Ben Gonshaw: Digital Media Theorist & Game Design Consultant
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NO GAME ALL PLAY

21st March 2005

Good ‘gameplay’ is what currently defines the quality of a consumer’s experience. We know that high production values, a licence, a particular style of content, the marketing, magazine reviews and shelf placement will influence the purchase. However, once they have got it home, how much they enjoy the game rests on how bug-free it is and how good the gameplay is. Frankly, console games should be bug free if publishers do not rush the mastering and developers match their ambition with realism, so we can concentrate on the ‘gameplay’ aspect.

Gameplay is a misleading term that helps to lock us into a particular mindset. It is neither game nor play, rather it is the subjective experience of interacting with the digital medium. Gameplay is just the responsiveness of the controls, the qualitative feel of the on-screen reaction to your inputs. In most AAA games the feedback loop of ‘move hand, see change, move hand’ feels satisfying, whilst those that have not had the benefit of money, time or expertise feel wrong. We term this loop gameplay and it is generally inferred from this label that interacting with a console or PC for entertainment must be in the form of a game. The notion is that only a game can be compelling. More restricting and more worrying is the confusion that only a game can have gameplay.

For me, the defining factor of a game is that you have to win it or lose it. While this may form the mainstay of current digital entertainment, this will not last forever; winning and losing, black and white, the tooth fairy, these are all for children. Have you ever won when watching a movie? Ever lost when finishing a novel, or even a magazine? What about an episode of Eastenders, a musical or a stage show? These are forms of entertainment that can only be classified as win or lose in an emotional pay-off sense, but not in a game sense.

There needs to be a paradigm shift in what we see digital media as being. Games have been a good education, they have helped us to push forward the boundaries of technology extremely rapidly and they remain at the forefront of hardware and software innovation. Games have also helped us to learn how to use digital media creatively. However, there are many forms of entertainment and games are just one amongst the number. Other digital entertainment could be more compelling, more stimulating and more mass market. One of us needs to be bold enough to take the first tentative steps into new territory and whoever gets there first will reap massive rewards.   As digital creatives we get to own a slice of the players’ lives and attention, whatever game we make. Do not waste that time on controller tests and therefore childish “I did better than you” challenges. Take the controls for granted and let the user explore and manipulate mature and adult abstract content, narratives and situations instead. Do not imagine your audience to be adoloescents or half-wits, but see them as intelligent, inquisitive and questioning. Provide them with an experience that challenges their beliefs and it could be far more engaging than shooting another machine-gun weilding bio-robot with huge boobs and a penchant for swearing.

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