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joining us once more this week is
Shannon Meisner lead artist at lo and
behold games who you'll probably be
hearing us mention a lot in the coming
year so long ago when talking about
Western and JRPGs I mentioned this idea
that we're fundamentally looking at our
game genres wrong this topic is a bit
heavy on the game design theory but it's
an important discussion for designers
and possibly useful for players as well
so here it goes
back in the early 2000s there was a
paper on design Theory published by
Robin Hunicke
mark LeBlanc and Roberts Abeka called
the mechanics dynamics aesthetics it's
one of the earliest attempts to
formalize the field of game design
theory and it's fundamental to how we
look at game genres today we're gonna
give a highly interpreted and expanded
view on the ideas contained within the
first section of that paper the portion
on the aesthetics of play James usually
has an hour to give this talk but we'll
see how this goes to start we have to
talk about the way games are categorized
this idea of mechanics dynamics and
aesthetics is a useful framework for
dissecting games so what are these three
mechanics are the rules and systems that
create the play we experience so the
math for how shooting works in an FPS
dynamics are the actual experience
you'll play those mechanics come
together to create that we engage in ie
the running and gunning gameplay in that
fps and the aesthetics are the
underlying emotive reasons we go to that
game for the challenge or the fantasy of
being a marine etc so the mechanics come
together to create the game's dynamics
which all come together to form the
overall aesthetics of play a key insight
in the mechanics dynamics aesthetics
paper is that game designers and players
fundamentally approach games from the
opposite ends of the spectrum players
are gonna most viscerally and directly
experience the chorus thetic s-- the
broad emotive play experience that the
game offers but designers due to the
nature of production have to start with
the mechanics and build their way up
unfortunately this leaves many designers
so focused on the mechanics that they're
not actually thinking about the
aesthetics of play they're trying to
deliver or perhaps worse they mistakenly
think that specific mechanics always
deliver specific aesthetics which is not
the case take the mechanic of levelling
levelling and Mass Effect serves a
completely different aesthetic than
leveling in Call of Duty multiplayer
many a terrible Cologne and knockoff
have been made by designers failing to
realize this fact but ok what does all
this have to do with genres well in
every other medium out there genres are
defined by the underlying emotive reason
that we go to that genre for
comedy-drama action but in games we've
haphazardly defined our genres over the
years so that we now lump everything
that's superficially similar into the
same genre
take the first-person shooter we've
defined an entire genre by the fact that
it has a first-person camera and
involves shooting and that's ridiculous
and what if we defined film genres that
way
wide-angle punching close-up kissing
Steadicam running here's the thing we
already know this first-person shooter
definitions faulty because we're
breaking it all the time we may not be
able to explain exactly why but we all
know that portal and fallout 3 don't
really fit in the first-person shooter
category I mean they're both in the
first-person they both involve shooting
they fit the rigid criteria and yet we
can all tell that they're fundamentally
different why because they fulfill
different fundamental needs they may
share mechanics with other first-person
shooting games but they have completely
different aesthetics so what are these
aesthetics specifically well
surprisingly they're a very finite set
of underlying reasons that we enjoy
games in the mechanics dynamics
aesthetics paper they define eight core
aesthetics that draw us to play in
James's entire time designing he's only
added a few of his own to this list most
of which will say for another time and
he's found that the appeal of almost
every single game can be defined by two
three maybe four of these aesthetics now
there are a handful of exceptions out
there that may deliver on even more
games that are so expansive that they're
practically multiple games all bundled
into one single executable for example
minecraft delivers quite well on more
than four aesthetics which is one of the
reasons it's been such a huge success
but there's a lot of different games
wrapped up in that package the people
playing on giant cooperative monument
building servers are practically playing
a completely different game from the
folks playing in survival mode oh and
one more thing before we start defining
the aesthetics themselves when we talk
about the aesthetics of play we're
talking about the core as the X of the
game the fundamental reasons you play it
because you'll find that most games
contain elements of all of these
aesthetics but that doesn't really tell
us much the useful information comes
from talking about the core aesthetics
which the game tries to deliver because
sure even Mario games have a narrative
but most of us aren't playing those for
the deep interpersonal drama between
Mario Peach and Bowser so that's not a
core as thetic alright so here's the
list the first is sense pleasure sense
pleasure is perhaps the simplest
aesthetic to define it's any game that
you go to for how it stimulates your
senses sight sound touch taste smell so
if it's a game that you play for the
visuals or one that you go back to time
and time again just for the music that's
a game with sense pleasure as a core
aesthetic games like rez child of Eden
DDR or even tag at recess
or boxing all deliver on sense pleasure
as a core aesthetic the second is
fantasy fantasy is the ability to step
into a role that you're not able to
participate in in real life they boil
that experience down to its essence and
deliver it to you in a steady drip games
like Call of Duty NFL Blitz Cabela's
hunting games EVE Online rock band these
all use fantasy as a core aesthetic the
third is narrative narrative is game as
drama it's about the stories and human
drama you witness rather than the
fantasy you live through games like
Final Fantasy The Sims Mass Effect
Journey Planescape torment these all
deliver on narrative as a core aesthetic
the fourth is challenge challenge is one
of the hardest for young designers to
grasp it's defined as game as obstacle
course it's about the engagement you
find in overcoming arbitrary obstacles
you find this aesthetic at the core of
any Mario game charades call of duty
Ikaruga often I see young designers
mistakenly defined this as difficulty
now difficulty is a dynamic that might
help deliver this but it is absolutely
not the same thing as challenge for
example Kirby's Epic Yarn uses challenge
as a core aesthetic but you can't
actually lose Kirby's Epic Yarn
nonetheless the joy in that game is an
overcoming arbitrary obstacles we could
do a whole episode on the difference
between difficulty and challenge but no
time moving on the fifth one is
fellowship fellowship is found in any
activity where we work cooperatively as
a group to achieve a goal it's that
innate desire we have as social animals
to work as a pack games that help
establish that feeling of camaraderie
our games that use fellowship as a core
aesthetic so games like World of
Warcraft or Team Fortress Borderlands
journey even I love bees are all games
that use fellowship as a core aesthetic
the sixth is competition I'm sort of
unofficially adding this one to the list
in the mechanics dynamics aesthetics
paper they mentioned competition but
don't formally define it as an aesthetic
I see it as games as expression of
dominance there's something in us very
evolutionary and innate that wants to
express our dominance over other members
of our species competition games let us
demonstrate our superiority over others
in some way games like Team Fortress
League of Legends Starcraft call of duty
and Magic the Gathering are all examples
of this weirdly enough you'll often find
it in social games as well the ones that
push keeping up with the Joneses as a
major element the seventh is discovery
discovery is the act of uncovering the
new it can be anything from discovering
new territory in Skyrim or World of
Warcraft to discovering new recipes in
Minecraft
or new cards and magic it can even be
learning new things about a system such
as discovering new emergent interactions
in Dwarf Fortress anytime you go to a
game to find out what there is left to
find you're going there for discovery
the eighth is expression as human beings
we have an innate need to express
ourselves you can see it in everything
from the clothes we wear to the very
fact that we choose to create art games
can be a powerful vehicle for this
expression anytime you go to a game
because it lets you express some aspect
of yourself from World of Warcraft
classes and gear to Scribblenauts
creative solutions you're fulfilling
that need minecraft Deus Ex The
Incredible Machine City of Heroes these
are all games that use expression as a
core aesthetic and finally the ninth one
abnegation abnegation is game as pastime
in the paper they title this category
submission but I don't think that
properly expresses the underlying desire
here if you've ever gone home after a
long day and just turned on a rerun of a
comfortable show because you wanted to
tune out because you wanted to do
something that let you disengage
that's abnegation in games you find it
in grinding you find it in any Skinner
box game you find it anywhere that you
can just zone out games like Farmville
lineage endless mode and bejeweled these
years out and again as a Korres thetic
okay so now that we've covered all of
that what makes this information
beneficial and what does it have to do
with genres well if you start to really
think carefully about game genres and
try to dissect them I think you'll find
that there are a few core aesthetics
that almost every game within any given
currently accepted genre will have in
common that is how we actually know Jean
rus' and that's how we instinctively
know that certain games don't fit in
with the rest it's what we're feeling
when we say that portal is more of a
puzzle game than a shooter really it's
how we instinctively know to call Mass
Effect an RPG
despite its third-person shooting it's
the subconscious guide that actually
separates how we think about genre and
games so I say it's time we start
talking about them consciously in this
manner and looking to the aesthetics to
define our genres because let me tell
you when designers start to think of
mechanics as defining a genre all sorts
of bad game design happens knowing and
delivering on their core aesthetic is
what separates great games in the genre
from those terrible clones and knockoffs
that just fall flat but even more than
that this will also help us as consumers
to voice our opinions more specifically
to more clearly convey what we want from
our games which will allow the industry
as a whole to break the cycle of turning
out mechanically similar clones because
once you start thinking of a genre in
terms of core aesthetics rather than
just the mechanics underneath you can
find whole new methods of play
to deliver on the core aesthetics of any
genre the hope that was interesting I'll
see you next time
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