Game Makeup, Archetypes, and Other Boring Shit

Short note: These are based around my own thinking and observations. In other words I’m a lazy bastard who doesn’t read books on the subject, even though I should. If you happen to know of a book about game design and such with a similar hypothesis, or an outright definition (something like Understanding Comics or Story. Both of which I’m going to steal from, as far as format is concerned.) I’m not going to pretend as if I have actual researched knowledge into the field, or that I’m some kind of expert, but I do want to see what other people think of the ideas I guess.

Video Game Composition

So, a video game is a game played on a computer, against a computer or another human opponent using a computer (basic stuff.) “Game” in general has a lot of definitions, but I’m going to say a game is composed of two things: rules and a goal. A goal contains the conditions for victory and the rules are the laws by which one must follow to attain the goal. Furthermore, rules have a hierarchy, and can be bent, broken and overwritten. Specific genres of games have similar goals or rulesets that set them apart from other games. For example, sports video games have rules and goals based on sports in the real world while platform games have goals based on reaching hard to get places and rules for governing movement.

A game must always have rules, the goal is secondary (it might exist, or in some cases not exist at all.)

Video Game Archetypes
(Here’s where I start stealing from Robert McKee and Scott McCloud…)

I see video games falling into three archetypes: Classic Games, Sandbox Games, and Story Games.