Human-Computer Interaction. Interaction Contexts

Game Design research, in the past few years, has spawned multiple models and frameworks for understanding of games as systems. These models and frameworks predominantly function as pedagogic tools rather than something designers can readily use. The availability of multiple frameworks with varying detail as well as the lack of interactive layers on these frameworks makes it difficult for practicing designers to use them effectively. In an attempt to overcome this limitation we propose a Unified Game Design (UGD) framework which assimilates components and elements from multiple existing models, frameworks and ontologies. The UGD framework features a superset of the existing elements and creates categories and relationships that makes it more usable. We explored several applications of the UGD framework in analysis, completion and synthesis of games. However this paper elaborates the interactive implementation of the UGD framework in the generation of game ideas. The game of ‘Lets Game it’ with the framework’s components and elements at its core was designed for the same purpose. The game provokes the designers to create new combinations of components and elements to generate game ideas. We conducted play tests for this game and found that game practitioners found it useful in generating game ideas.