Framing according to Linderoth

So I've taken time to read through the most interesting parts of Linderoth's book "Datorspelandets mening" about immersion in games. He basically set out to prove that the idea of full immersion (as an illusion of being in another world) is non-achievable, and wraps up the book by concluding that he is right - the idea of reaching an illusive state while playing games is an illusion itself. In the pursuit of proving this, Linderoth makes use of theories such as Caillois' taxonomy, Goffman's framing, Gibson's affordances, and Juul's fiction and rules... exactly like us, which makes the book quite valuable to us!

Linderoth speaks of framing as the internal and external dynamics of a game. According to his observations (of children playing games), the internal dynamics follow this pattern:

1. Frame confusion: the conflict of playing the game from a fiction frame (mimicry) or a rule frame (pursuing the goals of the game). This could also refer to whether it is reasonable to use fiction knowledge to understand the affordances (hence the rules) of the game.

2. Fiction breakdown: the discovery of the fact that the fictional world is inconsistent (or non-coherent if using the terminology of Juul). For example that some of the doors in GTA4 is possible to open while others is not.

3. Requesting compliance (överensstämmelse): realizing the constraints of the game but playing with the thought of a wider range of affordances.

4. Comical discrepancy (oförenlighet): realizing that terms or thoughts within one frame might have a completely different meaning in another frame, and realizing the comical aspect of that fact.

The pattern of external dynamics according to Linderoth is all about the social dynamics of the players (all his observations is of two or more children playing at the same time), as if playing the game takes place on an arena extending into the real world. While I think this conclusion is relevant, Linderoth only exemplifies with offline multiplayer games (Mario Kart 64, SSBM, Agent Under Fire), which is not really applicable to our case. Still the nature of the comments observed is quit interesting: negotiating about whether you're a successful player or a failure, inscribing characteristics of a character onto oneself (or avoiding the goofiness or sissyness of a character by referring to its affordances), or maintaining a friendly frame by cooperating in a game with competitive nature (mixing social frame with rule frame).

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Playing a game according to Linderoth is moving back and forth between a primary framework (competitive/rule frame) and keyed/secondary framework (mimicry frame). First of all, he considers rule oriented frameworks to be primary frameworks (not referring to any of our real world framework, for example we do not necessarily refer to a 'soccer frame' when playing a soccer game), which does not fall in line with our theories (which I think is a reason to reconsider our theories rather than discredit his). Secondly, he does not at all speak of vertigo (or chance) despite referring to Caillois, which I think we should take in consideration (I do still think that vertigo is related to games like ME, but to include it in a framing/immersion model might be too much). Additionally Linderoth speaks of aesthetically oriented frameworks (being drawn into a game by the graphics), which I think is quite relevant and something we should consider.

Among other things Linderoth states that as a player goes on playing a game, he/she eventually moves from playing fiction oriented to playing rule oriented - the same conclusion as Juul has.

The importance of game fiction

Since I've grown quite a bit of interest for the fictional space of games vs the actual 3D space visible to the player lately, I have taken some time to read through parts of Jesper Juul's book Half-Real which elaborates game fiction in relation to game rules. As Erik has mentioned earlier, Juul speaks of the (3D) game space as a place where fiction and rules overlap. What is interesting is that, from a UI point of view, there are cases when fiction and rules do not overlap, resulting in information outside the diegetic (fiction) part of the UI but within the 3D space (or rule space), for example runner vision in ME. In a similar way, there are cases when diegetic (fiction) information is presented outside the 3D game space, such as overlay GPS systems or the GTA4 cell phone. More on this later on.

Another chunk of Juul's material that I think that we should really take into account is the fact that a game world can be either coherent or incoherent. A incoherent world game is a game in which events in the game cannot be explained by the game fiction or contradicts the fiction itself; why does Mario have three lives in Donkey Kong? A game with a coherent world (fiction) is a game in which "nothing prevents us from imagining the world in any detail". Of course incoherent worlds weakens player immersion, and it is important to point out that this is not a problem for the UI designers to adress - it is the responsibility of the game designers to avoid genre conventions, if a strong immersive player experience is desired.

Juul also adresses the incoherent game world as a optional world, refering to the fact that experienced Quake 3 players (in fact I would say that this is common to most competitive FPS games) tend to shift focus from the fictional level of the game to the game as a set of rules. He exemplifies by the fact that players are initially attracted by the graphics, but as they play more they modify the graphics settings to get higher frame rates (thereby faster feedback) at the cost of graphical detail (lower texture resolution etc). From personal experience I know that Q3 also has the option to turn pickupable objects (weapons, health, etc) from detailed 3D models to very abstract 2D icons that are more easily spotted, which is also preferred by experienced players. In short, Juul's explanation to incoherent worlds is that "by game conventions, the player is aware that it is optional to imagine the fictional world of the game", and in some cases (competitive multiplayer) this can actually be desired.

Excerpts from the book "Hamlet on the Holodeck"

Here are some nice excerpts from Janet Murray's book "Hamlet on the Holodeck- The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace".

On Immersion:
"The experience of being transported to an elaborately simulated place is pleasurable in itself, regardless of the fantasy content. We refer to this experience as immersion. Immersion is a metaphorical term derived from the physical experience of being submerged in water. We seek the same feeling from a psychologically immersive experience that we do from a plunge in the ocean or swiming pool: the sensation of being surrounded by a compleatly other reality, as different as water is from air, that takes over all of our attention, our whole perceptual apparatus. We enjoy the moment out of our familiar world, the feeling of alertness that comes form being in a new place, and the deligt that comes from learning to move within it.... In a participatory medium, immersion implies learning to swim, to do things that the new environment makes possible." p.98-99

On regulating arousal (Murray claims that immersion will colapse both if percived as too fake and from being percived to be too real):
"In order to sustain such powerfull immersive trances, then, we have to do something inherently paradoxical: we have to keep the virtual world "real" by keeping it "not there". We have to keep it balanced squarely on the enchanted threshold without letting it collapse on either side." p.100

On The plasure of navigation:
"On form of agency not dependent on game structure yet characteristic of digital environments is spatial navigation. The ability to move through virtual landscapes can be pleasurable in itslef, idependent of the content of the spaces.... Pleasures specific to intentional navigation [are]: orienting ourself by landmarks, mapping a space mentally to match our experience and admiering the juxtaposition and changes in perspective that derive from moving through an intricate environment." p .129

On puzzle solving:
"The most dramatically satisfying puzzles are those that encourage the interactor to apply real-world thinking into a virtual world. (In Murrays own examples this could be as simple as knowing that the fire-breath of a dragon would melt an ice wall in the dungeon game Zork)" p.139

Overall, the chapters on Aesthetics and Agency (from where these excerpts were collected) are a very interesting read!

Ramblings: Taxonomy of Games and How it May Affect the UI

In the book "Man, Play and Games" from 1958, french philosopher Roger Caillois proposes an interesting classification of play and games that could be of importance for us.


According to Caillois, there's four fundamental categories of games: Agôn, games with a competitive nature; Alea, games of chance in which the participants have no control of the outcome; Mimicry, residing into a closed, conventional and in certain respects imaginary universe; Ilinx, the pursuit of vertigo (sv: yrsel), a sensory-rich experience of movement, speed and chaos.

According to Caillois, games can also be placed on a scale measuring how governed the activity is by rules. On this scale, the extreme points would be a) Paidia, the primary power of improvisation and joy, and b) Ludus, the urge to be challenged by difficulty and competition.

Games could of course touch on several of these categories. Mirror's Edge constantly attempts to provide the vertigo of parkour, but throughout the story mode mimicry is also an element as players play the role as Faith and immerse themselves in the game world, and in time trial agôn becomes a significant element as the competitive nature of the game is strengthened.


I think that this might be of importance, as it should be quite important to design a game UI that strengthens the nature of the game. Once again Mirror's Edge can be used to exemplify how this taxonomy can affect the UI. Vertigo is the dominant element of the game throughout all game modes, and this is strengthened by details such as blurring the edges of the screen to signify high speed. In the story mode, mimicry is also quite an important aspect, hence the lack of a 2D HUD breaking the illusion of being a part of the game world. However, in time trial the competitive nature of the game is stronger than mimicry, hence the addition of overlay digits for speed and time as they strengthen the competitive player engagement.

Summary of the book "Half-Real"

In the excellent book "Half-Real" by Jesper Juul the author is kind enough to summaries his thoughts on the relationship between a games fictional world and the rules of the game itself in the following way:

• A game can use functional stylization to implement selected interesting aspects of the fictional world.
• Space and level design in games are special areas where rules and fiction overlap -it works as a rule of what players can and can not do.
  
• Rules can cue the player into imagining a world. - I am not punished for killing, maybe the game is set in a war.
  
• Fiction can cue the player into understanding the rules of the game. - The game is set in a war - then killing might not have any negative consequences.
• The players real world actions (interacting with the controller) have a metaphorical relation to the fictional in game actions. Complex fictional actions (like shooting a hole-in-one) should be represented by complex (controller) interactions, and vice versa.
  

These points serves as excellent thought-provokers and guidelines, especially when designing for new player demographics.

Rules of Play: Magic Circles and Meaningful Play

During our tutoring meeting today, the notion of 'magic circles' was brought up. Wikipedia defines the term as "the membrane that encloses synthetic worlds such as FPSs, online social environments, and MMORPGs". The term seem to have been introduced by Johan Huizinga in the 30's (in the book Homo Ludens), and applied to gaming in the book Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals by Salen and Zimmerman.

Magic circles seems to be quite strongly related to immersion and engrossment, and even if we don't have much use for the term 'magic circles' itself, I think that we should check out the book Rules of Play. The authors also write about 'meaningful play'; when the actions that the game system affords the player seem enticing and make sense in pursuing the goal(s) of the game. This notion of 'meaningful play' seems highly relevant for us.

McCloud on How Words and Pictures are Combined in Comics

After a quick penetration of McClouds "Understanding Comics", one thing that could be directly related to our project is the variations of interplay between words and pictures in comics. Words and pictures can be regarded as the information channels in comics (together with shape of panels and space between panels).

According to McCloud, words and pictures are combined in the following ways:

Word specific combinations: "pictures illustrate, but don't significantly add to a largely complete text."

Picture specific combinations: "words do little more than add a soundtrack to a visually told sequence."

Duo-specific combinations: "both words and pictures send essentially the same message."

Additive combinations: "words amplify or elaborate on an image or vice versa."

Parallell combinations: "words and pictures seem to follow very different courses - without intersecting."

Montage: "words are treated as integral parts of the picture."

Interdependent combinations: "words and pictures go hand in hand to convey an idea that neither could convey on their alone."

This could be related to the notions of conflicting, redundant and complementary multi-sensory displays that Erik elaborated on in a previous post. I guess every single of the combinations above have their optimal uses for different purposes (immersive, narrative, etc.) - most interesting for us should be the interdependent interplay between information channels, to provide an experience as rich and immersive as possible for the player.

Book on film language

I think I have found the perfect book for us concerning film language: "Film Language: A Semiotics of the Cinema" by Christian Metz. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be available from any where but amazon.com. Perhaps they have it at the library.

Book list

A selection of interesting books from: http://wordsonplay.wordpress.com/2008/07/30/the-secret-books-of-game-design/

1. "Understanding Comix" by Scott McCloud

2. "Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience” and/or "Beyond Boredom and Anxiety" by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

3. “The Design of Everyday Things” by Norman