Imagining New

Game Styles
Greg Costikyan
CEO, Manifesto Games
greg@manifestogames.com
Game Design is:
 Specification of
 UI
 Playerverbs
 Underlying gameplay algorithms
 But normally concerned with implementing
a game of an existing game style
What is a Game Style?
 ~= to “game genre”...
 But in games, genre is not thematic (science
fiction, the action movie) but tied to a set of
gameplay dynamics (FPS, RTS, platformer,
etc.)...
 A game style is a collection of a set of
game mechanics that together make for
engaging play.
For example:
 The RTS is characterized by
 Resource gathering
 Building construction
 Tech trees
 Buildings create units and/or improve tech
 Diverse unit capability
 Realtime combat with multiple units on each
side
Game Styles are Ancient
 Per Parlett (Oxford History of
Boardgames), virtually all classic games
belong to categories that are definable not
only by mechanics, but also by historical
derivation
Example:The Chess Family
 Shared mechanics:
 Capture by replacement
 Bilateral symmetry and equality of material
 Functionally differentiated pieces
 Play by movement & capture, not placement
 Victory through capture of a single piece
Chess Family (con’t)
 Shared history:
 Chess, Shogi, Chinese chess, etc., all derive
from the Indian game of Chaturanga (approx.
600 A.D.
 In other words, these are “game styles” in
the same sense as modern ones.
The last 30 years
 Have seen an enormous surge in new
game styles, in both digital and paper
media: wargames, RPGs, TCGs,
platformers, RTS, FPS, LARP, etc., etc.,
etc….
 The rise of the game industry is not just a
story of new enabling technology—it’s also
the story of a ferment of creativity
Creation of New Game Styles...
 Is vital to the growth of the field.
 Each new style 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
The Space of All Possible Games

 Most will be uninteresting.

 But there are local maxima, where some
fruitful combination of mechanics breeds
interesting gameplay
 Once a local maxima is discovered, many
games exploring the possibilities of that
set of mechanics can be designed
Innovation is Driven by Finding
New Maxima
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)
New Game Styles
 1953: Board Wargame (Tactics)
 1973: Adventure Game (Colossal Cave > Myst)
 1973: Tabletop Roleplaying (Dungeons &
Dragons)
 1974: Vehicle Sim (Atari Tank)
 1977: LARP (Dragohir)
 1978: MUD
New Game Styles (con’t)
 1979: Flight Sim (Sub-Logic Flight Simulator)
 1981: Platformer (Donkey Kong)
 1981: Computer RPG (Ultima 1)
 1984: Graphic Adventure (King’s Quest)
 1985: Dynamic Puzzle (Tetris)
 1991: First MMOG (Neverwinter Nights)
 1992: RTS (Dune II)
New Game Styles (con’t)
 1993: FPS (Doom)
 1996: Rhythm Game (Parappa the
Rapper)
 2000: Autonomous Agent Game (The
Sims)
 2001: Collectible Miniatures Game (Hero
Clix)
Slowdown Since the 80s
 Possibly because “the videogame” is more
mature—
 But, IMO, because the increasing
conservatism of publishers makes it
harder to get funding for anything novel
(unless your name is Will Wright)
How Do We Go About Trying to
Invent a New Game Style?
 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.”
 Perhaps looking at 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
 Location
 Social networking
 Mobility/Ubiquity/Pervasiveness
 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
 May be hard to work through the retail
channel, but an obvious approach for
games aiming to fill a niche—e.g., Short
Hike, a space station simulator
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?
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)
“Four and Twenty Ways”
 Doubtless there are other ways to
approach the problem, but these four are
worth thinking about as a start:
 How can new technology be used to create
gameplay no one has ever seen before?
 How can we create a game on a subject no
one has touched (or touched recently)?
Approaches

 Where and how else can we sell games, and

what kind of games would work there?
 How does a different approach to UI give us
new opportunities?
“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 tGime 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.