This is my eleventh monthly Patch Wednesday post where I discuss a question about video games that I think is unanswered, unexplored, or not posed yet. I will propose my own tentative ideas and invite comments.
The series is called Patch Wednesday to mark the sometimes ragtag and improvised character of video game studies.
The word formalism has resurfaced again in discussions around video games (here, here, here). This post is not specifically about that discussion, but I would like to use the moment to discuss the idea of formalism in video game studies.
First: Formalism, formalist and more specifically anti-formalism have appeared a number of times in discussions around video games, but with often contradictory meanings. With this post I am attempting to give an overview of the terms’ history in relation to video games.
tl;dr Formalism has no particular set meaning. Its only universal meaning is the derogatory function of denouncing someone as theoretically, morally or politically bankrupt. But there are many interesting discussions in the details.
Let us go through the history and number the anti-formalisms we meet. Warning: If you are not familiar with every discussion, this will be quite compact. I identify 8 variations of anti-formalism, the 7 of which relate to video games. Here is the list.
- Formalism #1: Experiments are formalist. Don’t make experimental art – that would make you an enemy of the people
- Formalism #2: Experiments are formalist. Form, experiments or aesthetics are anti-political (or anti-progressive)
- Formalism #3: Experiments are formalist, and experiments are a way of fighting against oppression, and for letting marginalized voices speak
- Formalism #4: Defining things is formalism, and formalism is a way of locking down video games to prevent experimentation
- Formalism #5: Formalism = looking at game rules to the exclusion of looking at story, experience, meaning
- Formalism #6: Formalism = assuming that game meaning comes exclusively from the game rules
- Formalism #7: Formalism = looking at game design to the detriment of looking at players
- Formalism #8: Formalism = game definitions as stifling + focusing too much on rules
Formalism #1: Experiments are formalist. Don’t make experimental art – that would make you an enemy of the people
The history of anti-formalism really starts with Shostakovich and the 1948 Khrennikov decree in the Soviet Union (I’ve written about it here), according to which composers should stop making formalist (i.e. experimental) music.
Khrennikov reported that people “all over the USSR” had “voted unanimously” to condemn the so-called formalists and let it be known that those named in the decree were now officially regarded as little better than traitors: “Enough of these pseudo-philosophic symphonies! Armed with clear party directives, we will stop all manifestations of formalism and decadence.”
“Formalist” and “formalism” in this case meant anything experimental, and anything non-sanctioned by the regime. Fun fact: Shostakovich wrote a piece called Anti-Formalist Rayok (text here) making fun of a committee meeting about stamping out formalism in music. “O let us love all that’s beautiful, charming, and elegant, let us love all that’s aesthetic, harmonious, melodious, legal, polyphonic, popular, and classical!”
This is the original variation of anti-formalist thought, and I think this is the one whose echoes we are still hearing. It is clear that we can divide this in to some subthreads, but this is the source of the baseline air of accusation that is present when someone denounces someone else as formalist.
It’s not much of a stretch to see the relation between Soviet-era anti-formalism and other types of conservative attempts at preventing art experimentation.
Formalism #2: Experiments are formalist. Form, experiments or aesthetics are anti-political (or anti-progressive)
This is a common extrapolation of formalism #1: don’t play around with form, just state your politics in a well-known format. Similarly, from a theoretical standpoint: don’t analyze form, just analyze politics (or lived experience).
In prescriptive variations, this can be perceived as quite stifling. Those who lived through 1970’s will often, regardless of their political persuasion, talk about how oppressive the atmosphere could be, with constant requirements that all aspects of culture should be subservient to dominant political ideas. I am not saying that this necessarily applies to the criticisms I just mentioned, but it is a mode of thinking that has been used to such ends.
Of course, there are particular stories concerning (for example) painting, where (it is usually said) formalist art criticism hailed abstract expression as the highest form of painting, thereby concretely focusing on form to the exclusion of other issues. Such as, say, representation, politics. (Ian Bogost also discusses the broader history of the term here.)
Formalism #3: Experiments are formalist, and experiments are a way of fighting against oppression, and for letting marginalized voices speak.
If we consider that the Khrennikov decree was written under Stalin, then anti-formalist thought can also be seen as a way of protecting the powers that be against ambiguity and new voices speaking. To me, this speaks to my discomfort that some committee, however nice, should decide what experiments we are or aren’t allowed to use.
Formalism #3 is therefore completely contradictory to formalism #2, because experiments in form are assigned a completely negative role in #2, but a positive role in #3.
I recently wrote about how magic realism was interpreted as a way of saying what could not be said in traditional novel form. Rushdie says:
El realismo magical, magic realism, at least as practised by Márquez, is a development out of Surrealism that expresses a genuinely ‘Third World’ consciousness.
The recent wave of Twine games is distinctly formalist in this sense: finding new form for games to express what cannot be expressed in traditional game form.
Formalism #4: Defining things is formalism, and formalism is a way of locking down video games to prevent experimentation
Here formalism/formalist are not used to describe particular works or creators, but are instead applied to theorists:
In the so-called “Zinesters vs. formalists” debate (summarized at the bottom of this post), some people, especially in the Twine community, felt that their work was being excluded by formalists (mostly identified as Raph Koster) who were applying narrow definitions of what games are.
In the slightly different context of Jamin Brophy-Warren’s PBS show, I was also identified as a formalist (though not in a bad way) for having made a video game definition. This is a tad more subtle. “Formalist” may be a misnomer in this case, given that has an uncertain relation to any previous uses of the term.
As for the content of that discussion, I do think there is a distinction between is and aught: to identify historical cultural expectations for things called “games” (as I mostly do at least, hence the name “classic game model”) is very different from claiming that this should be used to evaluate or exclude experiments. I do also find that identifying expectations and conventions are a great way to generate new ideas and experiments. And I have a deep-seated hunger for game experiments.
The flip side of it is that nobody is really that aesthetically inclusive anyway: no “game” festival is going to include a word processor in the competition lineup, so isn’t it preferable to ask ourselves if we have criteria than to pretend that we don’t? (Writing this does make me consider whether you could make a mystery game that was basically a modified version of Libreoffice.)
Formalism #5: Formalism = looking at game rules to the exclusion of looking at story, experience, meaning
This is at least how I interpret Janet Murray’s 2005 DiGRA keynote (with its wonderful “mind of winter” metaphor):
According to the formalist view Tetris can only be understood as a abstract pattern of counters, rules, and player action, and the pattern means nothing beyond itself, and every game can be understood as if it were equally abstract. … To be a games scholar of this school you must have what American poet Wallace Stevens called “a mind of winter” ; you must be able to look at highly emotive, narrative, semiotically charged objects and see only their abstract game function.
Again, formalists are theorists, and in this case they emphasize rules structures to the exclusion of everything else.
Note that ludology and narratology are equally formalist according to some views (se #7 below).
Formalism #6: Formalism = assuming that game meaning comes exclusively from the game rules
This is what Miguel Sicart goes up against in Against Procedurality: the idea that game meaning comes exclusively from game rules (rather than from graphics, story etc..), and in a completely deterministic way.
Formalism #7: Formalism = looking at game design to the detriment of looking at players
TL Taylor recently tweeted a series of quotes from what she considers criticisms of formalist video game theory, let me cite a few:
(written by John Dovey and Helen Kennedy in 2006) “As already indicated, these ‘rules’ shape and structure our experience of a game to a greater or lesser degree, but they do not inevitably determine our whole experience. […] These kinds of activity and experience [cheating and mods] cannot adequately be accounted for by a reliance solely on structural or formalistic accounts of games.”
(Jenny Sunden in 2009) “The tension between these two directions in game studies, between games as mechanical-aesthetic objects and games as social practices, echoes the kind of friction between ‘playing the game’ and ‘being played by the game’ characteristic of any act of game play.”
(TL herself): Running nearly parallel to the familiar track of the classic narratology/ludology framing has been scholarship that sought to understand actual players and their everyday practices, as well as research that considered broader structural contexts and histories at work in the construction of play.
(Mia Consalvo in 2009) “What if, rather than relying on structuralist definitions of what is a game, we view a game as a contextual, dynamic activity, which players must engage with for meaning to be made. Furthermore, it is only through that engagement that the game is made to mean”
As you can see, the criticism does not concern rules or definitions as such, but rather the assumption that game design is able to determine actual use by players. Formalism here therefore is a shorthand for focus on game design, including as story, graphics etc…
The difference between #5 and #7 is that #5 promotes the interpretive tools of the humanities, while #7 promotes a social science perspective.
Formalism #8: Formalism = game definitions as stifling + focusing too much on rules
Which brings us to the present day. I see the current discussion (here, here, here) as being a combination of Formalism #4 (game definitions as stifling) and Formalism #5 (focusing too much on rules). This is one of the reasons why it has been a confusing discussion: different things were meant when people said “formalism”.
Conclusion: Which formalism is right for you?
Short answer: none. It’s a term with many contradictory meanings and lots of bad historical baggage. It’s also not conducive to discussion.
Here are some names for the fallacies we are often guilty of in these discussions.
- You are x. This is probably not as conducive to discussions as “is it possible that you are overemphasizing x“?
- Generalization by point sample: generalization made explicitly without considering whether it is true, i.e. saying that “a excludes looking at b” even though there is a chapter on b immediately following the chapter on a.
- Graduate luck: The amazing stroke of luck when your graduate studies just happen to be in the theoretical tradition that is superior to all the others. (We have all been there.)
- Exclusion by proxy: arguing that a perspective you dislike is exclusionary of other perspectives and therefore has to be excluded.
I would add that I think there are a few separate schools of thought from which supposed formalisms are emerging.
One is out of ludology, academic studies. This one is amply covered by some of your posts above.
Another, with some overlap but less than one might think, is very much emerging out of a non-academic community of design practitioners. Past exponents have included Crawford and Costikyan; today it’s identified with me, with Clint Hocking’s “ludonarrative dissonance,” Tadhg Kelly, Dan Cook, and so on. It has some very real differences in approach from the academic version. Though there is of course overlap (many academics are practitioners, for example), it’s far less focused on theories and much more on practical results because it’s really aimed at craftsmanship rules of thumb. In that sense it is instrumental.
A different one altogether is a sort of philistine culturally based one, which is frequently summarized as “reviewers and posters on NeoGAF.” This is a very different thing, though it sometimes borrows rhetoric from the others. It’s not interested in craft ends nor in academic ends, but in tastemaking.
There seems to be a sort of hybrid of #1 and #2 as expressed via game design programs, that seem to be something frequently kicked against by anti-formalists. I can only presume it is because game design programs tilt towards #1 or #2 depending on the nature of the program, but for the purpose of providing reading materials to their students, draw variously from both approaches. There is some sense that as a result, these two things result in a stifling of experimentation.
Finally, there are some cultural constructs around things like awards shows categories and whatnot, which I have also seen discussed. But that seems to be likely a fourth version, most likely with strong doses of #3 and some influence from #2. This one has political and commercial implications, and frankly is driven by marketing as much as anything else; it’s certainly not academically driven.
The conflation of these different currents into “facets of one ideology” isn’t really accurate, I think. They are motivated by very different things, and often reach pretty different conclusions. Speaking as a representative of #2, I feel rather like an opponent of #3 most of the time, and quite lacking in control over #4. And #1 is simply not usually practically useful to me, though it often is extremely interesting.
I suspect a fair amount of the conflicts result in terminology from one of these being read in the context of another.
Regarding #1: I think it goes back a bit further, to the denunciation of Constructivism, avant-garde cinema, and other 1920s Soviet art movements as “formalist” and unproletarian starting around 1929. For example, a 1929 polemic from the Russian Association of Proletarian Writers (RAPP) denounced Sergei Eisenstein for his alleged “tendency to regard content purely as raw material for formal experiments”. By the early 1930s that was the official line, and Eisenstein was chided for “formal experiments” in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia as well.
One merit of the late-1920s/early-1930s denunciations, at least, is that there is some real debate over the proper role of art in Soviet society, so the discussion is at least about formalism in some vaguely coherent sense. By the 1948 “anti-formalist” denunciation, the word seems to have mostly lost meaning, standing in as just a general slur to use against artists deemed insufficiently loyal to the state.
There is the point that some of the practitioner are in the center of a cultural homogeneity that is blinding them, whenever they try to come out with something prescriptive to enhance the craft a new success appear that prove their assumption wrong. Their reaction is almost never to look at it formally to improve the craft but denial and frustration. Idling game, “walking sim”, twine game, etc… Worst they make reductive assumption on their game, which they hastily play, and miss the mark by like 10 miles and use their authority and education to politely enforce their authority, which in turn frustrate the people they denied the right to have an insight.
I have been following this for almost 10 years and it’s still leave me scratching my head. For example most practitioner want to see a divide between “content” and “rules and mechanics”, seeing ambivalently one or the another as a necessary evil or the holder of true creativity, or they just want to hide the baby and not have the discussion at all (recent errant signal). There is also the debate of authorship vs player creativity.
But all of that is false dichotomy, Meritt Kopa one of the vocal new voice which denounce this kind of “formalism” made a game, Lim, that prove the authorship vs player creativity to be a false dichotomy, it also prove that for narrative expression and mechanics, and that mechanics are ultimately also their own content. Yet practitioner only see that as a only a game made by a trans woman. Despite that the game is currently the definitive answer to Rod Humble’s marriage failed experiment on abstract mechanics, it should be praise as an achievement step into understand game design beyond the current bag of vaguely related tips we still use today, answering so many question about the craft, yet instead it was met with ‘meh’ and reduced to outsider art.
This is also true with twine game, the refusal to see content as structure and mechanics, the blind application of erroneous assumption and just plain cultural disconnect does a great disservice for the gem that actually improve the art of all games.
There is so much more to say and deconstruct this culture of statu quo that one comment wouldn’t be enough.
Neoshaman, I think that so many practitioners think in terms of a divide between content and mechanics because that’s how it works when you actually build a game. Anyone who actually makes games knows that bringing the two together is the hard part — they actually fall separately very naturally, so naturally that it takes real effort to make them unified. This doesn’t mean that they think meaning is carried by one or the other, though. Any good designer knows that meaning is carried by both.
Similarly, the authorship versus player creativity dichotomy you mention has never been thought of as a dichotomy. It’s always been a spectrum in everyone’s mind — it’s all too obvious that it’s not a black and white issue.
Lim is brilliant; I am not sure it contradicts The Marriage so much as it builds on it, though. They are very much in the same tradition. They also got comparable amounts of acclaim and recognition — which is to say, from the mainstream, next to none, but among design cognoscenti quite a lot. I don’t know what practitioners you are talking about who denigrate it.
Finally — I, like many other formalists, see Twine as firmly in the tradition of hypertext. Content in Twine is structure and mechanics in exactly the same way that it always has been in hypertext. It’s not a new field, a new genre — in fact, it’s thirty to forty years old. That doesn’t mean that the work made using Twine isn’t often brilliant — it is. But it’s not radically new in that sense. What is new about it is who is writing it, and what sorts of stories they are telling. That speaks to cultural systems more than to game systems, so to speak.
When I read a comment like yours, it just illustrates for me how much perceived antagonism there is in this discussion. The assumption is that other designers (for that is what I assume you mean by practitioners, the group #2 in my list) are the ones blocking or otherwise denigrating this work. But in practice, it isn’t; it’s much more the NeoGAF crowd than it is fellow designers. Designers, at least the savvy ones, think it’s all pretty damn awesome and interesting, and if that weren’t the case, we wouldn’t be seeing these new voices on stage at GDC, Indiecade, and so many other conferences.
@Raph I don’t intuitively feel that much of a distance between academics and practitioners, but it’s true that the goals are somewhat different.
To me, the most interesting point of interest is really award shows and festivals: how *are* we deciding what merits inclusions and awards? My worry is not as much that we (I am an IGF judge) aren’t including experiments, as much as that we are promoting a particular insular hipsterish idea of what an experiment is.
@Mark Ah, I wasn’t aware of that early history. Interesting to think of formalism as having been an actual discussion before it ossified into what it is today.
@Jesper, I think that more or less what happens between academics and let’s say the grammarian types is that academics seem to follow the practitioners relatively closely, but the converse is not true. The academic side of course has a largish game studies umbrella, but practitioners are usually concerned with a rather smaller set of concerns that that. The result isn’t so much disagreements as it is just different areas of focus.
As far as awards shows and festivals — I really do think the categories are mostly driven by marketing labels and not formalism. :)
First I want to apologize if any of my post read as confrontational or rude, I don’t really know. English not being my native tongue I tend to use word that may be interpreted that way or choose a direct style because I don’t know better. I’ll hope at the end the discussion will prove fruitful and insightful to all, that’s my goal.
1. This first point, I think, is proof that game design is immature and that study focused too much on some part to the detriment of other. I, for example, and I think some other practitioner mostly in the indie space, has no problem at all. I’ll come back to that certainly peppered in the rest of the answer.
2. My point is that there is no spectrum at all, a spectrum implied that when you are at one side you are not at the other, my point is that is bogus, I now made no difference at all, and that ties to point 1.
3. I have witness a lot of developer just doing that, and in fact when the author react by making the kind of statement that spurred the recent “formalism” discussion is exactly because they are sometimes panned or literally mocked by some other. Sometimes it is broad statements, that have implicit connotation, that is unforsee by the author of the statement, on the practice of people like Meritt which prompt them to react in frustration. What happen often is a comical backtracking like “it’s not what I wanted to say” that kind of disqualify the statements in its entirety, as, if he he didn’t meant that then the statements don’t hold anymore.
3. I see myself as a formalist too, I see myself as a ludologist ie I thrust “structure” but I don’t forget that structure has “purpose”, just like grammar exist to support language therefore expression. My first contact on internet was with Jesper Juul’s works (even though I haven’t revisit nor followed in years, forgive me). toward 2002-ish I start to be in contact with “narrativist” frustrated by “mechanics”, but my education was made by reading project Oz with Mateas and Andrew stern and seeing them progressing toward Façade. It’s through them I know the work of Janet Murray even though I didn’t read Hamlet in the holodeck, I use its premise as outline in their paper to think about narration.
I was seeing narrativist trying to use narrative theory to try to understand how to tame the “rules and mechanics” to tell story. I thought, as a ludologist that they where too remove from gameplay to make strong assumption and that lead to naive conclusion. It was particularly frustrating to see that they successfully point at all the relevant parameters only to miss their own point at the conclusions. Not seeing them making any progress I decide to use their tactics in reverse.
My stance was simple, If you try to describe using narrative theory, I will try to describe story and narrative in term of games, aka systems, mechanics and rules. Which bring me back to point 1, to day I just see no difference at all, absolutely none, it empower me to do anything or everything.
So that lead also to your conclusion about how this is “just” hypertext and not radically new … To which I will mention a “nude descending a staircase n°2”, how does that compare to “the death of sardanapalus”, we can claim there is nothing radically different about them, they are both painting on a canvas ;) . Culture does change how we approach things and how we compose, it can lead to new insight, I would not dismiss them too quickly base on superficial similarity, that’s a sin!
On a superficial level they look the same, but playing them reveal new concern and new tactics. Hypertext where interested in freeing text from it’s linear format and how non linearity impact the experience, it wasn’t exactly about the experience itself but about the media. Twine game is all about how to convey experience and personality through a tools seen as the liberation of the individual and amplifying unheard experience, non linearity is really not a real concern. I learn a lot, and you can read some of what I learn for game overall (beyond narrative) in those sample I posted here http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=22176.msg945133#msg945133 here http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=32220.msg1097426#msg1097426 and here http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=32220.1440
4. I have been working on the inside of the industry from at least 2005 to 2008. I have met a lot of denial when approaching those matter just on the suspicion it was wrong by “definition” (ie story si wrong, there is nothing learn there) they even used a term about me “bumpmap” or the use of big word to appear intelligent (as of course I don’t know what I’m talking about). Even recently Danc said use a “no one meaningful” to handwave argument I was using to explain things about the famous twitlonger that spark the discussion (twitlonger itself being a frustration because of a discussion people like meritt where having in their own circle), just because something don’t happen to you don’t mean other people don’t have this experience happening to them. I left the industry now to focus on my own research. The irony is that even though I spend a lot of time understanding “gameplay-narrative” structures I can’t use them, I have no real thing to say.
This should have been the first sample in the list of link I shared, sorry
http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=22176.msg939483#msg939483
Why there is no edit button :(
I wanted to mention that when I talk narrative in game, I don’t point people at the usual sources, I point them to Scott Kims presentation about puzzle game design made in 2000. Part of it is to play on expectation abour rules, part of it is because this is the foundation I use. There is so much more about it.
This is highly reflective of the structuralist/post a structuralist debates in sociology where writers use vague or inaccurate definitions of their “enemies” in order to take a stance, very often one which both sides would agree with anyway.
@Elliot Yes, many fields suffer from something like this, unfortunately.