Category: games

Readings: Game Studies #5; War as a game; The Puzzle Instinct

Some readings:

The new Game Studies issue #5 is out, with pieces by Edward Castronova, Gonzalo Frasca, Shuen-shing Lee, Laurie Taylor, and Jan Van Looy. I haven’t been that active in relation to GS lately, having been engaged in other business, but I am working on getting the reviews up and running again.

A somewhat old link, James Der Derian’s article on the description of war as a game in relation to the Iraq war.
My game definition also discusses this very briefly – I think Der Derian overstates the case a bit, but it’s certainly possible to explain why war is often described as a game: Because it shares 5 of the 6 features of my game definition: 1) Rules, 2) Variable and quantifiable Outcome, 3) Value assigned to outcomes, 4) Player Effort, 5) Player attached to Outcome. But NOT 6) Negotiable/optional consequences.

And a somewhat overlooked book, Marcel Danesi’s The Puzzle Instinct discusses the history of puzzles from ancient Egypt to the present day. I would have wished that it mentioned video games, but it’s a valuable book anyway.

255,168 ways of playing Tic Tac Toe

Tic Tac Toe (noughts and crosses) is always such a nice example.

I was thinking about strategies and decided to implement a program that plays Tic Tac Toe according to John von Neumann’s minimax. This is a kind of meta-strategy that can be used for playing any game: Always chose the move that will minimize the maximum damage that your opponent can do to you.

The algorithm works recursively by looking for the move that will let an optimally playing opponent inflict the least damage. The opponent’s strategy is calculated by way of the same algorithm, and so on. This means that on the first move, the computer investigates the entire game tree – it considers every single possible Tic Tac Toe game and then choses randomly among the best (least dangerous) moves.

Have a go at http://www.half-real.net/tictactoe/

    • Here’s a document with every single game of Tic Tac Toe. It gives the following numbers.
    • 255,168 unique games of Tic Tac Toe to be played. Of these, 131,184 are won by the first player, 77,904 are won by the second player, and 46,080 are drawn.
    • This supports the intuition that it is an advantage to begin the game.
    • These numbers do not take similar board positions into account – rotating the board, mirroring it and so on. It does not matter which corner you place the first piece in, but this is not taken into account here.
    • If neither player makes a mistake, the game is drawn (but we knew that already).

 

  • This is an exercise in examining the objective properties of a game. There are two interesting sides to this:
  • 1) The objective properties of Tic Tac Toe really matter for our enjoyment of it: It is a boring game because there are so relatively few combinations.
  • 2) On the other hand, humans clearly play the game in a different way than the computer. The computer’s playing style lets us make some observations about how humans play games.
  • To the computer, the first move is the most complicated (takes around a second on my 2ghz machine). This is unlike human players who seldomly have any problem deciding what to do on the first move.
  • The program assumes that the opponent does not make any mistakes. Humans do make mistakes, of course, so adding some amount of randomness in algorithm would probably make it a better player against human opponents.
  • The number of possible unique games is larger than I would have guessed, but this indicates how we humans are very good at identifying patterns. Faced with the huge number of variations in a game like this, we simply identify some general properties of Tic Tac Toe: Beginning in the middle is a good thing; if your opponent begins in the middle, you must pick the corner; a good way of winning is to threaten two squares simultaneously.
  • We think about games like this in fuzzy and chaotic ways – this gives us a lot of flexibility.
  • It is the same fuzziness that leads us into making stupid mistakes.
  • On some level, it is our fuzzy way of playing games that allows us to have fun. If we simply played with the unimaginative brute force strategy that the computer uses, it would definitely be work rather than play – and nobody would have any fun playing against us, for that matter.

Games and MMORPGs – a clarification.

I guess the previous post wasn’t quite clear, but the point was simply that there is a historically dominant way of creating “games” – this includes a final, quantifiable outcome. MMORPGs deviate from this classic game model in that there is no final outcome. The following statement is therefore true:

MMORPGs deviate from the classic way of making games. Whether we want to call them “games” depends on whether we want to keep the word “game” as is or expand it in order to include “games” that do not have final outcomes.

There is no remotely objective way of making this decision, and this is why I made a game definition that I call “the classic game model” because it is a historically dominant way of creating “games”, but a model that is now being challenged by things such as MMORPGs. By doing this I hoped to shift the focus from the sequence of letters “g-a-m-e” to a question of what we mean by “game”.

That was the idea, anway.

Who owns the word “game”? (A definition of definition)

At the State of Play conference, Eric Zimmerman described MMORPGs as borderline games since they have no (quantifiable) outcomes (you can continue playing). My game definition also describes MMORPGs as borderline games for the very same reason. In his blog, Greg Costikyan disagrees strongly. There are really two issues here: 1) how to define “game”, 2) why is it so important to be a game or not? “Game” is just a word, isn’t it?
Here’s Greg’s conclusion:

[…] from my perspective, if you produce a definition of “game” that excludes things that most people call “games,” either your definition is clearly wrong, or you need to make a strong argument for why the excluded entities aren’t really games. Simply saying “they don’t come to quantifiable outcomes” is circular, since it is saying “This is my definition of games, these don’t fit, they aren’t games, QED”.

Greg is of course right that Zimmerman’s definition is tautological, but all game definitions are: When you attempt to define something like games, your definition will necessarily be designed to match an a priori idea of what should be included or excluded in the definition. Costikyan even points to the fact that his own game definition comes from his own RPG background. So the cornerstone in Costikyan’s argument will be this one:

They certainly fit my definition of “the game,” but it’s clear to me that they should also fit any reasonable definition of “game.”

Which is of course no better than any other argument here: A reasonable definition of games should include MMORGPs because that’s what a reasonable definition of games would include.

So what’s a poor theorist to do? Why, appeal to something external to the definition, of course!

For example: If we had been discussing whether a whale was a fish or not, one side of the argument would state that whales are fish because they swim in the sea; the other side would counter that whales are mammals because they have lungs and give birth rather than lay eggs. The issue is most easily resolved by using evolution as the measure of all things, showing that whales evolutionarily speaking are mammals etc.

But human culture is always stranger than that, so there are a number of things we can appeal to in order to prove that our personal game definition is the right one:

• We can appeal to consensus: Most people will agree that “game” should be defined like I am doing it here.

• We can appeal to consensus of the enlightened: Knowledgeable game scholars agree that games should be defined like I am doing it here.

• We an appeal to empirical factors: Many “game” stores carry RPGs, hence RPGs are games.

• Or we can (drum roll) include a sense of history in our definition: I called my game definition “The Classic Game model” because it describes a model for games that has been dominant from 3000 BC to approximately 1970 AD. And during that historical period, nearly all “games” had outcomes. MMORPGs differ from the classic game model in that they do not have outcomes, but they do belong to a broader family of games. This does not give us a simple yes/no result, but it gives us a qualified answer that is open about its premises. So there.

*

Another thing of interest is that half of the world seems intent on describing their obviously game-like projects as being non-game – “it’s not a game, it’s an interactive narrative”, while the other half of the world is bent on describing their borderline projects as games.

Is the label “game” something to be avoided or something to be sought at all cost? My feeling is that “game” is moving towards hipness – in a few years time, perhaps people will be using the word “game” as indiscriminately as the words “interactive” and “narrative” have been used lately … And we will be victims of our own success.

The Game, the Player, the World: Looking for a Heart of Gameness

Here’s the printed text of my keynote at the Level Up conference in Utrecht: The Game, the Player, the World: Looking for a Heart of Gameness.
It’s a small piece that tries to explain everything: What games are, what relates computer/video games to games, how games can move between media; what happens on the borders of games, and how games have changed historically.

And the slides from the presentation.

The Game Canon

Since Greg Costikyan has just posted a list of 300 games that every game developer (or gamer) should now, here’s the game canon that me and Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen at the Game Center put together.

Note: Understand what status this list has: It was quickly put together in December to see if it is possible to create a list of the most important games of all time. It is certain that you will disagree.

It was created in response to a discussion at the Game Developer’s Conference in March, where it was suggested that IGDA or DiGRA should create a game canon listing all the games that a knowledgeable game developer or researcher should beware of.
I was against this not because I think canons are bad, but because canons are more useful when coming from an identifiable perspective than from the compromises of a committee.

The platforms are listed alphabetically, and each game is listed according to the platform that we have mostly played it on.
If you compare to Costikyan’s list, this list only discusses computer and video games. It is also quite European in that it includes the Commodore 64, Amiga, and ZX Spectrum [Timex Sinclair] but not the Apple II.

The list is, of course, completely objective. I think it makes sense.

Amiga
Defender of the crown
Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge
Battle Chess
Lemmings
Wings of Fury
Flashback
Blood Money

Arcade
Bomb jack
Death Race
Double Dragon
Battlezone
Space Invaders
Galaga
Lunar Lander
Mortal Kombat
Pacman
Night Driver
Outrun
Rampage
Space Invaders
Spy Hunter
Dragon’s Lair
Star Wars
Moon Patrol
Street Fighter *
Operation Wolf
Time Crisis
Gunfight
Galaxians
Gorf
Donkey Kong
Virtua Cop
Yie-Air Kungfu
Marble Madness
Qbert
Arkanoid
Asteroids
Tapper
Dig Dug

Commodore 64
Exploding Fist
International Karate
Elite
Mission Impossible
Commando
Little Computer People
Pitstop II
Matrix
Attack of the mutant camels
Revenge of the mutant camels
Sheep in space
Summer Games, Winter games, World Games, California Games
Football Manager
Raid on Bungeling Bay
Pirates
Blue Max
The Hobbit
Pinball Construction Set
Archon
Boulder Dash
Where in the world is Carmen San Diego
Monty Mole
Arkanoid
Barbarian
Beach Head
Raid on Moscow
Bruce Lee

Dreamcast
Shenmue
Crazy Taxi

Gameboy advance
Chu-Chu Rocket

Gamecube
Super Monkey Ball
Pikmin
Super Mario Sunshine
Metroid Prime

Macintosh
Maelstrom
Spectre VR
Balance of Power
Bolo

Nintendo 64
Super Mario 64
Starfox
Legend of Zelda

Other
Hearts
Minesweeper
Adventure
Tetris
Spacewar
Breakout
Sokoban
Hunt the Wumpus

PC
7th Guest
Myst, 2, 3, Riven
Monkey island
Blackout
Grim Fandango
King’s Quest
Space Quest
Lesiure Suit Larry
Maniac Mansion
Zork
Alone in the dark
Gabriel Knight
Day of the tentacle
Final Fantasy *
Last Express
Prince of Persia
Under a Killing Moon
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Blade Runner

Age of Empires
Age of Kings
Starcraft
Sim City
Sims
Civilization
Warcraft
Red Alert
Command & Conquer
Dune 2
Second Front
North & South
Colonization
Alpha Centauri
Railroad Tycoon
Rollercoaster Tycoon
Zoo Tycoon
Battle Isle
Europa Universalis

688 Attack Sub

Doom
Doom II
Quake 1,2,3
Wolfenstein
Magic Carpet
Descent
Unreal
American McGee’s Alice
Half-Life
Counterstrike
Battlefield 1942
Duke Nuke’m
Thief
Hitman 1 & 2
Max Payne
Medal of Honor: Allied Assault
Canon Fodder
No One Lives for Ever
Return to Castle Wolfenstein
Serious Sam
Soldier of Fortune
Unreal Tournament
Tribes
Alien Vs. Predator
Deus Ex

EverQuest
Ultima *
Dark age of Camelot
Anarchy online
Asheron’s Call
Lineage
Baldur’s Gate
Diablo I & II

Wing Commander
Worms

Fifa
Actua Soccer
Flight Simulator

Heroes of Might and Magic
Warlords

Supercars
Micro Machines

Syndicate

Black & White
Dungeon Keeper
Populus
Megalomania

Airborne Ranger
Atomic Bomberman

Romance of the Three Kingdoms
Barbie Fashion Designer
Bar Games

Playstation
Tomb Raider
Vib-Ribbon
Resident Evil
Gran Turismo
Tekken
Driver
Dance Dance Revolution
Parappa the Rapper
Metal Gear Solid
Puzzle Bubble / Bust-a-Move
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater
Battle Area Toshinden

Playstation 2
Grand Theft Auto III
Gran Turismo III
Tekken 3 & 4
Metal Gear Solid 2

Super Nintendo (SNES)
Super Mario

Sega MegaDrive
Sonic the Hedgehog

Sega Saturn
Virtua Fighter

XBOX
Halo
Jet Set Radio Future

ZX Spectrum
Jetpac
Jet Set Willy
Sabre Wulf
Manic Miner