Games have a dirty secret. It isn’t anything of a conspiratorial nature. Rather, it is something that not even game designers may be cognizant of or willing to discuss even if they know it (I suspect it’s more the latter than the former). Those of us who do know don’t seem to talk about it publicly, except maybe for books on game design to teach people how to make games, not unlike what I’m doing now. Call it an occupational hazard, if you will, to let people in on the secret. The truth of the issue is simply this: games are meant to go the way of the dodo.
This isn’t something people really want to hear when looking to buy a new game. But it should be noted that games aren’t like most forms of technology. Games aren’t designed to be replaced with the latest, greatest version the way cell phones and computers are despite what some companies may have you believe. Games are designed to be replaced with a different game, usually of the same type. The reason for this is quite simple: once you master the skills necessary to overcome the challenge presented by a game, you lose interest; or, you should since there’s little left to learn. This isn’t a bad thing and is actually the point of a game. You are supposed to master the skills necessary to overcome the obstacle and then move on to something much more worthy of your newfound mastery.
Why games expire is rooted in how challenges in games work. To understand this, we have to deconstruct a few things about games from the point of view of the three basic hats a game designer has to wear: writer, designer, and educator. Let’s have a brief over view of these jobs. As a writer, my job is to inform or entertain you, the reader – preferably both. As a game designer, my job is to provide you with the means to an experience. As an educator, I’m trying to teach you without your realizing that’s what is happening. Most of the above is culturally defined and not accurate. They give satisfactory explanations, albeit misleading ones, for each role. However, they are useful as cursory overviews.
The roles probably are not what one would expect in relation to this subject. As such, let me take a moment to clarify that not only are they related (their differences are in how their emphasis or methodologies work to get at the same concept), but it is their perspectives which make them all the more so for understanding game design. For the purposes of this piece, the nuances of how this is so goes beyond the discussion. It is mentioned here in the spirit of full disclosure that the delineations between the three are made and the knowledge that a bit of conflation may occur.
Regardless of the format or audience, I still have to entertain my readers as a writer. One of the reasons why technical manuals are so hard to read is because of the intense boredom they incite in most people. The dryness of the language isn’t encouraging to say the least. If I wasn’t doing my job of keeping and holding your attention, you’d move on to something else. My audience would be quite small if I didn’t’ make the writings I offer as enjoyable as possible. This piece, like most of my entries, is of the more informative vein. As such, I have to balance information with keeping your interests on my words. Effectively, this is the kind of writing you’d find in a game’s rules.
When it comes to a story, the opposite is true. I need to keep you as long as possible, engrossed in my story. The balance here isn’t in fighting boredom that could set in, but in preventing you from being cheated while maintaining your suspension of disbelief in the logic of my story. Otherwise, the tale feels too rushed or contrived. If I maintain that balance, you will relish every moment and want it to end, but not just yet. The odd thing is that we want to be strung along by a good story. Part of the gratification of a good story isn’t just that it’s well told, but it also has to delay the promised gratification. Here is where a writers smuggles in (intentionally or not) his message while the reader is thusly entertained. This is how the writer informs the audience. Whether conscious of it or not, the reader is gaining that information. This isn’t to say writers are insidious or odious in their practice. What it means is that the news, facts, etc. are more palatable for the audience. Failing to do this often leads to turning off the writer’s readers as they may feel the author is being heavy-handed or worse.
From the perspective of a designer, it’s all about the experience inherent in the design. The formal structure cannot and should not try to capture all of the implications of a game’s experience. Rather, it should frame the likely possibilities. When a design is undertaken, the first step is to develop the unnecessary obstacle that lies at the heart of the game. The game Pac-Man will suffice to illustrate this point. Pac-Man is a test of finding the most economical route through a maze. By itself, this is an easy task. The ghosts are an unnecessary obstacle. Their purpose is to make the quickest route a lot more of a challenge when four arrestors move around the map in seemingly random patterns to include chasing your avatar, but are also affected by your avatar’s movements through the play space. In effect, a form of hide-and-seek with no safe place and four guards is the core of the game’s formal structure.
As much fun as this game may be, you’ll eventually get bored of it. The experience of being chased forever by ghosts that are relentless wears thin and has an ultimate conclusion: losing. Another game with this outcome is Tetris. The goal is to keep the blocks from piling up to the top. So, what do these games have in common? They’re not about inevitability, they are games of endurance. The experience isn’t in the graphics or the interface; those are merely window dressing for framing the experience. What these games are about is how long you can concentrate on a single task. The number of points you earn are a way to do it with style. Some players are more daring than others and it is their scores which will reflect this. As a designer, I bury the experience behind the façade so that what you see is essentially a new iteration of the same concept and how it can be applied to different situations while using some of the same skills.
The final hat I have to wear should seem straightforward, but it’s not. Let’s face it, raw knowledge is boring. Being given information you didn’t ask for is annoying. Add to that the fact that learning is work. Knowledge with no clear purpose is meaningless. That’s why people call it “trivia.” Not only does the knowledge being imparted require that it have meaning, but that the way it’s transmitted is also meaningful. Written instructions for how to wield a hammer with the least amount of time spent on each nail is not as useful as a live demonstration. The medium of transmission is as critical as the valuation of the information.
One of the critical skills for an educator is the ability to cater to different learning styles. Active demonstrations, written texts, physical objects, and the like are ways to engage the audience without alienating anyone. Examples of play in games fulfill this requirement in the same way that a classroom lecture highlights the key elements an instructor is actively stressing are important. What these different methods have in common is contextualization of the knowledge to be gleaned. This is where information gains meaning. So, the job of an educator is to make the context speak to people in a way that makes them want to learn and have the information possess meaning for them as well.
Eventually, one reaches a point of diminishing returns. This is what mastery causes. Once you know 2 +2 = 4, you begin to get irritated being asked to solve it every time someone demands the answer. Mastery leads to boredom. Hearing the same information get rehashed time and again in various classes is why so many begin to tune out their instructors. Understanding how the story ends, the way it’s structured and the characters’ personalities can only sustain interest so far before the magic of the tale begins to wear thin. The same thing applies to the thrill of an experience. None of these things are infinitely repeatable even if the sheer number of possible games can never be reached by a group of players.
Games try to overcome this, but they, too, cannot escape the inevitable. The game has its own relentless arrestors, like Pac-Man. Once a player has learned what the game teaches, it is only a matter of time before it is abandoned. Such is the fate of tic-tac-toe once players realize the game is rigged to conform to patters that are finite in number. That said, it’s a great way to teach a player the basics of cartography. Go does the same thing, but the depth of strategy required to master the game is far greater and inordinately complex if indeed it is even possible. Though the number of possible outcomes outnumbers the atoms in the universe, this isn’t enough to prevent a player from growing bored with the game. Such players have gained as much as they can stomach before they need another game to recapture the joy of the learning experience.
The experience is used to hide the lesson behind the context of meaning. The lesson comes in multiple forms in the game via art, rules, performance, game pieces, and a whole host of other media that represent the entirety of the game. The writing of the rules helps set the mood and tone for the game before it’s played, even if that’s simply a description of what role you have in it, such as Monopoly being self-described as a wheeling-and-dealing real estate game. The style in which the rules are written draws the audience in, but it exposes the formal elements, meaning you learn from the outset what the game teaches even if you don’t know the quickest route to mastery of the material. My job is to make myself obsolete by passing on what I know to you, but as there are multiple ways to view an obstacle, and the experience should last long enough to make you feel that your time invested in each play of the game is unique enough to warrant the effort through the meaning you create in the experiences you have. As such, my words are almost poetic in their prose insofar as that you have to puzzle out all of the nuanced meanings inherent in how the rules work.
Once all the players have learned their lessons, they graduate to another game. Students move on to the next grade. Martial artists gain a higher degree via colors of belts. Readers move on to the next writer or the next volume in an author’s body of work (if they haven’t exhausted his or her catalogue). We design new works to continue the exploration, but the old works remain to teach a new generation of players who learn the lessons and will also move on in time. Old hands can take pleasure in teaching and living through the experiences of new players. Once we learn, we teach; but we don’t become extinct, only unable to teach the same skill to the same audience without a shift to a new perspective. And, for that reason, we create objects driven to their own extinction for each individual who took up the challenge of their own volition.
Previous:
Anatomy of Game Design: Blurring the Lines
Next:
Anatomy of Game Design: Modifiers, Part 1