Imagining New Game Styles

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Imagining New Game Styles

• Greg Costikyan
• CEO, Manifesto Games
• greg_at_manifestogames.com

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Game Design is

• Specification of
• UI
• Player verbs
• Underlying gameplay algorithms
• But normally concerned with implementing a game
  of an existing game style

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What is a Game Style?

• to game genre...
• But in games, genre is not thematic (science
  fiction, the action movie) but tied to a set of
  gameplay dynamics (FPS, RTS, platformer, etc.)...
  
• A game style is a collection of a set of game
  mechanics that together make for engaging play.

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For example

• The RTS is characterized by
• Resource gathering
• Building construction
• Tech trees
• Buildings create units and/or improve tech
• Diverse unit capability
• Realtime combat with multiple units on each side

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Game Styles are Ancient

• Per Parlett (Oxford History of Boardgames),
  virtually all classic games belong to categories
  that are definable not only by mechanics, but
  also by historical derivation

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ExampleThe Chess Family

• Shared mechanics
• Capture by replacement
• Bilateral symmetry and equality of material
• Functionally differentiated pieces
• Play by movement capture, not placement
• Victory through capture of a single piece

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Chess Family (cont)

• Shared history
• Chess, Shogi, Chinese chess, etc., all derive
  from the Indian game of Chaturanga (approx. 600
  A.D.
• In other words, these are game styles in the
  same sense as modern ones.

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The last 30 years

• Have seen an enormous surge in new game styles,
  in both digital and paper media wargames, RPGs,
  TCGs, platformers, RTS, FPS, LARP, etc., etc.,
  etc.
• The rise of the game industry is not just a
  story of new enabling technologyits also the
  story of a ferment of creativity

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Creation of New Game Styles...

• Is vital to the growth of the field.
• Each new style creates a new audience
• By contrast, games in existing styles mostly sell
  to existing fans of that genre.
• For the field to continue to grow, we need to
  continue to find new game styles

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The Space of All Possible Games

• Most will be uninteresting.
• But there are local maxima, where some fruitful
  combination of mechanics breeds interesting
  gameplay
• Once a local maxima is discovered, many games
  exploring the possibilities of that set of
  mechanics can be designed

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Innovation is Driven by Finding New Maxima

• c. 2000BC Track game with blocking (Royal Game
  of Ur gt Backgammon)
• c. 800AD Game of Replacement Capture (Shaturanga
  gt Chess, Shogi)
• c. 1200AD Game of Leaping Capture (Alquerque gt
  Checkers)
• 1756 Thematic track game (A Journey Through
  Europe gt Candyland)

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New Game Styles (cont)

• c. 1850 Trivia Game (Grandmamas Game of Useful
  Knowledge gt Trivial Pursuit)
• 1856 Word Interpolation Game (Komikal
  Konversation Kards gt Mad Libs)
• c. 1890 Fishing Game (Fish Pond gt Operation)
• 1910 Military Miniatures (Little Wars gt
  Warhammer)

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New Game Styles

• 1953 Board Wargame (Tactics)
• 1973 Adventure Game (Colossal Cave gt Myst)
• 1973 Tabletop Roleplaying (Dungeons Dragons)
• 1974 Vehicle Sim (Atari Tank)
• 1977 LARP (Dragohir)
• 1978 MUD

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New Game Styles (cont)

• 1979 Flight Sim (Sub-Logic Flight Simulator)
• 1981 Platformer (Donkey Kong)
• 1981 Computer RPG (Ultima 1)
• 1984 Graphic Adventure (Kings Quest)
• 1985 Dynamic Puzzle (Tetris)
• 1991 First MMOG (Neverwinter Nights)
• 1992 RTS (Dune II)

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New Game Styles (cont)

• 1993 FPS (Doom)
• 1996 Rhythm Game (Parappa the Rapper)
• 2000 Autonomous Agent Game (The Sims)
• 2001 Collectible Miniatures Game (Hero Clix)

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Slowdown Since the 80s

• Possibly because the videogame is more mature
• But, IMO, because the increasing conservatism of
  publishers makes it harder to get funding for
  anything novel (unless your name is Will Wright)

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How Do We Go About Trying to Invent a New Game
Style?

• Doubtless many ways to do it. As Kipling says,
  There are four and twenty ways of writing tribal
  lays, and every single one of them is right.
• Perhaps looking at some historical examples

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Doom The FPS

• Attempts to do 3D even from early home computer
  days (e.g., wireframe dungeons in Ultima III)
• Plenty of 2D, third-person shooting games (e.g.,
  Castle Wolfenstein)
• Licensed by id for Wolfenstein 3Dessentially
  wireframe graphics with 2D textures...

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Doom (cont)

• Wolfenstein 3D opponents as 2D sprites, limited
  variety, choice of weapons, 1st person
  perspective...
• Doom nails it wide variety of opponents,
  textures give better illusion of truly being in a
  3D space (though still not true 3D)
• Often the case that it takes several tries to
  really find the sweet spot in terms of
  mechanics and gameplay.

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Doom (cont)

• Fundamentally, the FPS results from technical
  improvements with 286 machines, we finally have
  enough processing power to get decent-looking 3D
• Technical improvements often contribute to the
  establishment of new game styles e.g., color
  printing gt the commercial boardgame cheap
  die-cuttinng gt the board wargame

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Looking to Technology

• So one approach is to look at emerging technology
  and ask How can this be used to create
  interesting gameplay?
• Physics
• Location
• Social networking
• Mobility/Ubiquity/Pervasiveness
• Procedurally-generated content

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SimCity

• Will Wright wanted todo a game about city
  planning
• Spent over a year doing research
• Mid-80s machines barely able to keep up with the
  necessary processing to provide the simulation
• Successful despite technical limitations.

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SimCity (cont)

• In other words, Wright looked to a subject matter
  no one else was addressing, and figured how to
  treat it in a game context
• And it turned out some the same techniques were
  applicable to other subjects (e.g., railroads,
  theme parks)

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Looking to Subject Material

• A difficult approach, because often the existing
  techniques dont work
• Can sometimes be commercially very
  successfule.g., Deer Hunter
• May be hard to work through the retail channel,
  but an obvious approach for games aiming to fill
  a nichee.g., Short Hike, a space station
  simulator

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Looking to Subject Material

• But there are scads of things no one is doing
• Macroeconomic simulations
• Social interactions
• Making roleplaying meaningful in digital games
• Games-as-theater
• Geopolitics
• The love story

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Magic The Gathering

• In the late 80s/early 90s, tabletop RPGs began to
  sell through comic stores as well as specialty
  game shops and book stores
• Collectible card sets are also often sold through
  comic shopsthe know how to stock and sell them.

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Magic (cont)

• Garfield reasoned that a game build on
  collectible cards would work through this
  distribution channel
• And that an exceptions game approach, whereby
  the base rules set is simple but extended by
  rules on other game components would work (an
  idea drawn from Cosmic Encounter)

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Magic (cont)

• Thus Magic was bornnot out of a technical
  advance or an approach to a themebut from a
  business idea
• Of course it helped that Garfield is a superb
  designer
• Deer Hunter another exampleWal-Mart figured they
  could sell a game that appealed to hunters (they
  sell a lot of guns) and went to Vivendi with the
  idea.

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Looking to a Business Channel

• Today, doing something innovative almost demands
  distribution not through the conventional channel
• What alternative channels can you find?
• Assume that you cannot simply force an existing
  game style down that channelthat it must be
  tailored to the specifics of that environment

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Business Channel (cont)

• What kind of game could you sell through music
  outlets? (A CD-ROM is packaged like a music CD.)
  What would get White Stripes fans excited?
• What game would get warbloggers excited?
• What about evangelicals?
• LL Bean Wilderness Explorer?

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EyeToy

• Webcams had beenaround for a while, and some PC
  peripheral manufacturers had tried offering games
  with a camera.
• And configuring a PC with drivers and such is
  difficult
• Ron Festajo at Sony in the UK wanted to make it
  as simple as possible

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EyeToy

• His insight was to view EyeToy as a UI input
  device, not a camera
• And devise a series of simple games built around
  different UI ideaswiping the screen, batting at
  objects, etc.

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Starting from UI

• In other words, the germ of the idea was in a
  different UI element
• A more elaborate example Journey into Wild
  Divine, controlled by heart rate and sweat
  sensors
• Of course, its expensive to bundle hardware with
  software

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Starting from UI

• But it isnt always necessary
• Katamari Damacy How do I use a PS controller to
  roll a ball.
• Oasis I have a limited number of clicks, and
  every click must count.
• Loop Use the mouse to circle moving objects

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Starting from UI

• One approach Imagine a novel gameplay activity,
  and figure out how to map it onto existing
  controls (Katamari Damacy)
• Another Figure out some way to use existing
  controls that games dont normally use (Loop)
• A third Provide a new input device (EyeToy)

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Four and Twenty Ways

• Doubtless there are other ways to approach the
  problem, but these four are worth thinking about
  as a start
• How can new technology be used to create gameplay
  no one has ever seen before?
• How can we create a game on a subject no one has
  touched (or touched recently)?

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Approaches

• Where and how else can we sell games, and what
  kind of games would work there?
• How does a different approach to UI give us new
  opportunities?

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We Know What Works

• or so publishers say.
• But the game is a highly plastic medium.
• So is software.
• Weve only skirted the coast of a vast virgin
  continent.
• 30 years of dynamic creativity must not come to
  an end.

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Whole cloth innovation is risky

• Most experiments will fail.
• The ones that work have the potential to be
  vastly more successful than the average game.
• And the designers we admire most are those who
  have pulled this offWill Wright, Richard
  Garriott, Richard Garfield, Gygax Arneson.

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Duty Now for the Future

• If you dont fail from tGime to time, youre not
  taking enough risks Woody Allen
• As an industry, we need to take more risks.
• The potential payoff is big.
• Go do something cool.