Game Design Traid represents the entity that a player is interacting with, traditionally called a game. Any game should always have both the toy as well as the puzzle components built into it. This integration should to to such an high extent that, the game designer should ask himself if this traid condition is met at every point in the game. To be more precise, let me define what i mean by a toy, a puzzle and a game.
A Toy is any object that the player plays with. Like the player's car in Need For Speed, a Rubicks cube that can be twisted, your avatar ( mario ) in the game or a barbie doll. Something that you get pleasure and can have fun just by interacting with it. A Toy is fun to play with.
A Puzzle is a toy with a goal. The proximity of the player to the goal is not altered by anyone other than the player himself. The toy can be interactively manipulated by the player according to a well known rule-set. For every action of the player, the toy changes its state. The player would know the goal beforehand and would try to achieve this goal by adhering to the rules. Rubick's cube is a puzzle since it has a unique goal, all the six sides of the cube should have the same colour. And this is achieved by following one rule, twist along the X,Y or Z axes.
A Game is a puzzle where the proximity of the player to the goal is being altered by the player as well as anything that is not the player.
The distinction between a toy and a puzzle is clear. Toy + Goal = Puzzle. However, the distinction between a puzzle and game is subtle. Any game should make the player take decisions. A puzzle in the game is what makes a player take this decision.
Let us take the example of Tetris.
- As a toy, it is so much fun to just guide the blocks and rotate them into different orientations as they fall.
- As a puzzle, the player constantly takes a decision to see where the current block fits into the existing set of blocks.
- As a game, the player competes against god who throws the blocks from the top, one after the other. The conflict is to form as many lines of blocks as possible without hitting the roof. It could be argued that Tetris is a very good puzzle and a highly unbalanced game. God always wins. If the number of blocks that the second player (God) threw down were made limited, then Tetris would become a balanced two player game.
I feel any game can be analysed for 'how much fun is it?' at any point by considering the different components of the triad, namely toy, puzzle and a game. So any game should be a very powerful toy initially, and then it should be made into a good puzzle that well integrates the nature of the toy. This would require adding a goal that is coherent with the toy's nature. Further, a conflict should be introduced into this puzzle such that there is a change in the state of the puzzle even when the player is not-interacting with it.
To summarize, here are the three steps for designing a game:
- Build a toy that is fun to play with.
- Introduce a clear goal and a set of rules to manipulate that toy. Essentially come up with a puzzle.
- Add opponent to the puzzle, that changes the state of the puzzle even when the player is not interacting with it. Most often the introduced force will try to increase the player's proximity to his goal. This will be your game.
By the above set of rules, any toy can be made into a puzzle and a game. Vice-versa, any game can be broken down into its component puzzle and the toy that lies beneath. Here are some of the games and the break-up.
