How to Make Your Players Stay with Graner Ray

From personal experience with doing sound design in theatre, I wholeheartedly agree with Crawford and Graner Ray that design documentation is essential.  In the chaos, the constant sea of motion and change, that is a large-scale production, the design document is the one constant.  It is the holy text that brings everyone into orbit to form a stable system.  The design document  can be easily related to the Ten Commandments in their importance.  Running into any production without design documentation is just about the same as firing blind in a gunfight, you may kill it and come out of it the hero but chances are you're just setting yourself up for failure.  One of the major things stressed in my program is the necessity for such documentation, and I have shot myself in the foot in the past by not having it.

I particularly enjoyed their method of re-analyzing the core concept of gameplay to increase what they call emotional tie-in, and what prior authors we've read would refer to as agency, psychological investment, or engagement, as well as to broaden the potential audience for a game.  Gender alienation is an issue mass market games, where you often play a caucasian male who smashes, shoots, slices and just generally brutalizes and murders things.  Yes, that's a gross exaggeration but it's also an unfortunate truth.  And while it may be true that many mass market games are gender alienating, I believe that there is a time and place for using alienation as a mechanic.  Not every story or truth that has been told is applicable to both genders, as there are certain features of a culture that are gender specific.  Before I back myself into too difficult of a space, I just want to acknowledge that I'm oversimplifying this issue for the sake of time. Gender roles are something that are extremely intricate and philosophically challenging. Rather, I just want to acknowledge that its okay to tailor a game towards a certain audience so long as you understand what doing so means and entails.  Mass-marketed games are an entirely different beast than a game that is intended to be gender-charged in some manner.

The authors argue that mass-marketed games tend to alienate their female audience based on the larger game design concept.  They use the example of a King Arthur game where the original design has the player locked into playing one of the four Knights of the Round Table.  This instantly limits the player to playing a male character, which can be a disconnect for female gamers.  The authors proposed a redesign of the game concept where the player plays a fifth knight, of whom you can choose the gender, who must bring prosperity back to the Round Table.  Overall, their changes made for a more interesting and less gender-alienating game.