Virtual Reality and the First Person Shooter

Ok, so here's the deal with this post. It's a proposal for a research paper that I had to submit for a subject at Uni, and I thought that it had some interesting enough ideas that I'd post it for anyone who would care to read.

Two posts in less than a week - madness, I know.

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Research Paper Proposal

Ben Abraham

Throughout the course of researching my presentation topic for week 12’s virtualities I have identified a notion that I wish to explore in my research paper. The intersection of my thesis topic – broadly defined as the First Person Shooter (FPS) category of videogames – and the discussion of virtual reality has lead me to identify certain commonalities between the two areas. Additionally, an inverse relationship between the rise of the FPS as a genre and the decline in media representation of and interest in VR can be loosely correlated, and it is this issue, thinking about First Person Shooter videogames as a kind of virtual reality, that I wish to explore. In this proposal I will give an example of how one particular ‘exemplary’[1] FPS game engages with this issue and I will finish by elucidating a number of the concepts which I plan to employ to talk around this topic. I have also appended a short annotated bibliography to demonstrate the breadth of resources available on the topic but which were not directly referenced in the body of the proposal.

In her article on Immersion and Interactivity in literature, Marie-Laure Ryan sets up a definition of virtual reality saying that VR is “an immersive, interactive experience generated by a computer[2]”. This definition leaves a lot of latitude for interpretation, for any computer based activity that leaves the user with a sense of being immersed in the activity could then be considered ‘virtual reality’, allowing for someone to argue that even incredibly banal activities like word processing and data entry could be considered VR. She does however add further caveats to the definition, such as being able to ‘apprehend a world as real’ and ‘to be able to interact physically with it’[3].

From my own first hand experience growing up in the 1990’s, Virtual Reality seemed to me, as portrayed by the media, as being about donning gloves and a visor and perhaps a body suit, in order to experience a three dimensional world like out own, albeit one that only exists as 1’s and 0’s in a computer and in the imagination of the person. Prime examples of this kind of representation include the 1992 film The Lawnmower Man, in which a Virtual Reality researcher, played by Pierce Brosnan, increases the intelligence of a mentally handicapped man via a mixture of Virtual Reality games and drugs, with the result being the stimulation of his mind, which in turn endows him with telekinetic powers in the ‘real’ world. This idea of VR, one with blocky characters and clumsy interactions based on bodily inputs, it seems to me has dropped below the radar of public consciousness, to be replaces instead by the humble computer monitor and gaming control pad. I will try to explore this in my research paper, examining the notion that they have been replaced by this new and different idea of VR, and one I might say is more promising in terms of expressive potential and narrative possibility.

The main text when talking about videogames and virtual reality is undoubtedly Janet Murray’s Hamlet on the Holodeck, in which she uses the ‘holodeck’ technology from the Star Trek universe to paint an excellent illustration of some of the issues surrounding virtual reality. Videogames are similar to the holodeck in the sense that they are often visual representations of a physical space. Naturally, virtual reality can encompass non visual representations, and videogames like these, particularly MUD’s and other online games, are discussed by both Ryan and Murray – however I wish to concentrate specifically on graphical representations and the use of an ‘avatar’. By giving the player a representation of themselves, the avatar with which to explore and interact with the space, videogames have developed some rather unique methods of telling stories. While there have been and will continue to be games made that rely solely on text based or spoken word methods of explicating story elements, a number of particularly striking games of recent times have devised alternative methods of explicating a narrative, often integrating them with more traditional techniques.

As an example of this dual layered approach to telling the story, a useful example is the critically lauded game ‘Half Life 2’ by Valve Software[4]. The game is a ‘first person shooter’, a genre of games that give the player a ‘virtual self’ to move and shoot and perform actions in a way unrestrained by the barriers imposed by real life and to tell their story Valve employ both ‘old media’ style narrative exposition as well as some tricks rather more unique to videogames. Much of what they do in this way they describe as ‘training’ the player in the rules of the gameworld, and at the same time they are often weaving in narrative exposition elements that expand the players insight into the world. Robin Walker, a developer with Valve, describes one example from very early on in Half Life 2 when they player is still ‘learning’ how to interact with the world. In this particular example, the players progress is impeded by a police officer who tells the player to pick up an empty soft drink can before they can progress.

…the cop who tells you to pick up the can… we want you to press use, but at the same time you're learning about the relationship between the Metro Cops and the players, and the way they use civilians. But at the same time you're building this animosity between you and this character that eventually you'll be able to deal with when you get a weapon…[5] (emphasis added).

In this way, Half Life 2 combines teaching the player how to play the game with telling the player about the game – in this case that civilians like yourself have to do what they are told by the police, and thus setting up the world the players avatar inhabits with its 1984 style government that strictly controls its citizens.

Another aspect of the issue that I propose to discuss is what Ian Bogost calls ‘simulation fever’. Videogames, despite being simulations and therefore viewed as ‘objective representations’ of what their designers intended, Bogost says, are inherently subjective by virtue of their nature as ‘reductive’[6]. Even when a simulation attempts to render every physical aspect of an environment or situation in detail, it still abstracts concepts like the application and implication of the value of human life, a point which Bogost elucidates by referencing a military simulation of a sarin nerve gas attack modelling simulation. While it represents the progression of the gas on a university campus, showing such useful information as potential evacuation routes, it does not represent other concerns, such who to prioritise for evacuation; the Nobel Prize winning professors or the students with years of possible contribution in their lives still left unrealised[7]. Simulation Fever, Bogost says, occurs when the game player “[struggles] between the omissions and inclusions of a source system and the player’s subjective response to those decisions[8]”. It is a useful concept as it directly engages with the idea of a videogame as a form of virtual reality and reveals an aspect of how videogames manage that relation.

Finally, I want to briefly mention one last resource that I intend to use in my research paper, as it is indicative of my intention to draw upon the large body of writing about the subject, and that is an online blog post discussing the concept of Immersion. Michael Abbot, a professor at a liberal arts college in the United States, also runs a blog called ‘The Brainy Gamer’, and makes a habit of posting his thoughts on games to encourage and solicit intelligent discussion on the subject. One particular post, inspired by a talk given at the Game Developers Conference 2008, was about the concept of immersion in games. His line of reasoning was that, in his experience, many of the games that have been the most immersive to him have been the ones with the least, or the most abstracted level, of graphical representation, for example sports management simulations, which represent players and games as “a spreadsheet[9]”. This idea is interesting because it has very real implications for how videogames make manifest their virtual reality, and while I am choosing to focus in on the FPS genre of videogames, which are often characterised as aiming for photorealism, and are often the driving force behind computer hardware upgrades[10], there are still many unexplored possibilities within the realm of representational styles[11].

In conclusion, I have very briefly touched upon some of the material that I plan to use in discussion of the conception of videogames as a form of virtual reality. Obviously much more could be said about the topic, not least about the implications and implementation of the ideas I propose to cover, but I believe I have provided a concise window into the subject and my rationale for the project.

Bibliography

Abbott, Michael. ‘Immersion - Is it just me?’, The Brainy Gamer. http://www.brainygamer.com/the_brainy_gamer/2008/03/immersion---is.html, first posted 2 March 2008, accessed 26^th March 2008.

Adams, David. ‘Half-Life 2 Sells Millions.’ Ign.com. http://pc.ign.com/articles/583/583162p1.html. accessed 6^th May 2008

Bogost, Ian. Unit Operations : An Approach to Videogame Criticism. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2006.

Bramwell, Tom. ‘Opening the Valve Interview’. Eurogamer.net. http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=65391. accessed 26^th April 2008.

Murray, Janet Horowitz. Hamlet on the Holodeck : The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace. New York: Free Press, 1997.

Ryan, Marie-Laure, 1999, ‘Immersion vs. Interactivity: Virtual Reality and Literary Theory’, SubStance - Issue 89 (Volume 28, Number 2), pp. 110-137.

Shim, Richard. ‘'Doom 3' may doom users' current systems’. CNet News. www.news.com/2100-1043_3-5295390.html. accessed 7^th May 2008.

Valve Corporation. ‘Awards and Honours.’ Valvesoftware.com . http://www.valvesoftware.com/awards.html. accessed 7th April 2008.

Annotated Bibliography

Artful Gamer, The. ‘Inviting the Imagination: The Power of Words’. The Artful Gamer. http://www.artfulgamer.com/2008/01/19/inviting-the-imagination-the-power-of-words/. accessed 26^th March 2008.

Chris at The Artful Gamer blog discusses Michael Abbott’s blog post on Immersion and Interactivity, discussing the power of words to immerse.

Bogost, Ian. Persuasive Games : The Expressive Power of Videogames. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007.

Bogost in his second book argues the case that games possess a 'procedural rhetoric' as well as a number of other concepts useful for Videogame criticism.

Borden, Ed. ‘Gaming is an out of body experience.’ Ed Borden: PWNING 9-5. http://www.edbordenblog.com/2008/03/immersion-immersion-immersion.html. accessed 26^th March 2008.

In this post on his personal blog, Ed Borden riffs on Michael Abbott’s post on immersion, adding his own perspective and addressing some issues not covered in the original.

Gee, James Paul. What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.

Gee argues in his book for viewing videogames, and learning about videogames, from within their context, or 'semiotic domain'. His also includes a semi-autobiographical tale of how he came to appreciate games, coming from a very non-typical background, and making interesting points about immersion and storytelling.

Hocking, Clint. ‘GDC 2008 i-fi: Immersive Fidelity in Games’. Click Nothing. http://clicknothing.typepad.com/Design/hockingc_GDC08_Immersion.zip, accessed 7^th May 2008.

In this downloadable file, Hocking includes the slides and a PDF transcript of the talk he gave the GDC 2008, the talk which inspired Michael Abbott’s blog post on the same subject.

Rose, John. ‘Fewer Mechanics, Better Game’. Gamasutra – The Art & Business of making games. http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3621/fewer_mechanics_better_game.php. accessed 22^nd April 2008.

In this article for Gamasutra, an games industry publishing website, John Rose talks about how sometimes ‘less is more’ in terms of a games functionality, and talks about the lebel of abstraction present in games like Half-Life.

Travis, Roger. ‘Bungie’s Epic Achievement: Halo and the Aeneid’. The Escapist Magazine. http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/issues/issue_66/384-Bungie-s-Epic-Achievement. Accessed 2^nd May 2008.

In this opinion piece for The Escapist Magazine, Travis talks about how one particular FPS game, Halo 2 for the Xbox, contains within its narrative an allegory of the epic Latin poem ‘The Aeneid’. Both stories focus on an “eponymous hero”, and the author elaborates on the parallels between them.

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[1] Exemplary as defined through critical reception, financial success and a certain indefinable presence as part of popular culture. I acknowledge this is a somewhat problematic proposition.

[2] Ryan, Marie-Laure, 1999, ‘Immersion vs. Interactivity: Virtual Reality and Literary Theory’, SubStance - Issue 89 (Volume 28, Number 2), p. 110.

[3] Ibid.

[4] With a score of 96 out of 100 on Metacritic.com, a reviews aggregate website, winner of no less than 35 “Game of the Year” awards for the year of 2004 (http://www.valvesoftware.com/awards.html, accessed 6^th May 2008) and according to an IGN news item sold approximately 1.7million copies of the game in the first two months of release (http://pc.ign.com/articles/583/583162p1.html, accessed 6^th May 2008), I believe this claim to be largely beyond doubt.

[5] Tom Bramwell, ‘Opening the Valve Interview’, Eurogamer, http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=65391, accessed 26^th April 2008.

[6] Ian Bogost, Unit Operations : An Approach to Videogame Criticism (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2006). See Ch. 9, ‘The Simulation Gap’.

[7] Ibid., p.98

[8] Bogost, Unit Operations : An Approach to Videogame Criticism, p.132.

[9] Michael Abbott, ‘Immersion - Is it just me?’, The Brainy Gamer, http://www.brainygamer.com/the_brainy_gamer/2008/03/immersion---is.html, first posted 2 March 2008, accessed 26^th March 2008.

[10] Richard Shim, ‘'Doom 3' may doom users' current systems’, CNet News, www.news.com/2100-1043_3-5295390.html, accessed 7^th May 2008.

[11] For one interesting example of an alternative to the photorealism of many ‘bleeding edge’ FPS games, the also Valve Software developed game ‘Team Fortress 2’ released in November of 2007 chooses to represent the players avatars in a cell shaded cartoon style.

Another Post, another... BORKED PROMISE...

If you have been a follower of Stereo Left, Right, Centre you'll know that in my last post and subsequent follow-up comments I promised a certain Corvus Elrod a follow up post to answer some of his questions regarding my contribution to the month of April's Blog du Round Tableau (NB: not real french) and that, my readers, is just another one to add to the list of *BROKEN PROMISES*.

This is starting to get predictable. I make a comment about what's coming up on the Blog, and then I never get round to it. How cliche.

Moving right along, I just wanted to mention a little something cool that I discovered recently. If you have your finger ANYWHERE AT ALL near the pulse of the music industry then you'll know that recently a little British band released this album called In Rainbows and, as they say it in the Old Testament, we "saw that it was good". The real kicker though was that it costs whatever you choose to pay for it. I'm down for that!

Well, this is also a little bit of old news (hey, cmon - I post like, once a month, you gotta expect that a bit) but some other guys from a different part of the world have also released an album basically for free.

Trent Reznor and his groupies band have released a really quite excellent instrumental album, or more accurately, four of them, entitled Ghosts I-IV.

Yay free music! Great, but not what I'm most chuffed about (I pirate all my music anyway - sorry) - instead, I'm really pumped that they've included album artwork for every. single. song.

Not impressed? Well, they're wondrous high-res photos that (i assume) are meant to represent something about the song, or it's production. I couldn't find a link-able example but trust me, they're pretty cool.

So, like I said, it's free, go grab the torrent for it from The Pirate Bay or your favorite torrent tracker and listen away. Track numbers 21 and 22 come with my personal recomendation. ;-)

Finally, to end this very ad-hoc post, a link to my Last FM music profile, and a quick plug of the conference I am attending this weekend: The Convergence of the Real and Virtual Conference, the first academic conference being held solely in the virtual World of Warcraft!

April ‘08: S’Craft and the power of 3’s, Or “Why did I never know how much damage my Zergling’s did?”

Okay, so this is my first attempt at a ‘blog of the round table’ and if this is your first visit to my blog, to get a feel for what I am interested in, read my honours project summary post, the one immediately before this on.

But that’s not what I’m writing about today, in my oh-so conversational tone (picked up on that yet?), instead I’m focusing on the topic of Variations on a Theme: What are your favourite games? Well, one of my favourite games is the interminable Starcraft. If you are a follower of The Brainy Gamer, Michael Abbot, then you’ll know that he recently posted on the power of the story of Starcraft and its rather prophetic nature – reflecting modern society in a game from 1997. While I agree with Michael that the story is a powerful factor in the attraction of the series, and I’d argue that S’Craft is one of the few games with an extremely tightly integrated story and internal game logic, that isn’t exactly what I’m talking about today.

Everyone who’s ever played or watched Starcraft played competitively knows that it can be extremely fast paced and, if done properly, a significantly strong ‘early game’ strategy like the Zerg Rush (hyperlink) (along with obligatory ‘kekeke’ or ‘I’m in ur base killin ur doods’) can give one player an early win. And yet, not all races are created equal – there is a reason after all why it’s called the Zerg rush.

So, the phenomena I’m talking about is, of course, Asynchronous Gameplay, and it’s by no means a S’Craft specific trait. The other well known Blizzard game that deploys Asynchronous gameplay is, of course Word of Warcraft, and It does it in a different manner. World of Warcraft sets up extremely efficiently in its PvE (Player versus Player Environment) content the idea of the ‘Holy Triad’. That is, the most effective 5 person group for an instance is comprised of 3 roles (look at that – another 3!) the DPS, the guys who kill the monsters; The healers, the guys who stop the other guys from getting killed by the monsters; and a Tank, the one guy who’s job it is to try and soak up all the damage so the healers only have to heal 1 person.

Now, Mr. Elrod says in his guidelines suggest to “focus in on a narrow approach” so, I’m going to peel back the skin, if you will, of S’Crafts Asynchronous nature to explore this idea a little bit more.

So, back to the Zerg rush. Let’s break down how the Zerg “rush” the enemy with their little Zerglings. To get to the stage of being able to build their first Zergling, a player has to build a relatively low number of buildings – they only really need a ‘spawning pool’ to be built before they can start to churn out little ‘lings of their own. Aww shucks.

Great, you say, let’s do that! Not so fast, Little Timmy, cause your Spawning Pool only lets you build a Zergling if you have the requisite population cap allowance. And you only get that by creating, not a building, but a unit called an Overlord (bear with me, those of you who already know all this stuff, there’s a purpose for it). At this point I also need to explain that the Zerg differs from your traditional RTS race in a very important way. The Zerg, you see, employ a non linear build order. This allows a Zerg player to start building a unit as soon as possible as determined by your resources, and NOT determined by the end of the production of a previous unit. This means that a Zerg player can be making an Overlord and another Zergling and then halfway through start another Zergling or Overlord, without requiring a whole ‘nuther Zergling specific making building. Ah, parallelism at work – the revolutionary nature of which is worth another post in itself.

But getting back to our Zerg rush. Little Timmy was just about to build a Spawning pool to make Zerglings and splatter the pre-pubescent base structures of his enemies, who are currently dreaming of their high tech, and high resource investment, Protoss Carriers. Let’s not let him get there. But wait. Timmy knows that if he wants to get enough Zerglings to splatter aforementioned base, he’s going to need resource collecting drones - and LOTS of them. Also, Timmy knows that his Spawning Pool costs 200 minerals, whereas a drone only costs 50. So Timmy is at a critical juncture as he really wants more of those minerals, but also wants Zerglings.

At this point, it is probably worth comparing the monetary investment for each race in order to just get to the Zergling equivalent level fighter. If the player were to take 1 builder unit and keep the rest on mineral gathering duty…

A Zerg player would need:

• 200 minerals for a Spawning Pool + time to build it
• 100 minerals for an Overlord to supplying his population cap + time to create it (note this process is parallel, and not one after the other – a feature unique to the Zerg and hence asynchronous.)
• Finally, 50 minerals for 2 (count ‘em!) little Melee fighter Zerglings that go Muurrllsskkk when you click on them.

A Terran player needs:

• 150 minerals for a Barracks + time to build it.
• 100 minerals for a Supply Depot to supply pop cap (note this process IS linear, not parallel)
• 50 minerals for just 1 ranged Marine.

Finally, a Protoss Player needs:

• 100 minerals for a pylon to provide pop and power the following (linear warp time)
• 150 minerals for a Gateway
• 100 minerals for a Zealot

Okay, so what is this telling us that we didn’t already know before? For starters, it all seems pretty even at this point. There are no clear winners, but they are not really showing the full picture. We still don’t know one important factor in this whole plan, and it’s the key to the success of Timmy’s Zerg Rush strategy – if I send my doods at your doods who’s gonna win?

Again, this is an extremely complicated question to answer, but to be wilfully reductive, let’s put my Zerglings up against your Protos.

Example 1:

Timmy has 2 Zerglings, because he decided to save money on them, to get more drones to make more Zerglings in the future.

Joe has 1 Protos Zealot, because he too wanted more minerals to make more Zealots in the future.

Timmy’s Zerglings attack Joe’s Zealot for 5 damage 2x cause there is 2 of them, and Joe’s Protoss hits 1 of the Zerglings back for a whopping 16 damage.

Ouch. That really hurt because Timmy’s Zerglings each have only 35 health, and in 2 hits, he’s gonna do 34 damage, leaving Mr. Zergling on 1 health. The Zealot, on the other hand, has 100 health, and 60 shield on top. Man, you can see where this is going, can’t you.

Assuming that a Zergling attacks at around twice the speed of a single Zealot, it’s gonna have killed both Zerglings in 6 hits. In that time, it’s taken either 5 or 6 hits from the 1^st Zergling (25 or 30 dmg) and 11 or 12 hits from the other (55 or 60 dmg) resulting in a max total of 90 damage. PROTOSS WINS! His shield has soaked up 60 and his heal got hit for 30 more.

Example 2:

Let’s pretend Timmy decides not to save his money for mineral collecting drones and instead opts for 4 Zerglings.

Joe, on the other hand, is still holding his minerals out for drones, and he certainly has more reason to, as his 1 Zealot costs the same as 4 Zerglings – he’s gonna need cash fast!

This time, Joe’s Zealot engages the 1^st Zergling and all 4 start wailing on his flimsy blue shield.

This time, Joe’s Zealot is going to take 8 x 5dmg for every swing of his Slicey-Slicey Protoss blades. How quickly the parallelism of the Zerg has swung the balance.

Joes Zealot hit the 1^st Zergling for 17, and in the process takes 8 Zergling hits, resulting in 40dmg. Ouch. Before he’s hit it again for another 17, he’s taken another 40 dmg. Captain! Shields are buckling!

By the time he has killed the first Zergling, Joe’s poor beleaguered Zealot has taken 120 dmg, out of possible 160 before he dies (discounting all sorts of tiny things like single points of shield regeneration and Zergling health regen).

The Zealot swings around to face his 2^nd attacker – yet two more persist! He takes 30 more dmg before landing his 1^st blow, and another 30 before he expires. For Aiur, as they say.

From this example, we can see in action the power of the parallel design and build philosophy of the Zerg (as well as being an interesting in examination the risk/reward potential of early game mineral to fighter unit production).

And thusly, I conclude my investigation into the off balance world of Starcraft. The Zerg, by employing a strategy of parallelism offset their weakness, including the squishy nature of their little Zerglings.

I hope you have enjoyed this delicious Theory Crafting romp through a small, small subsection of the Starcraft domain, and I acknowledge the fact that this analysis is very reductionist – I felt that a more holistic approach that attempted to include every little possibility such as who hits first in battle, and at what rate does health and shields regen, was out of the scope of this little blog post, as well as bordering nigh on impossible. Also, I didn’t compare the Zerlings to the Terran Marine because it is a more complicated affair, as the marine is ranged and… well… I’m sure you can imagine how that can complicate this kind of analysis.

Feel free to leave a comment, or ignore them as you will.

Cheers.

[Humorous side note – after spending an hour or so writing down stats about each race’s unit and buildings, I forgot how to spell the Protoss race – 1 ‘S’ or 2? It’s two, in case you were also wondering.]

Project Update

HOLY HOLE IN THE GROUND, BATMAN! IT'S A VERBOSE UPDATE OF MY HONOURS PROJECT - POSSIBLY THE MOST IMPORTANT WORK ON VIDEOGAME MUSIC OF OUR TIMES! (Sorry Caps).

Follows:

In my project I propose to examine the role that music plays in the genre of videogames known as First Person Shooters (FPS). Specifically I will examine in detail the score of the Xbox game Halo 2, published by Microsoft Game Studios, and the complex relationships with other elements of the game. The Halo series of games are the Videogame equivalent of the Hollywood Blockbuster – they have some of the highest production values of the current generation of games and spend more time under development than their filmic counterparts.

Videogame analysis and critique, being a burgeoning field, has been developing a vocabulary and methodology with which to approach Videogames and their methods of creating meaning and story. Most analyses and critiques can be placed in one of two camps; those that study a Videogames efforts at inscribing a narrative in a game, identified as ‘Narratology’, often drawing on methods of analysis for other media, such as films, literature and especially hypertext and new media. The alternative, calling their study of games as systems unrelated to story ‘Ludology’, is exactly that, to treat Videogames as systems and representations, examining the rules and laws that govern the simulation.

My analysis of Halo and the music of the series involves a number of key elements. I will apply traditional musical analysis techniques to the music of Halo 2, looking at the function played by musical devices such as ‘Leitmotif’, as well as examining the effect of style and genre connotations. I will also apply a method of analysis that quantifiably examines the music in terms of ‘what plays when’ and try to find some motivation as to ‘why’ it does so. I wish to also apply an examination of the evolution of the music across the series, including key musical motifs and pieces, and view it as not only a development of the composers ‘voice’ but also as a representation of the progression of the themes of the games.

In a non traditional vein, I wish to also attempt to identify important salient features of the relationship between the music and other non-musical aspects of the game. For example, I wish to analyse specific levels of the game by using concepts such as ‘level flow’, ‘progression’ and ‘optimal paths or strategies’, in an attempt to uncover meaningful relationships to the music. One tool I will use to do this is a world famous video recording of a ‘Speed Run’ in which the player, an American film student and Halo player, completes the game on the hardest difficulty setting (called ‘Legendary difficulty’) and never once dies, providing an insight into the importance of elements of the structure and layout of the levels, as well as combat techniques. The most reduced and implicit form of feedback that the player receives from the game is information about the player’s state; either the player is still alive and can continue on ‘progressing’ through the game to its conclusion, or the player is dead and must try again. This information reveals inarticulate or tacit aspects of the game that the designers intentionally and unintentionally included in the game, and which I believe are a vital aspect of the ‘meaning’ created by the game. The crux of the rationale for this approach is a belief that Halo 2 locates much of its created meaning (in a largely non-narrative sense) outside of traditional narrative structures and devices such as dialogue, narration and cinematic direction. In this way, I believe that I will see a parallel to meanings and ideas created by and revealed in the music.

I will also apply semi-filmic analyses, adapting concepts such as Mimesis and Diegesis, along with analyses of such things as the effects of geography, art direction and the Videogame equivalent of camera angles to specific levels and sections of the game. Throughout I will apply Ian Bogost’ theory of ‘unit operations’ as an approach to Videogame criticism, as well as his idea of ‘simulation fever’, especially in regards to the ideas of Mimesis and Diegesis in Videogames – whether videogames ‘tell’ the story to the player (Diegesis) or ‘show’ the story to the player by mimicking actions (Mimesis). To explain the relevance of this distinction, I quote Wikipedia’s entry on Diegesis:

When we come to a modern consideration of the cinema, it may appear that the medium is a straight-forward example of mimetic storytelling--but it is not. In terms of classical poetics, the cinema is an epic form that utilizes dramatic elements; this is determined by the technologies of the camera and editing. Even in a spatially and temporally continuous scene (mimicking the theatrical situation, as it were), the camera chooses where to look for us. In a similar way, editing causes us to jump from one place (and time sometimes) to another, whether it be somewhere else in the room, or across town. This jump is a form of narration; it is as if a narrator whispers to us: "meanwhile, on the other side of the forest".

By this definition it would seem at first glance that First Person Shooter games (and Halo in particular) are generally ‘Diegetic’ with only a short amount of ‘cut scenes’ at the beginning and end of levels determining what the player has to look at. However, if we consider Bogost’s notion of simulation fever, which says that, while we generally view simulations, and Halo could be considered as such, as ‘objective’ representations of what we are simulating, they are in actual fact necessarily ‘subjective’ by virtue of their nature as reductive. Even when a simulation renders every physical aspect of an environment or situation in detail, it still does not include such things as concepts of value, such as the value of human life, which Bogost says by referencing a military simulation of a sarin nerve gas cloud modelling simulation. While it arguable simulates accurately the progression of the gas on a University campus and how to evacuate quickest, it does not represent such things as who to prioritise for evacuation; the Nobel prize winning Professors or the students with years of possible contribution in their lives still left unrealised. In this way, by choosing what Halo includes and excludes in its ‘simulation’, Halo 2 could certainly be considered also Mimetic, and this seemingly contradictory state will be explored.

To sum up my project, I am looking at the music of Halo 2 and placing an emphasis on identifying other aspects of meaning creation in the non-musical elements of the game, applying current theories and concepts of videogame criticism as well as a number of adapted methods from other mediums. I wish to outline the relationships between the music and these other elements and hopefully persuade the reader that a Videogame about a super-human soldier in the future whose task it is to save the world is a work worthy of investigation and which locates its meaning and value in places non typical to media such as films and novels.

*******

Word! Did you read it all? If so, give yourself a pat on the back for getting through over 1,000 of the finest words on Teh Interwebs without exploding. Feel free to comment / flame / ignore this post.

Oh, and the thing about Heiddeger I mentioned last week? That's so last week. It's MIMESIS now.

- Ben.

2 months of catchup!

Wow, no posts since December! How to cover such a vast backlog of things to note and write down?

--== BULLETIN POINTS! ==--

• Dec
  
• WoW. Lots of WoW.
• Christmas: New PC, Dual Core for all my musical applications.
• Jan
• Turned 21 in Vietnam, couldn't ask for a more interesting day!
• The rest of Vietnam was good, very mind expanding and eye opening.
• Assassins Creed - that was fun. For about 3 days... pity.
  
• Feb
• More WoW.
• Uni begins - honours is mind expanding.

Well, that's about it (ha!) but I've got a really cool idea for a post/mini essay that I'm going to write up in the next few days (hopefully) about practice led research, inspired by an article by Prof. Barbara Bolt, who was in turn inspired by Heideggers notions of Handlability.

Tying into that is the idea of 'Semiotic Domains', a topic upon which I have been enlightened by a chapter in the 'The Game Design Reader: A Rules of Play Anthology', edited by Salem and Zimmerman, though the chapter is not theirs. I think it has practical applications for the study of videogames.

I'm sure there's more and i've totally forgotten a lot of important details, but it'll all come good in the end.

Lions and Tigers and Honours, OH MY!

That's right. It's official. My application has been accepted and I am on the way to being an Honours student! ^_^

Expect more details on my project as I progress through it!

If I could find the application that I wrote, I'd put it up here, but I can't be bothered looking right now. I just got out of a 4 hour WoW raid with my new guild, and I'm going to bed.

A new post: Shock horror, another coverup

I have joined the hordes of Diablo II owners.

I am receiving a copy of Bioshock, courtesy of The Brainy Gamer.