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So I've been thinking a lot about the recent posts I've bumped out, and feel like I should start applying some of that mechanical theory into practice. I have a couple of purposes in doing so, one, in showing the applicability of the theory towards academic work, two to show that a cohesive study of video gaming is worthwhile as both a marketing and production device. If we can develop a better understanding of the mechanics of games, and the connections between media objects, we can simultaneously develop a marketing strategy that doesn't lump together games on mere genre (Call of Duty and Halo must automatically appeal to the same people, since they are first-person shooters!), or textual material (DC Comics Universe must appeal to comic book readers, and comic book readers alone!). Needless to say, I believe there are overarching cultural structures informing the mechanics behind games, and it is in the best interests of both marketing firms and game developers to better understand the objects they work with.

In light of that, I'm going to start work on a brief cultural criticism of World of Warcraft, based loosely on the works of Plato and Marx. I am also working on a general evaluation of casual gaming based on the writing of Arthur Schopenhauer.

In Defense of Media Specificity

Taking a look at what I wrote the other day, I’m worried that it might sound like I don’t believe that media specificity plays a role in how we interact with video games. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. The role of medium in determining meaning within any media object cannot be underestimated. At the same time, however, assuming similarities between objects due to medium is faulty logic. As always, these issues become clearer when we look at examples.

Recently, Telltale Games, an adventure game studio that also produces the popular Sam and Max adventure series, released Back to the Future: The Game. In this game, the player solves puzzles to advance a fairly generic rehash of the original movie, though shifted to the Prohibition Era. Inherently, we relate BTTF: TG to the original film, Back to the Future, as well as to its heritage in adventure games, via Sam and Max, the Monkey Island series, King’s Quest, etc. To fully understand the cultural content of the game, we must make these relations, while recognizing that the game is a fully independent artistic object, existing in a radically different plane than the film. To treat the two objects, film and game, as identical, is to commit the fallacy of medium equivocation.

Nevertheless, when we broaden our scope to the entire genre of the video game, we run into the trouble I mentioned earlier. Ironically, we treat video games as if they are necessarily identical because they both are viewed on a screen and manipulated via a controller. If, however, we imagine the mechanics and goals of a game like Halo in comparison to a game like BTTF: TG, we find that the phenomenological experience of each game is radically different, to the point that we cannot even consider them of the same medium, much less genre. To compare them as similar objects would be to compare a cookbook to a book of poetry; some of the aspects are similar, and they are presented in a similar fashion, but the similarities end there.

The Medium Fallacy: Towards a New Phenomenology of Media Objects

How do you like that title? If I ended up writing my dissertation, I'd have given it that title. Anyhow, I've been reading Claude Levi-Strauss' The Savage Mind, and some of his discussion of the so-called "concrete science" has gotten me thinking about our approach to studying video games (in particular), and media objects in general. Levi-Strauss draws a clear distinction between magical thought and scientific thought, not as the former serving as a primitive version of the latter, but as each standing as its own, independent form of connection building. Levi-Strauss achieves this conclusion by noting the different methodology and goals of each type of thought, rather than just pointing out that they occasionally grasp for the same goal. Too often, we note arbitrary relationships between objects, and declare them "equal" without noting their multivalent phenomenological differences. Similarly, the conclusion that gaming can be discussed as a whole due to the shared medium of the field, when there are so many divergent experiences within each of these media objects, leads us to false conclusions and false value judgments.

To truly understand how a video game functions (or any game, for that matter), we need to sever the game from its medium. Nobody would claim an eidetic difference between a Wii game and an X-Box game, yet we do just that when we compare video games to board games (for example). This, of course, is not to suggest that there are not eidetic differences between video games and board games, but to note that there are similar eidetic differences between Wii games and X-Box games that in no way are related to the medium the game is presented on, the television set. For example, Nintendo's Super Mario Galaxy, while presented on a video screen, requires the user to command his avatar via a joystick, commit actions via buttons, commit other actions via hand motion (a shake of the controller makes Mario attack), and aim via the off-hand controller (the user points the Wiimote in the left hand at the screen to collect certain objects and to shoot at enemies). On the other hand, Rockstar's Red Dead Redemption requires the user to only commit the first two of these actions, but also requires a deeper relationship with both the story and the digital material economy of the game. These two experiences, both in competition for "Best Game of 2010" seem about as different as playing either one and playing Monopoly on a board.

Of course, game theorists began the taxonomy of video games years ago, and have already attempted to construct some over-arching categories, most noticeably during the so-called ludology/narratology split of earlier years. Similarly, some game scholars have distinguished the ludic (competitive gaming) from the paedic (playful gaming) to distinguish winnable games from sandbox gaming. For the sake of a larger theory of video gaming, this taxonomy is absolutely necessary, yet it still seems to miss some of the more obvious aspects of video gaming. All of these distinctions are built around supposed goals of use, or perhaps interpretive conclusions. While we must notice the goal-distinctions between a game such as Red Dead Redemption (complete all of the challenges of the game, explore the world, conclude the story, etc.) and a game such as The Sims (follow your Sim through life until you get bored of it), we fail to note the mechanical, and thus sensual, distinctions and similarities between the games. For example, implicit to the distinction between these two games is the fact that the user has a mechanical, reflexive control of his avatar in a game such as Red Dead Redemption, but serves a more "advisory" role when controlling the avatar in The Sims. Nevertheless, in both cases we guide a non-self avatar through a series of challenges, despite the distinction in controls. Thus, both games could be validly compared to childish play with dolls (through avatar play), though Red Dead Redemption follows more of a controlled style of play, while The Sims is more similar to third party story-telling.

Ultimately, these half-formed thoughts are urging for a re-approach to the taxonomy of video games with more a focus on mechanical interaction with the game. In the sensory experience of the game, the difference between the sudden decision-making of a game like Halo and the careful strategy of a game like Civilization are as distinct as the relationship between a novel and a cookbook. Just because the game is presented on a screen guarantees no similarities beyond presentation. Similarly, just because a game shares goals does not guarantee even a marginally similar sensual experience. If we are to understand how games function (from the academic standpoint) and what games are valuable (from the marketing perspective), we need a total engagement with the games eidetic nature, rather than reductive assumptions about presentation and goal.

Temporality in the Written and Played Narrative

Gerard Genette writes in his Narrative Discourse that “the temporality of written narrative is to some extent conditional or instrumental; produced in time, like everything else, written narrative exists in space and as space, and the time needed for ‘consuming’ it is the time needed for crossing or traversing it, like a road or a field. The narrative text, like every other text, has no other temporality than what it borrows, metonymically, from its own reading” (Cornell 34). In this brief quote, Genette displays the complex relationship between the internal temporality of the text and the external, phenomenological temporality of reading/hearing/viewing. In the elder forms of narrative (the spoken and the written), the connection between external and internal temporality were, just as Genette explains, fully metonymic: the narrator is forced to explain to the reader what sort of time has elapsed in the internal textual world, as opposed to the time-elapsing experience of the reader: “Two weeks passed before they met again.” Of course, this narrated duration does not always err on the side of the novel; I have spent weeks of experiential time attempting to get through one interminable dinner-party with the Arrowpoints.

In contrast to this phenomenological experience of the reading of a novel (time is passing as I read this description of time passing), the video game ties together experiential and narrative times. Rather than existing in a dual (and dueling) temporality, the video game assumes a single time, the experiential time, and fills it with two distinct phenomenological experiences: the experience of playing the game, and the experience of spending time in the narrative. Similar to film (and perhaps even more to drama), we experience the narrative as it plays out in the game. Yet, unlike film, which uses experiential temporality to supplement and strengthen narrative temporality, the video game actually denies the distinction between these forms of time. This effect is most obvious when dealing with “non-narrative” games, such as Tetris. The user takes the position of both narrator and main character, experiencing the “narrative” of the game from beginning to end in real-time, explicitly bound by the rules of experiential time.

Some would argue, of course, that I am slicing salami, choosing non-narrative games to make an argument about narratology. However, the phenomenon of shared time occurs just as naturally in the game-play experience of the most highly-narrative RPGs. (For the sake of clarity, I should note that I disregard cut-scenes and FMV from my discussion of the video game experience; I believe that such devices are merely patches of film transposed into the game experience. The game itself only occurs when the player is ostensibly in control.) Imagine playing Bioware’s Dragon Age, a game that I am enjoying greatly right now. One of the earlier levels, the Tower of Ishal, follows your party as you fight through a tower to light a signal fire, culminating with a battle with an ogre (yes, I feel very dorky writing that). If we play through that entire level, we experience the temporality of the narrative at the same pace that we are experiencing the temporality of the narrating; i.e. the narrating takes just as long as the narrative, they share the same temporal space.

One might contend, however, that this is similar to filmic time, where some scenes are designed to replicate real-time, while others mere metonym of time. This, of course, would match up with the previous distinction between play-time and cut-scenes. However, that comparison only holds water if we assert that each run through the Tower of Ishal represents an identical narrative, in the same way that each viewing of Casablanca tells the same story. However, when we examine the phenomenological experience of the playing of a game, we recognize that each time we hit the reset button and run through the same narrative, from the base of the tower to the ogre at the top, slightly different events occur. In fact, the eidetic nature of the gaming experience is wholly unique on each play through. The first time I played the battle with the ogre, it took me ten tries, and when I finally succeeded, I was down to my last character, and had burned through all of my healing potions. The next time I ran the level, I easily burned the boss down, without batting an eye. Are these the same narrative? The first time, my main character died during the battle, with one of the minor NPCs finishing off the beast. The second time, Alistair, a secondary, but important, character dealt the killing blow over the shoulder of my hero. Amazingly, each of these narratives is wholly unique, and impossible to re-experience (as opposed to film).