flickering colours

Contemplating Rules

A tool useful when contemplating rules.

The following is sort of a post-article writing meditation on what I think I'm saying in a forthcoming piece on Fable 2.  Keep an eye on the SCAN Media Journal for a long review/critique of Fable 2 that opens up the idea of different rule sets in an example game.

In the field of game studies, we find ourselves talking about 'rules' a lot.  The rules of a game are the most obvious, and often the most valued.  Think of Marrku Eskelinen and early Jesper Juul--they both describe game rules in very clear terms as being a recognisable structure that we can point at, discuss, critique etc.  We learn the rules of the game in order to play, if we break them we are cheaters, etc.  They can be negotiated on the fly in certain types of (children's) games, that sort of thing.

When looking to narratology, we can discern a different set of rules, the rules of 'narrative.'  I would argue that these are rules of a different order, more meta-rules for building a good narrative, not content-rules of a particular narrative.  Like the meta-rule of what a game is (should be fair, have quantifiable outcome), the structuralist rules of what a narrative is (beginning, middle, end, having a narrator) are upheld by the narrative, not described within it.  So, the rules of an individual game are not identical to rules of games in general.  Similarly, the rules of narrative (structure) are not the same as rules that apply within a particular narrative.  And quite obviously, the rules that define general narrative and general game are not the same thing either--this is essentially the basis of the narratology vs ludology debate.

However, videogames are not 'games' nor are they 'narratives' they are, above all, videogames.  A new form of media/expression/art/software that hasn't been properly defined or criticised yet.  I believe we are getting close, however, as the frame of the general debate has shifted in the last couple years.  A lot of it has to come down to language, and the precision with which we apply certain words.  So a word like 'game' needs to not be confused with 'videogame' in certain contexts.  Because if we are talking about the rules of a particular game, we may or may not be talking about its particular instantiation within a videogame.  We seem to have a fairly decent grip on the fact that the 'narrative' doesn't account for the entire videogame, but perhaps because of the funny word play involved, it seems that earlier theory tried to substitute the game (rules) for the whole videogame.

As Espen Aarseth (perhaps the only theorist that everyone pretty much agrees with?) pointed out recently, videogames are not games.  They have games in them.  This makes total sense in the modern videogame landscape especially: Grand Theft Auto has driving challenges and races, shooting games, Easter Egg Hunts, and other discreet 'games' within it.  Fable 2 makes it even more obvious with the Blacksmithing and Bartending "mini" games.  In fact, any videogame with 'minigames' makes this obvious.  World of Warcraft has Capture the Flag in it as well as the game of 'boss fight.'  Mass Effect 2 has the hacking memory match game, as well as target practice.  Lots of 'games' within the larger videogame.  So we cannot hope to define Mass Effect or GTA4 with one set of 'game' rules, even when only talking about the 'game' parts--never mind the narrative parts.  In this way, even an videogame like Tetris or Space Invaders has 'stuff other than game' in it, like the starting screen, pause menu, the music, and possibly even the graphics, because they are not actually part of the rules, rather they are visual presentations of the underlying rules.

I mentioned the idea of internal rather than external narrative rules.  The external rules are what Genette, Chatman and Propp talk about.  They are what build the narrative.  The internal rules are what build the fiction.  Fictional rules are described either explicitly, often in fantasy or sci-fi stories that have to tell the reader where things are different from the real world we live in; or they are assumed, as in a realistic novel that simply uses real-world rules.  The most fundamental of these are things we hardly think about, physics, language, gender, that sort of thing.  Obviously in fantasy/sci-fi we can change those things: speculative physics like the warp engines in Star Trek, the fact that aliens usually speak English, or multiple gender situations as in LeGuin's The Left Hand of Darkness.  Tolkien spent years building his worlds, in text, by writing down either textual descriptions of 'the way things worked' in a general sense, or by creating 'history' which is, in fiction, the output of the world-system he imagined.  One is 'Elves and orcs hate each other because of XYZ.'  The other is 'The Elf/Orc war lasted a decade, many lives were lost including the noble and loved King of the Elves...'  (Not suggesting this is actual Tolkien lore here, by the way.)

When things aren't true.

The rules of narrative, such as conflict, climax and resolution, are often at odds with the rules of the fictional world.  One only has to watch an action movie to see this.  We are told that James Bond operates in a 'real world' but in his world, a 9mm bullet will cause a propane tank to explode.  We are to believe that most action movies occur in the real world, but in most action movies, a car will explode in a fiery conflagration at the drop of a hat.  These things simply aren't true.  So, what we have is the narrative imperative of drama and excitement stepping in to alter the rules of the fictional world's physics to suit the narrative.  Deus ex Machina refers to an unbelievable solution to an intractable problem, often in the form of a new character, ability or object.  "Oh that door is locked?  Here use my magical lockpick kit."  The kind of liberties film directors/writers take might not be egregious enough to qualify as deus ex machina but they certainly can ruin a story if there are enough of them. These narrative worlds are just as incoherent, and for the same reasons exactly, that videogame worlds are incoherent in Juul's typology.  Why does the propane tank explode?  Not because of physics, but because the narrative says the hero has to escape.

Videogames introduce a combination effect of rules, another contest between competing imperatives.  Narratives put the fictional rules of the imaginary world against the rules of narrative.  Games must be carefully designed for fairness, balance, excitement, and win-ability, so players have to be able to win, but not so easily that the game is not a challenge.  Initially, this arrangement might seem to match up effortlessly: in many narratives, there is a similar sense of goal, resistance, conflict and resolution that we can see in games.  One substitutes the narrative protagonist for an active player, and we simply let the player take the actions that make him 'win' the story.  The problems come up when those pesky inconsistencies crop up.  In a narrative, as I have said before, the knowledge that cars don't blow up or "He just wouldn't do that!" only get in the way of our enjoyment of the story if they go past our point of tolerance.  Not to say this doesn't happen; that on thing that makes a 'bad movie' bad, it is 'unbelievable.'  (Think of horror movies where people do stupid, stupid things to get themselves killed.  They do things to put themselves into situations where those bad things can happen, because the narrative needs its drama and excitement, not because we are to believe they are stupid people--but we believe that anyway.)

In games however, we seem to have a much lower tolerance for this kind of inconsistency because we are concentrating on the rules much more seriously.  We are constantly learning the rules of a game, mapping them out mentally as to make decisions later, to achieve the goals we have.  So if we can break down a door in one room, we file that information away and when we're trapped with a monster attacking, would rightfully think that the door could be broken down to get away.  If the narrative steps in and says, no you can't break down this door (because this is the part where you get rescued by the NPC for dramatic reasons) we get annoyed.  In this negative case, we the player are being treated unfairly by this inconsistent rule system that we had come to rely on.  In a positive situation, ie. we are suddenly more powerful and can do something we've never been able to before, we can feel just as incensed.  In that case, we've been robbed of a 'real' victory by a sudden change of mechanics that makes our previous learning and strategy much less meaningful.

The site of the interaction between narrative rules, fictional rules, game rules and meta-game rules is at the simulation.  Simulation is a powerful new rhetoric that can actually use systems to demonstrate systems, can enact rules to represent rules.  This is where Frasca and Bogost take us in their work.  The source of the actual, coded software rules are the four areas mentioned above.  (Or the two, which are composed of two sub-sets each.)  In a simulated environment like a videogame, we are able to and encouraged to test the rules, play with and according to the rules.  We learn by doing, experimenting, trying and failing and succeeding.  We store what we think the rules are mentally, building our own internal rule book that we refer to when we are faced with challenges/goals.  Like, fire is hot, don't stand in it, but can be put out with a fire extinguisher.  Of course these are real physical rules, but not all games let you pick up a fire extinguisher, let alone actually put out fires with one.  The same sort of thing happens when we read/watch a narrative story, however.  If in scene 2 a character puts out a fire with an extinguisher, and then is presented with another fire later in the film, we'd expect that (if one is available) the character will use another extinguisher to deal with it--and not freak out and start crying and claim 'its impossible!'  In the latter case, the audience would see the inconsistency and 'Boos' would commence.

The difference is that in a videogame, the 'audience' can actually try those kinds of solutions/techniques and will then react if they don't work.  The rules of a simulation can be consistent.  That's the point of a simulation, actually.  The designer would have to intentionally tamper with the mechanics of a simulation/videogame in order to change them at a certain point in time, to ensure that some event takes place--if that event runs counter to the mechanics of the world.  When that happens, we get angry or at least frustrated, and the game is less satisfying for it.

Don't lie about cake, seriously.

The simulation is the videogame, and is made up of rules that are dictated by narrative (structuralist meta-rules and particular fictional world rules) and game rules (meta-game structure rules and individual gameplay rules).  Neither one is 'more' important or more fundamental to what a videogame is, any more than the eggs or flour is more important in a cake.  Without the right balance the cake doesn't taste right, and without both you don't have a cake at all.

And we all know what happens when there is no cake.