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.