On games as games as games and nothing else

Markku Eskelinen, an independent scholar and self-professed "ludologist", in his response to Jenkins' paper "Game Design as Narrative Architecture", says:

According to the well-known phrase of David Bordwell, narration is "the process whereby the film's sjuzet and style interact in the course of cueing and constraining the spectator's construction of the fabula." In games there are other kinds of dominant cues and constraints: rules, goals, the necessary manipulation of equipment, and the effect of possible other players for starters. This means that information is distributed differently (invested in formal rules, for example), it is to be obtained differently (by manipulating the equipment) and it is to be used differently (in moving towards the goal).

By systematically ignoring and downplaying the importance of these and other formal differences between games and narratives as well as the resulting cognitive differences, Jenkins runs the risk of reducing his comparative media studies into repetitive media studies: seeing, seeking, and finding stories, and nothing but stories, everywhere. Such pannarrativism could hardly serve any useful ludological or narratological purpose.

Do you agree with Eskelinen's dismissal of Jenkins' approach? Why/why not?

In a way, Eskelinen’s reply to Jenkins is rather myopic in itself. In his response to Jenkins, a short summation of his own view regarding games as a medium of narrative discourse can be seen here:

“To the detriment of [Jenkins’] approach, there are no specific narrative contents, only contents. Consequently, only some combinations and arrangements of events and existents become game elements; others become stories or performance art.”

In my opinion, Eskelinen is guilty of a similar reductionist philosophy of games being games, and other art being other art. He admits that some elements from art, performance, narrative and play can make a game, but it does not make it either form.

Jenkins, in his paper “Game design as narrative architecture”, admits that:

1. yes, not all games tell stories, though many do,
2. games don’t have to tell stories to be good games,
3. playing a game doesn’t make it all about experiencing a story,
4. and games as a narrative medium are unique from other media.

Why I find Eskelinen’s critique of Jenkins unfairly harsh is partly because he seems to ignore Jenkins’ acceptance of the limitations of a game to tell a story.

In his paper, Jenkins also discusses how games can tell stories, but in markedly different ways – for example, touching on the concepts of games designed to use space, environment and embedded narratives to tell a story. Eskelinen dismisses all this as being useless, and says that these elements are game by-products. He also makes it sound like Jenkins is fully advocating games as the best way to tell a story, but this certainly isn’t the case – at least not what I gathered when reading Jenkins.

Jenkins, in my opinion, was trying to find a middle ground between the ludologists and narratologists, since the two fields have commonly been philosophically mutually exclusive (in that, they are always discussed in the same voice, but distinctly drawn as different).

While I do not agree with Eskelinen’s blunt dismissal of Jenkins’ attempt to draw a balance which ludologists and narratologists can share, I do agree with Eskelinen that in some sense, Jenkins’ approach is somewhat superficial.

Spatial and environmental elements are, more often than not, functional by-product of games - they certainly help in storytelling in the game, but are not necessarily the original purpose of their existence. In other words, they weren’t there for the sake of the narrative anyway.

It would have been helpful though, for Eskelinen, in his reponse, to have addressed these issues with some ideas of his own, instead of plain dismissing Jenkins.

On emergence and progression

Jesper Juul distinguishes between games of emergence, where a game is specified as a small number of rules that combine and yield a large number of game variations, and games of progression, where a game presents the player with a series of puzzles or challenges which must be accomplished in a certain order. Discuss whether games of progression, which often attempt to combine a narrative structure with gameplay, are unique to computer-based games.

Certainly, games of progression are not exclusive to computer-based games, but such games are definitely more common in the computer-based media. Games of progression on non-computerbased media require large scale organization. Much capital needed to design such games (people-intensive games like RPGs). Thus, such games are not only not viable to develop but also tough to be distributed. (Besides, most RPGs may be games of progression, but outcomes can be very varied, depending on the participants and the gamemaster.)

But anyway, here's why I think games of progression are more common in the computer-based media.

Games of emergence are somewhat "self-regulatory" and always have different outcomes, so does not require any specific governing medium to help ensure proper "playing". Games of progression however, require precise and explicit governance in the form of programming, this is probably the reason why such games became more mainstream with the development of technology.

With such control over the playing by the author, such forms of games are easily distributed, thus the computer-based nature. While I can think of some non-computer-based games of progression, they are definitely fewer than those computer-based ones (Say, D&D, treasure hunts like the Amazing Race).

Besides, with advanced graphics in technology, game designers often want to exploit it so that the medium can do more than just provide games of strategy, for example Chess as a game of emergence. With such complex and gorgeous graphic interfaces, game designers often choose to incorporate play with a lot of narrative elements, which often require the game to be one of progression, so as to maintain some fixed narrative arc.

Certainly, many games of progression have infused elements of games of emergence - the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive (eg Warcraft and similar MMORPGs).

Commercial, novelty and utilitarian reasons:

While games of progression are few in non-computer media, they definitely became more common and numerous in the computer media - not only to harness advanced graphic technology, but also for ease of distribution. Furthermore, it's a nice breather from the centuries of games of emergence before the advent of the computer, and that of good graphics. Games of progression in the computer media are still novel, thus still becoming very popular. These are incentives and also reasons why I think games of progression are still mostly computer-based, though not necessarily unique to the media.

Narrative and Agency

Choose a game which you feel attempts to incorporate strong narrative elements. Discuss the tension between agency and narrative structure within the game. Do you agree that narrative and interactivity can never co-exist? Why/why not?

I don’t believe they cannot co-exist.

I take Metal Gear Solid for example. This was a game that borrowed the typical structure that required free user movement within the boundaries of the game interface while delivering a narrative through conversations with game characters as well as video snippets in between segments, during which the player could take a “rest” and watch certain events unfold, often a result of the player’s movements to fulfill a certain task.

I remember we discussed how these segments may be tedious and take away user control. However, I think these segments brought things into perspective, giving meaning to the actions performed by the player. Also, there is a deeper level of immersion into the whole “point” of the game, so that it still feels like you are part of a different world.

If there are too few narrative elements, there may be too much freedom of movement such that playing becomes stressful. Too much responsibility lies on the user to determine the outcome of the game, which may actually be worse because the player has to detach himself more often to think clearly – “ok, now what?” Also, there is less meaning that is incorporated into the game, and less incentive to play. Just like how if there were few/no rules, there really is no game.

The narrative elements, in particular, with reference to Metal Gear Solid, give context and history to the game characters and environment. This works and makes it a good and enjoyable game perhaps because it feeds our innate desire for a social environment (which nicely explains why RPGs and social games like WarCraft are such hits). As you play, you find out more about the game characters, your game persona, the game environment, etc, and this further immerses the player into the magic circle, making the game much more enjoyable.

Certainly, games lacking in narrative can be enjoyable as well, but they don’t necessarily have more interactivity than games with strong narrative elements. I believe that the interactivity is still there, just that the narrative elements must not intrude too much into the gameplay.

For Metal Gear Solid, I found the narrative elements like conversations and video clips very entertaining, and made me enjoy the game more. Certainly there were bits I got annoyed at, especially when the girl keeps whining about our relationship and our feelings when I’m in the middle of a crisis. But apart from that, it certainly made for a good game experience.

Games and Play

Consider the work you created for project 1. Is this work actually a game? Why/why not?

Perhaps the easiest way to approach this is by examining the different elements that a game should have, using Greg Costikyan’s article "I Have No Words and I Must Design: Towards a Critical Vocabulary for Games" as a guide.

In project 1, my group attempted to translate the narrative of the movie, The Others into an interactive work, preserving the integrity of the narrative while playing around with non-linearity. As a short synopsis of the project, I quote our project’s report:

“In this project, we transpose the narrative onto a hypertext interface that integrates still frames, text, audio and video excerpts from the movie. Each frame contains hotspots that are linked to other frames. In some frames, text aids appear on placing the cursor over certain hotspots to guide the user forward. A mindmap is available for viewing to show the user how much of the story has been revealed. The resulting narrative is portrayed as a non-linear network that ultimately culminates in only one outcome, at which the climax of the narrative is exposed.”

Alright, so on to the question at hand: was this work actually a game?

I’m not sure. If you will bear with me, let’s take apart the key points that Costikyan’s article for discussion. According to him, a game is interactive, has goals, the achievement of which require the making of key decisions to meet certain objectives and the process of which requires some struggle and lastly, have endogenous meaning.

While in lecture on Tuesday, the discussion on Indigo Prophecy reminded me of a glorified “upped” version of our project, given that our project really was an interactive movie. However, key differences lie in user experience in the level of immersion the user has.

That aside, on hindsight, our project easily satisfies the qualities of interactivity and goals. Firstly because the user’s movement affects the system and is “remembered” and stored as a scene being visited. This agrees with Crawford’s definition of interactivity, albeit to a small extent. Certainly, the user is not able to change the narrative or have any serious effect on the outcome. The goal to the project however, is less explicit than that. Any said goal has to be determined by the user, and the means to this goal(s) has some degree of struggle as hotspots are not so easy to find, and blocks in the mind map have to be unlocked before the ending climax is revealed. While it can be said that the ultimate goal is to unlock the ending, this assumes that the user is motivated in the first place. Here, the line becomes a little fuzzy. Also, assuming the said objectives are to find hotspots, then does one assume that finding hotspots is a difficult thing? One that requires struggle? This is certainly debatable.

Lastly, do the elements in the project have endogenous meaning? Certainly. The elements in the movie, the characters, events etc, all have a meaning pertaining to the context of the story only, and not to real life. This could also just be due to the fact that it is after all, fiction and make-believe. (Although I agree that endogenous meaning is a quality of games in general, it shouldn’t be used as a qualifying characteristic. Doesn’t a novel also contain endogenous meaning?)

That said, I think our project 1 was not a game at all. Although if argued to death, it could be a sort of game that we discussed in Tuesday’s lecture, one that involves peripheral to very low interactivity.