Everyone in marketing gets what “fluff” means. It’s the hearts and minds bit. The emotional messaging. The tone of voice. The stuff you don’t really need – or so some people think.
But I was surprised to hear the same term being used in a very different context – over a very nerdy weekend at my first UK Games Expo.
Game designers split everything into mechanics and fluff
Game designers talk about fluff alongside “mechanics”. A game’s mechanics are its rules: who rolls the dice when, how pieces move, what particular keywords mean, who wins and how.
Then there’s the fluff: theming, colour, story, box art, and the names of pieces, factions, resources and currencies.
- Mechanics: you have a piece that can move one square in any direction, and if your opponent captures that piece, you lose.
- Fluff: that piece is called the king, and his court (your other pieces) are sworn to protect him from capture.
It’s not that far off how we use “fluff” in marketing. It’s everything that’s not the cold hard facts, the meat of the matter. The implication, conscious or not, is obvious: fluffy stuff is less substantial, less masculine, less important. It’s why, when a message isn’t landing, people’s first instinct is often “let’s cut the fluff”.
But that doesn’t work
The best writers, like the best game designers, understand that you need both.
If chess pieces were all random abstract shapes, it’d be harder to remember which one was which and how they move. But associating a mechanic (this piece can jump over other pieces) with some fluff (this piece is a knight on a horsey) makes the rule easier to remember. The fluff isn’t frivolous or unnecessary. It’s there to reinforce the mechanic. It aids understanding.
Smart designers separate fluff and mechanics to diagnose problems
During design and playtesting, it can be useful for game designers to separate the fluff and the mechanics, so they can diagnose where problems lie. Is it that players are put off by the idea of sacrificing their soldiers to protect the king (solvable by changing the fluff), or is one of the rules creating an unbalanced and unsatisfying game (only solvable by changing the mechanics)?
We do something similar when we’re analysing communications. We ask: is the problem with the content (what you’re saying) or the tone (how you’re saying it)?
But like good game designers, we’re not separating these elements with a view to getting rid of one, just because its contribution is harder to measure. We tease them apart to identify how to fix the problem, but we know they’re two sides of the same coin.
You can’t actually cut all the fluff anyway
Because while it might be possible to design a game without fluff (think Jenga), you can’t write content without tone. Anyone who thinks they’re eliminating tone is really imposing the most boring tone imaginable.
Cut the fluff from “Just Do It” and you get “Buy trainers”. “Go to work on an egg” without fluff becomes “Eat eggs”. The meaning might be clear, but it’s so stark it’s off-putting.
Here’s what to do instead
Next time you catch yourself reaching for those fluff-cutting scissors, try asking our Language team for help instead. We can diagnose where the problem with your communication really lies, write stuff your audiences will want to read, and train your people to do the same.
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Written by Matt Boothman, Senior Writer at Definition.