Parameters by Nekogames

While most of my friends are toiling away at Diablo III (sometimes even in it), I’ve been playing a different RPG. Or rather, thinking a bit too deeply about it.

Hookshot Inc. pointed out the reductionary Parameters by Nekogames. The game is simply a field of boxes you can click. Some boxes are locked, some are open. Click an empty one and you’ll fill it up while earning experience and money, which you have to hover up with a mouseover. Click a yellow box and you’re fighting a ‘boss’. Defeat bosses to earn keys and unlock other boxes or buy them in bulk.

It seems eerily akin to RRRRRPG, the ‘abstract’ JRPG containing shapes battling it out. Parameters goes one step further, reducing everything to progress bars, numbers and clicks. It’s the ultimate optimization of the RPG formula.

It’s also incredibly addictive.

My first play-through ended after 45 minutes and my second play-through halved that time. Apparently, you can even complete it within 5 minutes. That’s all fine and dandy, but the thing that I took away is how games are increasingly geared towards optimization. Parameters isn’t actually that much of a game; especially when trying to beat it quickly decisions fall away. It becomes more of a puzzle. Not the mind bending kind, but the jigsaw kind. You know the outcome, you’ve got all these options, and you’re just searching for that one piece to connect the two individual islands you’ve puzzled together.

And that got me thinking. Are games anything else than optimization? Most games seem to be geared towards optimization anyway. Everybody wants the quickest way to get the best stats, resulting in exploits that are then ‘fixed’. Even if you are training yourself to enhance your physical skills involved in the game, it’s still an optimization game for whatever gives you the best results.

Of course this reductionist approach has always been clearly present, but Parameters seems to confront you with it forcibly. Game design as pure optimization. Everything we do seems to be geared towards that: ordering. And not only in games. It extends to everything. Whether we want to just live, play sports, eat, or are at the whim of atoms rearanging, in the end its the ordering of things. It’s a pretty big leap from a stat bar clicking game to mulling over an existential drive, but Parameters made me think along those lines anyway. That in itself is pretty awesome.

So whether you’re playing Diablo III, Parameters itself, reading a book or simply making a cup of coffee, keep in mind you might just be putting a jigsaw puzzle together.

Or not. You might miss a piece.