Storytelling & Games: Interactive Expression

Nelson Zagalo, University of Minho

Lisbon, 25 June 2012

GALA - Games and Learning Alliance, Network of Excellence on Serious Games, FP7

Serious Games

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Educational tools / Learning Software

Serious Games

The purpose of Serious Games is not just putting game strategies at the service of education or training, but rather take the training and education to the game.

Use games to teach, is not something new, we had a lot of that in the 1990's, with the idea of "Edutainment." Now we started over again with this new label "Serious Games".

The main problem has been a total absence of interest in the Player. Betting everything on the teaching, on message conveying regardless of form, structure and gameplay used.

We forgot the player and the uniqueness of games as a communication and art form.

The purpose

Games are trial structures, and people like to be judged.

But beware, because they do not want any kind of judgment, they want to be judged favorably.

The rewards are what explain to the player that he performed his duties properly.

People play to be rewarded through:

Compliments, Points, Empowerment, Self-Expression, and other forms.

Why people Play

Storytelling is the art of creating structures of consistent events in order to stimulate specific audience effects.

In the games case, these events can only be triggered by user participation in the course of interaction, fulfilling some rules.

Thus looking into art and media comparison we have,

We Play, We Do, We Become

Literature - we read (ideas described symbolically of) what happened.

Film - we see (ideas displayed of) what happened.

Videogame - we do (actions that become ideas) happen.

The mechanics are the message

Brenda Brathwaite, Gaming for understanding, at TEDxPhoenix (2011)

Learnign about Middle Passage at schools

Mechanics on Middle Passage

Families in Africa Boat to take people to the US

New World , board game improvisedby Brenda Brathwaite

The approach and attempt to glue the aesthetic universe and cinematographic practices, is a natural step in the creation of video games when we think of sending messages throughout any audiovisual medium.

But to some extent this glue has done more harm than good to the media, because like what happened with the passage from theater to film, it is limiting the potential for artistic expression of the games.

Film to games problems:

1 - inputs of cinematic stylitics2 - very long cut-scenes3 - a linear succession of dramatic events credible4 - creating characters, dialogue and coherent fictional worlds5 - obsession with graphic realism to support the need for coherent representation

What is ultimately the singularity aesthetics of videogames?

Interactive expression, not film

Theatre

[Drama + (Architecture, Painting, Literature, Music)] Live

Film

[Editing + (Theatre)] Cinematography

Videogames

[Interactivity + (Film)] CGI*

Videogames Singularity: Interactivity

* CGI – Computer Graphics Images

Singularity

(P) Person(O) Other(M) Messages(Mj) Temporal sequencesP(Mj) or (OMj) - Messages based in Previous MessagesP(Mj/Mj-1) or M (Mj/Mj-1) - Previous messages based in earlier messages

Non-interactive, when a message is not related to previous messages;

Reactive, when a message is related only to one immediately previous message;

Interactive, when a message is related to a number of previous messages and to the relationship between them.

Interactivity

Interactivity is the Singularity of Game. Interactivity is a consequently communication cycle and between the object and person.

Questions,

        - Can I communicate complex messages through interactivity?

        - How can I do it?

We can start by taking the following

       - Create Art is Playing with ideas from our Reality

       - Structuring Play is creating Games

Without forgetting that,

       - In videogames we make happen actions that become ideas.

Communicate through digital interactivity

The Marriage, (2007), Rod Humble

“The circles represent outside elements entering the marriage.

The size of each square represents the amount of space that person is taking up within the marriage.

The transparency of the squares represents how engaged that person is in the marriage. When one person fades out of the marriage and becomes emotionally distant then the marriage is over.

The game mechanics are designed such that the game is fragile. It’s easy to break. This is deliberate as marriages are fragile and they feel fragile, I wanted to get this across.”

http://www.rodvik.com/rodgames/marriage.html

playing with world representations

“On the surface, the point of Passage is to open as many treasure chests within the allotted time. But that's not what Jason Rohrer's award winning game is really about. What it is really about is love, the passing of time, saying goodbye to youth and freedom, grief - ultimately life itself.”

http://hcsoftware.sourceforge.net/passage/

Passage, (2007), Jason Rohrer

playing with world representations

“As a mother, it's your job to keep your little tyke in the safety of the homestead until they have enough experience to survive the monster-infested woods. Don't expect any gratitude, though. The brat will continually try to give you the slip and escape into the wild. After a while, like many a parent, you may well be tempted to let it go find out the hard way what the world's really like.”

www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/560920

A Mother in Festerwood, (2011)de Austin Breed

playing with world representations

“Austin Breed has created a split-screen tale of a couple separated by, well, distance. You follow their separate, daily routines and at night get to pose one of two questions while they chat on the phone. But will their eyes start to wander? What would you do? Find out!”

www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/556828

Distance (2010) de Austin Breed

playing with world representations

"One Chance is a game about choices and dealing with them.

Scientist John Pilgrim and his team have accidently created a pathogen that is killing all living cells on Earth.

In the last 6 remaining in-game days on Earth, the player must make choices about how to spend his last moments. Will he spend time with his family, work on a cure or go nuts?"

www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/555181

One Chance, (2010), AwkwardSilence

playing with world representations

“Gray is a riot - quite literally. In this cerebral, experimental game, you play the part of a lone dissenter, trying desperately to win a seemingly never ending horde of rioters over to your cause. It seems like a helpless task but one by one you manage to woo the rioters until eventually you have the majority following you. But what does any self-respecting rebel do when they are a member of the majority, well in this game, they switch to the other side of course, and repeat the whole process again but from the opposite direction.

Gray raises some interesting questions about the individual and the possibility of one person changing the course of history.”

www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/495076

Gray, (2009), Greg Wohlwend

playing with world representations

http://www.kongregate.com/games/mindfulxp/connections

Connections, (2011), mindful xp

playing with world representations

“Every day the same dream is a slightly existential riff on the theme of alienation and refusal of labor. The idea was to charge the cyclic nature of most video games with some kind of meaning (i.e. the "play again" is not a game over). Yes, there is an end state, you can "beat" the game.”

www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/540741

Every Day the Same Dream, 2007, Paolo Pedercini

playing with world representations

Storytelling & Games: Interactive Expression

Nelson Zagalo, nzagalo@ics.uminho.pt@ics.uminho.pt

H. http://nelsonzagalo.googlepages.com

B. http://virtual-illusion.blogspot.com

F. http://www.facebook.com/nelsonzagalo

Lisbon, 25 June 2012

GALA - Games and Learning Alliance