What Makes a Game a Game?: Week 3

This week's topic is what exactly makes a game a game and how we should discuss game content. Computer Games by Diane Carr, David Buckingham, Andrew Burn and Gareth Schott in chapter 1 discussed exactly what made defined a game officially a "game". Short and simply it was brought up in the chapter that games would in the book be studied as games and not literature, film, art, and other forms of entertainment that are currently being studied. They went on to use game designer Celia Pearce’s definition of games to define what was made a game as well as Jesper Juul’s framework definition for games.
In Celia’s framework a game contains some sort of goal, obstacles to that goal, resources in helping your obtain your goal, rewards for once you reach a goal, penalties in case you fail to obtain goals, and info (known by all players and the game, or by a certain number of players, or known to the game only, or progressive info obtained through playing the game). This also brought up the main difference in games in regards to other “text” (movies, books, etc.); in that they are played and not just observed as in the player has the ability to manipulate the events in the text.
Juul’s definition differed in that he wrote that games are based on rules, have variable quantifiable outcomes, outcomes that are weight positively or negatively, players try to gain the desirable outcome, players become emotionally attached to the aforementioned outcome, and lastly the game has negotiable consequences for real life. Juul’s framework emphasized more that games have rules differing game from just play which has no set rules. The chapters had also mentioned how some games such as The Sims don’t fit into any of these set frameworks but are still considered games.

After reading chapter 1 I think the only thing I would add to what I considered a game instead of random play would be that in games you unchain yourself from reality to conform to preset rules of the “new reality” where your actions as a player of the game determines (or alters) the game as well. You play rather in a more linear style of play where you decide your actions in a predetermined sense of what you want to do, instead of a spontaneous feeling of play.

In Chapter 13 it was discussed how we should analyze games, which was decided that the best way would be to analyze both the ludic (the more game framework on the game based more on games themselves than other texts [the game system]) and representational (basically any part of the game that can be reference to other types of texts such as movies, books, art, music, character design, etc) aspects of the game in order to most accurately judge it. As well as the message/concept the game tries to convey, how they do it and how well they deliver it.

This chapter I believe was very fair in its way of defining games, and was a similar way I previously would analyze game as well. Since a game with only great representational aspects but lacking ludic aspects does not make a good game but rather a symbiotic combination of the two is what really makes a successful game. Games need to have fair footing in all aspects of not only its system but in its complexity as a text as well in or to really have practical playability as a game and enough originality and feeling of intrigue and connectiveness to the player. I’ve always been a firm believer in that a game is only as good as its weakest component whether it is game play, storyline, characters, visual appeal, music, etc.

For the single article I had to read and analyze I chose to read Play Dead: Genre and Affect in Silent Hill and Planescape Torment by Diane Carr. The articles entirety was to compare the differences in game play style of the games Silent Hill and Planescape Torment. Both games had different game play styles made to suit what affect they were trying to convey to the players.
In the article it proposed that both games had in style a set maze that the game made the players go through in order to get their objective met. Silent Hill’s maze was more linear so that the player had less of a choice of divergence in the storyline and to gather a more “on-the-edge” frightening thriller like feeling through the playing of the game in order to learn more of the history of Silent Hill (through exploring maps, overcoming puzzles, and entering cut scenes planned sequentially) as you tried to find the main character’s daughter Cheryl and survive. The whole point of Silent Hill as a Survival Horror genre game is to frighten the player as they uncovered more of the twisting plot as they are playing. While Planescape Torment is more on the RPG style genre with a more open non linear game play to allow the player to determine more their game purpose (which is to decide whether to corrupt more of the characters world or correct it on to the right path from the darkness it has sunk to). Quests and puzzles are given a choice to finish to the players leisure and thus determining part of the end of the game as well as the game play by what quest, NPCs talked to and puzzles are completed. Much like the game Fable Planescape Torment also has the avatar of the player change depending on the choices you played throughout the game. To make the game even less linear it adapted an Advanced Dungeons & Dragons style of dice to determine stats (like damage, and healing) as well as allows the player to customize the avatar in leveling stats for unique game play. Planescape Torment leaves it up to players to determine was the purpose of the game was for them as the game adapted to the player.

Both games were highly successful in trying to convey their purpose to the player by utilizing certain styles of game play to their advantage. In my opinion, it seems like the utilization of certain styles of game play to certain genres are becoming more and more standardized so that there is once again a high need for innovational games willing to try new methods of game play yet to be discovered in order to in a way try new styles of narration to draw them apart from other games from the same genre. For example Little Big Planet on the PS3 was a very different game play style to its usual platform game predecessors. If more and more games were willing to step out of the box and try new methods of game play, the game industry would be inventing better ways of making games superior and faster to previous ones.