For me, thinking of games as rules based systems is limiting. But for other designers it might be enabling. Since everybody is so obsessed with these system and I dislike most games that they make, I figured perhaps I should try to do something else. But feel free to think that what I’m trying to do is exactly the same. Maybe it is. It feels different to me. It’s what inspires me. That’s enough.

If everything is everything, then a story is indeed a system. And a toothbrush is a shoe.

You didn’t address my proposition that stories are systems. I don’t mean language. I mean that the form of a story, the archetypes present within a story, the moral relationships that are the motivic material for story (the whole reason for telling the story) compose one large and ancient system. They can exist without language, or images, or sound, or with all of those things, but they cannot exist without the system of story. But neither could anything else that we know of and can relate to one another, since the system of story is in itself a means of communicating experience. You speak alot about ethics, without ever venturing into the obvious contradiction of ethics being a progressive, evolving system. The games that you condemn as “unethical” are representative of ethics that were quite acceptable in certain cultures, at certain times, our own present not withstanding. Chauvinism, imperialism, survival and prejudice are very much alive and well for certain members of our society today, and were even more so in the past. Those are systems that you may not agree with, but compassion, fairness, and honesty are no less systems of behavior and perception (and more importantly systems of expectation for how others should behave and perceive), just because you think they are worthy of perpetuating.

Everything is a multi-dimensional experience. Nothing can be reduced to one thing (unless everything is one thing :). Nothing can be distilled. FORM is EXPRESSION, because without form there is no expression. You can easily see how that statement can be reversed. This has become a discussion about dualities because we’ve made it that. And there you have another system, Mr. Memes, that we all fall pray to. But without that system this conversation would never have taken place. Art is an outgrowth of our tendency for separation and dualism. As is all of our behavior. What makes us human, if not our ability to distinguish by way of inventing distinguishable qualities and seeing those qualities in everything around us. And yet we’re surprised when another human being, with this same capacity for invention, chooses to distinguish using utterly different qualities. Even though it’s our shared humanity that perceives such differences.

An interesting discussion in the comments as well but I think I’ll stay out of it. Too much talk and too little application for me. ;)

In my experience, the system of rules is generally not as stimulating to the imagination as the way things look and sound.

See, by my definition of “system” the audio and visuals and haptics are part of the system. A system without these is invisible, unknowable and most importantly non-interactive. The player’s presence is at the heart of it, its raison d’etre. So I think we actually agree, our definitions just differ.

I think I’ve come to this definition because, when I’m designing something, wherever it fits on the continuum of the intellectual, the visceral and the emotional, it would be foolish for me to discount the parts of the system the player interacts with directly – the sound, images, the input interface, etc. Separating these out and defining them rigorously against each other is where a lot of game designs, modern and old, go wrong.

Systems can be used in expressive ways. In fact, we need systems to express ourselves in a way that other people can understand. But game systems allow only for very limited expression, in my opinion. Their range is very small. They only allow for expressing a few things. Your chess player may be able to recognize his opponent by his style of playing, but can they learn anything form it about how he feels about his father or what the smell of camellia’s reminds him of?

What interactive storytelling can potentially do is give that expressivity an additional narrative resonance – in addition to their role in the system, they’re a character in a story.

Interactive stories need systems as a basis but they are not limited by them. Their only limitation would be the player’s imagination.

I would describe it as, “the system succeeds in stimulating the player’s imagination”. The rules conjure a larger image. Out of something logical and physical comes something emotional. Transcendence is a quality of many high expressions of an art form.

My main point was that such systems challenge the player. Challenge him to become as perfect as the cog he seems to be replacing. It’s a bit like a job. There’s expectations. There’s tasks to do.
As opposed to games-as-stories, which do not challenge but wait for your initiative instead. The lack of expectations of the latter, however, allows the story to go anywhere in the player’s mind. And I find that an exciting area to explore. Interactive stories need systems as a basis but they are not limited by them. Their only limitation would be the player’s imagination.

Oh yeah, I wanted to mention this. Abstract systems only have meaning because of the stories they contain. 2 plus 2 is a story.

Reveling John, I’d caution against jumping on the “everything is a story” meme. Story is basically this classic pattern that echoes through a great deal of human experience, but often when people latch onto this they start thinking in reductions and chauvinism. Really there are several other key patterns and no single one can explain the totality of what life is.

Systems are another of these patterns. Systems are all around us, in nature, in the modern world (economics), in the realm of pure abstract thought (mathematics, abstract art). Images are another pattern, our world is comprised of icons and illusions and everything in between – our culture worships the image, arguably. Patterns are a pattern – we enjoy them in music, we pick up on them in speech, we see them in the events around us.

All of these ideas are very useful models for thinking, and if you pluck Story – certainly a primal and powerful one – from out of the rest and proclaim that everything else is subservient to it, you write off a giant swath of human experience. Which is a shame.

Significantly, and you seem to acknowledge this in the post, the medium of a game that is intended as a story is still systems. Like you say, it’s a question of priorities – I call it intent. If you intend to design a beautiful system, by all means, and if you want to create a universe where people can feel involved in a story-like experience, do that as well… it’s when you do them both together in a half-hearted way that gives them short shrift. Intent makes all the difference – Go, Quake 3 and Shadow of the Colossus are all implemented in numbers and logic; it’s the intent of their creators that makes them so different.

I think I disagree that systems-centric games don’t by definition give the player a central role. When I’m designing such a game I still think of the player(s) as the center of the universe – if a tree falls in the forest and no player experiences it, it didn’t really happen.

You may be conflating emphasis systems in general with a certain design mentality that values process (what the machine thinks about) over input and output (what the player does and sees/hears/feels).

The difference with the formalism of game systems is that these ancient forms enhanced the narrative and increased the expressiveness. Probably because they were invented with this purpose in mind.

For example, a popular format today is the haiku. The formal structure of the haiku often contributes to the narrative potential of the poem.

I’m not advocating system-less game design. I just think that the current game systems do not support what computer games have become. We need new systems that can support stories, rather than limit them. It’s a choice of priorities.

It’s like we’re entering the impressionistic era of game design. Hopefully it will be as exciting and feeling provoking as its musical counterpart was in the early 1900’s (and still is).

There are very few games that are exclusively designed to be a story, even though I believe that many people play games as such (or would play them if the system did not prevent it). I want to see more such games. Not just for myself but also because I think this will open up the medium to a much wider audience.

I’m not saying that “systems are evil”. Not at all. Systems are very useful. Games-as-systems can be fun and interesting. And games-as-stories need systems to work. The distinction is not so much in the ingredients of the product as in the end results, the goal of the designer and the experience of the player.

But in all seriousness, this is nothing new. I’m sure you have read books that changed your life, seen movies that made you think, heard music that really meant something to you personally. There’s nothing “weird” about that. In fact all of this helpful. I hope (more) games can give us these things in the future: talk about life, our life.

We don’t, we just teach them how to describe it. Does the development of description change the color? In other words, does the story change the perception of the system (the system in this case being electromagnetic waves in the visible spectrum)?

So what came first, the system or the story?

Games-as-stories don’t require you to become a part of them. They want to become a part of you. If you allow them to, they will find a little place for their own in the flow of your life. There is no need for you to suspend life for a moment and to step into a magic circle. Games-as-stories step into your life instead.

I am one of those hypocritical bastards that professes to want this, but deep down I’m afraid of allowing the circumstances of a virtual world to become entagled with the circumstances of my real life. It’s both intellectually and emotionally disorienting. I had a short bout with Second Life that ended because I became romantically involved with a person who’s physical existence was utterly unknown to me. It just kind of freaked me out, and I don’t have any one in my “real life” social group that I can talk to about any of this. How do I tell my best friend that I’ve fallen in love with a visible/audible representation of a presumably female person when he can’t get past the part about me “having sex with a video game”? (that’s an example by the way, not an actual conversation that took place) My point being, Games-as-augmentation-to-real-life are thrilling and inevitable, but it’s gonna take some adjustment for people like me. Maybe some therapy.