Interview with a legend -- the mind behind "Elite", and more...

[Darren Dirt]

Q&A: David Braben--from Elite to today*

PS: If you have never heard of Braben (for shame) check out Moby Games ; the man implemented game features that in some cases have yet to be duplicated, let alone surpassed... over a decade ago.




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* Sounds like he's been waiting for technology to catch up to his ideas (Elite 4 would have been an MMO but back then the infrastructure wasn't there) and also the current next-gen project "The Outsider" totally sounds like the modern equivalent of what Deus Ex brought to the industry 7 years ago... Maybe David should get together with Warren Spector, who knows what they would come up with!

[Darren Dirt]

related: an famous essay by another veteran game designer, Greg Costikyan:
"I Have No Words & I Must Design"

Interesting to compare his vision and perspective back in 1994 to how gaming is perceived today. For example:

...the connection with socialization is key: roleplaying is a form of performance. In a roleplaying game, roleplayers perform for the amusement of their friends. If there aren't any friends, there's no point to it.

Which is why "computer roleplaying games", so-called, are nothing of the kind. They have no more connection with roleplaying than does HeroQuest. That is, they have the trappings of roleplaying: characters, equipment, stories. But there is no mechanism for players to ham it up, to characterize themselves by their actions, to roleplay in any meaningful sense.

This is intrinsic in the technology. Computer games are solitaire; solitaire gamers have, by definition, no audience. Therefore, computer games cannot involve roleplaying.

Add a network, and you can have a roleplaying game. Hence the popularity of MUDs.

How can players be induced to roleplay? What sorts of roles does the system permit or encourage?


Socializing
Historically, games have mainly been used as a way to socialize. For players of Bridge, Poker, and Charades, the game is secondary to the socialization that goes on over the table.

One oddity of the present is that the most commercially successful games are all solitary in nature: cart games, disk-based computer games, CD- ROM games. Once upon a time, our image of gamers was some people sitting around a table and playing cards; now, it's a solitary adolescent, twitching a joystick before a flickering screen.

Yet, at the same time, we see the development of roleplaying, in both tabletop and live-action form, which depend utterly on socialization. And we see that the most successful mass-market boardgames, like Trivial Pursuit and Pictionary are played almost exclusively in social settings.

I have to believe that the solitary nature of most computer games is a temporary aberration, a consequence of the technology, and that as networks spread and their bandwidth increases, the historical norm will reassert itself.

Wow, he really captured what is at the heart of a lot of the activities of members of this forum. 13 years ago.


Brought to you by your local chapter of the Gaming Appreciation Society.



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Do all the myriad forms of gaming have anything in common? Most assuredly. All involve decision making, managing resources in pursuit of a goal; that's true whether we're talking about Chess or Seventh Guest, Mario Brothers or Vampire, Roulette or Magic: The Gathering. It's a universal; it's what defines a game.

Is the analytical theory presented here hermetic and complete? Assuredly not; there are games that defy many, though not all, of its conclusions (e.g., Candyland, which inolves no decision making whatsoever). And no doubt there are aspects to the appeal of games it overlooks.

It is to be considered a work in progress: a first stab at codifying the intellectual analysis of the art of game design. Others are welcome, even encouraged, to build on its structure -- or to propound alternative theories in its defiance.

If we are to produce works worthy to be termed "art," we must start to think about what it takes to do so, to set ourselves goals beyond the merely commercial. For we are embarked on a voyage of revolutionary import: the democrative transformation of the arts. Properly addressed, the voyage will lend granduer to our civilization; improperly, it will create merely another mediocrity of the TV age, another form wholly devoid of intellectual merit.

Egad! He apparently predicted the advent of perpetual sport videogame franchises and Reality Television!

[Mr. Analog]

Man, I wish I could have played Elite on my Commodore 64! But alas I couldn't get it here.

[Thorin]

...the connection with socialization is key: roleplaying is a form of performance. In a roleplaying game, roleplayers perform for the amusement of their friends. If there aren't any friends, there's no point to it.

This sorta explains the difference between pen-n-paper RPGs and online RPGs.  Generally, in pen-n-paper the players are rewarded for acting out their character's actions by the various responses (spoken and subliminal, like body language) from the other players, whereas in online RPGs the players are rewarded for achieving actions.

That's not to say that in pen-n-paper games there aren't still goals to achieve, but because the goal is not coded into a program but rather is controlled by a GM who can alter the goal based on the characters' actions there is the ability to reward players who are good at acting.