What Games Are

The Maker's Lament, Free To Play and Transmedia Malls

I’ve been reading a book named Free Ride. Its central argument is that through the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, freeloading pirates, two faced behaviour from a variety of tech companies and faulty prevailing wisdom in the media about the need to be online at all costs, people who make content have been screwed out of a career.

It also asks whether it’s really worth throwing out hundreds of years of professional creation for openness. The author (Robert Levine) posits several solutions to try to recapture, or at least stabilise, a market for professional content, from the walled gardens of app stores through some form of television license for internet access to the blocking of infringing domains. On whole, however, he paints a pretty bleak picture.

Except he forgot one medium, arguably the one with the best plan for the future. The one that has shown massive growth in an age of professional content decline. The one that makes billion dollar corporations seemingly appear out of thin air. Ours.

Why Must Orcs Die? [Signifiers]

Orcs Must Die is a great indie game in which, as the title says, you kill a lot of orcs. Buy it, play it, it’s well worth it. But why must it be orcs that die?

Why not someone else for a change?

The Two Viralities [Marketing]

When people talk about virality, what they generally mean is whether a game spreads by word of mouth or not. However in recent years virality has taken on two different and often contradictory meanings.

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.

100,000 Players for 60 Days [Traction]

‘I don’t really care about being right’, Steve Jobs said in an interview for Triumph of the Nerds, ‘I just care about success.’

There are infinite ways to kid yourself that a game is successful, but there are also many ways to misinterpret success as failure. Here’s what I think: If your game can attract 100,000 players who each play for 60 days then it’s a success. It might take time to realise its value, but you’re definitely onto something.

It has traction.

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.

The Storysense of Call of Duty MW3

I often say that videogames are not a storytelling medium. They can’t tell tightly structured tales because the player gets in the way, and this is why there are no great game stories.

However I also often say that videogames are a great medium for storysense. An excellent example is the new Call of Duty game, Modern Warfare 3. This article looks at how Modern Warfare 3 conveys its sense of story, and how it sometimes gets it wrong, as a lesson for what you might do in your game.

(PS: Watch out, there are spoilers.)

Now on Google+

I literally just got enabled for Google+ Pages, and of course I had to create one. Here’s the link!

Why Not Brandification Instead? [Gamification]

My sense is that brand managers are approaching games in the wrong way. A few years ago they were all into creating virtual worlds but that didn’t really work out. More recently they went through a phase of creating social games, but again no luck. Now they’re keen to commission digital agencies or game developers to create gamified sites or software for brands, which will inevitably become coupon schemes, badges and leader boards.

The vast majority of these projects are utter failures because they end up creating vapid digital services with no soul. The ones that do succeed often do so accidentally (for example, because they were unexpectedly fun). Games are a cultural product, and like any other culture there is a line where commercial relationships become nakedly self-serving, and no customer finds that sexy.

Perhaps the branding industry should consider branding games rather than gamifying brands instead, if only for the reason that it’s more likely to work.

Currencies and Other Numbers [Game Design]

It’s somewhat fashionable to label any number in a game a currency. In practise, however, it gets a little confusing.

Anyone can grasp the idea that in-game gold is a currency, but what about your character’s health or experience points? Advocates might say that the player is trading health for damage or progress during the course of the game. But to most people that’s pretty tenuous.

I prefer to think of currency as one type of resource instead. This is a post about different types of resources that you could use in your game (including currency) and some guidelines on how to use them well.