Divergence and Reiterative Design

As designers (or any creative type, really), I think we've all found ourselves too caught up in our work. We get going on something and we just don't want to let go. We like the idea so we keep working on it. Sometimes this ends up working out, sometimes it's better to broaden the perspective and branch out.

This is the difference between reiterative design and divergence.

Say you're working on your latest game - its comes together, it works, but you keep wanting to make it better. Refining it. You add, subtract, change, modify different elements but the game, as a whole, is relatively the same. This is reiterative design.

Now take the theme and the overall design goals from above, but now you make a completely different game type. Maybe your first game was a tile-placement area control game and your new divergent game is a deckbuilding card game.

You've come up with two games with the same theme and goals, but is presented in two completely different ways.

When I think back to one of the first designs Matt and I worked on together... Man, that thing had so many divergences but was ultimately put on the back burner. For the sake of a laugh, here is one of the images that was shared between us to explain some of the game components.

The working title was Cave Monster, and it was an adventure/exploration game (ala Munchkin Quest, yikes) based around the cave systems underneath Kentucky. You can probably imagine where the original idea was heading - you're stuck in a cave, find items to help you survive, get out before the monster eats your face! Yeah, riveting, I know. Who wouldn't want to play that?

Well, we didn't. That's why we scrapped it.

The game started in that format and over the course of a month or so, it turned into many different games. We liked the idea of working with the cave systems, but we didn't like the type of game we were making - so we diverged.

It went from an exploration game, to a hybrid-set collection type game, where you are presented with a Monster and you need to figure out how to defeat him. There was some dice involved, rolling, still needed to navigate through caves (we were never really clear on how that worked), but it was sort of a Elder Sign Lite mashed up with Munchkin Quest now .... yikes. We spent some time working on this cause we liked it a bit better, and we wanted to see if we could reiterate enough to turn it into its own game - we couldn't. Again, we diverged.

The last divergent prototype we worked on before giving up was very different, though, still monsters and caves. But now it was a card game and puzzles were involved. Here is the super vague overview and visual we were working with:

With a starting hand of items, players work their way through the cave rooms in hopes to find better item cards and collect puzzle pieces. Two puzzles are present on the board and completing either one of them will allow players to take a chance at fighting the boss monster. Players do not show which puzzle cards they have in their hand and they may make trades with players to try and collect the right puzzle pieces.

This divergent prototype was probably the most original of the three, but we just never finished up with it. The idea for Double Up hit us and we began working on that. Sometimes you just roll with what's working for you at the time and Cave Monster was not working for us. Maybe we'll get back to it, maybe we won't, but it's a good example of divergence in game design.

This is an example of divergent design that ends up on the back burner, I'm sure you have your own examples of this. Next time, I'll be showing an example of a game that went through many divergences and is currently being developed further.

Recommended Reading

As part of my Master's Program, I am currently taking part in a class that is designing an educational video game. There is some recommended reading for that class which deals with video games mostly. But I think the reading crossesover well to the realm of board game design. So, the following is the professor's recommended reading list that he shared with the class at the start of the semester.

Dr. G’s Recommended Readings

Books

• Raph Koster, A Theory of Fun for Game Design. This book inspired much of my work for the last several years. I decided against making it a required book for the course, knowing how much attention production tends to eat. However, I’m happy to lead a discussion group with anyone that wants to dive into this during the semester!

Articles

• Eric Klopfer, Scot Osterweil, and Katie Salen. Moving Learning Games Forward: Obstacles, Opportunities, & Openness.
• Raph Koster, Narrative is not a game mechanic. Designers and philosophers disagree about what a “game” and a “story” is, but Koster’s practical perspective helps one focus on the systemic nature of interactive entertainment.
• Raph Koster, How I Analyze a Game. If you’re reflecting on how to write a good analysis, look no further than this recent essay.
• Keith Burgun, What Makes a Game? This is a controversial essay. A lot of people disagree with his taxonomy and nomenclature, but I believe it still has value. It is easiest to read if you see his use of “puzzle” and “game” as somewhat arbitrary variable names. His manifesto, Game Design Theory: A New Philosophy for Understanding Games, is worth a look if you are interested in more details; a copy is in the library.
• Anything by Daniel Cook at The Lost Garden, although I would not start with Multiplayer Logistics even if it is still the most recent one. Loops and Arcs and Building Tight Systems of Cause and Effect are both quite good.
• Keith Burgun, Instant Ambiguity Sauce is a challenging essay on the meaninglessness variety of “fun” that is easy to add to a game.

Dr. G’s Extra Recommendations

These recommendations are at the periphery of what we’re doing this semester. However, if you’re looking for something deep to chew on, look no further. I find them deeply connected to the essential questions of our inquiry.

Books

• Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini, Inevitable Illusions. This book is about the cognitive illusions under which all of us live. A cognitive illusion is like an optical illusion: you still fall for it even if you know it’s a trick.
• George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By. The authors describe how everything in thought and language is a metaphor. At the end, they tear down both objectivism and subjectivism. Who would want more from a book by a philosopher and a linguist?

Metaphors and Perception

This post is a little different than usual. It's actually a repost from one of my other projects - The Bone Wars Project. You've probably seen me tweeting about it off and on. It's a educational video game I'm working on for a class. We're partnered with the Indianapolis Children's Museum, and the game is about Marsh and Cope and their bitter feud to be the best paleontologists that they can be. This post is a reflection on the first sprint of our project. We have a paper prototype of the game, and a core set system in digital format - you can follow or check out the project at bonewarsproject.blogspot.com if you're inclined. Once the digital version more user-friendly, we'll be releasing different iterations of that as we go. As far as the paper version of the game - I'll actually have it with me at Who Yer Con and Indiana Comic Con if anyone is interested.

Anyway, this is more of a rhetorical reflection about the way we think about things and how metaphors shape perception. Hopefully you find some value in it. 

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Lately I’ve been caught up on what it means to be creating a “serious” game.

I know what it means. I’m sure most of the class knows what it means. Does anyone outside of our world know what it means though? If we walk up to someone in the architecture department and ask them what a serious game was, could they answer? Would the random passerby in the halls of Letterman know what it is? The term is ambiguous and perhaps disingenuous.

Wouldn’t any game development team that cares about their product consider their game serious? If you tell someone “I’m working on a serious game.” Would they cock their head and look at you funny until you explained it was actually an educational game.

What would happen if you told someone “I’m working on a serious game” and they asked “what’s it about?” We’d respond with “dinosaur fossils” and I suspect they’d ask “what’s serious about it?” We’re not dealing with violence, sexual assault, genocide, or another topic that could be considered serious to many people – we’re creating an educational historic game.

I think the idea of serious games only works within academia or with people who study and understand the term. Over the past few weeks while exploring the social media outlets for our project, I’ve come to learn that “serious games” is not something that is inherently understandable. A search for serious games on twitter will bring you to people talking about Call of Duty or their latest raid in World of Warcraft. By our understanding of a serious game, these are not serious games.

From an internal stand point, none of this is a problem – we know what we’re talking about. For our external communications, it’s a hurdle I need to jump over. Regardless of the external challenges, the idea of the language we use internally I’ve found quite fascinating. How does the language we commonly understand affect our performed identity and our team identity?

Does the idea that we’re working on a serious game cause of us work more efficiently? Are we striving to make something as perfect as we possibly can because it is a serious game? Would we be more concerned with other areas of production if we used “educational game” more often? I, for one, may have put less thought into certain aspects of the project because this is a “serious” game.

For instance, the historical accuracy of the game may mean less to me than the learning functions of our actions. I realized in our last meeting that the dinosaur fossils being in the historically accurate dig site was not a major concern of mine. I’ve been more concerned about the processes in which player’s achieve the fossils and the history of Marsh and Cope.

To be clear, there is more going on here than just “because we call it a serious game, I think this way about it.” My personal preferences and things that I find interesting come into play here as well. I’m merely pontificating on how our work ethic could be different if we used a different lexicon.

What if we were working on a big budget “Triple A” title for EA? Would the side of me that enjoys Gears of War or Borderlands come out, causing me to be more interested in high quality graphics and explosions? Maybe.

I firmly believe that the language we use shapes the way we think about everything. From our game development team to our personal lives, the way we conduct ourselves, the language we surround ourselves with, will all play a role in shaping who we are as people. George Lakoff and Mark Johnson’s Metaphors We Live By explains that we understand ideas based on the type of language that we use. I’m curious as to how we could change the meaning of our game, based on how we refer to the different things we’re doing to create it.

What if our programmers didn’t wrestle with code? What if they danced with code instead? Does that put them in a different stand of mind? Would they approach their work different? Perhaps with more finesse and grace?

What if our artists weren’t starving? Perhaps they are nourished or satiated artists. They aren’t struggling with creativity, but embracing their talents and what they know rather than fighting with it.

Our collective identity is formed by the language and symbols we use with each other. We come to an understanding and agreement on how we will interact with each other and our projects, and as time passes, our group identity forms out of the shared language and symbols we’ve grown accustom to.