Reading Response #6

to Artful Design • Chapter 6: “Game Design”

Oluseyi O.

11/05/2023

Music 256A / CS476a, Stanford University

Reading Response: Experiences only Games could Provide

From this week’s reading, I’d like to respond to Principle 6.5 which states that “Games can be mirror of our humanness” and Principle 6.8, which states “All games are played in hyper-1st person resulting in a sense of embodiment through control”, while keeping in mind the concepts posed in the analysis of the games “Save the Date!” and “That Dragon Cancer”. As these principles and the rest of the chapter point to, the unique quality of games is that they can immerse the player in a way no other media via Principle 6.8 and the control the designer must give the player.

To achieve truly unique, sublime experiences, the medium and its intricacies have to be designed for. Many games try to ensure that the player’s choices and decisions really, truly matter, dialing up that sense of embodiment and control. In narrative games, a common selling point is a narrative that is reactive. When something occurs in a story and you can trace why it occurred back to specific decisions you made earlier in the game, it is a unique feeling that you can’t quite get in other media. Even in non narrative focused games, this aspect has to be accounted for as well. In strategic games, watching a strategy you designed be executed can be an experience bordering on the sublime. If it succeeds, you gain a sense of pride and accomplishment from knowing what you did lead to this success. You feel in control of the situation and capable of steering it to your whims. But I think when complications arise, or unexpected consequences of your plan occur, that is when the experience begins to become sublime. Seeing the game world react in ways that are sensible yet you did not predict and being forced to improvise or adapt makes it feel like a real place you’re engaging with. You have to learn its rules and ways just as you would an instrument to gain mastery over it.

This just touches on one aspect of unique experiences games could provide. I just wanted to bring up how even games without traditional narratives such as pure strategy games can lead to great experiences, since the games Ge brought up in the chapter had narrative elements to them. A phenomenon some games attempt to achieve is emergent storytelling, where every player ends up forming a unique story of their own based on how they play the game and the decisions they make. I think all game designers can benefit from thinking about these types of experiences and emergent storytelling when designing games.