The Metanarrative of Videogames Part 1

Videogames teach their players things: at the least how the internal system of the videogame works. This is a central principle on which Raph Koster’s theory of fun and Ian Bogost’s procedural rhetoric are both built on. Murray’s conceptions of agency and immersion rely on this fact in a way as well, since one criterion of immersion is a meaningful interaction, through intelligibility and verification, with the system. James Paul Gee also assumes that games are teaching their players something, the lessons there are communicated through simulation and play-acting. More widely, all designed objects-to-be-used teach their user about how to use them, at the very least. Videogames are objects-to-be-used in that they must be activated, manipulated with manual skill and dexterity, as well as a conceptual understanding of the aesthetic context and content which they exhibit. Perhaps most fundamentally, videogames are games, and so posit a winning a condition most of the time. This activates the player’s understanding of positive and negative outcomes, therefore leading the player down a path or erecting a framework for behaviour: one choice will lead closer to winning, the other will lead away from it. This win/lose structure reinforces the lessons being taught by the game, explicitly, and ties those messages of approval/disapproval to the aesthetic content. How can we suppose that a medium with such strong potential to first define the range, then approve or disapprove of the player’s actions while playing do not make arguments about the world we live in?

If the implicit mechanics of a videogame are functions such as Mario’s triple jump, a siege tank’s two deployment modes, and the choice between harvesting or saving a Little Sister, what are the ‘meta-mechanics’ of a videogame? If those internal mechanics within the game are analogous to the events within a narrative, what is the corresponding message to literary fiction’s metanarrative? What is the ‘big lesson’ that comes out of certain videogames? What is the metalesson of the videogame medium itself? The first I will explore here is the concept of the Orderly World.

Escape to an Orderly World

Videogames presuppose that everything contained in their worlds are eventually knowable. They simply must be, at this point, due in part to our understanding of what it is to play a game, and what it is to program a computer. So two elements of the videogame, the computational architecture, and the gameplay framework conspire to create an eminently deterministic space where each event is caused in turn by its predecessor in a very clear line, and triggers other events in extremely predictable fashion. The machine component of the videogame is the combination of these two parts, and is of course, a logical structure itself. This overarching, determinist logic is perhaps an artefact of the modern: as a grand metanarrative, it corresponds well with the very concept of metanarrative, referring to Lyotard’s progress of logos over mythos. The dual purposes of viewing the world in a deterministic light coupled with the rebuilding of the world on an undoubtedly deterministic model can be read in virtually any videogame world one cares to mention. The joy with which people enter these orderly worlds indicates a modern craving for answers, for reason and subsequently, mastery, over this kind of orderly world, despite Lyotard’s contention that we are incredulous of these grand narratives. Whatever aesthetic material is linked up to this logical structure becomes logical, consistent and knowable itself. Following smaller metanarrative examples will be made possible or more intense by their foundation in this concept of an orderly world.

One may contend in contradiction of the above assertion that: videogames are individual experiences, with myriad configurations creating a fractured, local, personal experience and so have no metanarrative that is true for everyone. That may be true, and indeed I would agree that it is true, but that is the experience of the videogame, not the videogame itself. Every experience had within the videogame system, no matter how normal or deviant, is made possible by the same governing rules that the player, either in accord or subversively, is engaging with their predictable, intelligible behaviour. Perhaps I can focus the discussion by invoking McLuhan: the medium is the message; I am looking at the object called videogame, not the experience of that object. Furthermore, the farther from a normalised play-style a gamer moves, the more likely it is that he is aware of the structures the game is presupposing, and in subverting them, he may be acknowledging that. However, he may be moving in the opposite direction: valuing the winning outcome so much he is willing to cheat in order to get there.

One may also contend that though the rules may be deterministic, the player of a videogame doesn’t necessarily know all the rules and thus is not able to play as though all the rules are known. This is the precise process videogames rely upon for entertainment. The rules are not all known to begin with, but are ultimately knowable. Raph Koster ably illustrates how the primary pleasure of many videogames (and games in general) is in the learning, in the gaining of knowledge of the system. Once worked out, that system becomes mundane and uninteresting. Just as tic-tac-toe is no longer a challenge once either player works out the dominant strategy, a videogame will become less and less interesting once the player has internalized the rules. Some games offer other pleasures, additional pleasures, that will keep a player engaged, but that initial awe of discovery and feeling of new mastery will be hard to replace. MMOGs rely on content updates to introduce new mysteries to the world and new challenges to overcome in order to maintain player interest. Single-player, offline gameworlds will struggle to maintain the kind of dedication WoW enjoys, simply because of the amount of new content being poured into Azeroth.

Finally, one may point to the ‘random’ probability of dice-rolls in gaming in general, and videogames in particular. These surely indicate a chaotic, non-determined element to a videogame world. Firstly, these dice-rolls are never truly random, in fact, they involve yet another determined algorithm often taking the time of day (down to millisecond resolution) as a seed value to generate a seemingly random number, though really it is a precisely calculated number that is unlikely or impossible to be calculated again due to the nature of the seeding algorithm. In effect, though, the numbers do seem random, or at least unpredictable, to the player. But these occurrences are usually compartmentalised and carefully denoted. Players of paper-based RPGs know when a dice is being rolled because the group has to actually do the rolling. Experienced players of computer RPGs will know when probability is being incorporated into the game when such key words such as ‘chance to hit’ are employed. Indeed, most gamers familiar with RPGs will already know that most of their character’s actions are influenced in whole or in part by a certain set of percentage chances. The most expert players will know what those percentages are exactly, because the computer must maintain a table of values somewhere which will very likely be extracted by the most industrious of players and published to the wider player base. Gamers already know this information is there, the only question is how to get at it. Once extracted, simple spreadsheet calculators make it a relatively simple task to unlock the exact function of a given attack manoeuver, defensive action or spell. This effectively eliminates the indeterminacy created by dice rolls, since all possible outcomes can be known and planned for.

According to Koster, gamers are constantly working to eliminate the indeterminacy of the unknown within videogames, because the act of discovering order in an apparently chaotic environment is what constitutes “fun.” This is certainly the case in online RPG titles, perhaps most visibly there, and in online games in general, where the players’ combined efforts are pooled into online websites and resources. Certainly though, in single-player games, individuals will make notes, draw maps, or read other player’s accounts on how certain mechanics work, where items are located, or how to go about preparing for a difficult encounter. The paradox is, though, that the harder players work at uncovering the unknown, the closer they bring the game to being “unfun.” The further paradox is that all those so-called mysteries were placed there by designers specifically to be discovered. So whether or not the player, individually or collectively, knows all the secrets of the game at some given point in time, all the inner workings are internally consistent, measurable and even documented somewhere, by the development team.

The pleasure in this, I suggest, is for the highly determinist among us. This kind of game (virtually all games today) caters to the player who wishes there to be order in the world, or assumes that there is, and that there should be. This appeals to the positivist understanding of this world, and our fantasy game worlds, where the player will try something out, and learn from the feedback, assuming that the next time he tries, the result will be affected in a logical way by the change in approach. Science assumes that in the real world the same input will have the same output when all elements of the system are understood. Videogames are based on this same understanding of the world; their gameworlds are built to behave this way by connecting fictional material to an active logical machine. This includes the supposedly sentient life forms in videogames as well as their more physical characteristics. In gaming terms, bosses only have one mechanism for defending themselves, and once figured out by the player, the boss will not react and learn a new defensive tactic. Allied NPCs will not negotiate the requirements of a quest; only one behaviour will trigger the desired action.

There is a definite comfort in this kind of world. This ‘knowability’ affirms the methodology we are taught to apply in the real world by the positivist, scientific tradition. Even a spiritual player could take solace in the intelligence with which each element of the game world was designed, and know that each was playing its proper role in the fictional hierarchy. Some of the specific ways which this orderly world is activated to create experiences will be fleshed out in following posts.

This stuff is very much work-in-progress, so I’d really appreciate commentary on the quality of the argument.

6 Comments

By Jonathan M, November 15, 2010 @ 5:32 pm

An interesting piece.

However, I think that you’re glossing over the section of your argument that is most interesting and therefore most worth looking into. Namely the similarities and differences between the way we engage with our world qua ‘reality’ and the game worlds qua ‘fiction’.

I think that accepting that reality is deterministic is very different, psychologically speaking, to accepting that a game world is deterministic and I think you’re running the two psychological states together. For example, you cite Lyotard claiming that we are sceptical about grand narratives, but it’s one thing to be sceptical about a grand narrative existing in reality but quite another to be sceptical about one existing in a work of fiction.

You might want to look into some Heidegger as he touches upon the idea that we can quite contentedly juggle different modes of being. I am british. I am white. I am straight. I am a geek. I am a critic. All of these are different modes of being and we clearly delve more or less into them depending upon situations and contexts.

I wonder whether there is not something similar going on with regards to the ordered existences of videogames. We do live in a meaningless void but we also play troll rogues in hugely deterministic and winnable worlds.

Two different forms of being. Therein lies the crux of the matter.

Just a thought
By Adam Ruch, November 16, 2010 @ 8:43 am

That’s interesting stuff Jonathan. I have to admit, I hadn’t really thought about it in terms of real-actual reality that people live in, mostly because this is part of a project more focused on videogame ontology than … philosophy? Still, I think your comment affirms fairly implicitly that my introduction there makes sense and isn’t wildly speculative
By Roger Travis, November 21, 2010 @ 11:25 pm

That’s a great read, Adam! I’m eagerly looking forward to the sequels.

If you’ve got a moment, could you just map where you think the performance-element of gaming lies in relation to this admirable set-up with respect to Bogost, Murray, and especially Koster? My work suggests that there’s a pleasure that might even be called “fun” in performing within a system of known and thus epistemologically-ordered rules; I’m not sure it would be wrong to say that that pleasure comes from the desire to push the knowing asymptotically further, but I’d love to see it argued with respect to performance (and indeed to performativity a la Austin/Searle/Derrida).

Whether you find time to respond or not, thanks very much for this post, which has found an instant place in my bibliography.

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The Metanarrative of Videogames Part 1

Escape to an Orderly World

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The Metanarrative of Videogames Part 1

Escape to an Orderly World

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