Video games are unlike all other forms of games “Unlike board games or even sports, the rule structure of most digital games is opaque… they constrain players actions without recourse to alteration.”(Fron, p.4) In other words, the rules of video games often can’t be changed. For instance in Halo I really only have one way of interacting with non player characters, I can’t change the rules to decide that I want to try to be diplomatic about things I can only shoot.
MIT’s Spacewar(1962) is an interesting game in that it has flexible rules that can be decided at the beginning of a match or reprogrammed to give the user the experience they want. As shown in the play though of the game, the player is given the prompt “TYPE Y TO GET A STANDARD GAME.”(Brand) Upon selecting “N” the player is given the option of changing all the setting for the game. Controlling the game by letting the user modify a set of rules is the more common method of putting a little flexibility in games though at the time this game was released this was uncommon especially when compared to pong(1972) which didn’t give the user many ways to interact with it at all. This game goes one step further as well, because the code was released it allowed players to reprogram it to create there own rules to play by. Also, the game lets the players decide the out come of the game. While the game keeps score, its up to the players to decide what the score means wither it should be looked at as an individual score or a team score and so on.
The games mentioned in Fron’s article are also interesting in their flexibility and how they differ from standard games of there medium. In the game Prui “one of the participants changed the rules inadvertently…she protested the chosen Prui and became the self-appointed Prui essentially breaking the rules of the game.” (Fron, p.3) This action would normally be considered cheating but in the spirit of the game it is an accepted action and the other players go on playing and having fun. This mentality and way of playing is consistent with DeKoven’s ideas “[the players] might have to change a few rules. [The players] might even have to make up a whole new game…When [the players are] looking for Deep Fun, [they are] not as concerned with the game… as [they are] with having the opportunity to have fun together.”(Dekoven, 18-19) For the sake of play and having fun, the rules of the game begin to become more malleable and allow the players to start changing the rules on the fly in order to try to create a more fun experience.
Pierce’s Article mentions many modern games that don’t exactly follow the rules of conventional games. Many of the titles listed gives the user the freedom to either play their own way with in the games rules or it allows to player to alter some aspect of play to make the game more suited to their taste. For the Baby Boomers surveyed they ranked there favorite activities as exploring and helping newer players (Pierce, 8). These two activities are often unnecessary activates in a game and in some games they aren’t really possible. With games like wow and second life that give an expansive environment that will more or less change at some point in time(wow’s cataclysm and second life depends on the players to change it) as well as having an ever changing player base, activities such as exploring or helping newer players can be a common event. In video games exploring may be though of as a common feature but when compared to a board game where exploration is impossible it adds a strong effect on how space is represented.
Brand, S. (1972).
SPACEWAR: Fanatic Life and Symbolic Death Among the Computer Bums. Rolling
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DeKoven, B. (2002). Talking about what we're looking for. The Well-Played
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Fron, J., Fullerton, T., Morie, J. & Pearce, C. (2005). Sustainable Play:
Towards A New Games Movement for the Digital Age. Digital Arts &
Culture Conference Proceedings, Copenhagen. 1-6.
Pierce, C. (2006). Games as Art: The Aesthetics of Interactivity. Visible
Language: Special Issue on Fluxus. 66-89.
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