Brainy Gamer

Put me in, coach!

Sports games are wallflowers at the video game dance. Routinely ignored or dismissed, they rarely appear on best-of lists, nor do they get much GOTY love by reviewers. Last year NBA 2K11 (an extraordinarily well designed game by any measure) got a few cursory nods from critics, but when we talk about important titles or influential games, we seldom pay much attention to sports games.

Lessons in Game Design
It’s a shame because sports games have much to teach us about game design - especially with regard to thoughtful iteration and sustaining player engagement over time. The mistake we make with sports games is to assume they’re all lazy sequels with minor tweaks and simple roster updates. Slow-witted Madden players will amble in a mindless herd to buy the latest version, regardless of quality, so why bother making a big effort? Or so the thinking goes.

The Madden series may too often herald minor changes as major features, but other franchises have more carefully iterated from season to season, listening and responding to player feedback. These games borrow  shrewdly from other genres to offer players a hearty menu of gameplay modes and options. While other game genres struggle to stay relevant, sports games like the FIFA series and MLB The Show continue to find news ways to add value to the player’s experience.

I’m a big fan of Sony San Diego’s MLB The Show franchise, and I believe it offers some valuable design lessons for anyone willing to look. Here they are in no particular order.

Rethink “Gaming on the go”
I’ve played handheld games for as long as there have been handheld games, and one thing about them has never made sense to me. Why can’t I use my portable device to extend play on my console? Shouldn’t this thing be able to grab my character - progress and stats intact - and let me continue adventuring, puzzle-solving, stealing bases, or whatever on the road; and then export that character - progress and stats intact - back to my console to continue playing? Given that most portable games are derived from console counterparts, doesn’t this just make sense?

The forthcoming MLB The Show 12 will let me do just that. If I’m willing to pony up for both the PS3 and Vita versions of the game, I can transfer my player, team, season, franchise - you name it - back and forth between units with the game’s cloud sync feature, and never miss a beat. The console and portable versions are 100% feature compatible, so when I’m on the road, I’m not playing a stripped down version of the game. Portable gaming can mean different things to different players, but this kind of gaming on the go is - ok, I’ll say it - a game changer for me.

Re-think “Persistent World”
Sports games have always relied on role-playing, but in recent years many sports titles have fully implemented RPG design into their core systems. “Road to the Show” mode in MLBTS includes character customization and baseball analogues for quests, leveling up, items and inventory, and even a dynamic story setting. A player-created character can live in this universe from high school to retirement, experiencing dynamic events from season to season, winning and losing, and gradually unfurling his own unique story.

Granted, sports games have the advantage of an unchanging play space (baseball diamond, football field), so designers needn’t endlessly generate new content or environments. But there is great appeal in creating a character whose player-earned properties span many seasons over many years. My favorite player that I created 15 seasons ago was recently sent down to the minors. His skills had eroded with age, and I did everything I could to keep him in the Bigs. But his day finally came, and I have to admit I took it hard. As role-playing goes, I couldn’t have felt more connected to him or more engaged with his story.

Re-think “Modes of play”
Most games have a binary concept of play modes: solo and multiplayer, typically with three available degrees of difficulty. Sports sims like MLB The Show (Out of the Park Baseball is an even better example) offer players far more granular control, as well as layers of play modes that are less about difficulty than modes of fun. If you enjoy choosing every pitch, you can do that. If not, the AI will take care of it. If you want to make every trade decision for every team in your league, you can do that…or let the AI handle it…or choose something between those two extremes.

Be a manager. Be a player. Be the commissioner. A good sports game positions you in a variety of settings, altering your play experience and enabling multiple points of view from which to exist inside the game’s universe. And, of course, if you prefer to play with live opponents, sports games typically give you many more options for controlling the parameters of such games, including minute control of the mechanical properties of your “weapons.”

Rethink “Player Agency”
If narrative games create a possibility space for players to generate or discover their own stories, sports games offer a captivating vision of that possibility space, unconstrained by branching-paths or author-driven plot points. I’m not suggesting authored narratives are a bad thing; nor do I think Mass Effect-style storytelling is broken or inferior. But a game like MLB The Show shares important characteristics with Minecraft, especially in the ways they rely on strict rule-sets that constrain player behaviors, yet also enable imaginative meaning-making within that space.

I know the story of the 1962 LA Dodgers, who won 102 games, but still finished second, one game behind the San Francisco Giants. In a baseball sim I can attempt to change that story, and through my own efforts engineer a better conclusion by making different choices, assigning different roles to my players, and generally trying to be smarter than real-life manager Walter Alston, but limiting myself to only the tools available to him. Or I could make a few trades. Or maybe limit the season to 50 games. It’s up to me, but whatever I choose, a story will emerge.

Every game is a story. Every series. Every season. A good sports game lets me tightly adhere to “history” or go hog wild with possibilities. I once made a team that included Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Ted Williams, and Ty Cobb. We won lots of games…but lost the World Series. How I managed to do that is a whole story in itself. My story. My humiliating story...

To dream again

Ahh, do you not feel the grand romance of the wide open skies? The roaring invitation of the wind? The soft call of the clouds? You are a boring, boring creature.  --Willi, the Bird-Man in Wind Waker

Why is every new Legend of Zelda my drop-everything game? Why, after 25 years of playing essentially the same game over and over, does my heart race with excitement at the arrival of a new one? And, importantly, why am I so willing to overlook its obvious flaws?

Zelda Blind Spot
Why does my Zelda blind spot extend even to its designers’ stubborn unwillingness to update outmoded systems of character interaction and item discovery? Why must I be endlessly reminded that red rupees are worth twenty? How many times must I be exhorted “Don’t spend it all in one place!” Why must every shop owner deliver the same introductory spiel every time I engage them? The Legend of Zelda is the premier adventure series in the history of video games. Couldn’t somebody at Nintendo knock out a few more animations and lines of dialogue?

My blind spot obscures even more issues. Why, after nearly 15 years of navigating a 3D space, is it still so hard to get Link facing in the right direction to move a block or open a chest? When, after giving us so many cool gadgets and weapons to control, will Mr. Aonuma finally allow the player to control the simple action of making Link jump? And when will I - a grizzled veteran of Zelda games dating back to the original - finally be given the option to skip, or at least condense, the interminable hand-holding series of tutorials at the beginning of every game?

I ask these questions facing a paradoxical reality: I love these games. The latest Zelda release, Skyward Sword, was my favorite game of 2011. Not the best game and certainly not the most innovative, but nevertheless the game that delighted me more than any other.

How to make sense of this? I suppose I could chalk it up to nostalgia, but that word doesn’t quite characterize my experience. It’s easy to find familiar moments that resonate through the franchise. Link waking up at the outset. Link opening a treasure chest. The stirring moment when Link embarks on his adventure.

Hyrulian Tales
Despite their formal similarities, it would be a mistake to see these moments as cut-and-pasted from one game to the next. They are purposeful narrative motifs that connect Link to each of his previous incarnations. They resonate because they operate within a ritual storytelling tradition more akin to fairytale than epic poetry.

Critics often describe Legend of Zelda games as classic Hero Journeys in the tradition of Gilgamesh and The Odyssey. While it’s easy to find connections here - the call to adventure, supernatural aid, descent to underworld, etc. - I see more resonance in Zelda’s connections to Japanese folklore and, especially, the series’ deep roots in Shintoism.

Link often enters a “Sacred Realm” (“Silent Realm” in Skyward Sword) where he encounters beings inflicted with suffering caused by Ganon’s corruption of the earth. All beings in nature suffer from this polluting force: spirits, trees, forest creatures, and humans alike. Link must set things right by healing the land, restoring harmony to humans and nature.

In essence, he must embrace the Shinto philosophy of humans and nature as one, and he must accept his pivotal role in Shintoism’s indigenous vision of Japan (Hyrule) as connected to its ancient past. Link is that link.

Zelda games touch me in ways other games simply don’t. They express a lighthearted spirit of adventure, tinged with melancholy. Link’s youthful naiveté gradually gives way to an awakening that can only emerge through trial and discovery. This recurring journey from child to adult requires Link to accept his own mortality. I like Dan Merrill’s description in his terrific essay “Immortal Childhood”:

[Zelda games] express what it means to live bound to the flow of time. They are stories about the beauty of mortality, the journey from childhood to adulthood and from life to death. They are about growing up and leaving behind the immortal playground of childhood, letting go of the familiar to venture out into the world that lies beyond.

Whimsy World
My attachment to these games is more than philosophical. Every time I enter the world of a Zelda game, I’m enveloped by a whimsical universe that’s always richer and deeper than it appears. Whimsy gets a bad rap. When games strain for it, the results are painful and embarrassing. The Zelda world is full of delightfully playful, mischievous, idiosyncratic characters, and they are all loved and all welcomed without judgment. Even the “evil” characters have something to tell us about suffering and regret.

My country lay within a vast desert. When the sun rose into the sky, a burning wind punished my lands, searing the world. And when the moon climbed into the dark of night, a frigid gale pierced our homes. No matter when it came, the wind carried the same thing… Death. But the winds that blew across the green fields of Hyrule brought something other than suffering and ruin. I coveted that wind, I suppose. --Ganondorf in Wind Waker

When you visit Beedle’s Airshop in Skyward Sword, Beedle is furiously pedaling a makeshift bicycle which turns the gears that power the propellers which keep his shop aloft. If you leave without buying anything, he stops Link at the door, berates him for adding weight to his vessel, and opens a trapdoor through which Link falls to the ground. It’s a silly surprise, but Beedle’s ridiculous contraption fully belongs in this world.

If you’re more curious (and Zelda games have always rewarded curiosity), you may decide to sleep in Beedle’s shop until night. If you do, Link will wake up on Beedle’s Island where the airship is parked at night. If you find Beedle at his campfire, he will reveal to Link that his shopkeeper persona is not his true identity. I won’t say more than that. Go talk to him yourself. Things are often different at night in Zelda games. Find Rupin the Gear Shop owner at his mother’s house after sunset. Once again, things aren’t always as they seem.

“The rising sun will eventually set, A newborn’s life will fade. From sun to moon, moon to sun… Give peaceful rest to the living dead.” — Inscription on Tomb Door in Ocarina of Time

Zelda games present a broader scope of humanity than other games. We see preschool children playing games, teenagers locked in petty arguments, young adults, middle-aged men and women; elderly figures foolish and wise. It is a world of misfits and eccentrics, and Link must messianically save them all.

At the end of Link’s Awakening, we discover that the idyllic paradise of Koholint Island is only a dream of the Wind Fish. Link must awaken the Wind Fish to complete his mission, but that awakening comes with a cost: Koholint Island and all its inhabitants will vanish, and Link will be cast into the ocean, adrift on a piece of his wrecked ship. “It be the nature of dreams to end,” the Wind Fish explains to Link.

Like another character on another island, we will yearn for the next great adventure.

Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,
Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears; and sometime voices
That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again; and then in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open, and show riches
Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked
I cried to dream again.* –Caliban in Shakespeare’s The Tempest

It Lives!!

The holidays are a time for love, joy, even an occasional miracle. I should know. Such a miracle unfolded before my eyes this past Christmas, in full view of family and friends: I fell in love with my Nintendo 3DS.

You heard me right. A long-forgotten aqua blue device with a depleted battery suddenly sprang to life and filled my holiday with 3D reveling. Joy to the virtual world! A handheld immaculate conception! How did it happen? Most unexpectedly.

When the 3DS first appeared, I wrote about it and expressed dismay at the dismal launch lineup, high price, and befuddling absence of an online store for apps and games. I patiently waited for Ocarina of Time 3D to arrive, played it for a week, then proceeded to shelve my 3DS and forget all about it. A few months later Nintendo dropped the price by a third, angering many of us early adopters. Pundits wondered if Nintendo had finally lost its portable mojo, after 20+ years of market dominance. Meanwhile the iOS/Android market exploded, and a slew of sub-$5 games signaled the end one-trick-pony game devices.

No company responds to being pressed into a corner better than Nintendo. History suggests that the company tends to narrow its vision when it leads (“Who needs optical discs?!”), but when Nintendo senses a whiff of its own irrelevance, it springs to creative action (“Who needs motion controls?!”).

I fell in love with my 3DS for four reasons, all converging this holiday season. The usual YMMV caveats apply, but if you’ve been on the 3DS sidelines, or if you can’t say for sure which drawer you stored that overpriced gadget in, now may be a good time for you to take another autostereoscopic look at the 3DS.

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Reason 1: Games!

The 3DS launch lineup was disappointing, but it’s worth remembering that the most successful gaming device in history, the Nintendo DS, launched with even fewer games, none of them notable…Ping Pals anyone? The Urbz?

It’s taken awhile (too long, for many), but the 3DS now has a growing library of games that easily justifies purchasing the system. Here are my favorites in no particular order, with snapshot descriptions of each. I’ll talk in more detail about these games in my upcoming podcast.

• Super Mario 3D Land - The best portable Mario game ever made. It’s gorgeous, beautifully balanced, and a terrific example of judiciously implemented 3D. EAD Tokyo managed to marry its floating Galaxy game universe with older side-scrolling Mario games, and the result is a platformer that sparkles with fun and imagination.

• Mario Kart 7 - If you’re a close observer of the dev scene, you may know that Retro Studio has played a major role in designing top-tier Nintendo games like the Metroid Prime trilogy and the criminally under-appreciated Donkey Kong Country Returns. Last month’s Nintendo Power revealed that the studio quietly collaborated with EAD Tokyo on course and character design for Mario Kart 7, and the effort shows in the game’s immaculate fit and finish. It’s Mario Kart in 3D with hang gliding, underwater racing, and rock-solid online competition. What’s not to like?

• Pushmo - a cuddly gem of a puzzle-platformer, and the best title to emerge so far from Nintendo’s revamped eShop. The video below describes the game better than I can in words. Pushmo is called Pullblox in Europe.

• Mighty Switch Force - another stylish puzzle-platformer by Wayforward (A Boy and His Blob), the player controls a fembot named Officer Patricia Wagon, a “cybernetic cop send forth by the Galactic Penal Squad to put the Hooligan Sisters back behind bars.” You must turn translucent blocks solid, often in midair, while navigating environmental hazards and enemies. The game uses 3D to enhance the puzzles…and provoke gleeful giggles you vanquish baddies with blocks that suddenly materialize to crunch them.

• Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor Overclocked - one of my favorite DS titles has been revamped for the 3DS, but it’s mostly the same tactical JRPG that too many players missed in its original incarnation. I wrote about the game back in 2009, and I love the game no less fervently now. If you can overlook some gratingly effusive voice acting, Devil Survivor will bring you many hours of smart, well designed role-playing fun.

• Cave Story 3D - The definitive indie game gets a loving 3D makeover that honors the core spirit of the game, yet also manages to enrich it. Rich Stanton at Eurogamer described it as a “chibi pop-up book with the 3D effects…and it looks wonderful, both faithful and surprising.” I can’t think of a better way of describing it. Despite what you may have heard, Cave Story 3D isn't just a re-release with a new coat of paint. There's artistry here that's more about intepretation than reiteration. I wrote about Cave Story in detail back in April of 2010.

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Reason 2: Nintendo Love

Let's face it, Nintendo screwed up, and they're trying hard to fix it. The eShop is finally worth visiting because it now includes news, games, apps, and preview videos in 3D. In other words, it's actually begun to resemble a shop where you might buy something.

The "Ambassador Program," aka, "The Great Iwata Guilt-Trip Giveaway" was an effort to "show appreciation" to consumers who bought a 3DS in the first months of its availability. I was initially skeptical of this maneuver, but when I saw the final list of 20 free games - 10 classic NES and 10 GBA titles - I whistled a different tune. It's hard to dismiss some of the best games in the catalogs of both systems, including franchise launchers Super Mario Bros., Metroid, and The Legend of Zelda; and other terrific games like Yoshi's Island, The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap, Fire Emblem, Metroid Fusion, Wario Land 4, among others.

Finally, Club Nintendo at long last looks like a club worth joining. In addition to nerd-cool trinkets for frequent buyers, players can now trade in coins earned from registering games to purchase new games in the eShop.

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Reason 3: It's a Zelda machine!

If you're a Zelda fan, the 3DS is a good way to go. In addition to being backwards-compatible for DS Zelda titles Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks, seven other games are also available for the system:

The Legend of Zelda

Zelda II: The Adventure of Link

The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening DX

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D

The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Anniversary Edition (free via eShop until Feb. 20, 2012)

The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap

Four Swords Anniversary Edition is especially worth noting. It includes new levels that pay sonic and visual homage to previous Zelda games, and, unlike the cumbersome 2002 version, this is multiplayer Zelda without the crazy GBA-to-Gamecube connectivity issues. Even if you don't own a 3DS, pick this one up for your DSi or borrow one from a friend. It's a blast.

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Reason 4: It's still a pretty cool device

Despite the 3DS being on the market since last March, lots of people have yet to lay eyes on it, as I discovered spending time with family and friends over the holidays. I still get a kick out of showing it off. Unfortunately, now that more quality games are available, few people hand it back to me quickly. Mario Kart 7 and Pushmo, in particular, make my 3DS disappear for mysteriously long periods of time. 

I should also mention it's sturdy. Like most Nintendo hardware I've owned over the years, it can take a licking and keep on ticking. Good thing, too, because I've got a 4-year-old gamer girl with butterfingers.

At the risk of filling this "glass half-full" cup to the brim, I'll also note that I'm excited about some 3DS games on the horizon, especially Resident Evil Revelations (which I've briefly played); Luigi's Mansion 2 (be sure to check out the 3D video for this one in the eShop); and new Paper Mario and Animal Crossing games. I'm also a big fan of Monster Hunter Tri for the Wii, so an enhanced version of that game, Monster Hunter 3G, has me pretty excited too.

So maybe the 3DS got off to a rocky start, but 4 million unit sales in the U.S. (more than the Wii in its first nine months), suggest things may not be as dire as some of us thought. Who knows how smartphones and tablets will continue to impact Nintendo's gameplan, but for now I'm happy to say my 3DS was a welcome part of our holiday festivities.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Before you go...

It is better to be looked over than overlooked. –Mae West

So there you are, my gamer friend, gazing wistfully at that dusty white Wii that held so much promise when you brought it home five years ago. If only it had realized more of its potential. If only somebody had thought of a sensible online strategy. If only it had glowed blue more often.

Maybe you’ve reached the end of Skyward Sword and thought to yourself, “If this is the Wii’s swan song, at least the little guy went out on a high note.” But hold on there, friend. Don’t despair. I’ve got good news! Mario Party 9 is coming next March!! …Ah, sarcasm.

Before you relegate your Wii to doorstop status, may I suggest one more old-fashioned retail box game purchase? This one comes at a discount price (Amazon sells it for $25), and it’s actually six games for the price of one: Bit.Trip Complete.

If one Wii game, or in this case a series of terrific games, has been most unfairly overlooked by players, it’s the Bit.Trip series by developer Gaijin Games. While I’ve got you here, I’ll also mention Little King’s Story, A Boy and His Blob, and Excitebots, but all things considered, the Bit.Trip games are the most criminally neglected.

Bit.Trip Complete collects all six Bit.Trip games: BEAT, CORE, VOID, RUNNER, FATE, and FLUX. It also includes a video gallery recounting the story of CommanderVideo, concept art, an audio gallery featuring fan remixes of the game’s original chiptunes, and a soundtrack sampler. All nice inclusions, but fairly standard stuff for game re-releases.

Happily, Bit.Trip Complete contains three other features that convinced me to take the plunge. Included on the disc are six actual letters to Bit.Trip fans written by the developers, explaining the symbolism behind each game. These commentaries illuminate, in a decidedly non-didactic manner, the designers’ surprisingly ambitious narrative goals for each Bit.Trip game. More on the “meaning” of Bit.Trip in a moment.

Bit.Trip Complete also features 20 new mini-levels, adding a significant amount of new content to the game. But the biggest reason many players will appreciate Complete is the addition of Easy and Hard difficulty levels. My only real complaint about the original games was that they were too unforgiving. BEAT, in particular, gave me fits, and only a tag-team sub-in from my son got me past the final stage. Complete’s Easy mode mercifully lowers the difficulty curve, while Hard mode delivers a motion-controlled flogging to anyone crazy enough to tackle it.

The Bit.Trip games deliver a clinic on the virtues of minimalism in design. When I saw them a few months ago at IndieCade, Gaijin founders Mike Roush and Alex Neuse discussed the challenge of pursuing a design vision defined by simplicity. Their presentation was originally called “Storytelling through Minimalism,” but at the last moment they changed it to “Storytelling through Symbolism,” which better captures how the Bit.Trip games convey meaning.

Homages to classic games can be found throughout the Bit.Trip games. BEAT is clearly inspired by PONG; RUNNER owes its existence to Moon Patrol. Roush and Neuse wanted to make “as close to a pure game as possible,” while opening up opportunities for narrative interpretation. They visited the Museum of Modern Art in New York and studied Mark Rothko’s paintings, among other artists. They also found sonic inspiration from the chiptune scene, citing Bit Shifter and Anamanaguchi as key influences. Music is a fundamental element of the Bit.Trip design, both aesthetically and as a metronome for gameplay.

Through six games released three months apart over nearly two years, Gaijin presented the story of CommanderVideo. “We wanted to tell a story, not just [release] arcade adventures… We wanted to tell a story of pre-birth to post-death,” Roush noted. “We needed to be able to tell our story in three interwoven ways: 1) Gameplay; 2) Music; 3) Art”

How many players seek or require a story in these retro-style arcade games? Why must we “interpret” them? Why can’t we just have fun playing them and overcoming their challenges? The wonderful thing about the Bit.Trip games is that they invite interpretation without requiring it. For many players, simply surviving to the end of a difficult level is engagement enough.

But Roush and Neuse were delighted by the overwhelming number of emails and online discussions scrutinizing CommanderVideo’s symbolic journey from life to death to rebirth. If you see CommanderVideo as an ethereal being who dreams of being corporeal - and then experiences the consequences of that transition - you’re on your way to accessing the Bit.Trip saga presented sequentially over the course of six games.

Give Bit.Trip Complete a try and support the work of designers trying something different…and familiar at the same time. Each game can also be downloaded individually via WiiWare. Bit.Trip BEAT is also available for PC/Mac and iOS.

Can you recommend other overlooked Wii games? Let me know about them in the comment section below.

Miscellanea

I’m happy to report on a few things I’ve been up to lately. If you follow my work here on BG, maybe you’ll be interested in checking them out.

I was recently invited to be the first guest on a new podcast called Second Quest, hosted by Eric Brasure. Second Quest is a website devoted to “critical discussion about issues of interest to the videogame community.” The new show is a reboot of an older ‘cast called Cartridge Blowers, which ran regularly since 2009.

Eric and I discuss a wide range of topics related to games, and if you listen, you’ll quickly discover what I discovered during the interview: Eric does his homework. I enjoyed the conversation, and I’m grateful to Eric for inviting me on the show. You can listen to it here.

This week I’m also chatting about the Games of 2011 in Slate Magazine’ 5th annual Gaming Club. I’m joined by three terrific writers I admire: Chris Suellentrop, Tom Bissell, and Charlie Yu. We’re exchanging essays over the course of three days in a conversational format, doing our best to address issues as they emerge. I’m big fan of previous editions of the Gaming Club, so I’m honored to be included this year. You can jump in and read at any point in the conversation, but I recommend starting at the beginning. You can find Slate’s Gaming Club here.

Finally, I’m preparing to record my annual “Favorites of the Year” podcast. Stay tuned for an all-star gala confab featuring some familiar voices and a few new ones too. I hope you’ll enjoy it.

Happy holidays, everyone. Thanks for reading Brainy Gamer!

Who needs winners?

 

What can you find in an old picture except the painful contortions of the artist trying to break uncrossable barriers which obstruct the full expression of his dream? F.T. Marinetti, “The Futurist Manifesto” (1909)

Modernists ruin everything. Prior to the 20th century, visual art was mostly pictorial, depicting scenes and themes from the real world. Artists painted or sculpted images that anyone could recognize and understand. Then, in 1863 Manet scandalized the art world by painting a naked woman at a picnic. The Impressionists soon emerged and did their best to mottle everything up.

Then along game the Cubists. And the Dadaists. And the Expressionists. And the Surrealists. Manifestos whizzed by like flying plates, and suddenly nothing made sense. Reality was up for grabs and nobody knew what they were supposed to think or do anymore. Arguments raged over lighting and brushstroke technique. Critics praised or condemned in fits of unbridled vitriol.

It wasn’t just the painters. At the first performance of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring in 1911, a riot broke out in the theatre between audience members who reviled the production and others who loved it. (I should note that the Theater has a longer history with hot-tempered audiences. In 1849 one patron expressed his displeasure with William C. Macready’s rendition of Hamlet by hurling the carcass of a dead sheep onto the stage.)

It was a time of upheaval, ideological clashes, and reinvention. And it was wonderful. Art - and what that art meant or represented - mattered to artists and the public in ways it rarely does today. These days an occasional kerfuffle may arise over public funding for “offensive” art; or maybe a festering hip-hop feud re-erupts now and then - but it’s hard to find artists and audiences locked in spirited philosophical debate over “the future of art form X…” or “why artist X is advancing/killing art form Y.”

You know where I’m going with this, don’t you?

Those kinds of heated exchanges (not always civil or enlightening) are a regular part of “the video game conversation” occurring all around us. It unfolds on forums, chat rooms, and comment sections, but it can also be found at the local GameStop, in dorm rooms, and even in the classroom. One of the most vigorous debates I saw this semester occurred among students focused on the question of whether The Legend of Zelda’s Link should ever speak.

More importantly, the debate (healthy and constructive) continues among designers. I’d say roughly a quarter of all sessions at the annual Game Developers Conference in San Francisco could be classified as mini-manifestos, calling in one way or another for a change in thinking, a reassessment of methods, a challenge to assumptions. GDC and similar gatherings continue to ask fundamental questions about the nature, form, and purpose of games. Heck, we still have rip-roaring discussions on the basic question: “What is a game?”

This ongoing analysis of fundamentals distinguishes games from older media. I’ve attended theater and film conferences for many years. Trust me, we don’t spend much time asking those kinds of basic questions anymore. We’ve got that stuff figured out. Heh. Yeah.

The mistake we often make with games is to assume that one design philosophy must defeat all others. It’s the nature of manifesto. “I believe this to be true and ideal,” which, by definition, invalidates any alternate philosophy. Marinetti’s Futurist Manifesto, quoted at the top of this post, also contains this lovely sentiment:

Literature has up to now magnified pensive immobility, ecstasy and slumber. We want to exalt movements of aggression, feverish sleeplessness, the double march, the perilous leap, the slap and the blow with the fist.

Out with the weak, stupid old. In with the bad-ass, superior new.

History shows that no single aesthetic approach or philosophy ever “wins.” Representational art wasn’t killed by Abstract Expressionism; nor was classical Hollywood narrative killed by the French New Wave. But when you see a painting by Jasper Johns or a film by Martin Scorsese it’s easy to see how each style lives in the work of artists with many influences.

In the last month, four major games arrived that exemplify four distinct approaches to narrative game design. At the risk of oversimplifying, I contend these games represent the four major pillars of video game storytelling. The lines separating them aren’t impermeable, but each game presents a viable approach to narrative that many players find valid and meaningful.

You may be an exception - because, of course, BG readers are exceptional! ;-) - but most gamers I know prefer one, or maybe two, of these games over the others…which may prove why there's an important place for each one.

• The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword - the latest edition of the definitive hero quest adventure game. Zelda narratives are rituals, with each game re-telling the same essential story, set in a familiar universe with recurring motifs. Exploration and puzzle-solving are similarly ritualized, with iteration gently rounding the edges of the series. Link remains the quintessential silent hero, a old-school convention in a game chock-full of narrative and ludic conventions.

• Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception - the definitive playable movie. Sky-high production values, canny writing, and convincing performances elevate the series and punctuate its authored narrative with cinematic flair. The Uncharted games embed player-driven challenge sequences into the larger framework of a linear adventure story unfolding at breakneck speed. If you ever dreamed of stepping into the screen of an Indiana Jones movie, the Uncharted games offer a thrilling way to do just that.

• The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim - the definitive open world RPG. A stunning universe built for a player to explore however she wishes. A central narrative thread is woven through the game, but the player is free to engage it, or not. Emergent possibilities arise at every turn. Listen to players discussing their experiences (telling their stories, really) in Skyrim, and you will hear nearly every account delivered in first-person. Skilled veterans of the series spend more time playing with Skyrim than playing the game as it was “meant to be played.” Authorship in this case is less about formal storytelling than about enabling player autonomy within constraints intended to spark imaginative, self-directed play. Engagement deepens through an avatar created and evolved through the player’s own actions and choices.

• Minecraft - the definitive sandbox. A procedurally generated world in which players build, acquire, craft, and battle on their own, with no designer mandated directives aside from the single imperative: survive. So where’s the narrative? I’ll rely on Naughty Dog’s Rich Lemarchand for that answer, a fascinating observer, given his artistic connection to the Uncharted games, which, design-wise can be seen as Dr. Jekyl to Minecraft’s Mr. Hyde. As I reported in October on Lemarchand’s IndieCade keynote:

Lemarchand went on to consider the word ‘videogame,’ describing it a “a good word…but problematic.” It implies a win condition built into the system, “but lots of video games don’t have this state.” He praised Minecraft as one of his favorite recent games and admitted to developing a short-term addiction to it. “I play Minecraft narratively,” he said, seeing the game as a kind of “Lego I Am Legend.”

He also referenced Kent Hudson’s recent talk at GDC 2011 on player-driven stories, noting that agency within a game world can occur from top to bottom, throughout every element of design. “Minecraft expresses this perfectly,” and it does so entirely through its systems. A major part of Minecraft’s pleasure, for Lemarchand, is the player creating beauty and wonder through his own efforts. “It’s systemic Theater,” he observed. “Minecraft isn’t a story, but I made it one.”

I realize my claim that four games can stand for all narrative games is bound to fall short. My intention isn’t really to classify every storytelling game into one of these silos. But I do believe these games represent distinct and viable paradigms for storytelling.

Maybe the real value of such classification is to better understand how designers find inspiration (and unacceptable limitations) in these games moving forward. For example, it’s easy to see how BioWare positions its games somewhere in the space between the Uncharted and Elder Scrolls games. The artists I mentioned above understood it well. The real action is in the margins, crafting something new out of lessons learned from the old.

Tropes are for dopes

spitting in the wind: [spit-ting-in-the-wind]
idiom; euphemism (see also pissing in the wind)
1. A futile, self-defeating act.
2. Wasting time trying to achieve something than cannot be achieved. e.g. “Assigning Congress the task of addressing the budget deficit is like spitting in the wind.”

Bellyaching about mainstream media coverage of video games is an exercise in expectoration blowback. No amount of complaining seems to make a difference, and those of us who believe media coverage imacts public perception battle high blood pressure every time we hear another outmoded, ill-informed piece of reporting from journalists who clearly lack first-hand experience playing games, or have simply failed to do their homework.

NPR (National Public Radio) generally bucks the tired ‘soundbyte-news’ trend with thoughtful reporting that goes deeper and wider than other news outlets. Recently, the network has attempted to address its stuffy ‘east-coast intellectual’ image with refreshingly astute and lively coverage of the arts and technology. Video games, in particular, have received frequent attention. In the last week alone NPR aired four segments devoted to games on its flagship programs, All Things Considered and Morning Edition.

But apparently not even NPR can avoid the common pitfall of shoddy reporting on video games. Like its mainstream brethren, NPR consistently frames its game coverage with ‘analysis’ that fails to illuminate the games themselves. This kind of coverage produces four threadbare tropes that have come to define game journalism in the popular media:

• Video games make a CRAP TON of money. Even more than movies!!

  RENEE MONTAGNE, host: The new version of the video game “Call of Duty” is out now, released last week. In the first 24 hours on shelves in the U.S. and the UK, the game made a staggering FOUR…HUNDRED…MILLION…DOLLARS in sales - a new record.

Coverage of the game industry as business news will inevitably include sales data, and it’s certainly newsworthy that the COD franchise generates big revenue numbers. But Montaigne’s conversation with Harold Goldberg (G4TV) wasn’t a business report. The segment focused on “this season’s hot video games…” and Goldberg’s remarks were limited to 20-second blurbs - on COD: “It’s almost a lifestyle for certain people”; on Skyward Sword: “…at once sweet, adventuresome, heartwarming, and a little scary; on Skyrim: “It’s much more than slaying dragons; it’s building up your character…”

Goldberg does the best he can, but the segment is yet another consumer-focused “game buying guide” story that doesn’t say much about the games themselves.

• Gamers are CRAZY! (see also lazy, anti-social, obssessive, etc.)

In a segment called “Gamers Take Advantage Of Three-Day Weekend,” Beth Accomando of KPBS recorded an interview with her 18-year-old son and his friend who spent three uninterrupted days playing Skyrim.

DAVID: Oh, for a game like this, you should more or less just say goodbye to your life now - your wife, kids, job, bills - bye.

KYRA MORALES [customer in line at San Diego GameStop]: I’m going to play like 24 hours and then drink a Mountain Dew to keep me up.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

KYRA MORALES: And then play another 24 hours.

The report is a personalized and lighthearted take on gamers and their devotion to certain games, but once again we learn almost nothing about the game itself. What’s more, the piece feeds the popular misconception that gamers are mostly obssessive teenagers with time on their hands…when reams of data on games and gamers proves otherwise. Lots of players stood in line and bought Skyrim at midnight; but far more of us unwrapped our copy when it arrived from Amazon on the day of release.

• I don’t waste time playing games myself, but I’ll happily discuss why you think they’re interesting.

One of the saddest aspects of games reporting is that few of the journalists covering them seem to know much about their subject. NPR relies on experts like Jamin Warren (Kill Screen) or Brian Crecente (Kotaku) to discuss games with its on-air hosts, but rarely do these experts get to weigh in with more than cursory expertise. Warren recently discussed Batman: Arkham City with Renee Montagne:

MONTAGNE: Now “Batman: Arkham City” is getting attention for more than its good reviews. And it’s gotten good reviews. It is being sold with 10 percent of the game missing – that missing part would be Catwoman. How does it work?

What follows is an informative exchange about the industry’s increasing reliance on DLC, but once again (noticing a theme here?) we learn almost nothing about the game. Why did it get good reviews? Ironically, Warren co-founded the preeminent print magazine devoted to games criticism, but here he’s limited to being an industry pundit. He performs admirably, but one wishes he could have weighed in on why these Batman games have so deepened the cultural footprint of this iconic character and series.

• I don’t have anything interesting to say about this game, but here’s a provocative montage with lots of carnage, accompanied by blurbs with numbers in them.

I’ll admit this one’s a bit of a cheap shot (not aimed at NPR, by the way), but if we’re compiling a list of media coverage tropes for video games, this one must be on that list. Offering lots of heat, but very little light - this familiar encapsulation of games as wildly popular, violent, newfangled, ever-more-realistic, etc. has become the de rigueur presentation of games as a pervasive form of entertainment invading our living rooms, competing against TV and movies for our money and attention.

I focused on NPR in this post because I’m a true blue fan of the network. I financially support my local station, and I’m a devoted listener to its full slate of programming. I single out NPR because I believe it can do better in its coverage of games, just as it routinely does better with its national, international, and political reporting.

During the same period in which the stories I mentioned above were aired, NPR interviewed artists like novelist Don DeLillo, musician Keith Jarrett, and filmmaker Alexander Payne. I’m happy the network has expanded its coverage of games, but it can truly lead the way by focusing on games as creative expression, not just as commerce or cultural curiosity.

Reporting on Skyrim multiple times without talking to its director Todd Howard is a curious and disappointing omission. I’m happy to hear Harold Goldberg’s thoughts on Uncharted 2, but why not sit down with Amy Hennig and discuss her goals for the series…or what it’s like to be the most creatively influential woman in an industry dominated by men? Games offer so many compelling hooks for good reporting. Break free of the tropes and blaze a new trail.

What would such coverage look (or in this case, sound) like? Last Friday, P.J. Vogt from WNYC's "On The Media" reported on Ian Bogost's Cow Clicker, and "what happens when your creations take on a life of their own." It's the kind of smart, illuminating reporting on games that I hope we'll see more of in the future.

Cow Clicker - On the Media

 

Take 3 - Uncharted the Director

The history of narrative game design can be fairly summarized as an ongoing effort to enable the player. Games enable choice, strategic thinking, moral deliberation, mechanical mastery, etc., all designed to make the player feel smart, powerful, responsible, or otherwise connected to a world where the player’s actions and decisions matter. In one way or another, all the major game franchises aim at this same brass ring. Mass Effect, GTA, Bioshock, Elder Scrolls, Dragon Age, Assassin’s Creed, Fable, Fallout - each unfolds a story (apparently) driven forward by the player. Each enables the player to impact the world…or at least delivers an illusion of impact.

But not Uncharted. From its opening moments, Uncharted 3 establishes a cinematic sender-receiver relationship with the player. Advancing the story is the game’s prime directive, and it also functions as the player’s reward. The game presents a steady stream of prompts (timed button-presses) action challenges (climbing, gunfights and hand-to-hand combat), and puzzles, each requiring the proper response. Get it right, and you get more story. Get it wrong, and it’s rewind and try again.

In this way, the player activates story sequentially, bit by bit, not by choosing sides or navigating branching dialogue options, but by earning it like Mario coins. The Half-Life games work similarly (sans cutscenes), but the Uncharted series builds such pot-boiler suspense and character intrigue into its narratives that the player feels swept up in a globe-trotting page-turner that insists on steady progression. If I don’t keep going, who’s going to rescue Sully? Missing a jump means I’ve delayed the story, which somehow feels more consequential in these tightly-paced games. Cutscene as carrot; Rewind as stick.

In this ‘play the movie’ system, cinematic fidelity is paramount, and each game has raised the bar higher in this regard. Uncharted 3 retains the colorful adventure-movie look of the previous games, but this time the virtual camerawork has a Paul Thomas Anderson feel, relying heavily on constant-motion Steadicam cinematography. As cinema, Uncharted 3 feels at once old-school-Hollywood and art-house edgy. Pay attention to the “camera” in this early scene to see what I mean. It never stops moving.

So, if cinematic interactivity is Uncharted’s raison d’être, how does this affect the player’s experience? I believe an apt parallel can be found in the relationship between a lead actor and director on a film set, with the Uncharted player as actor and the Uncharted game as director. Playing Uncharted 3 is less about watching a film than shooting a film.

The actor must hit his marks and deliver his performance within a tightly constrained set of parameters. Autonomy is secondary to precision in this environment. I may have my own ideas of how to ‘play’ a scene, but if my approach violates the director’s (or cinematographer’s or art director’s, etc.) plans for how the scene must be executed, we have a problem. This isn’t necessarily a good or bad thing. It’s simply the nature of filmmaking, and the Uncharted games rely heavily on this paradigm, both as presentation and as player experience.

Like a good movie actor, my job is to make what I’m told to do look like it was my idea all along. When I hit the triangle button to dodge a punch, or jump at just the right moments to escape a building crumbling beneath me, Drake looks fabulous doing it. When I deviate from that script or miss my mark, Drake dies in a pathetic rag-doll heap. Film actors quickly learn that a skillful performance matters, but nothing matters more than what the director (and editor) do with that work. A good director may redeem a bad performance; but a bad director usually makes everyone look bad. Uncharted 3 is a very good, but very prescriptive director.

Alfred Hitchcock famously remarked “Actors are cattle.” If you’ve watched a film being shot, especially on location, it’s a nasty, but mostly fair observation, at least in terms of what’s required to get film into the can. Hitchcock later amended his observation: “I never said all actors are cattle, what I said was all actors should be treated like cattle.”

So, does Naughty Dog treat Uncharted players like cattle? Well...maybe Hitchcock’s notion that we should be treated as such isn’t far off the mark if we see mainstream narrative game design as a certain kind of cow-herding: moving a mass of players from point to point, keeping them fed and happy, and trying hard not to lose any strays. This is the general feeling I get from Uncharted 3. At the risk of issuing damning praise, I believe the game is a spectacular exercise in interactive cinema. No game comes closer to delivering a truly playable movie, with AAA production values and a craftsmanlike grasp of film language.

But the total experience falls short for me, not because Uncharted isn’t enough of a “game” or because it relies heavily on cutscenes. There are lots of ways to tell stories in video games, and Naughty Dog executes its way better than anyone else. I just wish this director trusted me a little more with my performance. I’ve worked with him (I could as easily say "her") three times now, and I think he's terrific. I love the studio, and I love the ethos. But I need a little more creative input now. I need to feel less like a cow and more like a collaborator.

A couple of examples highlight my point. A pirate named Rameses attacks Nate in Yemen, knocking him out with a piece of wood. He then takes Nate prisoner, transports him to a dry dock, and tortures him for information. When Nate refuses to cooperate, Rameses replies, “Perhaps your friend Sully will be more grateful for his life,” and departs.

Later, Nate is re-captured by Rameses’ men, but Nate manages to escape, steal a gun from one of the pirates, and shoot Rameses in the chest...with no input or interaction from me. Hey, Mr. Director! I could have done that! Given Rameses' treatment of me earlier, it would have been a pleasure. Why couldn’t you trust me to take care of the job?

A few chapters later, Nate staggers through the Rub’ al Khali desert - lost, alone, and dying of thirst. This section of the game is reminiscent of the Nepalese village portion of Uncharted 2: a tonal and mechanical shift occurs, and the player is free to explore and make sense of this apparently incongruous section of the game. But unlike the village, the desert in Uncharted 3 directs me ways that confine and confound me.

I admire how the control system breaks down in this scene, making it difficult to manipulate a staggering, hallucinating Nate. But all too soon, the game extracts me from the situation and moves the narrative forward, long before I’m ready. I wish the game had trusted me to explore, even aimlessly, perhaps encountering hallucinations that tell me more about Drake’s obsessions and fears. It’s a missed opportunity for me as Nate to wander confused, disoriented, and face myself. I might have learned something here. You gave me a place and situation to do that, but you didn’t trust me enough to make that time of wandering meaningful. Forty days and nights might have been interesting…

I like the Uncharted games. I'll begin playing Skyrim tomorrow, and I'm guessing I'll like that too. I don't need one game to be like the other. Vive la différence! But I'm a restless actor. I’ll happily accept another gig as Nathan Drake if the director wants to cast me again. But let’s talk about how to make that next performance more valuable for me. I’m happy to let you run the show. I just need a little more room to breathe. Work with me here, ok? :-)

Joy in Mudville

 

More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly. –Woody Allen

Gamers are a confounding lot. For a pack of people who like to play, we sure do seem miserable most of the time. We complain about review scores; we hate games journalism; we mercilessly pick at each other on forums; and we shake our heads sadly at projected dim futures for franchise X, developer X, or console manufacturer X. A newcomer to the ongoing “games conversation” on dedicated websites and social media channels could hardly be blamed for concluding that playing games and talking about them can take a serious toll on the psyche.

Let’s take a collective breath for a moment, shall we? When I survey the video game landscape and make a dispassionate assessment (as much as possible), it’s hard to understand why we’re so prone to gloom and despair. I see a bright horizon, filled with promise and terrific games.

The immediate future looks especially enticing. A “Magnificent Seven” assortment of big new games beckons me, and I couldn’t be more excited to play them.

• Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword
• Elder Scrolls: Skyrim
• Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception
• Assassin’s Creed 3
• Saints Row: The Third
• Kirby’s Return to Dreamland
• Super Mario 3D Land

One can easily scoff at this list. All sequels (so we’ve obviously run out of ideas); all AAA titles (so I’m obviously biased toward major studios); all console games, except Skyrim (so I obviously hate PC games); no Call of Duty 3 (so I obviously hate war games). Bibbidy bobbidy boo.

As I write this, Uncharted 3 is winging its way to me, “out for delivery” at any moment. The very thought of this brings me joy because the Uncharted games have given me so many gaming delights. I’ve written here before that a major Zelda title is my “drop everything” game, and Skyward Sword will be no exception. Will it revolutionize the Zelda franchise? No. Do I need that to fully enjoy the game? No.

I’m normally immune to pre-release hype, but Skyrim’s jaw-dropping trailers have me salivating for a new Elder Scrolls. Bethesda’s long record of superior craftsmanship suggests their new game will draw me into its world and, once again, steal dozens of hours from my life. I’m not the biggest Assassin’s Creed fan in the world, but the first two games point in such a promising direction that I’m encouraged Ubisoft will deliver a game that builds on what they’ve learned.

Dedicated Kirby players appreciate, as few others do, that Kirby games have consistently pushed in innovative directions, often jettisoning standard Kirby-isms in favor of other creative ideas its designers wish to pursue (e.g. Canvas Curse and Epic Yarn). As a swan-song Wii game, I’m curious to see what HAL Laboratories has come up with this time. The game is out now, but I haven’t yet had time to play it.

Super Mario 3D Land is a major Mario release, developed by Nintendo EAD, the company’s main studio in Kyoto, also responsible for the masterful Mario Galaxy games. The 3DS has been kicked around, and justly so, for its lack of quality games. A new Mario designed specifically for the system is clearly Nintendo’s attempt to help silence those complaints. It’s worth remembering that EAD has an admirable track record designing games that leverage a system’s unique properties (e.g. Mario 64, Mario Kart DS, and the Galaxy games), so optimism for a new 3D Mario doesn’t seem misplaced to me.

That leaves Saints Row: The Third, perhaps a curious title for me to enthuse over. At the risk of being a little cryptic, I'll say that the developer of this game, Volition, lives down the road from me in Champaign, Illinois, and I've seen bits of what they've been working on. Let's just say this game refuses to be ignored. You'll see what I mean very soon. 

These seven games pile on top of the ones I’m currently playing with joyful gusto. Dark Souls has owned me for 40+ tension-filled hours with no end in sight. NBA 2K12 (GASP! a sports game?), broken online-mode aside, is a stellar sports game, the first I’ve seen to successfully blend cutting edge graphical realism and old-school simulation. Finally, Batman: Arkham City waves at me from its unopened plastic, crying "What about me? :-("

As excited as I am about these games, my optimism has other roots too. My recent visit to IndieCade convinced me we need not worry about a lack of vision or forward thinking in the games industry. In Culver City I saw a virtual cavalcade of terrific games, covering a wide spectrum of design ideas, and a burgeoning collection of designers eager to advance this art form in many new directions. I’ll write about one of those games in my next post.

More reasons for hope. This year I’m honored to again serve as a judge for the Independent Games Festival, held at the Game Developers Conference this March. Last year, the festival received nearly 400 entries, a 30 percent increase from the previous year. This year, the entry pool increased by another 40 percent! Even if many of these games never see the light of day, the raw numbers suggest more and more young artists see game design as their preferred mode of expression, and that can only be good for the future of the industry, broadly defined.

One last thought. My friend Corvus Elrod has been working on an indie board game called Bhaloidam. Corvus describes it this way:

Bhaloidam is an indie tabletop game from Zakelro that is an open and accessible storytelling platform. With it you’ll spin character-driven stories and weave them together with the stories of your friends. You’ll exert your influence upon the storyworlds you create together, shaping its future and controlling your characters’ destinies as you perform their successes and their failures.

45 days ago, Corvus announced a Kickstarter fund to support the project, seeking $27,900 from backers. That’s almost 28K for a boardgame with an odd-sounding title and nobody famous involved. Today Corvus and company are celebrating. As of this writing, Bhaloidam has received $30,948 in support from 567 backers. The project is a GO, and Corvus is moving ahead with an initial production run of books, boards, tokens, and packaging, thanks to a community of supporters who believe in him and his work. I think that's a pretty remarkable thing.

There’s plenty of cause for hope around here. Sometimes we just need to break away from the chatter, which seems inevitably to follow a negative trajectory. As Mark Twain put it, “Lord save us all from a hope tree that has lost the faculty of putting out blossoms.”

Little nuggets of truth

Jonathan Blow grapples with design like a philosopher wrestles with be verbs. He interrogates core principles and the values they convey. If you’re interested in how game design emerges from a series of purposeful choices, Mr. Blow is an uncommonly generous teacher. His most recent talk at IndieCade, “Designing to Reveal the Nature of the Universe”, co-presented by Marc ten Bosch (Miegakure), presented a “game design aesthetic” that attempts to illustrate “fundamental truths [expressed] in the cleanest possible way.”

Blow believes good designers create and package “little nuggets of truth” for the player, building higher-order constructs from primitive granular elements. This system reflects nature, which can often be expressed through mathematics. Game designers create “toy universes” which resemble these complex mathematical systems. As designed systems, games can play a similar role illuminating the nature of the universe.

Blow and Bosch see another connection between Mathematics and game design. “Mathematicians talk about beauty. They seem to agree that the shortest equations expressing the deepest principles are the most beautiful.” We value similar elegance in design, across media and materials, because it leads us most directly to ideas the designer wishes to express. Blow believes game designers build systems and explore their consequences in a math-like way. “We present the results so that players can discover the same truths in turn.”

Blow and Bosch see useful methods for designing elegant games, and they devoted most of their presentation to sharing their process with aspiring designers, using their own recent work as models. What emerged was a series of principles (Blow called them ‘virtues’) directed specifically at puzzle design, many of which can also be applied to game design broadly defined.

1. Richness - Start with an idea (a mechanic or a detail or a consequence of an unknown mechanic) and aim toward the richest space. Adjust the setup or mechanics of the game to find the richest, most interesting consequences for the player.
2. Completeness - Explore the possibility space completely. Players naturally do this on their own, and their attachment to the game grows as the game reveals its depth in this regard. Leave no stone unturned.
3. Surprise - Counterbalance completeness with occasional surprises. An easy way to surprise the player is to combine mechanics to produce different results. Surprise goes hand in hand with discovery, which encourages the player to continue exploring.
4. Lightest Contrivance - Present the results cleanly. Let player experience it with the least possible contrivance. This applies to both mechanics and level design. Contrivance is proportional to Yield. The more contrived, the less the player connects with the game and/or its mechanics.
5. Strength of Boundary - Fully understand the space of consequences. Trace a strong boundary around it. Your game exists inside that carefully considered boundary.
6. Compatibility of Mechanics - Richness and Completeness want interactive mechanics that work well and feel like they naturally belong together.
7. Orthogonality of Mechanics - Ask yourself: does a potential new mechanic add interesting new consequences, or are these consequences mostly contained in the mechanics already present? Blow cited Ikaruga as a game whose mechanical limits serve it as well as its possibilities.
8. Generosity - Orthogonality and Completeness imply Generosity since rarely-used versions of similar mechanics are discouraged. The game should not limit you from leveraging its mechanics. The player should feel that the game’s mechanics make her feel powerful and enabled.

So, how do you design good puzzles? By not trying to make hard puzzles, say Blow and Bosch. Not even by trying to make good puzzles. “Look for the truth and illustrate it with a puzzle.” The point of the puzzle is to show some truth, and the designer must know what that truth is in the context of his or her game. “Eliminate anything that is not about that truth.”

Blow and Bosch see Nature as the best design inspiration, and a game designer who strives to emulate this system necessarily abdicates authorship over the puzzle. “The universe is the real designer of the puzzle,” according to Blow. “Games built this way are like many lenses carefully pointed at the universe.”