Field Guide
The words games are argued in
25 terms, each defined in one paragraph, set against the words it gets confused with, and linked to its sources and essays.
Beyond Entertainment
- Educational game
- A game designed to teach particular knowledge or skills, usually from a school subject.
- Game-based learning
- A way of teaching that uses games, purpose-made or commercial, as the material of a lesson.
- Games for change
- Games made to address social issues and move players toward understanding or action.
- Gamification
- Adding game design elements such as points, badges, and leaderboards to activities that are not games.
- Persuasive game
- A game that makes an argument through the way its rules work.
- Serious game
- A complete game made mainly to do something other than entertain, such as teach, train, inform, or persuade.
- Simulation
- A working model of a system that can be run to see how that system behaves.
- Simulation game
- A game built on a working model of a real or plausible system, played for the pleasure of running it.
- Training game
- A game used to build or maintain the practical skills a job demands.
Classification
- Format
- Format is how a game is packaged, delivered and played, such as single-player, multiplayer, episodic or live service.
- Genre
- A genre is a name for a recurring shape of play, meaning what you actually spend your time doing in a game.
- Immersive sim
- An immersive sim is a game whose world runs on consistent, interacting systems, so that players can solve problems in their own way.
- Mechanic
- A mechanic is a single action the rules let you take, together with how the game responds to it.
- Metroidvania
- A metroidvania is a game set in one interconnected world that opens up as you gain abilities that reach new areas.
- Perspective
- Perspective is where a game places your view of its world, such as first-person, third-person, side-on or top-down.
- Roguelike
- A roguelike is a game of generated, one-life runs in which nothing carries over between attempts except what the player has learned.
- Roguelite
- A roguelite is a game of generated, one-life runs in which some progress persists from one run to the next.
- Sandbox
- A sandbox is a game that gives you tools and a responsive world and leaves the purpose largely up to you.
- Soulslike
- A soulslike is a demanding action game built on the death-and-recovery structure of FromSoftware's Souls games.
- Theme
- Theme is what a game is about and where it takes place, as opposed to what you do in it.
Design Concepts
- Feedback loop
- A cycle in which the result of what a player does changes the conditions for what they do next.
- Gameful design
- Designing non-game activities around the rules, goals and measured progress of games.
- Player agency
- The player's sense that their own choices are what change the game.
- Playful design
- Designing things to invite open, free-form play rather than goal-driven competition.
Media and Form
- Interactivity
- The degree to which a work changes in response to what its audience does.