Game Matters

Learning to be fun

Last week I finished reading A Theory of Fun, by Raph Koster, Chief Creative Officer for Sony Online Entertainment.  This book convincingly answers the question, What makes a game fun?  And more than that, it dives into topics such as the ethics of games and how games can take their rightful place alongside other respected forms of entertainment.  It's all good stuff, and it's easy to agree with everything Koster writes.  It all rings true.

Although the book is deep with detail, the main question boils down to three words:  Fun equals learning.  As Koster puts it, "Fun...arises from mastery.  It arises out out of comprehension.  It is the act of solving puzzles that makes a game fun.  In other words, with games, learning is the drug."  And likewise, he writes, "Boredom is the opposite.  When a game stops teaching us, we feel bored...Games grow boring when they fail to unfold new niceties in the puzzles they present."

I think Koster is 100% right.  Developers must strive to make games whose difficulty zig-zags within that narrow band of "fun," between boredom (too easy, already learned) and frustration (too hard to learn).  Koster says that "the definition of a good games is therefore 'one that teaches everything it has to offer before the player stops playing'."

Another interesting comment in the book gives a hint as to why we love certain genres, like the FPS, RTS, RPG, & MMOG:  "Given that we're basically hierarchical and strongly tribal primates, it's not surprising that most of the basic lessons we were taught by our early childhood play are about power and status."

Koster also talks about a concept related to fun, called "delight," which deals with aesthetic appreication.  We experience delight when we recognize patterns, yet we're also surprised by them.  Delight has nothing to do with challenges.  And Koster says delight will "wear thin quickly," and therefore games cannot live by delight alone.  It's easy to name games that have sure looked pretty (delight), but have not given us an fresh challenge to overcome (fun).

Koster has written one of the best books for our industry.  I hope everyone adds it to their bookshelf.

The Ico syndrome

Quite often I see discussions among developers who use Ico as the poster child for critically stellar games with underwhelming sales.  But while Ico is often lauded as a great game, it never surprised me with its lack of success.

A few factors that contributed to Ico's under-performance:

o  Meaningless name.  Just seeing/hearing the name tells you nothing about the game.  So, the name itself did nothing to help position the game.

o  Oddball hero.  Doesn't the boy have horns?  If so, this game has the same problem that the Oddworld games have, a quirky hero that's hard to relate to.

o  Short game.  Probably a victim of rental, and gamers just wanting more for their money.

o  Non-compelling subject.  This may be the heaviest anchor.  Ico seems to be a generic fantasy, save the girl story without anything buzz-worthy to sell it.  Yes, the hook is that you grab the girl's hand and guide her, but on the surface that doesn't sound like an excitingly new hook.  And even playing the game I didn't find this all that compelling.  Really, the only thing eye-opening about the game was its visuals, but again it's still overall generic, just nicely done.

o  Kid's game.  This ties into the previous point, but it also stands on it's own.  To Joe Gamer holding the Ico box in his hand, it looks like a game for kids.  There is no obvious coolness to the concept.  This game is a tough sell to the teenage/adult gamer.

Ico has many game developers shaking their heads in dismay, because it's a game with stellar production values, gameplay uniqueness and overall terrific execution, and yet it didn't become an unqualified hit.  The game was poorly positioned, both from a branding perspective and from a game concept perspective.  Ico's main character, generic setting and kid level story did not lay a compelling foundation for a game.

Practically all games that are critically acclaimed yet fail to realize expected potential have similar problems.  And generally it's a problem that's easy to avoid.

Can you predict a hit?

No.

Well, yes.  But you have to assume that execution is adequate, and this is a huge assumption.  Many, maybe most games fail based on poor execution alone.  Execution encompasses areas such as interface, controls, bugginess, gameplay balance, and all other areas of production quality.  Execution is the one true wild card.  We engage in folly when we predict if an unreleased game will be a hit, because we cannot predict execution quality.

Well, unless the studio has a tract record of top notch execution, like Blizzard, Valve, and Bioware.  Then it's a well placed bet.

Otherwise, we're back to no, it's not possible to predict a hit.

Execution happens to be the area most disrupted by the publisher's money squeeze, or when they try to rush a game out to beef up revenues in one of their fiscal quarters, to ensure their stock doesn't take a slight tumble and rile investors a wee little bit.  It's really hard to execute on execution when you've got limited time to get things right.  This shortsighted behavior by publishers has sunk more games than perhaps any other development factor in the industry.  Too many games are simply released before they're done.  Eighty percent done does not a hit make.  We all know this, right?

Well, I wish.

So, while it's deadly tough to predict if a game will be a hit, it's actually not nearly so tough to make a hit game.  In fact, I think it's kinda easy.  Except you need to have the time to execute the game to its full potential.  That's quite an "except," and only a handful of studios can do so.  Well, like Blizzard, Valve, and Bioware.  Funny that.