A Playful Production Process
The front cover of Richard Lemarchand’s (2021), A Playful Production Process
A Playful Production Process: For Game Designers (and Everyone)
By Richard Lemarchand, foreword by Amy Hennig
The MIT Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2021
ISBN: 9780262045513
Review by Dr Dylan Yamada-Rice
If you are new to the processes of game design this book could serve as a useful introduction. The language is accessible and it is easy to dip in and out of the chapters, which broadly link to different parts of the design and development process. There are also a number of activities to try that might be helpful for someone starting out. However, my work sits across the games industry and academia and for a number of years I have been experimenting with ideas that offer additional perspectives that expand beyond those in this book. Thus, for the remainder of this review I critique Lemarchand’s work in relation to my own in the hope that others will experiment too.
To begin with I was struck by the masculine tone of some of the terminology in the book: ‘blue sky thinking’, ‘a metastructure of the creative process: how to manage our time and plan our projects’ (p. 1). In recent work with Eleanor Dare (Dare & Yamada-Rice, 2022), we asked the audience to question the extent to which the terminology and structures of gaming software build on those from capitalism (Keogh and Nicoll, 2019) and suggested alternative systems drawn from magic (e.g., Kuhn, 2019) and queering (e.g. Ahmed, 2006) could be used to disrupt these. Considering how alternative systems can be used within game design is not only acting responsibly to the creative process, but is also a form of ‘design justice’ (Costanza-Chock, 2020) that widens the audience being designed for/with. This also questions Lemarchand’s narrow framing of gaming audiences, which does not match the wide range of people that play games. Such language also reflects the gender imbalance in the industry so should be questioned from this perspective too.
As universities become more closely intertwined with industry; creating curricula that feeds their future needs, giving honoury degrees or taking sponsorship for infrastructure etc it becomes ever more important for students to be told that it is OK to see their studies as a platform for experimentation. I encourage students to explore each stage of the design and production process as widely as possible. For example, on page 13 Lemarchand advocates for mind mapping as a way in which ‘blue sky thinking’ can occur and the game design process can begin. Later he mentions storyboarding, ‘Wikipedia: random, or your favourite divination technique’ (p.15). In my research and practice I situate my earliest ideas around the narrative/story/information at the heart of the gaming experience, and then draw on notions of multimodal social semiotics (Kress, 2010) to explore how the gaming narrative is altered by the modes and ultimately the platforms included in the game design. A focus on multimodality links well with Lemarchand ideas that:
Game designers are communicators. The games that we make communicate ideas and feelings to our audience of players. Games are highly conceptual, built of logic, number, space, and language. These are conveyed in image, sound, touch, and the other modalities of our senses. (p. 43)
However, Lemarchand continues to states that the key to ‘effective communication is clarity, brevity, and active listening’ (p.45). Given the focus on modes and senses I believe that effective communication through games is more complicated and involves deep exploration of the match between mode and materials, and how these are used by the communicator and received by the player. Much of this relates to Gibson’s idea of affordances, which in turn connects to the player experience. In chapter 7, Lemarchand also talks about experience as a goal of good game design and likewise introduces Gibson’s theory of affordance (p.105). However, it also needs to be remembered that with XR gaming technologies traditional affordances need not be applied because VR makes it possible to mess with scale and immersion etc.
Chapter 3 is focused on research, but the methods offered are more search than research. I believe research is fundamental to good design and production processes and should extend across all stages. Thus, research could have been discussed within each of the chapters to illustrate this. In any case a deeper discussion of research would allow readers to understand how it can have a direct or indirect correlation with the gaming narrative and mechanics. For example, when working on a train themed app for my employer Dubit, I observed children playing with physical train toys to understand movements, sounds and narratives within their play. These were then carried over to the digital design process. However, research methods can also be less directly connected, and in doing so bring about innovation in the design process. As part of MA-level teaching I ask students to consider their gaming narrative from a modal perspective. In doing so, they are introduced to specialists such as the work of Kate McLean on smell mapping (Perkins & McLean, 2020) or McCloud (1993) on visual narratives structures. There are opportunities also to draw on social sciences or to bring gaming practices into the research process. For further discussion on this see here: <https://dylanyamadarice.com/TEACHING-ARCHIVE-Experimental-Research-Methods> . Isolating one mode at a time and researching in this way can lead to discovering new perspectives and ideas.
Lemarchand also seems to draw a distinction between research and making but the two need not be separate processes. Ingold (2013) also shows how making is part of the thinking process which he illustrates by demonstrating the long human history of knowledge production in this way. Having said this, Lemarchand is an advocate for prototyping which can be seen when he writes: ‘If the game engine you would like to use is not yet available to you, just find a game engine that you can use today and start building immediately’ (p.31). I agree, using readily accessible gaming platforms such as Roblox can make it possible to begin thinking, design, building immediately and act as an initial means of prototyping.
Overall, game design should be a complex process because as I have shown elsewhere (Yamada-Rice, 2021) it needs to consider the game, that is it’s modes, platforms, materials and associated affordances, the player and the places in which it will be played. One of the simplest ways to do this, which Lemarchand does not mention, is to play as widely as possible to become familiar with games and play in the broadest sense.
References
Ahmed, A. (2006). Queer Phenomenology: Orientation, objects and others, Durham and London: Duke University Press.
Costanza-Chock, S. (2020). Design Justice: Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need (Information Policy), Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Kindle Edition.
Dare, E. & Yamada-Rice, D. (2022) Virtual magic: sleight of hand in immersive storytelling. Keynote presentation for: Connected Screens Playing with Immersive Systems. Leeds Beckett University, 30th March 2022
Ingold, T. (2013) Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture. London: Routledge.
Keogh, B., Nicoll, B. (2019). The Unity Game Engine and the Circuits of Cultural Software, Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. Kindle Edition.
Kress, G. (2010) Multimodality: A Social Semiotic Approach to Contemporary Communication. London and New York: Routledge.
Kuhn, G. (2019) Experiencing the Impossible: The Science of Magic. The MIT Press: Cambridge MA.
McCloud, S. (1993) Understand Comics: The Invisible Art. New York: Harper Collins.
Perkins, C., & McLean, K. (2020). Smell walking and mapping. In S. M. Hall, & H. Holmes (Eds.), Mundane methods: Innovative ways to research the everyday (p. 156-173). Manchester University Press.
Yamada-Rice, D. (2021) Is now the perfect timing for a break through in connected play? Medium. Available online at: <https://komesanyamada.medium.com/is-now-the-perfect-timing-for-connected-play-4a44363c9147> [Accessed 11/04/22]