LANGUAGE - A Game Design Vocabulary - page 7

of the rules from the player. When the player discovers those complexities later, it feels like a
story is developing.
How do we lead the player to those discoveries? That's called “design.” And, frankly, I don't think
we, as designers, are doing enough of it.
What game designers need is a workshop—the means to design, have their design critiqued,
and improve their craft. We need to be able to discuss design as a craft. And if we're going to
discuss game design, the first thing we need is a vocabulary.
Failures of Language
We're not lacking for words to use to describe videogames. But those words were created to
sell videogames, not to describe the process of creating and understanding them. Our games
vocabulary is peppered with buzzwords, invented by someone in marketing for a press release
and regurgitated into a games magazine. Next the words are on the Internet, slung back and
forth by forum posters, and then, finally, I hear an otherwise intelligent game developer use a
meaningless word to describe a game.
Here's a brief glossary of some of the words I hear a lot and what they might mean:
■ Immersive —Game takes place underwater
■ Fluid —Game is actually made of water
■ Flow —Current of the liquefied game
These words don't have to be nonsensical. In fact, we'll be talking about meaningful ways to
talk about “flow” later in this topic. When buzzwords are used without context or nuance to
promote a game, as part of a press release or blurb, they might as well be meaningless.
When we use meaningless words to talk about games, our ability to describe them becomes
more confused; our language for describing them becomes less concrete. But we've bought
into this sort of thing in a big way, the same way we've bought into the idea that a game is com-
posed of “graphics,” “audio,” and “replayability.” We're used to thinking of games in those terms,
but who gave us those terms?
It was the games press. The terms we think about videogames in are taken from Consumer
Reports -style reviews of games. GamePro magazine would divide games into “graphics,”
“sound,” “control,” “fun factor,” and “challenge” and then give the game a score of one to five
in each of these categories. Doesn't the way a game looks have a relationship to how it plays,
though? Don't the way things move in a game tell you a lot about how the game controls?
Don't sounds characterize the interactions that they accompany? Doesn't the challenge of the
game affect what the experience of the game is—the “fun factor”?