The Growing Dichotomy of Game Design

There is something happening in the industry of video games. It has been a fissure that has been growing steadily wider the past decade or so and will only continue to widen further in the future. The change it brings has ramifications for fundamental design, for the way games will be sold and marketed, and even for the way they are played. It boils down to the central philosophy driving the game's creation. And, in layman's terms, this dichotomy can be boiled down to two things: is the game focused on story or play mechanics?

The heights of realistic graphical and audio quality that today's consoles are capable of has enabled story and narrative to take a more central role in many of today's games. However, certain game genres--for example, puzzle, fighting, and racing games--are built entirely around the "fun" of their mechanics and any story is usually superfluous and unimportant (or even nonexistent). On the other side of the coin, you have games that are starting to rival Hollywood movies in story quality, production value, and creative talent like Mass Effect, Heavy Rain, and Uncharted. While these games take varying lengths of steps toward being "more movie-like", they all retain the common denominator that the medium's intrinsic interactive qualities are integral to the way the story is experienced. That is to say, the fact that you, the player, are directly impacting the story is a key differentiator between movies and games and is still a defining aspect of these "story-focused" games; the difference is, it's not the only defining aspect.

Heavy Rain's revolutionary control scheme brings a new dimension to interacting with the game's story.

In fact, play mechanics are just as important to "story" games as "mechanic" games. As Epic Game's lead designer Cliff Bleszinski just so happened to say today on Twitter,

"If you have a great game with a bad story you still have a great game. If you have a bad game with a great story you still have a bad game. [But] if you have a great game with a great story then you have a classic."

To understand this, you must recognize that the emergence of story as a central element in many modern games is a relatively new phenomenon since in the old days story was very much an afterthought and what always came first were the mechanics. Furthermore, the thing that makes a game a game is the fact that interactivity is central to the experience...and interactivity is achieved via play mechanics. That being said, the few developers that have dipped their toes in the vast ocean of great narratives have opened whole new doors of possibilities.

The added dimension of interactivity means games are capable of stories that no other medium is, and by combining great game design on a mechanics level with the high quality narrative, characterization, and production values of movies, the door is open for fantastic new experiences to emerge. Games like BioShock have already played with the notion of interactivity as a central element to the game's story. Games like Mass Effect give your individual decisions a ripple effect that shows ramifications through the entire game's world--or multiple games' worlds--and affects your path through the story and the way other characters react to you. Games like Uncharted are more exciting than any summer blockbuster at the movie theaters because of the fact you are participating in the action, while witty writing and strong voice acting bring the story to a more personal level.

The way you've acted as Commander Shepard decides whether or not Wrex lives in Mass Effect.

But not all games strive for these goals--and not all need to. There is room in the market for games that merely want to do what games were originally designed to do without all this fancy schmancy new age story business. Fighting games in particular excel at using the idiosyncratic fighting mechanics to drive competitiveness in the players. Racing games center themselves around two simple things: driving cars really fast and being the first one to the finish line. These games don't need canonical explanations; they simply need to be fun. And that's just fine. Even some games that do have stories, like the Call of Duty series, are not necessarily trying to push the envelope of interactive storytelling, and are arguably designed with a gameplay-is-the-only-important-thing philosophy--not that you can blame them given the fact that the multiplayer (arguably a separate "mechanics" game) is so important to their sales.

SoulCalibur IV doesn't need a story to be really fun.

This is the divergence we are seeing in game design today. Some games are simply going to try to push the fun factor of what games can do. Some games are going to push the artistic envelope of what ways they can use interactivity to tell an engaging story. Similarly, when gamers want to play a certain game, they'll often do it because a) they love its mechanics or b) they love its story. It's not a matter of one design philosophy "winning" over another, it's about the way they coexist and feed off each other. Mass Effect 2 is a great example, learning from the cover-based gunplay of Gears of War to make playing through its story more fun whilst still retaining its focus on story and character development. The emergence of truly great game narrative and a push to take artistic advantage of games' interaction does not mean that "fun" games will go away. What it does mean is that games don't necessarily have to be fun, whimsical distractions, and can instead provide an artistic canvas for exploring higher level questions, such as the illusion of free will (BioShock) or the ethics of cloning (Mass Effect).

Mass Effect 2 combines its great narrative with Gears of War's fun cover system.

What do you think of this growing dichotomy of game design? Share your thoughts in the comments.