"The forthcoming game from EA, Spore, will probably blow everyone's mind, as Wil Wright is changing the paradigm for game development based on the concept of procedural programming"
Left: Katie Salen at the recently held X Media Lab in Singapore

From the academic point of view, Rules of Play is one of the first comprehensively written primers on the subject of game design. Co Author Katie Salen is a a designer interested in the connections between game design, interactivity, and play.

The world renowned games writer, academic, author and feature film animator, currently serves as director of the graduate Design and Technology program at Parsons School of Design New York, and has worked on a range of projects for clients such as Microsoft, SIGGRAPH, the Hewlett Foundation, gameLab, the Design Institute, the Director's Guild of America, the Buckminster Fuller Institute, and others.

At the recently held X Media Lab on Succesful Computer Games in Singapore, Animation 'xpress Anand Gurnani caught up with the Katie. The 90 minute conversation with the dedicated game design researcher and expert was focused on Game design...

Excerpts

What is the best thing about games and gaming today?
Also what's worse about them?
As an avid gamer, the best thing for me is the fact that more and more people are playing games…they are becoming part of an everyday lifestyle, rather than a geeky thing that only weird programmer guys do. I am also really excited by the ways games are giving players a chance to be creative, through character and level editing tools, which break down the line between game designer and player. Games are becoming living and breathing systems that players have a large hand in producing and changing…I find this extremely cool.

The worst thing is simply the cost of games. They are expensive to buy (for a lot people, including me!) and even more expensive to make. Developers won't risk experimentation when the costs are so huge. The result has been a dearth of games that we might call truly innovative.

Usually Art and Design are referred to in the same breath, but in terms of Gaming, Game Design and Game Art are two separate subjects. Could you help elaborate on that?
Game Design refers to the design of actual game play, developing the system of play that gamers will inhabit. Game Art refers to the visual assets that make up the character, world, and interface design of a game. This art is produced by illustrators, graphic designers, artists, and animators.

Right through Gaming history, which are the classic examples of great game design?
Well, I think everyone will have a different opinion, as there are a lot of ways of determining what constitutes a "great game." But for me, I would list paper-based, social games, and digital games alongside each other in a list that would include: Texas Hold 'Em Poker, Rock-Paper-Scissors, Mafia, Scrabble, Settlers of Catan, Tetris, Adventure, Katamari Damacy, Legend of Zelda, Defender, Warcraft/Starcraft/WoW, Rez, Antigrav, Unreal Tournament, and Advance Wars. I could just keep going actually, as there have been so many truly awesome games made.

Some comments on recent trends in Gaming? What's looking exciting nowadays?
The handheld market is looking particularly interesting to me these days, as I think platforms like the Nintendo DS are starting to innovate in the area of unique and compelling game mechanics, as well as exploit the power of multiplayer networked play. The forthcoming game from EA, Spore, will probably blow everyone's mind, as Wil Wright is changing the paradigm for game development based on the concept of procedural programming, In making Spore, Wright sidestepped the current paradigm of massive teams of content creators in favor of a system of building games from the ground up. Players produce and exchange content that is dynamically integrated back into the game, leading to greater and greater forms of emergent complexity. The model is not only sustainable-the system will generate content as long as players do-but economical too. Smart!

Please tell us a few things about keeping simplicity in the game design yet creating complex game-play?
I don't think the game design has to always be simple per se, but in designing games you want to figure out how the fewest possible rules can lead to a space of play filled with emergent possibility. We are finding that even the simplest game mechanics can lead to extremely rich game play if those mechanics give players complex, meaningful, and strategic choices. The trick is to balance restricting and stylizing player interaction through rules, and giving them the space to play.

Are Game Designers pushing technology to come up with better game-play or is it the other way round? Also your comments on role of technology?
I just wrote an article on this for Adobe and what I discovered in interviewing a lot of different game designers was that the design-technology equation must be approached in a lot of different ways. For some designers, technology creates a particular social or interactive context that they can respond to, as in the case of mobile technologies and alternate reality games like I Love Bees, or Uncle Roy All Around You. For others, technology is something to be exploited, invented, or simply modified. The history of the first person shooter is the story of programmer John Carmack inventing new technologies for games id software wanted to make. So technology always creates a context for game design. Understanding the limits and possibilities of the medium are ways that designers exploit any particular technology's strength or weakness.

Could you share some of your experiences while writing 'Rules of Play'? How did the idea to do such pioneering work come about and how has it been?
The book was a true collaboration between Eric Zimmerman and myself and was quite important in helping us both to explore ideas we had been working with for some time in teaching game design and making games. It was tough to write, as we wanted to try and write in a way that was approachable, but at the same time begin to establish a theoretical framework for thinking about the design of games. We have gotten a lot of good feedback on the book, and just put together an accompanying anthology called The Game Design Reader: A Rules of Play Anthology (MIT Press), which contains a lot of really excellent essays by writers, designers, researchers, and players. So those were two big projects we are proud of.

Future Plans?
Right now I am focused on a couple of experimental game design projects-one is a game for the cities of Amsterdam and Utrecht in the tradition of the Big Urban Game, which I designed with Frank Lantz and Nick Fortugno back in 2003. I am also working on a game that uses wireless surveillance cameras mounted on large red balloons in the tradition of an RPG, but played in the city streets, and am doing a fair amount of design consulting on some more commercial games. On the research front, I have been deeply interested in understanding the game prototyping process better, and hope to write a book focused on this subject in the next couple of years…right now I am studying a lot of game design companies to better understand how they prototype and model games. It is really fascinating.

Your comments on X Media Lab as you have mentored twice?
I am a big fan of Xmedia Lab, partially because I value teaching and education so much-it is one of the few places in the world where professional designers and content developers can come together and exchange expertise in an open and collaborative environment. I love being able to travel to different countries to see what people are up to and how innovation develops differently in diverse cultural contexts. Plus it is a great chance for me to listen and test out ideas of my own among a group of super-talented peers…I would go back again in a heartbeat.