Extending Soft Models To Game Design : Flow, Challenges And Conflicts

Abstract

Challenge and conflict are elements that all game designers strive to engineer into their games. Research shows that challenge is what drives a high proportion of games players yet there are few published tools that can be used to assist the game designer in constructing useful challenges and conflict leading many new game designers to resort to the ‘tried and trusted’ techniques used in previous games and hence limiting the originality of new games. In this paper we apply the Soft Systems Methodology to game design and assess its suitability as a tool for structured idea formulation in games.