Like Sandre Chen, I believe that everyone would benefit from a multidisciplinary approach to game design. Though Chen’s essay focuses on the application of traditional design disciplines to similar aspects found in video games (cinematography to visual elements, etc.), it made me think: What could other disciplines teach us about game design, even across different modalities? It turns out that there are many similarities between visual design and game design, and that the spirit of successful visual design is found in elegant and refined games.

The main thing to note is that

Both games and visual designs use hierarchies to aid the user in exploring the space.

Some definitions are in order, just to be crystal-clear:

• By user I mean “viewer” or “reader” in visual design, and “player” in game design. These are the people who seek information from the product we are designing.
• By the space I mean “2D visual space” in visual design, and “strategy space” in game design.

hierarchies is a word that warrants a more extensive explanation. One central tenet of visual design is that important information should be more noticeable and easier to read. If you took all the elements on a well-designed page and ordered them from most eye-catching to least eye-catching, you should end up with a list of elements ordered by descending importance to the viewer. The big, bold headline at the top of the page should tell the viewer what the document is about, while the gory details of the topic reside in unremarkable paragraphs that the reader will only get to if they are interested in the headline.

The equivalent of the visual hierarchy in game design is the “skill hierarchy,” or the ordering of skills that you expect the player to learn while playing. Because learning new skills and making interesting decisions with those skills is what makes games fun, guiding the player to a state where they are frequently learning new things about the game space is a goal that most games (excluding those that are designed to not be fun) should pursue. Having an effective skill hierarchy in your game can aid in this. As pointed out by Brenda Brathwaite, having a skill in the skill hierarchy that is out of place or too difficult can lead to frustration on the player’s behalf.

The skills outlined in this hierarchy should be of various difficulties, but, as in visual design, the more advanced skills will hopefully be buried in the “paragraphs” of the game. Likewise, the “headlines” of the game will contain the main mechanic, which should be instantly spottable and easy to understand. (Some games even let the player know about the main mechanic in the menu, like the original Katamari Damacy).

In both game design and visual design, giving the user information without a clear hierarchy is hopelessly inefficient. Imagine a version of Super Mario 64 where the player was told how to triple-jump before they were told how to move! Because triple-jumping is an advanced skill, the player is not introduced to it until they have already mastered core mechanics like movement (and single jumping).

In Part 2 I’ll discuss some methods used by visual designers to construct a visual hierarchy, and how analogues of these methods can be applied to support a game’s skill hierarchy.

Hear me out on this one! You’re just lucky that I’m not talking about Zelda DS for the fourth post in a row :)

Fumito Ueda and Co. at SCEA have created something really beautiful in Ico. This is probably a good indication that I’ve been lusting after electronic musical instruments too much recently, but I can’t help but think that this game, which has been lauded for its innovative and emotionally engrossing gameplay, gets much of its power by employing a concept not so different than that of a synthesizer.

In traditional musical instruments, a multitude of sound parameters are controlled simultaneously and intuitively by the abstraction of a physical interface. By simply banging on the keys of a piano, you are setting off a complex equation of harmonics, anti-resonances, and tiny musical demigods. I understand almost none of it, but I know enough to be thankful for the abstraction of the keyboard, saving me from tweaking each parameter of the sound individually. But, as with any abstraction, this convenience also limits the amount of control the user has. In this case, it keeps me from making a piano sound like anything other than a piano.

As anyone who loves working with synthesizers knows, this lack of control is in direct opposition to the nature of an analog synthesizer: synthesizers are essentially an open invitation to get in and muck with sound parameters to your heart’s content. I’ll agree that synthesizers are not without their own abstractions, but really, by breaking down sound creation from a physical abstraction to the components that actually shape it, they allow much greater control over the sound than traditional instruments. This property of synthesizers opens up their space of sonic possibilities to be significantly broader than that of a piano, and is why Ico is such an amazing game.

Ico breaks down an abstraction that had been pretty much taken for granted in traditional single-player adventure/puzzle games: that at a raw gameplay level, the player is a single entity, acting for themselves. Why do I find the switches in Myst? Because I want to progress to the next part; because I feel like taking on the challenge. It’s easy to see why this abstraction would be perpetuated throughout the ages - having a single agent acting in their own interest is something everyone can relate to, if only as a living organism. It is so intuitive that it doesn’t really even require any learning on the player’s part at all. Steve Krug would be proud!

But in Ico the player separates these normally grouped components, and it pays off in spades:

By breaking down this abstraction into components, then re-forming them into the game’s two main characters, Ico is able to incorporate a number of puzzles that could not have otherwise existed and boast an incredibly broad (for a puzzle/adventure game) emotional pallete.

Now, off to look at more synths…

After playing so much Zelda and Ico recently, I’ve been doing some thinking about puzzles in adventure games. Here’s a little method I’m fleshing out right now for creating perceptual-shift puzzles. By “perceptual-shift puzzles,” I’m talking about the kind where the player has to change the way they see a situation in order to solve it. I’m going to focus on puzzles that are embedded in games, but what most of I’ve got to say applies to “pure” puzzles as well. Without further ado, here’s the recipe:

1. Find something with two ways to perceive it - It can be anything, in any modality… it just has to be a good fit for your audience. A visual example would be the figure/ground relationship between 2D shapes: the face and the vase type of thing. A logical example would be the type of item-combination puzzle you are likely to encounter in classic point-and-click aventure games. This, for some people, will be the hardest part aside from actually balancing the difficulty of the puzzle for your audience (which is a tough task, no matter who you are).
2. Set up the context to suggest one method of perception - In order to maximize the impact of the perceptual shift, you need to pick one method of viewing the situation and subtly reinforce it. The presentation of the puzzle is probably a good place to do this, but less direct options are always available.
3. The other way is the right answer - Now make the way of seeing the situation that you didn’t subtly suggest to the player the one that allows them to complete the puzzle. Most of the time you’ll want to drop some clues that a perceptual shift being needed to solve the puzzle, but it depends on your audience.

Let’s think through this methodology by decomposing one of my favorite puzzles so far from The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass. **Major spoiler alert, by the way. If you haven’t played the game, please just stop reading right now, because I’d hate to ruin this fun puzzle for you.** Here are the three steps again, applied to the lever puzzle that occurs on the Ghost Ship:

1. Find something with two ways to perceive it - The creators of Zelda DS decided to play on the ambiguity of a string of numbers for indicating order. If I give you a series of numbers, say, 4 5 3 2 1, and tell you to pull the five levers over there in the order indicated by the numbers, you don’t know if I’m telling you to pull the fourth lever first or to pull the first lever fouth. Pretty good premise for a medium-difficulty puzzle, huh?
2. Set up the context to suggest one method of perception - Just a little earlier in the Temple of Courage, the player is required to hit switches in a certain order: ‘up, down, right, left.’ Notice that to people who read left-to-right, there is only one likely way to interpret this instruction: hit the lever that is located farther up first, down second, etc. After finishing this Temple of Courage puzzle and being rewarded with that amazing Zelda puzzle sound, this way of thinking is now the most prevalent schema in the player’s mind for puzzles that involve performing actions in order. The action must be performed on the item indicated by the clue in the order of the clue sub-parts, from left to right.
3. The other way is the right answer - In the Ghost Ship lever puzzle, the player is given a series of numbers, 2 4 5 1 3. If the player acts on this clue according to the schema instilled in them by the Temple of Courage puzzle, they will probably fail to complete the puzzle and be totally caught off guard (like I was!). This time, the action must be performed on the item indicated by the position of clue sub-parts, in the order indicated by the clue. It definitely took me a little while to figure out the bait-and-switch that had been played on my mind… But once I made the perceptual shift, my shock turned into fiero, and I was unhealthily pleased with myself.

Well, there you have it. What do you think? Did I leave any major steps out? Any gaping logical holes? Don’t hesitate to comment below.

In part two of my analysis of The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, let’s talk about how, at a very basic level, Nintendo managed to squeeze some of their game’s mechanics into the main menu.

After the introductory cinematic has finished, excited (blinking even!) instructions appear, telling the player to “Touch the screen!”. It intrigued me that the game didn’t give the classic “Press Start” or the more modern approach of just showing the main menu. Touching the screen is the most rudimentary skill atom available for consumption in the game, and apparently Nintendo wants to make sure that the every player “gets it,” since they will be using it for the rest of the game.

Exposing the player to skill atoms in the main menu which will later be incorporated into game mechanics takes a bite out of the learning curve for inexperienced players. This is a great way to take advantage of the fact that humans are information-seeking machines, stuck on a life-long learning binge. People are learning things all the time, whether or not they are in what is commonly thought of as “the game” part of your game. So why not use the whole product, from start to finish, to give your players the experience they want? Teach someone something in the menu, and you won’t have to bore them with a tutorial later.

For another example of this technique of putting mechanics in the menu, check out the load game menu from the original Katamari Damacy. If you can think of any other games that employ this technique, don’t hesitate to post a comment below!

Phantom Hourglass has been shamelessly hogging my DS these days. A well-polished gem like this can offer a wealth of insight about what makes games tick. Let’s start at the very beginning, shall we?

After they start up Zelda, the first (important) thing the player sees is an awesome intro cinematic. Here are some of the things the video does, and does well:

• Introduce the player to the DS: This theme features quite prominently in the game, and is expressed through novel puzzles, design choices, and the control scheme in addition to this introductory cinematic. Check out how the first seagull to appear flies vertically through both screens, immediately establishing a visual link between them and showing the player the cool factor of having two screens. Later, a second seagull appears and occupies a screen of it’s own, subtly reinforcing the notion that more is possible with this gaming system than with traditional ones. I mean, it supports twice the number of seagulls, how cool is that?
• Set the emotional tone for the game: From the sweeping camera shots to triumphant and determined score to the wind rushing through Link’s hair, Nintendo is not afraid to let you know that this game is adventurous, playful, and epic in scope.
• Establish a setting for the game: There are a thousand ways this intro could have gone down: they could have portrayed anything from evil forces scheming in the shadows to footage of the player solving puzzles and cutting grass. Instead, their focus on the setting and main character emphasizes the story and conveys the feeling that the player hasn’t missed a whole lot yet. These are both things that are likely to appeal to inexperienced gamers. (side note: I love how about three-quarters of the way through the cinematic, the seagulls switch screens again, which causes the most prominent figure on the screen to be Link for a little while, telling the viewer that he’s a character of some importance.)
• Loads fast and is skippable: Players don’t want to wait to get into the game. After all, they’ll probably only watch the intro cinematic once.

The time in between when a video game system is started and when the player actually begins playing the game is a great time to set player emotions on the right rack. All too often though, this time is relegated to harboring bland unskippable credit screens (Geometry Wars: Galaxies on DS) or warnings about autosave (Taito Legends 2). While this alone is not enough to ruin a game, using every tool available to make the player experience better is the mark of a truly polished game.