The article below is somewhat of a continuation of the things that came up in our post “The meanings of games” and the comments that followed it.
There are two very distinct ways in which computer games can be experienced. As a result, there are two very distinct ways in which they can be designed. On the one hand computer games can be the culmination of formal games. With clearly defined rules, challenges, goals and rewards. Abstract and logical systems. The fruit of a happy marriage between automated logic and the strict rules of games. On the other hand, we see a form of experience (and design) that is growing in importance as computer technology becomes more powerful and accessible. Here the focus is on storytelling and expression. These games tend to feature recognizable graphics and sounds and less formal kinds of play and interaction. They use computer technology to breathe life into landcapes and characters and to connect things with each other.
At the moment, game design (and experience) seem to be in a schizophrenic state, attempting to fuse games-as-systems with games-as-stories, if you’ll excuse the rather poor terminology. A futile attempt, in my opinion, that does neither any good.
Computer games designed as systems are perfect. They are intricate machines that are complete by design. A computer could run games like this all by itself. But that wouldn’t be much fun. So the designer purposely destroys one of the cogs in the machine and allows a human to take its place. The challenge for that human is to be as good as the cog. The better you perform, the better the machine will run and the more pleasure you will experience.
Computer games designed as stories are much simpler. They don’t do much on their own. They don’t have missing parts. They are a missing part. What they become is entirely up to the user. And it is in this becoming that games-as-stories differ from games-as-systems. They may not be very significant by themselves, but they have limitless potential for growth. As they become part of the human who interacts with them.
If games-as-systems are big machines that allow you to play a little cog, then games-as-stories are little cogs that want to find a place in the big machine that is the user. The system-machines require the cog to change and adapt, to try and become as perfect as itself. The little stories-cog does not change ever. But when it becomes part of a user-machine, it causes changes in that machine. And these changes know no boundaries.
Games-as-systems create magic circles. Becoming part of the game, stepping into the magic circle, requires accepting the rules of the game, performing in a way that the system expects, playing the role that you are supposed to play. As an abstract ruleset, the game does not need you. The magic circle does not disappear when you stop playing or when you break the rules. It just becomes invisible. To you. You play or you don’t play. And there is a clear border between the two.
Games-as-stories don’t require you to become a part of them. They want to become a part of you. If you allow them to, they will find a little place for their own in the flow of your life. There is no need for you to suspend life for a moment and to step into a magic circle. Games-as-stories step into your life instead. How far they go, how much they mean, or even if they make the step at all, is left entirely up to you. They don’t absorb you. You absorb them. And then they change you from within.
Games-as-systems push you to become as good as a computer would be. They require your submission to their rules and don’t allow you to add to them. They are perfect. And that is their limitation. And why they are not art. Perfection is a level cap. It implies an upper limit to the possibility space. It ultimately confines the experience of the user.
Which is not to say that games-as-systems can not be enjoyable. They most certainly are, especially as they continue to challenge you to become perfect. Systems can also be beautiful. Systems create patterns. Patterns bring pleasure to the human brain. Or think of the beauty of mechanical clocks and ship engines. Marvelous spectacles to behold!
Compared to those, the game-as-story is small and modest. It does not offer much. It requires your attention, your devotion, your willingness, your creative input. It cannot mean anything without you. But with you, its potential for meaning is limitless.
There is nothing wrong with games-as-systems. We all enjoy them. But when we try to combine them with games-as-stories, the perfection of the system tends to hold back the potential of the art! I don’t know how far games-as-stories can go, artistically. Maybe not far at all. But we should give them the opportunity to explore what’s out there.
Original clock image kindly borrowed from DTP999.
That seems like an arbitrary and imho false dichotomy.
Nevertheless, a very interesting read, thanks for sharing!
Interesting read, but where does emergent gameplay factor into your “two very distinct” categories? As we know, games as systems can afford the user the ability to create their own gameplay experiences that the designer did not intend. You describe games as systems as “perfect,” “complete by design,” and that they “require your submission to their rules and don’t allow you to add to them” which ultimately “confines the experience of the user.” This is just plain false!
I would say that emergent gameplay falls into the category of games-as-stories. I actually think a lot of games that were designed as systems are actually being played as stories. Often without the designer really anticipating it, as you point out. I’m hoping to see more and more games that are designed especially for emergent gameplay. Games that respond in an interesting way to the user’s creativity.
Excellent treatise. I’m sure many will disagree, as there is a lot to disagree with, but that’s part of what makes this great. I notice that you never make disclaimers about your explanations being a reduction of the issues into extremes. This is probably why some disagree so vehemently, because there seems to be no middle ground in your thought process. Fine, it makes the distinction all the more clear. Here’s my problem:
Games-as-stories don’t require you to become a part of them. They want to become a part of you. If you allow them to, they will find a little place for their own in the flow of your life. There is no need for you to suspend life for a moment and to step into a magic circle. Games-as-stories step into your life instead.
I am one of those hypocritical bastards that professes to want this, but deep down I’m afraid of allowing the circumstances of a virtual world to become entagled with the circumstances of my real life. It’s both intellectually and emotionally disorienting. I had a short bout with Second Life that ended because I became romantically involved with a person who’s physical existence was utterly unknown to me. It just kind of freaked me out, and I don’t have any one in my “real life” social group that I can talk to about any of this. How do I tell my best friend that I’ve fallen in love with a visible/audible representation of a presumably female person when he can’t get past the part about me “having sex with a video game”? (that’s an example by the way, not an actual conversation that took place) My point being, Games-as-augmentation-to-real-life are thrilling and inevitable, but it’s gonna take some adjustment for people like me. Maybe some therapy.
Oh yeah, I wanted to mention this. Abstract systems only have meaning because of the stories they contain. 2 plus 2 is a story. Think about how you teach children what that means and how many stories you have to tell them before it starts to sink in (and how inaccurately they perceive physical reality without the mastery of such systems;see Jean Piaget). Well, just because those systems become more and more complex, in no way takes from them their power to represent a story. MANY STORIES.
1 plus 1 represents an endless pool of potential stories, as do all numbers, mathematics, logical constructs, etc. Achieving the top score in an arcade is NOT fun because the top score is an incredibly big, beautiful number. It’s FUN because it represents a story. It’s a narrative of the brilliant journey of the player who made it, who beat the odds, who was worthy and valid. Leveling up in an MMORPG is a very similar story and means something to people because of the power that they invest in that story. Frankly there are no systems within the realm of human consciousness that do not represent as many stories as the stars of the galaxy. Because the ability of human intellect to even perceive such a system is based solely on it’s ability to translate systems into stories, and every personality is going to use a different story for that purpose. Conversely, story is parsed into a set of systems. It’s also impossible to create story without system. Our expectations are the cogs of an inescapable system, through which we perceive every story, every event, even our emotions are subject to this system. The unexpected event can only occur when certain events have been classified as “expected”. Unpredictability is only meaningful against a backdrop of predictable circumstance. I have trouble following (or creating) the narrative of Endless Forest because there’s no pain, and there’s no loss. See, those things are a part of my internal story->system->story translation. So my expectation for tragedy to be woven into the narrative pretty much excludes me from enjoying your game (and I really have tried; and I still admire your intent in spite of not enjoying the game). Even Endless Forest requires a certain kind of perceptive ability (or shall we say a lack of certain expectations), and if you don’t have it (which I don’t) you’re not gonna want to play.
So what came first, the system or the story?
As a addendum to that last question: How do we teach children to perceive the color blue?
We don’t, we just teach them how to describe it. Does the development of description change the color? In other words, does the story change the perception of the system (the system in this case being electromagnetic waves in the visible spectrum)?
I ended up marrying the person whom I met in an internet chat room… So I guess I’m biased about the connection of the virtual and the real. 😉
But in all seriousness, this is nothing new. I’m sure you have read books that changed your life, seen movies that made you think, heard music that really meant something to you personally. There’s nothing “weird” about that. In fact all of this helpful. I hope (more) games can give us these things in the future: talk about life, our life.
I agree with you that humans easily find stories in systems. But I think that the stories that can be represented by game systems are very limited. They are always about a “brilliant journey of the player who made it, who beat the odds, who was worthy and valid”, which I personally find a very poor if not ethically objectionable story.
Certainly stories rely on systems. If only for communicating (language is a system). And indeed cultural background. Which leads some stories to be appealing to some people and others to other people. The fact that The Endless Forest cannot find a place in your life does not invalidate my theory. It just means that you need other stories.
I’m not saying that “systems are evil”. Not at all. Systems are very useful. Games-as-systems can be fun and interesting. And games-as-stories need systems to work. The distinction is not so much in the ingredients of the product as in the end results, the goal of the designer and the experience of the player.
Hmm..
I like the cog analogy, but I think that some games fit into both “games as stories” and “games as systems”.
GTA III is one, and the sims is another.
I agree. And I even think a lot of mostly system-games are actually experienced as stories-games by many people. For me, as always, it’s not so much about what the game is, objectively, but about how the user experiences it. And while, for me, the system aspect of GTA III helped my enjoyment of it, in The Sims it really turned me off.
There are very few games that are exclusively designed to be a story, even though I believe that many people play games as such (or would play them if the system did not prevent it). I want to see more such games. Not just for myself but also because I think this will open up the medium to a much wider audience.
And I want to encourage designers who include a strong narrative component in their (system-)games, to take that element seriously. And not allow it to be limited by the system as much as happens today.
Aaah!
There are very few games that are exclusively designed to be a story, even though I believe that many people play games as such (or would play them if the system did not prevent it).
Yeah, that helped me to understand. I do feel like I make up my own story with games that I really connect to. It’s like the game encourages and allows me to do that, without really explicitly saying so. Baldur’s Gate and it’s squeals and prodigy was as much a system-game as could be had, because everything you saw was window dressing for the turn-based, die-roll rules of D&D. But every time I played, I created my own character with whom I identified, because I had made him/her and felt responsible (via my limited choices) for his/her development as an in-game character. So it was a system-game that encouraged the player to forget the system when taking an overview of the journey. I see what you mean now, and that you’re NOT presenting extremes. Games that seemingly fall in the middle are what you said; systems that people don’t think about as systems.
Which of course is what a narrative is, and why sooooo many stories are like sooo many other stories. Interestingly enough, when I mentioned Bach in that other blog post comment (“The meaning”), I didn’t think about how much of western baroque and classical music is almost pure system. Meaning, it’s all about form. It’s REALLY about form. And in the romantic periods begins an erosion of that form until the post-romantics and 20th century brings about an abandonment of those old forms (to an extent). New forms are birthed, especially in the Americas (both continents). And much more ancient forms are “discovered” allowing the west to construct “new” music from “old” and “exotic” palettes.
All to say that these discussions about systems are definitely a continuation of a very broad paradox in all the arts:
FORM (functionallity) V.S. EXPRESSION (emotional variety)
It’s like we’re entering the impressionistic era of game design. Hopefully it will be as exciting and feeling provoking as its musical counterpart was in the early 1900’s (and still is).
Isn’t the opposition of form and expression a recent invention? Almost all (Western) pre-modern art was extremely formal. But it was also very expressive, sometimes on an objective level, sometimes subjective. Often both.
The difference with the formalism of game systems is that these ancient forms enhanced the narrative and increased the expressiveness. Probably because they were invented with this purpose in mind.
For example, a popular format today is the haiku. The formal structure of the haiku often contributes to the narrative potential of the poem.
I’m not advocating system-less game design. I just think that the current game systems do not support what computer games have become. We need new systems that can support stories, rather than limit them. It’s a choice of priorities.
Good post, you’ve managed to avoid some of the sweeping condemnations that annoyed me with the “Meanings of Games” post and focus on the promise of something we’ve yet to fully explore.
Significantly, and you seem to acknowledge this in the post, the medium of a game that is intended as a story is still systems. Like you say, it’s a question of priorities – I call it intent. If you intend to design a beautiful system, by all means, and if you want to create a universe where people can feel involved in a story-like experience, do that as well… it’s when you do them both together in a half-hearted way that gives them short shrift. Intent makes all the difference – Go, Quake 3 and Shadow of the Colossus are all implemented in numbers and logic; it’s the intent of their creators that makes them so different.
I think I disagree that systems-centric games don’t by definition give the player a central role. When I’m designing such a game I still think of the player(s) as the center of the universe – if a tree falls in the forest and no player experiences it, it didn’t really happen.
You may be conflating emphasis systems in general with a certain design mentality that values process (what the machine thinks about) over input and output (what the player does and sees/hears/feels).
Reveling John, I’d caution against jumping on the “everything is a story” meme. Story is basically this classic pattern that echoes through a great deal of human experience, but often when people latch onto this they start thinking in reductions and chauvinism. Really there are several other key patterns and no single one can explain the totality of what life is.
Systems are another of these patterns. Systems are all around us, in nature, in the modern world (economics), in the realm of pure abstract thought (mathematics, abstract art). Images are another pattern, our world is comprised of icons and illusions and everything in between – our culture worships the image, arguably. Patterns are a pattern – we enjoy them in music, we pick up on them in speech, we see them in the events around us.
All of these ideas are very useful models for thinking, and if you pluck Story – certainly a primal and powerful one – from out of the rest and proclaim that everything else is subservient to it, you write off a giant swath of human experience. Which is a shame.
I do hope that designers of games-as-systems give the player a central role. My metaphor of replacing a cog is a bit skewed because indeed, it sounds like the player could play any cog. In theory he could, but only a few cogs in the systems are interesting to replace. And I do think that game designers build the entire system with those players as “imperfect cogs” in mind.
My main point was that such systems challenge the player. Challenge him to become as perfect as the cog he seems to be replacing. It’s a bit like a job. There’s expectations. There’s tasks to do.
As opposed to games-as-stories, which do not challenge but wait for your initiative instead. The lack of expectations of the latter, however, allows the story to go anywhere in the player’s mind. And I find that an exciting area to explore. Interactive stories need systems as a basis but they are not limited by them. Their only limitation would be the player’s imagination.
Another thing that doesn’t satisfy me about the player-as-cog idea is that it dismisses the possibility that a systemic vocabulary can be expressive, when this is far from true. Take a game with a pliable or open objective, or merely involve other human players, give the player an expressive vocabulary, and each player will make their own unique mark on the system – world class chess players can tell who their opponent is from nothing more than their moves.
What interactive storytelling can potentially do is give that expressivity an additional narrative resonance – in addition to their role in the system, they’re a character in a story.
I would describe it as, “the system succeeds in stimulating the player’s imagination”. The rules conjure a larger image. Out of something logical and physical comes something emotional. Transcendence is a quality of many high expressions of an art form.
In my experience, the system of rules is generally not as stimulating to the imagination as the way things look and sound. And for our own work, I want to get away from this object-centric view of a game that provides entertainment for the player to a user-centric view of a player that uses the game for their own benefit.
Systems can be used in expressive ways. In fact, we need systems to express ourselves in a way that other people can understand. But game systems allow only for very limited expression, in my opinion. Their range is very small. They only allow for expressing a few things. Your chess player may be able to recognize his opponent by his style of playing, but can they learn anything form it about how he feels about his father or what the smell of camellia’s reminds him of?
See, by my definition of “system” the audio and visuals and haptics are part of the system. A system without these is invisible, unknowable and most importantly non-interactive. The player’s presence is at the heart of it, its raison d’etre. So I think we actually agree, our definitions just differ.
I think I’ve come to this definition because, when I’m designing something, wherever it fits on the continuum of the intellectual, the visceral and the emotional, it would be foolish for me to discount the parts of the system the player interacts with directly – the sound, images, the input interface, etc. Separating these out and defining them rigorously against each other is where a lot of game designs, modern and old, go wrong.
This is a very interesting duality, one I’ve been thinking about quite a bit in the last few weeks – mechanics vs. story, representation vs. experience, etc.
An interesting discussion in the comments as well but I think I’ll stay out of it. Too much talk and too little application for me. 😉
Hehehe, you’re right on the money, Axcho. Talk is not doing. But there’s so much left to say. JP, I’m not simply saying everything is a story. I am saying that, as well is saying that everything is a system. Everything is vibration. Everything is light. Everything is everything (via Lauryn Hill).
Everything is a multi-dimensional experience. Nothing can be reduced to one thing (unless everything is one thing :). Nothing can be distilled. FORM is EXPRESSION, because without form there is no expression. You can easily see how that statement can be reversed. This has become a discussion about dualities because we’ve made it that. And there you have another system, Mr. Memes, that we all fall pray to. But without that system this conversation would never have taken place. Art is an outgrowth of our tendency for separation and dualism. As is all of our behavior. What makes us human, if not our ability to distinguish by way of inventing distinguishable qualities and seeing those qualities in everything around us. And yet we’re surprised when another human being, with this same capacity for invention, chooses to distinguish using utterly different qualities. Even though it’s our shared humanity that perceives such differences.
Certainly stories rely on systems. If only for communicating (language is a system). And indeed cultural background. Which leads some stories to be appealing to some people and others to other people. The fact that The Endless Forest cannot find a place in your life does not invalidate my theory. It just means that you need other stories.
You didn’t address my proposition that stories are systems. I don’t mean language. I mean that the form of a story, the archetypes present within a story, the moral relationships that are the motivic material for story (the whole reason for telling the story) compose one large and ancient system. They can exist without language, or images, or sound, or with all of those things, but they cannot exist without the system of story. But neither could anything else that we know of and can relate to one another, since the system of story is in itself a means of communicating experience. You speak alot about ethics, without ever venturing into the obvious contradiction of ethics being a progressive, evolving system. The games that you condemn as “unethical” are representative of ethics that were quite acceptable in certain cultures, at certain times, our own present not withstanding. Chauvinism, imperialism, survival and prejudice are very much alive and well for certain members of our society today, and were even more so in the past. Those are systems that you may not agree with, but compassion, fairness, and honesty are no less systems of behavior and perception (and more importantly systems of expectation for how others should behave and perceive), just because you think they are worthy of perpetuating.
Stories are tools that we use to create and sustain culture. And ultimately to destroy and remake culture.
If only all developers of games were right wing chauvenist extremists. Then I would agree. But they are not. Their stories are the illustrations of their systems. And their systems were never intended to be nice or friendly or solidary.
If everything is everything, then a story is indeed a system. And a toothbrush is a shoe.
Exactly
Because a toothbrush has meaning beyond its functionality. As does a shoe. As do I and as do you. Wasn’t that what the surrealist (check out paragraph 6) were articulating in their works? Isn’t that the reason that what many see as simply a game that “must be understood in terms of its rules, interface, and the concept of play that it deploys“ can be seen by others as “a storytelling medium, one that arises out of interactive fiction“? And aren’t you struggling against the tendency of people to look at something which has served one function for so long, and see only that function without taking in the limitless possibility that this thing is offering?
Ok, how bout: Everything is Anything you have the capacity to see it as.
Everything I say in this context is based on a belief that many people play computer games for other reasons than competing and achieving goals. And I personally find those other reasons more interesting, as a designer. But it’s just a belief. Based on how I feel about games myself. I’ve been wrong about these things in the past.
For me, thinking of games as rules based systems is limiting. But for other designers it might be enabling. Since everybody is so obsessed with these system and I dislike most games that they make, I figured perhaps I should try to do something else. But feel free to think that what I’m trying to do is exactly the same. Maybe it is. It feels different to me. It’s what inspires me. That’s enough.