Keith Burgan's Interactive Forms
Within “interactive entertainment”, we can divide things into four forms – patterns of design that, in theory, work in a certain way.
- Toy: Systems that have no prescribed goals
- Puzzle: Prescribes a goal
- Contest: Allows measurement, play session is limited
- Strategy Game: Obfuscates measurement, incomplete information requires ambiguous decision-making
A friend told me about this theory of game forms months ago, and we eventually tracked down the source: Keith Burgan. Keith also talks more in depth about contests on his blog.
Simple examples my friend and I talked about:
- Toy: Playing freely with Lego blocks
- Puzzle: Following Lego instructions to complete a model
- Contest: Completing the model against a timer
- Game: Building with others from a limited pool of blocks
We found other taxonomies but I like the simplicity of Keith’s.
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