What Games Are

The Two Kinds of Game Conference

The first type is full of professional developers and publishers. This kind of conference tends to be about business, technology and innovaton. The tone is often somewhat introverted, reflecting a particular culture of game developers. It is respectful of indie games but new-fangled concepts like social games are regarded with suspicion.

The second type is the peripheral event, and attracts brand people, educators, serious games people, gamificators, students, transmedia makers and (until recently) virtual world people. Presentation tends to be about pitching companies or theories, wide-eyed and optimistic. Attendees tend to be less aware of games as an industry, and often think of game developers as inward or backward.

They don't really gel. The first group is much better at execution but consumed with conservative ideas of what it should be executing. The second is more liberal, but tends to fall back on behavioural 'games' which aren't strong. For the first, games are a medium and a culture. For the second, a tool for doing other things. The first says 'gameplay'. The second says 'engagement'. The first is overly hard-headed. The second is very flaky.

Even in big conferences like GDC the two tend to separate into distinct streams, conferences and attendees, like oil and water. As a result, both tend to talk to the same kind of crowds again and again and make the same circular arguments over and over. Is there any way to bring them together?

Theatrics And Charlatans [Marketing Stories]

The game and music industries have two things in common. The traditional primary market for both tends to be younger, and video plays a key role in inspiring those markets. Video is arguably more important for games because the final product is unknowable until you play it. Video makes even more sense in the age of Youtube, filling in a role that magazine previews used to perform. Live broadcasts of conferences are now for everyone. Trailers and tech demos are easy to share and dissect, often in high definition. And finally there are interviews, previews and video podcasts. 

This makes it important for a game maker to have a sense of theatre. To be able to sell a market on the vision of a game, to speak excitedly and inspire is best done with your voice, your sound and your passion. It's amazing how far your message might travel in this way, especially to markets who don't have the inclination to read. It gives you the opportunity to tell your marketing story, but it also brings with it the temptation to act the charlatan. 

Games Are... An Invocation Poster!

I had to share this, from Martin Darby as a response to the previous post:

I love it.

Games Are… An Invocation

Games are belief engines. Games are canvases for stories in motion. Games are a challenge and a learning activity. Games are ideas. Games are explorations both intellectual and meaningful. Games are positive. Games make life better. Games help you feel success when all around you is grey and confusing. Games are change. Games are illuminating. Games are insightful. Games are irreverent. Games are very old. Games are very new. Games are tests. Games are addictive. Games are pressure. Games are motivational, inspirational and educational. Games are fun. Games are exercise. Games are good for body and soul. Games are about you. Games are projections. Games are worlds which we superimpose on this world in order to escape or make sense of it. Games are dynamic, chaotic and delightful. Games are there to be mastered, used up and then forgotten. Games are participatory, cultural and shared. Games are demanding. Games are emotive. Games are sometimes indescribable and yet all too real. Games are made, but more than the sum of their made parts. Games are a constant source of the strange. Games are risky. Games are playful. Games are one of the key experiences that life is for. Games are brilliant. Games are an art form. Games are numinous. Games are thaumatic. Games belong to us.

Have a great weekend, and play some games.

Ludomes: The Greater Set of Interactive Play

Perhaps a way of think of games in terms of a larger set of interactive art is as artificial worlds. Like a biome in the Eden Project, each has artificial rules superimposed upon reality in an attempt to craft a place. Each is different, bounded by the systems that give them form, but full of possibility and indviduated experience.

You could call them ludomes, ludic (as in interactive play) biomes. Perhaps that makes us all ludomancers, which makes the URL of Daniel Benmergui's blog oddly apt, no?

Games and Meaning

What does meaning really mean? Generally it translates as resonant, illuminating, symbolic or significant. In some cases all of the above. A meaningful song might evoke the history of a revolution for the listener, so that even though she does not know the facts she feels a connection to it. The same is true of novels, movies and art. 

Games incorporate agency and so many of the events that happen within them are of a player's making. An action causes change in the game world, and can therefore be significant, but not necessarily resonant, symbolic or illuminating. The question for games is really whether they can incorporate other kinds of meaning too. 

I think they can. 

On Value Judgements [What Is A Game?]

Chris Bateman over at iHobo is mid-way through a curious series of posts talking about the value judgements of those who define games. I think (correct me if I'm wrong) this spun out of a debate started on this blog over 'what is a game' that erupted in the wake of Dear Esther. Specifically whether defining something as a game only reflects a critical bias on the part of the definer.

It's complicated, especially when viewed in such lights as the four lenses of game making. Clearly there are many ways that people who hold a belief about what games are, or should be, could conjure a definition of games to fit their own bias as a circular argument. However does that mean that all such attempts are doomed?

Console Aphelion: Are Consoles About to Make a Comeback?

An aphelion is the farthest point from the sun of an object's orbit, when the night is darkest. Here's the relevance to games: Retail gaming is down, consoles are often thought of as old fashioned, even dead. It's all smartphones and freemium Facebook and Steam games now. It's threats from Apple, gamification, speculation over the role of the browser and the PC. It's dead-on-arrival handheld platforms.

And yet something is amiss: Despite the pronouncements of imminent doom, there are a surprising number of consoles out there. Despite the portents for middle-grade publishers, it's only really on console that we see 20m units of a title sold. Despite the seeding of games on many platforms, it's still console that sets the pace and draws the sparkle of E3.

Are they dead, or are we more in the territory of darkest hours and dawns?

Games Don't Tell Stories. People Tell Stories.

I posed the title of this post as a topic at GameCamp.

The idea is this: We get very heated on the discussion of whether games are a storytelling medium or not, with members from all four lenses often talking at cross purposes. Games historically do a bad job of telling stories but sometimes do a good job of catalysing memorable experiences. Those experiences then go on to be formed into stories by players, post hoc. 

What do you think?

Where Did The Primer Go?

Last week I did a little bit clean-up across the site, removing the large 'Primer' link and cleaning up some of the pages in the navigation bar. You'll notice in particular that the 'Book' and 'Archive' links have gone and there is a new 'Glossary' link.

The Glossary is the Primer renamed. The name 'Primer' ultimately did not reflect its actual content, and everyone else that sees it keeps calling it a dictionary or glossary anyway. So a Glossary it is. All the individual links to pages within it should continue to work, and I have many new entries to add to it over the next few weeks.

Also fear not: I have not abandoned writing the book of What Games Are. Far from it. I simply amalgamated the Book page and the About page into one, as they were doubling much of the same content. Finally, the Consulting page has been updated too.