(paraphrasing) "game design is creating/control the player's experience through the establishment of rules" - Eric Zimmerman
"Writing music is like designing the air of the world." - Nobuo Uematsu
"In each case, it makes sense to think of game designers less as storytellers than as narrative architects." - Henry Jenkins
A game is...
- a closed system
- with structured conflict
- that results in an unequal outcome.
"... we use narrative to make sense of our lives, to process information, and tell stories about a game we have played." - Rules of Play, Zimmerman
From The Cinema of the Future, Morton Heilig...
With the forming of society, different men concentrated on one of these three phases, and by learning to cast the results of their labor into concrete forms (that could be passed from man to man, and generation to generation) they created science, art, and industry. These three have the same methods and aims in the social body as the mind, heart, and muscle do in individual man. Their goals are clear. For science it is to bestow the maximum knowledge on humanity. For art it is to digest this knowledge into the deeper realms of feeling, generating emotions of beauty and love that will guide the crude energies of mankind to constructive actions. And for industry it is to act on the material world so as to procure more living energy for mankind. The success with which each field can approach its goal depends on its understanding of method.
Science has come the closest because it has uncovered the individual's scientific thought processes and codified it into a clear and systematic method of experimentation. Consciously applying this method, it makes more discvoeries in one year than previously were made in milleniums. Writing, international mail, and international conferences have long been efficient ways of distributing its findings to humanity.
Industry, within the last one hundred years, has also made great strides toward its goal because production geniuses like Ford have rationalized it to the last degree. They have instigated assembly line, mass production techniques that pour out more food, machines, and fuels in one year than were produced in centuries. The problem of distributing its bulky goods has been solved theoretically and only awaits practical application.
It is the middle field, art, which today is furthest from its goal. The world is woefully barren of peaceful, tolerant, humanitarian feelings and the art that should create them. And this is because, as yet, art has evolved no clear-cut methodology to make it as efficient as science and industry in creating its product. Art is now struggling feverishly to achieve this, and only in the light of this struggle and the laws it seeks to establish will we be able to understand the innovations that prompted this article.