Education, Technology and Games

The Designer’s Notebook: The Tao of Game Design

Posted on September 29th, 2008 in Game Design  and tagged Add new tag

[What's the point of designing games? Veteran educator and designer Ernest Adams examines the concepts of fun, enjoyment, and personal fulfillment to reveal the key, uplifting tenets of game creation.]

The Japanese language uses suffixes to modify the word that precedes them. Two of these suffixes are modifying, while the -jutsu ending means “the skills (or methods, or techniques) of…”

 Consider the words jujutsu and judo.They refer to two different approaches to a particular martial art, a form of unarmed hand-to-hand combat that concentrates on grappling, pinning, and throwing. Jujutsu is the older and more brutal form, intended for lethal combat. Judo is a sport that derived from jujutsu.

When appended to the name of a martial art such as judo, the -do ending refers to a philosophy behind the art — a set of values that are intended to guide the combatant in the proper use of the jutsu, or techniques, of battle. The Japanese word do is cognate with the Chinese word tao, which also means “way” or “path”, and also connotes a mental or moral discipline rather than a purely practical collection of rules.