www.ebook3000.com METAGAMING Electronic Mediations Series Editors: N. Katherine Hayles, Peter Krapp, Rita Raley, and Samuel Weber Founding Editor: Mark Poster 53 Metagaming: Playing, Competing, Spectating, Cheating, Trading, Making, and Breaking Videogames Stephanie Boluk and Patrick LeMieux 52 Th e Perversity of Th ings: Hugo Gernsback on Media, Tinkering, and Scientifi ction Hugo Gernsback, Edited by Grant Wythoff 51 Th e Participatory Condition in the Digital Age Darin Barney, Gabriella Coleman, Christine Ross, Jonathan Sterne, and Tamar Tembeck, Editors 50 Mixed Realism: Videogames and the Violence of Fiction Timothy J. Welsh 49 Program Earth: Environmental Sensing Technology and the Making of a Computational Planet Jennifer Gabrys 48 On the Existence of Digital Objects Yuk Hui 47 How to Talk about Videogames Ian Bogost 46 A Geology of Media Jussi Parikka 45 World Projects: Global Information before World War I Markus Krajewski 44 Reading Writing Interfaces: From the Digital to the Bookbound Lori Emerson 43 Nauman Reiterated Janet Kraynak (continued on page 380) www.ebook3000.com METAGAMING Playing, Competing, Spectating, Cheating, Trading, Making, and Breaking Videogames STEPHANIE BOLUK AND PATRICK LEMIEUX University of Minnesota Press Minneapolis London Portions of the Introduction and chapter 1 appear together as “Metagame,” in Debugging Game History: A Critical Lexicon, ed. Henry Lowood and Raiford Guins, 313– 24 (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2016). Portions of chapter 2 were previously published as “Stretched Skulls: Anamorphic Games and the Memento Mortem Mortis,” Digital Humanities Quarterly 6, no. 2 (2012). http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/6/2/000122 /000122.html. Portions of chapter 4 were previously published as “Hundred Thousand Billion Fingers: Seriality and Critical Game Practices,” Leonardo Electronic Almanac 17, no. 2 (2012): 10– 31. http://www.leoalmanac.org/vol17-no2-hundred-thousand-billion -fingers/. Copyright 2017 by Stephanie Boluk and Patrick LeMieux All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Published by the University of Minnesota Press 111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290 Minneapolis, MN 55401- 2520 http://www.upress.umn.edu Printed in the United States of America on acid- free paper The University of Minnesota is an equal- opportunity educator and employer. 22 21 20 19 18 17 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Names: Boluk, Stephanie, 1979– author. | LeMieux, Patrick, 1984– author. Title: Metagaming : playing, competing, spectating, cheating, trading, making, and breaking videogames / Stephanie Boluk and Patrick LeMieux. Description: Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, 2017. | Series: Electronic mediations ; 53 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016039454 (print) | ISBN 978-0-8166-8715-2 (hc) | ISBN 978-0-8166-8716-9 (pb) Subjects: LCSH: Video games— Social aspects. | Video games industry— Social aspects. | Video games— Design. | BISAC: GAMES / Video & Electronic. | COMPUTERS / Social Aspects / General. | SOCIAL SCIENCE / Popu lar Culture. Classification: LCC GV1469.34.S52 B65 2017 (print) | DDC 794.8— dc23 LC rec ord available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016039454 www.ebook3000.com For players, programmers, modders, mappers, speedrunners, streamers, competitors, commentators, spectators, gamblers, traders, farmers, cheaters, trifl ers, spoilsports, and all metagamers This page intentionally left blank www.ebook3000.com Contents Introduction. Metagaming: Videogames and the Practice of Play 1 1 About, Within, Around, Without: A Survey of Six Metagames 23 Metagame 1: Triforce 2 Stretched Skulls: Anamorphic Games and the Memento Mortem Mortis 77 Metagame 2: Memento Mortem Mortis 3 Blind Spots: Th e Phantom Pain, Th e Helen Keller Simulator, and Disability in Games 121 Metagame 3: It Is Pitch Black 4 Hundred Th ousand Billion Fingers: Serial Histories of Super Mario Bros. 173 Metagame 4: 99 Exercises in Style 5 Th e Turn of the Tide: International E- Sports and the Undercurrency in Dota 2 207 Metagame 5: Tide Hunter 6 Breaking the Metagame: Feminist Spoilsports and Magic Circle Jerks 275 Acknowledgments 291 Notes 293 Bibliography 343 Gameography 361 Index 373 www.ebook3000.com INTRODUCTION Metagaming Videogames and the Practice of Play [A] game without a metagame is like an idealized object in physics. It may be a useful construct but it doesn’t really exist. — Richard Garfi eld, “Metagames” Humans make their own [metagames], but they do not know they make them. — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain? Let’s play a game. It’s a simple game. Maybe even the simplest game. And although we could play it in any number of ways, let’s play on paper. In this context, our paper- and- pencil game consists of only a small square. Here: . Th is tiny gameboard doubles as a scoreboard with two possible states: on and off , black and white, one and zero. It’s not the most engaging equipment for playing a game, but neither are the digital mechanisms driving all videogames. Despite the fact that the physical attributes of digital media are never quite digital and the possibilities for play are prac- tically infi nite,1 the desire for a defi nitive outcome, score, or measure- ment will structure the play on this page.2 Beyond their voluntary rules and volunteering players, digital games require an observable or evi- dent diff erence— a discrete state or abstract quantity with which we play. Whether the observer is human or nonhuman, whether the evidence occurs within the equipment or the fi eld, a line in the sand must be drawn and judged by someone or something. Th e game must have a state and all such games are digital games. In the case of our small square, pencil marks paper and perception is left up to the player. Th ere is only one rule: in order to win, just fi ll it in. Don’t worry, we’ll wait. If you didn’t grab a pencil or pen or marker or crayon, you probably still have a white square worth zero points. Game over. Please try again. However, if you 1 2 INTRODUCTION actually fi lled in the square, you just won the game with a high score of one point. Congratulations! But the game is still over. Try again? Th is time, let’s make a metagame. Instead of simply playing again, let’s make a game out of a game. We’ll use the same voluntary conditions and physical equipment as last time and we’ll rely on the same belief in a digital diff erence between on and off , black and white, one and zero (at least for now). Here— have another small square: . It looks like the last game, but it is not the same. We now have a history with these mechanics— a metagame based on mimesis, materiality, memory, and even a simple form of markets already at work on this page. Before you fi ll in the second square, let’s agree to expand this metagame by adding an extra condition, just between us. To turn this deterministic task into a two- player game, we’ve hidden a third square somewhere in the pages of this book. Even though the mechanics are technically the same— to fi ll or not to fi ll— let’s adjust the rules depending on the combined states of both the second and third squares. Now we have two bits, with a total of four possible outcomes that change the game. If both squares end up black, we both lose. If both squares are left white, we tie (and you can try a second round). Finally, our Prisoner’s Dilemma3 comes into play when the squares are not equivalent. If you fi nd a black square while leafi ng through the remainder of this volume but neglected to fi ll your square here, we win and you lose. Another game over. But if you fi ll in your square now and fi nd an empty white square later, you win the paper game! We’ve already made our move. Your turn. Attitude, affi nity, experience, achievement, status, community, com- petition, strategy, spectatorship, statistics, history, economy, politics: the metagame ruptures the logic of the game, escaping the formal autonomy of both ideal rules and utopian play via those practical and material fac- tors not immediately enclosed within the game as we know it. Take our second paper-and- pencil game, for example. Beyond the mechanics for playing and scoring, questions emerge. Are we the kind of authors who would hide a black square somewhere in the pages of our book? Are you the kind of player to get a pen and mark your presence on paper? Metagaming is an attempt to ask these questions in the form of a true game design philosophy— a critical practice in which playing, making, and thinking about videogames occur within the same act.4 Part media theory, part media history, and part media art, Metagaming explores videogames by practically and critically engaging the conditions of www.ebook3000.com INTRODUCTION 3 twenty- fi rst- century play. From the embodied forms of vision required to navigate anamorphic indie games and the textual play of both blind and blindfolded players to the seriality of home console hacks and the fi nancialization of international e- sports, each chapter of this book not only documents the histories and theorizes the practices of play but is also accompanied by original soft ware available in the online version of Metagaming at http://manifold.umn.edu/metagaming. Exhibited at the end of each chapter, these playable postscripts are an attempt to further demonstrate and reinforce the game design philosophy already at work in the pages of this book.