What Games Are

How to Look at Resources vs Risk [Game Startups]

A startup developer contacted me today with some follow-up questions from my post about why Facebook is over. He wanted to know what I thought would be his best strategy for development and publishing given that he has a small team. I asked his permission to print his mail and my response (anonymously) here to discuss the importance of looking at risk in the right way, and he kindly consented.

I Think Facebook is Over [Social Games]

If Facebook games are an arms race, then Zynga have clearly won it. They have more users than their next nine competitors combined and a lock on cross promotion that can’t be beaten. Only Zynga is able to regularly make games that will acquire more than 20 million users, and they have been tenacious to a fault in dominating every channel they can find.

Meanwhile their competitors can only look on and stare at their own (mostly) declining fortunes. One publisher really does rule them all, and is about to IPO itself a couple of billion dollars to become as big as Activision. And there’s nothing they can do about it.

Captain Crunch and the Crazymakers [Game Direction]

A depressing story that occasionally does the rounds of blogs and forums is that of working conditions in the games industry. Whether it’s EA_spouse or the recent revelations about the conditions at Team Bondi (of LA Noire fame), the sorry story of how the pressure cooker environment of game making leads good people to become crazymakers is a long and ignominious one.

It’s sad for three reasons. Firstly that there are studios out there that think nothing of abusing staff. Secondly that, despite the overtime, they still can’t manage to ship games within a reasonable timeframe. And thirdly that developers young and old seem to think that this is the only way that life can be.

Have faith friends. There is more to life than this.

Is Your Game One-Dimensional? [Design]

When Usain Bolt competes in the 100m sprint, the test is about speed, and he has only one way to win: run faster than everybody else. He has little scope for strategy, no way to outwit opponents and he can only improve at the game through exercise (and good genetics). The 100m sprint is a one-dimensional game.

Some video games are like that. They are often fun, but only in passing. They burn out and have no room for extension because the play brain reaches maximum mastery very quickly. They need to consider their lack of dimensionality if they intend to build a lasting franchise.

My Report Card and Plan [100th Post!]

200 days ago I published my first post on What Games Are. It was a quiet period in my life and I didn’t quite know what I was going to do next. I had something of a draft for a book that I was writing, an urge to create something more immediate, and to strike out on my own and take a risk that I had something worthwhile to say.

Six months later, I’ve published around 130,000 words (and easily written double that). I’ve been invited to write for a couple of esteemed publications. I’ve had the chance to speak at a couple of events. And my consulting business is booming. I am, in short, really really busy. 

I thought the 100 post milestone might be a good opportunity to pause and reflect on how things have been going, and talk about my plans for the next 100 posts. 

Investment [Engagement Hierarchy]

(Last December I started to write a series of posts about a concept called ‘the engagement hierarchy’. My thesis is that players engage with games in five distinctive manners, and that while all games get users who engage at all levels, there are clear clusters around one rung or another on the hierarchy that define largely what that game can be.)

Investment is what happens when players fantasize. Characters come to life, music is hummed-along-to, and the possibilities of the game world feel as though they extend beyond the boundaries of what the player sees on screen. Players imagine scenarios, moments, what-ifs, winning strategies, infer qualities of the game that the developers never actually included, and otherwise find the game magical in a way that they can’t quite express. 

More than enjoying the experience, invested players participate in it. They resonate with it, become the influencers who connect other players and want to know its creators. An invested game is one that is important, and invested players feel as though they are a part of something.

Can the Ultimate Platform Work? [Wii U]

The delivery was stilted and a third of the global audience was confused by whether it was a peripheral or a brand new console. And yet, as they are wont to do, Nintendo appeared on the E3 stage in order to change the gaming world. However not to announce a key invention, as is their usual pitch.

This time it was to launch one platform to rule them all. Using a controller with an in-built touch screen that looks for all the world like a Nintendo PSP, their idea is to create an ultimate platform. Depth as well as breadth was the message. With this Wii U, you could play potentially any kind of possible game, anywhere in the house (via remote broadcasting). This in addition to compatibility with the Wii Mote, Wii Fit and all the other inventions that defined the Wii.

It’s an incredible idea, the sum of many single inventions rolled into one elegant ubiquitous device. Nintendo, it seems, have concluded that the time is nigh to unite the fragmented game markets under one banner: Its.

Going to the Circus [E3]

With E3 coming next week, take some time to remember this: The games industry operates a lot like pop music or blockbuster movies, in that the presentation and the wow factor are meant to tell a positive story that draws in the young.

It’s a circus. Tweeting, blogging, over excited interviews and press conferences are all pure show business. Good games come out of this process, but so does a lot of hypeware. Talent en masse tries to get noticed, and so the hubbub only loudens while the voices fade.

The real star is not the talent. It’s the circus itself. But is it out of date? Minecraft, Angry Birds, Farmville and many other hugely successful games never needed to go to E3. Meanwhile many developers who do attend sink without trace.

The lesson? It’s better to find your tribe in arenas where you can be heard rather than against the backdrop of elephants, clowns, acrobats and brass bands. A lone voice has more power these days than ever before, so pitch your own tent.

All Good Games Are Tests, But Not Vice Versa

You might call it challenge, difficulty or a scenario, but a universal trait of great games is that they test players in some way. Games have a learning value (as Raph Koster so memorably chronicled) and a huge part of their fun comes from mastering them. From the simplex crossword to the massive complexity of Battlefield 3, games push the player to be better in some way. Even creative games like the Sims are test driven.

Yet it is a major fallacy to conclude that all types of test consequently make for good games. They don’t, and there are good reasons as to why. The psychology of play and boredom gets in the way, the lack of clarity in some kinds of test makes them frustrating and the overall opacity of their results leave players nonplussed.

This is an essay about optimality, the play brain and why successful games need to be far more abstract than they might appear.

Busywork is not Fun [Design]

It’s important to give players enough to do. Especially in videogames where the focus is more sport- and single-player oriented than in table top games, your game really needs a lot of actions to occupy a player’s time. But of course it’s not just about the quantity. Does every game action cause a meaningful change in the game world? Do most of them?

If so, then you are on the right path. The wrong path is actions which do not cause meaningful change. There are a wide variety of meaningless actions that games incorporate but they all share a common trait:

Meaningless actions oblige the player to crank a handle that the game could easily be cranking for them. Such actions are busywork, and busywork is usually boring.