A Book of Lenses: Themes and Resonance

If I'm understanding this chapter properly, Schell is arguing that games are not art.  To try and use game design for artistic expression is selfish and pompous, according to Schell (48).  Game designers should in stead be merely creating transcendent and transformative experiences (Schell, 53).  He seems to be arguing for and against the same thing.  I almost wonder if he wants to argue for games as artistic expression, but is afraid of losing the audience for his book.  So he flat out denies the possibility for games as serious artistic expression, then uses other words to describe games and hopes no-one notices that those other words mean artistic expression. 

We can create games with powerful themes right now.  But Why?  Why do this?  Out of a selfish need for artistic expression?  No.  Because we are designers.  Artistic expression is not our goal.  Our goal is to create powerful experiences.  It is possible to create games that do not have themes or that have very weak themes.  However, if our games have unifying, resonant themes, the experiences we create will be much, much stronger. (Schell, 48)

Schell almost seems to be arguing that designers should take the methods used by artists to express deep personal truths, and turn them for use in creating emotional manipulation.  Why manipulate peoples emotions?  It's not really explained until:

When you manage to tap into one of these resonant themes you have something deep and powerful that has a true ability to move people and to give them an experience that is both transcendent and transforming. (Schell, 53)

Which is a pretty good way to describe what I understand to be the importance and power of artistic expression.  So far in this book I've noticed Schell has an excellent ability to explain how an artistic mentality can be applied to and good for game design, but there's an odd sort of fear of fully embracing all that art is.  If games can be emotionally resonant, transcendent, and transforming, why stop short at artistic expression? 

Cited:
Schell, Jesse. "The Elements Support a Theme." The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses.
Amsterdam: Elsevier/Morgan Kaufmann, 2008. Print.

Right and Left Clicking

Flip solid tiles by left mouse clicking.

Flip and activate ghosted tiles with right clicks.

Flip and deactivate solid tiles with right clicks.

The above screenshots show my attempts at making a coherent way of both flipping tiles and activating/deactivating the tiles. 

Solid tiles flip when you click on them.  Nothing happens when you click on the ghosted tiles.  Right clicking either activates (turns to solid), or deactivates (turns to ghosted) the tiles. 

There is still an awkwardness to the two different controls.  It's a little bit confusing, even with the knowledge of which click does what.  It might be enough to give some visual feedback when you hover over an activated tile.  I'd like to try adding a brightening effect when you mouse over an active tile. 

It's also possibly that having the tiles flip over as well as fade in and out is part of the confusion.  Perhaps they should simply fade in and out.

Irregular Tiles

When thinking about how to gradually introduce the idea of the tiles, I began to wonder how the tiles would look with a less regular grid pattern.  The above are two quick sketches of possible patterns. 

One of the much larger tiles could be a good starting place for the player.  The other tiles may be far enough away that they are not immediately visible. Once the player does find the edge to another tile, there would be enough smaller tiles nearby for them to get a better sense of how the world is constructed before seeing the birds-eye view of the world.

I think the irregular pattern offers better opportunities for expanding the number of tiles through the game-play.  The tiles could be added on to the edges without "messing up" the edges of the square grid (since there isn't a true grid).