CHAPTER III: GAMES, VIDEOGAMES AND REPRESENTATION
(This chapter is part of Gonzalo Frasca's Thesis. Get the full text here).

            Brenda Laurel starts her Computers as theater (1993) by narrating the story of how Spacewar, the first videogame, was born. According to its creators, Spacewar was the “natural” thing to create when they first had access to a CRT (cathode-ray tube) display. Laurel wonders why they did create a game instead of just displaying images. She concludes that the computers’ “interesting potential lay not in its ability to perform calculations but in its capacity to represent action in which the humans could participate” (Laurel, 1993). In order to understand videogames, it is essential to understand this participatory form of representation. Is this kind of representation available in other media or is it just an essential characteristic of computers? In which ways is it different from other forms, such as photography or narrative? How is the participation orchestrated? The main goal of this section will be, therefore, to find formal tools that will let us understand the mechanics of videogame representation and interpretation.

            First of all, it would seem that it is possible to create similar forms of participatory representations outside the computer. For example, games and toys can behave similarly to Spacewar (think of the manipulation of a toy rocket). While the toy rocket is clearly a representation (it models an actual rocket through its design and may include other characteristics, like sound effects), the videogame rocket can mimic a spaceship with a different kind of complexity. Not only the virtual rocket can be animated, but it can also model the machine with more accuracy by including characteristics such as fuel levels, acceleration, gravitational power, etc. The player is usually able to manipulate some of these characteristics, such as the speed of the spaceship. Even if they are different, both the toy and the videogame represent rockets in a different way than an image or a film. Real and virtual toys allow the player to modify the characteristics of the representation, while the content of a photograph or a film will not change based on the observer’s actions. It seems clear that the first group of representations differ from the second. Still, the main question remains: what is the real difference between them? Is it just user participation? Is a videogame interpreted in a different way than a film? How do those processes work? Does the relationship between author and reader change? In order to answer these questions, it is necessary to first understand the essential characteristics of the computer as a medium. During the last decade, many authors have proposed alternative descriptions. I will give next a short review of the three most relevant ones.

1. Three Takes on Computer Representation: Laurel, Murray, Aarseth

            Brenda Laurel’s Computers as theater was probably the first serious attempt to understand computers as a medium instead of looking at the machine as a big calculator. Her approach was very original mainly because she argued that software design should be created under the same rules that apply to drama, as described by Aristotle more than twenty centuries ago. Laurel uses Aristotle’s Poetics not only as a guideline for creating videogames but basically any software, particularly graphical user interfaces. Her approach focuses on one main characteristic that drama provides and traditional narrative lacks: user performance. She views the computer as a medium for designing action where users play equivalent roles to both the drama performer and audience member. The title of her book shows that she sees the relationship between drama and the computer as a simile (she does not argue that computers are theater) in order to help designers to create useful software that remains compatible with Aristotelian ideals. Interestingly, the idea of the computer as theater did not catch on as much as the comparison with narrative. During the last decade, researchers such as George Landow or Jay Bolter have been more interested on textual-based software, like hypertexts, where they could apply the rich corpus of previously existent literary theories. Therefore, the idea that the computer and narrative were related grew stronger among the academy. In addition to this, the fact that the videogame industry became closer to Hollywood and not to Broadway, easily explains why developers feel more at ease with seeing the computer as a medium for narrative rather than drama.

            The second and most popular approach to date, is Janet Murray’s Hamlet on the Holodeck (1997), where she describes the computer as a new medium for the old practice of storytelling. Her analysis includes videogames along with other artifacts such as hypertext, web serials and interactive chat characters. She distinguishes three main qualities in the medium: immersion, agency, and transformation. By immersion she understands the power of the medium for helping the user to construct belief, rather than just suspending disbelief. Agency is the capacity of the medium to allow the user to perform actions that have consequences on the representation. Finally, by transformation she means the ability to morph into multi-perspective, simulated worlds that can enhance the two previously described characteristics. Murray views the computer as a medium that allows storytelling expanding towards new expressive possibilities. Murray expands the concept of storytelling –which she calls cyberdrama-, that includes both traditional (literature, film, drama) and interactive forms (videogames, hypertexts, chatting robots such as Eliza).

            While both Laurel and Murray describe the computer as a medium and analyze different phenomena including interfaces, games and hypertext, Espen Aarseth focused his Cybertext (1997) exclusively on the analysis of textual representations. While most of his examples are computer-based (hypertexts, adventure games, multi-user dungeons), his analysis includes conventional texts, too. Instead of comparing them to drama or narrative, he focuses on their behavior, comparing them to machines. Aarseth’s “cybertext” term derives from Cybernetics, a discipline that studies system dynamics, and has been applied to the study of complex systems, including organizations and human behavior, and particularly computer simulation. Aarseth’s “cybertexts” are machines that produce signs, which vary from reading to reading. It is important to distinguish between different sequences of texts that readers perceive and their interpretations. This difference is crucial for the understanding of Aarseth’s concept:

Since literary theorists are trained to uncover literary ambivalence in texts with linear expression, they evidently mistook texts with variable expression for texts with ambiguous meaning. (Aarseth, 1997)

Different readers may interpret in different ways the meaning of a traditional text like Les Misérables. However, the sequence of signs (words, paragraphs and chapters) in Les Misérables is fixed. The meaning of a hypertext story like Afternoon, a story can also be interpreted in different ways. But unlike Les Misérables, different readers will access to different sequences of words and paragraphs. Aarseth views Afternoon, a story not as a text, but as a cybertext: a machine that produces different texts.

Even if Aarseth studies texts, this does not mean that his ideas cannot be applied to games. Actually, he does analyze adventure textual-based games and argues that

to claim that there is no difference between games and narratives is to ignore essential qualities of both categories. And yet, as this study tries to show, the difference is not clear-cut, and there is significant overlap between the two. (Aarseth, 1997)

Aarseth complements the concept of cybertext with the one of “ergodics”. Instead of using the vague, but in vogue, term “interactive”, Aarseth prefers to describe these texts as ergodic literature, defined as texts where “nontrivial effort is required to allow the reader to traverse the text” (Aarseth, 1997). By nontrivial, he means active participations -like clicking or typing- rather than the traditional actions associated with reading - like turning pages-, which does not modify the shape of the text itself.

            Unlike the three authors that I have just reviewed, I am strictly interested in games, not in drama, storytelling, nor texts. As I have previously stated, my goal in this section of the thesis is to find formal tools for understanding the mechanics of videogame representation and interpretation.  I am interested in understanding how players interpret both the rules and the content of games and how authors craft them. Since Aarseth makes a formal distinction between the interpretational level and the “ergodic” (understood as the rules that govern the reader’s use of the representation, for example the set of rules in a videogame), I am inclined to follow his ideas. Even if Aarseth analyzes both graphical and textual games, his focus remains in texts. This is why I will need to expand the reach of his approach to include videogames. In order to do this, I will take further his application of cybernetics in the study of computer representation by using simulation theory. Simulation theory is a direct descendant of cybernetics and will let us analyze videogames, cybertexts and non-electronic toys, games and texts as systems whose behaviors can be modeled on other systems.

2. Simulation and Systems

            Computer simulation heavily relies on system theory, which is defined by the “Principia Cybernectica Web” as

the transdisciplinary study of the abstract organization of phenomena, independent of their substance, type, or spatial or temporal scale of existence. It investigates both the principles common to all complex entities, and the (usually mathematical) models which can be used to describe them.

Computer simulation studies the modeling of systems, understood as “a set or arrangement of entities so related or connected so as to form a unity or organic whole”. Scientists have found in computers a natural medium for simulation. Historically, simulation has been performed long before the invention of computers. For example, early airplanes have been tested by creating small models. This kind of simulation is known as analog, in opposition to digital simulations, which are performed by computers. The Encyclopedia Britannica defines computer simulation as “the use of a computer to represent the dynamic responses of one system by the behavior of another system modeled after it.”

Figure 1 – Basic elements in a simulation

Figure 1 represents the basic elements in a simulation, as described in Theory of Modeling and Simulation (Zeigler et al., 2000). The three main elements are the source system, the model and the simulator. Let’s use the example of a boat simulation. The source system is a real boat, like the Titanic. The experimental frame is the “set of conditions under which the system is observed or experimented with”. For example, if our simulation was performed in order to understand how the Titanic worked, the experimental frame would focus on the characteristics of the boat as a machine, including its shape, weight and mechanics. For this purpose, some characteristics, such as the price of a first class cabin or the number of eggs in the kitchen, would be excluded. 

            The model is another system, a “set of instructions, rules, equations, or constraints for generating I/O [input/output] behavior” (Zeigler et al., 2000). For example, it could be a set of equations that model the behavior of the different mechanical elements of the ship.

            Finally, the third element is the simulator, which is defined as “some agent capable of actually obeying the instructions [of the model] and generating behavior” (Zeigler et al., 2000). In computer simulation, the simulator is a program in the computer. However, it could also be the human mind (a person could simulate on her mind how the Titanic worked).

            It is possible to find many examples of simulation on the computer. For example, a folder in Microsoft Windows simulates a real folder. Not only the virtual folder looks like a cartoonish representation of a real one, but it also behaves similarly: it can be opened to access to documents and it can be labeled. However, the virtual folder is not a completely accurate representation: for example, it is impossible to bend it or to make a drawing over it. In short, the virtual folder is a simulation. In this case, the source system is the real folder, the model is the virtual one, and the simulator is the operating system.

            Interestingly, the definition of simulation perfectly describes how toys represent reality. Unlike photographs, words or sounds, toys do not simply represent but they model a system.  A toy car is not just the representation of the static characteristics of a real car (color, shape) but it also represents its behavior (it runs, its wheels turn). While computer simulation theory was certainly not designed to explain the mechanics of toy representation, theorists do explicitly keep this analogy in mind, as this quote from Paul Fishwick shows:

The use of simulation is an activity that is as natural as a child who role plays with toy objects. To understand reality and all of its complexity, we must build artificial objects and dynamically act out roles with them. Computer simulation is the electronic equivalent of this type of role playing (Fishwick, 1994)

Since both videogames, non-electronic games and toys can be separately understood as “a set or arrangement of entities so related or connected so as to form a unity or organic whole”, they fit the definition of system as defined in the Web Dictionary of Cybernetics and Systems. I propose to use simulation theory to analyze these games as simulations, in order to understand how they work and, particularly, how players interpret its content.

2.1 Simulation and Non-Real Source Systems

            While, historically, simulations have modeled real systems, computers and particularly videogames, have allowed to simulate systems that have no real referents. As Juan Grompone (1996) states when he describes the classic videogame Breakout where the user controls a paddle that has to tear down a wall made of bricks, this is the first simulation where the simulated rules of physics are not consistent with reality. Still, some authors think that a simulation needs to be based on reality. Aarseth (1997) does not describe John Conway’s Game of Life as a simulation “since there does not have to be any external phenomenon that can be said to simulate”. On the other hand, Fishwick claims that it is possible to simulate “non-real systems”. I think that the reason why some authors think that there is a need for a real referent is a historical one. Since simulation has its roots in science, it was normal for scientists to simulate real systems instead of fantastic constructions. The computer, and particularly videogames, has allowed authors to simulate systems that do not exist and even contradict the rules of physics of our universe. To claim that there is a need for a real referent in simulations is similar to say that the word unicorn is not a sign since its referent is not real. Therefore, I will apply the term “simulation” to the representation of processes that mimic a system by the behavior of another, even if its source system is not real.

            For example, I personally think that the game Tetris is not based on a real source system: it is not simulating reality but just creating an abstract environment where the player can test her skills. I have been playing Tetris for years and it never bothered me that it lacked characters or settings. This is why I was particularly surprised when I started hearing some people saying that it was a “narrative” game. To me, this was shocking. I was not able to find any “narrative” characteristic on it, any more than I could find them in my yo-yo. I remember having a discussion about this with Janet Murray and at the moment I really thought that she was pushing her interpretation way too far. As she explains in Hamlet on the Holodeck, she believes that Tetris

is a perfect enactment of the overtasked lives of Americans in the 1990s - of the constant bombardment of tasks that demand our attention and that we must somehow fit into our overcrowded schedules and clear off our desks in order to make room for the next onslaught. (Murray, 1997)

Obviously, Murray was referring to the same blocks - or tetraminos, as they are technically called - that I played with. Her interpretation was not of the signs in Tetris, but of her relationship with them. She had referred to a particular system – the overtasked life of the nineties- and interpreted system as a simulation of the first one. Instead, I was playing the game as a functional level, without needing to refer it to some higher, more complex structure.

            It is important to stress that Murray uses the word “enactment”, instead of representation. Of course, a theatrical play is also enactment, but the difference is that she recognizes the source system not by the signs that it produces but by the signs that are produced as a consequence of the player’s actions. A spectator of Tetris may arrive to the same conclusion by watching Murray to play. However, the difference is that all he can do is infer the simulation rules by observing, when the player can do it by testing.

            This example clearly shows that the author does not set the meaning of a simulation but it is rather interpreted by the player (or observer, since an external viewer can also interpret it). Therefore, it seems that the definition of simulation that I have been using – the representation of a system by the behavior of another- is incomplete. It is the observer and not the author who connects the source system and the model.

(This chapter is part of Gonzalo Frasca's Thesis. Get the full text here).