Game Design Advance

How should we think about worldly success? When someone accomplishes a difficult goal or achieves impressive results to what degree is it a consequence of inherent ability, hard work, or random luck? These are interesting questions about life, right? They are deeply related to the fundamental philosophical issues of how one should live one’s life and what we should find admirable in other people. To me, these questions seem to have all the hallmarks of the sort of big ideas that “speak to the human condition” in the way that we would like games to be able to do.

I am put in mind of these questions by the recent kerfluffle between Steven Pinker and Malcolm Gladwell, and the role that Football stats have played in this debate.

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In this episode we’re talking to Heather Chaplin about her book Smart Bomb, some of her best stories about the different game developers she’s interviewed, and her famous rant at last year’s GDC. We also talk about her future work, including a proposed ‘public gaming service’, and our mutual love of Fumito Ueda’s ICO.

The episode is up on iTunes but you can also download it here:

Another Castle Episode 6 – A Conversation with Heather Chaplin

The episode has also been added to our Podcast page, where you can download older episodes of Another Castle.

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This recent Brainy Gamer post is terrific and I’m happy he wrote it.

I’d love to read more solid analysis about how and why this game and its predecessor work such magic with players. We’re drawn to writing about narrative games because we understand (or at least we think we do) their structures, and we have a vernacular for discussing them. [...] But I think the distortion field has distanced many of us from the vast majority of players and their perceptions of this game. It’s like we’re talking about one game, and they’re playing another.

Edit: My response is here.

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We sit down with Richard Rouse III, who has had a long and storied career as a game designer in the industry, working on games like The Suffering and Blacksite: Area 51. He is also author of Game Design: Theory and Practice, one of the first books to specifically addressed the art and craft of game design.

The episode is up on iTunes but you can also download it here:

Another Castle Episode 5 – Richard Rouse III

This episode will also be added to our ‘Podcast’ page, where you can download older episodes of Another Castle.

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I have often thought that there is an overlooked dimension to the discussions about games and narrative. Many games encourage a particular style of thinking – a way of looking at situations as possibility spaces and applying systemic, algorithmic, and probabalistic cognitive techniques. And in some ways this type of gamer intelligence can be seen in opposition to storytelling as a way of understanding the world.

I usually keep this idea of games against stories to myself, because it seems unnecessarily confrontational. But in this TED talk, economist Tyler Cowen gives a wonderful critique of story thinking. As an added bonus, his advice to embrace the mess of our lives and the world reminded me of Ian Bogost’s recent Digra keynote. Maybe Tyler is a skeptical realist?

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Speaking of Jesper Juul, the other day a bunch of us were standing around after a lecture, and I was loudly complaining (as usual) about how often progressive game criticism overvalues expression of big ideas as the primary indicator of greatness. And Jesper quietly mentioned this essay by Susan Sontag.

I must have read it years ago and forgotten about it. Or, more accurately, never forgot about it. Reading it now is an inspirational mind-blower. This is what I meant to say.

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