Articulating Goals
Does this conversation sound familiar?
Person 1: Hey, I’m designing a game system. Can you give me some advice?
P2: Sure. What’s the goal?
P1: I want a system that’s detailed but rules light, and realistic but with super powers. It needs to be balanced, highly flexible. It should allow any kind of character and let the players to do anything they want. It needs to be immersive and, above all, fun!
P2: …
There are at least four problems with the above goals—and every game needs goals.
- Some of the goals are obviously contradictory. You can’t have it all.
- Many of the goals are basically universal: every game wants to be fun. So they aren’t very helpful to discriminate this game from other games.
- Many of the terms are so broad that they’re basically meaningless in terms of going about the actual design process. You want flexibility? Well, uh, okay. What kind of flexibility?
- The goals are too abstract—they don’t say what play should actually be like for the players. Realistic is fine, but to what end? What specifically about realism (whatever that may mean) is deemed useful, and why?
Until we can get beyond these simple, basic kinds of goals, our designs will inevitably be imitative, shallow, and probably won’t give us the kind of experiences we imagine them creating.