One of the most thrilling games of my childhood had to be Golden Eye released in 1997 for the Nintendo 64. While the game play by today's standards would be lackluster and sluggish, back in the day, Golden Eye spent more time on the TV screen than any other game. While the single player missions were fun and engaging the real strong point of the game was the four player multi-mode multiplayer maps that were almost not added. Nothing could match the exhilaration of a nightly Golden Eye tournament, staying up until all hours of the night killing your best friends. This game could probably be traced back as the cause of my insomnia to this day.
Huizinga alludes to inseparability between the temple, set aside for sacred acts, and the magic circle for play (113). For most children the TV screen acts as their alter and the actions unfolding on it become as important and serious as everyday life. While playing the game, our friendship was put on hold, the game became of the utmost importance. I would have no problem sneaking up behind my best friend and shooting him in the back with the golden gun just to get a few extra points for the win. When the console turned off, the friendships turned back on and all was well again. Play as Huizenga defines it, is a free activity consciously outside 'ordinary' life as being ' not serious,' but at the same time absorbing the player intensely and utterly. He goes on to say, "it proceeds within its own proper boundaries of time and space according to fixed rules and in an orderly manner" (107). While as participants we know that the games are not real, we still become so engrossed in them, that we battle with the ferocity of a gladiator in ancient Rome fighting for his life. This drive to stay alive at any cost, the competition to be first would classify Golden Eye as Caillois' agôn.
Agôn "leaves the champion to his own devices, to evoke the best possible game of which he is capable, and it obliges him to play the game within the fixed limits, and according to the rules applied equally to all, so that in return the victor's superiority will be beyond dispute"(Caillois 132). Out of this seriousness within the game, the rules are promoted to a commandment like state. All three authors Huizenga, Caillois, and suits introduce rules as an integral part of playing. In a game like Golden Eye, as with many video games, the rules are pretty much set in stone (i.e. they are hardcoded into the game engine). The different modes enforced different rules, like the man with the golden gun mode which the player who picks up the golden gun can kill any opponent in one shot, but when he gets the gun, he can no longer pick up body armor, thus evening the stakes a little for the other players. The living daylights in which a flag is placed in the level and whoever carries the flag the longest wins, however when a player carries the flag he or she can no longer use their weapons, so they are put strictly into a defensive mode while the rest of the players hunt the flag carrier down. The classic free-for-all in which the team or person with the most kills wins and the variation on that, license to kill where on hit from any weapon, even a slap, kills. These hardcoded are very much like Suits' constitutive rules, "which prohibit the use of the most efficient means for reaching a prelusory goal" (Suits 189).
Players are forced to follow the games constitutive rules, aside from using cheat codes or games sharks to fundamentally alter the game. Another set of rules exist within the games set of rules, a set of rules agreed upon by the players. With the split screen multi-player death match, inevitably screen watching developed, in which one player would watch anthers frame on the screen to find out where they are located, or to see if the other player is sneaking up on them. Screen watching became an unfair advantage for the noobs who did it, thus it unbalance the game and as Suits would argue that it ceases to be a real game for the cheater at this point. Other rules, rules of skill, developed from regular game play as well. Every time the player selection screen would pop up, there would be a mad dash, by all the players, to select the player avatar Oddjob. Oddjob was so popular because unlike all the other characters whose size remained constant, Oddjob was much shorter making him harder to aim for. Thus we developed our own set of rules about who could get Oddjob and how often they could play as him.
Huizinga states that “play demands order absolute and supreme. The least deviation from it ‘spoils the game,’ robs it of its character and makes it worthless” (105). Golden Eye has a very well defined set of rules, which is part of the reason it became so popular in the late 90’s. Each player in the game voluntarily follows this set and the added skill set which adds even more depth to the game. When we jump into the game world, the game rules supersede those of our real world, and only with the active participation of everyone involved did it make Golden Eye such a great experience. The active participation with the games rule set was an important part of Huizinga, Suits, as well as Caillois papers and it is what made Golden Eye such a great experience.
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.
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