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

[Rick_D]

i think just reading up to here:

RY: All these games are based on human tragedy.

it seemed like you were on the attack, maybe i completely misinterpreted it. monday morning, grumpy, no coffee, no cigarette, rick is angry and ready to get angry about anything. mondays are the peak of my menstrual cycle.

don't change your style because of anythign i said, shit, you should probably be more agressive.

so, when will you do me? ;_;

[Skjalg]

so, when will you do me? ;_;

noone cares about pesky prop makers

[Campaignjunkie]

noone cares about pesky prop makers

[Rick_D]

hey that's pretty disrespectful.. i make some pretty good coffee too...

[e-freak]

I really liked the interview and Magnar's points.

What distracted me was the pushing (in the comments especally) at PlanetPhil. The guy runs his personal blog where he likes to go about action mods. Giving him the Wikipedia comparison or how he has to mention mods for the archieves came across really strong. I really like the radiator mods and they're featured on a lot of sites (including the one I used to write for) but repeatetly pushing at someone for not reporting on them just looks unprofessional. It's like trying to force your indie-band into the death-metal magazine.

[Campaignjunkie]

What distracted me was the pushing (in the comments especally) at PlanetPhil. The guy runs his personal blog where he likes to go about action mods. Giving him the Wikipedia comparison or how he has to mention mods for the archieves came across really strong. I really like the radiator mods and they're featured on a lot of sites (including the one I used to write for) but repeatetly pushing at someone for not reporting on them just looks unprofessional. It's like trying to force your indie-band into the death-metal magazine.

e-freak: I think discussing what PlanetPhillip "should" include, if anything at all, is important to the main point that emerged from the interview -- why are games separated into "normal" and "weird art game" when both can be interesting in their own ways? Are we just so set in these divisions? Why aren't we more inclusive and understanding of both?

I disagree with your comparison. It's more like asking a death metal magazine to cover prog metal.

[Sentura]

i really don't wanna go too much into this, but the division happens when you try to create a game with a message but without necessarily making that game fun or entertaining. it's very one sided when it should in fact contain both sides. i don't think people would have a problem with it, if it indeed contained both. but then this is just my opinion

[Rick_D]

i actually agree with sentura here, "weird art games" usually aren't entertaining, they are just weird "art". there has to be a point where something is either an experience played out through user interaction and doesn't have any real gameplay mechanics, or it's an actual game with actual mechanics that are actually fun and engaging.

i have a love hate relationship with so called indie or art games, things like Limbo or Braid which are hailed as creative masterpieces with deep storytelling and artistic gameplay. whatever, limbo is a platformer with nice atmosphere and some apalling "learn by dying" mechanics. braid is so up it's own arsehole that it forgot to have consistent mechanics and a learning curve, and opted for anything goes difficulty-wise and a learning curve more line a sine wave with a budget that would have made super mario shit his pants.

exploring mechanics is great, but how much fun would it honestly be to make a 6 hour game out of "alternative" mechanics? surely the reason games have evolved to the state they are currently in is because it's the best way to convey a story, drive gameplay forward, and sell an experience to the player. people have done some crazy shit in the past, the japanese actually made some very interesting games, and i think the ps1 had some of the most brilliantly innovative games we've ever seen, but from an end-user experience they weren't exactly the most compelling pieces of software.

long story short, the main problem i have with art games and alternative/weird mechanics is that the people who create them seem to think that games can somehow be as meaningful and deep as a medium such as painting or writing, but personally i don't think a whacky mechanic is the way to reach those goals. play through portal 2 and tell me you didn't come away moved, having experienced a wide range of emotions from sadness through to elation. surely in this case a video game has achieved the same thing a good book has done. it's used a series of quite unconventional but well presented and polished mechanics, and weaved in a story and characters in a very professional way.

do we really need a whacky loading screen or a fake BSOD to make it into an art?

[Campaignjunkie]

a game with a message but without necessarily making that game fun or entertaining.

Fun like grinding for XP? Fun like going to a bar with your friends? Fun like finger painting? I know you said "you don't want to get too much into this" but basing any value claim on an unexplained definition of fun is... lazy.

i have a love hate relationship with so called indie or art games

indie games != art games. Peri's procedural FPS is definitely indie, but I doubt he'd call it an art game.

And you think the mechanics in Braid are poorly designed? Are you kidding? I can't even tell when you're not trolling anymore... The puzzle design is fantastic. The last level is genius. The way he reuses level layouts is even more genius. No one defends the books or the text narrative though, I agree that aspect was lame. But generally when people talk about the narrative in Braid, they're talking about the level design, I think.

the main problem i have with art games and alternative/weird mechanics is that the people who create them seem to think that games can somehow be as meaningful and deep as a medium such as painting or writing

So no one should even try? There is literally no space for experimentation in this direction? And be honest, when was the last time a painting moved you? I'll confess: Portal 2 entertained me, but didn't move me. The plot structure was too transparent for me. "This is Act 1. This is exposition."

But when I played The Path? There's no gameplay, so what do I do? Okay, I'll just click on random stuff... oh crap, did I just get my character raped? My god. What the hell just happened. Was that even my fault? But the game wanted me to get raped? But that's a stupid thing for a game to want. Can a game "want" me to do something in that way? How can the game blame me for making a choice I didn't know I was making?, etc. and I find all those questions "FUN" to think about, "meaningful and deep like a painting"

After Portal 2, I had no such questions about what games are or what games could be. Therefore, Portal 2 wasn't fun or engaging. QED.

[Puddy]

imma staying outta dis

[Jetsetlemming]

The Stanley Parable had no fun gameplay but I really super enjoyed that. It was just walking down corridors and listening to a British guy talk.

[e-freak]

i was thinking about that as well - then again, the stanley parade does a lot of what you (robert) discuss in the round table. playing on player's expectations and making you think there would be "real" (action) gameplay and then leaving you with the exact opposite.

[insta]

Off topic: Thanks for interviewing me Campaignjunkie, it was a lot of fun! And I hope you guys enjoyed reading it as well!!

[Sentura]

a game with a message but without necessarily making that game fun or entertaining.

Fun like grinding for XP? Fun like going to a bar with your friends? Fun like finger painting? I know you said "you don't want to get too much into this" but basing any value claim on an unexplained definition of fun is... lazy.

fun is subjective. the point i was trying to make was that even if you do think a game is fun while having a message, the masses (i.e., me and everyone else) may not necessarily think so as well. games should be focused on the player's experience rather than the designer's intended experience, and for this, you need people from all over the bell curve to playtest.

[BaRRaKID]

games should be focused on the player's experience rather than the designer's intended experience

I think that's the main point, most artsy games are more about the developer than the player, and most of them are really pushy about it, and get offended when you question them.

It's a bit like musicians who ask the listeners not to skip songs from their albums, saying that the album should be experienced the way they intended it to be, but in reality the album should be experienced the way I want it to be, if I want to skip a song that I don't appreciate (maybe it brings back bad memories, maybe it doesn't fit my current mood, or maybe I think it breaks the flow of the album, etc...), I will do it, and I don't care.