What Games Are

How Engagement Killed Gameplay [Language]

(with thanks to Casper Moller)

I used to hear the word gameplay bandied around by executives a lot. Everyone would say that their game was all about innovative gameplay, and believe it, even though most of their games looked and acted just like every other game. However something has changed.

Nobody in those meetings talks about gameplay any more. It seems to have fallen by the wayside. Now everyone’s talking about engagement. It’s changing the way that games are thought of, and so the kinds of games that are getting funded and developed.

Engagement has, in a sense, killed the ideal of gameplay, how we see games, and certainly how we will develop them in the future.

Art is the Best Business [What Games Are]

In response to yesterday’s post about forgetting the money, Jeremy Springfield kindly shared a presentation by Scott MacMillan. Scott’s presentation is about why his indie studio fell apart. His conclusion is that art and business are at opposite ends of a scale, so he thinks an indie studio must be in the middle somewhere. With sympathies to Scott for his studio’s fate, his framework is wrong.

Not only is art a business, it is the best business to be in. Madonna, Apple, James Herbert, Valve, Ogilvy, Terry Pratchett and Lady Gaga are all in the art business in one form or another. So are you. The questions are do you realise it, and do you understand how the art business works?

Forget the Money [Heresy]

An eternal quandary for art is that it must make money and yet also forget it. While makers can get very rich from their work, and should be able to do so, money should not be the first and last question on their lips.

It cheapens the product if the player is reminded of its cost. That in turn sours the experience, and is more likely to make players feel bad than good. When was the last time you played a slot machine that changed your life or even just made you really smile? I'm betting never.

Fairness is a Perception [Game Psychology]

(with thanks to Sini Merikallio)

Fairness is one of the most important aspects of a good game, but it is rarely straightforward. While a game’s rules might be balanced, the player may feel that the experience is not fair, and this is a source of design tension.

The reason is that fairness is not an objective quantity. It’s subjective. Games are fair when the player sees that his actions in the game are achieving tangible rewards, even if the game is cheating to provide them to him.

Health Packs, Barrels and Uniforms are Good [Simulationism]

One of the most powerful aspects of a game is the way that it communicates in classes. Auras, team colours, arrows, uniform appearances and indicators identify enemies and helpful items without deep examination. In so doing they communicate the lay of the land to the player quickly and establish a sense of fairness.

Whatever about the realism of all barrels looking identical, it serves a purpose. If a player can’t develop an implicit understanding of how your game is supposed to behave, then your game has a big problem.

You Need $100,000 [Game Development]

Probably the single biggest thing that stands between the idea of making a great game and the reality of actually doing it is the cost.

Even with agile practices in place, games need a certain level of development before they start to show their potential. The game actions need to extend, the loops need to be in place, the dynamic needs to be coming together and the wins need to build toward something. It needs to develop an aesthetic voice and style, work on the user experience and finally have some level of testing. These things take time and money.

How much? It varies massively depending on what it is, but the bare minimum is $100,000. If you find yourself pitching well below that, it usually portends trouble.

A VTech-Style Premium Future [Game Platforms]

Consoles have long occupied the premium end of the games market. However they increasingly have complicated ambitions. They are hubs for ecosystems, avenues for digital content, and their sustainable software prices are well below what you might consider premium. In an accelerated and digital world, an unchanging technical spec makes them look ordinary, and so their platform story has become vague.

Manufacturers seem to have realised this, and they are releasing hardware more often, with more individual features. Their focus is moving away from selling the console-as-media-hub to the more joined-up game experience offered by a Kinect or a Wii Fit. Manufacturers seems to care more about hardware-dependent games, less about catalogue depth, and the premium space is increasingly turning into one of single-use game peripherals designed to provide one experience really well.

The question is whether the central component of those experiences, the console, is actually necessary. Will it always act as the hub through which more specialist peripherals such as cameras or instrument sets operate, or will it make more sense for the peripherals to become single-use game systems in their own right and sidestep frumpy consoles altogether?

Impassive Gaming [Trends]

The games industry moves quickly, so much so that it can be hard to keep up. Even industry legends miss out on hot new topics such as social games, gamification or tablet gaming, and it can seem like a blizzard of buzzwords and new terminology. It’s the nature of all innovative markets to move in that fashion however, so it’s important to stay current.

A trend that I’m investigating at the moment is impassive gaming. Even as Nintendo brings StreetPass and the next iPhone is rumoured to include near field technology for passive awareness, so impassive gaming may be the next leap forward.