What Games Are

Games of the Year [Fans]

One of the grand rituals, annually enacted across a thousand web forums, is the choice of Game of the Year. News sites, blogs and random posters on social networks declare their loyalties, discuss contenders, and attempt to capture common themes for the year. Game of the Year is often fun and informative as it turns readers on to games they may have missed, never heard of, or wanted to play but forgot. It's not really about finding a game of the year as such though.

What it’s actually about is fans giving back.

 

Sick!

Unfortunately I've been laid low by a heavy head/chest cold all this week. So unable to keep blogging at my usual pace. Will be back to it soon.

Happy New Year.

The Christmas Cheer [Games]

Just remember: Though you may have hated that project you worked on this year, today someone will find a copy of it under their Christmas tree and their eyes will fill with delight.

Also remember: Christmas Day is just a day, but art is forever. Connecting people, entertaining them and adding to the richness of their lives matters every day.

So either way be of good cheer, safe in the knowledge that what you do matters. Merry Christmas all!

Tetris Is Not The Answer [Tetrism]

A very long-running debate about games has gone something like this:

A: Games are the next evolution of storytelling.
B: Games are just games. If I want a story, I’ll read a book.
A: Games are storytelling because of the branches of possibility they offer.
B: No, games are all about gameplay.
A: My game story experience is unique. I build my own narrative.
B: Tetris does not need a story, you are talking nonsense.

I call them narrativism and tetrism. Is either right?

Beware the No-Brainers, Final Part [Morons]

This is the final part of the series about no-brainer games and the inner moron. In the first part I talked about what moronism is, and in the second part I talked about Four-Elephant ideas, hidden factors and our old friend Techthulhu. This part is about the delusions of spreadsheets, overly strategic thinking, and just plain old boredom.

And an argument for taking risks.

Functions vs. Loops [Finding Fun]

(thanks Patrick)

We often describe games in terms of mechanics, functions and features.

None of these terms are adequate for explaining a game however. Two games may have the same roster of features, and yet one is amazing while the other is an eyesore. Even worse: mechanics, functions and features encourage us to think of games as linear software projects where the addition or removal of individual components has linear effects.

The reality is that games are often improved by dropping excess features, worsened by unbalancing existing ones, and defined as junk or legend by the interplay between them. Games are dynamic systems, not regular software.

Great game design is made of loops.

The What Games Are Journal [Experiment]

I really like paper.li, the social news startup that compiles top shares from your Twitter account into a newspaper. It’s fun, but also incredibly useful. I’ve been testing it with my own account for the last two weeks (the Tied Tiger Tribune) and it’s great as a personalised source of interesting things, like a more social StumbleUpon.

It’s also given me an idea:

Worldmakers [Game Design]

For a long time, video games have tried to appeal to players in terms of their game character and their inner hero. But outside the walls of the development studio, the publisher and the academic, nobody cares. We need to just be honest about that.

The player has already shown up. Your job is to take him to a place that he has never seen before and blow his mind. You are a wonderworker, a worldmaker, a thaumaturgist. For games to become the art that they have always been meant to be, this is the central lesson that you need to take in:

Forget the person. The art of game design is all about the place.

There is No Secret Sauce [Lean vs Clean]

(with thanks to Chris and Kevin)

A couple of months ago, at Games Invest 2010, I attended a morning of presentations. The real stand-out speaker, predictably enough, was Phil Harrison.

His talk concerned the next generation game company. As a would-be game investing venture capitalist, Harrison expressed that he felt uncomfortable with the old school software development and business model used for games. He wanted companies that could be flexible, who could use metrics and agile development to create minimum viable products and test their assumptions. His ideal, as he explained it, was a company that could potentially add or remove game dynamics quickly from its games, be able to measure user behaviour immediately, respond to audiences, and do so at low cost with the prospect of high profitability.

Harrison was advocating a message of customer validation, low cost, and iterative process as the secret to game development in the 21st century. This is a whole school of thinking that the Silicon Valley people call the lean startup.

The What Games Are Digest #2 [Weekend]

In the first week of this blog I had a traffic spike for the Techthulhu article, but it fell back quickly. This week traffic has been more sustained and I am starting to see traffic from search engines as well as referrals. My unique user count for the month has risen to 614, and other stats like bounce rate, average page views and time on the site are all improving. I expect there will be some fall-off in the next two weeks because of Christmas, although I do plan to maintain a schedule of light, short posts over the holiday period.