http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20051004/sylvester_01.shtml

Talking about substance in gameplay.

without wanting to rate the written i also suggest to focus on decisions in gameplay.

he mentions chess for example. while all of us know that the frontline peasents are a very low level of use and effect they still come with decision supporting attributes. and in some cases this can be the turnarround or a guidline how to play this game of chess.

bad chess players dont use them. good ones can build solid rock defense lines with them that can get you into troubles.

lots of games ditch this completely. for example would everyone agree that a pistol is useless against some tank. as a consequence it gets removed from the gameplay one a tank arrives.
in chess there would still be situations and possibilities to use this gun effective against a tank unit. sure its way more dangerous and chances are bad to win but if worst comes worse its still an option.

as an example sollution tanks could be mounted by players ingame and after opening the hatch you could eliminate that crew with the gun.
while this for sure isnt the brightest example it should show some method when gamedesigning.

this also adds another point mentioned. if you solve to crack a tank this way its worth telling a story about it.

so if you make some sort of ww2 it would be wise to do a few steps:
1.) make every enemey vunerable to all weapons
2.) mark if a player solves this very hard task (give him some honor tag or ribbon "tank buster" for example.. games like wings did that very good)
3.) make (if playing online) this visible ... next time you play a ww2 game you find yourself next to some guy with a icon or medal on his uniform that says "spearhead of d-day" ...ranking is one of the best motivation factors in pvp games.

I just found time to read the article!
I was very curious about how he would define substance!

He found a definition! An impressing simple and good one!

And his explanations about the relation of style and substance and their different functions in game design are much worth!

Ive always hated it when a game gives you weapons/units/powers at the beginning that have no use later in the game. For example in Warcraft 3, you have no real reason to create footmen if you have access to knights, thereby making footmen useless.

I love the idea of any weapon being used against every enemy. We're not asking to kill a fighter jet with a molotov coktail easily, but having a small chance for the jet to be ambushed while it is flying low and having the coktail liquid seep into the cockpit. Things like this definitly give more "subtance" to every object, instead of fodder to replace with better weapons.

I want to bump up the 'Substance And Style' article, again.

It was worth to think about it, and I did exactly this, because I thought, that there is something wrong, if one stuck with the author's difference of substance and style WITHOUT making further differences within that what he called 'style'.

I'm talking with games in my mind like Half-Life or Gothic or GTA Vice City.
In this sort of games 'game', 'simulating', 'movie' come together.

It is not only about cleverness and/or fast reaction, it is about identification, it is about relations to real life, it is about a sort of 'mirroring', 'copying', 'commenting', 'beating', 'parodising' the 'real' world.

'Identification' has not the mere purpose of explaining the game substance - the pool of decisions - it has a purpose like it has in movies or in novels, too.

In movies 'identification' connects the viewer's feelings to the story, the story leads the viewer through events to develop his feelings and thoughts in a specific way, depending on the author's intentions.

Games have to transform story events into decision conditions. They can use the benefits of movie storytelling, but have to give the player more freedom than the viewer has: the viewer has to follow the hero's decisions, although he is free to think about them what he want, in the gasme the player has to make his own decisions and the game'author' has to provide an apropriate variety of consequences.

A game in the best choice of its abilities can give the gamer experiences of deciding and experiencing consequences which actually have value within his ordenary life!

(I'm not sure, wether this is already a theory, but its a couple of thoughts which fits together more or less, as far as I can see at the moment.)

I read the article again and saw that the author already used differences like role-playing, simulation, story-telling. So far, my approach is not as different to his approach as I thought.

but, my interest of making games is different:

He uses the difference of substance and style to achieve a high quality of gameplay and success on the market. He talks about entertainment as the target of game development.

My interest is focused on how to get intense game experiences which are comparable in quality to the best novels and movies.
And the best novels and movies IMO make you think about your own life and its composition of decisions.
How does one achieve a gameplay which provides compositions of decisions or compositions of constraints of decisions which are comparable to real-life?


My thoughts aim at something like this:

If Shakespeare were living today and were making games, how would the games' gameplay 'look' like?
Or the other way round: How must a game be to have the value of a theatre play of Shakespeare?

I love this article, thanks for bumping it so I could re-read it.

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And the best novels and movies IMO make you think about your own life and its composition of decisions.

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I think game designers are too afraid to draw from their own lives. Afraid to put characters and narratives from their own lives into their games. Instead, many games just draw from the 10 most popular action/fantasy/sci-fi movies.

Shakespeare's characters and how very human they are is what makes him such a powerful writer. The structure of his plays aren't very original and many people talk about his stealing plots. It's that we are so able to relate to his characters, though, and get inside their heads, and deeply feel with them a huge ocean of human emotion-- that makes him so important... For a game to have the value of a Shakespeare play, it needs to hold up a mirror and reflect a slightly different version of our ourselves back at us.

Artists and writers draw from their lives, it creates substance.. the creative forces behind a game must give in and do the same thing. Even if it is a star wars game, it can be made meaningful if experience from life is put into it.

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How does one achieve a gameplay which provides compositions of decisions or compositions of constraints of decisions which are comparable to real-life?

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I think this is the trickiest question of all. Shakespeare isn't real life, there isn't free will in a theater piece for the actors (unless it's a comedy improv group or hyper-weird bertold brecht experiment). Earnest Adams talked about this in the podcast [ below], he said "i think we'll have the holographic hardware technology for star trek's holodeck long before we ever have software to drive its interactive stories"

Here's a slew of excellent podcasts that go well with this thread.

Tim Schafer @gdc about how designers should draw from their lives: http://cmpmedia.vo.llnwd.net/o1/gdcradio-net/GDCR/gdcr_007.mp3

And Earnest Adams on interactive structure and narrative (extremely relevant to this topic)
http://cmpmedia.vo.llnwd.net/o1/gdcradio-net/GDCR/gdcr_004.mp3

And this one, on designing a game based on the life of Emily Dickinson, from a GDC design challenge:
http://cmpmedia.vo.llnwd.net/o1/gdcradio-net/GDCR/gdcr_001.mp3

Thank you for the links of the podcasts. I will need some time to understand them.

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Earnest Adams talked about this in the podcast [ below], he said "i think we'll have the holographic hardware technology for star trek's holodeck long before we ever have software to drive its interactive stories"

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Why does he think so? A sequel of Star Trek (or a play of Shakespeare) has important things common with a game:

#1 a restricted set of elements,

#2 which have to interact with each other to make sense within their constellation.

In a story the author selects the thread of decisions/interactions.
In a game the gamer should select, no, he interacts within constraints which the author already selected.

So far, the difference between play and game is very small: _only_ the level of freedom within the given constraints are different! From no freedom in a story to...more or less restricted grades of freedom.