Principles & Conventions in Interactive Media & Game Design

The principles and conventions of interactive media and game design as I understand them:

I see interactive media as more than just a tool for people to use and exploit, I see it as a way of life as we know it. How would things be if we weren’t able to interact with what was around us be it television, iPods, mp3 players, games consoles, Sky Boxes, PC’s, Apple Mac’s, mobile phones or even the humble radio? We would be lost in a place of static, moronic and constricted entertainment...
The 20th century...
Interactive entertainment and media is a revolution, a free thinking world’s solution to a dark age of technology. The way forwards and the dawn of endless inspiration, personalisation and control, maybe not your control but some ones.
To be able to customise your life in an infinite amount of choices and experiences, Interactive media is progression, its part of our culture and will progress further unto things no one may have yet dreamed of.
As stated in the book “Principles of Interactive Multimedia” by Mark Elsom-Cook Interactive media is near impossible to describe and in his book he breaks it down and explains the concepts and why it is an utterly different thing to multimedia as well as getting the reader to master the differences in the areas of multimedia.
While we design new ways of interacting with all forms of media fundamentals of design appear to stay the same in games,
• Story
• Degree of control
• Character
While all these things are no doubt customisable on some level there has never been a game designed to tear people away from what they would consider a game.
This maybe because most designers are paid when creating a game and games wouldn’t sell if their design was so complex or different that no one bought them, as people undoubtedly hate change.
But it has to happen eventually games along with other interactive media need to have a design revolution that surpasses the boundaries we have set as a materialistic society.
Games as a whole are very linear there’s a start, a middle and an end. This is standard. This is generic. This is boring. Why? Why can’t we have an end then a start then middle or just a middle and an end or just a start and middle with no end? The game just keeps evolving and changing and ultimately becomes an integrated part of our society.
In my opinion the principles of game design and interactive media revolve around linearity and material gain. Progression here is simply finding a newer way of delivering the same product instead of creating a new product with unknown experiences. Until our society changes and becomes less capitally obsessed, we are doomed to live a liner life.

~SmileyManiak