Again I fall into the habit of mistakenly reading one weeks reading for another this academic year. I say habit but it never usually happens that often, so yeah. For this weeks reading I did the next weeks reading of Gregory Trefry's book regarding casual games design and the topic was managing!It was excellent, and since we're not going to discuss it at class until next week I'll talk about it a bit here, but not specifically the Trefry chapter, but the other reading that I did which was quite interesting.
Emily Short writes a really interesting article about management games and how they can be used to create good stories in an article called “Opinion: Why Time-Management Games Ought To Be Great At Story-telling (And Why They Mostly Aren't)” In this article she talks a lot about how Miss management is a PARAGON of narrative and interaction in games, however before that she describes what a good narrative would include.
She puts a lot of emphasis at the start on how relationships between characters shouldn't explode into drama from the very beginning, and however, should evolve over time – causing you to create a deeper emotional bond with the characters, almost as if they are your friends, or co-workers, as they would be in Miss management.
She then goes on to re-enforce that what she said, talking about various issues regarding managing life, friends, work and time, and how there is never time for everything at once. Then she asks the question I want to talk about in this blog; “How to present this in games, though?” well... I think we already have, well actually... The Japanese have.
Emily Short said that Miss Management is a PARAGON of narrative and interaction in games, and management games are perfect for this sort of narration, and I agree with that. But I feel that there has been a completely different genre of games that has been around for a long while now, from about the mid 90's, the Visual Novels, and I'm going to go out on a limp here and say that Visual Novels are management games that blend narrative and interaction almost perfectly.
A Visual Novel isn't a conventional game... it's more like a visual... novel, a novel with pictures, an interactive book, an interactive fiction book, as wikipedia would describe it. But really Visual Novels come with all sorts of styles, but typically a Visual Novel is an interactive book. Most of the time the interaction involves the player making choices all throughout the game, typically these choices are made to help the main character get some girl or something like that. Some Visual Novels might incorporate a skill training mechanic to make your character perhaps more appealing to one character or something like that. But basically in a visual novel, all the things you do count.
So let's get our facts straight here, Emily Short praises Miss Management for the fact that characters are pleased or displeased depending on what treats you decide to give the other employees of the office, well, in generic Visual Novel A, all the decisions you make please certain characters while others they might piss off, Miss Managmement is praised for having interesting characters with whom you feel you have a relationship, as well as offering a casual experience. Visual Novels, depending on the quality, provide vivid characters that you get to know over time as well as the extremely casual experience of reading a novel.
Okay okay, so things might have gotten a bit too nutty. I'll take it down a notch for now and refer to some things Trefry said regarding management games; in Chapter 7 of Casual Games Design; Designing the Play for the Gamers in all of us, Trefry refers to Diner Dash and how that is a great example of a management game, combining complexity with simplicity.
Trefry says that Diner Dash involves a lot of time management, and it's true, he says that the fact that Flo takes her own time to get between the table to take orders means that she has her own time you must be aware of, as do the customers, and all the other things and you must take that all into consideration. He makes a clever metaphor to this, regarding it as spinning plates. Well when you think about it trying to balance all the relationships in a visual novel is much like spinning plates isn't it? In a visual novel it's impossible to please everyone, or get everyone's ending at once. But it is essential to please certain people.
Emily Short also says that the shape of a relationship develops slowly and you can't do everything at once. In Visual Novels this is especially true, and it seems like the spinning plates metaphor could be attributed to these games.
Trefry then goes on to talk about Cake Mania and how there is a thin layer of matching over the time management. I suppose what I'm trying to say here is that in Visual Novels there is a matching mechanic, of course, you match your answers to the characters to what the characters will want/won't want to hear. But Miss Management also features a thin layer of matching, and the decisions of the management and choices have consequences. In Cake Mania there are also consequences for giving the wrong customer the wrong cake, and you can't serve all the customers at once. Much like you can't please all the characters in a Visual Novel.
Let's hop back onto the Emily Short article again for a quick second; she says that the routine is important so you grow attached to the characters. Visual Novels provide a routine activity along side all the wonderfully cheesy dialogue. That activity might be whatever the main character chooses, be it going to school every day or going on a date with the girl you pursued, or whatever. The best example of this I can give, from my limited experience with Visual Novels, is in an indie VN called Brass Restoration where the characters morning is always mundane and the same on every iteration. He meets up with his friend and goes to school.
By all means, and the descriptions that Emily Short had given, Visual Novels should be the ideal management games with stories, excluding of course the time mechanic, but who said that time management was necessary? No one.
I feel like I've said enough on this for now so I'm going to wrap it up.
I think Visual Novels are management games that are great at story telling, but the key thorn in my rant is that Emily Short is talking about time management(despite the fact that she never mentioned the time management mechanic of Miss Management in her article), while Visual Novels mostly don't involve time management. Well I guess they could, depending on the game, but yeah. No time management, but there is a boat load of other features that describe a management game, albeit one lacking interaction(again, depending on which one). Trefry is also talking about time management, in all the examples I've given from him. But whatever, I could rationalise everything but that should be saved for another rant.
Bibliography
Short, E. (2008). Opinion: Why Time-Management Games Ought To Be Great At Story-telling (And Why They Mostly Aren't). Available: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/18769/Opinion_Why_TimeManagement_Games_Ought_To_Be_Great_At_Storytelling_And_Why_They_Mostly_Arent.php
Trefry, G (2010). Casual Games Design; Designing Play for the Gamer in All of Us. Burlington: Elsevier. p139-154.
