Chaim Gingold on Miniature gardens
I’ve been trying to read more game design papers recently, especially since the blog-distributed slides and notes from this years GDC are trickling through, and one thats really struck a chord is Miniature Gardens and Magic Crayons by Chaim Gingold. Gingold is currently working at Maxis as a key part of the prototyping group within the Spore team (what a job) and is described as Will Wright as “The Toymaker” of his design team. I’m fascinated by the rapid prototyping process employed by Gingold and others on the team (previously including Kyle Gabler of the inspirational Experimental Gameplay Project, now of Indie startup 2DBoy) and their ability to tackle the enormous problems that Spore must continue to burp up. Anyway more on prototyping later, back to the Thesis.
The first theme of the paper is Miniature gardens. Chaim’s discussion compares the design of a game world or playspace with similar practices in such areas as the design of Japanese gardens and playgrounds. They afford the designer the opportunity to strategically select and compose elements to represent a small scale representation of a bigger phenomenon or environment (perhaps not unlike Epcot, except not shit). For the player or user they allow the safe exploration of an abstracted world governed by simple, learnable rules - one that has been designed to be consistently engaging and intriguing, and to inspire wonder and exploration in the player.
The paper discusses a number of different techniques that can be employed to promote certain qualities in a play-space (such as the technique of miegakure, or Hide-And-Reveal, which is used in Japanese gardens to create the illusion of a larger space than is actually present - employed in games by placing intriguing objects in unreachable places in the distance).
Theres not much point in excessive paraphrasing, far better to read it yourself.
