HughXuechen/game-design-pattern-core-collection

Game Design Patterns Dataset

Original Source Attribution

This dataset is derived from the work of Staffan Björk and Jussi Holopainen. The original content comes from "Patterns in Game Design," published by Charles River Media in 2005.

• —Original authors: Jussi Kuittinen, Staffan Björk and Jussi Holopainen
• —Original format: HTML documents publicly available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/379683418_collection.zip
• —Citation: Bjork, S., & Holopainen, J. (2005). Patterns in game design (Vol. 11). Charles River Media Hingham.

Dataset Preparation

This dataset represents a cleaned and structured JSON version of the original HTML content, prepared to facilitate machine learning, knowledge graph applications, and other computational approaches to game design research.

Dataset Curator

• —Name: Liu, Hugh Xuechen
• —Contact: https://hughxuechen.github.io/
• —Affiliation: Chalmers Univeristy of Technology

Version History

v1.2.2.2 (April 26 2025)

• —Fixed issue with handling already formatted [[Pattern]] links
• —Now correctly handles special characters in pattern names (e.g., [[Captured)]])
• —Prevents double-wrapping of pattern links that are already in [[...]] format
• —Improved pattern link processing to maintain special characters properly

v1.2.2.1 (April 26 2025)

• —Enhanced text processing to remove consecutive spaces in all text fields
• —Improved example extraction by:
• —Automatically capitalizing the first letter after removing "Example:" prefix
• —Using regex to clean up all whitespace issues (newlines, tabs, multiple spaces)
• —Applied consistent text cleaning using re.sub() instead of simple replace()
• —Fixed issue where multiple consecutive spaces could appear in processed text
• —Ensured uniform text formatting across all sections of the JSON output

v1.2.2 (April 26 2025)

• —Pattern links in Example sections are now converted to [[Pattern]] format

v1.2.1 (April 24 2025)

• —Added functionality to export all pattern links to a CSV file
• —The CSV includes source pattern, target pattern name, and target file name

v1.2 (April 24 2025)

• —Added pattern_id field based on filename for stable references
• —Modified HTML links to use Markdown-style [[Pattern Name]] format
• —Removed example sections from content as they're already extracted separately
• —Removed "\n" characters in examples for consistency with other sections
• —Standardized section names to snake_case for better consistency
• —Added metadata section with version, processing date, and source file information

v1.1 (March 26 2025)

• —Added "playable" property to each entity
• —When playable concepts are available at "https://itch.io/c/3720943/goal-playable-concepts", the value points to the specific page
• —Otherwise, the value is "Not available yet"
• —Removed "\n" characters in "content", "Using the pattern" and "Consequences" properties for improved clarity and parsing

v1.0 (March 11 2025)

• —Initial release of the structured JSON dataset

License

This dataset is released under the MIT License, allowing for both academic and commercial use with proper attribution.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to the original authors for their foundational work in game design patterns. This dataset aims to make their valuable research more accessible to the computational game design community.