Dopass.com

Are games like movies? Or are games like books? Are games little things that you don't want to invest much into in order to enjoy, or is gaming a demanding medium that requires effort on the part of its audience to get the full effect?

The answer to all the questions is the same, isn't it? The answer is "it depends" and that's the problem...

Gaming isn't any one thing, but both the gamers and the developers have deeply passionate opinions related to all of those questions. In my experience, the division between types of gamers and developers based around these questions is as deep and full of emotion as any sectarian or political dispute.

For some, games are simple things - toys meant for children or small diversions meant to occupy time in a pleasant way, and nothing more. For others, games are a new medium - a new way to experience things as deep and complex as anything found in movies, plays or books.

To me, this is the strength of modern gaming - a sign that the scene is as diverse and broad as it can be. So, why do I call it a "problem?" Well, it has to do with the way people polarize when they have strong opinions.

Pick any hot button issue - Iraq, abortion, President Bush, Global warming... anything - and you will find two camps bitterly fighting each other over the issue. Dem and Reps battle over whether we should stay in Iraq, Pro-choice and anti-abortion activists fight over that issue, etc. In a way, this works for these issues - the two camps don't mix and it allows all sides of the issue to be explored, publicly... But for other issues - say the presence of Israel in the Middle East - the problem is worsened by this polarization because the two camps mix and mingle every day.

The militant Islamics battle the militant Zionists in the streets and the people suffer - be it from suicide bombs or missile strikes... Gaming, sadly, is more like this and here's why:

Teams and studios are made up of people who believe that games should be simple diversions and people who believe they should be large, complex, sweeping experiences. Whether they mean to or not, the people from each side of the issue conflict with the people from the other and the game - and its players - suffers as a result of the struggle.

You see the result all the time... A game that has a lot of "promise" but somehow doesn't deliver. Here's how it works:

The lead designer of a project decides what the game is going to be - say a deep, strategic tactical shooter MMO with adaptive AI and gameplay. The design team then takes this direction and begins to work on the design of the systems, AI, etc. that will make this happen. Since the lead designer is still the final authority here, he (or she) makes sure that the efforts of his team match his vision. Maybe he does the system work himself to make it happen, or maybe he just edits the work done by his team. How he does it doesn't really matter - it's his job to do it.

Then he presents this design to the rest of the team, his superiors, etc... And here's where the civil war begins. Maybe his superiors come from the other camp (since I used a tactical shooter MMO, let's assume our designer falls into the "sweeping experience" camp), or maybe it's his fellow leads who disagree. They then begin to pick apart the design, using whatever excuses they can find to simplify, pare down and otherwise mold the game into the "simple diversion" that they feel strongly is what games ought to be.

The designer fires back, defending his designs with the logic/dogma of his own camp's platform and then the war really heats up - sometimes these battles devolve into simple buzz words. Feel the game is too complex? Call the designs "French Logic" in a disparaging tone that implies that being complex is "lame" or "bad." Think the game is too simple? Fall back on calling it "boring" or "unchallenging" in the same disparaging tone.

Each camp will win some of these battles and lose others - and when it's all over, inevitably... neither side has won. Instead, what you get is a game that satisfies neither camp - a game that is neither a small diversion nor a sweeping experience. Players from both camps then stare at the game disappointed, because it has the potential to go either way, but doesn't.

I've worked on a few games that suffered this way. Auto Assault was one, an Xbox game called Nightcaster that I did before Auto Assault was another. It's interesting - because in the early days of my career this did not happen.
I won't say there weren't two camps back then, because even though I didn't notice them, I'm sure they existed.

No, instead I think that in the early days of my career, the industry was small enough that the camps were able to avoid mingling. Hell, perhaps I belong to the camp that I do because the first studio I was a part of was populated entirely by like-minded individuals. Perhaps, like a child who takes part in a sectarian dispute simply because he was taught to fall into a particular sect, I am who I am because of the camp I worked with, first. Maybe this is true of everyone in the industry.

It doesn't change the fact that now, barring a few exceptions, you're not going to find a team or studio that is perfectly aligned - instead you're going to find a mixed population of people. People that work together just fine, until some aspect of the game comes up that falls into one of the two camps... That's when the fur flies and the game itself becomes a weapon to fight the other side.

This is why I call it a problem - It's not that the games that follow the philosophy of one camp are better or worse than the games that follow the philosophy of the other - it's that the dispute seldom results in a consistent experience either way, and so our games end up mediocre as a result. Like our politics, our games are all centrist - you can't really tell which side of the argument they fall under because they seem to try to kowtow to both, killing quality and the experience in the process.

Anyone that knows me knows which camp I fall into. I'm not ashamed of that. I feel pretty damned strongly about it, in fact. Still, I'm not going to sit here and argue my opinion. Instead I wanted to ask the question, "How do we make sure our games don't suffer as a result of this conflict?"

It's a little like asking, "How can we have peace in the Middle East and keep everyone happy?" Thankfully, no one is dying as a result of this conflict, but it's just as complex. If you've got a dev team or a management team of mixed philosophies, how do you keep them all happy and still make a good game? Can you?

I really don't know which is sad, because I find myself in this situation, yet again. I don't want my game to suffer, but I don't want my game to be something I'm not proud of working on, either. So, I can't just give in, can I? Unlike an MMO, my current game is being produced outside of the public eye, so I can't even ask the audience what they want out of the game. Sure, I can focus group test, but I've got my own opinions about focus groups that could fill a blog of its own, so let's table that. Instead, let's move on to possible solutions:

I think, and I'm sure folks will disagree, that what we ought to do is try segregation - keep the two camps separate and let them make the games they want to make. The market is big enough for both types of experiences and people are more passionate contributors when the project they're working on follows their personal philosophies. The industry is large enough that there is plenty of top talent in both camps, so you can't really argue that the quality of games would suffer... but of course this isn't a viable solution for a simple reason: There's no stronghold of either camp. No place that like-minded individuals can go to join a community of studios in their camp. The studios are just as spread out and intermingled as the devs themselves. This solution would require nothing short of a complete reorganization of the industry... and because people don't like to move, it's not going to happen.

So what, then? Perhaps the smarter studios will set up specific teams for both camps and produce games that cater to one camp or the other. It makes sense - the studio will release top tier games for either camp, every cycle. Of course to succeed, it would require management (creative directors, studio heads, etc.) that were totally and completely impartial to succeed, and I'm not convinced that such people exist, so this probably won't work either...

See? It's a sticky problem, and one that very few studios have solved. Those that have solved the issue have resorted to "tyranny" - the studio head or owner decides the philosophy for the entire studio and anything that doesn't match that goes. This is an acceptable solution as it attracts like-minded individuals to the work, but these "dictatorships" are so few and far between that there's no way you can make the argument that this is viable, industry-wide.

It really is like peace in the Middle East. Everyone wants it, but it seems like the steps required to make it happen are impossible.

*sigh*

I guess it's back to the fight for me. I'm a member of the resistance - like the French underground in WW2. I fight for games that aren't boring and unchallenging. My chief weapon is French design - French logic, but that's alright. Descartes was French, wasn't he? It's a powerful weapon, and only a fool discounts it based on the passion or aesthetic of its wielders.

- Snipehunter