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.

Produsers, Difficulty Sliders, and 2KShare

As a lifelong fan, I've spent far too much money on lousy baseball video games in the past. For some reason, I have yet to find a game for this sport that I love so much that manages to embody baseball in the way I imagine it. However, I do have some hopes with the recent rise of Sony's MLB: The Show series (though I don't have a PS3, so I can't play it). This year, the main baseball video game producer, Take 2, decided to basically copy Sony's take, a move that, honestly, greatly improved their game. Nevertheless, on initial play, I still found the game to be lacking.

Generally when I play a baseball video game, I want the game to mimic the sport that I watch on television regularly. While Madden, Fifa, and NBA 2K have all managed to at least cause a suspension of disbelief for me, all of the baseball games I've played have failed in this aspect. Certain key aspects of the game haven't been incorporated (presumably in favor of an abstracted game play that the designers decided was more fun), while other aspects that should be abstracted are left realistic, thus making the game not enjoyable. Examples are in order.

For the first situation, I've found that baseball games have a great deal of trouble with foul balls. For a pitcher to throw a complete game in real life baseball, he usually has to throw around 120 pitches. By reducing the number of foul balls in the game, the programmers trouble the pitcher stamina mechanic, causing either a pitcher who gets exhausted in the sixth inning, after only throwing 60 pitches, or a pitcher who can plug through a complete game every time, because he only throws 90 pitches a game. Both situations disrupt the "realism" of the game, and lead to potentially problematic playability issues (i.e. most baseball fans know to pull a pitcher when they get to around 100 pitches. If the pitcher gets exhausted after 60, the player feels cheated. If the pitcher can continue to 150, you might as well do without the stamina mechanic).

On the other side of this issue, baseball games have a nasty habit of leaving certain extremely difficult aspects of baseball nonabstracted in the game. The particular mechanic that bothers me is the ability for batters to identify pitches that are in and out of the strike zone. Most players, we can assume, do not have the reaction time to be able to read a 95 mph fastball as it leaves the pitcher's hand and approaches the plate. Recognizing this, the game designers have tried a variety of abstracting mechanics. Many have tried to slow down the pitches to the point that the player can see the pitch. The problem with this is that it falls in the uncanny valley of mimesis: The game is trying to appear real by not abstracting the batter's eye mechanic, but doesn't appear real in that the pitches move far too slowly. A more acceptable approach would be to wholly abstract the mechanic, as The Show did in previous years. In The Show, the batter was given the opportunity to guess which part of the plate the pitcher was going to throw to (e.g. low and inside, up and outside, etc.). If you guess correct, you can see where the pitch is going before it gets there, and whether it's in or out of the strike zone. By including this highly abstract mechanic, the player can easily run up pitch counts, draw walks, etc. Still, some players have strongly resisted this mechanic, in that they feel it makes the game unrealistic, and potentially too easy.

What we find in both of these situations is a tension between reproducing the sporting event, i.e. a baseball game, as it would be seen on television and creating a fun and properly challenging game experience. Since each player approaches these games differently, sports games have found a reasonable solution in the development of "difficulty sliders." These sliders allow you to tweak the mechanics of the game to fit your desires: For example, as I mentioned above, I feel that baseball games don't allow enough foul balls. Ideally, any baseball game would include a slider that could determine the likelihood of batter contact, and another determining the likelihood of solid contact, and by setting batter contact high but solid contact low, I could produce a game that allows lots of foul balls, but not too many solid hits.

The problem with the slider solution is that these sort of mechanic manipulations are exceedingly complicated, and require excessive testing. Most players don't want to have to play dozens of games, making minor tweaks of the sliders, before they can finally produce a game that matches their vision of what the game should be. Thus, with the development of sliders, a secondary community has formed on message boards online (particularly operationsports.com), where those players who do enjoy developing sliders can post their most realistic sliders, as well as discussion with other players who help them test their designs. By posting on the internet, the slider developer can rely on other players to help test, and thus speed up the time needed to produce a valid set of sliders.

Surprisingly, 2k has widely endorsed this fan activity, in fact creating a service called 2kShare for users to easily exchange sliders. This function is embedded in the game itself, allowing a user with internet access to immediately download and implement other sliders, rosters, etc., without having to sit around manually adjusting what might be dozens of fields. Ironically, this service is basically 2k accepting that they are incapable of successfully accounting for this aspect of the game, and therefore relying on the fan base to do it for them. Instead, 2k takes the role of a world-maker, a producer of a system that can be adjusted to fill the expectations of a wide range of different fans. As the game updates each year, it is less important for 2k to produce a balanced game then to produce a set of sliders that account for every aspect of the game that a fan might want to adjust. We can't accuse the designers of laziness in relying on produsers to create difficulty settings for them; in fact, they aptly recognized that the game designer paradigm itself doesn't allow for successful difficulty balance! By recognizing that their fans are not a unitary group with single desires, 2k is moving in a direction that could eventually produce the most accessible and successful sports games ever made.

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).