"Level with Me", my level design interview series at RPS

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    RY: But why? Intellectually, I agree with you, but when I was in the class I was so angry, like, “no, that’s bullshit, you need to have a reason or else it was total luck that you finished a book with any degree of success.”

    interesting. i think you should read soem kerouac, and his style of prose. i get the constant feeling that for you everything must have some kind of deeper hidden meaning, or that everything must be designed in a certain way or it cannot possibly even be designed at all. great songs, great books, great games and mechanics have all been created out of pure luck, just doing what felt right, experimenting and creating and enjoying the process. this whole search for a deeper meaning will erode creativity rather than develop it.

    Quote from Campaignjunkie

    Sentura: Honestly I don't care to watch the video either. Can you tell me the point, briefly?

    He makes a very detailed and reasoned breakdown of Megaman 1 and X, to show how they teach the player without explicitly telling the player anything, and how X sets up the theme and goal of the game by having an unwinnable boss fight ended by Zero saving you at the end of the first level.

    Quote from Campaignjunkie

    I agree with a lot of your reasoning, but then your conclusions are totally unrelated.

    I agree that I may have derailed my conclusions when you look at it like this. But remember that it came down from a line of discussion where you said that "The message of Bioshock is that you should murder people with weapons and magic powers". I just wanted to make very clear that there is room for a game's message to go beyond the gameplay, as such Gameplay =/= message.

    Quote from Campaignjunkie

    Here's September 12th. You can argue whether this is an art game or a bad game or whatever -- but it's a game

    I disagree. September 12th is a toy. A very focused toy with very defined rules, but it is not measuring my success other then the ones I impose myself by interacting with it. Some can say Sim City is a toy, but the game does end if you run out of money. There is a game over, there is a way to lose, it is a game. But then... September 12th is a toy where we'll invariably and involuntarily set ourselves the goal of eliminating the Terrorists and preserving the innocents, so it is a toy that pushes the boundaries so far that it blurs with a game, and is a game so lose in it's presentation that it is a toy. There is no challenge (you always lose) and there is no game over or rules. It is not a toy, nor is it a game.

    Quote from Campaignjunkie

    Music is not a game. An MP3 doesn't care whether I listen to it or not, it is dead data sitting on a hard drive. In contrast, games have processes. Games are alive.

    I never said music is a game. I said that music can be a game, and perhaps it'll push the boundaries so hard that it stops being music!

    Quote from Campaignjunkie

    Or are you arguing that games don't have messages at all?

    Again, I only said Gameplay =/= message to illustrate that a game can have a much more detailed message than "The message of HL2 is that you should kill soldiers and monsters, and use the gravity gun to hit people with toilets." And even if that was the case, that would still be the message. All I'm saying is that, barring Tetris, Tic-Tac-Toe or blockout, a games message can't be entirely taken from it's gameplay alone.

    Quote from Rick_D

    This whole search for a deeper meaning will erode creativity rather than develop it.

    Was my gripe with some of the documents that where handled to me on Ubisoft, like they wanted to create a structured system to create innovative and balanced gameplay with a broad appeal by dissecting Nintendo hit games like Super Mario. It would be like ripping Rick limb by limb and spreading his insides and brain matter on a plate to try and understand his entertainingly irky attitudes.

    Innovation comes from doing what you know how to do over and over again until you reach that moment where you created something unmistakably brilliant. I see many wanna-be and aspiring game designers wanting to start out by doing the most awesome and innovative games possible, when they should first learn how to make a decent average game. Who knows, in the process of creating the average, you may find brilliance. But most times if you set your goal to be innovation and brilliance, you'll most likely fall behind and end up with and unfinished and unpolished piece of crappy unrealized non-potential.

    Edit: Whenever I go do a presentation anywhere in Brazil about game design and production I cite the example of Dice, due to the extremely widespread awesomeness that Battlefield 3 is. In 1992 they released Pinball Dreams. Ten years later, they released the first Battlefield game and almost 20 years from then, finally Battlefield 3: the biggest bad-assest game for the biggest largest enormous publisher. Go make your Pinball Dreams, Diva Starz: Mall Mania and Shrek games before you try and make something as innovative as Battlefield 1942. Who knows 20 years from now you'll be making the biggest bad-assest game for the biggest largest enormous publisher around

    Quote from Rick_D

    i get the constant feeling that for you everything must have some kind of deeper hidden meaning, or that everything must be designed in a certain way or it cannot possibly even be designed at all. great songs, great books, great games and mechanics have all been created out of pure luck, just doing what felt right, experimenting and creating and enjoying the process. this whole search for a deeper meaning will erode creativity rather than develop it.

    [Blocked Image: http://s3.amazonaws.com/kym-assets/photos/images/masonry/000/106/799/images.jpeg?1318992465]

    Really great article today again

    I liked these two replies, cause they pretty much summed up this thread:

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    If that’s how she writes books, that’s her individual process. She talks with friends and things come up, and it comes together, and she does something.[...]At certain points in my life – I wasn’t depressed, but I was struggling with answers. In the end, I decided I should just pull the “dispense food and chill out” lever instead of the “shock me and be paralyzed by thought” lever. I’m going to do what leads to being happy instead of being intellectually satisfied.

    on how not everything has to be artistic and idealistic, sometimes it can be just get food and have fun.

    Quote

    RY: I thought the same: reactions were my reward. Then I talked to an indie dev who questioned the “personal value” angle, as if to say, “You had privilege and could afford to mod instead of work. You didn’t earn your voice.” I feel guilty. That’s what I’m facing now, that I’m not authentic.

    and your own quote: there's a difference of releasing an art-mod, which players like for two reasons: it's great and they didn't have to pay for it. The first one is something the modder earned (that the mod is received as a great, fun work). The second is something why even if everyone in here would agree on games being to mindless or not telling proper stories, we would still be doing them, because they pay the bills. Super Meatboy is a fun game and it for sure doesn't tell a very artsy story. But after years of work it payed the bills because it was fun and appealed to paying customers. In the end, as much as it sucks for artistic freedom or what ever, financial success is what you need to achieve. And a Call of Duty with stale story, stale gameplay and awesome explosions just pays better than any art game.

    i'm constantly getting the impression that trying to define what games are and what they aren't isn't a proper way to go. i have a class on exactly this at uni, and i'm getting pissed at the lecturer every time i'm there. speaking from a strictly pragmatic point of view, there isn't any reason to have an ontology for this. what does it matter what games are? why should we care? it's not like the cure for cancer is embedded in the field of game studies and we must search rigorously to uncover it. it seems that these "game scholars" are much more inclined to argue definitions relentlessly than actually coming up with discoveries that are of use somewhere in the real world; and honestly, this is where i lose all respect for game studies.

    on the other hand, the right kind of analysis can bring about better games, in terms of immersion, message, inspiration, gameplay and so on. so there are topics that should be discussed feverishly, but i'm still thinking that these topics have very little, if anything, to do with game studies. you want to know the formula for immersion? take a look at a psychological perspective of how events are understood. message? literary theory. inspiration? artistry. gameplay? game design. these are all large fields of study that we haven't fully understood or researched, yet we're arrogant enough to build a new field of study on top called game studies? please.

    Quote from Sentura

    on the other hand, the right kind of analysis can bring about better games, in terms of immersion, message, inspiration, gameplay and so on. so there are topics that should be discussed feverishly, but i'm still thinking that these topics have very little, if anything, to do with game studies. you want to know the formula for immersion? take a look at a psychological perspective of how events are understood. message? literary theory. inspiration? artistry. gameplay? game design. these are all large fields of study that we haven't fully understood or researched, yet we're arrogant enough to build a new field of study on top called game studies? please.

    You are onto somethig. However, never forget that the sum off the parts is bigger then it's components. Properly acknowledging what this sum of parts is is as important as being able to focus on its elements.

    Movies - narrative, plot, photography, acting

    Painting - color theory, composition, subject

    Games - game design, narrative, technical realization

    Still, I agree with you.

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