Chapter 36 — Exercises

Five exercises. The first three are research-and-analysis work that will build your fluency in design history. The fourth is the practical progressive-project commitment. The fifth is for the reader who wants to go further.

Do not treat these as optional reading assignments. History is a skill, and it is built by exercising the muscle of looking backwards at specific games with specific attention. The exercises below are the training set.

A Note Before You Begin

The exercises below vary in length and intensity. Some will take thirty minutes, others will take several hours spread across a week. The exercises that ask you to play a game are not shortcuts — the forty-five minutes with a controller in your hand is the whole point of the exercise, because most design insight is kinesthetic and cannot be absorbed by reading about a game. Budget accordingly.

Some exercises ask you to push back against claims that are commonly accepted in podcasts, Wikipedia, and casual-conversation game history. This is intentional. A designer with historical fluency has to be comfortable being the person at the table who says "actually, that mechanic appeared earlier in..." Cultivate the instinct. Your colleagues may find it annoying. Your design work will be stronger for it.

Work through the exercises in any order. Exercises 4 is the progressive-project commitment and should be prioritized.

Exercise 1 — The Mechanic Ancestry Trace (Research)

Pick one of the following modern mechanics and trace its earliest appearance through three or more games. You are looking for the first confirmed appearance, one or two refinements that improved the pattern, and the modern canonical use of it.

Choose one:

  • Fast travel — the ability to instantly move between previously-visited points on a map
  • Achievements — persistent meta-rewards that survive outside the game
  • Skill trees — visual branching progression systems
  • Quest markers / objective arrows — on-screen waypoints telling the player where to go
  • Crafting recipes — combining materials to produce items
  • Cover-based shooting — snap-to-cover combat
  • Lock-on / target-focus camera — camera locking onto an enemy for combat
  • Minimap with fog of war — a corner-of-screen map that reveals as the player explores
  • Stamina-bar melee combat — attacks and dodges consuming a regenerating stamina resource
  • Bullet-time / slow-motion combat — player-triggered time dilation in combat

Deliverable. A 600–800 word research document that answers:

  1. What problem is this mechanic solving? State the problem in one sentence.
  2. What is the earliest confirmed appearance? Name the game, studio, designer, year.
  3. What earlier game (if any) almost had it? ("Almost" means the pattern existed in partial or different form.)
  4. What is one game that refined the pattern — made it tighter, clearer, or more universal?
  5. What is the modern canonical use? (A recent game that uses the pattern with craft.)
  6. What are three variations of the pattern in contemporary games? (Same problem, different solutions.)

Process requirements. You must cite at least three primary sources — MobyGames, the Internet Archive, YouTube gameplay footage of the actual games, published interviews with the designers. Do not rely on a single secondary summary (i.e., do not just read one article and repeat it). Cross-reference.

Expected pitfall. You will almost certainly discover that the "first" claim you had in your head is wrong. Fast travel is commonly attributed to Morrowind (2002) — it is in fact much older; Ultima III (1983) had something functionally equivalent, Zelda II: The Adventure of Link (1987) had teleport spells. Cover-based shooting is commonly attributed to Gears of War (2006) — Kill Switch (2003) and Winback: Covert Operations (1999) had earlier versions. When your research overturns a "first" claim, you have done the exercise correctly.

Exercise 2 — Play a Pre-1990 Game (Analysis)

Pick one commercially released video game from before 1990. Play it for at least forty-five minutes. Write an analytical reflection.

Recommended (commonly available on Internet Archive, Steam, GOG, NES Classic, or via emulation — check your region's law regarding abandonware):

  • Pac-Man (1980)
  • Donkey Kong (1981)
  • Asteroids (1979)
  • Super Mario Bros. (1985)
  • The Legend of Zelda (1986)
  • Metroid (1986)
  • Mega Man 2 (1988)
  • Tetris (1984 — the NES version or the 1988 arcade)
  • Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar (1985)
  • Pirates! (1987)

Deliverable. A 700–900 word analytical reflection organized into three sections:

Section 1: What surprised you. Playing a pre-1990 game for the first time is often disorienting. Things that feel "obvious" in modern games (tutorials, save systems, objective markers, responsive controls) may be absent or implemented very differently. Be specific about what surprised you, positively or negatively. Do not say "the graphics were bad" — everyone knows the graphics are dated. Say something design-specific.

Section 2: What mechanics are still in use today. Identify at least four mechanics or design patterns that are visible in your chosen game and that are still used in modern games. Be specific: not "collecting items" but "the power-up that transforms your player character into a temporarily stronger state, as in the Super Mario Bros. mushroom." Explain the modern example.

Section 3: What would you redesign today. If you were tasked with remaking this game for 2026, what would you change? Keep, because it still works? Cut, because it no longer serves? Be honest. This is a critical exercise, not a worshipful one. Old games are not automatically good.

Process requirements. You must actually play the game. Watching a Let's Play does not count. Reading a retrospective does not count. You need forty-five minutes with the controller in your hand. The reason is that many design decisions in old games are legible only when you feel the input lag, the respawn rhythm, the difficulty curve in your own hands. Secondhand descriptions do not transmit the design.

Exercise 3 — Debunking a "First Ever X" Claim (Historiography)

Find a confident "first ever X" claim in a podcast, YouTube video, game journalism article, developer interview, or Wikipedia article. Verify it. If it is wrong (and many of them are), document the correction.

Examples of claims worth investigating. These are not all wrong — some are correct. The exercise is doing the research.

  • "Grand Theft Auto III invented the modern open world."
  • "Portal invented physics puzzles."
  • "Dark Souls invented difficult games."
  • "Minecraft invented procedural generation."
  • "Super Mario Bros. invented the platformer."
  • "World of Warcraft invented the MMO."
  • "Overwatch invented the hero shooter."
  • "Final Fantasy VII was the first JRPG on PlayStation."
  • "Rainbow Six invented tactical shooters."
  • "Deus Ex was the first immersive sim."

Deliverable. A 500–700 word historiographic brief containing:

  1. The claim, quoted exactly, with source attribution (who said it, where, when).
  2. The evidence that supports the claim (be charitable — what is right about it?).
  3. The evidence that complicates or contradicts the claim (earlier games, parallel developments, uncredited antecedents).
  4. Your verdict: confirmed, partly confirmed with caveats, false, or unresolvable (some historical questions cannot be cleanly answered).
  5. A one-paragraph reflection on why the claim persists if it is wrong. (Common reasons: one game achieved cultural penetration while earlier games did not; the earlier game was regional; corporate marketing amplified the false attribution; the difference between invented and popularized got collapsed.)

Expected finding. Most confident "first ever X" claims turn out to be first ever X to reach mainstream awareness, which is different. The skill this exercise builds is distinguishing invention from popularization. Both matter. They are not the same.

A worked example (for reference — don't use this one in your own submission). The claim "Portal invented the physics-puzzle game" is common in casual conversation. It is wrong. Portal (2007) descends from Narbacular Drop (DigiPen student project, 2005) — the same team built both, and Valve hired them specifically because of the student project. Before Narbacular Drop, physics-puzzle games existed in various forms: The Incredible Machine (Dynamix, 1993), Armadillo Run (Peter Stock, 2006), and the Crazy Machines series (FAKT, 2004 onward) were all explicitly physics-puzzle games. Further back, LucasArts adventure games had physics-reasoning puzzles, and so did Half-Life 2's Ravenholm sequence (2004) where Valve first shipped physics-puzzles in their engine. So the claim compresses into Portal popularized first-person spatial physics puzzles with a memorable mechanic and character, which is true. The compression from "popularized X" to "invented X" is the textbook historiographic error. Your job is to catch specific instances.

Follow-up. After completing your brief, write one paragraph reflecting on how the claim's persistence affects current designers. If young designers grow up believing Portal invented physics puzzles, they will study Portal's design decisions as first-generation answers to a problem Portal actually inherited pre-solved. This is how bad history produces derivative design. Correcting the history improves the design conversation downstream.

Exercise 4 — The Three Innovations (Practical, Progressive Project)

This is the progressive-project commitment for Chapter 36. Do not skip it.

For your 2D action-adventure project, identify three specific historical innovations the game depends on. Write a paragraph on each.

Requirements for each innovation.

  1. Name the mechanic or pattern clearly. "Gated progression," "the save room," "coyote time," "the equipment-as-key puzzle," "the companion character," "the checkpointed boss fight."
  2. Name the game (or games) that established it. Include designer and studio where possible. Year mandatory.
  3. State the problem it solves. Every innovation is a solution to a problem. Name the problem.
  4. Explain how your game uses it. Be specific about the implementation. Not "we use it" but "we use it in the second area, where the wall-jump ability opens access to a cavern on the left side of the hub."
  5. Explain what (if anything) you are modifying. If you are using the pattern unchanged, say so — that is honest. If you are varying it, name the variation.

Deliverable. A document of three paragraphs, 200–300 words each, totaling 600–900 words. Format as Innovation 1 / Innovation 2 / Innovation 3 with clear headings.

Where this goes in your design document. Add a section called Design Lineage to your Game Design Document (GDD) and paste these three paragraphs in. When a publisher, reviewer, or collaborator asks what genre your game is, you will point at this document and say here is my specific answer, grounded in specific antecedents. This is more credible than "it's an action-adventure game."

Optional extension. Identify one anti-pattern — a historical innovation that your game is deliberately rejecting. For example, "this game deliberately does not use objective markers, rejecting the Deus Ex/GTA III lineage in favor of the Hollow Knight tradition of trusting the player to navigate." Knowing what you are not inheriting is as important as knowing what you are.

Second optional extension. For each of your three innovations, name a modern game (shipped in the last three years) that also uses the same pattern, and describe briefly how the modern use differs from the original. This helps you see the lineage as living rather than archival. The point is not to copy the modern version; it is to understand that the pattern you are inheriting has been continuously revised, and your use is adding to a living tradition.

Storage and reuse. Keep your three innovations paragraphs in a file you will revisit. When someone interviews you about your game, you will be asked "what are your influences?" and your answer will be clearer, more specific, and more professional than the average indie-dev's vague gesture at Dark Souls and Hollow Knight. Your answer will be: here are three specific patterns I inherited, here are the designers and games I am in conversation with, here is what I am modifying. That answer commands respect.

Exercise 5 — The Forgotten Game (Further Research)

Pick a commercially released game before 2000 that sold poorly or was critically underappreciated at the time but that retrospectively is considered important by designers. Research its design contribution.

Candidates (representative, not exhaustive).

  • System Shock (1994) — precursor to the immersive sim genre
  • Thief: The Dark Project (1998) — stealth in first person, sound propagation as mechanic
  • Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri (1999) — narrative-rich 4X
  • Planescape: Torment (1999) — CRPG as literature
  • Beyond Good & Evil (2003) — action-adventure with journalistic protagonist
  • Ōkami (2006) — Japanese painting aesthetics as mechanic
  • Shenmue (1999) — open-world sim-of-daily-life
  • Ico (2001) — minimalist companion game
  • The Dig (1995) — LucasArts adventure with ambitious narrative
  • EverQuest (1999) — before WoW, what EverQuest got right

Deliverable. A 400–600 word brief on the game's design contribution, focused on what later games inherited from it even if the originating game was commercially quiet. Name at least two successors that carry the pattern forward.

Why this exercise matters. The games that sold well get credited. The games that did not sell but seeded the genre get forgotten. Designers who know the forgotten seeds have access to a richer design vocabulary than designers who only know the blockbusters.

Process tip. MobyGames is the fastest way to find commercially-quiet but design-important games. Filter by year, genre, and platform, then cross-reference with retrospective feature writing on sites like Rock Paper Shotgun and The Digital Antiquarian. If a game has multiple thoughtful retrospective essays written about it a decade after release, it is almost always a seeder worth studying, regardless of its original sales numbers.

Exercise 6 — The Regional Canon Audit (Critical)

Pick one non-Anglophone non-Japanese game-making region and research its design contributions. You are looking for games and designers that have shaped the global medium but that are underrepresented in English-language game history books.

Suggested regions and starting points.

  • Korea. NCsoft (Lineage, 1998; Lineage II, 2003). Nexon's PC-bang business model. Ragnarok Online (Gravity, 2002). The Korean MMO economy and the ArcheAge story (XLGAMES, 2013).
  • China. Tencent's platform dominance. NetEase's Westward Journey Online II (2002) and Onmyoji (2016). miHoYo's rise from Honkai Impact 3rd (2016) to Genshin Impact (2020) to Honkai: Star Rail (2023).
  • Eastern Europe. CD Projekt Red (Poland — The Witcher trilogy, Cyberpunk 2077). GSC Game World (Ukraine — S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series). 4A Games (Ukraine — Metro series). 11 bit studios (Poland — This War of Mine, Frostpunk).
  • Nordic region. Mojang (Sweden — Minecraft). DICE (Sweden — Battlefield). Remedy (Finland — Max Payne, Alan Wake, Control). Supercell (Finland — Clash of Clans, Clash Royale). Housemarque (Finland — Resogun, Returnal).
  • Brazil and Latin America. Aquiris Game Studio. JoyMasher (Blazing Chrome, Vengeful Guardian: Moonrider). Dandara (Long Hat House). The rising São Paulo and Buenos Aires indie scenes.
  • India. Nodding Heads Games (Raji: An Ancient Epic). Pixel ArtWorks. The emerging Bangalore studio ecosystem.

Deliverable. A 500–700 word brief identifying the region's most significant design contribution, at least three studios or designers with specific named games, and at least one design pattern the region popularized that the Anglophone canon usually mis-credits or omits.

Why this matters. Game design history as taught in American and British universities is distorted. Some of the most important mechanical innovations of the last decade came from studios whose work is under-covered in English-language sources. A designer who knows only the Anglophone canon will keep discovering things that were solved ten years ago in Shanghai or Seoul or Warsaw. Save yourself the embarrassment; read broadly.

Exercise 6b — The Five Generations Playthrough (Extended Play)

For the designer with a free weekend and a real commitment to historical fluency, this exercise is the most valuable in the chapter.

Play one game from each of five distinct generations:

  • Arcade era (1978–1983). Space Invaders, Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Defender, or Galaga. Twenty minutes minimum.
  • 8-bit console era (1985–1990). Super Mario Bros., Zelda, Metroid, Mega Man 2, or Final Fantasy. Forty-five minutes minimum.
  • 16-bit / early-3D transition (1991–1996). Super Metroid, Chrono Trigger, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Tomb Raider, or Mario 64. One hour minimum.
  • Early-internet console era (1997–2003). Half-Life, Ocarina of Time, GTA III, Final Fantasy VII, or Deus Ex. One hour minimum.
  • Modern indie (2015–present). Celeste, Hollow Knight, Hades, Undertale, or Return of the Obra Dinn. One hour minimum.

Deliverable. A comparative essay, 1,000–1,500 words, organized around a single design thread that you trace through all five games. Pick one of:

  • How does the game teach the player to play it? (Tutorial design across eras.)
  • What happens when the player dies? (Death, checkpointing, respawn.)
  • How does the game use difficulty? (Escalation, gating, accommodation.)
  • How does the game communicate with the player? (Text, visual, audio, UI.)
  • What is the game's core loop and how long is each cycle? (Session design.)

Each game gets roughly 200–300 words in your essay. The final paragraph synthesizes: what is the trajectory of this design dimension across four decades? What has improved? What has been lost?

Why this is the most valuable exercise in the chapter. Reading about design history is accumulative; playing design history is transformative. The felt difference between 1981's Defender and 2018's Celeste — in how they teach, how they punish, how they respect the player's time — tells you more about the medium's evolution than any written source can. Designers who have done this exercise carry a different kind of fluency. They have the designs in their hands, not just in their heads.

Infrastructure note. Most of the arcade and 8-bit entries are free and legal on Internet Archive (arcade) or can be purchased on current consoles (Nintendo Switch Online for 8-bit/16-bit Nintendo; the various classic collections for PlayStation and Sega). The PC-era games are widely available on Steam and GOG. The modern indies are cheap and current. Budget is not a barrier.

Exercise 7 — The Self-Interview (Reflective)

Sit down with a notebook and a timer. Spend thirty minutes answering the following questions in writing. This is not for submission. It is for you.

  1. What is the oldest game you have actually played (not watched, not read about — played)? When? How long?
  2. What is the first game that made you think someone made this on purpose — that revealed to you the existence of the designer behind the game?
  3. Which five games have most shaped your design aesthetic? For each, name one specific mechanic or pattern you absorbed from it.
  4. Which five games have you pretended to know in conversations because you were embarrassed to admit you had not played them? Be honest. This is private.
  5. Based on #4, what are the three games you most need to play — or re-play with adult attention — to improve your design vocabulary?
  6. Which designers do you admire? Why?
  7. Which designers whose public conduct you dislike do you nonetheless credit as influences on your design? (This is uncomfortable. Do it anyway.)
  8. What is one design pattern you have used in a project that you did not know the origin of until this chapter? What is its origin?

Purpose. Self-inventory is an underrated design skill. Most designers have blind spots — games they should have played and have not, designers they over-credit or under-credit, patterns they use without realizing the source. This exercise surfaces the blind spots so you can fill them deliberately.

Keep the notebook. Revisit these questions in a year. Your answers will change, and the changes are data about your own growth.

Submission Notes

Exercises 1, 2, 3, and 4 are core. Exercises 5, 6, and 7 are extensions.

If you are working through this textbook on your own: do Exercise 4 at minimum. Commit it to your GDD. Do Exercises 1 and 2 if you want to deepen your design vocabulary. Do Exercise 3 when you catch yourself about to confidently repeat a "first ever" claim in a conversation. Do Exercise 7 at least once a year — the self-inventory compounds.

If you are in a class: your instructor will assign specific combinations. The pedagogical intent is that Exercise 1 builds research skill, Exercise 2 builds play-attention skill, Exercise 3 builds critical-skepticism skill, Exercise 4 connects history to your own work, Exercise 5 surfaces forgotten-but-important games, Exercise 6 corrects the Anglophone-canon blind spot, and Exercise 7 builds professional self-awareness.

You are not training to become a game historian. You are training to become a designer who knows where the tools they use came from — and who is unafraid of admitting when the tools came from someone the design-hero narrative did not name. The history is bigger than any single chapter can contain. The exercises are your entry point into the part of it that will matter for your own work.