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. year. For the relationist, on the other hand, discourse about time and temporal relations can be reduced to talking about Author Keywords events and the relationships between them. Without change time, videogames, temporality, temporal frame (events), there can be no time. INTRODUCTION As a methodological assumption for analyzing game Any formal analysis of games must account for temporality. temporality, we have found it useful to assume the One of the dominant experiential effects of games as a relationist view. This allows us to tie temporal properties to medium is the sense of agency induced by the player taking player-perceived state changes (events), as well as define meaningful action, action that influences future events in multiple temporal frames in terms of different domains of the game. The very concepts of “action”, “event” and state changes. Every game has multiple temporal frames “influence” require an account of temporality in games – such as, but not limited to, those established by: hardware the myriad ways that temporal structure informs gameplay. level state changes, state changes within the gameworld, and state changes in the real-world context in which the Consider the different temporal structures in Pac-Man, game is being played. The relationist approach to time Civilization and Animal Crossing. In Pac-Man, when the allows us to both isolate these frames and analyze the player eats a power pellet, a “special event” is triggered; for relationships between them. a limited time Pac-Man can defeat the ghosts that previously had been chasing him [12]. In Civilization, the Temporal Structure and the Experience of Time number of turns the player has taken are mapped against a Our work is situated in the context of the Game Ontology calendar [11]. According to this calendar, the game begins Project 1 (GOP), a hierarchical framework for describing in 4000BC, before the Bronze Age, and can last through to structural elements of games [27]. The GOP generally the year 2100AD, although the player may experience this brackets experiential and cultural concerns. However, progression in only a few hours. Finally, in Animal perfect bracketing is not possible; structural categories often Crossing, the passage of time in the game is mapped to the make (implicit or explicit) reference to experiential passage of time in the real world [14]. If the player turns on the game at 3:00am, he will find the village dark, with his 1 diurnal neighbors asleep and the nocturnal ones wide awake Further details are available at www.gameontology.org Situated Play, Proceedings of DiGRA 2007 Conference © 2007 Authors & Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA). Personal and educational classroom use of this paper is allowed, commercial use requires specific permission from the author. 516 categories. This results in a tension between the “days”. Inappropriate labels can break the player’s phenomenological (experiential) and structural (descriptive) suspension of disbelief. If the turns in Civilization were accounts of time in games. By adopting a relationist view of labeled as “days”, the game would be “unrealistic” because time, experiential concerns become manifest from the the player could build the Great Pyramids in mere days. beginning, in the notion of state changes associated with Finally, gameworld events may be experientially “special” events. through their participation in a narrative structure. In the beginning of Half-Life [23], the player moves a specimen In the relationist view, all talk of time can be reduced to talk cart into a machine. This action triggers the disaster that about the relationships between events, and thus to plunges the Black Mesa research facility into chaos, and relationships between state changes in the world. motivates the rest of the game. Viewed purely as a state Videogames execute on a computational infrastructure, in change within the game world, this action is which the fundamental state changes are the billions (on undistinguished from many other player-initiated state contemporary hardware) of computational state changes changes, like opening doors and firing weapons. However, happening per second. Describing events at this granularity this event is special in that the player understands that the would achieve maximal precision, but be incredibly game “happens” only because of that specific event; onerous. Further, players cannot perceive events at the level pushing the cart into the machine is the inciting incident for of individual instruction execution; such an analysis would the rest of the game. In our model, we capture the fail to provide a description of game time relevant to experiential aspects of socio-cultural references through a players and designers.2 The execution of instructions in the temporal frame we call fictive time. processor is simply too removed from the player’s experience. Discussing the temporality of a game requires A deep understanding of temporality in videogames that a player perceive events and relationships between requires multiple simultaneous perspectives, including the events. Thus, the experiential category of perception is purely structural, as well as cognitive and socio-cultural fundamental to a relationist account of time. aspects of time. Our relationist approach to time makes it natural to define multiple temporal frames in terms of Experiential categories also play a role in both temporal different domains of reference events. Though the Game cognition and the socio-cultural references that reinforce a Ontology Project is primarily structural and descriptive, temporal fiction. Most of our understanding of time is a temporal frames provide a vehicle for recuperating socio- metaphorical version of our understanding of motion in cultural references and (potentially) cognitive aspects into space [10]. Common metaphors include time flowing past a the model through the introduction of frames specific to stationary observer (ex: time flies by) and an observer those aspects. An analysis of game temporality then turns moving relative to stationary temporal “locations” (ex: on identifying the temporal frames operating within a game, we’ve reached September). Experiments have shown that and the relationships that hold both within and between people switch metaphors depending on the priming frames. provided by spatial experiences [4]. Thus, the player’s experience of time can potentially be manipulated or TEMPORAL FRAMES influenced through game design via explicit design of tasks When playing a game, say Kingdom Hearts II [20], the that trigger specific forms of metaphoric temporal cognition. player perceives many events. In the bedroom where the This experiential aspect can be partially captured in a player is playing, the hands of a clock turn, street noises structural framework by developing ontological categories come in through the window, the player’s breath moves in for the various metaphoric relations between embodied and out and her pulse beats. Her avatar navigates different spatial experience and temporal cognition. Though we have game spaces, moving continuously within discrete named not yet developed these categories, within our framework locations, between named locations, and flying in this would result in a cognitive temporal frame primed by spaceships between worlds. Additionally, she engages in a the performance of embodied, spatial tasks. struggle against the Heartless and Organization XIII, Social-cultural references can create a temporal fiction piecing together the complex story that relates these within the game world. For instance, videogames can use enemies to the player character. Relationships between either the passage of time,