Sep 18, 2003 - gamesâ4; it is unlikely that the will of narration could limit the evolution of ...... Where Resident Evil 4 overwhelms the player with dozens.
The intrinsic semiotics of videogames In search of games' narrative potential An article by Frederic SERAPHINE, Animation instructor at the Image Institute of the Indian Ocean (ILOI). First published on Amazon Kindle, KDP.
ASIN: B00Q1A0170
Table of Contents Abstract ..............................................................................1 Introduction ........................................................................2 Story Telling, Game and Experience .................................6 The semiosis in video games ...........................................20 Theoretical Design perspectives behind game Semiotics 34 Conclusion .......................................................................46 Ludography ......................................................................46 Bibliography.....................................................................47 All Rights Reserved © 2014 Frédéric SERAPHINE
Abstract This article aims at highlighting semiotic devices that are proper to the field of game design. By analyzing how current games handle their story telling, it will try to identify the process of signification within games in order to understand how it could be enhanced. This article will make use of concepts from Ludology, Semiotics, and Narratology; yet this paper's intent is to give new perspectives
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in the domain of game-design. It is a first attempt at identifying a language specific to games; a language that would permit the emergence of richer contents within games. It is likely that games have the ability to convey emotions, ethical values or stories. Some games already do. But we have yet to understand the workings of this signification. What really belongs to games? What is borrowed to other forms of art? Keywords – Game semiotics, game design, ludology, narratology, game studies
Introduction Whichever tool or media might they choose, artists will try to convey emotions and stories through the mastery of a chosen technique. And history of art is made of relentless reinvention of the medias by the artists. Rules of story-telling for cinema were constantly questioned in 120 years of existence. Video-game being at the scale of media history, a rather new mode of expression; it has yet an unexplored potential as a narrative media. Video-games do have the ability to convey a narrative; and many gamers will share their memories about playing a game they liked, by telling its story. Maybe the way video-games are currently telling stories is still immature. For example the overuse of tutorial levels in contemporary games is very analog to how story-telling used to depend on inter-titles in the cinematography of the early 20th century. Inter-titles were a crutch for a cinema which had not yet identified the narrative potential of its own tools. Such things as cut-scenes, and tutorial levels which use is broadly accepted in current games, are probably of a similar nature: mere crutches. As a result, the narrative potential of video-games, is still a subject of debate among game scholars. From the end of the 90s, in opposition to Narratology as an academic approach for game studies; scholars of northern Europe started to introduce the field of Ludology. One of them, Gonzalo Frasca, an Uruguayan researcher who graduated from the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, published in 2003 an essay called Simulation versus narrative: Introduction to Ludology. In this essay, for Frasca (2003) one of the main purposes was to
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challenge the idea that video games should be considered as an extension of drama and narrative. Opposing the narratological approach on game studies, and bringing in Ludulogy as the “stillnascent formal discipline of game studies”(p.222). For this purpose, Frasca is highlighting the concept of Simulation, as a ludological pendant to Narration. He splits this concept into two genres: the Paidia and the Ludus. Paidia could be vulgarized as the sandbox aspect of simulation, while Ludus is its aspect that relies more on rules and constraints. The point of his thesis is that games and narratives provide authors with “essentially different tools for conveying their opinions and feelings”(p.222).1 Nowadays, as opposed to what Frasca was stating back in 2003, the most natural approach to video-games’ studies actually became Ludology. And the common idea prevailing in game studies is that narratology is not the right theoretical tool to study video-games. Yet, Narration doesn't simply rely on Representation as Frasca was stating. And, as Simulation is all about reproduction of an experience, Simulation itself is subtending a strong notion of Representation. Representation coming from the Latin root praesento 2 with the repetition prefix re; basically means make something — or someone — present anew. Simulation on the other side comes from simulare3 which means copy or reproduce. So it appears that the concept of Simulation tends to be very close in signification to the concept of Representation. Simulation with its underlying meaning of copy or reproduction, is simply a particular form of representation: a representation of an experience. Making it the best experimentation tool for scientific studies. So Narration doesn't simply rely on Representation; for instance, in the context of literary narration, words are not representing, they are rather signifying. Representation itself is just a mere tool in the field of semiotics. Even if Frasca is stating that “the storytelling model Gonzalo Frasca, “Simulation versus narrative: Introduction to Ludology”, The Video Game Theory Reader, Issue n° 1, September 18, 2003 2 Wikitionary, http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/praesento (accessed on October 25, 2014) 3 Wikitionary, http://en.wikitionary.org/wiki/simulare (accessed on October 25, 2014) 1
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— for game studies — is inaccurate and limits our understanding of the medium along with our ability to create more compelling games” 4 ; it is unlikely that the will of narration could limit the evolution of video-game as a medium. Quite the contrary, there is still a lot to explore in the narrative aspect of game design. Narration might not be the core of game design, it is still an immeasurable tool to convey emotions. And semiotics could be the key to a better understanding of the narrative potential underlying in game-play. One of the dimensions of semiotics is the field of semantics. The concepts of semantics are at a deeper abstraction level than narratological concepts. Semantics are based on the relationship between two key concepts: The signifier, and what it stands for, the denotation. Can we find signifiers in the constitutive elements of game-play? Video-game being by nature a mixed media, when can we consider that a signifying element is part of the game-play? If the game-play can be the vector for a meaning, will this meaning derive from semantics or from pragmatics? As game-play is an ontologically abstract concept, does it have a potential of denotation as well as connotation? Finding out how to signify using the tools provided by game design could, in the end, allow the emergence of a form of video game auteurism. Narration has this incredible potential to convey strong emotions. Only mediums that have this experiential ability to convey emotions and meaning are broadly considered as art. In his thoughts about game ethics, the game philosopher Miguel Sicart (2013) defines his will for the recognition of games as a form of art.
If a new medium is considered to be art, then it becomes culturally legitimate for it to explore and communicate important meanings about our lives and culture.5 The present article is making this vow its own, and places it as a leitmotif to devote this reflection. However there is still a whole grammar and vocabulary to identify and establish for story-telling in video-game design. Despite its high subtended level of 4 5
Frasca,”Simulation versus narrative:”.221, Miguel Sicart, “Beyond Choices: The Design of Ethical Gameplay”,. 17, Kindle locations 375-3379, MIT Press, 2013 (Kindle Edition)
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abstraction, game-play has an unfulfilled potential as a narrative language.
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Story Telling, Game, and Experience
According to the game designer and theorist Jesse Schell (2008), the designer — may he design games, chairs or whatever — always aims to create an experience. However, in the case of game design, the game itself isn't the experience. The game is the tool to trigger an experience for the player. Schell presents us the Story as one kind of experience among others. He describes the will of “true interactive storytelling” as an unreachable goal and presents us two “real world” alternatives to this dream. The first method is the “String of Pearls”, consisting in telling a “completely non-interactive story” within the game. This story is the “string”, and along this string, the player is given moments of “free movement and control” where he will have to reach a fixed goal. These moments of gameplay are the “pearls”. The second method presented is described as “The Story Machine”. This method consists in creating a free playground proper to create interesting stories that the player will be able to enjoy and retell. Schell also states that an artfully shaped and balanced story can be handled within a game, through indirect control over the player's freedom. Formulated in another way: to keep control over the story, the designer shall manipulate the player's impression of freedom within the game; control his experience.6 But Schell is making a mistake invalidating the possibility 6
Jesse Schell, “Chapter 2, 15 and 16” in “The Art of Game Design: A book of lenses”, Taylor and Francis, 2008 (Kindle Edition)
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of a “true interactive story-telling”. He tends to impute his reasoning to others. As he thinks that only a technological leap, permitting players to establish communication with an artificial intelligence, could permit the existence of this “true interactive storytelling”7; he states that it is not worth trying, as long as the technology is still not there. He does not even consider that maybe, this solution of his own he proposes, is not the only possibility. Maybe we have been taking this issue from the wrong side for years. The common belief concerning storytelling for video games is that we should aim at telling “interactive stories”; and it is indeed a noble goal, and a difficult task. Perhaps should we simply aim at telling a story — may it be linear or interactive — with interactivity as a semantic tool. In other words, we should not try to create interactive stories, but rather stories interactively told. The String of Pearls and the Story Machine are totally efficient storytelling tools for video-games. They are doing exactly what players expect from them. They convey an experience and keep it interesting. The method of the String of Pearls is using storytelling as a reward for the player; as it is in the human nature to enjoy a good story. In words of Schell: The string of pearls method gives the player an experience where they get to enjoy a finely crafted story, punctuated with periods of interactivity and challenge. The reward for succeeding at the challenge? More story and new challenges.8 But, when it comes to the “string” phase, as the player loses all
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Ibid., Kindle Locations 5172-8075, Schell, “The Art of Game Design:”, Kindle locations 5076-8075
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control over the game, it kind of ceases to be a game. It may become a great movie or novel, but it relies on principles which are not those of games. The method of the Story Machine, is for the moment the only storytelling method that truly relies on principles intrinsic to games. However, the stories it conveys are in fact randomly generated. They are not the fruit of authorship. A game based on the Story Machine method will make a broad use of mechanics to randomly generate story-telling modules. One could tell the story of his character in The Sims for example; however nobody would be the author of this story. The story would, in fact, become peculiar to the player. This method is extremely rich and has broad perspectives of evolution. In truth, the utopian method that Schell was imagining to reach the dream goal of a “true interactive story-telling” is in absolute, just an evolution of the Story Machine method. A simulated world with AI crafted so finely that communication with non-playable characters (NPCs) would become so natural and transparent that it would be difficult to make the difference with real players. However, Schell thinks that to tell a story in a way that would be peculiar to game design; there would be a lack of verbs. To prove his claim true; he makes a quick comparison between the verbs of games and the verbs of movies.
The things that video-game characters spend their time doing are very different than the things that characters in movies and books spend their time doing: Video-game Verbs: run, shoot, jump, climb, throw, cast, punch, fly Movie Verbs: talk, ask, negotiate, convince, argue, shout, plead, complain9 Actually, this list is biased and aims at orienting the reader's point of view. In fact, a movie character could also do everything listed as game actions. And even though the listed verbs proper to the vocabulary of communication in movies are arguably difficult to put 9
Ibid., Kindle locations 5150-8075
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into game actions, game verbs cannot be summarized into stereotypical actions that most game characters usually execute. In truth, the right point of view on what video-game verbs are, should be less centered on characters' actions. It should put the focus on any possible interaction between the player and the game. To cite a precise example, in Blizzard's (1995) acclaimed real-time Strategy game (RTS), Warcraft II 10 , the player is given control over a medieval army to defeat his opponent's troops. The player does not control a particular character, the player controls a godlike disembodied warlord. His control over his units is indirect, he can tell a soldier to attack an enemy unit, but will not have any control over the fight itself. Strategy games are revolving around verbs that are from various lexical fields. If we take a look at any strategy game, we realize the player can command, select, build, explore, spy, economize, spend, harvest, mine, lumber, upgrade or destroy. However, those verbs are aiming at entertaining and building the gameplay experience of the player. These are verbs that are used as mechanics within games. Those verbs are the game-mechanics of Warcraft II. Game mechanics could be defined as patterns that always occur when the player executes a given action. Generally, the game mechanics are the tools given to the player in order to beat the challenges proposed by the game. Miguel Sicart (2008) in an early article attempted a formal definition of game mechanics.
I define game mechanics, using concepts from object-oriented programming, as methods invoked by agents, designed for interaction with the game state.11 To cite a handy example for vulgarization, let us apply this definition to the central game mechanics in a game that Ron Millar, Chris Metzen, “Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness”, Blizzard entertainment, PC version, 1995 11 Miguel Sicart, “Defining Game Mechanics” in “The International Journal of Computer Game Research”, Volume 8 issue 2, Game Studies, http://gamestudies.org/0802/articles/sicart , December 2008 (accessed on October 30, 2014) 10
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everyone knows. In Miyamoto's (1985) Super Mario Bros. the main mechanics of the game is the Jump ability. The agent — the A button when pressed — triggers the method, which is Mario's Jump. Mario's jump can interact with the game state in many different ways. Mario could jump over a platform; defeat an enemy by jumping on his head; or discover bonuses by jumping under a special brick. 12 Even a game such as Super Mario Bros. does have a story to tell. In truth, classic games are generally using a common pattern to tell a story. This pattern is making use of two layers of story-telling. A general layer that applies to the game as a whole, and a layer that will apply to the levels of the game. This pattern is inherited from a game design necessity. Classic game design needs to give the player a goal in order to make him achieve a challenge. In Super Mario Bros. the two layers of story are modeled on this game design necessity. The first layer is the main goal of the game, this goal's aim is to motivate the player to finish the game. In this case, the first layer of story is Bowser kidnapping the Princess Peach and Mario trying to save her. This story line will constitute the motive for the player to keep playing until he reaches the end of the game to free the princess. The second layer will constitute the level design, when Mario is reaching a new zone he will have to cross this zone from left to right; so he will be able to continue his adventure. Yet the levels he will have to cross are never peaceful straight lines, and he will have to make full use of the jump mechanics to reach his goal. In a way, it is already a story — a very simple one — told with game-mechanics. The story of Mario, who will save princess peach from the 12
Shigeru Miyamoto, “Super Mario Bros”, Nintendo, Nintendo Entertainment System, 1985
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infamous Bowser, thanks to his ability to jump. Undoubtedly we can affirm that if there is a video-game language, some of its verbs would be Game-mechanics; and later on, we will study in depth the workings of its signification. However, game mechanics are verbs only when the subject is the player himself. One could not imagine a novel in which all the verbs have the main protagonist as a grammatical subject. So in video-games, game mechanics are just one kind of verb. Eventually, what form could take verbs with other subjects than the player within a game? A game featuring a story always happen to be set in worlds in which the player is given some liberty. In most situations, this freedom is given through the control of a character. But as previously stated, with the example of real-time strategy, this is not a rule that applies to every type of games. Thus there are three distinct types of actions — verbs — we can identify in games. The first type, is actions executed by the player; the second type concerns actions that affect objects controlled by the player, and the third type is actions occurring between nonplayable elements of the game. The game experience as a whole is feeding on all the three categories. We will name these categories later on, in the chapter about game semiosis.(p.32) To illustrate, we will take a look at a fairly recent game. Naughty Dog's (2013) latest masterpiece of survival horror, The Last of us is making a broad use of these three categories of actions to craft a very fine story. It is a game centered on two survivors of a biological apocalypse. Indeed a kind of fungal disease have spread around the world. Infected persons are turned into blind zombies as the incriminated mushroom, the cordyceps, 10
colonizes the brain of the parasitized hosts. The pandemic has lead to an uncontrollable societal situation; and civil war outbreaks all over the territory of United States. In this context, Ellie, one of the main characters, who is the only known human to have survived the parasite, represents mankind's only hope to find a vaccine. Joel, an aging man who lost his daughter — by the hand of a non-infected soldier — in the first days of the pandemic; is sent to protect Ellie on her trip to join the Fireflies, a group of paramilitary rebels who are conducting clandestine research to find a vaccine.13 What made The Last of us stand high in esteem for players is mainly its way to handle story-telling. Yet primarily, let us not be fooled, The Last of us is not centered on a storytelling game-play. The Last of us is basically a third person shooter with a story-telling based on the String and Pearls method. The game's main mechanics are, walking, running, taking cover, shooting, aiming, reloading, grabbing objects, throwing and searching clues. It is a mix of mechanics of third person shooters and survival horrors. In other words, it is very close in terms of game-play to the latest Resident Evil games. However, a lot of efforts were put to tame and enhance the archaic structure of String and Pearls. Wherever the String phase could be avoided, the designer chose to handle the story-telling within the game-play sequences. Let us walk through the first minutes of the game and analyze how it is making a brilliant use of in-game actions/verbs. The story starts with a very short cut scene introducing us two characters, a father, and his daughter. We will start our detailed description from the moment the gameplay starts. But by now, we will make it short about the introduction 13
Neil Druckmann, Bruce Straley, “The Last of us”, Naughty Dog, Sony Computer Entertainment, Playstation 3 version, 2013
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cut-scene. The story starts in 2013 in Texas; the set is a living room; a father is coming back late at home and his daughter presumably fell asleep while waiting for him. When he comes back, he is on the phone with a certain Tommy, talking about work. His daughter hears him and wakes up. She was waiting to give him a watch as a birthday present. Later in the evening as she fell asleep again on the couch in front of television, her father is carrying her to her bed. After an ellipse, later in the night, the phone is ringing, waking up the girl. It's her uncle Tommy on the phone, he calls her by her name, Sarah; and asks in an anxious tone to talk to her dad. But suddenly in the middle of his sentence, the communication is cut. From this moment the game starts and the player takes control of Sarah. The player has a very limited choice of actions. Sarah can only walk around and execute some contextual actions. To put it briefly, Sarah can walk, very slowly; she can also open doors and observe some objects of the house. By limiting the range of possible actions, the game is orienting the way the game should be played. It helps to build up an ambiance. Indeed, simply by experiencing the limits of the gameplay, the player is likely to understand what to do to unfold the story; in this case, mainly exploring. The fact Sarah is walking slowly in addition to the environment of her home at night is modeling the anxious mood of the game experience. If the player decides to wander around in Sarah's room, she can observe objects in the room. In particular, a birthday card Sarah forgot to give to her father. For instance, even if it is not the most obvious example, there is a dialog between Sarah and this object. Sarah has to make a contextual action — using the cross 12
button of the Playstation gamepad — to observe the object on the table. It is an action of the first category — just like walking or opening doors — triggered by the player himself. Yet when she observes it, it triggers a dialog part where she explains what it is. So the object affected the player's character, it is an interaction of the second category. Basically, an action of the player triggered a sequence of narrative actions. Some may say it is a short term return to the String and Pearls pattern. But Sarah could as well not observe this object on the table and continue to walk in the house. It is a way to reward players who like to explore, by deepening their experience of the game's background story. When the player leads Sarah outside of the room, she starts to call for her dad. The player controls her movements, but she does not cease to be a character with her own motives. The player now understands why he is moving the character; he is not the character, but he is her accomplice and he now knows the goal to reach. The player could directly take the stairs and go to the ground floor. However, there is light and the sound of a television coming from the room next door. Other recent games would have used an artificial trick — like a red glowing contour — to indicate to the player where to go next. The use of logically integrated visual clues — without any Heads-up display (HUD) — is a really simple way to show the path, but it keeps the immersion, and as a result enhances the experience. It is a brilliant use of visual and audio cues to control the player's actions. When addressing the correlation of storytelling and level design, Schell advises the same observed solution. He describes it as control over the player's eyes. One of the keys to good level design is that the player's eyes pull them through the level, effortlessly. It makes the player feel in control and immersed in the world. Understanding 13
what pulls the eye of the player can give you tremendous power over the choices players want to make.14 However the examples given in the book are merely scratching the surface, Schell was mainly addressing this issue with pure level design, in the sense of design of the environment. While in this example from The Last of us, not only visual clues in the environment are used; but the game also makes wide use of the camera's position and spatialized sound effects. The game keeps control over the overall shape of the environment, the signs it conveys, the point of view from where it is displayed and even the sound it emits; but the player keeps his feeling of freedom. The player does not even seek control over those parameters because he is too busy controlling the character and experiencing the story. Inside this room, judging the environment, the player understands it might be the father's room. It now looks even more natural that the character came here first to look for him. The player doesn't realize it, but he was manipulated, he was given an impression of total freedom as in fact he was on a rail track. A player feels he could go downstairs first, but the camera angle, the light under the door and the sound of the television will convince him to take a little look into that room first. Without this implicit rail track, the rhythm of the storytelling would have been weaker. Player's could have visited the entire house before entering the father's room; it would have discredited the controlled character as being part of this story. The television broadcasts a live report about a fire in Boston. Sarah realizes it is nearby her home. Suddenly, there is an explosion and the broadcast stops. 14
Schell, “The Art of Game Design:”, Kindle locations 5466-8075
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Then the player is urged to press the left stick, with a quick time event — an icon appearing on the screen to tell the player to press a given button — When the player presses the button, the camera automatically turns toward the window. At this moment, there is another explosion in the district, this time, visible from the window. As in the rest of the game, quick time events will take a prominent place; this sequence serves as a kind of gameplay tutorial; yet it is less intrusive than popping up a verbose explanation about game controls on the screen15. However, if the player had decided to go downstairs anyway, the explosion would have been triggered while Sarah was walking down the stairs. And the player would definitively miss the sequence with the television, but the rhythm of the storytelling would be kept intact. When Sarah finally reaches the ground floor, through a window, we can see police cars with sirens wailing, crossing very fast. Suddenly her father's phone is ringing. Once again it is a way to orient the player. if the player decides to pick the phone, Sarah can see her uncle left several messages to her father. Now Sarah is in the kitchen and she can see the note her father left earlier on the fridge. A message she supposedly already read before; left to tell her he would come back late from work. Outside the house, we can hear a dog barking, as if something very unusual was happening. But while Sarah is crossing the house, the dog barks of pain one last time, Sarah startles and then the ambiance becomes strangely silent. The dog got killed by something out there. Even if there was no real “dog object” in the game, we could consider this event as belonging to the 3 rd category of actions: An action of a non-playable object on another non15
But later in the game, Last of us is no exception and also makes use of verbose HUD pop-up tutorials.
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playable object. This use of sound is a method often used in movies to build up the suspense, but in this situation, the game-play didn't stop at all. When Sarah reaches what seems to be the office of her father, he arrives suddenly through the door. He is very distraught; he talks about the neighbors who seem to be sick and urges his daughter to keep away from the doors. At first, while he is talking, the player still can play and move Sarah around. But when suddenly the neighbor enters the room, the player loses control, and we go back to the string phase. In a cut scene, her father shoots the neighbor turned into a zombie and takes his daughter outside where his brother is waiting to take them away. This first gameplay sequence of The Last of us is one example of today's game story-telling at its best, for the following reasons: First of all, The Last of us is a survival horror game based on third person shooter mechanics; however, the game is introduced without the shooting mechanics. It is focusing on a character which is not the main protagonist of the game, and it forces you to experience what it is like to be a harmless little girl in that apocalyptic situation. Even if the game doesn't give the player an experience fully playable — as there are some non-playable cut-scenes — it makes an admirable effort to build up most of the story telling in the playable sequences. Secondly, we will later discover there was a dramaturgical reason for this introduction to the game. Indeed, further in the introduction, the player starts to control the main character of the game, Joel. In this first sequence, Joel has to carry his daughter Sarah to protect her from the infected people who attack them. He puts himself in a situation of danger, and this gameplay sequence is just 16
about escaping the zombies. In other words, the player's freedom is still limited to locomotion. At the end of this sequence Joel fails, and Sarah is shot by a soldier who received the order to let no one leave the city. This whole sequence was dramaturgically speaking, a prologue to the story; as we will discover that it was introducing the game's main theme: the filial relationship. The rest of the story happens 20 years later and introduces us to the character of Ellie, that Joel will have to protect, even though he is afraid of this responsibility — because of what happened to his own daughter. Slowly, the character of Ellie will echo the character of Sarah. She will not replace Sarah, but she definitely puts the character of Joel in the same situation again. A father struggling to protect his “daughter”. This opening sequence is entirely part of the game's dramatics, and the scene where Joel carries his daughter to save her, is a variation on the principle of Chekhov's Gun, at the difference it is told through gameplay. In words of Anton Chekhov (1889), “One must never place a loaded rifle on the stage if it isn't going to go off. It's wrong to make promises you don't mean to keep.”16 By extension, in dramatics, Chekhov's gun, became the generic appellation for the principle of placing an element or a situation that will take a wider importance later in the story. Indeed, the game is introduced with this sequence where Joel has to carry Sarah in his arms, and ends up failing in saving her life. At the end of the game, Joel finds himself in the same situation and have to save Ellie who fell 16
Wikipedia contributors, “Chekhov's gun”, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chekhov's_gun (accessed on November 1, 2014)
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unconscious. Even though the game is based on mechanics of shooting and infiltration, the fact it starts with Sarah and ends with Ellie reveals the game's intention to address deeper issues. The classic video-game theme of survival in a post-pandemic environment becomes incidental to the father-daughter relationship that Joel — who lost his daughter — and Ellie — who is orphan — are building throughout the game. To summarize, in this introductory sequence, the game is establishing a dialog between the player's actions and environmental actions. Player's actions being therefore limited to basic locomotion movements; environmental actions and camera scripting were vectoring the passive narration. A narration that serves to convey strong emotions and ethical questions to the player. Cutscenes aside, it was an interactive experience making sense and questioning morals throughout a story deeply nested into the gameplay. The game is a tool conveying an experience to the player. This experience can be ethical, emotional, fun or immersive. However, a game experience should never limit the feeling of freedom of the player; because it is the heart of what makes it a game experience. Yet a better understanding of the signification workings specific to games is necessary to enhance the story experience games can offer.
II The semiosis in video games The field of Semiotics is often defined as partitioned into three different sub-fields: the Semantics, the Pragmatics and the Syntax. However it is unlikely that all the three fields could intrinsically apply to games. That is why this chapter will focus at first mainly on Semantics and Pragmatics; but also on concepts proper to Semiotics. Syntactics being implicitly affiliated to Linguistics, and its main purpose being the construction of sentences; study of 18
game semiotics through Syntactics would seem difficult and unnatural. However by the end of this chapter, we will try to approach a definition of what could be game Syntactics. Trying to understand the underlying semiotics in games, is arguably a necessary step in the evolution of game design. This article will intend to bring a highlight on this field which seems to be still rarely explored. For explanatory purpose, we will expose a few basics of semiotics as described by Charles Sanders Peirce (1894). Semiotics is generally described as the theory of signs and symbols. First of all, the basic studied concept in semiotics is the sign or representamen. Representamen are denoting objects. And Sanders separates representamen's way to denote objects into three categories: the icons, the indexes and the symbols. The icons, also called likenesses, are signs that intend to look like the object they stand for. Photographs, sound recordings or even imitations are relevant examples of this category of signs. Icons are generally standing for the object, just as if they were the object; it is a unary signification. The indexes, or in Peirce's early words, the indices, are signs denoting their object in virtue of a real relation. Peirce gives us the example of a clock indicating the time of the day. Another handy example to add could be smoke as an index of fire. An index is generally defined by a binary relationship between the sign and the object. The sign being ontologically different from the object it stands for. Finally, the symbol is a more complex sign. Symbols are signifying through conventions or rules. It is a ternary relationship between the sign, the rule and the object it stands for. The word bird, for example, is signifying the 19
actual animal through the convention of the English language. Thus there is a ternary relationship between the word, the rule of the language, and the actual bird. 17 But Peirce does not only define signs with their way to denote objects. He also defines them intrinsically, with the terms of qualisign, sinsign, and legisign; and as represented by an interpreter with the terms of rheme, dicisign, and argument. Peircean semiotics defined three trichotomies of signs. The first trichotomy defines signs' own phenomenological categories. This first trichotomy starts with the qualisign. The qualisign is the first possibility of signification; a sign yet to be embodied, a unary impression prefiguring a sign. Then comes the sinsign, which is a sign with an actual connection with reality, it is determined in space and time. And thirdly is the legisign, a sign existing as a convention or a rule. The second trichotomy, the one described at first; it is the trichotomy of icon, index, and symbol. The third trichotomy is based on the interpreter's perception of the signs. The rheme is the primary interpretation of a sign, it represents all possibilities of interpretation. It is a variable data affording some information, but not interpreted as doing so. A dicisign is also called a proposition, it necessarily involves a rheme as part of it. This proposition may be true or false but does not give any reasons for its truthness or its falseness. And at last comes the argument, which could be defined as a sign denoting another sign as its object. The argument is the rule 17
Charles Sanders Peirce, “What Is a sign”, http://www.iupui.edu/~peirce/ep/ep2/ep2book/ch02/ep2ch2.htm, §3-§6, 1894 (accessed on November 5, 2014)
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defending the truthness or the falseness of a proposition. Those nine words and their mutual relationship are defining Peirce's Theory of Sign as a whole. 18 However this short article will focus on the way signs denote their objects in video-games; thus we will mainly refer to game representamen with the terms of icon, index and symbol. In words of the field of Semantics, we would talk about signifiers for representamen, and about denotation to designate the object. This article will also make use of these words when it judges it necessary for a better intelligibility of the thought. In semiotics, the whole process of signification is called the semiosis, it is describing the production of meaning in a complex system of signs, might they be intentional or unintentional, human or non-human. Semiosis is commonly described as a triadic concept. A sign and a context producing a signification. If someone raises her hand in a classroom, it will mean she is asking the teacher for the authorization to talk; however if that person raises her hand in the street, it may mean she is asking for a taxi. The sign is the same but they belong to a different semiosis. This comprehension of signifiers through a context is commonly accepted as what defines the basis of Pragmatics. Thus as stated earlier, the game is conveying an experience, and an experience is a form of context; so what we will try to understand is the workings of the semiosis in videogames. So basically, to understand the semiotics of video-games, concepts from semantics and pragmatics will have to be identified within games. To recognize those processes we 18
Charles Sanders Peirce, “Philosophical Writings of Peirce”, Dover Publications, Kindle locations 1997-7992, 1955 (Kindle edition)
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will have to identify the different signifying units from games, from the shortest to the most complex. This paper does not pretend to be able to find them all, but it will attempt to establish a basis for future research. Of course, there is the easy part of game semiotics; games being simulations, they will often try to reproduce a realistic experience. For this purpose games will make a wide use of icons. In most cases, the constitutive elements of a game level will be mere icons. Within a game level, a 3d representation of a tree is a sign that intend to look like the denoted object. So this representation is an icon. The same statement can be made about the sound of the wind in the branches of the tree, it is an iconic representation of the real sound. As long as there is no interaction with the player, or with other game objects, every signs in a game environment are icons. However, to get a better perspective, let us come back to the lifeblood concepts of ludology Frasca borrowed to the French Sociologist Roger Caillois (1961): the paidia and the ludus. Caillois, back in the 60's was talking about games in the conventional sense; he was classifying games on a continuum going from ludus to paidia. Ludus being a game existing under a set of rules of play, while paidia defines games existing as an unstructured and spontaneous experience. 19 Games belonging to the paidia are more likely to use icons as their building blocks. On the other hand, games belonging to ludus are based on rules, in virtue of what — as symbols are based on a relation with a rule — they are likely to make more use of symbols. One of the most archaic occurrence of the ludus is the game of chess. The rider in a chess game — considering it is representing a horse — can be perceived at first as an icon; but it is in 19
Roger Caillois, “Men, Play and Games”, trans. Meyer Barash, University of Illinois Press, .13, 1961
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fact a symbol because it is implying the rules of movement attached to it in the chess game. Only the rider can move in L pattern. But for now, let us come back to video games. For this purpose, we will take again the well-known example of Super Mario Bros., in which every level feature special yellow blocks with a question mark symbol. The question mark in itself is a linguistic symbol; when used at the end of the sentence, it signifies the sentence should be interpreted as a question. In this case, the question mark and the yellow block are a symbol peculiar to the world of Mario. This symbol notifies the player that if he jumps under this particular yellow block, he will get a special bonus without knowing what it is in advance. It could be a mushroom, a flower or a green mushroom. Please note that all these bonuses are also variations on symbols. The world of Super Mario Bros. is making use of a symbol everyone knows — the question mark — to formulate a rule of its own that everyone may understand at first sight. In this way, it creates a symbol proper to this game. It is already a form of semiosis. But if we imagine a player coming from a culture that does not use question marks in its writing system — despite how unlikely it might be in our contemporary society — this player might have to experience several times the use of the question mark block in order to understand empirically the random factor of the bonus generation. On the other hand, in a 2d platformer, a floating platform is an index. A platform alone indicates a surface on which the player's character may stand. In most classic platformers, the level design will involve three key features in order to create a challenge: goals, risks, and paths. And these 23
features will appear in the game as signifiers. Let us now place the previously described platform sign in a situation we may encounter in a Mario game. We picture a game situation where there is a goal, a path to reach it, and a risk. Mario is in a castle, on the right side of the screen there is a door. This door is a sign — more precisely an index — it indicates there is an exit to this part of the level, so this door will be a goal to reach. In the middle of the level, there is a pit full of magma. The magma as an icon represents fire, but as an index, it indicates one may be burnt if he touches it, so it becomes a symbol of danger. The magma is a risk. Also, over the magma, there are several levitating platforms. As a singular sign, the platform is an index; it barely indicates that Mario could stand on it. But the combination of the door on the right side, the magma — that prevents Mario to simply walk to the door — and the platforms, irregularly aligned over the magma, is transfiguring what would be an abstract patchwork of decorative platforms, into a path. The signification of the path arises from the combination of the signs. The combination of the signs is a virtual context, a game semiosis. This path of platforms would not have been comprehensible in a different game semiosis. This example is a very simple one, and the semiosis serves the designer's objective. In a platformer, the designer's objective will be to challenge the player's ability to correctly jump from platform to platform to reach a given goal. What if the designer is driven by a different type of goal? What if the designer aims at conveying an ethical message or a story? The three ideas of goal, risk, and path mentioned before, are there to be symbolized in the context of a platformer, and 24
by extension in the context of action games. But other types of games, with other types of motives, may involve other types of concepts. For example, in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time20; one of the hidden objectives of the game design was to enhance the identification process of the player. In the Legend of Zelda series, the main character — generically called Link — is an avatar of the player. The player can name him however he wants. The Legend of Zelda is one of my all-time favorite game series since my childhood. If I grew an interest in video-games, it is because of this particular game. For me, Link's name had always been “Fred” and not Link. He is a projection of my own personality. And this strong identification process was brilliantly controlled by the game semiosis. Link is a mute character, except a few “Yes” or “No”, he does not pronounce any sentence in the game. However, he is unconsciously perceived by players as a talking character. How come is this even possible? The player's perception of the dialogs is manipulated by the virtual semiosis. For instance, when the player presses the interaction button in front of an NPC, the game never displays the line of the avatar; the NPC will directly answer a hypothetical question. His answer to this unasked question will include enough indices of the question's existence to have the player formulating the question in his own mind afterward. Even when the game gives several options to the player, the options will take the form of very general topics. It is only when the player chooses a topic, that the answer he gets, will give him indices about the question he supposedly
20
Shigeru Miyamoto, “The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time”, Nintendo 64, Nintendo, 1998
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asked. Here's a made up example to clarify this point: When a player interacts with an NPC, the game may ask her to choose between talking about flowers or clouds, without any more precision on the nature of what Link will ask. If she chooses flower, the game will not display the sentence Link supposedly pronounced. The NPC will answer something like: “Oh, you want to know more about the magic flowers of the north? Maybe you should see my grandmother, she might be able to help you!” The NPC is summarizing the question of Link within his dialog part. With this summary, the player can formulate the question in his own words. Thus he will be able to assimilate his avatar as an extension of himself. After all, the choice of the generic name Link might not have been innocent. The main character is the link between the virtual world and the player. Now let us regress to the example of real-time strategy, for it is a type of game that proved itself an excellent storytelling device. In strategy games, even if in most cases the goal will consist of destroying your adversary's infrastructures, it does not stand as a law. The motive of strategy games is to challenge the mind of its player. Unless it is challenging for the player's mind to do so; the motive of a strategy game is not to have the player crushing his enemies. Even in Westwood studios' (1992) Dune 2: The Battle for Arrakis 21 — considered as the earliest real-time strategy game — mission goals were more heteroclite than mere confrontation. This game was the first RTS, but every ingredient of modern games was already there. 21
Joseph Bostic, Aaron E. Powell, Brett Sperry, “Dune: The Battle for Arrakis”, Westwood Studios, Virgin Interactive, 1992
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In this game, to earn credits — Dune's currency — one would have to harvest the Spice. In some missions, the goal could be simply to harvest a certain amount of Spice. In another mission, the player would have to send a single unit in an enemy building. In every mission, the player would have to get to know the terrain and build the necessary infrastructures to reach the goal of the mission. So, in fact, an RTS game would need signifiers for the following concepts: goal, knowledge, and resources. In opposition to a platformer, for example, enemy units don't only play the role of obstacles. Despite the fact they may attack you or defend themselves, they may be obstacles, just as they may be themselves the goal of your mission22. In an RTS, any object geographically localized on the map, or anything quantifiable may become a goal. So in Dune, the goal could be identified only through knowledge. In a classic mission, if the player has to destroy the enemy's basement, she will have to find the basement's location first in order to prepare her strategy. In Dune — just like in Warcraft later — the player sees the map from a top-down point of view. But the player can only see the parts of the terrain already explored by his units. When his units will leave a part of the terrain, he will know the topography, but will not know if an enemy unit walks in there. This system is called the Fog of War23, it is an index of unexplored or unmonitored parts of the map. It takes the form of a totally black zone when it is yet to explore. When units leave a portion of the terrain without proper oversight, it becomes grayish, and would not update in case of an enemy intrusion. Black zones indicate that a part of the map is unexplored, and the gray layer indicates that we can't get 22 23
For example if the goal is to capture particular enemy units. From the German military concept Nebel des Krieges introduced by the Prussian military analyst Karl Von Clausewitz in 1837
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enemy’s position unless we send our own units there. Knowledge is symbolized through the contrasted semiosis of unexplored, unmonitored and occupied parts of the map. The resources are indicated by the amount of credits displayed in the HUD. But knowledge of the terrain will also help to find the reddish fields indicating the presence of Spice to harvest. One may decide where to settle a basement only after checking if there is Spice nearby. A player may have a lot of credits, if she has no more Spice to harvest, the context indicates her that she will soon run out of resources if she does not explore to find other fields to exploit. Also in Dune, any infrastructure the player may build need power. To furnish electricity to her infrastructures, the player will need to build wind-traps. Those are small power plants capturing the wind power to transform it into electricity. But building wind-traps will cost credits and space. In fact, ludologically speaking, the wind is not the resource. Arrakis, the planet where the game is set, is windswept literally everywhere on its surface. No, what indicates the second resource after credits/Spice, is exploitable space. On Arrakis, you have two types of terrain: Sand and rocks. Sand indicates that exploration is possible but not settlement; as black rock zones are the index of a plausible settlement. But these black zones constitute a really small amount of most game maps. Resources are quantifiable only within the semiosis of collected credits, available settlement space, and exploitable spice fields. To summarize, in Dune, knowledge permits to identify the goal's position and to find resources in order to establish a strategy to reach this goal. It is based on concepts that are quite different from those used in 2d platformers. 28
In Warcraft 2, in some campaign missions, different goals were given to the player along a single mission. The succession of goals to reach was building up a story within the gameplay. This game series even introduced special characters in the form of unique units. Warlords, commanders, and other important characters — may they be controllable or not by the player — were participating to the story-telling just like a movie actor would do. For instance, one of the key events of the game was the death of Anduin Lothar. This event was happening during one of the last missions of the game. The inability of the player to save this character was organized by the level design. The character was an NPC, he was in a zone the player could not reach with his units, and was ambushed by enemy units. Even if the games we took as examples, dot not take storytelling as an intrinsic priority; the succession of different goals to reach, the scripted actions of game characters and the overall control over what the player should do, meet the description of what defines a narrative. A report of connected events presented in a sequence of signification modules. In linguistics, those signification modules are words and sentences. In movies, the modules take the form of shots, sounds, and sequences. Namely, what are the modules intrinsic to games? A game level, for example, has more to do with a difficulty progression module than with a signification module. In the previous chapter, we defined three types of game verbs/actions. The actions performed by the player, actions of non-playable game objects affecting the player's avatar(s) and finally actions that are only affecting non-playable objects. For a simplification purpose, we will call the
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actions of the player actum 24 , the actions affecting the player tactum 25 and the actions occurring between nonplayable objects factum26. So we may now affirm that the littlest signifying modules in video-games are the objects and the actions. Objects can be categorized as different types of signs, while actions can be divided into the three previously mentioned categories. Also, will we call an association of objects and actions acting as a semiotic proposition, a ludophrase27. What this paper defines as a ludophrase is an in-game interaction that changes the course of the game. Once again we will use an example situation from Super Mario Bros., as this game's brilliant simplicity and popularity make it a wonderful vulgarization device. If Mario jumps under a question mark block, his jump is basically an actum. And when the block releases, for example, a flower bonus; this interaction of two nonplayable objects is a factum. No matter if it is a consequence of the actum, as Mario can still be moved by his player during this consequent action. The relation of causality between the actum and the factum is induced by temporality. This small interaction sequence is already definable as a ludophrase. Some will say that what I just described is simply a game mechanics. Yes, it is, but only secondarily. As it is a ludophrase which is, in this peculiar case, reused all along the game as a game mechanics. All game mechanics are ludophrases, but all ludophrases are not game mechanics. Then if Mario decides to touch the flower, the action of Wikitionary, http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/actus#Latin Wikitionary, http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/tactus#Latin 26 Wikitionary, http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/factus#Latin 27 Neologism from the Latin Ludum which means game and phrasis, which means diction. 24 25
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Mario — may he be walking or jumping — is still an actum; but the transformation of Mario is a tactum. The contact with the flower affected Mario's appearance, but also his range of actums. When Mario touches a flower, he becomes able to throw fireballs. The activation of this new possibility of action is also a tactum of the flower. However, the action of throwing fireballs itself is still an actum. The entire sequence of Mario touching the flower and transforming in Fire Mario is a second ludophrase. The succession of these two ludophrases is constitutive of a rudimentary in-game narrative. The glue sticking signs and actions together is a form of game syntax. The semiotics of time plays an important role in the Syntactics of games. For instance, we saw that the immediate consecutiveness of an actum and a factum implied that the factum was a result of the actum. Also, this rule of consecutiveness applies to most actions. Except that, an actum can never be a direct consequence of a factum or a tactum. The actum is highly depending on the player's eagerness to act; it can be a reaction but will never be a consequence. But in video-games, what mainly stands as syntax is the virtual semiosis itself.
III Theoretical Design perspectives behind game Semiotics What if we design games without the purpose of adapting a storyline to justify the game mechanics? What if the game mechanics serves the storyline? What if we forget about mechanics and make a game only out of ludophrases? Since the appearance of video-games, what seemed like the most natural way to create content was to stick to the formal definition of games: A form of competitive activity or sport 31
played according to rules. 28 The notion of interactivity implied the notion of competition indirectly. Not all videogames are about competition. But in truth, most games provide the player with challenges. Games are about having the player doing something. It is then difficult not making it look like a challenge. But challenges are not necessarily about competition. If we take the example of a game like Will Wright's (1989) Sim City29; the game does not ask the player to compete with anyone or anything except himself. In Sim City, the player is given the challenge of building his own city and making it prosper. It is a challenge because the settlement of the city is not made easy. For example, the player will have to balance a budget, to build industrial zones while taking into account the effects of pollution or to control the criminality rate in his city. This game is a simulation, and in a simulation, the player is given a lot of parameters he can influence. The game will consist in observing and understanding how one's own changes in these parameters affect the simulation. And actually, it is a pretty fun experience. To make it look more like a “game”, the designers also included a game mode with timed missions; in another word: scenarios. Those scenarios were placing a context in order to give a goal to the player: it could be about reducing the criminality rate in Detroit, or rebuilding the city of San Francisco after a major earthquake. The game could be, or a never-ending simulation, or a timed scripted simulation. But in every case, the game happened to be entertaining, mainly as an Oxford Dictionary, http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/game#game (Accessed on November 11, 2014) 29 Will Wright, “Sim City”, Maxis, Pc version, 1989 28
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experience that involved a form of interactivity challenging the player’s mind. A video-game does not need rules or competition to deserve to be called so. What defines the essence of a video-game is its ability to convey an entertaining and interactive virtual experience. This experience may be a challenge, a competition, or even a story. Goals are essential to invite players to interact, and challenges enhance the player's experience. But if the player's experience could be enhanced by something else than challenge — without abandoning interactivity — would it still be as entertaining? It is not a challenge to enjoy a good story, but it is still entertaining. Along a hundred and twenty years of history, movies managed to adapt literary stylistic devices and even to create devices of their own. It would be interesting to see if video-games could do the same. Who knows what form could take a metaphor in a game's virtual semiosis? For instance, the repetitive process of game mechanics could be stylistically assimilated to an anaphora. A game mechanics is a repetition of ludophrases that helps the designer to emphasize the inner workings of her game. Game mechanics are a peculiar form of Anaphora, yet anaphoras could arguably take other forms in video-games. Let us imagine a game which is aimed simply at providing a moving experience. Why would such a game choose just one camera system, or just one set of game mechanics? For example, camera systems are generally chosen for their particular ergonomic contribution to a specific type of game. Thus, third person shooters will use a camera attached behind the avatar's shoulder, because it is the best way to see the avatar while keeping the ability to aim and shoot. For instance, it follows from the evolution of the gameplay 33
of the horror game series Resident Evil, that workings of the game camera do influence the feelings of the player. Shinji Mikami's (1996) Resident Evil30, was the Japanese take on the survival horror genre introduced in France by Frederic Raynal (1992) with Alone in the Dark31. Resident Evil will later become a very prolific series, and its gameplay will change a lot. At this time, the survival horror genre was defined by a specific camera system. Indeed, in the first Resident Evil — maybe partly for technical optimization purpose — the camera was always standing still. Technically, this system permitted the use of prerendered background graphics. As it was pre-rendered, the background could bear more details; and more processing power could be used to render the 3d characters in real-time. Yet this technical decision was used to participate in the semiosis of fear the game was aiming to convey. The still camera as a semiotic device was limiting on purpose the virtual semiosis. As an example, when the player was in a narrow corridor, and a zombie was walking hidden behind a corner, the fixed camera was a way to limit the information the player could get. The semiosis of this ludophrase was composed of the visible environment and the sound effects. Visually, the player could see the iconic representation of the corridor. He could also maybe see indexes, like blood spills on the floor, indicating that someone — or something — was bleeding here before. From an audio perspective, effects could indicate the presence of a zombie in the corridor. The player could hear audio indexes of its steps and of its growls. But as the player 30 31
Shinji Mikami, “Resident Evil”, Capcom, Playstation version, 1996 Frédérick Raynal, Didier Chanfray, “Alone in the Dark”, Infogrames, Pc version, 1992
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do not control the position of the camera, he must cross the corridor with fear of what he may find behind the corner. This feeling of fear is almost impossible to convey through a virtual semiosis that makes the player potentially omniscient. The notions of ergonomics and comfort of play did not always affect game's emotional potential in a very good manner. From the 4th episode of Resident Evil 32 , it was decided to change the camera system. In this episode, the game mechanics radically changed. The game adopted the third person shooter camera. This camera permitted to have wider environments and less scripted ludophrases. This gain in freedom had to be paid with a loss of emotional potential. Indeed, as the camera allows the player to be virtually omniscient, it becomes more difficult to create a feeling of anxiety when the player knows he holds all the cards necessary to face any danger. In the end, the game will feature more gory scenes and overwhelm the player with a lot of enemies to compensate this absence of fear in the game-play. The gory scenes will convey a feeling of disgust; the overwhelming assault of enemies will convey stress. But only an equation with unknown factors can provoke fear and trigger courage. Where Resident Evil 4 overwhelms the player with dozens of intelligent and organized enemies to cause a vague feeling of stress; Resident Evil was succeeding in discomforting and scaring the hell out of players with just one zombie walking very slowly in a creepy hallway. It was brilliant. Nowadays, games are focusing on simplicity and comfort of play. And some types of features are depreciated because 32
Shinji Mikami, “Resident Evil 4”, Capcom, Gamecube version, 2005
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they don't meet the ergonomic standards of our time. However, despite its bad ergonomics, the still camera is a good semiotic device. If a designer aims at creating a discomforting experience, it should still be considered as a weapon of choice. If a game rather aims at providing a narrative experience to its player, maybe should it not choose a particular game system as a sports game would do. Maybe should it prefer ludophrases that are matching the mood the game aims to convey? A game does not necessarily have to bear only one set of mechanics from the beginning to the end. For instance — for ergonomic purpose — in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, the game was featuring several sets of game mechanics. When the player had to fight enemies, for example, the camera system was changing. In normal conditions — like simple exploration — the camera is interactive and follows the main character. The player can choose the point of view that suits him the most by refocusing the camera behind him with the Z-button. But when the player encounters an enemy, the Z-button will focus the camera on the enemy. In this way, the player can focus on the enemy and think of his actions to react accordingly. As the game's combat system was based on the observation of enemies' attack patterns, it was an efficient way to have the player focusing on indexes of the future attacks of the enemies. For example, the Stalfos — a kind of skeleton warrior from the universe of Zelda — had a very interesting attack pattern. If the player does not choose the right moment to strike him, he will jump and avoid the attack or use his shield. The Stalfos can make a lot of quick attacks from which only the use of the shield can protect Link. But at one 36
specific moment, the Stalfos will prepare a strong attack, for this purpose he will lower his guard and raise his arm. This is the index of a weakness; the player has to interpret this indication to win the fight. Without a camera targeting the enemy, it would have been difficult to observe those patterns. This special change in the camera system succeeds in creating a feel of duel. However, there is still some criticism that can be made of this system. First of all, it has the player totally forgetting about the environment. And secondly, this system does not match group fights. Indeed, it is very difficult to fight several enemies when the camera forces you to target one in particular. The game featured a change target system but it was quite unhandy to use. But despite a few induced weaknesses, the game managed to articulate different kinds of ludophrases successfully through a set of different game mechanics. This game is the living example of the possible cohabitation of several sets of mechanics. It confirms that it is possible to convey a meaning through a gameplay that changes and evolves along the game experience. Let us clarify this with a made-up example. If we imagine a game in which there is a shooting mechanics; in this kind of games, the player's ability to shoot will depend mainly on one parameter: having his rifle loaded or not. If the character is no longer able to shoot because his magazine is empty, the simple click noise of the trigger will be sufficient as an index of the inability to shoot. What if this ability to shoot depend on other parameters? Could it not also depend on ethic parameters? Parameters that would tell something about the personality of the character? So, if for example, the player tries to shoot a woman and 37
the avatar he controls refuses to shoot. Even if it could be upsetting for the player, it would nonetheless enrich the background of his character. It would give him a personal moral code. This refusal of the character would become an index of the existence of a personality of his own. It indicates the differentiation between this character and the player. It would have a significance in the game's story. And if therefore women characters are able to shoot the player’s avatar, it would also give the game a peculiar strategic significance. It this case, the controlled character would not have to be the player's avatar, he would be a character with his own values. And whether he shares those values or not, the player would have to deal with it. This process is the opposite of the identification process used in the Legend of Zelda series (p.27). It prevents the player from identifying to his avatar. However, it gives a supplement of humanity to the character. Even if the player doesn't identify to his avatar, he can have empathy for him. It is arguably the reason why most character-centric games feature third-person camera systems. Recently I had a dream from which bloomed a game-design idea. In this dream I saw a young girl, wearing a long white silk dress, and walking in an old French colonial style house. This house was lost in the middle of a lake. But the reflection of the house on the surface of the water seemed different. Inside the house, when the girl was passing in front of a mirror, her reflection was different. Her dress and her hair were floating, just as if she was walking underwater. When I woke up from this dream, I immediately took a pen to write a game idea. My idea was to adapt the literary genre of fantastic into a game experience. Fantastic is a literary genre in which the reader will end up questioning the reality of the facts presented to him. For instance, in Guy de Maupassant's (1887) fantastic novel The Horla; the main 38
character feels like he is attacked every night by an invisible man who suddenly appeared in his life.33 The story is told from the character's perspective. So while reading the novel, the reader is invited to wonder: Is the character becoming crazy? Or is this really happening? I imagined a game in which the player controls the ghost of a drowned girl. This character is stuck in this lonely home and tries to find an exit. She discovers that she can cross some reflective surfaces as if they were portals; may it be mirrors or the surface of the water. She would just have to touch a mirror, and the camera would pass on the other side. This other side would look like a totally different world from the moment the character would walk into the blind spot zone of the mirror. With the notion of boundary underlying in this idea, I thought it could be interesting to play with the notions of safety and trust in the ludophrases I would choose to use. I tried to figure out what would happen if you present something as a mechanics and then suddenly change the rules. Imagine this character, discovering her power to cross the mirrors. When taking the control of her reflected self, the player would discover that the topography of the house is totally different in this other world. He would also understand that he can return to the real world simply by touching the same mirror again. For example, our character could be stuck by a closed door in the real world. In this room, there would be two mirrors. A normal one, in which she sees her true reflection, and in which she could notice that there is a key on the floor. A key which is not here in the real world. But as this mirror is a plain one — she does not see the underwater version of herself in the reflection — she cannot
33
Guy de Maupassant, “The Horla”, trans. Charlotte Mandell, Melville House Publishing, 1887
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cross it. But there is a second mirror in this room. On the other side of the room. This mirror is a portal. Her own reflection is different in this one. So, when she touches the mirror, the camera crosses the wall to the other side and the player takes control of her reflection. This is a first ludophrase that the player will interpret as a game mechanics. They will understand that she can only cross mirrors when her reflection is different. On the other side, the scale of the room may be very different. From the entrance, the player might see the key on the floor of the room. But maybe the other side of the room could be a hundred meters away. And maybe the way to reach it could be full of holes in the floor. Behind her, she can see her true form reflecting in the mirror she crossed. The player crosses the room to get that key. Once he gets the key, the player would notice that this version of the room, features no door. He would then understand he will have to cross a mirror again to open the door. The mirror from which he saw the key is for its part still there. But when the character walks in front of it, the version of the character in the mirror is the ghostly version of this fake world. When she touches this mirror, nothing happens. So she will have to cross the room back to the first mirror. In this first mirror, her real self is reflecting. When she touches this one, she will return to the real world. From this semiosis, the player will deduce the workings of the mirror's mechanics. Only mirrors reflecting the character of the other world can be crossed, and these mirrors can be crossed from both sides. On the other hand, plain mirrors cannot be crossed, from whichever version of the world. These mechanics could be confirmed through a few other analog game sequences. 40
However, suddenly, the player could experience a new case. Once the player is used to this game-mechanics, we could put him in a confusing situation. For example, he could cross a mirror, to discover that on the other side it becomes a plain mirror. A mirror from which he cannot return in the real world. In this room, there would be no other mirrors to exit. He would find himself stuck in the other world. But while searching for another mirror in the other world, he would find a door. A plain wooden door. When opening this door, and crossing to the other room, the player would have the surprise to be back in the real world. He would be back in a room he visited before and the character would have her normal appearance again. But by breaking the game mechanics which seemed to stand as a rule in this world, we can have the player questioning the supposed reality of the world he previously considered as the real one. What was presented to the player as a game mechanics was simply a ludophrase. This ludophrase was so recurrent that the player interpreted it as a rule. A quasi-scientific rule. These mechanics became a normality in this fantastic world. But isn't it when the rules of reality are broken that we truly dive into the fantastic genre? Players are used to magic and fantasy in video-games. And those elements are often deeply rooted in the mechanics of the game; in such way that players accept them as a normality. When we play, we enter a world and we accept its rules. So with the example of the mirrors, the mirrorcrossing mechanics is easily acceptable by the player as a rule of the world he entered. This mechanic induced that the world that seemed closer to our real world, was also the real one in our virtual semiosis. After all, it is the place where we start to play, and the character does not look like she is 41
floating in mid-water in this version of the virtual world. But at the moment the player gets stuck in the other world and cannot exit in the right way; as players understood that the only path between those two worlds are mirrors. Suddenly, a mere door serves as an exit from the mirror world. The player will necessarily wonder how he came back, as he did not respect the rules of this world. Consequently, he will question the reality of the world in which his character came back. Did he really came back, or is he still in the mirror world? Is the mirror world less true than the real world? With this short example, just with ludophrases, we highlighted a potential to approach the depth of fantastic literature or cinematography in games. And it is likely that the same thing could be achieved with other genres. If we start to consider video-games primarily as an interactive experience, built out of signs and ludophrases; and if we make the game rules optional in this experience; maybe we will be able to reach new perspectives in game making. And slowly, as the semiotic of games will be better understood, video-games will take their legitimacy as a cultural media.
Conclusion Whichever tool or media might they choose, artists will try to convey emotions and stories through the mastery of a chosen technique. This short essay is a form of manifesto. It is desirable to reach a mastery of semiotics to give video games a wider storytelling potential. This article was aimed at designers, as it is their vision of our art that can change the way it is perceived as a cultural object. Video-game is a media that goes far beyond the standard definition of games. They are mainly an interactive experience, and the notion of rule is in the end very optional. Despite
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its propensity to borrow from other arts, video-game has its own language. And this language has a strong potential to communicate meaningful contents. Games are art, undoubtedly. And it is now the designers' duty to expand the range of topics they dare to address in video-games.
Ludography Shigeru Miyamoto, “Super Mario Bros”, Nintendo, Nintendo Entertainment System, 1985 Will Wright, “Sim City”, Maxis, Pc version, 1989 Shigeru Miyamoto, “The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past”, Nintendo, Super Famicom, 1991 Joseph Bostic, Aaron E. Powell, Brett Sperry, “Dune: The Battle for Arrakis”, Westwood Studios, Virgin Interactive, 1992 Frédérick Raynal, Didier Chanfray, “Alone in the Dark”, Infogrames, Pc version, 1992 Ron Millar, Chris Metzen, “Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness”, Blizzard entertainment, PC version, 1995 Shinji Mikami, “Resident Evil”, Capcom, Playstation version, 1996 Shigeru Miyamoto, “The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time”, Nintendo, Nintendo 64, 1998 Shinji Mikami, “Resident Evil 4”, Capcom, Gamecube version, 2005 43
Neil Druckmann, Bruce Straley, “The Last of us”, Naughty Dog, Sony Computer Entertainment, Playstation 3 version, 2013
Bibliography Guy de Maupassant, “The Horla”, trans. Charlotte Mandell, Melville House Publishing, 1887 Charles Sanders Peirce, “Philosophical Writings of Peirce”, Dover Publications, 1955 (Kindle edition) Roger Caillois, “Men, Play and Games”, trans. Meyer Barash, University of Illinois Press, 1961 Gonzalo Frasca, “Simulation versus narrative: Introduction to Ludology”, The Video Game Theory Reader, Issue n° 1, September 18, 2003 Jesse Schell, “The Art of Game Design: A book of lenses”, Taylor and Francis, 2008 (Kindle Edition) Dylan Holmes, “A mind forever voyaging: a History of story-telling in video-games”, CreateSpace, 2012 Miguel Sicart, “Defining Game Mechanics” in “The International Journal of Computer Game Research”, Volume 8 issue 2, Game Studies, http://gamestudies.org/0802/articles/sicart , December 2008 (accessed on October 30, 2014) Miguel Sicart, “Beyond Choices: The Design of Ethical Gameplay”, MIT Press, 2013 (Kindle Edition)
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