Module 5
Experience, Meaning, Play
a. Qualities of Experience
The experience of play comes in so many diverse forms that creating a single
catalog that takes all of them into account would be an impossible task. However, this
does not mean that systems for categorizing play cannot be a useful tool for solving
design problems. The classification model developed by Roger Caillois, provides one
typology for the variety of experiences found in games. In Toys as Culture, Brian Sutton-
Smith presents another model, one that lists the psychological processes by which games
are experienced. Although Sutton-Smith is looking specifically at video games, his model
is relevant to other kinds of games as well.
Sutton-Smith offers a relatively succinct list of the elements that constitute the
experience of play within a digital game. Visual scanning and auditory discrimination
represent the sensorial activities of the player, motor responses represent the player's
physical actions, and the other two elements (concentration and perceptual patterns of
learning) represent cognitive mechanisms internal to the player that link these inputsand
outputs.
Although Sutton-Smith's five categories do a good job of describing the
experience of early, single player console games, they are certainly not inclusive of all
games. A game might be invented, for example, that involves smell-based sensory input.
There are also plenty of games that involve social communication between players,
which Sutton-Smith's model does not take into account.
However, we can abstract elements from Sutton-Smith's thinking that are more
widely applicable. His model in essence posits relationships between inputs, outputs, and
internal player mechanisms. This three-part model is a useful general structure for
understanding how players experience a game. The way that a player perceives a game
and takes action in it is always going to be specific to a particular design. But these
details are contained within a larger system of experience that always includes some kind
of sensory input, player output, and internal player cognition.
All three components of this model can be considered in isolation, but they only
generate meaningful play as part of a larger designed system. What kind of play
experience do you want to create? A rhythm-based dance game such as Bust-a-Groove
locates player experience within a finely tuned set of visual, auditory, and physical cues
designed to involve players within the full-body rhythms of structured beats. A word
game such as Scrabble forces players to think strategically and linguistically, scanning
the board for openings, rearranging letters in their head and in their hand, making
language tactile by manipulating smooth wooden tiles. An arcade shooter such as House
of the Dead emphasizes the ability to quickly scan and isolate elements on screen,
responding to game events with rapid and repetitive motor responses. Identifying the
qualities of play you want your players to experience is a useful way of framing any
game design problem.
b. Designing Interactive Experiences
The challenge, of course, is that the experience of play is not something that a
game designer directly creates. Instead, play is an emergent property that arises from the
game as a player engages with the system. The game designer creates a set of rules,
which players inhabit, explore, and manipulate. It is through inhabiting, exploring, and
manipulating the game's formal structure that players experience play. The game designer
only indirectly designs the player's experience, by directly designing the rules.
So how do game designers shape player experience? We have already covered the
basics. If we highlight the experiential dimensions of these choice-based mechanisms, we
can frame games as systems whose meaning emerges from the experience of players as
they make choices in a game. Every component of a choice, from the representational
elements displaying actions and related outcomes,to the systemic elements determining
the internal logic of a choice's result, are experientially relevant.
Creating great game experiences for players—creating meaningful experiences
for players—requires understanding how a game's formal system transforms into an
experiential one. Doing so means considering both micro- and macro- dimensions, from
the small moment-to-moment interactions confronting a player to the way these core
interactions combine to form a larger trajectory of experience. Throughout PLAY, we
cover the many dimensions of the micro- and macro- components of designed game play.
c. The Core Mechanic
Every game has a core mechanic. A core mechanic is the essential play activity
players perform again and again in a game. Sometimes, the core mechanic of a game is a
single action. In a footrace, for example, the core mechanic is running. In a trivia game,
the core mechanic is answering questions. In Donkey Kong, the core mechanic is using a
joystick and jump button to maneuver a character on the screen. However, in many
games, the core mechanic is a compound activity composed of a suite of actions. In a
first-person-shooter game such as Quake, the core mechanic is the set of interrelated
actions of moving, aiming, firing, and managing resources such as health, ammo, and
armor. Baseball's core mechanic is composed of a collection of batting, running, catching,
and throwing skills. In a real-time strategy game such as Starcraft, the core mechanic
combines resource management with wargame strategy and rapid mouse and keyboard
command skills.
A game's core mechanic contains the experiential building blocks of player
interactivity. It represents the essential mom-ent-to-moment activity of players,
something that is repeated over and over throughout a game. During a game, core
mechanics create patterns of behavior, which manifest as experience for players. The core
mechanic is the essential nugget of game activity, the mechanism through which players
make meaningful choices and arrive at a meaningful play experience. It is therefore very
important to be able to identify the core mechanic at the beginning of the design process,
even if it changes as the game develops. Pinpointing the core mechanic of the game
allows designers to generate a summary profile of the game's interactivity. Very often,
when a game simply isn't fun to play, it is the core mechanic that is to blame.
The notion of a core mechanic is a crucial game design concept, and one
frequently taken for granted in the design process. Concepts for games, particularly
digital games, often begin with an idea for a story or character, to take place within an
established commercial genre. This is a valid way to start a design process. However, in
focusing on the "high level," narrative elements of a game, game designers can miss
equally fundamental questions that concern the core mechanic and play experience.
Game designers don't just create content for players, they create activities for players,
patterns of actions enacted by players in the course of game play.
d. Core Mechanics in Context
Designing the activity of play means creating the system that includes the game's
sensory output to the player and the play-er's ability to make input, as well as guiding the
internal cognitive and psychological processes by which a player makes decisions. The
core mechanic is not limited to just one component of this experiential process, but exists
as an activity that permeates all three. Following are several game examples, each one
utilizing an extremely different core mechanic.
In Tag, one player is "It." This player chases all of the other players within a
limited boundary; when another player is tagged by "It,"he or she becomes "It."The core
mechanic of Tag is incredibly simple: chase and be chased. Because Tag is a physical
game, the experiential component is very rich. As input, the player senses the entire field
of play, the position of other players (especially the player that is "It"), as well as his or
her own state of exhaustion. The output involves a player's entire body, and usually
involves running, dodging, and other evasive maneuvers.
The simple rules leave no room for ambiguity. If you are not "It," you avoid being
tagged at all costs. If you are "It," your goal is to shed this role by giving it to another.
Chasing and running. Running and chasing. And then, the occasional tag. The repetition
of the core mechanic enacted over the course of a game builds into larger patterns of
experience as players run about the field, avoiding the player that is "It," exchanging
roles of the hunter and the hunted when a tag takes place. As an experienced game
system, Tag's mythic simplicity is part of its appeal.
Verbal Tennis is an unusual game in which two players carry on a conversation,
taking turns making statements. The only rules are that each statement must be in the
form of a question and cannot repeat another statement that has already been made. If a
player gets stuck and cannot make a coherent response to the previous statement, he or
she loses.
The game of LOOP is a single-player computer game where the player uses the
mouse to draw lines around fluttering butterflies and capture them. Butterflies come in
different colors, and a player can only capture groups of butterflies of the same color.
There are additional ways to score, special bonuses, hazards, and bonus levels, but the
core mechanic—looping—remains the same throughout the game. The core mechanic of
a computer or video game involves a hardware input device in some way, and LOOP is
no exception. The essential activity of the game is to use the mouse to roll the cursor
about the screen, drawing lines to make loops around the moving butterflies. The player
perceives visual information on the screen and responds through motor movement,
generating additional audio and visual feedback. Instead of a drag-and-click, cursor-style
interaction, LOOP engenders a fluid series of wrist and arm gestures. The design of
LOOP emphasizes this core activity throughout: if the player clicks during a game, the
game pauses; on the game's main menu, the player does not click on a button but instead
loops around it to make a selection.
One challenge of designing computer game interactivity lies in inventing new
forms of player interaction, new core mechanics that lead to alternative game
experiences. Just as Verbal Tennis turns an ordinary conversation into dueling wordplay,
LOOP appropriates conventional mouse interaction and twists it to playful effect. Just
because a game's input is limited to mouse and keyboard or console controller input does
not mean that it has to rely on the conventions of other games. What if mouse movement
was the inverse of cursor movement? What if the keyboard was used as a physical input
grid? What if the player had to hold the console controller upside-down? Designing
inventive core mechanics, on or off the computer, often comes from questioning existing
conventions.
e. Breaking Out of Breakout
The first game is Breakout for the Atari 2600, the game David Sudnow details in
his book. Breakout's core mechanic is both simple and elegant; it is one of the keys to
what makes the play of the game so meaningful. The player uses a paddle controller to
move a bar on the bottom of the screen left and right, trying to intercept a "ball" that is
bouncing around the game space. It would be difficult to find a core mechanic more
stripped down than in Breakout. In the game, players are not moving an animated
character through a richly textured 3D space; they are not even moving in 2D. Players are
moving a blocky, rectangular shape in one dimension along a line. Players don't have a
range of actions and powers. They don't have a complex set of tasks to complete or
resources to manage. All players do is turn the knob, move the line, and avoid missing
the ball. Despite this spare interactive scheme, Breakout manages to generate meaningful
play.
The simplicity and immediacy of the design creates an interactive circuit between
the player and the game. The response of the paddle on the screen to the movements of
the knob in the player's hand is intuitive and instantaneous. The screen, the controller,
and the player enter into a larger set of experiential relationships, forming a system that
bridges the "wired gap," as Sudnow puts it, between the player's world and the televised
world of the game. But if that were everything there was to Breakout, a line moving on a
screen, it wouldn't be a game. It wouldn't have meaningful play. And it certainly wouldn't
generate the obsessive attachment Sudnow documents. On top of this core mechanic, the
simple action of knob-turning and ball-blocking, Breakout builds a more complex game
experience.
Of course the lights didn't obey the laws of physics governing solid objects, like
billiard balls, say. But Atari had rather decently simulated a sense of solidity.The light
[ball] came from a certain angle toward the side wall, and then followed out the
triangulation by going in the direction you'd predict for a real ball. What about the
paddle? Hit on an off-centered portion of a tennis racket or hand, a ball will deflect on a
different path and you can thereby place shots. Sure enough they'd programmed the
trajectories and different parts of the paddle surface to match, so the light-ball behaved
rather like a tangible object, refracting and deflecting so it seemed you could at least
somewhat control the ball's direction.
At first, playing Breakout is simply a matter of hitting the ball, trying not to let it
pass by the paddle. If a player misses the ball five times, the game is over. But as play
continues, the game play grows deeper. The paddle is divided into five sections, each of
which ricochets the ball at a different angle. Using the simulated physics of the game,
players can learn to direct shots. When the ball hits a brick, it disappears and the player
gains points. The goal of the game is to direct the ball to remove as many bricks as
possible, gaining points along the way. Because the brick patterns at the top of the screen
change each time the player hits and removes a brick, the playfield gradually shifts from
full to empty as a level progresses, each new arrangement offering different possible
trajectories for the ball to follow.
Many patterns and rhythms of play emerge. A skilled player will concentrate on
one side of the screen, creating a hole in the wall of bricks that allows the ball to "break
out" and bounce back and forth along the top of the screen. Other kinds of strategies are
required for the endgame, in which only a few bricks remain: the center of the paddle is
used to hit the ball in a nearly vertical trajectory, cutting a slow path across the screen
toward the remaining bricks. More than just a simple system of interaction, the game
rules create multiple levels of play experience, layering strategic thinking and gradual
skill acquisition on top of the physical and perceptual components of the core mechanic.
All of this experiential complexity in such a simple game! Yet the player's action, the
essential activity, the core mechanic, remains strikingly spartan: rotate the knob with the
wrist. Out of this basic interactivity blossoms an entire structure of play. This is precisely
how meaningful play emerges on the level of experience: through player action, input,
and output. In the end, the system of play becomes more than the sum of its parts.
f. Variations on a Core Mechanic
Working with an existing core mechanic is a common game design problem.
Perhaps there is a core mechanic that you want to borrow. Or maybe a publisher is
funding a digital game project that needs to resemble an existing game genre. Or it could
be that you have already designed an original core mechanic, but you don't know how to
extend it into a full game experience. In this section, we look at examples of how to
modify and re-mix a core mechanic to create new game experiences, using Breakout as a
touchstone. The version of the game Sudnow describes is Breakout for the Atari 2600.
Although he only plays the "basic" version of the game, the original Atari cartridge
includes many play variations.
The inclusion of game variations was a common design strategy in early console
games for platforms such as the Atari 2600. Typically, designers extended the basic game
interaction, creating numerous variations for play. For this reason, Atari games are
excellent examples of game designs that take a core mechanic and spin out many
variants. The alternate versions can be clever and engaging or gratuitous and unplayable.
But there is much to learn from both successful and unsuccessful attempts at creating
core mechanic variations. On the original Atari 2600 Breakout cartridge, there are twelve
different game variations.
Breakout on the Atari 2600 is a finite game. The goal is to clear the bricks from
one screen, which leads to a second screen of bricks. If that screen is cleared, the game
ends. Because players score points for each brick eliminated, the score at the end of a
finished game is always the same (864 points). One problem with thisgame design is that
an expert player will be able to clear both screens and will eventually lose interest in the
game. Even though the core mechanic might be engaging enough to encourage repeat
play, it is more likely that the player will feel as if the game has been "solved." The
game's space of possibility will become too familiar, and is unlikely to offer any more
surprising challenges.
To address this potential problem, the cartridge includes a "timed" version of the
game. In addition to a point score, the game keeps track of how long a player has been
playing. The goal of a timed game becomes not only reaching the maximum number of
points, but doing so as quickly as possible, adding a quantifiable tool for judging
performance to the same essential game play. The result is that timed Breakout becomes
a more engaging game for advanced players, who may have reached a scoring ceiling in
terms of points. The game variation allows players to continue exploring strategies for
reducing their overall time.
It is significant to note that the timer could have been included in the basic game
as well.The timer doesn't structurally change the actual interaction-it merely displays a
new kind of data. But the timer does change the experience of the game, psychologically
placing players under more pressure as the seconds tick by. Breakout can be a very
difficult game for beginners, and it was a smart design decision to keep the timer element
out of the basic game. That way, beginners feel a bit more comfortable as they learn the
game's basic interaction. Conversely, advanced players feel as if they have "graduated" to
a new level when they take up the timed version of the game.
Another variant on the Breakout core mechanic is the "Breakthru" version. In this
game, the player's core interaction with the paddle remains the same, but the behavior of
the elements in the game change. When the ball hits a brick, it eliminates the brick-but
instead of bouncing back, the ball keeps on going until it hits a wall.That means that a
ball will travel right through the wall of colored bricks, leaving a trail of empty brick
spots as it plows through them.
What is the reason for this design variation? In the normal version of Breakout, it
feels satisfying to eliminate bricks, a satisfaction that extends over the course of the
game. One by one, brick by brick, you chip away at the wall. Breakthru accelerates this
satisfaction, allowing you not just to nip at the wall, but to gouge out whole sections in a
single gesture. Although it makes the game much easier, this variation adds a new degree
of experiential pleasure to the game. It is significant that the designers chose the more
delayed gratification of the basic version to be the default structure for play.
Atari 2600 Breakout includes other variations as well. In some, the player can use
the paddle to affect the ball while it is in the air, nudging its path to the left or right. In
others, the player uses a button on the paddle to "catch" the ball, making it stick to the
paddle until it is released. In a third variation, the bricks are invisible until they are hit, at
which point all of the remaining bricks light up. Each of these versions of Breakout has a
strong impact on the play of the game. Steering and catching give the player an additional
way to control the ball, increasing the complexity of the interaction slightly, while also
decreasing the game's overall level of difficulty. The invisible brick variations make the
game much harder, especially when there are only a few bricks left and players must use
their memory to aim at them.
All of these variations (timer, breakthru, steering, catching, and invisible bricks)
offer not only individual variants, but are mixed and matched to provide many versions
of Breakout. Each of the dozen games on the cartridge is either basic Breakout, timed
Breakout, or Breakthru; each of these three general types manifests four times: with no
additional modifications, steerable balls, catchable balls, or invisible bricks.This system
offers a total of twelve different Breakout games, eleven variants on the basic version,
each one modifying the game's core game mechanic. Obviously, one effect of including
variations is to greatly expand the overall space of play; each version of the game
provides new strategic and experiential possibilities. Playing Breakouttakes place on two
levels: not only do players explore the structure of an individual variant, but they also
explore the larger set of variants as a whole.
For example, perhaps you like the satisfaction of the Breakthru version of the
game, but you find it too easy. You might balance the difficulty by playing Breakthru
with invisible bricks. If you are a strategic player that enjoys the pressure of the clock,
timed versions of the game with steerable or catchable balls might work well for you.
Providing variations for players lets them design their own experiences in a limited way.
Although it is not the right solution for every game, it is certainly part of the appeal of
many Atari 2600 cartridges. In the case of Breakout, the variations offer a great lesson in
altering a core mechanic in order to enlarge the space of possibility.
Beyond the original Breakout arcade game and the Atari 2600 version of
Breakout, there are many other versions of the game that borrow the same core mechanic.
For example, the sequel release, Super Breakout for the Atari 2600, refines the play in
many ways. In Super Breakout, games are no longer limited to two walls of bricks, but
can continue on indefinitely. Super Breakout also adds new game variants, such as more
than one ball in play at once, more than one paddle on the screen at the same time, bricks
that slowly move downward toward the player, and a special "children's version," in
which the ball moves more slowly. The number of variations that could be designed for
the core mechanic of Breakout is nearly infinite.
For a last look at Breakout, we turn to Alleyway, a game published in 1989 for the
Nintendo Game Boy. The essentials of the game are the same as in the Atari 2600
version: the player uses the directional pad on the Game Boy to move a paddle back and
forth at the bottom of the screen, bouncing the ball into a wall of bricks to make them
disappear. Alleyway offers its own variation on the game, while still remaining true to the
Breakout core mechanic.
The moment in Breakout when the ball actually "breaks out," when a player
carves a narrow path that allows the ball to bounce along the top of the screen, is one of
the experiential climaxes of the game. When breakout happens, the ball goes into a brick-
clearing frenzy, as the player sits back and watches the system do the work. In the Atari
2600 game, breakout is difficult to achieve, meaning that only advanced players get to
experience its thrill. Sometimes, by the time a player hits the top of the screen, there are
only scattered bricks remaining, so that the satisfying rapid-fire breakout bouncing never
occurs.
Alleyway addresses this design challenge by providing levels that encourage
breakouts to occur. For example, the very first level of the game features the classic wall
of bricks, but with columns of bricks removed from the left and right sides of the brick
wall. Instead of a closed wall that stretches the length of the screen, the wall of bricks has
open sides. A well-placed ball can angle into this gap, travel to the top of the screen, and
achieve breakout. This brick arrangement makes it much more likely for breakout to
occur early in the game.
Furthermore, when breakout happens, the audio design of the game highlights the
event for the player. As in the original Breakout, when the ball hits a wall or brick, there
is a collision sound effect. In Alleyway, the top border of the screen makes a very
different, high-pitched bell-like sound when the ball hits it. This means that when the ball
breaks out, the speedy back-and-forth bouncing produces an appropriately celebratory
"ding! ding! ding!" The first variation on the design-removing the sides of the brick
pattern from the initial game level-changes the game's structural logic in order to make
the satisfying breakout experience more likely.The audio feedback helps emphasize this
event when it does occur.
One common criticism of early digital games like Breakout is that they are too
repetitive. Although the core mechanic of the game is quite satisfying on its own, each
level is essentially identical.There might be manyvariations of the core game in Breakout
and Super Breakout, but once a player has selected a version of the game to play, each set
of bricks will be the same from screen to screen.
Alleyway's solution to this design problem was to design many different level
variations, so that each time a player clears a level and gets a new wall of bricks, the
arrangement (and sometimes behavior) of the bricks is different. Alleyway is certainly
not the first title to create unique levels for a Breakout-style game, but the progression of
levels is particularly well-designed.
Some levels in Alleyway feature bricks that fly steadily across the screen from
right to left. Others have bricks that slowly move down the screen toward the player's
paddle. In the timed bonus levels, the walls are replaced by portraits of Nintendo
characters made out of bricks that the player must eliminate, breakthru style: the ball
passes straight through the bricks and only bounces back when it hits a wall.
The levels in Alleyway follow a repeating pattern. For each structural
arrangement of bricks (such as the open-sided wall of the first level), the player plays a
"standard" version of the game, then a version with horizontally moving bricks, then
vertically moving bricks, before reaching a bonus level. The next level introduces a new
structural arrangement, and the player cycles through the set of variations again, followed
by another bonus level. This pattern of levels creates a wonderfully heterogeneous
playing experience, providing both familiarity (the variations cycle in a consistent way)
and newness (every four levels, a new structure appears). The engaging, repeatable core
mechanic of Breakout is enhanced through a system of levels that adds an element of
discovery to the overall experience.
Adjustments to a core mechanic, whether in a digital or non-digital game, can be
subtle or overt. They can create meaningful variations on an existing game, or a new
game altogether. The key to taking a core mechanic and modifying it within a game relies
on an iterative process. As you experiment with variations, ask yourself what is
successful or unsuccessful about the existing core mechanic. Then try out your best
guesses to see whether or not adjustments to the core mechanic result in more meaningful
play.
g. Putting It All Together
In the PLAY schemas that follow, we take more specific approaches to
understanding how a player occupies the space of a game during play. But before moving
on, we would like to bring our ideas about the play of experience together in a final,
detailed look at a particular digital game: Centipede. In the early arcade game Centipede,
the player's input occurs though a trackball device and a single button for firing. The
player uses the trackball to move a bug-like character on the screen, firing shots upward
at a variety of objects. Player input in Centipede is very simple: move and fire. Output, in
the form of a video screen and audio speakers, is typical for an arcade game. The
resulting core mechanic is somewhat generic: shoot enemies to score points and avoid
enemies to stay alive. Despite the seemingly simple elements that make up the core
mechanic, the game design of Centipede engages the player on a number of levels.The
following analysis of Centipede relies heavily on observations made by game designer
Richard Rouse III in his book Game Design: Theory and Practice.
How does a player take action in Centipede? There are some wonderful
restrictions designed into the game. The trackball itself was a novelty when Centipede
was first released, and even today, the large ball promises tactile, fluid motion. Ironically,
however, the player cannot move the character anywhere: movement is restricted to the
bottom 20 percent of the screen. By limiting the character in this way, the game retains a
tight structural focus. As in games such as Space Invaders and Breakout (other games
where the player moves along the bottom of the screen), game objects occupy the rest of
the space above the player. In Centipede, this space contains both inert obstacles like
Breakout bricks, as well as descending enemieslike the aliens of Space Invaders. Even
though movement is limited, the fact that the player can maneuver a little bit in the
vertical dimension increases strategic opportunities and gives the player a much greater
sense of freedom than in games that limit movement to a single spatial dimension. Yet
the freedom of movement is just enough: if the player was given access to the entire
screen, the game enemies and obstacles (which are focused downward towards the
player's narrow strip of free action), would not function as successfully.
Centipede's shooting mechanism also places important restrictions on player
action. The player can hold down the fire button for a continuous stream of shooting, but
only one shot can appear on the screen at a time. Because objects can be very close to the
player or very far away, timing shots becomes a focus of game play. Sometimes, a stream
of rapid, short-range shots are necessary. However, a shot that goes all the way up to the
top of the screen can waste a maddening amount of time, as a player impatiently waits to
gain the ability to fire again. The result of this simple design decision (only one shot on
the screen at once) forces players to manage their shots like a resource, greatly enriching
the decision-making process of the player.
Each of the five elements plays a role in the game's tightly designed system. The
experience of play, a composite of all of the decisions made by the player, emerges from
the possibilities mapped out by this system. For example, it is best to keep the overall
number of mushrooms low, because the more mushrooms that are on the screen, the more
rapidly a centipede will descend and the more mushrooms a scorpion is likely to poison.
The mushrooms at the top of the screen are particularly difficult to reach, because they
are blocked by lower mushrooms, and the limitation on the player's rate of fire makes it
difficult to rid the screen quickly of mushrooms that are far away. It is easier to clear
mushrooms from the bottom of the screen, but if the player clears too many, a flea will
descend, dropping mushrooms across the entire height of the screen, including the top,
where they are difficult to clear. The player must carefully prune mushrooms from the
field of play, while retaining just enough to keep the flea from appearing.
In looking at the system of Centipede, it is striking to see how a simple set of
rules generates complex play. More than just a complex formal system, such rules ramify
into a particular experience, a set of relationships that give the player's actions meaning.
Shoot this mushroom or that one? Kill the centipede at the top of the screen or the
bottom? Let the spider eat mushrooms or not? Furthermore, Centipede is an action game:
all of this rich decision making happens in an extremely compressed space of time,
resulting in the blend of action-shooter and strategy-puzzle experience Rouse describes.
Tension also escalates across an entire game. As the game proceeds, more and
more mushrooms crowd the game space, until the top of the screen is quite dense with
them. Of course, this makes the game more difficult in several ways. Additionally, the
creatures become more challenging as the game wears on: the centipede moves faster and
eventually begins a level already split into several independent pieces; the spider travels
more quickly and in a tighter pattern, making it more difficult to kill. Centipede creates
overlapping rhythms of pressure and relief, frustration and achievement, whether in a
single game moment, on an individual game level, or across the game as a whole. This is
play: the experience of rules set in motion. Players experience this system: as blinking
pixels on a screen, as sharp electronic sounds from a speaker, as sweaty fingers on a
trackball and button, as lightning-fast strategic planning. Play culminates in a whirl of
perceptions and emotions, thoughts and reflexes, inside the mind and through the body of
the player.
Too often, game designers forget that they are creating, above all, an experience
of play. It is not enough to tell a story. It is not enough to create pretty pictures or use
dazzling technology. A game designer creates an interactive system, a set of choices, an
activity. When you are making a game, ask yourself fundamental questions: What is the
player actually doing from moment to moment in the game? How are these moments
connected in a larger trajectory of experience? How does the experience of play become
meaningful? What, above all, is the play of the game? Although there are no easy
answers to these questions, focusing on the play of a game's core mechanic is a good
starting point for designing powerful player experiences.
h. Rule-Bound
Picture a child poised excitedly at the starting line of a footrace, ready to run
down the track, breathlessly awaiting the starting signal. Rather than giving in to her
intense desire to leap from the starting line, she waits for the signal that the race has
begun. What's going on here? Why does our player anxiously hold back when she really
desires to run? Developmental psychologist L. S. Vygotsky notes that "Play continually
creates demands on the child to act against immediate impulse, i.e., to act on the line of
greatest resistance." Certainly the child in our example wants to begin running, but the
rules of the game order her to wait. At the same time, the runner knows that the rules are
artificial, describing systems that are in some way outside ordinary life. So why follow
the rules? Vygotsky argues that players accept the rules of the game not in order to
restrict pleasure, but instead to maximize it. "To observe the rules of the play structure
promises much greater pleasure from the game than the gratification of an immediate
impulse." Through mechanisms of restraint and the withholding of immediate impulses,
games transform the play-er's experience of constraint into one of abundant pleasure.
The notion that pleasure is an effect of submitting to the rules of a game, that
pleasure delayed and constrained is pleasure enhanced, offers a powerful model for
understanding all kinds of pleasure.Think of examples from your own experience:
waiting to eat a particularly enticing dessert until completing the main course, or not
skipping ahead to the end of a suspenseful murder mystery. The delayed gratification of
orgasm is heightened when it is initially resisted, as is the urge of opening a fine wine
before it has properly aged.
Submission to constraint is certainly not the only way to understand pleasure, but
it is an appropriate starting point for a discussion of the play of pleasure in games.
Consider, for example, how the notion of constraint intersects with several core game
design concepts: Rules and Play. The idea that players subordinate their behaviors to the
restrictions of rules in order to experience play-and its pleasures-is a fundamental aspect
of games. The restrictions of rulesfacilitate play, and in doing so, generate pleasure for
players.
Free Play. A player's sense of pleasure is explicitly derived from being a part of
the system of a game, from being "at play" within the more rigid structures of a game. In
Man, Play, and Games, Caillois makes an explicit link between a player's free action
within the limits set by the rules and player gratification: "This latitude of the player, this
margin accorded to his action is essential to the game and partly explains the pleasure
which it excites." Free play is dependant on, yet also resists, the rigid structures that give
rise to it.
The Lusory Attitude. Playing a game means abiding by artificial restrictions,
which make game actions seemingly inefficient. Runners not only wait for the starting
gun, but, as Bernard Suits points out in Grasshopper, they also run around a circular
track, instead of cutting through the middle of the field to reach the finish line first.
Games are constituted by these kinds of constraints, which simultaneously restrain and
enable pleasure. The willingness of players to step into these artificial systems in order to
experience the resulting pleasure is at the heart of the lusory attitude.
Stylized Behavior. Although play is a free and improvisational activity, the rules
of a game stylize the actions and behaviors of players in very particular ways. Think
about the patterned movement of players engaged in a game of Ping Pong, or the tightly
constrained movements of Simon Says. There is something very pleasurable in the way
that games stylize play through a ritualistic, collective orchestration of movement and
action. Children derive pleasure not just from the dramatic tension at the start of a race,
but also from the collective experience of running together in formation, pumping their
arms and kicking their heels toward the finish line.
Rules give rise to the dramatic structure of pleasure, the link between constraint
and pleasure binding tightly the formal and experiential qualities of a game. But players
don't simply stumble into a game. Unlike other forms of ludic activities (such as playing
with a toy), a game demands that players know the rules before play begins. What
provides the enticement to begin play? What makes players stay in a game once it starts?
i. Autotelic Play
The magic circle of a game is, by definition, removed in some way from what
Huizinga calls "ordinary life." The victories and losses, the triumphs and failures that a
player experiences in a game are in a very real sense contained within the magic circle.
As DeKoven puts it,a game provides "a common goal, the achievement of which has no
bearing on anything that is outside the game." We know, of course, that there are many
ways winning or losing games can impact players: affecting their lifestyles, their sense of
self, their relationships to friends, even the amount of money they have in their pockets
when the game is over. There are certainly extrinsic ways that winning a game matters.
At the same time, every game implicitly asserts the premise that the value of the game is
intrinsic, that the game is self-contained, that the fiction of the magic circle will be
upheld, that winning or losing the game is separate from everyday lived experience.
If one considers the self-contained nature of the magic circle, the way that games
create their own meanings and provide their own goals, it is clear that games are strongly
autotelic. We borrow the term from psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who in his
book Flow explains that "The term 'autotelic' derives fromtwo Greek words, auto
meaning self and telos meaning goal. It refers to a self-contained activity, one that is done
not with the expectation of some future benefit, but simply because the doing itself is the
reward." When an experience is autotelic, it is participation in the activity alone that
counts. Games are, to a greater or lesser extent, pursued for their own sake, for their own
intrinsic stimulation. Although there are always some extrinsic reasons for play, there are
always intrinsic motivations as well. In playing a game, part of the incentive is simply to
play-and often, it is the prime motivator.
Because they have such a strong autotelic component, games are largely non-
utilitarian. Most forms of design serve an external function, or utility. Architecture
houses and shelters our families, government, and industries. Typography enables visual
communication. Automotive design supports mobility through the design of cars. Game
design, on the other hand, simply enables its own play. Please note, in saying that game
design exists in contrast to other forms of design, we are not proposing that games do not
serve external functions, or that other forms of design don't also serve non-utilitarian
ends. Our point is that games posit their own intrinsic needs or goals, such as abstract
winning conditions, which gives them a distinctly artificial and non-utilitarian status.
Contrast an online medical database program with an online multiplayer game. A
hospital worker looking for a particular patient's record comes to the software experience
with a clear extrinsic goal in mind, such as finding out what meds the patient needs to
take that day. The database does not contain its own set of goals; it supports the goals of
the user. The database program is used as a tool, as a means to an end, rather than as an
end in itself. When the worker finds the record he is looking for and extracts the
prescription information, the database has successfully fulfilled a goal that was brought to
the system from an external context. In an online multiplayer game, on the other hand,
there is no clear utilitarian purpose that the game serves. Why is the player exploring the
game world, customizing her character, killing monsters, and accumulating treasure?
Because she is playing the game. The game is not a tool being used to fill an external,
utilitarian need. The player is not playing the game in order to feed her cats, or tune her
car's engine. The explicit interaction of the game is not a means to an end, as in the case
of the medical database program; rather, the play of the game represents an end in itself.
We play, in some measure, for play's own sake.
Consider the way that the experience of play as an end, rather than a means, has
affected the development of digital game technology. One of the reasons why games have
been so inno-vative-pushing the envelope of computer processing power, creating
experimental hardware interfaces, pioneering graphics rendering and spatial audio-is
because games must provide their own motivations and pleasures. The medical worker
will suffer through an awkward interface and ugly visual design in order to find the
record he needs. A game player, on the other hand, is a much more fickle user: why play
a game that isn't fun? The computer and video game industry is continually spurred on by
an audience hungry for ever-more spectacular games and ever-more meaningful
interaction. People play games because they want to; game designers must create
experiences that both feed and satisfy this sense of desire.
j. Enter. Play. Stay.
Why go to such lengths about the non-utilitarian nature of games? In order to
make a larger point about the challenge of bringing players into a game and keeping them
at play. Because games are premised on needs intrinsic to the game, it is necessary for
game designers to both entice the player into crossing the boundary of the magic circle
and also keep them there until the goals of the game have been met.
Beginning a game means entering into the magic circle. Players cross over this
boundary to adopt the artificial behaviors and rituals of a game. During the game, the
magic circle persists until the game concludes. Then the magic circle dissolves and
players return to the ordinary world. These two actions, crossing into the magic circle as
well as maintaining its existence, represent two of the chief challenges of designing
meaningful play. The two actions require a carefully orchestrated double seduction. First,
players are seduced into entering the magic circle of a game. Second, players are seduced
into continuing to play.
Both events are challenging to design. The first seduction, bringing players into
the magic circle, requires players to cross a threshold that will take them out of their
ordinary lives and into the world of the game.The difficulty in making this happen comes
from the formal quality of game play. It is much easier to slip into and out of ludic
activities that aren't games. Are you eating peanuts and feeling playful? Just toss one up
and see if you can catch it in your mouth. How about those building blocks on your desk?
Stack them up, knock them down, or just let them be. In The Magic Circle, we looked at
the way a child might play with a doll, at how smoothly a player can slip in and out of
play, at how permeable the borders are between playing and not playing. In games,
however, the transition between not playing the game and starting to play the game is
more clearly defined. Games usually require formal preparation: finding players, reading
the rules, opening a saved game file, shuffling cards, setting up the board, and so on.
Players must learn the system and "officially" enter into the game and begin play. This is
a genuine hurdle for players of your game: they must attend to the initial set of chores
that lie on the border of the magic circle; they must properly perform the rituals of entry.
What does this mean for game designers? Designers create not just the game
itself, but also the ways that players enter into the game system. This event involves
consideration of not just the formal elements of the game, but also the way that the game
interfaces with external contexts. How and when does a player enter into a game? Where
does the initial seduction begin? Does it begin the first time a player sees a commercial or
reads a review of a game that encourages or discourages the player to make a purchase?
Does the seduction emerge from peer pressure and social values (Barbie Fashion
Designer is for girls! Quake is cool! Everybody is playing P.O.X.!). Does it begin with
the installation of a downloaded game, the first reading of a game's rules, or the menu
screen of a console title? Does it start the moment a newbie shoots his first monster?
Clearly, there is no single factor to which the act of seduction can be attributed
and no single, isolated moment when the player decides to begin play. Designing the
seduction of a game means understanding all of the formal, social, and cultural factors
that contribute to the player's experience. It is important, for example, to understand how
marketing, promotion, and distribution work in the game industry. It is important to scout
out what other game developers are creating and how it may impact the game you are
designing. It is important to understand how the culture at large perceives and regards
games and how new audiences might be brought to your games. There are no simple
answers to the question of whether or not a player will decide to begin playing your
game. This is one more challenge game designers face.
k. Typologies of Pleasure
Games evoke emotions of struggle, of competition. The kinds of things you feel
aren't often given common names in our usual everyday parlance but they are important
emotions that we feel and go through and enjoy and find in some mysterious ways
enlarge our spirit. How about the anxiety that you feel when your chest suddenly swells
as you realize you are going to be a master? How about the sense of self that develops as
you concentrate all your being and the various parts of your body upon the task of
overcoming obstacles? How about the dejection you feel, the despair when you fail
utterly? And how about the exultation and the sense of triumph you feel when you
actually succeed? And sometimes a little bit of awe as you maybe find that path out there.
And there's another name for these emotions and game developers call them fun.
LeBlanc's model is intended not only to assist game designers in understanding
the range of forms that "fun" can take, but also to provide a common language for
marketing digital games. He has proposed, for example, that by rating each of these
categories on a zero-to-ten scale and putting that information on the back of a product
package, a consumer could quickly get a sense of the kinds of pleasures the game
provides. A first-per-son shooter, for example, might have a high rating in Sensation,
Fantasy, and Challenge, but a low rating in Expression, Narrative, and Fellowship. The
challenge, of course, is that many of the categories seem to overlap. There is a very fuzzy
line, for example, between Fantasy and Narrative. Other ambiguities persist as well.
Categories such as Discovery and Expression might easily be applied to other categories:
can't a social framework be uncharted territory? Doesn't self-discovery occur in a
challenge? Moreover, even if these theoretical problems could be resolved, "officially"
rating a game's pleasure in this way would be a highlysubjective endeavor. Despite all of
these criticisms, however, LeBlanc's eight categories do identify many of the components
of game-induced pleasure and are useful as a way of understanding the range of pleasures
games provide.
There are many other typologies we could consider as well. There is no need to
choose a single typology to represent pleasure in games. You should feel free to mix and
match different models of experience and pleasure, depending on the needs of your
design.These typologies are less useful for theorizing about pleasure or for classifying
games, but they can be very handy as a way of organizing observations about the kinds of
pleasures that a particular game provides. One model is not necessarily better than the
others; each offers a different way of thinking about pleasure and its many motivations.
For example, let us employ one of these typologies-Caillois' four categories-in
looking at an Unreal deathmatch. Do they apply to the pleasures of playing Unreal?
Certainly the game contains a great deal of competitive, agônistic struggle. Mimicry
plays a strong role as well, in the fact that each player is represented to the others through
a customizable avatar in a fictional, virtual space. Unreal and games of its ilk are well
known for representing physical movement through three-dimensional space in real-time,
often creating vertigo in the form of motion sickness. There are arguably even elements
of chance in Unreal as well, such as the particular players that happen to join an online
deathmatch, or the layout and distribution of items on a level.
We can similarly apply the categories of LeBlanc and Apter. A game of Unreal provides
all of the pleasures they list too, from the Fellowship that emerges out of hard-fought
competition, to the creative Negativism of cheats, hacks, and mods. Pleasure is always
already exceedingly complex: where we find one form of pleasure in a game, we will
almost always find others. In general, most games provide many or all of the pleasures
listed in any typology of game play experience. But at the same time, there is always a
balance of factors, a particular ratio of ingredients that adds up to the unique flavor of an
individual game experience. What meaningful pleasures is your game providing, or
failing to provide? This is the utility of a typology of "fun:" offering a vocabulary for
charting out the complex play of pleasure.
l. System of Meaning
It should be self-evident that games contain representations. Think about the
thousands of objects represented in a game such as Animal Crossing or Grand Theft Auto
III. But games are not the only cultural forms that contain many internal representations.
The text of a storybook is also composed of thousands and thousands of representations:
the text doesn't just represent a single object, but is made up of a dense chain of signifiers
(or signs), denoting complex networks of characters, objects, descriptions, and events.
The words that make up the text of The Little Prince act as a representational system to
depict the many characters and events of the story. Similarly, games are systems that give
rise to representations of characters and events—representations at least as complex as
those created through writing in a book.
Games can represent: this is a simple idea. However, because games are complex
dynamic systems, the exact way representations operate within a game to generate
meaning is quite complex. Even the most basic set of game signs are always bound up in
larger systems of meaning. For example, consider one of the simplest elements of Virtua
Fighter 4 for the Playstation2: the health bar. In the two-player "versus" mode of VF4,
two players select a character and engage in hand-to-hand combat. Both characters begin
the game with 100 percent health, represented by a full green bar. As a character is struck
by attacks, her health is reduced; when a character's health reaches zero, she has lost the
match. Both health bars are visible to both players; each one communicates to a player
the status of his or her own health, as well as the health of his or her opponent. This
information can suggest actions for the player to take, such as switching from an
offensive to a defensive strategy if the player's own health is very low.
This example illustrates that even a simple game stat can have multiple,
interrelated meanings. The health bar is part of a complex network of signs, which is why
appreciating the meaning of the health bar requires an understanding of the larger system.
For example, your character's health is at 30 percent. Are you about to die? Possibly, if
your opponent is at full health. But perhaps your opponent's health is down to 5 percent.
In these two scenarios, you would assume very different play strategies, perhaps falling
back to a defensive posture or conversely, pressing the attack for a quick kill. The
meaning of any one sign can only be understood in relation to a larger set of signs, which
together form the densely woven fabric of meaning in a game.
We should point out that in Virtua Fighter 4 there are other ways to win the game
besides reducing your opponent's health to zero. For example, in some of the arenas, you
can win by knocking your opponent out of the ring. Every fight also has a pre-set time
limit—when the limit is reached, the player with the most health wins, even if the health
of one player's character hasn't been taken down to zero. These alternate victory
conditions add even more meaning to the sign of the health bar. If your own health is
very low, perhaps you should change your fighting style to try and push your opponent
out of the ring. Or if you are ahead in health and the timer is almost up, you might want
to stay away from your opponent, avoiding contact until the timed end of the match.
The meaning of the health bar affects the actions players take, actions which
themselves can affect the meaning of the health bar, again leading to new actions and
outcomes. In this way, meaning in the game sets up complex representational loops,
generating representations that affect and are affected by player interaction. For this
example, we used the single stat of a health bar, but we could have looked at any aspect
of the game. When all of the elements represented in VF4 are considered at once, from
the stances and maneuvers of the characters to the distances and spaces between them,
the total system of meaning becomes staggeringly complex.
m. System and Context
The health bar in Virtua Fighter 4 is an individual sign. Individual signs are a key
part of the way that meaning emerges from a game—but meaning requires more than just
signs. Meaning requires a formal system to generate relationships between signs, as well
as a context for interpretation. The formal system of a game is, of course, its rules. The
rules describe actions and events whose meaning remains the same from game to game.
Checkmate, for example, always means the end of a game of Chess. This is a meaning
conferred by the unchanging formal system of the game. However, for the formal system
of a game to be meaningful, the game has to be played—ultimately, the meaning of the
formal system emerges from within a play context. The context affects interpretation, and
can enhance, distort, or even radically alter the meaning conferred by the system.
Checkmate might not just mean the end of the game. It might also mean that money
passes hands if there was a wager on the game, or that reputations are gained and lost. It
might not even mean final victory, if players are playing in a tournament for the best two
out of three games.
Remember that the focus of this schema is how games can represent, how they
create meaning for players through representation, and how these meanings can, in turn,
be manipulated. To play a game is to move into the magic circle, to move from the
domain of everyday life into a special place of meaning. Within this special space the
player's experience is guided by a system of representation that has its own rules for
"what things mean." The context of play affects how players understand and act upon the
representations the game creates. The system and the context thus work hand-in-hand to
support player interpretation. (Note that we are using the term system to designate the
structure that organizes relationships between elements, an idea introduced in Design.)
The "X" in Tic-Tac-Toe, for example, means something quite different than an "X" in the
game of Scrabble. The difference in meaning is conferred primarily by the system, which
has rules for what an "X"means. In Tic-Tac-Toe, an X represents ownership of a square,
a strategic movement towards victory. Yet as with Chess and Checkmate, the context of
the "X" is also crucial in determining its meaning. Imagine a playful love letter that uses a
Tic-Tac-Toe board to spell out "XXX." Rather than interpreting the three X's as merely a
winning move in a game, the signs would also be read as symbols for kisses. The context
of the "X" has shifted its meaning from a game move to a declaration of "winning"
affection. The author of the love letter has played with the meaning of the sign "X" by
shifting the context within which the sign is interpreted.
n. Emergent Representations
In the "X" of Tic-Tac-Toe and in the action of Checkmate, we see that games
create meaning through the interplay of system and context—but this operation is not
unique to games. System and context represent a general semiological approach to
understanding how representation works. For example, consider spoken or written
language. Language is structured by grammar, the formal system that gives its individual
elements meaning. Yet the meaning of any utterance of language is also contextual. The
phrase "Don't have a cow" means two different things when spoken by a dairy farmer or
by Bart Simpson. The interpretation of the phrase relies both on grammatical structures
and the context of the speaker.
Meaning is emergent. When we use language, as when we play a game, we are
playing within the limits that the rules allow. To speak a sentence is to play with words—
but only in ways that the rules of language permit. A paradox of meaning is that although
simple rules shape every utterance, the total number of potential statements is nearly
infinite. Both language and games represent complex emergent systems, in which
possible outcomes far exceed the formal complexity of the rule-system, an idea we
explored in Games as Emergent Systems. As Jeremy Campbell notes in Grammatical
Man: Information, Entropy, Language, and Life, "A modest number of rules applied
again and again to a limited collection of objects leads to variety, novelty, and surprise.
One can describe all the rules, but not necessarily all the products of the rules—not the
set of all whole numbers, not every sentence in a language."
Representation in games emerges from the relationship between a rigid,
underlying rule structure and the free play of meaning that occurs as players inhabit the
system. Game designers must pay close attention to the play of meaning within a game,
crafting individual instances of player interaction within a larger field of representation.
As a game designer creates a system of rules, he or she is also creating a vast space of
representational possibility, a space that becomes meaningful through player interaction.
