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.
Comments
You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.