Theme is Not Meaning: The Slides
March 9th, 2010 Soren Johnson Posted in Games | 5 Comments »
My keynote on theme-vs- mechanics went well. I’m getting positive feedback so far although I am curious where people may have felt my arguments were not as strong. I’ve posted the slides in the sidebar, but here is a direct link. Also, the talk was written up a couple places online, with the Destructoid piece almost being a transcript:
March 16th, 2010 at 11:44 am
Thanks for posting those, and I think the talk does a good job of highlighting the distinction between themes and mechanics, and how they interact with each other.
After reading the Destructoid writeup, I think it would be interesting to incorporate some of the audience questions into the main talk. In particular, I liked the comment that “compel” can mean more than just “entertain,” as well as the notion that one-off projects like Train aren’t representative of a sustainable design model.
I also think there’s a missed opportunity to show how some mechanics and themes can support and reinforce each other, kind of the opposite of the Spore thing. However, that’s an advanced topic and probably worthy of a separate presentation.
March 22nd, 2010 at 10:04 am
[...] some ways, it’s a sequel that is a microcosm of the tension that Soren Johnson explored in his GDC talk about theme and mechanics. Is the Supreme Commander series about robots (constant theme) or is it a [...]
April 15th, 2010 at 5:40 am
[...] on the subject, often remarks that the theme of a game is not to be confused with its meaning (slides here). Diplomacy may cast its players as the great powers of pre-1914 Europe, but it’s about [...]
July 25th, 2010 at 3:37 am
[...] In a nutshell: what does literacy for a systemic medium look like, and how do you go about improving it or educating it? How can we claim to be literate when we still need to remind professional games developers that “Theme Is Not Meaning“? [...]
July 27th, 2010 at 4:49 am
[...] Johnson’s excellent GDC talk Theme Is Not Meaning covers this exact area, and it’s great. At the same time: I wish talks like that didn’t [...]