Level 1.1: Critical Vocabulary

Critical Vocabulary

When I say “vocabulary” what I mean is a set of words that allows us to talk about games. The word “critical” in this case does not mean that we are being critical (i.e. finding fault with a game), but rather that we are able to analyze games critically (as in, being able to analyze them carefully by considering all of their parts and how they fit together, and looking at both the good and the bad).

Vocabulary might not be as fascinating as that game you want to design with robot laser ninjas, but it is important, because it gives us the means to talk about games. Otherwise we’ll be stuck gesturing and grunting, and it becomes very hard to learn anything if we can’t communicate.

One of the most common ways to talk about games is to describe them in terms of other games. “It’s like Grand Theft Auto meets The Sims meets World of Warcraft.” But this has two limitations. First, if I haven’t played World of Warcraft, then I won’t know what you mean; it requires us to both have played the same games. Second, and more importantly, it does not cover the case of a game that is very different. How would you describe Katamari Damacy Links to an external site. (or the Windows clone The Wonderful End of the World Links to an external site.) in terms of other games?

Another option, often chosen by those who write textbooks on game design, is to invent terminology as needed and then use it consistently within the text. I could do this, and we could at least communicate with each other about fundamental game design concepts. The problem here is what happens after this course is over; the jargon from this course would become useless when you were talking to anyone else. I cannot force or mandate that the game industry adopt my terminology.

One might wonder, if having the words to discuss games is such an important thing, why hasn’t it been done already? Why hasn’t the game industry settled on a list of terms? The answer is that it is doing so, but it is a slow process. We’ll see plenty of this emerging in the readings, and it is a theme we will return to many times during the first half of this course.