Abstract
This article examines the visual design of games. To this end, visual design is analyzed according to dynamic visual images, semiotics, and interaction using Deleuze’s concept of “movement image.” As part of the analysis, the article presents the winning games from the Independent Game Festival. The analysis of visual design provides structure aimed at showing how games attribute aesthetical value to gameplay and how elements of visual design and game design combine their inherent qualities to form a game.
Keywords
Introduction
How should visual design be construed as part of game design? One may conceive visual design—that is, the creation of images for a game—as a video game component separate from the game’s design, which is the creation of game content and rules. A similar argument can be made with regard to any integrated design. For example, cars have a visual design component that can be judged independently from the overall car design, which is intended to form the image the car reflects. Proponents of this approach cite Tetris as a case in point, a popular game with minimal visuals that came out in 1984, when color was a novelty. A possible response would be that although once a very popular game, Tetris would most likely be unable to reach the same level of popularity today, based on its visual simplicity as compared to the multicolor of Candy Crush.
Let us examine the visual component about which very little has been written and the game design about which much has been written. Previous investigations in academic game theory have taken two main approaches namely, studies of the audience of games (the players) and critiques of the games themselves (Consalvo & Dutton, 2006). This article attempts to advance the theory of visual game construction. Unlike Deen (2011), it does not attempt to define aesthetics but instead tries to understand what type of analysis and creative process is appropriate to game design in order to create a visual analysis for games.
The game design process can be roughly divided into two parts, that is, (a) a creative process that generates the constructed form and (b) an observation that generates critical reflection in an attempt to understand the consequences of that intervention. As noted earlier, game design is the process by which one designs the content and rules of a game. This includes the interactive aspects of a video game, which determine the player’s ability to execute commands and receive feedback intuitively. Game design, then, can be considered as the ability to control the dynamic relationship between the player’s state of mind and the different possibilities that the game has to offer. This is sometimes referred to as “flow” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1988), the extension of the player’s learning curve and introduction of the unexpected into the game in a continuous flow. In a successful game, the game designer must anticipate the player’s expectations and possible consequences of actions. The game must tap into our emotional needs in order to trigger a response. A player’s choice of game play is determined by the kind of emotional and sensory engagement the player is seeking.
Visual design deals with aesthetic concerns and is characterized by an appreciation of the visual qualities that offer sensory pleasure. Previous attempts to construct the aesthetic ideals were presented by Lundgren, Bergström, and Björk (2009) who asked how aesthetical value contributes to gameplay. The latter identified several categories among which were tempting challenges, cohesion, gamer interaction as properties of the game, and more. This article examines game design from the point of view that attempts to integrate visual aesthetics design in the virtual world of video games.
The basis of an aesthetic judgment of any manufactured object—in the physical as well as in the virtual environment—is its compositional quantity and quality. Jacques Bertin’s book Semiology of Graphics (1967/1983) systematically classified the use of visual elements to display data and relationships. Bertin’s system consists of seven visual variables, namely position, form, orientation, color, texture, value, and size, combined with a visual semantics for linking data that may be/is attributed to visual elements. Bertin’s system is a static system, that is, it does not respond to the users’ movements in virtual environments. The foundation of compositional technique is contrast and balance, achieved through color/tone and line/form. Making and breaking the form is what keeps composition vibrant. Composition has always a two-dimensional feature; it is always a captured image frozen in time in order to be analyzed. Examining the compositional elements in a game is easy enough when one looks at a static object, but for dynamic movement, the view shifts and the composition shifts with it. In fact, dynamic movement compositional vocabulary does not exist, since this type of view is obliterated when one has only a single point of view in a three-dimensional environment.
The aim of this article is to evaluate the element of visual design in games according to Deleuze’s classification system. Does a system of classification for the cinema apply also to video games? This article sets out in an attempt to see if indeed one may gain useful insight into the nature of games. To evaluate the criteria for visual design in video games, I will examine the design of four pairs of games introduced in the Independent Game Festival (IGF). The aim is to present the relationship between game design, as a process of thinking about how a game is played, and visual design, as an element in the construction of the game. Each game title stands for final contenders of the Grand Prize who also won awards in other categories. The pairing of games is to illustrate some of the points brought up by Deleuze’s classification system. This analysis is not based on a statistical sample and thus requires no inference in the conventional sense of the word. It is a descriptive analysis of the pattern and correlation of events.
An Analysis of Visual Design
The video game is an object built around two things, that is, action/reaction and strategy, but this is too abstract, and, therefore, the game needs a type to exist. Type is the manifestation of the game according to genre. These genres include classic/skill games, action games, strategy games, role-playing games, simulation games, and educational games. Precedence is the way game genre is established and the way poetic devices function. Images are the first thing one perceives in a game and they convey the concept of the game. The conceptual level is where the visual and the linguistic combine (Kosslyn, Thompson, & Ganis, 2009) and serve as the first encounter and assessment for the player. This is where game design and visual design combine to form an idea.
The visual analysis of games is an aesthetic examination as well as a critical reflection of art and culture. Before we examine visual design in games, we need criteria for the visual analysis method applied to the judgment of games. The visual analysis criteria should be dynamic, rather than static, like the old systems of aesthetic examination. Games are dynamic events in which one meanders through a changing view. Movies, for example, have been around since the 1880s and have developed several systems for the examination of the dynamic aesthetic experience. The movie or motion picture is a series of still images which, when shown on a screen, creates the illusion of moving images. This optical illusion causes us to perceive continuous motion between sequences of pictures viewed rapidly in succession. Film theory seeks to develop concise and systematic concepts that apply to the study of film as art. Furthermore, movies, like games, have a changing backdrop with an actor who is the performer in an event. However, there is a difference between watching a movie and playing a game; most notably, the active and passive role the viewer has. The player may experience a heightened sense of the linkage between two different orders of reality, real physical gesture, and its on-screen representation (Rush, 2011). Thus, the player is engaged with the game in a twofold manner, observing himself act as part of the narrative and observing the performance of the physical coordination.
The French philosopher Henri Bergson’s Matter and Memory (1896) commented on the need for new ways of thinking about movement and coined the terms, “the movement image” and “the time image.” In Cinéma I and Cinema II (1983–1985), the philosopher Gilles Deleuze took Matter and Memory as the basis of his philosophy of film and revisited Bergson’s concepts, combining them with the semiotics of Charles Sanders Peirce. What follows is an analysis of the visual design of games through Deleuze’s concept of “movement image”.
Semiotic Theory
The basis of semiotics is the differentiation of the object from its representation—the sign. The sign is a label for an object, a sign is something that can be interpreted as having a meaning, which is something other than itself, and which is, therefore, able to communicate information to the one interpreting or decoding the sign. This is a tradition that goes back to Plato who explored the relationship between signs and its manifestations in the world. Semiotics is an account of signification, representation, reference, and meaning. Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913) is the undisputed founder of modern linguistics. Both he and Charles Sanders Peirce formulated the modern version of the “semiotic theory”, formally united by a social contract. Saussure’s concept is bilateral, constituting sign = signifier/signified, with the exclusion of the referential object, while for Charles Sanders Peirce, a sign is a three-part entity consisting of sign, signifier, and signified. The sign consists of some material representation—sounds, marks on the surface from which a word might be formed. The signifier is the object that generates the sign, while the signified is the interpretant that provides a translation of the sign and consists of the concept to which that word refers. The typology of the semiotic theory consists of poetic devices for conceptual construction. This should be understood by means of a relational logic that underlines the fact that their character lies outside a game category. The following are the poetic devices: analogy (icon) refers to itself only by comparing one object to another similar object; metaphor (symbol) refers to itself only through something else; and finally, allegory (index) is something that only refers to itself, quality, or power. Transferring the semiotic theory’s analysis to the construction of video games requires the following adaptation of the aforementioned definitions. Thus, analogy becomes the improvement in an existing game genre—for example, improving a game genre through the creation of improved worlds. Metaphor becomes introducing new concepts and interactions to a game—for example, creating a new fantasy. Allegory becomes a hybrid game that combines elements from two or more game genres through the game’s paradigm.
The first two games to be analyzed from IGF are Blueberry Garden, a puzzle platform video game by Erik Svedang, winner of the 2009 Grand Prize, and Machinarium, a puzzle/adventure game developed by Jakub Dvorský of Amanita Design, winner of the Excellence in Visual Art Prize, in the same competing year. Blueberry Garden is an innovative game with unpredictable action, set in an ever-changing ecosystem. Blueberry Garden is a puzzle platform, a video game about curiosity and exploration. The player takes on the role of a creature investigating a mysterious world. In the game, visuals are streamlined according to an algorithmic arrangement, with movement of the virtual human achieved by the arrow keys. The game is a two-dimensional side-scroller, with a line on the screen defining the game’s playable areas from the unplayable areas. Although Blueberry Garden did not win the Visual Art category, its minimal approach to constructing the stage, through a geometric algorithm, resulted in an aesthetically pleasing visual design. Thus, Blueberry Garden presented a rule-based constructed virtual reality that utilizes unconventional artistic game approach. The challenges of interaction with an agent are displayed in Blueberry Garden, while the challenges to background objects lie with Machinarium’s adaptation of visual knowledge (Figures 1 and 2).
Blueberry Garden, 2009 (http://eriksvedang.com/).
Machinarium, 2009 (http://machinarium.net/demo/).
The goal of Machinarium is to solve a series of puzzles and brain teasers. The two-dimensional puzzles are linked by a world consisting of a traditional “point-and-click” adventure story, in a fantasy world that consists of beautiful hand-painted, pastel-colored images. In constructing the stage, Machinarium is a classic example of creating a stage for the event. The game takes reference as the principle of the game, where illusion difficulty acts as the vehicle of movement to the next puzzle. The reference is the way by which one categorizes objects, and in Machinarium they are tools of exploration. In this “point-and-click” adventure, Machinarium has resorted to overloading the visual system with random objects to distract the player as part of the game. The adventure games are allowed to depart from the actual solving of the puzzle and combined with a travel fantasy, in fact both games, Machinarium and Blueberry Garden are analogical—that is, similar to other puzzle games/adventure games. Both are exploration games, taking the viewer’s action/reaction to new heights.
The next pair of games uses metaphoric thinking as a device to generate the game. A case in point is the transformation between Pontifex2 (2003) developed by Gray and Chronic Logic, where the game is a three-dimensional exercise in bridge building, and World of Goo (2008) developed by 2D Boy, designed by Kyle Gabler and Ron Carmel, where the game is a two-dimensional construction exercise. Both games utilize similar principles of design, but markedly differ in user interface. Here the metaphor is the conversion of one game to another environment. Such a transformation event is where a new interface emerges—for example, the World of Goo’s turning a three-dimensional game into a two-dimensional one, by employing a point-and-click interaction technique. The two games demonstrate the process of game development; they show/display/exhibit game evolution. For those games, thinking in subbasic level categories helped develop the conceptual game idea (Figure 3).
The confusion over what comprises an artistic game was very clearly revealed in the 2010 IGF awards. In that year, there were two contenders, namely, Monaco by Pocketwatch Games, designed by Andy Schatz, which won two awards—the Seumas McNally Grand Prize and Excellence in Design; and Limbo by “PlayDead,” designed by Arnt Jensen, which won the Excellence in Visual Art and Technical Excellence awards. Limbo is a side-scroller, where the player guides an unnamed boy through dangerous environments and traps. The game is presented primarily in monochromatic black-and-white tones, using lighting and grain effects (Figures 4 and 5).
Monaco, 2010 (http://machinarium.net/demo/).
Limbo, 2010 (http://playdead.com/).
Monaco on the other hand is an action game providing a top-down perspective, as players cooperate to perform a heist using a variety of specialized thief characters. While Monaco did not win the Visual Art award, as its visual design layout seemed simplistic and is reminiscent of early video games, the visual design of Monaco is far from simple. It features low-resolution digital characters, and with refined architectural plans, the resulting contrast causes the player in the game to be drawn in on the one hand and repelled on the other. Monaco demonstrates the “Allegory” characteristic: In the two-dimensional architectural plan, there is an embedded map of the area, thus one walks in the plan while at the same time walking in a representation of the plan. The view of the plan is further enhanced by the use of the representation of walls as an occluding device. Some of the walls/pillars have no apparent end to their height, thus obstructing the player’s view of the ground/plan and at the same time creating an aerial view. The restricted color and pixelated representation of characters resembles that of the early video gaming era; use of professional architectural plans, combined with state-of-the-art electronic cinematic effects, gives the game a quality of contrast and a surprising aesthetic. Thus, those award results demonstrate a bias toward the use of what are considered “classic” visual art elements in video games. The dramatic black-and-white art in Limbo overshadowed a much more subtle use of visual design in Monaco.
Deleuze’s Classification of Images
Gilles Deleuze’s Cinema 1: The Movement-Image (1986) attempts to categorize the human condition as perceived through the prism of the cinema as a subjective critic. The movement image is “the way of being in a world of universal variation, of universal undulation, universal rippling.” (Deleuze 1986, p. 58) Perception constitutes the surface on which the ceaseless flow of images is momentarily captured and thereby transformed into a set; the selection of received effects is perception and constitutes a gap in the universe of movement image, a gap between action and perception. Affection, the internal response rises and occupies the interval between action and perception. Thus, there is no reaction without emotional content, but from the meta-physical perspective one can create ontology. The relations to which movement image gives rise to seem to be further determined as “effectuating” relations, and every image is indistinguishable from its actions and relations. The image is effectuated by factors from the environment and the image is the originator of effects. The process of “framing”—which Deleuze describes in the movement image as the formation of an ensemble—and the process of containment begin at the most basic level of spectatorship because what the viewer perceives is a sensory motor image in which he or she takes part through identification with the characters. For Deleuze, the projected movement propels sensation to a new order of magnitude, thereby realizing the essence of the image (Flaxman, 2000). The image we see on screen is necessarily delimited from the rest of the world; not only spatially in terms of the off-screen but also and especially temporally in terms of the “whole relationship.” Films provide paradigms of moving images directly connected to the human experience.
In the analysis of movement image, the viewer is passive in relation to the actor. According to Deleuze, Cinema 1: Movement-Image is divided into three categories when transposed and applied to video games, as follows: First moment—action image: “In the first, the character O rushes forward and flees horizontally along a wall; then, along a vertical axis, tries to climb a staircase, always sticking to the edge of the wall. He ‘acts’, it is a perception of action, or an action-image” (Deleuze, 1986, p. 67). Action-Image—the actor acts as he or she perceives action. Second moment—perception image: “The second moment: The character has come into a room … O perceives (subjectively) the room, the things and the animals which are there, whilst OE perceives (objectively) O himself, the room, and its contents: this is the perception of perception, or the perception-image, considered under a double regime, in a double system of references” (Deleuze, 1986, p. 67). Perception-image—the actor perceives himself or herself in the new environment. Third moment—affection image: “Then O can be installed in the rocking chair and rock gently with his eyes closed. But it is at this moment, the third and last, that the greatest danger is revealed: the extinction of subjective perception has freed the camera of the forty-five degree restriction. With great caution, it advances beyond, into the domain of the remaining two hundred and seventy degrees, but each time wakens the character who regains a scrap of subjective perception, hides, curls up and forces the camera to move back again. Finally, taking advantage of O’s torpor, OE succeeds in coming round to face him, and comes closer and closer to him. The character O is thus now seen from the front, at the same time as the new and last convention is revealed: the camera OE is the double of O, the same face, a patch over one eye (monocular vision), with the single difference that O has an anguished expression and OE has an attentive expression: the impotent motor effort of the one, the sensitive surface of the other. We are in the domain of the perception of affection, the most terrifying, that which still survives when all the others have been destroyed: it is the perception of self by self, the affection-image … death, immobility, blackness” (Deleuze, 1986, pp. 67–68). Affection image—the actor perceives his or her limits. In some video games, the player is actively engaged in creating the narrative and thus becomes the “actor,” which parallels Deleuze’s classification of images where the viewer identifies with the hero’s actions.
Action image—The player perceives action and reacts to the options presented by the game. These are executed through hand–eye coordination. This model is the basis for every game where one is in a situation and reacts.
Perception image—The player perceives himself in an unfamiliar place or reexamines his or her position through a changing view. Perception image is the player’s perceptual awareness of immersing himself or herself in a new game environment.
Affection image—The player perceives his or her limits and the limits of the environment and can transgress them. The player has the possibility of changing the environment. Affection image is close-up of the desire and wonder that gives the game life.
Now let’s examine how movement image can be applied to the analysis of a game. Tetris is an example of early games that can be said to utilize the concept of action image to engage. The challenge is met with body gesture and excised with new constant stimulus, of new shapes and color, a dynamic composition. The action image feeds the insoluble need for new visual stimulus. Action image has the viewer’s subjective perspective removed and placed in a frontal model of what one sees is what one gets. Action image utilizes the frame size relative to the game to conceal and reveal objects as they come into view. Both Machinarium and Blueberry Garden use action image; the difference between the two games lies in their level of functionality as the background to action or as part of the action. In Blueberry Garden, the visuals are the background to action, while in Machinarium they are part of the action, that is, the reference of action. Blueberry Garden is a side-scroller and as such keeps us excited while forgetting the limits of the game; contrastingly, Machinarium keeps us in place until we solve the riddle. Thus, Machinarium uses perception image; the user figuratively knocks his head against a two-dimensional world drawn in perspective (2.5 dimensions). Monaco uses perception image with its heightened sense of visual perception, and with its fast action, makes it hard to grasp those subtleties. Nevertheless, one remembers the game for its perception image. World of Goo is an example discussed earlier, but now we can say it uses procedural rule by which an idea/concept is associated with perception to trigger actionimage. World of Goo creates a pattern imposed on complex reality, through mediate perception. Goo is a new version of classical games like Chess and Go, where perception image is the ability to visualize.
The last pair of games is the winners of the 2011 Annual IGF Awards, that is, Minecraft and Amnesia: The Dark Descent. Minecraft was designed by Markus Persson and Jens Bergensten of Mojang. Amnesia: The Dark Descent was designed by Thomas Grip, Jens Nilsson, and Mikael Hedberg of Frictional Games (Figures 6 and 7).
Minecraft, 2011 (https://minecraft.net/).
Amnesia: The Dark Descent, 2011 (http://www.amnesiagame.com/).
Minecraft allows players to construct buildings with textured cubes in a three-dimensional environment. It requires players to mine their own building blocks and to fashion objects from them. The building blocks are combined through models of thought that utilize technology with its evolutionary history. The game focuses on survival and construction in a “wild” environment. Minecraft uses metaphor to invent a new game genre and a new way to handle and process material. The game is metaphoric, but this does not explain the game’s attraction; to do this, one must examine the movement image, and Minecraft has the characteristic of an affection image:
There is an option where one has the freedom to roam the wild countryside with its caverns.
Buildings and other objects can be fabricated by means of tools that are assembled from materials found in the new environment, with any design in mind (as long as they are built out of squares).
There is a sense of breaking the rules. One can choose to fight or flee from threatening creatures, since there is no immediate objective to the game; only survival.
Amnesia: The Dark Descent is a first-person horror game with a focus on immersion in the game’s atmosphere, environment, and narrative. The game enables real-world physics, including the ability to pick up, study, manipulate, and find a way to use almost any object to the player’s advantage. Most of the screens in Amnesia are dark and barely visible. One is immersed in movement, dictated by the constraint of the labyrinth. As Amnesia: The Dark Descent demonstrates, one cannot see in darkness, viewing is restricted and therefore spatial reasoning which is part of memory must be used. This inability to see clearly negates memory, hence the name Amnesia.
Amnesia: The Dark Descent is designed in a manner that is opposite to the design of Minecraft; the first has tunnel vision and visual distortion and the other has a mostly open view and geometric abstraction. Both games are designed using the directional key as navigational movement and point-and-click for action, used in this interaction to enhance immersion through object handling. Both games attempt to use gesture movement; Amnesia: The Dark Descent allows one to move/lift objects and open door handles by dragging the mouse—we see but cannot touch; whereas in Minecraft, we construct objects and do not see the process—only the final product is seen. In the case of Minecraft, one does not want to experience touching the object (it is hard work to construct objects). Thus, Amnesia: The Dark Descent allows the player to manipulate an object’s position, while Minecraft allows the player to select material for processing. Amnesia: The Dark Descent and Minecraft improve existing games interaction; but when one examines the games as a whole, Minecraft uses metaphor to invent a new game genre, and a new way to handle and process material, and affection-image to allow a sense of freedom.
Conclusion
The design method examines the process of convergence, divergence, and transformation (Nigel, 2000), where convergence examines prototyping possible scenarios, divergence explores the inherited situations in order to create divergence and constraints in existing scenarios, and transformation allows the change in specifications to objects in the game. As shown, basic-level categories decompose the game into a set of informative categories. They maximize the number of attributes shared by members of one category and minimize the number of attributes shared with other categories. A semiotic model based on attribute-value identifies privileged levels in the hierarchy, making the game plot converge and diverge in relation to other game genres, and in the cases shown earlier it uses a subbasic level category. When one examines Deleuze’s model, one can see that it allows for the transformation of the narrative. Articulation of the categories of game genre allows the designer to adjust the game relative to other games and as a result to distinguish his or her game.
We have analyzed games with regard to semiotic theory and Deleuze’s movement image. These are steps in the process of constructing the game and, as such, represent only one side of the coin, the other being verbalization of the concepts. Both these notions help define the design process and thus improve the initial idea. We have established terms to deconstruct and analyze the visual design of both the dynamic and the static images of games. Semiotic theory has proved to be a driving force in game design; it explains elements of visual game assemblage and with it the possibility of identifying game genealogy. The “image” thus allows one to establish the cultural reference system. Deleuze’s classification of movement image helped to show some important traits for understanding players’ actions and reactions. This classification system divulges the intent of the game design through the experience of movement. This allows for game designers to advance their games based not on the criteria of age or gender but on the classification of movement image. The differentiated (perhaps simply “different images”?) images are also transformative results that come about by change in form, the outcome metamorphosis, taking the form of perception, affection, and action image. Movement image cannot determine visually what will be a successful game, but it does provide the designers of the game with a vocabulary by which to communicate their ideas. A successful game requires not only a good gaming plan but it must also retain visual proficiency so it might have a chance of succeeding.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.