What are the Special Effects of gaming?

Since the Game Industry only hears language spoken with a Hollywood way, let us use that to present a point. In Hollywood, we all know what is meant by ‘special effects’. Special effects in Hollywood is often another way of saying ‘computerized graphics’. Special effects are the little props and stuff that make up the space ships in Star Wars and generally everything not connected to acting, directing, and how movies used to be made.

Since every video game uses ‘computerized graphics’, where does the game end and the special effects begin? What are the special effects of gaming?

“Why does this matter?” asks a rude reader, snarling no doubt from his keyboard. Well, it matters because we all know it is bad when a movie focuses only the special effects. A good movie needs a good director, needs a good script, and needs good actors. All this non-special effect stuff of movies would be the ‘fundamentals’ of movie making. Right?

So if we can isolate the ‘special effects’ of gaming, we will be able to have a better view of the fundamentals of video games.

What are the ‘special effects’ of gaming? A common answer might be ‘anything that doesn’t add to the gameplay’. And that definition isn’t bad. But I have a better one. Allow me to illustrate it in a real life tale.

I am working with a game company located in Texas. A developer showed me a prototype and his plans for his game. (Keep in mind this is a small company and this game is very small). The premise of the game was that the player controlled a UFO. When he explained the game, he talked about all sorts of interesting levels that would appear. He then, incredibly, talked about the business structure of the game and how he wanted to do it like Minecraft (in that people pay little to participate in the alpha/beta which gives them the full game later on).

While he went on and on about his work, I put up my hand and asked him one question. “What can the player do?” Silence. Apparently, he hadn’t really thought much about that. What he was talking about was what he could do with the engine, the towers he was building in his mind about what the levels would be, but he never thought much about what the player could do. Except shoot stuff. “Maybe add some upgrades,” he mused.

I told him that the gamer won’t give a damn about what the DEVELOPER can or has done. The gamer will not care what the levels are, what the story is, or any snazzy thing you can do with the engine. The gamer will care only about one thing: what can he do? When a gamer describes a game to another gamer, the gamer speaks about his adventure within the game and the choices and actions he made. Gamers never talk about the choices and actions the developers made.

He responded: “Since I am shooting a blank, let me turn it around. What would YOU do? What would you let the player do?”

I answered that with using your UFO theme that many people would easily be comfortable with doing things that UFOs are known to do. Shooting laser beams to destroy armies isn’t what people think of with UFOs. UFOs make crop circles. They probe cows. They abduct people (and return them back to their trailer park). I raised the point of Defender where the ship’s mission wasn’t to just shoot the aliens. The ship’s mission was to protect the people being abducted and bring them back to ground. It is this that made it a much more interesting and timeless game. So one example I gave to him was the UFO trying to probe and abduct cows in competition against another alien race (while Humans shoot at both). If the player failed to protect a cow, the alien who abducted the cow could morph into something far more dangerous and really make things tougher (just like how in Defender, an alien who succeeded in getting a colonist would mutate into something nasty). It was a far more interesting idea than just shooting stuff in levels we’ve all seen.

But me saying this hit him hard. I am surprised that he was so stumped when it came to answer the question: “What can the player do?” He was so focused on what he could do, that he forgot that the game revolves around the player. The game does not revolve around a developer.

I would say the substance of gaming is what the player can do while the Special Effects of video games are everything the developer can do that the player cannot. Here are some examples:

In Metroid: Other M, the cutscenes and ‘story’ are all ‘special effects’. The player cannot do anything during this. The player cannot determine the story. What the player can do is actually limited. However, I guarantee the development of Other M was of great fun to the developers. They got to make cutscenes. They got to make a ‘story’. They got to do all these things. But a gamer only cares about what HE can do. And since this was quite limited, the gamer remains unimpressed despite all the work developers did on cutscenes, story, etc.

A big reason why 2d Mario outsells 3d Mario is because there are more things for the player to do in 2d Mario. There are more choices and ways to play. In 3d Mario, there are considerable less choices and ways to play. It is far more linear, far more ‘puzzle like’.

But developing 3d Mario is more fun for the developers. Why? They get to make exquisite 3d worlds (none of it connecting to one another [for that would be hard to do]). I bet Nintendo developers even run around their 3d worlds and marvel out how ‘beautiful’ it is (while sighing at their work). In Mario Galaxy, there were frequent times where Mario would ‘blast off’ and fly through space for a while. You couldn’t do a damn thing while this occurred except maybe collect some star bits with the pointer. The entire reason why that Mario flying scene occurred was so Nintendo developers could ‘show off’ their 3d environment and hope you would ‘ooh and ahh’ at it. The typical gamer response to that might have been ooh and ahh for the first couple of times. But it got old fast. All the gamer knows is that he cannot do anything while Mario flew through the air. This is all ‘special effect’ and is nothing but fluff.

What is fun for gamers is not necessarily fun for developers. And what is fun for developers is not necessarily fun for gamers. After every 2d Mario is made, Miyamoto has said that is the last game. He doesn’t want to make another. Yet, people enjoy the game immensely.

I think the reason why we get all these ‘special effects’ of gaming, all the story, cutscenes, bloated scenes, etc. is because developers are confusing what THEY CAN DO with what the PLAYER CAN DO.

The player is the only one with the right to be selfish. Only the player is allowed to have total fun. The entire job of the developer is to make the player have fun. The job of the developer is NOT for him to have fun (this doesn’t mean he has to hate his work).

A big, big problem with the games business is too many kids wanting to be ‘game developers’ and not getting a ‘real job’ is because they associate gaming with fun and think game development will be a ‘fun job’. I rarely hear them talk about the player. It is always me, me, me. My vision. My ambition.

Let me put it in another way. Around 99% of manuscripts submitted to publishers are rejected. Why? It is because they are crap. Why? How could so much work be bad? The reason why so much of it is junk is because the writer was entertaining himself. A writer that sells stuff focuses on entertaining the reader. The big mistake is that the writer will say, “Oh hyuk hyuk. I know that! But I am a reader too! So entertaining myself will also entertain the reader!” And that is the trap to mediocrity.

I have always been amazed that the more a developer enjoys his work, it means the more the game is becoming a Hollywood movie. Always. I have never seen it the opposite. I can only guess that by making the game appear more and more like a movie, the developer is amusing himself because he believes Hollywood is ‘quality’ and that his work is approaching that lofty standard.

But in the player’s eyes, it is the opposite.

Do video game makers even know what games are? Games are card games, board games, things like legos and toy train sets, and sports. All of this revolves around a player. How the player plays defines the experience. The more fun tools that are given to the player, the more fun the player will have.

Compare the tools the player has to the tools the developer has. The developer has so many tools at his disposal. He has the entire game engine to tweak. He has books and movies to go through to get ideas. He has comic books. He has all sorts of tools. The player, on the other hand, only has the controller. That is it.

Developing a game is a game in and of itself. I think too many developers are confusing this with the actual game.