What Games Are: Game Design, Development, Publishing, Marketing and Art

Ludomes: The Greater Set of Interactive Play

Perhaps a way of think of games in terms of a larger set of interactive art is as artificial worlds. Like a biome in the Eden Project, each has artificial rules superimposed upon reality in an attempt to craft a place. Each is different, bounded by the systems that give them form, but full of possibility and indviduated experience.

You could call them ludomes, ludic (as in interactive play) biomes. Perhaps that makes us all ludomancers, which makes the URL of Daniel Benmergui's blog oddly apt, no?

Games and Meaning

What does meaning really mean? Generally it translates as resonant, illuminating, symbolic or significant. In some cases all of the above. A meaningful song might evoke the history of a revolution for the listener, so that even though she does not know the facts she feels a connection to it. The same is true of novels, movies and art. 

Games incorporate agency and so many of the events that happen within them are of a player's making. An action causes change in the game world, and can therefore be significant, but not necessarily resonant, symbolic or illuminating. The question for games is really whether they can incorporate other kinds of meaning too. 

I think they can. 

Games Are Not Experiences

E3, trailers and previews mostly sell games based on potential experience. Look at the haunting graphics of Journey or listen to a podcast about the epic scope of Skyrim, and the promise of experience is there. Come into our worlds, they say, they are thaumatic.

Sometimes they are, however those worlds which are successfully so are based on more than just experiences. Experient design’s goal may be to take the player on an emotional journey, but it’s the games that pay attention to what happens in between emotional events that truly are magical. Experiential highs are just one tool in the making of games, not what they are. 

What Games Are: A Primer

Since I started this blog in 2010, I've noticed a common problem. Blog content expires, and so readers often have no idea what a term I use means, whether coined directly or borrowed from a fellow writer. This necessitates back-linking, which some find annoying. It also leads to a tendency toward confusions over meaning, which turns many debates into circular arguments or exercises in equivocation. So readers can only gain a fragmented sense of my larger argument and, while my plan is to publish a book, I feel that a lack of an easy reference is a more immediate problem.

So a few months ago I decided to create just such a reference, and today (just in time for GDC) I'm releasing its first version: A primer of terms about games, game making, the industry and art of games. It’s been a great project to develop so far, and I have high hopes for its future. Hopefully you'll find it useful, and over the next few months I will continue to expand and revise it based on your comments and suggestions. So feedback is definitely appreciated!

What Dear Esther Is Not...

… is a game. Although there are plenty of equivocations doing the rounds to redefine the term ‘game’ in order to include it in the club, Dear Esther (much like The Stanley Parable) is not a game. It’s a virtual promenade, a gallery of ideas mediated by walking. It’s really quite interesting as a thing in its own right, and I recommend you see it much as I would recommend you go visit the Tate Modern.

But I think the folks trying to mix this and game are doing both a disservice. A game is not defined simply by the ability to walk, but to cause meaningful change within it. Virtual promenades are aiming more for the artistry of the interactive gallery or the amusement ride (depending on their flavour) where the choices are there to simply trigger scripted events.

Some will disagree, or assail the meaning of ‘game’ as a way to characterise my position as limited. With respect, if that’s your takeaway from this post then you’re probably not grasping what I mean.

The Narrative vs Mechanics Circus

Last month I contracted what seemed to be a simple cold which progressed into a bronchial infection combined with asthma that knocked me out for three weeks.

It was really bad timing because around the same time, Raph Koster posted a blog bombshell when he said ‘Narrative is not a game mechanic’. A fair few commenters arose in support or ire. Posts flew about whether the meaning of narrative was too broad or limited, whether this was really about a limited formal view of games versus their possibilities, and so on. Exciting stuff, but I couldn’t really get into it.

I’m still recovering, but being ill has given me the chance to reflect and remember that there’s a reason that I don’t normally use the phrase ‘mechanics’. There's also a reason why I tend to dismiss broad narrativism. It’s because both of them are part of a pretend debate over correctness, and each – in their own way – is just circular flame-bait, an ever-burning meme that goes nowhere.

Why Pro-Amateurs Are The Future

The fact that professional makers are feeling under threat is not news. There are calls for tax breaks for game makers and novelists, scrambling efforts to lock down (or at least shut up) the Web through legislation. There is even Rupert Murdoch, once champion of anti-establishmentarian ideals of publishing, tweeting about why a search engine and mass theft are supposedly the same thing.

They have good reason to feel threatened. The Great Recession has accelerated the process of deconstruction. Nobody wants to invest in professional art in a time when we’ve started to use the word “trillion” in everyday conversations about national debts. Add to this the chorus of devaluation that digital distribution has wrought in all creative fields, the largely hazy arguments surrounding piracy, and cultural trends toward lionizing the past (great for back catalogue sales, not so much for new artists).

To many, it looks like Doomsday. However I think not.

Execution Is Worthless Without Vision [Game Design]

"Ideas are worthless. The only currency that holds any weight is the ability and drive to execute." writes Mike Birkhead.

I know plenty of great executors whose game development careers are going nowhere and are staring mystified at the success of companies whose products they consider to be massively inferior to their own. Being focused purely on execution is generally a way to avoid taking creative risks, and the stereotypical "ideas are worthless" line is more of a self justification for good engineering and technical execution of art, audience be damned.

Execution is worthless without vision. Nobody cares if your game is well made, they care that it's remarkable, not the norm, a new idea. You’re not in the business of making better toothbrushes.

Tolstoy, Art, Divided Brains and Roleplaying Games

I had the pleasure of attending a talk by the founders of Bioware at BAFTA. It was about whether games are an art and if so, how. Starting with a definition from Tolstoy, they explained that the ability to create key choices and moments within games to evoke emotion is what they consider art. They then invited members of the audience to share their own emotional play experiences.

However something bothered me about the definition and its application. Both speakers and audience were equating art with player emotion, beauty and experience and that’s not really what Tolstoy meant. It can’t be denied that many players of roleplaying games feel that their play experience should be regarded as art, but is it? Or are they actually searching for validation?

This is a post about definitions of art, emotional validation, the duality of play, Iain McGilchrist and whether roleplaying really is what its proponents think it is.

All Great Marketing Stories are About the Future

Many game makers look at figures like Peter Molyneux and wonder why he gets all the press and they get none. And the answer is that Molyneux understands marketing stories and how to tell them. Most industry legends are the same. They get that the public does not just see a game as a thing, but in context.

You might think you’re just making a game, but you’re not. You’re either creating or contributing to a marketing story, whether intentionally or otherwise, and it’s increasingly important to tell the one you genuinely believe in. Especially if it’s about the future.