The
Road Less Traveled –
The Case for Computer Game Philology
Julian
Kücklich
www.playability.de
Brudermühlstr. 28
81371 Munich, Germany
+49 89 726 26 808
julian@kuecklich.de
Since the onset of the debate between "ludologists" and "narratologists" in the late 1990s, the latter have consistently lost ground to the former, or so it seems. That digital games are to be studied on their own terms, as Espen Aarseth demanded in his 1997 book Cybertext, is now widely accepted in the emerging field of game studies. Of what use, then, are the outdated models and terminology of literature studies that briefly dominated the theoretical discourse on digital games in the mid-1990s? Apparently, none whatsoever. But the "ludological turn" in game studies is by no means at fault – rather, the narratologists are to blame for not presenting their case properly. Far from being an "imperialist" undertaking aimed at incorporating digital games into the field of literature, the narratological, or rather, philological approach to this field is concerned with expanding the scope of literary studies and studying digital games as cultural texts with roots in literary history as well as the historical development of the media and games.
Therefore, the primary aim of computer game philology is to place digital games within these contexts, thereby positioning them, as it were, at a point of overlap between the literary context, the media context, and the ludic context. Only thus, by taking these contexts into account, can digital games be read and interpreted. While this hermeneutic approach to games is firmly rooted in literary studies, it acknowledges the contributions of media studies and game studies as an indispensable part of the theoretical framework, within which this interpretation takes place. Literary theory does not provide privileged access to the "meaning" of digital games, but it is an integral part of this interdisciplinary effort to "make sense of software" (cf. Friedman). While the danger of "theoretical imperialism" is slight, the possible benefits of employing literary theory in the study of games is immense. Its integration into the theoretical framework of game studies holds the promise of reconciling the clashing concepts of narrative and interactivity, of placing games within their historical context, and, most importantly, of going beyond narratology in describing and analyzing games.
There is a prevalent notion, both within and without the field of literary studies, that as far as games are concerned, narratological analysis is the only thing literary studies has to offer. This is a misunderstanding, of course, albeit a rather persistent one. It has lead literary scholars to apply all kinds of narratological models, from Aristotle to Genette, to digital games, mostly with rather disappointing results. This in turn has led most ludologists to assume that the benefits of narratological analysis are not worth the effort, and, by extension, that the whole of literary theory is not well equipped to offer new insights into the inner workings of digital games. This is one of the reasons why narratologists have become an endangered species, while ludologists are thriving and multiplying. In this paper, therefore, I would therefore like to point out a couple of reasons for their preservation that are not as selfish as one might assume. On the contrary: I would like to argue that both factions are likely to benefit from a common effort to save computer game philology.
One of the key questions to be answered in order to allow for digital games to be read and interpreted is: Can digital games be regarded as texts? Many attempts have already been made to answer this question, the most prominent of which is perhaps Aarseth's integration of textual adventure games into the category of ergodic text. While modern graphical adventure and role-playing games can be regarded as having developed from these early text-based games, there is nevertheless a development towards the spectacular from Zork to Grand Theft Auto III that is more easily associated with cinematic, rather than textual characteristics. The recent expansion of the term text makes it possible, of course, to subsume all kinds of phenomena under this heading, from cereal boxes to entire cities. It is my intention, however, to foreground the ties of digital games to their literary precursors, rather than submit them to textual analysis without sufficient reason to do so. Therefore, the question has to be reformulated to supply a pretext for such an operation, granted the answer is positive.
Can digital games be regarded as literary texts, then? That depends on what kind of game one is talking about. Playing a first-person shooter like Quake III, for example, hardly qualifies as a literary experience. The interaction of the player with the game is not aimed at making sense of the game, but solely at scoring higher than his opponents. The same holds true for sports simulation games and games of pure skill such as Tetris. Other games, most remarkably adventure games and role-playing games, offer an experience much closer to the hermeneutic process of reading a literary text, by challenging the player to make predictions about what is yet to come, or to reconstruct the events that led up to the present situation. Typically, in the course of such games, the player is presented with tasks to be completed and puzzles to be solved, which serve as retarding elements, or "narrative barriers", as it were, against the player's impulse to unravel the "plot" of the game.
As I have pointed out elsewhere (cf. Kücklich), these games can be regarded as being on a higher level of "narrativity" than the aforementioned action games and simulation games, which atone for this lack by a greater measure of interactivity, or "openness", respectively. In this model, interactivity refers to the frequency of the player's interactions, while openness refers to the variety of actions offered by the game, including "illegal" operations such as cheating. The different genres of games can then be placed in a triangular matrix which reveals the three criteria to be mutually dependent. Thus, when a given game has a high level of narrativity, the corresponding levels of interactivity and openness are necessarily lower. This triadic model allows for greater precision and flexibility in differentiating between games than the binary opposition of narrative vs. interaction, but, as will be seen later, it can still be vastly improved upon.
Apart from their characteristic mixture of gameplay and narrative which renders them a hybrid form between game and story, adventure games have further ties to the domain of literature, especially genre fiction such as sci-fi and mystery novels. There is a wealth of motifs and narrative conventions that the two media share, and it would be futile to even begin to list them here. Role-playing games have even stronger ties to epic fantasy literature, possibly mediated through pen-and-paper role-playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons (D&D). Quite obviously, Gary Gygax was strongly influenced by the imagery of J.R.R. Tolkien's novel The Lord of the Rings when putting together the first edition of D&D, and his system of levels and classes has been incorporated into numerous games from Ultima I to Neverwinter Nights. And although science-fiction RPGs exist, most games in this genre are populated by orcs, goblins and trolls, just like good old Middle-Earth. While this will hardly come as a surprise to anybody even superficially acquainted with computer role-playing games, it is still a strong indication that the ties between digital games and literature are stronger and more numerous than generally acknowledged.
If the games that computer game philologists are interested in are in fact hybrids between stories and games, we cannot be content with pointing out the similarities between digital games and literary texts, but we must also ask ourselves to what extent digital games are games. This seemingly trivial question is all the more relevant for being asked so infrequently in academic debate and all the more controversial for the attempts to contest the game status of digital games by using terms such as "interactive entertainment", or "interactive fiction" to avoid the term "game". Answering this question is further complicated by the lack of a definition of games, and ludology's somewhat naïve demand to regard games as nothing else than what they are.
However, ludology must be credited with rediscovering the works of Johan Huizinga, Roger Caillois, and Avedon and Sutton-Smith, which provide starting points for an inquiry into the "gameness" of games. While Huizingas portrayal of man as homo ludens is far too much concerned with separating play from every other kind of activity to be useful in the analysis of such an interdependent phenomenon as digital games, Caillois' criteria of ludus and paidea do indeed prove useful in analyzing games. Ludus and paidea are more or less synonymous with the English words game and play, in their differentiation of a goal-oriented, competitive, and rule-governed activity from an aimless, cooperative activity without fixed rules. Furthermore, Caillois develops the categories of agôn, alea, mimicry and ilinx to distinguish games of competition, games of chance, games of make-believe, and games of vertigo.
While in traditional games the boundaries between these categories are usually clear-cut, in digital games they become quite easily blurred. If a player in a first-person shooter finds herself without ammunition, for example, her opponent might decide to put down her own weapon, and join into a boxing match instead. While this behaviour is still in accord with the rules of the game, it is not competitive but playful in kind. Thus, a competitive ludic activity can easily turn into paidea, and vice versa. In traditional games, such as chess, a similar change of behaviour is also possible, but it usually constitutes a breach of the rules. The same holds true for the other of Caillois' categories. Many digital games, especially adventure games, rely on a mixture of competitive gameplay, luck, role-play, and spectacular, dizzying effects to engage the player's imagination. Therefore, adventure games can be regarded as "meta-games" which incorporate the characteristics of other games just as the novel in the literary domain combines features of the epic, the poetic, and the dramatic.
While this seems to indicate that the "gameness" of digital games is quite pronounced, even more so, perhaps, than that of traditional games, some characteristics of digital games suggest, on the contrary, that they are less game-like than their predecessors. For example, most digital games can be played alone, while in traditional games this is rather an exception than the rule. Furthermore, digital games usually do not require specialized equipment, physical space and the like – as opposed to games such as soccer or golf. This virtualization of their material basis makes digital games almost completely independent of space, time, and the presence of other players. But this does not constitute a sufficient criterion to separate digital games completely from traditional, "analog" games. Pen-and-paper role-playing games, for example, are equally independent of material objects, and some digital games do require specialized equipment, either in the hardware or software domain. Therefore, despite their differences, analog and digital games have to be regarded as part of the same tradition.
In what way can we regard digital games as media? This question can be answered under two different aspects – by foregrounding the computer as a medium and by foregrounding the game as a medium. Both aspects should be taken into account and will therefore be treated separately. Another concept to be taken into account when considering digital games as media is the concept of remediation, as developed by Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin in their 1999 book Remediation. This concept must be expanded, however, if we want to adapt it to the goals pursued here, since Bolter and Grusin regard games simply as a remediation of film, rather than a medium that incorporates a plethora of other media ranging from literature to virtual reality environments. The definition of remediation provided by Bolter and Grusin – "the representation of one medium in another" – is sufficiently general to remain unaltered.
In his critique of Johan Huizinga titled "Homo Ludens Revisited", Jacques Ehrmanns states: "Just as culture is, in the last analysis, communication, so is play ... and game. Thus, any theory of communication (or of information) implies a theory of play ... and a game theory" (Ehrmann, 56). This seems to imply that if communication can be regarded as a game, individual games can be regarded as specific forms of communication, i.e. media. This view is supported by the observation that games are uniquely qualified to achieve co-orientation of different consciousnesses, as constructivist media theory claims for any kind of medium, albeit in varying degrees. Quite obviously, the experience of playing a game can be radically at odds for different players, although each of them would claim to be playing the same game as the others. A further parallel between games and media lies in the fact that both phenomena have been described as inherently social in nature, i.e. impossible to conceive in a social vacuum.
However, one of the strongest indications of games' status as media is their tendency to remediate other media. While this holds true for traditional games as well, e.g. board games based on films or television series, it is exemplified best by digital games, since they are difficult to conceive outside their dense and highly interdependent media context. Apart from films and television programs, digital games remediate media such as the World Wide Web and comics, to name just the most prominent forms of remediation. While a lot of work has been done in the field of digital games' adaptations of films and vice versa, the connections between digital games and other media remain widely uncharted. Nevertheless, there is quite obviously an "intermediality" at work between these media in regard to their aesthetics and content.
Film and television are maybe the media closest to digital games, insofar as photorealism has been the benchmark for the representational qualities of digital games for quite some time now, and for a while they even seemed to evolve toward "interactive films". In their chapter on digital games in Remediation, Jay Bolter and Richard Grusin state: "In addition to remediating the computer itself, they also remediate television and film" (Bolter and Grusin, 91). Television and digital games seem especially alike, since they both achieve a distinct hypermediacy by incorporating different kinds of information (visual, textual, numerical, etc.) into one screen. The remediation of film in digital games became possible through the advances in 3-D graphics which enabled them to "define a space that could be continuous with the user" (94). This continuous space is further explored by Lev Manovich, in his 2001 book The Language of New Media. In regard to remediation, Manovich stresses the relevance of a concept he calls transcoding, which allows for the seamless translation of one digital medium into another. With film becoming more and more dependent on CGI, the ties between the two media will therefore become even closer than they already are. Two recent publications, The Medium of the Video Game, edited by Mark J.P. Wolf (2002), and ScreenPlay – Cinema/Videogames/Interfaces, edited by Geoff King and Tanya Krzywinska (2002), further highlight the interdependence of these media.
The increasing connectivity of personal computers has led to a widespread tendency to regard the computer as a medium, rather than a tool. This perspective has been further supported by theorists such as Brenda Laurel who challenged the readers of her 1991 book Computers as Theatre to "[t]hink of the computer, not as a tool, but as a medium" (p.126). In trying to fathom the implications of this new way of perceiving digital computers, it seems advisable to look at computers from a semiotic point of view, since the most general definition of a medium is as a sign-processing device, and semiotics is concerned with analyzing sign-processes, or semiosis. This happens to be the approach taken by Peter B. Andersen in his book A Theory of Computer Semiotics (1990), in which he suggests a classification of digital signs based on their permanency, transiency and handling. He goes on to put this classification to the test by analyzing the digital game Dark Castle.
Although his theory seems well equipped for the analysis of digital games as a medium, it has some drawbacks that seem to be founded in Andersen's unwillingness to base his classification on Charles Sanders Peirce's semiotic triad of object, sign, and interpretant. Andersens theory fails to make sense of the game being analyzed, and has therefore been criticized for being "idiosyncratic and inadequate" (Aarseth, 33). Indeed, this first attempt at applying semiotics to the sign processes involved in playing a digital game does not tap the potential of semiotics in this area. For Aarseth, this failure to adapt semiotic theory to the requirements of digital semiosis appears as a failure of semiotics in general, and he concludes his critique of Andersen's work by stating that his approach is flawed because he does not take the "mathematical reality beneath the surface" (39) into account. His rejection of Andersen's Theory of Computer Semiotics is justified, but from the viewpoint of computer game philology he rejects it for the wrong reasons. For this approach is not concerned with the underlying "mathematical reality" of a game, but its connections with other media, including the medium of literature.
When analyzing the connections between digital games and literature within the larger context of media and game studies, the possibilities to apply literary theory to various aspects of these games are more numerous than it might seem at first. Apart from narratological concerns, including point-of-view, plot structures, and the relation between narrated time and time of narration, there are opportunities for textual analysis in the texts that appear within the game as well as in its periphery. Furthermore, literary theory is well equipped for analyses of the characters of digital games. The number of traits that digital games and literary texts have in common might seem to have decreased due to the constant evolution from text to graphics, but this is not exactly the case. For example, the narrative framing of digital games has been improved and extended, compared to digital games from the period of text-adventures and 2D-scrollers. Furthermore, new features of digital games, such as the log in role-playing games, depend on literary precursors. Dialogues featured in cut-scenes follow the same conventions as dialogue written for the screen or the stage, thus embedding digital games further into an intertextual dependency.
Leaving aside the issues of point-of-view and narratological roles, narratological structure and time relations appear as the most interesting points of narratological analysis in the domain of digital games. This is mostly due to the fact that the deficiencies of the structuralist models of narration become blatantly obvious in the study of digital games. Concepts based on the binary opposition of sjuzet and fabula, or plot and story, are hardly appropriate to analyze literary texts, although in some instances this has proved feasible, but in the digital domain such simplistic models are bound to fail. This is mostly due to the fact that there is no sequence of events in digital games that can be put in a fixed temporal order. Although many digital games follow a rather rigid plot line, there are always opportunities for the repetition or omission of certain sequences, forked paths, fail-continue-structures, and the like, all of which are present in literary texts as well, without being recognized by structuralist narratology. Attempts to expand the scope of narratology in this respect, such as Roland Barthes' concept of tmesis, have been few and far between.
The central misunderstanding that causes most, if not all of these problems, lies in the confusion between the hypothetical textual levels of a literary text and the actual semiotic levels of code and interface of a digital game. However, while a literary text is manifest only as the imprint of signs on the pages of a book, a digital game is manifest both as a sequence of numerical data processed by the computer's different components, and an array of signs on a screen interpreted by its human user, or users. The reasons for the confusion of two unrelated concepts lie simply in their structural similarity, but beyond that there is hardly anything to substantiate this conjecture. The two-dimensional models developed by structuralist narratologists are bound to fail for several reasons, one of the most prominent being the fact that digital games' narratives unfold in space as well as in time.
The concept of spatial narration in digital games, as introduced by Mary Fuller and Henry Jenkins in their influential essay "Nintendo® and New New World Travel Writing" (1995), has been taken up and developed further by theorists such as Lev Manovich, and it is now almost a truism to say that digital games are spatial, rather than temporal, narratives. This also holds true in games in which the three-dimensional space has been "linearized", e.g. in 2D-games that use scrolling to evoke the impression of a continuous motion in space. As Espen Aarseth points out in his essay "Allegories of Space", 2D-games as well as 3D-games often feature teleportation devices despite their otherwise naturalistic representation of space. This seems to indicate that space in digital games is more than just a backdrop for the game's action, but a narrative medium that has similar functions as time has in a traditional narrative. This view is supported by the fact that narrative time is much more versatile in literary texts than in digital games, allowing for manipulations that would severely disrupt the "flow" of a game.
Temporal structures in digital games have been studied in some detail by Markku Eskelinen in his essay "Aspects of Time in Computer Games". Here, Eskelinen bases his observations on Genette's categories of order, frequency and duration, complementing them by the categories of speed and simultaneity. Indeed, Genette's classic study of narrative time seems well equipped to analyze time structures in digital games, although this should probably be ascribed to the simplicity of the subject of analysis, rather than the versatility of Genette's theory. Nevertheless, Eskelinen's analysis shows that it is worthwhile to turn to advanced narratological models in studying digital games. Of course, Genette's theory is still limited by the restraints of his structuralist background, but his thoroughness makes up for this handicap by allowing him to take into account modes of narration seldom found in traditional literature, but abounding in digital games. Thus, erratic, repetitive and selective reading are the exception rather than the rule in traditional narratives, while in digital games they are the norm.
It remains to be seen how fruitful the application of textual analysis to digital games will be in the future, but the success of computer game philology does not depend on the outcome of these exercises. The actual concern of computer game philology lies in the development of a model of interaction between player and game. This approach is guided by the idea that literary theory is, at its core, a theory of interaction between the human mind and a meaningful array of signs, constituting a semiotic process in which the materiality of these signs is secondary. Nevertheless, digital games have specific qualities in which they differ from literary texts. In order to take these qualities into account, literary theory is complemented by models borrowed from semiotics and cybernetics, thus laying the foundation for a theory that is at once deeply rooted in literary studies, and going beyond traditional philology in embracing other theoretical concepts. Obviously, computer game philology is far from being a "finished" theoretical framework, just as every theoretical undertaking is always a work-in-progress as long as it is alive and growing. What I present here is a first sketch of a theoretical alternative to the binary opposition of narratology and ludology, and it will depend on future efforts whether it will prove successful.
One of the peculiar qualities of digital games is their ability to project a fictional world, something traditionally ascribed to literary texts, films, and other forms of fiction, but not to games. With the possible exception of role-playing games, traditional games do not fall into the category of fiction, and the pleasure of being immersed in a game of chess or Monopoly is distinctly different from the pleasure of reading a novel. But in digital games, these two pleasures are often mixed, since the pleasure we derive from playing does not depend solely on the actual gameplay, but also on the feeling of immersion in a world different from the real world. In regarding games as fiction, I rely on Wolfgang Isers theory of fiction, which is also a theory of play. Iser describes the interaction of real, imaginary, and fictional elements in literary texts as a game, which constitutes the fictional world of the text. But this game-process will not come into motion without the participation of the reader. In fact, the reader is the crucial element to enable the three positions to communicate with one another, and thus create the world in which the reader becomes immersed in.
The "worldness" of literary texts and digital games allows for the integration of another theoretical concept into the theoretical framework presented here: the theory of possible worlds. Possible world theory does not originate in literary theory, but it has been adapted for textual analysis by, among others, Umberto Eco and Marie-Laure Ryan. Ryan's interpretation of this theoretical concept is especially useful in the analysis of digital games, because she is the first to take electronic texts into account. In her 2001 book Narrative as Virtual Reality, she focuses specifically on digital games within the larger context of the spaces created by different forms of narrative media, but it is her 1991 book Possible Worlds, Artificial Intelligence, and Narrative Theory that I rely on here. Without going into too much detail, one can say that possible world theory is concerned with the accessibility of fictional worlds and their sub-worlds from the world of the reader. Typically, a sub-world of the world projected by a fictional text will be a mental projection of one of its inhabitants, such as a memory, a dream, or a fantasy.
The process of reading a fictional text can then be modeled as a series of interconnected semiotic processes, involving the world of the reader, the world projected by the narratorial agency of the text, and the "real world" of the text. The latter is only accessible through its representation by the narrator, and thus must be regarded as an ideal abstraction never to be reached in the actual process of reading a literary text. In fact, the three semiotic processes, which I call the intratextual, the intertextual, and the transtextual, form a semiotic triad by themselves, albeit of a higher order, which explains why the text's real world, that obscure object of desire, must remain unattainable. For semiosis is by definition an infinite process, the "object" of which is ever in the process of becoming determined. The important difference between the semiotic processes of reading a literary text and playing a game lies in the fact that the intermediate semiotic level is purely virtual in literary text, while it has an actual physical manifestation in a digital game. This difference can be easily described using the terms suggested by Philippe Bootz for the description of electronic texts: the text-as-written (texte écrit), the text-as-seen (texte-á-voir) and the text-as-read (texte lu). While both game and narrative are based on a written text, and processed in the mind of the reader, or player, they differ in the mediation between the two levels. In the process of reading, the text-as-seen is merely a mental projection, something that can be reconstructed from the text-as-read. But in a game, the text-as-seen will actually appear on the screen.
From this brief outline, it should have become clear that the project of computer game philology strives for a theory of ludic human-computer interaction that uses literary models to understand how games can become media for the processing of complex signs. In this conceptualization, narrative itself is no more than a sign, although it is infinitely more complex than simple iconic or indexical signs. By the same token, gameplay is a sign of a higher order, gaining complexity as it is processed within the semio-cybernetic system formed by game and player. From the literary point of view, the only way games can be read is by playing them. The game cannot be separated from the process of playing it, and this play-process cannot be separated from the player. Only by acknowledging this interdependence can we start to make sense of digital games and their impact on the way we make sense of the world.
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