Read them here: Ultima Online UO General Article: The Making of a Classic Part 1 and part two.
Throughout 1979 Garriott would design his computer role-playing game, revising it, adding to it, showing his friends, and finally when “D&D 28b” was finished, he renamed it Aklabeth…
It’s “Akalabeth” not “Aklabeth” — you can actually play it on your iOS device these days.
In it, he not only analyzes a variety games to determine their complexity class, but he also arrives at a few metatheorems that are generically applicable for all game design. In other words, “include these features and your game gains fun.”
When I said that narrative was not a game mechanic, but rather a form of feedback, I was getting at the core point that chunks of story are generally doled out as a reward for accomplishing a particular task. And games fundamentally, are about completing tasks — reaching for goals, be they self-imposed (as in all the forms of free-form play or paideia, as Caillois put it in Man, Play and Games) or authorially imposed (or ludus). They are about problem-solving in the sense that hey are about cognitively mastering models of varying complexity.
Some replies used the word “content” to describe the role that narrative plays. But I wouldn’t use the word content to describe varying feedback.
In other words, perverse as it may sound, I wouldn’t generally call chunks of story “game content.” But I would sometimes, and I’ll even offer up a game design here that does so.
From Twitter and the hilarious HULKGAMECRIT.
HULKGAMECRIT: @raphkoster @ibogost @larsiusprime HULK WONDER WHAT FFEDBACK WOULD LOOK LIKE IF HYBRID GAME DESIGN & WRITER WERE TAKE CONTROL OF NARRATIVE!
You have a system. Let’s say it’s a system where you can throw darts. And you have to open your bar in one week.
Throwing darts might have a bad interface. The dartboard might be too small or too big or poorly lit. Darts may be a perfectly nice idea, but the implementation of it needs tuning.
At this point, you have a feature, but not fun. It’s gonna take you four days to make it fun.
