The Tidiness Theory
There is a theory that when most people are confronted with a mess, the natural instinct is to clean it up. This propensity toward cleanliness, or "solving" the mess, is what I believe is one of the two most powerful fundamental elements of game design.
In Pac-Man, the mess is the maze full of dots. You need to clean them up to achieve your goal of cleanliness. In Space Invaders, the aliens are the mess. Clean them up and you reach your goal. In Bejeweled you are presented with a messy screen of jewels. Arrange them in groups of matching 3's and you clean it up, one match at a time. Chess? Clean the board of your opponent's pieces, specifically his King. The ancient game of Go? Same mechanic.
The other powerful mechanic in game design is that of Building. Most great games combine these two mechanics such as any successful RTS like Age of Empires. Build your empire one unit at a time until you need to clean up your enemy's mess of units. In Katamari Damacy, you are cleaning and building yourself constantly. RPGs are all about building and cleaning up the messy landscape of enemies.
Sometimes this mechanic exists at multiple levels within a game. Looking at the meta-design, you know that Resident Evil 4 is all about cleaning up the game world of zombies. Within this game you need to keep your inventory briefcase clean and optimized as well. And all the while you are building your arsenal to make all the cleaning easier and more fun.
World of Warcraft is the epitome of these two mechanics and both are executed at multiple levels in the game. Your character, you are building. The world, you are cleaning, so you can build more. Professions are building so you can make items that help with the cleaning....which feed into more building. The cyclical nature of the design is what all designers hope to achieve.
This tidiness theory, this instinct toward Order rather than Chaos, may be evolutionary and part of our DNA. My question is: if a person, when presented with a mess in any kind of medium, chooses not to clean it up, are they in danger of failing evolution? And are games, as a form of teaching how to build and clean various abstracted messes, helping us evolve?
posted by John Romero at 8:24 PM
19 Comments:
But couldn't you also argue, that the mechanic in which the user "cleans" something is noteworthy? If it wasn't fun to "clean" all the zombies they would certainly leave the chaos there.
If you present a user with arduous tasks of cleaning and organizing a world that doesn't appeal to them and is hard to do so they will abandon it. Much like the barrier of entry into dwarf fortress. The old mechanics and dated graphics on a incredibly detailed system, can still push interested users away.
6:32 AM
Isn't the Hell full of demons?
1:13 PM
I totally think you're onto something. RPGs are the most addictive games and they are the perfect blend of cleaning / building.
I love Fallout 3 and find myself spending ages repairing all my weapons and outfits, and gathering stuff from across the wasteland to build custom weapons.
I think mods also add to the chaos of the game, giving the player way more stuff to “clean up”.
1:27 AM
Very nice insight, John. I am wondering what category are Sport Games like car racing then?
You don't really clean or build something there. You could say you're building your own skill there or maybe prestige, but thats something different (internal building) and not external. So what category?
3:56 AM
...awesome argument! As for my take on your question; um, perhaps choosing the "non clean" route is like shooting up or snorting coke; it's Grunge and, well, destructive! :)
4:24 AM
Long time, John.
Hey, you've got it all wrogn.
It's as old as the hills; it's about what the Greeks called Chaos vs Cosmos, disorder vs order. We're structure and pattern creating mammals; the same thing carries over to our entertainment and gaming needs.
What you call "cleanliness" is not about cleaning stuff up, it's about killing chaos. In other words, as in real life we remove the unknown (the chaotic) and replace it with the known (structure, cosmos, serenity, balance, et cetera, and so on). Your oldie Doom serves as a mighty fine example; countless are the players that traverse the game vista in search for that elusive last beast, that last vestige of chaos, that last representative of the unknown, the darkness. When that final agent of chaos is eliminated darkness is gone and light has taken its' place; we now know the playing field, the world is under our control, we've killed chaos and we are satisfied.
That's what all great story telling is about, always has been and always will be. Not about spring cleaning or building a hut, but about removing the unknown, about cleaving through the darkness with a double barrel shotgun and a hell bent attitude. Only to bring light, my friend, only to bring light. If that light comes at a cost of piles of enemies reaching to the sky, so be it. All the better for rating. Bonus: it'll fatten your bank account too.
C ya round.
3:00 PM
Interesting ... I believe that inaction in any form is nearly gauranteed to lead to some sort of failure. There is always a danger, a risk assumed with comfortable inaction. You can also fail by making an attempt, but games help you learn how evolution is possible through your being compelled to try and try again until you are successful.
Nothing great has ever been achieved without failure. That is why games provision you with "lives", "continues", "reset button" and so on. Another great example to illustrate John's point is the Mega Man series. You're constantly cleaning on many levels (clearing the stage select screen, the enemies on the level, the boss), and you're building Mega Man with new parts for his body or gaining new weapons to make cleaning more efficient. It's an outstanding game design and it's no wonder the series has been able to go for so many years essentially unchanged at its fundamental level.
I'm constantly amazed at how overlooked games are in formal education considering the natural appeal, and the deeply rooted elements of Philosophy, Mathematics, Logic, and many other formal disciplines.
7:28 PM
The childrens, in other way, love to dirty and destroy..
3:24 PM
dogs too...
3:48 PM
Man, dunno. When I play a videogame (ironicaly enough I can remember this patern emerging from the Quake days) I choose a path, sweep every corridor, and if I reach the exit, I backtrack and check out the other corridors so I can clean them up and get that warm and fuzzy "every single motherfucker other than me is dead" feeling.
When I walk into my room which is a complete mess, on the other hand, I can't seem to give a fuck. Then again my friends already tell me that I seem to have failed/missed evolution, so you might actuall be on to something.
5:50 PM
I cant really think of it as cleaning up, just the simple idea that im cleaning up a mess of zombies makes it not very fun.
Its also not always about cleaning up, some times players are the ones that like to make the messes, im pretty sure any one that has own a copy of simcity has loaded up a map and brought 2012 to life, or played GTA and just tore stuff up for the hell of it.
I don't think clean up is always a big part of games, sometimes the chaos of making things unclean can be even more fun.
1:33 PM
VERY IMPRESSED. This post ties into a lot of concepts of human behavior, without getting hopped up on metapretension, which can be the bane of big ideas.
While I agree with everything said...I do need add my own caveat. As an artist, I get the curious fun of making messes in the pursuit of order. Attempting to outline that only, well, makes a mess, but I think somewhere in it is another angle worth considering.
4:55 PM
Agreed.
12:07 AM
Interesting theory. So... what does it mean when I see my messy room and I don't clean it up? :) Most of the developers I know seem to be like that. Maybe it's some subconscious reaction that game developers don't want to give into unless they are in control of the game ;)
6:43 AM
Hi John, cool thread. My take on this would be that it ties into the classical "challenge and reward" game-theory. "Challenge" being stuff to clean and opponents to measure against? "Reward" being resources to build more stuff, holding lap records and such.
I guess most people don't get a Titanbanger +33 for cleaning their room, so an MMO tends to offer uncharted reward territory. Whether they're therefore a better long-term investment, or a factor in evolution, I guess depends on the perceptions/reactions of the other DNA holders within range? :)
6:32 AM
Seriously, I think most computer games are about walking. Think about it. In doom you walk around. In pac man you walk around. Larry in the old sierra games walked around in order to get laid, super mario is walking around, barbarian on the amiga was about walking, and chopping off other people's head... even the moonwalk game was probably about walking!
I think there is a natural tendency towards walking that is hidden deep down in our inner soul.
its probably associated with fridges. because i will go now and grab a beer.
1:57 PM
Hey John, this is totally unrelated, but the links to your comics are gone...I was going to show it off to someone...then bam! A missing link (still not related to the topic)
9:28 PM
Hey Romero, It's been months man, wheres your updates? Any thoughts on the Iphone/Itouch version of Doom?
2:18 AM
For a long time my favourite game was GTA3. All I wanted to do was cause widescale disruption to Liberty City by piling up the debris of various vehicles and causing as much chaos as possible. Pure thrills at 6 stars when the tanks and FBI hurled themselves at you !!!!
Too much emphasis handed over to the theory of why games are fun.
Just escape the reality and switch off.
7:19 AM
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