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Today I will talk about some interesting aspects of
computer games.
For a start I'll give a brief, historical overview and
an introduction to different types of games. I will
then point out some theoretical thoughts on narrative
concepts in games, and later, there will be a practical
part, where we will, of course, play...
The era of computer games began around 1980 with the
classic arcade-games (Fossils
- LogBook's classic video game archive) as a direct
follow-up of Pinball machines: Space-Invaders, Asteroids
and Pac
Man. You had a joystick and a fire button - you
put a nickel in the slot and you could play for a certain
period of time or until you got killed....
In 1981 PACMAN for the Atari-computer came on the market,
and soon afterwards other game companies also released
Atari-versions of the most popular Arcade-games. In
addition, battery-powered standalone game toys became
quite successful.
People didnít play much at home, the computer was not
an entertainment-machine and not common in a normal
household; all that was mostly for teens and kids, and
basically considered a waste of time...
The main structure of games was more or less organized
vertically: the player had to solve a task or riddles
(a problem- "how to survive..."), only to
gain access to a higher level, where the tasks were
more complicated, the monsters would move faster, and
so on...until he reached the final level, where he was
considered a winner and probably saved the world...
Of course games evolved along with hardware improvements,
faster chips, higher graphic resolutions, more memory
- that allowed more sophisticated solutions for real-time
rendering and interaction.
Different types of games began to appear, with new narrative
forms in which the "reader=user" interacted
in new ways with a fictional environment.
Up until now, there are fixed points in these games
- the beginning of a travel and the end, the step to
another level; within these very few fixed points there
are multiple readings with different chronologies, but
there is no order.
The leading question is basically "where to go/what
to do next."
A very good example is Myst
(Cyan, 1993), an adventure-game, designed and directed
by Rand and Robyn C. Miller. It is believed that Myst
has sold more copies than any other PC game.
The non-linear game play lets players go anywhere, at
any time. Unlike other adventure games, there is no
inventory, and players never die. Anything you do can
be undone.
I was struck by the many references insistently pointing
towards textual concepts and writing in general. For
example the players main mission is to collect pages
of books and therefore restore a blue and a red book.
These books also serve as links to other worlds in the
game.
There is a strong Jules Verne influence in the Victorian
trappings in several of the rooms ó some places look
very much like Captain Nemo's cabin.
Those spaces and motifs used in the game Myst show strong
references to literary precursors. Their spatial function
is an intertextual one: the labyrinth alludes to the
Greek labyrinth as well as to the technological set
of Science Fiction; added to this SF-set we find an
oversized gear wheel, and a spaceship. The library and
the books allude to the world of Borges or Umberto Eco's
libraries as well as to the world of fiction and storytelling
in printed books in general. We find two wells, which
remind us of the function of a well in fairy-tales and
last but not least, the cottages in the trees, which
are reminiscent of Calvino's Barone rampante who lives
in the trees.
Curiously enough, a fan of the game wrote a journal
(The
Myst Journals) about his travels within the game
and put it on the Internet...
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| Space and Memory |
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The player's capacity for mental reconstruction can
help to transcend a mental image of geometric relationships
among the linked parts of the game.
The efforts to conceptualise the work spatially can
be quite successful, especially if the author helps
out by providing means of orientation. A reader/user
can navigate the game by creating a mental model of
the game's architecture.
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| Frequency |
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Frequency or repetition seems to be a time-category
applicable to computer games. The example of Myst shows
that frequency is one of the most important categories.
The library - which is the central place in Myst - has
to be visited several times to insert the pages into
the books or to find information about the codes. As
the player has to return to it again and again, the
temporal structure of Myst is cyclical rather than chronological.
The cycle of events leads to the final event and the
solution of the mystery of this game. It is not the
sequence of events or their causal order that make us
understand the final event, but their function as elements
in a puzzle which has to be constructed.
Time, as well as space, is here condensed in a way,
which allows for multiple perspectives. These lead to
a multiplicity of narratives, all embedded in the boundaries
of the given space.
To sum up, I would say that computer games use narrative
structures to organize their worlds.
A semiotic structure is projected onto the game to construct
a possible world, which plays with traditional literary
motifs and structures of time and space. Depending on
the player's response the computer presents more space,
more images, and more text to explore. While a printed
fictional text presents its episodes in a linear order,
the digital space of the computer game removes that
restriction. The movement between the episodes and places
is dependent on the player's interactions with the game
or intrusions into the given space. The player's "reading"
experience depends on his decisions and interaction.
Fictional works, for example the fairy-tale in its traditional
form, as well as its modern forms, such as fantastic
literature and science fiction function as sources for
the intertextual narrative space in computer games.
(See the study "Cybertextspace"
by Dr. Karin Wenz)
Along with the success of the Internet emerged a new
form of interaction in computer games: the multiplayer
game. Instead of fighting all by himself against a pre-programmed
artificial intelligence, the player can meet other players
online, play, and communicate with them.
As an example for this technical change, that is one
of the reasons for the success of computer games in
mainstream culture, I will focus on action games, the
so-called first-person-shooters.
Action games in their single-player versions started
also with (mostly poor) storylines that refer to SF/Phantasy
settings. By training certain skills (aiming, movement)
the player fights his way through different levels until
he reaches the final showdown.
The leftovers of the narrative structure are only represented
by the decor (the "textures") that evoke a
certain SF-Fantasy-Adventure-setting to justify a situation
of permanent threat and danger...
To be a good/successful player it is necessary to know
by heart the space and the architecture, the placement
of useful items (ammunition, weapons, health-packs...)
and the respawn-cycles of those objects.
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| Wolfenstein |
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Wolfenstein 3D (1992):
One of the early first-person-perspective shoot 'em
ups was created by John Romero of idSoftware.
The game was very simple (no 3D-modelling, everything
was flat), but very difficult. The aim was to find your
way through each level to the lift, which would take
you up to the next level without being killed by the
Nazis. This involved killing anyone who got in your
way, negotiating complex mazes and finding keys to locked
doors. Extra points were awarded for collecting treasure,
killing all of the enemies on the level and for locating
secret rooms. In one of the secret levels in Wolfenstein
we meet someone that looks familiar...Pac
Man!
By the time the source code was released the fans started
editing the game, created new
levels, modifications
and so on.
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| Doom |
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Doom
(1995), created by John Romero of idSoftware was still
"fake-3D",
as the models were still flat. It was the first game
that introduced a multiplayer-client for peer-to-peer
networks (LAN).
Recently, a group of programmers developed a tool
for system administration with a 3-D interface based
on Doom.
The editing community took of again with new level
design and total conversions
of the game.
With the introduction of the Multiplayer-Online-Clients
the timeline and the explanatory aspect of discovering
and progressing became less important. (Time became
more important in another sense: the rates of your local
ISP/Telephone company...)
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| Quake |
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Quake (1996):
Quake is id's sequel to "Doom"; it featured
a new graphics engine where everything including players,
monsters, and artefacts was rendered entirely of polygons,
which made it the first real 3D-game ever.
The multiplayer-version offered real online gaming and
allowed players to communicate through a build-in chat-client.
The release of the game code made it possible for a
fast growing community of builders to tweak the game
in every potential way. (Examples: Airquake/ Quake-Battle-Chess,
Fisheye-quake).
Today, there are over 4000 custom Quake-maps available
for download at fileplanet.com;
you can check out the worst levels ever built at "maps
from hell".
The fans and players rate these creations on their websites,
discuss new features and editing problems, and give
basic explanations to newcomers about the language and
the etiquette in Quake. (www.weenie.com)
Clans, leagues and web-rings for single players and
team play are formed, each with their self-designed
skins. (See Ocrana
- a german Quake clan)
That sounds a bit like talking about sports, and it
sure has that attitude sometimes - here is CLQ-the
Champions League for Quake. This website permanently
tracks about 150.000 game servers and 10 million players
worldwide and provides rankings and statistics for gamers.
A standard exercise in Quake-editing is the creation
of custom "skins", a selfdesigned outfit for
the player-model. The material that is used here reflects
a permanent recycling of pop culture (Batman, Silver
Surfer, Ronald Mc Donald, Sailor Moon, Spice girls,
Cartman, Dilbert, ...)
In fact, in 1999 we see a transition of the topic of
gaming from the underground to mainstream-culture. This
can be seen both in contemporary pop videos (Backstreet
Boys, Missy Elliott) and in contemporary art shows (Game
Over, synreal)
Last fall I curated an art show at shift e.V., Berlin
called RELOAD,
where we demonstrated some of the features that I am
talking about here.
With the recent release of Quake-3-Arena the group of
artists and programmers keeps working together on further
developing the concept of the show.
From my point of view the narrative in todayís action
games switched from the storyline of the game to the
social context that emerges from the communication between
the players and fans. The Internet provides an open
metastructure that allows the creation of a strong community.
The history of Computer games is closely linked to the
development of digital media and the hybridisation of
culture and can therefore serve to highlight this process.
I am closing with a quote from Dr. Karin Wenz of the
English Department at the University of Kassel:
"The player of a computer game is not safe. Trying
to experience a computer game is more like a personal
improvisation with the risk of failure. The tensions
at work in a computer game are not incompatible with
those of narrative texts, but they constitute an extension:
a struggle not merely for interpretive insight but also
for narrative control. The reader in a computer game
comes to be a player. While an understanding of and
reflection on our world is missing, the cybertextual
nature of computer games allows its users a better understanding
of the potential and the future of multimedia."
Martin Berghammer mailto:shift@csi.com
More Links:
Blue's
News -- The Real Deal
WomenGamers.Com
- Digital Women
PlanetQuake.com
Shugashack.com
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SEE ALSO:
<Berlin>
<Nuernberg>
<Geneva>
<Quake 1>
<Quake 3>
SOFTWARE
<id soft>
WEIRD
<stuff>
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