Bottom-up game design

Existing definitions

Adams defined bottom-up game design in 2004 as turning a simulation or a real-life mechanism into a game. It assumes that any process that is subtle or interesting to program is also going to be interesting to play with. If the simulation has too many variables, many of them end up being useless, and this results in possible dominant strategies and the game being dull.

Lopes and Kuhnen redefined bottom-up game design in 2007, as applying a particularly fun gameplay verb or mechanic, complementing it with the appropriate setting, content and story. Developers think first about the elementary game actions, called verbs, that the player can execute (move, attack, ...) and then about the aesthetics (fantasy universe, ...). Examples are games in the Doom series, which were built barely as excuses for the brutal, over-the-top shooting gameplay; the oppressing universe and mood simply fit well with the gameplay.

In 2010, Deleon focused more on the medium constraints with his definition: concept inspired by or chosen partly by its form of representation. For instance, Bubble Bobble is about shooting a ball into balls of similar color, and the little dragons or fruits are merely decorations. Same for Bejewelled. Bottom-up designed games also include games made for particular platforms with limited hardware (like Bogost's games for the Atari 2600).

More theory: ludemes

Ludeme was a term coined by Berloquin or Dawkins in the early 1970s, as a portmanteau of ludic meme, because a ludeme can be found in many (classes of) games. Ludemes are described by Parlett as conceptual elements of the game, most typically equivalent to its "rules" of play. For example, whereas the material piece shaped like a horse and designated "knight" is a component of the game, the distinctively skewed move of a knight is a ludeme of the class "rule of movement". But other types of ludemes also exist. For example, the name, referend and associated connotations of "knight" - those of a chivalric courtier - may be said to constitute a thematic ludeme.

At GDC 2005, Koster presented his vision of a grammar of gameplay, referring a lot to ludemes. For Koster, ludemes are atomic mechanics with at least 2 possible outcomes (e.g. moving a Checker piece to capture, prepare, or force the opponent to capture (which is actually a kind of preparation)), among which at least one is failure (even if failure only means closing some of the player's opportunity doors). Synonyms of ludemes are: verbs (Crawford), choices (Meier), or conflict. Each ludeme involves a UI action (e.g. pressing button). In terms of complexity, Chess is more complicated than Checkers because each of the 6 types of Chess pieces has its own movement and capture ludemes, while all Checker tokens have the same ludemes.

Bottom-up game design in practice

As Lopes and Kuhnen pointed out, designing games with a top-down approach is somewhat of a dark art when it's time for the designer to bridge the gap between the high-level concept (e.g. in terms of experience, emotions and feelings targeted to the player) and the routine tasks of the player (e.g. drawing a card, moving their avatar or attacking). Current game design textbooks such as Adams' Fundamentals or Schell's Book of Lenses, putting forward player-centricity, suggest a top-down approach by focusing on the experience the entire game should convey to the player.

But a player-centric bottom-up approach is also possible. I'm trying here to provide prescriptive rather than proscriptive steps. In the bottom-up process, the designer should ask the following questions:

• What are the elementary actions the player can do? (define the ludemes)
• How can these actions be fun? (feeling of latent power, fiero, schadenfreude, aesthetic pleasure, ...)
• What are the transitions between these actions? (for the ludeme "roll a dice", it is when the dice is rolling)
• How fun are the transitions? (surprise, feeling of progression)
• Sanity checks: how do the actions fit together as a whole? (pointing to shoot in FPS should not be followed by a dice roll, the intense mechanical ludemes of Doom should be matched with horror-aesthetics ludemes such as the lack of light, ...) Does the overall feel of the game match the feeling of all the elementary actions put together? (ludemes should add up, not negate each other)

This process is tentative, possibly flawed, and therefore feedback is most welcome.

21st Century Game Design - Part I

21st Century Game Design, by Chris Bateman and Richard Boon, 2005.

Part I - Games exist primarily to satisfy the needs of an audience

ch1 - Zen game design

Zen Buddhism can not be learned, it can only be experienced. There is no objective perspective on anything. Hence zen game design's tenets: game design reflects needs + there's no single method to design + there exist methods to game design. These methods are:

• first principles: what you want to do -> game world abstraction -> design -> implementation
• clone and tweak: most common method. existing design -> tweak -> implementation
• meta-rules: goal = provoking debate. meta-rules -> design -> implementation
• expressing technology: in teams without actual game designers. technology -> game implementation
• Frankenstein: art or technical materials -> design -> implementation
• story-driven: narrative -> design -> implementation

Participants in the game project: audience, publisher, producer, programmers, artists, marketing/PR, license holder. Example: saving for causal audience is vital; for hardcore audience, it should not break gameplay; for programmers, it's a technical detail; for producer, it's looking at how other games do it.

ch2 - Designing for the market

The commercial success for a medium clears the way for artistic expression, not the way around

A game design is successful when the target audience is satisfied. This justifies the need for an audience model. Existing models: simple distinction hardcore/casual, distinction by genre (but genres are too vague), EA's model, and ihobo's model.

Simple hardcore/casual distinction

hardcore	casual
plays lots of games	plays few games
game literate	game illiterate
plays for the challenge	plays to relax, kill time, and just for fun
segment can be polarized: many can buy the same title	hard to polarize, diverse and disparate

EA's model:

EA's model take-away: do not ignore hardcores because they are the ones pushing a game to broader segments. Corollary: no TV ads are needed if the game is not made for casuals.

iHobo's model:

Evangelist clusters = gaming press, mainstream press, and the 3 million of hardcores in the world. Target clusters = Testosterone (9M players worldwide), lifestyle (30M), and family (90M) gamers.

Design tools for market penetration (aka demographic game design):

• Looking for good gameplay (ie the game being performance-oriented, with stats, clear goals and victory conditions) vs good toyplay (unorganized). Hardcores are driven by gameplay, but lifestyle and family gamers are driven by both.
• Controls should remain accessible for casuals.
• The minimum play session length is usually expressed in terms of the duration of a level or the time between two save points. For casuals, it should be below 15 minutes, but hardcores do not mind core activities of a game taking at least an hour or two. Ex: a typical DotA match takes 45 to 60 minutes, whereas a (small size) Mine Sweeper can take less than a minute. Nintendo games are also famous for allowing the player to quit at any time and provide core activities of at most a few minutes.
• The average play session length is also lower for casuals: they may complete one level at a time, whereas hardcores can aim at 10 levels per play session.
• Play window: total time spent playing the game. The longer the play window, the longer hardcores will spend evangelizing the game. Therefore, despite most of the players not completing the game, content is crucial! The play window can also be extended by introducing hidden features, higher difficulty levels, variety in characters to play with (to increase replayability), and online PVP (although that only works for Testosterone and hardcore gamers).

Phases of penetration: taking the example of The Sims.

1. Hardcore penetration: the game needs challenge, progress, and depth.
2. Hardcore evangelism: the game needs to appeal to the Lifestyle gamer, easy to reach fun, strong marketing, and a strong license.
3. Casual penetration: the game needs fun, toys, short minimum play session.
4. Casual evangelism: the game needs to get the attention of the mainstream press.

ch3 - Myers-Briggs typology of gamers

Assumption: nature of games people enjoy and frequency of play vary with player personality and reaction to situations. The Myers-Briggs model was developed in the 1940s and indicates how an individual would prefer to react to situations in general. See the Myers-Briggs type frequencies in the US. Four pairs of traits:

Type	Opposite type	Game design
Introversion (50% of pop) think then act, needs private time, 1-to-1 communication and relationships	Extroversion (50% of pop) act then think, likes people, deprived when alone	Most games are played by introverts. Extraverts can take long breaks from the game, so provide a todo list for them when they come back to play, otherwise they'll forget what they had to do in their previous play session. Extraverts like DDR because of its performance aspect.
Sensing (70% of pop) live in the present, apply common sense, based on prior experience, likes clear and concrete info	iNtuition (30% of pop) live in near future, new and imaginative approaches, based on theory, comfortable with fuzzy information, seek for patterns)	Learning and problem solving are frequent gameplay elements in many genres. Learning: in tutorials, S will accept linear series of lessons, but N would rather guess by themselves. Problem solving: S will use trial and error, while N will like to use their lateral thinking skills. Therefore, make lateral thinking puzzles (at most) secondary objectives, or allow the player to progress without having completed all of them. Ex: Super Mario 64 only requires 30 stars to unlock new levels. S want simple and usual mechanics, while N won't mind having to guess the rules and a steep learning curve.
Thinking (30% of women, 60% of men) decide from facts and logic, objective, focus on task, think that conflicts are sometimes unavoidable	Feeling (70% of women, 40% of men) decide from emotion, subjective, focus on consequences to people, wish to avoid conflicts	Clear goals for T. Personal encouragement for F, but T may feel patronized. Solution: useful AND aesthetic/fun items are rewards that will satisfy both T and F. Gathering collectibles give goals to T, but should not be a grind. F are motivated and rewarded when they see their actions have impact on the world or other characters. T enjoy receiving critical feedback (a game over with tips), but F will take it personally. Ex: Zelda gives clear goals (good for T), falling or getting hit results in losing half a heart (and not instant death) and Link has an impact on the game world (good for F).
Judging (55% of pop) plan then move, single task at a time, ahead of deadlines, targets and routines to manage life	Perceiving (45% of pop) plan as you go, multitask, work better before deadline, avoid routine and commitment	J want to beat the game (get all the secret bonuses) and complete objectives. P want to improve their abilities, and enjoy the process. For P, goals completed = feedback that they're on track. Non-linear structure is good for P because if they don't like a level, they can try another and keep progressing. J needs to know what to do to progress. Ex: in Tony Hawk or GTA, players need to collect points (good for J) but they can collect them the way they want (various kinds of skate figures or driving/killing missions or sandbox play, good for P).

TJ vs FP: TJ want challenges to overcome (what most current games provide), FP want easy fun (cf Sims or casual games).

Study hypothesis: hardcore player is a 14-28 year old tech savvy male who plays up to 8 games per month. Supposedly, he plays on his own (hence I), is methodological, goal-oriented enjoys conflicts (T), plays games until completion and looks for perfect score/overachiever (J). Previous quantitative work from the Bartle test by Andreasen showed the average hardcore MMO player is IST. Therefore, let's suppose hardcores are IT. Overall, 15% of women and 35% of men are of type IT.

ch4 - DGD1

DGD1 is intended as a tool to aid in market-oriented game design.

Methods: between 2002 and 2004, ask 408 participants (incl 122 women) to answer a 32-question Myers-Briggs personality test, as well as questions on purchasing and playing habits, and do you consider yourself hardcore, casual, or no idea?. Only look at people who play at least one game per year. Survey advertised on hardcore and casual websites/game portals + university students.

Results: clustering gave a sketchy and incomplete result, and FE and SI dimensions did not help to cluster, but 4 clusters appeared anyway: conqueror (TJ), manager (TP), Wanderer (FP), and participant (FJ). Hypothesis rejected: hardcores are found in E and S (and not only I and T). Still, I and N are higher for hardcores and MMO players than casuals. For each of the four types, twice more respondents reported they were casuals than hardcores.

The DGD1 demographic model

Type	Hardcores Desc	Casuals Desc	Progress	Story	Social
Conqueror	ITJ. Want meaningful challenges, strategies and puzzles, want to complete the game. Want lots of content, try to beat themselves. The game is too easy if they don't die at least a few times. Anger, frustration, boredom, and fiero.	ISTJ. FPS and racing games, they play to compete and win. Rely on genre conventions and do not like deviations from the genre. Fiero (although it's oblivious to them) and schadenfreude in PVP, or in GTA for rampages	Rapid advancement: stats in RPG, better gear in FPS	Focus on plot twists/events, not on characters	Online: vocal hardcores from forums and blogs. They also like to win discussions
Manager	ITP. Strategy and tactics. Winning is less important than mastering the game systems: process-oriented, not goal oriented. Conquerors consider them rivals and targets. Patient. Look for challenging but not impossible. Don't look for hidden features but rather refine their current knowledge. Fiero. Civ series.	ISTP. Want familiar settings and realism. Like construction and management games like SimCity. Hate being stuck even if they suck. Hate interruptions and like smooth difficulty curves.	Steady. Give up if no reliable strategy is found quickly.	Plot, not characters.	None?
Wanderer	INFP. Easy fun and toyplay, not challenges. Variety keeps the fun going. Complete levels in aesthetically pleasing ways. Cf Puzzle Bobble/Bust-a-Move: simple controls, bright colors, and actions with direct and satisfying changes to the environment. See also Mario Party and Super Monkey Ball. Need to be able to give up the current task for another different task. May turn to Conqueror or Manager relatives for help. Emotions: finesse, aesthetics, wonder, awe and mystery, but no fiero.	ENFP. Want to accomplish something in the game world without the need for challenges. Games = way to relax. Feeling of progression or else boredom. Lack of market vectors to reach them [although nowadays there's Facebook]	New toys, colorful and imaginative environments	Emotions. Empathy to characters or investment in world/immersion.	Talk about what they like but avoid arguments
Participant	FJ. Games as social entertainment. Cf DDR, The Sims. Little survey data about this group.		Narrative of group of players	Characters and emotions, but in control of them, not just spectator.	Multiplayer, but must face other players in person, not just online (no MMO)

ch5 - Player abilities

Flow = subjects believe they can complete their activity. Subjects have clear goals and direct and clear feedback. Effortless involvement. Goals should be short-term for participant and conqueror, but long-term for Wanderer and manager because they like to figure out the short-term goals themselves.

Caillois' table of the four categories of play helps understand how flow is related to toyplay. In the table, there really is a continuum between Paidia and Ludus.

The relation between the four play styles of DGD1 and Caillois' categories of games

Conqueror Agon	Manager Agon (Alea tolerated)
Participant Mimicry	Wanderer Mimicry (Alea tolerated)

Caillois' table of the four categories of play

-	Agon (competition)	Alea (chance)	Mimicry (simulation)	Ilinx (vertigo)
Paidia (spontaneous play)	Spontaneous races	Counting out rhymes, coin flipping	Masks and disguisement	Children whirling, swinging
Ludus (structured play)	Sports	Betting, lotteries	Theatre	Skiing, mountain climbing

People with high Myers-Briggs Feeling scores prefer avoiding conflicts, therefore they don't like Agon. They're also more likely to like Mimicry since they focus on people. For example, Wanderers appreciate finesse, which is a component of Mimicry. Ilinx resembles immersion, it appeals to everyone.

Temperament theory gives patterns of behaviors, while Myers-Briggs gives patterns of perception or judgement.

Temperament theory

Temperament	Core needs	Myers-Briggs traits	Skills	% of pop
Rational	Knowledge, competence	NT	Strategic: Think and plan ahead, identify the means to achieve a goal, coordinate actions strategically	10%
Idealist	Unique identity, search for meaning and significance	NF	Diplomatic: Resolve conflicts while recognizing individuality, empathy, find similarities through abstraction	15%
Artisan	Freedom to act and ability to impact	SP	Tactical: Read the current content and manage the situation, work out the next step and take action, improvise to overcome problems	25%
Guardian	Belonging and sense of responsibility/duty	SJ	Logistical: Organizing and meeting needs, optimizing and standardizing, protect and ensure safety	50%

Temperament, Myers-Briggs and DGD1

Type	Myers-Briggs traits	Hardcore temperament trait	Casual temperament trait	Flow provenance	Examples
Conqueror	TJ	strategic	logistical	Capacity to see in advance how to address problems (strategic) and iterate/repeat to improve/optimize the solution (logistical). Willingness to fail and repeat	Production of units in RTS, monsters or bosses with patterns (cf Doom monsters)
Manager	TP	strategic	tactical	Planning ahead (strategic) and reacting to rapidly changing situations (tactical). Hardcores like to get lost in their thoughts, ideally without time limitations. Casuals have flow in the action, and need short-term goals.	RTS have both spontaneous maneuvers and long-term strategies. Civ, Chess or puzzles for hardcores.
Wanderer	FP	diplomatic	tactical	Immersion, explicit short-term goals (tactical). Completion of goals is not a big thing, it happens almost as a side-effect of exploration. Give them time to explore.	Platformers (goal is obvious and challenges relatively easy)
Participant	FJ	diplomatic	logistical	Feeling of belonging, toyplay, optimize relationships (logistical) with other characters or players, immerse themselves in social situation	The Sims, Animal Crossing

Casual audience is best approached with familiar settings and content, and with gameplay that revolves around optimization or thinking on your feet (tactical). Hardcores prefer original games that give them a sense of identity (diplomatic), and problems to solve (strategic), e.g. Final Fantasy focuses on story and strategic battles.

[Literature] Fundamentals of Game Design, ch 7: Storytelling and narrative

Include stories in games because they

• give context,
• attract a wider audience than bare gameplay,
• keep players interested and offer variety in long games,
• can be marketing/advertising tools

A game needs a story if it has characters, it's not too abstract (unlike Creepsmash), or if the designer wants to convey emotions.

Concepts

A story is a credible, coherent, and dramatically meaningful series of events. Interactive story contains player-performed, NPC-initiated, and narrative events. Narrative is presentational, non-interactive. Its goal is to explain why things happen in the game world.

Players want to act, but narrative is passive. Always give the player a way to skip narrative materials.

Dramatic tension happens when a viewer realizes something important is happening and he wants to know what happens next. Dramatic tension is the essence of storytelling, thanks to cliffhangers and climax. It depends on the reader's identification with a character (ability to identify and sympathize). Dramatic events should not be repetitive or happen randomly.

Gameplay tension happens when a player wants to overcome a challenge. It is caused by uncertainty of success. Can happen randomly and be repetitive (Tetris).

Linear stories

Players can't change linear stories (but still interacts with them). Require less content. Storytelling engine does not have to store critical player decisions (because player does not decide anything, illusion of choice).Guarantee that the story makes sense and is consistent with previous events. Player has no dramatic freedom, but the story has a greater emotional power.

Non-linear stories

Branching

Branchpoint is determined by in-game (NPC) events or player events. Player events consist of effort to overcome a challenge (resulting in success or failure) or a decision about the story.
Consequence of a choice can be immediate or deferred, and punctual or cumulative (ie throughout the game). Player should know which actions have which kind of consequences, otherwise it can seem unfair.
The story engine stores a story tree and the player's current position in the tree. There can be different starts based on character skills/status or randomly. Consistency requires the same node to never be visited twice.
Advantages: player has dramatic freedom, can try to explore story tree when re-playing from start.
Drawbacks: need lot of content, expensive to implement, player has to re-start a lot to see a significantly different story branch,

Foldback

Compromise between linear and branching. Players think they have control over the story the first time they play through the game, but not when they replay. Some events have no turning back because they are critical (eg death of a sidekick/ally). The designers want those events to be inevitable to convey emotions.

Emergent narrative

Story comes from play in itself. The story engine is the mechanics engine. The Sims is kind of like that. Hard because mechanics are maths, and procedurally generating emotionally meaningful stories is hard with maths.

Endings

Generate emotions. Multiple endings if you want to reflect player's dramatic choices. Choices taken when overcoming challenges do not need multiple endings (they're not emotionally meaningful).

Granularity

How often the game presents narrative elements to the player. RTS have rare cut-scenes between 2 levels, their story has large granularity. Minuscule granularity means player actions are the actual story.

Mechanisms for advancing the plot

• Series of challenges or choices: the plot advances as player overcomes challenges. Usual in large-grained games.
• Journey: travel is a key component. Player can stay in an area at will, therefore she controls the pace.
• Drama: advances at its own pace (player is just watching)

Emotional limits of interactive stories

Stories have characters. When player identifies/sympathizes with one, he can feel emotions. When the player takes decisions for his avatar, the designer has to accept them. However, bad decisions may result in a meaningless ending. Therefore, the designer may want to allow a single meaningfully emotional ending. Readers hardly believe that the narrator will die in the middle of the story. In games, player's avatar is telling the story. If he dies, the story has to stop. Avatar friends can die, though. Be a game designer, not a film maker. Interactivity is crucial.

Episodes

• Unlimited series: each episode opens and closes a plot strand. Episodes have no order. Ex: Simpsons
• Serials: Plot strands start and end in any episode. Cliffhangers are used to keep viewer interested. There's no ending, and the plot focuses on a group of people rather than on a single person. Ex: soap operas
• Limited series: plot is season-long and episodes contain sub-plots. Ex: Harry Potter movies, Dexter, 24.
• Multi-part stories: each end of an episode should resolve a conflict. Ex: Star Wars and Terminator movies.

[Conf] Game design = learning design = game design

On June 19th, James Gee gave the opening keynote at FDG2010. You can find the abstract page xix. Here are some notes I took during the talk.

Games convey learning better than schools do.

A concentrated sample is a basic language sample for a 1-year-old kid learning language. But people do not speak simply enough, they do not send basic samples only. Nature's solution is: kids filter and simplify what they receive, they can only process simple sentences. Kids are built to be limited. What could be a boss battle in language? For games, the problem is: how to be sure players get only the bits of information they need to progress. Games are guided experience on concentrated sample for future learning. Each level is a preparation for the following level, each level is learning. A boss is here only to test if the player is prepared to learn more. A better player is a better learner.

Experts only know one thing, they overvalue it and undervalue their other knowledge. WoW is distributed experts who also understand other classes' expertise. With the Damage Meter add-on, DPS free-riders are spotted.

Learning is helped by the emotional impact found in games. Why would I save people in the game? Why would I play? The story is here to kick-in emotions and motivate players. Stories are the only way to do it.

There is always performance before competence. The problem is trainees need to trust their trainers, otherwise they fear to perform. In games, there is performance: it is players looking at other players or NPC. Bonus: the intelligence is distributed. The community helps learning. This works particularly well with modding.

A game is fair when players admit I can win if I get better.

For Baby Boomers, intelligence meant speed and efficiency. For today kids, it is adaptation.

Comparing video games to films - 1/4

You can read the first, second, third and fourth parts of this article.

Roger Ebert

In November 2005, Roger Ebert, a movie critique, wrote: I did indeed consider video games inherently inferior to film and literature. There is a structural reason for that: Video games by their nature require player choices, which is the opposite of the strategy of serious film and literature, which requires authorial control. several reations of video games websites followed.

During a conference in late June 2007, Clive Barker, an English artist criticized Ebert's position of 2005. Ebert answered to Barker in July 2007. More reactions of video games websites and journalists followed.

Some days ago, in a response to a TED talk by Kellee Santiago, Ebert defended his point again: Video games can never be art. Very very many reactions followed on video games news websites and blogs (see also this google search). [Certainly off-topic, but worthy of interest: these different reaction magnitudes (2005 < 2007 << 2010) show how much video games communities have sprouted in the last few years.]

Citizen Kane

According to Keith Boesky, the "Citizen Kane of games" buzz started when Trip Hawkins first ran EA ads asking whether a computer can make you cry. This morphed into the question of when we would see the "Citizen Kane" of games. I could not find any source confirming that the actual source of the buzz was Trip Hawkins or EA. No date either. Anyway, Citizen Kane has been mentioned regularly since 2004.

• January 2004: Shayne Guiliano, a video game industry member, first mentioned Citizen Kane in a response to Ernest Adams about the visual impacts of video games.It is a misconception to say that visuals are not an excellent way of illustrating the internal states on mind. This problem was first solved in the film "Citizen Kane".
• October 2006: John Gaeta, a visual effects designer mentioned the Citizen Kane of gaming.
• March 2005: Warren Spector wondered how the video game industry could implement better stories: Citizen Kane was not a particularly successful movie… but RKO was willing to take a chance. We need to get to that point.

In February 2009, Boesky wrote that the "Citizen Kane of games" idea is poisoning young developers' minds. In April 2009, the topic was discussed between Bogost and Alexander, and some game critique reactions followed. Guillermo del Toro said in May 2009: In the next 10 years, there will be an earthshaking Citizen Kane of games.

In October 2009, Michael Thomsen, an IGN video game expert, mentioned during an ABC podcast that Citizen Kane has been hailed by film critics for decades as one of the best movies in history. And if Kane had a symbiotic partner in the world of video games, it would be the Metroid Prime trilogy. Eric Swain, a game critique, objected: Saying that this movie revolutionized the populous into thinking films were important, saying that before it they weren’t thought of as art and afterwards they were, well there’s no other way to put it, it is a lie. It is an artificial pinpoint created by its almost universal placement on top 10 lists and because of it has had its own mythos inflated beyond the reality of the film. Others have also reacted.

Nowadays, many critics, game journalists and developers use the reference recurrently.

Stating the problem

Given their very different histories, how can these two media/domains/arts be compared? (this is not a rhetorical question!) Clive Barker said in June 2007 that video games is a medium that’s barely 2 decades old, and he (Ebert) is saying oh, there’s no 'War And Peace' yet – of course there isn’t! When asked by Alexander about Why Raising 'Kane' Won't Help Games' Legitimacy, Bogost explained: It's a red herring, because we think that having a Citizen Kane will prove our artistic legitimacy, but masterworks are not how artistic legitimacy is proven anymore. This series of posts (kind of) aims at contributing to Bogost's point in comparing the early history of films and games.

While I am not a film expert/critique and I do not know anything about film theory, I can read wikipedia: the first movie was realized in the late 1880s. Judging from the content, it was more a technological proof of concept than anything art-related. I give a short history of cinema as an art, focusing arbitrarily on (vampire/zombie) gothic horror movies. Focusing on a particular genre makes it shorter and easier to analyze unknown materials, and I guess the same conclusions apply for other film genres as well (eg epic, adventure or Westerns).

Read the second part.

[Literature] Fundamentals of Game Design, ch6: Character Development

Even though characters should have a clear role to the player, they must not be too stereotypical (if they are, they should have a little something that differentiates them from the standard stereotype). Characters should be credible. Even if they can be complex, they must stay consistent. Like in movies, a game's IP and marketing often rely on the main character. Games often use the main character's name for the game title to make consumers associate the IP with the character. Examples are Super Mario Bros, Duke Nukem or Sonic the Hedgehog. In short, characters should be appealing, believable, and the players should be able to identify with them. Incongruity and Disharmonious elements can be introduced for humor's sake.

Relationship between player and avatar

In RPGs where the player avatar is designed by the player, the avatar has no personality other than what the player chooses to create. In old textual adventure games (or Half Life), avatars (like Gordon Freeman) are nonspecific: the game designer does not need to specify or ask anything to the player about the avatar because the player never sees it. But computer graphics improved. It became awkward to write more and more complex stories about empty avatars.

Avatars became specific. Depending on how the player controls the avatar, he/she will not identify with it the same way. Some avatars such as Mario or Lara Croft remain puppets inside the hands of the player. Others such as April Ryan from The Longest Journey have their own will (she refuses to act too dangerously when the player asks her to). The avatar utterances can also be very important to the player. April Ryan speaks a lot (and sometimes gives clues to the player when she talks) while Gordon Freeman from Half-Life does not speak at all. The player can be directly inside the avatar (Half-Life) or just suggesting where it could move (The Longest Journey). Semispecific avatars are between nonspecific and specific avatars: the player does not know enough about them to form an opinion, but these avatars have a decent background (like Link in Zelda or Mario).

Men can identify with female avatars as long as the character is acting in a role that men are comfortable with such as exploration or adventure. However, women can be disgusted by hyper-sexualized female avatars. While men tend to simply use an avatar as a puppet, women care more about it and may appreciate to be able to customize it as they wish. The more details given by the designer about an avatar, the more independent it will be.

Personality

Three factors help show a character's personality: its appearance, behavior and language.

Visual appearances: art-driven character design

Art-driven character design consists of thinking about characters' appearance first. It is usually employed for quite shallow and straightforward characters that can also be used in other media like TV or comics. Characters can be humanoid (2 legs, 2 arms and a head), non-humanoid (vehicles, machines, animals or monsters) or hybrids , robots like C-3POr cyborgs). Cartoon appearances can provide 4 stereotypes to characters:

• cool (detached but focused, clever and often rebellious to authority) like Ratchet or Otcho
• tough (aggressive, strong, often hyper-sexualized) like Duke Nukem or Lara Croft,
• cute (large eyes and heads, round body, innocent look but sometimes handle weapons bigger than themselves), like Mario, Sonic or Pikachu
• goofy (funny, comedic), typically like Goofy from Disney

Representations of stereotypes may vary depending on the culture (cute in a manga is not the same as cute in Tintin or Marvels) and age (cute or scary is differently represented for 5-year-old girls or 30-year-old men). Although kids love cartoonish characters, they hate goody-two-shoes ones.

Clothes and weapons suggest a lot about a character: see Darth Vader's helmet or Indiana Jones' hat and whip. A rapier suggests elegance, while a meat cleaver suggests blood and violence. Jewelry and accessories such as crowns, bracelets or rings also help a lot to recognize a character's role. They can also act as containers of skills or powers that can be transfered between characters. Names (Bugs Bunny), nicknames (Snake), clothes color palette (blue, red and yellow for Superman versus plain black for Batman) or sidekicks (Tails for Sonic or Watson for Holmes) also help define the characters. Sidekicks can also sometimes help the player (the fairy Navy in Zelda) or provide an additional perspective of the hero to the player.

Concept art is done early in the design process and should not consists of too elaborated drawings. The concept arts are to be used by the marketing and programmer teams to get a rough idea of the game.

Behaviors: story-driven character design

Story-driven character design consists of thinking about the character's role, personality and behavior rather than its appearance. Artists come after the designer has decided how the avatar interacts with the game mechanics. Even though the interactions were not really complex, SSX Tricky gained a lot in including meaningful character rivalries in a snowboard game.

When characters appear for the first time to the player, there is a minimum of information about them to give to the player: where does the new character come from? Why does the avatar meet him/her? Also, character traits should be shown/seen/experienced rather than directly mentioned in the game handbook. Behaviors convey more depth about character's personalities than their appearances, providing the player has opportunities to observe these behaviors.

A character can be described by its attributes. Status attributes such as Health Points change frequently while characterization attributes such as age or gender (nearly) never change in the game. Emotional states and relationships like in the Sims are another very recent kind of attributes that describe characters' behaviors.

Dimensionality can give a more realistic perception of a character. The table nearby, deeply inspired by figures 6.9 to 6.12 of the book, illustrates the possible dimensions of characters found in the Lord of the Rings. Zero-dimensional characters have binary emotional states with no mixed feelings. They may have more than two emotional states, though. One-dimensional characters only have one emotion that can change during the game. Two-dimensional characters have multiple non-conflicting impulses, they face no ambiguity, while three-dimensional characters can have contradictory and conflicting emotions producing inconsistent behaviors. Three-dimensional characters can do things they do not really want to, reluctantly, or even sabotage their own efforts subconsciously.

Number of character dimensions	Lord of The Rings example	Figure
0 dim	Orcs
1 dim	Gimli and his attitude towards elves change over time
2 dim	Denethor never faces any moral dilemma... until the end
3 dim	Gollum towards the Ring

Characters, especially the hero, can grow while the player progresses through the game. They can grow physically, intellectually, morally or emotionally. RPGs often feature a rich and complex growth of the hero and other characters in the game. The stats of the character, its appearance, skills, language, interactions with other characters or even the plot can evolve to show various types of evolution (more power, more knowledge, etc.). Some character archetypes such as the mentor or the rival have proven they were instrumental in the success of a story, but they should be used wisely.

Language: audio design

Characters can also be recognized to their notorious sound (Darth Vader's breath) or phrases ("What's up doc?" from Bugs Bunny). Much of sound design involves psychological expectations: "glug glug glug" for a drowning person or metallic sound when metallic-looking objects are touched. Sounds must also fit the movements of the character.

Accent or vocabulary specific of a time-period, social class or country helps setting the context of the game. Bad grammar reveals bad schooling or Master Yoda. Speed of speech can indicate excitement, boredom, anxiety or suspicion. The tone of the speaker and vocal quirks such as slutter also convey a lot about the character.

Test your skills

• Think about a human two-dimensional character as a child, teenager and adult. Give several attributes giving clues about the age and maturity of the character at each stage.
• Imagine two characters whose strengths and weaknesses complement each other. Show how they seem unalike but nevertheless complement each other quite well. Show how they are weak when they are alone.

[Literature] Fundamentals of Game Design, ch4: Game World

A game world is the place where the player pretends to be while in the magic circle. Th world is vital to sustain the interest of new players. Experimented players (of Counter Strike for example) sometimes stop viewing the game world and instead focus on the core mechanics (jumping, hiding and shooting at strategic moments). However, customers buy the game for the (visual, audio) fantasy of its game world made apparent on the box at the retailer shop. Mechanics are experienced after the game has been bought. [Although some stores do have consoles on-site so that customers can try demos of AAA games in the shop].

Dimensions

Games have physical dimensions. Spatially, it can be 2D (side-scrollers), "2 and a half D" (god-view RTS), 3D (Tomb Raider) or 4D (which should actually be two different but related 3D worlds, like in some action-adventure games where the hero has a special sense/skill that lets the player see the world differently). The spatial dimension must serve the entertainment value of the game: Lemmings 3D was less successful than the original Lemmings in 2D. The scale encompasses the absolute and relative sizes of objects, people, terrain, etc. as well as their speed. It is sometimes needed to distort scales a little, particularly in a god-view world. Zoom-in and out when needed: houses or dungeons have to be zoomed-in to be explored in 2D-RPG for instance. Some games have natural boundaries (sport, driving or indoor/underground FPS) but sometimes the boundaries need to be disguised to keep the magic circle: mountains, water, deserts, etc. or forcing the player to return where the action is (flight simulators). Unless the game world can be represented as a sphere (cf Populous), a cube or such 3D shape.

Temporally, day and night can be meaningful (cf Baldur's Gate). Most games which use time as a significant element skip or fasten uninteresting periods when nothing happens (between missions or when all the Sims work for instance). Allowing soldiers to fight continuously permits the player to play continuously without a pause also. Anomalous time consists of giving an incredible amount of time for a task to be done, absolutely or relatively to other tasks in the game: building a house takes nearly as much time as gathering berries, or the Sims take 15 minutes of the game to go to the mailbox. Letting the player choose the speed of the game is a way to cope with too long or too boring periods of the game.

The environmental dimensions consists of the cultural context and the physical surroundings. The cultural context contains the overall background of the world (religion, politics, architecture, landscape, personal stories, etc.) The UI should may to the cultural context (ie tribal look for a game with tribes). The physical surroundings composed of visuals and sounds define what the game looks like and are influenced by the cultural context. The level of detail determines the realism of the world. Rule of thumb: include as much details as you can until it begins to harm the gameplay. The style consists of both the content (eg medieval city or a hospital) and the way to present the content, ie the drawing style (Impressionistic, black-and-white, etc.). Keep the style consistent throughout the game. Try to find original settings off the beaten tracks: everyone designs games set in muddy and feudal European Middle-Age while at the same time, Islamic culture was magnificent. Angkor Vat, Easter Island or Machu Picchu are other original settings. [How many world designers subscribe to National Geographic?] All is grist for the mill, but borrowing concepts from movies is a quick-and-dirty backdrop.

The emotional dimension in a single-player game comes from the storytelling and the gameplay. Multiplayer games also rely on relations between players. Until recently, games have been seen only as light entertainment ... [but that] doesn't mean that's all they can be. Emotions can come from stimulating challenges at the appropriate difficulty. Emotions range from a fulfillment of power, greed or ambition in Tycoon or god games. For suspense to work well, the player needs to feel vulnerable and unprepared. Love, jealousy and outrage can be felt by the player if he/she identifies with a character. Saving the universe may convey some emotions to kids but adults will laugh at it. Trying to be fun can restrict the field of emotions conveyed (sorrow, guilt, despair is far from fun). The potential for our medium to explore emotions and the human condition is much greater than the term fun game allows for, but publishers and current markets want fun.

Games sometimes let the player do things he/she can/should not do in real life. Hence the designer can define the game's own ethics and morality. They are actually part of the culture but need a particular attention. If the player has to kill people to win, then killing is not morally bad. [Koster would argue that players do not give any credit to morality, they only take into accounts the mechanics for the fun of it]. Violence happens everywhere, the only problem is how it is portrayed: chess pieces can be killed but it is very far from killing humanoid characters with realistic graphics.

Bonus

• Choose one film maker and one composer whose works could fit well together into creating an emotional tone for a RTS, a mature action game or a child (non-violent) adventure game.
• Pick a game. Which actions are rewarded? Are they moral in real life?

NPC and virtual society

Think inside or outside the box?

In order to immerse the player, game designers build what is called a magic circle. In games, NPC are instrumental in the setting up of the magic circle. Their dialogs set the tone of the world. Their quests teach the player which basic avatar actions (walk, talk, attack, buy) can be used to achieve higher-level goals (leveling, getting appropriate equipments or traveling). Such NPC somehow teach which actions can be done in the society.

A society can be described (maybe not entirely, though) by what it contains or what it supports. In Western societies for example, charity or monogamy are seen positively. But a society could also be described by what it does not support (selfishness and polygamy). In fact, immersing a player in a world with original social rules could be done more easily in showing the player the few "bad" NPC rather than the anonymous crowd of "good" NPC. For example, Jon Irenicus in the beginning of chapter 2 of Baldur's Gate II is being apprehended by the Cowled Wizards. His casting spells and killing people inside the city clearly defines him as an outlaw because of the Wizards trying to arrest him. With this only one cinematic sequence, the player understands his acts will have consequences. The message is understood more directly, meaningfully and intuitively than if it was done by several "good" NPC (eg a tutorial character mentioning in a dialog that "every act has its consequences" or even city Guards saying "I keep an eye on you"). Illustration nearby: covering the entire (white) box surface needs more crosses than marking the (red) box boundary.

A sense of belonging

As seen before, NPC can help the player know the rules of the virtual society. But they also can strengthen the magic circle in giving the player a sense of belonging to this virtual world.

Robert Hercz, a Canadian journalist from the Saturday Night wrote that Psychopaths are not like the rest of us. In his psychopath examples, he includes the con man, whose real-self is manipulative, lying, parasitic, and irresponsible. Success psychopath movies such as The Silence of the Lambs or Dexter (TV series) insist on the differences between "them" (psychopaths) and "us" (normal people): they can kill people in cold blood (pun?), they manipulate people without remorse, etc. These differences make us remember that we are not psychopath. Hence they comfort us in our belonging to society.

Similarly, Bergson in Laughter explains that we laugh mainly to compensate for a "bug" in a situation. He gives the example of people not paying attention: stumbling on the sidewalk curb, colliding with a streetlight or falling from a chair one just tried to sit on. The lack of attention is the bug, transforming the attentive humans into stupid and blind machines. Laughter is a social protection.

In video games, NPC designs are most of the time based on the function they provide to the player (quests are used to earn XP, merchants to make money and monsters to complete quests or earn XP) and not on the experience provided. Designing flat true NPC does not strengthen the magic circle. One could argue that in movies, kicking the dog, You have failed me or You have outlived your usefulness followed by the horrified faces of the "normal" people go in this way. To my mind, they are just clichés used to show how really bad the Big Bad is; their goal is not the magic circle. So for games, simple NPC dialogs or actions could easily convey the sense of belonging to the society. Why not seeing a NPC spontaneously laughing at another during an embarrassing situation? If having a lot of money should not be a symbol of success in your favorite MMOG, then why not thinking of NPC who criticize rich players?