Call & Response; Game Design Problem #2

I was working on a tiny little analog game this past week when I realized that I wasn’t getting the same satisfaction that I had when working digitally. It was still satisfying, to be sure, but it was different. Why?

So I asked myself what I enjoyed about designing something. And I reasoned that my favorite part of the process was knowing that I was creating something worthy of interaction, and I wanted that interaction to be satisfying to the player.

I know that this is largely born out of my own desire to be satisfied with interactivity. As a player, I desire reaction. Even if my action is meaningless, I want there to be confirmation of it.

This goes beyond game design. This is a general principle of interface design, and a very, very important one. Let’s call it “call and response,” not only because they’re the first words that popped into my head, but because, as it turns out, they have a real and utterly parallel meaning.

According to Wikipedia (you know, right now), Call and reponse is “spontaneous verbal and non-verbal interaction between speaker and listener in which all of the statements (‘calls’) are punctuated by expressions (‘responses’) from the listener”. Apparently this plays a large role in West African culture, and emphasizes the importance of communication as a dialogue (however obvious that sounds). With call and response, a statement does not pass without affirmation of its reception, regardless of how the listener regards it.

In terms of interface, “call and response” means a button should tell me when I click on it, before a system performs any consequential tasks. This response could be visual (the button depresses), aural (the button makes a clicking noise), or a combination thereof.

This isn’t masters level geek speak; this is common, antiquated knowledge. Kids are taught from an early age to expect reaction from their interaction. My 7-month-old niece has several toys that are designed solely to react. When she rolls her giant fuzzy cube to the side with the cow, it moos. When she presses a button on her pretend phone, it plays music. These are toys, just as much as a game is. And what I’ve learned is that entirely separate from the design of a digital game — and just as important — is the design of its interface. A player needs to know the game is listening. A player wants reaction.

After figuring this out, I realized that satisfaction in an analog game was a very different beast than the satisfaction in a digital one, because the digital medium is able to respond to interaction in a way that a board game, or a card game, can’t.

I suppose this is important to reconcile because I’m looking for a particular satisfaction out of designing analog games that I’m never going to get. Players are parsing their own data in an analog environment, and as such, must be their own listeners. I’ll figure out what this means later.

» big red button from anatomist on Flickr. Thanks!