Temporal Frames: A Unifying Framework for the Analysis of Game Temporality Jose P. Zagal Michael Mateas College of Computing Computer Science Department Georgia Institute of Technology University of California Santa Cruz
[email protected] [email protected] ABSTRACT and anxious for interaction. As even only three examples This article introduces the notion of temporal frames as a shows, any account of game temporality must be able to tool for the formal analysis of the temporality of games. A describe a broad range of phenomena. Concepts such as temporal frame is a set of events, along with the temporality duration, actions and reactions, timelines, turn-taking, and induced by the relationships between those events. We calendars are just some of the temporal elements commonly discuss four common temporal frames: real-world time seen in videogames. (events taking place in the physical world), gameworld time (events within the represented gameworld, including events Time associated with gameplay actions), coordination time The literature on the philosophy of time commonly (events that coordinate the actions of players and agents), distinguishes Platonist and relationist understandings of and fictive time (applying socio-cultural labels to events, as time [13]. For the Platonist, time is like an “empty container well as narrated event sequences). We use frames to into which events may be placed; but it is a container that analyze the real-time/turn-based distinction as well as exists independently of whether or not anything is placed in various temporal anomalies. These discussions illustrate it” [21]. Thus it is possible to conceive of all change how temporal frames are useful for gaining a more nuanced ceasing throughout the universe for a period of, say, one understanding of temporal phenomena in games.