A few Friday’s ago, we as a class got to play Portal 2 during our session, however, I was sick, but you can bet I still played me some Portal 2. Usually I’m not as big of a fan of sequels, however, Portal expands so much on the original Portal both narratively as well as with what you can do. The first Portal had a lot of humor, however, I felt like they really out did themselves on the sequel, I found it hilarious. I love that they added a Co-op mode, my friends and I have been all over that this semester. The fact that when playing with a friend in Co-op, just because there’s two playing doesn’t make it any simpler. I enjoy that it’s tougher trying to maneuver 4 portals and 2 bodies the maps. I feel like more Co-op games should be like that, like with Gears of War playing co-op was a cake walk for me and my friends. Finally, I also like the fact that it was set in the same place as the first one so you feel like you recognize things, but at the same time you feel like it’s a fresh start as well.
This may seem random but is it just me? Lately I’ve been finding myself going backwards with the video games I’ve been playing as well as the consoles that play them. The other day I was hanging out with my brother and for some reason I had a sudden urge to play N64. So I went to my parents house and dug my old N64 and games out the attic, and the next thing I know I’m glued to my TV for hours. And this isn’t the first or only time. I have just found myself going back to the basics and playing my old school Nintendo as well as my Sega Genesis. Is it just that there’s no more good quality games being made right now. I’d rather think that it’s the good quality of video games that were made back in the day. I believe their simplistic features and controls and the gameplay itself for the games is what keeps bringing me back. The fact that they are simple and fun just calls for disaster. I have a hard enough time getting off my couch as it is. The games of the Nintendo, Sega, and Super Nintendo make for great casual games but you start you get stuck because they have such incredible replay ability. I could go out to my dad’s house out in the country and shoot at birds all day but the replay ability and the simplisticness of Duck Hunt just keeps me inside.
A few weeks ago in class we discussed an article by Ian Bogost. In the article, he analyzes the history of rhetoric and argues that videogames are part of a new form of rhetoric since their procedures involve interaction. He comes up with the term “procedural rhetoric” which according Bogost is the practice of using processes persuasively. According to Bogost, videogames can have a major influence on players’ views on politics, advertising and education. The idea of procedural rhetoric uses the games processes to build an underlying argument in which the player must figure out. Similar to Bogost’s idea, a games blog I found had an interesting piece on my favorite game of all time, Super Mario. According to this person, Super Mario is really just procedural rhetoric in a grey plastic case with a plumber on it. In the post, the writer lays out all these various possible subliminal messages promoting Communism. I’ve heard of Mario containing subliminal drug messages with him eating the shroom and riding on a star and what not, but Mario being a Communist, I didn’t see that one coming. And this is where I have issues with both this piece and Bogost’s. You can find subliminal messages and “procedural rhetoric” anywhere if you look hard enough or long enough depending on how bad you want it to be there. But I’ve played Super Mario all my life, actually I was just playing the other day as a matter of fact, and before reading this piece, I never picked up on any Communist messages and I’m pretty sure none of my friends did either.
A few weeks ago we discussed an article by Meyers, dealing with the narratives in video games. According to Meyers, games are always stories because they’re ultimately about winning and losing. Like stories which most of the time are repeated and told over, video games have that replay ability to them as well (at least the good ones but I guess that would work in the same manner with stories.) According to Meyers all games are stories. Madden is a story. Tetris is a story. Every game is/has a story to Meyers. I had a hard time buying this and I still have some issues with the idea but I’m getting there. I mean sure Madden has commentators that could serve as narrators to the story and they do give the provide a somewhat background story in there announcing the stadium and the players. But tetris? Really? Madden took some thought to understand his point about football being a story, but I just can’t comprehend, nor come up with a story for pretty little blocks falling down a screen. Maybe I’m lacking in imagination, but it just seems a bit too far fetched for me.
How has the recent growth in online social gaming affected the multiplayer gameplay experience for first person shooters?
In our attempt to answer this research question, we designed and conducted an observation, in which we had players participate in a large Halo 3 LAN party at my house last Saturday afternoon. We had the players play a series of different types of games to observe how various aspects of the gameplay is affected when people are playing in the same room as opposed to online. We initially chose Halo 3 because it is a widely popular game that all our participants were already very familiar with. We felt that this was important in maintaining the competitiveness aspect of our research since the various players’ skill levels were all relatively the same. In addition, Halo 3 also offers Multi-Team gameplay which helped in setting up different control factors in the experiment, and it also has an after game stats menu that goes into depth. Having access to different stats like how many times a player killed another player on there own or with help, gave us raw data in which we could get a better idea of how much cooperation was taking place.
In order to do this we got together 16 participants and split them in half. The first 8 participants were a sort of control group that served as a comparison for the online portion of gameplay that the second half of the group participated in. The participants played in a Multi-Team Capture the Flag game, but they all played the same game in the same room. We chose Capture the Flag because we felt out of all the game variants offered this one promotes teamwork the best. The game is designed so that there are 4 different teams with each team consisting of a pair of players. Now I know I have a big TV but 8 people cannot fit on it, so we set up two TV’s side-by-side, and system linked the two Xbox’s, as opposed to setting it up online in order to lower the chances of any lag so that this portion of the observation most resembles the normal multiplayer gameplay you would typically get at home not playing online. We deliberately designed our research to use player v. player play mode cause it increases the need for specific aspects of gameplay. “PvP creates competitive situations in which game goals include thwarting of other players’goals” (Myers 58). In other words, player v. player mode pits individuals or teams against each other, most resembling online play.
The first group played first team to capture the flag 5 times wins, (which was about 30 to 40 minutes of gameplay) while we observed, and then it was time for the second half of the group to play. For this portion of the observation we divided the four teams into 4 separate rooms, but with no team playing on the same TV. In addition, we divided headsets up so that there were two teams with headphones, but like with the players, there wasn’t ever two headsets in a given room. We felt like this best reflects how online multiplayer in Halo 3 works, since usually when you play online not everyone in the game is playing with a headset, yet there are still some who do. By splitting it up the way we did we were also able to make sure that there wasn’t any interference with teams listening in on plans of attack. It also helped to show us what kind of role communication plays in how teams cooperate. Like in the first game, the teams played on the same map and played the first team to capture the flag 5 times wins.
This research, while not 100% online, in the sense that not all 16 people are sitting at home with more than just walls between their teammate and other opponents, and an entire TV to their disposal, however it has been designed in a way so that it’s the closest possible thing to online play one can get with this amount of people. By making this as close as possible to the real deal, right down to the use of Xbox Live over system link for the second group, we were able to receive more accurate results, and observe the various factors that affected each type of gameplay, online and regular, and ultimately how they affect the player’s overall experience. The results that we gathered help to shed a good amount of light on the fact that while online multiplayer is designed to as accurately as possible create this simulation of playing a game with a lot of people, but when it comes down to it online gameplay is very different from actually physically playing a game with a lot of people.
One interesting thing that we observed was that in the closed off, system link game there was significantly more overall competitiveness when all the players were playing together in the same room. This finding could easily be the result of one-on-one contact with all the players within the group and the progression of teasing within the gameplay. As McGonigal states in his article Stronger Social Connectivity, “Teasing each other…is one of the fastest and most effective ways to intensify our positive feelings for each other” (McGonigal 85). We also found that the game itself actually took longer, although not by much. We concluded that since there’s this increased competitiveness the game remained close and therefore was stretched out longer. With this increase in competitiveness, we also observed that there were more kills in the first game than the second, which then in return caused another increase in competitiveness in the first game. It is Capture the Flag, so kills for the most part don’t really affect the player’s score. They do, however, keep people from getting to the flag and capturing it, thus lengthening the game. The increased amount of kills directly correlates with the level of competitiveness, or so we thought. About half-way through the first game, we also observed some cheating going on in the form of screen-looking. One of the players was sneaking up behind another to assassinate him with a pistol whip, when out of nowhere the other guy just turns around and starts spraying bullets. With the TV’s sitting right next to each other and all the participants playing in the same place, the participants were capable of seeing where each of the other players are quite easily, and upon bringing it up I was informed by a participant “that it was hard not to, and why not do it if everyone else has the capability of looking?” For these players, “cheating was an action of justification”, a justification of their own selfish need and desire to obtain maximal fiero (Consalvo 410). Its this overall gratification that the gamer is seeking and not the fairness or honesty exhibited by the rest of the players.
So cheating may or may not have been the reason for the larger number of kills in the first game, it may have contributed a lot or a little that’s hard to tell. However, its mere existence there is even more important, because in the second group we observed that there were very few, if any, instances of cheating or screen-looking. We concluded that this was due to the fact that there were only two people per screen and only one screen per room. So rather than looking at 6 other screens plus your own, players had to use their minds more as well as the cooperation of their teammate in order to get kills and advance in the game. However, in a more open online game, one could expect to encounter variations in cheating, opposed to screen-looking. Some of the most common forms of cheating that was not noticed in this study but are noticed through experience with gameplay would consist of: intentional lagging, use of glitches to obtain an advantage, and jumping off the map. Many find these acts as unfair gameplay, however others view it as a means to an end. Its this opposing viewpoint that leads researchers to refute the Magic Circle theory and establish one based on frames, where the individual is not fully engulfed by the simulation, but instead actively chooses to switch from a real world framework, to a rules based framework and so on (Consalvo 414). In other words, the immersion that the players underwent during gameplay was contained in a rules based framework where they were instruments of the game itself, however when cheating occurred, all regards for the rules were overturned, and a real world framework of self greed was established.
With regards to competition, we found that while there was still some level of competitiveness in the online game, however, there was a greater deal of individual competition, especially in the teams with no headset or ways of communicating. This sense of individual competitiveness arises because the player does not have the personable support that the players of group 1 encountered, instead they are relying on the positive feedback of statistical achievements and experience status quos to motivate their actions. This was another thing which we found intriguing. Although direct communication was not fully established within group 2, at first the teams without headsets didn’t really work together in their attempts to capture the flag. Then about ¾ of the way through the game, we began to hear yelling from across the house. It then became obvious that the players were doing all they possibly could do to communicate with each other in order to win the game. Even though these players had less physical contact with one another, than did group 1, they still managed to find ways around their restrictions and enjoyed the games. McGonigal states that the reason for this interactivity with strangers across barriers doesn’t stem from a social need to talk with people, but instead it’s a cooping mechanism we use to “combat our feelings of loneliness” (McGonigal 92). “Video games give you an opportunity to interact with other people, thus it is then clear how important communication is in order for most teams to cooperate and be successful, and we were able to see how cooperation and the ability and ease of communication can greatly affect the gameplay experience for the player (McGonigal 92). For example, we saw cooperation at its finest with everybody in the same room because it was easier for teammates to just look over at one another and communicate, whereas; verbal communication was weaker in the 2nd group. Additionally, with the use of communication, the gamers within group 1 effectively portrayed a sense of vicarious pride for themselves and their team by training their partner when experience was lacking, “enhancing group survival”(McGonigal 87). This aspect of gameplay may also be accountable for the increased cooperation and constant communication within the first group.
Through all this observation, one overarching theme continued to make its presence known. Encompassing all the aforementioned aspects of gameplay, flow (happiness) seems to be the underlying reason why people not only play games, but partake in the multifaceted design of digital media. Before video games, flow was considered a slow process in which the player or individual practiced for years in order to obtain fiero, however; since the advent of digital games, “immersion was almost instant, and flow was fast and virtually guaranteed” (McGonigal 45). McGonigal explains that people use games as an outreach from the doldrums of reality. “Games focus our energy, with relentless optimism, on something we’re good at an enjoy” (McGonigal 38.) Its this yearning for satisfaction that promotes competition, teasing, communication, and social play, just to say a few. Not enough flow in a game could lead to lack of interest in gameplay given that the gamer gets no true intrinsic reward for playing, conversely, if too much flow exists within gameplay, gamers’ regret emerges. Its this perfect balance, that game designers use today in order to not only grab the attention of gamers but create lifelong players.
From observing this sort of experiment, and reflecting over our results and observations we were able to find multiple answers to our proposed research question. We found that while the style of communication within the online realm is quite different from that of real life, the fact that communication is not only necessary, but key in order for the proper amount of cooperation necessary to be successful in a multiplayer first, person shooter like Halo 3. We also found that while people found means to communicate in order to build cooperation, competition isn’t as even across the boards. However, competitiveness is still a major factor in online games, it just takes a different form, a more individual kind of competitiveness. We observed how cheating redefines the theory of a Magic Circle, and how the culmination of these aspects are based around the individuals desire to receive intrinsic rewards in order to create flow. This research is important in that it will help others to further understand how cooperation, communication, and competitiveness each factor into the development of flow, which allows the gamer to immerge effortlessly into gameplay, while continuing to ratify the importance these aspects establish not only in the game play experience of social gaming, but more precisely in first person shooters.
References
Consalvo, Mia. “There Is No Magic Circle.” Games and Culture 4.4 (2009): 408-17. Print.
McGonigal, Jane. “Stronger Social Connectivity.” Reality Is Broken. 76-96. Print.
McGonigal, Jane. “The Rise of Happiness Engineers.” Reality Is Broken. 34-51. Print.
Myers, David. “The Video Game Aesthetic: Play as Form.” 44-63. Print.
One of the things I loved most about Halo 3 was its introduction of Forge and vast improvements in what game variations a player can create. All this hit me in class when we were discussing game design just prior to designing our very own games. Forge is a mode in the game that allows players to modify the existing maps and add and take away practically anything, The beauty about Forge and the game variations, is that it allows players to take on the role of designer within the confounds of the actual game. Tired of regular Halo 3, but don’t feel like going to the trouble to create all this amazing stuff? It’s okay, Bungie came prepared and designed it so players can go online and share their creations with each other. What’s even more cool, is that Forge is multiplayer so players can play each other as building stuff at the same time. I have even seen maps that are designed to resemble a race track and you Mario Kart style race around the track trying to destroy the opponent while trying to win this race that doesn’t really count. At first glance, one might say this straight up emergence, plain and dry. However, I would disagree. Emergence within a game is when there is potential for the player to play or use the game in a way in which was not designed. You might be sitting there thinking about what Halo even has to do with racing. Absolutely nothing. Yet, I would still be reluctant to call this emergence because the designers created Forge so that players could get creative. They put the vehicles like the Warthog in the options as well as barricades. When you’ve got cars and barriers at your disposal, you might as well be a wave of flag from racing. As for the game variations, players are allowed to modify so many things on the basic games offered that the amount of different possible game variants is pretty much unlimited.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F77i0Rd_z7Q
In class we discussed how in open world, sandbox style games like GTA players are able given a vast amount freedom to do as they please. It’s sunny day out, perfect for stealing cars and shooting hookers, right? One of the benefits of these kinds of games is that they allow the player to do whatever without really having to think of any major consequences. However, the Fable series is also an open world, sandbox style game as well, but it’s designers gave it something unique to the other open games like Oblivion, Skyrim, and GTA. Fable was designed with a karma mechanism, which affects various aspects of the gameplay itself. The kind of person your avatar is, from what they look like to varying storylines, even how you are greeted and treated by AI’s in the game, it all depends on the things you do which affect your karma level. If you decide you want to just kill everyone you see in the game, it won’t be very long before your character has huge horns and looks like the devil. In addition, you may or may not be able to take on certain quests, but on the other hand you could receive some dirty work that would never have been offered to you if you were good. I think this makes the game all that much more interesting, and really does make the game replayable over and over again. Some might contend that it the karma mechanism limit’s the character by making them be either good or bad. However, that is not the case, you are more than welcome to do some good things and some bad things, and your character will just come out normal, possibly with a little bit of an edge. If anything it opens the game up more than any of the other previously mentioned games because you are given more choice. The only way someone playing this game could feel the least bit limited would be if they are limiting themselves, like if they only want their character to be good.
As you may know the gaming blogs that I have been following throughout the semester for the class are Grand Text Auto (GTA) and Critical Gaming Project. (CGP) Since my last blog update, there have been many interesting posts on the GTA blog, but CGP went on vacation I guess, with only 4 posts since October.
Once again I’ll begin my update by discussing gamification, since that’s something that both blogs talk about most frequently. In one of there recent posts, CGP takes a critical stance on the situation claiming that “the problem is, gamification assumes a rattomorphic view of gamers in the appropriation of techniques and principles from games.” The article describes this as “pop behaviorism,” or conditioning through rewards and incentives. According to the post, this type of conditioning only works for the short term and ultimately back fires leaving the person unsatisfied. Therefore, gamification is as he likes to call it corrosive, and it’s also potentially dangerous in that by presenting something as if it’s a game, you create this “game layer” that really doesn’t exist. CGP is concerned about this because games are becoming increasingly more gamified themselves which will only lead to disaster leaving the gamer resenting the game. Likewise, in following the other blog, GTA also recently blogged about games and reward systems. According to this post games are by definition all about rewards. According to GTA, as well, people like receiving instant feedback and instant gratification for doing something good in a game, just like the rats in the CGP post.
http://www.tiltfactor.org/instant-gratification
https://depts.washington.edu/critgame/wordpress/2011/11/the-rattomorphism-of-gamification/
Another interesting thing that each blog discusses in a number of posts are these various ideas for unique game designs as well as an opinion on already uniquely designed games.
In a post on the CGP, the way in which some games are designed around time, and how various games are designed in different ways depending on how the creator of the game expected players to spend their time in the game. They use World of Warcraft as an example of how game creators allow players to spend their time doing different things, however, I was better able to relate to the post thinking about Skyrim. There’s so much to do and so much to see I often times find myself just roaming around for hours looking at cool stuff.
https://depts.washington.edu/critgame/wordpress/2011/11/the-timeliness-of-time-%e2%80%9ctime%e2%80%9d-keywords-gig-follow-up/#more-1918
GTA also offers up a couple posts in which the writer discusses various unique game designs. In one of the posts, they discuss the unique up and coming Telemetry-Supported Game Design. This design was used in most recent versions of Madden Football. Telemetry is designed to give designers feedback and help them answer the following questions: How do players interact with the game? Which features, modes, and content are players experiencing? Why do players quit playing the game? The way in which the game interacts back to the player makes it very useful in sports games like Madden where the computer can mold itself to the gameplay style of the player.
http://eis-blog.ucsc.edu/2011/12/telemetry-supported-game-design/
Another interesting post on the CGP that sort of deals with game design as well, is the post about multiple forms of interaction in games, but honestly I read it and enjoyed it and just wanted to write about it. The post talks about recent developments in the gaming world that with their design allow players to interact with the device/game more fluidly. It talks about the Nintendo DS and its revolutionary touch screen also containing a second screen, buttons, wifi, now a camera, and a microphone. Its versatile design allows for a number of ways in which one could possibly play a game depending on its design. The post also talks about how the Androids and iPad/iPhones have a built in accelerometer which adds a whole new spin to ways in which games can be played. The post ended with a particular question that I felt was interesting. “That being said, while this is all pretty theoretical, I wonder if this transition between different modes of interaction could be emulated in an analog game. Or perhaps this feature is unique to digital games?” I feel like many analog games for sure have the potential to go digital, especially with the gaming world increasingly moving towards more interactive forms of gameplay, like with the PS Move, the Wii, and the Xbox Kinnect. Not to mention that there’s already Yahtzee! for the iPad/iPhone where you shake the phone or whatever in order to roll the dice. Furthermore, I also have the Monopoly game on my iPad and it’s so much more convenient than the real thing and faster too!
http://www.tiltfactor.org/multiple-forms-of-interaction-in-games
http://www.trueachievements.com/n5640/drink-dew-eat-doritos-get-double-xp-in-mw3.htm
A number of classes ago we discussed an article called “There is No Magic Circle” by Mia Consolvo. In class we talked about how people pay other people to level them up in World of Warcraft and whether this should be considered as cheating or not. Likewise, I came across an ad for Mt. Dew and Doritos, which I linked above, offering players double xp points in the new Call of Duty: MW3. By buying these products players get a code that they type in and for a period of time how ever many xp points they get is doubled. Is this a form of cheating? Should players be able to simply buy something and move through the online rankings easier by getting more points in the game. For example, I could potentially lose a game and have more kills than the other person but they bought some chips to snack on for the day and so now they get double points and therefore have to make half as many kills. Since some players are benefiting from it while others might not be able to makes it sort of unfair, and I believe Consolvo would consider it a form of cheating.
At the beginning of the year, we discussed the article written by Caillois in which the author presents this idea of a Paidia/Ludus spectrum. Basically, on one end of the spectrum you have Paidia which deals with games that are sort of closed, structured, and highly rule-based. On the other end is Ludus, and this deals with games that are more open and free. In between these two ends, then is a spectrum on which different games fall in relation to each other. On to my point, in class we talked about linear games, like Super Mario, where you go from start to finish on a path to the end of the level, without really having the ability to be freedom to explore or play differently, and how they are generally thought to fall more on the Ludus end of the spectrum because its linear and in a very much closed playing space. However, I’d argue that Super Mario falls more towards the center of the spectrum than given credit. Of course it still have many Ludus qualities to it. You are still limited to what Mario can physically do in the game and it is two-dimensional so you are also limited in that you can only move up, down, left, and right. However, on the Paidia side of things, you can have very similar games, but for an experienced Super Mario player, you can play through the game several times and experience it differently each time. If you know where certain hidden items and places are in the maps, a player can quickly skip over several levels at a time or they can decide to not use them and play through the whole thing. Players can also make the choice to take a shortcut and as a result they play through a level or two without fire power or big Mario, for example. Also in later additions like Super Mario 3, you are given the ability to go backwards which helps you, for example, get a fire power back that you just lost. You are also given Yoshi and players now have the choice to play through levels with the help of Yoshi or not. All these choices and different ways in which you can play the game, I feel opens and frees up a significant amount, and gives the game a more Padia sense.
bowens089 