Exam Review Flashcards

Flashcards based on lecture notes to help students prepare for an exam.

According to Zubek, how does he define a game?

A combination of players, strategies, and outcomes played for fun.

What are some of the nouns of the Five Fingers game that were played in class?

Fingers.

What are some of the verbs of the Five Fingers game we played in class?

Play goes around the table to the left, you point at a player on your turn.

In Zen Counting, anyone can speak unless they spoke previously. This is an element of the game's what?

Flavor.

According to Zubek, what is gameplay?

It is what happens when players interact with the mechanics of a game.

A game's mechanics generate gameplay which produces …?

Experience.

"I played the Five Fingers game. At first I was confused, then I though it was too easy, then I realized you had to pay close attention to the last turns and got curious about what strategy to choose. I was frustrated when I lost but I wanted to play again." What part of Zubek's model is being expressed here?

Experience.

The game designer manipulates to create __ that generates positive ____.

Mechanics / gameplay / experience.

True or false: "If Felicity the designer wants to make people happier in her game, she has to change the rules or give people different items so that they play in a way that makes them happier. She can't make them happier directly, and she can't force them to play a certain way. Her primary controls are the mechanics of the game."

True.

Games are easy to design because people generally have the same experience when playing. What is the best way to exploit this similarity in player experience?

Trick question, the book says that people have really different experiences when playing a given game.

After we play a game in class, we generally discuss the player experience. We do this because it helps us what?

Understand how games affect people other than yourself.

Which of the following are elements outside Zubek's model of games?

All of these.

Zubek says that the specific job of a game designer is to design what?

Design mechanics.

What are some of the specific types of designer jobs, according to Zubek?

Systems designers, content designers.

What are the four Bartle player types?

Killer, Socializer, Achiever, Explorer.

Felix designed a game that Felicity plays. He wanted to make the game better for her, so he asked her why she likes it. Felicity said, "Because it's fun." What's limiting about that answer?

It's true but it isn't specific enough. Felix needs to know what she specifically likes in order to provide more of it.

The Player Experience of Needs Satisfaction (PENS) model suggests that players play games to satisfy underlying psychological needs. These are what?

Autonomy, competence, relatedness.

Which of the Big Five personality traits is the best one to have?

Trick question. These are simply features of personality, they can be good or bad in different situations

What is the Mastery aspect of Yee's motivation profiles?

The pleasure of overcoming challenges and developing good strategies

We talked about Christmas in class because what?

it shows how concepts continue through history without change

A good example of Huizinga's "magic circle" concept is what?

All of these.

In Zen Counting, if two people say a number at the same time, then those players win, but only if they say the same number what happens to the game?

the game resets

In the Language Game, we watched two volunteers play against each other three different ways. Most people thought that the most interesting to observe was the version where they had to state a food word that started with the last letter of the previous word. That's because what?

These constraints require more creativity and allow you to play along.

When I say "games are opinionated", I mean that what?

game designers create games that reflect implicit and explicit opinions

Senet description.

First board game.

Tlachtli description.

First sport.

Snakes and Ladders description.

First modern board game because it isn't a race.

Monopoly description.

Provides morality lessons for children.

Noun/object game element with the appropriate part of Uno.?

Cards.

Verbs/actions game element with the appropriate part of Uno.?

Draw, play, shuffle.

Game state game element with the appropriate part of Uno.?

Card locations (hand, deck, discard).

Experience game element with the appropriate part of Uno.?

Trash talking, fast games.

We generally play the version of Uno that we do because what?

it is a party game, so we want a version that's easy to play and low thought

At the end of the class where we played Random Battle (rolling a die each and seeing who had the higher outcome), we created a character to represent us in the game. This improved the experience for many people because what?

aesthetic elements affect our enjoyment of the mechanics of a game

was play because there was a winner

According to Kristy Anderson, the class-wide game of Rock-Paper-Scissors that we performed in class was what?

In Magic: the Gathering, how many lands can you play during a turn?

one

Which games that we've played this module do we consider asymmetrical?

Root

Which of these is a positive feedback loop? Choose all correct answers.

Snowball rolling downhill

Amplifying loop

Exploding over time

Balancing loop

Settling down over time

Marvel Snap is based around the 'Snap' mechanic. This mechanic is most similar to what?

The doubling cube in Backgammon

In a set of nested gameplay loops, how do the outer and inner loops differ? Think of the general case - some games will be different but this question is asking about how things normally are.

Outer loops represent longer time scales

According to the book, game designers most commonly use extrinsic rewards with what?

Fixed ratio schedule

What is the difference between a conversion loop and a conversion chain?

In a loop, the final output of the conversion chain feeds back as an input into the start of the chain

Suppose the red player has a house in Chicago and wants to build a house in Fargo. How much does it cost?

Trick question, red cannot build in Fargo because he does not have a house in Minneapolis

Indie developer Rami Ismail uses this figure when writing about design pillars. What is it?

An onion diagram

Why is card shuffling NOT considered an uncertainty mechanic in games?

Trick question - it IS considered an uncertainty mechanic

The counterinsurgency (COIN) games that inspired Root are NOT what?

Designed to appeal to a broad audience

According to Zubek, which of these is a family of mechanics?

Assignation

According to Zubek, which of these is NOT a family of mechanics?

Network programming

According to the book, based on Csikszentmihalyi's research, players enter a flow state when there are what?

Clear goals, challenge matching skill, and feedback

What is a heuristic?

An informal recommendation about good practice; a rough guide to doing something or thinking about a situation

According to Raph Koster, players have fun when they are doing what?

Learning

In contrast to a mechanics loop, a gameplay loop is …

All of these are correct

What does Zubek describe as the input mapping problem?

How to connect the inputs players can choose on their devices to things happening in the game

If your game shows players exactly how well they are doing as they go through a game, it is using which of these kind of mechanics?

Direct progression

In a game like The Witcher (a fantasy Role-Playing Game), match the gameplay loops to the appropriate time scale, based on the chart on page 125 of the book.

Rest, heal, sell loot every five to ten minutes

In Power Grid, money is used to buy fuel and the fuel is used to make more money. Which phrase most accurately describes what this is?

conversion chain

Units that players can direct, manage, or encounter can be loaded up with abilities and statistics. All of these mechanics are part of what mechanic family?

Resource management

According to game theory, when we played Wolves & Sheep the first time, players tended to all choose Wolves by the end of the game, why is this the case?

This is the dominant strategy

Suppose you have a gold conversion loop where the player kills monsters, gets loot, sells the loot for gold, uses the gold to buy better weapons, and uses the better items to kill stronger monsters that drop more loot. If you don't want the player's gold to increase, how do you keep this system from being an amplifying loop? Select the BEST answer from a game design perspective.

Make the weapon prices go up with power

Which of the following would be considered a primary mechanic in Hearthstone?

Choosing your character, including their Hero Power

How does Robert Zubek define a game system?

A collection of mechanics set up to work together in specific ways

In games with positive feedback loops, how does the pace of the game change during the course of play?

Starts slow, ends fast

What is an "exchange rate" in a game?

All of these are good ways of describing exchange rates in resource conversion chains

In a team fighting game, the map system sits on top of the movement system, which sits on top of the resource gathering system, which sits on top of the weapon power system, which sits on top of the combat systems, which sits on top of the damage system. When we see a game with multiple systems like that, we say that the systems are .

Layered

Which of these is a conversion chain?

Health - fight - loot - sell - gold - house

When Ben Brode designed Marvel Snap after Hearthstone, one of his goals was to make it more accessible. One of the ways he did this was what?

Setting deck size at 12

In Power Grid uses a round-robin auction, where players place increasing bids in a specific order or pass. If we replaced this with a sealed-bid auction, how would this change the player experience of the game based on our experience with a sealed-bid auction in class?

All of these

In the traditional form of the Prisoner's Dilemma game theory experiment, the possible player actions are what?

Split or steal

Dungeons & Dragons material used to provide a significant amount of the randomness in the game

20-sided dice

Exit Left, chased by a bear material used to provide a significant amount of the randomness in the game

A single 6-sided die

Fiasco material used to provide a significant amount of the randomness in the game

Fate dice

Werewolf material used to provide a significant amount of the randomness in the game

Cards

Disco Elysium major feature that they include.

Oil painting-inspired art

Save the Date major feature that they include.

Narrative that breaks the fourth wall

Among Us major feature that they include.

Player elimination

Fiasco major feature that they include.

Collaborative character creation

Social deduction games like Werewolf and Among Us are descended from what earlier genre of game?

Parlor games

In the book, Zubek gives an example of a developer supporting game modding. That was which developer?

Developers of a multiplayer game allowing third-party tools to change game outcomes

Dungeons & Dragons is the best-known tabletop role-playing game in the world. It was inspired most directly by what?

Wargames

One technique that For the Queen used to help players create interesting characters interactions was what?

Asking leading questions

Disco Elysium subverts player expectations of a role-playing game by what?

Having the player party be composed of multiple aspects of a single character's personality

An example of a social metagame is what?

Trying to get your friends to play a game

In Fiasco, the game master (GM) plays an important role because what?

Trick question; Fiasco doesn't have a GM

An example of a mechanic that encourages a specific pacing is what?

The time loop in Save the Date

The narrative for Mafia/Werewolf and Among Us is what?

Emergent

According to Zubek, having a metagame is beneficial because having a metagame does what?

Encourages players to return frequently

Visual novels tend to have narratives in this style.

Linear

Which of these techniques/structures gives the player the most agency?

Branching options

Fiasco is considered a freeform RPG because what?

The simple rules emphasize character connections

Which of these games was least directly influenced by Dungeons & Dragons?

World of Warcraft

Design documents are used to what?

All of the above

According to Zubek, the metagame is what?

Something that happens over multiple sessions

According to Zubek, authorial control and agency how are they relevant when creating a narrative?

Are opposite sides of a narrative spectrum

An example of a game we've played with an authored story is what?

Save the Date

Which of these statements about visual novels and walking simulators is most true?

Visual novels and walking simulators are narrative-heavy genres with low interactivity

The 'Seer' role in Werewolf allows that player to do what?

See if a player is a werewolf

In Fiasco character creation, the first person to go does what?

Chooses a relationship card and places it between any two adjacent players

Halo: Combat Evolved is a first-person shooter where the character has shields as well as health. Unlike health, which can only be restored if the player finds an item, shields regenerate over time while the player is hiding. This is an example of using a mechanic to structure the game's what?

pacing