I’m still trying to get a grip on why I think games are such a good reference point for IAs and IxDs. I’ll try to take another stab at it in this post. Previously I wrote about how games might be a good way to ‘sell’ algorithmic architectures to your client. Even if you’re not actively pushing your clients to adopt ideas such as on-the-fly creation of site navigation, sooner or later I’m convinced you’ll find yourself confronted with a project where you’re not asked to develop a definitive information architecture. Instead you’ll be charged with the task to come up with mechanisms to generate these procedurally. When this is this case, you’re truly facing a second-order design problem. How can games help here?
One of the defining characteristics of games are their complexity. A few years ago Ben Cerveny gave a brilliant talk on play (MP3) at Reboot 7.0 and mentioned this specifically — that much of the pleasure derived from game-play is the result of the player coming to terms with complex patterns. This complexity is something different from pure randomness and most certainly different from a ‘mere’ state machine. In other words, games show emergence.
There are many examples of emergent systems. The Game of Life springs to mind. This system isn’t really a game but shows a remarkable richness in patterns, despite (or maybe because of) the fact that it is based on a set of deceptively simple rules (which apparently took its creator, John Conway, over 2 years to perfect!) The thing is though, The Game of Life is not interactive.
A wonderful example of a complex emergent system that is interactive is the real game Go. It has a set of very simple rules, but playing it well takes a huge amount of practice. The joy of playing Go for me (an absolute beginner) is largely due to discovering the many different permutations play can go through.
So getting back to my earlier remark: If you’re convinced you’ll need to get a better handle on solving the second-order design problems presented by the design of complex emergent systems, games are an excellent place to start learning. They are emergent first and interactive second, the perfect twin to the web environments we’ll be shaping in the future.
It’s hard to effectively summarize or even form theory around how the magic that makes games great ties into interface design. My current favourite examples of games that are very “emergent” are SCEE’s LittleBigPlanet for PS3 and obviously Will Wright’s Spore. Neither are out yet, however, so it’s hard to really implement any interfaces based directly on what we learn from games like that. And the only other example I have is World of Warcraft, but as I explained before, that didn’t really work out the way I had hoped…
Interesting thoughts again! I totally agree with you that the ‘websites’ of the future will be emerging systems, which lack any designed structure as we know them now (in the sense of IA). Especially in the vision that online services will evolve to a set of services over different functions and outlets, and where the contact points with the user will be in places you don’t have any direct control at all as company.
Sites will be systems based on rules, agree. The designed structures will often disappear. I wonder in what way gaming can learn us the right dialog we offer the user to flow through the informationbase. Adaptive stories that develop be using. I believe that simple rules offers the most flexibility for the desired relevant systems. Just like the Go game indeed.
You could think of designers who create a platform and a bunch of independent and interacting components that will evolve in the valuable services by using. The work of the designer does not stop with the first release. He will be part of the user group and tune on the fly the stories in order to meet the targets.
For information architects and old skool designers this will be a real challenge. The quest for the best answer for structuring a pile of information is not the purpose anymore, but thinking in possible stories and scripts, designing for assembly by the user.
Thanks for all the thoughtful comments guys. This, as I said before, really helps to shape my thoughts for the upcoming presentation. I’ll be sure to mention you in the credits. ;-)
To Rahul: I’ve replied to your previous comment and also mentioned there that the best examples to use with laymen of game design might be simple non-digital games. I’ve noticed that the excellent book Rules of Play (from which I’m taking huge amounts of inspiration for all of this) does this quite often (even the digital games they use are often old arcade titles). I suspect they do this for the same reason, to make it easier to zoom in on the core mechanics that make them tick.
To Iskander: Your description of the web ‘environments’ (for lack of a better word) of the future is exactly what I have in mind when talking about algorithmic architectures and such. Reading your comment I can understand why all these ideas sound scary to ‘old school’ designers (not to mention many clients!) Scenario-based design is certainly one way to handle the fluid nature of these ‘spaces’ but I most certainly think we need new tools in our belt as well. For instance, game designers use state-charts to model the ways game AI responds to player actions. Perhaps we can reappropriate this for the design of web environments?
It would be cool to get in touch with the designers behind some of these games to see how they feel about translating their work to a web environment. Too bad someone like Will Wright is way too “superstar” to talk to just like that ;)
Yeah, that would be fun. One game designer who has taken the initiative of applying his thoughts to interaction design is Chris Crawford (who’s doing exciting work in interactive storytelling now). He’s written an entertaining book titled The Art of Interactive Design, which I can recommend if you’re looking for an unorthodox approach to interaction design thinking.