Bruce Sterling on game design
A while back I found this wonderful rant by Bruce Sterling. He spoke at the GDC about game development, and I found his talk to be absolutely fascinating for many reasons.
You can find one copy at http://lib.ru/STERLINGB/story.txt so go read it. Don't worry, this entry will be here when you get back.
No, seriously, go read it.
Okay, back? Wow, what a talk, huh? He covers a lot of topics that are vital to our industry and things we're going to have to grapple with as we mature more. A few of my favorites:
His talk about planned and marketed obsolesence. Why does he feel "nausea" about firing up his old Atari system? It is interesting that he later talks about preserving our history and how it is a "little cultural apocalypse" when a platform disappears, yet he isn't willing to play the old games he has at home. What does this tell us about the industry and its audience?
He also talks about how games are too left-brain. We focus on stats and numbers, which makes sense because that's what computers are good at, but where is the sense of mystery and magic? Can we really make these games resonate with the soul and give us deeper insight?
I also enjoy his concept of games as a radical and potentially dangerous medium. A game that is so threatening to people in power that they raid the developer's offices in order to keep it quiet? A game too radical or revolutionary to be allowed on the market? If this happened, it would put to rest all those "games as art" debates. Only real art threatens people on that level.
Then there's the issue of how we always look forward as developers. We pine for the future when everything will be better. Sterling uses the example of AI and networks to show how we talk about being able to make better games once these fields advance enough. You can say the same thing about graphics. Of course, these advances aren't always what we hope for; games based on better AI aren't always fun.
Toward the end, Sterling finally discusses storytelling in games. Yet, he points out how games might not be the best vehicle for storytelling according to the academics. However, he argues this isn't a bad thing! Science fiction didn't become popular due to great storytelling, it became popular because it was weird. He says that games should embrace the weird; we shouldn't compare ourselves to movies or books, we should bravely forge ahead and make our medium unique. We should study the weird things out there and incorporate them. We should also focus on being the best we can be even if we are weird and overlooked.
So, here's an insightful essay from a well-known author about our medium, dealing with important issues we're struggling with on a regular basis. But, did you notice the date at the top of this work?
March 1991???
Here's a screed nearly 15 years old and we're still dealing with these topics even today? Yeah, really makes you think. Why are we still in this situation?
I think one of the biggest reasons is because the industry did the exact opposite of Sterling suggested. Instead of embracing our weird, we've tried to clean up our act and go "mainstream". We focused on the profits, we focused on becoming another medium like any other. We've tried to adopt the ways of other entertainment industries and fit in.
Of course, it makes perfect business sense to do so. After all, people are paying a lot of money for games these days; the industry is worth billions of dollars, and we're challenging the income of movie box office receipts. We give the audience what it will pay for and we laugh all the way to the bank. Great for business, perhaps not so great for the medium as a whole from an artistic point of view.
But, can we still embrace our weird? Can one create art and still make enough money to eat? Or, are we doomed to become another cultural wasteland like TV and movies? Will we see 99% crap with the occasional brilliant work that reminds the us why we still care about the medium?
I guess we'll see.
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I love paying attention to Bruce Sterling, even if its a lot of work sometimes. He's a member of that cyberpunk ratpack and always has something fresh to say, even if it was back in 1991. :-)
The first half, where he talks about forgetting our gaming roots. Its a topic that I've seen you cover recently as well. I do see the validity of that, and there are certainly innumerable examples. Yet a part of me looks at new media as somewhat disposable, only because there is so much of it. Can we really keep everything? I'd say we could, and that it is desireable, but why not do something smarter? Meaning, delete all of that junk data, those old games, and just remember the principles that made them good (or bad). Save that. Teach it. And its around forever as it is assumed into our collective knowledge.
Its a strange contradiction that we're reading this old speech from 1991, surely the opposite from the "deleting the old" syndrom that he so aptly describes. Are we really losing our geek-rooted game heritage? We have emulators and lots of storage capacity these days...
He commented that when we bury the computer and play new styles of games, we will forget the past. A 2005 example counters this dire prediction - the most interesting game that has thus far come out from experimentation with the GPS-Mobile model was a real life version of Pacman. Is that forgetting the old?
OK enough with the disagreement. I found the REST of the talk simply poignant. It really gave me pause, and your framing comments only added to the effect. You look out upon the vastness that is the games industry today, and you really do see a lot of cloning. Such is the nature of the medium, and the reality of cost : it takes a lot to make beautiful games. Its a shame that the fundamental truth is that graphics get the audience, and gameplay keeps it.
You're both right, and I realised it with something of a jolt : we need to experiment more. We need to look for inspiration in places where we never thought to look. Games are such an open medium, so why shouldn't it feel like a huge creative tornado? It all feels so safe and bland. It should be a literal hurricane of new stuff. Even good graphics can do something with new ideas. Pacman would never have been sold today.
Comment by covert.c. — 12 July, 2005 @ 3:02 PM
That was an awesome read. I didn't notice the date at the top, but somewhere he in the talk he mentioned the 90's and I was thrown for a loop, lol.
Btw:
"He also talks about how games are too left-brain. We focus on stats and numbers, which makes sense because that's what computers are good at, but where is the sense of mystery and magic? Can we really make these games resonate with the soul and give us deeper insight"
I feel the same way, and I suppose it's the reason why I'm not playing any mmogs (or many games at all for that matter) at the moment. It bothers me more in mmogs than single player games, for some reason.
Comment by Raguel — 13 July, 2005 @ 1:51 PM
Yet a part of me looks at new media as somewhat disposable, only because there is so much of it. Can we really keep everything?
Yes, we can if we wanted. There's been a lot of things written over the years, but we've managed to save most of it. One of the important things about saving the past is that it's hard to tell what's really meaningful and what isn't. Shakespeare's work was simple enterainment for the masses back in the day when they were originally written. Yet, through the lens of time we see that his plays are really timeless pieces of art; they speak about the fundamental human condition, so they're revered now.
The problem with deleting the old junk and "remember[ing] the principles" is twofold. First, people don't remember (or sometimes even understand) the principles behind a game? To take an example from you own blog, what makes Diablo so compelling? I think you described a lot of great examples, but you wrote that nearly five years after the game launched. How many people do you really think give consideration to Diablo? Would you have written about it if you hadn't bought it on impulse when you couldn't find the game you originally wanted?
Also, consider that Diablo is a game that is fairly recent in memory. But, let's talk about some of the games that inspired Diablo: Moria, Rogue, and Telengard. How many of these games are you familiar with? How about the Nethack and Angband games? What's the difference between Diablo and Nethack? Why was Diablo more like Moria than Nethack? See the problem here? It's not easy to know all this stuff unless you have some experience. And, someone sharing insight with you could have their own spin on things.
Its a shame that the fundamental truth is that graphics get the audience, and gameplay keeps it.
Unfortunately, the industry is mostly only interested in getting the audience. They have very little desire to keep an audience for very long. Why? Because if you're happy enough playing the current game, you're not necessarily going to be first in line to buy the next one. This is yet another reason why the industry is eager to forget its past; if you're happy playing a remake of Telengard, you're not likely to pick up Diablo 2.
[...]we need to experiment more.
Exactly. the problem is, it's hard to experiment when it's your ass on the line. If you're a manager on a $15 million project, you're gong to be a bit hesitant about doing anything that might lead to problems. Innovate? Hell no! Safe and secure is where it's at when it's your job on the line.
Most people agree that it's the price of developing a game which hurts innovation. As I said, a $15 million budget isn't something to sneeze at when it's likely your game won't even break even. Games are a very hit-driven media these days. The answer is one of two things: either increase the price of games (to get more income from fewer sales) or reduce the cost of development.
Since I don't think anyone is eager to pay more for games, I think the best method is to reduce the cost. This means that we have to reduce the quality of the assets. This doesn't mean games have to be ugly or crude, but we need to move away from the demands of photorealism in the game. Accepting that a 2D game can be just as fun as a 3D game is another big step. As long a the market only pays for cutting-edge graphics, we'll see budgets continue to increase and innovation and experimentation pushed to the margins.
Thanks for your comment. :)
Comment by Psychochild — 13 July, 2005 @ 2:10 PM
What computer entertainment lacks most I think is a sense of
mystery. It's too left-brain.... I think there might be real
promise in game designs that offer less of a sense of nitpicking
mastery and control, and more of a sense of sleaziness and
bluesiness and smokiness. Not neat tinkertoy puzzles to be
decoded, not "treasure-hunts for assets," but creations with
some deeper sense of genuine artistic mystery.
When I read that paragraph of his talk, I immediately thought of Earthbound (though it wasn't released until 1994).
Comment by moo — 31 July, 2005 @ 7:40 AM