Lessons for the digital apprentice from the gaming world

Game of Groans

With kids on a break from school during summer vacations, as parents we are at times mute participants in the game of groans. This time they are complaining about fixing up their gaming consoles, the latest titles and so on. 

Sim City seems to have caught their attention and they have been asking me all sorts of questions about the game, gameplay, its designer.  I dusted my old gaming skills at playing Sims(there is a need to be hands on on almost everything these days) and looked up for the latest information on its legendary designer Will Wright.

I found this excellent video from his lecture in 2007, at the BAFTA where he covers aspects of design which seem very relevant today.  In 2007 he was recognised with the BAFTA Fellowship, a first for someone from Video Gaming Industry. 

Lessons from the master

As Digital apprentices we need to reskill ourselves to design our products for the digital world. Will Wright, like the Oracle at Delphi portends the future trends and also talks about design skills from a gaming perspective & I see how relevant they are to us designing for digital apps for non gaming scenarios as well.

The following parts of his talk struck me as significant to examine in the context of building digital apps. 

Apprenticeship

He talks (08:47-09:45) of how the apprenticeship model is core to promoting the cycles of experimentation, learning rapidly and finishing up.

Immersive Experience

Driving more immersive experiences has always been core to gaming. Will (10:30-12:30) talks about agency, the ability for a user to manipulate, make choices and in turn exercise control over the experience. In case you want to know more about the concept of agency in video games, here is an article that is a good summary Video games aren't about power – they're about agency.

He also brings in the concept of rewarding progressive levels of learning cycles with a success and failure state to further the progression and deepening of experience

Another aspect that he deals with is treating storytelling within gaming and movies (the context of this talk). You cannot always predict the outcome in games for e.g. each time you restart in a game like Minecraft you could end up with a very different outcome or the choices you make in Sim City could lead you to very different city structures and experience. Designing for such diverse scenarios is something digital applications today are faced with more and more. He talks of users exploring the boundaries of the experience and you see that almost regularly with digital apps being built today.

“Player as a design goal”

is the core philosophy driving design, says Will (27:00). The gaming environment for a user is designed as a series of experiments with tools for them to enjoy the experience, with a constant assessment using metrics and targeting content to the users.