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A video game is an electronic game that involves interaction with a user interface or input device – such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device – to generate visual feedback for a player. This feedback is shown on a video display device, such as a TV set, monitor, touchscreen, or virtual reality headset. Video games are often augmented with audio feedback delivered through speakers or headphones, and sometimes with other types of feedback, including haptic technology.
A strategy game or strategic game is a game in which the players' uncoerced, and often autonomous, decision-making skills have a high significance in determining the outcome. Almost all strategy games require internal decision tree-style thinking, and typically very high situational awareness.
A game programmer is a software engineer, programmer, or computer scientist who primarily develops codebases for video games or related software, such as game development tools. Game programming has many specialized disciplines, all of which fall under the umbrella term of "game programmer". A game programmer should not be confused with a game designer, who works on game design.
Video game design is the process of designing the content and rules of video games in the pre-production stage and designing the gameplay, environment, storyline, and characters in the production stage. The designer of a game is very much like the director of a film in many ways; the designer is the visionary of the game and controls the artistic and technical elements of the game in fulfillment of their vision. Video game design requires artistic and technical competence as well as sometimes including writing skills. As the industry has aged and embraced alternative production methodologies such as agile, the role of a principal game designer has begun to separate - some studios emphasizing the auteur model while others emphasizing a more team oriented model. Within the video game industry, video game design is usually just referred to as "game design", which is a more general term elsewhere.
In tabletop games and video games, game mechanics are the rules that govern and guide the player's actions, as well as the game's response to them. A game's mechanics thus effectively specifies how the game will work for the people who play it.
Game balance is a part of game design that can be described as a mathematical-algorithmic model of a game’s numbers, game mechanics and relations between those. Therefore, game balancing consists in adjusting those to create the intended experiences, usually positive ones. Players’ perception and experience are usually the objective of game balancing.
Emergent gameplay refers to complex situations in video games, board games, or table top role-playing games that emerge from the interaction of relatively simple game mechanics.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to video games:
Actions per minute, abbreviated to APM, is a term used in video games, particularly real-time strategy and fighting games which refers to the total number of actions that a player can perform in a minute. Actions per minute are the number of actions completed within a minute of gameplay in real-time strategy games, most notably in StarCraft. High APM is often associated with skill, as it can indicate that a player both knows what to do in the game and has the manual dexterity to carry it out. Software has been developed to analyze players' APM in these games. Beginners often have low APM counts, typically below 50. Professional e-athletes in South Korea usually have average APM scores around 350, but often exceed the 450 mark during intense battle sequences. Notable gamers with over 400 average APM include Lee Jae-Dong. Park Sung-Joon is noted for the record APM of 818. However, given that the majority of APMs are repetitions of orders already given, APM is not always considered an accurate indication of skill.
A level, map, area, stage, world, track, board, floor, zone, phase, mission, episode, course, or rank in a video game is the total space available to the player during the course of completing a discrete objective. Video game levels generally have progressively increasing difficulty to appeal to players with different skill levels. Each level presents new content and challenges to keep player's interest high.
In video games, grinding is performing repetitive tasks, usually for a gameplay advantage or loot but in some cases for purely aesthetic or cosmetic benefits. Popularized by Secret of Mana and Phantasy Star IV in 1993, many video games use different tactics to implement, or reduce, the amount of grinding in the gameplay. The general use of grinding is for "experience points", or to improve a character's level. In addition, the behavior is sometimes referred to as pushing the bar, farming, or catassing.
An overworld is, in a broad sense, commonly an area within a video game that interconnects all its levels or locations. They are mostly common in role-playing games, though this does not exclude other video game genres, such as some platformers and strategy games.
A strategy video game is a video game genre that focuses on skillful thinking and planning to achieve victory. It emphasizes strategic, tactical, and sometimes logistical challenges. Many games also offer economic challenges and exploration. They are generally categorized into four sub-types, depending on whether the game is turn-based or real-time, and whether the game focuses on strategy or tactics.
A sandbox game is a video game with a gameplay element that gives the player a great degree of creativity to complete tasks towards a goal within the game, if such a goal exists. Some games exist as pure sandbox games with no objectives. These are also known as non-games or software toys. More often, sandbox games result from these creative elements being incorporated into other genres and allowing for emergent gameplay. Sandbox games are often associated with an open world concept which gives the player freedom of movement and progression in the game's world. The "sandbox" term derives from the nature of a sandbox that lets children create nearly anything they want within it.
A game is a structured form of play, usually undertaken for entertainment or fun, and sometimes used as an educational tool. Games are distinct from work, which is usually carried out for remuneration, and from art, which is more often an expression of aesthetic or ideological elements. However, the distinction is not clear-cut, and many games are also considered to be work or art.
In game design the Mechanics-Dynamics-Aesthetics (MDA) framework is a tool used to analyze games. It formalizes the consumption of games by breaking them down into three components: Mechanics, Dynamics and Aesthetics. These three words have been used informally for many years to describe various aspects of games, but the MDA framework provides precise definitions for these terms and seeks to explain how they relate to each other and influence the player's experience.
This list includes terms used in video games and the video game industry, as well as slang used by players.
Game design is the art of applying design and aesthetics to create a game for entertainment or for educational, exercise, or experimental purposes. Increasingly, elements and principles of game design are also applied to other interactions, in the form of gamification. Game designer and developer Robert Zubek defines game design by breaking it down to its elements, which he says are the following:
Metroidvania is a subgenre of action-adventure video games. The term is a portmanteau of the game series Metroid and Castlevania. Metroidvania games use game design and mechanics that are similar to games from these two series. Specifically, the genre's basis derives from the Castlevania title Castlevania: Symphony of the Night and many of the games in the franchise which come after it, which are generally considered to contain certain aspects of gameplay comparable to that of the Metroid series of games. As such, the term is used to invoke gameplay concepts and mechanics similar to that of these two series. Koji Igarashi, the assistant director for Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, is credited with establishing key principles of Metroidvanias through his work on other Castlevania games.
References
- ↑ Bonnie Nardi (2 June 2010). My Life as a Night Elf Priest: An Anthropological Account of World of Warcraft. University of Michigan Press. pp. 137–142. ISBN 978-0-472-02671-5.
- 1 2 "Theorycraft" . Retrieved 13 March 2016.
The term originated in the Starcraft community as composite colloquialism between the name Starcraft and Game Theory.
- 1 2 "Optimizing Play: How Theorycraft Changes Gameplay and Design" . Retrieved 13 March 2016.
The growth in the role of theorycrafting offers room to analyze how games change over time and how players can influence a game's design by reshaping how they play..
- ↑ Ask, Kristine (February 7, 2017). "The Value of Calculations: The Coproduction of Theorycraft and Player Practices" (PDF). Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society. 36 (3): 190–200. doi:10.1177/0270467617690058. hdl: 11250/2458233 .
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