In the game Ico, the protagonist "Ico" ventures out to escape an abandoned castle after his own village threw him in there because of his horns, and there he meets a character named Yorda, who has her own special abilities, the most important of which is the ability to save your progress!
So, to advance in the game without fear, you have to hold Yorda's hand—by holding down a button—throughout your journey, and when you find a place to sit, you go there together to save your progress
That is, until the frightening stage arrives, where you get separated from Yorda, and now you can no longer save what you've done—every decision you make or place you reach, all it takes is dying once and you have to redo that entire section from scratch, so you become afraid to make any decision!
That was Fumito Ueda's Fumito Ueda style for making players afraid of making any careless decisions—or rather, it made them grow attached to Yorda's character, since she's the one you cling to after your own village abandoned you
Delivering Ideas
That was a wonderful way of conveying feelings—no need to scare you with terrifying monsters, just using one core mechanic in the game—like removing the save system—can make you feel afraid. Here, the feeling was delivered indirectly, but it still reached the player exactly as the developer intended
But when it comes to ideas, first of all, an idea is anything that comes to mind through reflection and contemplation, and whatever occurs to the human mind—things, solutions, novel suggestions, or analyses of events
A game developer, like any other human being, has their own ideas and opinions, their own thoughts and solutions regarding the world's problems, and conveying ideas through games is made possible in several ways
The developer first has to determine what ideas they want to convey to the player—is it a small, passing side idea, or does the entire game revolve around that one idea? Many games don't rely on delivering just a single idea, but rather several ideas throughout their stages
For example, the game Papers, Please, despite being small, has you play the role of a border control officer. You have to inspect passports and other documents belonging to travelers. You're the one who decides whether to let people through or not.
You might be presented with a mother who has rejected papers, but she needs to travel for the sake of her sick children—would you agree to let her through? What if it were a terrorist wanting to blow up the place and you didn't know it? All of this is framed to keep you constantly questioning one idea (should I let them through?)
Or what will you do when you're playing a game and discover that you're the one who has to sacrifice yourself to save the world—now the choice is in your hands, will you do it and become the candle that burns for everyone else, or will you try to find another way?
Many games present the developer's ideas, and might make you ask philosophical questions about what's around you and about decisions, or the developer might even present their own solution to a certain problem, and you're the one being guided toward that solution
And that might happen through the story and the narration of events, or actually through important decisions that you, as the player, have to make
Delivering Culture
I know a lot of our Arab friends who use games as a way to convey Arab culture through their games, because games truly are a great way to immerse the user/player in Arab culture
The game RDR2 placed the player in the life of the old American West, so you see the ways of the gangs and the hard life there, the ways of making money, and even the shapes of the buildings and houses
All of that is the culture of that time, and many games try, as much as possible, to spread their own cultures
Culture is: certain aspects of human behavior, social practices, and forms of expression such as art, music, dance, rituals, and techniques such as the use of tools, cooking, shelter, and clothing
And to portray a certain culture, like Arab or Islamic culture, you might take on one, several, or even all of these forms of expression—you could make a game about Arabic food, and include a method for preparing samosas!
You can also use graphics, designing levels that carry the culture you want, or use sound effects to express the feelings of that culture's people about something
Games as a Medium
A game's real role is to entertain players, to amuse them and let them unwind, but since it's a way of presenting content, it's like every other way of presenting content—it might carry special messages
Emotions can be used to make the player enjoy themselves more, taking them through several feelings they might not have experienced before, or hadn't experienced blended together this way, like courage and romance! They can also be used to convey social or even political messages
They can even be used to solve cultural problems—if everyone has a negative view of a certain culture, a game might include the good side of that culture, or let you play from the perspective of its people and their own view of the world
Games really are different from any other kind of digital content, since they're the only medium that makes the user interact with the events, and even decide for themselves how events unfold, putting them in the position of the main author and director of the story
Games I'd Recommend
I believe a game developer needs to play games to become an expert! Especially an independent game developer, or someone who wants to specialize in game design, so here I am suggesting some of the games I think deliver important ideas and messages
All the games mentioned!
The games I've mentioned in this post are genuinely inspiring games. Yes, some of them might be hard to play, but unfortunately, just watching them isn't enough—you have to try and actually find a way to play them, so you can get your own experience and see it for yourself
Celeste, Inside, Bastion, OMORI, Florence
All of these are indie games, and that's meant to make it clear that even independent developers have the ability to create games with implicit messages, some of which illustrate depression and its effect on us, and some of which illustrate the formation of relationships between people in love!
Disco Elysium, This War of Mine, Outer Wilds, A Plague Tale: Innocence, It Takes Two
Most of these games, on the other hand, came from private companies and studios, and they've presented history and cultures of different places and situations, some revolving around war, and some around the events and realities of the plague and how to deal with it
Challenges
A game designer is the person responsible for the game's idea and story, its rules and mechanics, its characters and worlds, its levels and challenges, and the player's experience as a whole
So one of their jobs is delivering these messages, feelings, ideas, and cultures to the player, and in terms of how they do it, that's a huge challenge, because it can heavily overlap with the rest of the game's elements
For example, if the game is about wars, should the designer add innocent families? What if the game is meant to be classified as fast-paced action, should decision-making then be made fast or slow?
If it's fast, the player might make the decision immediately without thinking, and so the idea never reaches them in the first place, and they never get the feeling that they made a tough decision—they might not even realize it until they finish the game and discover it later through game reviews. And if this decision is slow to make, then it stands in the way of the game's original classification as fast-paced
Or the opposite—maybe the game's direction is about conveying feelings, like "what is happiness and playfulness," so should it include blood in the game? Certainly not, or maybe yes! And it's the designer who decides that
The challenge also isn't just in conveying these things—there's an even bigger challenge, which is the possibility of delivering the opposite ideas, turning them extreme or harmful, so the designer has to be careful about this
All of that is without even mentioning how hard it is to actually measure the effect of these decisions on the player—did the feeling of sadness, fear, laughter, or happiness actually come through? Did they actually start thinking about the issue raised in the game? These things can't be easily measured
In Conclusion
This is one of the biggest topics in the world of game development. I wanted to talk about storytelling and narrative and their role, and I wanted to talk about techniques and how to combine them to convey feelings, or talk more about graphics and their effect on conveying ideas and cultures
But those are big topics, each with its own specialty. Yes, the game designer is involved in all of them, in order to deliver the desired game with the developer's own vision and to convey all the messages the author wants. Still, that doesn't stop even an independent game developer from combining all of that within themselves
Game development is an enjoyable process with plenty of things that make it stand out, and this field genuinely has its own unique way of delivering messages that immerse the user (the player) in all of this
Tell me about games you've played before that delivered messages that amazed you, and even try, next time you play, to notice the techniques the developer used to convey those messages
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