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clyde

The Individual and the Organization.

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So Ian Bogost wrote this:

http://m.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/03/video-games-are-better-without-characters/387556/

I think it's a good prompt for a great conversation. I share a lot of the appreciations that Bogost uses for their premises, but find the false dicotomy between representation of individuals and representation of systems (or organizations) to be both naive and disingenious. Some folks on Twitter seem pissed off, I'm not one of them. I'm glad Bogost wrote this because it's a really idiosyncratic angle to approach the the emergent/authored spectrum and the individual/organization spectrum and how they interact.

I'm hoping we can discuss our responses to the article here. I'm just going to go ahead and brag about y'all now; when I read this article I thought "I'm so glad I don't write articles, I'd much rather write a question on the Idle Thumbs forums because I know that I'm probably missing a perspective that members of this community will highlight."

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I'll repost what I said in the other thread this came up in:

 

I quite enjoyed this article and agree with a lot of his points, but slight condescension toward narrative games is annoying. I'm also not sure that systems-based games vs. character-based games is as neat a dichotomy as he'd like; it allows him to conveniently ignore games like Cart Life and Papers, Please, which seem to model that "cog-in-the-machine" feeling that he wants better than a game like SimCity. Also, and I've encountered this in other writings of his, he's got blinders that focus on video games solely, to the exclusion of tabletop games. I think any discussion of systems-based game design needs to include tabletop to be instructive.

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Is there a good amount of discussion in the other thread? I looked briefly, but didn't find it. What thread is it?

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Nope, somebody just linked it in this week's episode thread, but I think I'm the only one who responded. This seems like the best place to discuss the article.

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I think he's overly dismissive of the capabilities that a nuanced game can offer to underrepresented peoples. Putting the Walking Dead as the extreme is unfair to me, Gone Home is far more appropriate and it shows why there's real value in the idea of a game that will show you one person in depth.

I'm not very familiar with Bogost so forgive me if I'm quick to judge here, but is he normally a strong advocate of social justice? It seems very dismissive to suggest it's better to focus on systems when a big issue with real world systems is how they try to treat everyone as near categories without nuance and recognition of individuality.

I agree that there's a lot of interesting things you can do with a system based game but I think he's overselling the idea that it has more to offer.

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Zolani Stewart (@Fengxii) said something that resonates with me on Twitter:

@Fengxii: The most dangerous lie of that piece is that only the objective distance of "systems" can allow us to understand the needs of a society

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@Fengxii: The most dangerous lie of that piece is that only the objective distance of "systems" can allow us to understand the needs of a society

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@Fengxii: It's not the collective over the individudal, but pedestaling those who control the conditions of a system over those who live inside it

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@Fengxii: It's power rhetoric that works to reify power, basically. Not to be trusted imo

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@Fengxii: And if you think by saying these things that I'm against "systems" then you're falling the trap that piece wants you to, don't fall for it!

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It seems very dismissive to suggest it's better to focus on systems when a big issue with real world systems is how they try to treat everyone as near categories without nuance and recognition of individuality.

nailed it.

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That's a great point, it also reminds that I meant to say I was not happy with the connection drawn with systems in games as nonfiction. They may not contain explicit narrative but claiming they are closer to nonfiction rings as hollow to me as the idea of games being apolitical.

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I generally dislike articles that urge developers to drop certain pursuits and focus on other ones. No exception here. I feel character-focused games and systems-focused games can easily co-exist, and already do. There are probably even crossovers. From what little I know of Lords Managements (nice one, wordfilter), they seem to combine complex systems and characters in a way that suits both needs anyway? But I'll leave that discussion to someone more familiar with the genre.

 

According to the (imperfect) MDA framework, specifically the 'aesthetics' component, games can target some combination of various mental/emotional needs, and the importance of these aspects of games will vary from player to player. I tend to agree with this view and interpreted the article as subtly suggesting people just stop catering to one of these popular aesthetics in favour of a less popular one.

 

During a recent interview I did to assist with a friend's PhD on narrative in games, I reached the conclusion that characters (and to a lesser extent, the setting or wider 'world') are what I care about most in video games or any other applicable creative medium. Bogost says "at their best, game characters and game stories are still mostly like bad books and films and television, but with button pressing" but doesn't specify why the medium is intrinsically less capable of portraying these things, perhaps because it isn't intrinsically less capable.

 

Maybe I failed to engage with this sufficiently, but it won't be leaving me with much food for thought.

 

EDIT: oh yeah, promoting the idea of diversity as an unobtainable goal that we shouldn't even bother with seemed weirdly insidious to me? Like, the sort of thing that might appeal to the GG crowd even? I'd never expect this sort of thing from Bogost, though, so someone please tell me if I've misread the tone horribly.

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I don't feel like it was an attempt to appeal to them since there are plenty of GG critical parts. I just read it that he genuinely thinks individual representation is an ultimately fruitless endeavour compared to systemic representation.

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I just don't understand how Bogost can understand the power of having a player make organizational scale decisions in an authored simulation that creates an emergent dilemma, but not understand how that can be powerful decision to make on an individual scale.

The article isn't complete nonsense to me though, if it was, I'd ignore it. I am intoxicated by how strategy games can help me think from the perspective of the State; I am perplexed by how to design organizational scale and individual scale games that incentivize empathy, appreciation, and cooperation over single-actor optimization-paths; I'm intrigued by the perceived mutual exclusivity of player-input on the scale of bureacrat with a family and player-input in a city-builder.

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I think we're being a bit unfair to Bogost's argument here. I don't think he's saying that systems-based games are objective or that they should be. In calling them "non-fiction" games, I think he means that the primary thing you use them for is to learn something about the world, whereas "fiction" games are about being told a story. "Non-fiction" here shouldn't be read as "objective": Bogost is a scholar and any scholar who's writing as though their work is objective is ignoring the last 60 of scholarship.

 

Likewise, I think the core of his argument is that last paragraph: the biggest issues in the world (capitalist exploitation, racism, sexism, environmental destruction) have systemic roots and thus are best understood at the systemic level. Games are better at exposing systems than any other medium and they're better at exposing systems than they are at anything else, so it's a shame that we've left that by the wayside.

 

Like I said, I have some issues with this argument. Are high level systems really the best way at getting at these processes, or is a hybrid method such as the one in Cart Life more effective? Have games really left systems by the wayside, or can we see them in other areas, such as tabletop games. And if we see systematic games dominating in other areas, but not having the political impact that Bogost argues systems have (as I would argue is the case in tabletop), are systems really the thing that's missing, or is the political will? These are the questions I'd like to ask him.

 

But yeah, I think if you're reading this as an attack on social justice or subjectivity in general, it's worthwhile to give the article a second read.

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That article felt like the writer was stating his personal preference to be the Objective Best Thing. The quote that really jumped out at me was this:

 

The best games model the systems in our world—or the ones of imagination—by means of systems running in software.

 

Says who? My personal taste runs that way, but that's a hell of a thing to present as universally true, as though it's so obvious it needs no justification.

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I think we're being a bit unfair to Bogost's argument here. I don't think he's saying that systems-based games are objective or that they should be. In calling them "non-fiction" games, I think he means that the primary thing you use them for is to learn something about the world, whereas "fiction" games are about being told a story. "Non-fiction" here shouldn't be read as "objective": Bogost is a scholar and any scholar who's writing as though their work is objective is ignoring the last 60 of scholarship.

 

But yeah, I think if you're reading this as an attack on social justice or subjectivity in general, it's worthwhile to give the article a second read.

I was not taking the nonfiction comment to mean directly represent reality, but I think it's a similar trap to the idea that documentaries are factual or correct rather than a genre of film that attempts to directly reflect the real world rather than indirectly reflect it through a concocted fictional narrative. Systems in games can try to map the feel of a real life interaction into the game, but those systems are themselves constructed before the process of transcoding them into a game even begins. It's not that I think he considers it fully objective but it read as a bit naively forgetting that systems are made by people with flaws and biases, because I think that's an easy trap to fall into when looking at the world.

 

And system based games without a prescriptive narrative are still going to have emergent narratives that fit with the model the system allows. He mentioned the way Sim City is Americacentric, and that is a story the game tells you. It tells you about this particular kind of city, how it functions and what it values. That's a story to tell, even if it's not a singular specific one.

 

I also don't agree with the idea that fiction games aren't just as much about learning about the world, they're just about it from the opposite lens. Again, in Gone Home you are learning about the experiences of a whole group of people through the lens of one individual's journey. The very fact that it's personal is what pulls you in close so that you can learn more deeply about what it's like for them. Systemically, I don't think you could reproduce that same feeling.

 

I did enjoy the article and there's interesting stuff in there. I just, as usual, spent the most time discussing my negative reactions because they're more interesting than agreeing with what he has down. I don't at all think he's attacking social justice, but I do think he's got blinkers on about how to tackle both game design and social justice issues. Maybe that was a bit of devil's advocate for this particular article, but it didn't sit well with me.

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IDK, kind of cursory in this weirdly aggressive way, in service of an overall thesis which is also kind of cursory in a weirdly aggressive way, I think summed up for me by decision (in Khandaker-Kokoris paragraph, and throughout) to wave away everything that blurs line between his chosen two poles as basically product of a wishy-washy pluralism rather than inescapable dialectic. If Sim City turns into mush upon merest challenge or reframing of its olympian framing viewport then all that suggests to me is that nothing about it was ever worth saving in the first place.

 

And an account of how systemic Video game representations actually work and are "read" that seems to me extremely selective and dubious. Wasn't he one of the people pointing out that MolleIndustria's "McDonald's Video game" could just be played as a regular ass sim game about optimising system where the satirical subtext gets glossed over and lost (like the "satire" in The Sims)? As if even high-level systems are still produced, disseminated, marketed and consumed as part of even higher-order systems in which, yes, individual affect and identity are inextricably involved among other factors throughout, and that all this also plays into how these constructions feed back into consciousness and act?

 

I am not gonna touch on the stuff abt identity other than to say it's, again, cursory and I think wrongheaded in a lot of the assumptions it makes abt the underlying end goals of that movement.

 

 

So... IDK. It's a call for video games to do something that does not seem either particularly interested in or thoughtful about what video games actually are right now, other than as a tetherball to be bonked back and forth in service of vague straining rhetoric about sublimity and action and photography etc. I do not really have a preference between the two poles he describes, and pretty much everything I enjoy about video games doesn't fit into either model as portrayed here!! So, I really don't know what to take from it other than confirming that I don't like much Video game criticism and think it's generally a bad idea to deliberately coarsen your own thoughts for purposes of goading on an argument/.

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There are 2 ideas here that are somewhat tangled:

1. Video Games are better at exploring themes with systems (mechanics) than with narrative

2. Identity politics are a distraction from the systematic (ie: "real") problems facing humanity

The first I can get behind. As a medium, I believe video games allow players experiment with alternate experiences, inviting the opportunity for insight in a way deterministic narratives can't. This isn't to say that deterministic narratives CAN'T provide insights, but I would argue that the body of work produced to date suggests that games are better at doing it with the former method than the latter. Cart Life, SimCity, Real Lives 2010, Depression Quest, Problem Attic, Dys4ia, they provide you with systems to struggle with, which force you to make decisions you wouldn't normally have to consider. Typical video-game-assed video games with Messages, like Spec Ops: The Line, typically just provide video game obstacles to over come on the way to the next bit of expository text. So far, at their best, those games do deterministic narrative about as well as mediocre movies and books.

The second point, however... hmmmmm. Saying marginalized people should wait their turn until the "real" injustices are addressed, to stand united for the Greater Good, has been a thing for a long time. And it has typically been pushed by non-marginalized people; white, able bodied, first world, neural typical, cis gender, heterosexual, men. And those "real" problems usually concern economic injustices that affect marginalized and non-marginalized people equally.

As a perfect example of such a non-marginalized person, I can say that it feels like a perfectly reasonable stance to take. And everyone is always very willing to accept world views that are in tune with their feelings. And, as such, it is tempting to ask why issues of identity, issues that don't inform my lived experience, are so important. Why ARE gender neutral bathrooms such a big deal when unaccountable billionaires are slashing and burning the future to feed their temporal and unlimited greed. Why does it matter if there's only 1 woman on screen for every 3 men, when wages have been stagnant for 40 years, while social services have been dismantled and consumer debt is exploding.

Of course, anyone who doesn't fall into my perfect storm of privilege probably doesn't feel the same way. And expecting marginalized people to suck it up, stop rocking the boat and get on message isn't going to make their lived experiences magically stop sucking.

What I find strange is that Point One and Point Two so frequently get conflated to the point where the rationale for one feeds the other, and not just by Bogost. For some reason there does seem to be a correlation between people who espouse both point one and point two. If I didn't go out of my way to find marginalized voices who decry the call for ideological harmony, I would probably be one of them. But I don't know why one opinion seems to accompany the other so frequently.

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@Reyturner, I just tried out Depression Quest and it's an 'odd' example to point out games' strength in mechanics over narrative when it felt very much narrative driven (and not for any worse either, it does what it sets out to do and in more mechanic focused games I doubt they would be able to address the topic as well as it did as player could game the 'depression', which would completely miss the difficulty of suffering from depression).

 

I feel like best is good mix of the two, where narrative give better context to the mechanics and mechanics then reinforces the narrative... like Papers, Please which tberton mentioned does this exactly so well.  If you go raw mechanics then it's a sandbox... it can mean anything (Day-Z like games where it could mean joy of exploration with friends to torture-fest) or nothing (all the flight sim(ignoring the fanatics who argue that slight misbalance in favor of USA/Soviet fighter is clear sign of capitalist/communist agenda)).  Go raw narrative then it's not a game (movie, book, etc.).  If two contrasts then they detract from each other (I think this is AAA's actual real problem... most AAA games actually have plenty of system, just that they are not really fleshed out in conjunction with their equally busy narrative and two ends up just mixing into mediocre).

 

Article is... well it's a good article in a sense that it'll get people talking about it, it's just irritating enough of an opinion that it'll get temporary heat and attention but no long term damages.  I would assume that the author intentionally overstepped his logical limit to create that bit of poke.

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@Reyturner, I just tried out Depression Quest and it's an 'odd' example to point out games' strength in mechanics over narrative when it felt very much narrative driven (and not for any worse either, it does what it sets out to do and in more mechanic focused games I doubt they would be able to address the topic as well as it did as player could game the 'depression', which would completely miss the difficulty of suffering from depression).

 

IMO, Depression Quest's impact comes from its systems, or subversion of systems. Choose Your Own Adventure is the oldest form of narrative game there is and it mirrors life in a very basic way. Look at the options, and make the best move: easy. But, like in life, Depression removes your ability to choose "the best move", even though to a normally functioning person, the choice seems obvious and simple. One of the most hurtful things about people's misunderstandings of depression is the assumption that the sufferer is simply choosing to be miserable. "Why can't they just be positive? Get some exercise, call a friend. That's what I would do." In presenting options that would clearly be the right move and removing your ability to select them, Depression Quest gives you a glimpse into the experience of depression a traditional narrative lacks. 

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IMO, Depression Quest's impact comes from its systems, or subversion of systems. Choose Your Own Adventure is the oldest form of narrative game there is and it mirrors life in a very basic way.

 

Yeah it's a good subversion of 'choose your own adventure', but I guess it's more of my deal that I just can't hold that entire genre all that highly when it comes to mechanics so I just considered that subversion more of success on narrative end than anything mechanical.

 

If the subversion was set in such way that most players end up choosing (meaning alternative was possible) the subversion then I would call that mechanical (again, Papers, Please does this really well!  You can let people pass or not carry out bad laws but the subversion is that you are encouraged to carry out those questionable acts due to the way you are 'scored' via cash).  But when it's ruled out completely regardless of player input, that's subversion achieved purely on the developer's end, which seems closer to narrative.

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Yeah it's a good subversion of 'choose your own adventure', but I guess it's more of my deal that I just can't hold that entire genre all that highly when it comes to mechanics so I just considered that subversion more of success on narrative end than anything mechanical.

 

If the subversion was set in such way that most players end up choosing (meaning alternative was possible) the subversion then I would call that mechanical (again, Papers, Please does this really well!  You can let people pass or not carry out bad laws but the subversion is that you are encouraged to carry out those questionable acts due to the way you are 'scored' via cash).  But when it's ruled out completely regardless of player input, that's subversion achieved purely on the developer's end, which seems closer to narrative.

I agree that Papers, Please is another really good example, but I still think Depression Quest belongs but I don't feel super strongly about it. I'll concede the point to avoid a derail.

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By that concession you became the true victor in the eyes of mature ones.  Well played Reyturner... well played... :P

 

So back from that minor derailing, is there anyone out there who is 100% in sync with that article (minus the author) to begin with?  It also feels like a topic that Soren touched upon in his recent blog and briefly in podcasts because he said when he was younger he used to be very hostile towards narration in games.

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The second point, however... hmmmmm. Saying marginalized people should wait their turn until the "real" injustices are addressed, to stand united for the Greater Good, has been a thing for a long time. And it has typically been pushed by non-marginalized people; white, able bodied, first world, neural typical, cis gender, heterosexual, men. And those "real" problems usually concern economic injustices that affect marginalized and non-marginalized people equally.

As a perfect example of such a non-marginalized person, I can say that it feels like a perfectly reasonable stance to take. And everyone is always very willing to accept world views that are in tune with their feelings. And, as such, it is tempting to ask why issues of identity, issues that don't inform my lived experience, are so important. Why ARE gender neutral bathrooms such a big deal when unaccountable billionaires are slashing and burning the future to feed their temporal and unlimited greed. Why does it matter if there's only 1 woman on screen for every 3 men, when wages have been stagnant for 40 years, while social services have been dismantled and consumer debt is exploding.

 

This pretty much sums up how I feel about the apparently controversial elements of it. It's an insidiously bigoted argument to make. Please note, I'm not calling Bogost a bigot, I think he's used poor logic (and maybe a lack of empathy) to arrive at bigoted stance.  Something non-marginalized people (myself included) do all the time. 

 

Honestly, the more I read Bogost's essays, the less and less I care for his work.  I don't think it's particularly insightful, and I think it generates conversation solely because of his name and not the quality of the writing or arguments.  Quite frankly, I think he's disdainful of people who look for representation in games.  He loathes them, and the poisonous effect they are having, polluting the systems driven paradise he thinks ought exist.  Take a look back at one of his passages in his Gone Home piece, when he comments on people who had emotional reactions to it:

 

It’s impossible and undesirable to question these reactions, to undermine them with haughty disregard. But it’s also not unreasonable to ask how these players could have been so easily satisfied. For readers of contemporary fiction or even viewers of serious television, it’s hard for me to imagine that Gone Home would elicit much of any reaction, let alone the reports of full-bore weeping and breathless panegyrics this game has enjoyed. I felt charmed upon completing Gone Home, but then I felt ashamed for failing to meet the emotional bar set by my video game-playing brethren.

 

The language use here is really careful to me.  He's not saying the reactions of those players had any value, just that they exist and should not be questioned.  But not questioned only out of propriety, the implication is that intellectually it would be desirable to question, but to do so would be a social faux pas.  Then he goes onto question their cultural cred, their intellectual strength, if they were to be so effortlessly moved by what was obviously an average attempt at fiction at best.  And finally, his shame.  That he, a man (straight AFAIK), was not able to share in this pool of emotion from which others were drinking deep. 

 

And then there's this from a Gamasutra piece:

 

For example, games like Papers, Please, Cart Life or Dys4ia were made to be played and to illuminate the subjects that their creators wanted to make games about. "It's actually a little weird to talk about using games for social change or seriousness in the abstract," Bogost says. "We don't talk about other media that way. We just kind of assume it's possible: I want to make a film about something, I figure out a way to make a film about the thing I want to make a game about."

 

Of course we talk about using other media for social change.  People do write books with the intention of hoping to change something, even if it's just to shift the views of a few people.  People do make movies to have an impact.  The Day After was practically designed to force a conversation about nuclear deterrence.  And directly to his point, people do talk about other media that way, and even argue about whether or not it works.  I really can't fathom how someone who studies media could say that this conversation doesn't happen about other media, and ought not happen about games. 

 

I'm sure I've seen something else where he displayed some strong disdain for social justice movements, but I'm struggling to find it.  Ultimately I think this piece continues a trend where he tries to marginalize the experiences of marginalized people when then look to games for representation. 

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Of course we talk about using other media for social change. People do write books with the intention of hoping to change something, even if it's just to shift the views of a few people. People do make movies to have an impact. The Day After was practically designed to force a conversation about nuclear deterrence. And directly to his point, people do talk about other media that way, and even argue about whether or not it works. I really can't fathom how someone who studies media could say that this conversation doesn't happen about other media, and ought not happen about games.

People who talk about the effortlessness of discourse in a given medium tend only to have enjoyed only the fruits of it. There is a huge conversation on the utility of documentary methods to drive social change and Bogost apparently doesn't care either to know or to say it. Great post, Bjorn.

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I was not taking the nonfiction comment to mean directly represent reality, but I think it's a similar trap to the idea that documentaries are factual or correct rather than a genre of film that attempts to directly reflect the real world rather than indirectly reflect it through a concocted fictional narrative. Systems in games can try to map the feel of a real life interaction into the game, but those systems are themselves constructed before the process of transcoding them into a game even begins. It's not that I think he considers it fully objective but it read as a bit naively forgetting that systems are made by people with flaws and biases, because I think that's an easy trap to fall into when looking at the world.

 

I guess what I'm saying is that if you're going to allow "nonfiction" as a category of anything, it seems reasonable to include games like SimCity in it. Now, I agree with you that "nonfiction" is a bit of a lie no matter what we're talking about (if something's meaningful, it has a fictive element). But I think Bogost is on the same page there.

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