Original Post: November 15, 2010
Part 1
Videogames teach their players things: at the least how the internal system of the videogame works. This is a central principle on which Raph Koster’s theory of fun and Ian Bogost’s procedural rhetoric are both built on. Murray’s conceptions of agency and immersion rely on this fact in a way as well, since one criterion of immersion is a meaningful interaction, through intelligibility and verification, with the system. James Paul Gee also assumes that games are teaching their players something, the lessons there are communicated through simulation and play-acting. More widely, all designed objects-to-be-used teach their user about how to use them, at the very least. Videogames are objects-to-be-used in that they must be activated, manipulated with manual skill and dexterity, as well as a conceptual understanding of the aesthetic context and content which they exhibit. Perhaps most fundamentally, videogames are games, and so posit a winning a condition most of the time. This activates the player’s understanding of positive and negative outcomes, therefore leading the player down a path or erecting a framework for behaviour: one choice will lead closer to winning, the other will lead away from it. This win/lose structure reinforces the lessons being taught by the game, explicitly, and ties those messages of approval/disapproval to the aesthetic content. How can we suppose that a medium with such strong potential to first define the range, then approve or disapprove of the player’s actions while playing do not make arguments about the world we live in?
If the implicit mechanics of a videogame are functions such as Mario’s triple jump, a siege tank’s two deployment modes, and the choice between harvesting or saving a Little Sister, what are the ‘meta-mechanics’ of a videogame? If those internal mechanics within the game are analogous to the events within a narrative, what is the corresponding message to literary fiction’s metanarrative? What is the ‘big lesson’ that comes out of certain videogames? What is the metalesson of the videogame medium itself? The first I will explore here is the concept of the Orderly World.
Escape to an Orderly World
Videogames presuppose that everything contained in their worlds are eventually knowable. They simply must be, at this point, due in part to our understanding of what it is to play a game, and what it is to program a computer. So two elements of the videogame, the computational architecture, and the gameplay framework conspire to create an eminently deterministic space where each event is caused in turn by its predecessor in a very clear line, and triggers other events in extremely predictable fashion. The machine component of the videogame is the combination of these two parts, and is of course, a logical structure itself. This overarching, determinist logic is perhaps an artefact of the modern: as a grand metanarrative, it corresponds well with the very concept of metanarrative, referring to Lyotard’s progress of logos over mythos. The dual purposes of viewing the world in a deterministic light coupled with the rebuilding of the world on an undoubtedly deterministic model can be read in virtually any videogame world one cares to mention. The joy with which people enter these orderly worlds indicates a modern craving for answers, for reason and subsequently, mastery, over this kind of orderly world, despite Lyotard’s contention that we are incredulous of these grand narratives. Whatever aesthetic material is linked up to this logical structure becomes logical, consistent and knowable itself. Following smaller metanarrative examples will be made possible or more intense by their foundation in this concept of an orderly world.
One may contend in contradiction of the above assertion that: videogames are individual experiences, with myriad configurations creating a fractured, local, personal experience and so have no metanarrative that is true for everyone. That may be true, and indeed I would agree that it is true, but that is the experience of the videogame, not the videogame itself. Every experience had within the videogame system, no matter how normal or deviant, is made possible by the same governing rules that the player, either in accord or subversively, is engaging with their predictable, intelligible behaviour. Perhaps I can focus the discussion by invoking McLuhan: the medium is the message; I am looking at the object called videogame, not the experience of that object. Furthermore, the farther from a normalised play-style a gamer moves, the more likely it is that he is aware of the structures the game is presupposing, and in subverting them, he may be acknowledging that. However, he may be moving in the opposite direction: valuing the winning outcome so much he is willing to cheat in order to get there.
One may also contend that though the rules may be deterministic, the player of a videogame doesn’t necessarily know all the rules and thus is not able to play as though all the rules are known. This is the precise process videogames rely upon for entertainment. The rules are not all known to begin with, but are ultimately knowable. Raph Koster ably illustrates how the primary pleasure of many videogames (and games in general) is in the learning, in the gaining of knowledge of the system. Once worked out, that system becomes mundane and uninteresting. Just as tic-tac-toe is no longer a challenge once either player works out the dominant strategy, a videogame will become less and less interesting once the player has internalized the rules. Some games offer other pleasures, additional pleasures, that will keep a player engaged, but that initial awe of discovery and feeling of new mastery will be hard to replace. MMOGs rely on content updates to introduce new mysteries to the world and new challenges to overcome in order to maintain player interest. Single-player, offline gameworlds will struggle to maintain the kind of dedication WoW enjoys, simply because of the amount of new content being poured into Azeroth.
Finally, one may point to the ‘random’ probability of dice-rolls in gaming in general, and videogames in particular. These surely indicate a chaotic, non-determined element to a videogame world. Firstly, these dice-rolls are never truly random, in fact, they involve yet another determined algorithm often taking the time of day (down to millisecond resolution) as a seed value to generate a seemingly random number, though really it is a precisely calculated number that is unlikely or impossible to be calculated again due to the nature of the seeding algorithm. In effect, though, the numbers do seem random, or at least unpredictable, to the player. But these occurrences are usually compartmentalised and carefully denoted. Players of paper-based RPGs know when a dice is being rolled because the group has to actually do the rolling. Experienced players of computer RPGs will know when probability is being incorporated into the game when such key words such as ‘chance to hit’ are employed. Indeed, most gamers familiar with RPGs will already know that most of their character’s actions are influenced in whole or in part by a certain set of percentage chances. The most expert players will know what those percentages are exactly, because the computer must maintain a table of values somewhere which will very likely be extracted by the most industrious of players and published to the wider player base. Gamers already know this information is there, the only question is how to get at it. Once extracted, simple spreadsheet calculators make it a relatively simple task to unlock the exact function of a given attack manoeuver, defensive action or spell. This effectively eliminates the indeterminacy created by dice rolls, since all possible outcomes can be known and planned for.
According to Koster, gamers are constantly working to eliminate the indeterminacy of the unknown within videogames, because the act of discovering order in an apparently chaotic environment is what constitutes “fun.” This is certainly the case in online RPG titles, perhaps most visibly there, and in online games in general, where the players’ combined efforts are pooled into online websites and resources. Certainly though, in single-player games, individuals will make notes, draw maps, or read other player’s accounts on how certain mechanics work, where items are located, or how to go about preparing for a difficult encounter. The paradox is, though, that the harder players work at uncovering the unknown, the closer they bring the game to being “unfun.” The further paradox is that all those so-called mysteries were placed there by designers specifically to be discovered. So whether or not the player, individually or collectively, knows all the secrets of the game at some given point in time, all the inner workings are internally consistent, measurable and even documented somewhere, by the development team.
The pleasure in this, I suggest, is for the highly determinist among us. This kind of game (virtually all games today) caters to the player who wishes there to be order in the world, or assumes that there is, and that there should be. This appeals to the positivist understanding of this world, and our fantasy game worlds, where the player will try something out, and learn from the feedback, assuming that the next time he tries, the result will be affected in a logical way by the change in approach. Science assumes that in the real world the same input will have the same output when all elements of the system are understood. Videogames are based on this same understanding of the world; their gameworlds are built to behave this way by connecting fictional material to an active logical machine. This includes the supposedly sentient life forms in videogames as well as their more physical characteristics. In gaming terms, bosses only have one mechanism for defending themselves, and once figured out by the player, the boss will not react and learn a new defensive tactic. Allied NPCs will not negotiate the requirements of a quest; only one behaviour will trigger the desired action.
There is a definite comfort in this kind of world. This ‘knowability’ affirms the methodology we are taught to apply in the real world by the positivist, scientific tradition. Even a spiritual player could take solace in the intelligence with which each element of the game world was designed, and know that each was playing its proper role in the fictional hierarchy. Some of the specific ways which this orderly world is activated to create experiences will be fleshed out in following posts.
This stuff is very much work-in-progress, so I’d really appreciate commentary on the quality of the argument.
Part 2
Original Post: November 22, 2010
Constructive criticism requires the presentation of suggestions to ameliorate some if not all of the shortcomings identified by an assessment as scathing as the one presented above. While it is beyond the scope of a theoretical thesis to actually implement and test these suggestions, the following are essentially design ideas that, theoretically at least, alleviate some of the limitations observed above. The first area to explore are alternative concepts for what the object we currently call ‘videogame’ could be. When relying on existing definitions of videogame, many of these suggestions will very likely seem like very bad design choices. What must first be addressed then, is the nature of a videogame experience, the goals of the medium, which can then allow for slightly or wildly different formal structures. These new concepts are fashioned in hopes of creating new gameworlds that provide experiences with a wider range than is possible with the very determined, game-like and predictable systems presently available. Perhaps some of these simulations will be more true-to-life in some ways, certainly in certain contexts, than is possible through the determinist model. Whether true-to-life or not, though, this wider palette will allow artists in interactive media to express a wider range of ideas than rigidly game-like concepts allow.
Escape the Tyranny of Game-Fun
Industry-focused game design texts advise budding game designers that not everyone likes the same thing you do, not all players will find the same games fun. They advise to pick a market, a genre, or some other identifiable goal and work towards that. This is obviously sensible, the kinds of players who like the Sims are often not the same as those who like Fallout 3 or FIFA 2010. If they do crossover, it is usually to satisfy very different desires at a given time. However, as much above assessment describes, the very high-level kind of fun that these same game design texts assume is a ‘game-fun’ involving mastery of rules. That game-fun constructs an end-point of power, then builds a ramp for the player to ascend towards it, until eventually, there is no challenge the player cannot overcome. The player-character has become the most powerful being within the game system. There is nothing the player has failed to do, he has ‘beaten’ the game. This does not correspond well with life experiences, nor does it allow for other archetypal narrative types, from comedy to tragedy. The question is, can a system be designed that abandons this strict, rule-focused and progress-based framework for experience, and what would we call it?
I am not arguing for any system which abandons operational rules by any means, my own model does not allow for that. I am simply exploring the possibility of a change of focus. Instead of becoming master of those rules, what kind of experience is available to a player who always remains subject to them, and even unable to grasp exactly what the rules are? This is the first departure from the game-fun, namely, that a player might not be able to know all the rules precisely. There will always be rules, of course, within the machine, but hidden from the player, ambiguous, perhaps even contradictory in certain places. There are many times in life and art where contradictions are relevant: maintaining a work/family balance, when providing well for a family often means long hours at work or obeying a directive of non-interference with indigenous alien culture, though they are dying of a disease easily cured by the technology aboard one’s starship (see any episode of Star Trek exploring their Prime Directive). There are rules, or guidelines, here that contradict each other. Which is the right choice? Often, if not always, there are shades of grey, different interpretations, and most importantly, no reliable way to verify if one has made the correct decision other than one’s own personal moral code.
Typical ludic pleasure as it is described today is not compatible with ambiguity because games are defined as having a winning outcome. Who ‘wins’ in either of the two situations mentioned above? Even more basically, who are the competitors? Games rely on competition, confrontation and conflict between active agents. Often these are human players or combatants, but in videogames the system itself can be resistant. Drama can arise in much the same way, as direct conflict between people, whether violent or not. Drama can also arise, however, from conflict within one person—in this case the player is an obvious possibility. Inner turmoil is fundamental to some of our greatest works of art, perhaps personified by Hamlet or King Lear. The dramatic power of the interactive medium is that systems could be created to instigate conflict within the player him or herself. If a videogame were to ask a player a question that is not easily answerable by referring to the one and only winning outcome as benchmark, the player could easily be torn between the alternatives, and forced to think rather hard about which choice he would make. The argument against choices which have no ‘mechanical weight’ would fall apart here because the system has no preferred outcome labelled ‘win’ so neither choice will lead the player closer or farther from it. The choice will have consequences, these are defined by the operational rules and logic of the system, but that system simply does not designate a winning or losing attribute to an (or any of the various possible) end state. The challenge is not in simply getting to the end, but in the decisions along the way. The fun here is not game-fun, but rather dramatic fun, exploratory fun, if we can call those experiences of introspection and revelation ‘fun.’
There are no other art forms which must be any particular adjective to qualify as properly within that form. Visual arts perhaps must be ‘beautiful’ but humanity has redefined what constitutes beauty constantly throughout history, and will not stop doing so. One might demand ‘unity’ but the exact definition of unity has been challenged and reconfigured by entire artistic forms: the collage or edited film for example. Even music, perhaps must be ‘heard’ but there are musical pieces consisting of nothing but silence. Why then, must all videogames be fun? Rather, we should look for objects that do not waste our time, from which we walk away with more than what we approached it with. What exactly we gain from these objects is difficult to imagine, but consider what many people throughout time have experienced in other art forms: joy, humour, grief, sadness, revulsion, terror, bewilderment, understanding, education, spirituality, sexual arousal, frustration, anger, satisfaction. Art has worked to evoke every human emotion and experience human beings have conceived of, why should the interactive medium be limited to titillation?
By way of example, in contemporary mainstream games, there are only a sad few titles to refer to that explore this notion. Indeed, so few videogames present anything like a real-life experience that it is not surprising that there is room for so many that are of the highly rule-focused and deterministic as described above. The farther these games are removed from the chaotic ambiguity of average daily life, the more abstract and codified the experiences can become. The more game-like. One I will refer to a number of times is Heavy Rain, not because it is a perfect piece of art, but because if one can actually consider it as a work of art, new insight into the potential of the interactive medium is gained.
The question I would ask of the critics of this approach would be ‘What is the game in Heavy Rain?’ This example does not present the player with more than a tiny handful of predictable, repeatable actions. Those that are predictable include such fundamentals as walking (with the trigger buttons) and navigating Jayden’s investigation computer (itself a computer, therefore a predictable, rule-bound system). There are so few repeatable mechanics to cite, there is nothing like a strategy to be described, that traditional game design analysis is very difficult in this game. Virtually everything that happens in the game is a one-off event, when compared to the repetitive gun fights, car chases, climbing puzzles, or other core mechanical challenges that arise in typical action-oriented games. This is made possible by an unusual interface decision by the developer, that is to place action cues on screen for the entirety of the game. Because the player-characters can take so many different actions throughout the game ranging from opening a refrigerator to climbing through a glass-filled tunnel, to performing a strip-tease, the typical controller configuration is not adequate—there are not enough buttons and too many actions. So, though there are many examples of conversations (as a possible repeatable mechanic) there is nothing as formulaic as the Bioware standard of Red, Neutral, Blue responses in a consistent menu at the bottom of the screen. Indeed, in some cases, the player-character can fail to respond at all.
In the case of Heavy Rain the game is not the issue. The player does not have to learn a large schema of rules for this particular game—including button configuration, character abilities, weapon characteristics, squad control, objective interpretation, enemy recognition etc. Instead the experience is much closer to a real life situation that the average player will need very few cues or clues as to what the expected behaviours are—very few people would need to be cued into grasping that Ethan Mars is distraught and wants to get his son back. Much more explanatory effort is required to convince a non-gamer why the fate of the world relies upon the hero collecting trinkets for a local farmer. Using a relatively believable, recognisable life experience required the developers to implement many more actions into Heavy Rain, though, because the typical, limited range of interaction with the gameworld—namely violence—would not have been enough to solve the case of the missing Shaun, and the identity of the Origami Killer. What relevance does simply shooting everyone (or anyone) in the gameworld have when the challenges mostly revolve around information? In this respect, we can return to a tenant of game design fundamentals: for every challenge present in the game, the player must have the ability to overcome it. And vice versa, there is no need for abilities that are not useful to overcome some challenge. The challenges in Heavy Rain simply cannot be solved by pointing a gun at everyone.
To conclude on Heavy Rain, the notion of ‘ending’ in this example does not posit a ludic win/lose dichotomy. The obvious positive/negative is entirely narrative, completely supported by the fiction, not the game rules. That is, the only way to interpret winning or losing rather unambiguously is by whether Shaun lives or dies at the end. This ending can be tempered (in either direction) by the deaths or survival of the other three major characters, however. There is no steady ramp up of challenges, enemies or puzzles to overcome that once beaten, indicates mastery of the system. There is simply the conclusion of the story. The nature of that conclusion, the details described in the various combinations of live and dead characters must be combined with the player’s own feelings toward each character in order to achieve a sense of satisfaction or displeasure. The question is not ‘Did I win or did I lose?’ Instead the player asks how happy he or she is with the way things turned out, ‘Did I do a good job?’ ‘What choices did I make, and why did I make them?’ Getting to the end of Heavy Rain is not hard. Coming to terms with the consequences of decisions along the way is the interesting experience. Heavy Rain is not game-fun or game-challenging, by and large. It is something else, drama-fun, drama-challenging, perhaps? It is challenging the way A Clockwork Orange is challenging, not the way Space Invaders is.
Note: I wrote this on Friday, Nov 19 having not read the very excellent article here by the gentlemen of Experience Points. I am astounded at how closely our two arguments parallel, out of sheer coincidence.
