Week 4 - Mechanics as Metaphor
There's a parable about quantity vs quality from one of my favorite inspiration books, Art and Fear:
The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the "quantity" group: fifty pound of pots rated an "A", forty pounds a "B", and so on. Those being graded on "quality", however, needed to produce only one pot -- albeit a perfect one -- to get an "A". Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the "quantity" group was busily churning out piles of work - and learning from their mistakes -- the "quality" group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.
So it turns out, it's better to make a ton a crap because at least you're learning from each piece of crap instead of theorizing in your head to make the perfect thing, because that perfect thing in your head is probably crap when it comes out anyway.
And so, for week 4's update, I switched from quality to quantity. Week 3's build was a single fairly polished, self-contained quest, but it's lacking something to make it grab you and make you want to play more. I'm hoping that by rapidly creating many more prototypes, I can come up with something more interesting than trying to add depth to a single ok prototype.
As for what to prototype in the first place, there's a classic game prototyping article that tells aspiring game designers to build the toy first:
Start with the core mechanic. Whether spring systems, swarm behavior, gravity, etc, it never took more than a few hours to get the basic theme up and running. This “toy” should be the core mechanic of the game minus any goals or decisions. There is no win or lose state, just a fun thing to play with.
In the article's case, they're brainstorming lots of different unrelated mechanics to see what feels good, but in my case, I want the game mechanics to contribute to the tone and theme of my game.
The very excellent game design channel, Extra Credits, talks about how games can convey meaning with their mechanics in addition to their writing in their Mechanics as Metaphor mini-series. They pose the question, "What is it we're exploring?", suggesting that you can use the answer to that question as the central design constraint to focus all aspects of the game.
For my game, I want to explore how an everyday joe schmo could possibly defeat cosmic horrors from another dimension. I want the player to be able to relate to the game, thinking "Oh yeah, that's totally something I'd do if an eldritch creature snuck into my all hands meeting."
As an IRL person, you won't just pick up a shotgun and start blasting away like most video game protagonists would. You're most likely a "knowledge worker", not a fighter. And by knowledge worker, I mean, good at sending a well timed email or looking stuff up on the internet, not uppercutting an elder god in the proboscis. Maybe you'll sprint after a departing train or dodge a homeless man's projectile vomit on your way to work, but that's about the extent of your physical prowess.
So since this post is a long already, in my next post I'm going to show some of the prototypes I've created, talk about my thinking behind them and how I might fit them into my game.
Thanks for reading! Next post I'll show you my Tekken-inspired creature dodging prototype, so don't forget to follow me on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, RSS, homing pigeon, smoke signal, etc.
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