The Fantasy of Control

Games

… we love or hate and why.

• Scrabble (board game) – can use the final object for other word games, poetry or further creative activity
• 21 (cards) – HATE. boring, no competition, (discussion: does gambling make it interesting?)
• Call of Duty 4 (console) – Just like watching a film… but no more fun than a casual game
• Uncle Roy All Around You (Blast Theory) – Is it a game? That is the fun bit.
• Pick Up Sticks – Suspense
• Ice House Pieces – Playing pieces that can be turned into many different game
• Snakes and Ladders (board) – Nice and simple

The Fantasy of Control

• Interactive narrative – no real control
  • Anchorhead – search based interactive narrative
  • 253 – Geoff Ryman interactive tube novel
  • Both of these are what Barthes would call ’scripted’
• Playing God
  • is usually playing (and hopefully enjoying) micromanagement, not some strategic being
  • A lot of talk about Sim City
  • These things are Sims, a distinct style of game, not simulations
  • There is a lot of ’scripting’ in Sim City
    • They are all based on north American, grid-based cities
    • You can’t create many functioning cities of other sorts
    • The game tends to funnel you into certain choices, the cities parameters are designed to end up simulating a north American city.

Thanks Helen.

Casual Games

Games

• Subservient Chicken (web viral thing) – Looks like it is live. Has easter eggs (pun intended)
• Connect Four
• Fives (drinking game) – Out-psyching opponents, social manipulation
• Big Pub Jenga – 2nd week in a row, because it is so good
• Sardines (playground game) – The game style transitions as the sides switch
• Spoons (drinking game) – easy to add or remove players
• Paranoia (RPG) – everyone is out to get one another and everyone deserves it

This weeks discussion – Casual Games

We tried having a go at defining what a casual game is, with the disclaimer that we can’t do it, and that we kept finding edge cases. These are a form of family resemblences, things they often are, but not always.

• Non-violent (mostly)
• Simple mechanics
• Universal games that people ‘get’
• Easy to learn, hard to master – leasds to addictiveness
• Continual, small acheivements
• Easy to pass the time with
• Do not have an end

These are notes, in no particular order, taken from the discussions.

• Universal and simple
• Solitaire is the most played computer game
• Bejeweled – 25 million downloads (created c2000) popcap.com
• Console games are picking up on casual games – esp the Wii
• Social networking sites are important, links with friends, virality
• Orsinal – beautiful little flash games (ferryhalim.com)
• Score mechanics important – for replayability and sharing
• Jayisgames.com web site, lots of casual game news and reviews – highly influential
• Most causal games are made by hobbyists (looking at throughput of jayisgames, though obviously not all the successful games)
• Adver-games – games themed around brands or advertising conference
• Addictive
• Have to be quick to pick up
• Recognizable mechanics or style of play, consistency
• Global publishing/distribution
• Suit mobile as a platform
• The future – easier distribution to mobile is a must, ie Apple iPhone apps.
• Puzzlepirates - not casual. Full of casual style games, but the overall meta-experience is more MMORPG

Dramatic elements

Games

• Pixel Junk Eden (PS3) – Full of just in (or out) or reach micro challenges
• Total Anihilation (PC – RTS) – Complexity is in the player’s control, easy simple or complex as they want
• Gods (MUD) – Change in play style when player becomes a god, goes from having to worship a god to having to get people to worship you. Very social.
• Boxrunner (iPhone) – Neophilia, exploring a new device/interface
• Metal Gear Solid 1 (PS1) – The experience of two people playing a single player game
• Gravity Force 2 (Amiga) – Puzzle and 2 player experience is both directly and indirectly competitive
• Gauntlet (Coin Op) – Different characters, multiplayer, RPG elements
• Defcom (PC/Mac) – Groovy graphics and melancholy sound track. Beautiful and sad experience of killing everyone on the planet.

This weeks discussion area

Gamasutra article on top down versus bottom up design. The difference between last weeks formal elements and this weeks story elements being the starting points for game design.

What are Games?

The first seminar in our games seminar series – Friday 8th August.

The structure of the seminar and the following ones is

1. Each person names a good or bad game and the key reason why it is good or bad
2. A short presentation/talk about a topic in game design
3. Discussion around these

Good games

• GTA (console) – made to feel like NYC without being it
• Medal of Honor Airborne (console) – breaks a scripted game, drop in anywhere
• Braid (console) – Breaks all the rules and reinvents platforming
• Rock Band (console) – Satisfying to complete songs as a group, appropriate haptic interface
• Pig Pong (physical) – it gets trashed because it’s fun, good for small children
• Geometry Wars (console) – good to watch as a spectator
• Rolling Quartet (singing) – social, competitive, cooperative
• Pub Jenga (physical) – Simple, mental and physical, social, noisey
• Burnout (arcade) – Childhood fantasies
• Outrun (arcade) – Arcade experience, real interface, ie steering wheel, pedals, gears

I gave a brief overview of various academics’ definitions of games. Definitions are useful when we think about game design, not as an end, but as a means to think about what it actually is we are designing. What are the elements, what are the constitutive parts, what are the variables we have to play with when we build games. This is very relevant with the sorts of experimental games we create here at the studio, because often we are designing at the boundaries of what is traditionally called a game.

On the subject of definitions, Wittgenstein approached the plurality of language and the difficult of definitions in general, in his work Philosophical Investigations. He uses ‘games’ as his running example of a toothy problem in definition.