Slide No. 1 of 16GAP Summer School – Utrecht – August 21st, 2014

Analytical Game Design.Digital Game Studies between theory and practice.

Dr. Stefan Werning (University of Utrecht)

Slide No. 2 of 16GAP Summer School – Utrecht – August 21st, 2014

Problematizing ‚the‘ digital game studies

• Ian Bogost: „a mess“ (2009) *– Few consensual terms and concepts

– ‚Imported‘ structural metaphors such as „design patterns“ (Christopher Alexander) are still often limited to specific sub-discourses

– Limited corpus of examples• E.g. >40 references to Psycho Mantis in game-analytical

texts on Google Scholar (as of July 2014)

– Focus on discursively ‚claiming‘ new subject areas and phenomena

– Limited demonstrability of hypotheses since games are more volatile as ‚proof‘ than e.g. films

• Reconsidering the role of practice might be one way to address this

* Bogost, Ian. 2009. Videogames are a Mess, online: http://www.bogost.com/writing/videogames_are_a_mess.shtml.

Slide No. 3 of 16GAP Summer School – Utrecht – August 21st, 2014

‚Analytical‘ practices in different arts and disciplines

• Literature– Oulipo: Prototyping ‚littérature potentielle‘– Literatur based on ‚algorithms‘ (or: rules of play)

• S+7/N+7, snowball, palindromes, univocalism– Allowed for ‚testing‘ the feasibility of literary techniques– Explored the relation between textual and procedural rhetoric

• E.g. Raymond Queneau, Un conte à votre façon (1967)

• Music– Variations on a theme– Alexander Skrjabin; Theodor W. Adorno

• Reenactment and games in historiography– Includes aspects of corporeality into historical analyses

• E.g. spatial experience, weight and texture of weapons– Kevin Kee, Rob MacDougall, Timothy Compeau

• Using ARGs in teaching history

• Architecture– Parametric design practices– Iterative and intrinsically playful

Slide No. 4 of 16GAP Summer School – Utrecht – August 21st, 2014

The role of practice in film studies

• The ‚Kuleshov experiments‘– Part of an ‚experimental culture of filmmaking‘

• cf. e.g. ‚creative geography‘ und ‚creative anatomy‘

– Situated within the opposition between performance (actors) and montage (editors)• Conceptually similar to the early opposition between ludology

and narratology• Experiments facilitated a productive resolution

– Fostered a quantitative perspective on film• Kuleshov drew on the quantification of actors‘ movements in

time and space following Frederick Taylor (Prince/Hensley)• Notation syntax for on-screen movement• Faciliated the ‚rapid prototyping‘ of aesthetic ideas

Slide No. 5 of 16GAP Summer School – Utrecht – August 21st, 2014

The role of practice in film studies II

• Only iteration and comparison produced new insights– The singular experiment propagated montage rather

than analyzing it– ‚Testing hypotheses‘ about film syntax– Made viewing conventions and bias observable and,

thus, analyzable

• Call for a „Citizen Kane of videogames“ – http://thecitizenkaneofvideogames.tumblr.com/– „Citizen Kane moment“ (EDGE Online)– Instead, we rather need lots of video game

experiments following the example of Kuleshov

Slide No. 6 of 16GAP Summer School – Utrecht – August 21st, 2014

The role of practice in film studies III

• Supercuts and video essays as analytical ‚tools‘– Kogonada: Kubrick // One-Point Perspective

• Several ‚experiments‘ within a single video– Implemented by recontextualizing the same footage within

different contexts

• Adds an ‚aesthetic quality‘ to the hypothesis – E.g. through the juxtaposition of images and music

• Already used in institutionalized film analysis – Cf. e.g. Catherine Grant on ‚direct addresses‘ in Bunuels Los

Olvidados

Slide No. 7 of 16GAP Summer School – Utrecht – August 21st, 2014

Reflective playing practices I:Theorycrafting

• Speedrunning as a conceptual ‚precursor‘– Quasi-analytical playing practice

• Theorycrafting– Methodical iteration on player behavior and

documentation of the ‚results‘– Hypotheses on game-internal parameters– Mostly with reference to MMO(RP)Gs

– Analyses are limited to game-internal phenomena• E.g. used to optimize playing strategies• Do not generate ‚new‘ insights • I.e. rather a self-referential activity

Slide No. 8 of 16GAP Summer School – Utrecht – August 21st, 2014

Reflective playing practices II:In-Game Photography

• ‚Testing hypotheses‘ on aesthetic aspects – perspective and framing – Genres such as architecture, portrait or still life– mis-en-scène

• ‚Testing hypotheses‘ on photographic and ‚touristic‘ practices and perceptions

• Deemphasizes the element of ‚ludus‘

• ‚Photos‘ are being archived, documented, evaluated and used as the basis for new ‚experiments‘

Slide No. 9 of 16GAP Summer School – Utrecht – August 21st, 2014

The role of practice in Digital Game Studies

• Reflective practitioners in game design/analysis– Ian Bogost, Dan Pinchbeck, Jesper Juul– Perform similar functions as Eisenstein or Kuleshov

• Rationalized media practice– Second of six ‚phases‘ of media theory (Rainer

Leschke)– Lindley/Eladhari: Causal Normalization: A

Methodology for Coherent Story Logic Design in Computer Role-Playing Games

– Bjork/Holopainen: Patterns in Game Design

Slide No. 10 of 16GAP Summer School – Utrecht – August 21st, 2014

The (potential) role of practice in game studies:Video production as a form of analyzing games

• Videography as a form of knowledge production with a long tradition

• EXAMPLE: Recutting game footage according to cinematographic syntax– ‚Analyzes‘ the game and its relation to

other narrative media– Makes structural incompatibilities

evident and more easily analyzable

„The main reason this game is often criticized is the fact that it is extremely repetitious. Even with the editing I did, you will definitely notice this to be true. However, I hope the form of editing I did helps move the story along smoother

than actually playing the game does, which should allow this game to possibly be more watchable as a movie than playable as a game.“

„I've done my best to try to bring out the movie experience in this game. I've removed as much of the HUD as I could, and as with the Uncharted series, I've only

included the bare minimum gameplay necessary to understand the story.“

Slide No. 11 of 16GAP Summer School – Utrecht – August 21st, 2014

The (potential) role of practice in game studies:Game experiments

• Which? and More Which? (Nekogames, 2012)– Differentiate between outwardly identical

objects

– Experimental setting through iteration

– E.g. hard/soft, full/empty, 2D/3D

– ‚Analyzes‘ the (im-)mediacy of game-internal perception• Triggers the introspection and self-reflexivity of

the player

– Does not produce ‚answers‘ but rather important follow-up questions

Slide No. 12 of 16GAP Summer School – Utrecht – August 21st, 2014

Analytical game design

• The independent game scene already ‚iterates‘ on concepts through sheer quantity– Sophie Houlden, The Linear RPG– Nekogames, Parameters

• Hypotheses need to be tested through iteration and remixing– Problem: Existing games are not easily remixable and

repeatable

• Adapting methods from (commercial) software development– E.g. game analytics (Google analytics)– E.g. split testing as used in web and app development– E.g. platforms for collaborative code editing

• Forking and embedded comment functionality

Slide No. 13 of 16GAP Summer School – Utrecht – August 21st, 2014

(How) Can games ‚answer‘ questions?

• Bryan Lawson: „How Designers Think“– Always multiple ‚solutions‘, none of which is clearly ‚ideal‘– Every solution can only be assessed in its practical

application

• Design as „conversation and perception“

• Even the DT heuristic of the Hasso-Plattner-Institute (Stanford) is being constantly varied and ‚redesigned‘– Understand– Observe– Define point of view– Ideate & choose– Prototype & test– Implement

Slide No. 14 of 16GAP Summer School – Utrecht – August 21st, 2014

Playful knowledge production, or:The digital game studies as a game

• 1) Game prototyping as a game in itself– Iterative process allows for quick recombination of design elements (paidia)– Scripting language as ‚ruleset‘ (ludus)– Optimization problems similar to common gameplay mechanisms

• 2) Similarly, analytical game design encourages playful heuristics of knowledge production– Playing with the parameters of the experiments /prototypes (paidia)

• 3) Games can and should be part of the ‚dispositif‘ of game studies– Cf. e.g. Beat Wyss: slides/diapositives and Powerpoint as the dispositif of art history

• Collecting, taxonomizing, organizing as educational principles• Philology rather than philosophy

Slide No. 15 of 16GAP Summer School – Utrecht – August 21st, 2014

OUTLOOK: Thematic links to the workshop‚Reading and Writing Game Poetry‘

• Game poetry (Ian Bogost) as one potential manifestation of ‚analytical game design‘

• Goal of the workshop– Designing new ‚gameplay vignettes‘ that

allow for approaching the concept of (game) poetry from different angles

• Slides will be available online

Slide No. 16 of 16GAP Summer School – Utrecht – August 21st, 2014

Thanks a lot for

your interest!

Any questions or

Comments?