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Heide Hagebölling Hagebölling Heide (Ed.) New Approaches in Approaches New Design and Multimedia Content 13 Interactive Dramaturgies

Hagebölling (Ed.)

1 Interactive Dramaturgies

783540 442066 Heide Hagebölling Hagebölling Heide (Ed.) ISBN 3-540-44206-5 ISSN 1612-1449 springeronline.com Topics Key Dramaturgies Interactive Learning Cultural Museum & Media & Hybrid Spaces MediaTecture Gaming & Interaction Television & Interactive & Stories Literature Web-based Men-Machine Interaction Design Content Interactive 9 › · · · · · · · · · go beyond the well established the well go beyond is focussing on aesthetic,is focussing narrative, Interactive Dramaturgies Interactive Interactive Dramaturgies Interactive Prof.Roy Ascott, of Plymouth; University University of California, L.A. Dr.Roger Malina, Society the Arts, for Leonardo Chairman of the Board Sciences and Technology; Publications and of the Leonardo Sciences Editor Executive Interactive Dramaturgies Interactive and Design in Multimedia Content Approaches New allow and at the same time require new forms of dramaturgy. new forms the same time require and at media allow Interactive “Interactive – so called a new understanding of dramaturgy Heide Hagebölling develops Dramaturgy”or “Expanded Dramaturgy”. concept, the traditional Beyond structural, and multimedia situations in interactive develop that elements and communicative enviroments. multimedia authors, renowned internationally by A collection of original contributions designers, and artists and strategies.Outstanding outline design concepts case studies and analyzed,media projects are and genres: of both applications range a broad covering culture, art, and education; museums and exhibitions; film,TV,games, and entertainment; augmented environments. reality and hybrid term of interactive storytelling.They and of interactive roles term the rules of altered define and create carefully setting.The of both authors and users in a new communicational competences required publi- designers, provides cation authors, artists, theoreticians, media critics, and students interested and design. and views in multimedia content media with new approaches in interactive and chal- understand the multi-dimensional complexities wishing to anyone “Indispensable to cutting edge, of media at it’s book is a brilliant collection lenges of interactive Heide Hagebölling’s and inspiring sources.The many inspired writings from of dramaturgy, context in which these set,texts are issues: of significant a wide range over and reflections elicits propositions fruitfully structures, narrative innovative games,from ,TV to and new approaches and the- atre, learning strategies, radical to museum design and navigation, creativity in data space, and building.” issues of content the central media of interactive changing landscape need in documenting the rapidly “This book fills a real applications. and emerging of genres range and performance in a broad to It will be of interest creators, artworks.” of new kinds of online and offline interactive and presenters producers 127

11. Action, Adventure, Desire Interaction with PC Games Action, AdvenClaus Pias t

This paper seeks to understand, classify, and give rather the scene in which the computer and user come historical context to the dramaturgy of different together. Interaction is characterized not only by the kinds of computer games according to the differ- users’ programming of their computers to perform cer- atV Part ing interactive possibilities they provide. This results tain actions, but also vice versa, that computers make in three basic types of games: action games, ad- their users into actors of reproducible operational se- venture games, and strategy games. This conclusion quences. Thus Brenda Laurel explicitly and with good 11 is reached and accounted for on the basis of the reason bases her dramaturgy of user interfaces upon science of labor (time-and-motion studies), theatri- a strictly Aristotelian conception of theatre. For Aris- cal and narrative theory, and cybernetics. Time is totle, it is ultimately the circumstance “that there is critical in the interaction in the present in action action rather than reporting” [11.3]. Action is aimed games: they require attentiveness in the production not at “conversation” with the computer, but at “ma- of a temporally optimized series of choices taken nipulation” of complicated, invisible interrelationships from a repertoire of norm-governed actions. Deci- by means of simple, symbolic operations [11.4]. Action sions are critical in the navigation of that which is here simply denotes the handling of databases, the ma- at hand in adventure games: they require optimal nipulation of sets of data. Writing a text like this one judgments in the traversing of the decision-making would at best fall under the Aristotelian category of nodes of a flowchart. Configuration is critical in reporting, which is completely incommensurable with the organization of the possible in strategy games: a computer. To use the appropriate buttons to save it, they require patience in the optimal regulation of format it, or print it represents actions fitting for a com- interdependent values. puter. Interaction does not take place in the windows of word processing, but rather in all that surrounds it. Interactivity and Action This alone may explain the fact that dramaturgic con- cepts could first arise, and why they could, only in and Ever since Brenda Laurel (who – not coincidentally – along with the epoch of graphic user interfaces. For in was on the staff of the game producer Atari), it has be- the language of computer commands, a totally differ- come common to speak of “computers as theatre” [11.1]. ent kind of mode of writing and action rules, which Programs, such as Macromedia’s Director, which al- could be more easily described in terms of linguis- ready displays the dramaturgic profession in its title, tic pragmatism and, more specifically, in terms of the claim to do away with precisely those theatrical labors speech act theory. To write “KILL” under UNIX would that they pour into their software: actors are clicked mean – to paraphrase Friedrich Kittler’s old example onto a stage, and the productions created this way can – not just to write four letters, but actually to termi- be rehearsed backwards and forwards along a tem- nate something by means of writing. Thus, it cannot poral axis with variable speeds. In such rehearsals, be just a coincidence that in dramaturgically inspired which rush by without requiring any powers of the talk about graphic user interfaces reference is repeat- imagination on the part of their actors, a power of edly made to computer games [11.5]. Computer games definition over “actors” is witnessed that Diderot re- appear as that species of program in which the action- served for the “greatest of writers,” who leave their based side of interactivity is most purely embodied. At characters only the “smallest possible leeway” [11.2]. the same time, however, computer games raise most Of greater significance, however, than what occurs on emphatically the question of what interactivity actu- the screen is what happens in front of it. Laurel’s re- ally is, who or what actually rules the scene, and who flections do not concern the “tube” (the monitor), but or what the subject of such actions is. 128 Part V 11. Action, Adventure, Desire

Interactivity could be understood as that interplay a radically new kind of game, since they open up such of man and machine that first became possible by a test field of interplay between man and machine – means of a theoretical space (within which it subse- a cybernetic test field in which the user tests the ma- quently occurs) in which both man and machine could chine and, at the same time, the machine always tests be conceived of together. This is what cybernetics as the user. the “metatechnology” of man and machine claimed As uncertain as the status of word processing (in to achieve, based on the concepts of information and the literal sense) was, it proves just as difficult to de- feedback [11.6]. In the digital computer – the cognitive termine what were the first graphic games [11.9]. It image of cybernetics turned hardware – this interplay could be the demo programs that demonstrated the ca- requires reciprocal presentations. The invisible data pabilities of the computer, it could be the diagnostic have to be staged visually and acoustically for user programs that made demands on all of the functions eyes and ears, and, conversely, the analogue signals of of the computer, or it could be the computer hacks the life-world of the player have to be staged as dis- who “misused” university and military equipment. For atV Part crete data for query routines. Thus, at the point of this reason, there have been computer games since one interactivity, the computer appears to man as some- could call them that, in short, since the historical mo- thing human, and man appears to the computer as ment at which they were baptized in product form and 11 something machine-like, or, more specifically – as in “computer game” was stamped on their packaging. The the jargon of innumerable computer pioneers – as an Atari founder Nolan Bushnell – contrary to all hackers’ attached device. Only through such mimicry was it pos- ethics of free source codes – turned his tennis game sible to couple such heterogeneous elements as man PONG into the first computer game that could only and digital computer into a kind of “organic construc- be played, but no longer rewritten. And since it was tion”. Thus what occurs in this form as interactivity is meant for use in bars, waiting rooms, and departure – put rather dramatically – no longer something purely halls, it was also the first game that could be played human. without an opponent, in single-player mode. Above all The user, and more specifically, the (game) player else, though, it had a beginning and an end. It had to would be described in this construction in terms of his have a beginning, in order to allow for the insertion of position in the system. He is that which fills the empti- a coin, and it had to have an end to allow for the in- ness, the blankness, of his own position, a position that sertion of further coins. It was imperative that there exists before he assumes it, before he fills it out. This be a beginning and end, the distance between which position is a place of risk and the place where he com- could be controlled by the degree of difficulty, if for mits himself to taking this risk. Accordingly, a history no other reason that only these temporal endpoints of interaction in computer games would have to define made it possible to determine an efficient relationship more closely this realm of player engagement, namely, between income, operating costs, and service period. both in terms of the limits of what his commitment re- The fact that computer games could only become com- quires him to wager, to risk, and in terms of the limits of puter games by being given a beginning and an end what it allows him to. If, for instance, one considers the made their dramaturgy into a problem. They became “invention” of word processing, there is initially abso- – in good Aristotelian terms – a “self-contained action lutely no way to decide what is a “game” and what is of definite size” [11.10]. a “serious application” [11.7]. As in 1966 the suitability The following discussions do not attempt to write of the mouse and, at the same time, the point of word a history of such dramaturgies, of playability, or of processing in general came under scrutiny, word pro- the arc spanning the time from PONG to the present. cessing had nothing whatsoever to do with the writing Instead, their intention is to provide a rough system- of texts [11.8]. What was really at stake here were per- atization of the kinds of game commitments actually ceptual speeds and hand-eye coordination, in order to demanded within the interaction in which game dra- select and manipulate graphic characters on a screen, maturgy first developed. On the one hand, such an in short, it involved the psychophysiological test data or approach implies a claim about the pureness of form high scores achieved while playing around with mean- of game types, which will practically never be found in ingless text materials. It was no accident that these any current, concrete games [11.11]. On the other hand, trials took place on a radar screen, and the clicking it does, however, offer us the opportunity to get a fo- on of words was recorded as “target selection speed.” cus on those historical elements that are incorporated Just for this reason alone, computer games represent into the computer game without the latter being to- Reacting: Action Games 129 tally describable in their terms. For as a collection of gering of an action from a discrete number of options. heterogeneous practices, symbols, and technologies, Secondly, the possibility arises of optimization through the computer game is more than the sum of its parts. training, which opens up a pedagogical perspective. Thus, I would suggest distinguishing among three basic Thirdly, these test protocols are man-machine systems activities performed to and with computers: reacting, in which the instruments distill and administer data decision making, and planning. Iwouldliketocall from the test subjects, but conversely, also prescribe or the corresponding game types action games, adven- program their behavior. ture games, and strategy games. Each of these games Time-and-motion studies on human labor first has its own particular risk: there is a critical element of started making large-scale use of these procedures time in the interaction in the present in action games: with the work of Taylor, Gilbreth, and Münsterberg. they require attentiveness in the production of a tempo- Based on the doctrine of the “energetic imperative” in rally optimized series of choices taken from a repertoire the era of thermodynamics, these studies were con- of norm-governed actions. There is a critical decision- cerned with the systematization of a universal theory atV Part making aspect in the navigation of that which is at of motion, which aimed to place the shortest paths and hand in adventure games: they require optimal judg- least amount of energy loss into an efficient relation- ments in the traversing of the decision-making nodes ship of the greatest possible continuous performance. 11 of a flowchart. There is a critical configurational as- Thus Frank B. Gilbreth defined his “study of motion” pect to the organization of the possible in strategy as “the breakdown of elements of a given task into games: they require patience in the optimal regulation thesmallestpossiblesubdivisions,astheinvestigation of interdependent values. and measurement of each of these different, funda- mental elements individually and in their relation to Reacting: one another, and as the resulting construction and Action Games combination of processes from a selection of elements that demonstrate the least waste” [11.14]. The time-and- The still unwritten history of the could motion studies of the 1920s, which today’s procedures possibly begin with the institutionalization of exper- of motion capturing and gesture recognition still feed imentalpsychologybyWilhelmWundt[11.12].Inthe on, led Gilbreth to the isolation and classification of context of a crisis of credibility of the senses, these invariable motion interrelationships, to irreducible ele- test protocols were drawn up, which connected ex- ments,whichtheninturnprovidedthebuildingblocks perimental subjects and the “instrument readers” via for all kinds of motion processes. His so-called therbligs measuring devices. The speed of the senses neces- included options such as “select,” “grip,” “put in posi- sarily undermined such an undertaking, since the tion,” “mount,” or “let go of.” Each had its own symbol measurement of human perception and reaction times and its own standardized color code. These commands themselves cannot be assessed by means of human were supposed to make it possible to format “dead perceptions and reactions. For instance, in the reac- labor in linear chains” (Alexander Kluge) as a pro- tion time measurements made by Max Friedrich, a test gram in the medium of writing. Every computer game subject read a display, a stopwatch registered his re- played (with emphasis on the play rather than the game action times, and the test conductor, in turn, read the aspect)canbewrittendowninthissensewiththehand- stopwatch [11.13]. What was missing, however, in con- book’s stock of symbols. The elementary segments of trast to all subsequent computer games was, first of motion,suchasjumping,hopping,shooting,duck- all, the serialization of the reactions into a chain of ac- ing, or running, which are assigned to different keys tions, and, secondly, the elimination of the hierarchy and correspond to Gilbrethian therbligs, allow their between the observed test subject and the observing recording as linear text and thus make possible the test conductor. Action games do not end with the press replay function commonly found in many games. Be- of a button, and they draw their life precisely from the ing able to guarantee such a replay was, however, also feedback-based self-observation of the player, who has the central interest behind the standardization of la- to carry out a series of actions under time pressure. bor processes. This movement generated a “standard Nevertheless,threedecisiveaspectsoftheactiongame or normal” worker’s body, stripped of individuality are displayed by the experiments of experimental psy- and readily replaceable, which a written and thus dis- chology: First, they involve the reading of a changing crete notation choreographs without any loss during display, a reading in which time is critical, and the trig- the production process. 130 Part V 11. Action, Adventure, Desire atV Part (a) (b) 11

(c) (d)

Fig. 11.1a–d A typical action game Samba de Amigos (c 2000). The player must stand at a marked distance to ultrasound sensors, which record the position of two maracas in his hands (a), (b). Three different positions can be touched on screen (at knee , hip level, and shoulder level) with each of the two maracas, which results in a total of six possible postures. These six positions are displayed on screen with different colored circles (c).Inthecourseofthe game, the player has to move the maracas synchronously with the music. Circles are highlighted to indicate to the player which ones to touch. The increasing degree of difficulty is marked by faster rhythms, asymmetries, and interruptions. In between times, the player is requested to stop and pose for a moment in certain positions (d). If the player succeeds in adapting to demands, the colorful, in part psychedelic graphics also move in rhythm. Experience shows, however, that they are hardly perceived, since all attention is focused on the “instructions” and one’s own motor control

Itwasthuslogicalthatlaborprocesseswereno science [shows] ever more clearly that up until now no longer conceived of in terms of the finality of the effort has been made to point out the amazing simi- product, but in terms of the correct execution of a pro- larities that exist [among all kinds of labor],” Gilbreth gram. Accordingly, a chair does not result from the wrote in 1920 [11.15]. If work, in this way, is no longer fact that a carpenter sets himself the goal of produc- conceived of in terms of its purpose, but rather in the ingone,butfromthefactthatarandomworker’sbody name of a universality of processes, then the distinc- performs a standardized choreography of movements tion between work and play also collapses, and chairs within a definite setting at whose program’s end an become the ends of games. “Working this way seems object called a chair results. “The direction taken by like a game” [11.16]. Reacting: Action Games 131

Where labor processes are turned into a “program” reorganize; organization is a theory of change over in the technical theatrical sense, theatre becomes, at time” [11.19]. The “actor of the future,” as projected by thesametime,aworkspace.AntoninArtaud’sthe- Wsewolod Meyerhold, thus bore the stamp of “biome- atre of cruelty made “systematic depersonalization” chanics” [11.20]. He should be a virtuoso of effective into its manifesto, and dreamt of “mechanized beings” motion, a model of energy savings, and a technician and a “mathematics” of muscle movements [11.17]. The of the unrushed replay. The actor became a machine relation between a science of labor and the stage, how- that translated dramaturgic command codes into op- ever, can be seen even more clearly than in Artaud erational life and is measured in doing so – as are or in Oskar Schlemmer’s Triadic Ballet in the para- all analogue machines – not in terms of the either/or dox of expressive dance and in Soviet avant-garde of execution or crash, but in terms of the probability theatre. Rudolf von Laban, for example, who, on the test of marginal error tolerance. What in mathemat- one hand, praised the will of the conscious subject ical terms is termed the “confidence interval” means and veiled his choreosophy in vitalistic terms as a for the biomechanically optimized actor that there is atV Part “dance-based worldview,” on the other hand, made no play left in his play. “The Taylorization of the the- it all the more clear how his work replaced élan vi- atre will make it possible,” Meyerhold hoped, “to play tal and the subject with instructions and tracks. Laban as much in an hour as we can offer in four hours to- 11 placed movement on its physiological foundations and day.”Alltracesof“interiority”withwhichmachines revealed its sources: normally register their own defects were, accordingly, The flow of motion is regulated by nerve centers also considered for actors shaky points of biomechan- that react to an external or internal stimulus. Move- ical control and thus production risks. Conversely, the mentsrequireacertainamountoftimethatisprecisely perfect (inter-)play of the mechanics of steel and those measurable. The driving force underlying movement of biological activity (biomechanics) would make the is the energy produced by the metabolic processes sublime drama. “If a new industrially rhythmic gym- within bodily organs. Food is the fuel consumed in this nastics is created according to the principle of scientific process. There is no doubt about the purely physical labor organization à la Taylor and Gilbreth,” Sokolow character of this energy production and its transfor- wrote in a 1921 essay on “Industrial rhythmic gym- mation into movement ... . The impulses underlying nastics,” “the lines of art and enterprise will converge the movement of action of the laborer are just as visi- andintersect.Thetheatredirectorandtheengineer ble as those of the dancer ... . Modern labor analysis with the stopwatch in his hand will join forces to create and its notation are basically no different than the way a system of new production gymnastics according to in which expressive movements are described ... .It the laws of labor processes ... . It is very possible that [Notation] is based on the observation and analysis of in the factories of the future, tones of this or that pitch motion in space and time [11.18]. will intensify labor. What will probably be heard in Andsincethe“termsofmotion”ofdanceandlabor, a mid-20th-century factory will not be an amorphous oflaborasdance,anddanceaslaborcanbegenerated noise, but some kind of music of the machine, which from the same database, Laban, just like Gilbreth, came will be achieved by tuning all wheels and flywheels to upon the idea of discrete building blocks such as “to the same tone” [11.21]. thrust,”“topush,”“tothrow,”or“tocut,”withthehelp I have tried elsewhere to outline how this science of which the course of entire games could be written up. of labor of the thermodynamic world had to be re- In the Soviet Union, the abolition of the distinction formulated–oncethedigitalcomputerarrived–in between work and leisure in the concept of “movemen- accordance with the informational labor processes of t”wascelebratedasthesignofthesupposedendof a cybernetic world [11.22]. In the context of interac- capitalist society and thus as a historical-technological tion it may suffice to note that the “classical” science necessity. Thus Gastew, head of the Central Institute of labor did not implement any kind of feedback, for Labor (established in 1920), wrote: “The scientific butonlyhintedverycautiouslyinthisregard.Feed- organization of labor ... is not a purely intuitive hu- back in Meyerhold, for instance, can be found in the man discovery, but is a consequence, an equation of equation N = A1 + A2, which is only supposed to mean movement that reveals mechanisms to us. The groups that the actor N is at the same time the trainer A1 of machines and enterprises first educate us through and the trained A2. In Gilbreth, the attention of the their machine-based combination ... .Technologybe- worker is first supposed to be aroused and spurred comes a part of administration. To administer is to on “to experiments” via the supplemental information 132 Part V 11. Action, Adventure, Desire

on the instructional cards that contain the script of became the first person to get through all 256 lev- movements [11.23]. In a second step, he could then els of the rather aged 8-bit PacMan gaming machine be supplied with a time-and-motion measuring de- from 1980: “In a practically endless series of experi- vice, such as a chrono(cycle)graph, for example, so ments, Bill Mitchell and his friends observed the four that he could record “the operations he carries out for monsters until they had figured out their programmed himself.” “[T]he worker is not only interested in the behavioral patterns. They ultimately learned them by paths of electric light marked with dots and dashes, heart. With this knowledge they developed a couple but also makes the greatest of efforts that these tra- of ridiculously complicated sequences of moves, which jectories take the best direction and that the smallest granted them a few seconds of peace from their pur- number of movements are undertaken” [11.24]. Such suers ... . For viewers, it was pure magic. There are experiments in cybernetics, however, still lacked that a dozen world-class players on earth, Mitchell says, approximation of real time that makes corrections dur- a lonely league” [11.27]. Thus, action games reverse ing operating time and thus has a completely different what Jean Piaget considered the essence of play: “Play atV Part concept of disruption. Self-optimizing workers with can be recognized by the more or less large-scale their film camera and computer game players at work change in the relation of equilibrium between the real- atnewhighscoreswerenotseparatedmerelybyfilmde- ity relation and the ego. One could thus say: if adaptive 11 velopment times. The distinction here actually involves activity and thought produce an equilibrium between that between discipline and control [11.25]. assimilation and accommodation, then play begins at Nonetheless, several decisive aspects of those com- the point at which assimilation begins to dominate puter games in which time is critical can be deduced accommodation ... . Play is thus practically pure as- from the science of labor. The dramaturgy of action similation” [11.28]. In other words: in the “limitless gamesinvolvesinthissensealimitednumberofdis- adaptation” that is called a game, things lose their grav- crete options that have to be selected in the proper ity, their heaviness. Everything can become subject to sequence and, in addition, within a precisely defined play, an object in the game, and the game itself consists time frame. Hop, shoot twice, a step to the left, duck of juggling objects, signs, and movements in a space in ... and all of this not a moment too soon or too late. which anything can be connected with anything else. The player’s symbolic death is a function of his degree An action game, however, would have to be seen as the of precision and timing, and the sequence of his “re- exact opposite, indeed as something – as in the case of leases” is dictated by the program code. It is justified Mitchell – which means nothing more than practicing to talk of releases, because the player steers with his the performance of permanent accommodation, which hand movements (from his analogue world) an equally no longer ends with the symbolic death of the player sublime and motion-study optimized body on screen. who fails in his inability to adapt to a harsh reality. Ev- The body of the game figure not only rises up again ery attempt to enjoy Piagetian freedom in a shooting unharmed from (almost) every fatality [11.26], it also game,toassimilateit,andbesubjectivelysopresump- executes its jumps and steps with a precision repro- tuous as to try to play it in a totally different way just ducible to the last pixel. However, it is actually not the leads to a quick end to the game. To play action games player who controls his game figure, as an anxious edu- means,totakeanexpressionfromErnst Jünger,tolearn cational theory never tires of reminding us, but rather to speak the language that holds in the work space. theplayerhimself,inhiscontrolledaction,isalways the object of a choreographic dictate. In the sequential Making Decisions: program and the (more or less tolerant) time frame in Adventure Games which he has to press his buttons, he is the receiver of movement instructions that mobilize his body. Com- In contrast to action games, adventure games do not puter games have made – since the time this distinction involve the performance of actions where time is criti- became obsolete – the player work and dance at the cal, but rather a series of (topo-)logical decisions. The same time. His success reflects the double meaning of pointisnottodosomethingattherighttime,butrather performance, as both achievement and presentation. to make the right decision at a specific place, to go left The product of his employment relation is the end of orright,touseanobjectinacertainway,ortosay the game, which gives evidence of his learning success. the magic word. David Cronenberg gave unforgettable The most plausible example of this was recently form to this paradoxical state of a cyclical time of deci- provided by Bill Mitchell, who after 19 years of practice sion, an eternal return of the same before every choice, Making Decisions: Adventure Games 133 atV Part (a) (b) 11

(c) (d) Fig. 11.2a–d A typical : Return from Monkey Island (c LucasArt Entertainment 2000). The solution of material riddles produces discrete jumps within a narrative. In the example depicted, the hero has to follow a pirate to a treasure, which is not possible unless the latter leaves a trail. The solution: in a bait shop, one catches some termites with a wooden prosthesis (a). One goads the pirate until he breaks his cane and brings it in for repairs (b).Thereone releases the termites onto the cane (c), which immediately thereafter leaves a trail of wood dust, which leads the hero to the secret hiding place (d). Time plays no role: repairing the cane can potentially take forever and it is never completely turned to dust by the termites. All the riddles build upon one another and thus must be solved in a pregiven sequence. Alternative solution paths customarily do not exist. Visual design adapts the discrete single images that comics employ to tell a story in his computer-game film eXistenZ. The film runs con- world’s state of waiting is ended, a new segment of film tinuously in circles until the protagonists have posed appears, the story goes forward a bit, only once again the right question or have used the right object. Ev- to come to a halt at another decision-making node. ery wrong decision just leads to a déja-vu in which the For this reason, adventure games need a definite lastsceneisrepeatedandendsatthesamemysterious form of narrative, aformwithcertainminimalre- point, waiting for redemption by means of a new and quirements as summarized by Wolf-Dieter Stempel: a different effort that can move the action along. If the “result-based relationship” between individual event riddle is solved, the right decision made, the temporal links, the “referential identity of the subject,” and loop is resolved and the film returns to linearity. The a“solidarityoffacts”[11.29].Justthetechnicalstructure 134 Part V 11. Action, Adventure, Desire

of the software hardly allows for anything else, since This “continuation,” which is determined by the deci- every valid bit of input must have a computable and sion that precedes it, has no further decision-making prescribed result termed game progress, the identity of option open to it. Things go on one way or the other a game figure has to be programmed as an array of val- until the next kernel, but there are no longer any al- ues, and all facts of the game (in short: the game world ternatives on the intervening path. Barthes calls such itself) has to be organized and categorized in a database transitions from one kernel to another, from one risk to in which, accordingly, there is nothing that is not ad- another catalysts, and provides in this way a theory of dressable. Especially their narrative functionality and those timeouts in the game in which the player moves the coherence and intercorrelations of their artificial toward the next decision. For catalysts have a chrono- world (and thus that which computer engineers fit- logical, but not a logical function. For example, the tingly call “database ontology”) are interesting for the length of time that a player has to move around in dramaturgy and interactivity of adventure games. Put adungeoninordertofindadoorhasnoinfluenceon another way: how must a story be told in order to func- the logical significance of the door through which he atV Part tion as an adventure, where in this structure do places reaches the next level of play. Catalysts are, as it were, arise at which interaction can be demanded, and how the luxury and rest zones of a game. is a game created out of a database here? What is re- The class of integrative functions consists of indi- 11 markable in this context is the theoretical and historical cations and pieces of information. Indications always exactness offit betweencomputergames andstructural have implicit signifiers, refer to character, mood, or at- narrative theory. mosphere and correspond more or less to that which Roland Barthes, for instance, described meaning couldbeswitchedoffinearlieradventuregameswith effects as functional inferences: “We use ‘meaning’ to the command “verbose=off”. In contrast, the pieces of refer to that innertextual ... type of correlation, that information help in gaining knowledge of the game is, each step of the narrative that ... refers to an- space and orientation in it. They do not have any im- other moment of the narrative” [11.30]. And: “The soul plicit signifiers, providing ready-to-use knowledge. In of each function is, if one can put it this way, its seed, adventures, functions for viewing found objects and the fertilization of the narrative with a further element, especially maps, inventory lists, etc. assume this func- which will later mature on the same level or somewhere tion. In summary one could thus say that adventures else, on another level” [11.31]. In this sense, adventure consist in essence of kernels and pieces of information, games are functional constructs to the greatest possi- of risk situations on the basis of data as they are acces- ble degree, practically teleological relay races, which sibletoagivengamestate.Onthelevelofthenarrative, are much more closely related to folktales than to the this means that a story arises out of the decisions made psychological novel. This alone perhaps allows one to in navigating through a mass of data: “To functionally suspect why their contents are so highly stereotyped cover [the needs of] the narrative requires the organi- (fantasy, science fiction, detective story, etc.), and why zation of relays, whose basic unit can only be formed they operate less with intrapersonal states than with through a small grouping of functions that we term material riddles, not with moods or neuroses, but with ... a sequence here. A sequence is a logical series of keys that unlock castles. Nevertheless, the Barthesian kernels that are linked through a relation of solidari- terms are worth looking at more closely. The functions ty”[11.32].Asequenceisfinishedorcompleteonceit ofthenarrativefallintotwocategories(“distributional” leaves no moments of risk undecided, open, or remain- and “integrative”), each with two subcategories (“ker- ing (which does not mean that the result of a sequence nels” and “catalysts,” on the one hand, and “indicators” cannot, as a counterpoint, become the opening node for and “pieces of information” on the other). a new sequence). Since there are no meaningless ob- Kernels are those points at which alternatives of jects in adventure games, there being instead one and consequence open up for the story. A revolver can – in only one use for each and every useful object, adven- Barthes’ example – be fired or not. In this way, the tures consist of about half as many sequences as there kernel has a logical functionality, for it determines are objects. A key is only there for the one door that how the story progresses, how it unfolds, and it has waits just for it, a letter is only there to reach a player, chronological functionality, for at its point in space, a magic spell is only there for casting a spell on one sin- the game world’s time is bent (as in Cronenberg’s film) gle object. If an action game ends and suddenly become into a loop. Only the choice of a given option releases boring at the point at which one achieves sensorimotor the temporal impediment and lets the game go on. mastery of it, then the same occurs with an adventure Making Decisions: Adventure Games 135 game once all sequences are finished, once all elements an optimal route on an accompanying copper engrav- of the narrative are “used up” in the literal sense of ing by means of which the viewer could take in all of the phrase. For the poetology of the adventure game, it the sculptures along one course and at the same time thus holds that “[T]he ‘reality’ of a sequence does not walk the shortest of all possible courses. In this way, lie in the ‘natural’ succession of actions that it is made the viewing of art fell under the criterion of topological up of, but rather in the logic that becomes evident in it, efficiency. To walk along each path once and only once that is risked and adhered to” [11.33]. and still see everything that the park offered meant The narrative, however, only forms one half of the the avoidance of repetition and redundancy. Perrault’s adventure game. For it is more than just a metaphor to dramaturgy of the labyrinth of Versailles is organized say that every time a player makes a decision he stands for the sake of variety and thus for the purpose of the at a crossroads. Then to make the game playable, the greatest information garnered with the least distance game narrative has to be distributed across a map. The traveled. The ineffective stroller, on the other hand, dramaturgy of the adventure arises in the area of con- walks in circles and – like Cronenberg’s heroes – always atV Part flict between cartography and narrative, emerges from just views the same things. the relationship between topological structure and lin- In this sense, adventure games interrelate navi- ear path of resolution, in short: out of the intertwining gational efficiency in a network of paths and places 11 of a network and a tree structure. Thus it is typical with the narrative functionality of a decision-making that the first text-based adventures arose out of a mix- tree of kernels and catalysts. They break down a story ture of cave exploration, network development, and (a narrative), as it were, into functional elements and fantasy literature [11.34]. This is also nothing new, but distribute them across a map. Here, apparently, the eas- has long been inherent in the historical connection be- iest way to ensure the functionality of the narrative is tween labyrinth and narrative [11.35]. More precisely, by means of things, for a thing is both discrete and the modern labyrinth has significance for the adven- discreet: it has a place and materiality, a size and defi- ture game, a labyrinth that (in contrast to its ancient or nite properties, and it is mute. Taking and using things medieval counterparts) no longer has a single path of thus becomes the motor of the narrative. Managing to solution, but also has dead ends and even alternative fit them together smoothly comprises progress in the paths. Whereas the single-course labyrinth only offers game. The world of the adventure is thus a world of the options of straight ahead or back, the multi-course visible and discrete things and not, for instance, one labyrinth (since the 15th century) opens up the option of atmospheric and continuous phenomena. It is, in ofarepeatedchoicebetweenleftandright,thereby acertainsense,aworldwithouthorizonandwithout creatingtheriskoflosingone’swayatthepointsof the infinite, a world of many, singular, self-contained ambiguitas [11.36]. Thus the modern labyrinth is not rooms – abstract rooms that are pitched by means of only packed densely with tracks, but also has – as coordinate systems and in which nothing merges into does Barthes’ narrative – kernels and catalysts, logi- anything else, but in which everything has its own cal decision-making moments, and chronological foot unequivocal place. For this reason, the world of ad- marches, risky points of pause and reflection at inter- venture is reminiscent not merely of the depictions sections, and unambiguous movements along the paths found in medieval epics, which described landscapes intervening. asakindofemptyspacewithinventoriesintheform This link between stopping points and transit paths of lists: “there was ... and there was ... and there was already understood in the 17th century and re- was.” They are even more reminiscent of the alienat- sponded to with efficient route planning. The labyrinth ing poetology of the noveau roman. “Novels of things,” in the garden at Versailles, for instance, completed in such as Robbe-Grillet’s Le Voyeur, for instance, nar- 1674 according to the designs of the garden architect rate not the story of a protagonist, but of things from André le Nôtre (and in the meantime itself the subject which a possible story (or his possible story) can be (re- of a computer game), includes within it a sculpture pro- )constructed. A possible sense or meaning can only be gram based on motifs from Aesop. It accommodates in gleaned from the changed constellations in which per- all 39 fable motifs that the traverser of the labyrinth can sons and things appear. The ambiguity of such tableaus chanceuponalongthemanydifferent paths hecantake. of material riddles cannot be the matter of a computer Interesting here is less the selection and arrangement game, however, which knows nothing of the simultane- of the fables, but the way in which they are supposed to ity of several possibilities, but only the bivalent logic be viewed. Charles Perrault’s guide, namely, identified of successful or failed interpretations, conclusions, and 136 Part V 11. Action, Adventure, Desire

moves in a game. In contrast to “open-ended works of Planning: art,” adventure games are predetermined to the high- Strategy Games est possible degree [11.37]. The player’s task consists in turning everything that is virtual in the fully ad- In contrast to adventure games, strategy games do not ministered world of the programmer into the reality of involve the reconstruction of a succession of decisions a played game, in finding every object that needs to be along a given path, but instead the regulation of a con- found, and in taking every path that needs to be taken. figuration of values. Strategy games do not deal with In this landscape of things and decisions, the aim is to apregivenbestworldinwhichthe“possible”oflinkable take as few superfluous paths as possible, while avoid- data is turned into the “actual” of the finite course of ing the necessity of making the same choice more than a game. Instead, they deal with that which is possible at once. all and with what could be the best from among this ar- For this reason, there is an almost mathematical ray of the possible. Thus, the task of the player becomes “elegance” to the playing of adventure games, since the production of such a best world. Strategy games atV Part a successful game chooses the most varied and, at the begin with an unmarked landscape, an empty map for- same time, shortest course. It turns the greatest number matted only with a grid that the player looks upon of possibilities into reality while achieving the highest from a divine perspective in order to click on houses 11 relational density among them. Adventure games can and transportation networks, rivers and mountains, be viewed as nothing short of a late implementation of humans and animals, wars and natural catastrophes, the Leibnizian proof of the existence of God. For it is diseases and scientific discoveries in his world. It is his well-known that the best of all possible worlds comes control task to transform the configuration of the arti- about when God calculates, when he compares all op- ficial world by manipulating the image, to observe the tions and chooses that combination that includes the effects of his changes along a manipulable time axis, most possibilities at once, and thus results in the sim- and to optimize the state of the world by means of re- plestandrichestworld,aworldthataccommodatesthe newed intervention. The player balances, as it were, maximum diversity within a unified whole. After this achronic states with the aim of establishing the best divine art of programming has been translated “from of all the worlds the program offers. Here, the control the region of the possible into the region of real be- panels on which interactivity takes place make possi- ings” [11.38], and thus into operating times and life ble the control of a complicated structure with complex times, these beings alias players need to do that which behavior by means of a simple structure with complex hadbeendetermined“fromalleternity,”but“always behavior. [todoit]onthebasisoffreewill”(Leibniz).Toplay If one takes up once again the image of a system a good game, which consists in the integration of all el- of paths and a decision-making tree, it turns out that ements that the code provides for integration, in the the adventure, just like the tragedy, arrange the pos- Leibnizian sense actually thus also means to do the sible in terms of its end, from the point of view of good, since it realizes a divine program. The divine destiny and overview. Tragedy and adventure under- establishment of the best of all worlds requires its re- stand “contingency” in the Latin sense of “to coincide” alization in the real course of things, just as much as or “to encounter”. In this way, contingency denotes an the programmed solution of a game demands its re- event at a crossroads, and thus at a place where one alization in the course of a game and is carried out could have missed each other and failed to meet. Oedi- in its performance. During game time, the timeless- pus, for instance, meets his father at a “point where the ness of the program, in which all presents, pasts, and roadforks”:ameetingthatdidnothavetobe,butwhich futures are already contained, materializes, as it were. – in the moment that it occurs – can no longer be con- Therefore, at the end of a game (as in a labyrinth), the ceived as anything but necessary. Tragedy does not tire uncertainty of the individual moment of decision is of showing that things had to turn out as they do turn transformed into an epiphany of order, and particular- out. It calculates away, it excludes the probability that istic views are turned into a global overview. The end of everything could have been much different. It recounts a successfully completed adventure marks the triumph things so that it seems there is one and only one option, of a fitting-together process, a sense in which each of and, at the same time, it lays out a situation in which the player’s decisions appears as necessary and the best something could be different, but simply can not be possible, but, at the same time, as having always been so. Tragedies and adventure games eliminate all doubts set in writing. thatdeathsentenceshavetobesignedandfathers(mor- Planning: Strategy Games 137

Fig. 11.3a–c A typical strategy game: The Sims (c Elec- tronic Arts 2000). The player’s task is to ensure the happy and successful coexistence and survival of a family or group residing together. First, the player makes use of pregiven parameters to define the personality traits and appearance of each individual character (a).Then,their living space is created: houses are built and furnished (b). Each of the characters has his or her own standards and needs, and the player must continuously see to it that they are met. This includes: food and drink, conversation and sleep, entertainment and work, hobbies and hygiene, friendships and child-rearing, and so on. By means of countless interventions in all of these areas, the controlling atV Part player must primarily keep eight basic needs at a satis- (a) factory level (i. e., in the “green zone”: hunger, energy, comfort, fun, hygiene, social, bladder, room) (c).Here,in- 11 tervening times (e.g., night times) can be accelerated. The perspective taken resembles that of a surveillance system

periority, a prosperous community, or a flourishing enterprise – but there are a diverse number of paths to that goal and this number has not yet been set. Strat- egy games are – similar to chaos – strictly formalized, but not strictly predictable. And since they operate on a statistical basis, their time is irreversible [11.39]. If strategy games thus operate with a modern concept of contingency, this has two implications. First, disorder (b) is probable. The probability is high that the city just built, the enterprise just established, or the population just clicked together will, in a very short time, break apart, fall, or die out. In order to establish, defend, and expand an improbable order against a probable disorder, incessant control interventions are required from the player. Strategy games thus describe a topos of care inscribed with uninterrupted acts of procure- ment and attentiveness. Secondly, strategy games allow one to recognize the computer as a nontrivial machine. Where action and adventure games aimed at the re- liable repetition of the unchanging until the player is fast enough or makes the right decision, strategy games generate unexpected occurrences, surprising disrup- tions,andunexpectedemergentstates.Theymakeclear (c) that the visibility model does not suffice for under- standing computers. Daniel C. Dennett insisted upon this point in his critique of behaviorism. The attempt tally) wounded. Strategy games, however, proceed in to explain a computer by making different inputs and precisely the opposite way: they have only a starting then observing how it responds to stimuli, doing this pointthatcan“unravel”incountlessways.Admittedly, until all possible inputs have been made is not only strategy games do have specific goals – military su- ponderous, but possibly also pointless. It would, in any 138 Part V 11. Action, Adventure, Desire

case, be easier to read the program code [11.40]. This, 1950s not only on the combinatorial analysis of human however, has been hidden ever since computer games genetics [11.46], but also on the combinatorial analy- were given product form, which is why the playing of sis of tank battles. On a hexagonal-grid game board, as strategy games simply consists in the endless delay of wascommonlyavailableintoystoresforanyhobbywar an understanding that is always only approximate, ex- game enthusiast of the time, he positioned two tank di- trinsic, and necessarily insufficient. However, precisely visions and gave them a small and limited number of the nonunderstanding of an artificial world makes pos- (a) rules governing movement and (b) hit probabili- sible the playful experiment of strategy games and the ties. Then the game was no longer played by human effort to make the best out of it. players but by computers, and this thousands of times. The historical forerunners of strategy games can What these games offered above all was the coupling of be found at the point where the change from fiction chance and repetition. Whereas human players, driven to simulation took place, namely, in the sandboxes by their need for meaning, would have learned to im- of the Prussian general staff around 1800 [11.41]. The pede the production of chance outcomes and would atV Part war game of the Breslau Councillor of War and Lands ultimately also have been much too slow, comput- of the Crown, Georg Leopold Baron von Reißwitz, ers were able to produce nonstop, with the greatest prepared for Prince Wilhelm in 1811 and set up in of speed and historical forgetfulness, aleatory moves. 11 Potsdam, already anticipated, in visual terms, today’s The charm of these mindless games did not lie in the popular strategy games [11.42]. On a grid-covered sur- thousands that followed a similar course, but those few face, armies could be played with on different terrain that resulted in smashing victories and crushing de- formations with hills, valleys, rivers, villages, and roads feats, i. e., those, so to speak, at the extreme ends of put together from elements modeled in plaster and true normal distribution. For what distinguishes the un- to scale. It was, however, the war game of the son, Georg expected is the special demands it makes in order to Heinrich von Reißwitz (which the head of the general contextualize and categorize it. It is an extreme case staff, Karl von Müffling, “most warmly” recommended of the contingent outcome and, due to this distinc- to the army for training purposes), that was truly tivepositioninthespaceoftheprobable,relatedto asimulation:itneededahumancomputerfordatapro- the miracle and the catastrophe. The computer turns cessing and was the first game to require “supplements” outtobe,asitwere,aninstrumentforthesystem- (i. e., updates) in order to accurately model the reality atic investigation of a necessary and fully intelligible of contemporary weapons technology [11.43]. Based on miracleasthelimitingcaseoftheprobable,andthus probability calculations, it simulated all combinations exactly what is required in the military sense of cri- of terrain resistance, movement speeds, accuracy of sis or contingency management. It appears possible, fire, and death rates, but did this in such a way that the on the basis of game protocols, to reconstruct under gamecouldalsobeplayedbyallofthosewhobelieved which conditions miracles and catastrophes come to they understood something about war without, how- be. The military in the Cold War, with its paranoid ever, having to understand anything about the discrete fears of being surprised, attempted to reassure itself by computing operations of the game itself [11.44]. Play- having already computed everything that could hap- ers, who for this reason alone could be termed “users,” pen. Hermann Kahn, who – with his infamous book made their moves and left the calculation of their com- On Thermonuclear War – projected an image as the plex ramifications to a so-called confidant, who had Clausewitz of a theatre of global war, called this “think- a command of the (over 100-page-long) apparatus of ing about the unthinkable” [11.47]. This thinking the algorithms (plus updates). unthinkable, however, did not just refer to those in- To recount the success story of the war game would commensurable projections of millions of dead, whose lead us too far afield [11.45]. For computer games, the cynicism was still capable of shocking every audience. decisive moment was the introduction of computers It also referred to the incommensurability of a pro- (this time in today’s sense of the word) into the con- cess of computation which was so elaborate that it text of war games. They enabled one to process things could no longer have been carried out in human game that entire departments of “confidants” could not have times, of a process of computation that, by means of done the calculations for in their entire lifetimes. This an endless repetition of scenarios, was supposed to marked a quantitative leap that brought with it a qual- allow precisely that scenario to appear that no one itative change in the understanding of war games. The would have thought about. The RAND Corporation physicist George Ganow, for instance, worked in the had begun early on to automate its role-playing games Planning: Strategy Games 139 in this sense (games which had previously been acted In this way, Clark Abt formulated what have since out group dynamically, with the participation of mili- been the defining qualities of strategy games for play- tary officers and scientific advisors), to develop agent ers. Their game consists in changing the data of models, and to transfer the “playing field” into the in- individual submodels in such a way that – according visiblespaceofthecomputer.Inthisway,forinstance, to the pregivens of the game – conflicts either have by starting from the situation of the 1960s, chang- to be avoided or brought to some kind of conclusion, ing a few parameters, and running through countless that certain values increase and other decrease, or that computational operations, there arose the most diverse a certain sum of values remains on a steady level. In scenariosofaworldasitmightlookinthe1980sand all cases, however (and regardless how different the 1990s. various games may also be), the relationship of these In the context of interaction, it was significant that individual models remains hidden behind the inter- with the introduction of the computer, the player dis- face. The way the artificial world functions that the appeared from the scene for a while. In the military playerhimselfregulatesissomethingthatremainsin- atV Part definition, computer games were, from here on in, sim- accessible to the player; he can only ascertain this by ply games that were played by computers (and not, means of playing and while playing. How a pizza ser- for example, by people) [11.48]. Man – as program- vice works or how one becomes a railroad tycoon, how 11 mer and analyst – only lines the playing field, which one keeps an ant colony alive or administers the Ro- is completely occupied by symbol-processing machines. man Empire – all of these cares are responded to in Histaskislimitedtomodelimplementation(i.e.,estab- terms of options on scrollbars and buttons, whose in- lishing the rules of the game), then letting the computer terconnections are so constituted to remain hidden play, and thereafter assessing the most exotic outcomes. fromtheplayerandmustbeworkedoutinanap- Programming itself proved to be once more the game proximate manner through game experience. Whereas of all games. Only in the late 1960s, parallel to some of attentioninanadventuregameisfocuseddiachroni- the other prominent first signs of interaction – such as cally on one decisionatatime,astrategygamerequires Douglas Engelbart’s mouse or Ivan Sutherland’s sketch- adivided,synchronic patience in the management of pad and not least of all in the wake of the modeling of several values. It is not the individual decision that is the continuing Vietnam war [11.49] – was there a return critical, but the configuration and thus an interlinked of the player to strategy games. At this time, the game totality of values: anyone who does not simultaneously TEMPER (Technological, Economic, Military, Political pay attention to science, nutrition, defense, and re- Evaluation Routine) undertook the task of modeling production in his world will all too quickly end up the world on a world scale: data for 117 nations from all having to watch helplessly his own demise. Whereas possible areas of knowledge were to be continuously col- action games demand an accommodation of percep- lected and entered, the relationships among these data tual and reaction speeds, strategy games involve more and those among the states were to be modeled in the complex kinds of adaptations. In exactly the same way most diverse of areas and, with every change entered, that the program has to balance the various variables a military “escalation-assessment module” was to point against each other, the player also has to attempt to out potential areas of conflict and intervention [11.50]. deduce how these variables are internally connected Since TEMPER – despite the utopian data volume and (programmed) from the effects that his input has. His the logical impossibility of a “map on a 1:1 scale” – was efforts during the game to figure out what has which conceived as a planning tool for military policy and effects is the search for the algorithms themselves, and a decision-making aid, simple procedures of visual data his task as player consists in learning to act himself preparation and data entry were of paramount signifi- as a program. In this sense, action games were bi- cance. The developers aimed at a graphic interface on nary: being too fast or too slow decided over life or whichonewassupposedtolearn“in10or15minutes” death. This also held in a different sense for adven- to play with the world. “What we would like to have one ture games: to solve or not to solve a riddle, to go day is a system of 15 buttons, five for each of the military the right or wrong way need not result in death, but policy functions. One button could define the variable doesatveryleastproduceatemporalloop(a“going that the user would like to change, another could define round in circles”) that paralyzes the game. By con- thegeographicregionetc.Itshouldthenbepossiblewith trast, strategy games avoid being binary through the just a few settings and a map on the display to represent multitude and interlinking of their variables and in- most of the complexities of the model” [11.51]. volve instead states of (dis)equilibrium. Accordingly, 140 Part V 11. Action, Adventure, Desire

they do not punish with death or paralysis, but instead theformofaqueryinwhichthedecisioniscritical. signalize the slipping away of control via statistical de- In the case of the strategy game, we find ourselves in- viations that have to be regulated post facto. In this volved in the drama of virtuality and the problem of sense,thereisnogameendinastrategygame,just algorithmic regulation. Interaction takes on the form the wavelike function of correcting errors (disrup- of a query in which the configuration is critical. In this tions); thus, the game takes on the form of eternal sense, the three game types generate subjects of action, compromise. of the search, and of desire. Such a typology cannot take the place of an equally necessary iconography of Typology and Dramaturgy the world of images, cannot replace a genre-based his- tory of games, a technological history of the means The suggested typology investigates the problems that used in games (its material side), or an analysis of the arise during play and are resolved in interaction (or multimedia system that developed out of games. It cer-

atV Part conversely: the problems that the interaction itself tainly can, however, bring to the attention of an alarmed demonstrates); it investigates the places in the game educational theory that the level of the conditions of where interaction is called for and which kinds of dra- possibility of statements in computer games can hardly

11 maturgy develop on the basis of interaction. In the be reached by means of hermeneutics or ideological case of the action game, we are faced with the drama critique:thusonehas,asitwere,tomoveonmore of compatibility and the problem of temporal accom- “pedantic” terrain. It probably can also provide argu- modation. Interaction takes the form of a query in ments for a critique of humanistic and anthropocentric which time is critical. In the case of the adventure game theories in which one would still need to demon- game, we encounter the drama of meaning and the strate the legitimacy of speaking of an “episteme of the problem of (topo-)logical deduction. Interaction takes computer game.”

References

11.1 B. Laurel: Computers as Theatre ( TS0 , Reading, Mass. 11.11 For example, the interesting developments in the area of 1991) online games will be ignored here. 11.2 D. Diderot: Das Paradox über den Schauspieler. Ästhetis- 11.12 Cf. C. Pias: ‘noisy, narrow band devices’. Prolegomena che Schriften 2,521(1968) zu einer Animationsgeschichte des Computerspiel(er)s. 11.3 Aristotle, c. 6, 1449b 24–28 TS1 In: K.-U. Hemken (ed.): Bilder in Bewegung. Traditionen 11.4 Interaction is divided into periods along these digitaler Ästhetik ( TS0 , Cologne 2000) pp. 222–236 lines in J. Pflüger: Konversation, Manipulation, 11.13 M. Friedrich: Über die Apperceptionsdauer bei einfachen Delegation. Zur Geistesgeschichte der Interaktivität und zusammengesetzten Vorstellungen. In: W. Wundt (http://waste.informatik.hu-berlin.de/mtg/mtg4/pflueger.html) (ed.): Philosophische Studien,vol.1(TS0 , Leipzig 1883) 11.5 B. Laurel(ed.): The Art of Human–Computer Interface pp. 39–77 Design ( TS0 Reading, Mass. 1990) 11.14 F.B. Gilbreth: Bewegungsstudien. Vorschläge zur 11.6 H. von Foerster (ed.): Cybernetics: Circular, Causal, and Steigerung der Leistungsfähigkeit des Arbeiters ( TS0 , Feedback Mechanisms in Biological and Social Systems,5 Berlin 1921) p. 6 vols. ( TS1 , New York 1949–1953). The expression “metat- 11.15 F.B. Gilbreth, L.M. Gilbreth: Angewandte Bewegungsstu- echnology” was coined by Max Bense dien. Neun Vorträge aus der Praxis der wissenschaftlichen 11.7 Cf. C. Pias: Digitale Sekretäre 1968, 1978, 1998. In: Betriebsführung ( TS0 , Berlin 1920) p. 63 B. Siegert, J. Vogl (eds.): Europa – Kultur der Sekretäre 11.16 Gilbreth, 1921, p. 28 TS2 ( TS0 , Munich 2001) 11.17 A. Artaud: Das Theater und sein Double. Das Théâtre de 11.8 W.K. English, D.C. Engelbart, M.L. Berman: Display Séraphin ( TS0 ,Frankfurta.M.1983)p.62 Selection Techniques for Text Manipulation. IEEE Trans- 11.18 R. von Laban: Kunst der Bewegung 2nd edn. ( TS0 ,Wil- actions on Human Factors in Electronics HFE-8(1), 5 helmshaven 1996) pp. 29ff. (1967) 11.19 As quoted in B. Franciska: Arbeitswissenschaft und Psy- 11.9 For instance, William Higinbotham’s 1958 Tennis for Two chotechnik in Russland ( TS0 , Munich, Berlin 1924) p. 13 or Steve Russell’s 1961/1962 Spacewar. Chess possesses a special status in this context, but it cannot be discussed 11.20 W.E. Meyerhold: Der Schauspieler der Zukunft und die here. Biomechanik.In:R.v.Tietze(ed.):Theaterarbeit 1917– 11.10 Aristotle, op. cit. TS1 1930 ( TS0 ,Munich1974)pp.72–76.Cf.J.Bochow:Das

TS0 Please supply the name of the publisher TS1 Please complete your reference list: For books we need the name(s) of the author/editor, title, name of the publisher, place and year of publication. For articles in journals please supply the name(s) of the author, title, journal name, volume number, starting page and year of publication TS2 =11.14, p. 28?

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Theater Meyerholds und die Biomechanik ( TS0 , Berlin H. Herring (ed.): Philosophische Schriften,vol.II/2(TS0 , 1997) Frankfurt a.M. 1986) esp. pp. 261–269 1 11.21 As quoted in Baumgarten, p. 45. TS 11.39 N. Wiener: Newtonscher und Bergsonscher Zeitbegriff. 11.22 C. Pias: Wie die Arbeit zum Spiel wird. Zur in- In: TS?? Kybernetik. Regelung und Nachrichtenübertra- formatischen Verwindung des thermodynamischen gung im Lebewesen und in der Maschine ( TS0 , Pessimismus. In: U. v. Bröckling (ed.): Anthropologie der Düsseldorf/Wien 1992) pp. 63–81 0 Arbeit ( TS , Munich 2001) 11.40 D.C. Dennett: Brainstorms. Philosophical Essays on Mind 11.23 Gilbreth 1920, p. 25 and Psychology ( TS0 ,Cambridge1978) 11.24 Ibid., pp. 59, 78 11.41 F. Kittler: Fiktion und Simulation. In: Ars Electronica 11.25 G. Deleuze: Postskriptum über die Kontrollge- (ed.): Philosophien der neuen Technologie ( TS0 , Berlin 3 0 sellschaften. In TS : Unterhandlungen 1972–1990 ( TS , 1989) pp. 57–80 Frankfurt a.M. 1993) pp. 254–262 11.42 G.L. Baron von Reißwitz: Taktisches Kriegs-Spiel oder An- 1 11.26 S. Zizek: Man stirbt nur zweimal. TS In: Journal, Psycho- leitung zu einer mechanischen Vorrichtung um taktische analytisches Seminar Zürich, 17/1988, pp. 51–60 Manoeuvres sinnlich darzustellen ( TS0 , Berlin 1812) Cf.

11.27 M. Dworschak: Gefräßige Scheibe. Der Spiegel. (29), 181 P. von Hilgers: Spiele am Rande der Unberechenbarkeit. V Part (1999) In: Katalog: Sieben Hügel,Bd.7:Träumen ( TS0 , Berlin 11.28 J. Piaget: Gesammelte Werke,Bd.5:Nachahmung, Spiel 2000) pp. 108–111 0 und Traum,3rdedn.(TS , Stuttgart 1993) pp. 193 and 117 11.43 Vgl. Militair-Wochenblatt, 402/1824, p. 2973f.; Militair- Wochenblatt, 56/1874, pp. 527-532; Militair-Wochenblatt, 11 11.29 W.-D. Stempel: Erzählung, Beschreibung und der his- 73/1874, p. 693f.; G.H.R.J. Baron von Reißwitz, Anleitung torischeDiskurs.In:R.v.Koselleck,W.-D.Stempel(eds.): zur Darstellung militärischer Manöver mit dem Apparat Poetik und Hermeneutik.Bd.5:Geschichte – Ereignis und des Krieges-Spieles ( TS0 , Berlin 1824) 0 Erzählung ( TS , Munich 1973) pp. 325–346 11.44 Supplement zu den bisherigen Kriegsspiel-Regeln, revised 11.30 R. Barthes: Die strukturale Erzählanalyse. In: Das by a group of Prussian officers ( TS0 , Berlin 1828) 0 semiologische Abenteuer ( TS , Frankfurt a.M. 1988) 11.45 A.H. Hausrath: Venture Simulation in War, Business, and pp.223–250,herep.230 Politics ( TS0 ,NewYork1971) 11.31 Ibid., p. 109. 11.46 L. Kay: Who Wrote the Book of Life ( TS0 ,PaloAlto 11.32 Ibid., p. 118. (Stanford) 1999) 11.33 Ibid., p. 136. 11.47 H. Kahn: On Thermonuclear War. Three Lectures and Sev- 11.34 Cf. C. Pias: ‘Es mag wohl labor intus sein’. Adventures eral Suggestions ( TS0 Princeton 1961); H. Kahn: Thinking Erzählen Graphen. In: U. Bergermann, H. Winkler (eds.): About the Unthinkable ( TS0 ,NewYork1962) 0 TV-Trash. The TV-Show I Love to Hate. ( TS ,Marburg 11.48 Dictionary of U.S. Army Terms,AR320-5,(Department 2000) pp. 85–106 of the Army (D/A) 1965) 11.35 H. Kern: Labyrinthe. Erscheinungsformen und Deutun- 11.49 C. Pias: Von Saigon nach Sim-City. Vor t rag auf der 0 gen,3rdedn.(TS , Munich 1995) Tagung “Hyperkult IX”, Lüneburg 2000 (http://www.uni- 11.36 P. Reed Doob: The Idea of the Labyrinth from Classical weimar.de/∼pias/texte/uebersicht.html) 0 AntiquityThroughtheMiddleAges( TS , Ithaca, London 11.50 M. Gordon: International Relation Theory in the TEM- 1992) PER Simulation (Abt Associates, Inc. 1965) 0 11.37 U. Eco: Das offene Kunstwerk ( TS , Frankfurt a.M. 1973) 11.51 In the words of Clark Abt as quoted in Andrew Wilson: 11.38 G.W. Leibniz: Die Theodizee. Von der Güte Gottes, der The Bomb and the Computer. Wargaming from Ancient Freiheit des Menschen und dem Ursprung des Übels. In: Chinese Mapboard to Atomic Computer ( TS0 ,NewYork 1968) p. 157 CE4

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