Posts filed under 'Theory'
Opening night for the community theater presentation of The Scarlet Pimpernel in which I’m participating is less than two weeks away, and I realize that I’ve gone for several weeks with almost no gaming of any sort. Playing games has long been my primary form of relaxation, often taking up as much of my time as working for a living.
I haven’t spent much time in Middle Earth and Arkham. And since I’m the default GM for our tabletop RPG group we haven’t visited any of my own imagined worlds in even longer.
But while mastering dance steps (in high heeled shoes, no less!), striving for that high B-flat, and struggling to deliver lines in a convincing British accent, I’ve had time to reflect on an aspect of gaming that I don’t normally think about: games are primarily escapism, a way to make entertaining and constructive use of unstructured time.
While some who went on a self-imposed one-week gaming abstinence program found they couldn’t make it, I’ve had a pretty easy time. Why? Because a tremendous portion of my free time has been filled with the creative work of putting together a show that will (we hope!) entertain our audience. Participating in this play has fulfilled most of the desires that spark my interest in games.
Of course, just being busy wouldn’t do it. It just so happens that putting on a theatrical production offers a lot of the same pleasure that games do: the challenges, the imagination, the social interaction, the thrill of success (measured by applause).
Enjoying a reasonably comfortable games-light existence for several weeks hasn’t made me disdainful of them, though. In fact, if anything, I have an even greater appreciation for the value of play than I’ve ever had before.
I’ve spoken before (and no doubt will again) about the fact that games—though we may play them to escape, relax, and kill time—are one of the most worthwhile things we can do. We’re lucky to be a species that plays. The New York Times Magazine recently published a very interesting article on the benefits of play, as well as the reasons.
Play—be it gameplay, roughhousing, theatrical plays, or improvisational roleplaying—feeds our souls, exercises our brains, and keeps us happy. We should all do as much of it as we can. But for those who suffer a compulsion to play games, in particular games that they don’t actually enjoy, I recommend you find alternative escapes. Not non-play escapes, not non-game escapes, but different ones.
If you’re bored and frustrated with one of the many treadmills in an MMORPG, take a moment to consider the reward offered for your effort. Solving problems in games isn’t always fun, but it is generally enjoyable. If you’re not enjoying what you’re doing, by all means do something else!
The world is full of opportunities to play, and thinking gamers are in an excellent position to appreciate those opportunities and take advantage of them.
February 21st, 2008
When I (finally!) cleaned out my garage this weekend, I unearthed a fairly cruddy croquet set. We last had it out at my daughters second birthday party, two months ago, as something for the adult guests to play with. She recognized it. “That’s from my birthday!” she squealed.
I’m not surprised it appeals to her. Brightly colored balls and, especially, colorful giant hammers are bound to delight a toddler. I offered to show her a game, and she eagerly agreed. I grabbed one wicket, one ball (orange, one of her favorite colors), and two mallets, and gave her a quick lesson in noncompetitive croquet.
Since she recognized the mallet as a hammer, she tried to deliver a vertical blow on the ball. The mallet—as tall as she is—struck on its side, knocking the ball toward her feet. She liked this quite a bit, taking a step back and hitting the ball toward herself over and over again.
When she realized the ball wasn’t heading toward the wicket, she tried to adopt my side swing. The mallet was really just too unwieldy for her, though, and she finally got frustrated enough that she demanded “a different game!”
I figured I could design something that would be more fun for a two year old, so I drew three concentric circles with sidewalk chalk on the driveway and my daughter, my wife, and I each took a pebble. The goal was simply to drop the pebble so it stayed within the outer circle. Each person had a different line to stand at.
Again, this game was a big hit. My daughter’s first drop (from all of twenty inches or so) landed pretty near the middle. My wife and I didn’t have as much luck, as our pebbles tended to bounce right out.
My daughter started gaming the system. She considered it fair to “drop” her pebble by squatting down and placing it in the middle, so we changed the rules: you have to keep your knees straight. She still managed to beat us, and finally she gave up hope that her parents would get the hang of the game. She collected up all the pebbles and, one at a time, played them. But she still wanted everyone to have a turn.
“Now it’s your turn, Mommy,” she said, dropping my wife’s pebble. “Now it’s your turn, Daddy,” and mine landed right near the middle.
As she closed her eyes to sleep, she told me, “I want to play a game with you tomorrow.” I promised her we would.
This kids version of Mumblety peg won’t win any awards, but it’s the very first time my daughter has engaged in an activity circumscribed by (admittedly loose) arbitrary rules with a mild competitive element.
In other words, I think it’s the first time she’s every really played a game!
July 25th, 2007
Just yesterday, I dashed off a quick post on games as art. A reader, Yehuda, pointed me to an article he wrote over a year ago on the topic, and it has some great thoughts. Not only does the article prove that the question has been discussed since long before I started this blog, but it also good job of defining “art” and “game” for the purposes of any discussion on the topic.
In contrast to that post, I deliberately tried to avoid getting into definitions—in part because such posts have done a grand job already, but also because I wanted to argue my point in such a way that the common, unspoken definitions of art and games would suffice to support my contention that games are art.
The more I’ve thought about it, the more I think that it’s the emergent, participatory, interactive element of games that makes them an exciting and distinct form of art. This is not to say that a beautifully designed board game might not be a piece of visual art. But when the game is played, the convergence of the rules, the pieces, and the players themselves becomes a fascinating expression of art.
There have been many attempts at “interactive” art, such as museum exhibits in which visitors are in some way incorporated into the art. Museums are pushing for more interactivity in their exhibits, with good reason. In fact, here is a simply terrific blog on the subject.
But not all such attempts are games. Letting visitors touch objects, move through interesting drawers, or get a feel for the perspective of some historical group may be very compelling, but a game is something different.
I remember visiting an exhibit of work by the remarkable sculptor Alexander Calder shortly after his death. I was only seven or eight years old at the time.
The museum was bursting with Calder’s glorious, kinetic mobiles and bright, abstract sculptures. But what I remembered best was a series of doors in a row. Visitors were invited to walk through the doors, only to discover that each door opened in a different way. Some had a simple knob. One was completely covered with knobs, only one of which worked. One, I recall, didn’t open at all, and the solution was to walk around it to the next door.
I use the word “solution” deliberately. See, the doors were definitely art, a sculpture, but they were also a puzzle or game. (No, I’m not going to get into the definition of “puzzle” and “game.” They’re different, but the line is decidedly fuzzy.)
That simple exhibit—both a game as art and art as a game—has stuck with me for thirty years. I remember what it felt like to turn the knobs that didn’t work and the thrill of finding the solution to a door. I remember laughing with my brother as we tried to solve the door that couldn’t open, then realized that the solution lay in looking at the problem from a different angle.
I’ll note here that Calder created a great many wonderful toys as part of his work. His charming Cirque Calder is as delightful today as it was when he first exhibited it.
I haven’t read much about the man, but I don’t think he drew a line between the toys and games he made and the art intended to dangle magnificently from a domed ceiling.
Calder we have someone who delighted in visual art, in toys, and in games. In his hands, all these things were more definitely art. And although I love the look of his sculptures, for me at least the one that has made the most enduring impression was a game he created.
(You know, after all this chatter about Alexander Calder and games, I think it’s time I start writing up a profile of the GURPS campaign I ran a few years ago that heavily featured the public sculptures created by Calder’s father for the City of Philadelphia. Voodoo, witchcraft, horror, and secret history on the streets of the City of Brotherly Love! I’ll get around to it eventually, but if you’re very interested, comment here and I’ll try to move it up in the queue.)
July 24th, 2007
Games are art. Many may be very bad art, and many gamers may not give one groat about the question. But games are art.
Roger Ebert published an article two days ago following up on the ongoing discussion he kicked off about a year ago on whether games are art. He said “no” a year ago, now he says “not high art.” His main opponent in this debate is Clive Barker, here.
Game bloggers and journalists are continuing to weigh in on the subject (here, for instance, and here).
I figure I’ll just add my own quick opinions.
Games in general and video games in particular are obviously a distinctive kind of art, although arguing about what is and isn’t a game is just as valuable as arguing about what is and isn’t art. (That is, it’s very valuable for trying to understand what a game is, useless if you’re just doing it to make some peripheral point.)
Games may not yet have reached their full potential as art, but they’re an extremely exciting form of it. Like movies, some games experiment with technique and craft more than art. But also like movies, modern video games share something with all other forms of art—visual artistry, music, narrative—while adding the very exciting element of interactivity.
It’s this interactivity which, for some bizarre reason, forms the crux of Ebert’s argument against games as art. The artist’s work is where art begins, but the audience—the players, when the artwork is a game—are where art happens. The Mona Lisa is much more than Da Vinci’s paint spread on poplar wood. It’s the crowds in the Louvre, the great capers and thefts, the doctoral dissertations, the imitations and parodies, the games themselves
, and even things like The Da Vinci Code (which inspired a movie, a promotional game like the Bourne game, and endless debates and discussions).
The Mona Lisa is the emergent cultural phenomenon born of the painting, not the painting itself.
No other art genre has ever been so open to audience participation as games. No other art genre has the potential for emergent phenomena. Do games weaken the role of the artist? No more than Hollywood did. And in fact, all Hollywood and feature films really did was make it possible for collaborative art to come into its own. Great movies are the collaboration of directors, writers (too often undervalued), actors, and even suits who sign the checks.
Games are too, but more than anything else, they not only invite their audience to participate, they are art as audience participation.
So get out the chess board, the dice, or the Xbox, and let’s make some art!
July 23rd, 2007
Last year, Google hosted a cross-promotional alternate reality game (ARG) for the Da Vinci Code movie. I played the game and quite enjoyed the various puzzles. I didn’t qualify as a finalist, though, at least in part because of an irritating scheduling conflict. In fact, the nature of the game and its popularity meant that only those dedicated fans with very flexible schedules really had a chance.
This year’s game is the Ultimate Search for Bourne, a tie-in with The Bourne Ultimatum. I liked the first two movies well enough. (Actually, come to think of it, I slept through part of the second, and I’m not sure I’ve ever got the plot straightened out.)
The game looks fun, too. As far as I can tell, you can’t really do anything today except look at the site and take a stab at understanding the gameplay. When the first real briefings becomes available, you should be able to use clues in it to find a place on a map where you can catch a glimpse of Jason Bourne through a surveillance camera. And I guess, if you choose the right camera (or cameras), you “win” for that day.
The prizes aren’t very important to me, though I can’t deny that I’d say no to an iPhone if someone decided to give me one just for playing a game.
What does matter to me is that there’s a chance this game will capture a little something of the spy genre, in an armchair sort of way. (Not real spying, of course.)
I can’t think of any truly great spy video games (Am I wrong? If so, please tell me. I’d love to try them out), but perhaps, if this game is a success, some daring and innovative game house could build on it to develop a sort of internet-based, global, massively-multiplayer version of “Assassin.” A top-notch game development crew could make this very, very fun.
EA ran Majestic. Supposedly, you would sign up and get phone calls, e-mails, and even faxes! And these would lead you to clues in a conspiracy game. It didn’t last, maybe because the price didn’t seem justified by the execution.
The Lost Experience did something similar. Unfortunately, it did it at a time when Lost basically sucked, so I didn’t pay much attention. Plus, the “game” wasn’t very fun and did require you to buy too much stuff, or much off other geeks on the internet who were willing to spend their money. So I didn’t participate.
Technology is better now, and we understand it better, too. Even if a game like the one I’m imagining would be heavily driven by advertising, it’d be fun. And if it weren’t—for example, if you had to buy a box in the game store just as you do with World of Warcraft and to pay a modest monthly fee—it just might become a success that would drawn the attention of people who don’t call themselves gamers.
What would make such a game work? A truly great ARG needs to use not just e-mail and phones, but the tools developed for multi-player FPS games and MMORPGs. A quick brainstorm turns up:
- A console website (or separately executed program, though that may eliminate some markeshare) as the single source of access
- Daily challenges (like the Google game) to find something online, succeed at a particular action goal, or achieve some other end; if there are real prizes, they could be tied to this
- Constantly available content, consisting mostly of the same sorts of things that make up the daily challenges, but tied to in-game rewards only (character advancement, revelation of plot, the chance to actually affect the ongoing plot, etc.)
- Action-based mini-games (building on FPS games, presumably)
- Puzzle-based mini-games with a spy feel to them (decoding messages, for example, or hacking a computer)
- The daily challenges add up to an ongoing narrative
- Rewards in the form of mini-episodes (three minutes?) of an ongoing spy drama tied to the game
- A strong community tool, to allow users to share stories
- Challenges unique to each player, so they can’t be “spoiled”
- The ability to group into a “cell” for team missions, where each participant must complete a certain challenge live, and all will be rewarded together
- Possibly ways to develop your character down different paths, so that, for instance, one cell member might disarm traps in the action mini-games while the other does the sharpshooting, while in appropriate puzzle games characters could have “clues” that make resolution of difficult, timed bits easier
- PVP in the form of competition with other players or cells on mutually exclusive goals, such that one cell might be trying to protect an ambassador’s life while the other is trying to assassinate her
- Possibly the ability to control a team of NPCs, at least in certain mini-games (like map-based games, where agent placement determines success)
- Possibly real prizes from sponsors (if the game is 1/10 as successful as something like WoW, daily giveaways of geeky, spy-like prizes from companies interested in the free advertising, branded with the game so that winners can boast about their success, might not actually ruin the game)
- An opportunity to delve into roleplaying while playing, with story-choices, text and voice chat, avatars, and so on
Okay, it’s all just a bunch of crazy ideas, at this point, poorly drafted and dumped on the page. But I think there’s real potential for a tremendously fun, successful game. Not long ago, I bemoaned the fact that all new games really seem to be new coats of paint on old games. A well-designed internet spy ARG—with daily challenges, demands that reach outside the game (like finding translations, locations, and so on)—could fit the bill.
In fact, I think after I hit “Publish,” I’ll draft an e-mail to an old friend of mine who’s a writer for several video game companies (some of which have spy themes), to see if what he thinks about the viability of this idea.
July 16th, 2007
I love me some Catan, so this little application strikes a chord with me. Especially since I’m convinced the dice that came with my copy of the game are far from fair and roll fives far more often than any pair of dice should.
Of course, the frustration of true but unfair randomness in games like Settlers of Catan is also part of the fun. And, in fact, essential. Because if you find yourself in a slight losing position, you have a reasonable expectation that quirky dice rolls may turn the game around for you. If the dice were purely fair and all probabilities exactly as expected, players in a losing position after turn four or five might find that the game becomes, basically, a hopeless chore.
Still, a very fun thought. If anyone ever does play Catan with “fair dice,” I’d love to hear how it goes.
July 9th, 2007