The following originally appeared in the IGDA Perspectives Newsletter:

I am not the first to observe that there is a disconnect between buyers and users of most educational games.  Games designed to be played by children could be purchased by a teacher, a parent, a grandparent, a school superintendent or any number of adults in the child’s life.  Notably absent are the children themselves, who have been gaining more and more buying power over the years (1).  And what buying power they don’t control directly they influence by…let’s say…making their desires apparent to the adults around them.

The problem isn’t just about kids either, educational games for adult learners are most often purchased by an institution, whether that’s the military, a corporation or small business, or a degree-granting educational body.  The disconnect is pervasive.  By and large, educational game purchases are made not by those who want to learn, but by those who want something learned.  This brings up all kinds of philosophical questions about whether a game played under duress or for ulterior motives is really a game, which is a fine debate which I’ve been on both sides of.  For now, I’d rather talk about the dangers that creep in through the gap, and how to fight them.

The possibilities for abuse are obvious.  Making something that looks good to parents or teachers, but doesn’t appeal at all to kids is a common pattern which became notoriously referred to a edu-tainment.  Mimi Ito wrote about how the edu-tainment phenomenon was fueled by parents’ anxieties about their children’s performance in a competitive world (2).  By pandering to those anxieties, companies could sell units without making a particularly compelling product.  In fact, incentives ran the other way.  By making software that was boring, children’s lack of engagement with the material would only increase parents’ perceived need for intervention, causing them to buy yet more software.

Part of breaking that cycle is to encourage parents and children to play the game together, so that parents can assess the game for themselves.  This has more benefits than just keeping marketers honest.  When parents share any media experience, but especially gaming, behavioral and cultural models from the parents naturally pass to their children (3).

The flip side is that games which are fun and effective for children, but which don’t make an effort to be seen as ‘useful’ to parents or teachers don’t do well in the marketplace.  This has become a stumbling block especially for modern games which teach subjects you won’t see on a report card.  Things like ‘computational thinking’ and ’21st century skills’ are difficult to pin down, and hard to justify for an educational community so obsessed with assessment.  That’s why you might hear that a new game is ‘common-core aligned.’  This assures teachers and parents that progress in the game will ‘count’ towards their formal schooling.

Another approach might be to try to rely on the ‘nag-factor’ that motivates so much of the toy and game industry, but unless the game developer is confident that their game can stand out on its own merits among a sea of entertainment-only games, this is a difficult direction to go in.  It’s definitely not the safe choice.

In my own work on Codemancer, I am taking a wait-and-see attitude.  I’ll be launching a Kickstarter in the near future.  Based on who my backers will be, I’ll have to make decisions about where my audience is, and how I can communicate with them.  I hope you’ll join the experiment.

I’m Rob Lockhart, the Creative Director of Important Little Games.  I’m currently building Codemancer, a game that teaches the magic of code.  I’m also available for contracting as a designer and developer of games for learning.  If you were to follow me on twitter, I’d be grateful.

As many of you know, I’m a big fan of the genre of electromechanical games known as Pinball.  I got a chance to spend some time with the Twilight Zone machine over at Emporium Arcade Bar recently, and I want to share some thoughts about pinball design which might apply more broadly to game design experiences.

Over time, it seems, pinball rules have become more and more obscure.  In tournaments where precise control of the ball is the skill most tested, it makes sense to have long chains of events which result in increasing point values.  But in casual play, the rules often seem overcomplicated.  Here is the rule sheet for the Twilight Zone machine I was playing.  Check out this video where the rules of Bally’s ‘Frontier’ machine are explained.

I’ve come to the conclusion that most pinball players care about three things:

1. Length of play
2. Toys
3. Play Modes

Length of play is an obvious way that a casual pinball player can feel good about a session.  The longer you play, the more chance you feel have of activating something special, and you can’t help but accrue points just by hitting things randomly.  Conversely, when the ball goes down the drain and out of play, that’s a very punishing feeling.

Toys are the interesting things sticking out of the playfield.  Sometimes they flash or jiggle or make noises, or all three!  When a toy is activated, it’s very rewarding, regardless of the point bonus they often represent.  Sometimes they have interesting gameplay consequences, as in one of my favorite machines of all time, Jurassic Park.

Probably the most rewarding thing — and what people care about the most — is activating different modes of play.  It’s accepted that shooting the ball up the field with the plunger and flippers is the standard mode of play, but breaking up the fun with different kinds of experience is a core gameplay principle.  Think about the power-pellets in Pac-Man, which switches the player from the hunted to the hunter, or the special contraptions in Jetpack Joyride which change up the input.  The problem in pinball is, outside of expert play, these things are far too rare.  Getting a multiball or a mini-playfield often requires unlocking that experience by performing a sequence of difficult actions.

You can even think about a pinball machine as just one part of a larger game, which is getting the most enjoyment out of the pinball available to you.  If points are to have any value in that context, they need to be standardized across machines, otherwise the question will always be “is 540,000 points good?”  Outside of competitive play, everything is made up and the points don’t matter.

I don’t like to point out a problem without offering some solutions, so here they are:

1. I DON’T think that points should be eliminated, and I’m skeptical that they’ll ever be standardized across games.  I do think they should be clear consequences of specific actions, pointed out with something other than a playfield light, which are so easy to ignore amongst all the other flashing whatsits.  It would be great if points could be displayed over the place where the points were awarded, perhaps by projecting onto the playfield glass?
2. Activating toys and modes should be more straightforward, though not necessarily less difficult.  For example, getting the ball up a narrow ramp can be very difficult, especially if there are drop targets in front of it.  Drop targets (panels which drop below the playfield when hit by the ball) are a very intuitive, straightforward way of barring progress.  It can be difficult, as long as the player understands the steps needed to trigger a special event WITHOUT READING.
3. Extend the average playtime, if possible.  I know this is the arcade business, and that the margins on pinball are the worst they’ve ever been, but when the Donkey Kong machine right next door gives the player more playtime, that’s where they’ll put their quarter.
4. Make it quality time.  People need to feel powerful and competent right away, and there are some pinball games that already do this.  Bride of Pin-Bot, I’ve noticed, makes some ramps and moving targets really accessible to new players, and saves others for the advanced (or lucky) ones.  Just the fact that you can hit a ramp reliably feels like a huge accomplishment.  Other games (such as a favorite of mine for other reasons, Black Hole) make the player feel stupid.  If there is a big empty area in the center of the playfield, or a lot of stationary targets that just bounce the ball up into the glass, they’re gonna have a bad time.

I’m really excited about what’s happening in pinball right now, and I hope that this article will cause pinball designers to spend a little more time thinking about this segment of players — the casual barroom or arcade player, who plays pinball because it’s there, not because he loves the flippers the way we do.

That goes for other game experiences, too.  I wish that hardcore games of all types would consider the players that might wander in looking for a few minutes amusement.  Being a hardcore gamer should not be a prerequisite for playing COD, but playing COD should make me want to become a hardcore gamer.  And maybe that’s OK.  Maybe high-profile videogames can afford to turn away users by the millions because there are still millions more.  Pinball, however, definitely does not have that privilege.

I’m Rob Lockhart, the Creative Director of Important Little Games.  If you were to follow me on twitter, I’d be grateful.

~

When you’re working on a game, you hear this question a lot.  If you’ve worked in the entertainment industry, or heard it talked about, you know the kind of answer people are expecting. The format is <Gender(s)> <Age Range>.  If you’re working on something that kids might consume, that age range needs to be super-specific, maybe three consecutive years at the most, and is expected not to cross gender barriers.

Either this is a stock photo for the word ‘demographics’ or the Village People are accepting new members.

The more I’ve been forced to answer this question, the less meaningful I find this kind of answer.  The question is, without a doubt, still a meaningful one.  Who do you think would most enjoy this game?  No game is for everyone, and, practically speaking, marketers need to know where to direct their efforts and their dollars.  There are also certain kinds of products which are perfectly justified in using gender and age.  Acne cream, for example, will mostly be sold to teens, even though lots of other people have acne.  On the other hand, I think there are ways of dividing the population which might be more valid (i.e. more predictive) for interactive entertainment.

I googled “acne cream for the elderly” and this was the first image result. No joke.

Sometimes the simplest conventional thing to do is to point at a genre.  That is to say, the best predictor of your enjoyment of the next pixel platformer is your enjoyment of the last pixel platformer (or, perhaps, whether you know what a pixel platformer is).  This is a rudimentary form of segmenting by play-style, which is a strategy with a lot of depth.  You might consider defining your audience in opposition to other games’ audiences, or court people who liked a certain game except for one particular thing.

In my case, I’m working on an educational game, which is a concept that comes with a lot of baggage.  People assume that it’s for kids, and probably young kids.  And it is.  But it’s for a lot of other people, too.  My game isn’t for everybody, but it’s not about gender or age.

Codemancer is a game about learning programming, but it’s not a puzzle game, or a sandbox environment.  It’s for people who are interested in story-driven interactive experiences.  It might be for people who are somewhat interested in learning to program, but not totally obsessed with learning to program (the obsessed don’t need my game or any game).

I hope that my game is for people, especially women, who wouldn’t normally be drawn to the “hacker” archetype.  It’s for people who can’t stick with open-ended learn-to-code creativity tools like Scratch* and Kodu*, or who might be ill-suited to online tutorials, like the ones at Codecademy* or Code School*.  Maybe they don’t have access to in-person classes, like the ones at Starter League*, or are too embarrassed to expose their ignorance to a class full of strangers.

So now when people ask me what my game’s demographic is, I say “what’s Harry Potter’s demographic?”

Then they say “But really…” and I say “Fine.  Males and Females 8-11 years old.”  I’ve got to pick my battles.

*These are all cool things that you should check out.

Imagine that one day you are saved by a superhero.  You’re walking around with your sweet new noise-cancelling headphones and Spiderman swings down and pulls you out of danger before you even realized you were in any.  Amazing!  Spiderman puts you down somewhere and says ‘have a nice day!’

Later that night you go on twitter and you’re like ‘@therealspiderman hey thanks for saving me earlier!’ And later he replies ‘@regularhuman365 All in a day’s work for your #FriendlyNeighborhoodSpiderman’

A few years pass, and one day you discover that you have a superpower.  It’s not an amazing superpower.  Maybe you can control polyethylene with your mind (but not polyurethane or polystyrene).  You name yourself ‘The Bag’ and you say lame things like ‘Looks like the cat’s out of…The Bag!’ and then hate yourself for it later.  You tweet to spiderman again, like ‘@therealspiderman Hey, not sure if you remember me, but I have superpowers now’ and he replies ‘@thebag88 That’s great, you should come to the superhero drinkup next week.  Will DM details.’ WHAT?!  YOU hanging out with REAL SUPERHEROES?!

Next week it’s the night of the drinkup, and you’re looking in the mirror at your shitty costume and your shitty name, and you’re thinking ‘this is going to be terrible!  They’re all going to laugh at me.  Maybe I shouldn’t even go.  I’ll go later after I’ve stopped some serious crimes, and I’m more impressive, then I’ll go and it will be cool.’  But you force yourself to go anyway, and as you walk in the door you brace yourself for mockery, but nothing happens.  In fact, Spiderman remembers your name. ‘The Bag!  You’ve got to come meet Iron Man.  You two will get along.’

So you talk to all the superheroes, and all of them are unbelievably nice to you.  They tell you their secret identities like it’s no big deal, because you’re one of them.  And you realize that these are not gods, these are people, and they want to help you however they can.  Somebody suggests that if you wore clothes made of polyethylene, then you could fly.  ‘Why didn’t I think of that?’ you wonder, but it doesn’t matter because when you grudgingly say your goodbyes, you leave a better superhero than you came.

That’s what it’s like going to NYU Practice.

I was conflicted about writing about my experiences at NYU PRACTICE.  It’s such a small and amazing group of people, the selfish part of me hopes that the attendee list won’t grow too much next year.  In all fairness, though, you deserve to know how incredible it is.  I tell my friends all the time: ‘if you’re picking ONE conference to go to, and you’re a game programmer or manager or something, you ought to go to GDC, but if you’re a game designer it’s more important to go to Practice.’

I hope to see you there next year.

PS. Many Thanks to Eric Zimmerman and Frank Lantz for being Spidermen.

I’m Rob Lockhart, the Creative Director of Important Little Games.  If you were to follow me on twitter, I’d be grateful.

~

Nothing has been more important to my development as a game designer than getting acquainted with the independent game scene in my area, namely Chicago.  Learning about the ethos and the culture behind the wider indie game scene has only fall in love with it more.  The tenets of indie game culture are many, but there’s something I want to try to explore in connection with the specific genre I’m engaged with at the moment: ‘Make Something Original.’

‘Make Something Original’ is, I think, the most valuable thing that Indies can offer.  While big-budget games can have original elements, I think it’s safe to say that AAA game developers are unwilling to risk wholly original games.  In contrast, independent game developers are willing and eager to create whole new genres, some of which stretch the entire definition of games.

Running parallel to Independent games is a new renaissance in educational games, lead by academic institutions like Games*Learning*Society and the Center for Games and Impact , medium-sized game studios like Filament Games and E-Line Media and non-profits like the Institute of Play.  These groups are proving the efficacy of games for learning every day.

One of my favorite Filament games

Why Learning Games and Indies are Such a Good Match

As I grow to appreciate more and more, games for learning require a flexible approach to game design.  There is room for games at three stages of the learning process:

1. Need to Know.  This is the stage where a student is motivated to learn something.  For example, having students play a few rounds of Cannons (or Worms, or Angry Birds) might motivate them to learn ballistics formulas.
2. Content or Skills.  This is what most people think of when they think of learning.  All modern well-designed games teach the player the skills and knowledge necessary to play as part of the initial play experience.  A few make this play experience about something with real-world analogs, and thus teach real-world skills or content as a side-effect of play.  For example, this game about running a constitutional law firm.
3. Assessment. Most educational games are actually in this category (though they may claim to be in category 2).  Examples are Math Blaster and Mandarin Madness.

At their best, learning games are capable of covering all of these phases simultaneously, but that requires an openness to letting the subject matter and game mechanics influence and inform one another.  As Scot Osterweil once put it to me (I paraphrase), ‘the designer must find within the topic what is playful and let that be the kernel the game is built around.’

When risk-averse organizations attempt to design games for learning, what results is often a proven game mechanic (such as Mario-style platforming) paired arbitrarily with a learning goal (like diabetes management – this is a real game).  When indies experiment with educational game design, the results are not always polished, but are usually at least cohesive.

There is already a lot of crossover, in terms of personnel.  Some of the most innovative independent designers have already dipped their toes in the water of educational games, perhaps recognizing the usefulness of the independent design philosophy to pedagogy.

• On the top of the list is Eric Zimmerman, a games educator as well as maker of educational games.  The studio he founded, Gamelab (no longer operating, but still influential), worked on several educational games for Lego, and, with Katie Salen‘s leadership, eventually spun off both the Institute of Play and Gamestar Mechanic, a game that teaches game design.
• Jesse Schell, who wrote the touchstone book “The Art of Game Design,” has been known to create educational games.  Most of his company’s work is for-hire, but Schell Games has developed a name for itself when it comes to creating learning experiences, especially for children.  As a former Disney Imagineer, Schell seems to have a gift for inspiring childlike wonder.
• Robin Hunicke, famous for Sims 2 and the dearly departed Glitch, recently started a new studio, in part to create transformative games: Funomena.
• Steve Swink, who you may know from his current project SCALE, was lead designer of Atlantis Remixed (a literacy game for high school kids at Arizona State University).
• John Murphy is 1/8th of the team behind Octodad.  He also has another job, as game designer at Chicago Quest, a middle school with a mission to implement game-like learning throughout their curriculum.
• There was also a familiar name announced as a nominee for Most Significant Impact at the Games for Change festival.  Lucas Pope who has recently gained notoriety for the game ‘Papers, Please’ was nominated for an earlier game ‘Republica Times,’ which is about the ethics of journalism.

If only digital bison were as plentiful now as they were in the 1990s. Sigh.

What’s Holding Indies Back from creating Educational Games?

First, a small criticism of the indie scene I love so dearly: there is a significant slice of our community who create games primarily in order to recapture the glory of the games of their childhood.  That is to say, they want to be the triple-A developers of the early 90s.  This is fine on its own, but it’s not the most fertile ground for potential crossover between indies and eddies (as I hereby dub educational game developers).

This brings up the topic of history.  Educational games had a golden age in the early 90s with games like Carmen Sandiego, Oregon Trail, and Sim City (all of which have become ongoing franchises).  Shortly after, there was an explosion of content in the category called ‘Edutainment.’  Edutainment was, by and large, a series of ineffective, boring tarted-up flash-card systems which have given educational technology a stigma that we are only now starting to overcome.  It is partly the fear of returning to this state that led me to write this rant on Gamasutra.  It is this fear that may be holding back other indies from designing games for education.

The idea that pedagogical theory is a rigorous and difficult discipline might be another barrier.  There is some truth to this supposition — there is a body of knowledge about effective teaching which would benefit any prospective eddie.  This should not scare us away.  Firstly, there are so many experts in teaching around (namely teachers), it’s not hard to find yourself a consultant or partner.  In addition, it’s a field where there is little definitive knowledge, and what there is is largely intuitive.  It’s intuitive not because it is trivial, but because it has become part of the culture.  Ideas like Learning Styles and Bloom’s Taxonomy infuse themselves quickly in the zeitgeist through every small-town schoolteacher.

Finally, there is a genuine obstacle to becoming an eddie, which is that learning games are hard.  Like, super hard.  Making a game that entertains people is easy compared to making an engaging and effective educational game (I.M.H.O).  Still, I think it’s worth trying.

To be read in the style of Shirley Bassey.

What I’m Doing

As you may already know, I formed an independent educational game studio called Important Little Games where I’m engaged in making a learning game called Codemancer.

I’m Rob Lockhart, the Creative Director of Important Little Games.  If you were to follow me on twitter, I’d be grateful.

~

When the awesome project Tiny Games came to my attention, I immediately became an enthusiastic backer.  Just recently, the iOS versions went out, and I eagerly opened this gift from my (more well-to-do) former self.

If you haven’t heard about the project, Tiny Games is not a game for your phone, but a list of games to play in real life.  The app suggests IRL games based on where you are and what’s around you.  It sometimes asks silly little questions just to gauge what mood you’re in, or what kind of person you are.

I’ve been trying to play as many Tiny Games as I can on my own, but it it’s difficult to make work for me.  For instance, Tiny Games includes a whole set of games to be played on the road.  I have a 1-hour commute to the Indie City Coop, so it seems like an ideal situation at first blush.  Two things conspire against me.  1) The mood of a commute is not often a playful one, and trying to force oneself into a playful frame of mind is difficult and unrewarding (as my QA friends know). 2) The games for one player are whimsical, but hard to find satisfying because they’re so vague.  Having vague rules for a multiplayer game can be a strength, because they create debate and house-rules and adjudication.  It’s not as much fun for one – perhaps a hint as to why solitaire is still the most popular 1-player game.

Determined to play more Tiny Games, I asked my friends Brice Puls and Miles Aurbeck to come play with me in the park.  This was awesome, and clearly the spirit in which these games were meant to be played.  The games were mostly coop, and those that weren’t lent themselves to an amiable atmosphere.  We never kept score, and a good time was had by all.

Inspired, I made an attempt at a tiny game of my own.  I wanted to make something that can be played in public with no equipment whatsoever.  I call it bump5shake.

The rules of bump5shake are simple.  Two or more people stand at the bottom of a staircase in a well-trafficked public area.  Each of the players is trying to get to the top of the stairs before the others.  However, the only way to move up the stairs is to make physical contact with strangers.

• A fist bump from a stranger allows a player to move up one stair.
• A high-five moves them up two stairs.
• A handshake moves them up three stairs.

Players must move after each bump, 5, or shake (no ‘storing up’ moves to use later).  They have to stay on their stair for the duration of the game, and the CANNOT SPEAK.  That’s all you need to know to play the game.

I made a video of some playtesting.  I hope you enjoy it.

<iframe width=”560″ height=”315″ src=”//www.youtube.com/embed/3FCwToxWiwk” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FCwToxWiwk&feature=youtu.be</iframe>

Thanks to Brice, Miles, and the Art Institute of Chicago, whose stairs we used.

Below is a copy of the email newsletter sent out to all subscribers this morning.  To subscribe to the Codemancer mailing list, go here.

~

Hello, and Thank You to everyone who has signed up to receive updates about Codemancer!  The team and I have been hard at work on the game, and if you’re impatient and want to skip to the video below, I don’t blame you.

As part of Codemancer’s development, I’ve been seeking the opinions of experienced learning game researchers and developers.  Just a few days ago I went to Madison, WI, which is one of the few Meccas for those of us interested in games for learning.  I visited the Games+Learning+Society department at UW Madison.  I also spent some times with the folks at Ronin Studios.  Everyone was very positive about the prospects of the game, and gave me a lot of inspiration for ways to improve the design.

I’ve also been trying to be better connected to my peers who are developing learning games themselves.  If you’re working on an educational game, or have made one in the past, please get in touch.

Once again, thanks for signing up to take this journey with me.  I hope I can entertain you along the way.

Many Thanks,
Rob Lockhart
Creative Director, Important Little Games

Video: Moving Around in Codemancer

New Blog Posts

Systems of Magic, Part 1

Here I describe a diverse set of magical systems, in the hope of providing inspiration to those of us designing games in the fantasy genre.

Games That Teach Programming

There are a lot of approaches to learning programming. Some of these are purely digital – Creative Environments and Games. There are lots of creative environments, but not a lot of games.  I’ll go over a few here.

I’m writing this rant because this Kickstarter has just come to my attention.  As a bit of background, I’m working on a learning game called Codemancer, and consequently I keep a close eye on the games for learning space, especially games that teach programming principles.

~

I think we can all agree that a good game is hard to make.  Even a team of fantastically talented and experienced game developers with infinite money can still make a bad game.  There are an incredible number of books, courses, conferences — hell, this entire website you’re on — all saying “games are really hard to make, but here’s, maybe, a bit of advice that can help you.”

And yet I see ‘startup people’ (aka technology entrepreneurs) assume that it’s as easy as e-commerce.  Some guy has an idea and thinks he’s a game designer — well, maybe he is, but wouldn’t it be smarter to find out with a small project?  Make something with a $0 budget and see if anyone thinks it’s worth playing.  Oh, but you just have this one epic game idea, and no others?  That’s easy, then.  You are not a game designer — at least, not yet.

Right now I’m in the midst of making a learning game (they used to be called edu-games, but most things by that name were insipid, and the term was jettisoned).  Learning games are MUCH HARDER than entertainment games, because on top of all the difficulty of making something interesting to play, it also has to be teaching you something.  The thing you’re learning has to be what MAKES it fun, not an add-on bonus stage, or a gate that blocks you from having fun until you have answered this math problem.

So when I see a group of people attempting to make a learning game without anyone who calls themself a game designer on the core team (which is very very common, for some reason), it makes me sad.  There are a few reasons I get sad:

1. This game is probably either going to be bad, or isn’t going to get done.  There’s always a slim chance that it will be finished and good, but almost negligible.

2.  If the game is finished but bad, as most turn out to be, it will erode the already poor reputation of games designed for learning – just as we’re starting to get a foothold!

3.  In the worst case, the creators of the game know the horrible truth: It doesn’t actually need to be any good to make money.  All it has to do is play to the anxiety of parents who want their children to succeed (citation).

4.  There was an easy way to avoid this disaster — get a game designer on your team (me, for instance — I’m happy to help)!

Truly, I’m sorry to be negative about people joining the games industry.  I really do want as many people as possible to make their voices heard.  Please make games.  Learning games are especially sparse, and I like to encourage people to make them for any and every learning goal.  Please, make games for learning.

On the other hand, independently developed games, and especially independently developed learning games, have very limited public attention and favor, and I’d rather that it not be spent unsustainably.

If you are an entrepreneur at heart, I recommend that you start a games company!  This is a very different process from creating a game, and perhaps one that will make better use of your talents.  Hire a talented game designer or two.  Due to downsizing at nearly every major studio, there are quite a few on the market right now.  You could also buy out a respected indie studio in financial distress.  Sit down with these people and come up with a game together (it’s absolutely OK for you to be part of the creative process).  Get an experienced producer who can figure out how much money and time you will need.  Let me know if I can help.

~

I’m Rob Lockhart, the Creative Director of Important Little Games.  If you were to follow me on twitter, I’d be grateful.

I’m Rob Lockhart, the Creative Director of Important Little Games.  If you were to follow me on twitter, I’d be grateful.

<(╯°□°）╯·._.·´¯)·._.·´¯)

I’m working on a game that involves magic and magical epistemology.  Consequently, I’ve been doing a lot of research about magical systems.  I’d like to describe a few here, for those of you interested in incorporating magic into your games.  One of the things I think games is best suited to, is to give a person the feeling of being able to do something impossible.  What could be more impossible, or more satisfying, than the ability to use magic?  I hope that this post will inspire you to create interactive systems of magic that are amusingly unique and uniquely amusing.

Harry Potter & The Lord of the Rings (& Naruto)

I love Harry Potter and the Lord of the Rings series both, but they share a sloppy dismissive view of magic.  If I were going to try to attempt to answer questions about how magic works in the universes these works of fiction take place, I’d be hard pressed for a place to start.  There seem to be spells for all kinds of things available in various arcane languages, but with very little discernible pattern as to how the spells are constructed.  Magical items, too, might answer to any description, and can have arbitrary powers.

J.R.R. Tolkien, J.K. Rowing and Masashi Kishimoto are great writers, so they don’t use spells or items as deus-ex-machina.  Every spell or item is well introduced to the reader before it can have an impact on the plot.  Nonetheless, the lack of a coherent mythology which explains the workings of magic invites this kind of abuse of narrative form, and less skilled writers who try to emulate these authors or who work in a similar milieu have trouble pulling out a previously unheard-of magical trick when it is convenient for the story.

In a way, it is unfortunate that J.R.R. Tolkien was so influential to Gary Gygax, and that Gary Gygax has had such a huge impact on video games.  This kind of disordered free-for-all view of magic makes the enjoyment of many games (such as WoW) dependent upon memorization (or constant reference), in some measure, for their full enjoyment.

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell

In this novel, magic was an art lost to time, except for a few obscure references scattered across a few hundred rare and otherwise un-entertaining books, so it would be excusable for the magic to be just as chaotic as in LOTR, since the characters only have a small piece of an established body of knowledge.  In fact, it does seem this way for most of the novel’s length.

Near the end, however, a bit of coherence is added when Mr. Strange is granted nearly limitless power.  He merely speaks to the objects in nature in their own language, and they obey.  This is an element of magical fiction I like to call the “Language of Nature.”  While not being a perfect explanation for how magic is allowed to influence the world within the fiction, it at least provides a distinct path to mastery — to learn magic, you must learn this language.  This also implies that the elements of nature have a a degree of consciousness; at least enough to understand a (presumably unconstructed, aka natural) language, and obey.

This also helps one of the important narrative conundrum in any fictional universe that includes magic: ‘why can’t everyone use magic all the time?’  In this case, the answer is that the language is largely forgotten, or (even better) it is extraordinarily difficult to master.

This brings to mind the general principle, shared by many conceptions of magic, that symbols can have a direct influence on the world (other than via the human mind).  In truth, it seems that the ‘language of nature’ seems to be Mathematics, but it’s a language nature only speaks but doesn’t understand.  This must have frustrated even the earliest people making systematic observations of nature.  While numeracy and symbols have so much explanatory power, they have no power whatsoever to influence the things they describe.  But what if…

click the image for artist’s page

A Wizard of Earthsea

‘A Wizard of Earthsea’ and its follow-up novels have a similar conceit.  In order to command the forces of nature, one must know the true name of the thing one is trying to command.  That name, such as the name referring to the wind, can also change regionally, so a wind over the Pacific might have a different name than the winds over the Atlantic.  Simply knowing the name seems to be enough to summon a thing, like summoning a hawk out of the sky, one of the earliest bits of magic the main character, Ged, is able to accomplish.

The Name of the Wind

This book, as the title suggests, also includes the concept of the power of names.  It also includes descriptions of a lesser form of magic known as Sympathy.

In sympathy, the magic user must form the firm belief that two entities are linked, and then they become so.  This is another theme quite common in magical mythology: mind over matter.  One’s state of mind is an important component of many magical practices, whether it be perfectly calm, fiercely effortful, or, in this case, utterly credulous.

Once linked, entities may have a sort of positional entanglement, or may be able to transfer heat at a distance, or change heat from one into kinetic energy in the other, etc.  Sympathy also introduces the idea that a sympathetic link’s efficiency depends on the similarity and provenance of the two linked entities.  For example, two apparently identical coins will be easier to link than two coins of different denominations.  Personally, I think this is a very clever concept, which puts firm limitations on the performance of this kind of magic, while still allowing miraculous things.

Sympathy has its own explanations for why magic is uncommon.  Here, creating this unshakable belief of a known falsehood is a near-impossible mental exercise.  In addition, performing most useful magic involves a Rube Goldberg-esque set of complex interconnections between various things.

Sympathy also preserves quite a lot of laws of nature, including conservation of energy.  For instance, a character might light a candle by linking the wick to her own body, drawing heat from herself, but this will make her very cold very fast.

Fullmetal Alchemist

This manga and anime series also preserves quite a lot of laws of nature – notably conservation of mass.  This is known in the lore of this series as the “Law of Equivalent Exchange.”  It also states that you can’t transmute something from one material to another.  However, alchemists who know the proper runes and transmutation circles are able to alter the form of physical matter however they see fit.

There is also an exception to the Law of Equivalent Exchange.  If an alchemist is in physical contact with a crystalline material known as a Philosopher’s Stone (which can only be crafted using the blood of thousands of dead people), their transmutations need not obey Equivalent Exchange.  This makes Philosopher’s Stones so valuable that people are routinely willing to commit mass murder to obtain them.

Here is another concept common to many ideas of magic: physical contact.  In real-world physics, physical contact has no real definition.  At the scale of fundamental particles, messenger particles are being exchanged in order to repel clouds of electrons from one another.  The same is true for every set of two materials, and even within materials – there is little difference in the process of atoms nearing one another.  The idea of a discrete ‘object’ or of ‘touching’ that object are telltale signs of a pre-20th century model of nature.  Nonetheless, from a commonsense perspective, the idea of losing or gaining some ability while touching or holding a special object still has rhetorical power.

Mistborn

Brandon Sanderson’s novels introduce a fascinating form of magic.  In his universe, there exist three forms of magic, but the one I’ll describe here is the most ingeniously crafted, and clearly the basis for the rest.  Allomancy is the rare genetic ability to ‘burn’ metals in order to gain specific powers.  Most allomancers can only burn one kind of metal, granting them one supernatural power.  A few, called Mistborn, can burn all the allomantic metals.  An appendix in the back of each of the books explain the workings of each of the metals:

Twelve of the 16 metals.

 This power comes with a lot of limitations (assuming you possess it at all).  You must ingest the correct metal, which means you have a finite supply.  Someone burning bronze can locate other allomancers, unless they or someone nearby is burning copper.

The whole system is very balanced and rational, which is part of what makes this series so thrilling.  Grasping the full extent of the powers available takes very little time, so it becomes a game of how to use and combine these skills in novel ways.

The Last Airbender

In the Nickelodeon cartoon series “Avatar: The Last Airbender,” magic is a unique skill which is randomly granted to a small percentage of the population.  Furthermore, the world is ethnically and geopolitically divided into four parts: Earth, Air, Water and Fire.  Likewise, the magical system is divided: Earthbending, Airbending, Waterbending and Firebending.  People from the Fire Nation, for instance, are only granted the ability to Firebend, if any.

All these types of ‘bending’ require a source of the material in question, so waterbenders are powerless in the desert (unless they bring their own water, which would be wise).  And manipulation of the material is done through special gestures, as well as a little mind over matter.  This introduces the new concept of body motions as magical symbols.

In this lore, only one person in the world can do more than one kind of bending — the Avatar, who must master all four.

Sabriel

In the Abhorsen trilogy, there are a few kinds of magic.  The most common is Charter magic, which involves bringing your conciousness into another plane with runes that flow like a river through it.  Practitioners of charter magic, called ‘charter mages’ must pluck these runes from the flow and bring them into the material world, where they assemble spells like recipes.  This brings up the interesting notion of symbols taking physical form.  This is common in many supernatural anime, such as Fairy Tail and Strait Jacket.

There is also free magic, which has a sort of wildness and unpredictability to it.  Necromancers command one form of free magic which has its own schema involving seven bells.  The bells can be used in life, but are most effective when traveling into the seven precincts of death – a process which, from the outside, looks like someone voluntarily going into a coma or trance.  Here, sounds are symbols, and even sometimes have a rough equivalency to charter runes.

Codemancer

Codemancer is a fantasy video game I’m working on in which magic is code.  Players write ‘spells’ (programs) and then ‘cast’ (run) them.  This is a variation on the “Language of Nature” with a hint of mind over matter.  In this case, the language of nature is so specifically defined that it doesn’t require a human-level of intelligence to understand it, just a simple computer-level intelligence.

You can see a bit about how the magic works in this youtube video.

As game developers, my opinion is: the more logical the magical systems in our games, the better.  A logical magical system drastically decreases the learning curve of the game, and may decrease development time as well.  I’ve found that it’s especially satisfying if players can stack or combine a few abilities in novel ways, and to master these combinations, before new ones are introduced.  If enemies abilities fall within the same logical system, then so much the better.  Enemies who must act within the same constraints (even if given more power to work with) increases our sense of fair play, which is a fragile thing.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this first round of magical systems.  Stay tuned for part 2!