My background (and the reason for my interest in this class) is that I’m a game designer. The games industry is, as I like to describe it, in it’s adolescence. We have lots of people shouting to the heavens “Yes! We really are an art form!” and then on the other hand we also have lots of games where you shoot people and half-naked girls are running around. The industry seems to have one identity crisis after another, and we are constantly trying to prove to the world that we are not making just toys for little kids but that we’re doing something artful or meaningful.
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the process of game design, particularly the idea of intent, for my thesis project this year. I’ve found a number of game analysis and game design frameworks that have been thrown into the ring by prominent game designers and academics but there seems to be some major disagreement about the fundamentals of this process. This makes our current class discussion of explanation vs. understanding particularly relevant for understanding what it is we do when we design or play/experience a game. For example, one article that I read recently, titled “The Chemistry of Game Design” is a rallying cry for the development of a science of game design. Some notable quotes:
As an industry, we need to beyond the mystical hand waving that defines modern game design. It is now possible to craft, test and refine practical models of game design built from observable patterns of play. We can describe what the player does and how the game reacts. Recently, we’ve begun to crack open why players react to certain stimuli and are able to create models that predict pleasure and frustration.
The bigger hope is to move our alchemical craft towards the founding of a science of game design. We currently build games through habit, guesswork and slavish devotion to pre-existing form. Building a testable model of game mechanics opens up new opportunities for game balancing, original game design and the broader application of game design to other fields.
During our discussion in class today about the difference between explanation and understanding, I thought about this article and realized that game design is not a science and simply cannot be a science. There are no fundamental laws of game design out there that are scientifically reproducible. Even the surest of game design tactics are based in psychology which is decidedly a soft science and in the realm of understanding, not explanation. In Elridge’s chapter “Understanding Art”, I found his ideas about imaginative perception to speak directly to this notion. The idea that we can’t say a painting is serene because of the formal element of the color blue is the same as saying a game is fun because of the formal element of a particular rule. In games, rules don’t translate directly into experiences in the same way that formal elements don’t translate directly into expressive significance in art. While the debate rages on in and out of the games industry, I’ve always sat on the “games are art” side and this passage in particular really helped me formalize why. (Well, at least why games aren’t a science.) The question for me now is: if we can’t say all blue paintings are serene and all games with rule X will have experience Y, then how do we purposefully build specific experiences? How do you make a serene painting? Maybe that’s another class all together 🙂
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September 8, 2010 at 1:52 pm
jeffreybardzell
I agree with the direction of your thinking, Jenna. Game design is fundamentally concerned with user experience. But user experience is subjective. By that I do not mean that making judgments or collecting data about user experience is subjective. What I do mean is that user experience itself takes place inside of people’s subjectivities. So if you want to measure or collect evidence about it, you have to look where it is–in people’s subjectivities, that is, in their state of mind, emotional reactions, hopes, anxieties, opinions, values, fears, tastes, and so forth. And because it is enmeshed in those things, and not in the material world, it will be very hard to offer scientific explanations (in the proper, technical sense of the term). But that doesn’t mean you throw up your hands and say “it’s all subjective.” It means that you dive in and leverage interpretative strategies to construct an understanding.
Nice post!
And will someone, ANYONE, besides me start commenting around here?!
September 8, 2010 at 2:30 pm
ninamehta
Jenna, thanks for sharing your thoughts on game design. It’s not something I know a lot about or nor a place where I could assert my opinion on whether or not it can be artful (though consider me convinced). I do agree with Jeff that it is fundamentally concerned with user experience, though regarding state of mind, emotions, hopes, fears, values etc.
I have a journalism background and lately I’ve been digging back to the basics of those academic roots. In journalism 101 you learn about news values or newsworthiness. These are elements of a news story that that help writers help readers (/consumers) find value from their content such as impact, timelines, prominence, promximity, etc.
For another class, I’m working on defining the values for social news, but your post made me wonder what are values for games that make something gameworthiness like: emotions, intensity, sensory stimulation, perspiration 😉 Just kidding about that last one.
The point of that question is to talk around your question, “how do we purposefully build specific [game] experiences?” That, I don’t know and maybe the news value/newsworthiness guidelines are an outdated way to think.
September 9, 2010 at 8:27 pm
Anna Eaglin
I really liked this post because it I feel like your comparison of art and video games really clarifies the idea of trying to take formal elements for and A+B=C scenario.
It also reminds of Jane McGonigal, a game designer who I love! She created this online game called Top Secret Dance off where players upload video of themselves dancing (with masks to hide their idenity). People can then give them points for positive things such as creative, brave, awesome, etc. In an interview I saw with her she said she created the game because dancing releases certain things in your brain that make you happy, and therefore participating in this game can create happiness in its players. It almost seems to me like this is an A+B=C scenario (if we create a game with dancing, it will make people happy) but this somehow seems more complicated then that.
September 11, 2010 at 12:23 am
woolthread
Jenna,
I agree with your statement, although I think that Eldridge does not rule formal elements out of the picture in understanding. But rather the formal becomes among what gives something its emergent meaning rather than solely defining it.
One way for having insights to craft good experiences is what we did last semester in “Experience Design”, which is insightful criticism [Bardzell, Eldridge] of what we would consider good experiences. While we attempted to create a good museum experience we looked at why certain experiences are satisfactory while others are not. Along with that, we visited museums and exhibitions and attempted to closely read our experiences and that of the people present there. As Eldridge concludes, understanding a work can be done in diverse ways and is always multiple and never finished.. therefore the ways to understand and craft an experience are multiple and interpretive. We actually got introduced to many methods and practical examples around experience design last semester and we can share the readings list if you were interested.
-Bardzell, J. Bolter, and J. Löwgren, “Interaction criticism: three readings of an interaction design, and what they get us” in interactions 17, 2 (Mar. 2010), pp. 32-37
-R. Eldridge, “Understanding Art,” from An Introduction to the Philosophy of Art, pp. 128-49
September 12, 2010 at 2:57 am
jennahoffstein
I would LOVE to see the reading list from that class! If someone could kindly forward it to my e-mail: jrhoffst@indiana.edu or point me to a URL I would be grateful 🙂 Also – any idea if it will be offered again this spring?