ADAPTIVE GAMEPLAY AESTHETICS: A Disruptive Game Design Framework (Essay)

Why Pay What You Want?

This essay is FREE. I wrote it because I have a passion for adapting classical art techniques for game design. Essay's such as this are written in my spare time. Please consider donating if you find they help you as a game developer or academic, so that I can continue making such contributions to game design theory and practise. You can also donate after downloading and reviewing the content. 

Many thanks!

— Chris

What you get:

• 90 page PDF featuring exercises with video and audio links
• Suitable as a workbook for educational and training purposes
  
  

This essay provides a disruptive game design framework based on , with original content and refinements that have arisen since the book was published. Readers will gain in-depth insights into shape language and composition, tracing the lineage of these long-standing techniques from antiquity to contemporary mainstream culture and games, where they are translated to adaptive composition. Adaptive composition is a game design framework for heightening physical empathy and the sensory experience of players with a focus on art and narrative-driven games and transmedia. Shape language and composition are framed in the form of Jesper Juul’s puzzle piece metaphor, to provide a practical interpretation of Raph Koster's theoretical work, with the aim of challenging game design conventions, and illustrating adaptive composition’s relevance to the entire development team of game and narrative designers, artists, writers, programmers, musicians, game user researchers, etc. Practical exercises throughout the essay provide design tools for averting ludonarrative dissonance, and demonstrate the shortcomings of the magic circle metaphor, and common misconceptions regarding Marcel Duchamp's teachings on objects and meaning. This essay is therefore sure to be of interest for those that are already familiar with my two books: , and

Whether you’re a developer of video games, virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) or cross reality (XR), a filmmaker, game user researcher (GUR), a gamification and transmedia expert, game theorist, psychologist, or simply interested in experiencing resonant and meaningful interactive stories—you’ll find the following insights will awaken a new appreciation for art and craft, and provide you with creative tools that can be actioned immediately to influence the user experience. 

Endorsements for (CRC Press 2017), on which this essay is based:

"The convergence of narrative in film, video games, and virtual reality will fundamentally change the entertainment industry in coming years. Chris Solarski's book gives content creators crucial insights into interactive story composition and how to adapt these concepts for transmedia storytelling."
— Marc Forster, Film Director and Producer incl. and

"The concepts presented in remind me of Joseph Campbell's powerful demonstration of a universal storytelling structure. Coming from a technical game design background yet being artistically inclined, I never considered that atomic elements such as shapes, lines of movement and transitions contain a vocabulary strong enough to sculpt our mood, whether consciously or unconsciously. This book creates that wonderful feeling of learning new letters, which soon prove useful to form new sentences for bringing new poetry to the world."
— Stéphane Assadourian, Veteran Game Production Consultant and founding member of Ubisoft's franchise

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