A Game Design Document is a Living Organism because it is
not bound by physical laws of determinism. This means that, unlike a code,
which has to mechanically carry out a set of preordained functions in a totally
controlled environment, prone only to the wear and tear of the occasional bug
or virus, a Design Document has what Carl Jung calls an Autonomy. It operates
on its own terms. This presents several planes of irony, therefore. On one
hand, one might suggest that one can have total control of any system that is
not bound by mechanical laws, because to that same extent as it is malleable it
can be manipulated according to one’s own will. But in actuality this is a
naïve oversimplification. It presupposes two postulates: that there is no
flexibility in programming, either for the Programmer or the Code Itself, and
that any flexibility in Design must by necessity answer to one agent: the
Designer, and not the Game Itself. My contention is that this is a false
presumption, because it is a presumption in the first place, devoid of
experience. In actuality, experience demonstrates that the Game has a LIFE OF
ITS OWN. It develops of its own accord, and it merely finds its EXPRESSION
THROUGH the Designer. And only years of experience in the field could have
brought me to this conclusion. True: I was operating in solitude a great deal
of the time. Yet the company of fellow designers at Game Jams never alleviated
the sense of powerlessness that a Designer at times feels. As an Artist, he is
as haunted by his Vision as Mozart was haunted by his Father’s Ghost, or as
Hamlet suffered the same fate before him. The Unconscious mind supplies him
with a set of options to choose from, and even when he has only just begun to
make these choices is he all ready involved within the Game. There is no
distinction between the Game and the Experience of the Game, because the
materials employed to create a game, be they digital or physical, do not become
a Game until they are EXPERIENCED in a RELATIONSHIP. This Relationship could
all so be called the “Game”, implying that the Game has an ontological ground
(its Being, in the sense that a Tree that falls when no one hears it, whilst it
makes no sound, IS yet nonetheless a Tree in its own right). If the medium is
not the message but simply a medium, this Being is not summed up in lines of
code or even in design documents; these are maps, not territories. The Being would
in this case have to precede the Conception of the Game itself. Hence the
Concept that a Design Document indicates is only at best a Map of the Game
Territory. Any reductionistic attempt to understand the Game NOT through the
Relationship and Experience of Play but rather through the maps that are
employed to bring the Platonic form into Worldly manifestation is a crime
against the player, whose experience is limited the moment that he begins to
think ABOUT the Game. In order to fully PRODUCE a game, a Designer must
therefore have the same sort of open mind (not in the undiscerning sense, but
rather in the PERCEIVING sense) that an Ideal Player would have.
When the Subconscious Mind produces ideas, the Designer is
all ready playing a game WITH the Subconscious Mind, on whose grounds all of
Existence might very well be a game (as per Watts’ Ontology and Cosmology, upon
which I expound, very summarily, in the previous essay). Each decision in this
Game limits the Designer’s options, so that in order to progress down the
Game-making path the Designer must work with a limited Inventory of Ideas that
can only be applied within certain confines intrinsic to the Game Medium. These
limitations are both PSYCHOLOGICAL and TECHNICAL, the former being a function
of the Human Mind and the latter a function of the Code. (In some cases: a
literal Code Function.) Once the Designer gives up, his game is incomplete. He
quits the Game prior to conception. It’s Game Over for Design. In this very
crucial sense, the Game is only conceived UP UNTIL that point that the Designer
died within it, either killing himself volitionally or by some other error. The
Game as a Being remains, yet its Manifestation is unfinished until a Designer
loads it and continues towards its conclusion. In the same manner as the word
“painting” describes both the PROCESS of painting and the PRODUCT of painting –
THE painting – THE GAME describes the process of Development as well as the
Product and the Experiences and Relationships of the Players. And all of these
are manifestations of the Game as a Being. For this reason, we can lay to rest
the naïve common sense whose epistemology presupposes that a Designer has any
sort of “Absolute Control” over his Design Document. He is simply the
messenger. Like any other player, he has choice. But the objectives are limited
by the Autonomous Being he is bringing out of the Platonic Realm and into a Playable
Reality. As above, so below.
Dm.A.A.
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