Galloway categorizes anything to do with acts of configuration without actually interacting with the game world as nondiegetic operator acts. He specifically places Real Time Strategy (RTS) games in this category as the entirety of playing an RTS is interacting with the menus around the screen. In a game like Starcraft, the mere act of placing unit production buildings in reasonable positions, or technological buildings in places that they will not be easily found or destroyed is perhaps, even, a majority of the gameplay. This video is a beginner’s guide to Starcraft II in which the importance of building placement is emphasized and demonstrated. Building placement is literally choosing where to build each building and is an act of configuration accomplished through the menu constantly on-screen.
Tag Archives: Galloway
Video Games and Play
Galloway introduces its readers with the idea that video games are actions. In order to play the video game, users must cooperate with a machine in order to achieve a goal that exists in a world of its own. Although users may not always be ‘playing’ the game according to authors Huizinga and Caillois, Galloway suggests that video games are different and that they must be interpreted differently from traditional games. There is this separate factor, the machine, who introduces the idea that a game can be played even when users are not actively interacting with the game. The machine can create gaming elements, such as those creatively pointed out in Upgrade Complete, that immerse intrinsically motivated players into a virtual world of gamic actions (p. 38).
It is interesting to see how Galloway attempts to interpret several definitions of ‘play’ into video game culture. “To arrive at a definition of video games, then, one must take Huizinga and Caillois’s concept of play and view it as it is actually embedded inside algorithmic game machines” (p. 21). Does Galloway mean to say that ‘play’ is programmed into video games and that any video game user is implied to be a player? The definition of play has evolved concurrently with culture (in my opinion), so would this just be the next step in our (the world’s?) definition of play?
And what gets me the most is Galloway’s idea of diegetic machine. Even when a user is not there, the game continues to ‘play’. Although no operator actions are occurring, do machine actions constitute play? Galloway doesn’t answer the question when he brings up the idea of cut scenes and only suggests a different interpretation, but I’m curious as to what he would say if he were to give a direct answer.
Blurring the lines of Galloway’s “Four Moment” Schema
In the first chapter of Gaming, Galloway introduces a schema for loosely categorizing games using four contexts; diegetic, nondiegetic, machine, and operator. Depending on which constitutes a majority of the involvement, that of the console (machine) or that of the player (operator), and upon the amount of graphic on screen to be considered a part of the gaming world (diegetic) and that which is not (nondiegetic), Galloway is able to create a means of identifying the essence of a game and its experience. What is most intriguing about this concept is the means for which it provides a way to not only draw the lines to distinguish say, diegetic machine acts from nondiegetic operator acts, but also to identify those which distort the lines completely. Galloway rightfully acknowledges that these categories cannot be held as concrete, but I think what is so beneficial to these quadrants is their existence in relation to those games which blur the lines. As technology is evolving with each passing year, I believe that these lines will be further distorted. For example, what would Galloway have to say about the infringement of nondiegetic space by the diegetic world in a 3-D video game? The same could be said about virtual reality games, or motion-sensor games in which the body becomes the controller. As the operator becomes more and more crucial to the processes of the machine (with the elimination of a controller with the XBOX Kinect for example) how do we as an audience demarcate the space that the game acknowledges and that which it does not? I think these are interesting points to discuss is moving forward with the analysis of these “four moments in gamic action,” as discussed by Galloway.
Comparing Video Games to Financial Markets
While thinking about Galloway’s special treatment of video games as a special kind of game, I initially thought “Aren’t they basically just really complex board games with a ton more pieces (i.e. millions of lines of code)?” Then, I realized there was more that separated video- and board-games than scale, in much the same way that there was something unique about the first financial institutions.
Before banks, lenders and borrowers had to find each other and trade directly. This worked for small economies, but limited the amount of money an entrepreneur could get to fund a new or growing business. Similarly, many games (board games included) require the direct action of the players to make it work. Every piece in Monopoly is moved by a human, with the exception of gravity and inertia working on the dice. This allows for great diversity in games, but there is a limit to their complexity (Anyone who has ever played the game Squad Leader by Avalon Hill understands this all too well). However, when financial intermediaries (banks) came around, they provided a valuable middle-man with larger networks of lenders and borrowers than any individual. This opened up a new world of financing for businesses, and the result has been a tremendous increase in prosperity. Again, in a similar way, the game console is that middle-man for games. No group of players could possibly keep track of everything necessary to play a game like Civilization or World of Warcraft without the help of a computer. Much like banks opened up many new financial possibilities, computers have, to an even greater extent, opened up a new world of games that were previously unimaginable.