| Distant Star said: Ofcourse you can have your own personal definitions. This works great if you want a basic framework that proves useful to yourself. My basic requirement is "If it doesn't make sense with voice commands it's probably not good enough" + "dimension/category SHOULD be one word otherwise it's not clearly defined. Wiki
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Again, great hints! Thank you for the time you've put into this. Let me now go step by step.
I agree with you. It should make sense with voice commands. But that's not the only, and probably not the most important, requirement. In some cases, we may have to compromise it in favour of a more accurate, better organized and/or more comprehensive classification.
The question we were discussing was: between Adventure and Mithology which was a better term for a game like Tomb Raider. And honestly, I believe the former is. Another question was: does the Steam classification make sense to people? Do gamers see GTA as an adventure game? Again, I don't think so.
About dimension/category, these are different concepts. Dimension is the characteristic you are looking at when classifying (e.g. interaction time). Category is the value that you assign a given game (e.g. turn-based). In a biological classification, the dimensions are the ranks (kingdom, phylum, class, etc.) and the categories are the instances those ranks can assume (animalia, chordata, mammalia, etc.). But this one is a hierarchical taxonomy (which is what is described in your citation). Taxonomies do not need to be of that fashion ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxonomy_(general) ). Mine is not. But do you think it should? Why?
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These three lines could be helpful What you play is about the game. (Game Classification) <-This thread |
That's an interesting perspective. I kind of mixed the three in the Taxonomy. Dimension 1 (Physical input) is more related to hardware and Dimension 10 (Purpose) is more about why you play. Separating these three lines is something to be considered. But I still have questions about this. For instance, the physical input (and output - WiiU has changed a bit this one too) is not just about hardware, but the game (or at least the operating system where the game runs on) needs also to be designed accordingly. About the MDA framework, I think mechanics and dynamics is already included in the Taxonomy. Aesthetics is a higher level dimension, which should result from the building blocks of the lower level dimensions of this Taxonomy.
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A Interaction/ Controlls 1 Physical Input (Digital, Analog, Motion, Neural) 2 input time / space C Structure/Rules |
1) That would be a way of looking at it. However, there would be a lot of categories and they would result from combinations of the current ones. Moreover, lightguns and dualshock 3 would be separate categories, although having the same characteristics (digital, analog and motion). I like to break things in their building blocks, so prefer to keep it this way. Or another possibility would be to turn these categories (digital, analog, etc.) into dimensions. The categories would all be binary though. In the way it is right now, I understand the issue you're pointing. Still, we could overcome it by considering that some games can be hybrids (digital + analog) or that the categories are nested (analog includes digital, motion includes digital and analog, etc.).
2) The problem with "interaction type" is that it could represent different things. I know my organization is not completely clear. But the idea was to distinguish first between supertypes, where discrete would correspond to discrete space and time, and continuous could be further divided.
3) Do you have another suggestion for the name of the dimension? About the categories, it's exactly that! Those names are probably more scientific, but the ones I used were more the terminology used by gamers.
4) You're right! Probably camera perspective or viewpoint are better names.
5) I agree it's about level design, like viewpoint is also about level design. And it's not just about loading times. Imagine that in Super Mario 64, the loading times were reduced to 0. That wouldn't make it open world, because each level would still be accessed by a single portal. On the other hand, GTA Vice City has loading times, but it is still open world, because there's a continuous interface between both islands.
6) I don't know. Gamemode is also too generic. For instance, in a racing game, gamemode can be arcade, career, time attack, etc. But I agree this dimension deserves a lot of credit.
7) AI is a very important aspect and maybe it deserves a separate dimension. But this one wasn't just about AI. It's about everything that makes a game more or less scripted, so it includes AI, randomness (e.g. casino roulette) and how sequential events depend on each other (less dependency = more scripted).
8) No, a scripted story game would correspond to mission-based (I don't know if it's the best name), while non-linear, collaborative story (RPG) games would correspond to skill-based. This is not the same as (although it may be related to) the scripted/non-scripted behaviour of the previous dimension. That one is about what happens inside the mission/match. This one is about how missions/matches are structured in the game.
You gave a lot of inputs, and I still have to think about some of them. Meanwhile, if you have more ideas or comments on these questions, please let me know! Thanks!
