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for Computers & Graphics, Winter
2002 Introduction: The Imminent Demise of the Narrative Hegemony Since the invention of the Gutenberg Press, the infrastructure of content creation has been built on an industrial model, which has culminated in the current broadcast media narrative hegemony. This model of "mass media" is based on the notion that there is a centralized producer who distributes a large quantity of identical content "products" to a large, mass audience. This structure is built in a foundation of two fundamental principles: "authorship" and "ownership." Authorship is a measure of the value of content, and ownership determines the recipient of that value. Ironically, these are almost never the same entity, although in very rare cases, the author receives some small percentage of the value he/she creates. In this context, content is controlled by a small and elite minority. Not unlike the so-called "Dark Ages" of Europe, when virtually all content was owned, controlled and held under close guard by the Catholic Church, today’s content hegemony has Absolute Power over what is made and distributed. This system is very reliant on the dynamic of a producer/consumer relationship. Up until now, the entertainment and media "industries" in general, have worked on this model. The computer and the Internet pose some very real challenges to this system because, unlike the media hegemony, which is centralized and controlled, the Internet is a highly decentralized, uncontrolled, peer-to-peer environment. As such, it creates a physical infrastructure that poses a real and present threat to the media hegemony. A great example is Napster, the Internet music trading software that allowed users to freely share their private music files with others on the system. This decentralized, open system, although it was never used to generate a profit on anyone’s part (including Napster’s) was percieved as a huge threat to the hegemonistic copyright/ownership equation, above. As a result, the music industry used its considerable legal infrastructure to eventually shut it down. The result has been an explosion in copycat software. Now there are more "napsters" than there were before, the and situation becomes even harder to control. The story of Napster is a sort of modern-day David and Goliath story. Or perhaps, more aptly, it can be described as a Trojan Horse. Like the old video game Centipede, where each time you shoot the vile creature, he splits in half and becomes two Centipedes, the revolution started by Napster has not become a groundswell. This is only the beginning. In the following pages, we will look specifically at two new entertainment genres which are generally being described as hybrid narrative/games. They are revolutionary because they not only represent the emergence of new forms that are unique to the computer medium (although, as we’ll see, they both have their roots in non-computer forms), they also reframe the producer/consumer relationship. Both genres challenge fundamental notions of authorship and create a new consumer-producer hybrid, inviting the player to become a co-author in the narrative. I believe these forms will challenge the narrative hegemony, and fundamentally change the way we both experience and create narrative content. A Brief History of Interactive Narrative Genres It is ironic that, although a virtual parade of literary theorists (Barthes, Foucault, Derrida, L’Dieaux, et al) have spent four decades proclaiming the death of the author, it is not authors but game designers who have been able to innovate most boldly in the author-creator control negotiation. The reasons for this will be made more clear as we take a deeper look at the culture of game creation. These new trends in gaming have not arisen overnight. Rather, they represent a somewhat logical and perhaps inevitable evolution from earlier non-digital genres. They are part of a continuum of augmentations, mutations and evolutionary steps from which have emerged arguably compelling and certainly addictive forms of interactive entertainment. As these genres have emerged, it seems pretty clear that they have usurped the cinema-derived concept of "interactive movies," which appears to have (mostly) failed. This genre was in high fashion in the first part of the 1990’s (primarily pre-web), and continued into the mid-nineties, with a few last gasps in ’98 and ’99. The fact that you can probably not call to mind even a half-dozen of these offerings should be an indicator of their lasting cultural impact. Both in the desktop environment (CD-ROMs such as Johnny Mnemonic), on the set-top (CDI titles Burn Cycle and Voyeur) and even in movie Theaters (Interfilm’s I’m Your Man and Mr. Payback), the so-called interactive movie seemed to lack the strengths of both movies–script, quality acting, directing–and games–fun, challenge–leaving us with a singularly unsatisfying experience that never fulfilled its promise. The interactive novel has also yielded disappointing results. With the exception of a few isolated works that have met high critical acclaim from a notably small audience, the interactive novel has not thus far emerged as a robust fictional form. More effective were narrative-derived experiences of the ‘90’s which moved the story more into the terrain of games. Particularly successful were adventure genres such as LucasArts’ top-selling Indiana Jones series, Westwood Studios’ Blade Runner game, and of course the wildly original and equally wildly successful Myst, which is still among the all-time best-selling CD-ROM titles. In each case, the game designers found a corollary between a player goal and a character objective to build an interactive adventure around, immersing the player in a process of discovery to uncover and/or drive the narrative. Unlike the media vending machine model of so-called interactive cinema, the player was more engaged in a game-like experience which became a technique for creating dynamic drama. It is clear that some fictional genres lend themselves to interactivity better than others. The key to success seems to be the appropriate pairing of story genre with play mechanic. It’s important to remember that the central activity of a game, that is, a goal-oriented structure for spontaneous play, is play. Thus the play mechanic, or interaction quality of the experience, is crucial in creating the ever-evasive quality of "fun," the defining characteristic of a good game. Let’s talk for a moment about this notion of play mechanic. Play is at the center of all game experiences. But what exactly is play? The idea of a game is that people are engaged in some activity in which they make a palpable and discernable contribution to the outcome. This is done through a process of spontaneous improvisation, exploration, discovery, deduction, intuition, etc. A game generally can be described as a goal-oriented experience (which may include sub-goals), with a certain configuration of obstacles, resources, rewards and penalties, and various types of information that the players can use in forwarding their objectives. Each of these elements can actually be very effectively mapped to a narrative structure, if they are seen as dynamic, rather than static elements. In other words, rather than a "non-linear" narrative in which the player is trying to understand the goals of a character, make the character goal and the player goal synonymous, and motivate the player to move forward the character’s agenda, even while discovering what it is. The interactive narrative experiences which have met with the most critical and popular success to-date have tended to be those which build their narrative around an interesting and compelling play mechanic, one which supports the narrative, and vice versa. In the ideal case, the play mechanic is synonymous with the narrative structure; the two cannot be separated because each is really a product of the other. The roleplay/adventure genre puts the player in the role of a character moving forward a pre-structured story, and this model has proven extremely successful in a variety of desktop computer and console games. Recent examples are Deus Ex, the Final Fantasy and Zelda series, Resident Evil and numerous others. Although these games allow an immersive narrative experience to unfold for the player, and may even allow the player to influence the outcome through his/her actions, they do not allow the player to generate his or her own characters or story elements. For the remainder of this paper, we will focus on games that put the player in a co-authorial role within the narrative, thereby challenging the traditional concept of "author." The Hobbit on the Holodeck: Massively Multi-Player Online Role Playing Games The first genre we will look at is the massively multi-user online role playing game, or MMORPG. Games that fit into this genre include Ultima Online, EverQuest, Asheron’s Call, and Diablo, as well as a number of others. These games arise from a long lineage that predates computer games. They can, for the most part, be traced back to a book that has probably had more influence on the game industry than any other single text. I refer of course to J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit [1], published in 1937. Also influential was its subsequent sequel, Lord of the Rings [2], published in 1955. Both books have combined worldwide sales of over 85 million copies, making them the most widely read fiction books in the world. It is interesting to note that both books were written primarily as a means for Tolkien, a scholar of Old English, to explain an complex language and elaborate imaginary world of his own invention. By his own admission, the story was merely written as a means of exploring the world. As such, it makes perfect sense that this book should become the foundation for the evolutionary process leading to today’s computer games. This evolutionary arc began with the Dungeons and Dragons role-playing game, first introduced by TSR in the 1970’s. The notion was to create a kind of hybrid game/interactive story. Each person was meant to create their own character by selecting from a character genre with certain archetypal traits, which could then be developed into a personalized character. Each of these traits are given a numerical value. During game play, the outcome of various scenarios is determined by rolling one of a number of multi-faceted dice with as many as twelve sides. The game is generally played in groups of about five or six, often for many hours, and over long-periods in a serialized or episodic fashion. Groups tend to get together on a regular basis, playing the same ongoing story or a series of interrelated adventures with the same characters for months and even years. "Hardcore" players often do illustrations of their characters or purchase figurines (some of which can be painted with custom colors) of their characters. The individual game session generally overseen by a Dungeon Master whose job it is to set up the narrative framework and scenarios for each installment, often in response to what occurred in the previous session. During the game, the Dungeon Master responds dynamically to the players’ actions, having mapped out in advance the terrain of the game (usually an actual map is drawn) various choices and their consequences. The unique style of the Dungeon Master is instrumental to the success of the game. One of the keys to the success of a Dungeon Master is an understanding of how to manipulate narrative closure. Creating a satisfying and ongoing experience requires a carefully choreographed interplay between bringing closure to narrative threads while at the same time leaving others open, and opening up new ones. Unlike novels and films, which rely heavily on closure for a sense of satisfaction, these games thrive on lack of closure, which leaves ongoing opportunities for game play. The same is true of TV series or any other serialized form–even if conflicts are resolved, others must remain unresolved in order to continue the story. On the computer, D&D evolved into the online text Multi-User Dungeons (MUD’s), text-based environments that simulated the D&D experience, and MOO’s (Multi-User Object-Oriented), other non-D&D-themed forms of multi-user text-based narratives. Although they lack the dynamism and graphical sexiness of contemporary MMORPG’s, these games still have a small and adamant following. The game might be moved forward by a live Dungeon Master/facilitator, or by a pre-programmed narrative challenge generated by the computer. In either case, the players are actively engaged in the story. In some cases, autonomous text-based characters are created to add additional narrative elements, create conflicts, or assist players as guides in the game. It is interesting that, though most of these experiences are text-based, they tend to be framed in terms of navigational interactions. A scene will often begin with a description of the physical space, followed by options for directional navigation. Text conversations are also possible, either through pre-programmed interactions (with text-based agents) or live interactions with other players. The modern day MMORPG is a graphical (virtual reality) version of the MUD and MOO that is based navigation through a three-dimensional graphical space. In this case, a very large virtual world has been created that literally thousands of people can co-inhabit simultaneously. A kit of character parts is provided, again offering an archetypal framework for players to start with. Usually, numerical values are applied to each, some of which are dynamic (such as Health or Strength), based on what has occurred in the game. They then venture forth into the fictional world on various missions and adventures, some propelled by the game and its objectives, others by their own desire for adventures, skills, goods or status. In the typical MMORPG, players can acquire: skills, through such devices as apprenticeship, money, though the use of skills or more nefarious means, property, usually with money but sometimes through battle; and, of course, reputations, probably the most important currency of these types of games. In many ways these games parallel the culture of such "live fantasy" environments as the Renaissance Faire or a Star Trek convention. Large groups of people come together, don virtual "costumes," and live for a time in a fantasy world. This is a play pattern that of course we have all experienced at some point or other in childhood: dress-up, fantasy role-play, etc. For some it evolves into a more grown-up form of fantasy entertainment–deep immersion and role-play in a highly sophisticated fictional context. That these sorts of experiences have migrated onto the computer should not be a surprise. They are, in fact, optimally realized in the context of interactive computer entertainment. The computer is an ideal place to manifest a fantasy world. It allows for a wide variety of effects that cannot happen in real life: here, magic is simply a matter of coming up with the right algorithm. And while it allows the imagination a wide swath, it also creates the possibility of a more controlled environment. Game designers can automate story features and characters, They can also introduce narrative elements at-will. On-line game masters (which most of these games employ at various levels) can monitor the game, assuring that the story is running smoothly, enforcing game rules and assisting new and struggling players. To-date, virtually all MMORPG’s have been derivative of Hobbit/Dungeons and Dragons themes. They all exist in fantasy medieval environments, replete with Knights, Wizards, elves, various gnome-like creatures, magical spells and what have you. These worlds are interesting culturally because they tend to exist on the cusp of paganism and Christianity. They exist in a fantastical version of a historical period where perhaps magic and technology were beginning to vie for position. Although somewhat narrow in its focus and its audience, it is interesting to ponder why the medieval fantasy genre is so popular. Eddo Stern, a game artist and theorist, examines this phenomenon in his in-progress film project, A Touch of Medieval. The medieval fantasy genre has some interesting layers in terms of its relation to high-tech culture. On the one hand, it provides a potent antidote to the high-tech of our daily lives. Although science fiction worlds are on the horizon, in the past, these games have not tended in a high-tech direction. Instead, they combine a kind of nostalgia for a low-tech period, with an environment where nature and magic are integrally intertwined. Oddly, MMORPG’s have a certain back-to-nature aspect, even though their naturalistic worlds are, in fact, synthetic. Pagan culture is prevalent and may even be adopted by some gamers in their daily lives. Yet at the same time the magic and somewhat dangerous qualities of nature also provide an interesting metaphor for the computer itself–a mysterious realm of darkness which seldom behaves as anticipated, even while we try to harness and control it. Perhaps the "nature" of computers is well represented through these magical worlds of mystery. Myst used the living book as metaphor for the computer, a construct in which the central character creates entire worlds just by writing. Perhaps these fantasy environments are a way to understand, manage and control the mystery of the computer itself. Another aspect of the MMORPG which is frequently overlooked is its theatrical aspect. This genre shares much in common with improvisational theater and the theater games of Viola Spolin. These games were designed to teach professional actors techniques of improvisation and authenticity. With MMORPG games, the player becomes the central actor in the drama. It is a highly social form of collaborative fiction. There are peculiar properties to the culture of game production that I think are responsible for making it a caldron, so to speak, for the creation of some of the bolder experiments in contemporary fictional entertainment. In particular, game designers are predisposed to breaking the mold of the author/audience hierarchy, because it is inherent to their craft that the success of a product is a measure of audience participation. From a process point of view, game design is usually (though not always), a team sport, so to speak. At its very conception, each game usually begins with a level of social engagement, which sets the tone for collaboration with an audience. Although many game teams have strong singular creative lead, there is less of an ethos of "auteurship" than in other media. Therefore social play "begins at home," and translates into a social product. In addition, the craft of game design is very much about challenging the player’s creativity and intelligence. It has long been a tradition of gamers try and outsmart games and therefore game designers. The politics of this engagement goes back to the roots of computer games. The culture of games is about how good you are, how smart you are, and whether you can "beat" the game. As a result, game designers are programmed, in a sense, to respond to player challenges. Each game must be more challenging and "smarter" than the last. Therefore the game designer is always engaged in a battle of wits with the player, even from the inception of a new game concept, a sequel, or even a new game level. Game design is highly user-centric. In fact, the most common entry-level position in game companies is a play-tester. And because of the battle of wits between designers and players, game designers know more about their users than producers of any other entertainment medium, or, for that matter, any other computer medium. If designers of word processors knew as much about writers as game designers know about players, the world of software would be a much better place. There is a major shortcoming to this approach however: game designers are notorious for designing games for themselves. Although the game market has grown and broadened substantially, the game industry is still dominated by male game designers with a decidedly monotheistic doctrine of "fun." The startling lack of women in the game industry is a self-fulfilling prophesy that only a few astute individuals have been able to crack. The Catch 22: Games are not designed for women because women don’t play games. Nontheless, the few popular games that have had appeal to females have consistently topped sales. Namco’s Pac-Man, originally released in 1977, remains the top-selling arcade game of all time. Toru Iwantani, the game’s designer, said in a 1979 interview that although the game was not openly targeted as a women’s game, he "was interested in developing a game for the female game enthusiast"…"I started out with the concept of eating and focused on the word 'taberu,' which means 'to eat.'" This formula was so successful that Namco subsequently released Ms. Pac-Man, which was targeted specifically to women. [4] Myst, still the top-selling CD-ROM game of all time (at roughly $5.5 million sales and still climibing) had the largest percentage of female players of any of the top-selling games of its time. The Sims, which is currently the top-selling CD-ROM game, is also estimated to have been 40% and 50% female players. And leave us not forget the girls-only smash hit Barbie Fashion Designer, which made record Christmas sales when it was first released. MMORPG’s with their emphasis on story, social interaction, and fantasy have also proved to be popular genres with girls and women. Another aspect of game culture that predisposes it to an open authorship model is the "Open Source" movement, which invites players to go "under the hood" and soup up their own games. Many games include level-builders which allow players to create their own game environments, and character building kits that let them do the same with player avatars. Some games allow you to transport 3D models in from other authoring systems, and some even let you into the code or scripting language to build your own game "mods." This is a kind of high-tech hobbie culture not unlike the model train culture of the 1950’s and 1960’s. Interestingly, many early model train hobbyists were electrical engineers during World War 2 who used the hobby as an outlet for technological, creative, and sometimes, social expression. The Open Source movement has been particularly strong in the First Person Shooter game genre, or FPS. First Person Shooter games tend to contain highly marginal narrative content, but where they are of interest is in that they have been at the forefront of engaging player creativity. This phenomenon reached a watershed at the March 2001 Computer Game Developers Conference when the Best Rookie Studio Award was awarded to Counter-Strike, a first-person shooter game created entirely by players using the level-builders in the Half-Life game engine. The creators of Counter-Strike were not professional game designers, just Open-Sourcers who wanted to develop their own game environment. It was made available as freeware on the web and quickly became the most popular Online First Person Shooter Game. What is telling about this story is the radically different response the game industry has to audience members hijacking its technology and content. To the rest of the entertainment industry, this sort of behavior is looked at as criminal, and is met with an army of lawyers, not an Academy Award. Try to imagine the inventors of Napster receiving a Grammy and you will understand the profound cultural difference between the "mainstream" entertainment industry and the game industry. While the traditional entertainment industry is frantically trying to thwart the Tsunami with teaspoons, the game industry embraces and even awards audience creativity. To them, this sort of audience usurpation of authority is the ultimate sign of success. There have been other circumstances in which game companies were not so enthusiastic about emergent player-generated trends. Much controversy has arisen around the selling game characters and objects. An Ultima Online player made the newspapers when he garnered $1,500. for a character put up for auction on E-Bay. The emergent economies of game worlds took on still more interesting proportions when people started selling virtual game money–for real money. A few small companies have been formed to sell Ultima, EverQuest and other forms of virtual gold in exchange for "real" cash (using a credit card, of course, its own form of virtual currency.) This is tantamount to selling Monopoly money for dollars, bringing new meaning to the concept of "throwing good money after bad." A few gamers have put up virtual currency exchange rates on their web sites, another interesting metaphor for contemporary economics, which is based largely on the exchange of synthetic currencies in the forms of stocks and bonds. An interesting study can be made of the ways in which MMORPG game companies respond to these player usurpations. Diablo responded by creating D-Bay, its own internal game auction feature. Rather that thwarting this new economy, the Diablo team figured that everyone could benefit from it, so long as they got their piece of the action. EverQuest, on the other hand, explicitly forbids the transfer of characters between players. Many believe their impetus for this to be economic, but in fact, quite the opposite is true. Although they don’t mind the practice in principle, they found that it had an adverse affect on game play. An unskilled player playing at a high-level, not unlike an unlicensed driver in an automobile, can become a menace to other players since they do not have the skill required to operate the character properly. In a sense, it’s a form of cheating. You get ahead in the game without really earning your status or position, and without really having the skill to be in an advanced stage of game play. On top of that, an unskilled player playing at high levels can be a menace to himself as well. One anecdote chronicled a teenage boy whose parents bought him a high-level character for his birthday–at a four digit figure. While many games employ various reincarnation schema to reanimate player characters who have been killed, EverQuest practices what is known in game circles as "perma-death." Once a character dies, he’s…well…dead. The young man almost instantly got the character killed due to the fact that he was more or less "out of his league" with other players at the same level. The parents raised a ruckus, trying to hold the company accountable for the loss of their investment. To avoid this sort of problem, EverQuest prefers to force players to play within the rules: you may only play the character your build yourself. This assures that you are playing at the appropriate skill level. From a behavioral standpoint, it also assures that you are playing by the rules, and that players are operating with a proper sense of reward, penalty and accountability. One of the most interesting aspects of MMORPG culture is the behind-the-scenes infrastructure and culture that supports them. Again, participation is part of the production processes. Companies like EverQuest now view themselves in a service role. Therefore they see ongoing creative and game play maintenance as a critical part of their business. They are mostly subscription-based and so their business is based on the ability to keep players coming back month after month. To keep the game fresh and exciting and to encourage repeat play, the game is adapted as it is played in direct response to player actions. Thus the staff becomes a mix between an improvisational theater company and, say, the writing team for a television series. They are constantly creating new story lines to accommodate their players, and they keep a number of staffers "in-game" at all times to both move the narrative ahead and also to suss out the trends so the game designers, story creators and rule enforcers can respond accordingly. As always, game designers must engage in an ongoing dialogue with players in order to constantly raise the bar on excitement and challenge. God Plays Dice with the Universe: Sims and God Games Having explored the culture of MMORPG’s, we are now going to move into a different genre, the so-called "God Game," or "sim," and its variants. Although this genre has been around in various forms for over a decade, this genre is currently in the midst of an evolutionary leap, largely driven by both creative and technical innovations. On the creative side, the notion of "procedural narrative" has started to emerge as a viable form. In addition, progress in the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in games has also enhanced the ability to create games with more variety. "Sims" games are not to be confused with first-person flight or tank simulations, which are derived from military training VR systems. Sims in this sense are simulations, or dynamic models, of complex systems, with object-oriented programs that interact in a vast web of interdependent, algorithmically-generated events. Sim or God Games put the player in a God-like role of manipulating variables in a large world. In the past, these games have focused on the modeling of large-scale systems. They have some narrative context, but tend not to have as strongly developed story framework as the MMORPG games. Rather, they create a rather generic scenario by creating procedural computer models of large-scale systems. Simulation as a practice also pre-dates computers and was initially developed in the 1960’s and 1970’s for the academic study of social science and economics, as well as ecology. Originally done with paper and pencil, these simulations were an integral part of systems-theory. The idea was to model a range of interrelated variables, then play out various scenarios of what would occur were the variables changed. Needless to say, computers made this process much easier. Age of Empires, SimCity and Sid Meier’s Civilization are some early examples of this model. In these single-player games, the player has a God-like overview, manipulating events in a variety of direct and indirect ways. The characters tend to operate on a more demographic, rather than individual model, using techniques of flocking (group behaviors) rather than AI. In SimCity, people are dealt with more on the level of demographics. When a factory is built, roads are required to allow workers to get there, then housing is needed to contain them. Too much industrial or commuter pollution creates problems, not enough roads create traffic, etc. Various disasters can be introduced to model how the city services, such as police, rescue or fire departments, will respond. In the game Roller Coaster Tycoon, players take on the role of a theme park operator. They must design rides from various kits, and assure that guests have ample facilities, such as toilets and food concessions, and that they are having enough fun to justify the admission price. Players can see a balance sheet of current expenditures vs. profits, can see a head-count of park visitors, as well as individual ride visitation. They can even read the minds of individual visitors to gauge their needs. If a visitor’s thought bubble says "This park is dirty," then it’s time to hire some more janitorial staff. If they are hungry, then a hot dog stand is in order. As the worlds become larger and more complex, emergent behaviors create a natural increase in challenge. A bigger world is by definition more challenging to play with, thus creating a self-evolving skill levels. In these games, a drama emerges, but it tends to be more, as was mentioned earlier, a drama of demographics, rather than a character-driven story. In Civilization, conflicts happen between tribes and villages, not individuals. The group tends to operate as a unit. Advances in both game design and technology have now lead to what can only be described as "higher resolution" genres of sim and God games. Ironically, it is much easier for a computer to model the movements of groups using flocking behaviors than it is to create an individual character. Flocking behaviors apply a small number of rules to fairly generic characters, who then behave accordingly en masse. In this context, they do not possess highly articulated individual personalities. The new genres of God and sim games are employing more and more sophisticated levels of AI which allow for more complex and cumulative behavior of individual characters. Admittedly, character behaviors are still somewhat simplistic and cartoon-like, but they are able to engage with each other in new and delightful ways. Black & White provides one extreme of this. In this game, you are responsible for rearing a godlike creature within a small island culture. The story and its essential conflicts are fairly well structured, but it is the player’s job to in a sense "raise" this all-powerful creature to be either a Good God or a Bad God. Depending on what you do to it, it will be kind or cruel, malicious or merciful, malignant or helpful to its "loyal" subjects. No doubt this game provides an intriguing metaphor for child-rearing. Antecedents to this type of game include the virtual pets Tamagotchi (the popular Japanese keychain toy), Petz and Creatures. In each of these, you have a more individual relationship with the characters, but they are operating at the level of an animal or a small child. With Black & White, a specific and highly articulated personality emerges as you raise your Godlike being, who then interacts with a less-individuated populace, who function on more of a flocking model. The biggest success to date in the God Game/sims genre is the best-selling PC game, The Sims. Almost entirely without a narrative agenda, let alone an ideology, this game has been described by Janet Murray as "the yuppie game," by myself as "the IKEA game" and "Big Brother, the game," and by its creator, Will Wright, as a "virtual dollhouse." The Sims is a sort of narrative Lego, a kind of domestic drama kit that allows the player to project his or her own experience on to the semi-autonomous characters she or he (sort of) controls. The Sims has a generic quality that leaves its narrative outcome open-ended. In it, you are responsible for the well-being of a family unit of some kind, which you can either adopt from a list of pre-existing families, or create from your own custom-built characters. You can chose from some key personality traits, such as neatness or playfulness, or just let the system automatically generate a personality by choosing an astrological sign. The game provides three basic play modes: Live, Build and Buy. In Live mode, you must guide your characters through their day. If you leave them alone, they will sort of do their own thing, but, especially at the beginning, they will need you to attend to their needs. Well-being monitors tell you more or less what their need state is in a variety of categories, form the sublime (social, comfort), to the mundane (hunger, bladder.) If you don’t urge them along, calamity can occur. If a Sim doesn’t make it to the carpool, she misses work and therefore income. If a child Sim misses school too many times, she’ll get sent to the military academy. A hungry Sim too long unfed will die of starvation, a sleepy Sim can collapse in a heap if not put to bed when tired, and a full bladder unattended to can result in…well, I’m sure you can imagine. These characters also have social needs, including the need for love. Some characters tend to need love more than others, and it is not at all uncommon for a Sim to have a tantrum, waving his or her fists at you and yelling in "Simmish," a combination of gibberish and cartoon bubble symbols. If a Sim is yelling and you see a picture of two people kissing over his head, that means he wants a girlfriend. If you see a television, he’s longing for some entertainment. A hamburger indicates hunger, and a picture of a bed means it’s time for sleep. Over time, the Sims develop relationships with each other, some positive, some negative. Depending on the nature of the relationship, certain actions become available. If you have a high love factor between two characters, they can talk affectionately with each other, give each other back rubs and gifts, and eventually they can kiss. But if you try to kiss or even compliment a character that you don’t get along with, he or she will become irritated with you and you may even lose favorability points. One of the consistent qualities of Maxis games, especially true in The Sims, is the detail with which consequences are played out. In particular, failure states become a source of great humor, or in some cases, tragedy. A badly tended populace in Sim City will eventually riot. In The Sims, children can be taken away by social services, characters can lose their jobs, and even die. It has long been a criticism of video games (not to mention many films) that death has no consequences. In many games, as discussed earlier, reincarnation is the norm; even with games that employ "perma-death," the consequences of death are still not really dealt with in any kind of depth. In The Sims, when characters die, other characters have to bury them and mourn them. A mourning spouse might become depressed and unable to work for a time. While the game itself is quite compelling, even in its mundanity–it’s really more or less a sitcom or a domestic drama of sorts–what is even more interesting is the relationship of Maxis to its audience and its strong ideology about user participation. Months before the game was released in stores, a web site was set up to allow players to Beta Test it. Thus in some respects, players got in "on the ground floor" to really engage in the design itself. By the time the game hit the shelves, The Sims already had a strong and adamant fan base. In addition, almost immediately, players started to engage in very creative uses of the game. Like most of these interactive narrative games, The Sims features a screen capture mode that allows players to take pictures of their game in-progress and create an album. Highly creative players began to use the game for content creation, essentially a storyboarding tool, to make up their own narratives. Some of these narratives became quite popular with other users and are now viewed by thousands of players daily on The Sims web site. In addition, the game allows you to upload a game-in-progress onto the site so that other players can continue where you left off. This means there might be a variety of variations on a particular family based on the different directions taken by different players. The Sims also allows for various forms of what is known as "skinning," essentially adding textures to characters in order to customize them. An early example of this is a player who built a Star Trek Enterprise in the game, complete with crew uniforms. In response to this, Maxis had produced a number of expansion packs, including The Sims Living Large and House Party, both of which allow for a wider variety of options. Currently, they are developing The Sims online, which will create an online Sims community where people can build families in a shared neighborhood. This new hybrid brings together aspects of the God/sim game with MMORPG’s to create a social version of what is now more or less a single-player game with a web-supported fan community.
Conclusion From a cultural perspective, the ramifications of these new forms of entertainment is nothing short of revolutionary. Through these experiences, the consumer is thus transformed into consumer/producer and consumption itself becomes an act of production. Where previously there was a clear boundary between producer and consumer of content, this boundary continues to become more blurry. The role of the "author" in this context is, rather than creating content, to create context. This then invites the audience create or co-create the content, in essence, to entertain each other with their unique way of "playing the story." Karl Marx said "seize the means of production." What is interesting here is that not that users are seizing the means of production, but that in a sense, capitalism has found a sort of compromise in the production/consumption hybrid. From a socio-political standpoint, this fundamentally undermines the very fabric of the broadcast media–where there is a fixed and hierarchical relationship between the content creator/owner and the audience. Sims designer Will Wright has a vision for user-created content. If 10% of players are highly skilled content creators–people who build their own character skins and create their own objects–he posits, then for every million players, 100,000 of them will be content-creation experts. The result is that the game becomes its own system for self-generating content. The next step is building some kind of economy around this self-generating content model. Wright is currently thinking about ways to reward expert players/content generators, possibly with cash, or perhaps with game coupons, such as free games and subscriptions. In this way, he envisions a new schema for content creation, where players co-create and self-generate their own content, and are rewarded for how well they entertain each other. This model is also moving beyond the game area. There are already some systems in development by groups such as Canada’s Bitcasters (www.bitcasters.com), who are creating new schema for a producer/consumer model. Their system provides a subscription-based tool kit which feeds into a distribution system. You "rent" their tools, create content, then feed it back into the site for public distribution. You can charge for your content, opt to "sell" ad space by selecting from a list of available sponsors, or simply make it available for free. The income you generate goes back into the system as credit towards your tool use, and so on. However, the experience of the content is still passive, so in that sense, the system still has a broadcast model as its basis. Inversely, the game experience unites production and consumption into a single act. In the future, I think the content bases (such as game themes) will be expanded to appeal to a wider audience. The MMORPG genre is already branching into other areas. Verant, the makers of EverQuest, are underway creating a Star Wars Galaxies, and many other companies are working on new story genres within this game play paradigm. As the themes become less narrow, we will see new audiences embrace these games. What is always exciting about that is that these new players will continue to surprise us by reinventing the very games they are playing. This is probably them most interesting thing about game culture: in the end, the outcome is always a surprise.
Publications [1] Tolkien J.R.R., The Hobbit, (Various Publishers) 1st ed., 1937. [2] Tolkien J.R.R., Lord of the Rings, (Various Publishers) 1st ed., 1937. [3] Fragmaster, Game of the Week, Classic Gaming, www.classicgaming.com/rotw/pacman.shtml [4] (No author listed), Who Knew? Computer Industry's Biggest Games are Violence-Free Contrary to Popular Belief, Violent Computer Games Are Not Industry Standard, Just Adventure www.justadventure.com/articles/What_Was_That/What_Was_That.shtm Games, Films & Interactive Media A Touch of Medieval, directed by Eddo Stern (film in progress) Age of Empires, (CD-ROM) Microsoft Games www.microsoft.com/games Asheron’s Call (Online Role Playing Game), Microsoft Games www.microsoft.com/games Barbie Fashion Designer (CD-ROM), Mattel Software www.barbie.com Bitcasters www.bitcasters.com Blade Runner: The Game (CD-ROM), Westwood Studios westwood.ea.com Civilization (CD-ROM), Microprose www.microprose.com Counter-Strike (Online PC Game) Creatures, Creature Labs www.creaturelabs.com Deux Ex (CD-ROM), Ion Storm www.deusex.com Diablo (Online Role Playing Game), Blizzard Entertainment www.blizzard.com Dungeons and Dragons (Role-Playing Game), Wizards of the Coast www.wizards.com EverQuest, Verant/Sony Online Entertainment www.verant.com Half-Life, (Online PC Game), Valve www.valve.com I’m Your Man (Interactive Theater-Based Movie), Interfilm Indiana Jones (CD-ROM), LucasArts www.lucasarts.com Johnny Mnemonic (CD-ROM), Propaganda Films and Sony Entertainment Mr. Payback (Interactive Theater-Based Movie), Interfilm Myst (CD-ROM), Cyan www.cyan.com Pac-Man (Arcade Game), Atari Petz www.petz.co.uk Resident Evil (Nintendo-64), Angel Studios www.angelstudios.com Riven (CD-ROM), Cyan www.cyan.com Roller Coaster Tycoon (CD-ROM), Microprose www.microprose.com SimCity (CD-ROM), Maxis www.simcity.ea.com Tamagotchi (Virtual Pet Toy), Bandai The Sims (CD-ROM), Maxis/Electronic Arts www.thesims.ea.com/us/ Ultima Online (Online Role Playing Game), Origin Voyeur (CDI), Philips Media Zelda: Majora’s Mask (Nintendo-64), Nintendo www.nintendo.com Suggested Further Reading Murray Janet, Hamlet on the Holodeck. Cambridge, MIT Press, 1997. Wardrip-Fruin Noah, Harrington Pat, eds., First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game, Cambridge, MIT Press, 2002. Pearce Celia, The Interactive Book: A Guide to the Interactive Revolution. Indianapolis, Macmillan Technical Press, 1997. Game Studies Journal www.gamestudies.org/
Reprinted from Computers & Graphics ©2001 Celia Pearce |
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