Design is one of those subjects that seems to be relegated into a technical role regardless of the discipline. In no small part this is a result of the science underpinning design. But that isn’t the entire use or goal of design. Design is an interconnected network of disciplines with a single goal: providing the framework for something to happen. That something can be anything, but often is a process or experience. As game design works with both, it is a good candidate to show design as an art form in how it channels players’—and viewers—to have an experience.
What is design, though? It isn’t just a discipline like woodworking or programming. Design is a multidimensional skill set driven to structure how you see or feel the information experienced. It works to answer questions like “what is the best way to…” and “how can we….” Most of these questions are experiential, even if, as in the realm of science, the object subjected to the experiments experiences the phenomena rather than the observer. The best way to do things can be measured for tasks and spaces that require efficiency to reduce waste, time and the like, but it won’t necessarily be healthy or pleasurable.
For example, scientific management is essentially dehumanizing. Frederick Winslow Taylor tried to apply mechanical efficiency to people. Taylorism is hellish as it reduces the worker to a mere cog in the machine. His insights are a breakthrough for mechanical engineering, but it designed a loss of self in place of repetitive, menial tasks performed with optimal movements. Doing this today would result in familiar repetitive motion injuries because that “wasted” effort of follow through is the body’s defense against such injuries and why machines are best suited to such roles.
One thing design isn’t is physical. The concepts used to create design are abstract. There aren’t any tangible elements one can point to as design, only things produced as a result. In regards to game design, the intangibles are the ideas, themes, or mechanics used as a starting point. From there, a structure is produced, but it is not the game. It is only the presentation—the prelude—to the game. The components are only the means for entering the magic circle that houses the game.
As a designer, I have to shape the user experience (UX) and the user interface (UI); with a team, I only have to make a part to get the right feel and fit for the final product. That makes design quirky given that its relationships between the UX and UI are vital and if one is designed for a slightly different frame of reference compared to the other, the audience will know it even if they are unable to say why. This is where the art of design begins to emerge.
Conceptually speaking, design is a tree germinated from the conceptual seed used to develop it. Its fruition is the individual’s experiences while tracing a path from the trunk to the limbs bearing the result of the audience’s interaction with the design. The trunk in this metaphor represents the rules governing the way everything (information, rules, etc.) behaves while engaged within the parameters of the design. This is intended to draw the audience towards a type of experience. The structure and its accoutrements are the guides to get there.
Art works the same way. Even if you remove a painting or symphony from the political project and historical context that support it, it doesn’t remove the design’s structure. Music is pure structure from the movements and scales that invoke specific moods to the bridges, refrains, and codas that bring the themes together. Paintings also use similar techniques: colors, lighting, and perspectives to name a few. Rembrandt did this with The Night Watch. The titular figures are the focal point, but the real star is the use of lighting. By darkening the region outside of Cocq, Ruytenburch, and their men, Rembrandt is guiding your eye where he wants it without relying on vanishing points, a technique DaVinci used to draw attention to Jesus in The Last Supper.
How influential is all of this? Consider that Bach’s canons are still popular, Ayreon (a progressive metal group) did a song about The Night Watch entitled The Shooting Company of Frans B. Cocq and DaVinci’s paintings have been central plot elements in film and literature—not to mention some interesting theories. These pieces of art were so well designed they cannot but continue to create experiences well beyond their times.
What they have common is they all set their perspective stages to let the audiences experience something. Usually experiences are emotional, but physical sensations may occur if the reaction is strong enough. The art itself doesn’t cause the reaction. Rather, the art creates the doorway through which one must step to have a personal, internal response to the source. And it is for this reason that game design is an art.
The rules are not obstacles to be surmounted; they are the parameters that shape the type of experiences you get to have while playing. Does the game encourage one-upmanship while the math controls the effects mechanically on the play space? Then the experience is ancillary to the mechanics while being facilitated by them and masking the boring bits. If all you do is roll and move along a track, the games you play will become as torturous as Taylorism. You aren’t a machine, and as covered in “Driven Towards Extinction,” you eventually tire of rote task games. The design might be elegant and efficient, but it’s also boring because on some level we realize random chance isn’t fun by itself.
Design helps alleviate this sensation by combining multiple mechanics and aesthetics to create an experience worth repeating. As such, a designer has to make the final product match expectations. One of the ways to do this is by creating visual components that reinforce the game’s themes and goals. As an example, you wouldn’t include pigeon carriers in a high-tech sci-fi game, but you might in a WWI or earlier era one. These pieces can have all sorts of rules and effects tied to the game, but those are related to the simulation’s UX and the pieces and rules help immerse the player in the experience through the UI (the presentation of that information).
So, one of the reasons for the size of most roleplaying game books is the contingency factor of edge cases where rules can conflict. However, roleplaying games also resemble the medium they simulate. The books are novel-length because the books are physical simulacra of physical simulacra for the original format: oral storytelling. They are filled with illustrations and snippets of stories and settings designed to not only show the rules in action, but to also serve as prompts for your own games. Thus, you are informed from the outset that the games are stories. The types of stories and their complexity are determined by the content. The book and the presentation elements contained therein shape the experiences to be had. The art of design in games is in both their making and the playing, it is drawn out of the player by the hands that crafted the rules directed at a conceptual/thematic focal point.
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Anatomy of Game Design: The Sid Meier Effect
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Anatomy of Game Design: Systems and Creation