Games, Genres, and Why
Independent Games are Vital
Greg Costikyan
Texas Independent Games
Conference
7/22/06
What is a Genre?
“...2. A category of artistic composition
characterized by a particular style,
form, or content (a fine introduction to
twelve-tone music for those who have
had little experience with the ~ - Arthur
Berger)”
--Webster’s Third Int’l Dictionary
The Nature of Genre Varies with
Artform
• Novels: Thematically (science fiction,
romance, mystery, Western)
• Music: By nature of sound (choral,
emo, drum & bass, Gangsta, the Blues)
• Film: By the nature of the emotion
evoked (drama, comedy, romantic
comedy, horror)
How Do We Think of “Game Genres”
Today?
Reflexive’s
Genre
List
How Do We Think of “Game Genres”
Today?
How
Gametap
Does it
How Do We Think of “Game Genres”
Today?
...and Strategy First
This is Braindead
• “Style, Form or Content.”
• Do these people actually play games?
• This isn’t how we actually talk about
games.
• We use terms like FPS, RTS, MMO,
graphic adventure...
Games Have been Implemented for
Many Media:
From the
Neolithic….
Tewa Kiva Altar at Hano
Showing Gaming Reeds;
Tewa Indians, Arizona
Games of the North American Indians,
Stewart Culin, Smithsonian Institution,
1907
To Modern Digital Media
Will Wright’s Spore
So The Medium Doesn’t Define
Genre
• “Handheld” isn’t a genre.
• Neither is “casual downloadable”
What is a game genre? Or does the term
have any meaning for games?
Parlett Divides All Classic Games By
Shared Mechanics
• Race games: (tracks, victory by being
first to the end)
• Games of Leaping Capture (take
opposing pieces by jumping—
Checkers)
• Games of Territorial Occupation (control
the board by piece placement—Go)
The Terms We Use Also Characterize
Games by Shared Mechanics
• RTS: resource extraction, building
construction, real-time combat
• FPS: first-person view, 1
character/player, power-ups, combat
with ranged weapons
• Adventure game: inventory, puzzles,
unlockable areas, story exposed via
play
For Games, Genre Is Characterized
• By shared mechanics.
• As Parlett shows, this has been true
since the earliest folk games...
• And as the way we instinctively talk and
think about games today, it remains
true.
Here’s Our List:
Game Genres
• Think of the potential space of all
possible games.
• Most of that space is occupied by
games that would not be interesting.
• There are local maxima of games that
are (or would be) interesting.
• Established game genres exist where
we’ve discovered local maxima.
Understood Game Genres
• There are many: boardgames of
replacement capture (Chess), card
games of combination (Poker), RTS
(Warcraft), FPS (Quake), the trading
card game (Magic)…
• Most games are variations on an
understood style…
Innovation is Driven by Discovering
New Genres
c. 2000BC: Track game with blocking
(Royal Game of Ur > Backgammon)
c. 800AD: Game of Replacement Capture
(Shaturanga > Chess, Shogi)
c. 1200AD: Game of Leaping Capture
(Alquerque > Checkers)
1756: Thematic track game (A Journey
Through Europe > Candyland)
New Game Styles (con’t)
• c. 1850: Trivia Game (Grandmama’s Game
of Useful Knowledge > Trivial Pursuit)
• 1856: Word Interpolation Game (Komikal
Konversation Kards > Mad Libs)
• c. 1890: Fishing Game (Fish Pond >
Operation)
• 1910: Military Miniatures (Little Wars >
Warhammer)
• 1953: Board Wargame (Tactics)
New Game Styles (70s)
• 1972: Adventure Game (Colossal
Cave)
• 1973: RPG (Dungeons & Dragons)
• 1974: Vehicle Sim (Atari Tank)
• 1977: LARP (Dragohir)
• 1978: MUD
• 1979: Flight Sim (Sub-Logic Flight
Simulator)
New Game Styles (80s)
•
•
•
•
1981: Platformer (Donkey Kong)
1981: Computer RPG (Ultima 1)
1984: Graphic Adventure (King’s Quest)
1985: Dynamic Puzzle (Tetris)
New Game Styles (90s)
• 1991: First MMOG (AOL Neverwinter
Nights)
• 1992: RTS (Dune II)
• 1993: FPS (Doom)
• 1994 TCG (Magic: The Gathering)
• 1996: Rhythm Game (Parappa the
Rapper)
New Game Styles (00s)
• 2001: Collectible Miniatures Game
(Hero Clix)
• 2003: Big Urban Games (BUG >
ConQwest
• 2004: Alternative Reality Game (The
Beast)
....NONE OUT OF OUR INDUSTRY
SINCE 1996
What Happened?
• Budgets too high to risk anything on an
unproven game style.
• Ameliorate risk by sticking with licenses
& franchises
• “No Stars” means no talent with the
clout to force originality through
– Will Wright the obvious and perhaps lone
exception
What Will Happen? (if nothing
changes...)
• Budgets keep rising
• The range of genres that the industry
can continue to offer will continue to
narrow
• The market will ultimately decline as
what was once the most fertile and
innovative creative artform on the
planet continues its trend toward
sterility
But Maybe ESD Changes the Game
• Break the constraints of the retail
channel
• At least the possibility of distribution
without an 8-figure budget
• Less sales compression=opportunity for
word-of-mouth.
• Xbox Live Arena, Steam, Manifesto,
etc., etc.
How to Survive as an Independent?
• ...When your budget is two or more
orders of magnitude smaller than the
majors...
• ...And when consumers are trained to
look for glitzy graphics?
Go for the Blue Ocean
• That is, go where others don’t.
• Racing games? RTS? FPS? You
cannot compete.
• Do the things that EA dare not.
The Publishers Need 1m Unit Sales
• ...To repay their bloated budgets.
• So they can’t support MOST of the
game styles that still have fanatic
followings....
• Because you can’t sell a million units.
• But we don’t need to.
Adventure Games
Wargames
Sim/Tycoon Games
Shooters that AREN’T FPSes
Shmups
4X
Turn-Based Strategy
Sports Management
Look to the Past
• Who today is doing modern versions of
the great games of yesterday?
• Where is....
Balance of Power
M.U.L.E.
Seven Cities of Gold
....Or... Look for New Genres!
• New genres grow the market...
• ... creates a new audience
• By contrast, games in existing styles
mostly sell to existing fans of that
genre.
• For the field to continue to grow, we
need to continue to find new game
styles
Creating New Genres
• Hard to do, but, if you succeed....
• You will make a huge amount of money
(id, Westwood, Wizards of the Coast...)
• And you will be as famous as Carmack
& Romero, Gygax & Arneson, or
Richard Garfield
• You will have materially advanced the
state of the art
How?
• Doubtless many ways to do it. As
Kipling says, “There are four and
twenty ways of writing tribal lays, and
every single one of them is right.”
• Some historical examples:
Doom & The FPS
• Attempts to do 3D even from early home
computer days (e.g., wireframe
dungeons in Ultima III)
• Plenty of 2D, third-person shooting
games (e.g., Castle Wolfenstein)
• Licensed by id for “Wolfenstein 3D”—
essentially wireframe graphics with 2D
textures...
Doom (con’t)
• Wolfenstein 3D: opponents as 2D sprites,
limited variety, choice of weapons, 1st person
perspective...
• Doom nails it: wide variety of opponents,
textures give better illusion of truly being in a
3D space (though still not true 3D)
• Often the case that it takes several tries to
really find the “sweet spot” in terms of
mechanics and gameplay.
Doom (con’t)
• Fundamentally, the FPS results from
technical improvements; with 286 machines,
we finally have enough processing power to
get decent-looking 3D
• Technical improvements often contribute to
the establishment of new game styles: e.g.,
color printing > the commercial boardgame;
cheap die-cuttinng > the board wargame…
Looking to Technology
• So one approach is to look at emerging
technology and ask “How can this be used to
create interesting gameplay?”
• Physics
• AI
• Social networking
• Cross-platform/mobility/ubiquity
• Procedurally-generated content
SimCity
• Will Wright wanted to
do a game about city planning
• Spent over a year doing research
• Mid-80s machines barely able to keep
up with the necessary processing to
provide the simulation
• Successful despite technical limitations.
SimCity (con’t)
• In other words, Wright looked to a
subject matter no one else was
addressing, and figured how to treat it
in a game context
• And it turned out some the same
techniques were applicable to other
subjects (e.g., railroads, theme
parks)…
Looking to Subject Material
• A difficult approach, because often the
existing techniques don’t work
• Can sometimes be commercially very
successful—e.g., Deer Hunter
• Poses a marketing challenge, too, as
your prospective audience probably
doesn’t visit Gamespot or IGN
Looking to Subject Material
• But there are scads of things no one is doing:
–
–
–
–
–
–
Macroeconomic simulations
Social interactions
Making roleplaying meaningful in digital games
Games-as-theater
Geopolitics
The love story…
Magic: The Gathering
• In the late 80s/early 90s,
tabletop RPGs began to sell
through comic stores as well
as specialty game shops and
book stores
• Collectible card sets are also
often sold through comic
shops—the know how to stock
and sell them.
Magic (con’t)
• Garfield reasoned that a game build on
collectible cards would work through
this distribution channel
• And that an “exceptions game”
approach, whereby the base rules set
is simple but extended by rules on
other game components would work
(an idea drawn from Cosmic
Encounter)
Magic (con’t)
• Thus Magic was born—not out of a technical
advance or an approach to a theme—but
from a business idea
• Of course it helped that Garfield is a superb
designer…
• Deer Hunter another example—Wal-Mart
figured they could sell a game that appealed
to hunters (they sell a lot of guns) and went
to Vivendi with the idea.
Looking to a Business Channel
• Today, doing something innovative
almost demands distribution not
through the conventional channel
• What alternative channels can you
find?
• Assume that you cannot simply force
an existing game style down that
channel—that it must be tailored to the
specifics of that environment
Business Channel (con’t)
• What kind of game could you sell through
music outlets? (A CD-ROM is packaged like
a music CD….) What would get White
Stripes fans excited?
• What game would get warbloggers excited?
• What about evangelicals?
• LL Bean Wilderness Explorer?
Dune II
• Every element of Dune II exists in
previous games.
• Building construction (Civilization)
• Real-time military combat (Patton vs.
Rommel)
• Resource extraction (M.U.L.E.)
• Dune II combined them in a novel and
appealing way to create the RTS
Mix & Match
• Study other games
• Learn about as many different
mechanics as you can
• Try to figure out how to combine them
in ways no one has seen before.
• Game Design Patterns (Björk &
Holopainen) may be a useful reference
• Prototype & test
EyeToy
• Webcams had been
around for a while, and some PC
peripheral manufacturers had tried
offering games with a camera.
• And configuring a PC with drivers and
such is difficult
• Ron Festajo at Sony in the UK wanted
to make it as simple as possible
EyeToy
• His insight was to view EyeToy as a UI
input device, not a “camera”…
• And devise a series of simple games
built around different UI ideas—wiping
the screen, batting at objects, etc.
Starting from UI
• In other words, the germ of the idea
was in a different UI element
• A more elaborate example: Journey
into Wild Divine, controlled by heart
rate and sweat sensors
• Of course, it’s expensive to bundle
hardware with software…
Starting from UI
• But it isn’t always necessary:
– Katamari Damacy: How do I use a PS
controller to roll a ball.
– Oasis: I have a limited number of clicks,
and every click must count.
– Loop: Use the mouse to circle moving
objects
Starting from UI
• One approach: Imagine a novel
gameplay activity, and figure out how to
map it onto existing controls (Katamari
Damacy)
• Another: Figure out some way to use
existing controls that games don’t
normally use (Loop)
• A third: Provide a new input device
(EyeToy)
Other Possible Approaches?
• “Evoke an emotion” (Cloud)
• Take game design theory seriously and
try to use it (Play with Fire, Crawford’s
conception of ‘verbs’)
• Find an interesting mathematical idea
and try get a game out of it (Scram/nonlinear equations)
• Take lots of drugs?
“We Know What Works”
• …or so publishers say.
• But the game is a highly plastic
medium.
• So is software.
• We’ve only skirted the coast of a vast
virgin continent.
• 30 years of dynamic creativity must not
come to an end.
Whole cloth innovation is risky
• Most experiments will fail.
• The ones that work have the potential
to be vastly more successful than the
average game….
• And the designers we admire most are
those who have pulled this off—Will
Wright, Richard Garriott, Richard
Garfield, Gygax & Arneson….
Duty Now for the Future
• “If you don’t fail from time to time,
you’re not taking enough risks” –
Woody Allen
• As an industry, we need to take more
risks.
• The potential payoff is big.
• Go do something cool.