Remediation

Remediation = the representation of one medium in another 

hmmm now that sounds familiar.

To put it in more simple terms, remediation is taking a formula that works from one medium and apply it to a similar one. It's a convention that has been widely used since the appearance of digital media. Radio adopted from theater, television from radio, internet from television, television from the internet and games from all of the above.

There are two ways of remediating  something : by being aware that you are doing it or not, and by this I mean you are either doing it, thinking you are bringing something new to the field, without actually persevering the medium you started from; or you know you are using conventions established by other medias and show how your "adaptation" of that convention belongs to the original and is somewhat linked in theme or aspect.

Talking about remediation in games, a short introduction to that subject would be to watch the German production "Run, Lola run". The way it's shot, the music and the costumes, all kinda lead me to the thought of a combination between "The Fifth Element" and "Scott Pilgrim vs The World". Both of these movies are later productions that Lola, but all of them have plot points that are similar to games. All of them have the "hero", who is not actually a hero, until the situation demands it ( Lola has to save her boyfriend,) (Korben Dallas(Bruce Willis) is a taxi driver that has a Leeloo ( Milla Jovovich) dropping in his taxi and guides her along her journey to save the world ) ( Scott Pilgrim is a teenage boy that has to battle the 7 evil ex's of the girl he is in love with.) The visuals in these 3 movies, especially "Run, Lola run" and "Scott Pilgrim vs The World" are very game like and the way they are shot can easily be summarized in levels/waves and boss battles with small interludes/cut-scenes in which the story is developed.

 

Talking a bit more just about "Run, Lola run", the main remediation element is that of Lola "respawing" if she failed in her mission. This element is commonly known in video games, where the player respawns at the previous save point if he falls into a snake pit. Many would argue that this kind of approach in a film would be impossible without video games, but I would go a bit further back and say that it would be impossible without Greek mythology. The lay motif of rebirth/retry/"resapwn" has been around since the stories of Hercules, and they are present in most works of literature. A very common example I would give would be that of Gandalf, who in the Fellowship of the Ring (both the book and the movie, but first the book) he falls to his doom, battling the Balrog, but is brought back by Galadriel after he defeats the creature. He "respawns at his last save point" atop Caradhras and ventures off after Frodo and co. to finish his quest.

So yes, remediation. You start from one place talking about a concept and end up with the same concept, but in another field.

Narative in Games

Telling stories has been mankind's way of depicting, remembering and transmitting  events. First they were told, then written, then pictured, then filmed and now played. Games are today's most viable and accessible way to make your own story, in a way. You get to take on the face and body of a character which you get to create from a various range of presets and then you guide him/her/it through the world he's been set into, following a series of events that are (hopefully) skillfully masked by a gamed designer to offer quite a unique, subjective experience to each player. That is the purpose of narrative in the game.

But what's the difference between story, plot and narrative?

• The story tells you that you are a great hero of a land you already know ( so not to many details are given ) and that through  a series of events ( some of which are not depicted) you get to the baddie, slice of his head and proclaim yourself savior, and then the next hero (through a series of unknown events) slays you. And so on and so forth.

•  The plot tells you that you are a farmer because you dad was a farmer and his dad was a farmer and so on and so forth. This is your legacy. Your quest is to go and stop the evil person from stomping on your vegetable patch while on his way to pillage and rape the town your sweetheart lives in. This is your motif. You win the battle against evil. By doing this you redeem your lady's honor and plant a new batch of tomatoes in your new garden, behind your new castle. This is your reward. 

•  The narrative tells you that once upon a time this and that happened, respecting the chronological course of the events. Then it reaches you part in the story and starts by telling us that you just woke up, you get out of bed and notice that you can't find a slipper so you walk barefooted on the cold stone floor to your bucket of water. You splash water on your face. put a shirt on and notice that it has a hole in it. You walk to the kitchen and you pour yourself a bowl of porridge. It's cold. You eat it and then step outside and start doing your morning chores. A chicken clucks around you and you push it aside with your foot. As you work on your tomato patch, a dark person on a dark horse gallops straight through your tomato patch. You jump out of his way and watch him disappear  over the hill side.  You get up, grab your trusty spade and swear vengeance in the name of your beautiful tomatoes. Your adventure starts. 

If you haven't figured out by now : story is the one that tells you the overall events in a short and direct manner, ignoring details, plot is the one that tells you about the relations between the actions that you do and the general story and consequences and narrative depicts EVERYTHING. 

Even though the narrative one seams the most tedious one, it's used in games due to the fact that you can change the sequence of the events that happen, just to create a certain atmosphere : "

I must get to the holy water in time to dip my arrow in order to get back to the mine and shoot zombies.  (If I don’t, I am stuffed)…again…..

"

Also when narrative is used in games, details and information relating to the world and sometimes your quests are conveyed in more unexpected modes (for a game) than dialogue with an NPC. Here I refer to in-game books/scrolls/murals/magazines/news and sometimes even flashbacks that serve to further the story and better immerse the player in the game world. Another way to convey the narrative to the players is by introducing "cut-scenes" during certain moments of game play. These would tell the story such as the player would see it in a movie, with little to no interaction from it, leaving thus the core game play to concentrate more on the action. The use of cut-scenes, although amazing from a graphical point of view, and sometimes from a story point of view as well, are a bit controversial. Some players don't enjoy cut scenes at all and miss out on the story, some play the game only for them and miss out on the actual game-play and some just use them as a break to go get a biscuit. I believe there is still a balance to be reached with this form of interlud in games and more interactive ways of conveying a story to the user should be adopted.

Most games revolve around epic stories of liberation, freedom and justice. You have to defend the Earth, work as an undercover agent to save your country, foil the Templar's conspiracies, survive a zombie apocalypse and discover the mysteries of long lost lands. But not all games revolve around stories. "Tetris" for example is just a reflex game, based on the ability of how fast is the player able to make a line before the blocks reach the top and the game ends.  Of course you can add whatever story to it: from an evil circus monkey that throws pieces at you and wants to bury you alive  to a very per-historic variation of portal, in which every line you make opens a portal that sends those pieces/or bits of pieces to the top so they can fall down again, creating a never ending loop.  But whatever you imaginations chooses to render, the game is not one story based, and the fact that the pink line and the blue square never met will not affect the overall game play. Same goes for simulation games, may it be "The Sims" "Sim City" "Roller Coaster Tycoon" or "TrainTown". They are there to simulate situations that might occur, eventually in real life. You might add a story to it, but a story is not necessary to make the game work.


 

Gender And Games

As a girl at a Games Design Course, I can tell you first hand that the feminine presence in the course is about 10 / 1.I have also had a brief experience in the industry, working as a QA Tester, at Electronic Arts and I could say that I was one of the 10 women testing in the "PC and Consoles" department, on a floor with about 100 something testers. So yes... the ration is kinda the same.

I believe that this huge difference comes from the fact that men are usually viewed as gamers, and until about 15 - 20 years ago, girls were only associated with tea parties, Barbies and pretty, pink shtuff. As you can see in the chart above, the more the fields glide towards the technical path, the lower the percentage of women in the industry is. Most would say that it's because women are better at taking care of the not so technical/math/sciency part of game making but of the more human/pay-check/interview/advertising part.

 And I agree that most of this is true. When you look at a polytechnics high school/college/university the ratio of men per woman is the same. And since game making is viewed as 70%-80% programing, of course the majority in that field are men. You could argue that women can go on the artsy part of game making, but even there the percentage is very low. And I wouldn't say that's because women are not good at art, but working in an mainly male environment can be quite challenging, and most women would rather be with their own kind. That's why you will find most of them in the HR department.

A second reason for this lack of equal numbers in the industry would be the fact that, until recently games weren't very girl friendly. And I'm not referring to Barbie games or dress-up games, but mostly, at the beginning of the development of the game industry, both girls and women couldn't picture themselves playing "Doom" or "Duke Nukem" or "Warcraft" or "Starcraft", and neither could society. They were for boys.

But this situation of inequality is mostly present in this industry. In most work places both men and women are in fairly equal numbers, from fashion designing to business and marketing. 

I am not writing this post to be on any of the two parts side. I have had the great luck of having parents you are open to games and with whom I played all the above mentioned games that were considered back in the day to be for boys. I worked in the industry, and now I'm studying at a course which prepares me to work again on the other side of the task sheet. The atmosphere is the same and it takes a special kind of view to manage to hold your own once you get there.

It's all a matter of perspective.

Games Britannia Continues

Last time I discussed about "Games Britannia" I followed the course of game evolution from ancient times untill the Victorian age. I saw games going from divination motifs and strategy practice to mass entertainment to education and the set of moral rules of conduct in ones life. The conclusion to the last post was that games had an extensive influence on human evolution, both as a singular being and as an individual part of a group and part of the society.

In this post I shall discuss about how games became something that satirizes the political issues that the 20th century, how they were turned into a massive industry and shipped across the ocean to America and how, in the late '80's early '90's they became one of the most iconic way of interactive storytelling.

Starting with "Games Britannia: Part Two: Monopolies and Mergers".

Continuing from where I left of last time, in the 19th century, in Great Britain, games were used as an instrument of moral instruction. They were introduced in schools and children were often encouraged to play them and develop their morals on the good outcomes of the games. And by "good outcome" I mean of course follow the path of the righteous and fair, saying no to all the temptation and eventually looking back at a very fulfilled, peaceful and paladin - exemplary life. Ah, if it only worked in real life as well.

Following the great boom these games had in that times society and seeing the great potential in making a good profit, the British game industry, at that time, started exporting them over the ocean. Americans took these games and adapted them to their own moral views, those of promoting the American Dream of free enterprise and economic success. Thus the first variations of Monopoly  started appearing. But it wasn't until the economical downfall of the economy, preceding the First World War that the game actually took flight.

Monopoly was based on a British game called "Landlords" which was meant to satirize the economical power that the British nobility of that time had. Players were able to buy land and the more you had, the bigger the tax your opponent had to pay.  Almost like monopoly, but without the building and bankruptcy part. This came later, when in the 1930's, the American version hit the market. Being based on the American view of enterprises and monopoles, buying land, build hotels and driving you opponent into complete and utter (fictional ) financial destruction became the fun of the everyday man.

Later on more interactive games with a social background were introduced, like Cludo, which is a game that puts you in the shoes of a detective and Scrabble, which is a board game rendition of your usual crossword puzzle you find in your daily news paper.

With the passing of time and the growth of the fantasy literature ( J.R.R Tolkien's books became a sort of Bible amongst most gamers and geeks ) a new niche was formed in the industry of gaming. That of RPG's (and I'm not talking about the digital ones yet.). In the '80's and '90's you could not call yourself a gamer if you did not attend at least a monthly 6 hour play-through of a 3 month long campaign in "The Forgotten Realms of Faerun" and being a DM was one of the greatest test of fantasy lore and story telling knowledge one could pass. These type of games brought forth an explosion on the gaming market, being also the first who could be held responsible for the creation of the first game fairs.

Today, in an era of digital games that are seen everywhere, besides the all known RPG's and Monopoly and Cluedo's, board games have become quite an underground environment for tabu political satire."Games Britannia: Part Two : Monopolies and Mergers" ends on quite a creepy note with a group of people playing a board game that pictures the "war on terror", completed with masks and consumes and themed boards, in a basement. Creepy...

The third and last part of the "Games Britannia Show " ends with the apparition and progress of digital games. I'm not going to talk to much about this, because it's a medium that 1: it's still developing and growing. 2: we all know that bit of history.

With the developing of technology it was bound that games will soon become one of the main objectives in technological advancement. Games can offer a unique experience into a world and players often do or partake in events that are not permitted in today's (or any other day's) society and are viewed as a complete tabu.

Lara Croft will let you explore wild places while you guide her through the Tomb Riding adventures, while "Black and White" gave you the powers of a god and a small group of villagers to do with as you wish. Games have evolved since then both in complexity and in content.

In this day and age, with games coming out one after another it is very hard not to disappoint those for whom you make those games. On one side you have "The Grand Theft Auto" franchise who kept getting better and better, and then you have games like "Fable" who start out as amazing and at the third installment the concept with which it stared was overused and it lacked that freshness that a new game, even a sequel, should bring to the players.

Reference : Image credit : Tim Barkley, CTRL+ALT+DEL Comics;
                                      Google Images;