Many games, however, require you to play the game while pretending that it is something other than what it is. Again, broadly speaking, these games are \"role-playing games\". In Space Invaders you're piloting a spaceship, defending your planet alone against a fleet of (rather simple-minded) aliens. In World of Warcraft you're a heroic mage or warrior (or whatever) who, together with your small band of companions, is attempting to save the world or whatever.
When someone works as a \"game designer\" the game mechanics reflect the pure game (in World of Warcraft this means walking around in a virtual 3d landscape and clicking on things) while the game content reflects the head game (in this case this includes the appearance and meaning of stuff in the virtual 3d landscape, as well as the game \"rules\" (mages cast spells, warriors don't), and numerous other abstractions.
All this content is designed (perhaps inadvertently) to create a coherent virtual world in the player's head so that he/she will give meaning to the basic \"pure\" game activities in the game. (I'm not just clicking on something, I'm killing a dragon.)
For all \"role-playing\" games (and I'm using this term very broadly to refer to all games played in large part in the player's imagination) the reason you play the game is in your head, and is the most important part. Screw it up, and the game is just not fun to play.
It's impossible to say what makes good content. It's like trying to prescribe what might make a good movie. But it is possible to list a bunch of things which make for bad content, just as (say) bad acting, poor continuity, bad dialog, incomprehensible plots, poor pacing, and so on are all likely to detract from a movie.","$updatedAt":"2024-06-05T10:51:18.886+00:00",path:"game-design-501-the-head-game",_created:"2024-07-09T20:34:05.232Z",id:"67",_modified:"2024-07-09T20:34:05.232Z","$id":"67",_path:"post/path=game-design-501-the-head-game"}}