Chardish Games

I had a brief conversation on Twitter with the designer Alexander Ocias. This is the same guy who made the very interesting Loved, which is a clever piece worth a few minutes of your time to play through if you haven’t yet. Anyway, I saw this tweet of his: 

I’ll include a function in my games to turn off the audio the same day I include a function to turn off the graphics. And the gameplay.

This was consistent with neither my personal experiences nor my discussions with others. So I replied:

@AlexanderOcias Is remapping the controls a grave sin too? What about any other way to meet the user’s wants? Audio controls are a courtesy.

Alexander responded:

@chardish Absolutely, if controls need remapping: they’re not good enough. Other ‘ways’ are granted if it improves the experience for all.

I strongly disagree with this, and I felt an explanation deserved more characters than a tweet.

First, let me say that I sympathize with Alexander. He’s clearly of the school of thought that games can be more than just mere diversions. Game design, of course, includes a number of artistic choices, and there’s no reason to believe that control choice can’t be used for artistic effect. (Indeed, Alexander appears to have done just that - load up Loved, and try using the WASD keys to move around.)

But games aren’t just art, they’re also software. Part of good software design (and I speak as one with a background in software engineering and computer science) is anticipating the needs of the user and taking said needs into account when designing the software.

So I take contention with Alexander’s statement: “If controls need remapping, they’re not good enough.” Good enough for what? The statement suggests that Alexander knows the needs of his users, which is simply untrue.

Control remapping exists because different users have different needs. Consider the following scenarios:

• a player has a keyboard that has one or more sticky or broken keys, and would rather not use those keys
• a player has a foreign-language keyboard (such as AZERTY, popular in Francophone regions, or perhaps a keyboard lacking Latin characters at all)
• a player has a keyboard model preventing the simultaneous pressing of two keys that can be pressed simultaneously on the designer’s keyboard
• a player is playing on a device without a physical keyboard (such as a mobile phone)
  
• a player has a physical disability impairing the use of one hand or limb, and is perhaps using a one-handed keyboard

…or one of potentially dozens of other scenarios I haven’t thought of. Since there are real technological or physical impediments that might prevent someone from being able to interact with my game, and I have no realistic way of anticipating every possible user interaction scenario, I have two choices as a designer:

• design games in such a way that if the player’s computer setup differs from mine, I can include reasonable faculties for the player to make adjustments,
• or, alternatively, design the game exclusively for people with setups exactly like mine, and treat it as a happy coincidence if others are able to play my game as well.

One of these attitudes treats the player as a participant in an interactive experience; the other ignores her actual needs in favor of the designer’s wants.

I’m not saying that including a control remapping option in every single game is or should be mandatory. What I object to is Alexander’s claim that there can be a good control scheme that works for everyone, and an inability to discover it is a failure on the designer’s part.

So how does the mute button factor into this? Much like a control remapping feature, it’s a courtesy for players with unexpected needs. Consider some hypothetical scenarios:

• a player wishes to play the game quietly, in order to avoid disturbing others, yet wants to be able to hear notification sounds (such as an incoming email, IM, or internet phone call)
• the player’s computer is being used to play music for others in the room, and game audio would disturb the others
• the player is using her computer to play music, and doesn’t want to pause the music to play the game (is this such a crime?)

Admittedly, these are less critical scenarios, but the same design choice is there: accommodate the player’s needs, or ignore the player’s needs. And, in the above cases, if the game doesn’t meet the player’s needs, which are immediate, and probably come before the game itself - the player will simply choose not to play the game. Is this preferable to letting her play with the audio muted?

Alexander’s hypothetical “function to turn off the gameplay” isn’t that unreasonable, either. DJ Hero has exactly that function, a “Party Mode” that allows the player to treat the game as a jukebox, listening to its soundtracks and watching its animations while disabling gameplay elements. Tetsuya Mizaguchi’s Rez includes a mode called “travelling” that makes the player invulnerable and disables scoring, allowing her to treat the game as an experience for its own sake rather than aiming for particular gameplay outcomes. Both of these choices were born out of the idea that the player might wish to experience the game in ways other than the designer’s main intent.

I applaud the respect Alexander has for the artistry of making games, and of the attention to detail he clearly exhibits. However, games should meet the needs of players, rather than insinuating that the players meet the demands of the game. (And yes, I’m quite aware of the irony of that statement, in light of Loved!)