"Out Of Character" design

Exhuming comments written months ago brought back many thoughts. In particular the very last line where I linked a well-known story written by Raph. As always as a provocation, because I'm naturally a provoker and that's the aim of most of what I write.

The problem is that after months have passed I had some difficulties to remember what exactly I meant with that conclusion. At that time Raph replied with:

I'd love the answer to who is out of the box there, Abalieno. :)

But I didn't give the answer simply because I thought it was obvious and that my point didn't need further explanations. Now I'm not sure if what I was trying to say was that clear, in particular because now I see how it was deeply interconnected with many other topics that were evident only to myself.

The "OOC design" was a conclusion that I figured out at the end of the last summer, after weeks spent to discuss Star Wars Galaxies on Grimwell. Trying to understand how the game should be developed, what were its natural strengths, what went wrong and needed to be addressed but still preserving the true nature of the game and improve on that path instead of derailing it somewhere else. Now the actual development of the game turned out to be worst than our expectations but this isn't the point. The point is that, after many reiterations and simplifications, I managed to figure out the origin (from my point of view) of the pattern that brought to many design problems in the game. Escher's drawing hands.

This is what I consider Raph's basic mistake and that I believe he still hasn't fully realized. From those discussions I started to write a lot, on this site and on different boards, so what I was trying to explain couldn't be more obvious to me. I was writing endlessly about it to the point that I started to put everything for granted even if the topic became more and more complex. I moved from criticizing the specifics of SWG to the importance of the "symbolic shared systems" (the myth) over the "formal system". At this point the hyperlinks (in my head and on the internet) become countless. On this same site Raph commented:

I think you're wrong about abstract games, btw. There's a LOT to learn from them, and they are not necessarily less fun because they are abstract.

Which brought to my my considerations about Raph's speech at the last GDC. Where again I underlined the importance of the culture and its archetypes over the formal system.

Now I have the occasion to go back and explain that somewhat cryptic comment I wrote months ago on Lum's blog. With the possibility to even add one more hyperlink, maybe.

The mistake of the "Out Of Character design" is about giving the precedence to the formal system (the shape) instead of the myth (the content). It's the attitude of the designers that begins to build the general structure of the gameplay only to adapt it afterwards to a specific setting. The setting itself comes after, the rules are built "out of character" because the game-world still doesn't exist, it hasn't an identity, it doesn't share a myth. I underlined all this in SWG exactly because the mistake is more evident. Star Wars is a myth before it is a formal system. This is why you cannot plan the shape without considering beforehand the myth itself. It's "Star Wars" that should define the gameplay, that should inspire the mechanics, that should trigger the creativity. Not the formal system emptied of any ties with a particular setting.

Now give a look to the recent discussion about crafting and mini-games on Ubiq's blog. In the comment I wrote there I explain that, from my point of view, mini-games used to make crafting more fun are just a design shortcoming. As Ubiq wrote and Ray summed up concisely: "it's either an annoying hoop or it excludes those people who would naturally fill the crafter role". But it's not the crafting that I want to discuss here. What interests me and that ties to what I'm writing here is the repeated pattern of "OOC design". Crafting shaped up as a mini-game is clearly a solution created by a designer and not the projection of the desires of a player. Now go back to read Raph's story. What he writes and evocates there is PURELY about the projections of a player immersed in an environment with a cultural value (so a "myth"). If the player starts to "dream" about the possibilities and scope of what he could do, this means that he starts to design his own projection of the game from within. He becomes a possible designer of an "In-Game design" that is the opposite of "Out Of Character design". The scope of what he is thinking is naturally coherent with the setting and the fabric of the game because it is MADE with the fabric of the game. The formal system that can consequently build these possibilities comes after the myth, not ahead of it.

I believe this examples helps to explain my point. The prevalence of the myth over the formal system. Where it's the myth and its requirements to set the behaviour of the formal system and not the other way around. It's a matter of priority. It's a matter of who defines who. Who is the consequence of who.

We know that Raph still keeps enjoying tinkering with abstract formal system. This surely helps to understand and learn important elements of the gameplay, but I fear that ultimately it keeps shifting the focus on a level that should come only after the actual content. The focus on the "shape", forgetting how the content is way more important and from where all the rest should come as a consequence.

So. That last line at the end of the comment was a provocation. I quoted Raph against himself to show once again where the contrast is between coherent design and abstract design. I don't think that this point is trivial and that should be dismissed, so I keep bringing it up till I figure out where I'm wrong. At the same time it's another occasion to underline another core concept of "beyond".

That I commented just before on Grimwell:

The fact is that the genre could be a lot more than a pointless and endless character advancement. It's like if we took the form of an RPG and emptied it completely of any content. What is left is the advancement and nothing else.

Can't you see that these games and genres can offer MUCH more than advancement paths and combat?

Can't you see that these games are much more than formal systems?