The following article is from Tencent Game Academy, the author Yaming
This paper elaborates on the relationship between movies and games from the perspective of game narrative, takes metagame (metagame) as an introduction and distance to discuss the concept of meta performance and boundary, inferencies the meta-universe from the subjectivity of the audience and players combined with the technical details of the meta-universe and the performance characteristics of social and media, and looks forward to the future, focusing on the performance and embodiment of narrative, hoping to help readers interested in game narrative understand how to exert the power of game narrative from perception and experience.
At a time when games are keen to create richer virtual worlds and provide a variety of avatars, Metagame forcefully breaks down the barriers between the game and the player, focusing on the player himself in the real world off the screen.
Just as the audience screams and gets up to avoid when the Lumière brothers show "The Train Comes In", when the player plays "Heartbeat Literature Club", Monica stares straight ahead and calls out the player's real name, even the experienced live streamer will subconsciously freeze and quickly transform into a complex emotion mixed with fear and doubt.
The emergence of this type of game also pulls several dark origin questions out of the water again: "Who am I"? Where is the "world"? and even where "I" came from, where I'm going, and how other narratives work in the game.
[ Morp is the streamer's real name rather than the pre-entered player name, and the game program is read by the computer system username]
Game identity
Start with the player's "self" in the game.
The player's perception of self-positioning in the game can be divided into four layers: player, avatar, character, avatar.
As soon as a player starts trying to interact with the game world, they can be said to be a player. Even a random keyboard and mouse that does not understand the rules of the game, or moves a chess piece, can already be considered a game.
In most games, the player manipulates an avatar to interact with the game world. The avatar serves as the player's medium for participating in the game world: the default character in CS:GO, the emperor in civilization, the coach in FIFA, and the master controller in the otome game. The basic characteristics are blurred image, white space or high freedom in shaping of personality, values, etc., and system design such as face pinching, personality or experience have also been born.
In some games with more specific stage settings, the player manipulates specific characters to feel the characters' experiences and choices. Claude in Final Fantasy 7, Connor from Detroit, Kratos from God of War, Zagleos from Hades, Arthur from Red Dead Redemption 2. When an uncontrollable story performance progression occurs, the player retreats from the player to the viewer and continues to play with the feelings and memories of the viewing.
[ Connor's perspective branch selection in Detroit: Changing Man ]
Avatars have more blurred boundaries. If and only if the player and the control object are one and deeply immersed in the game world, the story that happens in the game can become the player's own story, that is, the story of "me".
Chen Xinghan simulates a "Flow" immersion state in "Flower", and the ideal player is not to mechanically manipulate the image changes or only view the grassland scenery from a visual point of view, but to feel the mind crossing the screen in the continuous experience, blending with the petals on the fingertips, enjoying the wind wandering over the side and the beauty of the petals dancing in the sun.
[ Footage from "Flower."] Chen Xinghan's later works include "Wind Journey" and "Light Encounter"]
The avatar realm is also brilliantly represented in genres other than Zen games. Players can experience friendship in MMO games, feel heartbeat in dance games, and be overly frightened in horror games. Even in casual games like Dancing Lines, players can feel as if they are the geometric line, moving through the polygonal landscape.
[ Dancing Line fan-made levels ]
Players can immerse themselves in any situation and quickly enter the avatar, while maintaining their status under extremely demanding conditions.
("The Impact of Video Game Avatars on Self-Concept", Heng Shupeng et al., 2020)
So, can the player move through several layers of cognition completely smoothly?
What are the levels in which the game guides the player to stay?
What are the risks of involuntary changes to the level of immersion?
Is there an absolutely insurmountable boundary?
Magic circle
The relationship between players and games, we start with The Magic Circle.
Johan Huizinga uses the magic circle to describe the boundaries of the game, which can be understood as a space where players voluntarily enter and abide by the rules in it, (The Existence and Meaning of the Magic Circle in Games) This definition also contains a more concise and effective antithesis: when the player refuses to accept the rules, magic fails.
Players can only "enter" the game by actively accepting the boundaries of the rules, and gain the satisfaction of desires by accepting limited freedom. In the process, players immerse themselves in the avatar, enter the virtual vehicle of the game world, and build a new experience by selecting and receiving feedback.
(Further reading: "The "Dangerous" Game: Rethinking the Relationship between Game and Freedom", Ren Zhilin et al., 2021)
Broadcasting is an act close to actively expelling the player from the magic circle, and in the stereotype broadcast of the 3A game, the player is forced to break away from the avatar state of pleasure and blow, switch to watching the viewer of the character's behavior, and even wander out of the world, and briefly leave the game world.
The plot passages between the actions can adjust the player's physical state and state of mind, although most of the time the experience is not pleasant.
There are several related conceptual expressions about the player's loss of immersion and substitution in the story, such as Ludonarrative and the jumping effect.
The game content directly interacts with the player, this design we call Meta elements/elements, is more common in games with Meta elements or MetaGame, meta games.
Meta has rich meanings, but "Meta+ suffix" can be simply understood as "suffix about suffix". For example, a meta novel is a novel about a novel, it will be discussed in the text if it writes about itself or directly talks to the reader; Metagame is a game about games, and it is not uncommon for characters to change options, control the mouse, and even delete configuration files.
The metaverse may also be interpreted as "the universe about the universe." Humanity is trying to create a new world that embraces all things.
In all discussions about Meta, the concept of a "boundary" has become clearer. We not only judge whether the player is in an immersive avatar state based on whether the player crosses this boundary and projects his mind into the game world, but also whether the content crosses the boundary and enters the player's heart and consciousness to achieve the Meta state of "breaking the fourth wall".
In the truth revealed scene of "Heartbeat Literature Club", the game characters directly talk to off-screen humans, pulling the player's self-perception from the level of playing AVG as a stand-in to experiencing the situation provided by the game as the avatar "me".
[ Monica from Heartbeat Literature Club even instructs you how to delete the game's character profile ]
In "The Love of Jun and His Daughter and His Daughter", when the player opens a new Week Game with the inertia of the AVG protagonist, and changes the character strategy, Miyuki, the character who has been raided by Week Eye will suddenly look directly at the player and question the player, didn't Week Eye choose to be with him forever? Why chase other female characters like you don't know? After pointing directly at the off-screen player who interacts with her, rather than the protagonist of the game, she forcibly drags the player off the campus stage and "imprisons" her, hoping for an emotional answer.
[ Aoi in "Jun and His Daughter and His Daughter's Love" who finally says goodbye to off-screen players and disappears]
Before we talk about overlooking, let's turn our attention to the "border" itself.
boundary
At the beginning of the creation of the film, the boundary was presented to the public in the form of the physical form of the screen. Before that, people were accustomed to the capture of reality by still patterns such as painting and photography, but the continuous image caused an extraordinary impact. Deleuze's exploration of how images relate to people in "Film 1: Motion - Image" and "Film 2: Time - Image" is difficult to ignore that in the various changes in the development of images, the audience has never separated from the scene of watching the screen with their eyes, and the interaction between the audience and the film has formed a mode: display and immersion.
(Further reading: "Reinterpreting Time - Images: A Perspective of Film Archaeology", Jiang Yuhui, Literary Research, 2019)
From the beginning of its birth, the image carries the responsibility of projecting reality, and naturally maintains an unbreakable distance from reality. Imagination, memory, space, smell, form, material, moment, eternity.
What exactly are humans looking for in images? A memory storage? A spatial reproduction? A reinvention of the atmosphere?
We often discuss whether literature can be visualized, whether the penetrating power of words is decayed by force, or penetrated into people's hearts in a unique way after attaching images, sounds, and the speed of its most essential time passing.
Another thing that has never changed in the history of film is that the audience tries to touch the screen, penetrate the screen and participate in the world of images.
Physical contact, only the distorted projection on the screen and the cold electronic components of the screen, and the audience's pursuit of cross-border immersion cannot be contained, then the exploration of interactive narrative is not abrupt.
Interactive video game narrative
We emphasize the rise of exploration rather than the rise of interactive storytelling itself, because many of the existing interactive storytelling works present an interactive form that presents the same destructive result as a shootout broadcast: taking the player out of immersion.
When it comes to the key elements that distinguish movies from interactive narrative games, there seems to be only a predetermined sequence of frames that flow sequentially and never stop.
But in the era of digital movie viewing, the audience has long been able to move the image at will, in and out of the slow static frame, if this is not the audience is cutting and understanding the plot according to their own wishes, then the preset video clips of interactive movie games, as long as the infinite cumulative number, can be counted as a game?
In Immortality, players take on the role of an editor, jumping around, discovering new clips, and rewinding from countless complex sequences to discover stories hidden in countless images.
[ Immortal's Mock Studio Gameplay ]
We can define it as a game not because it is released as a game app on Steam, as in the previous game of the production team, Her Story, we can control less content than just search for words, view acquired images, and save or unbookmark.
[ Old-fashioned computer video search interface for Her Story ]
The joy of play lies in the subjectivity of the narrative. Players weave stories that they think are credible according to preset fragments, and do not even need to be reflected in the game program, and there will be no end-of-chapter quizzes like "Spring Death Centennial Copy". (The reasoning verification in The Centennial of Spring Death is presented in a puzzle-like form.) Many reasoning games rely on the different flavors of verification chapters to form characteristics, such as "Danganronp")
But, since when did the interactive narrative itself no longer have the fun of play, but must have "playable" operations?
The freedom of the subject of the narrative
In Marcuse's "The One-Dimensional Man", when technology develops, people seem to gain more freedom, choosing to be all over advertising, entertainment, and consumption, but succumbing to the socially imposed way of life, and falling into essential unfreedom.
QTE, which was badly reviewed in adventure game cutscene CG, has been transformed into an interactive narrative game and a seemingly balanced choice. Even if the essence of QTE is to provide small plot differences, interactive narrative games seem to be able to point to a completely different plot direction.
Interaction design provides the most seemingly gentle solution: the player can direct the character's actions through actions such as trust, doubt, or action instructions: opening the cabinet door, etc., and direct the plot to their own desired direction, but also strip the player of the greatest freedom: the freedom to maintain the distance between thought and action.
(Further reading: "Critique of the "Interactive Illusion" of Interactive Films", Xie Zhoupu, 2021)
"Spring Death Centennial Copy" and "Black Photo Collection: The Devil in the Heart" have been widely criticized for such divisions. After seeing the character options, the player must first translate in his mind what the character thinks, even what the script writer thinks, and then deduce the behavior and choose the one closest to the direction he wants to guide.
Therefore, it is often interesting to watch the "blood pressure moment" of the live interactive narrative game of the anchor, and the anchor of station B "Infiltration of C Jun" misunderstands the interpersonal relationship of the operating character and chooses another character in a level that requires the protagonist to choose to save his lover, and then does not read the file. At this point, the player has made a huge disconnect from the character's mental activity, and the player is still choosing high blood pressure, and the character is still doing contradictory behavior. An American horror story until the end, the anchor and the barrage are evaluated as "funny".
[ NPCs give hints to "save important people", but it is difficult for players to understand the same-sex couple relationship implicitly expressed in the early plot, and it is even more difficult to substitute the inner thoughts of the operating characters]
Interactive storytelling games provide the illusion that players can reach over the screen, and the player ultimately loses the battle, accepting the impassability and impassability of boundaries. The player has the desire to find the avatar, but can only stay in the viewing of the character's story across the screen, or even retreat to the player level where the system only mechanically clicks the system indicator button. A well-crafted story is crunchy in the face of player rejection and stripping.
Whether players can have fun with the puzzle depends solely on whether the puzzle itself is brilliant?
Whether it is Sudoku, mystery fiction or in-game puzzle solving, the sword of Damocles hangs "interest" outside the dimension of logic.
medium
Let's look back, can it be achieved on a physical level, can it ensure that the "border" is crossed?
According to McLuhan, "the medium contains any technology that extends the human body and the senses", games explore the upgrading of input methods, and the communication between games and people is increasingly closer to the human way of thinking.
The vibration feedback of the controller completely changed the video game gameplay limited to audiovisual information exchange, and was closer to the real experience: players began to be able to touch those game items, the speeding motorcycle handlebars, the rubber balls received in hand, and the vibration of eating large amounts of gold.
Our fingers and palms are full of sensory neurons, they can respond to temperature, pain and itching, but also the pleasure of caressing human pursuit of strong feedback, from physical to psychological, the first touch of the skin of the person you like is like a weak electric shock, and the breeze when panicked can also cause the greatest trembling.
The controller feedback physically drives the human mind to receive signals that should be active, and the gyroscope maps the orientation of the real space into the virtual world. Esports players love mechanical keyboards that make a crisp sound when tapped, and driving game characters to unleash skills can also give people the pleasure of hitting the keys. Sniper throwing relies on angle judgment and dynamic vision to hit enemies, while fighting games require controlling your breathing and heartbeat rhythm, reading moves by frame with the naked eye, and relying on muscle memory to play beautiful counterattacks.
(Further reading: "Movies, Games, Metaverse: The Media Genealogy of Interactive Interfaces", Che Zhixin, 2021)
Embodiment
Richard Schusterman coined the concept of embodiment, bringing the body itself back into the discussion of concepts. The theory of "embodiment" advocates "embedding the mind in the body and placing the body in the environment, forming a multi-integrated pattern of body, consciousness and social environment." (Embodiment: A Study of Richard Schusterman's Aesthetic Thought, Wang Yaqin, 2020)
When we think of games as a mind-body experience rather than a one-way virtual experience, we look at the changes in human-computer interaction from the perspective of body aesthetics.
From near-eye displays to helmets to brain-computer interfaces, from command-line input to interfaces to anthropomorphic interactions, from developing language to natural conversations, and even skipped language for picture mapping and physical condition monitoring.
Will human-computer interaction at some point become nearly accessible, or will it eventually identify an insurmountable gap?
(Further reading: "Body Aesthetic Positioning in the Era of Artificial Intelligence", Xu Jie, Journal of Southwest University for Nationalities, 2020)
Correspondingly, as we pursue the immersion that comes with realism without limits, the next step in the game's narrative is a more realistic scenario? A stronger sense of presence? Tighter narrative rhythm and time flow speed?
The meticulousness of Red Dead Redemption 2 caused a certain fatigue.
Players will still be moved by Arthur's increasingly frequent twilight cough, and will relish the thermal expansion and contraction of the horse's organs. But players don't feel strongly about more of this elaborate game, and their call for more Red Dead Redemption 2 has several hidden implications: more spectacular narratives, more vivid culturally specific immersions, and more freedom to explore.
[ Red Dead Redemption 2 is considered to be close to the peak of next-generation live graphics ]
At this point, the paradigm of "watching - screen" again works.
Imagine sitting alone in a theater, watching a story on screen in the dark, and some distraction pulls us out: suddenly lit lights, meaningless shouting, imposed seat shakes, torn and slipped screens, and damaged unilateral speakers.
There's also one of the most overlooked distractions: confusion.
The screen is the art of breaking frames between frames, and when the viewer's mind can no longer follow the jump of the frame, the audience is thrown away by the forward time and sits alone in the outside seat again.
Confusion usually includes details and obscured points that the viewer is unable to absorb, and humans have learned how to process environmental information in detail through the evolution of the entire population and the experience of individuals from infancy to the present, in order to reduce the load of their own power and improve efficiency, sometimes just for the pleasure of consciousness and mind.
When the realism style in the oil painting was perfected, Nieps exposed eight hours to capture the scene in front of his bed, and photography was born. The art of painting in the torrent of the times did not die, painters made refinements in different directions, first fascinated by capturing light and color in the air, and then born shapes, lines, deconstructions or more subjective depictions, the only constant in the change is the ability of human beings to always learn to understand new forms.
[ Paintings by Claude Monet, representative of the Cathedral of Rouen and Impressionism (partial) ]
[ There are also human painters who maintain the ultimate pursuit of realism. Leng Jun: "Little Ginger" ]
I had a discussion with a military fan friend about the difference between the definitions of "game" and "simulator", and about a UE5 production video uploaded to YouTube, "The picture is so real that it is suspected of fake?" The hyper-realistic game "Unrecord" trailer", I discussed with him whether being extremely close to reality is necessarily a bonus for a shooter? There are many different simulators out there, such as retail or driving, but simulating all the details will definitely provide more fun for players?
[ 《Unrecord》Presentation screen ]
Steam has a somewhat witty airplane simulator that fixes the player in the environment of the airplane seat at the same time flow and perspective as reality, and can rotate the perspective left and right or control the seatback screen in front of him to play simple mini-games, which takes eight hours in a single experience.
[ bilibili video: Airplane Simulator ]
Is flying a fun experience in itself?
When we fly in reality, we somewhat link the flight experience with the expectation of the destination, and we subjectively screen out the sore wrists of those carrying luggage during the flight, the shoulder rubbing in economy class and the swelling of the lower limbs that have been sitting for a long time.
The human memory and cognitive system itself has a set of protective mechanisms, we do not write down everything in detail, but actively or passively screen.
Memory is also unreliable, and sometimes it is intertwined with emotions, time feelings, senses, physical pain, etc. and stored and stored, or even fabricated new memories out of thin air.
This is why humans are able to quickly adapt to images full of cut shots and clips: all the physical and mental mechanisms such as blinking, memory, and experience are so consistent with it.
If we agree that games are more about choosing what to express and how to crop it, whether it's fun enough isn't the only beacon. In the field of serious or functional games, rigor and educational value are more important.
(Tengyun's report on the Recognizable Game: The First Functional and Art Game Exhibition held by Central Beauty in 2018: "Recognising the Game: Re-understanding the Rich Meaning of "Game" in this Era")
[ Tencent NExT A philosophy + game that explores the perceptual form of time: What shape is time? 》 ]
And if we want a game to have a place in the player's mind or form a unique copy of its memory, we need to understand the mechanics of memory and cognition and design it accordingly, rather than just trying to replicate reality.
Magic circles draw boundaries, simplify and emphasize rules, and interpret appropriate content. If we can recognize that play can be a medium that separates reality from physical and mental experience, it becomes clearer what the boundary is.
perception
Jiang Yuhui interprets Merleau-Ponty's "body schema", and concludes through the analysis of Merleau-Ponty's systematic exposition in "Phenomenology of Perception" that "my entire body is not a combination of organs juxtaposed in space", emphasizing the need for human beings to relate to the outside world through the body (extended reading: "Aesthetic Experience and Body Image", Jiang Yuhui, 2004), that is, the superposition of sensory experience is not equal to the sum of human physical and mental experience.
Breaking the equation also eliminates boundaries.
It is not only the perfect reproduction of all the sensory perceptions of human reality that can bring a certain experience to those who are in it, on the contrary, the more infinitely close to the exploration of reality, the more human beings can feel the nuances of virtual and reality, the thin and solid border highlights its existence, the content quickly fades and loses its charm, and we cannot invest in the feelings of a second reality without magic.
The boundary is no longer defined by sensory experience, we can experience excitement and exhilacity from exploring patterns, and we will also cry at the 8-bit pixel villain.
There's never a shortage of stylized exploration pieces in the game. The geometric aesthetic of Monument Valley, the low-poly of Refuge, the gothic cartoon of Famine, the religious decorative art of Painted World, and the blackened shadow characters and comic special effects of Hades.
[ Memories of Eddie Finci attempts multiple narrative and presentation styles in different chapters]
Audiovisual displays do not aim at the sensory stimulation they provoke, but rather act as a medium or introduction, leading the player to the expressionism, era style and trend of thought behind the different presentations.
Hideo Kojima explains the definition and meaning of MEME in "The Gene of Creation: The MEMES I Love." Human culture is a collection of MEMEs (tiny stories), and human cross-cultural and cross-language communication depends on the resonance of symbols and elements.
It is the basic process of art form to act on people by distilling things in an abstract way, presenting them in the form of art organization, and visualizing them by combining practical experience and concept mapping, and turning them into their own physical and mental experience.
[ Color applications can strongly affect the feelings and emotions of the audience ]
Meta element
In order to break the inertia of the player's thinking, cross the player's psychological safety distance, and directly talk to the player, Metagame usually adopts the design of unfamiliarizing and anticonscientiously interpreting the general interaction with words.
For example, "Heartbeat Literary Club" will inform you at some point that the text displayed in the dialog box below the characters' standing drawings is not what they said, and the narrator in "Stanley's Fables" does not speak to guide you, and the arrows and forbidden behavior reminders throughout are full of banter.
[ A narrator that guides the player in action, and the narrator will make mocking remarks when the player enters the door on the right]
There are also many games that will add meta elements to spice up the game experience. Posted a paragraph from "What is "Metagame"? Let's talk about the summary of what is the "Meta" element from games such as "ICEY".
The following common ways to play can be summarized:
- Character knowledge that has previously played or died in the game is used.
- Adjust the character's behavior towards other player characters based on their real-life relationships with other player characters.
- Adjust the character's actions in the game based on the game narration or the attempts of the game designer.
- Through the understanding of the game mechanics, the character makes the character take actions that do not match the character's personality.
- Depending on the different outcomes produced by the game mechanics, the character will behave.
- In the game, through a series of activities or methods, players can go beyond the limits of the rules of the game itself.
- Games will connect the game world outside of itself, and also refer to breaking the boundary between game and reality.
[ In There is no game, you need to move the sharp mouse icon to the balloon to puncture the balloon to continue the game]
[ Inscryption reads the player's Steam friend information to create a monster to challenge]
Both Evil and No Game Here are orthodox Metagames, which meet the criteria for the division of game content directly to off-screen players.
The Evil Shadow has more gameplay content after clearing the level, and players can find more information hidden by game makers for players to retrieve through unpacking, forum mutual assistance, website retrieval and jumping, etc.
[ Evil Underworld players share cryptographic information and inferences obtained from the game ]
This type of play also has a concise category name: ARG.
ARG
"Alternate Reality Game" (hereinafter referred to as ARG Game), or "Immersive Virtual Reality Interactive Game" and "Parallel Reality Game".
If Metagame is just staring across the screen on the player, ARG is about turning the world into a playground, where the player walks through the gap between rules and reality, following instructions to find loop-by-loop puzzles and answers.
Rust Lake: The White Door created a web page outside of the flash-based puzzle game that matched the clinic information mentioned in the game, uploading a video of simulated news reporting a murder, and the live evidence was the surreal Rust Lake series core prop, the black square.
Players can then find that international calls on business cards that have appeared in the game can be connected, and after connecting, they will inform the player of a website in the tone of in-game character settings. There are more links and information in the website, packaged in various forms such as doctor information, medical questionnaires and news, and players can also log in to the website with the account and password of "doctor" to enter the background after collecting the necessary information, and enter the password on the page similar to the command character to obtain more information.
After jumping through the layers, the information will point to some real-world location coordinates, and players who arrive here can get clues and souvenirs for the next step after showing the information to the clerk.
[ bilibili video: "Internet homicide that requires ten countries to cooperate to solve - Alternative Reality Game" ]
At the end of the first level of "Player One" (the original novel of the movie "Ready Player One"), the protagonist Wade uses his familiarity with the terrain and architecture of his school to locate the location of the tomb of horrors, which can also be seen as a manifestation of ARG. There is more reflection in the movie, when the proportion of the whole world immersed in the virtual has far exceeded the real world, the real experience can be cross-used for game puzzle solving, and the wind and grass, information flow convergence and even love and hate in the virtual world also profoundly affect everything in reality, and the "oasis" has long been more than games.
The value of narrative
Even if we are not viewing images in a particular context, what is our definition of browsing the Internet? What is the definition of a story that we listen to around the fire? What is the definition of our inner feelings of gratitude?
The entire real world is nested in interconnected narratives. Then the player's desire to cross the boundary is easier to understand: not just for the pleasure or curiosity of the moment, the player needs the boundary to reverse the exploration of their location and real existence.
In Plato's metaphor, there are only two states in which the cave man is either immersed in the cave as a dream person or coming out of the cave to reality. This either/or is also a strong description of boundaries and confirmation of boundaries, both out of panic that cannot confirm one's own existence and only strengthens the sense of hindrance of borders. When players are aware of boundaries, they are already isolated.
[ Spelunism has rich meanings and has a variety of evolutions, and it is recommended to understand it completely]
Merleau-Ponty jumps out of this either/or perspective by using the concept of "perception": phenomena do not differ from the world seen inside and outside of the world.
[ The relevant research discussion of perceptual phenomenology is very exciting, if you are interested, I recommend in-depth reading]
What is a game?
Is the concept ahead of reality, or is it that humans predate the concept? From the perspective of perception, the world existed before human language and thinking systems, so people should humbly use concepts to help people understand the world, rather than apply the world to the rules of human concepts.
When we understand games, if we take stock of all the game behaviors that humans have carried out since their birth, we may find some commonalities in many ambiguous boundary behaviors.
Why do humans look for seasonings for food? Why add time comparison to a fixed-distance run? Why can you rely on the sand table for a simulated march?
If we refer to Homo Lidens's theory that "the important primary forces of civilized life—law and order, commerce and profit, craft and literature, poetry, wisdom and science—are derived from myths and rituals, and are rooted in the primordial soil of games", we may think that games are the medium of the real world and human cognition, perception itself.
Civilized gameplay
In the reality that games exist as appearances, games also exist as a culture and as a characteristic of civilization itself.
Compared to the "idle" state, which is also for useless, the game is more for fun.
In games, humans can invest energy, passion, physical energy, and even the means of production.
Games are also often confused by the difference between appearance and essence, and people themselves often confuse utilitarianism and fun, but this is not the original sin of people, but one of the group diseases under the modern media.
Pleasure is closely related to the essence of man, and in the infinite alienation of man in today's society, man has lost the ability to identify what pleasure he needs.
(Further reading: "The Game Man: A Study of the Game Elements of Culture", John Heizinha; "Burnout Society", Han Byung-chul)
When only in a simulated scenario or at little cost, most people will try the worst option in the game.
Children also often show their amazing talents in real-life games: pushing and shoving others, running out of areas, destroying props, or refusing to accept the judgment of the game system.
(Further reading: "Research on "Game Breakers" in Children's Free Games", Yang Yanping, 2020)
Children understand and accept existing morality in two ways: forced memory driven by profit; Or accept the boundaries of the "magic circle" for the purpose of play.
In Community and Society: Basic Concepts of Pure Sociology, Ferdinand Tennis proposed two types of human associations for group life: the association of individuals and collectives formed according to plans and boundaries - society, or the association of concerned people based on common memories and conditioned habits - community.
When people play in order to shape the image of society, play is the means; When people play games for fun, people become part of the game, and people are connected to the game, with other players, and with the rules of the game in an organic way.
An inseparable narrative
After children first recognize that the person in the mirror is themselves, they will go through a period of recognizing all external objects as themselves, and after continuous feedback and correction in social interactions, they can clearly distinguish themselves from the outside world.
Games and social networks recreate this experience. When playing games, it is very natural for people to use subject-like descriptions such as "I walk up the steps", even if what actually happens is that people use input devices to operate virtual interfaces, and commands are passed through the system, algorithms, hardware, and engines and then reflected as changes in image sound.
(Further reading: "Interaction, Interface and Temporality - How Do Movies and Games "Merge"?") 》。 Jiang Yuhui, 2019)
Players who refuse to identify a virtual character as "I" can also be seen in a number of situations.
'The performance and thinking of the characters in the game are quite different from the player, and the player is removed from the substitution state; Players feel a large sense of frustration and disparity in the game world. After repeated setbacks, players do not identify with the repeatedly defeated game characters as themselves, but maintain their own psychological defense barriers by refusing to substitute.
When building a virtual world that covers as wide and complete as possible, how do you control the boundaries of the magic circle?
Can the difference between the identity tag of the account and the user's real life situation in social platforms bring enlightenment? In the voluntary access UGC (User Generated Content) content platform, the difference in the posture of publishers and users has brought about a gap, and viewers who have not posted any content may still have a huge amount of social energy in reality, and energy can also penetrate into this level, and abbreviated content is used as a corner of the class world for ordinary people to peek into.
[ Giant Twitter follows the numbers themselves to form a landscape ]
In an omniscient and all-powerful virtual world, how to distinguish the landscape represented by the account from the user? Will users be able to reject the simplicity, clumsiness, limited functionality of accounts, and still survive well by exiting this world? Has the landscape society completely obscured the picture of people themselves?
The more involuntary the game behavior, the closer it is to the nature of socialization. In the 321 wooden manoeuvre of "Squid Game", from panic to body covering, for the VIP audience watching from the high platform, it is still entertainment; For participants who cannot exit, it is no different from the experience at any time in real life.
[ For those who do not know the true rules of the event, the 321 wooden man has changed from a game to a fear of survival]
When a player disagrees with some rules and craves the rewards of another, how much sacrifice is they willing to make to achieve the experience? When players have a strong desire to break away from the rules, does it affect the profit and loss in the real world?
"Gamification" is for the purpose of the original purpose, and social games are for the purpose of socializing.
Security
Meta games mostly contain psychological horror labels, which is related to Meta games using narrative techniques to break the player's self-drawn psychological safety zone.
Monica looks directly at and communicates with the player, distinguishing herself from being able to image only on ill-fated screens in a virtual world. The traditional narrative structure of the spectator has changed, and the player's avatar is set aside and forced to face the game character who is the object of the play.
If the weapons and vehicles constructed in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom have a construction score after they are constructed, become part of the character's growth system, add market prices and friend rankings, and maybe even convert real money, what kind of mindset and purpose should players have to explore it?
[ Nintendo's design and encouragement has spawned countless alternative and personalized assembly attempts, as well as various "Mentally Handicapped Bar Featured Videos" - all based on psychological safety]
Audiences sitting in the cinema needed an unbreakable psychological barrier to tell themselves that the vertical saw in "Chainsaw" would not cut themselves, and in the early days, the theater's newspaper had to repeatedly emphasize before the performance that all storylines were fictional, in case the agitated and resentful audience rushed to the stage and injured the villain.
[ The boundary between virtual and real is also an eternal object of discussion in the study of the dissemination of literary and artistic works]
A sense of security is a player's psychological need to be able to take all kinds of risks. Whether it is a downhill facility in a playground, a live CS game, or extreme sports, it can only be recognized as a game behavior by the human mind on the basis of satisfying the psychological preparation of "safety". Many horror films cleverly cross this boundary and evoke the horror of the audience. Gaconuts who appear under the covers in "Grudge"; In "Curse", guide the audience to silently recite the mantra and then tell the audience that you are also cursed; Death Is Coming, adds fatal failures to every space and facility that can be found in everyday life.
Aesthetic styles such as "dream core", "strange core", and "child core" do not reconstruct completely novel and weird landscapes, but fine-tune unfamiliarization on the basis of familiar scenery, but can trigger fear and horror by breaking the psychological safety boundaries of the audience's daily life.
[ Another theory is that human childhood memories are quite different from adulthood, so it is more likely to cause fear when grotesquely influenced and evoked]
Horror movies and horror games are also typical genres where almost all narrative and audiovisual techniques serve the audience/player's sense of substitution. The reaction of the characters in the film is far less important than whether the audience in front of the screen is frightened.
[ The classic elevator shot in Toshi Ima's "Unhemp Buya".] As a psychological horror thriller anime, many poor information and metaphors are designed that the audience cannot even trust the protagonist ]
At this time, the boundary changes from a barrier that hinders the player's access to the virtual world to a shield that protects the player's real safety, and the player can relax and enjoy the entertainment under the psychological hint of confirming his own safety. There is no more than a line between stimulation and danger. Extreme sports, racing, bungee jumping, human beings constantly raise the threshold of challenging the limits of life by constantly improving safety protection measures. One of the eternal quests of human beings is to perceive one's existence by adjusting to external conditions or by persecuting or relaxing in order to enjoy the unity of mind and body.
When faced with the embodiment of an existential crisis, psychological safety collapses, and the participants' game mood subsides, turning into worry and fear in real situations.
Former universe
When we agree that the world is no different from a huge playground, and that people do not exist in a purely physical world, but rely on the connection of perception to become people in society, then we can understand that the metaverse, that is, the universe of the universe, does not have the limitations of being in the virtual and the real, and there is not only one.
Although cruelly, when a game is considered a meta game, meta as a core concept fills the game itself, every word and action in the game penetrates the boundaries into reality, and the player regains control of the narrative to believe. The game's characters can't identify the player's realistic image while claiming to have control over the life and death of the player's manipulated characters, and trying to stick to the concept created by the game setting is like struggling to maintain a shaky stage set.
[ Mandela Records: Hypocrites simulates the process and interface of onboarding, online testing, and video retrieval issues, but even if a first-person "clerk" fails the test and dies, the player will not think that he will be harmed]
The concept of Meta is reflected in the metaverse, and the biggest impact is that it is difficult to interpret everything in the virtual world as a game behavior. In the process of adulthood, humans have learned to give social meaning to most game behaviors, learned to think of cup pushing and changing glasses as the management of human relationships, and regarded ball games as a manifestation of power.
Therefore, the characteristics of the game behavior itself that attract players, such as the ability to change identities at will, the ability to experiment with low-cost behaviors in various situations, the ability to obtain heartfelt fun according to their own preferences, the ability to abandon complex reality factors and physical and mental relaxation, all of which quickly pass and lose their attractiveness in the operation and strengthening of the meta-universe of a strong social nature.
It is difficult to "for fun" and continue to collapse towards "for useful".
The metaverse is a competitive arena for a small number of people who have already mastered the narrative initiative in the real world.
(Further reading: "Metaverse as the "Experience" of the Future: A Critical Perspective Based on Media Archaeology", Jiang Yuhui, 2021)
Miniature society in MMORPGs
In "Sword Warrior Love Network Version III", players can become "bosses" by paying game coins: they do not have to have game operations or equipment, but they can follow a group with sufficient combat effectiveness through the copy, get the equipment of their own class exposed in this copy, and can also pay to participate in the auction with other team members.
When you have basic combat strength, you can participate in some auction groups without bosses as a member of the group in order to obtain equipment upgrades, and this type of group can get relatively few gold coins.
After the combat power reaches the threshold of the boss group, you can go to the boss and get five to ten times the gold coins of the auction pattern at a time. When it becomes an account with high combat effectiveness, it can gain a certain status in the game society, help new accounts in all aspects or enter the powerful gang to obtain resources from other systems, and accept apprentices to gain social experience.
Game versions are updated regularly, new factions and bosses appear, account values change from moment to moment due to game adjustments, and falling behind often requires the same process as above, and you may lose most of what you have already gained in the game society.
The game process of Sword Three PVE (Player vs. Environment) is like this, and the experience of PVP (Player vs. Player) players is more humane and social. Hit the ranks in the arena to exchange tokens for PvP-specific equipment, and you can have friendly matches in the main city outside the arena, or you can use the in-game design mechanism to chase in the wild.
The game world of MMORPGs does not yet involve real society, and has reached a microscopic reproduction.
The real world is reduced to images, but images are elevated to seemingly real existences. —Guy Debord, "The Landscape Society"
Zuckerberg makes no secret of the existence of landscapes in his open letter: "Think about how many physical objects you have today that might just be holograms in the future."
In the game world, players plan activities and operations according to the landscape created by the producer, and do everything they can to create their own account.
When the game gold coins are locked in the game world, the funds are unilaterally transferred from the real world and converted into various virtual values in the flow of the system, forming a landscape.
The metaverse attempts to break through the boundaries of virtuality, bring users benefits in reality, and make the rules set by metaverse producers have power influence in reality.
When the quantitative standard of game content by the game people is separated from the game structure and the fun of playing, the user's game psychology is gone, and any activity that can be converted into real benefits is equivalent to real activities, and people will naturally compare investment and benefits. For useful。
"Oasis"?
In the metaverse scenario, people travel everywhere to communicate with avatars and experience the appearance of gamification, but people's consciousness wanders with a sense of urgency and utilitarianism for survival, and after exceeding the absolute safety threshold of the game, users will find it difficult to withstand the slightest bit of play and error, while pursuing the ultimate efficiency and precision.
Athletics is cognate with gaming. Competition has strict participation boundaries, no medication, and rules that follow, and participants are encouraged to achieve the highest possible results within the rules, rather than encouraging measures for the sake of the results themselves. Resistance to efficiency and the pursuit of limits produce a striking harmony under the influence of rules.
[ Esports also maintains the competitive nature of computer gaming behavior by setting rules ]
But when we pursue the extension of a society, the only direction of rule-making that can be allowed is to be favorable to reality.
The metaverse, which pursues to break down barriers and expand its influence in reality, is difficult to solve the problem of maintaining users' psychological safety and non-utilitarianism and thus maintaining users' game mentality.
For the impact of real society destined to infiltrate the virtual game world, Neil Stephenson clearly described it in "Snow Crash":
The clarity and substance of the avatar(s) is a very intuitive criterion for "differentiation" (Bourdieu). Only a few elite rich have the financial strength and status to change themselves into one pair of high-definition "skins", while the rest of the sentient beings are destined to be hidden in the bleak background of rough pixels: "Many black and white avatars are scattered in the crowd, and they enter the metaverse through cheap public terminals, presenting black and white images with coarse particles, which are constantly moving and very unstable." (Jiang Yuhui 2021 translation)
As Jiang Yuhui asks in "The Metaverse as an "Experience" of the Future: A Critical Perspective Based on Media Archaeology:
Why is the metaverse now almost one-sided in a beautiful and dreamy form?
Conclusion丨The world is an eternally continuous narrative
Humans love myths, epics, tragedies, and destinies—reality is no different from story, and humans need space for imagination to breathe for themselves.
Whether it is games or social platforms, they are exploring and breaking boundaries through various forms of experiments, and then establishing a safe field by maintaining boundaries, and the invisible form can maintain the existence of individuals and the appropriate unity of groups.
A good narrative can lead people into a state of incarnation, and narrative is not the same as reproducing material reality. The human body is not simply a recipient of information, and focusing on perception and experience is the only way to tell a good story. The trend of content payment and experience payment is proving that people not only need games, but also games that are different from their own reality.
Boundaries are not only obstacles but also protections, only when boundaries exist can players maintain a sense of security and aesthetic mentality, immersed in the game mentality for fun, rather than falling into the cycle of exhaustion and unsolvable only utilitarianism.
The history of the game is the history of civilization. The metaverse is destined to be born, just as the history of human development is a never-ending narrative.
However, on the way to explore the "universe about the universe", we should not ignore the materiality of the metaverse, but also remember that it is the people themselves who participate in it, not just the grand conceptual subjects.
What kind of story to tell and who is the narrator itself is a power struggle. In the development trend of technological development and experience upgrading, if you consider yourself a pioneer and explorer, all you need to do is to constantly examine the "magic circle" you have drawn, and examine the rules created by others and the rules you want.
We don't simply claim that video games are the ninth art and demand acceptance, nor do we insist that the world you live in is written by others, but we look back at time and life itself.
What defines time as moving forward? Why is it judged that life is agitating? Where does "I" exist, and "I: what does what I hear, see, see, and feel affect this world of truth?" What rules flow between all things, why do we rejoice, weep, what is the meaning of words and touch?
How do we face destiny?
If you have a moment when you feel that the characters in the game seem to be real, telling you something, can be moved by the corners of the game world, shocked by the unheard of spectacle, the game flow is intertwined with your memory and life trajectory, evoking your memories, feelings, fantasies and flickering inspiration, if this article can help everyone better understand the game narrative, as an explorer, luckily even ya.
Extended reading
A Study of Hypertext Narrative in Video Games, Xiong Chaokun, 2020
"Film History as Media History": Media Competition and Integration in Metafilms, Wei Ran, 2021
"Film and Game Integration and Symbiosis of Film and Game: On the Aesthetic Characteristics of Interactive Film", Wang Guannan, 2021
"Narrative VS Interaction: The Narrative Problem of Film and Game Fusion", Liu Mengfei, 2019
"The Reconstruction and Crisis of the "Thought-Image" Mechanism: Deleuze on the Subjectivity Change of Modern Film", Zhou Houyi, 2021
"Research on the Immersion of Contemporary Film: From Theory to Video", Li Yuyan, 2021
Hamlet's Triple Ghost: Philosophical Thoughts from Consciousness Theater to Brain Cinema, Jiang Yuhui, 2020
Fire, Danger, Sympathy: Emotions in Video Games, Jiang Yuhui, 2021
"Bong Joon-ho Film Research from the Perspective of Landscape Social Theory", Xiong Chengwei, 2021
Merleau-Ponty's Aesthetic Study of the Ontology of the Flesh, solemn, 2019
Digital Wonderland or Cold End: Rethinking the Temporality of Video Games, Jiang Yuhui, 2021
"The Phenomenological Dimension of Image Turning: A Re-examination of Image Consciousness and Media", Xiong Yiran, 2021
Virtual Reality Film Architecture: From "Cave Metaphor" to "Capsule-Tunnel", Jia Yunpeng-Xu Lei, 2020
The Touchable Screen in Early Cinema – A Media Archaeological Study of "Screen", by Wanda Strauvin Wang Shusuo trans., 2012 (original)
"Toward a New Aesthetics of Film Acceptance in the Age of Digital Technology——— New Changes in Film Viewing Experience under New Media and New Technology", Chen Xuguang and Zhang Minghao, 2021
"Games as Communication: Historical Origins, Theoretical Paths and Core Issues of Game Research", Zhou Kui, 2016