Re: Is Innovative Gameplay a Dead End?

What does 'game design' mean in the context of your award?

Black and White, for example, has the twinned gameplay of a typical 'god'
game and a tamagothci. That's it.

'The Sims', for second, is a brilliant game, but brilliant because it
creates an interesting skin of the real world over what is essentially the
same gameplay as any other caring game. It's a doll house meets Sim City.

What makes both games candidates for awards is that they are excellently
designed. But game design is not just a technical/mechanical exercise. The
Sims would not be nearly as interesting or entertaining if it was exactly
the same game, but with poorly coloured blocks and harsh beeping noises
replacing the characters and setting. Black and White would not be nearly as
interesting if the creatures were represented instead by blank spheres that
learned stuff, in a landscape of triangles of clashing shapes and colours.

Depiction is massively important in videogames, more so than gameplay.
Gameplay is only one aspect, and it takes a perceptive designer to see that
their game is actually much more than just rules and movement stats and AI
patterns. Gameplay, as a depictive elements, is like a mechanical frame,
Without other well-designed depictive elements filling out the frame, then
it is useless.

It is in that respect that designers regularly fail. You said it yourself in
an earlier post, most designers are self-referential. This is because they
lack confidence, imagination and so forth. Indeed, there is a large case for
saying that designers focus too much on game rules etc, because that is what
they believe they need to do (but that is the subject of a later blog), yet
the evidence is plain. The best loved games always combine gameplay and
other elements properly, leading to a complete depiction that is much more
than the sum of its parts.

particle

"Brandon J. Van Every" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in
message news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]

> As an IGF judge I have a rather clear and exacting sense of what it means.
> "The Sims" and "Black And White" score a "10" for Innovation In Game
Design.
>
> If you don't know what it means, if you have no scale or metrics by what
you
> measure it, that's your problem.  The rest of us may not have the *same*
> scales, but we do have scales.  And not every innovation is equally
> innovative, you can get anything and everything from 0 to 10.
>
> > As the blog post said, I question whether innovative
> > gameplay is really possible at all, as there are no videogames that I
know
> > of that provide a root different type of experience that is not already
> > available in some shape or form in analog gaming before it.
>
> What do you think of The Sims?  Black And White?
>
> --
> Cheers,                     www.indiegamedesign.com
> Brandon Van Every           Seattle, WA
>
> 20% of the world is real.
> 80% is gobbledygook we make up inside our own heads.
>