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Damion Schubert, Zen Designer

*sigh* Most video games are about violence because it’s the easiest thing to do. It is the ‘layup’ in terms of video game design. Let me explain (Thread)

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Del | Naughty Dog

Game Devs can we discuss the movie Free Guy? Because the fact an above average Ryan Reynolds film can ask the question "Why are all modern AAA Videogames based around violence", yet we never mention it is... Unsettling.

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5:43 PM · Nov 6, 2021Twitter for iPad

Damion Schubert, Zen Designer

Replying to

The cornerstone defining trait for video games is ‘interactivity’. In terms of art, its what we do that music, movies and books don’t do. It’s our secret sauce. It’s our calling card.

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Damion Schubert, Zen Designer

Interactivity can take a marvelous variety of forms, and you see it in the incredibly diverse number of games that are out there, from Cod to Boyfriend Dungeon to Clash of Clans to Civilization.

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Damion Schubert, Zen Designer

The simplest version of interactivity is ‘I press X and Y happens. I understand it and it feels good’. This sense of understood causation is the cornerstone of video games.

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Damion Schubert, Zen Designer

In terms of ‘I’m controlling an avatar and doing things’, the things that feel good are actions that have responses that are (a) immediate and (b) big. Violent responses, if you will.

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Damion Schubert, Zen Designer

Great examples of ‘violent responses’ are the cornerstones of modern video games. Jump. Steer. Throw a punch. Shoot a gun. Launch a nuke. These actions inherently feel good because you can immediately see & gauge the game’s response.

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Damion Schubert, Zen Designer

Because the building blocks are so simple, it’s also easy to make these games have great depth as well. It is easy to, for example, have 500 hours of combat in an MMO that varies, escalates in difficulty and provides different challenges.

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Damion Schubert, Zen Designer

Compare that in your modern MMO to mining or fishing. It’s difficult to make those games deeper without making them weirder or more arcane mini games and less close to life.

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Damion Schubert, Zen Designer

Even our ‘violent’ responses aren’t equal, in terms of creating gameplay experiences. It can take days or months to create jump puzzles in a Tomb Raider level that the player consumes in 10 mins and never wants to play again. By contrast, combat is a highly repeatable activity.

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Damion Schubert, Zen Designer

That’s not to say that other game verbs aren’t possible. Literally any verb you can think of has been put into an indie game somewhere, and some of my favorites stretch into very different verbs.

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Damion Schubert, Zen Designer

Some games, like Animal Crossing, do it by having a wealth of verbs, none of which are particularly deep. And it’s great! Other games double down on a single verb and push it as far as it will go. Think the camera in Beyond Good and Evil.

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Damion Schubert, Zen Designer

One of the reasons why Spider-Man is such a great video game is that the web slinging city traversal is DEFINITELY in the category of gameplay with visceral and immediate feedback, and good content depth/ease of content creation.

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Damion Schubert, Zen Designer

(Not to say that developing Web slinging in spider-man was easy - just thinking about it makes me want to reach for my bourbon. But once you’ve built it, creating challenges and dropping them around the city is a lot easier than many other gameplay verbs I can think of).

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Damion Schubert, Zen Designer

And lots of games are built around interactivity that’s inherently slow, where you make choices and the payoffs aren’t really visible for some time. Think about strategy games or interactive fiction. That’s fine too, though even they shine best when feedback is immediate.

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Damion Schubert, Zen Designer

But all the above being said, these alternate games exist, but the mass market still prefers games with big violent responses (fighters, shooters, RPGs and drivers) to most other genres, and the reason is simple:

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Damion Schubert, Zen Designer

They’re the verbs that allow us to do gameplay that is (a) extremely visceral and immediate and (b) full of a large amount of varied content. Making these games is game development on easy mode. These mental models already work and are well understood.

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Damion Schubert, Zen Designer

Players understand how to play them as soon as they pick them up (due to us building on successful gameplay models). We’re on our 10000th iteration of the RPG, and maybe our 10th iteration of photo taking video game.

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Damion Schubert, Zen Designer

As a last parting shot, most of these other verbs ARE being built by the indie scene, and the gameplay they’re delivering is very experimental. Which is fine, but AAA budgets cannot afford to be experimental.

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Damion Schubert, Zen Designer

EA and Activision are both interested only in games that sell 10M+, for a whole bunch of reasons. They are not interested in your Didgeridoo simulator, and they definitely aren’t going to drop massive dev or ad budgets into them.

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Damion Schubert, Zen Designer

So in short, the reason the biggest, most successful video games are violent is because the medium does these VERY well, and we as an industry have gotten very good at it.

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Damion Schubert, Zen Designer

But don’t you worry, as soon as the indies find another verb that has the immediate visceral response and easy content depth as combat, I promise the AAA publishers will have their studios rip it off as soon as they are able.

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Damion Schubert, Zen Designer

Several people have responded to my thread with the belief I was saying ‘violence bad’ or ‘violence good’. A better summation is that it’s the same reason so many hit songs use the I-IV-V-vi chord combo - it’s easy to make big shit that resonates w/ lots of people

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@littleartistan

Really great thread that has a really great core thought: In what ways have we allowed media to hook us on instant gratification? And how have we steered the market to do just that? twitter.com/ZenOfDesign/st…

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Damion Schubert, Zen Designer

Those bands don’t invalidate other bands - lots of musicians mock I-IV-V-vi and there’s definitely a lot of bands like Dream Theater that make more sophisticated & challenging music. But mock it if you must, ‘Take on Me’ is an awesome song.

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Damion Schubert, Zen Designer

Oh, I think this too. I think the criticism, though, is why we invest so much into the violent games. The truth of the matter is that there’s a broad spectrum of game designs out there, and the audiences gravitate towards the violent ones, at least in the AAA space.

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▲I am Emmet▽ @ ???

Replying to @ZenOfDesign

Also, games allow people to explore violence in a safe, harmless way. After all, literally every person has a moment where they want to go apeshit, and just punch a motherfucker lol. I think that games allow us to do that is extremely satisfying.

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Damion Schubert, Zen Designer

Casual space is a different animal. It’s dominated by things like solitaire, candy crush, bingo and poker. And slot machines - y’all would not BELIEVE how many people put money into slot machine apps that will never output any money in return…

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Damion Schubert, Zen Designer

For the purposes of this thread, I think 'conflict' is the wrong mindset. I don't think that Animal Crossing has much conflict in it's core gameplay, nor does candy crush, solitaire, minesweeper, or loads of other titles, as conflict is commonly seen...

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Replying to @ZenOfDesign

This is a fantastic thread. Something that's maybe a bit implicit in your explanation but I think is worth calling out is that violence is also an easy *conflict*; conflict is engaging beyond a simple "action-reaction" loop, because it makes the reaction more meaningful.

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Damion Schubert, Zen Designer

To give your point credence, some sort of conflict IS usually necessary for games with a narrative bent, and when that happens, you'd like game mechanics to be the conflict resolution.

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Damion Schubert, Zen Designer

I prefer to think of it as 'the puzzle'. Every game has a puzzle that the player is trying to solve. In RPGs, the puzzle is the game's AI. In a virtual romance novel, the puzzle is simply navigating a Choose Your Own Adventure.

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Damion Schubert, Zen Designer

What combat has that most other mechanisms lack is a natural sense of escalation. Combat can get harder and whackier at a learning pace you can naturally absorb. Not only that, but the visuals of the experience escalate as well.

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Damion Schubert, Zen Designer

Fighting the Final Boss in an RPG uses similar tools (usually only powered up) as the ones they started on day one, and yet are a audiovisual orgy. Other 'puzzles' or conflict resolution tools lack that heroic arc, for better or for worse.

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Damion Schubert, Zen Designer

Just so long as we all agree that Death Stranding is the exception that proves the rule. =)

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Bret Mogilefsky is @mogul@mastodon.cloud

Replying to @ZenOfDesign

This is a really critical point.

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