What follows is adapted from a talk I gave to WolverineSoft, the game development club at the University of Michigan, on September 30th, 2021, titled "Notes on Novelty." At the time, most of the talks we hosted in the organization dealt with topics including game development techniques, breaking into the games industry, and so forth; my intention with this talk was to instead focus on the not-so-concrete aspects of game design, discussing the field as an art and sharing my reflections therein. This talk in particular dealt with the question of originality in game design, and though there are some points I now find insufficiently thought out, I'm quite proud of this presentation. As an added context, this presentation was made not long after Deltarune Chapter 2 was released, a game which some friends and I immediately played and screamed at each other about for weeks thereafter.
Trying to create something original is a problem I've wrestled with in my game design for quite some time, and a problem I still contemplate often. I too was once hoping to make the next big, quirky, Earthbound-inspired RPG, but I've long since taken a step back to reflect on the direction of my game development. Approaching game design and development as a form of art and expression has always been a priority for me, and my goal today is to share with you some of my reflections.
So here's the big question: how can we be more original? Another related question we might try to address is: how do we make our games stand out? While these are important questions regarding how we market our games, that's not what I want to talk about today. Even mediocre games can succeed with good marketing. Today, though, I want to ignore the financial concerns of game development and think only about games as an artistic medium.
Before we talk about how to be more original, we should start with a quick discussion about what it means for something to be "original" or "novel" in the first place. A good way to try and address this question with some examples. Pictured on the left of this slide (this presentation was accompanied by a slideshow) is Harvest Moon DS, a game from 2005, and on the right is Stardew Valley, an indie game released in 2016. So, what do you think? Is Stardew Valley "original"? How, and in what ways? Here's the same exercise, with the original, if you will, Earthbound-inspired RPG. Is Undertale original?
Here's the point of that exercise: there's no single, correct answer. What we might consider to be original could appear to be unoriginal in someone else's eyes, and vice versa. At the end of the day, novelty isn't everything in game design, and my advice is to make whatever it is you want to make. If you want to try and make something completely novel and never before seen, go for it! But if you really like a specific kind of game, and that's what you set out to create, who cares if someone thinks it's unoriginal?
Of course, there's still a point to this talk. In my game design, I've often thought about what it takes to make something truly novel. It often feels like every game has been made already. It can also feel quite discouraging to be working on something alone and to see how much "better" a game made by a larger team over several years is. This discouraging feeling is something that's caused me to abandon some projects quite early, and it's what drives this question of originality into my mind. As I see it, if you're working on something that's original, the problem of comparison can't weigh you down.
So what do I think it means to be original? I think originality exists on a continuum. Every game, or every work of art, is similar to others and deviates in certain ways. Every component of a game, in the smallest unit you can possibly divide it, has some degree of similarity or difference to another game. When we might seem to disagree on whether a game should be considered original or nothing more than a clone, what we might really be contemplating is how original certain aspects of the game are, and how much importance we place on them.
If we return to the Stardew Valley example for a moment, many people might consider this game to be unoriginal for a lot of reasons: the aesthetics of the game bear a significant resemblance to Harvest Moon, especially the version I chose to compare it with. The core mechanics of farming, selling your crops, and expanding the farm are also all the same. Someone who sees Stardew Valley as unoriginal might focus on these elements, and regard them as the ones that define the game. I want to note, however, that a person could still very well love Stardew Valley as a game that revived a classic genre, so this argument of unoriginality may not be a means to put the game down.
On the other hand, someone might consider the many ways in which Stardew Valley deviated from Harvest Moon: many of the existing gameplay systems were greatly expanded and new ones invented. The game's expanded relationship system with the villagers is a prominent one. Many of the previously mentioned, arguably "unoriginal" features are interacted with differently than harvest moon as well. The games also tell fundamentally different stories. So for another person, these differences may be enough to consider Stardew Valley as something novel. Again, this whole notion seems to be a rather subjective one.
Now, if we focus on one specific element instead of considering a game as a whole, another question arises. What makes a deviation from a "source" game a real innovation as opposed to a gimmick? In some cases, gimmicks are nothing more than a "trick to attract business or attention," (as per Miriam-Webster) but sometimes, a gimmick can be an "ingenious" approach to something. For our purposes, we can refer to a gimmick as a single, specific change, maybe to a game's mechanic or aesthetic design. Often, these are used in marketing material to make a game stand out.
A gimmick isn't necessarily a good change. For instance, I believe that the Pokemon series has been plagued with gimmicks instead of any meaningful innovation for generations now, so to speak. To make things worse, GameFreak constantly seems to abandon their gimmicks after each generation of games instead of fleshing them out into interesting genre deviations, opting for new gimmicks instead.
The reason I bring this up is because something I've observed in a lot of failed indie games or the endless listings on Itch.io is that they all seem to have some gimmick that they argue sets them apart from everyone else. Sometimes, these gimmicks are ingenious, totally novel approaches to what was previously standard in a genre. For example, Undertale's battle system's incorporation of bullet-hell gameplay was inspired. The gameplay is, in my opinion, far more fun than traditional turn-based RPG gameplay, and also puts much of the battle's outcomes directly in your control instead of depending on random number generation for player damage. There's many other novel changes to the battle system as well, including the "Act" and "Mercy" options. The success of these new systems was, of course, very much implementation dependent. Far too often do I see the next quirky Earthbound-inspired RPG with some battle system gimmick that's really just not any fun, or that adds nothing to the game. In some games, such as the unfortunate case of YIIK, the battle system's gimmick may even be detrimental to the player's experience.
But it's interesting to note here that Earthbound, and the Mother series itself, was once nothing more than a quirky RPG that deviated from the genre in a few ways. The introduction of a modern setting; some battle gimmicks, such as the rolling health counter; and a surprising twist at the end all contributed to the growth of Earthbound's cult following. But even then, the game was a commercial flop during its release in the United States.
Now, let's jump back to the big question: how can we make our games more original? At this point, I'd like to share with you some of my reflections on the matter. You may not agree with everything I present, but these are some of the things which I've found valuable.
The first step is what I would describe as observing and introspecting. The general idea is to have experiences and to reflect on them. In your game design, draw from more than the genre, more than the medium, and draw from your experiences. I think the feeling that every game has been made already comes from a place of drawing only from the game's genre. I also believe that this narrowed perspective is why many game developers feel that they must depend on some kind of gimmick, and why these gimmicks are often not meaningful or interesting changes to the game.
We've actually had a discussion about this aspect of game design in WolverineSoft in the past, and I read through what we said in the chat while writing this presentation. I think one of our club members summarized the idea pretty well, so here's an unprompted quote from him: "In short, you cannot craft novel experiences if you haven't had life experiences of your own." I would add though, that simply having these life experiences is not sufficient, and that the key is reflection, but I'll return to this idea in a moment.
But, first, a question arises. How do we have more experiences? The answer is really simple: you just do. Play more games, especially exploring new genres. Read books, especially the boring non-fictions or classics. Watch movies. Listen to music. Study more disciplines—I think this is a big one. Reading about philosophy or psychology or history can really go a long way. Finally, but really not finally, have adventures whenever you can. The most important thing here, though, is to reflect on all of it. Think about how each of these experiences affected you. What did you learn from them? It's a good idea to spend some time just writing out your thoughts. Then, make connections to other experiences you've had. It also doesn't hurt to start generating ideas for how you might capture these experiences in your game design.
The next step is to think about the big picture for your project. Before you dive into programming the game, think about what it is you want to accomplish. This seems obvious, but I usually find myself jumping right into a game's mechanics without thinking about my project's goals first. Some things you may want to think about might be: what specific experience are you trying to give the player? How do the systems you plan on implementing work to accomplish that?
Celeste is definitely a good example of this. Celeste is a game that captures the struggles of a person's mental health, and it makes a pretty obvious metaphor to the struggle of climbing a mountain. It's through the actual gameplay and difficulty that the game is able to capture the triumph of overcoming these challenges. Celeste also has levels where the protagonist is literally being chased by a shadow of herself, with whom she dialogues with throughout, to make peace. While I wouldn't cite this game as an example of subtle messaging, the gameplay is not only very fun, but it works hand-in-hand with the narrative to develop the overall emotional experience of the game.
When I say think about the game's experience, I mean that in an encompassing way. Video games are very much an experiential medium, and each of the game's facets contribute to it. So, you might want to consider the gameplay experience, the emotional experience, the aesthetic experience, and so on. Think about how all of these components build off each other.
This step also involves quite a bit of learning. Here's a quote that's attributed to Pablo Picasso: "Learn the rules like a pro so you can break them like an artist." I cannot stress enough the importance of studying the medium you're working with. Think deeply about what others' games have done and how they have succeeded or failed to accomplish their goals. And again, don't limit yourself to just games. Think about other forms of media, and of science and literature. Think about your lived experiences, what they mean to you, and how you can simulate that feeling in a video game. Going back to the example of Celeste—if you've ever found yourself climbing a mountain, reflect on the experience. What specifically made you feel the way you did? Is there any way to capture this in a video game?
The third suggestion I have is to think about the details. Once you've thought about the big picture, consider every detail you can. Think about every sprite in the game. Scrutinize every moment of gameplay, and ask yourself: is this detail working towards my goal with the game? Is there something I can do differently here that could accomplish the goal more effectively? I want to mention once again that the goal doesn't need to be something grand and new, but even if you're trying to recreate the experience of another game, giving the details their due attention can help make sure you're creating the best game you can.
As an example, consider Deltarune. If you haven't played Deltarune Chapter 2 yet, what are you doing? Go play it. You have no idea what you're missing. While I was playing it, something that blew me away was Toby Fox's attention to detail. For instance, in a JRPG like Deltarune, if the player chooses to interact with objects in the world, sometimes they're given a snippet of text to describe what they're looking at. In Deltarune, these text prompts not only contribute to the game's worldbuilding (sometimes in very subtle ways), but they're usually humorous, which encourages players to spend time interacting with the world. Deltarune's tight incorporation of humor and worldbuilding easily gets the player invested. Some examples of this from the game are astonishing, but I won't spoil them now. This attention to detail shows up in the user interfaces, the character dialogue, the puzzles, the individual sprites and animations, the sound effects, the musical motifs, and on and on. I highly encourage you to closely analyze the game's details when you're playing it. It's not only a valuable learning experience, but trust me, you won't regret it.
I also want to briefly mention Cow Tools. Cow Tools is a comic from Gary Larson's The Far Side. The comic depicts a cow standing in front of several tools, one of which resembling a hand saw, with the others unidentifiable. People were very confused by the comic, expecting some kind of punchline, trying to figure out what it meant. What were the tools for? What would a cow do with them? The author received hundreds of letters about the comic. The best part of this story is that the tools meant nothing. There was no deeper meaning or commentary. The comic was simply "an exercise in silliness." Yet, the readers had devised many possible meanings for the tools on their own. So, the idea here is that when you're adding details to your game, it might not even be necessary to weave such an intricate net. Even vague, loosely connected details can be enough to get the players thinking about their significance. So if you're out of ideas, I'd say just sprinkle in some cow tools.
Another thing I want to mention with regards to the details in your game is that it's important to trust your players. This screenshot is from a game called YIIK, and in so many ways, is an example of what not to do. One specific problem with the game is that at every turn, it assumes it's players are stupid. Every detail is explicated to the player through way, way too much text. It's incredibly boring. There are even cases when something in the game is explicitly shown to the player in the animations, and yet the game still tells you exactly what happens in dialogue as if you didn't just see it. I see games that simply don't trust the players far too often, and it's important that you give the players time and autonomy to discover the details at their own pace. The feeling of having discovered something or realizing a subtle connection is quite valuable to the player's experience.
I want to end my talk with this note: the first video game was said to be invented in 1958, with Pong from 1970 often cited as the first commercially successful video game. What I mean by this is that video games are an extremely young medium. We've barely scratched the surface of what they can do. Computers really are incredible tools, and I encourage you all to try something new. And don't be afraid to fail, because failure is part of the creative process. Game jams, for example, are a great place to just try implementing a new mechanic or system and thinking about the places you can go with it.