What Games Are

Marketing Stories Are Not About You

It's really tough to design a game, prototype it, ship it and fix all of its bugs. It feels like that should be the end of the story and that - if you do all of the above well - rewards should be yours. Execution, not ideas, etc.

And yet in all likelihood the media and the public will react with apathy. The fault is likely not with your coding skills, production values, the quality of your music or your design. It's with your approach. You are telling a story which is all about you.

'Me Me Me', your story cries, look how cool I am. Look how quirky I am. Look how awesome I am. Now pay me. That’s a product story, but it’s not a marketing story. A marketing story is about them, not you.

Games Are Not Experiences

E3, trailers and previews mostly sell games based on potential experience. Look at the haunting graphics of Journey or listen to a podcast about the epic scope of Skyrim, and the promise of experience is there. Come into our worlds, they say, they are thaumatic.

Sometimes they are, however those worlds which are successfully so are based on more than just experiences. Experient design’s goal may be to take the player on an emotional journey, but it’s the games that pay attention to what happens in between emotional events that truly are magical. Experiential highs are just one tool in the making of games, not what they are. 

What Draw Something Is...

… is a game.

In contrast to the Dear Esther ‘is it a game?’ question of two weeks ago (answer: no), the question arises whether Draw Something is a game. To some it doesn’t feel like one because it is creative and based on user collaboration, but like charades or Pictionary this does not disqualify it:

A game is a simplified, fair, fascinating, empowering and enclosed world whose purpose is to provide structured play through moderated yet unscripted actions and learnable dynamics, with the goal of winning through victory or achievement.

Most people who read this definition seem to fail to notice ‘achievement’ and only see ‘victory’, thus assuming that I’m equating games with competition. That’s simply not the case. Games are much broader.

The key qualities of a game are structured play, moderated yet unscripted actions (especially of the kind that lead to meaningful change) and learnable dynamics. Draw Something has all of those qualities. Dear Esther does not.

 

(Primer References: achievement, action, empowerment, enclosure, fairness, game, victory, win)

Equivocitis [Terminology Wars]

Some people argue that every kind of interactive software experience should be called a 'game'. For some, it's a statement of inclusiveness as a way to explain why games are brilliant. For others, it's about being part of a marketing story about games, for visibility. Mostly it's about pushing boundaries and escaping limits, but the thing is: All eventually fall victim to equivocitis.

Like Douglas Adams's joke about Man proving that black equals white (only to be killed at the next zebra crossing), equivocitis is the disease of bending definitions and words to connect the unconnected or gather the un-gatherable. It’s using equivocation to prove a point, inferring single-case exceptions to bridge ideas and ‘prove’ to the reader that the thing you believe might be real is actually so.

We need to inoculate ourselves against this plague because it’s the main reason why the debate over games, their status as an art and their future goes nowhere.

What Games Are: A Primer

(Note: Since writing this post the Primer was rebranded as the Glossary)

Since I started this blog in 2010, I've noticed a common problem. Blog content expires, and so readers often have no idea what a term I use means, whether coined directly or borrowed from a fellow writer. This necessitates back-linking, which some find annoying. It also leads to a tendency toward confusions over meaning, which turns many debates into circular arguments or exercises in equivocation. So readers can only gain a fragmented sense of my larger argument and, while my plan is to publish a book, I feel that a lack of an easy reference is a more immediate problem.

So a few months ago I decided to create just such a reference, and today (just in time for GDC) I'm releasing its first version: A primer of terms about games, game making, the industry and art of games. It’s been a great project to develop so far, and I have high hopes for its future. Hopefully you'll find it useful, and over the next few months I will continue to expand and revise it based on your comments and suggestions. So feedback is definitely appreciated!