Chapter 7. Rediscovering Fire – Common Game Design Elements
Video games are getting more and more intricate every day. It seems that innovative ideas are on the rise, especially with the increasing popularity of indie games, such as Minecraft and Super Meat Boy. While the game ideas themselves are getting more and more abstract, at least on the outside, the rigid skeleton behind the pretty skin that keeps it standing and helps it retain shape is still taking the place of the lowest common denominator in the eyes of game developers. Even if the focus of the game centers around two unicorns who spend their free time smoking fairy dust and helping Dracula make muffins so that Neptune doesn't blow up, that concept coming to life is going to depend greatly on the underlying logic of the game before anything else. If there are no entities in the game, there are no unicorns. If the entities are simply bouncing around a black screen, the game is not engaging. These are the...
