Notgames Forum

I think they are.

Well at least after response to some of my posts on gamasutra. I have posted two kinda notgamish post on gamastura and the response on them compared to our own blog is quite different. Sure, people who read our blog are usually fans our games, but I still believe we have a quite diverse group of followers. Also the Gamasutra are not all professionals, but all are involved in gamedeving in some way (hobby, pro, etc)

Anyway, here are two posts to compare:

Post 1 (on meaning in games):
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/ThomasGrip/20100215/4417/Exploring_Deeper_Meaning_In_Games.php
http://frictionalgames.blogspot.com/2010/02/exploring-deeper-meaning-in-games.html

Post 2 (on trial and error):
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/ThomasGrip/20100412/4905/Why_Trial_and_Error_will_Doom_Games.php
http://frictionalgames.blogspot.com/2010/04/why-trial-and-error-will-doom-games.html


What does everybody else make of this?

I think that most game developers love games, so they've played alot of games, so they've gotten good at playing games, so they're considered hardcore gamers. *shrug*

That's just a response to the thread title, though. I'll do a thorough reading of those posts and their comparative responses when I have time, hopefully later today.

I think you're right. Chris Bateman has identified this as the primary reason why videogames are not more diverse. He proposes that developers should stop making games for themselves. But another, and better solution, in my opinion, is that other people than hardcore gamers are enabled and encouraged to make games.

It's understandable that some people who like videogames want to create them. But it's ultimately very stupid. Because you have not much to offer if you already like the field you're entering. All you can contribute is derivative work or at best work that makes minute improvements. which is sort of ridiculous in a medium with some blatant problems.
I propose that only people who hate videogames should make them. That's the surest way to see some radical changes in the medium. Gamers should just remain gamers. And more non-gamers should become developers.

Perhaps I should had suspected it, but I never knew that the concept of trial and error was held to dearly by developers. I honestly thought that people would all agree that it is not very good for immersive games, but instead I have gotten the opposite response at Gamasutra. Granted that I was a bit over-dramatic and introduction, but still.

The thread can be found here  (http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/ThomasGrip/20100412/4905/Why_Trial_and_Error_will_Doom_Games.php#comments)and is also linked to in the first post.

Some quotes:




Making people that hate games make them is not such a bad idea after all :)

Game developers, and gamers alike, have no imagination. And they are very protective of the thing they love so dearly. All nerds are. It's best to ignore them. And prove them wrong by means of our work.

Also, I think that most game developers' talents are limited to the creation of the games that we are familiar with. Maybe making a case for something else to them sounds like telling them they will be out of a job soon.

. . .You really shouldn't be so willing to adopt this kind of view.

I argue with myself about this all the time.  One potential conclusion: Become familiar with fewer videogames, i.e. stop playing videogames.  I try to be pretty careful in selecting what videogames I play for the very reason you mention.

I suppose this is based on the assumption that as you become more familiar with a set of rules, you become less willing to break them?
(http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2801/4519450113_5320f20317_o.jpg) (http://www.flickr.com/photos/godatplay/4519450113/)

I'd question that. In my experience, the best thing to do is to get familiar with a broad variety of rulesets and mechanisms- ones in different genres, different mediums, different experiences altogether.

That way you learn to draw on the full spectrum of your experiences for inspiration, and your ability to craft the mechanics is no longer reliant on the "training wheels" approach of imitating other works and making small tweaks. In other words, you have to go beyond a familiarity with the rules, and achieve an actual understanding. Do that and you'll find that those rules aren't as restricting as you might think; and when they do need to be broken, you can dismantle them in a much more thorough and precise manner (all the bathwater, with none of the baby).

Yeah that's the other side, and you have presented it really well!  Nice job :)

I don't think there's any rules in conventional game design that are even worth breaking.
Unless you want to make a game.
Otherwise, start from your content. And work with the raw materials of the technology. The only real lesson to learn from game design is that if you are serious about your content, you should avoid game design like the plague, because it tends to destroy story, immersion, meaning.

Game elements do that if they're not handled properly. It's a question of implementation, similar to how the use of curry can make a dish great or ruin it.

I disagree. Games can only tell stories about very specific topics and in very simplistic ways. This why most game stories are about war and why Rod Humble's The Marriage lacks subtlety and personality.

Anything that surpasses this comes out of aspects that are not related to the actual game design and could be divorced from it. The game design always diminishes the things that are good and interesting about a game (in fact, the better the game design is, the more extreme its negative impact on content, often). There are no exceptions, even, for once. Any videogame that has some interesting content would have been more interesting if it had not been a game.

I do realize that "interesting" is subjective. But so is anything.

This is not an argument against games. It's an argument against using the game format as a basis for human expression. (though using game elements on top of some other form of human expression, can be very effective)

Games can be fun, games can be fascinating, games can be beautiful. But only as systems for players to manipulate. Not as artistic media. As artistic media, games are useless.

I think that there is a lot be learned from many games and it is well worth studying them.

The most important thing is interface and not only are many people accustomed to these, they have also evolved over a long period. For example, if one wants to make something where several agents are move around at the same time, then one can learn a lot from RTS:s.

In other cases, it might be best to not be too influenced by games (with views such as "the must be a challenge",etc). But I think it is wrong to not see what people have come up with and learn from.

Of course. Sorry if I wasn't clear. I meant that we should avoid game-as-game design, if we want our work to be immersive and artistically expressive. But there's definitely a lot of other things in videogames that are very interesting and that we can learn a lot from. I'd even say just about everything that is not the pure game-as-game is interesting.

ಠ_ಠ
So your argument is that game elements always diminish the good and interesting aspects of an experience, except when they don't.

Has anyone ever pointed out that you use the term "game" in a really ambiguous manner?

I think I am guilty of that at least :P
Sometimes with game I mean "videogames", other times just "normal" games and finally sometimes mechanics that that mimic those of traditional games (card games, boardgames, etc) that are about winning/losing.

I am now trying to use videogames, whenever I can, since there is a vast difference between these and traditional games. I am not sure what use for "traditional game rules" though, gameplay seems a bit too broad and "traditional game rules" perhaps to narrow.

Perhaps a terminology thread would be good? In which we not only talk what words we on this forum shall use, but what kind of words can be used when discussing these things with others and cause the least confusion.

From my experience a surprising (?) large portion of game developers don't play games regularly. In fact, a majority probably is more passionate about their creative pastime ( writing / composing / photography etc. ) then consuming video-games.

True. Many of the developers I've spoken with "haven't got the time" to play games.

Are these designers? I mean people that are responsible for what gets into the game. I know a lot of programmers and artists that fall into this category, but from after reading at Gamasutra, it seems to me like many designers are hardcore. Or to be more, fair, enjoy hardcore games the best.

Perhaps I am wrong though and that these people do not play hardcore games, but like the design in these. Or perhaps the people at Gamasutra is not a good place to draw any conclusions from?

I was just surprised by the amount of "Games must have a challenge" type of responses. So I am searching for an explanation :)

::)

What you call "Videogame" I'd call "Interactive virtual experience". Games are experiences that provide us with interesting challenges to try and overcome. They've been around about as long as art.

But that in itself can be seen as a misconception, Thomas is quite right in not assuming games have interesting challenges to overcome. Two cats vs. a ball of wool is "play", as is two children dressing up like Victorian noblemen; just like two teenagers running along the beach to see who is faster. They are "playing" at something, a temporary 'magic circle' within different laws are true: for a few blissful moments, not being a Victorian nobleman is odd, for a stretch of mere minutes the only attribute that counts is being fast. A structured experience like this is a "game", providing "play". This is the definition I have settled living by, courtesy of Roger Callois. Challenge can be a part of it, dubbed "agôn" by Callois. I can not always see the point of a separatist movement which takes 'challenge' as the thing that is needed. There are too many borderline-cases in any definition to take 'challenge' and point it out as the defining factor.

This is how where I think "videogame needs challenge" especially fails, because challenge is such a loose term. For example: Reading a book with sticky pages is challenging. Is reading this book suddenly a game? There are more cases like this and any sort of separation gets very hard.

I agree get that "videogame" is not the ultimate term, since it easily conjures up thoughts of chess and other classic games. But I do not think it is possible to change, so we might as well just widen its meaning :)

I disagree with one of your fundamental assumptions here. Yes, a game is something you "play"; but that doesn't mean that everything you "play" is therefore a game. My view (to steal some lines from posts I've made in other threads) is that the english language uses "play" to describe two distinct kinds of activity.

"Interactive virtual experiences" can be games, but they don't have to be. A "videogame", by definition, has game elements and thus provides a challenge. If you go around urging people to consider how "videogames" don't need to be "games", you really shouldn't be surprised when people take you to task for trying to redefine a term.

I am not surprised at all, there is a whole world of people who assume that someone has agreed on the definition of 'game'. I myself was claiming things not to be games and rather 'interactive experiences', to great annoyance of my teachers a few years ago. A definition proposed by Callois in 1961 has no meaning although apparently this unsigned agreement about 'game' is.

I am not saying that a video game need not be a game. I am saying that a game need not be competitive, nor have challenge as its highest goal. This is not a new thought, again. The definition of 'game' is like the definition of 'play' very much in flux, true. But don't assume that because many people say so 'game' must mean 'something which has among other properties challenge'. Many people will attest that a game can have a high level of 'immersion' whereas immersion is more properly an attribute gained from the apparatus being of 'imposing' (if you will) value. Many people use 'immersion' to mean what is commonly meant, but that does not mean by mob rule that this is what the word means. This is the case I make for games having to 'include challenge'; I think that is a common misconception derived from a large focus on the competitive factors of games.

I myself prefer to follow Callois' indication and keep the term 'game' open. I cannot stand modern writers who suddenly say games must have a quantifiable outcome, games must have a set duration... The term 'game' can be used far wider without excommunicating many forms of game without offering them somewhere to go but 'experience', which is a thorough useless nondescript term. One may as well say that a film needs to have a narrative and without narrative it is 'moving pictures'.
Games may include a quantifiable outcome.

Two children playing at being jungle explorers are playing the game of being jungle explorers, not playing 'the toy' of jungle explorers, nor playing 'the experience' of jungle explorers. They are pretending to be jungle explorers and this mimicry defines the rules of the game. You could say that if one uses common sense he breaks the 'game' and 'looses' but that is more of a magic circle-related element and not game-specific.

I thinks words change meaning all the time. Not just over time or from community to community, but within a single person, continuously. I can post the sentence "The Graveyard is not a game" on Facebook, look up from the keyboard at my daughter who walked into the room and tell her that "Love is not a game". In a time span of just a few seconds, I will have used the word "game" with two widely different meanings. It's an illusion to think that there even is an agreed upon definition of any word. We should try to understand what people mean when they use a word. And not be distracted by what the word "actually" means.

That doesn't mean I do not fully support Jeroen in trying to open up the understanding of what a game can be -especially within games industry circles. And indeed, Callois is a very eloquent source to fall back on. Even common use of the word, as illustrated above, shows that the word already has a much wider meaning, without requiring academic research. Game developers just tend to forget. Or they narrow down the definition of games for the sake of argument.

Strictly speaking, we should probably call most videogames "sports" and not games. Because sports are the kinds of games that you do competitively. But this would ignore all the opportunities for mimicry, fantasy and whimsy that many videogames also offer (elements of the wider concept of games).

The problem with allowing "game" to mean all the things it could mean, immediately creates the need for a word that signifies only rules-based goal-oriented, competitive challenges. So it's probably more practical to just try to understand what a person really means, rather than criticize their (necessarily) clumsy use of language.

Wow, that's a great way to think about it.  So many videogames seem to have a sports mentality, and I want to explore the kinds of videogames that don't have that mentality.

I was thinking 'could call it sport' writing my post but I am glad you did not hold that thought back, Michaël. I like the thought.

It is not a category but a component name; 'agôn'. Competitive play. Categorizing games as in need of competition would leave a game like Psychonauts/i] which is still 'doing things' narratively on a weird edge. It's more a mix of types.

It would be interesting to put together a team of people who have never created computer games, aren't gamers by any stretch, but are proven outstanding creatives/experts in something tangential to games. Like, a novelist, an architect, a painter, an actor, a psychologist, a sculptor, a musician, a... well okay, not that many people, but you get the idea. A few people who have thought a lot about creativity, expression, storytelling, the author-audience relationship, and other related things. Then put them together with a small team of coders, artists, animators, and sound designers and let them brainstorm and experiment with creating something interactive. It might become a game of some kind, but it could just as well become something completely new and... notgamey.

One of the problems of having outsiders create games, is that the technology is so specialized and new. As such, outsiders often come up with very conservative ideas, actually. As far as I have seen, the best ideas come from people with experience. I regret this, though. I wish it were different. It will be in the future, I think, when the technology becomes more accessible and our knowledge of the medium has grown.

I'm not sure I agree. I think there are people who have an intrinsic talent for spotting quality, but of course it's extremely hard to find them, and you wont know if you got the right person until the work is finished and you can take a look at the result.

And of course they might still end up grabbing a lot of ideas from what little they know about how computer games are "supposed" to work, but I still think there's a great opportunity for fresh ideas and perspectives if you do something like this. A bit like when people who don't know much about music theory try to write music. They stumble around and come up with all kinds of strange chord progressions that an experienced songwriter might spontaneously think of as a "mistake", but of course they don't know that they're making mistakes, so they build their whole piece around that... the result is often highly original and personal in a very un-contrived way, and often colored by the possibilities of their instrument of choice. They don't know how to imitate anyone elses musical expression, so by definition they will creating something personal.

Michael, I think the problem is that developers are NOT making games for themselves... they're making games for a "target audience" with maximized sales potential.

As I have started on my own development journey, I find that I certainly don't want to make something that is meant to "sale" and follows certain marketing schemes... I want to make games as though they were my children, my paintings, my legacy.  Even if they don't reach as many players as the latest WWII shooter epic.

I hope that my future career highlights what you want to see in new developers... I hate videogame culture, I don't like going to developer gatherings, and have really only enjoyed playing games on a very casual level.  I sort of "fell" into game development because I felt compelled to; as though all my various skills converged and pushed me, kicking and screaming, in this direction.  I kind of relate to the author Virginia Wolfe, who claimed it was actually painful for her to write, yet she did anyway.  That is how I feel about making games (or notgames, even), it's like I'm reaching into a chasm trying to pull something out rather than follow a beaten path to drink from the same well everyone else has.

I think we feel quite similar about making games as a necessity, a painful duty, rather than an actual choice.

It's an interesting question: do (AAA) game developers make games for themselves and are they just simple "dudes" who like guns or do they make games for an existing market and are they simply not adventurous or ambitious enough to reach out to other markets? I wonder what Chris Bateman thinks about this. He'd probably say it's a fortunate or unfortunate (depending on your own position) lucky coincidence.

Will Wright spoke in the mid-00s about how the famous and recognized game developers of the future won't be "classically trained" game developers or people who only play games, they will be people who have backgrounds in architecture or history, even a dentist could be a great potential reservoir for game ideas. They would still need some access to the creative process and a desire to make them.

I share the sentiment that people who come from more diverse backgrounds will create more diverse gameplay experiences, and thus will satisfy gamers seeking diversity (which I feel are most of the people here).

And as for people who hate videogames making videogames, well we've all felt letdown by videogames at some point. Get letdown by enough videogames and the shape of what is there and unwanted (or what is lacking and wanted) becomes more defined. Eventually that definition can become ideas for games, and you then work towards realizing those ideas with better and better execution. At least that's how it works for me.

Nicely put, sir.