The Design Document as Conceit.
Dmitry Andreyev.
Morgan.
Game Design.
The question of whether or not a Game Design
Document is necessary towards the creation of a Video Game begins to find its
answer in the deeper, underlying question: is it necessary for Games to be
developed? All though some might want to cheat by arguing that the question of
a game’s teleology is secondary to the question of its creation, the fact
remains that those values that are essential to the conception of a game are
ultimately decisive in its birth and development. If there is no necessity to
design a game, because it serves no ultimate teleological purpose, then the
manner of the game’s execution is just as arbitrary as the decision to execute
it. Yet if a game MUST be made, as though some divinity had commissioned it or
some internal biological function had necessitated it, then naturally the
matter of development becomes grave in its playfulness. At that point, it is
essential to examine the nature of every step and to ensure that it relates to
the overlying purpose. As above, so below. To that same extent that we employ
the extraverted intuition function in order to visualize an ultimate outcome,
we must exercise the introverted intuition in order to hone in on the minute
details. And this begins at the earliest step: that of the Game Design Document.
In the same manner that we should ask whether or not a game NEEDS to be made,
we must ask ourselves upon having resolved this former question whether or not
a thorough map of its territory must be made. I will argue that because the map
is not the territory, the answer is ultimately negative. Yet this does not mean
that I answer arbitrarily. Rather we MUST understand that it MAY NOT BE
necessary, so that we know for a fact that we are not wasting our time in
pursuing it or wasting an opportunity in foregoing it.
Shigeru Miyamoto is reputed to emphasize the
value of the Design Document repeatedly in seminars and interviews. The
designer for Mario and other global
franchises says in one interview with Vox that “early on, the people who made
video games […] were technologists […] were programmers […] were hardware
designers. But I wasn’t. I was a designer; I studied industrial design. I was
an artist; I drew pictures.”(Miyamoto 1). When Shigeru was commissioned to
design a game to replace the colossal flop that was Nintendo’s Arcade Game Radar Scope, he drew on something hitherto
unheard of in video games: Pop-eye the Sailor Man. By translating the heroic
machismo of the old King Features cartoon character into the format of a simple
platform game with barrels, a gorilla, and a damsel in distress, Miyamoto
elevated games into an art form by incorporating mythological significance from
OUTSIDE THE MEDIUM ITSELF into the work. Considering that his designs were one
of the earliest known instances of a character having been conceived prior to
the writing of the code for his game, it is easy to jump (as though over a
barrel) to the conclusion that this sort of a priori approach to game design,
which relies heavily upon foregone concepts and Platonic visions, is the hallmark
of true artistry, and that if games MUST be made for the same reason that a
song HAS TO BE written, then they HAVE to follow this prescribed structure,
which in turn prescribes a structure for the games themselves. Yet several
details send this conclusion down the proverbial green tube. One salient fact
is that when Miyamoto penned Mario, he knew NOTHING ABOUT VIDEO GAMES. This
means that he simply envisioned what he might have LIKED to play, and he
designed it by drawing (quite literally) on knowledge from Industrial Design.
Yet for all his knowledge of that civil science he could not yet bring himself
to avail himself of the subtle science of writing a Game Design Document,
simply because no such science yet existed. Miyamoto DID pioneer the concept in
later years, despite the fact that he had begun with a near-totally blank
slate. Yet here an other salient fact looms: that Miyamoto Himself does NOT
REGARD HIS GAMES AS WORKS OF ART. “I’m
a designer. I don’t think of myself as creating works, I really think of myself
as creating products for people to enjoy,” he said. “That’s why I’ve always
called my games products rather than works of art.” (Miyamoto 2) Miyamoto, ever
the nebulous genius, has held contradictory stances on the sophomoric debate
about whether or not games are THEMSELVES an art. Put plainly, however, he can
only speak for himself.
True artistry must by necessity break
with tradition in order to convey a Spiritual Message. It is for this reason
that artists are forever pushing the envelope, experimenting with new media,
and drawing on various disciplines from outside the craft itself in order to
imbue the craft with spiritual meaning, so that the created world is no longer
a utilitarian “escape” but rather the expression of an internal journey that is
then made external. It is for this reason that it is usually stunning for a
game designer who is passionate about his work to imagine that any one would
regard his brain-child as though it were merely a means to an end. The reality
that we create when we develop a game is not an “escape” from “reality”; it IS
a reality in and of itself!! So if an artist creates a world with that intent,
and if there are some messages that cannot be conveyed as palpably in theatre
or painting as they can be in an interactive game, then the video game rests
outside of the domain of sports and is closer to the works of Shakespeare. If
the artist must forever push the envelope in his or her choice of medium, then
who is to appoint himself to denounce a medium for being new? To appeal to the
authority of a man who confesses that he is a Designer does not discredit the
medium; Dali himself was accused of being a Designer. To agree with Miyamoto
that synthesizing elements in order to create a product for consumption is to
fall short of artistry is to ignore what we know about Shakespeare: that he too
played to the pit, and he managed at once to appeal to the lower class
audiences as well as the expensive theatre seats by synthesizing elements that
conveyed the experience of living in MULTIPLE REALITIES AT THE SAME TIME.
Aldous Huxley posited that the Human Being lives in as many as twenty different
universes at once, some of which are even incommensurable. He says that “we
must make the best of not only BOTH worlds, because there are more than two –
but of ALL the worlds we live in.” (Huxley.) It is for this reason that Huxley
praised Shakespeare for Shakespeare’s PLAYFUL use of language in painting
multiple narratives at once, not unlike what Jonathan Blow would later do with
code in his seminal debut Braid. Huxley
understood, as does Blow, a fellow Berkeley intellectual, that the simple fact
that worlds are incommensurable does not mean that one is any more REAL than
the Other. And this is all so apparent to any one who has had to not only
create characters like Link and Mario but to oversee the production of a game that
would by NECESSITY REQUIRE that it meet Huxley’s criterion for Superior
Artistry in order for it to EVEN SELL. Admittedly, Miyamoto’s humility might be
simply the product of upbringing in a famously stoic culture. What appeals to
so many players about the original Legend
of Zelda is that it was inspired by Miyamoto’s childhood (Hanson). At any
rate, if we allow him to cede his authority as a Creator to the naïve public
then we have all ready begun to act as designers instead of artists. Likewise,
if we appeal to any elite opinion as to an ABSOLUTE authority, then we have all
ready begun to target an audience, and we bite our own critique. So the matter
of the Game Design Document, and of game design in general, must presuppose
that the Developer is an Artist who has a Teleological Duty to entertain the
public with the products of his own psyche, knowing well that he is engaged in
a sacred dialogue between himself and the player, in a manner that transcends
practical concerns and echoes the first attempts made by hominids to live a
now-recognizably HUMAN Life.
If
the game MUST be made, then it is all ready like an organism. It must be
nurtured, but it retains an autonomy. No developer has absolute control over
his brain-children. Invariably maps are scrapped in the development of a game
as development obstacles become more challenging and solutions become more
rewarding. The process of game design is in ITSELF a journey and a game. This
was why Marie-Louise von Franz, a Jungian Analyst operating in a school that
stressed playfulness and fantasy as essential to psychological health, stressed
the importance of surrendering “the
utilitarian attitude of conscious planning in order to make way for the inner
growth of the personality. “ (von Franz) This clinical prescription is to Jung
what de Beauvoir’s Ethic of Ambiguity was to Sartre. It supplements what Jung
says when he proclaims that “One of the most difficult tasks men
can perform, however much others may despise it, is the invention of good games and it
cannot be done by men out of touch with their instinctive selves.” (van der
Post)
One critic that is notoriously
opinionated on the matter of Game Design, from entertainment to ethics, is
Jonathan Blow. Blow’s games are by no mistake cited in lists of arguments for
the status of Games as Art; he himself cites Buckminster Fuller when he claims
that “the medium is the message” (Blow). Yet Blow, whose comments have even
been so diverse and controversial as to suggest, within the heated liberal
climate of the Bay Area Computer Intelligentsia, that “women are biologically
less interested in tech than men” (Resetera), has near to NOTHING to say about
the concept of a formal document, preferring to develop his own philosophical
musings into a binding Universal dogma (if I may be so bold as to criticize
someone outside of myself for doing that).
It’s true that the best journeys tend
to start with a map. It is by no coincidence that Tolkien’s twentieth-century
faerie tale The Hobbit did so and that
this same work was referenced by analogy to Roberta Williams’ early notes for King’s Quest: “For the right kind of nerd, to have her
original notebooks sitting in front of you is like getting to flip through a
first draft of The Hobbit.” (Kohler) Yet what was innovative when games first
imported literature from a handmade medium is hardly necessary now, especially
in an age when computer literacy is no longer a specialty (as it was for
Roberta’s husband) but a requirement for survival itself on Planet Earth. Is it
helpful to have a map? Yes. But the map is no longer the territory. And the
G.D.D. is no G.O.D.
Work Cited:
Blow, Jonathan. “Game Design: the Medium is
the Message”. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxFzf6yIfcc)
Hanson, Arin. “Sequelitis - ZELDA: A Link to the Past vs. Ocarina of Time.” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOC3vixnj_0)
Huxley, Aldous. “The Mike Wallace Interview.”
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ePNGa0m3XA)
Kohler, Chris. “Deep Inside This Museum Lies the Holy Grail of Adventure Games.” (https://www.wired.com/2013/10/kings-quest-design-documents/)
Miyamoto, Shigeru. “How the Inventor of Mario
Designs a Game.” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-NBcP0YUQI)
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