Tapping Empathy in Video Game Design

This is a collection of notes/thoughts on Reality Check: Game Design and Empathy by Mark Venturelli, a writer and game designer on Gamasutra. Feel free to study alongside me as I try to figure out game design one article at a time.

Notes/Quotes

If you don’t know how people work, you can’t make stuff for people to interact with.
The most talented and technical designer that lacks empathy will make something that only he/she can enjoy
Satisfaction is fulfillment of expectation; following through on promises
Everything we do in our game can be viewed as either expectation-setting or expectation-fulfillment.
I don’t think we’re in the business of giving people what they want. We’re f***ing artists. What we really want is to cross that chasm. To build something truly awe-inspiring. We must take our understanding of what people want, and then surprise them.
Entertainment is satisfaction and surprise
Real greatness comes from understanding people better than they do themselves.

This concept of empathy (and psychology, for that matter), is one that I've been thinking about a lot lately. I think too often in video games we work to create cool stories but not timeless ones. We seek to create interesting characters but not ones that have real life to them: none to whom people can really relate. We create grand narratives without thinking about the player's narrative--where he/she has been and what things he/she has encountered--and so we miss out on some of the greatest opportunities to access the minds and hearts of our players. I think any artist has to come to understand humanity (and for that matter, joy and sorrow) in some small but significant way before he can really make anything that will resound with people on a deep level, and until we approach that level of understanding and empathy, we are just churning out simulations. We've gone around understanding human psychology and instead relied on intense music or stunning graphics to invite serenity or terror or awe. We've neglected to study character and instead have created simulacra--emulations of a breed of mankind that never existed in the first place. I think if we are to ever get into the hearts of our players, we have to first show them that we've already been there, in thought, in comparison, in memory. We have to let them know, through the game, that we're human, too, that we've suffered the same doubts and discouragement, felt the same joys, as they have. We have to learn to truly each other--game designer and player--despite the processors, monitors, and controls that stand between our interaction. I see game design as as much an art form as writing or painting, and we have to get the medium out of the way before we'll really be able to talk to players in a meaningful way.

Progress Update #1: Simulacrum

So, I've been working on a few art assets for the game that I'm making right now. The game is called Simulacrum, and it's a existential exploration of reality and illusion through the lens of a 2D puzzle platformer. Anyway, I just wanted to post a quick update with some screenshots. Let me know what you think of everything so far!


One of the benefits of this being a personal project and, at that, a rather philosophical one, is that I can pretty much draw on whatever influences and include whatever references I feel like. As such, this last little bit of work has been primarily adding "figures of    disillusionment," an exceedingly pretentious epithet for historical/literary characters who were fed up with the phoniness of our day-to-day interactions and/or who were confronted with severe contradictions in terms of their idealistic view of the world and how things actually were. Thus, for your viewing pleasure, I present Nietzsche, Holden Caulfield, and Joan of Arc, along with some cherry blossom trees that I made yesterday.

J.D. Salinger's Holden Caulfield next to a
Japanese cherry blossom tree. These trees are
a symbol of the ephemeral in Japanese art.

Joan of Arc, likewise beneath a
Japanese cherry blossom tree. 

The level in which each of these characters features is more of an art demo than a real component of game play, though it becomes necessary to resort to this area at various times in pursuit of other goals. It is one of four "layers" of a virtual reality in which the player resides, and the player must pass through it in order to overcome obstacles that, in the other layers, are otherwise impassable. The problem is, every second that the player spends in this world visibly degenerates it: the trees shed their blossoms, the streams become polluted and dry up, those characters caught in restless deliberation decide at last and leave, others simply disappear without a trace. The world itself is meant to represent the psychological or metaphorical place wherein those who have "escaped the world" live, but it's likewise a commentary on idealism and the fleetingness of the dreams we talk ourselves in and out of throughout our lives.

Nietzsche

Now that I've thoroughly bored you, I want to touch just briefly on this week's programming endeavors. I've been working on developing a pathfinding system, which basically takes static enemies or objects and allows them to behave in a way similar to how they would act if a player were controlling them. That might seem a little bit abstract, but it's basically just writing the artificial intelligence for enemy characters so that they can walk, jump, and interact with their environments in ways that are at least pseudo-intelligent. I think AI and storytelling are kind of the next big things in video games, and really, I think they go hand in hand, so I'm excited to be working to push the limits with each of them.