Make smaller games
When I was a kid working with limited funds, I often stood before a row of arcade cabinets deciding how to spend the quarter in my palm. The decision I made was based largely on the balance of two factors: interestingness and duration. With just a single quarter to spend, selecting a game I knew well (low interestingness) could yield more than 5 minutes of play while a turn on a flashy new game, however compelling, might end after fewer than 30 seconds. In her talk on the opening panel of the Independent Games Summit at GDC 2008 this morning, Kelly from That Game Company expressed frustration with a popular marketing discourse that treats gamers as unintelligent and passive. In particular, she questioned the persistence of duration as an indication of quality.
To illustrate this point, Kelly contrasted the marketing of two Playstation 2 titles: Katamari Damacy with God of War. She highlighted a repeated assumption correlating perceived value and the quantity of pre-planned game content. Reviews of Katamari ($20) celebrated its fun and replay value yet lamented it for being “short” while mentions of God of War ($60) regularly glorify its many hours of gameplay. Pekko from Kadonnut Kaupunki further identified the weakness of this value system by comparing games to literature and remarking on the lasting effect of experiencing creative works in these media. Rarely, he suggested, does the length of a novel correspond to the impact it will have on its reader.
Of course, the comparison to literature can support the opposing view just as well. Players integrate lengthy games into their lives in much the same way that a reader might carry a novel over the course of months. Recent episodic games like Sam & Max further push the literature/games comparison by offering a serialized downloadable experience reminiscent of printed literature such as Great Expectations.
Perhaps the missing piece causing this tension is an analogue to the short story in games. Several presenters in the Casual Games Summit hinted at this need in their calls for greater narrative “depth” in brief-playing casual games. They pointed to Myst-likes such as Azada for examples of games that provide rich storytelling yet demand little time. What might a “hardcore” short game feel like?
I suspect that Portal marks a turning point in the evolution of short gaming. One reason that I found Portal so compelling is precisely because of its duration. I knew that I could reasonably complete it despite a demanding grad student schedule. Likewise, Passage provides a rich, fulfilling gameplay experience in fewer than 5 minutes. The result of these innovative short-games is that the ratio of gametime to lasting effect is far greater than in many mainstream games.
With the advent of accessible digital distribution and high-quality, low-cost game development tools, the community of creative game designers continues to grow. In the coming years, the residual effect of arcade economics will fade as these new designers explore the possibilities in the gaming short-story and one-act play.
Tags
development, future, gaming, gdc, independent, indie, literature, passage, portal
Tags: development, future, gaming, gdc, independent, indie, literature, passage, portal
