JEFF WATSON ASSISTANT PROFESSOR INTERACTIVE MEDIA AND GAMES USC SCHOOL OF CINEMATIC ARTS @REMOTEDEVICE
What Hockey Wants: Drama, Narrative, and Sports (DiGRA 2014 Talk)
Aug 19, 2015
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JEFF WATSON ASSISTANT PROFESSOR
INTERACTIVE MEDIA AND GAMES USC SCHOOL OF CINEMATIC ARTS
@REMOTEDEVICE
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This talk won’t be about Canadian national identity.
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These people aren’t all here just to watch the pretty patterns the players make as they move around the ice.
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Heroes and legends.
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Iconic moments.
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News.
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Broadcasting.
COMPLETELY UNSCIENTIFIC CHARTS COMPARING GOOGLE SEARCHES FOR THE KEYWORD
“HOCKEY” WITH OTHER KEYWORD SEARCHES
0
5
10
15
20
hockey(18M)
"videogame"(69k)
videogame(20k)
# of news search results
# of news searchresults (inmillions)
Google.com. 28 July 2014.
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Numbers vary from day to day.
02468
1012
hockey(109M)
"videogame"(70M)
videogame(12M)
# of web search results
# of web searchresults (in tens ofmillions)
Google.com. 28 July 2014.
0100200300400500
# of web search results
# of web search results(in tens of millions)
Google.com. 28 July 2014.
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Movies.
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Books. Soundtracks for books.
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But even on a lonely neighborhood rink, there is plenty of narrative. As I’ll discuss later, it’s essential to how the game works.
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Narrative is also key to the individual identity constructions of players.
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And finally, the rules of the game can be thought of as a kind of distillation of narratives about the game.
GAMES AND NARRATIVE
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Usually when we think of narrative and games, we think of stuff like this.
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RPGs…
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Twine games…
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Interactive fiction…
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Experiments in AI…
NARRATIVE IS JUST AS CENTRAL TO HOCKEY AS IT IS TO THESE
GAMES.
SPORTS LIKE HOCKEY SET THE HIGH WATERMARK FOR PROCEDURAL CONTENT
GENERATION.
SPORTS MAKE NARRATIVE – AND THEY ARE MADE OF
NARRATIVE.
DEFINITIONS: SPORT
SITUATION DRAMA
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First, let’s define some terms.
DEFINITIONS: SPORT
SITUATION DRAMA
SPORT
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What is a sport?
A SPORT IS A COMPETITIVE ACTIVITY, USUALLY BUT NOT NECESSARILY INVOLVING SOME KIND OF ATHLETIC PERFORMANCE, WHEREIN THE SKILL OF ONE PLAYER OR TEAM OF PLAYERS IS TESTED, THROUGH INDIVIDUAL CONTESTS OR SETS OF LINKED CONTESTS, AGAINST THE SKILL OF ONE OR MORE OTHER PLAYERS OR TEAMS OF PLAYERS*
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A formalist definition.
A SPORT IS A COMPETITIVE ACTIVITY, USUALLY BUT NOT NECESSARILY INVOLVING SOME KIND OF ATHLETIC PERFORMANCE, WHEREIN THE SKILL OF ONE PLAYER OR TEAM OF PLAYERS IS TESTED, THROUGH INDIVIDUAL CONTESTS OR SETS OF LINKED CONTESTS, AGAINST THE SKILL OF ONE OR MORE OTHER PLAYERS OR TEAMS OF PLAYERS*
A SPORT IS A COMPETITIVE ACTIVITY, USUALLY BUT NOT NECESSARILY INVOLVING SOME KIND OF ATHLETIC PERFORMANCE, WHEREIN THE SKILL OF ONE PLAYER OR TEAM OF PLAYERS IS TESTED, THROUGH INDIVIDUAL CONTESTS OR SETS OF LINKED CONTESTS, AGAINST THE SKILL OF ONE OR MORE OTHER PLAYERS OR TEAMS OF PLAYERS* *except when it isn’t
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There are of course many exceptions. This is the danger of trying to make any kind of formal definition. Maybe the best definition of sport is, “you know one when you see one.”
A SET OF RULES, PROCEDURES, LIMITS, AND TRADITIONS THAT GIVES RISE TO DRAMATIC SITUATIONS
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Instead of getting caught in the mud of formalist definitions, let’s bump up the abstraction level a bit.
A SET OF RULES, PROCEDURES, LIMITS, AND TRADITIONS THAT GIVES RISE TO DRAMATIC SITUATIONS
DEFINITIONS: SPORT
SITUATION DRAMA
SITUATION
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Borrowing the concept of “situation” from Sartre.
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Tie-ins here to Goffman, Debord, and Jerome Bruner. Bruner we’ll return to again.
AN OPPORTUNITY TO ACT
The writer is in a situation in their epoch.
Jean-Paul Sartre Editorial in Les Temps Modernes, Issue 1 (1945)
AN OPPORTUNITY TO AFFIRM OR BREAK WITH EXPECTATIONS (or
“SCRIPTS”)
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For info on Scripts, see Bruner 1991.
“We’ve got ourselves a situation…”
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Western Lit & Dramatic art: conflict, crisis, revolution
“CHARACTER IS DESTINY” Heraclitus
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We define ourselves by our actions.
“[There] is freedom only in a situation, and there is a situation only through freedom . . . There can be a free for-itself only as engaged in a resisting world. Outside
of this engagement the notions of freedom, of determination, of necessity lose all meaning.”
Sartre 1956, 621
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In the absence of action, there is no narrative, no interpretation, and no identity.
DEFINITIONS: SPORT
SITUATION DRAMA
DRAMA
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Western dramatic narrative is about the disruption and restoration of balance.
an exciting, emotional, or unexpected series of events or
set of circumstances.
DRAMA
“TROUBLE PROVIDES THE ENGINE OF DRAMA.”
Bruner 1991, 16
HOCKEY IS A POWERFUL FORMULA FOR TROUBLE
HOCKEY IS A POWERFUL FORMULA FOR DRAMA
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People at a roller rink skate in the same direction to avoid injury.
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Hockey players are heavily equipped. They wear sharpened blades on their feet.
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Danger is inherent to stick-and-ball games like hockey, hurling, and shinty.
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Some of the earliest Celtic legends, such as the tales of Cu Cuchulainn, involve killing giant beasts with a slap shot.
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When a game involves swinging sticks in close proximity, drama is inevitable. Mistakes will be made. There will be anger and recrimination.
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Anishinaabe, Mohawk, and Choctaw stickball games (precursors of Lacrosse) functioned as war surrogates in certain contexts.
“[If] one were not told beforehand that they were playing, one would certainly believe that they were fighting.” (Conover 1997)
DANGER -> DRAMA
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Danger envelops and amplifies the drama inherent to playing a game. It is a kind of uncertainty – the uncertainty of physical jeopardy.
TROUBLE -> DRAMA
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Danger envelops and amplifies the drama inherent to playing a game. It is a kind of uncertainty – the uncertainty of physical jeopardy.
UNCERTAINTY -> DRAMA
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Sports like hockey have all kinds of uncertainty in them, which drives the drama (and, indeed, leads to the dangerous situations of play).
Evan Torner
THE DRAMATIC SITUATIONS PRODUCED BY HOCKEY RESOLVE INTO VARIOUS FORMS OF PUBLIC
AND PRIVATE NARRATIVE.
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How players act in these situations feeds into their own identity construction processes, the processes of the team as a group, and observer narration processes.
POWER PLAY
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Let’s look at a typical situation from hockey: the (aptly named) power play.
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A power play occurs when a penalty is assessed.
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The attacking team on the power play can “set up” in the defending team’s zone and pepper them with shots.
TROUBLE
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Consider the following video clip from the perspective of Trouble…
UNCERTAINTY
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…uncertainty…
SCRIPTS
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…and Scripts.
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Trouble created this situation: the penalty that left the Bruins short-handed put them in a dangerous situation.
“[when] you see a guy go down like that and the way he went down and what he did . . . the guys are going to want to rally around that.” Bruins Coach Claude Julien, following the incident
EACH SUCCESSIVE LAYER OF NARRATIVE MODULATES THE
SITUATIONAL COMPLEXITY AND HERMENEUTIC RICHNESS OF
GAMEPLAY.
“MOMENTUM”
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Scripts…
“CHOKE”
“CLUTCH”
NARRATIVE FROM “OUTSIDE” THE GAME CAN ALSO IMPACT
SITUATIONS OF PLAY
“. . . IN ADDITION TO, IN COMPETITION WITH, OTHER RULES AND IN RELATION TO MULTIPLE CONTEXTS, ACROSS VARYING CULTURES, AND INTO DIFFERENT GROUPS.” (Consalvo 2009, 416)
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There is no magic circle.
IN SPORTS, THERE IS A VERY TIGHT FEEDBACK RELATIONSHIP
BETWEEN SITUATION AND NARRATIVE
SITUATION
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“Ludonarrative Dynamo”
SITUATION NARRATIVE
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“Ludonarrative Dynamo”
SITUATION NARRATIVE
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“Ludonarrative Dynamo”
THIS FEEDBACK LOOP FUNCTIONS IN MULTIPLE CONTEXTS,
REGISTERS, AND TIME-SCALES
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From an individual player in an individual game…
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To a player over the length of a playing career…
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All this narrative adds up.
NARRATIVE ACCRUAL
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Psychologist Jerome Bruner talks about narrative accrual in his 1991 essay, The Narrative Construction of Reality.
Even our own homely accounts of happenings in our own lives are eventually converted into more
or less coherent autobiographies.
Bruner 1991, 18
[The] principles of jurisprudence . . . guarantee a tradition by assuring that once a "case" has been
interpreted in one way, future cases that are "similar" shall be interpreted and decided
equivalently. Insofar as the law insists on such accrual of cases as "precedents," and insofar as "cases" are narratives, the legal system imposes
an orderly process of narrative accrual.
Bruner 1991, 18
NARRATIVE IS THE MEANS BY WHICH A SPORT ITERATES, EVOLVES, AND SPREADS.
SPORTS ARE NOT STATIC SYSTEMS
THE RULES OF THE GAME CAN BE SEEN AS A KIND OF “LOSSY” NARRATIVE…
…A DISTILLATION OF SUCCESSIVE ACTS OF
NARRATION…
…A KIND OF ENCODING OR “ENCRYPTION”.
RULES
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“Ludonarrative Dynamo”
SITUATION
RULES
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“Ludonarrative Dynamo”
SITUATION NARRATIVE
RULES
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“Ludonarrative Dynamo”
SITUATION NARRATIVE
RULES
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“Ludonarrative Dynamo”
SITUATION NARRATIVE
RULES
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“Ludonarrative Dynamo”
EMERGENT EMBEDDED
ENCRYPTED
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“Ludonarrative Dynamo”
EMERGENT EMBEDDED
ENCRYPTED
Ludonarrative Dynamo
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“Ludonarrative Dynamo”
THE MORE NARRATIVE A SPORT GENERATES, THE MORE
WELL-PLAYED IT WILL BE.
IF WE THINK OF A SPORT AS A SPECIES OF LIFE THAT “WANTS” TO REPRODUCE AND SURVIVE, THEN MAYBE WE CAN SAY…
NARRATIVE IS HOW HOCKEY GETS WHAT HOCKEY WANTS
WHAT HOCKEY WANTS
JEFF WATSON ASSISTANT PROFESSOR
INTERACTIVE MEDIA AND GAMES USC SCHOOL OF CINEMATIC ARTS
@REMOTEDEVICE
Thank you.
WHAT HOCKEY WANTS
JEFF WATSON ASSISTANT PROFESSOR
INTERACTIVE MEDIA AND GAMES USC SCHOOL OF CINEMATIC ARTS
@REMOTEDEVICE
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