Source: Making Deep Games (Rusch, 2017)
Source metadata
- Type: Textbook
- Author: Doris C. Rusch
- Full title: Making Deep Games: Designing Games with Meaning and Purpose
- Publisher: CRC Press / Focal Press
- Year: 2017
Key takeaways
- Deep games are games designed to make salient aspects of human experience — emotional, psychological, existential — tangible and explorable through gameplay. They are transformative, not merely entertaining.
- Experiential metaphor is the core mechanism: an analogy between what the gameplay feels like moment-to-moment and what a real-life abstract experience (grief, addiction, depression, love) feels like. The player enacts the metaphor, not just observes it.
- Experiential gestalt (drawing on Lakoff & Johnson / Johnson) is the abstract structure underlying any experience — its participants, parts, stages, linear sequence, and purpose. Designers map this structure from a source domain (real experience) onto a target domain (gameplay).
- “How it works” vs “what it feels like” is a critical design distinction. Rod Humble’s The Marriage models the structure of marriage dynamics, but Rusch argues this isn’t enough — deep games must also convey what the experience feels like.
- Allegorical approaches: Rusch identifies three — metaphor as mystery (theme left open), message (theme stated clearly), and muse (theme as creative starting point). All three are valid; choice depends on communicative intent.
- Communicative goals taxonomy: self-expression / awareness-raising / object to think with / behaviour change / “what you do is what you get” (procedural rhetoric). Each demands different design choices.
- Nine Questions framework (Ch. 6) — a practical preproduction checklist for purposeful game design: source system identification, core mechanic, experiential metaphor validation, player–avatar alignment, and more.
- Player–avatar alignment — deliberately designing so the player feels what the avatar experiences, not just observes it. Achieved through mechanics, not fiction alone.
- Participatory deep game design — involving subject-matter experts with lived experience (e.g., trauma survivors, people with disabilities) as co-designers. Illustrated through the For the Records case study.
- Game design as creative arts therapy — using the design process therapeutically, not the product. Analogous to dance/movement therapy; the act of externalising internal experience through game structure is itself therapeutic.
- Representational hierarchy — rules are the primary vehicle for meaning in games; fiction is secondary. Rusch cites Juul’s “half-real” (games as real rules + fictional worlds) and Frasca’s “simauthor” concept.
- Procedural expression / procedural rhetoric (Bogost 2007) — making statements and arguments through rules. Games with agenda use mechanics to persuade or provoke.
- Beat chart — Minority Media’s method of mapping desired emotional states to specific game moments during preproduction. A concrete tool for emotional design.
- Hero’s journey (Campbell/Vogler) proposed as a structural template for allegorical games — the protagonist’s transformation mirrors the player’s intended experience arc.
Notable claims
“Deep games … make aspects of the human experience tangible and explorable. They allow players to gain a deeper understanding of themselves, other people or the world they live in.”
“The ‘experiential metaphor’ describes the analogy between what it feels like to play a game and what it feels like to have a real-life experience.”
“If games are an expressive medium, and if you want to use them expressively, you need to understand how they communicate and create meaning.”
“It is not enough for a game to model how something works; it must also convey what it feels like.”
“Rules are the primary vehicle for meaning in games. Fiction is secondary.”
“The Beat Chart [is] a road map for the emotional experience the game is supposed to create.”
“Participatory design with people with lived experience isn’t just ethically preferable — it is epistemically necessary for deep games about that experience.”
(All paraphrased from extracted text; see the private authoring archive for original wording.)
Relevance
This source primarily informs:
- deep-games — the central concept; Rusch’s definition and framework
- experiential-metaphor — Ch. 3–4; detailed theory and case studies
- transformational-game-design — Ch. 5–6; communicative goals, Nine Questions, participatory design
- narrative-design — allegorical design approaches; metaphor as mystery/message/muse
- player-agency — player–avatar alignment; how agency serves emotional communication
- game-feel — experiential gestalt; moment-to-moment feel as meaning-carrier
- systems-thinking — source system identification; games as models of systems
- internal-economy — procedural expression and how rule systems carry meaning
Open questions raised
- Can experiential metaphor coexist with competitive/multiplayer games, or does it require single-player linear-ish structures?
- How do players who resist or reject the intended metaphor experience deep games — does the frame break, or do they still benefit?
- Is the therapy-through-design-process model empirically validated, or primarily practitioner testimony?
- How does the beat chart method interact with systemic/emergent gameplay — can you beat-chart a sandbox?
- Where is the line between a game with an experiential metaphor and one that merely has a theme?