Being a Realistic Master: Creating Props and Environments Design for AAA Games

Abstract

To maximize the potential of computer games beyond entertainment, it is crucial to lower design and development costs and delegate production to domain specialists. While specialists may be interested in incorporating games, they often need more technical expertise to design or customize games for their requirements. To simplify game creation and improve user experience, we suggest defining games as a mixture of simpler games developed through combinatorial creativity. This method avoids the cognitive strain of learning a new design language. Along with speeding up game descriptions, designers might use a set of archetypical games to achieve their goals rather than starting from scratch. The design technique is enhanced by a game platform that provides authoring tools for exporting game designs to XML files and a game engine that automatically generates a 3D virtual world for play. This study explored how this approach allows designers to build games and evaluate their validity through play iteratively. Here, the combinatorial technique was assessed in two focus groups, demonstrating its viability and appeal among technical and non-technical users.