Key Aspects of Game Play #1
Vision
An essay
By Tyler Tinsley
Vision in relation to game play is a players ability to see possible moves and the consciences there of, and guess at the possible response of the opponent. The use of vision in a games’ design is of the up most importance, for it determines just how people will play the game, and just why people will enjoy the game. There are many ways a player’s vision may be altered by game design. The most prevalent ways are these three, the overload, hid, and obscured.
The overload is where players are given a multitude of possible moves at any time so that always seeing every possible move is quite a challenge. A classic example of this is chess. Unless the players have a truly good understanding of the game there can always be a surprising move. The overload is commonly associated with strategy games.
Vision is hidden from a player when there are preexisting variables that the player is not aware of. Vision is generally only partially hidden allowing for play such as bluffing and deduction. An example is the game of draw poker, the type of cards in a player’s hand is unknown but the amount of cards he returns and the amount that he bets are know to all players. Hidden vision allows for unpredictability while still allowing for deduction of possible best moves.
Obscured vision is when there are multiple random outcomes to a single action. Obscured Vision can be archived in many cleaver ways by a game designer but the most common way is dice. It’s used in many themed games to represent the variable outcomes one action can have in a realistic setting. Obscured vision is most commonly associated with “luck”.
It is a rare that a game uses only one of the ways to alter a player’s vision, in fact nearly all games use combinations of all these aspects. The devices used in games typically lend them selves to having a mix of these. Dice for example, when rolling two or more will create outcomes that are more likely than others thus allowing for players to see what outcome has better odds. There is no right mix of vision modifiers, as it is really up to the player to decide what types and mixes they prefer.
Tyler Tinsley is an unpublished game designer seeking to build connections in the board/hobby game industry and is available to blind test or review any game. You can contact him at t_h_pro@yahoo.com
what do you guys think? am i right, full of crap, or almost there?
"Some very good points there, somewhat obscured by the spell checker you used mangling some of the words"
If anyone could act as an editor for me I would really appreciate it. As my biggest failing is communicating with text.
Can anyone come up with a vision modifier I did not discuss? I have not gotten to play as wide range of game as I have liked, so there is possibly something important missing.