Internal Structure of a Game

I want to take a cut at the internal structure of a game to provide some vocabulary for discussing aspects of a game and to provide some distinctions between a game of some of the related phenomena.

First, a game must have a deciding factor. The deciding factor determines who, if anyone, has won the game. For example, in Chess, the deciding factor is having a King in Check. In football, it is the team with the most points. In golf, it is the person with the least points. There may or may not be constraints on the deciding factor. In football, for example, there is a time limit whereas in many games there is not.

Second, if the deciding factor is numeric, the game must have goals which are both complete units of activity and ways to accumulate points. So, scoring in football, getting a ball in a hole in golf, or exposing your winning hand in poker would be examples of goals.

On the way to achieving a goal there may be objectives the satisfaction of which helps you to achieve the goal but for which you do not get points. You may get credit for objectives in game statistics. But, the satisfaction of the objective does not contribute to the deciding factor.
Depending on the complexity of the game there may be subobjectives which are smaller problems that must be solved in order to achieve an objective.

There may be contratints on how goals or objectives are achieved.

And, to borrow a term from Suits, there is a 'lusory attitude'. The point of playing the game is the inherent satisfaction one achieves through playing a game. That is, the point of the game is the game itself. So, if one is playing professional poker to earn their livelihood, it would no longer be a game under this defintion. There is an element of practicing for real life that makes a game a game. As soon as it is no longer practice but actually is real life, it is no longer game.

Those are my thoughts for now. I may change some of this as I figure out more about it.

The Status Granting Social Environment

Games, due to their very nature, are fun to play. This was discussed earlier at some length. However, the inherent satisfaction that one derives from playing a game does not account fully for the energy and fervor with which some games are pursued. Different games are more or less popular in different time periods. Other games are more or less popular in different locations. One of the reasons (but not the only one) for this variation is that a game is embedded in a social environment which grants status to players. This status further amplifies the significance of the game goal and this, in turn, amplifies the game experience.

The social environment of a game includes the value placed on excelling at the game; competition between players and other motivators not immediately part of the game itself. For example, there is chess, there are chess tournaments, and there are world class matches. Winning a single game is one thing. Beating a Grand Master in a World Class Championship is quite another. Similarly, winning a football game in the field behind your house is one thing. Winning a professional game or even the Super Bowl is quite another. In both of these examples, the same game is being played. But the significance of the play is much larger in the later cases.

The Status Granting Social Environment for games is, presumably, not unlike other status granting social environments. That is, things other than games have status granting social environments. There are endless examples. In some social niches, there is status associated with money and power even though the acquisition of money and power could not be considered a game other than metaphorically. The community of wine lovers grants status for people with good taste in wine or people who find great vintages. The community of coin collectors grants status to those who find unusually rare coins. And so on.

The point here is the the Status Granting Social Environment of a Game must be separated from the game itself. The Superbowl, from the perspective of the game of football, is just another game. However, from the perspective of the Status Granting Social Environment, it is a huge deal.

Some Distinctions

Before this all starts getting too far out of hand, I think I'd better start making some distinctions. An objective within a game and the game itself are not the same thing. A game and a game world are not the same thing. A virtual game world is different from a non virtual game world. A virtual (game) world can be entirely fantasy or have connections of some kind with the real world. And products, such as football jerseys that exist and have value because of the game, are not part of the game but are clearly dependent on it.

Let's take the first of these distinctions. I will use foot ball in these examples because more people are familiar with football than are familiar with, say, World of Warcraft. In football, there are any number of objectives within the game itself. An objective, in football, may be to advance the ball ten yards to get a first down or to prevent the other team from doing so. Another objective may be to score a touchdown. Clearly, the first of those is a a sub-objective to the second one. One could see the touchdown as a sub-objective to winning the game; winning the game as a sub-objective to making the play-offs; and making the play-offs as a sub-objective to winning the Superbowl. So analysis of objectives can get quite complicated. However, my unit of analysis is the game and I can't see (at least at the moment) how developing a structure for objectives within or beyond the game itself advances my understanding of games. It may advance my understanding of football, but not of games.

In football, we have a clear unit of analysis that we call 'the game'. At the risk of being simplistic, it is four fifteen minute play intervals at the end of which there is a score indicating a winner or a tie. I understand all that business about overtime, elapsed time and so on. But, as I said, we are not analyzing football here and I think most people understand what a 'game' of football entails.

In World of Warcraft this is not nearly as clear. Exactly what is 'the game' in WoW? This could get complicated; but I will keep chipping away at it.

Is It a Game?

William Sims Bainbridge, who I mentioned in the last post, says that World of Warcraft is not game. In his words, "World of Warcraft is far more than a game" [pg. 9] Based on a discussion preceeding that remark, one might speculate that he sees it as a virtual world. I would certainly agree with that observation but would also point out that while the term 'game' is limiting, the term 'virtual world' is limiting as well. Second Life, for example, is a virtual world, but it would be a stretch to call it a game. Bainbridge says that WoW is a virtual world that contains games and I would agree with that observation. However, we need a term specifically for virual worlds that contain games to distinguish them from virtual worlds that do not contain games. The term 'game world' comes to mind but is entirely unsatisfying.

This may seem nit picky and it probably is. However, for the purposes of research, it is necessary to define things correctly. There are things that are true of games that are not true of game worlds. There are things that are true of game worlds that are not true of games. There are things that are true of virtual worlds (e.g. Second Life) that are not true of game worlds (e.g. World of Warcraft).

World of Warcraft has features that are not part of other game worlds. For example, there is body of literature (well paperback books) that provide an elaborate backstory and narrative for World of Warcraft. And WoW contains endless symbols, archetypes, and hidden meanings that make it a target of critical study unlike most other examples of the game world genre.

To get back to basics here for a second, when we are doing research on games, video games, game worlds, or whatever, we need precised defined terms that refer to similar objects with similar attributes. Thus far the explosion of possibilities in video games seems to be frustrating all efforts. However, we shall just have to try to stay on top of it.

World of Warcraft as a Social Science Lab

I have just started reading a delightful new book about World of Warcraft entitled The Warcraft Civilization: Social Science in a Virtual World by William Sims Bainbridge. Since I am only about 20 pages into it, it is too early to say much other than what I have read so far is terrific. However, I wanted to point to a comment made by the author.

"WoW is a very conducive environment for quantitative research because it encourages individuals to write "mod" or "add-on" programs, and scientists can use some existing software as research tools or write their own. These range all the way from very simple sequences of character behaviors constructed using macros built into the WoW user interface, to long programs written in the Lua language. For example, one widely used program called Auctioneer analyzes prices on the WoW virtual item auction system [the Auction House], and CensusPlus tallies all the players currently online by several characteristics. With census data on more than 200,000 WoW characters, a team centered at the Palo Alto Research Center analyzed the factors associated with the upward status mobility of individuals and the dynamics of social groups" [pg 12]

I found this interesting because I have been looking at video games as an object of study in this blog and hadn't really considered them as a laboratory for study. One of my goals in keeping this blog was to get to the essence of video games for the purposes of research. As more and more comes out, I seem to be getting further and further away from that initial goal.

How Many Games Are We Talking About?

Since not everyone is familiar with World of Warcraft, I am going to use a more familiar game - football - to make some important distinctions about games. As with most words, we use the word "game" to cover a lot of very different activities. When we talk about the "game" of football we often refer to a very wide variety of different activities that are all refereed to as part of the game. These activities might include tracking player statistics, whether or not to use instant replay, player salary negotiations, drinking beer and eating pizza, painting yourself in team colors and dancing in front of the camera, tailgate parties, and so on. Most people would say these and many other things are all part of the game of football. And from the perspective of a football fan, this is fine. However, from the perspective of a researcher it is a disaster.

If the concept of football as a game includes all of the above things and more, it would be very difficult if not outright impossible to make any general statements that would be true for all instances. It would be difficult, as well, to find any regular relationships between football and other concepts. In order to do that I need well defined concepts and the way I achieve that is to make distinctions between the various kinds of activities.

First we have the definitional game. This is the game as described by the rulebook.

Second, we have the experiential game. This is what it feels like to play the game or observe the game being played. This should probably be broken down further since what it feels like to play and what it feels like to watch are very different. Yet this break down may require some thought.

Third we have the social game. This is the social experience of being in a stadium or in a room full of friends watching a game being played. This will require further breakdown as well since the social experience of fans is very different from the social experience of team mates.

Fourth we have the economic game. This is the game as a business or economic enterprise.

Finally, we have the game as phenomenon. Why is football bigger than hockey? Why do people wear football shirts? How does football influence younger people?

This is far from the last word on game categories. In fact they need a lot of work. However, it does show, hopefully, that in order to study a thing, we must break it down into categories of like things and study those like things. Next time I will return to World of Warcraft and look at it in terms of these categories.

World of Warcraft and the Lusory Attitude

Bernard Suit defines a lusory attitude as a player's willingness to accept the rules of a game as a means of pursuing the goals of the game in order to maximize one's enjoyment. Consider a simple example. Let's say that a running back in football has broken away from the line and is running down the field in pursuit of a touch down. Let's say, further, that one tackler stands between him and the goal. He may change direction to avoid he player. He may fake a change of direction. He may plow right into the tackle and attempt to overpower him. These are all acceptable options within the game of football. It would not do, however, to have a sniper in the stands pick off the tackle with a well placed shot from a high powered rifle. For, under these conditions, even if the runner managed to cross the goal line it would not be considered a touchdown. Any number of other silly examples could also illustrate this point. In checkers, one could glue their checkers to the board to prevent their opponent from taking them. In golf one could carry their ball to the hole and drop it in. However, games have rules that we must follow in order to achieve the goals of the game and if we do not follow those rules we are not playing that game. Further, if we are not playing that game we are not enjoying the experience of playing that game.

I have noticed, in World of Warcraft, that the lusory attitude varies considerably from one player to the next. Different players are actually playing very different games. In the case of some players, they are not playing a game at all. And these varying lusory attitudes reflect, I believe, very different game experiences. So, I thought over the next few posts, I would explore this.