Breaking: GDC SGS Keynote - 'A New Kind Of Game'

Kicking off the second day of the Serious Games Summit at GDC with his keynote, 'A New Kind Of Game: Broadening The Idea Of What Games Can Be', game theorist Jesper Juul presented an interesting lecture on how games have evolved over the past 30 years. Serious Games Summit chairman Ben Sawyer commented of Jesper that he is "...one of the leading academic thinkers who is putting out great thinking for developers as well", and Juul's intriguing keynote touched on a lot of theoretical to practical transitions. One of Juul's central points was that games don't have to include explicit goals - you can cater to a wider audience by designing open, expressive games. In building games without goals, it was suggested, you can create something relatively new and positive. Reasons for trying this approach include "getting beyond the typical hardcore gamer demographic", and allowing user-generated content, as well as user-adjusted difficulty - in very open games, they can simply pick what they want to do. Juul booted up an emulated version of 1981 Konami arcade title Scramble and showing that alternative tactics don't work - for example, pacifist Scramble doesn't work because you will run out of fuel, due to the game mechanics. The player is punished for not using the correct tactics, allowing play in a very narrow way, and meaning that there's a very narrow audience, potentially. However, he suggested, the economics of the arcade game necessitated such difficulty. He then argued that video games "have not entirely escaped the idea of the arcade game", that you have to punish the player harshly. The classic model of rules, goals, and outcome give the player "a clear sense of accomplishment and clear attachment", Juul suggested, but the problem with a clear goal is that it leads to clear failure, and not all players enjoy failure. He suggested: "The typical hardcore game ethic is that negative feedback is rewarding", but for many more mainstream players don't enjoy failing in a game. In other words, "you are forced to do what the game tells you", working in ways that don't match the ways that they want to work. [NOTE: This initial write-up covers the essential details of this GDC lecture. Gamasutra will have a full write-up from the key lecture, including details not revealed elsewhere, in the near future.]