Theory of computer games

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That holds true even for the most maligned action-entertainment games. Such games also require players to think of an overall strategy, perform several tasks simultaneously, and make decisions that have both an immediate and long-term impact. Useful skills, to be sure, but exercised excessively they can also become problems. After all, when kids become so accustomed to multi-tasking and processing large amounts of information simultaneously, they may have trouble focusing on a lecture in a classroom setting.

The very nature of action-entertainment games not only attracts young people with focus, attention, and anger issues particularly in the case of violent games ; it also tends to reinforce these negative behaviors. While a number of companies have tried to create beneficial games for children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder ADHD , they've had limited success. Instead, kids with ADHD often play action video games to flood their senses with visual stimulation, motor challenges, and immediate rewards.

In this environment, the ADHD brain functions in a way that allows these children to focus, so much so that they don't exhibit symptoms, such as distractibility, while gaming. The stakes may be higher for a child with anger and behavior issues who finds solace in violent video games. While experts disagree about what if any impact violent games have on actual violent behavior, some research shows a link between playing violent games and aggressive thoughts and behavior.

For a kid who already has an aggressive personality, that could be a problem, say experts, since video games reward those aggressive tendencies. In fact, two separate studies found that playing a violent video game for just 10—20 minutes increased aggressive thoughts compared to those who played nonviolent games. However, not all games are equal—and each person's reaction to those games is different, too.

They can have benefits or detriments depending what you're looking at. For Rosner, gaming was detrimental. His grades suffered, he missed assignments, and he almost failed to complete his first year of college. His academic advisor gave him two options: complete all of his essays for the first year within a span of three weeks, or fail and retake the first year.

After turning away from the game, Rosner found other sources of pleasure. He joined a gym, started DJing at his university, and became much more active socially. Ironically, World of Warcraft led Rosner to achieve his dream of making films. More than 1 million people worldwide have viewed his film, which can be seen on YouTube. It has been featured at film festivals, on TV, and in newspapers and magazines.

Today, gaming is just one form of entertainment for Rosner. He even plays World of Warcraft occasionally. But gaming no longer controls his life. With news about video games turning kids into bullies—or zombies—and a growing number of experts warning about the dangers of too much screen time, it may be tempting to ban computers and smartphones altogether.

Don't, say experts. If you forbid game play, you'll forfeit any opportunity to influence your children's behavior. In the same way that Kasparov does not think of the shapes or name of the chess pieces in a game of chess. In this description of the computer game I have first and foremost focused on the temporal characteristics and the sequence of the game.

But most games have a story on the package, in the manual, or somewhere else, placing the game in a larger story:. A prehistory is suggested in Invaders : An invasion presupposes a situation before the invasion. We can't tell what should happen once the invasion has been prevented, it is just implicit in science fiction mythology that these aliens are evil.

The title suggests a simple structure with a positive state broken by an external evil force. It is the role of the player to recreate this original positive state. You do this by controlling a space ship at the bottom of the screen. This space ship is protected by some bunkers that can be destroyed. The enemies enter from the top part of the screen. Having shot all enemies, you proceed to the next level.

The next level brings new enemies, and the bunkers are rebuilt. In the narrative model of Greimas , a narrative is seen as moving between two positions. His example is a princess that has been abducted from her home to a new position by a villain, and is subsequently rescued by a hero.

It is thus a sequence of a good state that is threatened, after which there is a struggle to restore the original state. I will start with the following structure:. Jensen works from a parallel narrative model in three parts. Point one is not entirely clear: I have previously argued that the temporal characteristics of the computer game are quite different from narratives. But you can not complete Space Invaders: Having shot all the attackers, you are simply faced with a new attack, and the green bunkers protecting you have been repaired or replaced.

So this suggests that some time has been skipped ellipsis. It is a question of interpretation whether every wave of enemies is part of the same attack, or if a new invasion has occurred. It can mean that the initial state has been restored, but then threatened again, only this happens without any indication from the game.

So the narrative frame does respond to the three-part model above, but the game only happens in point 2, battle. Compared to the three-part model we should also note that there hardly is any lack in the initial state. So the narrative frame provides an explanation of what the player should do. In a less abstract way: It is possibly obvious, that whatever object you control, it should be defended against other objects moving towards it. At least until you know otherwise. This is why that narrative frame can add meaning without changing the game.

It is thus evident that the narrative frame is not necessary to play the game, and that it can be replaced with another narrative: Space Invaders can quickly be changed to — for example — a game where you are attacked by insects and centipede instead. This is the game Centipede Atari We use narratives for many different things in many different contexts, both fictive and real.

The history of the computer game is fairly short and begins in the 's with very primitive graphics. The computer game can, especially early, hardly be taken for a representation of something real. Up to the middle of the 's it was possible to buy games where you, for example, controlled an exclamation point a warrior and fought 's monsters. This is the reason why the narrative frames from the outset have been considered irrelevant, arbitrary.

And this is why a game already in could have an ironic narrative frame. The narrative frame has always seemed forced, irrelevant to what really matters: The game. This point is slightly controversial since many people will claim that their action games really to tell stories: It seems that inexperienced players take the narrative frame at face value, "I am fighting an evil samurai", while the experienced player determines the genre; "It is a 3d shooter".

When various commentators for example Jensen , Grodal , Wenz describe the computer game as narrative, they are assuming that the narrative frame or the game commercials are right. It is my point that the narrative frame is purely metaphoric assignment of meaning to the game. This point corresponds more or less to Theodor Nelson's critique of the Macintosh user interface Nelson : The Macintosh and modern Windows are based on the concept of metaphoric design , where you create an interface by mimicking things already known to the user.

The modern user interface is built on a desktop metaphor. According to Theodor Nelson, this doesn't work very well because you have to explain most users why this is like a desk. If you click on a document, it is suddenly above other documents. If you pull a disk to the trash can, it is not thrown away but ejected on MacOS.

In the computer game, the titles, intro sequences and cut scenes work in the same way: Their purpose is to explain to the player, why this platform game is at all related to the movie The Lion King , why this 3D flying game is related to Top Gun.

Because it is not clear from the game itself. Modern pinball games are another, and perhaps clearer example of this assignment of meaning to a game. You still shoot the ball around to hit the flashing lights, but now a display claims that you are part of a story.

On the Star Trek machine Williams , you are sent on different mission: avoid an asteroid, rescue the crew from a planet. Or more precisely: You still have to hit the flashing lights with the ball, but now a display tells you that the hitting a special lamp rescued a crew member for the planet and so on. There is an abundance of pinball games based on popular movies. Even Thousand and One Nights has been created as pinball - open the gate, fly on the carpet etc.

Not everything that claims to tell a story actually does so. But there seems to be a tendency for humanities researchers to take every description of something technological at face value - even if it comes from the manufacturer. When creating a game "based on" a movie, there is a clear interest in having the buying public assume a deep connection between game and movie - it sells the product.

But movie-based games are known as low quality products, that simply seek to exploit this connection - they are seldom innovative or even especially focused on relating to the movie. When movies for a young audience are converted to games, it is almost inevitably as platform games ; games where you have to control a main character jumping over obstacles, collecting small objects.

And this is clearly the discount strategy in computer games: Simply pick a well-known game genre and add some graphics and sound from a movie. Interactive fiction often downplays the game in relation to the frame. Rather than trying to achieve some kind of correspondence between frame and game, the complexity of the game is reduced. Narrative parts are added and interactivity is removed. This does not make the relation between program and material any less arbitrary; it simply shifts the emphasis.

I have argued that in the computer game we find an implosion between story time, narrative time, and reading time. This is a consequence of the fact that a game is not a fixed sequence that the game has not happened yet but is happening.

The interactivity demands that the game happens now , unlike narratives which are basically told afterwards. A narrative can also be characterised by the fact that there is narration. If the narrator is not characterised as such, at least there is some kind of selection of what to tell and emphasise. This selection is related to the temporal situation and variations in narrative speed.

In a game like Space Invaders, there is no such variation during the game, but the game has a narrative frame, and there are omissions ellipsis in time when the game ends: When the player doesn't play, there are some operations going on that may remind us of the narrator's role. But no narrator is indicated. Let us then turn to the novel and consider the detective story. The detective story needs a criminal. The criminal is not a narrator, but shares some traits with the narrator in that the criminal is responsible for the existence of the detective story at all.

The criminal is the source of the story, and it is the job of the detective to find this source. In Doom II, as in any game, there is a corresponding implicit question of why the game world looks like this.

Who created it so that aliens are attacking me? Doom II is inhabited by evil monsters that have to be killed to get on. But where do they come from? The last level 32 provides a possible answer, as you are faced with a giant monster that shoots monsters from a hole in its forehead.