273: The Philosophy of Game Design (part 1)

[More Fun To Compute]

I wonder when Nietszche and deconstructionism will show up

How about.. now!

I tell you: one must have chaos within oneself, to give birth to a dancing star.

Plato is boring.

I don't think he would be impressed with game makers looking to Plato to justify using dry logical methods to create "ideal" games where players are only important as statistics in a spreadsheet.

 

[Robert Yang]

Plato is boring.

Haha. What a fantastic man.

 

[Zamn]

I was pretty disappointed with this article. I hate the idea that philosophy is something that some hairy men made out of marble did in Ancient Greece. "What makes a game good?" is an interesting philosophical question, and I don't think asking "What would Plato say?" is a good way of answering it.

Speculating on the application of Platonic philosophy to game design is a perfectly valid thing to do, but it's a much less general question than addressing how the idea of 'goodness' applies to video games. It seems like the sort of thing that's probably only really interesting to philosophers, and even then of a particular bent. Why would you care if you didn't have an interest in Plato in the first place?

My real bones with this article is that it's reinforcing a negative image philosophy of being about beardy old Greeks and -ism's, rather than dealing with the really interesting issue and showing that philosophy is interesting and relevant.

(and yeah, I am a philosophy student)

 

[Robert Yang]

Zamn: It's part 1, so I was trying to lay a base, and it seemed logical to start with the Greeks as a base. Part 2 might be more to your tastes.

 

[Heraklitus]

Well. . . anything that gets people reading more of the Greeks is good I suppose.

 

[Wolfram23]

Hmm I think I'm more into the Aristotle type games. Demon's Souls is easily a favorite... I like challenging games. If a game is too easy or "watered down" I just lost interest fast. Well, I guess there's a few exceptions here and there, like Spore for example. It didn't hold me for a long time, true, but I played it pretty heavily for a while just because it's a cool experience.

 

[mkey]

"incredibly difficult and unforgiving platformer" Megaman and Contra? Do come on, those games were nothing of the sorts. Of course, by today's standards a game of Solitaire might seem incredibly difficult without a checkpoint system that doesn't allow you to lose more then 5 seconds of progress and shiny arrows pointing exactly at where you need to go next, but nevertheless those games were not that difficult.

If you wanted to name an above average difficult game of the era, "Fortress of fear" would be my choice, but even that one helped by a bit of hand-eye coordination and experience an 8-10 year old (as I were the first time I played those games) just doesn't possess, can be coped with quite easily.

From more recent past, one game comes to mind as rather hard - "Shadowgorunds" - that one is a tough little son of a gun. Also, "Space rangers" with boosted Dominator AI can be a nut breaker of it's own kind.

 

[TheCapn]

Wow what a pointless write-up. You could have cut out the first 2.5 pages. Don't feed us an intro and call it an article, Escapist. Come on, you're better than this.

 

[Smokescreen]

Wow what a pointless write-up. You could have cut out the first 2.5 pages. Don't feed us an intro and call it an article, Escapist. Come on, you're better than this.

Lessee...from the opening of the article
'Ed. Note: This is the first installment of a four-part series discussing the philosophy of game design and how we define what makes a game "good." The series will continue in issue #274 of The Escapist Magazine.'


It's a 4 part series. An intro is exactly what you should expect.

/and I liked it-but I see I need to read many of the comments as this one seems to have sparked some brainfood in people.

 

[ilion]

I was pretty disappointed with this article. I hate the idea that philosophy is something that some hairy men made out of marble did in Ancient Greece. "What makes a game good?" is an interesting philosophical question, and I don't think asking "What would Plato say?" is a good way of answering it.

Speculating on the application of Platonic philosophy to game design is a perfectly valid thing to do, but it's a much less general question than addressing how the idea of 'goodness' applies to video games. It seems like the sort of thing that's probably only really interesting to philosophers, and even then of a particular bent. Why would you care if you didn't have an interest in Plato in the first place?

My real bones with this article is that it's reinforcing a negative image philosophy of being about beardy old Greeks and -ism's, rather than dealing with the really interesting issue and showing that philosophy is interesting and relevant.

(and yeah, I am a philosophy student)

I agree, it needs more Anaxagoras. And clear simple thinking.

 

[Twilight_guy]

Well that's interesting. It's a bit odd to think of how Plato's and Aristotle's philosophy on governance and life work with games though. I really think the one and only answer is always going to be that games are art and thus subject only to individual interpretation. Group decisions may label a game as "good" or "bad" but that doesn't decide on how I think it is. It's inevitably up to society (i.e. everyone with an opinion and access to the internet) to decided on what is good or bad but I know myself what I like and for me what makes something good is more of what I like. I just want people to make games that they would like and really put soul into it. I don't care if the end result sucks, making games just to put forth a creative expression would be so awesome. Still it always seems to me that "goodness" or "badness" is always the result of an aggregate of opinions with various weights (metacricit matters more then Joe blow after all) that leads to a label forever associated with the game.

 

[BehattedWanderer]

The platonic idea that there is an essence of the thing that exists before the thing itself is one that consistently plagues me. Personal goals of understanding aside, I have to ask about the recent trend in dividing articles into multiple parts. Sure, it gives me something else to look forward to reading, but I'd much rather be reading this all at once. Give us some credit, it would only be a bit of reading, after all.

 

[starrman]

The main issue I have with the OP is that Aristotle and Plato were directing their arguments towards moral philosophy (what consists in and of goodness, and to what extent we are agents or patients of that moral essence). Games and indeed the act of gaming are not moral issues, but, as Plato would have said, ones of techne (or craft/skill) for which the arguments of objectivity are stronger and for which there need be no morality. The rest of the article pretty much rests on whether there should be any reason to believe that 'goodness' is something that can even be applied to games. Aesthetics I can get with, morality and the pursuit of eudaimonia; not this time...

Having said that, I love that there is such a broad and interesting approach to gaming articles of late, and look forward to next time's.

 

[KCL]

These are only quibbles. Your argument is obviously more narrative- than evidence-based, so it really doesn't matter if you got Aristotle or Plato wrong in an academic sense. But in case you're interested:

So, an Aristotelian philosophy of game design would presume the existence of a "citizen" - the hardcore gamer. Under this account, the game should chiefly cater to this "best of the best," allowing these players to excel, perhaps at the price of accessibility for every other type of player.

An Aristotelian philosophy of game design would look nothing like the Politics. Aristotle believed strongly that we should broach subjects on their own terms rather than impose existing models of thought on them. To philosophize in any other way would be unethical. E.g.:

The type of accounts we demand should reflect the subject matter; and questions about actions and expediency, like questions about health, have no fixed and invariable answers.

The Poetics would have made a much better point of departure than the Politics for this.

Plato would argue that Mega Man is good because Capcom made it, or because of the specific influence of certain "philosopher-developers" at Capcom. Mega Man's "goodness" has nothing to do with players - because, as we just established, players all have different tastes, skill levels and experiences.

Reread the Republic 595a-608b (about half of book X). This is the section on imitation that sees poets banished. Also see 811a-817d in the Laws for Plato's account of what a poet would have to do to get back in. It's the same thing a game would have to accomplish for Plato to consider it "good."

The main issue I have with the OP is that Aristotle and Plato were directing their arguments towards moral philosophy (what consists in and of goodness, and to what extent we are agents or patients of that moral essence). Games and indeed the act of gaming are not moral issues

You're right that different lines of thought are being crisscrossed here, but games are certainly a moral issue. Everything's a moral issue on some level.

but, as Plato would have said, ones of techne (or craft/skill) for which the arguments of objectivity are stronger and for which there need be no morality.

Technē is actually an Aristotelian virtue. It's deeply embedded within ethics in Aristotle's philosophy (is mainly discussed in the Nicomachean Ethics, in fact), though there are a few competing theories on what to do with it.

(Of course Plato and many others used the word "technē," which was after all a common Greek word. But they never used it as a philosophical concept.)

 

[wonkify]

I love it! This is exactly the kind of piece and comments that make The Escapist one of my favorite spots on the web. Excellent intro that touches on a number of discussion threads in the gaming universe and deserving of investigation and analysis.

I am really looking forward to the additional parts of this piece.

Thank you!

 

[under_score]

I would tend to disagree with them. The idea of a game being objectively good is patently ridiculous. A game's objective 'goodness' can only be measured in terms of technical achievements; how good the graphics are (debatable since an artistic style, e.g. TF2's cartoonish look, can be enjoyed by some but not others), how well it runs, the effect it had on the industry as mentioned in the article and so on.

What makes a game good is the affect that it has upon you, the player. A terrible story, ugly graphics, broken or boring gameplay, these will all stop a game from having a positive affect on you. The reverse; beautiful graphics or music, a fantastic story, inventive and addictive gmaeplay, will make a game have a profoundly positive affect on the player.

But what makes graphics beautiful, a story interesting or gameplay fun? I would argue that it is based in personal opinion. For example, Jim Sterling of Destructoid claimed in his review of Assassin's Creed 2 (http://www.destructoid.com/review-assassin-s-creed-ii-155807.phtml) that the gameplay was dull and repetitive, the graphics ugly, the story "mostly forgettable" and the parts of the story focusing on Desmond in particular "tacked on, pointless and totally unnecessary". On the other hand, I found the gameplay to be enjoyable, if not revolutionary, the graphics (aside from the character models) to be pleasing and the story fascinating. Is one of us objectively wrong? Of course not.

So then, for the objective view of a game's merits advocated by the article to hold true, the affect that a game has upon the player, being wholly subjective, can't have an affect on the game's overall quality. This, to me, seems backward- surely when you tell somebody that a game is 'good' you are telling them that its affect on you was a positive one, not that its affect on the game's industry was large or that its graphics engine was above average.

In short, a game's goodness is inseparable from personal, subjective opinion.

 

[maiiau]

While I think it's a bit too early for any specific opinions on the content and I don't know a whole lot about Plato and Aristotle anyway, I am really interested in seeing where this is going.

 

[boholikeu]

A good game is one that is unified, proportional and whole - based on the sum of its parts.

Disproportional games:
Great graphics but no gameplay.
Great story but short length.
Great music but bad sound effects.

Guess Portal is a crappy game then...

 

[FunkyJ]

"the very notions of "player accessibility" and "artistic merit" in games are both relatively recent. In fact, they barely existed in the 16-bit era, much less the 8-bit era"

I'm going to challenge this point.

Zzap!64 [http://www.zzap64.co.uk] magazine came out in 1985, only 2 years after the Famicon was launched, which is definitely in the "8-bit era".

They rated games in terms of accessibility and artistic merit, as did many of the gamers who read Zzap!

 

[Serrenitei]

A game's objective 'goodness' can only be measured in terms of technical achievements...

I'm not sure I can agree with this. In fact, if that were to be the case, that it's goodness can only be measured by technical achievement would mean that a game like Ocarina of Time while it was once 'good' by your definition, isn't anymore. The paradigm you put forth here creates a moving window of what can be considered good--technical achievements will increase as technology advances, meaning that the only 'good' games can be those on the edge of some technical prowess. Anything below that technical prowess means that they cannot, by their very nature of being old technology, be good.

You could put the qualifier on their of "the technical achievements of their time," but that would go fully against what the article is saying. This implies that games are only good when viewed in a given context, not simply a good game. The concepts put forth by both Aristotle and Plato both point to something being "intrinsically" good--meaning good without context. To put a qualifier on something creates the logical scenario of, "Games are only good if and only if X conditions are met..." Putting a conditional on the 'good' statement means that it can no longer be intrinsically good--that there can never truly be a telos (the metaphysical "Best" of something--or the ultimate good). Based on the perspectives of Plato and Aristotle, I don't think your logic works.

What I think are potentially flaws in the author's logic are that the "Citizen" is the hard-core gamer and the "Philosopher-Kings" are the developers. The concept of Eudaimonia not only has the concept of achievement wrapped up in it, but also that of good character. Like the platitude, eudaimonia is akin to "Don't just be good, be good for something." Action/Activity does not suffice to achieve eudaimonia, the person must also be of good character (the concept of character is much longer one than can be described here). Essentially, good character means that the person must also be successful in other aspects of their life. Eudaimonia then is not just being self-actualized at one thing, but rather your life as a whole. I'm not sure I would pre-suppose the self-actualization of your life as a whole for the traditional view of the hard-core gamer.

For the Plato side of the argument, those who have attained eudaimonia, the author says are the Philosopher-kings. For Plato, the philosopher king one who has Virtue, being of an order and balanced soul that all works for the person's benefit, and thusly wise. I'm not convinced that in fact, the developers are actually these philosopher-kings because in reality, the developers have very little say in the process. They are basically given a framework and told to create this (of course, that a horribly overly-simplified version of the back and forth that occurs between any Dev team and the design team). In fact, there are so many people involved in game-creation that I can't say who I think would actually be the Philosopher-kings in this role. However, I think that the developers are more "builders"--in Plato's world a stonemason was not likely to be a Philosopher-king, that is have enough Virtue (in the capital 'V' sense of the word).


What the author was attempting to get at was not an absolute "THIS IS HOW IT IS BECAUSE I HATH DECREED IT SO," but rather a thought of, "Here are two tried and true ways to frame things that might give us some insight into what makes a good game good." Philosophy, and to a larger extend, rhetoric, are all about framing what we experience in the world around us. The article should be taken as a way (note: not THE way) to think about game design.