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The Rules We Break: Eric Zimmerman on Game Design, Loops, and Culture
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Episode Overview
What does it really mean to design a game — and what can that teach us about culture, creativity, and even our daily lives? In this episode, Greg is joined by Lewis Ward and Eric Zimmerman, legendary game designer, professor at NYU’s Game Center, and author of The Rules We Break. Eric’s career spans from pioneering web-based multiplayer with Sissy Fight 2000 to co-founding GameLab and shaping Diner Dash, one of the most influential time-management games ever made.
We dig into the fundamentals of game design, the ethics of addictive mechanics, the surprising history of Monopoly, and why prototyping isn’t just for developers — it’s a mindset for anyone building systems or communities.
Joining us for this conversation is Lewis Ward, long-time industry analyst, who helps unpack Eric’s insights with both sharp questions and nostalgia for 90s game culture.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode
- Iteration as a Superpower – Why prototyping is the start of design, not the end.
- Feedback Everywhere – How observing body language and engagement rhythms tells you more than analytics.
- Sissy Fight 2000 & Early Multiplayer – The “flame wars” era and lessons for today’s online communities.
- Diner Dash’s Secret – How a “casual” game ended up brutally difficult — and why that mattered.
- Loops Within Loops – What makes Balatro so compelling, and how game design patterns keep players hooked.
- Ethics & Addiction – Dark design patterns, dopamine hits, and the responsibility of game creators.
- The Rules We Break – How Eric uses hands-on exercises to teach design as a 21st-century literacy.
- The Real Monopoly Story – Why one of the world’s most iconic games is often misunderstood.
Resources & Links
- Eric Zimmerman’s book: The Rules We Break
- Classic text: Rules of Play (Zimmerman & Salen)
- NYU Game Center: gamecenter.nyu.edu
- Follow Player Driven for more conversations: playerdriven.io
Episode Chapters
00:00 – Intro & Eric’s background
03:30 – Teaching game design & iteration
13:30 – Sissy Fight 2000 & the flame war era
21:00 – Diner Dash and the rise of “casual” games
26:30 – Feedback loops, dopamine, and ethics
42:00 – The Rules We Break: learning design through play
50:30 – Monopoly, culture, and closing reflections
Call to Action
Enjoyed this episode? Subscribe to Player Driven on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube for more conversations at the intersection of games, business, and community. And visit playerdriven.io to explore more resources, clips, and insights from the show.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Game Community Management
00:00:00
Speaker
I don't know if I would want to kind of launch and have to manage a community like Sissy Fight today. bit of Flame more That might be the most 90s thing. And when I look back at all of Game Lab's games, I think that Diner Dash, which was the most...
00:00:12
Speaker
successful was maybe the hardest as well.
Meet Professor Eric Zimmerman
00:00:16
Speaker
Welcome to Player Driven. We are joined by Professor Eric Zimmerman. He has worked on such games such as Diner Dash, which I'm pretty sure everyone is familiar with, Sissy Fight, and most recently he is the author of the book The Rules We Break.
00:00:29
Speaker
He also has a fascination with the game of Monopoly, which I'm really excited to learn more about it. and We also have Lewis Ward joining us today. He's just as fascinated, if not more than me. So Lewis, thanks for joining
Zimmerman's Game Design Journey
00:00:41
Speaker
me. Thank you. Before we give it to you, Lewis, Eric, thank you so much for joining me. Anything you want to say about yourself?
00:00:47
Speaker
I'm just really happy to be here. um i i am a game designer. I've worked in the game industry since the 1990s. um And i ah sometime after that, I became a ah professor at and NYU at the Game Center, which is the Department of Game Design at Tisch School the Arts.
00:01:06
Speaker
And yeah, I make a lot of games. I'm a cheap date for game design. ill I'll make any kind of game. I make
Innovative Teaching at NYU Game Center
00:01:12
Speaker
video games. I make tabletop games, card games and board games, um museum installations that are large scale interactive things. So i um I really like inventing new forms of play and writing about game design and teaching game design.
00:01:26
Speaker
I am very excited to break all of that down and more. Louis, do you want to say hi and introduce yourself? Yeah, great to join you again, Greg. um Yeah, and I'm thrilled to have Eric Zimmerman here, Professor Zimmerman, I might say. Eric, please, no one can't remember Professor Zimmerman. Some people love the title.
00:01:47
Speaker
um And it is it it is you know it is a valuable thing. But again, I was a Games for Change. I wrote something about it IDC.com about it. um We kind of cornered Eric. Yes, that's true there.
00:01:58
Speaker
ah Just because I thought his talk was super interesting. So we'll we'll get to a few questions about that. but um And also his book is really good. He was kind enough to send me a copy. I can't recommend it
Game Design Principles in Life and Career
00:02:08
Speaker
enough.
00:02:08
Speaker
what i What I especially liked about you know Eric's background, and and he crosses the boundary between the IRL games, like board games, yes, but also the rules of society and the unwritten rules of society.
00:02:20
Speaker
And to me, that's also super fascinating when you start connecting the dots between how video games are designed. It's almost like a negative space where you make these rules and and the play emerges from the negative space designers create.
00:02:32
Speaker
But anyway, super, super interesting read. I'm only partway through it. But again, happy to be here and excited to get on with it.
Path to Academia and NYU Contributions
00:02:39
Speaker
Lewis is breaking into the meat of the conversation right at right it right in the set. And I love it.
00:02:44
Speaker
You know, I think what Lewis said really fascinates me as well. I've learned to love game design and I'm seeing more and more people talk about board games and physical games and games. The more I look at design, I see it can almost fit into every aspect of your life, depending on how you want to look at the rules that you create.
00:03:00
Speaker
ah We're going dig into that, but I've learned to love career development and learning how people do this. And one of the main hats you're wearing now, whether you like the title or not, is professor NYU Game Center, at the Tisch School of Arts.
00:03:15
Speaker
I'm curious, how do you fall into a role like that? was it Did you ever see yourself going in that direction or or how did that happen? Well, I guess we could trace it a few different ways. i I studied art originally. So my undergrad degree is in painting, fine art degree, BFA. And I got an MFA in art and technology. Although I'm not a technologist. they you know they i work I collaborate with programmers a lot.
00:03:42
Speaker
You know how they say that you know... just enough martial arts to really get your ass kicked. That's exactly how much programming I know, like just enough to like really get into trouble.
00:03:54
Speaker
But anyway, um so but my background is in fine arts and um I come from a family of academics. So my parents are both university professors, actually professors of art education at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, where I grew up.
00:04:09
Speaker
So but I never thought I would be a professor. i always said, OK, I, you know, first I wanted to be an artist. Then right after graduate school, I entered the game industry and I realized, oh, this is like another really interesting way to make to make culture.
00:04:23
Speaker
um And I just always said, look, I'm I'm a I'm a designer. I want to work. I'm going to make things. But I also started teaching. Right when I was out of graduate school at ITP, ah the Interactive Telecommunications Program, which is also in Tisch School of the Arts. It's sort of their very famous digital media and design program, which is around from the 70s.
00:04:45
Speaker
So it's been around a long time. And Frank Lance and i another New York City based game designer, started teaching game design there. way in like the the the early nineteen ninety s And ah just as an adjunct, i was just teaching a class, you know, once a week coming into to the university and and teaching. And i i guess I guess over the years, I just kept on teaching.
00:05:07
Speaker
So i I, you know, in those days, Game design wasn't a thing that you could study. Games had already been around for decades. You know, Atari had come out when I was a kid and arcade games. i grew up with arcade games and Apple 2 Plus and all this stuff. So it's not that games and and video games were were new, but no one had really...
00:05:30
Speaker
you know, written books about how to design them or how to teach them. So Frank Lance and I were really kind of
Evolution of Game Distribution
00:05:36
Speaker
exploring that whole field. I remember going to the and NYU library and typing games into the university computer. And we were just like running around, like grabbing books, what the hell are students going to read in our class?
00:05:47
Speaker
But in figuring out how to teach game design, we really um ended up figuring out, you know, what this field was. So in a funny way,
00:05:59
Speaker
Although I kept on working full-time in the industry, I had my own studio that I formed Peter Lee for a little while, for about 10 years, um Game Lab that made Diner Dash, among other games. I was always teaching. So I was teaching as an adjunct at and NYU, places like MIT, School of Visual Arts, Parsons School of Design.
00:06:16
Speaker
um And I have to say, for as a designer, teaching really became part of my practice. And it became part of how I understood what games were and how they functioned. you know i don't believe in teaching like I have all this knowledge and I'm like injecting it into my students.
00:06:33
Speaker
I teach like I'm in there learning with them and we're all figuring this thing out together. um and But as the person leading that process and having to like structure things and and and name things and figure things out, that it's really taught me so much as a game designer. And that actually led to the but the first book I wrote, which was ah with Katie Salen called Rules of Play.
00:06:59
Speaker
And that was published by MIT Press like way back in 2004. But that started with my teaching with Frank Lance. Like the structure of the book is based on the classes that we taught.
00:07:10
Speaker
And that's a standard textbook for game design. So a
Diner Dash's Legacy
00:07:12
Speaker
lot of students... know that book, um Rules of Play. um But anyway, so so that's that's how I ended up here. Then eventually, Game Lab closed and I was freelancing around and they were starting up a new program at NYU for game design.
00:07:27
Speaker
And they asked me to come and help design the curriculum. Frank Lance was the director. So this guy I had you know ah been doing making games with on and off during my whole career, he was a director. There were some famous folks like Catherine Isbister and Jesper Yule,
00:07:41
Speaker
um who if you're in the game studies arena, you might recognize those names. But the four of us designed the curriculum and started the program. And I've been here ever since. At this point at the and NYU Game Center, I'm um the dinosaur here. i'm I'm the one who's still around from the very very beginning. frank Frank is retired and Jesper and Catherine have moved on.
00:08:05
Speaker
um But I'm really happy to to still be here and and teaching games and shaping this program. it's a very It's a very highly regarded program in game design, but we're all still figuring it out. We're still constantly changing the curriculum, trying things out, seeing what what works and doesn't work.
00:08:22
Speaker
um Anyway, sorry for the long-winded answer to your to your question. playing with the rules of how to design a curriculum. Totally. um Teaching is so much like game design.
00:08:33
Speaker
You set up a structure, which are like the rules, right? The policies, the assignments, even whether you're going grade or not grade, um who's working with who in what way, the constraints on on the projects they're doing.
00:08:45
Speaker
And then they play with that, right? Like it's the same thing. Like you you set up a space and then they inhabit that space and they might follow the rules or bend and break the rules. And your your hope, just like a game, and as a game designer, my hope is always to see players doing things I never anticipated.
00:09:03
Speaker
That is the sweetest pleasure for me of game design. And as a teacher, it's really the same thing. Like seeing your students do things you didn't anticipate.
Iterative Design and Prototyping
00:09:12
Speaker
That's awesome. Yeah, it makes sense. I think that was the line in your book.
00:09:14
Speaker
And I would say as an analyst, i was I knew just enough about how to make a game to be a little bit dangerous myself. Like I never wrote code. Actually, i did. Apple II code in the 19 fricking 80s. I did design a game, but mostly clinging together other other scraps from other games into something like Joust or whatever. But yeah,
00:09:30
Speaker
Do you notice that game design changes throughout the years based on where we are in technology? Or does it kind of also kind of go in this loop where we're coming back to the past and looking at what we've learned from the past?
00:09:42
Speaker
Well, I guess, can I say yes and no? I think that, I mean, I teach game design, the fundamentals of design off the computer. So i'm I teach because I'm not a programmer, I'm not teaching the software development courses.
00:09:57
Speaker
I'm teaching the classes that really like fundamentals of game design for our BFA and MFA students. And when And this was also what Frank and I did at at NYU originally.
00:10:09
Speaker
and for me, it's almost like when you when you when you look at, like ah I don't know, like like ah us and a tree and a chimpanzee, like we share like some like large percentage of our chromosomes you know and genetic makeup and everything.
00:10:24
Speaker
and And there's a level at which a game is a game is a game. Like what it means to design meaningful choices, training things like systems thinking or collaboration, the rapid rapid prototyping and iteration process, all of these kind of essential tools for making games um and concepts. ah there you know and First of all, I think there's a lot of overlap between tabletop and and analog games and sports and physical games and and digital and video games.
00:10:52
Speaker
um And also, there's i you know it's easier to teach in a sense. ah You can quickly whip up a card game prototype you know a minute after you have an idea, not like a week or a month after you have an idea if it's a video game.
00:11:05
Speaker
But in in it in and so so So on one level, I think a game is a game is a game. And there's just so the fundamentals really do move across media.
00:11:16
Speaker
um On the other hand, of course, whenever you're doing a specific project, you really need to look at the affordances of the platform and the way that your audience is using that, right? Like, you know, using like this is really different interactivity than like the computer that I'm looking at right now that has a mouse and a keyboard.
00:11:35
Speaker
um So, of course, as technology and platforms evolve, then those are those are, you know, an intimate part of the thinking from the very beginning of of any project.
00:11:46
Speaker
um So, yeah, I think that you kind of need to
Creating Sissy Fight: Challenges and Innovations
00:11:51
Speaker
um think about it, you know, from from both both sides of that coin. um But definitely, i mean, now, you know, things like...
00:12:00
Speaker
um yeah a yeah I'll give you a really good example and kind of in an unexpected way. like When I started my career, there wasn't digital distribution of games right in the 1990s. That sort of happened in the late 90s when the World Wide Web was sort of was was was um becoming um something that that you know was about to change everybody's lives.
00:12:23
Speaker
And yeah, people used to have to buy a a video game off a shelf, which was like made in a factory and pressed on a disc and then shipped across the world like a physical commodity.
00:12:34
Speaker
And then we were, you know, publishers were fighting for that shelf space and they, never you know, thousands of games would come out every year. And there was this whole thing about how, you know, how to reach consumers, but digital distribution completely changed.
00:12:50
Speaker
the the game industry, right? I mean, not only was there no, you know, different kind of fighting for shelf space, but an actual game creator in an app store, the Steam steam store can now make a game directly for for players. So that, for me, that's a really good example of how technology works completely changed the kinds of games that were made, who's making games, the scale of games, for example, um revenue models, and and if new kinds of people are making games. And that that led this led to the rise of indie games, right? And which has really changed the cultural status of of what video games are.
00:13:24
Speaker
so So technology is also super important. um I would like like to go to one of your early games. You mentioned Diner Dash, but Sissy Fight, which is is just a funny name that i I love. I haven't played that one, but it i think it was built on Shockwave or Flash or something. This was like 2000, and was even a multiplayer game. yeah And I believe this was probably around the time you were starting teach or an early experiment before Diner Dash, if I got my chronology right.
00:13:50
Speaker
But, ah you know, having grown up in the 90s myself, playing a lot of games, having played, you know, ah some of those early Atari things and the PlayStation 1 and all that. um You know, I can, I know how hard it was to do an online multiplayer game. And I know, and I and i saw it was mentioned in the rules you break, you had a little bit of a vignette of what that game is like, but ah both in terms of, you know, I guess how the game came about, you you designed a certain set of, you know, rules. And then I guess, secondly,
00:14:20
Speaker
you know, how you how did it actually work on the internet, right? Because it sounds like it had a at least a found a niche audience and maybe can still play it even today. But I just wanted to double click on one of your early games because it sounded technically super difficult to actually pull off back then.
00:14:36
Speaker
Right. Yeah. And that's funny that you, yeah, that the the technical aspect that game was actually something quite innovative. It was a browser based game and we launched it in 1999. So we probably started developing it, you know, a year or two before that.
00:14:50
Speaker
I worked with word.com, which was at the time a New York City based game. sort of content company. This is like the first wave of Silicon Alley ah companies, um dot com companies.
00:15:03
Speaker
And they were just a great content site, really quirky, really, um
00:15:09
Speaker
really interesting aesthetically and culturally. But they they wanted to make a game. And, you know, I've been put in touch with people working there. So I was the lead designer and worked with the team to develop this.
00:15:22
Speaker
um we It started actually as ah as a paper prototype. So we wanted to make a social game about social interaction. And the very first version, we were playing with post-it notes around a table.
00:15:34
Speaker
um ah but And that's how we developed the the kind of core logic. But it's really a game. um where everybody inputs their turn and then
Ethics in Game Design
00:15:44
Speaker
everyone is playing a little girl on a playground.
00:15:46
Speaker
So everyone ah starts off with 10 self-esteem points. And the goal of the game is to reduce the self-esteem of of the other girls on the playground. And there can be one winner or two winners, sometimes no winners.
00:15:59
Speaker
um And so it's a it is it's ah it's a very satirical game about childhood. It's not for children. um And it's ah it's ah it uses a kind of a ah game theory or prisoner's dilemma structure um that for the for the game designers, that's a simultaneous outcome, ah simultaneous move contingent outcome structure where everybody inputs their turn and then they're all revealed at the same time. And the success of what I did depends on what everyone else did.
00:16:27
Speaker
So for example, if... um if uh uh lewis if if if greg just teases you by himself nothing happens but if i also select tease and i also select you as a target then you're teased by two people and then your self-esteem is going to go down so it was all about this kind of negotiation and then backstabbing and ah you know trying to be the last one standing but also having to work with the other other girls there so it's a very much a kind of like lord of the flies sort of vibe um and but but the Sounds a little bit like Among Us. i don't know if that's a fair analogy, but... Oh, yeah. I mean, it's Among Us in the sense that, yeah, I mean, preceding that game by a couple decades. But yes, it was it was a it was it wasn't about hidden ah hidden identity. so you Okay. But but but each each move that you made was in secret and then revealed. You know, it's close to the board game Diplomacy.
00:17:19
Speaker
If you know that, that sort of classic game where ri the lights down everyone writes down their moves and it's like, well, I'm invading France. Well, if it's one versus one, it doesn't succeed. But if if you know if Germany is also helping england England invade France, then it's two versus one. And then then you can move your unit in there. So it's that kind of um it's that kind of structure that if you know diplomacy really breeds...
00:17:42
Speaker
backstabbing and, you know, a lot of a lot of arguments and tension. So Sissy Fight was really meant to playfully um comment on and kind of capitalize on like what happens online when you have like ranting and, a you know, a bad behavior or sort of playfully transgressive behavior. But
The Cultural Impact of Monopoly
00:18:02
Speaker
technically, yeah, it was real time chat in a browser.
00:18:05
Speaker
So all of this was, you know, facilitated by communication. So every girl has a little word bubble. And there was sort of a constant six way conversation going.
00:18:15
Speaker
And I can't tell you anything about technically how it was made. Ranchi Bopnogger was the lead programmer. He ended up working um at Game Lab, the studio that I co-founded with Peter Lee um a few years later.
00:18:29
Speaker
But Ranchi was a technical whiz and he somehow you know was squeezing all this functionality out of the browsers. And I remember that that was kind of a big deal. And I think it was maybe it was Shockwave. Yeah. the original Was the original pre-Flash or whatever. Yeah, that was.
00:18:46
Speaker
And I do have to say that we, ah Ranjit and Naomi Clark, who is now the chair of the NYU Game Center, who was ah also a designer and producer on the project, the three of us ran a Kickstarter.
00:18:58
Speaker
ah long time ago maybe maybe 10 years ago to sort of like raise a little bit of money to recode the game for contemporary browsers so sissy fight 2000 is still up online it's not you know it's a little bit of a deserted playground these days but you can still go on with friends and and play a game so i'm very happy about that sounds like you could build like a battle royale out of something like that and just yeah cause mayhem online of people trying to like bully other people for like... They probably don't need help with the trolling though. They probably do. It's funny, yeah. I mean, there was definitely... with people We used to call it flame wars, right? When people would like on message boards and stuff. So it's true. I really... i don't know. Now...
00:19:39
Speaker
you know It is a different era now. um We were kind of playfully sort of prodding people into negative behavior. Now all of it is so much worse than that. you know i would i don't know I don't know if I would want to kind of launch and have to manage a community like Sissy Fight today.
00:19:54
Speaker
But you know that that that it was definitely a game of its era. It's still a fun game to play. I mean, it's ah it's it's a very classic, simple game um that that is really about the social social dynamics between the between the um players.
00:20:10
Speaker
I love how you called it a flame war. That might be the most 90s thing that it was ever said on my podcast so far today. All right. Well, you're lo I blame Louis. He's dragging up back to my early career. Bring it back to the 90s, baby.
00:20:21
Speaker
Yeah. Love it. Jump up a few years, right? And talk about Diner Dash. I think that was probably one of your first breakout hits as ah a game designer. It was developed by Game Lab, published by Play First in 2004. And I can tell you, it's one of the things that i told my wife. I was like, you ever play this? And her eyes lit up. Like, yes, I played that game. It's probably one of the first games she's played that I'm talking to someone on the podcast about.
00:20:43
Speaker
um it's a mobile variant still around, so it seems like strategy and time management kind of, it stuck with people, and people still love those types of games. and And when you look back at it, what's the biggest thing you think you got right, and was there something you think you got wrong when you took a look at that game?
00:20:57
Speaker
Oh, that's interesting. Well, first I should say that I definitely helped come up with the whole concept with that game, but Nick Fortuno was the lead designer at Game Lab, so I don't want to steal credit, but still his credit but Like all games, it was very much a team effort ah in terms of, you know, Peter Lee had a lot of input on that game, my co-founder of the company, and it will ah a lot of us worked on it.
00:21:21
Speaker
Yeah, it's true, um Greg, that the The game definitely, i mean, it did not invent the sort of time management kind of gameplay, but it really did like establish it.
00:21:34
Speaker
um ah And it it really stuck. we My company only did the original Diner Dash. So just the very first game, all of the other, we ended up selling it to the publisher, selling the IP to the publisher, all of the other sequels and mobile versions, those are all kind of derivatives made by other people. So I don't even know ah um what happened, but i i ah like, you
Player Engagement in Game Design
00:22:02
Speaker
know, who who actually made those other versions.
00:22:04
Speaker
I would say what we got right. um You know, here's one thing that we kind of accidentally got right. um We were... At Game Lab, and generally in my career, I don't i don't make hardcore games. i Sometimes I play a real you know like ah games of all kinds. like um But in my career, I mostly try to make games for people that... ah I hate the term casual players.
00:22:30
Speaker
for casual games. Who who what musician says i make casual music? you know But anyway, let's call it like a more broad audience. right So i i love i love making games for people that wouldn't normally play games, um for example.
00:22:43
Speaker
And Diner Dash was also meant to be that. right It was meant to be very accessible. The theme was not whatever, shooting aliens or killing dragons. you know It's like running running a cafe, and there's a whole story about a character that um you know sort of like trying to get her business going.
00:22:59
Speaker
so um I think one of the funny things that we got right is actually that game, if you get into it, gets really hard. The original game is really, really difficult.
00:23:11
Speaker
And when I look back at all of GameLabs games, I think that Dinerdash, which was the most... successful was maybe the hardest as well, which is really interesting, right? Which maybe would cause you to like rethink this whole idea about, well, a mass market game has to be easy, right? That you kind of have to spoon feed it to the, you know, chew the food before them, you know? So I think that was an interesting lesson from Diner Dash.
00:23:38
Speaker
Well, I think Donkey Kong, right, is that they just keep shortening the time, right? So that if you get up to the, you probably saw the Donkey Kong documentary out of King of Kong, where when you get super, super high, they just keep shortening the time so that your margin of error of do jumps and follow their exact pattern has to get more and more split second.
00:23:56
Speaker
So anyway, i sorry to interrupt you, but I'm almost thinking that... With the level of difficulty rising, and I don't know exactly what change there to make it if it was really that same split second thing, but it would allow for eventually only a tiny fraction of players to actually keep mastering it. So I don't know, I'm just throwing that out there. Yeah, it's true. I mean, we also, there's a lot of levels to our game. So, and the levels just get harder and harder, more customers to fulfill and, you know, yeah, a little bit stricter on how long they're going wait before they start getting impatient and leave the restaurant so you won't get points for them.
00:24:34
Speaker
So, um yeah, that definitely, like, yeah, we also had a curve, like a, you know, a curve that starts sort of gentle and and goes up like that. So, yeah. In terms of what we got wrong with Diner Dash, I don't know, maybe Game Lab should have held on to that IP. We had a weird deal with the publisher, and I think probably we made the right decision.
00:24:55
Speaker
um i will say one funny thing about that game, which is that i love I love the the character and the narrative and everything, but in a funny way, it's very, um if I think about you know some of the kind of critical work, the museum kind of work I've i've done these days, it's very like ah uncritical about capitalism. It's just kind of like, oh, make a restaurant, make more money, you know invest more money. it definitely falls into this kind of... um you know, let's call it ideology of sort of growth of games where it's like, all you're trying to do is, you know, get more money so you can build more things and then you can, you know, get more customers and build, do more things and more things. And it and it's a little bit like, ah ah I know that that's, no one probably reads the game like that, but now I look at it and I'm like, oh, it's a little cringy for me. Like it's sort of a love letter to capitalism or something.
00:25:50
Speaker
But maybe that's just me. i've I've grown up right since then. At the end, you could have had the exit screen where they're like retire on a beach somewhere. You just didn't do that part. Right. Exactly. Exactly. Although, again, I don't know if that's.
00:26:03
Speaker
it would They would stop playing, though. So you're youre you're you're the the IP owner would not want that. um there Are there one or two, you've done IRL stuff, you've done obviously video games, you've done board games and stuff.
00:26:15
Speaker
Are there one or two design principles that you know you've seen consistently in your work, which I suppose says something about you as a designer, or they there really depends on the game and you're you know do a wide variety of things and there aren't certain themes or certain structures in the design principles that you that you you find yourself playing with more than others?
00:26:36
Speaker
I would say... The
Role of Feedback in Game Development
00:26:38
Speaker
process of design is what I mostly teach. right So yeah there's concepts and and things like that. So i don't know if that I don't know if I'm stretching your use of the term principle, but I think that the core concept that I teach students, which is just based on my own experience as a game designer, is this idea of iterative design.
00:26:57
Speaker
that that you build a game as quickly as possible and then you base your design decisions on your experience of that. So you you build something, then you play test it, right? right You play test it initially, maybe start getting other people to play test it.
00:27:15
Speaker
And then you analyze what worked, what didn't work, what might we change for next time. You make those changes and then you have a new build. which you can then play test. and then you analyze the play test.
00:27:26
Speaker
And then this this cycle, that is the iterative cycle where you're making successive versions of the game. And you try and get there as quickly as possible.
00:27:38
Speaker
That's the main thing that I teach, how to get there. And you know with a game like Sissy Fight, I mentioned that we started with a paper prototype because there were technical problems that we started solving off to the side, but we also had gameplay problems, which were...
00:27:52
Speaker
okay, how do we how do we get this kind of vibe of kind of playful but mean and fun social interaction? It turns out that if you're doing a turn-based game, um writing your messages down and sending them to someone who's like quickly trying to calculate and then revealing them the way the game would, that works pretty well just as a basic...
00:28:13
Speaker
um as as a basic version of the logic of the game. So that was the process. Okay, how do you how do we quickly get to a prototype? You have to strategize about that. um And I think that that um that that way of thinking is something that you find in a lot of design fields.
00:28:33
Speaker
But I will say that when I meet people who are other kinds of designers, right like architects or product designers, industrial designers, who i you know I feel they're sort of my spiritual sisters and brothers, but they often have like a very long research phase. you know They'll find out, which is great. It's like, what's our problem?
00:28:54
Speaker
Who are we addressing? Who's our audience? What problems are we solving? Let's analyze their kitchens or their lifestyles. How are we going to fit into that? And then at the end of this process, you end up with a prototype.
00:29:06
Speaker
And what I, my thinking as a game designer is that you, you make the prototype at the beginning, right? And you do those other things too. You also start learning about your audience, but the, the, the, the actual making is threaded throughout. It's just a different emphasis. It's a more experimental process. Sounds like Google. You might've worked for Google early on. they and They get it out there, break it and fix it.
00:29:31
Speaker
Kind of, yeah. I mean, I don't know if I want to be compared with Google, but ah but yes, it's I guess i guess it's it's similar to that. Yeah, rapid prototyping and then learning organically um ah from from that process, like growing up like growing a plant.
00:29:48
Speaker
You know, like you you you want to get it out of the ground and then kind of seeing seeing how it grows and fostering its growth. So so that that's one principle that I would say runs throughout my work. ah To answer your question from the museum installations I've done to to board games, to video games, um just getting getting to a prototype very, very early.
00:30:10
Speaker
it's a It's cool to hear you say that, right? And it kind of brings me back to the idea of digital distribution, right? you're talking about we classify that as feedback, right? You want to get feedback. And when you're creating Sissy Fight, right? Digital distribution wasn't really quite there yet. So what was the quickest way to do it?
00:30:24
Speaker
Let's print up some Post-it notes, throw them around, start applying. And now you have digital distribution. And it's funny, there was a report that came out actually today from Newzoo that talked about... talked about roblox and how the best use of roblox for a lot of designers is to quickly prototype something and put it out there and if it works you build something bigger but this is a quick way to throw a bunch of slop together for lack of better words right and see what people want to play and get that yeah no It's funny, but someone was just asking me, do you do you guys teach Roblox in your school? And I'm like, Roblox? They said, yeah, a lot of schools are like using it as rapid prototyping tool or like a make quickly throwing together a 3D world.
00:31:03
Speaker
Because it I guess it does have like, it's 3D. It's got game mechanics built in. It's got you know lots of assets you can use. And it has custom scripting as well if you want to start going deeper. So it's interesting as a platform that way.
00:31:17
Speaker
Yeah, just I kind of love it how no matter what, when and where you look at it, right? Feedback is a core design principle people need to look at. like if you're Completely. Yeah. Completely. And this is why, you know, i feel like as a designer,
00:31:30
Speaker
um The human skills are so important, right? So in thinking about feedback, I think part of what you end up training yourself as ah as a game designer, really any kind of designer, is to observe people.
00:31:45
Speaker
And, you know, observing them all the time, but especially when they're playing your game. Like, you know, like I... it's It's funny. You just train yourself. You can immediately look at people playing your game, whether it's a video game or a tabletop game.
00:31:57
Speaker
And you just... the The body language immediately tells you the energy. Are they engaged? Are they not engaged? Are they like paying attention when other people playing or not? And then you you learn to... like ah try and sculpt those rhythms of the game. Okay, there's too much dead time.
00:32:13
Speaker
what are they well How can I sort of get them involved when it's not their turn? Or you know what can I give them something to do or think about? so For example, right? um um And it's, yeah, so for me, that's also a kind of feedback, right? Like just looking at what people are doing and how they're engaging with with the game.
00:32:31
Speaker
So that's also part of it. you're Of course, you're doing other things too. You're like testing the balance of the game. Is this character overpowered? Like, are they getting into the story? Are they using the interface
Ethical Player Engagement
00:32:41
Speaker
correctly? Like there's a there's a hundred different things that you could be playtesting, um but but they all have to do with that kind of feedback.
00:32:48
Speaker
Can I can i um offer another analogy you're probably not going like? Facebook is accused of have having addictive apps, right? And in some senses, when you talk about the design of seeing when they're down, when they're disengaged, whatever, in some ways, you could be accused of designing for addiction.
00:33:07
Speaker
And I guess, is that fair? Or it just came to mind when you were describing the process of of optimizing... I mean, all right, let's open this can of worms, shall we? There's definitely things that are kind of dark design patterns, right?
00:33:22
Speaker
where That are used in games and apps where you're really trying to hook players. And for example, you know, oh, you can't go any farther until you um pay us more money or recruit more friends into the game.
00:33:37
Speaker
Or, you know, wherere we're going to have you do microtransactions that kind of build and build and build. in order to kind of keep keep your leaderboard status where it is. So, um you know, I think that, ah and and there's plenty of examples of games, like, I mean, gambling games, right? I mean, game gambling addiction is something that, you know, is is known as well.
00:33:59
Speaker
But of course, humans get addicted to all kinds of things that often are good. You can also be addicted to exercise or or reading or sex, things that are normally like wonderful things. in you know human activities that everyone should be doing, right? So so anything can be done to excess.
00:34:15
Speaker
And and I think as a game designer, it's especially important that you are conscious and aware that part of what you're doing is playing with the the pleasure and desire of your audience, right? Just like a filmmaker, when you're like using emotions, you know, and and sweeping them along.
00:34:34
Speaker
I think that um there's no right or wrong, you know? ah ah Frank Lance has said that, who I've mentioned before, and he's amazing book called The Beauty of Games.
00:34:44
Speaker
One of his points is that um when you play a game, it's like you are able to um be self-conscious about your own thought process, right? it like ah if if if look if If visual art makes you aware of looking, playing games makes you aware of your own thinking, right?
00:35:04
Speaker
And so there's a sense in which diving into your own sense of desire, what's drawing me in, what's what's attracting me, like what's making me want to play this game again, that is part of, I think, the the interesting reflective aspect of games, right? It sort of puts you in contact with your own sense of desire in this weird way where you are, you're you're sort of, it's both pulling you along, but then you're also able to kind of see it see it in operation.
00:35:31
Speaker
um And I think that's why there is a sort of a wonderful pleasure in, okay, one more game. I'm just going to play one more one more hand of poker or you know I want to, okay, one more round of Tetris or on my phone or whatever it is.
00:35:44
Speaker
um But the you know there's also sort of like a fine line between that and addiction, especially if you are sort of tricking players, right, out of their money, for example.
00:35:56
Speaker
So I guess all I can say is that This is why game design is not just about learning about how systems work and feedback loops or even design processes or or or technical or technical approaches to to programming games.
00:36:13
Speaker
It's also about understanding people and culture and ethics. Right? so as As creators of these kind of digital spaces and media, i just it's part of what we teach our game designers at NYU. right So I guess I just would say like there is an ethical dimension to game design, and I don't think that there's a right or wrong.
00:36:33
Speaker
you know I think there're there have been game designers that argued that like grinding and online role-playing games is unethical. You know, you're just giving the players busy work. Right. It's not meaningful. I think it's so awesome that there's debates like that going on. Right. So that's that's what needs to happen.
00:36:49
Speaker
um And so, yeah, so you're I think, Louis, you're you're totally right that. um ah A lot of these techniques can be used and are used to kind of like rope people in and basically take take money out of
Creating Meaningful Game Experiences
00:37:03
Speaker
their pocket. you know And and i i don't think that it's... yeah i would i you know that That makes me really uncomfortable as a game designer.
00:37:11
Speaker
I guess that's all I can say. That's what said. one One of the things I've learned to start loving and I need to do more research on is dopamine. Games can figure a way to trigger that so well, and some of them will abuse it, right? You have games like Monopoly Go, which which do a really good job at triggering dopamine, but there's not much of a game behind it. And then you have games like Bellatro, which is a poker game, which I think triggers a lot of dopamine, but you don't actually need to pay or anything, right? And wow how as a designer, can you balance that to make it more approachable for players? You said it great. How do I get that one last game that itches? You know what? One more hand at poker is not going to hurt me.
00:37:46
Speaker
you know What a game like Bellatro does is it creates like, almost like it creates let's think of it as like wheels within wheels, right? Little loops of feedback and pleasure. So it's like, okay, buying a new pack and opening it up, right? Oh, that's a a little o a little unexpected dramatic moment.
00:38:06
Speaker
And then, do you have new pack? making little decisions, which cards do I buy? How do I go? Then I'm in a match and I'm like, okay, i'm it's a slightly larger loop. by making a bunch of decisions. Each of those decisions is meaningful and there's an outcome to that, right?
00:38:20
Speaker
And then there's larger loops, which is like, oh, I'm actually moving through these these blinds and levels and stages. And so all these things are sort of constantly intertwined. And then there's like the whole game.
00:38:30
Speaker
But then a whole game is also within, there's bigger loops too, which have to do with unlocking cards, unlocking difficulty levels and decks. And so, um, i I think that that kind of sort of intertwining someone's um sense of pleasure within these kind of loops of feedback, right, that are that are not always positive, sometimes they're painful. I love it how the Joker makes fun of you in just this cruel way when you lose in Bellatro. So...
00:38:59
Speaker
um But I, you know, I, and again, I don't, I'm not a psychologist. I haven't done research on this. So this is just my kind of intuition. And I think that every game does games all do it differently. So there's not one way, but Bellachio is a really good example for me of, and I think of games like, like Pokemon or, or Neopets back in the day. Like they also had this kind of like lots of little repeating mechanics that sort of slowly get you more points or build you up over time.
00:39:25
Speaker
Roguelikes RPGs. There's many games that use these kinds of structures. um But that that kind of wheels within wheels where there's like little moments and then those add up to bigger ones and bigger ones and bigger ones and bigger ones.
00:39:36
Speaker
it's ah It's really an interesting way to to to um to like to to get players hooked on your game. um Games are about meaning, right? Games are about like... um ah doing things that are meaningful.
00:39:50
Speaker
All culture is about that. Interacting with culture, buying a comic book and sharing it with your friends or whatever it is, seeing a movie, ranting about it online. um So in games, we part you know you participate in the meaning, and it's literally like I'm choosing this card over this card for my Bellatro deck for my next Joker.
00:40:10
Speaker
And then the meaning of that action plays out over and over and over again because you go all through all these rounds, right? So it's almost like if if meaning is like flavor, then Bellatro gives you just like just keeps on giving you mouthfuls of...
00:40:23
Speaker
delicious meaning, right? Because you're, you're making choices and those choices add up and they kind of slowly add up in a way that is legible to you. You understand it. You can see it. It's like you're, you know, you're, you're, you're building the car as you're driving it. And like, as you're making improvements, you're like enjoying driving it even more
Combining Genres in Game Design
00:40:42
Speaker
and more. And I think that's, again, that's a kind of like looping sort of pattern that, um,
00:40:48
Speaker
ends up making a game like that really compelling. As you can tell, I've been playing a lot of Bellatra recently. It's amazing. But it's... ah you I love the way you talk about it. And I'm really curious because this is great for indies, right? Indie indie developers.
00:41:01
Speaker
Bellaccio was made by one person. And I love the way you describe the loops. There's so many loops going on, Bellaccio. I think it was made by LocalThunk. I think that was his name, right? Like, you think he purposely knew these were all loops or did he just happen to fall into it once it was all all the pieces were put together? He realized, oh, there's loops here. Like, it's hard to imagine he thought of all these going in, but it's also hard to imagine he didn't.
00:41:24
Speaker
Well, I mean, games are not made like you don't design them and then just build them, right? Like think about the the prototyping and iteration, the paper version of Sissy Fight before the digital version. And actually in between, we had a text only online version while we were still prototyping it.
00:41:39
Speaker
we would But anyway, so Bellacho evolved like all games from a little prototype, like a little plant. And so... It seems in the end like, oh, of course it had to be this way, but of course it could have it could have grown in different ways.
00:41:52
Speaker
I also think Bellatro is really standing on the shoulders of lots of other interesting games and designs, right? So um this idea of Bellatro is kind of like what we would call a roguelike, right? it's a It's a game, roguelikes are types of games where you are, you know,
00:42:10
Speaker
moving through a space and you're somehow like ah leveling yourself up, your abilities and powers in a very customizable way, in a very modular way. And like roguelikes, it has permadeath, right? If you fail once, yeah it's over, right? so So that also gives a real edge to the decisions that you make. Because if you make...
00:42:30
Speaker
bad decisions, or even if you get unlucky, you know, and you didn't hedge hedge against that luck enough, then, then, then you could, your game is over immediately. Right. So, um, it's also building, standing on the shoulders of deck building games, right. So starting with games like, um, well, magic, the gathering,
00:42:47
Speaker
ah what that that by Richard Garfield that helped helped invent collectible card games and and games like Dominion that that turn deck building like within the game itself. um And then lots of digital games like Hearthstone, et cetera, et cetera, that are digital versions of these games.
00:43:03
Speaker
So it's also pulling upon that and saying, yeah, ah that I have a deck of cards and I'm kind of sculpting and, you know, ah customizing this deck as I go. And the really brilliant thing about Bellatro is that that's not sitting on top of some invented combat system of fantasy dragons and casting fireballs.
00:43:25
Speaker
ah It's sitting on top of poker, right? Which kind of everybody knows. So that's kind of the brilliant thing, which is that the on-ramp into the game, which has these very sophisticated roguelike and deck-building mechanics,
00:43:37
Speaker
is sitting on a game that everybody knows. And I think that is such a brilliant concept. And I think that those, so I guess what I'm trying to say, Greg, is that those elements together, like this mass market game of poker that everyone knows.
Teaching Game Design: Experiential Learning
00:43:54
Speaker
But then when you start adding roguelike and deck building, you you kind of end up in this space where Bellatro ended up. And of course, there's brilliant design going on and lots of great little tiny decisions um that add up to a really a really successful game. But But like it was the I think from the beginning, it was this kind of interesting combination of these genres. Like, okay what if what if what if you could customize your poker deck as you go? What would that be like? you know And it's it's such a cool, interesting idea.
00:44:21
Speaker
Yeah, I think, you know, we've seen the merging of certain genres that work out really well and it gets people enticing because you don't have to learn a whole new mechanic. Right. You know, when we start talking about your new book, The Rules We Break, right, you're you're kind of teaching design concepts on a fun, hands-on way. And, you know, as you're talking about games, I can tell you're a true gamer. I mean, right? Like, how did you decide to go upon with that approach to game design?
00:44:46
Speaker
Yeah. Well, I think that from the very beginning of my teaching, I did you know project-based teaching, which is like give give the students assignments and um ah you know their projects. And you know you might give them a constraint, give them a theme or a mechanic that helped shape it.
00:45:05
Speaker
um But I also was really influenced by Stone Labrandi. Stone Labrandi is a game designer that worked at Electronic Arts for many years. I worked on the SimCity series, for example. I believe he's still working for Riot now.
00:45:22
Speaker
um He's made board games and video games. But Stone gave this lecture at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco many years ago. I think it was called Designing Games for Game Designers, where he just shared his class that he's teaching.
00:45:35
Speaker
And he's like, here's how I do this, and here's how I And I have an exercise about you know ah probability where it's this great exercise that's actually in, I have a version of it in in the rules we break called die versus die, where first two players just roll a die against each other. um And okay, there's a 50% chance of winning, but you're you plot it on a six by six grid, all the different outcomes, right?
00:45:59
Speaker
And then he's like, okay, now design a die. What? Like, oh, OK, well, the the numbers have to add up to 21, just like a normal die. One plus two plus three plus four plus five plus six. I think it's 21.
00:46:10
Speaker
um And you can only put whole positive numbers on there. but Design a die to beat another player. And then suddenly you're like, oh, interesting. And then he says, OK, but how do we how can we see which die would beat another die? Well, you can use that ah same six by six grid.
00:46:26
Speaker
It's just a and then plot you know the numbers of each die. It's not one, two, three, four, five, six versus one, two, three, four, five, six. It might be zero, zero, zero, three, five, 12 versus you know someone else's die.
00:46:36
Speaker
Oh, my die will beat your die two thirds of the time. So. That's just one example from Stone Labrandi's exercises. But it was like, it's not an assignment. It's not going design a game. But it's using games to teach ideas and principles that are all relevant for design.
00:46:53
Speaker
um And it was really inspiring to me. And I had been doing some things like that. But I think that he really ah was doing such creative work with designing these exercises and activities that give players a really focused understanding of something, in this case, probability.
00:47:10
Speaker
And I have to say, this is probability not from a lecture, but from doing something. and And some students like learning passively with a lecture, but I find that more students like learning in a visual way, in a social way, in a kinesthetic way.
00:47:24
Speaker
So you're literally rolling dice, physical things. You're putting tiles on this grid of of win and loss. It's like you're making probability tact It's such a powerful way to learn about about learning and probability.
Monopoly as Cultural Critique
00:47:38
Speaker
So in a sense, the rules we break came out of after that, like moddiify really like coming up with all of these exercises for teaching.
00:47:47
Speaker
um And that's what's in this book. So a lot of them, that that exercise actually is in the book, my sort of modified version of Stone Labrandi's Die vs. Die. I give him full credit in the book.
00:47:57
Speaker
um But other things where here's a game that's slightly broken or let's modify tic-tac-toe, list the rules, what happens when we start changing rules to the to the to the play. um And i thank you for bringing up the book, by the way. And i I just want to say the one thing about all of these exercises, which teach things like that we've mentioned before, systems thinking, collaboration, communication, the iterative process, designing, yeah observing humans, they teach all these things.
00:48:24
Speaker
I don't think they're just relevant for game people. So the the book is not just to teach professional game designers. I feel that they're teaching essential 21st century literacies, right? Which are the four C's of of collaboration, communication, critical thinking, and creativity, right? That they there theyre they're getting at the heart of anybody doing creative work or technical work, organizational work.
00:48:50
Speaker
You need to understand how systems work. You need to understand how rules result in certain kinds of behaviors or how to experiment and prototype a new project or system to see how it's working.
00:49:02
Speaker
So my you know my hope would be that game design is kind of like an essential sort of human literacy, like we think of math or reading or music. um And that's that's kind of what this book is pointing at.
00:49:15
Speaker
So sorry, I'm getting very excited. You can see it. Yeah, it's like you you you often learn by doing, right? Like I did a lot of XR research over the past five years. And instead of seeing an instructor teach you something about making an airplane better, whatever it is,
00:49:31
Speaker
When you're in a headset in 3D, moving the actual you know part of the engine around, one of the benefits that we've seen in ah in the survey research was like reducing errors. It didn't necessarily wasn't better than doing it in person.
00:49:44
Speaker
by Doing it virtually was cheaper, faster, and it would like save you time. And you know there there were other advantages to it. But basically, hands-on learning, generally speaking, I think, does work a lot better. And so and again, you've you've obviously thought a lot about game design, and so you're almost playing with the idea of how you teach game design in the in the book is what it sounds like.
00:50:04
Speaker
Yeah, yeah very very, very much so. I think that it's... you know it's i use games and play to teach design. Design for me is a very, very broad you know human endeavor.
00:50:18
Speaker
So and and applicable to a lot of different fields and disciplines. and I know you've looked into the history of Monopoly. You're obviously a student of the history of games, which is awesome. We talked about Monopoly Go briefly, but I don't really need to get into that and why it's successful.
00:50:33
Speaker
But certainly Monopoly is an i an iconic game. And I know you're part of a documentary that looked at the origins of Monopoly. So I thought I'd open the floor to you to just say, you know, why is Monopoly iconic?
00:50:45
Speaker
And, you know, i know there's some irony in the history of what the game has since become. But why don't I give you a few minutes to talk about, you know, what you what you love most about Monopoly and what do you think is the most...
00:50:56
Speaker
maybe misunderstood part of where it came from. Well, yeah, Monopoly is interesting. You know, I think it's because I was interviewed on a podcast, 99% Invisible, about Monopoly. Then that's why the documentary people contacted me.
00:51:11
Speaker
I mean, it it's it's I'm not like a history scholar. There are folks here at the Game Center that are more like that. ah a lot of what I know about Monopoly, I learned from Jesse Fuchs, who's another professor here.
00:51:22
Speaker
But man yeah okay The ironic thing about Monopoly is that it was designed by Lizzie McGee in the kind of early twentieth century. um and it was designed It was originally called the Landlord's Game.
00:51:35
Speaker
and It was designed as a kind of um actually a serious game, like an educational game about ah ah certain kinds of tax structures and to sort of to sort of show what was wrong and unfair with the existing way that that landlords were or taxing their tenants.
00:51:56
Speaker
So the game itself, though, was really innovative because you have to think about That game, at that time, most games were like basically just roll and move, right? They were like these sort of Victorian games. that there were There were, of course, games like chess and Parcheesi were around. It's kind of classics. But her game were like you moved around. There was money.
00:52:21
Speaker
You paid things. There was a system, different cards. ah Her game is very, very close to the final version of Monopoly. Of course, there are some small changes, but there's many, many details that are very, very similar to to to Monopoly.
00:52:34
Speaker
what that the scandal um And so, anyway, just to say that Lizzie McGee was this incredibly interesting... um woman and figure and intellectual and creative person in in her day.
00:52:46
Speaker
and but And Monopoly is actually a really innovative game. like it it It did help sort of usher in a lot of things that we now take for granted in contemporary board game design. So Lizzie McGee is, first of all, a kind of unheralded hero of of contemporary game design.
00:53:04
Speaker
But the ironic thing is that Parker Brothers, and this has been you know documented in films, there's books about it, basically stole um Monopoly, copied Monopoly.
00:53:16
Speaker
Charles Darrow is you know credited with inventing it, but it's really kind of a classic case of ah you know unfair capitalistic practices.
00:53:27
Speaker
And in many ways, the the irony is not just that Lizzie McGee has been kind of robbed of her authorship, ah but Monopoly has gone on to become such a global, iconic game, as you correctly said, Lewis, that...
00:53:42
Speaker
um you know, it it's it's in many ways now the icon of the thing that it was originally meant to critique, right? so So if the landlord's game was really about trying to have us question and be critical about these structures of capitalism that lead to unfairness between those in power and those not in power, now it's just, talk about a love letter to capitalism. i mean, monopoly is like, you know, just an unabashed, like, let's just celebrate greed and bankruptcy bankrupting each other. And, you know, it's really...
00:54:13
Speaker
I don't know, it's like the symbol of capitalism, right? This kind of like playful playful idea of of competition. And then the other thing about it is in a lot of ways, it's kind of a bad game, right? Like it you know it's not easy to critique Monopoly.
00:54:27
Speaker
um it's It's kind of a, it's it's too long. It goes on forever. um It's like it has player elimination. So it's like, oh, you bankrupted halfway through the game. Sorry, you just have to watch us watch us play.
00:54:39
Speaker
ah It's a huge amount of luck. So it's like, okay, we're playing and basically it comes down to did I did i land on the properties that I could buy or that i where I have to pay you or not? So it's also, it's kind of a deliciously bad game at the same time, but it's still so popular, right? I mean, the pop culture is not logical, right? Culture is not logical. It's not like, oh, only great games become the classics.
00:55:03
Speaker
Monopoly is a classic and yeah, it has it has a lot of problems. um But anyway, so there's there's so multiple layers there. But I think for me, the the the most bitter irony is just that, yeah, that this game, which was invented by this brilliant woman, just became like the the the the the most the most like ironic parody of the thing that the game that was stolen was trying to critique in the first place. So...
00:55:27
Speaker
monopoly The Batman Begins quote that i always use and I always love it. It always makes sense. It's either you die a hero or you live long enough to become the
Flexibility and Creativity in Game Rules
00:55:35
Speaker
villain. And it seems like that's what Monopoly it has done. as it just became It became it its own worst enemy. Parker Brothers loves it. but Yeah, it's really true.
00:55:44
Speaker
You know, breaking the rules, right? So the the book is about the rules we break. ah But having read the first 30 pages or so, um you also talk about that we are suspending our disbelief and choosing to voluntarily exist within those set of rules when we play.
00:56:03
Speaker
And that, yes, you there are some games that you can, when you become an adult, play with the rules, maybe subvert the rules. And if you all all agree to do it, maybe you can create something new that becomes interesting.
00:56:14
Speaker
But I guess, you know, going back to the premise of the book, if players are allowed and thinking about real world capitalism, if you become the monopolist, the game is over. um But when you When you break the rules or players are allowed to break the rules of your game, the game is over, right? I mean, the game ends if that suspension of disbelief turns into somebody who can subvert the rules in a way that just makes them the winner. So I guess I'm um interesting on interested about the limits of the rules we break.
00:56:46
Speaker
Because if you are allowed to break the rules of tic-tac-toe and do three around the edge or whatever it is, the game is also over. And so I guess I'm i'm wondering about the constraints on the rules and the importance of rules in the in the kind in the construct of of of games of all kinds.
00:57:04
Speaker
it's so It's actually a really, really deep and profound question that you're that you're dropping at the end of the conversation. So ah that we could have spent the whole hour talking about this, but... I saved the bets for last. Yeah, try and answer.
00:57:16
Speaker
um i think that what's so interesting about this idea of games and systems and baking breaking and bending rules is that there's lots of ways that we can think about it, right? So it's true that, okay, if hacking into the server is breaking a rule and bringing down the game for everyone, then...
00:57:31
Speaker
then yeah, that's not you know that's not necessarily like this positive, wonderful, creative example of breaking rules. But there's other ways of thinking about systems and and breaking and bending bending them as well.
00:57:44
Speaker
um One person that comes to mind for me is Bernie DeKoven. So Bernie DeCovan was a wonderful designer and a mentor of mine um who has since passed away. But he was one of the founders of the New Games movement um that brought us those books, New Games and More New Games, in the 1970s.
00:58:04
Speaker
And Bernie's book called The Well-Played Game, A Player's Philosophy, is an amazing book written in the 70s, so prescient for our time today.
00:58:18
Speaker
The basic idea of that book is that what he calls the well-played game is a game where everybody together who's playing acknowledges that we can change the rules of the game in order to make it a better game for everyone. So let's take tic-tac-toe, for example.
00:58:35
Speaker
So you said, yes, if I just decide, oh, I can you know draw X's around the edge or I can like erase what you did and draw mine. Well, that's yeah, maybe that's not breaking rule a good way.
00:58:45
Speaker
But let's say you're playing with um playing with a kid and and they just started out and they realize you're about to win. And then you say, you know what, do you want to take your rule back? you want to take your move back? yeah, let's let's see, or or helping them out, right?
00:58:58
Speaker
So that's like bending a rule, but in a way that makes it better for both of you. Or let's say you're playing with someone and you're both pretty good at tic-tac-toe and you're like, how do we make this better and more fun? Well, then maybe then drawing you know a fourth ah row ah of squares around actually suddenly turns this kind of boring game into something that you both are enjoying.
00:59:18
Speaker
In which case, your exact example of drawing more X's, i like an extra ring, would be a positive thing, right? So this was Bernie's idea, which is rethinking of the ah the notion that games are these fixed sets of rules. And another and instead, they're more like a social contract.
00:59:34
Speaker
And what there's so many beautiful things about this idea. For example, it blurs the distinction between players and designers. So that... that as players we're not sort of just beholden to what our um what what we're handed to by designers, but we're kind of given games and we sort of can can play with them as they want.
00:59:53
Speaker
And there's so many wonderful examples, even in video games, of things like interesting mods and, I don't know, cultures of speed running and machinima, people like making their own versions of games or or doing interesting and unexpected things with them.
01:00:08
Speaker
um And I also think that this whole set of ideas of breaking the rules can apply to things outside of games too, right? Like what if, for example, we thought of democracy as a kind of system, right, of rules, and what would it mean for us to think about democracy as a design problem where, um,
01:00:27
Speaker
We don't have to take things kind of as they're given, but we can think about how we might redesign it to fix some of these problems in our creaky 200-year-old, badly patched ah yeah system of government here in the United States, which which we can see now every day is being gamed in ways that are maybe not...
01:00:50
Speaker
ah not in line with the spirit of of the original design. so reads i mean So it's a really big and profound ah profound kind of set of ideas. um yeah well that's that's i I totally agree. Completely fascinating and and really does ah get into, again, system design and things like that, ah which we could have spent the whole hour on, but I know we're running short of time.
01:01:12
Speaker
I maybe have one more question, Greg, but I don't know if you have one more. Otherwise... i just wanted to touch on the one thing because so you know you just said it again it's watching people play your game and how they play your game and i think that's why it's super important as you were talking about the rules right i'm thinking back to monopoly and sometimes people say hey free parking you get the money or we're not playing that or when you say uno do we keep picking cards until you go right like very much so these are rules we call them house rules right and i think right as long as it's not cheating it but then you can start to say how far can i push my house rules until i can kind of game the system Right.
01:01:42
Speaker
I think I think everybody has to agree to them. And the problem is when somebody doesn't have to agree to it and they're allowed to do something nobody else is allowed to do that, I believe, violates the spirit of the social contract or the the hermetically sealed bubble, even if you choose to change it.
01:01:57
Speaker
Right. And that's true for any social gathering. If you're sharing a pizza with friends and someone just grabs half the pizza for themselves, you're like, hold on a second. What are you doing? You know, they're like, well, I'm hungry. But, you know, there's five of us here. We each get a piece and a half. Right. So feel advantage that's games are just like games are a wonderful space in part because they are these kind of imaginative narrative.
01:02:19
Speaker
ah
Ethics and Innovation in Serious Games
01:02:20
Speaker
situations that are a little bit separate usually from everyday life, they're actually a good place for us to practice practice those things and learn about those things. My last question was about Games for Change. Again, I really appreciated your talk there and we cornered you afterwards partly because I thought it was so cool.
01:02:35
Speaker
um I guess two quick things if I can. One is that there was a focus on serious games there where they are trying to teach something, but in many ways The demos that I saw, at least some of them were rather rigid in the rules. They didn't let you play with the rules. They were kind of straight ahead narratives.
01:02:51
Speaker
They had a point and they kind of led you by the nose to experience the point they're trying to teach you about being nice to other people, whatever it is. And I thought your your talk kind of cut against the grain of that.
01:03:02
Speaker
So that's one thing is what do you make of serious games and a critique of a positive critique? Because games game has its heart in the right place in many ways. The other one was i i thought of Marshall McLuhan's The Medium is the Message. And I think in your book, you talk about the ludic century, which I guess I think it means games. but Maybe maybe i I didn't go look up exactly what ludic means.
01:03:23
Speaker
But I think you're implying that the strength of games is not the same strengths of the medium, right? The technology, the the means of conveying information and the message can be separated.
01:03:35
Speaker
And a linear thing like TV or a book or a podcast or you're on this linear path and you experience it that way, but games don't have to be that way, right? In other words, the strength of that medium can be quite different from the linear stuff that we all grew up with.
01:03:50
Speaker
So if I can do a two-headed question, it's, you know, what do you make of serious games? And then B, do you agree that the... What is the if the medium, if you agree with Marshall McLuhan, that the medium is the message, how you say something is important is what you're actually saying the content.
01:04:06
Speaker
If you agree with that in the context of video games, you know, what is the strength of video games? What is what what are they what is what is the good use of those systems and so forth? Right. So that's the I can try and weave those two things together.
01:04:19
Speaker
um so You two are just hammering me with these great questions. You're really ah making me think early in the morning today. um or copy So I yeah exactly that's that's why I got it handy. So, OK, first of all, yeah, I'm definitely but let's say the loyal opposition.
01:04:38
Speaker
for Games for Change, right? So i I love Games for Change. I've been a booster of their work for but from the very beginning of the organization and participated their conferences. And i do work in the, you know, often educational
Games as Storytelling Tools
01:04:52
Speaker
kind of work. So um I really want to support what they're doing, but I also want to be a critic, right? I agree with you, Lewis, that a lot of times we see these kind of games that were like, well, like what is actually happening here? right How could this be better?
01:05:06
Speaker
Is this actually innovative? and it's It might be innovative because it's a game, but is it actually innovative in terms of how it's teaching and what it's teaching? um So i um so i that was what my talk was about. It's like, okay, can can how can we go deeper or make this better um in order to improve what we're trying to do with with games and impact, right? Whether it for education or activism or or what have you.
01:05:30
Speaker
Oftentimes we see see these approaches that are kind of like either it's propaganda, I'm broadcasting a message at you, or I'm trying to inject information in you, it's about skill and drill,
01:05:42
Speaker
or it's behavior change and I'm like, ah you know, it's just trying to train me like a rat in a cage. So all of these are kind of like very shallow notions of what people are and how thinking works and how learning can work.
01:05:55
Speaker
um To switch to the the other part of your question, about about the medium of the message. I haven't actually thought about McLuhan specifically, but if I were gonna think about it right now, I would say that for me as a game designer, I like to think about experiences that only games can make, right? For example, if I wanna tell a story with a game, I don't wanna think, how can this story be as good as ah theater or as good as a novel or a film?
01:06:21
Speaker
I wanna think, what is a story that could only be told through a game? that leverages the unique capabilities of games, for example, that they're interactive, for example, that they're dynamic systems, right?
01:06:32
Speaker
um In order to tell ah kind of maybe it ends up being a new kind of story, right? So that we're not trying to go toe to toe with cinema and end up with some kind of weird watered down film that's a little bit interactive, but instead something that's that's capitalizing on the characteristics of games.
01:06:47
Speaker
And in that sense, if we think about the medium as the message, these dynamic participatory aspects of games, um how can we leverage those for learning, right? So that that's kind of what I was about.
01:07:01
Speaker
How can we leverage the systemic and interactive aspects of games? that The ludic century idea that you mentioned is ludic being the Latin word for play. That's all it means. But i my point was that in the 21st century, um we've seen this shift in art, media, entertainment, music.
01:07:21
Speaker
culture driven ah driven in part by the rise of digital
Games as Cultural Literacy Tools
01:07:25
Speaker
technologies. Right. So um ah the in the 20th century, you know, I think, for example, the moving image was a very dominant form of culture. Right. It was a lot of our advertising, government propaganda, personal stories, pop culture, big cultural mythologies were spun out in film and video television.
01:07:47
Speaker
um and later online at the end of the 20th century. But that the the moving image is still about this kind of like a sequence of images, right? But what's happened with digital technology is that that notion of just kind of linear media is sort of like becoming um displaced, right? So now now video is like, we can capture it, we can remix it, we can have AI making it.
01:08:10
Speaker
we We watch it online or stream it, then we're chatting with our friends about it. We're looking at reviews and clips and all these things. So it's no longer this kind of immersive experience sitting in a theater and watching a film from beginning to end.
01:08:22
Speaker
And in fact, all of our media, I think, are turning that way. they're becoming more systemic, modular, interactive because of these networks of digital information. The fact that the ways that we work and learn, like everything that happened to make this podcast happen, right? That we, you, you know, we've been communicating over email. We're, we're looking at a computer right now. That's recording us for this podcast thing that then it's going to be later distributed through different kinds of social media.
01:08:48
Speaker
So, so that's the ludic century idea and the connection to games and why I call that play is because there's This idea of media as modular, systemic, interactive.
01:09:00
Speaker
Games are the one ancient form of human culture, right? Tens of thousands of years ago, and maybe 10,000, at least 10,000 years ago, people in in Egypt, Mesopotamia, Africa were playing ancient games.
01:09:14
Speaker
table games, of mon Moncala, Royal Game of Ur, Go, Parcheesi, these wonderful ancient games. And games have always been little systems of inputs and outputs um just in this modular, customizable way, right?
01:09:30
Speaker
Games are weirdly remarkably, like chess and Go and Parcheesi, they are weirdly contemporary. they They feel like little, like memory addressing machines, right?
01:09:41
Speaker
Like they they're they're weirdly computational systems. So games, in a sense, are the medium, human medium, that has always had a kind of connection to where we are now in the 20th century.
01:09:53
Speaker
And that's why I think there're's there's such an interesting model for us for thinking about all these things. That's why I think, for example, teaching these game design exercises are relevant in terms of literacy for such a wide range of things.
Games: From Ancient Traditions to Modern Tech
01:10:06
Speaker
This is why I think games are interesting in terms of teaching, right? But not just injecting people with information, but but leveraging these interactive computational aspects of them.
01:10:17
Speaker
So anyway, hope- Which don't showing how to fish, but teaching people to fish, man. Yeah, exactly. That hands-on stuff that we've been talking about. So anyway, I hope I tried to tie all- That's awesome. No, it that's deep. It was very deep, Greg. So- and professor yes i love I love hearing about Moncala and just not even thinking about how old it actually is. and It makes sense. but But before we do wrap today, if Lewis and I are in your class and you had to say, hey, if you're interested in game design and you've got to play one board game and it can't be Monopoly,
01:10:45
Speaker
What would be the area? This is the question that all. either What's one one board game that I would assign to play? That's it's that's really tough. I guess it depends on. um Oh, there's so many interesting board games that are coming in mind. Some of them are like some of them are like go that, ah you know, are just like beautiful mathematical things.
01:11:05
Speaker
Some are contemporary. board games like Root, which I think just are used of this incredible melange of um mechanics that also in a funny way is making a sort of political point.
01:11:18
Speaker
um But, okay, if I were to say one game, this might be a weird pick, but I think I would say like ah a game like Dungeons & Dragons, like a tabletop role-playing game, because I think that for a few reasons, one thing is that Dungeons Dragons does so much. It does engage with kind of systems, dice rolling, simulation, but it's also the opposite of that. It's also like improvisational acting and storytelling and world building, right?
01:11:43
Speaker
And I also think that Dungeons and Dragons is maybe the most influential game on contemporary video games. that Dungeons and Dragons, things like characters, player characters, NPCs that have hit points and classes and levels, experience points that you go up and gold and skills and abilities and like all of these things, D&D did not invent them all, but it really brought them all together in a way that still resonates today. So in terms of like learning about like Dede does so much, right? So it's both training all these different kinds of creative skills.
01:12:17
Speaker
And then also it's such a great history lesson too. So that, that might be my pick. I love it. D&D. And for those of you who are maybe afraid to take that first step into D&D, I heard ChatGPT is actually a great partner to play D&D with kind of help you get through kind of if you have any of that. Wow. each fighter and I haven't heard that one, but that makes sense.
01:12:38
Speaker
So Professor Eric Zimmerman, this has been such a cool conversation. Before we go let us know anything you want and also where we can find you. um Well, my website is ericzimmerman.com.
01:12:50
Speaker
I'm at the and NYU Game Center, which you can find online. And, you know, we have a bachelor's and a master's program. We also, if you're living in the New York City area, we have a um a range of ah public events that happen regularly. So definitely come and we have a wonderful lineup of ah speakers at gamecenter.nyu.edu.
01:13:11
Speaker
And that's super cool. we'll We'll have links to all of Eric's stuff as long as the stuff going on at and NYU. Louis, let us know a little bit about you and where we can find you yeah I mean, right now, mostly on LinkedIn, again, contributing here as you know as my time and schedule permit. But um yeah, I'm still interested in doing more research on on the video games market and kind of the XR stuff like I've been doing. So hopefully I'll have something to share in the next few months about where I'm going to land. But ah Professor, that was awesome. ah Really great to get your insights on some of these topics we addressed. And so again, thanks very much for making the time today. We great conversation with you two. So much fun.