What "Inception" Says About Games

*I'm going to try not to spoil the plot of Inception here too much, but I will be talking about the ideas behind it, so if you haven't seen it, don't say you haven't been warned.*

So it wasn't too long after I walked out of the theater after seeing Inception that I started thinking about video games. If you aren't planning on watching it, the film centers on a team of freelance corporate spies who construct dreams designed to allow them access you a subjects secrets. They, and the subject, enter the dream and attempt to steal whatever he or she has locked away.

There are a lot of obvious parallels between Inception's team of spooks and a game production team. The dream starts with a goal (the design), and is constructed by an architect, then ultimately "played" by the team. Accessing the secrets of the mind works a lot like beating a level in a game, including shooting lots of folks and blowing a few things up.

Inception has a long list of it's own unique mind-benders, and that's the real meat of the movie, but watching it left me thinking a lot about the relationship between the player and the designer. In the film, the designer has to create a scenario which will elicit a particular response. They design vaults and safes in the dream world because once the subject enters the dream, that's where he will hide his secrets.

But once it's time to enter the dream, the architect has to give up control of her own creation. It becomes the subject's own space, filled with his thoughts and anxieties. When the 'hand' of the architect can be seen, it angers the subject so much that the projections inhabiting his world (you could call them "dream people") might kill her.

Being a game designer offers both the joys and frustrations of releasing your game. It is a certainty that players will do things you did not expect. Sometimes these can be wonderful examples of emergent play or clever solutions to problems, or not. As a friend from my previous job said: "Give them the tools, and they will make a penis." On the other hand, it doesn't really become a game until it's been put through these paces, trampled on by players, and tossed back to you for evaluation.

Tied up in this same relationship is the uncertainty of the player's interpretation. Game design really is a lot like Inception. We create a vault because we know the player knows a vault is a safe place. But what we never know is just what secrets they will choose to store there.

At the moment I'm out of time, but I'll update this soon with more on interpretation and representation.