Reading #1: Text from Roger Caillois “Man, Play and Games”
Chris Wolf
Caillois Response
When reading the chapters from Callois, I found myself wondering how he would classify modern video games, in all of their iterations. I think he would lump much of video gamnig into the agon category, for the sense of competition, whether simulated or actually with another player. However the interesting part of a well designed game is that it does not actually create competition per se with the player, however works with the player to produce a challenge within its system. The average player of today's games does not go into a single-player experience expecting to be defeated completely, but rather expects to be able to eventually get through the entire game, to "beat" the game, once he is fluent in the game system and the interactive patterns it creates. Of course, one might say the same about crossword puzzles, which callois places in his agon category, because the sense of competition is important for a game's entertainment value, regardless of whether that competition is real or imaginary.
The last part of Callois' essay, about Eskimos and the cup and ball game, called to mind the role of games as simulations, whether realistic or extremely abstract, of acts of violence and war. Video games are often chastised for being too violent or too often about violent conflict. However, if we look at many analog games, they are not an exception. Chess, a game of high cultural respect and deep strategy, is in its most basic form an extremely abstract simulation of warfare. The same can be said of children's games like dodge ball.Many video games that are presented as family friendly contain some representation of conflict, as in Sid Meyer's Pirates!, Spore, or even Mario jumping on and destroying threatening monsters. Not all video games, of course, are violent in nature, however most games that have no representation of violence are abstract puzzle games, and are generally not as well absorbed by a mass audience. There are, of course, exceptions.
Richard Rodriguez
Caillois Response
For a piece that was written before the video game era, it was surprising to me how almost all video games can fit into Caillois classification of games. Early video games such as Asteroids and Pong fit into agon and paidia. The easiest form of play to simulate on a television screen would likely be agon and paldia because having competition is easier than making AI and creating action on screen is not difficult to program. Once AI was actively used, video game play still, for the most part, simulated competition.
Only now are we beginning to see the play category ludus in the video game industry. Casual games like Bejeweled are becoming increasingly popular, which is causing more developers to move from paidia to ludus in there game designs. Ilinx is also starting to show itself in video games with games like flOw, Rez and Flower. The feeling of Vertigo is most likely the hardest to replicate in video games since no matter how complex the graphic designs are, the player is still looking at the action through a 2D window. One of the first games to successfully make me feel vertigo however, was Sonic the Hedgehog, just because of its speed.
I would be interested to see if Caillois' definitions would change after seeing video games. All of his categories are based off physical-moving play. Even with alea, the player is expected to throw a die, or hide facial expressions in poker. While I doubt that the categories would change too much, virtual play has to invoke different emotions within each of his categories. One change I could see is that with video games, Alea becomes more possible for children to engage in. Early games like Casino Kid for the NES were mildly popular and event though the child playing the game had no economic independence, they still could enjoy the game since virtual money and winning still invoked excitement.
James DeVito
The first thing that definitely stuck out in my mind when reading The Classification of Games by Roger Caillois was how relevant his classification is now, over 50 years later. When he wrote this, the Cold War was still going on, and Dwight D. Eisenhower was president. When I say that his classification is still relevant today, I don’t mean only in the only somewhat recently developed video game industry, but also physical games as well. His mention of mimicry instantly led me to the thought of Second Life players living their lives in a virtual world, allowing them to escape all of their troubles in the real world, but also brought me to realize that each and every fan (be it sports, movies, music, etc) is essentially a mimicry of the one they look up to or idolize. Especially coming from this class, it is difficult to read this paper without somehow linking it to computer games in this day and age. It is truly interesting to me when such an example of gaming exists so vividly in real life as well (especially coming from the 1950’s).
My next thought has to do with the idea of how rules applied to the games back then, and how they were regulated then and now. Now, with the help (or hindrance) of computers, we become limited to boundaries that the ‘game’ or software allows us reach. Back then, there were clearly regulators (i.e. umpires, or even police) that kept the rules of the game intact. Much like today’s world though, there were those competitors who decided not to play by the rules and cheat, thereby gaining an unfair advantage over the opponent, and skewing the records or scores they create. All too similarly this too has moved over to the digital realm of today’s world, in the form of hackers or straight up cheaters. For example in the game Counter-Strike, many people (even at the highest levels of performance) have been caught online for using wall hacks, enabling them to see through walls, in which the other players could not.
Matthew Nolin
Caillois Response
When I was first reading through "The Classification of Games" I thought for sure that Caillois would not have covered the scenario of a person playing a game against a computer. But there it was as I came upon the section about ludus, "the conflict is with the obstacle, not with one or several competitors." Knowing that this was written in 1961, it is incredibly impressive that someone could come up with a categorization that worked in his time and still works today when a whole new type of game play has been created. A major piece about this classification is that the separate sections (agôn, alea, mimicry, ilinx) can all intertwine with each other. As is the case with most things there is almost always a bit of gray and most games are not purely one category. This key piece alone allows the classification to work as well as it does.
Caillois also mentions that "absolute equality does not seem to be realizable.", this may seem like common sense but it is always good to remember. Even with video games where the game will always be the same, people will have different familiarity levels with the controller and some will have played the game before while some have not. Some will simply be more ambidextrous and better because of it. In the past this has been a huge issue because the controllers for the PlayStation and Xbox are not intuitive, there's no getting past that. Any person without prior gaming experience that picks up the controller will not know what to do. This is changing and games are growing because of it. The Wii controller is a bit better in that regard and is certainly helping to grow the audience for games because of it.
The Social Function of Games chapter deals with what makes games worth playing. It doesn't matter if you're playing a single player game (albeit, it's slightly less important) or whether you're facing your best friend in Madden - people play games because of other people. This becomes extremely apparent in MMO's like World of Warcraft or in other games. I've come across this example myself, a web based game called TDZK had fostered a community around it and when the game ceased to be available to play - the community stuck around. Even if you play a role playing game like Final Fantasy, you'll still discuss with friends difficult points about the game or what you did to get around a particular boss or even if you beat this special monster in a certain part of the map. Games mean so much less if other people are not involved at some point of the equation.
Christian de Botton
Caillois Response
In Roger Caillois’ “The Classification of Games”, the author describes four main types of play, Agon, Alea, Mimicry, and Ilinx. What is most surprising to me is that the piece was written in the 1950s, yet the descriptions he conceived, before any modern video or computer games existed, still apply perfectly, in the independent and social frames. Caillois described, first, two types of games. Agon and Alea. The first is a game of skill, and the second is a game of chance. The two are related because the game of skill is set up to be a perfectly even competition, and the way in which it is entertaining for an audience is if that it appears to be as close to a game of chance as possible. This exists in the form of video games today; namely, competitive gaming. Much like sports, there are leagues established in which teams and individuals play in many games played popular for leisure entertainment, like Counter-Strike, Halo, and StarCraft. Games like these mix the competitive play with a type of play the author later describes, mimicry, in which the players act as if they are someone or something else. The notion of mimicry is important today, because I believe that games primarily exist now as a type of escape, to get away from chaos of real life.
Caillois’ Alea is also a form of game that still exists today, heavily affected by mimicry. Role playing games, not only the traditional ones such as dungeons and dragons, but modern games such as Final Fantasy are in reality the combination of mimicry and alea. The games are not skill based. There is little technique to developing a character in World of Warcraft. The game relies entirely on the roll of a sort of digital dice that the player has become often oblivious to. In battle, numbers are constantly randomly generated, determining hit points, effectiveness of armor and so on. From these battles, points are assigned, and characters are developed. Though different from simpler games such as the rolling of dice, these games are now accompanied by movie-like scripts with very intricate story lines and character development. The player is given control as with how to use the points gained from these often random battles, adding a dimension which Caillois explained as Ludus in his piece.
Ian Riccaboni
Caillois
In response to Caillois' four categories of play, agon, alea, mimicry, and ilinx, I would like to mention the newest Nintendo peripheral, the Wii Fit, as a game that has managed to break the previous four pronged model. The Wii Fit is quite the interesting phenomenon: it is a video game, where, as your avatar, you work to both improve your health, as well as your fictional character's by doing actual exercises in real time. It is a fascinating combination that includes all four types of play, action, chance, mimicry, and vertigo, which is unique but not brand new, as well as unique motivating factors for actually playing the game.
For instance, if someone chooses to play an agon, or action, game in Caillois' world, such as baseball or football, they are doing so with the predisposition that they are athletic enough to participate and have gone through some sort of preparation, such as lifting weights or even learning the rules of the game, before they must participate. If someone wants to take part in an alea, or chance, game, they must prepare by learning the rules, and are drawn in by the aura of chance. Mimicry requires learning acting sequences and ilinx is a unique dance with vertigo. These are very specialized types of play. For those that play them, they are motivated to do so by perhaps fame, competition, pleasure in escapism, or challenging a fear.
The Wii Fit offers no direct comparison to those in terms of motivation. Wii Fitters are motivated by a unique set of circumstances that range from health to pleasure and the Wii fit itself cuts across all four categories of play. I would be interested to see what or how Caillois would write about hybrid games that encompass all four of his game models. He admits that there are games that cross over, but he does not write about any that reached all four.
Evan Griffin
Chapter III Response: Of Master Chief and Men
When Reading Callois’s opinions on the important role of social dynamics in games, certain modern multiplayer conventions bear a striking resemblance to those of antiquity, such as Eskimos being the cosplayers of yore. Play does in fact “lack something when it is reduced to a mere solitary exercise”. I know this all too well. Some of my darkest, loneliest, most forlorn moments have been while playing Mario Party with me, myself, and a platter of cream cheese and pepperoni sandwiches I made. As we crawl out of the doldrums of self-imposed, digital purgatories, we venture out into the wide social world of online gaming. But as Callois posits, the social agon game is more of a rivalry-motivated, glory-reaping contest than a brotherly communion. I told myself that playing Halo 3 online would strengthen long-distance friendships and maybe forge new ones. The game fulfilled this desire to an extent, but the beast quickly took over.
Suddenly, you start to see your rank go up. Your melee elbow becomes battle-hardened. You see and hear the cruel face of interactive war; teenage kids accommodating every fresh corpse with a post-mortem teabagging and guys with ‘DJ’ somewhere in their gamertag rap battling their way to victory (forfeits where the degree of annoyance was too great to endure). You see your service decorations get shinier, bigger, more ornate. You enter games and see guys in the pre-game lobby that have all sorts of crazy emblems. “ A silver phoenix? A golden spatula? I don’t know what the fuck rank that spatula represents, but I’ve never seen it before and I’ll probably never want to see it again after this game,” you tell yourself.
A little bit longer and you’re thirsting for victory and that fearsome, intimidating veneer, that golden spatula to call your own. It’s fun when you’re sober as well as blood-drunk, but karma quickly comes back to you for every white, nameless, data archive cross you helped erect in the vast graveyard known as the Bungie.com stat server. With the sour taste of defeat still in your mouth, you start playing as a ‘lone wolf’ because you think your team is bringing you down. Once that adrenaline-fueled war high starts to wane, post-traumatic stress takes hold. You come full circle, become reformed, start playing by yourself again and looking for meaning, purpose, and God in the serene fields of Hyrule. But every now and then that trigger finger becomes itchy, you start hearing things, the sound of your maiden whispering into your ear. “ Say my name,” she demands. “ PWNage,” you respond… “sweet, sweet PWNage.”
Evan Griffin
Chapter II Response
Callois does a thorough and admirable job of detailing most dominant styles of play and the rules, either implicit or explicit that come with them. However, in every game described, the player knows the rules before engaging with that game. Be it the correct procedure for stepping onto a merry-go-round and mounting a plastic horse or playing football, the tenets of the activity are known to the participant prior to playing. One thing I don’t think Callois mentioned was the phenomenon of a participant playing a game when they weren’t entirely sure of the rules. This isn’t it’s own division of game style since the rules are independent of this, but this blind approach to confronting a game is something I find interesting.
flOw that practices this idea of limited user information, but does it in a way that adds another component to the game and a fruitful afterlife to the gameplay rather than a premature death. The act of discovering relationships between your single-cell protagonist and other creatures, other organic life (of the nutritional, caloric energy variety), and other players in the cooperative (or in some cases, uncooperative) mode adds an element of mystery, investigation, careful observation, and player interpretation to the game. Sharing thoughts about the attributes and effects of certain digestible matter with other players is also very interesting in that you see how others interpreted the mechanics. This dialogue exposes little aspects of how someone interprets speculation and adds their own meaning to it. Different people can perceive the same in-game item as an aid or a hindrance, both not entirely sure of what it does. Some people think a certain action, attack, or state had more of an influence over the space and AI than others. These differences offer little insights into how people think.
But over time, these assumptions begin to break down and the dynamics between the player, the other species, and the resources in the game become apparent. Unlike the fool’s errand I know affectionately as Warioware, the enjoyment of the game does not cease after this period of discovery because it does not chiefly consist of repeating tasks that only have one proper solution, or in Warioware’s case, making sense out of the nonsensical. This is where non-linearity enters in. Once the rules are known to the player, the game goes on to be a remarkable meditative journey, a microscopic fugue that explores relationships between pacifism and antagonism, the will to power and all forms of life, consumption and depletion of resources, nourishment and gluttony, primal instinct and rational thought, outward appearances and intimidation, allies and enemies.
Cooperation and competition are both equally supported in single and multiplayer. This unconventional hybrid of play styles is not something Callois really touches on, but doesn’t rule out either. He does stress that agon games are largely competitive exhibitions to display one’s superiority over another, an obstacle, or nature. This can be the attitude one would choose to adopt when playing flOw, but it is certainly not the only one. flOw is a rare species. In an industry permeated by classical, agon-centered games, flOw illustrates that we can marry together mechanics from unlikely genres in intelligent and invigorating ways
Seb
This text was written decades before the advent of video games, but still applies to most aspects of gaming today. The design of video games can often be simplified down to basic concepts of ancient games like rock-paper-scissors or tag, but there is one important aspect of gaming that electronic games wholly invented: artificial intelligence.
Video games find more overlap between the classes of Agon, Alea, and Mimicry than other games, due in no small part to artificial intelligence. Take the example of the modern military shooting game. The AI of the player's squad mates and enemies attempt to recreate the experiences of a soldier or counter-terrorist commando, and the game becomes a game of Mimicry.
However, the game will surely have a competitive multi-player mode where the scenario, takes a back seat to the purely competitive nature of the game: Agon. The game is no longer about simulating anything-- soldiers of different countries are not outfitted by the resources of their respective governments but rather by meticulously balanced competitive game design, and particular real-world weapons or tactics are conspicuously omitted so that the American war machine and a rag-tag crew of terrorists can compete at the same level.
At the end of the day, the player is still doing the same thing-- he's pointing his weapon at someone wearing a different uniform from his and pulling the trigger. But the single player experience is one of Mimicry, while the multi-player experience is that of Agon. The text separates games into these categories based on the player's involvement-- whether active or passive, whether coolly calculated or purely visceral. This works for the games listed, but not for video games, where it is clear that two players doing the same actions playing the same game can have completely different gaming experiences. Ultimately, the classification of games depends not only on what the player does, but whom he does it with.
Joseph "Bud" Intonato
ILINX (Vertigo) in Portal
Portal has been the subject of a lot of critical acclaim and investigation (see: feminism). However, when my roommate and I played and beat it recently we weren't especially impressed. The puzzles seemed pretty repetitive and the overall experience was a bit shallow, not to mention short. Although we were not blown away by the experience Portal did undoubtedly have an effect on us: it made us dizzy.
Caillois speaks about vertigo as means to classify games that involve spinning around or twirling or gyrating; horseback riding, dancing, skiing, etc. Although he isn't necessarily speaking about "dizziness", the overall impression he gives of this class of games involves a sense of disorientation and unexpected movement. Save a racing video game where I physically lean into the turns, or when I tilt my head to the side trying to bend in a goal in FIFA, and excluding games like Dance Dance Revolution and Wii Sports, that require movement, rarely have I felt my body so engaged while playing a game.
Several games disturb the rules of physics, but only Portal had my roommate and I pausing the game to regain our balance during times when we accidentally got stuck falling, spinning in and out of portals at high speeds. Should more games incorporate this? I'm not sure if it added to the experience. It certainly seems as if it would be extraneous in a game not so focused on bending physics.
Will Torbett
One of Callois's primary categories of games is that of mimicry or simulation, which may perhaps be one of the more common foundations of modern video games. Now, there are various sort of mimicry that he outlines, and likewise, there are numerous manifestations within gaming. "Identification with the champion in itself constitutes a sort of mimicry," he writes. And for the majority of so-called 3rd-persion action/adventure games, this is the form it takes. One doesn't so much take on the role of Kratos in God of War, for example, as much as one strongly connects and identifies with his exploits. Despite the direct plater control, the separation between player and avatar is strong enough such that one recognizes the avatar as the game's champion and will most likely only partially share in his victories. A game like Rock Band, on the other hand, involves a much fuller sense of embodiment. In it, you more fully mimic the behavior and role of a rock star, and winning is more c losely linked to your individual competitive skills. Either way, gaming involves a certain essential degree of make believe, of "liberty, convention, suspension of reality, and delimitation of space and time." In video games, the degree and nature thereof is generally referred to as immersion.
When discussing his category of ilinx, or vertigo, Caillois documents the sort of "gameplay" that involves seeking out ecstatic physical sensations associated with extreme disorientation. While the activity itself is fascinating in its own right, the description he uses for the sort of motivation behind it is most noteworthy. To some extent, it seems as though there is a sort of physical boredom, which is to say a sort of muscular restlessness, that prompts such quixotic activity. I daresay that this is a most unique phenomenon, one otherwise under-recognized, much less reported. As an adult, such an urge - to cart-wheel, to careen, frolic, and spin wildly about - is generally so socially unacceptable as to have no room for an outlet. The closest gaming analogy comes only in responses to the typical, more mental doldrums - the boredom of a long commute, during which time we find engagements in such diversions as casual cell phone games. What can this sort of shift imply? Fro m horses needing an outlet for exertion and galloping about to commuters turning to Sudoku for stimulation.
Nick Nordfors
Video games themselves can be broken down into the categories that Caillios describes for gams. Role Playing Games fall into the category of mimicry. He describes a game as mimicry when a player, “forgets, disguises, or temporarily sheds his personality in order to feign another.” RPGs cause the player to become a character in a game, making decisions for him and facing the direct consequences without it effecting the player's life at all. It is easy to see that one appeal of an RPG would then be the ability to have a no-ties persona in another world, but Caillios brings up a more interesting point when he talks about imitation. He says, “contagion and imitation are not the same as simulation, but they make possible and give rise to the idea or the taste for mimicry.” While playing RPGs, players either take the role of good or evil, and it would be interesting to see who they are subconsciously imitating as they put themselves in the role of the character. Could the appeal for RPGs also come from the desire to imitate the great heros or villains of history, or ancient myths and fables of humanity, or even some as personal as the players parents or the bully at school.
Caillios describes paidia in the second part of the first chapter as the desire to do mischief because of the play instinct. I think the mass appeal of Grand Theft Auto is the ability for each person's inner child, who feeds on paidia, to come out. He says, “For the child it is a question of expressing himself, of feeling he is the cause, of forcing others to pay attention to him.” The premise of GTA is based on the disruption and distortion of average life. It is a very exciting game to play because with each thing the player does he calls attention to himself and makes a direct impact on the world around him. GTA uses paidia to its greatest potential because it creates an open world, with no restrictions, and lets the player actually play in it.
Derek Stoops
The usefulness of the concepts of ludus and paidia to describe the rigidity of play in modern video games is limited. My impression was that Caillois was intending the interpretations of the rigidity of play to be regarding level of constriction applied the participants actions. I think there is a threshold somewhere close to the end of the ludus side of the spectrum where nearly all video games can be plotted at that point or past it. Video games ranging from Counter Strike to Peggle to World of Warcraft are all highly dependent on the underling structure to provide their respective players with their unique mix agon, alea and mimcry. Sandbox simulation games such as the Sims are the one exception that I can think of. Their structure is more about creating a large possibility spaces than a clearly defined path to success.
However, if you scale the sandbox-to-pure-ludus end of the spectrum up it becomes a useful comparator. You can then use it as to talk about the amount of freedom one has to solve certain problems or goals presented by the game. On the open end of the video game luduc spectrum you have the sandbox Sims and the Tycoon series of games then you progress towards MMOs with much more structure on the short term, but still lacking the overall constriction of an end game scenario. Emphasizing the multiple paths through a traditionally linear plot, games like Deus Ex and Farcry would be next with more linearly played games like Halo, Half Life 2 and Doom following. Almost to then end of the scale would be a large number of casual games such as Tetris and Peggle. On the far end of the video game ludic scale would be beat matching games like DDR and Guitar Hero which are almost pure skill tests.