Recently, Michael of the Brainy Gamer wrote a brilliant (yet terribly misunderstood) exploration of the phenomenology of keeping a scorecard at a baseball game. Sounds a little boring eh? You bet… until you understand the level of intimacy that he creates just by writing down a few numbers and thinking through the game. In this post I’ll try to do justice to just what Michael might have meant by the word “engagement” by talking a little bit about what people do when they “engage” themselves with a game. Before you read this, it’s critical to read Michael’s post first… because I’ll be referring to it throughout. Trust me, it’s worth it.

Let’s deal with scorekeeping a baseball game first:

“Scoring a ballgame brings you closer to the game being played on the field”

How is it possible that keeping a score card at a baseball game could actually create a level of intimacy with the game that goes beyond spectating? Isn’t it just a cold calculus of the mind?

From what I can tell, this intimacy is produced in two ways:

1) Through the mechanics of maintaining the scorekeeping card. Michael writes of his experience: “A right-handed batter steps to the plate to face a right-handed pitcher. These two have faced each other many times, so I note that this pitcher “owns” this batter with a mark next to the batter’s name. The flags, which indicated that the wind was blowing out at the start of the game, have now gone limp, so I note that on my scorecard as well.”  From what we gather from his story, keeping the score card requires patience, attentiveness, technical skill, judgment, and a darned good memory. This skillful act, while important (as we’ll find out), is secondary to another personal act…

2) Through the imaginative work of playing the roles of the pitcher, batter, fielders, basemen, etc. This act, as form of engagement with the game, is primary. It involves how we imagine the on-field players are feeling and thinking. As Michael says in a later comment, “If the batter can be patient, he will likely see a good pitch to hit, but if he’s over-anxious, as my scorecard tells me he was both previous times, he’s probably going to be vulnerable to a pitch low and away. He knows this. The pitcher knows this. And so do I.”

Now let’s think about what happens when someone scorekeeps the way he does. The scorekeeper does not just record numbers, statistically analyze them, and spit back out the results. He also does not just imagine the game as a personal fantasy; the game is going on in front of him. He is also not a passive spectator - he feels invested in the game as if his judgments were just as important as the pitcher’s choices.

What the scorekeeper does, and I daresay all people familiar with role-play do, is engage themselves with the game at a level beyond both rule-following and imaginary fantasy. The scorekeeper is like an appreciator of fine art or music: they are mindful of the subtleties and nuances of the ‘rules’ while simultaneously mindful of the art work itself. Where the casual spectator can only engage with the game in fantasy, and the rigid statistician does not “see” a game but a complex calculus, the scorekeeper plays the game. They are engaged with the baseball game at a bodily and spiritual level - the game unfolds for them at their personal pace.

Based on those distinctions we can imagine that there are three (idealized) kinds of video game players:

“The Accountant”

The game is enjoyed at a distance as sets or levels of generative rules. The game is played in terms of understanding these rules and making distinctions, and using this understanding to obtain something of personal interest: in-game artifacts, treasure, quest completion, character attributes, etc.

Because the player has no personal engagement with the rules, the rules are seen as inviolable, impersonal, and external; the player often attempts to master or dominate the game.

“The Devourer”

The game is enjoyed as a flight into fantasy; it is “consumed” by the player because s/he makes no distinctions of quality or quantity within the game. This kind of player simply relies upon their inchoate sense of personal value which determines their play style, and the game is subsumed by their desires. If the game rules do not suit them, they are tossed, ignored, or violated (ie. cheating). The kind of game does not matter much in the end; an FPS could be just as enjoyable as an adventure game as long as it satiates their desires.

“The Role-Player”

The game is understood as deeply personal yet otherworldly. The game world exists as a living, breathing, self-sufficient world, separate from the player’s desires. Yet, the role-player finds ways of discovering his/her desires within the game, by understanding the game’s rules. The player’s desires, in the end, are reshaped by their understanding of the rules. They engage with the game world (usually through a Player-Character or avatar) with a sense of commitment, care, and personal value for what happens in the game. This player plays in the game.

Of course we can see that these player types are idealized, and every player sits in all camps simultaneously, but drawing out the distinctions brings us closer to understanding just what’s at stake for the average player.

Loving Games is Hard Work

Appreciating anything is more than just distilling our personal enjoyment from it, and more than just coldly analyzing its constituent elements one at a time. Appreciating games, art, music, baseball, the subtleties of my cat’s meows, all require a deep personal engagement only possible when we allow ourselves to become mindful of the rules, what’s happening in front of us, and our selves. Developing a phenomenology (a description of our personal engagement with some phenomenon) of video and computer games is one of the new languages that we have to develop, among other things. Understanding and appreciating games allows us to engage with them in deeper waters and ensures that they won’t become just another flavor of the month. I’m deeply thankful that Michael started paddling us down this creek in the first place.

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.

"Video games, particularly the twitch-and-shoot kind, are remarkably passive activities for ones that involve such an increase in heart rate. I wonder what kind of effect that has on us? Do we feel less need to do other activities because, at least chemically, we feel we've already accomplished so much?" [link]

Always with an ironic, yet good-natured, sense of humor, Carrington’s work features some of the most subtle yet recognizably Canadian takes on modern and retro video/computer games. And, with a quick wit and tendency for poetic verse, his writing and speaking both exude a laid-back yet artistic sense. Not bad for a Torontonian!

Although all of his podcasts are worth listening to, I found his retro game reviews especially insightful. Podcast #1 features a review of “Tass Times in Tone Town” - a game that I referred to in “Revitalizing Dead Culture: Why Game History Matters” article, Podcast #2 has an excellent review of the classic Lode Runner, and Podcast #6 features what I think is his best review, of the game Portal. No, not the recently over-hyped game from Valve. Portal is a one-of-a-kind interactive novel that came out in the early 1980s for the PC. In a genre of its own, it’s hard to pigeonhole this excellent story in any particular game genre. Carrington’s review of the game does an amazing job of giving us the feeling of how the game plays - something rarely done in any review I’ve seen. While I don’t want to give away the premise of Portal, it still stands as a beautiful example of how literature itself can become the object of exploration in games. The whole idea of reading an in-game book or listening to a character’s voice logs in order to advance the plot, found in modern games such as System Shock, BioShock, and Mass Effect, was unimaginable before Portal. Unlike these games, however, Portal manages to unfold the storyline only through the player’s discovery of in-game literature and diaries.

So head on over to the 1 MHz Podcast and give it a listen, or check out his latest article on passivity in video gaming.

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.

“Not being a games designer, Douglas was still thinking linearly,” says Steve [Meretzky]. “As we got more comfortable working together, and I began to assert myself, and Douglas got more familiar with the possibilities of non-linear storytelling, that changed - the majority of the game has the most fiercely non-linear structure of any adventure title I’ve ever worked on.” 

As a followup to friday’s link to Andy Baio’s archeology of Milliway’s (which incidentally made Slashdot), I remembered an excellent article posted in issue #45 of Retro Gamer magazine. Since this is a rather obscure magazine I decided to scan in the entire article because getting back-issues of the U.K. based magazine is rather difficult. You will notice that several of the Infocom folks who contributed to the article also commented on Andy Baio’s page, which gives a sense of interconnectedness to the situation. The article gives a quick look into the creative forces behind the games as well as a sense for the creative environment engendered at the time.

Warning: each page image is over 500kb. It may take you less time to order it from the U.K. than wait for it to download via 28.8k modem.

Page 1 | Page 2 | Page 3 | Page 4

Edit: I forgot to include a link to the publisher’s web site! If you’d like to order a copy of, or subscribe to, Retro Gamer - which comes with my highest recommendations - head on over to Imagine’s eShop to order it online.

design documents, email archives, employee phone numbers, sales figures, internal meeting notes, corporate newsletters, and the source code and game files for every released and unreleased game Infocom made.

So why does this matter? Because he went through the drive and weaved together the tale of why Milliway’s: The Restaurant at the End of the Universe was never completed nor released. If you have not played the excellent Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy IF game (designed and created by Steve Meretzky and Douglas Adams) you’re missing out on a crucial piece of computer game history and a damned fun (difficult!) game. I’ll let Andy tell the story, except for two points:

1. It tells the story of a venerable game company in decline; crisis even. Being 1989, Infocom had already merged with Activision and Milliway’s had been languishing since its inception in ‘85. The company closes with not a bang…
2. It comes with a playable prototype of Milliway’s (!!)

Comments from the ex-Infocom folks on the story seem to agree with some of Andy’s story, however it is quite clear that there is more to this than meets the eye. It will be interesting to see what comes of this in the following weeks, as it quite clearly has ruffled a few feathers - and for good reasons.

Thankfully Jason Scott’s new documentary, Get Lamp, is scheduled for release some time this year. I suspect that his own exploration into the world of interactive fiction, complete with interviews of major designers and programmers, should be just as utterly fascinating just as his epic BBS: The Documentary was.