Fic On Innovation
Derek Yu over at TIGsource.com just posted a video from the Independent Games Summit on Innovation in Games. The four panelists had some very inspiring speeches prepared and I want to share my own thoughts on the subject. In the meantime, check out that video. It’s okay, I’ll wait.
Back already? Great. It was interesting to note that the four speakers, each one a well-known independent developer, were as a whole arguing AGAINST what Jon Blow called “Innovation for innovation’s sake.” Jenova Chen of Cloud and flOw fame argued that games needed more “feeling.” Jon Mak of Everyday Shooter fame argued that games should avoid deliberate innovation and to instead embrace the personal expression of the developer. Jon Blow actually had a name for Innovation for Innovation’s sake: a gimmick. I’m not here to just regurgitate the arguments each made, but rather to tie these concepts together with a few examples taken from my own personal experience.
Prior to creating Kill Dr. Cote in late 2004, I was part of a group of students that had studied under Bill Kunkel (of Electronic Games Magazine fame, credited with pioneering videogame journalism) and we met once a week at the Starbucks by the UNLV campus. It was with this group that I learned that true deliberate innovation is a very tricky proposition. Our meetings were almost strictly on design, and we tried different methods of coming up with new games. One mindset that a few of us had was that we would create a completely new game. I’m talking on the order of: Chess, Checkers, Go, ___(insert our game here)___. Trying to brainstorm a game like that with purely abstract game objects was a spectacular failure. A few of us came up with ideas, but they all had some sort of setting: bugs, ninjas, whathaveyou, and because of that, were rejected. And when the uDevGames 2004 contest started up, it was worth noting that none of these ideas were used as a possible game idea.
For the uDevGames contest, we had originally decided to go with a prototype that one member had created: an unfinished 3D version of columns. Being unsatisfied with the choice of game, I instead decided to work on my own game, which ended up being Kill Dr. Cote. KDC is a dual analog shooter, controlled with the keyboard and mouse. It’s basically Robotron / SmashTV, and in the eyes of a lot of people, was hardly innovative. But no one could deny that Kill Dr. Cote was a wholly new experience, and here’s why:
- Feeling. Jenova Chen argued for Feeling. KDC had many deliberate evocations of feeling. For instance, the choice of sounds for the railgun, armageddon laser, and grenade. The camera shaking when big explosions took place. The sheer size of the armageddon laser. The ridiculous number of body parts flying around at any given time. Finally, the difficulty. All these things were deliberate choices by me to evoke a feeling of intense, visceral action.
- Expression. Jon Mak argued for Expression. After my initial inspiration for the game, it practically designed itself, or at least it felt that way. The design work on the game felt automatic because it was what came naturally from my personality. The game was praised for its style and panache. MY style, and that alone is something that has never been seen before.
- No gimmicks. Jon Blow argued against Gimmicks, or Innovation for Innovation’s sake. There’s a term I like to use for a gimmick that isn’t quite a gimmick- for innovations that don’t overpower your game design and instead work to improve it. I like to call those “Hooks.” KDC had many hooks: the keyboard/mouse control, the recharging grenade, the carnage meter, and the sheer number of enemies. Each one of these individually won’t overpower the game, but they were combined to create an experience that hadn’t been seen before, even in similar games.
So with the blatant self-promotion out of the way, here’s what all that boils down to:
- Innovation isn’t about coming up with totally new rules for games on an abstract level. That’s a risky prospect, there isn’t much to work with, and expression doesn’t usually work on that level anyway.
- Expression is innovation. Even the most subtle visual or audible effects can alter the player’s experience, and change the feelings that are evoked. Just the difference in these feelings can create a completely new and innovative game.
- Another form of evoking feelings is being able to reference how a player feels while playing another game. An example is one level in Everyday Shooter that Jon Mak says was inspired by the Studio Ghibli film Porco Rosso, where the player must shoot down red enemy planes inspired by foes in the movie, in an attempt to recreate the feelings that one would get from watching the movie. Of course, when, where and how this sort of thing is done is completely dependent on your own personal style, and is therefore innovative and new.
- Similarly, WHICH feelings you evoke are another source of innovation. Kill Dr. Cote is very intense, meant to give feelings of constant pressure (and a release from that when you whip out the bigger guns) and intensity. Jenova Chen’s flOw is meant to be a peaceful, almost spaced-out experience. So imagine two games, exactly like KDC and Flow, respectively, but swap those feelings. So a dual-analog shooter that actually evokes feelings of peace and calm, and an abstract eat-game that evokes feelings of pressure and anxiety. I believe both can be done, and even with all other game mechanics identical, I would call these two hypothetical games innovative and new. (As an aside, it would be an interesting experiment to create a version of KDC that was actually relaxing, or to create a new game with two different versions or “skins”: one is intense and one is relaxing. If I try it, it would be the subject of a later post.)
That’s all for now. More developments on the FicEngine to come very soon!
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