Some very nice people seem to think that game design looks like this:
I submit that the actual situation looks a lot more like this...
Wednesday, February 08, 2012
the shape of game design
Some very nice people seem to think that game design looks like this:
I submit that the actual situation looks a lot more like this...
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Well there goes my Earth, Wind, and Fire: The Funkening RPG idea...
ReplyDeleteunless you want to join with my P-funk/Cthulhu crossover idea?
DeleteThis made me laugh.
DeleteCthulhu... from the motha ship... comin atcha.
DeleteI'm in.
Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds is the first and greatest example of Cthulhufunk. There should be more. Now you've reminded me of Hezbollah! The game where the forces of Rock fight back the inexorable tide of Disco...
DeleteZak has a substantive point. Please excuse my drunken ramblings. More generally, yes to roads still, inexplicably, not travelled.
I would PLAY THE HELL out of that game.
DeleteWell put. I'd add a 'yet', for 'those roads not yet taken', to recognise that it's less about past roads than all the roads, in that a new work that looks old is still new. The overall point - that 'old school' doesn't necessarily mean the old - is also a good reason to reconsider the 'OS' in 'OSR'.
ReplyDeleteIn my head it's more like:
ReplyDeleteOriginal Version --> Objectively Worse Version --> Objectively Worse Version --> Pablum.
agreed
DeleteAnd yet game design so often seems much more pear shaped.
ReplyDeleteI think that the first model is not quite an accurate representation of the underlying assumption that newer means better which is itself based on late 19th and early 20th century ideas of unlimited progress. Interestingly, it is a notion that is still very much with us but under names like "Continuous Quality Improvement," a doctrine that presumes you can always make something better than it is currently. A Platonic Ideal, having no need of improvement, cannot necessarily exist remaining unattainable or the premise of the entire system breaks down.
ReplyDelete-yell0w_lantern
I'm trying to figure out where you disagree with me. "A Platonic Ideal, having no need of improvement, cannot necessarily exist" was part of my point.
DeleteIt's pretty simple:
ReplyDeleteComputer game design is based on computer game technology.
Computer game technology objectively gets better (i.e. it can do everything you used to be able to do plus more) so there are video games that can take advantage of that technology.
Then (some) people draw a false analogy between video game design and the design of art and leisure products which don't depend on evolving underlying technologies.
However:
Some 4e fans seem to be saying something different: that the newest game is simply more familiar acceptable to the current audience, not that it is objectively better.
That may be true, take it or leave it as to whether that matters.
"Some 4e fans seem to be saying something different: that the newest game is simply more familiar acceptable to the current audience, not that it is objectively better."
DeleteYeah. But that argument applied 35 years ago would leave us all playing OD&D. I'm down for that but I doubt they are. Furthermore, shouldn't we assume that every new edition is about broadening the audience of the game? Selling more copies than the previous edition seems like a pretty obvious goal for the folks at WotC.
Like I said: take it or leave it as to whether that matters.
DeleteI just don't like seeing a (bullshit, indefensible) argument made by Fourbie jerks about "quality" lumped in with a (perhaps good perhaps not) argument made by reasonable Fourbies about accessibility.
I propose the Fourbie jerks to be pushed to the same pit where live all those AD&D Firstie jerks who insisted that dwarf or elf as class is ridiculous. Then celebrate in ewok yub yub festival, though those who tell me Mentzer set ain't the bestest thing ever don't get cake.
Delete"Furthermore, shouldn't we assume that every new edition is about broadening the audience of the game?"
DeleteInsofar as that is true, WotC's motives are in conflict with the current players'. Obviously, if something is just broken, it should be fixed or removed. But some changes are going to be good for the newbies but bad for the experienced players. e.g. Hand-holding.
Also, (I hope) the people in charge of making decisions about the game at WotC are themselves players, and it's always tough to design things well if you yourself wouldn't appreciate them. It's hard enough to make good decisions about things you think you *would* like, as opposed to realizing that you liked something that was new.
I think you left out the curly-Q lines and the arrows that have 17 heads all in opposite directions, but yeah - the second diagram is far more accurate. :)
ReplyDelete- Ark
Jeff had a horrible encounter with a Lernean Hydiagram once, and limits the number of arrow-heads accordingly
DeleteThere are, imho, three schools of (roleplaying) game design.
ReplyDeleteSchool 1 is that of The Corporate Structure. Here the goal is to develop a marketable game and sell as many copies of it as possible. Once sale drops, develop a new marketable game and sell as many copies of it as possible. Rinse/repeat.
School 2 is that of The Independent Game Developer. The ruling principle here is to make a kickass game that people will hopefully love.
School 3 is that of The Basement Gamer. The goal here is either the same as in School 2, or to improve a system developed by School 1 or 2.
School 2 and 3 have graph #1 in mind - some even believe it describes what they're doing. All schools are best described by graph #2, with amendments Ark suggested.
I think you are proposing an ontology of rpgs...very interesting!
ReplyDeleteActually I think real science looks very much like your second pic. We make a hypothesis, find it faulty, shift around everything we thought we knew etc.
ReplyDeleteThe first pic is less like science than like ideology. Like saying we are better than Neanderthal just because we are more modern. Well, probably not as good at taking a fall as them etc. etc.
Perhaps I'm sheltered, but I've never met _anyone_ who'd do anything but giggle at the first diagram.
ReplyDeleteWell, it seems to be implicit in the kind of folks who think the next edition of a game would be perfect if only they implemented the following changes...
DeleteCan you go and repost this into G+ so I can just hit '+1' instead of having to type this response? Thanks.
ReplyDelete...
Ok, nevermind.
This cannot be repeated often enough. I am so tired of hearing the diagram 1 nonsense.
ReplyDeleteI'd also add that BOTH of these diagrams are proposed based on CORPORATE game design principles. The COMPANY wants to put out "even better versions" so it can MAKES TEH $$$$ to continue to make the "even better, better version," etc.
ReplyDeleteBut once the COMPANY releases their "better version," the PLAYERS take over and create their own versions of the "roads not taken."
There seems to be this mentality that once the "new & improved" versions are released (and the old versions are not available to purchase) that every customer will embrace the "new & improved" version.
But pen-and-paper RPGs aren't computer games, where, as Zak S. pointed out, the technology allows you to do new things. And even then, just because my computer is obsolete doesn't mean it can no longer play the games it played before it was cast on the technological wayside (and, indeed, with the rise of emulation, many old games are living on a fairly long time).
The real CORPORATE problem is that many large game companies treat pen-and-paper RPGs like a perishable good--once it's old, it's no good any more, so you have to buy another one. Or, once it's used up, you have to buy another one. But p&p RPGs aren't soap or a carton of milk. They don't get used up, and they don't go bad--they're infinitely shelf-stable.
I'd go back to Jeff's D&D-as-band idea and repurpose the life cycle of a band for my model of game design.
ReplyDelete1: "Wow, this is new. I like it." (OD&D)
2: Expansion/exploration of new ideas (OD&D+GH)
3: Difficult 3rd album (AD&D)
4: Return to roots (B/X)
5: Variations on a theme in a well-ploughed furrow, often with *shudder* double or triple concept albums (Mentzer, 2E)
6: Slide into irrelevance and "Yeah, they used to be cool once"-ness (2.5)
7: Retro-revival, either on the strength of grassroots touring or when picked up by a new distributor (3E)
8: Start to believe their own hype again. (3.5)
9: Experiments with trendy electronica/mash-ups, either under Enotic influence or to prove they're still down with the kids. Also, cracking down on fan bootlegs as they 'steal from real creators'. (4E)
10: Realise fanbase alienation hurts sales. Release Greatest Hits album and promise to return to touring... (5E)
Yep, all the rigour of Sickboy's "You have it, then you lose it" theory of excellence in "Trainspotting"...
I think there's a partial flaw here, because the reality is the "roads not taken" are the "roads taken by some other publisher", especially if we're talking early RPGs and their offspring. Evolution involves speciation and diversification, not just a single line leading from amoeba to man. (I misspelled "amoeba" originally; my spell check suggested both the correct spelling and "Obama". Is my spellchecker Republican?)
ReplyDeleteThe "roads not taken" as D&D evolved into AD&D, BECMI, 3e, and 4e, were taken by Chivalry and Sorcery, by Rolemaster, by Tunnels and Trolls, by Palladium (well, it didn't so much take another road as scrape out a dirt path paralleling D&D and then running into a canyon from which it never escaped, but that's another issue), and by dozens of much less successful efforts. It's why I refer to the 70s era as the Burgess Shale of RPGs... an era filled with wild experimentation and uniquely insane creations that mostly died out, leaving all existing species of game the descendants of the few survivors.
"I think there's a partial flaw here, because the reality is the "roads not taken" are the "roads taken by some other publisher"
DeleteSome of those roads are taken by other publishers. I believe that many more are lurking in that Shale.
Honestly, I am not sure there are that many new ways to figure out if you hit the orc[1]. I'm happy to be proven wrong, though. I'd rather see more original material built on existing systems, or retro-systems, or neo-retro-post-modern-deconstructed-systems, than yet another set of core rules that's basically OD&D/Mentzer, but "now dwarves have shorter beards and elves have pointier ears". The things I love most from the 1970s weren't the endless proto-heartbreakers, but the very, very, unofficial supplements to good ol' D&D: Arduin, All The World's Monsters (I have volumes 1,2, and 3!), Booty And The Beasts, and some others which are truly obscure.
Delete[1]And games whose main purpose is to discuss WHY you're hitting the orc, or have you roleplay the axe you're hitting the orc with, or where you roleplay the orc but not really because it's all deconstructionist mumbo-jumbo, or something, belong in evolutionary branches far, far, from any kind of decent RPG.
I think you're right, Jeff. WotC seems to be going for some unified game design or something, when in reality what is vibrant in gaming is the opposite. What is needed is a poststructuralist orientation that acknowledges unlimited creativity. No one design to rule them all. What should be focused on now are not rules, but the gaming experience itself. There are all these "actual play" recordings nowadays. Imagine talking all this data and writing about that - "meta-strategies/-analysis" or of gaming if you will. Imagine articles entitled: "Turn Sequence: Generating Simulated Fear in a Friday Night Casual Gaming Group." Or, "Dragons as Plot Device: The Mythic Metaphor Hypothesis." Or, "Human or Demihuman? Critical Issues in Campaign Design." Or, "Making Religion Relevant: An Exploration Across Three Rules Systems."
ReplyDeleteIn this perhaps nutty vision of gaming future, Wizards would cease to be a game system generating company (at least in regards to D&D), and instead transform itself into the first global academic-level "postsystemic" professional gamers association, hosting conferences and publishing journals of gaming.
(I have to admit to having graduate studies in TESOL on the brain right now, and yet...well, let's just say I'd hesitate less to pay for something like I just described than another game system. Of course, part of the whole point of the above is to encourage space for all manner of systems, too.)