I read an interesting tweet from a fellow Virginia Tech alum last night.
Authorship in a game does not belong to the designer. It belongs to the player. Let's start embracing that and let people play how they want
— Manveer Heir (@manveerheir) February 21, 2012
If you don't know Manveer, he's a game designer. He helped deliver the Wolfenstein reboot for Raven Software a couple years back and now works on a little game called Mass Effect 3 for BioWare. You might have heard of it.
In some ways, the sentiment encompasses what we believe when we advocate for busy gamers. In our Busy Gamer Manifesto, we suggest that game designers shift their thinking to accommodate the growing legions of gamers who want to enjoy games on their own terms - often with great constraints on their playing time.
My initial take on what Manveer suggests in his tweet is both a basic truth ("you can never fully control what players will do with your game after you ship it") and a guidance to fellow game makers ("alter your thinking to construct games that players can take whatever pleasure they want from it, even if it's not specifically what you had in mind").
Manveer further clarifies his message in reply to a colleague, Scott Warner of 343 Industries, who disagreed with his view of player authorship "as an absolute truth":
@scott_343 @mworch I was talking about if a player wants to skip your dialogue or combat, let them. If they want to jump everywhere let em
— Manveer Heir (@manveerheir) February 22, 2012
Another colleague, Matthias Worch of LucasArts, feels that there needs to be some middle ground:
@scott_343 @manveerheir I believe in the general principle of abdication of authorship. But designers still need to focus the experience.
— Matthias Worch (@mworch) February 22, 2012
Where do you think the balance is between game designer and game player? Do you feel any authorship on the games you enjoy? Do you think designers have an obligation to provide better tools to allow you to enjoy games on your own terms? As a busy gamer, is there a basic set of features that you demand from your games that isn't delivered often enough or that will cause you to reject a game if not present?
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203806504577181320148513432.html
An example of gamers playing a game the way they want to. There was a NPR story about this kind of.gaming too, but can not find it.
I also would like to applaud companys that embrace exploits or shortcuts gamers manage to find.
I've noticed that some halo reach challenges seem to only be possible if you know about certain exploits, which can often be found via youtube or forums.
ok so I've gotten some wind of this controversy. My stance is that skipping combat is not like skipping cut scenes. While yes we do have to acknowledge that the gamer's experience doesn't have to match the plotted experience there is still a degree of Authorship involved. This would be like watching a movie without the video. It is something anyone with reasonable skill can do and it's not something that should be punished but noone sells a DVD that has a no video function, because video is the core component of a movie. The same way that gameplay is the core component of our medium.
The truth is that while you allow for freedom, you do not and can not cater to everyone. In Utah people would be very happy if they could get Hollywood blockbusters without curse words. They tried. That was shot down vehemently.
In this sense games are more like movies than they are like music which does get released with friendly edits. You could argue for ages on whether games are more like music or movies but the short version is that my stance is games are more like movies.
Interesting comment, but I would argue that movies and music are very similar since they are both passive entertainment. You watch/listen but do not interact.
Games are their own thing. A game is an experience in and of itself, more so than passively watching or listening to something. You can own that experience to varying degrees, depending on the design of the game and how much you put into it. My favorite gaming experiences are those where something unique happened, something I found while exploring maybe and the unexpected repercussions it had on the overall game.
The only way you own the experience of a movie or song is in how you interpret it. Several people may respectfully disagree on the meaning of a movie (say, Sucker Punch, which I wrote about in-depth last year when it seemed the vast majority didn't invest in trying to decipher it and dismissively trashed it). Unless the author or auteur comes out and defines the intended meaning (which very few do since they're creating art and good art typically should stand on its own), no one is wrong per se and they're free to their opinions regardless.
I guess my point is that games are unique as a category of entertainment. No matter how hard the designer tries to focus that experience, the gamer is free to ignore the guidance and try to do what they want. Enabling the gamer to color outside the lines can improve their investment and enjoyment. In all but rare cases, I believe this should be encouraged.