Game Design

I've been reading Junichi Masuda's (director of gamefreak) blog for a while and it seems he always has a particularly interesting insight into the world of game design ==>http://www.gamefreak.co.jp/blog/dir_english/?p=15

You should check out his posts even if you're not so much a pokemon fan, I like the way he breaks down the mechanics of gameplay and questions the underlying structure of games in order to make the games they are developing even better.

Sooo about gameplay... In magazine reviews when a game is being rated the gameplay will be one of the aspects beings assessed but this is always separate from graphics or sound etc. Gameplay could be described as the interaction between the user and the game, how it progresses, the way the controls work...

At the moment gameplay is being pushed further than ever to create a new experience for gamers, the nintendo wii for example using the remote to produce a whole new genre challenging the concept of gameplay. Speaking of different genres, it seems that what you can expect from a game in terms of gameplay depends on what category it falls into.

Board games are traditionally intended to be played as a turn taking based multiplayer game, with 2-4 players being the average. The majority of computer games are single player and gameplay varies drastically between each genre whereas most board games tend to be the whole 'first one to finish wins' concept.

BTW, a pacman board game??? :O it's cuuute!

Oh and I thought this was just hilarious, but does make me think how far should we take gaming in terms of realism?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a14s1LcCUWs

See ya ~Emi ^o^