Exercise 8 games of progression and emergence

Jesper Juul distinguishes between games of emergence, where a game is specified as a small number of rules that combine and yield a large number of game variations, and games of progression, where a game presents the player with a series of puzzles or challenges which must be accomplished in a certain order. Discuss whether games of progression, which often attempt to combine a narrative structure with gameplay, are unique to computer-based games

According to Jesper Juul, games of progression are those which “directly set up each consecutive challenge in a game”, whereas games of emergence are those which “set up challenges indirectly because the rules of the game interact”. Progression could be considered as a characteristic of a narrative, as it essentially encompasses sequence and chronology. Emergence, on the other hand, would be a derivative of play: things emerge in games as the players interact with the rules of the game to achieve a specific goal.

Both progression and emergence are present in computer games. Most role playing games are progression orientated while most strategy games are emergence oriented, although frequently they would intertwine with each other to game a game some partial characters of each genre. Nevertheless, when I look at non-computer based games, surprisingly, I could not conveniently find any examples of progression games. In fact almost all of the non-computer games are emergent, from chess, card games, board games and even to recreational sports. Adventure books may be progressive; however, the lack of goal and struggle could only qualify them as ‘interactive narratives’, but not games.

It would be arbitrary to immediately conclude that games of progression, which attempt to combine a narrative structure with game play, are unique to the computer medium; however, real-life example and experience would make it undeniable that the component of progression only exists in computer games so far, and the other games are generally emergent.

It is, in fact, difficult to give an abstract rational to this observation. However, we could imagine superimposing a game of progression on computer medium to the normal games, let’s say board games, and examine whether it works or why it does not work. Take the example of a progressive role playing game such as Final Fantasy. The setting up of the game itself would be very difficult: too many roles or characters, complicated battles, lack of immersion into the game space and etc. And playing the game would be tiresome and boring too, maybe except the component of cosplay. In fact, it may be easy to translate the narrative/progression structure, but difficult to translate the narrative details, which are essential to computer based progression games: the multimedia environment, the graphic and sound effects, the animations and so on. Furthermore, if such a game is played among several person, there could be only a few person playing the game, while the majority of others have to take on the roles of computer generated NPCs, i.e. no room of play for them.

To abstract the idea, games of progression requires a big storage of information, and complicated processes which could only be handled on a computer platform. Non-computer games could only survive and propagate given that they interesting and easy to play, i.e. with simple rules and easy setting-up. The complicity of rules and processes of progression would, therefore, most like to restrict such games on a computer media, or to be scrapped off the gaming component to become a narrative instead. Furthermore, games of progression would require a ‘hidden hand’ to push the progression forward. Such a consistent latent driving force is difficult to be achieved in usual games.

Exercise 7: Games and Narrative

How is time represented in games? Is there a separation of story and discourse time? How the game’s used of time allow for interactivity?

As a game itself is a ‘fantasy’ generally separated from the real world, the concept of game in time is also an enclosed entity with respect to the real time. To use Neitzel’s words, there is “a cyclical time structure within games”. People may argue that the concept of “present” is actually a turning point at which future is lapses into past. The “present” represented in games, interestingly, is expanded. One could stay in the “present” of the game, especially the turn-by-turn games like “civilisation” forever, but the player could also play in the “present” as so to affect the future of the game, with the involvement of interactivity. Thus, there is a separation between “game” time and “play” time, which is somewhat parallel to the separation of story time and discourse time, as I will discuss below.

Essentially, the notion of story and discourse time comes from the study of narrative structure. Story time refers to the time of the events told, while the discourse time refers to the sequence of the story being told. The separation of story and discourse time is subtle in conventional narratives such as stories and movies, however, they are made more explicit in computer games, on the basis that most computer games involves, to different extent, the creation of narratives by the player. That leads to the equivalence of separation of story and discourse time in games. The story time would refer to the part where the player has not control over during the play of the game, like introductory and interlude animations in some RPG games, or even certain plot events that the player is forced to play through to proceed to the next stage of the game. The discourse time, on the other hand, are the occasions during which the players are able to make choices and decisions so as to change either the sequence of the narrative in the game, or even the content of the story. In non-real time games, the discourse time is either manifested as pauses in between turns, or the states in which the RPG characters are free to move around. The case for real time games is a bit difficult to argue, however, we could divide the continuum of time in such games into infinitesimally small quantum of time, and the first choice that the player need to make is whether they want to make the choice to change the flow of the game, followed by the actual choices and decision.

Indeed, the expansion of present and the explicit separation of story and discourse, or game and play time gives the computer games their capabilities and potentials to be interactive. Without the separation of game time and play time, there would be no opportunity for the player to interact with the game or the narrative embodied within. Without the expansion of present, the past, present and future is in a continuum and the time flow is too fast for any decisions or choices to be made. The expansion of present and the separation of story and discourse create an intermediate point or period in which the game time and the real time converge and the player is able to input into the system. The system would then take the input and respond to the player, thus achieving interactivity, although on different levels as suggested by Ryan, depending on the methods and approaches of the game algorithm.

Week 8 Games and Play

1. In his article "I Have No Words and I Must Design: Towards a Critical Vocabulary for Games", Greg Costikyan suggests that "the search for non-game interactive entertainment is wrong-headed, inspired by a failure to apprehend games and a foolish, reflexive response to what they represent, in our culture, at this point in time. Any form of 'interactive entertainment' that isn't a game must be non-interactive; or not entertainment; or pointless." Do you agree? Support your position with reference to specific works.

Greg Costikyan’s argument, which summarized in his concluding statement “interactive entertainment means games”, is much of an absolute and over-generalised idea. Costikyan defines a game as “an interactive structure of endogenous meaning that requires players to struggle towards a goal”. After that through limited example which only supports his point, he proceeds to argue that such an “interactive entertainment” could not exist or has existed but phased out as well. To substantiate his point, he also resorts to semantic analysis of “entertainment” and “entertaining”, which appears the least convincing to me. I disagree with his argument as well as argumentation. Nonetheless, it is the most simple to give an evidence of “interactive entertainment” which is not a game, rather than resorting to complicated logic arguments.

The example I am giving here is star-searching TV programmes which involves spectator’s participation such American Idol and “Super Girl” in China. Costkyan’s may argue that they are actually games as the contestants strive to be the winner of the competition. However, the millions of spectators and fans are not. Of course they make phone calls or send in SMSes to support their favourite candidates at a purpose, however, there is no specific goal that they can achieve. Without the goal, such programmes would not qualify as games, but categorized as entertainments. The spectators could interact with the TV programme, through the voting system and etc. Interestingly, such programmes could be both endogenous and exogenous. The competition being shown on the TV with a final prize would mean that for the contestants, the competition is real, and the final prize has a meaning to them, either in the form of cash or a CD contract, which would have a meaning in the real world as well. However, such competitions also have an endogenous layer, which is unique to the fans and spectators. For example, the fans for the “Super Girls” give unique collective names such as ‘Yvmi’ (corns) and ‘Bigan’ to themselves, which are either meaningless or takes on other meanings in the real world. At the same time, the kind of interactions present in such programmes are definitely not merely a form of clicking buttons, and they are wildly regarded as ‘entertainment’ forms and are popular for a few seasons. Thus, it is too arbitrary for Costkyan to conclude that interactive entertainment does not exist. Nonetheless, given the time he publishes his book, he would possibly not be able to foresee such a development in entertainment industry.

N.B. The response to the other two questions are juts for fun.

2. Consider the work you created for project 1. Is this work actually a game? Why/why not?

Our group project is not an interactive game. Actually it was not meant to be a game at the beginning, and our main purpose was to create an interactive narrative, but not towards to level of a game. In first place, there was not a goal that can be felt by the audience. The goal is set by us, the authors. We were looking into a new method of presenting a narrative in which the audience has more control, compared to the conventional books and documentaries. There wasn’t the sense of ‘space’ of game either as the audience could only change the sequence of the narrative: they are not allowed to change the content/existents. The audience had little opportunity for ‘play’ as well. Ideally we expect the audience to think, before voting at each decision making point, however in actually presentation this was much reduced to the desire to see every episodes in the narrative: no struggle is involved.

3. Costikyan's definition of games as "an interactive structure of endogenous meaning that requires players to struggle towards a goal" includes a stress on the self-contained nature of the meaning within a game. From this definition, any form of gambling, such as mahjong or poker played for money, is not a game. Discuss.

Costikyan’s definition of ‘endogenous meaning’ is similar to Caillois’s characterization of game is ‘separate’, although the latter is more lenient: Caillois indeed include gambling as a type of game and play. Indeed, the definition of ‘endogenous’ is very troublesome. On the first glance it cuts off all links between the game space and the social space, however, such a situation is ideal. Such a definition ruled out not only gambling which involves money, but also professional sports and etc. Similar to the Chinese character ‘wan’, game has many interpretations, from Costikyan’s endogenous games, to Olympic Games, to game theory and etc. Stock market is definitely not a game to Costikyan, but it would be undeniably one to the economists. NBA’s slogan ‘I love this game’ also deviates much from the commercial and professional nature of the league. To some extent, games could be precursors to professions in real society, in the case of professional sports. The vice versa may happen as well, like transforming property markets into monopoly. It could be noted that on general, games have goals. As the winner achieves that goal through some struggle, he obtains a sense of satisfaction. This satisfaction could be purely psychological, physical, but economical — money. In fact, endogenous meaning may not be the deciding factor in judging games, or it could be abstracted to better precisions.