Extra Credits – Understand. Think. Then write.

Paper #3: Epistemology

My first job after graduating from Wesleyan University was as a tabletop roleplaying game designer at White Wolf, and it was there that I developed what has remained a pillar of my own approach to game design: namely, the idea that game mechanics – the rules by which the game is played –

Vampire: The Masquerade roleplaying game (1991)

must meld seamlessly with the themes and setting of the game. In the game Vampire: The Masquerade, the core theme is the struggle between “The Beast” (one’s vampire nature), and one’s “Humanity.” These are primarily abstract roleplaying concepts, however, so in order to make the game more than purely narrative, the game assigns two key statistics to each character – their blood pool, and their Humanity score. Let the blood pool go too low (due to wounds, using vampiric abilities, or not feeding), and the character frenzies, loses control, and the evil acts they commit lowers their Humanity score. Of course, this is a simplification, but the core mechanic of the game supports the theme, determines the kinds of stories that will be told, and guides the player’s roleplaying.

How does this relate to epistemology? When game studies were formalized as a field of academic study, the two opposing camps were narratology and ludology – in essence, focus on story or mechanics. The latter does not preclude the presence of story in games, but it does require there to be game elements there for something to be considered a game. Of these two epistemological perspectives, I align myself more closely with narratology, as ultimately I find the story more interesting. Coming from an English studies background, that is the toolbox I am accustomed to using.

As I read more deeply on narratology, however, I recalled my own background. You can tell players that it’s important to the story to do something – retain one’s Humanity, for example – but if you do not attach a number, a game mechanic to it, they are free to ignore it. Mechanics are how you tell the player what is important, and what you want them to do. My own approach as a game designer, then, is a melding of narratology and ludology: the mechanics exist to guide the story. As a scholar of English studies, my approach is to look at the mechanics and gameplay through the lens of the story; the way that the game is played is a part of the story, whether that is the narrative being created by the game’s designer, or the self-created narrative of the player: the story of their character’s adventure in the world of the game. While not identical, my method is very similar to that of Harrison Pink, who puts forth a model of game design in which the designer identifies the feeling they want to evoke first, and the rest of the game design process is guided by that.

Of course, not every game has a story, and defining what should be considered a game was one of the earliest disputes among scholars of game studies, and as new forms of games are created this definition must be constantly reevaluated. I enjoy Spider Solitaire and Word Streak with Friends as much as the next GenXer, but when it comes to academic objects of study (OOS), I prefer games that have story as a central element. My ultimate goal is to create games that will teach critical thinking and research/documentation skills, and the best way to do that is by getting the player (student) invested in the story being told. To be successful, the game mechanics have to seamlessly fit the setting and convey to the player what is important, what their goals are, and how to achieve them.

Game journalist Brianna Wu threatened on Twitter during #gamergate

As a secondary approach to study, I somewhat reluctantly align myself with feminist theory. Gender is something of an elephant in the room when it comes to video gaming in particular, whether it deals with who plays what kind of game, design for specific demographic groups, or the industry-wide collective dumpster fire that was Gamergate. As designer, I want to believe that the games I create can be enjoyed by anyone regardless of gender; as a scholar, I know that we have not yet evolved as an industry or a subculture to the point that we can be blind to something that is so divisive in the games and communities I study. To understand the way we play and use games, we first have to understand who “we” is, and gender differences are relevant to this; thus, applying feminist theory will give important insights into the way we play, design, and criticize games.

Pink, Harrison. “Can I Borrow a Feeling?” Gamasutra.com, 3 Mar. 2013. Web. 14 Oct. 2016.

Hartshorn, Jennifer, Ethan Skemp, Mark Rein*Hagen and Kevin Hassal. Vampire: The Dark Ages. Clarkston, GA: White Wolf Publishing, 1996. Print.

Additional Readings:
Extra Credits’ episode on Harassment addresses the issue of bullying in the gaming community, and while it predates Gamergate, the victims of harassment in and out of the game are often women.

Quantic Foundary examines what type of gameplay is most interesting across genders and ages, and finds that the desire for competition is a higher priority for male, younger gamers, while strategy games appeal to people across all age groups and genders.

Vampire: The Dark Ages (1^st Edition) is my most well known game, and adjusts the mechanics of the basic Vampire game to fit a different setting. In it, we sought to make the mechanics and the setting/story meld seamlessly, which shapes my approach to both ludology and narratology.

Wraith: The Oblivion (2^nd Edition) was the first game I developed. Well, not entirely true – first edition is now out of print, which was my game; the second edition was developed by my successor, Richard Dansky. It’s far from the perfect game, but it’s not bad for someone who was new to design.

The Only Guide to Gamergate You Will Ever Need to Read is the Washington Post’s summary of the scandal that rocked the gaming industry and pulled back the covers on the widespread misogyny within the industry and the subculture.

PAB Entry #6: “Game-Based Curricula, Personal Engagement, and the Modern Prometheus Design Project”

Barab, Sasha, Patrick Pettyjohn, Melissa Gresalfi, and Maria Solomou. “Game-Based Curricula, Personal Engagement, and the Modern Prometheus Design Project.” In Games, Learning, and Society: Learning and Meaning in the Digital Age, edited by Constance Steinkuehler, Kurt Squire, and Sasha Barab, Cambridge UP, 2012, pp 306-326.

In “Game-Based Curricula, Personal Engagement, and the Modern Prometheus Design Project,” authors Barab, Pettyjohn, Gresalfi, and Solomou explore the possibility of basing an entire curriculum around games. Their ideal curriculum “involves trajectories or missions that include rich storylines, multiple tasks, …and interactive objects…that require the player to make conceptually informed choices” (307). The game that they created is a single player exploration of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, in which the player is exploring the world of the novel, and must solve problems make both practical and ethical choices that have persistent impacts on the game world.

Key terms they establish early on include intentionality (player choices impact meaningful goals), legitimacy (methods utilized are relevant beyond the context of the game), and consequentiality (player actions have a meaningful impact on the game world). When all these elements are present, they term this kind of participation transactive engagement. This term captures an important element in any immersive experience – the notion of the transaction, which makes the player an active participant and not merely a spectator.

Intentionality is important, because without a context, goals are not meaningful; busy work is work for the sake of work, without a purpose. Legitimacy is something that is gaining widespread attention in education, because if students do not see a real world application for a skill, if it seems like something abstract that just has to be learned because there will be a test, they will not engage with the skill as deeply. If they see transferrable applications, and have the opportunity to use the skill in context, there is a greater potential for deep learning. Consequentiality is something that requires extremely responsive game design, which means time and money on the development side. For that reason, many games do not have persistent environments – but setting a game in a persistent world where player actions can have meaningful, lasting impacts on the environment and the responses from other characters increases immersion and engagement.

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, the basis for the — Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the basis for the “Modern Prometheus” game

While much of the article understandably deals with the specifics of their Modern Prometheus project, it’s iterations and why they made the choices they did in its creation, the part that is the most interesting to me is the way that they establish the educational value of immersion and engagement. They state that “supporting transactive engagement involves fostering a deep sense of immersion in which the learner enters into a situation conceptually and perceptually, has a goal, has a legitimate role, and engages in actions that have a consequence – whereby both the learner and the situation with which he or she is engaged become transformed” (307). By getting the player to buy in to the game setting, rather than remaining detached from it, their choices have context and meaning.

There are many techniques that can be used to create that sense of the game world having meaning and consequences (some of which are also addressed in Extra Credits’ “What Makes Us Roleplay” below), but this feeling can also be fostered by everything from the interface design to the soundscape players hear, and the art style they are seeing. The game’s mechanics also play into this, although these elements are not explicitly addressed by Barab, et al. Ideally, these elements are all so seamlessly integrated into the game experience that they are not consciously perceived, because to do so brings the player out of the experience and makes them aware of the artificiality of the environment. For players, and students, to feel that their choices have meaning, they need to be invested in the game world.

Additional Watching and Reading
The Extra Credits episode “What Makes Us Roleplay” deals with immersion and how games make the player’s choices matter. Roleplaying (taking on the personality of a character that may or may not make the same choices that they would in a real world situation) can be a distraction from learning in some situations, but the design choices dealing with it also create an immersive environment in which the decisions you make impact the game world – the consequentiality described by Barab, et al.

Marshal G. Jones’ (apparently?) unpublished paper, “Creating Engagement in Computer-Based Learning Environments” is what it says on the tin – an exploration of how designers get players engaged and invested in learning games. Jones explains that in this case, engagement refers to “the notion that the program makes the learner want to be there.”

The Education Business Blog has an article on an early iteration of the Modern Prometheus game.

PAB Entry #4: “Game Design as Narrative Architecture” by Henry Jenkins

Jenkins, Henry. “Game Design as Narrative Architecture”. In The Game Design Reader: A Rules of Play Anthology, Ed. Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman. MIT P, Cambridge, MA, 2006.

In the introduction to “Game Design as Narrative Architecture,” Henry Jenkins states that when first presented at a conference, the essay, “provoked strong reactions from the so-called Ludologists and resulted in my being falsely (in my opinion) identified as a Narratologist.” He goes on to explain that his ideas are more centered on game spaces, “ripe with narrative possibility,” while story itself can be deconstructed as “less a temporal structure than a body of information.”

While he devotes considerable time to finding common ground between Narratologists and Ludologists, his primary point is that games are spaces. This is true whether it is the board of Monopoly, which he alludes to, or the vast outer space reaches of the 2016 release No Man’s Sky, with it’s 18 quintillion planets to be explored. While he says that he was “falsely” lumped in with Narratologists, the main gist of his article does deal with narrative – but not necessarily linear narrative. His description of games, or perhaps ideal games, allows for a great deal of player agency to discover a narrative and piece it together on their own, rather than being forced on rails to live the narrative themselves, along a linear path that the author/designer wants them to follow. He explains the game world as “a kind of information space, a memory palace,” if the designer intends a more linear path, or a space in which the player can “explore the game space and unlock its secrets”. Either way, it is about discovery of an existing story, rather than the player character’s own heroic journey.

Screen shot of — Screen shot from “No Man’s Sky” (2016) showing one of the many alien planets that players can discover and explore.

He cites the work of Don Carson, who has written on the lessons game designers can take from the work of theme park designers, observing that “the art of game design comes in finding artful ways of embedding narrative information into the environment without destroying its immersiveness and without giving the player a sensation of being drug around by the neck.” This single sentence encapsulates what is perhaps the most important concept in this article as a whole – the importance of immersion in the experience of a game, the need for player agency in

Image from interior of Disney's — Part of the physical space that Guests walk through in line for Disney’s “Expedition Everest,” demonstrating the storytelling power of detailed space design.

exploring an environment and uncovering the story for themselves, and the reason why standard models of narrative borrowed from literary and film studies are of limited use when applied to (some) game stories. And while some resist (and others embrace) the idea of games as “art”, in a traditional sense, Jenkins is speaking more of artful design – the creation of something functional in a way that is seamlessly integrated into its environment, as opposed to something that stands out as unique within its own context.

Interior of Disney's — Another interior image from Disney’s “Expedition Everest” ride, creating an immersive environment for Guests waiting for the ride.

While some games do have linear stories, and some have no stories at all, if a designer wants to tell a story that is unique to the medium of game design, it is necessary to do so using a framework that goes beyond that of traditional print and motion media.

So while Jenkins seemingly bristled at the idea of being called a Narratologist, his perspective is an interesting middle ground, seemingly doing exactly what Aarseth calls for in his essay “Computer Game Studies, Year One”. While Jenkins is interested in the idea of narrative (with a small “n”), which would cause some to place him in with the Narratologist camp, his concept is decidedly non-linear and as such goes beyond what traditional scholars of narrative could apply existing models to. Just as Aarseth has challenged game scholars to carve out their own niche, independent of existing fields, Jenkins has done just that.

The article situates the field of game design studies as being separate from, but arguably both complimentary and adjacent to that of English studies. While his concept of narrative spaces is unlike the linear narrative structure familiar to scholars of literature, and even that of nonlinear hypertext narrative, English scholars who are open minded enough to look beyond existing theoretical models will find fertile ground in analysis of these narrative spaces. Within the bounds Jenkins sets in this article, he defines a theoretical space between Narratologists and Ludologists, outside of the domains of literary and cinema studies scholars, but also scholars of computer science, animation, and art. His notion of narrative space works equally well to imagine a flag being planted in a new domain belonging to computer game theorists.

Additional Reading
The ubiquitous Extra Credits video I’ve paired with this deals with “Negative Possibility Space” – dealing with player agency and how that relates to the physical space being explored by characters.

Jenkins mentions The Image of the City, a book dealing with city planning and urban design, as being useful for designers in understanding how people live, work, and play in designed spaces.

PAB Entry #3: “Computer Game Studies: Year One”

Aarseth, Espen. “Computer Game Studies – Year One.” Game Studies, vol. 1, issue 1, 2001. http://gamestudies.org/0101/editorial.html. Accessed 20 September 2016.

While relatively short, Aarseth’s article ambitiously sets out to demarcate an official beginning for computer game studies as an “emerging, viable, international academic field”. Aarseth, known for his 1997 book Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergotic Literature, makes the case for formalized study of computer games as a field separate from, though drawing on, a range of related disciplines from computer science to anthropology, and film studies to aesthetics.

University of California at Santa Barbara: Studies in Literary Criticism and Theory: Intro to Game Studies

While the article seeks to define computer game studies as being something “too important to be left to” individual fields like English Studies, it also does not exclude scholars of literature, communication, and writing from being a part of the conversation. Indeed, to imply that English Studies has a greater claim on the field than other disciplines such as interface design, computer programming, animation, film studies, or sociology would be both selfish and unproductive, as they all have a role to play in the development of a truly interdisciplinary field. Aarseth warns against attempts by individual departments to stake a claim over Game Studies, pointing out that, “Making room for a new field usually means reducing the resources of the existing ones, and the existing fields will also often respond by trying to contain the new area as a subfield.” However, this seems to ignore the fact that the very sources of funding that make up these resources often come in the form of tuition dollars from students interested in a new major being drawn to a school, as well as research grants – largely absent in the case of English Studies, but more likely in new media fields, especially those with close ties to multimillion dollar industries.

SCAD Department of Interactive Design and Game Development — Savannah College of Art and Design’s stand-alone department of Interactive Design and Game Development

But how does Aarseth’s establishment of this field impact, restrict, or invite the participation of English Studies scholars? He allows that with the development of a new area of study, everyone is a newcomer, stating, “We all enter this field from somewhere else … and the political and ideological baggage we bring from our old field inevitably determines and motivates our approaches.” But should we really consider methodologies, historical perspective, and knowledge of cultural context to be “baggage”? As English scholars, we have much to contribute to this field, whether it is the formalized study of language, a deep and rich understanding of storytelling conventions and traditions, or the ways in which digital literacies inform and shape our verbal and written interactions through the medium of a game. Aarseth’s point is well taken, though; we can bring with us the knowledge and methods that have served us well in the past, but we must enter into the conversation with an open mind, willing to consider and incorporate other disciplinary perspectives that are different from, perhaps even contradictory at first glance to our own.

Just as English Education studies cannot exclusively be claimed by either departments of English or Education, and Cultural Studies will always include contributors from the social sciences, arts, and humanities, Game Studies can prove to be a fruitful and fascinating area for English scholars to explore and contribute to, but we will never have exclusive rights to it – nor should we. Its essence is interdisciplinary and Aarseth’s article helps to define the field, its roots, and the contribution it can make not only to academia, but to the larger community. While it could not remotely be considered to be staking a claim over this new discipline on behalf of English departments, it has established the need for formalized study, research, and (implied, if not explicitly stated) pegagogy.

Additional Resources
A much later contribution to Aarseth’s Game Studies journal, “Game Definitions: A Wittgensteinian Approach” explores the many ways scholars have defined the concept of games.
Showing the way the field of game studies has branched out from Aarseth’s initial definition, “Feminist Game Studies: Defining the Field” similarly carves out a subfield within this new discipline.

“Extra Credits” contribution to the discussion of what a game is – in which Portnow disputes the usefulness of narrow definitions, and claims definitions are “the intellectual version of chasing your own tail”.

Paper #1 – History of Game Studies

The academic study of video game design has deep roots in many disciplines, stretching across the humanities, the social sciences, and computer science. Since it is a truly interdisciplinary field, there are as many claims to being the “first” to study them as there are subspecialties within it. Although my own area of interest draws strongly from composition studies and pedagogy as well as game studies, it is dependent on the idea of computer games having the potential to be immersive stories, and as such, much of the seminal work on this dates to the late 1990s.

Aarseth's Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature — Aarseth’s Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature

In Volume 1, issue 1 of Game Studies, Espen Aarseth states “2001 can be seen as the Year One of Computer Game Studies as an emerging, viable, international, academic field.” His book, Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature predates his “year one” by four years, as does Janet Murray’s seminal Hamlet on the Holodeck. While not the first works to ever explore the interactive potential for fiction, their work is among the most influential long-form explorations, which laid thegroundwork for more widespread acceptance and formalized study.

Janet Murray’s Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace

Two of the first universities to begin interdisciplinary programs to study computer games were, unsurprisingly, MIT and Georgia Tech. Hamlet on the Holodeck was written while Murray was at MIT, where she began teaching “interactive fiction” in 1992 (Murray, Hamlet ix). She later went on to lead the Information Design and Technology program at Georgia Tech, among the first graduate programs of its kind (Murray “From Game-Story…” 6). Both these schools, sharing both a rigorous program of study in fields that fed into game studies and a student body with a passion for roleplaying games (live and tabletop) as well as computer games, proved fertile ground for new research programs. Over time, degrees in “Game Design” have sprung up at colleges and universities at all levels. However, most focus primarily on the art and technology that go into the creation of games, with analysis being pragmatic and not theoretical.

The high level of interest on the part of students, and the increasing demand for highly skilled workers in the ever-expanding field of video game design and production, has led to the development of these programs as a means of credentialing and training students to fill these roles. Beyond the notion of filling a market demand on the part of students and industry, Aarseth states a more philosophical imperative for the establishment of formalized video game studies, stating, “Today…we have a billion dollar industry with almost no basic research, we have the most fascinating cultural material to appear in a very long time, and we have the chance of uniting aesthetic, cultural and technical design aspects in a single discipline.”
However, some designers, like “Extra Credits” James Portnow, argue that game design programs often fail to provide the broad humanities base necessary to prepare students to be professional designers (Extra Credits). Turf wars over the disciplinary relationship between game studies and more established departments must take into account the primary purpose of schools, after all – the teaching of students. There exists a potential conflict between what is best for students (broad-based undergraduate programs with a strong liberal arts component, and more specialized, in-depth graduate study of games) and what may be best for career academics, who have a career imperative to carve out their own niche and identity as researchers.

I would argue, however, that for a well-rounded understanding of the field, study – whether formal or informal – of multiple disciplines is necessary. Individual disciplines may provide a theoretical framework for analysis, as well as their own rich traditions of the many elements that make up game design. And while Aarseth allows that “games should also be studied within existing fields and departments, such as Media Studies, Sociology and English,” he then goes on to say that “games are too important to be left to these fields.”

The demand on the part of students and industry for game design programs means that departments will continue to exist at least as long as the tuition dollars are there, and they have an important research contribution to make to the university community as well. There will be scholars who identify with these departments exclusively, and see researchers from related disciplines as interlopers. Such is the nature of interdisciplinary studies and departments, and Game Studies is not the first, nor will it be the last, to experience this conflict.

In the case of English Studies, studies of game design and game narrative open up new possibilities to explore issues underlying writing pedagogy, as well as an evolving definition of narrative that allows for agency on the part of the “reader” as well as the writer. Scholars of English Studies have much that they can contribute, and much that they can learn as well from this burgeoning field…if disputes over who has the “right” to study games do not get in the way.

Aarseth, Espen. “Computer Game Studies, Year One”. Game Studies. July 2001. http://gamestudies.org/0101/editorial.html.

Extra Credits. “Educating Game Designers – Too Much “Game” at Game Schools – Extra Credits.” YouTube. YouTube, 20 Apr. 2016. Web. 22 Sept. 2016.

Murray, Janet. Hamlet on the Holodeck. MIT P, 1997.

Murray, Janet. “From Game-Story to Cyberdrama” in First Person, edited by Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Pat Harrigan. MIT P, 2004, p. 2-11.

PAB Entry #1 – “Composition, Computer Games, and the Absence of Writing”

Moberly, Kevin. “Composition, Computer Games, and the Absence of Writing.” Computers and Composition 25.3 (2008): 284–299. Web. 15 Sept. 2016. Reading Games: Composition, Literacy, and Video Gaming.

Moberly’s article, written in 2008, begins with the idea that in games like World of Warcraft and Second Life, the written word was becoming scarce. As player communication moved from text-based to voice based, and given that game content was delivered primarily through sound and visuals, it seemed that writing (and reading) were becoming obsolete.

Text from a World of Warcraft chat window

However, Moberly states that, “If writing appears to be absent from these games, however, it is not because the games have evolved to the point where writing is not useful or relevant but because, in order to appear magical, the games must disguise the degree to which their technology is dependent on writing.” Certainly, the writing of design documents and dialogue as part of the game’s design and production is vital, though it is largely invisible to players. But while actual written words may be scarce on the page, the player goes through many of the same processes that a writer does.

Composition is occurring, in that the thought processes required to define a character visually using the symbolic language of the game is much the same as choosing words to describe something to an intended audience. An important lesson that can be applied to the composition classroom, is that “whether reading and writing takes place in the context of a computer game or a research paper, its effects are ultimately not manifested on the screen or on paper, but on the individuals who, in expressing themselves through the surrogate of the screen or paper, produce the discourse communities in which they are involved.”

Rhetoric and communication are happening in MMORPGs, even if they are being done through symbols and game mechanics. The choices players make in crafting identity can be applied as lessons on audience and tone, as well as relation to a discourse community. What impression do you want to give to your reader, or in this case, other players? A scantily clad Night Elf sorceress is going to send a very different message than a stout Dwarven warrior – one which can be deconstructed in terms of gender, race, social standing, and a host of other factors. As a player, are you going to make choices based on that character’s cultural background, or just do what feels fun? How much will you roleplay the character, through your words or actions?

The — Sometimes player dialogue choices are limited

Ultimately, Moberly is addressing one of the elements I feel is fertile ground for study – the ways in which games can help students learn the underlying elements that have to be in place before effective, fruitful writing can be created. In the case of World of Warcraft, issues of discourse community, relation to an audience, and finding a unique voice from which to write from are all inherent in game play. From a pedagogical standpoint, though, students will not necessarily absorb these lessons in a conscious sense – for a game to be applied in a practical way to composition studies, there has to be a teacher to act as a catalyst for students, to see these applications.

Additional Resources:
“Extra Credits” is a web series on game design. In their episode “Symbolism 101,” they discuss uses of symbolism from a design standpoint, and address issues including player identity.

“Narrative Mechanics” addresses how a story can be told through the mechanics – the way that a game works, the rules that govern gameplay.