Autoreferential games and mainstream culture

Sometimes I repeat in my mind things I already know for a better (excessive) schematization and simplification. And to find and underline some specific aspects.

Months before Raph published his book about the “Theory of Fun”, I had already figured out the most important point on my very own (precisation: I don’t claim to be smarter. Raph talks in the book about a million of other things. I got one, Raph got the remaining 999.999 that I really could have never hoped to understand and explain so well):

– “Fun” is the result of a learning process. So “learning” is the key.

There are then two possible situations in a game:

1- The game is boring because it is too simple, or repetitive, or doesn’t match the interest of the player.
2- The game is frustrating because it is too complicated (cannot be “read”) or too hard (performance).

“Fun” is essentially a state of equilibre between those two positions.

Game Design is essentially about finding that balance.

A game is a problem to solve. A given situation with its rules that requires a solution.

Playing a game and solving those problems is divided into two moments: acquisition/reading and mastering.

There’s a wall. I need to pass it. I start to poke it.

The first moment about the acquisition/learning is about starting to observe the type of wall. You observe its shape, thickness, height. What you do is about trying to define the type of obstacle starting from what is already part of your experience, so confronting this wall with the wall types you already know. First you look for similarities, then you look for differences. You start to poke it as a form of experimentation, to check consistence, to look for passages. To understand the differences and finally add the new discoveries to your “system of competences”, a pool of knowledge and abilities. So even this fist moment is divided into other two:

1- Use of competences that the player already has.
2- Acquisition of new competences.

The second moment of the learning process is then about the “performance” or mastering. What you do is about acquiring a practice and getting better. Becoming a well-oiled system, being able to react to and identify obstacles more promptly and so on.

This is a basic schematization that can help to understand how games essentially work, but that doesn’t really help to make better games. In the meantime I was thinking that the system I described is not closed at all. And this is definitely important. What I mean is that when a player begins a new game he doesn’t start from a “tabula rasa”. Instead he brings along all the competences that he has developed in previous games. This may be one good reason why games are often derivative.

In fact I’m quite sure that modern FPS are much more complex and “hard” overall than the FPS we had years ago. The “target” of these games (and the majority of games in general) isn’t a noob. But an experienced player that, for example, has already a very good competence about moving in a 3D space using two hands at the same time to use a keyboard and a mouse. It wasn’t easy at all when I moved from Doom to Quake and the new configurations with +mouselook stareted to become popular. It wasn’t even “fun” because I was struggling with the controls instead of enjoying the immersion (non-immersive FPS suck).

Today we see that games that focus on accessibility (like WoW) can be largely successful because they go back to absorb those players that weren’t already part of the sub-culture and sharing its competencies. WoW is laregely derivative, so very familiar for veteran mmorpg players, but at the same time it is built to rely on competencies that are shared by a larger pool of players (“gamers” in general).

So I started to think about derivative games and mechanics, feedback, competences required from other games, subsets, accessibility issues and so on. And there’s a point where this model breaks: the immersion, once again.

The immersion is a way to break out of “games”. Like the debate about “mechanics” and “metaphor”. Think for example if you aggro a monster. The monster start to chase you and you run as fast you can. You could find an house and close yourself inside, trying to block the door while the monster starts to ram it. Or maybe you can try to climb a tree and move out of reach. Or, if the monster is big, trying to move in a point where the forest is more intricate. In a mmorpg you would already know that noone of these are possible. You know that a mob can run right through a tree, you know that terrain doesn’t affect run speed, you know that buildings have no doors, you know that you cannot climb a tree.

The problem is: we can build a game to rely on itself, on its subset of rules that you slowly teach and impose to the player, or draw from previous experience when the game is derivative. But maybe we can also “jump” these specific competences and leverage the audience through immersivity. The immersion could be the very best accessibility key. Free of artificial mechanics that you have to study, free of GUI.

How can you make a game with that approach? Maybe by using game mechanics that only draw from immersive elements. (will return on this. Comments on Lum’s blog, simulation and so on)

I was thinking: is more accessible a mmorpg with the standard aggro mechanics we already know, or one with more complicate animal behaviours but where monster behave and react more realistically?

The point is that current games have become incredibly sophisticated, but they seem to have lost the tie with their very origin. The original myth and culture. The shared values. These games don’t talk anymore about this world we share. They talk about themselves only. In the meantime we have developed so much practice with these artificial, sophisticated worlds that aggro mechanics and whatnot are incredibly familiar and foregone.

You know what’s this process? Games becoming autoreferential. They don’t need anymore to talk about something out of themselves. Because the myth we share is now the myth that these games have built. They are now so complex than their system is autonomous.

But, while doing so, I think these games are also losing contact with a greater public, and with that desire for “something else” that even the “gamers” share. So the possibility to talk and seduce outside their niche (big and growing, but still niche).

What I mean is that there’s now a gap between the fantasy genre and the mmorpg genre. The mmorpg genre was a representation of the fantasy genre. But now they are two different and autonomous systems. With the risk that the fantasy genre will become a subset of the other (movies and books made out of games). And I don’t think I like this scenario.

Vanguard is a perfect example of incredibly sophisticated game built around those concepts that were created right within the genre, instead of outside of it. The most derivative game you can imagine. As Lum said:

various subtle game systems and UI improvements that would only make sense if you were staring at a combat screen forever, such as pre-built combat macros for common tasks, inherent friendly – and enemy – target differentation and the like.

Where’s the immersion?

Leave a Reply