last week, i took a trip to Seattle to meet all of my lovely @nogoblin coworkers for the first time. we mostly did a lot of touristy things and general socializing rather than talking about games, but one night i did split a bottle of wine with one of them and ended up rambling on about Marvel Snap and The Magic Circle (both the concept and the 2015 video game)
that conversation has been on my mind since, so i'm gonna take a stab at writing out some of my thoughts here!
magic circles and possibility spaces
if we establish that the "magic circle" is the agreed upon space where play can happen, then let's also consider "possibility space" as representing the range of actions/reactions a player can realize inside the magic circle.
in video games, these actions/reactions need to be defined explicitly by the developers so the computer understands how to enforce the rules. this is why making them is so hard! a lot of care and intention is required to build systems that allow the player to feel engaged but also give them reasonable boundaries. where are the limits of the simulation and what happens when you push them? does the player hit an invisible wall and get frustrated or does the game push back?
"breaking" the "rules"
Portal often jumps to mind as an example of this handled well - the possibility space is limited at first and slowly expands as you explore the test chambers. however, just as you start to feel as though you've mastered the rules, GLaDOS puts you on a moving platform that leads directly into a pit of fire and a very anti-climactic death.

the first time this happened, i just stared at the screen in disbelief. "i heard this game was short but does it really end like this?" upon respawning and reexamining the dead end, i realized there was a platform above the pit that i could portal to. and from there, i could even break out of the test chambers entirely and into office spaces that were clearly not meant for me to access.
at least, not meant for my avatar to access - in reality i'm just following the route the developers had planned for me all along. but in the moment, it truly feels like i've violated the rules in an unexpected way. it's the feeling of the possibility space being larger than the established magic circle that often compels me as a player. even if my developer brain can later rationalize everything i've done, it doesn't really matter if i'm able to be swept away by the illusion in the moment.
make believe
it's hard to generalize my goals and aspirations as a game designer, but i think this is as close as i can get:
i want to recreate the feeling that children have playing make believe.
i want to yell "fireball!!" at the game and have the game reply "nuh-uh, i have flame-resistant armor!", which i counter with "but but but i put jelly in the latches of your armor so it wouldn't close properly"
"ha! i ate the jelly before the fight started and it gave me +5 HP!"
"wait! it's grape jelly and you're allergic so you die instantly!"
"you wish! i saw an immunologist!"
"are you kidding? in our healthcare system? you'd have to make an appointment months in advance!!"
anyway, you get the idea.
there's an obvious problem with this kind of "game", though. it's one thing to be a child screaming logical one-ups at another on a playground, but another thing entirely to capture that imagination in a digital space that is dramatically more limited in its ability to dynamically react to a player's actions. and even if you're able to create that illusion of freedom, how do you keep it from feeling boring when the game doesn't push back in an interesting way (or frustrated when the game pushes back too hard and you scrape your elbow on the blacktop)?
Marvel Snap

so here's where Marvel Snap comes in - i think this game is very good at making you feel like you're playing superheroes with a friend at recess. there is a push and pull that makes you feel like the game could swing either way at any moment...and it often can! i have played countless rounds of Magic the Gathering where i feel like my fate is sealed by turn 2, but i have yet to have that feeling in a Marvel Snap session.
the game has rules, yes, but not only do the cards you play overwrite these rules, so does the battlefield itself. MtG has flirted with this idea via the Planechase format, but it's impossible for a physical game to achieve the same level of sheer chaos a digital game can (and it's still an impressive feat of design to make the chaos feel like something that can be harnessed and used to your advantage)

i have more complicated feelings about the specific ways in which Marvel Snap works and the ways in which it doesn't, but i'm not interested in writing a whole review or anything so i'll leave it at that. i'm sure i will continue to Have Opinions as i spend more time with the game and share those as separate, more bite-sized posts.
One Piece
okay so this was supposed to be a blog about game design but if i've still got your attention at this point, please allow me to get truly self-indulgent and talk about my favorite thing: One Piece
you can snoop around in that twitter thread for more context, but i think this clip sums it up pretty well. One Piece is an anime/manga about pirates searching for the ultimate treasure (the titular One Piece). it means a great deal to me personally bc of the way friendship is such a core theme of the story, but it's also very much a story about rebelling against government powers (which is pretty neat imo). both pirates and navy alike will often have eaten "Devil Fruits", which effectively grant them magical powers (at the great expense of losing the ability to swim, which is kinda important in the age of pirates)
the range of Devil Fruit powers are truly batshit. aside from the example above in which my dude has become a "biscuit man" (able to make infinite amounts of biscuits), there's also one that makes your body very smooth (so attacks slide off of you), one that allows you to manipulate the hormones of yourself and others (making genderbending canon), and one that turns you human (which just happened to be eaten by non-human Tony Tony Chopper)

that's just a tiny sampling of what goes on in this series. these powers frequently drive the plot in interesting ways that always make you nod and go "yeah makes sense" no matter how absurd they get. it truly takes the "here are the rules, now let's break them" mentality of card games to its logical extreme and while it's not a game itself (and most of the video game adaptations are very bad), i can't help but wonder how much watching/reading it over the years has shaped my imagination and influenced my game design (or even narrative design!) brain
so yeah. play Marvel Snap, watch One Piece (or read it, which is a significantly smaller time commitment)
also maybe read this thing i wrote years ago about Spelunky which i have not read recently but probably relates to this blog in some way (as do roguelikes in general, which i will mention in passing just to justify tagging this post as such)

