People are always talking about how gameplay should be more important than narrative, graphics, sound design, etc., but I'm not at all clear about how to define gameplay.
Those other things feel quantifiable to me, at least insofar as they can be seen in isolation from the rest of the work. But gameplay, to me, seems to require things like narrative, graphics, and sound design in order to be experienced.
What is your definition of "gameplay"?
>>319834083
How you play the game. Come on anon.
>>319834918
Take the question seriously.
Like, the story and visuals of a game can be mapped, charted and described. It can be described in terms of things like dialogue, themes, tone, and choices.
But the gameplay? Where are the limits there? What defines it? How could you describe the gameplay of, say, X-Com without referencing narrative elements. Statements like "killing aliens" or even "turn-based combat" require to take in and digest the narrative content first, don't they?
For me, gameplay is the mechanics. The quality of gameplay is the intuitiveness, depth, and fun of controlling the game.
>>319835815
I can work with this.
Intuitiveness, depth and fun are qualities of a system of gameplay.
I think I have a firm grasp on the concept of "fun". Sure, it's subjective, but so are things like "theme" and "tone".
"Intuitiveness", I assume would be the degree to which actions in the game correspond to actions in real life. For example, Doom is less intuitive than Half-Life 2, because when I pick up an object in HL2, it falls, it has a particular weight, and in other ways it behaves more like a real object.
I think Depth is the concept I hear about the most often but it's very poorly defined for me. How would you describe "depth" in gameplay?
>>319835589
I don't see why you need much of any narrative context, I mean sure, nouns are defined and certain events are therein 'good' or 'bad' but those don't have any effect other than to define the various end states of the program.
>>319835589
It's not necessary to convey gameplay mechanics like that, but it is often the easiest because people understand narrative more than computer jargon. Controls and mechanics can be quantified because they have to be programmed in. So I'm sure a developer or programmer could go in depth and explain gameplay mechanics from a technical standpoint that doesn't touch any narrative or anything at all. But if I describe gameplay to someone I'm going to use general and contextualized statements because I'm dumb and I don't know how games work.
>>319836603
I just find it hard to imagine being able to understand or interface with a game at all except through narrative.
Imagine, hypothetically, that I make a rhythm game. Like DDR or Guitar Hero. And in order to play this rhythm game, you use the same input device you would use on a gameboy or an Atari 600 or whatever the fuck. Like most rhythm games out there, I put in some visual feedback that tells you what button to press and when. Maybe I play some music and if you fuck up the button-press, the music sounds shitty but if you get the press right the music sounds good and you get 100 fun points.
This is a very rudimentary game, but it's still a game. It has gameplay in the sense that you can play it and you can win or lose and how you play it effects the outcome. If I asked you about what the game was about, you'd probably say something about music, or points, or rhythm.
Now imagine that, intentionally or coincidentally, I had made the correct button prompts for my game the *exact same* series of inputs you would need to play the perfect game of tetris. You recieve feedback at the same rate, the same buttons need to be pushed to win, and any time that you make a choice or an input it has the same effect on my rhythm game that the input would have in tetris. The only difference is that my game looks and sounds different while you play it.
In my mind, this would make it a substantively different game. The way things are presented fundamentally impacts our view of what the game is and how it works. It really matters if what we're doing is killing aliens or, say, converting infidels or baking delicious hamburgers. I can't imagine being able to describe a game without that narrative component.
>>319837580
It's not just that. Most of a game's dynamics are invisible to the player while they're playing, and often large numbers of players need to work together to reverse-engineer gameplay. Most games don't provide you with feedback on how to best, say, control recoil. You've either got to be the kind of person who sits in the game and does 20 trials firing exactly 20 bullets at a wall from a given distance or you've got to be in communication with the kind of person who does.
But this isn't a problem in and of itself. After all, obscurity may make things hard to talk about, but it doesn't necessarily make them bad. I think in many ways the mark of a good game system is, as another anon said, that it's intuitive. That it works the way you would expect it to work without you having to think about it too hard.
>>319836562
Depth is how many ways you can do the same thing differently, and how many different significant things you can do in this way.
>>319836562
In essence, I feel like depth is how many branches any given game state can lead to, depending on your choices as a player. Take DMC4 for example. When you hit an enemy with your sword, you could go into a buttload of different moves. You could mash out a combo, you could switch to a different weapon, you could Stinger, you could launch, use your current gun, switch and use a different gun, cancel your attack with a jump or a roll and do something else entirely, Royal Guard to counter an incoming attack, go Trickster and just dash around like an asshole, etc.
That definition of "depth" can apply to just about any genre, I think. Although, if you think about it as if it were a decision tree or something, it's more like breadth.
>>319838143
Reading this, I think immediately of the Deus Ex definition of game quality: The more choices I get to make and the more playstyles are viable, the better the game.
Depth, then, would refer to the complexity of the system? A function, perhaps of the number of choices a player has and the number of possible outcomes a particular choice might produce?
>>319837623
I don't get it, is narrative component here the simplest shit like 'go to X' or 'kill Y'? Cuz yeah, that exists, but only to explain what the game is 'supposed' to be.
>>319838554
But at the same time it's not really necessary for a game to have depth, as countless quality titles would demonstrate. It does give more longevity to the playerbase's ability to play, innovate play, and of course to keep on playing and discussing the game. That's why you'll see Smash Bros. threads go on forever but only really see recommendation lists for Ninja Gaiden and Castlevania and stuff.
>>319834083
Of course anon. How could you possibly create a game without narrative and sound design?
>>319838628
I think (and I do mean "think". I'm kind of thinking as I type.) that what I was going for there was a point that a game system "under the hood", e.g., stripped of all narrative content, would be unrecognizable to a player, and that how satisfying the gameplay is relies heavily on the player's ability to put the game in a narrative context.
If I can make two games which require exactly the same physical movements and decision-making from a player, but which are percieved as fundamentally different (in my example, a game of strategy and a game of simon-says), then it seems to me that you can't really have game-play without having a story. Even if that story is extremely rudimentary. Because, to steal the above anon's example of a combo/style-based beat-em-up, it makes a great difference to my experience whether I think the button I'm pressing will be a punch, a kick, a gunshot, a choice of dialogue, or a choice to finalize where my tetris block drops.
>>319839336
Ah yes, the great story of Tetris
>>319839132
Smash Bros is also a multiplayer game, whereas Ninja Gaiden and Castlevania aren't. Other players are the content there, not just the games.
>>319839579
Narrative is being used here in a far broader sense than the story of the game, rather what is happening between the player and the game.
>>319839312
I'm focusing mainly on video games, but I can see this as a legitimate criticism.
The only real response I have is that, in traditional competitive games, the game is incredibly boring and unfulfilling unless the player is able to construct a narrative around a particular instance of the game. Which is why playing checkers against yourself sucks. You need to be telling yourself something about your opponent and how you stack up against him.
>>319839132
To piggy-back off the above comment, I would point out that games which incorporate direct player-on-player interaction are generally more novel. That is, a great deal of "depth" by the quoted definition can be produced by increasing variation and complexity in the response of a human player or group of human players who do not respond as predictably as an AI. Thus, simple rules, when balanced in such a way as to leave a variety of viable responses to any given player input, would still create depth.
>>319839719
In too broad a sense. Tetris is just working through a puzzle. Saying that interpreting the systems and visuals as moving blocks is like saying an OS is a 'narrative' because you're interpreting a UI.
>>319839579
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWTFG3J1CP8
Abstract games act as projective tests for the mind. Tetris tells a story about pressure, toil and inevitable failure.
>>319839776
>. You need to be telling yourself something about your opponent and how you stack up against him.
video games are just virtual checkers against a computer opponent
>>319839979
As much as it feels that way some times, the designers of Windows did not intend me to compete against their interface.
>>319840084
I would argue that (single-player) video games are more like a dialogue than a competition.
>>319840215
Competition is doesn't inherently equate to story or narrative. Neither does giving something context.
>>319840339
that sounds more like a book to me
>>319840339
Then argue it!
>>319840215
>>319840339
Just noticed how incompatible these comments are.
To clarify, by >>319840339 I mean that designers construct games with the intent of communicating, and the relationship between players and games is more like the relationship between a checkers player and the rulebook than between two checkers players.
>>319840339
A game like the shit telltale pushes out, maybe. But even those have segments where you're competing to perform the right actions against the clock. Even in point and click adventures or puzzle games, you're competing against the puzzle designers' attempt to stump you.
>>319840554
>the relationship between players and games is more like the relationship between a checkers player and the rulebook than between two checkers players.
Yes, but no. The game is not just the rule book, but also the referee and the board and as such has a lot more power.
In any case, dialog is probably a better term for what we're discussing than narrative.
>>319840541
If the goal of a game designer were to beat the player, most games would look like the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Text adventure. There is an inherent inequality between the designer and the player in that the designer gets to make the rules. If designers wanted to make games the player couldn't win, they could do so easily. Instead, they choose to create systems where players are constrained in a novel way. Players learn what designers are trying to communicate by making choices and providing inputs. The responsiveness of the system to inputs determines the success of the communication.
>>319840463
I can't disagree with that. I can also agree with anyone who distinguishes between games and puzzles.
The thing about tetris that makes it different from a puzzle is its responsiveness to feedback. Tetris is not a pass-fail test. It's a system in which you learn through practice, trial and error how most efficiently to align blocks without creating empty spaces.
The difference between Tetris and an operating system is that, rather than a set of tools designed to respond to feedback in such a way as to create novel content, the creators of Tetris constrained it in such a way that certain outcomes were preferable to others (as defined by the designer) and that mastery of certain skills was valorized by the awarding of points and the opportunity to continue playing the game.
The thing a person does to get good at tetris is not memorize a series of inputs. It's learn what each block means in the context of the system. Sure, the blocks aren't people, and the actions of the player do not make people interact, but a story is still being told via relevant concepts. The concepts of volume, orientation, and symmetry are communicated not by the system but by the presence of visual assets: a series of blocks, demarcated by units of surface area, and unable to occupy the same space at the same time. You can't make that point without including art.
>>319840874
Not at all. You compete against a challenge that designers specifically created to be within your power.
>>319840996
Agreed on your first point. I have difficulty making a meaningful distinction between narrative and dialogue and this is probably due to inadequate definition. I would benefit greatly if you could clarify the distinction.
>>319842426
Dialogue as the interactions between the player and the game. On a technical level, this would be the series of inputs and outputs. On a broader, "how do I design good games?" level, it's how the player understands the series of inputs and outputs.
Of course, even then I'm only pretty sure that's where this has led us. This is all being created on the fly becauseI've never had an interesting conversation on /v/. It's good but tripping me out
>>319842852
To continue this metaphor, "narrative" as I've been using it so far would refer to the individual outputs of the game which are, presumably, intended to be understood by the player.
Thus, a dialogue with the system would consist of the system providing some narrative content to the player, the player recieving, interpreting, and making a decision about this narrative content, then providing an input to the system in response.
I think I'm getting closer to a general thesis.
I would say that it is impossible to establish dialogue, which is our current operational definition of "gameplay" without transmitting a series of parseable narrative signs to the player. Put another way, players can't interact directly with code. Code is a vehicle for narrative, a logical construct by which particular bits and pieces of visual art, sound, and spoken or printed text are configured so as to be understandable. Gameplay can't exist without the player as otherwise it is *merely* narrative, but neither can gameplay exist without narrative, as otherwise it is *merely* code.Glad to be helpful. : )
