Clint Hocking – LucasArts
Click Nothing design, clint.hocking@gmail.com
Click Nothing design, clint.hocking@gmail.com
- Background
o 2009 Chris Checker GDC talk
o Asked “how do games mean?” (i.e., “what does Go mean?”)
o ‘What games are about’ is subjective (there are levels)
- Kuleshov Effect
o Film experiment – showed man with same expression intercut with different images
o Showed that the juxtaposition of elements drives meaning in film
o This is how film means – it’s the core meaning generation that happens on the lowest level of film
o This discovery allowed film to move forward from mere snippets without context. Film was simply a curiosity at this point – but now could have meaning
o We’re sort of currently at ‘games as curiosity’
- Suggestion: games mean via their dynamics (just as films mean via their editing)
o Games break into Mechanics, Dynamics, Aesthetics
o Can also be put as Rules, Behaviors, Feelings
o From where do aesthetics originate? (in film, it’s the editing)
o Mechanics (authored meaning) vs. dynamics (authorship to player) as a source of meaning
§ Can put more in one than another
- Examples
o Chaos theory (Splinter Cell)
§ Game is intended to be about chaos theory: complex and challenging tasks in proximity to fragile systems (guards, etc). Disruptions to the systems create cascading effects (so the game is about: sensitivity, proximity, fragility)
§ Lightened up from previous game – the player had more options to solving a problem as opposed to one specific solution
· This change in mechanics, allowed for more dynamics
§ Now the meaning changes depending on what the player does
· It could be about chaos theory or could be the same as Quake
o Farcry 2
§ Intended to be about the idea that human social savagery is worse than the simple savagery of teeth and claws
§ One player’s experience of killing someone in a field. Had one experience of what the game was about – became horrific, intimate, shameful
§ In another player’s experience he played it safe. This made the game safe, boring
o “Hills Like White Elephants” Short story
§ Meaning is implied, audience brings meaning to story
§ Showing audience that they are authors themselves
o Tetris
§ Is a game about precision, anticipation, keeping the opportunity alive
§ Unable to comment on world at large
§ Tetris is about itself and who’s playing it
§ Side example - The Marriage: abstract game with implied meaning about relationships
§ What if you change the game of Tetris to imagine that it’s about packing a train car – but you find out in the end that you’re sending people to a concentration camp (like Brenda Brathwaite’s “Train”)
· Changes what the game is about!
· How does gameplay change?
o Maybe you optimize the way you lose
o Immediate sabotage (single row)
o Do dutiful duty as soldier
§ Changing fictional skin, game has new fictional meaning
· Fiction is a skin, but it strongly impacts how we feel and can change the way we play (which changes what the game means)
- Competition is different than single player experience:
o Street Fighter
§ Fundamentally a battle between 2 players
§ Competitive pressure has massive impact on gameplay
o Go
§ “The Master of Go” book – chronicle of a game between two masters who embodied Imperial Japan vs. Modern Japan
§ Slow, deliberate game – at a point in the game the older Master made a dramatic move intended to force the other player to come to the battlefield in response
§ In response to the dramatic move, the other player made a simple, anti-climactic bookkeeping move, which bought him 2 days of time.
§ It was a great technical move, but the master was offended – said it was like “smearing paint upon what we had painted”
· A masterpiece of a game can be ruined by insensitivity to adversary
§ Younger challenger never thought he did anything wrong, had a completely different view of the game overall
o Meaning in competition is synthetic – synthesis of meaning between 2 players
o It is also instantial: meaning is not inherent to game, but to that particular instance of gameplay
§ This is why we can talk about the meaning of one specific game of Go
- Overall idea is to get us thinking more about what games are and how they function on a fundamental level
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