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What this paper is and isn't about
There is a current interest in the value of computer games for education (see Prensky 2001); Gee 2003; Kirriemuir and MacFarlane 2004). This results in really important questions about computer games and learning theory, motivation, pedagogic practice - how people might learn from games and how they might be used in practices. This paper will not explore these issues. The paper starts from an implicit notion that games are good for humans because they have been sustained as a human activity for a long, long time, and that the introduction of computer mediated games has not materially altered an almost implicit human activity in some form of structured play. In fact this article will not specifically distinguish computer games as a particularly special case.
This paper is intended to describe the components from which games are constructed. It is prompted in the first instance by the development at Futurelab of new formats of games, and the need for advice and guidance for designing and constructing games by considering some of the affordances of previous games. This paper is based on what one finds when one begins to dissect games. The paper does not describe how games work as such in a way that the work of Juul (2003) or Crawford (1982) provide. The descriptions they valuably provide are more systemic - more in the nature of the physiology rather than the anatomy of games. The paper draws no distinction between recent concerns in the study of games between game play or what has been termed ludology and the narrative or fantasy elements of computer games (see Andrews 2004). These factors are treated similarly in the anatomy as (potential) parts of describing what games consist of. The paper also makes no attempt to describe motivation to play games, or what or why people may gain from engaging in games as described in the work of Gee (2003). The review does not constrain itself to computer games in that new formats can draw on elements that have been previously in board games, field games or card games and so on. The paper does not discuss simulation in any depth, however, many complex and rich games are some form of simulation.
There are also new emerging formats of games that we would want to address. Games using augmented reality form some new categorisation - games in which there is an element of field play where the reality of the field is augmented by the use of mobile, wearable computers that collect and deliver information about players' locations and information appropriate to their location in the game field. This has currently been implemented in the educational game Savannah, where students role play as a pride of lions on a field that has overlaid information about a virtual African environment. It is as a contribution to what we can make in these new formats that this dissection has been made.
An anatomy
Anatomy is a study that arises from dissection. The anatomy is presented at this stage as an experimental tool - it is anticipated that it will facilitate design as it is explored and refined. It is based on six top-level categories of game components: game aims; game location; game pieces/players; the means of making progress in the game; game language; and the time frames of games. These are described in detail below with reference to some popular games and sports. It will be rapidly apparent to the reader that most games have multiple attributes (for instance below Risk will be described as both battling and space occupying).
EM Avedon's article 'The Structural Elements of Games' (Avedon and Sutton-Smith 1981) suggests the following elements:
- purpose of the game
- procedure for action
- rules governing action
- number of required participants
- roles of participants
- results or pay-off
- abilities and skills required for action
- interaction patterns
- physical setting and environmental requirements
- required equipment.
This classification system does not quite map onto the full set of items that are developed in the anatomy below. This classification system, although useful, does not easily map onto the work in progress at Futurelab, which will seek to develop an analysis of game activity that draws on activity systems (see Engestrom and Cole 1983), and which will need an understanding of issues like the mediation system, the goals, the rules, the community, and the division of labour. This analysis will need to be addressed in two ways, firstly those that are intrinsic to the game and derived from a game as it has been historically constructed, and also the actual activity of the game when there is an instance of game play and the ways that the historic mediation system presented by the game results in actual activity by players. Juul makes a strong case for understanding that in the case of poker, there is a set of rules - or in my terms the activity system of the game as it was historically constructed - and the actual playing of the game of poker where the activity system "revolves a lot around interpreting the signals of the other players" (Juul 2000).
Juul is critical of approaches that categorise. He questions that such analysis reveals the interaction patterns from the role of the participants, the equipment or pay-off. Juul notes "the impulse towards categorization is matched by an equally strong urge to deconstruct categories" and that weakness of current research that adopts categorisation as its methodology because "every self-respecting game magazine or website is doing the same". However this presupposes that all categorisations are uniformly useless or useful. The purpose of anatomy and dissection here is not to create a taxonomy - although that may be a side effect - but to create a parts list that identifies some key features. There is no intention to draw up a table that can be used to put particular games in their rightful places in a scheme of the world - the utility of this exercise is questionable.
Parts list may be the inappropriate title in the same way as tool or cultural artifact is often counterintuitive when looking at activity systems in general. In this parts list it is just as possible to include a description of game aim as it is to describe a form of game equipment.
Anatomical game aims
Game aims are the area in which debates around the nature of differences between game play and narrative emerge. In this anatomy the cases of the protagonists are inappropriate - it is recognised that in many games a strong fantasy and/or narrative are important and that in all games there is also a set of objectives that give rise to the nature of the game activity - the gameplay. In the descriptions below, fantasies and narratives are described as the aims of proponents. Fantasies could also be described by opponents who are trying to defend and avoid the proponents' actions or succeed in the same aim before the proponent.
Fantasies and narrative
Battling: the notion of overcoming an enemy in games has long been a source of mock-battling - jousting and tournaments, chess, Risk and many field team games.
Building: constructing an edifice or object. Beetle drives and hangman are primitive versions of this activity (although in hangman the actual aim is not to build). Modern games on computers like SimCity and Populus have construction as the main game aim. In the popular game Tetris progress is made by fitting shapes together to build lines. The board game Scoop involves building the front page of a newspaper page. Some games like Risk involve building by the occupation of space, which is building in the horizontal direction (as well as battling).
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