Games and Play
2. Consider the work you created for project 1. Is this work actually a game? Why/why not?
Let’s recall: My group’s project’s titled “ScaryTales”, an interactive narrative where Sadako the evil existent ‘transcoded’ her hatred into a once-ordinary fairytale world. The user navigates his way sorta linearly through a non-linear narrative. (Actually, I find this rather ironic that while we are trying to make the fiction non-linear, the user can seemingly only go thru the piece in a linear fashion.)
My Take
My take is that “ScaryTales” is in essence a narrative which was tweaked to be as interactive as we could manage, so much so that it became more game-like then we had intended it to be.
Why is it game-like?
Firstly, the element of existence of a goal presented to the user*. I observed that during the implementation, certain groups were sub-consciously vying to reach the part where the potion could be thrown at Sadako to defeat her. Hence the role of agon is brought in, giving it some game-like quality, where users get the notion of “an explicit win-state”.
Secondly, the presence of struggle has fittingly induced the game-like quality. Recall that we laid certain traps, e.g. a rebellious user ignores Puss’s warning, ventures to the mountains, and dies. The use of memory in “ScaryTales” locks areas which have been accessed, which when clicked on again produce “There is no time to lose.” Thus the sense of urgency, hence the illusion** of struggle (against time) which is very much an element of a game.
Why is it still considered an interactive narrative?
With reference to the first point, the notion of a goal is somewhat sub-consciously generated on the user’s part. If we looked at “ScaryTales” as an interactive narrative with a no. of different endings, inevitably some ends would be ‘better’ then others. And by the logic of induction, there would be a ‘best’, the most ‘ideal’ end- and that is what the user sub-consciously sees as the goal. To illustrate my point, take a look at “The Others” piece done by another group. By my yardstick, I do find it an impressive interactive narrative. At the same time, I also observed that during implementation, within each group, people were focused more on unlocking the most areas in the quickest time (or the time interval given for implementation J). As such, we see the sub-conscious identification of a certain goal. But this certainly doesn’t make “The Others” a game.
With reference to the second point, I would like to borrow Costikyan’s quote to fight my stand. He wrote, “- there can be no game without struggle. A game requires players to struggle interactively toward a goal.” It is true that the laying of traps and the throwing of the potion on Sadako makes “ScaryTales” game-like. Yet, back to my take at the very beginning, all these were included for interactivity’s sake. We were keeping to Crawford’s definition of interactivity – the use of feedback to the user whose input influences the feedback from the system.
To conclude, I reinstate my take.
* I used the term “user” instead of a “reader” here not to intend that “ScaryTales” is a game. It’s just because there isn’t too much to read in “ScaryTales” anyway, and if it did, there wouldn’t be much gaps intended for the user to fill in for interactivity’s sake.
** I used the word “illusion” since we didn’t use any timer in “ScaryTales”!
Let’s recall: My group’s project’s titled “ScaryTales”, an interactive narrative where Sadako the evil existent ‘transcoded’ her hatred into a once-ordinary fairytale world. The user navigates his way sorta linearly through a non-linear narrative. (Actually, I find this rather ironic that while we are trying to make the fiction non-linear, the user can seemingly only go thru the piece in a linear fashion.)
My Take
My take is that “ScaryTales” is in essence a narrative which was tweaked to be as interactive as we could manage, so much so that it became more game-like then we had intended it to be.
Why is it game-like?
Firstly, the element of existence of a goal presented to the user*. I observed that during the implementation, certain groups were sub-consciously vying to reach the part where the potion could be thrown at Sadako to defeat her. Hence the role of agon is brought in, giving it some game-like quality, where users get the notion of “an explicit win-state”.
Secondly, the presence of struggle has fittingly induced the game-like quality. Recall that we laid certain traps, e.g. a rebellious user ignores Puss’s warning, ventures to the mountains, and dies. The use of memory in “ScaryTales” locks areas which have been accessed, which when clicked on again produce “There is no time to lose.” Thus the sense of urgency, hence the illusion** of struggle (against time) which is very much an element of a game.
Why is it still considered an interactive narrative?
With reference to the first point, the notion of a goal is somewhat sub-consciously generated on the user’s part. If we looked at “ScaryTales” as an interactive narrative with a no. of different endings, inevitably some ends would be ‘better’ then others. And by the logic of induction, there would be a ‘best’, the most ‘ideal’ end- and that is what the user sub-consciously sees as the goal. To illustrate my point, take a look at “The Others” piece done by another group. By my yardstick, I do find it an impressive interactive narrative. At the same time, I also observed that during implementation, within each group, people were focused more on unlocking the most areas in the quickest time (or the time interval given for implementation J). As such, we see the sub-conscious identification of a certain goal. But this certainly doesn’t make “The Others” a game.
With reference to the second point, I would like to borrow Costikyan’s quote to fight my stand. He wrote, “- there can be no game without struggle. A game requires players to struggle interactively toward a goal.” It is true that the laying of traps and the throwing of the potion on Sadako makes “ScaryTales” game-like. Yet, back to my take at the very beginning, all these were included for interactivity’s sake. We were keeping to Crawford’s definition of interactivity – the use of feedback to the user whose input influences the feedback from the system.
To conclude, I reinstate my take.
* I used the term “user” instead of a “reader” here not to intend that “ScaryTales” is a game. It’s just because there isn’t too much to read in “ScaryTales” anyway, and if it did, there wouldn’t be much gaps intended for the user to fill in for interactivity’s sake.
** I used the word “illusion” since we didn’t use any timer in “ScaryTales”!
posted by cpf at 11:12 AM
2 Comments:
Its very interesting (for me anyway) that many of the projects became more game-like than intended. This seems to suggest that games are perhaps the easiest way to think about or frame interactivity, such that even when we don't mean to, we end up creating something game-like as a way of expressing interactivity.
Yeah, i agree with that too. Perhaps it stems from our pre-conceived notion that the most apparent form of interactivity takes place in the form of a game, since almost everyone has played at least an engaging game before. And "engaging" seems == to interactivity on the most general level.
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