Sorry, you're saying that the goal of a game designer is to have the player interpret the gameplay in the same way as the game designer? I don't buy that. The goal of the game designer is to provide an idea that the player finds fun. If I introduce a friend to GTA and he considers it to be a game about picking your way through inner-city traffic jams - and enjoys that - then the designer of the game has succeeded in entertaining my friend. It doesn't matter that the designer never considered that to be the focus of the game.

As far as RPGs go - I think the genre is seriously mistitled, mainly because few of the main conventions (like stats and levelling up) have anything to do with role-playing. As has been explained in this thread, most games involve roleplaying - playing the role of Gordon Freeman, for example - and those don't involve stats.

superpig:

Read The Design of Everyday Things by Dr. Donald Norman.

Briefly... (There's a lot of ground to cover; however, I don't want to "lecture" anyone so I'll just cover the main points I'm making.)

What is design? Design is the process by which a guide to a certain effect is produced. If the objective of a game designer is solely to produce "fun", then today's elaborate games are unneeded, overextended, and unimportant. Psychologically, a "fun" game does not require the latest-and-greatest super-accelerated 3D graphics with a rich, intense environment artistically created by God himself. To design something is to give something a (vague or specific) purpose, which is actionably fulfilled by a product's user.

Game designers (also called gameplay designers) design a game (a product) to guide players (users) to cognitively or emotionally respond to a desired effect (such as "fun"). A skilled designer, regardless of industry, designs for a specific effect rather than a general and subjective emotion like "fun". If you design solely for "fun", then you transfer responsibility for the game's distribution to the marketers because what's "fun" to one market may be "boring" to another market.

The primary objective of a product's design is never met until a user interprets the design correctly. If the desired effect is never produced and the target market is never reached, the design failed.

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What is roleplay? To play a role is to assume a behavior according to a role's specifications. What are a role's specifications? How are they defined? As a roleplayer, I want to know if my character is strong, smart, agile, wise, etc., because knowing my character's physical attributes facilitates "getting into character". A stats/leveling up system is one method of defining a role's specifications. Using a story to define a role is another. The current RPG landscape calls for in-depth customization of a role from a character's inventory to stats to anything else. A stats/leveling up system lets roleplaying gamers customize their roles as they wish; thus, such a system does indeed affect roleplay.

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Original post by Adraeus What is design? Design is the process by which a guide to a certain effect is produced. If the objective of a game designer is solely to produce "fun", then today's elaborate games are unneeded, overextended, and unimportant. Psychologically, a "fun" game does not require the latest-and-greatest super-accelerated 3D graphics with a rich, intense environment artistically created by God himself. To design something is to give something a (vague or specific) purpose, which is actionably fulfilled by a product's user.

I agree that games do not need super-accelerate 3D graphics with rich intense environments to be fun. There are many games with super-accelerated 3D graphics and rich intense environments that are not fun. However, this does not mean the game designer's goal is not to produce fun. It just means he is being inefficient about the process.

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Game designers (also called gameplay designers) design a game (a product) to guide players (users) to cognitively or emotionally respond to a desired effect (such as "fun").

Yes.

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A skilled designer, regardless of industry, designs for a specific effect rather than a general and subjective emotion like "fun". If you design solely for "fun", then you transfer responsibility for the game's distribution to the marketers because what's "fun" to one market may be "boring" to another market.

And presto - once you've picked your market, 'fun' is no longer subjective. Say you do try for a more defined emotion, like fear - you alienate the markets that do not find fear fun.

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The primary objective of a product's design is never met until a user interprets the design correctly. If the desired effect is never produced and the target market is never reached, the design failed.

The desired effect is 'fun.' We know what that is because we know our target market. If the target market does not find the game fun then yes, the design failed. If they had fun, it was a success. So unless you're prepared to say that designers only seek to define their gameplay to be "fun" - which is true, but not helpful - then you have to admit that a product which has been misinterpreted but is still fun is a success.

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Original post by Adraeus 1. Game Designers design the game how it should be played. If the player interprets the gameplay differently, then the design did not succeed.

So-called 'success' or 'failure' of the design is (a) irrelevant to classification and (b) subjective. The end product is classified according to its effect on the user/viewer/player, not on what the designer intended, or the designer's appraisal of the degree of success in achieving that goal. If I write a film and not a single person anywhere laughs at the content, it's not a comedy.

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2. To play a role is to assume a behavior according to a role's specifications. That is roleplay.

That is also absurdly vague and useless as a criterion. And even if it wasn't, it would still be entirely irrelevant to the question of 'what is a roleplaying game'. Language evolves.

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All concepts apply to everything. Everything is relative.

Whereas this is getting into the realms of pseudo-intellectual babble. The only reasonable and relevant interpretation of the first sentence is that all games are RPGs, or at a finer granularity, have RPG-like elements, to a lesser or greater degree. And that is exactly what I said in the first place.

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3. Lack of a clear definition does not make something subjective by default.

If you can't pin a definition on it, then you can't call it objective. For a system to be objective requires observable and measurable phenomena. Until you have this baseline which appears the same from all viewpoints, it's all just opinion.

[Edited by - Kylotan on January 18, 2005 7:21:43 PM]

Who cares if it's an RPG or not. Don't pigeonhole yourself.

In a nutshell: The technical definition for an RPG is:

role-playing game
n.

A game in which players assume the roles of characters and act out fantastical adventures, the outcomes of which are partially determined by chance, as by the roll of dice.

Now, I don't assume that you want to create a role playing game based on the definition, but instead to create one that has a certain feel. Naturally, it's useless to design a game to live up to a definition when you really want to design a marketable and fun game. Look at successful games like Diablo II. Many say that this isn't an RPG. That may be true. But if the gameplay is fun, who cares what label is put on it? It's about the game, not what it's called.

So, to answer your question, an RPG is composed of whatever you want to put in it. It should give the player the illusion that they've completed an insurmountable goal, but set goals that can be reached without frustration. It should provide a world that is internally consistent, and should be complex enough to allow for suspension of disbilief. Just think of what you'd like in an RPG style game, and try to flesh out exactly what draws you to the concept.

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Original post by Kylotan So-called 'success' or 'failure' of the design is (a) irrelevant to classification and (b) subjective. The end product is classified according to its effect on the user/viewer/player, not on what the designer intended, or the designer's appraisal of the degree of success in achieving that goal. If I write a film and not a single person anywhere laughs at the content, it's not a comedy.

1--------
If the success or failure of a design were subjective as you claim, the success or failure of a design would be relevant, not irrelevant, to classification of a product since success and failure in this sense are ambiguous. Fortunately, the success or failure of a design is measurable and discernable (e.g., "Has this product satisfied the target market? Achieved the desired effect? Sold this many units and retained profitability?"); thus, it is objective.

2--------
Poorly designed and marketed products are classified by users.

Well-designed and marketed products retain their design.

3--------
If your comedy film fails in the marketplace, it was poorly designed and therefore subject to viewer classification. Read #2.

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Original post by Kylotan That is also absurdly vague and useless as a criterion. And even if it wasn't, it would still be entirely relevant to the question of 'what is a roleplaying game'. Language evolves.

Perhaps you misunderstood? I was discussing roleplay and its application games.

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Original post by Kylotan Whereas this is getting into the realms of pseudo-intellectual babble. The only reasonable and relevant interpretation of the first sentence is that all games are RPGs, or at a finer granularity, have RPG-like elements, to a lesser or greater degree. And that is exactly what I said in the first place.

All games are not Role-Playing Games. Many games, especially traditional games, do not require a role played. For instance: chess, poker, checkers, Monopoly, football, soccer, rugby, etc., are not Role-Playing Games. Players are themselves.

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Original post by Kylotan If you can't pin a definition on it, then you can't call it objective. For a system to be objective requires observable and measurable phenomena. Until you have this baseline which appears the same from all viewpoints, it's all just opinion.

I agree; however, I am reasonably certain there is an objective system for classification of games... if we, gamers and developers, would take time to analyze and solve these communication problems instead of trying to ignore them like Edward Ropple and Nytehauq suggested.

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Original post by Edward Ropple Who cares if it's an RPG or not. Don't pigeonhole yourself.

Game designers, marketers and other communicators are concerned with the classification of games. What exactly is a game's genre is a communications problem which would be easier to solve if we collectively analyzed it.

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Original post by Adraeus 2-------- Poorly designed and marketed products are classified by users. Well-designed and marketed products retain their design.

What about art?

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Original post by superpig What about art?

What about art? Art isn't designed, design or a product of design. If this strikes you as somehow subjectivist or objectionable, then ask me about it because I think that you are just mistaken.

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Original post by Adraeus 1-------- If the success or failure of a design were subjective as you claim, the success or failure of a design would be relevant, not irrelevant, to classification of a product since success and failure in this sense are ambiguous. Fortunately, the success or failure of a design is measurable and discernable (e.g., "Has this product satisfied the target market? Achieved the desired effect? Sold this many units and retained profitability?"); thus, it is objective.

Wrong. Firstly, you are confusing success of design for success of marketing. A perfectly executed design can still completely fail in terms of sales targets. Secondly, even these targets are subjective, depending on whether you ask the designer, producer, publisher, retailer, player, etc.

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2-------- Poorly designed and marketed products are classified by users. Well-designed and marketed products retain their design.

Wrong. All products are classified by users. Well-designed products simply happen to have a higher correlation between user classification and designer classification. This pattern applies not only to computer games, but films, cars, music, etc.

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3-------- If your comedy film fails in the marketplace, it was poorly designed and therefore subject to viewer classification. Read #2.

Wrong. Read #2.

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All games are not Role-Playing Games.

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All concepts apply to everything

Which is it to be?

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Many games, especially traditional games, do not require a role played. For instance: chess, poker, checkers, Monopoly, football, soccer, rugby, etc., are not Role-Playing Games. Players are themselves.

And yet this is totally avoiding the point. There may well be games where the amount of roleplaying approaches zero, but there are many others where it is non-zero and yet the game would not reasonably be called a 'roleplaying game'.