A common metaphor used by game designers is that game mechanics are verbs. Verbs are actions; each distinct action you can make in a game is one verb.
Children’s games are often named after their verbs. Consider: Hide and Seek, Tag, Rock Paper Scissors, Kick to Kick.
The primary verbs in Doom are LOOK, WALK and SHOOT. Immersive sims such as Deus Ex are characterised by their large variety of verbs, whereas the minimalist Canabalt has only a single verb: JUMP.
In fact, JUMP is one of the oldest and most adaptable verbs in game design. Corvus Elrod recently wrote about game verbs as carriers of meaning by describing how the verb JUMP varied across five different games.
Just for fun, let’s extend the language metaphor. If game mechanics are verbs, game objects must be nouns.
Nouns are easiest to identify in a board game. The nouns of Chess are PAWN, ROOK, KNIGHT, BISHOP, QUEEN and KING. Each has two associated verbs: MOVE and CAPTURE. The game board may also be considered a noun, or 64 nouns if each square is taken individually.
Nouns in videogames can be harder to define. Take Mirror’s Edge: obvious nouns include enemy police officers and climbable objects, such as drainpipes and fences. But is the player-character a noun? (I’d say so.) Is a far-off building that can never be reached a noun? What about Faith’s arms and legs, which you can see as you run and jump about the rooftops? These things are represented visually and aurally, but have no substance. Stripping them from the game would not alter the action in the slightest. They are therefore not ludic nouns – but they are aesthetic nouns, defined solely by their adjectives.
Adjectives are a game’s aesthetic wrapper. They affect the game world’s presentation only, not its rules or actions. For example, the adjectives of the standard Chess pieces are HORSE, CASTLE etc., but there are Chess sets that swap these out for alternatives (e.g. WOOKIE, DROID etc.) or abstract shapes without changing the nature of the game.
So far, so mildly entertaining. But is this more than an alternative jargon? Can it help to express anything useful about games? Let’s see how some typical writing advice applies to game design.
One of the most common recommendations for writers is to avoid adjectives and adverbs. “Show, don’t tell.” Writing that is high in objects and actions and low in descriptions engages the reader (the theory goes) by making them work to imagine the story. In games, this can be taken one step further. Once again, Corvus Elrod has said it first: “let me do, don’t show, don’t tell.”
Adjective-heavy videogames are all wrapper and no lolly. Typical features include continual overlong cut scenes and hours of dialogue that bears little relation to the game. No surprises there; melodramas like the Final Fantasy series have always struck me as florid teenage poetry made manifest.
Adverbs in games are modifiers to game mechanics (verbs) that alter the effect of the action but don’t change its nature. Once again we’re in RPG territory, but this time the most conspicuous abusers are Western games. Blizzard, I’m looking at you.
Action RPGs, such as Diablo, Torchlight and even the core of World of Warcraft, are all about accumulating adverbs: get this ring to make your mana regenerate faster, use this weapon to cause more damage, put a point into Constitution so your health will last longer.
Justin Keverne has written about the pitfall of overusing adverbs when a game need distinct new verbs:
In the majority of role playing games the actual number of verbs that are valid is fairly low. They basically break down to “move”, “attack” and maybe “talk”. When we make character development choices we are modifying these verbs. We select a “Point Blank Shot” feat and this serves as an adverb, modifying the “attack” verb slightly but still retaining the same core functionality, we are simply changing how and when we can attack; changing the underlying equations.
Keverne’s point is specifically about using game verbs to create dramatic role playing. That doesn’t mean Diablo is a bad game, but its mechanics are not terribly varied, expressive or dramatic. As in writing, verbs create real action; adverbs just dress it up.
Right, that’s about enough forward chaining. Time for a conclusion. As of today, all videogame criticism must be conducted entirely in English language metaphors. All game designs must conform to strict grammatical rules, as laid out in Fowler’s Modern English Usage.
Next week: HUDs and menu screens – the punctuation of the videogame.
Related posts:
- Baby games
- The biggest problem facing the games industry
- Gaming Pedigree: Five genre-defining adventure games
This is a fascinating and highly enjoyable exercise.
However, I tend to think of adjectives and adverbs as the game design components that alter and define the relationships of the game’s nouns, rather than mere aesthetic trapping.
Another amazing post, Fraser.
While I have heard of the verbs of game design before, the rest of this is quite new to me, especially the talk of adverbs and adjectives. As a writer who is always trying to banish such words in favour of more descriptive nouns and verbs, this is a really useful way for me to understand game design aspects I have never been able to quite get my head around.
Really, a stellar post. Well done.
Corvus: Thanks. Yours is perhaps a more useful interpretation from a game design perspective. It certainly focuses the attention on the game itself, as opposed to the presentation. Food for thought!
Brendan: Thank you! I wrote this as a tongue-in-cheek idea, but I’m surprised how easily and directly the writing rules translate into game design. It won’t work for every game, but it’s actually a useful shorthand language.
More like this, please. This is probably the most useful blog post I’ve read since Danc’s Chemistry of Game Design.
These ideas go back a long ways. I highly recommend that you read some of Chris Crawford’s original books and essays if you are interesting in game design as a language. Raph Koster has also done a bit of work trying to tease out the grammar of game design. As have Stephane Bura and quite a few other working designers.
Here’s an example of the sort of direction this line of thought has evolved towards:
http://www.projecthorseshoe.com/ph08/ph08r5.htm
Grammar is in the end, a delightfully dry subject.
take care,
Danc.
Danc: That’s an interesting link, thanks. A particularly apt point was that this kind of model can be useful for analysing existing work from a player’s perspective, but isn’t much use as a generative tool.
I’ve read some of Chris Crawford and Raph Koster’s work, though not on this topic; I’ll have a look for Stephane Bura. Cheers.
Nice one Fraser, and a comment by Danc too! He’s royalty to me
I love where you’re going with this and hoping you continue to develop it more. Your thoughts and references on superfluous adverbs in particular is valuable to me as I’m back in my ‘I hate games’ doldrums, though the good thing about feeling that way is I really scrutinise exactly why I’m so dissatisfied with games. I’ve not done any formal study so when I write about it, I’m probably horrendously inefficient but aside from being insightful, you’ve also made me ask myself yet again whether or not I should go back to school!
It might take me a while, but I’ll eventually trawl through the archives here. Lots of things to read, lots of things to do as is always the case, but I’ll get there.
Great to meet you last Friday too!
Cheers Wall.
I agree, we live in an age where it’s hard to keep up with even one small niche interest like videogames, let alone all the other stuff in the world. In playing games or reading about them, it’s easy to fall into a binge-and-detox cycle. Nothing heightens your appreciation of a game more than time spent not playing games, ironically.
So always read RKD in moderation!
By the way, I see you’ve started Planescape: Torment. Don’t you find it’s like eating a great big bowl of steamed broccoli? It’s densely packed with goodness, and tasty in bites, but slow going after a while. Maybe you should alternate it with a good palette cleanser, like Peggle or Spelunky. (I’ve never made it past the Drowned Nations, which I think it about a third of the way through. I really should pick it up again soon…)
I just stumbled upon this while doing some research. Every since I started teaching scriptwriting for games more than 7 years ago, game grammar has been a wonderful design tool. I’ve been writing on these topics, in case you are interested:
The Poetics of Game Design, Rhetoric and the Independent Game
http://www.digra.org/dl/db/11310.07353.pdf
and practicing a bit:
http://www.criticalgameplay.com/page2.html
Thanks for the interesting read
this bag! From the nude color to its size to the snakeskin accent on the top handle鈥his bag is perfect to carry around for all seasons. Made of slouchy patent leather