Gamasutra (Doug Church)

For Rob's lesson we were shown an a piece from 'Gamasutra' written by Doug Church.
Doug Church begins by mentioning how he believes it is necessary for games designers to develop a  language that is understood by all games designers, to give them a better way of communicating and expressing their feelings about a game or idea. Church talks about how the technology we, as games designers, use to create the games. However he feels the language is needed to evolve the games designing process. Instead of just saying 'this game is fun', this shared language will provide us with easier ways to express views between different designers.

Some people (not naming any names) may see this as Church being snobbish by trying to put on a show with flashy words to make the subject seem more academic. However I believe it is necessary to develop this new vocabulary even if others do have this opinion, I mean who cares what we look like?

Within this text Church also talks about Perceivable consequences as a topic.
Perceivable consequences can be represented by when the player does something within a game, the player then has expectations of the outcome following his own actions. This makes it possible for a player to know how they have failed at a task or goal and how they can change this the next time round, providing improvement for the player as they will understand why they failed and what to do instead.

Other things I have taken from the text is that Design is the most important aspect of creating games as without the design, there is no game.
Also the players need to have the ability to devise and carry out there own plans so they know where they are doing things right and wrong.

Overall I feel heavily influenced by this text when thinking about creating any type of game. It has made me think about what the player wants and what they want to do. Can they carry out there own goals? can they succeed at these goals? Are they going to learn from their mistakes when they do eventually fail?