How many times have I not heard the same thing when I asked students at the beginning of their graduation degrees their reason for choosing a professional career in the Games Industry:
“I want to work in games because I love creating stories, characters and universes”
When I hear that answer, I always think two things.
The first thing is that I used to be like that too. My first steps were because I wanted to create a complex universe, from its genesis to its destruction, with great heroic arcs and fascinating places in a rich fantasy world.
The second thing is that the chance that the person who answered me this will give up on games early in his or her education is very, very high. If not this, the dream of creating these universes and stories will slowly fade away, while the interest in other areas of development will grow.
Of course, this is a natural phenomenon. It is part of professional discovery to understand that your dream is a little different when it is materialized, especially when it comes to a career that is billed as fun by outsiders, but is really a profession like any other.
At the same time it is also interesting to note that this journey, starting exactly from the point of the story creator, is so constant and is repeated year after year, generation after generation, in game courses and regional developer communities.
For me, this is one of the most common frustrations of the young developer and the reason for writing this text is exactly to explain a little bit of several things that I have already talked about in other Compass publications, but from the perspective of this personal journey.
The first point, which is perhaps the main responsible for this breach of expectation, is the mentality with which we face games when we are the consumers.
The big blockbusters and the productions that grab attention and make the industry look good are usually deep and engaging narratives, movie quality plots, or as deep as high quality works of fiction.
We have everything from contemporary stories dealing with crime and power, through sci-fi sagas involving intergalactic civilizations and futuristic technology, to epic medieval fantasy narratives with their mythologies and wondrous worlds.
All of this, of course, is part of these experiences, but these are descriptions that can be applied to books, series, movies, and various other works that can be consumed without an interface such as a digital device, a board, cards, or anything like that.
Therein lies the rub.
As much as these characteristics can be applied to games, games are not about that. Games are interactive products, which offer a wide space of possibilities for their users to have experiences, accomplish things, impact and be impacted by actions.
Movement. Dynamism. Interactivity. Experience. Action. Reaction.
And understanding this is harder than it sounds, especially when you are the consumer.
There is a very simple reason for this, you are the one who is immersed in these stories. You experience them as their narrative, their adventure, and their quests, not as the set of systems, mechanics, and arcs designed to make you feel immersed.
Should you pay too much attention to these structures instead of enjoying the game, beware, you may be one step closer to becoming a Dev or even already being one.
So when one thinks about what the game they are playing is about, it is natural that the focus is narrative and story and event oriented, rather than the mechanics, the systems and above all the proposition that the game pursues as an interactive experience.
A quick disclaimer. Not all modern games are like this, many are focused entirely on mechanics and interactions or the emergent aspect of gameplay, such as competitiveness, collaboration and visceral feel. The whole issue lies in the fact that when we think about games of global reach, the biggest examples are of characters and franchises loaded with complex stories and worlds (no, I’m not looking at you, Nintendo).
So when you seek to make that transition from consumer to developer, it is usually paved by the decision to promote the same kind of feeling to other people (and often to yourself, in the famous case of developers who make games just because they would like to play that kind of game).
You want to be able to tell the story of the game you have created. You want people to like the characters, find them interesting, and maybe even wear their printed shirts to pop culture events.
But let’s be honest, it would be easier for you to achieve this result by writing a book than by developing a game. In the worst case scenario, you would need fewer people to create something that nobody will care about.
Again, there is nothing wrong with that, but when you start developing games you automatically notice two things: first, development is a collaborative process; and second, games are made to promote an experience.
By collaborative process, I mean that you will rarely be able to create something that will be untouched by other people’s opinions. Creating a game requires several professionals who will put part of themselves into the project, modifying it and making the final idea different from what was originally thought.
At best, even if you develop it yourself, your game will still be subject to feedback from the public and people who test it, which will encourage you to change the project over time in the same way, or at least be in doubt as to whether your masterpiece is in fact a masterpiece.
And by promoting an experience, I mean that games are only as good as the interaction they allow and the immersion they promote for their players. This is done using the artifacts that the ludic language has at its disposal, such as mechanics, systems, visual arts, and, of course, narrative.
The result of this is that what you create is both subject to external interference, be it from people on your team or from the audience you are trying to reach, and the set of artifacts that promote that wonderful immersion in a game go beyond having a good story to tell, but go in the direction of having a good experience to live.
And then we come to the title’s Designer. I guess he wasn’t going to show up and it was just a nice name, right?
When you realize these things, you take your first step in understanding that creating a game is not only associated with working on a narrative, but in designing a set of elements that, combined, will generate the proposed experience.
The act of designing these elements, with a goal in mind, is called Design (just for the record, this is not the formal definition, but a simplification).
And the Designer is famous for being different from the Author or the Artist because, above all, he values the result of the product he is creating.
To do this, he must give up the preciousness of some ideas and the beauty that certain elements may have for the sake of functionality, accessibility, objectivity and coherence of the work being created.
Being a game designer is not the same as being a writer or an artist. The most common comparison is with the Director of a movie, who uses his understanding of the cinematic language and the various artifices he has at hand to create the audiovisual experience.
I, on the other hand, tend to use a comparison closer to the reality of the developer and argue that the Game Designer is, above all, a User Experience Designer.
A professional who seeks to create a product that meets the established needs and proposals, satisfying those who will interact with it and need to like the result, using methods, tools and conducting evaluations to measure the efficiency of the proposed solutions.
If this is not being a Game Designer, thinking about the mechanics, systems, game dynamics, core loop, balancing variables, level design topography and several other issues with the goal of bringing a good experience in the interaction with the product, then I am as lost as you are.
So if you are a developer or an aspiring developer who is going through this moment of distress about how to create your games, but feel that you can’t express the stories and dramas you imagined in the final product, try to imagine what your product is about.
Think about why your player would like it, what would be interesting to do in that world, or how the interaction could be enjoyable and fun. What would make him feel excited, frustrated, energized and relaxed?
Look for answers for your product that are based on what games do best: provide meaningful interactions for players.
That way, when you meet someone who has played your game and enjoyed it, that person won’t tell you the story you thought up for the product, but the story they lived and fell in love with because of what you created so they could do it.
