Week 7 Questions

2. How is time represented in the game? Is there a separation of story and discourse time? How does the game’s use of time allow for interactivity?

Time, in a game, is relative and depends on the game. In some games, 1 day is 3 minutes, in others, it’s the same as ‘real time’. There are tons of ways of measuring time. In days, in minutes and seconds, in stages.

There is definitely a distinction between story and discourse time. The story is usually predetermined, and has already happened – when you play the game, all you’re doing is running through the narration (Metz’s “Time of the thing told and the time of the telling”). And because games aren’t entirely self-contained, I’d argue that there’s another time dimension in the perception of time by the person experiencing it – be it how long it takes for the person to play the game, or how long this time seems to the person in relation to the other activities. For example, how long it takes a person to read the text, or figure out how to get to the next level.

Without time, there would be no interactivity. It’d be… akin to reading a book. Time is one of the facets that we are able to manipulate as part of the activity. It creates limits and provides a way of manipulating the narration (flashbacks, cut scenes, etc). It allows the player to save at a certain point, go back, and try again.

What I find really interesting is the use of time in the later versions of Pokemon. Like the usual games, you have flashbacks (in the form of cut scenes, or a character in the game relating to you what has happened). By saving and reloading you can go back to a point in time, you can try again. Pokemon also keeps track of how much time you actually spend playing the game, leading some players to try to finish the entire game (i.e. defeating the elite 4) in as little time as possible.

What sets the later versions apart from other games is how the time of day in the real world affects what happens inside the game. Certain Pokemon will evolve into different Pokemon depending on the time of day (morning, afternoon, or night) once a certain criteria is reached (either a certain level or a certain amount of “happiness”). So if you want a certain Pokemon, you have to make sure that the evolving criteria is reached in either the day or the night (depending on which one you want), otherwise you’d end up with a different creature. For example, Eevee (which evolves into 5 different pokemon, of which 2 of the evolutions depend on the time of day). If Eevee reaches the happiest it has ever been, and levels up during the day, you’ll get the psychic Pokemon Espeon. If it reaches this criteria at night, you get the dark Pokemon Umbreon. In addition, certain maps only have some creatures show up at night, or in the day time. To effectively “catch them all”, you’d have to play at different times, at least.

Week 6 Questions (I think)

3. Costikyan’s definition of games as “an interactive structure of endogenous meaning that requires players to struggle towards a goal” includes a stress on the self-contained nature of the meaning within a game. From this definition, any form of gambling, such as mahjong or poker played for money, is not a game. Discuss.

Although I can understand where Costikyan is coming from, I quite disagree with his definition. Such a definition, while useful, is too much of an academic trying to nicely demarcate where the lines in their field of study are. It cannot be said that a game is entirely, purely endogenous. The meanings held within the game are largely symbolic – he argues that these symbols retain an unchanging meaning within the game.

His use of the bloodforge hammer and monopoly money, however valid, do not refer to the goal of the game. They’re the means to the goal. I think “goals”, as we’ve seen so far, have been looked at too narrowly. I think of goals as “why do people play games?”, not “why do people play =this= game”. I feel that people play games for the interactive experience – as though they are with other people, talking to them, responding to them. All the game does is let a person experience an environment, or a life, of another, no matter what the game is. RPG, FPS, RTS etc.

Similarly, I think symbols used outside the parameters of the game, however, still mean something. Because the experience of the game does not end when you’re not playing the game. If anything, -=everything=- in the game has an object it is representing from life itself. The game mimics reality, and we can’t separate what we know to be reality from the game’s reality. Everything has to be taken within its context.

So when we derive meaning in a game, it isn’t entirely within the game itself. Meaning comes from us. Why do we accord value to items which would be at face-value, meaningless? I think it’s because we put a little of ourselves on the playing field when we play the game. We live a small part of who we are or who we want to be when we play the game. We want to be generals, assassins, soldiers, God. Even when symbols within the game are taken out of the context of the game, they still hold meaning to us as individuals, if not the common meaning held by everyone else. Playing a game is a highly individualistic experience. It is also, inherently, a means to an end.
Therefore, any form of gambling can be a game. My family plays mahjong every sunday, in 10 cent increments. It’s not for the money – the most you can win in one game is $6.40. We play to keep my grandmother occupied and thinking, to catch up with what happened over the week, to discuss who’s getting married next and what to cook for dinner. To us, it’s a game – we’re all out to stop my mother from winning so much money – and yet, it’s so much more than that.