I was intrigued by a post on WaterCoolerGames, discussing a Tetris clone made where the blocks are textured to appear like ethnic cleansing internment camp prisoners and the play-space resembles a mass grave. Apparently, a team of Brazilian game designers took a claim from Raph Koster about how context can dramatically alter games and decided to put it to the test. Functionally, the game is still Tetris - it plays exactly like the Pajitnov original. But it appears to be a game about the best way to efficiently dispose of genocide victims, and that is huge difference.
As in all things, context is king. “There is nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so,” says Shakespeare. On their own, games are simply math and logic chains, and for the most part we can strip away or reinvent the context applied to a game without altering play. We could restyle and rename all the pieces in Chess to strip out the references to medieval warfare and the game would be wholly unchanged. We could replace the suits and ranks of standard playing cards and people could still play Poker, Hearts, Bridge, and Solitaire pretty much exactly the same way they do now.
But is this always the case? If we changed Doom to simulate dispensing candy to hysterical schoolchilden we could do so without changing any of underlying system that makes Doom work. But is it still Doom if we do that? Of course not. The context is indivisible from the game. Killing monsters is somehow so integral to what makes Doom exciting that it cannot be changed without destroying it. So what makes Doom different from Chess and Poker? Why can we get away with stripping the context off those games but not from this one? I think it comes down to potency.
Because Doom has such a visceral, emotional, potent context, the context is too easily missed when it is removed. It’s like smelting an alloy - using trace amounts of a tougher metal would make the new metal stronger, but it would still be only marginally distinguishable from the original material and the tougher metal could be taken out of the recipe without much loss. However, using high concentrations of that superior ore would yield a much better alloy, but now the alloy is utterly dependent on it and cannot exist without it. Doom is like an alloy formed from equal parts simulation and context. The game is too far from a pure simulation or a pure system - it was made with a context that was so highly developed it completely covered and repackaged the mechanics that made up the system, and now we cannot think of Doom without viewing it through that context. If it had a different context it would obviously still be a shooter, but it wouldn’t be Doom in the way that Chess would still be Chess even if we changed the pieces to characters from The Simpsons rather than knights and bishops. Doom with a different context would certainly still be a “shooter,” but it would be a different game. Hence why innumerable shooters can exist with virtually identical mechanics: they have vastly disparate contexts that cover and repackage those tired old mechanics so well that we view them as entirely different experiences. Indeed, the juggling of contexts is what makes genres possible in the first place.
Yet I argue that this isn’t enough. What we do with contexts in video games isn’t close to realizing their full potential for meaningful play. Having a rich context isn’t right for every game, certainly, but under certain circumstances it can take an otherwise simple, mundane experience and truly make it profound. My professor and mentor, Brenda Brathwaite, recently completed a game that illustrates this potential better than any game I know. Without going into detail, she presents a game that on the surface appears simple, straightforward, even a tad dull. Players play the whole game believing there is little more to the game than its mechanics. But upon completion, the game reveals its context in one jaw-dropping moment and suddenly the entire experience is transformed. Everything the players just completed, the seemingly-uncomplicated system and basic decision-making they participated in, it all suddenly has deep and disturbing weight and consequence. All from the context! Brenda is debuting the game at the Game Education Summit at CMU in June, and I encourage you to check it out if you can (otherwise look for posts about it on her blog) - you can see what I mean about the power of context.
Tags: Game Criticism, Game Design // 4 Comments »
However, it means my future posts will be somewhat divided between this blog and that. If you are not already a reader of Applied Game Design, I cannot recommend it enough! So from now on, look to that space as much as this one to find my thoughts on games, game design, and the state of the games industry.