Game Theories: Epic Fails

I was having a late-night discussion with some designers at work about the nature of Succeeding and Failing in games. The question of the hour was this:

"In a narrative-driven or narrative-inflected game, what is a player's threshold for tolerating narrative failures with respect to gameplay."

To illustrate this, consider an exemplary assassination set-up in a typical Assassin's Creed game: You are given a target, and discover multiple approaches to reaching him. After choosing your path, you sneak up on the target and press the final "Attack" button. The assassination animation kicks in ... then cuts to one of the following cinematics:

1. You plunge your blade into the target's chest, killing him. [Success!]

2. You plunge your blade into the target's chest, but the target is wearing an iron vest a la the Man With No Name in "A Fistful of Dollars." Surprise! Your blade breaks. He has tricked you. After you wrestle, your target escapes. [Failure!]

3. You slam your fist down, but your target slips to one side at the last moment. The blade misses completely and slams into the ground. Your target rolls away and escapes. [Failure!]

Two of these scenarios end in narrative failure, one in success, and yet, in all three the gameplay loop is exactly the same -- the planning, approach, the execution of the attack. In all three cases, the player can be said to have "played the same game."

Game Theories: The Whiteboards

Over a year ago I left a nice job at Griptonite Games near Seattle, Washington with a mind to seek my fortunes in the east. My plan was to move to New York City after taking two months off to finish a few lingering personal projects and begin a few more. That almost happened, until life intervened. But that's another story.

The day before leaving, I brought my camera into the office to execute pet project that had been simmering in my head for a long time. I wanted to take pictures of my colleagues' whiteboards. Over the course of my many years in the game industry, I had grown fond of the messes that accumulated on the small doodle stations adorning every cubicle in the building. And I mean, every cubicle. Griptonite was as generous with whiteboards as they were with staples. And thank heavens, too, because they always came in handy....

The fact that nearly everyone had access to a whiteboard is precisely the cause of what I love most about these pictures: the juxtaposed variety of evidence of every discipline in the studio -- programmers and artists, designers and producers -- haphazardly scribbling to make their ideas known, to solidify concepts, or just let off a little steam. The whiteboard empowered everyone.

It's too obvious to admire the remnants left behind by the clearly talented artists in these pictures, through fun all the same. But what I like best are the wrinkled diagrams and the hastily scratched notes. They are visible evidence of a halfway point in an otherwise inscrutable creative process; these are middles of so many unknowable ideas. Ideas that started in someone's head, leaked out on to a whiteboard in any one of five or six colors, and then perhaps, if it was lucky, eventually made its way into a game that you yourself may have played only last year. Just maybe.

Click on through to see more. And click on the photos themselves to blow 'em up bigger.

Game Theories: A Practical Guide To Game Writing

Gamasutra published another article of mine about a month back. In "A Practical Guide to Game Writing" I teach interested, dedicated game developers how to get the most out of their writers. Check it out.

Game Theories: The Deaths of Game Narrative

An article I wrote for Gamasutra is up. Called "The Deaths of Game Narrative", it's a whimsical look at death, design, and storytelling in the digital world. An excerpt:

It's been quite a year for epic, narrative-driven games -- titles vast in scope, grand in ambition, and gorgeous in execution -- and I have fought my way through a few of the best.

In recent months I have transformed into an exiled Florentine nobleman thirsty for vengeance in Renaissance Italy; I masqueraded as a continent-hopping, chiseled chunk of vainglorious derring-do in search of lost treasure; and I traveled the western wilds of the United States as a battle-scarred loner fighting to restore his dignity and return to his family.

To the ear of an outsider, this might sound like a pretty diverse scrapbook of experiences, and I'd say this was half right. But there's one element that draws all these titles together under a cozy umbrella. In each game, the protagonist -- my avatar -- is a mass murderer...

Game Theories: Object Innuendo

Here's a small recipe to spice up a dull party:

Rule:
Name three objects found in a grocery or drugstore which, when purchased together, give your cashier the impression that the strangest night of your life is about to commence.

Example:
A cucumber, a jar of patroleum jelly, a disposable camera.

I codified the rules for this one about 5 years ago and have played it numerous times since. Players typically dive right into the risqué stuff first, but after the first few rounds the combinations tend to get more subtle and strange. Some people even take the shocking step of avoiding sexual innuendo altogether. Weird, right? But it works.

Game Theories: The Last Express

I will always be indebted to Jordan Mechner's 1997 game The Last Express for providing me with the first hard evidence that videogames could look and act as seriously as any film or novel. While the game's presentation is rather clunky by today's standards, the art direction, the real-time conceit, and the quality of the writing all deserve a huge measure of admiration.

While searching for images of this game to accompany a small article I've been writing about the role of narrative in videogames, I came across Mr. Mechner's Vimeo page. It contains this little gem:

Passively watching The Last Express is no substitute for actually playing it, but for posterity's sake this is a nice little memorial to a fantastic and overlooked milestone.