Play Redux: the Form of Computer Games

play redux DIGITALCULTUREBOOKS is an imprint of the University of Michigan Press and the Scholarly Publishing Office of the University of Michigan Library dedicated to publishing innovative and accessible work exploring new media and their impact on society, culture, and scholarly communication. play redux the form of computer games David Myers the university of michigan press and the university of michigan library Ann Arbor Copyright © by the University of Michigan 2010 All rights reserved Published in the United States of America by The University of Michigan Press and The University of Michigan Library Manufactured in the United States of America Printed on acid-free paper 2013 2012 2011 2010 4 3 2 1 No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher. A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Myers, David. Play redux : the form of computer games / David Myers. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-472-07092-3 (cloth : alk. paper) — isbn 978-0-472-05092-5 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Computer games—Social aspects. 2. Play—Social aspects. I. Title. gv1469.17.s63m95 2010 794.8—dc22 2009038405 ISBN13 978-0-472-02687-6 (electronic) God bless everyone. Mother and Daddy. Nanee and GeeGee. Grandma and Grandpa. Kim. Me. Megan and Sarah. Susan. And all the rest. Play ball. contents introduction 1 What computer games are chapter 1 Bad Play 15 chapter 2 Anti-ness 30 chapter 3 Formalism Redux 40 chapter 4 Interface and Code 50 chapter 5 The Computer Game Anti-aesthetic 65 What computer games aren’t chapter 6 Anti-narrative 71 chapter 7 The Backstory 86 chapter 8 Civilization 98 The self and the social chapter 9 Social Play 117 chapter 10 City of Heroes 132 chapter 11 Play and Punishment 144 The genie in the bottle chapter 12 Final Comments 158 Notes 163 References 173 Index 181 Introduction Play is a very interesting thing. Somewhat strangely, though, play is not stud- ied as often as are the consequences of play. The reason for this becomes clear when we try to study play: it is a very hard thing to study. Play resists our scrutiny in characteristically slippery ways. One of these is the degree to which play is dependent on and deter- mined by paradox. In The Nature of Computer Games (2003), I spent a great deal of time focusing on the paradoxical nature of play. In that book, I classi- fied paradoxes according to commonly accepted categories, examined common features of those categories, and concluded that paradoxes—and most particularly play-related paradoxes—are a form of self-reference. Prototypical examples of self-referential paradoxes are these: • The Liar’s Paradox: This statement is false. • Russell’s Paradox: The set of all sets that are not members of themselves. In the Liar’s Paradox, the “statement” refers to itself directly; in Russell’s Paradox, the “set” refers to itself by including itself in its own membership. The result, in both cases, is that we have trouble understanding what these paradoxes mean. When we try to derive a meaning from the Liar’s Paradox, for instance, we find our meaning-making process oscillating between thinking the statement is true (which it must be in order to be false) and thinking the statement is false (because, after all, that is what the statement says it is). This oscillation of meaning doesn’t stop. And because we find ourselves (potentially forever) in the midst of this oscillation, befuddled, our awareness and attention turn from the meaning we cannot derive to the meaning- making process that cannot derive it. That is, we turn our awareness and attention from the content of meaning to the form of meaning (and/or the lack thereof). In this brief analysis, then, are a couple of important realizations concern- ing the nature and study of play that I wish to pursue further here. First and foremost, play involves a special form of self-reference. And because play exhibits a particular self-referential form—similar to paradox—the study of play offers opportunities for formalist methods of study. Second, a self-referential form is also, obviously and importantly, referential. Therefore, the study of play should involve not only the study of self-referential forms but also the study of references and referencing in general: that is, semiosis. Currently and curiously, the study of play does not often focus on either its formal properties or its semiotic properties as much as it focuses on other things. The most prominent and frequent of these other things is culture. In the 1970s, which was quite some time ago it seems, I was an under- graduate English major at Yale University. Walking across campus on some dark and snowy eve, a fellow student pointed out to me a bearish figure receding in the distance, coated and capped, who was, I was told, William K. Wimsatt, “the formalist.” After a long career in academia, Wimsatt died in 1975; his primary teach- ing duties at Yale had been curtailed—if not completed entirely–sometime before that. Thus, I am uncertain whether this figure in memory was Wimsatt indeed or simply one relatively naive student’s wild speculation to another. In any case, that particular image has stuck in my mind as emblematic of the decline of formalists and formalism, both of which were, by the mid-1970s, being shunted into obscurity. During the mid-twentieth century and beyond, formalist models of literature were superseded by structuralist models of history and, subsequently buoyed by post-structuralism, cultural studies. In this supersession, cultural studies relegated the study of language and literature—and aesthetics in general—to a subset of its own broader, more inclusive, and often impen- etrably complex view of social relationships as instrumental and unavoidable in determining human thoughts, interpretations, and meanings. Ostensibly, semiotics is the study of semiosis, or the human meaning- making process. However, in common practice, semiotics as an academic discipline has tended to adopt a particular set of assumptions regarding how and under what influences a human-like meaning-making process operates. These assumptions are, by and large, equivalent to those of cultural studies. Thus, conventional semiotic analysis situates the human meaning-making process in a particular cultural context. 2 play redux This is contrary to the assumptions I am going to bring to bear here, and it is contrary to the original assumptions of formalism as held and promoted by William K. Wimsatt, Cleanth Brooks, Viktor Shklovsky, and other similar formalists. Wimsatt and Beardsley (1954) coined the terms intentional fallacy and affective fallacy to emphasize exactly this issue. The tenets of their “New Criticism” claimed that it is the literary work itself—its interior mechanics— that determine its value as literature, or its “literariness.” If you were, rather, to determine that literariness on the basis of author intent—including author history, culture, or psychology—then you would be guilty of an “intentional fallacy.” Likewise, if you were, rather, to determine that literariness on the basis of audience (reader) response—emotive or otherwise—you would suf- fer from an “affective fallacy.” Above all other things, it is this claim that sets formalism apart from its opposition: the formal properties of an artwork are its defining properties. When we apply an unadulterated formalism to the study of play, we pro- duce a similar claim: the formal properties of play are the defining properties of that play. This is the primary claim I will make here, and this claim (if true) allows us to position semiotics, in contrast to its position within cultural studies, as a science. At its core, semiotics as a science investigates repre- sentationalism, intentionality, and human meaning-making as fundamental components of human activity and expression and, equally importantly, as more general features of the natural world. For, although human meaning- making processes often behave and feel as though they were subjective, semiotics as a science would attempt to uncover their objective properties, regardless of cultural context. These objective properties may appear most evident in the mechanics of a common, singular, and universal meaning- making form. The most oft-cited studies of play and the historical basis for most con- temporary play and game studies are not formalist studies. The two most prominent of these are Huizinga’s Homo Ludens (1938) and Caillois’ Man, Play, and Games (1961). Each of these early works has something important to say regarding the crucial issue of whether human culture is determinant of or determinable by human play. Huizinga’s thesis, for instance, is clear: The aim . is to integrate the concept of play into that of culture. Conse- quently, play is . understood . not as a biological phenomenon but as a cultural phenomenon.1 Introduction 3 Yet Huizinga’s analysis subsequently reveals play as dependent on something other than cultural contingency. If this innate tendency of the mind . is in fact rooted in play, then we are confronted with a very serious issue. We can only touch on it here. The play attitude must have been present before human culture or human speech existed.2 Caillois’ book, more focused and restrictive in theme than that of Huizinga, prefers to examine and categorize toys and games (“the residues of culture,” p. 58) rather than either play or culture in broader contexts. To this end, Caillois’ analysis is largely directed toward attempting to uncover—the same attempt I will make here—universal properties of play as form: “These diverse qualities [of play activities] are purely formal.

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