4 Things a Game is NOT
Understanding the Game Design Grammar — PART 1/3
“If we are to produce works worthy to be termed “art”, we must start to think about what it takes to do so, to set ourselves goals beyond the merely commercial. For we are embarked on a voyage of revolutionary import: the democratic transformation of the arts. Properly addressed, the voyage will lend grandeur to our civilization; improperly, it will create merely another mediocrity of the TV age, another form wholly devoid of intellectual merit.”
Greg Costikyan — Game Designer and Science Fiction Writer
How we analyze games as Game Designers?
How we understand them?…
…what works?
What makes them interesting?
To answer those questions we need identify which is Game's LANGUAGE.
What a Game is Not
1. It’s Not a Puzzle
- Puzzles are STATIC, they present the “player” a logic structure to be solved.
- Games, by contrast, are NOT STATIC, they change with the player’s actions.
According to Game Designer Chris Crawford some “games” a really just puzzles. For example: point and click graphic adventure games. This kind of games sole objective is the solution of puzzles: finding objects and using them In a particular way to cause desire changes in the game-state. There is no opposition, there is no role-playing and there are no resources to manage: victory is solely a consequence of puzzle solving. If Crossword is 100% puzzle, point and click graphic adventure games are 90% puzzle and 10% game.
A puzzle is static. A game is interactive.
2. It’s not a Toy
According to Will Right, his Sim City is NOT a game at all, but a Toy.
- Toys are element that offers Interesting behaviors which you may explorer. Sim City provides no objective, no victory conditions, no goals; it’s a software toy.
Toys could be part of a game without losing their qualities (a ball can be thrown, bounced, twirled, and became part of basketball game with their victory conditions, goals and objectives.
A Toy is interactive. But a Game has goals.
3. It’s not a Story
- Stories are inherently linear.
- The outcome of a story can’t be changed
- Characters, events and situations are fixed.
- Games are inherently non-linear.
- Depends on decision-making.
- Decisions have to pose real, plausible alternatives, or they aren’t real decisions.
- If you make a game more like a story –more linear, fewer real options- you make it LESS like a game.
Gaming is NOT about telling stories. They borrow elements of fiction to define meaningful decisions for the player to make.
Stories are Linear. Games are NOT.
4. It Demands Participation
Game provide a set of rules; but players use them to create their own consequences.
- Traditional art forms play to a passive audience.
- Game require active participation.
The designers provide the theme, the player the Music.
