On Game Design - Game Design Theory - page 19

These kinds of relationships also extend into larger themes such as terri-
tory control, prediction, adaptation, risk management, and many more.
Often, the real themes of deep games (such as Go) are difficult to put into
words. As noted in Chapter 1 , game designer Frank Lantz has described a
game of Go as a complex visual representation of the intertwined thought
patterns of two players. This is the sort of theme that you can actually ab-
stract from game mechanisms.
Can you also express a literal theme, such as love of a father, in a
game? The most obvious way to do this would be to add nongame ma-
terial such as cutscenes or dialogue (i.e., cinema or prose) in order to
express your theme. Although our broad usage of the word game to refer
to digital entertainment software may lead us to say that the game is ex-
pressing the theme, in reality the game parts of the game cannot do this.
In more recent years, some developers have taken to the task of ex-
pressing a literal idea through the use of an abstract system. Rod Hum-
ble's The Marriage is one such example. In The Marriage , the player
loosely controls two squares on a single screen. You have various ways
of making the squares grow and shrink, and overall the application is
meant to say something about marriage itself. But is The Marriage a
game? I would say definitely not, because it lacks a goal—it's not a con-
test between different agents. Several examples of so-called art games (a
term that I personally find offensive) make similar attempts to express
ideas. However, in every case it's clear that a game is not making a home
for literal expressions. If your goal is to express a literal idea, there are
almost certainly better media to do so.
Questions to Ask
Here are a few questions that you should ask yourself before you start to
design a game. If your answer is yes to any of these questions, you should
consider another medium. Remember: games aren't better than other
media. In our culture and era, it can be easy to fall prey to a misguided
desire to make a game when you'd be better off making something else.
Is your goal to tell a story ? Consider a linear, temporal medium
such as prose, cinema, or comics. I'll get into this more in the
next section.
Is your goal to feature a character ? Again, stories tend to be the
best way to reveal who a character really is by showing the deci-
sions he or she makes. In a game, the player makes the decisions,
not the character.
Is your goal to feature a physical object, image, or setting ? I have
heard many novice game designers describe their ideas for games