Talking Game Design - Wordplay and the Discourse of Video Games - page 55

while providing the “typically wisecracking” response expected by players
of the game. 12 A blog can focus players on the strengths of a game, like
explaining “the design decisions that make you, the player, the center of the
action,” 13 while also framing the “hardest and most controversial decision”
as “where to stop,” 14 portraying the limitations of the game as a strength,
rather than a weakness. EVE Online used developer communication with
their player base to similar ef ect because players had concerns that “high-
lighted problems with CCP's [ EVE' s developer] approach to communicat-
ing with players and the way feedback was collected.” This led the company
to begin “making an absolutely colossal ef ort to communicate more with
players through focused technical devblog s 15 and a series of video blogs.” 16
The trend toward communicating with players is so pronounced that even
behemoth game company Sony Computer Entertainment America launched
a blog for the PlayStation 17 because the company had “learned, perhaps the
hard way . . . that a blog like this is really about you and the things you
want to hear, share and discuss with us. With that in mind, you'll notice
that comments are enabled—and encouraged—so tell us what you want to
see here and we'll do our best to make it happen.” 18
The result of all this communication is at least a partial acknowledge-
ment on the part of game development companies that games are designed
for audiences and that the audience needs to be addressed. Contemporary
modes of communication make it easy for companies to reach out to con-
sumers and players are helping to decide the direction for game design.
Video game players, through their interactions with developers, have an
impact on the games that are made and how those games are executed. A
player's role in discussion about video game design and play is not limited
to passive consumption of communication from game designers; they can
also be active participants in constructing the discourse of video games.
PLAYERS: SHAPING THE GAMES THEY PLAY
Beyond extra-game discussion on blogs and forums, players are key pro-
ducers of words, design, and play in three clear ways: the overlap between
players and developers, the reviews certain players issue about games, and
the design elements within certain games predicated on the participation
of players. Developers know they need to address the audience for their
games, but applying wordplay shows how the participation of players is
intertwined throughout video games.
The cleanest link between the audience for and the author of video
games is in the overlap between the two groups. Although there may be
a game developer or two who does not actively play games, generally the
game development population is overrun by active, engaged gamers who
play a wide variety of dif erent games and possess strong opinions about
all of them. Although the identifi cation of game developers as game players