Reading Notes Week 2 - Greg Costikyan

Greg Costikyan - I Have No Words and I Must Design: Toward a Critical Vocabulary for Games

When you get down to it what do all games have in common?

A keyword used is "Game play", but what is it?

To understand, talk about intelligently and to design better games, we need to understand what game play is; in short we need a critical vocabulary for games.

Interaction:

1982 Chris Crawford published The Art of Computer Games Design.

Crawford contrasted games and puzzles.

Puzzles = static, they present the "player" with a logical structure 

Games in contrast = are sometimes static but mostly not but change with players interaction or actions

Example of a puzzle that isn't a game is crosswords

According to Crawford some games are puzzles e.g. "Zork" - main objective is to change game state, no enemies, no role play, no resources, winning is purely through puzzle solving> Costikyan disagrees as the games state is changed due to players actions, solving one puzzle opens other puzzles so is dependent on the players and the end result depends on what puzzles are solved.

Every game includes a degree of puzzle solving - depends on the interpretation of a puzzle i.e. hiding in a FPS behind cover to stay alive is solving the puzzle of staying alive.

Crawford's Statement "A puzzle is static. A game is interactive" is still useful

Every game is interactive i.e. board, card, computer etc depends on user interactions and decisions

Goals:

Interaction must have a purpose, the goal - "interaction with a purpose - a decision"

"What make a thing into a game are decisions"

Decision making is key to every game

The player will look at the game state and decide what is the best thing for them to do to achieve their objective - the goal, personal or set by the game itself

Does every game have goals - in short yes, either determined by the game or by the player

When playing a game the user automatically agrees to play by the rules meaning, the end goal is important and key to the game making them want to achieve it without cheating,

Exceptions however include games such as The Sims and Sim City as they have no specific end goals, but the user makes their own goals to gauge their success or failure, Sim City is described as a software toy not a game.

Football is a set of player defined objective overlaid on a toy - the ball

Some games such as RRG's and MUD's depend on the user making their own goals for example character improvement, as they have no specific end/ winning state. Finding your own goals eventually ends with boredom of the game which is a failure to the player as they have to keep making new rules to make the game entertaining.

"Games are goal-directed interaction, but goals are not enough"

Struggle:

Competitiveness is key to a game

Competition is one way of making a game struggle e.g. if your struggling against a friend in a head to head match you are in direct competition with each other - and this is a key way of making a game struggle

Chess is a key example of struggle making a compelling and competitive game due to the one on one nature of thinking 2 steps ahead of your opponent.

Competition is not the only way to create struggle 

Role playing games do not need direct player opposition to create struggle

Puzzles, difficulty and struggle in solving puzzles makes games, games.

Game developers are using struggle to their advantage  with varying difficulties, but they can't be too hard or to easy otherwise the players get bored and/or frustrated.

Even if a player has an opponent in a game adding obstacles can increase a games richness and emotional appeal.

"A game without struggle is a game that is dead"

We want games to challenge us

Need to feel sense of accomplishment, it's rubbish if the end comes to quickly

"There can be no game without struggle"

Structure:

"Games are structures of desires" - Eric Zimmerman

"By desire he means games have goals, and players agree to behave as if the goal is important to them"

"By structure he means the interaction of the games rules, components, software etc create a structure within which people play"

"Kids playing let’s pretend feel the need for structure" meaning every game needs a degree of structure to work

Any mode of control is a type of structure

"Zone of control is a building block for a war game" - board not computer

Zones of control mean changes of player behaviour 

Electronic game's structure is invisible to the user, generally speaking 

"To reinforce that game design is different from graphic design - it is independent of the specific graphical form in which the structure is represented to the player" - basically the user has no control of the structure, it is built in to the coding and background of the user interface of the computer game that they cannot access legally.

"A small change in structure means a big change in player behaviour"

The "Game shapes the players behaviour" but does not determine it

Garriott - pro social, moral paths

"Economists believe that people respond to economic incentives they face, and attempt to "maximize their utility""

"You can expect that a player will respond to the incentives a game provides"

"Think of a game's structure as akin to the economy or an ecosystem; a complex interacting system that does not dictate outcomes but guides behaviour through the need to achieve a single goal"

Endogenous Meaning:

Endogenous - "Caused by factors inside the organism or system"

"A games structure creates its own meanings"

"Is the stock market a game?" meaning the things people purchased all have an endogenous meaning and a real world value until those companies that have been invested in shut down rendering the investors, invested in something that has no value outside of a working, running company in the stock market, like monopoly money has no value in the real world until you’re playing a game of monopoly. But no the stock market is not a game, but it does, to a degree include and endogenous concept.

Interactive Entertainment:

"A functional definition of a game: an interactive structure of endogenous meaning that requires players to struggle towards a goal"

"To be a form of entertainment, you require some kind of structure" i.e. a conversation is entertaining but it’s not game entertainment as it has no hidden structure and no fixed ending or goals.

"Interactive entertainment means games" i.e. what else can you think of that is interactive entertainment that isn't a variant of a game?

Marc Le Blanc's Taxonomy of game pleasures:

"What we do to create compelling games - provide goals, create endogenous meanings, establish a structure, make sure you make the player struggle"

Sensation:

Good sensory pleasure i.e. it looks good

"It's important to recognize, however, that graphics design or media design more generally, is not in itself game design. This is a fallacy many who do not understand games make - because what they see when they watch someone playing a game is motion on screen" meaning on lookers do not understand the feeling of self gratification when playing and completing a game as well as thinking that the graphics and art are the key focal points for a game but they are not, it needs to look good but is not the main focus and because people believe this they believe that media design and graphic design is the same thing as game design because they do not have the knowledge of the background working and scripting behind computer games.

Fantasy:

Basic escapism from the real world and indulging in a virtual world where all of the players worries and every day struggles disappear for a short while.

Narrative:

Do games need a story line? Depends on game type i.e. chess does not need a story line but a game such as final fantasy does.

"Games should a sense of drama" if a story line is included to indulge the player deeper into the virtual world.

Rising tension to a massive climax is best when thinking of game narrative and whether or not it is needed "for a sense of accomplishment"

Challenge:

Challenge is similar to struggle (Le Blanc's version pretty much)

Cannot have a good successful game without struggle/ challenge

Need to establish with your game what is the challenge and why it's compelling and to make it as challenging and compelling as possible without making it too hard or too easy,

Fellowship:

Basically community in online gaming as an example

Discovery:

A sense of discovery and immersion into the emotions of a game make the game more compelling and fulfilling for the player.

Expression:

Meaning self expression

The player showing themselves to other gamers’ either how they are in the real world or how they would like to be via a virtual character i.e. they would like to be a more muscle bound hero or a evil genius depending on each player desires.

Masochism:

We want our games to be a challenge/ struggle

"What Marc means is that there's a pleasure to be gained by submitting yourself to the structure of a game"

Basically we want to play by the game for the game i.e. not cheating and winning fairly by working up the game structure, beating the challenge, fighting the struggle, and getting personal gain physical or not" i.e. monopoly money is personal gain and physical in the game but not the real world.

Artists:

"A game designer is an artist"

Good artists in game design start by attempting to design a game similar to what they enjoy, not copy or improve it but to pass on and share their experiences in those games within their own creation.

What makes it A Game?

Using Marc Le Blanc's taxonomy or Costikyan's views as bases are a good place to start as they both define the same key characteristics, in my opinion, that game designers and players want from  their games.

When creating a game asks yourself how does it achieve the titles of this entry and see how to improve them. Read pg 31-33 of this book when creating a game and reviewing to see if games on right track.

From the outside looking in writing scripts, creating games, story lines all look easy but are all one of the hardest disciplines to achieve.

"Games are an art form unlike any other, because the product is not passively received"

"A game as it is played is a collaboration between the developers and the players, a journey of mutual discovery, a democratic art form in which the shape of the game is created by the artist, but the experience of the game is created by the player"

"Game design is not merely difficult, it’s impossible" meaning you commit from the start to create a brilliant prototype, leading to a final game straight away without development, and once the game has been polished and tweaked it is impossible to have made a perfect product that every audience member will appreciate and enjoy, for example there is not a single game, film, piece of art etc that everyone in the world likes.

Sorry that was a long entry but I believe that it was necessary and has answered the question that was set.

Dan out x