Fancy title for a cut&paste comment I write on Jeff Freeman’s blog. He explains the new approach to the design that the team tried to have with JTL, space expansion of SWG. The original article is here, my comment is here below.

The fun is that all this has its origin on Big Bartle’s article. I’m trying to write something about it, but it isn’t coming out easily. Most of the points I underline here below are similar to my critics to Big Bartle.

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My first impression after reading what you wrote is that the mistake was the consequence of a start directly from raw, abstract design theories.

It’s true that we can draw a line between content and systems like Ubiq and Raph did, but this is useful only if we still consider, and never forget, that they are still two aspects of the same “unit”.

You can dismantle something to analyze it but then you cannot start from the pieces and hope to create the unity. This is also know as “reductionism”. Considering that a game is a complex system, by definition, the reductionism will never work to understand it.

I’m starting to believe that the problem in this genre is about having too many specialists about math and logic problems. When, instead, the genre itself would need a sociologic approach. To be analyzed as a complex system and not as an array of elements.

Interesting read anyway. What you did is EXACTLY what I explained a few months ago on Grimwell when I strongly criticized Raph. My main theory is that he broke the “third wall”. He let the design shape the game instead of the game shaping the design. This is basically a broken approach and there are theories (not mines) explaining this.

We are building a world. The “design” isn’t really a creation from a blank page. Instead it is way more about “reading”, “observing” and shaping what was already codified. In particular when we have to deal with a game about Star Wars, something that has its first quality as: a symbolic/social structure. But the same even if we are in a generic fantasy world. There’s still a MAIN component that is about “myth”. Something that has a strong and deep-rooted definition. Even before we consider the game aspect. This is also what the mistake in what Big Bartle wrote recently. There’s nothing new in the genre. We are dealing with something that was already there. We have different mediums and shapes but we are still dealing with myths and simbolic social structures that we fill with meaning.

At this point we cannot revert the system. We cannot start from a raw theory and build a world because the world itself, in it’s “being a world”, has already a long list of rules that MUST be respected and not simply discarded. Observing and shaping. Re-reading a genre that is ALREADY codified and not trying to build a theory from scratch because the genre is completely new. Like Raph is saying. This genre is OLD as much as the world. The structures and the content is the same. It is the SHAPE to change. And I agree that in a virtual space the shape is also the content, so relevant. But we cannot negate and discard all the rest.

So if we build a game, about a shared symbolic system (in particular Star Wars is a STRONG symbolic shared system way before Raph put his fingers on it). We need to RESPECT it. We need to shape it from the inside so that the frame is not shattered.

This is why SWG feels too faked. It’s a meta-game, speaking more about design than a real fictional space inside which the players makes an experience. What the player experiences is the meta-language. The design itself. And this obviously breaks the third wall, the immersion, the relationship between cause and effect and so on.

Designers need to stop to be gods shaping stuff on a blank page. These games are strongly typified and a lot can still be done by observing what they are and want to be already. Rediscover the fictional aspect, rediscover the relationships, rediscover the adventurous dimension. And rediscover all the feelings involved.

All already codified, with a strong identity that MUST be respected. What we should do is about studying the medium to see how all this stuff can be shaped in the best way.

But our studies about the medium CANNOT replace the respect of the content that is already there.

> From a development standpoint, it ensures that you don’t have more canvas than paint.

Because the canvas isn’t a result. The canvas is a tool. There’s dependence. There’s a strict priority system that must be respected and not violated. We build already inside a frame. This frame for us is fictional and with preexistent, codified rules. What we are going to paint must exist (must be seen) from the inside, thought from the inside. And only THEN, shaped.

Okay, I’m done.