Getting Inside Your Head

Two years ago, before I began Ghosts in the Game, I probably wouldn't have been able to tell you the difference between Story and Gameplay in a videogame. This is not because I was a half-wit (despite popular opinion). It was because I didn't know the difference, and I didn't care. I was a consumer of games, books, movies, and music. I loved (and still love) story with a passion and went looking for it everywhere. I couldn't see the gameplay, I was blinded by my passion. I genuinely didn't know what parts were story and what parts were game. Most people don't. Most people don't care.

I have the fondest memories of playing Circle of Blood (The Broken Sword, for you Europeans), and The Dig, and Grim Fandango. These games enthralled me with their stories as much as any book had ever done. I was amazed by the power of a videogame to draw me in, make me care about the characters, and keep me interested by making me a part of the solution. It was these, and others like them, that inspired me to pursue game design specifically as a medium of telling stories. Which has led me here.

In all media there is a curtain that separates the creators and the audience. Most people are blissfully unaware of what goes on behind the curtain, in the realm of creation. Some are even unaware the curtain exists. It allows them to enjoy the magic that is created and presented to them. Sometimes the curtain slips, and they glimpse the gears and pulleys that are driving the show, but soon enough they forget. Those behind the curtain, however, can always see the machine if they want to. Once you know something is there, and how it works, it is a small step to see it everywhere. I've started to move the curtain of game design aside, and now I can see the gameplay.

Which in some ways makes playing games for their narrative, and their story, harder. Too often I see the gears of gameplay I never noticed before obscuring the potential of the game. Going back to play many of my beloved adventure games leaves me more frustrated at the clunky and obtuse mechanics employed to block my progress than elated by the discovery of character, setting, and plot. I see the puzzles for what they are to the gameplay, and can't get past my broken immersion to truly enjoy the story I'm exploring. This happens most when the story and the mechanics don't match.

Psychonauts: An Exploration of Mismatched Mechanics
I have experienced Psychonauts from the opening sequence to the final Boss in the final mind, and the sequel expectant epilogue. The impression it left on me was a good one, and I would recommend it to a great many people. However, I am forced to describe it as a game with a split personality. On one hand (or mind) it is one of the best story games I've played in a long time. It has rich world, unique and developed characters (for most of the minds you encounter), a subtle sense of humour, excellent dialog and voice acting, and surprising hidden depths. While the story itself is linear (more so as you progress), the game provides you with ample ability to explore at your leisure, allowing you to discover the characters and world as you progress.

However, your leisurely dip into the psyche of the game is often halted and battered by the action-platform mechanics used to make it a game. You encounter frustrating jumping and dodging puzzles, often made more complex by the same landscapes that add personality to the usually dull and repetitive platform genre. You have many Boss fights that serve no purpose greater than to pit you against a strong enemy at the end of an area. And, most heinous of all, in a game that normally gives you free reign on pacing you encounter areas and challenges that force you to run and react instead of observe and explore; killing you time and again when you fail to jump or dodge at just the right moment.

The game tries to alleviate these short-comings by providing copious amount of help to the novice (or untalented) player. The physics are as forgiving as possible. Death is never absolute, health is plentiful, and lives are easily restored. There is even an in-game hint guide given to you as soon as is feasible by the story: encounter a new enemy, difficult enemy, or unstoppable Boss and simply call on Ford Cruller for a quick but of advice. If you get stuck (especially in Boss fights) the game is apt to just give you the hints you need anyway.

But why is there all this emphasis on making the action-platform gameplay easier? I think that a lot of it was added in an attempt to make the mechanics invisible, or at least ignorable. The game really isn't about jumping and shooting and running and dodging. The game is about delving into the (sometimes warped) minds of those you encounter on your path to save the world, and your girlfriend. Half the psychic talents have no use during the action sequences. Most are best applied to creative puzzles born of environment deep seated emotional trauma. A couple are only used a handful of times because as the game progresses it increasingly relies on action to draw you along instead of the mystery and discovery that hooked you in the first place.

The game becomes a mismatch of story and mechanics. The story is lost to the adrenaline rush needed to progress. The gameplay is hampered by the detail and design used to support the storyworld. In the end you get a game that has brilliant moments, and terrible ones. It contains aspects of drama, humour, action, suspense, and thrill but lacks a sustaining feeling. You get a game that despite its flaws is brilliant. And I can, sadly, understand why it never sold well to the mass market. The split personality is something that would ultimately grate on an audience that doesn't care to sift the story from the gameplay. An audience that shouldn't have to.

Mind Meld
I believe that there can be a balance between the story told by a game, the story created in the experience of play, and the gameplay itself. I don't think it is necessary to remove or replace what we know as gameplay mechanics to be able to tell a creative and deep story -- to build a world the player can explore. I do however think that choosing your gameplay to suit your story is an often overlooked, and sometimes ignored, part of development. When pitching a game, its easier to sell the fun than the depth.

I used Psychonauts as my example for two reasons: I had just finished the game when I started writing this post, and I believe that it could have been a better game. In fact, it probably could have been two better games. One would have had an incredible story about a kid discovering the power of his mind. The other would have been a kick-ass game with psychic powers used to create incredible action. By mismatching the story they wanted to tell with the gameplay they wanted to sell Double Fine wound up with an amazing game that I enjoyed immensely and fought with constantly.

Unique Snowflakes

It isn't a coincidence that all engaging stories are about someone. Sure, they often stray into the realm of being about something, but while metaphor and meaning are interesting they are not the meat of great tales. It all comes back to character, because character is where conflict and resolution lie. The draw of character is so powerful that many non-fiction writers use it too. The most compelling biographies, true crime novels, history books, marketing books, whatever, draw you in by creating or relating characters to you, or even go so far as to make you a character in their narrative. They build a sympathetic connection you are able to follow, tying you to the actions and motivations of the characters. The main character(s) become proxies for your own temporary escapism. We read to be transported which happens best when we connect to a character and, in some small way, become them.

Games with immersive storytelling in their core design usually depict the main character as a strongly defined individual or a faceless avatar. On one had you have characters with recognizable profiles, pronounced design, carefully written dialog, and even voice acting. The character is crafted to fit the role and each touch builds a better character. The idea is to create a strong link with the avatar by making it distinct and catchy — something you would want to emulate. The other hand holds the blank, generic, undefined, and sometimes unshown visage. There is minimal writing, and almost never any voiced dialog. By leaving the avatar as blank as possible the designer hopes that the player will imagine himself in the role, adding their own (possibly adopted) behaviors and reactions to the character to bring it to life. These techniques are amplified echoes of similar character development styles in traditional writing, but with a heavier focus on agency. The players are encouraged to become the characters, either by emulating the character given, or by assuming the role of the character left blank.

It is this agency in games that acts as a further step towards transparent escapism, when done properly. Rather than following along inside the character's head, or hovering, invisible, just over their shoulder, we take control. We inhabit their head, decide their motivations, direct their actions, and reap their rewards directly. Agency is the most powerful interactive story tool because the direct connection we have to the character can be exploited to create tension, conflict, and other story elements. Properly directed, and with a healthy dose of suspension of disbelief a game may even be able to induce self-reflection and internal change in the player. I'm getting off track. The question I want to address is: why is understanding character connections and motivations important for video games?

Focus and Intent

A book that is written from the perspective of a nobody who inhabits a world where nothing interesting happens is boring. No one would read it because there is no conflict, and our connecting character is uninteresting. Even books that claim to be about nothing, or have boring characters, are lying; the theme is a facade for the internal conflicts and meat of the story happening inside the outwardly boring world. I just want you to imagine the impossibility of a narrative that has no story, because nothing happens. Now we can make a small change and create story without altering our boring character: Make Mr. Boring a witness to interesting things happening to other people. Conflicts create interest, but notice that the focus is now on world (and people) that surround our non-character. The focus has shifted without our intended avatar changing. You can move the focus back to our boring guy by having the interesting things around him change him. With the conflict internalized again (even if the actual events are happening to a 3rd party), our relationship is now with our intended character again and nothing interesting has to happen to him directly. Notice that he also isn't as boring as he used to be. Of course this would make for a shit game.

In a story and character focused game (like most cRPGs, MMOGs, FPSs, and Platformers), if there is nothing interesting happening to your avatar in the game world then there is no direct action, and passivity makes for unsatisfying gameplay (hence all the complaints about cut-scenes). So games tend to be about exciting things happening to you. And because games are relatively immature (as a storytelling form), they tend to be about fantastic things happening to you. So you fight Hordes of Terrible Monsters and Save the World, or battle the Unstoppable Armada and Save the Galaxy, or travel through Impossible Worlds and single-handedly Save the Princess from captivity. You act and your heroic efforts turn the tide and save the day. You are special and important (the mantra of all good escapism, and most public schools), or you become so because to do otherwise would — we assume — be boring. This is the general motivating force behind most non-abstract games, from Mario to Shadow of the Colossus. The fiction is that you are the center of the world's attention, the sole hero. So what happens when you aren't alone?

Repeat After Me

HELEN
Everyone's special, Dash.

DASH
Which is another way of saying no one is.

One of the things I find absurd about many MMOGs is that they try to support a focused story and a core linear narrative. Everyone follows the same quests, does the same trials, fights the same bosses, gets the same loot (Corvus beat me to talking about this). You sit down, you load up, you log into a city where everyone is a hero or villain (can anyone guess which game I'm think of as I write this?). In fact the active, intelligent population is 100% special, with abilities far above the "norm" of society. Except the game isn't about living in a world peopled with superhumans (or Underwear Perverts). The narrative being told is about how your actions affect a world filled with normal, helpless people. Normal, helpless people that had to be invented. I find it bizarre that in a world where everyone has incredible power the majority of the population has to be created out of digital stuff. Special people wouldn't be special without everyone else. To support the player-as-hero infrastructure, the world has to be constantly refreshed and maintained, rebuilt and changed, so that the repetitiveness of the actual gameplay can be hidden beneath a thin, shifting veneer of self-important storytelling.

Jeff Freeman and Raph Koster have been recently back-and-forthing about rewards in a linear style MMOG. Their discussion has been mostly about how rewards are related to progress and prestige, and how those status symbols are corrupted by a system that allows people to purchase advancement. I'm more interested in Raph's later comments about the control developer's have over the feedback the game provides. In one comment he says this:

With the games we’re making now, people are mostly going around and doing stuff independent of one another. We aren't even measuring and then giving out prizes based on how WELL they slew the dragon — just that they took the ride.

Reaching New Depths

Eventually, video games will strive to new depths of creativity, interactivity, and (ultimately) storytelling. What that may look like is anyone's guess. It may also depend on how we play our games in the future. Games intended to be played alone may look very different from games intended to be played in community. Single-player stories can achieve incredible levels of pathos if we learn to use the tools of storytelling we have in new ways. Massive worlds may become interesting and sustainable if we learn to create balance and diversity that allows players to tell their own stories from anywhere inside the complex world of the game. Realism isn't something that the graphics designers have to worry about. Storytellers, world builders, game designers have to be reaching for new ways to make something real — tell something true — in the story-worlds that they are building, whether they are meant for one or meant for many.

Perhaps the greatest design change we can look forward to is the realization that different tools lead to different ends. As an outside observer I see a lot of time and effort being thrown at "problem areas", when oftentimes the answer isn't in the code. This is a common engineering design flaw which has bled into games through programmers (engineers of instruction sets) and designers (engineers of play structures). We see something that we think needs a particular solution and single-mindedly drive through hell and high water to find a solution. What we often miss is the beautiful and elegant solutions already around us, and the irony. I'll illustrate with a simple question:

Why are single-player games being designed to solve the problem of complex social interactions, while massive online worlds are being designed as linear stories with limited playable scope?

Reindeer Games

Holiday music usually sends me into a bit of a state. Don’t get me wrong; I love this season, filled to the brim as it is with good will, holiday cheer, and rampant consumerism. The thing that gets me – what really makes me twitch – is the repetitiveness of it. How many times can you listen to “White Christmas”? How many badly sung and poorly arranged pop-girl versions of “Frosty the Snowman” can one season take? And the radio stations and malls have been playing this stuff since the middle of November, without pause. Which is why I tend to retreat into the obscure back aisles of holiday music. If I must recognize the season through song (and I must), at least I try to do it via underplayed, unrecognized, and unusually odd jingles.

Without further ado: 5 Obscure Christmas Songs Games

5) The Same Christmas Cake (The Arrogant Worms)

Christmas makes me realize how greatly things do change
Friends lose touch, people age, and family moves away
But it is what had stayed the same that gives me the most tears
For I've had the same Christmas cake for almost thirty years

Granny made it back in sixty-eight and gave it to my mom
Who gave it to her uncle who gave it to her son
Who then gave it to me and that is where it stuck
For I was only three months old and clearly out of luck

Here’s your basic Match-3 rip-off, casual game. You have to escape the curse of the Christmas Cake, and to do so must match and remove the festive coloured candied fruit pieces. Not much here, except a theme, a thin back story, and a really odd song.

4) I Want an Alien for Christmas (Fountains of Wayne)

I don't need any ugly sweaters
And I don't play much basketball
But there's something kinda special
That I want most of all...

I want an alien for Christmas
Bring me an alien this year
I want a little green guy
About three feet high
With seventeen eyes
Who knows how to fly
I want an alien for Christmas this year

I have two pictures that pop into my head here. One is of the crappy two-minute flash games where you are either dodging or catching something that is falling from the top of the screen. The second is a 2-D platformer where you go on a mission to get an alien for Christmas, then have to take care of him, and play with him. I think that the two could be combined into a short Flash-based game where you have to jump dodge and fetch various items while avoiding bad presents, federal agents, and angry alien parents (but perhaps not all at once). Again, not the deepest of stories or gameplay – just something fun for a holiday break.

3) Chiron Beta Prime (Jonathan Coulton) [Bonus Link]

Merry Christmas from Chiron Beta Prime,
where we’re working in a mine for our robot overlords.
Did I say overlords? I meant protectors.
Merry Christmas from Chiron Beta Prime.

On every corner there’s a giant metal Santa Claus
who watches over us with glowing red eyes.
They carry weapons and they know if you’ve been bad or good.
Not everybody’s good but everyone tries.
And the rocks outside the airlock exude ammonia-scented snow.
It’s like a Winter wonderland.

I think that this song has only one place to go: Christmas ‘Shmup. Start as a Christmas convoy from Earth, carrying presents past the defenses of the Asteroid Mining Company to the indentured workers on the surface of Chiron Beta Prime. Levels could include: Open Space, Asteroid Field, Ammonia Winter Wonderland, Mine Shafts, and Escape from Chiron. Swoop in, drop of the holiday cheer, and escape with your life (and maybe a few freed slaves – I mean volunteer workers).

2) Oh, Santa! (Veggie Tales, Silly Songs with Larry)

Umm… this one needs a video.

This is a social game, involving the sharing and passing of cookies. Something like a cross between Lost (the game, not the show – invite here), and the Zune commercial with the never-ending DRM-infected cookie. Only without the icky DRM. You start with a few cookies to share, but you need to hurry or they can be stolen. Share them and you’ll get more as your friends share theirs. Or steal cookies from already invited friends to keep your stock up. The game could run as a special promotion in the weeks running up to Christmas. You need to finish the week with at least two friends and one cookie to get a special “gift” from Santa. Incentives go to the sharers, and while the game seems easier if you steal, it winds up being easier to lose (I think that you’d become a bigger target for other thieves).

Basically a light, social game to promote sharing and community during the holiday season.

1) Elf’s Lament (Barenaked Ladies)

I'm a man of reason, and they say "'Tis the season to be jolly"
But it's folly when you volley for position

Never in existence has there been such a resistance
To ideas meant to free us
If you could see us, then you'd listen

Toiling through the ages, making toys on garnished wages
There's no union
We're only through when we outdo the competition

I make toys, but I've got aspirations
Make some noise
Use your imagination
Girls and boys, before you wish for what you wish for
There's a list for who's been
Naughty or nice, but consider the price to an elf

This song (and if you haven’t heard it, I’d encourage you to find it and have a listen) has the most depth, and as such has the most potential to inspire gameplay. I could see this being enacted as a full-sized economic sim and construction game. Cross the building and management play from a Tycoon game, with a deeper economic strategy (to manage the work force and changing product demands), and then give it the visual styling of the later Santa Clause movies.

Build the North Pole from a tiny little one-room workshop into a bustling hidden city of candy-coloured buildings and toy manufacturing machinery. Deal with all sorts of obstacles of progress including unionization of the elves, outsourcing of production, time and resource management, campaigning and funding to support the internal economy, and more. Create whimsical production devices by combining simpler assembly gadgets into larger contraptions. Micromanage by assigning work shifts and duty rosters, or let the elves manage themselves and reassign as factories become automated.

Delivery’s a snap, it’s making the toys that’s the challenge.

Grammatical

To understand what use a Grammar of Games would be, I’d like to take a walk through the use of grammar in other mediums. I’m treating this as a thought experiment, so please hold onto something; this might become a little bumpy.

How about a definition to start us off? Dictionary.com gives us this:

1. the study of the way the sentences of a language are constructed; morphology and syntax.
2. these features or constructions themselves: English grammar.
3. an account of these features; a set of rules accounting for these constructions: a grammar of English.
4. the elements of any science, art, or subject.

Notice that the majority of the definition concentrates on language. Particularly on the rules that can be extracted from it, or applied to it, to create consistency. Grammar is a set of conventions developed and applied to allow easy communication. Not only language itself (syntax, conjugation, punctuation), but also any subject matter with sufficient history to have developed definable elements.

So, based on this definition, games already have a grammar, or are at least forming one as we continue to deepen our knowledge of creating and playing them. Any time we talk about aspects of a game, gameplay, or design we are using our established grammar to communicate ideas. However, as games (and especially computer enhanced games) are relatively new, the grammar that we have is incomplete and ill-defined.

Shifting Sand

One of the fascinating aspects of language is how it changes over time. I’m not just talking about lexicological shifts – words are created or acquire new meanings or contexts over time, that’s a given. Grammar shifts as well. This can be seen most dramatically in they way that punctuation is used today, as compared to even a decade ago. While some of this is due to haphazard education, laziness, and apathy, some is purely a result of cultural shift.

Go ahead and pull out any given paper or essay that you wrote in school. Something written at the high school or post-secondary level. Compare the grammatical construction of that writing with your last blog post or e-mail. What do you differently online than you did on paper? These shifts in grammar are not just limited to the internet. As new forms of communication become the de facto standard the grammatical shifts leak into other means of communication.

In the digital community shifts such as these are accelerated. Think back over the last year or two of game design, gameplay, and the theories that hover around them. How many new ideas were put forward? How many terms bandied about, discussed, created, changed? How many theories of design toted, praised, rejected, argued? The list is a lot longer than the number of changes to punctuation created in the same time frame.

From Analysis

I do believe that we are on a solid path to developing a mature grammar for games – play and design. For instance, there are people who are dedicated to the analysis of gameplay. The goal, so far, is to understand how and why people play. This gives us a foundation for analysing what people enjoy and giving us meaningful feedback about it.

Without the language to describe the systems, and our interactions with them, it is impossible to separate the elements that work from the elements that don’t. By elements, please don’t think that I’m trying to define games as something that can be broken into Lego-esque building blocks for easy reconstruction and recombination. It is more chemistry. There are atomic building blocks, but also formula and restrictions that must be discovered and communicated. A mature grammar can be developed by deconstructing (to a point) existing formula to discover the combinations that went into the mix.

To Design

Grammar isn’t going to solve all of our big design problems. You can’t take the short story you wrote about dragons in the fourth grade, upgrade the grammar and spelling, and expect an award winning piece of fiction. Grammar is a support, a framework, and an ideal – it will not create on its own. Designers will forever be struggling against conventions, story, and play in an attempt to create something new.

It will, however, strengthen the core of design as we push for the edges. By applying our grammatical tools – structural analysis, play styles, gameplay notation – we can strengthen our work. This process will become akin to editing your writing. You go back over the work using critical analysis (proofreading) to find grammatical hitches. You add a comma here to create a necessary pause. Something gets re-written to remove ambiguity. An element replaced to create a deeper symbolism.

(…)

I think that I’ve wandered enough for one post. What I’ve tried to imagine is a series of tools, conventions, and definitions – a common grammar for games – that would enable us, as designers, to better understand and develop our work. I see it as incomplete right now (perhaps perpetually), but in progress. I see it as worthwhile to pursue and understand. Just so long as we don’t forget that it will not solve our problems, and it will not design our games for us.

Conventioneering

I have a great many “strong convictions” about conventions, or so I have discovered over the past week as I thought about this month’s Round Table topic. By “strong convictions” I mean to say baseless opinions about good design, how to achieve it, what works, what doesn’t, and a raft of other topics. It comes from knowing a lot of theory, but having little practice. In truth, I had a much longer and deeper post about conventions, user interface, and bringing non-gamers into a gameplay space. Lots of theory. Something I should probably stay away from.

I’ve also had my ass kicked by a strange combination of work, head cold, Animal Crossing, and Fraggles. The first two led me into not wanting to do much but enjoy the latter two. Also, Katamari. Hopefully more on some, or all, of these things in other posts… On with the conventioneering!

The first thing I’d like to do is forward a definition of a convention. A convention is an arbitrary pattern within any information space that is recognized and adopted by designers and users. Joel Spolsky refers to is as a “mental model” held by users and programs alike. If the mental models of two interacting entities match, then there is recognition and compatibility. If, however, they differ, there is confusion, frustration, and the need for at least one party to adapt. Invariably, the hard-coded model forces the other to change.

Conventions are a short hand in most design. They are a series of well recognized mental models that will provide a specific user-base access to your design. In UI, this is the 3D button, or the check box, or the underlined link. In games this is the right thumb-stick to move the camera, or the Tank-Healer-Assassin-Mage class system, or the Jump-On-Enemies-To-Kill-Them. If you use a convention, then your design can be understood with ease. If you subvert, invent, or break conventions then users must adapt to your system before they can fully use it.

Should conventions be used? Of course. Without conventional design there would be impenetrable barriers between technologies. People would never want new software, or hardware, or books, or music. Does using only conventions produce stale technology and design? Yes. Innovation demands new design, which leads to new conventions or adaptation of older ones. Are all widely accepted conventions representative of best methods? Of course not. Conventions are publicly agreed upon and are therefore often bloated and inefficient.

Can you do better? Should you try? I would have to say that sometimes you should. But mostly you shouldn’t. If you are trying to create something mainstream you need to use conventions that are broad, intimately understood, and easy to learn or teach. New conventions are none of these things. New conventions are for narrow audiences, cutting edge design, and the leaders of the pack. The middle 80% won’t go near your work until everyone else is doing the same thing. So how do you win? How do you innovate without alienating?

Saving the Baby

My first example of new design, focused on the mainstream, that appears to buck convention is the iPod. Apple’s little music player that could. But what makes the iPod so special? Is it sleek physical design, or funky advertising? Does success come from supporting software and media, or a brand name backing? I would argue that there is one thing that caused the iPod to stand above the competition, both past and present (excepting the Zune, jury’s still out on that one). Interface.

Apple innovated by adopting broad, and unused (by MP3 players of the time), interface conventions to make navigation easy. By utilizing the same principles as a dial, users were easily able to understand and better navigate the information provided through the touch wheel. By providing a familiar file system, and a large screen, the information could be clearly displayed. The difference between the iPod and its competitors became ease of use through a non-cryptic interface.

And this line of thinking follows into today, and games, through the Wii. By subverting existing interface conventions Nintendo intends to make video games accessible to a broader demographic. The controller is a remote, found in nearly every couch across America. Everyone from your 2 year-old nephew to your 96 year-old grandmother knows how to operate a remote.

The primary interface the remote provides is a point-and-click system. No more highlighting with the left hand and selecting with the right. Just point at the screen, and click. Even movement is a convention we understand far better than current game controls. How many people, when swinging a sword, or tennis racket, thinks about twitching their thumbs? It is easier to have the interface be the action.

Engineering has let us remove some of the layers of interface. We don’t need to invent new conventions to create new forms of digital play. Sometimes it is as easy as finding old conventions – hidden conventions – that make more sense. It is simplicity through better conventions.

Additional reading includes Joel Spolsky’s online book User Interface Design for Programmers. If the idea of creating an interface has ever scared you, confused you, or caused you to pull your hair out, then you should read this.

Casual Games, Serious Experiments

Casual games have become an industry buzzword in recent months. A few bean counters discovered that there was money to be made in them thar internets, if only we could tap into all the people who don’t play Counter Strike, or Battlefield, or Half-Life, or Everquest, or World of WarCraft. People who just want to play a simple game, with fun mechanics, for a few minutes at a time will actually pay money to do so. An industry is born, and with it comes all of the usual problems.

I don’t have to go into it: clones. Create or discover anything of significant popularity and you wind up with clones. Copycat companies spring up like weeds to steal, subvert, and ultimately destroy the core ideas that made the original so popular in the first place. Inevitably you wind up with an industry filled to the brim with sludge. The bejeweled are still there (pun intended), but so are all the rest. So where does the next great idea come from? Out on the edge, of course.

Edge of the World

At the edge of any popular industry is a small group of people looking for the next big thing. Saddled with an uneasy task, the fringe developers are not often ignored and shunned by the mainstream. Working on a shoe-string budget, often with hare-brained ideas, these innovators are the source of the next wave. These are the inventors, the research scientists, the garage bands, the weekend engineers, and the true indie developers.

When it comes to games, casual and hardcore are two sides of the same coin. Both are popular forms of recreation, indulged in by thousands. Both are big money industries, if you can get the magic spark in your game. Both have the same problems with clones, dross, and bloated industries. And both are carefully looking towards the fringes for the next big thing.

So where do we start? Well, from a casual perspective: innovative gameplay would be a good place to start. What better way to create something fresh than by adopting a new gameplay mechanic. Perhaps an innovative twist on an existing theme will be the breakthrough. Sometimes all it takes is looking at the problem from a different angle and coming up with a new way to use a stuck and mired interface.

Weird Science

If you have not, I highly encourage you to check out the Experimental Gameplay Project. Started in 2005 by four grad students at Carnegie Mellon University, their goal is to find and rapidly prototype as many new forms of gameplay as possible. It is now more than a year later and they are going strong. Encouraging game designers to be innovative and try new things, their site is a testament to practical testing of gameplay.

What they develop may never make it to the light of day as you see it on their site. Most of the prototypes they host are simple toys and games that you wouldn’t play for more than 10 minutes. But each is the practical application of an idea. Not all are good, and few make it to the realm of success. But if only one or two prove to be truly inspired, and go on to spawn new game ideas, then they have accomplished much more than an industry filled with Match-3 games ever will.

For games to live healthy, and move forward, be they hardcore or casual, there needs to people at the edges. Creative minds who can look beyond what we have and into what we could do.

Game Path

I have always loved games, anyone from my family can attest to that. As far back as I can remember I have been playing, finding, creating, and sharing games with anyone that comes in close contact with me. I don’t know if there is a definitive moment that games became more important than anything else, they were always just there. If anything, it feels more like a series of events, spread over a number of years, which has led me to where I am now. Another epiphany may yet alter my course further. For this month’s Round Table I’d like to share some of these first steps with you.

Elementary Gamer

The first two clearly game related memories that I have are from Elementary School (grades 1-6 for those of you playing against different systems). The first is of creating a game. It was the final project for a book report; you know the kind I’m sure. You read a chapter or two a week, answering questions after each. At the end of it you have to do some form of final craft-related project, usually the infamous Shoebox Diorama. I made a board game. Yeah, I had to be different. It was a simple follow-the-path game using events from the book as jumps and hinders. But it did have multiple paths you could select, and cards that altered your progress based on decision making factors. And I understood that you had to space and balance the game (I always hated playing board games, especially cheap ones, that would have you skip 3 spaces only to land on a lose a turn, or some such).

The second memory is of rescuing a fantastic game from the obscurity and ruin of the Lunch Room Game Cart. Brought out on days too rainy or cold to be let outside, the game cart held games, toys, and other things in various states of childhood destruction. Lost and forlorn at the bottom of the cart was a marvelous game called Quest for the Philosopher’s Stone (note: that is not me in the picture). How it got there I’ll never know. It is a game of mental challenges and puzzle solving. I could never get anyone to play with me. Not really surprising if you knew me back in elementary school. I did, however, convince the lunch ladies to relinquish the unplayed and unloved game to me. I still have it, and I still find the game intriguing. It was my first step to collecting great and rare games.

Digital Gamer

While elementary school held some computers and edutainment related games (such as Oregon Trail, and Math Blasters), it never held much for me. When they upgraded from Apple II’s to a lab of stylish Mac’s, they removed all the fun from the computers via a program interface called AtEase. It wasn’t until I moved on to Junior High (grades 7-9) that I truly began gaming on computer. With a school full of Macintosh computers (we are talking a library full, a couple of labs, and several hall areas with computers too), gaming was inevitable.

It was my first introduction to networked play. We’d play Bolo over the Appletalk network, and try to hide the games from our teachers. It was also the first time I created a digital game. I made a couple of attempts at point and click adventures using HyperStudio. My artistic skill were simple, but I had non-linearity, small puzzles, persistent items (across hypercards), and cheesy story. It was bad, but it was fun to create.

Principled Gamer

Since those early years, I’ve played dozens of games. I’ve even completed a few of them. I’ve tried to learn something from each one, and the more I play the more I can see the choices the designers made, and why they work the way they do. The more I understand the framework, the more I want to create something of my own. More than that, I want to create worlds – places of character and depth and story. I want the things in my head to be in front of me, and everyone, to play and explore.

It has been a long journey to this conclusion. Part of this realization is the firm knowledge that I have a long way to go before I can do that. There are still many things I have to learn about games, gameplay, design, programming, business, life, philosophy, literature, music, economics… the list, perhaps, is endless. I am comforted by the fact that I am young, and have resources available to me that will allow me to pursue this knowledge.

But there is one last formative step that stands out. I started with an obsession for trivia. I love it, especially obscure and funny trivia. After playing You Don’t Know Jack, I was hooked. It was hilarious and irreverent, packed full of odds and ends. But most impressive about the game was its ability to draw you in and make you feel as if there is another person, just the other side of the monitor, asking the questions. Sometimes there is a whole cast of people, ready to jump into your computer room.

I’ve followed the work of only a few game studios closely over the years. Jellyvision has the (dubious?) distinction of being one of them. They have a track record of creating these interactive, and immersive, games and sites and concepts. They have also conveniently boiled down their wisdom into something they call the Jack Principles. It is a set of guidelines to writing and delivering interactive experiences. I wish more designers would read these guidelines before setting out to design a conversational interface. They aren’t easy, not a one, but they are crucial to creating a dialog that seems natural and fluid.

In finding and incorporating these principles into my Gameview (like a Worldview, but narrower… and virtual) I’m slowly understanding where a lot of immersion breaks down and why. It has helped me to analyze games. It has also begun to change the way I think about the stories I want to tell. The Principles don’t apply to all situations, but they do help to shape certain aspects of play. Learning these things has also led me to seeking out understanding of other game design concepts, fostering yet more learning.

Step-By-Step

I see myself as on a path littered with games. They are everywhere I look. They occupy spare thoughts and lost dreams. I want to play games. I want to share games with others. Most of all, I want to create games. I want others to share my games, my stories, my visions. Each step I take along this path teaches me something new, each new direction leads to deeper understanding. In my mind, that makes this a worthy path to travel.