1. There is no communicative “medium” to speak of in art. A medium presupposes a message of some kind - a basic, unambiguous code that can be transmitted from point to point. Because artistic works are inherently ambiguous in their meaning, there are no messages in artistic works. Video and computer games are not a communicative medium, and they have no message.

2. The artist has no hidden message for us. Even when an artist deeply desires to communicate, moralize, educate, challenge, or amuse the audience - their artistic creation will always frustrate, deny, and exceed their intentions. Trying to interpret or understand an artistic work by guessing at the artist’s intentions is a blind, endless, alley.

3. What we think of as an artistic “medium” is simply a set of conventions and tools used for artistic expression, bound together in a common style or genre. Painting or drawing media, such as crayons, charcoal, and paper, are tools used for expressive purposes. Computers are the primary medium through which video and computer games are created; games are therefore not a “medium” in the creative, artistic sense. Games are creative expressions brought to life through many kinds of tools.

4. The expressive qualities of a work of art, or video game, come from many different sources. Some of those sources of meaning are bound up with the artistic medium - the fact that a game must proceed in a logical, rule-based, manner. The artistic methods and techniques of the artist also bring a particular personal expression to the work. The cultural and historical context that an artist works in, responds to, lives, contributes to the meanings we find in the work. The emotional and intellectual depth, imaginative capacities, intensity and breadth of feelings, and sensitivity of the reader/viewer/player/audience bring meaning to the art piece. All of these things, bound up together, give us a “sense” of what an artistic work means. Segregating any of these elements (culture, language, artistic method, the artist, the audience, the piece itself) and trying to pin down the source of meaning onto just one thing is a plain mistake. However, contextualizing and interrelating these elements, one to another, gives us the chance to understand what art is about.

So there are a few distinctions: the first (1 & 2) having to do with the confusion over a medium-as-a-means-for-communication, and the second (3 & 4) having to do with the confusion over a game-as-an-artistic-medium.

In the end, games are no different from other symbolic forms insofar as understanding them, what they mean to us and not simply our opinions of them, demands a holistic view of the particular game, the genre, the artist, the artistic method, the culture, and the audience, among many other things. As Michael suggests, sometimes 21st-century Bolivian painters do have much to learn from 18th-century composers, just as game designers have a lot to learn from books, films, music, drama, and fine art. All human expression is a thick jambalaya of influences, and to single any one particular thing out - for instance by claiming that the language for video games should not include the language for film or music - is a mistake, I believe.

And finally, pulling together the roots, similarities, and relationships of meaning in games are not simply “academic” endeavors that only some elite crowd can do. Even being able to say “I’m playing an FPS” is a step in the right direction - of recognizing that this particular game belongs in a long history of first-person shooters. What is tougher is taking those extra few steps, and showing how the particular feelings the game gives you, the other games it plays like, the style of the art or technical direction, or the culture of war or violence that the game was created within - all give a sense to this being a meaningful thing. This is someone everyone is capable of, as long as they’re willing to make a few more connections they weren’t planning to. Like Michael said - this is something worth doing.

In this article I take on the very common problem of players becoming bored or frustrated by “art games”. I try to spin some new language around games that help us understand how they relate to art, and vice-versa, all in the hope that more gamers have the opportunity to take on any kind of game without quitting in frustration.

I don’t begrudge gamers for having difficulty with understanding art - almost everyone does. Gamers came up with these responses to The Graveyard and The Jackyard (culled from various sources):

“Am I right in saying that Tale of Tales don’t make “games”, rather, they make “interactive experiences”, because it would be crass to call their works “games”?
Sigh.”

“That wasn’t very fun.”

“I think ‘interactive experience’ is a fair name for it; there’s very little which is traditionally game-like about it. Anyway, not really worth playing, I think. There’s just an awkward camera, a slow walk, and a quiet song.”

“The camera is actually sort of central to what I don’t like about the game; that they give you the pretense of a world you can walk about and explore, and then the inexplicably broken camera is the excuse that keeps you from being able to explore it at all. So I immediately fight with it, walking off the screen till I can’t see the lady any more and am afraid I’m stuck on something back there.”

“Does anyone know what to do???
(Except walking around?)”

“Certainly interesting, but seems very short.”

Common to all of these comments is the sense that games are about immediacy: action, reaction, novelty, responsiveness, control, like, dislike, etc. For a large majority of gamers, games are about immediate and momentary enjoyment. Games that don’t respond with immediate feedback, give the player a sense of exploration or achievement, or give the player complete control over the character, are often reviewed as boring or frustrating experiences. To some degree that accounts for why the great majority, 99.999% of all games created today, are player-driven action games. These kinds of games put the player in the hot seat and hand over the keys to an on-screen representation of themselves. “Interaction” is understood as something active, something that the player does and the game responds to.

In other forms of art, interaction is often understood differently. Viewing a painting, listening to music, or reading poetry is also thought of as an interactive experience - between the viewer-listener-reader and the art piece. “Interactivity” in this case is predicated upon the idea that the artist produces a work that engages the audience’s imaginations and feelings. Ultimately, the responsibility for engaging with a work of art is in the hands of the audience - the artist has no “say” in determining what our experiences are. The art piece is a public artifact in an imaginative dialogue with an audience.

Video and computer games are held against a different standard of interactivity. “Interactivity” in games mean that the computer must provide the player with the illusion that the computer is “responding” to the player’s choices. When that illusion is frustrated, for instance because the character cannot “do” what the player wants her/him to do, players often feel that their sense of dialogue with the game is destroyed. In this form of immediate activity the player is in a literal dialogue with the game. In many ways video games imitate or represent real-world dialogical interaction. Action-reaction. Decision-consequence.

The point is that in imaginative dialogues the audience shoulders the great responsibility of the interpretive work. In video games, the great bulk of interpretive work is done by the computer. In the first, the audience gains a sense of closeness with the piece through the imagination - the symbols in the work of art evoke imagery and feelings for us. In video games, the sense of closeness is based upon a physicalistic metaphor - if I push against a box on the screen it better damned move! The meaning of what is happening is progressively and literally shaped by the computer, in response to the player’s actions.

This is why games like The Graveyard and The Jackyard often receive such (empty) criticism. Many gamers don’t want to interact with a piece through an imaginative dialogue, they want the kinds of literal dialogues that they’ve become accustomed to. So-called “art games” often play at the more imaginative end of the tension between imagination and immediacy - art games require the player to make some kind of interpretive judgment in order to determine what is meaningful, and rely much less upon the elements of literal dialogue to shape meanings.

True, we speak in relative terms here. There are many games that play at the tension between imagination and literal interactivity, and many of these accomplish the feat marvelously. Interactive fiction games often deliver interactivity through the imagination. Sandbox games provide an open environment where the imagination can be expressed through interactivity. Somewhere closer to the middle are role-playing games such as Planescape: Torment and Wasteland that put the player in the midst of the action, yet provide a living and breathing landscape that defies total control.

Near the imaginative end of the spectrum is The Jackyard. Richard Hofmeier does a great job of exploiting and frustrating the expectations of the literal gamer. The game is full of obstacles that aren’t puzzles to be solved, art images that simply exist for their aesthetic qualities, and a coal-colored palette that is deeply integrated with its equally stark musical score. The world that Richard has produced is an artifact for our exploration and understanding, by prodding at artistic expression through the language of game. Determining how and if his work achieves what it is trying to do is your work as the player. So temporarily put aside your preconceptions (or not) and give The Jackyard and The Graveyard a go. Post your comments on the games, and let’s try to figure out together what the heck they mean.

Once we’ve started to develop this new language of art in games, I suspect that “game criticism” and “game reviews” will be much more interesting than a reviewer’s opinion.

This article is part of a new series of articles that I call “Treasures from the Tickle Trunk” where I pull a game from my basement game library and take a deeper look at what it achieves. This style of article is deeply influenced by Corvus’s Narrative of the Moment series.

As I played through the demo of Penny Arcade Adventures this morning, I kept reminding myself that writing comedy is difficult - and writing interactive comedy well is nigh impossible. Not only is quick wit, rich satire, and goofy slapstick necessary, but it has to be reflected in gameplay in such a way as to play funny. With so few adventure games, and even fewer games with a sense of humor, I thought I would take a fresh look at one of the bright highlights of gaming humor in the 90s - Day of the Tentacle.

Drawing upon the strange, quirky, world of its predecessor, Maniac Mansion, the first minute of DoTT sets the tone for the rest of the game. The game is an excellent example of how every element of a game can be integrated into a holistic theme.

Visual Art

The most striking aspect of DoTT is the bizarre and striking artwork found throughout the game. If you’re familiar with the German Expressionist film movement, you may recognize the kinship between the artistic style of DoTT and films such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Instead of the generic 2D perspective view common to most adventure games of that era, the backgrounds are lavishly painted in a tilted, helter-skelter fashion: walls curve into one another, objects lean at impossible angles, characters are illustrated as distorted figures. Unlike German Expressionism however, DoTT combines this illustrative style with a saturated palette of bright purples, greens, and blues.  The artwork, both foreground and background, shrieks of goofy and lighthearted yet sincere zaniness. The game is similarly animated: Bernard struts around with his pants pulled up to his chest and feet far in front of him, Laverne’s neck stretches to impossible lengths in the introduction, and Dr. Fred wrings his hands outrageously in every scene. Nothing in the game is unembellished, and most things are exaggerated to a ridiculous degree.

Music and Sound

Although less exaggerated than the visual art, the music still retains the goofiness of the game. Thanks to the iMUSE system, every piece of music in the game is synchronized and arranged on the fly according to the mood of the scene or specific event. In terms of musical style the game relies upon wind instruments throughout; very few percussion and string instrument pieces are found. The wind instruments - mostly flutes, clarinets, and tubas - give the game a light atmosphere punctuated by the occasional slapstick tuba honk. Although less aggressive in its strength, the music is in many ways reminiscent of the Looney Tunes cartoon musical scores - every scene is arranged to fit the particular scene. In scenes where the character is surprised by something, we are greeted with the familiar and hackneyed da-da-daaaaah! of daytime soap operas or B-grade horror flicks that only serves to make the scene even more outrageous and fun.

The sounds in the game accomplish the same feat: Bernard picking his ear wax makes the sound of two balloons squishing against each other, picking up objects gives the player a yoink! or swipe! feedback sound; the introduction to the game gives a good overall survey of the theme. But unlike the great majority of games that rely upon the same kinds of sound libraries, the most cliched sound effects are put to perfect use in this game because they are so overused and ridiculous. 

The characters in the game are not only voiced convincingly, but the voices always suit their character illustrations in uncanny ways. Bernard is voiced by the somewhat unknown, but excellent, Richard Sanders who played ‘Les Nessman’ on the American sitcom WKRP in Cincinnati. Bernard’s voice is so thickly nerdy that at times Sanders manages to capture in his acting what I think is the quintessential nerd: long periods of whining interrupted by brief, pathetic, moments of bravery.

Story/Narrative

What could be more bizarre than a twisted Scooby Doo troupe bumbling their way through a search for a crazed purple tentacle bent on taking over the world? Apparently this: by sending them all through portable toilets fashioned into time machines to the past, only to have them end up in different time periods because the crazy professor was too cheap to pay for a real diamond to power the Chron-O-Johns!

Hoagie is trapped in pre-confederation America, Bernard in the present, and Laverne in a disturbing purple-tentacle-controlled mockery of the future. By satirizing each period the game does an admirable job of presenting its own twisted look at history: Hoagie for instance spends his time interacting with American colonialists like George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and John Hancock, each of which are thickly stylized personalities. Although the characters are lampooned mercilessly, they all manage to retain their signature styles and contribute to a hilarious and surprisingly educational American conferedation history lesson.

In truth the story theme is itself nothing new (mad scientific experiment goes wrong, threatens world, kids save world), but what makes it so compelling is the sheer oddity of the characters and world, and the sense of humor they constitute together. The story is one long schtick that always stays safely on the side of witty and good-natured, and never makes excursions into senseless violence or needless sarcasm. Because the story and gameplay are so well integrated with one another, both compel the player to keep playing.

Gameplay

As I mentioned in the introduction, finding ways of making gameplay goofy often borders on impossible. Because games depend upon repeatable, predictable, and logical rule systems, making games that operate on a twisted logic and play well is rare. Although DoTT does nothing new in terms of its inventory system and point’n'click verb interface, both are put to new uses thanks to an interesting world and puzzles. Instead of commanding just one protagonist, the player can switch between three protagonists throughout the game: Bernard, Laverne, and Hoagie. Each character has their own distinct personality and will or will not do certain kinds of tasks - Hoagie is hideously lazy, Laverne is not altogether bright, and Bernard is downright clumsy. Since each character is trapped in a different time period, certain puzzles can only be completed by “flushing” items down the Chron-O-John to another time period. Many items are combinable and often in strange and bizarre ways, which many times left me baffled as to how to complete the puzzle. However that is not to say that the puzzles are irrational - the player must simply learn to immerse her/himself in the wacky logic of DoTT. For instance, a great amount of the game is spent changing things in one time period in order to effect changes in future periods; the game does an admirable job of making the most seemingly insignificant change in one period change the entire game. As Chris Remo of Adventure Gamers puts it, “Indeed, the story of the game and the gameplay itself are deftly intertwined. Almost without exception, the puzzles tie directly into the plot, rather than existing on a separate plane.”

Conclusion

Although this game has been reviewed a countless number of times, given the recent releases of Penny Arcade Adventures and Telltale’s Sam and Max episodes, I felt it was important to remind myself that the humor in these games was eclipsed over 10 years ago by a true modern adventure-humor classic. I could have written this same article about Sam and Max Hit the Road (which has a completely different style of humor) but I felt that Day of the Tentacle is unmatched in its synthesis of humor, story, and world. Game designers and writers do not need to write or design anything funny - they need to make worlds and characters that in themselves are compelling and hilarious - the jokes come as a natural consequence of that after the fact.

Thanks to the excellent ScummVM project, you can play Day of the Tentacle in Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, etc. I highly recommend playing the CD “talkie” version with full voiceovers.

Whether cavemen, plumbers, femme fatales, cutesy dinosaurs or aliens - they’re all bound to save the world by the end, or die trying.

Although taken tacitly as the standard for the vast majority of character-based video/computers, the Hero protagonist is the ubiquitous yet completely understudied workhorse in the history of video games. In this article I explore the uses of the hero in video game narratives, and how an over-reliance upon certain kinds of hero characters has limited the kinds of stories being told in video/computer games.

What is it about the hero role that we find so engrossing and rewarding? Why do we always shake on the social contract that sets us up as the beasts of burden that repair worlds in imbalance, deliver miscellaneous goods, rescue damsels in distress, return ever-missing kings to their mushroom kingdoms, or rise up against ridiculous tyrannical dictatorships?

Hero Stories

Within the heroic genre, there seem to be a few kinds of roles. The first kind of role is an already established, somewhat powerful, protagonist who must overcome an army of villains. We might think of these as the James Bonds, Lara Crofts, or Sam Fishers of video games - protagonists born of high standing and carry out deeds of Supermanesque proportions. For these characters doing The Right Thing is a foregone conclusion, and inner tensions are nonexistent - we simply cannot progress in the game without carrying out some kind of predetermined task of moral rightness, which usually results in the world being saved. The great majority of video/computer games rely upon this kind of hero. True, we speak quite generally here, but the idea is to draw out a few ideal characterizations that will serve as a guide for later.

The second kind of role is more akin to a Campbellian hero - a weakling protagonist that rises up to meet the call for adventure, and in doing so, becomes a savior in the end. These characters are often born of low stature and come to great fortune as they overcome terrible obstacles, and in the end typically discover that they are in fact of nobler birth than once thought. Although it is much more difficult to pick out examples of this kind of hero, Link (Zelda), Cloud (Final Fantasy VII), Cutter Slade (Outcast) and Norman Gordon Freeman (Half-Life) are particularly straightforward examples. In each of these games the hero is drawn into the (sometimes reluctant) role of savior, yet always rises to the occasion in the end. Again, in the end the world is saved and everyone goes home and eats their bucket of KFC.

A third kind of role has only been explored more recently, and involves some amount of moral relativity on behalf of the player. This kind of hero can be either powerful or weak to begin with, but her/his choices throughout the game come to determine (to some degree!) if they will save the world, or assist in its ultimate destruction. These relativistic heros often must choose between good and evil by doing good and evil things. Protagonists like this are found in games such as Mass Effect, Fallout, and Knights of the Old Republic. The fate of the world hinges upon whether the hero freely helped the old lady across the street, demanded cash from her before doing it, or pushed her into oncoming traffic.

All of these kinds of heroes share a common thread: their actions ultimately lead to the liberation, repair, destruction, or transformation of an entire planet or galaxy. All of these stories draw their appeal from the oldest hero myths that pit the protagonist against unwinnable (winnable!) odds, usually consisting of ultra-evil corporations, god-like enemies, or behemoths of an evil nature. What counts as ‘winning’ the game is having some kind of effect upon the external world; almost always the inner world of the hero is left unprobed. The player, as hero, satisfies these external criteria and in doing so, satisfies her/himself.

A Road Less Travelled

This is where we hit much more interesting narrative territory, I think. Because there are so few games that offer non-traditional protagonists, we will have to dig a bit deeper.

In Dreamweb you play the anti-hero Ryan, “a bartender in a futuristic dystopian city whose nights are plagued with strange dreams. In the last dream before the game starts, Ryan is asked by the master monk of the keepers to be the deliverer and kill the seven evils who are united to break the Dreamweb.” As Ryan, you pursue these seven evils throughout the game and murder them using whatever means possible: shooting a rock star to death in bed, crushing a man to death with a heavy crate, and driving a doctor into an oncoming carriage. All of the deaths are grisly, public, and morally justified in the eyes of the player.

In the end, Ryan is thanked by the mysterious Dreamweb monk for his deeds, and is sent back to the material world. SPOILER ALERT (Please - first play this game and return later to read the remainder of the article!): The game ends as Ryan walks out of his apartment, recently acknowledged as savior of the world, only to be confronted by the police who shoot him to death on the spot. The player has, through Ryan’s delusional dreams, aided and abetted in the brutal murder of seven innocent strangers. The ending is one of the most powerful conclusions to a game I have personally played, and stands out as a narrative marvel that predates films such as Memento by almost 10 years.

In Dreamweb there is no recognizable way of “winning” the game - we are always chained to Ryan’s situation, his state of mind, his dreams. If Ryan is killed during the game, the player is treated to a heartwrenching story sequence that relates the annihilation of the world as the Dreamweb falls into the hands of evil forces. If Ryan saves the world it is only in his own eyes; his reward is death, and worse his acts of heroism are treated as outright murder by an unwitting populace. There is no way out for the protagonist nor the player than to simply acknowledge the tragedy of heroism. This kind of hero story leads to an inward effect: the hero (player) is forced to come to terms with her/himself in the end.

This kind of story, I think, is far deeper than any of the aforementioned hero tales. The ideal of the hero is not only inverted in the story, but is ultimately destroyed. The game destabilizes the mythical footing that players are used to relying upon, and ultimately draws the protagonist into a truer moral world: is it right or fair to be heroic? Who do I put in danger by acting selflessly?

Roads for Other Journeys

What I’ve tried to present here is an often taken-for-granted character role in video/computer games, and how these kinds of roles lead to different kinds of experiences. Despite the sharp contrasts I’ve drawn here, the kinds of protagonists we play in video games are always much more relatively crafted; in fact many ubiquitous kinds of heroes lead to fun, enjoyable experiences for the player. Role-playing games have led to the idea that the player must make choices and that their choices have consequences for the protagonist and her/his world. Yet, I strongly suspect that these kinds of hero stories bear few psychological fruit for the player in the end: winning or losing come with no meaningful conclusion for the player beyond the mere completion of unfinished tasks. Only in games that feature more complex protagonists, whose fates are bound up with their own flaws for instance, do we see the seeds for powerful, deep, storytelling. Games such as Dreamweb, Shadow of the Colossus, and Planescape: Torment sketch out protagonists that can grip us in powerful ways without turning to melodrama, and in doing so transform us in the ways that stories should.

Note: 100footcroc posted an excellent review of Wander, the hero protagonist of Shadow of the Colossus. The article is absolutely worth reading!

This post is included as part of a Blogs of the Round Table discussion on character archetypes in video and computer games. Follow the below drop-down list for other May ‘08 Round Table entries. The list below links to other blogs who participated in this month’s Round Table - I strongly suggesting visiting them.. these articles are all particularly good reads.

But does playing these old games matter? Does writing about them matter? What value is there in sweatin' to the oldies? Is it only for reminiscence or nostalgia? In this article I make a few arguments about retro gaming/computing that outline the meaningfulness of tying together the past and the future in the present..

Earlier this week I was listening to the 1 Mhz Apple ][ podcast (which I highly recommend!) and its host, Carrington Vanston, mentioned that his interest in retro computing isn't just for the sake of reminiscing about old stuff or waxing nostalgic about the good ol' days. Rather, Carrington's interest lies in showing how the Apple ][ is a fun, exciting, system that has found new uses in the present. His inaugural episode includes a review of Tass Times in Tonetown - a classic graphical text adventure set in a wacky re-imagining of the 1980s new wave culture. In the review Carrington focuses upon his current-day experience of the game and the ways in which it stands out as something different from the usual fare, such as the inclusion of a feelie newspaper included in the box called “The Tonetown Times” which the player must read to discover the names of characters s/he can talk with in-game.

But why should this matter? Isn’t this just like digging through your old box of hockey cards and marveling at your memory of opening the first pack? Here’s where we get into the nitty-gritty of understanding history.

Understanding what History Means

First, let’s correct a false assumption that often undermines this kind of historical exploration: it does not involve living in the past, in involves living through the past. In history we look at ourselves in the present through the past, and come to understand ourselves as standing in a long genealogy of meaning that pre-exists us. Now that’s a lot to swallow for the modernist who sees him/herself as largely being self-made and sees the past as a sequence of barbaric events that are thankfully left far behind her/him. That kind of modernist philosophy still persists today: we see it in people who cannot understand why Yar’s Revenge, Chrono Trigger or The Faery Tale Adventure are still compelling games. They simply stare blankly at the screen and think to themselves, ‘these graphics sure suck!’.

A corollary of this is that every game we’ve ever played, whether it be Wonder Boy in Monster Land or Mass Effect, all bear some kind of relation to the games, films, novels, poems, myths, paintings and other art media that came before it. Not only do they stand in artistic relation (in terms of the genres, styles, inspirations) but they stand in phenomenal relations. That is, when I say that I “enjoyed” Mass Effect yet “found the gameplay repetitive”, I try to tug at the entire web of language implicit in the meaning of enjoyment or repetition. Put differently: we experience enjoyment and repetitiveness in different ways, depending upon the way we are able to use those words to describe different games. If we’ve only played 10 console games in our lifetime we are going to have a very empty idea of what repetitiveness means, because we’ve only experienced the kind of repetition associated with level-based japanese RPGs. However, the gamer who has played hundreds of games understands that calling Windows Solitaire repetitive is a fundamentally different meaning than calling the battles in every Square-Enix RPG repetitive.

History for Gamers and Game Writers

The current bemoaning of the state of video game reviewing can almost be completely attributed to a problem of language. Reviews are superficial and empty typically because the people who review games typically do not engage themselves with games as standing in a history of meaning. Saying that, “I found the gameplay repetitive” is for all intents and purposes a meaningless statement. If the reviewer says that “the battle scenarios are not unlike the random battles found in all Final Fantasy games prior to XII” we have a fundamentally different meaning, one that breathes life into the doldrums of using the word “repetitive” to describe gameplay.

Now, here’s the big leap that I’d like you to take with me: changing our understanding of words changes our very experience of them. This stands in long relation to the certain forms of philosophy (if you’d like, look up folks like Herder, Goethe, and Charles Taylor). But the point here is that when I make comparisons of repetitiveness between Solitaire and Final Fantasy I actually come to experience the gameplay differently because I can see how each game I play comes to re-shape just what I mean by repetitive. History is about breathing new life into the present and future through the past.

But that’s not possible without actually playing, and writing and talking about, the thousands of games that came before us. Without making the miniscule distinctions between the qualities of the text parser in Tass Times in Tonetown and later Infocom text adventures that on the surface seem petty and redundant, we lose the chance to enrich the language of video/computer games, and in doing so, our experience of modern day gaming!

History Matters for Developers: Any Good Writer is a good reader

I should make one thing clear: understanding history won’t stop anyone from making an unsuccessful game. You can spend your life reading all the works of Shakespeare and still write poetry that nobody reads. But, like a good game, your poetry can be rediscovered decades or even centuries later because it managed to tap into the eternal - the long history of poems, stories and myths that preceded it. Although digital gaming is a medium in its infancy, we can still draw from the deep well of history to fill our games with meaning.

Whether plumbing the depths of The Hobbit on a Sinclair ZX Spectrum or reading Dumas’s The Count of Monte Cristo a good developer hones her/his craft through immersing her/himself in history. The very idea of playing a game through the eyes of a protagonist, themes of friendship and betrayal, or the story of the journey home, have been around for over a thousand years. The way that these themes were became typified in the great (and not so great!) works of art of human history all bear upon the way that people experience computer and video games now.

The developer, as artist and creator, can only make their creation compelling for an audience by steeping it in a vast ocean of meaning. Without a historical engagement the developer both re-invents the wheel and turns what could have been a deep, compelling work, into a hackneyed consumer product that lasts a week in a gamer’s stomach. The great works, the games that we come back to after 20 years and wonder to ourselves how the game still feels current, are the ones that withstood the test of time because they managed to capture the infinite wisdom of a thousand years of storytelling and poetry on humor, sadness, or friendship - and to a lesser degree at least 30 years of gameplay.

Conclusion

What I tried to suggest here is an alternative to the disappointment that we face when we pick up our dusty copy of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past and find out that the game just isn’t as compelling now as it used to be when we were 12 years old. Nothing can be more traumatic for the gamer than finding out that their favorite game just didn’t grow with them - and if that’s the case it’s even more important to understand why it didn’t grow. If we try to live in the past through our “rose tinted memories” of games we surely can learn nothing new about them, or ourselves.
 

This post is included as part of a Blogs of the Round Table discussion on our ‘favorites’ and ‘least-favorites’ in video games. Follow the below drop-down list for other April ‘08 Round Table entries. The list below links to other blogs who participated in this month’s Round Table - I strongly suggesting visiting them.. these articles are all particularly good reads.

Although I initially reported on Periscopic’s excellent re-envisioning of the Oregon Trail some time ago, the game managed to garner nearly universal acclaim from gamers and critics alike, most notably indiegames.com who ranked it #19 in the top 20 freeware adventure games of 2007.

It took me a little while, but I managed to get a hold of Periscopic’s co-founder and Head of Conceptual Design (not to be confused with the Head of Impressionistic Design) - Kim Rees. Kim ever so kindly rounded up the crew to give us a peek at how Thule Trail was built from concept to finished product. Much thanks goes to Dino Citraro - Periscopic’s other co-founder - who invited me to ask a few questions about the game in the first place. The sheer craftsmanship put into this game is stunning and is a testament to how the right kinds of collaborative relationships in game development can lead to great things - but I’ll let our Oregonian friends over at Periscopic describe how that works…

Chris - Was the concept generated in-house, or did Thule have some specific ideas that were integrated into the work? Not a lot of work has been done using retrogaming as a subject, and it’s surprising for most to see a major corporation (Thule) take computer games on as an advertising uh.. vehicle (ignore the pun).

Kim - The idea actually came from TDA Advertising, our partner in this project. The original concept came from Thule’s existing “road trip” campaign. TDA thought it would be fun to parody the “original road trip.”

Chris - What kinds of collaborative opportunities did TDA offer you (and vice-versa) during the development process?

Kim - We’ve worked with TDA for several years and have a great collaborative relationship with them. They were great for honing the personality, the aesthetic and the humor of the game. Since it was their original idea they had specific ideas about how the finished product should look and perform. They communicated these to us at the start of the project and we used them as the basis of our interactive design phase. We came back to them with the game logic and interface designs and we went back and forth a little bit to tweak them, but for the most part, it was a pretty smooth process. They had many great ideas that couldn’t be incorporated into the final game, and sadly, some of their best ideas were relegated to Phase 2 due to budget restrictions.

Chris - What kinds of inspirations went into Thule Trail? Oregon Trail is an obvious one, but were there other influences that gave the game the overall look and feel?

Kim - We took cues from other simple games like Microsoft’s Ski Free. That’s another addictive “game” that has painfully simple graphics and audio. We worked hard to pare things down to their essence.

Also, TDA was largely influential in the development of the game. It was their original idea and they wrote most of the dialog. They also had very strong ideas about how the game should look, its pace, and personality. We spent most of our time developing the game logic, the point structure, and the overall playability.

Chris - How did your development team capture aesthetic/gameplay so authentically? Were there specific design choices that went into developing the music (great mono-voice melodies!) and 16-color dithered artwork?

Kim - Conceptually we wanted to stay as true as possible to the original game, so prior to any development we downloaded the emulator and captured all of the interface screens. We then used that as the basis for our interactive design and storyboards.We focused on the nostalgia of the game; with those of us who had played the game in our youth making sure we identified what we felt was most compelling, how it made us feel, and how we felt we could best bring that into a modern-day scenario.

We found an illustrator here in Portland who actually specializes in pixel illustrations. He created all the images: people, cars, landscapes, skylines, etc. We tried working with these at 16 bit, but found that 8 bit was the only way we could achieve the correct aesthetic.We worked with a sound designer in New York City, Sean Eden, to create audio cues that would be reminiscent, yet also modern. We gave him an audio “palette” and he ran with it.

Chris - Do any ideas come to mind that couldn’t be fit into the final release of the game? Did it begin as a different kind of project?

Kim - Yep, we wanted to have Easter Eggs in the game that would allow people to choose different cars, acquire Mario-type bonuses and tools (like a rocket launcher), and see funny animations. These were all relegated to an as-of-yet unfunded Phase 2.

Chris - What kind of testing process did the game go through before release? Did the game “play” and entertain as you hoped, or was gameplay tweaked significantly later on?

Kim - We did a lot of play testing throughout the development of the game. The logic was the toughest part to hone. By staying true to the original game, we had to make sure all the choices gave similar results at the end of the game.

For instance, the choices of profession impact the money you have to buy goods, and we needed to calculate how quickly items should expire, and how expensive goods should be. Additionally, we needed to gauge how quickly car morale should deteriorate, and what influences the trip would have on this. If you pick up one hitchhiker, it affects the car’s mood in a different way than another. That was a major focus during our testing and revisions.

Chris - Was it a complicated design to implement in Flash? What kinds of challenges/benefits did the Flash IDE provide during the development process?

Kim - Aside from the complexities of dealing with asynchronous events, and the logic problems associated with a multifaceted game, the most interesting challenge was LO-FI-ing flash while keeping the right vibe—one that is true to the fact that this is current, not simply a product of the 80s.

Many of the tools within Flash are about making an interface or animation smooth, clean, and polished. In Thule Trail, it’s exactly the opposite. Everything, whether audio, user interaction, movement, or rendering is guileless. Creating something that feels right within this idiom requires rethinking what your ideal feel is and working within a totally different mindset.

Chris - Finally - what’s the weather like in Portland? It’s been damned cold up here (Edmonton, Alberta, Canada) …. it was -30F last week for several days. I drove through Portland last year on a trip to northern CA, and it was a stunning city.

Kim - Yikes! Well, it’s a colder than normal winter here in Portland, but that only means near freezing temps. It’s actually snowed a few times which is unusual. Mostly the winters are a solid shade of grey for about 6-8 months. It helps us stay focused on our development, but does nothing for tanning our complexion.

Chris - My thanks to you and the team for taking the time to answer everything. I’m sure readers will appreciate the inside look at Periscopic!

Kim - And thanks for writing us up!

Normally I avoid posting news, but I found this bit o’ information a little too tasty to keep to myself. First reported at the Dark Castle News blog, a Return to Dark Castle trailer video (Youtube version here) has been posted over at the publisher’s web site. The gameplay looks hilarious, and definitely captures the spirit of the original. I can’t wait for this classic to hit the Super Happy Fun Fun online store.

If you missed my earlier coverage of Return to Dark Castle you might want to take a peek at the article.

A Few Examples of iMUSE in Action

Note: I’ve intentionally dropped the speech volume on the audio tracks in these video clips so it’s easier to focus on the musical score. You’ll need Flash installed to view the following clips I uploaded to Youtube. The clips have been resized to fit this page, so click on them to see larger versions.

In this scene from The Curse of Monkey Island, Wally - a cartographer-cum-pirate - breaks down under Guybrush’s relentless teasing (“I’m gonna… I’m… gonna…. <sniff>”). As you watch the clip, listen to the way in which the metre and rhythm of the score remains the same, while the melody changes to suit a more upbeat and less sinister atmosphere. The transition, heralded by a few light drum beats, reflects the “lightening up” of the situation after Wally finally stops threatening Guybrush with his revolver. The melody transitions seamlessly and gives me the sense that the silly but desperate situation has resolved for our bumbling hero.

In this scene, Guybrush enters the Voodoo Priestess’s swamp, greeted by Murray the Talking Skull. As Guybrush enters the rotting swamp boat the music transitions from a soft ethereal score to a slightly spookier score with the addition of another wind instrument (anyone know what that instrument is called?). The mood changes again when Guybrush pulls the alligator’s tongue and as the Voodoo Priestess appears she is introduced by the addition of a subtle reggae beat played on the organ. Mixed into the Voodoo Priestess’s beat is a soft trumpet chorus that fades in and out that adds a sense of foreboding to the scene. All of these subtleties are, of course, recognized only at the subconscious level as we play the game but add a fine atmosphere to each scene and help paint the characters in certain musical tones.

In this scene, Guybrush walks into the Barbershop and the music transitions immediately. See if you can pick out the five different themes that are played here as he speaks with each buccaneer hairstylist. The differences are all subtle, and serve to both colour the personalities of each pirate and the player’s expectations. If you want to hear the different audio tracks independently, head on over to iMUSE Island - my thanks to them for noticing the different mixes in the first place!

How does iMUSE Work?

According to the original patent document for iMUSE, the purpose of the system is to produce “aesthetically appropriate and natural” music and sound effects that modify the “texture, mood and character” of scenes in response to “a directing system”. The musical sequence (composed of notes and instruments) that the composer sends to the directing system is marked at crucial musical junction points, ie. at every ‘measure’, marking positions at which the music can branch. The musical sequencer has the ability to jump to any specific point of a composition (unlike most music), thus giving a standard musical score much more flexibility much like the difference between an mp3 file and a cassette tape. Furthermore, as I will demonstrate in the next part, iMUSE was also able to transpose musical arrangements into completely different tunes, giving the melody different tones and moods to suit the scene. The easiest way to imagine iMUSE is to think of a musical version of interactive hypertext - the user can jump around and re-arrange things at her/his whim.

The early versions of iMUSE-based games used “MIDI” tracks. Since midi arrangements are progressions of electronic musical notes, each note could be remixed on-the-fly. In some LucasArts games that use midi, such as Monkey Island 2, all sorts of transforms (tempo, volume, pan, instruments, etc) are applied to the midi sequence in order to achieve some dramatic effect. In this scene, Guybrush joins a spitting contest. As he approaches the ’spitmeister’, listen as the music detunes and quickly drops out instruments, hailing the entrance of our blundering protagonist. Hey, at least he hocked up a decent loogie this time!In games that use mp3-based musical data, the score is broken up into many constituent musical tracks. Each track, as we saw with the Barbery Coast pirates earlier, are timed identical to each other, so the music engine can seamlessly transition between tracks. While the sound designers lose some flexibility with mp3-based music (because they cannot mix the track note-by-note, instrument-by-instrument, in realtime), they at least can standardize the sound coming out of the speakers on the player’s end because the tracks have been pre-recorded according to their specifications.

Final Thoughts

While the musical feats that the iMUSE technology accomplishes are impressive in themselves, it is clear that all of these examples work not only because of the smooth transitions and/or identical rhythms - they work because the sound designers and composers found the right melodies and rhythms that suited the particular dramatic effect represented in each scene or for each character. iMUSE does not create good arrangements itself, as is evidenced by the occasional failed drama in several games, but rather relies upon the creative composers and designers who use it to craft the right mood for a scene. The subtlety that iMUSE allows for gives players the sense that they’re playing a game, and not simply interacting with a computer. And, when scripted-in with interactive dialogue, art direction, animation, story, and unique characters, the end products are adventure games that capture dramatic moments reminiscent of old radio and television dramas. Add in the rather kooky humor that most LucasArts game writers are known for, and every game beams with a gentle yet compelling story that’s downright enjoyable. Since iMUSE was one of those under-the-hood engines that was meant to work through subtlety, it isn’t surprising that it hasn’t really gotten its due now that it has faded into obscurity. It’s sad that there are so few games that can match the kinds of dramatic achievements that the creators of iMUSE did in their time.

If you’re interested in playing some of the classic LucasArts adventure games, I highly suggest heading on over to the SCUMMVM web site and downloading one of the best open source software projects on the web. SCUMMVM allows you to play all of those great oldies on modern PC’s running Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows.

If you’re looking for LucasArts-composed music to add to your music library, wander over to WorldMaker.net (scroll down to the comments section) and take a look at the suggestions - I can confirm those are all great compositions!

This post is included as part of a Blogs of the Round Table discussion on music in video games. Follow the below drop-down list for other January ‘08 Round Table entries. My sincere thanks to Corvus for accepting my rather last-minute entry! The list below links to other blogs who participated in this month’s Round Table - I strongly suggesting visiting them.. these articles are all particularly good reads.

ChipWits was an edutainment game that was released in the early days of the Macintosh. One part puzzler and one part GUI-based programming teacher, ChipWits used an icon-driven programming language (IBOL) to command a miniature robot on rollerskates around a room. Through combinations of operators and arguments, the robot would traverse the room picking up, eating, or frying objects at your maniacal whim. I don’t doubt that games such as The Incredible Machine, and more recently Chibi-Robo, gained much of their inspiration from this classic.

Dark Castle was a mixed action/puzzler/platformer that put you in the shoes of the bumbling adventurer Duncan in his quest to defeat the Black Knight. The game featured eery waveform sound effects and wonderful character animation reminiscent of later ‘rotoscoped’ animation. (Interesting side note: Co-developer Jonathan Gay later came to pioneer the now-ubiquitous Flash animation software. The designer and illustrator Mark Pierce later became the co-founder of software giant Macromedia. Holy jebus!) Full of slapstick humor and frustrating puzzles, Dark Castle is probably one of the least known indie masterpieces of the 1980’s.

Unfortunately, neither of these games have been playable on modern systems without frustratingly clunky emulation software. That is, until now! I was very pleasantly surprised when I found out that both have been remade into modern sequels by indie developers:

Return to Dark Castle (Mac OS X only) has been in production for the better part of 7 years. Originally developed for Mac OS 9, the game engine had to be completely reprogrammed for OS X, and the art had to be redrawn for a 16-bit color depth. Since then, the game has went through years of bumpy roads; finally making it to an immanent final release through its publisher, Super Happy Fun Fun. For now, I strongly suggest downloading the latest demo beta (link courtesy of the Dark Castle forums) and playing it through. The demo is rather short, but demonstrates the potential the final release of the game will have, especially considering that the full version will include all of the levels from the original Dark Castle, Beyond Dark Castle, the new levels for Return to Dark Castle and a level editor. The production quality is simply stunning and demonstrates the kind of polish that is possible when a game receives nearly 10 years (!) of attention. The final release of the game is definitely on my 2008 must-buy list. Now, someone just has to convince ZSculpt to port this to XBOX 360 Live Arcade…

Edit: If you want to keep up on the latest news for Return to Dark Castle, head on over to the Dark Castle Blog.

After stumbling upon Doug Sharp’s blog a few months ago on an unrelated search, I found out that a beta of ChipWits II has been released! The original programmers, Doug Sharp and Mike Johnston, re-wrote the entire game from scratch using the Adobe AIR Flash framework - meaning that it’s playable on both Windows and Mac! The sequel very much captures the enjoyment of the original, and it’s great seeing these oldschool designers back on the saddle. So head on over to the ChipWits II web site and give it a try. Even 25 years later, it’s still great edutainment software since the goals have stayed the same, so if you have kids let them take a crack at some procedural programming. The only criticism I have is that I miss the old ChipWits interface… there’s something slightly clunky about this one. Hopefully that gets resolved for the final version…

Update: The original ChipWits was remade for the Windows platform by Klaus Breuer. Klaus painstakingly reprogrammed the entire game from start to finish, and it’s available as freeware at his web site. I highly recommend playing the original, and this is the next best thing.

A few weeks ago, Michael over at the Brainy Gamer wrote some final thoughts on his play-through of Planescape: Torment, a cRPG that many consider to be one of the best role-playing games to ever hit the PC. The beginning of his post caught my attention right away:

Planescape: Torment is a text-based RPG. True, it manages to squeeze every bit of isometric splendor out of Bioware’s Infinity Engine. And yes, the game occasionally treats you to a pre-rendered cutscene. But these are merely window dressing. Planescape: Torment places all its narrative eggs in one giant 800,000 word basket.

In this article I begin to explore the idea that photorealism in games ultimately detracts from immersion and gives players the feeling that the story and characters are contrived and un-real. I suggest that immersion and dramatic investment aren’t a product of good technologies, they are a product of good artisanship.

There can be no doubt that Michael is right here: Torment is predominantly a text-based RPG. And while I think the art and sound direction play a major role in the way the story is experienced (and should be talked about at some point), the game so heavily relies upon words alone. In major dialogue sequences (note, I didn’t say ‘action sequences’ or ‘cutscenes’), I’ve spent up to 20 minutes exploring the various facets of my character and the NPC I’m talking to through various dialogue choices. This was possibly the first cRPG I’ve played where many NPCs had a greater role than the average bulletin board. Rather than starting the conversation with ‘Hey X, I’m Y - could you retrieve Z for me and I’ll give you N gold?’, many NPCs begin their pleadings with a story. Some NPCs even tell stories (here I refer to the character “Reekwind”) for their own sake: simply to share something to a sympathetic ear. And while it’s obvious that listening to their stories will have some future gameplay benefit (such as gaining experience, or unlocking certain quests), there is something special in Chris Avellone’s writing that captures the imagination and makes us desire more of the stories-within-stories-within-stories.

So how does Torment manage to invite us to the extraordinary world of Planescape? One of the answers (and there are many of course) lies in details of the medium itself. Michael’s later comment, “Imagine a game with the narrative and thematic richness of PST…inside a Mass Effect or Oblivion engine…” caught my interest in that respect. Is that true? Would my experience of Torment have been the same (or better?) through the flashy cinematics and hyper-realism of a new 3D engine? Or - thinking in terms of film - why is Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds original radio drama still superior to the hundreds of millions spent on the modern remake by Steven Spielburg? Was the remake simply a botched job by an acclaimed director, or was there something more endemic to the radio drama itself that grabbed our imaginations by the cojones/ovarios and gave them a good shake?

Here are some of my thoughts in response to Michael’s:

Pictured above: Jim Henson puppet from children’s television series Fraggle Rock.

When I play Mass Effect and Oblivion, I often find myself paying more attention to the technical feats of the 3D engines than the story itself. The first time I experienced this kind of technical distraction was when I watched one of the new Star Wars films. Gone were the Jim Henson puppets and scaled miniatures, and in their place were high-poly renderings of space ships and Jabba the Hutt. The 3D “photorealism” that George Lucas attempted failed miserably for me, and I spent most of my time distracted by imperfections in the animation and the rather stilted ways in which living and non-living characters interacted.

When I play Mass Effect, as say compared to the old Wing Commander computer games, the experience is almost identical. In Wing Commander: Privateer, you spend much of the game exploring and satisfying quest requirements, just as you do in Mass Effect. However, being almost 15 years older, Privateer’s technical feats are humble at best. Instead of the cinematic and high resolution dialogue sequences we see in ME, the dialogues in Privateer consist of random mouth movements and duplicated character art - the bartenders on each planet are physically identical, only wearing different wigs for instance. Despite that (and later I will say ‘because of that’), when my character in Privateer speaks there is something unmistakably *human* about his speech. My expectations of Privateer are lower in terms of realism of course, but as such I become free to focus on what the character means or is feeling and not what s/he is doing, or looks like as s/he is doing it. And similarly, my imagination is freed in the original Star Wars films when I see muppets talking with humans. The muppet is a real character to me - a larger than life human being in its own right, and not just a low budget stand-in for something better. A sock puppet, properly dramatized, is infinitely more ‘human’ than the high-res renders of Aki in Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within.

Why though? That seems totally counterintuitive. Shouldn’t a photorealistic rendering of Jabba the Hutt be more satisfying than a rubber and plastic puppet?

Pictured above: Screenshot of Zork I in the text interpreter. Pictured below: the same scene depicted in Return to Zork.

Here’s where I’d like to speculate a bit: I think part of the reason is due to the complexity of film animations and 3d video games. First, when we look at the first line from the original Zork, “You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door”, we can immediately imagine the scene depicted. When we take that same line and transform it into a 3d representation (as was done in the 3d adventure Return to Zork) little things begin to nag at us because it’s not how we might have imagined it for ourselves. This problem becomes doubly obvious when a director refuses to interpret a text through her/his own imagination, and instead takes a literal reading of the text and transports it to the screen. In my experience, the best interpretations of text rely upon the director’s imagination, and are often quite unlike the original piece.

The second part of the problem comes from the complexity of the medium itself: when a designer chooses translates text from a different medium, they must make some interpretive decisions - the colors in the scene, the character voices, the character models, the lip syncing, etc. If any of those elements draw away from the central focus of the scene we immediately notice because they just don’t fit together well. For instance, take a line of dialogue from Mass Effect - “I don’t care what you want to do. We have to save her!” We can imagine that this scene depicts a fellow comrade requiring our assistance and one of the NPC’s won’t cooperate with us. Take that same line of dialogue and try to design a 3D simulation of it: the lip syncing has to be exact, the voiceover has to be expressive and powerful, and the model’s face has to frown at the exact times as s/he shrieks at the disagreeable NPC. If one little thing is ‘off’ or discordant with the performance (ie. if the character’s arms lay dead at his/her side as s/he tries to express anger), the scene deflates and we feel like we’re watching computers generated models interact, and not riveting drama. In Torment and other text-based games, problems of expression are less focal because our focus is purely on the text itself. Text adventurers must simply use their imaginations to ’see through’ the text to a story, drama, or puzzle, instead of analyzing a thousand different elements interact simultaneously. Therefore, as a text-based RPG Torment predominantly relies upon the imagination of the reader-player and, in my opinion, is a better game for it. If Torment were remade with the Mass Effect 3D engine, we’d have a completely different gaming experience: subtlety is so hard to express when you’re trying to control everything in a scene like a puppet master with a thousand fingers. Computer games, especially those using 3D engines, present the artistic director with an inherently complicated system to express his/her ideas.

Pictured above: What happens when you take a good movie, and mix it with bad photorealistic CG models.

But that’s only half of the story. If the artistic difficulties associated with photorealism were just about handling technical complexity the solution would be easy: just make computers faster and integrate more AI routines. But that’s missing the point. The real problem with photorealism is photorealism itself. As I alluded to earlier, there is something inherent in a dramatic performance, a good piece of art, a piece of well-written dialogue, that draws an emotional response from us. Like in live theatre and radio drama, the exaggerated drama of a muppet can somehow draw me into the character far more than the ‘realism’ of a computer-generated model. But what is that artistic process, and how might it be adapted for video games? Those are questions I don’t have answers to yet, but I suspect that part of the answer lies in allowing players to focus on what matters (the story, the gameplay, the environment, etc) and allowing the rest of the game to be filled in by the player’s imagination.

Every once in a while I come across a thoughtful, well-written blog that I keep up with. Recently, I came across Doc Love’s rather unassuming blog. Like Michael’s thoughts over at the Brainy Gamer, Doc Love reflects upon the past, present and future of video games as a gamer and a cultural scholar. The latest post focuses on understanding the experience of playing Half-Life 2 - through the lens of dystopian literature and film, and through an examination of the player’s part in assuming the role of the protagonist Gordon Freeman. The links Doc Love draws between Blade Runner, Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, and the game are all apt of course, but I am more struck by the way the article is framed through Barthes’s essay Death of the Author.

Pictured above: The alien tripod creature in The War of the Worlds, as illustrated by Alvim Correa. The resemblance to the synth “Striders” in Half-Life 2 is anything but accidental. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

Like the Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin who has much to say on the subject of creativity and its roots in traditions of speech, Barthes seems similarly claim that we must see any creative work as inherently a part of the historical and cultural tools that its creator drew upon, and what we as us readers draw upon when we interpret their creations. Even the wonderful title of the post, “Everything Old is New Again“, reminds me of a quote from an ethnomethodologist named Garfinkel who said that our social circumstances tend to happen again and again “for another first time” - that there is a novelty to even the most ritualized ‘Hello!’ greeting. As a creative work, Half-Life 2 is of course a recombination of its many cultural and literary influences - yet it presents us with a dystopian future “for another first time”. On a side note, I would add H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds as an important literary and aesthetic influence… the apocalyptic London immediately came to mind when I first saw ‘City 17′.

When I logged into The Endless Forest, the first thing I did was fiddle with the controls. I walked my fawn around in circles. I had it rub its side against a tree, and eat some purple flowers. I visited an ancient stone shrine that made my fawn’s head glow after kneeling before it for a minute, and visited the ruins of a cemetery. It was serene, but lonely.

Then I logged out, slightly frustrated. I was worried that I had missed something crucial… a cleverly hidden gameplay mechanic, a story-line or introduction that failed to get trigged… some kind of point to the game!

Then I read an interview with Michael and Auriea¹, where they discussed some of their goals with Régine Debatty, and it all became clear:

They are brilliant.

If there is a single human element that unifies just what makes games ‘gameful’ - it is play. Despite its daily use, “Play” is not a well understood term in the gaming world. Play is often used as a part of other game-related words: gameplay, player, playable, playing, multiplayer, role-play, etc. But just what we mean when we use the word “play” is often ambiguous. What does it mean to play a game? Does it mean we are playing with a game, like the way a baby plays with a toy, or the way a dog plays fetch? Does it mean that we are playing with ourselves? Or is there something more enigmatic to human play, something beyond simple mechanical interactivity? Is it possible to perhaps play through a game as an extension of our bodies?

The Endless Forest, I think, demonstrates a theory of play at a fundamental human level and corrects what was a long history of games that were not very “playful” and were more like “toys”. Before I discuss the game any further however, we need some new language to talk about games with, because our language for talking about “play” is not very rich.

Forms of Play

Pictured above: This is what happens when players get bored with your game, and resort to monadic play. Courtesy of Garry’s Half-Life 2 mod.

When a child plays with a stuffed bear, she often imbues the bear with aspects of her own personality: the bear is grumpy or happy. She tells the bear secrets, and even scolds it when she thinks it has told on her. This model of play relies on the child’s imagination to set the rules for play; the bear cannot talk-back or disagree outside of the child’s mind. This form of play I will call monadic play. An example of a game that has some monadic play to it would be Will Wright’s Sim City. In this game the player is free to explore the world and build in it, destroy their creations with earthquakes and tornados, or make smiley-faces on the map using the in-game tiles ² - hence the term “sandbox” game.

A second kind of play is found in children (and adults!) who play games with each other, such as hide-and-go-seek, cops and robbers, and tag. These games often feature rule systems that are decided by the players as the game is played - children always find ways to “cheat” in these games and convince their friends that the “rules” don’t really matter and they make up new ones on the spot (think to yourself - is there any definitive rule in a game of ‘tag’ or ‘hide-and-go-seek’ that cannot be broken?). This form of play is set apart from monadic play in that the rules of the game are now formulated, argued, and enacted by more than one person - thus I will call it dyadic play. It is a dyad (two) because two is the minimum number of human participants necessary to engage in this form of play. Dyadic play can occur in multiplayer video games that have some amount of gameplay freedom - for instance we can make our own game of ‘tag’ or ‘hide-and-go-seek’ in World of Warcraft if we want to. However, most multiplayer video games distract players from engaging in dyadic play by forcing external rules upon the player. For instance, in World of Warcraft I cannot ‘play’ in most areas of the game as a low-level character because I will simply be killed by randomly spawning enemies. In that way, opportunities for play are greatly reduced because the designer has some ideal method of play in mind for the player (Second Life is a much better example of dyadic play, but I haven’t played with it enough to use it as an example). This is certainly different from pencil’n'paper roleplaying games that offer the richest forms of dyadic play in that the settings, social contexts and battle rules are almost completely decided by the players as they make up the story (often using rulebooks such as Dungeons and Dragons as the norms for gameplay).

Pictured above: This is what happens when players mix monadic play with dyadic simulation - the kind of gameplay that World of Warcraft often falls into. Um, wow.

A third form of play is typically only found in video games, and sits somewhere in between between monadic and dyadic play. In most single-player games, the author decides what the rules of the game are, and what tools the player can use to play within those rules. This form of play is often the most restrictive, and does not give the player much opportunity to engage in their own personal goals. In that way, we are playing with the computer as an opponent or assistant, acting as a stand-in for what would normally be another human being. This form of play I will call monadic play with dyadic simulation. Most video games fit this bill to varying degrees, because they presume that the player must learn and discover the rules set by the designer and play according to them. That’s the theory; in practice things are much stickier. At one extreme, we have games that are only playable if the player follows the rules set by the designer (ie. Tetris) and purely make use of dyadic simulation, but at the other extreme (ie. RPGs such as Fallout 2, or Neverwinter Nights) we have many more opportunities for monadic or even dyadic play. Each game obviously makes use of many different forms of play, but Fallout 2 and NWN seem to offer the richest opportunities for other forms of play because they allow the player to role-play. For instance, in Fallout 2 there is no rule that forces my character to fit a certain personality type; I can be a psychopath, a murderer, a savior, or simply a wanderer; as such I can engage in kinds of play that are purely imaginal - the character only exists insomuch as I impart some meaning on them. I can role-play a psychopath that only wishes to maximize his personal benefit and takes advantage of others at every turn, because my imagination imparts a meaning to the act of killing an NPC on the screen after taking his money; this is obviously a monadic form of play.
Alternately, in Neverwinter Nights forms of play are granted even more flexibility through user-created scripts and multiplayer capabilities - possibly allowing for dyadic play. However, it must be understood that even in games that offer players great flexibility with forms of play, players often resist engaging in monadic and dyadic play and prefer to engage with the computer as a dyadic simulator. Often, we see this in MMORPGs: players who spend hundreds of hours in what I call a “math fight” - a brute-force attempt to subjugate the character level/experience math curve that the designers have imposed upon the game (other people just call this “grinding”).

Poesis: Creating Play

Now that we have a bit more language to ‘play with’ (*groan*, I couldn’t resist that one), why do I think that the developers of The Endless Forest are brilliant artists? What tipped me off was their response to Régine’s question regarding future updates to the game:

All of these [additions] will be more poetic than game-like. Our priority [is] definitely with poetry. To some extent we only use game-type interactions to stimulate people to hang out in the world a bit longer. Ideally, however, we want to design interactions that are poetic in and of themselves.

At first glance, that response seems a bit odd. What do they mean when they say they desire “interactions that are poetic in and of themselves”? This is where the language of ‘play’ might come in handy. Poetry, if you don’t mind a rough definition, involves play-using-words (Robert Frost has even said that poetry is “serious play“). And “poetry” comes from the Greek word “poesis” - literally, to “make” or “create”. What matters here is that poems somehow bring together words and play to create something new.

Pictured above: Communication and play in The Endless Forest. Is the fawn saying, “hello”, or “mount me”?

Turning back to Michael and Auriea’s comment, we now can understand that part of their goal is to create opportunities for play using the in-game symbolic system. Literally, they want people to play with each other in the most basic form of human engagement: dyadic play. And what makes The Endless Forest different from other MMO’s is that it discourages people from resorting to other forms of interaction that decrease the chances for dyadic play. Concretely, there is no in-game chat system, nor any other way of talking to other players than by using symbolic acts such as shaking your the antlers, rearing up on your back feet, or erupting a loud squeal. None of these acts ‘mean’ much of anything alone, and require other human players to react (ie, if I rear up on my hind legs, you cower in deference) and give the symbols a meaning. The game is literally creating a language for play from the ground-up by allowing players to decide what everything means. That is why the developers did not build any quests or external goals: all of the goals are determined by the players themselves. In that way, players have to ‘decide on’ what games they are going to play with each other from the very beginning: first they need to play together in order to determine what the symbols/icons mean to each other, then they can use these symbols to make up “2nd order games” with each other.

To put this more concretely, imagine that you and I do not speak the same language and meet each other on the street. I move my hands around, and you move your hands around, vainly attempting to communicate using gestural language. Eventually, we might come to an understanding that if I point with my finger in a certain direction and wave my arm towards it, I want you to follow me. After a while, you decide that you’re tired of following me, and wave to the north - and I follow you. The second that our actions become mutually responsive to each other, we are playing a game together - we are playing the following game! And in that way, my fawn avatar in The Endless Forest is literally an extension of my body - just as my hands and arms are when I’m trying to communicate with the stranger on the street.

This kind of play is what the game lends itself to producing opportunities for: games of ‘tag’, ‘Marco Polo’, and ‘hide-and-go-seek’. And even better, it forces us to make up the rules on-the-spot for the symbolic language that we’re going to play the game in. Play is poetic - it requires us not only to negotiate with other human beings on the rules of a game using words or symbolic acts (and in the game’s case, deer-like actions), but come to new formulations of those rules when someone breaks them. In that way, The Endless Forest is the ultimate user-created fantasy world where our spoken languages no longer matter and we can, as human beings, come to define languages and games within the world together. The “game” is not really a game as we currently understand them (as abstract rules-systems that designers allow us to play) - the game is really a world, a forest (!), or a city park that gives people new opportunities to play with each other freely with as few external rules as possible. That is what sets the game apart from other MMORPGs that rely upon external rules to give players a sense of purpose of duty - in this game the goals are left unspecified and totally to the player’s imagination and social context. That is what makes the game truly artful - it destroys our pre-conceptions of ‘play’ in video games.

That is why players who think that ‘the game has no point’ are utterly confused, or personally resistant to monadic or dyadic play. The world can have a point - but it’s up to the players themselves to decide what the point is by playing/interacting with other players.

And that brings us to what is missing in the game to make this budding masterpiece work: it needs more people playing it! In order to engage in dyadic play, you need at least one other person - and if you want to create a language using the symbols they have in the game, you need a critical mass of people that regularly log-in and stand in front of each other making funny gestures until they cohere into a recognizable set of social meanings.

With any abstract language, tag and hide-and-go-seek are the most simplified forms of play - but imagine the possibilities in this kind of world! With enough work and creative ingenuity I guarantee that a group of players will eventually figure out how to tell the story of King Lear, or a deer drama troupe will learn how to act out an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation using the deer iconography. The possibilities for play in The Endless Forest are truly endless.

If I’ve persuaded you at all to give The Endless Forest a shot, there is no better time than this week! On Thursday November 1st, starting at 4pm 10pm GMT, the world will celebrate its next “Abiogenesis” - a get-together where Michael and Auriea login to the world as gods (or simply as ‘nature’), and create real-time changes in the world (ie. playing music, or creating objects) as people play. This will be the first Abiogenesis I’ve attended, and I’m looking forward to seeing what they have planned for All Hallow’s. If you’re looking for me, I’ll be logged in with my girlfriend. We’ll be the two deer walking around with the same pictograph above our heads. Feel free to signal a ‘hello’ - we’ll figure it out what it means eventually.

What Forms of Play might mean for game developers

I realized that I neglected to add some comments directed towards game developers. Basically, forms of play (monadic, dyadic, simulated play, etc) are simple descriptors used to allow us to think conceptually about game play. The concepts are important because they give us the ability to identify just how particular forms of play make more or less use of the imagination, are more or less social, or are based on interaction with a computer. So, for instance, if you’ve decided to make an MMO game that’s based on a high degree of player interaction - you might rethink the whole idea of making generic quest generation algorithms that make Player X deliver a Y to NPC Z and receive Q coins in return. In fact, you might allow players to create quests of their own - ie, “challenges” that are funded by a guild like killing a dragon - dyadic play at its best. You might develop a built-in escrow system that only hands over the prize after the enemy has been smoten. Monadic and dyadic play also demonstrate why “griefing” is always going to happen in MMOs, when players literally become bored with static gameplay mechanics that the designers have imposed on the world. Griefing, many kinds of bug exploitation, and general out-of-character behavior are all the acts of a creative mind searching for something more interesting in the confines of a rather bland game.

Alternately, if you’re making a single-player RPG you might provide the player with enough flexibility to allow them to explore the world freeform using completely non-linear adventuring and storytelling (ie. Ultima VII) - and not force them along a very narrow linear story (ie. The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion). Freeform exploration and non-linear storytelling are much closer to a kind of monadic play using dyadic simulation but much richer than the usual cRPG. It is richer, because it depends upon the player’s imagination and personal choices to decide where the story is going - and the computer only exists insomuch as to facilitate their choices.

In the end, Forms of Play demonstrate that our jobs as developers involve providing players with opportunities for play using the player’s imagination, their friends, often with the computer acting as a facilitator for those play experiences. Who really wants a math fight with a computer anyway? That gets boring, quick. Might as well go play the slots in Vegas.