Arrivals and Departures
A matter of attention
This isn’t a brand new concept, just a way of looking at game design through a different lens that I find fascinating. I hope you find it fascinating, too.
I’ve been toying with the concept of attention. What we pay attention to is important, and I’m a firm believer that when you bring awareness or even fascination to any part of existence, really cool things start to happen. And art, to me, is ultimately a vehicle for directing attention (and games are definitely art).
At a base level, most creative endeavors draw your attention to them because we have an inherent interest in the things people can create. Whether it’s the technique or the boldness or the imagery, a lot of art says, “Look at this! This thing, right here!”
Some mediums are really subtle about it, like an orchestral piece of music. What exactly are they drawing your attention towards? Much of the time, it’s simply making you aware of the effect listening to music has on us, really listening, and how it might change our emotions (in my opinion). A movie or a book might spell out its intentions more clearly, presenting an theme they want you to leave with.
But we tend to get tired of things that are too obvious in their attempts to sway us. We live in a world where we’re constantly being sold something everywhere we go. But something too opaque doesn’t get the job done. Many pieces of art leave people wondering what the creators were actually trying to say. Attention is tricky.
Taking all this into account, I find myself drawn to game design because many my experiences with tabletop role-playing games have been ones where my awareness is captivated in a way that’s hard to create consistently. Games are naturally fascinating to us, and tabletop games bring us together to really share in emotional experiences in a way other art rarely achieves for me.
When made well, games grip people in ways other art just can’t. So what does that mean for us game-makers and how can we use this to make cool stuff?
Drawn to the flames
Many games (and movies, and books, and songs, etc.) work to draw us in but don’t do much once we’re there. And this is perfectly fine! Sometimes a game is attractive because it tells you it’s full of dragons and magic and warriors cutting through swathes of baddies. And then you play, and, as expected, there’s dragons and magic and all of these things. Sometimes we want simple pleasures that are just what they say on the tin.
When I wrote This City Must Burn, it started very differently then it ended up. The end product is a game that is alight with fire: the stark red and black cover, the large title hurridly scrawled across it. When I brought it to conventions, people noticed it right away.
And what does it promise? Fire, chaos, rebellion. This City could be your city, your life, the things you want to burn down. We’ve all been living through a difficult turning point in society and there’s a lot of rebellion, strikes, activisim, and unionization. When people saw this game, they instantly knew what they wanted to get from it. They would say, essentially, “I know why you made this.”
So, first, above all else: deliver what is promised. It’s simple, but we’ve all seen a game we thought we’d love, only to discover that, underneath, it isn’t what was promised. In my game, the city burns! It’s guarunteed. It’s what you play towards. The night of fire that takes place was once of lesser importance, but it became a great hinge that the whole game revolves around. And thank goodness, because that fire sells my game!
But here’s the fun part: you don’t need to stay there. Some games keep delivering more of the same. They grab your attention with something, and they throw more of that something on there to keep you going. But games have other properties that keep you in, ones that other art forms don’t.
The social aspect, the shared experience, is something that, for some reason, always seems novel and exciting. Shared play is a natural human need. Our brains light up when we do it, especially since most of us stop doing it once we reach adulthood. It scratches an itch deep in our lizard brains. Once we’re at the table, we don’t need dragons and magic any more. That’s just what got us to sit down and play. And once we start playing, it’s hard to stop.
And we can rely on this to divert attention elsewhere with a little behind-the-scenes magic.
What we leave with
In This City Must Burn, the real game lies beneath the fire and flames and carnage. From the start, I wanted a game that demonstrated how complicated revolution and societal change is. It’s not meant as a deterrant, but a warning to prepare for how messy things can become and how quickly it happens.
I focused on a few things. First, a mechanic called privilege. Every character has privileges, character abilities that grant you access to places, people, and things, and they are in no way close to equal. When you aid the revolution, you gain exposure. Too much exposure and you lose your privileges one-by-one.
Suddenly a character with less to lose is looking awkwardly at a an affluent character suggesting the less radical path. But how can a nobleman fund the revolution if they don’t maintain appearances and keep their hands clean? There’s a purposeful imbalance and it’s, hopefully, fascinating. You were drawn in by the fire, but now there’s something even more interesting going on beneath it all.
This is where games shine. When you choose mechanics, you choose where the player spends there time. You choose what they look at on their character sheet and how often. You divert attention.
The second mechanical twist I threw in was that after the fire, your privilege is worth nothing. Suddenly no one cares if you were rich. The city is burning. Suddenly your contacts and your private table at a fancy restaurant and your bank account are meaningless.
The point is to draw attention to how we get caught up in things that in the end matter less than we thought. It’s drawing attention to the fact that change makes us wrong about things. We will have to adapt to new realities, to new balances of power. We have to let go of things.
What’s next?
My next game (I hope), The Things We Become, is in the early stages, and a big part of that process is deciding what I want it to draw attention to. I think, in games, that’s the closest we get to themes. We can’t force a story on someone; it always changes based on the players. But we can draw their attention to the parts of their story we think are important, and in drawing their attention there, perhaps make cool things happen for them personally in their real lives. That’s the magic, right there.
I think The Things We Become is ultimately about belonging and change. It’s about how things aren’t always what they seem. It’s about finding ways to form connections with others when your very understanding of reality is shifting. Something grand, but something we all experience when we grow and change in different ways than those around us.
But I don’t think that’s fascinating enough to start with. (Well, I think it is, but I know it’s a little niche.) That’s where I want your attention to end up. So I want to plan a journey: something to pull you in, something that it delivers upfront for you to get you hooked, and a path that leads you to the real prize without you ever seeing it’s there.
We can sort that into three sections: what they arrive with, what they depart with, and how it happens during play. In The Things We Become, we arrive with an alien-like post-apocalyptic society and weird evolutions, a world of mystery and danger. We leave with the experience of having changed and been forced apart by new understandings, but desperate to hold onto our connections with each other. We leave with a found family that accepts us as long as we are willing to accept them in turn. The path is something I have to uncover.
Let’s assume all typos are intentional.