My group’s game is built on a fantasy. It places in the player in the role of a little hooded lantern-lighter. The game’s (rather simple) puzzles create a kind of resistance that puts the single task of lighting lanterns at the center of play. Yet the primary interest of the game is, for me, sensuous. The first elements developed for the game were sprites for the protagonist, then the lanterns themselves. Before they could do much of anything interesting, the lanterns could emit flickering lights when activate, which dimmed over time. An early version included a short introduction sequence where a large crescent moon appears in the sky, timed to an 8-bit rendition of Claude Debussy’s Clair de lune. My interest in the game has always been its cool, nocturnal atmosphere, and the pleasure of dotting it with lights.
In our readings on game design I was taken aback by Chris Crawford apparent abhorrence of what he calls a “topic” driven games. “Don’t be dishonest with yourself,” he rejoins warmly, “if the topic really is the initiating concept in your game design, then you simply don’t understand game design well enough to do a good job.” This heartwarming passage is part of a wider argument that game designers must think first in terms of mechanics. Crawford puts gameplay at the fore – a fair enough point if one wishes to prioritize that which makes games, games. At the same time it is a blinding as any understanding of painting that limits itself entirely to shape and colour – and misses the centuries of religious, allegorical, and political representative painting that precedes the advent of such arguments. I think Crawford would scoff at my references to painting. In “Common Mistakes” he undertakes a “reductio ad absurdum” where he disclaims the importance of graphics through the example of a game where the sequence of play is intermittently interrupted by an image of the Mona Lisa. Graphics are only important, he argues, inasmuch as they inform gameplay – which is why an enemy’s shadow in a first-person shooter is a better use of graphics capacity than a Da Vinci jump-scare.
I’d argue that the real victim of Crawford’s reductio is the reductio itself. A game which interrupts itself to show you something irrelevant is probably not going to play very smoothly - although, if the designer feels it necessary to throw the Mona Lisa in your face every few seconds, one may start to ask whether there’s a point they’re trying to make. The absurdity in Crawford’s example is not graphical elements which contribute nothing to gameplay, but rather elements which actively undermine the designer’s intended experience.
What Crawford misses is how layered the experience of a game can be. My group’s game leans on some established conventions – 2d platforming, puzzles – which frame the experience as a set of problems to be solved. But it does so in the tradition of Lieve Oma’s mushroom hunt – a goal to direct to attention to one’s surroundings and get the player exploring. Our puzzles ask players to light lanterns in order set various machines in motion, in order to move on to the next area. But the ultimate goal is simply to fill our little setting with light, and to witness that transformation.
Rollings & Adams have less trouble reconciling things like mood and visuals with game design. Starting with the conceit that games are interactive “dreams”, they allow fictive imagination to guide the design process – Game rules can help tell a story. In defining how the game is played and won, mechanics can be used to relate a dream. Fictional positioning, such as avatar and setting, help the player make sense of the situation before them and understand what they are supposed to do.
Rollings & Adams also take a more moderate stance on Crawford’s “topics”: “It is not the business of the game designer to tell stories, but to create worlds in which stories take place around an active player.” Within this framework, a story or topic is not some added layer, like Crawford’s Mona Lisa, but that “world” which grounds play. Mechanics and game structures, which shape the experience of play, take part in building that world.
To return to my group’s game, what captivates me most about it is its world, and a great deal of our design discussions have been about how to manifest that world for the player. A number of our early discussions had to do with our “dream” – what world does our lantern-lighter inhabit, and what is it they hope to achieve in turning on all these lights? In doing so we have asked ourselves thematic questions: Is this game a metaphor for depression? What does it mean to light these lanterns? If we are using such a metaphor, how should it influence our level design? We have not found these questions to be divorced from the pragmatics of implementation, but an important factor in guiding it. When we wish to present the “dream” in a certain way, how do we intend to do so? What assets and solutions would it require?
Crawford and Rollings & Adams approach the same question from different angles: How do graphics, sound, and narrative fit into game design? Crawford sees these as secondary to the core question of compelling gameplay, being the primary level at which the player engages the game. Rollings & Adams see gameplay as embedded in, and informed by, a game’s fictive dimensions. Audiovisual elements and story frame the player’s interactions, giving rise to a world which emerges at the intersection of fiction and play. While they do not say as much explicitly, their notion of “dreams” presents games as fundamentally communicative works, rather than the primary mechanicity of Crawford’s interpretation.
It is for this reason that Rollings & Adams work aligns more closely to our own design values, although we may not see eye to eye with them on all counts: They warn against “art-driven” games, as these tend to allow gameplay to fall by the wayside. In the tradition of Lieve Oma and many walking simulators, we argue that simply exploring a sensuously rich space can be gameplay enough – and have added some puzzles for good measure.
Works Cited
Crawford, Chris. "Common Mistakes." On Game Design. Indianapolis, IN: New Riders Publishing, 2003. 107-124.
Rollings, Andrew, and Ernest Adams. "Game Concepts." On Game Design. Indianapolis, IN: New Riders Publishing, 2003. 30-53.
Veltman, Florian. Lieve Oma. Videogame. Itch.io, 2016.
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