Corvus leads us to ponder the emergence of narrative from interpersonal experience when interpreted through game mechanics and the restrictions that traditional applications of these mechanics imply.

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Any writer of a book is fully authorized in attaching any meaning he likes to any word or phrase he intends to use.
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson

Talking to me through the corridors of time–just as he always has done.

Story is the shared exploration of a relationship over time.

Play is any pastime with a primary goal of self-guided exploration of possibility within a bounded space.

Toy is an object created or used for the purpose of play that suggests, but does not define, a bounded space.

Game is a set of rules and/or conditions established by a community and intended as a bounded space for play.

Community is a group of people who have interests or experiences in common.

Participatory Storytelling is the intersection of Story, Play, and Community.

For what it’s worth, I didn’t add that Toy definition until after talking about it with you all last week. Notice that play occurs in a bounded space and that a game is a set of rules that define a bounded space. I wasn’t terribly clear about the difference in my latest posts, sorry. Likely the next post you see from me will open up the conversation to bounded spaces and/or actants (which I’ve not written about yet).

The semantically keen among you will notice that all of these definitions are interwoven. They are not meant to stand alone, but reflect an interdependence that is important to understanding each individual definition. And I admit that they do reflect a very particular approach to interpreting games. An approach that isn’t all that common. It’s a philosophical approach that includes huge chucks of semiotics, incorporates gaming’s religious roots, and blends in a smattering of anthropology.

And, Just as I recently did while defining Toy, I opened up each definition to discussion before settling on the final wording. I thought it might be helpful to link-farm the posts where that happened and share them for those of you who want to play catch-up:

Defining Story
More on Defining Story and a Bit on Play
Defining Play
More on Defining Play
Defining Game

Here’s a side post that foreshadows the recent discussion on toy:

Ways to Play

And, finally, the recent toy posts:

Defining Toy
More on Defining Toy

There is an implied bounded space defining how to play with the ball. Some of it is implied by the ball’s design and others boundaries by the various social contracts in effect. But there is no formal bounded space. The room itself does not count as a bounded space, because there is no formal declaration that someone can’t take the ball into the lobby and play with it there.

There will be parts of the community that play a game with the toy. The most obvious/common bounded space in this scenario suggests that the ball not hit the floor. This implied boundary is of the social contract variety.

Now imagine that same scenario, but with a stage at either end of the room. The organizers throw the same ball in, but announce that the concert will appear on the stage of the side of the room to first get the ball onto the opposite stage. Now the ball exists within a bounded space as described by goals.

The ball itself is still a toy, but it’s now being used in a game.

The organizers may add constraints to the bounded space that reduce the freedoms of the players. These constraints would take the form of rules–if the ball touches the floor it will be thrown back to the center of the room, you may not touch the ball with both hands, etc–that alter the experience of playing within the bounded space.

Now imagine an iPhone app consisting solely of a 3d representation of a beach ball. Toy or Game? At first glance, it would seem to be a Toy, but there’s a problem with that. The developer(s) of the app has decided upon an environment for the ball to appear in–both scale and appearance. Additionally, the developer(s) decided on the exact algorithms for the ball’s movement, as well as the controls that produce the behaviors.

So the developers, by deciding upon the exact nature of the experience of playing with the ball (toy), are providing a bounded space for the ball, i.e.–a game.

And that is why I contend that no interactive electronic experience can be considered a toy.

It worries me that this power of games to teach and train their players is either not understood or being wilfully misused for commercial gain. It doesn’t strike me as ethical to train a player to want to do something that they wouldn’t want to do in the absence of an external reward.
Dan Lawrence

via The Storybird blog

Many in the game industry like to describe particularly simple interactive media as Toys. This is great because, you know, anything that might contradict some common knowledge about what a game is can be breezily dismissed with a wave of the hand, a slight chuckle and a statement of, “Yes, but that’s just a toy.”

I find this to be condescending and not terribly helpful™. First of all, the implication that toys are somehow inferior, or less socially worthy of discussion, than games is simply wrong. And secondly, I contend that any interactive media is a game by definition, as the media itself acts as a bounded space with a set of rules/mechanics that are established by a community (the developer who wrote the rules and the player who plays by them).

But toys are important to consider and I think we can define them in a manner consistent with the other definitions we use in the Semionaut’s Notebook. Let’s start by taking a brief look at three real-world toy groups that we’ve all probably played with at one point or another.

Building Toys: Wood blocks, Lincoln Logs, Erector Sets, LEGO, K’nex–the list goes on and on. These toys clearly suggest a function and have surfaces that behave in predictable, and consistent, ways when interrelated. Some building toys, due to their locking properties, fragility, and/or expense, lend themselves primarily to constructive pastimes, while some like blocks and Lincoln logs, seem to demand a joyous approach to destructive pastimes as well.

Baby Dolls & Plush Animals: These toys often evoke a more solitary form of play. Either through soft, furry, fabric, or mimicry of actual infants, they encourage hugging and protective behaviors. These types of toys often lend themselves to strong emotional bonds and offer opportunities to play-act at relationships.

Throwing Toys: A terribly diverse range of toys, from Nerf balls to frisbees. Throwing toys encourage group play, or environmental play, or both. Many balls have been designed for a particular purpose. American footballs, with their oblong shape, are designed to be thrown for distance, as is the golf ball with it’s dense core and aerodynamically dimpled surface. Throwing toys, clearly, are ideally suited for use in games.

As you can see, each of these groups suggests a particular type of play, but don’t demand it. There are no inherent rules stating you can’t interact with a toy in a given manner. You can certainly play catch with a building block, but they aren’t aerodynamic and hurt when you don’t catch them. You can build a wall out of stuffed animals, but it tends to topple rather quickly (and without a satisfying clatter). You can name your basketball, but it pretty quickly gets too dirty to cuddle with (if you’ve also been playing basketball with it, that is).

And, of course, toys can be used in games whose bounded spaces often reflect the implied play function of the toy.

So with all this in mind, the definition I’m proposing for toy is:

Toy: An object created for the purpose of play that may suggest, but does not create, a bounded space.

All stories teach, whether the storyteller intends them to or not. They teach the world we create. They teach the morality we live by. They teach it much more effectively than moral precepts and instructions… We don’t need lists of rights and wrongs, tables of do’s and don’ts: we need books, time and silence.
Philip Pullman

Developer Moments are a narrow band at the top of the chart, where Player Freedom has been dramatically constricted. Constricted, but not absent, as the player still has the freedom to turn off the game or the freedom to completely re-interpret what’s going on or the freedom to wander off and make a sandwich. If we’re going to expand this model to all media (as I am want to do), most traditional media–literature, fine art, music, and film–exist in this narrow band.

The bulk of the game experience is comprised of Shared Moments, which are a balance of Constraints imposed by the developer and the Freedoms experienced by the player.

Player Moments are a narrow band at the bottom of the chart, where Developer Constraint is quite minimal, but still present. After all, the developer is responsible for providing all the game mechanics and the art assets that help players interpret them. Pure sandbox game-spaces like The Sims and Second Life exist here.

I realized last week that this exploration of game “moments” is a nice, solid, extension of my past work and that I need to write a new semiotics whitepaper once I’ve got it nailed down. Because, you know, I’ve got nothing else going on this year.

/me sighs

Anyway, the first thing I want to chat about briefly is this idea of examining moments of a video game, rather than elements or mechanics. Because so much of our discourse is focused on interpreting the intent of the designer, this may seem a bit odd. But it’s specifically this designer-focused approach the model is meant to circumvent. The single purpose of exploring video game moments is to place the focus where it belongs–on the audience experience. And what is the experience of a video game if not a series of moments and the relationships they describe?

But there’s been, I sense, some confusion about the use of the term. Let’s see if we can clarify that with a real world example drawn from Assassin’s Creed 2.

In the first assassin’s tomb you’re presented with the challenge of chasing a guard through the tomb. During this chase, your throwing knives are unavailable in the weapons menu. As discussed previously, this constitutes a DM, as there is no explanation within the game narrative as to why Ezio suddenly can’t use throwing knives.

If you consider the entire time the audience is not allowed to use those knives a DM, the term itself seems rather inadequate to describe the gameplay. After all, the audience is busy using all sorts of other verbs to participate in this new chase expression of the game’s familiar gameplay.

But I contend that the entire time frame in which the throwing knives are unavailable is not a DM. Rather, only the exact moment that the audience realizes that she doesn’t have access to the knives is a DM. Once the audience adapts to this restriction, the gameplay immediately returns to being (in this case) shared moments.

Now this might sounds like I’m minimizing the impact of DMs, but it’s actually the opposite. This specific example depicts precisely how powerful DMs can be. I personally never noticed the lack of throwing knives in this scene because I didn’t use them regularly as I found their unerring accuracy to impede my emotional attachment to the gameplay.

But for those that did regularly use the knives, this was a hugely invalidating DM. And, because every subsequent Shared Moment reminded them of the previous DM, it had a huge impact, inspiring them to revisit the DM over and over as their frustration increased.

Judging by the Twitter responses to this event, this one small, seemingly insignificant, DM that was meant to introduce a slight constriction of the following shared moments, turned out to be a fixation point for all the things that were less-than-perfect about the game.

Thoughts?

To what extent do you see the “semionautical” approach to game storytelling as the correct one? Put another way: do you see something fundamentally flawed with branching dialogue trees (to use the example below), or are they simply not to your taste?
Anonymous via Formspring.me

I think this question would almost be better served if it were two, maybe even three or four, questions. Let me see if I can address everything I see here succinctly.

1a) If I ever suggest there is only one “correct” method of telling stories with video games–smack me.
1b) If I ever suggest that there should only be one method of examining any media–smack me again.

2) My semiotic approach is meant to be a means of examining media–particularly video games–so that we have a deeper understanding of its methods, its strengths, and its weaknesses. I believe that doing this as a producer of the media is especially important, but I understand that a) there are other models for deconstructing video games and b) many believe any attempt in this direction to be so much academic navel-gazing. I think the latter are selling us, and themselves, short and seriously limiting the potential of video games, but they’re entitled to their views.

3) My dislike for dialog trees is just a reflection of my personal taste and doesn’t even apply to every game. Deirdra Kiai’s games tend to revolve around the dialog tree and I like them quite a lot. But, generally speaking, I find stapling dialog trees into a game to be the least interesting means of communicating story. And as such, I have a hard time appreciating them.

How’d I do?

Do not tell people how to live their lives. Just tell them stories. And they will figure out how those stories apply to them.
Randy Pausch

::

Q: You often offer definitions for commonly used terms: game, story, play, et cetera. How is this approach received by other game designers? Do they tend to agree with what you suggest?
Anonymous via Formspring.me

In every era, in every discipline, there are those that appreciate efforts to view things through a new lens and those that do not. Game design is no different. Responses to my semiotic approach have met with everything from outright dismissal, to incredulous curiosity, to open interest and support, to everything in between.

I do try not to worry too much about how my approach is being received and just focus on the journey itself, but I’d be lying if I didn’t tell you I’m thrilled whenever I find a developer (usually a young, indie developer) linking to my writing or emailing me to tell me how much my semionautical ramblings have influenced their thinking about the games they design.

In the meantime, I’m experimenting with formspring.me, a site where people can ask me anonymous questions. For example:

In your opinion, what game has the best storytelling ever?
Anonymous

Oh, I don’t think that’s a question I can answer so simply. For one thing, there are many different approaches to storytelling in games. For another, nearly every game has a significant flaw in its approach that keeps it from doing great storytelling. Finally, I’m committed to examining how game mechanics communicate meaning without passing off my own subjective tastes as objective truth.

So instead, I will say that I still hold the environmental storytelling of Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss in high regard. Psychonauts’ use of traditional platformer mechanics to communicate story was very delightful. And Today I Die’s manipulation of textual elements to influence the storyworld (and vice versa) was inspired.

Games traditionally held up as great storytelling games (for example: Planescape Torment) typically do not hold my interest as my focus is on game mechanics themselves, not branching dialog trees.

While I can easily tick a box that sends my formspring.me Q&As to Twitter and Facebook, I can’t auto-publish them here at the Semionaut’s Notebook. I suspect many of the questions will be of interest and worthy of discussion, however.

So what do you think? Should I continue to cross post a selection of my formspring.me Q&A to the blog?

In the first Assassin’s Creed, after each major assassination, the world dissolved into the pseudo-code space of the Animus and the player is shown a conversation between Altair and his victim. The player has no control over Altair during this time, but can watch for “glitches” in the data stream and press a button to switch the camera view during a glitch.

Keeping in mind the thematic context of AC–player as character as virtual memory puppet–would these moments be Developer Moments or Shared Moments? Why?

Any time the player’s available verbs are restricted beyond what can be attributed to a clear narrative device.

And if they fall into the three categories of Exposition, Foreshadowing, and Puppeteering, then doesn’t that rather suggest there are a lot of other things that happen in video games that don’t fit this mold?

Hopefully, yes.

The moments we’ve talked about that almost-but-don’t-quite-fit the DM label suggest we should also define shared Shared Moments. After a bit of contemplation, my first attempt looked a bit like this:

Any time the player completes a developer-designed task in the manner anticipated by the developer

Which pretty much sums up (non-sandbox) gameplay, right? I mean Braid is one long shared moment, with the player expected to solve each level in exactly the right manner. Hitman, while more willing to let you stray, certainly rewards you for finding the shared moments.

But… just as I don’t feel Developer Moments should be limited to cut-scenes, I don’t feel Shared Moments should be limited to gameplay.

Link’s flourish when he opens a chest in a Zelda game is, I feel, a shared moment. The player has no “flourish item” button and so they aren’t being puppeteered, precisely. It’s simply an animation designed to convey a childlike sense of excitement over opening a present, as well as a means to clearly communicate what was found to the player.

Half Life’s gun-lowered-when-facing-a-friendly-character is a shared moment, as are the love-em-or-hate-em in-game conversations. FPS games are full of “locked door until you complete a task” manipulation and since the player is still in control of their verb set in HL2, I believe we should call these shared moments as well.

So perhaps a slight tweaking of the definition towards a bit of inclusiveness of approach to the shared moments:

Any time the player is guided towards experiencing the game in a manner intended by the developer.

Thoughts?

And while you’re at it, feel free to suggest categories of Shared Moments if they occur to you. I imagine we can find three good categories for Shared Moments before we move onto defining Player Moments.

So here, for the record, is something I’ve avoided doing in the past–my own Game Manifesto.

The more rigidly we declare what games are not, the more culturally irrelevant we threaten to make them.

That’s it. Everything else I do involving game is a semiotic exploration based on that underlying principle. I believe we would be far better served exploring how people interact with games than running around saying they aren’t art, or aren’t stories, or can’t end, or must have challenge/reward loops, or must be indie, or must make a statement, or blah Blah Blah. We, as an industry, don’t have an ounce of understanding about how the games we produce impact our audience emotionally and only a small idea of how they impact them intellectually. And most of the things we think we know we’ve borrowed from Hollywood, only to discover that once we apply them to a game–we don’t really know them after all because they don’t seem to work.

So let’s stop this masturbatory process of dictating what games are and, most importantly, what they aren’t and start exploring what people do with them. That’s the important part of the equation and so far–we seem to be missing it.

“This is a videogame, those are real peoples’ lives, we are not trying to make a statement with that.” #devquote #missingthepoint #semionautvia Twitter

Make eye contact with everyone. If they look back at you, smile. If they smile back say, “Hi.” If they say hi back, ask them how their conference [day/week/month/year] is going. The next thing you know, you’re in a conversation with an industry [interesting/insightful/intelligent/angry/crazy] pro [artist/geek/homeless person/middle-aged woman with a golden retriever *].

The trick, of course, is finding value in talking to people from different backgrounds and with different perspectives. If you’re not genuinely interested, the above advice won’t do you a lot of good.

* Crazy Middle-Aged Woman with a Gold Retriever appears to be a Portland archetype. I’ve met at least three in as many months.