Cold Light of Day

Reviews for the book are flooding in at the rate of, oh, maybe one a month. Still, the reviews have nice things to say and unsurprisingly this is more enjoyable than being torn apart by wild tortoises. Our first review is Jack's at the Amazon sales page (five stars - thanks Jack!), and the second (as far as I know) is over at the consistently excellent Lost Garden. Danc's review not only praises the book but it raises all sorts of sensible issues for discussion. I can think of no better claim to make about one's work than it provokes intelligent debate among the bright and talented.

Danc makes the claim that the likelihood of the DGD1 audience model being correct in all its details is approximately nil. Personally, I think the word 'approximately' isn't needed in that sentence! We did the best we could with the data we had, but the reason for the '1' in DGD1 is that by the time we were finished, we already had new directions to explore. My hope is to encourage the creation of many audience models - what a terrible place the games industry would be if there was just a single lens to look through!

The review breaks into an engaging aside, looking at the dangers if the audience model approach becomes dogma instead of thought food. It will come as no surprise to my readers that I detest rigidly dogmatic thinking (although, as my wife is keen to point out, I do dogmatically believe in supporting diverse belief systems!). One of my chief concerns with Noah's 400 Project, which I discussed with him at length when he first set it up, was the danger of people taking it as canonical dogma... the trumping schema  seems to feed into this problem. Noah seemed confident there was little risk  - I'm not so sure myself.

With regards to our own work, the idea that anyone could rigidly adhere to a single audience model and use it to dictate cookie cutter game design is chilling. Danc is right to raise a warning flag, but I remain optimistic that the game design community can take DGD1 in the spirit in which it was offered - as a way of thinking differently about the play needs of a diverse audience. (Perhaps I am showing the same naivity as Noah in this regard, though). Ultimately, future audience models may provide a template for wide scale economic success - my hope and belief is that if and when this happens, the niche audiences will not be left out in the cold as smaller companies will be able to meet their play needs on lower risk budgets. In fact, the direction we've gone after finishing this first round of research into audience models was to say: lets see if we can make it economically viable to support the play needs of minorities. I know we're not alone in thinking this way.

Danc wants to see various things that we want to see too - such as additional studies done with more statistical rigour. Oh to have the money to fund such an endeavour! I dream of a partner organisation with the resources to prove us wrong and take us to a new and better model. In the meantime, we plod remorselessly towards DGD2 on our own, and with a budget more suitable to buying tinned spaghetti hoops than carrying out research.  Still, we have to do what we can.

In terms of the applicability of audience models to game design, we have been using DGD1 (and Lazarro's Four Keys) to inform our game design for two years now... I guess I should really write about how this has worked for us at some point - but how does one get around the non-disclosure agreements? I know we need to do more with this.

As for exploring the business consequences, I thought the book already did this! But Danc is right that there are potentially negative issues which are glossed over in our enthusiasm to suggest that there was a better way to do business than copying the most successful genres ad nauseum.

I loved reading the Lost Garden review. It was that encouraging moment when you go from lingering self doubt to the confidence that your once fanciful ideas actually make sufficient sense that a fellow intellectual is willing to spend the time looking at both the advantages and the potential pitfalls of your approach. I wouldn't want DGD1, which is effectively our prototype audience model, to be  anything other than a first step towards an industry which is more in touch with the reasons why people play games, and a lesson in how we can better meet the play needs of our audience. But this journey has really only just begun.

Comments

[Hub]

Danc's post is indeed excellent.

Regarding Chris's point suggesting a discussion of the values of DGD1 from an internal perspective, the amount I find myself using the terminology suggests great value. Though it is likely that this terminology is incomplete or flawed, and as such may have uncertain value for the design process in the long term, I believe that since these terms replaced no other terms - which is to say, I had no way of talking about these issues prior to DGD1's development - they must provide some degree of advance.

DGD1 clearly works best in thought experiments and at the concept level. Once a game is prototyped, the best way to see if an audience exists is to have players play it. As such, irrespective of its 'accuracy', I think DGD1's primary strength will be in giving a foothold during the initial design process, where the job is to narrow down possibilities to find the game within. We need some criteria by which to assess a potential game's value, after all.

Finally, I'd like to add my vote to the anti-dogma theme by suggesting that DGD1 must be put down via a bullet to the spine should people ever actually start believing in it. Hopefully there are enough typos in the book to spare it this level of respect :)

[James O]

The idea of anyone taking any of these models as law is fairly silly on its own - one wouldn't write a text book on "The Rules of Painting" and expect it to be taken as the one and only source of painting knowledge. While there can always be general guidelines for what has been seen to work or not work, no rule in art and design can ever be cast in stone. For that reason, I feel Falstein's 'trump' schema actually alleviates the issues that concern you - it illustrates that no one rule can always apply in all situations.

[Chris]

And yet there are books on etiquette, dating and even science which have been taken as law. :) As humans, language has a strange power over us. Still, until I find an actual instance of someone making this kind of mistake, all I have are my misgivings.

[Dan Boutros]

The best martial arts instructors regard their art as 'guidelines' and not rules.

Guidelines merely offer the chance of greater success, but only a fool would think them as certainty.

I would say the DGD models are excellent guidelines, but without understanding the why, who, what, where, when and how, some people will end up mis-using them, but that's always a pitfall and can never be avoided.

[Danc]

We know for a fact that Electronics Arts uses a simple audience model as a foundational element of their game selection process. They also have evolved a check list formula of what is a 'good game', based off what I assume are internal studies. It isn't Chris's model, but this class of tools is already being used as a 'culling mechanism' instead of a 'design/brainstorming tool'.

What is interesting is that market driven gates which are used to cull concepts can be a very valuable technique that actually encourages innovation. 3M, a company that gets something like 35% of it's revenue from new products released in the past four years, uses a market driven stage gate process that is heavily weighted towards innovation.

So I guess my take is:
- Audience model are and will continue to be used as a portfolio management technique throughout the industry.
- If used blindly as a profit maximizing device for existing segments, they lead to stagnation.
- If used with a proper respect for the dynamics that innovation play in a well balanced portolio, they can be exceedingly helpful.

take care
Danc.