A Guide to the Videogame System
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SYSTEM AND EXPERIENCE A Guide to the Videogame as a Complex System to Create an Experience for the Player A Master’s Thesis by Víctor Navarro Remesal Tutor: Asunción Huertas Roig Department of Communication Rovira i Virgili University (2009) © Víctor Navarro Remesal This Master’s Thesis was finished in September, 2009. All the graphic material belongs to its respective authors, and is shown here solely to illustrate the discourse. 1 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my tutor for her support, advice and interest in such a new and different topic. Gonzalo Frasca and Jesper Juul kindly answered my e-mails when I first found about ludology and started considering writing this thesis: thanks a lot. I also have to thank all the good people I met at the ECREA 2008 Summer School in Tartu, for giving me helpful advices and helping me to get used to the academic world. And, above all, for being such great folks. My friends, family and specially my girlfriend (thank you, Ariadna) have suffered my constant updates on the state of this thesis and my rants about all things academic. I am sure they missed me during my months of seclusion, though, so they should be the ones I thanked the most. Thanks, mates. Last but not least, I want to thank every game creator cited directly or indirectly in this work, particularly Ron Gilbert, Dave Grossman and Tim Schafer for Monkey Island, Fumito Ueda for Ico and Shadow of the Colossus and Hideo Kojima for the Metal Gear series. I would not have written this thesis if it were not for videogames like these. 2 INDEX Page · INTRODUCTION _______________________________________________ 9 · CHAPTER 1 – WHAT IS A VIDEOGAME? 1.1 · THE FOUNDATIONAL QUESTION________________________ 11 1.2 · CONSTRUCTING MY DEFINITION _______________________ 15 1.3 · COMPLEMENTING MY DEFINITION______________________23 1.4 · VIDEOGAMES AS SYSTEMS_____________________________ 28 1.5 · VIDEOGAMES AS MEDIA_______________________________ 32 1.6 · MY DEFINITION OF VIDEOGAME _______________________ 34 · CHAPTER 2 – THE PLAYER AND THE EXPERIENCE 2.1 · THE HUMAN BEHIND THE CONTROLLERS _______________ 35 2.2 · CHARACTERISTICS OF THE PLAYER____________________ 37 - 2.2.1 · Style of playing_____________________________________ 37 - 2.2.2 · Previous knowledge and skills__________________________ 39 - 2.2.3 · Current engagement__________________________________ 43 - 2.2.4 · A profile of the player________________________________ 44 2.3 · INTERACTIVITY AND THE PLAYER______________________ 45 - 2.3.1 · The allowed interaction continuum______________________ 45 - 2.3.2 · The secondary player_________________________________ 47 2.4 · PLAYER TO PLAYER RELATIONSHIPS___________________ 50 3 2.5 · WHY WE PLAY? A LOOK AT THE EXPERIENCE___________ 50 - 2.5.1 · My definition of experience____________________________ 51 - 2.5.2 · Experience and structure______________________________ 52 - 2.5.3 · Challenge__________________________________________ 54 - 2.5.4 · Emotions and play ___________________________________ 57 - 2.5.5 · The gratifications of playing___________________________ 62 2.6 · CONCLUSIONS ON THE PLAYER AND THE EXPERIENCE___ 66 · CHAPTER 3 – THE SURROUNDING SYSTEM 3.1 · THE ENVIRONMENT OF THE PROCESS__________________ 69 3.2 · THE GAMING SPACE___________________________________ 70 - 3.2.1 · Real world context___________________________________ 70 - 3.2.2 · The magic circle_____________________________________ 72 3.3 · THE REMEDIATION CHANNEL__________________________ 74 - 3.3.1 · The platform as remediator____________________________ 75 - 3.3.2 · The software________________________________________ 77 - 3.3.3 · A map of the remediaton channel_______________________ 78 3.4 · THE PLATFORM_______________________________________ 83 - 3.4.1 · Types of platforms___________________________________ 83 3.5 · CONCLUSIONS ON THE SURROUNDING SYSTEM_________ 86 · CHAPTER 4 – THE CORE SYSTEM 4.1 · VIDEOGAMES AS GAMES_______________________________ 88 4.2 · GAMEWORLD__________________________________________89 - 4.2.1 · Gameworlds as representations_________________________ 90 4 - 4.2.2 · Gameworld rules____________________________________ 91 - 4.2.3 · Gameworld limits and worldness________________________ 95 - 4.2.4 · Information________________________________________ 100 - 4.2.5 · Gameworld objects__________________________________ 103 4.3 · ENTITIES AND CHARACTERS___________________________ 106 - 4.3.1 · Entity functions_____________________________________ 106 - 4.3.2 · What is a character? _________________________________ 107 - 4.3.3 · The “character” layer_________________________________ 108 - 4.3.4 · Entity/Character study in videogames____________________ 110 - 4.3.5 · Avatar_____________________________________________ 116 - 4.4.6 · AI-controlled characters_______________________________ 122 4.4 · MECHANICS___________________________________________ 125 - 4.4.1 · Defining mechanics__________________________________ 125 - 4.4.2 · Mechanics and the player______________________________ 128 - 4.4.3 · Types of mechanics__________________________________ 132 4.5 · RULES AND GOALS____________________________________ 135 - 4.5.1 · Rules______________________________________________135 - 4.5.2· Goals______________________________________________ 139 - 4.5.3 · End states and desired states___________________________ 141 - 4.5.4 · The problem of freedom_______________________________144 4.6 · NARRATIVE POSSIBILITIES OF VIDEOGAMES____________ 148 - 4.6.1 · Defining narrative___________________________________ 149 - 4.6.2 · Narrative in the videogame system______________________ 150 - 4.6.3 · Functions of narrative________________________________ 153 4.7 · CONCLUSIONS ON THE CORE SYSTEM__________________ 154 5 · CONCLUSIONS _________________________________________________ 157 · REFERENCES BIBLIOGRAPHY____________________________________________ 160 WEBLIOGRAPHY___________________________________________162 LUDOGRAPHY_____________________________________________ 166 6 INTRODUCTION The aim of this thesis is to provide a complete and useful description of what a videogame is. I will not limit my research to any specific genre or type of videogame: I will try to identify what is common to all videogames and, therefore, what is needed for a videogame to be a videogame. As I will show in this thesis, it is a common assumption amongst Game Scholars that videogames are systems: a set of interrelated parts that interact in different ways. My intention is to check if that is accurate and, if so, analyze the precise structure of that system and how it works. These questions are the starting point of my thesis: · What is a videogame? · Is the videogame a system? If so, how does it work? To answer these questions, I will attempt to construct a detailed definition of videogame that will serve me as a compass throughout the rest of my research. Videogames are very dependant on technology: I would like to determine its exact role. That adds another research question: · How is technology a part of the videogame? 7 Another element that I consider crucial for my research is the player. Without a player to play the videogame, the videogame is just a set of possibilities. Since I want to study videogames as an active system, I need to answer two more questions: · What is the exact role of the player in the videogame? · Why the player plays? By answering these questions, I hope to create a complex and global description of the videogame, not just of the game elements of it. In addition to the core system (the game elements of the videogame) I would like to include the outer elements (such as the technology) and the player in the system I propose. For the sake of honesty, I consider important to give some clues about my educational and personal background. I have training in scriptwriting (for film, new media and humour TV, to be precise) and, having published a collection of short tales recently, I can say that I am a writer myself. I am familiar with narrative, and this familiarity made me want to analyse videogames as a mean to convey a story. But, as authors such as Jesper Juul or Gonzalo Frasca claim, videogames should be studied and valued for what they are: games. I want to study videogames as games, even though that does not contradict my first intentions; I still want to answer that question: · What is the role of narrative in videogames? My hypothesis is that videogames are a complex, multi-layered system that includes not only game elements, but the specific technology and the player. The videogame system has compulsory and optional elements that can be combined to create a vast range of videogames. Story is not an obligatory part of the videogame system, although many of its elements present narrative possibilities that can affect the player’s experience. This 8 experience is created by the interaction of the system elements, is the reason why the player plays and goes beyond the mere idea of “fun”. In short: videogames are a multi- layered system that creates an experience for the player. I will start this thesis with a definition of videogame and the basic map of its systematic nature. After that, I will study each one of these parts of the system in-depth: the surrounding system (the context and the technology), the player and the resulting experience and the core system (the game elements of the videogame). This thesis is addressed to both game scholars and game designers. I hope it ends up being useful for both of them. 9 CHAPTER 1 WHAT IS A VIDEOGAME?