Starting Development on Meaningless Games

I’ve started development on my first experiment, which is to try to make a series of meaningless games that result in a positive impact. So far, it has been incredibly difficult to muster up the will-power in order to keep a game meaningless at all, let alone to make it positive somehow. This will be an exercise in discipline of keeping a small scope and using subtractive design, if nothing else.

As you can see, it’s quite tempting as a designer to add complexity to the image above.  And yet, this must be the first game.  But I’ve decided most of the games will have more than just this, which will make them “mostly meaningless” I guess.  On top of all this, they should be positive.  I haven’t come up with too many ideas on how to do that yet, so I’m hoping that something will just come to me in the middle of development, hehe.

One of the things I realized I could learn from this whole experiment is how to intensify and purify meaning by separating elements of the game through elimination.  If I define what isn’t in the gameplay, maybe that will help me realize what is.  A nice side effect is a possible better skill in improving the non-game-specific elements of a game.  Let me illustrate:

This first illustration would represent elements of a game and potential meanings the player could get from the game.  If you remove some elements and reevaluate the game, you would notice certain meanings that are missing.  Then you can group those elements and meanings together, which would result in a better definition of what game element creates what meaning.

If I continue this process scientifically, I could get a pretty defined set of elements and their corresponding meanings.  The opposite would also be true:  if I only started with one element - say a title - that could lead to a specific corresponding meaning.  Then I could add elements little by little, evaluating the new meaning created.  By keeping the elements few, I can focus on creating specific meaning using the least elements possible.  This would result in an efficient game design, which I hope to talk about in a later post.

Will it work?  It seems to be going all right so far.  I’m working on a game with a few more elements, and I’ve already thought of an interesting by-product.  Removing some elements can have a meaning in and of itself, and I hope to explore that with this game about rewards.

Game Developers Anonymous

I’m at the GDC with the rest of the Intuition collective, and we spent all Monday and Tuesday attending the Independent Games Summit.  It was an amazing experience…as expected.  I was touched by a particular talk from Alec Holowka (Aquaria) and Tommy Refenes (Goo!) entitled How to Finish a Game Project You… Hate?

They discussed their stories on developing Aquaria and Goo!, emphasizing how much work development takes, and how it can often be depressing.  Both of them were in a situation where it seemed like the project would never end, and they had to persevere in order to finish.  The whole talk was very candid.  I really admire their boldness to speak on such personal things.

We have a very similar story for the development of Dinowaurs, so I was relieved to know we weren’t the only ones who had gone through this.  It got me thinking that talks like the one they gave provide a very therapeutic benefit to all game developers.  I would imagine it is like the same benefit people get from Alcoholics Anonymous.  I feel we were created to be in community, so it seems natural that sharing our troubles helps us to realize that we’re not alone.  On the outside, everyone else seems so successful, but we all struggle with things on the inside.  It’s comforting to know that.

Ron Carmel (World of Goo) put it best when he said “Alec and Tommy deliver what in my mind (and heart) was the most important and honest talk of the IGS.”  I couldn’t agree more.

What Happened to EA? – A Failed Manifesto, Part 2

I did some more research, and the results I found as to why EA failed to achieve its manifesto are pretty sad.

The Game Industry of the Early 80s

During the early 80s, we had Atari raking it in with lots of consoles in homes, although they were totally screwing over developers by doing so.  Developers basically didn’t get any of the money, and they certainly weren’t getting the credit they deserved.  As a revolt, some of them formed Activision, with similar goals as EA.  In fact, both companies shipped their games with tasteful album covers to draw the parallel to being an independent music label.

So you have Activision and Electronic Arts both trying to support devs who were doing good things for games.  And then the Great Crash of 1984, caused largely by actions of publisher/manufacturers like Atari, Mattel, Coleco, and Commodore, left the industry in shambles.  As a result, EA resorted to actions that became increasingly different from their manifesto in order to gain the success they desired.

From Software Artists to Engineers

It started out innocently enough.  EA switched its marketing style to promote the game as a brand, and its genre, moreso than the “software artists.”  This apparently made more sense to the customer, who didn’t care as much about individual developers as EA thought.  But of course that was the case because gaming was new and customers didn’t really understand it completely.  Not only that, but the developers themselves hadn’t made too many games yet, so there wasn’t much to care about or relate to at this point.

Therefore, EA “adapted” to focus less on the developer as an artist.  Activision had the same trend, too.  And what happened when they focused less on the developers as artists over time?  They published fewer artistic games.

For EA, this meant continuing to publish more games like One on One, which was a basketball title.  Marketing One on One was easier when it featured people who were already celebrities, like Larry Bird and Julius Erving.  After the crash, EA pursued this direction by publishing several licensed basketball, racing, and baseball games.

This was working out so well, that a few years later EA decided to develop a game in-house – Skate or Die.  No longer would they focus completely on indie developers; they had their own developers to worry about now, too.  Right after this, EA developed John Madden Football, based on founder Trip Hawkins’ passion for football simulation.  The combination of first and third-party titles led to enough success that EA had room to expand.

The obvious next step for expansion was to consoles, like the upcoming Sega Genesis.  By then, EA – or more accurately, its founder Hawkins – had quite a different focus.  Hawkins had to convince the rest of his company, who had up to this point believed in his vision, to go the other direction.  Gamasutra’s History of EA article quotes him as saying,

The goal was to stop making esoteric products for an elite customer base, and go make it in the big-time with mainstream gamers.  Several employees were outraged and quit, but I convinced the team that if the public chose to buy consoles like the Genesis, then to satisfy our customers we had to make the best games possible on the platforms chosen by the public, not the ones our engineers wished they could afford.

Compare this to EA’s manifesto previously advertised:

Why do we cry? Why do we laugh, or love, or smile? What are the touchstones of our emotions?

Until now, the people who asked such questions tended not to be the same people who ran software companies. Instead, they were writers, filmmakers, painters, musicians. They were, in the traditional sense, artists.

Since when did the “touchstones of our emotions” become esoteric?  Isn’t that why books and film are so popular?  And since when did “software artists” become engineers?  It seems that somewhere along the line, Trip Hawkins became one of the “people who ran software companies” that EA’s original manifesto was reacting against.

Was it the crash that caused him to change views?  Was it based on his new experience from leading game development with Madden?  Just simply greed?  What happened?  Maybe someday I’ll really get to the bottom of it.  Until then, I’m left wondering what the world would have been like had Electronic Arts stuck to its original vision.

Pertinent Links:
Part 1 of What Happened to EA?
http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20070216/fleming_01.shtml
http://www.edge-online.com/features/a-short-history-of-activision
http://www.edge-online.com/features/a-short-history-electronic-arts

Weird Dreams #1

It was 4 am and I couldn’t get back to sleep, so I thought I would start writing down some of my dreams with the hope that I might remember them for future use in my work, or maybe they would inspire someone else to use them, too. Here’s the first:

I was young again and found myself sitting next to my mom on the couch.  She was fiddling with a sleek, black TV changer.  It resembled the keypad on a RAZR phone, so it seemed sort of futuristic.  She handed it to my dad who made some silly comment that made me laugh.  I wish they were still married.  I wish he was still here so I could hear more of his jolly teasing.

Then there was a design competition where the architecture and design firms of the community could submit designs for a light rail system.  It was really exciting to think about the prospect of a light rail system where I lived (wherever that was).

Next, I envisioned a bizarre fashion illustration that suggested I had created a fad of specifically not putting any jewelry on the wrists of the runway models.  I was a prominent fashion designer, and at the time I made the illustration, my carpal tunnel was really bothering me.  I left their wrists bare as an expression of that pain.

The Butterfly Effect – A Model for Game Design?

I was listening to the band Muse today and came across the song Butterflies & Hurricanes.  After looking up the lyrics, I realized that the song was using the concept of the butterfly effect to inspire people to live their life to the full, and that it could easily be extended as a tool in creating a meaningful game (even one that is small in scope).
 

 

Butterflies & Hurricanes Lyrics

I’ve always enjoyed Butterflies & Hurricanes because of its inspirational mood and appealing mix of rock and classical style.  I could never fully understand the lyrics, and for some reason, I was moved to look them up today.  They are excerpted below: Read the rest of this entry »

What Happened to EA? – A Failed Manifesto, Part 1

Chris Hecker’s Website

I’ve been visiting blogs of people I respect, and one of them linked me to Chris Hecker’s website, which is infrequently updated and more of an archive at this point.  I remember hearing about his rantings given at various GDC talks, so I thought I’d poke around a bit to see what I could find.  One page was particularly interesting.  Entitled Can a Computer Make You Cry?, it featured an intriguing essay on exploring the emotional and expressive possibilities that computers can provide.  In fact, I would go so far as to say it is a manifesto.

EA Had a Manifesto?!

I was shocked to find out that the manifesto was actually an ad for Electronic Arts.  EA?!  This blew my mind.  I felt like I had stumbled upon a dusty but rare classic at the record store.  Apparently, EA had aspirations of exploring the essence of humanity using technology.  That’s definitely something I can relate to!

The Manifesto

Let’s take a look: Read the rest of this entry »

Creating meaningless games

I’ve been reading through Rules of Play lately and have been thinking about the concept of meaningful play.

An overview of meaningful play

The concept states that the amount of meaning play has is the value of the relationship between the action and outcome.  So if an interaction has value to you, it is meaningful.  And in order for it to have value, you have to both understand it (discernable) and make sense of it in its context (integrated).

If that’s the case, then meaning is quantitative.  The qualitative aspect of meaning would refer to its type:  whether it’s positive, negative, or maybe even more specific types like funny, dramatic, thrilling, etc.  For the more math-inclined, the amount of meaning refers to the length of a vector, and the positive nature of it refers to its direction.

A positive, meaningless game?

Therefore, that begs the question:  Can you have a meaningless game that results in a positive outcome?  It seems like in order for you to have a positive outcome, you’d have to have meaning.  So if a game was meaningless, the positive outcome would have to come from somewhere other than the game itself.

Still, without actual meaning in the game itself, it doesn’t seem like there would be much meaning left to get.  Maybe a game would send a message just by its very existence.  Therefore, a group of meaningless games might result in a noticable positive outcome.    Does the very existence of a game have meaning?

To find out, I would conduct the following experiment:  create a series of games that are meaningless to play, but when presented as a group, have a positive outcome.  If successful, each game would result in a positive outcome that is a fraction of the total positive outcome of the group, while still remaining meaningless itself.

Doomed to failure – right where I want to be

A game development adventure

I feel like I’m embarking on some epic quest here.  I feel like I’m part of an expedition, or maybe a group of expeditions, exploring the nether regions of the globe.  That’s what game development seems like right now, especially the so-called “indie games” scene.  Ha!  I suppose I’m being over-confident when I assume I’m “part” of it, but it is all around me and I can’t help but feel like I’m a part of it.

But I shouldn’t get hung up on that.  On “being a part of something.”  I need to just do stuff.  Just freaking make things.  They don’t even have to be games.  I guess at first they can’t really be games, since I’m more of an artist or designer type than a programmer.  As long as whatever I do represents me, or more specifically what God has made me to be, I think that’s what matters most.

How can developers work so hard making some AAA title for a huge studio, on a game they don’t even care much about, only to release a game that will be forgotten in a month?  I guess I’ve done it, but I could only tolerate it for a little while.  Why aren’t there more developers just striking out on their own?  Doesn’t the fear excite them?  It excites me.  I think God turns that fear into excitement for me.

Spiritual games?

I think He wants me make meaningful, experimental, or quirky games.  Games that explore spirituality.  Games that explore theological concepts.  Games that are deeply personal.  I hope I’m right.  I hope that is God’s voice I hear and God’s desire I feel.  Everyone who has advised me on this decision has told me that I should go for it, but I can’t help but feel some doubt.

Maybe that doubt is my fear.  Instead of being afraid to be independent, I’m afraid to be confident that what I’m doing is right.  Maybe that makes me just like the other game developers out there.  I should find that out and ask some developers about it.  I bet I’m like them in surprising ways.

At any rate, I’m going to charge ahead.  As I’ve been told before, I should put myself in a situation where only Jesus can save me.  So my intention is to do just that.  To embark on an adventure so perilous, that I’m almost doomed to failure, if it wasn’t for some supernatural power preventing me from failing.  Would that be proof enough for some?  I hope so, because it would be proof enough for me.