The Definition of Design by Subtraction
How to make more with less in video games through minimalist and coherentist design
If a video game is reduced to its essence, what would be left? Just its abstract concept? Just the basic mechanics that define its genre? If either of those alternatives is the answer, then that video game is empty or generic. But if there’s something wittier left after this subtraction, then this is a subtractionist video game, and it can give you a unique experience in a dense and coherent way.
It has been 20 years since ICO was released, a video game very different from the industry standard of the 2000s. Despite not having achieved much popularity, it has nevertheless become highly influential among developers in many video game genres.
This was not because ICO introduced a technical aspect that could be used in various genres, such as the 3D camera movement of Super Mario 64. It was because it brought to the industry a new theory and philosophy of design, which the creator and game director, Fumito Ueda, called “Design by Subtraction”.
A “design theory” or “design philosophy” in the video games industry is a set of rules (more or less precise) for developing video games, which should not be confused with a specific “genre” of video game.
A design theory or design philosophy can be applied to different genres (not necessarily all), in a transversal way. In other words, it is possible to develop video games that follow design by subtraction in different genres, such as puzzle games, shooters, action adventures, etc.
On the other hand, this term cannot be confused with Philosophy of Design (in capital letters), a sub-area of Philosophy of Art that studies the definition of “design”, its implications, and the fundamentals behind particular design philosophies (among which the one we’re addressing). We can say that this text is an essay on Philosophy of Design according to the last sense.
The definition of design by subtraction involves two game design assumptions:
- Minimalism
- Coherentism
It will be explained in what sense these terminologies apply and, finally, how, in general terms, they can be implemented and interpreted in different ways in video games.
The Minimalism of Design by Subtraction
There is no universal notion of “minimalism”, something difficult to consolidate especially because it is a name for different movements since at least the 20th century that covering different areas. There are authors associated with minimalism in sculpture, like Tony Smith; in literature, like Samuel Beckett and Raymond Carver; in music, like Philip Glass; in cinema, like Robert Bresson, and in many other areas, even in automobile design, like Colin Chapman.
We will use the strict sense of “minimal” as a term to designate the minimum necessary to express a certain concept or to convey a certain experience.
Thus, an ideal minimalist video game expresses a concept and/or conveys an experience with as few video game design elements as possible. Similarly, a partial minimalist video game does so relative to other similar works and/or partially in a certain design aspect; for example, only in the script, only in the visuals, or only in mechanics.
In this partial sense of minimalism, we can understand that a videogame, like Minit, by Devolver Digital, is minimalist especially in visual technical terms. But its gameplay and script, although simple, are much more complex than those of The Last Guardian, by Team Ico, although the latter is not minimalist in technical visual terms. That’s what makes The Last Guardian a minimalist game in a lot more ways than Minit.
The minimalism present in design by subtraction is not necessarily found in technical aspects of the visuals, but game design elements such as:
- use of music at strategic moments;
- few lines of dialogue or no intelligible dialogue;
- few characters;
- small variety and/or number of enemies;
- interface, menu, and descriptions are highly simplified;
- simple and functional mechanics
More rigorously and abstractly, minimalism can be characterized by the following assumptions:
- Given a non-minimal set A with a number n of game design elements (mechanics, models, music, sprites, etc) in view of an objective x, it is possible to find a subset B within A, with n* elements, such that n* is fewer elements than n, and B still achieves goal x;
- A video game with objective x based on a set B — as described above — of game design elements should, in principle, be preferable to a video game developed based on set A.
If we consider the minimalist literature, for example, these general principles can be translated into various types of “salient characteristics”. Phil Greaney (2012), for example, highlights some characteristics that, by analogy, we can also find in minimalist script choices in video games, such as the following:
a reduced vocabulary; a shorter sentence; […] unresolved, even slight narratives which reveal more than they resolve; […] a detached, even ‘absent’ narrator; fewer adjectives and, when used, not extravagant; showing, not telling as a primary means of communicating information; […]
All these characteristics are also found in video games from thatgamecompany and Playdead. In LIMBO, for example, there is no narrator, there are no dialogues and many scenes are poorly detailed or justified, making them more open to interpretation; for example, as analyzed by Chris Solarski in his book Interactive Stories and Video Game Art: A Storytelling Framework for Game Design (2016):
the presence of hostile secondary characters in LIMBO, by Playdead, is never explained — leaving players to draw their own conclusions about their significance in the narrative.
Analogously, script characteristics like these and several other minimalist choices of sound design, level design, visual design, etc. are found in games that have applied design by subtraction. These include Shadow of the Colossus, FEZ, Journey, Brothers: A Tale Of Two Sons, Inside, RiMe, and many other titles.
These and other video games were developed by Fumito Ueda or by developers who were directly or indirectly influenced by him, such as Phil Fish (creator of FEZ), Josef Fares (director of Brothers: A Tale Of Two Sons), Arnt Jensen (Playdead director), Jenova Chen (director of Journey and other video games for thatgamecompany), Raúl Rubio Munárriz (director of RiMe) and many others.
Evidently, this recurrence of minimalism in these works is not a mere coincidence. This is an assumption for design by subtraction. This was made clear several times when Fumito Ueda addressed the matter. In a developer interview in 2002, talking about ICO, he stated:
For a long time, I was very worried whether a game created in this way would be accepted by players. There were no stats, no scoring… would players really accept a game that only had a story and a realistic map/world? But rather than take a left-turn into some compromised vision, I thought it would be best if we push ahead with the original idea as planned. Whether it was the girl’s animation or the details of the map, I didn’t hold back on removing and subtracting elements as needed. If something felt unfinished or lacking, then I’d remove it.
Furthermore, choosing a more minimalist design does not mean neglecting visual or sound characteristics that significantly contribute to immersion in the game. This kind of concern can be combined without any problem with minimalist design, as exemplified by the director:
We hated these objects that were very unnaturally placed in levels just for the sake of level design, so we removed them as well. For example, in ICO we don’t have invisible walls that would normally prevent the player’s character from falling off. And when we really needed those walls, we made them look very convincing.
Indeed, as Damien Mecheri stated in his book The Works of Fumito Ueda: A Different Perspective on Video Games:
he had to be sure not to make it more complex, but actually to simplify it, and make it as short and dense as possible. To do this, he took away elements he found useless or superfluous
In this sense, Ueda’s use of the adjective “needed”, even though hyperbolic, was not used by chance. It is an indication that design by subtraction presupposes not only minimalism but also coherentism.
The Coherentism of Design by Subtraction
If minimalism guarantees density, that is, it guarantees that a game expresses concepts or produces experiences with more economical game design choices, coherentism, on the other hand, guarantees coherence. By definition, it guarantees that the minimal (or approximately minimal) set of game design elements do not result in an empty set (that is, just an abstract concept) nor an incoherent set of elements that end up expressing incoherent goals.
The term “coherentism” is polysemic in Philosophy and may imply misunderstandings, so it is convenient to delimit exactly what is meant by it when it is used. In this text, coherentism is understood to be a theory of design with the following assumptions:
- Given a set P with one or more experience propositions about what a video game C intends to communicate, C a set of game design elements (mechanics, music, sprites, models, etc.) capable of expressing it: C is said to be incoherent if and only if the experiences or concepts resulting from these elements are contradictory, and C is said to be coherent if and only if the experiences or concepts resulting from these elements are not contradictory.
- Between two possible video games that intend to communicate the same set of propositions P, if the first of them has a coherent set of game design elements and the second an incoherent set, in principle the first should be preferred over the second.
As an example, consider the case of The Longing, directed by Anselm Pyta. This is a game that has among its propositions, P, the proposal to provide an experimental, challenging, reflective experience about loneliness and waiting.
To achieve this goal, Pyta developed events that take a long time to unfold, for example, it can take hours to wait for a door to open. This choice is considered coherent. On the other hand, if you had opted for a door to open instantly (or faster than usual), such a choice would result in a contradictory experience with the proposal, thus being a case of inconsistency within the set of game design elements.
There are several types of inconsistencies in game design, perhaps the best-known type is what Clint Hocking called ludo-narrative dissonance. This is the much-discussed concept of inconsistency between the level design and the narrative design.
Which, it’s worth remembering, isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Walt Williams, 2K Games writer until 2014 and current Insomniac Games writer argued, for example, that the ludo-narrative dissonance of a protagonist with violent gameplay in a narrative intended to communicate altruism can be a good resource for introducing a hypocrite character in order to provoke the player to reflect on his hypocrisy.
In any case, it is not enough for a game to be coherent to be using design by subtraction. In many ways, Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne, by Atlus, has a design highly coherent with its central Nietzschean philosophical proposal, but it certainly is not an exemplar of design by subtraction.
Likewise, it’s not enough just to be minimalist either; after all, many games (especially from the last century) are extremely simple just because of hardware limitations or low budget.
Thus, for design work by subtraction, there needs to be a conjunction between the two theories (minimalism and coherentism). Here are some specific examples of applications of this conjunction.
Different Design Applications by Subtraction
Invariably, the result of a creative subtraction design process will result in a video game that delivers a dense and coherent experience. Dense because it has few game design elements and as few non-functional elements as possible; coherent because these elements will orbit one or more specific ideas whose functions are directly linked to them.
Consider the beginning of gameplay from Shadow of the Colossus. After a cutscene with subtly expressive scenes and a few lines of dialogue introduces the game’s central objective, the player takes control of Wander. He tries to search, immersed in a desolate, silent, lonely world, for the first of sixteen colossi he will have to kill, so that, at the cost of a high sacrifice, it is possible to resurrect Mono.
The player soon realizes that he has not much more at hand than he needs to accomplish his goal: two weapons (a sword and a bow, to slightly vary the gameplay) and a horse, as this is a large area to explore.
Finally, to indicate where his sixteen unique enemies are in that world in a visual and simple way, without needing further explanation: the mechanics of a beam of light reflected by Wander’s sword that shows you the direction toward your next target. Ueda, as he explained in a 1UP interview cited by the aforementioned book by Mecheri:
I wanted a hint that was direct and could only be expressed visually.
The simple and functional approach with which Ueda explains to the player part of his goals in this scene guarantees the game its minimalism factor. On the other hand, the relationship of these elements to functions strictly related to exposed non-contradictory objectives ensures that your project is also highly coherent. With both factors met, the result is an elegant subtraction design.
Similar results are obtained in games inspired by Ueda’s creations. At the beginning of FEZ, the player is controlling Gomez and is quickly introduced precisely to the game’s proposal by what will be some of the rare lines of text you’ll see in dialogue: “Reality is perception. Perception is subjective.”
More specifically, FEZ intends to work on this idea in order to involve puzzles with 2D and 3D perspectives. The design choices in soundtrack, script, and gameplay are almost always quite simple and highly consistent with the proposal: the core mechanics make it possible to counter-intuitively rotate the 2D perspective; characters and settings are made up of rectangular elements; the player seeks to form cubes, shapes considered non-existent by those who, unlike Gomez, are not able to see outside the 2D environment; etc.
With an entirely different aim, Brothers: A Tale Of Two Sons is also a good example of design by subtraction. The story largely told through gestures and bodily expressions features two protagonists who have lost their mother and who venture out in search of a miraculous solution to help their sick father.
The focus of the game, as can already be inferred, is on the relationship between the two brothers, and this is even clearer due to the mechanics. The player simultaneously controls both characters, one on each controller analog. Each complements each other in advantages and disadvantages for solving puzzles: one of them (the older brother) is taller, stronger, and heavier; while the other is shorter, lighter, and more agile.
The narrative, which develops around a single main objective, told by gestures, actions, and appearances; the small number of characters, as well as the simple, contrasting, and functional design of the protagonists, are some of the elements that grant it minimalism. While these elements, combined with mechanical, coherent, and explanatory choices in relation to the work’s proposal, guarantee its coherence.
ICO and the History of Video Game Art
Alluding to the subtitle of Mecheri’s book already mentioned, since ICO, the design by subtraction brought a different perspective on video games. A movement has emerged that has certainly contributed enormously to elevating the artistic potential of video games and still has a lot to teach.
Much was developed with this “doing more with less” perspective, particularly in the emerging indie industry, but it has also partially influenced design choices in some AAA games, such as those in the Dark Souls series, directed by Hidetaka Miyazaki. Several of these games provide unique, dense, and coherent experiences with exuberant elegance and creativity, and certainly many more await us ahead.
We already have 20 years of history pages on design by subtraction, but many of them are still waiting to be written and studied. For this, as well as for the future of this design movement, it is of great importance to know what comprises this design philosophy and have it understood by developers, consumers, critics, and journalists.
