This past week, aside from dealing with massive web-related headaches, I managed to re-read Raph Koster’s excellent presentation from the 2005 Game Developer’s Conference. Any serious student of games owes it to themselves to take a look through. It’s witty, it’s fairly accesible, and it avoids being dry like many academic studies on the subject. Which is not a problem for me, but it can be hard to get the message through when just reading through Rules of Play.
There’s a great many things I agree with Raph on. And then there’s one big point that I don’t. We disagree on what the smallest pieces of a game are, and how that relates to what exactly makes a good game.
There are those who would say (not Raph and not myself) that any Good Game is one that you enjoy. These would be the same people who say that any good painting is one you enjoy, or any good tv show that you enjoy, or any music that you enjoy. This is a subjective theory of Goodness. And I will agree that any game you enjoy can be a good game… for you.
However, the purpose of many academic fields is to say either there is an subjective value of good (an extreme example of this is in post-modernism) or an objective value of Good. (Notice the capital letter.) Academic studies that focus on the objective are fields like Aestethics, where it is argued that certain techniques register better with the human brain, and so are better. Similarly for music theory, and as Raph references in his presentation, choreography.
So let’s assume, entirely for argument’s sake, that the objective theory is right. This is because if we develop an objective theory, we can design games with these objective priniciples in mind. In a subjective few of design, you’re just doing market research to figure out what people like and try to move the game to fit it. This is, of course, what Hasbro and similar companies do. But I am not interested in what will sell (as should be obvious by how much money I’ve made from game designer!) but how good a game I can make.
So Raph’s assesertation, if I understand correctly, is that the central design point of every game is a verb. Some action is taken, and “atoms” or “beats” extend from that.
This is where we disagree, but only kind of: I believe the heart of every game is in a decision. A verb seems to imply the decision is “do this or not.” Again, this is an oversimplification, but an important one: when designing a game, I do not look at what a person must do. I look at what a person must decide. My game designs are guided by attempting to have quality decisions.
Part of this, of course, is because Raph is talking about video games mainly, and comes from a video game background. My field of study is much more into rpgs and boardgames. While in many ways the two have a lot to learn from each other and have a lot of overlap, in a pratical sense, it is often hard when you boil it down to translate some of these terms.
So that all was a long winded way of answering: What is a Good Game anyway? It’s one filled with interesting decisions for the players. A game’s “goodness” is defined by the quality of the decisions you have to make within the game. It also means that a game is defined by having decisions at all, an assumption that I am questioned on constantly by people asking “is this a game?” and then us trying to remember how the game is played and if you have any decisions.
I think we finally figured out that Candyland barely qualified as a game because it has one decision. But it is not a Good game because it only has one decision and it’s not a very good one.
Even if you enjoy it.
Actually, I am not asserting that the core is verbs. In fact, in a more complex game you may well have many verbs to choose from at any given time — as well as the choice of inactivity.
That said, in terms of the goal of notation, which is what the talk was about, “decision” is a little too vague to use. So the diagrammatic efforts focus on things that can be referenced a bit more concretely. The decisions would be implied in the diagram by branching choices with multiple verbs present.
The model I was working with was developed from both boardgames and video games, btw. I don’t think they actually differ at this level.
Hey, thanks for responding. I should have noted that the presentation’s goal is to come up with a formal notation in games. I just happened to grab onto a few concepts that were mentioned.
As I reread, I see that the “core nucleus” of verbs that you talk about is only in regards to the notation, and not the design process itself.
What I really want is a model that describes the decisions trees, and tells me where the emergent properties arise, and simultaneously let’s me see what doesn’t lead to emergent properties and fiddly bits. But probably only for more complicated designs, which I don’t work with much.
To Game:
I’m sorry that I couldn’t make it through Raph’s presentation, although it was aesthetically pleasing.
am I right in hearing that your desire is to find a way to model your game (somewhere on the level of UML modelling or finite state modelling) so as to be able to predict what is a good design decision? Figuring out on paper what most only figure out after prototyping?
Do you have hopes that such a system is feasible? If so, I’m quite interested. I think that it could be generalized far past games.
p v t _ s o c r a t e s @@ y a h o o
p.s. I’m in the wikipedias, researching that presentation.
And I’f I’m nuts and have completely missed the point of this article, let me know.
Abe, you have it right, that was exactly the goal.
The presentation, alas, is a bit hard to follow if you weren’t there.
Others have since run with this ball a fair ways. Among them Stephane Bura, who developed a notation system and has posted an article on the web about it, and Dan Cook of lostgarden.com.
The most important decision always being, “to play or not to play?” or as Raph put it the choice of inactivity.
I’m seeing, as usual, a ton of interesting parallels between Raph’s goals and stuff I see in Architecture. Just imagine trying to create a list or diagram of what exactly makes up “good architecture”. There are actually books out there to this end, and it might provide some insight for you guys (but i’m not positive).
I’ll spare everyone the mocking comment I was going to make regarding Bartoneus and architecture (I’m so much above that) and instead point on the surprisng idea of Good Law and Good games….
…. and Platonic theory….
…. just kidding.
It seems to be that the very best games would actually combine objectivity with subjectivity. I mean, what is the point of designing a Good game (with a capital G), if it is not a good game (with a lower case g)? A game designer solely focused on the objectivity of a new game’s quality could potentially release a game totally lacking in appeal. Now, despite saying that the goal of this was not to design a game that the masses love, by not listening to the masses, a game designer could in effect release a game that is not fun/enjoyable/played/worth playing/etc.
We already know the reverse of that is true. Candyland (I was there for the “barely a game” discussion) proves that the reverse is true. Candyland has several good subjective qualities (that were likely gathered from a group of 5-7 year olds in a study). While these subjective qualities entice youngsters to play, the game fundamentally lacks qualities that would make it interesting, long lasting, or even replayable (to an extent). This is of course only one very simple example. I can think of other games that could fall into this category, but this post is already long enough and my point is well enough made here.
So, if the subjective but not objective method is no good, something tells me the objective but not subjective method is going to have problems as well. How about considering a design that is first objectively Good, and then also subjectively good?
I think it’s worth mentioning that for purposes of your theory of a game’s Goodness, decisions which do not happen within the scope of the game (i.e. I decide to play this game or not) or do not affect the outcome of the game (i.e. which color team do I choose) are not counted as decisions. When trying to explain this theory to my fiancee, she argued that using this definition would result in things like ‘I spy’ or the ‘license plate game’ counting as games.
Now I Spy certainly seems like it could be a game, but the License Plate Game? I don’t know about that one.
By the way, does Hungry Hungry Hippos count as a game?
DrScotto: My point is that any game can have good subjective qualities. That’s where choices such as genre and theme come in. I’m saying that making a game that is objectively good first being guided by a good genre and theme is better than just coming up with a game that will sell.
Original Sultan: Yes, you are completely correct, any “metaissues” do not factor in here- they have to impact within the game itself. We can further add that the decisions must have consequences- a rule such as “pick either red or blue. No matter what you picked, move two spaces” would not make it as a game. I’d have to look at the exact rules of “I Spy” and “License Plate Game” before I could count them as games. More than likely you’re not making any decisions.
Hungry Hungry Hippos, like most physical activity based games, do count, where the decision is based on how hard/how often you do something. In this case, the decisions are based on timing and how quickly you can hit it. But because there’s not an interesting range of decisions, it’s not a very good game.
I really do need to write that article where I trash a lot of games that are popular…
This article has made me think of the new game/sport that I have taken up… curling.
The more I have thought about it, the more it seems to fit within these parameters. I think I like it so much because there is ALWAYS an interesting decision to be made with each shot (actually up to possibly an infinite number of decisions), and it is never the same game twice.
I think that is why I like chess so much too. Granted, both of these games have fiddly rules/fixes in certain places, but I would argue that decision making process that is present in these games is really top notch.