Ultimate Game Design : Building game worlds

Building Game Worlds
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U L T I M A T E G A M E D E S I G N
FIGURE 5-1
Motion-tracking suit
Sports games have established rules. In many other genres as a designer, you are
tasked with creating the rules. Typically, for standard sports titles, you will be translating
the rules of a particular sport into your game. Design-wise, in an effort to
maintain the best game experience, you will have to consider how the flow of a typical
game and its rules affect the player. You will frequently decide to provide the
player with options to disable parts of the officiating rules of a game that breaks the
“action feeling” for the player (for example, turning off “icing” calls in a hockey
game). Every effort will be made to bring the full set of rules of the given sport into
the game.
A point of design balance is frequently called for in the “simulation versus fantasy”
area as it pertains to sports. A hardcore simulation that attempts to re-create
every minute detail of a sports game experience in real-time may find an audience
among die-hard simulation fans, but lose the action player in the mix. For example, a
baseball game may simulate the catcher sending signs for pitches, to which the
pitcher either agrees or shakes off the sign before pitching. For brevity and less distance
between “action points” in the game, you would probably cut sending pitch