This morning was no different, and although I can’t remember my dream as well as the first weird dream, I was struck by the climax/end of the dream, and so I’m adding this one as #2.

I remember being chased clockwise around the perimeter of a stone tower or tall building of some sort, probably 50-80 feet tall.  I was being chased by a large monster with a long neck.  It might have been a dragon, I’m not sure.  Suddenly, the dragon turned the other way and appeared in front of me to the left of the building.  I was terrified.

At once, I was no longer myself, but instead a spectator standing just a few feet away watching a woman staring up at the monster.  The woman was in her 20s or 30s with dark hair, and she was holding a giant indigo or purple lance with both hands over her shoulder, kind of like you would hold a bazooka.  The lance was 10-15 feet long and several inches wide – about the size of a lance used in jousting – and the posture of her body indicated that it was quite heavy.  Then, right next to her appeared a young girl, holding an identical lance.  In fact, it was the same woman, but instead she was about 8-12 years old.

Within seconds there were several versions of the woman at different ages, each holding a lance.  The women were in slightly different poses, each holding the lance at a different angle and partially overlapping.  The different versions of the woman started to take the same posture, and eventually combined back into the original.  Even though there was no physical indication, I knew that somehow the woman now had more power based on the combination of different versions of herself.  She took her right hand off of the lance and aimed with her left, ready to throw it like a spear right at the monster…and I then woke up.

I was in the shower thinking about the dream, and since I tend to think really clearly in the shower, an interesting and meaningful game idea hit me.  I imagined a game where the player had to essentially play through a woman’s memories.  The game could be split up at different stages of her life, where the player experienced what it would be like to be the woman at that stage.  The woman’s strengths and weaknesses would be based on who she was at that time.  As a younger girl, she would be physically weaker and more vulnerable, yet more fearless and zealous.  As a woman, she would be stronger, yet more cynical about the world.

Then the game would culminate in a moment where different versions of herself would combine together.  This would represent various aspects of the woman’s consciousness being healed, and the woman would become fully satisfied in who she is.

As you can see, it’s quite tempting as a designer to add complexity to the image above.  And yet, this must be the first game.  But I’ve decided most of the games will have more than just this, which will make them “mostly meaningless” I guess.  On top of all this, they should be positive.  I haven’t come up with too many ideas on how to do that yet, so I’m hoping that something will just come to me in the middle of development, hehe.

One of the things I realized I could learn from this whole experiment is how to intensify and purify meaning by separating elements of the game through elimination.  If I define what isn’t in the gameplay, maybe that will help me realize what is.  A nice side effect is a possible better skill in improving the non-game-specific elements of a game.  Let me illustrate:

This first illustration would represent elements of a game and potential meanings the player could get from the game.  If you remove some elements and reevaluate the game, you would notice certain meanings that are missing.  Then you can group those elements and meanings together, which would result in a better definition of what game element creates what meaning.

If I continue this process scientifically, I could get a pretty defined set of elements and their corresponding meanings.  The opposite would also be true:  if I only started with one element – say a title – that could lead to a specific corresponding meaning.  Then I could add elements little by little, evaluating the new meaning created.  By keeping the elements few, I can focus on creating specific meaning using the least elements possible.  This would result in an efficient game design, which I hope to talk about in a later post.

Will it work?  It seems to be going all right so far.  I’m working on a game with a few more elements, and I’ve already thought of an interesting by-product.  Removing some elements can have a meaning in and of itself, and I hope to explore that with this game about rewards.

Butterflies & Hurricanes Lyrics

I’ve always enjoyed Butterflies & Hurricanes because of its inspirational mood and appealing mix of rock and classical style.  I could never fully understand the lyrics, and for some reason, I was moved to look them up today.  They are excerpted below:

Change everything you are

And everything you were

Your number has been called

 

Fights and battles have begun

Revenge will surely come

Your hard times are ahead

 

Best, you’ve got to be the best

You’ve got to change the world

And use this chance to be heard

Your time is now

 

Don’t let yourself down

And don’t let yourself go

Your last chance has arrived

 

Best, you’ve got to be the best

You’ve got to change the world

And use this chance to be heard

Your time is now

I’m no musical expert, but to me Muse is creating a metaphor based on chaos theory.  Among other things, the song is drawing a parallel between the ability of a butterfly to change weather patterns and the ability of a human to change the world.  Let me explain.

What is Chaos Theory?

Chaos theory is a field of scientific study dedicated to studying the behavior of complex and dynamical (i.e. chaotic) systems.  It’s absolutely crucial to realize that the word chaos used in this context refers to a deterministic system.  In other words, given the right formulas, one could determine how the system will behave over time.  However, the system is complex enough that its outputs appear to be random over time – even though it isn’t purely random – hence the term deterministic chaos, or just chaos.

The Butterfly Effect

One of three core properties of a chaotic system is that it is sensitive to initial conditions.  This means, roughly speaking, that the points that are close to each other at the initial stages of a system will be greatly different in the future.  This implies that small changes in the points early on will result in very large changes later.  In 1952, Ray Bradbury illustrated the concept in a book about time travel, where he explained that the death of a butterfly during prehistoric times could lead to a much different reality in the future.

Edward Lorenz later reported scientific evidence of this concept while running a weather simulation.  To make things easier for himself, he shortened the decimal .506127 to .506 while inputting values into the simulation, which resulted in a much different output in the weather system.  After doing further study, he reported his findings in a talk Does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?, choosing a butterfly as a nod to Bardbury’s book.  Ever since, the butterfly effect has been used to illustrate a core component of chaotic systems.

Using the Butterfly Effect in Game Design

The basic concept behind the butterfly effect is that a very small change early on can have a large impact later.  Because the changes made early on have a large impact, they are meaningful.  However, because the changes made early on are small, they seem meaningless.  This creates a dichotomy where the changes made to the system seem to have much less meaning than they actually do.  In addition, the difference between the perceived meaning and actual meaning is not realized until later.

The game designer can use this dichotomy as a tool in several ways.  If the player makes a wrong choice early on, the player could feel regret later.  If play continued after that regret, the player would be more careful about his decisions the next time around.  This tool is used in the game Jumpman to good effect.  The avatar in Jumpman has little friction, so a small movement causes the player to slide easily.  This is like creating a miniature butterfly effect every time the avatar moves.  As the player progresses through the game, he learns to be very careful about his movements, because one small error could lead the avatar to instant death.

Another way the designer could use this dichotomy is as a way to create hope.  If the player knew the meaning of the actions he made early on, he could gain hope that later those actions would have a large impact that would give him an advantage.  Chess is a good example of this.  Players must move the pawns first in order to free up the more powerful pieces.  This makes the first few moves in a Chess game pretty important.  In fact, expert players will be able to recognize a particular play style by watching the first several moves in a Chess game.  Being able to see the pattern early will help them to understand meaningful moves that could be made later.  This gives the player hope that he can overcome his opponent successfully.

A designer can also use the butterfly effect in the story of a game.  The most obvious way would be force the player to make decisions at certain points in the game, branching the story into alternate versions.  This was made popular by the Choose Your Own Adventure books.  Lately, Daniel Benmergui and Gregory Weir have used this technique in their games I Wish I Were the Moon and (I Fell In Love With) The Majesty of Colors.  Each game gives the player the freedom to explore the consequences of his actions made to the characters and the environment.  Those consequences are played out in short animations as endings to the game.  The final goal of the game is to experience all of the endings.  Both games are pretty small in scope, so the designers have not created a lot of room for the early actions in the game to branch very far and therefore to cause much impact.  The Majesty of Colors takes the concept a little further, and after playing it, one can see how this concept could be extended so that the stories become even more different over time.

I’m sure the best way to create meaning with the butterfly effect is yet to come.  Until then, these directions should be explored further in games.  Doing so just might change the world. . .

I’ve been visiting blogs of people I respect, and one of them linked me to Chris Hecker’s website, which is infrequently updated and more of an archive at this point.  I remember hearing about his rantings given at various GDC talks, so I thought I’d poke around a bit to see what I could find.  One page was particularly interesting.  Entitled Can a Computer Make You Cry?, it featured an intriguing essay on exploring the emotional and expressive possibilities that computers can provide.  In fact, I would go so far as to say it is a manifesto.

EA Had a Manifesto?!

I was shocked to find out that the manifesto was actually an ad for Electronic Arts.  EA?!  This blew my mind.  I felt like I had stumbled upon a dusty but rare classic at the record store.  Apparently, EA had aspirations of exploring the essence of humanity using technology.  That’s definitely something I can relate to!

The Manifesto

Let’s take a look:

Why do we cry? Why do we laugh, or love, or smile? What are the touchstones of our emotions?

Until now, the people who asked such questions tended not to be the same people who ran software companies. Instead, they were writers, filmmakers, painters, musicians. They were, in the traditional sense, artists.

We’re about to change that tradition. The name of our company is Electronic Arts.

That is pretty deep for a company who devotes itself to sequels and franchises based on veteran gameplay systems.  I wonder what happened to change their course.  And what’s so striking to me is the pure truth that this ad speaks.  In fact, it’s still true today that the people who run software companies don’t usually ask those questions.  Continuing:

SOFTWARE WORTHY OF THE MINDS THAT USE IT.

We are a new association of electronic artists united by a common goal—to fulfill the enormous potential of the personal computer.

In the short term, this means transcending its present use as a facilitator of unimaginative tasks and a medium for blasting aliens. In the long term, however, we can expect a great deal more.

That first statement is interesting to me because it assumes that prior to this, software wasn’t worthy of the minds that use it.  That it was a lowly servant of its master, the human, or that it didn’t fully stimulate the human mind.  It’s amazing how things have come full circle now.  EA in general is considered something like the Wal-Mart of the games industry, almost like some necessary evil.

Notice the goals listed next.  The short term goal is to “transcend its present use as a … medium for blasting aliens” and the long term goal is something that is “a great deal more.”  At some point, EA ended up actually taking a step back from even its short term goal.  It certainly didn’t make it close to the long term goal.  Maybe they set their sights too high?  One last quote:

We’re providing a special environment for talented, independent software artists. It’s a supportive environment, in which big ideas are given room to grow. And some of America’s most respected software artists are beginning to take notice.

We think our current work reflects this very special commitment. And though we are few in number today and apart from the mainstream of the mass software marketplace, we are confident that both time and vision are on our side.

Again, it seems that EA ended up taking a pretty big step backwards.  EA is the company that has one of the worst reputations when it comes to a “special environment.”  Now certainly, much of the hate developers direct to EA is unwarranted.  But I’ve heard plenty of horror stories that confirm it can be far from special.  In addition, this section and the accompanying photo presents EA as supporting a collective of indie game developers.  If one were to take a photo of 8 popular indie game developers today, I bet it’d look pretty similar to the one in this ad (accounting for change in fashion of course).

What Happened?

All of these things beg the question:  What happened to you, EA?  This manifesto presents you as a publisher who supports a collective of indie game developers who aspire to realize the true potential of using computers to explore the depths of humanity.  Something happened along the way to derail this goal, and I’m dying to find out.  This warrants some historical research, and I hope to come back with some information of why they changed their focus.

The Word “Game”

Lastly, I’d like to touch on something that Chris Hecker picked up on in his comments about this ad.  He mentioned that the title is Can a Computer Make You Cry? and not Can a Computer Game Make You Cry? and that games aren’t mentioned much at all in this ad.

This is something that I feel pretty passionate about, which is the problem with using the term “game” all the time.  When one is developing an interactive experience, I think it’s really important to only think of the word game in the semantic sense, sort of as a necessary evil, and try to remove one’s self from all the baggage associated with games in the past.  It’s surprisingly difficult.  Depending on the idea, turning an experience into a traditional game might be a bad idea.  According to Tale of Tales, you should specifically avoid making a game if you want to reach the true potential of interactive experience – assuming that’s your goal.  I’m not really going into any more detail than that, since I’ll return to this subject more later.

However, I wanted to point out that this is another example of not assuming a good interactive experience automatically means you have a game.  I’ll continue to refer to interactive experience as “game” because the term is only four letters long.  But I certainly intend on pushing the limits of interactive experience and changing people’s perception of what that word means to them.

An overview of meaningful play

The concept states that the amount of meaning play has is the value of the relationship between the action and outcome.  So if an interaction has value to you, it is meaningful.  And in order for it to have value, you have to both understand it (discernable) and make sense of it in its context (integrated).

If that’s the case, then meaning is quantitative.  The qualitative aspect of meaning would refer to its type:  whether it’s positive, negative, or maybe even more specific types like funny, dramatic, thrilling, etc.  For the more math-inclined, the amount of meaning refers to the length of a vector, and the positive nature of it refers to its direction.

A positive, meaningless game?

Therefore, that begs the question:  Can you have a meaningless game that results in a positive outcome?  It seems like in order for you to have a positive outcome, you’d have to have meaning.  So if a game was meaningless, the positive outcome would have to come from somewhere other than the game itself.

Still, without actual meaning in the game itself, it doesn’t seem like there would be much meaning left to get.  Maybe a game would send a message just by its very existence.  Therefore, a group of meaningless games might result in a noticable positive outcome.    Does the very existence of a game have meaning?

To find out, I would conduct the following experiment:  create a series of games that are meaningless to play, but when presented as a group, have a positive outcome.  If successful, each game would result in a positive outcome that is a fraction of the total positive outcome of the group, while still remaining meaningless itself.

I feel like I’m embarking on some epic quest here.  I feel like I’m part of an expedition, or maybe a group of expeditions, exploring the nether regions of the globe.  That’s what game development seems like right now, especially the so-called “indie games” scene.  Ha!  I suppose I’m being over-confident when I assume I’m “part” of it, but it is all around me and I can’t help but feel like I’m a part of it.

But I shouldn’t get hung up on that.  On “being a part of something.”  I need to just do stuff.  Just freaking make things.  They don’t even have to be games.  I guess at first they can’t really be games, since I’m more of an artist or designer type than a programmer.  As long as whatever I do represents me, or more specifically what God has made me to be, I think that’s what matters most.

How can developers work so hard making some AAA title for a huge studio, on a game they don’t even care much about, only to release a game that will be forgotten in a month?  I guess I’ve done it, but I could only tolerate it for a little while.  Why aren’t there more developers just striking out on their own?  Doesn’t the fear excite them?  It excites me.  I think God turns that fear into excitement for me.

Spiritual games?

I think He wants me make meaningful, experimental, or quirky games.  Games that explore spirituality.  Games that explore theological concepts.  Games that are deeply personal.  I hope I’m right.  I hope that is God’s voice I hear and God’s desire I feel.  Everyone who has advised me on this decision has told me that I should go for it, but I can’t help but feel some doubt.

Maybe that doubt is my fear.  Instead of being afraid to be independent, I’m afraid to be confident that what I’m doing is right.  Maybe that makes me just like the other game developers out there.  I should find that out and ask some developers about it.  I bet I’m like them in surprising ways.

At any rate, I’m going to charge ahead.  As I’ve been told before, I should put myself in a situation where only Jesus can save me.  So my intention is to do just that.  To embark on an adventure so perilous, that I’m almost doomed to failure, if it wasn’t for some supernatural power preventing me from failing.  Would that be proof enough for some?  I hope so, because it would be proof enough for me.