March 22, 2007

Design Game for Entertainment

This is the slides I used on GDC 2007 Game Innovation Panel. My speech's topic is about how video game started as a niche software product, now evolves into a major entertainment medium.

However, entertainment is the emotional food for human beings. When you are sad, you need some thing to make you feel better. When you are too stressed, you want to see some thing to calm you down. It is all about the feelings its audience experienced rather than a product which is very much about features and functions. When people comment about main stream entertainment like movies and literatures, they talk about how it feels. When people talk about products and software, they talk about the technical features. It's also very interesting to see people describe certain product as an entertainment and experience. For example, ipod and bmw.

As a main stream medium, video games are often treated like products and designed around features such as "40 hours gameplay, MMORPG, FPS, WWII" I think it is time, we, the game enthusiasts, to review and design games as an entertainment medium rather than software products, to care more about how our audience feel rather than how long they can play.

Click here to enlarge.

Posted by Jenova at March 22, 2007 3:16 PM


Comments

I'm definitely with you, Jenova.

The mainstream game industry still very much subscribes to "big-hit" logic and games as consumer goods. Metrics like # gameplay hours, genre, and graphics tech are often voiced as "product features" because they are easy points to communicate to users and are relatively "sound" investments that merely require additional manpower/cash.

Altogether, it's predictably the path of least resistance.

Thanks for the slides -- I only wish I was at GDC to watch you present them!

Posted by: JMiao [TypeKey Profile Page] at March 22, 2007 5:03 PM

I would agree that feature lists are a bad place to start design out at. The first question of design should be "what do I want the player experience to be, in the broadest sense". Once you have that nailed you can try to make specifics that build up to it.

Posted by: PaulB [TypeKey Profile Page] at March 29, 2007 1:23 PM

Hi Jenova,
I like your approach to gaming and I agree that tech does not replace a good concept, and the emotions it can create. Your slides certainly raise interest - only the actual speech missing ^_^;
I am contacting you also as I organize a forum on mobile services in Beijing called "Mobile Monday" (www.mobilemonday.cn), and I am planning a session on "mobile games" for next August. Any chance you stop by Beijing at that time ^_^?
Cheers -- Benjamin

Posted by: Benjamin [TypeKey Profile Page] at April 9, 2007 2:05 AM

Hehe, I don't like Beijing very well. I'm from Shanghai. There will be a good chance that I will be at Shanghai this Winter.

Posted by: Jenova [TypeKey Profile Page] at May 22, 2007 11:00 PM

Hi Jenova,

I was wondering if you have had any experience in mobile gaming. I am co-founder of MuZui.com, a social community, based on free mobile games with power-ups and challenges. We have a feature that allows you to make your own mobile games, and we are not talking inserting a picture. We are talking influencing gameplay.

I would love to hear your take on it, especially about the future of mobile gaming, both in Asia and Europe.

Posted by: MuZui [TypeKey Profile Page] at August 27, 2008 5:39 AM

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