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This
Developer’s Life: The Universal Game
Dear Reader:
This week I am going to
call on you again to aid me. Over the
next few weeks I plan to write about creating “The Universal Game”, a game that
crosses demographics lines.
Run with me on this
one. Ignore the fact that it’s probably impossible;
imagine you’ve got a mandate to try.
What do you do?
The Impetuous
I’ve started thinking
more and more about the universality of gaming and, while I’m not sure we’ll
ever achieve a game that appeals to the entire set of “people who play games”,
considering things which are universal which are also well suited to being
conveyed in this medium seems worth the time.
This got me thinking a
lot about how so many of our games focus on what would, in pop psychology, be
called “left brain challenges”, and how hard it is to create intuitive or emotive
challenges for our games (does Insult Swordfighting count as an intuitive
challenge?), which led me right back to the question of what it would take to
make a “bilateral game”, which in turn made me ask the question “what would give
a game universal appeal”.
Thoughts So Far
Those of you following me
on twitter, already know this part, but I put out the call there too and got
some interesting response. I’m going to
list some of them below because I felt like they were particularly salient. I’m more in the dark on this one than
anybody, so apologies in advance to anyone I throw up here to disagree
with. I’m reposting you because I
thought your comment was worthwhile!
(For those of you
wondering I’m going to start #universalgame so that I can see the flow of the
discussion)
The Comments
The idea of simply aiming
for the lowest common denominator was raised by @manveerheir. While this might get you high sales, this
tactic has never gotten the highest sales in any medium, which says to me that
it’s (luckily) not really a path to universality.
@ Oizys brought up the
thought of making an a la carte game where users can tailor their experiences. It’s a great thought and where I was headed
for a while, but it sort of defeats the point of trying to make a universal
game (as why not just make lots of games and let people make their a la carte
choices when buying games rather than in the game itself…as we do now).
@ Larington raised the
questions of aesthetics in a universal game.
This one stumped me completely.
Moving On
I think that catches you
up with the discussion thus far. I want
your thoughts. What’s universal that is
well suited to be conveyed through games?
Catch me on twitter
@jamesportnow or email me at jportnow@gmail.com
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One of my initial reactions is to address accessibility. I know many disabled people with physical and other disorders, and know quite a few elderly who never or rarely play games. Part of me thinks this appeals to the lowest-common-denom already mentioned above, but let's see later if this can be used in helping to pinpoint the necessary characteristics of universality.
Another thought: laughter. Do all cultures have laughter? I think so, but maybe someone better schooled in sociology/anthropology can help out on this question. Either way, I would probably want to avoid a society which is devoid of laughter.
Going back to accesibility, consider the blind or deaf players. Maybe, "smiling and laughter" grouped together would successfully include nearly everyone. So, this is rather wishy-washy, and barely defining anything, but how about a game whose sole defining purpose is to get the player to laugh and/or smile, through the most respectful means possible? Maybe a difficulty with this approach is that alot of humor is based upon humiliation or self-/other degredation, which is why I added "respectful" as part of the requirement.
It's hard to say that this is any different from what many other games aspire to do, that is give the player joy, but it seems that smiling or laughing for many of those games would be secondary phenomena that are peripheral to the central experience of playing.
So how about it...laughter and smiles. Too sugary, too general?
Really interested to see where this discussion goes.
They were by no means bland nor did they mean to follow the lowest common denominator, but their music was catchy, fun, and uplifting. They were not weak, being consistently bold, but they were still as soft as tapioca pudding. They did a good job of expressing moods in the best way art can.
The problem with trying to aspire to the Beatle's universality is that music is in itself more accessible than games or technology in general. Music comes actively to the listener and even provokes emotions from the listener. Games require the player to overcome instead of ride.
Of course, it would need to be technically compatible with the hardware most people have. This would obviously be a windows computer with a keyboard and mouse and a dialup connection. The resource requirements would need to be small.
The control scheme would need to be simple, needing fewer than two other buttons other than buttons to control the four cardinal compass directions. No circulating though anything. What would most likely be the source of the game's depth would be the environement.
In final remarks, many people agree with things that are rather simple, yet provide a considerable ammount of depth. It would need to be somthing that does not challenge the player to do somthing more than three times. It does not need to be as bright as a children's cartoon. For example, Elanor Rigby was simple and it also conveyed the experience of loneliness clearly. No stretched smiles here.
"Who is it for? All the lonely people. Where do they all come from?"
It was essential to have said this.
Then you have age groups and demographics and that's where your aesthetics really becomes a problem. If you exclude the afore mentioned things then it's not so much music, images or humour that become hard to tune to your different groups, it's your game play. I suppose the game would have to be casual in nature, yet have some sort of prolonged experience and growth for those who like to play and grow in their games.
The hardest part about making a game "universally liked" would be catering it to people who...well...dislike gaming.
In the end I think we're talking about a very amorphous game. Something that can morph from being a game, to a movie, to a picture, and back again to varying degrees as the user wills. It would also need to morph between being adrenaline charged action, and sedate puzzle solving, to resource management, and role playing. It could not have music, or language, unless those were of a culture that's equally alien to everyone. It would have to vary in complexity (probably in line with the picture->movie->game idea), and scale, with the ability to go from point (picture) -> linear (movie) -> multidirectional (game). Perhaps a game that can be stopped at any point to act as an image, or recorded to be watched as a movie, with the ability to switch to "movie mode" at the press of a button, where, from wherever you are in the game, a story is extrapolated from your situation and shown until you return to playing the game, perhaps unique to each users experience.
So how does the game type change, perhaps the game generates content dynamically, when the user gets to a piece of game they dislike they could effectively hit the movie button, the game could learn that it's a section they dislike playing through (or some rationale similar to this), and generate that content less during play. Still it's beginning to sound clunky and awkward.
Consider Wall-e, that film worked for children and adults and depending, on their perspective two people, (say an adult and a child) could walk out of that movie each seeing a totally satisfying but fundamentally different film. I feel like there are a handful of games that do this, but before I spout any, you guys want to throw me your list?
As such I've actually had a little while to think about the problem of visual/artistic preferences, as long as you keep the character models and geometry of locations (etc.) the same shape it might be possible to allow the user to choose a visual style. Obviously, the biggest cost of this would be the need to outsource texture creation in order to account for increased costs of creating texture assets but basically most of the variation can be done in the shaders and textures loaded when the game is initialised. So potentially you could create three different visuals styles chosen to maximise the potential audience with minimal impact on the (Mechanics of, at least) gameplay.
As to humour, I'd argue the biggest risk there lies in localisation issues, many jokes are based on word play or twisting words to a comic purpose, for example the word "ass" in English can either be a donkey or a persons backside, but this might not be the case in German, French, etc. That said, a lot of humour can be injected into a game experience via music & visuals, so there are still plenty of opportunities, I suspect though that you might need to get one or two comedic experts in house in order to pull off a truly funny game experience.
The actual gameplay mechanics would have to be very refined, with a very strong feedback loop that gives high reward for control inputs at a rapid pace whilst always doing the upmost to prevent the player from either becoming confused or unsure of what to do, or for that matter, overwhelmed by choice (Which would arguably be a very significant risk of an a la carte/compartmentalised gameplay setup).
'Insult Swordfighting' reminds me of the contests seen in the film Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead. Check it out, if you haven't already. In fact, there's a whole host of improvisational games actors use that could likely inform this effort.
The question “what would give a game universal appeal” leads me down two paths, the universal appeal it necessitates and the logistics of the resulting game.
Like a lot of game designers, I'm currently looking to the field psychology to form a more concrete model of human needs. My current understanding (limited) leads me to think that the universal appeal would have components of motivation theory: competency, autonomy and relatedness. That is, the game would at once: offer instant engagement of novices while also able to support advanced players' effort against difficulty but attainable challenges, offer a wide range of player action with accompanying feedback, and offer meaningful connections between players or other components.
The logistics of a universal game would have to be dead simple, imho. No consoles, no computer, no phone, no board, no cards, no dice. In college, with no money but a desire to play a drinking game, I've had to come up with games that require less and less. No quarters? Use bottle caps, two rolled like dice, where two caps 'up' mean your turn is over, two caps 'down' mean everyone drinks (with a toast) and one-up-one-down means the player chooses who drinks and they get another turn. No bottle caps? Okay, two players take turns counting up one number at a time, "1, 2, 3...", after three consecutive numbers a player can say the wrong number on purpose, "7", which causes the count to reverse, "6, 5...", but other than that any miscount is a loss (drink). (Necessity is the mother of invention.) My point is, to the extent possible, all requirements of such a universal game should be stripped away. If possible, no common language (beyond the game rules themselves), no requirement the players be in the same place, no minimum number of players, etc.
Okay, that's as brave as I feel today. Hope that helps. Good luck, James.
Yeah this would be an amazing achievement. But as pointed out, the technology level would be one concrete boundary whose definition I surely wouldn't want to be tasked with!
We also have to define what makes a game successful if we want to engage this topic. Is it simply sales? Is it return customers to episodic content? Is it long-term playability? IMO long-term playability is what makes a game successful. Well timed expansions/bonus packs help contribute to this end. I'm not a big fan of premium episodic content. We become emotionally attached to games. Whether it's through online camaraderie, or more direct attachment to a game's character, storyline or locale. Identifying and applying the emotional investment players have with successful titles is IMO the first step towards creating a universal game.
That being said, I think it's easier than we might think. If we assume universal appeal to mean that 9/10 people (gamers) will buy and then love playing the game. What I want is different than what my emo cousin wants. Nothing can change that. Some people want a place where their feelings of morality can be amplified by saving the princess from the dragon, some people want to be freed from their moral obligations and be the dragon. I think this is what will ultimately deliver the universal gaming experience. We find a way to let the player approach the game world in a way that gives as much freedom to their impulses as possible. Forgive the analogy but cowboys and Indians to the Nth degree should be what we're after.
I'd say Wii Sports is probably another one. While there is occasional griping from some "hardcore" gamers about it, the appeal of Wii Sports is about as wide as that of Rock Band, and maybe even wider. Most people enjoyed Wii Sports at least for a while after it came out, and millions of people continue to enjoy it today.
I think those games both have two things. The first, as has been pointed out, is simple control schemes. Rock Band gets quite complicated on the more difficult levels, but on the easiest setting it's quite simple to play. The other thing is that they both have familiarity. Most people have never fought in a war, or been an assassin, or been the ruler of a kingdom. But just about everyone listens to music, and has some idea how a guitar or a rock band works. And just about everyone understands bowling. Perhaps the key to making universal games is to take things that people are familiar with, and then find simple ways of making them fun and interactive.
Language is a more difficult issue. Two possibilities: Use every known language in the game, or else use no language at all.
There are multiple ways to implement the all-languages approach. First, the most straightforward, is to simple translate everything, sort of the brute force method. A more elegant path is to mimic the real world, and have characters all speak in native languages, maybe even without subtitles.
But human language is always specific to cultures, so the better way might be to exclude language altogether, instead relying upon demonstrating all the game has to offer without the clutter of including all languages. However, the real-world experience of being in different cultures with different languages can still inform what a language-less game looks like: it suggests a particularly strong AI component, one that can try to discern a player's intent from their in game activities. The physics can exceed the constraints of realism, as long as they are consistent in a self-contained manner. If a player is on an abstract planet (meaning it can be something other than Earth), has some kind of jumping/flying ability, can see two planets/satellites/moons off in the distance, and continually tries to move in the direction of those objects, the AI needs to figure out the intention of the player to reach those distant objects, then assist them in reaching that goal.
The world of such a game, assuming we are still discussing video games, needs to be full of interesting activities and places that appeal to all human beings. Things which are instantly interesting at first glance; it is pragmatically speaking only possible to discern universal interest through rigourous testing on a global scale. The interface of this game, then also needs to conform to many of the natural instincts of the human body, again requiring a massive testing effort. In relation to James' re-phrasing of "multiple levels", this shows the beginnings of a successfully multi-level game.
A note about platforms: I think discussion of "the" platform is kind of irrelevant. Actually, in the world we have today, assuming the game is even remotely possible, it would almost have to be all-platform, allowing players to play on the device/s with which they are most comfortable.
Language is a more difficult issue. Two possibilities: Use every known language in the game, or else use no language at all.
There are multiple ways to implement the all-languages approach. First, the most straightforward, is to simply translate everything, sort of the brute force method. A more elegant path is to mimic the real world, and have characters all speak in native languages, maybe even without subtitles.
But human language is always specific to cultures, so the better way might be to exclude language altogether, instead relying upon demonstrating all the game has to offer without the clutter of including all languages. However, the real-world experience of being in different cultures with different languages can still inform what a language-less game looks like: it suggests a particularly strong AI component, one that can try to discern a player's intent from their in game activities. The physics can exceed the constraints of realism, as long as they are consistent in a self-contained manner. If a player is on an abstract planet (meaning it can be something other than Earth), has some kind of jumping/flying ability, can see two planets/satellites/moons off in the distance, and continually tries to move in the direction of those objects, the AI needs to figure out the intention of the player to reach those distant objects, then assist them in reaching that goal.
The world of such a game, assuming we are still discussing video games, needs to be full of interesting activities and places that appeal to all human beings. Things which are instantly interesting at first glance; it is pragmatically speaking only possible to discern universal interest through rigourous testing on a global scale. The interface of this game then also needs to conform to many of the natural instincts of the human body, again requiring a massive testing effort. In relation to James' re-phrasing of "multiple levels", this shows the beginnings of a successfully multi-level game.
A note about platforms: I think discussion of "the" platform is kind of irrelevant. Actually, in the world we have today, assuming the game is even remotely possible, it would almost have to be all-platform, allowing players to play on the device/s with which they are most comfortable.