Among the various perspectives that already exist, I want to try and position a game primarily a system of inputs and responses. I'm going to
try to avoid using the word "player;" I think the term implies a
manipulation, awareness, and a sphere of expectations I don't think are
necessary in the experience of play. I want to communicate these ideas in the
most flexible, expansive sense.
Within most games there are entities that create
inputs; they say something to the game, they send it messages, and the game in
turn responds. The response may provoke another input, possibly from you, and
this spawns a cycle, a cycle of inputs and responses, flowing and entwining
between and through each other. The cycle lasts for 5 minutes or it lasts
for 10 hours, and we usually participate in the cycle by providing inputs and
observing responses, which then influence our future inputs. The experience of
participating in this cycle, providing input and observing response is we can see the act of playing a game. This is what play means to me, at least.
What does it mean to provide input? I think there's an endless possibility of inputs you can make into a game, as there are an
infinite number of responses. The ways that a game can respond to input depend
on the ways we're are capable of expressing ourselves, our feelings and
opinions, our thoughts and the messages we want to communicate to others (or
ourselves). A response can be a sound or the moving of an image or a vibration
on a joystick. Or a response can be no response. Or a response and an input can
be read as the same! If we read a game as a cycle of inputs and responses, then
I think we can find games in places where we haven't looked before.
When you
use something like a TV, for example, you provide inputs to the TV and the TV
responds by changing the channel or the volume, influencing the nature of your
next input into the TV. This would mean that within this perspective, the TV
acts as a game. It would also mean that Hervé Tullet Un Livre is a
game! A book that encourages you to touch colorful shapes on a page and watch
fun things happen to them on the next page. Un Livre responds to
you, it creates an experience that cycles between your input--your reading and
touching of parts of the page--and the book's response by proving new images
based on your touch. "Un Livre" is as much a game as any platformer
or action beat-em-up.
Some games play well with input/response but others
fight it and stretch it out. Jack King Spooner's Mammoth is a game
that consists of long stretches of video, separated by very short
keyboard prompts and visual cues. In that case, where is the input? Where is
the response? There is seemingly none; both input and response become
abstracted, stretched and muddled, but I don't think they're non-existent. Because
I think response is what creates the relationship between the game and those
who interact with the game. To respond (or to not respond) is to create a
relationship. To respond is to show a sign of life! To say "yes, I am
here. I'm listening." Games can make us feel less alone, or they can make
us feel more alone, through the nature of their responses.
Another example can be found in Lydia Neon's
"Creative Conflict Jam," where Cameron Kunzelman game made with Tara
Ogaick called Resolving Conflict by Acquiescing to the OverwhelmingViolence of Time. I like Cameron Kunzelman games because they carry a
rich humor to their detached cynicism. I never laugh at loud, but they give me
a fun smirk on my face when I play them. Resolving Conflict shows a
woman, and prompts you to use the 'up' key to "forward time', cutting to a
black transition screen that says "TIME" and back to the woman who
appears sicker and sicker until she is shown dead, and eventually degrades into
a skeleton. Each time you press the up key the game responds by forwarding
time, a linear sequence of events, but when she reaches skeleton state, the
game stops forwarding time--it stops responding. The 'deadness' of this woman,
her sudden ending is communicated through the death of the system itself, a
system that has 'died' in its own sense, since the game is no longer responding
in the way it once did. (1)
--------------
On Grids
---------------
Aaron Steed's Ending was the first game that
provoked me to think about what it means for a game to respond. Ending is a
game that responds, immediately, aggressively, consistently. Ending's nature
regarding the way it responds is what gives it a sense of immediacy, and a
forcefulness, that in my opinion is what makes the game so strong.
Ending's nature of response mostly comes from the
way Ending communicates movement, which is through grids. If I want to
understand Ending's movement, I need to go through what the grid is. What does
it mean for a game to be grid based? We can understand the grid a little better by first looking to Lana Polansky on cartography:
"Cartography is an illustrated representation of ideology. It’s way of visualizing and codifying territory, sure—but it’s also a way of claiming it. [...] Maps, borders and place names change over time as societies move and borders are restructured and cultures reshape. Maps are ultimately an expression of a need for a culture to impose itself on the territory, as much as they express a need to understand it and plot it out."
It's important, when looking at 2D games, to think
of the 2D space as an abstract space, a 'free' space that, initially, defies
all structure, form, and rationality. If you use a 2D graphics/window library
like LOVE2D, or Pygame, and do nothing but initialize a window, the first thing
you'll see is a black screen, a sign of the infinite void that currently exists
in your program. To create systems around movement is to structure the abstract
space, to rationalize it to our cultural modes of thinking. Polansky's point to ideology within cartography can be extended to any ideological structuring of a
'space'.
So the grid is a mode of structuring the abstract
space. Movement then, revolves around this structuring of such abstract space.
With games like Ending, the space is broken down into *steps* of fixed
distances. 20 pixels to the left. 80 pixels upwards on the screen. The way that
Ending communicates these 'steps' is the way that Ending communicates movement,
and ultimately the way that Ending creates immediacy.
When you move a piece in a game like Chess on your
Windows PC, you'll see that they have very slow steps. Chess is a game of
hesitance and contemplation, a game of prevention through prediction. To
present steps as these slow, procedural processes, communicates chess as this
type of game. The slowness of these steps also brings a power to its movements.
To lift your piece and stomp it to its new place is to claim your stance with
authority and bravado.
Ending lies on the opposite. Its steps are quick,
blindingly fast. They're immediate. As a result, the game doesn't feel
contemplative or authoritative, rather it feels reactionary. This doesn't seem
right, because in Ending I don't need to make decisions against dynamic time. I
can wait, and think about my situation as long as I want before I make a move.
But this is where we come across Ending's peak dissonance: its presentation
suggests reaction, immediacy, and hesitation, but it structures space around
fixed movements and the freezing of time. Ending feels like a tense arcade
shooter, but plays like traditional chess.
I like to place the tense arcade shooter under the
umbrella of "twitch games. When I say "twitch," I refer to games
like Leon Arnott's The Blob Family, Sophie Houlden's Shift*Switch
or Molinari's Sounddodger. Games whose win/lose conditions are based on
contact, where play consists of using movement to avoid it, sometimes focalized
through an arcade context (points, time limits, leaderboards). I see Ending as
a twitch game more than turn-based strategy. It's a twitch-game that's been
slowed down, and cut-up into pieces. Ending is a game that still revolves
around 'contact', after all; to win or lose in Ending depends on whether you
can avoid contact, similar to the twitch (2).
-------------------------
Drone Response
--------------------------
Ending's nature of response is immediate, and it
gives the game a tense, exciting flow to it. But its response is also
consistent, bringing a feeling of overwhelm.
You're not alone in Ending. There are large groups
of various 'antagonists', entities whose purpose is to prevent a win-condition,
who are also operating in the same space as you. It's not uncommon to see at
least twenty other 'bots' in the same level. Ending feels crowded.
This is important, because when you make input in
Ending, everything responds with the same immediacy as your avatar. With every
input you make, the environment will shift in a split moment. It's drone-like,
and hard to deal with. You feel surrounded, overwhelmed, and slightly nervous.
Ending is consistent in the sense that every input of movement will trigger the
same kind of response: 20 or so bots will immediately shift towards you,
adapting their position around yours.
 |
| Fucked by the start |
As Ending responds consistently, its tension
scales. This is a unique thing to see in a videogame! For example, tension in
Street Fighter mostly relies on inconsistent response. When you and your
opponent's health is low, the tension arises around the system's variability.
You cycle through your possible inputs to match your prediction of the opponent’s
response. To 'read' in Street Fighter, is to accurately predict and anticipate
a response, and plan your input accordingly to bring yourself closer to
achieving a win-condition. Ending's tension is different, because you know very
well what's going to happen: the bots will move closer, they will move where
you move, they'll close in with every input you make. The knowledge of a consistent response gives Ending a subtle dread, a feeling of impending Doom.
Consequently, every win-condition achieved in Ending feels like you've dodged
the smallest bullet.
-------------------------------------
AASSTTTTCCIIISSTTEEEIC
-------------------------------------
ENDING IS FLOWING WITH SYSTEMS. So what's next?
Well, Ending has no plot. This is okay! Games don't
need plots. What games *do* need, is context, framing, focalization.
I started thinking about focalization, and have
been trying (with some fail) to implement the idea into my writings when I read this blog post by
Robert Yang. With some stumbling, he attempts to give the word
"focalization" some grounding for further widespread use:
"It means something like "point of view" or "perspective", but maybe it's less rigid than those two, and implies less embodiment and more dynamicism?... perhaps it's not really about inhabiting or role-playing characters or people exactly, it's about consciousness and the ways in which the reader or player's attention gets focused.
I think that games make systems meaningful by
focalizing them through aesthetic and thematic ideas. We usually see system
focalized through sounds and visuals, but we also see systems focalized through
text, material, and controller vibrations. To focalize a system is to give a system a tone and a voice, and a feeling that binds to the play experience. A
system that's focalized cohesively can create an "immersive"
experience. A system focalized incohesively can create a weird, jarring play
experience, that's ultimately still interesting and valuable in its own way.
I want to explore Ending's aesthetic focalization
in the form of closing notes, and then close this off. Given the heap of words
I just dropped onto you, it may not be surprising to realize how much of
Ending's aesthetic characteristics correspond to its systems.
1 - Ending, at times, feels slightly aggressive,
mostly because of the way its camera moves with the avatar. To move feels like
being violently pushed forward, piloting a mech vehicle that thrusts your body
with every push of the controls.
2 - Ending is played on a grayscale checkerboard.
Bots are white with gray and black shadings, and carry different shapes to
indicate their nature. When you achieve your win-condition, the screen
stretches and dissolves in a particular direction.
3 - Ending responds to every movement input with a
whishing sound that feels more electrical than physical.
4 - When you win a match in Ending, the game emits
a horrifying track of sounds. A barrage of electrical thumps that feel like a
reverb being turned up. It's disturbing, and like Ending's systems, we see a
drone-like nature matched with intensity. It sounds like a computer trying to
scream.
5 - Ending is incredibly desaturated, so the bright
red 'X' marks you can toggle on the board really bleed onto the screen and it's
slightly jarring. The red was likely for visibility but layered on the
checkerboard ground, it creates a compelling contrast.
I guess I have to say that on top everything else,
Ending is just really enjoyable to play. It's intense, resonant, and it
provoked me to think about the structure of games in ways I haven't before.
I felt things! And I learned a thing. That's all I
really ask from a game.
SCORE: [8\34\*****}]
-----------------
Notes
-----------------
1: Of course there can be arguments that Resolving Conflict never really stops responding, that its turn to a static state becomes its final response and therefore its final communication, that being the total ending of this woman. But that's okay. This isn't meant to stay rigid, but I hope what I'm trying to say here is coming across.
2: What makes Ending dissimilar to the twitch is that it's rules around contact are slightly different. You can lose on contact, but you can also destroy a bot if you make contact first.
