Playdom's Raph Koster is one of the veteran game designers who joined the social gaming space after building a legacy in traditional online game development, most prominently leading Ultima Online. But although he expresses "cautious optimism" in the new landscape, he also says there's something of a sense of loss.
Most concerns about the blending of gaming with social media hinge on obsessions with ideas that metrics or social design will somehow corrupt the purity of games, but Koster says that designers should be more concerned about the bleed-out of once-private ideas into the popular realm.
"We should be aware that ultimately we're the ones that should be in the driver's seat," Koster tells Gamasutra about the traditional designer's role in the highly-trendy app and Facebook landscape. "In the end there isn't any better-qualified, better-adapted group of people to help shape this kind of world than game developers. It's the environment we've chosen to live in."
"We're talking about this like these two worlds are in collision, or one is swallowing the other... but once upon a time newspapers were 'social media', poems were 'social media.' Games were born social media," Koster emphasizes.
Thus in some ways the proliferation of games, gamified apps and social play across networks "brings games back closer to their roots," he reflects.
Koster has always viewed games as social, having worked in the online space for the great majority of his career, and on group-oriented board games before that. To him, they've always been social. "No doubt I feel a sense of loss over the kind of qualities I think the market is shifting away from," he acknowledges.
"I feel a sense of loss over mystery... I feel a loss over immersion. I loved... playing long, intricate, complex, narrative-driven games, and I've drifted away from playing them, and the whole market has drifted away from playing them too," Koster says. "I think the trend lines are away from that kind of thing."
Lest people surmise Koster no longer himself loves or believes in such things, he's emphatic -- rather, the loss he describes is a result of a changing market and an evolving audience.
"To me, it feels like how opera fans must have felt when people first showed them their first primitive movies," he suggests. "The world is moving on. I feel that sense of loss, but at the same time, I'm excited by the new canvas."
Only in this era does someone who loves game design as much as Koster have the opportunity to create for millions of simultaneous players. "Things like that would have been outright impossible [before]... so part of me goes, 'well, I'm losing the opera-style game, but I'm gaining something else that we've never had before.' It's very exciting to me as a designer."
"Another way to think of it is, we always said games would be the art form of the 21st century: Gamers will all grow up and take over the world, and we're at that moment now," he continues. "It's all come true -- but the dragons and the robots didn't come with us, they stayed behind."
Yet in plenty of ways this loss isn't even about social games, Koster believes. "We're losing some of our most cherished things -- and honestly, we already had. The more big business we got, the more that got replaced by women in too-little clothes, or guys that all look the same and have bullet-heads and everybody's dressed in green and brown."
In light of the increasingly risk-averse and market-researched nature of traditional games, the increasing size of the mainstream audience has been something of a boon. "If you'd asked someone in 1998 whether there could be hit games about cooking, fashion design... a guy running over roofs, [as in Canabalt], still there's an element of a broader frame of reference, a broader aesthetic there."
And while he himself is a big science fiction fan, Koster says that a wider frame of reference is "incredibly exciting" for games that can be about all kinds of things now, beyond the expected. "We lose something, but we gain something that is potentially bigger," he reflects.
"It's a mixed feeling that I have; that's how it's changed me," Koster continues. "I always said I wanted to make games that ordinary people could love and enjoy, but in practice I was still working inside of this little box. I think the world still shows us that these ordinary people... don't love the dragon and the zombie on the box, necessarily, but they can love games. That's pretty awesome to see, and that's the thing I try to spend more time thinking about now."
OK, I see what he is feeling in loss, however, "an end is another endings beginning."
So in simple terms, how do you put 'Game' into the coming Social Media of tomorrow? What Golden Age are we at the gate of and how do we grasp it and own it?
As children we played hide and go seek in our backyards. In high school, we had cars with CB radios and hide and seek was limited then to the city we lived in. Where can the MMORPG and other interactions progress with the new advancements?
Don't dwell too long on the 'loss'. Learn from it and make something even better.
I recently made the point to folks at an internal session here at Playdom that once upon a time, people dying on the field of play was an expected and normal part of games. Things that we once considered essential to games drift in and out of fashion.
So I mourn the gradual loss of deep immersion and the trappings of geekery that I love, sure. But stuff changes.
I think that the great opportunity is to actually seize the opportunity here, which is to make games be the core entertainment medium of the century. We have always talked big about their potential. Well, now we have the audience. We are starting to get the breadth of reference, the emotional subtlety, the understanding of our craft, which enables us to fulfill that promise.
We'll need to reach accommodation with the business realities. But in the long run, the biggest entertainment media in history did so by managing to be both commercial AND artful. Artfulness drives passion, which drives long-term value for customers, and therefore makes business sense.
FWIW, I am actually fairly optimistic about this. I think we as a community do indeed have the tools to meet this challenge.
What is the point of being in control of the ship if you can't steer it (where you want)? You're saying that "WE" should be out front because otherwise "THEY" will. Why? It doesnt matter who's in command if you're still going to allow the ship to head over a waterfall.
Honestly I'm not seeing the difference between social games and casual games from ten years ago. Both brought with them the fear that these more banal games will somehow undermine the core market; both had their boosters saying that the world was changing and all these people were playing these games now and the core market would just have to get used to the idea. Both had their audience get sophisticated a bit more quickly than everyone expected.
Maybe he means we ought to look at the situation differently. For the most part we look at games as entertainment, and by that I mean a sort of escapism we're thankful for. You gotta turn a profit doing that too, because it's an incredible amount of work to make a game that reaches people.
Things are different, now. We can see things we couldn't before with analytics on social graphs. It can be a sort of evil in a naive sense, because you can use them to profit madly on games we previously saw as "shitty" and they aren't the sort of games most game developers like to play (or make.) That's a very important thing to know, these things can be evil, but it's not the most important thing. The main point is that it works, and there are logical conclusions to be drawn from the fact that it works.
I'm guessing Ralph is very frustrated because even the people he works with (who should understand best) by and large do not realize what he sees. He's a bigshot, and so he needs to be cautious, but I'm essentially a no-body so I can be a bit more aggressive in my predictions and claims. Perhaps I am catching is drift here.
There is now an incredible power to be wielded through games, and it means a creative force over players never before known. It's an outstanding assertion, but I do not mean to be hyperbolic here. It's something that spans many disciplines all surrounding games that most players and developers don't consider, but he's right at the top of the mount in the middle. All this talk of "gamification" (sp?) and the success (11.5bn in 4 years) of an "analytics company masquerading as a game company" is evidence, but really only tremors.
I'm talking about things going so far as paying certain players actual currency. Creating mechanics within the game that do economically constructive work. Educating players, not just in terms of tutorializing them, but actually the sorts of things we normally consider education. Socializing them and improving their relationships. Politics. Propaganda. Instead of delving into the world and simulating it within a computer, or conjuring up an imaginary scenario that allow people the pleasure of acting out their instincts, now finally projecting things through the lens of the players and game into the world at large.
Crazy? Ask yourself if media has been doing this already.
It's a juncture at which the definition can be changed. An inflection point in the trend where the ideas of social and games are gathering connectivity at an exponential rate. AND (as it ultimately still comes down to this being able to eat while making games) you can put it on a graph where the line points up towards dollars and massive stores of information that actually comes true.
To compare casual games from ten years ago to social games now is possibly ignoring what's NOT within the game. I don't think you can look at this moment now in isolation and have any idea whats going on, you have to look both back and forwards to see the whole landscape and where things are very quickly going.
It's this step into social that finally gives games the reach into every laptop, cellphone, thin client holding mindshare who's very attention is held now quietly playing our games. We've got their attention. We have tools and options unlike ever before. What shall we have them do?
I feel a sense of loss, as well. Loss for the game developers of yesteryear who created game worlds out of love for the game, rather than following current social trends. Sure, people are using Twitter and Facebook. That doesn't mean that just has to automatically be rolled into the gaming industry.
The fact it, Mr. Koster, your company sees a swelling demographics that can be tapped for profit, and you're simply one of the talking heads propped up to help make it happen.
You've sold your gaming soul. Forgive me if I pass on the social media frenzy and just dance with the one what brought me.
I equate today's light social games more with the games I played in the video arcade back in the day. They were quick, easy games with only a sprinkling of story. The compulsion loop was having only 10 seconds to put in another quarter to keep playing. Had those games stayed around a while longer, we would have come up with more sophisticated ways to keep the player. Now the platform has shifted, and the compulsion loops are better, that's all.
In 1983 you could choose between Joust, or D&D. Now you can choose Cityville or Skyrim -- or both.
So in simple terms, how do you put 'Game' into the coming Social Media of tomorrow? What Golden Age are we at the gate of and how do we grasp it and own it?
As children we played hide and go seek in our backyards. In high school, we had cars with CB radios and hide and seek was limited then to the city we lived in. Where can the MMORPG and other interactions progress with the new advancements?
Don't dwell too long on the 'loss'. Learn from it and make something even better.
So I mourn the gradual loss of deep immersion and the trappings of geekery that I love, sure. But stuff changes.
I think that the great opportunity is to actually seize the opportunity here, which is to make games be the core entertainment medium of the century. We have always talked big about their potential. Well, now we have the audience. We are starting to get the breadth of reference, the emotional subtlety, the understanding of our craft, which enables us to fulfill that promise.
We'll need to reach accommodation with the business realities. But in the long run, the biggest entertainment media in history did so by managing to be both commercial AND artful. Artfulness drives passion, which drives long-term value for customers, and therefore makes business sense.
FWIW, I am actually fairly optimistic about this. I think we as a community do indeed have the tools to meet this challenge.
That's just my opinion, however.
What is the point of being in control of the ship if you can't steer it (where you want)? You're saying that "WE" should be out front because otherwise "THEY" will. Why? It doesnt matter who's in command if you're still going to allow the ship to head over a waterfall.
I think things will be fine.
Things are different, now. We can see things we couldn't before with analytics on social graphs. It can be a sort of evil in a naive sense, because you can use them to profit madly on games we previously saw as "shitty" and they aren't the sort of games most game developers like to play (or make.) That's a very important thing to know, these things can be evil, but it's not the most important thing. The main point is that it works, and there are logical conclusions to be drawn from the fact that it works.
I'm guessing Ralph is very frustrated because even the people he works with (who should understand best) by and large do not realize what he sees. He's a bigshot, and so he needs to be cautious, but I'm essentially a no-body so I can be a bit more aggressive in my predictions and claims. Perhaps I am catching is drift here.
There is now an incredible power to be wielded through games, and it means a creative force over players never before known. It's an outstanding assertion, but I do not mean to be hyperbolic here. It's something that spans many disciplines all surrounding games that most players and developers don't consider, but he's right at the top of the mount in the middle. All this talk of "gamification" (sp?) and the success (11.5bn in 4 years) of an "analytics company masquerading as a game company" is evidence, but really only tremors.
I'm talking about things going so far as paying certain players actual currency. Creating mechanics within the game that do economically constructive work. Educating players, not just in terms of tutorializing them, but actually the sorts of things we normally consider education. Socializing them and improving their relationships. Politics. Propaganda. Instead of delving into the world and simulating it within a computer, or conjuring up an imaginary scenario that allow people the pleasure of acting out their instincts, now finally projecting things through the lens of the players and game into the world at large.
Crazy? Ask yourself if media has been doing this already.
It's a juncture at which the definition can be changed. An inflection point in the trend where the ideas of social and games are gathering connectivity at an exponential rate. AND (as it ultimately still comes down to this being able to eat while making games) you can put it on a graph where the line points up towards dollars and massive stores of information that actually comes true.
To compare casual games from ten years ago to social games now is possibly ignoring what's NOT within the game. I don't think you can look at this moment now in isolation and have any idea whats going on, you have to look both back and forwards to see the whole landscape and where things are very quickly going.
It's this step into social that finally gives games the reach into every laptop, cellphone, thin client holding mindshare who's very attention is held now quietly playing our games. We've got their attention. We have tools and options unlike ever before. What shall we have them do?
The fact it, Mr. Koster, your company sees a swelling demographics that can be tapped for profit, and you're simply one of the talking heads propped up to help make it happen.
You've sold your gaming soul. Forgive me if I pass on the social media frenzy and just dance with the one what brought me.
In 1983 you could choose between Joust, or D&D. Now you can choose Cityville or Skyrim -- or both.