MetaGame
Musings Of A Game Designer
Women In Games
Aug 30th
Yesterday I attended the GameLoop 2010 unconference. It was a fantastic event, all around, and I have a very good time. I wanted to address one session in particular that got me thinking in overdrive.
The first event of the day I attended was a “Women in Games Rant”. It consisted of people sharing their opinions about how women are treated, both as characters in games and as individuals within the industry.
Some women were of the opinion that treating female game characters as objects of sexual desire was offensive or detrimental to the whole of women as gamers. I disagree with this. I recognize, of course, that there are blatant examples of ridiculousness in how women are portrayed sometimes in fantasy genres. But, I posit: isn’t that why we call it fantasy?
I don’t believe that the fantastical portrayal of women in chainmail bikinis is why the gaming demographic does not have more women in it. Personally, I think chainmail bikinis are sexy, and I like them. I love looking at images of beautiful women, scantily clad and in control of their sexuality, and I find it difficult to imagine why an image of a powerful, sexual woman would be offensive to another woman. Sometimes at conventions when I am selling my husband’s art, men who come to buy steer away from the images that they most desire, citing that their wives wouldn’t like it. Why not? Are their wives jealous of these imaginary women? Are they afraid that the fantasy of a beautiful elven queen will usurp some position that they hold in their husband’s fantasies? Do they not have fantasies, themselves? Do we live in such a puritanical, pro-censorship culture that we are made uncomfortable by the sight of a sexually liberated fantasy-girl?
The argument that is often made is that this type of objectification of a woman makes her less human, or less powerful. I disagree. I believe that when a woman is confident in her sexuality, being viewed by others as sexy is not a degradation, but quite the opposite. When a woman is admired for her physical appearance she is being given power– just as attractive men are given power in the same manner. If the argument is that a woman should not need to rely on her appearance to be powerful, I agree– but there’s no reason why a woman cannot be both strong in character and sexual, especially if the objective is wish-fulfillment as it so often is in fantasy. Our image of ourselves and our confidence is often wrapped up in our comfort with our physicality, but this is not a problem with games, this is simply an incontrovertible societal truth. No one seeks to be ugly, awkward, annoying, or dim.
If women are offended by this type of fantasy, and that is, indeed, why there are not more women in the gaming world, then I have a radical suggestion. We, as women, need to get over it. We are not doing ourselves any favors. We are holding ourselves back– by our lack of acceptance of other women and our internal competitiveness.
The people who create these images are, by in large, close personal friends of mine. They are not misogynistic or disrespectful by any sense of the word, and are, in fact, some of the friendliest and most open group of individuals that I have had the pleasure to know.
I have never had the experience in the games industry of being treated badly because of my female-ness. In fact, I have often been treated very well because of my shared interests and common experiences with men in the industry. While I do believe that I am given more consideration (my men and women alike) because of the rarity of women who share my preferences, I do not consider this offensive, nor do I feel I receive special treatment either positive or negative– whatever respect I garner, I earn. I also don’t consider that I have masculinized myself. While my interests and hobbies most closely align with those of men, I am very feminine, and proud of my femininity.
I am a huge advocate of bringing women together. I organize monthly get-togethers for women with geeky interests precisely because of the disjointedness I see among self-labeled geeky women, gamers among them. At these get-togethers, we are able to talk freely with each other about the things we care about, our sexuality, our relationships, and more. I think that this kind of openness, support, and comfort with each other is difficult to find with other women, not just geeky ones, and I wish that I could spread it further.
Women of gaming– we need to come together; to support one another, to reach out to each other, to mentor and share our experiences. We need to respect one another, feel free to disagree without fear of social repercussion, and pull ourselves out of the obscurity of “other” within the gaming world.
Game = Ert?
Jul 20th
The game community was abuzz a couple months ago after Roger Ebert’s famous “Games Are Not Art, and Never Will Be” blog post. It’s all a matter of opinion, of course, but here’s mine.
Collaboration = Not Ert?
Video games, like many other games, are not considered “art” by some because they are involve collaboration from across mediums. Video games, though, are directed by the lead designer. Someone creates the vision for the game. Not every member of a film crew is performing an artistic function, yet they collaboratively work to make a film. How is that any more or less art than a video game?
Entertainment = Not Ert?
If the main argument is that games are not art because they are purely entertainment, I would argue, then, that certain films are not art. If they are created with the sole purpose of entertaining and not to create some change or deliver some message or idea or emotion, aren’t they just the same as some video games? I mean, is anyone really going to argue that Transformers 2 was art? Because I will take that bet.
Art = Intent.
Even if it is bad art, if the creator intended it as art, then it is art. Since we do not always know the intent of the creators of individual games, it is hard to say they are or are not art. Perhaps some games are art and some games are not.
Level design takes skill and creativity, so do game mechanics and, of course, graphics. Is programming an art? I know programmers who would definitely say it is– and I agree with them.
Personally, when I set about to design a game, I intend it to be a form of art. I intend to create something that is engaging and emotionally stirring to the players. I hope to tell a story. Not unlike other art forms we may know. Like, you know, all of them.
As an artist, it’s my prerogative to say when I’ve created art. It’s other people’s prerogative to say whether or not what I created sucks, but the creation is mine.
Game Motivations
Jun 15th
A little while ago a few friends from the game dev community were all sending out invites to a new(ish) Zynga game, FrontierVille. I jumped into the game to see how it played versus other social games I’ve tried, and immediately I thought about other game experiences I had growing up.
First of all, I think it’s important to say that have a love-hate relationship with “get more stuff” (aka simulation) games. I was all about Animal Crossing. I played the hell out of Harvest Moon. I had a long stint with the Sims. I even recently played through Kingdom for Keflings. These types of games are appealing to me because they’re pretty mindless and relaxing, and make you feel a sense of accomplishment over and over while still not giving you a huge payoff. That lack of payoff is the same reason why there’s the “hate” part of the love-hate statement. I usually lose interest in these games after about 10-20 hours of play, because they just don’t ever end. There’s no way I can win– and if I’m not winning I like to be roleplaying or engaging emotionally, and there isn’t any way to do that, either.
The social games phenomenon has just repackaged those exact same games and added the caveat of friends playing alongside you and sometimes leaderboards as replacements for the gamist “I can win” motivation. I doubt the sustainability of this type of experience. Here’s why.
The Harvest Moon Cycle
When I played Harvest Moon- which holds the record for the longest time I’ve played any sim game- I was working toward a very tangible goal. Harvest Moon is uncannily similar to FarmVille, et al.– you use sparse resources and energy to build up your awesome homestead. Here’s the motivation trick: Every winter, a pixelated spirit appeared and assessed how I’d done as a farmer in the previous year. It usually went like this:
Spirit Appears
Spirit: “You didn’t do very well.”
Me: “WTF ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT SPIRIT!? I have like 1 million cows and chickens and moneys! I hate you!”
Then I’d go back to working harder to please the damn spirit, until I finally gave up because I figured that I’d never win.
The Facebook Game Cycle
So imagine all the same elements of Harvest Moon, but your friends are playing in their own homesteads and you can give them presents or help them out, hopefully garnering favor and reciprocity. In some games you are also ranked in various areas against everyone else who plays. There’s also the monetization factor. If you don’t want to wait to build up your character over time, you can throw money at the game and it will enable you to get a lot of cool stuff very fast. Last I saw, about 2-3% of players monetize in games of this type.
Here’s why I don’t think the model is sustainable: it relies on guilt as a central motivator. If your friends are playing and ask you to play, you may join up. If they ask you for a virtual item, you might be able to give it to them. There’s a heavy guilt factor if you don’t send your friends gifts when they send them to you. Quite frankly, guilt is a crappy motivator.
Extrinsic Vs. Intrinsic Motivation
Truly excellent motivation is intrinsic, not extrinsic (thanks Daniel Pink). Guilt is an extrinsic motivator. I don’t want to play because it’s fun, but because I feel bad if I don’t play.
Game designs sometimes forget that player motivation is central to the playability, success and sustainability of a game. If a game is not making the player happy, it is a failure.
In games, engagement may equal monetization, but engagement does not equal good design.
Why People Don’t Do B2B ARGs
Jun 10th
While there still are a few people playing the HubSpot ARG, the overwhelming majority of people are not paying much attention to it. I think that this is caused in part by the fact that many marketers (who are the target audience) just plain aren’t interested in the type of content that this style of ARG presents, and the fact that there was a good deal of negativity surrounding the launch and how we implemented it.
In retrospect, I wish that I had made it clearer from the beginning that it was a game. I had assumed that there were enough hints for people to be able to figure it out very quickly and know right away that it was not real– that was a bad assumption.
I’ve learned that sometimes you just plain have to tell people and not rely on them being clever. There were a number of hints that I thought would give it away immediately: Firstly, there was a teaser puzzle sent out the day before in the Inbound Marketing Magnet newsletter that was labeled “let the games begin” the solution to the puzzle reveals a storyline teaser. The next (small) hint was the lawyer signing the cease and desist letter with “Warm regards”. No one says that in a cease and desist letter! The next hint was if you went to the “Save IMU” landing page and noticed that there was a lot of white space between the text and the form (or looked at the source code), you could highlight to see the secret message directing you to the CIA. Then of course there’s the fact that the Kronus Media website is ridiculous. The list goes on… but I don’t want to belabor the point.
The real takeaway for me was that I thought it was clear that it was a game, but others did not, and that was a huge flaw in the game’s design.
The other major takeaway is that you have to design games that people in your target audience want to play. This is exactly why there are 80 million people playing Farmville while only 12 million people play a complex game like World of Warcraft. Farmville figured out exactly the attention span and apparently the material that is the least offensive or controversial for a mass market audience.
I’ve heard it said a lot that ARGs will be the most successful based on their story, but I would argue that this isn’t true for all audiences. I came up with a detailed and interesting story with a lot of room for player impact, yet the audience simply did not care. If I had designed a game around getting badges, though, I have a feeling it would have resonated much better and ended up much more successful.
I’m going to be wrapping the game up earlier than planned, having learned some very important lessons about what people in this audience want, and writing a whitepaper about the experience and the data that people will be able to get from HubSpot.
And Miles To Go Before I Sleep…
Jun 3rd
Today was the dawn of a new era in B2B marketing, or so we like to think.
For months I’ve been working on the first ever B2B ARG for a business/marketing audience. The reactions are, well, mixed. Some people are calling us visionaries, others are calling us frauds. I think the overall reaction is 80/20 positive/negative, and a lot of people who start out skeptical will lose their doubt once they get a good explanation of the risk we’re taking and why.
The game is being run for HubSpot, and let me first say that it is not a “ploy” or a “hoax” or a “joke” or even any kind of “promotion”. It is an interactive experience, and one I have worked very hard on to make a rich and enjoyable experience for those involved. There is intrigue, there are secrets to be uncovered, there is action and excitement, there are fun and interesting characters. It’s like a television show that you participate in instead of watching. Do we want to get more people involved with or aware of HubSpot through the game? Of course– it’s no fun if no one plays along. But the game isn’t trying to trick anyone into doing anything they don’t want to do.
I think there is a natural tendency for people to be upset when they feel like they’ve been fooled about something, but most of the time they come around and can look more objectively and say, “Oh, okay, I get it. That’s cool.” Some people can’t do that. Some people just don’t like games. It breaks my heart, but it’s true. Some people think that the best kind of scavenger hunt is reading the NYTimes classifieds, or the best kind of play is one you watch from the safety of your audience seat. Personally, I couldn’t disagree more.
We’re all entitled to our own opinions.
I’ll be writing more about the progress of the game as it goes along, I especially want to write about the challenges of designing for a business/marketing audience versus a gamer/ARGer audience.
In the meantime, I’ll attempt to catch a wink of sleep here and there.
Links pertaining to the ARG:
Trailhead – How it started
CIA – Community where players go to solve clues/interact
Behind the Curtain – Out-of-game blog where we attempt to explain what is going on.