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February 19, 2006
Art? Sure, But What KIND?
In a fascinating thread about "Amber" as a system over on Adam Dray's blog, I decided my own tentative answer to the "is game design an art or not?" question - the real question is, what kind of art. I'd say, It's like architecture more than, say, painting. Architecture is an esthetic endeavor, but it's also a technical one. There are facts of the matter, often reducible to numbers. When Frank Lloyd Wright was building Fallingwater, it wasn't just a question of whether it would be "beautiful"; it was a question whether the thing would stand up. Edgar Kaufmann, Sr., Wright's friend and patron, feared that the architects untried system of cantilevering plain wouldn't work. (It did.)
Similarly, it's possible for a game design to be objectively "non-functional." The text may promise heroic action, but the mechanics make the predominant play experience the failure to perform even simple tasks. And so on.
But past the level of basic function, we're in the realm of esthetics, aka taste. Is Fallingwater beautiful? I think so. Some might find it too solid and dark, too much like huddling under an overhang. Would you want to live there? Answers will vary. Similarly with games. Dungeons & Dragons 3.x seems to "work." Do you want to do what it helps you do? Maybe you do. I don't, quite.
Game design is the building: play is the lives we live in it.
That's my story for today anyway.
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Comments
Its a good analogy, and I personally appreciate any which serves to remove the hobby from the visual arts/literary continuum.
Posted by: Jeremiah Genest at Feb 20, 2006 10:21:56 AM
I like the metaphor "Game design is the building: play is the lives we live in it." very much and it reminds me of Stewart Brand's excellent book How Buildings Learn about how some buildings (wooden, say) are easily modified and thus over time adapt to the needs of those who live in them and change them to suit changing requirements, while other buildings (concrete and steel designed by famous architects more interested in making a statement than practicality, say) are difficult to modify, and thus require their inhabitants to adapt to them.
Christopher Alexander's The Timeless Way of Building and A Pattern Language list design patterns for building and the effects they have, and perhaps part of what game design theory is reaching towards is a similar sort of thing, so that game designers have a better understanding of "If I do this kind of thing, I make it easy/hard for players to achieve these kinds of results."
Very cool, thanks!
Posted by: Carl Rigney at Feb 20, 2006 11:00:13 AM
As a sort of aside, I found Fallingwater to be crowded and confusing in its layout. I wouldn't want to live there, though it'd be a great place to have a mini game con. Lots of small, well-lit rooms tucked into little alcoves, perfect for 4-5 seats and a coffee table. It was beautiful though, but not functional (for me).
Posted by: Adam Dray at Feb 21, 2006 1:30:17 PM
Michael's analogy along these lines is that rulesets are programming languages and individual games/campaigns are software application. I particularly like this in the small-application analogy, which is about the little, single-function programs that do one thing very well. Most games are like that: well-suited to the participant group, and perhaps unsuited to other groups.
This has been a big issue for me in discussing game design of late. I'm very interested in small-app tools for the style of game I like and just don't care about designing for either the MS Word of games or for small apps that don't suit my needs. I feel like there's been no point in talking to people on the Forge or whatever because there's just no interest in doing the things I want to do.
Posted by: Ginger Stampley at Feb 22, 2006 12:01:32 PM
