Design Exercise 1: Video Game Skill Trees

“Skill Trees” in video games are the upgrade systems used to progress the player character. Although all look different, most use the common structure of edges(lines) and nodes(dots) to represent themselves. The nodes are the actual features of importantance, representing the upgrades, while the edges show the potential paths that can be taken through the tree (i.e., you can only acquire an upgrade if you have unlocked the preceeding node, preceeding shown by the lines that connect them).

Lots of information about these upgrades can be communicated through the dots and lines, depending on the speciifc game. For example, many of the dots may be clustered together to represent a commanlity between those upgrades. The number and length of the lines that connect dots can also be used for information (many lines leaving a node could demonstrate its importance, since choosing that node will open many more possibilities).