Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
The fact is that although these categories may seem dated, we nonetheless allow them to
inform the way we think about games. Instead of considering a game holistically, we mentally
divide games into categories. It's especially easy to do within a bigger group or studio, where
all these categories may be separate jobs performed by separate people. But what something
in a game looks like, for example, tells the player what to think about it, what expectations to
have. “Graphics” are part of design. So is sound, and how the game controls, and every part of
the experience of a game. We're trained to think of all these parts of a game in isolation.
Our language limits us in other ways. We've bought into the established “genres” of video-
games: the shooter! The strategy game! The platformer! These categories make it hard to
describe, to pitch, to even imagine games outside of the ideas that are already established.
When I created
dys4ia
in March 2012, an autobiographical game about my own experiences
with hormone therapy, many players and critics, though they admired the game, questioned
whether it actually was a game after all, because it didn't fit their genre-influenced precon-
ceptions of how games should work and what “ought to” happen when you play them.
The language that we use to talk about games constrains the way we think about them. We
don't have a vocabulary that can fit games that are as diverse as, say, a game about hormone
replacement therapy that relates events that really happened to me and isn't a struggle for
victory or dominance. And so the language of games is a language of exclusion. Game culture's
vocabulary frames discussions in such a way as to perpetuate the existing values and ideas of
that culture, which is problematic when that culture is so insular to begin with.
dys4ia
is a traditional game in many ways. It borrows a lot of established game vocabulary to
tell its story. Most scenes involve guiding some player-controlled character around the screen
to perform a given task. The reason both players and creators fail to recognize it as a game is
superficial—we lack the design vocabulary to connect a game about hormone replacement
with related games that have more traditional themes.
When I mention “story” in a game to most players and developers, what they think of is
cutscenes: an interruption of a game to show a five-minute movie, directed in obvious imitation
of a Hollywood production. Or they think of a wall of expository text that the player has to stop
and read or, more likely, skip annoyedly past. This is just another symptom of designers' fear of
design. The truth is that we already have all the tools we need to tell stories in games—to tell
real stories, not exposition—but we don't understand those tools.
Until we learn how to tell real stories in games, “story” is always going to mean “cutscene.” Until
we learn how to design holistically, games are always going to be broken into “graphics” and
“sound” and “control.” Until we have a language that can describe games in all their diversity,
we will only design “shooters,” “strategy games,” and “platformers.”
By equipping ourselves with a language for talking about design, we are giving ourselves the
ability to design.
