This week we dived deeper into dramatic elements and how they contribute to the overall experience of a game. In Fullerton’s chapter “Working with Dramatic Elements” it is mentioned that “Dramatic elements give context to gameplay, overlaying and integrating the formal elements of the system into a meaningful experience“. Some of the elements are characters, challenges, story, visuals, music, environment, premise, pace, and many more. Depending on the game, some of the elements are more emphasized than the others. For example, in games such as Dota 2, Overwatch, and Counter Strike, challenges and mechanics are the main dramatic elements that contribute to the overall experience of the games. On the hand, games such as Virginia (2016), Firewatch and The Beginner’s Guide focus more on story, visuals, environment and music instead.

This week I got to see in depth how visuals, music, environment and characters come into play as we played Virginia (2016) in class. In Virginia, we can see how the game designers use lightning, coloring, contrasts, and environment to give certain effects. One example would be using the color bright red in dreams to give this mysterious and vivid vibe. The game also starts with a dramatic music in the background and movie-like manner cut scenes that were short and quick. Last but not least, the design choice have a strong impact on the overall message and experience of the game such as having male characters as the majority or having our character silent during whole game. I think it’s interesting that most of the characters in the game are male but the ones that we can related the most are the female characters, the main character and her mother. Even though I have not played the whole game, I believe that there are good reasons behind all of these specific design choices.

Another game that comes to my mind is Batman: Arkham City. Besides progression and story line, I enjoy its uses of environment, space and dramatic music to improve the gameplay. This game is an open world game and it requires sneaking around to takedown enemies. The challenges and the open world design give this “loss of self consciousness” described in the Fullerton’s book, as I play the game.

To conclude, most of these games use story, progression, visuals, environment, music and challenges to create a game with meaningful experience. These are the important things that we need to take into account when we design our own games.

Works Cited:

Fullerton, Tracy. Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games, 4th Edition. 2019.

Virginia. Variable State. Published by 505 Games. 2016.