Name: __________________________________________
Date: ___________________________________________
Class: ___________________________________________
Copyright
by
The
Goodheart-Willcox
Co.,
Inc.
Lesson 3 Click Ball 25
Situation
The Awesome Game Company wants to create a game for young children to improve the
child’s control of the mouse and ability to left click. First, you must learn the definition of a video
game and the associated rules and victory condition. The information in this section discusses
these aspects.
How to Begin
1. Read the passage below.
2. Complete the review questions.
3. Turn in all materials.
4. Complete the game build.
Reading Materials
A video game is a software-entertainment product that has a game environment, rules, and
a victory condition. The game environment is what separates a video game from all other games. The
game environment is a setting altered or designed to play a specific game activity.
For a game like baseball, the game environment is the baseball field. The field has been
altered to have three bases, home plate, a pitcher’s mound, in-bounds areas, and foul areas.
None of these things exist in nature. A piece of land has been changed to make this game
environment.
In a video game, the game environment is a virtual game world. This virtual world is seen
through a video screen, thus the video in video game. The video display is the part of the game
environment that separates video games from regular games (such as board games). The really
cool part of a virtual world is that anything can happen without regard to reality. Both realistic
and unrealistic events can occur in a video game. It is up to the designer to create the world.
Inside the game environment are the rules that determine the gameplay. A rule is a
constraint that determines what can or cannot happen in the game. Look at the baseball
example again, the game rules become clear. Inside the game environment of the baseball
field these rules apply: teams have nine players, each team has three outs per inning, there are
nine innings in a game (unless the score is tied after nine innings), each batter can take up to
three strikes to reach base or an out is recorded, if the ball is caught before it hits the ground it
is an out, etc. There are, of course, many more rules than these for the game of baseball. It is
important to understand that rules make the game environment meaningful. Imagine if the rules
for the game of baseball did not set an out of bounds. The batter could hit the ball anywhere out
of bounds to have a home run. That makes the out of bounds rule a very important part of the
game environment for baseball.
Much thought has been put into designing the rules of baseball. Similarly, a video game
designer has to be very careful when making the rules for a video game. Rules must help the
player feel the game is fair and winnable. This is one of the main reasons to construct a rule.
If players feel the game cannot be won, they will not play it. Other rules help create the game
environment, like the out-of-bounds rule in baseball.