Science vs. Faith in Game Design
The new paradigm shift in game design is faulty, flawed and fallible “organic” or soul-driven design vs. metric’s-driven solid fact-based sciency design. It’s the difference between “i feel that we’re at the center of the universe” vs. “hey – we just discovered heliocentricity!” Zynga is the new Galileo, reviled by critics (like me) who want to design games with their hearts, the way God intended, instead of with their spreadsheets.
Of note: i have a way bigger wang than Adam.
Here’s an article in the Intelligent Design vs. “Without Metrics, You’re Not Intelligent” debate, from one of the social games Big Three, Playfish:
Next thing you know, these Godless, metrics-driven heathens will try to take creative play out of our schools.
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Too late, Ryan. :(
Unfortunately no one sees the “macro metric” that Zynga got huge by being the one company fluked into the right place at the right time. It’s a nice piece of fiction to pretend that Mark Pincus had planned this trajectory all along and that it’s in any way duplicable “if you just measure the right thing” but it’s the business equivalent of feel-good self-help platitudes.
I’ve stopped listening to business advice from people who don’t have any personal investment in their work. These guys (almost without exception) are the ones who go on to quit their jobs in ten years and take up woodworking or restoring antique cars because they’ve spent their entire lives avoiding creative fulfillment in the name of making a fast buck.
I don’t want to postpone the feeling of liking what I do or who I am so “metrics” can go take a flying leap.
Awesome comment. I’m saving that to read again in the future.
Agreed. Let’s frame it.
i get the same feeling whenever i go to a “Lookit How Awesome We Are” presentation by Zynga and others at these conferences. They always chalk their success up to their own ingenuity, and it’s always clear that so much luck factored into it. And if not, then why aren’t these “visionaries” able to repeat their successes? These talks may as well be called “How You Can Get Struck By Lightning Like I Did.”
i read an article recently that i found very helpful. It basically said that no one has it figured out … everyone’s just rolling the dice. That’s why products like Microsoft Bob happened.
Both have a place in Game Development
This.
The thing to realize is that (deferring the context of your ‘intelligent design’ angle), all design matches closely to the scientific processs:
We have a hypothesis, we experiment, we gather results, and we draw conclusions.
The Hypothesis is the intuition, the experiment is the design, the results are the metrics, and the conclusions are intuition again.
The big disconnect is when people are looking for a theory of everything. They think the metrics define the conclusion, and often ignore the hypothesis completely. They see the numbers pointing in a direction, but they don’t ask: where did we THINK they were going to point, or: is this a direction we WANT them to point? So long as a core variable is getting larger, they are satisfied.
(Incidentally, this is a problem in science, also!)
Hi Ryan
it’s Jim again. First of all, i love reading your blog as it is very informative on Ontario’s robust gaming community however i really wished you would do some research before you talk about how the people at Zynga got all their success just because “they were in the right place at the right time”. Mark Pincus, the visionary that you said couldn’t repeat his success is a graduate of both Wharton Business School and Harvard Business School of Management. He worked for many years in the venture capital and financial services before he started his first company Freeloader which he sold for $38 Million in 1995.
He then started Support.com, that company went PUBLIC in 2000. He then started his third start up Tribe.net which was acquired by Cisco System in 2003. In 2007 he started his 4TH company which is know today as Zynga. This man has repeatedly built and sold companies throughout his 20 year tenure and I don’t think anyone should speak uninformatively of a very successful man and regard his success as purely luck.
Keep up the good reads! :)
Regards,
Jim
Jim – i’m not suggesting Zynga’s success is entirely luck. Of course not! But i AM suggesting that most of these great success stories owe more to luck than the storytellers let on. For every well-educated Pincus who had a brilliantly executed idea at the right time, there were umpteen well-educated also-rans who either had either a brilliantly executed idea at the wrong time, or even a poorly executed idea at the right time.
One of the examples in the article i mentioned – and i wish i could find it – was Palm. Palm had an app store years before Apple did, but Apple had far better timing (and marketing and mindshare, etc).
I always take objection to terms to statements like “you can’t quantify X”, since that usually just means it’s hard to do. Following your faith vs. science analogy, it’s akin to the sliding scale of religious belief, which shifts based on our existing scientific knowledge. Magnets are not magical, despite the fact that the Insane Clown Posse doesn’t understand how they do. The weather isn’t caused by the moods of a deity, etc.
But I do agree that stochastic methods which don’t assume that we already have all the facts (since we already know we don’t) often yield great, unexpected results and should be encouraged.
I’ve always taken the position that I should be passionate about the work I do, so the outcome is always better and I am proud of the work I’ve helped produce. I think you ultimately end up with better products if one is personally involved for the love of it – not for the dollar signs. (see: http://www.paulgraham.com/yahoo.html)
And because the title of your blog reminded me of this game, I had to share it with you:
http://www.wisdomtreegames.com/games/bibleadv/
LauraBee – hahaha … i know all about the Wisdom Tree games. Another example of the impossibility of creating a good Christian video game.
Prince of Persia, Prince of Peace