Game Design Review of Jesper Juul s Half-Real: Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds Simon Cutajar December 14, 2011
Half-Real What are games? What are video games? Where do they fit in the world? Are they necessary? These are some questions one might be asking as video games become increasingly more common in today s world. With video games being advertised on the Internet, television and printed media, with the rise of smartphones and portable devices and with the console wars, it s very rare to find someone that has never played a video game before, even casually. However, in his book Half-Real: Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds, Juul states that although the history of video games is a relatively short one of only 40 years, games have been around since the beginning of civilization, and it is only recently that academic effort has been devoted to studying games (Juul, 2005). After an introductory chapter explaining the history of games, as well as delving slightly into the history of video games, Juul starts by introducing his classical game model. He identifies the fact that while video games are in the same category as board games and card games, there are slight differences between them. It seems that, while Juul does not explicitly make reference to the digital fallacy, as proposed by (Stenros and Waern, 2011), he still acknowledges the difference between the types of games. He then dives straight into trying to find a definition that adequately encompasses all 8 video games that he has made reference to in book. He quotes Wittgenstein by saying What is common to them all?... look and see whether there is anything common to all (Wittgenstein, 1991). To try and define games, Juul first examines definitions that have been made by other people, and then comes up with a new definition consisting of 6 features, as quoted below: A game is a rule based system with a variable and quantifiable outcome, where different outcomes are assigned different values, the player exerts effort in order to influence the outcome, 1
the player feels emotionally attached to the outcome, and the consequences of the activity are negotiable. (Juul, 2005) With this definition, Juul begins to distinguish between games, borderline cases (such as SimCity (Maxis, 1989)), and non-game cases (such as freeform play and Conway s game of life (Gardner, 1970)). One topic that Juul briefly mentions, but does not attempt to classify is toys. Although in Juul s definition, they are clearly not games, they can be played with and can become part of a game. Moreover, toys can be used as prototypes to create games (Sass and Oxman, 2006), something that Juul does not seem to have considered in his text. With that, Juul goes into the interesting case of transmedial games, a topic which is not very frequently mentioned in academic literature. Here, Juul likens games to a narrative; where if a narrative can occur in an orallytold story, in a novel or in a movie, likewise a game may appear as card games, board games, sports or video games. Just as the narrative from a novel may be retold in a movie setting, similarly, a card game may be replicated and played in a digital setting as a video game. Juul mentions that different game settings support different types of games, and not all games may be easily replicated in other settings. Some might even have to take certain liberties when adapting the game, such as sports games as video games, where not all possible actions that a human player can take in a physical sport may occur in the game simply because humans invent new strategies, tactics and moves all the time. Here, Juul says that the player s body is part of the game state (Juul, 2005). An interesting case to consider here is B.U.T.T.O.N. (Copenhagen Game Productions, 2010). Whereas Juul points out that the advantage of digital games is the fact that a computer can compute the rules and replace the game referee, in a game like B.U.T.T.O.N., the computer does not actually referee the players. Instead, the players referee themselves, the computer merely provides the incentive to play. Moreover, the game is actually aware of its ambiguity, making it a self-effacing game (Wilson, 2011). One particular element that both previous definitions and Juul s definition seem to focus on is rules. In fact, Juul dedicates a whole chapter to the subject of rules. In this chapter, Juul states that rules are more than just an indirect and less efficient way of doing things (as argued by (Suits, 2005)). Juul argues that rules present challenges in the game, creating a state machine and a game tree of all possible outcomes in the game. These challenges may appear in what Juul describes as emergence games (which Juul sums 2
up with the sentence easy to learn but difficult to master )and progression games (where the gameplay is much more directed by the designer). Juul mentions that the rules must be recognized by all players as well as specific and definite. But where do the rules in a game come from? In the case of modern games, we can easily identify the designer or team of designers behind the rules, but this task is not so easy for folk games. It is interesting to see the parallel between iterative prototyping (McConnell, 1996) and the development of rules for folk games, where when new rules are introduced to a folk game, they can either be accepted or integrated as part of the game if popular, or simply ignored. House rules for popular games such as Monopoly also seem to have followed this progression. Even children during their playground games engage in this type of rule creation and debate (Hughes, 1983). One important point to mention is that some rules may be taken for granted in some games, particularly in sport, where the real world rules such as gravity and laws of physics are not mentioned. They are still rules that affect the game (since after all, football would be played much differently on the moon), but they cannot be changed. The state machine, which consists of all the possible choices that a player can take in the game, allows for different strategies that players can use. It is important to note that these strategies are never defined in the rules, they are simply ways of playing that have been coined by players. Games that have a limited state machine (and little replayability value, as argued by Juul for The Hobbit (Melbourne House, 1984)) will be considered as far less interesting by the player. Juul compares The Hobbit, a text adventure game with graphics, with Pong (Atari, 1973), a table tennis simulator using very block and very simplistic graphics, asserting that Pong is more interesting than The Hobbit because in Pong, every game is unique simply because the game has a wider possibility space. Juul goes on to assert however, that the rules by themselves do not make up the gameplay. Rather, the gameplay is determined by the way the game is played, and different games may be played in different ways. For example, B.U.T.T.O.N. allows and encourages subversive gameplay, by allowing players to push other players controllers, thus forcing them to interact with each other, adding a social element to the game. Other people play speedruns, which consist of an attempt to finish the game in the least amount of time possible. Some games, such as World of Warcraft (Blizzard Entertainment, 2004), inherently allows for social play by encouraging players to form clans, social groups that allow players to build a community and work together to 3
defeat bigger and harder monsters. An interesting statement that Juul makes is that a game changes the player that plays it. By this, he means that the puzzles and challenges that appear in the game should be interesting enough to keep the player engaged, as well as useful for future challenges. The challenges should also be at a particular level so as to keep the player in flow, they should not be either too hard or too easy, as this may either frustrate or bore the player. The save function is a particularly tricky question, since having a save function inherently reduces the immersion the player experiences. However, adding a save function may encourage the player to constantly save the game, thus making it too easy, while removing the save function may frustrate players by making it too difficult to play. Certain challenges may have an aesthetic choice; Amnesia: The Dark Descent (Frictional Games, 2011) was intentionally designed to not have a combat mechanic, thus increasing the experience of fear and helplnessness in the game. One aspect of rules that Juul seems to have left ambiguous is the prevailing fact that games are almost always thought of as systems, making the play aspect of games very much unexplored (Stenros and Waern, 2011). Not only should the game designer focus on the game as simply a system, but also on the experience that the player receives in the game. Minecraft (Mojang, 2009) for example, especially the creative mode, contains simple and understandable rules, but allows the player to build whatever structures he or she wishes to build. The player is free to play in the sandbox environment and is not tied down by rigid rules and systems. In the third chapter of the book, Juul describes the fiction of the game, such as the game setting, the narrative and the thematic elements. Juul states that there are several cues that aid the player into being immersed into the fictional world, ranging from the graphics and sound, to the game box and the manual. All of the elements that are mentioned seem to be important in creating a believable world. However, there seems to be a marked difference between a coherent world, where the designers go to great lengths to make the game believable, and an incoherent world, where there are certain game elements that feel odd (such as Mario s 3 lives in Donkey Kong (Nintendo, 1981)). Juul also mentions optional worlds, worlds where players may not be immersed in, since they are more focused on the skills needed to play the game, so details such as graphics do not matter. The time experienced in the game can also affect the game s fiction. Some 4
games, such as Tetris (Atari, 1986), are abstract enough to not immerse the player in a fictional world, regardless of how time is experienced. In first person shooter games, such as Quake (id Software, 1996), the time experienced in the game flows at the same time time is experience in the real world. This allows the player to feel as though he is actually inside the game. Other games, such as Civilization (MicroProse, 1991), are turn based, where a thousand years may pass between each turn. Some games even allow the speeding up and slowing down of time (such as in SimCity). One major similarity to movies is the fact that some games have cutscenes, where the player is no longer allowed to interact with the game, but watches events unfold in the game world. While cut-scenes are counterintuitive (since the player is not playing the game), they can be used for immersion. One major difference however, is the fact that certain narrative elements, such as an unreliable narrator or flashbacks, are problematic to present in a game setting, since the player has control over his or her character s actions. If a player does not follow the right sequence of steps in order to make the next sequence occur, then the present might be rendered impossible. Having an unreliable narrator also makes the player feel like he is no longer in control of the game, since whatever he or she completes in the game might not be relevant anyway. Another point that is raised in the expected question of ludology vs. narratology. Juul seems to think that although games can be used to portray and tell a narrative, they should not be used as a narrative, since the game also consists of activities and rules. In the fourth chapter of his book, Juul discusses the issue of game space and real world space. He references the magic circle to describe the game space as happening inside of the real world space, and the events in the game space should not have any effect on the events in the real world space. (DeKoven, 2002) speaks of the events that happen inside the game space as social fictions, events that must continuously be created to exist, similar to a dance performance. Juul also describes the mapping of real world space onto the fictional world (such as invisible walls existing as limits of exploration in the game). A similar and related point is the placing of importance on certain things over others; so a wall may not be textured as detailed, simply because it is irrelevant to the game outside of being a boundary. According to Juul, this makes it a stylized simulation. This may result in conflicts, where certain objects cannot be interacted with simply because they were not scripted to be interacted with by the game designer. We also find out what Juul really 5
means by half-real games, games that interact with the fictional world as well as the real world. Certain characters or locations exist in the game that do not exist in the real world; however, one may control these characters from the real world. Finally, Juul tries to draw meaning from games, such as representations, interpretations and statements about real-life events and morality and ethics in games. In summary, Juul s Half-Real: Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds is a perfect overview of the current state of game studies, delving into relevant topics such as the digital fallacy and rules in games, as well as suggesting different topics of interest (such as morality in games) to potential readers. 6
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