First of all my best wishes to you for 2008. It’s been a bit quiet around here lately—the last proper post was published December 19. Shame on me. The usual apologies apply: I’ve been busy doing work, but also spend some time catching up with friends and family in the Netherlands around the holidays.
I was considering doing the traditional look back at 2007 and perhaps post some resolutions for the coming year, but I won’t. 2007 has segued into 2008. Therefore I feel it’s best to just dive in and tell you what’s been occupying my mind lately.
How exactly do the fields of game design and interaction design relate? I’ve found myself straddling the line between the two more and more often. And what I’ve been wondering: Can game design be considered a specialised sub-discipline of interaction design, or are the two equals with some overlap? (Or can interaction design perhaps even be considered part of game design?)
Here’s a diagram of how I tend to think of the relationship between the two fields:
Seen this way, interaction design and game design each have their own body of knowledge with some overlap. From this perspective you could consider my work to be brokering of some sort—passing information back and forth between the two. I tend to place myself in the interaction design circle, making the occasional foray into game design territory and bringing back interesting stuff I find.
But there’s at least one other way of looking at these two fields:
I was trained to be an interaction designer. But part of the curriculum consisted of game design. Nowadays interaction design’s emphasis on efficiency naturally makes it irreconcilable with game design. At the Utrecht School of Arts, these two were not seen as being at odds with each other. You can consider this a gross oversight, or alternatively as proof of a far-reaching vision. Whatever.
In any case, it can be argued that (digital) game design is simply a very specialised sub-discipline of interaction design. This is not to say it is in any way less valuable than ‘regular’ interaction design. However, it might help people in both fields to advance their practice if they look at each other this way. Which is more or less a summary of what I’ve been arguing ever since I went freelance last year.
The problem is of course that in reality the two fields—or to be more exact the two communities of practice—are very much separate from each other. I’ve been trying to make some change there, in my own little way.
On the other hand this might just be me trying to justify my interest in game design as an interaction designer…
But perhaps there’s something more than just professional guilt at play here. I’m not sure yet. Some observations that might support one or the other view:
- Although their definition of games is very exact, Salen & Zimmerman’s definition of play is broader: “Play is free movement within a more rigid structure.” Isn’t that an apt description of what people do with anything interactive?
- The Interaction Design Association defines interaction design on their site and says it concerns: “the structure and behavior of interactive products and services”. Surely that includes digital games?
- I don’t have the book with me at the moment, but I seem to remember Koster mention something about game design ultimately being about putting people in touch with each other. Sounds like interaction design to me.
In any case, as long as I need 400+ words to explain why I want to do both interaction design and game design, I’ll be in trouble. Can you boil it down for me?
Hi Kars, interesting dilemma. Could you give an example of interesting stuff from game design that you found useful in interaction design?
Hi Aartjan. ‘Interesting’ is putting it a bit euphemistically isn’t it? ;-) To answer your question, let me point to my Euro IA Summit talk of last year. My thinking has progressed since that, but it’s still a nice stake in the ground.
Kars,
In fact at my ETech talk, I actually said outright that “game design is interaction design.”
http://www.raphkoster.com/gaming/etech07.shtml
Interesting thoughts. I support you view that game design and interaction design are very alike. Or better said, cannot live without eachother. As you know, in our principles of the virtual warmth and asynchrone interaction model it is important to design in different way; shaping stories, scripting experiences in stead of designing structures. This is especially important in the design of social systems I think. I never designed a game but I expect that the way you need to think about these, will be a good way to design modern interactive applications. So I don’t think that game design is part of IxD, or a specialized form, but interaction design will evolve to a new form were the principles of game design will be a important inspiration and asset.
So I hope you’re preaching will be heard. And you can be a role model for the new interaction designer. If it is possible to translate your experiences into new guidelines and methods, you can contribute a lot to the IxD-discipline. Keep me posted!
Thanks for commenting Raph. “Games are made out of making choices aka Interaction Design” I’d seen the talk but had completely forgotten about it. If you’re still following along, here’s a question: When designing a game grammar (or skill chain, or whatever you want to call it) would you start with the lowest or highest level atoms?
And thanks to Iskander for the decidedly different view: “interaction design will evolve to a new form were the principles of game design will be a important inspiration”. It seems I really need to start coming up with some techniques for applying these ideas. Perhaps that’ll be 2008’s mission.
I recently developed the idea that in Game design the Real World plays a completely different role than in interaction design, this was rooted by the different cultures of interaction and game design students.. For me you were one of the students with strong roots in the real world, and maybe the expception on the rule..
Gee thanks Joost, I consider that a compliment. To be honest I think that there’s a lot of things in the real world left unexplored by game design. All kinds of activities can be turned into games. This would broaden the appeal of games as well. If I can contributie to that in some way, I’ll be more than happy.
By name, game design includes all social activities, as they can be considered “games”. The real issue is what “interaction design” contains already, and whether that relates usefully to making computer entertainment for people. To be honest good games designers should already be talking to novelists, musicians, directors, playwrites, programmers, mathmeticians, sociologists, psychologists, scientists and architects. Because knowledge doesn’t have subject markers on it, you can use it for whatever you want, although it must be applied wisely, and something are more readily useful than others. Intellectual divides are caused when people cannot see the value of someone else’s experiences to themselves, or theirs to someone else, or don’t think it worth the bother. So how to bridge the gap? Find an example where interface design principles interact with game design principles, or just apply them outside their normal context. When people see them in action, they will be more convinced that crossover is worth it.
Such a thoughtful comment, too bad you felt the need to remain anonymous!
In any case, you make some interesting points. Although I’m not sure all social activities can be considered games, I think I consider them all a form of play.
I agree with your observation of how “intellectual divides” come into being. Sometimes I think my problem is the opposite—that I think all other people’s experiences are potentially valuable to my own work.
I’m happy to take you up on your challenge. Expect to see a post here at some point about a project where I combined IxD with GD. I’d love to hear your thoughts when I do!
Hi there Kars Alfrink ! I am Rajas Rane, a Student of Business Design course in India. I am currently studying the interaction design subject and also doing my dissertation project in the same subject. Since I have a strong liking for gaming, I was planning to focus my project on the interaction design for game designing. When I was searching on the net for different views on this topic, I liked the view which you have put up. Till now i was only looking at this topic as interaction design helping to mold up game designing. But i liked you view which says that as these field are evolving even game designing would be helping to develop interaction design. Since i am still very new and armature (though having strong liking and interest :) ) to this topic, i would like if you help me with some further inputs in this topic or some particular topic which requires some more in depth research in this field. Do write to me at rajasrane@gmail.com and let me know about it Best Regards Rajas
I have do disagree. I think interaction design and gameplay design are fundamentally different disciplines. If I build a web application that relies upon a database is the database design part of interaction design? Same with gameplay and interaction design. Usability and accessibility as goals of interaction design are external qualities of a game whereas gameplay is an internal quality. Gameplay only defines in game actions (such a moving). Interaction design concerns how these actions are made available to the user (arrow keys or mouse clicks). I don’t really understand why gameplay and interaction design are often mixed in user testing.
Thanks for commenting Eelke. You have some interesting points. Let me address them briefly.
I think so too, but I feel that GD deals with a narrower but deeper subset of IxD.
Clearly not.
I fail to see the analogy.
The things you mention are qualities of an interactive product that might be of importance to an IxD, depending on a project’s priorities. I do not understand what you mean by “external” and “internal” though.
I disagree. Gameplay emerges from a game’s mechanics, which are directly defined by a designer. Gameplay can only be indirectly designed.
One aspect of interaction design (the most concrete one) deals with interface, yes. But other, more abstract aspects deal with concepts (what value a product should offer to users and businesses) and behaviour (how that value is delivered). Interface is the expression of a product’s behaviour.
Are you talking about testing practices in the games industry? In any case, I don’t see why one would not want to test several aspects of a product. It might be a good idea to separate them across testing sessions though.
Interesting discussion. I’ve been giving these concepts a lot of thought lately.
Let me explain it with an example. Lets say you are designing a game. First and foremost we must find a way to interact with a computer that is fun which is the main goal of game design. Lets say we decide to build a tennis simulator like pong. Being able to deflect a ball with a paddle is a fun way of interacting with a computer. In theory it does not specify anything about how the user will control the paddle. You have designed the gameplay by defining the actions in your simulation. Gameplay is an internal quality of the game itself. HCI decides how these inputs are made available to the user by generating and exploring different control schemes. HCI should define an interface such that the user expects it (usability) or requires it (accessibility). You could use direct manipulation like the arrow keys or indirect by clicking with the mouse where you want the paddle to go. Alternatively for severely motor impaired users you could implement a scanning mechanisms that allows the player to control the paddle with one switch input. User studies should evaluate the best mechanism to use for particular users and if possible different control schemes could be implemented while the game is kept fair. In this respect HCI is different from designing a game because it is merely concerned with finding the best way to break high level game actions (moving the paddle) into specific user provided inputs (up/down) or (click). I consider this an external property of the game, as you can define different types of interfaces without changing the gameplay. The pong example is trivial but you could easily replace it with a first person shooter where a number of high level actions are defined (such as navigation, combat, communication) which are then mapped onto user specific actions (forward, shoot etc).
Hmmmm… game mechanics just describe the building blocks of game and are useful for analysis but are not that useful from a design perspective. You cannot just randomly throw game mechanics together and expect a good game. It’s the overall gameplay that counts but then again its kind of like a catch 21 ;-) Good thing 95% of the games being published are genre based games with well defined game play & mechanics.
Its an interesting point you bring up that GD is a subset of HCI. Most usability definitions models (Nielsen/Shackel/ ISO) decompose usability into an objective component (learnability / efficiency / reliability) and a subjective component (satisfaction). Do you think this subjective component expresses gameplay?