Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Digital games have exploded commercially since 1985—in fact,
Super Mario Bros.
was pro-
ceeded by more than a decade of successful videogames—and we've consequently learned
a lot of new words with which to talk about and describe videogames. Unfortunately, those
words come from marketers, brand-loyalty Internet arguments, and magazines that exist as
extensions of publishers' PR departments. The language that exists to describe videogames is
facile when applied to the very real problem of discussing design.
Most designers, lacking the vocabulary with which to discuss, analyze, and criticize game
design, operate largely by intuition and instinct. And there's a lot to be said for intuition and
instinct: A lot of radical decisions are made by instinct and then only understood in hindsight.
But what if a designer is working in a team? What if someone else is drawing the characters
that will appear in a game? What do they need to convey, and what does the designer need to
tell them? What if a designer is working with another designer? How will the two communicate
about the needs and direction of the game?
I'm not the first person to notice this problem. Back in 1994, game designer Greg Costikyan
wrote an essay all about it, called “I Have No Words & I Must Design.” At the beginning, he says,
“We need a critical language. And since this is basically a new form, despite its tremendous
growth and staggering diversity, we need to invent one.” He was right then, and he still is.
Consider that we're all in a team—difficult in light of the practices of most contemporary
publishers, I know—and that we all have access to this tremendous, growing resource of game
design solutions: every videogame that has ever been made. By understanding those games—
how they work or don't work, what they're doing and why—we get better at making our own
games. We don't repeat problems that were long ago solved, like how to convince the player to
go right. But how can we understand those games if we don't have a language with which to
talk about them? How can we have a discussion?
Once upon a time, I studied creative writing. Someone would submit a story, everyone else
would read it, and then we'd sit in a circle and people would offer their critiques, with the goal
of allowing the author to improve the story and, in the process, improve her own writing ability.
This was called “workshopping” a story. We would talk about things like how a story was paced,
how certain passages or phrases helped—or failed—to characterize the characters of the story,
which parts were weak, and which succeeded.
No game creator wants to put a tutorial into her game, to make the player press the jump but-
ton five times before being allowed to press the shoot button five times. A game creator puts a
tutorial into a game because she lacks confidence in her ability to teach the player the rules of
her game without explicitly stating them upfront. In a board or card game, it makes sense that
the players should be aware of the rules upfront because they're the ones keeping the rules.
But the great strength of digital games is that, because the computer is performing the task of
enforcing the rules and tracking the numbers, the game can withhold some of the complexities
