the playable detective -...

The playable detective - some theoretical considerations

concerning construction of interactive

characters in crime computer games

5th Klim Seminar

May 26th 2009

Kjetil Sandvik, Film and Media Studies,

University of Copenhagen

Agenda

• A first larger attempt to get into my own project on interactive crime fictions (and as a test balloon for my paper on this fall’s crime and realism-conference in Aalborg).

• I will put forward some theoretical speculations on how this remediation actually is conducted when it comes to constructing interactive crime-plots and playable detectives.

• Main focus today: I will have a closer look on two major concepts here: embodiment, which is the feeling of being bodily extended into the fiction space, and agency, which is the player’s ability to conduct actions within the plot structure embedded in this fiction space.

Case: Blackout (Deadline

Games, 1997) • Double mystery-solving:

• What happened to the beheaded woman on the bed?

• What is your own identity?

• These to are connected

• Film noir setting (melodramatic)

• Deranged people and decaying society: hostile environment

• claustrophobic, depraved, disillusioned fiction universe

• The detective’s personal problems bigger than problems concerning solving the case…

• Control is what differentiates games from

movies, books and other media. Without

control there is no game. » Aubertin, Callesen & Hauballe

Gameplay genres

• Action games require the ability to operate the game interface at a high speed and reacting real-time to the multitude of choices constantly presented by the game,

• Adventure games demand skills of pattern recognition, logical reasoning, puzzle solving and so on.

• Strategy games build on players’ ability to construct and handle increasingly complex systems (a family, a city, an ecosystem etc.).

Crime fiction and games

One of the crime fiction’s main

characteristics is that solving

the crime is more important

than the crime itself. As readers

or spectators we are engaged in

this crime-solving work con-

ducted by members of the

homicide squad, the forensic

team and a large part of the

suspense building up is

connected to how this work is

carried out and to the feelings/

emotions of the characters

doing the work.

Computer games are playable

fictions

• Interaction between an abstract or a

fictional world and a plot structure + a

players actions within and according to this

fictional world and narrative structure.

• Gameplay constituted by role-play.

• In games the players do not ‘just’ discover

and uncover and to read for the plot, they

play the plot.

Roles to play

No spectators, only participants

• The game is not meant to be watched, but an

end in itself

• Narrative complexity and coherence, psycho-

logical character development, depth in

character and story are not ends in them selves,

but elements which may facilitate the player’s

ability to be embodied and to perform agency in

the story.

• The thing is not to discover and uncover and to

read for the plot, but to play the plot.

Perception = performance

• The player’s actions are not just of a

perceptual, emotional and mental

character, but also tactile, that is

constituted by physical actions which

create a sense of control, of ’agency’ in

the game universe.

• Reading is playing, interpretation enables

further play

Gameplay situation Time

Player

Space

Game fiction

Player character

Dramatic

action

’Time’

’Space’

Analysis/

evaluation

Rules

Interface

Other

characters

Game

universe

Games as fiction

• In games, suspension of disbelief, which

is vital to reading and perceiving fiction of

all kinds, has become a physical attribute

in the fiction itself.

• In games, suspension of disbelief is not

just a mental activity, but a hands-on

integrative structure of agency extending

the player into the game fiction.

Agency and embodiment

• To the fictional character the story will always be here-and-now (realtime).

• The computer game provides the player with the opportunity to go in and play a character and thus partake in the fiction’s realtime.

• The player does not just get emotionally involved in the story’s character; she embodies the character: her visuo-motoric actions are extended into the character.

• The player executes vital agency in the fiction’s here-and-now time.

Levels of agency

• Kinesthetic agency

• Character agency

• Dramaturgical agency

• Narrative agency

• Discoursive agency

Body and movement

• Engagement of the player’s body takes place on several levels in computer games, ranging from

• the virtual physicality inherent in the player’s embodiment and agency found in the player’s control over the game character and game story

• to the tactility in encountering and operating the games interface.

Extending the player’s body into

the game universe

• Playing computer games consists of an interplay between the player’s body movements in the physical world and the agency of game characters in the game’s mediated environment with the controller as a mediator remediating the movements of the player in physical space into the actions of the avatar and into its navigational operation in the space of the game world.

Embodiment and agency

Bad game design: the enemy

characters is supposed to kill

you, not the interface

An absurdly difficult to handle controlling system

Turns Die by the Sword into Die by the Mouse

Extensions of the body:

Systems like Nintendo Wii

create a man-machine

symbiotic game experience

of agency and sense of

control beyond the limits of

the player’s physical body.

Expanding the body scheme

(Merleau-Ponty):

’Becoming-one-with’ the tool

(experiences from sports:

athletes merging with or

bodily extension into the

tennis racket, the spear, the

ball).

Interface in Blackout

• Screenmouse + keyboard

• 1. person POV

• old-school point-and-click navigation and interaction

• in Blackout the emphasis is not on kinesthetic agency connected to the movements of the avatar, but to the navigation through the fiction space

Levels of agency





• Discursive agency

The character as vehicle

• The “character” is better

considered as a suite of

characteristics or equipment

utilized and embodied by the

controlling player. The primary

player-character relationship is

one of vehicular embodiment

(James Newman).

• We do not play e.g. Lara Croft –

we gain control over a certain set

of ‘skills’ regarding the ability to

act and which is implemented in

the Lara-avatar: the avatar’s

action become an extension of

the player’s body.

Open characters

• More abstracted characters leave more room for the player, and are therefore better suited to support a play-centric model.

• In the game Tomb Raider, Lara is a partially formed character, she is in essence a cartoon who serves as an avatar onto which he player is meant to project her or more often his own interpretation.

• It is important that the character is incomplete because if the character is too developed, there is nothing compelling for the player to contribute.

» Celia Pearce: ”Towards a Game Theory of Games (2002)

Character agency: The Sims

Character agency: Blackout

• In the beginning the

character is empty

• Throughout the game

you (re)construct the

character and by

doing so you also

(re)construct the

crime story.


dramaturgical agency

Levels of agency






Game dramaturgy

• The way player-inflected actions work

within the game as part of causal chains of

pro-actions and re-actions in a (mono- or

multi-) linear structure producing change in

time and space.

Dramaturgical agency: Doom Save game-function:

May be embedded in the game fiction (e.g. Prince of Percia

Dramaturgical agancy: GTA

Dramaturgical agency: Blackout

Story

-space Story

-space

Story

-space

blackout blackout

Levels of agency






Narrative agency:

The Sims as story-

telling device

Levels of agency






Discourse agency: designing

new game using Far Cry-engine

Agency

• The satisfying power to take meaningful action and see the results of our decisions and choices.

» Janet H. Murray: Hamlet on the Holodeck, 1997

• Activity alone is not agency. • Although gamemakers sometimes mistakenly focus on

the number of interactions per minute, this number is a poor indicator of the pleasure of agency afforded by a game

• In Blackout the loss of agency is vital to the over-all gameplay and game story

The loss of agency

• Your loss of memory renders you unable to act (others hold the truth about your identity, e.g. The Truth-sayer).

• The hostile environ-ment takes command.

• The blackouts take control over the course of the plot.

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