What teens and adults have in common: Hopefully, your game.
This chapter
focuses on techniques to make games appeal to both kids (or young teens) and adults.
At one of the game conventions I attended, a talk on how to make a hit game really caught my attention.
The speaker was the president of one of the most successful game development studios in the world, specializing in platformers. His company had just released a high-budget platformer whose sales, while significant, hadn't measured up to the very high expectations that had been set for it.
The company head's postmortem was that his game needed more violence. He pointed out that Grand Theft Auto III, which had debuted four months earlier to massive numbers, had a lot of violence and was selling quite well. He said that his next game would have more violence, so that his games once again would be in sync with popular tastes.
I thought there was one thing right with his analysis, and three things wrong.
The right item is that, as this book is being written, platformers are indeed not performing well. Whether this will change in the future is hard to predict.
But I also had a couple problems with his analysis:
There is no shortage of violent games on the market. Many sell well, but many sell poorly. So violence in and of itself isn't enough to, in any way, guarantee game sales.
Grand Theft Auto III and its sequel Vice City use tons of Emotioneering techniques. It's the artful blending of great gameplay and Emotioneering that has resulted in these games' success, not violence in and of itself. To take another example, there are many games more violent than Max Payne, but it sold very well.
I'd seen such attempts to find “magic pills” (easy solutions) in the film business, and they always fail. Various executives, in substitution for their lack of knowledge about story, characters, suspense, and the creation of emotional experiences, have tried relying on simple formulas. Or they'll become obsessed with one genre as the way to guarantee success. One year they might think it's big action pictures, the next year it's feel-good movies, or teen comedies, or films based on comic books, or romantic comedies, or whatever their idea of a sure-fire hit is.
Yes, there are trends, and it's great when you can ride one. But these magic pills rarely work. It turns out that films also need (what do you know) good writing.[1] This lesson applies to games as well, in that a search for a single formula to make a great game won't work.
If I thought there was a magic pill, I wouldn't have written this book, for it would mean that everything you'd need to know about making games that were emotionally immersive could be summed up in a single technique.
Certainly one way to try to increase game sales is, when appropriate (and it's not always appropriate), to reach a range of demographics. Various films and TV shows have succeeded in appealing to both kids or teens, and adults as well, such as:
The Lord of the Rings films
The Terminator films
Pirates of the Caribbean
Star Wars—Episodes IV, V, and VI
The Matrix (At the time this book is being completed, it's too early to say whether the sequels will have the same cross-demographic appeal as did the first film.)
The Austin Powers films
The Simpsons
The Toy Story films
The Men in Black films
Shrek
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Angel
These films and TV shows appeal to multiple demographics, and they do so because they use what I call Cross-Demographic Techniques.
The general idea to making a game with an appeal that crosses demographics is, first of all, to figure out a game that would appeal to the younger demographic you want, whether that's kids (as in Toy Story) or teens (as in The Matrix). Then layer in those elements that would also make the game appeal to adults. There are many such elements. Let's look at a few.
This is humor that, with an implicit “wink-wink,” makes fun of itself. Kids laugh and adults laugh. The Simpsons uses this technique quite frequently.
For instance, in one episode, a friend of Bart's begins using dirty language. His parents recount the list of dirty words he's been using to Marge, Bart's mother, and declare that their son must have picked the words up from Bart. It's the only possible answer, they conclude, for their son couldn't have learned these words from TV. The joke, of course, is that we just saw the words used on TV. The Simpsons has always been filled with this kind of humor.
Another example from the same episode: Bart and his class are about to go on a field trip to a boring box factory. Bart deals with it by escaping into a daydream. But the only image he can conjure up is the fantasy of himself going to a box factory. He wakes up from his reverie, angry at television for destroying his imagination.
Giving the character you play in the game a First-Person Character Arc (see Chapter 2.20) or giving a Character Arc to a major NPC (see Chapter 2.9) won't turn away a younger player, but might help grab an older one. Adults enjoy the emotional sophistication of a character growing emotionally.
Adults and kids like trendy comedy. I say trendy comedy because comedy, by its nature, tends to be trendy. Many TV shows of the past that seemed hilarious, witty, or cutting-edge when new no longer seem quite as funny. These include I Love Lucy, Remington Steel, M*A*S*H, Cheers, Northern Exposure, and even Seinfeld. Comedy tends to date.
It's to the credit of the writers and other creative talent behind The Simpsons that they managed to keep it alive for so many years.
Grand Theft Auto III used a style of comedy popularized in such films as Pulp Fiction.
How can you predict the next trend in comedy? There's no formula. But one thing you can do is pay attention to the trends, and watch which trends seem to have the most staying power.[2]
A rich world is something that, layered into a game, will also increase its appeal to an older demographic.
The richness of Tolkien's world couldn't possibly be captured in a film. Most people agree, however, that the Lord of the Rings films did as good a job as was possible. It helped make the movie much more than just a kids' film.
To learn how to construct a rich world, take a look at Chapter 2.18, “World Induction Techniques;” Chapter 2.5, “Group Interesting Techniques;” and Chapter 2.6, “Group Deepening Techniques.”
One could say that the Lord of the Rings films have a heroic struggle that adults can relate to. However, you can see equally titanic struggles and quests on many Saturday morning cartoons. So a “hero journey” or a titanic struggle isn't enough to make a story appeal to an adult.
In Lord of the Rings, we also see adult or complicated emotions. For instance, Aragorn (also known as Strider) feels compelled to aid in the destruction of the ring out of guilt. His ancestor was responsible for the failure to destroy the ring the first time around.
And in The Two Towers, the elves have the difficult decision whether to help rescue mankind for a fate that mankind brought upon itself by failing to destroy Sauron's ring when it had the chance.
Also in The Two Towers, Gollum is torn between thinking and acting like the degraded creature he has become, or the human (Smiegel) he used to be.
In both films, there's an elf woman, Arwen, in love with Aragorn. She maintains her love, even though she knows she's immortal and he's mortal, and it will bring her sorrow in the end when time takes him away from her.
All of these issues are ones that have the kind of complexity that can appeal to an adult.
As you might recall from Chapter 1.8, “Where Screenwriting Leaves Off and Emotioneering Begins,” Deepening Techniques fall into many categories. And in this book we've looked at many ways that dialogue, individual characters, and groups can be given depth.
Adding depth into a game (or film) can help gain an older demographic without losing a younger one.
By way of a case study, let's take a look at 15 of the Deepening Techniques that were woven into the first two Lord of the Rings films (the only ones out at the time of this book was completed), helping them become such huge cross-demographic hits.[3]
Character Deepening: Gandalf's mysterious abilities.
Character Deepening: The Elves' mysterious abilities.
Character Deepening: Any time a character puts aside selfish desires to fulfill a grander duty. This happens repeatedly, with many characters and groups, such as the Ents and the Elves, and even, at times, Gollum.
Character Deepening: Internal conflict in many characters, such as in Gollum, as discussed earlier. Gollum is torn apart by his self interest, conflicting with a tenuous sense of what's right. He's torn between what he once was and what he has become. He's torn between being human and being an animal. And he's torn between sanity and insanity.
Character Deepening: Many characters have Character Arcs. For instance, Frodo and Sam learn to be heroes. The Ents learn to take responsibility for their world. The Elves overcome their insular self-interest. Gandalf evolves spiritually.
Scene Deepening: An example is the moment of utter desolation when Gandalf and the Fellowship are almost destroyed on a snowy mountain ledge in Fellowship of the Ring. There are many other such moments of desolation, such as when all seems lost at the battle that ends The Two Towers.
Relationship Deepening: The relationship between Gandalf and Frodo is complex. On one hand, Gandalf feels protective, almost fatherly, toward Frodo. On the other hand, in some ways Frodo is his superior, in that he has the purity to carry the ring.
Plot Deepening: The ring is a symbol that takes on increasing emotional associations as the film goes on (see Chapter 2.23, “Enhancing Emotional Depth Through Symbols”).
Plot Deepening: The use of symbols for good and evil. The symbols of good are light, trees, and water. The symbols of evil are dark, machinery, and fire. I call any symbol like this a symbol of a concept.
Plot Deepening: Another symbol of a concept is the pendant Arwen gives Aragorn, which symbolizes her love.
Plot Deepening: The rich world of the film, discussed earlier.
Plot Deepening: Parallel plot-lines. Frodo, who is small, turns out to be incredibly powerful. The ring, which is small, turns out to be incredibly powerful.
Plot Deepening: Opposite plot-lines. Gandalf and Saruman are both wizards. However, Gandalf chooses good, and Saruman chooses evil.
Plot Deepening: A theme is woven into the Fellowship of the Rings. The theme is “power.” We see power explored from many different angles:
The power of evil to corrupt the good, such as Gandalf's teacher, Sauranon.
The power of a team working in concert (the Fellowship).
The power of innocence (Frodo).
The power of magic (Gandalf).
The power of an army (Sauron's and Saruman's forces).
In the second film, the theme changes to duty.
The films use many, many other Deepening Techniques (such as Dialogue Deepening Techniques) in addition to the 15 mentioned here. Together they contributed to the film's emotional depth, and they're a big part of why the film appealed to adults as well as kids.
In this chapter, we've glanced at a few ways to make games appeal to a variety of ages. There are no easy solutions to making a game with broad demographic appeal…but there are ways to hedge your bets.
Although this chapter has discussed many techniques used in films and television, they'll work in games as well. For instance, if you take another look at the list of techniques from Lord of the Rings, you'd find that every single one would also be appropriate for a game.
[1] The exception might be sequels. Sometimes, if the first film is incredibly popular, people will flock to the sequel even if it's far inferior.
[2] People often say that humor is hard to weave into a game. There are quite a few types of comedy that would work in games. I suspect that one of the reasons we haven't seen more hysterically funny games is because very few A-list comedy writers have worked in games. Of course, even if one was to try, he or she would still need to surmount all problems delineated in Chapter 1.4, “17 Things Screenwriters Don't Know About Games,” and would need to figure out how all the various game structures discussed in Chapter 2.16, “Plot Interesting Techniques,” could become tools for comedy.
[3] Remember, Deepening Techniques are usually designed to operate outside the audience's or game player's conscious awareness. How many of these Deepening Techniques did you spot in the films? If you missed many or all of them, don't worry—most were intentionally designed to affect the audience without being consciously noticed.