That’s Not A Game

As I mentioned in my previous post, my 9-year-old daughter is autistic. There’s a misconception that autistics can’t feel emotion as viscerally as neurotypical people; on the contrary, many autistics feel emotions with an intense empathy that requires distancing themselves, or else they get swept away. Gwen is like this; when she cries, and she cries often, it’s a wet, sobby, theatrical affair. It’s loud. It’s messy. Much of the time, it’s annoying.

This weekend I watched her go through the entirety of Journey on her own. As she got to the end of the snow level, and her beautiful scarf blew away like petals on the icy wind, I watched her cry. I’ve never seen her cry like that before: it was silent. She stubbornly pushed her tears out of her eyes and kept trudging, in total silence, pushing towards the light at the top of the mountain.

***

Leigh Alexander, who is among my favorite smart people talking about games, tweeted some awesome stuff that has been on my mind lately:

when people say games need objectives in order to be ‘games’, i wonder why ‘better understanding another human’ isn’t a valid ‘objective’

— leighalexander (@leighalexander) April 8, 2013

games need ‘challenges’ and ‘rules’, isn’t ‘empathy’ a challenge, aren’t preconceptions of normativity a ‘rule’

— leighalexander (@leighalexander) April 8, 2013

This is something incredibly important to me. When I got my start in tabletop RPGs, my exposure to modern game design wasn’t D&D; it was the weird indie game Jonathan was working on about bodhisattvas trapped in a subway station bringing on the end of existence. It was the game Shreyas was making about wu xia films where the passive-aggressive tension in a scene was measured by the location of a real, physical knife at the table. When I finally released my first tabletop RPG, It’s Complicated, one of the initial reviews said something that’s burned in me ever since: It’s like someone who has never seen a roleplaying game before tried to make a roleplaying game.

That throwaway sentence didn’t matter, in the long run: It’s Complicated sold out of a number of printings, still sells steadily. It was nominated for some awards. People play and love it. That’s all that matters now. But then? Nervously sharing my first creation with the world? Yeah, it fucking mattered.

People who want the game industry to “grow up” snort derisively when people use the term gamer. “We don’t call people who listen to music music-ers,” they sneer. I feel that this well-intentioned argument robs games of their interactive power, of their place in the minds and hearts of so many. People love books and music they can identify with, that they can project themselves into; the interactivity of games blurs the line between the consumer and art like no other medium. Even with games like Dys4ia, which detractors say “isn’t a real game,” what word would you use? You don’t view Dys4ia. You don’t read it or listen to it. You are a part of it.  Some don’t feel like they had any meaningful choices? Ridiculous. They made the most meaningful choice already:

They played it.

People call themselves gamers because they identify intensely with the act of playing games. It’s a refuge for many: the richest form of escapism, a place where people can feel understood, powerful. A place where gamers can slip into someone else’s skin— someone better at life. Or not better! But at least in a game, you have as many tries as you need to get it right.

And this— this power, this safety— this is why so many people want to guard the definition of “game” like it’s the Ark Of The Covenant.

When something belongs to everyone, no one controls it. What does it mean if games are a place where privileged people go to feel powerful, and those privileged people could end up slipping into the skin of someone who constantly feels afraid? If you claim the mantle of gamer as a part of your identity, and these weird, powerful narratives are games— the raw, glitter-encrusted womanhood of Ke$ha, the  gut-wrenching senselessness of your wife’s death — then you have to claim these narratives as part of your identity.

And that, I think, is the real debate. The real argument isn’t over what set of mechanics we accept; it’s over what narratives and creators we will embrace.

The broader our definition of game, the more types of games that people get exposed to, the more games themselves will diversify. And for a lot of FPS-loving, AAA-bred, EA-hating, self-anointed tastemakers— they see all of those experiments and balk. You’d think if they can handle Bioshock Infinite, they wouldn’t get squeamish watching that many edges bleed.

***

My whole body was tense when Gwen’s character collapsed in the snow. I felt like an awful mom; it just occurred to me, right then, that she had never finished a game before. This kid couldn’t handle reading The Little Engine That Could because she got so worried about the fucking train, and now I’m letting her play this? She’ll be in therapy for the rest of her life. And then the white-robed figures appeared, and then her body lifted from the ground.

The look on her face is burned into my mind forever.

That one look.

I remember when I was her age, playing Commander Keen for the first time. There was a power-up just out of reach. I was still figuring out how to use the pogo stick, but I had an idea— if I could just get the timing right. The idea that this one thing, this pogo stick, suddenly opened up entirely new worlds of interaction for me within the game— I had the same look on my face Gwen had, I’m sure of it.

Both of us basking in wonder as we realized, for the first time, that the goal was in reach after all.

Autism Day Of Mourning

There’s an epidemic in our country.

I am not talking about the rising number of autism diagnoses in the last few years; those are good things. There’s always been neurodiversity in the world, and understanding what makes people neurologically different and giving those people support so they can live the fullest lives possible is a fantastic leap.

There’s an epidemic in our country, and it looks like this:

Parents, nannies, teachers and caretakers have murdered the autistic people under their care. Often, these murders are acquitted. Almost exclusively, these murderers are pitied in the press: it must be so hard to take care of a child who’s different. It must be hard to love a child who can’t tell you they love you. “We’re not saying it was right,” the media backtracks, “We’re just saying we understand.” Or, “This was tragic for everyone involved”— implying that it was a sad inevitability that this person murdered the vulnerable person in their care, not that it was a deliberate choice.

My 9-year-old daughter is autistic. She was six the first time she told me she loved me. She is smart and quirky and hilarious, and has a fast-temper and obsessive-compulsive tendencies and sucks at being flexible with her schedule. I’d be lying if I said it was always easy to raise her; it’s not. But I’ve never met someone who is easier to love.

Tomorrow, March 1st, is the Autism Day of Mourning. Sponsored by the Autism Self-Advocacy Network, an organization that champions neurodiversity and the inclusion of autistic voices in all movements, legislation, and discussion related to autism. ASAN puts it best in their presser:

Day of Mourning began as a response to the murder of George Hodgins, a 22-year-old autistic man from California, and to the way people were talking about his death. Far too often, when a disabled person is murdered by a caregiver, journalists write as though it is the disabled victim who has perpetrated a crime simply by existing. In discussing the killing, people say that we should feel sorry for the murderer, because they had to live with a disabled relative. When a disabled person is murdered, many people act as though the murder victim’s life, not their death, was a tragedy.

On March 30^th, 2012, we held vigils in 18 cities to remember those we have lost, and to remind the world that their lives had value.

On March 31^st, 2012, a 4-year-old autistic boy named Daniel Corby was drowned in a bathtub by his mother.

There is so much work to be done to change public perceptions about the worth and the quality of our lives.

So, from now until March 1st at 11:59 PM Pacific time, the money from all PDF sales of my games will be donated to ASAN in solidarity. Not only that, but I will personally match the amount of PDF sales, up to $1,000.

This is an epidemic that can only be cured through social change— through recognizing the worth of the human beings around us. That’s what ASAN’s fighting for, and that’s what I’m fighting for, too.

Everything Is Game Design

Well, not everything. Cheese isn’t game design, for example. But most things are.

Everyone has their own definition of what a game is, so I’ll give mine quickly so we can get on with it: a game is a series of rules that mold behavior. This can be railroady, like Super Mario Bros; it can be more of an enticing suggestion, like the End Dragon in Minecraft. When you choose to engage with rules that dictate how you should interact with the world around you, you’re choosing to play a game.

Good Game Design

The mark of good rules— not subjectively good rules, not fun rules, but rules that work— is that the rules guide the players’ behavior in the way that the designer intends. Think of every game as a treasure hunt. If the clues/arrows/rules do not get the player to the big X, then the clues/arrows/rules suck. There are a ton of individual workflows that can lead to a successful game design, but my process always starts with the same two questions:

• What do I want a session of play to be like for the player?
• How do I get the player to that place?

You can start with the extensive history of the world, or with your cool dice mechanic if it’s tabletop, or with the sweet mood board you spent all day putting together in the extra conference room if you’re making a video game. But if you don’t tie that stuff to the end experience of the player, you’re not going to have good design.

Bad Game Design

So if all of that is true, it stands to reason that bad rules discourage the behavior the designer wants, or encourages behavior that is not related to the designer’s goals. You’d think this wouldn’t happen often, or if it did, that it wouldn’t make its way into our daily lives often, if at all.

You’d be wrong.

Throwing Bad Design After Bad: the problem with “Gamification”

Earlier today, I said this on Twitter: “Gamification” assumes all games share the same mechanics, which means everything that’s gamified is basically the same shitty game. Using badges and leaderboards and offering toothless points for clearly-commercial activities isn’t a magic formula that will engage anyone at any time. Demographics are different, behavior is different— things that will work to motivate users of product X will not work to motivate users of product Y. And no one is motivated by badges.

The core principle to remember is that game design is everywhere. Instead of trying to stick a crappy, half-formed game onto real life, the real challenge— the one that’s tough, the one that will bring the greatest results— is to fix the bad game design that’s all around us. Abstract points won’t motivate employees who aren’t motivated by a paycheck! Finding the reward structures and the rules that are already in place, and figuring out how to make them more effective, is the key to making life better for everyone— not adding an additional layer of uninspiring mechanics that push us to engage with mechanics that already suck.

Bad Design Is Everywhere

I asked my Twitter followers for examples of bad everyday game design, and they did not disappoint: tenure, the DMV, the American healthcare system, and the stock market were just a few of the responses. Finding bad design is easy, once you know the questions to ask yourself:

• What’s supposed to be the goal here?
• Is this experience set up to help or hinder my ability to reach that goal?

I’m thinking about doing a series of blog posts breaking down specific examples of bad design, so feel free to offer suggestions in the comments.

Designed Experiences, Mediums and Genres

My mother is not the first person you would consider going to the Disneyland theme parks with. She’s 66, and she finds even the Dumbo ride to be violently nauseating from the spinning. As a result, when we recently spent two days there with my family, she regarded every ride with suspicion, going on the “experience” rides and avoiding anything twisting, spinning, or flying.

When we made it over to California Adventure, I talked her into going on a ride called Soarin’ Over California. Of course, simply judging by the name, she was dubious. Another flying ride! But I made her go on it anyway.

If you’re not familiar with it: Soarin’ Over California simulates a trip over California in a hangglider. You sit in a big bench seat, strapped in, and get lifted into the air in front of a huge, floor-to-ceiling, 180-degree movie screen. Wind blows in your face. When you fly over the redwoods, you smell pine; when you fly over orange groves you get a faint whiff of oranges. It’s incredibly immersive and maybe the one thing that makes those Parkhopper tickets worth it, at least for one day.*

As we were exiting the ride, I asked my mother what she thought about it. She waved me off. Oh great, I thought. She hated it. I don’t get it! It wasn’t the least bit scary or motion-sickness-inducing! When we got outside the ride, I asked her again, and she took off her sunglasses. There were tears in her eyes.

My mom is 66 years old and spent most of her teen years and adulthood in California. She had memories of every single place we flew over, and the immersive nature of the ride brought them all rushing back. “I just love this state so damn much,” she said to me, voice a bit strangled.

One of the biggest traps we can fall into as designers is to conflate mediums and genres. I never thought a theme park ride could make my mother cry! And, of course, the only reason it hadn’t happened was because no one had tried to do it. This revelation isn’t exactly news in the game design world, thanks to the Wii and the Kinect and the iPad and the Gameboy DS, but it seems like it is a lesson we are resistant to learning. Maybe it’s because people who make games now are people who loved games as they were, and everyone wants to design games that they themselves will love and play.

(Incidentally: THIS is the reason it’s so important to do outreach and inclusiveness to attract women, people of color and others with diverse backgrounds and experiences to design games! Our medium wants to be as loved and respected as cinema, but it will not be until it is embraced by EVERY walk of life the way that cinema has been; and that happened through more and more people wanting to share their unique visions through film.)

Whatever the reason, we limit ourselves when we think that a medium belongs only to a certain demographic: roleplaying games are for dorky guys aged 16-30. Social games are for housewives aged 30-40. Console games are for bros aged 18-24. The Wii is for kids. Has there ever been a video game that made my mother cry? No, but then, I don’t think anyone has designed an experience in a video game expressly to make her cry, either.

This is one of the reasons I’m so psyched to work for Loot Drop. I feel strongly that Ghost Recon Commander is breaking down the idea of “social games” as a genre, and helping them mature into their own as a medium. Of course, you don’t have to take my word for it; Ghost Recon Commander goes live soon. If you like shooters, why don’t you give it a spin and see what the medium can do?

* I feel obligated to note that there was one other thing that made CA Adventure worth it for us: front row seats for the amazing Aladdin stage show and a private meet-and-greet  afterward. But that’s not really an experience open to everyone.

Photos: Síochán Leat

In honor of St. Patrick’s Day, a holiday near and dear to my heart, here are some photos I took of Brenda Brathwaite’s profound and moving game about the Cromwellian invasion of Ireland, Síochán Leat. I wrote a blog post about the game previously, which is handily linked in the title.

Here are the photos. Tom Hall set up all the lighting equipment and backgrounds; I just shamelessly stole his setup.