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[Fallsburg]

Paul, I think you should actually read the books before criticizing.  Feral_P did a good job of synopsizing, but the cheat sheet he posted is just that, a cheat sheet. 

Anyway, I disagree with you entirely about the meaningful choices.  The ones you listed aren't meaningless choices. It isn't always the right choice to hold down the run button in Mario, because maybe my fine control goes down because I'm not a great player.  Jumping to get a coin is indeed a meaningful choice, I get 1 more coin, perhaps I screw up my next jump, maybe it slows me down so I feel a need to rush later in the level, etc. 

I'm going to use an example from one of my favorite games, Magic: The Gathering, to show a meaningless choice.

Before the last round of major rule changes in the game there was something known as "damage on the stack".  When two creatures hit each other in combat (i.e. attacker blocked by blocker)  there would be a step when the damage was sitting on the stack waiting to be applied in which both of the players could act.  If you had a creature that had the ability "Sacrifice this: Deal 1 damage to target creature or player."  and blocked another creature, there used to only be 1 play that made any sense, i.e. wait until damage is on the stack and then sacrifice your creature to hit another creature or player.  This is because you get both the damage that blocking the creature allows for and the other 1 damage dealt to your creature/player of choice.  By offering up the option of doing something while damage is on the stack, the game offered up a meaningless choice.  There are no meaningful tactical decisions to be made because there is only 1 correct line of play.
In contrast the game has changed such that damage is no longer placed upon the stack, it is dealt instantly.  In the above example, the player has to choose whether they want the damage dealt by the blocker or the damage from the ability to their target of choice.  By limiting the options to the player, the game forces the player to make a meaningful choice. 

I guess my interpretation of the "meaningful choices" is that you need to make sure that every choice your player makes them trade something for another thing.  If the game asks me "Would you like 50 gold or 100 gold?"  I'm going to take the 100 gold every time (this is discounting the subset of gamers who like to make the game more difficult themselves as this discussion becomes impossible if we include them).  Now if the game asked "Would you like 50 wood or 100 gold?"  and there was no direct conversion between wood and gold, that would be a meaningful decision.

[eclectocrat]

There are many genres of game. By saying "game design" we are destroying meaning. Just like saying that candy and spaghetti are both "food". Sure they are but they have different qualities and you certainly wouldn't want to have a candy for dinner, or a plate of spaghetti for a mid-hike snack. So any advice that is labeled "game" design is a little suspect to me, kind of like the "heart smart" label on the diabetes inducing concentrated sugar breakfast cereals.

That being said, lets boil down the whole meaningless choice business to basic min-maxing. We have resources that we need to allocate like, time, points, coins, attention, whatever. If the trade-off between two resources is below a certain ratio, then it reaches an absurd level where only masochists would select option B, as in the excellent MTG example above.

In the mario bros. example however, we have the resources of attention, reflex, and time. I can only mash so many buttons per second, and when goombas are swarming up ahead I need to allocate my reflexes for the more important resource (coin vs. life). In early parts of the game, apparently meaningless "decisions" about whether or not to jump for a coin are really just reflex training. Later on when the game starts closing in on you, decisions bear more gravity and what was once a simple no-brainer becomes a split second resource allocation problem.

In my experience most well designed games do this. They provide a safe environment to learn about these resources, and then slowly ramp up the difficulty until you are presented with a (hopefully) interesting allocation problem.

Just my two coins...

[Feral_P]

There are many genres of game. By saying "game design" we are destroying meaning. Just like saying that candy and spaghetti are both "food". Sure they are but they have different qualities and you certainly wouldn't want to have a candy for dinner, or a plate of spaghetti for a mid-hike snack. So any advice that is labeled "game" design is a little suspect to me, kind of like the "heart smart" label on the diabetes inducing concentrated sugar breakfast cereals.

While I'd agree you can't get as specific about design when talking about games in general as you can when talking about a specific genre, I don't think different genres are so different as to warrant completely separate theories of game design. They're all algorithmically based systems designed to create a feeling or experience in the player, and as such you can always use the principles of psychology to help your design.

I could agree to separating game design ideas based on what you want the player's experience to be like. Most of the ideas I had on the list were for creating a 'fun' experience.

That being said, lets boil down the whole meaningless choice business to basic min-maxing. We have resources that we need to allocate like, time, points, coins, attention, whatever. If the trade-off between two resources is below a certain ratio, then it reaches an absurd level where only masochists would select option B, as in the excellent MTG example above.

In the mario bros. example however, we have the resources of attention, reflex, and time. I can only mash so many buttons per second, and when goombas are swarming up ahead I need to allocate my reflexes for the more important resource (coin vs. life). In early parts of the game, apparently meaningless "decisions" about whether or not to jump for a coin are really just reflex training. Later on when the game starts closing in on you, decisions bear more gravity and what was once a simple no-brainer becomes a split second resource allocation problem.

In my experience most well designed games do this. They provide a safe environment to learn about these resources, and then slowly ramp up the difficulty until you are presented with a (hopefully) interesting allocation problem.

Just my two coins...

All good points.

[Makiyivka]

i tend to think most writing on 'game design' is wrong, especially writings by people who don't make games professionally, and these principles aren't an exception

While the rest of the thread has some good discussion, and I don't mean to detract from that, I'm curious why you put in that bit about 'by people who don't make games professionally'?  Each one of the three authors listed (Raph Koster, Danc, and Jesse Schell) makes games professionally.  I mean, Raph Koster was lead designer on Ultima Online, he's practically a founder of MMOs!  Danc has worked on several rather successful flash games (most recently Steambirds: Survival).  Jesse Schell is perhaps the weakest of the list, though he's still a professional game designer (and best known for his TED talk on games in the real world: http://www.ted.com/talks/jesse_schell_when_games_invade_real_life.html)

I mean, I've no problem with you disagreeing with their points, but to do so because 'they aren't professional game designers' seems inappropriate.

[Paul Eres]

schell isn't a professional game designer, he's an academic professor. he's credited in only two games, and wasn't really involved much in either of them (he's in the special thanks section, not on the development team)

http://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,282434/

the others have better credentials, but schell dominated the cheat sheet, and it was his three points i addressed in my reply

i also wasn't particularly talking about these three, but about game design in general. most books and papers on game design aren't written by people with any experience at it. same with game design courses etc. -- so it was basically a warning not to put much stock in what these people say, or to try to make games according to what they teach.

in general i've found that the less experience someone has making games, the more they have to say about how games "should" be made. people with experience have a much more 'there are no clear-cut rules, what works works, for any rule you can find dozens of exceptions' approach. and i see so many people misled by these ideas; 'game design chemistry' and such is probably the worst of them i've seen.

[Fallsburg]

Paul, I'm not quite understanding your vitriol about this.
I understand that taking these or any writing on game design as the one true way is a bad idea, particularly if the author isn't a game designer, but that doesn't mean that these and other writings are necessarily bad.
In fact, I don't think one needs to necessarily be a game designer to think and write about game design in an interesting or meaningful way.  Most art historians are not artists themselves, but that doesn't mean that they can't analyze art in an interesting way.  I feel that one can be a connoisseur of game design without necessarily being a game designer. 
I think the works listed in the original post are a net positive for the game design community even if they shouldn't be taken as scripture.  There needs to be more thoughtful, cogent analysis of game design out there, in my opinion, and anyone who wants to contribute to the dialogue is welcome.

I'm not saying that when it comes down to brass tacks it isn't just 'there are no clear-cut rules, what works works, for any rule you can find dozens of exceptions', but I feel that anything that gets people thinking about game design is going to be good for all of us in the end.

Maybe I'm misinterpreting you though.  If you don't like writings that are strictly along the lines of "Here is a 100 step process to make the perfect game," then I definitely agree with you.  But to be fair none of the works listed in the original post are of that sort.

P.S. By 'game design chemistry' did you mean 'The Chemistry of Game Design' by Daniel Cook?  Because to me it is a well written, if not exactly ground-breaking, look at how games teach player skills that wouldn't seem to evoke such a negative reaction.

[Paul Eres]

i don't have or intend to convey any vitriol, my emotion is more like sadness: sadness that these people who are basically scam artists convince so many people of made-up ideas, and mislead so many young game designers (including me, in earlier years). i just think it's a shame; it's the equivalent of people, who aren't published fiction writers, writing books about how you should write fiction. or the equivalent of people who never had a painting in a gallery teaching others how to paint.

it's inexperienced people who are pretending to know what they are talking about preying on inexperienced people who are honest enough to realize they are inexperienced. this basically categorizes 90% of books and articles on game design, but this isn't unique to games; it happens in writing and painting and probably a bunch of other media and industries as well.

and sure, the effects aren't entirely bad and there's some good that comes out of it, but the good has to be taken along with all the bad, and i do think it's a net negative.

as i mentioned, i disagree almost entirely with the original post, i just chose three examples of that disagreement earlier; i definitely do not agree that the ideas in the original post are innocuous or harmless. i attempted to show that in my responses to them; some people agreed, some didn't, so i didn't do a good enough job at it (but i didn't really expect to convince anyone either).

i also disagree with this statement: "There needs to be more thoughtful, cogent analysis of game design out there, in my opinion, and anyone who wants to contribute to the dialogue is welcome." -- i do not feel we need any more of this, i think theorizing about what game design is is almost innately a bad idea and very hard to do in a way that isn't harmful. creating games shouldn't be done based on theory, it's an unconscious, organic process, not a science.

thus the main reason i disagree with the chemistry of game design for instance isn't because it's badly written (as you mentioned, it's not), it's because it attempts to turn game design into a science, something that can be measured, with laws and principles. that just isn't how game design works, and anything like that is eventually bound to become a self-reinforcing dogma, like all the various schools of thought in psychology (psycho-analysis, behaviorism, cognitive psychology, humanistic psychology, and all the rest) where all data can be interpreted in its own complex theoretical system, but which are essentially still big made-up rationalization systems far removed from reality.

so no, i don't think we need more people writing articles and books about game design, i think we need more people making games. i've probably read over 100 books on game design over the last 20 years, most by people who never made a game, and can easily say that i don't think i've gotten anything good out of them at all, just a bunch of contradicting theories and a lot of time wasted. i've even written one myself, which to be fair to myself is more practical and hands-on than most writings on game design, but still suffers from their major flaw of overly abstract theorization and misleading rules and principles.

when you try to make a game (or for that matter, a novel or whatever) based on theory it's not going to turn out very well, mainly because it disconnects you with (and is antagonistic towards) the process of creation. you're thinking of the theory, not of the game. the better thing to do is to let your thought process relax and work on the game through a largely subconscious or at least discursive process.

tl;dr summary: game design is a skill or an art, not a science, and almost all writings on game design treat it as if it were a discoverable science (often they say stuff like "if only we could figure out game design! our knowledge of it is just beginning!"), when in reality it's not something that can be taught (much like writing can't be taught), only something that can be self-taught, through the dedicated practice of spending many years making many games.

note: there are many things which can be taught about games: the history of games, how to program games, studies on why particular games worked or didn't work, and so on, so i'm not saying all writing about games is bad at all, just game design theory or overarching theories about what games are or how they should be made. pragmatic books on game design are great. interviews with game designers are especially great.

[C.A. Sinner]

I think the problem with writing on "how to design games" is more that most of it is oriented towards mainstream industry-based development, where creative expression and subconscious, organic design processes are often not part of the deal. When you're developing a game to market it to certain target audiences, the "scientific" approach to design is more than viable, whatever your views on that may be.

[Fallsburg]

Well, I think we might be talking past each other, or at least I might be talking past you, but by and large I think we agree.  
Perhaps we interpret these works in a different way.  I don't see the "Chemistry of Game Design" as an attempt to turn game design into a science. Well, ok, he does state that as his goal, but the actual content is pretty basic in terms of "teach a player a skill; if player doesn't use skill, skill atrophies; etc."  which, you are right if one goes into game design juggling "well I need to do thing A that Schell talked about and thing B that Lostgarden talked about" then it is bad, but if instead it is incorporated into the person and used holistically then I don't think it is such a bad thing.
I agree that the science of game design when presented as "this is how you create a game" is a net negative, but the science of game design along the lines of http://www.auntiepixelante.com/?p=465 is a good thing.  I think it's good to analyze these things, because when one turns a critical eye to something there is the chance that they will learn something and learning something is never (rarely?) bad.  If you disagree with me on this, then I guess we disagree and the discussion can move on to other things.

[Muz]

Yeah, I'd echo what everyone is saying about this not sounding right. A good theory should be like an epiphany, shouldn't give you a "Huh? What?" feeling. Unless it's sufficiently complicated or poorly explained. A Theory of Fun doesn't sound like my kind of book, though I'll check out the other two.

My favorite book so far is Chris Crawford's On Game Design. There's a lot inside which I disagree with, but overall, it's been quite insightful.

I do believe there are some things you could learn about game design, but so far formal game design's been counter-productive. I'm not fond of any of the games since the game design revolution. I've stopped having up to date computers because modern games are too shallow. I'm mostly just playing old games and indie games. Modern games have too much of this focus on "don't have stuff that's not important". Well, I like a lot of that stuff. I play games for the same experience that people try to get from books.

One thing I noticed is that there's a lot of theory for casual or competitive games, but very little for things like roleplaying and simulation. There's a reason that people who love Fallout 3 hate Fallout 2 and vice versa, it's because the things that make either one great fails horribly for the other. All the unnecessary, unbalanced stuff makes a roleplaying or simulation game feel a lot more fun and challenging.

[C.A. Sinner]

One thing I noticed is that there's a lot of theory for casual or competitive games, but very little for things like roleplaying and simulation. There's a reason that people who love Fallout 3 hate Fallout 2 and vice versa, it's because the things that make either one great fails horribly for the other. All the unnecessary, unbalanced stuff makes a roleplaying or simulation game feel a lot more fun and challenging.

This * 1000.

I also hate the recent trend in JRPGs of abolishing traditional towns and world maps and replacing them with menus. For me, an RPG or sim game isn't about being "smooth" or "balanced" to play, it's about getting immersed in and interacting with  a world (and possibly story). I don't like all those new age RPGs like Mass Effect and Fallout 3 that are designed like action games. They lose a lot of that "RPG magic" I think.

[eclectocrat]

Hmmmm...

I hate game design books for reasons I have not fully explored. More of a gut thing.

Lets remove the game design aspect entirely. For the sake of argument, game design is purely creative. Who are we designing games FOR? That's the basis of successful human interaction, knowing the players. Since most players are relatively sane human beings we should design games with them in mind, even if your intended target is just yourself, you'll want to know what you like and don't like. So rather than rules about how to design a game you should pay attention to GUIDELINES about how to please/not piss off homo sapiens sapiens (or rather the specific subset you are targeting).

One thing I noticed is that there's a lot of theory for casual or competitive games, but very little for things like roleplaying and simulation. There's a reason that people who love Fallout 3 hate Fallout 2 and vice versa, it's because the things that make either one great fails horribly for the other. All the unnecessary, unbalanced stuff makes a roleplaying or simulation game feel a lot more fun and challenging.

Double true. BUUUUUUUUT....

From a interface cognetics point of view there are things which do suck about most RPG's, and they should be eliminated. There are some tasks that must be done often, and I hate when those things are buried under piles of menu's, while the "trophy system" or some other rarely accessed subsystem has it's own hotkey.

Think of your fav RPG... good... now think of three ways to improve the interface... If you haven't found them, spend some more time and you'll realize that even the BEST interfaces have room for improvement.

Sorry, game UI is kind of an obsession. I'll stop hijacking this thread now

[C.A. Sinner]

I think accessibility is overrated...

[simono]

i also disagree with this statement: "There needs to be more thoughtful, cogent analysis of game design out there, in my opinion, and anyone who wants to contribute to the dialogue is welcome." -- i do not feel we need any more of this, i think theorizing about what game design is is almost innately a bad idea and very hard to do in a way that isn't harmful. creating games shouldn't be done based on theory, it's an unconscious, organic process, not a science.

And I disagree with *this* statement Maybe what annoys you is the way they prescribe how game design should be. What I would wish for is more describing, less prescribing. A theory about what makes games fun and how to create them would certainly be interesting and helpful.

Similarly to visual arts or music. It is helpful to derive rules from the history of works. Not to prescribe how you should do it, but to describe how it can be done.

various schools of thought in psychology

They are all valid if you read them as describing what happened to people. They are meant to be interpreted. But you can't derive a general "psychology of the human" from it. In that sense they are all wrong.

And now I'm sitting here, wondering why you think Danc and Schell are removed from the art of maknig games. Don't you think they make good games?

[Tumetsu]

I'm interested in game design, both theory and practical side of things. Reading few of the comments here, like Paul's and some other who seem to dislike theoretical articles/books about game design, I have to say I partially agree.

To me game design isn't science but more like art. And like art has lots of theory, so should game design IMO. Some of the best artists I have seen have said to both practice and read theory as a way to hone your skills to max. Lines just don't happen to go as they should, even if you blindly practice and practice over and over again. As a way to great artist requires (or at least helps greatly) the knowledge of various art theories and skills to be able to apply them creatively. I think same about game design.

Like in visual arts, if you strictly follow theories and guidelines, you may end up with boring, though "correct" piece of art. I don't think it is good idea to in creative fields to take theories as they are but I also think it isn't good idea to dismiss them as crap and useless. I myself used to be like that and it really restrained my skills until I learned what value theory can have. I think it is good to know about other people's thoughs about the subject in hand, and take their thoughs as grain of salt depending how sceptically you think about their text.

tl; dr; version: In creative fields I think it is bad to follow strict guidelines. Still, reading and thinking about theories can give you thoughs, tools and skills to hone your creations and think out of the box.