So, as a followup to the thing I posted the other day about what a game designer does, it’s helpful to answer a more fundamental question: What *is* a game?

This is one of those things that gets bounced around a lot, because it’s one of those things, like “What is art?” that there’s not a really iron-clad and definite single answer to.

That said, it’s not like a lot of people haven’t taken a stab at answering it.

What do *you* think a game is? Is it something with points? That you play on a screen? Does it have a story? Does it have a goal? An end? Do you use a controller? Is there conflict, or challenge? Competition? There are certain aspects of gaming that people take for granted, but in the end, the best a lot of people can manage is, “I know it when I see it.” Or more appropriately, “I know it when I play it.”

Of course, a lot of professional game designers have spent a little more time trying to refine their definitions.

Chris Crawford’s view on what a game is can be found here. It’s a bit of a read, but worthwhile.

Eric Zimmerman and Katie Saleen define a game as follows: “a system of artificial conflict, defined by rules, that results in a quantifiable outcome.”

Some people have paraphrased Sid Meier, creator of landmark games like Civilization, as saying that a game is a “series of interesting choices.”

They’re all good ways of thinking about the game, but just as any artist comes to their own definition of what art is, I think all game designers build an understanding of what, in their experience, a game actually is.

For me, I’m going to post something here I wrote at the end of ‘08. I was thinking about writing a book on game design, and this was one of the first bits I wrote.

—–

Let’s start with the easy question. If this is “A Practical Guide to Designing Videogames” (the working title of the book I was writing), what is a videogame? Ask a dozen people, and you’ll get a dozen different answers. Pretty much everyone will agree that video is somehow involved, though you might be stymied by something like Real Sound, a videogame that came out around 2000 that had no graphics, and was only sound. There’s a whole genre of “sound novels” in Japan, and they’re widely considered to be videogames, simply because they’re played on videogame consoles.

So the easiest, most obvious part of the definition - the “video” in the title - can’t even be relied upon to form part of the basic definition. Graphics, surely, are a part of *most* games, right? Sure. Same goes for audio. And a controller - some way to interface with the thing is critical. Does it need a story? Fans of Final Fantasy would argue that it’s critical, while fans of Tetris would probably raise the point that Tetris has no built-in story.

There are such a wide variety of games out there that it’s hard to find a good definition of what a game is. What are the similarities between Madden, Gears of War, Civilization, Grim Fandango, the Sims, Tetris, Rock Band, and Zork? There are a huge number of arguments you could make, and for each of those arguments, there are a small handful of exceptions. A definition of what a game is has to include those things.

Heck, why even limit ourselves to videogames? Why not include other things, like card games or board games? Or games in general, like wrestling, or cops and robbers? There have been dozens, if not hundreds of attempts to define what a videogame is over the years, and most of those discussions have been totally fruitless. So I’ll just cut to the chase:

A game is when a user is presented with a compelling choice that allows him or her to make an informed decision that has consequence.

I hear you asking yourself, “That’s it?” Yeah. That’s it. There’s nothing in there directly relating to story or character or shooting or graphics or controllers or epicness or saving the world or preteen androgynous adolescents or anthropomorphic cats or anything of the sort. However, that doesn’t mean they’re not in there. The definition has three key words:

• Compelling
• Informed
• Consequence

Heck, you could probably reduce the definition to only those three words, and you’d have at least a passable definition for what a game is. Still, since that’s pretty reductionist, let’s take another stab at it.

The basic gist of it is pretty simple. The thing that separates games from all other media is interactivity. That means that the player has the ability to interact with the game. That, in itself, isn’t enough. If, for instance, I’m watching a movie and it pauses itself, and requires that I unpause it to continue - that’s not a game. That’s just annoying.

The issue with interactivity isn’t simply the base interaction - it’s that the interaction has to have some sort of consequence. But again, if I unpause the movie, that’s a consequence - the movie continues to play. Fine - so the interaction has to have some sort of meaning. You have to have a choice, with consequence.

Okay, well, let’s take the same argument. I’m watching a movie. Halfway through, a screen pops up and says “Choice A or Choice B?” and that’s it. Nothing else. How do I make that decision? Normally, when faced with the choice between two options, you weigh the options to see which might have a better outcome. What is the risk involved with picking one over the other? What is the reward? Without any information as to what Choice A or Choice B is, there’s simply no *point* in selecting one over the other. The decision is totally arbitrary, and my personal interaction with it is meaningless - I might as well be an Eenie Meenie Miney Moe-bot. That’s not a game.

So the choice has to have consequence, but there has to be some ability to understand how to make the choice. The player has to be empowered to make an informed decision. Great. So let’s say the movie presents me with a character, Bob, and I can decide whether he takes a job at the box factory, or the paper mill. The movie’s informed me that Bob is a bland, boring guy or no particular consequence. He’s got no love for either boxes or paper, and he’ll be pretty much happy at either one, though maybe a little more creatively fulfilled in one job, and a little more financially stable in the other.

Whoop-de-doo.

Part of the problem is that on top of having the choice and understanding the consequence, the player has to actually give a damn about the choice they’re making. If two beasts are bearing down on me - a chihuahua and an angry grizzly bear, and I have only one bullet to try and stop one, I care because if I pick wrong, the bear will eat me for lunch. I’m informed by the physical stature of the beasts, the choice is compelling because really, it’s either the bear or the harmless teacup-dog and I only have a limited time to make the selection, and the consequence is life or death.

So creating compelling situations where players make informed choices, and those informed choices have meaningful consequence is what makes up a game? The game exists in the continual risk-reward balancing act in the player’s mind. You’ve given them the playground, the game is letting them churn through the possibilities.

To expand a bit on those keywords, though:

• Compelling: Narrative, Risk
• Informed: Presentation, Systematic Consistency
• Consequence: Progression, Reward

How do you make something compelling? Seems like a black art, really. Mechanically, a lot of what makes a decision compelling is the balance between risk and reward. The part that makes the choice compelling is setting the stakes - putting something valuable on the line. The narrative aspect is where story elements come in, because the things that you risk need to have some value. There can be mechanical value to those things - you might wager credits, or in-game objects - but in many games, your choices are balanced on narrative mechanics - do I risk my life to save the world? How far am I willing to go to save a character who means something to me?

In a game like Tetris, compulsion is built entirely on risk - do I wait for the long block to get a Tetris, or do I place another shape to clear some lines now? In a game like the old Lucasarts adventures, where death was impossible, the compulsion was built entirely on the narrative - the desire for progression. Those games had almost no way to even incur risk at all! Most games balance the two - the risks you take have both mechanical and narrative value - your teammates’ lives in squad-based shooters, for instance.

Information is nominally pretty straightforward. If you want to inform a player about the decisions they’re faced with, there are a pretty wide variety of ways to do it.

You are in an open field west of a big white house with a boarded front door.

There is a small mailbox here.

Those lines should be instantly familiar to anyone who played the original Zork. Text is a pretty clear way to inform the player of the parameters of the decision they have to make. Graphics, too. The simple image of an angry bear and a chihuahua is probably enough to communicate to you the risks involved if you make a decision a particular way. So by “presentation,” I suppose what I really mean is some combination of graphics or text. The visual content of a piece in Tetris, combined with the gaps in the placed pieces - that’s enough to inform a player what they should or shouldn’t do.

The second piece in that puzzle is Systematic Consistency. Taking the Bear-Chihuahua example again, the information the player’s given are that the potential targets are a bear - a large beast known for mauling humans, and a Chihuahua, a tiny, maybe yappy, but mostly harmless dog. If one were to take the Monty Python approach, perhaps the bear is a friendly kind animal, and the little dog is a psychotic killing machine, but that undermines the consistency of the imagery in the real world, and prevents the player from making an informed decision! Sure, sometimes upending someone’s expectations can have good results, but you do so at the risk of breaking the mechanics of the game.

For the bear-Chihuahua example, for instance, if you wanted to keep the integrity of the informed decision, you might spatter the little dog in blood, and have scraps of human flesh hanging from its rabid jaws. And the bear might be in a tutu. That way, rather than upending the player’s expectations in a way that’s unexpected and frustrating, players will see that there were clues, they just had to look past their initial gut reaction.

Consequence is pretty straightforward. Something should happen when the decision is made. If you shoot the bear, the Chihuahua comes up and licks your face happily. If you shoot the Chihuahua, the bear eats you. That’s a pretty straightforward reward. It’s immediate, provides clear feedback on the player’s actions, and can be clearly causally linked to what the player did.

The second part of Consequence is the idea of progression. This is a little more nebulous, because it’s more on the dividing line between good games and bad games, rather than games or not games. Sure, you could repeat the same mechanics, over and over and over again. You could, in some bizarre iteration of Halo, have players enter the same room, encounter the same enemies with the same behaviors, and fight them with the same weapons. Over and over again. You could probably make a strong argument that that’s exactly what happened in the Library levels in the middle of Halo 1 - it was still a game, but it wasn’t interesting or fun, and failed to engage people.

Progression really is about keeping people engaged. Games aren’t progressions of an infinite variety of mechanics. Most games - card, real-world, or video - are about a very small set of contained mechanics, repeated over and over again. There’s a discussion to be had here that games are intentionally a smaller subset of all possible interactions, because originally, games were training mechanisms that allowed people to practice small chunks of real world interactions in a relatively safe environment until they were mastered.

But modern games are constrained more by practical considerations - developing an experience based on a limited set of interactions is possible, while developing an infinitely variable set of interactions is not. Most games are a handful of mechanics that evolve over the course of the game. If the game’s about fighting, you fight more or stronger enemies, you learn new techniques, and in addition to building your personal skills, your character grows in skill and magnifies your ability to succeed.
The fact that the game changes over time is really important, because it ensures that the player is constantly surprised, challenged, and that complete mastery takes a long time. Boredom sets in quickly with repetition - without progression, people will lose interest quickly.

The reason that Progression is contained within the definition of a game isn’t because it’s really critical to defining what a game is, but because I have no interest in talking about bad games, and Progression is absolute vital to the next topic, the Core Cycle.

——

So, that was one chapter, more or less. The Core Cycle’s a pretty simple concept. If people are interested, I can post that, as well.

Word Ace & Card Ace were both nominated by users for the 2009 Best App Ever Awards! Thank you so much for the nominations!!

Now, though, it’s time to get to work! If you think Word Ace or Card Ace are great, we need your help! But don’t worry - it’s super simple - just go to the following links, and click to vote! That’s it!

Word Ace: Vote Here

Card Ace: Vote Here

Thank you for your support!

A new Pre App review site has hit the web, and one of their first targets is Word Ace! It’s a great, super-through writeup! Go check it out, and show the site some love! It’s PreAppTastic!

A few years ago, when I asked a coworker why they got into game design (they’d previously been an engineer), their response was, “I want power. You guys get to make all the decisions.”

On the surface, it seems like a sensible thing to say. You see Cliff Bleszinski or Will Wright out there, talking about their games, and these guys are the “visionaries” - at least, that’s how it’s pitched to the public. Who comes up with guns attached to chainsaws, or creature creators that let you build whatever you can imagine, right? These guys are the creative powerhouses behind their games, and if you’re in their position, you’ve got *control*… right?

Now, I’m no cliffyb, or Will Wright. Far from it. But for me, hearing my coworker say that they wanted to go into game design because they wanted power was a strange thing.

To me, design has always been a “service position.” In general, game design is broken up into a couple different sub-disciplines. You’ve got system designers, who build the mechanics of the game. You’ve often got level designers, who create the actual experience that the player will interact with, and you’ve got the lead designers, who both set the tone of the game, and effectively act as the design team’s manager.

What I mean by  “service position” is that at each stage of the process, the designer is rarely in “power” - rather, they are in service to some greater force. Let’s start at the top.

Building a game is essentially a giant resource management game in itself. You’re creating something - you’ve usually got a deadline and a budget. Maybe a target audience, and a platform you’re working on. As a lead designer, you have a handful of really important goals:

1. You need to figure out what the game *is*.
2. You need to get people psyched about making it.
3. You need to make sure you can build it with the resources you have available.

Just to take an example - when we were first looking at making a game for the Palm Pre, the biggest question was, “What should we make?” On one hand, we had the immense luxury of making that decision ourselves - we weren’t handed a specific set of marketing goals, or a demographic to target. We could make whatever we wanted.

But when you step back a bit, you really … can’t. Or rather, you shouldn’t. Your platform has certain things it’s good at. The original Playstation, for all its vaunted power, was a relatively lousy machine for doing 2D games. The PS3’s controller has a giant dead spot in the middle of the analog stick, so making games that require high degrees of precise input can highlight the console’s flaws. On the Pre, Mojo has some very positive aspects (rapid development, a familiar language), and some negative ones (limited access to the underlying hardware).

In addition, unless you’re in a very, very privileged position, you’re working with limited resources. Limited people, limited money, limited time. This isn’t a bad thing. It can help give your game form. It forces you to concentrate on what’s important and what’s not.

Look at Duke Nukem Forever - 12 years in the making, and never released. Why? Because the developers (at least until the very last moment) never had to say “no.” Why was Star Wars better than the Phantom Menace? Why was Metal Gear better than Metal Gear 2? Because free of restrictions, you don’t have to find creative solutions to your problems, and you’re not forced to take a look at what you have to cut away to get to the core of what you want to make.

Building the best possible game is as much, if not more, about knowing what that chewy center is. Knowing what the experience you want to convey to the players is - building that - and eliminating everything else.

One of my favorite games in recent years was an action-adventure called Ico, for the PS2. Greatest game of its generation by leaps and bounds. It was emotionally engaging despite virtually no dialog. It was epic despite taking place in what amounted to a single setting with only two main characters. It knew what it wanted to focus on - the emotional bond between the two main characters in the game, and it stripped away anything that didn’t serve that purpose.

Can I say that Word Ace or Taxiball is similarly minimalist? Absolutely not. But what I can say is that we knew where the “core fun” of the games were, and we never sacrificed that. We cut a lot of things in the process of making the games, some of which will be added in over time (particularly in Word Ace (and Card Ace)), some of which are better left on the cutting room floor (no, we don’t actually have a “cutting room”). But the games work, I believe, because we took the time to figure out what was important about them, and to make sure that as we developed the games, we focused on the things that emphasized the particular fun, and eliminated things that didn’t.

With Word Ace, for instance, when we were playing it with cards, an absolutely critical component of the experience was the “IN YOUR FACE!” moment when you pulled out a great word. The great word was satisfying in itself, but the booyah! moment - that moment of interaction between players - was something we couldn’t lose. That led to the development of the emote system, which is one of my favorite things in the Ace games.

The point is - there are some people who have the ability to be visionaries. Who have the resources or the stubbornness to build their singular vision. But to me, a good designer builds the right game for the right circumstances - good design is about maximizing… everything. The platform, your resources - finding the “fun” in that and making sure that everything in the game serves that fun. It’s not a position where you lead - it’s a position where you listen. You listen to what the engineers think you’re capable of. You keep up with the state of the art, to know what your competition is doing. You research the future - you can’t design for now, your game’s not coming *out* now - you’re designing for months, sometimes years in the future. You try to understand who will be playing the game. When they’ll play it. What they’re looking for.

You take all that information, and if you listen, it’ll tell you what you should make.

—

More later, time permitting (if there’s interest - want more? Leave a comment.).

Topics to come: How do you find “fun”? What *is* a game, anyway? Why designers who don’t play games should find another job.

So, at the end of the year, there’s always a bit of self-reflection, and for us, this year’s been a really crazy one. The year started out with the seeds for Self Aware Games, and between January and March, we had no name, and it was a pair of us working part time out of our living rooms

Taxiball's First Playable

As you can see, in the early days, without an artist, the game looked… um… “functional.” I took a stab at some placeholder art, but it wasn’t a whole lot better. (though I still kind of like the style for the water)

Taxiball with Designer Art

Fortunately, not long after this, Crystal joined us, and Taxiball immediately started looking a whole lot better! The pixel-art, eboy-inspired style that she brought to the game was incredibly appealing. Between the hyper-digital style and the all-vocal beatbox soundtrack, the game just felt like nothing else out there. Taxiball wears its influences on its sleeve - the old Labyrinth toys, Crazy Taxi, retro pixel art, but when it’s all smashed together with the beatbox stuff, it’s *still* unlike anything else out there.

Taxiball with Artist Art!

Taxiball was a really satisfying experience. We got our first game out the door to rave reviews, and it was something we were really excited about. The soundtrack was really unique, and while it wasn’t a runaway sales hit that made us all bazillionaires, a lot of people really enjoyed it. Edge Magazine named it #6 in their Top 50 iPhone games, which was really great.

Crystal + Funnel Cake = oog!

Once Taxiball wrapped up, we got to work on the first of two updates, adding levels and polishing up little bits and pieces of the game.

Okay, first we went to Great America, where we all got funnel cakes. For anyone who’s thinking of doing the same, LOOK AT THAT THING! Share your damn funnel cakes. I think we bought four, total, and ate maybe 1.5 of ‘em among the four of us? Seriously. Unless you’re Man vs. Food guy, one funnel cake for 3 people.

We’ve still got things we’d like to do in Taxiball - we had some really bizarre ideas for things that we’d like to do in the game. I hope we’ll get a chance to go back and give it a little more love. (And if you want more Taxiball content, the answer is simple! Get more people to grab the game, and we’ll add more stuff!)

As Taxiball was winding down, the question was, “What next?” One of the most important decisions of the year was to start development on the Palm Pre, and one of the best things that happened early on is that Dan joined the team as our main Pre developer.

We thought long and hard about what we’d do on the Pre, what the audience might want, and how it might differ from the iPhone’s audience. I don’t know whether it’s ended up being the case, but at the time, we thought the Pre would appeal to users of the Treo & Centro, which were slightly more business-oriented than full-blown consumer-oriented. The other thing that we’d learned with Taxiball is that games that require a lot of twitch-based dexterity are a bit self-limiting, audience-wise.

Self Aware Games' first office space!

So, a turn-based game that appealed to a slightly older audience of people on the go, for a platform that was starting from scratch! Card games and word games seemed like the way to go, right from the start - but what? Hold ‘Em? As much as we liked the game, it’s a known quantity - and we wanted to make something really special.

A simple misunderstanding later, and Word Ace was born - not just a word game or a card game, but both together, cross-platform between the Pre, iPhone & (later) Facebook! (In the picture below, avid Word Ace players may note something’s different about that screen than in the final game. That one change took many iterations over many weeks before we settled on the final thing. It’s a small detail, but one that tripped up a lot of early players!)

Word Ace

With Taxiball, we’d laid the groundwork for letting friends keep up with their friends in game through our Friend List-based leaderboards. With Word Ace, we’d take it a step further, and allow people to play together. Sure, there were other online card games, but we wanted to make sure that it felt *social* - like you were playing with people, and not just a bunch of randoms.

In addition to the text chat, we introduced a little “click & flick” emote system, where you can quickly swap out your profile picture for a happy or sad face. It was pretty amazing how fast Word Ace was prototyped, and as a result, how early we’d been able to play it online. For months, we’d play against each other (and our friends, our beta testers), often late, late at night. I’d be lying in bed at 2am, playing Word Ace against bots, when Colin, Crystal or Dan would suddenly appear at the table.

We talked about bugs via the in-game chat. We played face-to-face in the office. Heck, once we submitted the game to Palm, we even talked about bugs with their people via the in-game chat!

CTS defends our desks!

At the San Diego Comic-Con, Colin got a chance to talk to Tycho, from Penny Arcade, about Word Ace. When the game launched on the iPhone, he posted a note on their site. As longtime fans of PA, we were over the moon.

Word Ace launched on the Pre. It was an ambitious game on a new platform, and the fact that it launched as smoothly as it did was a testament to both the hardworking folks at Palm, and the hours and hours of hard work our team put in making sure that we’d be prepared for the launch. Thousands of people started playing, and the feedback about the game was incredible. We’d made it free, so that as many people could try it as possible. Once the game was completely solid, we’d turn on chip sales & donations, so people who wanted to support the game could spend whatever they wanted on the game to help support further development.

Chip sales went up a few weeks after launch, and donations are slated to be part of the next update. It’s been really fascinating watching the competition on the App Store/App Catalog, and seeing how things have shaken out - how they’ve been different from each other, how pricing evolves as people realize that the $0.99 price point isn’t sustainable, and it’s been a learning experience.

Dan Rarely Drives to Work

Speaking of learning experiences, there’s nothing that teaches you about what you did right or wrong like releasing a game. And one of the greatest things about working on mobile platforms is how fast development is. I came from a console game development background, where most projects are a minimum of 1.5 years, and some projects take 3x that long.

I’d never want to go back to that. You spend so long trying to make sure that your game is fun, but you only get that learning experience once every 2-3 years. Now, we learn a massive amount about how to do things better once every 3-4 months! Heck, with each update we learn something new, which brings that time down to once every few weeks.

With Taxiball, we learned about pricing, about making a game that’s dexterity-based, about how important generating awareness is on the App Store, and how to work with a new team. With Word Ace, we’ve learned a lot, again, about pricing, about keeping people playing the game, the importance of good & proactive moderation, and the perils of building an always-on, always-online game.

The One Constant? Bakesale Betty.

And some of the time, we still work out of the living room, and not the office.

Not long after the launch of Word Ace, the next step became really clear. Hold ‘Em. There wasn’t a Hold ‘Em game on the Pre, and Word Ace’s interface was so good that by taking that and applying it to Hold ‘Em, we were confident we’d have an exceptional version of online Texas Hold ‘Em. People wanted it. We got e-mails asking for it the moment Word Ace went live. Who were we to argue?

Card Ace!

We also really wanted to do a version of Word Ace (and Card Ace) for Facebook. Rylan joined the team and built the Facebook (and fubar) versions of Word Ace & Card Ace in a ridiculously short time, bringing our total “official” team size to five.

So in the course of the last year, we’ve released: Taxiball (iPhone), Taxiball Free (iPhone), Word Ace (webOS (Pre & Pixi)/iPhone/Facebook) and Card Ace (webOS (Pre & Pixi)/iPhone/Facebook). That’s a lot for a small team in a year, and we couldn’t have done it without help from some very critical people.

Every single one of those games is something I’m proud to have been a part of, and to both the players and the people who’ve made Self Aware Games possible, thank you.

It's Not a Mugshot.

I’d never have thought that this is how 2009 would have turned out.

So… what’s next? I can’t tell you. What I will say is that I thought I was as excited about a concept as I could be with Word Ace, and I’m even more excited about this. And if you thought Word Ace was different than Taxiball, this new thing is as different from both of those as you can imagine.

The Eyepatch Is Just for Kicks

Onward to the future!

I was looking back through the blog, and it occurred to me that I don’t seem to have ever announced on the blog that we’ve got Facebook versions of Word Ace & Card Ace available. :O

If you’ve got friends without a Pre or an iPhone, you should get ‘em to check it out! All they need is a PC and a Facebook account!

If you’ve got a Pre, you can also link up your Card Ace/Word Ace accounts with your Facebook account - just go to Profile, and click “Import Account,” then follow the directions there. (Account linking on iPhone is coming soon.)

I hope you get a chance to check ‘em out!

Woohoo! Kevin, one of the first people to grab a deck of Word Ace cards, sends in the aftermath of his first game with the new deck! How cool is that?

Got pics of you playing Word Ace with your friends? Send ‘em in, and we’ll post ‘em on the Self Aware blog! Get the best photo, and there might be a surprise in it for you!

So… almost all the physical decks of Word Ace cards have been spoken for - and 85% of the decks have shipped out. We’re waiting on a shipment of the plastic cases for the last bunch, and we’ll be off to the races. For those that have already paid, you’re guaranteed a deck (if you’ve paid by 3pm Friday 12/11), and they’ll ship as soon as the cases come in.

Thanks so much for your interest and support. And to those whose decks are on their way, send us a pic of you playing with your friends, and we’ll put it on our blog!

Cheers!

Finished card packs! Just about ready to ship.

Rylan signs a whole mess of instructional leaflets. Each pack in the 1st run of cards is hand signed & numbered by each member of the Self Aware Games team!

Crystal & Dan peeling stickers and putting ‘em on the card cases. Crystal’s happier than she looks. Seriously.

The first batch of cards is just about to go out. It’s going out a day late because we had a delay in the shipment of the card cases. They’ll be going out first thing tomorrow morning, and additional shipments will follow in the coming days.

Woo!

One of the little things we’re including in the Word Ace physical decks are stickers of the Word Ace ‘W’ icon! Slap ‘em on your phones! Got a Touchstone? They happen to fit just right on that, too!