Reading about Games

[Impossidog]

Another interesting read is anything Tom Francis wrote on his personal site : http://www.pentadact.com/

[gray117]

Depending on how you skew I'd heartily recommend perhaps looking at some of the more explorative framework writers, especially if you're looking at cultivating your own understandings - as opposed to the practical approaches/experiences of others (not to take away from these, which are great in their own right, but never typically discuss fundamentals beyond specific comparative examples):

 

Understanding Media - Marshal Mucluhan - Often a bit bombastic, but highly entertaining to read, and most importantly extremely exploitative. Yes it's old, but it's really amazing how prophetic and thorough this man was, and his explorations on sport/communication/play in particular are still simply some of the most valuable insights ever written in correlation to this medium we now understand as games. If nothing else it really helps to highlight what a melting pot games have become for 'media', and the considerations one has to make in approaching/delivering them. If you ever felt somewhat dismayed by the Roger Ebert stance on games be re-assured; there were those from previous generations who would treat the medium of video games with a lot more interest, reverence and insight than than that critic.

 

Cyber_Reader - a great collection of easy to read studies that will introduce you to a great number of writers/works to look into that may relate to games - some are from 'entertainment' media themselves, others are more 'academic'. Compiled by Neil Spiller whose also an interesting guy in his own right.

 

Half Real - Jesper Juul - one of the few peer reviewed academics dedicated to games. You'll no doubt find things that might rub you slightly the wrong way, and despite something of a 'plodding' first book it remains his most useful book imho; good in terms of attempting to explore critical thinking in games. It is a good starting point for helping to critically assess games or at least help identify how you personally would like to start looking at games - even if you disagree with some of the stances taken.

...

If these are up your street, let me know, and I should be able to recommend a few more - but these may be a bit more particular/dictatorial/dry compared to those above, possibly steeped more in relative literary theory.

...

On a completely different tack - if you're up for something nostalgic and entertaining, rather than academic, but quite revealing in terms of the history of games development - Masters of Doom by David Kushner remains one of the most entertaining stories written on games development and some of the more notorious western personalities involved. 

[juv3nal]

not reading so much, but what I saw of the talks in the recent critical proximity conference were pretty great.

you'll find slides and transcripts of the talks there, and archived video (though not broken down by talk) in their twitch channel.

[aperson]

So has the OP figured out yet that the vast majority of writing on game design is absolutely horrible and not worth the time it takes to read?

 

I feel like I should elaborate but I'll make it brief:

 

1. The most-cited books on game design are almost universally terrible.

 

2. Many game design theories are trivially easy to falsify, yet remain popular for years despite being easily falsifiable. ("A Theory of Fun" is a perfect example of both 1 and 2 - the theory is clearly incorrect) Similarly, many theories sound plausible but no more plausible than a million other competing theories, such as theories that try to separate players out into different groupings like the Bartle types.

 

3. Many of the academic texts spend a lot of time on academic-sounding but meaningless topics like what the exact definition of game is, and contain inane statements like "before making a fun game we need to know exactly what a game is and what fun is!" (Eric Zimmerman's book is a good example of this, 100 pages in and it's still wanking about the 8 different possible definitions of video game) If you read a book on movie-making that was all about "but what is enjoyment???" and "but what is a movie???" I assume you'd put it down in disgust, but for some reason game design books are full of this stuff.

 

4. Reliance on terms like "core gameplay loop" that make less and less sense the more you think about them. Fun fact: the more someone talks about the "core gameplay loop" of their game the worse their game is. "The core gameplay loop of Mario is jumping" is an actual sentence you can read in a game design book.

 

Note that I am talking specifically about "academic" writing about game design here, and not general criticism. (Which has it's own share of different problems)

 

For some reason academic writing about games is essentially completely immune to logic and review. My impression of it is that it's mostly written by people attempting to mimic how they imagine academic discussions should sound.

 

Edit:

 

To be nice, the Schell book of lenses is pretty good. One of the few "academic" pieces on game design I can think of that might actually make someone better at or understand more about game design. (or at least how to approach it)

 

One thing that amazes me about game design writing is how little of it is based on case studies and real-world examples. It seems like, and maybe this is just me, that instead of trying to divine out of thin air unifying theories of game design that are trivially proven false it makes more sense to look at games that work and try to derive rules of thumb based on them. Instead of coming up with inane theories about what "fun" is why not look at some fun games, figure out what makes them fun, and see what they have in common? For some reason almost nobody does this.

[TychoCelchuuu]

  On 3/17/2014 at 1:30 AM, aperson said:

Reliance on terms like "core gameplay loop" that make less and less sense the more you think about them. Fun fact: the more someone talks about the "core gameplay loop" of their game the worse their game is. "The core gameplay loop of Mario is jumping" is an actual sentence you can read in a game design book.

I'm pretty sure the Thumbs talk about core gameplay loops on the podcast sometimes.

[aperson]

It's become an extremely common phrase. It's just one of those accepted terms that people use without examination. Here are my objections to "core gameplay loop" as a concept:

 

1. When people talk about the "core gameplay loop" they are most often talking about the structural organiztion of the game rather than the gameplay.

 

2. As I said before, the more designers talk about the "core loop" of their game the worse the game is. The most complex writeups of core loops tend to be about bog-standard match-3 games with commoditized gameplay.

 

3. Almost everything in life can be described as a loop, but that description is rarely the best one or particularly helpful. A movie is just a loop of scenes - however the "core" of movie being "there's a scene then there's another scene" is completely useless both as analysis and as creative direction.

 

4. Similar to 2, when designers think about games as loops they tend to make very repetitive games. (For obvious reasons) How designers mentally model games is a complex issue, but as a related example if you think about "combat" and "traversal" and two separate things you're always going to make an Uncharted rather than a Mario, because you mental model precludes the design of Mario. Using a loop as a mental model for a game is IMO very bad compared to using verbs or experiences. Almost any game is going to have some repetition even if you do your best to avoid it, and embracing that repetition at the outset only makes things worse.

 

5. It's very hard to explain what the "core gameplay loop" is for a variety of classic games. Again with Mario - "the core gameplay loop of Mario is jumping" is a real sentence I didn't make up, but that doesn't describe Mario gameplay at all. Mario has obvious structural loops (8 worlds, 4 levels per worlds) but the gameplay is not loop based - there's no loop you can describe that when repeated makes up a Mario game, beyond meaninglessly vague stuff like "jump over or on some dudes and pits." The way Mario games are designed is verbs-first - the reason everyone plays around outside the castle in Mario 64 is that the game was designed not based on the "core loop" but on the core movement mechanics.

---

 

It seems to me that the idea of the "core gameplay loop" became popular after the Bungie "30 seconds of fun" thing as a sort of bastardization of it. Now it's often used as a way to pretend that shallow F2P games have complex gameplay as they have a lot of different reward cycles, even though none of those reward cycles could honestly be described as gameplay.

[brkl]

The book Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals by Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman is an absolute marvel if you want proper analysis of how games work and what their place is in human culture. It covers games from a number of perspectives. I can't recommend it enough.

[clyde]

I can see how designing a game with a loop as it's core could lead to a result that is more repeatitive; it's like writing a pop-song based on a hook. Suggesting that such a focus is necessary could certainly be detrimental. Still, I can see why game-critics would be obsessed with the role of iterating familiarity in games. Most songs have hooks, and I think that much of the subversion that makes high-art, is dependent on the expectation of familiarity from the audience.

I could see the core-loop of Mario as jumping on a microcosmic scale, but I would think that explaining how jumping is Mario's dominate way of interacting with his world would be more useful. To me, the core-loop of Mario is getting past the obstacles to reach the flag. That establishment of motive through repeatition and rewards of removing player-control is worth mentioning.

I don't think that the purpose of game-criticism is to prescribe methods of doing things like adding core-loops to your game; I think it's to start discussion about what games try to do and how they succeed at what they achieve, and why they fail at what they don't. No one's opinion is a waste of time, but when an author is willing to be honest about their opinion rather than hiding their own dissent it's appreciated.

[brkl]

  On 3/17/2014 at 11:11 AM, brkl said:

The book Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals by Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman is an absolute marvel if you want proper analysis of how games work and what their place is in human culture. It covers games from a number of perspectives. I can't recommend it enough.

 

Heh, I see aperson already performed a drive-by shooting of this book. Anyway, I recommend it highly. Including the bit aperson hates. It's about how different definitions of games don't really agree with one another at all. If you aren't interested in reading that, the book has a table of contents.

[Merus]

I think the most valuable thing you can take out of theoretical game design discussions is that no-one agrees with you about a) what is a game or  what is fun. It's humbling. You stop thinking a) games have to have a checklist of things for them to work properly and  that the kind of fun you like best is the most legitimate kind of fun. When you get out of your own experiences and start trying to work out what the audience wants, you improve as a designer.

[prettyunsmart]

More on the academic side than the design side but I like:

Kurt Squire, who writes about games and learning.

 

Ian Bogost, who writes about persuasive games among many other things.

 

Also, the Journal of Games Criticism is just starting out, but seems to have some interesting stuff going on.

[aperson]

Man...that Journal of Games Criticism.

 

That piece by Brendan Keogh is the kind of thing I can't stand in academic writing - taking an extremely simple idea and making it needlessly complex, rather than coming up with a new interesting idea and making it understandable. I think a lot of this style of writing is an evolved defense mechanism - if you adopt it you can intimidate people and sound smart, completely independent of the ideas you're expressing. If you just come out and say "games are about the play experience, not just the mechanics" people will just say "no shit", but if you dress it up like this you come off as some sort of word wizard beyond mortal comprehension.

 

To analyze a video game as purely about mechanics or narrative is reductive, the analysis should take into account the holistic play experience including the experience of the player. That's basically the entire idea being expressed.

 

Incidentally I agree, but good lord. it's also interesting that it says "this article lays the groundwork for such an academic discourse of video game criticism." It's very similar to the claim made in Game Design Fundamentals about establishing a vernacular to talk about games. It's very odd to hear academics bemoan the lack of groundwork or vocabulary to work in their own field of study, purport to fix it, then bemoan it again years later. It's like...if video game criticism has been around for decades as an academic discipline and you still don't have any language for discussing video games properly maybe you should just pack it in, because what you're doing clearly isn't working. Or maybe consider using good old plain English.

 

"the humanities generally and cultural studies in particular lacks a coherent vocabulary to perform strong, analytical criticism of individual video game works."

 

This is not true at all. That language exists. It's just that academics refuse to use it because they're obsessed with staking out territory by inventing new terminology or new "conceptual frameworks." It's like everyone wants to be credited as the inventor of good games criticism so each person has to offer their own unique take they hope will catch on. They really need to someone to step in and say "yo guys, stop arguing about which framework or term you're going to use and get to the fucking criticism already you ninnies." And as an added bonus "go read George Orwell on how to write effectively because you're doing the exact opposite of that." Literally the exact opposite!

 

Maybe we need a Journal of Video Game Criticism Journal of Criticism.

[Gormongous]

  On 3/17/2014 at 1:30 AM, aperson said:

3. Many of the academic texts spend a lot of time on academic-sounding but meaningless topics like what the exact definition of game is, and contain inane statements like "before making a fun game we need to know exactly what a game is and what fun is!" (Eric Zimmerman's book is a good example of this, 100 pages in and it's still wanking about the 8 different possible definitions of video game) If you read a book on movie-making that was all about "but what is enjoyment???" and "but what is a movie???" I assume you'd put it down in disgust, but for some reason game design books are full of this stuff.

 

This one made me think. What film studies books do spend a lot of time doing is hammering out the "waves" of filmmaking and what characterized each, but by virtue of the console cycle, poisoned chalice though it is, video games have a strong and effective periodization built in. In general, until the retro fad of the past five years, it's been very easy to tell what time and what technology made a game. I wonder how or even if that's been leveraged in critical studies of games, or if it's just been disregarded in favor of other more impressive-looking critical legwork.

[aperson]

I was thinking less about film studies books and more "how to make a movie" books.

 

In my mind a book like "Game Design Fundamentals" is a "how to make a game" book. It's not a step by step guide, but it is about making games rather than critiquing them, by giving people the tools and understanding required to make games. I'm not familiar with film studies books, but I am familiar with books on cinematography, editing, and other books about the fundamentals of making a film. Some of them are fairly academic sounding in their language (regarding nomenclature, types of shots, etc) and like Game Design Fundamentals in part about building a vocabulary, but in my experience they don't stop and debate what exactly a movie is or why people enjoy watching them. It's just assumed that people have a good understanding of movies and basic human emotions and motivations. You're reading a book on cinematography, you probably know why people like movies!

 

For some reason that I don't understand at all people who write about games are often obsessed with inane "deep thoughts" about games - what is a game? What is fun? What is enjoyment? Does a game need to be fun? Is making a game art or craft? Is story important?

 

These are things that can be fun to debate but are wholly irrelevant to making good games. But these are often posed as foundational issues that must be addressed first - we just can't make fun games until we understand exactly what "fun" is. It's like the authors of these works are extra-terrestrials confused by our human emotional states. Doesn't every human being intuitively know what fun is? If you're reading a book on game design don't you have a good enough working definition of "game"?

---

 

The idea of waves of video games being aligned to generations is an interesting one. I think this is definitely true for the introduction of the NES and the N64/PSX, but I'd have to think about it a lot more for other hardware. In general the history of game design seems like an extremely under-explored topic. Game design is very trend-driven but I rarely see those trends discussed.

[prettyunsmart]

  On 3/18/2014 at 6:52 PM, aperson said:

Incidentally I agree, but good lord. it's also interesting that it says "this article lays the groundwork for such an academic discourse of video game criticism." It's very similar to the claim made in Game Design Fundamentals about establishing a vernacular to talk about games. It's very odd to hear academics bemoan the lack of groundwork or vocabulary to work in their own field of study, purport to fix it, then bemoan it again years later. It's like...if video game criticism has been around for decades as an academic discipline and you still don't have any language for discussing video games properly maybe you should just pack it in, because what you're doing clearly isn't working. Or maybe consider using good old plain English.

 

I hardly meant to hold that article in particular up as an example of academic criticism about games. I only meant to say that this could be a space to watch for academic work on games in the future. On the linguistic defense mechanism side of things, I think you have a point with some writers, but some of that is just a matter of audience. There's a cycle of academics talking to other academics in their own special brand of "academese" which then gets passed on to the next generation. 

 

  On 3/18/2014 at 8:46 PM, aperson said:

n my mind a book like "Game Design Fundamentals" is a "how to make a game" book. It's not a step by step guide, but it is about making games rather than critiquing them, by giving people the tools and understanding required to make games. I'm not familiar with film studies books, but I am familiar with books on cinematography, editing, and other books about the fundamentals of making a film. Some of them are fairly academic sounding in their language (regarding nomenclature, types of shots, etc) and like Game Design Fundamentals in part about building a vocabulary, but in my experience they don't stop and debate what exactly a movie is or why people enjoy watching them. It's just assumed that people have a good understanding of movies and basic human emotions and motivations. You're reading a book on cinematography, you probably know why people like movies!

 

For some reason that I don't understand at all people who write about games are often obsessed with inane "deep thoughts" about games - what is a game? What is fun? What is enjoyment? Does a game need to be fun? Is making a game art or craft? Is story important?

 

These are things that can be fun to debate but are wholly irrelevant to making good games. 

 

Part of the conflict here might be your goals not matching up with people working on the critical side of things. Not all game designers may want to work with these "deep thoughts" about what is a game, or what is fun, but I don't think you should discount people who do want to have those discussions. Conversation and criticism about painting, the novel, film, and a variety of other artistic mediums allowed for people to push at the boundaries of what those various arts could potentially be. Just look at cubist painting, the modernist novel, or experimental film. Maybe these same kinds of discussions could inspire someone to make a kind of game that wouldn't have otherwise been imagined. 

[brkl]

The book is not what you think it is, aperson. It's not fair to presume it's "Make a Fun Game Today" manual and criticize it based on that. It's a 700-page textbook with a very wide scope for people who need that.

 

http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/rules-play

 

  Quote

Rules of Play

 

 

Game Design Fundamentals

 

By Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman

 

 

 

Overview

As pop culture, games are as important as film or television—but game design has yet to develop a theoretical framework or critical vocabulary. In Rules of Play Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman present a much-needed primer for this emerging field. They offer a unified model for looking at all kinds of games, from board games and sports to computer and video games. As active participants in game culture, the authors have written Rules of Play as a catalyst for innovation, filled with new concepts, strategies, and methodologies for creating and understanding games..

Building an aesthetics of interactive systems, Salen and Zimmerman define core concepts like "play," "design," and "interactivity." They look at games through a series of eighteen "game design schemas," or conceptual frameworks, including games as systems of emergence and information, as contexts for social play, as a storytelling medium, and as sites of cultural resistance.

Written for game scholars, game developers, and interactive designers, Rules of Play is a textbook, reference book, and theoretical guide. It is the first comprehensive attempt to establish a solid theoretical framework for the emerging discipline of game design.

 

[aperson]

It's not a manual but it is about making games, rather than critiquing them. You own excerpt says as much:

 

"catalyst for innovation, filled with new concepts, strategies, and methodologies for creating and understanding games."

 

IMO the book, like most books, is an attempt to carve out territory that serves nobody but the authors.

[brkl]

What you said was this:

  Quote

In my mind a book like "Game Design Fundamentals" is a "how to make a game" book.

Rules of Play is not that kind of a book. If that was its purpose, the book wouldn't be a holistic discussion of what games are and how they are made. A "how to make a game" book would likely focus on some sort of game and not discuss sports and board games between the same covers. It does discuss game design as that's obviously pretty salient, but also everything else that quote includes and you choose to ignore. 

 

Your view is needlessly cynical and solipsistic. Perhaps it's not what you are looking for, but it serves me excellently and I doubt I'm alone in that. I find the book to be meticulously researched and well argued. The framework it presents is useful for looking at gaming from several angles, not limiting itself to just the rules, just the experience or just game culture. Do you have any criticism that relates to what the work actually is and not what you would wish it to be?

[aperson]

The book does not accomplish what it set out to do. We know this to be true. The book has not informed game design discussion in any meaningful way. It did not establish either a vocabulary or a critical framework, and in fact the previous links in this thread were to a journal including a piece bemoaning the lack of such vocabulary and frameworks.

 

The book was not a catalyst for innovation. Nobody adopted the new concepts, strategies and methodologies. Not game designers and not even other academics.

 

It's cool that you liked the book. That's allowed. If you want to read a drawn out discussion about what games might be the book is good for that, and if you find that interesting there's nothing wrong with that.

[brkl]

My finding that interesting should not be all that surprising considering the forum in which this thread is located.

 

Are works only worth reading if they prove to be historically influential on discourse regarding gaming? There are many reasons why that could be. The field is fresh and on unstable cultural standing so there are no obvious classics. In any case, it seems Rules of Play gets cited plenty. I don't see how you could know the things you state as facts and I find those absolute statements rather obnoxious. For example, here's someone referring to Rules of Play extensively: http://www.half-real.net/dictionary/

That's Jesper Juul, the author of Half-Real which you recommended earlier. Half-Real also refers to Rules of Play. 

[Zeusthecat]

  On 2/22/2014 at 10:06 AM, aperson said:

Saying that something is a fact doesn't make it a fact ... Argument by assertion is no argument at all.

 

 

  On 3/19/2014 at 1:03 PM, aperson said:

The book does not accomplish what it set out to do. We know this to be true. The book has not informed game design discussion in any meaningful way. It did not establish either a vocabulary or a critical framework...

 

This statement of fact seems a little contradictory to your previous statements regarding how facts work. I totally agree with what you've said previously regarding argument by assertion but you're not exactly practicing what you preach.

[aperson]

Juul writes some good stuff. That dictionary isn't one of them.

 

It has a definition for "fiction" with citations. Who is it written for? Who is like "what is this strange concept of 'fiction' I keep hearing about?"

 

Who doesn't know what a "goal" is? What "interesting choices" are? Someone doesn't know what it means to "lose" something?

 

I mean, if you're going to assume that your readers don't know the meaning of these basic words how are they supposed to read and understand your dictionary in the first place? Let's roll with that assumption - they don't know what "win" means or what a "player" is. So if you write "In Bioshock finding food in dumpsters helps the player win the game" isn't it also safe to assume that the reader doesn't know what "food" or a "dumpster" is? Does this hypothetical reader even know English?

 

By comparison look at this dictionary of game theory terms:

 

http://www.gametheory.net/dictionary/

 

In this dictionary the entries are for specific jargon with specific meaning. When you spot what looks like a normal English word like "game" it turns out the definition being used is narrower and more formal. All of these terms cross-reference and create a total formal system for talking about game theory. By comparison the Juul dictionary is gobbledygook. The game theory dictionary is precise and well-defined. The Juul dictionary looks like a half-hearted stab that didn't go through any editing or review.

---

 

I'm belaboring this dictionary to make the point that game criticism (using the term broadly) could use a lot more criticism itself.

[brkl]

Whether Juul's dictionary is good or not is completely beside the point. I have not read it.

[aperson]

  On 3/19/2014 at 2:38 PM, Zeusthecat said:

This statement of fact seems a little contradictory to your previous statements regarding how facts work. I totally agree with what you've said previously regarding argument by assertion but you're not exactly practicing what you preach.

 

It's beyond the scope of this conversation to prove what I said. When people design games they don't talk about "choice molecules." Take my word on this! That doesn't happen! (Maybe it happens at Spy Fox!)

 

I googled "choice molecules" to see if I could find any reference to them and I came across this. I think it's an interesting and accurate take on how game design operates in relation to game design theory. It also corroborates my claims that this academic work has not penetrated the practice of game design.

 

http://www.digra.org/wp-content/uploads/digital-library/12168.46494.pdf

[brkl]

What on Earth are choice molecules and why should people talk about them?

 

I really can't follow your argument. That article cites Rules of Play numerous times. If your metric for the books success is that it should have transformed how everyone makes games, that's just absurd. I already quoted the back of the book, its target audience is not limited to game designers. It seems to have influenced people who have read it quite a bit since they are keen backing up their arguments using the book.