Suspension of disbelief

The term Suspension of Disbelief (SoD) is a phenomenon present in all media in where the audience/player are willing to suspend there knowledge of the real world for the sake of entertainment and with knowledge of the limitations of the media.
SoD is what makes the audience "buy" that James Bond can take 20 blows to the face without even getting a nose bleed.

In the Wikipedia article on the subject many game conventions are given as clear examples of SoD. Like the player dying if falling into water - even though it seems plausible that the character (a heroic adult) would be able to swim.

There are however many things that will push the limit of how much an audience are willing to suspend their disbelief.

For example the fictional element called "Breaking the Fourth Wall (an invisible wall separating actor from audience)" often brakes the spell for an audience. These are the times when a character in a film or play directly addresses the audience, where the characters displays signs of knowing that they are in a work of fiction or reference something that they wouldn't know given the fictional world they exist in. In games, having characters referring to save points or controller buttons would be a clear example of this kind of brake. Even though it could be successfully employed if used conscientiously in the tongue-in-cheek manner of the Metal Gear Solid series (or more recently, the game Eat Lead).

A game always balance on what Murray calls "the enchanted threshold". Player's will always be willing to suspend their disbelieves (forsaking their primary framework for the fictional framework of the game), but will always be sensitive to brakes in the "fourth wall", especially if the game is attempting to portray a realistic virtual world.

Differences between film and game

In his dissertation Ulf Wilhelmsson has this to say about the difference between a first-person game and a so called subjective shot in a movie.

" In a movie, it is the lack of motor control, motor access to the diegetic environment that makes us wish for a visual presence of a protagonist. Computer games, on the other hand, will afford motor control. A lack of bodily presence and a lack of motor control is the very basis for a ”subjective shot”. It is what makes the shot subjective. "

This might be worth putting into the report when/if discussing the relationship between films and games.

Ulf goes on stating that it is the motor-link between player and what he calls Game-Ego (the object in the gameworld that the player has direct control over) that is the foundation of what we call game engrossment/immersion.

"The body of a Game Ego is anchored, it is made manifest, through the tactile motor/kinesthetic link between the game player and the game environment. We are really there. The concrete actions taken by the game player are the foundation for the identification with the abstract cognitive model of a Game Ego. It does not matter whether the movement is performed in 2-dimensions or 3-dimensions, as long as it is direct. The game player imagines him- or herself as moving in the environment. The color depth, i.e. the amount of colors, is also not important. Two colors are enough. As soon as something is possible to be perceived, to be something separated from its environment, it gets to be an object. It gets to be a PART in a PART–WHOLE configuration."

Affordances, spatiality and player manifestation tied to Caillois

I've re-read the previously mentioned article "Computer Games as Playground and Space", which discusses the spatial quality of games tied to Caillois game taxanomy, affordances and player manifestation in the game world. As our ground of knowledge has grown considerably during the last few weeks, this article now seems highly related to our work!

I've also contacted the author of the article, a senior lecturer at the university of Skövde, who has mailed me his PhD thesis "Enacting the Point of Being: Computer Games, Interaction and Film Theory", as well as a link to his article "Roger Caillois ur en narratologs perspektiv". The PhD thesis seems especially relevant for us.

Ramblings: Media tracks - Games vs Film.

In this "article" summarizing the book "New Vocabularies in Film Semiotics", I came across an interesting view on film as a media. According to the author, film has five tracks that can be used to convey meaning to the viewer:

1. Moving images
2. Dialogue
3. Noise (environmental sounds)
4. Music
5. Text

All these tracks are shared with Games as a medium. However, games have at least 3 more tracks at its disposal, that I can think of:

6. Responsive behavior (the game world responds to your actions and you are forced to respond in return),
7. Haptic feedback (Rumble)
8. Non-diegetic elements (the HUD and menus).

This might be something worth looking further into IMO....

Ramblings: Film language terminology

Here are some useful pieces of terminology used in film language and semantics dealing with the conveying of meaning:

In Film:
The Perceptual Level - This level consists purely of shapes, colors, textures and movement.

The Diegetic Level - Everything narratively denoted - Characters, objects, time, space, actions and events occurring in the "film world".

The Connotative Level - involves all the ‘symbolisms’ and metaphorical, analogical, and associative meanings that attach themselves to events and objects (or to relationships between
objects) outside of films, i.e., in culture.

The Subtext Level - involves hidden and suppressed meanings of symbols and
signifiers, framed by one of the “great narrative structures that obtain outside of films”. For example, the use of Freudian symbolism or the hero symbolizing a messiah (as in the Matrix) .

The Cinematic Level - accounts for the use of formal film/video techniques to produce particular artistic/formal/expressive results. For example, the use of a "wavy lines transition" to symbolize a character remembering a previous event.

In Semantics/Language
Five general ways of producing meaning, when using language:

We tell people how things are (Assertives)

We try to get them to do things (Directives)

We commit ourselves to doing things (Commissives)

We express our feelings and attitudes (Expressives)

We bring about changes in the world through our utterances (Declarations)

- I don't know if this is of much use, but I found, at least the film part, quite useful. Interesting to note is that films, in most parts, only work with assertiveness and rarely employ any of the other meaning conveyors - But that games do.

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.

Cinematography

Last Friday I contacted a professor of Cinematography at Gothenburg University, asking for help in coming up with useful books or articles on "Film language" (how information is conveyed to the viewer).

Still have not heard back from him though...... Perhaps he is occupied with the ongoing film festival.