G|A|M|E on games. The meta-panel.
Giovanni Caruso
Università di Udine
nrgiga@gmail.com
Riccardo Fassone
Università di Torino
riccardo.fassone@gmail.com
Gabriele Ferri
Indiana University Bloomington
gabriele.ferri@gmail.com
Stefano Gualeni
NHTV Breda University of Applied Sciences
gualeni.s@nhtv.nl
Mauro Salvador
Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milano
mau.salvador@gmail.com
ABSTRACT
«But this leads us to recognition of a
more complex form of play; the game
which is constructed not upon the
premise “This is play” but rather around
the question “Is this play?”»
Gregory Bateson - A Theory of Play and
Fantasy
In late 2012, G|A|M|E - The Italian Journal of Game Studies
(www.gamejournal.it) launched an open call for a project named Games on Games
(http://www.gamejournal.it/games-on-games-project-2/). The project originates from the
hypothesis that it is possible to talk about and critique video games and their related
themes by adopting their own forms, mechanics and languages. Game designers from
around the world were invited to submit their “game on games” prototypes.
While this kind of meta-pieces already exists in some niches this has seldom lead to
considering games as tools for theory and critique. Is it possible to design a “game on
Proceedings of DiGRA 2013: DeFragging Game Studies.
© 2013 Authors & Digital Games Research Association DiGRA. Personal and educational classroom use of
this paper is allowed, commercial use requires specific permission from the author.
games”, a video game that not only represents the way games are designed, made, played
and sold but that also reflects upon these topics? Are “games on games” able to highlight
some elements of play practices more effectively than written words and audiovisual
media?
Are this kind of products a step towards a “playable theory” of game studies - a
meta-level in which playing, designing and critiquing overlap? Can this tool help us
defragging the divide between playing games and studying them?
In this panel, part of the editorial team of G|A|M|E wishes to discuss examples of
what we consider successful “games on games”. We propose a series of categories,
expanding on the MDA design framework and discussing some specific titles.
PANELIST 1: ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK
The fundamental existing condition of a game on games is its relation with
another object, a zero grade to which the GoG has to relate. It signifies if and only if its
user recognizes the related object, if not it loses its meaning and its objective: to critique
video games and their related themes by adopting their own forms, mechanics and
languages.
To describe the “games on games” we encountered in our research we decided to
use an extended version of the MDA framework (Hunicke et al., 2004). In addition to
Mechanics (as sets of rules), Dynamics (as emergent “run time” of the game) and
Aesthetics (as narrative elements and players' sensations) we also consider a “contextual”
superstructure that refers to video game cultures and production processes. In this
framework we recognize two different modulations for each describer (M, D, A, C): the
elaboration/addition of elements and their reduction/simplification.
We are well aware of the need of considering different points of view when
considering video games (Bogost 2009). The meta qualities of the products we observed
make them even more suited to a trans-disciplinary analysis. We identify four non
mutually exclusive areas to which a GoG can relate:
 a “contextual” area that refers to production practices and video game
cultures (see part 3);
 a “figurative/narrative” area emerging from the aesthetics of the MDA
framework (see part 4);
 a “run-time” area that emerges from the dynamics of the same model
(Little Inferno, Grindstar);
 a “genre/rule conventions” area that comes from the mechanics of the
MDA model (DLC Quest).
PANELIST 2: HOW DID WE GET HERE?
This intervention will serve a double purpose. First, it will contextualize the
notion of games on games within the wider environment of reflexive media texts,
comparing it with a series of meta-discursive cultural products. From Woody Allen’s The
Purple Rose of Cairo to McCloud’s Understanding Comics, I will confront the practice
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of crafting theoretical and critical discourses about a medium through the adoption of the
affordances and constraints of the medium itself.
In the second part of my intervention, I will detail the short but troubled history
of our research around game on games. From the initial idea of investigating reflexivity
in game design, to a series of theoretical tools developed in our research. My presentation
will discuss the critical lexicon and conceptual model that we ended up adopting, but will
focus particularly on the ideas and theoretical tools that were discarded or substantially
revised, thus detailing the path of our research in its entirety. This focus on mistakes and
false steps will provide an insight on the difficulties of conducting this kind of study, and
at the same time will constitute a peculiar example of a reflexive practice within research.
By disclosing the mechanics and dynamics of our research, we hope to
demonstrate the relevance and heuristic value of adopting a metadiscoursive, self-critical
perspective to investigate complex phenomena such as that of games on games.
PANELIST 3: CONTEXT SIMULATION
When we started our research on games on games, we found a group of very
specific games offering a critical insight on the production practices of video games
industry. Contrary to what we'll see with other case studies presented in this panel, where
the critical power seems to rely on an "exageration" of some key elements of a genre or
text used as critical source or target, my interest here is to present GameDev Story
(Kairosoft, 2010) and Global Game Jam Simulation (Brace Yourself Games, 2013) as
critical simulations of their own context of production.
According to Frasca “to simulate is to model a (source) system through a
different system which maintains to somebody some of the behaviors of the original
system” (2003). In my contribution, I will discuss to what extent these two games
represent a challenge to the idea of game on games itself. My point is that in this case the
critical operation relies on the ability of the games to hook the player experience to a
meta-discursive layer that works by contrast – as the result of the opposition of what the
gameplay offers to the players interpretation (simulation) and players shared background
(the system simulated). According to latest trends in game studies, such a way to
"operate" should be the way video games make their arguments. So, can we really talk of
GoG? Do GoG really exist?
PANELIST 4: GAMES ON RPGs
While mapping the current state of the art on games on games, we noticed a
relatively high number of pieces critiquing and reflecting on Role Playing Games. In this
case study, I will explore a small corpus composed by The Fastest RPG Ever (Sohier,
2012), Grindstar (failnaut, 2012) and Linear RPG (Houlden, 2009). Each of the three
examples focuses on a different area of the above-mentioned schema (Rules/Mechanics
for The Fastest RPG Ever, Run-time/Dynamics for Grindstar, Narrative/Aesthetics for
Linear RPG) but they are united by the common theme of storytelling and I argue that
they provide useful insights about the relation between games and narrative structures.
Classic RPGs tend to closely follow basic narrative structures because of their
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(sometimes naive) mimicking of myths. The three proposed pieces are well aware of this
relation and play with it, reducing or expanding some parts of a narrative schema and,
thus, making its existence more evident.
Amongst different options, let us consider the Canonical Narrative Schema
developed in French Semiotics and Narratology. In its later version (Bertrand 2000), it is
composed by three phases called Manipulation, Action and Sanction. The first two cases
adopt different strategies to modulate its phases: Fastest RPG Ever radically compresses
the Action phase while Grindstar takes the opposite approach by expanding it. The third
piece of this corpus - Linear RPG - deploys a similar rhetoric but takes it a step further.
While the Action phase is still present, the figurative structures fleshing out its abstract
components and mechanics are reduced to a bare minimum: the avatar is simply a dot, the
world is a single line, enemies are disembodied and their presence is inferred only by the
hero’s diminishing health level.
These related rhetorical moves have several aims (parody, critique of specific
dynamics, experimentation...) but, from the perspective of games reflecting on games,
they share a common feature as they all make the underlying narrative structure visible,
allowing its discovery and its critique.
PANELIST 5: NECESSARY EVIL. DESIGNING A CRITICAL GAME
Necessary Evil is a critical video game designed with the objective of
problematizing and demystifying the unquestioned (subjective) idealistic way in which
video games are developed.
Video games, their worlds and their narratives are customarily designed towards
the disclosure of a certain player-experience. From the perspective of software
architecture, video game worlds are generated around the player’s possibility to perceive
them or interact with them: objects in the world that are too far from the player, whose
sight is occluded by other objects (or that are momentarily irrelevant for gameplay)
literally do not exist as far as the game states are concerned. These technical
materialization of an idealistic mindset have the functional scope of limiting the amount
of calculations that are needed to run the video game world. It is a desirable, if not
necessary, evil.
Necessary Evil pursues its critical goal primarily by giving the player control
over a contributory character: a disposable baddy. Playing a trivial creature that is trapped
in a dungeon and is deprived of any meaningful interactive possibilities is meant to make
the player experience feeling marginal and to reveal what a virtual world feels like, once
it is designed around someone else’s perceptions and desires.
In my contribution, I will discuss and analyze many design choices (including the nonplaying hero and the end game conditions) that make Necessary Evil a critical game.
KEYWORDS
Reflexive
practices,
game
studies,
REFERENCES
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critical
games,
game
rhetoric
Bertrand, D (2000). Précis De Sémiotique Littéraire. Paris: Nathan Université.
Bogost, I. (2009). “Videogames Are a Mess”. Keynote address 2009 DIGRA
Conference (Uxbridge, UK, September 2009).
Brace Yourself Games (2013). Global Game Jam Simulator.
Failnaut (2012). Grindstar.
Frasca, G. (2003). “Simulation versus Narrative: Introduction to Ludology”. In Wolf,
M., Perron, B. (eds.). The Video Game Theory Reader. New York (NY):
Routledge.
Houlden, S. (2009). Linear RPG
Hunicke, M., Leblanc, M., Zubek, R. (2004). “MDA: A Formal Approach to Game
Design and Game Research”. Proceedings of the Challenges in Games AI
Workshop, Nineteenth National Conference of Artificial Intelligence.
Kairosoft (2010). GameDev Story [iOS]. Kairosoft. Tokyo, Japan.
McCloud, S. Understanding Comics. The Invisible Art. Northampton (MA): Tundra.
Sohier, R. (2012). The Fastest RPG Ever.
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