Read Online Read Online
Previous page Next page
Games and Learning Alliance: Network of Excellence for Serious Games
Triadic Game Design
Balancing Reality, Meaning and Play

This level marks the ending of the book. After comparing the game design process to a children's book about designing a butterfly, it goes into how a balance is found when designing a game. To explain this, an analogy is made with the concept of Yin and Yang. This level further deals with the "so what" and "who cares" question of the Triadic Game Design (TGD) approach. It is concluded that it can be used as an "analytical lens," "application tool," or "puzzle frame" in the field of games. But to have a real impact on the actual practice, it is needed that people are familiar with the idea of TGD. Since game design is (generally) collaborative, it would be beneficial that more than one person knows about it. For this reason, a game-based workshop has been developed that can be employed at the beginning of a project. Besides making sure that a project runs smoothly during the design, considerations should also be made about what happens if the game is finished. From the observations of the "life after the design" it becomes clear that this is certainly an issue that should not be neglected. The main message of this level concerns, however, that although this book is "game over," it is everything but "over" for the design and research of games. To bring the field to "the next level," structural approaches are needed and TGD is one of them. With the insights of this approach in mind, people can start to "dance." Because it takes two to tango, but it takes three to design a game with a meaningful purpose.