If you want to be a good game designer, you need to pay attention to the world around you. This axiom comes from the world of art, but it applies here as much as there. You don’t know what’s going to inspire you or shake loose that missing mechanic that will make a game awesome. Problem is, there’s this nagging undercurrent of intolerance towards sports that makes no sense from a professional perspective. Frankly, it’s just as pointless as attacks on nerd culture.
Being a designer means you have to have intimate knowledge of your system. How do you do that in a vacuum? Where do you draw your references from? If you can’t relate this information to your audience without mentioning another game, can you really crate an original work worthy of someone’s time? Better yet, how do you get the younger set to enter your world?
I get how some of this looks like rambling in this series, but that’s directly related to how difficult this subject is. The whole theme running through game design is unraveling the conceptual framework all games use. To do that though, we need a way to visualize the components and how to map them out so we can have a discussion. And that requires hanging ideas on imagery. This is a bit poetic but necessary to get the correct idea out of our heads and into each other’s.
About that poetics thing, anyone who knows me will attest to how much I hate poetry. It’s not that I don’t get how it works or a lack of appreciation for the form, I just don’t care to spend time trying to tease out meanings. When I write fiction, I employ imagery for effect just like a poet, but I’m not asking you to feel a moment. I’m asking you to experience its showing. Similar ideas and tools, but a different outcome altogether.
Think about this: the fickle finger of fate in a poem is just a picture. In a story it’s an act in motion. What happens if we take away the physical element? Describe acumen without using any visual constructs, which means no concepts of any kind hinging on/including imagery. Try it, I dare you. Or, why not try to change the words. How does the ticklish toe of turbulence grab you? Worse, the picky penis of providence. Neither of these work despite keeping the alliteration and for very good reasons. Feet have their own uses, and unless your toes are freakishly long (like mine) you don’t grip objects with them. The other image is pretty vulgar and likely makes you want to scratch out the brain cells containing the image.
Sports and games work in a similar manner. We’re not born with reason and a library of experiences to help us understand how something works by substitution something else. That’s analogy, but by using the phrasing I did, I created an image showing it rather than just hanging a word on the idea. But this is how we collectively learn and how language accretes new words or meanings for existing words by catachresis. Younger players need physical images as much if not more than veteran gamers so they can quickly grasp concepts and play the game with more experienced players.
Once you get past that point, you begin to grasp new games with greater ease from a combination of a priori experiences and the storehouse of imagery they entail. This matters because when you make the leap from player to designer, there are a few changes you face compared to the learning process. What games did you play that informed your idea and what changes you’ve envisioned are directly tied to the storehouse of images from your experiences.
What happens when you come across an idea that doesn’t quite fit? Most of us will automatically default to catachresis and try to shove the idea into concepts and imagery we already possess. The problem is that not every idea is easily converted into an easily digestible package your audience can understand and follow, let alone you. Making something unique in games often requires finding something new that fits the idea and gives you the right visuals to solidify the concept. Why? Because we’re all creatures of habit and fall back on patterns familiar.
Sports do this a lot. There’s an important element all professionals possess: an adherence to the fundamentals of their respective careers. As game designers, we often appear to stay within our general area of mechanics and make incremental innovations using out existing body of work and an adaptation of someone else’s design. In sports, this translates into muscle memory to free up the brain for complex strategies. In game design, fundamentals lends to insulation without nongaming sources, meaning some people exclude sports.
Sports, though, have complexity in rules and play. These are physical games where assigned roles come with their own subset of guidelines and field location. Basketball emphasizes finesse, baseball precision, and football tactical maneuvers. The events are metaphors in action. They belong to the same arena as tabletop play and give you ample imagery upon which to hang your concepts. By excluding them from your studies and openly bashing them, a designer doesn’t demonstrate superiority but rather a weakness in design and opportunity to draw in more players as the movement and physical manipulation of components is a symbolic act of bodies and equipment found in the stadiums enjoyed by many who might otherwise find your simulation entertaining.
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Anatomy of Game Design: Distinctions with a Difference
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Anatomy of Game Design: The Sid Meier Effect