What V contributes to Metal Gear's lore

One of the biggest criticisms that Metal Gear Solid V has received since its release in 2015, perhaps since 2014 if you count Ground Zeroes as the prologue it is, is that its narrative barely contributes anything to the overarching lore of series. I don't believe that is the case, quite the opposite, really. I believe Phantom Pain is yet another example of something Kojima knows how to do really well: how to subvert expectation while still staying true to pre-established facts. Phantom Pain is a game set in the middle of the timeline, it connects to very detailed eras that have been previously fleshed out in great detail. One would assume it would be difficult for Phantom Pain to surprise avid fans of the series since it is lodged so deep into the timeline, with so many details surrounding its own narrative already established. However, in true Kojima fashion, he manages to alter the meaning of key events in the series by crafting a narrative that is about anger, revenge and how vicious cycles of revenge can be born out of perception rather than fact.

One way in which Metal Gear Solid V contributes to the overall saga, and the one that will be the sole focus of this post, is by shining a light onto the true nature of the relationship between Zero and Snake; this has been exposed before in MGS4 and Peace Walker, but the revelations in Phantom Pain drastically changed my own reading of the facts. There will be spoilers ahead, so please stop reading now if you haven't finished the game yet and wish to experience this by yourself.

If you've played the game to true completion, you'll know Big Boss and Venom Snake are actually two different people. For this post, I'll be mainly grazing on the material that directly affects Big Boss in the game: the prologue/epilogue and the audio tapes. I'll focus on how the material in MGSV takes a "show, don't tell" approach by building on previous work in the franchise like the initial reason Zero and Snake split up and the ideological rift that formed between them after Peace Walker. This hypothesis is based on my own analysis of several key moments within the franchise and I welcome any criticism towards it in an attempt at digging deeper into the lore and extracting more meaning out of the work done by Hideo Kojima, creator of the series.

First, it must be said that Zero and Snake were friends. They operated together in FOX and even founded the organization that would be known as Cipher, and subsequently the Patriots, together - though it may not have been named as such at the time. But it should be clear Zero didn't see Snake exclusively as a friend: he was a symbol, and an important asset in the scheme Zero had put in motion in the aftermath of the Boss' death. Fearing Snake might not share his perspective on the way the world should function, he had Snake cloned in an attempt at securing what Zero perceived to be an asset. As Snake himself put it, the children weren't the problem, but what they represent: mistrust, manipulation, betrayal and ruthlessness - not to mention the basic violation of his individual traits. Zero was willing to engineer a human being to take Snake's place in case he did not comply with the plan. This led to Snake's departure from the organization he and Zero had founded with EVA, Ocelot, Clarke and Anderson.

But even before all of that, in the year 1964, during operation Snake Eater, Snake executes the Boss as the final objective of his mission. He manages to carry out the deed, but his strong feelings for her make him feel conflicted about the whole affair. His inner conflict turns into extreme guilt once the truth is exposed by the spy EVA: her defection was initially a ruse, but her operation was compromised when Volgin fired the Davy Crockett in Russian territory. America needed to present tangible evidence of its innocence by dealing with the defector that supplied the rogue colonel with the warhead. This would help Khrushchev maintain power and avoid all out nuclear war. Thus the Boss' objective was altered: in addition to her current objectives, she would be required to die. The world could never know about her last mission, she would die and be remembered as a traitor who almost sparked a nuclear war. In the end, she wasn't a defector. She was a loyal soldier who carried out her mission perfectly regardless of personal cost, or Snake thought.

Snake saw the Boss as the perfect soldier: every mission she ever undertook, every order she ever accepted, every objective she ever accomplished defined her in his mind. He couldn't see past her profession, couldn't acknowledge any other facet of her personality and the fact that being a soldier might not have been her entire life. Even though she was a woman of many talents, as evidenced by Strangelove's accounts in Peace Walker, Snake saluted and cried for the Boss, the woman who he thought had soldiered on out of duty as she was a given a suicidal objective in Snake Eater. She was 'loyal to the end', to her mission. Snake didn't understand, at least until 2014, that 'loyalty to the end' actually meant loyalty to your own beliefs: the Boss carried out her final objective so humanity could live on unscathed in the hopes that it would one day come to the same realization she had when looking back at the Earth in space and not because she felt duty bound her to those orders. The Boss desired peace for humanity, that meant she didn't want to risk humanity being victim of a senseless nuclear war. She accepted her objective because she believed the best chance humanity had was for her to take the blame for that Davy Crockett going off in Russian territory and allow America to use her death as proof they weren't to blame.

The Boss' exchange with Snake in the beginning of Snake Eater shows her outlining several 'problems' with the orthodox definition of a soldier in a veiled manner. She criticizes Snake for showing feeling for comrades, saying that is a sin for a career soldier and that such a soldier should be loyal to his country, and yet, when Snake points out he is loyal to his country despite who's in charge, she points out how futile that is as the times truly dictate how politicians feel and think.

Peace Walker's first ending shows Snake denouncing the Boss as a soldier who had given up on her entire life. This is in response to the revelation that the Boss aspired for peace, that she aspired for humanity to come together as one and forget all notions of segregation that kept humans apart, such as geographical borders. This revelation, of course, was enabled by the Peace Walker AI, which was trained to follow The Boss' rationale; similar to how the Patriot's AI network was trained to follow Zero's rationale, or even how Venom was conditioned to think like Snake. The accuracy of such revelation is, therefore, questionable and imperfect. However, as questionable as that conclusion may be, Snake took it to heart: it struck a serious psychological blow to Snake, but it also presented him with an opportunity. It struck a blow because it conflicted with his version of reality by destroying his narrow perception of who the Boss was and what he thought her rationale was, which was a basic building block for Snake's identity; however, it also presented him with an opportunity of ridding himself of the excruciating guilt he had felt for almost a decade. Guilt born out of the shame and disappointment he felt for killing who he perceived as the best soldier who ever lived, and probably the person he loved the most, because of a lie the government fed him.

In order to salvage his identity and rid himself of guilt, Snake blamed the Boss as a defence mechanism. In Peace Walker's first title card dialogue scene, Snake states the Boss betrayed him. That in putting her gun down, an euphemism for seeking peace, she had given up everything she was up to that point, including him as an apprentice during her years as a soldier. It is much easier, and a much more comfortable proposition, for Snake to lie to himself and interpret the Boss' actions as betrayal, than it would be for Snake to come to terms with reality. The truth could, in fact, end up making him feel even worse about killing her, seeing as she was such a noble and determined soul.

He goes on to tell Kaz he "won't make the same choice" she did. This statement demonstrates he's willing to stand by what he currently believes in, despite the fact that the seed for his own rationale may be based on a misconception. In practical terms, this means he'll go deliberately against what the Boss was for in an attempt to further invalidate her in his mind: he won't aspire for peace like she did. In fact, as time would reveal, he fights for the exact opposite: Snake desires perpetual war.

The reasoning he fabricated behind such an excuse, though the character himself might prefer calling it a stance, is that a peaceful world would have no place for soldiers like Snake and that would mean an end to his lifestyle. So he validates his selfish decision of opposing peace by buying into the cause of preserving the warrior's lifestyle and the status this group has achieved within society at that time. This is, of course, the role which Snake most intimately identified with, to the point of actually confusing it for his own identity. This is explored further in Peace Walker itself and even outright exposed by the character in Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake.

The fabrication of such a thought process to support a perspective designed to alleviate his guilt and the impact of the revelation that the Boss was not who Snake thought she was shows how strongly Snake’s own identity was rooted in who the Boss was. His life was the military and, perhaps, his most important years were spent with the Boss; she shaped who he thought he was and he took her as his role model, as his idol and maybe even his muse. When placed under mental duress, Snake retreated into the importance of his duty as a soldier, all the while giving up on himself as a man. The transition was probably easy since he was already incapable of separating himself from that role, it had almost completely fused with his own self-image; except the soldier didn’t have to deal with Snake’s problems and traumas. The soldier could just shut all of that out and deal with the task at hand, the task of hating the Boss and not dealing with what she meant for Snake as an individual. So he chose to drop all other aspects of his own identity and architect a dream based on the most intimate persona he's ever had to play in his life.

Desiring war, under the pretense of protecting the soldier’s lifestyle, means fighting against peace. The peace the Boss envisioned for the world. Striving for that allowed him to oppose the Boss’ true self, one that conflicted with his own warped image of her, and shift his perception of her from a hero to a villain. Ultimately, this enabled him to achieve two things: stop feeling guilty over her death and avoid dealing with the misconception of her identity.

With this knowledge, we loop back to the moment Snake woke up in 1984 and was informed by Ocelot that his best soldier had been brainwashed into a doppelganger by his former friend (now perceived enemy, due to the events of Peace Walker) and that this same man had been, at the same time, connected to both the incident that took 9 years of life and his survival during that same period. Throughout the Metal Gear saga, the concept of the Patriots was introduced in Metal Gear Solid 2 and tied in to the events of every other game in the series. In Metal Gear Solid 3, we met a whole new cast that, for better or worse, mimicked the one presented in the original PlayStation game launched in 1998, which in turn mimicked the cast of the two previous games in one capacity or another. In June 2008, with the release of Metal Gear Solid 4, players were given the truth: both storylines were connected and that group presented in MGS3 were the original members of the organization now known as the Patriots.

One must understand that, for almost 7 years, with the inclusion of events depicted in Peace Walker, players were led to believe Snake and Zero had parted ways in the early 1970’s and that, since then, they had been waging a secret war that ended up shaping the world into what it was in 2014, when Metal Gear Solid 4 takes place. However, Ground Zeroes and the Phantom Pain both reveal a much more nuanced truth about the alleged “war” between these two men by shining a light onto the nine years leading off from Peace Walker all the way to 1984, the year the main episode of MGSV takes place.

A few facts expand on the established lore and reveal the truth about Metal Gear’s overarching narrative: Zero is already in a coma by the time Phantom Pain begins. Skull Face managed to locate him using the information he had extracted from Paz and strike at him using a deadly parasite strain. Also, while it is true Zero tried to coerce Snake into working for him again by infiltrating Paz into his organization and orchestrating an incident that could have revealed MSF’s nuclear capabilities to the word, he died a completely different man. Somewhere along the line, Zero had a change of heart and gave up trying to possess Snake as his tool; he came to respect his own friend for standing his ground and believing in something different than himself did. Which is why he went through all the trouble of securing asylum for him in Cyprus.

Not only that, but Zero longed to be reunited with his friend once more: he believed Snake and him could come to an understanding if they had a chance of talking again. Perhaps a conversation that could’ve changed the entire course of the series. But the reunion was denied by Skull Face when he put Snake in a coma during the attack on MSF in 1975 and later that decade when he killed Zero himself, dooming them to never see each other again.

The truth is that Snake and Zero were never in a true war. They had a incident in Peace Walker, but Snake knew Zero was probably not in control of Cipher anymore by the time he woke up in 1984 and that the Patriot AI’s, as reported by Ocelot, had taken control over the organization. However, he did understand what they represented: they would carry out Zero’s will and, while alive, Zero sought peace through unification. Unification being the means the major had found to achieve the worldwide peace the Boss fought for. This went against what Snake desired, so he knew that his nation of soldiers might one day fight the self-administrating organization Zero left in his wake. This, however, wasn’t certain: Snake would fight the keep the world engaged in conflict while Zero’s organization would fight to stop all wars without openly engaging with each other, similar to how America and the USSR fought the Cold War, and perhaps one of them would fall without ever engaging in open conflict with the other.

In the end, Snake understood what he was up against: an AI network designed to emulate Zero’s will, a machine incapable of changing its mind like Zero himself did before passing away, but still capable of altering its strategies to achieve its objectives - or alter its understanding of the objectives, as was shown to be the case in Guns of the Patriots. Which is why Snake accepted Zero’s gentle gesture of keeping him safe while he was under and didn’t oppose the plan of consuming the identity of his greatest apprentice in an effort to conceal himself or of sacrificing an entire hospital full of innocent people in order to evade XOF. Snake had his eyes on much bigger prizes, whatever disputes he may have had with Zero in the past were petty squabbles when compared to the scope of what he had in mind. Zero, now his phantom AI, was just one more name on the long list of people who wanted him dead, people who would serve as the forces of the times in an attempt to defeat Snake and his nation of soldiers.

Snake went to on to fight for what he believed in, as twisted and warped as his beliefs may have been. He didn’t focus solely on defeating Zero’s organization because that wasn’t the most direct avenue through which he could pursue his goals. They were clearly a force that was pulling the world in a different direction than Outer Heaven, but Snake didn't think that destroying the Patriots would necessarily make them closer to perpetuating war. In the end, however, not prioritizing the elimination of the Patriot AI’s proved to be an inefficient strategy for Snake, since it was Zero’s AI that flagged the both Snake and Venom for elimination. Sending the orders which resulted in the deployment of Solid in an attempt of sabotaging Outer Heaven operations amidst its uprising and of disabling Zanzibar offensive capabilities.

In the end, Phantom Pain alters the meaning of key events in the saga by revealing that the greatest conflict in the entire series was never truly a conflict, but a misunderstanding that grew larger and larger until the anger of one man set the fate of both man in stone. The true story is much more tragic and "meaningless" than some of the characters in previous games would make them out to be.

‘Vigilante’ gameplay – Arkham City’s fan design

Long time no see! Let’s get right into the post-

I’m a big batman fan, most people who read this blog can tell, and I’m a big gamer too; needless to say when the two come together, it’s a given I’ll have a good time. After I finished Arkham City’s storyline, in the X360, I vowed to wait for it to come out on the PC where I would pick it up again and then play it through and through.

And so I did: played it again twice on the PC. Nearly had a 100% game too, but I made the mistake of unlocking an achievement and leaving the game right after finishing the campaign that gave it to me, making me another victim of the dreaded save game bug.

Well, some things are meant to happen! No permanent harm done, I’ll end up playing it again soon. The whole game was brilliant: better combat, more challenge maps, incredible story and the list continues, but perhaps the thing that stuck with me the most from the game was was the horizon, though. True story, I kept thinking about the life outside those walls, how Batman went about one case to the other and all the other small things he did, saving citizens from harm and abuse, preventing gangs from going to war and all that. I craved to play as the vigilante, not only as the badass detective in cape & cowl.

This too, remained: the desire to play and deal with all the casual stuff the man himself would. I took it to heart and started thinking about how I’d do it, how I’d design a system for procedural side-missions to be delivered to the player – and how these side missions would play out – now I come here to show the results of that.

The idea’s inception happened around 3 weeks ago, I took the time from then to now to perform some research, as the text explains. I’m pretty proud of the results because I had an original idea which was AWESOME, yet completely unfeasible. The research I did and the time I put into thinking about it finally convinced me that what I had was cool, but insane from a technical standpoint: it featured hundreds of missions, multiple ways for them to unfold, multiple free-roam cases and a lot of other stuff which was completely out of context with the initial proposal: a side-mission system.

So then came the time to actually put the ideas into paper, permanently (at least for the time being) and deal with what I had. I started reviewing all my paper scribblings and  putting my ideas together, that was about two days ago.

I took to writing the final piece and promised to stop working on it in two days since that’s the time I had left in my vacation. Then I’d close file and forget about it; turns out I actually finished it. I kept my word and didn’t touch it since I stopped writing: so the work hasn’t been proofread (except spelling mistakes and get over them) and I didn’t go through the trouble of describing everything before I actually meantioned it, therefore it’s not a simple read, take it for what it is, a fan made game system outline – it’s also about 12 pages long, so not all will read it through. You’ve been warned.

I’ll post it anyway and, hopefully, just enough people will go through the trouble and give me some feedback, and hey: any feedback’s better than none at all.

It’s a high-level design so I didn’t go through the trouble of setting up excel spreadsheets and actually building the mathematics behind everything, but that’s exactly what the next step would be and I did go through some of that, but not enough to justify putting it in there. Therefore, you won’t see any math – sorry if that’s what you’re expecting!

You can access the whole document, or download a copy of it for better reading, here.

“Open source” GDD

Hey guys, I realize I’ve spent way too long away from this blog. But in fact, I’ve checked it every once in a while. Just don’t have as much time or stuff to write about with all the work going on.

Couple of months back (in very early July) I finished a non-profit indie project for a basketball game. There was only me and a producer, who was looking for a team at the time. The project began way back in May and the task given me was to design the gameplay systems for this ficticious XBLA basketball sports title.

Short story is: the project went to hell during late pre-production after me and him found work in the industry, so the design became obsolete. With no real use to it I decided to let it out there as reference material for anyone starting out, I myself found very little work in game design when I was starting back in ‘08. So I decided to put it out there for whoever’s interested. Many people starting out don’t really understand what you mean when you say most designers find their way around creating documents and other important things like spreadsheets and stuff for gameplay design. But it becomes clear once you start to use a pre-cooked one for your game… Things don’t add up, and that’s the Eureka moment where designers learn that templates only go so far.

So I’ll link to my “open source” GDD here and anybody willing will be able to download the .pdf for non-profitable use. So, if you’re interested, link here.

Dunking Legends GDD of Ronildson Scarani Sillas Palermo is licensed under a Licença Creative Commons Atribuição-Uso não-comercial-Compartilhamento pela mesma licença 3.0 Unported.

Batman Arkham Asylum Multiplayer

This is an excerpt from an original early concept created by me, Ronildson S. S. Palermo, for a hypothetical multiplayer component for the already released title Batman: Arkham Asylum. The text assumes, for the general purpose of illustrating the idea, that much of the game’s design and features would remain the same and that only small changes and additions would be made, all of those will be, of course, explained and detailed along the way.

[…]

High Concept

Multiplayer revolves around the clash between hero and villains. Gameplay is set much like a challenge room. The hero and the henchmen battle for basic multiplayer objectives like deathmatch (or in batman’s case: outcoldmatch), protect/capture the VIP or a special item and others. Of course all the components are stylized and themed for batman’s world using people and items of interest in the universe for the multiplayer. Some changes in perspective and slight additions to combat would be created and balanced. The hero would struggle to remain undetected and silently eliminate any immediate threats to his life and, if necessary, engage enemies in physical combat to achieve his objective. Villains would work together to find and eliminate the hero as soon as possible, combining their many different abilities to find, corner and kill Batman. Many game modes and play styles could be created by tweaking the numbers in the game, for example, like creating a pure predator mode where all thugs have guns or a wave mode where Batman must fend off wave after wave of increasingly better equipped enemies.

Gameplay Features

• A multiplayer match begins like a challenge room. There’s the possibility of mixing combat and predator gameplay in the match by introducing armed and unarmed opponents, using the match’s settings, forcing heroes to integrate and coordinate their skills in both Predator and Freeflow gameplay;
• Villains play using a first person perspective camera to facilitate weapon aiming and handling, build more tension around fighting and allowing more freedom for the hero to perform stealth maneuvers;
• Hero keeps third person perspective;
• Batman has only one life and henchmen have plenty, depending on balance and game mode. As thugs go down, they respawn until they run out of lives;
• Visual obstacles are mainly used to hinder the villain’s line of sight and create suspense as well as to allow some surprise for the hero in terms of enemy positioning. It allows stalking, silent approaches, quiet elimination of threats and ambushes, the latter possibly coming from both sides;
• Levels would contain pipes, tasers, knives, wall boxes and even weapon lockers. But never enough for more than a certain fraction of the thugs. This creates diversity and allows some predatory gameplay to take place in order for the hero to pick off any gun-wielding thug and increase their survival chance during close encounters;
• Villains can communicate through in-game voice chat. But when one of them are neutralized, no warning or notice is given to their partners. This feature helps the conveying of the experience of being Batman and eliminating a large group of enemies one-by-one leaving the rest to wonder what happened to the others, it also incentives thugs to work in groups.
• Detective Vision’s X-Ray range would be limited to two-three dozen feet, roughly 8-12 meters. This makes it mandatory for Batman to actively move and explore the area in order to find the all thugs’ positions, at the same time, henchmen outside his vision’s range would be given a chance to relocate and surprise the hero;
• The ceiling of every interior area, as well as the high perch areas of outside environments, (above the floodlights that light up the area) are shrouded in darkness. It allows Batman to move and scour the area without being seen by any thug who simply happens to look up. Batman would be able to grapple from gargoyle to gargoyle and range the area, assess the situation and then expose himself;
• Rifles have flashlights; these are capable of penetrating the thick darkness that embraces the high points of every area. Armed goons are capable of seeking Batman in the darkness, so the hero is not totally safe while scouting the area from the high points. The hero needs to avoid their light beams and keep moving in order to avoid getting caught by a dutiful guard.
• Tasers and other weapons do not respawn in a standard match. They spawn once, at the beginning of the game, and whenever a henchmen carrying one is neutralized, the weapon drops on the floor. Respawning thugs have to search for their initial weapons on-site. Batman cannot interact with them. This makes ammunition for the rifles extremely scarce, since they only have one ammo clip from start to finish. Making thugs think twice before spraying bullets into the known gargoyle positions.
• Villains have a similar set of movements in combat to the hero, except Batman’s counter is replaced with a block for villains and, though their evade jumps have the same range as batman’s jump/roll, their recovery time after an evade jump is a lot longer and, during this period, they are completely vulnerable to attacks, not to mention they cannot vault over someone with an evade move. The cape stun would be changed to a crippling blow or a ramming move that cannot be countered, only evaded, and would leave batman exposed for a second. Note that these additions, along with the tweaking of the henchmen controls to support weapons, would inevitably increase the number of animations.
• Henchmen are encouraged to work cooperatively and cover their weaker partners. If their partners are not as good as them in combat then the hero gets punches in and builds up a combo worth a takedown, thus enabling the hero to take out any thug in one move. That makes the game a lot more tactical for both the hero and villains. The hero would do its best to avoid the most skilled henchmen and pick off the weaker ones to enable takedowns which he can use to tackle better ones down, all the while the best thugs have to corner the hero and avoid him from building up combos, sometimes even using the weaker ones as bait; this requires some amount of coordination from the thugs’ part and gives a purpose the communication system mentioned earlier.
• Combat mechanics get one new addition, a cancel effect. The reason for this is quite simple: Batman Arkham Asylum was a single player experience, so it was important to empower and take care of the individual having the experience, since we’re dealing with human controlled villains now, they’re not going to want to wait to attack Batman whenever he counters a move. They’ll feel extremely frustrated if Batman becomes invulnerable whenever one of their friends makes a dumb move and the hero counters it. What’s proposed is a quick tweak in the counter move. Instead of triggering a cool cinematic camera and slow-motion effect whenever the hero successfully counters and attack, the counter animation is played normally like any other move during combat and, during the counter, if the hero triggers an evade move or another counter move due to a second wave of attack, the current counter is stopped and the thug takes a percentage of the full damage the counterattack would cause him. That allows Batman to deal with multiple attacks incoming at once. But also allow thugs to help out each other by striking when Batman counters one of their friends, forcing him to give up the full damage he would do to the specific thug in order to preserve his own life. But not entirely making the move useless, since some damage is still done. This way Batman can still defeat them by constantly switching targets, avoiding damage and doing little bits of damage every time he successfully counters and attack. This process considerably extends the length of the battle, making Batman susceptible to more attacks and, since he only has one life, each chance the thugs have of landing an attack on him brings him one step closer to losing. Cancel Counter is a very fast move, giving Batman the ability to counter any number of attacks in a fast sequence, provided they aren’t thrown at a very tight time gap. If two or more attacks are synchronized and thrown by thugs at the same time or with a very small time gap between them Batman won’t be able to counter all the attacks because of his Cancel Counter delay and would be forced to evade instead, in order not to be hit.
• Building up a combo rewards the player with the possibility of using a combo takedown and a throw. These are rewards the hero earns for playing well and keeping his combo up by dealing with whatever situations were thrown at him by the bad guys. Throws work just like in the single player and are used to stun one thug, potentially more if used right, except in multiplayer they have a stun effect that lasts a lot longer than that of the average stun cape. It does no damage unless the enemy is thrown against an environmental hazard like fatal drops or electrical cages, in which case the throw becomes deadly. It is also noteworthy to point out that a throw is unstoppable, it can’t be blocked, only evaded. Takedowns also work just like in single player, they are unstoppable, unavoidable and disable an enemy instantly, but the catch is that a combo takedown can only be applied on an enemy which is within eight feet from the hero, allowing thugs to attempt to get clear of the takedown once they feel it is coming by taking some distance from the hero, usually with an evade jump. Another problem with the combo takedowns and throws is that attempting to realize one and failing in multiplayer breaks the combo, this allows for thugs to break a hero’s combo by capitalizing on the move’s weaknesses, evasion for the throw and distance for the takedown. Going from the principle that a takedown and a throw are rewards and the design presupposes that they’re hard moves to unlock when playing against henchmen who know what they’re doing, these move should be non-cancellable by either Batman or the henchmen, this means that once a hero lands a throw or a takedown on a thug, they become momentarily invulnerable until the move is done;

[…]

This is just an initial high concept and by no means should be treated as the final documentation of a product or component of the game. Features here could, and should, be changed as further playtesting and polishing is conducted and done. All the ideas indicated here also should be changed, tweaked, expanded and shrinked in the designed experience’s best interest. Any mechanic or idea could be pulled independently or in conjunction with others from this document and used as the designers or developers see fit. Other aspects of the game design such as the rest of the wide range of gadgets Batman had in the game (Sonic Batarangs, Explosive Gel and the Line Launcher), special moves for the villains and others weren’t mentioned here but would also need to be fully explored, designed, balanced and tested for a fair and fun experience. This is just a sample that illustrates my vision of Batman’s multiplayer from an idea I had nearly a year ago. Although, I do think some major changes should be done in order for multiplayer to truly fit and feel right in the game, but I did my best with what I know Batman Arkham Asylum had in terms of gameplay and experience.

Most of the tweaks and changes done here were realized with balance in mind. Batman is the hero of the game, granted, but unless the “evil” side holds some appeal, no one would enjoy playing and spend time getting good at it. Therefore the use of known villains as potential playable characters in the multiplayer such as Joker, Zsasz (he has been introduced in the challenge rooms), Bane and others is an idea that came to mind and could be further explored and discussed, but wasn’t fully detailed in this excerpt.

I have no connection with Rocksteady Studios or Warner Bros. And Batman, along with any other names or logos are trademarks from their respective owners.

PACE System

A great paradigm for MMO’s today, if not the greatest, is its progression structure, based on experience gathered from activities such as killing monsters or other players, completing quests, exploring new places and such. This experience is then converted into levels, labeling the character a given level and rewarding him/her with points they can either freely spend on their desired attributes or with preset values that are added to the  attributes automatically after each new level is achieved.  The GameCareerGuide.com “MMO-OFF” contest had the objective of inciting the creation of ideas and designs which incentivized players to spend less time inside the game. As well as solving the problem of players burning through the hand-crafted content too fast, which these genres of games so heavily rely on. The problem, as the contest presented, led me to wonder about two issues of the standard system today, which were the following:

Issue 1: Players spend too much time in the game. Now this is interesting, because can you really blame players for wanting to spend more and more time inside the game? When the precise message the gameplay yell is: “The more you play it, the further you get into it!”. It’s hard to think that players actually dedicated and truly interested in playing and exploring the game’s world, lore and gameplay possibilities would not follow this simple advice from the game itself. You’re creating the game and telling players not to experience it, not to enjoy it as deeply as they can. It’s like putting food for your dog and making the poor thing just sit still right by it and stare at it, you can’t really blame him if at one point, sooner or later, he starts eating. It’s just natural and instinctive. So, one way that could be changed is by having the experience of playing the game convey a different message. This “message” would be one that incites players to explore and dive into the world in doses, balancing time inside and outside the game in order to fully progress in the game, without worrying about leveling up or if he’s friend is going to surpass his level because he’s not investing 7 hours a day into it. So this is one point that ought to be re-explored and maybe even re-defined.

Issue 2: One of the aspects that keeps the playing of the game interesting is the feeling that there’s always something new to be found in the next corner, in the next area, after a certain event, a new NPC to meet, someone new to get acquainted to or the latest development in the conflict afflicting the land the game features and the player ventures. This necessary aspect makes the game fun to explore, but when put together with the current message most game structures convey, players end up experiencing content rather quickly, sometimes  even to the point where it renders the game boring. Even though it’s a given this state will be eventually reached by all players, unless more content is released periodically, it would be, nevertheless, interesting for developers to have a reward system that looks free and intuitive, even though it provides them with a subtly tighter control over how long it would take for all players to experience all content without making them feel like they’re being controlled or kept (be it either in time or space) from experiencing all the game has to offer.

With these issues in mind, and attempting to create a solution that addressed them both, I came up with the  PACE system, which was my submission for the GameCareerGuide’s Game Design Challenge regarding this subject, although it was rather poorly explained in the original entry due to word-count limits, the name  of the system stands for Persistent Absorption Character Enhancement and it is, at its heart, an MMOG character progression/reward system which mainly focuses on inciting players to limit their playtime in the game without feeling like they're being kicked out of it by some mechanic that increasingly limits their progress the more they play and allows developers to manage the amount of content players have access to in a given amount of time.

A first, and very important, point to be made is that leaving the game is entirely up to the player, at all times, though the system subtlety encourages him to do so through rewards and benefits if he takes longer periods of time off the game between quests and adventures. Secondly, keep in mind this is a system, therefore it’s flexible. It should work for the designer’s purpose, not the other way around. It can, and should, be tweaked for the experience’s best interest. More on this later, as I unravel the concepts behind the system.

So, basically, the two main issues presented by the challenge were the fact that players need to forget the notion that spending 10 hours a day playing the game is necessary to enjoy it, but in doing so they also need to be aware they’re not missing out on anything, making sure they don’t fall too behind in terms of progress, since it’s a given that if they indeed cherish your game, they won’t want to be behind their friends and other players who can afford to spend 10 hours inside the game (issue number one) and we need to allow a more rigid control over the game’s content by the developer that created it (issue number two), from there I created the key concept behind the PACE system: The Slow-Absorption Element (SAE), or just Element. Ideally, there are no levels in PACE. The Slow-Absorption Element is the item sought by players to enhance their attributes, just like experience and levels would in any other MMO’s, but an Element is not limited to just that. In PACE, SAE’s are the responsible for character growth in all aspects of the game, be it new equipment, magic, spells or whatever other feature the designer wants to make accessible to the player. Elements can be used to give players access to new technology, reach the next level in their character’s magical studies or any other contextual reason the designer might've created for their players to pursue. The sources from where a player could get a a SAE also depend solely on the developer's choice and design. It could be something bought in the black market, assembled from a series of special ingredients and rituals or found through exploration of desolate planets across the galaxy.

There are two kinds of SAE's: Consistent and inconsistent. Consistent ones are those achievable by some type of currency. Money or any other type of currency the game might feature. Fallout 3, for instance, used bottle caps. These consistent Elements can be bought in a regular store or even in the black market, as I’ve already mentioned before. So, questing for money is the way to get them. They’re called consistent because they’re always there, available to the player, as long as he/she has enough currency to get it. There're also the inconsistent ones, which require the player to explore and quest for the items specifically, thus the player never really knows when he'll come across an Element or if he'll even successfully find one at all.

After completing quests, amounting enough money and/or uniting the recipients needed for the SAE’s formula the players have three choices: the first option is the trick behind PACE, the player can choose to persistently absorb all of the artifact’s power through a slow and lengthy process, called the Persistent Absorption Process (PAP). By undergoing PAP the player fully absorbs the power contained inside the Element and takes full benefit from his efforts spent into acquiring the SAE in-game. Second option, absorb it right away and gain some of the Element’s total benefit instantly in order to keep playing, we encourage the player to leave the game after collecting some Elements, but he’s never forced, this second option is his tool of choice in order to keep playing. A third option would be to save it for later. Players do have slots to hold onto some SAE’s and use them after an event or something important they have scheduled later that day or so, though not too many slots are available to the player. We don’t want them scheduling PAP’s for the next five months and not showing up until then. So, summarizing, if the player wants to rush the process of absorption and keep playing, he can, sometimes, do so using the second option. There's no penalty for it, he’ll even gain some of the SAE’s benefits, but not as much as if he took a break and underwent the PAP, but we never force the player to use the SAE right away. We give the player some flexibility to plan and even to go back on a choice, depending on the element being used.

The Persistent Absorption Process requires no player input; in fact it actually requires the player to be logged off. The progress of the PAP is showed in the login screen letting the player know when it'll be finished and what percentage of power has already been absorbed. Attempting to login before the process is finished prompts a warning, informing the player that entering the game will interrupt the PAP, either making the remaining energy in the artifact go to waste or resetting any benefits acquired from the Element, but letting the character keep it, at player’s choice. Needless to say that PACE is a pretty context heavy system, and this means two things: Number one, it goes against the flow of experience and level based character progression systems known today. So you need to make it clear for players what they're getting into. Number two, you need to ornate the system a lot with reasons, explanations and excuses as to why things must be done the way they do. Everything must be pretty well explained, otherwise the mechanic becomes a nuisance in the eyes of players much used to the old whoever gets there first, leaves there first mentality.

It's also important to remember two things: First, it is part of the designer's job to know the average time it takes a player to get a hold of a SAE at any given point in the game. Thus it’s also his job to choose how the system will play out in his game. Does he want the system to even out any discrepancies that are going to occur by the difference in playtime the players have? Then the designers should tweak the numbers so that any benefit a player can acquire by absorbing an Element for three hours can also be acquired by instantly-absorbing X Elements, X being the average number of Elements a player can possibly find in the same three hours, and so on. It solely depends on the designer’s vision. Secondly, it’s important to point out that the so-called SAE’s, or elements are just generic names. A project's creative designer has to come up with cool items that relate to the world’s back-story and make sense gameplay-wise to fill the SAE's position, like the examples I mentioned above.

During the creation of the PACE I came up with 4 different items that could be classified as SAE’s. Please, keep in mind that I created all these examples using a 4-layered character structure, therefore any differences towards any other character structures would have to be appropriately balanced and adapted. For the ones who don’t know what I’m talking about, the four layers are:

The first layer contains attributes like Strength, Dexterity, Vitality and Intelligence which the being invariably has. These are all attributes which define who the character is. This category holds all the attributes and numbers that have a more indirect use in the game world. It’s what defines all the abilities the player has.

The second layer is the abilities layer, which carries specifications for actions like running speed, explosion speed, physical damage capable of inflicting and withstanding with his limbs and torso, will power, fatigue level, reaction time, awareness and etc. They’re all calculated using attributes as their base. Abilities are, in this particular sense, what the character is naturally capable of doing when bare naked, with simple clothing or with no skill and technological assistance. This category holds all the attributes and numbers which can be more directly used in the game world, therefore they can be considered the actual gameplay itself.

The third layer refers to the skills possessed by the player, the knowledge which augments the performance or the duration of the basic abilities held in the second layer such as making the character’s accuracy better or increasing the it’s sprint time. It’s a fact that a character can get better and better in using a rifle through training or he can even entirely learn how to shoot a rifle through constant necessary experience, of course some things might not be capable of being used or operated unless the player previously has the skill, like a special vehicle or armor. In that case, it would be advisable to require the character to have the skill prior to trying to make use of the item. Basically put: the skill level affects the natural ability of the character, if such exists. These natural abilities are presented, again, in the previous layer.

The fourth layer holds all the equipment the player has. Equipment in a game can sometimes increase the player’s performance and capacity or even enable some kind of gameplay style or move in the player’s repertoire. Equipments work just like skills, except they can make a character fly and other cool stuff which simple skills can’t, unless you’re an alien, then maybe you can fly or become invisible with mental training. Anyhow, of course equipment can always be stripped of a character, whereas a skill can only be taken away with brainwashing, if you’re into this “staying true to some aspects of real life” thingy. It greatly supports the performance of skills and abilities, sometimes even enabling a given style of gameplay or adding to the player’s choice repertoire.

It is important to remember that none of elements explained below are in the same universe, much less in the same game. They could be, with the proper tweaking of their backstories, functionality and effect. Though it was chosen to present and explain them for what they are, using separate universes, backstories and the like. These are mere examples with the purpose of exemplifying the potential and some of the uses an element could take shape as. Anything not explained or detailed could, and should, be filled in with your imagination.

The first element I came up with during the creation of the system was an alien tablet. This tablet contains specifications for advanced technology; they’re called “Inscription of the Ancients”. This is an example of an item that could be used for a equipment-oriented reward and an example of an inconsistent SAE, since it’s an item generally found and not bought. The tablet can be read by a Portable Factory Module which is an item all characters heavily dependent on equipment have in the fictitious game world I created for particular this example. The Inscription is inserted into the factory and blasted with radiation which reveals the hidden markings and symbols. A little backstory for it: the tablet was actually thought to be mystically dangerous in ancient times, until a human scientist discovered how to read the information in it, ever since then PFM’s have been created and continuously improved. This explosion in portability and tech incited the search and scavenging of these tablets across all galaxy, one tablet can be read one time, and having technology nobody else does is considered to be an advantage. The PFM is programmed to thoroughly analyze the tablet and create the best possible outcome out of the information it contains. The process, of course, takes time (PAP), though the device does present the possibility of just skimming the inscription and assembling a quicker outcome. For example, let’s say the player comes across a flame ignition control and power tablet, one from which could potentially spring a nice flamethrower attachment for his main rifle. If the player decides to undergo PAP he’ll get a portable flamethrower, attachable to the main rifle, enabling him the use of two powerful weapons at once. If he decides to “instantly absorb” or, in this item’s context, skim the tablet in order to keep playing, the character will get a big and bulky flamethrower with a much less powerful oxygen combustion system than the original attachment. Not to mention the weapon is going to have to be wielded by itself. While the player still gets access to new tech, even though he instantly skimmed the tablet, this serves to incentivize the use of the PAP. This player, who skimmed the tablet, would have to find another flame ignition control and power tablets and either instant absorb a certain number of then or PAP the next tablet. The bright side is that, ideally, the PAP process would last a little less this time, supporting the idea that the skimming already meant something and that the PFM already has some information about the fire technology the tablet holds. Again, totally up to the designer to tweak these numbers and perhaps even out the differences a bit if he feels he doesn’t want his game to convey this message or experience.

The second Element is called “Hourglass”. This device is placed in one’s ear when it goes to sleep, provoking lucid dreams. The element allows anyone to train and improve their skills even when they’re sleeping. This is an example of an item which is used for a skill-oriented reward. It is also a consistent Element, which, as a perk of its own, cannot be instantly absorbed and the reason for that is simple: knowledge invariably requires practice and time for natural absorption and by the time this device was built they still hadn’t found a way to spike brain activity in a way a person could read and assimilate a 700-page book. Upon use of an Hourglass, the player would choose which skill or list of skills he would like to share his practice time and then get dreaming. The device works through emission of a very high frequency sound wave which is not even heard by the human ear, but is felt by the brain. The wave incites a slight peak in brain activity right before it’s about to enter a sleep state, causing REM sleep. In this state, the character enters a dream state which is moderated by the device, preventing the corruption of the “physical” dream world with fantastic features not true to the real world, although it still gives enough autonomy and freedom to the user to break those rules when strictly requested, the Hourglass simply makes sure the user gets a real experience, one that can be passed as a legit memory, not just a dream. But the user never loses consciousness that he’s not in a real world. As one could expect, Hourglasses require an enormous amount of energy to function, energy they get from the cracking of ruxxy crystals. Ruxxy crystals are incredibly expensive jewels which are mined from planets all over the galaxy. The population of the universe often wonders if the crystal’s steep prices and all the restraints put into the Hourglass device’s design are due to actual difficulty in finding and extracting the crystals or a way to keep a good percentage of the universe from engulfing themselves into a world of pleasure and fantasy that only their minds could provide for them, of course the results of such a trend would be terrible since it would alienate most of the population. In this hypothetical game world I present the players would buy the Hourglass device once, and subsequently buy any crystals he wishes in any authorized sale store, thus explaining why it is labeled a consistent SAE. After activating it the player would choose how many hours he would like to spend practicing each skill, and then logoff. When logging in the prompting is pretty much the same as the Inscription, although there’s one detail which I thought could be further discussed and I’ll leave it to the readers to take their pick: the hourglass could work in a way all the progress is lost if the player chooses to login without waiting for the crystal to run out of energy. That would require a change in the lore so that if the process is interrupted the crystal would need to remain intact, thus giving a chance for the player to reschedule his PAP. The second option is to use a more practical approach and go for the principle that what you learn, you don’t simply forget. Making players keep the progress they had up until the point where they cancelled the process, but taking the crystal from them. I enjoy the latter a lot more, for one because it provides a little variety in the way these this SAE works when relating to others. Even though the first option could be perfectly realized since people usually don’t remember all their dreams and the designer could very easily capitalize on this simple fact from the human condition to craft an acceptable reason for the players’ progress to be lost.

This third SAE is called “Essence of Kings” and it serves a very specific purpose, it was designed to be used for a mechanic called Path of the Ancestors. The Essence of Kings is, basically, a mystical glowing crystal shape and, even though it is solid, something glows inside the transparent crystal. The essence carries glowing dust scattered among the crystal’s molecules and absorption of the dust grants permanent benefits to the person’s natural abilities. For optimal dust absorption rate it is recommended to hold the artifact for a continuous period of time, usually during meditation (PAP). This allows the dust to be slowly absorbed by the skin, with no loss to the environment. On the other hand, one could break the artifact and, with the crystal shape broken, set the dust into the air and inhale it, though this method allows for only a portion of the dust being effectively inhaled. Its backstory is quite peculiar: In fantasy worlds these artifacts are generally created by collecting the necessary items for its creation and then imbuing the crystal with energy, coming from the character’s ancestors. The imbuing process can be done, once the materials are collected, by either the ever-moving spiritual sages, these are NPC’s scattered around the game world; the trick is that these sages are difficult to find. They are nomads and are constantly changing place, but they realize the work for a symbolical fee, since they are not interested in any material wealth. The imbuing process can also be done by any player with a spiritually-linked class, these of course are much easier to find though much more expensive. Imbuing the power of an ancestor spirit in the crystal creates a dust which carries the power of those who lived and trained before you. By seeking, crafting and using Essences of Kings the player has an opportunity to achieve key bonuses to their abilities and, at the same time, he actually crafts some of his story for himself. This gives the player a chance to incorporate into his RPG experience a history for his character, where he came from, who were his ancestors, what they did, what they accomplished at the same time he “chooses” which ancestors he would like to absorb knowledge from and carry on with him. This possibly increases the bond between character and player. This, of course, is an example of an inconsistent SAE, with an ability/skill-oriented reward focus. I do believe it is possible to incorporate this idea in a sci-fi world with a simple change from a spiritual to a scientific approach to the matter. In this case it would be explained that the Essence of Kings, possibly carrying a new name due to cultural differences, would be a product that must be produced on-demand, costing huge amounts of currency for a single iteration of it, of course, the SAE would then fall into the consistent category. The futuristic version of the element would scavenge the user’s DNA for ancestor’s genes which made them especially good at an specific ability or skill and rewrite these new-found genes into remote areas of the genetic code which would take effect, yet not disturb the physiological integrity of the body. This way the ancestral benefits for skills and abilities could still be achieved, but through a scientific approach, impliedly a DNA memory theory used in many games such as Assassin’s Creed.

The fourth, and last, SAE is a drug called “PUX-24/x”. Its backstory is one of misuse and carelessness: humanity had expanded throughout the galaxy and with its technological advances, some scientists created a drug which triggers the artificial development of the human body and mind. It is capable of enhancing one’s strength, agility, health, intelligence and perception, among other things. With the cheapening of the technology, the use of the drug became widespread among humanity: humans used it all the time to become stronger and/or faster for sports, more intelligent for test and such and some people even used it to live more. In fact, humanity started to abuse this drug to such an extent that a condition started to manifest itself in a great portion of people, eventually reaching out to 97% of humanity, the condition was dubbed metabolical development disorder, or MDD, and humans who suffered from MDD did not develop properly, either muscularly or mentally. The problem is that it is a genetic disorder, so parents passed on this condition to their offspring. The only way found by scientists to ensure a steady, healthy growth of the human body and mind was to continuously make timed use of the drug. The irony is that the drug is the precise thing that caused the problem in the first place, some folks around the galaxy even wonder if this was a planned feature for the drug all along. The rise of what soon got to be known as a disease was that PUX started to be seen as a constant need for humanity. As a consequence, its production had a huge boom in production and R&D, as more and more children were born with the condition; more and more drug doses were needed. Today,  PUX treatment is much like standard vaccines: you must take it as early as the age of three to properly develop body and mind. This triggered a bending of the default human figure. Old standards lost themselves among the prospect of stronger, faster and more intelligent humans that could more optimally perform their everyday tasks if they made continuous use of the substance. Doses which are mandatory for a child’s standard development are subsidized by the government, since the doses are extremely expensive. Anything beyond the necessary use has to be bought by the individual himself. As the backstory may suggest, this is a consistent SAE with an attribute-oriented reward. The name comes from the nickname that many scientists, during the first run at researching the main properties of it, used to refer to the drug: Power Up X; “24” refers to the version of the drug, with each new version providing much less side effects and a revised formula for increased performance. “x” indicates the drug’s variant: “s” relates to the strength variant, “v” is the letter for the vitality variant, “a” is the agility variant and the “i'” codename indicates the intelligence variant. A designer could have as many variants as he/she wants, though, ideally, there’d be, at least, as many variants as needed to cover all the attributes individually. In this case, at least one variant relates to at least a single attribute, developing it when applied. It works like this: players need to first buy a syringe, which he’ll use to inject the drug into himself, simpler syringes allow for smaller doses to be applied and not much combination to be done, bigger, more advanced syringes allow for bigger cocktails of variants (thus creating bonuses for mixing them), after acquiring the syringe the player has to buy the doses from any regular store or pharmacy and mix them if he wants, and then apply the cocktail to himself. For example, combining one strength variant, two vitality variants and one agility variant would prompt a bonus for vitality, allowing for further specialization of the attribute if a character continuously takes a single variant at a higher rate. Time control over the PAP of this SAE is done by managing the size of doses, smaller doses are absorbed faster, which incites to player to have more contact with the game at the beginning and bigger dosages, which are unlocked later in the game, allow for developers to control and incentivize players to take a longer break between play sessions.

It goes without saying that much of the fiction created and used here does not match the reality of our own world and it doesn’t exactly have to be that way, this is to say that I am not an expert in alien technology, engineering, biology or sleep and the explanations for the Essence of Kings, Inscription of the Ancients, PUX-24/x and Hourglass do not have, in either shape or content, the pretension of being scientifically accurate.

I truly believe that the experience and the way people play MMOG’s should and can be a lot more healthy without taking away any of fun and the abundance of content and immersion. This is just one idea, one system which I try to present in order to give the first step, try and discuss a different way. The idea presented in this piece of writing is simple: make the player feel less constrained to the game in regards to time, allowing him to player other games, have different experiences and even work without worrying about the fact he’s being left behind by people who do have the time play the game all day long. At the same time that we try to keep the player within the game world through more interesting means like better content, more compelling story and more interesting experiences. The PACE system aims, as a first objective, to present a way of playing that doesn’t require the player to be at the game 24 hours, making an effort to change the way people think of online massive gaming and also give the developers a bigger control over the time people take to experience content, since all the experience is based around time and periods the developer himself have created, he can easily calculate the average amount of time it would take a person to experience all the sequences and acquire all the items.

Please, comment! Let me know what you think of my idea and let me know of your ideas. Tell me what’s bad in my design so I can make it better.

I appreciate your attention and your patience, if you’ve endured this far.

Persistent Absorption Character Enhancement System by Ronildson Scarani Sillas Palermo is licensed under a Licença Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported.

Provocando Emoção

O papel das ciências sociais no game design

This article will be translated to english ASAP, while the translation’s not up you can check the original article. Thanks for your patience! – Roni

Os jogos estão tão intrinsecamente conectados ao nosso cotidiano que é difícil imaginar uma época em que os humanos não usavam estas atividades recreativas para seu lazer e aprendizado. Jovens de tribos indígenas no sul da Austrália costumavam brincar de Battendi (jogo no qual o objetivo é lançar objetos) para praticarem sua pontaria com as lanças¹ e adultos chineses jogam Xiangqi (famoso passatempo, conhecido como o xadrez chinês²) para se distraírem da mesma maneira que crianças, hoje, brincam de pique-esconde para passar o tempo enquanto adultos jogam xadrez para exercitar suas mentes. Uma certeza é irrefutável: a noção de jogo nos acompanha há tanto tempo que é difícil até mesmo separá-la da condição humana. Hoje, jogamos para aprender, jogamos para nos distrair, jogamos para ter experiências e até jogamos para nos emocionar, mas todas estas possibilidades oferecidas pelos jogos digitais atualmente não nasceram da noite para o dia. Isso foi fruto de um processo lento que necessitou de muita tentativa e erro e da idealização de diferentes tecnologias.

Partindo de um exemplo remoto como a criação do famoso jan-ken-pon, jogo criado na China antiga³ que é usado como base para o equilíbrio da jogabilidade de muitos jogos hoje, ou da invenção do xadrez, na Índia, durante meados do primeiro milênio⁴ já é possível notar a necessidade do idealizador de tomar decisões sobre como uma partida de seu jogo, mesmo este sendo clássico (fazendo uso de tabuleiros, cartas, dados ou até mesmo as mãos), irá transcorrer. É necessário decidir quais serão as regras deste jogo, estipular seu objetivo pelo qual o(s) jogador(es) tem que competir, seja esse objetivo baseado em tempo, quantidade ou conquista. Além de definir o espaço deste jogo, explicando se a movimentação dentro dele é livre, regrada ou até mesmo controlada baseada em alguma coisa. Informar como os jogadores podem manter o controle desse movimento (mapa de quadrados, hexágonos, círculos, régua flexível) também é necessário, sem esquecer de escolher quais artifícios usar (cartas, dados, fichas, fotos, esculturas) para representar as idéias que o jogo precisa que o jogador entenda ou observe. E definir quais as interações possíveis do jogador sobre o jogo, o que ele controla, o que ele não controla, quantos jogadores podem participar de uma partida, como manter o jogo interessante para todos os participantes, como um jogador pode afetar o outro, quais as ações que cada jogador pode exercer sobre o outro. São essas as características que definem o conceito e a jogabilidade do seu jogo. São estas decisões que compõem o game design⁵.

Estes simples exemplos mostram necessidade de criar sistemas e estruturas que engajem e cativem o jogador a participar e interagir, pois jogos, enquanto entidades interativas abstratas, são naturalmente atividades e não trabalho. Portanto, na grande maioria das vezes, a participação do jogador é totalmente opcional e particular a ele, se ele não se sentir motivado a jogar, não participará. Outra característica notável é o fato da maioria destas características serem totalmente voltadas para a parte funcional, e consequentemente mais genérica, do jogo. Essas características previamente apresentadas, as quais se limitam a não apresentar razão ou lugar para elas mesmas, não tratam de nenhum assunto em especial. São apenas partes que compõem uma estrutura genérica a qual pode ser encaixada qualquer contexto. Essa estrutura possui conceito, características, mecânicas e ações. Mas ainda falta dois elementos básicos: Conteúdo e contexto⁶. Todos os jogos criados no passado e até há algumas décadas atrás tinham conceito, características, mecânicas e ações bem definidas e significativas, mesmo que poucas, mas não tinham tantos artifícios para relacionar o jogo com a realidade, no caso conteúdo e contexto. Não existia visuais aprimorados e em tempo real, nem efeitos sonoros realistas ou trilhas sonoras, ou qualquer assinatura própria com a realidade do jogador. Isso é um aspecto que caracterizou a maioria dos jogos clássicos: a necessidade de limitações nos campos de conteúdo e contexto serem preenchidos com a imaginação. O jogo, sem contexto e conteúdo, é só um conjunto de regras abstratas o qual regem sobre um universo, que é a partida. Um jogador, provavelmente, só lembraria dessa estrutura genérica quando jogasse algum outro jogo parecido ou lembrando de algum acontecimento extraordinário, que provavelmente aconteceu externo ou universo do jogo, mesmo que durante uma partida, como alguma interação entre jogadores ou algum acontecimento engraçado devido as regras do jogo. Essas eram as dificuldades enfrentadas dentro da dinâmica dos jogos clássicos e até de brincadeiras de criança. Todas estas formas de jogo necessitavam de criatividade e imaginação para se aproveitar suas experiências em ao máximo. Não era fácil, se ao menos possível, contar uma história profunda, significativa e complexa através de jogos clássicos ou brincadeiras, entretanto era possível criar estruturas genéricas sobre as quais os jogadores aplicavam suas histórias, personagens e narrativas. E estes exemplos, claro, também se aplicam aos jogos de tabuleiros mais sofisticados que são comercializados hoje, pois a mídia, e consequentemente suas limitações, continua praticamente a mesma.

Portanto, levando em consideração todas as limitações da mídia analógica em relação à quantidade de informação apresentada a(os) jogador(es) para que o jogo corra de maneira flúida, as limitações em contextualização e a exposição de conteúdo simbólico significativo, caracterizado pela diferença entre mostrar uma carta de uma personagem e materializar, mesmo que virtualmente, a personagem diante do jogador, dar uma voz a ela e um conjunto de opniões e diretivas para que ela interaja com o jogador, já é possível definir alguns aspectos que caracterizam razões para a força da experiência interativa não ter sido plenamente explorada pelos jogos:

Primeiramente, não havia tantas e nem tão simples formas de difundir a capacidade de imersão e intimidade que os jogos proporcionavam entre o jogador, a narrativa e suas escolhas dentro dela, no passado. Talvez uma das raras formas de jogo que poderiamos qualificar como criador de experiências plenamente interativas são os RPG’s de mesa como Dungeons & Dragons e GURPS, populares na década de 1970 e 1980, aonde o jogo, por ser mediado por um ser humano presente à mesa, tem infinitas possibilidades ao passo que qualquer indagação ou ação tomada por um jogador pode ser rapidamente interpretada e incorporada ao jogo através da vontade e imaginação do chamado ‘mestre’ da sessão, criando uma sensação de realidade e imprevisibilidade. Esses sistemas de jogo de interpretação criaram a possibilidade de histórias serem contadas através do jogo em si, com os jogadores fazendo escolhas que afetam a história de maneira ativa e dinâmica, criando relacionamentos e relações com outros personagens e NPC’s dentro do jogo. Porém, por apresentar um conjunto complexo de regras e que necessitava ondas constante de cálculos, um pouco de trabalho por parte do mestre para a preparação dos materiais para a sessão de jogo e muita imaginação por parte dos jogadores para superar as limitações audio-visuais e de imersão que os sistemas de RPG de mesa apresentam, essa não foi uma forma de jogo muito difundida.

Vale citar também que, devido as limitações de mídias analógicas já mencionadas, as experiências proporcionadas pelos jogos e brincadeiras clássicos eram baseadas em emoções básicas, como as da lista mais simples apresentada por Paul Ekman na década de 1970: alegria, tristeza, cólera, surpresa, nojo e medo⁷. Sendo as últimas duas, ainda sim, sendo exploradas de maneira muito superficial, de maneira que é necessário um nível de imaginação e compromentimento com o jogo muito alto para genuinamente sentir medo atráves de simples representações ou até mesmo nojo de qualquer experiência que o jogo em si possa vir a apresentar, ao passo que é mais fácil que essas emoções surgam em relação a qualquer um dos outros jogadores, o faz relação direta com o próximo item.

A grande, e quase generalizada, dependência das estruturas de jogo na participação de mais de um jogador para potencializar o possível compromentimento emocional com os resultados que o jogo pode proporcionar. Os jogos clássicos necessitavam de imaginação e adicionais jogadores para as experiências vividas durante as partidas se traduzirem realmente em emoções, do contrário elas eram simples sentimentos, ou sensações. Não havia personalidades dentro do jogo para culpar por erros, acontecimentos ou perdas a não ser que o jogador imaginasse o bispo esquerdo do xadrez como sendo um homem terrível que queria tomar o trono do rei negro. Era tudo mecânico, o que dificultava o relacionamento dos acontecimentos com a realidade. O game designer criava estruturas de jogo sobre as quais deveriam ser implantadas as histórias, personagens e narrativas do jogador. Ele criava sentimentos e possibilidades, nada mais. É mais fácil proporcionar a possibilidade da emoção nojo surgir quando você obriga um primeiro jogador a disputar pela vitória com um segundo jogador e este se mostra disposto a trapacear para completar seus objetivos, uma opinião da qual o primeiro jogador repugna.

Isso leva a crer que emoções básicas são facilmente representadas pela forma como agimos com objetos, objetivos e problemas os quais não precisamos interagir de maneira social para que sejam resolvidos, mas ao inserir um elemento social na disputa, como a introdução de um jogador oponente, ou a simulação deste, capaz de se comunicar e interagir com o jogador fora do âmbito de jogo, o jogo dá margem para a criação e/ou o desenvolvimento de toda uma teia de motivações, pensamentos, sentimentos e emoções que cada jogador deverá tentar desvendar para auxiliar no entendimento e na superação de seus oponentes. Isso traz todas as emoções envolvidas no processo social para dentro do jogo, o que só auxilia na tarefa de imergir o jogador em um mundo único no qual ele possa viver uma história que ele irá acreditar e, possívelmente, extrair algo de positivo, levando consigo lembranças das experiências vividas nesse mundo fictício.

Mesmo com todos as limitações da mídia analógica, o nascimento e a popularização dos videogames trouxeram uma mudança para o paradigma do papel do game designer: na década de 1980 a terceira geração (8-bits: SNES, MegaDrive) dos consoles de videogame chegou e com ela muitas franquias de RPG’s começavam sua tentativa de apresentar uma história, personagens e uma narrativa que tentava cativar e emocionar o jogador que estivesse vivenciando o protagonista. Pela primeira vez havia um jogador que interagia socialmente com outras entidades simuladas, o que permitia partidas individuais, e essas entidades, por sua vez, interagiam com o jogador utilizando programação de computadores para fazer a análise do que deveria ser tido ou feito dentro do jogo. Havia razões para os acontecimentos dentro do jogo. O jogador ainda tinha a liberdade de fazer o que ele quisesse dentro do mundo do jogo, dentro dos limites impostos pelos designers naquela determinada estrutura, mas havia ali uma história, algo que deveria ser seguido, explorado, descoberto e entendido. Agora havia vilões, entidades com motivações ou intenções opostas as suas. Mas dessa vez havia motivos que podiam ser descobertos pelo jogador e esses motivos iam além da simples alegria, tristeza, surpresa e outros. Agora havia a possibilidade do jogador finalmente derrortar um vilão só para descobrir que seus motivos talvez fossem tão nobres quanto os seus próprios ou que ele tinha sido levado a isso por forças maiores que ele, o que poderia levar o jogador a sentir pena do que antes ele pensava ser seu arqui-inimigo. O aspecto emocional evoluia dentro da mídia dos jogos através do advento dos jogos digitais e da introdução da narrativa de maneira difundida para as massas. Game design estava se transformando em algo mais complexo do que simplesmente criar regras e métricas para que os jogadores projetassem suas emoções. O papel do game design agora era o de provocar emoção. Um game designer precisava fazer seu jogador chorar, rir, ter ou perder a esperança, sentir medo, aflição, nojo, culpa e muitas outras emoções para que sua narrativa e seu mundo fossem lembrados e incorporados na vida do jogador quase como uma memória, algo que os seus jogadores pudessem lembrar e aprender com, e não como um simples sonho ou jogo.

As limitações dos jogos clássicos começavam a ser superadas com a introdução de narração e tecnologia digital o que, permitindo o processo de um enorme fluxo de dados, facilitava a criação de jogos maiores e mais complexos que ainda sim pareciam simples para o usuário final. Todavia, na terceira geração os visuais ainda eram rústicos, portanto ainda havia a dificuldade de transmitir sensações e emoções relacionadas a lugares, ambientes, visuais, trilhas sonoras e efeitos sonoros, mas o ofício de fazer jogos finalmente começava a dar seus primeiros passos em direção a ser considerado arte. Algo que não era visto em todo seu potencial, nem em todo seu espectro. Com o passar dos anos a tecnologia avançou, passando para a renderização de jogos em três dimensões, o aumento exponencial de polígonos renderizados na tela, a quantidade de texturas que os modelos suportavam e assim foi o desenvolvimento das tecnologia disponíveis hoje.

Hoje títulos de jogos como Ghost Recon, Gears of War, Call of Duty, Dead Space, Fallout e Batman: Arkham Asylum lideram o avanço das inovações que ocorrem todos os anos no mercado mainstream de jogos digitais. Novos designs se transformam em novas idéias, novos sistemas de jogabilidade ou em novos jeitos de representar as idéias mais inusitadas e os personagens mais fantásticos no mundo virtual. Muito se fala do costume de comparar o ramo dos jogos com o ramo dos filmes, mas é válido fazer a analogia de que hoje o trabalho de um game designer é muito mais parecido com o de um diretor de cinema. Ele tem a idéia, o conceito em sua mente. Todo o jogo se passa em sua cabeça: a jogabilidade está montada, todo o ambiente modelado e texturizado, os efeitos prontos, os NPC’s no lugar, todas as set pieces, sequências pré-programadas, já animadas e preparadas. O game designer já pode vivenciar toda a experiência em sua mente, se colocar no lugar do protagonista e sentir tudo o que ele pode, entretanto ele precisa passar isso para a equipe, o jogo estar pronto em sua mente é somente o primeiro passo.

Um game designer precisa aprender a traduzir o que sente quando vivencia o jogo em sua mente: quais são as emoções chave para a experiência sair do jeito que ele a idealizou, quais as características mais marcantes dos momentos que se passa em sua cabeça e como traduzir isso para o jogo. Essencialmente, um game designer precisa construir mecânicas e ações que o seu jogador irá realizar repetidamente dentro de seu jogo e estas mecânicas e ações devem influenciar os jogadores a sentir algo. Ter uma sensação única ou estranha a eles, como sentir desgosto ao tomar uma decisão não muito convencional, mas necessária para a preservação de sua vida dentro do jogo, uma sensação de poder e controle quando estiver detonando diversos meliantes pelas ruas de uma cidade tomada pela violência ou sentir desconforto e medo enquanto explora um laboratório escuro e parcialmente destruído localizado no fundo do mar enquanto ouve sons estranhos e gritos de dor a distância. Por isso ele precisa conhecer a si mesmo e o que sente para poder transmitir isso através de vias comuns como um jogo, criando jogabilidade e situações que vão colocar o jogador sobre pressão, fazer ele pensar em alguma coisa ou fazer ele agir de alguma forma, só para citar alguns exemplos. Para isso o game designer precisa, como um provocador de emoções, se apoiar em ciências que estudam os diversos aspectos de quem vai jogar seu jogos, seres humanos. Para isso ele faz valer de áreas estudadas já há algum tempo como Antropologia, Psicologia, Linguística e História.

A antropologia estuda o homem, como o nome indica: antropo, do grego anthrōpos – “homem”, e logia, do grego logia – “estudo”, a partir de diversas perspectivas. Dentro da antropologia há quatro áreas principais: antropologia biológica, antropologia cultural, antropologia linguística e a arqueologia⁸. A principal área contribuinte para a matéria interdisciplinar que é o design de jogos é a antropologia cultural. Ela engloba o estudo da cultura de uma população, o que é especialmente útil para julgar a melhor forma de focar os esforços no momento de elaborar o game design dedicado a uma porção da população. Usando o exemplo de um jogo casual: é fato consumado que nem toda a população do mundo aprecia as mesmas atividades, portanto é útil saber qual porcentagem de pessoas gosta do que e focar os esforços em desenvolver as áreas em maior demanda para atingir um nível de aceitação adequado. Mas isso só caracteriza um exemplo, também é hipoteticamente possível usar o conhecimento gerado pelas pesquisas e experiências dos antropólogos para detectar padrões de gosto e preferência e aplicar isso na criação de designs, apontando a confecção de desafios, mecânicas e ações para padrões cognitivos específicos, exemplo disso é montar uma mecânica ao redor da idéia de repetição ou sequenciação, dependendo do foco e da preferência dos jogadores. A antropologia linguística e a biológica dão respaldo ao uso de outras áreas na criação de designs, como a linguística e a história, respectivamente.

História é uma área usada, juntamente com a antropologia biológica, para dar suporte às narrativas dos jogos atuais, tanto para as que carregam um teor fantástico ou fictício quanto para as narrativas mais contemporâneas que apresentam alguma conspiração, ramo desconhecido da história ou teoria da destruição mundial. O uso e o estudo da história são importantes por diversos motivos, um deles seria para dar consistência a narrativa e encaixar ela de maneira eficiente no escopo mundial que o jogador conhece, outra utilidade do estudo de história para aplicação na narração de um jogo seria utilizá-la para misturar fato e ficção de maneira que aliene o jogador em relação ao que realmente aconteceu naquele período de tempo, isso se prova especialmente eficaz quando partes da história são inexploradas ou parcialmente desconhecidas pelo o jogador, assim o designer tem a liberdade de criar ficção ao mesmo tempo que à apresenta de maneira convincente e quase que real, o que pode ser usado para manipular a visão e opinião do jogador sobre acontecimentos passados. Enquanto isso possa parecer um tanto mácabro e maquiavélico de ser realizado por parte de um designer, esse método é simplesmente mais uma opção em seu arsenal para apresentar sua idéia e convencer os jogadores de que ela e válida ou fazer eles sentirem empatia por um lado ou uma perspectiva da qual ele acha válido apresentar para o mundo, novamente, parecido com o jeito que um diretor impõe uma visão ou um sentimento sobre sua audiência. É só mais um jeito de influenciar o jogador e um bom exemplo dessa técnica é o estilo de narrativa do jogo hit de succeso Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater⁹. No jogo, Hideo Kojima, o principal designer, escritor e idealizador da franquia, utiliza de muita técnica para aplicar alguns conceitos de hiperrealidade na ficção do jogo. Ele foi tão cuidadoso em sua aplicação em relação a conteúdo e método, além de ter escolhido uma ótima época para aplicá-la, que não seria um absurdo considerar a possibilidade de que muitas então crianças, o jogo é de 2004, foram expostas ao conteúdo do jogo e tomaram como verdade muitos dos fatos expostos no jogo. Uma breve explicação, a efeito de exemplo. No jogo, Kojima apresenta a crise dos mísseis em Cuba como uma farsa, apenas uma mentira apresentada pelos EUA para encobrir a verdadeira moeda de troca usada para forçar os russos a retirarem os mísseis de Cuba. Os russos queriam, na verdade, um de seus cientistas, que havia fugido para o oeste anos antes, de volta. Esse cientista se chamava Sokolov e era o principal responsável pelo desenvolvimento da tecnologia que possibilitou o voo do foguete Vostok, responsável por mandar Yuri Gagarin para o espaço por uma hora e quarenta e oito minutos. Sokolov havia fugido para o lado oeste da cortina de ferro depois de se ver forçado a adaptar seu trabalho para ser utilizado na criação de um sistema de lançamento de mísseis balísticos intercontinentais. A URSS queria Sokolov de volta, por motivos que os EUA não completamente entendiam, e, devido a gravidade da situação e ao desconhecimento dos norte-americanos dos planos russos, eles o devolveram, mesmo contra sua vontade. Anos mais tarde um agente da CIA, codinome Snake, durante a execução de uma missão que provaria para a agência que sua unidade especial estava pronta para ser aprovada e oficializada, ele foi designado com a missão de extrair Sokolov novamente para o oeste, baseado em inteligência de que ele estaria trabalhando em um novo sistema de lançamento de armas nucleares. Durante a extração da área de operação o cientista é recapturado por uma facção separatista que tem planos para tomar a Rússia e o líder dessa facção explode um protótipo de uma bomba nuclear portátil norte-americana que a melhor agente secreta americana deu de presente a ele quando traiu os EUA para se aliar ao bloco soviético, mais precisamente se aliar a esta facção e causa uma instabilidade no governo russo, o que força Khrushchev a dar um ultimato secreto no presidente dos EUA, forçando o agente da CIA envolvido no primeiro incidente a voltar a campo, mesmo tendo sido seriamente ferido. Isso é só para ilustrar, de maneira branda, o quão fundo Kojima foi para montar sua ficção em cima da história que conhecemos hoje. Embora o cuidado e a execução possam ser considerados impecáveis, o principal atrativo de tudo isso ainda é a época em que ele decidiu posicionar o jogo e esta narrativa. Como o nicho de jogadores está mais envolvido ao redor de jovens que não viviam na década de 60, poucas delas conhecem o que realmente acontecia em 1964 e quais eram as possibilidades da tecnologia da época. Dando margem para Kojima brincar com a realidade da época. Já que tudo o que esses jovens conheçem é tecnologia, não seria um absurdo imaginar que a 40 anos atrás tudo também era tecnologia. Isso dá a Kojima e sua equipe a liberdade para alterar a história e inventar pontos que façam com o que jogador tome alguns acontecimentos do jogo como reais, mesmo que não seja e ajude os jogadores a simpatizarem com seu, já conhecido, tema anti-guerra e anti-nuclear.

A Psicologia é o campo que estuda o papel das funções mentais no comportamento individual e coletivo e seu objetivo imediato é entender a humanidade através da descoberta de princípios gerais e o estudo de casos específicos, por isso é um campo tão explorado na área de design, principalmente pois se trata de criar experiências para pessoas e para realizar esse feito conta muito ter a disposição uma ciência que estuda a razão para pessoas se assustarem, apaixonarem, se sentirem felizes, deprimidas ou praticamente qualquer outro sentimento ou emoção. Os casos de uso que as técnicas da psicologia proporcionam para o game design são inúmeras, mas algumas valem a pena ser citadas. Por exemplo, é muito útil saber qual a sensação ou emoção inatas que as cores transmitem para a maioria das pessoas. Se for o objetivo do designer criar uma área que parece mais solitária ou isolada ele pode se basear nos conhecimentos e pesquisas feitos pela psicologia para usar as cores que correspondem com a emoção que ele quer transmitir. Outro caso interessante é o do próprio estudo do comportamento. Sabendo quais os movimentos, expressões e jeitos de falar de uma pessoa que está mentindo, falando a verdade, sendo espontânea ou deprimida é muito mais fácil representar isso na tela durante a atuação de seus personagens. Outro caso interessante é o efeito da noção de recompensa na mente do jogador, analisando o exemplo do jogo Diablo, por exemplo. Diablo é um jogo que, apesar de todo seu contexto e conteúdo, se caracteriza por apresentar uma dungeon (um calabouço ou uma simples área subterrânea ou separada do mundo normal que apresenta perigos e tesouros desconhecidos) na qual o jogador deve aplicar sua habilidade, fazer valer seu equipamento e utilizar seus itens para eliminar todos os inimigos ou encontrar a chave para o próximo andar, que geralmente vai mais fundo. Ao final ou durante os confrontos de um dado andar o jogador obterá novos itens que repõe os itens gastos com recuperação de energia ou mana e também terá acesso a equipamentos mais poderosos com um contexto ainda mais místico e maravilhoso e com visuais macabros e ainda mais fantásticos. Entretanto, o que o jogador não percebe é que o jogo está simplesmente o enganando. Ao dar os itens que o jogador gastou de volta, aumentar a capacidade de seu personagem e lhe provir equipamentos mais fortes o jogo está proporcionando ao jogador a sensação de sucesso, de missão cumprida e de recompensa. Após todo o esforço e todas as perdas ele sente que conseguiu algo novo e mais poderoso, algo que o difere do resto dos personagens de seu mundo, entretanto, no momento em que ele faz a transição para o novo nível, que contém inimigos mais fortes, o próprio jogo anula qualquer benefício que ele tenha ganhado anteriormente. É um clássico caso aonde o jogador pensa que está ganhando algo fantástico quando na verdade só está ganhando aquilo que o jogo julga necessário para que o jogador sobreviva e possa ter uma experiência satisfatoriamente divertida e ao mesmo tempo não menos difícil do que o nível anterior. Pode ser feita uma analogia com esse exemplo, imagine que você esteja dentro de um carro, andando a noventa kilometros por hora em uma estrada de cinco pistas, seu carro está na terceira pista e todos os carros nessa mesma pista parecem estar andando a uma velocidade parecida, em relação a você eles parecem parados. No momento que você acelera para cento e dez kilometros por hora, tudo parece mais lento, você está indo mais rápido que a maioria e sente isso. Entretanto, no momento em que você muda para uma pista à esquerda você percebe que tudo volta a ficar relativamente parado. Na realidade o aumento de velocidade só conta na pista mais lenta, quando você passa para uma pista mais rápida o ganho se incorpora a necessidade natural de velocidade para não bater o carro em um veículo que venha atrás. E com um algoritmo simples de criação de mapa, posicionamento de inimigos e um escalador de pontos é possível deixar o jogador passando de um nível para outro com inimigos mais fortes, mais resistentes e com armas mais fantásticas por um período praticamente infinito. Outro exemplo interessante, e que não havia sido explorado de maneira aberta até pouco tempo atrás, é o mapeamento de personalidade e comportamento para uso dentro do jogo. Imagine que um jogo tenha um questionário tão detalhado que, ao respondê-lo de maneira verdadeira, ele apresenta desafios, sustos ou estímulos que são feitos sobre medidia para você. É o seu medo na tela, aquele susto ou aquele local foi feito para estimular você de uma maneira que o designer deseja. Pode parecer algo estranho mas foi justamente o que Silent Hill: Shattered Memories apresentou ao criar um contexto de consultório psicológico no qual um psiquiatra lhe faz perguntas e grava suas respostas para influenciar a jogabilidade e até os personagens e o que eles falam para o jogador. Esse conceito ainda não foi plenamente explorado, mas traz possibilidades animadores para designers de todo o mundo.

A Linguística é a ciência da comunicação, como hoje trabalhos com narração e jogabilidade juntos. Vemos uma tendência: o crescimento da personalização e da aleatoriedade da narrativa. Hoje a narrativa ganha espaço e vem se transformando em algo tão aleatório e tão controlável pelo jogador como as ações de jogabilidade de nível baixo de seu personagem. O princípio é básico: toda ação dentro do mundo do jogo deve ter uma reação, uma consequência. O campo da linguística ajuda na confecção de diálogos e da comunicação básica entre jogador-jogo. Além de beneficiar em campos como o da criação de significado, já que a linguística também estuda a formação de símbolos e como o cérebo os interpreta. Isso é particularmente útil quando criando mensagens subliminares ou criando cenas que possuem, ou não, um ar misterioso. Um item bem posicionado e bem mostrado pode valer por mil palavras quando o que está em questão é o entendimento de um significado pelo seu jogador ou a criação de um. Além da exposição de sentimento e emoção através de itens cotidianos em nossa vida. O estudo de como símbolos e o significado são criados ajuda o designer a criar ou expor símbolos e significado para o jogador o que potencializa e muito a força que uma experiência interativa pode ter sobre uma pessoa.

E assim se pode constatar a evolução do ofício de fazer jogos em um trabalho de criação de experiências, algo tão íntimo, real e carregado de significado que é de interesse do designer e de toda equipe de desenvolvimento que as experiências exploradas e ocorridas dentro do jogo não sejam tratadas apenas como diversão, embora elas, muitas vezes, possam ser, mas como algo da onde possa se aprender algo, tirar significado. É uma perda de energia e também uma pena não considerar todo o potencial que experiências interativas tem sobre nossas vidas, uma vez que é da condição humana prezar por tudo aquilo que é construído por nós mesmos. Nada mais natural do que prezer com vigor extra o resultado de um jogo, que é fruto direto das escolhas do jogador. Sejam essas simples, básicas, complexas ou simplesmente escolhas. O trabalho de um designer é muito divertido, mas ao mesmo tempo de grande responsabilidade. Somos susceptíveis a estímulos quando procuramos diversão. Encaramos o que vemos de maneira aberta e totalmente sem preconceitos uma vez que escolhemos aquele jogo, filme, livro ou aquela experiência para vivenciarmos. Portanto, o que uma pessoa joga, assiste, lê ou ouve durante sua infância, e talvez até em sua vida adulta, influência em como esta pessoa pensa, age e vê o mundo. Trazer questões pertinentes ao cotidiano do público e usar os jogos como uma ferramenta que possibilite o balanço de uma visão, geralmente, unilateral para que, a partir daí, este público possa encarar situações com diversos pontos de vista em mente e assim tomar atitudes de maneira informada é uma responsabilidade que todos os designer de jogos e de entretenimento em geral carregam, invariavelmente. Claro, é de opção pessoal engajar ou não nessa empreitada, mas sem dúvida, está nas mãos de game designers uma mídia de extrema força que carrega, por natureza, o poder de convencer os mais teimosos dos homens, se bem usada.

Referências

1. Traditional Aboriginal Games & Activities, http://www.creativespirits.info/aboriginalculture/sport/traditional-aboriginal-games.html, acessado em 28/10/2010;

2. Xiangqi, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiangqi, acessado em 28/10/2010;

3. Rock-Paper-Scissor, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock-paper-scissors, acessado em 28/10/2010;

4. History of Chess, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chess, acessado em 28/10/2010;

5. SCHELL, Jesse (2008), The Art of Game Design: A book of lenses, pg. xxiv;

6. LOPES, Gilliard; KUHNEN, Rafael (2007), Game Design Cognition: the Bottom-Up and Top-Down approaches, http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/2129/game_design_cognition_the_.php?page=1, acessado em 02/09/2010;

7. Emotion Classification Theories, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotion_classification, acessado em 04/11/2010;

8. Anthropology, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropology#Military, acessado em 04/11/2010;

9. IOVANOVICI, Zoran (2010) Analysis: What Metal Gear Solid 3 teaches us about Hyperreality, http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/29377/Analysis_What_Metal_Gear_Solid_3_Teaches_Us_About_Hyperreality.php, acessado em 01/10/2010;