Scary and inspirational. We’re all going to leave little tombstones by the side of the trail at some point; Randy’s leaving Machu Pichu. It’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. More on that later.
Randy Pausch’s “Final Lecture”
Regardless how old I am, if I can look back and make a checklist like that…
Whew! Lately I’ve been putting every ounce of my thought energy into my book about Game Feel (and much of my physical energy – just got back from a bunch of interesting book-relevant interviews in LA, SJ.) This, obviously, leaves little time for the blog. But, hey, writing is writing, and if what I’ve written for the book thusfar is any indication I write better when I’m more relaxed. Blog-like style suits me much better, n’est-pas?
So as a bit of a brainstorming/creativity/productivity tool, I’m going to start brainstorming some of the things I’ve been mulling book-wise to the blog here. This should provide some nice clarification, perhaps a bit of book-usable writing, and a chance to get some feedback on ideas as they’re developing.
Spew du jour:
• Are casual games “without feel?”
• Casual games focus on having the lowest possible barrier to entry. They accomplish this by using the most widely spread interface conventions possible, mostly pointing at things and clicking on them. Browsing the Web, essentially.
• How does skill relate to casual games and game feel?
• Not about skillful translation of intent into motion
• About other things, more generalized things such as word puzzles, logic puzzles, or image puzzles
• As a casual designer you can’t assume the player has pre-existing knowledge or skills of manipulation past basic point and click skills
• But you can assume that everyone has an image processing center that will be pleasurable to utilize by doing things like sorting objects, recognizing patterns and so on. Same with words; everyone who’s online can probably read, and letters are simple, recognizable and fun to organize or rearrange. Often casual games will appeal to many of these faculties simultaneously.
• Skill grows over time, both in a single game and as a more abstract generality
• There is a general skill to manipulation of a digital avatar which is applicable to all games in which motion translation is employed
• Just as knowing how to use a mouse is applicable to all websites
• Game ‘genres’ have kind of evolved this way: if a game takes a particular kind of skill that is similar to another game, those two often get lumped together
• Assumed knowledge in the player is a game design tool: if your interface is close enough to lots of other FPS games, you can assume that players will ‘get it’ very quickly and this gives you some reassuring certainty in an otherwise highly uncertain enterprise
• This is why lots of games are so similar to one another
• This is also why it’s so damn hard to make a game that’s completely ‘original’ and employs few conventions from other games that the designer can assume the player will understand to some degree.
• But hey, we got along ok when there was no precedent, when every game you made would potentially constitute a ‘new genre.’
Casual games are very interesting to ponder in relationship to game feel because they contain no proactive motion. Here is a whole class of games that more or less ignores the core of game feel. That is, purely input-driven motion and the potential for frustration, challenge, and the soaring elation of mastery that comes with it. Often, there is no control layer, no “twitch” skill that must be mastered as part of the gameplay in a casual game. To play takes roughly the same amount of skillful manipulation as buying a pair of shoes from an online retailer. Point to what you want and left-click. The challenge in casual games tends to be more cerebral, as in word puzzles, logic puzzles, or image puzzles, with as low a barrier to entry as possible.
The thing is, a lifelong gamer can pick up and enjoy a casual game. The interface is no barrier, and the challenge can still be engaging or meditative.
Casual players do not consider themselves gamers, and might even be offended by the suggestion.
One mantra of casual game design is ‘only the mouse.’ Even right clicking is viewed as too complex for the average casual player.
Does this mean that casual players are inept? That they’re all morons? Perhaps unsurprisingly, the answer is no. We can’t swipe categorically at these folks because they’re not stupid. They simply lack the experience of years of skillful manipulation those of us who grew up with games take for granted. But they’re still intelligent people, people who want to solve crossword puzzles or play Sudoku. This speaks to the nature of skill and challenge in video games: there are limitless kinds of challenges, some of which are about mastering a motion translation, some which aren’t. By and large, casual games are about sorting things by colors and shapes, recognizing patterns in letters or numbers, logical deduction, or a combination of the three.
The processing power of the computer is used mostly for keeping score and for reactive effects such as showers of particles and blasts of colors that reward the slightest action. Perhaps this is why most game designers regard the casual player with disdain, because they see this constant stream of reward as mollycoddling and can’t comprehend the notion that a person would not have devoted countless hours of their life to mastering Ninja Gaiden.
Casual games are also about Flow. Flow in the Csikszentmihayli sense, as in “The Flow State.”
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Not exactly my best prose, I realize, but I’m brainstormin’ here. Thoughts are welcomed/appreciated.
It’s like staring into the eyes of the notion of beauty; the eyes are always the same.
Whew! Have a few lazy moments after an airport-spanning full out sprint culminated in a missed flight. It’s kind of amazing to directly test your fitness barrier by sprinting way, way farther than one should sprint.
My book was accepted! Wow! I’m excited/terrified. It’s going to be a lot of work. The official title is “Game Feel: A Game Designer’s Guide to Virtual Sensation.” So, if you’re a game mechanic designer, give me a holler. I’m interested in your take on the kinesthetic, tactile feeling of steering and manipulating a digital avatar or agent and how to implement it. What are the important factors in creating good-feeling games? Word. I have, like, 30 candy bars. One of them could be yours 
.
IGF! So, Matthew and I are coordinating IGF this year. Yeah. Again, the blend of terror and elation. Terrelation? Excitified? Those are words now . We’ve been around the IGF since it started, when we were wild-eyed young’uns, drunk on 3DFX’s beer. It’s amazing to be in charge of the shebang. We have some ideas about how to make things run more smoothly, but everything comes from our experiences as entrants and finalists over the years. Things ran smoothly last year, we don’t want to change much.
To Minnesota!
With a title that high-falutin’, it must be pompous! Oh yeah!
Last Saturday, we were having pancakes with Kellee of thatgamecompany. We were talking about – what else? – World of Warcraft. Specifically, I was wondering aloud if a designer has moral responsibility in the case of a game that has literally caused people to forget their children, ruin their marriages, and all sorts of other drug-addicted types of behavior. I teach, and I’ve seen multiple people drop out of college specifically because of WoW. An interesting point that Kellee brought up was that perhaps drug addiction isn’t as apt a metaphor for a designer’s culpability in the creation of something intended to produce a specific outcome for its players – namely, continuing to pay their monthly fee for the rest of their born and natural lives – as, say, running a fast food restaurant. Is McDonalds responsible when people overeat?
My knee-jerk reaction is an emphatic YES!!11!!One!1Exclamationpoint!!!
But there are shades of gray. For example Matthew brings up the example of Shane, the former Audio Director at Flashbang, my former roommate, and the eldest Wegner sibling. Shane was a bone fide WoW addict. Lately, he has joined the Navy and became some kind of naval cryptologist, but that is a relatively recent development. Before that there was a period of WoW abuse (during which I lived with him.) I observed some genuinely disturbing behavior.
Before WoW came out, Shane would regularly leave the house to go on hikes, hang out, play games, talk with us. After WoW came out, he stopped eating and going to the bathroom. “Hee hee!” He would say “I don’t need food, I ate in-game!” Yowch! And then he’d do things like start a pot of spaghetti on the stove, forget about it whilst on a “raid”, and burn it down to waterless noodles. He lost a bunch of weight and developed a disturbing, ashen pallor. Matthew’s interesting point was this: who are we to take the moral high ground? If I spend 12 hours on my computer working on a game, how is that different? Perhaps it’s the notion of creation that separates the two, the intent. I’m shuffling bits with the goal of self expression while playing WoW is primarily escapism. But the line gets blurry, doesn’t it? People who are geographically separate can get to together and share some kind of mutual experience through a game like that, as Kellee noted. Surely, that can’t be bad? Can it? If they feel the same kind of social satisfaction from that that someone feels from going to a dance club, or teaching a class, or playing board games with friends, how is it different? Physically, it’s sedentary, so that’s one possible answer. Exercise makes everything better. There’s just no counter-argument to that.
The crux of the question is whether or not playing WoW is more or less a waste of your life than creating original games intended to produce the same kind of enjoyment. In this age of digital property, virtual experience, how does one set of bits have value relative to another? How is it that Shane is wasting his life while I am an artist or a game designer or whatever? Why is sitting around making games and digital art different than raids on Molten Core?
All we’re really trying to do as game designers is make meaning. At the end of the day we’re just shuffling a bunch of bits around attempting to create an experience. How is that different? We are only successful when our games mean something to our players. So our currency is experience. We don’t make anything tangible or real. We try to make meaningful experiences that sit on top of layer after layer of abstraction, of a bunch of imaginary ones and zeros. And if we concede that – that what we do has no meaning without players, their feelings, and their experiences – we can only judge the intrinsic value of our work based on the experiences of our players. So we find ourselves in a unique position. We want artistic validation without anything tangible to validate. We want to be treated with respect, as film and literature are. But have we thought that desire through? Our currency is experience, same as film or literature, but a film will still run if no one’s in the theater and a book is a tangible, touchable object. Neither has meaning if no one reads or views them, but the very fact that they are exist without participation makes them seem more real.
This is where we get into trouble, because as we move forward pondering ways to ‘create emotion’ in players, we turn to film and literature because they are our only touchstones for creating enduring meaning, for creating experiences that are considered timeless art. But film and literature are more tangible and less participatory than games. So maybe the whole notion of seeking validation of the same kind is flawed.
If an act of playing creates something beautiful, we have been successful. Kellee’s games are, I think, one great example for striving towards this aim. The act of playing creates something beautiful, for both player and observer. As a counterpoint, I think that something that causes addiction, obsession cannot be beautiful. The clinical definition of addiction demarcates a specific line: as soon as a habitual or compulsive obsession begins to impact other areas of your life, it has become an addiction. That is not beauty or art, it is human tragedy. It’s not glue-sniffing in the streets of Moscow or Darfur massacre, but addictive long-term gameplay is an insidious life-leech. So is TV, I’d say. It’s the same phenomenon: when you’re no longer playing or watching to produce a state of enjoyment, for emotional nourishment, the end has come. You’re obsessed, addicted, and looking only for numbness. You’re dying slowly.
So I guess I think that yes, a designer should be responsible for the resultant behaviors their players exhibit. We’re playing with primal, fundamentally physiological processes of cognition, manipulating them for profit and gain. Should we ban MMOs? No. Should designers own up and take responsibility for the fact that people may abuse their games? Perhaps. Really, though, what do you do? This a fundamental problem in our society. We compromise – we have warning labels on cigarettes, and that seems okay. We can’t trample people’s liberty, telling them what they can and cannot do. You can’t be responsible for people’s lack of self control, but you doing nothing feels wrong too. Is McDonalds responsible for a 150lb four year old? A bit, I’d say. It’s a give and take, and you have to accept responsibility if you’re going to design a product intended specifically to addict.
Design games responsibly. Use your moral compass. If it feels wrong, it probably is.
More casual game madness. The latest trend is “Hidden Object Games.” I confess, I don’t quite get it. I’ve played a couple hours of Hidden Expedition Titanic, and I’m having trouble finding the appeal. Of course, everything is sequels and branding in the casual space now, so the latest game is Hidden Expedition Everest. It will be interesting to see what modifications they’ve made to improve the game, but the base level appeal is still eluding me. I’ve enjoyed other casual games – Bejeweled 2, for example, or Grimm’s Hatchery – but I’m having a really hard time seeing the underlying appeal of hidden object games. I understand why it should be fun, I guess. There’s some basic neural circuitry devoted to discerning shapes and patterns, especially picking out specific objects from amongst a jumble of objects, but in my mind the granularity feels off for a successful casual game. Especially at the start, it takes a long time to find each object. It makes me feel quite inept and, especially when I’m looking for the wrong thing, as though I’m being tricked. In my mind, a casual game (and just about any game, really) should have very compelling moment to moment game play, a strong presence at the finest granule. In Bejeweled, you sort gems constantly, a constant stream of stimulus. Your opportunity to sort gems never diminishes; you can always sort more gems. With hidden objects, there are always fewer and fewer objects to look for. It’s weird. I don’t get why millions of people are buying these games. I guess I’ll play the new Hidden Expedition: Everest game when it launches and try to figure it out.
Getting there! At GDC 2006, the Harmonix guys gave a short demonstration at the Experimental Gameplay Workshop about the stuff they weren’t able to fit into Guitar Hero. Namely, a cool system for wanking off and jamming with the guitar controller that was empowering and expressive. Tall order, obviously. So I think that systems like this are getting much much closer. It would be really, really cool to play some kind of more precise strumming game on Wii. It looks like this is fairly complicated and that this gentleman has practiced quite a bit to get this modicum of proficiency, but it looks very compelling nonetheless. What would really make this sing (p. i.) is a bit more sophisticated gesture recognition. A full chord strum versus a single pluck versus a pinch harmonic and so on. And then, of course, you’d have to build some crazy interpreter like the Harmonix guys to get the thing to feel fun for people who don’t spend hours learning it. But hey, getting there.
Or, you know, you could have a band where someone played Wiimotes instead of a real guitar. Hmmm a Wiimote shaped guitar case and a roadie to charge my battrez for me? Hmmm…
Belittled. Subserviant. Pathetic. Transparent. Also, conflicted. It makes me think of Ellison’s Invisible Man (though I know there was no intent here.)
If ever there were a game that is diametrically opposed to the rippling muscle scantily clad power fantasy drivel of the retail game industry, this is it. This is an anti-power fantasy in the truest sense. And, hey, it still manages to be misogynistic. Yay.
A couple years ago, we at Flashbang Studios were tracking the casual space very closely. We ultimately decided to depart for greener intellectual, monetary, and creative pastures, but at the time we knew quite a bit. Following a single game is a bit pointless because in the swirling clone-froth of the casual space, the only way to get ahead is to follow and predict the larger trends. A game comes out, like Nanny Mania, and it’s a big hit. This is unexpected; from the publisher’s point of view, if they’ve done their homework they will know that a certain game will be a big hit in the marketplace. This does not mean that said publisher knows what kinds of games to make in the first place, what kinds of games will catch on. No one does, to the hair-pulling consternation of the big players. So they put a ton of games out there and see what sticks. A game comes out, and it’s a big it, and three months later the clone armies crest the rise: the slaughter is on. The water runs red, and tons and tons of knockoff product is sold. The consumers don’t know any better; people who download and buy and love Cake Mania or Mystic Inn have no idea whatsoever that Diner Dash ever existed. And so it goes.
Anyhow, one trend I was tracking is the migration of retail industry-style games into the casual space. This is one of the many ways casual publisher and developers strive to cash in on the Casual Cash Cow. The “casualification” of games, if you will. On game that seemed particularly ripe for exploitation in this manner was The Sims. I mean, the Sims’ audience is already the audience they’re after. It’s a no brainer. So I was unsurprised to see that things like Virtual Villagers had caught on and was going strong. Enter Nanny Mania. Ouch.
I mean, it’s kind of a Diner game, but it takes advantage of the thematic familiarity and humanistic aspects of The Sims. Simply put, though, I find it horrifying. Go play it. If you wanted to make the anti-Gears of War, here’s your template. Something tells me that when the Clone Armies line up for this one, they won’t have that in mind.
*sigh*
Ahh TED.
It was interesting to me that despite loving every minute of this talk, I left feeling slightly deflated. A pejorative potshot at video games in the middle: “If you only get the BFA, not the MFA, you go home and continue playing video games.” Those of us who design said games sigh collectively. But I suppose I’m in an odd middle ground, as I am an educator of and about video games and their design. Not only that, but about creativity, the kind of creativity Gentleman Sir Ken is espousing. Game design is a profoundly creative enterprise. Designing games was thing I did in school instead of what I was supposed to be doing, the thing which was stigmatized. It was clear that I was pretty smart, but no one had any idea what to do with me because I wouldn’t sit and memorize multiplication tables. I just wanted to make games in Logowriter all day.
The first thing I hit students in my Game Design class with is the concept of looking for the second right answer. And the third and fifth and twelfth. This comes from Roger Von Oech, and is, I would argue, the first step in a long process of unlearning the wheel clamps public education has put on your Porsche of Creativity. When you look for one and only one answer to a problem – as we have been taught from day 0 hour 1 in every classroom – you’ll grab the first answer that pops into your head that seems like it might be serviceable. If instead youlook for twenty different answers to a problem, the simple odds that you’ll come up with something original that has value increase drastically. Plus, once you exhaust the staid, boring, obvious answers to a problem, you’re left only with things wild and wacky. So increase your failure rate. Lose the fear to fail. If you had to find it, you can lose it.
And so it goes. Even in what one would assume would be a profoundly creative field, the lack of creativity is staggering to me. At an art school. Where people are studying video game design. Anyhow, wonderful talk. My kids at least will have their creativity nurtured and supported, possibly at a Montessori school.
Much love to my parents who did their best to keep my brain out of the public school manure.
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