Documentary Games and Gameplay

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Back in 2007-2008, when I was still a young’un in high school, it was difficult to be a deeply interested video game fan without hearing about controversy. That was the period when many of the video games Ian Bogost mentions in his essay about documentary ‘newsgames’ were released. Games like Kumawar, Six Days in Fallujah, and Super Columbine RPG were regularly featured in gaming websites and blogs. An inevitable media rampage soon followed. I dabbled in playing a lot of these types of games (except Six Days, which never saw the light of day), and they all had something in common.

They weren’t very entertaining.

The Kumawar episodic games were critically lambasted for being simplistic, sloppily made first-person shooters. Super Columbine RPG was made with the RPG Maker tool, inherently limiting its gameplay to that of a generic, 90’s-era turn-based roleplaying game. The subject matter they reference is definitely compelling, but it’s hard to be engaged in a game when the actual ‘game’ part of it is flawed and boring. Some of the flash games are better in this aspect, such as the McDonald’s game I blogged about earlier in the year, but they’re also just that: very simplistic flash games.

Bogost speaks of the spatial, operational, and procedural aspects that can shape these documentary games and help them properly replicate and emulate historical events. But should these games be critically discussed without mentioning the playability and game design aspect? Obviously, the coding and design of the game itself is distinctly separate from the more scholarly and political ideas behind it, but shouldn’t these games be enjoyed and analyzed holistically? Considering how new this entire genre of media is, I didn’t exactly expect a masterpiece out of any of these games, but Bogost does convince me that the potential is there for video games to be serious documentary works.

We don’t have a video game equivalent to ‘Planet Earth’, a documentary series that demonstrates deep technical achievement and accessibility, but we might just see something like it emerge.

Phone Story: Why I Hate Politically-Motivated Gaming

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I was (and still am) that gamer that spent most of his life constantly seeking examples of hip, contemplative games to show to his high school and college girlfriends, family members, and other general skeptics that video games are art, that they are documentary, that they are more than just mindless polygon killing sprees. It’s why titles like Deus Ex and System Shock, with their blend of politics, philosophy, and “fun” will forever sit at the top of my list of favorite games the same way someone would look at Blade Runner, Pulp Fiction, or Battlestar Galactica.

But then there is Phone Story. And despite my admiration of thought-provoking video games, there seems to be this uncanny coincidence regarding “political” games: while effective in conveying their stance/argument, politically-motivated games, like Phone Story, are simultaneously unable to deliver a strong, thoughtful game play experience.

Designed as a series of mini-games with an accompanying narrative, Phone Story is an “educational game” that seeks to instruct willing consumers on the dangers of smart phone technology and its relationship to exploitation through global capitalism and neo-colonialism without, in any way, attempting to condescend or insult their audience as responsible or complicit. But that, in and of itself, is OK. If the developers of Phone Story want to bludgeon over my head the dangers of global free market economy through a series of “mini-games,” I am fine with that. I take more issue with the way in which the game itself is designed, alluding back to the “uncanny coincidence.”

Beginning my first playthrough, on the first mini-game, I was so focused on hearing what the voice had to say that I was not aware of what I was supposed to do. I immediately failed, and was promptly told to start over. I did, and focused on the objective. I completed it, but I did not entirely remember what the voice was trying to say. And over this series of mini-games, I constantly found myself frustrated, struggling to hear the political narrative while at the same time completing the objective. I found it was easier to listen the first time, and fail, than try and listen while completing the objective.

I think this frustration came into climax about four or five “games” in, where I was to click and drag objects off a conveyor belt and give them to one of the four appropriate, color-coded sprites. I was so focused on this menial task, I was no longer listening to the activity. I was no longer listening to the narrative; I was mindlessly attempting to fill up the yellow bar and reach my “goal.” And, in a sense, that entire process of completing the game, of being “educated,” is cheapened.

But perhaps that is also the point? Perhaps I’m just that uneducated consumer walking into glass doors to get my next iPhone. It is impossible to get that daily dose of “mindless” entertainment while still remaining conscious of the economic impact these smart phones have on the population(s) of both developing and developed nations. We like to think of video games as thought-provoking exercises, equal to their print-friendly narrative counterparts, but even elements of Phone Story can be trivialized by objective-based gaming through progress meters and upper-right corner high scores.

So while I think Bogost is on the mark establishing “documentary games collide with a problem of participation,” I think Phone Story is an example where some documentary games are not too linear … but not linear enough. (69)

What happened to my smiling background?

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World 1-1These smiles in the background defined big parts of my childhood. The mood, the design, the color palettes; all have become secondhand to me in my platforming history. Not the menacing, cryptic excerpts found in Jason Nelson’s “game, game, game and game again.” Disturbing music mixes, hand-drawn doodles and scribbles, aggressively written text scattered in the background; everything about this game has theming that transcends what the game has you doing. Which is jumping and moving. Collecting collectible doo-dads. Secret pathway and taunting vortexes of doom. What am I playing?

Well it seems like I’m playing a game that is more about the message than the gameplay. The gameplay supplies a means of progressing through a narrative, a non-cohesive one at that. This could be compared to flipping a page, clicking on next page, or other means of interacting with various parts of new media as we’ve explored this semester.  The appeal of the game is the level on interaction involved. Because of past histories with games, surpassing the video game era and reaching into every history of game development, internet designers have a huge catalog to study and develop games with.

What I found most engaging about the games is the methodology on directing the player. Starting level with extended titles to theme the stages and presenting an ambiguous player to control allow anyone accessing the game a unified degree of entry. The game does not care if you are a gamer or not; it wants you to be able to play.

What is most engaging is the theming and tasks. One level that stuck out to me was the level with block. Having the creature go up the stairs collecting things was reminiscent of the end of most Mario Brothers levels, which the ends of the stairs would lead to a leap for the flag of completion. Instead, we have an intended fall to the bottom and scrolling to the left. This part felt the most degrading, as my gaming desire for success involved failing in the most literal sense.

Meaning Maker

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“The computer program has no real understanding of the user’s input” (Bogost 11).

Writing regarding the Rogerian psychologist program “Eliza,” Ian Bogost makes the point that the computer itself cannot really understand the input of the user, but can only process the input and respond based on procedural rules that the programmer has set up in the system. Although it is clear that a computer program has limits to its functionality as a result of its design, this question of “meaning,” I believe, is critical to the discussion of the relative persuasiveness of computer-produced rhetoric.

“Wherever there is meaning there is persuasion” (Bogost quoting Kenneth Burke, 21). If this statement is inversely true, then in order for a piece of digital rhetoric to be meaningful, it has to be persuasive. That persuasiveness is (according to Bogost), a consequence of the process written into the program and the effectiveness of its expression. I would extrapolate further and propose that “meaning” is also created in the interaction between the user and the program, and that the interaction follows the procedure of the designer and is constrained by their authorship of “potential events” (Bogost 64). In other words, meaning is not inherent to the actual physical technology and the efficacy of the program can be limited by the foresight of the designer.

The design or process that is crafted by the program creates a space in which a discourse is possible and obviously intended. The interface of the digital media allows for new ways to interact with information. In addition, the programs are able (by their processes) to articulate that information successfully to the user. Working as a medium for the purposes of the creator, computer-generated rhetoric is a powerful tool in producing avenues of meaning and understanding that are no longer chained to geographical locations or limited by physicality. Transcending the boundaries of all the forms it utilizes (i.e. text, image, film, sound, etc.), the computer program can be undeniably persuasive in its ability to communicate meaning.

Perspective

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I thought that the different perspectives on all the different games was very interesting. If you look at PhoneStory, most of the actions you take as a player are as the villain. You are the one controlling the soldiers who enslave children, you are the one throwing phones as people, and you are the one catching people as they attempt to commit suicide. The perspective is incredibly important for the game’s procedural rhetoric. Because we are the consumers of these phones, the game is forcing us to take the positions of those who are helping us get those phones, and it creates an uneasy dissonance inside me as a consumer and as a player. Part of the procedure is making me do something horrible, similar to the torture version of Tetris. The perspective makes me the bad guy.

As for Darfur is Dying and games like it (Ayiti: the Cost of Life is another), the game forces me to take the perspective of an impoverished person or family and try to figure out a way to survive. Spent is another game that accomplishes something similar. It makes you thing about things in a way you normally wouldn’t just based on how the game is build and what it makes you do as a player. What the interesting about Unmanned and September 12th is that both of those games are from the standpoint of the American military, not from the Taliban or Osama bin Laden. It’s like how in most games the bad guys are Nazi or zombies. I can’t think of a single game where you try to help Hitler exterminate the Jews or help Stalin build a better Russia. People like to be the “good” guys, the protagonists of their games, but most of these really call into question not the natural protagonists of these games, but who we as players should feel about it. Killing someone with a drone feels weird when in most games you play with a variety of weapons in the field. Being powerless without any weapons to fight with other than searching for water feels weird. One of the strengths of games in that it gives their players a feeling of agency, but the way these games are build and the perspectives of these games gives the player a feeling of alienation and immobility. I think this created dissonance is in part used to try and spur the player into real life action, which I’m not sure it does. I’m already against wars overseas and I still haven’t donated a single dollar to Darfur. While these games all have a clear perspective and motive behind them, is it truly effective? Do people’s opinions change based on video games?

The Day After

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Before I played September 12th, I immediately envisioned a “day after” tragic portrait of New York City- guessing it would be a game in which I would have to navigate throughout the aftermath on the streets.  I thought it would be sort of like “We Feel Fine” but more of an emotional look into the people of the city.  This was not something that really appealed to me, so I wasn’t really looking forward to the game.

Instead, this game was much more shocking than I had imagined.  The setting is in what I can only assume is Afghanistan.  There is a sandy landscape with palm trees, simple square buildings, outdoor markets, and people that seem to be in two categories: bad guys, and civilians.  There are even dogs and children running around.  It is a simple game and background, and I couldn’t figure out how to do anything but shoot.  Also, navigating through-out the game, you can’t really go anywhere, the entire landscape is the same.

The goal seems to be to hit the “bad guys” without harming any civilians, which seems to be impossible.  I fired a few times, and as I got a “bad guy” down, I also killed civilians, and even a dog.  The game plays with your emotions, as you hear a woman crying when you accidentally hit a civilian or civilian area.

The games says in the beginning that there is no winning or losing- just choosing to shoot or not to shoot.  At first, I shot many times, trying to hit my target, but it seems no matter how hard I tried, I also took out people and things that I really didn’t want to- such as a outdoor market, dog, or child.

The people all kind of look alike, and it is hard at first to spot the terrorists among the civilians.  Everyone has the same type of walk and seems to be moving at the same pace.  I assume that the point of the game is that it is very hard to kill the terrorists without hurting innocent bystanders, and that shows the harsh reality of war.

Mario is an unreliable narrator

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Television will rot your brain. Heavy metal makes you worship Satan. Dungeons & Dragons will make you a homicidal lunatic. These are all claims I have heard growing up, and the people who said them honestly believed them. Of course, television has also brought us “Sesame Street”, heavy metal has introduced millions to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Dungeons & Dragons has taught many lonely, lonely young men how to do math. (They’re still lonely, though.)

As Ian Bogost et al note in their article “Documentary”, “[c]ontroversy is nothing new for video games – it is a medium that has been accused of inspiring prurience, brutality, and sloth for decades.” This puts video games in excellent company, particularly as they attempt to make the difficult transition from entertainment to documentary. However, despite all of the strengths that video games bring to the genre, there are certain inherent qualities to video games that have to be taken into consideration along the way, qualities that may be more easily masked than in other mediums.

As N. Katherine Hayles has suggested, “print is flat, code is deep”. This “flatness” applies equally well to film. Video games have an underlying structure that, while they may seem to offer more freedom of control in a given environment, still do not reflect the real world. The programmers make the rules, and those rules can shape the outcome either blatantly (such as with Kuma\War, wherein the player’s actions are tightly constrained to reflect John Kerry’s account of events), or subtlety (such as with JFK Reloaded, wherein the game physics define the possibility of “making the shot”). By shaping the outcome in this way, the programmer has the option of shaping the narrative despite any protestations of objectivity (such as Kuma’s insistence that “the players can decide for themselves”).

Another way that games’ protean nature allows them to differ from more traditional media is in presenting procedural reality. Rather than creating a specific situation with established characters in a linear story, a situation is created with a rule set that players engage with and make their own decisions. This gives the illusion of freedom and a lack of bias, but invokes Noah Wardrip-Fruin’s argument that “we must read both process and data.” How the character interacts with the scenario is dictated by the rules as they are provided, and choices are constrained both by the data given and the processes set forth. As an example, the game Peacemaker involves several sets of variables that include potential points of bias. How each “leader” is programmed to respond to a situation, the resources given to work with, and even the intermediary goals can be opportunities to shape the overall narrative, as well as the fact that the only available solution is a two-state solution.

While video games have great potential as documentary, they are no more or less objective in nature than their predecessors, and it is important to be aware of the ways that they will be manipulated, by their creators, their supporters, and their detractors.

 

My Poor Avatars

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In the game “Darfur is Dying,” the player is faced with the realities of the current situation facing those living Darfur. Trying to get water was very difficult for me (maybe because I never play video games?). I’m not sure if it was purposely that difficult, but I made it to the well on my third avatar, only to get captured on the way back with my jug full of water. It is a sad game to play. It was incredibly difficult to attempt to get to the well only to continually get caught. I got most of the family caught. I was sad to realize how slow the mother was and she was caught very early on. I tried to go to the village but we were out of water to I had to keep go out to forage for water. It was quite frustrating and I bit scary. Avoiding the trucks of Janjaweed was not an easy task. It seemed like they just kept going. I felt bad for my avatars for getting stuck with me. I felt bad selecting little kids to run around trying to get water. It made me feel almost like a bad person because it seems like something an adult should do since there is such a high risk of getting caught. I managed to get almost the entire family caught. I’m unsure if the game is intentionally difficult in order to create a realistic experience of the sad real-world conditions in Darfur. I know that I felt frustrated that I didn’t do very well. For full disclosure, I couldn’t figure out what to do in the village. All I did was wander around.

I could see how this game was like what Ian Bogost discussed as far as the game recreating a realistic experience by commemorating “the memories of those lost by sharing the operational reality” of their experiences. Unlike the 9-11 experience that Bogart refers to in that quote, the Darfur situation is repeatable because the issue being addressed by the creation of this game is that these atrocities continue to occur and the game hopes to inspire the user to care and want to do something about it.

What’s the difference?

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Sure, I play my fair share of shooters–Call of Duty, Halo, Medal of Honor–but when reading this article, I was taken aback with the notion of rewarding a player $100,000 emulating the ballistics of JKF’s assasination with hopes of dispelling the many conspiracy theories that surround that tragic day. The question I asked myself while reading this was: how is this different from Call of Duty? or any game for that matter that involves the assassination of any figure of histortical relevance.

Tracey Fullerton introduces the term documentary games, which serves as an “umbrella term for commercial war games that feature fictional recreations” (62). Now, this may apply to Call of Duty and Medal of Honor, but it appears the same for JFK Reloaded, which doesn’t make sense–the assassination wasn’t fictional, it really happened.

How is this different from killing Fidel Castro on Call of Duty: Black Ops, for example? In the game, players are given the objective to storm Fidel Castro’s stronghold, and neutralize him. As you break through security, exchanging gunfire with hostiles, you reach Castro, and put a bullet right between the eyes–awesome, right? Of couse it is! You completed the objective, but would players feel awesome putting a bullet through JFK’s head, and if so, why? Is it because you accomplished the assassination, or is it because your ballistic marks match that of Lee Harvey Oswald’s?

This article was interesting because it questioned my morals. How is it that I can streight-faced run into an enemy stronghold, kill everyone, put a hole through the head of a communist revolutionary, continue through the rest of the campaign, and not feel disturbed? I can’t really see JFK Reloaded as a game–a documentary, sure, but not a game. In Call of Duty you can game over very easily, and continue from a checkpoint. Conversely, JFK Reloaded only has one way to win–there are no chekpoints, or game over screens.

Twine: where E-lit meets mapping

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Twine is a program used to create interactive stories through hypertext mapping. E-literature and mapping have met in the middle with this program, letting “you organize your story graphically with a map that you can re-arrange as you work.” Similar to the IF stories or choose your own adventure, twine grants agency to the reader, as well as the writer. As a reader, you choose how you will navigate the story, and how the story will be told. As a writer, twine allows you to manipulate time, space, and perspective through its mapping medium.

I recently downloaded the program and began experimenting with twine as a prospective medium for my digital object project. As I began fooling around, I was genuinely surprised by the ease at which I understood the program. Each passage can be created in a new window and linked together, creating a web-like story that can be a simple as  point A to point B, or as complex as a spiral. “Links automatically appear on the map as you add them to your passages, and passages with broken links are apparent at a glance.” Over all, the program is fairly user friendly, even to a new user.

However, that is not to say that there is not a fair amount of frustration to be had, especially once users get past the novelty of learning how to simply use the program, and begin to attempt creating a complex and thoughtful story. I’ve stumbled upon complications while mapping out my story: if it is too simple, it’s just not that interesting, but if it’s too complicated to follow, the reader will get lost and become uninterested (at least, in my opinion). So I am working on finding a balance between continuity and linear prose, and innovative twine mapping that involves the reader, not by simply asking the reader to click through links to continue the story, but by truly engaging the reader, and asking for their participation.