Rather than speak of ‘emergence’, I see a more useful distinction between ‘endogenous’ and ‘exogenous’ variables in economics. The exogenous variables are those whose value is imposed from outside the system, while the ‘endogenous’ variables arise from the system itself. So, for example, in an economics problem the supply and demand curves are often exogenous (externally imposed) but the price is endogenous (the outcome of balancing supply and demand).

Because these two words look so annoyingly similar, I prefer to use ‘intrinsic‘ (endogenous, internal) and ‘extrinsic‘ (exogenous, external) instead, which have roughly the same meaning.

Consider jumping in a platform game. How far does a jump take you? This may be intrinsic or extrinsic depending on the game. A simple platformer will have a discrete ‘jump’ action which will move you through a prescribed arc. In this case, the jump distance is extrinsic — it is a number externally imposed by the designer. A more complex platformer might have a richer physics model which is used to plot the jump. The result will then depend on a number of interacting variables in the system — i.e. it is intrinsic.

Two levels of interpretation

Often there is a layer of abstraction between the extrinsic and intrinsic variables of the game. The game simulates some aspect (eg physics) at a fine grained level (velocities, forces), but the player observes and interprets it at a more abstract level (character movement). We recognise patterns at the higher level, but these patterns are not explicitly represented in the game rules. We call this ‘emergence’, but it is really a feature of our abilities as pattern recognisers than a feature of the game. When the game is too complex for us to grasp at both levels simultaneously, it can seem like magic.

Where these two-level of representation exist, the game can feel more ‘open‘ — that is it can provide a large possibility space for action with subtlety. The opposite it a ‘closed’ game, one where the outcomes of actions are extrinsic – press the jump button and you do the jump action, press the punch button and you punch. Many ‘street fighter’ games work this way, they have rich ‘combo’ sets, but each combo is extrinsically defined – you press this precise combination of buttons and it plays that scripted animation.

Some kinds of systems are more amenable to this kind of two-level representation. Physics, for example, is easy to simulate at a low-level but computer graphics enables us to observe the results at a much higher level. Notice that this is a property of both the simulation and the representation. The same calculations presented as a table of numbers would not feel ‘emergent’ as the patterns would be obscured by the representation. Similarly, if the results were rendered as text (“The ball bounces off the table”) the patterns would be codified and made rigid, and the subtlety is lost. The important thing is that the graphical representation allows us to see both levels at once: the patterns and the detail.

One of the main failings of computer games has been representing social interaction without this two-level approach. Dialogue in games feels clunky because it is a single-layer system and our choices are all extrinsically defined. The failure is not for lack of effort, but we simply do not know the ‘equations’ that represent the low-level physics of social interaction, nor do we have the ability to input or output them with subtlety. Language is capable of subtle shades of meaning and a real dialogue game would be about playing with those details — an opportunity which current day dialogue trees completely lack.

Story sits in an interesting place in this discussion. Many games these days have extrinsic narratives – i.e. stories imposed on them by the designer, but often these narratives are at odds with the intrinsic narratives that arise out of the gameplay. For example, a character may tell you that a certain mission is desperately urgent, but the game does not apply any time limit to completing it and the result is the same if you take minutes, hours or days to do so. This doesn’t have to be the case. The game can create intrinsic urgency as well by varying the outcome based on the time the player takes.

Again the problem is one of levels. The extrinsic narrative is written at the high-level of “story events”. The intrinsic narrative is written at the lower level of game mechanics. We don’t yet know how to make these two levels mesh together, so they tend to sit side-by-side in our game and only coincide more-or-less by accident. Making these two levels talk to one another is, in my opinion, one of the key challenges of narrative AI.

Intrinsic outcomes in games are often considered more interesting than extrinsic ones. I believe this is because extrinsic outcomes betray the hand of the designer and break the suspension of disbelief.

Games based learning

How is this relevant to games-based learning? I believe that games are best suited for familiarising the learner with processes, rather than teaching them facts. A game allows the player to directly interact with a system, to play with it and observe the results. This allows the player to ‘get to know’ the system rather than just ‘learn about’ it. So, for example, playing with a market model and observing how and why prices go up and down can provide a better intuition for markets than a text-book description of supply and demand curves. The Kolb learning cycle starts first with concrete experience, which leads to reflection and abstract conceptualisation, which informs experimentation leading to new experience. A game can facilitate this cycle in learning by providing a space for concrete experience with a system.

This means that a learning game should be most effective when the concepts learnt about are intrinsic properties of the system. Otherwise the game is nothing more than a textbook in (poor) disguise. Contrast Trivial Pursuit and Monopoly. The gameplay in Trivial Pursuit teaches you nothing about its topic matter. It is just an arbitrary competition with extrinsic answers. The gameplay of Monopoly on the other hand, gives the player an intrinsic familiarity with wealth accumulation and bankruptcy, because these things are emergent properties of the system. It supports reflection and theorisation because there is a complex system on which a theory could be built. Trivial pursuit supports no theorisation because the answer is only ever right or wrong, and has no other foundation.

This creates a design problem for serious game designers: the level of representation. If the level of representation is too flat, if the abstract theory is extrinsically encoded in the rules, then there is no meat for the players to chew on. Such games can often feel like propaganda: they impose a certain point of view rather than presenting an argument for it based on first principles. But representing real low-level systems is hard. A bad approximation made yield to a completely different high-level representation, leading the player to false conclusions. When designing for emergence, the designer gives up some of their control over the result. Often this leads to unexpected high-level behaviours. In a game for entertainment, this may make the game more or less fun. In a game for learning it can be worse: it can completely mislead the learner.

This is undoubtably another title to add to my “Secret Books of Game Design” list, and I’m sure I’m not the first person to notice it. There is a lot of general purpose design wisdom in this book that applies well beyond architecture, and it is presented in delightfully plain and pithy language. The topics range from the profoundly aesthetic (Beauty is due more to harmonious relationships among the elements of a composition that to the elements themselves) to the immediately practical (Roll your drawings for transport or storage with the image side facing out).

If I may reproduce one of my favorite entries (on a topic that I struggle to get my students to understand):

Improved design process, not a perfectly realized building [or game], is the most valuable thing you gain from one design studio and take with you to the next.

Design studio instructors, above all else, want their students to develop good process. If an instructor gives a good grade to what appears to you to be a poor project, it is probably because the student has demonstrated good process. Likewise, you may see an apparently good project receive a mediocre grade. Why? Because a project doesn’t deserve a good grade if the process that led to it was sloppy, ill-structured, or the result of hit-and-miss good luck.

There is, of course, also a lot of architecture specific wisdom in the book, but this is also of value to game designers. All level design is architectural, insofar as architecture is fundamentally about the interaction between people and space. Understanding the concepts of positive and negative space and their psyhcological impact on their occupants, for instance, is as important in a game as in the real world.

There are a lot of books on Level Design which can tell you everything you need to know about the Unreal editor, but few that can explain how to make your spaces feel meaningful. For that, I strongly recommend we learn from the architects. They have been designing levels much longer than we have. This little book is a nice starting point; a teaser, if you like, that might start a love affair with something more profound.

As Brett explains, there are always a large number of ways of playing any game. The rules place some boundaries on that space but we still need some freedom to provide room for play (“play is the free movement within a more rigid structure” as Salen and Zimmerman have it). So there is a space of play-possibilities fenced off by the rules. Brett draws this as a cicle but I prefer to think of it as a countryside.

Typically that countryside is hilly. Some places (ways of playing) are higher (more fun) than others. The player usually does not come to the game knowing where the peaks are but they can experiment and explore. Starting at any one place in the country they can explore the neighbouring areas to see which way the ground is sloping and start climbing uphill to greater levels of fun.

As anyone with a background in AI or optimisation knows, there are several kinds of problems with this approach. The first is the problem of local maxima. If I am standing at the top of a hill every direction I can travel leads downwards. If I cannot see the higher hills and mountains in the distance, I will not be inclined to move from that spot. If my hill is only a low one, this may mean that I will have a mediocre experience when I could have had a great one.

A second problem is when I find myself in the middle of a flat plane. No matter which way I go, everything is at the same height, so I wander aimlessly and have an unrewarding experience. I might even walk straight past a mountain and not notice it.

A third problem is when there are competing measures of optimality. If a game has a “win” condition then this creates an alternative slope for the player to follow. Some styles of play will be more “winning” than others. Oftentimes the “win” slope will point in a different direction to the “fun” slope and players will sacrifice their enjoyment of the game in order to play more efficiently. This leads to behaviours like grinding which are effective but dull.

The answer is to design your game to always provide a slope for the player to follow and to make every slope lead to the most fun parts of the play-space.

Ethical Choices in Videogames: Lessons from Moral Psychology

By Dan Staines and Malcolm Ryan

Abstract

How do we create engaging ethical scenarios in games? This question has been taken up with seriousness by many designers, wanting to see their work grow beyond pure action and address deeper aspects of our lives. We are making progress, but existing designs are still too simplistic. They neither engage us as strategic gameplay nor as meaningful stories. To answer the question we must look deeper into moral reasoning itself to learn the skills it involves and how to engage them. In this paper we investigate the Four Component model of moral psychology to see what light it can shine on the problem. The result is a pattern for a holistic system of ethical gameplay, incorporating ethical identity, investigation, choices and challenges.

1. Introduction

In recent years there has been a surge of interest in ethical decision making in computer games. A few stand-out titles (Mass Effect, Fallout 3, BioShock) have shown us the potential narrative power of placing the player in a morally challenging situation requiring them to make a difficult choice. These kinds of scenarios have been the stock and trade of storytelling for millennia, but we are only beginning to understand how to make them work in an interactive context. There is potential for great narrative power to be had in such interaction but sadly so far we have typically squandered this power on choices that are obvious, over-wrought and ultimately insignificant.

Part of the solution lies in gaining a better understanding of the processes of moral decision making itself. In this paper we look to the cognitive-developmental psychology of the ”Neo-Kohlbergian” school of researchers to gain insight into the variety of skills that comprise ethical reasoning. The Four Component Model of James Rest and colleagues will help us to think more broadly about the entire process of recognising an ethical problem, solving it and enacting the solution. We then consider how this understanding can help us to improve the way we represent ethics in our games, n terms of both strategy and narrative.

2. Moral Psychology: The Four Component Model

The Four Component Model is a cognitive-developmental approach to moral psychology, developed by James Rest and colleagues and expanding on the work of Jean Piaget and Lawrence Kohlberg, but diverging from its predecessors in terms of their emphasis on rationality. Where Kohlberg saw the capacity to make rational moral judgements as the basis of moral maturity, Neo-Kohlbergians such as Rest contend that it is merely part of a much larger and more complex cognitive apparatus. According to their model, there are in fact four key psychological components that comprise the complete moral agent:

1. moral motivation – the desire to act on moral decisions and focus on them to the exclusion of other concerns,
2. moral sensitivity – the ability to recognise and respond to moral phenomena,
3. moral judgement – the capacity to engage in moral reasoning and make moral choices,
4. moral action – the ability to act on moral decisions and see them through.

Taken together, these form the Four Component Model of moral functioning.

When we think about designing ethical scenarios in our games, it is normal to focus on moral judgement – deciding the right thing to do in a presented situation – but if we do so we are only engaging a fraction of our player’s moral faculties. So lets look in more detail at each of the four components before investigating how they might influence our design choices. In what follows we draw on the elaborations of Narvaez and Lapsley to the Four Component model.

2.1 Moral Motivation

Moral motivation is the impetus to act on our judgement, the desire to do the right thing. It is about cultivating an ethical identity which values courtesy, honour, generosity and fairness. Without these qualities, judgement lacks motivational force and will seldom result in action.

2.2 Moral Sensitivity

Moral sensitivity is the ability to discern that an issue is moral in the first place and recognise how it might be interpreted by different participants. It involves a number of skills including the ability to connect to others and understand their perspectives. Communication (both speaking and listening) is a key skill of moral sensitivity, as is the ability to recognise and control one’s own social bias.

2.3 Moral Judgement

Moral judgement is the act of determining a proper course of action in a moral situation. This is the component that we are most familiar with. It requires skilled reasoning and the ability to identify and employ different judgement criteria. It also requires the ability to predict and evaluate the possible outcomes of our actions to plan our behaviour.

2.4 Moral Action

Moral action is employing the skills to carry out the solution. Skills of moral action include the ability to negotiate, to solve interpersonal problems, to take initiative for action, and to show courage to persevere in the face of obstacles.

3. Game Design: Mechanics and Metaphor

Every game is the interplay of two systems: the mechanical system of the rules and goals (the ‘mechanics’) and the narrative meaning attached to those mechanics (the ‘metaphor’). Thus for example, chess’ mechanics describe the movement of various pieces and the victory condition, but its metaphor is one of battle between ‘pawns’ and ‘knights’ concluded by ‘capturing the king’. In chess the metaphor is very loose, in other more abstract games (such as tic-tac-toe) it is completely absent, but in most computer games it is a very important part of the game.

The mechanics and the metaphor both give meaning to events and objects in the game. The mechanical meaning of an event is its strategic importance. An event that advances progress towards the goal is positive, an event that obstructs process is negative. The narrative importance of an event, on the other hand, depends on the significance given to it by the metaphor. To return to chess. the strategic significance of check is that it forces the player to defend the king, the narrative significance is that the monarch is in danger and one of his servants must urgently act to defend him. In designing a game with a significant metaphor, care must be taken to make the ‘intrinsic narrative’ of the mechanics and the ‘extrinsic narrative’ of the metaphor coincide, else the player may experience dissonance.

Ethical decisions are intrinsically decisions about other people and how they are affected by our actions. An abstract game is amoral, there is nothing good nor evil about capturing an opponent’s knight or threatening his bishop – it is ‘just a game’. It is only through metaphor that we can bring the player to regard these actions ethically. Thus maintaining narrative immersion is important. Dissonance between the mechanics and the metaphor is a threat to this immersion. It takes the player out of the story and reminds them they are playing a game.

We contend that ethical systems in most existing games are dull, both strategically and narratively. They are over-simplified and engage the player’s ethical skill set in a very shallow fashion. They are also regular sources of dissonance, as the narrative meaning of a moral event has little connection to its strategic importance. Let us consider the Karma system of Fallout 3 as a particular example.

3.1 Karma in Fallout 3

The Karma game mechanic in Fallout 3 has been praised as a victory of Utilitarian ethics but we see little reason to praise it as good game design. It consists of a single axis variable, ranging from +1000 to -1000, representing how ‘good’ or ‘evil’ the player character (PC) is. It starts out at zero representing an ambivalent ‘neutral’ character and is affected by certain player choices throughout the game. The list of actions which affect your Karma shows a certain perverseness and inconsistency. For example, you lose 100 Karma for killing a ‘non-evil’ towns-person but nothing for devastating a raider base (as raiders are automatically deemed ’evil’). Furthermore, you can earn back that Karma by giving away two bottles of water to beggars.

The consequences of Karma are limited. Some companions will require a particular level of Karma (good, bad or neutral) before they agree to accompany you. If your Karma is very high or very low you will begin to randomly encounter powerful enemies sent to kill you. So for early, weak characters there is a strategic incentive not to act too moral or immoral to avoid danger.

The mechanics of Karma are not strategically interesting. It is easy to adjust your Karma to whatever setting you desire, with relatively little sacrifice. We suspect that this is deliberate, that the designers wanted to treat Karma as a largely cosmetic attribute that had no major strategic importance giving the player the freedom to play whatever morality they wanted without endangering the outcome of the game. However, in doing so they have actually weakened its narrative significance, as the dissonance between mechanic and metaphor destroys the player’s suspension of disbelief.

The Karma system aside, Fallout 3 is known for presenting the player with a number of moral problems. These range in sophistication from the farcical (the Power of the Atom quest which invites the player to detonate a nuclear bomb in the middle of an innocent town – in return for a handful of currency) to the clever (the Oasis quest which asks the player to assist in the euthanasia of a person in a paralysed state). It is interesting to note that this latter decision, which is by far the most ethically sophisticated in the game, has no Karmic consequence, unless the player chooses the outright evil option (deliberately causing the victim to die in extreme pain).

This disconnect is informative: a single Karma scale can only represent characters who are cartoonishly heroic or villainous; real moral character is sophisticated. This realisation is useful; it means that there is room to create an ethical system that is both strategically rich and narratively subtle. We will next look at each of the four components and consider how they can help us build such a system.

4. Designing ethical games

Designing a meaningful ethical game is more than just creating ‘moral choices’; it is about creating an entire system that engages the skills of moral sensitivity, judgement, motivation and action. As a strategic system it should reward exploration, offer interesting choices and challenging obstacles. As a narrative system is should present a world populated with engaging characters, a dramatic plot and room for self-expression through role-play. Let us now look at each of the Four Component in turn and consider how it might inform this design.

4.1 Moral motivation

The key game dynamic of moral motivation is identity construction, that is giving the player the ability to decide who they are. From a narrative point of view, this requires provision for a diversity of moral character beyond just ‘good’ and ‘evil’. Ultima IV took a step in this direction, representing eight different virtues: honesty, compassion, valour, justice, honour, sacrifice, spirituality and humility (although by requiring the player to optimise all eight, it ultimately homogenised the character and suppressed self-expression). There are also a variety of ways that a character can be evil; consider the seven deadly sins for example. An interesting character is not ‘good’ or ‘evil’; she has a mixture of virtues and sins, even existing at times in opposition. If we are want moral content in our games, we need to start by allowing complexity in their character.
Narrative also requires a href=”http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1592003532/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=woonpl-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399353&creativeASIN=1592003532″>character growth. The character’s moral identity should change over time as she interacts with the world. This growth should drive towards establishing the uniqueness of that character, in the same way that the sun and the wind decide the particular shape of a tree as it grows. Looking at the character one should see the scars of the history that shaped her: the humiliating moment that made her humble or perhaps spiteful, the praise that fueled her honour and her pride.

Strategically this means a constructing multivariate representation of ethical identity. The system should be an interesting construction toy, allowing multiple affordances through different combinations of identity choices, but with constraints that create a dynamic feedback system rather than allowing unfettered growth in any direction.

A richly interactive toy such as this allows the player to express himself by setting his own goals for his character. One possibility might be for the player to select a ‘self-image’ at the outset of the game and then measure their progress against that image. The cost of an action that violated this image would be a loss of self-approval, hindering the player’s progress until it was remedied.

4.2 Moral sensitivity

The key game dynamic of moral motivation is investigation. A typical ethical conundrum in a game lays out the facts and then presents us with a set of choices; in the real world things are not presented so neatly. Moral sensitivity is the skill of being able to discern the importance of a situation in the first place, and one of its essential components is the ability to identify and express emotions. The extent to which one can practice this skill in a game depends largely on the emotional complexity of the characters the player encounters. A character possessed of complex emotions invites scrutiny and empathy, encouraging the player to recognise the role emotional states play in motivating their behaviour. A one dimensional caricature, as many of our NPCs are, does not invite emotional scrutiny before it doesn’t have any emotions worthy of scrutiny.

Moral sensitivity also requires recognising diverse moral stand-points. As with the PC, we tend to give our NPCs simplistic labels as ‘good’ and ‘evil’ rather than give them depth of moral character. The Megaton quest in Fallout 3 is again a rather egregious example. Sheriff Simms is an affable, fatherly stereotype of ‘goodness’; Mr Burke is a scheming villain. These kinds of caricatures deny ethical engagement. More interesting characters need more complex moral stand-points and internal complexity. Simms could be scrupulously upright and hostile to strangers, but with a genuine love for his son and a blind spot when it comes to pleasing him. Burke could be an outcast with a grudge, a proud man who has faced discrimination (warranted or not) on the basis of his connections. Such characters would provide much more material to engage the player’s moral sensitivity.

To establish this depth, we must give the the player time to explore, to get to know the characters, build relationships with them and uncover their problems. Far too often we encounter scenes in RPGs which begin with “Welcome stranger! Please help us answer our ethical problem…”. Such an abrupt introduction prevents exploration. The ‘show; don’t tell’ mantra applies here. Rather than front-loading all the characters’ motivations in introductory dialogue, the designer should reveal them slowly through ongoing interaction with the player. This also gives the player time to form attachments that can later be tested when conflict arises.

4.3 Moral judgement

The key game dynamic of moral judgement is interesting choice. A binary choice between the ‘good’ or ‘evil’ outcome is rarely interesting. Once the player has determined their desired moral direction such choices are usually obvious. A diversity of moral criteria helps here: choices can become genuine moral dilemmas, tradeoffs between different virtues and vices, informed through investigation and dramatic in terms of their effect on characters.

Strategically, these choices need to balance risks and rewards, offering what Schell terms ‘triangularity’. They should be informed through investigation, but not obvious, and they should be consequential, having long term impact on the game and feeding back on future choices. It is through these choices that the player constructs their character and they need to provide a complex strategic space.

Narratively, choice should be be dramatic. That is, it should address conflict between characters or conflict within characters (such as a character fighting a drug problem). To avoid being over-wrought, conflict should be personal. That is, it should deal with characters the player knows, rather than the anonymous masses. A good story is less about saving the world and more about saving just one person or saving yourself. Again, the ‘show; don’t tell’ mantra applies. The consequences of a choice should be reflected in ongoing changes to the player’s relationships. A one-off judgement affecting an anonymous character who will never be encountered again is not drama. We must give narrative context and consequences to our choices.

4.4 Moral action

The key game dynamic of moral action is challenge. Making a moral judgement may be easy, but carrying it out should be difficult, requiring courage and perseverance. This implies an ongoing and possibly costly commitment. Mechanically, ethical action should be balanced against risk of failure and some kind of material cost. Choices should not be resolved instantaneously, but should require action over time with potentially mounting costs and opportunities to abandon the choice. This provides long-term vs short-term tradeoffs and enriches the strategic space. In terms of narrative, ongoing action provides drama by allowing us to place obstacles in the player’s path, threatening the goal.

The most challenging problem for game design is to allow moral action with subtlety. In purely physical systems like combat we have a continuous space of action with emergent gameplay that permits the player to act with a high degree of subtlety once they master the controls. Our ability to implement social interaction (usually dialogue) falls far short of this mark. Real moral action often requires careful employment of interpersonal skills. This kind of care does not translate well to selecting from discrete dialogue choices. While we could simulate social interaction with continuous combat-like mechanics, representing that simulation with a convincing metaphor would be very difficult. We simply lack the emotional and linguistic AI to do so.

5. Conclusions

Making our games ethically engaging calls for more than just cribbing moral dilemmas from an ethics textbook; it requires the construction of a narrative world with meaningful characters and a diversity of moral perspectives. It requires space for the player to form a detailed ethical identity and to explore and grow that identity through meaningful choices and challenging gameplay. In short, it requires morality to be the heart of the game rather than a cosmetic feature.
Our next plan is to put our money where our mouth is and attempt to implement such a game. We intend to reimplement the Megaton scenario from Fallout 3 in an interactive fiction engine such as Inform and then modify it along the lines suggested in this paper. We do not expect this to be easy. Designing such a game will be challenging but we hope we have shown how the insights of moral psychology can help guide the way.

6. References

• T. Hartmanna, E. Toza, and M. Brandona. Just a game? unjustified virtual violence produces guilt in empathetic players. Media Psychology, 13(4):339–363, 2010.
• L. Kohlberg. Essays on Moral Development – Vol. 1. Harper and Row Publishers, San Francisco, 1981.
• D. Narvaez and D. K. Lapsley. The psychological foundations of everyday morality and moral expertise. In D. Lapsley and C. Power, editors, Character Psychology and Character Education, pages 140–165. University of Notre Dame Press, 2005.
• J. Piaget. The Moral Judgement of the Child. Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd, London, 1932.
• J. R. Rest, D. Narvaez, M. J. Bebeau, and S. J. Thoma. Postconventional moral thinking: A Neo-Kohlbergian Approach. Psychology Press, 1999.
• J. Schell. The Art of Game Design: A book of lenses. Morgan Kaufmann, 2008.
• Schreiber, L. Hughes, C. Seifert, B. Cash, C. Pineda, T. Robertson, J. Preston, and L. Law. Choosing between right and right: Creating meaningful ethical dilemmas in games [online]. 2009.
• M. Schulzke. Moral decision making in fallout. Game Studies, 9(2), 2009. Available from: http://gamestudies.org/0902/articles/schulzke.
• L. Sheldon. Character Development and Storytelling for Games. Course Technology PTR, 2004.

As others before me have said, games designers need to know how to write. They don’t need to be master storytellers (although they should definitely consider employing good writers if their game is going to involve narrative or dialog) but they do need to know how to express their ideas clearly and they also need to understand the rudiments of narrative structure. Paul Callaghan opened my eyes to this in a guest lecture for my games class. I thought I understood the basics of writing: Setting, Character and Plot; but he got us thinking about deeper issues such as Theme, Subtext and Symbolism, and how they applied to our work as game designers. A game may not involve any “writing” per se, but can still benefit from the application of these ideas. They are the meat and drink of serious writing and for our games to earn the same level of artistic merit, they need to be our food as well.

Many of us got turned off of these ideas in high-school English classes and dread the idea of applying them to our games. If this is you, I recommend Stephen King’s book highly. He doesn’t waste your time insisting on deep philosophical themes. Story comes first with King and his first draft is not concerned with anything else. But once you’re done, look for opportunities to add “grace notes”.

“If you write a novel, spend weeks and then months catching is word by word, you owe it both to the book and to yourself to lean back when you finished and ask yourself why you bothered.”

If you see a theme emerging from your work, he says, see what you can do to develop it. If you note particular symbols reccuring, try to reinforce them. This is advice that we can bring to game design. Done well, it leads to work with greater depth, that are not only fun but also have something worthwhile to say.

Another piece of valuable advice from King is to always make at least two drafts of your work first with the “door closed” and then with the “door open”. That is, your first draft should be the one in which you download the idea in your head onto paper, without help from anyone. You say everything you need to without feedback from others. Only when it is done does he recommend showing it to others for criticism.

The second draft is made with the “door open”, that is, it made to address the input of others. And you edit fiercely, cutting out anything that is an impediment to your readers. “Murder your darlings” he quotes. Your aim is not to show off your cleverness but to provide the reader (player) with an experience. Cut out anything that hampers that experience.

The same tension between artistic vision and playtesting arises in our work, and I think King’s approach to it is healthy. Make the game you want to make, playtest it, then be merciless in how you edit it.

There is more in the book that could apply also to game design. I think King’s concept of an Ideal Reader, for example, is a valuable one, much better than the nebulous ‘target audience’ spoken of in game design texts. Whether you are a fan of King’s work or not (and I confess I am not) I recommend this book highly for anyone who would like to improve the craftsmanship of their game design.

To a great game designer there is no useless knowledge.

Extra Credits
So You Want To Be A Game Designer

This is not a book on game design. Nor is it a book on any skill you are likely apply to game design. It is, however, a book that has elicited more excited conversation from my fellow game designers than text on graphics or storytelling. It is a book about cooking, but it is not a cook-book. Rather it is a compendium of “science and lore”, a place where the art and craft of the kitchen meet with the science of the laboratory. It short, it is the cooking for geeks.

For example, the chapter on eggs (all 50 pages of it) explains what is happening at a molecular level when you beat an egg, or boil it or add it to a cake. It explains why vinegar aids in poaching and it delves into the mystery (still unanswered) of why egg-whites whip better in copper bowls. It explains the biology of egg-laying and the history of raising chickens. It explores the theory of custard. It reveals the secrets of chinese pickled eggs (no, they aren’t really 1000 years old). It answers any and every question you might have ever asked yourself about how and why we use eggs in the kitchen and then some. And then there’s the chapter on milk…

Why does this excite my inner game designer? I think it is because it so thoroughly explores the complex mechanics of the game that we call cookery. Jesse Schell’s “Lens of the Toy” encourages us to design our games first as toys – objects that offer many affordances and a rich space of possibilities to explore. McGee’s book shows us that in egg is a very sophisticated toy indeed. It seems such a simple thing, but it enables a wealth of different interactions.

A crude conclusion might be to suggest that this book could inspire a cooking game. A cleverer one would be to reflect on the lessons it contains for crafting systems in general. But the real greatness of this book is in how it opens our eyes to the subtle complexity of one of the most mundane parts of our lives. There are games everywhere, if we have the eyes to see them.

The camera is a much neglected topic in game design. We think a lot about what we are looking at and less about how we are looking at it. But if 100 years of cinema have taught us anything, it is that the choice of camera influences us as much as the choice of subject. A good game designer needs to know to use all the tools available, including the camera, so we should take some time to learn from those who have most experience with the device. The Five C’s are a good place to start. Yes, the book is getting old and the example shots look dated, but the principles still hold and are clearly and simply stated. To those who argue that the interactivity of games requires us to break all these rules, I quote from Mascelli himself in the prologue:

“It is important, however, that ambitious movie makers first learn the rules before breaking them. … Experiment; be hold; shot in an unorthodox fashion! But, first learn the correct way, don’t simply do it a “new” way – which, very likely, was new thirty years ago! – because of lack of knowledge of proper filiming techniques.”

So what are the rules? Mascelli’s five C’s are Camera Angles, Continuity, Cutting, Close-Ups, and Composition (to which he adds an unofficial sixth: Cheating). He dedicates a chapter to each of these topics, discussing in detail how the placement of the camera and the sequencing of shots affect our understanding of a scene. Many of the rules deal with how to avoid mistakes that confuse the viewer. For example, continuity requires that travelling actors are always from the same side (usually travelling left to right) unless they make an important change in their journey. Someone coming to meet them is shot from the other side, so they are seen travelling right to left. If, after the encounter, the main character decides to return home then the camera changes sides, now showing them travelling towards the left of the screen which in the viewer’s mind represents home. It is interesting to reflect on how these rules relate to the games we play. Is it a coincidence that almost every platformer has the player travelling left to right?

Of course, the rules will need to be broken. Much of Mascelli’s advice relies on the director being able to control the scene and edit it afterwards – although he does spend a fair amount time discussing shooting documentary and news footage where the ability to direct the scene is limited. In games we have a dynamic scene which we have to shoot and edit on the fly, but we should know the ideals that we are aiming for and the pitfalls we need to avoid.

Combining cinematography and interactivity is an art that we are still learning. Film has an established language that audiences know how to interpret, but that language is also evolving and growing more sophisticated. Camera techniques in games have been fairly simplisitc so far, but we are beginning to learn greater subtlety. Jonathan Cooper’s essay Cinematics without Cutscenes is a great starting point for designers interested in this topic.

Or… I could happily stay out of their way, figuring that life is cheap in a nuclear wasteland and I’ve already pushed my luck to breaking point. Who really cares about a lost poker chip anyway? Maybe I should just spend my time in this bar buying drinks and fleecing the locals at Caravan.

In an open world game, you give the player the freedom to ignore the story and do what they want. This is all very well but what the player really wants is a story they don’t want to ignore. If I just wanted to run around killing things, I’d play an FPS.

FNV seems to have this problem throughout. I’m meant to care about the political future of New Vegas, but it seems to me that the status quo isn’t so bad and as long as I don’t interfere, nothing is going to change. Oh sure, there’s meant to be this looming threat of invasion, but everyone seems happy to wait for me to decide when that’s going to happen. Again, the freedom that the game offers it at odds with the drama it is trying to create. You can’t have your cake and eat it too. Either you have real time pressure, which curtails the player’s freedom to endlessly explore, or else all atttempts at creating urgency come across as artificial. It comes back to the old “show don’t tell” motto. Drama is not created by telling the player they should care, but by giving them consequences they actually care about.

Another aspect of RPGs that seems to be at odds with creating a compelling story is the desire to make the player character a blank slate at the beginning of the game. Again, this gives the player the freedom to create whatever character they like, but without an established backstory to work with, it is hard to forge any kind of connection between the player and the world. Yes, it gives us a nice conceit to explain the player’s early unfamiliarity with their world (and run them through the obligatory tutorial quests) but dramatically it leaves the character without any investment in the world.

The solution I’d like to explore is to have a more significant “Ordinary World” (in Campbell’s terms) before the Call to Adventure. For example, in FNV you could use the same opening but accept that the player is unlikely to want to immediately hit the road to track down Benny. Instead, give them more reason to stay in Goodsprings and settle. Let them play there long enough to gain some attachment to the place, build a home an defend it once or twice from Powder Gangers and Legionaries. Give them time to invest in the characters there through repeated, positive interaction, then threaten those characters in a way that forces the player to take on the bigger enemy, to address the root of the problem. In fact “threaten” is the wrong word. You need to do actual harm. Change the status quo. There needs to be a wrong to set right, not just the potential of some future wrong that will never happen unless the player specifically triggers it. And things need to get worse the longer the player waits.

Psychonauts is a great example of this. You start as an outsider but it gives you plenty of time to invest in the characters of the camp before springing the main plot on you. There are lots of things to do during this stage and character interactions to enjoy. It’s a tutorial, but it’s not something you’d want to skip, even if you were already familiar with the controls. You have the freedom to explore, but you’re always drawn back to the main plot line. And then, once you have established yourself and found a potential future in this community (with a love interest), it snatches it all away from you. You still have the freedom to explore, but the emptiness of the camp and the mindlessness of the campers is eerie, and encourages you to accept the call and venture into the Unknown to save the people you love.

Having a main quest that is uninteresting is like having an obligation hanging over your head. Yes, you can ignore it, but it doesn’t go away, and the player will only end up resenting it. Giving the players freedom is better than forcing them to follow your story, but better still is when the players choose to follow of their own free will, because following the story is what they really desire.

1. There are many flavours of fun.
2. You’re never too old to play with brightly coloured balls.
3. Play early. Play often.
4. Ask yourself: Who is having fun here? The designer, the computer or the player?
5. “Story” and “game” are antagonistic. To tell a story, hide the game.
6. The one on the ground should never contradict the one who is flying.
7. Your game works perfectly right up to the moment the player touches it.
8. Players try darndest things.
9. Every game creates its players.
10. Experience, experience, experience.
11. Design, prototype, playtest, repeat.
12. Controllers matter. A mouse feels different to a trackball.
13. Creativity can be fuelled by constraints.
14. Even clicking a cow can be fun, if done with friends.
15. Cooperation is harder than competition.
16. With the right rules, you can sell a dollar and make a profit.
17. Play turns Rules into Fun.
18. The Big Triangle works for games too.
19. People have been studying game design for centuries (but calling it Psychology or Architecture or …)
20. Make it resonate: every part contributes.
21. Be ruthless. If it doesn’t contribute, cut it out.
22. Fall in love with your game. Don’t fall in love with your game.
23. Games are everywhere.
24. The things we learn to do, we learn by doing.
25. The medium is the message.
26. To make a good game, first make a good toy.
27. A good toy has many affordances.
28. Competition will motivate some and demotivate others.
29. People who “don’t play videogames” still play Solitaire.
30. Learn the rules before breaking them.
31. You can’t make learning fun. Real learning already IS fun.
32. Do, don’t show.
33. To return you must first depart.
34. Architecture has meaning.
35. Amplify input.
36. Dissonance can be delightful or destructive.
37. The way you frame it matters.
38. Artists, programmers and designers must learn to talk to each other. This requires effort.
39. Emergence is an art that nobody can really explain.
40. Play reflectively.
41. Building a world is as important as telling a story.
42. When the player is the protagonist, character growth is tough.
43. Breaking the rules is also fun.
44. Vary the pace.
45. Some players will win at any cost — even if it spoils their own fun.
46. The Magic Circle invites moral detachment.
47. Games can make you cry.
48. It’s not “just a game” any more than it is “just a symphony”.
49. Put the art and the gameplay in the same corner of the Big Triangle.
50. Use feedback loops to dynamically control the pace.
51. Mixed motives make for political play.
52. Make room for personal touches.
53. Provide interesting choices.
54. If it doesn’t work, fix it. Don’t just add more stuff.
55. …