On Game Design - Game Design Theory - page 39

to dominate or damage your game designs—a problematic tendency of
video game designers and Ameritrash board game designers (see the
“Designer Board Games� section). You may ask: if themes cause such
problems, why bother with them at all?
As with other elements, I would say one should include only as
much of a theme as is needed. Generally, the more complex a game is,
the more it may need thematic elements to help explain its verbs (ac-
tions). Themes make games easier to learn, although Go is fine with no
theme, and probably couldn't be improved much by adding a thematic
layer. On the other hand, The Legend of Zelda is inherently more com-
plex than Go, and so there are elements that would be much harder to
explain and remember without the theme. Zelda 's bombs and arrows
are an example of this: if the game was totally abstract, it would be
very difficult to explain and remember the way that these items work.
You'd have to say that item X (i.e., a bomb) can be placed on the spot
where you are, and in three seconds it will destroy some other mov-
ing agents and possibly uncover new paths. Item Y (i.e., arrows), on
the other hand, is shot straight from the angle you're facing and will
destroy any moving agents they come into contact with. Without the
thematic layer of information of bombs and arrows, players would find
these rules arbitrary and very difficult to remember. So the theme helps
players to learn to play the game (see Figure 10 ) .
I have a personal story that illustrates something quite interesting re-
garding this subject. I've spent many years dabbling with emulators—pro-
grams that can emulate various video-game console technologies on other
hardware. In this case, this was a Windows emulator for the Super Nin-
tendo Entertainment System (SNES). A friend of mine and I were sitting
down to play the Super Nintendo version of Street Fighter Alpha 2 . Appar-
ently this game used some funky technology that the emulator couldn't
Figure 10 . This simple, iconic graphic of a bomb quickly relates a lot of useful
mechanical information to the player. For this reason, it's helpful for a game
designer to study symbology.