game design

Original Theory of Fun & Grammar of Gameplay talks reposted
December 24, 2008December 24, 2008 Game talk
2 Comments
The “Theory of Fun” website is down, caught between two webhosts, and has been for a while (with the book out of print, it hasn’t been a priority to sort out). But I keep getting requests for the materials that were hosted there and not here, so here they are.
- The PDF of the original AGC 2003 keynote and Serious Games Summit 2004 keynote, “A Theory of Fun.” This is the black and white cartoon one with the low-res, that turned into A Theory of Fun for Game Design, the book.
- The PDF of the GDC 2005 advanced design lecture “A Grammar of Gameplay,” which sort of kicked off the current wave of “game grammar” stuff. As you can see, Dan Cook’s diagrams are much prettier than mine. 😉 Just picture one of his atoms fitting inside one of the boxes I drew though.
- The PPT of the Training Fall 2005 keynote “Why Games Matter,” which is sort of rehashing ATOF for a non-game-developer audience.
Read More Original Theory of Fun & Grammar of Gameplay talks reposted
Wired makes the case for more torture in games
December 15, 2008 Game talk
20 Comments

If you weren’t sick of this debate already, here’s more.

So this, really, is the problem with World of Warcraft‘s torture sequence. It does not model any consequences. You torture the sorcerer, but nothing particularly comes of it. You just move on to the next quest.

This would be lame in a TV show, but is arguably even lamer in a videogame, because it’s not too hard to imagine all sorts of repercussions that would have been dramatically fascinating while actually enhancing the gameplay.

For example, Lich King maker Blizzard Entertainment could have made the Art of Persuasion quest optional — but endowed it with some unusually lucrative loot or experience. That would have made it a genuine moral quandary: Should you do a superbad thing for a really desirable result?

— “Why We Need More Torture in Videogames“, Clive Thompson in Wired

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Are games about torture evil?
December 12, 2008 Game talk
50 Comments

…please explain to me again why killing NPCs in games is fine but sticking them with a cattle prod is evil.

Here’s your explanation, from my theory-of-fun/game-grammar point of view.

In killing NPCs (or popping any other sort of experience balloon), we are definitely seeing a “kill” dressing put on top of a statistical exercise. We are being entrained around measuring odds, optimizing behavior towards success, and then receiving a reward. The reward is generally utilitarian in some other aspect of the game. In other words, you do it, and there’s a reason for it — you kill the mob and you get back the loot, the XP, etc.

Although the killing is itself morally dubious as a ‘dressing’ for these underlying mechanics (see my previous writings on the subject), players do learn to see past the fiction fairly quickly, and cease seeing this as a moral issue, because they are smart: they know it’s just a game, and they move onto the underlying systemic reality very quickly.

Read More “Are games about torture evil?”

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The ludic fallacy
December 9, 2008December 9, 2008 Game talk
38 Comments

I was just pointed to this wonderful essay by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of The Black Swan and Fooled by Randomness.

First Quadrant: Simple binary decisions, in Mediocristan: Statistics does wonders. These situations are, unfortunately, more common in academia, laboratories, and games than real life—what I call the “ludic fallacy”. In other words, these are the situations in casinos, games, dice, and we tend to study them because we are successful in modeling them.

–Edge: THE FOURTH QUADRANT: A MAP OF THE LIMITS OF STATISTICS By Nassim Nicholas Taleb

It’s not the only ludic fallacy I can think of. Recently I had a discussion with a management and leadership consultant, and we were discussing the generational characteristics of Millenials versus Gen X in the workforce, and we were talking about how a gamer mentality may have affected the way Gen Y behaves in the workplace: more likely to follow the rules, more likely to work in teams, more needful of reassurance, less creative and risk-taking, less likely to see the full scope of irreversible consequences of a choice, and less likely to see things in shades of gray. In a way, these sound like thinking trained by games. Read More “The ludic fallacy”

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D&D as a racist tract
November 20, 2008 Game talk
78 Comments

Well, here’s a barnburner of an essay and Powerpoint!

To quote Steve Sumner’s essay again, “Unless played very carefully, Dungeons & Dragons could easily become a proxy race war, with your group filling the shoes of the noble white power crusaders seeking to extinguish any orc war bands or goblin villages they happened across.” I would argue with/ Sumner’s use of the phrase “could become,” and say that unless played very carefully, D&D usually becomes a proxy race war. Any adventurer knows that if you see an orc, you kill it. You don’t talk to it, you don’t ask what it’s doing there – you kill it, since it’s life is worth less than the treasure it carries and the experience points you’ll get from the kill. If filmed, your average D&D campaign would look something like Birth of a Nation set in Greyhawk.

–Race in D&D.

It’s “just a game” you say? Check out this quote: Read More “D&D as a racist tract”

Read More D&D as a racist tract

game design

Original Theory of Fun & Grammar of Gameplay talks reposted

Wired makes the case for more torture in games

Are games about torture evil?

The ludic fallacy

D&D as a racist tract

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