How can we make sense of a video game? In his essay, Manic Miner under the Shadow of the Colussus: a Semiotic Analysis of the Spatial Dimension in Platform Video Games, Joaquin Siabra-Fraile argues it is thanks to “pragmatic net of objects”. What can be done with objects of a video game determine the logical space of actions. The regularity of that logical space, or system, enables meaning. Immersion is the acceptation by the player of that net of logical conditions; it is the only way for him to make sense of the goal and to complete the video game.

The real-time audio/video Mountain (2009), made by the artist duo Depart at the occasion of their Chukwa’s Approach performance, feels like a video game. Time is counted and flying objects are targeted. The comparison with video games might be far stretched, but they both share an obsession of the targeting. It is the cognitive process that most video games use to engage players with the objects of the game.

The Chukwa’s Approach 1 – The Mountain, artist duo Depart, 2009

The Carmageddon data-bending (2005) by Tim Drage (Cementimental) is a journey to chaos, where objectification and pragmatic net of objects can’t exist anymore. The machinima messes with the objects of the Carmageddon video game, “the player car is mutated into a jagged mass of mangled polygons which fill almost the whole screen, and becomes a moving virtual abstract sculpture.” The experiment is accompanied by the harsh noise of Cementimental, the combination give us a feel of what virtual worlds could look like if their creators didn’t restrict game representations to what we humans can apprehend.

Carmageddon data-bending, Tim Drage (Cementimental), 2005

Are pragmatic nets of object the only conditions of intelligibility in video games? What else do you need to make sense of a game?

See also the annex discussion by Dario Compagno What is a game world? Doors, keys and… good legs.

Next theme: Rules in video games

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By Mathias Jansson

A key characteristic of a videogame could be that it has rules. You have to follow certain rules to succeed in the game. The rules could be as simple as in Pong, hit the ball, or as complex as in Civilization, build an empire from scratch. In his essay Interpretive Cooperation and Procedurality. A Dialogue between Semiotics and Procedural Criticism, Gabriele Ferri describes the cooperation between players and rules as follow: “Users’ cooperation with an interactive matrix generates a ludic discursive universe inside the TIAG (this-is-a-game) layer in which gaming interactions are acknowledged to be fictional. When the focalization is shifted inside it, users abide to TIAG interpretive rules and temporarily set aside encyclopaedic knowledge of the world – not being surprised, for example, by the height of Super Mario’s jumps.”

But what if the videogame suddenly changes, mixes or breaks its own rules during the game play?  Well, if it would happen in the real world, we would call it anarchy, but when it happens in fiction we often call it art. If I would pick one very simple definition of what art is, it would be breaking the rules. The fundament for all art is that it questions and experiments with the rules of reality. In that perspective you could regard the videogame ROM CHECK FAILS (2008) by Farbs as an art piece. In ROM CHECK FAILS, classic arcade games such as Pac-Man, Tetris and Super Mario are mashed-up, the rules and scenarios are randomly changing, making the game nearly impossible to play. It’s like a virus has hit your hard drive and mixed up all your games into a one, or perhaps I would say an artist has hit your hard drive? The title refers to a type of system failure that happens when corrupted code is loaded into the computer’s memory. The rules of the ludic universe are constantly changing so the player cannot any longer recognize the “this-is-a-game” layer and needs instead to shift to a “this-must-be-art” mode.

ROM CHECK FAIl, Farbs, 2008

Garry’s mod (2004) by Garry Newman is another example of a videogame that challenges the rules of the game genre. The game is described as a sandbox game. Sandbox is a safe area on your computer where you can run and test new software without harming the computer. Garry’s mod has the interface of a First-Person Shooter, but instead of killing enemies and blowing buildings apart, you have the possibility to create your own objects and worlds. Instead of the deconstruction of worlds, which is the common rule of First Person Shooters games, you are constructing worlds, and become in a sense the creator, an artist that investigates and questions the rules of the videogame, creating your own game universe.

Garry’s mod, Garry Newman, 2004

It would be too simplistic to conclude that if videogames have rules, those breaking rules should be called art. But next time you play a videogame, you could ask yourself: “Am I playing by the rules or against the rules?”

Next: What is a game world? Doors, keys and… good legs

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References:

• “Computer Games, between Text and Practice“, edited by Dario Compagno and Patrick Coppock
• “Gamer Theory” by McKenzie Wark, read few quotations from his book.
• “Persuasive Games” by Ian Bogost, read few quotations from his book
• “Video Game Spaces” by Michael Nitsche, read few quotations from his book.

• Videogames open a new domain for persuasion: procedural rhetoric, “the art of persuasion through rule-based representations and interactions”.
• “When we create videogames, we are making claims about processes in the human experience, which ones we celebrate, which ones we ignore, which ones we want to question.”
• “Videogame players develop procedural literacy though interacting with the abstract models of specific real or imagined processes presented in the games they play. Videogames teach biased perspectives about how things work. And the way they teach such perspectives is through procedural rhetorics, which players ‘read’ though direct engagement and criticism.”
• “Serious games are videogames created to support the existing and established interests of political, corporate, and social institutions. Seriousness helps create an opposition to triviality, positioning the goals of government, business, and educational institutions against those of entertainment. ”

Read more in the book: Persuasive Games by Ian Bogost

The world as a gamespace:

• “There is no idle time in The Sims”.
• “Work becomes a gamespace, but no games are freely chosen anymore. Play becomes everything to which it was opposed. It is work, serious, morality, necessity”.
• “The utopian dream of liberating play from the game, of a pure play beyond the game, merely opened the way for the extension of gamespace into every aspect of everyday life”.

Algorithms:

• “What is distinctive about games is that they produce for the gamer an intuitive relation to the algorithm”.
• “The game is true in that its algorithm is consistent, but this very consistency negates a world that is not”.
• “Gamespace turns descriptions into a database and storyline into navigation”.

Boredom:

• “Boredom is something a body does when space will not let the body enter it in a way that transforms the body into something else, so that the body can forget itself”.
• “The time and space of the topological world [gamespace] is organized around the maintenance of boredom, nurturing it yet distracting it just enough to prevent its implosion, from which alone might arise the counter power to the game”.

Read more in the book: Gamer Theory by McKenzie Wark

An article summarising the Heterotopia of Walt Disney World presentation that I gave in October 2009 is now published in the February edition of the Philosophy Now magazine. The article is part of a series of papers about ‘continental tales’ and the concept of narrative in Continental philosophy.

Citations from the short and very interesting book written by Marc Augé in1995 (contemporary philosophy and anthropology):

• “If a place can be defined as relational, historical and concerned with identity, then a space which cannot be defined as relational, or historical, or concerned with identity will be a non-place. Supermodernity produces non-places, meaning spaces which do not integrate the earlier places: instead these are listed, classified, promoted to the status of ‘places of memory’, and assigned to a circumscribed and specific position.”
• “Our towns have been turning into museums (restored, exposed and floodlit monuments, listed areas, pedestrian precincts) while at the same time bypasses, motorways, high-speed trains and one-way systems have made it unnecessary for us to linger in them.”
• “A person entering the space of non-place is relieved of his usual determinants. He becomes no more than what he does and experiences in the role of passenger, customer or driver [...] he obeys the same code as others, receives the same messages, responds to the same entreaties.”

More about places on http://curatedmatter.org/welcome-to-my-place/

The slides of the lecture I gave few weeks ago can now be consulted here. I used the example of Walt Disney World to illustrate the concepts of Utopia, Heterotopia, Postmodernisn and Consumerism. It would have taken me two hours to explain all the relations between them and the theme park. My presentation was limited to half of that time and only a subset of the slides were used for the Philosophy for All lecture. Don’t hesitate to leave your feedback. I hope that the slides are still understandable even without any comments.