[What's the point of designing games? Veteran educator and designer Ernest Adams examines the concepts of fun, enjoyment, and personal fulfillment to reveal the key, uplifting tenets of game creation.]
The Japanese language uses suffixes to modify the word that
precedes them. Two of these suffixes are -do
and -jutsu. The -do ending means "the way of..." whatever it is
modifying, while the -jutsu ending
means "the skills (or methods, or techniques) of..."
Consider the
words jujutsu and judo. They refer to two different
approaches to a particular martial art, a form of unarmed hand-to-hand combat
that concentrates on grappling, pinning, and throwing. Jujutsu is the older and
more brutal form, intended for lethal combat. Judo is a sport that derived from
jujutsu.
When appended to the name of a martial art such as judo, the
-do ending refers to a philosophy
behind the art -- a set of values that are intended to guide the combatant in
the proper use of the jutsu, or
techniques, of battle. The Japanese word do
is cognate with the Chinese word tao,
which also means "way" or "path", and also connotes a mental
or moral discipline rather than a purely practical collection of rules.
It seems to me as if this distinction could apply equally
well to game design. Game design has many jutsu,
and these are well-known. Challenge, growth, choices, balance, pacing,
novelty, surprise, risk/reward, social interaction, storytelling, creative play
-- all these are techniques we use for creating entertainment. But what values
guide our use of these jutsu? What is
the tao of game design?
The first answer that the novice will give, undoubtedly, is "give
the player fun." I've already explained why fun is too limited a concept
on which to base a medium as powerful as ours, so I won't bother to do so
again. Broaden the idea of fun a little and you get enjoyment.
But I find even enjoyment
is too restrictive. Broaden it further, and we come to entertainment. For the most part, we want to give the player
entertainment -- whether it's pure fun or some more complex kind of experience.
Video game design is not analogous to martial arts, however.
In martial arts the goal is always victory, and victory is precisely defined --
the death or submission of the enemy, or his defeat according to a system of
rules adjudicated by referees. Different jutsu will lead to victory over
different kinds of enemies, but victory is defined the same way no matter who
the enemy is.
That's not true for entertainment, because different people
like to be entertained in different ways. They enjoy doing different things,
they like to face different challenges, and they like to experience different
emotions.
The tao of game design cannot be "give the player entertainment,"
because there are no rules about how to entertain everyone. Let's look at it
another way.
Most art forms (painting, dance, music, film, theater,
literature and so on) are purely expressive. The artist expresses; the audience
observes. The audience may also contemplate, criticize, interpret, applaud, or
reject the art, but the one thing they cannot do is change it.
Video games aren't like that. They're interactive. The
player and the designer collaborate to create the experience that the player
will have. The designer has most of the power, of course: she constructs the
world, establishes the actions available to the player, and defines the goals
towards which he will strive.
And yet in spite of the designer's pre-eminent
role, the game is nothing without the player. A video game that nobody plays is
an empty thing, a mere collection of machine code. To be meaningful, the game
must be played.
In fact, the game doesn't really exist until it is played. By convention we refer to the
software as "the game," but in truth, the software is not the game.
The game is the act of playing. It comes into existence when the player starts
up the software and crosses into the magic circle.