Hi all, just dropping by with an itch for game philosophy. I’ve spent the past few months tinkering in UE4, practicing my hand at blueprints and all the functional aspects of game design, and I’m realizing I haven’t thought about the finer art of things. Employing nonstandard game mechanics to help tell the project’s story, for instance, or to sell the project’s theme.
A popular example: plenty of people – including Yahtzee of the Escapist – point to the Legend of Zelda Majora’s Mask and say it instills a sense of futility and loss of identity in players with its time travel and mask-wearing mechanics.
Personally, I feel I’ve made a mistake focusing so absolutely on the function of game mechanics without considering the thematic import of said mechanics. So, uh, I’m going to get on that. In the meantime, I was wondering what other people are thinking?
Here, let’s make a list out of it. That’s fun, I think. Lists are always fun.
How would any of you build a set of game mechanics to sell one of the following themes or character traits?
Loneliness. How would you sell the idea of loneliness? That is, how would you instill a sense of loneliness in a player through the mechanics of the game itself?
Rage. Say you make a game where the player character has anger issues, or else is angry all the time. How would you suggest this through the game’s controls? Or through the level design, perhaps?
Wonder. Okay, most games tackle this one. Your sandbox game sells this theme by giving you a diverse world to explore and a constant stream of new items, enemies or some-such. What would you do different?
Inequality. I don’t see many games approach this one. Most try to give the player a power fantasy, after all. How would you instill a sense of inequality in a player through the use of the controls, level design, etc.?
Just spit-balling here, thanks for reading. Hope you have a great day.