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A few interesting game design theory posts

January 26th, 2007 (Visited 2980 times) Tags:

I don’t really have time to comment on these much, except to point them out:

Critical Hits asks, What Is A Good game Anyway?, referencing my game grammar material.
Yehuda asserts that Wiinning as a Goal is Incompatible with Art; and I disagree, but the reasons why are long and complicated.

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Bloggers | The Cesspit. wrote on January 26th, 2007 at 6:14 pm:

[...] Bloggers January 27, 2007 01:18 Made it to the front page I get linked to a lot, from many different gaming sites, which isn’t really news. But this time I got a link from Blizzard themselves, directly on the front page of the European World of Warcraft… Source: Tobold Categories: Bloggers 01:17 The eBay era over? The rumor has been going around, but now Slashdot seems to have official confirmation. All this will do, of course, is push more to independent resellers. Source: Raph's Koster Website Categories: Bloggers 00:02 A few interesting game design theory posts I don’t really have time to comment on these much, except to point them out: Critical Hits asks, What Is A Good game Anyway?, referencing my game grammar material. Yehuda asserts that Wiinning as a Goal is Incompatible with Art; and I disagree, but the reasons why are long and complicated. Source: Raph's Koster Website Categories: Bloggers [...]

Nerfbat » eBay Delists Virtual Goods wrote on January 27th, 2007 at 8:27 am:

[...] There’s more on this story at Slashdot, with comments over at Broken Toys and Raph’s Website. Bookmark to: [...]

Bloginati » Feeds by Site wrote on January 27th, 2007 at 11:25 am:

[...] A few interesting game design theory posts [...]

Friends wrote on January 29th, 2007 at 8:49 am:

[...] raphkoster 26 January 2007 @ 11:02 pm A few interesting game design theory posts http://www.raphkoster.com/2007/01/26/a-few-interesting-game-design-theory-posts/I don’t really have time to comment on these much, except to point them [...]

Theory of Fun For Game Design « Emily Short’s Interactive Fiction wrote on March 17th, 2007 at 9:45 am:

[...] to add: Koster’s blog contains a recent thread of discussion about games and art, including links to some other reviews that are a little less [...]

Reader Comments

Jonathan Blow said on January 26th, 2007 at 5:41 pm:
Well, I posted a reply on Yehuda’s blog. I didn’t attempt to confront the whole issue, but given that all the work I have been doing for 2 years is completely counter to the thesis, well, I had to say something.
Morgan Ramsay said on January 26th, 2007 at 6:28 pm:
One issue that I have with “games are art” arguments is that art does not communicate. Communication is interpersonal.

Yehuda writes that art is a message. Yes, art can be or represent a message. But messages aren’t communication! Messages are communicated between people, and messages contain no other substance than the meaning attributed to them by the people participating in the communication process. Yehuda also claims that art and games are vehicles for communication. I agree, but a vehicle for communication is not communication.
Bartoneus said on January 27th, 2007 at 5:41 am:
Morgan: The biggest thing you should realize is that your opinions are formed around your own personal interpretation of the word ‘communication’. The dictionary defines it as the act of conveying an idea through speech, WRITING, or SIGN. In this way paintings, videogames, or any form of expression is communicating. You cannot limit the definition of the word to purely humans interacting, imagine pen pals who have never met and you telling them that they’ve never shared ideas, communicated on a personal level, or anything of the sort? That they’ve just been sending ‘messages’ back and forth and none of it was communication?
Jonathan Blow said on January 27th, 2007 at 7:48 am:
When I make a game these days, I am definitely communicating.
Yehuda Berlinger said on January 27th, 2007 at 9:43 am:
Thanks for the link, Raph. Of course, I would like to know the long and complicated reasons. I’m always open to the possibility (probability) of being wrong.

Do read through my replies to the comments first, however.

Yehuda
Patrick said on January 27th, 2007 at 3:48 pm:
I’ve fluctuated over the years on the whole goal-orientation issue, as Raph well knows from my casual antagonisms of his book.

I’ve come to think of games as inherently goal-oriented, but as having different types of goal orientation. “Puzzles” or optimizable situations, winning as the goal, is only a half to a third of what the medium is capable of; in addition to explicit goals there are also implicit and induced aesthetic goals.

The data shows clearly that there is a lot of commercial support for games where explicit goals are not the primary focus, and I imagine our medium won’t arrive at artistic maturity until we leverage all of the strengths available.

Braid is great, and so is The Sims; Facade may be an example of something that utilizes both sides of the coin. In another sense, Super Columbine Massacre RPG is another example. I’m looking foward to playing and/or making titles that utilize more interested blends of goal-orientation and are less flawed than the given examples.
Morgan Ramsay said on January 27th, 2007 at 5:32 pm:
The dictionary defines it as the act of conveying an idea through speech, WRITING, or SIGN.

The American Heritage Dictionary defines atheism as "immorality". Dictionaries are not authoritative and objective resources. They remain subject to the “personal interpretations” of their editors, and are often horribly inaccurate. That’s not to say that the definition you cited is incorrect. Indeed, the definition you provided &describes communication as the act of conveying messages using verbal and nonverbal means. The definition acknowledges that verbal and nonverbal means are vehicles for communication. The definition does not posit that communication vehicles are messages or communication.

As for my “interpretation” of communication, I urge you to research models of the communication process using academically credible resources. If you don’t have access to EBSCOhost, you might settle for Google in which case this is a good start.

Feedback is integral to the successful exchange of information between people (i.e., communication.) Communication does not occur without feedback, but receipt of feedback does not indicate communication either. If the feedback is corrupted, whether by noise or delay, then communication did not occur. To use your example, if Pen Pal A sends a message to Pen Pal B, but the message was lost by the Post Office, Pen Pal B will never receive that message and Pen Pal A may not receive feedback indicating that the communication cycle was not completed. In another case, if Pen Pal A sends a message to Pen Pal B whose misinterpretation of the message is applied to the feedback received by Pen Pal A from Pen Pal B, then communication did not occur because the initial message was not received. That’s why we use words such as "attempt" and "failure" to describe instances where we engage the communication process unsuccessfully.

A painting cannot communicate with people precisely because the painting cannot respond to people by sending feedback. A painting is an inanimate object whose substance is a product of the perception of its viewers. That is why one painting can be interpreted differently by each of its viewers. No two people perceive the painting in exactly the same way. Don’t mistake this as communication though. The painting is not sending or receiving any messages. The message is, in fact, imagined by the viewers. The painting becomes a vehicle for communication when viewers of the painting engage each other and transact the messages they created using their perception of the data provided by the painting and/or by other viewers.

You cannot limit the definition of the word to purely humans interacting, imagine pen pals who have never met and you telling them that they’ve never shared ideas, communicated on a personal level, or anything of the sort?

Although interpersonal communication usually occurs instantly, I do not dispute that noise and delay often contribute to the rate at which messages are exchanged between people.
Bartoneus said on January 29th, 2007 at 6:26 am:
Using the good site to begin with that you linked to for examining Communication, it basically tells you that Paintings can communicate.

“Who … says what … in which channel … to whom … with what effect”.

Is the old model, but all new models are just elaborations or extrapolations of that, and the painting fits in at the ‘channel’ level. The painter is saying something with the painting to the viewer, and the viewer’s unique interpretation (that you talked about) is the effect at the end. The feedback that is ‘necessary’ for communication is less of a response to the painter and more of a cultural and inspirational kind of feedback, something changes in the person that views the painting. The source puts it like this:

“the effects are found in various relationships between the primitives, including relationships, perspectives, attributions, interpretations, and the continuing evolution of languages and media.”

The down and dirty of my view is this, Paintings are vehicles of communication, but in being so they are themselves communicating, even if just as a -part- of the communication process. It could be argued that a telephone is the same, and that in fact the telephone itself does not communicate in any way, but here we have to distinguish between passive and active vehicles for communication. A phone is an active vehicle, it requires two end users to communicate, but a painting is a passive vehicle and the painter could be dead for years before the painting ever communicates anything, but then the feedback is the response that the viewer has to the whole world based on that communication.
John, Hatchlings said on January 30th, 2007 at 8:27 am:
I have to agree with Yehuda and want to know your reply to this Ralph (as I am sure it will be interesting). However, I am sure you are busy with Areae. We too are busy with our own web 2.0 game startup building a board + trading card game with user generated content. Hope we could talk about all these design issues in person one day (it depends on whether my company can break into the global market).
Cheers, John

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