Focus: A brief, three- to five-sentence description of the most important concepts
guiding a game’s development. Described in detail in Chapter 5, “Focus.”
FPS: Depending on the context, this may refer to the first-person shooter genre of
games or to the frames per second that the game’s engine is currently rendering.See
First-Person Shooter.
FSM: Stands for finite state machine.SeeState-Based AI.
Full-Motion Video: Any non-real-time graphics in a game that are displayed quickly
in a sequential order to create a movie-like effect. Full-motion video can be of live
actors, computer-generated environments, or a combination of the two.
Functional Specification: The sister document to the technical specification, in
that it describes how the game will function from the user’s perspective, as opposed to
how the programmer will implement that functionality. In game development, typically
referred to as the design document.See alsoDesign Document.
Fuzzy Logic: A type of AI that introduces some degree of randomness into the deci-
sion making process. This means that, given the exact same inputs, an AI agent will
make different decisions based on chance.
Game: The Oxford Universal Dictionaryincludes a number of definitions for “game.”
The definition we are most interested in for this book reads as follows: “A diversion of
the nature of a contest, played according to rules, and decided by superior skill,
strength, or good fortune.” To rephrase, a game presents an entertaining challenge to
the player or players, a challenge which the player or players can understand and may
be able to succeed at using their wits, dexterity, luck, or some combination thereof. To
expand, in order for that challenge to be meaningful, the player must be presented with
a number of interesting choices for how to succeed at the game, and those choices must
be non-trivial. And in order for the challenge to be truly meaningful, the game must
define the criterion for success. This excludes “software toys” such asSimCityfrom
being games. Of course, one could write an entire book about the nature of a game at its
purest level, but this is not that book.
Game Design: The game design establishes the shape and form of the gameplay in a
game. The game design may be communicated through a design document, or it may
only exist in the head of the implementors of the game.See alsoGameplay.
Game Designer: The game designer is the person on a project who is responsible
for establishing the form of the gameplay through the game design.See alsoGameplay
andGame Design.
Game Engine: SeeEngine.
Game Flow: The chain of events that make up the playing of a given game. A game
can be said to flow between its action, exploration, puzzle-solving, and storytelling
components. The proportional amount of time spent in each of these components and
the pace at which the game takes place contributes to its overall flow.
Game Master: In a pen and paper role-playing game, the Game Master is the player
who governs the actions of all of the other players in the game-world. The Game Mas-
ter often has also dreamt up the adventures that the players are going on, and continues
to dynamically create this story as the players navigate through it.
660 Glossary