I think it would help you to define the word “content.” I’ve read practically all of your blog posts, and I think it may be best defined as this: Any part of a game that can be taken to make a movie.
Basically take interactivity of the customer out of the game and what do you have? For Mario you have an Alice in Wonderland type world. For Zelda you have a Lord of the Rings-esque world*. For Metroid, you have a very similar universe to the movie Aliens. Etc. etc.
On the flip-side, I suppose you define “gameplay” as all of the choices and input into the game that come from the customer.
My challenge has been to illustrate the mindset of the passionate customers of the Golden Age of Video Games. For example, why did Super Mario Brothers perform so well? This is challenging because there is nothing written about it. There is much criticism about video games and there is much psychology written about it, but there is not much there that gets to the passion. Why are gamers passionate about this game and not that game? This passion is the great hand that organizes the sales charts. Marketers like to say they are behind creating the passion, but we know that cannot fully explain it.
Everyone keeps saying, “Gameplay”. But in the rest of the entertainment mediums, everyone says “Content”. In other words, ‘substance’. It is not so much the process of the entertainment that matters but the substance. People still watch old films and listen to old music. Just because new technology alters the process, technology cannot create substance. And I think this is what gamers mean when they say, “Graphics don’t make a game.” Of course, how the game is displayed visually is extremely important. What the gamer is saying is that the substance is more important than the process.
Sequels tend to do so well because players were satisfied with the substance of the first game and see the sequel as risk-free.
Nintendo’s creative side keeps trying to downplay content and focus on the process. The substance of the experience of the console is not what Nintendo advertises anymore. It is the process of that experience. “You will buy this console because you play on it differently. You use a touch screen now. You use motion controls now. Etc.” The killer-app games that move console sales are considered games of substance to the gamers. Monster Hunter is a game full of substance to the players. So they bought a PSP for it even though the PSP was supposed to be dead. Games that lack substance and rely on new processes are what gamers call ‘gimmicky’.
What I mean by content is a context of looking at entertainment. Instead of looking at how the entertainment is done (special effects), look at WHAT the content is about. Star Wars’ impact had little to do with special effects as Hollywood believes as it did with the actual ‘WHAT’ it was about. Star Wars was a mythological heroic epic adventure which is oddly similar to some the timeless Hindu stories. During the 1970s, Hollywood did not make mythological heroic epic adventures as much as they made ‘artistic’ movies no one cared to watch.
The Golden Age of Hollywood revolved around mythological heroic epic adventures. The ‘special effects’ of the 50s and 60s involved how many extras they could cram onto the screen. The ‘Chariot Race’ of ‘Ben-Hur was seen as spectacular ‘special effects’. But Ben-Hur, as well as Moses, Spartacus, and the rest were mythological heroic epic adventures.
What was Shakespeare? Mythological heroic epic adventures. What was Greek Myths? Heroic epic adventures. What is the Old Testament? Heroic epic adventures. Do you see a pattern?
What I am trying to do is point out that creating additional value in entertainment cannot rely on improving special effects. What people value is content, the substance. A good way to tell if something in entertainment will work is to ask the maker, “Why are you making this?” If they dully say, “Haven’t tried this process before,” then it will be a snoozer. Usually, good entertainers have a well of passion behind their project.
Let’s leave the theoretical. Many games were looking to break into the lucrative FPS market. Since they heard ‘gameplay is everything’, they make a FPS with a gameplay gimmick. But then something interesting occurred with Call of Duty by making the FPS revolve around World War 2. At a time, World War 2 FPS became all the rage. Why? It was different from the space dungeon FPS. But even that became boring after a time. So then came Modern Warfare which ditched the World War 2 theme and had the more modern warfare theme. Sales explode beyond anything.
Keep in mind that there is a baseline craftsmanship that must be done in order for the content approach to work. No one cares what a speech maker says if the person cannot put words together properly or speaks very softly. No one cares what a writer says unless the writer knows how to put phrases together. And no one cares what a game is about if the game keeps breaking down on the player. This baseline craftsmanship is something that takes a decade or two to get under one’s belt. But once it is done, the entertainment competes on a content level.
Newspapers are losing to the Internet not because the Internet ‘writes better’ but because after a certain level of writing craftsmanship is achieved, the content is all that matters. The job of a book publisher is to immediately weed out every manuscript that doesn’t have the necessary craftsmanship. The editor will work with the writer to spruce up the ends and all in order to get the manuscript functional. But the actual sales depends on the content.
If you take two writers and one writes about sex while the other writes about the composition of dirt, which will sell more? They both write competently. More people would rather read about sex than about dirt. So the sex writer sells more.
Gaming has grown past the baseline craftsmanship
Once upon a time, no one knew how to make a ‘video game’. It was just a bunch of programmers with too much time on their hands. In the 80s, I could go to different games and be amazed at how incompetently one game would be programmed while another game would be programmed much better.
Many NES games had problems with flickering. But some game companies were more competent in their game programming. Rare, for example, had all their NES games be flicker free. This baseline craftsmanship was enough to make one rise from the competition.
Marketing also had incompetence. Some games were marketed effectively and others had no marketing whatsoever. Video games were new. No one knew what it meant to ‘make one correctly’ or ‘market one correctly’.
Today is a very different story. Everyone understands how a video game should be programmed, how it should be marketed, and so on. Budgets may differ, but the competence is the same. If I said, “Make the first level exciting, easy, and accessible because the first level is where 100% of your players will see,” no one would argue against it. Everyone understands that. But once upon a time, this was not understood (except perhaps in the tough arcade market). You wouldn’t believe how many computer games made learning rocket science easier than playing their game.
Variety
Our brains get bored if we do the same thing over and over again. A beach may be nice but, it gets boring. A swamp may not be nice, at first, but it becomes interesting if all you know is the beach. Entertainment revolves around spontaneity, around variety. This is why you have plot twists.
Super Mario Brothers offered a significant content proposition when it was introduced in 1985. Miyamoto said he originally planned five worlds but then changed it to eight worlds. It is not the number of worlds that matter as much as it was with the variety. Level 1-1 was very interesting. However, 1-2 was nothing like 1-1. 1-2 was underground. 1-3 was not like 1-1 or 1-2. 1-3 was jumping on giant mushrooms in the sky. And 1-4 was in a castle. 2-1 may have been somewhat similar to 1-1 (but there were new enemies being introduced), yet 2-2 was underwater and 2-3 was filled with flying fish. The variety of the game was amazing and stunned everyone.
If you are going to serve a meal, you do not want all the food to be the same. Variety in the meal and how it comes together is very important. Instead of eating eight bowls of vanilla ice cream, which is not a bad experience, it is much more interesting to eat eight different bowls of ice cream. Super Mario Brothers was not just 1-1 over and over again made faster and harder.
Let’s look at Mega Man. Why did this series break out during the NES Era? Aside from the baseline competence (the game was well programmed and well executed), there is a significant content proposition it offered. Mega Man 2 offered eight levels with each of them being incredibly different. The variety between the levels was immense. More interesting was that with Mega Man switching weapons added even more variety to the game. Mega Man 3, also loved by fans, adds to this variety with its levels from Gemini Man’s stage or Snake Man’s stage. But when Mega Man began to lose its excitement was with Mega Man 4 onward when the games offered little to no new variety. Mega Man 4, 5, and 6 had the same ‘fire level’, ‘water level’, ‘earth level’, ‘air level’ nonsense.
Light on the Wall
Keep in mind when I talk about content, I am still in Plato’s Cave. We are in the cave together, and I am discussing the light on the wall. I am not sure exactly the source of the light, I am pointing out that the light is not coming solely from the gameplay or ‘process’. This is why despite the rise in ‘gameplay scientists’, games are not becoming ‘more fun’.
So if it seems like I am talking circles, it is because I do not know the source. When I say “Content”, I am actually saying, “Not process!” in what creates the passionate gamer.
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