It's Pitch Black. You Are Likely to be Eaten by a Grue

IT IS PITCH BLACK. YOU ARE LIKELY TO BE EATEN BY A GRUE.

ANDREA @RESMINI :: WORLD IA DAY 2014 BRISTOL

It is pitch black.You are likely to be eaten by a grue.Lessons from videogames

WORLD IA DAY 2014 BRISTOL

ANDREA @RESMINI

[] Entrance to the cellar Score: 32 Moves: 47

The room is unwelcoming. The door to the cellar is locked.It is pitch black.You are likely to be eaten by a grue.

> attack door with pitchfork

What? It is pitch black. You haven't played this game before, have you?

> what is a grue?

(lights out. Two voices read the dialog above)

ANDREA @RESMINI :: WORLD IA DAY 2014 BRISTOLOnly confirmed photo of a grue in the wild

What is a grue? Well, we don't really know. But grues were invented as a substitute for the bottomless pits that used to litter even the attics (unpractical) in textbased exploration games such as Zork. They were practically means to control game dynamics and game space: if it was pitch black, grues were going to get you, and you had to either leave in a hurry or light a torch.So let me light a torch to get the grues running, and we will try to explain what we can learn from how and why video games create and manipulate game space.

(lights on)

Let us start with the core question.

what is a game?

STORY, PROVIDES NO INTERACTION

Fullerton, T. (2008). Game Design Workshop. Morgan Kauffman

I'll be using the framework laid out by Tracy Fullerton in her “Games Design Workshop”, as it focuses on the elements of structure, story and interaction, which are key points for any conversation that addresses user experience. Fullterton points out there are different artifacts related to the idea of “play” and “game” that differ in how they handle key elements. The most basic one is a story. A story provides no interaction.

TOY, PROVIDES NO GOAL

Then we have toys. Toys turn storytelling into an interactive experience but they still provide no goals.

PUZZLE, PROVIDES GOAL

Puzzles provide a goal, so we have a slightly more structured experience, but we still lack a necessary element.

PUZZLE, PROVIDES GOAL

GAME, YOU CAN WIN

That element is unbalance. Games generate an outcome: someone wins and someone else loses. No winners, no game.

what is a gamemade of?

So we have an idea of how to assess if something is a game or not. The next step is to understand what is a game made of?

Prince of Persia, Broderbund

To illustrate this, I'll use the Prince of Persia videogame. Not the original one written and coded by Jordan Mechner for Broderbund in 1989, but ...

Prince of Persia The Sands of Time, Ubisoft–

… the UBISOFT 2003 PS2 reboot. Mechner was involved anyway, and honestly it shows.

In many ways, it was a groundbreaking game even though other offers had better graphics, or better controls, or better interactions at the time.Much of its charm came from how elegantly its different building blocks were integrated.

formaldramaticspatial

But what are these building blocks? Fullerton introduces two larger categories or broad areas: formal elements and dramatic elements. I add to the list, and will explain why, spatial elements.

ANDREA @RESMINI :: WORLD IA DAY 2014 BRISTOLFormal

Formal elements are the practical building blocks, if you will.

games structure procedures

They include rules and procedures you necessarily follow to play the game, and ...

games require players

... players and ...

games provide resources

... resources. If you have roamed a level in SuperMario for more coins or frantically run across some 3D nightmare landscape for some sort of medikit, you know what a resource is. Here's a hint: they are scarce. Evil designers make them so.

games thrive on conflict

One very important formal element is conflict. Games thrive on conflict. Someone has to win. Someone has to lose.

games have boundaries

Check Huizinga's Homo Ludens A Study of the Play Element in Culture–

Objectives are another formal element, and Fullerton also considers boundaries as one of them. This is where I depart from her model. I consider boundaries, or what stands for boundaries, to be one of the spatial elements of games.

ANDREA @RESMINI :: WORLD IA DAY 2014 BRISTOLDramatic

Then we have dramatic elements. In the case of Prince of Persia, the whole story revolves around the Sands of Time.

While in the original game they were simply a formal element (you had 60 minutes to beat the game), a resource, they get a whole different treatment in the reboot. They also become a fundamental part of the story.

how does a game connect

emotionally to its players?

The sands also become one of the dramatic elements, those that emotionally tie a player to the game mechanics provided by formal elements.

The Walking Dead

The role of dramatic elements cannot be underestimated. What sets this specific scene from The Walking Dead game apart from similar games is not its mechanics, but rather the way it plays out to our emotional engagement. Many other games include using a controller to push a door close, but here you have zombies.

through the use of dramatic or

narrative elements

So dramatic or narrative elements, the storytelling if you will, is what makes you want to go back (or not) to the game.

it certainly allows play and

challenges players

While as we said the basic dramatic element is involving players ...

it provides a premise

... a game always provides a premise, a way to set up a narrative thread and a coherent environment.

This is true even if we consider games that have become in time so abstract or commonplace that we don't really see the premise anymore. Monopoly is really a game about real estate and capitalism in the America of the 1930s. Chess is about warring armies.

it works through characters

Then a game works through characters, be these pawns representing roles on a numbered board, kings and queens, or ...

Flappy Birds

... really plump birds.

it weaves a story

Through premise and characters, every single game weaves a story.

these narrative elements structure and contextualize formal elements within the game

Dramatic elements contextualize and structure formal elements within the game, and make them different, and more or less successful at engaging players.

ANDREA @RESMINI :: WORLD IA DAY 2014 BRISTOLhttp://mestadelsbilder.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/g-is-for-grue.jpg

Grues, for example, are a great way to make players proceed into areas of the game only if some formal elements have been triggered or obtained. In this case, light, a resource. Did I mention torches are probably scarce?

a game is a formal system that engages

players in structured conflict and resolves

its uncertainties in an unequal outcome

At this point, we could have a pretty satisfying definition for “game”, again mostly following Fullerton. Key words here are conflict, uncertainty, and unequal. You don't want to play a game if you already know how it's going to end, right?

but what about those boundaries?

But then, aren't we leaving something out?

ANDREA @RESMINI :: WORLD IA DAY 2014 BRISTOLSpatial

We sure are. Here's a rendition of the palace in which the whole of the formal and dramatic elements in the Prince of Persia reboot are played out. This is where you spend the 11 to 30 hours it will take to resolve the story of the prince into an unequal outcome. Isn't this a set of very important elements? What are rooms and walls and precipices and waterfalls? Where is playing actually happening?

are grues found everywhere?

Think about the Zork game. Are grues everywhere? Not at all.

ANDREA @RESMINI :: WORLD IA DAY 2014 BRISTOLhttp://mestadelsbilder.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/g-is-for-grue.jpg

That would defy their purpose as a game element in the first place. You only find grues in the pitch black areas you haven't explored yet.

ANDREA @RESMINI :: WORLD IA DAY 2014 BRISTOLPope Guilty, http://www.flickr.com/photos/popeguilty/2696780797/

Humans vs Zombies at Indiana University

This is a map outlining the boundaries for a zombie game which was played on campus at Indiana University. Within the borders, you can be a zombie and have fun. Outside the borders, in the red areas, you could get shot by a particularly nervous citizen who has seen too many a bmovie. And generally have a lot less fun.

A game of hide and seek: does this game have boundaries? Borders? What are its spatial elements? They sure are there, but if you exclude the pole or base, they are all procedural. You sure know if you are playing, and probably running to the airport and flying to Antarctica would be considered cheating.

Look at the way this grandma restructured the sofa to have a good game of go fish, the two opposite areas, the position of the players, and the screen.

And boardgames. On this table, you have an abbey in the Middle Ages. That table is now a microcosm taking you somewhere else, where different space/time rules apply.

And you can go all the way, and fight dragons in Skyrim. Even without any Oculus Rift visors, this can get pretty “elsewhere”.

PHYSICAL VIRTUAL

What we have here, is a constant shift from physical to (apologies) virtual. All the same, these games all structure their different game spaces as an essential component of play.

boundaries are both physical and

conceptual

This is because boundaries can be both physical, and conceptual.

ANDREA @RESMINI :: WORLD IA DAY 2014 BRISTOLNandadevieast, http://www.flickr.com/photos/agnihot/4937763060/

Procedural boundaries

A game of hopscotch. Played in physical space, but do you have walls or signs in the sand here? Staying within the lines and playing out the right sequence is the challenge that the game provides you with.

ANDREA @RESMINI :: WORLD IA DAY 2014 BRISTOLTanzen80, http://www.flickr.com/photos/tanzen80/6140025125/

Emotional Boundaries

Playing videogames on portable devices on the subway. Who's playing here? What about the others?

ANDREA @RESMINI :: WORLD IA DAY 2014 BRISTOLchloester, http://www.flickr.com/photos/etherealdawn/4599010666/

Emotional Boundaries

And what about a bunch of friends playing videogames together? And the odd person in the group who doesn't play but has to comment on every push of a button? Are they playing? Where are the boundaries here?

a game isa closed system

That was the missing piece from our previous definition. A game is a closed system.

a game is an invitation to play and to enter the

magic circle

It's a magic circle, in which we willingly suspend reality and walk for a little while in different shoes, following different logics for different goals. Not many of those who played Doom got to kill aliens as their daytoday job, right?

games happen in space

For a magic circle to exist, we need a specific space for games to be structured.

this space defines the very nature of

the game itself

could you have games without

having game space?

(no. all games happen in space)

And this space is an essential element. No game space, no game.

Functional Abstract Space

Playing charades, Travismcclain.blogspot.com

Even abstract games, such as charades for example, necessitate of game space. Not only that, but the game itself structures space and imposes constraints. You could play charades over Google Hangouts, but you couldn't play across the full extent of a football field (without a lot of running, that is).

this space is both mathematical and

experiential

This game space has a dual nature: it is both mathematical, made up of cells and lines or algorithms, and experiential, related to our engagement.

discretevs

continuous

Space in games exhibits a few basic characteristics. It can either be discrete or continuous, for example.

ANDREA @RESMINI :: WORLD IA DAY 2014 BRISTOLDiscrete or Continuous

discreteand

connected

When space is discretely partitioned, it is also usually connected.

ANDREA @RESMINI :: WORLD IA DAY 2014 BRISTOLPrince of Persia, Map Screen

When Discrete, Connected

Many games, even when they allow a certain degree of free roaming, actually use this hub and spoke model. Here's the map of the Prince of Persia reboot reboot (it was actually a reboot of the reboot. I have no idea how you should call it)

strictly boundedvs

loosely bounded

You can have strictly bounded spaces, or loosely bounded spaces.

ANDREA @RESMINI :: WORLD IA DAY 2014 BRISTOLBounded vs Unbounded

Think of tennis vs hide and seek. But also SuperMario vs Skyrim.

monobi-

three-dimensional

Then, space in games can be mono, bi or threedimensional. The monodimensional idea of game space is particularly interesting.

ANDREA @RESMINI :: WORLD IA DAY 2014 BRISTOLhttp://maxqubit.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/ganzenbord_6-1.jpg

A typical monodimensional game is the traditional game of the goose board game.

Guitar Hero, Activision

But Guitar Herotype games are also monodimensional. Game play happens along a line, there's no going back. Note that some include circular board games, say Monopoly, in this category.

Now, bidimensional is tricky. Clearly boardgames that do not use a game of the goose layout are bidimensional. But what about pool? It appears to be bidimensional, right, but can you make a ball jump? Sure you can. Football is also 3D, or Call of Duty, and so on.

Let's try out tictactoe. It's a simple game, so we can apply these pairs easily.

Space is discrete. You have 9 cells, clearly delimited.

It is also connected. You make sense of the game by lining up tokens or checks across the different cells, according to established patterns.

It is also clearly bounded. It doesn't matter if your “x” is square center or slightly off. Every cell is either 1 or 0: you are either in or not, and this reinforces the discrete nature of cells.

TIC-TAC-TOE

3D Tic-tac-toe, jacquesamerica.com

And it's bidimensional, right? A threedimensional tictactoe would look like this, and probably be slightly more complicated to play.

V. Lodin, M. Olovsson, M. Nilsson, J. Magnusson, I. Anic

Mapping the Zoo area - Exercise

In one of my courses, students got to work with game space. We wanted to see if and how game space was impacting the game experience. Prince of Persia – The Sands of Time was our game. Here you see a sketch of an area in the game, the Zoo.

Adapted from McGregor G.L. (2007). Situations of Play: Patterns of Spatial Use in Videogames

Challenge Space

the game environment

directly challenges the player

The students started out by mapping game space according to a model proposed by Georgia McGregor. McGregor categorizes game space according to the way it engages the player. In Prince of Persia, students found challenge spaces.

These are all the areas, quite a lot of them, where the prince has to show off a little of his acrobatics.

ANDREA @RESMINI :: WORLD IA DAY 2014 BRISTOLMario and Luigi

Challenge space is a staple of platformers.

Contested Space

the game environment is the setting for conflict

between entities

Then they found a good deal of contested spaces.

The game pitches the prince against a rather large number of foes. One more chance to show off that vaultthenstabthenfinish trick that took ages to master. These areas are distinct and different from those that represent challenge space. The two never overlap.

CONTESTED SPACE

Battle for Middle-Earth

Contested space is a staple of strategy games. Here is Battle for Middle Earth.

Nodal Space

social patterns of spatial usage are

imposed on the game for structure and

readability

Then they found nodal spaces.

The magic fountains where the prince gains a few more notches on his healthbar for example.

NODAL SPACE

A leap of faith in Assassin's Creed 2, Ubisoft

Nodal spaces are aplenty in videogames. They represent a specific actionable potentiality that is encoded in an object or place for clarity of play. A very good example is the leap of faith ledges in Assassin's Creed. While you can jump off any tower and roof, these are the only places from which you can leap and survive, and they are well marked so you don't get confused and make a mess out of you.

a different understandingof game space

This way of deconstructing game space was extremely fruitful. One of the immediate consequences was that the students were able to identify a spatial rhythm to the game, that was reflected in its dramatic and formal flow. Game space was driving the narrative in more than one way. Before getting into that tho, I want to introduce what a few groups did. They applied Kevin Lynch's spatial primitives to the game.

ANDREA @RESMINI :: WORLD IA DAY 2014 BRISTOL MNSU.EDU

KEVIN LYNCH, SKETCHES

Districts

From http://krypton.mnsu.edu/~tony/courses/431/Vocabulary.html

They started out with districts. Do we have districts in Prince of Persia?

ANDREA @RESMINI :: WORLD IA DAY 2014 BRISTOLDoug Walsh, PoP The Official Strategy Guide, Bradygames–

We sure do. The game is built around the concept. The Hall, the Zoo, the Baths, the Caverns, the Prison, the Tower.

Then they checked for edges. Structures that keep you on a path, such as the banks of a river, or the continuous curtain of buildings along a street.

They found plenty.

Next was paths. A road, a gravel track in a park.

Here came more to support the initial findings in respect to the general nature of game space: regardless of how complex the architecture looked, you usually had one way to get across a certain section of the game, and no ways to go back.

ANDREA @RESMINI :: WORLD IA DAY 2014 BRISTOLIco

Paths are a big feature of games. Here's Ico. Great game by the way.

ANDREA @RESMINI :: WORLD IA DAY 2014 BRISTOLMirror's Edge

Here's Mirror's Edge. As an extreme parkour slash cyberpunk courier, you go from roof to ledge and from crane to water tank. All safe paths in the default mode for the game are marked red.

Note that Prince of Persia is a tad subtler here, and figuring out the path is part of the challenges that the game throws at players.

Nodes. Nodes are points of interest. Places where things happen or might happen. For example, the intersection of streets.

Prince of Persia has its share of nodes. Both at game level, and at room / space level. An area is a node for the game: within that area, you usually have a number of nodes as well.

Landmarks

Finally, the students checked landmarks.

And while you could argue that you have arealevel landmarks guiding you around, and usually showing up in the visions the Prince has of upcoming challenges, the real landmark in the game works exactly like those Lynch describes in his seminal book.

You see the Tower of Dawn a number of times throughout the game, and the narrative makes a point of constantly pointing you towards the fact that the tower is the ultimate destination.

Throughout this process we sketched, we took notes, we played the game. I can assure you nothing is more humbling than playing anything that involves controllers with a pack of twentysomething. A sobering experience if any. When we were done, we had a couple of workshops and went through what we had learned about game space and its role within the game.

Minecraft, Mojang

While the game presents a realistic if fantastic environment, it is definitely not a sandbox game the way Minecraft is. Everything is strictly scripted and there is no free wandering around. Prince of Persia is much more similar to a theme park ride than to the Sims.

LA Noire, Rockstar

We are not even close to games such as Rockstar's LA Noire or UBISOFT's own Assassin's Creed series, where a main storyline can be abandoned at will, and some of the scripted events evolve through game time (for example, a chase).Space is the only metric for advancement in Prince of Persia, and with the exception of the palace defense traps, nothing ever happens if the player doesn't move forward through game space.

ANDREA @RESMINI :: WORLD IA DAY 2014 BRISTOLhttp://maxqubit.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/ganzenbord_6-1.jpg

From this perspective, Prince of Persia is a glorified (and spectacular at times) game of the goose. It's monodimensional, and it is defined by a rigid structure of dramatic elements that unfolds through a rhythmic succession of alternate spaces: challenge spaces, mostly built around the edge and path spatial primitives, are always followed by contested spaces, where nodes and districts become prevalent. You might have a little exposition there, and then the cycle repeats itself.

EXPLORE

GAMEPLAY: STRUCTURAL ARC

COMBAT

EXPLORE

Basically, the structural arc of the game, its narrative, advance in sync with the player's exploration of its space. Once all space has been explored, the game is over.

EXPLORE

PROGRESSION THROUGH SPACE / TIME / STORY

COMBAT

EXPLORE EXPLORESTORY

COMBAT

EXPLORE EXPLORESTORY

COMBAT

EXPLORE

The game is simply a repetition of this 1hour mini arc over and over.

how have we been fooled here?

This rhythmic structure is so evident when you deconstruct the game, that some of the students claimed they didn't enjoy playing it that much when they figured it out and they knew what to expect next. That was interesting. What was fooling us then? Because when you play the game, especially if you consider it's more than 10 years old now, it's actually a rather good game.

this is a quest

The short answer is that this progression through space to tell a story is nothing new. We call this narrative “quest”, and we have been using it for quite a long time to tie together loose figments into a coherent narrative. It's the Odyssey, the search for the Graal, or the Lord of the Rings.

the end of the narrative coincides

with the end of places we visit

We know that the story ends when we have reached the castle, defeated the dragon, saved the day.

Zork is nothing different from this point of view. Only, its world is bidimensional. In some versions, threedimensional. It allows much more freedom than Prince of Persia does. Still, exploring the world means exploring and uncovering the story. Giving meaning to whatever actions we are carrying out in game space. That's why Prince of Persia is a satisfying game: because its internal narrative is tightly bound to its spatial structure, and it delivers precisely what we expect it will do. And it does it well. With a twist at the end I won't give away, in case someone wants to play it.

information is turned into meaning

by weaving a narrative through

From the point of view of professionals or researchers dealing with new media, videogames but also websites and mobile apps, here we have information turned into meaning by weaving a narrative through a spatial structure. Without space, there's no story. Without the story, game space is meaningless and fruitless. And the balance works splendidly.

why is this spatial understanding of games important?

I wouldn't stop there though. There's an important point that has to be made. Spatial understanding is at the root of our engagement. But understanding these peculiar spaces and the way they are built, the way they work, can provide us with interesting insights into how to structure our experiences with informationbased digital / physical ecosystems.

because navigable space can represent

both physical spaces and abstract information spaces

Navigable space is not restricted to games.

because spatial understanding is

something that comes to us naturally

We navigate through both physical and abstract spaces naturally.

and this narrative is contagious

See J. Kallay's Gaming Film

And the spatiallybound narrative that comes along with new media is terribly contagious. It's like the Snow Crash virus in Neal Stephenson's novel. It spreads fast.

Zombieland

And while we have a lot of videogameinspired movies, and a lot of movies using videogame logic, I would love to highlight a different angle today, and have a conversation on how information, meta information that does not physically belong to the scene, is entering movie space and it is doing it “naturally”. There's plenty of examples. Here's a couple of screenshots from Zombieland, where the trick works pretty well, with ...

Zombieland

... characters crashing through the credits, for example. But more recently, Cumberbatch and Freeman's “Sherlock” deserves a mention. In the series, we have at least three different representations of this metainformation creeping into scenic space. We need to thank director of photography Steve Lawes and director Paul McGuigan for that.

Sherlock

Mobile phone messages and such first of all.

Sherlock

It is interesting to note that while we get a fairly stylish and absolutely abstracted display of information directly on the 4th wall, most of the times at least, McGuigan feels compelled to always show a mobile phone being used, on a table, or in the hands of the characters.

Sherlock

Similarly, when Sherlock and John are reading John's blog, we have a full inscene treatment of the article, down to the fonts and layout. This is very much inline with anything you can see in House of Cards as well, or back to movies such as Panic Room (which had credits working pretty much like those of Zombieland, if less refined).

PHYSICAL VIRTUAL

Using our initial model, the one I used for boundaries in games, these embedded pieces of information would be roughly positioned slightly after the middle point. Going for “virtual” (apologies again), but connected to the physical world. We still need to see the phone. For now.

Sherlock

Then we have Sherlock's deductive reasoning. His thoughts made visible. These are much more disembodied and at the same time much more “inside” movie space. Words float around and attach themselves to people and objects. This is a different approach.

Sherlock

When in an episode we have a drunk Sherlock, we visually see his deductions go both blurry and imprecise, ...

Sherlock

... and his chain of thought collapse and derail. Is this the client or what?

PHYSICAL VIRTUAL

In that model, we are much more leaning towards “virtual” (aagh) here. Still, we get it, right?

Sherlock

We have no issues connecting the abstract pieces of information that are thrown at us, as they are physically anchored to the story. This works. So we get to see Sherlock upping the ante and totally reverse this. In another episode, he's chatting with / interviewing a number of women using multiple computers (not multiple accounts, we are still not there).

Sherlock

Only most of the scene is played out in Sherlock's own mental rendition of this multisided conversation as a courtroom (he's investigating, after all). We definitely moved along the continuum, but we are playing it backwards: this is a mental space that becomes “real”. Pretty much like a videogame.

PHYSICAL VIRTUAL

We moved even closer to “virtual” (lordy). And we did that in a mainstream, and very successful, crime series. This is no Gibson. Something is changing. In his “The Language of New Media”, Lev Manovich stipulates that we can “be there” either through immersion, and skeumorphic actionable 3D spaces, or through navigation, a more reflective databaselike modality. Ten years have passed. My take is that we are seeing these cultural structures blending and morphing. We increasingly grok actionable abstract spaces, and videogames are more than partially responsible for this. When you play your next game, pay a little attention to how game space plays you. And always carry a torch. You'll need it for the grues.

thank you

It's Pitch Black. You Are Likely to be Eaten by a Grue

official strategy

game design

zoo area

goal fullerton

tonycourses431vocabulary

pitch black

interaction

anic mapping

Design

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