Must Gamers be Cynics?
Posted in Game Design on July 27th, 2009 by Rafael
Greg Costikyan is an idealistic game designer and critic who has been trying¹ to foster innovation in computer games since 2000. Back in 1994 he wrote a famous² game design theory essay: I Have No Words & I Must Design, with which I mostly agree… but I’m going to take a bit of it out of context and pick on it anyway. Here’s the quote:
If the game has more than one ‘resource,’ decisions suddenly become more complex[...] If I declare against the Valois, Edward Plantagenet will grant me the Duchy of Gascony, but the Pope may excommunicate me, imperilling my immortal soul.
These are not just complex decisions; these are interesting ones. Interesting decisions make for interesting games.
The resources in question have to have a game role; if ‘your immortal soul’ has no meaning, neither does excommunication[...]. Ultimately, ‘managing resources’ means managing game elements in pursuit of your goal. A ‘resource’ that has no game role has nothing to contribute to success or failure, and is ultimately void.
Costikyan is 100% right that dilemmas are interesting, but are the only interesting dilemmas game-mechanical? Well, when it comes to the current state of computer games, yes. “Hard core” players separate the game’s mechanics (e.g. the way the chess pieces move) from its “colour” (the pieces’ shapes and names) very quickly, and ignore the latter. But does it have to be this way? I say no! There are other ways to play. In a game that engages the player’s emotions — in particular a role-playing game in its true sense, in which the player strongly identifies with the character she controls – “colour” can dominate game-mechanics in the subjective play experience. Emotionally loaded decisions are interesting even if they do not affect your progress towards a goal — in fact, especially if they don’t: if the cowboy in the white hat accepted the reward for killing the bandits, he’d be a mercenary, not a hero³. Moral decisions become especially interesting if being virtuous actually makes the game harder.
The emotional impact of decisions increases if the game world reacts to them. For example, the quartermaster in Deus Ex reacts disapprovingly if the player decides to massacre all enemies in the first mission, although that is a game mechanically acceptable victory. Such reactions require a light touch to avoid becoming puerile and a lot of cleverness to avoid being very expensive (since the game developers must determine what behaviours they want to measure, how to measure them, and how to make the world react to them), but even in rudimentary form they are hugely rewarding for some players.
¹ And so far, alas, failing. In 2000, he hoped cell phone games, being cheap to make, were going to become a fountain of creativity. In fact, because potential players just see lists of titles (rather than demos or even a box blurb), licensing tie-ins or massive marketing are even more essential than in the “classic” games industry.
² “Famous” in a tiny niche of game design snobs, anyway.
³ Mercenary attitudes can be emotionally involving too, of course, but if they have no hidden heart, they get dull fast.
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