As far as the spike example goes, I think you’re definitely right that the visual element of a game can have an effect on the way it’s played, and it is important to signal players in different ways the behavior of the system (if only to prevent them from having to learn by trial and error). However, I’m afraid I don’t agree that this means that the line between a rule and the image associated with it is fuzzy. While it’s true that the picture of a spike communicates danger, it doesn’t actually have any effect on whether or not the terrain is dangerous. You could replace the spikes with apples and that terrain would still kill you instantly. Conversely, you could step on spikes and they could do no harm whatsoever, and then you would know that you didn’t have to worry about them.

The point I was trying to make is that the image of the spikes represents danger, while the rule that determines which terrain instantly kills the player is creating actual danger. This is what makes the latter a rule and the former simply a sign.

Now, I don’t want to give the impression that I think that the representational layer of a game isn’t important, I very much think it is. I derive a great deal of pleasure from beautiful games and I would be just as pissed as the next guy if I touched an apple in a game and suddenly exploded. I just think that it’s important not to confuse the content of a game with its mechanics, because to me they are very separate things.

The key difference between reader response theory and interactive media is that, while the player is integral in both cases, the player’s role in the combination of elements in a game is much more direct and total — UConn’s Roger Travis ( http://livingepic.blogspot.com ) calls games and the activities of Homeric bards “performative play practices”. Most recently, he described Bioshock’s climax by saying that “the moment of having to kill Andrew Ryan makes sense only in contrast to the interactivity the player has been allowed to enjoy elsewhere in the game”. This doesn’t have a clear analog in reader response theory, right? Even if a film was very open to interpretation in some places and closed in others for contrast, it wouldn’t have the same impact.

Joe – Thanks so much for the detailed feedback, you’ve definitely struck on some things that I’m going to have to consider.

While I think that we agree on some things, I think there are places where we miss each other as well. Like I said I’m a bit of a Formalist and so I’m not entirely comfortable referring to the ‘ancillary elements’ of a game as ‘rules’. To me ‘rules’ are those things which affect the possibility space of a game and ‘play’ is the interaction with that possibility space. On the other side we have code in video games that determines how it looks, sounds, etc., but code and rules are not the same thing. Following that I would say that we ‘consume’ the ancillary elements in games, rather than play them.

While you’re right that the player’s mind is constantly forming a story and filling blanks, I would say that this is analogous to reader response theory in literature and film, that’s still something that is different from how I’m using the word ‘play’.

I’d be really flattered if you wanted to incorporate some of this into your talk. Like I said, you’ve brought up some good points that I’m going to mull over, and if you’re interested I would very much like to continue this conversation in the future!

Iroquois – Always good to have you drop in!

My impression after reading Humble’s piece, and additional words from Jason Rohrer and Jonathan Blow, is that the Mechanists were pretty strict at one point. I think they’re drifting away from this now though. Hell, Jason Rohrer just released an abstract puzzle game! So you’re right that there isn’t anyone around quite so doctrinaire anymore.

However, I would point out that my primary complaint about Mechanism still stands, and even a less ridged belief in the expressive power of mechanics is still incorrect. In my opinion mechanics don’t mediate anything; instead of expressing something, they usually are the thing itself!

Here’s an example: spikes in Mega Man. How do we know that they’re spikes? Not because of the mechanics of the game, but because of the image that is associated with them. It’s the image that’s doing the mediation. What are the mechanics mediating? Danger? Well, no, because they actually are dangerous. Sure, they’re not threatening to player’s actual life, but they’re still deleterious to their progress in the game. It’s a different level of danger, but it’s still danger. It’s not a representation of danger.

Perhaps, though, I’ve misunderstood how you’re using the word ‘mediation’.

Anyway, this comment has gotten way too long, but you guys have made some great points and I just wanted to give them their due!

I like this post quite a bit.

I had one question, though: I wonder if you’re overplaying the form-content distinction in your treatment of productionism and mechanism. Maybe it’s the practitioners of these schools that are really at fault for this, but I don’t think even the most doctrinaire mechanist could deny that the contents of the ruleset matter. (For example, it’s important that the squares in Humble’s the marriage are pink and blue squares. the reference to the husband-and-wife relationship is what invests the mechanics with meaning.) I think a sane version of mechanism would just insist that the mediation of that content by mechanics is paramount in interactive art.

As an elaboration, every game has an art style; this style is actually a group of rules dictating how things in the game should look and move and animate, and even though it was an artist, not the player, who “played” these rules, they’re still a vital part of the milieu of the game’s narrative events in the player’s mind.

I would suggest that Formalism, not Mechanism, tends to ignore these less-playable rules.

Thanks for reading my paper — as a quick summary to the rest of the commenters, I believe that the narrative of games is something produced in the player’s head, a synthesis of game art, game music, the player’s mental model of the game mechanics and their inputs, and all the rest. In other words, all these disparate elements are fundamentally just different kinds of inputs to the player’s brain, a perfect machine for authoring stories and filling in blanks.

I would look at something like the division cited in Brathwaite’s post as an artifact of the coincidence that the game writer and the game designer are the most obvious authors of explicitly meaningful tokens in a game, and if they’re working towards different artistic goals then a divide of some sort is inevitable. However, a game-story divide is probably no different than a game-art divide or a story-music divide — sometimes it can be intentionally used to artistic effect, sometimes it’s an unintentional break in the player’s constructed narrative. It’s a question of cognitive dissonance, right?

I share your concern about productism, but broad classes of mass-market movies and books are also treated in this way. It may be that we’ll see a Hollywood model of big budget mass-market hits funding smaller indie-style experiments; in such a case, productism is probably an important style of writing, even if it generally sucks to read. If anything, our culture of productism is too informed by the world of software and hardware and not enough by the world of everyday experience. That’s why I feel that you give playism short shrift; if players make stories using games, then those stories are the rewards and memorable aspects of the experience. I might be misunderstanding your definition of playism, but if it amounts to “game travelogue”, I think it could be a way for the enthusiast press to garner legitimacy and “soul” at the expense of shader-worship and polygon fetishism.

I’m thrilled to chat about this — do you mind if I incorporate these terminology and this conversation into my talk?

i think another useful angle on ‘productism’ is that of the value proposition .. the idea that, say, the orange box is a better buy than halo 3 because it contains FOUR games rather than one, or that flower is better somehow for costing $10 on psn rather than $50 in a box.

It’s nice to know that someone else is mulling things in a similar direction. Now I know there must be something to it!

I think that the biggest difference between our two approaches is that you’re far more generous than I am. To me there are serious conceptual problems with Productism and Mechanism. Playism, like I said, is barely about games at all.

The truth is that I’m a Formalist. While I recognize that there’s no single legitimate way to examine games, I think that Formalism is ultimately the most coherent and the widest ranging.

By the way, I wandered over to your site and read your essay, ‘Parametric Criticism’. I think it’s a great argument for a new way of looking at narrative in games. It made me wonder what you thought of Brenda Brathwaite’s recent post on stories and databases?