Player Experience is Paramount: Report and Discussion on Come Closer

There is much discussion in modern game design about the concept of "playercentric design" and the importance of the player experience.  However, most would find it difficult to boil that down into a basic vision statement.  At the 2010 Meaningful Play Conference, Jamie Antonisse and Sean Bouchard attempt through their presentation to give a formula for such a design statement.

What makes designing playercentric games particularly challenging is that there are two sides to the design.  One, the creator's side, is what Antonisse and Bouchard describe as the statement "I want to make my game about ..."  Sometimes, the design process stops there.  However, the two emphasize there is another important side, and that is absolutely the player's side, described in the statement "when playing this game the player should feel ...".  They believe that there is a disconnect in many designs between these two sides, caused by the fact that designers often think of player experience soley as accessiblity and engagement.  These two elements, although important to the design of a quality game, ignore another key feature:  player experience. 

Antonisse and Bouchard argue that one must have two design statements, one related to the topic the creator designs the game about and the other what the player should feel, or the player experience.  The trick to this is that the experience must resonate with the topics.



They went on the exemplify this concept of resonance, with existing commercial games and games they'd created that with the intention of topic and experience resonating.  Commercial games cited included Sonic the Hedgehog, a game about cartoon animals where the player should feel fast, Civilization, a game about 6,000 years of humanity where the player should feel they are guiding the course of history, Gears of War, a game about the front lines where the player should feel strong, solid, and tough as nails, and Tetris, a game about abstract shapes where the world feels like it is spinning out of control.

Further discussion involved games they had created as students at USC.  They downplayed the resonance in their own games, but used their knowledge of their own design process to describe how to use the statement "I want to make a game about ... and I want the player to feel ..." in order to create playercentric games.

The first game dissected in this manner was Hush.  This game is "about the Rwandan genocide where the player should feel powerless in the face of a moral crisis."  To create this experience, the pacing was slow and measured.  The controls were slow, rhythmic keypresses, as an attempt to "disempower hardcore gamers."  To focus player attention, they playtests different types of letters, movement, and shadows in order to create the optimum experience.

Several other games were discussed in this same manner,including Suits, a game about supervillainy where the player feels buried in bureacracy; Winterbottom, a game about time-travelling duplicates, silent films, and pie where the player feels charmed; pOnd, a game about zen gaming where the player feels their expectations have been changed by a single moment; and  Ninjabi, a game about oppressed Muslim women where the player feels powerful.

The final game discussed was their most recent, Spectre, which was also demoed at the conference.  This game is a platformer about the life story of a simple character where the player should feel nostalgia and a sense of regret.  This game required many iterations in order for the topic and experience to resonate and included reframing the representation of the main character, adjusting the controls (that vary with the age of the character in his memories), balancing simplicity and complexity, and refining the timeline of memories.

Antonisse and Bouchard's final advice was 1)  to write out any inspiration; 2) to know your topic; and 3) devour related and unrelated media.

Response:

To me, this presentation was advocating for a special type of "thesis statement"  or "theme" for game design.  Often, in art, the work is selfish and focuses solely on the creator.  On the other hand, many designs focus solely on the user.  Game design seems to be in an interesting place where the balance of both user and creator creates a unique and memorable experience when the game "resonates".  Everything in the experience is tied together with a purpose of creating an experience.  This is valuable in writing and entertainment, but especially in modern games which are both interactive and often time consuming (compared to other media).

I left this session with an abundance of energy and ideas.  In fact, I see in my notes a game statement  ... "A game about being a 'gifted' child where the player feels the world is a magical place where inspiration and whimsy can sprout at any mundance moment, second, or place."

I also left with the impression that I should not only know my topic, but explore the experience space around the topic. In a practical sense, I thought back to teaching. The best day in my classroom was Multicultural Day, where I turned my classroom into Japan.  My experience was about Japan, where the students should have felt transported to an exotic and far away place.  I never had a better day teaching in my two years.