Interactive Illuminatus

Exploring ludodissonance

2010-12-28T21:55:00.000-08:00

Readers of my previous post on ludonarrative dissonance may have noted that formal dissonance and moral/ethical dissonance didn't sound all that bad. Defying genre expectations? Putting two ethical systems into conflict? It sounds more like art than bad game design, right?

To be quite clear, ludodissonance can be quite bad--bad meaning that it creates effects contrary to the desires of the game designer. If the goal of the game designer is to make a serious game, but the mechanics of the game make the characters look ridiculous, the game designer has unequivocally failed.

However, "bad design" is not all ludodissonance has to offer. Dissonance is a very useful tool in the creation of art, so I want to survey examples of dissonance outside games, within games, and then speculate on ways to think about ludodissonance going forward.

Examples of dissonance outside games

While dissonance was played with on a mostly narrative level going back to the earliest days of film (thank you, theater), the New Hollywood revolution brought the idea front and center in cinema. The two basic components of a film is the picture and the sound, and this is where most of the interesting dissonance will happen in film. From disturbing score choices such as the Wagner being played over the images of Vietnamese being gunned down in Apocalypse Now to the absence of sound during Dave's reentry into the spaceship in 2001, filmmakers found that a mismatch between the sound and picture can result in powerful expression.

Of course narrative dissonance is important to film, as well, with many films banking on surprising audiences with unexpected innovations in form. Psycho is maybe the most famous for this: killing off its main character halfway through the movie. Filmmakers are constantly thinking up new ways to surprise and titillate fans of a genre without upsetting them too much. Of course, this often leads to camp, which could be described as genre expectations coming into conflict with logical expectations, and genre winning.

In finer art, The Ecstasy of St. Theresa offers a well-known dissonance between a sense of morality and the expression of divine joy. As many people are touched by Theresa's ecstasy from the word of God as are offended by the orgasmic overtones of the piece. Even the poppiest music features clear harmonic dissonance, though you have to slow it down 800% to hear it.

Examples of effective dissonance in games

For the most part, instances of effective use of dissonance that occurs in most games appears to be unintentional.

We'll have time for more examples in the future, but for the purposes of this post I'll concentrate on some obvious dissonances in war shooters like Modern Warfare and Bad Company have that can be seen not only as neutral to the gameplay experience, but actually beneficial in helping them create a warlike atmosphere. The inhuman speed at which the characters move and the lack of a command structure are among many oddities jarring to one unfamiliar with the conventions of the genre, but it could be argued that these dissonances between the game rules and the real world actually serve to put the game at a level of abstraction at which the games do accurately portray not foot soldiers, but the colonels and generals commanding them. The sense of compressed time and hostility toward one's own teammates creates a dynamic that appears to fit the war experience of upper brass, and fits it chillingly well.

Of course there are also examples of dissonance that are purposeful and not nearly as interesting. See for example the political game September 12th, in which the player is tasked with killing terrorists in a Middle Eastern city and winds up making more terrorists in the process. A lighter example--and more artful to boot--is the game Bayonetta, which gracefully replaces the male oozing with teenage fantasy with a female oozing with teenage fantasy, with nearly every adolescent sexual fetish hinted at if not put stage center. Not only does Bayonetta poke fun at the immaturity of its fan base, it also seems to raise an eyebrow at those gamers who have been merrily playing games that feature male protagonists arguably as fetish-laden.

The future of dissonance

What lessons can we learn from these few examples above?

First, dissonance adds to a level of fun--the spectacle of something new. Games that fail to upset expectations also fail to excite.

Beyond that, however, dissonance within an artwork is capable of highlighting dissonance in the real world. Just as St. Theresa's Ecstasy confronts its viewers with disagreements arising out of church dogma and September 12th points out the inefficacy of the current War on Terror, dissonance in games allows players to see how some rule systems just don't make sense. This is a powerful tool not only for religious or political debate, but also for the expression of genuine emotion and concern.

Ultimately, however, for true art to be created, dissonance must come together as harmony. Two contradictory ideas must be united as a larger idea, a more beautiful idea. This is the goal of art: not to point at the ugly, but to paint a beautiful picture of it.

So play games with dissonance in mind

Where is dissonance taking place? Is it enjoyable? How can it be replicated in future games? How should it be replicated in future games? Asking questions like these cannot fail to bring about the sort of "Why wasn't this done before?" innovations we all love.

But the main point is do not tolerate dissonance. It has been the case for too long now that gamers and even designers just grit their teeth and ignore obvious inconsistencies within games. This is a terrible mistake because, a, no dissonance is inherent in any game, it must be created by the designer, and, b, by ignoring what you think is "merely dissonance," you may be missing the entire point of the game--especially if you're playing a Japanese game that has guns in it.

Schell School

2010-12-17T12:56:00.000-08:00

To me, the most important part of the test is the final task: turning it in to the provost. You have to look confident, almost dismissive, but not too much or they'll think you're fronting. I don't know if they actually have a hidden score sheet somewhere grading my "attitude," but it's not really about the points at that moment. It's a sense of propriety--an affirmation of what you are and what you stand for. It's a test of who you are as a person: too arrogant and you're a bully; too timid and you're a coward, unfit for your position.

And here I am talking like it has anything to do with me or the provost, instead of the 14-year-old double-checking her work seven desks away from the desk I just coolly evacuated. With my peripheral vision I can see her looking at me with her peripheral vision--looking for any tell, any indication that she needs to triple-check her work. I try to give her every reason to believe she should. I know how many mistakes I've made by correcting others--I'm trying to take luck out of the equation.

But either she's playing the same game or she has a great shot at winning. She looks just as cool as me; her body language is almost enough to convince me she's only concentrating on the exam papers in front of her--in a couple years, she'll be perfect at it.

Ah yes, it usually is at this point--about two-thirds of the way to the provost's desk at the front of the class room, when he's just beginning to raise his eyes toward me as if he didn't hear me coming the whole way down from my desk--it's at this point I start to really scrutinize my decision to take the exam. Maybe it's because I know I like the challenge too much, or maybe it's because I've never lost--but there's always a bolt of the darkest doubt that runs through me right before I make eye contact with my boss; right before he gives me that reassuring grin of his, as if to say, "Hey, it'll happen one day, and it'll be okay if today's the day."

I've talked with the other teachers about game strategy, and while I'm mildly interested in some of the things they do, some of it just feels downright unsportsmanlike to me. They've got the numbers crunched: converting probability scores into grade values and letting the math make the decision for them. I call one of my buddies Belichick because I think the only reason he teaches is to humiliate students--he's got the game worked out to a science and he is merciless. Probably my second-most important test is suppressing the terrible smile when I'm looking at a student walk out of the exam room with tears in his eyes and Belichick walking stone-faced behind him: another notch in the belt, the bastard.

I don't play the game like that: I like to think I'm more honest. Take the case at hand: she wanted an A and I was set on giving her a low-B. Like a solid low-B. If she wanted a high-B, I probably would have given it to her, but she wouldn't back down from A. Well, them's fighting words in my corner of academia, and I hadn't taken an exam all year, anyway. (See, now in retrospect I begin to wonder if she knew I was rarin' for a fight--now that the provost is looking dead at me, about two lightyears away from the moment I could have just given her an A and been done with it.)

And even though I should have expected it, I get off-stride just a little bit--just enough for me to imagine her raising an eyebrow behind me. Well, let her get cocky, I say. I'm teaching Grade 21, so I've got a long way to go before I'm a student again. Going back to Grade 20 wouldn't be so bad, especially coming in with a B in Grade 21. A low-B. Dammit!

Just like the best of rituals, from the darkest place I travel into a clearing. I recalled all the studying I did before the test, all the mistakes I'd been making throughout the year that I corrected, the new knowledge I don't think I ever learned before. Yeah, I know that's the whole point to why we play the game, but now--in this moment--all I worry about was whether or not I played the game well.

My secret is that I don't play the game at all. Whether the student wants a low C or a high A, I do the best I can on every test, so there's no question which is mine. A lot of other teachers bite their nails because they're playing the points, but I'm resting easy. I'm confident in my work, because I respected my opponent. I trained hard and I used every trick I have.

I guess all this to say, if the provost comes back and tells us hers was the A exam, I'll take my B exam and go happily home, knowing that I'm a Grade 20 Language Arts teacher who has a low-B in Grade 21, and at the end of the day, that's not so bad. I'll also be the first one to know that we're getting a new Grade 21 teacher next term, and who she is.

And, when I'm ready, I'll get a rematch.

coupla links

2010-12-14T12:06:00.000-08:00

This is why we make games.

And this is why we read the comments section.

Going deeper into dissonance

2010-11-20T17:36:00.000-08:00

Way back in 2007, Clint Hocking proposed the term ludonarrative dissonance to describe the disparities that often occur between the "story" elements of a video game and the rules that govern its gameplay. The example he used to put this idea forward was Bioshock, but it has since been applied to many games to understand where they fell short.

Though it maintains its importance in the world of video game theory, there is a growing backlash to the idea, with commentators' concerns ranging from "useful, but pretentious" to "useless, and pretentious." Somewhere in the middle stands Brendan Keogh, who--in his "In Defence of the Cut-Scene"--distills the sentiments of those who are afraid the idea may distract gamers from enjoying otherwise great games due to dissonance created entirely by the player.

So far, most of what I have seen concentrates on using the idea of ludonarrative dissonance to highlight negative aspects of video games, and it's certainly a valuable tool to that end. The discussions have been fairly superficial--of the "Is it good or bad?" variety--and in my opinion fail to grapple with the real issues at the heart of the matter; to name a few: why is there ludonarrative dissonance in most games? what role has ludonarrative dissonance played in attracting or repulsing would-be fans of the art form? and, perhaps most importantly, how should we best use our understanding of ludonarrative dissonance to make better games?

At this juncture, I want to lay out a sort of tentative outline of future posts I'll be writing about ludonarrative dissonance and dissonance in art, generally. None of these are written yet, and I might not write about everything I'm going to list below, but I figure it would be a good starting point to what I see as a sprawling study of what will likely become a very broad subject, even though now it only seems like a niche in a clique. I encourage folks to write comments about their take on ludonarrative dissonance in general, as well as my prospectus here, and I would also like to invite anyone who has more than 300 words on the topic to email me so I can post it up as a separate post for readability's sake. Of course if you have written something germane on this topic elsewhere, be sure to post linkies for our perusal.

The first piece I plan on writing is the importance of viewing dissonance as something that is neither bad nor good, but something that can be used effectively or created through carelessness. In fact, great art thrives on creating dissonance, so Hocking has given us a head-start in identifying what areas of modern games are most vulnerable to exploit toward expressive ends. Note that I will not be making the argument found here, which I find to be unintelligible. Ludonarrative dissonance is never something to be merely tolerated--it should challenge, offend, make light of, and change lives.

But I also want to break down ludonarrative dissonance into particular sub-classes of dissonance to add even more vocabulary to our fledgling art.

The first I propose is paranarrative ludodissonance, which is in substance very similar to Hocking's definition of ludonarrative dissonance, but is narrow where Hocking's is broad (you're welcome, Clint). Specifically, I want to use this to refer to any dissonance that arises between the ostensible narrative of a game and the rules of the game itself. Like all that follow, I just want to mention this and plan on unpacking it later.

The second form of ludonarrative dissonance I propose is panoplistic ludodissonance, where I'm referring to the general setting and game art elements versus the rules of the game. As you may be suspecting, there will be a fair amount of overlap between a lot of these, and certainly games that have one form will likely have a lot of the others, but I do believe these things are separate concepts and can help us understand how to use dissonance more effectively. An example of panoplistic ludodissonance would be the ability to jump or otherwise cause a disruption in what should be a dramatic point in the story, played out in-game. Notice that neither of these things is wrong on their own--only when they are combined is dissonance created.

I've already come up with two sub-categories for my next dissonance, cognitive ludodissonance, which are: intracognitive ludodissonance and metacognitive dissonance. In general, cognitive ludodissonance is referring to dissonance that arise between the rules of the game and logical expectations, with intracognitive dissonance arising out of faulty logic contained within the rules and metacognitive dissonance created by applying logic outside the game.

My penultimate (for now) suggestion for a new ludonarrative dissonance category is formal ludodissonance, where genre expectations are upset; and lastly, ethical/moral ludodissonance, where the game rules are at odds with an ethical or moral system.

Violence, part 6: The spinning top

2010-09-02T21:33:00.000-07:00

Like the rest of the multitudes, I enjoyed Inception very much. Not only is it a intricately crafted work of cinema, it also creatively synthesized new findings in neurobiology, several strands of post-post-modern philosophy, and that familiar alien world known to all of us as dreams.

And it was much to my chagrin to see that top spinning at the end of the film. As soon as the credits began to roll, I knew what the conversation would be about on the way out of the theater, and sure enough, it was insipid debate over whether or not "It was all a dream." I don't want to get too bogged down in the foolishness of wondering whether the events depicted in Inception really happened or not, but I do want to use this as a shining example of people getting caught up in the wrong debate. And shame on Christopher Nolan for placating whatever studio boss who suggested that ending.

Getting back on topic, the spinning top here is the depiction of graphic violence in video games. The violence in our most powerful media is currently regulated by two industry-ordained forces: the MPAA and the ESRB. These entities concentrate solely on the amount of explicit violence portrayed in films and video games. They control how violent make-believe characters can be to other make-believe characters, with little regard to the overall violence visited upon the real-life audience.

The concern of the artist and the audience should not be the level of violence inflicted upon characters created for the purpose of being victims. That is absurd. The real concern should not be fictional violence, but actual violence. Art can be violent. It can offend. It can hurt. It can break, it can cultivate, and it can embolden--all the functions of all other expressions of violence.

Art should be inflicting violence upon you that makes you stronger, wiser, and more sympathetic to those around you. If art does not do this, it is bad; whether it's because it is too violent or not violent enough, it doesn't matter.

Meanwhile, artists are unable to control the reactions of others. We know this. Some people need x amount of graphic violence to experience growth, while for others x amount of graphic violence will cause an unhealthy reaction. In my opinion, this means that artists should always be striving to make violence more graphic, more explicit, and more visceral. The boundaries of art is limned by how graphic it can make a given form of violence.

I believe this is a natural process for all artistic media. Slapstick gives way to brilliant political humor, train robberies give way to mind-bending explorations of the human psyche. I don't see any need to be concerned about the bloody state of affairs in games right now--it will pass. The only danger is giving into the critics--to accept that video games must not get any more violent, that violence should be abhorred in all its forms, and that the public should only be exposed to the level of graphic violence their grandparents were exposed to.

We would see nothing without violence, hear nothing, feel nothing. Through the violence in art, we are allowed to experience the violence that allowed others to see things we didn't see, to feel things we never felt. To rob violence from art is to rob art from us. Concerned parents and legislators, please calm down. Game developers and fans, please prove me right.

Violence, part 5: Its role in art

2010-09-01T21:04:00.000-07:00

At least as far back as 1915, there has been concern over the graphic violence depicted in film, as evidenced by the "Plea for the art of the motion picture" that prefaces D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation. It reads, in part, "We do demand, as a right, the liberty to show the dark side of wrong, that we may illuminate the bright side of virtue--the same liberty that is conceded to the art of the written word..." D.W. Griffith, as video game enthusiasts would do around a hundred years later, was recognizing the double-standard his new medium was being held to. While the clearly violent works of Shakespeare and Holy Scriptures were held in high esteem, his works were in jeopardy of state censorship merely because they were new.

D.W. Griffith's "Plea" that precedes Birth of a Nation

The reasons for questions about the moral implications of experiencing works made in new artistic medium all boil down to the same thing--that while the violence may be depicting something already depicted by an earlier medium, the new medium is much more successful in its depiction. New artistic mediums are a double-edged sword in this regard. The reason for their rapid embrace by the public is exactly the same reason concerns over graphic content arise: they are simply more graphic. Graphic violence is considered a kind of pejorative in today's litigation-addled world, but artistically it's nothing but a compliment. To depict something more graphically than what came before is the entire goal of art.

The real problem with video games is not that the violence keeps getting more graphic--it's that game developers are only working with one type of violence. The mediums that came before it, meanwhile, are now adept at graphically depicting many kinds of violence. Even in violent films, the main source of conflict is not the physical violence that classifies it as "violent" in the popular imagination, but something less apparent that the movie attempts to bring out through tangential forms of violence.

This is how art works.

In the oft-referenced "violent video games" such as GTA or God of War, there are indeed multiple forms of violence being depicted, but typically only the most basic form--the harm one human being visits upon another human being--is actually part of the gameplay. The emotional violence, the intellectual debate--all the other forms of violence common in other forms of media--are usually restricted to the meta-game structures of a video game, such as the cutscenes or level art. Many gamers feel like the "story" is reserved for such things as the emotional violence related to the video game, not the gameplay itself.

So the goal of video games is not to find out how to make compelling works that do not involve violence, but to find ways to make ignored forms of violence more graphic in the gameplay itself. Perhaps this will eventually lead to games in which all of the violence could be classified as "hidden violence," which players may not recognize as violent, just as we do not recognize sound waves hitting our ears as violent. But the point is that we will not reach that day by decrying the use of violence to create compelling drama, but instead by embracing the power of violence in expression.

In the last part of the series, I want to explain how I think debate over depictions of violence in any art form is a distraction--the "spinning top" from end of Inception. Indeed, our discussion should be about violence and how graphic it should be, but not the violence that occurs to the characters in a work of fiction; rather, the violence that occurs to real people who make the art and the real people who interact with it.

Violence, part 4: Names for it

2010-09-01T07:51:00.000-07:00

The main reason I believe it's important to view everything from riddles to your sense of sight as acts of violence is that I want to make a case that violence is a necessary part of art and expression. But obviously, there's a difference between a conversation and someone being brutally murdered, and in this part of the series, I want to sketch out the beginnings of something like a taxonomy of violence.

One of the first distinctions to be made when talking about violence is the kind of reaction the violence generates. Some violent acts result in the growth and well-being of the victim of violence, such as a child being punished by a caring parent or in the example of retinas being able to use the bombardment of photons to better understand the world. Therefore, these acts of violence result in a Healthy Reaction.

An Unhealthy Reaction is one in which the victim does not benefit from the violence, and I've noticed two types of unhealthy reaction--overreaction and under-reaction. When a victim of violence under-reacts, the victim misses an opportunity for growth or betterment. Overreaction is the kind of reaction we typically associate with violence--when the violent act causes the victim to visit further violence upon himself or herself. The pain we feel is generated not by the wound itself, but by our brains. It is fully possible to experience severe bodily trauma unaccompanied by pain, though those with leprosy would tell you it's not as pleasant as it may sound at first.

Another important distinction we recognize is between the physical and what you could call mental or emotional, which would be comprised of ideas and emotions, among other things. Both physical violence and emotional violence can lead toward healthy and unhealthy reactions.

The last distinction I want to mention is between apparent violence and hidden violence. My example of the photons hitting our retinas is an example of hidden violence--violence that has apparent consequences, but is not necessarily perceived as violent. By apparent violence I'm sticking closely to the denotation, meaning something closer to obvious, not a chimera or something to not be believed. The violence under question in video games is apparent physical violence resulting in unhealthy overreactions to its victims.

Now that I've established a rough terminology in order to speak more deeply about violence, I hope to now move on to the point I was trying to make from the beginning of this series--that violence is necessary in the creation of art, and that one of the primary goals of any artistic medium is to find the best way to make violence more graphic.

Violence, part 3: Its usefulness

2010-08-30T20:51:00.000-07:00

Defined as two or more objects attempting to exist in the same space at the same time, it is fairly easy to see why violence is bound to occur. One of the laws of our physical universe is that two objects cannot exist in the same space at the same time. Therefore, even if two objects both came to the same space honestly, there will be conflict between them if they reach it at the same time.

Supernovas and volcanoes are among the many things found in nature that are undeniably violent, but most of nature appears to be in harmony with itself. While I agree that the universe is harmonious to a large extent, I believe that when you look hard at it, you find that the universe's harmony comes not from a lack of violence, but from spectacular reactions to violence. The example of photons hitting our retinas from the last installment demonstrates that even things existing for only a few million years can develop ways of using the violence pervasive throughout the universe in a way that is beneficial.

In fact, all of our senses rely on violence to detect the world around us. We only perceive things that either directly or indirectly visit violence upon our bodies. There are things in the physical universe that are unable to visit violence upon us--most strikingly dark matter, the substance that appears to compose the large majority of our universe. It is invisible to us because it passes through us and everything we perceive as if we were in a ghost world. Because it does no violence to us, our bodies were not able to evolve a detection system for it.

It likely didn't take long for humans and their massive brains to take a more proactive role in figuring out the uses of violence. While we all have the image of the caveman bashing in a neighbor's head with a club, our ancestors were also able to utilize violence to create some of the most important of human inventions, such as fire and the wheel. More toward our purposes, humanity also took advantage of violence that occurs outside the physical realm--in the universe of emotions and ideas. From threats of deliberate physical violence that make one obedient to brain-teasing riddles that make one more intelligent, humanity has existed with a multitude of violent expressions along a wide spectrum of degrees for literally as long as it can remember.

And as we are seeing in this world of violence that is growing ever more complex, we would be mistaken to shun all violence as necessarily "bad." Violence indeed is responsible for all of the hurtful things that happen to people, but it is also responsible for nearly all of the great things in the universe, as well. In the next installment, I want to set up a rough taxonomy of violence to make it easier to discuss not only its various roles in our everyday lives, but also where it fits into our most precious works of art.

Violence, part 2: What it is

2010-08-29T16:34:00.000-07:00

I want to make the case that no art can be successful without violence, but to do that I will have to address the obvious and countless counter-examples you already have floating around in your head. Like many things I've talked about on this blog, a lot of confusion can be mitigated if we take a hard look at how we define violence.

Most people's definitions of violence, I presume, would involve one person hurting another person, which I agree is violent. However, things get trickier when you start breaking that down. Is it a violent act if you unintentionally hurt someone? If it's not, then is it a violent act if it is unintentional, but the victim feels it is intentional? What about passive-aggressive behavior, where intention is purposely hidden? Does violence include hurting someone's feelings? You can go on and on with questions like these that will all be good debate starters in a room with more than three people.

So instead of debating, I'm just going to tell you what I mean by violence, and recognize that it is most likely not what you mean by violence. However, I believe if you accept my definition for the time being, that you'll be able to not only understand my case better, but also might become more hopeful regarding the future of games as art.

I propose we think of violence as any time two or more objects collide. Specifically, when two or more objects attempt to exist in the same place at the same time. This, I believe, is fairly non-controversial, though it does--and is intended--to allow more things into the "violent" category than many people would ordinarily. Let's think about some of these things that would fit this definition, but not most people's definition.

Closest to humanity, we can think of debate as something that is violent--when two ideas want to exist in the same "space" at the same time. Debate begins when two or more people realize that to accept the other's idea would mean rejecting their own, for whatever reason. While many people may allow that debate often leads to violence, some may not see the debate itself as violent. Under my definition, it would be classified as violent even if it never results in physical violence; in fact, even if it's done in the most cordial way imaginable.

On the extreme end of things, our ability to see results from massive violence happening in front of us all the time--this would be the photons bouncing off of other atoms and subsequently smashing into our eyeballs. In contrast to debate, I believe most people would have a very hard to accepting this as violence because it has such a desirable outcome. In fact, it seems to contradict the first definition that was proposed--except in rare cases, no one is hurt by photons hitting their retinas. However, not only would this be considered violence under my definition, it would even have to be called physical violence, which is almost unanimously described currently with bad connotations.

This observation that photons hitting retinas can be considered violence leads us directly into the next installment, where we will look at both why violence occurs and how violence can be manipulated for both good and bad ends. Hopefully by the end of the next installment, you will see that violence in itself is not necessarily bad, and in fact is responsible for tremendous good. A growing concern of this series will be on the reaction to violence, not the violence itself, as a key indicator to whether the violence was "good" or "bad."

Violence, part 1: Introduction

2010-08-28T13:38:00.000-07:00

The video game industry is well-known for its controversial violence, with legislators attempting new ways to tamp down on the graphic violence in flagship games just as they were fifteen years ago. Meanwhile, I'm starting to feel this swelling undercurrent of concern from video game sympathizers that perhaps, maybe, video games have to be violent to be successful. Though the history of video games is certainly pockmarked with wildly successful titles such as The Sims that at the very least do not feature violence as the main focus of the game, these successes have been more difficult to replicate than those involving mass murder.

Reaction to this sentiment is usually one of two things: an acceptance that fuels the demand for ultraviolent games such as God of War or GTA, or a rejection that sees hope in games like Flower--games that may pale in comparison to the popularity of the other two titles, but offer the possibility of a fun, nonviolent game. I believe both reactions to be misguided, though I sympathize with both sides. On the one hand, I understand that the amount of prurient violence in the most talked-about video games makes the industry and the medium as a whole appear juvenile to the outside world--and to a large percentage of gamers, as well. On the other hand, I also notice that nonviolent games such as Flower do seem to be missing some key element--that the lack of violence in Flower may play an underappreciated role in its relative unpopularity compared to GTA.

Over the course of this series, I want to make the case that, indeed, video games must be violent to be successful both financially and artistically--but that this isn't as bad as it sounds at first. The reason this idea shouldn't offend those who dream of a day when video games are taken as seriously as sculpture or music is that I believe no art is successful without violence. I am going to take a good hard look at what violence is, the role it plays in our everyday lives as well as our favorite works of art, its various purposes, and how we can use this knowledge to make more compelling works of expression in the medium of video games.

In the next installment, I'm going to try to convince you that graphic, physical violence--the kind that makes Hillary Clinton say, "There oughta be a law..."--is only one expression of violence. And in fact, I'm going to attempt to do more than that. I'm going to try to convince you that violence is the engine of the entire universe.

Dimensional conflict: diversion vs. expression

2010-07-30T11:17:00.000-07:00

While I mentioned in Three-dimensional games that games with the greatest magnitude in all three dimensions will be considered the best, this isn't to say that dimensions won't occasionally come into conflict with each other. In other words, it is possible that attempting to increase the magnitude along one axis will decrease the magnitude along another axis.

I want to focus on a specific conflict that can arise when trying to maximize the magnitude along every dimension: the conflict between the demand of diversion to fill time and the demand of expression to reduce the time filled.

While I don't doubt that all readers would understand why diversion demands the maximum time to be filled, some may believe it outweighs expression's demand to minimize time taken. Surely expression demands first and foremost the expression of a thought or emotion, with economy of space and time being of secondary concern.

However, I believe that the more one delves into art, the more one finds that the true art of art is that economy. Given enough time, space, and energy, anyone could express anything...eventually. The true prize in art is not merely expressing something, but expressing it elegantly.

As in mathematics, elegance in art should be thought of as complexity simplified. Mathematicians call their greatest equations both "powerful" and "beautiful," which are the same words we use to describe great art. I believe that what a great equation and a great work of art have in common is the quality that if even the smallest element were removed, the whole thing would fall apart. This doesn't happen by chance--one of the most important jobs of both the artist and the mathematician is to remove all the extraneous stuff.

Perhaps this should give pause to an industry known for its proclamations of quality based on quantity ("80+ hours of gameplay!"). While even mainstream games appear to be slimming down as a more casually-minded audience picks up the sticks, it is still rare to find the level of pruning in a video game that approaches the mathematician's sense of beauty. In fact, the thought is so alien to the medium as a whole that it's probably difficult to imagine what an "economic game" would even look like.

And of course the conflict that we started with might have begun brewing in your head by now: that games are often primarily diversion. That even if you could boil the essence of a game down to 4 minutes, would you want to?

There are two ways out of this dilemma, per usual: an easy way and a hard way. The easy way is to say, yes, let's just make the game 4 minutes long. This is a short enough time that players will likely still get hours of diversion from it because they'd keep replaying it--if it were any good. This is the option I see most widely accepted by game designers who don't like to subject their players to filler content or pretend that the game is 20 hours long when it's really the same 4 minutes repeated over and over again.

The harder way, and the one that is much more rare--which means you have the better shot at glory if you can do it--is to make a game that takes 20 hours to play through because what it is expressing demands 20 hours of gameplay. In other words, the complexity of the expression is so deep that even after pruning every extraneous element from the game, the game will still take that long to get through.

This is not only a challenge to game designers--it should also be a challenge to players. Be looking out for the game that accomplishes this. At each stage of a game, be asking yourself whether this could be part could be cut out with no detriment to the experience. Demand more of your games--don't desire merely to have your free time wasted. Expect to have your empty hours replaced with full hours. Anything else isn't worth your precious time.

A worthy opponent

2010-07-20T11:40:00.000-07:00

The video game universe is awash in heroes, but the noteworthy villains could likely be counted on two generous hands. Often, the "main villain"--the hero's true adversary--feels more like an endnote than a palpable force in games. Players rarely form a connection to their characters' ostensible opponent, most likely because they can recognize that the villain of the story is not their opponent. Rather, villains are mostly MacGuffins--merely excuses to "go on the quest" or create a wake of corpses behind the titular character.

Villains who remain in the collective imagination of gamers are generally those who can be identified not only as the player character's adversary, but the player's own adversary. The AI constructs SHODAN (System Shock 2) and GLADoS (Portal) plausibly fill the role of the player's true opponent--these characters appear to manipulate the environment and give the orders to lesser AIs in an attempt to prevent the player from reaching her goals. These characters are identifiable as Worthy Opponents because they appear to have the same qualities of the player: goals, agency, and motivation.

Goals

Mutually exclusive goals create opponents. Therefore, when designing a game, it is important not only to identify the goals of one player, but to also identify the goals of all his opponents. Classic games such as chess simply pit two heroes against each other, though there are other game forms that assign at least one person a special role, such as King of the Hill or Four-Square, which have a separate rule set for one person, putting the player in competition with everyone else, and everyone else in competition with each other.

Computer gaming, of course, allows much more development of the number and depth of these specialized roles through artificial intelligence, as well as online gaming. Computer games have the opportunity to not only put players in competition with each other, but games in competition with games. After all, isn't the true villain the one who wants what you want, but doesn't have to follow the same rules?

Agency

While the assigning of nominal goals to AI characters is firmly established as a carry-over from film and literature conventions, games like System Shock 2 and Portal still refuse to give the villains a fighting chance to achieve their goals. The idea that SHODAN or GLADoS are actually manipulating the environment is, of course, an illusion. The level designers are your true opponents in these games.

A truly great villain must be given true agency. For sports games and the like, this is a matter of course. However, developers of action titles and RPG's seem to be unwilling to let go of a tightly scripted roller coaster ride. This is a mistake. The lack of opponent agency leads to a cardboard cut-out experience that lacks any emotional connection not only to the villain, but also to the player's character, who seems 2D by association. People are defined by their enemies.

Motivation

While it can be easy to identify the goal inside the game, oftentimes it's just as important to identify the goal that led you to the game to begin with, which could be called your motivation. Why do people decide to play games? Is it because they have something to gain? Or maybe they have something to lose.

Establishing why the villain is playing the game is important in creating that emotional connection. A man who's hell-bent on destroying the world for no reason is less compelling than the man who risks destroying the world to protect his country from certain destruction. If the player can assign an entrenched motivation driving her opponent's attacks against her, not only will the villain become a fleshed-out character, but the opponent will also gain the psychological strength of fighting a battle worth fighting. The action will become more intense on a deeper level, and the closer the player gets to defeating the opponent, the more the player will fear the opponent--an increasingly desperate opponent with less and less to lose.

Ultimately, the key element to creating a great villain is giving him the power to win. Legitimately win. The villain must not be a passive character, waiting for Batman to make a mistake so he can laugh in his face during the "Retry?" screen. The villain must be actively changing the game's environment to make victory more difficult for the player--analyzing the player's strategy and attempting to neutralize it. When the player is defeated, the player should not say, "I lost," but rather, "The villain won."

Difficulty: Slow it down, don't dumb it down

2010-07-01T23:24:00.000-07:00

Sitting down to play Super Smash Bros. for the first time is an overwhelming proposition for the average adult. The game is a flurry of action, a camera moves in and out constantly, and the winner appears to be randomly chosen at first. To top it all off, all characters start out at 0% (you're not told of what), a percentage that is increased every time they are hit. Without instruction, most adults would give up on this game fairly quick, resigned to the fact that it's something they'll never get.

Kids don't do that, though. They just keep playing the game until it makes sense. This probably should be expected, since kids are usually in situations that don't make sense, so perplexing video games don't seem all that different than anything else. Adults, however, have cultivated a lifetime's worth tricks that help them spot the right patterns to quickly make accurate predictions. Once something requires that they detect new patterns, instead of building upon past patterns, adults usually opt out. One reason is that it quickly becomes difficult to think outside of established patterned thought, and another reason is that adults realize that figuring out every video game that comes along is not a high priority.

Developers seem to understand part of this--something along the lines of "you can't teach an old dog new tricks." Games that are built for adults recognize that the adult will have a difficult time learning a new gameplay mechanic, so they rarely add gameplay mechanics to established patterns of gameplay. This does solve the problem, but it's not the only solution, nor I think, the most ideal.

Adults are capable of learning new patterns, they just need more help in finding them. The fast pace of Super Smash Bros. is not conducive to this process. Adults see a blur of random events that seem to almost willfully contradict any potential pattern the adult may be trying to apply to the situation. As opposed to kids, adults live in a world that largely adheres to established patterns and is a comfortable place to live in--parts of it that don't conform to these patterns are largely ignored, mainly due to the discomfort they create.

This calls into question how difficulty in games has been thought of for the most part--specifically making it so it's easier for a novice player to win, "dumbing the game down," so to speak. However, making the enemies "easier" to beat will not make any difference to the player who doesn't understand why sometimes he wins and sometimes he loses--in fact, it could make the situation worse by affirming a pattern that should be ignored to actually understand the game. As we said in the post about grokking, winning is a sign of grokking, so if a beginning player is winning, that player believes he is making progress in understanding the game. In essence, by allowing players who don't understand the rules to win, you are helping them learn the wrong things, which will ultimately lead to frustration when the established patterns stop working as the difficulty increases.

What a new player really needs is not coddling, but clear feedback on the success of her actions. Arkham Asylum's fighting mechanic does a great job with difficulty. The most apparent goal--beating up the bad guys--is also the easiest. As players get used to the mechanics, they begin challenging themselves at more difficult tasks, such as beating up the bad guys without getting hit, or the final challenge, beating up the bad guys in one unbroken combo. This also happens to be the most highly rewarded goal in this area of the game. The levels of difficulty are organically built into the mechanics: by slowing down the entry-level gameplay, the game can layer more advanced gameplay into the temporal cracks.

So slow it down, don't dumb it down. Keep your great new gameplay mechanics, just make sure that people can see them at work.

Grokking in three dimensions

2010-06-28T21:39:00.000-07:00

Even if you accept that the notion of grokking and grok-tests play an important role in understanding games, you may doubt that winning is an indication of grokking in light of games such as foot races and lotteries where grokking the rules is clearly not the sole requirement for victory.

However, foot races and lotteries are not games where winning is not a sign of grokking, but rather games in which grokking the game leads players toward a single strategy. Games of chance lead players to a "null" strategy, while foot races push players toward a strategy so highly effective, the game is unwinnable without it--in this case, running fast.

Athletic events are an obvious example of these kind of "one-strategy" games, which would also include trivia competitions such as spelling bees and Trivial Pursuit. These games are designed to create situations where the best strategy involves excellence in the desired ability. While the rules of the 100-meter never say that the fastest runner will win the race, the construction of its rules make it so the best strategy involves running faster than anyone else.

Lotteries are one of the purest examples of games of chance, which can all be classified as "null-strategy" games, or games where no strategy appreciably increases the chances of winning.

Obviously, all games lie along a spectrum, and some games of chance involve more luck than others, while the luck element may be easy to spot in games ostensibly designed to spotlight excellence. The key here is the overall effect--does the luck element in the athletic competition help to showcase the athlete's talents? Do the strategies allowed by the game of chance significantly diminish the effect of luck? Asking questions like these will help us understand what kind of game we are talking about, and allow us to see that games with a central luck component, such as poker, cannot accurately be called games of chance if players are able to employ strategies which allow them to win consistently against opponents at a rate higher than chance would predict.

These two classes of games fall neatly into the dimensions of games that I proposed a while back--specifically the Sport and the Diversion dimensions. One-strategy games designed to recognize and reward excellence in a given field are Sport, while games that don't allow for in-depth strategies would be called Diversions.

This leaves the final dimension, Expression, reserved for games that are about grokking the rules. Games that do not have a point at which the game can said to be "grokked"--games where success is defined solely by understanding the rules and strategies of the game, and not athletic ability, trivia knowledge, or luck. Success in them requires you to enter into them, which in turn can lead you into the mind of the author, the ultimate goal of expression.

Therefore, this blog will be increasingly focused on games that are not sport and not diversion. Rather, we will study games that have no other apparent purpose than to understand the games themselves more deeply, for these are the games that will lead us down the path of more powerful expression through video games.

Grokking and Games

2010-06-23T13:28:00.000-07:00

The term "grok" comes from Robert Heinlein's book Stranger in a Strange Land, and is a Martian term that roughly translates into "to drink," which also describes the Martian's take on the act or state of understanding fully--"to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the observed." If you haven't read the book yet, you probably should, as this idea of grokking alone is worth grokking.

Typically, it is difficult to ascertain whether someone has grokked, or fully grokked, an idea--especially one expressed through art. Because artistic expressions exist outside the realm of language or even rational thought, there is no real way to test whether someone "got" it or not. It's quite common to hear the following conversation after a film:

"Didn't like it."

"But did you get it?"

"Yeah, I got it, but I didn't like it."

"But did you really get it?"

The ability to tell whether an artwork has been grokked or not is important for precisely this reason: that it is difficult to have conversations about art unless you know that your interlocutor has grokked it as much as you have. This works both ways. More fully grokking something does not mean that you'll like it more--in fact, it could very well mean you enjoy it less. For our taste to improve and to grow as people, it is important for us to know who grokked the work the best and what can be said about it.

Which ultimately brings us to the wonderful uniqueness of games. They have a built-in grok test (at least games as I define them). If you keep losing the game, you have not grokked it. Simple as that. To paraphrase Sean Connery in The Rock, losers whine about doing their best--winners grok the prom queen.

Now let's unpack that idea a bit. The simplest way to understand this concept is to think about gated games, which can be seen as a series of grok-tests. In fact, this I think should be thought of as the primary purpose of the gated games--not games unto themselves, but rather an interactive instruction manual that verifies the player truly understands how the game is meant to be played. We can say that once a player has completed a gated game, that the player has grokked the game--at least on that level of difficulty, if the difficulty is variable. While some may argue that there could be more to a game than simply its rules, I would argue otherwise, though I agree that many video games hold some elements in higher regard than their rules--to their detriment in my opinion.

A more interesting scenario is a game that involves human competition. In this case, we can say that while the nominal goals may vary, every game has at heart the same goal--to grok the game most fully. Therefore, when humans are competing in the game, the competition is to decide who understands the game the best. This is a fairly simple test--if I can beat you at the game every time we play, I clearly understand the game better than you do. The interesting thing about human opponents is that every time they are defeated by a new strategy, they have grokked the game more fully, so the next time you play them, you are playing against a stronger opponent.

This even applies to games that involve luck. As there is a point in luck-based games where the understanding of the rules will no longer assist in winning, it is at this point that the game can be said to be fully grokked. In part, this might relate to the "fun" of a game--that games are fun when the competitors have an equivalent understanding of how the game is played. Games aren't fun when you are out of your depth, and also when you have a vast superior understanding of the rules versus your competitors. Therefore, what I said earlier about chess and fun needs to be revisited, slightly--chess is a game that can create a large disparity between the amount one player has grokked the rules versus the competitor, which creates a situation that is not fun. Lotteries and other games of pure chance are easy to completely grok, so that it will not take long for a newcomer to have the exact same understanding as a seasoned pro. Therefore the difference between the two is the likelihood that you will have fun (i.e., compete against someone who has grokked the game equally), not whether one is flatly "fun" and the other is "not fun."

The beautiful thing is that this creates an reasonable grounds for authority. If I can beat you just as many times as you beat me at a game, we have equal authority in our opinions of the game. However, if I can beat you many more times than you beat me, I have a greater authority to deliver an assessment of the game, because clearly I understand it better than you. While this doesn't address things like disparities of aesthetic values and the like, it does at the very least address that first level concern many critics of art have, which is, "Do you really get it?"

Versus Series 5: Toys vs. Simulations

2010-06-04T17:32:00.000-07:00

Chris Bateman recently concluded a series on game design as make-believe, kicking it off with an interesting view of games serving in part as props for imaginative play. Of course, games aren't the only props that are used for the purpose of play, and Bateman lists different examples of items that can be used as representations during imaginative play. At the top of his list is the first class of object we think about when it comes to props for imagination: the toy.

Continuing with Bateman's thoughts, toys assist their uses in constructing an imaginative construct somehow. In a way, you can see them enabling us to achieve higher levels of imagination than we would be able to without them. Since we have the G.I. Joe figure serving the role of the soldier (or any character--or even object) in our imaginative playground, we no longer need to dedicate neurons to certain aspects--most likely physical aspects--of this character. The more fleshed-out the toy is, the less we have to think about its functions in our imagination. We can concentrate on conjuring up needed elements for play that aren't as readily available, such as the conflict between G.I. Joes and the Ninja Turtles or where to jump now that we can jump three feet into the air with a pogo stick.

Obviously, this leads down the road of simulations, which can be seen as a sort of toy from this perspective. Simulations do a lot of the leg work for our imaginations to assist us in imagining things that are difficult to imagine on our own. Once I accept that this piece of simulation software accurately imagines the effect of gravity on objects, I can concentrate my own imagination on constructing bridges that won't fall down. If my construction is good, the bridge won't fall down; if it's bad, it will. No more thought needed.

However, there are important differences between toys and simulations that make it so we can't conflate the two all that easily. Primarily, it is the kind of imagination that these props assist.

Toys are associated with play in general, and what might be called diversionary play in particular--play that is intended to distract from boredom or other unpleasantness. The end goal of this type of play is the play itself. As long as the play can keep you distracted, it is sufficient. No other rules need be applied for diversionary play to be successful.

Simulations, however, require rules by their nature. In fact, it is difficult to see a simulation other than a collection of rules. Simulators are generally not constructed to fill time, but to accurately simulate something. Therefore, a successful simulator is one that provides an accurate simulation, even if it does not aid in distracting from boredom or tedium.

These things seem self-evident once you point them out, but it's important to think about these differences as video games offer both toys and simulations, rarely labeling which is which on the box. As noted in the discussion of dimensions in games, merely knowing what exactly your interlocutor is talking about can be a huge step in having a decent conversation.

Many of us may take it for granted that the video game that is a more accurate simulation is better, while others of us may believe that only video games that distract from the tedium and boredom of daily life are worth playing. Once we become well-versed spotting differences not only of opinion, but definition, we can speak more intelligently and conserve quite a lot of energy in the process.

Choice-management in the aid of building tension

2010-05-26T14:14:00.000-07:00

At present, the word "tension" is almost exclusively considered negative. The quest of the modern man is to reduce tension, or stress, which are known causes of disease and emotional distress. The desired state is one of complete relaxation.

However, in the artistic world, we find that many descriptions of good works imply tension: taut, solid, robust. Likewise, many descriptions of poor works imply the opposite: loose, unfocused, flat. It seems that while we prefer our bodies to be relaxed, we prefer our books, movies, music, and games full of tension¹.

While there are probably many reasons why having tension is good for art, I suspect an important reason is that tension provides definition. Just like flexing your bicep shows its definition, putting an object in a state of tension is frequently a better representation of what that thing is than observing it in a relaxed state. The human condition doesn't appear to be an exception.

It's quite clear that putting humans in stressful situations isn't enough to create compelling works of expression, though it's a good start. Here, I see narrative as a helpful guide, yet again. It is in narrative where choice-management decisions are the clearest², on a certain level. In narratives, characters are making decisions that drive the story in a linear fashion, and often these are decisions we can more or less understand intellectually--by which I mean we can reason about them.

Characters in the best stories always make decisions that drive the story forward, but what does that mean? At a functional level, we can say that the characters make choices that take away choices. Ideally, a character will want to take away choices only from an antagonist, but often we find that characters will soon resort to taking away choices from themselves in order to take choices away from the antagonist--often because they have no other choice. In a good narrative³, you see a progression from a large field of opportunities to a claustrophobic room of tough choices.

So an important aspect in creating compelling expression is a process of eliminating choices. The art is in which choices to eliminate and in what order. The artist must be aware of which choices the audience perceives as "easy" and which they perceive as "difficult," and begin eliminating the easy choices.

Of course, games provide other great examples of this. Good moves in chess are ones that eliminate at least one of the opponent's options, and the best are ones that force the opponent to have to choose between two terrible outcomes. The tower game Jenga is also a good example of tension-building through choice elimination. These tension-inducing games also show that players cannot be confused with "audience"--in a game, players must be getting increasingly tense, just like characters in a film or novel.

Relaxation is inherently boring, pleasant as it is. But does it have a place in games?

It may seem that this post is directly solely at the Expression and maybe Sport dimension of games. However, tension management is important when thinking about the Diversion dimension, as well. Diversion, after all, could be defined as a relief of tension--a distraction from tension, however brief.

It would be logical, then, to say that a "diversionary game" is one with very few rules--one that allows someone to enjoy a space of relaxation. And indeed, "player choice" is frequently heralded as a goal of games. However, I believe that misunderstands the aim of this person needing relaxation. Doing nothing--lying in a hammock, listening to whale songs--is a better space of relaxation than a game. If a tension-filled person is turning to a game, we can assume that while he may be full of tension, he actually wants more tension. After all, rules create tension by their nature, so if this person wanted to exist in a space of complete relaxation, he wouldn't have approached the game--an activity intrinsically rule-bound⁴.

What explains this seemingly paradoxical behavior? I think that games can represent a sort of light at the end of the tunnel. A reassurance that eventually all tension will be released, even if it will be shortly replaced by something else. Therefore, I believe games should always be paying attention to choice management, continuously limiting options, and building up tension, so that once the game is over, players--win or lose--may sit back, relaxed, and for a brief moment, enjoy the ease that can only come after being tense.

The unimportance of writing

2010-05-20T10:54:00.000-07:00

The idea of a writer as a “crafter of narrative” is an idea that is entrenched, understandable, and I think very misleading in our discussion of video games.

In most creative endeavors, when we talk about writers we are talking about storytellers. They write the scripts and the books that have a beginning, middle, and end; with a protagonist and antagonist; an inciting incident and a climax—all the things a good narrative ought to have.

The temptation is to assume that when we speak about writing for video games, we are talking about the same person. In replying to my recent post The importance of writing, Resonance 462 over at Kotaku writes:

But I feel like the author has overlooked something that is paramount to video games, and that's distinguishing themselves from movies. Movies exist to tell stories. Video games exist to be played. Both mediums can deliver compelling narratives, but the difference of passive (watching) and active (playing) is becoming part of video game design. This is a flaw in the direction.

Resonance 462 has assumed that by saying games need to begin with writers instead of programmers, that I am suggesting a narrative be written and the game will exist only to support that narrative. I can understand why that assumption would be made, especially because a lot of talk about writing for games emphasizes the narrative element in some games (and perhaps one of my own recent posts only adds weight to that assumption). However, I agree with the writer of this comment that narrative does not find a happy home in video games.

There are other kinds of writers, of course. There are technical writers, poets, copy writers for advertisements—all sorts of people making their living putting thoughts into the written word. So when I say “writer” in an unqualified sort of way, I am leaving the option open for the “writer” in question to not be a screenwriter, playwright, or novelist. In fact, this writer may not be proficient in any traditional creative writing format. It is entirely unnecessary for a great screenwriter to also be a great novelist, and so it should be for video game writers.

In fact, the writing I have in mind when I think about games—and indeed, in my mind when I wrote The importance of writing—is of rules for board games and card games. These writers create games, not by creating the board and pieces, but by writing down the rules that the players will follow in order to use the board and pieces correctly. I see this as the true role of a game writer.

I myself am very interested in this writer and will likely spend a great deal of time on this blog talking about this writer. I see it as an exciting creative space to be in now, as video games gain in their cultural stature and the market will begin supporting new kinds of games.

Bottom line is this: when I say we need writers to begin the process of making games, these writers...

…do not write stories, they write games.

…do not write dialogue, they write games.

…do not write character bios for in-game databases of characters, they write games.

…do not write the exposition in introductions of games, they write games.

…are not consulted about how to make a level more cinematic, they write games.

…do not write code to implement games in software, they write games.

Once the game has been written, of course the writer of the game is free to do any and all of the above things, but only after the game is written. The game will tell you what the story should be like and what dialogue should be written (if any), how the characters should be described to the player and how the game should be coded. There will be great games made that don’t use this method—they will be exceptions to the rule. They will be happy accidents. To guarantee a consistent generation of quality games, developers need to start with writing—not stories, not characters, not dialogue, but games.

Comment round-up #1, 15 May 2010

2010-05-15T12:10:00.000-07:00

One of the great things about blogs is that they allow people to voice their opinion of an idea in the exact same place where the idea is first given expression. I've been very happy with the conversations I've had in the comments section of the posts, but I get the feeling that a lot of these gold nuggets are passed by because they occur in older posts and I imagine few of my readers obsessively check all of my old posts to see if any new comments have been written. I figured it'd be worthwhile to an first Interactive Illuminatus comment round-up, where I collect my favorite discussions so far and put them up to give people a chance to review what's been said since they last read the post.

I want to do this on a regular basis, partly because I want to point out these great comments that might have been missed, but also to encourage people to comment on older posts--or even the comments that are highlighted in the round-up. Sometimes you have something good to say about a post or comment, but figure it's not worth it if no one's going to read your comment. Well, don't fear! Your great comment will most likely wind up in a future comment round-up, so write away!

Mmm...that's good synthesis! (25 March 2010)

Remy77077 applies the idea of my Three-dimensional games to my post The softening of the hardcore to show how the trend has been to move towards games that have a greater magnitude in the Diversion dimension at the cost of the Sport dimension. This observation results in big blocks of text laden with links to even bigger blocks of texts, so fans of reading should check out Remy's comment and the conversation that follows.

Games and 'anon' (29 March 2010)

Remy77077 (whose previous comment inspired this particular blog post) returns to start a conversation about how agon is related to games by asking, "Are you dismissing 'easy agon' though as 'not a game'?" The quick answer is "no," but don't waste the opportunity to see the good conversation that came out of the question.

Another case for expression (8 April 2010)

Smokin' Hot Josh decides to go ahead and write his own case for expression. You won't see a reply from me here because I don't like wasting words (despite appearances), so when I completely agree with you, I feel like I don't need to add anything more to the conversation.

Who cares about Ebert? (2 May 2010)

Smokin' Hot Josh wonders why we should even care what Ebert has to say about games and art.

The two narratives of games (5 May 2010)

Yet another from Smokin' Hot, who delves into his massive archive of Game Informer to quote Prince of Persia's Jordan Mechner: "The real story of a game isn't the one told in the dialogue and the cinematic cutscenes...but the one the player tells afterwards..." Check out Josh's comment to see the full quotation and Josh's analysis of it.

Sounding the depths of narrative game theory (8 May 2010)

You're bound to have people question an unconventional way of viewing something, and newcomer Charles decided to be first in line for the job after I suggested games follow a narrative form. Check out our lengthy conversation, starting with his opener, "Games are not only older than the narrative form, but are most likely older than complex language itself!"

(Here's a little side note that doesn't appear in the comments that follow: actually, games are most likely are the result of complex language. While play is universal in the animal kingdom, the "game" form of play appears to me to require a level of complex communication that makes complex language necessary. In this way of thinking, games are a uniquely human form of play. And this comment about a comment is quickly turning into its own blog post...)

What's a fun game? (13 May 2010)

And we end where we began, with Remy77077 pushing the conversation to the next level. In this comment, Remy asks the question, "What game conforms to your definition of a game, and yet is still 'fun' in the sense you write about here?" You can tell by the length of my response that I found that question quite arousing.

That's it for this round-up, but I hope that before long it will be time to do another one with conversations just as interesting and fun to read as the ones listed above.

The importance of writing

2010-05-13T20:22:00.000-07:00

It was recently announced that God of War writer Marianne Krawczyk will be lending her talents to the upcoming game Shank. I thought the God of War games were above-average in the video game narrative department and Shank looks like a well-done update to one of my favorite games, Metal Slug. However, instead of making me anticipate the game even more, the news has left me perplexed. Why? Because this game was announced last year and has already been previewed by game reviewers. The game is done and now it's time to get a writer on board. As a writer, this strikes me as odd.

As a writer who plays video games, however, it strikes me as typical. Most video games are "written" after they're completed. Writers are usually brought on board to write dialogue and exposition. Only people who don't understand what writers do would think this is an acceptable use of writing talent.

To my knowledge, film was the most recent medium that thought it could get along all right without writers. Of course, that was many years ago, during its advent, when directors would drive actors out to the countryside and make up a story based on whatever was around ("Here's a barn, so let's say you're the farmer and you're his wife. Oh, and here's a shovel, so let's start with you digging something."). Films varied in terms of how much planning went into them back in those years, but for the most part you wouldn't be able to find anything resembling a script floating around anywhere. The only writers you'd find hanging around were the guys who wrote the dialogue cards. Sound familiar?

It's important to remember that this method of filming was quite sufficient as long as film was considered a second-rate form of expression, the technology driving it being far more impressive than the works themselves. People didn't mind poorly thought-out plots or terrible acting because they didn't expect anything better. If you wanted to get a good story, read a book; if you want good acting (with sound, even), go to the theater.

In the present day, we know that we no longer have to engage in such trade-offs. We can demand more of films than its original audiences thought possible. While color and sound are often given credit for bringing the cinema into the realm of respectability, films were widely accepted as valid forms of expression by the 1920's, well before these inventions were mainstream. The innovation that preceded them was the screenplay.

It could be argued that other mediums don't require writing--painting certainly doesn't, and certain forms of music don't have a writing process. Even some films and TV shows don't use a script, relying in improv performances to tell the story. We'll deal with improv later, but first, let's address the painting issue.

Painting doesn't require writing because painting is a form of writing itself, or the other way round. Writing a book also doesn't require a script--the book is the script. This changes when you want to create a work of art (or entertainment, if you like) that is acting out a story. At that point, you need to have a story before you can start acting it out, which is exactly what most games don't do. They start acting out the story and then close to the end of development, they try to figure out what they were acting out the whole time. Even moderately creative people can come up with a decent story to connect all the dots, but they will never create a picture that's as good as someone drawing a picture without being constrained to only use semi-randomly placed dots.

Others may find improv to be a more appropriate comparison to video games, as the story is not dictating what the player does. Unfortunately (for the argument, at least), that's not true. Games do constrain what players do, and none are worse violators of player freedom than narrative-centric gated games. For improv to work, the performers need as little constraint as possible. But video game developers run into a problem when they lift constraints--most players are not good at improv. They will not receive the rich experience that rivals cinema, the goal of most AAA developers. Remember that the reason Christopher Guest movies even get off the ground is because of the talented actors who have had years and years of experience doing improv. Everyone else is going to need a writer.

I get the feeling that most video game developers start their creative process thinking, "What would I like to do in a video game?" This is a natural thing to do, and I think most people who wanted to write a movie for the first time would think to themselves, "What would I like to see in a movie?" Most people often think of great premises for a movie--often involving terrorists or zombies--and think that the work is almost over. This is the birth of bad scripts. This is the mindset of amateurs. A great writer will rarely start the process by saying, "What would I like to see in a movie, or read in a book, or do in a video game?" And if she did, she would know that 99% of the work in front of her.

How does this change the end product? A game is a set of rules, and everything--including the story--must follow the rules for it to be great. If a story demands a character be weak for the drama to happen, but the game has given that character a lot of power, something is going to have to change or "ludonarrative dissonance" will be the result. As the game has probably already been in development for years, it's not difficult to figure out who's going to buckle in this dilemma. This means that even a writer who knows what is necessary to make the story work will have hands tied when it comes to implementing it.

But imagine if the writer came up with a "story" before the rules. A "pre-rules story." At that point, you could create the rules around that story, and even if the rules seemed unconventional or unbalanced, you could be confident that they would work as long as the story works. Suddenly you have the freedom to create a game that actually does have a great story without sacrificing the game experience, because they grew up organically together, instead of one being thrown over the other at the last minute.

And even more importantly, programmers cost more per hour than writers Do the math. Have the writers work on the game for two years before the programmers come on board instead of the other way around and maybe we can stop pretending that there's ever been a game worth $60.

Luck: the spoonful of sugar

2010-05-07T21:19:00.000-07:00

Mainly due to my increased conscious thinking about game theory, I've started playing more chess these days, mainly against the computer as chess enthusiasts are few and far-between. The reason for this is fairly straightforward to me, now that I've been playing the game more.

Chess is not fun.

In popular language, calling a game "not fun" is tantamount to saying it's not a good game. Games are supposed to be fun, after all: that is their purpose. If a game is not fun, it is not fulfilling its purpose. But I still think chess is one of the best games ever invented and enjoy playing it--I just don't have fun while I'm doing it.

Before you start thinking I'm barking up the wrong tree--that chess is indeed fun, I'm just describing a different kind of fun or something--know that I truly do not find it fun and yet I truly do find it worthwhile. Other people might find it fun, and other people may find it not enjoyable. The important thing is that at least one person is capable of finding a game not fun and still finding it worthwhile.

So the question to ask is, why? Why is chess not all that fun, while still being a good game? What makes a game fun, after all?

I posit that the key element to making a game fun is a heavy luck component. The reason has to do with simple psychology: I don't like blaming mistakes on myself, so I will take whatever steps necessary to avoid doing that. Sometimes, events conspire so that I'm forced to accept my mistakes--this happens. However, when it comes to games, players have several powerful options when it comes to denying responsibility, the most powerful of which will be to call the game "not fun," "useless," and ultimately, "a waste of time."

If a player does well at a game, that player will likely enjoy the game until he starts doing poorly. The tricky part is that at some point the player must do poorly, or there is no sense of accomplishment for getting better. If everyone can do equally well at a game, it is truly a waste of time--pure diversion--and it will quickly lose its appeal. It reminds me of the expression, "He who is friends with everyone is friends with no one." To be a great game, the game must challenge its participants at some point. This means the player will eventually make a mistake, lose, and will be looking for someone to blame it on.

Games considered fun usually designate the blame for the player: it's not the game's fault, it's certainly not the player's fault--it's luck's fault! You got dealt a bad hand! Your numbers didn't come up! You got tougher questions than your opponents! Now the player can blame something else for the mistake and go on playing, sans bruised ego.

Once a game has established luck as a common enemy, the game works its way into a trickier situation: how to encourage players to learn more about the game. Not many people will dedicate much time to a game that solely awards players based completely on luck. People, in addition to needing something to blame failure on, need a mechanic that will point success back at them. In other words, they need to be able to express what they did to deserve the win. Luck needs to play a limited role here, as any win attributed to luck isn't attributable to anyone.

In this way of seeing things, a game's "fun" and a game's "worth" aren't merely two distinct descriptors, but are potentially pitted against each other. A game needs to assign losses to luck (to be fun) and assign wins to players (to be worthwhile). This is difficult, but then again, it should be. Otherwise, every game would be good, and "good" would lose its meaning.

It also explains why chess is not fun and worthwhile, poker is fun and worthwhile, and Candyland or the lottery are fun and not worthwhile. Each of them manages luck differently, and result in different experiences. In chess, there is no luck--or to be specific, the only luck in the game (an opponent's mistake or oversight) cannot be used to justify a loss. The player is completely responsible for any loss.

To me, a game of chess is nerve-racking, all-consuming, and a frequent cause of rage. These are not descriptions of a fun activity to me. They do, however, suggest a level of emotional attachment that an activity which can only be described as "fun" would lack. Games need to move beyond fun to be worth anything, but don't forget that fun is an important "spoonful of sugar" that helps the medicine go down. While chess teaches me a lot of lessons about games, system design, and life in general, I still wish I had more people willing to play it with me.

"All the play's a game...": Narrative as a game

2010-05-04T14:43:00.000-07:00

Writers in the narrative formats--be it novels, screenplays, etc.--often borrow terms from games to describe dynamics in the narrative. There is talk of "setting the stakes," "set-ups and pay-offs," "playing out his hand" or "her ace-in-the-hole." Classic self-referential lines include, "Now it's my turn" and "Game over, man." Certainly, writers borrow terms from wherever they find utility, frequently using such concepts as disparate as Newtonian physics and strings of thread, as well. My intent here is not to argue that all narratives are based on games, or vice versa, but rather to explicate the two's relationship in hopes that it will surface lessons for both crafters of narratives and crafters of games.

The striking thing about this analogy is how easy it is to make. A good narrative is aligned almost beat-for-beat with a good game. In both you begin by setting the stakes and outlining the rules. Games do this explicitly, with a person suggesting that a particular game be played with particular stakes. Narrative is less explicit, but accomplishes the same goal. What writers call the "first act" in a three-act structure can easily be described in these terms: the audience learns about what characters have at stake and what rules they will be following for the rest of the narrative. The first act ends at the moment all the necessary players decide to play the game.

The second act of a narrative is the playing out of the game. As they are linear format, narratives can generally be described as turn-based, with one character responding to the action of another character, who in turn responds to that response. Certain narratives--particularly in this the Post-Modern era--attempt to break out of these rules of causality through various techniques, but the bulk of narrative remains turn-based.

Just as in narrative, people rarely comment that a game is "good" if one side is dominating over the other for most of the game (the exception in both cases: the underdog victory). Therefore, in most narratives you will find the players more or less equally matched, each with her own advantages. Depending on the game, "equal matching" has different connotations. In games that involve a heavy luck element (part of what Chris Bateman calls alea play), players who are equally matched are each getting a fair share of lucky breaks. Games that downplay the alea element (what Bateman terms agon) require the players to have an equal amount of skill or experience to be considered well-matched. Narratives exist along this spectrum, as well.

Here it's important to remember that most narrative is concerned with the fortunes of one character, known as the "hero" or "protagonist" of the story. This is the character the audience wants to "win" in the end. Protagonists have also been called the audience's "avatar." Typically the first half of the second act is composed mainly of the progression element of the game. The protagonist is playing out the rules without meeting much resistance. This can either be seen as something equivalent to the opening moves in chess or placing the ball in the roulette wheel. The second half of the second half is when the wheel starts spinning. This is where the tension builds, where our protagonist meets the first real resistance from the other players, known as the "antagonists." The relatively easy-flowing progression that characterized the first half of the second act is lost as the protagonist and antagonist more effectively sabotage each others' plans and jockey for more conditions more conducive to winning.

The beginning of the third act finds the characters knowing that the end is near. Any amount of conservatism vanish in pursuit of the end goal: this is the land of the full-court press, where queens are sacrificed, and bad guys start kidnapping daughters. Perhaps most accurately, this is the moment when the coin is suspended in the air after being flipped. The entire narrative, the entire game, the entire universe is held within this moment, between winning and losing, between existence and non-existence. A good narrative and a good game will create a very special emotion at this point, where every player simultaneously desires and fears a conclusion.

The game is over at the end of the first half of the third act. The players accept the outcome of the game and spend the rest of the final act collecting the losses and handing out the winnings. The word denouement finds its root in the idea of "untying," and while it has more of connection with the "thread" metaphor of narrative, we can also see a correlation in the rituals necessary to release the players from terms of the wager, in effect untying them from the game and each other.

Just like the camera lens theory or thread metaphor, viewing narrative as a game is just one way to explain the dynamics found in the art of storytelling. I find it particularly powerful, but it's up to each writer to determine which framework best suits the construction of a story. However, game-makers can also find lessons here. Most games that involve stories only use the story aspect as part of an extrinsic reward system, equivalent to handing out candy or toys for achieving certain results during the game. The construction of narrative-as-game allows the possibility for the two to be much more integrated.

Therefore, makers of games should look at narratives such as film or novels not as providers of rewards given in piecemeal throughout the game, but examples of games themselves. While a narrative only gives an example of one playthrough, that is typically enough to get the gist of the rule system and a prediction of possible outcomes in future matches. The art of narrative is thousands of years old, honed by the stress of time. Makers of games would be robbing themselves of an incredible collection of knowledge by ignoring the lessons narrative has for games.

"Video games can never be art": a case of mistaken identity

2010-04-18T22:09:00.000-07:00

To apologize would be presumptuous, but to the curious, I've been busy earning money and haven't had the huge blocks of free time that allowed me to write for this blog so regularly during the past couple months. In this brief span of time that I've allotted to video game theory, I need to economically and thoroughly respond to Roger Ebert's direct response to my previous post. The first mistake he makes is calling me Kellee Santiago and saying that I delivered my argument at TED instead of writing it on Interactive Illuminatus.

The vital question that Ebert asks at the end of his post is, "Why are gamers so intensely concerned, anyway, that games be defined as art?" Well, I can't speak for gamers, but most of the ones I've spoken with don't seem to view games as art. They view them as diversion and sport, much as Ebert and most gaming developers view them. The "gamer" community isn't known for backing efforts to classify their hobby as art, except to defend it against legislation that would make violent video games more difficult to purchase. (Is that the answer you want, Ebert?)

So Ebert hasn't gotten a firm grasp of the variety of people interested in games--so what? We can just assume he's talking to me, someone who wants games to be treated as a respected form of artistic expression, not because he's a "gamer," but because he's interested in art and the potential of interactive art works. Therefore Ebert, my response is, "I'm concerned that games be defined as art because I want people to make better games." Video games at the moment are trite, disposable, half-assed, and boring. This is not because games have to be that way; it's because society views them as a novelty toys, so great creative minds are elsewhere. I suspect this will change fairly rapidly whether Ebert approves of it or not.

Of course, my burning question is, "Why is Roger Ebert so intensely concerned, anyway, that games not be defined as art?" Is he concerned about the "sanctity of art" the same way anti-gay marriage people are concerned about the "sanctity of marriage"? Does he feel that if the "art" label is granted to certain video games, the art label on films will be a little less special?

An earlier post about the same subject sheds more light on Ebert's perspective:

"[Saying that video games could never be art] inspired a firestorm among gamers...Of course, I was asking for it. Anything can be art. Even a can of Campbell's soup. What I should have said is that games could not be high art, as I understand it."

So the question is not really, "Can games be art?" The question, to Ebert, is, "Can games be high art, as Roger Ebert understands it?" Well, probably not, but then again, I don't know how Ebert understands high art. Considering he has dedicated his life to an art form on the fairly low-brow end of the art spectrum, I imagine he has relatively low standards when it comes to letting things into his museum. But this distinction between "high art" and "low brow" is pretty much like the distinction between "bad words" and "good words." It's a sensibility handed down to us from ancient times that anything that the wealthy did that the poor didn't do is morally superior to what poor people did that the wealthy people didn't do. Many people would say it's an outdated way of judging things, and I would agree.

I hope Ebert agrees with that, too, because it's an attitude that laughed at the idea of films being taken seriously as expression. And, of course, just like Ebert does regarding games, critics of film (not film critics) have plenty of good arguments for keeping film out of the realm of artistic discussion. Primarily, the argument Ebert himself gives about video games, "No one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great poets, filmmakers, novelists and composers." Obviously, take filmmakers off the list and put them in video games' camp and you'll find it hard to name a film that can seriously find a place among the pantheon of Greek tragedies and Renaissance sculpture. These are works that survived hundreds or thousands of years. They had the right stuff, and no film can claim that distinction. Why? Because the earliest films are about a hundred years old, and only film nuts like Ebert find any relevance in films that are more than sixty years old.

"High art" simply means "old art," and while the art forms that have survived thousands of years while others have passed by the wayside are definitely powerful and contain great works, there is nothing to suggest that somehow contemporary critics could have known the full potential of any of them when they were first being formed. We're going to have to wait about four hundred more years to see if Citizen Kane can be ranked alongside the Sistine Chapel, and about five thousand years to see Godfather holds the same lasting appeal as Oedipus Rex.

Ironically, games actually have a much longer track record of being able to appeal to generation after generation. I point to the game that was off-handedly and somewhat confusingly dismissed by both Mr. Ebert and Ms. Santiago: chess. I have no idea why Kellee doesn't want to put chess in her camp (that's always a mistake), though it seems like she is merely admitting it hasn't been conventionally treated as art. Ebert is more clear on his reason:

"One obvious difference between art and games is that you can win a game...Santiago might cite an immersive game without points or rules, but I would say it ceases to be a game and becomes a representation of a story, a novel, a play, dance, a film. Those are things you cannot win; you can only experience them."

Apparently Ebert's never been a part of a dance-off. Of course, you should know that I agree with Ebert when he says that a game is something you must be able to win (or lose). But to deny games the "art" label on that basis is nonsensical to me. It's like saying a music lover saying that paintings aren't art because "you look at them instead of listening to them." You can't "only experience" anything--you have to look at it, listen to it, smell it, etc. Ebert seems to think that once you win a game once, you've grokked everything it has to offer. As any chess player will tell you (and I'm going to be writing about in the future), that's simply not true.

Chess isn't merely one of the greatest games invented, it is also something that easily ranks up there with Shakespeare and Mozart when it comes to expression of the human condition and timeless aesthetic sensibilities. It's not that chess can be viewed as a metaphor for so many things, it's that it is viewed as the best metaphor for so many things. People aren't shoehorning meaning into chess, it arises organically out of the game itself.

Well, if chess isn't art and Death at a Funeral is (two thumbs-up), then I'll have more of whatever chess is, please.

The case for expression

2010-03-29T13:51:00.000-07:00

I think there's a reason two of our most beloved games--chess and poker--are also major contributors to our language. Expressions such as "checkmate," "pawn," "playing the hand your dealt," "calling his bluff," "ace in the hole," don't have real linguistic equivalents. They are areas of expression these games have claimed a monopoly over, and it won't take much effort to find many other expressions that find their roots in games. It's not mere postulation that games could be used as expression--they already have been!

What is art? I know you've heard the question a million times, but you haven't heard my answer yet. You see, I'm utilitarian at heart. I think in terms of utility. Therefore, if A gives me the same utility as B, A and B are equivalent. I get calories from pizza, I get calories from hamburgers. While they are different in many significant ways, they find themselves identical when both are abstracted to "food." I see no reason not to view art in similar terms.

I use "expression" and "art" synonymously for the most part, mostly because I don't care for the baggage of "art" and I'm aware of the ambiguity of "expression." The two concepts are slightly different, however, though closely related. "Art" is an expression that uses an artistic form. You can say art is a "formal expression," in that it uses a defined form to promote the expression.

But what is expression? Expression is related to communication, the transmission of information. Humans generally concentrate on transmitting information via denotative language. Denotative language suggests that one idea may be used as a representation of another idea. The sound "blug" is an arbitrary vocalization, but if I can tie that sound (one idea) to a particular object class (another idea), I have created a way to refer to the object class without having to point at it all the time--which will come in handy in cases in which the object class consists of man-hungry animals with sharp teeth and nasty dispositions.

However, there are peculiar ideas that are unable to be shared in this fashion. These ideas are ones essentially one's I can't "point at" in order to reference. They exist solely in our minds, and as no one can look into anyone else's mind, it would seem like we are doomed to leave these ideas un-transmitted.

The solution to this problem is the creation of a sort of proxy language, which is called connotative language. This language also uses objects in the "outside world," but not as representations of ideas. Instead, it arranges objects in a way that aims to induce the idea itself in another's mind. This inducement of ideas themselves instead of representations of ideas is "expression."

Going back to my utilitarianism, if I were able to induce an idea itself in you by using an expression in a particular form, wouldn't that be art? If I used music, of course you would say, "Yes." If I used sculpture or literature, you'd again say, "Yes." But would you hesitate if I expressed that idea to you through the rules of a game?

The expression of ideas that lie outside the realm of denotative language has long been a noble goal of humankind. It is an enterprise that has everything stacked against it, and yet there is a tremendous will to defeat the odds and connect on the deepest levels imaginable with family, friends, and neighbors. I see no point in turning our noses up at potential tools, at handicapping ourselves out of decency's sake. You don't get points for being "proper" in this endeavor, you only miss out on the chance to strengthen the bonds that unite us.

There was a time before they hung paintings in museums, before they taught music in schools. How did the people back then recognize art? Did they take a vote at town hall? Did they wait for their kings to proclaim it so? Or did they look at a painting or listen to some music and say to themselves, "Through its artifice shines the natural, through its ineffability rings the truth, through its design I see infinity, and in its creator I see myself"?

In the end, isn't that good enough?

Versus Series 4: Games vs. Play

2010-03-27T22:01:00.000-07:00

In one of his posts, Remy77077 pointed me to Chris Bateman's blog, particularly to a post about what Bateman terms "Agon." Bateman's musings about agon and other dynamics in play are fairly interesting, but reading him reminded me of a tendency in this budding school of game-making theory to conflate "play" with "games," as if the words were interchangeable. I think there are some crucial differences between the two ideas, and I hope clarifying those differences will go a long way in better explaining how I view the world of games and play.

The idea of "play" is one that captures two key elements: participation and imagination. Play involves activities that are designed to reward the participants. Playful activities care little if at all about outside spectators. At the same time, play relies on the imagination of its participants. At the heart of play lies a conceit, or many conceits, that the participants will have to accept in order to participate properly.

The first element differentiates play from such things as watching a movie or reading a book. While "watching" or "reading" may be considered activities, the initial activity in the creation of the movie or book was done with the eventual spectator in mind.

The second element differentiates play from business enterprises and town hall meetings. While some of you cheekier readers might comment that money and democracy are essentially imaginary, we'll hold on to the idea of the willing suspension of disbelief here. We'll say that participants in a playful activity will understand that the conceit is indeed untrue, but are willing to ignore that fact.

You might be noticing that games could fall easily within this definition, and that's because they do. Games are a subset of play. More specifically, they are a subset of structured play. Play does not require structure. An activity that centers on imaginary propositions can rightly be called play. This is not true for games.

As I said in The definition of a game, games are composed of four parts: goals, progression, obstacles, and strategies. Without all four, you might have a playful activity (fun, even!), but you don't have a game.

Some things that are true for play is not true for games, and of course vice versa. Bateman's post about agon starts to get confused when he starts talking about "one versus many" agon. Bateman's apparent failure to understand that video games support many forms of play (not just games), I believe is partly to blame for this. "Play" does not require challenge, but the idea of agon will always be at the heart of any game. While I can understand the differentiation between the "Hard" and "Easy" agon, the appeal of video games like Hulk or GTA is much better expressed simply through the ilinx dynamic than performing the mental contortions necessary to justify it through their agonistic properties.

Not all video games are games. The term "video game" is a rough designator, not a theoretical term. When we are talking about theories of games and play, we need to keep in mind the difference between them so as not to confuse our interlocutors or, more importantly, ourselves.