====== Lens Of Action ======
**Actions** are the core tools a player has to influence the game. Camera control, avatar movement, jumping, all these can make up the actions of your game. The core loop of any game is to have a [[lenses:lens_of_goals|goal]], do an action to try to progress, and process the resulting [[lenses:lens_of_feedback|feedback]] into more actions.

{{ :lenses:goal-action-result-feedback.jpg?nolink |}}

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===== Focusing Questions =====
  * What actions are players allowed to do? What can they explicitly not do?
  * What actions do players wish they could do that they cannot? Why?

===== Can be instantiated by =====
=== Lenses ===
  * [[lenses:lens_of_feedback|Lens of Feedback]]
  * [[lenses:lens_of_goals|Lens Of Goals]]

=== Patterns ===
[[patterns:quests|Quests]]

===== Examples =====

=== Yahtzee ===
{{ :lenses:yahtzee.jpg?nolink |}}

In [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahtzee|Yahtzee]], there are a small number of actions that form the core gameplay loop.

  * Roll the dice (up to 3 times per turn)
  * Save 0 - 5 dice, reroll the rest
  * Trade in a set of dice for points (full house, straight, etc)

===== Considerations =====
> A game without actions is like a sentence without verbs - nothing happens. Deciding the actions in your game will be the most fundamental decision you can make as a game designer. Tiny changes to these actions will have tremendous ripple effects with the possibility of either creating marvelous emergent gameplay or making a game that is predictable and tedious. Choose your actions carefully, and learn to listen to your game and your players to learn what is made possible by your choices. - Jesse Schell, //The Art of Game Design// 


===== Tool =====

===== Metrics =====

===== Validity =====
The lens is **industry standard**.

===== Categories =====
[[:Motivations:goal-setting| Goal-setting]]

===== References =====
  * Schell, J. (2008). The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses. Amsterdam: Elsevier/Morgan Kaufmann.

===== Authors =====
[[about:contributors:danieljost|Daniel Jost]]