When I think about designing and producing my Magnum Opus, I imagine creating the world’s best (Mass-market!) Train game, or Pirate game, or Empire building game. Many of my friends and colleagues have similar aspirations.  Recently, I reflected on three of my biggest influences in storytelling and entertainment, they too had those common themes.

Certain epic themes resonate with people: the general public as well as game designers, authors, film makers, etc.  From Sid Meier to Ayn Rand to Walt Disney, the fusion of technology, systems, romance and adventure are brought together in a few common themes.   Transportation (Trains), Outlaws (Pirates), Kingdoms (Castles), and Romance (Princesses) stand out as cornerstones of epic storytelling, particularly in games.

• Sid Meier scores with: Railroad Tycoon, Pirates!, and Civ and its cousins.
• Walt Disney hits it out of the park with the DLRR at Disneyland, Pirates of the Caribbean, the Castles in the Magic Kingdoms, half of his movies, and lots of Princesses.
• Ayn Rand grand slams in just one book, Atlas Shrugged: Trains, the modern pirate Ragnar Danneskjold, a fantastic hidden realm in the form of Galt’s Gulch, and Romantic interests (Dagny et.al.).

Railroads and other networks are familiar, common, approachable, and everyone has an opinion as to how they ought to run.  Railroads opened the West, build wealth, provide escape and adventure.  They are a complex system of supply and demand, load balancing, resource management, and engineering.  Trains are the intersection of technology, commerce, and romance.

Pirates and other outlaws (like the mafia) are another fusion of people’s daydreams: of wealth, adventure, and technology.  Pirates and the Mob have a code, and rules, and have interesting social systems.  Playing with those rules makes for drama, twists and intrigue.  Ships and sailing are another familiar, approachable transportation technology.  Trading booty for cannons, using cannons to pirate more booty, to trade for a bigger ship, are a simple economic lessons.  Throw in sword fights, tropical islands, and damsels in distress.

Castles and Kingdoms represent yet another intersection of technology, organization, and romance.  Castles are fortifications, cities, states.  They have internal economies, as well as command their demesnes.  They represent man’s monumental achievement over terrain; and represent safety, wealth, and power.  They harbor kings and knights and soldiers and sometimes wizards.  Multiple castles and kingdoms lead to an Empire. 

Aside from Princess Peach, princesses do not factor frequently in games.  Romantic love is a main story driver in other media, but not for games.  In the early days of EA, when Trip Hawkins asked “Can a computer make you cry?” he was onto something.  Will Wright gets close with the “domestic coefficients” of The Sims.  But where most movies involve some variation of “boy meets girl”, that is rarely the driver of fiction or drama in a game.   Games have technology building and system balancing and resource management and exploration and conquest and adventure, but there is still no d20 roll for Love.

People read, play games, and watch movies to escape, aspire, and to observe/participate in interesting dynamics.  I think Trains, Pirates, and Castles encapsulate those elements.  They fuse technology, social and economic systems, building, wealth, romance and adventure into tidy packages for both creator and audience.  Not only are they fun to enjoy, but they are fun and compelling to model in the form of games.  So, computers (and consoles, and cellphones, and boardgames) CAN make one feel joy, humor, fear, triumph, and cleverness. But not until we figure out how to incorporate Princesses (romantic love) will games be as emotionally resonant as a good book or an old movie.  Then, a computer can make you cry.