Game Design Advance

There were a few things that popped up in my RSS reader last week that I thought were pretty interesting and didn’t get a chance to link. So here they are, just in time for the holiday.

James Portnow posted his notes from a talk he gave at this year’s Meaningful Play conference on the ethics and responsibilities of game developers working on ‘persuasive games’. His thoughts actually echo a great piece by Chris Sullentrop from a year ago. An argument that the fears of Portnow and Sullentrop may be misplaced could be read into a recent post by Michael Abbott over on The Brainy Gamer, about the admiration he had for the game design of Fallout 3. I would say that we give far too little credit to players in assuming that they are unaware of the biases built into a game’s design. Video games haven’t nearly reached a level of immersive quality that we have to worry about intentional, or even unintentional, brain-washing.

On a different topic (or is it?), Matt Thrower at Boardgame News has another good post that applies to video games as well as board games, namely the idea that games are simply “carefully dressed up mathematical exercises”. He then goes on to discuss how obvious the intrinsic mathematic nature of a game should be in its presentation, and how that affects the reception a game receives, especially among more neophyte gamers. 

Hope you all enjoy these and I hope everyone has a happy Thanksgiving!

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There are a number of debates in the world of game design and development that remain unsettled. Is there an intrinsic difference between video games and more traditional games? What is the relationship between games and narrative? How do we distinguish between games and other rule-base activities? Finally, how do games create meaning? Each of these questions has intelligent and thoughtful people who spend a great deal of time and energy arguing over the answer. One of the arguments, over the role of narrative in games, took place on such a scale among scholars that it could be partially credited with giving rise to the field of academic game studies. Another, the question of meaningful games, has given birth to a whole genre in game design: ‘art-games’.

The simple conceit of art-games is to use game design to create meaning, to express things, in ways that only games can. Arguments made by the central brain trust of the movement in support of art-games, a trifecta of Rod Humble, Jonathan Blow, and Jason Rohrer, are that too many contemporary games, especially mainstream games, rely too much on their audio/visual assets to create meaning instead of properties that are more intrinsic. Meaning in a game, they say, should be created primarily by the mechanics of the game rather than cut-scenes or other decorations. Jonathan Blow said as much in a recent lecture at the Montreal International Game Summit.

Unfortunately, there are a couple of problems. These problems aren’t being addressed by the members of the movement (at least not publicly) and aren’t being raised in the discussions that surround their work. First, what if mechanics can’t create meaning or express anything on their own, and second, if that’s true, what implications does it have for art-games and games in general?

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There’s an old samurai saying that goes: “The one who thinks first, dies”.

WarioWare was the first to realize that an entire game could be based around this maxim, or rather, a suite of games. The best games in this themed collection are the ones that feature one mechanic that must be executed in a split second. Challenges where the player must grab a rod as it drops past a hand, or jump off a ski jump at exactly the right moment. These games require the player to empty their minds and act purely with their reflexes.

Academics refer to a ‘flow state’ as the feeling of effortless mastery that occurs when the difficulty of an activity sits below frustration but above boredom. WarioWare induces flow states with incredible alacrity. It’s method for doing so is proof of the developer’s (Nintendo R&D1) subtle genius. By dressing up the same game, ‘Press The Button’, in a several disguises, they trick the player into practicing the same task over and over again without seeming monotonous. Then, as they slowly ramp up the difficulty, usually by tweaking the timing, the player lifts off into the golden zone where everything is a challenge but nothing is hard.

Towards the end of the game however, the developers seem to forget their own lesson. As the games become more complicated the margin of error necessarily increases. One wouldn’t think that the difference between 3 seconds and 7 seconds would be that big a deal, but the addiction to near instant gratification, and instant failure, is palpable and to have it delayed even a few extra instants can be infuriating.

However, with their follow-up, Rhythm Tengoku (Rhythm Heaven), R&D1 proved that looking back on their own work, they could recognize the seed of greatness when they saw it.

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Today on the Dispatches, we finally reach the end of Ken Levine’s head-scratchingly identity confused FPS rollercoaster ride, and begin to draw some sketchy conclusions. This isn’t the ending I thought it would be, pleasant dreamers– well, except for the fact that I got the good ending, if you know what I mean. Instead, it’s what immediately preceded those final, alternate-branching moments that I felt something from this game that I hadn’t from most others, something that makes me at once look on it with respect and a little bit of sadness, as well.

BioShock is a good game, but sometimes it doesn’t know when to leave well enough alone. It goes so far, yet just at that point, it finds a way to overreach itself, but even then one can’t help but pause to admire what it was trying, and at times failing to do. In the end, Levine’s strange combination of art-deco excess, murderous chaos, schizophrenic suspense and blockbuster showstopping all can’t help but remind me of a certain cinematic icon, one whose work I’ve never truly enjoyed but always found a way to appreciate from a safe distance:

Alfred Hitchcock.

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Fans of former games journalist Shawn Elliot should check out the current Gamers With Jobs Podcast, as he makes a guest appearance. He doesn’t disappoint, starting the show by making an analogy between the game design of Gears of War 2 and humming birds.

The GWJ podcast is one of my new regulars now that Games for Windows is gone and 1Up Yours has deteriorated into endless-feeling discussions of the correct pricing for Spore expansion packs.

Enjoy!

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If you’ve recognized that I haven’t left many posts as of late, it’s because the day job has had me pretty busy. I’m here now for some shameless promotion for the new release I’ve been working on at Kognito: At Risk.

At Risk is a game wrapped around a conversation simulation where you’re a professor at a college and you have to watch out for students who are showing signs of mental distress. If you have suspicions that there are students ‘at-risk’, you have to invite them to office hours and have a conversation with them, and if it turns out the student is truly ‘at-risk’, then you need to convince the kid to seek counseling (sort of an intervention). Feel free to play the demo and leave some feedback.

Keep in mind that the underlying motivation behind At Risk is to train faculty to recognize, approach, and refer mentally distressed students who might otherwise fall by the wayside. We made this game in partnership with the Mental Health Association of New York. Here’s the link (click on the button near the top of the screen to play the demo):

http://www.kognito.com/atrisk

PS: Please pass on to friends if you think they might be interested, any publicity helps!

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In 1969, whispers of a strange rumor began spreading through college newspapers and radio stations across North America. Students in Iowa and Michigan had been tracking clues that pointed towards a sinister conspiracy dating back three years, that if true would suggest one of the most disturbing hoaxes ever staged. Though the mainstream media refused to take their claims seriously, they put their word out in broadcasts, reviews and books, in the hopes of spreading the news and letting everyone in the world know the terrible truth of an entire generation’s greatest heroes. Though that information is still widely written off, it is known in every corner of the earth today by three infamous words:

“Paul is dead.”

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