Notgames Forum

I have always been attracted by the method for creating Ico (http://tale-of-tales.com/tales/ueda/) that Fumito Ueda called "Subtracting Design". The idea is that you remove everything non-essential from your game and put all your energy in the few remaining elements.

But now I'm starting to think that such a "negative" approach is just a remnant from the age of when videogames were games. When you think of videogames as games, you get all sorts of ideas for gameplay and features and rewards and levels. Then, confronted with the reality of production, you need to start cutting and cutting until you have a concept that can actually be released. In my experience this cutting continues throughout the production process, as things take more time than estimated and schedules slip. It's heart breaking to have to cut features just because you need to release on a certain date, or even release at all.

I think notgames is starting to point in a direction of a new approach. An approach that one could simply and optimistically call additive design. Since we're not making games, we could start any project with the simplest of concepts. Just a basic situation, a virtual world, a piece of text rendered in a certain way, a single image, etc. It could be anything. And that thing, since it doesn't need to be a game, can be the finished product. Simple, straightforward, no cutting.

Of course, once you're in the process of producing this simple concept, you will get new ideas for additional features. And you can then decide to add them or not, based on whatever norms you have for such decisions. The point being that such additions do not jeopardize the release of the product, or even the quality of the concept. They are additional features, decorations, extra. Fun to have but not essential.

I think some of us are better at having the simple ideas required to apply additive design. I myself have a lot of trouble with coming up with simple ideas. Or at least with accepting that a simple idea can be a good enough starting point. My mind always starts wandering, inventing things to do, places to see and then inevitably I need to start cutting again. So for me, it takes discipline.

But I think for others, and more now that videogames don't need to be strictly games anymore, this will be much more natural.

Yeah, I tend to start with a simple concept and it grows and grows until it gets out of hand! I'm currently in the process of paring A.W.E. back down to a more manageable level. :)

I still haven't played Ico, probably never will unless they release a PC version and that's will never happen.

If you've got a decent PC you could use a emulator ;)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nka0VtKPdoI

Sounds very reasonable, Michaël. Could be the start of something different for the future of Tale of Tales.

I only disagree with your interpretation of Ueda's design method.

Me, I'm kind of interested in the opposite of what could be called simple or clean design, what Blow and Bosch speak of here:

http://www.brainygamer.com/the_brainy_gamer/2011/10/little-nuggets-of-truth.html

This seems to be my style, if I could call it that, something that follows from my ideas for certain games which I am designing in my mind right now. Away from core mechanics and in to nesting, twisting ad-hocs, exceptions, temporary states, etc. But it is not additive design, as I do not have a core gameplay to begin with and then add onto it, but rather because I have ideas and emotions and it just so happens to be that they can be expressed best this way, that this form is what makes sense for me.

I have no core gameplay either. I'm striving for doing absolutely nothing.