Analytical Otaku

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Showing posts with label goals. Show all posts

Madness in the Method: How You Do Something Says More than What You Do

On Sunday, March 10, 2013 1 comments

Context is everything. Roughly 90% of games send you on a quest to save the world. But like we covered before, the way you accomplish a goal is every bit as important as the goal itself. For example, consider Okami. In Okami, players are yet again tasked with saving the world. However, instead of some buff warrior, players assume the role of Amaterasu, the goddess of the sun. Since she is a nature goddess, her can restore harmony by purifying corrupted spots of land. The player isn’t supposed to just save society, but the very land itself. By placing the focus on saving nature, the game suggests that nature is both valuable and powerful. It also suggests that nature is something that needs to be protected. While the game has no overt environmental themes, it still communicates an ecological message through the game play.

Eveything about this game sets it apart, including the goals.

Sometimes, goals communicate a message not intended by the developers. Even if a message is unintentional, the programmers set up the system for the world. They make up the laws of that fictional world, and their imaginary land reflects how they believe the real world should work. For example, in Jak and Daxter: the Precursor Legacy the main goal of the game is to transform your friend back into a human. There are threatening monsters called Lurkers, but when players fight them, it is only so they can advance their journey. Even doing good deeds has a selfish purpose. The local townspeople always bribe you upfront with Power Cells, so you don’t help them out of the good of your heart. While the player does end up saving the world, it is less out of intentional effort and more due to unlikely happenstance. The entire game is about serving self-interest. Even if the developers weren’t consciously putting that into the game, the way they set up the system reinforces the idea of looking out for yourself first and foremost.

In the sequel, Jak II, the goal is to overthrow Baron Praxis’s totalitarian rule. The goal is a generally noble one, but the methods involve terrorism, bribery, and blackmail. Even if the player doesn’t agree with the morality of a mission, the only way to move forward is to do what the game wants. Through the set-up of the game, it suggests that the ends justify the means when it comes to overthrowing a corrupt government. Sometimes the strictness of a game can be rhetorical by only allowing one solution to a problem, suggesting that is the best solution.

Jak II teaches us that if violence isn't solving your problems, you aren't using enough of it.

BlazBlue, on the other hand, encourages the player to use as many different methods as possible. BlazBlue is a fighting game, which means that the game play consists of one-on-one battles. In most fighting games, the story will be tournament style, with players having to beat several opponents in order to progress. BlazBlue takes a different approach, with branching storylines that take multiple play-throughs to reach. The only wat to reach some of the branches, players must lose certain battles. In fact, in order to achieve 100% completion the player has to lose all possible battles once. By including losses as part of the completion requirement, the game suggests that both winning and losing are valuable experiences.

Blazblu shows us that if violence doesn't solve your problems, you aren't smashing the buttons fast enough.

Goals suggest something is worth value, but making something a goal does not make a convincing argument by itself. Video games are often criticized for glorifying violence, but “violence is an element of play that serves specific purposes.”¹ Because players are aware that it is only a game, they do not see the things they kill as living beings, but as challenges and hurdling blocks. Whether or not the violence in video games has negative effects on people is a subject of much controversy, and no conclusive evidence for either side has emerged. At the moment, though, the goals in video games are not always directly parallel to actions in real life, but remain abstracted. In order for the creator to persuade the audience that game goals apply beyond the game, they must create a system that is comparable to real life. Then, they need to show real-life rewards that could motivate the player. “Immediate goals provide immediate rewards,” and the success the player feels over small victories will motivate them to continue through the game to achieve larger victories.¹ Developers need to provide adequate reason for the player to become invested in the stakes.

This concludes the goals section of video game rhetoric. For Part 1, check here. For Part 2, check here. Make sure to check out the main Rhetoric directory, and check back for the next section, where we delve into choice and effect in video games!

Oh, and if you want to make me really happy, check out my novel. You can get it for free with the coupon code YP65T.

1. DeMaria, Rusel. Reset: Changing the Way We Look at Video Games. San Francisco: Berret-Koehler Publishers, Inc., 2007.Print.

Your Objective is Anarchy: How Video Games Encourage Rebellion

On Sunday, February 3, 2013 2 comments

Last time we talked about how video game objectives can influence how much a player values something. The careful designer can set up an objective that forces the player to temporarily adopt a value-set that is not their own.

Speaking of forcing their values on players, Every Day the Same Dream is an indie game with a bleak outlook on life. The player is stuck in a vicious cycle of waking up, getting dressed, and going to work. The only way to “beat” the game is to go against the system. The player must accomplish five tasks. They are given no instruction on what they are supposed to do, but must figure it out for themselves by going against the flow. For example, one of the tasks involves going to work in their underwear and being fired by the boss. Another task involves the player throwing themselves off the roof of the building where they work. The goal of the game is to break out of the everyday routine and have players think for themselves. The player is forced to “fight the man,” regardless of their current job satisfaction. And because being a free-thinking douche is the only way to win the game, the game advances an anti-establishment doctrine.

Petting cows: the biggest middle finger you can give corporate America.

What’s more, the way players accomplish this goal is rhetorical. Players are rewarded for suicide in the sense that it helps them progress in the game. The sparse bits of dialogue in the game don’t mention the main character dissatisfaction or frustration. The game never tells you that it wants you to refuse labor and become an individual. It doesn’t have to. Simply by making that a goal, the game illustrates its argument to the player. If you sit down at your desk and work like a good little drone, then the cycle repeats ad infinitum. But by throwing social norms to the wind, players are rewarded with advancement. It’s positive-reinforcement for rebellion.

He's very nonchalant about the whole suicide thing.

Portal also preaches an anti-establishment rhetoric. In the beginning of the game, you are in a lab undergoing a battery of dangerous tests (for science!). An anonymous voice instructs and encourages you over the intercom. Players are given little context for what they are doing and who they are working for. Even though they’re kept in the dark, the only way to move forward is by completing the tests. The players have no choice but to abide by the rules of an unknown force.

As the game progresses, the disembodied voice shows signs of impairment and malfunction. Still the only option is to continue through the tests. Things change when the computer running the tests tries to dump the player into the furnace. The tables are turned, and now the only way to survive is to rebel and find a way to shut down the malicious computer running the facility. In this way, the players are both literally and figuratively encouraged to bring down the system.

GLaDOS just may be the only feminine incarnation of "the man" in existence.

Portal puts gamers in a situation where they have to blindly follow the voice of authority. Then the game takes that authority and makes it insane and unreliable. Players are forced to rely on themselves, not an anonymous authority. The game is a sort of pro-solidarity/ anti-authority science-fest.

Visit the main video game rhetoric directory here.

View Part 1 of video games and goals.

View Part 3 of video games and goals.

Check back in a few days for the next part in the series!

Winning Terms: How Goals Influence Players

On Thursday, January 31, 2013 1 comments

Welcome back to the rhetoric of video games! For these next couple of posts, we will explore how goals influence gamers. If you missed the first couple of posts, make sure to check them out.

What makes video games “games” is that they have goals. Without a goal, then it is just an interactive piece of software. Of course, some games have really loose goals, like Tetris wanting you to stack a bunch of boxes. Others have very specific goals, like defeating an evil sorcerer or escaping a testing facility.

Why are you spending hours on end stacking boxes? Because you have no social life, that's why.

No matter how lightly the game takes its primary objective, the goals still have rhetorical effect. By designating something as a goal, a game implies that it has worth. For example, if the goal of the game is to “save the princess,” then that implies that the princess is valuable enough to go through the effort of saving. “By stating a rule that defines a winning scenario, the simauthor is claiming that these goals are preferable to their opposite.”¹ So the player will see the end goal as the right thing, and the opposite conditions, or losing, as something that is bad. When properly applied, goals and the methods to achieve those goals can motivate the player and convince them that something is worth their time.

The setting of Final Fantasy VII is a run down, dilapidated world. Big business has exhausted natural resources, and the whole planet is on a downward spiral to disaster. Despite this, the goal of the game is to save the world. This implies that the world, no matter how run-down and used-up it is, is still something worth fighting for.

This image of FFVII's Midgar isn't in grayscale. It's naturally that dreary.

Many games force players into the role of a messiah, combating evil in an attempt to restore balance. However, “evil” can be anything the developer wants it to be. If the developer makes the enemy a bunch of cartoonish pigs, the player has to fight them to win. It doesn’t matter how the player personally feels; while ‘they are playing a game, gamers operate under the logic of the programmer. The designer’s goals become theirs.

1. 1. Frasca, Gonzalo. "Simulation versus Narrative: Introduction to Ludology." The Video Game Theory Reader. Ed. Mark J.P. Wolf and Ed. Bernard Perron. New York: Routledge, 2003. Print.

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Visit the main video game rhetoric directory here

Learn more about goals and their influence on players here

Learn how perspective affects games here