Game Design as Cultural Practice Fall 2009

I Won't Forget

Earthbound was an RPG for the Super Nintendo released around 1994. It remains to be one of the few games that has stuck in my mind for years for a multiplicative of reasons, and upon replaying for this assignment I was awestruck by how amazing the game presented itself to me. This game offers to it's audience, a brilliantly and vividly portrayed world for the audience to explore, which Johan Huizinga states as a core aspect of play: "We found that one of the most important characteristics of was it's spatial separation from ordinary life. A closed space is marked out for it" (Huizinga 113). Earthbound uses this element of play to attempt to parody many aspects of American culture within the world it represents. Instead of defeating hardened enemies to collect powerful weapons, we find Ness our protagonist buying supplies at the local supermarket, department store, or super mall complex, in much the same way a suburban mother does her family shopping during the course of a day. This is not only a humorous representation of Americans, but the comical portrayal of a young elementary school boy buying a baseball bat and cheeseburgers to supply himself to fight the greatest evil the world has ever seen seems like a preposterous idea. 

However as Huizinga states, "play is not "ordinary" or "real" life. It is rather a stepping out of "real" life into a temporary sphere of activity with a disposition of it's own (Huizinga 103). Earthbound models itself after real life, using American culture in particular as its base, but pushes the bounds of the imagination to present to us the audience a world in which a child with his infinite faith in the universe can save all mankind from an impending doom, while having a sense of humorous irony. We giggle as Ness' capitalistic pig of a neighbor, in their luxurious house, mocks Ness' family and their home, while we see visually how Ness' house is smaller than the one next door. We enter his house to realize what it means to be home as Ness' mother states, "You look tired Ness, I'll fix you a steak and then you go straight up to bed, a mother knows these things." Though these are only a few examples of the vivid world induced through mimicry, as Roger Caillois stated, "All play presupposes the temporary acceptance, if not of an illusion, then at least of a closed, conventional, and, in certain respects, imaginary universe" (Caillois 135).  The universe of Earthbound as fake as it may be mimics the real world to the point, I felt an emotional attachment to it. 

Earthbound shines brightest at the end as the player faces the final boss. The traditional rules they have followed up to this point become uncertain and the player's own intuition must be utilized to find the solution to the goal. Normal attacks prove fruitless, and as the boss in a roar of confusion constantly wails on your party, all seems hopeless. In this hopelessness the player realizes they must pray to succeed and ask for the prayers of the world to ensure their safe return home. As the player does this the boss is vanquished and one realizes the true power play has to offer. 

SAmer Ead LCC4725 - Blog Post 2

“The goal of a game, we may say, is winning the game“[3]. ­While playing Ninja Turtles on the NES, I dare say, even though I was looking forward to win or beat the game (over and again!), my main purpose was to enjoy my time playing with friends, in one of the few and extravagant multiplayer games of its time. Thus my main motivation to play was always to spend time with friends and to measure how we coped together, in one way or another, which ultimately affected our relationship for the rest of the day if not the entire week, “The player is stimulated to emulate himself, permitting him to take pride in his accomplishment, as against those who share his taste” [2]. In this blog I intend to critique the various elements and features of Ninja Turtles’ effects on my family, my friends, and even myself in real life, versus the definitions of games provided by Huizinga, Caillois and Suits in The Game Design Reader.

One of the most puzzling things with respect to the NES in general, and Ninja Turtles explicitly, was watching family and friends from various generations, including my parents, play the game and actually express enjoyment and excitement, as if “the ‘fun’ of playing resists all analysis, all logical interpretation”[1]. Yet play seemed to be something irrational. For example, as my mother taught me that violence could never be the solution to a problem, I found it hard to believe her when I watched her kill the enemies in the game, and actually enjoy it! Such dilemmas provided me with a different perspective of the world around me, and the effect of games on it. One thing was apparent though everyone playing was trying to waste time, taking their minds off of work, life, and their individual problems to be able to reach a state of much needed leisure, and entertainment. Such results led me to believe that there is much more to games than I could possibly understand, the state of play itself is an “occasion of pure waste: waste of time, energy, ingenuity, skill, and often of money” [2] yet a much needed sate “for relaxation” [1]. Ninja turtles particularly touched on an aspect pretty much only found in board games prior to its existence and that is the need of a positive social atmosphere in order for players to be able to cooperate, which in many ways simulates a work-like ambiance but for the fun of it and thus “Games therefore might be expected to be what work, in some salient respect, is not” [3].

Thus Play must be defined as “a free and voluntary activity, a source of joy and amusement” [2], something that ninja turtles accomplished and provided to individuals from all ages, groups and backgrounds. From my perspective, I felt that the three authors did a great job at defining what a game is, but I feel that they lacked the subliminal portion of the message, it has been proven that games indirectly affect the minds of the players and could help shape them.
By thus, I conclude that as humans, we do not always take on at playing games knowing all the exact limits, especially which appear to reach out beyond time and place.

[1] -- Huizinga, Johan. "Nature and significance of play as a cultural phenomenon." The Game Design Reader. Ed. Salen and Zimmerman. Boston: MIT, 2006.

[2] -- Caillois, Roger. "The definition of play and the classification of games." The Game Design Reader. Ed. Salen and Zimmerman.

[3] -- Suits, Bernard. "Construction of a Definition." The Game Design Reader. Ed. Salen and Zimmerman.

Wario Land II and analysis of dynamic play

Wario Land is a 1998 Game Boy Color game. One of the first of its kind, the software was meant to be backwards compatible. This would mean that the players of the game could choose between playing on their new Game Boy Color machines or on the old Game Boy Classic machines (which were being sold as GameBoy pockets at the time). The story was essentially Wario being attacked during his sleep and, as a result, being robbed of his fortunes. The game is the revenge that follows as he goes to retrieve it back.

On a superficial level, Wario Land is simply a game with hidden exits or unique options for completing a stage. This is no more unique than a game like Super Mario World, where different level exits can often lead to different game paths and secret areas. What is unique about WL though, is that the game does not just provide a divergent path, but a divergent narrative, with a unique outcome for each path. While the most direct path is Wario's trek to the enemy castle that he assaults and reclaims his wealth from, other choices include simply letting the enemies win and getting forced out your home castle so that you can fight your way back in, attacking an enemy ship and taking other valuables that are worth just as much as your own, or charging on a different fort altogether just to get simple revenge on the group that stole from you.

Plot within the game is not restrictive. Nor is geography, though you do not have limited choices, you certainly do not have a single choice in play. These two changes may seem inconsequential (specifically to the meta-gamers), but they take narrative strength away from plot arc and character intent. While many will be quick to assume that the only real constraints players have during a game are gameplay constraints, they presumptuously ignore the restrictions a story arc often has upon a player's journey. This is particularly true within games that are made up mostly from predesigned content.

Run to the end! Kick the enemies out of your castle! These apparent urgencies are broadcasted to the user at the beginning of each stage. They, in many ways, act like an implicit rule. They are a larger objective that the player attacks over time. Consider the greater (and artificially imposed) restrictions highlighted by Bernard Suits. While he refers to short goals like staying within the bounds of the race track, Suits also points out that there is a greater goal that is intentionally "inefficient" to achieve, driving a car in a number of circles, for example. (Suits 37-39). By this logic, all one would need to do is skip straight to the last level on Waio Land in order to finish the game efficiently. However, because the arc of the story dictates the levels that Wario passes through, there is no last level in this game. It is as though the track has become dynamic and that the race car driver could, over the course of the race, decide how this track is laid out. Suddenly these inefficient properties are no longer inefficient but a means for identifying a Schrodingan unknown. Like Schrodinger's cat, the efficient solution to this game exists as different states simultaneously. This is only true, however, while the solution is not inefficient. In observation, the solution to the game becomes tangible and is brought into existence.

Roger Caillois seems to hit on a concept that talks about games in an originative state. With a selection of different terms that refer to different types or facets of play, two stand out when it comes to dynamic realization of intention, paidia and ludus. Paida acts as spontaneous and primal component of play that is kind of a tool for moving to ludus, which is a refined action that may be used to achieve a goal, whatever goal that may be.

Caillois intends to use these terms to give a kind of Freudian origin to all games as we progress through our youth. But he also (unintentionally) leaves interpretative points for those that are looking to understand a generative or dynamic game. At the onset of this game, there is no greater plot or goal. In fact, the "efficient" game is a part of the generative ether, it is not an actual complete game. However, the player still has capacity to proceed through the game's existing levels. So while there is no definite plot arc to guide users through their greater motivation to complete the game, there are many primal and intermediate tasks that can keep the users involved to the point that they play their world into existence. These "primal" tasks include formulaic interpretation of platformer rules, run to the end of the level, kill all the enemies. They have no genuine attribution to a greater goal, however, as the greater goal only exists as a potential state. Metaphorically, it is as if you are charged with caring for Schrodinger's cat before you know the fate of the animal. Should you go to the store and buy cat food? Or should you go find a plot of land and dig a small pet grave? Unfortunately, you can do neither with certainty; so you instead select to do something instinctive and purchase the cat a blanket, knowing that it can be universally applicable to the situation (it can either be a toy or sad cover for the animal). So while you are not able to strategically move against the end result, you are quite capable of at least acting toward an intermediate situation.

Upon first glance, the level map of Wario Land II appears to be a straight forward level branch that goes from one linear start to a single inevitable end. Johan Huizinga would see this line as his magic circle. This is because the linear tree not only is a spacial map, but it represents every stage in the game. In a very particular way, this linear map encompasses all of the playable space within the game. The game behavior that would probably illicit shouts of disgust from Huizinga, however, would be the fact that the map can branch out like a tree upon completion of goals in ways that were not linearly intentional, that is, intentional from the point of the declared linear narrative arc that character is under at the time. The infamous "spoil sport," that Huizinga vividly defines, would expand or change the game upon breech of rule instead of being penalized for it. Upon making the decision to spoil the content of a single arc, the player is immediately given a new arc to match the decision that had invalidated the previous one. (Huizinga 43)

New arcs in Wario Land exist in a unique state. This arc is both a deviation from the previous assumed story as well as a new linearly justified original story. The player has two potential ways of producing these alternative arcs, either by playing through the game with the  intention of selecting this unique arc, or by accident, breaking the arc the player intended to proceed through in the first place. In both cases though, the player will end up completing a single story thread. This thread linear, but exists among a set of other linear threads that are derived from possibility. Each potential thread could then be linearly mapped from start to finished by time, they can also branch based upon utilization of possibility. This product, in many ways, embodies the absolutely unique rhetorical device that games have the potential to utilize, choice. This is not just choice as possibility, but choice as all possible outcome as well. For this reason, this game is extremely important. And while it rattles the notion of what play truly is, this device is ultimately rooted in play in ways that other forms of media could not be. Because of this, Wario Land may be truer to the notion of play than typical interactive products that are incorrectly based in conventional narrative.

Bibliography

Suits, Bernard. "Construction of a Definition." Game design reader a rules of play anthology. Cambridge, Mass: MIT, 2005. Print.

Caillois, Roger. "The Definition of Play and the Classification of Games." Game design reader a rules of play anthology. Cambridge, Mass: MIT, 2005. Print.

Huizinga, Johan. "Nature and Significance of Play as a Cultural Phenomenon." Game design reader a rules of play anthology. Cambridge, Mass: MIT, 2005. Print.

Commander Keen: A Classic Platformer

    Commander Keen was a series of platforming games from the early 1990’s. I had played this game around the age of eight, and so picking this game up again opened a world of nostalgia for me, mostly with the quirky 8-bit music and wacky monsters. The premise of the game is really simple: you play as an 8-year-old Billy Blaze and follow his adventures through space. The ‘world map’ that displays the level choices is top-down, and allows player movement. Once the player decides on a level, Keen is transported to that level and the gameplay goes to its main 2D sidescroller format.

  The three main buttons are: jump, pogo, and shoot. Ammo can be picked up as well as an assortment of items that give you points. As your point count increases, the number of lives you have increases as well. Every hit Keen takes makes him lose a life, and start from the beginning of a level. The pogo stick is Keen’s signature mode of transportation, allowing Keen to reach higher than usual but makes him unable to shoot while it is equipped.

     Being a basic platformer, with jumping puzzles, key/door puzzles, and items galore, there’s no surprise that it fits in a wide variety of definitions for games. Huizinga presents the three main characteristics of play as being free and voluntary, deviant from real life, and secluded from reality in its own world on its own time. The ‘freedom’ that Huizinga defines in terms of play means that this play is “superfluous…. It is never a task. It is done at leisure, during ‘free time’ (103)”. I remember playing this game on weekends, the two days elementary schoolchildren can have the ultimate ‘free time’. Playing was never a task for me, but a way I could escape from the real world and into the fictional world of Billy Blaze, who himself is in a fictional world of his own creation, one where he called himself “Commander Keen”. In this way, the game is an escape on two separate levels. The story tells of Billy constructing a spaceship out of old soup cans. He then proceeds to imagine exploring through space, and the player ‘plays along’ with this imagery.  This ties in with Huizinga’s requirement of play, namely that it is “stepping out of ‘real life’ and into a temporary sphere of activity with a disposition all of its own (103)”.

    Caillois agrees for the most part with Huizinga on certain aspects of the definition of play. His six attributes of play are: free, separate, uncertain, unproductive, governed by rules, and make-believe.  The 'free' and 'separate' attributes are directly borrowed from Huizinga. In this case, the PC is the environment where the game is played (separate from the outside world), while outer space is the emvironment for Billy Blaze’s imaginative play. A new concept Caillois introduces to us is the fact that play has an uncertainty to it. You cannot have play if the result of the game is preordained. This is mostly true for video games, and Commander Keen is no exception. The player does not know whether they will lose on the second boss, or how many points they will accrue, or even whether they will win in one sitting. So far so good, but now we get to the concept of ‘unproductivity’. Caillois reminds us over and over that play is “an occasion of pure waste: waste of time, energy, ingenuity, skill… (125)”. Here, the definition is subject to debate. Is a game really considered unproductive? You may not have a product come out of your experiences with Commander Keen, but the experience still exists.

    Continuing Caillois' definition of a game, the game is both governed by rules and make-believe. Once again building on Huizinga’s model, the concept of play differs from ‘real life’ in that the game takes place in an alternate reality, namely the imagination of an 8-year-old child, with an alter ego as Commander Keen. With all of this in mind, Commander Keen fits pretty well into both Huizinga’s and Caillois’ definitions of play. Under Caillois’ classification of games, Commander Keen fits in ‘mimicry’, the category for games made to create an illusion of an alternate world. The player temporarily stalls reality; I am no longer a college student, but a young boy in outer space fighting space aliens. I become this “illusory character (135)”.

    Bernard Suits has a different view of the definition of games. He agrees that games must have a set of rules, but brings it a step further that claiming that these rules are instated in order to sacrifice efficiency for more inefficient means (173). The rules bring about the desired ends, but take a more winding route. The gameplay in Commander Keen certainly follows suit. The end of a level may be in plain sight, but certain rules (eg. enemies, keys/doors) prevent the player from reaching the end linearly. Commander Keen may have been just another platformer, but it was an exciting game for me, and it definitely fits the bill for a game--a form of play.

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Bibliography

Suits, Bernard. "Construction of a Definition." Game design reader a rules of play anthology. Cambridge, Mass: MIT, 2005. Print.

Caillois, Roger. "The Definition of Play and the Classification of Games." Game design reader a rules of play anthology. Cambridge, Mass: MIT, 2005. Print.

Huizinga, Johan. "Nature and Significance of Play as a Cultural Phenomenon." Game design reader a rules of play anthology. Cambridge, Mass: MIT, 2005. Print.

Elements of Gameplay: Why Monkey Island Is Just that Bad Ass

    In honor of The Secret of Monkey Island I will be delivering the rest of this post with a pirate vernacular. Arrrrrrgh maties, come aboard and see ye the wonders of monkey island. Look out ahoy... and scurvy...Okay I think we can agree that this is not the best of ideas, especially considering my pirate vocabulary is limited to arrrgh, maties, ahoy, and scurvy. Moving on, The Secret of Monkey Island was a point and click adventure game released by Lucas Arts in 1990. In the game players would interact the world by clicking various commands, such as "look", and objects to interact with. In many ways Monkey Island's basic mechanics represents the bare minimum of what it takes to be considered a video game, and yet it is still considered one the of the greatest games of all time. However, to see if playing Monkey Island can really pass as "play" it is important to see how it stacks up to popular definitions of play. In order to truly examine Monkey Island it is important to compare the game to a number of definitions. As such we will looking at Monkey Island in relation to the works of Johan Huizinga, Roger Cailois, and Bernard Suits who have all written papers that attempt to define what constitutes play.
    Throughout Huizinga's paper he tries to demonstrate how broadly play spreads throughout culture. As such his definitions for what defines play are also very broad. His first claim is that play must be voluntary (Huizinga 102), and Monkey Island clearly fits the bill. Like any computer game you can start Monkey Island whenever you want, quitting is as easy as hitting the quit option, and the game has no constraints on the length of play. Most importantly there is no "need" to play Monkey Island beyond the simple desire to play the game. Huizinga's second definition is that the game is not "real" life. In other words, "it is rather a stepping out of 'real' life into a temporary sphere of activity with adisoistion all of its own" (Huizinga 103). Considering the subject matter of Monkey Island involves an imaginary character on an imaginary island journeying to a second even MORE imaginary island on a quest to become a pirate, it's probably a safe bet that the game fits in with Huizinga's second definition as well. In fact the very premise of Monkey Island seems to have evolved from a classic children's dream of growing up and becoming a swash buckling (oh hey there's another Pirate word) Pirate, thus enticing many players with their own personal history of play. Furthermore, the game must take place within it's own space-time, IE he play must have it's own specific place and it must have a set beginning and ending. Being a computer game, one can only play it in front of their computer, and the games starting and winning states mean that it definitely meets the space-time requirement.
    Perhaps the most important element of play is that, "All play has it's rules" (Huizinga 106). In Monkey Island the player is limited to a set of interactions which they must use to interact with the virtual world. The basic interactions outline the rules of Monkey Island, and due to its nature as software it is very difficult to subvert these rules for your own end. Finally Huizinga notes that play will eventually lead to a formation of play-communities (Huizinga 107). At first glance it would seem that it's nature as a single player game would exclude Monkey Island from this category. However, even before the dawn of the magical series of tubes known as the Internet play-communities were forming around Monkey Island and other PC games. My father has shared many stories of him talking with his co-workers about his latest excursion into Monkey Island. Now, with the Internet, you would be hard pressed NOT to find some kind of community around Monkey Island: A google search of "Monkey Island Fans" returned 1,670,000 results. Essentially now you do not need to play with someone to form a "play-community", something which Monkey Island clearly has.
    In his own paper, Cailois critiques many of the assumptions made by Huizinga. When it comes to defining play both Huizinga and Cailois agree on a number of points. Both authors think playing should not be obligatory, and that is must exist within it's on space and time (Cailois 128). Cailois also add in a layer of uncertainty to the restrictions, "the course of which cannot be determined, nor the result attained beforehand, and some latitude for innovations being left to to the player's initiative" (Cailois 128). In Monkey Island there is no loose state, so player can only complete the game in a single victory scenario. The set end point does not exclude Monkey Island from this criteria; however, how a player goes about reaching set end point, or if they will even get to it at all, are all up to how the player interacts with the game. Both Huizinga and Cailois believe that play has to be separate from any needs, but Cailois takes it a step further. Cailois states that play has to be unproductive to the extent playing can produce neither goods nor wealth and the player must end the game in the same state he/she began (Cailois 128). I am relatively sure that there is no professional point and click adventure league so this seems like a moot issue to me. Finally Cailois claims that games must either be governed by rules or make believe (Cailois 127). As discussed above Monkey Island is clearly governed by a set of rules. Unfortunately Monkey Island does not fair as well in the make-believe category. This is due to the fact that a large portion of Monkey Island's humor is designed specifically to break the immersion of the game, which makes it very difficult to maintain a state of make believe. Despite this I think Monkey Island meets enough of Cailois's criteria to be considered a game. Ironically Monkey Island does not fit very well into Cailois's classification system, but I believe the game fits best under Mimicry, Simulation (Cailois 148). While the game does not simulate anything per se, it does accurately convey the experience of the game's character to the player.
    Finally our last author, Suits, has a much more straightforward definition for play and games,

"to play a game is to engage in activity directed towards bringing about a specific state of affairs, using only means permitted by the rules, where the rules prohibit more efficient in favor of less efficient means, and where such rules are accepted just because they make possible such activity." (Suits 184)

Really the only unique section of this paper is the idea of efficiency. In no ways does the interface of Monkey Island mesh with this statement. Easily a more efficient way of playing the game would be to just tell the character what to do. Even the sequels of Monkey Island slowly refined the interface until the word list was no longer used. In principle I agree with Suits definition, but I feel that Suits was not considering technological limitations when he was writing this statement. Still, since the interface of Monkey Island was as efficient as it could be at the time, I believe that the game still meets Suits definition of a game.

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Works Cited

Huizinga, Johan. "Nature and significance of play as a cultural phenomenon." The Game Design Reader. Ed. Salen and Zimmerman. Boston: MIT, 2006. 96-119.

Caillois, Roger. "The definition of play and the classification of games." The Game Design Reader. Ed. Salen and Zimmerman. 122-155.

Suits, Bernard. "Construction of a Definition." The Game Design Reader. Ed. Salen and Zimmerman. 173-191.

The Dog that Ruined my Childhood; or, Defining Duck Hunt

Often overlooked by other NES staples—the Super Mario 3s and the Legend of Zeldas—Duck Hunt is an underrated gem of the late 80’s that simultaneously upholds and challenges traditional game definitions, as argued by game theorists Johan Huizinga, Roger Caillois and (the appropriately named) Bernard Suits. Not only was it one of the first games that effectively sucked me in for hours at a time, but its gameplay was one that was (for its time) somewhat novel; it is these same mechanics that can serve as a lens through which these traditional definitions can be reread and reinterpreted in a digital context.

There are two main aspects of DH on which I want to place emphasis; the first of which is the gun peripheral— the NES Zapper—with which it came. Besides looking freakin’ sweet, the gun itself is a way to contemporize Huizinga’s infamous (and, frankly, a little overplayed [pun sort of intended]) concept of the magic circle. A cornerstone of the game studies realm, the magic circle refers to “a closed space” that is closed out for the game itself, “either materially of ideally [...] inside this space the play proceeds, inside it the rules obtain” (Huizinga 113). That is to say, there is a spatial element to playing games. Written in 1938, this is of course an anachronistic application of the concept, but nevertheless, DH was the first game that really problematized Huizinga’s concept. On the one hand, there is a ‘real’ game space that exists insofar as the peripheral distances the player from the screen/game. While the same thing occurs with a standard controller, the mimetic quality of the Zapper (i.e. in that it mirrors firing a ‘real’ gun) creates the illusion of space. As the player fires the gun at the screen, distance is needed, just like shooting a ‘real’ weapon. To one degree, the magic circle plays out very directly insofar as the player sets up a makeshift play ‘arena.’

Similarly, Huizinga states that the magic circle is the “marking out of some sacred spot” (ibid, my emphasis). A key memory of DH—both for me and, undoubtedly, for other DH players my age—was the intense concentration that went into the playing of the game. In living rooms worldwide, children stood at the ready, arm poised, gun loaded, reflexes at the ready—until someone walked in front of the screen. In spite of my protests, my own mother had no grasp of how dire this situation was; the magic circle, and thus the game, was interrupted. In this way, it wasn’t only disrupted via physical invasion (which was really more of a mild annoyance), but rather a disruption of what Huizinga refers to as the “play-mood:” “At any moment ‘ordinary life’ may reassert its rights [...] by an impact from without, which interrupts the game” (Huizinga 114). There are multiple facets to the magic circle, including both the physical, spatial element, as well as the intellectual, conceptual one (i.e. the play-mood).

With that, this introduces the second element of DH: that damned dog. While DH was a multiplayer game, as an only child, it was usually played solo. In spite of this, DH was probably one of the only games that truly inspired a spirit of competition in my younger self, though not against another player, but the game itself. Whenever I failed a stage, that damned dog (henceforth referred to as “TDD”) would appear to taunt me, thus becoming my natural rival. Caillois’ notion of the agon focuses on the establishment of a level playing field: “the adversaries divide the elements into equal parts and value” (Caillois 131). Of course, TDD wasn’t a ‘real’ adversary insofar as it didn’t actually play the game. Rather, it is TDD’s symbolic significance (i.e. to rub in my face how much I suck) that is key here.

Wanting to avoid reminders of my own digital shortcomings, I tried to play the game to the best of my ability, ultimately giving up and simply playing with the NES Zapper right up against my television screen. This is important in two ways: while it proves Caillois’ argument—in that there exist “inevitable imbalances”—it also goes to show that agon is not only limited to other players, but also constructed rivals (or the player competing against him or herself). More significantly, this plays into Suits’ discussion of game rules and, in particular, how they relate to the purpose of the game: “If the rules are broken the original end becomes impossible of attainment” (Suits 175). It is debatable whether or not the up-against-the-screen strategy constitutes ‘cheating’ in the context of DH. Suits discusses this with his notion of lusory goals, which are vaguely described as “means which are permitted (are legal or legitimate) in the attempt to achieve prelusory goals” (Suits 187). Assuming the goal is to shoot the ducks using the Zapper, it is ambiguous as to what the “legitimate” set distance is between the player and the screen. Rather than criticize Suits, however, this only strengthens his argument in that the ambiguity highlights the flexibility of game rules. Even though the rules are permanently established in video games (i.e. through binary code), there is still room for the player to interpret and ‘play with’ (pun totally intended) the preprogrammed rules of the game.

As it pertains to DH, its status as a game proper is not one that can be legitimately contested. It has a clear purpose, a game space exists, there is some sense of competition, etc. The game-ness of the game is highlighted through how these rules are enforced and effectively interpreted by the player. Suits would argue that I didn’t “really” win at DH because the means by which I ‘won’ are arguably kind of sketchy (Suits 175). The question to ask is what win condition I was ultimately trying to achieve. If I was playing by the ‘actual’ rules of the game, then I wasn’t “really” playing... but if my goal was to shut TDD up and play my game with dignity intact—did I win? Hell yeah.

 

Works Cited:

Huizinga, Johan. "Nature and significance of play as a cultural phenomenon." The Game Design Reader. Ed. Salen and Zimmerman. Boston: MIT, 2006. 96-119.

Caillois, Roger. "The definition of play and the classification of games." The Game Design Reader. Ed. Salen and Zimmerman. 122-155.

Suits, Bernard. "Construction of a Definition." The Game Design Reader. Ed. Salen and Zimmerman. 173-191.

From cats to Caillois to caves: An analysis of Daisuke Amaya's Cave Story

Have you ever watched two cats tussle?  Or dogs play tug of war with each other? As Huizinga discusses, animals have been taking part in games long before the first man walked the earth.  It then stands to reason that games have had time to develop and refine, to become a steady and symbolic part of existence.  Games have now become so heavily engrained in human activity that it is sometimes hard to discern what is play and what is not.  And, of course, games have also found themselves a comfortable and profitable place in today’s economically driven society.  This essay will analyze a modern game in terms of its mechanics and formal elements under multiple definitions.

The video game Cave Story has built quite a name for itself.  This freeware creation by solo developer Daisuke Amaya (artist alias Studio Pixel) has shown that independent and noncommercial game development is not only possible, but it has the potential to lead to great, polished, and, most importantly, fun games.  Cave Story is a 2-D sidescroller action/adventure a la Metroid or Castlevania created in 2004.  It stars Quote, an amnesic robot that awakens in a cave sewer and must find his way out.  His soon-to-be enemy the Doctor, in all his bipedal temerity, has plotted to capture the native Mimigas of the caves in order to turn them into unstoppable killing machines.  Quote must, through a mix of keen puzzle solving and simple brute force, rescue the Mimigas from the Doctor’s evil plans.  This is a plot like many others and it sets up a game that plays similar many others.

But repetition does not make for a bad game.  In fact, it is the repeating of a familiar formula that makes Cave Story such a successful and engaging game.  Huizinga describes play as an activity that exists outside ordinary life and its seriousness, yet allows us to become completely immersed in the experience.  It has sets rules and goals within the experience to allow the player guidance and to give a sense of accomplishment.  In order to rip someone utterly out of reality, it is necessary to create a scenario that is out of current world we occupy.   Cave Story, like so many other games before it, has built a world where you are the hero, yielding weapons, saving the helpless, defeating the evil.  It establishes situations that we can allow ourselves to believe during the course of the game in order to truly play the game.

But Caillois says that Huizinga’s definition has a few critical oversights.  According to Caillois, the definition is “too broad and too narrow” at the same time, allowing for many types of in depth scenarios to fall into the category of games but excluding “bets and games of chance… which, for better or worse, occupy an important part in the economy and daily life of various cultures.”  He also mentions that games do not necessarily need to have definitive goals to be considered games.  So, what elements of Cave Story would be considered play under this broadened definition?  In other words, which aspects can you remove from the game while it still remaining just that?  Cave Story is about a hero trying to save a people group.  But in this game you do not need that goal to play.  The world itself is so massive that simply exploring, finding new items, and destroying random enemies in your path is enough to keep a playing occupied and having fun.  So, with only a few simple rules (i.e. running, jumping, shooting, collision, etc.) Cave Story still remains a game after being stripped down to adjust to a new definition.

A third definition by Suits describes a game as being an activity that an individual or individuals choose to take part in where they are pitted against arbitrary challenges and tasks.  Or, in Suits’ own words; “playing a game is the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles.”  This very simple yet very effective definition pulls many instances under the umbrella of play, but perhaps this is all the better, for a definition heavy with words and attached strings seem counterintuitive to what a game means to us as humans.  And, like so many video games and more material games before it, Cave Story presents plenty of “unnecessary obstacles” for the player to overcome and falls into this categorization of a game.  Video games are very specific instances of play, so it is not all that surprising that Cave Story or games like would meet the requirements of three separate definitions of what a game is, but analyzing its elements under these filters allows for interesting aspects of the game to stand out, and even for emergent game play to surface through the intended goals of the Amaya’s game.  

Works Cited

Caillois, Roger. "The definition of play and the classification of games." The Game Design Reader. Ed. Salen and Zimmerman. 122-155.

Huizinga, Johan. "Nature and significance of play as a cultural phenomenon." The Game Design Reader. Ed. Salen and Zimmerman. Boston: MIT, 2006. 96-119.

Suits, Bernard. "Construction of a Definition." The Game Design Reader. Ed. Salen and Zimmerman. 173-191. 

Quake 3 Arena - The Definitive Community Based Game Evolution

Quake 3 Arena is an FPS (First Person Shooter) game released in 1999 by id Software. They redefined the FPS genre by designing the physics engine and maps specifically to generate an environment with extreme action and movement. Players have interestingly molded their tactics with the game creator's philosophy to form their own style of "play". I found that certain characteristics of Quake 3 Arena, in a bizarre way, seem to obey certain game definitions and characteristics by Huizinga, Caillois and Suits.

Huizinga says that a game "proceeds within its own proper boundaries of time and space" (Huizinga, 107). After playing Quake 3 Arena 12 hours a night, everyday, for a couple of months, I realize now, how vividly true this statement is . There were instances after playing for long hours when it took me a couple of seconds to lucidly adapt to the real world. I think Huizinga's thoughts on how a game is confined with it's own boundaries of time and space transgresses from cultural and religious rituals to video games, where the action of playing a game is the ritual.

Roger Caillois has four fundamental categories while describing games (Caillois, 130). I have observed that two of his categories are blended the most into different game mechanics within the Quake 3 universe. The two most prominent categories that are underlying in the game are Agon and Alea.

Quake 3 Arena is primarily a tourney based multiplayer game having one-on-one and team play modes. The game is highly competitive with entire mods being set up for the game, specifically for tournaments. Even while starting out with the game, the tutorials are meant to condition you in combat situations by learning tactics and methods to out maneuver your opponent.

Elements of Alea resonate in the game by way of spawn points. Although not a new concept in games by any means, the game designers of Quake 3 took the aspect of unpredictability in a different direction. While playing a one-on-one match, the player usually spawns in a location far away from where he was just killed. This location is usually random but still has the constraint of being distant from the "kill location" so as to give the player time to restock on weapons and ammunition. To make the game interesting in a competitive environment like a tournament, the designers decided to have a couple of re-spawn locations extremely close to the "kill-location". This caused the players to hide in the last few minutes of the game, if they already had a lead, instead of trying to kill the opponent to inflict further humiliation (which for someone people was the sole purpose of playing Quake 3 Arena in a tournament).

A lusory attitude is acquired by someone who "adopts rules..to employ worse rather than better means for reaching an end" (Suits, 188). In most tourneys, the rules are encouraged to be difficult so as to induce a sense of satisfaction after defeating the opponent. Initially, tournaments had a "kill limit" that one had to achieve to win the game. Over time, they incorporated a time limit instead of a kill limit as this would make things more difficult for players. Now, players had to employ strategies to win the game by making the most amount of kills first and then avoiding other players so their kill count would be the highest at the end of the alloted time.

I think Quake 3 Arena is a great example to illustrate all these game definitions that span over various parts of the 20th century. I have specifically picked this game to show case the foresight the authors had in recognizing the characteristics games would need regardless of the "space" they were in. Like traditional games, Quake 3 Arena is a community based game where the entire community decides on the rules and regulations and after 10 years, they still have stuck with the above mentioned fundamentals. It is the clearest example of a community based game being played with better technology, but still consistently maintaing fundamental game characteristics.

Cited Work:

Huizinga, Johan. "Nature and significance of play as a cultural phenomenon." The Game Design Reader. Ed. Salen and Zimmerman. Boston: MIT, 2006. 96-119.

Caillois, Roger. "The definition of play and the classification of games." The Game Design Reader. Ed. Salen and Zimmerman. 122-155.

Suits, Bernard. "Construction of a Definition." The Game Design Reader. Ed. Salen and Zimmerman. 173-191.

Final Fantasy: A Video Game Dynasty

In 1990, a revolutionary new game was introduced to the United States.  Final Fantasy was the first in a series of console role-playing games introduced by Square Enix.  In the first Final Fantasy, you start of by choosing a group of four "Warriors of Light".  You're allowed to choose from six classes: Fighter, Thief, Black Belt, Red Mage, White Mage, and Black Mage giving the player up to 24 combinations to choose from.  Final Fantasy was revolutionary in the sense that for the first time, the player controlled a party of multiple characters (positioned on the left side of the screen) and faced enemy parties with up to 9 enemies (positioned on the right side of the screen).  The game also focuses more on a story rather than action.  The story line focuses on the four “Warriors of Light” bearers of 4 ancient elemental artifacts, tasked with saving the world from a growing threat. 

Although the characters the gamer plays as are all humanoids, the game falls in with Huizinga’s  criteria that play is not “ordinary or real life” and that by playing the game we are “stepping out of real life into a temporary sphere of activity” [103].  Final Fantasy also falls into Huizinga’s criteria that play is free, not in the monetary sense, but rather in the sense that it is not an arduous task, it is a game that is played at someone’s leisure, for fun. 

Roger Caillois agrees and disagrees with Huizinga on different aspects of the definition of play, but one particular aspect of his definition of play is quite interesting in the scope of video games.  Caillois writes, “An outcome known in advance, with no possibility of error or surprise, clearly leading to an inescapable result, is incompatible with the nature of play” [126].  A RPG like Final Fantasy is story driven and thus has a pre-defined ending.  Though it is not known to the player in their first experience with the game, what the conclusion of the story will be, each time the game is subsequently played, the player knows the outcome, which doesn’t follow with Caillois criteria of play.  It can however be argued, that in a story-boarded game like Final Fantasy the play aspect is in the variety of paths you can take on your way to the end, rather than the end itself.

One thing that has always intrigued me about linear story based role-playing games like Final Fantasy is that although you can win, that is, reach the conclusion of the story, you cannot lose.  True, your party can perish and you’ll be restarted at your most recent save, but if you continue to play the game, you will eventually come to the end.  Suits touches on the subject a bit when he discusses a restriction of means for obtaining the end which invokes the activity of trying to win, thus resulting in play.  In Final Fantasy, you’re restricted by the constant enemies (with increasing strength as the game progresses) which act as an obstacle to keep the player from reaching the end, thus invoking a state of play.

Elements of Gameplay: An Analysis of Pokemon

    Pokémon, a game made in the mid 90’s, was about the capture and training of creatures called Pokémon. The game was set in an alternate reality where you play a trainer who strives to be the best trainer. The main way to interact with the environment is through battling with your Pokémon. The trainer is very weak, in fact if all their Pokémon are knocked out the trainer passes out as well, and loses half of his money for some reason.

 

    Huizinga’s ideas of play are supported by this game: the “magic circle” (Huizinga, 103), “pretending” (Huizinga, 103), and “play being differed or suspended” are traits of the game. “The magic circle”(Huizinga, 113) is marked off in the small parameters of  the Game Boy’s screen but the world contained with in that area is much larger then that. The game can also be saved and picked up later or even paused if it’s only for a short time. Last as an RPG this game is a great example of “pretending.” You are playing as another person a role that can not be violated as long as the player stays with in the confines of the game.  

 

    Caillois’ ideas of Agon and Mimicry describe the features of this game as well. In this game you play as another person who lives in a world entirely different then your own. This feature follows Caillios’ idea “Make-believe: accompanied by a special awareness of a second reality.”(Caillios, 128) Also, Caillos’ idea of separate laws with in the game world is upheld in the rule that most interactions with other people and creatures must be carried through with the Pokémon the trainer has. By using these Pokémon to fight and compete, the game supports Caillios’ idea of Agon or competitive games. Constantly through out the game the trainer is challenged to matches and will challenge the leaders to fight for there title or badges.

 

    Suits’ arguments on how a game can be defined by having goals and the rules used to achieve those goals can also be supported by this game. This game has many rules that must be followed and much like Suits’ “golf club” (Suits, 174) example. Often less efficient means must be followed to achieve the goal. For instance if I wanted to win very easily I could just capture a single Pokémon and attack a trainer and steal there Pokémon afterwards, but even the villains in the game follow the rule of Pokémon fighting Pokémon to achieve their goal. Another rule that every one follows that is less then the optimal method is that no trainer has more then six Pokémon at any given time. It would be an obvious advantage for a trainer to have twenty Pokémon in a line up rather then only six. Suits’ other idea of having multiple goals such as to participate, to win, or just to finish (Suits, 186) is also supported by the game. As a player there are multiple ways to play and win. For instance you can play just to play: to treat the game as a pet simulator and raise Pokémon. You can also play to win, to beat the Elite Four. Last you can play to finish. This one would be dependent on what it means to finish for the player which could be any thing from beating every trainer in game to collecting all the types of Pokémon.

 

 

Bibliography

Huizinga, J. (1938). Nature and significance of play as a cultural phenomenon. The Game Design Reader, 96-119.

Caillois, R. (1958). The definition of play and the classification of games. The Game Design Reader, 122-155.

Suits, B. (1978). Construction of a Definition. The Game Design Reader, 173-191.