Game Research - The art, business, and science of video games

Date posted: July 16, 2008

Game journalist Jim Rossignol has travelled far in his quest to answer core gaming questions: Why are they here? and what are they good for?

He tells the story of this journey, and reflects on these worthy topics throughout his new book This Gaming Life. From the story of the author being fortunate enough to be fired from a dull life of financial journalism and to recountings of his encounters with people at the cutting edge of gaming, Rossignol offers observations about current trends in gaming and the cultural position of the medium.

The form is strictly essayistic and the stylistic approach may remind the reader of previous journalistic takes on grand gamer questions such as J.C. Herz (humorous) Joystick Nation and Steven Johnson’s (lucidly written) Everything Bad is Good for You.

Unlike these other authors, however, Rossignol is undecided and even admits to quite conflicting emotions about the value of digital gaming. Video games provides pleasurable experiences for multitudes of people, but at the same time consume large amounts of time with little direct outcome beyond personal enjoyment.

Initially this humble approach feels refreshing. But the questions remain questions as the author prefers to offer a variety of observations to actually tackling the issues in any depth. The book may teach you a few facts and make you rethink old questions, but it won’t make you laugh, it won’t make you change your mind, and it won’t leave you much wiser than you were to begin with. Reading This Gaming Life won’t hurt you, but the hours may be better spent stopping some on-screen alien invasion.

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since June 2007

Date posted: October 1, 2007

Review by Jonas Heide Smith

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The proliferation of games for serious purposes in recent years has been nothing short of astounding. Although using games for training and marketing is a phenomenon with a considerable history the present surge of interest marks an unmistakable mainstreaming of the concept that games can be efficient means of persuasion, branding, education, and communication. A telling example is the recent initiative of the Danish agency in charge of recycling of bottles and cans (Dansk Retursystem A/S). Wanting to increase knowledge and compliance the agency launched two web-based games.

The first (see image), which tied in with a larger campaign, lets the player retaliate against non-recyclers by firing trash at them through office building rubbish chutes. The other one which has an optional multi-player mode puts the player behind the wheel of a can collection lorry speeding through town against the clock to pick up irresponsibly discarded cans.

It is clear that communicators across domains have quite suddenly become convinced that games can forcefully help spread messages. What is less clear, however, is why this sudden change of heart (after all, games have been with us for some time) has come about. For instance, it seems difficult to point to new persuasive evidence that games are measurably more efficient than traditional tools for teaching or persuasion.

It is into this landscape of seemingly ungrounded enthusiasm that Ian Bogost, assistant professor at Georgia Institute of Technology, releases his ambitious Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames. Few seem better placed to do so. For some years now Bogost has refined his thinking on the game medium both through academic channels (Bogost, 2005; 2006; 2007) and through the co-edited (with game theorist Gonzalo Frasca) weblog www.watercoolergames.org, a site which seeks to be “a forum for the uses of videogames in advertising, politics, education, and other everyday activities, outside the sphere of entertainment”. In parallel, Bogost and his game studio has produced several titles within the category traditionally labeled “serious games”.

Bogost dislikes that label and understanding why is key to appreciating Bogost’s larger philosophy. But initially it is worth considering just what the world of academic videogame rhetorics needs at this point. First of all, the plethora of competing labels and perfunctorily defined buzz-words floating about calls out for a careful survey of the field and a framework for analyzing the variety of specimen in the fast-growing serious games biotope. Second, we need a sense of the relative abilities of videogames to persuade; that is we need a theory of how, why and when they do persuade and preferably some documentation that they do in fact persuade. Bogost convincingly supplies the former but does not fully tackle the latter. No convenient model of game-based persuasion appears fully-formed in Bogost’s text. Instead we get a meticulously researched and clearly composed treasure-trove of examples alongside various hints of a larger theory. Let’s look briefly at what those hints tell us.

Centrally, Bogost argues that the noteworthy communicative characteristic of games is that they can employ “procedural rhetoric” defined as “a practice of using processes persuasively” (p3) whose “arguments are made not though the construction of words or images, but through the authorship of rules of behavior, the construction of dynamic models.” (p29). Other media can employ words and images and it is only through representing relationships and processes through rules and reward models that games require and deserve a particular rhetorical perspective. Games, to loosely paraphrase Bogost, lets players participate in the making of claims and through this mental process (as opposed to mere on-screen interactivity) games may persuade.

These persuasive games, importantly, can be of any type. In a criticism of the “serious games movement”, Bogost emphasizes how the study of game persuasion should not limit itself to those games which are self-professedly “serious”. To Bogost, such a delimitation is “a foolish gesture that wrongly undermines the expressive power of videogames in general, and highly crafted, widely appealing commercial games in particular.” (p59).

This criticism carries over to B. J. Fogg’s work on “captology” summarized in his book Persuasive Technologies (Fogg, 2003). To Bogost, the problem with Fogg is that he limits the perspective to deliberate messages and intended outcomes of computer design thus leaving out real social or mental consequences unforeseen by designers. But more pressingly, perhaps, Bogost takes issue with how “captology is not fundamentally concerned with altering the user’s fundamental conception of how real-world processes work. Rather, it is primarily intended to craft new technological constraints that impose conceptual or behavioral change in users.”. In other words, captology is the effort to change the environment and thereby affect behavior, while Bogost’s vision of persuasive games is one in which you change the people. One ties your hands behind your back so you can’t smoke; the other makes you no longer want to light up.

Here we see Bogost’s rhetorical philosophy quite clearly outlined: People should be convinced, not coerced.

From his reflections on the proper communicative uses of games, Bogost goes on to discuss persuasive games in terms of politics, advertising, and learning. Many thought-provoking, some quite funny, and a few directly baroque, examples are scrutinized with a strong focus on the efforts of the designers to actually make statements through processes (and not just through auxiliary text etc.). Bogost’s method is textual analysis. He looks for possible interpretations and thus leans on the logic of classical rhetorical analysis which relied chiefly on the analyst working on a text. The actual listener, or player, in Bogost’s case, is an abstraction. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas orients the player towards its crime-filled missions through its design and from this Bogost argues that

As the player exits the open urban environment and reenters the missions, he does so willingly, not under the duress of a complex socio-historical precondition. This rhetoric implicitly affirms the metaphor of criminal behavior as depravity. (p118).

Bogost does not claim that all players necessarily reach the same conclusions but this type of analysis does arguably make very strong assumptions about actual player interpretations without empirical basis. This approach in turn highlights the rather modest attention in the book to describing the exact working of procedural rhetorics and to documenting its efficiency. We hear little of why engaging with processes are a useful way of understanding the real-world phenomena that they represent. We are given very few leads to theoretical literature that might lend credence to the idea that personal engagement is important in persuasion. And we are not informed of one single instance in which anybody changed his mind or behavior after playing a game.

Bogost does well to tie his discussion to classical and visual rhetorics as well as captology. But practically passing the entire field of “persuasion research” which provides both theoretical models (e.g. O’Keefe, 1990) and empirical studies of the effects of various aspects of computerized persuasion (e.g. Sundar & Kim, 2005) is a curious choice. These omissions may leave the reader on shaky ground as to evaluating the very importance of games as tools for persuasion or critical thought.

Of course, few (sub)fields come nicely gift-wrapped and fully articulated in a single volume. Persuasive Games creates order from chaos and puts recent game developments into a much-needed historical perspective. This is an invaluable service to the field and the thoughtful treatment of a wide range of little-known games is inspiring as a case of game analysis in action. These achievements make me recommend the book warmly, while looking forward to Bogost’s future fleshing out of the theory and empirical merits of persuasive games.

References
Bogost, I. (2005). Frame and Metaphor in Political Games. Paper presented at the DiGRA 2005: Changing Views - Worlds in Play, Vancouver, Canada.

Bogost, I. (2006). Playing Politics: Videogames for Politics, Activism, and Advocacy. First Monday(Special issue number 7).

Bogost, I. (2007). Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Fogg, B. J. (2003). Persuasive technology : using computers to change what we think and do. Amsterdam ; Boston: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers.

O’Keefe, D. J. (1990). Persuasion: Theory and Research. Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage Publications.

Sundar, S. S., & Kim, J. (2005). Interactivity and Persuasion: Influencing attitudes with information and involvement. Journal of Interactive Advertising, 5(2), 6-29.

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since June 2007

Date posted: August 21, 2007
Updated: Aug 23, 2007

By Jonas Heide Smith

No medium exists in a vacuum. Media draw upon established forms of expression and depends on existing hardware. Only gradually do they evolve towards aesthetic independence and take on forms that are less derivative. As a medium evolves, its practitioners usually try to “liberate” the medium from what is often seen as the dominance of external phenomena – often more established forms – and claim that the medium in question is important, artistically and academically, in its own right. Video games are presently in the late stages of this phase. To illustrate the entire process let us first, as an example, look to another medium which has moved beyond any inferiority complexes.

Cinema as an example of medium development
In film’s infancy, the enormous possibilities of the medium were poorly understood. While the notion of moving images was awe-inspiring, movie pioneers Louis and Auguste Lumiere were initially satisfied with simply placing a camera on a tripod and leave it to capture whatever went on in the frame. The earliest movies were of workers exiting a factory or a train pulling into a station. There was no staging, no narrative to speak of, and no editing. Essentially, the Lumieres worked as if they had a still camera that happened to capture moving images.

The concept of editing was a radical one. So innovative was this concept that it was unclear whether movie-goers would be able to make sense of a film’s disjointed points-of-view, and lack of a clear real-life counterpart. After nearly two decades of editorial experimentation, in 1913 D.W. Griffiths dramatically altered the future of the medium. Griffiths grasped the importance of a wide range of techniques. None were entirely new, but they had not yet been used efficiently and certainly never combined to form one compelling dramatic vision. Griffiths’s Birth of a Nation featured dramatic close-ups and dramatic cross-editing (cutting repeatedly between interconnected scenes).¹

Birth of a Nation

In the midst of these innovations, however, some of Griffiths’s contemporaries used an opposite approach in order to establish the seriousness of films: they sought to link film to already established art forms, mostly theatre. Thus, a surprisingly wide range of films merely showed theatre performances of classics; today the term “filmed theatre” refers to a truly primitive approach to film making. Nevertheless, it represented a particular evolutionary stage that has parallels in game design, as we shall see below.
With the introduction of sound in the late 1920s, the “talkies” paved the way for much more complex narratives and for the wide-ranging dramatic uses of sound that we take for granted today. And with it a new controversy arose, as some argued that the addition of sound changed the audience’s experience and threatened the medium. There is a direct comparison with the now-mostly-historical rivalry between text based adventure games and their graphic counterparts. Text game designers often bemoaned the loss of “that special something” – like the active appeal to a player’s imagination – which made the old games superior, and which they felt was lost with the addition of graphics.

With the introduction of color film in the 1930s we see another interesting shift in the medium’s development. In these early years, color sequences represented fantastic situations or dream moments, whereas “normal” life was rendered in black and white; in The Wizard of OZ, for instance, the bleak reality of Dorothy’s Kansas home is monochromatic, whereas the dream-like vision of Oz is intensely colorful. But today the situation has reversed, and black-and-white film is generally reserved for dreams or flash-backs.

The Wizard of Oz

In the 1960s, cinema entered its rebellious phase. Film was no longer simply entertainment for the illiterate masses. The believers claimed that film had special properties and functions not found in other media. Notably, critics and film-makers associated with the French Nouvelle Vague (or “New Wave”) argued that film was comparable to literature. Although film offered new forms of narrative, the movie director was comparable to the book author² using his camera “as a pen”. And as several of these auteurs – from Pier Paolo Pasolini to Ingmar Bergman – rose to worldwide prominence, and as the academy grew more interested in an analytical approach to film, the artistic ambitions of the medium could no longer be denied. Today, cinema no longer has to defend itself as a form of artistic expression. No one argues that films cannot be considered art – but we must not forget that this evolution was many decades in the making.

The development of video games as a medium
Let us approach video games in a similar fashion. For present purposes, we are interested in the development of their relationship with other media and other phenomena, rather than their aesthetic development per se.

Did 1962’s Spacewar borrow from previous media? As to form, we cannot say that it copied anything directly, although it is interesting that the one-screen, fixed perspective is reminiscent of the Lumieres’ first films. As to content, on the other hand, the game designers were explicitly inspired by science fiction books and low-brow action movies (Graetz, 2001). Spacewar also borrowed from non-electronic games. It mimicked certain skill-based ball games and, more importantly, it required two players. Thus it was a continuation of previous game types – from tennis to chess – which had mostly been multi-player.

With the growth of arcade games in the early 1980s, game designers drew heavily on pop culture symbols. Game cabinets explicitly cited popular movies, which, although often irrelevant to gameplay, enriched the game experience by framing it within a larger narrative. For instance, Shark Jaws, published by Atari in 1975, shamelessly referred to the blockbuster movie Jaws (itself based on a book) in order to piggyback on the film’s popularity.

1976 was a watershed year for video games for two reasons. First, Night Driver challenged the dominance of the third-person perspective by having the player drive into the screen from a first-person perspective. This mirrors discoveries made by movie-makers in the 1910s and 1920s who found new ways to work with the camera and perspective. Second, another driving game, Death Race, shattered the status of games as harmless fun by sparking widespread fear of the detrimental effects of on-screen violence. The game, (based on the movie Death Race 2000) had players control a car in order to run down “gremlins”, who looked like little men, an activity unacceptable to many.

Although the arcade business involved intense creativity, few entertained the notion that games should be considered anything more than entertainment. This public perception was rooted in the fact that games were closely associated with the teenagers who played them, and the somewhat dark and disreputable arcades that housed them. This perception changed with the release of Zork in 1980, an early adventure game. Games could now approximate literature. Those who wrote about video games started describing them in radically different terms. In return, adventure game designers began the attempt to separate themselves from their less-lofty arcade relatives. Adventure games were called ‘interactive fiction’, story-games, compu-novels etc. (e.g. Rothstein, 1983).

The effort to distance adventure games from other game genres can be interpreted in two ways. On the one hand, this evolutionary step was could be seen as fully justified, since these game types are radically different and offer far richer or deeper experiences. Compared to then-contemporary action games such as Space Invaders, adventure games could offer far more complex and emotionally rewarding stories. Furthermore, because they were interactive, adventure games were not “mere” stories but offered new techniques and pleasures. They offered a chance to experiment with alternative story lines, and enabled the player to confront the consequences of choice and the very nature of narrative form.

On the other hand, we can see this effort of separation as a case of “filmed theatre”, an unreflective yet strategic attempt to piggyback on the legitimacy of established art forms. Adventure games essentially miss that which is special about games. By confining the player to a linear story, designers display a lack of courage to engage in shared authorship. These games illustrate an immature understanding of the medium, one which merely makes games subservient to literature.

As the reader will have noticed these two positions do not represent answers to a scientific question. Stripped bare, the discussion is fundamentally about what makes games good or bad – and this is not something that can be decided by game scholars. Let us note, then, that adventure games appealed to many, while others considered them boring. Considering the target audience, the struggle by many adventure game designers to frame their work in terms of literature was a successful marketing strategy. Text adventure games vanished from the mainstream in the late 1980s. But ten years later they were followed into near-oblivion by their direct descendants, the graphical adventure games (though there have been a few successful recent titles, such as Microïds’ Siberia from 2002).

The late nineties saw another far more coordinated and successful attempt to argue for the relevance of games as aesthetic objects. First of all, game design had reached a level of complexity where professionalization was necessary. Gone were the days where single individuals worked out of their garage to create popular games. To compete in the game business, “developers” became teams of highly specialized individuals overseen by project managers and backed by dedicated marketing departments. New professional organizations such as the International Game Developer’s Association sprung up and the sharing of knowledge on the intricacies of design and development increased.

Meanwhile, the academic world was rapidly becoming interested in games as aesthetic and cultural objects, rather than as simply a sub-genre of literature or a dangerous social phenomenon. The IT University of Copenhagen (in 2001) and the university of Manchester (in 2002) held the first international conferences on video games. Books such as Espen Aarseth’s Cybertext (1997) or Steven Poole’s Trigger Happy (1999) highlighted the status of games as new and important cultural objects.

Further evidence came with the rise of ludology (see Smith, 2004) which was a move towards studying games first and foremost in their capacity as rule-based systems. Today, both the analysis of video games continues unabated. For instance in journals such as Game Studies and Games and Culture and through the work of associations like the Digital Games Research Association.

The relationship between games and cinema
Video games are compared and contrasted to movies more often than to any other media. As audiovisual works, games have clear connections to cinema and indeed many games have suffered from what we can call “cinema envy”. Though the two differ greatly in the way they present on-screen activity, games have adopted a variety of conventions established by Hollywood style cinema. For instance, games employ a range of “continuity techniques”. Most obviously, they do not skip frames which would disorient the player. The term for a break in continuity is “lag” and is generally considered a flaw. Nor do they normally break the 180° “rule”, which states that you cannot cut between two camera positions that are more than 180° apart from one another. Doing so would reverse the direction of on-screen objects; a person moving in one direction would suddenly seem to be moving in another.

Nowhere is this more obvious, of course, than in games which closely mimic the structure and form of narrative films. Adventure games like Gabriel Knight III uphold these conventions almost completely, as do games with scripted editing like the Resident Evil series.

Resident Evil 2: The game uses scripted editing that complies with Hollywood conventions.

While similarities stand out, one crucial difference between games and movies relates to the use of editing. Some games have semi-linear narratives and employ almost the entire arsenal of movie conventions, but many do not. Action games like Kung Fu Master and Doom, for instance, do not divide the on-screen action into sequences of shots, but rather display continuous streams of images that stop only when the player reaches a new level. Doom uses two techniques that are impossible in narrative film for dramatic or practical purposes. Firstly, the game uses the first-person-perspective only. The best known attempt to tell a film from the first-person perspective was Robert Montgomery’s 1947 Lady in the Lake; while interesting, the effect is less than compelling. Secondly, the game’s lack of editing is virtually impossible in movies. It would require super-human planning and luck, and would do away with many fundamental film techniques such as close-ups, cross-editing, reaction shots, and establishing shots. Perhaps the ease with which the Doom player orients himself is a testament to the success of letting the player control perspective with his mouse or keyboard.

Cross-media titles
The video game business has a longstanding affair with Hollywood. Mostly, it is a win-win situation. One may piggyback on the popularity or marketing efforts of the other and, increasingly, one may directly use material produced in the making of the other. Also, the two do not really compete for the same money or time. Since the two media generally provide different experiences it is not an either-or situation for many viewers/players.

However, the relationship has undeniably been fraught with artistically questionable products. In this category, Atari’s infamous E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial outshines most others. The game failed so spectacularly that, arguably, the link between movies and video games was compromised for years. It was evident beyond any doubt that a good movie did not automatically make for a good game. For reasons already mentioned, however, the temptation did not vanish. The mid-1980s saw the release of games like Ghostbusters, Gremlins, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Aliens. Since those days, many movie blockbusters (at least those with strong action elements) have been increasingly accompanied by one or more games. Many of these adaptations have worked well, but it is noteworthy that practically none of these games are seen as groundbreaking. Recently, attempts have been made to go beyond the mere translation of movie to game. Enter the Matrix, for instance, tried including scenes that were not shown in the movie Matrix: Reloaded in an attempt to create a more exciting synergy between the media. Reviewers were not impressed. Influential Gamespot.com described it as “just another licensed game that doesn’t do justice to its source material”, while PC Gamer felt that had it not been for the Matrix setting one would be left with “an action game that really does nothing new - and looks pretty average doing it”. More recently (in 2004), Electronic Arts attempted yet another alternative strategy, by releasing the James Bond game 007: Everything or Nothing as an original Bond title without a supporting movie. The developers scanned actors who appeared in the movies in order to have game characters mimic their movement styles and mapped their faces onto the characters. This attempt was met with much more critical success than Enter the Matrix.

We also see movies based on games, but with far less regularity. Oddly enough from a design perspective, the games chosen for the silver screen have mostly been action games. The Super Mario Brothers movie is based on a game which revolves around the less than epic kinetics of jumping between platforms while avoiding small animals. The movie obviously had to move quite far from the defining features of the game. This is less the case with the movies based on street fighting games like Double Dragon, Street Fighter and gory, arena-based Mortal Kombat. These games can be converted into action-packed movie narrative easily and directly, although the movies have not been particularly ambitious productions in terms of budgets. Creepy survival horror games translate almost directly, though the attempt is not always successful. Reviewing the Resident Evil movie, The New York Times despaired that “The movie has a frantic staccato style that is more game-oriented than cinematic.” (Holden, 2002). The first real attempt at a full budget Hollywood game adaptation was Simon West’s 2001 Tomb Raider. Building on the fame of gaming’s most celebrated heroine, Lara Croft, the movie saw Angelina Jolie traveling the world to fight crime and recover archaeological treasure. Practically universally disparaged by critics, the movie was a hit at the box office inspiring a 2003 sequel, Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life.

Continuity and self-reflexivity
In narrative literature and movies, suspension of disbelief is generally achieved by presenting a coherent, self-contained world and a story that does not call attention to its artificial nature. In mainstream cinema we do not see the movie production crew on-screen and in novels we do not hear about the author. Similarly, we might think that successful games immerse the player in an experience by supporting his suspension of disbelief. But some games seem to sin against this rule by specifically highlighting their gameness. Typically, this happens by referring directly to the game interface (“Now, press X to jump across the gap”). In some cases, however, game designers include more playful features that bridge the gap between representation and real life. In the adventure game Planetfall, for instance, when the player wished to save his position, the robot sidekick Floyd would ask “Are we going to do something dangerous now?”. Something similar happens in Prince of Persia: Sands of Time when the narrator comments on the death of the player with phrases like “No no, that’s not what happened!” drawing attention to the fact that the game’s action is a retelling of past events. In a sequence in Metal Gear Solid: Twin Snakes, an in-game enemy “reads” the player’s mind by analyzing certain data on the PS2 memory card. In many real-time-strategy games (such as Warcraft II) units will start addressing the player directly if clicked repeatedly without being given orders.

Such gimmicks arguably break the illusion and remind the player of the artificiality of the situation. Film makers go to great lengths to avoid drawing attention to “the fourth wall”, a term originating in theatre to describe the imagined wall at the side of the stage from which the audience looks in. From a traditionalist Hollywood perspective, this illusion must be preserved for the spectators to be able to lose themselves in the narrative. Film-makers of the modernist school have challenged these classic film-making conventions. An example is the camera conspicuously entering our field of vision in Ingmar Bergman’s Persona, thus stressing the representational nature of the action. Designer Ernest Adams has a very unambiguous opinion about illusion-disruptive techniques in games: “Such cute gimmicks don’t improve the players’ experience; they harm it. It’s a direct slap in the face.” (Adams, 2004). Here, Adams voices a common notion that games and all media must uphold certain rules and conventions that help transport the player to an imaginary space. The slightest incongruence may violently rip the player out of this space, rendering the experience shallow and imperfect. There is an opposing position, however. Game designers Salen and Zimmerman define “the immersive fallacy” as “the idea that the pleasure of a media experience lies in its ability to sensually transport the participant into an illusory, simulated reality.” (Salen & Zimmerman, 2004, p. 450). They argue that, to the contrary, we become engrossed in games through the activity of play, which necessarily entails that the player, at some level, is aware that the situation is at once real and make-believe.³

Taken to extremes the idea that “immersion is always broken by self-reflexivity thus hurting the experience” and the idea that “self-reflexivity in games is never an issue since the player is aware of the game’s nature” both pose problems. Even Adams admits that many games do in fact make strategic use of mixing fictional levels. In the case of real-time-strategy games the player is probably less immersed in a narrative than feverishly processing strategic opportunities in her head and thus not likely to be torn from any deep-felt immersion. In games that rely on the progression of a richly textured narrative such antics may well seem inappropriate, however. In other words: we need to take into account genre when considering the effects of immersion-disruptive techniques.

Interactivity
Games require the active participation of players and the way a game plays out depends on input from players. This, at a very concrete and basic level, sets games apart from linear media like novels or movies. A typical game is more like an amusement park than like a novel. Generally, the concept of interactivity has been associated with positive notions of freedom and the liberation of media users. Having people make choices and exert influence was, particularly during the 1990s, one of the greatest emancipatory promises of computing and networking. Game scholar Espen Aarseth (1997) points out that attempts to produce nonlinear fiction are not tied exclusively to computer technology but can be found throughout the entire history of written literature. He aims to cut through the ‘hype’ of interactivity, seeing the term as highly ideological and as connoting revolutionary or utopian expectations that can never be fulfilled:

The industrial rhetoric produced concepts such as interactive newspapers, interactive video, interactive television, and even interactive houses, all implying that the role of the consumer had (or would very soon) change for the better. […] To declare a system interactive is to endorse it with a magic power. (Aarseth, 1997, p. 48).

What is interactivity? Media Scholar Jens F. Jensen has emphasized that the concept is multi-discursive having significantly different meanings in different fields (Jensen, 1997). In particular, he focuses on three. In sociology, the term “interaction” refers to “the relationship between two or more people who, in a given situation, mutually adapt their behavior and actions to each other.” Communication and media studies have a broader definition of interaction including “processes that take place between receivers on the one hand and a media message on the other.” Finally, Informatics uses interaction as “the process that takes place when a human user operates a machine“. These uses are quite different but building upon the most influential definitions of the word, Jensen proposes one of his own: Interactivity is “a measure of a media’s potential ability to let the user exert an influence on the content and/or form of the mediated communication.” This is probably not too far from the colloquial use of the term. Interactivity refers to the meaningful ways in which the user becomes a co-author by directly manipulating variables. DVD viewers are technically able to edit their own narrative and can influence the form of the movie by adjusting the lighting or sound. But the video game player is usually able to determine the configuration of the signs presented to him or her on-screen and through the speakers. Again, the issue is genre-dependent. Although all games have an abstract “potential ability” to allow the user co-authorship, adventure games do this only modestly while MMORPGs lie at the other end of the spectrum, in principle letting every player choice impact the future of the world as long as the server is running.

Most discussions of interactivity in video games are muddled by the fact that they assume that users of other media are passive. This corresponds poorly to the understanding employed by most media scholars who argue that media use such as television viewing demands a high degree of cognitive activity on the part of the viewer. To understand a novel, a movie or a television drama, the reader/viewer must make a large number of inferences, fill in a number of blanks and often deal with numerous narrative threads. The meaning of a movie is something that the viewer must largely construct cognitively from what are essentially patterns of light on a screen. Also, media users sometimes make interpretations that are different from or even opposite to the intended meaning. When discussing the interactive elements of games we must be careful not to be swept away by the positive connotations of the term and we must be quite precise about what we mean so as not to ignore the “active” nature of all media use.

A few remarks towards the end
We can, contrary to common arguments, learn much about video games by looking at other media, even film. While analogies can of course run out of control, the cultural development of games has many similarities with that of film and the two media obviously inspire each other thematically and aesthetically to great extents.
At present, studies of the cultural reception of video games during the course of their four decades of existence are sparse. In particular, cross-national studies of how various cultures have dealt with the arrival of video games on the cultural landscape would be illuminating; not least for developers and publishers who are still facing some opposition from policy makers and from those who would delegate gaming to the domain of children and the young. Such studies would help us understand an important part of the video game ecology, the effects of which - however subtly - influences both games, their creators, and their players.

References
Adams, E. (2004, 9th of July). Postmodernism and the Three Types of Immersion. Gamasutra.com.

Graetz, J. (2001). The Origin of Spacewar! In V. Burnham (Ed.), Supercade, a visual history of the videogame age 1971-1984. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.

Holden, S. (2002, 15th of March). They May Be High-Tech, But They’re Still the Undead. The New York Times.

Jensen, J. F. (1997). ‘Interactivity’. Tracking a New Concept in Media and Communication Studies. Paper presented at the The XIII Nordic Conference on Mass Communication Research, Jyväsklä.

Poole, S. (1999). Trigger happy : the inner life of videogames. London: Fourth Estate.

Rothstein, E. (1983, 8th of May). Reading and Writing: Participatory Novels. The New York Times Book Review.

Salen, K., & Zimmerman, E. (2004). Rules of Play - Game Design Fundamentals. London: MIT Press.

Smith, J. H. (2004). Does gameplay have politics? [Electronic Version], 2004. Retrieved 13th of April 2004 from http://www.game-research.com/art_gameplay_politics.asp.

Aarseth, E. (1997). Cybertext : perspectives on ergodic literature. London: Johns Hopkins University Press.

1. It also, unpleasantly, features the Ku Klux Klan as heroic protectors of sound values creating an unfortunate situation for film historians who tend to praise the movie’s form but not its contents. [↩]
2. The term used was auteur, which does not necessarily translate into (book) author. Their point was that the director, although engaged in a collective form of expression, could be the single determining force behind the movie. [↩]
3. This is also Jesper Juuls’s argument in his book Half-Real (2005). [↩]

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since June 2007

Date posted: June 18, 2007

Pat Herrigan and Noah Wardrip-Fruin (eds.): Second Person: Role-Playing and Story in Games and Playable Media

A review by Julian Kücklich.

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It has been three years since my review of First Person: New Media as Story, Performance and Game appeared in Dichtung-digital. To say that the review created a controversy would be an understatement; in fact, the backlash against the review was so intense that I refrained from writing reviews for more than a year after its publication. To this day, the review is accompanied by a warning that informs the reader that “this review contains inaccurate information about the circumstances of the book’s publication.” This is due to my claim that the contributors to First Person were “given the opportunity to update their writings, but elected to squander it” – which turned out to be false.

Three years older, but none the wiser, I approach the task of writing a review of Second Person: Role-Playing and Story in Games and Playable Media with a certain wariness, but also with the hope of righting wrongs that I may have inflicted unintentionally because I simply had too high expectations. Therefore, I started reading Second Person with my expectations significantly lessened, but still expecting it to be an improvement on its predecessor– which should allow me to write a more level-headed review of the book. The fact that Second Person is no longer entrenched in the theory wars between narratologists and ludologists, and draws on a more diverse pool of contributors, makes this task much easier.

First off, the list of contributors bears some reflection. In their introduction, the editors assert that the “authors, artists, and theoreticians in Second Person address the exigencies of playable media in a number of ways, and a number of voices.” However, I cannot help but feel that the chorus of voices could be much more diverse. Of the 50 contributors, eleven are women. Most of the authors live and work in the United States. Their backgrounds are almost exclusively Western. Admittedly, this is a problem that plagues not only new media studies but also many other fields of research, but this is precisely why it is a point worth reiterating.

Another point that should be addressed before I talk about the content of Second Person is the book’s format. First Person was set up with much fanfare as an “imagined panel discussion” between the contributors, which meant that each essay was accompanied by two respondents’ commentaries as well as the author’s reply to these commentaries. This sounds confusing, and indeed it was. In my review I described it as a “tangle of arguments and fragmentary counter-arguments” in which the reader frantically searches for a common thread. Therefore, I am very pleased to see that this concept has been abandoned.

The essays in Second Person are divided into three sections, entitled “Tabletop Systems”, “Computational Fictions” and “Real Worlds”. While the first one deals with role-playing and storytelling systems that do not require a computer, the second part is about interactive media including computer games, cyberdrama, and hypertext. The third part is dedicated to games and artworks that are designed in such a way that they change the players’ perception of the world they live in. Additionally, there is an appendix that includes games by Greg Costikyan, John Tynes, and James Wallis.

In their introduction, the editors claim that the contributors to Second Person are “not interested in questions such as ‘What is a game?’” – however, this question lurks in the background of almost all the essays in the first section of the book. Thus, Greg Costikyan defines a game as a “system of constraints” and uses this definition to differentiate game-like storytelling devices such as Julio Cortazar’s Hopscotch from game systems which can be used to tell a story. In doing so, Costikyan covers a lot of ground that has already been covered by scholars such as Espen Aarseth, but he does not add anything to his structuralist analysis of ergodic texts.

Costikyan thus sets the tone for the first part of the book. Like many other contributors to Second Person, he still clings to the ideal of ‘interactive fiction’ – an art form that has been superseded commercially, aesthetically and technologically – and propagates the myth of the game designer as romantic author. This is also true for Rebecca Borgstrom’s borderline incoherent, formalist analysis of her game Exalted: The Fair Folk, in which she comes to the unsurprising conclusion that a role-playing session is an information-generating process and that “it is possible to go significantly further in developing a formal language for studying this process […], and that this would facilitate more efficient role-playing game design.”

The formalism that haunts the field of game design theory – represented by writers such as Jesper Juul, Katie Salen, and Eric Zimmerman – is thus revealed as a powerful meme that has taken root in the minds of many game designers. However, while Salen and Zimmerman at least recognize the fact that games are inscribed into cultural contexts, the embeddedness of games is largely disregarded by the contributors to Second Person. This becomes especially obvious in the accounts of the development of various RPG systems – from Dungeons & Dragons to Call of Cthulhu – which make hardly any reference to the socio-political climate in which their development took place.

Overall, however, the first part is especially interesting for researchers in the field of digital games, because it demonstrates the manifold possibilities of integrating storytelling and games in non-computational media. The second part, by comparison, offers less interesting examples and less interesting writing. While some of the descriptive pieces in the first part are nothing but post mortems or thinly veiled advertisements, some of the shorter contributions in the second part seem to serve no purpose than to include the names of some renowned researchers in new media, such as Lev Manovich and Marie-Laure Ryan.

Again, there is an abundance of examples, particularly in the area of interactive fiction, but ultimately most of these are so obscure as to render them invisible outside of the small circle of academics who study them. Thus, I found Jordan Mechner’s fairly technical post mortem of The Sands of Time much more relevant to contemporary media research than the theoretically sophisticated contribution by Nick Montfort on interactive fiction. On the end of the spectrum, Chris Crawford’s speculative essay about a programming language for interactive storytelling is so completely out of touch with the reality of contemporary media that it borders on science-fiction.

One of the few genuinely ground-breaking essays in the entire book is D. Fox Harrell’s essay on the computational narrative generation system GRIOT, in which he manages to blend the domains of cognitive linguistics and algebraic semiotics, arriving at a non-deterministic model which goes significantly beyond the structuralist paradigm so prevalent in Second Person. This is a conceptualisation which could help to overcome the limitations of formalist approaches, such as Mateas and Stern’s framework for their interactive drama Façade. Accordingly, Mateas and Stern’s contribution to Second Person focuses more on the failures than the undeniable achievements of their model.

The contributors in the third part of the book look at alternate reality games (ARGs), persuasive games, and massively multiplayer games, as well as more experimental forms of play such as improvisational theatre. Clearly, this is the miscellaneous section of the book, and it is hard to discern any kind of overarching theme in the contributions to this section. The blend of technological utopianism with thoroughly conservative modernist aesthetics which is evident in John Tynes’ opening essay, is characteristic of the contributions to this sections, most of which adhere to a televisual logic of exposure and persuasion rather than a new media logic of multitudinous manipulation.

This attitude is obvious in Tynes’ insistence on overcoming the paradigm of escapism, and arriving at “authentic experience”, but it is also present in the contribution by Ian Bogost and Gonzalo Frasca, who describe the process of creating a persuasive game used in an electoral campaign in the United States. This is a particular interesting example of how theoretically advanced positions are rejected in favour of simplistic models of representational identity and monolithic citizenship in order to package politics into a game. Considering Bogost’s sophisticated argumentation in Unit Operations, this political naiveté is particularly unfortunate.

A similar unwillingness to reflect one’s role as a researcher in the creation of games is evident in Jane McGonigal’s contribution to the book. While she is aware of the problematic power relationship between the players of an alternate reality game (ARG) and the ‘puppet masters’ who orchestrate the game, she only reluctantly admits her own role in ‘I Love Bees’, and she never mentions the fact that the game was part of the marketing campaign for Halo 2. This refusal to engage with the economic context in which ARGs take place threatens to render her entire argument moot because she disregards capital as a source of power. Even more dubious is her suggestion that player performativity solves the problem of unequal power distribution in ARGs.

While there are some essays in the third part which raise interesting questions – particularly Jill Walker’s reflections on networked quest structures in World of Warcraft – this must be considered the weakest part of the book. This is at least partially due to the fact that it lacks coherence, and there is hardly any interplay between the individual essays. This, however, is a problem that plagues the book throughout. While there is a semblance of coherence in the first two parts, it is quickly revealed to be superficial. While First Person tried to hard to engage the contributors in a conversation, Second Person has given up on the idea of intertextuality almost entirely.

In this respect, Second Person is very much like an RPG source book. It contains a lot of information, but most of this information is only potentially useful. And while I wouldn’t want to fault the book for trying to integrate description with analysis, the balance between these two modes appears off-kilter, especially considering the fact that it is much easier to find good descriptions than good analyses of games. Considering the recent inflation of game-related books it would have made much more sense to create a companion website with background materials for the book than to put all this material in the book itself.

In the final analysis, then, Second Person is clearly an improvement on its predecessor, albeit a small one. It is a relief to see that the theory wars and the concomitant essentialist theoretical positions do no longer occupy much space in this book, and that the editors chose to continue their integrative policy vis-à-vis phenomena that would not necessarily fall under the ludological definition of a game. At the same time, it remains unclear which audience this book is trying to reach. Most academics will probably reject it as too shallow, while game designers are likely to shun it for its lack of practical advice. Considering that Second Person strikes me as fairly cliquish and exclusionary, I fear that the only people who will take an interest in it are the contributors themselves.

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Date posted: May 9, 2007
Updated: Aug 23, 2007

Review by John Edwards (John Edwards is pursuing his MA at the University of the West of England and plans to begin PhD studies in games during 2007)

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The title of this book suggests a comprehensive overview of the field of game studies and possibly answers to fundamental questions. Alarm bells begin to ring, however, in the Preface, where the editors discuss the potential in games for ‘new ways of developing and telling stories’, and how games have ‘become a focus for new enthusiasms, expertise and communities’, declaring that ‘digital games sit at the centre of a significant combination of cultural, industrial, technological and social phenomena.’ All of this may well be true, but the authors here tend to steer clear of what lies at the heart of the gaming experience, choosing instead to map out areas on its periphery. The editors describe it as ‘an attempt to pull together the diversity and richness of research on digital games’ but there’s very little here about the practice of playing games. One of the contributors, Alberto Alvisi, recognises that ‘games are about creativity, eye-to-hand coordination, skill and fun, and to some extent can be considered a new form of art’, but such considerations are barely touched upon throughout this book.

The book is divided into three parts: History and Production, Theories and Approaches, and Key Debates. In Part 1, John Kirriemuir offers a beginner’s thumbnail chronology of the evolution of game technologies. As such it is a useful precis, although claims such as: ‘we moved from a dot on the screen, to games which share the style and technology of many Hollywood blockbusters’ are pretty useless in that they refer only to the visual aspect of games.

Aphra Kerr takes a political economy approach to the international business of making games, from the pre-development stage to retail. She includes a lot of sales charts, and traces the ‘cycle of activities involved in creating a game and delivering it to the consumer.’ Kerr does an impressive job of marshalling her stats, but her conclusions are unsurprising, for example: ‘Recent research would appear to suggest that the growth of licences combined with consolidation in the digital games industry is making it increasingly difficult for new ideas and third party developers to enter the market.’

Stages of game design are examined by Jon Sykes, who offers (dread phrase!) ‘a set of conceptual tools’. He claims that ‘interactive digital games are but another chapter in the long history of gaming, and the process of game design is much the same, regardless of the actual medium in which the game is situated.’ To support his case he identifies five stages of game design: 1. Concept identification 2. Research 3. Defining game mechanics 4. Balancing game mechanics 5. Game evaluation. He describes game developers’ use of a persona, ‘a fictitious character who embodies the desires and needs of the target audience’ and seems to think this is a good idea. He also recommends the use of ‘mood boards’ to help define and communicate the ‘affective tone’ of a game.

The theories and approaches of Part 2 are derived from existing academic fields. Julian Kuchlich questions how applicable literary theory is to analysing games by attempting three approaches, Poetics (conventions and rules), Hermeneutics (meaning) and Aesthetics (effects). He believes that ‘the terminology of literary studies - terms such as “text”, “narrative”, “protagonist” and so forth… remains indispensible’, although he does recognise that ‘to regard digital games as a storytelling device is not only an oversimplification but a distortion of the medium.’

Geoff King & Tanya Krzywinska demonstrate how concepts from film studies can be used to engage with the visual elements of games, although they understand that ‘games are not films, or some kind of interactive cinema, and should not be studied as if they were.’ Once again, a ‘valuable set of tools’ is offered, including such concepts as point of view, mise-en-scene, iconography and spectacle.

The only authors here willing to discuss players at play with their games are Seth Giddings & Helen Kennedy. They look at games as a form of new media and argue for the importance of the player’s interaction with technology. They concentrate on the newness of digital games and the forms of engagement and experience facilitated by their status as computer hardware and software, showing particular interest in user intervention strategies such as modding and skinning. The concepts of interactivity, simulation and technological imaginary are applied to Tomb Raider, The Sims and Quake.

Part 3 is the least successful section of the book, in which Bryce, Rutter & Sullivan rehearse debates on the relationship between gender and games, and review literature on the relationship between playing games and violent behaviour, questioning assumptions of causality in past studies. Dumbleton & Kirriemuir look at the use of games in education, examining the benefit of using games in the classroom, with inconclusive results.

Rather than arriving at an understanding of games and play, Bryce & Rutter seem more concerned with inviting academics from other fields to find their way into the study of games. They state that Understanding Digital Games is ‘for those approaching the study of digital games for the first time or those wanting to develop an understanding of approaches outside their own discipline.’ They aim to promote a multidisciplinary approach, arguing against game studies as a new discipline, stating that ‘drawing boundaries around academic fields is not necessarily a productive activity’. They see that games ’sit at a junction between a wide range of established academic interests’, but seem more interested in those established academic interests than they are in the games themselves.

Unfortunately for them, they fail to make a convincing case for a multidisciplinary approach by assembling a range of essays that shuffle tentatively around their subject and notably fail to lay a glove on the key issues of gameplay. Their book ‘celebrates the fact that research on digital games provides great opportunities for exploring the potential links and divisions between the different academic areas’. This sums up what’s wrong with this book by betraying its focus on academic fields and their boundaries. This is not the fault of the contributors, who will have been asked to write from their own particular perspective, but what this book lacks is any sense of true engagement with the actual playing of games.

Understanding Digital Games is a misnomer. Perhaps Understanding A Range of Possible Academic Approaches to Digital Games would be a less concise, but more accurate title.

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Date posted: December 22, 2006

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Date posted: November 16, 2006

By Tony Tulathimutte

Given the genre’s staggering growth and diversification over the last decade, the trust issues surrounding massively-multiplayer online games (MMOGs) are becoming as diverse and complex as those found in real-world systems. MMOGs like Second Life and The Sims Online created environments where real-life social phenomena are encouraged and replicated, while games such as World of Warcraft, Lineage, and Everquest, in virtue of their role-playing and fantasy settings, create new social dynamics with few practical real-life analogues, which in turn create new bases for trust.

User Demographics
As of June 2005, there are an estimated 9,250,000 active MMOG subscribers, with the games Lineage, Lineage II, and World of Warcraft comprising 67% of the market share (Woodcock). According to an online survey of 30,000 MMOG players, the mean age of users is about 26, and ages range from 11 to 68; weekly use averages 22 hours (Yee, “Demographics”). Though in most MMOG populations male players outnumber females by a wide margin, gender proportions are steadily converging, and in many respects (e.g. guild membership) females tend to be more dedicated to certain aspects of gameplay than males (Yee, “Norrathian”).

Massively Multiplayer Online Games – Background
In addition to an initial software purchase or download which costs around 50 dollars, MMOGs typically charge a monthly fee of 10-25 dollars, excluding one recent game (Guild Wars). Players are encouraged to meet, cooperate, and socialize in the game environment; users in my survey reported that they meet and play in a group with new players every time they play. Common tasks include informal adventuring for the sake of gathering items and completing predefined mission objectives, meeting to socialize and role-play, and creating and exhibiting player-created content such as items, furniture, character models, organized performances, and so on. Often times, tasks are designed such that they are too difficult to realistically complete with only a single player. Most MMOGs have a form of “guild” system which allows players to organize into a semi-hierarchical group with fellow players, and there is data to suggest that the majority of players belong to a guild (Yee, “Norrathian”).
The games are offered as entertainment, but many more serious uses and abuses of MMOG systems have since emerged: “farming” characters for retail (Loftus), real-world attacks prompted by in-game actions (Levander), and high-profile allegations of virtual underage prostitution (Ludlow). Since MMOGs are subscription-based services owned and maintained privately, players are subject to strict end-user license agreements and terms-of-use policies, as well as less formal game etiquette standards established both by the game companies and the player communities. However, the extent of repercussions for transgressive in-game behavior has thus far only amounted to account suspension or cancellation; there has yet to be a criminal investigation arising from actions between in-game characters. This may have to do with the regular patrolling of game environments by company-employed officials, or “GMs”, who have the ability to move undetected, observe remote exchanges, and eject any players from the game at will; moreover, most game actions and dialogue are recorded in server-side logs. The lack of privacy makes the use of MMOGs for illicit legal conduct risky; however, the otherwise lax repercussions make more minor behavioral infractions prevalent, such as verbal harassment and item stealing.

Trust Issues and Benefits in MMOGs
In almost every sense analogous to the offline world, trust serves numerous functions between MMOG players. Trading and bartering of equipment, items, and property occur much as they do in real life, and cooperative tasks such as exploring dungeons and defeating enemies form the bulk of gameplay in games such as World of Warcraft. As such, MMOGs share many trust issues with online transactions, such as those found in e-commerce and online auctions like eBay and craigslist, where participants are mutually anonymous and direct retribution for fraud is difficult. Similar to those sites, then, MMOGs have implemented reputation systems of their own; however, the entertainment-oriented environment of MMO worlds makes certain abuse and fraud issues all the more salient for their ease of execution (Appelcline). Corritore et al. cite risk as a defining factor of online trust (241), and since online play environments are typically designed to be risk-free, people are more willing to trust more quickly and on weaker grounds.
Naturally, players have found many ways to exploit reputation systems in MMOGs. Since certain actions will enhance one’s trustworthiness according to the conventions of the game, players can write “macro” programs to repeat these actions ad nauseam, or simply invest time in performing the actions themselves, artificially inflating one’s reputation score, and thereby their perceived trustworthiness. Moreover, since new characters and identities are easily created, it is easy to falsify positive reputation from many different sources, which is a common basis for judging overall trustworthiness online.

Finally, the anonymity and lowered stakes of the MMOG environment have spawned a category of players known as “griefers”, who take pleasure in the intrinsic appeal of annoying others, going to great lengths in-game to cause slight-to-major annoyance to other players; this is less common in the real world, where such people might incur severe consequences for this behavior. Griefers confound the motivations for evaluating trust and trusting reputation scores, because some griefers will build reputation for long periods of time simply to grief more effectively, and they are not motivated by self-interest where game standing or welfare is concerned.

MMOG groups share several similarities to temporary systems and virtual organizations in the real world: like temporary systems, groups can easily be described as “a set of diversely skilled people working together on a complex task over a limited period of time” (qtd. in Meyerson et al. 168). Players often interact in highly transient, lightweight situations, and many users report that they play with different players nearly every play session, and often only once. As in the real world, this pattern of play makes it difficult to form long relationships upon which one would otherwise base trust; rather, players must employ swift trust (167). Furthermore, player-created groups lack the kind of authoritative “institutional mechanisms” into which team members in real-world teams invest their trust (187); there is often no “leader”. An effective reputation system is therefore critical for providing a surrogate basis for trust and facilitating cooperation.

Reputation Systems in MMOGs – Background
Reputation systems of all sorts have been in widespread use in online games ever since the first mainstream MMOG, Ultima Online (UO), was released in 1997. Most often, reputation systems have been criticized for being “gameable”, or capable of being exploited, allowing a player to either artificially inflate his own reputation or defame another player’s. Raph Koster, one of the lead designers of UO, had this to say about his experiences with reputation systems:

…the game system attempted to detect good and bad actions, and adjusted a stat on the character based on their history of actions. It led to all the bad guys having sterling reputations and all the good guys with terrible reps because they were willing to sacrifice their good stats in order to take down the bad guys (who had great reps through abuse of the system). I suppose that in some ways this is an accurate simulation of real life.
After that failed we moved on to one where transactions were assessed by a human, rather than by the computer… Each murder you committed gave the victim the choice to report you, and to submit cash towards a bounty on your head… Numerous tricks had to be put in place in order to curtail people working off the murder counts over time (we believed that people needed to be able to reform, which led to people “macroing off murder counts” in their homes… (Koster)

In addition, players criticized the system because it was unclear to them what types of in-game behaviors would lead to gaining or losing notoriety; for example, looting corpses or slaying non-player characters (NPCs) would cause one to lose points, but looting other players and trespassing in people’s houses would not (Fitzpatrick). Interestingly, although players could give other players positive karma (by forfeiting 5 points of their own), the development team described the system’s intent as “to make this into a roleplay thing–it has no real gameplay consequences” (ibid.). Rather than a system intended to indicate trustworthiness to other players, it was only intended to govern interactions with NPCs.
Other notable instances of online reputation system implementations have been World of Warcraft’s “Honor system”, which rewards players who fought with other players of comparable experience levels with access to special titles and items; the idea is that players who fought fairly would be more trustworthy. However, as one user pointed out, one’s honor ranking typically has more to do with how much time is invested in fighting, rather than exactly how honorable a character is. The socially-oriented MMOG Second Life allows players to rate other players with positive or negative feedback, for a fee of game money. Though the fee has reportedly served as a deterrent to exploitation, it also means that rich players have greater leverage—which is even more problematic due to the fact that game currency can be bought offline with real money. Finally, The Sims Online’s “Relationship system” (shown at left) consists of a visualizable network of everybody the player has made a transaction with; friends are indicated by green links, enemies by red, and the length of the links indicates the depth of the relationship between two players, as measured by the number of positive or negative transactions shared between them. This system provides a quick means of assessing not only how reputable a character is, but who the source of the reputation is. Unfortunately, this aspect of the system is not as useful if the user does not know who those sources are, which is often the case. Furthermore, TSO’s system has been subject to one of the most well-publicized abuses, in which a group of players calling themselves the “Sim Mafia” accepted payments of game money to gang up on a player and perform a “hit”, bombarding the player with negative ratings. This was highly disruptive to the target of the hit, because TSO links a player’s access to game features with his reputation, ironically, in an attempt to encourage goodwill.

A Proposed Implementation of Reputation in MMOGs
I propose a general design for reputation systems in MMOGs which, although not ironclad, hopefully resolves many of the loopholes and vulnerabilities of previous attempts at encoding trust into a system operated by the population of players. In doing so, I have attempted to identify the bases of trust that apply specifically to MMOGs and apply theories of online trust accordingly; I will enumerate these after describing the proposed system.
In my system, which I will refer to as “RS-Tag”, ratings are based on a “tag” system similar to one proposed by a poster on the TerraNova game development blog (AFFA). A player (player A) can assign another player (player B) up to one negative or positive rating, which can be modified at any later date if the player changes his mind. Each rating is accompanied by a mandatory 30-character comment “tag” which describes the rationale behind the rating. Although the ratings are initially valued at either +1 or -1 reputation points, if another player C also gives player B the same rating, and either C is on A’s friends list or A is on C’s friends list, then RS-Tag count their two combined ratings as only one point. That is, each of their ratings are divided by the number of friends giving another player identical ratings. So, for example, if players A, B, C, and D were all friends, and they all rated player E positively, then each of their ratings would only be worth 1/4th of a point, so the “voting bloc” is restricted to a single point. The relationships between A, B, C, and D would be checked whenever the E’s reputability was assessed, so that the friends could not temporarily remove one another from their friends list when assigning the rating and then simply add each other later. Furthermore, the database of all tags would be publicly available, such that if you checked player A’s public profile, you could see what all other players have said about player A, with links to the other players’ own profiles and trustworthiness. Finally, multiple characters from the same account could only form one rating of another character, and all characters on a single account share the same rating.
RS-Tag focuses on improving two elements of MMOG reputation: removing the incentive to game the system, and preventing factions of players or high-level players from inflating their own ratings (as in UO) or driving down other people’s ratings (as in TSO). First and foremost, all ties between trust scores and game content have been severed; as soon as there is some tangible benefit conferred by a high trust score, there is a huge motivation to game the system. Unlike UO’s reputation systems, RS-Tag ensures that the reputation system’s only purpose is to assist players in forming judgments of trustworthiness. The text tags emphasize this by giving specific details about the character’s trustworthiness, and their mandatory provision simply adds another deterrent to making artificial ratings .
Furthermore, the “bloc voting restrictions” prevent groups of friends from performing hits on players. They also cause slower gain/loss of reputation than the one-player, one-vote system; as a result, the player’s reputation score is more trustworthy. In order to have a score of +5, a player would have had to cooperate with at least 5 distinct groups of players, which is considerably different than cooperating once with a group of 5 players. This slow growth of trust could be effectively used as a surrogate for “slow trust”, since it would take a player quite a lot of cooperation to achieve any significantly high score, and conversely, quite a lot of grief to many different people in order to earn a low score; thus, there is an adequate basis upon which to base swift trust.
There are fallibilities to RS-Tag, but hopefully the cost of exploiting these vulnerabilities would be too great to appeal even to dedicated griefers. First, the bloc voting restrictions could simply be circumvented if a group of friends all remove each other from one another’s friends lists; however, the benefit to this group would not be very significant (adding or subtracting a few reputation points to some player), but the loss of communication between them would be very inconvenient, as friends lists are becoming more vital for managing in-game communication, so hopefully this trade-off will deter this behavior. Another possible exploit might involve a player opening up several distinct accounts, but this would require acquiring many subscriptions with distinct credit cards, and few players would consider this practical. Also, players who give other players positive ratings in order to receive one in turn might later change their minds out of spite; this is easily remedied by a notifier which informs players of when other players have changed their ratings, so they can respond in turn. RS-Tag also prevents players who prefer to play solo or always with the same group of friends from earning a high reputation score; but then, such players would not have any use for trust systems at all. If anything, RS-Tag encourages players to meet and cooperate with as many separate groups of people as possible, which indeed is one of the underlying tenets of the MMO genre at large.
RS-Tag is a synthesis of previously postulated ideas, coordinated in order to provide players with a basis for trusting other players. It has nothing to do with role-play; that is, it is not meant to represent a character’s trustworthiness, but the trustworthiness of the player controlling the character . However, in the future, it might be interesting to study source-orientation effects to see if reputation assignments are influenced by the appearance or in-character behavior of an avatar, even when players are explicitly instructed to rate the person controlling the avatar. If the effects are significant, then this might be another potential failing of RS-Tag, which assumes players are able to distinguish between in-character and out-of character behavior. However, the alternative would be to put reputation in the hands of automated behavior monitoring algorithms, none of which have yet succeeded in resisting exploitation by any player with enough friends or time on his hands.

Works Cited

AFFA. “TerraNova: Reputation.” 21 December 2003. 6 August 2005.
http://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2003/12/reputation.html

Appelcline, Shannon. “Future Memes, Part Four: Community and Reputation.” 24 January 2002. Skotos.net. 10 August 2005. http://www.skotos.net/articles/TTnT_58.shtml

Corritore, C.L., Kracher, B., Wiedenbeck, S. “On-line trust: evolving concepts, evolving themes, a model.” International Journal of Human-Computer Studies. 58:6. 2003.

Fitzpatrick, Rob. “Ultima Online: Social Accountability for Good and Evil.”
(Presented 2/22/05 to Georgia Tech Game Seminar in the EGL)

Koster, Raph. “TerraNova: Reputation.” 21 December 2003. 6 August 2005.
http://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2003/12/reputation.html

Levander, Michelle. “Where does fantasy end?” Time Magazine. 157: 22. 4 June 2001. http://www.time.com/time/interactive/entertainment/gangs_np.html

Loftus, Tim. “Virtual worlds wind up in real world’s courts.” 7 February 2005. MSNBC.com. 3 August 2005. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6870901/

Ludlow, Peter. “Evangeline: Interview with a Child cyber-Prostitute in TSO”. 8 December 2003. Second Life Herald. 7 August 2005. http://www.alphavilleherald.com/archives/000049.html

Meyerson, D., Weick, K.E., & Kramer, R. “Swift trust and temporary groups.” Ed. R. Kramer & T.R. Tyler, Trust in Organizations: Frontiers of Theory and Research. 1996.

TSOMania.net. “Game Guides :: Relationship System (Friendship Web).” 2004. 10 August 2005. http://www.tsomania.net/gameguides/relationship_system.php

Woodcock, Bruce Sterling. “An Analysis of MMOG Subscription Growth” MMOGCHART.COM 12.0. 29 November 2004. 1 January 2005. http://www.mmogchart.com

Yee, Nick. “The Demographics, Motivations and Derived Experiences of Users of Massively Multi-User Online Graphical Environments.” Diss. Stanford University. http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/archives/pdf/Yee_MMORPG_Presence_Paper.pdf

–. “The Norrathian Scrolls: A Study of Everquest.” Diss. Haverford College. May 2001. http://www.nickyee.com/eqt/home.html

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Appendix A: Sample Questionnaire

Below is one sample response to the questionnaire I sent to a dozen people. Salient comments are in bold.

Answer these questions about your MMO(s) of choice. Be as detailed or as concise as you please, but answer completely.

–Which MMO games do you play most often?

World of Warcraft

–How often and in what cases do you cooperate with people you’ve met in-game and have never met face-to-face?

All the time. Pick up groups require at least 5 people—I have only been in a group of 5 people I know from RL twice maybe. Meanwhile, any sort of end game raid (40 people) definitely requires cooperation with people I do not know face to face. Essentially every time I sign on there is some cooperation required with people I do not know from real life.

–How often and in what cases do you cooperate with people only once or for brief spans of time?

Mostly for 5 man instances, it is possible to cooperate with somebody only once. While there is no guarantee that the cooperation will only occur once, there is no assumption of further interaction in many cases. For the brief span of time one it is either when someone asks for help “briefly”, if we notice we are working towards the same simple quest, or if the group sucks and it falls apart.

–Do you tend to play with people you’ve played with before, or do you tend to play with people you’ve never played with before?

A little of both, and often both at the same time. The class structure in wow requires a variety of classes to be successful in an instance. If people I know of a certain class are on, I try to query them first, but if they are unavailable I just take anybody who responds to my LF “this class” messages in chat. Sometimes if I am particularly bored I’ll also join groups in a similar scenario—they are looking for somebody and I fit the bill. This is often the case as I play a healer class and they are in demand, so there are great swings in the familiarity I have with my group mates.

–How well do you feel you typically get to know people that you’ve met in-game?

This is a difficult question. I feel you can get to know a lot about their personality and their playstyle, but that unless you really go out of your way, you won’t find out much about their real life undertakings (work/age/etc). The exception being, if they have “off-hour” jobs, leading them to be at work 2-10 pm Saturday and Sunday, at which point it becomes common knowledge they are waiter or something. Once you get on to a voice chat server with your guild for more complex raids, the amount of familiarity with individuals increases. Also, while I have certainly put my time into the game, I have played a lot (/played 20 days), but not as obscenely much as others (/played of 40 or more…)

–Are you in a guild?

Yes.

–How/why did you join?

Pretty damn necessary in WoW. Very few 60’s are not in a guild and they are usually Chinese gold farmers, or people who were dissatisfied with their guild or whose guild was dissatisfied with them. I joined because I was grouped with an individual who seemed nice enough (and skilled enough) and they asked if I wanted to join.

–Do you regard your fellow guild members as trustworthy? Why?

For the most part, yes. Partly from having grouped with them over time—they pass the Turing test of trust, if you will. Also, because I know they have more to gain over time through cooperation than by defecting. This is not the prisoner’s dilemma—word gets around in the guild and by working together they can be more rewarded than by stabbing me in the back. Once again, especially since I am a healer and in short order. I leave the guild, they start having a lot of trouble .

–Do you prefer playing in a guild / with a team of friends, meeting people on your own, or playing alone? Why?

All of the above but the last. I think I enjoy playing with friends the most, but also enjoy the socialization and potential “human capital research” derived from playing with new people. You don’t get more skilled, cool friends by not meeting new people. The last option I don’t go for too much—the game is all right solo, but the complexities and challenges only emerge in group play. The AI is cheesy and boring—it’s working with people that is interesting. Also, being a healing class while people really need me, I also really need people. Killing things on my own is extraordinarily slow.

–Do you consider in-game reputation systems effective and/or reliable?

While the game does not have one in place, except for, arguably the PvP honor system, I am wary of in-game reputation systems. You have a bunch of maximizing nerds with a fair amount of time they dedicate to the game—the system would have to be rather robust to withstand attempted cheats or reputation would not have to be rewarded enough for cheating to be worthwhile. If reputations were publicized it would be impossible to control how much individual players reward positive reputation, thus making the goal of a robust, impossible to game system more important. I doubt whether I would believe people’s abilities based on their reputation score.

–If applicable, in what cases have you rated a person positively / negatively?

Not applicable. On the extremes are the only two personal options available—adding them to your buddy list, or deciding never to group with them again. I have added about 30 individuals to my buddy list, and have decided to never group with, I’d say, about 5. Most of those are from personality and not skill disagreements though…

–What does it take for you to trust other players, both in low and high risk situations? How long does that take?

Well, risk is actually never that high, but I guess the time loss can be huge. You know within the first 5 minutes of a group how skilled the players are (are they fulfilling their needed roles?), and if they are doing something wrong you will know after the first 10 minutes if they are willing to be open and work as a team. Or usually you do. Meanwhile they are many systems in place to make sure you don’t have to completely trust individuals either. Synchronous trading, master looting system, hierarchical guild powers all prevent people from having too much ability to abuse trust.

–Do you feel that you can easily distinguish between in-character (IC) and out-of character behaviors?

There is basically no role-playing that goes on on the server I play on. Everybody knows they are playing a game with people on the opposite keybord—I would feel comfortable with saying everything is OOC. Your character says what you want to say—thus night elf, humans, dwarfs, and gnomes (from the alliance) will all talk the same about how 1337 their crits are. Haven’t played on a role-playing server though, so not sure what it is like there.

–A priori, do you consider other players generally trustworthy or generally untrustworthy?

Generally trustworthy. Doesn’t mean I’ll trust them though.

–Which modes of communication do you typically use to communicate with other players (i.e. text-only, text + avatar, text + avatar + voice chat, etc.)?

Text for people I don’t know. Avatar chat is usually used for trying to do silly things while waiting for something. (Or occasionally doing some taunting at your cross-faction opponents—who can’t read your text chat). Voice chat for in guild (and some of my RL friends) cooperative efforts. Once voice chat enters the text screen becomes rather muted.

–What are the most desirable traits in an MMO partner/companion? The most undesirable?

Patient, nice, competent, fair. Hurried, distracted, belligerent (they always think they can do no wrong and anybody making a slight mistake is just the worst thing in the universe—often these people spend way too much in game/have too much invested in achievement in game), unwilling to be flexible with their play to benefit group. And no fucking ninja looters.

–What do you consider a successful in-game partnership? A failed one?

A successful one is any partnership that keeps me entertained and not frustrated. I have done many failed instances with funny people. Ultimately though the surest measure of PvE success is the number of “wipes” (or everyone in the party dies) while seeking out whatever goal was had in the instance. No wipes is good, one is pretty much expected, 2 is reasonable. Above two and I start questioning my commitment to continue. Even that can be okay though, but that would probably be considered a failed run. (on the other hand, for some more complicated things, if the group performs better, a learning experience can be considered a success). A complete failure is a group that fragments before it reaches the instance, where somebody has to leave in the middle, or where a total self-centered ass wastes my time with his douchity. And ninjas.

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since June 2007

Date posted: November 15, 2006

By Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen (sen@game-research.com)

This article presents some thoughts on educational use of computer games focusing on why we should look to socalled process-oriented games rather than games that relies more directly on narratives for providing the game experience. One may start by asking where the infatuation with computer games for education stem from? Is it just a passing phenomenon so well known from other new media emerging or does it have more holding power? Educational researchers have embraced radio, television, computers, and computer games for their ability to engage and motivate students (Calvert, 1999; Prensky, 2001). The idea of using computer games for education is not just a concept forged by educators and hopeful game researchers but is also found in game designers description of the most basic incitements for playing computer games. In the words of game designer Chris Crawford (1982) “The fundamental motivation for all game-playing is to learn”. Apparently a very basic premise for playing computer games is to engage with an unknown universe, and slowly find ways to surmount seemingly impossible barriers.
For a computer game to work the player on a very basic level need to learn. Computer games may have different tolerance levels for bad learners but in all games you need to learn to advance. This makes computer games quite different from other media as the responsibility for the game activity and progress lies with the player. The role of the player have important ramifications for learning through computer games as it presents an alternative to the distanced, abstract, and representational form in other media. When computer games work best they give an internal understanding of a given system by embedding the player in the game universe (Gee, 2003). The player will not only be presented with text, pictures, sounds, and explanations but will have to act on these connecting them meaningfully to the actions performed. The player cannot abstain from constructing a meaningful response to what happens in the game, as this will in effect bring the game to a stop (although this may just mean a restart) (Egenfeldt-Nielsen, 2003a).
The learning in computer games may take very different forms in the action game Space Invaders you improve your ability to react swiftly with utmost precision shooting down those damn aliens. In adventure games like Leisure Suit Larry you are forced to constantly acquire new knowledge, solve puzzles to advance, and understand the mindset of the avatar Larry. If you fail to get a clue or figure something out, you are stuck. The game will come to a halt. The demand for actions and making the play situation meaningful by connecting the different output is closely related to everyday learning experience.
This paper will argue that the structure found in computer games are more similar that other media to our everyday life, and how we learn from everyday situations. Computer games may therefore be a way to cross the border between an educational setting and an everyday setting that have notoriously been a hard nut to crack for educators. With other words making sure education is accessible outside the setting, where the learning experience takes place. Narratives will play a central role to understand how we can engage with everyday situations. Narratives can potentially play a central role in computer games facilitating learning .
On the above background it doesn’t make much sense to treat learning in computer games from a narrow perspective, where learning is perceived as occurring only in computer games specifically constructed for educational purposes or other specific genres. This is also in line with James Paul Gee’s (2003) argumentation concerning learning in computer games. I furthermore find that all computer games possess a potential for educational use, with some more explicitly catering for the instructive dimension. Of course, depending on your educational goals some computer games may be more or less appropriate for education. However, whether a computer games is considered educational or not is more than anything a question of perspective. The decision as to what is educational primarily rest on what knowledge, skills, and attitudes we as a society find relevant to nurture.

The focus on simulation games in educational game research
Some educators have intuitively identified some computer games more worthy of pursuit than others for educational purposes, often after growing weary of traditional edutainment titles relying mostly on drill-and-practice learning principles. It has almost become a mantra for people talking about computer games and their educational potential to bring forward SimCity, a second after Simcity has been mentioned other familiar titles will emerge like Civilization, Roller Coaster Tycoon, and Railroad Tycoon. However it seems that SimCity is the game when it comes to having a metaphor for education through computer games. The other titles are not too different from SimCity but can be described as process-oriented computer games. The genre process-oriented somewhat overlap with what is called simulation and strategy games but are more explicitly open-ended in the sense that you don’t have to complete specific goals. I will in the following elaborate on what I mean by process-oriented by looking at the characteristics of SimCity. By this I do not mean to state that SimCity should be our preferred genre for educational use of computer games however it is a suitable starting point especially for the educational perspective I will bring forth.
SimCity has been accentuated as a significant example for teaching about societal dynamics, urban space, and city planning through experimentation with building and running a virtual city (Adams, 1998; Betz, 1996; Miklaucic, 2001; Prensky, 2001; Squire, 2002; McFarlane, Sparrowhawk & Heald, 2002; Kuntz, 1999). The gameplay seems to lend itself to educational purposes in respect to the game’s content, and there exist a potential for establishing an environment of social interaction around the game. In this social environment it becomes possible to discuss experiences in the game, challenge the underlying model, and the different outcomes of students’ actions. The social-cultural environment surrounding playing a computer game should not be neglected as important for facilitating the learning experience, however in this paper it will be somewhat in the background.
It is interesting that SimCity is quite an unusual computer game. First of all nobody expected SimCity to become a success – some even question if it qualifies as a computer game. Mainly the objections are connected with the lack of explicit goals in the game: how and when did you win. Will Wright, the designer of SimCity, has since become well known for his design style that he characterises with the following lines:

Instead, we give them [the player] a rich environment with goals embedded in it […] I’m interested in rewarding imagination: letting them leverage creativity to build an interesting external artifact of their imagination. (Brown, 2002) .

It is not the lack of goals that are central but rather the possibility to create a more open game universe: The goals are set by the player but are still a part of the game context. Especially the last part is quite interesting from an educational perspective, where Wright specifically label a large part of the game process, as the player’s building of external artifacts of their imagination. From his perspective it seems that computer games are not well defined and finite for the player but instead serves as a mental construction set. The player can interact and construct a game session, where the player’s own prior knowledge and the game artefacts are combined. It is less important what the result is as long as you have fun with exploring the different potentials for building a city. Of course you will still be disappointed if a neighbourhood falls flat but still the game experience is primarily the process of building the city. The outcome of your game actions primarily serves to inform future processes and ultimately as an indicator that you have internalised the game’s model of urban planning.
The success of SimCity points to the factors in games that educators and researchers find interesting properties for educational purposes. The general idea seems to be that games for educational use should be open-ended, creative, process oriented, dynamic, complex, and toy-like. This also implies that a lot of game titles would not be suited for educators’ purposes. There are for example few similarities between SimCity and the so-called edutainment titles, which is the current label for computer games specifically targeted at education. There is common agreement that edutainment has not fulfilled the potential of computer games for education (Van Deventer, 1997; Brody, 1993; Leyland, 1996), so it seems obvious to instead distil some characteristics from a commercial computer games, SimCity. A problem is that if we take the properties of SimCity as necessary elements in educational usage of computer game we limit the scope of games for education and favour process-oriented games. This is hardly in line with my starting point, where I saw all computer games as learning experiences and potential educational. Towards the end of the paper I will try to extend the focus to other genres to avoid this trap.
Closely connected with process oriented computer games is a research preference for simulations and experiential learning. The simulation genre is one of the most researched genres when we look at traditional games and education. Simulations entered education in the 1960’s but are far from the only genre in the modern age of computer games (Duke & Seidner, 1975; Dempsey et.al, 1993). The simulation genre lends itself well to the underlying learning paradigm in the game research community, namely experiential teaching (Gentry, 1990). In line with experiential learning theory simulations make it possible to perform actions in a virtual setting resembling the real actions as closely as possible. We should however be careful not to perceive the ideas of experiential learning to literally, and we should not make experiential learning the only theory. We should also be aware that when we choose experiential learning as a starting point it points in the direction of simulations.

A few words on educational theory
The focus of this paper will not be traditional educational theory as I will focus on the role narratives play in understanding the actions we perform. In that sense narratives are the central tool for learning as they frame and reflect our practice. Still, it might be worth introducing a few theories and concepts used throughout this paper. I use learning to refer to all activities and contexts we engage in, where we change or support our patterns of action (Bateson, 1972). This is as broad a perception of learning as they come, and a tighter focus is appropriate. Drawing on Bloom’s et al. (1956) I differentiate between knowledge, attitudes, and skills concentrating on the knowledge aspect of learning. Knowledge can take different forms including memorization, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, evaluation. Memorization is the most basic form whereas synthesis and evaluation is the most complex. The higher levels of knowledge are built on the lower levels. With the term education I refer to a more controlled process, where we engage in an activity with the purpose of learning specific things.
The landscape of educational theory is rich but I primarily use the experiential approach represented by John Dewey, Jerome Bruner, Lev Vygotsky, and David Kolb as their focus on connecting concrete experiences with abstract representation and thinking is most suitable for my purpose. In an experiential perspective it is not enough to simply hear or read some information, we have to engage with them, and connect it with our existing knowledge and concepts. They also stress education’s roots in everyday learning and try to find ways to cross the border between school and everyday life. It is also a common trait in the experiential tradition to stress the learner’s existing knowledge. The challenge is to expand on the existing concepts learners have about a given area, and constantly relate the learning to the learner’s everyday life. The everyday life is where the existing knowledge has been constructed, and for the new knowledge to take root it has to connect with the everyday experiences (Kolb, 1984; Dewey, 1938; Vygotsky, 1978; Bruner, 1990).
It is also worth shortly mentioning Vygotsky’s theory on zone on proximale development as it is central to how I understand the learning experience. The zone of proximale of development describes the difference between a learner’s current competence and the potential competence that can be achieved under the right circumstances. These circumstances are facilitated through different forms of mediators for example language, teachers, and peers. Computer games could be one mediator but it will often not be enough. Wertsch (1991) stress that tools will stress different aspects of a relevant area, and computer games are in that sense not different than books, television, teachers, parents, or peers. Language is the primary mean for a tool to reach the learner, and this sets certain limits. Some tools are capable of supplementing the learning experience with other forms of modalities (Jewitt, 2003; Wertsch, 1991).
It is critical to understand why some tools are more appropriate for learning. This is partly because the zone of proximale of development works, there is a fitting distance between actual and potential zone. Constructing this zone should be understood through narratives which is the way a learner constructs a concrete instance of a situation. I will expand a bit on the role of narratives in the following.

A different kind of narratives
When Henry Jenkins (2002) in his paper Game Design as Narrative Architecture, points to the obvious problems of applying film theory to computer games, the flexibility of the game universe is one of the key points. He states that he wants to formulate a position “examining games less as stories than as spaces ripe with narrative possibility” (Jenkins, 2002:2). A computer game supports different interpretations and routes. Jenkins is trying to follow in the footsteps of legendary game designers like Will Wright and Sid Meier. The game is not characterized by linearity, like other media, but Jenkins stresses that this doesn’t mean, that the narrative potential is all lost. He advocates for diversity in the genres, the aesthetics and the use of narrative in games. Narratives should have different roles, and be allowed to have different expressions in computer games. On this note I will try to outline a somewhat different understanding of narratives in computer games drawing on Jerome Bruner and Marie-Laure Ryan. The aim is to be able to capture the characteristics in process oriented computer games described earlier, and ultimately expand it to other game genres ultimately linking it to educational potential of computer games.
In her transmedial definition Marie-Laure Ryan (2004) identifies three properties of a narrative script, which are necessary for a narrative script to function:

1. A narrative has a world with characters and objects.
2. The world must change either as a consequences of user actions or events.
3. It must be possible for the user to ‘speculate’ around the events hereby creating a plot.

In the three points above Ryan focuses on the narrative structure. Ryan’s definition has the advantage of making it possible to distinguish between levels of narrativity in games, which will prove quite useful, when we discuss narratives across computer game genres, and later turn to the role of narratives in educational use of computer games. The three levels of narrativity can be thought of as properties describing a computer games from a continuum reaching from “possessing narrativity” to “being a narrative”. Marie-Laure Ryan (2004) proposes this distinction and sees being a narrative as attributable to the text (game itself), however in order to posses narrative quality the text must be able to evoke the narrative script in the user through immersion, agency, and transformation . So even though a game can be a narrative it doesn’t necessarily posses narrativity in the sense that the player is able to construct a meaningful narrative out of the game universe and its affordances. For example the game Mario Brother’s has a world with characters, object, and these changes as a consequence of a player’s actions, or by a random pattern, however the game do not necessarily posses narrative qualities from the players view. It is possible to speculate around the events of the plumber, killing monsters, getting closer to freeing the princess in the end, but the players only engage in this behaviour to a limited degree, and it is not the primary dynamic of the game.
We can observe that games are often set in a game universe with some resemblances to the real world (especially what I have defined as process-oriented games), and the player’s actions are fundamental for the game experience to progress. Excluding very abstract computer games like Tetris, and Pong, games often have objects, obstacles, and characters, which are interconnected, and change during the game as a consequences of the player’s action. It is possible to speculate around the game events but in a lot of games, it doesn’t really make sense. The meaning attributable to the narrative is so insignificant that it doesn’t qualify as a narrative, in the player’s interaction with the game. This is primarily because the player’s actions are not meaningful in relation to the game’s narrative. It does not make sense to connect, the plumber on a rescue mission for his loved one, with head butting little boxes to gain points. Even though the narrative is potentially there, and the objects, characters and events are interrelated, it is not deep and relevant enough to engage the player meaningfully.
The distinction between being a narrative, and possessing narrativity, is important because it points to a common misunderstanding, when thinking about the educational potential of computer games. Even though a computer game may as a text contain elements relevant to any curriculum they may not be central to the playing experience. A player of Age of Mythology may superficially recognize the Greek mythology used in the game however the mythology is of little relevance to the concrete playing, and will therefore not really form the playing experience, and therefore also only to a limited degree facilitated a learning experience about Greek mythology. In Age of Mythology the Greek mythology narrative will be quite weak for most players because the distance between the gameplay (activity) and narrative is quite abstract. Indeed Age of Mythology could have taken place during the American Civil War or Second World War. This doesn’t mean that Age of Mythology cannot learn some player under some circumstances about Greek Mythology however it depends more on the players existing affordances and active construction than the computer game. A player with prior interest in Age of Mythology will appreciate the names, narratives, and objects hereby reinforcing knowledge about Greek mythology. What is quite certain is that all players will learn to perform the activities necessary to play the computer game. This illustrates the problem when using narratives in computer games compared to rules. The rules are finite, logical, and can formally be described. This is hardly the case for the narrative experiences which rest very much on the player’s interpretation (Egenfeldt-Nielsen, 2003). This also results in the narrative components being supplementary rather than core to the game experience. You can’t control the progress through the game by counting on the player’s precise interpretation of the elements that make up a narrative. There have been made different attempts to solve this problem with the quest structure as the most solid (Tosca, 2003). Still, even the quest structure only works because you identify central narrative elements for the player to acknowledge, which often become quite simplified – resembling rules.
The strength of narratives also becomes its weakness in an educational perspective. Narratives rely on the player’s subjective interpretation which opens up for new player experiences and a more elaborate game universe, but also leave the actual learning outcome more at the mercy of the player’s approach to the game. We can further explore the potential of process-oriented games by looking closer at the limitations of relying on narratives in educational use of computer games.

The relation between narrative, language and mental images
Marie-Laure Ryan (2004) states that she finds that language is one of the best carriers of narrative but that narrative is not a linguistic phenomenon but rather a cognitive phenomenon, where we construct a mental image of the experience we participate in. Taking this further, the mental image comes before the narrative. We construct a mental image of the activity we are engaged in and only when we reflect over it, under special circumstances, do we turn it into a narrative. In this way narratives become a way to understand and handle the world by making it meaningful.
If we turn to the psychologist Jerome Bruner (1990: 67-99) the importance of seeing narrative as something very fundamental becomes clear. According to Bruner, language is learned through praxis, which he calls an everyday drama: narratives without a narrator. Bruner sees the first drive for acquisition of language as a way to control these everyday narratives, and frame them according to ones own goals and pleasures. Therefore, it is not strange that to understand and communicate narratives the natural medium is language, which originally is a way to master our everyday life, and frame it to our benefit, by using narratives. However it is also very clear that the experience of a narrative is not related to language per se. It doesn’t really make sense to call our everyday experiences for a narrative, even though they resemble them. Our everyday experience is life but when we talk about them and construct the experience it happens through language manipulation. They become narratives. To make events manageable we narrate them, and put perspective on.
Therefore the experience of agency a player has is not to be seen as a narrative but rather the other way around. The player venturing into a game, experiencing things, and dealing with these, is participating in virtual life. Like life itself it can with different degrees of relevance and success be transformed into a narrative. But, just like life, the game is not a narrative as such although it as life may have narrative potential (Remember Ryan’s distinction between being a narrative and possessing narrative). An experience is not necessarily attached significant and constructed as part of the narratives a person ‘carries’ around.
Drawing on Bruner (1990) the narrating process is often activated when it violates canonical narratives. Although life in action is not a narrative we still constantly live and navigate in and through narratives. Everyday life is framed within a social praxis that consists of canonical narratives, but these are not explicit in our everyday life, rather background noise. When the background noise comes too much out of tune with our life (narratives are violated), we search for ways to make these deviances meaningful. The language becomes a tool for the narrative process.
This implies that narratives are problematic as the very building blocks for educational experiences. Rather, the narratives can serve as ordering tool for the concrete experiences we have in real-life, or in the process-oriented games. Here lies the strength of process-oriented games – they provide the building blocks not just the finished narratives of other media, that can be very hard for many players to relate to (depending on initial knowledge and hooks for understanding the narrative)
With this theoretical framework it is important to maintain what constitutes the activity in games – what is the actions you perform. These actions are not the background story in Age of Mythology, the description of wonders in Civilization, the scenario description in Medal of Honour, or the aesthetic expression in SimCity with still more beautiful buildings. In these games it is the actions of moving armies, clicking to attack and making the right buildings – these will be strong elements for an educational experience, and secondarily the overall narrative that are of course also a part of these games. Often, these narratives are, however, quite simple and relies on recognition from the player rather than brining new knowledge as Sid Meier have revealed (Brake, 2002). The narratives are presented through language, which is a tool of manipulating basic building blocks rather than actual learning new blocks. This doesn’t imply that language is not a very capable tool for learning, but it requires that you have the necessary buildings blocks to form.
The game universe in process-oriented games is not build through language but through a wide range of means like genre awareness, kinetic activity, spatial, and audiovisual dynamics. Language plays a smaller role, and is usually not necessary to come to terms with, what is going on in the game, by creating a narrative. At least not until someone ask you, and you thereby reflect on your practice. It can also occur when you have to make sense of a specific conflict or problem in the game for example objects, characters or events that deviate from traditional genres, narratives or gameplay.
The point I want to stress is that we should not be fooled into believing that games are necessarily better off by drawing more heavily on abstract representation (language), which seems to be he case in some circles, where adventure games with a strong narrative component is preferred (Cavallari et al., 1992). Process-oriented games have other means and effects for facilitating educational experience. Games are closer to our everyday activities than to other media types, and we should not build on top of classic media theory. Instead you will have to move closer to theories of everyday life, to understand, what goes on in computer games.

Characteristics of games in a learning context from a narrative perspective
Narratives in a classic sense are not the main attraction of computer games, and in line with the thoughts not usually a part of the playing a game (excluding adventure games) In most computer games the dynamics comes from playing with life in a social praxis with another frame than everyday life. Just like everyday life happens within an overall narrative (Bruner, 1990), so does games but without taking on immediate consequences to our everyday life. The narrative is framing the perception.
From a learning perspective this is quite interesting, as this is actually close to the very definition of a learning environment. It is a place where we can experiment and gain important experiences and knowledge, without too much risk (Dewey, 1938). It has long been argued that games are well suited for offering the opportunity to practice and experience different areas without the consequences of real life (Boocock, 1968). The main question is how strong the relation between the digital learning environment and everyday life is.
Adventure computer games are a popular way to create a digital learning environment through games although the evidence on the learning outcome and the correct teaching application is limited (Cavallari et al., 1992). In a study by Oluf Danielsen, Birgitte Ravn Olesen & Birgitte Holm Sørensen (2002) a school class plays an environmental adventure game, and experience different events, thereby forcing them to think about environmental issues. What is interesting in their research project is that the degree of success is measured through test questions on environment, and it supports the researchers in their conclusion that learning do occur. The environmental information are presented through language, and tested through language. However this does not mean that the children change their everyday practice, in this study the researchers found this to be unlikely . With the exception of the few homes, where the children parallel with the computer game playing in school, engaged in environmental relevant behaviour. When the children at home engaged in environmental issues it became possible for the players to cross the border between the narratives constructed through language by playing the game, and their everyday activities. Adventure games are quite traditional and close to the written media in their learning process, using language as the primary requisite . Therefore it also makes sense to talk about a narrative to a certain degree although it is rather clumsy implemented in this particular environment game. However the adventure game rest heavily on traditional learning theory, where we acquire information and then learn about them. We read or hear information, and then learn them (Bandura, xxx).
In opposition to this learning theory I will point to experiential learning represented by John Dewey (1938) and David Kolb (1984), which stress then importance of ‘Learning by Doing’. In their perspective it is not enough to simply hear or read some information, we have to engage with them, and connect it with our existing knowledge and concept.
A better example of a learning game, which lends itself more to experiential learning perspective is Bronkie the Bronchiasaurus presented by Debra A. Lieberman (2001), which is within the action genre, in the sub genre called platforms games. You control Bronkie, a little dragon that must fight the bad Tyrannosaurus Rex to assemble a wind machine to clean the air. During the game you must fight evil dinosaurs, and engage in proper asthma management to win the game. The story has minor significance except setting the scene, and is quickly forgotten, when you jump over enemies and avoid obstacles that will deteriorate your asthma, trying to make it to the next level. In the game a lot of necessary asthma management tools are embedded in the game universes and the activities you perform. The use of language is limited to a few multiple-choice questions between levels. The pre- and post-test are not done through language, but is rather observed directly in the children’s everyday life, where the game leads to significant improvement. These improvements were for example observed in communication about asthma with peers, clinical staff and parents. In another similar game called Packy & Marlon the same guidelines were used for helping children to improve their management of diabetes’s. Here, in addition to improved communication, a post-test showed a 77-percent drop in visits to urgent care and medical visits (Lieberman, 2001).
In best case the information the game designer wishes to convey to the player is part of the game experience, the actual actions you perform, like in Bronkie the Bronchiasaurus and Packy & Marlon. Here primers for the information you wish to convey have been integrated as a natural part of the game activity and are necessary for succeeding in the game - the game actions are directly related to the behaviour you want to learn the player.
The adventure games do have a potential for learning as have been argued by Amory et.al (1999) but I argue that the real potential for learning through games lies in other game genres like the action, strategy and simulation genres, where virtual life is to a higher degree practised. Here the social virtual praxis is constituted through narratives but as in real life the narrative is a distant, framing device. In everyday life it is possible to manipulate these narratives through language, framing a situation differently, or exploring other narratives by reading them. But the narrative part comes after the game experience, after we have done something. Before challenging our experience through narratives we have to experience ‘something’ – both in life and virtual life. We have to get the small blocks for toying with in the game before we engage in reflection, and narrative discourse. Computer games can very well be the carrier of this something, providing it can give the necessary physical sensations (audiovisual, tactile, kinetic, and motor skills) for a given situation to be constructed meaningfully by the player. The real challenge when using computer games for learning, is to stay focused on the areas, where computer games can give a better learning experience: Not because the player is ‘tricked’ into the learning processes through his favourite pastime but because the computer game can offer a safer, better, and fuller experience. With a safer, better, and fuller experience I am referring to the game as environment, where you can explore, experience, and manipulate without the same risk as other environments, and get input that is otherwise more restricted.
In the genres, action, strategy, and simulation, the process-oriented potential of games is an interesting feature for educational use. The narrative experience is formulated and constructed by the player (under the right circumstances) for example about how he managed asthma in a game, or changed light bulb from a normal bulb to a low-energy bulb. Although this is beyond the scope of this paper it could be argued that a design strategy for games for facilitating learning could be to strengthen the game’s narrativity by leaving it to the player’s imagination to form a narrative interpretation, rather than explicitly telling a story through language. Perhaps this explains the attention that SimCity have drawn in educational circles. As I explained at the start of this paper Simcity is characterized by giving the player more options for setting own goals, and playing the game. It becomes possible for the player to play a game of own device, and to construct a narrative experience, which supports their game experience, and not the game designers. In this perspective the closer a game simulate real life, the better. This is not necessarily the whole truth. In the future work will have to be done on identifying different learning set-ups in computer games.
When examining learning games from a simulation perspective (learning by doing) we would be wise to be cautious with games trying to communicate abstract information, concepts and ideas, which are learned through language, and are primarily represented by language. By using language we run the risk of reducing the player’s creative options severely to the process of constructing a narrative. This is not sufficient; instead we should stress the importance of actually engaging in play, and do concrete things in a safe environment. We should also be wary of our tendency to fit our conception of learning games within the current educational practices, which clearly supports learning through language. Furthermore we should be aware that the computer game genres today are quite rigid, and the expectations of the players make it limited what activities they will engage in. Computer games are somewhat conservative in their content, interface, narratives, use of time, space perception, and progression.

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since June 2007

Date posted: August 16, 2006
Updated: Oct 24, 2006

by Joris Dormans

Now, as an academic I can get paid to write a book about pretty much anything as long as I give it a complicated title.
- ‘Michelle Carapadis’ on K-Chat radio in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City

The game series of Grand Theft Auto (GTA) has many faces. On the one hand it is a very popular gaming franchise; GTA San Andreas was one of the most anticipated and successful games of 2004. Millions of gamers indulged themselves into the various San Andreas cityscapes, car-jacking and killing their way up the criminal ladder. On the other the games are controversial because of their violent and criminal nature; many parents, educators and legislatures worry about that these games might inspire likewise violent and criminal behaviour in children. At the same time, GTA games were well received in critical circles of both game journalist and game academics. Up to the point that no self-respecting game scholar can go without an opinion or - preferably - an article on the game. The open-ended nature of the game is one of its most mentioned and best appreciated characteristics.

Closer inspection of the games reveals that GTA is all these things. It is a cool game with dubious and subversive content but also possessed with a surprising flair, depth and intelligence. Its critical and popular success make it one of the key gaming franchises of this decade. The discussion about its subversive content puts into clear perspective some of the issues that surround games during this same period. In this article I will try to identify the attributes that contributed to this success in the last three major installations of the GTA series: GTA III, GTA Vice City and GTA San Andreas.

A GTA primer

GTA III, released in 2001, welcomes the player to the fictional city of Liberty City, a virtual place that resembles New York rather closely. The story starts when the unnamed protagonist (sometimes referred to as “the kid”) is betrayed by his girlfriend and sent to prison for armed robbery. He manages to escape when his convoy is attacked en route, and from that moment the player gets play him as he steals and murders his way to revenge. Starting out as a humble chauffeur for the Mafia he quickly makes a name for himself as a competent driver and gunman. The game which presents the action in a 3D environment alternates between a driving mode, in which the player races cars around the city, and a third-person shooter mode that handles the on-foot action (see figures 1 en 2). The kid works his way up but eventually is betrayed by the Mafia at which point he changes sides and joins the Yakuza, which he will eventually also betray. In the end he defeats the most powerful gang in town (the Columbian Cartel) which was run by his treacherous girlfriend. The main story-line is resolved by numerous missions that must be completed successfully by player. But that is not all, there are numerous side-missions for the player to complete. One-hundred secret packages are scattered throughout the city, as are several challenges and rampages. These latter two are best regarded as a sort of side-games which have little to do with the narrative environment but which test the player’s skills with driving and shooting.

figure 1 – Driving around in GTA III	figure 2 – Walking around in GTA III
figure 3 – Playing Vice City or Miami Vice?	figure 4 – Los Santos
figure 5 – San Fierro	figure 6 – Las Venturas
figure 7 – The San Andreas country side

GTA Vice City and San Andreas follow the same basic set-up but differ in location and scale. Vice City places the action in the eighties in a city that closely resembles Miami. Again the protagonist carves out a criminal existence, but this time he quickly establishes himself as a local crime-lord and many of the missions resolve around the expansion and protection of his criminal emporium. The fictional setting and period establish the visual look and feel of the game and are a clear reference to the Miami Vice television series (see figure 3). San Andreas frames its story in 1992 and a fictional environment that includes no less than three cities Los Santos (or Los Angeles), San Fierro (San Fransisco) and Las Venturas (Las Vegas), and sizeable rural and dessert areas (see figures 4-7). Just as the play area increased more than threefold the story’s dramatic arc is proportionally larger than in the earlier two games. From the protagonists humble beginnings as member of an insignificant local gang in Los Santos, leaned upon by corrupt police officers and betrayed by his ‘homies’, to his triumphant return as an established crime-lord after a career that takes him from Los Santos to San Fierro and Las Venturas and back to Los Santos.

The three games featured in this article are not the only games in the series. Obviously, GTA III was preceded by two earlier games: GTA (including its London 1969 mission pack) and GTA 2 published 1997 and 1999 respectively. Both games are two-dimensional with a top down perspective (see figures 8 & 9), and many of the basic game play and features are already in place. You steal cars and work your way up the criminal hierarchy and visit Liberty City, Vice City and San Andreas in the process. The games already have the typical driving and walking modes, and like in the later games a visit to a ‘Spray ‘n’ Pay’ shop rids you of unwanted police attention. In 2005, GTA Liberty City Stories was released for the PSP (Playstation Portable). In this game the action returns to Liberty City and a multiplayer mode is introduced, allowing players to hunt each other down or compete several other typical multiplayer matches.

figure 8 – Driving around in GTA 1

figure 9 – Walking around in GTA 1

Like many contemporary games, GTA is violent, sexist and racist. However, GTA is, as we shall see, a fairly reflective game: its violent, sexist and racist content is simultaneously questioned by the game itself. Still, there is no denying that, especially the earlier games, fail to represent women and minority groups fairly. One might argue that all characters in GTA are stereotypes and that no one, not even gamers, escape to be at the receiving end of the games’ humour. But that does not counter the fact that women and minorities find themselves in that position more often, than white males. This is a serious problem from which these games suffer, no matter how reflective the game is in other areas.

SimCrime

As mentioned in the introduction, GTA is praised for it open-ended nature. The game does a good job at balancing its story with a simulation game of a rather violent, modern, North-American city (Frasca 2003a). It effortlessly bridges a gap that has divided the field of game studies in two camps for some time. On the one hand the game follows a basic mission or quest-based plot. The player has to complete various missions to advance the story-line and to unlock new areas, new cars and new equipment to play with. This way the game provides a narrative framework that motivates the player and explains the background. This narrative framework might not be very innovative in terms of its structure, but as we shall see below it is very rich in its references and intertextuality, offering interesting material to the post-modern scholar of interactive narratives. On the other hand, GTA remains true to its nature of a game by offering an extensive playground that accommodates for many different types of play, which size and variance is sufficient to avoid nearly all narrative interruptions for those who are so inclined. Many players enjoy just cruising around the city listening to the radio, racing around as a cabdriver to deliver customers to their destination in time, or just looking for more of the hidden packages. The game offers many of these side ‘missions’; mini-games in which the players can test their skills in fighting, driving and navigation. In this respect, GTA is a ‘ludic simulation’ par excellence.

The idea of the ludic simulation has been (and still is) advanced by many scholars of games, such as Espen Aarseth (1997: 141), Harvey Smith (2001), Rune Klevjer (2002: 200), Gonzalo Frasca (2003b: 224) and Jesper Juul (2005: 172). The medium of the computer with its capacity implementing rules and for processing data is well suited for simulation. It is natural for computer games to make use of this disposition. But games are not ‘just’ simulation. As Chris Crawford, in one of the earliest studies of games as a cultural form, already stated (1983: 9):

A simulation bears the same relationship to a game that a technical drawing bears to a painting. A game is not merely a small simulation lacking the degree of detail that a simulation possesses; a game deliberately suppresses detail to accentuate the broader message that the designer wishes to present. Where a simulation is detailed a game is stylised.

This is an important observation. Games are never true simulations, they are inherently and deliberately ‘unrealistic’. This is not only because it would be very expensive and impossible to simulate a real city in all its aspects in a game, but also because it would be no longer any fun. As Steven Poole points out: “We don’t want absolutely real situations in videogames” (2000: 64). Part of the fun of playing a game is that games enable us “to somersault like Lara Croft, to climb sheer walls, to swim a hundred feet down in icy Artic rivers or to finish off a brutal martial arts combination of smacks and punches by floating six feet in the air and delivering a round-house kick to the head” (ibid: 77). Games are simulations that allow us to do all these things, even if that renders the simulation unrealistic. The game simulation is subject to rules that dictate that the game must be fun to play, first and foremost. These rules have more to do with an interesting balance, gameplay and coherence than anything else. Although that does not mean that the game should be easy or fair by necessity, nor it does prohibit any allusions to a reality outside the game.

GTA is a ludic simulation of a violent and criminal city (”Sim Sin City” as Gonzalo Frasca aptly puts it). The player is relatively free to roam around and to commit various criminal or unethical acts. Throughout the three games this includes robbery, joyriding, manslaughter, vandalism and burglary, among many, many others. And although it might be possible to play the game without committing these crimes that clearly defeats the purpose of playing GTA: it is already very hard just to drive through the city without driving through a red light or two, speeding, and cause fatal accidents. The object and added difficulty of some missions is to simply drive around without damaging your car. All these acts affect the city and its denizens react to it. Drive over the sidewalk and pedestrians will try to get out of your way. Cause trouble and the police will try to arrest you. Cause to much trouble and the police will come gunning for you. The missions are also ways of interacting with the simulation: after the successful execution of certain missions you may gain control over certain areas, you earn money to acquire property, or certain gangs will start shooting at you on sight. While it is fairly safe to move around during the initial stages of the game, during the later stages half the city will know exactly who you are and act accordingly. All these aspects are governed by a multitude of general and specific game or simulation rules, and from these rules a virtual playground emerges for the player to discover.

In GTA many aspects are stylised or abstracted in order to facilitate play. Like many games the player’s health is represented by a percentage: the player starts with a health of 100% and dies (is “wasted”) whenever it is reduced to 0%. This single scale representation is a considerable abstraction from the complex physiological state that make up a real person’s health, but works within the game. Interestingly, the condition of the cars is much more detailed. There is no singular scale that represents the condition of the car, instead the car is damaged in a much more ‘realistic’ way: drive into a tree and loose you front bumper, back up into a wall and dent your car’s rear. This localised damage affects the game as well. You are more easily arrested when you have lost your car-doors, as the police can more easily put a gun to your head under those circumstances. Damage the engine block enough and your car will explode. Blow out a tire and cars become more difficult to handle. The way your car is damaged is a little bit strange. Bump into an obstacle slowly and your car is damaged pretty heavily compared to the force of the collision, but you can drive through lamppost with little difficult at high speeds, and fall one-hundred meters without problem as long as you manage to land on your wheels. Clearly this balance was informed by game play considerations.

The way GTA presented audio-visually also indicates this balance between simulational realism and play. On the one hand, the cityscapes of GTA are fairly realistic. The designers went through great lengths to communicate the feel of the city of they represent (see figure 10). On the other hand, game play elements are clearly distinguished. Objects that you can pick up are represented by icons that are suspended in the air (see figure 11). Characters with any importance to the game are have arrows floating over their heads (see figure 12). The simulation of the interactions with the population of the city is also abstractly simulated: the denizens of GTA are worryingly short of memory, you can pick up as a first customer in a cabdriver mission the same chauffeur whose cab you stole to start the same mission (as happens in figure 12).

figure 10 – Liberty City	figure 11 – Guns ‘float’ around
figure 12 – Blue arrows mark a mission objective in GTA III	figure 13 – shopping for clothes in GTA: San Andreas

The criminal simulation that is the core of GTA provides the player with a sophisticated sandbox to play with a criminal identity. This is progressively stressed in the latter games, as these introduce more and more role-playing elements. In San Andreas the main character JC has many skills that he can develop. Work up you pistol skill enough and JC will be able to wield a handgun in both hands. Swimming builds up your lung capacity and running increases your stamina. The numerical representation of such skills and attributes have for long been the staple of the role-playing genre, and today, when a game is said to include to contain role-playing elements, we generally mean that the game provides some options to build-up your character’s strengths and statistics. Personally, and I think that many players of pen-and-paper role-playing games will agree, I find that such character-building systems have little to do with actual role-playing. Instead, the ability to go shopping for clothes (see figure 13), date girls, to invest in houses and customise your cars, are much better outlets for configurative role-playing, as these allow the players to sculpt JC into an image of their choice. The option to use JC as a virtual doll and choose different styles for him further encourages role-playing experiments. After all one, of the charms of Grand Theft Auto is the fact that you get to play the bad guy. Anything that helps you to let out your inner gangster facilitates this process. In this way GTA, builds up one of the strengths of the computer game genre: it enables you to experiment with different roles and identities. According to James Paul Gee (2003) this is one of the positive effects of playing games, as being able switch between identities facilitates learning and becomes an important asset for later life. What the player does (the game content) is of less importance than how she does it (the games form). Even though GTA puts the player in the shoes of a villain, it is more important that player given tools to construct an identity with than the details of the identity she builds with them. The success of GTA cannot be attributed solely to fact that you can role-play the villain, which in it self is a welcome change from the bland, generic game heroes, but also to the fact that you can do so in style. It is not enough to wield a gun and steal cars, you also need to buy the right clothes, pimp your ride and choose your favourite soundtrack to accompany it all.

figure 14 – A hidden package in GTA III	figure 15 – Spraying graffiti in San Andreas
figure 16 – A collectable horseshoe	figure 17 – Oysters boost your sex appeal
figure 18 – Spot photo opportunities by looking through your camera

In its openness GTA offers a lot of variety and playthings to a wide variety of players. There is the driving and shooting action, a story to follow and plenty of opportunity for role-playing. This still does not deplete the games’ depth of play: for those who want to explore there are various mini-games to play and tokens to collect. In GTA III and Vice City the latter are represented by one-hundred hidden packages that are scattered through out the game (see figure 14). Collecting ten gives you a money bonus, and a free pistol at every save point. Collecting ten more increases the value of the bonus and the freebies, etcetera. In San Andreas the fairly abstract hidden packages are replaced by more ‘realistic’ (or rather better integrated) graffiti tags, horse shoes, oysters and photo-opportunities, but the fulfil the same, or similar, role in the game (see figures 15-18). There are one-hundred gang tags scattered around Los Santos and by grabbing a spray-can and spraying your tag over them unlocks bonuses and free weapons, just like the hidden packages in the earlier games. The collectible horseshoes and photo-opportunities (of which there are only fifty) also unlock weapons in different parts of the game. The oysters give you a different bonus, and ultimately will give you a super sex-appeal with which none of the potential ‘girlfriends’ can resist.

The various challenges scattered throughout the game test the player’s ability. In all three games there are unique jumps or stunts for the player to perform. Successful execution of these stunts gives the player a monetary bonus. Gone from San Andreas are the rampages. Challenges that test the players ability to use particular weapons. In these rampages the player is given a particular weapon, unlimited ammunition and is asked to go and kill a set number of targets in a limited time (see figures 19-20). The targets are usually vehicles or rival gangsters. In effect the player has to go postal and kill her targets before she gets killed herself. The rampages seem to have little effect on the game itself. It is entirely possible to be offered a flame thrower and challenged to go and kill twenty members of the Yakuza in two minutes, without having this having any impact on your standings with that same criminal organisation. The rampages seem to be little asides, put in the game to amuse and challenge the player without interfering with the main course of the action. Perhaps it is for that reason that have been left out of San Andreas as that game aims for a greater sense of realism, as also becomes apparent from the integration of the ‘hidden packages’ into the virtual setting and the way items are no longer represented by a floating icon (compare figures 11 and 21).

figure 19 – A rampage icon	figure 20 – The rampage challenge
figure 21 – Items in San Andreas	figure 22 – Overwhelmed by the police

The virtual worlds that the GTA games offer, allow for many different types of play. In many ways ‘the world is yours’. Yours to explore and to conquer. That is, as long as the police do not get you; cause enough trouble and they will come after you. In large numbers. With helicopters and SWAT teams if need be (see figure 22). Even in GTA, crime does not always pay.

Knee-deep in intertextual references

One of the most striking features of GTA, and the feature that got me to play the game, is its intertextual richness. It easily is the game with the largest portion of intertext I ever saw. In fact, it is hard to find anything in the games that can not be interpreted intertextualy.

Intertextuality is core concept of post-modern thinking on literature and culture. The term was coined by Julia Kristeva in a discussion of the works of Russian scholar Mikhail Bakhtin. It was his insight that “any text is constructed as a mosaic of quotations; any text is the absorption and transformation of another” that Kristeva labelled intertextuality (1980: 66). Today, intertextuality is popularly understood as the direct or indirect quotation of literary sources by a literary text. But for Kristeva intertextuality is “the transposition of a system of signs into another system of signs” (ibid. 15). Thus incorporating the typical form and style (which is the result of the use of a particular system of signs) from, say, a newspaper article into a novel is a good example of intertextuality. To sum up, there are many different forms of intertextuality: direct quotations of other fictional sources, references to the non-fictional texts and reality, and the copying of various cultural and non-cultural forms, genres and styles. In the case of GTA, it is guilty of all charges.

The most prominent direct intertextual quotations are the references to Oliver Stone’s film Scarface (1984). This film traces the rise of a Cuban refugee to crime-lord in Miami in the eighties, and his subsequent fall. Inspired by the promise of the American Dream, the film’s main character Tony Montana takes the Pan Am slogan “the world is yours” as his own (see figures 23 and 24). He does not shun any means necessary to claim his stake of success and kills, steals and betrays his way up. Eventually he looses it and dies in an orgy of violence that also sees his best friend, his sister and all his henchmen dead. Obviously, the references are most prevalent in Vice City as that game is set in the same period, in a similar setting and follows a similar narrative development. Vice City uses the same first name for the game’s protagonist (Tony Vercetti) and borrows more than a few settings of the film (see figures 25 and 26). But many subtler references already appeared in GTA III that, among other things, has a radio station that exclusively plays songs from the film’s soundtrack.

figure 23 - ‘The world is yours’ as Pan America slogan

figure 24 - ‘The world is yours’ as Tony’s motto in his mansion
figure 25 - Tony’s room in Scarface	figure 26 - And of Vice City

There are many more direct references in all the three games, some more obvious than others. One of my favourites is the reference to Peter Greenaway’s film The Cook, the Thief, his Wife and her Lover (1989) in GTA III. There are four optional mission to be undertaken fairly early in the game called “The Crook”, “The Thieves”, “The Wife” and “Her Lover” (which must be followed in this order). These missions obviously refer to Greenaway’s film title, but the resemblance does not stop at that. The objectives of the missions involve bringing various people to a dog food factory where they are processed into the food. This repeats the cannibalistic finale of the film. Another personal favourite is San Andreas’ character Zero who seems to speak in citations of famous war speeches most of the time (”never was so much owned by so many to so few”), something which seems to largely escape and confuse the game’s protagonist CJ.

As mentioned before, the different locations of the GTA games represent real-life American cities and locations. Some of the structures and architecture draw directly from real-life counterparts such as San Fierro’s Gant Bridge that spans the San Fierro Bay and which has more than a passing resemblance of San Fransisco’s Golden Gate Bridge (figure 27). Unfortunately, I am not familiar with any of the real-life locations, but I am sure that those who are can point out many more of such examples. Even I occasionally recognise the backdrops of rap videos from playing San Andreas.

figure 27 - Gant Bridge in San Fierro	figure 28 - Area 69
figure 29 - The air graveyard	figure 30 - The ‘world’s biggest cock’

Interestingly, there are also many references that have far more cultural or popular significance than simply being in on of the cites GTA is referring to. For example we have the “Area 69″ complete with alien-themed bars that allude to a whole body of popular myth that surrounds the real-life Area 51 and television series such as the X-Files (see figure 28). Then there is the “abandoned air strip” lined with wrecks of old plains (figure 29), that resembles a location that plays a prominent role in Don DeLillo’s novel Underworld, which is among other things an important reflection on the history of the United States after the Second World War. And what to think of “The World’s Biggest Cock” in Las Venturas (figure 30)? Does it have anything to do with the ‘decorated shed that looks like a duck’, that in the manifesto of post-modernity Learning From Las Vegas comes to stand for a whole tradition of modernist architecture (Venturi, Scott Brown & Izenour: 1977). Last, but not least, the city of Los Santos spirals down into a state of riots and chaos towards the end of San Andreas, an event that clearly refers to the Rodney King Riots in Los Angeles in 1992, which is the same year in which the game is set.

The last form of intertextuality (that copies the form instead of the content) is constantly encountered in GTA as most of its characters and scenes are rather stereotypical and seem to come from a host of different sources. Most prominent in this respect are the radio stations, commercials and billboards. While driving around you can tune into various radio stations that sound typical of the day and age of the game setting. These radio stations sound just like such radio stations should sound like, complete with typical DJs, catchy jingles and convincing adds. But despite the commercial and professional sounding form, the content of these messages cannot be taken seriously. For example GTA III features the following radio stations (among others):

• Head Radio - a rock station that is “making sure radio in every town in America sounds exactly the same” and that boasts “a better variety of weird noises between songs”.


• Double Cleff FM - a classical opera station that broadcasts a show called “The Fat Lady Sings” hosted by - Morgan “The Maistro” Merriweather - who constantly hints at his dubious sexual preferences: “this powerful tune can overpower the senses, much like a twelve year old nephew who lets you bounce him on your knee… one last time… multo adagio”.


• Flashback FM - that plays “all the songs you were tired off twenty years ago” (which happen to be only songs from the Scarface film), and which DJ cannot help but hint at all the great sex she had during the eighties (”I used to play the trumpet a lot back then, if you know what I mean”).

The commercials aired by these stations range from hilarious to downright disturbing; from adds for the New Maibatsu Monstrosity SUV (equipped with an amphibious mode to cross artic tundra. “Why drive a small car? Are you a small person?”) to the add for “Liberty City Survivor”, the television event that “takes twenty recently paroled guys, equips them with grenade launchers and flame throwers and let them hunt each other down.” A reality show “where you just might be part of the action”: “natural selection has come home”.

These radio stations and commercials add to the games’ ‘mock-realistic texture’. The player is drawn in by a comfortable look and feel, but soon discovers that realistic appearance is perverted by the contradictory or humour content. This characteristic is repeated in the billboards that are scattered throughout the cities (although less so in Vice City). The player expects to see a lot of advertisements in a faithful representation of a modern city, and sometimes these billboards are just that, but more often than not their messages are as hilarious or disturbing as the radio commercials (see figures 31-33).

figure 31 - Commercials	figure 32 - More commercials
figure 33 - Still more commercials

It should be obvious that most of these contribute to a satirical form of humour, that beyond any doubt has been noticed by many players, journalists and academics. I would say it is one the reasons behind the games’ popular success. The designers must have thought so too, as they deliberately crafted characters and scenes just for this reason; throughout the game the tongue is firmly in cheek. A good example can be found in all the scenes that involve the fictional rock band ‘Love Fist’. These Scottish rockers are walking stereotypes whose dialogue would not be out of place in an episode of the Young Ones.

Intertextual irony and engagement

In his collection of essays On Literature Umberto Eco discusses the idea of double-coding. Double coding refers to the idea that a work of art can simultaneously address a elite minority that favours ‘high’ art and the general public that favours popular or ‘low’ art (Eco 2004: 214). It is an aspect of art that has been foregrounded by post-modern theories of culture, but according to Eco has been characteristic of artworks throughout history. In fact, many of the great canonical classics were popular hits during their time of creation (ibid: 217). GTA, as should have become clear, is likewise double coded: it is on the one hand a fun game, and on the other hand it is steeped in modern cultural and intellectual references. Even in its artwork the game is double coded. It features all icons of popular culture (fast cars, guns and sexy girls) but renders these in a visual style that, with its strongly modulated colours, that Gunter Kress and Theo van Leeuwen associate with ‘the abstract coding orientation’ favoured by the sociocultural elite. (1996: 170). Incidentally, the visual style of GTA can be traced to the film-posters of Scarface, that arguable address the same audience.

Eco does not stop at with his observation that popular and critically successful works are double coded. He links the idea of double coding to the idea of two levels of reading. The first level of reading is the most common, a reader is just following the story; she is immersed in the text. The second level of reading involves a far more critical relation to the text. The reader is also interested in the structure and workings of the text. Eco associates this second level reading with scholarship, something which students of literature need to be taught (Eco 2004: 220). It is easy to expand this idea of a primary, immersed level and secondary, critical level of reading with other types of texts. The appreciation of modern art, for example, depends for a large part on the ability to read on this second, critical level. It is my experience in teaching visual semiotics that once students learn how to ’see differently’ (seeing how images are constructed and structured) they can start to appreciate images of many types critically. I am confident that similar observations can be made in film, television and media studies. In fact, I think it is one of the biggest assets of an academic study that one learns how to appreciate a certain type of text critically, whether these are academic, political or artistic texts.

The particular form of double coding in GTA is similar to what Eco describes as ‘intertextual irony’. A player of the game can on the one hand enjoy a well-crafted game on the first level, and the player capable of second level ‘reading’ strategies can appreciate the game on a deeper, intertextual level that for a large part can be read as a comment of popular culture and games. An interesting quality of intertextual irony is that, according to Eco, it invites second level readings from a reader that commonly traverses the first level only. The humour frequently is so obvious that all readers are actually encouraged to reflect on the construction of the text (ibid: 234-235).

The first and second level reading strategies also recall the dynamic between immersion and engagement described by Diane Carr et al. Engagement is distinguished from immersion as “a more deliberate, critical mode of participation” (2006: 54). Games that allow a player to constantly move between immersion and engagement can be very compelling as this dynamic causes a state of flow with the player. A state of flow that cannot be attributed solely to the games ludic or representational qualities, but which has to be attributed to interaction of those qualities (2006: 55-58).

When looking at GTA it becomes clear that the player can immerse herself in the gameplay or the story, but is constantly encouraged to take a more reflective stance of engagement by the presence of the on screen characters. In GTA, and especially in the later instalments, the player is never allowed to play herself. The Kid, Tony and JC are always present, and increasingly act on their own. Especially JC, who gets the most screen time in lengthy cutscenes, has a distinct character that is independent from the player. We are invited to role-play JC, not ourselves. We are invited to experiment with his character and the social identity he represents. All the characters that appear in the games are stereotypes, as if we are never allowed to believe that these characters are anything but fictional. Their artifice, the games’ humour and intertextual references almost forces us to adopt an engaged, critical and reflective stance to the text it presents.

GTA as a social commentary

When we discover that Grand Theft Auto is a reflective game, the question arises what the game reflects upon. The answer is fairly easy. If anything, GTA can be read as a strong social commentary that addresses the current state of American society, violence, consumerism and excessive branding.

GTA is set in the United States, although the cities go by different names, it is clear that it represents contemporary American cities. The way the cities are represented is not always flattering. Los Santos is a urban sprawl, complete with chain-linked fences, poor quality housing and polluted skies. The streets are controlled by gangs and corrupt police officers. Drugs hold sway over the populace, and it is not very hard to find a prostitute working the streets. When riots erupt in the streets the town descents into violent chaos, which was very much part of real-life Los Angeles in 1992 (see figure 34). The other cities are not better off, run mostly by criminal organisations and ruthless real-estate developers, who do not shun from provoking a gang war in order to drive down the price of land.

The people that inhabit this urban fiction are preoccupied by the consumption of media and consumer goods. When asked to comment on the violent climax of the narrative of GTA III during radio-clip that accompanies the final credit roll, witnesses recall the visual spectacle ‘which was better than the fireworks of the Fourth of July’. In San Andreas your sex appeal is directly related to your fashion budget: spend more on clothes and accessories and you will become more attractive. The cities of GTA are littered with often hilarious advertisements, radio stations designate a significant amount of there airtime to commercial messages, and the poor employees of the fast-food restaurants speak in poorly written pitches.

figure 34 - Los Santos riots
figure 35 - Ammu-Nation in GTA III	figure 36 - Ammu-Nation in Vice City
figure 37 - Ammu-Nation in San Andreas	figure 38 - Ammu-Nation San Andreas interior

All these elements are superimposed with the ‘Ammu-Nation’ chain store which is a constant feature in all games (see figures 35-38). Ammu-Nation sells weapons and ammunition, and aggressively advertises its wares: it is “the store that helped defeat Communism”, where one can buy “a frequent sniper card” or attend the “Ammu-Nation endangered species barbecue” every Saturday. The irony is obvious, beyond doubt the designers had great fun developing this fictional brand. At the same time no one escapes the uncomfortable feeling that all this is not too far from actual reality. The powerful mix of branding, consumerism, patriotism and militarism, packaged into catchy slogans and aired by commercial media is all to familiar.

A quick comparison with Joel Schumacher’s 1993 film Falling Down should take away any doubt that GTA addresses real social issues of modern life. The similarities between this film and the games are striking. Falling Down is set in Los Angeles during the early nineties, and features the same degenerate urban landscapes that comprises Los Santos. The film’s main character, Foster, is driven insane by the burdens of modern life. Admittedly, he is was not a very stable person to start with, but a series of events that lead him trough gangland to burger restaurant and has him collide with bureaucracy and trigger-happy freaks leaves no doubt as who or what is to blame for his mental state. Throughout his ‘adventure’ Foster finds several weapons, initially knives and baseball bats, later submachine guns and disposable rocket launchers, that echoes the typical collection of power-ups in a video game. Although Foster is eventually brought down by a venerable police officer, the audience is clearly invited to sympathise, to some extent, with the violent and dangerous Foster.

figure 39 - Burger restaurant in Falling Down

figure 40 - A similar burger bar in Los Santos

The similarity between scenes in the Falling Down and locations in GTA cannot be coincidental (see figures 39 & 40), neither can the similarities in content be ignored. I doubt many people would refrain from calling Falling Down a social satire, and by extension not many people who actually take the time play GTA can conclude otherwise. If anything, GTA should be applauded for its critical portrayal of contemporary urban society without romanticising pastoral or rural life, as is all too common in mainstream cinema and games (cf. King 2000). Despite its violent theme, it is more intelligent and critical than the celebrated Sims series that on closer inspection is quickly revealed as “civilian simulator training for yuppies” (Kline, Dyer-Witheford & De Peuter 2003: 276)

We can take this analysis one level further still. So far we have seen that the content - or the representational dimension - of GTA is reflective. The same can be said for some aspects of it ludic dimension. A good example of this, is the infamous role played by prostitutes. In the game the player can restore her character’s health to 100% by resting or picking up health power-ups. By having sexual intercourse with a prostitute health is set to 125%. This clearly has a gaming advantage at a negligible price. This feature is not mentioned in the manuals, but word of it spread quickly through the internet. Much has been made of this feature, but I ‘read’ into the reduction of prostitutes to power-ups a revealing commentary on how the society represented by the game treats its women. It is not teaching us how to treat women, rather it is reflecting back to us how we are treating women. In my view it is close to a play of Brechtian estrangement, maybe not as obvious as Gonzalo Frasca’s September 12, but definitely making intelligent use of the game medium to make a profound statement about the state of our society.

There are many more of this type of commentary expressed through game devices. Most notably is the way San Andreas takes typical statistics of role-playing game and subverts these to express the important attributes of modern life. Your ‘fat’ score increases from eating to much fast food, expanding your waistline. Your sex appeal can be increased by spending enough money on fashion products. A rating for ‘respect’ is build up like a score for strength or charisma in a game of Dungeons & Dragons.

GTA consciously and intelligently uses the typical structure of games to incorporate and comment on modern life. The game might be ambivalent, one might even point out that many gamers will fail to notice these qualities at all, but one cannot deny that these qualities are present, and more importantly that GTA shares these qualities with some of the most important works of art in human history. After all, we need to teach our children to read Shakespeare in the right way: we need to teach them to enjoy his tales, but also to understand the underlying themes and comments, and to appreciate his wonderful constructions. Maybe if we point out some of the critical features of GTA they would enjoy and appreciate the games at a more significant and critical level.

Conclusion

If there is a to be a canon of games, then GTA deserves a prominent spot on that list. As I hope to have shown, the GTA games are successful as ludic simulations, play an important role in the discussion of the place of games in society, but at the same time can be read as intelligent, intertextual, social commentaries themselves. In GTA the world is truly yours. It is your ludic playground, build from the same commercial and cultural elements that create the promise of the American dream and society, and in that way it reflects on the real world that is yours outside the game. The designers show that they master the form of games, and have used that ability to create a message that is both pleasurable and profound. The particular use of double coded signs puts GTA in a long tradition of artistic reflection, and hopefully, elevates gamers to a more critical level of gaming and interpretation. The message that GTA constructs deviates from typical popular tales that tend to celebrate militarised masculinity or blind consumerism. If the game is subversive, it is so not because it teaches youngsters to be criminal, but because it teaches them to appreciate their society critically. But, crucially, GTA manages to integrate all this: it is a fine example of craftsmanship and intelligence within the medium of games.

Bibliography

Aarseth, Espen J. (1997) Cybertext, Perspectives on Ergodic Literature. Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Carr, Diane, David Buckingham, Andrew Burn & Gareth Schott (2006) Computer Games: Text, Narrative and Play. Cambridge, Polity Press.

Crawford, Chris (1983) The Art of Computer Game Design. Available at <http://Vancouver.wsu.edu/fac/Peabody/gaeme-book/coverpage.html>

Eco, Umberto (2004) On Literature. London, Vintage.

Frasca, Gonzalo (2003a) “Sim Sin City: some thoughts about Grand Theft Auto 3″. On Gamestudies.org <http://www.gamestudies.org/0302/frasca/>

Frasca, Gonzalo (2003b) “Simulation versus Narrative” in Mark J. P. Wolf & Bernard Perron (eds.) The Video Game Theory Reader (pp. 221-235). New York, Routledge.

Gee, James Paul (2003) What Video Games Have to Teach us about Learning and Literacy. New York, Palgrave MacMillan.

Juul, Jesper (2005) Half-Real, Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds. Cambridge, The MIT Press.

King, Geoff (2000) Spectacular Narratives, Hollywood in the Age of the Blockbuster. London, I.B. Tauris Publishers.

Klevjer, Rune (2002) “In Defense of Cutscenes” in Märyä, Frans (ed) Proceedings of Computer Games and Digital Cultures Conference. Tampere, Tampere Univeristy Press (pp 191-202)

Kline, Stephen, Nick Dyer-Witheford & Greig De Peuter (2003) Digital Play: The Interaction of Technology, Culture, and Marketing. Montreal & Kingston, McGill-Queen’s University Press.

Kress, Gunter & Theo van Leeuwen (1996) Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. London, Routledge.

Kristeva, Julia (1980) Desire in Language. Oxford. Basil Blackwell Ltd.
Poole, Steven (2000) Trigger Happy, The Inner Life of Videogames. London, Fourth Estate.

Smith, Harvey (2001) “The Future of Game Design: Moving Beyond Deus Ex and Other Dated Paradigms”. On Igda.org. <http://www.igda.org/articles/hsmith_future.php>

Venturi, Robert, Denise Scott Brown & Steven Izenour (1977) Learning From Las Vegas, Revised Edition. Cambridge, The MIT Press.

Ludography

Grand Theft Auto (1997), Keith R. Hamilton (team leader). DMA Design Limited / BMG Interactive.

Grand Theft Auto 2 (1999), Nigel Conroy, Adrian Hirst & Emel Akiah (development team). DMA Design Limited / Rockstar Games, Inc.

Grand Theft Auto III (2001), Craig Filshie, William Mills, Chris Rothwell, James Worrall (design). DMA Design Limited / Rockstar Games, Inc.

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (2002), Leslie Benzies (producer) & Aaron Garbut (art director). DMA Design Limited / Rockstar Games, Inc.

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (2004), Leslie Benzies (producer) & Aaron Garbut (art director). Rockstar North Ltd. / Rockstar Games, Inc.

Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories (2005), Leslie Benzies (producer) & Aaron Garbut (art director). Rockstar Leeds, Rockstar North Ltd. / Rockstar Games, Inc.

The Sims (2000), Michael Perry (design director). Maxis Software Inc. / Electronic Arts Inc.

Joris Dormans is independent game scholar, lecturer of game design at the College of Amsterdam and freelance designer.

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since June 2007

Date posted:
Updated: Oct 24, 2006

by Joris Dormans

Abstract

Branching plot trees are not the way forward for the development of interactive storytelling or narrative gaming. By investigating the gaming nature of many computer mediated narratives and by learning from pen-and-paper role-playing games the story-world and the railroad are presented as successful, alternative structures for interactive storytelling. However, these structures are not without limitations. Taking cues from novelist Neal Stephenson and scholar Marie-Laure Ryan a new structure, the fractal story, is explored and presented as a promising format for expressive narrative gaming.

Introduction

Branching plot trees are the dominant form in the popular conception of interactive fiction or interactive cinema. In this form of interactive storytelling the reader or player occasionally chooses a direction for the story to develop in from a set of pre-designed options. Many computer games are plot trees, too; the landscape of computer-mediated narrative gaming is like a forest. However, the plot tree constitutes a rather poor strategy of storytelling and gaming alike. A plot tree offers little control over the story. A forced choice between a distinct number of options does not inspire significant action on the part of the player. This contributes to a ‘mechanical’ and ‘lifeless’ story effect [8]. Worse still, the player is pulled out of the narrative world to make an often arbitrary choice and left to wonder whether the story might have been better if she had chosen differently. As Steven Poole puts it: "we don’t want to have to make crucial narrative decisions that might, in effect, spoil the story for us. We want to have our cake and eat it." [10: 123]. In this paper I will explore alternative structures of narrative gaming, drawing on the accumulated experience of pen-and-paper role-playing games and expanding on the (more) hypothetical structure of the fractal story. It is due time we cut those fictional trees down.

Narrative Games

Rule-based simulation of a game world is what sets games apart from hypertexts and many other media that do allow some forms of interaction. Interaction and simulation in games are closely tied to a notion of dynamic systems and emergent behaviour. Media of these type allow for a type of experimental, and culturally significant form of play (or paida). It might well be, as Frasca has it, that "Video games imply an enormous paradigm shift for our culture because the represent the first complex simulational media for the masses" [6: 224]. Thus, in order to understand games we must comprehend the rhetoric particular to simulation. We must understand how game and simulation rules structure our experience. How we interact with the gaming machines and enter in a cybernetic feedback loop that can consume our attention for hours on end. Not all of these game engines have a disposition to generate narrative output, but some unquestionably have. These are narrative games.

Pen-and-paper role-playing games are precursors of computer based narrative games, even though strictly speaking computer games are little older than these role-playing games. For their entire thirty year history, pen-and-paper role-playing games have had the advantage of little technological limitations and have had access to the most powerful processor available: the human mind. This has given pen-and-paper role-playing games a clear advantage over computer mediated, narrative games. This has lead to the development of different types of structures for interactive storytelling, but also has allowed these games to make much more of the interaction between the player and the game. As we shall see it is the freedom of player expression on the one hand and co-operation between players and storyteller on the other hand that make these games successful. There is no reason why computer games can make use of the same recipe. By reinvestigating possible ways of structuring interactive stories, and by giving more attention to the ways players may express themselves we might discover a way out of the forest and discover new horizons for narrative gaming.

We like to think about games as cybertexts, but from the point of view of pen-and-paper role-players the interaction in computer games remains rather limited. To them these games are little better than spreadsheets with nice textures; character-builders associated with roll-playing games instead of role-playing games. For many players expression and interaction has always been the strength of narrative gaming. As Steven Poole argues, the technology is keeping back the development of interactive narratives. We simply do not have the technology to allow for more than a handful dialogue options [10: 121]. The result is that the contribution of players to the construction of the game consists only of the options that can be selected using a mere handful of buttons. We might have to wait for the development of good speech synthesising, voice recognition and natural language parsing before the games industry start delivering dramatic game interaction, but we might as well be waiting forever.

However, there are games that do offer more ways of expressions to the player. According to Harvey Smith, lead designer of Deus Ex, that game "tried to provide the player with a host of player-expression tools and then turn him loose in an immersive, atmospheric environment" [12]. The expressions Smith talks about are extremely limited on the first glance. The player for example is offered the chance to choose between two different upgrades for his avatar. But because these upgrades "tied into analogue systems like lighting or sound" they continue to influence the game and thus actually offer a finer granularity of expression than most branching path models ever could (ibid.). In Deus Ex the way you develop your avatar became an important tool for expression, in the end it determines the way you can play the game. And this development is firmly rooted into the narrative background. In many ways Shigeru Miyamoto advocates a same approach to game development when he stated that "Another big element is that players themselves can grow. In the game you see and feel Link actually grows. At the same time, players can become better players" (quoted in [5: 240]). This prompted game-designer Doug Church to state, in a discussion on Mario 64, that "Simple though the controls are, they are very expressive, allowing rich interaction through simple movement and a small selection of jumping moves" [3].

From a semiotic or linguistic point of view the limited number of ’signs’ a player can use does not necessarily limit the number of expressions that can be build from them. In fact, a defining characteristic of language prevalent throughout all linguistic work of Noam Chomsky is that we make infinite use of finite means. Although the number of words in a language is much larger than the number of commands in a computer game, Chomsky illustrates how this ‘infinite use of finite means’ can be achieved with only a few words [2: 18-25]. Likewise semiotics, as a theory of signs, is not only interested in the way signifiers relate to signifieds, but also the way several signs combine on a syntactic axis. The expressive potential of the limited input is hardly
exhausted by the common dialogue trees. When limited commands are projected onto a world-simulation (as is the case in Deus Ex and Mario 64) their potential as tools for dramatic expression increases.

Railroads & Story-Worlds

Dungeons & Dragons is not really known for its strong plots or dramatic developments. Originally the game was designed around dungeon adventures where the players had to explore a dungeon, kill the monsters and find the treasure. At the basis of these adventures is not a set of possible scenes but a map that outlines the dungeon. The map has been prepared in advance or is taken from a commercial adventure module. The map provides details on the whereabouts of different monsters, secret doors, various pits and pendulums. The maps gives the players the freedom to explore while at the same time it limits the game within ‘natural’ boundaries. The existence of the prepared map contributes to the freedom by providing an easy and ‘fair’ method reference to the storyteller (or ‘dungeon master’). It conveys the idea that the players can truly choose their own path and destiny; contributing to a sense of agency on the part of the player. On the other hand, the players cannot ‘escape’ the dungeon. There is usually no reason for the storyteller to prepare anything outside the dungeon. The map allows her to focus on the actions of the players within its confines. It helps her prepare the game. Players are unlikely to try to go beyond the limits of the dungeon, because, after all, the whole point of playing Dungeons & Dragons is to explore the dungeon, slay the monsters and steal the treasure.

Role-playing games have evolved from their ‘dungeon-crawling’ beginnings, but still maps are the backbone of many ongoing stories. The map is a way of simulating a world; designing a map sets up a web of possibilities for the players to explore. The old dungeon adventures are crude and primitive compared to the worlds and settings created for later games. These elaborate settings define the narrative disposition of the game, by setting up an intricate simulation rife with dramatic potential. They have become story-worlds, even in those instances where a political or psychological ‘map’ forms its most defining structure.

The downside of the story-world is that the player can easily become lost in its sheer size. In most computer role-playing games that rely on huge maps the action quickly becomes repetitive. How many dungeons should one visit to gain enough experience points to be able to deal with the next part of the story? For players interested in the hack-and-slash combat these games invariably offer, this is fine, but those who wish to progress the story can find this an arduous task and may loose track of or interest in the narrative altogether, These are reason for Chris Crawford not to put too much hope in this structure [4: 261-262].

One other way to overcome the restrictions of the plot-tree is to abandon the idea of player choice altogether and drive her through a single plot narrative. Design effort can than be directed on delivering a involving story and keeping up the illusion of freedom of action. For in the end, in most games freedom is just that: an illusion. It is a strategy that is common in printed adventure modules for role-playing games. In effect the players may control her avatar and the player’s actions maybe crucial to help story advance but the story is typically constructed in such way that it will advance independent of the player’s relative success. In role-playing this structure is often referred to as railroading. The trick of a good railroaded story is to either put the players under the illusion that they are doing it all themselves or have the plot motivate their lack of control over the situation. Usually a combination of the two works best.

Many computer games that have been credited for having a good story make extensive use of the rail. A good example is Half-Life – and not only because actual trains feature prominently in the game. The survivalist narrative that drives the game makes sure the player always has a clear goal: escape the vast Black Mesa complex. As the player progresses through the various levels, the story of the technological failure and subsequent government cover-up takes form as you overhear guards, marines and scientists, that are put on your path. In Half-Life you either advance through the levels or you die, there is no other option.

There are two distinctive dangers of the railroading stories. First, the player may get frustrated when she feels she has lost control over her character. And second, the player may get the feeling that her action does not matter at all; that she plays only a small part in the story as it develops. In both cases the player’s feeling of immersive agency crumbles and she might as well read a book, watch a movie or go see a play. The agency we have in railroading stories is "micro-agency" to use Doug Church’s word, and what is lacking is "agency at a higher level" (quoted in [7])

Fractal Stories

The term fractal story is coined by Marie-Laure Ryan [11] in her discussion of Neal Stephenson’s novel The Diamond Age. With Ryan I think that the fractal story is an interesting direction in which interactive storytelling and narrative gaming might evolve. In Stephenson’s work of science-fiction a lower-class girl called Nell by chance acquires a state-of-the-art interactive book. This book is designed to educate little girls, teaching her all manner of practical skills and preparing her for the world at large. It does so by relating the adventures of princess Nell. These adventures are partly interactive, sometimes Nell has to decide what Princess Nell is going to do.

The stories of Princess Nell take the form of classic folktales. When Nell has become an experienced reader of the book she understands the basic premises of these stories and thereby understands what is expected of Princess Nell. But the book has prepared Nell also by telling her the end of the story right in the beginning. While Nell is reading the book she is not advancing the story rather she is expanding it. Where once the book simply refers to the many adventures Princess Nell has in the lands of the twelve Faery Kings, they grow into full blown interactive stories for Nell to enjoy and resolve, when those parts are read more ‘closely’ by simply flipping back the pages and start reading again. It is this ability to zoom in on the story that gives the structure its name: anfractuous with Stephenson [13: 343] and fractal with Ryan [11: 337].

In my opinion the fact that the basic structure is known and recognised by the reader is at least as important for the fractal story structure. It is a point that is stressed by The Diamond Age: "We change the script a little," Madame Ping said, "to allow for cultural differences. But the story never changes. There are many people and many tribes, but only so many stories." (p. 374, see also the quote above). The narrative database the interactive book uses is filled with generic universal folk materials. These are meant to be recognisable. This is also in line with the chosen metaphor of the mathematical structure of the fractal. For one of the characteristics of fractals in nature is that we are very good at recognising them. A coastline is fractal, but not every fractal line qualifies as coastline. To draw an imaginary and convincing coastline takes some practice. The same goes folktales. Most people will recognise a folktale quickly by reading just a few lines. It is the particular use of words, content-matter and style that makes the genre recognisable. When the story is recognised as a folktale certain expectations about its narrative structure can be made. Folktales have particular and predictable ways of developing and ending. However, this does not harm the pleasure of reading such stories in any way. In fact these aspect of storytelling goes for a great many of genres

We like to believe that we watch films or read books exactly because we do not know the story or how it will end, but this is only partly true. We often know that the hero is not going to die. Fans of horror films will often be able to make accurate guesses of who will live or die after only a few minutes. After all: "it cannot possibly be the right course of action in a Hollywood blockbuster if it wipes out the stars" [9: 88]. We often end up retelling the same story. It is not the plot that matters much; it is the process of the telling that makes it worthwhile. As Atkins puts it: "The satisfaction of such stories, at least at the level of discrete plot fragment, rests not in matter of plot sophistication, but in matters of sophistication of telling. The question is never will the prince overcome the dragon but how will the prince overcome the dragon?" [9: 43]. The retelling of old (mythical, biblical) stories is often applauded in literature, drama and cinema. Why shouldn’t it be good enough for games? Especially as games are particular good at creating telling tailored to the taste of the individual player, giving such a tale much more personal significance.

Working towards a pre-defined (if not pre-designed) goals is a common strategy among those role-players that design their own stories. Knowledge of the fantasy genre will help the players to guess the general shape of the story. In fact, The Lord of Rings helped shape many fantasy adventures to the extend that finding a particular artefact and finding out how to deal with it has become a common structure in many role-playing adventures. As long as the storyteller and the players (subconsciously) work towards the same goal, such a goal confines the game as effectively as a map in a story-world structure. The basic structure of the quest, where not the goal but the path towards it is the biggest beneficiary of the hero, is highly compatible with this structure.

The idea behind the fractal story can solve some problems of interactive narratives. It has often been argued that a good story depends on authorial control which cannot be combined with freedom of action. The structures of narrative storytelling discussed above cannot solve this dilemma entirely. The plot tree is too restrictive, the story-world often lacks strong narrative developments and the rail quickly turns into a frustrating experience when the illusion of freedom is broken. The fractal story can be seen, to some extend, as taking a position somewhere between the story-world and the rail. Like the rail it has a fixed destination, although this destination is less defined, but unlike the rail the path towards the goal is not fixed. Like the story-world it offers freedom to the players, but its boundaries are not determined by the ‘edges on the map’ but by a common goal and direction. Most likely the destination of a story is defined by the conventions of the genre. In a fantasy setting we expect the protagonists to be heroes, and since most of them do not start out as one, it is the path of becoming a hero that is the true story being told. A very extreme form is the imminent death of the hero in a classic tragedy.

A common destination of the story is the only way we can truly blur the boundary between reader and author in narrative games and this becomes a lot easier when the player knows what is expected and the storyteller knows what the player expects. Likewise, when a plot structure is known beforehand, players can experiment with different motivations that drive the plot forward. It makes it easier for the storyteller to allow the player to create those "well-turned phrases" and "elegant sentences", too [1: 44].

Still the destination of a fractal story can be reached under different conditions, changing the relevance or meaning of the destination dramatically. The film Hero offers a good illustration of this point. In Hero the same story is told again and again. The climax of the story is always the same: a duel between the nameless hero and a character called Flying Snow. However, because the events leading up to this scene change a little with each telling the emotion that drives the scene changes – from jalousie, to love and honour – giving the scene a new poetic significance with each iteration. Stories thus constructed have the power to change ones perception of certain events by offering multiple viewpoints (which would be high on my list of functions of literature or art in general). Games can do this as well. It allows a player to approach the same story from different angles by replaying, or these different perspectives can be incorporated in a game in different episodes. Imagine a game where you are required to kill a certain antagonist, and in the next sequence playing the role of the antagonist through the events that build up to his death.

One basis on which the fractal story works is that most interactive storytelling is an co-operative activity. The story is confined by self-set paida rules [6: 230] or laws of drama set by the story’s style and genre [4: 263-264]. Most players are prepared to work with each other, the game-master / game, taking latter’s lead. Just as a good game-master / game takes care to involve all the players and to ‘give them what they want’. This does not necessarily mean that she should be easy on the players, only that she is to provide the type of fun they all agreed on by playing a particular game, whether it is the quasi-mythical heroics of high-fantasy dungeon gaming or the gothic horror of playing modern-day vampires. Players and storytellers strive after closely aligned goals: the creation of interesting narrative game experiences. Games designers should do well to design a story so that it progresses to a fixed point but allows the player enough freedom of expression to breath life into the story, and change it into a personal and significant tale.

However this also is the weakness of the fractal story. No real contract is signed by the players or storyteller. Sometimes players will have different ideas of what is expected from them, sometimes storytellers cannot adjust to the wishes of her players. In a game of set in the Star Wars universe the kinaesthetic pleasures of the deep-space chase might be
the essential aspect for the player, but if the storyteller only wants to expand on the quasi-mystical of the Jedi-tradition their expectations might conflict. Like-wise, playing a deranged vampire who thinks he is a character in a cartoon because he is immortal and insists on smashing everything with an oversized-hammer is fun to some. It can harm a carefully prepared campaign about the dark-romantic love between a mortal and a vampire.

Conclusion

Plot trees are restrictive modes of interactive storytelling. Narrative games which combine simulation of a narrative game-world and with significant ways of player expression are much more successful modes of story-telling. Player expression can be limited to only a few commands as long as the ways these commands can be combined and interact with the simulated world can accommodate a certain level of complexity. In such games players are stimulated to immerse themselves into the gaming world.

The fractal story combines the strengths of two common and successful types of interactive stories: the story-world and the railroading story. Assuming that the players and the storyteller are co-operating in creating a compelling story, we can use that knowledge to structure the game and focus the narrative development. In such games it is not a causal plot that drives the story but the expression and significance particular players bring to it. For computer games this means that they can deliver a good story as long as they give the player room to contribute to it. Narrative depth in such games does not depend on having many different endings but on the quality and variety of expressions that can emerge from each individual ‘play’.

References

1. Atkins, Barry More than a Game, The Computer Game as Fictional Form. Manchester University Press, Manchester, UK, 2003.

2. Chomsky, Noam Syntactic Structures. Mouton, The Hague, The Netherlands, 1957.

3. Church, Doug "Formal Abstract Design Tools" on Gamasutra, 1999. Available at http://www.gamasutra.com/features/19990716/design_tools_01.htm

4. Crawford, Chris "Interactive Storytelling" in Mark J. P. Wolf & Bernard Perron (eds.) The Video Game Theory Reade. Routledge, New York, USA, 2003, 259-273.

5. DeMaria, Rusel & Johnny L. Wilson High Score! The illustrated history of electronic games, Second Edition. McGraw Hill, New York, USA, 2004.

6. Frasca, Gonzalo "Simulation versus Narrative" in Mark J. P. Wolf & Bernard Perron (eds.) The Video Game Theory Reader. Routledge, New York, USA, 2004, 221-235.

7. Hall, Justin "The State of Church: Doug Church and the Death of PC Gaming and Future of Defining Gameplay", Gamasutra, 2004. Available at http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20041123/hall_01.shtml

8. Jenkins, Henry "Game Design as Narrative Architecture", 2002. Available at http://web.mit.edu/21fms/www/faculty/henry3/games&narrative.htm

9. King, Geoff Spectacular Narratives, Hollywood in the Age of the Blockbuster. I.B. Tauris Publishers, London, UK, 2000.

10. Poole, Steven Trigger Happy, The Inner Life of Videogames. Fourth Estate, London, UK, 2000.

11. Ryan, Marie-Laure Narrative as Virtual Reality, Immersion and Interactivity in Literature and Electronic Media. The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, USA, 2001.

12. Smith, Harvey "The Future of Game Design: Moving Beyond Deus Ex and Other Dated Paradigms", 2001. On Igda.org. lt;http://www.igda.org/articles/hsmith_future.php>

13. Stephenson, Neal The Diamond Age, or, A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer. Bantam Spectra, New York, USA, 1995.

Joris Dormans is an independent game scholar, lecturer of game design at the College of Amsterdam and freelance designer.

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Date posted: August 8, 2006

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Date posted: July 5, 2006
Updated: Oct 24, 2006

By Christothea Herodotou

026202599X

Due to a lack of a strong tradition of literature in the area of videogames, most of the books I’ve come across leave me wondering what the other side of the “coin” is. Bogost’s approach to videogame criticism, by gathering vital issues raised in the domain of videogames and by presenting them through a strong argumentation, manages to cultivate a multifaceted perspective affording and encouraging critical reading.

Since there is not yet a consistent language for speaking about games or a discrete field of game studies, Bogost draws from a variety of disciplines to construct a versatile approach to videogames. The result of this attempt is noteworthy account of videogames as a cultural artefact of the 21st century. Central in his approach is unit operations’ functionality - an arrangement of discrete interlocking units of expressive meaning. Bogost’s claim is that videogames, like any other medium, can be read as an example of unit operations. Each chapter thrives from a range of philosophical underpinnings from humanities to technological lodgements in order to develop a strong argument for the use of unit operations. For Bogost, unit analysis is the missing link in the study of videogames. It is the link that can consolidate different fields leading to game studies evolvement.

Bogost’s continual argumentation along with his innovative approach to videogame criticism allows for critical reading and questioning within the area of videogames. Reading this particular book becomes that kind of game in which the more the reader gets familiar with Bogost’s way of thinking, the more s/he engages in it and deepens his/her understanding. In the beginning however, the reading process may not be so pleasant or easily managed - especially if the reader does not master or at least is aware of the basic philosophical underpinnings deployed in the text. This initial dissonance disappears as long as the reader proceeds to following chapters.

As far as the content is concerned, in the initial chapters the emergence of the term unit operations is described. Additionally, several examples (especially from philosophy) are drawn upon in order to clearly explain the functionality of unit operations. In the second part of the book the discussion is focused on videogames, their commonalities with other mediums and the discursive nature of unit operations. The third part of the book is an attempt for presenting unit operations from the perspective of cellular automata and a detailed discussion of simulations. At the final part of the book, Bogost’s suggests the creation of a unit operational academy for the formation of unit operations for literature, computer science and other domains.

Overall Bogost’s book is an unconventional piece of writing in the domain of games. Without any intention of exaggeration, it is worth reading not only for those only interested in game studies per se but also for those involved in many other disciplines since certain aspects from the richness of the content may well be broadly appealing.

Links to other reviews (inserted by editors):
- Gameology
- Jorisdormans.com

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Date posted: July 4, 2006
Updated: Dec 15, 2006

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