Theme
In short Theme is what a game is about and where it takes place, as opposed to what you do in it.
Definition
Theme is what a game is about and where it takes place: its subject matter, setting and fiction. It is the axis players notice first and the one that says least about how a game plays. The same theme can sit on very different play, since a war can be a shooter, a strategy game or a story about civilians, and the same genre can wear any theme. Theme still matters: it frames the rules, gives goals their meaning and can change how an action feels. Second Playthrough keeps it separate from genre, mechanic, perspective and format, and reads labels built on setting alone, such as "fantasy game," as statements about theme.
Not to be confused with
- Genre
Genre is what you do in a game, while theme is what the game is about, so two games with the same theme can share nothing in how they play.
- Mechanic
A mechanic is a rule-defined action, while theme is the fiction that tells you what that action represents.
- Simulation game
A simulation game models how its subject works through its rules, while a theme can sit on the surface without any of the subject's workings being modeled.
Where the game lives
- rules: dropped
- goals: used
- feedback: dropped
- uncertainty: dropped
- choice: dropped
- play: used
Theme supplies the fiction that gives goals their meaning and colors the experience of play. It changes none of the rules by itself, which is why it is a poor guide to how a game plays.
used dropped · What the six structures are
Examples
Papers, PleaseLucas Pope, 2013
Its theme, a border inspector in an authoritarian state, turns a document-checking routine into a story about complicity.
This War of Mine11 bit studios, 2014
Takes the familiar theme of war and attaches it to survival and resource management rather than combat.
Stardew ValleyConcernedApe, 2016
A farming theme over a mix of planting, crafting, exploring and socializing, showing how a theme can span several genres at once.
In the essays
Why “RPG” stopped meaning anything
“RPG” fuses five separate things—mechanic, theme, format, perspective and role-play—and once progression spread to every genre, the label stopped sorting games.
Sources
- BookHalf-Real: Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds. MIT Press, 2005. Distinguishes a game's real rules from the fictional world it projects, the basis for treating theme as its own axis. Reading list
- BookGenre and the Video Game. University of Texas Press, in The Medium of the Video Game, 2001. Argues that game genres should rest on interactivity rather than iconography, the visual and thematic surface. Reading list
- PaperGenre and game studies: Toward a critical approach to video game genres. Simulation & Gaming 37(1), 2006.