Features of using the canvas-oriented approach to game design

Abstract

The article proposes an canvas-oriented approach to game design. It justifies the applying of a dynamic cycle of interconnected canvases into creative game design, for the purpose of documenting the progress and results of the creative process, stimulating it while canvases simultaneously are both clues and guides in game development. The author's definition of game design сanvasation as a process of creation of a visual abstract structure that generalizes the case goal (the task containing the accumulated experience) for achieving it and creating a unique creative product is given. Projects “Canvas of Player Psychotypes & Aethteticts”, “Canvas of Player's needs in Control, Information and Action”, “Canvas of Game Mechanics & Dynamics”, “Canvas of Narrative”, “Canvas of the Game World”, “Canvas of Game Level” are presented. Canvases structure the game development process, reduce the time taken to generate game designer ideas and to contrive game mechanic and dynamics. Canvases are an additional road map toward making creative decisions in game design. They can be a convenient basis for automating the process of latter, a paper prototype of the game and the game design as a quest process provided that each canvas is a location with quest tasks, the variability of which depends on the potential and attitude of the leader and team. The proposed set of interrelated canvas has been tested during the training course “Computer Game Design for Education” for teachers of the humanities of Odessa National Polytechnic University within the framework of European Commission Erasmus+KA2-project GameHub. Subsequently, it is planned to develop “Canvas Balance” and “Canvas Ethical Dilemma” to regulate the game with regard to balance and ethics by detecting deficiencies in the gameplay components, controlling the achievement of the necessary aesthetics and solving ethical conflicts, adjusting feedback between channels so that, ultimately, create socially useful human oriented product. The algorithm for routing the components of the canvases also will be developed, allowing to automate the process of filling out sections of the Game Design Document.