Boiling down games to their barest essential elements can yield results that are illuminating, jaded, fascinating and just plain misanthropic. Here are a few examples:
Mario is a game about going right.
So is Sonic, Mario 3, and the Lost Levels.
Pacman is about eating everything on your plate.
Oregon Trail is about how life isn't fair.
Batman Arkham Asylum is actually just Rock Paper Scissors.
Mostly, though, Mario had the best premise. It's no surprise that Mario was a success when you consider how easy to understand it was. It started with a surprising lack of opportunities .
1) Go left. This worked for a few steps, but really, no-one even tried this.
2) Jump. Great option, but it only really gets interesting in conjunction with the first goomba, the brick blocks, or the ? block.
3) Go right. Unlike the other verbs, this one actually moves the screen. AWESOME!
The first level also lets you go DOWN some pipes, but this is optional.
3D games suffer for this reason. I'm not sure that they are capable of the saturation that "go right" style games are capable of. In a 3D game, all goals are much more nebulous and understanding intensive. "Defeat King BoBomb" or "Free the Chain Chomp" are good examples. Fun, but comparatively cerebral.
Monday, October 24, 2011
Game or Toy
This question bugs me a bit, but it's important, so here goes.
Is ______ a game or just a toy?
Let's try SimCity, Minecraft, Falling Sand or any number of great electronic toys in this blank.
As a philosopher and a game designer, I should be really excited to talk about rewards structures, goals, and all sorts of things that are actually important in addressing this question. Unfortunately, like most philosophical questions, there's a shortcut that's good enough.
If it's fun, if it's engaging, it's a game. Sorry Raph, but that's close enough for now. Any definition of game seems to leave little holes that slip through the cracks, or they tend to leave out strange interactions like Peek-a-Boo that most people regard as games.
It's a fun question, but it has the problem that most definition exercises have. The reader already knows, a posteriori what a game is, and any humble definition is a hollow attempt at some form of correlation with the understanding the masses have already formed.
For the future and current game designers, I would humbly ask both you and I to consider the Will Wright. Wright thought that city planning is pretty neat and made an electronic experience to contain that truth. Let's both think of games more as containers for something neat and novel, and less as rewards structures.
Is ______ a game or just a toy?
Let's try SimCity, Minecraft, Falling Sand or any number of great electronic toys in this blank.
As a philosopher and a game designer, I should be really excited to talk about rewards structures, goals, and all sorts of things that are actually important in addressing this question. Unfortunately, like most philosophical questions, there's a shortcut that's good enough.
If it's fun, if it's engaging, it's a game. Sorry Raph, but that's close enough for now. Any definition of game seems to leave little holes that slip through the cracks, or they tend to leave out strange interactions like Peek-a-Boo that most people regard as games.
It's a fun question, but it has the problem that most definition exercises have. The reader already knows, a posteriori what a game is, and any humble definition is a hollow attempt at some form of correlation with the understanding the masses have already formed.
For the future and current game designers, I would humbly ask both you and I to consider the Will Wright. Wright thought that city planning is pretty neat and made an electronic experience to contain that truth. Let's both think of games more as containers for something neat and novel, and less as rewards structures.
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