In her paper "The Puppet Master Problem: Design for Real-World, Mission Based Gaming", Jane McGonigal suggests that "the success of the puppet master challenges our assumptions about the kinds of action and interaction that qualify as gameplay, reveal dramatic interpretation to be a viable game mechanic, and demonstrate the value of a dramaturgical perspective for pervasive game design." Discuss how these ideas could be applied to designing elements of narrative and gameplay in interactive media systems.

In our previous readings, ludologists like Huzinga have described games as something "outside ordinary life" while Greg Costikyan defined a game as "an interactive structure that requires players to struggle toward goals". Other ludologists give different definitions of games, but basically most agree on the fact that games are free, separate from real life, where player interact within a given set of rules to work towards a goal. Powerplay, which McGonical considers "live gaming events" where players were given no goal, no rules, no choices, no resources to manage... just a series of very specific, physical locations and an impending cascade of actual, real-time moments" hardly seems to fit the definitions of games earlier stated. However, they were still highly successful, with up to thousands of players participating.

One characteristic of powerplay which could be constructive in designing gameplay in interactive media systems is the lack of choice. Uninteractive as it may sound, having set routes for players to follow may make a game more successful. As can be seen from the success of powerplay, having to make choices does not necessarily make a game more enjoyable. Sometimes, perhaps it may be useful to allow the players to decide or interpret how they should perform the tasks instead of what task to perform.

Another concept that game designers could adopt is the concept of “live gaming events”. I feel that what makes powerplay so exciting and enjoyable is the fact that boundaries are so blurred, and players actually have to go around the real world at specific times to participate. The fact that no expectations or goals are given makes it even more mysterious. Even on interactive media systems such as the computer, it is possible to link real life to games, thus blurring the lines between them. Designers could allow players to perform tasks on certain websites only at certain times of the day, for example, or link current affairs to the game being played. Items/codes needed to continue with the game could also be sold in convenience stores at certain times of the day so that players will have to leave their computers and walk in the ‘real world’ to continue the game or to find out what’s going to happen next. Perhaps this use of space and real time will lead to greater immersion on the part of the players, where the game becomes less like an online game and more a part of their lives.

Ultimately, I feel that it is not the level of interaction, the goal, or the level of separation a game has from real life, but sometimes the uniqueness of the game which causes people to want to play. By adopting some features of powerplay previously not adopted in interactive media, designers could possibly create a whole new class of games which gamers truly enjoy.

Markku Eskelinen, an independent scholar and self-professed "ludologist", in his response to Jenkins' paper "Game Design as Narrative Architecture", says:
According to the well-known phrase of David Bordwell, narration is "the process whereby the film's sjuzet and style interact in the course of cueing and constraining the spectator's construction of the fabula." In games there are other kinds of dominant cues and constraints: rules, goals, the necessary manipulation of equipment, and the effect of possible other players for starters. This means that information is distributed differently (invested in formal rules, for example), it is to be obtained differently (by manipulating the equipment) and it is to be used differently (in moving towards the goal).
By systematically ignoring and downplaying the importance of these and other formal differences between games and narratives as well as the resulting cognitive differences, Jenkins runs the risk of reducing his comparative media studies into repetitive media studies: seeing, seeking, and finding stories, and nothing but stories, everywhere. Such pannarrativism could hardly serve any useful ludological or narratological purpose.
Do you agree with Eskelinen's dismissal of Jenkins' approach? Why/why not?

I largely disagree with Eskelinen's very biased and narrow dismissal of Jenkins’ approach in his paper "Game Design as Narrative Architecture". Basically, in my opinion, Eskelinen has ignored every attempt Jenkins has made to establish the fact that games are NOT stories through his statement “He assumes computer games to be a storytelling medium among many others”. This is clearly not the impression I got while reading Jenkins’ paper.

Jenkins had stated very plainly that although many games do have narrative aspirations, “not all games tell stories”. Jenkins made no attempt to fit all games as storytelling devices. Having stated that so clearly at the beginning, it was clear that although he didn’t write in a ludologist’s point of view, he didn’t necessary disagree with them either.

Jenkins had never implied that his paper gave a totally objective or complete picture of games. Instead, he merely meant to focus on a different aspect of games in his paper. Much of his paper centred on spatiality in games. This discussion wasn’t relevant to every single computer game, but to the kind of games Jenkins was talking about such as Half-Life and Majestic. Jenkins couldn’t possibly cover all aspects of games in this one paper. For Eskelinen to read this paper and assume that Jenkins was referring to all games was unfair.

Eskelinen stated that while Jenkins looked for “superficial similarities” between games and stories, he ignored “crucial and incontestable” differences. This was evidently not true. Jenkins mentioned that “the experience of playing games can never be simply reduced to the experience of a story”. This statement shows Jenkins’ acceptance of the fact that games and stories are different kinds of media.

I feel that while Jenkins may have downplayed the “dominant cues and constraints: rules, goals, the necessary manipulation of equipment, and the effect of possible other players”, Eskelinen had also dismissed the fact that games can indeed be used to tell stories. Ultimately, they both had done their job in their field of work. It is impossible for these two individuals to write from a totally unbiased point of view. Jenkins wrote from the point of a “narratologist”, while Eskelinen wrote as a ludologist. Their views shouldn't just be compared, but be integrated to give a fuller picture of games.

Jesper Juul distinguishes between games of emergence, where a game is specified as a small number of rules that combine and yield a large number of game variations, and games of progression, where a game presents the player with a series of puzzles or challenges which must be accomplished in a certain order. Discuss whether games of progression, which often attempt to combine a narrative structure with gameplay, are unique to computer-based games.


While thinking about this question, at first it seemed pretty unlikely that non-computer games could be a game of progression. However, using Juul’s definition of games of progression which ‘directly set up each consecutive challenge in a game’ and players have to ‘perform a predefined sequence of events’, I realised that several games, especially more traditional ones, fitted the definition.



The first game that came to my mind was finger puppets. Every Saturday, I teach five-year-olds mathematics, and during our breaks, they will insist on playing with ‘The Three Billy Goats Gruff’ hand puppets. Basically, this involved me reading from the story out while they move the character puppets according to the story.

Another classic example of non-computer based games of progression would probably be Adventure books. Some examples of these are the ‘Mario brothers’ series and less commonly known, R.L Stine’s ‘Goosebumps’ Adventure books. These books grant the reader a very low level of interactivity by allowing them to choose from a limited amount of endings to the story.


Although games of progression often contain a strong narrative structure, this is not always the case. Five stones, a traditional South-East Asian game which I often played as a child, is one such example. This game requires players to complete a series of steps by throwing and catching the stones. If a step is performed wrongly (for example, if two stones are picked up instead of one), the player loses her turn. Although one could argue that every game is different since every throw sets the stones differently, I still consider it a game of progression (with small emergence components) since no matter how the stones are thrown the same steps still have to be performed.

To conclude, although it is not obvious, games of progression are not limited to just the computer. Progressive games may be more easily created on computers, but they can still exist regardless of medium.

Choose a game which you feel attempts to incorporate strong narrative elements. Answer one of the following questions, in 400 words or less.

Discuss the tension between agency and narrative structure within the game. Do you agree that narrative and interactivity can never co-exist? Why/why not?

Having played so few computer games, the only game with a strong narrative I’ve had experience with would probably be one of the first Pokemon games to come out on the Game Boy and the computer, Pokemon Yellow. Pokemon Yellow was released in 1999, when I was still in Primary school, and being a closet fan of Pikachu then, I used to secretly play it on my brother’s computer.

Pokemon Yellow is an example of a typical progression game with components of emergence. The kernals in the game/narrative are basically set. The satellites, on the other hand, can be explored freely, giving the user an illusion of high interactivity and freedom.

The main aim of the game was to collect a total of 8 badges from the ‘grand masters’ in a certain order. This order followed the same order used in the Pokemon series. Pokemon caught also have the same strengths and weaknesses in the game as it does in the series. Through the game, I feel that the player lacks global agency, but holds a lot of local agency. When fighting with other pokemon masters, the player can choose which of his pokemon to use, which would affect the outcome of the battle. Many small choices have to be made, which will show immediate responses.

The creators of the game managed to give players a limited amount of global agency. A feature which comes closest to global agency is the choice the player makes around the beginning of the game, choosing which pokemon to capture and which to train. This would affect the battles fought at a later stage. However, because Pokemon was set as a narrative which coincides with the TV series, I feel that some aspects of the game had to be compromised. For example, the player never dies. If a battle is lost, the player merely faints and starts the level again. Also, the game is set within fixed boundaries, and the player doesn’t have much space for real time story generation.

I somewhat agree that narrative and HIGH LEVEL interactivity cannot coexist. Taking Pokemon Yellow as an example, the narrative was built through conversations one had with different Non-Playing Characters. I feel that in the creators’ almost desperate need to include narrative into the game, conversations were directly copied and pasted from the TV series to the game, making it slightly out of context and irrelevant, especially for players who have never watched the TV series. However, the overall narrative could be figured out, and a substantial amount of moderate interactivity which managed to create variations in the game was included.

I choose question 2.

Consider the work you created for project 1. Is this work actually a game? Why/why not?

Our group did ‘Scarytales’ for our first project, a spoof of fairytales. Although I wouldn’t consider our group project a game, it is pretty obvious that there were some aspects of gaming and play in it.

In ‘I Have No Words & I Must Design: Toward a Critical Vocabulary for Games’, Greg Costikyan defines a game as ‘an interactive structure that requires players to struggle toward goals’. Many of these points he used were similar to that of other writers such as Zimmerman and Caillois. Though Scarytales wasn’t meant to be a game, many areas in our project fulfilled the requirements of a game according to these authors.

Our group started out with the goal of creating a piece of interactive fiction (IF), something exploratory, using the same concept as ‘The Afternoon Story’, only done in flash. However, as our brainstorming progressed, we felt that adding game aspects would probably make our ‘IF’ more interesting. Thus, the first modification we created in our project was to add a goal- to collect all the necessary ingredients to finally defeat Sadako and save Fairytale Land. Users had to follow set rules (e.g. ‘Do not go to the mountains. YOU WILL DIE.). If users decide to go against these rules (if they try exploring the mountains), they die, and the game is over.

Besides these intentional modifications to the project, Scarytales started out with some aspects of game which also fulfilled requirements of an IF. For example, the project is interactive. Users have to interact with it to fulfil goals and explore the whole story. However, as Costikyan goes on to say, even a light switch is interactive. I feel that Scarytales is interactive primarily because it is greatly influenced by works of IF and secondarily because it’s adopted some aspects of games.

To conclude, Scarytales wasn’t created with the intention of making a game. However, through the various adaptations, it managed to fulfil much of what the professionals consider games. Ultimately, Scarytales is a piece of Interactive Fiction influenced by techniques used in games.

1. Montfort argues that interactive fiction is distinctively different from hypertext fiction, stating: “There is… nothing in the nature of the lexia or the link, those fundamental elements of hypertext, that allows the reader to type and contribute text or provides the computer with the means to parse or understand natural language. […] Hypertext fiction also does not maintain an intermediate, programmatic representation of the narrative world, as interactive fiction does.”In terms of understanding how these two forms relate to/differ from narrative, is this distinction significant? Or are they more closely related that Montfort would like to admit? Discuss.

Yup, it is significant because it is the MAIN distinction between IF and hypertext. Basically, I feel that the two forms of narratives are the same if it were not for the fact that interactors can contribute to the story in IFs, while they can only change the sequence of the story in hypertexts.

Using 'The Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy' as an example, if we were not able to pick up items, to throw them back down, or to kill ourselves for that matter, it'd just become a hypertext where one just explores a story but isn't able to do anything about it. There wouldn't be that level of interactivity that classsifies it as an IF.

2. Espen Aarseth defines cybertext as a perspective on textuality, which considers a work as a textual machine, and sees the reader as having to make a non-trivial effort to traverse the text. Discuss whether Scott McCloud’s “Carl” comic strip can be considered a cybertext.

It's a textual machine since its got WORDS which we can READ right? Erm... and I guess the non-trivial effort lies in the fact that the comic strip is awfully tedious to read. We've gotta put in effort just deciding which frame leads to where. And after all that effort we've still got to make sense of what it actually means. But that's probably due to the fact that it, in my opinion, isn't well laid out. And it's a form of cybertext because it's been published online.

3. Does a potential narrative such as Paul Fournel’s “The Tree Theatre: A Combinatory Play” satisfy Crawford’s definition of interactivity? Could it be considered an example of interactive media? Why/why not?

To me, it wasn't highly interactive since the choices of statements were really limited. It probably doesn't fulfill Crawford's definition either. Crawford states that interactivity is only achieved when there's the input, process, output sequence. In this play, since the statements have already been decided, the process stage is probably lacking because there isn't much of a need to process.

When it's being acted out in front of an audience, however, it could become more interactive. Actors often change their style based on the kind of audience they get, and processing could take more than just choosing which statement they want, so there'll be a continuous flow of thoughts between actors and audience.

In "Hypertext, Hypermedia and Literary Studies: The State of the Art", Landow and Delany suggest that “hypertext can be expected to have important institutional as well as intellectual effects, for it is at the same time a form of electronic text, a radically new information technology, a mode of publication, and a resource for collaborative work… Hypertext historicizes many of our most commonplace assumptions, forcing them to descend from the ethereality of abstraction and appear as corollary to a particular technology and historical era. We can be sure that a new era of computerized textuality has begun; but what it will be like we are just beginning to imagine."This passage was written in 1991, at a time when hypertext systems were available in somewhat limited forms such as Hypercard and Intermedia, use of the Internet was largely confined to academic institutions, and the term “World Wide Web” had only just been coined. Now, 15 years later, comment and reflect upon the impact hypertext has had on the world.

I feel that even after such advancement, there is only so much Hypertext can influence in the world beyond the computer. Within the "World Wide Web", Hypertext continues to play an increasingly important role. Now we have an easier time doing searches and stuff.

Beyond that, I guess we could say that hypertext emphasizes the interconnectedness of everything... you know that 'no man is an island' concept. But I don't go through my day thinking about things like how hypertext influences our life. It's just when I have to answer questions like these that I'm forced to think up something.= )

gosh this uploading of photos thing took me a whole afternoon thanks to my ultra slow comp. i'll upload more later if my comp lets me.

1. In his paper “Modular Structure and Image/Text Sequences: Comics and Interactive Media”, George Legrady states: “Meaning in the interactive work is a result of the sequential selection of components that the viewer assembles in the viewing process. The viewer can then be considered as someone who actively constructs the narrative through the assembling of fragmented or modular information elements. The sequential sum of viewed selections becomes the narrative.” This approach to interactivity is reflected in his work Slippery Traces.
Discuss how this approach to constructing a narrative changes the roles of the reader and the author in the process of narrative transmission.

I believe what narratives like comics can do which other narratives(eg. novels etc) may not be as good at is allowing readers to play a part in constructing the narrative. By filling in the gaps between frames, the reader is intepreting what could possibly be happening. This intepretation may or may not be different from what the author intended, and the author can't be there to tell the reader whether or not he is on the right track.

Using the example of the most simplified comic strip containing 2 frames of Carl telling his mother that he won't drink and drive, and later showing a tomb stone, one could make a multitude of intepretations as to why he died, which would most likely, at some stage, be different from the 52 complete slides shown. This would make every reader's experience different.

Because of this, I think it is even more crucial than usual for authors/artists to think of the best possible way to represent their thoughts so as to put across their intended meaning. However, the author's role later diminishes in the reader's intepretation of the text.

2. Choose a set of 5-10 images that you feel form a narrative. If they are not digital images, scan them into the computer (there’s a scanner available in the USP multimedia lab). Arrange them in a linear sequence on your blog. You may or may not want to include text captions with each image.Bring a physical copy of your images to class on Thursday. We’ll be using them as part of an in-class exercise.



3. Write about the narrative that your group has chosen for project 1. Why have you chosen this work? How might you approach the task of re-configuring it as an interactive piece? Be prepared to discuss your group’s choice of work in class on Thursday.

We're doing a combination of a few fairytales. -to be continued-

1. In the Introduction to Story and Discourse, Chatman quotes Claude Bremond, who says: “Any sort of narrative message… may be transposed from one to another medium without losing its essential properties: the subject of a story may serve as argument for a ballet, that of a novel, can be transposed to stage or screen, one can recount in words a film to someone who has not seen it.” Chatman goes on to suggest that “transposability of the story is the strongest reason for arguing that narratives are indeed structures independent of any medium”. Choose a narrative that has been expressed in both an interactive and a non-interactive medium, for example the game Tomb Raider and the movie Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. Discuss how the transposition to/from interactive media has changed the narrative. Has the structure of the narrative remained intact?

The example I thought about was X-Men. When I was young, I used to read X-Men comics, but I can't really remember the details, so I'll compare the latest X-Men movies to the Marvel vs Capcom arcade games instead.

The game, of course, is hardly like the movies at all. In the games, there isn't a set outcome. Cyclops doesn't have to die. Wolverine doesn't necessarily kill Jean Grey. The bad guys can win. The movies, on the other hand, have a set ending... In the third movie, Jean Grey kills Cyclops and Professor X., and Wolverine ends up killing jean Grey(Yeah, they really shouldn't have ended things that way).

2. Chatman observes that “whether… the author elects to order the reporting of events according to their causal sequence or to reverse them in a flashback effect – only certain possibilities can occur… Of course certain events or existents that are not immediately relevant maybe brought in. But at some point their relevance must emerge, otherwise we object that the narrative is ‘ill-formed.’” This is the notion of self-regulation.Interactive media allows for choice and control on the part of the reader/user. What problem does this raise for self-regulation? What, if anything, does this suggest about designing interactive narrative?

I don't really know how to answer this, but I guess since interactive media requires the user to make choices as to how things are going to end, self-regulation doesn't play a part anymore. Unlike non-interactive narratives where some events are set to happen, interactive media is more flexible. I guess this means that people who design interactive media cannot follow narratives as they are exactly. There will have to be some adjustments involved.

3. Discussing the concept of interpretation, or "filling in the gaps", in narrative, Chatman states that “there is… a class of indeterminacies… that arise from the peculiar nature of the medium. The medium may specialize in certain narrative effects and not others. For instance, the cinema may easily – and does routinely – present characters without expressing the contents of their minds… verbal narrative, on the other hand, finds such restrictions difficult… Conversely, verbal narrative may elect not to present some visual aspect… The cinema, however, cannot avoid a rather precise representation of visual detail.”
Think of an example of the use of narrative in interactive media. With reference to your example, suggest what the “peculiar nature” of interactive media may be, and which narrative effects it may specialize in.

I guess the only one I can think of, after discussion in class, is that interactive media allows you to change the outcome of things(though that can be questionable). Right? =)

I just typed about half my response, which I accidentally wiped out!!! Anyway, as I was saying, I hardly get the readings, so my answers are based on whatever little I actually understood, and will probably be quite brief and shallow.

1. In “What is New Media?” Lev Manovich proposes 5 principles of new media: numerical representation, modularity, automation, variability, and transcoding. Choose an example that you consider to be “new media”, and describe it in terms of these principles. What implications do these principles have for narrative and play within interactive media?

While doing the readings, I kept thinking about the only online game I ever played, Gunbound. Since it is an online game, and from what I understand through the readings everything involving computers are numerically represented, I guess Gunound has to follow the principle of numerical representation too.

Gunbound, like most computer programs I can think about, consists of various components. In this case, the costumes, avatars, characters and landscapes are just a few discrete sections in Gunbound which come together to make a proper complete game. As such, one can change one's costume or avatar without changing the other components.

Because of its numerical representation and modularity, Gunbound becomes largely automated. Unlike the real world where there is space for flexibility, in Gunbound, much of the game is controlled by codes and stuff. Players cannot promote themselves, they have to reach an exact point to increase in rank. The different avatars you use automatically grant you a different power.

The variability in Gunbound is obvious. Everyy game, and player, is different. Players can choose from a few landscapes where they want to battle. They can earn money to buy costumes to look different from their opponents. The amount of damage you make with each hit varies. Even the factors influencing the game such as wind strength varies from game to game.

Transcoding is the main principle I'm basically clueless about. I guess the way players choose their costumes can be an example of transcoding. The player chooses what he likes, which in a way represents himself as a human being in the computer world.

2. Manovich questions the usefulness of the term interactivity, suggesting that “once an object is represented in a computer, it automatically becomes interactive. Therefore, to call computer media ‘interactive’ is meaningless – it simply means stating the most basic fact about computers.” In contrast, in “What exactly is Interactivity?” Chris Crawford proposes a much stricter definition of interactivity. Compare these differing views, with reference to your own experience of interactive media systems.

Crawford describes interactivity basically as an 'input, process, and output' cycle. If something doesn't follow these steps, it is not interactive.("Printed books are my first target because you can't interact with them. A book can't listen or think. It can only speak..."). Manovich, on the other hand, equates interactivity to a wider span of factors. He considers painting, sculpture and architecture interactive since there are 'psychological' interactions taking place when someone admires it.

I agree with Manovich's theory more. Crawford seems to be contradicting himself, by saying that there are varying degrees of interactivity then totally dismissing the fact that books could have some tiny degree of interactivity. While reading printed books, the reader will have an emotional engagement, which would automatically cause him to respond to different aspects of the text differently. Even more extreme are storybooks with different endings. As a child, I remember reading a particular Goosebumps book by R.L. Stine, where we could choose an ending we wanted by turning to different pages. Isn't this considered interactivity?

3. Narrative, interactivity and play – how does Run Lola Run reflect these concerns? How does this relate to Manovich’s concept of transcoding?

As I said, I know nothing about transoding. Run Lola Run follows the typical conventions of a narrative. The protagonist encounters a problem and has to make choices which eventually affect the outcome. However, the 'computer layer' of it comes in because unlike most movies, Run Lola Run is set like a computer game, where one can always try again after the 'Game Over'.

Hello!!

I'm really bad at editing templates and all, so I'll just leave it like this.

see ya!! =D

hollzzz