gamEstrogen

The Uke As Guilt-Free Anti-Feminist Female

2012-01-31T10:04:00.000-08:00

When I was just starting the fifth grade, I had a friend. We'll call her Mary. Mary was four years older than I was, and when I first met her we bonded over our mutual love of anime - specifically Sailor Moon. She was the one who leant me her untranslated volumes of the manga Kusatta Kyouhei no Houteishiki - describing the story to me as she had half learned from assiduous internet research and half deduced from following the illustrations - and, in doing so, gave me my first introduction to shounen ai.

Shounen ai, literally "boy love" in Japanese, is a genre of Japanese manga and anime (comics and cartoons if we want to be boorish and ignore the subtle cultural differences) that focuses specifically on gay romance between men or boys. This genre is much more popular in Japan than any similar equivalent in the states, and is targeted not at a gay male audience but primarily at straight females. In fact shounen ai is generally written and illustrated by women as well, occasionally to the point of radical inaccuracies about male physiology.

A typical shounen ai story focuses around two characters - the "seme" and the "uke" (pronounced "sehmeh" and "ookeh"). In a literal sense, the seme is the top and the uke is the bottom in the gay relationship. But much more than in any Western story, the characters in shounen ai manga are defined by these labels. The seme is generally gruff, stoic, and often pushy often to the point of being almost rapey. When he is not tough and stoic he is cheerful and puppy-like, overbearing in his eagerness, and still the more aggressive of the two. The uke, by contrast, is usually smaller, more feminine, easily confused, easily brought to tears, overthinks things, is highly emotional, and in most cases, is either reluctant to accept the seme's advances or secretly pines for him without realizing that his feelings are reciprocated. There are a number of stories that can be told with these two archetypes, and for the most part these same stories are told over and over and over again with different set dressing across various manga.

It may sound like these stereotypes lack nuance, but that's a problem endemic to manga and anime as a whole and not unique to shounen ai. Most anime characters fall into broad archetypes - the "tough guy," the "shy girl," the "nerdy character," etc. Much more so than Western media, Japanese media is oriented around comfortable stereotypes that the audience recognizes. I won't spend a lot of time belaboring this point, but if you're interested in the idea, there's a very good book called "Otaku: Japan's Database Animals," by Hiroki Azuma that explains this trend in great and fascinating depth.

When I was in middle school and receiving my first shounen ai education from Mary, these stories were fascinating to me. I was too young to read critically and pick out the fact that all the stories were basically the same - all I knew was that they appealed to a very visceral and newly-formed notion of the romantic (a childish one, yes, but I was a child). To this day I still find myself enjoying some shounen ai here and there, provided it doesn't adhere too faithfully to the basic stereotypes and devices of the genre. There was and still is something appealing about the sheer, unapologetic emotionality of them - the longing, the heartbreak, the misunderstandings, and so forth - that is enjoyable in a very onanistic sort of way.

I had given up more traditional shounen ai for several years when I recently stumbled upon an anime that encompasses all the worst (or best, depending on how you look at it) of shounen ai cliches. (The series, pictured right, is called "World's Greatest First Love" and is available on CrunchyRoll.com, for anyone who is interested.) Looking over it again with a much older and more critical eye, I tried to pinpoint what about it was so pleasing to me back when I first discovered it, why it sparked an interest in me that I have to this day not really lost.
I started to think about the uke character - I have long believed that the uke is basically a wish-fulfillment stand-in for the author/reader, but in male form. At any rate, the character is almost always written in an unbelievably feminine way, either intentionally or from lack of writing skill. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the uke embodies a very specific subset of characteristics.

The uke is everything that we as young women growing up are taught is supposed to be romantic, but which we are simultaneously taught is a sign of weakness in women (or, less charitably, the weakness OF women). Confusion, being too quick to mope and overindulge in negative emotion, sighing crushes from afar that the character is too shy to act upon - all of these are characteristics that are rather Victorian in their notions of how women should behave in a romantic situations, and all of these are traits which modern feminist women abhor in female characters.

If you don't believe me, take Bella Swan. Bella is the main character in the Twilight Series (for the two people who aren't already familiar). She is universally defined by her love for her man, she accepts his stalker-like behavior as a sign of the trueness of his love, and when he breaks up with her she literally spends four months locked in her room staring at the wall and moping. She's that kind of protagonist. Bella Swan is a non-character created to be a wish-fulfillment fantasy for author Stephanie Meyers and her twelve-year-old female audience. A very specific demographic absolutely adores these books, while most of the rest of the reading public basically despises them.

We despise these books because Bella is weak. As more mature women, we don't want to be anything like Bella. We've learned to cope with our emotions, to not let men rule our lives. We hate her for being the sort of character that flies in the face of the equality and respect that women strive for in the modern world. And yet, Twilight DOES have a huge fan following - which indicates that these situations and these behaviors have found some appeal somewhere. How is it that these things can be simultaneously romantic and detestably anti-feminist?

Well, for most readers of Twilight, they can't. You're either in the pro or anti Twilight camp, and there's not a lot of room for compromise. But with shounen ai, there is room for compromise. With shounen ai, you neatly side-step the problem of "is it okay for a girl to be like this?" by making the character a boy. Many of the uke characters in shounen ai manga are just as bad as Bella Swan, but much better received by many of the same women who would scoff at Twilight.

So I suppose the question is, is this okay? Does the fact that the character is male make these behaviors acceptable? Are the actions of the uke scornful, or are they actually romantic in the absence of feminist baggage? It's not a question I feel comfortable answering on my own. Am I a bad feminist because I found (and occasionally still find) these subservient, melodramatic characters compelling, even though they're male? Is shounen ai somehow groundbreaking, or is it just the opposite? And why are these plots compelling at all in the first place - what is the cultural construction that causes us to find these things romantic at all? And if I DO find these things romantic, does that make me a hypocrite for disliking Twilight?

More and more questions pile up, and I feel inadequate to answering any of them. Perhaps it is because I know that the answers will lead to some heavy self-evaluation, always a daunting prospect. But regardless, I hope some of the questions will lead you to thought as well, and encourage you to examine your own preconceptions. Are female stereotypes universally detestable, even when applied to men?

Slash Fiction as Feminist Activity

2011-10-22T00:37:00.001-07:00

It's no secret that I'm a pretty big fan of slash fanfiction; writer of much, reader of much more. There are many and varied reasons to enjoy slash, from the most basic counterpart to male interest in lesbianism (one man is hot, so two men are hotter) to more nuanced narrative concerns like the interesting conflicts inherent in social taboos and so on. If you ask me why I'm into slash, I'm likely to give you a different answer on any given day of the week; there are just so many angles to the subject. It's something I think about an awful lot, but one possible explanation did not occur to me until just recently, and it seems to explain a lot.

A friend recently said to me that he thought that any gay material at all in a given piece of work was both "necessary and sufficient" to keep me interested. Which isn't true, but it got me thinking about counterexamples. When do I not need gay characters or gay undertones to enjoy something? When do I dislike something if it doesn't have those qualities? For the most part, there's one common thread that binds these distinctions: the presence or lack of interesting female characters.

I've only recently started to notice how very few interesting female characters there are in media, particularly in the games industry. I mean, I've always been aware of the problem, at least peripherally - but somehow recently it has come into much sharper focus for me. It might have something to do with this rather interesting article I read, linked by a friend: To my someday daughter. But everywhere I turn, I feel like I'm seeing new examples of stupid, vapid, shallow presentations of the feminine.

Case in point: my boyfriend and I just bought an indie game called "Dungeon Defender." It's a good game - a hybrid of action RPG and tower defense that is better than any other attempt at the genre mix that I've seen. The narrative isn't anything particularly novel, but it's cute enough to be less tired than it by rights should be. There are four character classes you can play as, all of which have predefined genders. They are: the squire/knight character (male, human), the sorcerer's apprentice (also male... presumably human? Hard to tell under the robe and hat), the monk (male, human), and the huntress (female, elf).

When you are on the character select screen, choosing which hero you would like to customize to play as, each character has a little animation upon selection. For the three male characters, this is basically a battle animation. They hold up their sword or staff, or in the case of the monk, go into a meditation pose. Know what the elf girl does? She turns around and wiggles her butt at you. That's right - she's even wearing a low-slung belt so you can see the small of her back and the very top of her butt when she does it. And this is the indie scene - don't even get me started on the triple-A atrocities.

Little things like this didn't used to bother me, but the older I get, the more they do. Maybe it's just that as I grow up, I expect the people around me and the things I'm consuming to also grow up and be more mature as well, and it seems like they're falling behind. Or, as I'm sadly realizing, they fell behind long ago. Most big game studios aren't even pretending anymore.

So what does all this have to do with slash? Well, consider the average romance featuring one of these women. Who am I supposed to identify with? The shallow save-me damsel that exists solely to be captured and to be the reward for the hero upon completing his quest? The bad-ass leather-boot-clad action dominatrix whose sole qualities are "is hot" and "can blow shit up"? Why would I want to identify with these women? They're not real people. They're cardboard cutouts. Not only do I not feel kinship with them, I feel abhorrence towards them.

So if I'm going to identify with someone, I'm much more likely to pick the character that matches me emotionally - or at least has emotions I can empathize with - than I am to pick the character that has boobs. And because I like men, I want the character I identify with or care about to like men. It seems the natural extension or progression of my empathy. It's not that simple, of course, but it proves to be surprisingly true across a very broad variety of cases. The characters I slash are most often the characters I feel empathy for. I hardly ever feel empathy for female characters in anything these days. Because they're barely characters.

Going through the media that I've been consuming lately, I started asking myself - who do I slash, and why?

Avatar: the Last Airbender
I don't slash anyone. Katara is an awesome, complex female character, as are support character females like Toph and Suki.

Supernatural
I slash Dean and Castiel. There are interesting female characters in the series, but they're only ever bit characters; one-or-two-episode players. Mostly there are just NO female characters on the show.

Glee
I'm interested in the canon gay couple, but I don't slash anyone non-canon. I find Rachel and Quinn, while stereotypes, to still be somewhat interesting - at least enough that I care about their emotions and what they're going through. And the shallowness of their characters is balanced out by the fact that the gay couple is actually canon.

Kingdom Hearts
I slash the hell out of this series - Sora and Riku particularly (although one-sided), and Axel and Roxas as a close second. Female characters? Basically one - Kairi (and Namine, who is also Kairi). Know what she does in the game? Mostly get captured. And sometimes wait longingly on an island for her man to return. At least Riku and Axel are somewhat interesting.

Community
No slash pairings, despite the tempting target of Troy and Abed. Annie, Britta, and Shirley are at least as complex as any of the male characters. (They are still fairly simple as characters in these sorts of comedies are, but they can at least be described with actual personality monikers - Naive, Uptight Activist, Religious, etc., rather than as "the girl.")

Sherlock (BBC)/Sherlock Holmes
Very slashy, in both cases. In Sherlock (the slashier of the two, in my opinion), essentially no female characters, barring one bit character who is the female counterpart to an identical male character and a bland love interest non-character who's in about three scenes total. In Sherlock Holmes, two female characters whose personalities are, respectively: "love interest" and "feisty love interest."

I'm not saying this is a hard and fast rule - like, if there is a good female character, I 100% won't slash, and if there isn't I 100% will. I'm just saying, I'm most likely to take an interest in the emotional states and emotional underpinnings of characters that actually have emotions. Most of the time those characters are male. Asking me to care about the doings of a shallow piece of eye-candy is not only ridiculous, it's frankly insulting.

So there you have it - yet another reason to like slash; it's the feminist thing to do.

GDC 2011: Unexpected Adventures in Classism

2011-03-08T21:08:00.000-08:00

PART 1: The City of San Francisco

I am what my boyfriend likes to refer to as a “Country Mouse.” (From the Aesop fable. Look it up.) I’m not comfortable in cities at the best of times; I’m nervous around strangers on the street, particularly if I’m walking by myself, even if it’s in broad daylight. Part of it is because I grew up in rural Middle-of-Nowhere and attended undergraduate school at Slightly-North-of-Nowhere, and part of it is undoubtedly the numerous warnings I received before I came out to LA: don’t walk by yourself at night, make sure you’re always aware of your surroundings, cross the street if you see someone who makes you uncomfortable, etc. It certainly doesn’t help that I’m all of five feet tall and barely over a hundred pounds, not to mention the fact that I’m a young woman.

So when I came to LA for the first time to attend graduate school, I was nervous. My feelings were slightly mollified by the numerous enormous old trees on and around the USC campus – trees never fail to cheer me up and make me feel at ease – and the laid-back air of the city. Gradually I got used to life out here, and though I’m still far more nervous just walking the streets than I want to be, I’ve begun to feel more comfortable here than I ever expected.

This was my first year at GDC, and my first time ever visiting San Francisco. My very first impression of the city was that it felt far more like a city than LA did. It reminded me much more of being in Manhattan – tall buildings, people in a hurry to get somewhere, and a general air of tension and busyness. LA feels like someone took a city and placed it in Southern California, where everything from the city’s geography and the attitudes of the people within it melted in the heat, spreading out and slowing down and dripping across the map. San Francisco feels like a place where hip things are happening, where you have to keep on your toes and stay alert and grab hold of life as it swings and twirls around you. It’s got the beat and rhythm of a city, rather than the strange desert patience of LA. (Which is not to say that nothing happens in LA; very important things happen all the time – they just happen in air-conditioned office rooms. And they usually involve lawyers, which means they take at least three times as long as usual.)

After spending a little more time in San Francisco, my impression extended to include, most notably, the homeless. The homeless in San Francisco are not like the homeless in LA. For one thing, I’ve never seen a homeless person in LA with a sign saying “Need Money to Buy Weed.” The idea of giving someone change for having a sign that’s clever or something you want to read somewhat baffles me, but the signs – and the assumption that they would work – was everywhere we looked. Furthermore, it was the first time I’ve been approached by an obvious pan-handler trying to sell me a story. My own experience involved a woman who claimed to be diabetic, but I have a friend who experienced a full-on con – someone tried to get him to help pay for parking for a car that was about to be impounded with his family inside. Aside from these more notable eccentricities, the homeless were also just more aggressive and far more numerous than I’ve seen in LA. In the ten blocks that my friend and I walked home one evening, we were approached by perhaps five different people asking us for change – and saw several others that were asleep or didn’t come up to us.

I don’t want to preach or turn this into some kind of moralistic diatribe. This is obviously a problem in San Francisco, and the bizarrely entitled attitude that we seemed to get from some of the pan-handlers is probably a part of it. I just know that it brought to the forefront my urban paranoia – only in feeling it fresh again did I realize how much it had faded over my time in LA. This isn’t a reason to not go to San Francisco by any means – but it’s something I was acutely aware of while I was there. I wonder if the residents are aware of how large the problem is, or if they’ve simply become used to it.

PART 2: The Problem of Passes

As most people know, GDC is incredibly expensive. I was able to go only because I received a free Expo Pass as part of a raffle. The value of my pass – even if you pre-ordered it early – was roughly $200. This is basically out of my price range barring exceptional circumstances, and it’s actually the second-cheapest pass at the convention. The cheapest is the student pass for $75, which gives you access to almost nothing, and in order to receive the full, heaping-platter, everything-and-the-kitchen-sink pass, you’d need to pay $1500. The next price bracket above mine – the summits and tutorials pass – was $600, a significant price jump.

The Expo Pass gives you access to the main awards ceremonies and to the show floor. I figured that would be enough – especially since I’d only be there for two and a half days or so – and that the floor would keep me occupied with interesting content. I came to GDC looking forward to learning interesting new things about game design and being inspired to create something new.

The reality I soon discovered was that my pass essentially ranked me as a second-class citizen. I was astounded by how ostracized I felt at the conference. It began on Wednesday morning, when I traveled to the conference at 8 AM in order to accompany my friends (with summit passes) who were planning to attend the Keynote at 9 AM. Now, my pass did not entitle me to attend the Keynote, which I knew, but I figured that I could at least take advantage of having a mere Expo Pass to check out the floor early, when all the higher-level attendees were busy elsewhere.

However, upon reaching the expo hall, I discovered that the doors didn’t open until 10 AM, when the Keynote let out. I was barred from entering, and had to sit twiddling my thumbs in the lobby, waiting for the important people to get out of their meeting so we could start the show. A few other Expo Pass holders waited nearby, while exhibitors hurried into the hall to complete their last-minute preparations.

When I finally did step onto the floor, I was indeed wowed by the display of technology that I saw. Everything new and cutting-edge in the industry was on parade, although with notably fewer flashing lights and booth babes than E3, for which I was thankful. I had a great time just strolling around the floor, checking things out.

The thing is, the GDC floor does not match E3 for size, and touring the floor doesn’t take more than a few hours. Additionally, most of the vendors are (understandably) there for business; if you’re not handing out resumes, attending a pre-scheduled business meeting, or purchasing several dozen Maya licenses for your school, then the vendors are generally polite to you but ultimately disinterested. The only exception was the IGF corner, where all the IGF games were available for demo. This was certainly the highlight of the floor for me, and I spent a great deal of my time there playing the games and at the IGDA booth playing ninja.

When I met my friends at mealtime, I was subjected to the frankly tortuous experience of listening to them talk about how amazing the summits and lectures they’d attended had been. Don’t get me wrong – I don’t resent them for it, and I wanted to hear what I was missing as much as possible. But the knowledge that I had wandered around mostly bored after the third or fourth hour while they’d been hearing from some of the most fascinating people in the industry on topics I really cared about was crushing. I went to GDC as an academic, but I only had access to the sales pitches.

The evening of the first day was the awards ceremony, and finally I felt like part of the community once more – despite the roped-off section of VIP tables in the center of the awards hall with guards at every entrance. But given the caliber of some of the people in that area who were nominated for the awards, that felt almost reasonable. The awards ceremony even made me feel strangely elitist – being familiar with so many of the games nominated for the IGF awards made me feel like someone who’s seen all the short films nominated at the Oscars; it’s not exactly general knowledge for the general public.

The next day I spent almost exclusively at the IGF games booth, having nothing really better to do. I went to one of the IGDA Special Interest Groups, but was unimpressed (although the second such that I went to was a bit better). The games were fun and interesting, and it was great to get a chance to play them. I saw a lot of stuff I doubt I would have seen otherwise. It was a great mini-vacation from my classwork, if nothing else.

On Friday I had brunch with my friends and then headed for home. Overall I have to say that I’m glad I went – I would encourage people to go if they can, and particularly if they want to network or hand around resumes or similar. I did have a free pass, which was excellent, although travel and living expenses were still significant. But if I go next year, it will only be if I can get a higher-level pass – even if it’s free. (And it will probably have to be – if $200 was out of my price range this year, I doubt $600 will be in my budget for next year.) The Expo Pass experience was fine to do once, but if I attend again, I’m going to some of those lectures. I don’t think I could stand going again if I didn’t.

E3 Impressions

2010-06-27T23:45:00.000-07:00

Before it gets far away enough to be irrelevant, I thought I'd write out my impressions of everything I played while at E3. I played a little over a dozen demos, and had a blast. ^_^ Here's what I thought of each, in no particular order.

LittleBigPlanet2
Unfortunately, the demo for this was (understandably) only of the gameplay elements, and it seems most of the innovation on this game between versions 1 and 2 was on the content creation side. Still, I liked what I saw - it looks like there are a huge number of new tools, both for use in levels and in creating levels, and you can apparently make mini-games now, to play inside the standard levels! I'm really excited about that; making things is always at least half the fun of games like that.

As to the gameplay itself, I have to say I was rather disappointed with the multi-player they provided as a demo. It controls the same as a standard LBP game from the first one, with the added twist of a grapnel-gun in the level that was available for demo, but the camera following for multiple players was really weird. The moment one player got even slightly ahead of the others, the other players would find themselves off-screen, with nothing to do but wait until player 1 hit the next save point, causing them to re-spawn. So as co-operative play, it seems like it would involve a lot of waiting around for other players to catch up, and as competitive play, it seems like an initial lead would completely determine the game's outcome.

Assassin's Creed Brotherhood
Here's another multiplayer game, but this was one that's way different from what I'm used to. This game was surprisingly similar to real-life games like assassins, red-light green-light, and so on - and it was definitely a good twist on your standard shooter death-match, which have been pretty much done to death (no pun intended) at this point.

The whole idea with this game is subtlety. You're one of six characters in a crowded city made up of clones of the six characters. One of each character is the real assassin, controlled by one of your opponents, while the rest are all mindless NPCs that wander around the map. You are assigned one of the other assassins as a target, but you can't be certain which member of the crowd is your specific target unless you see them move in an unusual way - running, climbing walls, shanking someone, etc.: all things that the NPCs can't do.

Behaving like an NPC isn't necessarily a failsafe; everyone has a sort of radar that allows them to home in on their target gradually. But you're also warned when an assassin targeting you is approaching, so you can break into a run and then hide in order to save yourself. So it's a balance between stealthily stalking your target, and making sure someone doesn't sneak up behind you and shank you while you're ambling along.

I have to say, I was pretty bad at this game. (I came in second-to-last in the first round, and dead last in the second round.) But I still really enjoyed playing it, which I think is a sign of a really good game. I also felt like I could perhaps become good at it with time - another good sign. I had never played any assassin's creed games before this, but this demo really made me want to start.

Super Scribblenauts
When the first Scribblenauts game came out, I played a friend's copy and was rather enamored with it. I'm sure the novelty wears off after a while, but there's something really great about being able to summon Cthulu at will if you get frustrated with a level.

What Super Scribblenauts has going for it is adjectives. And with that simple addition, the playful, childish novelty increases exponentially. If you're trying to have fun being silly in the game, you're probably not going to summon a paintbrush or guitar unless you really have to for a level; they're not really particularly fun or clever objects. But a ludicrous paintbrush? An eclectic guitar? Suddenly any object can be made interesting via simple juxtaposition.

I have to say, probably my absolute favorite item that came out of my demo play was the "suspicious envelope," which ended up being an envelope that was, itself, suspicious of things. When it popped into existence, it had a little purple suspicion mood bubble, and immediately tried to make for the corner of the game screen. I also got quite a kick out of our "lively sentient chair," which immediately picked up the "happy angry sad cat" that we'd left around earlier, and then proceeded to bounce up and down. This worked out fairly well, until the happy angry sad cat decided that it was in an angry mood at the moment and injured one of the innocent bystanders, which unfortunately lost us the level.

Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance
This was an 8-bit Castlevania game in hi-def. I know what you're thinking: WHY? Turns out, not a completely useless combination. The fine detail means that the player can zoom out far enough that they can see the entire castle - every single room - on one screen, before zooming back in to themselves so they can navigate. This allows you to plan out your route from a distance, and then execute it.

Supposedly this game is multiplayer, although I demoed it playing by myself. The castle seemed to have a lot of elements that interacted with other rooms far away from your location, so I can easily see how it could be a lot of fun to zoom out, note where your friends are going, and then take the quickest path to help or hinder them. As a single-player venture, I wasn't particularly moved, however. An adequate 2-D 8-bit platformer, with a little bit of oddball-ness thrown in. I suppose you can't ask for more, given the nature of the game.

This is, of course, not to be confused with the full 3-D Castlevania by Hideo Kojima that was also there. I didn't play that one myself, although my friend Mike did and said it was about what you'd imagine of a Castlevania game from the creator of Metal Gear Solid.

Invizimals
Invizimals is an AR (Augmented Reality) game for the PSP, using the PSP camera. I say game, but from what we saw, it really seemed more like a tech demo for AR. (Or else, something that might be whipped up in one of the advanced game classes here at USC.) Basically it's an AR Pokemon. (Man, did the demo guy get offended when I said that.) You use the camera to focus in on brightly-colored objects, and find the creatures hiding there. Once you find them, you use a little AR trap to isolate them (put the little piece of paper down in physical space over the creature within view on the camera), and then you have to play a mini-game to capture them. Once captured, monsters can be evolved and battled, thus completing the Pokemon/Digimon/Monster Rancher/etc. parallel.

It was cute, and apparently has a story mode as well, but the controls were not exactly seamless, and overall it didn't seem particularly deep to me. There's an argument that it doesn't have to be, if the new technology is interesting enough, but we'll see if that argument pans out for the Kinect, and then re-evaluate from there.

Epic Mickey
If you'd told me a decade back that someone would make a dark, scary game featuring Mickey Mouse, I would've laughed. But since then we've had Kingdom Hearts, where Mickey is a badass, black-cloaked, keyblade-wielding king of a planet, and so times have changed. My actual reaction to the demo was that it wasn't dark enough.

The game was marketed as super edgy and unexpected, particularly in the amazing concept art. But I'm guessing the dark and edgy images didn't get past certain family-friendly higher-ups at the smile-like-you-mean-it monolith that is Disney. Instead the game looks like a fairly generic adventure game, complete with fetch-quests and collectible items hidden in bushes. The game's central mechanic - drawing things in with paint versus erasing them with thinner - flirts dangerously close with being your standard black-and-white moral choice system where angelic good and satanic evil are your only two options.

There's been some nod to the idea that, as designer Warren Spector put it, "play style matters," in that there are multiple ways to solve various quests and/or puzzles, and which choice you make effects the game characters and game world. Okay, fine. I appreciate the effort, I guess. But I would've gladly sacrificed that element of choice if the game had instead delivered on the darker aesthetic that was promised in these amazing pictures.

Fable 3
Speaking of black and white moral choice systems, I also played the Fable 3 demo at E3. I ended up playing side-by-side with a friend who was at the neighboring console, where he got a mission that involved beating up giant mechanical vulture statues and shadow monsters from dripping pillars of darkness, and I got a mission that involved dressing up in a giant chicken suit to round up some missing hens.

Sigh.

I don't really know what to say about Fable. I never played the second one, so my only point of comparison is the first game, which isn't really a comparison at all. I can't tell you if this game is trying to be a Sims-like life simulator in a fantasy setting with more direct control, or a gritty fantasy action game a la God of War, or something else entirely. The two demos were so disparate, it felt like they came from different games. Nevertheless, I'm not sure I'd say I didn't like it, per se. I guess I was too confused to really get a full impression. Mostly it seemed kind of funny and interesting, but I'm not sure it'd be enough to hold my interest for the full game length.

Lost in Shadow
This was one of the few games I played at E3 that I had never heard of before, as I imagine most others haven't either. The idea was that you play as a shadow of a person, navigating across the shadows of a physical world. The environments reminded me strongly of Ico, which endeared me to it immediately, and the puzzles were just bordering between intuitively easy and clever (but then, I only played the very beginning; I'd imagine they get harder). As a shadow person, you run across the shadow platforms created by railings, walls, and so forth, while avoiding sunlit drops and the spiky shadows cast by the tops of gates and things. You have some limited control over what happens in the physical world, which allows you to change the way shadows are cast, and therefore how you can move. As a mechanic it has a lot of potential, although I didn't really get to play enough to see if the makers capitalized on that potential.

What this game really reminded me of was a more polished version of many indie games, which tend towards side-scrolling action-platformers; essentially what this game is. It reminded me of something like Closure, say, or Shift (both games that I loved and highly recommend - they're free online flash games, and the latter has a number of equally interesting sequels) where you have one central mechanic that's exploited in a variety of interesting ways. The relative interesting-ness of Lost in Shadow's puzzles and mechanical exploits remains to be seen. I'm considering picking this one up when it comes out largely from pure curiosity, and a desire to encourage the game industry to try more interesting things.

Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep
I went into E3 HUGELY looking forward to this game, so it's almost not even fair for me to comment on it. I played a little bit of Deep Space, which is apparently Stitch's level, as well as an unknown generic Disney area, and all I can really say is that I saw nothing that would make me hesitate to buy the game.

What I saw of the (slightly) new combat mechanics (rechargeable special moves) seems interesting, and I've heard bizarrely fascinating things about the leveling up system (a board-game based mini-game?!), but the bottom line is that I'm in this for the story and the world-building, and for that you need to play the full game to give it a thumbs up or a thumbs down. I trust Squeenix, and I trust the Kingdom Hearts franchise. Every time I've been skeptical so far (a card-based battle system? A third girl who looks EXACTLY like Kairi and Namine?) they've managed to allay my fears and provide me with a solid, fun gaming experience, and so I'm willing to just take their word on this one and get it. The real question is, can I justify getting another PSP enough to buy the super special bundle pack when it comes out?

Okami-den
It's Okami but with baby animals on the DS. Enough said. I'm sold.

Avatar: The Last Airbender
This is a tough one for me, as I'm a huge fan of the animated series, and am feeling some serious trepidation about seeing the movie. Even if you're not a fan, though, I have a hard time seeing how this game could excite you. Looked at independent from its IP, the demo seemed like a fairly generic Wii game, where you press A repeatedly to attack, and then give a directional swing of the wiimote when the pop-up command indicates that you should do so. It might as well be God of War with exercise for your wrist instead of your thumb.

As an example of the Airbender IP, I really couldn't tell you. The character you play in the demo is the Blue Spirit, a character who doesn't use any form of bending - only physical combat. Which makes me wonder why they made that decision for the demo, since bending is the central mechanic of the series, and the action that the players will be most eager to perform in the game. It should be the most interesting part of the game, and the one that would be best suited to the Wii motion controls. So why didn't they demo that? Are they ashamed of how generic it is? If it's the same as the combat that was in the demo, then they should be. The A:tLA brand presents amazing opportunities for a motion control system, and unfortunately, I think this game is going to be just another lame movie-tie-in brand extension. I'd love to be proved wrong on this one, but somehow I doubt it.

Ghost Trick
Apparently this game is from the same developers as the Phoenix Wright series, and it shows. In this DS title, you play as a ghost that can posses items in the world and cause them to perform actions, or "tricks." You've lost your memory, and so the game is about trying to figure out who you were and why you died. The mechanic is simple, and I can't imagine all that much you could do with it past a certain point, but the demo was adorable and really quite funny (and broke the fourth wall in some very refreshing ways), and so I may have to pick this one up just for the sheer novelty. I think it's worth playing a game just for the sake of silliness every now and again.

Kirby: Epic Yarn
What you can say for this game, aside from "it's a Kirby game," is that it has quite the interesting aesthetic. I'm not sure I've ever seen "yarn-punk" before, but this would probably fit that description, if anything would. (Or, perhaps, "yarn-core"?) The game takes place in a fabric world, where you and everyone else are made of yarn. That's right, yarn. You're a little yarn outline, fighting other yarn outlines. You jump on stitches, hide between layers of fabric, and swing from buttons. Altogether, the aesthetic is fairly seamless (no pun intended), and affords some interesting mechanics and visuals.

The game is co-op for the Wii, and I played with a friend of mine that I was touring around with. The co-op reminded me a little bit of playing Four Swords, and also of the LittleBigPlanet 2 demo, in that there was a lot of, "Hey! Put me down!" and "Oh, sorry, I didn't mean to grab you!" and "Throw me over the ledge! Throw me over the ledge!" But I'm of the opinion that we should have more games like that, so count it as a positive aspect coming from me.

Other than that, not much to say about this game. Playful, adorable adventures. Kirby. From those key words, I think you should know what you need to know about whether you'll like it or not. Oh, and the two playable characters combined to form a giant tank made of yarn at one point. I guess that bears mentioning.

Overall Impressions
E3 was loud, it was glittery, it was full of shine far past the point of substance, but I think there was still enough meat buried under there that I feel confident about what's coming up in the industry and in the market. I could care less about generic shooters 1, 2, and 3, but there was a surprisingly high amount of content at the convention that wasn't generic, and even many of the sequels seemed like they were trying to push themselves and do something new. Overall, I think we're going to be okay. (And also, I'm seriously looking forward to more news on 'El Shaddai.' That trailer has some really darn pretty sequences. And also also, OMFG Portal 2 trailer. Seriously.)

Games That Don't Think You're Stupid (OR, Why I Like Final Fantasy Games)

2010-03-14T18:24:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I've had the pleasure of starting a completely new Final Fantasy game, and FFXIII is making me remember why that sensation is so special. There's something about Final Fantasy games that's kind of amazing, even when it's the exact same formula. It starts with a fly-over of the game world, stunning graphics and amazing, unique details for the player to gorge their eyeballs and curiosity on. Then - something's happening! Then suddenly there you are, in the middle of gameplay, with little to no explanation and, if you're lucky, a bare tutorial. (In FFX there was no tutorial at all for the first combat, mimicking the confusion and unpreparedness of the main character.)

Maybe it's the early hinted depth of the world, maybe it's the continuously unique atmosphere, maybe it's the ease of slipping into the menu-based combat, even though it can change drastically from game to game, or maybe it's just the trust I have in Final Fantasy, but there's something about this state that makes me go, "Alright! Yeah! I have NO IDEA what's going on, but let's do this, Bitches!" And from there on, it's straight into adventure.

One of the things I like the most about the Final Fantasy series is the way it doesn't hold your hand narratively. Characters bandy about unfamiliar terms as though you're supposed to know what they mean (in FFXII we already have Fal'Cie, L'Cie, Cocoon, and Pulse, to name a few, and I'm only a few hours in...), and the game just lets you soak it in and try to keep up. And yet inevitably, by the time I'm fully immersed in an FF game, I feel in total control of the game world, narrative and all. I bandy the terminology about myself, as though I've been using it all my life. Zanarkand and the Aeons? Of course. What would that highly religious land be without its slumbering guardian spirits? Now, who's up for a game of blitzball?

FFXIII is new in that it has a file of reference sheets about the world. I've been reading them, but honestly, I don't think I need to. It's nice to have the extra reference, but I got immediately that the "Focus" was the task that the Fal'Cie order their L'Cie to do. It makes total sense. Or else they turn into those crazy zombie monsters (Cie'eth, I believe, although I haven't been playing that long yet, and it's possible I got that wrong). I get it. Cool. Awesome. I'm totally with you on this one. Let's rock this, FFXIII.

This kind of reminds me of one thing that I really like about the Kingdom Hearts series. Invariably, whenever I saw an ad for a Kingdom Hearts game, I would have two reactions: the first would be a general, overall impression of "That looks AWESOME. I must try it." The second would be a more detail-oriented look at the hints about what they were doing with the thought, "How the hell are they going to make that work? That doesn't make any sense at all. That's gonna be so stupid." And ALWAYS I have been proven wrong. Examples:

Game 1, Kingdom Hearts
Initial Thoughts: A Square game with Disney characters? This is going to be so lame. They're all completely separate universes. You can't just throw Donald Duck into a party and hope it works.
But: It did. They explained the separate universes, they justified the Disney characters as RPG material, and they connected it all in a well-thought out and internally consistent plot.

Game 2, Chain of Memories
Initial Thoughts: A card-based battle system? Are you kidding me?
But: They actually bothered to justify it narratively. And it was a real-time combat system, despite the cards, that actually worked quite well and was incredibly fun to play.

Game 3, Kingdom Hearts II
Initial Thoughts: Really. Two characters that look just like Sora and Kairi? How does that work? And are they really going to try and justify a whole new enemy type just to have some combat variety? And the guy in the hood is obviously Riku. Why are you even bothering to hide his face?
But: The Nobodies were not there for variety, but for the expansion of the world's internal logic. The two characters that looked like Sora and Kairi were integral to the plot and its unfolding. And beneath the hood was Riku, but- OH MY GOD ARE YOU KIDDING?

Game 4, 358/2 Days
Initial Thoughts: Oh. Great. ANOTHER girl who looks like Kairi. How original. They're just doing that to complete the aesthetic set of three. There's no way they're going to be able to justify that.
But: In fact her presence made total internal sense with the game logic so far, and culminated in an actually quite creepy and heart-rending ending.

I haven't played "Birth By Sleep" yet, but I'm already wondering how they're going to justify a character that's identical to Roxas (who never really existed in the first place anyway), but some 10 years in the past. It doesn't seem possible, but they've proved me wrong every other time, so I'm heartily looking forward to them doing it again when the game comes out in English this summer.

I like these games because they don't think the audience is dumb. They don't think we have to be coddled or talked down to, and they acknowledge that we'll notice if they don't have internal consistency. They tell the stories they want to tell, no-holds-barred, and I respect that. Even when using familiar tropes, even bound as Final Fantasy is to Chocobos and Moogles and Cactuars and Cids, they never stop re-imagining themselves, never let the player rest and get so familiar as to become complacent. Every game is an adventure into a new world, even if it's one where, the moment I get there, I already feel at home.

Some Products of this Weekend

2010-02-01T11:38:00.000-08:00

This weekend saw the both the Global Game Jam and the deadline for the Gamma 4 1-Button Game competition. As a participant in both, I'd like to share the fruits of our labor.

"Uniscorn" is a game about social anxiety and a donkey pretending to be a unicorn. Match the unicorns' outfits to sneak by them without getting "uniscorned," and find the truth behind their secret schemes. This game was made for the Global Game Jam over the course of 48 hours by myself (Kyla Gorman), Mike Sennott, Greg Nishikawa, Samantha Vick, Dai Yun, Juli Griffo, and Aurora Wang.
Uniscorn can be found here: http://globalgamejam.org/sites/default/files/uploads/2010/4291/Uniscorn_0.swf
(Here is the official GGJ site for it: http://globalgamejam.org/2010/uniscorn)

"Dear Moon" is a one-button game where you play as the moon. A young tree, eagerly growing in the daylight, has come under attack from evil herbivorous gremlins. Luckily, moonlight summons the tree's guardians, little tree sprites, who will use the night time to collect stars and make cannons to hold off the gremlins. You win by surviving to the full moon with at least 4 star cannons. Hold down your button (clicking, in this case) to bring out the moon. The game is meant to be peaceful and relaxing, and was made by myself (Kyla Gorman), Mike Sennott, Teddy Diefenbach, and Joe Osborn.
Dear Moon can be found here: http://god-bear.com/DearMoon.html

Agency - To Be Desired?

2009-10-01T11:45:00.000-07:00

It's a legitimate question, and one that seems to be coming up a lot in one of my classes: how much agency do we really want in a media experience? Certainly we want some if we're expecting a game; without any at all, then we might as well just be watching a movie. But is more agency necessarily better? How much is too much? Is there even such a thing?

The games that give us the most agency, games like ''The Sims'', where there are no rules holding us down and we can do anything we want, are often the least "game-like" experiences. This is because games are defined by rules. The confines of the system are what give us a solid structure in which to work, to problem-solve, and to explore. It is the reduction of our agency in certain areas that highlights our agency in others.

Rules allow the game's creator to structure an experience. It allows him to provide atmosphere, to dictate events in such a way that our feelings are manipulated (the final goal of all art forms) in the way the designer desires. Such a guided experience can be very pleasurable. But if a guided experience is what we're looking for, then what separates interactive media from movies? Should we not dispense with the interactivity altogether and simply go back to our static films? This, after all, would allow for maximum structure on the part of the creator.

The fact that we do not must mean that there is something inherently pleasurable about interacting. Under this assumption then, how do we compromise? How do we maintain the pleasure of interactivity, while not losing the pleasure of a structured experience, the way we do in ''The Sims''? Game designers are still struggling with this problem, and will likely continue to do so for some time. Rather than trying to define a single answer, perhaps an impossible task, perhaps we should look at what interactivity gives us that is pleasurable. What is it about interactivity that we WANT to keep?

Perhaps foremost (arguably; I would be more than happy to debate this point with anyone who so chooses), interactivity is a powerful tool for empathy. Compared to a passive movie-going audience, players are incredibly invested in the life and well-being of the main character, because they are directly responsible for it. It is the decisions and skill of the player that determine what happens to the main character and whether that character lives or dies. By the same token, anything that happens to the character reflects back on the player. If the character is injured, it is not just the character: it is YOU who is injured. If the character murders someone close to him, it wasn't just the character's action: it was YOUR action. When a player is in control of a character, he effectively becomes that character. His own fate, his own success or failure, is innately tied to that of the character. The emotional resonance that occurs therein is therefore necessarily stronger than with other forms of art, simply by virtue of the fact that the player is participating in it.

So then, in order to make use of this powerful empathy, a player must feel like he has control over the character. If too much of the character's actions, or the effects on the character, are out of the player's control, then he no longer feels that these actions/effects are his responsibility. The feeling of empathy is broken. This can happen once the player falls below the threshold of "enough" agency, at which point he feels as though he has no control over the character, or his control makes no difference. At this point, the character becomes just as sympathetic as a character in a book or movie; we might feel something for them, but in a detached sort of way that allows us to distance ourselves from them.

So then, let us return to the question of what is "enough" agency. How much is too much? I would argue that a highly-structured media experience is preferable to an unstructured one. After all, if no creative mind is shaping our experience, then what is the point of being an artist of the medium? However, it is vital that these experiences allow enough agency to make the player feel not only that he has a vested interest in the fate of the main character, but that he has a palpable ''effect'' on the fate of the main character. When he feels this, he becomes engaged with the material, and video games (and other interactive experiences) can do some of their most powerful work.

Emotional Experiences in Gaming

2009-08-30T11:43:00.000-07:00

WARNING: THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR "SHADOW OF THE COLOSSUS," "PORTAL," AND "CALL OF DUTY 4: MODERN WARFARE."

So I've been thinking recently about emotional experiences I've had playing games, and what causes them. Games, especially good games, have given me quite a few to consider. In "Portal," for instance, I've had moments of genuine laughter, and of genuine panic and fear. Games have given me and others moments of real sadness, and a very real feeling of achieving victory. So what is it about these games that can make me feel so much? Emotional experiences in gaming, I've found, tend to break down into two categories, according to cause: those caused by narrative elements, and those caused by game elements.

Emotional experiences caused by narrative elements are similar to those in other fiction media. When Aggro hurled me over the edge of the crumbling bridge in "Shadow of the Colossus," and subsequently fell to his own (presumed) death, I felt real anguish. Aggro was a character I had grown attached to. He was my sole companion throughout the game, my vital aid in many previous missions, and though I was occasionally annoyed when he had a slower reaction time than I wished, I had really come to think of him with fondness. In fact, I didn't realize just how attached I had become to that horse until I watched him plummet into the canyon.

Most of us are familiar with this sort of experience. Many of us remember crying when we first read "Bridge to Terabithia" or "Where the Red Fern Grows." We become absorbed in fictional worlds, attached to their characters, and invested in their plots. The process of storytelling gives us mental models in our minds of people and events that are as real as those models we create to represent people, places, and things that actually exist in the real world. The things that happen to fictional characters are as real to us as the things that happen to, say, celebrities, sometimes more so - since we often know more about a fictional character's life and motivation than we ever know about the mysterious lives of the rich and famous. So it's not strange when emotion is evoked by a story. We're sort of used to that.

The other way games evoke emotion are through the experience of gaming - the feeling of "yes, success!" when we accomplish a difficult goal, for instance. Puzzle games can be particularly pleasurable for the feeling of cleverness and self-appreciation we get when deciphering a particularly complex brain teaser. We feel a sense of triumph - over the machine, over other players, even over the rules of the game itself. Likewise we can feel defeat, frustration, determination, unease, and even fear, concerning the goals of the game and our progress towards them. Just yesterday I felt such successes and failures when playing a fighting game with a group of friends.

This second type of experience doesn't require story - it comes straight from our real-world experience with the act of playing the game. I can be argued therefore that this type of emotion is therefore more "real," although that term seems to belittle the story-based emotional experiences, which can often be incredibly powerful - sometimes even more than these so-called "real" emotions. (In my opinion, both sets of emotions are real, whether the source they stem from is fictional or not. After all, both emotional experiences take place in the same centers of our brain.)

These two methods of evoking emotion have historically been very segregated in their study. The practice of evoking emotion with fiction has long been the study of the creative fields - creative writing, film-making, literary study, theater, and so on. Whereas the evocative powers of games, when studied at all, tend to fall more into the psychology or sociology category - how do humans deal with success and failure? With stress? With competition? It is perhaps because of the vast separation of these two fields that it becomes somewhat difficult to think about the unifying of the two types of emotional experiences.

Some of the most moving emotional experiences I've ever had in games, however, come not from either of these categories, but from clever hybrids of the two. Video games are in the unique position of being able to provide a game experience and a story experience at the same time. Here are a few examples:

When I first played "Portal," and completed the last of the official missions, I was feeling very satisfied with myself. I'd been doing very well, thinking around obstacles and proving myself to be smarter than the machine. GLaDOS was just congratulating me on finishing the test.

Then the platform I was riding turned a corner, towards a bank of fire, and I panicked. An eerie, tense techno theme rose in the background as thoughts flashed through my mind: 'Oh no, GLaDOS betrayed us' - 'I'm going to die, what should I do?' - 'Where can I put a portal?' - 'So that's why the lab is empty, this is what happened to everyone else' - 'Ohshitohshit! I'm gonna die! I have to jump!'

This series of thoughts illustrates the combination of emotional occurrences. On the one hand, my panic was engendered by fear for my game success. I had only seconds to make a difficult decision, solve a puzzle, or else the result would be failure. Actions I had been performing more or less at leisure the rest of the game were suddenly put under extreme time pressure, which caused an equally extreme anxiety.

But on the other hand, part of my panic was entirely story-related. I realized that my character had been betrayed. That all along, the AI had been planning to get rid of my character after she analyzed my abilities. I realized that this must have happened before - that all the test subjects who came before me must have been hurled towards this same fire, that maybe they'd found a way out, but maybe they'd burned to death in the flames. I panicked wondering how I - how my character - was going to get out of this situation.

Another such powerful experience comes from the game "Call of Duty 4," and is one I've written and talked about often before. In the game there is a sequence where one of the characters - a character which the player has been controlling for about half the game thus far - is caught in a nuclear explosion while trying to escape by helicopter. The helicopter goes down, and the player assumes that the character has died.

But wait - he's alive! The GPS locator in the game's loading screen focuses on the character, finding him amidst the wreckage, and the game drops you down into the man's body once more. You awaken to find yourself in the midst of the helicopter wreckage, so injured you can barely move except for a slow crawl. As you stumble out of the twisted hulk of metal, you find yourself in the midst of the nightmarish aftermath of the explosion. An enormous mushroom cloud towers over you on one side, while the wind blows pale-colored dust and debris in a fierce storm all around you.

It quickly becomes horribly obvious: this situation cannot end well. There is no reasonable hope of escape. Everything around you is dead, dying, or destroyed. The faint hope you felt at finding your character alive quickly dwindles into a shocked acceptance of the truth: you are going to die.

The emotional impact here is once again two-fold. On the one hand is the obvious impact of the story elements, the horror of nuclear war, the desolation of the environment, the doomed fate of a well-liked character. But on the other hand, the despair is also game-based: there is no way to win. All the previous missions (with the exception of the "mission" over the opening credits, which is almost more of a cinematic sequence, and should probably be considered differently for a variety of reasons which I won't get into here) have always had a win state, a goal to accomplish, a way to survive. Now, the player must gradually come to terms with the fact that there is nothing he can do. There is no way to win, no way to save the situation, or keep this character around for later use. This is it. You lose.

By combining these two emotional impacts, the game delivers an exceedingly strong message about the danger and destructive force of nuclear war. Neither emotional resonance on its own would do the trick - just forcing you to lose a mission without the story context would be meaningless and frustrating, while having you watch a static story-based cutscene about the character's death would seem preachy and cliche. But together, the combination of the two delivers a startlingly effective experience, reaching out to the heart and soul of the player.

Because of the strength of this impact, I think it's very important in the study and creation of games for us to think about the nature of such emotional experiences - after all, the ability to evoke emotion is one of the strongest powers of Art, no matter what its format. We must learn to appreciate the nature of games in both their capacities to evoke emotion, and think long and hard about the best ways to combine them.

Indirect Storytelling in Facebook's Packrat

2009-08-22T12:40:00.000-07:00

I've been playing the facebook app game "Packrat" (copyright Alamofire Digital Collectibles) for over a year now. It's an addicting little sucker - a collectible card game wherein you use in-game credits to purchase cards from stores, or use cards you already have to steal new ones from other people. The cards belong to various themed sets, and each card has a point value. Low-level cards from the same set can be combined to form higher-level cards from that set (which, most of the time, cannot be gotten in any other way), and the object is to collect all the cards from a given set and "vault" them so that they can no longer be stolen from you. It can be played with or without active friends playing the game, although as with most facebook apps, there is a bonus for getting friends to join.

I didn't start thinking about Packrat as a form of narrative until recently - perhaps because they've only just started using it as such in a more blatant fashion. It's not direct, obvious narrative like you'd find in a novel or a movie, but much more subtle. It arises from the nature of the card sets, and how they're designed. Allow me to explain via example. The following is one of the current sets of cards, "The Razor's Plunder," and the cards required to make each card:

Base Cards:
Pickaxe
Shovel
Treasure Map Fragment
Metal Detector
Trail of Treasure
Iron Heart (a sort of steampunk engine)
Stone of Fortune
Marked Palm Tree
Unfortunate Treasure Hunter (a skeleton)

Built Cards:
Captain's Gig: Iron Heart x3
Treasure Cave: Metal Detector, Marked Palm, Unfortunate Treasure Hunter
Captain Auger Confrontation (a fearsome-looking pirate with a sword): Treasure Map Fragment, Trail of Treasure, Stone of Fortune
Converted Cutlass Arm: Pickaxe, Shovel, Iron Heart
Swashbuckling!: Treasure Cave, Captain Augur Confrontation, Converted Cutlass Arm
The Razor Triumphant (the Captain with a handful of gold): Swashbuckling! x2, Captain's Gig

Consider the direction in which these card combinations leads the mind. Like a connect-the-dot drawing, the makers of Packrat lay out a few key points along the way to allow the player to construct a narrative of swashbuckling pirates, hastily assembled mechanical limbs, and a struggle over hidden treasure. The details of the narrative may differ from player to player as they construct it in their minds, but the essential plotted course is there.

"The Razor's Plunder" is not the only Packrat set with an implicit narrative. Recently released sets include an "Independence Day" set wherein you make Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and John Hancock, and combine them to form the Declaration of Independence. "Ink Wars" told the story of two rival tattoo parlors, one upscale and one rundown and sketchy, and the tattoos produced by each. Currently in progress is an "Ants & Grasshoppers" set, which seems to be a slightly revised version of the classic tale about work and procrastination. (The high card in that set is called "Bug Summit," and seems to be a meeting between the emperor of the grasshoppers and the queen of the ants.)

Packrat is an interesting example of a non-traditional narrative - but one nonetheless clearly intended by the game's creators. The combinations within each set are clearly intended to evoke some very specific images and causal relations. But the narrative itself - including its timeline - must be literally constructed by the player from these building blocks. It's a good reminder that our current models of narrative are not all-inclusive, and that it is still possible to think of storytelling in new, and entirely radical ways.

Required Playing: Eternal Darkness

2009-03-12T20:03:00.000-07:00

Silicon Knights. 2002. Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem. Nintendo GameCube. Nintendo.

Reading a description of the plot of Eternal Darkness might not give you the greatest confidence about the game's innovation; the plot reads more or less like a cheap Lovecraft ripoff. When I played it the first time, I was looking specifically at its "fourth wall"-breaking elements. I was not expecting to be completely blown away by the narrative structure. Since I played it, it has become my opinion that this game should be required playing for anyone discussing narrative in video games - its narrative structure is one of the most unique and well-designed that I have ever seen in a video game.

Eternal Darkness goes like this: a young girl named Alexandra is told that her grandfather has been murdered, and goes to his house to find out what happened. There she discovers a mysterious book - the Tome of Eternal Darkness - containing a legend about the Elder Gods, each of whom is trying to come into our world and take it over. The legend also tells of one of the God's undead servants, a former Roman soldier called Pious Augustus. While reading, Alex notices that most of the book is missing - it seems to have been removed. She inspects the house to find the other chapters.

The first chapter features a young woman in an ancient temple, bearing the very same book. At this point, however, the legend is all the book contains. As the young woman progresses through her journey, she writes down her experiences within the book. At the end of her life, she finds herself trapped within the temple.

As she has finished reading, we return to Alex in her grandfather's study. We now have all the information that the young woman in the chapter learned, including any spells she discovered. Alex can use these spells to uncover the next chapter of the book in the house. This chapter features a new character, and his autobiographical segment. Because he has inherited the book after the young woman of the first chapter, he too has access to all her information and spells. He adds his own as he discovers them, thus giving these same powers to Alex.

This goes on for 10 characters, each giving the next piece of the story of the Elder Gods, and providing further clues about what happened to Alex's grandfather. Each character has his or her own strengths and weakness, different items, and different fighting style. The controls, however, are similar enough across characters that the player can easily adjust to a new character within moments. By the time she has completely reconstructed the book, Alex has all the information she needs to defeat Pious Augustus and his Elder God.

The structuring here is brilliant. The multiple flashback system allows for a fascinating nonlinear narrative, while at the same time the inheritance feature of the book allows for completely plausible linear character ascension - the player continues to gain more and more powers, never losing ones she had previously, but without any sort of artificial feeling of "leveling up." Each character is entirely unique, and gives a refreshing change to gameplay (younger characters might have more strength, religious characters have greater sanity, older characters tire more easily, etc.), without being so different as to require the player to learn a new control scheme every time.

The flashbacks are even played with in the narrative in other ways; certain levels will take place in the same maps as previous levels, but with gaps of often hundreds of years. Therefore, things the player does in previous levels, as previous characters, can affect what the player can and cannot do in subsequent levels. (For instance, if you retrieve the longsword the first time you are in the monks' abbey, you can find it again on that character's corpse when your new character returns there years later.) All the stories interweave effortlessly with each other and with Alex's frame story.

As if this astoundingly well-crafted narrative wasn't enough, the game also provides some really interesting breaking of the fourth wall. The game features a "sanity meter" (it is not the only game to do so, but as far as I know, it's the only game to handle it quite like this), where the character you are currently playing has a limited amount of sanity, measured by a green vial on the screen. Witnessing strange and unbelievable horrors will drain your sanity meter, as will falling under the gaze of the game's monsters.

As your sanity drops, you begin to experience some strange effects. Blood might drip from the walls, the floor turns to quicksand, statues turn to watch you as you go past, etc. This is all your standard horror-genre sort of fare, but the game doesn't stop there. It also tries to mess with the player directly. When sanity gets low, the game might throw up a message that the controller has been disconnected, just as you enter a room with a huge crowd of enemies. It might tell you that the TV has been muted, or that the console has been restarted. All these effects are completely outside the context of the game, and aimed specifically at you the player, meant to make you doubt your own sanity. I will admit to being caught in at least one or two of them, and I knew they were coming! This clever little gimmick might be worth checking out on its own, even if the game wasn't a must-play for narrative structure.

I think games like this are a must-play before anyone argues that games can't have innovative or unique narrative structures. True, most games are linear or tree-style narratives, but just because many are, doesn't mean they have to be. I have never been as pleasantly surprised with a game as I was with Eternal Darkness, and while it may not be the most popular game in a commercial sense, I do believe it should be required for all Game Studies academics.

Readings in Game Studies: Avatars of Story and Half-Real

2009-03-10T13:51:00.000-07:00

These are my final two books for now, and I'd like to offer them side-by-side for comparison purposes. These books represent two opposed schools of thoughts in game studies: narratology and ludology.

From what I've gleaned from my reading, this particular argument has gotten muddier and muddier as time has gone on. On the surface, the question is simple: should video games be studied as narrative artifacts, or as examples of games? (Perhaps, ludological artifacts? Or ludive? Ludic?) But both arguments have had voices that tend to lend a certain extremism and, importantly, both arguments have framed the other as extremist. The extremist narratological view states that games with stories are necessarily better, and that every game has narrative. The extremist ludological view states that games cannot have narrative, and that the goals of games and storytelling are fundamentally opposed to one another.

I agree with neither school in particular - my personal feeling on the matter (which I discuss in chapter 1 of my paper) is that games should be treated as the medium in which a story takes place, and thus the study of narrative in games is nearly impossible without looking at the game elements. Similarly, games can be studied as games in themselves in the same way that language can be studied separate from its content, but a full study would not be complete without looking at the unique tools that they offer the art of storytelling.

Still, I'd like to present these two books as the quintessential viewpoint for each school of thought.

Ryan, Marie-Laure. Avatars of Story. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2006.

Ryan offers some rather excellent summary and analysis of how narrative has been constructed in the past, in more traditional media, and how interactive narrative is now being born in new media. Her actual reference to video games is rather small, consisting of a single chapter in the entire book. Rather than dwelling on one particular form of interactive media, Ryan explores all aspects of how storytelling can be dynamic, including such experimental forms as hypertext fiction. Her approach is largely theoretical, and includes, for instance, a very informative series of diagrams on different potential narrative structures.

My one beef with Ryan's work is that, when she discusses video games, she seems to speak from a position of complete inexperience. With most other game studies writers, it is obvious from the text that the writer is familiar with video games, has - to a greater or lesser degree - played some of them, and, while perhaps not preferring it, has the potential to adopt a "gamer" persona when necessary. Not so with Ryan. Her references to various games come across as stilted and distant, and often she goes so far as to underestimate and even denigrate the medium she is supporting.

For instance, she refers to the narrative in FPSs as an "'affective hook' that lures players into the game. [...] Once the players are absorbed in the fire of the action, they usually forget whether they are terrorists or counterterrorists, humans defending the earth from invasion by evil aliens or aliens conquering the earth. Having fulfilled its role as a lure, the story disappears from the player's mind displaced by the adrenaline rush of the competition" (197). While this may be true of multi-player shooter "death-matches," single-player FPSs often have protagonists that the player identifies with more closely than with any other genre. Only the cheapest instances of the genre have stories bland enough to allow for this kind of disregard. (Granted, this book was written in 2006, and some of the best examples of storytelling in the FPS genre have only come out within the past two or three years. But that does not mean that reasonable examples were not present before that.)

Similarly, when describing how we look at/study games, she says, "A game does not need to tell stories that would provide suitable literary material to immerse the player in the fate of its fictional world, because the thrill of being in a world, of acting in it and of controlling its history, makes up for the intellectual challenge, the subtlety of plot, and the complexity of characterization that the best of literature has to offer" (195). It may be unintentional on her part, but she seems to be implying here that video games don't or can't contain "intellectual challenge," "subtlety of plot," or "complexity of characterization." Granted, a lot of current games don't contain these things. But then, neither does most current fiction. The "best of literature" is few and far between, and I do believe that games are fully capable of this depth, and that it has already been seen in some current examples of games. (Try Portal for "subtlety of plot," given how creatively the game asks the player to construct backstory from carefully-planted clues.)

She continues: "The pursuit of large audiences by the game industry and its reluctance to take risks explains in part why it has been sticking so far to stereotyped narrative themes and formulae, such as medieval fantasy, science fiction, thrillers, horror, and the mystery story. But through their emphasis on action, setting, and imaginary creatures of fantastic appearance, these narrative genres are much more adaptable to the interactive and fundamentally visual nature of games than "high" literature focused on existential concerns, psychological issues, and moral dilemmas. Literature seeks the gray area of the ambiguous, while games and popular genres thrive in the Manichean world ofthe "good guys" versus the "bad guys": if players had to debate the morality of their actions, the pace of the game, not to mention its strategic appeal, would seriously suffer" (195-196).

This just seems to indicate an ignorance of modern trends in gaming; morality and the player's consideration of it has become such an overused trope in modern gaming that it has in some cases been reduced to the level of gimmick. Gray areas abound in modern games - what about the US marine in Call of Duty 4 who dies slowly in the aftermath of a nuclear blast, unable to do anything to save himself? Consider the commentary this offers on warfare within a game focused on the player's participation in war. What about the scene towards the end of Metal Gear Solid 3, where the player is forced to kill the main character's mentor in order to fulfill his mission, despite the character's emotional attachment to her? Granted the game industry has often stuck to more easily implemented genres, as she says, but that doesn't mean that deeper, more meaningful games do not exist and, importantly, have the potential to exist in the future.

But I suppose one of my biggest complaints is the fact that she seems to show little regard for the games as artifacts in themselves. It may not seem like a big deal, but the fact that she gets a popular game title wrong (it's Tomb Raider, not Tomb Raiders) is almost personally offensive to me. Combine this with the fact that she does not list any of the games she mentions in her bibliography, and one begins to wonder if she actually played any of these games at all.

Still, regardless of this (and for many who might be interested in the sort of subject material she discusses, this criticism is really little more than a pet peeve on my part), she does have some truly insightful discussion of narrative, which is worth taking a look at. In particular, I found her three sets of diagrams of narrative structure (mentioned earlier) to be an excellent summary of some often very difficult concepts. She also has a very good point-by-point rebuttal to the classic arguments of the school of ludology.

Juul, Jesper. Half-Real: Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds. Cambridge and London: MIT Press, 2005.

Compare this to Jesper Juul's Half-Real, which Avatars of Story references directly upon occasion. Juul is a ludologist, and believes that games should be studied as game objects, not as narrative objects. Although this book takes a more compromising stance than previous remarks on the viewpoint. (He now argues that it depends on how one defines "narrative" - a perfectly reasonable argument, although I still disagree with his conclusions.)

Juul prefers to look at the gaming experience as something that is half real - that is, half made up of a player's experience interacting with a set of concrete rules that define a game - and half fictional, referring to the virtual worlds in which these games take place, and the cues that the fictional aspect of games can lend to the rule-based system. (I know that agent X is a bad guy, because it looks like the green slimy aliens that my character is defending the world against.)

While I disagree on several of the points where Juul implies the lack of importance of game narrative, his arguments are well-formed and completely reasonable. His approach, while not the only way, is certainly one entirely valid way of studying games in general and even video games in particular. His compromising position provides more of a concession to the importance of the fictional aspect of games than do many ludological approaches, and thus helps prevent a certain loss of richness in study that one might get from an approach that completely disregards all narrative elements.

Both texts are worth a read, both on their own merits and the way they frame the ludology/narratology debate. As a conclusion here, I would like to present a short summary of the ludology vs. narratology question, as presented by either school.

Narratology:
Basic Idea:
Games can be studied as narrative artifacts, looking at the way they tell stories.

Extremism (as framed by own school):
All games tell stories; they are a superior story-telling medium to other media.
"[Tetris is] a perfect enactment of the overtasked lives of Americans in the 1990s--of the constant bombardment of tasks that demand our attention and that we must somehow fit into our overcrowded schedules and clear off our desks in order to make room for the next onslaught." (Janet Murray, Hamlet on the Holodeck, 1997: 144 (quoted in Juul, 133))

Extremism (as framed by opposite school):
Games are better the closer they resemble more traditional narratives.
"In the rhetoric of narratology – or the storytelling rhetoric – we find an aesthetic understanding of video games in which researchers study how games might live up to the demands and requirements of narratives in literature and movies. Usually literary and film theorists are involved as representatives for this kind of rhetoric. Looking for narratives, the focal point of attention has explicitly been narrative-based games like adventure and role-playing games." (Aarseth 1997 (quoted in Konzack, 2007))

Ludology:
Basic Idea:
Video games are examples of games as a form of play, and should be studied as rule-based systems.

Extremism (as framed by own school):
Games and stories are of opposite nature and therefore incompatible.
"...story is the antithesis of game. The best way to tell a story is in linear form. The best way to create a game is to provide a structure within which the player has freedom of action. Creating a "storytelling game" (or a story with game elements) is attempting to square the circle, trying to invent a synthesis between the antitheses of game and story." (Costikyan, "Story vs. Game," 2000)

Extremism (as framed by opposite school):
Games are incapable of telling stories, and narrative can only be found in literature.
"Ludologists [...] are generally partial to the definition proposed by Gerald Prince in 1987, but since modified by its author [...]: "Narrative: the recounting ... of one more more real or fictitious events communicated by one, two or several (more or less overt) narrators to one, two or several (more or less overt) narratees. A dramatic performance representing many fascinating events does not constitute a narrative, since these events, rather than being recounted, occur directly on stage." (1987, 58)." (Ryan, 184)

Having read these two texts, I think I shall have to rescind my earlier position as "probably a ludologist" and claim the title of narratologist. It's hard to determine where one fits in when so much of the argument is framed by the opposition, but the fact of the matter is that I'm looking at how games tell stories. So that makes me a student of narrative, and thus a narratologist.

Readings in Game Studies: What Video Games Have to Teach Us

2009-03-05T15:35:00.000-08:00

Gee, James Paul. What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. Revised and Updated Edition. New York: Palgrave and MacMillan, 2007.

This book is excellent - I highly recommend it for anyone interested not only in gaming, but in anything to do with teaching, learning, and literacy. Gee uses the medium of games and how they teach skills as an example to express the necessity of teaching (particularly in schools) in dynamic and involving ways. The writing style is engaging and his analysis is fascinating. Definitely a good read, even for the non-academic.

As for relevance to my own work, I marked so many passages in this book that I actually ran out of post-it notes halfway through and had to go out and buy more. There are so many quotes from his book that I find useful that I'm not sure I'll be able to fit them all in a single post. So, while very much of his work directly impacts my own, I'd like to focus for the purposes of this post on a single section that I felt was of the most interest - Gee's categorization of video game identity.

Because I've been studying narrative theory a lot lately, I've been getting caught up in the terms they use to describe the voices that go into the telling of a story and the reception of it. Terms like "implied narrator" and "implied reader" and so on. However, when one tries to transfer these personas to video games, the terms start to break down. The narrator is the character through which the "text" is experienced, but in a game, that same character is also the implied reader, since the player is assuming that character's role. It seems the previous literary terms must be discarded in favor of a new system of terminology. That's where Gee comes in.

Gee breaks the identity of the video game player down into three categories, each with different degrees of actual existance. His categories are the virtual identity, the real-world identity, and the projective identity. The real-world identity is the player playing the game - James Paul Gee, or Kyla Gorman. The virtual identity is the character in the game - Sora from Kingdom Hearts, or Gordon Freeman of Half-Life. The projective identity, in my opinion the most interesting of the three, sits somewhere between the two. The projective identity is the player as character. This identity represents the player's imagining of herself in the role of character - a "projection," as well as the player's wishes for the character to develop in a certain way - the player's "project."

Video games use this intermediary projective identity as a way to equate the other two identities, drawing them closer together and creating the player/character empathy I'm always harping on about. Through the projective identity the player feels involved on two levels - the level of experiencing the events of the character - the projective-virtual connection, and the level of removed interest in fulfilling an implicit game goal, controlling the character's development - the real-world-projective connection. By linking these three identities together, the real-world identity can mentally place herself in the position of the virtual identity, through the projective identity. This creates immersion and empathy, which in turn is responsible for much of the power of digital storytelling.

(If this sounds interesting to you, you really should read the book - Gee's identity formulation can be found in Chapter 3, "Learning and Identity: What Does it Mean to be a Half-Elf?")

I'd like to start by sharing the Gee quotes I've marked about identity, followed by the quotes on immersion, of which there are also quite a few. Finally, I will add the other miscellaneous relevant quotes to finish. I fully realize that there is a great deal of quotation here, but keep in mind that this is AFTER I have pruned what I marked and taken out the less-relevant remarks. As I said, Gee is a very insightful guy.

On Identity

"Each of these traits [that the player can customize] will affect how your character--that is, you--carries out dialogue and action in the world of Arcanum and how other characters in the world respond to you." (46)

"First, there is a virtual identity: one's identity as a virtual character in the virtual world of Arcanum--in my case the half-elf Bead Bead. I will represent this identity as "James Paul Gee as Bead Bead," where Bead Bead is italicized to indicate that, in this identity, the stress is on the virtual character Bead bead acting in the virtual world of Arcanum (though I am "playing/developing" her)." (49)

"The successes and failures of the virtual being Bead Bead (me in my virtual identity) are a delicious blend of my doing and not my doing. After all, I made Bead bead and developed her, so i deserve--partly, at least--praise for her successes and blame for her failures." (49)

"A second identity that is at stake in playing a game like Arcanum is a real-world identity: namely, my own identity as "James Paul Gee," a nonvirtual person playing a computer game. I will represent this identity as "James Paul Gee as Bead Bead," where James Paul Gee is italicized to indivate that, in this identity, the stress is on the real-world character James Paul Gee playing Arcanum as a game in real time (though Bead Bead is the tool through which I operate the game)." (49-50)

"A third identity that is at stake in playing a game like Arcanum is what I will call a projective identity, playing on two senses of the word "project," meaning both "to project one's values and desires on to the virtual character" (Bead Bead, in this case) and "seeing the virtual character as one's own project in the making, a creature whom I imbue with a certain trajectory through time defined by my aspirations for what I want that character to be and become (within the limitations of her cpacities, of course, and within the resources the game designer has given me)." This is the hardest identity to describe but the most important one for understanding the power of games like Arcanum. I will represent this identity as "James Paul Gee as Bead Bead," where the word "as" is italicized to indicate that, in this identity, the stress is on the interface between--the interactions between--the real-world person and the virtual character." (50)

"The kind of person I want Bead Bead to be, the kind of history I want her to have, the kind of person and history I am trying to build in and through her iss what I mean by a projective identity. Since these aspirations are my desires for Bead Bead, the projective identity is both mine and hers, and it is a space in which I can transcend both her limitations and my own." (51)

[In discussing the difference between the three identities as exposed by the way failure is represented differently by each.] "The projective identity of Bead Bead as a project (mine) in the making can fail because I (the real-world James Paul Gee) have caused Bead Bead (the virtual me) to do something in the game that the character I want Bea Bead to be would not or should not do." (52)

"It is not uncommon, even when young people are playing first-person shooter games featuring a superhuman hero (like Master Chief in Halo)--a character that, unlike Bead Bead, they usually cannot choose or develop but must take as is--that they will redo a given fight scene because they feel they have "let their character down." They want to pull off the victory more spectacularly, as befits a superhero. They feel responsible to and for the character. They are projecting an identity as to who the character ought to be and what the trajectory of his or her acts in the virtual world ought, at the end of the day, to look like." (53)

"As a player, I was proud of Bead Bead at the end of the game in a way in which I have never been proud of a character in a novel or movie, however much I had identified with him or her. [...] my satisfaction with Bead Bead is thinged with pride (it could have been regret had things turned out differently), at various levels, in and with myself. This feeling is not (just) selfish. In a sense, it is also selfless, since it is pride at things that have transcended--taken me outside of--my real-world self (selves), if I am playing the game reflexively." (54)

[on students in science classrooms, projecting their identity as scientists] "They want their scientist to become this sort of person, whether or not they are themselves anything like this in their "everyday" lives. In good science learning, learners are not just role-playing being a scientist of a certain sort (their virtual identity). They are also proactively building that virtual person as a certain kind of person with a certain kind of history. They are projecting their own hopes and desires onto that person." (62)

"The learner, in this case, gets to customize the identity the game offers him to a certain extent--this, in fact, is an important feature of good video games." (37)

"Thus, Von Croy's remark [about which buttons the player should push] perfectly melds and integrates talk to Lara and talk to the player. This melding is part of what marries the player's real-world indentity as a player and his or her virtual identity as Lara. This type of talk is very common in video games." (118)

"Such language is one among many devices in a good video game that encourages the player to relate, juxtapose, and meld his or her real-world identity (actually, multiple real-world identities) and the virtual identity of the character he or she is playing in the virtual world of the game. Such a process also encourages the player to adopt [...] a projective identity." (121)

"...when you are playing as a virtual character in a video game, that character, (you) is the hero (center) of the story and in that sense the "good guy" no matter how bad he or she might be from another perspective." (147)

"Good video games offer players strong identites. [...] In video games, players learn to view the virtual world thorugh the eyes and values of a distintive identity [...] or one they themselves have built from the ground up." (216)

On Empathy

"Players can choose strategies that fit with their style of learning, thinking, and acting. This, of course, is highly motivating both for learning and for playing the game and a rich source for reflecting on one's own styles of learning and problem solving (and, perhaps, experimenting with new ones)." (78)

"When the character you are playing dies in a video game (and it is always, of course, a main character), you can get sad and upset, but you also usually get "pissed" that you (the player) have failed. Perhaps you even feel that you have failed yoru character. And then you start again, usually from a saved game, motivated to do better. The emotional investments you have in a video-game story are different from the emotional investments you have in a book or movie." (80)

"Players are placed, by the very design of the game, in the same psychological space as Lara--learning from Von Croy but not subordinating themselves entirely to his old-fashioned professorial need for dominance. The game's design encourages the player to take on a certain sort of attitude and relationship with Von Croy--and, more generally, a certain sort of personality--that represents, in fact, just the sort of person that Lara is." (117)

"As we said earlier, the player is encouraged by the very design of the game to be more Lara-like--playful and willful--leaving behind fears and hesitations about authority and the risks of exploration." (122)

"But, alas, Heinrich got me in the end. I went down with more pride and dignity (remember, in my projective identity, I care about such things), but I went down nonetheless." (127)

The movie Saving Private Ryan [put the audience in the middle of a full-scale battle] as well, but the game puts the player right in the midst of the action, pinned to the ground, surrounded by deafening noise and woundedm, wometimes shell-shocked soldiers, and facing the near certainty of a quick death if he or she makes one wrong move." (145)

"Video games have an unmet potential to create complexity by letting people experience the world from different perspectives. Part of this potential is that in a video game, you yourself have to act as a given character. As you act quickly, and not just think leisurely, and as you (while playing) celebrate the character's victories and bemoan his or her defeats, you must live in a virtual world and make sense of it." (159)

"[...] players feel a real sense of agency, ownership and control. It's their game." (217)

Other

"The experience brought home to me, forcefully, that learning should be both frustrating and life enhancing, what I will later call "pleasantly frustrating." The key is finding ways to make hard things life enhancing so that people keep going and don't fall back on learning only what is simple and easy." (3)

"Rather, [people] think best when they reason on the basis of patterns they have picked up through their actual experiences in the world, patterns that, over time, can become generalized but that are still rooted in specific areas of embodied experience." (9)

"Finally, despite some claims to the contrary, the fact of the matter is that the effect size of video-game play on aggression is smaller than the effect size for television, thereby rendering the claim that there is something special about the interactivity of games as a source of aggression suspect." (11)

"The game [Pikmin] encourages him to think of himself as an active problem solver, one who persists in trying to solve problems even after making mistakes, one who, in fact, does not see mistakes as errors but as opportunities for reflection and learning. It encourages him to be the sort of problem solver who, rather than ritualizing the solutions to problems, leaves himself open to undoing former mastery and finding new ways to solve new problems in new situations." (36)

"The story line ina video game is a mixture of four things:

1. The game designers' ("authors'") choices.
2. How you, the player, have caused these choices to unfold in your specific case by the order in which you have found things.
3. The actions you as one of the central characters in the story carry out (since in good video games there is a choice as to what to do, when to do it, and in what order to do it).
4. Your own imaginative projection about the characters, plot, and world of the story.

The first and fourth of these itmes are true of books and movies, as well, but items two and three are true of video games only.

Thus, in video games like Deus Ex, stories are embodied in the player's own choices and actions in a way they cannot be in books and movies." (79)

"The intertextual principle is concerned with the fact that after players have dealt a good bit with certain types or genres of video games and the texts associated with them, they can begin to see these texts themselves as a gmaily or genre of related texts." (106)

"...the episode is also meant as a training module where the player is explicitly coached on how to play the game." (116)

[on a character referencing the control scheme for instructional purposes] "Now this is, if you think about it, a strange thing to say. However, it does not seem the least bit strange when one is actually playing the episode. Von Croy is tlaking to the virtual character Lara, a character who walks and jumps in the virtual world but has no computer whose keys she can press, push, or hold." (118)

"In a good game, the player leanrs to play the game by playing in a "subdomain" of the real game. This is an important learning principle and, again, one regularly ignored in school. [...] Furthermore, this episode usually offers a concetrated sample of the most basic and important actions, artifacts, and interactions that the player will need to deal with throughout the game." (122-123)

"This and other games have brought home to me that I hold cultural models about learning like: "The final goal is important, defines the learning, and good learners move toward it without being distracted by other things" and "Good learners move quickly and efficiently toward their goal." I also hold other models: "There is one right way to get to the goal that the good learners discover (and the rest of us usually don't)" and "Learning is a matter of some people being better or worse than others, and this is important." These models all get entrenched in school repeatedly." (173)

"In playing video games, hard is not bad and easy is not good. The six-year-old mentioned earlier was once asked whether easy or hard was better in a video game. Without a pause, he said hard is always good, easy is not. Would that children said such things about learning in school." (175)

Readings in Game Studies: Unit Operations

2009-03-05T12:38:00.000-08:00

Bogost, Ian. Unit Operations: An Approach to Video Game Criticism. Cambridge and London: MIT Press, 2006.

While I did manage to pull several relevant quotes from Bogost's book, I have to admit that I found it largely unhelpful. Bogost's book outlines a critical framework wherein a "text" is looked at as a larger structure built up of individual base units. He relates this critical approach to object-oriented programming.

While I got very little out of this book myself, I thought I should perhaps outline his approach here anyway, in case it will be useful to anyone else. (And so I have some place to keep track of the quotes I do intend to use.)

One of the central tenants of programming is the idea of breaking up large chunks of code into smaller, easier-to-manage pieces. I may have a difficult time writing a single program that simulates a queue at an airport counter, but it will be much easier if I write, for instance, a single function that models a person entering a queue, another function that models someone leaving a queue, a function that models the process of the first person in the queue being served by the counter attendant, and so on. Each individual piece is easy to write, and by combining them all together, I can make my larger program with far greater ease. There are two ways I break up code into smaller chunks: I can create sub-routines that do pieces of the work, or I can create "objects" - units that describe smaller pieces of the simulated "world," and can be interacted with in simple, easy-to-understand ways.

Bogost proposes looking at criticism in this way - having single, simple concepts that can be built up to create larger, more complex wholes. This approach in relation to criticism leaves me with many questions. How are we to determine what these base units are, precisely? How far is it acceptable to go downward into taking pieces apart? (In one chapter, he presents the base unit for a particular set of critical analyses as the "chance encounter." It seems to me that this unit is still made up of smaller units such as "character," "location," etc.) What impact does this form of structuring have on our greater conclusions? (I did not see much of one, personally, but perhaps I missed something.) What is to distinguish these units from tropes, or from standard story elements?

On the whole, I think this sort of rigidly functional approach does not lend itself as well to literary (and thus, the narrative aspect of video games, although it certainly relates to the software, computer-science-related side) criticism as Bogost argues that it does. Formal systems, like computer software, are built on rules - rules that define and, importantly, create the system they describe. On the other hand, creative works such as literature, while they may be described by rules, are created in an absence of them (even sometimes of the fundamental spelling and grammatical rules of the language containing them, especially in the case of more modern poetry), and often specialize in breaking these rules, or finding ways around them. You can't find "a way around" a programming syntax without invalidating any program written in that language. However, you can strategically break rules of, say, the detective novel genre and generate a new and innovate work that nevertheless still belongs to the genre.

I've always thought of the central difference between the sciences (in particular, computer science) and humanities as the difference between a binary relation and a gradient. In computer science, there is a Wrong answer. Your program either works or it doesn't. Sure, one working program might work more efficiently than another, or the coding style might be more readable, but if the program doesn't compile, or gives faulty output, then it is Wrong.

On the other hand, creative works such as writing tend to operate more on a gradient. We can tell, for the most part, when a work is Good and when a work is Bad. But there is almost never a single error or failure that we can point at and say, "look, if this was fixed, then the story would be Good." It might be better, but there's no clearly-drawn line to cross between success and failure. There is wiggle room. Furthermore, an author's particular technique might be successful in one way, but fail in another, which requires a subjective "was that sacrifice worth it" judgement on the part of the critical audience. You can't argue that one program is better than another because it sacrifices the successful completion of its goals for a neater, more readable coding style. Your program no longer works - therefore it is objectively not as successful as a program that does work.

I realize that there is much creative thinking that must go into the sciences, especially when you get to higher levels of thinking. Just as I realize that there are certain things in literature which are generally considered good and bad according to formalized rules. But no matter what, I can always say that a faster program, all other things being equal (including the program's end goals), is better than a slower program that performs the same task. Whereas in literature, a technique that may have seemed highly evocative and creative years ago could seem stilted or foolish to a modern audience. Some readers may subjectively think that one story is better at evoking sadness, while other readers disagree and point to another.

I think Bogost's "units," while certainly an interesting new way of looking at criticism, and an interesting parallel to point out between vastly different systems, imposes just a bit too much of this discrete, objective framework on an inherently subjective and gradient-based discipline. But that is merely my opinion; others who read Bogost may disagree.

Below are quotes that I found useful from Bogost. They are, unfortunately, incidental to Bogost's subject material rather than integral to his approach, and therefore probably won't give readers a very accurate idea of Bogost's overall philosophy. Still, they were useful to me, and may be so to others as well.

"Ludology is one way to address this need to explain what games are and how they work. From the Latin ludus, meaning game or sport, ludology addresses "games in general, and videogames in particular."" (xi)

"...DiGRA [Digital Game Research Association] president Frans Mayra offers an especially unambiguous vision of "three theses" for game studies:

'Thesis one: There needs to be a dedicated academic discipline for the study of games.
Thesis two: This new discipline needs to have an active dialogue with, and be building on of existing ones, as well as having its own identity.
Thesis three: Both the educational and research practices applied in game studies need to remain true to the core playful or ludic qualities of its subject matter.' " (52-53)

"The field of "hard core" game studies is thus revealed to be essentialist and doctrinaire, its theorists hoping to reinvent a different kind of isolationist techno-textual criticism that privileges the ludic over the literary, culturing the virulent oppositions of a future whose media ecology we cannot foresee." (53)

"Game engines are no more transcendental than genres, in the sense that one cannot play a game engine but only a game that encompasses and integrates that engine to create a work. However, game engines do enjoy a different status with respect to authorship and criticism. The first-person shooter is clearly a genre of videogame and, for better or worse, perhaps the medium's most common genre. But first-person shooter game engines construe entire gameplay behaviors, facilitating functional interactions divorced from individual games. Genres structure a creative approach to narrative; they describe a kind of story. While one can imagine a conceptual description of any of the film genres just mentioned, it is much more difficult to imagine the unit-operational underpinnings of such a genre. [...] Game engines differ from genres in that they abstract such material requirements as their primary--perhaps their only--formal constituent." (57)

"Especially right now with current technology, there are a lot of limitations in terms of what we can do with character simulation. So, to me that seemed like a really good use of the abstraction because there are certain things we just cannot simulate on a computer, but on the other hand that people are very good at simulation in their heads. So we just take that part of the simulation and offload it from the computer into the player's head." (Will Wright in Bogost, 85)

"Because The Sims is a game, players have an opportunity to explore the conditions, assumptions, and outcomes of the simulation through interaction, something impossible in the poems of Baudelaire and Bukowski." (85-86)

"What the game allows that the literary medium cannot is interactivity, the direct manipulation of the "narrator" in the simuated world. Because the sim waits for the player's input by default, the game affords a unique perspective on chance encounters in the simulated and real world. On the one hand, the player is forced to register the event not only from the perspective of the character (does that sim look like someone I'd like to meet?), but also from the perspective of the simulation (what are the social rules to which my sim conforms?). Otherwise said, the simulation exposes the various strategies the player can choose in approaching his sim's situation." (87)

"...the gaps in the simulation that the player fills in "in his head" function equally well no matter how the player directs his sim." (87)

Readings in Narrative Theory: The Rhetoric of Fiction

2009-02-27T11:34:00.000-08:00

I have saved the best of my narrative theory summaries for last with Wayne C. Booth's classic The Rhetoric of Fiction (second edition). This book and this critic have been cited in nearly ever other narrative theory work I've read (at least, the ones that came out after this book was published). To be quite frank, I can see why. Not only is he complete and insightful, he is also clear and concise. Therefore, before I get to the actual text, I would like to begin this post with a short note about writing style and readability.

It is a painful task for students, scholars, and general audience readers to have to slog through a badly-written text, particularly an academic text. Writing clearly and obviously is a skill that many academics seem to lack. If your text is indecipherable to the average reader outside the field, this does not automatically make it a good text. In fact, unless it is about a topic so specific that such language and obscurity is required, I would even go so far as to say that this automatically makes it a bad text.

I've heard excuses before like, "This author is very dense, and you have to read him several times to truly understand what he's talking about." But in my mind, this is not an acceptable excuse. Booth is very dense, and his text definitely benefits from re-reading, yet The Rhetoric of Fiction text is still entirely accessible. Compare, if you will, a selection from two narrative theory works. The first is from Reading for the Plot, by Peter Brooks. (Brooks, Peter. Reading for the Plot. New York: Knopf, 1984.) The second is from the Booth book:

"Plot, then, might best be thought of as an "overcoding" of the proairetic by the hermeneutic, the latter structuring the discrete elements of the former into larger interpretive wholes, working out their play of meaning and significance. If we interpret the hermeneutic to be a general gnomic code, concerned not narrowly with enigma and its resolution but broadly with our understanding of how actions come to be semiotically structured, through an interrogation of their point, their goal, their import, we find that Barthes contributes to our conception of plot as part of the dynamics of reading." (Brooks, page 18)

"For experienced readers a sonnet begun calls for a sonnet concluded; an elegy begun in blank verse calls for an elegy completed in blank verse. Even so amorphous a genre as the novel, with hardly any established conventions, makes use of this kind of interest: when I begin what I think is a novel, I expect to read a novel throughout, unless the author can, like Sterne, transform my idea of what a novel can be." (Booth, page 127)

To me, the latter paragraph displays a high degree of skill in communication. While the relative value of the subject matter may be something for critics to debate, the forms in which the subjects are related are clearly of very disparate quality.

There are three reasons, I think, why a critic might write with the former tone rather than the latter. The first is a lack of ability to communicate clearly, either through an intrinsic inability or perhaps the blunting of communication skills through too much exposure to similar academia. Judging by the prestigious list of schools attached to Brooks's name, I would hesitate to attach such lack of skill to the man. Especially considering he is working in a field dealing with the English language, if anyone should be able to communicate effectively, it should be him.

The second reason a critic might write with such obfuscating language is that the subject matter is so detailed and in-depth that it defies more conventional language. I think this excuse is dangerous territory, although it may often be the justification that writers use for themselves. Booth covers very detailed and nuanced ground with perfect clarity. My suspicion is that Brooks's own points have the potential to be captured just as neatly, with the right choice of language.

The third reason is a selfish and misguided one, and that is a certain pretension of appearance. The idea that such language will keep those who are "not worthy" from understanding the subject matter, or the idea that there should be no reason why the author should have to "dumb down" his language for the sake of his audience. Clear communication is not dumbing-down - in fact it shows the author's skill more clearly. Not only that, clear communication allows readers of all levels to enjoy a work and to absorb the ideas it contains, which should be the goal of any author who is convinced that his ideas have merit. I can't claim to be an expert in such clarity myself, but I think it is something that one should strive for.

I'm not sure which of these three reasons - if any - afflict our dear Mr. Brooks, but I do have to say that I was disappointed with his text. I think the writing style is an unpleasant barrier to the understanding of his work, and that his ideas suffer for it. It is my hope and my goal to write in a clear, understandable way. If I am not, feel free to call me on it.

Anyway. Now that I've gotten that particular vitriolic rant off my chest (I apologize - sometimes I get a little too passionate about these things), on to Booth.

Booth, Wayne C. The Rhetoric of Fiction. Second Edition. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1961, 1983 (second edition).

I've found much of interest in my reading of Booth, even beyond what directly relates to my project. For anyone doing anything even tangentially related to narrative theory, I would include this work as a must-read (even somewhat dated as it is). Don't be afraid of its large size - it's relatively easy to read (for an academic text, very easy). Because of space limitations (this entry will be quite long as it is), I will only cover the areas I found directly related to my work, but even so, there are multiple. I will therefore be dividing up the rest of this post into segments based on focus.

Section 1: Reader Objectivity / Player/Character Empathy

As readers of this blog might remember from previous posts, I have a particular interest in the ability of games to give the player a strong emotional connection to the character she plays. In the novel, it is much more difficult, requiring great skill on the part of the author, to give the reader a sense of emotional connection to his characters, especially if the characters are very different from the reader. (Booth compares the reaction of two readers - one with a lisp and one without, to a character that speaks with a lisp. Obviously the more similar reader will react more strongly to the character.)

I will not go into too much depth at the moment about how this technique of empathy is evoked, since I do so not only in previous posts, but also in the section below. Nevertheless, I would like to offer the quotes that Booth has on the subject.

[speaking about the tendency towards an "alienation effect," where good works are considered those that don't involve the emotions] "...the novelist will find himself in difficulties if he tries to discover some ideal distance that all works ought to seek. "Aesthetic distance" is in fact many different effects, some of them quite inappropriate to some kinds of works. More important, distance is never an end in itself; distance along one axis is sought for the sake of increasing the reader's involvement on some other axis." (123)

"It is only as I read that I become the self whose beliefs must coincide with the author's. Regardless of my real beliefs and practices, I must subordinate my mind and heart to the book if I am to enjoy it to the full. The author creates, in short, an image of himself and another image of his reader; he makes his reader, as he makes his second self, and the most successful reading is one in which the created selves, author and reader, can find complete agreement." (138)

"Much more important [than authorial commentary], the sustained inside view leads the reader to hope for good fortune for the character with whom he travels, quite independently of the qualities revealed." (246)

"While only immature readers ever really identify with any character, losing all sense of distance and hence all chance of an artistic experience, our emotional reaction to every event concerning Emma tends to become like her own. When she feels anxiety or shame, we feel analogous emotions. Our modern awareness that such "feelings" are not identical with those we feel in our own lives in similar circumstances has tended to blind us to the fact that aesthetic form can be built out of patterned emotions as well as out of other materials. It is absurd to pretend that because our emotions and desires in responding to fiction are in a very real sense disinterested, they do not or should not exist. Jane Austen, in developing the sustained use of a sympathetic inside view, has mastered one of the most successful of all devices for inducing a parallel emotional response between the deficient heroine and the reader." (249)

[on a lack of authorial commentary] "[Miranda] must be accepted at her own estimate from the beginning, and that estimate must, for greatest effect, be as close as possible to the reader's estimate of his own importance. Whether we call this effect identification or not, it is certainly the closest that literature can come to making us feel events as if they were happening to ourselves. As we read, we know only Miranda's world and we know only her values. Our only value becomes, in a sense, her well-being, and we accept any threat to her happiness precisely as she accepts it. The slightest suggestion that she is at fault will create too much distance; the slightest sign that author and reader are observing Miranda from above rather than alongside will destroy at least in part, the quality of our concern and hence of our final revelation." (277)

"This kind of near-identification can be used for innumerable effects. [...] A motion picture can achieve this kind of thrill perhaps more easily than any other medium, but the devices of showing developed by modern fiction can do it well." (277)

"And then he is gone. He is dead, and we have experienced a personal loss, a personal blow, of a kind that would be difficult, perhaps impossible, to achieve with a technique which provided us with any clear moral or intellectual guidance about the meaning of his death." (278)

Section 2: Types of Literary Interest

Booth has a very interesting section in his text where he discusses the "types of literary interest," or the elements of fiction that keep our attention and force us to continue the experience. While this is related to the idea of immersion, I think a look at how these interests relate to games may deserve an additional section of its own.

Booth breaks up literary interest into three types: intellectual interests, completion of qualities, and what he calls practical interests, but which I shall call empathic concerns (since I feel that more accurately captures the sort of interests he describes).

Intellectual interests refers to curiosity. We have a sort of impartial, academic interest in facts and in how the story will play out. Completion of qualities refers to pattern recognition and the desire for pattern completion. Booth includes in this all types of pattern completion, from story concerns - capture and punishment being the natural completion of crime, and so on - to more formal concerns dealing with the literary discourse (the form of the story rather than the content) itself, as described in the first quote ("a sonnet begun calls for a sonnet concluded..."). Finally, empathic concern deals with our relation to the characters, and our desire to see things unfold based on how we relate to them. We would like to see sympathetic characters have happy endings, villainous characters get their just desserts, and so on.

Booth's analysis of these three aspects and how they interact with one another is quite in-depth, and I will not go into all of it here. (If you're curious about it, it's in chapter V of the book, beginning page 125.) What I would like to discuss is how these types of interest might relate to game studies. Let's put side by side the way each of the three interests work in both media.

Intellectual interest in the novel: I am curious about how this strange egg came to be in the middle of the field. I am curious about what the egg is. I am curious about what will happen if the main character goes up to the egg and touches it. I keep reading, hoping that the author will see fit to answer these questions.

Intellectual interest in the game: I am curious about how this strange egg came to be in the middle of the field. I am curious about what the egg is. I am curious about what will happen if the main character goes up to the egg and touches it. I go up to the egg and touch it, definitely answering at least the final question, and hoping that my interest will trigger further information about the first two.

The interest has gone from a passive experience to an active one. In the case of intellectual interest, a game can be directed by the specific interest of the player, allowing for more engagement - the player need not rely, as the reader must, on the good grace of the game's creator to focus in on what the player finds interesting. The player chooses the area of focus. However, she must still rely on the game designer to create the game in such a way as to allow it to respond to her curiosity in a satisfactory manner. The game designer can accomplish this by making as much as possible of the environment reactant. A reader, on the other hand, must hope that the author's area of intellectual curiosity matches up with her own, because only the author determines what areas of the novel are further explored.

The completion of qualities area is similar. Rather than waiting in suspense to see if the author will complete the patterns I see forming in the novel, I will actively seek out these pattern completions in a game, if I find them desirous. However, this does remove one element crucial to the enjoyment of the novel - suspense. Because he maintains total control, the author can withhold the completion of certain patterns as a method of keeping the reader interested. When the player can actively seek out completion, the suspense is weakened, if not destroyed.

Pattern recognition is also an integral aspect of gameplay, and the learning inherent in gameplay. Players learn that certain actions are available, and will have certain effects. Unlike the real world, the effects of actions in a game are generally consistent. We build our experience of playing the game through learning to recognize and use patterns, in fighting, in problem-solving, and in a number of other ways. Many players gain pleasure from the repetitions of certain patterns, as in the steadily increasing difficulty of certain puzzle games, where the answer to each new puzzle incorporates skills and tricks learned in previous puzzles, and a recombining and shifting of patterns produces new results, which can then be added to the player's repertoire of puzzle solutions for use on future puzzles.

Finally, empathic concerns. This, as touched upon previously, is an area where games really shine. Controlling the empathic relations of a character with their reader is exceedingly tricky business in a novel, and requires a good deal of skill on the part of the author. A game, on the other hand, generally starts with an advantage, given that the character is under the control of the player, and thus the player is forced to relate to their actions (as they are the player's actions as well). We have a very personal stake in whether the story will work out well for the main character, because this happy ending likely coincides with our successful completion of the game. There are, of course, exceptions to the happy ending - but we still tend to presume that we are moving the character towards a certain goal, and that the goal is somehow desirous, at least for the player. Our empathic concern is less necessarily for the happiness of this character, but more of the success of ourselves as players. Nevertheless, this method still operates by harnessing the same sort of interest as does our empathic concerns for a character in a novel. The focus has just shifted from an exclusive focus on the character to a mixed focus on the character and ourselves.

A combination of these three elements of interest are why I think games have a tendency to be "addictive." Combining a high degree of emotional resonance with the pleasure of repeated pattern recognition (technical, at the very least) and the ability to actively pursue the objects of one's curiosity combine to capture the audience's interest and hold it fast.

Here are some relevant quotes from this section of Booth:

"...our desire for causal completion is one of the strongest of interests available to the author. Not only do we believe that certain causes do in life produce certain effects; in literature we believe that they should. Consequently, we ordinary readers will go to great lengths, once we have been caught up by an author who knows how to make use of this interest, to find out whether our demands will be met." (126)

"If we look closely at our responses to most great novels, we discover that we feel a strong concern for the characters as people; we care about their good and bad fortune. [...] It is of course true that our desires concerning the fate of such imagined people differ markedly from our desires in real life. We will accept destruction of the man we love, in a literary work, if destruction is required to satisfy our other interests; we will take pleasure in combinations of hope and fear which in real life would be intolerable. But hope and fear are there, and the destruction or salvation is felt in a manner closely analogous to the feelings produced by such events in real life." (129-130)

"Such [emotional] concerns are not simply a necessary but impure base, as Ortega would have it, to "make contemplation possible" but "with no aesthetic value or only a reflected or secondary one" (pp. 80, 76). In many first-rate works they are the very core of our experience. We may refuse assent when an author tries to manipulate us too obviously or cheaply with a casual bestowal of goodness or intellectual brilliance or beauty or charm. We all have use for epithets like "melodramatic" to apply against abuses of this kind. But his does not mean that human interest in itself is cheap. It is true that our involvement in the fate of Raskolnikov is not different in kind from the involvement sought by the most sentimental of novels. But in the great work we surrender our emotions for reasons that leave us with no regrets, no inclination to retract, after the immediate spell is past. They are, in fact, reasons which we should be ashamed not to respond to." (130-131)

"...it is clear that no great work is based on only one interest. Whenever a work tends towards an exclusive reliance on intellectual interests, on the contemplation of qualities, or on practical desires we all look for adjectives to whip the offender with; a mere "novel of ideas," a mere "desiccated form," a mere "tear-jerker" will offend all but the small handful of critics and authors who are momentarily absorbed in pushing one interest to the limit." (133)

Section 3: Person / POV

I don't have much to offer in the way of quotes for this section, but I am impressed nonetheless by the incredibly nuanced view which Booth takes towards the idea of "point of view" in literature, from distinguishing between "person" in the traditional manner to more complex ideas of "dramatized narrators" and so on. What I think is very interesting about point of view in games is the way that certain games embody what we often think of as traditional points of view.

A game is almost always told from the point of view of the PC. This makes the PC the "narrator-agent," as it were, or the narrator who is also a character in the story. However, the character also shares the experience of being the implied reader as well, as he is the intended avatar for the player within the game, and thus all responses to the player's input will be received via the game's relation to this character. In the same way as a text is "speaking" to the implied reader, the game is "reacting" to the character, which is implied to be the player. Narrative theory will have to come up with a whole new terminology to describe exactly what position the player and the PC hold within the narrative - games have a tendency to twist the existing terms to their breaking points.

Oddly enough however, what we think of as some of the most basic and elementary (in the sense of sort of juvenile, in addition to simple) categories of literary point of view hold true in games, and do so in ways that provide an interesting visualization for how we think of the literary equivalents.

First-Person
First-person games present a camera situated "behind the eyes" of the PC. Only the hands and perhaps some of the arms can be seen of the character being played. We see of the character and of the world only what we would see of ourselves if we were in the same situation, thus helping to increase our sense of being the character in question, the limited "I" perspective.

Third-Person Limited
Third-person games such as RPGs have a camera situated behind and usually slightly above the main character. We see the figure of the character from the outside, and a portion of the surrounding environment. This gives us a sense of greater grasp over the world/map, perhaps seeing some things that the character himself might not be able to. Thus we increase the scope of our viewpoint while limiting our identification with the character.

Third-Person Omniscient
Common to RTS and other God games, this perspective puts the camera high above the ground, allowing the player to see large portions of the world at once, and to move back and forth across the world independent of any particular character. This is also the only viewpoint where the player is not specifically relating to a single character in the game. In this perspective, we lose almost all empathy with individual characters - more often than not, characters are resources rather than individuals, and the player is an invisible god-force that controls their actions. With our view at its fullest availability, we sacrifice the most player/character empathy with any single character.

It would be very interesting to me to see these perspectives related, in turn, back to the literary medium, but I do feel that this is somewhat outside the scope of this project.

In conclusion, go read Booth. It will quite likely be less tiring than what you have just finished.

Why I Hate Edutainment and MMOs

2009-02-23T11:57:00.000-08:00

I suppose this title is a bit harsh. Actually, I don't really hate edutainment OR MMOs. I have no gripe against the games themselves (any genre that can produce a game like The Typing of the Dead is alright by me), nor against the people who make them. My gripe is really with the way they're studied, particularly in the larger context of game studies.

If you're unfamiliar with either of the two genres, allow me to explain. "Edutainment" is the term used to refer to games that teach a subject. This could be old-school games like Number Munchers or more complex games that happen to have an educational element, like Civilization. Because of the immersive and interactive nature of video games, many have found that games are a good way of teaching people facts and skills. The fun and playful nature of games keeps people coming back, and helps them to absorb the information. It's no secret that games and play are a great way of learning - people have used games to learn and teach since long before the video game.

MMOs are Massively Multiplayer Online games, games which include communities of sometimes millions of players, all interacting and playing with each other online. World of Warcraft is usually the first game to come to peoples' minds when discussing the subject. MMOs can provide a very interesting forum for the study of virtual worlds, and various sociology/social dynamics/anthropology studies.

As interesting as games in either of these genres can be, more and more I have found the way they are studied to be somewhat degrading to video games as a medium. Both genres deflect attention away from the medium, forcing it to be little more than a vehicle for something "more interesting."

When people look at the potential of video games to teach, particularly people outside the Game Studies community, their enthusiasm seems to contain the implicit criticism, "Well, games are pretty useless by themselves, but look, we can use them to teach people things of real value." It's as though the medium is only valuable to the extent that it can teach us history, or a foreign language, or typing skills. You know, useful information.

To me, this is like someone saying that only non-fiction books have any value. While I know a lot of people prefer to read exclusively non-fiction, I think most of them would agree that some fiction, particularly the classics (Shakespeare, anyone?), have at least some intrinsic value as works of art. Even if they would argue otherwise, I think they might have a difficult time supporting their points while running from the angry mob of literary critics at their heels with torches and pitchforks.

It's the same thing with MMOs - games are looked at not for their worth as games, but for how they can illustrate interesting social phenomena and, more often than not, are lumped in with non-game virtual worlds like Second Life. The sort of studies people usually talk about when they discuss MMOs seem to belong more in the field of sociology than in Game Studies. The game itself is largely ignored in favor of the players. And while it is certainly interesting to see what this new medium can tell us about ourselves, it seems terribly rude to that medium to ignore so much of it. Studies of MMOs often seem to largely ignore the existance of single-player games, as though multiplayer games were all that the medium consisted of, or at least all of any importance. In fact, MMOs and single-player games are vastly different from each other, and should not be lumped together.

Games can be art. I firmly believe this. I want to study them for what they are, and what they can give us as a medium, not how they can be exploited for the purposes of other schools. I wouldn't study filmmaking for what it might teach me about how to make educational science videos. I would study it as an artform and as a medium. This is how I think we need to look at games as well.

So, What Is This Project Of Yours?

2009-02-19T10:35:00.000-08:00

The following is a brief (well, perhaps not so brief...) summary of my current work. It began Fall semester, and will conclude when I give a public presentation on the subject at Hamilton College on April 17th.

What is a Senior Fellowship?
The Senior Fellowship program is offered every year at Hamilton College to members of the senior class who wish to pursue an in-depth personal project. At the end of their junior year, interested students submit a 10-page proposal outlining their academic studies to date and the project they would like to pursue the following year. A committee of faculty members read these proposals, and select up to seven that they feel have academic merit.

The selected students are exempt from all classes their senior year, and all other requirements for graduation, including major and number of credits (although students may still choose to fulfill any of these requirements). Instead they spend the entire year working on their project of choice under the supervision of one or more faculty advisors. At the end of the year, they must give a presentation (open to the campus) to a board consisting of their advisor(s), two Hamilton faculty members, and a member of the student's chosen field from outside the college. This board determines whether the student fulfilled his or her obligations as defined by the original parameters of the proposal and, therefore, whether the student graduates.

The Senior Fellowship program is designed for independent, self-motivated students who have a very strong desire to pursue a project that is too large and/or too interdisciplinary to qualify for a senior thesis in the student's department. Projects vary from creative works, such as writing novels or creating comic books, to research projects, including scientific and social. Almost any topic is game as long as the committee determines that a) it has academic merit and b) is large/in-depth enough to merit a full year's worth of intensive work by the student.

What is your project about?
The subject of my paper (book, really) is narrative in video games. Tentatively, I have decided to title it either "Hands-On Narrative" or "Playing Stories" (with the subtitle "Video Games as a Narrative Medium"). For research, I have been playing video games and reading books on both narrative theory and game studies. The major final product for the project is going to be my paper, but there will also be a preliminary outline/design for a video game of my own that exemplifies some of the techniques I have been studying for game narrative. (The game tentatively titled "The Legend of Acornus.") This latter connects my project to my chosen career field - video game (story) design.

What has your research encompassed?
My research currently covers 43 games and 54 other sources (with 6 or 7 sources still pending in the latter category). The other sources include academic works such as texts on narrative theory and game studies, popular culture sources such as podcasts and video reviews by gamers and game critics, and other sources such as films. The current bibliography for my paper is as follows (I apologize for reproducing the entire thing here, but a) perhaps it will be useful for those researching on the same subject and b) I plan to use this page for a presentation in which I will need to display my bibliography. So, sorry.):

Games:
2K Boston. 2007. Bioshock. Windows. 2K Games.

Arc System Works. 1998. Guilty Gear. Playstation. Atlus.

Black Isle Studios. 1999. Planescape: Torment. Windows. Interplay.

Blizzard Entertainment. 1998. StarCraft. Windows. Blizzard Entertainment.

Bullfrog Productions. 1997. Dungeon Keeper. Windows. Electronic Arts.

Capcom Production Studio 4. 1996. Resident Evil. Playstation. Capcom.

Cyan Worlds. 1993. Myst. Windows. Broderbund, Midway Games, Mean Hamster Software, Sunsoft.

Double Fine Productions, Budcat Creations. 2005. Psychonauts. Playstation 2. Majesco Entertainment.

Game Freak. 1998. Pokemon. Game Boy. Nintendo.

HAL Laboratory. 1999. Super Smash Bros. Nintendo 64. Nintendo.

Hudson Soft. 1999 – present. Mario Party series. Various platforms. Nintendo.

Infinity Ward. 2007. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. Windows. Activision.

Ion Storm Inc. 2000. Deus Ex. Windows. Eidos Interactive.

Konami Computer Entertainment. 2006. Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater (Subsistence). Playstation 2. Konami.

Level-5. 2008. Professor Layton and the Curious Village. Nintendo DS. Nintendo.

Lionhead Studios. 2001. Black & White. Windows. EA Games and Feral Interactive.

Lionhead Studios. 2005. Fable: The Lost Chapters. Windows. Microsoft Game Studios.

Maxis. 2000 – present. The Sims series. Windows. Electronic Arts.

Maxis. 2008. Spore. Windows. Electronic Arts.

Media Molecule. 2008. LittleBigPlanet. Playstation 3. Sony Computer Entertainment.

Namco. 1999. Soul Caliber. Dreamcast. Namco.

Namco. 2004. Katamari Damacy. Playstation 2. Namco.

Nintendo EAD. 1985. Super Mario Bros. Nintendo Entertainment System. Nintendo.

Nintendo EAD. 1992 – present. Mario Kart series. Various platforms. Nintendo.

Nintendo EAD. 1993. The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening. Game Boy. Nintendo.

Nintendo EAD. 2006. The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. Wii. Nintendo.

Nintendo EAD. 2007. Super Mario Galaxy. Wii. Nintendo.

Nintendo EAD. 2008. Wii Fit. Wii. Nintendo.

Nintendo R&D4. 1987. The Legend of Zelda. Nintendo Entertainment System. Nintendo.

Pajitnov, Alexey, and Vadim Gerasimov. 1985. Tetris. Various platforms. Various publishers.

Ready at Dawn. 2008. Okami. Wii. Capcom. (Originally developed by Clover Studio and released for Playstation 2 in 2006.)

Rockstar North (DMA Design), and Tarantula Studios. Grand Theft Auto series. 1998 – present. Playstation 2. Rockstar Games.

Silicon Knights. 2002. Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem. Nintendo GameCube. Nintendo.

Square. 1987. Final Fantasy. Nintendo Entertainment System. Nintendo of America.

Square. 2000. Chrono Cross. Playstation. Square Electronic Arts.

Square. 2001. Final Fantasy X. Playstation 2. Square Electronic Arts.

Square. 2002. Kingdom Hearts. Playstation 2. Square Electronic Arts, and Disney Interactive.

Square Enix. 2006. Kingdom Hearts II. Playstation 2. Square Enix and Buena Vista Games.

Square Enix, and Jupiter. 2008. The World Ends With You. Nintendo DS. Square Enix.

Team Ico. 2001. Ico. Playstation 2. Sony Computer Entertainment.

Team Ico. 2005. Shadow of the Colossus. Playstation 2. Sony Computer Entertainment.

TOSE. 2001. Chrono Trigger. Playstation. Square Electronic Arts. (Originally developed by Square, and released for Super Nintendo Entertainment System in 1995 by Square Soft, Inc.)

Valve Corporation. 2007. Portal. Windows via Steam. Valve Corporation.

Other References:
Adams, Ernest. “The Designer's Notebook: Difficulty Modes and Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment.” Gamasutra. May 14, 2008.

Adams, Ernest. “The Designer's Notebook: Three Problems for Interactive Storytellers.” Gamasutra. December 29, 1999. October 25, 2008.

Bissell, Tom. “The Grammar of Fun.” The New Yorker. November 3, 2008: 78-84.

Booth, Wayne. “Distance and Point of View: An Essay in Classification.” in Hoffman.

Bradley, Ed. “Can A Video Game Lead to Murder?: Did Grand Theft Auto Cause One Teenager to Kill?” CBSNews.com. June 19, 2005 (originally filed March 6, 2005):

Carson, Don. “Environmental Storytelling: Creating Immersive 3D Worlds Using Lessons Learned from the Theme Park Industry.” Gamasutra. March 01, 2000. October 25, 2008.

Carson, Don. “Environmental Storytelling, Part II: Bringing Theme Park Environment Design Techniques to the Virtual World.” Gamasutra. April 05, 2000. October 25, 2008.

Chatman, Seymour. “Discourse: Nonnarrated Stories.” In Hoffman.

Chatman, Seymour. Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1978.

Consalvo, Mia. “From Dollhouse to Metaverse: What Happened When The Sims Went Online.” The Player's Realm: Studies on the Culture of Video Games and Gaming. Williams, Patrick J. and Jonas Heide Smith. Jefferson, North Carolina and London: McFarland & Company, Inc, 2007. 203 – 222.

Coomer, Greg. Portal commentary, Stage 10. Portal. Valve Corporation. 2007.

Costikyan, Greg. “Where Stories End and Games Begin.” Game Developer Magazine. 2000. October 25, 2008.

Doody, Margaret Anne. The True Story of the Novel. New Brunswick, New Jersey, Rutgers University Press: 1996.

Dunniway, Troy. “Using the Hero's Journey in Games.” Gamasutra. November 27, 2000. October 25, 2008.

Eladhari, Mirjam. “The Player's Journey.” The Player's Realm: Studies on the Culture of Video Games and Gaming. Williams, Patrick J. and Jonas Heide Smith. Jefferson, North Carolina and London: McFarland & Company, Inc, 2007. 171 – 187.

Frank, Joseph. “Spatial Form in Modern Literature.” In Hoffman.

Frasca, Gonzalo. “Ludologists love stories, too: notes from a debate that never took place.” Digital Games Research Conference 2003 Proceedings. 2003.

Frasca, Gonzalo. “Ludology Meets Narratology: Similitude and differences between (video)games and narrative.” Parnasso #3 (Helsinki – Finnish version). 1999.

Hoffman, Michael J. (ed.) and Patrick D. Murphy (ed.). Essentials of the Theory of Fiction. Second Edition. Durham: Duke University Press, 1996

Iron Man. Dir. Jon Favreau. Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, and Jeff Bridges. Paramount Pictures, 2008.

Iser, Wolfgang. The Act of Reading. Baltimore and London: John Hopkins University Press, 1978.

Jenkins, Henry. “Game Design As Narrative Architecture.” Publications: Henry Jenkins. March 25, 2002. MIT. October 25, 2008.

Jenkins, Henry. “Reality Bytes: Eight Myths About Video Games Debunked.” The Video Game Revolution: Impact of Gaming: Essays. PBS. October 25, 2008.

Keller, Daniel. “Reading and Playing: What Makes Interactive Fiction Unique.” The Player's Realm: Studies on the Culture of Video Games and Gaming. Williams, Patrick J. and Jonas Heide Smith. Jefferson, North Carolina and London: McFarland & Company, Inc, 2007. 276 – 297.

Konzack, Lars. “Rhetorics of Computer and Video Game Research.” The Player's Realm: Studies on the Culture of Video Games and Gaming. Williams, Patrick J. and Jonas Heide Smith. Jefferson, North Carolina and London: McFarland & Company, Inc, 2007. 110 – 130.

Krahulik, Michael, and Jerry Holkins. “Our Crucial Pamphlet.” Downloadable Content: The Penny Arcade Podcast. Penny Arcade. March 7, 2008. Podcast.

Krahulik, Michael, and Jerry Holkins. Penny Arcade. Nov. 18, 1998 – Present. Retrieved 11/12/08.

Krahulik, Michael, and Jerry Holkins. “The Spore Cult.” Downloadable Content: The Penny Arcade Podcast. Penny Arcade. February 15, 2008. Podcast.

Leaska, Mitchell A. “The Concept of Point of View.” In Hoffman.

Montes, Rafael Miguel. “Ghost Recon: Island Thunder: Cuba in the Virtual Battlescape.” The Player's Realm: Studies on the Culture of Video Games and Gaming. Williams, Patrick J. and Jonas Heide Smith. Jefferson, North Carolina and London: McFarland & Company, Inc, 2007. 154 – 170.

Mortensen, Torill Elvira. “Mutual Fantasy Online: Playing with People.” The Player's Realm: Studies on the Culture of Video Games and Gaming. Williams, Patrick J. and Jonas Heide Smith. Jefferson, North Carolina and London: McFarland & Company, Inc, 2007. 188 – 202.

Murray, Janet H. “The Last Word on Ludology v Narratology in Game Studies.” Digital Games Research Conference, preface to keynote talk. June 17, 2005.

Palmer, Alan. Fictional Minds. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2004.

Phelan, James. Narrative as Rhetoric: Technique, Audiences, Ethics, Ideology. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1996.

Pirates of the Caribbean. Dir. Gore Verbinski. Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, and Keira Knightley. Walt Disney Pictures, 2003 – 2007.

Prince, Gerald. “Introduction to the Study of the Narratee.” In Hoffman.

Rabinowitz, Peter J. Before Reading: Narrative Conventions and the Politics of Interpretation. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1987.

Ratatoille. Dir. Brad Bird. Patton Oswalt, Lou Romano and Peter Sohn. Walt Disney Pictures and PIXAR, 2007.

Rickey, Garret. Portal commentary, Stage 10. Portal. Valve Corporation. 2007.

Sinclair, Brendan. “Q&A: Diving deeper into Bioshock's story.” GameSpot UK. September 20, 2007. Accessed November 6, 2008.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. Dir. David Hand. Adriana Caselotti, Lucille La Verne, and Pinto Colvig. Walt Disney, 1937.

Taylor, Laurie N. “Platform Dependent: Console and Computer Cultures.” The Player's Realm: Studies on the Culture of Video Games and Gaming. Williams, Patrick J. and Jonas Heide Smith. Jefferson, North Carolina and London: McFarland & Company, Inc, 2007. 223 – 238.

The Emperor's New Groove. Dir. Mark Dindal. David Spade, John Goodman, and Eartha Kitt. Walt Disney Pictures, 2000.

Todorov, Tzvetan. “Reading as Construction.” In Hoffman.

Totilo, Stephen. “Playa Rater: The 10 Most Influential Video Gamers Of All Time.” MTV News. June 21, 2006.

Toy Story. Dir. John Lasseter. Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, and Don Rickles. Walt Disney Pictures and PIXAR, 1995.

Watt, Ian. The Rise of the Novel. London, Chatto & Windus: 1967.

Williams, Patrick J. (ed.) and Jonas Heide Smith (ed.). The Player's Realm: Studies on the Culture of Video Games and Gaming. Jefferson, North Carolina and London: McFarland & Company, Inc, 2007.

Yahtzee, aka Ben Croshaw. “Bioshock.” Zero Punctuation Reviews. The Escapist Magazine. September 5, 2007. Video review.

Yahtzee, aka Ben Croshaw. “Console Rundown.” Zero Punctuation Reviews. The Escapist Magazine. August 29, 2007. Video review.

Yahtzee, aka Ben Croshaw. “Fable: The Lost Chapters: in retrospect.” A FullyRambloMatic Review. July 29, 2007. Video review.

Yahtzee, aka Ben Croshaw. “Little Big Planet.” Zero Punctuation Reviews. The Escapist Magazine. February 4, 2009. Video Review.

Yahtzee, aka Ben Croshaw. “Super Mario Galaxy” Zero Punctuation Reviews. The Escapist Magazine. Jan 2, 2008. Video review.

Yahtzee, aka Ben Croshaw. “The World Ends With You.” Zero Punctuation Reviews. The Escapist Magazine. May 28, 2008. Video Review.

Yahtzee, aka Ben Croshaw. “Tomb Raider Anniversary.” Zero Punctuation Reviews. The Escapist Magazine. September 12, 2007. Video Review.

(The pending sources for the paper include 2-3 more books on narrative theory and 4 books on game studies.)

What do you cover in your paper?
Below is the table of contents for my paper, along with a brief summary of what is included in each chapter.

Introduction
In which I compare the rise of video games to the rise of the novel - both were treated either skeptically as escapes from reality, little more than pop culture fluff, or as potentially dangerous - causing the disconnect of their audiences from reality. I also use the introduction to outline the content of the rest of the paper.

Chapter 1:
Narratology vs. Ludology
In which I address the narratology/ludology argument in the field of game studies, and use this argument to present the framework through which I will analyze narrative in video games - as a relationship between a story and its medium.

Chapter 2:
Anatomy of a Game
In which I outline the basic narrative and structural anatomy of a game, presenting the most common way a game is segmented, and the narrative/gameplay purpose of each segment.

Chapter 3:
Choice and Non-Linearity
In which I discuss the first of two narrative tools unique to video games - non-linear storylines. This chapter details the ways in which games make use of player choice to dynamically adapt the storyline of a game to the individual player.

Chapter 4:
Empathy and Immersion
In which I discuss the second of the two narrative tools - player/character empathy. This tool allows video games to draw in their audiences in a way that more traditional media cannot.

Chapter 5:
Storytelling Techniques and Traditional Narrative Tools
In which I outline certain elements of video game narrative that have interesting parallels with elements of more traditional narrative. Topics in this chapter include point of view, genre, and breaking the fourth wall.

Chapter 6:
Non-Narrative Elements
In which I briefly outline various elements of video games that are not necessarily directly associated with narrative, but which may greatly affect the gameplay experience.

Conclusion
A brief concluding statement regarding the content of the paper.

Glossary
A glossary of narrative and game-related terms, both those used in the paper, and other terms that might be useful for a discussion of game narrative.

Appendix
An appendix of game reviews - a bibliographic record, brief summary, and highlighting of interesting elements of many of the games which are referenced in the paper.

Bibliography
Reproduced above.

The total work currently comes to 95 single-spaced pages, but it is only the rough draft.

What about this game you're designing?
The game I am designing will, unfortunately, be forced to remain a briefly-sketched outline. My original intent was to have a full design ready for implementation as part of my work, but time constraints have forced me to cut this segment of the project. However, I will be pursuing a completion of the design after the project has come to an end, so that I might have a full game design to add to my portfolio. I am quite enamored with the concept - it stars a small group of rodents fighting for their independence on the Hamilton campus. Through this work, I hope to use the power of player/character empathy to show how radically different the same story can be when told from multiple points of view.

I hope this helps to illuminate both the direction of my work and the purpose of my blog. If anyone reading this feels that they have something valuable to contribute, please don't hesitate to comment!

Personal Pronouns in Discussing Games

2009-02-16T14:39:00.000-08:00

I originally wanted to talk about this in my paper, but finally decided that it was too difficult a point to support, based as it is mostly on anecdotal evidence. Still, I find it to be largely true, and I think it's worthwhile to mention regarding games, because it helps to shed light on how players relate to in-game characters, and the gaming experience in general. The topic in question is the way players talk about games - specifically, what pronouns they use.

Depending on the person of the pronoun a player chooses, she might be talking about a variety of different perspectives on a gaming experience. The first-person "I" denotes something that the player in particular did at a given point. Third-person "he" or "she" usually refers to an action taken by the character being played. The second-person "you" refers to an action that any player may or must take in a given situation. (This last is often used on shows like G4's "Cheat," to describe how a game can be played - "Pick up the gun and get onto the platform before you press the button to go up," etc.) Think of these pronouns as three entirely different (although perhaps not entirely separate) levels of gaming:

Level 1: He/She/It
The game's intrinsic story, as presented by the game designer. This level includes the immutable actions performed by the player - static cutscenes, character dialogue, and so on. This is largely the game's "context," or the self-contained world of the game itself.

Level 2: You
The game as a playable (not played) experience - all the decisions and dynamic elements that exist in the game in potentia, elements that may or may not be expressed depending on player choice. A sort of theoretical game experience that could apply to any gamer that might play the game.

Level 3: I
The actual played experience, as opposed to the level 2 playable experience. What actually happened when the player played the game. The decisions she made, the weapons she chose, the direction she decided to go in. The dialogue path she enacted, or the character skill tree she selected. This level corresponds to a single instance of game play, an actual performed example of the level 2 theoretical layer.

While the different levels that can be designated by pronoun use is interesting, what really fascinates me is the way players use these pronouns in conversation when they are discussing games. Players routinely switch back and forth from one to the other, bounding across the layers of designation, sometimes using multiple persons in the same sentence. The experience of playing the game is such a complex one that it cannot merely be related on one of the three levels - the player holds all three in her head at once, and a memorable moment can occur on any of the three planes. This can lead to some confusion of speech, as in the following (not directly quoted, but very typical of the sort of story that players might relate) description of the beginning level of Kingdom Hearts (for those unfamiliar with the game, "Sora" is the name of the player's character):

"So you run across the beach towards the island where Sora and his friends play, only to notice that Sora's friend Riku, who he was fighting earlier, is standing there, apparently surrounded by darkness. So Sora sort of skids to a halt and they have this conversation where Riku's being all weird, and then Riku opens this vortex, and you almost get sucked in, but then you wake up with this weapon, and hear these voices talking about a keyblade. So then I remember that weird cave that I explored on the island earlier, and head back to it, but when I get there it's turned into this huge white door, like the one Sora saw in his dream. And I'm like, 'oh shit,' because that door was really big and important when you run into it before."

I first took note of this phenomenon when it was pointed out to me that I myself was doing it. I had just finished playing Kingdom Hearts 2, and was rather enamored with the game. I was relating my experience to a non-gamer friend with enthusiasm and wild gestures when she smiled at me and gently reminded me, "You know that you're not the main character, right?"

I realized that I had been talking in the first person about unchangeable game events, as though I myself were in control of them. ("And so I run down the mountain, trying to catch him, because I'm pretty sure it's Riku...") It must have seemed silly to my friend that I was saying "I" when I was in fact talking about a young spikey-haired boy with mystical powers. But my connection to the game was so strong that I did feel as though I were in control of these actions, even the immutable cut scenes.

Even though Sora is characterized in a way that is completely different from myself as a player, I still felt a strong enough connection to him, a deep enough immersion in the story, that I experienced it from his point of view. His confusion was my confusion, his actions were my actions. It probably helped that I personally felt very connected to and interested in this story, just because it's the sort of genre I happen to enjoy - but other games accomplish this effect with more widely-applicable immersive tools, such as silent and/or generic (implicitly rather than explicitly characterized) protagonists, or dynamic storylines that actually change depending on player action.

To me, this sort of pronoun confusion indicates that we don't really know who we are when we play games. If we're immersed in the story, the character might be "me," otherwise, a character we feel distant from might be "him." If we're trying to describe to a friend how to play a game, we might put that friend in the position of main character, and the character might be "you." And strangely enough, all three of these persons can apply to the very same gaming experience, in the same telling, interwoven with one another. It truly speaks to the power of gaming as an immersive experience, that it can confuse our very concept of who we are.

Readings in Narrative Theory: Story and Discourse

2009-02-13T13:20:00.000-08:00

As promised earlier, I'd like to take a moment to explain my position in the narratology vs. ludology argument, a debate which has raged to the point where even the game studies critics involved seem to be growing tired of it. If you're unfamiliar with the debate, allow me to quickly summarize: it boils down to the question, "Should games be studied as narrative texts or as games (challenges, simulations, etc.)?" My answer to this question, and thus my position in the argument, is, "How can you possibly do one without the other?"

My viewpoint boils down to the distinction of video games as, and I cannot stress this enough, a medium for narrative. I mean this in the same way that books or films are also mediums. While it is entirely possible to study the medium for itself - the tools it has to offer, the way in which it may accomplish certain effects of tone or voice, etc. - a true, and truly complete, study of the medium must include individual examples of that medium, and these examples will always include the narrative - for how can you describe what takes place in a narrative game without at least outlining the narrative?

The reverse is similar; although you can technically relate just the contents of a "story," it is nearly impossible to truly study a narrative without studying the medium in which it is present. You may talk about the "what" of a story, but the "how" will be mired in stylistic details unique to the medium. When the medium is video games, this includes all elements of gaming - difficulty level, graphics, gameplay, physics, cutscene types - everything. Therefore, in order for games to be studied as narrative texts, they must also be studied as games. The two are inseperable aspects of the same artifact.

This distinction between the story and the medium in which it is told is recognized in literary narrative theory as "story" and "discourse." Thus, the following book from my reading list:

Chatman, Seymour. Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1978.

Chatman's book turns specifically on the differences between story and discourse. It outlines which elements of a work of literature belong to which category, and how both influence and craft the work. For my purposes, I was mostly concerned with supporting the idea of differentiating between the story and medium for video games, and therefore with how Chatman portrays the differences between his "story" and "discourse." Here are some of the quotes I found to be relevant:

"Following such French structuralists as Roland Barthes, Tzvetan Todorov, and Gerard Genette, I posit a what and a way. The what of narrative I call its "story"; the way I all its "discourse." (9)

"Taking poetics as a rationalist discipline, we may ask, as does the linguist about language: What are the necessary components--and only those--of a narrative? Structuralist theory argues that each narrative has two parts: a story (historie), the content or chain of events (actions, happenings), plus what may be called the existents (characters, items of setting); and a discourse (discours), that is, the expression, the means by which the content is communicated. In simple terms, the story is the what in a narrative that is depicted, discourse the how." (19)

"What in narrative is the province of expression? Precisely the narrative discourse. Story is the content of the narrative expression, while discourse is the form of that expression. We must distinguish between the discourse and its material manifestation--in words, drawings, or whatever. The latter is clearly the substance of narrative expression, even where the manifestation is independently a semiotic code." (23-24)

"So far we have considered gaps common to all narratives regardless of medium. But there is also a class of indeterminacies--phenomenologists call them Unbestimmtheiten--that arise from the peculiar nature of the medium. The medium may specialize in certain narrative effects and not others. For instance, the cinema can easily--and does routinely--present characters without expressing the contents of their minds. it is usually necessary to infer their thinking from what they overtly say and do. Verbal narrative, on the other hand, finds such a restriction difficult--even Ernest Hemmingway, at such pains to avoid directly stating his characters' thoughts and perceptions, sometimes "slips." Conversely, verbal narrative may elect not to present some visual aspect, say, a character's clothes. It remains totally unbestimmt about them, or describes them in a general way: "He was dressed in street clothes." The cinema, however, cannot avoid a rather precise representation of visual detail. It cannot "say," simply, "A man came into the room." He must be dressed in a certain way. In other words clothing, unbestimmt in verbal narrative, must be bestimmt in a film." (30)

(Chatman also has several points to make on the subject of reader construction of narrative, but I feel that these points are made more clearly and at more length by Rabinowitz, so I will not include the relevant quotes from Chatman here.)

So what does this duality between story and medium mean for video games? Well, quite a lot actually. As a unique medium, video games become a rich ground for academic analysis. The medium of games has storytelling tools we've only barely begun to think about - and the implications of which can be staggering. (Player/character empathy, in particular, is quite the can of worms, not to mention dynamic storylines.) Being around at the current state of Game Studies is very much what I imagine being around for the beginning of film to have been like. The potential for the great films of the future can be seen even in the most rudimentary early examples of the medium.

And I do think that this duality also implies that such great works are possible in the medium of video games as well. By coming to understand these tools and harnessing them, game designers can create games of true artistic and academic merit. Already we are beginning to see glimpses of genius in the way these tools are used - the manipulation of player emotion in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, or the complex interlayering of distinct and yet unified characters in Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem, or the subtle horror and paranoia of the Silent Hill games. There is more to games than entertainment - entertainment is merely the first and most logical expression of a new medium. But, as it has with other mediums, I am confident that art will soon follow.

Readings in Narrative Theory: Before Reading

2009-02-13T12:22:00.001-08:00

Allow me to preface this by saying that not only is the author of this text a professor of my college, he is actually on the board of examiners that will eventually evaluate my project to determine whether or not I graduate. Not that I'll be overly generous to him or make a point of being nicer than I otherwise would in my analysis. Just fair warning that if, for some reason, you bear a mighty grudge against Rabinowitz (although why you would I have no idea - he seems like a very nice man) - there is a reasonable chance he may read this blog. Bear your audience in mind when leaving comments.

Rabinowitz, Peter J. Before Reading: Narrative Conventions and the Politics of Interpretation. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1987.

One of the things that interests me in my readings on narrative theory is the idea of reading as construction - specifically as the cooperative construction between reader and author. I use this idea as a counter-argument to a particular thread of ludological extremism that tends to go along the lines of "successful narrative is completely under the control of the author, while a successful game should be as open-ended and player-decision-oriented as possible. Thus, the two mediums have opposing goals and are not compatible." (For an actual example of this argument (well-constructed, for all that I violently disagree with its premises), see this article by Greg Costikyan: http://www.costik.com/gamnstry.html.) (For the record, I'm not against ludology in general - I'm probably a ludologist myself, all things considered. (I will have to write about my exact position in the debate at a later point.) I just dislike the extremist end of the school of thought that declares that video games can't tell stories.)

I happen to disagree with both the assumptions of this argument. The second assumption, that a more successful game must inherently be more open-ended (less linear), is easy enough to undermine with examples of successful linear games like Portal or Call of Duty 4. Games, I might add, that are successful not only from an entertainment/sales point of view, but from an academic/artistic one as well. (I use them both as examples in my paper to support various points about effective use of the medium.)

The first assumption of this argument, that literary narrative must be entirely under the control of the author to be successful, is also faulty. This point is best supported through the analysis of reading as a cooperative construction - a much-explored topic of literary narrative theory. This is where Rabinowitz's book comes in.

Before Reading is about the aspects of reading that go into a narrative construction before the reader even opens the book. These are things like narrative conventions that the reader might expect when picking up a book from a particular genre, assumptions - ethical, logical, emotional - that the reader brings to the construction, or even the way we are taught to read. Thus, before we begin the first sentence, we as readers have already assembled a framework with which to interpret the text. Moreover, this framework will be different for every reader, thus flying in the face of the argument that "literary narrative is strictly controlled by the author."

Here are some relevant quotes from Rabinowitz's work:

"There can be no reading without a reader--but the term reader is slippery, not only because all individual readers read differently, but also because for almost all of the them, there are several different ways of appropriating a text. This fact has been recognized, at least implicitly, by the large number of critics whose models of reading are multitiered. Usually, a two-leveled opposition is posited, although different critics use different terms. For Hirsch, it is "significance" and "meaning." For Wayne Booth, it is "understanding" and "overstanding." For Tzvetan Todorov, there are three terms: "interpretation," "description," and "reading." Many other critics, despite the recent arguments of Fish, remain wedded, in one form or another, to the distinction between literal meaning and interpretation." (20)

"[...] despite the theoretically infinite number of potential authorial audiences, it does not follow that authors have total control over the act of writing, any more than that readers have total control over the act of interpretation. In a trivial sense, of course, they do: authors can put down whatever marks they wish on the page; readers can construe them however they wish. But once authors and readers accept the communal nature of writing and reading, they give up some of that freedom. Specifically, once he or she has made certain initial decisions, any writer who wishes to communicate--even if he or she wishes to communicate ambiguity--has limited the range of subsequent choices." (23-24)

"A reader in the genre [of classical British detective stories] will know fairly quickly what to fasten on to. Of particular importance will be such details as who has seen the victim after the train has left the Gare de Lyon. Such a reader, from his or her experience with other similar novels, will also know that in detective stories, "there must be no love interest." He or she will therefore rightfully dismiss as window dressing the romantic story of the pure and simple Katherine Grey, who has just inherited a fortune from the crotchety old woman to whom she was a companion." (40)

This final quotation is of interest to me for an entirely different reason - the concept of "genre." I've found it interesting that, in gaming, "genre" rarely refers to the narrative content of the story, but instead to the gameplay method. Instead of "mysteries" and "romances" we have "shooters" and "RPGs." (Role-Playing Games) And yet, some of the same reader strategies indicated by Rabinowitz above apply to these game categories as well. A player will come into an RPG with a certain set of expectations about what the genre will provide. This can even include (although does not always) certain narrative conventions. An RPG player may expect, instead of a single main character, that she will control a party of main characters, each with their own unique set of skills. She will expect an inventory screen through which to access the items she's collected. An FPS (First-Person Shooter) player might expect the "jump" key to be located by default on the space bar, "wasd" to be the movement keys, and primary fire to be controlled by the left mouse button. The same way that a reader picks up an example of the mystery genre with an in-place mental framework about how to read the narrative, players of a particular gaming genre come into the game with an idea of how to play it.

Readings in Narrative Theory: Narrative as Rhetoric

2009-02-13T11:03:00.000-08:00

At the moment, I am doing some intensive reading in narrative theory and game studies. I'd like to present some summaries of my readings here, as well as quotes of interest I have found, and how the reading topics relate to my work. In addition to helping me organize my own thoughts, I hope the summaries might be helpful to others looking for readings on the same or similar subjects. Work summaries will be preceded in posts by their bibliographic information.

Phelan, James. Narrative as Rhetoric: Technique, Audiences, Ethics, Ideology. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1996.

Of the chapters from Phelan's book I read, only one ended up frantically pasted with post-it notes; I found the chapter on second-person narrative to be particularly interesting and very relevant. One of the topics of my paper is the feeling of empathy that the medium can generate by combining the personas of the player (as audience, narratee, etc.) with the persona of the main character (as protagonist, narrator) - having the decisions and actions of the former control the latter, allowing the player to in effect mentally substitute himself for the character in the world. (What Gee apparently calls "projected identity.") Perhaps unsurprisingly, the best literary parallel I've come across so far has been second-person narration. A quote (this and all following quotes are from chapter 7 of Phelan's book, entitled "Narratee, Narrative Audience, and Second-Person Narration: How I--And You?-- Read Lorrie Moore's "How""):

"When the second-person address to a narratee-protagonist both overlaps with and differentiates itself from an address to actual readers, those readers will simultaneously occupy the position of addressee and observer. Furthermore, the fuller the characterization of the you, the more aware actual readers will be of their differences from that you, and thus the more fully they will move into the observer role--and the less likely that this role will overlap with the addressee position. In other words, the greater the characterization of the you, the more like a standard protagonist the you becomes, and, consequently, the more actual readers can employ their standard strategies for reading narrative. However, as recent commentators on the second-person narration have consistently observed, most writers who employ this technique take advantage of the opportunity to move readers between the positions of observer and addressee, and, indeed, to blur the boundaries between these positions." (137)

When Phelan uses "observer" in this passage, he means the audience as reader, the person observing and mentally cataloguing/interpreting the text. The "implied reader," to use the literary lingo. In gaming, this would be the audience as player. The gamer with the control pad, controlling the character's actions from outside the game's context.

The "addressee" on the other hand, is the "you" of the second-person narration, the addressed individual that the narrative describes. Phelan quotes from a work by Lorrie Moore ("How") as his example of second-person narration:

"Begin by meeting him in a class, a bar, at a rummage sale. Maybe he teaches sixth grade. Manages a hardware store. Foreman at a carton factory. He will be a good dancer. He will have perfectly cut hair. He will laugh at your jokes."

The addressee here is the "you" who is telling jokes. The "you" who meets "him" at a bar, or a rummage sale. The "you" is a character in the story, and has specific characterization (in particular, in this passage, she is female and dating). The gaming parallel here is the PC - the character that the player controls. Though characterized (we know exactly what Sora from Kingdom Hearts looks like, who his friends are, how he talks, etc.), the PC is still conflated with the player by allowing the player to control his actions, in the same way that the observer and addressee are connected by the pronoun "you."

Phelan's point about characterization steering the audience towards the observer role rather than the addressee role is particularly relevant to my work - in my chapter on player/character empathy, I posit that "implicit characterization" - or characterization that takes place mostly in the mind of the player, rather than in cues inherent in the game - lends itself more readily to a high level of immersion and empathy. This is as opposed to "explicit characterization," which provides the characterization for us within the game, and thus limits the degree to which we as a players can substitute ourselves into that character's role. If the player is thought of as the implicit "you," then he may assume that all characterization elements that apply to him also apply to the main character, unless told specifically otherwise. For instance, if I do not know the gender of a main character, I might choose to believe that she is female, to better empathize and put myself in her position. However, if I am told (as I often am) that the main character is male, this is one step of distance between who I am and who the character is.

For this reason (empathic generality), many games have silent protagonists (the "Silent Protagonist Phenomenon," as I like to call it) - the PCs have no voice, and no dialogue. This very important trait - how the character responds to the world around him, is left up to the player's discretion and imagination. A sarcastic player may choose to imagine sarcastic responses to questions posed to his character, while a sympathetic player may imagine sympathetic responses. We, as players, are allowed characterization that suits our preferences and personality, allowing us to draw as close to the character as possible.

Other quotes:

"Because Moore begins by narrating an event in which the actual reader is not directly involoved--girl meets boy-- the observer role is initially more prominent. But in the second paragraph, where the gender of the you is not specified and the general trajectory of the you's experience is widely recognizable, the actual reader is likely to feel the pull of the adressee role." (137-138)

"As Rabinowitz says, Prince's narratee remains "out there," distinct from the actual reader; a narrative audience, by contrast, occupies some part of the actual reader's consciousness and, given the default position, the actual reader also gives traits to the narrative audience." (143)

"Is it adequate to say, as a structuralist narratology would, that the unnamed you addressed by the narrator is the narratee and the protagonist, that the narrative's implied reader is different from this narratee, someone who infers from the narrator's address a larger cultural story about female-male relationships? Although this account gets at a good part of the communicative structure of the text, it is not fully adequate. It leaves out the way that the second-person address exerts pressure on the actal reader--even the male reader, as in the second paragraph--"to take on the role" of the narratee-protagonist as "you" experience(s) the ups and downs (especially the downs) of the relationship. In other words, continuing to assume that the narratee is a distinct character who is "out there" will mean not just that we prefer the structuralist to the rhetorical framework; it also will mean that the structuralist analysis will neglect a significant aspect of how the text attempts to communicate." (143-144)

"For the mimetic illusion and the emotional force of a play to work, we must enter the observer position of the "narrative" ("dramatic"?) audience and believe in the reality of, say, Othello, Iago, and Desdemona. Indeed, the oft-discussed instances of people leaping upon the stage to stop the action are, in these terms, examples of what happens when we enter so deeply into the narrative audience position that we fail to maintain our simultaneous participation in the authorial audience." (145)

"In narrative, where we always have narrative audiences and narratees, one of the variables in narrative discourse will be how much the narratee and the narrative audience overlap. As I suggested earlier, what second-person narration shows is that the more fully the narrative is characterized, the greater the distance between narratee and narrative audience; similarly, the less the narratee is characterized, the greater the coincidence between the two." (146)

"As I noted above, "How" identifies the narratee as female, but the second-person address blurs the separation of narratee and narrative audience frequently enough for the observer of either sex to be pulled into the narrative's subject position." (148)

"While the clear distinction between the narratee and the narrative audience allows us to infer so much about the narratee's behavior and situation, the "you" address also invites us to project ourselves--as narrative audience, authorial audience, and actual readers--into the narratee's subject position. Consequently, the inferences we make as we occupy the narrative audience position lead us to a complicated vision that mingles narratee and self in the narratee's position. We both occupy the position and know what the position is like in a way that the narratee herself does not. In this way, we feel addressed by the narrator but not fully coincident with the narratee." (151)

As you can see, Phelan's conclusions about second-person address have direct parallels with gaming. Because the player is required to participate in the narrative, she is always addressed as an implicit "you" by the game, by sheer virtue of the fact that her actions/decisions control the main character. The character is her window into the world, her remote-controlled puppet, and addresses to that character by the game automatically become addresses to the player as well, in the same way that the player's actions become the character's actions.

Allow me to introduce myself

2009-02-12T16:26:00.001-08:00

Welcome to gamEstrogen, a blog about narrative and video games, as experienced from the perspective of a girl gamer/academic. Here's what I'm all about:

Who?
Currently I am a senior at Hamilton College, working on a "senior fellowship" project about narrative in video games. My background at the college has consisted of a double-major in computer science and creative writing. My personal background consists of a great deal of reading, writing, and gaming.

What?
This blog is intended as a way for me to share my current thoughts and research, in the hopes of reaching out to the academic game studies community (as well as the pop culture gaming community) for their thoughts, insights, and experiences, in the name of furthering the study and reputation of video games.

Why?
Because games deserve to be recognized for their academic and artistic merit - though the medium is in its infancy, there is much that can be accomplished with the unique tools it has to offer. Video games do not deserve their reputation as "mindless" diversion - in fact they're very interesting and worthwhile diversions, as books and films are. They just need a few good champions to demonstrate that to the rest of the world.

How?
How do you pronounce the name of my blog? Well, there are a number of ways. Personally, I prefer game-strogen, although I would also accept game-estrogen. It should definitely not be gam-strogen, however, nor gam-estrogen. That would just be silly.