The Perma-death interview.

A large part of what fascinates me about games is the subjective nature of the play experience itself, the notion that no two people will have the same experience even within a heavily scripted game. Recently Australian blogger Ben Abraham has been gaining attention for his decision to partake in an “iron man” play through of Far Cry 2, no reloading when his character dies the game is over. The manner in which this player imposed boundary altered his play experience is something I’m particularly interested in. Fortunately Ben was kind enough to answer some questions I had:

1. In your own words, what prompted your decisions to play Far Cry 2 in this fashion?

I think the initial desire was to impose a new way of playing Far Cry 2 that would lead to more of those fun moments where it feels like something is really hanging in the balance – where the outcome is hinged upon my performance. I thought that perhaps by imposing a limit of a single life, it would add more drama and weight to my actions and performance in the game and ultimately provide me with a more satisfying experience.

In that sense it was for entirely selfish, experiential reasons – I wanted to enjoy and continue enjoying Far Cry 2 having played it a lot already.

2. Having completed Far Cry 2 previously, can you describe some of the ways in which permadeath changed the way you approach the game? Have you noticed yourself doing things differently when you played it under normal conditions?

I guess the approach I took reflected my desire to have a fun experience, and so I took it very seriously and played it quite safe at first. When the initial sense of tension and danger wore off I experimented a bit more, deliberately courted danger a little bit. When playing normally however I probably strode right up to danger and punched it in the face, trusting luck and skill to get me by, but by prioritizing my survival I became much more reserved and cautious. Kinda boring, really.

Practical things that changed how I played included picking safe options, and utilizing all the points on my “How To Kill People More Effectively” strategy. Basically any time there was a dangerous option and a boring safe option, I took the safe one.

3. Do you think this type of play through is something you could imagine doing for a game you had never played before?

I don’t think so. Far Cry 2 is quite forgiving of your mistakes in the sense that if you ‘die’ with a rescue buddy around, you get a second chance. That’s one of the reasons I thought it would be feasible for an ordinary non-uber player like myself to complete Far Cry 2 without ever dying.

4. Is there something specific to the design of Far Cry 2 that makes it more suitable to this type of play through than other games? Do you think Far Cry 2 was a good choice for what you were intending to do, and if so why?

I think the buddy rescue system is one of the best ways of dealing with the problem of lost and wasted game-time that you get by forcing players to reload and try parts of a game again – and I do think that it is a loss. Jesper Juul talks about ‘time lost’ as a punishment in a talk from GDC earlier this year.

5. You have been describing the events that took place from a first person perspective (With a notable exception), and as a connected narrative, is there an explicit reason for this approach to the presentation of your experience?

Part of the attraction to the “one life” approach was that it made everything in the game more meaningful to the story – that is, never ever was an action ‘wasted’ because I died and had to start over. I had also hoped that it would add weight to every action, even insignificant ones, but as it turns out, it’s not quite that straightforward.

I wanted to write from a first person perspective because of a couple of reasons – firstly I was (and still am) increasingly bored with straight essay style writing about games. That’s not to say that I don’t appreciate the good ones, and they’ll certainly always have their place, but more and more I’m finding myself attracted to the kind of games criticism that involves some application of creativity of expression. I’m a bit of a desperate fan of Kieron Gillen’s somewhat controversial New Games Journalism style of writing because it doesn’t just give permission to a writer to be creative, it demands it. I think a lot of people mis-read it back in the day and took it as meaning that was the only way you were meant to write about games, but it’s not meant to be so constrictive – it’s just another tool in the critic’s toolbox.

I also thought that the first person perspective would let me describe how I was feeling while playing it, and as the whole point of the exercise was to change the experience, keep it new and interesting, that seemed the logical choice.

6. The concept of adding additional rules to a game is not a new one: “Iron Man” runs, “Speed Runs”, various approaches have been adopted when playing Thief: The Dark Project: “Ghosting” etc. From your own perspective why do you feel your play through has garnered so much attention? How much of it do you feel is because of the way your have presented your experience? Do you feel people are more interested in the story of your play through, or the concept of what you are doing itself?

I think Kieron Gillen when he linked to the story in RPS’ Sunday Papers hit the nail on the head when he said he wished he’d thought of it. Like you say, self imposing additional rules and constraints isn’t new, but the idea of writing about them is still not done particularly often, and almost never with a view to how it changes the experience.

So in that respect I think it’s the concept that made people sit up and take notice. Whether they stuck around and enjoyed the story, I can’t be sure, but if it’s any indication comments have dropped off slightly in the later episodes while pageviews are still holding steady at somewhere around 100 a day.

When thinking about whether people are explicitly interested in the story, the question I’ve got to ask is “What really is the permanent death story?” Is it the experience that I, the player, have in the game? Or is it the story I construct with blog posts and pictures as it’s received by readers of the blog (and eventually, in the PDF novelization)? From my vantage point as both player and reader of the story, I know that there are a lot of things that happened in the game that get cut from the written story because they either make it too long and boring, compromising the quality of the narrative, or they’re nearly impossible to convey to a reader.

How does one write about the feeling of boating down a river under the cover of darkness as the moon slides behind trees? How do you convince a reader that you really were imagining the feel of the breeze in your face, and the feel of being immersed in this environment? Does the reader even care whether or not I was engaged at this particular point or not? How do I convince a reader that the idea of a soldier who I already shot, but who was still staggering around, was going to burn to death mildly horrified me? The fact that it horrified me in a videogame at all is still amazing to me because videogames suck at making me feel anything other than a desire to collect shit or blow stuff up.

I think it’s in trying to convey these sorts of experiences and personal reactions that I draw the most inspiration from NGJ. Not that Permanent Death is even an NGJ piece, it’s not quite personal enough and it often borders on the edge of being Fan Fiction, so I guess there’s that.

7. Permanence is an unusual term to use when discussing any video game, after all isn’t every decision you make permanent? You can return, change your actions and play out the consequences of that alerted decision but that doesn’t remove the fact that at some point you did make that initial decision?

When writing my thesis last year, I downloaded a single-life speed run of Halo 2 completed on Legendary difficulty. I watched it religiously – I watched all two and a half hours of it through more than once. I think what was so attractive and mesmerising about it was that it seemed to me like this is how Halo 2 was meant to be played.

In terms of making sense within the overarching narrative and fiction, this was how Master Chief would have done it. Any time you die, you mess up and you fail to live up to the chief’s standard, so you have to repeat a section until you get it right. Why do we not see the inherent weirdness in this? I think we have this ingrained, rote-learned blindness to the fundamental strangeness of videogame narratives. We do not experience the real world in anything remotely like the way we experience the events in a videogame.

Obviously, there are lots of good reasons for some of this – if it weren’t possible to fail then where would the challenge in the game come from? I think there are some great alternatives just waiting to be discovered, but so far all we do boils down to retconning the story on-the-fly. Ideally, every game would be perfectly set at that optimum level of difficulty that made it just hard enough to stay interesting, but not hard enough that you ever die and have to repeat any sections. I think most games err on the side of un-boring and go for just a little too hard. Which is fine, but it’s hardly a perfect system.

8. In reference to the previous question, would the decision to play Far Cry 2 again after this play through mitigate the decisions you made? Is that your intent, to never play Far Cry 2 again, and therefore make this your definitive play through?

I definitely intend to play Far Cry 2 again in the future, so no, the series of events in-game that became ‘Permanent Death’ are in no way meant to be the (or even just my) definitive Far Cry 2 story-experience. For starters, they are a fantastically more boring sequence of events than I have had in even other games of Far Cry 2, so it would be doing the game a disservice to leave it at that.

I don’t think playing again would diminish the permadeath story, either. There will always be the written record that roughly equates to that in-game series of events so I don’t think it would be impacted by playing again – or even by someone else attempting the same (or similar) thing.

9. How do you feel about the fact that there is no way to prove you have actually done anything you’ve described? Have you ever considered that there is no way in which the game can confirm that you in fact have not died? Is there such a means of recording this information that I have missed?

It’s interesting, I’ve been thinking recently about what I would do if I died right before the end of the game in a brain-meltingly stupid way, by shooting myself in the face with a grenade launcher, for example. If I was tantalisingly close to the end and messed up I know I would be tempted to lie about it and just keep playing as if nothing happened – after all how would anyone know? As far as the written Permadeath story goes, it’s whatever I say it is, right?

I guess there is no way of proving that I really did all the things I said I did, except to take me at my word. I don’t know if I’d want to there to be a way of proving what I said I did was what really happened, either. I wonder if it would limit the things I could do with the written story – as in, I couldn’t get away with as much ‘sexing up’ of the story as I have so far. I’ll freely admit that I’ve added in all sorts of stuff to make the written story more readable – like adding in some imaginary reasons for why I did the things I did in game.

It’s quite boring to just say “And then I shot some dude because it feels good to click my mouse and have the little man fall over” so I often invent a motivation for the character. I think it comes back to the question of ‘What is the Permanent Death story?’, because if you’re being truly honest, there aren’t any reasons for why we do a lot of what we do in games. Why do we shoot enemy soldiers? Because we’re told we should? Are we even explicitly told that most of the time? It’s certainly not because we are afraid of dying ourselves, as would be the case in a real combat situation. So is it fair game to pretend that’s why I was doing it in the game? I think for the sake of making an interesting written story, it is.

10. Do you think if there was an Achievement for completing the game without dying (Well until the very end), this is something you would have attempted for no other reason that obtaining that Achievement? What about if there was a scoreboard recording the total play time before death, would you be interested in trying to beat the “scores” of others?

I think if there were an achievement for it I wouldn’t need to do the Permanent Death ‘experiment’/story. I’m not very interested in achievements so I may have never bothered with it, but then I may have just to get some additional replay out of the game. Who’s to say?

Actually, I take that first bit back – I may still have done the permadeath play through because it’s important to note that anyone who finishes the game already does never die – because any “narrative branch” of the story that leads to the players death, gets pruned off when they die. Your loading the game eliminates the series of events between that save and your previous death from the Far Cry 2 history and your character goes on none-the-wiser. You may know and remember, but as far as the story is concerned, no one else does because it never happened. Now, the difference with permanent death is that there are no pruned branches.

I’m not really a competitive player, so scoreboards hold next to no interest for me. If you want to play Left 4 Dead with me though, I totally love cooperation and I daresay I work harder at a game when it’s for a cooperative goal than when it’s for a competitive reason.

11. Personally where do you fall on the ludology vs. narratology debate? How do you feel your personal opinions have influenced the decisions you have made during your play through?

I think the ludology/narratology debate is worn out and as Ian Bogost says in his DiGRA keynote, even the question of whether it’s one or the other presupposes a formalist approach to the ontology of games. Realistically, my opinions on whether games are play versus narrative only really matters when thinking about games as stories or games as playgrounds and any other time of the day I’m quite happy to let games be whatever they want to be.

Bogost characterises the Ludology/Naratology debate as “a formalist rather than functionalist approach to the study of games” and by arguing over what games are we end up ignoring what games mean already.

12. A number of other people joined you in your permadeath play through at the start, I believe none of them are still playing having already died. Do you think there is anything about the way you have approached your play through that has helped you to stay alive?

I think it’s more sheer bloody-mindedness that’s kept me going. Michel McBride got bored and quit, and if you’re an experienced player it’s not that hard to stay alive on normal. A reader who started up his own blog was playing along too, but on the hardest difficulty and he didn’t last very long. For me, it’s turned into an endurance test, rather than a skill test.

In defense of the author.

Ask somebody about something they did or something that happened to them recently, you might have encourage them to open up but try it anyway. I can wait…

… Let’s assume for the moment that you did that, what happened? You were told a story. Whether the teller realised it or not, they almost certainly explained their events using dramatic tools and structure. There were characters, there was an ordered sequence of events; there was likely a beginning leading to a middle an through to an end.

Now ask somebody about something they did or something that happened to them in a game they played recently. The resulting story will be very different in terms of content, but the form in which they explained those events will be same. They dramatised it, they provided it with a structure and logical order that it didn’t originally contain.

People having be creating and retelling stories about events in their lives since the birth of communication. Encouraging players to do the same with the events that happen to them in a game is natural; in fact I’d say it’s impossible to prevent them from doing so. Self-authorship, or more accurately the post structuring of events into a dramatic sequence, is a natural human trait and of course it should be encouraged.

But what about the meaning of these stories? What is the emotional and intellectual potential of this self-authorship? How much can players learn about themselves and the world through games that focus largely on self-authorship? Self-authorship relies on players contextualizing events based on their own experience and bias, events are analysed and structured through the lens of the individual experiencing them, they are stories formed through self-reflection. Self-reflection is powerful, but difficult to master and gaining insight from it can be a laborious task that, though, ultimately rewarding may come too late in life to put that insight to use. Insight without sustained self-reflection requires us to be challenged, it requires a catalyst to push that self-reflection into new and previously unexamined directions. It needs events to be examined through the lens of another, somebody with a different viewpoint from us, different values, experience and a different bias. Insight of this kind can change the way we think about the world, by encouraging us to see it through the eyes of somebody of a different gender, or race, or sociopolitical philosophy. Insight of this kind requires an author.

Really? What about The Sims, Michael Abbott (The Brainy Gamer) recently proved that The Sims has the potentially to offer powerful insight into his own psychology and affect him in unexpected ways. The Sims doesn’t have an author so clearly I’m talking nonsense…

… Though it’s true that the story Michael described had no prescriptive author beyond himself the game itself has dozens of authors. The fact that Michael was able to be affected by the game was because the context was instantly understandable and relevant. The tasks he was performing and the decisions he was making had a cultural significance. The Sims presents a view of life that is familiar not simply from our observed reality but also from decades of suburban Americana in other media. Western culture is rich with that particular strata of American culture. From The Wonder Years, to Desperate Housewives, suburban American is a social and cultural construct that many of us understand immediately even if we’ve never been directly exposed to it. The Simsdidn’t need an explicit author it has already had hundreds of them.

The range and type of self-authored stories that emerge from a game like The Sims is something not seen in a game like Spore which provides a lot of the same tools for self-expression and agency. I think the reason for that is that alien civilization as depicted in Sporedoesn’t have the cultural cachet of suburban American. There is not the wealth of pre-extant authored content to serve as contextualization for our actions. With no author for the work itself, and few examples in other media Sporeis a play ground devoid of relevance or association to our own lives. We can only relate to our creations in the most basic terms and with no external lens through which to view them, we are forced to find meaning once more from self-reflection. Powerful yes, but difficult and not always pleasant.

As powerful a tool The Sims is for self-authorship and self-discovery it could only exist in a culture overflowing with the idealised view of suburban American that exists throughout other media. The Sims is a game that could not exist without the authored work of dozens of writers, producers and directors over the last several decades. Left 4 Dead‘s power comes from the filmic history of Zombie movies, Grand Theft Auto IV‘s from shows like The Wire, or The Sopranos.

Is this the best games can do? Relying on the work of other authors to define the context and meaning of available actions?

The Sims is rich with meaning but it is inherently limited in scope, it has a lot to say about family, and human relationships (Which is incredible if you stop and think about it), but little to say about the meaning of life, or the nature of good and evil. It can deal very well with the topics we engage with everyday of our lives but it’s ability to push beyond that to questions that are outside the immediate scope of the family and the neighbourhood is limited. In order to explore these questions games need to start relying on different topics, potentially ones that don’t have the preexisting cultural associations that The Sims is able to draw upon.

Therefore games need an author, to provide the different lens through which we can examine our own actions and decisions. Games need the author to provide the structure against which we can push, the authority we can rally against, the challenges we can overcome. Games need the author or they are doomed to rely on the authorship of those who have gone before, and therefore limited to only mining the veins already tapped.

Games need authors. The only thing left to discuss is how visible those authors should be and that’s a topic that will keep us going for the next few years at least.

Multi-level decision making.

At any moment during a game players are liable to be thinking about events in multiple timeframes at once. Performing tasks that are over in seconds, in order to achieve goals that are over in minutes as a means of completing missions that may take hours.

The lowest level of actions occur on the Immediate layer, these are the second to second decisions made in the heat of combat, during a conversation, or while climbing a wall. When and where to shoot, which dialogue line to select, which handhold to reach for. These events are the Encounters, over in seconds and repeated dozens of times during the course of the game. The narrative strength of actions in this layer is best served through directly embedded content. Animation cycles, dialogue lines, and the options available to the player all serves as vectors for narrative meaning.

Above this there is the Tactical layer, the longer term minute to minute decisions made in the execution of plans. Which particular enemies to engage, which NPCs to talk to, which wall to scale. These are the Objectives, and can be defined either explicitly by the game, or implicitly by the players themselves. Variation in these Objectives and the levels in which they take place can be used to provide narrative.

Operating above both of these there is often, but not always,  a Strategic layer, actions on this layer occur over a much longer term, possibly hours. They include, which missions to accept, which character upgrades to select, which tools to equip. They can be either explicitly defined as Quests chains, or often they are not defined at all the goal of the Strategic layer simply being to reach the end of the game. This layer is best used to define the narrative context for actions that occur on the lower layers.

• The Immediate layer is Reactive.
• The Strategic layer is Proactive.
• The Tactical layer is both.

Though some traits can be associated with each layer,  the boundaries between them are fairly permeable. The goals of the Immediate and Tactical layer are often elements of those defined on the Strategic layer. Strategic goals lead to the creation of multiple Tactical goals, and multiple Immediate goals will be needed to fulfil a specific Tactical goal.

If the Strategic goal is to get to a specific location, it might require engaging in combat with several groups of enemies. This leads to the creation of Tactical goals concerned with how to deal with each enemy group and in what order. These Tactical goals in turn lead to the creation of Immediate goals, when to shoot, where to move. Successful completion of the Strategic goal requires successful completion of the Tactical and Immediate goals that stem from it.

In this way it can be seen that actions on the Strategic layer directly influence those on the lower layers.

Plans trickle down from higher layers to lower ones. Immediate actions are defined, their scope is limited by decisions made on the Tactical layer. Where you are and which tools you have at your disposal are based on decisions made at the Tactical layer, which in turn are influenced by decisions made on the Strategic layer. If a particular character upgrade has not been obtained on it will not be available.

This flow of influence does not only occur in one directions. Actions and their consequences trickle upwards. Events that occur in the Immediate layer change the Tactical status of the world, new routes are located, items are found. Events on the Tactical layer in turn affect the options available in the Strategic layer. Meaningful actions are ones that send ripples out beyond the layer in which they occur and affect decisions made on all layers: actions on the Immediate layer that leads to consequences on the Tactical and Strategic layers.

In ludic terms each layer has some degree of repetition, as there are only so many valid actions that can be performed at any given time. The repetition is mitigated most on the Strategic layer because the goals are long term, any repetition that does exist occurs over the course of several hours making it difficult to ascertain any patterns in the type of actions being performed.

On the Immediate layer the sense of repetition can be the strongest, as often the core mechanics of a game only allow for a few options. However at this layer the direct connection between action and outcome serves to lesson the impact of the repetition, as the consequences of actions on this layer are often the most directly stimulating, the blood spurts of a successful headshot, the ding of a loot pickup, the fluid animation of a character clambering over a ledge. Each one a little endorphin kick that keeps us engaged; if anybody is in doubt I point you to the immediate feedback presented in a game like Diablo.

The biggest problem with repetition comes on the Tactical layer. Action games suffer the most on this layer. Consider Far Cry 2, the actual combat mechanics and the options available to players in combat can be quite engaging (The Immediate layer is well designed). The ability to select which missions to attempt and in which order lessens the restrictive sense of repetition on the Strategic layer. However regardless of which mission the player selects and for whom, the short term goals required to complete each are usually very similar, if not identical: go here kill, these people\find this item, get back to here. The execution of these individual Tactical goals on the Immediate layer might be entertaining but that does little to cover up the fact that players are basically doing exactly the same thing during each mission. This is not helped by a lack of narrative feedback regarding the overarching consequences of actions. Assassinating a Police chief might be contextualised differently to the assassination of a Warlord but the narrative feedback from each event is not differentiated enough to mask the underlying repetition.

Because Tactical goals can take minutes to an hour to complete they occur over too short a timeframe for their patterns to be lost in the noise of all the other decisions, yet at too long a timeframe for that endorphin kick to keep players engaged. It’s here that a strong narrative context can keep players engaged in performing what are mechanic very similar actions.

Halo: Combat Evolved is another prime example of a game that suffers on the Immediate layer. Those “thirty seconds of fun”are, at least for me, some of the most pleasurable in gaming, but there can be no denying that on the Tactical layer the game is little more than a sequence of goals of the form: “Kill these hostiles.”

With their focus on Immediate and Tactical actions, action games are geared to a shorter play session, that serves to mitigate their repetitive nature. Plans are often completed within seconds or minutes, so players are given more points at which they are “free” to quit because they have no plans remaining to complete. Under these circumstances it’s little surprise that action game stories are fairly perfunctory, serving only to cover up the core mechanical repetition and provide a loose context for who, where and why.

In comparison a high level strategy game (An accurate genre name if ever there was one) like Civilization IV  relies almost entirely on actions playing out on the Tactical and Strategic layers. This leads to a long term investment as players keep playing in order to see the consequences of actions, the beloved\cursed “one more turn” syndrome. Goals at these layers are well served by a more “hands off” approach to narrative, as players will be less likely to baulk at the lack of direct feedback on the Immediate layer, when they have played a greater part in the selection of the Tactical goals that led to those Immediate actions.

Institutional Care.

Arkham Asylum, or more formally the Elizabeth Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane, is not a pleasant place. It seems you are a nobody in Gotham City’s criminal fraternity unless you have spent some time there. Batman: Arkham Asylum draws influences from the various, often contradictory, sources of Gotham history to create a fully realised island compound, a gothic nightmare combination of penitentiary and mental hospital. It is home to facilities and practices that easily cross the line from treatment into torture, often bearing euphemistic names such as “Intensive Treatment”. 

For the majority of the game Batman’s foes within Arkham are the various thugs and career criminals “shipped in from Blackgate” Gotham City’s correctional facility, aided of course by a rich cast of supervillians led (If such a term can ever be used within such an unpredictable mercenary group) by the Joker.

Among these residents of the titular Asylum are those patients who are contextualised as being mentally ill, the portrayal of these characters in the game is something that is a little worrisome. Manic, screaming and liable to pounce they have to be incapacitated quickly, usually by smashing their heads into the ground. That this act doesn’t kill them is one of the many fine lines walked by any medium depicting the actions of Batman.

My friend Travis Megill of The Autumnal City initially brought the treatment of these patients to my attention, referencing how similar it was to the manner in which people of colour are treated in Resident Evil 5. Having been enjoying my time with Arkham Asylum I instinctively came to the defense of the game noting that it’s portrayal of the mentally ill does not come with the associated cultural and historical significance of a heavily armed white male gunning down Africans; it was these allusions to the racist and colonial history of western nations in Africa that was at the heart of debate concerning race in Resident Evil 5.

Though the history of the treatment of the mentally ill has not been consistently just or humane, it does not carry the same associated cultural cachet so played upon in those initial trailers for Resident Evil 5. However Arkham Asylum does imply that it is somehow not a problem that Batman physically abuses the mentally ill, of course it’s not as clear cut as that, they are only there because they are “criminally insane” to begin with and Batman is never in a position to instigate action against these inmates as they will instantly attack him on sight. It could also be argued that Bruce Wayne is far from mentally well adjusted himself, being that he spends his nights beating up criminals dressed as a giant bat, so also suffers from at least one classifiable mental disorder. However such an argument seems to imply Arkham Asylum is the intellectual and social equivalent of bumfighting. In the end the issue is that the mentally ill are treated as just another video game villian whom it’s alright to beat up, like Zombies or Nazis have for years.

It’s a situation made more worrisome in the context of the entire game, there is no reason why Batman can’t be given a specific tool with which to subdue the freed patients in a less brutal fashion that using his fists. A tranquiliser dart would fit perfectly within the context of a Batman title, and it could likely have additional uses in other areas of the game. Even simply requiring that Batman use the Batarang to stun these patients would make more sense. In both cases it could be tied to the collection mechanic that already exists within the game, with rewards provided for humanely subduing patients instead of pummelling them into the ground (The distinction between a Batarang and fists is probably a fine one, but the visual representation is far less brutal).

I can hear the counter arguments now: “It’s just a game!” That’s true but this is one of those thin end of the wedge situations, if we accept the mentally ill as valid villains, what’s next? Beating up fat people? Euthanizing the old and the infirm?

Will any of this stop me playing Arkham Asylum? No, I accept that it is a work of fiction and that it would be extremely unwise to treat Gotham City as being representative of the real world. However it would have been better if the game didn’t make me  mentally wince every time I was required to slam a screaming incoherent mental patient into the ground ostensibly for my own protection. This representation of the mentally ill and the “treatment” they require is one I had hoped had died out a century ago.

Narrative through level design variation.

In the interests of pacing it’s not uncommon for action games, and first person shooters in particular, to vary the style of gameplay over the course of the game as a whole, and over the course of individual levels. This variation of gameplay style leads to a variation in the aesthetic experience of play, and because of which it can be used as a narrative tool.

While playing Resistance: Fall of Man, I found I was able to break each level down into a combination of seven distinct styles of gameplay. With one notable exception all of these different gameplay styles used the same control scheme. In order to provide this degree of variety without changes to the core mechanics, changes were made to the layout of the levels, the placement of enemies and other objects (Nouns), and the range of tools (Verbs) available to the player. This form of level design is common throughout action games.

The seven distinct gameplay styles in Resistance, should be  familiar to anybody who’s played an action game in the last decade:

• [A] Combat in a corridor or along another form of restricted path.
• [B] Combat in an open area.
• [C] Boss Battles.
• [D] Mini-Boss Battles.
• [E] Navigation past mines, and other traps.
• [F] Combat against Turrets or other fixed emplacements.
• [G] Vehicle Combat. (The sole exception where a new control scheme is used).

While each level in Resistanceis united by an overriding narrative goal and aesthetic (Visual, aural) theme, the gameplay is made up of a combination of these seven different gameplay styles. It’s possible to examine each level and break it down into a string of characters describing the gameplay, for example BEFAB, or ABDAG.

Each of these gameplay styles changes the experience of play, eliciting a different psychological reaction from the player. Therefore it’s possible to ascribe certain emotional responses to each gameplay style. Often in areas that are focused on gameplay style B (Combat in open areas) the player is provided with support from allied non-player characters, the aesthetic experience is one of cooperation and teamwork. Areas that are focused on gameplay style E (Navigation past mines, and other traps) keep the player alone and lead to slow and careful progress, the aesthetic experience being one of tension and deliberate action.

A level built from the structure BE evokes an aesthetic experience of teamwork followed by tension and isolation, an implied narrative of having to “go it alone”. This is a different emotional reaction to a level structured as EB, which contains an implied narrative escaping isolation and “pushing through to your teammates”. In the former case the narrative arc of the level moves from a position of  camaraderie and power to one of tension and isolation, a downward arc. In the latter the arc is reversed and the player ends the level with a with a sensation of power and comfort that they did not possess at the start, an upward arc.

In this way it’s possible for a level designer to indirectly influence the emotional experience of a player, altering  their personal narrative, through changes in the gameplay style of a level.

Meaningful Actions.

I like Chess, I would even go as far as to say I think it is a mechanically perfect game. The strength of Chess is that there are no redundant actions, there are no actions without consequences. Achieving a checkmate is not only dependant on the final move but on every preceding move, right back to the opening. Any change in that sequence of moves by either player will result in a radically different outcome.

Every move in Chess is meaningful because every move irreversibly changes the state of the game world and which subsequent moves are possible; all actions have consequences.

Redundant actions are those that are not meaningful, those for which there are no consequences, such actions are literally a waste of time, as nothing is gained from performing them.

The concept, that every action should be meaningful and have consequences, is one that has seemingly been abandoned, or at the very least greatly diminished, in recent years. Often for the purposes of increasing accessibility or pacing, and usually in games that feature some degree of authored narrative.

Consider Far Cry 2, the mechanic of respawning hostiles at checkpoints is implemented to prevent the world from ever becoming safe and thus damaging its representation of a country in the grip of civil war, yet the mechanic causes some actions to become redundant, meaningless. The core mechanic of the first person shooter genre is that of shooting hostile characters. This usually requires a degree of skill and comes at the cost of some form of ammunition. Even ignoring the cultural connotations of the act killing a hostile character is rich with mechanical meaning. They will no longer be around to threaten the player in the future, which leads to a change in the play style of the player over time, as areas of the game world shift from hostility to safety. Additionally the expenditure of ammunition is meaningful, as the quantity of ammunition used in killing one hostile will cause changes in the manner in which subsequent hostiles can be dealt with.

Upon encountering a hostile checkpoints in Far Cry 2 both elements of meaning inherent in that core shooting mechanic become redundant.

Respawning enemies prevent a change in future behaviour as areas do not become less hostile over time. The act of killing does not change the overall state of the game world or the future play style of the player, therefore in this sense the act of killing itself is rendered largely meaningless, there are  no long term consequences. It is in fact more beneficial to avoid enemies as it is to kill them, especially as time is very rarely a factor. The decision to engage these hostile in direct combat is a redundant one. Ammunition can be recovered from the bodies of dead hostiles, so the actual expenditure of ammunition is only meaningful when more is expended that is recovered a  generally rare occurrence, made even more so because some checkpoints contain stockpiles of ammunition.

In a strictly mechanical sense the act of attacking checkpoints in Far Cry 2 is meaningless beyond the immediate short term.  It’s possible that this was an intentional inclusion designed to be representative of a country in the grip of civil war where death is largely meaningless.  I’m willing to give Ubisoft Montreal the benefit of the doubt given the various subtexts at work in Far Cry 2, however this doesn’t excuse the dozens of other games that also include redundant and meaningless game mechanics.

The infinitely respawning hostiles in Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, when killing a hundred hostiles has no consequence the act of killing itself becomes meaningless; war can be won simply by continuous forward motion. Dialogue trees in Mass Effect or Fallout 3, when two different options lead to the same outcome the choice between them is meaningless. Vita Chambers in BioShock, when you are eternally reborn any actions taken to mitigate health lose are meaningless.

These mechanics were implemented because they served to increase tension, constrain options or improve pacing, in short they were included to help maintain a specific aesthetic experience; often a narrative focused one. Yet it’s worth noting that almost all the examples I’ve cited have been criticised for in some way being unrealistic. The expectation is that actions have consequences, that choices are meaningful, when this fails to occur the artificiality is made painfully obvious.

Narrative plots are built around the immutability of fate, events occur in a specific manner for dramatic purpose. If an event is included in the plot it serves a purpose, even red herrings exist serve the purpose of being a red herring; nothing is wasted, nothing is redundant.

Games are built around providing choices and feeding back the consequences of those choices. Choices are included if they have some consequence that influence the developing act of play. If choices are included that don’t have consequences they are redundant  and a waste of time on the player of both player and designer.

In order to be meaningful narratives and games depend on the portrayal of both actions and consequences.

All too often when games seek to include some form of narrative the inflexible nature of heavily plotted stories is given prominence over the flexible nature of gameplay choices. As in the examples cited this can lead to redundant choices being included simply because choices must exist in a game but the focus on the plot means those choices cannot have consequences that might move the narrative away from what has been prescribed by the original author.

That actions have consequences and thus carry meaning is something we all learn in childhood. So when presented with a choice its naturally expect there to be a consequence, otherwise why be given the choice at all?

The future of narrative games is not based around more directly authored experiences but around narratives that make use of the fundamental nature of games to present choices that have consequences, and to ensure that those consequences contain both a mechanical and a narrative component.

Despite some first steps made in this direction, Masq being a particularly interesting if limited example, there is still some way to go. Until then maybe it’s time those interested in narrative in games start to look for guidance from Chess as much as Chaucer.

Who are you?

Who is Gordon Freeman?

That is a surprisingly difficult question to answer. The elements of his character that can be said to be fixed, are insubstantial and provide little that is definitive. In reality there are a hundred thousand Gordon Freemans, a million. Each person who plays Half-Life has a subtly different interpretation of who Gordon Freeman is yet in each instance he is explicitly not the player; he may be of a different race, a different gender, or may simply have a different name. At the same time it cannot accurately be said that Gordon Freeman is a specific pre-authored character. He is in fact a composite entity who’s authorship is shared between two different individuals separated by a multitude of factors, not least time and physical location.

The precise nature of this shared authorship is unique to the interactive medium however there are some striking similarities to a type of authorship that has been occurring for decades in other media. Let me present another question.

Who is Batman?

I expect everybody reading this has an instant mental image of a specific character. Everybody’s mental depiction of Batman will share some key similarities but the precise nature of that character will be subtly different. Some will be more influenced by the recent work of Christopher Nolan and Christian Bale, others might go back further with a concept of Batman heavily based around the work of Tim Burton and Micheal Keaton, or that of Frank Miller, or Tim Sale and Jeph Leob. Over the years, hundreds of different artists have reinterpreted the character of Bruce Wayne and Batman through the lens of their own tastes and beliefs. Each of these is unique and yet all of them are still identifiably Batman.

Consider how this relates to the original question: Who is Gordon Freeman? There are some fixed elements of Freeman’s character, defined by Marc Laidlaw and Valve Software, the rest is constantly reinterpreted by each player through the lens of their own actions. In one instance Gordon Freeman is cold, methodical and precise, in another he is messy, aggressive and violent.

Much as each writer, or actor, brings their own style to the character of Batman, each player brings their own style to the character of Gordon Freeman.

The specific instance of Gordon Freeman each player experiences exists within the common ground constrained by the boundaries set down by the original creators and those imposed by the actions of the player.

This is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to shared authorship, but even in an otherwise linear game such as Half-Life there is a layer of player interpretation that makes every player’s experience uniquely theirs.

Continuous Meaning.

As has been discussed previously it makes no sense to analyse a game mechanic devoid of the context in  which it occurs. At an abstract level Jump is a mechanic that exists in many games from Super Mario Galaxy to Mirror’s Edge or Far Cry 2. The context within which each mechanic is performed is what imbues an otherwise similar action with a different meaning. The Jump mechanic in Mirror’s Edge is not possessed of the same layers of meaning as the Jump mechanic in Far Cry 2. Neither is a Jump performed at one point in Far Cry 2 as meaningful as a Jump performed at another point; the circumstances surrounding the mechanic have changed.

The specific context in which a mechanic exists is always in flux, previous actions influence the context of future actions.

If I am standing in the desert in a far corner of the world with nobody in sight then Jump has a decidedly different meaning than it would if I was in the middle of a frantic fire fight in the capital city.

It’s natural to expect that the more meaningful a mechanic, the more obvious, and potentially dramatic, the reaction it provokes. If I am alone and I start to Jump the action is not very meaningful at all, so little to no response is expected. If I am in combat in an object rich environment and I Jump the action is rich with meaning. Consequently I respect the world to response in an equally meaningful manner; enemies will change their attack patterns, objects will move if I knock them over, I will land on other objects if my Jump enables me to reach them.

The same actions performed in different contexts should lead to different, but contextually appropriately responses.

Some mechanics are, by their very nature, more inherently meaningful than others. Shoot, is a mechanic full of cultural and psychological implications that imbue it with much richer layers of meaning than those associated with Jump. However if I Shoot when standing alone in the middle of the desert I still expect to elicit very little response, despite Shoot being more symbolically meaningful. This is because a lot of the meaning associated with Shoot is dependant on there being other objects around to act upon. Shoot is inherently more meaningful than Jump but only in certain circumstances. Shooting when in combat in the middle of a city is an action where a dramatic response is expected.

The meaning of a particular mechanic is governed not only by the inherent symbolism and cultural associations of that action (Shooting is symbolically and culturally more meaningful than Jumping) but also the specific context in which each action occurs.

An example of this can be seen in a very specific manner in Mirror’s Edge. The movement options available are highly dependant on the current speed at which you are moving, which is turn is influenced by the previous moves you have performed. No action occurs in isolation as every previous action has some influence on the current context and therefore your range of possible actions and the potential responses to them.

Because all actions alter the state of the game world in some fashion, the context of future actions is determined by the previous actions that led to the current state of the game world. This means all actions that alter the context of the game world, in affect any and all actions, are meaningful as they have an impact on future actions.

All actions are meaningful if they alter the context of future actions.

The Taxonomy of Left 4 Dead.

Nearly twenty years ago Richard A. Bartle, co-creator of the first Multi User Dungeon (MUD) the precursor to the Massively Multiplayer Online Game, wrote an article entitled “Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds, Spades: Player who suit MUDs”. Even today the classifications he set forth still hold true when examining the types of player who play World Of Warcraft and other MMORPGS.

This taxonomy can also be applied, with some modifications, to any multiplayer environment. There will always be those players who value winning over anything else, the Achievers, the Diamonds. Or those who simply enjoy the experience of playing with others, the Socialisers, the Hearts.

Playing Left 4 Dead recently it struck me that the characterisation of each of the four survivors seemed to conform to one of these four player types.

Bill, is the grizzled veteran, the professional. He knows what he’s doing and will get the job done with little fuss. The goal is to win (to survive) and anything that doesn’t increase his chances of winning is not worth bothering with. He’ll crack the occasional joke to break the tension but ultimately he’s the responsible adult of the group. He’s the Achiever.

Zoey, is the horror film fanatic. Like Bill she knows the rules, she’s seen all the films, she knows what happens when the dead start to walk the Earth. At the same time she’s always ready to lend a hand, and support the group. On her own she might survive but what’s the point is she’s the only one left? She’s the Socialiser.

Francis, is the misanthrope, the cynic. He might know the rules, but you can never be sure, as he’s perfectly willing to break them for his own benefit. He’s good to have around when the horde descend on you but if he has to he’ll leave everybody else to die, after all what does he care, he hates everything, so don’t expect him to care about you. He’s the Killer.

Louis, is a little out of his depth. Everything is an experience, everything is fascinating and new and exciting. He’s not sure of the rules, but fascinated in finding out what they are, and have some fun along the way. He’s just as liable to accidentally shoot you in his excitement as he is to shoot the shambling masses of undead. He’s an Explorer.

The nature of Left 4 Dead, is such that Bartle’s original classifications don’t fit exactly, with no explicit reward beyond survival Achievers cannot really be singled out by their desire to accumulate wealth or experience and the cooperative nature of Left 4 Dead means that Killers cannot be solely identified by their desire to impose themselves on others.

A more appropriate way to define the different play styles of Left 4 Dead, and a method that works for other multiplayer titles, is to examine where players fall on two axises defined by their tendency towards a focus on themselves (Cooperation) over others (Competition) and their attitude towards the rules of the game.

Returned to out Left 4 Dead example, Francis and Bill style players have a focus on winning, on competition and success. Whereas Louis and Zoey style players have a focus on the act of play itself and their experience with others.

A team of prodominantly Bills will almost always get to the end of a campaign, they are effecient, reliable and proactive. They have a plan and they’ll execute it, even if the whole experience might seem a little joyless to the outside observer.

A team of Zoeys, might get to the end of a campaign but if they do everybody will get there together, as a team. Like Bill they are proactive and reliable, but they are also willing to risk themselves for the good of the team.

Much like a team of Bills, a team composed of a majority of Francis’ will get to the end, but it might be messy. They’ll keep each other alive as long as they need to because an extra weapon and extra pair of eyes is always useful, but come the climax it’s everybody for themselves.

As with a team of Zoeys a team with a high percentage of Louis’ might get to the end or they might all die horribly, either way it’ll be an interesting experience and something will be learnt, even if it’s just when not to throw a Molotov Cocktail.

With a little modification this taxonomy can be used to differentiate the types of players in other multiplayer games, or potentially even predict the outcome of team games, by examining the make up of players within each team.

Oh and by the way, I’m a Zoey. Who are you?

The Play Experience.

In the past I’ve taken to examining games and game mechanics in a manner that is open to criticism for being piecemeal. I’ve examined specific elements of a game in isolation, ignoring important mechanics and interactions in order to aid clarity. The obvious problem with this approach is that a game is a complex system of rules interacting over time, and it’s impossibly to present an entirely accurate analysis of any individual mechanic without looking at all the ways that mechanic affects and is affected by all other mechanics. That is a valid criticism, and I think it’s important to understand and appreciate that no mechanic exists in isolation and everything in a game is in some way, either directly or indirectly, connected to every other.

However there is a reason why I have often chosen to approach specific mechanics in isolation, or to otherwise present a limited view of the dynamics of a game. As I have previously discussed games do not exist in any measurable way, the rules defining the constraints of the game are not the game itself. It is only during the act of play that those rules take on a contextual significance, that they are able to enthrall, thrill and otherwise emotionally affect us. Games exist to be played. The experience of play is different for each game and each player.

Though it is important to consider games in their entirety as a system of interconnected rules that is often not how they are perceived when played. Consider any game you have just started playing. After ten minutes how many of the mechanics are you aware of? How many of the myriad relationships between different mechanics do you have an understanding of? How about after two hours, or five hours, or fifty hours? Depending on the game, and how much attention you have been playing, the answers to these questions can differ significantly. Often it is not until the very end of the game that a complete conceptual model of the mechanics and their relationships can be formed.

Play, by its very nature is a process of exploration and discovery.

Consider BioShock, I feel confident that by this point most people who have played the game are aware that the mechanical rewards, in terms of Adam, are essentially the same regardless of whether you choose to Harvest or Rescue the Little Sisters. When analysing the game itself it is important to consider this fact, however when examining the play experience it might be useful to ignore it entirely. During play, assuming you don’t run two parallel games in order to examine the consequences of each choice, there is no information provided on the reward you would have received if you had chosen the opposite option. If you decide to Rescue the Little Sisters you will be rewarded with one quantity of Adam, and if you had Harvested you’ll be rewarded with another. It is implied that there may be an additional reward for Rescuing a certain number of Little Sisters, but unless and until you do so there’s no way to know whether that additional reward exists and what it might be. Even if you choose to alternate between Harvesting and Rescuing in order to gauge the difference in reward there is no way to know that the reward for consistently Harvesting doesn’t increase over time, or if the additional delayed rewards for Rescuing balance out the immediate rewards for Harvesting.

When playing a game what you do not know is just as important as what you do. If a particular mechanic or relationship is not known it’s impossible for that mechanic to influence your actions. When examining games and the manner in which they attempt to convey meaning it is important to understand the manner in which this subjectively understanding of the game mechanics influences player actions and reactions.