Computer Games E-Book

Diane Carr

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 443

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

Computer games are one of the most exciting and rapidly evolving media of our time. Revenues from console and computer games have now overtaken those from Hollywood movies; and online gaming is one of the fastest-growing areas of the internet. Games are no longer just kids' stuff: the majority of players are now adults, and the market is constantly broadening. The visual style of games has become increasingly sophisticated, and the complexities of game-play are ever more challenging. Meanwhile, the iconography and generic forms of games are increasingly influencing a whole range of other media, from films and television to books and toys.

This book provides a systematic, comprehensive introduction to the analysis of computer and video games. It introduces key concepts and approaches drawn from literary, film and media theory in an accessible and concrete manner; and it tests their use and relevance by applying them to a small but representative selection of role-playing and action-adventure games. It combines methods of textual analysis and audience research, showing how the combination of such methods can give a more complete picture of these playable texts and the fan cultures they generate. Clearly written and engaging, it will be a key text for students in the field and for all those with an interest in taking games seriously.

Leseprobe

Computer Games

Computer Games

Text, Narrative and Play

Diane Carr, David Buckingham, Andrew Burn and Gareth Schott

polity

Copyright © Diane Carr, David Buckingham, Andrew Burn and Gareth Schott 2006

The right of Diane Carr, David Buckingham, Andrew Burn and Gareth Schott to be identified as Authors of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2006 by Polity Press

Polity Press

65 Bridge Street

Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK

Polity Press

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Malden, MA 02148, USA

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-8750-6

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.

Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publishers will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.

For further information on Polity, visit our website: www.polity.co.uk

Contents

List of illustrations

Acknowledgements

1   Studying Computer Games

David Buckingham

2   Defining Game Genres

Andrew Burn and Diane Carr

3   Games and Narrative

Diane Carr

4   Play and Pleasure

Diane Carr

5   Space, Navigation and Affect

Diane Carr

6   Playing Roles

Andrew Burn

7   Reworking the Text: Online Fandom

Andrew Burn

8   Motivation and Online Gaming

Andrew Burn and Diane Carr

9   Social Play and Learning

Gareth Schott and Maria Kambouri

10   Agency in and around Play

Gareth Schott

11   Film, Adaptation and Computer Games

Diane Carr with Diarmid Campbell and Katie Ellwood

12   Games and Gender

Diane Carr

13   Doing Game Analysis

David Buckingham

Notes

Games Cited

References

Index

List of Illustrations

1    A screenshot from Baldur’s Gate

2    A player-character’s statistics, Baldur’s Gate

3    The inventory screen for Jaheira in Baldur’s Gate

4    Planescape Torment’s The Nameless One in conversation

5    The avatar Harry in Silent Hill

6    Cloud Strife – the avatar of Final Fantasy VII

7    The battle screen of Final Fantasy VII.

8    YAOI manga depicting an erotic relationship between Cloud and Sephiroth.

9    Representational motivations in Anarchy Online

10    Ludic motivations in Anarchy Online

11    Boys engaging in collaborative play

12    Abe interacts with a fellow Mudokon

13    ‘Abe Art’ by Dipstikk

14    Depiction of a Shrykull

Acknowledgements

This book emerged from a research project called ‘The Textuality of Video Games’, funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Board (grant B/RG/AN8023/APN12462). The project ran from September 2001 to December 2003, and was based at the Centre for the Study of Children, Youth and Media at the Institute of Education, London University. David Buckingham and Andrew Burn co-directed the project, and Diane Carr was the lead researcher; Gareth Schott subsequently joined us from the Psychology Department as a research associate.

Although this was a collaborative project, we have assigned individual or joint authorship to each of the chapters in this book. David Buckingham was responsible for overall editing, and Diane Carr also contributed fine-tuning to each chapter.

An early version of chapter 5 was published as ‘Play Dead: Genre and Affect in Silent Hill and Planescape Torment’ in Game Studies, 3 (1) (Carr). An early version of chapter 6 appeared as ‘Heavy Hero or Digital Dummy: Multimodal Player-Avatar Relations in Final Fantasy VII’ (Burn and Schott), Visual Communication, 3 (3), October 2004. Chapter 9 was first published as ‘Moving Between a Spectral and Material Plane: Interactivity in Social Play with Computer Games’ (Schott and Kambouri), Convergence, 9 (3), 41–55. An early version of chapter 8 appeared as ‘Signs from a Strange Planet: Role play and Social Performance in Anarchy Online’ (Burn and Carr), conference proceedings, COSIGN 2003, 3rd conference on Computational Semiotics for Games and New Media, 10–12 September 2003, University of Teesside, UK, pp. 14–21. Chapter 12 draws on research undertaken with the support of the Eduserv Foundation.

We would like to thank all those who read and critiqued early drafts of our work, especially Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen, Caroline Pelletier, Julian Kücklich and Siobhan Thomas, and the games industry professionals we interviewed in the course of our research. Diane would like to thank Paul. Thanks also to Liza Chan, and to all the players who answered our questions, especially Pete Katsiaounis, and Barney Oram and his students at Long Road VIth Form College, Cambridge.

CHAPTER

01

Studying Computer Games

David Buckingham

COMPUTER games have existed in some form for almost half a century and have been a mass-market commercial phenomenon for more than twenty-five years. They are a regular part of life for millions of people. Given the current scale, significance and popularity of computer games, the reasons why we should study them might seem self-evident. Yet what is less obvious, even to computer games academics, is how we should study them. Deciding on the constituents or defining qualities of computer games has also proven rather problematic. How we distinguish computer games from other forms of media might have various ramifications, and different interest groups are naturally motivated to highlight those aspects of computer games that best reflect their own speciality, preoccupations or agenda.

Why study computer games?

Economically, games are one of the most rapidly expanding sectors of the cultural industries. For example, the US Entertainment Software Association claims that, in 2002, 221 million games were sold, and that the industry’s annual income in that year of almost $7 billion had more than doubled over the preceding six years.1 The European Leisure Software Association similarly estimates revenues in Europe of $5.5 billion, of which $3.5 billion were from the UK (which is the largest games market in Europe)2 and there are alleged to be over 100 million games consoles in use worldwide. In Britain, the games market is twice the size of the market for video rentals and 1.4 times greater than that for cinema admissions,3 while sales of games in the US exceed those of books (although the latter are in fact also growing). Industry forecasts project continuing expansion: one influential estimate suggests that the worldwide market will grow from $20 billion in 2002 to $30 billion by 2007, with revenues from online gaming growing more than fivefold.4 The oft-repeated claim that the games industry is ‘bigger than Hollywood’ may be misleading in some respects, but it is clearly not far from the truth.

Reliable recent statistics on the scale of gameplaying are rather more difficult to obtain. Research conducted in the late 1990s in Britain and the USA suggested that, on average, children were spending between twenty-five and forty-five minutes a day playing computer games (Livingstone and Bovill, 1999; Roberts and Foehr, 2004), although these figures have almost certainly increased since that time. However, it should be pointed out that children are not the sole or even the main market for games. The US Entertainment Software Association asserts that the average age of gameplayers is twenty-nine, and that 41 per cent of the most frequent PC gameplayers are over thirty-five. There are now growing numbers of gamers over the age of sixty.5 Meanwhile, the market is also diversifying in terms of gender: according to recent figures from ELSPA6 39 per cent of gamers in the US are women; nearly 37 per cent in Japan are women; around 70 per cent in Korea; and 25 per cent in Western Europe. What these figures do not reveal, however, is the diversity of games that all these various people are playing. Many women, for instance, play online puzzle or card games, rather than the mainstream titles advertised on television or lining the shelves of computer games retailers. By contrast, the games that we focus on in this book are high-profile games with massive production budgets. Such games, especially those developed with consoles in mind, continue to be aggressively marketed at youthful, male consumers.

Despite these figures, the majority of new computer games lose money, and the costs of entry to the market are rising dramatically; and this inevitably leads to a form of conservatism, since it is safer to reproduce existing successes than to risk innovation (Zimmerman, 2002). The old view of games production as a creative ‘cottage industry’ is belied by the increasing concentration of the industry in the hands of a small number of large corporations. Likewise, there are significant ‘digital divides’ in terms of access to gaming, particularly when it comes to forms of online gaming that require subscriptions and broadband access; and, despite the industry’s interest in attracting a female market, gameplaying continues to be perceived as a heavily male-dominated activity. Computer gaming is undeniably a mass phenomenon, but it has yet to approach the universal reach of television or video.

These qualifications aside, the sheer scale of computer gaming would suggest that it is worthy of study. Yet we also need to take account of more qualitative claims about the cultural significance of games, and about their effects. Despite their increasing popularity, computer games continue to be denigrated by critics and commentators of many persuasions: they are frequently condemned as a vehicle for sexism and mindless violence, as antisocial and anti-educational, or alternatively as just a pointless waste of time. As Kurt Squire (2002) and others have pointed out, these kinds of criticisms have recurred with the advent of every new medium – and, as with debates about the effects of television, the evidence for such claims is often equally inconclusive (see Buckingham, 2002).

On the other hand, the popularity of computer games frequently reinforces a generational rhetoric that is characteristic of popular discussions of young people and new media (Buckingham, 2000). Young people are routinely described as a generation of cyborgs, whose relationship with technology has produced new orientations to learning, to play and to social interaction that are radically different from those of their parents. Thus, Jon Katz (2003) argues that gaming has produced a cultural ‘chasm’ between the generations, and that traditional forms of culture are ‘declining and endangered’ – although his arguments have generated some equally forthright abuse, even from self-professed gamers.7 As with the claims about the negative influence of computer games, the evidence here is decidedly limited (Goldstein, 2001); it also tends to ignore the considerable continuities between older forms of gaming and those provided by new technology.

Some games researchers have sought to counter the widespread condemnation of computer games by defining them as a form of ‘art’. Henry Jenkins and Kurt Squire (2002), for example, claim that games are one of the ‘lively’ or popular arts of the modern era. They raise important questions about the aesthetic qualities of games – their origins in other artistic forms, their ways of managing space, their unique approaches to creating mood and stimulating the engagement of players, and their use of texture, colour and light. Steven Poole (2000) likewise explores games using well-established concepts from art and literary criticism, such as genre, narrative and character. We will be drawing on and developing some of these approaches in this book, although we suspect that the claim for games as ‘art’ raises some rather awkward questions about the category of ‘art’ itself.

Yet, whether or not they are ‘art’, computer games are now an established cultural form, with their own history and their own place in the broader landscape of modern culture. While most claim that Spacewar, created by Steve Russell at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the early 1960s, was the first computer game, some British scholars argue that the honour should go to A. S. Douglas, a Ph.D. student at Cambridge, who created a computer version of noughts and crosses (tic tac toe) in 1952.8 There are now numerous scholarly and encyclopaedic histories of computer games (e.g. Herz, 1997; Kent, 2001; Kline et al., 2003; Sellers, 2001), although most of these are US-centric.

Furthermore, today’s games are deeply enmeshed in the ‘convergence’ that characterizes modern media: books are made into films which are made into games (and vice versa), which in turn generate a myriad of other texts and commodities. Television programmes increasingly purport to be interactive, incorporating specific game-like elements; and the graphic styles and structures of games are taken up by musicians and visual artists in their work. It could even be argued that much contemporary media culture – from The Matrix (1999) to Big Brother (2000–) – is increasingly aspiring to the condition of the computer game.

Games are also a key factor in the globalization of the media industries. A phenomenon like the recent children’s craze Pokémon illustrates both the convergence of media and the ways in which games are crucial to building global markets. Pokémon began life as a video game, designed for Nintendo’s handheld GameBoy console, and subsequently ‘span off’ into television, movies, trading cards and a whole range of other merchandise. This process of globalization was decidedly double-edged: through a complex web of local franchises, Nintendo sought to ‘deodorize’ the potentially alienating Japanese aspects of the game, while simultaneously maximizing its Japanese ‘cool’ (Tobin, 2004). As we shall see, similar processes of cultural appropriation and exchange are at work in Role Playing Games targeted at a much older market, such as the Final Fantasy series discussed in chapters 6 and 7.

The current enthusiasm for using computer games in education is also indicative of this broader significance. Many educators are now looking to games as a potential means of re-engaging disaffected learners and of exploiting the apparent benefits of ‘interactive’ technology. Evidence thus far points to rather limited success – not least because of the limited nature of much ‘edutainment’ software (Buckingham and Scanlon, 2003). Some researchers have argued that the way forward here is for educators to pay closer attention to the nature of learning in apparently ‘non-educational’ games, such as those we consider in this book (Gee, 2003).

The reasons why we should study computer games are thus, we hope, fairly self-evident. The more difficult questions are to do with what we might study, and how.

What is a game?

This book is called ‘Computer Games’ rather than ‘Video Games’ (or ‘Computer and Video Games’) simply because it is a more inclusive term – in the UK, games are called ‘computer games’ irrespective of whether they are played on a PC or on a dedicated games console such as a Playstation or an XBox (and we use the PC to mean ‘personal computer’ whether it uses a Windows, Linux, or Macintosh operating system). Some games theorists have made a great deal of this distinction. Keith Feinstein (1999), for example, argues that ‘computer games’ (played on a PC) are more cerebral and strategic in their approach than ‘video games’ (played on a console or an arcade machine), which are more emotional, and focused on immediacy and action. He also argues that computer games are a solitary pursuit, while video games are more sociable. Others (e.g. Wolf and Perron, 2003a) argue that computer games are less likely to rely on the visual dimension than video games.

It is still possible to identify some differences between console games and those played on a PC, yet the prevalence of cross-platform games (that is, games that can be played on both PCs and consoles) would complicate any attempt to distinguish absolutely between the two. Ultimately, while PCs and consoles are different in important respects, and while certain kinds of games are more associated with one platform than the other, the differences are not sufficient or consistent enough to justify a fundamental schism. Thus, in the context of this book, when we say ‘computer games’ we refer to games that can be played on a PC or on a console (we have not included analysis of games played on portable or handheld gaming devices).

As we have noted, computer games draw on other media forms including, for example, science-fiction writing, fantasy novels and gangster movies. Computer games, in their turn, infiltrate wider popular culture. Yet, despite this two-way influence, it is of primary importance that computer games are recognized and studied as games (Eskelinen, 2001) and not simply as a new form of hypertext, literature, drama or cinema. Several credible and comprehensive definitions of ‘game’ have been suggested. For example, the games designer Celia Pearce (2002: 113) defines games as follows:

A game is a structured framework for spontaneous play consisting of:

•  A goal (and a variety of related sub-goals)

•  Obstacles (designed to prevent you from obtaining your goal)

•  Resources (to assist you in obtaining your goal)

•  Rewards (for progress in the game, often in the form of resources)

•  Penalties (for failing to overcome obstacles, often in the form of more obstacles)

•  Information

–  Known to all players and the game

–  Known to individual players (e.g. a hand of cards)

–  Known only to the game

–  Progressive information (moves from one state of knowledge to another, e.g. Chance cards in Monopoly)

The first sentence of Pearce’s definition points out the fundamental difference between games and other kinds of cultural texts: games are played, and the rules of the game provide a framework for play. Thus a computer game is not as self-contained as a book or a film, and games involve a different type and level of participation from that of reading a novel or watching a movie. For instance, in many (though not all) games, we effectively ‘become’ a character in the game – we assume the identity of an ‘avatar’ – and play the game from their perspective. Thus, Pearce argues, rather than simply ‘getting to know’ characters, players can play a part in actively defining and directing them. Furthermore, players do these things in different ways: in a game, players spontaneously generate variable sequences of action, which are never exactly the same each time (see Eskelinen and Tronstad, 2003).

Jesper Juul (2003) provides a model of what he calls ‘gameness’ – that is, the essentially game-like characteristics of games. Like Pearce, his primary focus is on computer games, but he attempts to locate them within a broader account of games in general. Juul argues that games can be defined by six common features, as follows:

1.  Games are based on rules.

2.  Games have variable, quantifiable outcomes.

3.  Different values (positive or negative) are assigned to these outcomes.

4.  The player invests effort to achieve the desired outcome.

5.  The player is emotionally ‘attached’ to the outcome.

6.  Games have negotiable consequences for real life.

Juul’s definition clearly distinguishes between games and play. All games must be played, but not all play takes the form of a game. Games entail rules. It is rules that give meaning to players’ actions (for example, by defining the different consequences that follow from them). In order to function, rules must be unambiguous: there must be at least some limits on how far they can be changed or renegotiated. Yet, as Juul himself points out, there are well-known games that fail to conform to his definition. The Sims (2000), for instance, has no particular outcome, while the rules of a table-top Role Playing Game like Dungeons & Dragons (1974) are, in practice, actually negotiable – and these games also have no particular outcome. The computer Role Playing Games (or RPGs), that we examine in this book have relatively quantifiable outcomes, and less negotiable rule sets, but other aspects of table-top RPGs, especially a concern with role, characterization and storytelling, are still evident.

There is a further general quality of games that is only implicit in the definitions we have considered thus far. This relates to the essentially fictional nature of games – that is, the idea that games are fundamentally set apart from ‘ordinary life’. This argument was proposed by much earlier theorists of play, such as Johan Huizinga (1938/1955) and Roger Caillois (1958/1979). However emotionally ‘attached’ players may be to the outcome of a game, they nevertheless recognize on some level that it is ‘just a game’. This applies even though, as Juul suggests, games can be assigned real-life consequences by players (for example, if they bet on the outcome). As Salen and Zimmerman (2003) put it, the game takes place within a ‘magic circle’, a frame that marks it off from reality, both spatially (in that the game world is distinct from the real world) and temporally (in that play must begin and end). In play, we can use our knowledge of real life, as well as our knowledge of other games (and indeed of other media or genres). Ultimately, it is the rules that apply within the magic circle that define what things mean – and, in many cases, there are significant differences between what things mean in games (or in different games) and what they mean in real life. We would argue that this applies even in cases like The Sims that make strong claims to resemble real life (and that possess what in semiotic terms is called ‘high modality’).

Distinguishing between games

The attempt to identify an essential ‘gameness’ of computer games may encourage us to recognize what games such as Tetris (1988) and Final Fantasy X (2001) have in common; but what they have in common may in fact be rather less interesting or important than the ways in which they differ. Of course, there are several fairly obvious distinctions we might make between computer games. We can distinguish between games in terms of the point of view players adopt (first person, third person or ‘god’); between games with single or multiple players or teams; between games with defined levels of difficulty or progress and those without; between games that are based on completing tasks within a given time, and those that are not; between games that encourage exploration and those that require us to follow a linear path; and so on. As all this indicates, the differences between computer games are not simply about the manner in which they represent settings or narratives or characters – in other words, about those elements that apply to other media or cultural forms (which may in fact be more or less superficial). They are also about the ways in which games are played.

For example, Pearce’s definition (above) draws attention to the different economies of games – their balance of rewards and penalties. Thus, we might make distinctions between the economies of games in terms of their diversity and complexity, and the degree of control that they afford to players (for example, through permitting ‘trading’ of one form of ‘currency’ or resource for another). Likewise, Juul alerts us to the fact that games differ in terms of the balance between elements of chance and elements of strategy. Indeed, it is essentially because of the element of chance that a game must be different each time it is played. A slightly broader way of looking at this is to say that there is a balance between elements that can be controlled by the player, and those that cannot be. Mark Wolf identifies four necessary ‘elements’ of games as follows:

those indicating the player’s presence in the game (the player-character); those indicating the computer’s presence in the game (computer-controlled characters); objects that can be manipulated or used by game characters; and the background environment that generally serves as the setting and is not manipulated or altered by any of the characters during the game. (2003: 50)

Obviously, in the context of a single game, these elements would have to exist in some kind of coherent relationship. This recalls Salen and Zimmerman’s definition of games, which stresses that games are systems: ‘a set of parts that interrelate to form a complex whole’ (2004: 55).

Another key element specific to games is that of rules. For example, Aki Jarvinen (2003) outlines a taxonomy of different types of game rules, as follows:

1.  Components. These are rules relating to the properties of objects within the game (such as tools, avatars or resources) that define their number, status or value.

2.  Procedures. These relate to the actions that players perform in order to play and to advance towards their goal. Thus, it may be that procedures have to be performed in a certain order, using certain components, or at certain points in the game.

3.  Environments. This is the physical space of play, which may be more or less abstract. Environments typically contain objects or paths that permit or constrain movement, and define the boundaries of the game world.

4.  Themes. Themes are the ‘content’ of the game – for example, puzzle-solving or driving or fighting or escaping to safety. They may be more or less abstract, and can enable players to use knowledge drawn from other areas of media or of real life (such as sport).

5.  The interface. This refers to our means of access to the game, for example a board or a pack of cards or a computer screen. The interface may be more or less complex, but it is this that governs how we gain access to the game world.

Jarvinen suggests that these different types of rules may be combined in different ways, and prioritized or marginalized in different games or game genres. They may apply in different ways in different locations (or levels) of a particular game, or at different times, and they can be mutually interdependent or not.

Another significant component here is that of obstacles – or what Aarseth (1997) refers to as the ‘aporias’ or ‘gaps’ that effectively provoke the ‘work’ that is required to play the game. Markku Eskelinen and Ragnhild Tronstad (2003) provide a useful categorization of these gaps in gameplay, as follows:

1.  Gaps can be either static or dynamic. Static gaps are always present and must always be overcome; dynamic gaps can be avoided and the goal can still be reached.

2.  Gaps may be determinate or indeterminate: that is, they may or may not function in the same way each time.

3.  Gaps may be transient or intransient: we may have to overcome them in a fixed (limited) time, or not.

4.  Personal gaps are specific to a particular character (that is, to the avatar we play during the game); impersonal gaps apply to all characters.

5.  Controlled gaps may appear depending on the player’s progress and skills, whereas random gaps can appear at any time.

6.  Linked gaps are connected to (and dependent upon) other gaps, while unlinked ones are not.

Taxonomies of this kind provide some ways of exploring the differences between games, which readers might wish to apply to their own chosen examples. (There are several others now emerging within the academic literature: see, for example, the various contributions to Wolf and Perron, 2003b; and Goldstein and Raessens, 2004.) On one level, they alert us to the diverse characteristics of games as structured frameworks for play (to use Pearce’s terms), or as rule-governed systems (to use Salen and Zimmerman’s). Clearly, these differences have significant implications for the experience of players. They determine how challenging a game appears to be, how much control it appears to give us, and how it seeks to motivate us to continue playing. The sense of engagement or frustration or immersion or boredom – the pleasure or displeasure – we experience in playing a game is thus at least partly determined by its ‘gameness’, or what might be called its ludic qualities (the term ‘ludic’ derives from the Latin word ludus, meaning ‘game’).

While such definitions and typologies are valuable, considering computer games in these terms by no means wholly explains the nature of gameplay. The experience of play also depends upon how we interpret and use these various elements of the game, and how they relate to our own existing enthusiasms and preoccupations. What players and reviewers call ‘playability’ is certainly an important dimension of games, and we can begin to define it in terms of some of the dimensions noted above. Yet what attracts and motivates players may also be the visual spectacle of the game, the storytelling, the emotional appeal of the characters, the use of humour, the sense that the game is somehow relevant to their own lives, and so on. In other words, games have a representational dimension that may be crucial to their appeal – and it is a dimension that we ignore at our peril.

Meanwhile, of course, gaming is also a social activity. This is literally the case if we choose to play with others; but even if we play alone, the wider culture of gaming involves a considerable amount of interpersonal interaction, both face-to-face and virtual. These elements are frequently emphasized in the research on gameplayers, particularly in relation to children (see Buckingham, 2002; Ermi and Mayra, 2003; Jessen, 1999), although they are often neglected by those who focus mainly on game ‘texts’. Yet this too is a crucial dimension of the study of games.

Given this diversity, there are definite limits to the value of a generalized theory of games. For this reason, in this book we have chosen to focus on a specific genre or genres, rather than on computer games as a whole. The games that we discuss are computer Role Playing Games (or RPGs) and, to a lesser extent, action adventure games. We are particularly interested in these genres, because such games celebrate their relationships to other media forms (cinema or comics, for instance), and clearly rely, in terms of their appeal, on the creation of complex worlds, intriguing characters and twisting narratives. When analysing RPGs we have no wish to ignore their ‘gameness’ – but neither do we wish to ignore their obvious commitment to their representational aspects, or the social dimensions of play. In fact, it is the relationship between the game as system – its representational factors – and the social dimensions of play, that is of particular interest to us.

Who studies ‘Game Studies’?

The question of how games relate to (and differ from) other kinds of cultural texts is not a purely academic concern. On one level, it is a legal issue, which relates to anxieties about media effects and the need for regulation. Thus, if we were to prove that players ‘identify’ with the protagonist of a first-person shooter game in a much more direct and powerful way than they do with the protagonist of an action movie, the case for censoring such games might become stronger (see The St Louis Court Brief, 2003; and Kline, 2003). It is also a cultural issue and an economic issue, which relates to the growing convergence of the media industries. If computer games are positioned primarily as ‘spin-offs’ from other media (such as the game versions of feature films or popular television quiz shows), then there are significant questions raised about the potential sources of innovation within the industry.

As Marinka Copier (2003) observes, the process of defining what a game is (and is not) also entails defining what game studies is (and is not). The attempt to define ‘gameness’, or the essential qualities of games, is thus intimately related to this struggle to establish computer games studies as an independent discipline. So, even within the academy, the question of how we define a game is tied up with the operation of institutional power, and has been subject to ongoing territorial claims and counterclaims. Computer games studies is a new field and, inevitably, most of those involved are refugees from other disciplines. An anthology such as Routledge’s Video Game Theory Reader (Wolf and Perron, 2003b), for example, features contributions drawing from literary reception theory, psychoanalysis, art history, postmodernism and cognitive psychology.

For some, this disciplinary promiscuity is a problem. To establish computer games studies as a new humanities discipline, it is necessary to demonstrate that the topic of research is not sufficiently served, appreciated or understood. Thus, in July 2001, Espen Aarseth launched the first issue of a new online journal, Game Studies, with an editorial declaring it to be ‘Computer game studies, year one’, in which he firmly divorced the study of games from related disciplines such as film and media studies, literary studies and other aspects of new media. Others see the emergence of game studies not only as a matter of establishing a new discipline, but also as a challenge to established disciplines. Frans Mayra (2003), for example, argues that the genie of ‘interactivity’, once released from its bottle, will result in established theories of art, culture and learning (and the rest) having to be rewritten; although other games theorists (such as Aarseth (1997) and – even more strongly – Newman (2002)) dismiss the very notion of ‘interactivity’ as imprecise and meaningless. Others argue that the study of games should revolutionize existing disciplines, while still somehow preserving them: Julian Kücklich (2003), for example, argues that computer games are the ultimate fulfilment of postmodernist literary theory, and that all texts can ultimately be seen as games. Others seek merely to apply well-established theoretical approaches from literary or film studies (see, respectively, Rockwell, 1999, or Rehak, 2003), with rather less revolutionary intentions. Meanwhile, yet others argue for the relevance of theories of drama and performance (Eskelinen and Tronstad, 2003).

Theory developed especially for computer games is certainly useful (as the typologies and definitions used in this chapter demonstrate). Yet we would argue that theories drawn from narrative theory, film studies, social semiotic theory, sociology and audience research are also applicable – albeit not without thoughtful adaptation. Often what is interesting is not what such theories tell us about games, but rather the manner in which a game’s playability complicates or challenges the theories themselves.

In this book we analyse games and game genres that foreground their associations to other kinds of texts. We recognize their distinctive identity as games, at the same time as we acknowledge their associations with other forms of popular culture. This emphasis is due in part, no doubt, to the fact that we teach and write from within a media studies tradition. This means that we are not primarily concerned with technical or aesthetic questions of game design, although we do address these in chapter 11, and in passing throughout the book. Our primary aim is to develop a set of critical ‘tools’ that will enable students of popular culture to engage with the unique characteristics of a relatively new cultural form.

The study of computer games involves revisiting a dilemma that media studies scholars have long (and perhaps quixotically) contended with: if we focus on analysing the structure of texts, do we risk underestimating the social and cultural specifics of the audience, and the degree to which such factors might alter their ‘reading’ of the same material? If, on the other hand, we focus on the audience, and ignore the specifics of the particular text they are engaging with, do we risk misunderstanding the audience’s experience? This tension between textual analysis (commonly associated with the humanities) and audience-based research (generally associated with the social sciences) is impossible to ignore in the context of computer games and gaming culture, precisely because the game text is playable: it is only realized through play, and play is a lived, social and culturally situated experience. Hence the relationship between the text and the player is central to the structure of this book.

Accordingly, we begin by focusing on games as ‘texts’. To call a game a text is not to deny that it involves play, mutability, chance, interactivity or change. Being a text does not mean that something has to have materiality; nor is it limited to things that are written down, as texts might well incorporate a variety of communicative modes (speech, song, sound, writing, visual design). A text is composed for some kind of purpose beyond the everyday, the disposable or the ephemeral. What matters is that it is recognizable and that (in some broad sense) it is replicable. So, for our purposes, the fact that computer games are only fully realized when they are played does not exempt them from being ‘texts’.

In chapters 2–5 we look at the textual characteristics of games, their playable systems and their representational factors. More to the point, we examine the ways that playability and representation interrelate. We look in turn at genre, narrative, gameplay, space and navigation. Our analysis in these early chapters is largely based on our own experiences as players. The advantage of this approach is that it enables us to engage directly and in some detail with the games themselves. However, the limitations are obvious: the analysis will inevitably reflect the perspective of a particular player/author.

As the book proceeds, then, the focus progressively shifts from the game to the player’s relationship with the game – to the avatar and the ‘roles’ available to players (in chapter 6) and to the manifestations of that relationship in fan art (in chapter 7). In these chapters we begin to draw more on interviews and email dialogues with other players. We focus on the ways that games combine different ‘communicative modes’ (that they are, in fact, ‘multimodal’) and analyse the ways in which players respond to, and manipulate, these various modes when interpreting a game, or designing their own experience of play. Finally, we turn our attention more towards social aspects of gaming, and to relationships between players. Thus, in chapter 8 we examine an online multiplayer game, while in chapter 9 we look at co-playing in a domestic setting on a games console, and in chapter 10 we consider thedegrees of agency enjoyed by gamers, both in the act of play and in the context of fan culture. In chapter 11 we ask how the issues we have discussed have relevance to professional games developers, while chapter 12 focuses specifically on gender, looking across the different dimensions of gaming that we have addressed in the book as a whole.

There are many important issues that we have not addressed in the course of this book. We have focused on a limited selection of graphically rendered commercial games, and on specific genres. As such, we cannot hope to do justice to the full diversity of contemporary games. We have also largely bracketed off the ‘political economy’ of games – that is, the commercial dimensions of the global games industry, the marketing and promotion of games, and the patterns of ownership and control that significantly determine the kinds of games that are produced. There are also omissions that are the result of our own disciplinary leanings: we do not focus in any detail on issues of hardware, games programming or cognition, for example. These are all important issues; and, as the study of computer games continues to develop, new research in these areas is emerging all the time.

Another point worth noting is that, at the time of writing, the games that we are analysing are already several years old. We recognize that no matter how up-to-date we attempted to be in our selection of games, they would be passé by the time the book was published. For this reason we have focused on games that are widely known and played, and that might be regarded in some sense as representative. Our aim is to explore a series of key issues in debates about games in relation to these specific case studies; and, in the process, to offer some models or strategies that readers might use in analysing games of their own choice.

CHAPTER

02

Defining Game Genres

Andrew Burn and Diane Carr

MANY computer games could be said to offer degrees of role play, but not all games that do so are categorized as Role Playing Games (RPGs). So what is an RPG? To ask this question is to invoke the complex set of practices by which computer games are described and classified by a range of groups, with a variety of interests – from developers to marketing departments, reviewers to fans, cult audiences to academics. In some ways these categorizing practices are a continuation of the ways that the idea of genre has been used in literature, film, art and music. There are, however, important differences. In order to describe these differences, and prior to examining what differentiates RPGs from other game genres, it is necessary to review the theory and practice of genre classification itself.

What is genre?

The term ‘genre’ is used in everyday language, but it is also used in a more specialized or technical sense within literary, film and media theory. Genre theory belongs to a tradition of classification often traced back to Aristotle who, in about 335 BC, laid out systematic criteria for the analysis of epic poetry, tragedy and comedy. For Aristotle poetry was, above all, representation, or mimesis – and this serves as one basis of his classification: how do different fictions represent the world in different ways? He was also concerned with form as another basis for distinguishing between various kinds of poetry, and with medium (voice, flute or lyre). This balance between content, form and medium continues in genre theory to the present day.

The most influential modern theory of genres is that of Mikhail Bakhtin, a Russian cultural and literary theorist who saw genres as a form of social action. According to Bakhtin, genres are the conventional uses of language by social groups, and range from the ‘little speech genres’ (or everyday uses of language) discussed by his colleague Volosinov (1973) to the major genres of the novel analysed by Bakhtin himself (1981). The founding characteristic of language in Bakhtin’s view is dialogue: genres are forged in the ceaseless exchange between speaker and listener.

Bakhtin’s work, then, adds four new ideas to the Aristotelian model. First, genres are not to be found only in artistic texts, but in all uses of language – from the job interview to the political speech. Second, genre is not only found in the text, but also in the social context that produces it. Third, genre is not a fixed set of properties, but is fluid: it is constantly remade in a dialogic (from ‘dialogue’) process in order to suit the needs of the social groups who produce, define and contest its structures. Finally, genres are resources for both the production and the reception of texts. This means that they exist as patterns that cannot be ignored by makers of texts, however much they may seek to transform them. It also means that they serve as resources for the social use and the interpretation of texts by their audiences.

To give a brief example: later in this chapter we explore how the RPG genre was received and transformed by Japanese computer game designers in the 1980s. Games such as Final Fantasy VII hark back to earlier sets of generic characteristics (that themselves reflect the social interests of particular games communities), but these new games were designed to address the needs and interests of a different community, which was reared on the popular narratives of post-war Japan. These new RPGs were wedded to a different technology (games consoles) and, while they borrowed from pre-existing RPGs, they held no particular commitment to retain or duplicate their structures. Thus the genre evolved to accommodate itself to new social uses and new resources, both cultural and technological.

According to Bakhtin, this process of generic change is characteristic of language in general. Language, he argues, is naturally fluid and diverse; it contains many dialects and accents. However, there are also powerful forces that attempt to limit this diversity; that seek to pull language towards a unifying, standardized form. Similarly, genres could be regarded as ideological straitjackets that control how texts represent the world, and how we engage with them; or they can be regarded as structures whose patterns help us to navigate through and beyond existing representations of reality, and to find communities of like-minded readers, viewers and players.

The idea of genre as a form of social practice has been further developed in the field of film studies. Early film theorists tended to define genres in terms of more or less fixed sets of characteristics, for example, particular narrative devices, settings or character types. However, Steve Neale (1980) argued that genres were not simply about the qualities of film texts, but ‘sets of expectations, orientations and conventions’ that were shared between film-makers, the film industry and audiences. The industry might seek to fix or stabilize the characteristics of a genre in the hope of capitalizing on earlier successes, but it is also bound to encourage change (for example through the creation of new, hybrid genres), in the hope that it might reach new audiences. Neale’s more recent work (2000, 2002) has tended to focus on the economic dimensions of this process – in effect, on how the industry attempts to use genre to regulate audience behaviour in order to generate profit. Yet genres are not solely defined by the industry: what ‘counts’ as a romance or an action movie, for example, is also debated by critics and filmgoers. Genre, then, is a matter of the dynamic relationships between producers, audiences and texts.

A further development of the idea of genre can be found in social semiotic theory, which we use in analysing some of the games in this book (see chapters 6, 7 and 8). Social semiotic theorist Gunther Kress (2003) writes that genres seek to establish particular kinds of interactions between producers, readers and texts. For example, his analyses of scientific texts suggest that in some cases science is defined as a set of objective facts that the reader is expected to learn. In other cases, it is offered as a more subjective narrative with which the reader is invited to engage in an active and questioning way. Likewise, we might classify games according to the way in which they establish the terms of the player’s interaction. These terms might be multiple and simultaneous, however; so, while this form of classification is relevant, it might not be the most useful place to begin when classifying a game.

We could prioritize one aspect of a computer game in order to simplify or expedite its generic classification, but in truth these games are hybrid forms, and thus they invite compound classifications. As we noted in the previous chapter, computer games are played on various platforms, they incorporate different rules, outcomes, and obstacles, and they represent their worlds, themes and inhabitants in different ways. Generic classification that foregrounds any one of these factors would be valid, yet, taken in isolation, each would be (to varying degrees) partial. Thus, a game can simultaneously be classified according to the platform on which it is played (PC, mobile phone, XBox), the style of play it affords (multiplayer, networked, or single user, for instance), the manner in which it positions the player in relation to the game world (first person, third person, ‘god’), the kind of rules and goals that make up its gameplay (racing game, action adventure), or its representational aspects (science fiction, high fantasy, urban realism). All these possibilities for classification coexist in games, and none are irrelevant, but we would argue that the style of gameplay on offer is of fundamental significance.

Game genres

We cited various theorists in chapter 1, including Salen and Zimmerman (2003), and Celia Pearce (2002), in order to argue that games are, first and foremost, rule-based systems, or structures for play. Games involve rules, and a game’s genre is (to a large degree) determined by its rules.1 Computer RPGs owe their rules to earlier table-top RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons. The rules govern timing and turn taking, combat outcomes, character creation, and the kinds of weapons and magic on offer to different character types. While table-top RPGs are open-ended (with negotiable rule sets), offline computer RPGs tend to have set outcomes – to ‘win’ is to complete the quest and defeat the archvillain. However, an emphasis on exploration, storytelling and characterization does mean that these games are relatively non-linear. Action adventure games like Tomb Raider (1996), on the other hand, tend to set specific goals that must be attained in a particular order before the player can progress. Rules are likely to concern the ways that resources need to be rationed or used up, the combination of commands that are necessary to get the avatar successfully past a spatial obstacle or the kind of error that will have them plunging to a (temporary) death.

Meanwhile, in those sports simulation games that mimic the experience of a single physical activity, such as car racing or skate-boarding, the rules and objectives of the game are likely to relate directly to these activities. Alongside this will be the economies related to the competitive dimensions of such activities, such as rival drivers. A strategy game, by contrast, will typically be based on territorial objectives, and rules that are orientated towards the marshalling and management of available resources, whether these are armies, weapons, labour or geographical features. Even open-ended simulation games like Sim City or The Sims have rules that determine how characters and locations are constructed, and what can then be done with them.

When it comes to genre designation, gameplay is of crucial import, but it is still only part of the story. Our research with players suggests that, while expertise in and loyalties to particular kinds of gaming does matter, players also select and value particular games for their representational aspects. As we explore more in later chapters, online fan communities value these factors to the extent that they will invest enormous effort in expanding on these features, writing poems about characters in Final Fantasy, producing concept drawings for new characters in Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee, or inventing complicated personal lives for their characters in Anarchy Online.

Genre in practice

The idea of genre is very much an everyday part of gaming. It is key to how games are produced and marketed, and central to their evaluation by critics and players. The online game magazine Videogame Review (<www.pcgamereview.com>), for instance, organizes its player-submitted reviews by genre (‘game type’). Their classifications seem fairly straightforward to begin with, and include adventure, puzzle, racing, simulation, sports, strategy and role playing. The local diversities buried beneath these classifications only become apparent within the text of the reviews. Here, for example, three, reviewers of Final Fantasy VII assess the game.2

There’s no describing how this game makes you feel, the story grabs ahold of you and never lets go . . . The gameplay is the best in any rpg I’ve ever played . . . The materia system was beautiful and the magic spells and summon materia were magnificently animated. (Review submitted by OmegaReaper777, 1 August 2004)

Final fantasy 7 is . . . possibly the best RPG of all. For it’s time, FFVII’s graphics were stunning and brilliant . . . The storyline is very deep and you feel as if you personally know the characters. The music wraps you up in the emotions and makes you feel as if you are there (Review submitted by Eliza Kyo, 6 October 2002)

I might not mind the ‘random battles’ (also known as ‘every three steps you fight’) if the storyline was any good. However, that isn’t even the case. The storyline is this: Follow Sephiroth around until you finally, at the end of this mess of a game, kill him. Woo-hoo. Frankly, when Aeris died, I didn’t care. I mean, Aeris had no personality. Or maybe she did, if you consider ‘stereotypical giggling girls’ to be a personality type. (Review submitted by Seifer, 3 December 2001)

These reviews reflect the approaches to genre that we have discussed. For one thing, different aspects of the game are identified and assessed, some of which (music, characterization, narrative) relate to the game’s representational ‘dressing’, while others relate more to gameplay. These reviews are located in a specific context, and produced by a particular set of gamers. The reviews fall within the umbrella category of RPGs, but contributors make fine distinctions within that magazine’s community, and different aspects of various games are prioritized and prized by different players. For instance, the reviewers tended to compare Final Fantasy to other Japanese RPGs, while games from the Baldur’s Gate franchise were more frequently compared to table-top RPGs. In accordance with Kress’s arguments, the conventions of genre serve here to express these players’ relations both to other participants in the play culture, and to the text itself. These reviews also illustrate the notion that genre is dialogic (in Bakhtin’s terms): reviewers make comparisons, and thus respond to the history of the genre, as well as to a specific game text, while directly addressing the reader, as a fellow-player and as ‘you’.

Another online magazine, Gamespot (<www.gamespot.com>), attempts a much more complex system of classification. It allows readers to ‘browse by genre’. Again, the list seems fairly straightforward at first glance, and very similar to the genres listed in Videogame Review: Action, Adventure, Driving, Puzzle, RPG, Simulations, Sports, Strategy. However, once individual games are selected, the genre description is broken down into a series of more detailed units. Gran Turismo 4 becomes ‘Driving > Racing > GT/Street’. The Sims