CHAPTER V: SIMULATIONS AND IDEOLOGY
(This chapter is part of Gonzalo Frasca's Thesis. Get the full text here).

            The interpretation of a simulation is a complex process that involves two levels. From an author’s point of view, this complexity represents an even greater degree of uncertainty in the communication. It seems that there could be a much higher probability of “noise” between what the author tries to convey and what the observer may interpret. It is not anymore just the matter of what is interpreted from the model, but in which degree the observer is familiar with the system that models the source one.

            Eco has presented the concept of a “model reader” (1979) that the author has in mind when creating her work. The “model reader” is an ideal reader that is “supposedly able to deal interpretatively with the expressions in the same way as the author deals generatively with them.” In a similar way, we could suggest that simulations need a “model player” who is supposed to deal with the model and retain from it similar laws and characteristics to the ones that the author intended when she designed it. Several techniques are available in order to diminish the distance between interpretamen and representamen in videogames. One of them is the book of rules that explains the basic rules of behavior of the system, as intended by the author. Another, similar one but implicit rather than explicit, is to include a “demo session” which shows an iteration of how the game could be played. Obviously, these demos do not show very bad players nor they try to confuse the player. In addition to these techniques, some games include training levels that precede the actual game, where the player is guided through the system and can safely experiment with it, under authored supervision.

However, it is possible that this “noise”, understood as misinterpretation, could be conceived by the author not as a problem but rather as a goal on itself. Again, it is important to keep in mind that this “noise” is in the reading of the work, not in its interpretation. This is what happens in Michael Joyce’s hypertext Afternoon, a story. The text implies a game structure: the reader wants to discover what really happened to the protagonist family, because they may have died in a car accident. However, the text sabotages the reading by promising a resolution but never offering it. Afternoon, a story is a very unusual kind of ludus: it has a rule of ludus, but the system does not allow the player –reader- to achieve it. It is a riddle with no solution, a game designed to deceive its players. What makes Afternoon, a story very original in videogame terms is that no game that we know has ever tried to convey confusion not through its contents but through its playing. Of course it would be possible to create a videogame based on the same structure – think of it as Sisyphus’ game- but it would probably generate rejection from the players, who are used to consume products that do have an ending and can be solved.

The author of simulations has also a different responsibility than, say, the novelist. The writer describes just a finite sequence of actions; we usually witness how her character’s behaved, not how it may have. The novelist has to write specific actions, the simulation author has to write rules of behavior that will result on specific actions. If a writer usually represents women as housewives, we can infer her beliefs about women. But if a simulation author simulates women as housewives, she is not only representing but explicitly creating a rule that connects women with a certain behavior. The rule may be absolute (100% of simulated women are housewives in this virtual environment), concrete (between 50 and 70%), random, or dynamic (the number of housewives will vary depending on other elements, for example depending on the availability of education or the average number of toothbrushes used by the virtual people in the system). While the 18th century writer’s ideas on women might have been transmitted through the use of adjectives and the portrayal of certain events, the simulator author is required to be much more explicit since she has to create a rule that defines how women are portrayed. Authors in traditional media are just accountable for one or more instances of possible actions. Simulator authors are not only creators, but also legislators, because they decide which rules will apply to their systems.

Ideology in a simulation is not just conveyed through how characters are represented. Even subtle choices in deterministic or indeterminist models speak about the author’s option and vision of both the real and simulated world. Are some scenes hard-coded into the system and therefore are as inexorable to the player as destiny? Or maybe they are just a consequence of the player’s actions? What is the role of chance in the simulated world? Has the player real means of cooperation with other characters or the game is designed to foster individualism? These are some of the issues that the designer has to deal with while crafting simulated worlds.

            Ludus incorporate an extra ideological level. The ludus creator not only has to design the rules that make the simulation work (paidea rules), but also defines what is the ultimate goal of the game (ludus rules). The creation of a final goal creates a new value for every action performed by the player. Now everything that the player does or does not will be measured in relationship to how close or far it placed her from the final goal. Creating a ludus creates a moral set of rules, defining what is right and wrong. For example, Mario Brothers’ rule of ludus is to rescue the princess. Therefore, any action that does not help Mario on this task becomes wrong or, at least, not advisable. Mario cannot take a rest or spend extra time on his quest. Instead, he has to walk or run in one direction, beat the monsters and rescue the princess. There is an essential difference between creating a simulated environment where it is just possible to murder people, and another were you get a reward (score, extra levels) for doing it.

There is another important consequences of ludi structure: its binary logic. In general, ludi imply that you either win or lose; there is no middle term. Even if you score in the seventh position out of three hundred, the cultural value behind ludus tells you that this is nothing but a not so terrible way of losing. This binary logic is usually translated to the actions of the player. If killing the gatekeeper will allow the player to enter the castle and therefore to win, then killing is right and not killing the gatekeeper is wrong, at least by the game standards. Therefore, the simulation author –and the videogame, game or toy designer- is ideologically responsible for the creation of three levels of representation.

Level 1 - It is shared with traditional storytellers, and is related to scripted actions, descriptions and settings.

Level 2 - It has to do with the rules of paidea, the rules that model the simulated system. An example is the rule in Quake that states that the monsters fire at you, or the one that states that you can fire at the monsters but you do not have the ability to talk to them.

Level 3 - The third level is the ludus rule. It states what is the goal of the ludus and defines a winning, and therefore a desirable, condition.

I will now use these categories in order to do a brief analysis of Will Wright’s The Sims (Figure 6). The Sims allows players to simulate the American dream. As it is stated in the game’s box “Open-ended gameplay gives you the freedom to set your own goals and chart your Sim’s destiny […]. Whether they prosper or perish is completely up to you”. An immigration officer at Ellis Island could not give you a better description of the ideology behind capitalistic America... The simulation takes for granted that all the characters start from an equal state, without leaving room for physical, economical or social disadvantages.

Figure 6 – A screenshot from The Sims

The Sims is an interesting case of a videogame because it is not a ludus (therefore it has no “Level 3” rules). You do not win or lose on this simulation, you are instead encouraged to experiment and observe how the characters – who are called Sims- evolve. The lack of a goal – understood as “winning or losing”- may lead an uncritical player to believe that the game is ideologically “safe” –as if such a thing existed- because, after all, it is not giving you a bonus for killing human beings or chasing girls in underwear, as it happens in the infamous Panty Raider. Therefore, it seems that “level 3” is nonexistent in this game. However, even if there is no winning ending on this game, there are certain sections of the simulation that cannot be unlocked unless certain actions are performed. In this case, the representation of consumerist suburban American life is maybe too literal: a rule states that the more goods a player has in her house, the more friends she would have. And in order to access these goods, it is necessary to have money, which leads to encourage attending to work. A player that did not play in this direction would not “lose”. However, she would lose part of the attraction of the environment that is testing and playing around with “new stuff”.

About “Level 1”, I can say that the game, which is particularly original because it simulates human life, sets the action in a very particular environment: the American suburban neighborhood. The designer chose this place instead of all the other possibilities that include, for example, the Canadian or French suburban neighborhood, the Brazilian favela or the Chinese mountain town. At this level, the ideological choices are identical to the one of a narration in a traditional medium, such as in a film or novel. All the “cosmetic” characteristics of the game also pertain to this level. For example, the system allows the player to select gender, age and skin color. However, the skin color does not affect the development of the game: it is simply a matter of political correctness. A similar kind of diversity is offered through the available ornaments for house decoration: a couple of zebra-patterned ethnic objects can be used to help the darker-pixeled Sims to feel at home.

The main differences arise at the “Level 2”. The characters in The Sims are defined through five main characteristics (Neat, Outgoing, Active, Playful, Nice) that can evolve through the game. Not ten thousands nor three: the Sims are have five. In the recent “Entertainment in the Interactive Age” conference at University of Southern California in January 2001, Janet Murray criticized this choice from designer Will Wright, because – I paraphrase – she “believed that human beings could be more complex than that”.  The criticism was not aimed at a particular representation but at the model itself: she considered that the model was too simple and did not produce a behavior that is comparable to the human referent. Wright’s answer was that he first tried to build a more complex model of human behavior, but he discovers that it was too complicated.

However, The Sims’ biggest ideological message is extra-simuletic – if I may use the neologism to refer to what is situated outside the simulation itself. What makes The Sims a vanguard work is not how it simulates human life, but the fact that by attempting to simulate it is affirming that human life can be simulated, that we can be modeled as a less complex system. This is a major breakthrough in videogames, which previously attempted only to simulate simpler organisms, such as Dogz, Catz, Tamagotchi and Babyz. The characters in The Sims are not mutants in a distant galaxy, but doctors, clerks and housewives, characters that refer to real people that we are very familiar with and know what to expect from. It is clear that we cannot even dream about dealing with social, political and philosophical issues in videogames just based on monsters and trolls: believable human characters are an absolute requisite. This is why The Sims should be welcomed as an advance in game design, in spite of its questionable depiction of consumerist life.

In order to close this short review on videogames and ideology, I would like to explain how videogames embody one of the main myths of the digital media: the myth of a democratic medium where consumers can become producers. This myth got particularly stronger with the Internet and its cheap, fast and easy way for everybody with a computer to publish texts, sounds, animations, videos, photographs, games, etc. It also became a popular idea among hypertext theorists, particularly George Landow (1992) and his concept of the reader-author. I am not going to discuss that the computer could allow highly participative experiences, but to claim that it allows users to become authors is, in general, far-fetched. The reader does not become the author of Cortazar’s Hopscotch just because she decides which textual path to follow. Yes, she is in part responsible for how she will experience the novel, but all the possible combinations were already “authored” by Cortázar. Still, some hypertexts do allow user to annotate extensively, therefore becoming co-authors of the textual system. But this is done through active writing, not by merely browsing.

Videogames also allow, or give the illusion of allowing, players to become designers. Most first person shooters allow players to create “mods”, modified versions of the original games where it is possible to create a new environment with different objects and characters. Some games even allow accessing the programming code, so players can expand the characteristics of the original engine in order to create their own, expanded versions. Some “mods” created by independent players have been bought by the original producer company and became “official” expansions. However, “mods” are hard to create and most require a high degree of proficiency in programming and/or design. While there are no official statistics, the fact that only hundreds of mods are available for games that sold millions of copies made me think that only a very small fraction of players are “mod” designers. In other words, “mods” are just an option but not a standard way of using the software. The videogame player could become a designer, by in fact, this activity is marginal in current videogames.

Now that I have defined a set of concepts and formal tools to help us understand the mechanics of videogames and, particularly, how players interpret them, it is time to start working on the techniques for creating videogames that would serve as a medium for fostering the player’s critique on her personal and social reality.  Later, I will explore how both Brechtian and Boalian techniques will prove to be helpful in attaining my design goals.

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