Games and Storytelling: Understanding Games

1. Games and Storytelling: Understanding Games Frans Mäyrä Research Director, PhD Game Research Lab Hypermedia Laboratory

2. Birth of Game Studies, or Ludology • Games are ancient, but academic study of them is rather recent phenomenon • But there is some: Stewart Culin: Games of the North American Indians: Games of Chance & Games of Skill (1907), H.J.R. Murray, A History of Chess (1913), Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture (1938), Roger Caillois, Man, Play and Games (1958), The Study of Games (Elliott M. Avedon & Brian Sutton-Smith, eds., 1971) + modern game studies (2000>) • ”No prior research” is no excuse any more

3. Many lines of games history

4. Games as a cultural phenomenon • Games are based on play behaviour, which has ambiguous and complex nature • Action that takes place in tension between a) fixed rules and structures, b) free improvisation and creativity • According to Johan Huizinga, play is older than culture, but culture is also based on play

5. Different varieties of games • According to Roger Caillois, there is the basic distinction ludus/paideia (more structured games/more free games & play forms) • In addition there are four basic categories (agon, alea, mimicry, ilinx) • Ranging from competitions to games of chance, from masks & role-play to games of action & ’vertigo’, the range of games is vast

6. Definitions of ’play’ & ’game’ • Play is “a free activity … [in which] one proceeds within its own proper boundaries of time and space according to fixed rules and in an orderly manner” (Huizinga) • Game is “an interactive structure of endogenous meaning that requires players to struggle toward a goal” (Costikyan) • Focus on the ”magic circle”: the mental act of framing (this is ”just a game”, I am ”just playing” – effects a magical act of imaginative liberation) • Or: ”games are what game designers create” (Salen & Zimmerman)

7. Gameplay and game thematics • The ’core’ of game can be located at its ”gameplay” (the rule-bound interaction), but there are also other important aspects of games

8. Towards ludology • Games were long allowed to enter academia only as ”interactive fiction/narratives” • Partly a question of cultural value: literary and visual arts were perceived to have such merits that e.g. Pong (Atari, 1971) did not have • At the end of 1990s some literary and cultural scholars started to see the need to study ”games as games”, i.e., from their own starting points, rather than with the criteria of some other form of art

9. Simulation vs. representation? • Gonzalo Frasca has emphasized the differences in the fundamental character of simulation as compared to representation • Simulation does not only represent objects and systems, but also models their behaviours • Whereas representation is chosen and defined by the artist/creator, a simulation allows for experimentation by the user

10. Ludology vs. narratology? • At the early stages, ludology was positioned by some as a counter-reaction towards the ’dominant’ narratological views • The storytelling potentials of games were strongly rejected: a game is not a story (but: players can use games for storytelling purposes) • Today, most games scholars would see the situation as more multidimensional • There are games that are more ”toy/tool-like”: they are strong in simulation – but some games are rather linear, and are thereby pre-scripted vehicles for ”authorial expression”

11. Story vs. game world? • There is difference between plot, story, and intrigue (dramatic/dynamic tension) • In order to have a narrative, there needs to be both narrator and narratee; games do not naturally fit into this kind of structure (e.g. Tetris and other more ”abstract” games) • Where games can have storylines as potentials, they all can be seen to have a game world • A game world is the space that is imaginatively entered when gameplay starts

12. Example: the world of Tolkien • J.R.R. Tolkien, a philologist and an Oxford professor, orginally created his ”Middle-Earth” in order to give background to the invented languages he had been working on from his youth • Similar to the folktales and mythologies Tolkien admired, Middle-Earth was an endless process of creation, addition and alteration, rather than a fixed and unified collection of stories

13. From a world into a game • Tolkien’s work has made a profound impact on both fantasy literature and game design • ”Entering the world of fiction” has got various implementations • Early role-playing games (e.g. Dungeons&Dragons, TSR, 1974) combined a fantasy setting with the gameplay mechanisms adapted from miniature war games • ”Advent”, ”Angband” and others took the world exploration aspect as the focus of gameplay

14. Story-driven Tolkien-adaptations • The Hobbit by Beam Software, 1982 (a C64 ”classic”) • A text adventure, gameplay based on a parser with rather good vocabulary • The plot of the novel broken into multilinear task-structures

15. Current range of LOTR games • Action adventures: Fellowship of the Ring (Surreal, 2002), Two Towers (Stormfront, 2002), The Return of the King (EA Games, 2003) • Strategy: War of the Ring (Liquid Ent. 2003) • MMORPG: Middle-Earth Online (Turbine, under development) • In addition: a range of board games, traditional war games, role-playing games etc.

16. Focus: cinematic action with a LOTR theme

17. Focus: strategic action with a LOTR theme

18. Focus: exploration, character advancement and community creation with a LOTR theme

19. Conclusions • Both at the core gameplay level, and at the secondary (e.g. thematic) level, there are extensive range of alternatives • Typical ”game genre” characterisations are combinations of core and secondary elements, e.g. ”space shooter”, ”fantasy RPG”, or ”military strategy” • Gameplay is an act that takes place in the crossing of contexts; those of different kinds of games and those of various kinds of players