Breakout!

My contribution to the Only a Game Play Specification Symposium.

For the symposium entry, and an explanation on what play specification is, see here. To understand why there is such a thing as play specification, play some low-rating games (maybe an X-men licence), then ask yourself - did the game designer really know what was going on between his game and its players? Or was he just throwing game tropes at the wall and hoping they'd end up a Picasso?

This is probably a controversial entry, from the point of view of being acceptable under the defined genre for entries - shooters. However, I loved this game, and even though it is not strictly shooting, the Constituative rules could be easily fit to a pure shooting game, with an Operative makeover.

Breakout! (who published the original? when? I'll never know, I first played a PC port circa 2000)
Specified by Ben

Verbs

Move (L/R arrow keys)
Bounce

Nouns

Bat (avatar)
Ball (or sphere, polyhedron, polygon, cube, etc depending on your philosophical outlook. I'm a glass half full person (I prefer to ask the more pertinent question - who stole the top half?) so I say its a ball)
Blocks
Power-ups
Extra Lives
Life Counter
Score

Adjectives

Length (of Bat)
Speed (of Ball)
Consistency (of Blocks)
Effect on Verb (of Power-up)



This is a little hasty in formulation. Possibly copy/paste and cut out the smart comment for clarity :D.
There are fine details that I'd consider important, but couldn't see how to express within this definition structure. Perhaps they just aren't the kind of details this structure deals with. I remember some of the power-ups as being radical enough to alter the whole gameplay, such as the sticky bat, which allowed you to choose when to release the bounce. It was the same bounce, but once you caught the ball you had all the time in the world to position your bat before release. That took all the time pressure off, and when that ball is zipping about at high speed, time pressure is a big gameplay element. But, I suppose the play specification is talking Constituatively, and time pressure is perhaps an Operative consideration (like clocks in chess).

When every game designer is using some kind if formal play specification, its gonna be soooo much easier to implement interesting things with some nice real-time machine learning of player types...but I'll say no more for now ;)