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Next Generation – A Theory of Games For Just About Everyone

September 1st, 2006 (Visited 5222 times) Tags:

Aaron Ruby, co-author of Smartbomb: The Quest for Art, Entertainment, and Big Bucks in the Videogame Revolution, has written an interesting article on NextGeneration entitled “A Theory of Games For Just About Everyone.” In it, he tries to tackle the big questions about what play is, what games are, and so on.

Traditionally theorists have made a distinction between freeform play (paideia, etc) and goal-oriented play (ludus, etc), and even gone so far as to deny the former the status of “game.” Aaron is out to demolish that:

…’play’ and ‘game’ have been largely defined without reference to the other. And in both instances, definitions have proved incredibly hard to come by and tremendously slippery. Inevitably they have ended up being both too narrow and too broad at the same time, excluding items we accept in our day-to-day life as qualifying while including others that don’t.

His approach: to define “play” as an “intentional attitude” rather than an activity, and to define “game” as any set of objects that one applies this “play” attitude towards objects.

On the intentional attitude side, I’m pretty much in accord with Aaron. As he points out, this puts interesting wrinkles on the old “magic circle” idea, by allowing one participant to be “playing” while the other is treating the activity as a job; it’s even possible to be doing both at the same time, as in a pro sport.

Now, I’ve focused primarily on “fun” in the past, and not on “play.” To my mind, these are different concepts; play isn’t necessarily always fun (we’ve all had that experience) and you can try to apply the intentional attitude of play and just not have it click into fun. Conversely, we’ve also all had times when we came to something with some other serious intent, and it became fun for us. I suspect that having the “play” attitude is a prerequisite for fun, and I further suggest that people can train themselves to immerse in this attitude by learning to exclude outside concerns (such as the fact that maybe you are paid to play). This then robs the interaction of its heavy load of consequence and permits fun to emerge. Athletes and performers of all sorts learn to focus in this manner as part of their training…

The set of objects that Ruby references, he calls “a model of a possible world.” This certainly seems like a workable starting point, though I might quibble with the word “world” because of all of its implications. He goes on to suggest that this raises the question of whether there is a distinction, then, between a toy and a game. His solution is

Still, I agree that there is a distinction to be made between game designers and toymakers. The difference between the two is that, unlike toymakers, game designers make models that do almost all of the heavy lifting of world building for the user—while a toymaker might build a model car, for example, a videogame designer typically builds the car, the physics that govern it, the terrain it rides on, and maybe even adds virtual drivers to race against. Again, it’s a fine line between the two, and it’s often difficult to say where one leaves off and the other begins, but the same situation holds for baldness—how many hairs can one have and still be considered bald?–and yet we still find a meaningful distinction between the bald and the hirsute.
So then what videogame designers really do is create digital worlds that invite play.

Here we part ways. To start with, I believe it is important — critical, even — to consider videogames are being no different from board games, sports, or indeed any other form of game. I even believe it important to encompass activities such as playing a musical instrument that are peripherally related. After all, language itself tells us that we “play” the piano (though interestingly, in other languages, there are other verbs used). Not all games model space, particularly in these other arenas, so “world” to me is an inaccurate word.

Steve Jackson’s Chaos Machine at Worldcon
(photo Quinn Norton from Wired –
My photo got lost along with my entire camera!)

Secondly, I think that the “heavy lifting” bit is not at all accurate either. A complex toy, like say Steve Jackson’s Chaos Machine, provides a fair amount of heavy lifting. Tic-Tac-Toe does very little heavy lifting. Rather, a toy is typically defined as a model where there is no specific goal or challenge presented to the user; instead, the user provides the challenge, if any. A game is a model where there is a specific challenge presented to the user.

In the terms of my “game grammar” stuff, this distinction is literally one of whether there is an endpoint to the model. A game is designed with end points (not necessarily to the whole experience; possibly only to a given “module” or branch); a toy always loops back to the top node in the tree. Toys can therefore easily be embedded in games, and games can easily be embedded in toys.

A toy in the grammar:

space provided is arbitrary and you can kick ball, where feedback is ball moves

A game that is substantially similar:

space provided is arbitrary but bounded and you can kick ball

if ball exits space, lose condition

otherwise, continue

Videogame designers are still just creating models, not worlds; worldness is a characteristic of the model, not a defining quality. This is easy to lose track of in today’s AAA game world where most games have world characteristics. But the weight of the model, its heft in terms of modelled features, has little to do with whether it is a game or a toy. Its sense of self-directedness is much more critical to understanding the distinction.

Aaron concludes that

many of the things that folks from Callois to Crawford, Koster to Costikyan, and Bogost to Juul have variously considered essential features of videogames—things like uncertainty, conflict, fun, competition, and goals—as part of a palette of strategies for luring gamers into playing in their worlds rather than simply manipulating them.

I think most of those things have usually been considered essential features of games in general, not of videogames specifically. But toys can provide conflict, uncertainty, and fun with no problem. Not all games are competitive. But goals — all things that we usually term “games” have goals.

Are these all strategies for luring people in? The theory of fun says that not everyone will be wanting or needing the same cognitive stimuli in order to have fun. So sure, you can and should be mixing and matching here. You may not end up with what someone calls a game, but who cares? If your goal is fun as opposed to game, you have a much wider palette. This is precisely the stage we reached with the last version of the Andean bird project; by making it a game, we actually robbed it of some fun. Fun is not confined to games.

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IGDA SAN DIEGO wrote on October 3rd, 2006 at 9:45 pm:

president John Smedley writes in his blog a critique of Aaron Ruby’s opinion-editorial published by Next Generation. Aaron Ruby, who co-authored Smartbomb with Heather Chaplin, also recently instigated commentary from former Sony Online creative chief Raph Koster. “The ESRB certainly isn’t the problem here. It’s the lazy reactive approach we as an industry have taken,” says John. “For too long we have sat on the sidelines and reacted to events rather

IQpierce said on September 2nd, 2006 at 2:39 pm:

So you would define a “game” as any “toy” (i.e. any set of objects which invite play) which also includes a goal?

Interesting definition. How do you classify games which allow for either goal-oriented or non-goal-oriented play, such as:
-Grand Theft Auto
-Many MMO’s
-Morrowind/Oblivion
-Guitar Hero (allows for “free play”, or for a challenging goal-driven “career mode”)

Do you define all these as “toys with games within them”, inasmuch as the goal that is something optional which can be pursued?

Just curious about the fine points of your definition… it seems to make more sense than Ruby’s for the most part.

Monkeysan said on September 2nd, 2006 at 4:37 pm:

Interesting Raph, but you misinterpreted me in many places and that seems to have generated most of your issues with my account.

“The set of objects that Ruby references, he calls “a model of a possible world.” This certainly seems like a workable starting point, though I might quibble with the word “world” because of all of its implications.”

I think you may be injecting your own prejudices about the word ‘world’ as a game designer. I’m not using the term in any sense that is peculiar to AAA games. It applies equally to Tic-Tac-Toe.

I’m using the term world and possible world the way philosophers, logicians, linguists, mathematicians, and cognitive theorists (of consciousness, mind, epistemology) have all used the term, particularly the variety devloped by people like Nelson Goodman in “Ways of Worldmaking” and David Lewis and Saul Kripke. They are primarily tools of reference and are extensive in theories of representation.

“Here we part ways. To start with, I believe it is important — critical, even — to consider videogames are being no different from board games, sports, or indeed any other form of game.”

Actually here we don’t part ways. I never suggested what you’re attributing to me. Straw man.

“Secondly, I think that the “heavy lifting” bit is not at all accurate either. A complex toy, like say Steve Jackson’s Chaos Machine, provides a fair amount of heavy lifting. Tic-Tac-Toe does very little heavy lifting.”

Tic-Tac-Toe does almost ALL of the heaving lifting. The figure and the rules together completely define the entire space of possible configurations. All the players do is agree to play and choose moves. Together they constitute a model of a possible world–a Tic-Tac-Toe world, but a possible world nonetheless.

“Rather, a toy is typically defined as a model where there is no specific goal or challenge presented to the user; instead, the user provides the challenge, if any. A game is a model where there is a specific challenge presented to the user.

For one thing, what consitutes “presenting a specific challenge to the player?” How specific does it have to be? How is this challenge articulated? Is a bag of marbles a toy or a game? How about a slot-car racing set? My point was that the distinction between the two exists but is vague precisely because you will never be able to make definitions like yours robust without being arbitrary.

Second, I think you’re making a category mistake.

A toy is a model that was designed to invite play. Once someone adapts an attitude of play toward that model, it becomes a game. A game created by the user? Why? Because the user has to do the preponderance of the work required to flesh out the possible world modeled by play.

Presenting ‘goals’ to the user is not what distinguishes toys from traditional games. Instead it is the size of the contribution the model makes to identifying (among all possible worlds) the possible world the user seeks to carve out by playing with it.

“I think most of those things have usually been considered essential features of games in general, not of videogames specifically. But toys can provide conflict, uncertainty, and fun with no problem. Not all games are competitive. But goals — all things that we usually term “games” have goals.”

Yes, most of them have, and that’s an unfortunate mistake, for both games in general and videogames specifically.

No, toys can not provide those things. They are only provided when they are being played with. At which point they have been made part of a game.

There are a lot of reasons that motivate my account that go well beyond these category disputes. One of the those, for example, is that my account plays well with other disciplines that are becoming more and more interested in games–disciplines like moral philosophy, cognitive science, game theory, and economics.

But that’s all stuff you’ll get to read in my next book, The New Model Society.

Anyway, I honestly think that we’re not that far apart on this.

And thanks to you and anyone who took the time to read the piece in Next-Gen.

Best,

Aaron

Raph said on September 2nd, 2006 at 5:21 pm:

Fair enough; in that case, it’s the example of the racing game that throws me off. Here your use of the word “world” is basically the same as saying “model” where model means the entirety of the topology, inputs and outputs provided by the game system. Essentially, the constituative ruleset, as Salen & Zimmerman have it.

“Here we part ways. To start with, I believe it is important — critical, even — to consider videogames are being no different from board games, sports, or indeed any other form of game.”
Actually here we don’t part ways. I never suggested what you’re attributing to me. Straw man.

I saw us as parting ways because your examples of “heavy lifting” were all ones that had to do with extensive simulation. I gather, from your reply, that what you mean by heavy lifting is in fact “extensively defined constituative rules,” or perhaps what I have termed in the past “extremely formal games.” Something like skateboarding, which I regard as having “imported” vast quantities of rules from physics, you regard as having fewer rules that are defined.

The reason I make that distinction and do consider the laws of physics to have been “imported” is because we often do create rules which override, limit, or otherwise alter the laws of physics. The most obvious case is the boundary case found in most every ball sport, but there are others (for example, we don’t permit extreme variations in external weather to impact a game; hailstorms are considered outside the bounds of soccer’s permissible rules, a certain amount of rain results in discontinuation of a baseball game). Similarly, there’s many cases where we make partial use of physics in a ruleset — even in videogames, as in the case of Dance Dance Revolution.

For one thing, what consitutes “presenting a specific challenge to the player?” How specific does it have to be? How is this challenge articulated? Is a bag of marbles a toy or a game?

The challenge presented in a game is typically presented very simply via a rulebook. A bag of marbles does not have a rulebook, but the game of marbles certainly does, and it frequently comes packaged with the bag of marbles. Similarly, a deck of cards has no implicit rules and is not yet a game, but there’s plenty of books which describe games you can play with a deck of cards. These are, if I recall, the “operational rules” according to Salen & Zimmerman.

They have a third sort as well, the “implicit rules,” which are socially imposed. Generally speaking, I’d say a characteristic of toys is that they have constituative rules (though ones with no goal) and they have implicit rules (because these arise spontaneously anytime people play with something) but they lack operational rules.

How about a slot-car racing set? My point was that the distinction between the two exists but is vague precisely because you will never be able to make definitions like yours robust without being arbitrary.

A slot car racing set most certainly does come with an important element that leads towards a goal; it marks a portion of the track as “start” and “finish.” That right there creates a bounding condition on the model. The fact that we then create additional rules about whether that matters, whether there’s a number of laps, etc, is mostly a question of whether we are choosing to play with the model given as a toy or as a game.

The instant you can declare a winner, it’s a game. The instant you can compete with yourself, it’s also a game. To me that’s not very arbitrary, it’s a nice bright line.

A toy is a model that was designed to invite play.

This here is the statement that seems vague to me. I mean, it sounds good, but architecture, to pick just one example, is often designed to invite play. A Mac desktop. A good interface on an audio mixer. The examples go on and on. That’s because play is fundamentally “taking a world (using your term here) and trying stuff out.” Much of good design in any field relies on that.

I’d suggest that what makes something a toy is its boundedness; it must invite exploration of its model in a way that is purposeless outside of its model, so to speak.

And if you apply a purpose, it’s going to either be a game (if it’s directed within a model) or a tool (if it’s directed externally).

Once someone adapts an attitude of play toward that model, it becomes a game.

By this logic, most everything I do all day is a game. This conversation certainly is. I guess I just do not agree with that logic; that’s where it feels like a category error to me.

Why? The terminology in no way means that software toys cannot or do not exist. And toy design is alive and well, outside of software.

I can definitely see where the terminology offered would fit well; it’s just unfortunate that the use of the word “world” has so many usages already, including different ones that pre-exist in the fields of game design and ludology.

Monkeysan said on September 2nd, 2006 at 8:28 pm:

“Here your use of the word “world” is basically the same as saying “model” where model means the entirety of the topology, inputs and outputs provided by the game system. Essentially, the constituative ruleset, as Salen & Zimmerman have it.”

No, it’s not. As I wrote in smartbomb, a model works by directly instantiating properties of the thing it represents. Possible worlds don’t do that at all, unless you believe that every thing is also a model of itself. Even if you do, that’s a trivial sense. According to Lewis, and many physicists, they all exist. They are just not the actual world. They have no spatio-temporal connection. Philosophically they don’t even have to have space or time.

Whatever one’s view of the metaphpysical status of possible worlds, it’s irrelevant. My account is theory neutral, since I’m not claiming that traditional games, sports, videogames and toys are indeed possible worlds, even when they are played with. Instead, when one plays with something, one is adopting an attitude that treats an object *as if* the player, the toy/game/sport and those engaged with it were a possible world.

The *as if* is super important because it is what identifies play as an attitude that signals our intention to put our brains into ‘modeling mode’. It’s precisely analogous to willing suspension of disbelief in traditional media. Play, however, goes beyond imagining a possible world and actively engages in the construction of a model of a possible world that, among other things, includes the player’s counterpart as a member.

My use of the word ‘world’ is also not equivalent to ‘constitutive ruleset’. Rule sets are collections of propositions that describe behavior of a model. Worlds are not models.

“A slot car racing set most certainly does come with an important element that leads towards a goal; it marks a portion of the track as “start” and “finish.” That right there creates a bounding condition on the model.”

I agree that the part of the racetrack model representing a finish line invites a particular playful use of the model, namely the game you are suggesting the set *is*. Are you saying that the slot car set is a game (rather than a toy) because it modeled a finish line? I don’t agree. In fact I don’t think you can say either way until you have a player who uses the set to help model a possible world.

To the extent that the player essentially adopts the race set as completely identifying some possible world, and the player merely adds their possible world counterpart, it’s the game you describe. But there are a lot of other likely playful interpretations involving the race set that identify very different possible worlds. To the extent that there are an abundance of likely playful interpretations, the race set is a toy.

“This here is the statement that seems vague to me. I mean, it sounds good, but architecture, to pick just one example, is often designed to invite play. A Mac desktop. A good interface on an audio mixer. The examples go on and on. That’s because play is fundamentally “taking a world (using your term here) and trying stuff out.” Much of good design in any field relies on that.

No, play is an intentional attitude, not an activity. We are playing when we are doing something that involves maintaining an attitude of play. I thought you were with me on that.

Many things outside traditional games and toys *do* invite play. And when one takes a designer up on that invitation, that person becomes part of a game involving the object. It’s not vague at all. Game designers and toymakers aren’t the only ones who can invite play with their designs. In fact, in the evolution of games, you guys (and humans in general) are rather late to the table.

“I’d suggest that what makes something a toy is its boundedness; it must invite exploration of its model in a way that is purposeless outside of its model, so to speak.”

It’s not a question of being purposeless, as I think you suspect by ‘so to speak’. Rather, when you explore model by playing with it you are considering it as if it were a possible world. Since possible worlds aren’t connected in any way with the actual world, when you play you are in a mental state that considers models as explicitly *not* part of the actual world. To that extent that something in a possible world cannot have a *purpose* in a world it’s not a member of, it’s purposeless. This is what defines the magic circle. But because games are actual world objects, and because games are only models of possible worlds, there is porosity between the actual and the modeled possible world–it’s called transfluence.

Once someone adapts an attitude of play toward that model, it becomes a game.
By this logic, most everything I do all day is a game. This conversation certainly is. I guess I just do not agree with that logic; that’s where it feels like a category error to me.

Yes, much of what you do all day is a game. Huizinga was right that play is far greater a part of our everyday lives than we acknowledge–he just happened to be wrong in analysis of play. I’m with Thomas Malaby on this one.

To some extent, and in many respects, this conversation is indeed a game. Dialectic is a kind of game. It’s precisely the kind of game Plato thought was most becoming of adults. But it’s also not-a-game in many respects.

That’s why I think it’s a shame that game designers are often averse to an account like this. It constrains the space of possible games and ignores domains that have covered much of this ground already. Personally, I think it’s a big reason that ludology is relatively insular.

Andy Havens said on September 3rd, 2006 at 5:41 am:

Question for Monkeysan, then: Is play ever not part of a game, then? If not, you’re just defining “play” as a synonym for “gaming,” eh?

We often use the term “farting around” in my circle of family and friends to mean, “Playing with something with no intention of having any real effect except testing it out, seeing what it does, stretching boundaries, experimenting, brainstorming, creative tampering, etc. etc.” No predefined goals. This can be used at work when designing or even trying out headlines. “What are you writing?” “I’m farting around with headline copy for the sales meeting posters.” “What are you sketching?” “I’m farting around with shapes for a new logo.” “What are you building with Legos?” “I’m farting around with an idea for a robot.”

Here’s the interesting thing — farting around is usually lots of fun. The fact that I get to do it at work is of great joy to me. It seems like “play.” And the further from a defined goal I can keep my head, the more likely it is that I will actually create something valuable.

I see this all the time when teaching writing and leading kids in creativity and crafts programs. If you give yourself too structured a goal — if your play becomes too game-like in that you have a “start” and “finish” line pre-drawn on the track — you will limit your rewards.

Take the deck of cards. Give it to many very young children and the first thing they do with it is start to build things. Second thing they do is begin to throw them around and experiment with the weird aerodynamics of laminated card stock. That’s not in most rule books of card games. I’ve seen kids take all the face cards out of a deck and turn them into impromptou puppets. Is that a game? Or is it play?

Give kids crayons and paper and they draw. If you leave them on their own, some of them will go nuts and draw amazing stuff. Many, before a certain age, however (about four) will just draw patterns unless you provide them with some context. Tell them a story or go on an imaginary adventure together and then ask them to draw what they heard about or did. They’ll then draw from those imaginary experiences. If, however, you get too specific… some will become frustrated that they “can’t draw that.” Too many rules all of a sudden. The game is too hard. It’s not play anymore, it’s a game.

Same with teaching music, if we’re going to include that. At the earliest stages, it’s a game. Almost all kids love to “play” with musical instruments (especially percussion…). But if you start to impose too many rules, too early on… frustration. At the earliest stages, there can be no rule other than “have fun,” or they will begin to associate music with judgement and failure. I’ve seen it happen way too often. Same with art and writing and sports.

I think there is a pretty wide space of play that does not include games, per se. I think there is a space of activity where there is “action without externalized requirement.” Now, if you want to argue that any internal requirement will count as a rule, and therefore anything we do, at any time, counts as a game… well, we’re back to everything being a game. And play being a synoym for gaming, which I don’t think is helpful.

I play with my designs and headlines at work sometimes… but it’s not a game. Unless you want to call it that just… well… for fun ; )

covert.c. said on September 4th, 2006 at 8:46 am:

It’s interesting that “Next-Gen” has no facility for commentary or community discourse. How Next gen is that? Anyhow, Raph’s blog to respond is just as good a place. I’ll steer cleer of the category debate, yet am surprised that no one’s commented on :

We expect games to help kids do their homework or even become their homework; others rally around games as a force for social change; yet nobody can explain how or why that should happen.

Why do you say that no one is explaining why games should be a force for social change or education? I think Will Wright and Raph discuss that every day. It’s an implicit desire, much like shaping a baseball league to encourage positive aspects of socialization and competition in young people. If it’s what they do, then make it worthwhile based on the prevailing impression that “education/social-change is good”. One can question why anything should be a force for social change. It’s a scuss of an ideal : everything should be a force for social change. Whether that actually happens is not the point. We desire it as a hopeful outcome to human endeavour.

Are games compelling because they’re fun, or are they fun because they are compelling?

I must apologize if I seem irreverent, but is that chair comfortable because you’re sitting, or because it’s a comfortable chair? Are black suits actually black, or just seem that way because of a lack of light? The question itself is not really worth asking. Nor does the answer reveal anything incisive about gameplay, how to create it or how to popularize it.

When I wrote Smartbomb, I was convinced that videogames would become the dominant medium of the next century. I’m not so sure anymore.

I feel that this “Gaming is dead” debate might have been more relevant twelve months ago. We are on the cusp of a gaming explosion, don’t you see that?

Yes, you claim that without proper vocabulary for an endeavour that it will never have the social relevance to truly become mainstream. I’m sorry that you feel that way. I’m going to buy at least twelve games in the next six months. I’m going to teach my kids the joys and interest of exploring gameworlds. I’m going to create games that teach and inform, because I believe that’s also what they’re meant to do. What do you want to have happen, exactly?

I think game design is probably more similar to your vocation than you probably realise. Do you fret over the formal definition of a semi-colon before you write a sentence? The answer is no. You just write.

monkeysan said on September 4th, 2006 at 11:28 am:

First, remember that many cultures don’t even have distinct concepts of ‘play’ and ‘game,’ so theories that define one without any reference to the other (like Raph’s) potentially run afoul of the facts in the field.

But if you want a distinction between ‘playing’ and ‘gaming’, I’ll give you one.

Playing = Maintaining an attitude of play.

Gaming = Performance in the context of a game.

The first is a mental state; the latter is an activity.

I think there is a pretty wide space of play that does not include games, per se.

I agree, since I think that ‘games per se’ is your way of saying ‘traditional (video)games’–the kind of things Raph and Costikyan are almost exclusively concerned with designing.

The fact that games pop up everywhere doesn’t mean that *everything* is a game. It simply means that almost everything can *become* a game. Play is the attitude that allows games to be instantiated.

It’s IMPORTANT to remember that the point of this theory is not to *win* an argument about what constitutes a game. It’s part of a larger theory of models that cuts across cognitive science, philosophy, anthropology, and linguistics and economics. For Next-Gen, the point was to provide designers, academcis and journos a fresh way of thinking about play and games that gets away from relying on discovering ‘essential features’ of games and instead sees these ‘essential features’ as strategies for inviting (and maintaining) play.

I think such an understanding is crucial to the maturation of the medium and is prerequisite to realizing its potential, whether culturally, artistically, or financially.

monkeysan said on September 4th, 2006 at 12:04 pm:

“We expect games to help kids do their homework or even become their homework; others rally around games as a force for social change; yet nobody can explain how or why that should happen.”
Why do you say that no one is explaining why games should be a force for social change or education?

If you think that the question of how and why EITHER education or social change are to be accomplished with videogames has been sufficiently characterized I can only /boggle. None of the funders, academics, politicians, teachers, and NGO reps I’ve talked to seem to think so. That’s one reason the Serious Games movement has had to focus so much on evaluation. It’s incredibly hard to show a game even has a particular effect, let alone how and why a game is having that effect.

“Are games compelling because they’re fun or are they fun because they are compellling?”
I apologize if I seem irreverent, but is that chair comfortable because you’re sitting, or because it’s a comfortable chair? Are black suits actually black, or just seem that way because of a lack of light? The question itself is not really worth asking. Nor does the answer reveal anything incisive about gameplay, how to create it or how to popularize it.

Well, to start with, none of your metaphors are analogous with the question I asked.

People in the industry tend to think that games are compelling because they are ‘fun’. I (and quite a few others) think that games are fun because they are compelling.

Since you can’t see the distinction, I’ll explain it to you:

The first implies that if a game is not ‘fun’ it won’t be compelling.

The second claims that games derive their fun from their being so compelling.

If you can’t see the different implications each has for game design and popularization, I don’t know what else to say.

“When I wrote Smartbomb, I was convinced that videogames would become the dominant medium of the next century. I’m not so sure anymore.”
I feel that this “Gaming is dead” debate might have been more relevant twelve months ago.

Maybe, if it were a “gaming is dead” debate.

Raph said on September 4th, 2006 at 12:42 pm:

OK, so I think I see where you are coming from. I also see how this can be useful to put play in context with other fields. Most of my concerns come from how to make it jibe with any of the other useful building blocks we have in theory now, and it has problems there.

For example, it’s a somewhat unhelpful definition for game designers, I think, precisely because it minimizes design. Anything is a “game” as long as it is approached with this attitude of play.

What is needed to allow it to interact with the other work in the field is the distinction between a “game” as it occurs “in the wild” so to speak, the one that is spontaneously created by this attitude, and “a game” that is intentionally designed.

Further, there’s definitely other difficulties using the definitions we have in concert:

- to a designer, a game is model; it’s part of a family of models that includes toys, and it can be interacted with in multiple manners.

- to you, a game is anything interacted with as if it were a possible world, and the sort of thing a designer calls a game is just a certain sort of thing that could be interacted with in this manner, now lacking a name.

I think this is your intent, but it has as its effect the erasure of the categories that have been built up laboriously over decades within the field and other fields including toy design. It’s rather similar to the thing many accused me of with my book: co-opting the word “fun” to mean something else (though there are some differences; I believe that what I defined as “fun” is the core underlying all the sorts of fun others identify; and I was also going more specific, whereas you are going more general).

You state,

My account is theory neutral, since I’m not claiming that traditional games, sports, videogames and toys are indeed possible worlds, even when they are played with. Instead, when one plays with something, one is adopting an attitude that treats an object *as if* the player, the toy/game/sport and those engaged with it were a possible world.

I believe this is almost identical to the original definition of the magic circle, though tied in more thoroughly, as you say, to modern understandings in other fields. So that sounds fine.

The question is what “the object” is. You seem to feel that by broadening the array of types of objects, it will assist in the development of new approaches, but I am unsure this is the case; tons of types of objects exist already, and people play with all of them all the time. To really open the door to new approaches, you have to discuss in what way intentionally designed objects that invite play are not like the toys and games we have now.

Some minor points:

Play, however, goes beyond imagining a possible world and actively engages in the construction of a model of a possible world that, among other things, includes the player’s counterpart as a member.

Not all forms of play include a counterpart for the player in that model. One does not necessarily identify with a given marble when playing marbles; the player is not really present in the model except as a collection of data (“how many marbles do I have left and in what positions?” and as a motive force to the marbles. I’d hesitate to call this a counterpart in the usual sense of the term… similarly, whne playing basketball, in what way would we call the player a counterpart of himself?

I also think that there are degrees and degrees of “active construction” — the “in the moment” and the “in advance” construction that represent the player’s understanding of that world and the boundaries of the model as specified in advance.

Are you saying that the slot car set is a game (rather than a toy) because it modeled a finish line?

No, I was saying that it has an element of a model that is a cue to players to treat it as a game, but is not a game itself.

Many things outside traditional games and toys *do* invite play. And when one takes a designer up on that invitation, that person becomes part of a game involving the object. It’s not vague at all.

It’s vague because it is pretty all-encompassing. All-encompassing isn’t particularly useful for tackling some of the specific problems you cite, such as games for education.

I think my core issue here is that you are defining play as an attitude, and then “game” is this all-encompassing notion of anything you play with, including doors, leaves blown on the wind, and checkers. There’s not even a clear way to define whether the “game” is the soccer ball or the entire entity that we call soccer.

The common ground is that I think I agree with your definition of “play.”

Game designers and toymakers aren’t the only ones who can invite play with their designs. In fact, in the evolution of games, you guys (and humans in general) are rather late to the table.

I presume here you must mean objects intentionally created or adapted (“designed”) by animals in order to invite play, such as otter slides. Given that we can’t get into the head of the otters, it’s a little tough to know whether they design the slides intentionally to invite play. I also think it’s safe to say that humans have been making object intentionally designed to invite play for a very very long time. I suspect that what I call “games” (intentionally designed models) have been around for as long as humans have.

It’s not a question of being purposeless, as I think you suspect by ’so to speak’. Rather, when you explore model by playing with it you are considering it as if it were a possible world. Since possible worlds aren’t connected in any way with the actual world, when you play you are in a mental state that considers models as explicitly *not* part of the actual world. To that extent that something in a possible world cannot have a *purpose* in a world it’s not a member of, it’s purposeless. This is what defines the magic circle. But because games are actual world objects, and because games are only models of possible worlds, there is porosity between the actual and the modeled possible world–it’s called transfluence.

All that is fine; that’s not what I was referencing. Rather, I was again trying to re-establish a typology of games, one that feels to me like it vanished in your theory.

It’s pretty universally understood (across multiple cultures and languages) that there is a distinction between “an object intentionally designed to invite play that has no particular metric in its model” and the same object with metrics included. The metrics are what colloquially make something “a game” as opposed to “a toy” or even “a well-designed object.”

Yes, much of what you do all day is a game. Huizinga was right that play is far greater a part of our everyday lives than we acknowledge–he just happened to be wrong in analysis of play. I’m with Thomas Malaby on this one.
To some extent, and in many respects, this conversation is indeed a game. Dialectic is a kind of game. It’s precisely the kind of game Plato thought was most becoming of adults. But it’s also not-a-game in many respects.
That’s why I think it’s a shame that game designers are often averse to an account like this. It constrains the space of possible games and ignores domains that have covered much of this ground already. Personally, I think it’s a big reason that ludology is relatively insular.

The usual reason why academic disciplines are insular is because they lose touch with reality. And I have to admit, that’s my concern about the preceding paragraphs. Making everything into a game makes games into nothing. Having to say “it’s a game in many respects but not in many aspects” is just not concrete enough for me, and I suspect for most people.

Perhaps one fundamental philosophical disagreement between us is that you see “constraining the possible space of games” as a bad thing. I don’t. It lets us actually point at what we are talking about.

Today Gamasutra referenced this thread in their “Blogged Out” column, and the closing comment was “what’s the point?” (paraphrased, of course), while also mostly focusing ont he fact that we seem to just be talking past each other because the terms don’t match.

I don’t have a theory of play OR of game, at the moment…? My theory was of “fun,” and to my reading your theory of play actually jibes rather well with it.

I’d also point out that many cultures don’t have distinct concepts of lots of things, ranging from “agnosticism” through “dialectic” to “zippity doo dah,” but that doesn’t mean that those concepts run afoul of facts on the ground. “Fun” is actually one of those.

Here’s the crux of it. IMHO, almost everything can become a TOY. Games are something else again.

the point was to provide designers, academcis and journos a fresh way of thinking about play and games that gets away from relying on discovering ‘essential features’ of games and instead sees these ‘essential features’ as strategies for inviting (and maintaining) play.
I think such an understanding is crucial to the maturation of the medium and is prerequisite to realizing its potential, whether culturally, artistically, or financially.

Get away from discovering “essential features” when we have barely begun, and have only the haziest understanding? Why? They won’t be seen as essential strategies for maintaining play unless they are understood in the first place.

I agree with the latter definition, actually. But there’s lots of forms of compelling that aren’t fun. Given what people in the industry do, it’s unsurprising that they would focus on the forms of compelling that are fun.

In and of itself, this is an inadequate answer, obviously, which is WHY there’s theories of fun and exploration of ‘essential features’ and so on. Otherwise, you could simply go for any sort of compelling content whatsoever. If you are turning to games, you are doing so because of the strengths that games specifically have to offer for a given task.

covert.c. said on September 4th, 2006 at 9:10 pm:

None of the funders, academics, politicians, teachers, and NGO reps I’ve talked to seem to think so.

Then maybe you need to find other funders, academics, policitians and teachers to talk to? I know plenty. Go check out DIGRA, or perhaps try some research.

If you can’t see the different implications each has for game design and popularization,

Yes, I was making fun of you. Yes, I think that your question is entirely spurious to any debate on game design or popularization.

I don’t know what else to say.

Thank goodness!

monkeysan said on September 5th, 2006 at 10:43 am:

Wow. For some reason, I just got the most insane sense of de ja vu reading the not-so-covert post above…either that or it’s such standard, boilerplate troll meat that I’ve got it memorized at this point.

Anyways…

Making everything into a game makes games into nothing.

Agreed 100%. If my account does that it’s useless to that extent. I don’t think it does. Instead it says that everything can be *part* of a game or *become* a game. We’ll see if that’s enough to get me out of the useless category in a sec.

Yeah, I saw that. I really don’t think we’re talking past each other. Maybe I’m mistaken, lol. Like I said from the beginning, I think we’re actually very close:

Your chief outstanding concern seems to be that what I’m proposing is too ‘all-encompassing’. This leads to several ‘bad’ things.

1. It minimizes design.

2. It erases a distinction between games that are designed and those that erupt in day to day life.

3. It robs designers of a word they use to describe what they maek, namely ‘game’.

Let me start by saying that I sympathize with this concern. Ultimately, however, it’s a concern easily put to rest.

1. I’m not trying to minimize design. Objects designed to invite play are arguably exclusive to humans (e.g., I agree 100% about otter slides) and important for that reason alone. My dogs, though they play and makeup games that require constant negotiation with one another, are unable intentionally design models or other objects for that purpose. They don’t use explicity rulesets to maintain consistency of instantiations of their games. They also don’t play games that involve proxies for themselves, as Costikyan might say.

As a result, my dogs very limited in the kinds of games they can play. For instance, they can’t play any game that has the kind of properties that make intentionally designed games fascinating.

The fact that in my account dogs can play and create games by negotiation doesn’t diminish the role of intentionally designed games. Neither does the fact that ordinary people create games out of blown leaves, doors and checker pieces. The point is simply to recognize that these things, too, can become (part of) games.

2. I don’t think it erases any distinction at all. here are the distinctions I think you are pointing toward:

Game = A set of objects and participants that is the target of an attitude of play.

This breaks into designed and ‘in the wild’ games, to stick with your terms.

Designed games break into toys and games:

Toy = object designed to be used to facilitate playful modeling/world-building.

Game = object deisnged to be taken as a complete/near-complete world model.

As I said before, I think that the distinction between toy and game gets hazy and vague, though it still exists.

3. It doesn’t need to rob you of the term. I still call them games. Think about it like this: What is it that is unique about what you do? You build models that are near-complete worlds. It’s the near-completeness, the ease with which the user carves out a possible world with them, the models’ self-sufficiency, so to speak, that uniquely identifies them among the larger family of models we both agree exists. Owing to this near completeness, I say they deserve the colloquial ‘games’.

A note on counterparts:

Not all forms of play include a counterpart for the player in that model. One does not necessarily identify with a given marble when playing marbles; the player is not really present in the model except as a collection of data (”how many marbles do I have left and in what positions?” and as a motive force to the marbles. I’d hesitate to call this a counterpart in the usual sense of the term… similarly, whne playing basketball, in what way would we call the player a counterpart of himself?

Actually, ALL forms of play include a counterpart for the player, but not in the sense you take it, which is kind of like ‘avatar’. Agency alone is enough identify a counterpart in a possible world. In the case of basketball, your counterpart is just yourself in ‘the possible world carved out by this basketball game’. The counterpart arises philosophically because you can’t exists in two worlds simultaneously. It happens to translate very well to games and play.

Some stray points:

It’s not bad, but I think there are myriad self-imposed limits on the kind of games that designers make. Some of these are imposed because designers see certain strategies as essential properties of games. As a result many kinds of game that people want to play with are not being adequately explored.

Obviously, I disagree with you on the value of my account to game designers, writers, critics, etc. I guess time will tell. Either way, I think I have shown that your concerns, while precisely the ones you should have, aren’t really that serious.

What I’m proposing is the groundwork for a philosophy of MODELS for game folks and just about everyone else. It’s an outgrowth of work I did for Smartbomb and prior to that while at Rutgers phil. A Theory of Games For Just About Everyone was intended to offer a glimpse into a small part of that philosophy, which I feel constitutes a fresh view of the terrain. I think it actually plays very well with what you’ve written, particularly the theory of FUN.

That’s why I named the piece what I did in the first place.

covert.c. said on September 6th, 2006 at 12:04 am:

I can’t imagine it being a troll when I’m voicing my opinion (albeit a dissenting one).

The category debate is interesting and relevant to game theory and popularization. It’s interesting that you’re talking to one of the most experienced designers in the industry and trying to come to an… understanding? Who are you, exactly?

The question about how we conflate the terms fun and compelling, as if the concepts represented some central tautological relationship, is not. If you had an answer to that question, would that affect any politican’s rather dim views on education and gaming? Or a teachers? That’s the part that irks me. You’ll have to do better than, “It is because I say.” It’s not.

Your claim that “no one talks about education” is very troublesome. I regularly read about it so much that I /boggle at your /boggle. As I said, at least in Canada, I have had numerous conversations with educators and ministry folk who are in fact very interested in the serious games movement. Perhaps as a writer or reseracher you’d be more interested in my story, rather than merely dismissing me because I disagreed with you. Lets give you an accurate book, not a sweeping one that merely serves opinions you already have?

So yes, I disagree with you. Call me a troll if you feel it elevates your opinion. I think we can say that we’re quite plainly missing each other.

monkeysan said on September 6th, 2006 at 5:38 am:

Because you’ve done nothing but go out of your way to insult at every turn, without supplying any real argument:

Yeah, kinda like that.

The question about how we conflate the terms fun and compelling, as if the concepts represented some central tautological relationship, is not. If you had an answer to that question, would that affect any politican’s rather dim views on education and gaming? Or a teachers? That’s the part that irks me.

At the Games For Change conference in NYC this summer many people from education and social change groups were concerned that simply importing games into the classroom without understanding ‘why’ is a recipe for inviting the same disasters that befell the movement to bring TV into the curriculum decades ago.

From a teacher perspective, bringing new technology into the classroom has to have value to education. If it’s fun, and that fun directs learning in a way that’s effective for teachers, that’s one thing. Games then give teachers a new tool. If it turns out that the experience of playing (vidego)games resonates fundamentally with something about our cognition, about how we are wired to build models of the world and abstract meaning from them, then we’re talking about a completely different kind of tool.

That’s an example of what I was referring to in a one line, throw away sentence in the lede of the next-gen piece. I’m sorry it so offended you.

Your claim that “no one talks about education” is very troublesome.

I said no such thing. Reload and try again.

As I said, at least in Canada, I have had numerous conversations with educators and ministry folk who are in fact very interested in the serious games movement.

Yes, I’m sure you have. I’ve had many conversations with their counterparts in the U.S. and elsewhere. They’re very interested and active in the serious games movement as well. But there’s a difference between recognizing the power games have and wanting to channel it for, say, education or social change, and the hard work of figuring out how and why that desire should become manifest as policies, programs, curricula, etc.

covert.c. said on September 6th, 2006 at 10:44 am:

I apologize for being sharp in resposne to (what I perceived) was a bluntly condescending reproach to my criticisms. Anyhow…

…many people from education and social change groups were concerned that simply importing games into the classroom without understanding ‘why’ is a recipe for inviting the same disasters that befell the movement to bring TV into the curriculum decades ago.

Jumping blindly into any technology is indeed a sure route to failure. I think educational institutions are far more resistant to the influx of new technology for the very reason you cite. Truly, the proof is in the games. Games that can demonstrate their promise in teaching and informing. For a designer who wishes to create such a game, an in-depth understanding of cognition, perception, and learning are absolutely critical to that effort. In other words, understanding how to teach within a new medium. I’m not sure that I agree that people aren’t discussing the how’s and why’s, either (versus discussing it at all, which is what I took you to mean). Perhaps those explorations are too far away from the meat of making games, thus rendering them inaudible to the ears of those with vested interest.

But there’s a difference between recognizing the power games have and wanting to channel it for, say, education or social change, and the hard work of figuring out how and why that desire should become manifest as policies, programs, curricula, etc.

I zoned in on your ‘throwaway’ sentence (compellingfun) totally missing that it was a throwaway. I totally agree with your statement here. Again, there is currently real work (albeit trepitious work) being done to this end in the province of British Columbia.

I think the game maker needs to be very clear on the how and why. The politicos of education, well, not as much. They need to be demonstrated to, clearly and manifestly, that a certain product or technology accomplishes its goals in an educational setting. They don’t create new programs (e.g. curricula) out of vapour, but doing all this work to adjust our nomenclature may constitute such vapour that they likely won’t understand anyway. Sure, it may elevate game creation away from the disposable shoot-em-up culture, but I believe what they’re really looking for is a good example. In my opinion (which is clearly not shared here) is that it’s up to us to give it to them.

I’m loathe to advertise my own blog, especially after my excessive outburst, but I’ve formed some hopefully unique thoughts around the matter which may offer a slightly different approach on the topic (and perhaps personify this side of the debate a little).

Good luck with your next book. I own two copies of Smartbomb.

Next Generation – A Theory of Games For Just About Everyone

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