The Artificial Designer

Games designed to be looked at and never played

A couple weeks ago, I wrote an article all about what I called “The Artificial Gamer.” This particular character is one who does not actually play the game but wants to be included in the conversation around the game. They are pretending to pretend or, as I call it, “playing at playing.” There’s another aspect to the artificial gamer who wants a seat at the table without engaging in the hard work of actually understanding the game though. This particular character is a degree worse than the artificial gamer because they place themselves in what are ostensibly positions of authority in the hobby. These people are artificial designers. They release books, run Kickstarter campaigns that rake in big money, participate in industry panels and win awards but one look at any of their books beyond the surface level shows that they aren’t designing actual games. Somehow though, this mold of designer has completely captured the mainstream RPG market. Let’s dig into this concept of real design versus artificial design and find out what makes these designers impostors so that we can reconquer our hobby.

A real designer’s focus should be on creating a game that works well and delivers upon the fantasy of the chosen genre. The mechanics of the game must be complicated enough that they take into account all relevant variables, but simple enough that they can be understood by a majority of the players. Some games strive for near-total simulation and have appropriately complex mechanics. Others opt for more abstraction which allows for a simpler mechanic. As with all things, there are trade-offs. The more you simulate, the more complicated your game becomes. The more you abstract, the simpler your mechanics become, however on both ends of the spectrum lies an extreme. If a game becomes too granular in its simulation, you have endless modifiers applied to rolls and rounds split into tiny increments of time to simulate every little step that goes into performing an action. If a game becomes too abstracted, then every mechanic becomes the same; make a wish, roll the dice, and see if it comes true. Good designers will sacrifice in one direction or another to give the game the desired feel. GURPS opts for a more granular mechanic. Savage Worlds is a smoother mechanic with an eye towards pulp heroism. A good designer carefully considers what is most important to their game. and designs in that direction. The artificial designer though, does not consider any of this because the mechanics are of least concern to them. Many of their games focus more on “the story” but fail to recognize how the mechanics create emergent narrative. This is why so many of them rally around games like Apocalypse World and Amber Diceless. They don’t want anything hindering their narrative expression. Their games are not framed around the quest for power, but around “exploring feelings” or “dealing with trauma.” Beneath it all though is a total lack of understanding of the tools they are using though. For them, roleplaying games are not actual games with rules because rules are restrictions and restrictions limit creative expression. Besides, actually knowing how mechanics work is a restriction, so expecting people to know that is gatekeeping.

The artificial designer creates games that function more like amusement park dark rides than actual games. Players are not given tools to freely explore the game world. Rather, they are put on a set of tracks that take them from scene to scene. Sometimes they may have targets to blast with their on-ride laser guns like on Men in Black: Alien Attack at Universal Studios, but sometimes even that is too much gameplay for these designers. It’s more about the vibes. It’s about the cool scenes you can set up and moving the players through this funhouse to the end. That’s the long and short of it. It’s no wonder why many of these games are never even played at all. They aren’t games. They’re just presented like games. There are various reasons why this happens, but the two most common ones are that the artificial designer is a frustrated fantasy writer or they are using games to force an ideological message. The frustrated fantasy writer has so many cool ideas in his head for moments, but he just can’t string them together with any kind of coherent narrative. Instead, he just takes his fantasy world, lays train tracks across it and tells people it’s an adventure module. These adventures usually contain some kind of vile villainy villain and a couple of super cool NPCs who were at some point the main characters of the aborted story. There may be a kind of sandbox built around this plot, but the sandbox is never very big nor very deep and it all funnels back into the main plot. It’s just a railroad even if parts of the track are hidden.

The other reason for creating these hollowed-out non-games is to deliver some kind of ideological point. This is what you see in games like Coyote and Crow, Thirsty Sword Lesbians and Shield Maidens. There are bare-minimum mechanics present, usually borrowed liberally from Amber Diceless or Powered by the Apocalypse, but it’s mostly about just having characters of a particular race, sexual proclivity, disability status, blood type, etc. These games don’t even have pretentions of being played. Most of them can’t be played at all in fact. They exist to garner awards and to be streamed once during the corresponding months on the progressive’s liturgical calendar. These people don’t pay attention to serious design because they don’t actually care about gaming. They might have played a few times, usually they haven’t, but their goal is just to conquer every space that humans occupy. They’re invaders like Orcs from Warhammer 40K. They must expand continuously destroying all that they see and remaking it in their ugly image. They should be treated as invaders. We should not be giving them prestigious awards or letting them run panels at industry events. We should be politely but firmly showing them the location of the nearest exit.

Moreso than playing, design is a labor of love with emphasis on labor. It’s hard work and with that hard work should come credibility if the fruits of the labor are worth eating. The Artificial Designer wants the prestige, what little there is, without putting in the immense effort of knowing the games they’re ostensibly designing for. Do not grant them what they ask for. Question their credibility and, when they are found wanting, drive them out of the hobby forever.