273: The Philosophy of Game Design (part 1)
- Thread starter Robert Yang
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I'd like a clarification on why this makes games less of an art. Do you mean because you give the player choice, or the ability to do something beyond the exact specifications of the artist? That doesn't make it "stand on its own" any less, and to think so would be incredibly shallow, in my opinion. It's still a carefully contained and regulated world, no more so than a painting. Allowing the player to explore it is merely giving them the opportunity to look at more sides of that picture.vxicepickxv said:
OT; A good game is very subjective, but honestly I think it's a mix of the two ideas. A developer catering to only the most "hardcore" or "heady" folk, it will automatically appeal to them, but the developer him or herself will never make a good game if there only goal is to appeal to an audience. They still need to try, to want to make a good game.
This is what I was thinking. I know someone whose favorite game (with no trace of irony) is Superman 64. Now, we can all agree that it's a horrid game with bad design and programming choices, but to my friend it is the best game ever made. He looks beyond the flaws and finds the fun himself.under_score said:
I myself have a favorite game that is critically bashed (save for, funny enough, Jim Sterling) and have seen others on here talk glowingly about it; the game being Deadly Premonition. It goes against everything this generation of games are trying for, but the game itself is just something that has to be played to understand. I feel it does what you say in your next to last paragraph with effecting the industry in that it proves you don't have to have cutting edge graphics or the best of everything to make a good game as long as you have atmosphere, interesting characters and a halfway decent story to go along with the gameplay (even if the gameplay was a throwback to the old SIlent Hill/Resident Evil types of yesteryear).
The text is actually quite intersting. There are some misinterpetations and some parts of the essential philosophy is left out. But presents the idea of a great consept: meta-critisism. Where we look on the critic and method of critisism rather than just the game that is critisized.
Not necersarly. Let's put it this way. There are clearly objective facts in the world (trees grow, some animals eat other animals etc.) These objective facts could quite possibly affect videogames. (that game is good/bad etc.)under_score said:
But I am not saying that I dissagree with you entirely. Humans episetmical ability. (Our ability to aknowledge information through our senses and reason)is likely subjective.(If it wasn't there would probably never be different opinions.)So rather than saying that a games goodnes is subjective, wouldn't be more correct saying that a gamers ability to deem a game good or bad is closer to being subjective? (There is a BIG difference between the two.)
Great article! Very informative. I happen to have a friend who will only play a game if that game is willing to push him to the edge of insanity. I'm referring to a difficulty of course, that is challenging and not just annoyingly frustrating (VVVVVV vs. I Wanna be the Guy). I personally play games with great stories and entertaining game mechanics, but I have to admit that I do enjoy playing MegaMan X from time to time, because it forces me to get better, and once I do, I feel the satisfaction that comes from taking down yet another boss. I'd definitely say that it all depends on the person. There should be difficult games for people who enjoy a challenge and casual games for those who simply enjoy the ride.
Interesting how young the old guard is... what does that make gamers that are 35+ the "ancient guard"? Let me put it this way if most classic 8bit and 16bit games are older then you then you're not any kind of "guard" you're someone that has jumped on the retro band wagon. Which is fine just let us not forget the kids that actually can remember what it was like to get an Atari 2600 for the holidays(35+ gamers). I for one find that my nostalgia for something tends to be way to kind and my desire for it quickly fades once the bright light of the present shows it for what it truly is glorifying the past.
PS I'm glad to see your Political Science degree didn't go to waste ;-)
Both of these are true. I can make the most difficult game of all time using nothing more than a few square dots, zero music or sound effects, and the worst control scheme of all time. There are also incredibly fun and accessible games or games that don't even have an objective. (Animal Crossing and games that are about creation like Mario Paint or Flipnote Studios come to mind) Obviously a good game is subjective, but it's even more obvious that some games are better than others.
Hmmm, interesting but I think it misses too many points. Among them the role that money and business play in this, with most philsophers looking down on such worldly things, and their influance. For any theories by the great thinkers to really apply we would need to remove money from the equasion almost entirely so we could evluate gaming without the financial aspects involved.
Gaming hasn't evolved the way it has due to any paticular school of thought. It's evolved the way it is because with gaming becoming a bigger and bigger business, and more and more corperate, it has wanted to reach a larger audience than ever before. The industry does not care about whether a game is good or not, all they care about is whether it will make money, and the biggest source of money is of course selling to the lowest human denominator, or the "mainstream" so to speak. Chances are almost all of the great philsophers would be disgusted by this simple reality and would not be lionizing gaming by trying to assign deep thoughts to it.
I will also say that I think you have the Plato bit wrong. By definition the game developers could not be the Philsopher Kings as they are part of the design process themselves. The guy setting the standards and making the desicians has to be outside of the entire process and looking down from on high. The game developer is just another artist looking for approval from his betters (so to speak).
The problem with Plato's philosophy (well among many problems) is that there is no real way to determine who has the right to make those judgements. In a practical sense it ultimatly came down to Plato himself and anyone else he decided was worthy.
It's like this, I could declare myself a philsopher king and tell you what is good and what isn't. Of course those who disagree with me are going to doubt my right to do that... and vice versa of course. In the end you wind up with nobody that will be universally agreed upon to set those standards.
At any rate I think it would be more interesting to ponder what Herodotus would think of gaming...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herodotus
Now THAT would be entertaining. Arguably the greatest (lol) historian of all time, recording the history of video games. We'd definatly have to fit giant ants in there somewhere.
Gaming hasn't evolved the way it has due to any paticular school of thought. It's evolved the way it is because with gaming becoming a bigger and bigger business, and more and more corperate, it has wanted to reach a larger audience than ever before. The industry does not care about whether a game is good or not, all they care about is whether it will make money, and the biggest source of money is of course selling to the lowest human denominator, or the "mainstream" so to speak. Chances are almost all of the great philsophers would be disgusted by this simple reality and would not be lionizing gaming by trying to assign deep thoughts to it.
I will also say that I think you have the Plato bit wrong. By definition the game developers could not be the Philsopher Kings as they are part of the design process themselves. The guy setting the standards and making the desicians has to be outside of the entire process and looking down from on high. The game developer is just another artist looking for approval from his betters (so to speak).
The problem with Plato's philosophy (well among many problems) is that there is no real way to determine who has the right to make those judgements. In a practical sense it ultimatly came down to Plato himself and anyone else he decided was worthy.
It's like this, I could declare myself a philsopher king and tell you what is good and what isn't. Of course those who disagree with me are going to doubt my right to do that... and vice versa of course. In the end you wind up with nobody that will be universally agreed upon to set those standards.
At any rate I think it would be more interesting to ponder what Herodotus would think of gaming...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herodotus
Now THAT would be entertaining. Arguably the greatest (lol) historian of all time, recording the history of video games. We'd definatly have to fit giant ants in there somewhere.
I did get that freaking shiny trinket in the end. Took ages, but somehow felt worth it, even if that was just the leaked 'demo' version.Scobie said:
I really should buy VVVVVV....
Megaman 2 remains one of my outright favourites. It's tricky, not initially accessible in the slightest, and full of traps which you just have to learn by losing lives, but it doesn't diminish its quality as a game experience for me.
I'm very impressed with simply asking these questions! I love your call to not be intellectually lazy. We (the gaming community) should be proactive in our philosophical struggles with where we've come from and where we're going. If we sit back and leave it all to fall in place without our efforts, then we have no reason to complain when things fall into place in a way we dislike. It's in asking these difficult questions that we find pure growth of knowledge, as well as character building by being forced to figure out our viewpoint and then either stand by it, or not.
Bearing in mind that the concept of a "philosophy" of game design is essentially just a hook for how to assess game quality (presumably to be detailed in Parts 2 and 3 of this series), I think Dastardly and Lyx were headed in the right direction in their comments.
The problem is that the word "good" is being overloaded. Part 1 is giving the concept of "goodness" way too much to do.
But a lot of confusion and disagreement goes away, I think, if we dispense with the notion that player-centricity and developer-centricity are two poles of a single spectrum. In fact, I believe they are two nearly independent metrics of "goodness."
Developer-centrism is about goodness of craft. A game is "good" in this sense if it is so constructed as to substantially satisfy the functional intentions of its makers: framerates, control accessibility, number of NPC quests, story pacing (there's a nod to Poetics), and so on. In other words, this is a view of goodness as a percentage of tick marks on the checkboxes on the top-level design document. If it accomplishes most of what its designers intended, it's a good game on an absolute measure of quality. (This is essentially the "games as art" position.)
Player-centrism is about goodness of utility. A game is "good" in this sense if a lot of people can enjoy it. Note that this is not exactly equal to "popular" -- there's an important difference between a game that a lot of people *can* enjoy and one that a lot of people *do* enjoy. The quality of goodness-in-utility doesn't require a game to actually be a WoW/MW2 blockbuster. All that's necessary is that the game possess the qualities required for many persons in a certain audience to enjoy it if they were to play it. And please note further that I didn't say that *everyone* has to be able to enjoy a game for that game to be utility-good. As long as there's a definable group of end users for whom that game effectively satisfies their playstyle preferences, it's a good game on the relative player-centric scale.
What's crucial to see here is that craft and utility -- intentional goodness and applied goodness -- are independent. A made thing (including a computer game) can be well-made but not be useful to any general or particular audience. Or it might be something that many people in a group would find extremely useful but still be a poorly made instance of that kind of thing. It's only when a game hits near the high end on both of these scales simultaneously that we find general agreement (among both gamers and critics) that it's a "good" game.
This is why I agree with the spirit of Robert Yang's concluding suggestion that a successful philosophy of game design will provide a theoretical foundation for balancing developer-goodness and player-goodness.
What I'm proposing is that this balance isn't restricted to one scale, which would mean that a game that was equally good from both developer and gamer perspectives would also be equally bad from both those perspectives. Rather, I suggest that in a well-designed game both developer-goodness and gamer-goodness are equally and simultaneously high. The game needs to function as its makers intended, *and* it needs to possess qualities that some audience of gamers find highly enjoyable.
I'm looking forward to reading Parts 2 and 3 to see whether the upcoming philosophy points a way toward meeting those twin goals.
The problem is that the word "good" is being overloaded. Part 1 is giving the concept of "goodness" way too much to do.
But a lot of confusion and disagreement goes away, I think, if we dispense with the notion that player-centricity and developer-centricity are two poles of a single spectrum. In fact, I believe they are two nearly independent metrics of "goodness."
Developer-centrism is about goodness of craft. A game is "good" in this sense if it is so constructed as to substantially satisfy the functional intentions of its makers: framerates, control accessibility, number of NPC quests, story pacing (there's a nod to Poetics), and so on. In other words, this is a view of goodness as a percentage of tick marks on the checkboxes on the top-level design document. If it accomplishes most of what its designers intended, it's a good game on an absolute measure of quality. (This is essentially the "games as art" position.)
Player-centrism is about goodness of utility. A game is "good" in this sense if a lot of people can enjoy it. Note that this is not exactly equal to "popular" -- there's an important difference between a game that a lot of people *can* enjoy and one that a lot of people *do* enjoy. The quality of goodness-in-utility doesn't require a game to actually be a WoW/MW2 blockbuster. All that's necessary is that the game possess the qualities required for many persons in a certain audience to enjoy it if they were to play it. And please note further that I didn't say that *everyone* has to be able to enjoy a game for that game to be utility-good. As long as there's a definable group of end users for whom that game effectively satisfies their playstyle preferences, it's a good game on the relative player-centric scale.
What's crucial to see here is that craft and utility -- intentional goodness and applied goodness -- are independent. A made thing (including a computer game) can be well-made but not be useful to any general or particular audience. Or it might be something that many people in a group would find extremely useful but still be a poorly made instance of that kind of thing. It's only when a game hits near the high end on both of these scales simultaneously that we find general agreement (among both gamers and critics) that it's a "good" game.
This is why I agree with the spirit of Robert Yang's concluding suggestion that a successful philosophy of game design will provide a theoretical foundation for balancing developer-goodness and player-goodness.
What I'm proposing is that this balance isn't restricted to one scale, which would mean that a game that was equally good from both developer and gamer perspectives would also be equally bad from both those perspectives. Rather, I suggest that in a well-designed game both developer-goodness and gamer-goodness are equally and simultaneously high. The game needs to function as its makers intended, *and* it needs to possess qualities that some audience of gamers find highly enjoyable.
I'm looking forward to reading Parts 2 and 3 to see whether the upcoming philosophy points a way toward meeting those twin goals.
1) Sorry to all the people I've disappointed, apparently!
2) I extrapolate from political philosophy because that seems to be the most general "philosophy-ish" kind of thing. You might be right, in saying I should've gone with aesthetics or something, but this is the one I took so I gotta stick to it.
3) Lots of people feel philosophy is dead -- so self-interested with no relevance to their lives. Many disciplines in general are in chaos. I'm told a lot of papers at a recent anthropology conference were apocalyptic: "The Death of Anthropology."
4) Even after part 4 is published, I don't think this will be a conclusive or comprehensive account of philosophy and games.
If I've angered you with my account, you should write a blog post or contribute somehow to fill in the gaps / correct errors! (the 10+ paragraph comments here, I think, would be better suited for that format)
2) I extrapolate from political philosophy because that seems to be the most general "philosophy-ish" kind of thing. You might be right, in saying I should've gone with aesthetics or something, but this is the one I took so I gotta stick to it.
3) Lots of people feel philosophy is dead -- so self-interested with no relevance to their lives. Many disciplines in general are in chaos. I'm told a lot of papers at a recent anthropology conference were apocalyptic: "The Death of Anthropology."
4) Even after part 4 is published, I don't think this will be a conclusive or comprehensive account of philosophy and games.
If I've angered you with my account, you should write a blog post or contribute somehow to fill in the gaps / correct errors! (the 10+ paragraph comments here, I think, would be better suited for that format)
Since I just had one of my final exams on philosophical theories, I'm hopefully forgiven for not joining the discussion.
(don't get me wrong: discussion was great, but now I'm just feeling terribly lazy)
Personally, I prefer games that offer me a real challenge. I don't think there's a game I own that I haven't beaten because of it's difficulty, though I don't like games that take the easy way by just being unfair, therefore forcing the player to look for exploits. It's like a gamemaster being pissed because the heroes slaughtered his final boss and finally going for an ill-conceived revival (probably along with some meanie-minions).
Still, I don't think that the difficulty of a game actually makes that much of a difference to the experience. Sure, a well balanced difficulty level can make an already good game even more great. But for me, games today are all about the experience. There's no bigger sin for me in game design than games that are stretched artificially just to add some more hours of gameplay. If the gameplay experienced in those hours consists entirely of alibi-quests (e.g. fetch this, kill that, gather those, go there ...) I really start to wonder why I should continue playing.
Repetitive gameplay elements should be considered a capital sin and therefore severely punished. Even if there ain't any famous Greeks who stated that.
(don't get me wrong: discussion was great, but now I'm just feeling terribly lazy)
Personally, I prefer games that offer me a real challenge. I don't think there's a game I own that I haven't beaten because of it's difficulty, though I don't like games that take the easy way by just being unfair, therefore forcing the player to look for exploits. It's like a gamemaster being pissed because the heroes slaughtered his final boss and finally going for an ill-conceived revival (probably along with some meanie-minions).
Still, I don't think that the difficulty of a game actually makes that much of a difference to the experience. Sure, a well balanced difficulty level can make an already good game even more great. But for me, games today are all about the experience. There's no bigger sin for me in game design than games that are stretched artificially just to add some more hours of gameplay. If the gameplay experienced in those hours consists entirely of alibi-quests (e.g. fetch this, kill that, gather those, go there ...) I really start to wonder why I should continue playing.
Repetitive gameplay elements should be considered a capital sin and therefore severely punished. Even if there ain't any famous Greeks who stated that.
Just as a little nitpick, your comment on Aristotle and self-actualization doesn't mention that this self-actualization comes from political participation. In fact, if anything Aristotle comes off as supporting game designers more then gamers. As you mentioned, he only thought that certain people should be able to politically participate. In most of the texts I read, they translate eudaimonia into 'virtue'. It wasn't just a dead-on attack of women and slaves, instead Aristotle defined justice as when the just and virtuous run the government, while those that need to be ruled over are ruled over. His system can be summed up as 'equal people being treated equally, while unequal people are treated unequally'. He still argued, however, that the many should have limited participation, while those who are already virtuous should maintain power (i.e. game designers). I guess you could say that in a gaming context he still argued for designers, but realized that hardcore gamers are an important part of a gaming community.
Once again, a bit of a nitpick, but I love the Nicomachean Ethics, it's one of my favourite books on political philosophy, just after Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy. The Republic's good too, but I only enjoy it because of the hilarious way Plato writes Socrates.
Also, is one of your articles going to touch on Plato's realm of forms? Because I think that concept is very relevant in game design and critique as well.
Once again, a bit of a nitpick, but I love the Nicomachean Ethics, it's one of my favourite books on political philosophy, just after Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy. The Republic's good too, but I only enjoy it because of the hilarious way Plato writes Socrates.
Also, is one of your articles going to touch on Plato's realm of forms? Because I think that concept is very relevant in game design and critique as well.
Call it a win. Only one of the other articles in this issue generated more comments than yours, which is impressive for an ostensibly philosophical piece. Actually, in terms of word count yours probably generated the most feedback, since the comments are longer and more thoughtful than usual.Robert Yang said:
Funny I don't remember the 8-bit era as being extremely hardcore. Every kid on the block played video games, the rich kids had gaming consoles or microcomputers, the not so well off went to the arcade occasionally to deposit their change. Cheap handheld games was the rage in the '80s, pretty much every kid had one or at least was able to borrow one.
It was as casual and softcore as it could get. The distinction between hardcore gamers and casual gamers happened much later, as far as I recall as a reaction to some extremely hardcore MMOs that was introduced around 2000.
I think it's true that 1990-2000 was a period where gaming became more of a niche. A lot of games specialized and refined gameplay concepts in order to cater to specific niche audiences. In my opinion some of the best game were made in that period because designers had more focus. It's probably fair to call that era of gaming relatively hardcore even though the word hadn't been invented at that point. That period was probably lacking in games designed for casual audiences.
You seem to make the assumption that accessibility and difficulty is identical or at least closely related. I think thats a false assumption. I would define accessibility as how hard is the game to get into, and difficulty as how hard is the game itself. A game can be extremely accessible and extremely difficult at the same time. Arcade games were the perfect example, everyone should be able to deposit a coin and get what the game was about, but at the same time they were often designed to be extremely difficult because then people spent more money. Those games were the exact opposite of hardcore, but beating the end boss was the pinnacle of hard-core'ness. That meant all types of players could enjoy them.
There's a new trend that assumes that in order to enjoy a game, you must be able to beat it. I think that trend is caused by narratives being introduced to gaming. We hate it when we don't get to see the ending of a story, so it's a natural development. Unfortunately if we are guaranteed success, the skill is taken away from gaming resulting in a less enjoyable game. The way I see a game, the potential to fail as well as the potential to succeeed is an essential element in the nature of a game. Without that element it's not a game anymore.
Currently a lot of game developers make the same assumption that in order to make their games accessible they need to make them easy. Thats a shame because it undermines the nature of a game.
It was as casual and softcore as it could get. The distinction between hardcore gamers and casual gamers happened much later, as far as I recall as a reaction to some extremely hardcore MMOs that was introduced around 2000.
I think it's true that 1990-2000 was a period where gaming became more of a niche. A lot of games specialized and refined gameplay concepts in order to cater to specific niche audiences. In my opinion some of the best game were made in that period because designers had more focus. It's probably fair to call that era of gaming relatively hardcore even though the word hadn't been invented at that point. That period was probably lacking in games designed for casual audiences.
You seem to make the assumption that accessibility and difficulty is identical or at least closely related. I think thats a false assumption. I would define accessibility as how hard is the game to get into, and difficulty as how hard is the game itself. A game can be extremely accessible and extremely difficult at the same time. Arcade games were the perfect example, everyone should be able to deposit a coin and get what the game was about, but at the same time they were often designed to be extremely difficult because then people spent more money. Those games were the exact opposite of hardcore, but beating the end boss was the pinnacle of hard-core'ness. That meant all types of players could enjoy them.
There's a new trend that assumes that in order to enjoy a game, you must be able to beat it. I think that trend is caused by narratives being introduced to gaming. We hate it when we don't get to see the ending of a story, so it's a natural development. Unfortunately if we are guaranteed success, the skill is taken away from gaming resulting in a less enjoyable game. The way I see a game, the potential to fail as well as the potential to succeeed is an essential element in the nature of a game. Without that element it's not a game anymore.
Currently a lot of game developers make the same assumption that in order to make their games accessible they need to make them easy. Thats a shame because it undermines the nature of a game.
If criticism is not constructive, than its just an opinion. So in regards to this article I don't find it necessary to critique anyones use of a philosophers works or ideas. Instead I would like to input that this issue is the basis for the existence of many forums and sites dedicated to the critique of games in all their intrinsic facets. I compliment the writer on attempting to explain the concept in such a way that it summarizes many of the problems that are of concern to the "Players" of todays generation.