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