Ludology vs Narratology

Well apparently this is a war lol. For newcomers to the discussion, Ludology was originally a name (psuedonym practically) for game studies which is a new field taken up by some universities to try to create a more formalised view/structure for studying games. The usefulness, rigor and legitimacy of such a field or whether there is a need for one has yet to be proven and what such study may yield.

When I first heard of ludology, I was intrigued and briefly enthralled. There was already a lot of talk of story/narrative and I think at an unconscious level this is because of a distinct lack of story/world/meaning in today's games compared to those of yesteryear. I know I certainly felt an unconscious reach towards it at the earliest stages of coming up wtih this site. I originally intended this site not as a forum but as a hall of fame of past games and to also honor game industry greats that I admired and looked up to growing up but have since moved on i.e. Al Lowe

As the idea eventually morphed into something that attempted to tackle the problem instead of just waxing about the past, I realised that an attempt at a serious game study forum/site would have to take into account games in all its forms not just ones with a strong narrative backbone and story.

Ultimately where I stand on the debate is when the language of ludology becomes more about academic references and english academia then it has effectively splintered which is what I believe the solution to this war is. It is one of the reasons why I stopped reading Grand Text Auto too.

The essence of gaming is about play, being in the story, performing actions. This may or may not have anything to do with the story. Ultimately gaming is an interactive medium and that is where it is rooted. Interactive fiction or an interactive narrative may be a story where you can make decisions but ultimately you are still relying on a storyteller to tell it for you. Narratology really should be a new branch of literature studies or english I am not quite sure there.

Even though my preference leans towards games with a story most definitely, for example adventure games or the C&C and War3 games captured my imagination because of the story, games are still interactive, functional and formal systems. You can still have a game without a story, as in the game as a toy approach of Nintendo, or world as dollhouse/sandbox ala Will Wright. Narrative is only one aspect of a game albeit a very important one. I may be less involved with games that lack a story or a purpose for me to invest in but that doesn't make them any less of a game for somebody who just wants to *play* and ultimately that's what games are for. To be played.

As a PS to this, one of my guiltiest pleasures are FMV games, I have loads of them and I liked quite a few of them. Some I did not appreciate the lack of gameplay but what they did bring was a better sense of storytelling and even closure to an experience. Maybe an FMV game article is in the wings

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Cognisant Game Design - why? and the mission statement

I founded Cognisant Game Design because I feel that with all the technology and tools we have at our disposal, our biggest deficit in games currently is design. This site was inspiried someone over at Greg Costikyan's blog who posted in a comment that he wished/was looking for a place to discuss serious game design issues, and *only* game design.
I was getting increasingly bitter, even resentful of the current game industry I realised that there are a paltry number of game companies and games that inspire me enough to want to work for/on them compared to when I was a kid and growing up. It wasnt just a symptom of getting older and more jaded (well not as much as I'd thought).I realised we are missing something nowadays and design is close as an approximation . In order to better study and understand the subject I created this site.

The main problem I see with today's world is that we try to make a game that fits into a specific genre, or in a specific way whereas in the old days people came up with the idea/the concept first and then tried to figure out how to build it. By not having 3D engines or to have to worry about pixel shaders, physics etc they worried about what was best about the game. Now often, concepts are fit into engines or 3D, or worse, what you think the publisher would like you to pitch.

The best example was a friend of mine who asked me to start and MMO company with him and I asked, "well do you even know what kind of game you want to make? and what about it would it make a good MMO?". He hadn't thought it through, he just wanted to make *some* kind of MMO since that is "Where it's at" these days. Or the funding/development hurdles of doing one

Lastly I designed this site so that it would cover all aspects of design, not just a vague statement, and also to move away from the current state of ludology and acknowledge existing genres, study them, learn from them or to evolve them as well as studying abstract new representations of narrative, virtual societies etc. We are forgetting gameplay and what games can offer, past, present and future.

What is holding back gaming from being a spectator sport.

I'm going to break this down into a couple of chief reasons then actually offer some solutions for a change

Chief Reasons

1) Gaming skill cannot be commonly appreciated or understood unless the game or at least its controls are familiar. Games do not deal with the physical plane of reality like sports do. Or the limits of human endeavour. That is the main reason why everyone can appreciate michael jordan taking off from the free throw line or someone winning a NASCAR race is because even on a vague level any human being can understand why a feat like that is difficult. With games, to an average laymen or someone who is unfamiliar with the game they are watching, you dont know what part of a combo move is preprogrammed, what level of speed/physics is unusual to the game, nor any understand of controls that would allow you to understanding of why one series of actions is more skillful than another.

2) Games are not about real people. At least not the way we present them. They are about models flying about the screen, sprites, caricatures, cartoons at best. How many attempts of game videos have there been that have focused exclusively on the game action. You're not going to watch a football game beginning to end from the one angle on ESPN, why would watching a game like that be anymore exciting? which brings me to..

3) Rest breaks. The best spectator events are ones which allow people to appreciate the feat that they are watching. Lots of sports have timeouts where a broadcast will use as time to replay the last touchdown or goal, or talk to another commentator, spectator, player. Games are ridiculously fast, with lots of flashing lights, effects and explosions that have no meaning other tahn a lightshow. A commentator could use the time to then explain why something was paritcularly skillful or not.

4) Rules - There is no easy solution to this. Games wildly vary even within the same genre. Being able to understand the rules of what someone is watching is key to drawing them into the action and investing them into it. After all most people understand the universal rules of soccer, hocket, basketball, all of which involving getting some kind of ball thing into a hole right ?

Factors to consider

1) Replays. Well we are starting to build these modes into games like Counterstrike which is a start, but most game developers don't know the first thing about broadcasting. We have the freedom in 3D to have as many cameras to cover the action as we want and to switch between them freely or to even make cuts ont he fly, but this has to be built into the game. These alone would not be enough unless there would be heavy editing time spent afterwards on each replay, if you are designing your game to be spectator sport friendly then the design has to take into account the above as well as camera controls and placements that would be more suitable for broadcast outside of the basic game view.

2) Cameras - In considering camera placement we forget that a camera view that is not one that a player would normally be able to play a game in, and if partciularly captures the action better is pretty new and exciting especialyl to someone already familiar with the game.

3) Human involvement - This is stepping outside the realm of your traditional video games but it is a huge reason why otherwise simplistic games like DDR took off. This is also a good example.

I also think there is something to be relearned from the near extinct arcades of yesteryear, it can be very awe inspiring and attracting to see a skillful match or get into parts of a game that others typically couldnt. Anyone remember the crowds?

4) Advertising - Along non existance of arcades these days people are forgetting the simple draw/advertising/stickiness of value of seeing other people play a game and how much fun it is and wanting to get/play it for themselves.

Can making a game that is also exciting to spectate really be ignored?

Discuss

A pessmistic/business view of casual/puzzle games

Lately I've been reading a bit bout the casual/puzzle game market. The pros that are stressed are the low cost and time of development, and the low price/low barrier to purchase. These are all great points but I see one big thing that has mostly been forgotten. Passion and that ingredient x that makes you actually want to buy. There's no great hook to many of these games, and most are not much better than free flash games that you can play for free around the place. Some puzzle games can be pretty addictive i.e. tetris, puzzle fighter but these were easily the creative equals to many other original concept games. Short of a few one offs like Bejeweled, Beezly's Buzzwords etc my opinion is that the mass majority of casual games are just too thin/uncompelling to make anyone really *want* to buy them. Sure they might be enjoyable but if something is just fun for me as a 5 minute diversion or to kill time waiting for a meeting to start etc, does it provide enough entertainment for me to actually shell out? A magazine can do the same job and still be cheaper for example. No matter how cheap something is, someone still has to spend and in order for the transaction to be fulfilled, the product to be purchased must have value. With many other things to spend your money on, food, gas, triple AAA titles, all of which have *arguably* greater value and priority, I dont think a slightly diff version of Tetris or Super Pang will be high on my buy list.

I think the bigger root problem is as always, the large cost, team and time involved in development nowadays. Indy or casual doesnt necessarily mean small or niche market. It always ultimately pains me to see someone basically resign themselves to failure or something smaller when I see someone demoing their small scale puzzle/just for learning game at IGDA or elsewhere. It's been a great learning experience for that person or team no doubt and I am still proud of anyone who has made that journey as I think we all are, but classics like Civilisation or Super Off Road did not have to deal with AAA budgets or teams in the first place but they all had that magic "hook" which if you resign yourself to making a clone you will have an unlikely to no chance of having.

Ultimately I'm not much of a puzzle game man, with the above few Ive mentioned being the few that have had any impact on me. Ive read about all this mobile gaming business too, resurgance of 2D etc too. Hopefully we can remember whatr made some of these 2D games the masterpieces they were, gameplay and fresh concepts and trying to make something that is a must have

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Hi :)

Well Im redoing this blog after starting it almost a year ago.

I'll be posting any opinion or discussion posts that I've posted on my other game design community. Cognisant Game Design

This is so that you can still read my thoughts as a blog if that is more of what you are interested in, or drill down to the individual areas that interest you on the board. The initial bunch of posts will be a flurry since Ive had a LOT of these thoughts kicking around/gestating in my head for awhile, I'm planning to post as many of these in one day in fact since I have other stuff to do ;) Mel Brooks was another guy that had a pile of ideas in his head that might have never seen the light of day if someone had not seen this and hired someone to write them down for him. Well I'm cheap :)