I have no words and I must design

"That's a good blog."

Pretty vague description, right?

Greg Costikyan talks about the importance of vocabulary in games design and emphasises the point that the words "good gameplay" is about as informative as our previously established "that game is fun" (which is to say, not at all).

In 1994, when the article "I Have No Words and I Must Design" was published there wasn't a lot of guidance or information surrounding the creation of games. Costikyan identified the lack of explanatory words as a major contributing factor to the deficit. After all, with no words of reference, how can we communicate what we mean? This blog would certainly be pointless without an understanding of the language used within.

The most fundamental aspect of understanding gameplay would be to define the necessary components for something to be called a game. While a game is and can be many things (football, poker, racing, computer games, board games, playing around in a field, etc.) the most important component to take away is that they must be interactive. Costikyan goes on to state that most games have some form of puzzle element, even in the simplest sense (push the object into the correct place [which object? Where? - these would be the puzzle elements, albeit extremely simple ones in the case of say, football]).

Of course this presents the suggestion that interactivity is all that is required for a game, and that interaction is the gameplay itself. Is a lightswitch a game? It has multiple states and can be interacted with, after all. One could even argue puzzle elements in the case of unfamiliar devices! Greg counters this however with the suggestion that a game only becomes one when whoever is interacting with it subconsciously chooses to care about a goal. This could depend on various factors, including but not limited to: story, setting, characters, mechanics, level of challenge, risk involved, etc.

As a result Costikyan comes to a conclusion that games are endogenous, that is, they create their own meaning (in this case, when the player cares about playing the game).

"To be a form of entertainment, you require some kind of structure - and you require endogenous meaning." G. Kostikyan (I Have No Words and I Must Design, 1994).

He also uses Marc LeBlanc's "Taxonomy of Game Pleasures" as a way to measure aspects of a game, recorded here as:

* Sensation - Visuals, audio and other direct sensory inputs.
* Fantasy - Something akin to 'suspension of disbelief' - allowing yourself to care about what is happening.
* Narrative - More 'drama' than narrative in a literal sense (although many games have great tales to tell). The progression of events that occur which make the 'story' of playing exciting.
* Challenge - Struggle and the desire to overcome this struggle.
* Fellowship - Sharing and experiencing with other people. Probably one of football's (as a national sport) greatest aspects and certainly a huge contributing factor to many MMORPGs.
* Discovery - Sometimes literal, but it's intention is in the idea of learning something unknown. Games of deception (such as poker or Magic: The Gathering) have this in the desire to work out your opponent.
* Expression - Simply self-expression. In the same way that people enjoy wearing certain clothes to identify who they, people also play games in certain ways to express themselves.
* Masochism - Not quite the sexual connotations the word usually applies. This means a more literal sense of 'submitting oneself', in this case it means to the rules of the game. The game tells us to do something, and we do it out of a desire to play the game. We CAN break the rules, but it would ruin the game (unless it's part of the game in which case we submit ourselves to that rule too) so we all pretend to care about the goals and we adhere to the game itself. Footballers could easily pick up that ball and punch every other player on their way to the net, but they often don't due to submission to the rules.

Costikyan finishes with advice for the budding games designer. He suggests that your game can be that much better and easier to design if you first think of what experiences you wish your player to have, and what makes a game what it is. With this understanding of what players will get out of your game, it will be much more easily iterated and slowly molded into that experience you want others to have.