Competition: The New Games and Culture Journal

At Game Studies, we now have competition: The Games & Culture journal:

Games & Culture is a new, quarterly international journal (first issue due March 2006) that aims to publish innovative theoretical and empirical research about games and culture within the context of interactive media. The journal will serve as a premiere outlet for ground-breaking and germinal work in the field of game studies.

My first reaction was that this might as well be an introduction on the Game Studies web site. So how are they going to position the new journal? Reading further, Games & Culture seems to be positioned as belonging to the American cultural/critical studies tradition.

This leads to the problem is also that it is currently not very clear how we are positioning Game Studies: In 2001, it was brand new to do an academic peer-reviewed journal on video games, but now that everybody and their aunt are doing game studies, I think we lack a more specific profile.
If Games & Culture take on the “political” things, are we then doing “aesthetics, ontology, and design”, is this a ridiculous distinction, or are we / shouldn’t we / should we be doing both, or something else entirely?

Do we need a stronger profile for Game Studies?

Plot versus Interactivity Solved!

(Inspired by Robin’s post.)

There is currently talk about shutting down the dormant Idrama mailing list. From recent postings, no small amount of frustration is shared between the participants on the list.

Chris Crawford, as ever, remains certain of victory sometime in the future.

I remain absolutely certain that interactive storytelling can and will be achieved. Many of the arguments I witness on the topic no longer excite my attention, as I have long answered most of those questions to my own satisfaction. First among these is the “plot versus interactivity” debate. I solved that problem 15 years ago, published the solution, and nobody seems to have noticed it. Fine. They’ll figure it out someday. There remain serious problems to be solved, but I no longer consider any of them to be killer problems. They are what physicists like to call “engineering details”.

Taking one step back, I think the basic issue with “interactive drama” or “interactive storytelling” is that as headers they need to be qualified. Here are a few options:
1) Is it “narrative” – the presentation of a sequence of events?
2) Is it “story” – a fixed sequence of events?
3) Is it a question of content – human interaction and such?
4) Is it the symbolic coherence and economy of narratives (if a gun hangs on the wall in act one, it must be fired by the final act)?
5) Is it creating believable AI characters?
And the academic version:
6) Is it redefining our terms so that the problem goes away?

It’s certainly hard to solve a problem until you know what the problem is … And since the overall heading of “interactive drama” does not refer to any specific problem, there isn’t going to be any specific solution.
(Btw, I think Facade is aiming at 3, 4, and 5.)

In the quote above, Crawford claims to have solved the “plot versus interactivity” problem 15 years ago. I think he is referring to this piece:

Is not West Side Story a rehash of Romeo and Juliet? Sure, the sequence of events is different, but isn’t it the same story? Think of how many stories have been told and retold a thousand different times, each time with different details of wording, while preserving the basic story.

What’s important are the interpersonal dynamics going on, not the actual events. The events serve to reveal those interpersonal dynamics, but they are windows on the story, not the substance of the story itself.

Our program must start with the interpersonal dynamic and generate events in response to the player’s actions. The precise sequence of events will be variable, but the underlying story will always be the same.

Crawford seems to be making two very different core claims:
A) The “heart” of any story is not tied to a specific setting but can be transferred between environments. While this is at least partially true, I am not sure it actually reflects on the overall problem, unless we want an “interactive story” where the user’s input consists of moving a core story between different settings (could be fun). It’s not unlike some of the improv theater I have seen, but is this what we were asking for?
B) A very different claim, that the heart (“meat”) of a story is not the actual events, but the interpersonal dynamics. From a user perspective, I am not sure how to make a clear distinction between events and interpersonal dynamics. This interestingly rules out centering a story around chance encounters and fate, and I do think there is a close relation between storytelling and a feeling of fate and inevitability (try implementing a Paul Auster story without it). If we are talking about implementing an interesting open world (3-4-5), sure, but is it still Romeo and Juliet if they never happen to meet (actual events)?

Not very convinced. Also not very convinced because as much respect I have for Crawford’s work and writings, it is not clear what problem he claims to have solved.

Fiction, Disgust, and Player (Ir-)rationality

You are one of two people in an experiment. The other person is handed $100 and has the choice of either splitting the money 50-50 with you, or taking $90 and giving you $10. You can accept or refuse the offer.
The other person takes $90 and offers you $10. Do you accept?

Chances are that you will reject the offer and thus end up with no money even when you could have had $10. This is completely irrational behavior, but you were disgusted by the behavior of the other person and wanted no part in it.

Businessweek writes about neuroeconomics:

According to the new science of neuroeconomics, the explanation might lie inside the brains of the negotiators. Not in the prefrontal cortex, where people rationally weigh pros and cons, but deep inside, where powerful emotions arise. Brain scans show that when people feel they’re being treated unfairly, a small area called the anterior insula lights up, engendering the same disgust that people get from, say, smelling a skunk. That overwhelms the deliberations of the prefrontal cortex. With primitive brain functions so powerful, it’s no wonder that economic transactions often go awry.

We can extend this to games. Players do not always play rationally, but sometimes they do.

Here’s a prediction that I have not tested:

  • In a multi player game, disgust is a factor. Players will irrationally refuse offers that they find unfair or humiliating.
  • When interacting with a character that the player is consciously aware is an NPC, disgust will not be a factor.
  • The role of disgust in decision-making when interacting with NPCs depends on how much the player thinks of the game as a fictional world. If the player believes in the fiction of the game, disgust will be a factor, if the player thinks of the game as a set of rules for which to optimize his/her personal performance, disgust will not be a factor.
  • Hence in dealing with NPCs disgust is more likely to be a factor for beginner players, and early on in the playing of a specific game.

    • It would be nice to empirically test this.

    More Spore Pics

    • Update October 10 2006: OK, images of Spore are all over. I have put the images back online.
    • Update March 3rd 2006: You can see the video of Will Wright’s presentation here.
    • Update March 23rd 2005: I have inquired with Maxis/EA and found that the screenshots should not be distributed. They have been permanently removed, sorry.

    By popular demand, more pictures from Will Wright’s Spore video game demo at Game Developer’s Conference:

    The amoeba stage:
    Amoeba
    On land:
    on land
    (At this point, we all thought “wow, they really put in a lot of stuff in this game!”)

    The Sim City-style mode:
    City
    Planet mode:
    Planet
    Solar system mode:
    Solar system
    Galaxy:
    Galaxy
    Should provide entertainment for a few afternoons.

    First Spore Pic

    Will Wright’s presentation included a sneak peek of Spore.
    The sheer ambition of Spore is unbelievable.
    You start of as a mutating amoeba, then you become a higher-level creature in the sea, then an action game on land, then a social simulation with a tribe of your own creatures, then a SimCity style city simulation, then an RTS-type game between different cities, then you zoom out yet again and see the entire planet, then the solar system, then the galaxy. All of these levels are unique games.

    The only thing really missing is the Sims – the game certainly appeals to the geek in me (from gene to galaxy, hey!), but I feel that the market is slightly smaller than the Sims.

    I think we were told not to take pictures, so since I don’t have my camera cables with me, here is a cell phone camera picture of my real camera showing a picture of Spore. This is in planet-mode, a planet in the middle, your flying saucer at the bottom. The game looks great, though you can’t tell:
    [Image removed, sorry.]