I was hanging on to every word you wrote and then I came to this paragraph: "Other forms have established the answer to that question more clearly, he said. Frank Lantz and Jonathan Blow have advanced the message model of meaning, where the designer imbues the work with a meaning to be delivered to the player -- but Hecker says this is"

What does he say it is!? I NEED TO KNOW. ;)

You also might have missed a "t" in the next paragraph somewhere.

Correction: Frank and I have spoken *against* the idea of the message model of meaning, cautioning developers not to think about things that way. It is overly simplistic and tends to yield poor work.

Thanks, Jonathan - we have fixed.

Interesting. I don't really understand how you convey meaning to the player by relinquishing authorship... in doing so, you can perhaps give them freedom to create their own meaning, but I don't see how you can abdicate authorship but still preserve your method of conveying *anything* to the player.

Although thinking about Farcry 2, I think I start to get what he means - by relinquishing authorship, but having systems that are naturally predisposed to evoke certain meanings, emotion and beauty when "prodded". The authorative nature of the game is gone, and the player is free to create her own narrative, but within the context that the game provides.

With respect to the issue of "meaning" in games, I think it's easiest to consider other forms of creative work, particularly entertainment. For example, an author of a novel or director of a film may or may not have attempted to convey particular meaning in their work, but whatever the audience gets out of it is pretty much beyond their control. Good creators know this to be true and welcome feedback from audiences who experience their work. Many creators marvel at the wide variety of meanings that diverse audiences receive after experiencing a particular work.

Ultimately, I don't think it really matters whether or not game developers attempt to author specific meanings into their work because audiences will experience the work in a very individual way. Of course, there may be overlap where an individual experiences a specific meaning that was intended by creators, but that's usually due to similar psychology, life experiences, etc. In such a case, there's a mutual communication route that occurs based on shared, similar experiences and thought patterns. It doesn't happen that way universally, though, because everyone's experiences are different.

I put up my notes from the session on my blog: http://doublebuffered.com/2009/03/29/gdc09-meaning-aesthetics-and-user-generated
-content/

Remo's otherwise great summary (he seems to have understood the end better than me, heh) is missing a few research studies Hecker mentioned in the middle.

I think this whole idea of abandoning authorship is just silly. What the game designer brings to the table is what makes one game different from another. That distinct, unique voice behind every game is a part of what makes games wonderful. The fact that I can tell a Jenova Chen game from a Miyamoto from a Will Wright from a Peter Molyneux. If you get rid of that authorial voice altogether you'll end up with the equivalent of modern American journalism. Dry, joyless, completely without voice or opinion.

Modern American journalism is all about displaying a set of facts and leaving the reader to draw their own conclusions. And it makes a certain amount of sense for journalism. But that mentality, frankly, makes NO sense for video games.

Just giving us a world with no authorial voice and leaving us to come up with our own meaning will not make for an interesting or--honestly--meaningful experience.

Instead I think game developers should strive towards the same sort of synthesis you see in other forms of art. It should be a meeting of the minds between the developer and the player. When an author writes a work, he leaves a lot up to the imagination of the reader both in terms of detail and also when it comes to theme. But that doesn't mean he leaves it all up to the reader. It's about having the right ratio.

One of my favorite games is Knytt, a tiny indie game developed by Nifflas. On the one hand this game sets the player on an alien world and tasks them to explore it and find all the parts of the ship. The game's focus is on exploring the environment and experiencing the scenery of the game. In this way much of the game is indeed left up to the player. There is no text. And there is no specified order in which you need to pick up the parts of the ship.

However that doesn't mean that Nifflas does not have an authorial presence in the game. Everything from art to sound design is carefully authored to invoke feelings in the player as they explore the world. And all sorts of elements of the game's design encourage the player to explore freely, meaning that the player is being subtly directed by Nifflas to play the game in a certain way.

I remember this striking moment in the game where I reached a long, crumbling bridge, going over a body of water. On the other side I discovered a crumbling castle. It struck feelings of loneliness and gave a sense of this immense sea of time that had worn what must have once been a mighty castle down to crumbling ruins. This is a moment of synthesis. I couldn't have arrived at such meaningful emotions without Nifflas bringing something of himself in the design of the castle and indeed the ENTIRE world of the game up to that point.

The choices he made as a developer helped to create that moment. If the game was filled with enemies I would probably have been too distracted to consider the history. If the game were filled with talking characters the world wouldn't have seemed so isolated and haunting. If the music wasn't so sparse or the environmental ambient sounds more friendly, bam! A different experience. If the game weren't so focused on encouraging exploration my attention might not have been so focused on the environment.

At the end of the day it is all the choices a developer makes that allow a player to come to meaning. Blow is certainly right that developers should avoid message games. But Hecker takes it too far when he says that the developer should try to somehow remove their authorial voice from game. It's the difference between message and theme. A message is a trite, simple, meaning that is preached to the reader, viewer, listener, player. A theme, on the other hand, is a complex meaning. It is a combination of everything that happens in a work and is often multifaceted and open-ended. A theme informs everything that happens, but does not pretend to be an answer or solution. And most important of all a theme invites the participant to bring their own thoughts and experiences to that theme. It invites conversation and debate. It creates a dialog between the participant and the author.

If game developers want to find a way to make meaningful games they should focus not on avoiding authorship, but instead focus on using their authorship to create games with underlying themes (and I'm not even talking story here).