Category Archives: Aalto University (TAIK)

Classes I’m taking, things I’m learning and enjoying at TAIK.

Aalto University (TAIK), Game Design, Understanding Games

GAME IMMERSION, BLEED, AND PLAYER RESPONSIBILITY. (UNDERSTANDING GAMES, LECTURE #3)

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Any good role-playing game will cause the player to go in and out of character and an immersive flow throughout play.  Of course this flow is not constant and can even last for fractions of a second as the outside world brings forth its distractions via ringing phones, yelling moms, and nagging spouses.  Especially good games can cause a mingling or bleeding between fiction and reality, sometimes to the determent of the player, causing him to get slapped for hitting on a girl in “tlhlngan Hol.”

Some may underestimate the actual power and seduction of fantasy and the dangers of this bleed.  Though embarrassing to speak of today, I can only look back to my younger days as a teenager with a smirk.   Reading punisher comics, I played the secret role of Frank Castle, The Punisher; a badass vigilante, taking pop shots at old j-walking grannies and litterbugs on the streets of New York.  Of course preventing more serious crimes through very effective and mostly violent and unlawful techniques.  But who the hell cares?  They deserve that form of punishment for what they did to my wife and two kids.  Mind you I had enough trouble getting a date to the dance in our local gym, let alone have time for a wife and children.

Fortunately for me, 7th grade middle school in the suburbs of Delaware was far from the mobs and back alleys of New York.  Here the double layers of foam pad that I had sewn under my T-shirt bearing the Punisher skull were my Kevlar.  It may not stop real bullets, but at least the punches of the local bullies who wanted to steal my lunch money.  But in my mind, it was the most powerful protection known to child-kind.  When wearing it, I swore I felt more powerful. I was in the flow!  Unfortunately all good things must come to an end.  Someone finds out my secret identity, and notifies the local bully-mob and my days as Frank Castle, the Punisher of playground bullies is over, as well as not having any lunch money for the rest of the year.

Was I playing a game?  I probably was.  Where winning meant I had lunch that day, and losing meant I would go home with a growling tummy.  Even though I was playing alone, the role did bleed into my normal life, and I did act differently.  But at the end of the day I was still the little guy that acted and reacted the same way to things that I had learned throughout my life growing up.  So this brings me to the point, are players responsible for their actions when they are “only role-playing?”  This is a definite yes!  If I were to have taken one of those bullies, tied him up to a chair, and bitch slapped him silly, it may have felt good, and probably been what The Punisher would have done, but alas, I was not Frank.  I was Arash John Sammander, 7th grader and bully lunch money vending machine.

So I would have probably gotten a suspension from school (Giving vacation time from school to bad children is probably one of the stupidest inventions of the US educational system.  But I digress.) and my parents would have been notified, etc.

So for all you people out there that stab your friends in the back or cheat on your significant others during role-playing games because you are playing a different character, the only person you are fooling is yourself.  Take it from me, I have the scars, and lack of lunch money to prove it.

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Aalto University (TAIK), Game Design, Understanding Games

STORIES IN ROLE-PLAYING GAMES? A PHILOSOPHICAL DISPUTE. (UNDERSTANDING GAMES, LECTURE #2)

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A proposed statement:

If a story is the recounting of past events, then a story cannot be a present nor future occurrence, and can only exist after those said events have ended.  Thus a story cannot be told or exist in a live event and can only be produced from it.

Assuming this to be true, one could say that a role-playing game cannot tell a story unless it is successfully completed, thus they do not exist in the realm of RPGs and are only produced from them.

I don’t agree with this idea because I have a different view on what a story actually is.  I never really thought deeply about what a story was until I was working on a project for a design company that wanted to create a service that allowed individuals to be able to share stories with each other.  While interviewing my uncle (who is a well-known philosopher in the afghan community and fell within the company’s user base), when presented with the question of if he was interested in telling stories, he said no and regarded them as being childish.  He was not interested in telling the story of Sr. Isaac Newton’s observations of the falling of an apple but instead his opinions on Newton’s theories that were later developed from that occurrence.  I said well that can be a story too.  And he did not agree, and we had an interesting discussion, both of us learning from the other, and broadening our scope of what we defined as stories.

So if I were to define stories, I would expand on them to say that since they include one’s opinions, they can also include all occurrences of one’s life, including the one that they were currently living.  Thus the story of telling a story is also a story, and the act of living life could be the telling of that story.

Though this might seem confusing, we could look to Goffman’s (1974) and Fine’s (1983) breakdowns and descriptions on social frames and see that blurring can occur when one does not know exactly which frame she is currently in at any given moment: outside, game, or diegetic.  Delving deeper into this, we could also argue that the second a thought occurs in ones mind, it is now no longer in the present and thus in the past.  So all of the thoughts, utterances, and situations leading up to a game can be included in the over all story of playing the game.  Thus there can be an outside, game, and diegetic story.  So the guy delivering pizza to your game is part of the on going story.  The ideas going on in ones head only spoken to herself can also be a story leading up to that specific second in time.

In addition to this the game master also has a set storyline that she is trying to describe and create as the game progresses.  This outline contains a story, even if the players never play the game.  The story still exists, even if fragmented with no one to read it aloud, like a book of ideas that is never opened.

If we were to combine these ideas, we can easily see that the act of living in the present moment is the continual creation of a story that I am telling through this text, and as each word is created it now becomes part of the past and further extends the story of me writing for lecture #2 of understanding games.

Things to ponder on:

Does a story have to end?  Does it exist if it is never told?  If it is my life, does it end when I die?  What if I’m talked about till the end of time?  What if the stories change each time they are told?  Am I immortal?  I have no ending therefore I have no story?


REFERENCES TAKEN FROM LECTURES SLIDES #2

Goffman, Erving (1974). Frame analysis: An essay on the organization of experience. Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press.

Fine, Gary Alan (1983): Shared Fantasy. University of Chicago Press.

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Aalto University (TAIK), Game Design, Understanding Games

WHAT IS A ROLE-PLAYING GAME? (UNDERINGSTANING GAMES, LECTURE #1)

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What is a role-playing game exactly?  I think before one can really understand the term, we would need to try and define what a game is.  This can fill volumes of text describing various theories from many different people.  To keep things simple and to not drag this article on to long, I will try to define a game and then use that definition as a basis to define what role-playing is in that context.

So what is a game then?  I believe there are a few key components that must exist for something to be defined a game:

– Interactivity – with the game itself, or other players.
– Challenge – in the form of decision-making and/or against others.
– Rules – defined by the game system or group of players, which is agreed upon.
– Goals – in the form of winning / losing conditions.

Though these things exist in other contexts as well, they must exist within a game.  Some may say it has to be fun; the players must be willing to play and what about self defined goals?  To this I say players can be forced to play a game and not enjoy it. Watch any of the SAW movies for a good example; the “players” are definitely not willing to play.  It may not be a game to them but to the killer it sure is.  Self-defined rules and goals also pose a problem in that they can turn anything into a game.  I could for example say that typing this is a game.  I must finish in a set amount of time, have a set amount of words, and if I don’t, I lose.  This doesn’t sound like fun now does it?  This brings us to the most overlooked component.  FUN!  Unfortunately I cannot include this because there are many games that lack this.  Back to the SAW example, I’m sure the players are not having fun playing someone else’s game but just cause they don’t want to play does not make it something other than what it is, a game with their life.  I do admit though, that in most gaming scenarios, willingness to play is a key in that if it does not exist, one’s job can fit into these key elements.

So now that I roughly fleshed what a game is, let us look at role-playing.  Lets break this word down into two different words, role and play.  A role is the act of someone performing a set duty within a given society.  This can be self-assigned or governed to them.  The society can be the entire human race, the people of a certain country, state, province, group, etc.  As long as more than one person accepts the position of this person, they can say they have that role.  At the most basic terms, one could say, “I’m the head of the household.” All that I need to accept this role are my wife and kids.  Now, play can be the act of doing an action for the amusement of oneself or for/with others.  This action usually is performed willingly, bringing enjoyment and fulfillment.  Now that I have basically defined theses two words, when combined we see that role-play is willing assuming a role in a given situation to bring forth enjoyment and fulfillment.

Thus a role playing game is a challenging, interactive system containing rules and goals, in which individuals assume an accepted role for personal pleasure. Though this definition is probably far from complete, it lays out a good framework and foundation to build upon as one delves deeper into this genre.

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