Category Archives: Game Design
How Stage Magic Influenced My Career
On Saturday night, we attended a taping of the CW television show Masters of Illusion. They tape the show five nights in a row, and then edit it all into 12 episodes that will appear in the summer. After we arrived and sat down, one of the ushers decided to relocate our party to the front row, where the cameramen did close-up shots of us to use as audience reaction shots throughout the season. Then the host, Dean Cain, who I best know as Superman in Lois And Clark, taped all twelve of his openings and closings. Later, we were surprised and excited to see our friend magician David Blatter of David and Leeman happened to be on stage that night doing their always-wonderful magic act. Toward the end of the evening, magician Naathan Phan invited me onstage to strap him into a straightjacket that he soon escaped from while singing. All in all, a magical night!
I’ve been interested in magic since childhood, when I read a biography of the magician Houdini, famous for his escapes from handcuffs, safes, and straightjackets — just like in the magic act I participated in this weekend. At the age of ten, I took a magic class taught on weekends at the local park, and soon I was buying Harry Blackstone, Jr. and Marshall Brodien magic kits at the toy store so that I could do magic on my own. I eventually started reading magic books and magazines so that I could construct my own apparatus, and when I saved up enough of my allowance, traveled down to Bert Wheeler’s Magic Shop in Hollywood to buy professional quality equipment. On weekends I would put on magic shows for the neighborhood kids, accompanied by music I had recorded on a tape recorder. My signature trick was pouring milk, flour, and the contents of an egg into an empty paper bag, and when I tore the bag open, there were cookies inside!
My interest in performing magic waned when I went into college and discovered another type of magical device — the computer — which transported me into the realm of video game development. However, I carried forward much of what I learned about performing magic into my work as a video game designer.
Magic routines are all based around trickery — sleight of hand, hidden doors, and other forms of deception — to convince the audience that they are perceiving something other than what they are actually seeing. This requires the magician to call the audience’s attention away from the reality of the trick and focus elsewhere so that the illusion can occur. However, to truly engage the audience and get them to fully suspend their disbelief, the magician must also be a good storyteller — employing what magicians call “patter” — to keep the experience interesting, entertaining, and move the plot of the magic trick along.
This is something we need to do in games a well. Games also require a willing suspension of disbelief from the player, since game designers want players to become immersed in the game, believing that the characters they are portraying and the situations they are in are real. However, as realistic as computer graphics are becoming, there is always some trickery involved in creating that virtual reality, and game designers need to divert the player’s attention away from the flaws that break the illusion. Good storytelling can play a part in that, focusing attention on a part of the part of the experience that is important for the players to remember, or more importantly, to perceive.
When creating a game, I am mindful of that fact that I am creating an illusion, and an imperfect one at that. Therefore, I must use whatever tricks are at my disposal — story, dialog, music, visual effects and interaction — to convince my players that they are experiencing something more than what they are actually seeing.
Writing about this, I’m tempted to take up my magic act again. I never lost my interest in magic, and magicians always have been a part of my life. One of the customers at the computer store I worked in was close-up magic expert Al Goshman. When When my wife and I were dating, we took a magic course together, the final class of which was held at The Magic Castle, the famous club for magicians in Hollywood. I’ve been lucky enough to see Harry Blackstone, Jr., David Copperfield, and Penn and Teller perform live. In fact, I once had a phone call with Penn about possibly doing a game project together when I was a producer at Disney Computer Software, but unfortunately the talks never went anywhere. I did do a game project with filmmaker Jeff Blyth, who is also an amateur magician, and he was kind enough to invite us one evening to the Magic Castle, where he is a member. Now, one of my wife’s fellow high school teachers is David Blatter, who as I mentioned above, is also a member of David and Leeman, a magic team that has appeared on America’s Got Talent as well as the Masters of Illusion show we saw taped.
After posting on Facebook that I saw him perform on Saturday, David wrote back that it’s never too late for me to return to magic myself. Perhaps I will. Now that I’m a teacher myself at The Los Angeles Film School, maybe I can also figure out a way to incorporate magic into my classroom. If I can get all my students to stay awake during my Game Production lectures, that would really be a trick!
Defining Play, Game, and Gaming
One of the recruiters in The Los Angeles Film School’s Admissions Department recently asked our Game Production faculty to define three terms: play, game, and gaming. My assumption was that it was to help when describing our program to potential students, but regardless of the reason, I was happy to comply. One of the other instructors came up with some very philosophical definitions, but after a couple of paragraphs, came to the conclusion that “game” couldn’t be defined. But what’s the purpose of words for communication if they have no commonly understood meaning? So, I decided to give this one some thought.
I had just spent an entire day in my introductory game production course describing the psychology of play, and I actually provide a number of definitions for each of these terms. One of the definitions of play I use is “the freedom of movement within a more rigid structure.” That’s a definition I found in my textbook, Game Design Workshop, and I use it when just describing the elements of a game, where “freedom of movement” translates to “player actions” and “rigid structure” translates to “rules, goals, conflict, resources, boundaries, etc.” That works for the lecture, but it isn’t a very practical definition. After all, commuting to work is also freedom of moment (driving) within a more rigid structure (streets and highways).
The definition for “play” I ultimately decided upon was “to engage in an activity for pleasure and recreation.” To me, play is not about what you are doing, but why you are doing it. You can play baseball for fun, but if you’re a professional athlete, it’s work. Household chores can be tedious, but if you approach it with a playful attitude, it can be more fun. Besides, the definition was simple and straightforward.
“Game” is a little bit trickier. It needs to cover board games, card games, tile games, party games, pen and paper games, sports, electronic games, and video games (which in turn includes console games, computer games, mobile games, and browser-based games).
I provide a lot of definitions of “games” in my class. Sid Meier describes games as “a series of interesting choices.” Well, so is a multiple-choice test. Jesse Schell has an alternate description: ““A game is a problem-solving activity, approached with a playful attitude.” My problem with that definition is that the problem-solving in some games, such as Rock-Paper-Scissors or Candyland, is so trivial as to be virtually non-existent. Eric Zimmerman and Katie Salen defines “game” as “a system in which players engage in an artificial conflict, defined by rules, that results in a quantifiable outcome.” Yeah, that will attract potential students!
In my game design class, I describe games as having the following elements: players, goals, procedures, rules, conflict, resources, boundaries, and outcomes. However, in very simple games, resources can be non-existent, and the conflict can be trivial. I eventually decided that the essence of games was this: “a playful activity with rules and goals.” Short and sweet.
Gaming! The final definition I had to come up with. Well, strictly speaking, “gaming” means “to play games of chance for money.” Our campus is in Hollywood, not Las Vegas, so I came up with an modified definition, specific to our program” “to play video games.”
I was happy with my working definition of “play”, “game”, and “gaming.” But if you have others, I’d love to see them in the comments below.
David Mullich 