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 Designer's
Notebook
The Designer’s Notebook Turns
Five:
A Look Back
The Designer's Notebook is five years
old this month, and frankly, I'm delighted it has lasted this long.
When I was first asked to write a regular column on game design
back in 1997, I was afraid I might not know enough about the subject
to keep it up month after month. What I didn’t realize was
that writing The Designer’s Notebook would involve learning
as much as it does teaching. These articles aren’t wisdom
handed down from On High; often they’re about something that
I’ve just learned myself and I’m eager to pass on to
others. It’s a notebook, not a textbook.
So to celebrate my fifth-year anniversary, I'm
going to indulge myself with a retrospective. The game industry
has changed a lot in the last half-decade, sometimes for good and
sometimes for ill. I've chosen a few of my old columns that stand
out for one reason or another, and I'll use them as a starting point
to talk about some of the changes.
Most Useful
I've never presented a design idea here that
was so earth-shattering the whole industry adopted it and held a
parade in my honor, but I do occasionally get letters from people
saying they might try out some of the things I've suggested just
as soon as they figure out how to get out of the straitjacket. But,
oddly enough, I think my most useful columns are the ones that tell
people what not to do. Some of the “Bad
Game Designer, No Twinkie” articles are now required
reading in a few college game design courses, and I get quite a
lot of mail about them. It’s funny, because they’re
primarily opinion pieces about my own personal gripes rather than
how-to discussions about design principles. But they seem to be
the ones that make people say, "Yeah, I'm going to remember
that when I design a game."
On the whole I think game design has improved
considerably over the last five years. You still occasionally see
a game with egregious design flaws in it, but the press tends to
come down on those things pretty hard. And there's another factor,
one that wasn’t so important in 1997: the Internet. The Internet
enables gamers to spread the word about a bad game so quickly, much
faster than magazine reviews can, that it’s a lot harder for
a publisher to get away with shipping garbage-in-a-box the way they
could in the old days. Competition and customer scrutiny is driving
out the worst of our mistakes.
Most Press Attention
You know you’ve accomplished something
as a writer when other writers start writing about you. Two columns
in particular garnered attention from outside the game development
community. "Dogma
2001: A Challenge to Game Designers" was mentioned
on slashdot.org, and this resulted in TV interviews, lecture invitations,
and even a short piece in the New York Times Sunday Magazine. It
was also reprinted in daily newspapers in Canada and India, which
was flattering considering that it wasn’t even that comprehensible
unless you already knew something about game development.
Nothing much has happened with Dogma 2001 since
then. Unlike Dogme 95, on which it was modeled, I didn’t set
out to create a new movement in game design; I just wanted to get
people talking -- and laughing, if possible. Film has an established
status as an artistic medium, so if someone made a Dogme 95 movie,
there was a good chance that it would be viewed and discussed somewhere.
Games are only just beginning to appear in art exhibitions, and
we don’t yet have enough momentum as an art form to launch
aesthetic movements. I expect this to change significantly in the
next few years, however.
The other column was one of the earliest ones
I wrote, a critique of the much-hyped (at the time) category called
“games for girls.” In "Games
for Girls? Eeeeewwww!" I protested at the idea of the
game industry going the same direction that the toy industry has,
dividing our products into “boys’ games” and “girls’
games” and creating a pink ghetto in the software store. This,
too, garnered some attention from the mainstream press and earned
me a TV interview for PBS’ Digital Divide series. It also
got a certain amount of disapproval from colleagues who were engaged
in making games specifically for the female market. The truth is
that I don’t mind games whose content is designed to appeal
to girls; what I object to is publishers using the “for girls”
label as a marketing gimmick to flog inferior products (as some
of them were) to well-intentioned but ignorant parents.
With the failure of Purple Moon, and some of
the other “for girls” companies struggling, the hype
has largely died down. My favorite quote on the subject comes from
my designer friend Sheri Graner-Ray, who said, “Girls are
not a genre, they are a market.” The idea that there’s
a certain class of games which appeals to all girls just because
of its “girlyness” is a bit insulting because it doesn’t
take into account their diversity. As consumers, girls are actually
more diverse in their tastes than boys are. The early games for
girls looked as if some guy had said, “What do girls wear?
Dresses! Yeah, dresses with flowers on them!” and proceeded
to turn out a whole lot of very similar flowered dresses. If we’re
going to make girls’ games, they should have at least as much
variety as girls’ clothing does.
Most Controversial
By far the most controversial column, light-years
beyond the others, was "Reflections
on the Colorado School Massacre" It wasn’t my
take on videogames and violence that bothered people so much (I’m
against censorship and in favor of self-restraint), as it was my
asking one simple question: why it is illegal for children to drive
cars, buy alcohol, gamble, or read pornography, but it is entirely
legal in many states for them to be in possession of a firearm?
There are even places where children can buy shotguns but not spray
paint – figure that one out. But judging from the response
I got, even asking the question is tantamount to advocating the
violent overthrow of the government (although I got the impression
that a small minority of my correspondents were in favor of that,
too).
Since 1997 games have been unfairly blamed for
some truly horrendous events, though not, fortunately, September
11. People seem to be willing to take Osama bin Laden’s stated
purpose at face value, but not Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold’s.
Like Mohammed Atta and company, the Columbine murderers committed
a ghastly act of suicidal terrorism to make a point; but in their
case it was a point that struck at the very heart of our self-conception
as nice people who live in a nice country. Rather than really examine
their motives and message, it’s safer to conclude that videogames
made them do it.
The violence debate ebbs and flows depending
on how busy the politicians are with more important things. Juvenile
crime statistics have gone down; that’s good. Judge Stephen
Limbaugh of St. Louis, Missouri has determined that video games
are not protected by the First Amendment because they are incapable
of expressing ideas; that’s bad. Actually, it’s beyond
bad, it’s breathtakingly stupid. Judge Limbaugh will probably
get overturned; that’s good. Acclaim Entertainment, which
really ought to know better, has turned to selling cheesy soft porn
in a desperate bid to revive its flagging fortunes, thereby handing
the censors another stick to beat us with; that’s bad. And
so it goes. What people don’t seem to realize is that this
is a political problem as well as a legal one, and that means managing
public perceptions. Unless we want to go on fighting this battle
until we’re filing amicus briefs from the nursing home, we
really need to stop taking two steps backwards for every one step
forward. Even Doug Lowenstein, Executive Director of IDSA and our
most tireless defender, has been heard at game conferences pleading
with developers to use a little common sense.
Funniest
Laughing at one’s own jokes is bad form,
but my E-mail bears me out: “A
Letter From A Dungeon” is definitely the funniest
of all my columns. There’s something about RPG’s that
makes them ripe for parody. I think it’s because they take
themselves so everlastingly seriously, and at the same time the
gameplay is full of ludicrous conventions that we’re just
supposed to accept without question. Why is it that I can slaughter
legions of stone trolls effortlessly with my Seriously Butt-kickin’
Fire Axe of Destruction, but a locked wooden door has me completely
stymied?
RPGs have gotten bigger, richer, and longer
in the last five years, and a few of them, like Planescape: Torment,
have aspired to serious themes. This is much to be applauded, and
allows us to see a glimmer of their real potential. But for the
most part, they’re still silly sword-n-sorcery romps about
whacking anything that moves and picking up and selling anything
that sits still. If we want to see creative advancement in this
area, we’re going to have to abandon that model.
Most Prophetic
Two of my early columns, “Why
‘Online Community’ is an Oxymoron” and
“Implementing
God in the Online World” were about cheating and various
other forms of misbehavior in on-line games. Ultima Online
was in the worst throes of its player-killing problems at the time,
and had they not dealt with it decisively, the whole genre might
have died a-borning. (In fairness it has to be said that the MUD
community already had the answer, or part of it, but if the bigwigs
at Origin had experienced a significant loss of faith, MMORPGs could
have been tainted for years with the deadly label “unprofitable.”)
While no one could claim that the social problems
of MMORPGs have been completely solved, there have been advancements,
and I'm happy to see that some of the things I advocated at the
time have been adopted. I suggested that we needed some flatfoots
on the infobeat, and nowadays communities that want to maintain
a certain standard of conduct are routinely moderated to keep the
griefers out or at least stifle them every time they open their
mouths. Ultima Online now confines player-killers to areas where
they can pound on each other to their heart’s content; and
those who get their jollies beating up helpless newcomers would
be better advised to see a therapist. Likewise, in “Implementing
God” I suggested that an automated “God” responsible
for administering justice could curse misbehaving players with weakness
and other maladies; this has since been implemented in some games
under the general name of “stat loss.” I don’t
by any means claim credit for having been the first to propose these
things, but it’s nice to see that they proved to be sound.
What Next?
Well, I'm still having fun learning about cool
new ideas to put in computer games (or sometimes cool old ideas),
so I’m still scribbling in the notebook. Art, architecture,
music, literature, science, mathematics, engineering -- it's all
grist for the mill. The potential and infinite flexibility of this
amazing medium are an excellent excuse for educating myself about
all kinds of things, and that's why I keep writing it down. Thank
you for reading it. And a special thanks to those of you who have
read it, and believed in it, ever since the beginning.
1997
Dr.
Livingstone, I Presume?
Why
'On-Line Community' is an Oxymoron
1998
Not
Just Another Scary Face
Games
for Girls? Eeeeewwww!
Bad
Game Designer, No Twinkie!
Implementing
God in the On-Line World
Gulliver
and Game Design
Cartographic
Cartwheels
In
Memoriam: Danielle Berry
The
VR Gorilla-Rhino Test
A
Symmetry Lesson
Creating
Opponents for Wargames
How
to Get Started in the Game Industry: Part I
How
to Get Started in the Game Industry: Part II
1999
Interstate'76
and the Principles of Harmony
How
To Be Weird
Let’s
Put the Magic Back in Magic
Shut
Up and Design!
The
Slippery Slope of Advertising
Tolkien,
Beethoven, Vision
Simplification
Reflections
on the Colorado School Massacre
Designing
and Developing Sports Games
I
Can't Keep Up!
It's
Time to Bring Back Adventure Games
Three
Problems for Interactive Storytellers
2000
A
Letter from a Dungeon
Some
Thoughts on Archaic Language
Bad
Game Designer, No Twinkie! II
Death
(and Planescape: Torment)
Breaking
the Rules (Ernest Goes To The Movies)
Casual
versus Core
Sex
in Videogames, Part 1: Seduction
Sex
in Videogames, Part 2: Explicit Sex
Sex
in Videogames, Part 3: Dramatic Significance
Designing
Need-based AI for Virtual Gorillas
2001
Dogma
2001: A Challenge to Game Designers
Brian
Moriarty on Text RPGs and Skotos Tech
Replayability,
Part One: Narrative
Replayability,
Part 2: Game Mechanics
My
"Next" Games: Families, Psychology, and Murder
The
Day the "Fun" Became Real
2002
Designer's
Notebook: Positive Feedback
Bad
Game Designer, No Twinkie! III
Technology
Inspires Creativity: Indie Game Jam Inverts Dogma 2001!
Stop
Calling Games "Addictive"!
The
Role of Architecture in Videogames
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