Archive for August, 2009

For the most part, I liked Quantic Dream’s other game in this vein, Indigo Prophecy (2005). The story was engaging, if it did fall apart a bit in the later chapters. The characters were well drawn. And some of the set pieces were extremely engaging. But I always felt as though some of the gameplay mechanics just didn’t fit the fiction very well. The on-screen interfaces and cues were intrusive, drawing attention away from the action.

In the example below, you can see what I mean. In addition, the “Simon Says”-style button sequence never seemed to have even an abstract connection to the action. I always found myself feeling frustrated because the action kept pushing me in one emotional direction while the mechanics kept pushing me in another.

Their rhythmic patterns don’t even really mesh in any recognizable way. I’m hoping Heavy Rain better synthesizes some of these systems into a more involving experience. The sequence above makes me think games like God of War (2005) have a better idea of how players relate to action sequences via standard controllers. I’m not sure how you’d design a Wii-mote into this experience and maintain its tone.

I’m very happy David Cage and Quantic Dream are willing to risk this kind of experimentation on a highly touted game played on a major home console. Very few other companies are willing to try this sort of high-concept kind of experience.

After reading David Silver’s introduction from Critical Cyberculture Studies (2006), I’m left with a few questions (which I think is Dr. Liza Potts’s nefarious plan). Silver makes this statement regarding however it is this scholarly endeavor might be defined:

It can be argued that a commonly shared set of theories and methodologies is a sign of an academic field’s development and sophistication. It can also be argued that such commonly held approaches signal ossification, stagnation, and a lack of imagination. I favor the side of a temporarily canonless field of study (Silver 2004). If and when the canon appears, replete with acceptable theories, methods and method0logies, I surely hope its foundations are pliable enough for whatever meets us in the future.

We have a young field of study, one that, depending on with whom one speaks, stretches back only five, ten, or fifteen years. In other words, what we have is a field of study under construction — with boundaries not yet set, with borders not yet full erected, and with a canon not yet established. As such, we have a field of study ripe for growth and twigging, becoming and re-becoming, imagined and reimagined. Now, before the mold is set, is the time for experimentation. (pp. 5-6, emphasis in original)

As Steve Jones notes, we mix, match, and borrow from all kinds of academic fields/disciplines in order to generate insight into an always-emerging site of study. What does a “canon” look like when it is focused on something that evolves at such a rapid pace? The internet now is, in many ways, not the same internet of even five years ago. Collaborative technologies on the web facilitate spaces of (kinda/sorta) user-centered participation. But not only do the technologies change rapidly, so do the nature of the networks in which users play and work.

For example, fan cultures have emerged from underground networks of hyper-stereotyped “geeks” and “nerds” into the public spotlight. Such mainstreaming has been facilitated by these technologies. And it’s also been facilitated by the marketing forces seeking to take advantage of potential revenue streams. Tweeting and live-blogging from San Diego Comic Con has taken on a life of its own as TV and movie studios use the venue to gauge fans’ reactions to upcoming seasons and films. It’s essentially free publicity, utilizing Web 2.0 infrastructures and fan participation.

Thus, from a socio-cultural perspective, the ever increasing presence of marketing forces in fan experiences alters those experiences. But it’s not always clear how they do so since we’re only beginning to understand how those experiences emerge from the intersection of interior phenomenological factors with external technological and cultural forces.

SIGDOC sent PDF proofs of my conference paper today.  They looked very good.  And USI approved travel funding to cover expenses.  Here is the initial abstract/proposal I submitted.  The paper has morphed a bit, but you get the gist of it.

As computer technology has significantly progressed in recent years — resulting in high resolution graphics, improved sound design, and more sophisticated control interfaces — these experiences become less and less dependent on traditional techniques of representation and communication. Video games can be seen as procedural systems [Bogost 2007, Malaby 2007] designed to create such experiences, ones with which players want to engage. Player experiences are contingent upon the relationships of six configurative elements: rules and fiction that govern the gamespace [Juul 2005]; perception, emotion, cognition, and action experienced cognitively by the player [Grodal 2003]. Developing analytical tools informed by an interdisciplinary framework allows us to not only critically analyze games more clearly for cultural and technological importance, but to also design games to more effectively take advantage of their communicative potential. These tools should account for affective elements of such experiences, or what Eugenie Shinkle [2008] has labeled “proprioception”. The relationships of these elements to one another are contingent upon the player’s embodied affective responses that emanate from the player in non-linear ways. The purpose of this paper is to synthesize several theories of games analysis, rhetoric,
and representation into a reconfigurable and interdisciplinary model that can usefully analyze the player’s proprioceptive experience. I’ll demonstrate the model’s efficacy through the experiences of two very different games: Grand Theft Auto IV [2008] and The Arcade Wire: Airport Security [2006]. Both depend upon affective player responses to create satirical commentary upon cultural and social problems. They engage unit operations [Bogost 2006] that can be termed “player frustration” as an important element of the player experience. Yet, that frustration is generated and deployed in very different ways: how can such a unit operation be utilized more effectively, and when is it subverted by other unit operations? Assessing the relationships of different elements allows us to see how unit operations work in conjunction and work against one another.

Grafting together Juul’s examination of fiction and rules and Torben Grodal’s cognitive model of narrative, I sketch a method with which understand elements of the experience players encounter, as well as what can be represented to and through the player in that event. Discovering similar unit operations at work within GTA IV and Airport Security allows us to contrast these experiences and the messages communicated through them to better understand how to design for affective elements of player experiences.

The final piece focuses solely on Airport Security.  And, I’ve found that Grodal has elaborated further on his model in his new book Embodied Visions (2009).  Unfortunately, I just managed to snag a copy a couple of days ago.  He develops his ideas I based this paper on into a more robust model he’s dubbed the “PECMA flow model”: Perception, Emotion, Cognition, Motor Action.  Grodal primarily focuses on film, but I think his theory has wonderful potential for constructing useful analytics for interrogating gaming experiences.  PECMA, so far as I can tell, adapts nicely to different media because it assesses narrative and representation as an audience’s experience, and not solely a structural consideration embedded within specific media.

Grodal wants to recover the audience’s experiences from both pure biological determinism and extreme post-structural social constructivism.  An audience’s experience is an amalgamation of “innate dispositions [as] flexible frameworks within which…[t]he development of culture has provided new options for satisfying” inherent psycho-social needs (p. 8).

Rather than assuming that the mind is totally socially constructed and hence completely malleable, a more cautious assumption would be a relative malleability: innate dispositions can be activated by exposure, deactivated by lack of exposure, and modified with certain limits. (p. 11)

As someone trained in a postmodern literary environment, turning to biology to partially explain some things long relegated to semiotics and aesthetics can be a disconcerting step.  Everything within the core of my scholarly being reflexively turns to social construction as to account for meaningful experiences.  But PECMA resonates too well with my own experiences in game spaces and participatory cultures, and it seems to resonate very well with emerging ethnographic research on gaming experiences and online gaming communities.

Just checking to see how this blog looks with a post and some YouTube goodness.

(BTW, don’t you like how Deep Six is hanging out watching two boys swim in a pond.  Sheesh…)