Digital ame design is a relatively new profession. I present how it has evolved through the eyes of gaming history.

1. Game design Through the eyes of gaming history

2. 1962 1971 1971
Spacewar!
1st gen digital game
Computer space
1st gen arcade game
Magnavox odyssey
1st gen home console
First attempts

3. Atari
First to achieve commercial success
with their arcades and consoles

4. The golden coin-ops era
1972-1985
Space invaders
1978
Pac Man
1980
Street fighter II
1991
Donkey kong
1980
Asteroids
1981
10,000,000,000+ 8,000,000,000+ 6,500,000,000+ 1,120,000,000+ 500,000,000+
Typical arcade commercial

5. Game design to serve monetization
● Super intuitive controls and objectives
● Endless, race to highscore game play
● Skill based games

6. Genre innovation in the 80’s

7. 1985
NES
3rd gen console that revived the dying US market
Home consoles
● In depth game design
● Exploration and progression as
objectives
● New “auto-save” mechanics
● Hours of gameplay
Link to arcade commercial

8. PC as a gaming platform

9. 1989 1996
Game boy
3rd gen handheld
Tamaguchi
1st “casual” handheld, aiming at
girls as main consumers
Handhelds
● Fragmented gameplay
● Half a toy, half a game
Link to Tamaguchi commercial
Link to Game boy commercial

10. Hello casualers!
2001 2002
1990
Bejewled
Downloaded over 150M times
The sims
Best selling PC game in all
times
Solitaire
The most popular PC game

11. Online and social - boys
MMORPG
Most subscribed game with 7M
paying customers.
2004 ● Massive multiplayer online role playing
game
● Game as a service (IM’s, guilds, forums)
● Sandbox, an open world
● Almost endless gameplay

12. Online and social - Girls
Social game
Biggest social game, more than
11M DAU at peak. FTP
2009 ● Using the vast FB community to go
where no game had ever gone before
● Data is a major factor on the game
design
● Behaviorism is another major factor
● Clever use of in app purchases
● Appeared in Time’s “50 worst
innovations” list

13. Shifting to mobile (2009)
Fruit ninja
New mechanics for touch
screens
Draw something
First true mobile social success
Angry birds
Bringing puzzles to the people!

14. And… New audience!

15. ● The Ipad brought gaming to toddlers
● Playing gamified toys
● Dominated by free to play model
Toddlers

16. App Stores 2014
Candy crush saga
Top grossing, a monetization
machine
Clash of clans
Top grossing, dumbed down RTS
game
Flappy bird
The app store phenomena of 2014

17. Free to play
● Games are built for short sessioned gameplay
● Game design emphasizes micro transactions
● Game design by data
● Fragmented gameplay
And.. Flappy bird clones.

18. 2013 2012 2002-
Playstation vita
8th gen handheld
Steam
70% share of digital PC games
distribution
Home consoles
Playstation 4
8th gen console presenting
amazing audio-visual experiences

19. Thoughts of the future?
● Games as a service (QuizUp)
● E-commerce games (Covet fashion)
And.. Flappy bird clones.
Taking a wild guess
here...

20. Thoughts of the future?
● New gamers migrating to more serious gameplay.
● Indie leaps forward, due to cost-effective projects
and crowdsource efforts.
● And yea, oculus rift.
Taking a more
educated guess...

21. Gaming is…
Everywhere
“Everything in the future online is going
to look like a multiplayer game”
- Eric Schmidt, Google chairman
Xbox 1 commercial
Donkey kong commercial

22. Why do we love games so much?
Answers in the next lecture...