Here below I wrote that I consider games as an hybrid media and that the learning experience should be the discovery of oneself.

Now I’m reading an article from Will Wright that mirrors many of these fundamental points:

Dream machines

Games cultivate – and exploit – possibility space better than any other medium. In linear storytelling, we can only imagine the possibility space that surrounds the narrative: What if Luke had joined the Dark Side? What if Neo isn’t the One? In interactive media, we can explore it.

Like the toys of our youth, modern videogames rely on the player’s active involvement. We’re invited to create and interact with elaborately simulated worlds, characters, and story lines. Games aren’t just fantasy worlds to explore; they actually amplify our powers of imagination.

The same transformation is happening in games. Early computer games were little toy worlds with primitive graphics and simple problems. It was up to the player’s imagination to turn the tiny blobs on the screen into, say, people or tanks. As computer graphics advanced, game designers showed some Hollywood envy: They added elaborate cutscenes, epic plots, and, of course, increasingly detailed graphics. They bought into the idea that world building and storytelling are best left to professionals, and they pushed out the player. But in their rapture over computer processing, games designers forgot that there’s a second processor at work: the player’s imagination.

Games have the potential to subsume almost all other forms of entertainment media. They can tell us stories, offer us music, give us challenges, allow us to communicate and interact with others, encourage us to make things, connect us to new communities, and let us play. Unlike most other forms of media, games are inherently malleable.

Games are evolving to entertain, educate, and engage us individually. These personalized games will reflect who we are and what we enjoy. They will allow us to express ourselves, meet others, and create things that we can only dimly imagine. And more than ever, games will be a visible, external amplification of the human imagination.

Which means: a personal form of expression.

The goals in a game shapeshift from functional (and objective) to metaphorical (and subjective). Symbolic. It isn’t anymore a custom path from A to B. But it’s instead a “slice of world” that you can then model as you want. Following your “imagination” as the displacement that exists between the world of forms and the world of ideas. Games become not just “lessons” to figure out, not just “packaged experiences” but a form of discovery and expression of individuality.

We sublimate to the world of the ideas, toward the culture, its myths and what we absorb from those. Our personal elaboration and interiorization. Our symbols, our sensibility, our presence. A form of communication.

This is an essential evolution.

From my point of view the “roleplay” isn’t one of the patterns available in a game. But the only one complete. The one more powerful and effective. The one that “reaches” more. That communicates better and without “language” barriers. Universal.

Now an entire generation has grown up with a different set of games than any before it – and it plays these games in different ways. Just watch a kid with a new videogame. The last thing they do is read the manual. Instead, they pick up the controller and start mashing buttons to see what happens. This isn’t a random process; it’s the essence of the scientific method. Through trial and error, players build a model of the underlying game based on empirical evidence collected through play. As the players refine this model, they begin to master the game world. It’s a rapid cycle of hypothesis, experiment, and analysis.

I believe this process works at best when it happens through the immersivity. Where we remove the filters and let express the player the way he like, in that particular context that was offered.

The immersion in an environment. Free to our interpretation and individual perception of it (and ourselves within it).

I see mmorpgs as the best way to explore these possibilities.

Another turn in a discussion that I already started here (the second part in particular).

“Content that is not seen as good by players is not content”. Fun is subjective. And there’s also a “communicative pact” between the game and the players that is the premise of what comes next. “I’ll tell you that story you want to hear”.

From the comments where this discussion is continuing:

—
The parallel you do between games difficulty, greater player choice and “sandbox” games is interesting. They seem to have so much in common that the concrete distinction between each is a blur.

Which could bring to the conclusion that fun in games is always subjective. Exactly because “the pattern the player masters does not have to be the one that the game was intentionally presenting”. What is fun for you could be boring for me, the game could communicate something to me that “doesn’t tick”. That doesn’t have a common ground.

And then. “That goal and the player’s goal have to actually align”. Which actually means that the player must be “preventively” interested in the pattern offered.

And what if this specific pattern comes in the form of a metaphor that the player is trying to “roleplay”?

—
I think “mastery” means the acquisition of a competence. It’s always an idea of fun strictly tied to “learning”. When you have mastered a pattern (meaning you know it thoroughly) you stop having fun, it becomes boring. Which is the idea of the “losing battle against the human brain” that tries to optimize everything and make everything “boring”.

The “jump” in the discussion is when we deal with games that are subject to an interpretation. So where what the game “teaches” isn’t strictly codified but that allows the player to interact with less “filters”.

I discussed about this point here, but it’s where I start to have different ideas than Raph. From my point of view the immersion becomes a fundamental element because it removes the filters and allows the player to explore and determine the game and its patterns from a personal point of view. Adding subjectivity.

—
To the last line of the first comment Raph replied:

Then the underlying game patterns that the player wants to learn likely aren’t mechanical, in the rules sense… they may be social.

But “roleplay” isn’t always social. I don’t even think that the two are connected. Take the recent example of Oblivion. It’s all about the roleplay, all about the immersion, all about creating your character and “exist” in the “slice of world”. Oblivion can be considered as a “sandbox”. And again I see “sandbox” and immersion as tightly connected.

The roleplay is a basic form of experience without “filters”. This is why we would like to reduce or remove completely the HUD. Live an experience in its full potential instead of through stictly codified patterns. A degree of freedom that is again strictly tied with the immersion, then the roleplay and finally the symbolic meaning. The myth we are trying to reproduce.

All this may or not include social patterns, but these patterns aren’t essential.

I don’t see the games as a medium that has its fundamental qualities in the mechanics. I see it more as an hybrid medium that can borrow narrative techniques from everywhere. It’s more like an infusion of different styles. Probably one of the most powerful way to communicate even if not yet used in that sense (which brings to ethical problems).

I’m not sure if I can effectively connect all the dots but I have a very precise point of view, with ethical implication: “learning” should be the discovery of oneself:

The evaluation should come from within. Not from the outside. Originally “education” meant the discovery of oneself. Not shoving in an empty, valueless mind the imposed categories and dictates of a culture.

Which brings to:

We learn through stories; we become who we are through stories.

Our own stories, those that we can shape the way we want, those that we can control to an extent and add our subjectivity. So adding something that is about us. About our symbols. Our value.

From wherever you want to look at the problem, the mechanics are a mean, a vehicle of the communication. Not its end. We can communicate how we are to someone else, we can explore ourselves in a game but, essentially, a game is a form of expression. It must be personal, somewhere, so that it can truly communicate to us, or communicate who we are.

Continuing on the line of immersion, mechanics and metaphors.

From “A Theory of Fun” (the actual book, not the site – Chapter 4 – What Games Teach Us):

Formal training isn’t really required to become a game designer.

I went to school to be a writer, mostly. I believe really passionately in the importance of writing and the incredible power of fiction. We learn through stories; we become who we are through stories.

If games are essentially models of reality, then the things that games teach us must reflect on reality.

Sadly, reflecting mathematical structures is also the only thing many games do.

The “coordination” between mechanics and metaphors is all there. Those are the reasons that justify why they ARE distinct, but they SHOULDN’T be thought as disctinct. Hence why I find the distinction not as a useful one (and why I backed off on the discussion about “what is what”).

It’s all there. We learn through stories and those stories are myths and symbols. This part is cultural, so arbitrary and much more “powerful” than the strict mathematical, functional level. It’s that impact and viscerality that makes this part stronger and much more effective. It communicates better. Hence why I said that this is where even this medium is going. We are in for the stories. In games: to be part and live those stories. Living stories = immersion. Be there. No interfaces or filters. So the simulation as: direct tie between mechanics and metaphors. A transparent experience.

The mathematical structures are worthless if they get in the way of the communication. The sphere of the emotional impact.

We are back at the essential premise that games are about learning. And the ethical problem about what we teach. So learning is still essentially about communication. Communicating something about us. That we have in common, that we can recognize, that we can share. And the best communication, the most convincing and even honest, most direct one is through the emotions.

Games are like drugs because we are addicted to the emotions. In every form. Even in the form of an artificial drugs.

But it’s not the “pornography” of the emotions to be the strongest element. It’s not the “image”, it’s the “idea”. What the form suggests us, what we carry within and that we can recognize outside. A desire, a wish, a symbol.

So games are essentially “worlds of ideas” that are replicated through a “form”.

Raph:
I suppose you’d say I come down on the ludological side, because I do grant a certain sort of primacy to mechanics. That’s why I tend to call everything else “the dressing” — it’s the stuff that orbits the nucleus, which is the game mechanics.

When Raph says that, he becomes a pornographer.

He reveals the explicit image and forgets about the idea. He sets that hierarchy that he wanted to avoid. He denies the symbolic and, then, emotional level.

This is my contribute to the discussion about race selection and implications. I’m not sure I see any pattern that could be really theorized and I believe the most interest part is not about the consequences of the choices (concretely close to zero in my experience) but the reasons behind those choices.

I love my dwarf in WoW. Not because it is unique or less popular than other choices, but simply because I find him having a lot of charisma. Pretty or not pretty is just a superficial point of view, as is taking the physical features “out of context”. The physical appearance of a race is much more than that. It doesn’t just define how a character looks, but it also suggests who he is, his story, his attitude.

The character customization/look is the first step into the “roleplay”. It’s the very beginning of your personal story.

You aren’t just going to choose what looks better, but you are already choosing a pattern of interaction with the game. This is already the level of the metaphore. Who You Want To Be. This being the very most important thing in a persistent world. There isn’t really anything more important than the role you choose for yourself. Simply put: your identity.

Really, I’m not surprised if the physical appearance is so important. Why I should be? It’s the ideal of the virtual world. The player is immersed in a consistent world and the very first choice is about the identity. Alternate realities, “Let’s Pretend”, “Magical Mystery Tours”, roleplay. These are the elements that define the choices of the players. It’s the level of the metaphor. Your symbolic presence and value in the virtual world. The possibility to “roleplay” and evocate a wish, a desire, an aspiration.

It makes sense that the majority of the players choose a human shape compared to an alien shape and it makes sense that they choose something looking pretty instead of something looking ugly. Aspirations, wishes.

What is being offered to the players isn’t simply a different look, but a “packaged myth”. A pattern of interaction with the game world. The way a character looks already suggests a lot about his story and his nature. All these aspects are tied together.

I completely agree with Raph here:

“Character classes and races are just modes of expression.”

The players choose the mode of expression they feel closer to themselves, or the idea of themselves they have in their minds. We are still handling symbols here, the emotional interaction with the game, the ideals it suggests you. We follow again personal myths.

Now it’s obvious that these interactions all happen on a personal, even intimate, level. The identity, the part you perceive and build, not the part the others observe, is always something stirctly personal. I’m not sure how it can be useful to reasearch the physical features of the avatars isolated from the symbolic context where they are immersed. A similar type of reasearch would just reveal the obvious, something that we can already postulate without going through it.

If I use a dwarf I’ll make it sturdy with a long red beard, if I make an ogre I’ll make it as huge as possible, if I make a gnome I’ll make it short. These choices depend on the ideals I have behind those archetypes. It’s like Plato and the theory of “ideas” and “forms”. The phyisical features of a character are its form, the idea of it is the way you think about it, the ideal. In the game you’ll try to match as much as possible the form with the idea. The single features you are going to choose are strictly dependent on that particular archetype, so it’s quite silly to think or theorize that the players will choose always tall and always handsome.

Want more concrete proofs? I have them:

Aside from Humes, the general image of each race appears to influence character size selections, i.e. Tarutaru are more often of the smallest size, while Galka players usually choose the largest model. Even last year’s trend of medium-sized Elvaan males has now been replaced by a higher percentage of large-sized characters.

Final Fantasy XI is also one game with a surprisingly even racial distribution. Why? Because everything in a Final Fantasy is strongly characterized, so building its own personal myth and style more than borrowing from a shared, consolidated “imaginary”. All the element of the game are much less stereotyped and familiar compared to western games. This means that the races were all able to create their own ideal model instead of just referring to a preexisting model. Less stereotypes = less predictable choices.

And it’s absolutely not surprising to see the race affecting the job selection: the cat girls being thiefs in majority, the Tarutaru tiny guys being casters and the huge Galka being monks and warriors. It’s again all part of the “package” that bundles together the physical appearance with the symbolic value suggested by that race. When you choose one you also choose your “mode of expression”, your identity in the virtual world in the way you see fit. The way that is more appropriate to the ideal you have. The form is always a reference to the metaphor suggested.

Along with a physical, objective description, there are always subjective, typical traits.

Who you are. What you are saying about yourself.

What actually matters is a “blind spot” in those abstract researches. The choices will be ALWAYS defined by the context. If I’m going to play a game where I’m going to save the world and marry a beautiful pricess I’ll choose the handsome knight, if the game is instead about pillaging villages and eating people alive I’m probably going to choose a troll. Ideal models. Archetypes.

These choices cannot be encoded and theorized because they strictly depend on the context. We choose the point of view from where we want to observe that *particular* story.

At the end what truly matters is the possibility for a game to offer a plurality of modes expression, variations. Even if some are going to be statistically (and unsurprisingly) more popular than others.

People laugh and mock me as I flee from the battlefield but.. hey, I thought I was running away with the loot I was interested in.

What was my whole point? That there is a relationship, a tie between “mechanics” and “metaphors”. Then the discussion evolved and I realized that not only that tie exists, but, in particular, that I advocate it and I believe that it will be where games in general are heading to. Two new elements, then.

Raph demonstrated that the tie isn’t an absolute rule and that each layer can revolve independently. I stepped back on my initial positions and agreed there, but I also wrote that from my point of view that’s the consequence of the immaturity of the genre: the interest in the medium and not in what the medium can be used for.

Then, the last reiteration that flows in a simple equation, in my mind:

mechanics + metaphors = immersion

The tie/dependence between the level of the “mechanics” and the level of the “metaphor” is the “immersion”. The immersion is that part that I really miss in these games. It’s a level that I would like to see recovered. I know it’s possible and worthwhile.

Mechanics not strictly tied with metaphors are not immersive. And not fun nor accessible.

That’s why I’m not all hyped up about penguins. And why I’m not squealing in delight if that’s where we are going.

The rest of the discussion about ludemes, game grammar and all the “what is what” is a discussion that, *right now*, I don’t feel useful and that I didn’t join. Nor is one where I would argue with Raph because I haven’t formed my own opinion yet and I have nothing that could contribute to it.

And always remember that disclaimer up there, on top of the page. That’s like the EULA you need to accept before reading stuff here.

In the comment thread of the ongoing discussion with Raph, he started to quote me and asking me (indirectly) many questions.

I don’t want to answer those questions. It’s not my level, nor something I feel like contributing to. I refuse those provocations because my mind doesn’t work that way and I’m not going to accept any of those rules.

I won’t join his “play”.

Psychochild:
My original point remains, though: it can be hard to tell where the line is drawn, exactly. Likewise, I think the line between metaphor and narrative can be a bit tricky to nail down. Precision in these terms will help us talk about things more intelligently.

Or more blindly.

This is about the “Laws of Form” of Spencer Brown. As you point something you create two parts, the part you point and the part that is excluded. An “observation” implies two blind spots. You cannot see anymore the “whole”, since as you point something you lose it and you cannot see the subject of the observation.

We know the world through the culture. But the culture is made of distinctions, so it is “digital”, granular. The world instead is contiguous, so “analogic”. The distinctions come “handy”, but they are a limitation, there’s always an “error” included. A bias. The same happens in Linguistics. There is no real difference or “border” between the table and the pavement. Everything is contiguous in nature but we “know” through observations. Pointing things and setting them apart.

We know that the language is arbitrary. We draw the distinctions wherever we like (them to be). So are the definitions.

From my point of view that thread collapsed on itself as people started to try to nail down exactly the four layers Raph described. Like going to observe each with a magnifying lens and start arguing where one finishes and the other starts. Transforming each into a discreet unit. Guess what? There is no answer. This is why these types of discussions can be so involving. Everyone is right and you can continue to argue endlessly. Because there’s nothing set. It’s just an exercize to demonstrate who can be smarter or more convincing. There is no truth to discover if not how you can influence yourslef to the point of not being able to observe anything in not through the conventions you imposed on yourself.

If I have to design something I start from the suggestions. I portrait things visually, like closing the eyes. It’s a DENIAL of the logic. I create rifts in it to approach things on a different level. Emotional first, then I find and explore ways to formalize the result. I dread the mechanical level if it isn’t finalized to something else. I don’t feel the need to explain or justify anything else. That’s enough for me.

I despise registers, codes, conventions. I’ve always naturally resisted them and I’ll continue to do so because I feel I can “absorb” a lot more. If I start to use strict definitions I know that I won’t able to see the world if not through those conventions. They are like traps.

Abstract system can work and be useful on different levels, but they are never perfect because this desire of perfection is utopian. If you surrender to it, you’ll be caged in the system and will never able to see anymore outside it. Names and conventions are the same: ways to structure the way you think. Then the way you see.

They limit your perception, they don’t enhance it. It seems you see better, but only because you see less.

The more you formalize and the more you are enslaved by the system and your thoughts encoded. Yes, it is “reassuring”. It gives you predictable structures that you find familiar and can build things upon. But they are essentially lies that you assimilate to the point you aren’t anymore aware of their true nature.

This is why I criticized the industry and how people get hired and promoted. The structure defines your mindset and it’s not surprising that always the same games are being made when the education continues to move through the same schemes. The great majority of game designers are programmers. Then don’t complain if these games don’t communicate anything if not complicated and convoluted mechanics that lead nowhere. It’s a direct consequence. “Game design” is a “wish” on the world.

The more you formalize the more you are imprisoned in the model you built. You create your own cage.

This is why I’m a runaway. I dabble in with the academics to then step out when things go dry and the discussions turn in nothing but an exercise. I read the theory, elaborate ideas, and then go back to write about the last patch in World of Warcraft. I speak with everyone without distinctions of merit of prejudices.

“Jack of all trades, masters of none” is the ability to communicate on all levels, without being trapped into one.

That thread is now an exercize in futility, because those four layers worked and were useful exactly because they were blurred and subject to the interpretation. The more you try to define them, the more you render them useless.

Michael Chui:
Here, I kinda stole something from you, so feel free to steal it back or whatever. Public domain and fun-ness.

Oh yes, I will:

(ref link)
“All things can be automated except creative output.”

This could work as a good principle (here we are discussing again the idea to use NPCs to automate some parts of the game).

I believe it’s wrong to codify everything in all the smallest details because again I feel that you lose more than what you understand. But I could say here that the “boring” activities are felt so exactly because the “creative output” is pretty much null.

The repetition, the grind. These signify a lack of interest of the player. The game is boring because it isn’t offering or suggesting me anything that I value. So the need to have to go through a part of the game just because of an external reason that motivates it. I’m going to harvest resources for hours because I need to and I’m interest in the outcome. But the activity itself doesn’t require any “creative output”, it’s just a timesink that I have to suffer.

It’s like reverting that quote: an activity without a “creative output” is probably going to feel rather boring, so it makes sense to automate it.

From this point of view my idea of the PvP sandbox is a way to offer the players an accessible “toolset” that they can use as “designers” themselves. Not “game designers”, but players immersed in a consistent virtual world where they have a role and purpose. The conquest system and the emergent strategic level are “means” to allow the players to add their creativity to the game. Their desires, their *presence* in the game world. The game becomes less codified and enforced, and more subject to the interpretation. The players aren’t anymore trapped in a labyrinth with just one exit, but they are free to creatively move within the game world, live within it, create their own stories. A degree of freedom.

From an interview with David Braben:

Story-telling in games in most cases is little different to the stories of those Harold Lloyd films of the 1920s.

The player is stuck on pre-defined railway lines, forced to follow their character’s pre-determined adventures, much as in a book or a film.

In story-telling terms at least, games have not yet broken free of their non-interactive roots.

The Holy Grail we are looking for in fifth generation gaming is the ability to have freedom, and to have truly open ended stories.

Our golden age has not yet started but the door is open, and somewhere are the Welles and Hitchcocks of the future. They may even be reading this piece right now.

I’m sure the great majority of us could agree with these claims, it would be more than enough to set a goal and chase it. But what if we are Raph Koster and we aren’t satisfied with a superficial claim that isn’t backed up with facts?

Here comes the theory, that level that I always find pretty much useless because it leads to the exact same conclusions I arrived before. So I use Raph to answer to himself (or that version of himself I evoked here):

(ref link)
– We talk so much about emergent gameplay, non-linear storytelling, or about player-centered content. They’re all ways of increasing the possibility space, making self-refreshing puzzles.

– We also often discuss the desire for games to be art – for them to be puzzles with more than one right answer, puzzles that lend themselves to interpretation.

– That may be the best definition of when something ceases to be craft and when it turns into art – the point at which it becomes subject to interpretation.

– Games will never be mature as long as the designers create them with complete answers to their own puzzles in mind.

That’s pretty much it. “Fun” in games implies a degree of freedom.

The possibility to experience. Here the immersion becomes a mean to creatively manipulate an object, observe it without filters. Interact with it directly. This is why open-ended games are much more fun and satisfying. They allow you to have different points of view and become the subject of the experience instead of just an object.

From my point of view this is what ties all the elements together:
– the sandbox as a way to put the players at the center and give them a degree of freedom
– the immersion in the game world and “myth” as the true “interface” with the experience (also the obligatory tie between “mechanics” and “metaphors”)
– the need to make all these parts easily accessible to everyone, including without excluding – remove the prejudices

I see the first two levels as closely tied together. Freedom and immersivity are two faces of the same medal. They are the hook to bring the player on another level and make him the protagonist of the story, instead of a passive executor.