Would it be possible to design a video game like a deck of playing cards? A virtual world with characters, objects and artificial life but without an implied goal or ruleset. Perhaps, like many decks of cards, accompanied by a manual that proposes several different games that can be played within this environment. Somewhat similar to the way in which games like Quake and Halo allow for multiple types of multiplayer games with different objectives but set in the same environment and using the same characters and game objects. But without the application having to switch modes explicitly. Just like the pictures on the cards don’t change. The game to play would be entirely up to the player(s). Depending on how they act, the game would be different.

In a traditional computer game framework, one could think of a virtual world in which the player decides to play either an adventure game, an action game or a strategy game, depending on what they do in the world, perhaps on which studies their avatar takes and jobs they choose, for instance.

It would be even more interesting if the game itself would also have input so that somebody who sets out to be a soldier in the game ends up becoming a diplomat because the death of his wife made him allergic to aggression. The player of such a game would be required to actively suspend disbelief and really play his role in all earnesty, without trying to manipulate the game into becoming something pre-defined and expected. “Playing Cards Next Gen”: where the cards themselves can change the nature of the game.

Perhaps, in an interactive piece, like a game, the story should be treated as if it is already there. And not as something that needs to be developed in a linear fashion. Interaction does not need to tell the story, it should merely support its existence, not contradict it. Perhaps the narrative purpose of a game is to create the effect of having read a book, the feeling that you get after finishing the book, not the one you experience while you are reading.

I’m finally reading the lovely Chris Bateman‘s book “21st Century Game Design“. As always, I appreciate Chris’s uncanny ability to analyze games and their audience in a mercilessly dry way, illustrating the enormous gaps in its rethoric and practice. And apparently it’s not just the pseudo-biker-black-tshirt-weapons-fetishist type of game developers who are just wrong…

The foundation of game design is in providing the right design work for the project, not in trying to dazzle with unfettered creativity. All game designers have a duty to the project that must always take precedence over their desires as players of games, and that duty is the core of the game designer’s role.

Oops!

In a discussion of procedurally generated art in game production, the wonderful Brenda Brathwaite -whom we met at the last GDC during a very encouraging panel session about sex in games- said:

In my view, procedurally generated art doesn’t ask artists to leave the party. Rather, it invites programmers to it.

This sums up, in my opinion, to a large extent, what’s wrong with games as an artistic medium. On an aesthetic level, in most games, the people who are making the artistic decisions that matter are the programmers. Sure, the grunt work (3D models, textures, sound, music, etc) is done by actual artists. But that is just called “asset creation”, and correctly so. The real artists are the ones who create the normal mapping, the lighting systems, the shadow shaders, the physics effects, the water simulation, forest rendering systems, etc.

Without a common aesthetic vision, contemporary games quickly start looking like collages of different technologies. This doesn’t come as a surprise. All of these systems are built as solutions to problems, not as artistic statements. I’m sure a programmer wants his blur shader to look pretty. But that’s just not the same as an artist who really knows why he wants that shader and how he’s going to use it.

Games are an art form where the real artists are engineers. No wonder they fall apart, aesthetically! Engineers shouldn’t be making art. Just like artists shouldn’t be building engines. A bridge created by an artist without the help of an engineer, will fall down. The same is true for a painting created by a programmer. It will fall down like an empty house of cards that was never supposed to be meaningful in the first place.

So how can we solve this? The technology that we are using is very complicated. With all the work that it takes to make something even run on a computer, there’s hardly any time left for artistic decision making. Let alone a place for a global artistic vision in the production pipeline.
I guess one way is wait. Once the hardware gets so fast that it can do anything, there will be a lot less need for difficult programming. Because, let’s face it, most of the programming in games is transpiration, not inspiration: it’s creating software so that it can run on our feeble hardware.
But will that moment ever come? Will the hardware ever be powerful enough?
And isn’t there anything we can do in the mean time?