Let the Game Play
12/19/11
I’m not a theorist. I’m a novelist. I am not a writing scholar. I am just a writer. These were the thoughts that went through my head less than a week ago as I struggled to write this paper on the nature of gaming. I have always been more concerned with the application of the craft of writing over the implications. I don’t think critically about games I just play them. I consume or I create. I don’t bother with anything other than that.
The title of this piece is “Let the Game Play.” It is a reference to a conversation I had with my brother, Alex, nearly four months ago. I was leaving to return back to campus in a few days and my brother decided to play one of the games that I was bringing with me on my old game system. I noticed while he was playing that he was missing one of the gadgets from the game. So meaning to help him out I pulled out my smart phone and searched up a walkthrough. Alex grabbed me by the wrist as a typed with my thumb and asked, “Do you remember when questions didn’t have answers? When we just let the game play?” Over the past several months I have thought about what he said and the way I play games. I often play games to complete them. To get to the end of the story because as a narrative writer, story is what I care about most. So when I get to a difficult or challenging point I often give up or look up the answer. In doing this I robbed myself of one of the most important aspects of gaming, challenges. How did I as a narrative writer forget all about the importance of character development? Character development, the process by which a character (me) struggles and faces challenges and comes out as a better person for having faced them.
Can playing video games play a role in character development of an individual? I certainly think they can. I believe they can be, as James Paul Gee, the noted video game theorist who’s research heavily influenced my own, said after eight hours of playing The New Adventures of the Time Machine, a “life-enhancing experience.” (Gee 3) Furthermore I believe that at their root video games tackle issues inherent in life and if we look at life as an opportunity for play, we can show just as much capacity for development as the characters in the games, and if we cannot then we are static background characters not playing our game of life.
The first mistake that I made while writing this paper was to establish an identity for myself that was incompatible with the completion of this paper. I was not a theorist. Through my first reading of Gee, I realized that I had created this identity. Additionally there were other identities that I had assumed through my playing of games that were not me and still been successful at being those characters. I had been a soldier, a test subject and a millionaire playboy who dresses in a bat suit to fight crime, why couldn’t I be a theorist. Gee in the first page of his chapter on learning and identity says as much. In order to actively learn from any semiotic domain the student “must be willing to take on an identity as a certain type of scientific thinker, problem solver, and doer.” (Gee) Gee identifies three important levels of focus when dealing with identity, the virtual or assumed identity, real identity, and on a Meta level the projective identity. In video games this is the avatar, the player and the two viewed as a unit. In the course of this paper it was David the theorist, David the person playing a theorist, and the level from which I am writing now as I unravel the links between the two.
Identity switching isn’t difficult. When playing a video game it ties in with empathy but all empathy is really just another form of pattern recognition. Rollings and Adams recognize pattern recognition as one of the major types of challenges with in games. However, they also recognize it as one of human kind’s greatest assets, saying, “the impressive abilities demonstrated by the human brain mainly stem from one basic ability: pattern recognition.” (Rollings and Adams 216) Rollings and Adams show that pattern recognition can be attributed to all of human learning. Pattern recognition is more than simply the ability to understand shapes as they come as in Tetris. It is the ability to predict, and to see like objects as the same. Every human accomplishment can be attributed to pattern recognition. Taxonomy is the grouping of evolutionarily similar animals in to groups. Mathematics would be meaningless if we could not create new math problems and solve them as we have others. Neither one of these concepts would have ever come about if it weren’t for our ability to recognize patterns. We are able to understand how things relate without being given the relationship. And this is what allows us to be productive human beings. We are told to learn from our mistakes lest we make them again but we are rarely offered the opportunity to make the same exact mistake twice. We have to learn what situations are similar. In this way we get to find something to take away from everything we watch. It's why every teen whose parents disapprove of their boyfriend thinks that they are an example of Romeo and Juliet. It is the reasons societal norms exist and why they change in regularly predictable patterns. Pattern recognition is the entire reason for our lives as they are now. Gameplay facilitates pattern recognition. Gee talks about how the mark that a person is learning actively is that they begin “to experience (see, feel, and operate on) the world in new ways” (Gee) as they apply to a semiotic domain. They can see the patterns and similarities between the new domain and the real world. It is why I say that life's a game. Because I have learned to see the world as a series of levels each getting progressively more difficult. Each time I use what I have learned in the previous stage of life to continue on to the next.
As we progress from identity further into play I find it necessary to introduce the two games that I will use in this paper. I will primarily be using Valve’s Portal as a game of reference. In Portal the player takes control of Chel, a young mute woman who wakes up in The Aperture Science Computer Aided Enrichment Center and is informed that she will be going through a series of test. The only other character in the first game is GLaDOS the Artificial Intelligence that guides the player through certain tasks often coaxing them along with the promise of cake. She gives helpful advice such as warning you that in certain rooms “any contact with the floor will result in an unsatisfactory mark on your report, followed by death.” (Valve) Gameplay revolves around completing each of the Enrichment Center’s 19 test chambers. In order to get through each test chamber the player must learn to use the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device. Throughout the Test Chambers there are small nooks and crannies where one member of the faculty, Doug Ratman, has scrawled cryptic messages that suggest that GLaDOS may not be as friendly as she sounds. This is confirmed in Test Chamber 19 when GLaDOS attempts to push Chel into an incinerator. If the player has learned how to use the portal gun correctly then they can easily escape this trap and head into the bowels of the facility to confront GLaDOS. I chose this game for its unique gameplay and for the developer commentary which can be accessed after completion of the game.
As I will have to address violent video games by the end of this I have chose Batman: Arkham Asylum as my violent video game. The game features Batman as he tries to stop the Joker who has taken over Arkham Asylum. The game’s action is primarily concerned with stealth based combat, picking thugs off one by one, and brawling against scores of thugs. While Batman does not kill any of his enemies, the fights are brutal and if a real person fought the way Batman does the thugs would be dead.
Play
In order to make myself write this, because as much as I did not want fail, I did not want to write this, I resorted to an old trick. I made it a game. I set up rules.
1. I must read a minimum of 5 sources per day for three days
2. Each source must be read for at least one hour unless I discover the urge to write about that source before the hour is up.
3. Once I start writing I must write a minimum of 800 words about the source. These words may comprise a summary of the source and/or reflections on the topic of the text.
4. I will use a program known as Write or Die which will make annoying sounds if I stop writing for more than 5 seconds.
Now at this point you’re probably saying, “This doesn’t sound like a game. It sounds more like an arbitrary set of deadlines. Furthermore, 800 words on 15 sources add up to approximately 30 pages in 3 days, well over the required minimum of 15.” To which I respond, yes I did voluntarily undertake an “activity or occupation executed within certain fixed limits of time and place, according to rules freely accepted but absolutely binding, having its aim in itself and accompanied by a feeling of tension, joy and the consciousness that it is "different" from ‘ordinary life’” or what Johan Huizinga calls in his 1949 book Homo Ludens, play (28).
And this is something that gamers do all the time. Gamers will set up rules besides the normal limits of the game in order to beat it and feel accomplished. Every gamer who has ever played a challenge map or set arbitrary limits on what functions of a game they will play understands the notion of Huizinga’s definition of play. In Call of Duty this is the shunning of easily used weapons such as the “noob tube.” In one of my favorite games, Portal, which I will speak more about in a bit, these are challenge maps which either add deadly traps, or count the step, seconds, or portals that a player takes to complete a Test Chamber. But before we talk about challenge let’s talk more about play and what play teaches us.
Chris Crawford in his book on game design talks about play in the most extraordinary of terms imaginable to him play is everything. Or rather everything is play. Play as Crawford and most of the civilized world will point out is something that most people talk about when discussing children. However Crawford takes Huizinga’s broader definition of play which he can be used to describe most of human interaction. Crawford gives an example in dating. “One form of game‑ritual was the school dance, where each person was expected to wear a special costume and dance with members of the opposite sex. The dances themselves were specified by the music that was played and the fashion of the time.” (Crawford 28)
I have examples of these games in my life too. I enjoy the arguing politics with my best friend. We both know that neither of us will change the other's mind but we do it because we enjoy it. Crawford points out that each instance of play helps to strengthen connections in the mind. Crawford says that part of the nature play, and the reason that it is looked at as childish, is that play is used by every species of animal to work out the kinks in the circuitry so to speak. Every animal uses play to create pathways for information and commands to flow more fluidly. This also works for ideas and arguments. Every time I argue with my friend I find holes in my logic. I find the kinks in the way I think and seek to fix them. Every game does this. It functions to make us create patterns of recognition that build on the nature of play.
It’s no secret that gaming teaches things. The major argument is, “What does gaming teach?” According to Ian Bogost there are two camps, behaviorist and constructivist. Behaviorists believe that games teach their content. He gives the example of Sim City. “In the game, players construct cities by zoning land, choosing energy sources, and investing in infrastructure like roads, rail and public service. From the content perspective, the game teaches something about urban planning, which players could then use to plan real cities.” (Bogost 237) I can understand that. There are certainly practical skills that could be learned from this game. I now want to know how many hours of playing Batman: Arkham Asylum I need to be a fully trained Batman, but I understand that that’s not exactly what was meant. But I digress. Behaviorist theory has lead to the trend of educational games, which aside from Carmen Sandiego were hardly games. At the most they could be argued to be animated math drills. It also leads to the idea violent video games teach violent actions. Behaviorists like David Grossman and Gloria DeGaetano even mention the “shocking” statistic that 49 percent of young teens indicate a preference for violent games, while only 2 percent prefer educational ones.” (Grossman and DeGaetano 67) I will admit that I may be biased in this regard and have no other evidence except for personal experience with educational games, but I believe that statistic says more about the inability of behaviorists to make enjoyable educational games, than about why violent video games are bad. I would also like to congratulate Grossman and DeGaetano on showing the prevalence of violence rhetoric in video games without actually giving a statistic to show an increase in violence among teens that played violent video games. Yes, one could point to the estimated dozens of acts of violence that are committed by players of violent video games each year, but if they are statistically relevant than so are the millions of well adjusted teens and adults who have grown up playing violent video games and have not had any charges filed against them for violence. (McAllister 8) I will end this portion of my admittedly defensive argument for the continued existence of violent video games by referring to an argument made by Gee and asking that a study be done to see if there has been an increase in town planners since the release of Sim City. (Gee 12) After all if simulated violence leads to actual violence, surely simulated town planning leads to actual town planner.
Sitting opposite the behaviorist are the constructivist. The constructivists believe not in content but in tools. Their perspective on education is to teach the method. It has its basis in pattern recognition. The situation does not always have to be the same for the concept, the abstract reasoning of the problem to be implemented. This is important because it allows games to be examined at a deeper layer than just their face value. Gee says that what games do is teach the player how to play the game. So while behaviorist may look at a game like Portal and see how it can teach the concept of momentum and various others physical concepts, the constructivist will see the myriad ways of using spatial reasoning. Constructivists see the puzzles getting harder as a way of teaching the player to think and apply the concepts to other parts of life outside of the game.
At some points though constructivism can sound like behaviorism. After all aren't the tactics being learned part of the content? Doesn't Grand Theft Auto teach us how to act as criminals? Aren't the tactics, strategies and tools we learn from violent games mostly violence? No. The tactics we can learn from violent games are far more abstract. Consider a person playing Batman: Arkham Asylum. As I have played this game I can say that most of the tactics used in the game are based on observation of the enemy. Before attacking Batman must know what equipment the enemy has. He must understand his position in the room and what parts of the scenery can he hide amongst or use to deliver the attack. Batman is a stealth based game so after taking out the enemy Batman has to quickly get away. Batman has to prioritize enemies with guns, as guns will very quickly end any battle. If Batman does get into a fist fight the combat system is based on rhythm. The key concept being that Batman has finesse on his side while the enemies have only brute strength.
We now move back to Crawford who believes that “play is metaphorical.” (Crawford 29) Crawford finds some of the most compelling stories in the most basic of games. While other video game theorist believe that the most compelling games are based in escapism Crawford finds more compelling games serve to allow the player to fight against what he is escaping rather than disappear entirely. In Arkham Batman fights his way through a home for the criminally insane that has been taken over by the inmates. Each goon that Batman takes out is a potential mania. Each trembling thug is the player’s fear being crushed. And even if we don’t subscribe to this interpretation entirely at the very least the stealth missions where Batman stalks individual goons can be seen as a lesson in prioritization.
But now you say that video gamers do not socialize they do not get out and make friends like kids used to. And to an extend you are correct. Gamers don’t make friends like they used to. They make friends in entirely different ways. Multiplayer functions have been available in video games since Pong. And now games allow for players to meet over the internet, which I will admit has its own scary implications but we are talking about play here not basic internet safety. Where before children were limited to playing with only those physically near them, who had time to play and who like the same kind of games, now gamers can connect online and find others who like to play their game. They can be people next door or people half way around the globe and it doesn’t matter. Now personalities still clash, but that’s bound to happen. It’s not a match making service. The second of Gee’s marks that a person is actively learning from a semiotic domain is here. “Since domains usually are shared by groups who carry them on as distinctive social practices, we gain the potential to join this social group, to become affiliated with such kinds of people (even though we may never see all of them, or any of them, face to face).” (Gee 24)
No man is an island and no gamer is either. There are game forums dedicated to every game that has been made sometimes multiple forums exist for the same game. There are groups of people who sit together and not only talk about gaming but do so while gaming. There are Local Access Network parties and all of this is dedicated to interpersonal communication.
But there is still more social interaction happening online. Games can be purely competitive such as battle games like Call of Duty. They may be purely cooperative like Portal 2. And some are more involved than that. For example the World of Warcraft. In WoW as it is sometimes called, players embark on quests, collect items and explore dungeons. However, within WoW there is a thriving social game as well. Player often form guilds to complete quests in large numbers. Some guilds even engage in Player versus Player combat. They may gang up on single players. Sometimes the only way to keep your player character alive in these games is to also be a part of a guild. Guilds have been known to engage each other in all out war. All of these are interactions between real people that the game facilitates. The personality of the player comes out in the game world. This too comes into play with the concept of mastery. If a player cannot master the social game as well as the actual game then they will not go nearly as far as others.
One game theorist Friedl gave a very appropriate description of the conflict that happen in some online games.
In multiplayer game environments, however, a player is no longer isolated with the game and his computer system. He is permanently observed by other players who continuously evaluate and study his abilities to master the game, the system and additional problem situations that take place on a player-to-player level. Players are thus in an enduring process of demonstrating power over each other and proving their abilities to survive in both the game and its accompanying social framework and mechanisms. (Friedl 30)
While single player games teach players many practical tactics such as spatial reasoning, timing, and recourse management, multiplayer games teach social skills. Not only do players have to figure out how to navigate the game world they have to understand that their actions have social consequences. They have to deal with some of the lowest of the low personality wise. They learn how to deal with these people or, to use the internet term, they rage-quit. There are griefers who may hound them night and day just to make them miserable. Spawn campers who wait at the location where recently killed players come back to kill them again. Guilds behave like companies trying to figure out the best way to handle certain assets. To be part of a guild requires that the player understand antisocial politics. All of this is done by players trying to master the game.
Challenges
The most rewarding feeling on earth, to my knowledge, is the feeling of completion. As I approach the last third of this paper I’m getting closer to that elation that accompanies finishing. But this moment of triumph, this one perfect moment of joy as I prepare my final arguments to take me to the last page, would be hollow if there was no struggle. If I hadn’t taken so long to come to terms with this paper, if hadn’t pushed myself beyond what I thought I was capable of, I wouldn’t be feeling this joy at reaching the top of page twelve right now. Unlike when I first was told by my brother to let the game play, I understand the feel of victory.
Rollings and Adams define gameplay as, “One or more causally linked series of challenges in a simulated environment.” (Rollings and Adams 201) But still what is a challenge. Narratively I know that a challenge is anything with which a character has difficulty or struggles to overcome. I also know as a narrative writer that the only way for a character to develop is through overcoming challenges. I also know why it took me so long to understand taking these challenges head on rather than taking shortcuts or asking someone who had already done it. Because in all writing only conflict is interesting, and because in video games the principle character for conflict to fall on is being controlled by the player. I didn’t understand that this struggle was integral to my enjoyment of the game until I had already experienced hollow victory.
Struggle is an important aspect of gameplay, but if the player never experiences victory, if the game seems set on destroying them without ever giving them a fighting chance then there is no point in playing. Gee calls this push and pull between difficulty and attainability the state of being “pleasantly frustrating.” (Gee 3) Each time a player completes a difficult task they become better at playing the game. This means that difficulty increases as the player grows with the game. No game developer understands this, or at least is more willing to explain this to fans of the games, than Valve. One feature of Valve's Portal is commentary mode which allows players a glimpse at what the developers were thinking while creating the game. A commentary node in the first Test Chamber, calls Portal an "extended player training exercise." (Valve Test Chamber One) Each level incorporates new mechanics to portals and so that the player is constantly being trained in a new skill up until the end. Occasionally some of these skills needed to be retrained such as the fling maneuver. The fling was first used when the player had access to only one half of the Portal Gun. The player was presented with a hole with one unlinked portal at the based and a high wall to place a portal on. Falling through the first portal sends the player rocketing out of the second at the speed of gravity. The tactic had to be retrained after the player gained the ability to shoot multiple portals. One commentary node remarked, “Player training doesn’t always stick especially after the introduction of a big new concept. For instance after they had acquired the fully powered Portal Device, players often forgot about the fling maneuver. Since it’s such an important skill, this puzzle was designed to reintroduce the idea of flinging.” (Valve Test Chamber 12) The gameplay then increase the difficulty by creating puzzles in which the fling would fall short. Players had to place a portal as they were falling in order to fling with enough momentum to clear a given goal. The final test of the fling move comes just before the final confrontation with GLaDOS in which the player must set up both new portals of a fling whilst flying through the air from a previous fling.
Because Portal is designed to train the player to “think with portals,” the game designers left in some instances putting in less effort and risk requires the player to think more. In test chamber 14 the player must climb a set of stairs, place a portal next to what amounts to a high shelf that cannot be reached by jumping and place a portal on a floor one story down and throw themselves into it. This will allow them to reach a box that they can use to hold down a button to enter into another area to solve yet another puzzle to cause a lift to go down in the main room so that they can go get to the next test chamber. It is a daunting puzzle. During play-testing several play-testers "cut the knot" so to speak. They placed a portal on the ground next to the lift, climbed the stairs and threw themselves down the one story drop to pop out of the portal and land on the lift without messing around with the box at all. The developers could have changed one thing in that level to keep players from doing that (and in the challenge maps they did) but because doing that required a keener understanding of the game mechanics than playing the puzzle normally, they “let the ninja solution stand.” (Valve Test Chamber 14 Commentary Node 1)
Having just spoken about experimentation I feel now is the time to bring back Crawford. One of Crawford’s play theories is that play has to be safe. Not foam bumpers on all of the hard surfaces safe but safe none less. Being tough on players is fine. Making them fight for every inch is fine. But if they have to worry that at any moment they will lose all their progress and have to go back to the beginning to fight for those inches which have long since become miles they will never take risks. It has a lot to do with why we play simulation games at all. If you told me that I was going to have to fight a bunch of lunatics and psychos and if I didn’t a super-villain would gain the power to wipe out the city, I’d probably die within twenty minutes of getting into the door. And forget it if you had a psychotic Artificial Intelligence system pushing me into an incinerator. I wouldn’t even get to the confrontation where she uses guided missiles. This goes all the way back to the notion of identity. We can play these games which have horrifying premises when you think about them, and find them enjoyable because we recognize them as games and establish a level of disconnect. And to a certain extent we want out characters to have a level of that security. The easiest answer is to have a save feature. Most games either let the players save at will, feature save points, or have an auto save feature which saves when ever certain actions or plot points are reached. If we know that the hours invested into a game won’t suddenly go to waste then the game becomes more enjoyable even if it has to sacrifice some of the tension.
So now we have dealt the gradual level increases in games, we had a lull in action during which we discussed saving the game. I guess we are pretty much done.
Oh wait no. It’s time for the behaviorists to come back for a final climactic boss fight/debate.
Grossman and DeGaetano contend that violent video games are addictive because they supply the teen with his need for mastery and control. They believe that these feelings are like drugs to the teenager and that, “the less sense of power the child or teen feels in his or her life, the more this element may become important as an addictive factor.” (Grossman and DeGaetano 68) Further they believe that because the difficulty level is set by the player that the player does not need to improve or change to achieve this mastery and control and will turn to violent video games in place of coping or actively dealing with the conflict.
First, I must reiterate my assertion that challenge is what we play the game for. (Rollings and Adams) Second, if challenge does not exist a gamer will implement one. (Huizinga) Third, dominance and mastery over a domain can only come from being tested and pushed beyond ones skill level. (Gee) Fourth, through pattern recognition we can see play as a metaphor and use it to cope with our reality. (Crawford) In other words, the mastery and control that the play experiences and which Grossman and DeGaetano seem to believe comes from facing easy challenges, is cultivated overtime by the player as he struggles to defeat stronger enemies. The position of power the gamer achieves over his lesser enemies is only possible because he has already overcome the challenges of stronger enemies. Now if I may be excused, I am done playing with Grossman and DeGaetano. They can no longer supply me with an interesting challenge. Continuing to debate with them will not make me any better at this.
I have reached a new level.
Bibliography Baer, Ralph H. "Foreword." Herman, Leonard. Phoenix: The Fall and Rise of Video Games. Springfield, NJ: Rolenta Press, 2001. xiii-xiv.
Bogost, Ian. Persuasive Games. Cambridge, Massachusets: The MIT Press, 2007.
Crawford, Chris. Chris Crawford on Game Design. Indianapolis: New Riders, 2003.
Friedl, Marcus. Online Game Interactivity Theory. Hingham, Massachusetts: Charles River Media, 2003.
Gee, James Paul. What Video Games have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2007.
Grossman, Dave and Gloria DeGaetano. Stop Teaching Our Kids to Kill: A Call to Action Against TV, Movie & Video Game Violence. New York: Crown, 1999.
HenryJenkins. "Game Design as Narrative Architecture." Wardrip, Noah and Pat Harrigan. First Person. Cambridge, Massachusetts: New Media, 2004. 118-129.
Huizinga, Johan. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd, 1949.
Kopp, Drew. "Computer Gameplay as Grunt and Reflection." Works and Days 43/44, Vol. 22, Nos. 1&2 (2004): 167-183.
McAllister, Ken S. Game Work: Language, Power and Computer Game Culture. Tuscaloosa, Alambama: University of Alabama Press, 2004.
Rollings, Andrew and Ernest Adams. Andrew Rolings and Ernest Adams on Game Design. New York: New Riders, 2003.
Valve. Learn with Portals. 16 Sept 2011. 4 Dec 2011 <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpB2VwSC8xc>.
—. "Portal." Valve, 10 Oct 2007.
The title of this piece is “Let the Game Play.” It is a reference to a conversation I had with my brother, Alex, nearly four months ago. I was leaving to return back to campus in a few days and my brother decided to play one of the games that I was bringing with me on my old game system. I noticed while he was playing that he was missing one of the gadgets from the game. So meaning to help him out I pulled out my smart phone and searched up a walkthrough. Alex grabbed me by the wrist as a typed with my thumb and asked, “Do you remember when questions didn’t have answers? When we just let the game play?” Over the past several months I have thought about what he said and the way I play games. I often play games to complete them. To get to the end of the story because as a narrative writer, story is what I care about most. So when I get to a difficult or challenging point I often give up or look up the answer. In doing this I robbed myself of one of the most important aspects of gaming, challenges. How did I as a narrative writer forget all about the importance of character development? Character development, the process by which a character (me) struggles and faces challenges and comes out as a better person for having faced them.
Can playing video games play a role in character development of an individual? I certainly think they can. I believe they can be, as James Paul Gee, the noted video game theorist who’s research heavily influenced my own, said after eight hours of playing The New Adventures of the Time Machine, a “life-enhancing experience.” (Gee 3) Furthermore I believe that at their root video games tackle issues inherent in life and if we look at life as an opportunity for play, we can show just as much capacity for development as the characters in the games, and if we cannot then we are static background characters not playing our game of life.
The first mistake that I made while writing this paper was to establish an identity for myself that was incompatible with the completion of this paper. I was not a theorist. Through my first reading of Gee, I realized that I had created this identity. Additionally there were other identities that I had assumed through my playing of games that were not me and still been successful at being those characters. I had been a soldier, a test subject and a millionaire playboy who dresses in a bat suit to fight crime, why couldn’t I be a theorist. Gee in the first page of his chapter on learning and identity says as much. In order to actively learn from any semiotic domain the student “must be willing to take on an identity as a certain type of scientific thinker, problem solver, and doer.” (Gee) Gee identifies three important levels of focus when dealing with identity, the virtual or assumed identity, real identity, and on a Meta level the projective identity. In video games this is the avatar, the player and the two viewed as a unit. In the course of this paper it was David the theorist, David the person playing a theorist, and the level from which I am writing now as I unravel the links between the two.
Identity switching isn’t difficult. When playing a video game it ties in with empathy but all empathy is really just another form of pattern recognition. Rollings and Adams recognize pattern recognition as one of the major types of challenges with in games. However, they also recognize it as one of human kind’s greatest assets, saying, “the impressive abilities demonstrated by the human brain mainly stem from one basic ability: pattern recognition.” (Rollings and Adams 216) Rollings and Adams show that pattern recognition can be attributed to all of human learning. Pattern recognition is more than simply the ability to understand shapes as they come as in Tetris. It is the ability to predict, and to see like objects as the same. Every human accomplishment can be attributed to pattern recognition. Taxonomy is the grouping of evolutionarily similar animals in to groups. Mathematics would be meaningless if we could not create new math problems and solve them as we have others. Neither one of these concepts would have ever come about if it weren’t for our ability to recognize patterns. We are able to understand how things relate without being given the relationship. And this is what allows us to be productive human beings. We are told to learn from our mistakes lest we make them again but we are rarely offered the opportunity to make the same exact mistake twice. We have to learn what situations are similar. In this way we get to find something to take away from everything we watch. It's why every teen whose parents disapprove of their boyfriend thinks that they are an example of Romeo and Juliet. It is the reasons societal norms exist and why they change in regularly predictable patterns. Pattern recognition is the entire reason for our lives as they are now. Gameplay facilitates pattern recognition. Gee talks about how the mark that a person is learning actively is that they begin “to experience (see, feel, and operate on) the world in new ways” (Gee) as they apply to a semiotic domain. They can see the patterns and similarities between the new domain and the real world. It is why I say that life's a game. Because I have learned to see the world as a series of levels each getting progressively more difficult. Each time I use what I have learned in the previous stage of life to continue on to the next.
As we progress from identity further into play I find it necessary to introduce the two games that I will use in this paper. I will primarily be using Valve’s Portal as a game of reference. In Portal the player takes control of Chel, a young mute woman who wakes up in The Aperture Science Computer Aided Enrichment Center and is informed that she will be going through a series of test. The only other character in the first game is GLaDOS the Artificial Intelligence that guides the player through certain tasks often coaxing them along with the promise of cake. She gives helpful advice such as warning you that in certain rooms “any contact with the floor will result in an unsatisfactory mark on your report, followed by death.” (Valve) Gameplay revolves around completing each of the Enrichment Center’s 19 test chambers. In order to get through each test chamber the player must learn to use the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device. Throughout the Test Chambers there are small nooks and crannies where one member of the faculty, Doug Ratman, has scrawled cryptic messages that suggest that GLaDOS may not be as friendly as she sounds. This is confirmed in Test Chamber 19 when GLaDOS attempts to push Chel into an incinerator. If the player has learned how to use the portal gun correctly then they can easily escape this trap and head into the bowels of the facility to confront GLaDOS. I chose this game for its unique gameplay and for the developer commentary which can be accessed after completion of the game.
As I will have to address violent video games by the end of this I have chose Batman: Arkham Asylum as my violent video game. The game features Batman as he tries to stop the Joker who has taken over Arkham Asylum. The game’s action is primarily concerned with stealth based combat, picking thugs off one by one, and brawling against scores of thugs. While Batman does not kill any of his enemies, the fights are brutal and if a real person fought the way Batman does the thugs would be dead.
Play
In order to make myself write this, because as much as I did not want fail, I did not want to write this, I resorted to an old trick. I made it a game. I set up rules.
1. I must read a minimum of 5 sources per day for three days
2. Each source must be read for at least one hour unless I discover the urge to write about that source before the hour is up.
3. Once I start writing I must write a minimum of 800 words about the source. These words may comprise a summary of the source and/or reflections on the topic of the text.
4. I will use a program known as Write or Die which will make annoying sounds if I stop writing for more than 5 seconds.
Now at this point you’re probably saying, “This doesn’t sound like a game. It sounds more like an arbitrary set of deadlines. Furthermore, 800 words on 15 sources add up to approximately 30 pages in 3 days, well over the required minimum of 15.” To which I respond, yes I did voluntarily undertake an “activity or occupation executed within certain fixed limits of time and place, according to rules freely accepted but absolutely binding, having its aim in itself and accompanied by a feeling of tension, joy and the consciousness that it is "different" from ‘ordinary life’” or what Johan Huizinga calls in his 1949 book Homo Ludens, play (28).
And this is something that gamers do all the time. Gamers will set up rules besides the normal limits of the game in order to beat it and feel accomplished. Every gamer who has ever played a challenge map or set arbitrary limits on what functions of a game they will play understands the notion of Huizinga’s definition of play. In Call of Duty this is the shunning of easily used weapons such as the “noob tube.” In one of my favorite games, Portal, which I will speak more about in a bit, these are challenge maps which either add deadly traps, or count the step, seconds, or portals that a player takes to complete a Test Chamber. But before we talk about challenge let’s talk more about play and what play teaches us.
Chris Crawford in his book on game design talks about play in the most extraordinary of terms imaginable to him play is everything. Or rather everything is play. Play as Crawford and most of the civilized world will point out is something that most people talk about when discussing children. However Crawford takes Huizinga’s broader definition of play which he can be used to describe most of human interaction. Crawford gives an example in dating. “One form of game‑ritual was the school dance, where each person was expected to wear a special costume and dance with members of the opposite sex. The dances themselves were specified by the music that was played and the fashion of the time.” (Crawford 28)
I have examples of these games in my life too. I enjoy the arguing politics with my best friend. We both know that neither of us will change the other's mind but we do it because we enjoy it. Crawford points out that each instance of play helps to strengthen connections in the mind. Crawford says that part of the nature play, and the reason that it is looked at as childish, is that play is used by every species of animal to work out the kinks in the circuitry so to speak. Every animal uses play to create pathways for information and commands to flow more fluidly. This also works for ideas and arguments. Every time I argue with my friend I find holes in my logic. I find the kinks in the way I think and seek to fix them. Every game does this. It functions to make us create patterns of recognition that build on the nature of play.
It’s no secret that gaming teaches things. The major argument is, “What does gaming teach?” According to Ian Bogost there are two camps, behaviorist and constructivist. Behaviorists believe that games teach their content. He gives the example of Sim City. “In the game, players construct cities by zoning land, choosing energy sources, and investing in infrastructure like roads, rail and public service. From the content perspective, the game teaches something about urban planning, which players could then use to plan real cities.” (Bogost 237) I can understand that. There are certainly practical skills that could be learned from this game. I now want to know how many hours of playing Batman: Arkham Asylum I need to be a fully trained Batman, but I understand that that’s not exactly what was meant. But I digress. Behaviorist theory has lead to the trend of educational games, which aside from Carmen Sandiego were hardly games. At the most they could be argued to be animated math drills. It also leads to the idea violent video games teach violent actions. Behaviorists like David Grossman and Gloria DeGaetano even mention the “shocking” statistic that 49 percent of young teens indicate a preference for violent games, while only 2 percent prefer educational ones.” (Grossman and DeGaetano 67) I will admit that I may be biased in this regard and have no other evidence except for personal experience with educational games, but I believe that statistic says more about the inability of behaviorists to make enjoyable educational games, than about why violent video games are bad. I would also like to congratulate Grossman and DeGaetano on showing the prevalence of violence rhetoric in video games without actually giving a statistic to show an increase in violence among teens that played violent video games. Yes, one could point to the estimated dozens of acts of violence that are committed by players of violent video games each year, but if they are statistically relevant than so are the millions of well adjusted teens and adults who have grown up playing violent video games and have not had any charges filed against them for violence. (McAllister 8) I will end this portion of my admittedly defensive argument for the continued existence of violent video games by referring to an argument made by Gee and asking that a study be done to see if there has been an increase in town planners since the release of Sim City. (Gee 12) After all if simulated violence leads to actual violence, surely simulated town planning leads to actual town planner.
Sitting opposite the behaviorist are the constructivist. The constructivists believe not in content but in tools. Their perspective on education is to teach the method. It has its basis in pattern recognition. The situation does not always have to be the same for the concept, the abstract reasoning of the problem to be implemented. This is important because it allows games to be examined at a deeper layer than just their face value. Gee says that what games do is teach the player how to play the game. So while behaviorist may look at a game like Portal and see how it can teach the concept of momentum and various others physical concepts, the constructivist will see the myriad ways of using spatial reasoning. Constructivists see the puzzles getting harder as a way of teaching the player to think and apply the concepts to other parts of life outside of the game.
At some points though constructivism can sound like behaviorism. After all aren't the tactics being learned part of the content? Doesn't Grand Theft Auto teach us how to act as criminals? Aren't the tactics, strategies and tools we learn from violent games mostly violence? No. The tactics we can learn from violent games are far more abstract. Consider a person playing Batman: Arkham Asylum. As I have played this game I can say that most of the tactics used in the game are based on observation of the enemy. Before attacking Batman must know what equipment the enemy has. He must understand his position in the room and what parts of the scenery can he hide amongst or use to deliver the attack. Batman is a stealth based game so after taking out the enemy Batman has to quickly get away. Batman has to prioritize enemies with guns, as guns will very quickly end any battle. If Batman does get into a fist fight the combat system is based on rhythm. The key concept being that Batman has finesse on his side while the enemies have only brute strength.
We now move back to Crawford who believes that “play is metaphorical.” (Crawford 29) Crawford finds some of the most compelling stories in the most basic of games. While other video game theorist believe that the most compelling games are based in escapism Crawford finds more compelling games serve to allow the player to fight against what he is escaping rather than disappear entirely. In Arkham Batman fights his way through a home for the criminally insane that has been taken over by the inmates. Each goon that Batman takes out is a potential mania. Each trembling thug is the player’s fear being crushed. And even if we don’t subscribe to this interpretation entirely at the very least the stealth missions where Batman stalks individual goons can be seen as a lesson in prioritization.
But now you say that video gamers do not socialize they do not get out and make friends like kids used to. And to an extend you are correct. Gamers don’t make friends like they used to. They make friends in entirely different ways. Multiplayer functions have been available in video games since Pong. And now games allow for players to meet over the internet, which I will admit has its own scary implications but we are talking about play here not basic internet safety. Where before children were limited to playing with only those physically near them, who had time to play and who like the same kind of games, now gamers can connect online and find others who like to play their game. They can be people next door or people half way around the globe and it doesn’t matter. Now personalities still clash, but that’s bound to happen. It’s not a match making service. The second of Gee’s marks that a person is actively learning from a semiotic domain is here. “Since domains usually are shared by groups who carry them on as distinctive social practices, we gain the potential to join this social group, to become affiliated with such kinds of people (even though we may never see all of them, or any of them, face to face).” (Gee 24)
No man is an island and no gamer is either. There are game forums dedicated to every game that has been made sometimes multiple forums exist for the same game. There are groups of people who sit together and not only talk about gaming but do so while gaming. There are Local Access Network parties and all of this is dedicated to interpersonal communication.
But there is still more social interaction happening online. Games can be purely competitive such as battle games like Call of Duty. They may be purely cooperative like Portal 2. And some are more involved than that. For example the World of Warcraft. In WoW as it is sometimes called, players embark on quests, collect items and explore dungeons. However, within WoW there is a thriving social game as well. Player often form guilds to complete quests in large numbers. Some guilds even engage in Player versus Player combat. They may gang up on single players. Sometimes the only way to keep your player character alive in these games is to also be a part of a guild. Guilds have been known to engage each other in all out war. All of these are interactions between real people that the game facilitates. The personality of the player comes out in the game world. This too comes into play with the concept of mastery. If a player cannot master the social game as well as the actual game then they will not go nearly as far as others.
One game theorist Friedl gave a very appropriate description of the conflict that happen in some online games.
In multiplayer game environments, however, a player is no longer isolated with the game and his computer system. He is permanently observed by other players who continuously evaluate and study his abilities to master the game, the system and additional problem situations that take place on a player-to-player level. Players are thus in an enduring process of demonstrating power over each other and proving their abilities to survive in both the game and its accompanying social framework and mechanisms. (Friedl 30)
While single player games teach players many practical tactics such as spatial reasoning, timing, and recourse management, multiplayer games teach social skills. Not only do players have to figure out how to navigate the game world they have to understand that their actions have social consequences. They have to deal with some of the lowest of the low personality wise. They learn how to deal with these people or, to use the internet term, they rage-quit. There are griefers who may hound them night and day just to make them miserable. Spawn campers who wait at the location where recently killed players come back to kill them again. Guilds behave like companies trying to figure out the best way to handle certain assets. To be part of a guild requires that the player understand antisocial politics. All of this is done by players trying to master the game.
Challenges
The most rewarding feeling on earth, to my knowledge, is the feeling of completion. As I approach the last third of this paper I’m getting closer to that elation that accompanies finishing. But this moment of triumph, this one perfect moment of joy as I prepare my final arguments to take me to the last page, would be hollow if there was no struggle. If I hadn’t taken so long to come to terms with this paper, if hadn’t pushed myself beyond what I thought I was capable of, I wouldn’t be feeling this joy at reaching the top of page twelve right now. Unlike when I first was told by my brother to let the game play, I understand the feel of victory.
Rollings and Adams define gameplay as, “One or more causally linked series of challenges in a simulated environment.” (Rollings and Adams 201) But still what is a challenge. Narratively I know that a challenge is anything with which a character has difficulty or struggles to overcome. I also know as a narrative writer that the only way for a character to develop is through overcoming challenges. I also know why it took me so long to understand taking these challenges head on rather than taking shortcuts or asking someone who had already done it. Because in all writing only conflict is interesting, and because in video games the principle character for conflict to fall on is being controlled by the player. I didn’t understand that this struggle was integral to my enjoyment of the game until I had already experienced hollow victory.
Struggle is an important aspect of gameplay, but if the player never experiences victory, if the game seems set on destroying them without ever giving them a fighting chance then there is no point in playing. Gee calls this push and pull between difficulty and attainability the state of being “pleasantly frustrating.” (Gee 3) Each time a player completes a difficult task they become better at playing the game. This means that difficulty increases as the player grows with the game. No game developer understands this, or at least is more willing to explain this to fans of the games, than Valve. One feature of Valve's Portal is commentary mode which allows players a glimpse at what the developers were thinking while creating the game. A commentary node in the first Test Chamber, calls Portal an "extended player training exercise." (Valve Test Chamber One) Each level incorporates new mechanics to portals and so that the player is constantly being trained in a new skill up until the end. Occasionally some of these skills needed to be retrained such as the fling maneuver. The fling was first used when the player had access to only one half of the Portal Gun. The player was presented with a hole with one unlinked portal at the based and a high wall to place a portal on. Falling through the first portal sends the player rocketing out of the second at the speed of gravity. The tactic had to be retrained after the player gained the ability to shoot multiple portals. One commentary node remarked, “Player training doesn’t always stick especially after the introduction of a big new concept. For instance after they had acquired the fully powered Portal Device, players often forgot about the fling maneuver. Since it’s such an important skill, this puzzle was designed to reintroduce the idea of flinging.” (Valve Test Chamber 12) The gameplay then increase the difficulty by creating puzzles in which the fling would fall short. Players had to place a portal as they were falling in order to fling with enough momentum to clear a given goal. The final test of the fling move comes just before the final confrontation with GLaDOS in which the player must set up both new portals of a fling whilst flying through the air from a previous fling.
Because Portal is designed to train the player to “think with portals,” the game designers left in some instances putting in less effort and risk requires the player to think more. In test chamber 14 the player must climb a set of stairs, place a portal next to what amounts to a high shelf that cannot be reached by jumping and place a portal on a floor one story down and throw themselves into it. This will allow them to reach a box that they can use to hold down a button to enter into another area to solve yet another puzzle to cause a lift to go down in the main room so that they can go get to the next test chamber. It is a daunting puzzle. During play-testing several play-testers "cut the knot" so to speak. They placed a portal on the ground next to the lift, climbed the stairs and threw themselves down the one story drop to pop out of the portal and land on the lift without messing around with the box at all. The developers could have changed one thing in that level to keep players from doing that (and in the challenge maps they did) but because doing that required a keener understanding of the game mechanics than playing the puzzle normally, they “let the ninja solution stand.” (Valve Test Chamber 14 Commentary Node 1)
Having just spoken about experimentation I feel now is the time to bring back Crawford. One of Crawford’s play theories is that play has to be safe. Not foam bumpers on all of the hard surfaces safe but safe none less. Being tough on players is fine. Making them fight for every inch is fine. But if they have to worry that at any moment they will lose all their progress and have to go back to the beginning to fight for those inches which have long since become miles they will never take risks. It has a lot to do with why we play simulation games at all. If you told me that I was going to have to fight a bunch of lunatics and psychos and if I didn’t a super-villain would gain the power to wipe out the city, I’d probably die within twenty minutes of getting into the door. And forget it if you had a psychotic Artificial Intelligence system pushing me into an incinerator. I wouldn’t even get to the confrontation where she uses guided missiles. This goes all the way back to the notion of identity. We can play these games which have horrifying premises when you think about them, and find them enjoyable because we recognize them as games and establish a level of disconnect. And to a certain extent we want out characters to have a level of that security. The easiest answer is to have a save feature. Most games either let the players save at will, feature save points, or have an auto save feature which saves when ever certain actions or plot points are reached. If we know that the hours invested into a game won’t suddenly go to waste then the game becomes more enjoyable even if it has to sacrifice some of the tension.
So now we have dealt the gradual level increases in games, we had a lull in action during which we discussed saving the game. I guess we are pretty much done.
Oh wait no. It’s time for the behaviorists to come back for a final climactic boss fight/debate.
Grossman and DeGaetano contend that violent video games are addictive because they supply the teen with his need for mastery and control. They believe that these feelings are like drugs to the teenager and that, “the less sense of power the child or teen feels in his or her life, the more this element may become important as an addictive factor.” (Grossman and DeGaetano 68) Further they believe that because the difficulty level is set by the player that the player does not need to improve or change to achieve this mastery and control and will turn to violent video games in place of coping or actively dealing with the conflict.
First, I must reiterate my assertion that challenge is what we play the game for. (Rollings and Adams) Second, if challenge does not exist a gamer will implement one. (Huizinga) Third, dominance and mastery over a domain can only come from being tested and pushed beyond ones skill level. (Gee) Fourth, through pattern recognition we can see play as a metaphor and use it to cope with our reality. (Crawford) In other words, the mastery and control that the play experiences and which Grossman and DeGaetano seem to believe comes from facing easy challenges, is cultivated overtime by the player as he struggles to defeat stronger enemies. The position of power the gamer achieves over his lesser enemies is only possible because he has already overcome the challenges of stronger enemies. Now if I may be excused, I am done playing with Grossman and DeGaetano. They can no longer supply me with an interesting challenge. Continuing to debate with them will not make me any better at this.
I have reached a new level.
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