Re: An Engineer's View of Game Design

"PizaZ" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> If I may ask, what is the goal of these types of threads?

Well, I think when someone offers a body of theory, we bang on it and
eliminate the extraneous.  Get rid of things that don't hold up under
scrutiny, things that are just "your nice idea" as a Game Designer.
Hopefully then a few core fundamentals remain.

> Are we saying
> that we have a ~30 year old industry and we still don't know why people
play
> games or what makes a good game?

We will of course always be able to say that!  It doesn't matter if the
industy is 30 years old: not everyone *in* the industry is 30 years old, or
has put 30 years of hard thought into Game Design.  Every generation will
always be inventing Game Design anew; it is new to them.  And, in every
generation there will always be Game Designers / Screenwriters / Novelists
who suck rocks.  People who just Don't Get It, who aren't talented,
perceptive, experienced, or dilligent enough to do a good job at it.

All we can hope to do as Game Designers, is put as much effort into
understanding as we can.  That's going to mean wrong turns, wasted labor,
and disagreements.  These are inevitable features of the creative process.
Feel free to deny the verbal part of the process if you like; I hope you're
just hunkering down cranking out code if that's your attitude.  Engagement
to material has to come from *somewhere*.

> Is the goal one day to reduce the process
> of game design to a set of discreet algorithms and formulas?

It's not for me.  Is it for you?

I do, however, aim to understand the fundamental psychology of games.  Some
of what Aleks brought up is fundamental; a lot of it isn't.

> One day will I
> be able to write a specification for a "fun game," stick to the rules, run
> it through the formula mill and presto chango, a fun game comes out the
> other end?

Even if theoretically possible, do you honestly believe you will ever save
production labor that way?  I don't.  I believe games are works of
authorship, like screenplays.  I believe automated storytelling is a wild
goose chase.  I think the people interested in those problems would be far
better off just improving their writing skills and doing the manual labor.
Similarly for games.  Automation is a "techie" approach to creativity and is
*not* the answer to creative problems.

> So Aleks presents us with a psychological profile of people who play
games.

An implicit one... and a bad one, for being too narrow.  Nothing Aleks wrote
would help a Game Designer deliver a mass market title.  And by "mass
market" I mean Charlie's Angels style mass market, 65 million players.

I think one of the first questions a Game Designer has to ask is "what
demographic am I chasing?"  You can't please everybody.  Only when you know
who you're trying to please, do you have a basis for what to keep in your
game and what to throw out.

> But so much of it to me seems extremely basic and obvious... not the least
> bit profound (with the exception of the part about "learning" to which I
> disagree).  Maybe that's just because i'm a long time computer gamer?

I don't think questions of "immersion" are at all obvious, or mature in the
game industry.  I think we can all stand to do a lot of head scratching
before we'll have usable, succinct, readily communicable statements on the
subject.  "Immersion" is usually the do-nothing word of Game Design.  At
least Aleks attempts to define it instead of just bandying it about, even if
some of his definitions fail.

> Gamers know what they like right?

No, actually they don't.  Like a lot of people claiming they want things,
they have *some* correct perceptions of what they like, and some things that
are rather inarticulate.  But people like to control their power stake in a
discourse, so they vocalize things.  "I'm important!  You'd better do this
thing the way I say, or else!"

I always take pains to remind Game Designers that players are not so
godawful important.  You are not a politician seeking re-election.  You are
an artist: at a minimum, you only need to please enough people to sustain
your art habit.  Take input from players; don't mollycoddle them.  It's your
game and your decision.  Most good Art, and all great Art, comes from people
willing to exert the strength of their personal views.

When this notion of mine turns into a debate, it's usually with people who
aren't comfortable making judgements about what's good and what isn't.  Or
else they think "reacting" to the audience is morally correct and forcing
your own viewpoint isn't.  This also underlies debates about whether
Marketing is a passive or active industry.  It is certainly an active
industry, it forces agendas, and we can readily prove this by looking at all
kinds of availabe evidence.  But a lot of people try to say that it doesn't,
that it's only passively evaluating what the consumer wants.  I'm sure this
difference of perception is strictly a matter of personality type: some
people aren't comfortable with making judgements and exerting naked power to
get what they want.

> Hrm, I'm reminded of some of these
> ludicrous studies that organizations sometimes do which describe what
common
> sense already tells us.  e.g "Study conducted by the University of
Illinois
> has found that men like looking at naked chicks."  Wow! Who woulda thunk
it?
> (I made that example up by the way, but there are absurd studies out there
> like that which don't really tell us anything new.)

I wouldn't necessarily evaluate whatever Aleks has to say for newness.  I'd
evaluate it for succinctness and extraneousness.

> However, these threads (like the last one dealing with "immersion")
> always seem to ignore or gloss over  what I believe to be the two most
> important aspects of game design:  1) Creativity and 2) Game play
experience
> or historical familiarization (particularly) in the genre of the game you
> are designing/developing.  Without creativity, you get clones of games
that
> don't advance the genre.  Without experience and historical perspective,
you
> don't know how various genres started, progressed and you're even less
able
> to predict where they might go.

PizaZ takes his crack at the brass ring!  Yes, Aleks didn't succeed at the
Unified Field Theory of Game Design.  I agree with both your (1) and (2).  I
call (2) the "training problem."  Three Act Structure, for instance, is not
fundamental to film.  It is a convention that audiences have been trained to
expect for a very long time now.  Platformers have certain conventions, so
do most FPS games.  Things could be done differently, but since most games
are done the same way, that strongly conditions how the Gamer demographic
perceives certain titles.  There are "rules" of these genres - the
long-standing conventions as they currently exist and are typically
disseminated to players.  When you break the rules, you have to break the
rules *well*.  Otherwise people complain petulantly, "Why isn't it just like
all the other FPS games??!"

This is long enough, so enough!

-- 
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.