Gamasutra has just published an in depth look on the relationship between style and substance in games. The author of the article defines substance, in short, as the “rules of the game” - the gameplay and style as the rest - theme, sound, graphics etc. He makes a point of that style can be used to facilitate the learning of the rules of the games. We touched this here in gglob earlier, when discussing Storytelling and games based on Raph Koster’s “A Theory of Fun…”.
Style can be crucial to playability in board games, where one has to remember, and follow, the rules of the games oneself (instead of letting the computer keep track of them for you). Quite complex rulesets depend heavily on the games’ theme to be as quickly accessible as they are. A good example is Andreas Seyfarth’s excellent Puerto Rico-game where theme and rules blend nicely. (Although in almost every PR-session we have the series “What if the game was about…?”-jokes and “Are our dark brown “working for free” workers really colonists or something else?”-questions) You have good games where the theme feels kind of badly pasted upon a good set of rules as well, like the Ticket to Ride-series by Alan R. Moon. (Is this a train-travelling game (as the rule-book proclaims) or a railroad-building game (as it feels more like)?) Here the rules are simple enough for the game to work anyway. The same applies to classics like Chess and Go - almost pure substance, I would say. In the end what kind of theme the board game has is not really that important, I feel, as long as it is a good enough aid to remember the rules and the rules are good and balanced. The game can be about colonizing islands, purshasing and selling art or worshipping obscure Egyptian gods, as long as they work. (I know several people who feel different here, of course.) Maybe because board games are not as immersing as video games are?
This brings us to another interesting point the writer of the article in Gamasutra makes; that style can convince the player that she is living a story. This can be achieved through a linear storyline for the player to follow, but even games without much storyline to them, like Counter Strike or Battlefield 1942, can set a scene where players can live trough something worth telling a story about. Thus one can say that the game “generates a story”. (Who hasn’t witnessed perfectly good parties being ruined by somebody starting to talk BF, thus creating a huge seemingly uncrossable divide between FPSers and non-FPSers?)
I would also like to comment on what the article calls “Control and amplification of emotional impact”.
“Substance alone can provoke emotions, but they are not very strong and are not very diverse. Designers who want the gamer to feel fear, get nostalgic or laugh need to design their style to accomplish this goal.” (From: Gamasutra.)
This has perhaps never been as clear to me as when I was playing Doom 3. Substancewise this has all been done before over and over and over again (since the legendary Doom), but the style - surround horror-movie sound, flickering dim horror-movie lights on horror-movie monsters in a claustophobic horror-movie environment - really made it a nerve-wrecking and good game experience. (I hope you all got to see the amusing third person ‘Scary Alpha’-movie of a player of the game.)
The article concludes with some thoughts on how one can use the knowledge of the interaction between style and substance to design better games. Sometimes one should maybe see through the style and create games with new original gameplay concepts. Easier said than done, I guess, but a good tip indeed…
This is a perspective on games i find really interesting. I’ve never been able to enjoy Civ or any other Sid Meyer game for that matter, even though I realise they must be great games. I remember a friend of me trying to show me how much fun Civ was by dropping an atom-bomb icon over some cavemen. He found this hilarious, but all I saw was a dull icon move. He could just as well dropped a shortcut from his desktop into his trashcan for all I cared. This, I assume, must be because style is the important part for me in games. The same is true for board games. I want really, really badly to play Warhammer 40k with all those miniatures and terrains, even though I know I haven’t got either the time nor money to play it properly. But that is the type of game that appeals to me. Paper bits with mumbers on them just don’t do the trick. If my squad attacks another squad I want to see the enemy fall. A board game without this element would for me probably be a bit like just reading the script for an action movie, as opposed to watching it.
I don’t see why you would have to see through the style of a game to have original gameplay concepts, though. I’d rather say that a good, original gameplay concept should have a very simple, streamlined substance that works, and then making the game enjoyable by focusing on the style. An example that strings to mind is the Half-life mod “The Ship”, which at present have a nice 30s murder mystery gameplay, without the recuired style to make it the excellent game it could be. (And probably will be when the source-engine-version arrives.)
Anyway, while reading the entry I immediately thought of your entry on computer games popular with girls. I would guess style would be the most important factor for the majority of girls starting to play a game. At least in my experience a game without a style that appeals to girls will never catch the interest of most girls, no matter how great the substance is. For instance, “No-One Lives Forever” seemed to be popular with a lot more girls than the average FPS, even though it is mostly the same game as the competition, but in an estetic and original style. Again I think complicated, detailed substance would simply be percieved as annoying and in the way by many girls, hence the popularity of “simple” games like Tetris, “Super Mario Brothers”, “Mortal Kombat” or others with a good but simple substance that works well. For instance, the substance of “The Ship” appealed to the girls I talked to about it. On seeing it, however, they seemed to lose all interest in it. It just didn’t look right, and because of it, the substance part didn’t matter at all.
Yes, I think simple gameplay is important to the group of so called “casual gamers” (where I guess one find a lot of girls), but I’m not saying that I think substance has to be complicated to be new or good. See Kirby the Canvas Curse, Nintendogs, Meteos and to certain extent Gish. They all have very simple gameplay, but they bring refreshing new ideas substancewise. (All proven girl-friendly.)
I also agree with your observation that a lot of the success of the “No-One Lices Forever”-series among girls can be accredited the style - more prescisely, I think, the theme. Maybe most importantly that you are playing a female agent, but also the playfullness and unseriousness of the setting and storyline aids. (The substance, of course, is still just FPS with a bit of puzzle-solving. But, by all means, they are good ones at it.)
I think for most people (me included) the theme of a game do matter. The theme of Battlefield 1942 is for example way more interesting than the theme of BF2 for me. (Also (or therefore) way more exploited…) Rome: Total War wouldn’t have been so appealing if it was set in modern times, maybe. (Although one could have managed with just a few adjustments in the storyline and unit-graphics. :))
In lots of games good graphics actually adds a lot to the substance-part. FarCry is a very good example. To be able to move around and use the landscape and views, as you can there, really boosts the gameplay. The play on the light in Splinter Cell, Doom 3 and Thief 3 are other good examples of gameplay enhanced by graphics.
A game like Half-Life 2 blends fancy graphics, detailed surroundings and a rich storyline with new gameplay elements like physics based puzzles on top of the old ones (FPS with vehicules). The package works better than either just lots of style or just lots of substance. (Although I could have played a game just consisting of the puzzles - without the fancy graphics. :D)
I do like good graphics in games, but the reason that I (mainly) play new games these days, instead of the good old classics, have more to do with refinements in substance than style in them.
“Who hasn’t witnessed perfectly good parties being ruined by somebody starting to talk BF”
I can’t leave this comment alone any more. How on earth can a good party be ruined by Battlefield-talk when BF-talk is required for a party to be good in the first place?
For some reason I find talking about BF so enjoyable that it quite often is even more fun than actually playing it. But BF’ers are not the only ones. If you talk to almost any old, male person they seem to start overy odd sentence with “back in the war…”. And that war was released over 60 years ago and was not even any fun! I think I’ll still be talking BF while eating porridge at the elderly home…
BTW; I hope the new nukes of Civ IV will satisfy you, Abhoth.