Hold on to the Tingles

I just posted this to one of the Indie Dev Facebook Groups that I frequent, as I see more and more indies getting down on themselves as their games continue to not sell very well:

Hey everyone! I just wanted to say that despite the current indie climate, and even if it changes for the better or for the worst, you should always remember why you are making games in the first place. 

You are doing something that is so very, very hard and frustrating and at times, I know, you must ask yourself why when you could put your talents into another industry, another trade and make much more money to get all the things you want for yourself or for your family versus this struggle.

I bring this up because I see so many worrying about "being able to support themselves" by doing this; its mentioned daily. I do too, but we can't all make games that sell hundreds of thousands of units, even if they all deserve to do so! There just aren't enough consumers for that. If you hold on to why you got into game dev, that tingly magical feeling of it, then your work will improve; your game will be so much better if its made out of passion and not to support yourself. 

Games made to make money are inspired by sales data, by current trends, by past successes. Games should be inspired by things like history, struggle, love, loss, victory, family, etc; real themes that we all, as humans, encounter at some points in our lives. Good games are no different from good books, as we all know. 

I'll leave you with a quote from the game I'm making right now:

"Fulfillment is a risky balancing act where one must risk breaking the cup they try so desperately to fill."

I think ALL devs should try to support themselves with their work, but that shouldn't be the reason to gamedev in the first place.

The Bootstrappers: Out with the 80s Guy, In with Indie

It's been awhile since my last post, but I have a slew of good excuses: prototyped my first game, put together a little team to build a Kickstarter campaign for it, and have been getting everything ready to (finally) make the big move out west to California or Seattle. While I also have 3 new blog drafts that will collect e-dust for eternity, I've noticed a paradigm shift in the industry that I had to write about.

See, the biggest problems I have with the games industry stem from the culture set in place by this guy:

The 80s Guy (Futurama)

That's not the cartooned version of an actual person, rather he's the archetypal representation of an obsession with the bottom line. 80s Guys do whatever it takes to score the most profit. They do not shy away from drowning others in legal shenanigans to get what they want. They play hardball 24/7.

The ironic part is that these guys made the video game industry as big as it is today. The problem is that they did so on the backs of underpaid developers. This industry is best characterized by the endless struggle between these two factions: those who are here to make their dream game, and those who want to buy yachts.

Now, that is an extremely polarized view. The majority of people in the industry fall into the gray middle area. And most of those grays do so out of necessity: games cost money. Having seen the industry from both sides, I am able to relate. Games need to make money since the people who make them need to feed and house their families. Yes, there are lots of fees from first parties, retailers put on a shitload of pressure (and fees), and then there's all the licensing, marketing, trade shows, and legal dues. Those other things can add up, but there are ways to avoid 95% of them.

The big question is: if 80s Guys are so bad, why do we need them?

In short, they built what we have today. They turned a curiosity into an empire. They were the first ones to make licensed games, to cross-promote, on-disc DLC, DRM, pre-order exclusives, Mountain Dew & Doritos, etc. All of those things are tools to squeeze more money out of consumers. The industry was started by the bright-eyed hopeful (or a few scientists and fantasy nerds), but it was made into the billion dollar force by the 80s Guy.

But the sun is setting on the 80s Guy. Games no longer require gagillion dollar budgets, lawyers, publishers, or retailers to sell. Making games (and still being able to sell them) now just requires a programmer and an artist. People are making games about being an immigration inspector, MUDs are making a comeback (!), and Steam Greenlight is just a spawning pool of all kinds of cool, thought-provoking stuff. But who is making these games for next-to-nothing?

The Bootstrapper - The 80s Guy Antithesis

He waits tables on the weekends to supplement his weekday pizza-delivery income, and spends every night plugging away on his game. He's self-taught through videos, psuedo-mentorships, books, modding. He doesn't care about profits; he cares about his family, his team, and his game. He's always looking forward to the "one day" when its released and its perfect. He is as indie and indie gets.

It's funny how the industry is circling back and relying on the same type of person who started it all in the first place. Without these super-indies the 80s Guy has nothing to push, no new ideas to steal. More and more bootstrappers are appearing as game development becomes cheaper. And the 80s Guys are retiring or moving to other, more profitable ventures. 

Their greatest accomplishment, the gaming console, is in its last generation. Will the Xbox Two even play games? Will consumers need it to? Who knows. All I can say is that I am happy that in the struggle between creativity and profits, creativity is prevailing. There is a merger between the two factions, a new breed of developer. See, bootstrappers also know how to market their games, how to land funding they might require; how to sell. They are not the bright-eyed curious hobbyists of the past. They are here to make games and sell them to make just enough money to fund the next one. Can their games do well? Of course! But money doesn't matter to them; money is an issue of filling a small tank that fuels their passion, not creating a stockpile of excess. 

Profit is the by-product to the bootstrapper, not the goal.

RPG Systems: A Balance of Freedom

Do you get tingles at the end of your spine when thinking/working/playing with game mechanics? When a new MMO or RPG comes out do you pour hours (or days) into creating character builds, even though you do not have any plans to actually play it? I sure as hell do; my current fascination is the Smite "closed" beta since Hi-Rez did a lot of work adding options for players. If you haven't played in awhile (last I played was when Cupid came out), fire it up and look around.

Besides Smite, the past few weeks have been spent absorbed in pre-production system design for my first title. It has been wonderful. I could (and do) work on systems all damn day. There's just something magical about weaving math and narrative together. Working systems reminds me of why I got into this business; for the tingles.

In an earlier post I talked about the 3 ways RPGs balance their games: Homogenization, Anomalization, and Self-Limitization. These are used to make sure that each choice a player can make is as good as the next in the context of completing a game's victory conditions. That's the "golden rule": all decisions, while different, must be equal; especially in games with PvP. Off the top of my head, only a handful of games have achieved this: Final Fantasy X's wonderful spheregrid comes to mind, Guild Wars 2 has a great omnipotent approach to it, and the new World of Warcraft talent system is a wonderful example of Self-Limitization.

But how do all of these systems work? Why do we think they are fun?

Limited Freedom

Most game designers set out to create a "playstyle" that revolves around doing the "same thing but different", or the choices revolve around a pre-defined meta. WoW's new talent system, for example, lets the player make choices within the very strict tank/dps/heal mechanic. The fact that the game's "meta" is pre-set and hammered in place by the developer allows them to cage-in the player's choices. The player cannot make bad choices because the game's systems do not allow it; I cannot make a Mage to tank heroic raids because it's simply impossible due to a lack of gear, talents, etc., although I do remember blink-kiting (with ice block) the last boss of UBRS back in the day.

RPG systems are simply limits on the player's freedom. "Skills" are the actions a character can take that differentiates them from other characters. Here they are in order from most freedom to least:

• Blank Slate (Skyrim)
• Populate character with any selection of Skills
• Customize those Skills to differentiate from those with the same Skills
• No limit on how Skills can be employed
• Archetype/Class (World of Warcraft, Guild Wars 2)
• Choose from a collection of Skills that work toward a gameplay concept
• Customize those pre-selected Skills to differentiate from the same archetype
• Hero (League of Legends, Smite)
• No choice of Skills; only choice in how Skills are prioritized
• Customized by choices shared among ALL heroes
• Linear (Devil May Cry, Mega Man)
• No choice of Skills; only when/if they are unlocked
• Skills designed to make meeting victory conditions easier, but they are not required to do so

Character statistics (Stats) systems (Int, Agi, Str, etc.) are different from Skills in that they do not enable new actions (for the most part), they are just another way to customize Skills. When playing D&D I can still try to punch an ogre in the mouth with a 1 strength character , but I will most likely fail horribly.

RPG systems of all types are so much damn fun because they create the illusion of freedom; freedom players can explore in their quest to find the ultimate solution to the problem of the game. When we play Black Ops II we are striving to find the optimal set of weapon, attachments and loadout based on our preferences. We are able to form opinions that certain weapons perform better than others, or certain perks are better for certain maps. Opinions are just choices relevant to a specific context. It is my opinion to re-play Fallout: New Vegas as a silver-tongued master of stealth and hacking, who utterly lacks any useful combat skills.

Note that limiting your player's freedom is not negative: Mega Man and Devil May Cry, while extremely linear, are extremely fun. In fact I think some gamers thrive on linearity. They do not wish to form opinions; that is not fun for them (and there is nothing wrong with that). Not all games have RPG systems after all. But for me it's all about talent trees, character builds, equipment guides, numbers and stats. And the tingles.

Employed vs. Indie: The Curse of Financial Fasting

It has been a solid month since I was laid off. My wife and I hashed out the finances. We re-budgeted all of our spending. We moved pieces of our lives around. It seems I was left with a decision between two things:

1. Hunt for a job in the industry
2. Stay at home to raise my son and develop games on my own

Initially it was the first option, no doubt. I'm young; 24, and inexperienced; this past job was my first in the industry, straight out of college. We discussed Gearbox, iD Software, and Robot Entertainment since we live in DFW. I checked Gamasutra's job boards, trolled my LinkedIn groups. We talked about moving down to Austin where the indies live, going to California with the head honchos, or even to Salt Lake City because I had a lead there. We talked about the score of unfinished GDDs and development timelines I have sitting in a folder on my desk. We talked about my degree in game design, my growing library of C# and Unity books, Kickstarter, and "that one guy you met who ..." We talked about "what do you really want to do with your life".

We did not talk about going outside the industry. 

That's the main reason I married my wife. She believes in me. "You need to do what you love!" she exclaimed so easily. She is a market researcher so she works from home and makes a solid commission-based living. She's very good at her job; driven, inspired, she is one of my top role models.

So it seems we're going with door number two. I am absolutely terrified.

Door Number Two

So how possible is it, really, for me to bring one of my ideas to life? I spent the last year and nine months on the publishing side of the industry, so I have extensive knowledge of how and why games never see the light of day (always boils down to money). This resulted in a self-fulfilling prophecy filled with failure, starvation, and divorce.

I coined this life-choice "Financial fasting" because I am willingly choosing to make less money compared to other options. Yes, this huge risk could have a big payoff. Statistics on the financial success of a dev's first title would imply otherwise, but it is still possible. Regardless I stand by the bleak outset that my first game won't make any money, so therefore this path leads not to fortune.

But it can't be all bad, can it? What exactly do I have going for me? Let us see:

1. Modest scripting knowledge in the Unity engine. I know the basics and where to go to solve any problems that come about. After finally finishing Unity 3.x Game Development Essentials (Goldstone) cover to cover, I can read other's script with relative ease plus get around the engine.
2. Very experienced in the backend of a game's release: project management, costs, distribution channels, politics, licensing fees, legal stuff, marketing, PR, QA, etc.
3. Passionate academic game designer. Good for doing stuff like, "Make a black and white game about the color orange."
4. Connected to a few badasses in the industry.
5. Married to a supportive sugar mama who is also smokin' hot!

No, I've never made a video game. No, I'm not fluent in a programming language (although getting close in C#). No, I don't have any money. I also have no idea what I'm going to do for art/sound assets due to the previous point and I can't make them myself.

But it's really all I ever think about; every day. It can be quite stressful.  Is this the same for all indies? Is this why they forgo things like food, relationships, and hygiene to develop a game that will most likely flop financially? It's a curse! 

I bet every developer considers this at some point in their career: "Can I do this on my own?" Most indies are created when a large studio goes under, like so many little planets settling into orbit around each other when a star goes supernova. And when those planets cannot sustain themselves, they break apart into comets that hurdle through space to crash into other planets or stars to start the process over again. Can a comet become a planet without ever moving, without all the violence?

What drives a person to do this to themselves? We've all heard the horror stories, although I've yet to see the movie. The plight of indies reminds me of the old masters. Seurat in his pointillist masterpiece, "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte" suffered a great deal for this piece. He lived in a very, very small room where this giant canvas had to sit corner to corner diagonally, pretty much taking up the entire space. For over 2 years. Not to mention it was rejected, despite how he went every single day out the the park to sketch the inhabitants. Why did he do this?

Imagine if more people who suffered from the indie curse were not victims of their circumstances. Imagine if more indies were sponsored similarly to fine artists. Imagine if more indies had crazy hot spouses to shoulder life's burdens so they can do their work. What types of games would we see?

I never believed in testing the water. It's time to jump in, head first. If I have learned anything from my parents it's that the advantage of youth will keep me from drowning. I have been hard at work on planning out the project: polishing the GDD, re-organizing the development timeline; today I finished up the base for my concept reference libraries for when its time to shop for talent. You can never, ever plan too much!

This is easily the second most terrifying-yet-exciting thing I have ever experienced, second only to having children.

The Purpose of Choice: Role versus Power

I define RPGs by two elements backed by one key mechanic:

Aesthetic Choices - choosing character background, hair color, race, gender, moral aptitude, clothing, skins, etc. These do not grant any sort of advantage over any other player/character, nor do they impact the game's mechanics. 

City of Heroes (R.I.P.) costumes come to mind. It matters not if my Scrapper is a 5 ft. skinny woman in heels or a hulking 9 ft. beefmass in his underwear.

Tactical Choices - talents, loadouts, stat allocation, class/skill choices, ice vs fire, sniper vs shotgun, etc. These do NOT (should not) grant Mechanical Power gains by comparison to other tactical choices of the same level. 

For example, equipping the 'Force of Nature' on TF2's Scout changes your playstyle, but does not grant you excess Mechanical Power compared to using the basic shotgun. In essence these choices are aesthetic in that they do not impact Mechanical Power, but they affect the game's mechanics instead of appearance. Of course, tactical choices are only effective if the game is properly balanced.

Gains of Mechanical Power - characters grow stronger over time as tasks are completed and/or experience is earned/battles are won. Increased stats, more talent points, cooler weapon attachments, gear, etc. This is defined by a character being literally stronger than another outside of skill. 

For example, regardless of skill/competency, a lvl 1 Rogue will never be able to beat a lvl 90 Paladin in a duel unless the lvl 90 just stands there dancing. Mechanical Power here is not from the duel being "Rogue v. Paladin", rather it's "Level 1 v. Level 90".

These are used together to give the illusion of growth. Growth is important for players. It establishes relevance for the game; makes us feel like we did something important, when all we are really doing is staring at a screen, hitting buttons, while possibly interacting with people.

But growth is also something you can do without these RPG elements. Growth is really intrinsic to every game out there; it is a staple of interaction. Moving from stage 1-1 to 1-2 in Super Mario Bros. is growth. Completing a quest hub in Guild Wars 2 is growth. I would actually define growth as any type of progress relevant to the victory conditions defined by a game.

However we can not argue against the effectiveness of RPG elements. They're downright addicting (read: fun) when done correctly. But why? What is their purpose? Now that we have definitions in place, I'd like to examine the impact of the "Role" in Role Playing Games.

Aesthetics versus Power

According to Raph Koster in his wonderful book A Theory of Fun, players will always go for the choices that they perceive to be the "best" to meet the specified goal or victory condition. While I do agree with this in many games, I think RPGs are an exception. RPGs place Aesthetics on the same level as Power, so many players will make choices based purely off of the Aesthetic side of the coin.

I am guilty of this myself: back in vanilla WoW I loved the mage fire tree so that's all I played, despite how my guild was attempting MC and then onto BWL. My character's Power suffered as a result of not choosing frost because I'd rather shoot big explosive fireballs than dinky little snowballs.

Broken down even further, WoW's classes are designed to fulfill either tanking, DPS or a healing role. They are then balanced around being able to fulfill one or more of these roles as well as the next class. In theory, a priest should be able to heal as well as a pally or druid; one is not better than the other. So why play priest? Assuming that they ONLY plan on healing and each class was properly 100% balanced, how do players conclude what they would like to play?

Aesthetic and Tactical choices are the key. Without them this decision would be very difficult. More so, without a certain quality of these choices, it would be impossible for players to decide because it is then completely irrelevant without Aesthetics and Tactics. For example, what if the decision was more polarized: instead of priest, pally, druid it was red, blue, green? Which would you choose?

Here's a real-world example of this. Remember the old X-Men arcade game? It came to XBLA a couple months ago so I HAD to pick it up to be faceslapped by nostalgia. The question is, which character did you play as? Each hero has the same moves and supers that accomplish the same thing in slightly different ways. Point is: there is no "best" choice. Despite this, I always played as Nightcrawler because he was (is) my fave X-Man. He was the "best" solely due to Aesthetics.

This brings me to League of Legends. In LoL we see a monetization of Aesthetics and Tactics through selling Skins and new Characters. It's not the only game to do this (it's what makes F2P to begin with), but in LoL I found something interesting. Whenever Riot decides to revamp a character's portrait art or in-game model, that character gets used much more often by players than before. I'd like to see numbers on it since I'm just going off of what I see other people do in games.

This begs the question: if Ezreal looked completely different and had different lore (but played exactly the same), would he be as popular as he is? Imagine if Ezreal was actually "Ezmerelda: The Burger Queen" who was a morbidly obese woman wielding bottles of condiments for weapons. Would the pros pick him as often despite how his Mechanical Power was exactly the same? Does the undisputed fact that Ryze looks totally badass (especially with the new art) factor into how much I play him? In the end it is important that designers factor in Aesthetics into their balance charts.

Successful Balance of Design

So game designers have a very tricky balancing act to do in order to pull off RPG elements. They must balance each Tactical and Aesthetic choice with how much Power is gained through play. But when you add in the element of player skill, balancing goes out the window. For example, I think people can agree that Cassiopeia is harder to play than Ryze. Her abilities simply require more practice than smartcast spam Ryze. As a result, Cass will always have a little bit more Mechanical Power than Ryze since there's is a higher margin for error while playing her. It looks unfair on paper, but is balanced in reality (again...arguably).

People argue that LoL has a very "washed out" roster compared to DotA 2 or Heroes of Newerth. The Power differences between characters is much slimmer because that's how Riot chose to balance them, whereas DotA is balanced around having EVERY character be absurdly overpowered. Which is more effective? Or what about how Team Fortress 2 balances their elements? They enact self-limiting choices that contain advantages and disadvantages in one. Choose option B where you gain X but lose Y.

It seems that there are 3 ways to balance this trio of RPG elements:

Homogenization - Balance the game by making the differences between how Tactical choices mesh with Power gains very small. The problem with this method is that the Tactical choices become more and more irrelevant since the choices differ less and less between themselves.

While this tactic is employed by Riot and Blizzard quite a bit in their game(s), ArenaNet's Guild Wars 2 is the epitome of homogenization. Each class can do everything to the same effect (more or less). While this does make the game extremely well balanced and fair (which is good for competitive titles), it reduces the amount of emergent gameplay; the holy grail of good game design.

Anomalization - Balance the game by making each choice contain one huge anomaly that defies other balancing conventions within the game. Yes, I made this word up. This is the "everyone is overpowered so no-one is overpowered" approach.

DotA 2 uses this to great effect. The problem with this method of balancing is that it can be very difficult to achieve perfect Starcraft-like balance. In the case of DotA 2, it can also limit gameplay choices for each character (why would you build Ursa as a support?). The good thing about it is that its sets the stage for some serious emergent gameplay. It also takes the focus away from balance-between-characters and focuses on balance-between-teams.

Self-limitization -  Balance your game by making the choices within contain disadvantages equal to the advantages. 

Team Fortress 2 is the most polarized example of this method, although it's found in every game mentioned in this article to some extent. This method is based around the basic concept of Tactical choices mentioned above: achieve different gameplay while retaining equal Mechanical Power across all choices.

Koster said it's difficult to critique game design since fun is so subjective and unique to each person. But I think we can instead look at what we know is fun and go from there. We know emergent gameplay is always fun. It's fun when a game develops a meta-game within itself. Developing strategies is fun. I spend hours (days) pouring over talent trees and character builds. All of these things are contingent on incorporating the elements list above. Having fun is dependent on having choices. Choices do not mean anything if they are not relevant. Relevance is established through Aesthetics; the "Role" in Role Playing Games.

A Player's Time vs. Their Money: The Sequel Problem

Which of these two is worth more to you: a player's time or a player's money?

The answer may seem obvious: money, of course! If I obtain a player's money, who cares how much/often they play my game? If I can convince them to drop $10-60 bucks, I win; it doesn't matter afterwards since sales are sales. I can reinvest that money into my team, pump out new products, and stay in business.

The problem with this is that it is a front-loaded system. The money is made up front in huge initial bursts and then all the talk/support/community falls out over time as people play the game, get tired of it, and move on. Most games are, from their core design, meant to be played this way. Most "little black book" ideas that designers have are constructed to be a linear experience that ends at some point. But what if you look at the most (critically and/or financially) successful games in the past 5 years? How many of them actually have an end? According to Metacritic (I know, I know "ugh...Metacritic") these are the best games ever:

I know that chart really speaks to Metacritic's lack of credibility (no Shadow of the Collosus or MGS 1?) But to my point: out of all of those games, how many had or are a sequel? Every single one, with one exception. And most of them were designed to "end". No shit, who cares: good games make money, so we should create more content from successful IPs so we can make more money and buy corvettes and private jets, right? You know how those game developers love their private jets.

Stay with me now. From a design standpoint, what is a sequel? It's an addition to something that originally was planned to end at some point. When initially designing a game, designers have to build the game with the possibility of the game having one or more sequels. It must end, but not end. Through this development method (publishing method?) a game's core narrative and mechanics are limited by how much money it can generate.  In a way, games are really only designed to make money; they cannot exist if they do not make money or convince stakeholders that there is money to be made. For example, if Half Life 1 didn't sell we would have never seen Half Life 2. While this isn't an ironclad rule, and it also applies to other industries, it's nice to imagine a world where the creative process isn't affected at ALL by the financial success of the creation.

Books, for example, are mostly free of this constraint. Their development costs are so low that a writer can just write for funsies while the potential for revenue be damned! Imagine what types of games would come about if they were not designed to make money.

Back to my point: what about the games that are not designed to end? Games that hearken back to their more primal roots of competition? With a game designed from the beginning to never end, you remove the sequel problem entirely. This changes how designers approach them, setting these endless games down a completely different design path from their colleagues. Not having to worry about a potential sequel bestows this sense of freedom to the designer, a sense of finality to the mechanics and narrative.

While this concept is associated mainly to F2P/Freemium titles, the concept of trying to attain a player's time rather than have them buy your product extends into ALL games. For example, what would the Call of Duty IP be like without it's Multiplayer component?

The main problem with trying to attain players' time is that their time is much more limited than their wallets. Any competitive title worth it's weight in in-game currency requires many months to years of practice to become "good" or even competent at it. This requires your players to actually want to devote hours upon hours of playtime to develop such proficiency. I have quite a few F2P titles on my desktop that I no longer play, but keep them installed "just in case". I log about 10-20 hours in one, then move on to the next. Sometimes I'm in the mood for Tribes Ascend, other times I want to tear it up in LoL or Awesomenauts. In fact, I only really "play" 1-3 F2P titles from each genre. I doubt I am the only one in the world who does this.

When developers focus on trying to make my time-investment more worthwhile, I am more willing to spend more time (and eventually more money) on their game. I quit playing Smite because I didn't feel that learning the nitty gritty paid off at all compared to perfecting LoL. I quit playing Bloodline Champions (BLC) because despite how I LOVE it, having to play on European servers makes me tear my hair out. I know that, in the long run, I won't be able to "go pro" with BLC because of this reason.

We are seeing a big shift in the industry towards never ending games. I can attest that they're way more fun to design as probably 80% of my black book ideas are designed to be played forever. Gamers are maturing (might not be the right word) into wanting more from the games they spend so much time on, they want to be rewarded for developing insane APM in Starcraft II. They want to go down in history for having the fastest run in Dustforce (which has a great soundtrack by the way).

Time actually translates into money because of this. Let's say I decide to dedicate my time to becoming a beast in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 1. What are the chances I will buy the next sequel(s)? I personally only started buying LoL skins when I hit level 30 and really started taking the game seriously. I decided that LoL was relevant to my life, and started investing money into it. People naturally have no qualms investing in things they seem important; relevance = importance.

The bottom line is: players seek to establish relevance for their colossal wastes of time and effort. Give your players relevance and you will win their time (and their money).

SIDENOTE: I recently was laid off from my sweet producer gig, so I will be updating this thing twice monthly from here on out. I decided I am going to stay home for a couple years while my wife finishes school, raise my son, develop my programming skills and collaborate on a few games. I'll add them to the portfolio page as they crop up, so stay tuned!

The Issue of Funding: Medium vs. Amusement

With so many, many proponents to games being considered an art form (whatever that means), why is it still ...not? In one word, Funding. With how expensive it is to actually go from concept to gameplay, games are on the trek up the long, hard road to becoming a medium. Traditional art had to do it, as well as movies, music; games have to find their place in our society before we will widely accept them as a medium rather than an amusement.

Before I continue, we need definitions:

Medium - An agency or means of doing something. (Dictionary.com)

I do appreciate dictionary.com for it's eloquence. Games as a medium are capable of things music, movies, traditional art, etc. are not: they allow the user to interact with the thought/idea. This allows artists to tweak the level of transparency to a much higher degree than they can with other mediums. Games as a medium provoke the simple question: Is it the job of the designer to foster the user to build their own experience or to describe to them, inch by inch, what is taking place inside their own imagination? Should I build a world for you to explore or tear open my skull for you to peer inside and look around?

Amusement - The provision or enjoyment of entertainment. (Dictionary.com)

This is the other much more common view: games as toys or novelties; distractions that lack the capability for depth. How can one draw meaning from playing with Play-doh? How is that any different from drawing meaning from games?

The Issue of Funding
Games are expensive to create. Angry Birds, a relatively "simple" design ('simple' as in low number of mechanics, not 'simple' as in lack of brilliance) and low 2D asset load, still cost $140,000 for the first playable. While no numbers were posted, the iOS super-retro game Monkey Labour cost over 300+ manhours for one very experienced programmer, not to mention the efforts of the other 4, +2 on contract.

Regardless of the huge difference between the financial success of each of those, they both cost a lot of money to make. Yes, GTA IV had a mega budget, including marketing/ads in the hundreds of millions, and SW:TOR was the most expensive MMO to create, ever, but we must look at the issue of funding through the eyes of the individual artist; we must look at development costs the same way a sculptor views her purchase of clay, tools, and the rent for her studio space. Very few sculptures cost $140k to create. Yes, you could argue the giant marble blocks Michelangelo carved cost quite a bit, but  Michelangelowas more like the Electronic Arts of his day, not the Rovio. This brings me to my next point:

Funding fuels the creative process.

Consider the painter. Regardless of WHAT she wants to paint, it all costs the same more or less. She is completely free of the issue of funding in this regard. The game designer, much like the director, is faced with the issue that their creative vision will costs large sums of money based on what it is. Rovio could not have made the next GTA, Halo, Gears of War, Call of Duty, with their team and setup. I'm not saying they were not capable of doing it, they just did not have the funding.

So, in a way...funding is as important to the design of a game as the mechanics and elements. Game Design Documents should be filtered based on the amount of money that can be pumped into it. You also cannot argue that people can simply get together and build something like Gears of War 3 on their own time. They could, but time costs money. They could, instead, spend that time making money and then use that money to fund a large team.

All of this means that the creative process is in the hands of those with the money. Granting "full creative freedom" doesn't really exist in the publisher-developer model, even if both parties want to. The one with the money will always have the final say.

Let's go back to Michaelangelo. The church funded his art, as they did most (all?) of the old masters. Without the church's interest (and money), they would not have been able to exist as artists. What if the church didn't fund them, but some eccentric gazillionaire from another country? Or what if it had been a different religion? What if Leonardo became wealthy off of one of his inventions, and used that to fund his own art, for his own ends? The result would have been COMPLETELY different artwork. This is a prime example of how the issue of funding affects content. We see it today in every game we play: studios are afraid to take big leaps in design, because funding comes from publishers, who are doing the logical thing and taking lowest-risk-greatest-reward projects. Not just in IPs, either, but in mechanics and elements as well.

I get a little depressed when looking at my black book of ideas. I have hundreds upon hundreds in here, but only a few are actually feasible because of how expensive the others are. As much as I love working on one of my big MMOs, in the back of my head there's always a little voice saying that it's just a waste of time. Their design and my craft is limited only by the issue of funding.

The Good News: Commission Based Funding

Certain business models are immune or work around the issue of funding. Alpha-funding, donations, Kickstarter, etc. all work around it. The project earns funding based on the amount of interest. In a way, it's a completely reverse model of distribution: instead of a product being created, set up to be sold, and then the money is made back, the money is made up front. Developers get to (in theory) feed their families, take care of their bills, expenses, etc. up front, while working on the project. When the project is finished, they move on to the next one. They get to always work and make money, consumers get exactly what they want. This is WAY more similar to how today's traditional artists make a lot of their money: commissions. It also front-loads the marketing aspect of the project.

Games are art, in my mind, but our society does not treat them as such: they are bought and sold as amusements. The entire industry is moving in the right direction: front-loaded distribution, lower development costs, and an expanding audience. And when it does happen, when games earn their beret, nobody will notice or even care. It will be as natural a transition as any other; evolution is fueled by the mutations we've seen in the past decade, but the process will always be slow and steady.