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Role of the Gamer
By Corvus | August 30, 2005
This post is going to writhe around like a pit full of cranky snakes hopped up on dope. I’ve been accused in the past (out here in the “real” world) of expressing my theories and posing my questions in such an authoritative and final manner that it seems like I’m not welcoming argument or discussion. Well, it’s not true. I try things on for size from time to time and I do so with gusto and conviction, treating them like a second skin, not a rental tux. Otherwise, you’re not really seeing how well it fits, are you? Then, if it itches overly much, or becomes torn on a nearby counter-argument, I shed it, revealing the freshly tender skin underneath. So, I not only expect such reactions, I seek them out.
That being said, reactions to my Genre post yesterday confused me a bit. It felt as if many of them were directed off stage, to some argument not put firth in the post or preceding comments. Like our own little homage to Waiting for Godot. I noticed a few important assumptions in the comments and I thought I’d talk about them a bit. Let me get the assumptions out of the way first:
- Genre is just for the Gamer. It provides a road map for their expectations.
- Genre is a Marketing Tool. It’s possible that this assumption carries with it under-tones of Genres Make Jesus Cry.
I don’t necessarily agree with either of those assumptions. Don’t get me wrong, I know that marketing decides which genre label to slap on a game’s box. I know they do so to position it in the marketplace and to inform the Gamer what they can expect from the game. This is clearly true.
But is that really all there is it? Chris points out that his game Ghost Master suffered from denying genre. He intentionally avoided designing the game to fit a genre and when a ’strategy’ genre label was applied to it, the game didn’t do so well with fans of the strategy genre.
Writers often write for their ideal audience, often it’s an audience of one. Cars, tennis shoes, and soft drinks are designed for an ideal consumer (yeah, target demographic, but allow me my momentary romanticization of the process). Games exist somewhere in between these two, being engineered creative products. Shouldn’t they be designed, from the ground up, for their Ideal Gamer?
It seems to me, from a design standpoint, that abstracting Genre into a pool of mechanics you can draw upon is only going to be useful in connecting with your Ideal Gamer. It’s rather the flip side of the demographic game design Chris has discussed.
Am I way off base? Should genre not be present in the game design process?
It’s possible that the Ideal Gamer proposition is going to cause some confusion. I was talking about transparent game design at Only a Game (Chris is getting all the link love today) and James O said this:
Would even fans/gamers (ie non-industry people) be able to see things like this? That seems like a trainwreck waiting to happen. Not only that, but the immense deceleration caused by the design by committee process just sounds like it would greatly length development time.
I’ve seen small studios turn to their audiences to ask what ought to be in their game. This invariably creates a very excited core fan base that proclaim, “At last! A studio that listens to us, the Gamers!” Yeah, down that path lies certain doom. Eventually you’re going to have to cut something from the game. Something your core fan base feels to be their due. Chances are, you’re going to do this about the same time a publisher drive up to your house with a VW full of money and takes control of the marketing, and therefore (I’m guessing) placing a contractual gag order on chatting about the details of your game.
So, by designing for the Ideal Gamer, I do not mean finding this Ideal Gamer and asking them what should be in your game. I do feel that Gamers play an important role in the development of a game and that core fan base can be your best marketing department. That doesn’t mean they get to have direct input on game design decisions… but shouldn’t their expectations (of, say, a genre?) have an indirect impact on the decisions you make while designing?
I’m a big fan of ‘limitations’ or ‘restrictions’ being place on creative endeavors. Only, I call them a framework. I feel that some of the my best design was crafted around a framework; criteria that forced me to find creative solutions to imposed requirements. Gamers are the game design framework upon which game should be designed, an integral part of the process.
I heard an intriguing reference to Umberto Eco’s The Role of the Reader on NPR yesterday:
High school was followed by college, where I read Umberto Eco’s Role of the Reader, in which it is said that the reader completes the text, that the text is never finished until it meets this voracious and engaged reader. The open texts, Eco calls them.
Sound familiar? It sounds very much like my definition of story. I’m requesting this via inter-library loan (it’s frustrating when you run into some fundamental gaps in the local library’s collection). It’s possible that I won’t be revamping those definitions as promised, until I’ve read it. At first blush, I find the thought very compelling. The Role of the Gamer. If my game won’t be finished until it meets the voracious and engaged gamer, doesn’t that make the gamer a terribly important part of the process?
Tagged:Design. | 7 Comments »
August 30th, 2005 at 11:33 am
Once again, a very interesting set of posts and comments. My 8 cents:
On genre, I think its useful to think about how genre began. I’d say it began with that cambrian explosion of game types in arcades of the late 70s – early 80s. Video games had existed in the arcades (and a much lesser extent in homes) since the early 70s but it was only with the advent of Space Invaders Asteroids and Defender that video games were suddenly seen as a big deal.
After this holy trio of earnings potential you had a limited number of copycats (because, after all, how many ways are there really to rip off Space Invaders considering the limits of the technology of the time?), legitimate expansions of the gameplay of hit titles (such as Galaxian, Galaga and Centipede expanding on the genre created by Space Invaders (altho SI was truly an extension of Breakout… but, nevermind) and a slew of new and different game types. Games based around every mechanic that designers could think of, and why not? No one really knew what could be done with video games, and no one really knew what game players would want FROM video games. You had maze games, pattern games, fighting games (thinking about stuff derived from Tank and Warrior rather than games that grew out of Karate Champ), car games (Like a Night Driver, Fire Truck, Turbo), platform games (like Donkey Kong, Kangaroo, Zoo Keeper) racing games (Like Gran Trak, Indy 800 and later Pole Position) and all kinds of games that really defy a genre definition like Qix, Dig Dug or Quantum.
Some games instantly defined a genre, like Space Invaders, Donkey Kong or Battlezone (which really did, I think, lead us to Half-Life and Halo by way of Xybots and Wolfenstein3D). Some games like Missile Command were spectacularly successful but failed to create a genre because there wasn’t a lot more you could do with the play mechanic. Other genres also flared and waned. But they were organically created without marketing because there barely was any marketing in the early days of arcade games.
Players found their games – and how did they do that? How did a game player decide what games they would play in an arcade filled, in the day, with dozens of bleeping and flashing arcade machines, each vying for your minutes of attention and limited budget of quarters? How did a game maker hope to attract players to their game? You had either a new advance in technology (which could include new graphics capability or type (like color, rotating sprites or vectors, etc.), sound capability (voice, music,distinctive sound effects, later digitized speech and music) or you had a game that would expound upon an existing genre as Galaga, Centipede and Tempest expanded the definition of a shooter while still appealing to the fans of the earlier games.
So, in my long-winded way, I think that Genre exists for the gamers and the designers and is an organic thing. Of course the marketing types have picked up on genre and in some cases abuse it to the detriment of gamers and designers – but it’s not only soul-less marketing types that can damage games by abusing genre.
The 2-D shooter is the perfect example of genre being abused by designers, leading to near complete destruction of the genre. I’d argue that 2-D shooters disappeared not because the public really had lost any inherent desire for the game type but rather the designers actively isolated their games from the game playing public at large.
Well designed 2-D shooters appealed to everyone. Games like Centipede or Galaga are still popular and they have a couple things in common besides good control – they start out relatively easy, they have distinct enemy types that players can learn and know their types of movement and attacks merely by looking at them, and they get harder incrementally (however quick those increments may be). Even later shooters like Truxton displayed this – but games like the Raiden series (as revered as they may be) do not. They start out blisteringly hard, have many enemies that look similar and they literally paint the screen with bullets and other forms of immediate death for the uninitiated player. The designers created their games for only the best players – a group that got smaller and smaller because obviously no new players could rise to that level – and (IMO) are responsible for killing the genre.
I will now apologize again for my astounding long-windedness and mercifully end my comment.
August 30th, 2005 at 12:36 pm
I think it’s very relavant to consider the history of genre. At one time, genres were simple enough that a single game could encompass the entirity of the meaning of them.
As technology has become more advanced, and our appetites more complex, genres have correspondingly grown more and more complex.
September 2nd, 2005 at 4:07 am
I never wanted to suggest that the marketing aspect of genre was the only facet of it. This was the secret meaning of the words ‘in part’ in my previous comment. I don’t think my undertone was ‘genres make Jesus cry’, but if it was it would certainly have to be ‘genres make *baby* Jesus cry’.
Oh, and Keith – stay away from my Cambrian explosion metaphor. You’re on my turf!
And absolutely games should be designed for the audience – this has been what I’ve been passionately arguing for several years now, and the entire focus of our recently published book.
Beware of the ‘Ideal Gamer’ though… she has many guises, and you can’t roll them all up into a single katamari.
September 2nd, 2005 at 4:21 am
Welcome back, Chris!
So, like, what doesn’t make baby Jesus cry? Far more impressive to make the adult Christ shed a tear! Now that I’ve offended deeply religious people who have no sense of humor…
The genre as marketing tool was not mainly in reference to your comments, but to Troy’s.
Absolutely. I was going to link to the book, but decided that a) you’d had enough links in one post (*kniw*) and b) I’d save talking about the book until after I’d read it.
Although I didn’t make this clear enough, the Ideal Gamer is an actual person. You don’t rush out and show this person the game at every build, but as you design, you think about what their reaction will be to it. I don’t know if that’s the best method, but I lifted the concept from King’s On Writing, and it intrigued me.
September 3rd, 2005 at 4:28 am
To pick up on the most irrelevant part of your post, the Bible paints a picture of baby Jesus as being pretty emotionally solid, really. It’s adult Jesus who is a touch unstable… I quite like that about him. And he does shed tears, when he learns that his friend Lazarus has died (the origin of the phrase “Jesus wept”, the shortest verse in the Bible). This is one of those times when Jesus’ emotional vulnerability shows through, as rather than bearing that particular cross, he brings him back to life. It’s situations like this that make a certain mockery of the phrase “What Would Jesus Do?” as if you or I lose a friend to death, we don’t have the same options…
Let me extend my apologies in advance to any sensitive Christians who don’t appreciate what I just wrote, but Jesus would forgive me and you should too.
September 3rd, 2005 at 8:39 am
I think that citing an instance of crying at a friend’s death as evidence of emotional instability is a bit of a stretch!
How about angrily turning the money lenders out of the temple?
September 6th, 2005 at 7:13 pm
Ideal and Implied Gamers
Corvus Elrod recently discussed the role of the gamer, and proposed the idea of an Ideal Gamer, a conceptual person who replaces “genre” as the guiding light of the innovative game designer. Elrod is currently tracking down Umberto Eco’s …