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Online Game Design Theory Questioned
hergin writes "In his recent column, Engines of Creation, Dave Rickey reviews Richard Bartle's new book on online game design and questions many of the basic precepts: 'I believe that if [a theory relating to a game mechanic] isn't testable and disprovable, it's not a theory, it's simply an argument.'" The article goes on: "It is possible to create meaningful social theories and test them, through online games... Handwaving in the direction of 'game experience as Hero's Journey' (as Dr. Bartle does extensively) may be an intellectually satisfying exercise, but how can it be tested?"
What the hell is this claptrap and what does it actually have to do with the real art of putting together good, successful games that people actually want to play?
I have a very difficult time with the idea that game designers sit down and plan a game around the modification of social dynamics and provable theory. Maybe a few niche games are like that, but I can't imagine that is part of the ingredients for an entertaining game.
Maybe, in the future, it will be like the movie industry, and we'll have Art Games (that no one will actually play) and Experimental Games, and then the things that people actually enjoy.
Beyond that, I wouldn't be surprised if we get enjoyable, artistic masterpieces, but those are a long way off. At this point we have a new technology, a new sector in the game industry, and we're having fun with it.
Because they're games. Really. Just games.
Karl Popper must have been quite a man to have, 100 years ago, predicted the World Wide Web and virtual societies like EverQuest and Ultima Online. Richard Bartle's argument that theories have to be disprovable needs to take a step back -- they should at least provide a guidance on how to prove them in the first place. We can disprove theories as well as we can disprove opinions. We can even disprove facts if we refuse to agree to underlying assumptions and axioms and contexts. I believe that game design -- and Internet game community design -- is still far more of a black art than it is a science at this point. While there are tremendous strides being made in game sciences -- mathematical theories, huge studies being made -- the vast majority of the successful games toss the "game science" out the window and go to the heart of it: FUN! That's emotional. That's visceral. That's where the money is. In pure, unadulterated joy. While many game designers believe they can work like pure scientists and "manufacture fun," at best all they can do is incent certain forms of fun. Fun is not testable. Fun is not provable. Until we have calculus that proves "fun", then gaming is an art to me. Some aspects of game science are just now starting to address markets, psychology and desires in players. However, most of what I see is not really science. Or if it is science, it's a nascent science -- ludology. It's not 100 years old, no matter what people might like to believe. Elements of what we might call Internet game sciences can go back millennia, but what we have today is a new field, brought upon us only since 1984 when the Arpanet changed to the Internet, and moreso, when the World Wide Web started to take off in 1994. The question is -- what game theory can we postulate now that will be provable when sciences catch up with it in the next 20-30 years? My prediction is: we shall have Internet game economies, where there will be people who make their living off of servicing Internet game economies like vendors at ballgames. And we will see our first professional online game players -- those who are paid salaries to play games, like actors in Hollywood, or like sports figures on a professional circuit. We are not there yet -- but in the future, there will be professional gamers. And there will be professional scientists -- from psychologists to economists -- who will study game worlds to learn what they can through simulation, and how it effects individual and group social behavior in the real world.
Disclosure: I work for Skotos where Rickey's column is published.
As someone from a hard science background, I sympathize with Rickey's desire for testable hypotheses, but I also wonder if this will prohibitively limit the scope of inquiry. It is one thing to know that there is a natural limit on the population density of a PvP server. It is quite another thing to combine that fact, perhaps with numerous other facts gleaned from testable hypotheses, into a cohesive theory of game design that allows you to answer the one million user question: "Is it fun?"