A New Gaming Theory and Lexicon
I've been a member of The Forge for a few years now. One of the things that took me a while to adjust to in that gropup was the usage of specific terms that describe elements of gaming theory. The problem is that many of these existing terms have a different usage in common language, or they are used to describe something in a way that just doesn't quite give a good mesh between the actual word and the element being described.
Story Games is always quick to shoot down someone when they mention Gamism, Narritivism or Simulationism...and whether the motives are honourable or not, I think it's good that they do this, because the words in themselves are poorly defined (or hold different definitions to different people). Confucius began one of his books by saying that much conflict in the world derived simply from a lack of shared definitions, that a common language would prevent many of the world's wars.
I've hinted that I'm working on a new theorum of game design. Not quite ignoring the "Big Model" or continued work of Ron Edwards, I'm trying to dig at the methods of play, the interaction of mechanisms, the structure of story and the reflection of what people put into a game compared to what they expect in return for their investment (and conversely what they actually get for their return).
Andrew Smith has pointed out that the work of Ron Edwards comes from an anthropological viewpoint. This seems a fair comment, and is certainly an appropriate manner by which a social pastime ould be analysed. But anthropology has a nasty tendency to pigeonhole people and when people don't fully understand the nature of the labels being applied to them, they can react badly to the description. The "Big Model" and it's subtheories tend
I'm more interested in the work of John Kirk, and his Design Patterns of Successful Role Playing Games, which has been circulating the game design community for a few years now. I've mentioned it a couple of times in this blog and it';s been a really influential part of my own game design techniques over the past two years since I've been made aware of it. An updated second edition of the book was also made available this year.
I'm not sure if I'm just going to be treading the same ground with my own work, or if I'll develop an interesting fusion with a fresh perspective. I'm hoping that I strike something revolutionary and special in my approach, something that might inspire a new generation of designers...but that would just be a welcome side effect. The theory is intrinsically a method to clarify the process of assorted roleplaying games, to analyse what goes well and what goes wrong within a variety of game types and play styles.
It's not going to be easy, and I'm sure there will be discussions and arguments along the way, but that's going to be my project for 2010.
Story Games is always quick to shoot down someone when they mention Gamism, Narritivism or Simulationism...and whether the motives are honourable or not, I think it's good that they do this, because the words in themselves are poorly defined (or hold different definitions to different people). Confucius began one of his books by saying that much conflict in the world derived simply from a lack of shared definitions, that a common language would prevent many of the world's wars.
I've hinted that I'm working on a new theorum of game design. Not quite ignoring the "Big Model" or continued work of Ron Edwards, I'm trying to dig at the methods of play, the interaction of mechanisms, the structure of story and the reflection of what people put into a game compared to what they expect in return for their investment (and conversely what they actually get for their return).
Andrew Smith has pointed out that the work of Ron Edwards comes from an anthropological viewpoint. This seems a fair comment, and is certainly an appropriate manner by which a social pastime ould be analysed. But anthropology has a nasty tendency to pigeonhole people and when people don't fully understand the nature of the labels being applied to them, they can react badly to the description. The "Big Model" and it's subtheories tend
I'm more interested in the work of John Kirk, and his Design Patterns of Successful Role Playing Games, which has been circulating the game design community for a few years now. I've mentioned it a couple of times in this blog and it';s been a really influential part of my own game design techniques over the past two years since I've been made aware of it. An updated second edition of the book was also made available this year.
I'm not sure if I'm just going to be treading the same ground with my own work, or if I'll develop an interesting fusion with a fresh perspective. I'm hoping that I strike something revolutionary and special in my approach, something that might inspire a new generation of designers...but that would just be a welcome side effect. The theory is intrinsically a method to clarify the process of assorted roleplaying games, to analyse what goes well and what goes wrong within a variety of game types and play styles.
It's not going to be easy, and I'm sure there will be discussions and arguments along the way, but that's going to be my project for 2010.
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Comments
As an example from the tech industry, just because Windows has the largest install/usage base doesn't mean it is the best OS, or that doing things the Windows way is the optimal way to do things. It just means that's what people are used to, for whatever reason.
This is why following "successful patterns" in design often ends up creating a lot of what I'll call "Hollywood": endlessly reheated crap that we've all seen before that pushes actual innovation, vastly more interesting, downright BETTER material to the edge of our collective consciousness and fails to allow it to thrive, to become successful, and overtake the previously "successful" patterns.
I'm a huge fan of looking at the little things and trying to see what they do well in comparison to the mainstream players.
In this light, I'm not viewing success as "commercial success", but rather what forms of mechanism and what combinations of mechanisms produce good/successful results to emulate specific styles of play.
I know in advance that the group playing a game will heavily taint the outcome of a game, but that's usually through the application or ignorance of the mechanisms involved. Like most theorists, I'm going to develop some theorems for optimal play, then expand out into how game play is modified for a system through the modification of game systems (through omission or addition).
I'm glad to see that discussion has already begun.
For example, in Mega Traveller, one could spend all day designing one starship, tinkering with the kilowatt hour power output of its fusion drives, the power needs of sensors and weapons, etc. But the game did not reward or penalize players at all for developing a detailed and consistent personality for their characters.
No judgement there. One could argue that is consistent with the genre, since sci-fi literature is riddled with cardboard characters and can dwell on the particulars of one's technology.
Aeon/Trinity is also a sci-fi game but you have to choose a nature and a demeanor for your character and you do benefit from using them in play, but a starship in that game has a very small stat block, and the players can never get their characters into a position to make their own custom starship.
If there were a shorthand way to describe a game based on what the game chooses to focus on, and how fine that focus is, that might be a new and useful way to talk about games, maybe how many rolls it takes to do different things in the game, or how many stats detail those things.
A player that always plays the most beautiful character in the game, would of course like a game that has a stat for physical beauty that comes up in a decent amount of rolls, or at least an advantage that provides some significant bonus.
Just a thought. Feel free to ignore it if you were already off in another direction.
I would like to hear the rest of that thought. I downloaded Kirk's "Design Patterns..." to check it out, and I'm intrigued, but please, my friend, tell us more about the Big Model and its tendencies! ^_^
Where was I heading with that?
Based on the context of the paragraph leading up to that sentence fragment, and some of the other thoughts I've had on the topic, I'd probably finish that train of thought like this.
"The Big Model" and it's subtheories tend to cause more division than unification with their categorisations in the instances I've seen. Especially when people are too busy arguing the definitions of "Narrativism" or "Step On Up" rather than actually applying them to specific circumstances and situations. But lack of concrete definitions and intrusion of varying human perspectives has long been a bugbear of anthropological study.
As for that earlier comment
If there were a shorthand way to describe a game based on what the game chooses to focus on, and how fine that focus is, that might be a new and useful way to talk about games, maybe how many rolls it takes to do different things in the game, or how many stats detail those things.
That's exactly the kind of thing that I'm aiming towards. A more quantitative analysis of games from a mathematical perspective of vectors and analogy of light particles/waves.