Brian Crecente received a response from Microsoft saying that, “A conflict mineral free supply chain is a priority for us in our supply chain management policies and practices.”

Nintendo responded to earlier pressure from another group, Raise Hope for Congo, and completely dodged the issue saying, “Nintendo does not purchase any metals as raw materials. As a remote purchaser that buys finished components made from many materials, Nintendo requires its suppliers to comply with its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Procurement Guidelines, which stipulate suppliers comply with applicable laws, have respect for human rights and conduct their business in an appropriate and fair manner.”

The problem is that while these statements sound mostly nice and hopeful, they are bullshit. Why? Because the problem is not a conflict over the minerals but a conflict between the laws that set forth the financial responsibilities of corporations and their social responsibilities towards people and the earth.

In the US, by law it is illegal for corporations to do anything that would hurt their ability to maximize profits. Shareholders can sue the company if they think the company is spending too much money on being socially responsible and thus cutting into profits. Corporations often have “social campaigns” to green their products or give funds to cancer, etc. But that is just a distraction to the real atrocities they commit by employing slave labor or funding wars.

Their goal is to extract human and earth resources for as cheap as possible and they are required by law to do so. You can read or see The Corporation for more info. If you don’t have time to watch the 2.5hr film, watch the extra features radio interview with the Majority Report. That segment does a great job of summarizing how the market forces work to compel corporations to act in ways that abuse both people and planet.

If we want to stop corporations from using minerals extracted from conflict zones which funds the perpetuation of violence and killings, then those laws that compel them to behave in such ways must be changed.

That’s how the system works and if being a game designer has taught me anything it’s that any system can be changed.

© 2010, Reid Bryant Kimball. All rights reserved.

I’ve played some of the games on AddictingGames.com and it’s a mixed bag of trash and gold. They don’t seem to discriminate which kinds of games are accessible through their website.

This is a problem, because Nickelodean is a company devoted to entertaining children, and yet AddictingGames.com is in the business of entertaining anyone. By having Nickelodean link to AddictingGames.com, there is no way to ensure that children do not play violent or sexualized and otherwise inappropriate games. There is no way currently to filter out the adult games if the visitor came from a children focused website.

Steve Youngwood, Executive Vice President, Digital, Nickelodeon Kids and Family Group is being targeted (rightfully so) by the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood to remove AddictingGames.com from their links page of games for children.

The only issue I had with this, was the original letter they wrote for people to sign and send to Mr. Youngwood, which I have copied below.

OLD

Dear Mr. Youngwood,

I am writing to express my outrage that Nickelodeon links to AddictingGames.com on Neopets.com, Nick.com and NickJr.com.  AddictingGames.com features violent and sexualized content that is completely inappropriate for children.  I am shocked that Nickelodeon would direct kids to a website where they can play games like Bloody Day, which boasts “back alley butchering has never been so fun,” or play the role of a leering peeping Tom in Perry the Sneak.  Linking to games like these from websites for young children is one reason parents have selected AddictingGames.com as the worst toy of the year.

I urge you to immediately remove any and all links to AddictingGames.com from Nick.com, NickJr.com, and any other Nickelodeon websites for children.

End of letter.

The problem I have with it is that it sort of distorts the truth. It implies that AddictingGames.com only has violent and sexualized games, but in fact, it has a wide variety, some of which are fine for children, such as Bloons.

I reworded the letter to say the following, which I think conveys more truth and offers a solution for all parties involved.

NEW

Dear Mr. Youngwood,

I am writing to express my outrage that Nickelodeon links to AddictingGames.com on Neopets.com, Nick.com and NickJr.com.  (note: I forgot to edit the “outrage”, because that is too strong a word to represent my view.)

AddictingGames.com features many games, some are fine for children, while others have violent and sexualized content that is completely inappropriate for children.  I am surprised that Nickelodeon would direct kids to a website where they can play games like Bloody Day, which boasts “back alley butchering has never been so fun,” or play the role of a leering peeping Tom in Naughty Park.  For this reason parents have selected AddictingGames.com as the worst toy of the year.

I urge you to immediately remove any and all links to AddictingGames.com from Nick.com, NickJr.com, and any other Nickelodeon websites for children. Something should be done to ensure that future links from Nickelodean websites only go to gaming websites that have child safe content. Or websites that have a wide range of content only display age appropriate content if the visitor arrives from a Nickelodean website.

Sincerely,

-Reid Kimball

I kind of rushed in that solution towards the end there, but the idea is that if someone is on a Nickelodean website and they click on a link to go to any outside gaming website, like AddictingGames.com, they are directed to a special section of the website that only features games for children.

I realize that there are ways to get around that, any kid could re-type the URL to get full access to AddictingGames.com. Another idea is that parents of children could register a “parental” account that will email them a list of games that are being played, at what times and for how long. This way, they might be able to discover that at 3:30pm, just after school, but while they were at work, their child went to AddictingGames.com and played an inappropriate game.

What do you think? Something ought to be done I think, because there is no ESRB for online games and in years to come, more and more games will be accessible online.

© 2010, Reid Bryant Kimball. All rights reserved.

Subtitling

Being hard of hearing, subtitles and preferably full closed captioning are very important to me. Right off the bat I knew something wasn’t right when the opening cinematic is not even subtitled, despite my having turned on the subtitle option from the main menu. Unfortunately, this is kind of common in video games, but it’s even more disappointing and surprising this time because Ubisoft has publicly pledged to subtitle ALL their games in house. This initiative was announced well before Assassin’s Creed 2 was released.

Consider me unimpressed and very disappointed. My trust in Ubisoft making their games for the hard of hearing and deaf is non-existent right now. Only way I will play another of their games is if someone else, preferably the fine folks at DeafGamers.com can confirm an Ubisoft is properly subtitled.

The other faults of the game are numerous.

Who, Where, Why, When and What the Fuck is Going On Here?

Having not played the first Assassin’s Creed, I was thoroughly confused with the beginning and was not a fan of that feeling. I could not connect with the main character, Desmond, who was also confused, but had more knowledge about the world and events than I did. Let Heavy Rain be a great recent example of situating the player in the world and introducing who all the characters are without putting the player under duress.

Quality

The production quality in the graphics, animation and art style was really lacking and at times jarringly poor. The way Desmond would turn his upper body stiffly, waist to head along with arms, to face the woman snapped me right out of the game. The home base where I jacked into the chair was really uninspired. Looked like some hipster’s NY loft rather than an underground operation doing… whatever it was they were doing. What was it?

UI Made Me Ask Questions More Than Answer Them

I spent the first mission mashing buttons without ever really feeling like I knew what I was doing and why. First, the game asks if I want to accept the missions, but, I can only choose to accept them. Why even bother asking me? It tried to explain certain combat moves to me, but 1) the text was extremely small on my standard def TV. BTW: Why the fuck won’t game developers make UI and text look proper on SD TVs? It really fucking pisses me off. The subtitle text is also ridiculously small. At least it had a tinted black background. 2) there were so many enemies on screen that when I tried to look at the UI to learn how to different moves, an AI enemy would attack me and I have to go back to attacking.

Combat

While attacking, I got absolutely no kinetic feeling of intensity or flow. It was lackluster. Transitioning from enemy to enemy to chain attacks was slow and clunky looking. The same animation would repeat over and over. I would punch someone in front of me, and see someone behind me was attacking and would attempt to turn to punch them, but the response was sluggish. I was often hit in the back of the head before my character would turn. Not fun.

First Free Running Race Mission

I don’t think I need to talk about this. It is universally reviled as a horrible mission for very good reason. Right after that I had to climb another building. One side of it is unclimbable so I would push my stick to the left to climb to the other side, but every time I did that my character would jump for unknown reasons and fall to its death.

Fight the Good Fight

A friend on twitter replied to my comments on the game, “Aaah! Don’t give up! One of the best game’s of the year.” Unfortunately, the first 45 minutes tell me it’s definitely not worth my time and there’s absolutely no reason why I should continue to give it a shot. That’s what the first 45 minutes are for.

I know the guys and gals that work on the game put a lot of effort into it, but this reeks of rushed development under very tight deadlines with a lot of overtime without proper rest. It screams of, “Fuck it, just ship it.” All of these problems are things developers can see early on in development and they need to fight for them to get fixed.

© 2010, Reid Bryant Kimball. All rights reserved.

However, because of competition, the weak global economy and not knowing the law, employers may be illegally using internships to not pay for work that is benefiting the company. The New York Times(1) reported on April 2nd, 2010 that this trend has been accelerating in recent years and that there is a crackdown, particularly in California and Oregon to put a stop to this.

In November, 2009 The Employment Tribunals in the UK ruled that an intern, Nicola Vette was due back-pay for her work on a film with London Dreams Motion Pictures Ltd(2). The ruling sets a precedent that “workers engaged on an expenses-only basis are entitled to payment at least in line with the national minimum wage, in addition to payment for the holiday they accrue.”

Dana John, a senior at N.Y.U., had this to say about her unpaid internship, “If you want to be in the music industry that’s the way it works. If you want to get your foot in the door somehow, this is the easiest way to do it. You suck it up.”

That sounds exactly like the kind of thing people say about the video games industry. That you do whatever you can get in. I hear the phrase “suck it up” often during discussions about the games industry’s frequent exploitative unpaid overtime.

An important point from the New York Times article is that even if the company offers college credit, it doesn’t free companies from paying for the intern’s work, especially when it benefits the company.

Unfortunately, with how competitive the video games industry is, I believe this illegal practice of unpaid internships may be common, especially in the smaller, lesser known development studios. I’ve already contacted one developer in the US to let them know their unpaid internship may be illegal. A quick search of internships from Activision, EA and Ubisoft found that on some Activision internships, particularly at Raven were listed as being paid. Some others had no mention either way. At EA, it appears all internships are paid. Information on pay for Ubisoft internships could not be found.

Even though you may be willing sacrifice a lot in order to get a job in the games industry, you need to stick up for your rights and make it clear that if your work is going to benefit the company in anyway, you have a right to be paid fairly.

Sources:

(1)http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/03/business/03intern.html?hp
(2)http://www.bectu.org.uk/news/548
(3)http://wdr.doleta.gov/directives/attach/TEGL/TEGL12-09acc.pdf (Page 8 is especially relevant)

Also posted at my Gamasutra blog…

© 2010, Reid Bryant Kimball. All rights reserved.

His main premise is that games of the future will continue the trend of all media becoming more relevant to or at least connected with reality. Current examples of this trend he cited are the virtual plant that grows in the Honda Insight (though he incorrectly said it was the Toyota Prius) when drivers are more fuel efficient. It’s a game to encourage better driving behavior. Facebook games frequently encourage players to connect with their friends, to share virtual items or challenge them. XBox has its public achievement system that can pressure someone to play more to get more points so they can brag to their friends in the real world, about something that doesn’t exist if there’s no electricity.

Schell says this trend started because people care about reconnecting with what is real. That in the past twenty to thirty years, technology has enabled us to gorge on fantasy and escapism and now we are finally awakening from our post-gorge-fest to realize it was a sham. A farce. Empty calories that aren’t delivering what is real and true to the experience of being human.

We now want real experiences, we want real change and to reconnect with nature. Partly why Avatar was so successful was because it reawakened a deeply muted and numbed core of the human experience, which is to be in tune with nature, life and your own body. Many are sick today because they aren’t awake; they don’t know what “real” feels like.

So that’s the now, which I’ve sort of emphasized a bit more than Jesse Schell did and put my own interpretation on what I’m seeing. What about the future? What did Jesse Schell have to say about where games will go?

I think this was the best part of his presentation because it aroused strong feelings of disgust within and will leave me thinking for days, if not weeks, until I can figure out how to deal with it, because I see what he predicts as a very real possibility. In summary, what he predicts is massively multiplayer advertising games through sharing of dynamic electronic tattoos that display brand advertisements, cereal boxes with leaderboards among friends ranking who has eaten the most and Amazon reviews that give bonus points if the Kindle detected your eyes read every single word. Massive, pervasive awareness of what you see, what you eat, what you drive, how you do it, why you do it, where and when.

It’s not a future I want to see. I don’t like advertising, I think it pollutes the mind. “You are ugly. You are fat. You are hungry. You are friendless, hairless and depressed. What you need, we have. What you want, we sell. To be better, buy now.” Now couple that with achievement systems for being a “better” consumer and we have an already ill western society built up on consumerism now on a fast track to even greater self-destruction.

I went to a town hall recently and several members of the city government gave presentations, including the mayor and commissioner, as well as citizens. The topic was on peak oil, climate change and what it can do to our local food supply, the citizens and the planet as a whole. One point that really struck me was that for generations we’ve been brought up to be consumers. We consume food, clothing, information, services, products, art and raw materials of the earth. If we are to not only survive, but thrive in the coming generations, we need to adapt our way of living away from consumers to instead being contributors. We’ll need to become contributors of local community services (carpool organizer), food (grow your own), clothing (sew your own), healthcare (be your own doctor) and information (teach others what you know).

The question for us game designers as we move ahead to creating more reality infused game experiences is, are we going to create games that are leaderboards for how many calories players have consumed for McDonalds? Or are we going to create games that help people positively, to be more connected with nature, genuine and compassionate towards all life? Are we going to be creating generations of consumers, or generations of contributors? Which way will you contribute to the future of society?

Also posted on my Gamasutra blog.

© 2010, Reid Bryant Kimball. All rights reserved.

No, my problem is mainly with the fact that by and large the videogames industry prides itself on making the most addictive games possible. It’s become a selling point to claim just how addictive the game is. Or to a lesser degree, a developer will claim that someone can put in many hours because of its replayability just for the sake of replay rather than to learn something new.

I can’t think of any other media; theater, painting, music, film, novels or other, where the industry works extremely hard to create addictive works and then further encourages that practice by trying to create monetization schemes that benefit the most from addicted players.

I don’t like it. Not at all. I have a very different philosophical approach to game design. I want to create games that people only need to play once. They are certainly free to play more than that, but it’s not necessary because they get a satisfying experience the first time through.

As a social progressive game designer, I see so many people who are unknowingly victims, locked inside a vicious cycle, unable to escape because they don’t know any better. Games have the power to help free people from being victims in their daily lives. Whether it’s being a victim of prejudice, bullying, sexual harassment, social status, economic systems, disability, disease, or even their own mind, many people are trapped in a vicious cycle of victimization and can’t find ways to break away.

A game can do that though. It’s an idea that has yet to gain mainstream acceptance. Critics of the idea, without being able to see my vision with their own eyes, may call this a boring serious game, or a not so fun self-help game. It’s more than that. It’s an inspirational experience that one can relate to and gain valuable wisdom and knowledge to apply to their own lives. It’s the Erin Brockovich of videogames.

Erin Brockovich is a woman who fought against PG&E in court for polluting the drinking water of Hinkley, CA. The citizens had an abnormally high rate of cancer and sickness. Through her hard work and determination, she taught herself law to take on the powerful utility company, PG&E. The sick citizens whom she fought for were compensated $333 million after winning the suit. While money will never help them regain the health and lives lost, what she did was prove that one person can make a difference for a community by fighting for their ideals and justice.

Erin Brockovich’s story inspired millions and became a very successful film, nominated for several academy awards. Her story is one that can inspire someone to act in similar ways to fight against an injustice. It’s a story, no scratch that, it’s an experience that can be replicated in a game and give people not only the motivation but the real life tools and skills to apply in their daily lives.

In the United States, I look around and I see people who are victims of 24 hour news channels that lack news, victims of a food industry that lacks sustenance and victims of a health care industry that does not care.

It’s all shit and it’s all wrong. Everyone knows it, but few act. If only they knew their power. The games industry thrives on power fantasies, but not the kinds that can change a person’s life. Instead, it creates addictive escapist fantasies and many developers pride themselves in that. They pat each other on the back and tell one another they earned their pay by making people happy, by putting smiles on their faces. By helping them escape all shit that’s killing them.

No, they’re not doing that. Not at all. They’re only delaying the routine of victimization, if only for a few hours. But when players turn off the game and get back to their daily lives, the problems are still there. The media still controls what they think. The food still clogs their arteries and the drugs still create more problems than they solve, forcing them to take more drugs. The vicious cycle continues.

They don’t have to be victims though. My own battle with Crohn’s disease is proof of that. I was once a victim, of my own vanity. Of my own low self-esteem. My acne. I took all kinds of acne medications, one after another. From low grade to the motha-fuckin’ A-Bomb itself, Accutane. It destroyed my immune system. Years later, I was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease, an inflammatory bowel disease. Symptoms for people with Crohn’s can range from blood in the stool, fistulas, bowel obstructions and uncontrollable diarrhea.

It’s a shitty way to live… I can joke about it because my Crohn’s is now in remission. I learned how to break free from the vicious cycle by not listening to my pharmaceutical brainwashed doctors. Instead, I listened to my gut and changed my lifestyle and diet. It took a lot of hard work and dedication, but my story proves the benefits one can wield by refusing to be a victim.

I don’t think of Crohn’s as a curse. It’s a gift. I now eat healthier than ever before and love to cook. I don’t take life for granted. My experience proves people don’t have to be victims, not of their relationships, society, technology, corporations, government or of themselves.

However, people aren’t going to get there without a little help. A game can be the hammer that smashes the chains and breaks them free. But the kinds of games the industry strives to make aren’t going to help anyone get there any sooner. To help people realize their full potential and help improve the world, we can start by breaking the vicious cycle on addictive multi-play games. In this complex and increasingly dishonest world we live in, it’s time the videogame industry stepped up to the responsibility it has when wielding such a powerful yet largely untapped medium.

© 2009, Reid Bryant Kimball. All rights reserved.

These common production mistakes can be costly because they hurt production efficiencies, create low morale, guarantee the game will slip behind schedule and ultimately lower the shipping quality of the game. Here are the some costly production decisions that need to be avoided to ensure the highest quality game possible.

One Team for Both Single and Multiplayer
If a game has both single and multiplayer components, sometimes the developer/publisher will try to share resources between the two components, such as code, assets and personnel.

This often leads to compromises between the two teams and gameplay modes that prevent either mode from reaching their true potential. It’s done to save development costs, mostly by keeping the multiplayer team small since it’s expected they can use singleplayer assets easily. It’s never that simple if you want to make a top quality game with both singleplayer and multiplayer modes.

Clint Hocking wrote in Game Developer’s March 2009 issue a post-mortem on Far Cry 2. In the What Went Wrong section, under “Managing Single-player and Multiplayer Teams”, Clint specifically points out, “…the realities of a multiplayer versus single-player game are very different, and this creative vision in itself may have been fundamentally flawed.”

Only later did they decide to split the multiplayer team off to be managed separately. From the article, it sounds like they weren’t properly staffed to handle this new structure of being separate from single-player. He further states, “This led to conflict, inevitable compromises, and ultimately cascading failure of the entire multiplayer design.” Later, they had to bring in a consultant to get the game back on track.

In my own previous experience, the multiplayer team was only six people, three designers and three engineers. The amount of work we had to do was overwhelming, in addition to working with a new engine and tools being built from scratch. It was expected that we would share gameplay code and art assets with little need for heavy modifications.

The singleplayer level designs were not built to suit our style of multiplayer. Repeated attempts to discuss this with the singleplayer designers resulted in no change in design of the levels. The level artists were stretched between providing art for both modes, though most of their time was dedicated to providing art for the singleplayer levels. This required the multiplayer team to base our designs around what was planned for singleplayer, however unsuitable they were.

For a quality multiplayer experience, we needed the addition of a blocking ability to introduce more skill and dynamic gameplay, otherwise whoever attacked first won due to the auto-targeting system. Because a change in multiplayer meant a change in singleplayer, the singleplayer system designers balked at the idea of a block ability. We felt so strongly about it that we fought for the addition for months.

Only after repeated playtests where players commented that both single and multiplayer would benefit from a block ability did the system designers approve it. In the end though, because our team had so few resources we were forced to cut over two years of our work from the game and move to helping singleplayer ship on time.

Singleplayer and multiplayer are vastly different games each with their own engineering and content requirements. It doesn’t make sense for one team to build an RTS and an RPG game at the same time, sharing the same resources, does it? If you’re going to do it right, do it separately.

Not Enough Time for Gameplay Pre-production
It’s absurd how often pre-production is given an arbitrary amount of time for exploring gameplay mechanics. A game will have a list of gameplay features and the team is given maybe six months to prototype them. Most teams probably need at least a year to prototype all the gameplay features planned.

But most production pipelines don’t allow proper pre-production time and when the date for entering production arrives, the managers expects everyone to be ready, assuming all the answers needed for a smooth and efficient production have been discovered.

Smooth and efficient production rarely happens because the game mechanics are not fully explored. During production, gameplay metrics such as jump heights are tweaked constantly. A programmer creates a bug that inadvertently creates a cool gameplay experience that according to the project lead now needs to be incorporated into every level.

These constant changes force level designers to play catch-up, modifying their collision geometry, which causes level artists to join in this ever-expanding game of catch-up. It’s so fun that the schedule often slips and the whole team is asked to join in by putting in lots of overtime. The deadlines don’t change, increasing stress on everyone to work faster or longer hours. Usually both.

Ideally pre-production is done independent of a games’ production schedule. Gameplay designers need to have the freedom to explore all kinds of ideas. The smallest change in the mechanics can have a huge cascading impact on the whole game. Once all the mechanics are set in stone, then production can begin and roll much more efficiently.

Developing Game and Tech Simultaneously
This is one of the worst offenders and it happens all the damn time. You are guaranteed a world of pain if you develop technology and the game at the same time. It’s a mind bogglingly stupid thing to do.

Here’s an apt analogy. Imagine you are the racecar driver and you and your team of mechanics must finish the race under a specified time to win. Now imagine that 5 minutes before race time you find out that you don’t even have a car to drive. It has to be built first.

All mechanics and engineers scramble to put together the bare necessities of a car to get you started. The owners and advertisers are made aware of the situation and they explain they can’t do anything to help. The required finish time will not change! You, in your mangled mess of a car, if it can even be called a car, can’t go top speed because doing so causes the airbags to inflate.

Instead, you drive as fast as possible, but no faster.

In the middle of the race the car breaks down and the mechanics have stop what they were doing to trod into the racetrack, pick up the car and carry you for the remainder of the laps. But then some clever engineer comes up with a miracle plan to build jet packs for the mechanics carrying your car so they can move faster! Heroically, the whole team pitches in and finishes the race on time.

Even though the team finished, money was lost, tempers flared and reputations burned.

To explain the above analogy, in game development production slows to a crawl because content creators are waiting for the game engine and development tools. The tech developers do an admirable, though naturally rushed job and release buggy tools.

This only adds to the already frustrated and stressed content creators. Producers put even more pressure on tech/tool developers to work faster and better because now the game is a month behind schedule.

Then features get cut or at least their scopes are drastically reduced. Open world? How about open city block? Morale is the hardest hit at this stage as developer’s dreams of making a great game are crushed because their favorite features are slaughtered by incompetence and a clusterfuck of circumstances. Such is the way of life for a game developer.

But it shouldn’t be. There are plenty of engines built for a variety of genres that can be licensed. If a brand-new engine needs to be developed, do it separately from trying to produce the actual game. During the pre-production phase might be the best time to build an engine so that it can be tailored for the game’s specific needs.

Hiring a Writer too Late
Story is becoming more and more important to the success of a game. A screen of text at the beginning and end of a game don’t measure up to the players’ expectations anymore.

Unfortunately, the people that know story best are often brought in much to late in the production cycle to shape the game into one that fuses the gameplay and narrative into a cohesive whole.

A game design director who came up with the game concept may flesh out some characters, mechanics, worlds, a basic plot and then design levels and art assets to flesh out their vision. When the writer joins, they are walking into a production that already has an existing world full of characters and locations and are told to improve on them.

There’s something deeply spiritual and personal about writing. It’s next to impossible to create cohesion on a game concept thought up by a game designer and then written by someone else. The writer may have a certain tone and themes they want to express through the gameplay, characters and art of the world, but because someone else designed those aspects, the expression may feel incompatible.

Additionally, the game may not have room for the writer to express the themes they want the player to explore. As the previous production decisions noted earlier are made, such as not enough pre-production time for gameplay maturation or simultaneous development of game and tech, level content gets cut and story elements bleed with it. No one likes blood, so band-aids (because it’s quick) are used instead of actual stitches. It’s messy and games ship with a scarred ludonarrative experience.

Hiring a writer earlier will make for a better game. In the near future we’ll see game designer/writer teams working together to create new games even before pre-production begins. The two will go on to create wonderful works of art because they treat each other with mutual respect. They understand that gameplay is story and story is gameplay. They are the Yin and the Yang, fighting against one another, feeding off one another, transforming each other to higher and higher levels of artistry. Their efforts emerge as a cohesive entity, one that stands alone with a reverberating soul that touches the lives of millions.

Conclusion
In the end, each of these production disasters harms the final quality of a game. With games costing millions to produce and the many millions of lives that invest dozens of hours into the fruits of our blood, sweat and tears, don’t we owe it to ourselves to eliminate these inexcusable production decisions? Don’t owe it to the very people we want to challenge and inspire, our players?

The industry is still struggling to enter a new age where games are respected by the public and mass media as an art form, capable of changing people’s lives for the better. But we can’t do that just yet. Not when boneheaded production decisions stand in our way time and time again, preventing our games from reaching their full potential.

Also posted at my Gamasutra blog.

© 2009, Reid Bryant Kimball. All rights reserved.

However, the word fun has a very specific meaning that can’t possibly include art games. If it doesn’t include art games, then we ought to use another word besides fun when describing the goal of a game.

First, lets go over some quick definitions.

Fun –noun

“A source of enjoyment, amusement, or pleasure.”

If we take the root of enjoyment, we get enjoy.

Enjoy -verb

“To experience with joy; take pleasure in.”

If we’re going to be strict with definitions, it will be a tough sell to say an art game, like Passage is fun, that is, it provides us with a joyful experience that we take pleasure in. Instead, I found it to be cathartic (the purging of the emotions or relieving of emotional tensions, esp. through certain kinds of art, as tragedy or music.) and profoundly introspective experience.

In the past I’ve had difficulty justifying art games because it has been drilled into my head by reviewers, educators and colleagues that the only purpose of a game is to be fun. If that is true, more artful games that deal with rather painful adult themes cannot exist in this industry.

Yet, I believe games that deal with more adult themes, even painful ones can and should exist. But first we have to agree that fun is not the root purpose of games, but instead a distinct flavor of a type of quality that all games share; which is the quality of being compelling, engaging or engrossing (all used interchangeably).

Compelling –adjective

“Having a powerful and irresistible effect; requiring acute admiration, attention, or respect: a man of compelling integrity; a compelling drama”

Or… a compelling game.

Engaging/Engrossing –adjective

“Fully occupying the mind or attention; absorbing: I’m reading the most engrossing book.”

Or… I’m playing the most engrossing game.

Take note of the words, “Fully occupying the mind or attention.” What else does that remind you of? Flow, perhaps? Nearly all games have their foundation derived from the concept of flow. We achieve a state of flow when we set our own internal goals, receive feedback on how we are doing and achieve personal growth through the pursuit of those goals. Upon completion, we move on to more difficult goals and thus repeat the cycle, maintaining flow.

If we agree that all games have this concept of flow, and when implemented skillfully can induce the state of being engrossed within the experience or compelled to experience it, then we can also agree that both fun and serious adult themed games can coexist. Fun is one type of experience that can engross a player, while catharsis is another type of experience that can engross a player.

The next time you think to say that all games must be fun or hear someone else make that claim, try stating instead that games must be compelling or engaging. By saying that, you include all games that can be fun or cathartic. Eventually, this will broaden our acceptance of  which types of games can be created. We’ll get to a point where a designer can make a game about less pleasant aspects of the human condition without others dismissing it as a game because it’s not “fun”. The key question will not be, “Is it fun?” but “Is it engaging?”

© 2009, Reid Bryant Kimball. All rights reserved.

Rod’s argument is a terribly irresponsible one to make. His comments are sure to have an influence on execs and producers elsewhere in the industry given the success of Epic’s games.

Crunch is not a good thing and should never be “necessary”. Ambition on paper sounds like a great idea, but based on my own experience, ambition is never driven by the whole team.

Instead, certain individuals within a team drive it and more often than not, they don’t have to do the work to realize their own ambitions. The workload that comes from their ambitions is pushed onto someone who doesn’t feel comfortable expressing their concerns.

In fact, I’d argue that I see ambition hurt more than help. Games today are full of too many incongruous and poorly implemented ideas or mechanics that have overstayed their welcome.

We’ve all seen games advertise how many weapons, characters, locations, cinematics and endings they have, emphasizing it is bigger and more than their competitors, hoping to convince players that more means better.

Every game I’ve worked on has started out with ambitious goals, which were cut back repeatedly, while working hours increased. Cutting content doesn’t get as much benefit as it sounds like it should. In some areas of the game, more work may be created because content was cut from another area.

Instead of cutting content when crunch begins to creep around, why not just have more realistic goals for the game to begin with? Embrace the idea that your game can be even better by adopting a “less is more” approach. Ask, “Do we really need all this content? Can the story work with fewer this or that? Do players need all these choices? Does this mechanic serve to communicate the emotional essence of the game I want expressed?”

With an approach of “less is more”, everything in the game must serve a holistic purpose, not because it’s “badass” but because it serves the true essence of the game, whatever it may be. When you do less, the game will have focus, it will be tighter and stand out because it has a strong identity, rather than a bland personality that tries to be everything to everyone.

To that I say, down with ambition! Less is more.

© 2009, Reid Bryant Kimball. All rights reserved.

Bill Clinton said it wasn’t Parkinsons, but that when he writes for a long time or plays videogames the tendons can act up or something. He even motioned with his hands out front, holding an imaginary controller, pushing buttons. From the shape of his hands, I think he’s an XBox 360 or PS3 fan.

© 2009, Reid Bryant Kimball. All rights reserved.