Blog - Theme Vs Core

Monday, March 24, 2008

Spring break is over for me, and it is the start of a new quarter.
Today I had an art history class (being at an art school does require one to take quite a lot of art history courses) called "Digital Art and Culture" which looks to be very thought-provoking.
It may well influence much of what I write here!
It did in fact nearly inspire a post I was going to write for today, but I'll save it for later until that idea becomes more unified in my mind.

Tomorrow, however, I will have the first day of my other two classes: Advanced Screenwriting, and Abstract Systems Simulations.
The former will be what is likely my final screenwriting class of my academic career, and I believe its emphasis is on the feature length screenplay. That is something that I will bet is much more applicable to games than my past writing classes in television and short screenplays, as games tend to be a longer-form medium.

in Abstract Systems Simulations, from what I gather, we make a tabletop RPG.


In any case, the writing class has got me thinking on the subject of theme.

I know from past experience that it really helps going into the class with an idea for what I'm going to write already fairly formed, so the bulk of the class time can be spent actually getting it down and more importantly refining it, rather than flailing around for far too long grasping for an idea of what to write.

This idea is also encouraged in my game development classes. My development team for Abstract Systems Simulations, for example, has already been formed.

In any case, for my screenplay, I wouldn't say I don't have an idea yet... but it's not as ready as I would have liked by this point.

Like everyone, I have plenty of stories in my head, and the capability to pump out more when necessary.
My problem has been in selecting which idea to go with. This requires finding one I've already slightly formed that has the ingredients necessary to make it to a longer-form work like a feature film.
None of my story ideas at the moment have anything more than the suggestion of a B or C plot yet, which becomes of much greater importance in a longer-form work.

The one that seems ready to form side plots the most, however, is a sort of frantic jumble of ideas at the moment. To fix that, I need a theme. A theme could be used to unify this jumble of story ideas into a unified story.

This got me thinking about core game design, and how it is used in a similar fashion to how a writer can use theme.

Much like defining the core for a game, I need to decide what this story is to be about.
Then, as writing is the art of rewriting more so than writing, the theme can be used to determine what to cut, what to add, and what to change.
In a similar fashion, game design is a process of iteration (rewriting is crafting new iterations of a written work, after-all) and having a well defined core can help define what to refine in upcoming iterations.

Of course, games can have a theme as well which is usually separate from their core.
The core is the "theme" of the game's mechanics, but if the game has a story, that story can have its own theme.
It is important to note that this theme is then expressed through the core.
For example, whatever you might want to argue is the theme of what little narrative Super Mario Bros. has, it is told through having the player jump.

Granted, I don't know how well jumping, as a core, is at expressing a theme, which might be why Super Mario Bros. has so little in the way of narrative content.
This is not a fault of the game, certainly. Jumping made for a great core for an absolutely classic game.
I just find it kind of strange in retrospect that so many games feature an odd lack of unity between their core and their theme.

Can you think of instances where the core and the theme of a game were ever the same?
Or if not directly the same thing, then a game where the core and theme compliment each other in a logical and artful way?

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posted by Brian Shurtleff @ 5:55 PM  0 Comments Links to this post



Blog - Swimming != Jumping

Sunday, February 10, 2008

Core game design, where an entire game is built around one main mechanic, is often used by Shigeru Miyamoto, apparently.

As a notable example, Super Mario Bros. uses "Jumping" as its core. It's an entire game built around jumping: jumping onto things, jumping off things, jumping over things, jumping up and hitting things from below, etc.

Or is it?

If the core of the early Mario games is jumping, then what is the deal with the water levels?

Sure, it adds some variety to the levels, and mixes things up a bit.
And the swimming mechanic is kind of like the jumping mechanic, I guess, just with different physics.
But, it seems too different to me. And I don't think it's just me...

The water levels are hated by many a gamer.
Don't believe me? Look at all the groups users have created on the facebook for the shared hatred of water levels.
The anti-water level sentiment is shared even in a song called "Water Level" by a quirky, video game-inspired band called Super 8-Bit Bros.

Of course, the song doesn't target specifically Mario games, nor do most of the facebook groups on the subject.
For example, several facebook groups exist to vent rage at the water temple from Ocarina of Time.
But to me, the bigger offender is the Mario games because they're supposed to be entirely about jumping. Swimming != jumping.

Although as one exception, I do like it when there's a level that has water, and involves Mario jumping out of water onto land, etc. That is legitimate play with the jumping mechanic, contrasting how Mario jumps from land with how he jumps from water. It's still mildly frustrating, but in a logical way and therefore comes across at least to me as an interesting and fair challenge.
But those levels set entirely under water? What's the deal with that? Seems to me to be a clear violation of the core, and the fact that there is apparently a mass dislike for such levels seems to indicate that the games suffered for it.

Of course, perhaps he was consciously violating the core, in essence thinking: "What if we do a level where the player CAN'T jump?"
Well, to that I say the answer is "It's pretty annoying." The whole rest of the game trains the player on the use of that one mechanic. Water levels take away all the patterns that the player has been learning, for only one level, just to throw them back into the fray of mastering jumping patterns again in the next. How does that make sense?

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posted by Brian Shurtleff @ 10:50 PM  0 Comments Links to this post



Blog - Considering Aesthetics

Saturday, February 9, 2008

So this weekend I'm working with another team of students to develop a board game. We're trying to develop a game under the MDA design framework, using paranoia as the aesthetic. In other words, making a game that makes the players feel paranoid. I'll post more on this game when I can.

In any case, the previous weekend, I made a quick and dirty little prototype board game with a different group of students. Brenda suggested we try a board game based on a video game. Our group settled on the Metroid series of games (although not any one game from the series in particular.) Obviously as we don't have rights to the IP, this is not a commercial venture, this was just merely a way to build up our game design skills, and hell, just for fun.



To create the game, we defined what we thought was the core mechanic of the series, which we determined to be exploration. You explore to find items which in turn help you explore more. Thus, in our board game you did that too, with a series of randomly-placed face-down tiles on specific room-squares on the map. Get to a room, flip it over and see what was in the room inside - often it was an item you needed, which also gave you enhanced abilities when exploring the map. For example, acquiring your morph ball let you use certain tunnels as shortcuts around the map, etc.

But I bring this game up because I can relate it back to the MDA framework. Although we captured the core of the video game series it was based on, we didn't capture the aesthetic. The aesthetic of the Metroid series is creepiness and isolation; one that doesn't really transfer well to a multiplayer board game. Our game was incredibly fun because it's pretty much the opposite aesthetic: a fast-paced, competitive race between players. This is not to say that the aesthetic of the video game series is not fun. It's just a completely different kind of game.

I thought it was interesting that now that I'm looking at the MDA framework for this upcoming game, it provides the clue as to why my previous game didn't quite feel like the game it was designed to emulate. Does it matter? Not really, as I see it, because we still had a blast designing and playing our board game, and I'm betting that matters a lot more. ;)

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posted by Brian Shurtleff @ 4:38 PM  0 Comments Links to this post