What Games Are

Interactivity Means Doing Stuff [Narrativism]

In discussing some of my older posts on players, characters and stories, I often come across a logic that says stories are interactive, games are also interactive, and therefore games are stories. Which makes sense except for one crucial detail: Stories are not interactive.

Interactivity is not how you react to what you see. It is how you change what you see. To be interactive, a game (or any art) needs to be capable of being intentionally altered by the viewer’s actions. It may sound obvious, but games are about the doing, not the viewing.

The Little Deck of Game Design [Project]

In 1975, Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt published a deck of cards named Oblique Strategies. Their idea was to give creators a tool to help them get unstuck or see differently. I want to develop a similar kind of deck for game designers. 

Would you like to help?

The Other Way [Industry Issues]

Many developers want game making to be treated as a skilled profession. They want it to be serious, have stable working hours, to acknowledge their contribution and to be paid accordingly. They want to see themselves as craftsmen bringing decades of experience to bear on projects.

This desire reminds me of a scene in The Wire where Marlo steals lollipops in plain view of a security guard, and when the guard challenges him Marlo sizes him up and says:

‘You want it be one way. But it’s the other way.’

Camera Comes First [Game Design]

Games have their own visual rules which are often contrary to other kinds of camera. Camera design dictates how players see into the game world, and ultimately how they play, so without good camera design your whole game may end up unplayable.

It’s very difficult (read: expensive) to change a poorly designed camera without rewriting a game entirely. This is why I consider gamatography (like photography, but for games) to be the first design task on any project, the first spec to be written and the first code that needs to be prototyped.

There need to be clear rules that will govern the camera throughout the whole of the game, sooner rather than later. Do it right and camera acts as a foundation on which you can build. Do it wrong and you’ll create a user experience nightmare.

The Law of Fascination [Game Design]

It don’t mean a thing if it aint got that swing.

Duke Ellington’s point was simple: Across all genres and eras, music needs to swing. It’s a creative constant. I make a similar point about fun, arguing that it too is a creative constant and a game is not a game if it lacks the joy of winning while mastering fair game dynamics.

But some kinds of fun are more appealing than others. Some are innately fascinating and inspire the play brain to play, where others just don’t. I call it the law of fascination.

The Ding Economy [Art]

Some will frame the work of Steve Jobs as showmanship, hoodwinking millions in the quest for power and money. Those same people will roll their eyes in disbelief at fans who left flowers or memorials at Apple stores, or think of it as evidence of just how clever at branding this man was. That cynicism is what prevents ambition or achieving anything of worth and is why most people live what Thoreau called ‘lives of quiet desperation’.

Jobs once said that his ambition was to put a ding in the universe. He did it through being a businessman and artist rather than one or the other. It’s a way of working which inspires loyalty, which social media amplifies. It’s no accident that art-and-business companies like Apple and Nintendo have dominated their respective fields over the last decade, or why James Dyson can charge more than competitors for state of the art vacuum cleaners and yet still win.

The 21st century economy belongs to business artists. It is a creative economy where dings spread like viruses and create huge profits. It’s also the economy where commodity jobs get devalued down toward near zero. I’m not saying you need to be Steve Jobs. I am saying you need to find your own ding and then create it. What does your ding in the universe look like?

(Today’s image comes from Scalar Scopes.)

Find the New Positive [Motivation]

Making games is so tough that most makers do not stay beyond half a decade. Frustration, stress and uncertainty nip at them while bad management and poor practises sap their will. This tension is common to all of the arts and it breeds very negative creative cultures. Failed actors, alcoholic pulp novelists and game makers who develop liver damage from stress are all the same breed. They want to make people laugh or cry, or maybe just to make a generous living, and when neither happens they grow resentful.

The only real solution is to find a new source of positivity.

RIP Steve Jobs

Sad news. I think he did manage to make that ding in the universe though.

As Ben Jonson said of Shakespeare, "there was ever more in him to be praised than to be pardoned."