On the Game is not the Rules

Thoughts after reading “The Game is Not the Rules” by James Ernest from The Kobold Guide to Board Game Design.

I remember early at the start of my game dev journey, professor Zyda would show the GDD of the game Nevermind as what to follow that and other GDD would inevitably have something like:

Target Audience:

Primary: Adults!(18+) who are fans of psychological horror games

Secondary: Adults (18+) who are interested in learning how to better manage and cope with everyday stress.

At that time, I probably thought wow game design documents have to be so formal, I don’t even know what my target audience is other than me. I don’t know what kind of audience are out there. There is so much to learn.

That or I thought, ‘Wow, that information is not really useful.’ Then again, condensed information often is.

I think I disagree with the author in that there is no one thing you can name that makes a good watch. I think a good watch needs to be able to tell time. It also should be portable. This is tautology. Watch is defined as a portable timepiece intended to be carried or worn by a person.

If someone is wearing a watch that cannot tell time, it is perhaps broken (which means it no longer functions as a watch) or a fashion piece.

In that sense, the author is correct in that there is no individual part that makes up a good watch. You can achieve what makes a good watch in different ways. You could have clock hands or digital numerals.

A Good Watch

Other than these fundamentals, however, what makes a good watch is highly subjective to the user’s needs - which means we are back to target audience.

Some may want the ability to see time for multiple locations (for business, for distant relationship). Others may want the cheapest watch. My girlfriend says she just doesn’t like having something on her wrist. Maybe an ideal watch would be something that just ‘floats’ around her.

In these cases of what makes a good watch to a specific person, could individual parts start to matter? When Bob the businessman says “I like how my watch shows the current time in Los Angeles, Tokyo, and Paris.” It’s about the important value of showing different time, but it may also be about the specific part of having 3 time presented in easily legible manner. Perhaps in this case we can argue whether he likes 3 analog clock hand displays or 3 digital numeric display as there are multiple ways to achieve simultaneous presentation of time. If we know more about Bob, we might know that he never really learned to read clock hands as a kid and vastly prefer seeing time in military time due to his military service. Having a watch that shows 12:00 LA, 04:00 Tokyo, and 21:00 PM Paris might be the exact part that makes the watch good for Bob.

Back to games.

I shared that there are at least 8 types of fun with some of you. https://gnomestew.com/the-eight-types-of-fun/ I think it’s a trick question to say all good games are ___ other than ‘fun’. Even ‘fun’ is a loaded word with multiple types.

If we know the fun we are going for, then we CAN be specific about a particular part of the game. Take the fun “ Sensation” for example. Compared to other JRPG games, Persona has an in-game menu with very dynamic and fluid animation and feedback. So much so people make videos about it. https://youtu.be/QmQZg2990ck Or take rhythm games for example. If we take out the music and visual feedback, would you still want to play it? It could still be “fun” because it fulfills the “mastery” fun. I suspect most people would want some audio and visual feedback. Dwarf Fortress and ASCII games might be a counterexample, though will there be anyone that says a graphic upgrade will ruin the game? Fundamentally, the formal elements wouldn’t have changed.

Back to the article.

All this is not to say I disagree with the author or Jenova Chen said about how games are more than the sum of individual parts. There are a lot of emergent properties (emergent gameplay) that can arise. Is emergent gameplay just something that designer didn’t design for but could have designed for? After you see a supposed emergent gameplay show up in one game, couldn’t you replicate it in your own game?

It’s just that, there can definitely be compelling game mechanics - if you know the effect you want. Knowing the fun you want based on the audience you want. A catch-up mechanism can help players not lose hope and allow for amazing come backs, but might be frustrating for skilled players if its effect is too prominent. Randomness and chance can be great in providing replayability by providing variety in game state, but it can also make it difficult to account for and difficult to balance.

Final Thoughts

Maybe when I decide to specifically make a commercial game to make loads of money, I would want to consider more about target audience. For now, I think I am more interested in what kind of fun I like, how I can achieve that through different mechanisms and features, and adjust as necessary to include other types of fun at minimal effort to broaden the appeal.