Beyond the game ...

When the game is an alternate reality game such as The Beast, where the game does not have any explicitly declared actions and outcomes, and in some cases does not even acknowledge its own existence, is it possible for there to be meaningful play?

Yes there is, I guess it all depends on the players, like in games such as Calvinball, the players themselves set the goals and rules of the game, and change them as they see want to experience the game. Having said that, I still think a large part of the experience of playing games is attributed to the way in which immersion is enabled through the oscillation of remediation between the making the interface disappear, and making the interface visible (immediacy vs hypermediacy). I guess the Interface in games is in fact, the magic circle, and it does not necessarily refer to the technology that constitutes the game, but rather the very experiential elements that constitute the game in which the players create meaningful play. Even if the interface is blurred until it disappears, I think the player is still conscious about the difference between the experiences that constitutes the game and normal day to day real life experiences, simply because, they can only find the game meaningful by playing them, not forgetting about them.

Does this type of "game" require us to rethink our definition of games?

I guess at this current moment, there is a tendency to associate the term ‘game’ with either digital games or conventional physical games such as board game and sports. These are usually clear cut in terms of the visibility of the interface, rules and goals etc. But perhaps one may suggest that the whole system of human life, which is made up of written and unwritten rules, and how people play out the power relations in their own lives, fits pretty much the definition of a game as well. So I guess we need to refine the definition of games not from the view of whether conflict involved in the game is artificial or not (interface/interface less), but whether the outcome has any real meaningful contribution to the larger game called ‘ life’ that we all play.

Game Systems

Creating mods (modifications) to existing games is a common practice, not just for computer games, but for any form of games. Does this imply that any game can be considered a game system? Why/why not?

Actually I am very tempted to agree that any game can be considered a game system, because I simply cannot find any game that offers no opportunity whatsoever for emergent play outside those of intended play (even if there are, those that I can think of do not fit my description of a game, such as interactive story books/movies). For non computer games, understanding completely the rules of the game is already one thing, but to actually enforce these game rules is another challenge altogether. At best games can be played according to agreed terms between all or some of the players, and meaning is created out of these agreed terms.

For digital games, although it can be argued that the computer act as the moderator, I find that there is still room for creativity. Even for a simple puzzle game such as Tetris, I could imagine someone could try to play it to use those falling blocks to form say, letters of their name initials for instance, or other silly stuff. There are people who play Sim City to build a beautiful city then call up disasters in a sense that, destroying the city now becomes the meaningful play...or what about people who play racing games by driving backwards all the way to the finish line? Almost all games, simple or complex, offer some sort of ways to play outside the intended play.

Consider a game which you feel could be successfully modified. How could this game be generalized into a game system? How much of the unique character/flavour of the game can be retained? How generic can you make the game system? How easy will it be to create new, unique games from the game system?

Fatal Frame would make a good modification into a game system. The game system of roaming around in 3d space with a camera to shoot objects can be retained, but player can capture other objects instead of evil spirits, and have different kind of objects in different zones of the level. It wouldn’t be so difficult to create new games out of this system I guess, just a matter of level design and art design for the objects.

Describe one new game designed on top of the game system you proposed in question 2.

I would call the game, “Wild Frame”, players are equipped with a camera with different lenses and capabilities, and then they are left out in a safari with wild animals roaming around. The objective is to capture as much as possible pictures without getting attacked by the animals…

Or we can make it into a paparazzi game, "Fatal Fame", where the player identify celebrities from the crowd and try to take pictures of them…And when the celebrities are identified, they would run away, and we have to catch them…As in real world, such Papparazi chasing game is no joke, it can be fatal…(in memory of Princess Diana, 1997)

Marble Madness!!!

Try to find an example of a digital game which truly takes advantage of the traits of the medium, and could not be successfully implemented in a non-digital form. In particular, think about the traits of digital/computer games as listed by Crawford. Describe the game, and identify the core gameplay mechanic.

My game of choice is Marble Madness, by Atari games, released in 1984.

It’s a simple arcade game where we take control of a marble and complete a course of three dimensional labyrinths within a strict time limit. The three-quarter overhead view actually gives a sense of depth, and with all the shadow effects, it really gives a nice illusion of 3d space. The screen actually scrolls downwards, and reveals the level as the marble progresses down. There are various small enemies scattered through the levels, but the player's greatest challenge is actually the controlling of the marble throughout the levels itself, which feature many peculiar passages and obstacles. This controlling of the marble is essentially, the core mechanic of the game.

Responsiveness

The game can be played in one player or two player modes. The home console versions let you choose the difficulty levels. In terms of the game interface itself, the game does not have any action button, simply because the only action available is moving around the levels. Although the version I played was the Sega Genesis port, the original arcade version actually features a trackball as the controller, but I find the directional pads sort of work quite well also. But it is interesting how a trackball is featured in the arcades, as it reflects the affordance of the ball and thus enhances the sense of control of the marble in the game.

Automation of rules

The purpose of the game is to control the marble to reach the goal in the shortest period of time. A play time was set, and a timer starts to count down as soon as player takes control of the marble. Should the marble drops off the edges of the level, or breaks due to falling down to a lower level, or got eaten by the enemy, then the time it takes for the marble to respawn and to resume control is the penalty imposed to the player. Remaining time gets carried over, while game ends if player fails to reach the goal within the specified time.

Immediate interactivity

With every push of the button, there is this inertia which the marble carries, and it will pick up some speed if the player continues to direct it towards a certain direction, so interactivity comes out of trying to balance the flow of the marble to avoid dropping off the edges or the enemies.

Intelligent opponent

Although there are no real artificial intelligent opponents, the level design itself provokes enough challenge to the player. There are some a.i controlled opponents like this enemy marble that moves around the level and try to bump into the player.

Control over visibility of information

As mentioned, due to view the perspective of the game, the screen scrolls down, and thus only certain parts of the level is visible at one time. This unpredictability of what lies ahead is what makes the game interesting.

What is it about the core mechanic that makes the game truly a digital game?

I guess what makes this game truly digital is fact that the level design is quite difficult to implement physically. Although I would imagine somebody could come up with a Lego version of it, it's still kinda hard to implement the core mechanic of controlling the marble with all the inertias/ gravity, not to mention the mechanism to control it.

The thing about digital game is that computers can convert physical user input (through the game interface) into certain mathematical computations to simulate the effects of a rolling marble as it interacts with the environment, and represent these effects using pixelated graphics. The levels themselves are not static, they are dynamic, the computer using the same calculations, simulate the obstacles for the player to overcome, and automatically keep track of the rules, such as the time limit and penalties.

McDonalds : Fan(4) Tastic!

Using this game as an example, discuss whether it is possible for a game to be successful on two levels: both in terms of its goals as a game (creating meaningful play and engagement/flow), and as a serious game (achieving specific learning objectives, conveying a political message, or other non-entertainment objectives).

At first glance, the game seems promising. The tutorial at the beginning of the game was very effective in getting beginners to understand the mechanics of the game. For familiarity, the game even uses existing interface style used in other Sim games. But unlike the Sim games where you can neither lose or win the game, in McDonald’s game, there is a longer term goal of staying in business, or rather, not ending the game by getting bankrupt.

A few sessions into game play, I wasn’t expecting Sim City Mcdonalds’ Edition, or Pizza Tycoon or anything, but at least I expected a way so that I could survive the game and become a millionaire; Call me an amateur gamer, but there is no way I could ever beat this game, with or without corruption!

The game provides an illusion of interactivity in which through a series of both ethically and morally questionable decisions in each of the operational sectors (such as use of genetic modifications, deforestation, hormone injections, corruption etc), you can determine the performance of the business and keep it out of bankruptcy. There seems to be an illusion of flow as well, because as you grow your productions on one sector, you have to balance it with the other sectors by implementing whatever measures necessary to keep the business out of the red. However the truth is, no matter what the players do, the game will fall short on one or more of the production sectors, and the game becomes a sort of closed system with a single predetermined course of outcome.

So this game fails in both aspects: In terms of meaningful play, it offers too little interactivity/ options for people to be engaged in a play of roles and outcomes; no matter what you do, straight or corrupt, you still will end up bankrupt.

In terms of other non-entertainment objectives, it is not clear what the game is trying to teach the players: The over-simplification of what would be complex workings of the fast food industry, or how to maintain a legit business by using ethically questionable practices such as corruption?

The game however presented us an interesting depiction of the interrelation workings of the fast food industry, and helps us a mental model of how the business operates. But the skills and knowledge gained in playing the game is hard to relate to any practical skills in real world.

Mafia

Describe the social interactions which you observed during play. In what way did these interactions emerge from within the formal elements of the game?

Overall, the mafias did a great job in protecting themselves; by simply exploiting the voting mechanism of the game. The dynamics of voting is what makes this game engaging and fun, in which case people will actually put out a case of who the mafias are.

The opinion leaders usually get accused first as the mafia, since there is an assumed motivation to avoid accusations by accusing others. Villagers were careful to voice out their case, ensuring a safe level of mutual agreement on credible claims such as hearing voices coming from certain directions during the night killing spree. Certain externally derived social cues were also visible, for instance, at one stage people found it difficult to accuse someone whom everyone else thought would be harmless, especially some of the people in the group whom are thought to be quiet and shy.

Using Sutton-Smith's categorization of social play roles, discuss how the players' roles changed during the course of the game.

The flow was more or less as follows: Everyone Searches for some cues (usually sounds produced by the gestures during the night killing spree, assuming they were not cheating by peeping) to filter out the possible candidates, then everyone will evaluate the likelihood of themselves being accused as the killer. Players then seduce each other to accuse a candidate while protecting themselves, usually by teasing or harass others in order to ignite everyone, getting everyone agitated. Players can also play the role of savior by not voting those whom they think have been wrongly accused.

Suggest a modification to the game which will alter the social dynamics that emerge during play.

Perhaps a new rule could be implemented: what if the mafia doesn’t know each other? Then this may add another element of mechanics: which out of the two mafias survives and emerges as the winner. Each turn the game master may specify which mafia to wake up and kill villagers/ the other mafia. If one mafia has been eliminated, then the surviving mafia must kill everyone until left only two remaining villagers. This will change the social dynamics of the game a bit by introducing an element of competition between the mafias, by making them hunt each other.

Random rantings on Text/command line inputs...

While I was doing some research on Text-Based games such as King's Quest, I often wonder how much do these interfaces cater for funny inputs by the user?

For you programmers out there, you know how we like to compile using the "Make" command?
Well I was doing some C++ stuff the other day, and I wonder how smart is the Compiler in natural language processing, and I came up with an interesting error message when I try to "Make Love" (LOL)

Here's a snap shot!

The computer as expected, not only that it doesn't know how to Make Love, it doesn't acknowledge the existence of such concept!

LOL..

King's Quest : A 3D Animated Adventure Game?

Okay, for the long overdued blogging exercise, I am using the classic Sierra graphical adventure series, particularly Roberta Williams’ King’s Quest series (from 1-4).

Let’s take the first one, Kinq’s Quest : Quest for the Crown, released in 1984 for the personal computer. King’s Quest is set in a fantasy medieval kingdom ‘Daventry’.

The plot is simple really; the old and frail King Edward was looking for a worthy successor to his Kingdom and for it, he sends his bravest knight, Sir Graham to retrieve three magical items: the magic mirror, shield and chest, all which have been stolen. If Sir Graham succeeds, he will become the next king.

So we take the role of Sir Graham, and the game environment is sort of three dimensional in a sense that you’re able to move him in any direction and the maps are continuous (if you keep going west by exiting the screen from the left hand side, you will eventually appear in the same screen again from the east). Freedom of movement is definitely the revolutionary thing about this game, and the other thing is the concept of ‘Text Input’ as a means of interaction. Just like we saw in ‘Façade’, you interact with the game universe by typing things like “Look around”, “Open door”, or “Talk to the Lady” etc. The game has some sort of natural language processing for recognizing the player’s intentions through interpreting the text input, and I must say although it is somewhat restricted (like you can’t actually do funny things such as, well, whatever you imagine you can do with the f-word…), it is quite consistent and reliable, and they do give you a sense of freedom and interactivity.

I played this game back in 1989 and I was totally blown off by the concept of being able to roam around in a fantasy universe and try to get as much interaction with the environment as possible. The idea of the game is to gather up as much clues about what you need to do next, and by exploring things and talking to people (or creatures), you can sort of work out what needs to be done and how to do it. For me, I was lazy and I just got a walkthrough (they somehow came together with the copy of the game when I bought it, hmm…), and just follow exactly what to do, what to say, and how to do them.

Discuss the tension between agency and narrative structure within the game. Do you agree that narrative and interactivity can never co-exist? Why/why not?

Okay, so this game definitely has strong narrative elements. There is an initial state (equilibrium) of a peaceful Kingdom with an old King Edward, and this equilibrium was disrupted when the magical items’ gone missing, and we take the role of Sir Graham in order to retrieve the items and restore the disrupted state back into a new equilibrium where he assumes the position of the King.

The game seems to offer a high level of interactivity with the 3-d universe and text input. The objective of the game is to retrieve three magical items: the magic mirror, shield and chest, and they can be individually done in any order. In a sense the game is divided into smaller quests, in which to retrieve each of the items, a number of tasks need to be performed and a number of supporting items need to be gathered first. For instance, to get the magic mirror, I need to throw a bucket of water to kill the dragon guarding the magic mirror in the dungeon underneath a hidden well. So we need to figure out, where the hidden well is, and once you found it, how to get into the dungeon and how to kill the dragon.

Sometimes you also find items whose purpose are not clear until later in the game; for instance, you collect some pebbles near a pond somewhere only to realize that they are to be used to kill a giant with a slingshot later on. So “items gathering” is sort of the abstract design tools behind this game (maybe in a sense it is also like a puzzle because you gather items and information to solve a particular situation in order to proceed). But the interactive part of this game only comes from carefully getting the sequence right in gathering the items necessary and performing the actions required to do so, all of which eventually, lead to a predetermined set of results. The game is really an interactive puzzle with a story.

In a sense, yes I do agree that narrative and interactivity can never co-exist, because like in this game, interactivity is sort of limited in which you are not given the ability to explore anything else in the game other than the predetermined goals of the game. There are times in the game when I wish I could have done more, such as, why can’t I just trade the magic items with a witch in the game, cut a deal with her so that she could kill Edward, and made me King instead? Or why can’t I use the magical items to enrich myself and don’t care about inheriting the kingdom, or start my own Kingdom? Given the hope of full exploration of a fantasy universe and interactivity through text interface, King’s Quest seems to offer a potential in delivering both good narrative while offering full interactivity at the same time, but I guess it’s just a story book waiting to be ‘played’.

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

Time seems to be standing still! You could turn the game on for 24 hours and the color of the sky in the game doesn’t change a single bit. The game has a “Save/Load Game” feature, and it’s kind of beating the purpose of full immersion because now you can save at one point of the game, and when you realize you have done something you didn’t intend to do or something which resulted in unexpected outcomes, then you can always go back to that saved state where you can start again the next course of action, making sure things get done right this time around.

Time in this game is represented as a ‘parallel universe’ kind of concept, in which the story time is completely separated with the discourse time. So long as you have a saved game at that particular state of story time, you can change the outcome of the future in the story time by going back to the saved state. Interactivity is made possible by the ability to explore the consequence of an action, and allow the player to decide whether they want to continue with that course of action or restore the previous state to try out another.

Some people call this save/load feature as cheating, or destroying the flow of the game, or even enjoyment of the game, but some people can’t live without it, but I guess it depends on how people set their expectations on what kind of experience they want to get from the game, like, for people who wants some challenge, they can choose to completely isolate themselves from the outside world to be fully immersed in the game, play the game until the character dies, and start again from the beginning, or people like to experience the story to the end of it by making sure they don’t always get killed half way…

Street Fighter 2: World Warrior

To pay tribute to the name of the Blog, I would like to dedicate this entry for what I would argue as the King of all Fighting game of all time, the game that started the craze for 2D Fighting games (and even sparked the development of later 3D ones, such as Sega's Virtua Fighter).

Here’s a Wiki Entry for those who never heard of this game : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Street_Fighter_II

(For Girls : you’re excused if you never heard of the game, but for Guys… You must be kidding me…unless you’re born like, very recently)

I started to play this game back in primary school, I think the year was 1992 when this sucker appeared in my neighborhood pool parlor back in Jakarta, not a very nice place to hang out, but hey, with Street Fighter on the menu, the smoky and rather sleazy place was always packed.

What’s really appealing about this game is the degree of freedom you get in trying to pull out a combination of offensive/defensive moves in order to beat your opponent. Each character has their own fighting styles, with punches and kicks of different kinds and strengths(3 each). What makes it revolutionary is the introduction of the concept of “Special Move” where by through a combination of key motions and button presses, your character are able to perform this special move which, well for one, looks cool, and also can inflict some serious damage to the opponent if executed successfully.

At first, I was never any good at it, those punks at the arcades always managed to beat me within minutes, but once I got my hands on the Super Nintendo console port, I began to practice like for hours and hours everyday after school. Me and my buddies always got together at someone’s place over the weekend and we would just kick each other’s asses the whole day.

(I tend to use Ryu and Ken a lot, and sometimes Guile if I really wanna be cheesy and piss everyone off… but hey, I’ve been playing this game over and over for almost 10 years now, you pick someone up in random for me, and I’ll beat the cr*p out of you haha..)

Now, on the discussion questions..

1. Describe the formal elements that make up the game. Be as clear and detailed as possible.

Players:
Two Participants compete directly, either two human players or 1 human player versus the computer.

Objectives:

- Beat each other’s defense and ‘kill’ the opponent. Each player has an energy bar, depletes as they take damages from each other.

- The objective is to deplete the opponent’s energy bar until empty or until time runs out, in which the player who remains alive or has more energy than the other stays in the game either to compete with the next human player, or compete against the computer if no other human challengers.

Procedures:

- The movements are limited to a simple bi-directional walk (front and back), upward, forward and backward jumps, standing and ducking. Punches and kicks can be performed while standing/ ducking, or jumping.

- Both players are free to move around, use any of the punch or kick moves to inflict damage to each other, anywhere in the fighting arena within the duration of the round (around 2 minutes).

- The arena has two ends, so a player could get cornered if got pushed enough.

- There are two kinds of blocks, upper block for all attacks above the waist and lower block for below the waist.

- Two Players can attack at the same time, and inflict damage simultaneously. But most of the time, a player will be attacking while the other takes the damage. Some special moves can cancel each other (such as ‘fireballs’)

- A player will temporarily lose control of the character when taking a hit, the stronger the hit, the longer it takes for them to get the control back, allowing certain ‘Combination’ moves to be performed inflicting as much damage as possible.

Rules:

- Whoever depletes the energy of the opponent until empty wins

- If time runs out, whoever has the more energy remaining, wins

- If both player has the same amount of energy when time runs out, the round is considered a draw, and the round is repeated.

- To win the match, a player must win two rounds, from a maximum of 5 rounds. If no winner until the end of round 5, both players lose.

- Winning player get to use the same character until they get beaten.

- No rules on how damage is inflicted (can punch, kick, throw, bite, etc)

- Blocking punches and kicks will inflict no damage, but special moves inflict damage if blocked

Resources:

- Energy bar (Health)

- Time limit (2 minutes)

- Fighting arena

Conflict:

- Dilemma: Some special moves leave the character in a ‘frozen’ stance open for attack, for instance, if a player performed a move that gets avoided, the other player can carefully counter attack the vulnerable player, so moves have to be planned carefully.

- Obstacles: Time and Energy is limited, so must attack or be a sitting duck!

Boundaries:

- Malfunctioning controllers can seriously affect game performance

- Pressure from the surroundings, such as viewers, or opponent’s peers making verbal gestures or sometimes threats.

Outcome:

- Winning player accumulates score to be contested on the score board.

- Incumbent winner stays in the game as long as there is challenger, or continue to fight the computer until all the computer opponents are defeated and the player gets treated for a short ‘Ending’ sequence, with a bit of narrative behind why the character fought within the game universe.

2. Does this description fully capture the requirements for playing the game? Are there any additional rules or assumptions that you may have left out? Do these need to be written down? Why/why not?

I would say that one assumption that people would tend to make is that their opponent knows all the moves and have around the same experience/ skills in playing. Against experienced players, beginners wouldn’t have a chance because they would just go ahead and beat the poor newbie without giving him a chance to practice. But sometimes, experienced players can somehow realize that their opponent needs a bit of breathing space so they tone down their offenses, other wise it wouldn’t be fun, just like stealing candy bar from a little kid. Some experienced players also realize that certain characters in the game are able to pull out certain moves that are very difficult to counter, therefore offsetting the balance of the game if such character is being used. So sometimes, experienced players tend to use the weaker characters in order to just try their skills, or use the stronger character but avoid using such moves that are deemed to be “cheap-shot” or “cheesy”. And sometimes, due to the surroundings and social context, players might want to tone down their game play if they sense that the player they’re about to beat the cr*p out of, might not like the idea of losing, and might take it to another intensity outside the game itself, so for games such as Street Fighter where there is a high sense of male masochism and pride, sometimes you win not by beating the other guy, but by losing out to him so that he would not lose his face in front of his gang or whatever. And these kinds of rules, are somewhat external to the game, but you might want to take into consideration when you’re playing outside with others.

3. Following Doug Church’s approach, try to extract the abstract design concepts that constitute the gameplay. Can these be transferred to a different type of game? Why/why not?

I think this game is only about knowing your characters, everything about them, such as memorizing the kind of moves they can perform and how to carry them out. Because these moves involves real physical ‘button bashin’ skills, to put in an abstract concept, I would describe it as ‘Skills Mastery’, as one would do in learning techniques in dance or martial arts.

Skills mastery: The player chooses a character/ subject that suits their preference for competition styles/ moves the best. They learn and master as much as possible the moves and strengths of their characters or the codes of the game system, in order to be able to carry out a combination of attacks to inflict the maximum result while minimizing their penalties.

A game that we can also apply this concept to is Dance Dance Revolution, where you get to practice the combinations of taps in order to hit all the directional pads you’re supposed to hit. Although there are no characters in this game, in a sense, other parameters can also become a character that you can learn/ master, such as the accompanying Song or the difficulty level, as each song carries their own signature combination of moves which can be learnt and memorized and mastered.

Or maybe even Racing games? I realize that Racing games rely on the kind of cars you select or the kind of Stages you choose to race on, where you get to memorize the particular challenging corners which you have to tackle, or the kind of gear combinations in order to successfully maneuver a particular corner. I remember someone showed me that he could beat the Expert level of Daytona USA (time trial mode, no other cars in the track) while having his eyes closed! He told me that its all about memorizing when and where to turn the car and when to switch the gears etc, all based on timings.