Culture Clash Dec09

Every month, Matthew Sakey discusses culture-oriented issues of gaming, ranging from the evolution of critical language for understanding the new medium to the culture of gaming and how the nongaming public perceives the industry.

All About Appeal
What do you look for in a game?
By Matthew Sakey

I am much more a gamer than a game developer. In fact I’m not at all a game developer, unless you count supervising development teams that produce corporate games-based e-Learning. But I consider myself a student of design, one who tries to understand the reasons and logic behind certain design decisions, and why they were made. I think it comes from film school. We got used to analyzing film for stuff like mise en scène and shot composition along with the more basic “how was the movie.” Thinking about games this way helps me find the fun in otherwise not-so-great games, and helps me understand how the design process works. This annoys my friends; I know it does, though they haven’t actually complained about it – we’ll be playing splitscreen Borderlands and a friend will say “damn, that was intense,” referring to a firefight, and I’ll respond “There was a similar design element in Painkiller. Locking us in an arena to create a feeling of confinement until you complete some objective increases the sense of desperation. It’s interesting here that they’d use it in an open-world shooter.”

And my buddy will fall silent for a moment, and then “accidentally” shoot me in the face, which luckily doesn’t hurt you in Borderlands.

Part of my work in e-Learning involves playing small, usually Flash-based, indie games online. (seriously.) From a learning development perspective, there’s much to be gleaned from titles like Pandemic 2, Auditorium, Today I Die, The Devil’s Tuning Fork, and such. In those cases the developers are trying to make fun games with often limited or nonexistent resources. My team and I are trying to make fun learning tools, often with limited or nonexistent resources. And there’s not that much difference between the two for those with an open mind. The trick is to look at the design schema and mechanics, then use what works to allegorize some dull corporate or manufacturing procedure. Pandemic 2 and Auditorium, for example, are darling Lean Manufacturing similes, teaching the importance of flow, error correction, waste reduction, lean product development, process optimization, and so forth. The simple addictiveness of Desktop Tower Defense or Armadillo Run provide valuable lessons about keeping things entertaining in the long run, while teaching underlying skills. The only real difference is that they’re creating fun out of a physics-based puzzle game involving a rolling extradimensional armadillo and we’re trying to create fun with the physics of, say, hard chrome plating. Like maybe we could do an armadillo that rolls around in a plating bath, and you… maybe you drag things in there with it… I don’t know. We’re still working on that one.

So as a learning developer, I look at games for how and what they teach. As a gamer for fun, my perspective is less unusual; I evaluate games based on how much I enjoyed/am enjoying the experience. But I do go one step farther than many gamers, adding heavy emphasis to how the game makes me feel. This is somewhat parallel to Randy Smith’s comments about whether games need to be “fun,” or Demon’s Souls producer Takeshi Kajii’s recent remark: “I do not think that games need to be accessible to be appealing.” Another industry writer, whose name escapes me, once wrote something along the lines of “Schindler’s List was brilliant, but once the credits roll you don’t exactly want to crack a beer and start it again.” The implication being that you might feel differently about some kickass popcorn-and-effects film, but they’re still of the same medium, and are both appealing. Games, too, have the capability to move beyond pure entertainment and into the realm of what I call affective cognizance, creating potentially complex impact in players well aware of what’s happening to them, and who find such impact appealing. Good games are always appealing, but they need not all be whizbang explorgies of space marine princess rescuing.

Ironically, if corporate e-Learning would render valid training content inside the allegorical experience of whizbang explorgies of space marine princess rescuing (explorgigorical), it’d be a lot more effective. Sadly, convincing suits that fun and games are the best way to learn is easy; convincing them that their content should get that treatment is not.

What interests me here is how different people experience their games differently: what each individual is “looking for” in a game, why, and how all that might vary in the context of the play experience. Officially there’s no wrong answer, though pompous, overeducated pedants such as myself reserve the right to roll our eyes at frat-boy mouth breathers who “only like movies with explosions,” or “only play games like Halo,” just as a foodie will scoff in contempt at someone who puts ketchup on steak. The value of the experience is in the eye of the beholder, and that value may differ (or not) from what the creator gets out of the endeavor.

“I love to code,” Matthew Ford, president of Australian indie Digital Cream, said to me. “And I love to look at beautiful women. Why not combine the two?” The result was Matt’s recently released Taboo Snaps (NSFW) a game which combines Pac-Man type maze play with a, erotic photography reward system that is, frankly, hot. And despite what you might think, there’s really nothing sleazy or even mildly distasteful about the game. People who’ve played it find it, at worst, charming. Matt has recently made some adjustments to Taboo Snaps to accommodate gamers’ requests for more hardcore content, something he wasn’t thrilled about doing; “since 75% of my players… ask for explicit sexual material, I have met their demand. Personally I prefer the artsy nudes more. Not out of prudishness! Just if I’m going to see a naked lady, I’d like her to be nicely lit.”

So experientially, Matt combined two things he enjoys: boobs and coding. And since Taboo Snaps allows you to choose what genders and what level of NSFW-ness available in the game, it’s crafted so others who want different experiences can get them. So ask yourself: how do you play your games, and why? What appeals to you when you play? Pure fun? Rich story? Easy time-killing? Princesses to rescue? A game like Demon’s Souls worked when all conventional wisdom argues it wouldn’t simply because its designers asked themselves how they could make something appealing, even if it’s not accessible. With more to the medium than just the explorgiastic, truly understanding what we seek will help developers deliver on it.

Matts Bio

Matthew Sakey is a professional writer, designer, and interactive media analyst. In addition to writing the monthly Culture Clash column for the IGDA website, Matt also maintains the popular gaming and entertainment site www.tap-repeatedly.com. His work has appeared in several other publications, Games for Windows: the Official Magazine, Develop, The Escapist, Game Developer, and Play Meter. Matt serves as an industry consultant and analyst, working with developers on story and gameplay, educators on curricula for game studies, and corporate clients seeking to leverage games-based technology for e-Learning. For more information, visit www.matthewsakey.net or email matthewsakey@comcast.net.

© 2009 Matthew Sakey. All rights reserved.