» Making Meaning Desert of My Real Life

{August 5, 2008} We’re Not Telling Stories

One of the aspects of game analysis that my students struggle with has to do with the dramatic elements of a game. According to the text that I use in my Creating Games class (Game Design Workshop by Tracy Fullerton, Chris Swain and Steven Hoffman), dramatic elements are those elements of the game that help to keep the players engaged in the game. There are five dramatic elements but the ones that my students struggle with are premise and story.

The text says that premise sets the stage for the action that will propel the game forward while story has to do with actual plot points in a narrative being told by the game. For example, the premise in Monopoly is that the player is a real estate mogul. But there is no story in Monopoly because there is no action that moves from point to point as determined by the author of the game. Fullerton and her co-authors say, “Plays, movies, and television are all media that involve storytelling and linear narratives. When an audience participates in these media, they experience a story that progresses from one point to the next as determined by an author. The audience is not an interactive participant in these media and cannot change the outcome of the story.” They go on to say that games are different in that the audience (the game player) interacts with a game and can (in fact, must be able to) change the outcome of the game. So traditional storytelling methods will not work in a game system because the player will not have enough of a sense of control if she cannot change the outcome of the game. The game will feel “fixed” or “random” which will result in an unsatisfying game-playing experience. Because of this need to have the player feel that she is in control of the progress of the game, very few games incorporate story as a dramatic element. Instead, most games use some sort of premise. Of course, some premises are more elaborate than others. When a premise gets to be very elaborate, it is called a backstory. Confused yet? Obviously, the boundary between premise and story is blurry.

I’ve been thinking about the word story a lot lately because of FaceBook. Every change that is made to your profile is called a story. So, for example, every time I change my status, a story is posted to my mini-feed as well as to the newsfeed for each of my friends. And then I can look at all my status stories. In fact, here are my status stories:

Saying that each of these items is a story is confusing to me. If you were to say that together these items make a story, each item being a plot point developed by me, the author, then I would understand why the word story is used. But how is each of these items a story by itself? I think this is yet another example of FaceBook coopting a word and changing its meaning.

{August 3, 2008} A Lipshitz by Any Other Name

Here is one of the most amazing stories about an unthinking reliance on technology that I’ve heard in a long time. Verizon does not allow the setting up of accounts that have profanity in the name of the account. This might sound reasonable on its face since you can imagine a young English major deciding it would be cool to have their email address set up to be fuckuahl@verizon.net as an homage to her favorite faculty member at PSU (although I’m not sure why anyone would really care if that was indeed someone’s email address but apparently, Verizon does care and I suppose that is their right). So the problem is not that someone at Verizon thought it would be good to have automated checks for such things. The problem arises when there is an unthinking application of the rule so that legitimate requests are denied.

And that’s exactly what happened to Dr. Herman Lipshitz when he tried to set up an Internet account with Verizon. He was told that because his name contains the word shit, he could not use it as his username for the account. Like any good customer with a legitimate complaint, he asked to speak to a supervisor. When the supervisor insisted that the rule must stand (and that perhaps the good doctor should misspell his name in order to get around the rule), Dr. Lipshitz called the billing department and spoke to another supervisor. That supervisor said that the only person who could deal with it was someone in Tampa who would have to call India to have the computer code changed to allow an exception for this account. The person from Tampa would call him back. No one called but eventually, Dr. Lipshitz received a letter telling him that his name could not be used for his email account because it violates Verizon’s policy for allowable usernames. So Dr. Lipshitz called the Philadelphia Inquirer and after Daniel Rubin published an article about the incident, Verizon relented, saying, “As a general rule (since 2005) Verizon doesn’t allow questionable language in e-mail addresses, but we can, and do, make exceptions based on reasonable requests.” Dr. Lipshitz points out that he gets phone service from Verizon, is listed as Lipshitz in Verizon’s phone book and, perhaps most importantly, Verizon regularly cashes his checks with the name Lipshitz prominantly displayed on them.

About 15 years ago, I purchased something at a grocery store. The total came to $2.37. I gave the cashier $5.37 but she had already put $5.00 into the cash register which told her the change should be $2.63. Despite five minutes of arguing, I could not convince her that it would be ok to take my $5.37 and give me $3.00 in change. Until now, that had been my best story of an overreliance on technology. That has now changed.

{July 24, 2008} Philosophy of Jokes

On Word of Mouth today on NHPR, I heard an interview with Jim Holt, the author of Stop Me if You’ve Heard This: A History and Philosophy of Jokes. His book is short, only 160 pages, for a history of jokes. The fact that it contains history and philosophy makes me even more suspicious about how much coverage he could possibly have included in the book. But I was intrigued by the philosophy part of what he had to say. He discussed several theories about why people find some jokes funny and I think these theories can illuminate why people find some things fun.

The description of the interview on the Word of Mouth web site says, “Humor lives in the moment and the more you take it apart, the less humorous it becomes.” I think I disagree with this statement–the reason I say “I think I disagree” is because I haven’t thought about this kind of comment in relation to humor but I have heard similar comments about other phenomena and I disagree with those comments. An acquaintance once said to me that she doesn’t want to know too much about astronomy because that knowledge would take away from the beauty of the stars. I completely disagree with this statement. In fact, Richard Dawkins wrote a book called Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion, and the Appetite for Wonder in which he argues that the more you know about how the world works, the more wondrous the world becomes. In other words, ignorance is NOT bliss! I also hear comments like this when it comes to talking about games. Students often want to begin and end their analysis of a game with the statement: “It was (or wasn’t) fun.” But if I press them to articulate why it was fun, they often complain that doing so takes the fun out of the game. Clearly, I disagree with that idea. Otherwise, I wouldn’t teach game design and analysis. So I think I disagree with the statement that trying to figure out how humor works makes the humor disappear. But I do acknowledge that it is possible that humor is somehow different than these other phenomena.

Anyway, Holt discussed several theories about what we find funny and why. I think at least one of these theories can help us to understand what we find fun and why. Humans have probably been telling jokes since before they could speak (if you consider slap-stick a kind of joke). The oldest known joke book is called The Philolegos, or Laughter Lover, which is a Greek anthology from the fourth or fifth century a.d.

The theory of why we laugh at jokes that I found most interesting (and useful for thinking about game design) is the incongruity theory (which is actually about the resolution of incongruity). We perceive an inconsistency of some sort–two things that don’t normally go together or a sentence that seems irrelevant to the story being told. Inconsistencies heighten our attention–an inconsistency in our world might signal the presence of a predator and if we don’t pay attention, we might end up as someone’s lunch. With our attention (and anxieties) heightened, we try to resolve the incongruity. When the resolution finally comes, we realize that the incongruity was actually harmless and we laugh with relief.

The incongruity theory is useful for us in trying to understand why games are fun. Like Michael Shermer, I believe that we are “pattern-seeking” animals. We have evolved to look for patterns in our world–those ancestors who were good at finding patterns were good at seeing the predator hiding in the trees and so survived while those that missed such patterns ended up as lunch. As Steven Johnson reported in Discover magazine, when we find a pattern, we get a little jolt of pleasure in our brains. Games present patterns for us to discover and it’s pleasurable for us to find those patterns. I’m sure it’s one of the reasons I’m addicted to Dr Mario Online Rx. I get a little jolt of pleasure every time I resolve the inconsistency of the active viruses by manipulating the falling pills. So at least one way to put fun into games is to focus on patterns. The patterns have to present an incongruity that can be resolved by the player, but not too easily. If the player doesn’t recognize the incongruity or the incongruity cannot resolved in a recognizable way, the player will be frustrated. If the incongruity is too easily resolved, the player will be bored.

The use of incongruities in games is related to what the authors of the text that I use in Creating Games (Game Design Workshop) call challenge. In order to make a game more fun, the authors say, a game designer can focus on the dramatic elements of the game, one of which is challenge. By focusing on making the challenge appropriate to the level of skill of the player, the game designer can avoid frustration and boredom, both of which are antithetical to fun. When the level of challenge presented to the player closely matches her skill level, she enters a state called flow, in which the player “is fully immersed in what he or she is doing by a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity.” Entering the flow state, being completely immersed in what you’re doing, is pleasurable. As game designers, our ultimate goal is allow someone to enter the flow state while playing our games.

{July 16, 2008} Adventures in Time or Why I’m Freaked Out by FaceBook

Because so many of my friends are completely addicted to FaceBook (and threatening not to be friends with me anymore), I decided to join two days ago (less than 36 hours ago). In keeping with the entire Web 2.0 movement, I feel that I should share my impressions of FaceBook immediately, before I’ve had too much time to reflect on the experience.

The first strange experience I had on FaceBook involved the status update feature. This is a feature that allows the user to tell her friends what she’s currently doing. One of the options was “Cathie is sleeping” and so when I went to bed, I changed my status to that. Yesterday morning, I logged in for further exploration and Liz was online (and of course, by “online”, I mean “on FaceBook”). I had forgotten to change my status when I logged in and so the first thing Liz said to me was “You aren’t sleeping.” She was right, of course. I was freaked out by the fact that my un-updated status was immediately noticed and commented upon. So I changed my status to “Cathie is freaked out by the status update feature.” This was immediately commented on by the two Robins, both of whom said something like: “It’s how we track your every movement.” Which, of course, freaked me out even more.

The second strange experience is one that Ian Bogost calls “collapsed time.” After I filled out my profile on FaceBook (entering things like where I went to high school, college and so on), the first person the site suggested that I add as a FaceBook friend is someone who actually is a friend of mine, Amy Briggs. I’ve known Amy since I was in seventh grade and she was in sixth. We went to high school together and then went to Dartmouth College together, where we were two of the very few women majoring in Computer Science in the mid-1980s. We both went on to get PhDs in Computer Science and we’re now both faculty members at small New England colleges (although she has gone over to the dark side and is Middlebury’s Acting Dean of Curriculum). Because of the similarities in our backgrounds, it was probably a no-brainer to suggest that I add her as a friend. And, of course, I did. To complete the friendship relationship in FaceBook, however, the second party must agree to the friendship. So I went to bed Monday night without Amy in my FaceBook friend list. By the time I logged into FB Tuesday morning, however, Amy had accepted my request for friendship. What’s strange to me is how FB reported this to me. It said, “Cathie and Amy Briggs are now friends.” Now we’re friends? Despite the fact that we’ve known each other for more than 30 years, now we’re friends? As Bogost has pointed out, FB collapses time to this moment. Now is the only time that matters. This freaks me out just a little bit.

The third strange experience happened this morning. I have been on FB for just more than 36 hours so I have only dabbled in exploring the many features available. For example, I have uploaded only one picture, mostly just to see how the upload feature works. It’s a picture of Ann and I taken at a baby shower this winter. (Despite the fact that I have just joined FB, quite a few other pictures of me are there because of the addicted friends I mentioned earlier. It’s another interesting and freaky aspect of these social networks that you can “exist” on the network without even knowing it.) A friend teased me via a comment on my wall (a public space on which FB members can post comments for and about you), implying that I need to get more photos out there. Although I know the comment was meant in jest, I think it illustrates an issue concerning “immediacy,” in which users expect stuff to happen immediately. The immediacy issue is related to the issue of collapsed time in that they are both about an emphasis on now. And on FB, stuff does happen immediately. And then all your friends are immediately notified about it. Freaky.

And that leads me to the last of my current impressions about FB. I’m having significant information overload. As a user, you can control the kinds of things you are notified about via email. By default, you are notified about everything. So when someone accepts your offer of friendship, you get an email about it. When a friend changes her status, you get an email about it. When a friend writes on your wall, you get an email about it. When a friend adds a photo to her page, you get an email about it. And so on. Like I said, you can change these settings but as a new user, it’s difficult to decide what you want to get an email about and what you don’t. I’m finding it challenging to keep up with it all. This brings to mind Sturgeon’s Law, which says: “Ninety-nine percent of everything is crap.” Since I’m writing these impressions without having thought them through, that’s also what I’m thinking about this blog entry.

{July 14, 2008} Game or Sport?

While we were in Barcelona, I picked up the European (Summer Journey Double Issue) edition of Time magazine because it’s about the games that people play around the world. A number of the articles are fascinating, describing activities that I had never heard of.

For example, one article describes parkour like this: “It’s not quite a sport, and it is certainly no game. But for sheer athleticism, the French-born extreme activity is unmatched as a spectacular thrill.” The article goes on to describe parkour as part gymnastics and part tai chi. It involves moving through an urban landscape as quickly (running) and as efficiently (leaping over obstacles such as walls and gaps between buildings) as possible. Clearly, it requires considerable skill to not get hurt. We saw some young men engaging in this activity while we were in Spain and would have had no idea what they were doing had I not read the article. It’s difficult to imagine without seeing someone do it (pictures, video). But the thing that I found most interesting about this article is that it was about an activity that is “certainly no game.” If this special issue is about games that people play, why would parkour be included?

The question came up for me again in another article about competitive computer gaming in South Korea. Apparently, however, to call this activity computer gaming is to commit a faux pas. Instead, the activity is called e-sports. Gaming doesn’t engender the same respect that sport does and the professional gamers in South Korea definitely want respect for what they do.

So this got me to thinking about what distinguishes game from sport. And why does one activity command respect while the other doesn’t? I’ve had a similar conversation with Liz and Ann about art vs craft. I think it’s human nature to want to categorize things and so there are furious debates about what is art and what is craft. Apparently, lots of people have also argued about the difference between game and sport. Until I read the Time magazine articles, I hadn’t given serious thought to what is sport and what is game. In fact, the only reason I think this is an interesting conversation is because of the respect that seems to be accorded to one and not the other.

According to Dictionary.com, sport is:

1.an athletic activity requiring skill or physical prowess and often of a competitive nature, as racing, baseball, tennis, golf, bowling, wrestling, boxing, hunting, fishing, etc.
2.a particular form of this, esp. in the out of doors.
3.diversion; recreation; pleasant pastime.

And a game is:

1.an amusement or pastime
2.the material or equipment used in playing certain games
3.a competitive activity involving skill, chance, or endurance on the part of two or more persons who play according to a set of rules, usually for their own amusement or for that of spectators.

Each word has about 15 or 20 other definitions that are not quite related to this discussion. For example, someone can be a good sport or be in the real estate game. I’ll ignore those possibilities.

These two sets of definitions are very similar. Both a game and a sport are a “competitive” “pastime” involving “skill”. One difference seems to be that sport involves “skill or physical prowess” while physical prowess doesn’t seem to be part of the definition of a game. Instead, games involve “skill, chance or endurance.” But that makes me wonder why ESPN, which considers itself to be “the worldwide leader in sports”, shows the World Series of Poker (WSOP). One could argue that because winning the WSOP requires days and days of poker-playing, it requires physical endurance (which makes it a game) but there is no way to argue that it requires physical prowess.

Wikipedia says: “Sport is an activity that is governed by a set of rules or customs and often engaged in competitively. Sports commonly refer to activities where the physical capabilities of the competitor are the sole or primary determiner of the outcome (winning or losing), but the term is also used to include activities such as mind sports (a common name for some card games and board games with little to no element of chance) and motor sports where mental acuity or equipment quality are major factors.”

Once again, physical prowess appears to be an important factor. But this definition might help us a little in understanding why poker is shown on ESPN. According to this definition, some games, those with “little to no element of chance”, are also sports (presumably even though the games do not involve physical prowess). The role of chance in poker has a name–we call it “a bad beat” when someone should win a hand but chance intervenes to make her lose. While chance might play a role in a particular hand or even entire game of poker, in the long run (perhaps over a series of games), the poker player with the better abilities will come out ahead of the lesser player. So perhaps we can say that poker is on ESPN because chance plays only a small role in determining the outcome. And perhaps that’s also why the South Korean gamers insist that they play e-sports. My guess is that most of the computer games they’re playing leave very little to chance and the very best gamers win these competitions.

I don’t think the distinction between games and sports is important except to the extent that the playing of games is considered “kid stuff” and accorded little respect. In Everything Bad is Good for You, Steven Johnson argues that today’s popular culture, including video games and television, is making us smarter because of the complexity presented to us through these media. I would argue that games (including non-video games) have made us smarter throughout all of history (not just today). Through the playing of games, we practice and develop mental and physical skills in a safe space, a space that Johan Huizinga called “the magic circle”, where the stakes are lower than they are in “real life.” In other words, the magic circle is a learning space. Rather than demanding that our game activities be called sports (as in e-sports), we should be proud to play games since doing so shows we are engaged in lifelong learning.

{June 8, 2008} Wii Weaknesses

A recent positive experience I had with the Wii exposes a couple of weaknesses in Wii Tennis.

Because they enjoyed playing with our Wii so much, Ann and Greg have purchased their very own Wii. We went over to their house with our Wii remotes to play. It was amazingly fun playing Wii Tennis with four people, 2 against 2. In fact, it was much more fun playing 2 on 2 than it has ever been playing either 1 on 1 or against the computer. I was thinking about why the four person game is more fun and I think the reasons expose some problems with the way the game was designed.

Whenever you play Wii Tennis, you are playing doubles. What this means is: if you are playing 1 on 1 or against the computer, you are controlling two characters (usually two copies of your own Mii) with one remote. I think the decision to always have tennis be doubles was a mistake on the part of the designers of the game. One of the reasons that the Wii is so popular is because of its unique (and innovative) input mechanism. By using the Wii remote, a player is able to interact with the in-game characters in a way that feels like interacting with the real world. Rather than mashing keys on a remote, the player moves an arm to hit the ball in tennis, for example. This more realistic interaction with the game has appealed to many non-gamers and is truly what has made the Wii the phenomenon it has become. But the decision to have a single remote control multiple characters in the tennis game means that we lose some of the realism of the interaction. When a player moves an arm to hit the ball, two characters in the game swing their rackets, which is a little disconcerting. It would feel more realistic and be more engaging (and more fun) to be able to play singles if you are playing against only one other player or against the computer. Then your one remote would control a single character within the game.

Of course, I understand why the designers made this choice. Within Wii Tennis, there is no way to control where your character moves. The only thing you can control is when the racket is swung and at what angle. The movement of the characters is controlled by the game itself. By allowing a single remote to control two characters, the game then only needs to control horizontal movement of the characters (they move left and right depending on where the ball is) and does not need to control vertical (forward and back) movement of the characters. Instead, one character plays the front and the other plays the back. This, however, is another weakness of the game. Because you can’t control the movement of your character, there are some shots that are impossible to defend against. For example, Greg has perfected a shot off a serve to his forehand. If the serve is a regular serve (that is, not one of the ones that is really fast), Greg will return it with a cross-court shot in a spot where the front character cannot get to it and the back character (whose left and right movement is controlled by the game) does not start moving fast enough to be able to return the shot. So as a player, there is nothing you can do to return this shot. You’re inhibited by the limitations of the game implementation.

This second weakness concerning the lack of control of the movement of the in-game characters exists when you play 2 on 2 with a separate remote controlling each of the four characters in the game. But the first weakness is not there so that it feels like a more natural interaction with the game, even if other flaws exist. I think this is a lesson for how to design engaging games. The more realistic the interaction, the more closely the in-game characterization represents the real world, the more engaging (and the more fun) the game is.

{May 8, 2008} Wii Fitness Age

The Wii has a lot of features that you can use with the basic set up. One of the most popular seems to be the fitness test that comes with Wii Sports. Once a day, each Mii in the Wii can take the fitness test. The Mii is presented with what appears to be a random set of three games (although every time I’ve taken the test, I’ve been presented with tennis, bowling and baseball) to play to determine the player’s “Wii fitness age”. The fitness age purports to measure speed, balance and stamina. The results of hitting balls back over the net in tennis, being able to knock down pins in a variety of configurations on bowling and being able to hit home runs in baseball result in a “Wii fitness age” somewhere between 80 and 20, 80 being the worst score and 20 being the best. The interesting thing to me about this particular aspect of the Wii is that the ideal age is 20.

I’m not sure why a game that is supposed to be based on experience would be designed to peak at the age of 20. The description of this feature suggests that the player should practice every day in order to bring his/her age down. In what world is the “peak” age twenty years old? For many athletes, their peak age is in the late 20s. In fact, for some athletes, golfers in particular, their peak age is much later in life. Think about Tiger Woods who has gotten better and better as he has aged. Now that he’s in his 30s, he seems to be continuing to get better. So where does peak happen at about age 20? The only thing I could find is that men tend to peak sexually at age 20. Women, however, peak sexually in their mid- to late 30s.

The fitness test says that it will be about speed, balance and stamina. None of the games seems to be about these things. Instead the game seems to be totally about experience within the game. Experience tends to increase with age. The only conclusion that I can come to about this particular aspect of Wii Sports is that the developers of the game were geeky men who tend to think that the peak age in life corresponds to male sexual peak age. Why else would 20 be the age to strive for?

I would love to hear from others about what their Wii fitness age is. My current Wii fitness age is 39, which, as regular readers of this blog (all one of you) already know, is younger than my actual age. Although I am skeptical of the bases for this particular test, I am secretly (not so secretly anymore) proud of the fact that my Wii fitness age is lower than my actual age. This reminds me of the peculiar pride I take in the fact that this test has deemed that I am a “Pure Nerd”. All it takes to help my self-esteem is for an anonymous web site to declare one thing is better than another and I am totally trying to achieve that better thing. How pathetic is that? My current score on the Nerd, Geek, Dork test is 82 % Nerd, 17% Geek, 26% Dork. And I’m a little bit proud of that. Sad and pathetic, I know. Take the test yourself and explain why you’re proud (or not) of your score.

{March 29, 2008} Desktop Layouts

My friend Ann (who, despite being one of the most astute critics of the technological life that I know (or maybe because of that fact–don’t you love the parenthetical to the parenthetical?), surprisingly does not have a web page or much of a web presence–otherwise I would put a link to her here) and I are working together to read a number of texts at the intersection of our two fields, computing and literary theory. We have read, among other things, Jean Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation. Obviously, the work we’ve done together has inspired this blog. The other day, we were discussing our latest project in the HUB (PSU’s student union), each using our laptops to make notes. When I showed her my computer, she was intrigued by the arrangement of icons on my desktop.

There are many limitations to the desktop metaphor for organizing files and folders. But Microsoft has introduced additional problems into the metaphor by only considering it at a superficial level. The default for Windows XP is to put icons in alphabetical order starting in the upper left corner of the desktop. This has never made sense to me. The desktop metaphor is a spatial one–the screen of the computer is supposed to represent a real, physical desktop. On a real desktop, WHERE you place an item is of primary importance. The NAME of that file is not important at all. And yet, Microsoft has chosen a default organizational structure that depends on the name of the folder or document. I have chosen to organize my computer desktop in a way that is very similar to the way I organize my physical desktop. In the upper right corner of my desktop are the things that I want to deal with first when I sit at my desk or start my computer. There’s a shortcut to NHPR’s streaming audio which I always start first thing. (I am addicted to National Public Radio–that will be the subject of a future post.) There’s a shortcut to my web browser which allows me to check my email next. As I move down the right side of the screen, there are the folders for my current classes, followed by articles and other projects I’m working on followed by the applications I use most. Across the bottom of the screen are zip files which contain the work of previous semesters. On the left side of the desktop are the items I use most infrequently. These items tend to remain in alphabetical order because I don’t care enough about them to move them around.

Ann pointed out to me that my desktop organization is kind of like a clock, with the things I want to be able to deal with first at 1 o’clock and things I don’t care about at 11 o’clock. The clock is an apt metaphor for how I organize my desktop–and I guess I see more of a relationship between my time organization and the desktop metaphor than between Windows’ default alphabetical organization and the desktop metaphor.

One of the things that interests me is how we understand what the computer is presenting to us. The use of metaphors is clearly important. But when the metaphors are superficial, they fail to help new users understand the information they face. We may think that there are no new users, that everyone knows and understands how Windows works. But it isn’t true. I spend my Friday afternoons at the Interlakes Senior Center in Meredith, NH, teaching senior citizens how to use computers. I am constantly amazed at how much one has to know in order to interpret the information presented by the computer in even the simplest interaction. As I explain even the most basic activities, there is a constant tension between too much information so that I overwhelm them and too little information so that they don’t really understand what’s going on. If the metaphors worked on deeper levels or if the information presented could be organized in more intuitive ways, I think some of this tension could be lessened.

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