Ludology & Narratology

Narratology. Apparently this 'ology' has been around for a while as evidenced by Blogger's built in spell checker that doesn't see red when it sees the word in black. Since the term has been around for a while I suppose no one needs me to explain that narratology is the study of narratives.

Ludology. Now there's a different story. Ludology drives Blogger's spell checker nuts. It is not a term that has been around for long, that's for sure. For those as uninitiated as Blogger's spell checker, ludology comes from the combination of 'ludi' meaning 'game' and 'ology' meaning 'the study of'--ludology therefore means 'the study of games'. While games may have been studied games in the past, gaming has become more complex as technology becomes more complex as well--so complex has gaming become that a new spell checker irritating word has been created to define it.

So what do these two ologies have two do with one another? Perhaps the answer can be found in the 'snapshot' of the 'house' at the beginning of this blog entry.

While ludology is the study of games and gaming for the sake of studying games and gaming in and of itself, games have progressed to the point to where studying many games now includes the study of the narrative of the game.

Again, the idea that games have a narrative is not new. As Janet Murray points out in her essay, From Game-Story to Cyberdrama, "Games are always stories, even abstract games such as checkers or Tetris, which are about winning and losing, casting the player as the opponent-battling or environment-battling hero." What appears to be new is the incorporation of the narrative within the game itself. While a game may in fact be a story, the advent of digital media has taken a turn toward making the story a game. Murray makes the point that storytelling in games has become more and more common place because "the digital medium is well-suited to gaming..." Gaming and stories have many things in common, not the least of which is the fact that, again quoting Murray, "Stories and games are also both distanced from the real world..." Digital stories are allowing 'players' more ways in which to experience the story being told offering "still images, moving images, text, audio, three-dimensional, navigable space--more of the building blocks of storytelling than any single medium has ever offered us." (Murray, From Game Story to Cyberdrama)

So what does all of this have to do with the 'snapshot' of the 'house' at the beginning of this blog entry? In the introduction to the chapter "Ludology" in the book First Person, the editors Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Pat Harrigan ask the question, "Why focus on things that do not exist, are arguable impossible, and should they ever be created, might turn out to be of only marginal interest?" (35) The 'snapshot' and 'house' previously mentioned might, in some way, answer that question as the snapshot isn't really a snapshot and the house isn't really a house--at least not in the way we normally think of snapshots and houses.

The snapshot is a photo of a house in Second Life--my house to be precise. It is in that house that my "second self," Saraide Indigo, conducts business, meetings, and sometimes attends classes. In fact, Saraide is presently, along with the other members of the Tech Art class, constructing a narrative from her home that does not exist.

Second Life might qualify as an answer to Wardrip-Fruin and Harrigan's question. While games such as The Sims existed, they did not provide anywhere near the level of interaction and creation as exists in Second Life. It may be argued that prior to its creation, itself may have been thought of as an impossible dream and one that might have been of interest to only a few "techies". With millions of members across the globe conducting business, relationships, or creating what may be described as digital artwork, Second Life seems to demonstrate quite vividly the value of focusing on the impossible and possibly marginal.

While I have heard the criticism that Second Life is not real enough for some, for others, it seems to provide an answer to Ken Perlin's question, "...what would it take to make an interactive character on our computer screen seem real to us the way that a character on the page or silver screen does?" (Can There Be a Form Between Game and Story?, Ken Perlin) Second Life seems to imply that a high level of interactivity and artistic freedom goes a long way toward achieving that goal. User create their avatars--their clothes, hair, eyes, skin, and other body parts in as graphic detail as their imaginations allow. Once done, the user then explores the world more or less creating his or her own narrative along the way. Users may also enter pre-fabricated worlds where stories have been scripted for them, such as on the role playing worlds of Second Life.

In the coming weeks our TechArt class will be exploring the relationship between narrative and gaming first hand as we create our very own Second Life story--a story in which each class member will play a role not only in the story but in the story's creation. In fact, we have already been meeting in the house pictured at this blog entry's beginning. A large part of the story we create depends on the world already created within Second Life and what we are allowed to create within that world. While we may be considering ourselves as creating a story, we must also remember that we are, in some respects creating a game and in so doing, I believe we will be vividly demonstrating the truth of Henry Jenkins statement: "Game designers don't simply tell stories; they design worlds and sculpt spaces." (Game Design as Narrative Architecture)

It remains to be seen what kind of world we will design and how effect a story we will tell!

The Horrifying Chair Experience

OK, so if I had a clue as to how to script in electricity for this "chair" I would certainly do so because I felt like this Second Life exercise was going to be the death of me or at least of my avatar.

I had high hopes for this project. I have always wanted to be an artist--a real artist--you know the tortured painter hacking off body parts to send to all those silly men who have spurned my affections. Two things have prevented this from occurring: my inability to paint anything other than stick figures (and even those are more or less abstract stick figures rather than anything remotely resembling realistic stick figures) and my severe aversion to pain.

Second Life, however, I thought might provide an outlet for all of this pent up desire. The textures are already created requiring no painting ability of my own to bring them into being, the objects or 'prims' are prefabricated requiring only my ability to stretch, shrink them, hollow them out, rotate them, move them up and down, and then assemble them all together into one happy completed object. It really appeared not much skill was required.

Ah, how wrong I was. First, I more or less started the project at the end, trying immediately to link my prims. Not only was I more or less doing things out of order but I also was completely misunderstanding the concept of linking--seriously misunderstanding the concept of linking.

Maybe I've dyed my brown hair blonde just one too many times or have suffered some other form of brain damage but I honestly thought that linking the prims meant that I would select them one by one and then they would somehow magically assemble themselves into the object I had pictured in my head. Yes. I really did. It took consulting with another class member to understand that as advanced as Second Life is, it is not in fact, some sort of mind-reading holodeck. Initially, my classmate thought my question of, "How does it know which prims go together," was a good one. That was of course, before she understood the level of my misunderstanding. What my classmate thought I asking was the how to select the 'parent prim'--the prim to which all the others are subordinate. She had no idea that what I was actually asking was how to select the items so Second Life would somehow magically know to form the prims into the object I had in mind.

Finally understanding that linking is basically virtually gluing the prims to one another so that they stay in place once assembled, I then set about attempting to actually create the chair. This was another time consuming ordeal. As detailed as the tutorial at the "Ivory Tower of Primitives" is, it apparently was not quite detailed enough for a fake blonde. In addition to completely not comprehending the concept of linking, I also misunderstood how to get the prim from the 'build' menu onto the ground. After using up a substantial amount of time, I learned that dragging a prim onto the ground does not garner the same results as clicking a prim and then clicking the ground.

After mastering these key concepts I then set about attempting to fashion the chair. My original idea was to construct a throne. This seemed easy enough as I thought pretty much the only prim I would need to work with was the cube. While this was by and large true, I had great difficulty attempting to see all sides of the object, great difficulty shaping this very simple prim, and great difficulty assembling the prims once they were finally, successfully clicked onto the ground. At long last I finally settled on something resembling more of a bench--if one can called something that looks like several two by fours tacked together a bench.

Did I enjoy anything about this experience? I did enjoy selecting the texture, having collected a number of free textures from various different Wal-Martesque freebie sims. In a desperate attempt to give the chair some 'personality' as our assignment required, I selected a pink marble texture for my disaster--I mean chair. I also enjoyed the scripting part, mainly because the scripting only required me to learn a tiny bit of the language and did not require much manual dexterity on my part.

One might assume that this experience has put me off of Second Life construction forever. Not so. Second Life fascinates me for some reason that I can't quite explain and the possibilities for exercising creativity, especially by constructing items, seems endless. As frustrating as this experience was, it actually reminded me of the way I felt years ago as a child learning to play piano. I desperately wanted to learn to play but had great difficulty learning to read music and even more difficulty getting my hands to follow my brain's instructions. Many times I threw fits and music all about my parents' living room. Despite all of this, I never gave up. The frustration appeared to be some kind of demonic exorcism of fear of failure and once the fear was spent music came easy to me and in the years that followed I became quite the virtuoso.
I'm hoping to have the same experience a second time as I work my way through Second Life.