Blog Exercise 10

In her paper "The Puppet Master Problem: Design for Real-World, Mission Based Gaming", Jane McGonigal suggests that "the success of the puppet master challenges our assumptions about the kinds of action and interaction that qualify as gameplay, reveal dramatic interpretation to be a viable game mechanic, and demonstrate the value of a dramaturgical perspective for pervasive game design." Discuss how these ideas could be applied to designing elements of narrative and gameplay in interactive media systems.

Firstly, I think designers can consider integrating more real aspects of the physical world into gamespace into interactive media system. This confers a greater sense of real-world participation for the players, and also more immersive roles as “gamers”.

I came across this ‘Wearable Environmental Media Project’ by Japan’s Keio University, which I found quite applicable to gameplay here. These wireless sensing devices serve as potential complementary roles to stationary media systems, adding mobility and real physical-space-out-there for the user. This adds to the pervasive factor. Also, the integration of a real-time, real-space (physical) environment makes the spacial interaction in a game more real.

To make it less virtual and more real, designers can leverage on history, geography, or ancient folklores as back-stories to the game, then let the players take on investigative or live role-playing character persona. ‘The Songs of North’ is an interesting example.

Secondly, designers can consider making social use of space. A game where social interaction is vibrant gives an extra layer of meaning and depth- for the game function as not just a game but a social arena to promote real life interactivity. An interaction across cultural borders can also add depth to gameplay, like The Amazing Race!

I guess games can be such that the instructions or goals are first made explicable to players, like in the Puppet poweplay- "Gather in x location, at y time", then design the game such that a lot of communication between social groups is needed. Or structure it such that a mob mentality is needed, such as a game outcome influenced by popular votes. Or even, such that the game cannot be completed without different skills/knowledge from different cultures, where people from different cultures can willingly come into interaction to play this game.

How about a minimized game interface for the players? Designers can be creative and choose media systems which require little mechanical input from the user (think Internet-abled handphone). This shifts most of the cognitive load of gameplay to the community of players who will then need to work together via communication to decide on the next move.

Thirdly, consider giving a more dramatic, broader game play mechanic, where players are free to interpret the game designers’ action scripts. This way, the sense of "fun" will be brought in by the players. This matters, because the games are played by them, not the designers, who can by no means tell how fun their game is to the players when they design it. Talking about such applications, I think it is already existent in games like the reality TV gameshow, ‘Win, Lose or Draw’. It's interesting to note that even in a simpe game like Pictionary or 'Win, Lose or Draw', the player can choose to intepret how to play out the given word, and his actions may be intepreted differently by the guessers too.

To sum things up, I think the applications are many but the practicality of actual implementation on interactive media systems sets the limits.

Blog Exercise 9

No, I think Eskelinen made too quick a dismissal of Jenkins’ approach.

In the first place, Jenkins made it rather clear that “not all games tell stories”, although “many games do have narrative aspirations”. He then supplicates that “the experience of playing games can never be simply reduced to the experience of a story”. So basically within the set of all games, there exists a subset of those which tell a story. Jenkins’ point is valid- in fact in my humble opinion, it’s really up to the players’ mind to to ‘find stories everywhere”. Even my sister can derive a story (albeit a simple one) from a game such as Pac Man Trail (a cruel story of a dog-eat-dog world, aka survival of the most hungry) or Hearts, the game which comes with your Microsoft Installation on your newly- bought computer (a story of how 4 kiasu card dealers eagerly shake off as many cards bearing the highest scores as possible). It’s then a question of whether the narrative is a good one- or not.

Further, Jenkins’ approach toward game design as a narrative architecture is not an unwise one. The human mind often finds stories almost everywhere, and that applies to games. After much discussion, an aspect of cognitive psychology suggests that most (English-educated, that is) finds the “ABCD..” song a preliminary must to tell what follows after e.g. the letter “q”. Similarly, in a world where we are told stories from young (think folktales, nursery rhymes, bedtime stories etc), the mind is pre-conditioned to find narratives or think along narrative lines. Moreover, every picture tells a story- even a screenshot from a game like Space Invaders tells one of a battle between alien crafts & a sole survivor. Hence, in the study of games, Jenkins’ approach is a valid one. At least, tell a good story if you want to in a game. This is what he cautioned. Thus, I don’t share Eskelinen’s put-down of Jenkins’ ideas as purely pannarrativism.

In conclusion, I side more with Jenkins on the basis that the study of games does not negate the study of narratives. In fact, they complement each other.

Emergence & Progression

Jesper Juul distinguishes between games of emergence, where a game is specified as a small number of rules that combine and yield a large number of game variations, and games of progression, where a game presents the player with a series of puzzles or challenges which must be accomplished in a certain order. Discuss whether games of
progression, which often attempt to combine a narrative structure with gameplay, are
unique to computer-based game

I think that games of progression are, more often than not, unique to computer-based game.

The nature of such games is that once the player figures out how to win such games, he is unlikely to want to play is again since the uniqueness of these games diminishes with each run. For instance, I derived great fun solving all the intellectual puzzles in the Usborne Puzzle Adventure Series as a kid, a non computer-based game of progression (book). The detective adventure narrative unfolds with every unlocking of a (kernel) puzzle. Yet, upon finishing the game, I found basically no incentive to re-read the book, save the cool illustrations. Hence, the economic value of such non computer-based games of progression is not very high.

I guess you can also say that games of progression as a computer-based game has more re-playable value, because the restrictions on what computers allow are less. There are added functions and hence possibilities, creating more incentives to re-play. Like when I tried The Neverhood, an award-winning claymation adventure game, I found myself constantly re-playing, ‘cos of the wacky clay animations, the silly clay characters (plus the hilariously stupid things it can do) and the quaint accompanying music by Terry Scott Taylor.

If you look at the history of games of progression, it is not very long. In fact, by Juul, they are “historically newer structure that entered the computer game through the adventure game.” But successful transition of these to non computer-based game takes time. Thus most of which which we can pin-point are actually in the form of computer-based ones.

But games of progression are not always unique to computer-based games though. There’s this reality favorite TV gameshow I caught on Mobile TV where family teams pit against each other through many different stations of mazes, roadblocks etc. There was even a part where members of the same family were fired by water guns from another family as they traversed through a shaky bridge. (Sorry- couldn’t find the name of this show!) Also, The Amazing Race reality TV series is a successful example, although it is not a pure game of progression, as some of the roadblocks involved are more rule-based and strategic.

In conclusion, I will say games of progression are largely yet not wholly unique to computer-based games, at the present. Perhaps in time to come, we will see more popular or successful non computer-based ones.



http://www.usbornebooks.memoriesofus.com/adventure.htm