Maybe someone remembers my idea. It was about clustering the servers and using a system of portals to regulate the population and spread all the players evenly between the factions and the servers.

Right now Blizzard is severely suffering both (faction and server unbalance). I’m sure everyone can agree that overlooking these fundamental problems isn’t anymore acceptable and Blizzard’s server transfers aren’t going to have a relevant impact.

I pull back up this argument because Jeff Freeman wrote a wonderful article.

He explains magnifically the problems and suggests a structure usable in both PvP and PvE. I believe someone else could be interested beside me. So it’s there if you want to discuss. I’d suggest Mythic to hire him if he wasn’t already taken.

I’m going to write about it as I have time but there are a few weaknesses in his proposed system, imho. Still I’m happy to see I’m not the only one to consider this aspect and propose ideas.

(as posted on Q23)

While studying television and media at the university I discover more and more elements that are common (or should be) even to mmorpgs. There are a few of these that found popular success, in particular for programs that must hold and increase the interest in the long run. Technical terms that sadly I don’t know how to translate but that would be also useful to analyze and describe core mechanics of mmorpgs.

One of the laws is to avoid anxiety-inducing and “wrong footing” mechanics. The large public wants a catharsis and wants to know what to expect. Paradoxically the public rewards the lack of surprises. The most popular (on all levels) programs are those that are more similar to a “ritual”, a repetition of always the same structure that all the spectators know already and are able to anticipate. Obvious is the example of comic spectacles based on gags that the public repeats aloud as they are being acted. Or movies where you definitely know how it will end, but still you feel worried and “live and feel” the characters along the story. Famous is the example of Kenny in South Park where this mechanic is openly exploited.

While these are for sure mechanics specific of the television, since its use is concretely different in the fruition and target, I believe that the discussion is still interesting. Even for mmorpgs the attitude could be more effective and popular, with World of Warcraft again as an example.

When you want to hook a bigger public not only you deal with the casual player, but you deal with a lot of elements tied to that aspect. One well-known is the possibility to join easily and play with your friends and this brings directly to the problem of level-gaps that begin to separate and put impassable lines between these players. These are fundamental aspects, the design should focus on this. Another element is that most players would like to relax, accomplish something, maybe even playing something dumb that doesn’t require a full, nonstop attention for two hours pressing frenetically keys in a highly challenging environment. It’s stressful, it’s tiring. It works for brief playsessions but it requires an attitude and predisposition. So it’s not recommended to a mmorpg that is expected to target the largest public and keep the players interested in the long term. It doesn’t “please”.

The same happens for the wrong-footing mechanic. Not long ago I touched the topic about a “too balanced” game. If it’s true, like Raph says, that the main activity in a game is about pattern-matching, the appeal of the game will depend directly on this. In a “too balanced” system it’s hard to distinguish the optimal path because they seem all equal. There’s no choice, everything is even, levelled. At the same time most of these games (like DAoC or SWG) have obscure mechanics filled with exceptions to rules. You cannot “expect” something. If these games are at the core “formal systems”, the main goal for the player (on the meta-level) is to understand the shape of that system, figure out its rules and define the optimal pattern. So it’s founded about the possibility to observe, deduce, understand and forecast results. If the mechanics are obscure or if the game keeps “wrong footing” the player the result is frustration.

Of course there aren’t defined and “safe” answers to these problems. There’s the problem of the target that you choose as aim (I saved a message from Raph about this here). But the problem is still crucial and always present. I believe understimated or even not considered at all when the development is shaken by too many production problems that make appear the few points I described here absolutely superficial.

This is Raph at his best.

I wish I had time to comment.

Another recurring topic in this genre is “instancing” Vs “persistence”. I’m not going to get involved with it again because I already expressed my opinions diffusely. I started with a glance here, then I expanded slightly the idea with a lot of redundancy, Stephen Zepp brought up the problem again and the discussion lead to delve more in the gameplay toward a different attitude where I explained some of my ideas. On Terra Nova another discussion lead me to draw a distinct line between “PvE and PvP” mirroring exactly, at the same time, the line between “instancing and persistence”. The result is that the design turns over. How you build PvE is the opposite of how you build PvP.

“Instancing” is a shape. A shape that will determine if what you want to put into it will fit or not, so it’s important that you choose the shape for its content and the content for its shape. PvP and PvE are also shapes for different types of content. These are basic oppositions, basic design structures. Essential dichotomies: “PvE vs PvP” and “instancing vs persistence”. My point is that they not only come in pairs, but they are also linked one with the other, PvE with instancing and PvP with persistence. Isn’t one of the main duties of a designer to choose suitable structures?

It’s the reason why in my idea for the “dream mmorpg” I tried to plan the structure of the game-world trying to put both parts where they belong and consequently draw all the best they have to offer. But so why that “pessimistic” title at the top? Because these discussions aren’t concrete. They are ideas. And not all ideas are easily actualized. Because, as per definition, they are simply “potential”. So the question changes in: why I’m sure that the path of persistence is going to be ditched?

The reasons are in the market. What happens isn’t that the ideas shape the market, but that, instead, it’s the market to set the trend and drag along the ideas. It’s another “upside down” process. The market isn’t a designer. It is a reaction. But, even if just a reaction, it mantains a strong impact on everything, to the point that it sets its *own* reactions. Big Bartle underlined the same point because the “audience” follows a similar behaviour. Supposedly are the developer to plan ideas, give them shape and then propose them to the “audience”, or playerbase. But at some point it’s the playerbase to take the lead, put deadlines, ask for precise features and decide what will be developed next. It’s a delicate process.

The problem is that these situations need an interpretation. Since the market is a mere reaction it cannot “remember”. It has no perception of history and it isn’t able to think outside the box to understand the reasons why something happens or happened (or will happen). Why something is effectively successful. It’s like a dream taken for its straight meaning without considering it as a symbol. Symbol: something standing for something else. The market is blind about this “something else”. The symbols, the reactions are straight. No interpretation. Direct meaning.

But, again, the market isn’t only a reaction, it also drags itself along, exactly like Big Bartle explained. All this brought to what I wrote on Grimwell recently:

“Worlds” are NOT the future because we do not have meaningful and successful examples of them to suggest a direction to the dumb guys who hold the money and are able to do something in the concrete. And we also do not have awesome designers leading projects that are heading that way. It. Won’t. Happen.

Things can change in two cases:
1- When there are big successes of $$$ that set a trend that will make everyone jump in the bandwagon (and, in general, fail because noone is able to “read” why the first example was so successful in the first place)
2- When there are geniuses and an infinite list of lucky shots that are able to join good ideas with their concrete realization.

I don’t see this happening anytime soon.

Now the argument becomes more complex. Finally someone else is starting to see how I also expect things will go. Quoting Rich Vogel:

People go to the next shiny thing.

It’s fun because I disagree basically on every point he made. This point included. But it still allows me to explain how I believe things will develop. The time for steady, rock solid subscriptions is over. Peoples will stop to watch the same movie over and over. The “genre” isn’t anymore about factions built around two games. Rich Vogel says “communities are portable”, “Today’s audience is more casual” and “People go to the next shiny thing”. But he forgets *why*. He observers what happens, put that on a nifty list. But *why* that happens? Peoples move for dissatisfaction, not for greed. Peoples cancel from World of Warcraft because of the queues, or because of the lack of updates but at the same time the genre comes up as an emergent level. It’s not anymore a single title, a single experience. You start from a point and then you look around for something similar that is able to better fulfill your *new* expectations. This is why EverQuest2’s exploit is a malicious winner.

With the time the players will become more and more casual subscribers. One element is the consequence of the other. If the games try to appeal the casual players they will also obtain casual subscriptions. The life span of a “world” will shrink. New games will require a *strong* impact and all the resources focused on that aspect. The market becomes a “zerg rush” in a similar way to what happened with the other types of entertainment: movies, television, music and so on. In Japan they call their typical phenomenon as “idols”. Excessively famous singers that simply vanish after a six-month span. Vanishing to be replaced. It’s the eritage of the consume society. So the trend isn’t anything new if you just look just some more from the outside.

What’s the direct consequence? It mirrors what I wrote above. The market not only reacts as it reacted till today. The market starts to set the standard, it demands actively and it will determine what will be delivered. This means that, with these elements, the optimization of the process will just lead to more games, coming out more quickly, fighting furiously for a slice of the pie. To do this they’ll need as many subscribers as possible, those that gladly jump from a game to the other and that will also easily jump away even from this new game that temporarily stole them.

From the production process point of view (the only one that matters, it seems) the best way is to develop quickly types of games that are able to be successful in a short period of time. Who cares if they do not hold subscribers? This would require again to “think outside the box”. Instead it’s the market to drag along the ideas and the result is that the developers will second what happens. If the market wants zerg rush successes forgotten in six months, this is what will be delivered. If it will become increasingly harder to work on the persistence (both of the world and the subscribers), the developers will simply run in the opposite way. They’ll push out brand new worlds every six months that are designed and expected to “expire” with that timespan.

What will rise to the visible level of the “news” is about those emergent winners. Like City of Heroes. Noone cares if they will fall months later or if they’ll simply vanish. Because they are consumables. Designed to be used and forgotten.

It would make sense to believe (like I do) that “worlds” aren’t supposed to “expire”. That the development should go exactly in the opposite direction, allocating more and more resources, developing the structures of the game even more radically. But this isn’t what happens nor what will happen. Another path is possible. The development could consolidate instead of shatter. From this point of view Mythic releasing Imperator isn’t a bad idea, because they aren’t offering their previous game in a new flavor. Instead they are exploring a new genre to deliver something that wouldn’t fit in the previous. The players may appreciate this because it consolidates the choice on a type of interest instead of a direct comparison of the same offer. The opposite of this idea is building sequels. Like EverQuest moving to become EverQuest 2. It’s a natural process of erosion. The mudflation applied to the whole shape of the game.

Honestly I do not believe that this idea will move from its potential status to be effectively actualized. “Instancing” is easier than persistence. It presents less problems to face on every level, it gives more control on the content and its development. It will allow more easily to shape up “disposable worlds”. Considering how the market is shaped and its requests, it’s the way to go.

We will have mmorpgs that do not remember why they are called so.

EDIT- A follow-up can be found here.

Lum writes again about games but this time I didn’t feel so hooked by his words. Despite the premise was interesting: “why there aren’t any alternatives to the current MMO gameplay model”

I think the answer to that question is different depending from the point of view. For example it fits perfectly an explication based on the “risk” factor in all types of industry. Innovation is what delivers the quality and what allows something to improve and discover new potentials. At the same time innovation is risk. And the money-guys, those that are able to turn ideas into facts, don’t like risk. If they invest they must be reassured. So the result is a sort of “natural selection” process where the “better” games are saved while others are ditched progressively but without “sharp turns” or clear examples of creativity. Raph Koster repeated even early today that the subscription numbers shouldn’t become “everything” but this is how the industry works. The best ideas are those that bring money. The new (founded) ideas will be the previous ideas that brought the money. In this world quality is always equal to money, that’s the soul of the place where we all live.

So this is a suggestion, a possible point of view to answer the original question. There are other possible points of view. For example there’s Megyn’s point of view, which basically says that there’s nothing new because the “game designers” are always recycled. Game companies keep searching peoples with years of experience and shipped products. A guarantee? Yes, a guarantee of “same old, same old”. They exit from a door to reenter from another so it’s not too strange if then the games look all the same, with the same ideas and the same mistakes repeated.

Lum’s point of view is also interesting but this time I believe he wasn’t able to portrait it so perfectly like he is able to do. He glides on the reasons without convincing enough. Still, I believe that even this point of view is correct and (if I understood what he writes) is similar to a few concepts I repeated on this website. For example the representation of the avatar. I keep repeating that this genre is the result of a lot of influences. An inheritance. The role of the avatar, as the physical perception of the body and its relationship and interaction with the environment, are all elements strongly present in the “theatre”. For example.

The core issue is the cultural value, that layer that I keep bringing up when I criticize Raph Koster. Something successful, and in particular something successful at the level of the “masses”, has a deep cultural meaning. This is why I agree when Lum repeats that even Second-Life or Eve-Online, at the end, pivot around the exact same elements or cultural archetypes. Because a “mmorpg” isn’t an alien. It isn’t something that exists alone. Even a game is the result of so many cultural influences, archetypes, belief, perceptions. All that comes from the everyday life. What we have in a game, even in the most “fantastic” settings, is still directly inspired by our real world. Star Wars draws its life source from structural archetypes that are STRONGLY ACTUAL. It’s now, it happens now.

We simply love metaphors, symbols. Rebuses. Patterns in general. But these aren’t formal elements. They are cultural elements. Our culture, not something coming from an alien world or the product of an alien mind. Something *radically* new would simply go ignored because we wouldn’t be able to relate ourselves to it. Instead, when something produces a success it’s always because it went to “shake” something intimate (where “intimate” means something strictly personal. Ours.).

So if we do a step back at the importance of the avatar we can see easily that the importance lies in something we have in common. We live with our real body and if we are going to enjoy a form of entertainment it’s because we find there, once again, something we “understand”. A type of patter that is teaching us something, but that we are able to learn because it’s near our perception.

Why the physics is becoming so important in the games? Because it’s again a form of perception and interaction with which we can relate. It becomes a toy and a type of pattern we are able to recognize and use.

What are other types of gameplay mechanics that are strong in games (and hence heavily exploited)? Fear for example, the feeling of tension, sexual representations, heroes, betrayals. The first are way stronger because they happen BEFORE the roleplay. In a tense PvP situation you don’t roleplay the tension, you experience it directly. This is why often games try to push on these Out Of Character mechanics. They are direct, straight to our perceptions. But even the concepts of “hero” or “betrayal” are strong and deep-rooted in the culture. They just need enough immersion and mimesis to be triggered.

But all this still doesn’t justify the lack of ideas. These influences aren’t restricted to an hadful of mechanics. The possibilities of interaction are endless because our culture is vast and absolutely not simple. The point is, once again, that only those few attempts that went right are confirmed and repeated. While a real development is hindered. And then you need a completely new project to fix even the most superficial problems because the designers are too scared about applying even a minor shift in the gameplay.

The trick is to discover and develop those gameplay “switches” that are able to trigger a grin instead of a yawn. The scene isn’t dry as some peoples would like to demonstrate. Even our standard D&D setting isn’t arid of gameplay that isn’t grinding monsters. There’s so much to do and discover without pulling out crazy “five-bagger” ideas, psychedelic worlds or completely abstract spaces (or all this at the same time).

Tell me, for example, which game delivers a strong feeling of adventure. Or journey.

Sure, a lot is being done. But a lot more could be possible. If there was a less short-sighted attitude.

Even my “dream mmorpg” idea isn’t crazily creative or impossibly risky but I believe it would still develop easily a strong and inedited personality. Where the basic concept is simply to divide the whole landmass of a fantasy world in hexagons (like the old wargames or even different shaped regions ala Hearts of Iron). Then enable the various player-factions to effectively conquer all the nearby zones and build an empire. Ruling over cities, castles and towns would allow the guilds to spawn NPCs and give them simple schedules similar to RTS games like Warcraft 3. So you manage and distribute farmers, miners, builders. Creating an actual economy and a truly living world where you have a direct impact and interaction. With a complexity that can easily rise to the level of games like “The Settlers” without betraying anything that is making mmorpgs successful now. The “wargame” becomes an emergent layer where the players won’t have to “work” directly and will, instead, dedicate themselves to those activities that are considered fun. Leaving all the burdens to those NPCs that won’t complain about cutting a tree over and over and over.

If you trigger these processes it will be the game itself to tell you exactly what it needs to move on. You just need to observe and give a shape to what will spontaneously arise. This is what happens when we moved from endless, “mudflated” content to more cohesive structures (superficially branded as “sandboxes”).

– No time to reread, edit, correct typos, add links. Will do tomorrow. *yawn*

The picture shows the distribution in levels on any server. No matter of the type. Can you see what happens at level 60? The process is easily explainable if you think to a stream of water. Till the water can flow its level is more or less homogeneous. But if you build a dam the water will start to gather in that point. The level of the water will rise. A lake will start to form.

This happens to all the treadmill mechanics. Because they are effectively streams of water, they are movement in one direction only. Especially in a PvP envoronment it’s INDISPENSABLE to reach the gathering point because the progression translates in power and the power translates into the possibility to compete. And so to have fun.

So, reaching the last level becomes a requirement. It’s a threshold of accessibility you are required to pass.

This is the reason why Blizzard wants to limit the “slots” available for each rank. Because that system will offer an hard cap that will preserve the “special” flavor of those rewards without transforming them in a requirement for everyone.

My idea also retains this quality because, while you can unblock all the ranks, the system still requires you to have the other roles covered. So only a small percent of the players will be “enabled” to actively use their rank powers.

This is a core issue in a PvP environment.

Planetside also addressed this problem because the “roles” you can unblock are never (supposedly) just direct upgrades. And even the lower ranks are (supposedly) useful in a battle. But WoW doesn’t have a built-in support for roles and a similar system would be rather weak if not specifically developed from zero.

Each year this GDC thing happens. A bunch of ego-powered developers gather in a room and distribute Knowledge. You listen, you /nod, you /clap.

From here I have to read second-hand reports that, still, are enough to put me in “flaming” mode and get me banned everywhere (as per “disclaimer” above on this site). A ritual. Each year I keep wondering why the technology hasn’t reached that place. You know, I guess it’s too hard to record everything and deliver a well-edited .avi file for each conference or, AT LEAST, an MP3. This is why I wish I could be there and offer at least a REAL content and useful reports. I’d love to provide content in the first place instead of just reactions to it.

This time things are somewhat better. We have already a more complete report of Raph Koster’s speech. As always I have to sit down and parse what is being said. I need to understand if there’s something to learn, if there’s something I already know or if there’s something where I have to disagree. The purpose of this site is again to help me shape my own ideas and this means that I strongly need to put order in the thoughts and list and categorize what’s new, what’s old, what’s wrong. Then I build a “packet” and send it in my memory to be used “later” (or never, good riddance).

As you start reading that second-hand report you notice that it’s directly a live-reading of what Raph put in his book. He explains the process that brought to formulate questions-that-need-to-be-answered:

I blew through all of it, and the game said “You’ve beaten the levels, so we’ll just randomly throw stuff at you that you’ve played before now”, and so I quit. I also wondered why I quit.

I found it BORING. This is interesting. I find it boring when it’s really easy, and also boring when it’s really hard. What’s that space in the middle about?

Both this and the next part are ressuring because they are things I already parsed. Raph believes that everything can be reduced to “pattern-matching”, while I believe everything should be generalized to “learning“. As you can see from this link my ideas were set already many months before Raph’s book. I underline this again not because I believe Raph stole my ideas, nor to demonstrate I’m smarter. I do that just because I agree, so I can move on. Despite the apparent difference about “pattern-matching” or “learning”, the core concepts and the conclusions are the same, only observed and described from a different point of view. We are still looking at the same “object”.

In fact Raph’s explaination of the meaning of “pattern-matching” can be juxtaposed easily to “learning”:

What we think of as ‘thinking’ or consciousness is really just a big memory game. Matching things into sets. Moving things into the right place, then moving on.

Maybe, at this point, you can understand the introduction I wrote above. You can also imagine that “learing” may be just equivalent to “pattern-marching”, where the first is just a superficial term. Raph decided to delve more. What “learning” means? How we learn?

When we meet noise, and fail to make a pattern out of it, we get frustrated and quit.

When we see a pattern that we get, we do it over and over again. We build neural connections. Now this is what I call fun.

Building those patterns is necessary for our survival. If you don’t have a pattern library, you are going to die. You won’t be able to tell an apple from Draino.

The last line is the key. From the “world” point of view a Draino (I don’t know what it is, btw) is like an apple. The REAL world is continuous. Or, if you like academic terms: “analogic”. A table isn’t different than the pavement. The world, by itself, doesn’t justify a “culture”.

Wittgenstein used a simple “language game” that I’ll simplify even more. If I take two notebooks, one with a yellow cover, the other with a red cover, we can easily point to one and say it’s red or yellow. But if the cover fades slowly from yellow to red? Maybe, if this is uniform, we can set the limit between red and yellow near the center. But if this fading effect isn’t uniform? The conclusion is that it is impossible to draw an exact line between two concepts. A tree is a forest? How many trees can be considered a forest? We cannot know.

One of the first principles that you learn when studying linguistics is that (every) language is “arbitrary”. It means that it’s not “set”. It depends on how we decide to agree. It’s an opinion, not science. Another basic principle is that the language works as a “system”. A word hasn’t a meaning on its own. A word has a meaning depending on its relationships and ties between the other words. This is what brought to the concept of “distintive traits”. An “apple” is “fruit” but it contains more specific traits and these traits, opposed to traits of different words build the relationships in the system. The meaning of a word depends on its position within the system. Different cultures define different words with different meanings. They “cut” and segment the world in a different way. Separating things that another culture joined, joining something else. Because another important lesson (Wittgenstein again) is “Meaning as use”.

If you do another step following this line of thoughts you’ll see that the language is an “operation”. An action. It isn’t a passive observation. It isn’t an objective study of the world. It’s completely subjective. You point something. You build a form. You distinguish a shape by separating it from the rest. As you point you build two parts. Always. What you pointed to and all the rest. This is an active operation. It’s an action. The conclusion is that the two parts you have actively created don’t exist in the reality. You shaped that.

The “culture”, in its widest and most comprehensive meaning, is the process of segmenting the world. It’s like taking scissors and cut a paper into pieces. The “paper” is our reality, we shatter it, we segment it, we “know” it. The culture cuts. The culture is “digital”. Not analogic. Not contiguous. The fragments it builds are always an “opinion”. Always arbitrary. But how we communicate? We agree, more or less, about where to cut this paper. Our culture sets the opinion. Our culture defines our influences. It teaches us.

This digression is just to explain that pattern-matching is learning. Learning is how we build a culture. A culture is the sphere where we live. Inside it. We do not know the world. We only perceive it through the filter of the culture. “Pattern-matching” is all we do. Always.

Fun is the feedback the brain gives while successfully absorbing a pattern. We need to absorb patterns, otherwise we die. So the brain HAS to give positive feedback to you for learning stuff.

This reminds me the agreements Homer Simpson does with his own brain. You do that and I release the endorphins. I believe “sex” is “fun” for similar reasons.

And this is the serious games cheer line: I’m’ here to tell you that fun is not only not frivolous but fundamental to human nature and required for survival. Therefore what we do is saving the human race from extinction.

Or maybe we have the money-guys who discovered how to exploit the mechanic to get loads of money. Like the porn industry. Addictive. Dependence. Hunger pains interrupting your game? Moral Responsibilities of Game Creators? (link needs registration)

Let’s move on.

Games are training us to find underlying patterns. Games are teaching us to find patterns in a systemic way.

We have a fundamental disagreement about what games ARE. They are not story, presentation, metaphor. These are all in games, but that’s not what games ARE. The real social value comes from what games are. The distilled cognitive schemata inside games is socially valuable.

What follows now is interesting. He speaks of cheating:

If you can’t choose the battle, choose the battlefield. People are smart. If you follow the rules of duelling.. the evolutionary smart thing to do is count one and shoot the guy in the back. People come to games thinking the same way, which is why we get cheats and hacks and exploits. We try to game the system. We game designers react negatively to this, but it’s a sign we’re doing our job, as game designers. It’s getting them to figure out the pattern, cope with it, deal with it, then reapply it. If a player sees an optimal path – an Alexandrine solution to a Gordian problem – they’ll take it. Under most circumstances we call this lateral thinking and praise it to the skies. In games it’s called cheating.

But it’s the wrong lesson. Cheating isn’t a process working in an open sandbox. Cheating is about breaking rules that are supposedly set. It’s about teaching the wrong lesson. What Raph writes here should be reverted: the players are doing their job, not the developers. This is also why cheating is often a result of bugs or bad game design. This is also why it’s a duty of a developer to solve the situation.
From Dave Rickey:

Fix the game, not the players. Every online game operator needs to print that on signs and paste them all over the office. If neccessary, tattoo it in reverse on their foreheads so they see it every time they look in the mirror.

“Exploits” are the *designers* error, not the players. Fix them. No excuses. If you can’t fix them and the “exploit” is severe in consequence, turn off the relevant content until you *can* fix it.

But this is another digression because Raph’s points is just a demonstration of how everything can be taken back to the core element of “pattern-matching”. But here begins also the limit of this analysis. When you focus and delve too much, you lose track of what’s around. You squints your eyes so much to stare that point that you lose directly the possibility to understand the context. Above I explained that pattern-matching is what builds a culture. But I also said that we live in there. Inside the culture, not by it. The mistake is that the culture isn’t anymore just a tool to deliver “a process of signification” (what I explained about pointing something and separating it from the rest). The culture becomes by itself education. The culture provides directly a “meaning”. Even when the meaning isn’t supposed to be there. This is why, at some point, the kamikaze “are able” to put the sacrifice ahead of their life. Why? Because the culture became more important than its reason of existence. There are concepts that went above all that. Social structures like “god” are so powerful that are able to represent disasters and they also represent the purest form of culture. In all its best and worst examples. Like two extremes.

The same happens with the superstition. We see patterns that do not exist, we put value into stones. We believe in what’s “holy”, we believe that something is magic. That storms are the result of an angry god, that we can see the future in the bowels of an animal. We also believe that World of Warcraft cheats on the rolls for loot.

At some point the culture took the lead and now it provides directly the context, the meaning and the fun. The formal system are indispensable to understand and describe but you cannot start from them to create something without remembering that its the context to create the content and its mechanics. you cannot revert the process. An excerpt from Raph’s book:

The best test of a game’s fun in the strict sense will therefore be playing the game with no graphics, no music, no sound, no story, no nothing. If that is fun, then everything else will serve to focus, refine, empower, and magnify. But all the dressing in the world can’t change iceberg lettuce into roast turkey.

This is where he is wrong. Escher’s Drawing Hands. He designs from the outside. He breaks the boundaries of the setting. He alienates the purposes from the context, he trivializes the power of the culture. Star Wars isn’t a formal system. It’s not a case that many still bitch about the game betraying the expectations of “being a Jedi”. Because the figure of a Jedi isn’t a formal system. It’s a strong cultural archetype. Same for the problem in balancing factions on PvP. The good faction always overpower the bad guys because those archetypes are stronger in their cultural relevance.

The “fun” is strongly affected by the perception. The perception is distorted by the culture where we live. This is why Ubiq underlines the importance of the localization of a product (despite I disagree on this point). Playing a Jedi isn’t the same as playing a random kung-fu guy, even if the formal system may work in the exact same way. When I was young I imagined about playing Bruce Lee when playing a fighting game. And playing that game was way more involving the day after watching a Bruce Lee game. When the first Lord of the Ring movie was out I noticed a sudden boost in wizards in Emain. Everyone wanted to be Gandalf. They quoted Gandalf. They tried to reproduce those battles.

Games are completely driven by these processes. We not only match patterns, but we chase patterns with a strong cultural meaning. We want to be successful “as” someone else. We live with myths. We live FOR the myths. This doesn’t mean that the formal system isn’t important. It means that the formal system is just a face of a medal. Since it’s a medal it has the other face. This other face is about the culture and its added value today.

The most successful books, the most successful movies and the most successful games are always those that are able to reproduce and anticipate strong cultural values and developments. Think to Marlon Brando, think to “Gone with the Wind”, think to “Generation X”, think to “Blade Runner”, think to “American Graffiti”, think to “Big Wednesday”, think to “Rocky Horror Picture Show”, think to “Happy Days”, think to “Titanic”, think to “Evangelion”, think to “Star Wars”, think to “Grand Theft Auto”. Think to “Sex and the City” and “Desperate housewives”. Think to the music in general. The trends. Think to the cyberpunk. Think to the “New Age”.

This is a “cultural” industry way more than a “game design” industry. The medium is the message. We live for the mythos.

We don’t need modern cognitive schemata. We need edible myths. We need Britney Spears boobs.

EDIT: A better report of Raph’s keynote can be found here.