Are Games Design?
I’m sitting in the cafe of the Design Museum in London, writing explanatory text for my two accepted nominations for its Designs Of The Year exhibition. I had put forward three nominations. The third, unaccepted, design was a game. It’s the third year that I’ve been asked to nominate and the third year that the console game I’ve submitted as an exceptional work of design has been left off the long-list. Previous years have seen the Wii make the grade – albeit in the product design category – and I’m proud to have managed to get both Media Molecule’s digital toybox, LittleBigPlanet, and Area/Code’s educational Flash game, Sharkrunners (in which players track actual GPS-located sharks in the Pacific), into the honours in the past. But it’s meagre representation for one of the biggest cultural forms of the 21st century. Why is that? Is it the subject matter? I mean, I’ve nominated Left 4 Dead and BioShock, which I guess could be seen as a little… dark. But I don’t think so – adult themes and content in the graphic design and fashion submissions are often notable. Is it perhaps the old prejudice against games and gamers – the view that they are marginal ‘spotty teenager’ preoccupations? I think not – the design industry/gamer Venn diagram probably has more of a healthy overlap than most other sectors. I think the issue’s a little more subtle. I think it’s that games are seen as ‘media’, rather than designed objects. They are seen as a commodity to be experienced – like a movie, an album or a book – rather than an apparatus or container for experiences. Which I guess can be seen as a perverse thing to complain about. After all, haven’t gamers and game industry grandees alike wanted videogames to be seen critically as an emotional and experiential peer to other, more established, media? And, despite games overtaking other media in both complexity and commercial appeal, those cries can still be heard. So, a good thing, right? Games should be honoured with BAFTAs, not Brit Insurance Designs Of The Year gongs. Well, I’d love to think it’s both/and not either/or. The rich, unique and intriguing thing about games as a form is that they are both worlds and stories, architectures and adventures at the same time. This is a feat of design primarily – of design, engineering and aesthetic attainment balanced. A feat at least as complex and coordinated as that of a Jonathan Ive laptop or a Foreign Office Architects building.