Simple, Single-Purpose Elegance

I hate Facebook.

There’s lots of reasons to hate it, but I hate it for the reason that it is obtuse and sprawling. The worst part is that I used to love it. And back then, when we were starry-eyed for one another, I swear that it was a different creature altogether. I swear that it changed, more than I did.

This is going to get around to talking about story games in a minute, but give me time to bitch about Facebook first, okay? See, Facebook is now a mess of Walls, status updates, pages, groups, events, apps, social network games, ads, albums, chat windows and boxes. I have a hard time looking at a Facebook page and establishing a clear vision of what it’s supposed to do.

Facebook used to have a vision, right? College students and alumni could sign up with a college email, and then they’d be able to find their friends, write on walls, and view people’s pictures. It was a time magnet for people wanting to creep the hundreds of photos that their ex Courtney has up. Excellent. A simple and elegant social site. Now, it has traded in that vision for extra tools. It’s become a big, sprawling box of tools, something unwieldy.

Perhaps I’m weird, but I want everything in the world to have a clear and immediate purpose, to have a clear and immediate big picture. I don’t care if it’s important or not, I just want it to know what it is.

And now, I want to take a moment and share with you some of my favourite stuff on the internet, and unpack why it’s my favourite.

Twitter
Twitter is the perfect example of what I wish Facebook was comfortable being: a site with a clear role. A simple, single-purpose elegance. Twitter is a place where you can talk to yourself about what you’re doing, name-drop the people you’re hanging out with, and watch other people do the same. It’s like a perpetual, narcissistic chatroom. You can reply and retweet, follow people and whatever. Or not. You can just spit out little 140-character tidbits about what you are doing on your day off.

Now, Twitter is constantly adding new features, just like Facebook. So, how are they different? First of all, Twitter’s features are unobtuse and unobtrusive. Some (hashtags, @replies, new search options) are an increase in functionality without an increase in visible stuff. Others (lists, retweet button) are quiet & available, obvious in their purpose. In all cases, Twitter’s features increase functionality without detracting from core elegance, and reinforce what Twitter is supposed to be about: dropping little updates, and watching your friends do the same.

750Words
I’m absolutely in love with this site right now. It’s a beautiful middle-ground between Livejournal and Nanowrimo and Twitter. Here’s how it works: you log onto a private journal. Along the top of the page, there’s a very-sleek simple calendar showing you which days this month you’ve written and which you’ve missed. On the bottom of the page, there’s a word counter. Write until you have 750 words or more.

It’s inspired by an exercise called morning pages, wherein a writer starts their day by writing three pages. Usually journals and untidy thoughts. So, a really simple purpose. What does 750 Words bring to the table? Well, first of all, the main journaling page is simple and tidy. There are no distractions in your virtual workspace. The calendar along the top (just a series of thirty checkboxes, with completed days filled in) is a powerful, powerful motivator – seeing a skipped box isn’t fun, and there’s a drive to fill today’s. The real-time word count along the bottom is another powerful motivator. So, the main workspace is motivating and uncluttered, a perfect environment in which to write. It’s also accessible from anywhere, a bonus over real-world journals that you need to lug around with you if you want them handy.

But here’s the cool bit! Once you’ve hit your goal, click the little word count link. It takes you to an analysis page, which breaks down your words-per-minute, total time, number of distractions and total words written. It graphs that in comparison to your record best. And then it analyzes your post and tells you about your mood, your writing topics, and your common words. It’s not always right, but it’s a fun feature. FINALLY! You can earn badges for writing a certain number of days in a row (badges at 1, 3, 5, 10, 30, 100).

So, there are all these features. But, here’s the cool thing: they don’t cloud the site’s functionality. They support the core vision (daily writing and self analysis). The badges motivate, the analysis tools invite you to take a look at what you’re writing. Everything about the site supports its core vision, and every feature is unobtrusive and purposeful.

Canabalt
Perhaps the best video game I’ve ever played. Canabalt follows a man in a tuxedo, only a couple pixels tall, as he makes a “daring escape” from a crumbling city. He runs along rooftops automatically, and you click your one button to make him jump. Jump from rooftop to rooftop!

The game is super, super slick. Great music, great graphics, great pacing. And it’s simple: your only control is jump. He’ll run progressively faster and faster, and the only way to slow him down is to crash into some obstacles (there are crates and garbage cans scattered across these roofs). Some buildings are covered in cracks, and start collapsing the moment you land on them. Sometimes, you need to jump through a “window” and run through a building. Finally, there are two types of bombs: little ones, that land on top of a building and that you shouldn’t hit; big ones, that obliterate a building upon contact, that you need to jump on top of to make it through the level. There’s a “tweet your score” button, and you can tweet how many meters you ran before falling. That’s it. On the ipod version, you have two different soundtrack options.

So,
This all relates to story games and game design. You can already see how, right?

Games are powerful when they have a strong, guiding vision. When that vision is backed by a simple, single-purpose elegance… it glows.

I have a design bias towards minimalist, structured freeform games. But that’s not necessarily what I’m talking about. What I’m talking about applies equally to games with complicated mechanics and lots of dice. Maybe an example will help me make that case.

Apocalypse World is a post-apocalyptic game about sexy people in a dangerous world where there are no status quos. It’s a game about putting diverse people in a place together, and having them figure out how to hold their own.

And everything about the game backs that up beautifully. The players have a few principles that they’re supposed to play by: play your character and when you do it, do it. The GM has a longer list, but three that stand out: make Apocalypse world real, there are no status quos and respond with fuckery and intermittent rewards.

The game mechanics are geared to ensure that status quos won’t emerge. It’s easy to gain power, easier to lose it, and there’s a scarcity and danger that prompts constant action. Every special move that a character can take helps to flesh out the world, flesh out who that character is, change the opportunities in front of the character, and enables the GM to respond with new fuckery when something goes wrong.

The games that I’ve designed that I’m happiest with (Ribbon Drive & Gun Thief, btw), they have a strong vision and they reinforce that unobtusely with every rule and note I add. The games that I’m least happy about, the mechanics don’t always line up with the vision, they’re over in the corner, doing something else. It’s a struggle I’ve had with Perfect all along – bringing the mechanics in sync with what I want the game to achieve. But, it’s coming, slowly. Faster now that I’ve diagnosed the issue.

So, what can we take from this post? That I hate Facebook, because it lost sight of its purpose. That I love Twitter, because it hasn’t. That 750 Words is an amazing demonstration of how to unobtrusively support a core vision.

That games benefit from a strong vision, supported with mechanics that build upon it without distracting from it. That this is a truth no matter how minimal or fleshed out your game is. That having everything feed back into a core experience, a core vision…

…well, it’s invigorating.

Posted by mcdaldno | 6 comments