Comments on: Patch Wednesday: What Determines how a Game is Played?

By: J. Juul: What determines how a game is played? | Gabriele Ferri's research blog

Tue, 21 Jan 2014 13:57:13 +0000

[…] “What determines how a game is played?” is a short essay from Jesper Juul’s blog discussing the properties of freedom, submission, subversion and creation. http://www.jesperjuul.net/ludologist/patch-wednesday-how-a-game-is-played […]

By: Jesper

Jesper — Mon, 20 Jan 2014 10:15:14 +0000

@Jason I would put that under the “creation”-header, at least if it is stated strongly.

By: Jason Begy

Jason Begy — Fri, 17 Jan 2014 18:01:44 +0000

What about as social activity? The social context in which a game is played can greatly impact what is played and how it is played. The game can even be secondary to the social setting, acting as a mediator or facilitator between players.

By: Jesper

Jesper — Thu, 16 Jan 2014 09:50:42 +0000

@Angela Yes, but I would argue that conventions play a part in each of the four conceptions that I list, both in terms of the design work taking place against conventions, and the player approaching the game with certain expectations. But I agree it is worth spelling out.

@Brand I think those examples would often be used for “subversion” and “creation” arguments.

@ Joris I agree that happens, but I am unaware that anyone has made this central to a theory of what it means to be playing a game?

By: Joris Dormans

Joris Dormans — Thu, 16 Jan 2014 09:16:51 +0000

What about critical reflection?
Where the player plays along with the game, but at the same time is very aware of its artificial nature and cultural context and critically reflects upon her interaction with the game. Although I guess you could could consider it to be a variant of submission. Papers Please would be the examplar game.

By: Brand

Brand — Wed, 15 Jan 2014 18:10:16 +0000

Maybe : 5) Previous knowledge

In tabletop RPGs, we have a concept called “System 0”. This refers to the game system the game master (or the other players) use when there is no rule he can refers to to solve a specific situation. It doesn’t matter whether these rules are not available because they are not designed, because he doesn’t actively use alreay written rules (for small stakes situations, to go quicker, …) because the game master doesn’t remember them, or because he twist the written rules without even noticing it.

The same thing happens in video games. You don’t only play a specific game, you play partly a specific game and its rules, and partly what you think applies and other rules, mostly that you learned through other games (red items explode, gold is better than silver, …), genre conventions (if this plateform is too high, I can come back here as soon as I get the double jump skill), plateform specific conventions (cross validates, circle cancels…), narrative conventions, your own gaming history, etc.

Some examples might be :
+ when a game location seems about to finish, maybe with a boss encounter, many player just stop going where they supposed to go and start exploring the area again to be sure to get everything that could be collected in the zone.
+ when you play an older game and you try to do whatever was allowed into a more modern one, feeling mostly its limits even though it has made its own genre evolve when it was released (quite common in competitive versus fighting games).
+ …

By: Angela R. Cox

Angela R. Cox — Wed, 15 Jan 2014 17:04:51 +0000

It’s missing genre expectations and social conventions, I think.
Players read genre cues and enter into a “genre contract” if you will, and feel betrayed when those expectations are betrayed, and behave in accordance to their understanding of the game’s genre. Likewise, players are trained by social convention to attempt certain strategies (which accounts for why 21st century players of 20th century PC games seldom think to read the manual, and then don’t understand why certain aspects of the game are completely unsolvable). These approaches to games probably fall under your “hybrid” category, as they assume that the game is constructed not only between the player and the designer, but also other games and the cultural climate or zeitgeist in general, seeing the game (or “text”) as a phenomenon.

By: Andrew Peterson

Andrew Peterson — Wed, 15 Jan 2014 14:45:35 +0000

I love reading game design sites and replace “player” with “student” and “playing” with “learning”. You get just as much insight in a whole new topic.