Game of Design

Only a Game beats me to it and posts about whether we’ll ever see great game stories. I’m not sure I actually agree with him, but Chris is a superior writer and he’s bringing his experience to bear. I’ve consistently approached this problem from a game mechanics point of view rather then a writing point of view. Or more accurately, a writer’s point of view.

“It is unfortunate that there are no great game stories. It would be nice, when people ask what I would single out for excellence in game narrative, to have some quick and easy retort; some title I could comfortably pull from memory with the confidence of many days repetition. But alas, I am at a loss to find anything in the literary history of videogames thus far that aspires to greatness.”

This raises so many more questions then answers for me. Things to ponder. If we were to approach this critical then, what would greatness look like? Would it also by necessity be a great game? I have a sinking feeling Chris’ answer is no. It sounds to me like he’s describing games like the Quest for Glory and King’s Quest series - all timeless setups, popular if not interesting characters, and non-repetitive but limited gameplay. But then again, hardly anyone else cites those for writing either. I’m more frequently citing Planescape: Torment, which arguably only nails the characters.

Having just watched Seven Samurai I have to say, it’s a slog. The movie’s significant, but there’s a reason most people have never and will never see it. There isn’t a place for those kinds of movies in mainstream film either. It’s the indies where it’s at. And correspondingly, it’s the game indies where I’d look for this kind of story. In fact, indie genre of Interactive Fiction seems like a fantastic place to start. Some of the writing and drama within these modern text adventures has really impressed me. All Roads is the last best one that I’ve played, but now I’m dating myself. All the IFComp winners are worth checking out though, and they all play under 2 hours, so you really don’t have any excuses. They lend themselves directly to writing, so if that’s the best approach, that’s where it’ll start. I’m still not convinced though. You first have to sort out player narratives from stories for me. I’m not sure we can ever claim the writer’s authorial control.

My friend Tim points out a great game Questionaut and says exactly the right things about it.  A game that’s made for educating kids but fun in it’s own right.  Short, simple, and sweet.  Working in the 5-year plan of game design is feeling sillier and sillier these days, with games like this.

And just in time with my post, SexyVideoGameDesign writes dreamily about getting rid of health bars too.  Her ultimate idea might have a few flaws, but after playing Braid, her troubles with death in games are right on the money.

There’s an interesting article in The Economist this week.  It’s about a new EU project to study religion using science.  But it spends most of it’s time discussing a couple of disparate studies that have already been conducted.  I feel they are trying to present 2 early conclusions:

1. Religion is an evolutionary tool, like morality, to promote better groups.  Groups are important because in an extremely dangerous and competitive environment, aka a war, the better group will win.
2. The converse is also true.  Because religion preferences group selection over individual selection, it causes religious people to make bad individual decisions when they are not in an extremely dangerous environment, aka a war.

Pretty strong stuff!  The implication here seems dangerous:  Religious people are evolutionary encouraged to create dangerous conflicts.  Yikes.  If the logic and science holds, that would put all religion in the same category as weapons dealers, terrorists, extremists, and some bad political company.

I see one problem though.  Morality does seem like the same evolutionary pressure.  Morality binds society together much in the same way, with laws, police, and social guidelines.  But most of us feel that losing these things would lead to total anarchy, a lower quality of life, and little chance of survival.  Oops!  It doesn’t seem like we have the complete story.  Here’s one piece I think is missing:  Historically, religiousness tends to diminish over the long term without these dangerous environments.  Morality seems to increase.

I referred to mechanics that work against their flavor. One on my mind: Players view player death as “the end”. Designers use player death to mean “try again”.

This creates a conflict, particularly for new players who haven’t seen it before. I believe this is a core reason why so many players hate death, and we see most “quitters” after death. Here’s a quote from my friend Wyatt watching new players die playing World of Warcraft several years ago:

“Most players didn’t realize that when they were a ghost they had to go back to their body. A lot of players upon turning into a ghost go off wandering and end up very far from their body. Often when somebody tells the player they have to get back to their body to resurrect or get back to a Spirit Healer, that’s when the player decides it’s easier to just quit.”

Games are reexamining this paradigm.  Scanning my shelves, the new Prince of Persia stands out. The narrative of the Prince telling a story and the voice over when you die saying “That’s not how it happened” implies that you made a mistake, but it can be repaired.  Bioshock and Pokemon do a good job of taking this approach as well.

The other approach I can think of is to try removing death altogether and replacing it with a better paradigm.  In a lot of ways, we have death because we have health and it’s analogs.  That seems a lot harder, but it may just be because we haven’t found a better metaphor for “try again”.  If I wanted to get someone to try something again after they made a mistake, I’d put them right in front of the problem again, with no down time.  Lots of games do that too, and we’ve seen the benefits with higher sales and better impressions.  Portal comes to mind, but most First-Person shooters have gone in this direction.  The next question then is, how can we bring that approach to other genres, such as strategy games or role-playing games?  And can we take find a better “try again” narrative metaphor then death for FPSs?

I posted about this article on the scientific study of childhood play a while back, but wanted to take some time out to comment. It now appears that the most obvious interpretation of play - that it trains important skills in a safe environment - is wrong. The next theory up to bat is that we play to train our entire brains, not just specific muscles or parts of our brain. I find the correlation with ADHD study particularly interestingly - that ADHD is a symptom of a lack of brain development, and play may be a cure. Play is fundamental to our development.

So what does this mean for games? I find it fascinatingly parallel with my theory that games resemble life more then stories. Games represent systems to be broken down, analyzed, and even conquered. Our interactions are physical and immediate. Our thoughts on games come after we’ve finished with play. Games require looking forward, not reflecting back. What does that imply about the parts of brain we’re training, and how we should design for it? I’m not a neuroscientist, but I am a game designer, and I’d like to speculate.

I find the fiction of games is frequently separate from the mechanics, even when they are heavily connected. In fact, while some mechanics reflect the flavor, others (appropriately) act against flavor. Pushing a button has little in common with the flavor of swinging a sword. Many of the “art” games I love I only play for 15-30 minutes, while I’m sure my World of Warcraft account lists weeks of playing. Is the “analyze” part of the brain separate from the “imagination” part of our brain, with only weak relation between? Are the feelings that Lazzaro cites at the heart of games specific to this “analyze” area? If this area didn’t exist, then we’d expect art games to engross us. Instead, games are even more powerful motivators then museums, concerts, and even books. This area of the brain seems to exist, and our motivation to play suggest it’s important to us. And games seem to be experts at targeting and training this part of the brain.

If so, what does this mean about this mean about how we design games? First of all, clearly the core and focus of our work in games should be on these systems for the brain to break down, comprehend, and analyze. For a while now, we’ve known that flavor is not the core of game design, and that story is problematic. We should not then be surprised if our traditional games are deeper and more interactive then art games, while art games focus more on the post-play reflection and discussion then a traditional game. The artist is trying to communicate something to the player, while the designer is trying to trying to let the user communicate with him. “What do you want to do with my door? You want to open it? Let me help you.”

But evidence also suggests that we should can use these artistic elements to make a well rounded experience, just as movies use music, engaging as much of our brain as possible. These elements just impact a different part of the experience, this reflection part, that occurs afterwards.

The current theory thus seems to expand on what we’ve suspected all along. Reflective mediums like painting, books, and movies are bad models for games. Sports and children’s play are good models. And we shouldn’t expect a particular game to help us hunt prey or do our homework. The act of play appears to make us stronger as a whole. Counter-Strike makes me a deeper thinker, not just a better gun aimer, and that appears to be a very good thing. But there are even higher heights to strive for. The best art games, just like the best games, create an interesting system that when reflected upon highlights new meaning, awakening both of these aspects of the brain. We may ultimately find ourselves having to play artist and designer together.

This is officially my first post, so I wanted to lay out expectations and what not.

I’ve been blogging on Facebook for quite some time now, and several of my friends and co-workers have convinced me to go public. I intend to continue writing in the same idea-meet-head dashy style that I employed over there, and I’ll be RSS feeding this onto my Facebook Notes so that my old followers out there won’t miss out. As this site develops, expect the unexpected. I’ve still got a lot of toys to play with, and I’m open to suggestions on blog names as well. This was just the best of the quick list.

As you can probably see, there are actually posts before this one. I’ve ported over some of the highlights of my previous Notes to kick this site off. Thanks for visiting, and don’t hesitate to join in the discussion.

So my Mom has asked me to help with the Purim carnival this weekend. She wants me to figure out the best ticket reward schedule for the carnival games. They have about 15 games, figure about 30 kids of all ages will attend, and have a number of prizes to give away. The games range from “Throw darts at a balloon”, “guess the lucky number”, to Guitar Hero and Wii Sports. I’m guessing the whole thing lasts about 4 hours, and most of the games take 30 seconds to play, with the notable exception being the video games. She wants to know what the best way to hand out the tickets will be, maximizing the value of the prizes and the fun everyone has.

I have some ideas, like tournaments, timed sessions, different prize categories, but I’d be interested in your take. How would you approach this classic game design problem?

In the stating the obvious column…

I just spent the last two hours reading the web. For free. I then hit a link and listened to Glen Hansard and Markta Irglov’s fantastic Oscar performance. For free. It didn’t seem too different to me. Just one form of data translated into another. I suppose I could go hit Popcap if I felt like a game jaunt. The Internet has ruined all forms of ubiquitous media profiteering. The money will continue to be focused in the large treatises of the mediums. Although, I haven’t felt like reading a novel in months.