Terminology: Focal Points and Emphasis

[Mike Holmes]

In this thread: http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=12222

The terms Focal Point and Emphasis were brought up. I really like these terms, and wanted to see if others thought they were as useful as I do. This is what I said:

Oh, and I've been a huge proponent of the ideas of emphasis and what I've called "focus." I like your terms better, however, because people have a problem with my use of focus, occasionally. These, I think, are tangential to balance, but related to CA. That is, I think that Ron would say, again that Focus per se, having one, is coherence, again. But what I wanted it to mean was what, specifically is focused upon. Focal Points is perfect. Focal Points are the individual things focused upon to create a focused, or coherent CA. Emphasis is how you make something a Focal Point.

So, do people see these terms as jargon that can deliver as concise and important ideas as I do?

Mike

[John Kim]

Focal Points are the individual things focused upon to create a focused, or coherent CA. Emphasis is how you make something a Focal Point.
...
So, do people see these terms as jargon that can deliver as concise and important ideas as I do?

Um, no.  That is, as expressed these terms don't convey any concise and important ideas to me.  As far as I can tell, you're just saying "Focal Points are what you focus on; and Emphasis is what you emphasize".  And these are important things to think about, but they aren't really jargon in my mind.  Then again, I'm not familiar with graphic design jargon that Doplegager was referring to.

[ErrathofKosh]

Perhaps a working defintion is in order?

Cheers
Jonathan

[Paul Czege]

Hey Mike,

Focal Points are the individual things focused upon to create a focused, or coherent CA.

Hmm...the definition seems to carry an embedded presumption that coherence is built/assembled somehow from attention to a checklist of important bits. And that seems simplistic to me. In my mind, not all bits are created equal, and a single counter-productive bit can scuttle coherence despite the presence of all the right pro-coherence bits. Ron's assertion from http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/21/">Gamism: Step On Up:

"Nothing beats Gamism - once you have Step On Up in action, it takes over....Situation becomes Challenge, and the cognitive fascination with esteem relative to performance becomes the order of the day."

And then there's the question of the source of attention to the focal bit. Do the rules call attention to it? Does the social contract call attention to it? Is a social contract call equivalent to a rules call from the perspective of coherence? There are lots of bits in play, some contributory to CA, and some that are counter-productive, some of them are from the rules, and some are from the social context of play. None are irrelevant. In this context, it's hard for the "focal" of "Focal Points" to have a strong association with "focused CA," because everything focused on within an instance of coherent play isn't necessarily contributory. The aggregate of focus on contributory bits just so happens to be strong enough that we qualitatively assess the instance as being coherent.

Paul

[Mike Holmes]

John, that's fine. If you're only seeing a normal use of the terms here, then at least I can get away with using them in the context for which I'd like to use them.

Hmm...the definition seems to carry an embedded presumption that coherence is built/assembled somehow from attention to a checklist of important bits. And that seems simplistic to me.

Let me try another way of putting this.

Every game has focal points, what play is "about." Coherence is a matter of having all of these points constructed in such a way as to have them create a consensually accepted CA overall.

Which implies that one can certainly do it incorrectly. From another POV, since all games have focal points, if we assume that incoherent games exist, then there must be some that have the wrong focal points, or ones implemented in the wrong manner.

What I'd follow up with is this: A game that tries to make it's focal points too broad (or have too many of them) will always have a greater threat of incoherence.

This doesn't make incoherence automatic, but just more likely. And this is in terms of sub-GNS categorization, too. For instance, if a game includes special rules for combat, and for politics, it can all be quite gamism based, but still be incoherent because different players may see the game as being just about combat, or just about politics. Again, this doesn't automatically mean that this must happen, just that the chances are increased.

Basically what I want to say is that for every focal point that you include in your design, it's a good idea to try to ensure that it's just one solid block in the overal CA that you're trying to establish.

Does that fly? People wonder what agency it is that causes a particular design to "matter" - how a system can have an effect on play. Well it's what the Points of Focus are, and how they're implemented, that cause play to tend to one sort of play or another, by how they facilitate things. Gamism producing psychology rules, or narrativism producing combat rules, or whatever.

None of this is really new thinking, I'm just trying to put it into clearer statements than I think have been made previously.

Mike

[Doplegager]

While I might be able to see some use of the terms, I would agree that we would need to thrash their definitions around before they were very applicable to game design.  My warning about erroneous analagies is even more applicable, IMO, to the terms focal Points and emphasis.

In graphic design, focal points are elements which help structure the viewer's interaction with sn image.  Arguably, every image has primary focal points, secondary focal points, tertiary focal points, and so on.  You could say that the focal points are what direct your eye through an image (ie, what's the first thing you see?  the second?  the third?  the fourth?  What is the hiearchy of elements in the image?  Is there an element that is obviously dominant?  Are there any elements that share equal priority?)

Generally, you can be as microscopic or macroscopic with focal points as you want to.

I think I understand the approach that Mike is coming from, but my own opinions may be slightly different.  In the same thread that Mike mentioned, I said:

I definitely agree that a game's CA can be promoted by the penalizing of other CAs by the system. IMO, though, there is little difference between encouraging a CA and discouraging others. While it's very possible, and arguably a very good thing, to allow multiple CAs to work well with a system, I would argue that they work because, to some extent, all of them were encouraged by the system. CAs not intentionally constructed into the rules of a system will have a hard time operating in that system unless they can bypass the rules.

If I were to use Focal Points to describe system elements, I'd probably use them to categorize what elements are given importance by the system.  In other words, to what degree are different CA's encouraged by the system?  On a broad level, does the system have a definite bend on the G/N/S model?  More specifically, what kinds of conflicts does the system encourage/have developed rules for?  What is the hiearchy of elements in the system? Is there an element that is obviously dominant? Are there any elements that share equal priority?

I'd say that one of the chief problems with using the term focal point is that it is, generally, a very subjective term.  Two people can look at a piece of art, diagram the focal points in two very different ways, and both be pretty accurate.  This might not be such an issue for something as structured and quantitative as a system, but I would think that it would still present difficulty.  In addition, I'm not sure that the term really offers very much in the way of new concepts: I would almost argue that, for most intents and purposes, the term focus is more appropriate.

The problem isn't so much the focal points are too simple.  From my understanding, it's not really a checklist of elements so much as a web how the elements relate to one another to convey a sense of unity.  I dunno.  I'll have to think about it a bit more.

[Mike Holmes]

I'm not sure where your viewpoint on this and mine differ, D.

In any case, yes, these things are going to be subjective. RPGs are more art than science, no matter how much theory we throw at them. In fact, I'd say that the question of what's a primary focal point vs a secondary one in a system and similar questions are precisely why different people have different opinions on what a particular system supports.

For instance, some people don't buy into my rant that lots of combat rules makes combat a strong focal point of a system. They argue that, instead, this is just neccessary to capture the complexities of something that most of us have no real experience with. This difference in perception is exactly the sort of analysis that we're looking at, and it will always, IMO, be subjective. For instance, sombody suggested page count (perhaps as percentage of whole) as a way of looking at how much a text makes a focal point of some particular element of play. But, while that might give a rough idea, it's pretty clear that this would be a very imprecise way of dealing with the matter. There are so many potential factors that the end result is just as subjective as deciding whether or not a particular advertisement will deliver the message intended.

Mike