While noodling around on some more ideas for Spider Siege, I found myself pondering the game’s verbs and nouns. This let to further noodling, which I’m doing right now, and sharing with you.
Verbs are the actions that players take when playing a game:
- Play a card.
- Score a point.
- Move a unit.
- Deal 10 points of Jello damage to your opponent.
Nouns are typically the objects of those player actions. These are game elements that are in play on the table, such as:
- units,
- cards,
- abstract pools of resources, or
- the players themselves.
(Okay, I’m not sure if the players themselves count as nouns. It probably depends on the game. But I’m just trying to be thorough.)
Of course, seizing any opportunity to wield my English degree, I must now extend the metaphor to include some more parts of speech.
Adjectives are how you differentiate different types of nouns:
- Melee, Ranged, or Magical Units
- Land, Creature, or Artifact Cards
- Small, Medium, or Large Bowls of Jello
Which I guess means adverbs are how you differentiate different types of verbs:
- Move a unit aggressively (attack) or defensively (retreat)
- Deal fire, water, or Jello damage
- Score a red, green, or yellow point.
Hmmm. Not sure this “adverb” thing works so well. Each modified verb could be its own verb. “Attack” and “defend” certainly seem like their own verbs.
Meh. Whatever. This whole “grammar” thing is just a metaphor to help identify the different parts of a game system, and should only be used insofar as it helps you make a better game anyway.
While I was originally thinking about this in terms of tabletop games, it works really well for video games too. In that case, I’d say that nouns are things that appear on screen (player avatars, levels, enemies, etc.), and verbs are the player’s inputs (walk, run, jump, shoot, talk, etc.). Such things are truly valuable in video game design because when programming them, you need to have a list of everything that must be included. If I don’t put “jump” on the verb list in my design doc, the programmer won’t programming jumping.
I didn’t invent the grammar metaphor, and don’t know who did. Probably a Magic designer. But I hope that my noodling around with the idea can help your own game design efforts.
