The blog of Glenn Essex

From Raph Koster’s GDC takeaways:

There’s a little bit of an identity crisis. Some of this is from debates over terms (“is Dear Esther a game?” was a constant thread), which some feel to be exclusionary. Now that interactive art is burgeoning, it is either growing out of the rubric of “game” or expanding the definition.

Recently, I’ve been comparing a lot of games against my definition of “game”, and some of those games are forcing me to refine my theories.   I’ve begun to contemplate the nature of decisions in games:
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In my Fundamentals Expanded post I defined objective as a game state reached by optimal decision-making.

Decisions that reduce the discrepancy between the current game state and the game state described by an objective are considered optimal.

Non-optimal decisions are certainly not bad decisions.  Non-optimal decisions can serve as indicators of player agency.

Steven Conway, in his 2010 article entitled Hyper-Ludicity, Contra-Ludicity, and the Digital Game, for the Journal for Computer Game Culture, establishes a dichotomy that separates ludus into “hyper-ludic” and “contra-ludic”, where the former refers to a game state that encourages the player, and the latter refers to a game state that resists the player.
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Time now for a bit of elaboration on one of the fundamentals of game design, as described here.

Decision – The selection of a course of action by the player.

There are two types of decisions: problems and choices. A problem is a decision that directs the player toward the objective.  A choice is a decision that allows the player to choose an objective.

A person is not a Player unless they’re playing a game, and since it is the player that makes decisions, deciding between playing a game and not playing a game is not a decision.

It seems a new effort is underway to establish a framework for game design ethics.  My thoughts on the matter are mostly incomplete, so I will be paying close attention to the progress of Controlled Invasion.
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For context, click here

Johnathan Blow’s recent lecture on Social games, as well as his interview with PC Gamer has convinced me to write this post.

“…I don’t necessarily like to approach [design] from that question ‘Is the player having fun or not?’…I go at it from the designer’s side and I ask ‘Are you trying to take advantage of your players and exploit them? Or are you trying to give them something?’”

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