*I want to see Monkeys*, Area7 Lab, Margarete Jahrmann/Stefan Glasauer, 2017.

*Kitty AI: Artificial Intelligence for Governance*, Pinar Yolda, 2016.

*Le Jeu de la Guerre* (Board game), Alice Becker-Ho/Guy Debord, 1977.

*The Landlord's Game*, Lizzy Magie, 1904.

## **If You Play It, Do You Believe It?**

Making Game Stories Become Real with Embedded Design

*Mary Flanagan*

I will start with a simple question: If you play something, does that mean that somewhere, somehow, you suppose it is happening? Believe in it? Does a game change you? Over the last decade, scholars have conducted research on the use of games in education, healthcare and other areas where an engaging "gamified" approach might be "useful". But what about deeper things, such as our beliefs? Is it possible for a game to affect our personal values or behaviors? Are players of games swayed, enticed or brought into new states of understanding with games?

As all games express and embody human values (Flanagan/Nissenbaum 2014), they express "big ideas" like democracy, justice, equity, honesty and cooperation. They also express other ideas, including violence, winner-takes-all mentalities, exploitation and greed. These values emerge in games whether designers intend them or not, so it is important that designers understand their impact. So, when we consider whether and how game stories can "become real", that is, have impact on our lives, shift our actions, beliefs or behaviors, we need to ask several questions. One, what actions, beliefs, or behaviors do we mean? Two, what about the game story, in the larger sense, facilitated this shift? Three, how does one go about measuring shifts? And finally, what are the unintended consequences of game stories impacting on everyday life?

This essay details a game design approach called embedded design, developed in my game design research laboratory, Tiltfactor, that was founded to study and create pro-social, pro-people games that strive to have a positive impact in the world. Concerning social challenges like public health crises, sexual assault, mental health challenges and more, games in fact can play a role in tackling them. From *Depression Quest* (2013) to *That Dragon Cancer* (2016), games increasingly are used to empathize, educate and transform.

The core idea behind embedded design is that using a collection of narrative mechanics, games can be effective at shifting beliefs and biases when these are carefully designed employing subtle techniques (Flanagan/Kaufman 2016; Kaufman/Flanagan 2015; Kaufman/Flanagan/Seidman 2015). Transformative moments can be designed and studied utilizing psychological approaches from social cognition, bias and persuasion fields. These intentionally transformative methods inspire new ways of thinking through the narrative mechanics that designers initiate in games. A game can mix in or even hide an overt message, activate fantasy, position a mindset and introduce "aha" moments, all of which have the potential to shift player' attitudes and beliefs, and thus change not only the game story, but the real world.

In this chapter, I will articulate three key aspects of how an embedded design approach can help game stories have real-world impact. By stories, I mean not only narratives in the stereotypical sense, i.e. a linear story with a narrative arc (one might initially think of a game story as constituted by the plot, the script, with authentic characters whose motivations we invest in). However, games also tell stories through genre, style, images and animation, and music. The most important sites for storytelling in a game lie in a given game's game goals, player actions and the model of the universe this framework represents. From narratives in the most abstract games (Go, Chess) to the character positioning in PC games like *Papers, Please* (2012), the spatial storytelling in games like *Gone Home*  (2013) and the social experience in board games like *Monarch* (2015), games tell their stories in many different ways: by their very mechanics-based nature, by their context, by their rules and patterns, and ultimately by us, the players. What is and is not possible in the rule system communicates what is valued and what is important; stories can be generated by rewards, player interaction and play aesthetics, depending on platform, advertising and target audience. Games create meaning through the models they express, and the logic of the game universe. Thus, game stories are the result of a constellation of intersecting points from all of these ingredients at play, realized ultimately in the player's own mind – right alongside the unquantifiable experiences and beliefs and situations that are preloaded, instilled or built up by the cultures and customs which form the respective context for each and every player.

Such transformational games use specific techniques ranging from the embedded design approach to attitude and behavior change. These techniques are not at first obvious, but are based on years of research into games concerning impact and bring to light notions that game stories are themselves kinds of mechanics, just as game mechanics lend themselves to certain kinds of game stories.

## **OBFUSCATION**

Games can tackle very difficult topics, but the one thing they can't do is tell a player what to do and how to think. That is inherently anti-play and cannot work in a game structure in which players voluntarily enter into the space. Take as an example a game design project from my research lab that was specifically aimed at promoting "bystander intervention" in situations of potential sexual assault at college. The US has grave statistics about sexual assault on college campuses, with one in five college women and one in sixteen college men reporting assaults. With such a crisis, it is critical to shift mindsets so that students find tools and strategies to keep themselves and their friends safe. Our research partners turned to games as a way to engage the attention of students in order to introduce them to ideas about bystander intervention, an effective set of counter-measures to sexual assault.

A key challenge is that students have typically been lectured on the dangers of sexual assault in earlier schooling and by families, and "tune out" college workshops on the topic. Many students therefore display *psychological reactance* to such ideas: where certain types of messages or topics meet resistance. Dillard and Shen (2005) found that public health programs promoting teeth flossing or limiting student drinking produced *reactance*, resulting from a combination of negative cognition and anger, perhaps because such messages undermined feelings of personal freedom or the participants' concept of self and identity. Challenging topics or training programs (such as multicultural training, as studied by Mio and Awakuni (2000)) actually lead to resistance among students. Some programs in fact cause students to hold on to their original beliefs much more strongly. This phenomenon is consistent with the original research in psychological reactance theory (Brehm 1966; Brehm/Brehm 1981). Studies on some sexual assault prevention programs even suggest a boomerang effect, in which the training produced the opposite result and led to poor attitudes towards women (Spikes/Sternadori 2018). Malamuth et al. (2018) note that boomerang effects are produced by an individual counterarguing against the message and even displaying hostility, which shows that among high risk males, sexual assault training interventions may actually do more harm than good. Thus, overt approaches can and do backfire, and require instead a method that aims to deemphasize the overt message. One of the core principles of embedded design is obfuscation, that is, designing for psychologically powerful player choices that do not at the time appear to be as "on topic" as they truly are. Obfuscation changes the frame or the narrative to decrease psychological reactance to challenging materials.

Our design team decided that in order to subvert psychological reactance, we had to obfuscate any overt message and study this approach to see if it could still be effective given such a highly-charged and important topic. We decided to try two very different game approaches and wanted the games to look nothing like one another so that the messages about bystander intervention, developed across two games, could be tested against each other and possibly work in tandem. The first game we developed, *Ship Happens*, is a single-player interactive comic that tackles bystander intervention through a ridiculous narrative involving a future college student "spring break" holiday trip on alien planets. Our space traveling spring breakers encounter a few strange situations in which they have the option to intervene. The choices offered to players ultimately embolden them to try out bystander intervention in the game. Though it is a point-and-click comic involving funny characters and outlandish space travel, the choices strengthen the idea that the player has agency, and that taking action can have a positive effect, narratively speaking.

*Figure 1: A player playing Ship Happens (2017).*

Source: Mary Flanagan

The second game developed, *Mindflock*, is a same-room, multi-device mobile trivia game. What this means, is that players play with a team of friends in the same room, but each player is using their own phone. Players answer trivia questions, and each correct answer is a point for the team. At the start of each round, each player gets a bunch of trivia question categories, such as "College Football" "Harry Potter" or "Contemporary Art". Teams shout back and forth amongst themselves to figure out who is going to be the best person to answer each question. If a teammate knows a lot about college football, players drag that question to that person's name, and it will send the question to their phone. Then, after the questions have been moved around, everyone has a very short time to answer the ones they ended up with, so teams have to hope that they sent the right questions to the right people. The teams are competing over the internet, so whichever team has more points at the end wins. Here, the trivia game obfuscates its intent (it is pitched as a team-building exercise), and it also uses "intermixed" content. More on this theme will follow.

*Figure 2: A group of players engaged with Mindflock (2016).*

Source: Mary Flanagan

Thus *Mindflock* appears to be nothing more than a team-based trivia game, but it is working to encourage eventual bystander intervention. Our longitudinal study on these two games aimed at first-year male college students took place over month. The research team was happy to find evidence that through time the games continued to shift thinking towards bystander intervention, even though it was not obvious to the players that the games were doing so (Potter et al. 2018). Longitudinal studies are notoriously difficult to fund and run in any subfield, and attrition in these types of studies is a very real challenge across the social sciences. Yet the effort was incredibly valuable, for our findings show that welldesigned yet not obvious messages embedded into each of the games, in very different ways, have the power to shift beliefs and attitudes. In this case, the game story may lead to real-world intervention, as first-year male college students reported that they are more likely to intervene in instances of potential sexual assault after playing the game.

Therefore, a game designer taking a responsible role in designing for a game's impact needs to take into account that their approach could cause unexpected reactions, or even harm. In fact, a word of caution: while it is true that messages are a part of a game's story, messages that a designer thinks are in the game may actually not be there, or may not be read/experienced as intended. This is why research is an important component of understanding how game mechanics gel into narratives themselves. Framing the game narrative or choices away from the game's true purpose can reduce unintended consequences and counterintuitively increase its impact.

#### **INTERMIXING**

The principle of intermixing involves using both relevant and irrelevant content in the game so that the blend of content does not reveal the intentions of the game (Flanagan/Kaufman, 2016; Kaufman & Flanagan, 2015). Intermixing is close in its approach to creating a research survey that contains distractor questions, or "cover stories", so that participants in the research are not led to answering in a certain way, are less aware of the study's purpose and do not become biased. Examples of intermixing includes trivia questions that are on- and off-topic, choices that mix "just for fun" with more related choices, and other ways that a message can be present but "mixed in" to feel "natural". Part of the reason intermixing is effective is that the over-representation of on-topic content can trigger reactance or have unintended consequences.

*Mindflock*, mentioned above, addresses this problem by containing trivia questions that increase players' likelihood to intervene in cases of sexual assault. We used particular strategies to develop the content of this game that could have the potential to change players' likelihood of intervening. As we wrote questions, we looked at setting positive norms, teaching intervention methods, increasing risk of not intervening, fostering anti-rape culture role models, minimizing perceived embarrassment and humanizing bystanders. Taken together, these various approaches were mixed together with random trivia questions. In fact, these "just for fun" questions constituted less than half of all of the questions and therefore did not cause reactance.

To take another example, in a study we conducted about role models and representation, we found that "overdoing it" with counter-stereotypical role models can backfire. We tested the representation of characters in a science game, where we created one version that featured six female and two male scientists, while the second version was balanced, including equal numbers of male and female scientists. We tested the game on girls to see if more role models would be more effective in encouraging them to pursue science careers. Even though girls were exposed to more female role models in the imbalanced condition, these role models had virtually no effect on girls' inclination to see themselves pursuing computer science as a career. Perhaps counterintuitively, the female-dominated version was harder for female players to identify with. Reasons could be that an overabundance of female scientists was simply unbelievable and could have reduced perceptions of attainability of career goals. This condition could also have made players see the gap between role models and the self (i.e. "I'm not like them"). Ultimately, being less subtle was also less effective than a balanced representation of male and female scientists.

## **ACTIVATING FANTASY**

Imagine two different scenarios: You are watching a documentary film about a mountain community across the world from where you live. The film shows stunning, unfamiliar scenery but you quickly learn of political turmoil in the area. You become very wrapped up in the emotional plight of one particular family as they struggle. You see the circumstances of unfairness that led to this family losing their farm. Now they have no food. The mother of three has resorted to begging on the street. There is a small girl in particular who needs warmer clothes and could really use help. From deep in your heart you want to reach out ... Now imagine you are watching a program after coming home from work. This show is about a homeless family who live in your city. You hear how they lost their house due to job loss in the economic downturn. Now they can't afford food. The youngest daughter needs better clothes to go to school. The mother of three small children spends her days asking people for money as they pass, going off to their jobs. In fact, now that you look at the image of the mother and where she sits, you realize that you walk near that spot every day on your way to work.

Which story pulls the heartstrings more? These two scenarios invoke ideas of *psychological distance*. This is a phenomenon where places, ideas and people that aren't present in our direct experience of reality are interpreted differently to things that are present in our daily environment. In short, something "far away" engages the imagination and makes us less likely to judge. Things can be distant through time ("once upon a time"), space (on a planet far far away or across the world) or by relation (strangers). Researchers have found that because we simply know less about the distant past and distant future, and because we know less about more remote places that might be difficult to imagine, this lack of knowledge means that our minds must represent these phenomena more abstractly and fill in the blanks. Distant entities in time, space or familiarity are just more abstract to us. This abstraction can be useful: employing psychological distance, for example, can help improve decision-making. Distance, after all, helps us to see "the big picture". Liberman, Trope and Stephan (2007) have shown that temporal distance (thinking about the future, thinking about the past), spatial distance (remote locations), social distance (working from someone else's perspective) and hypothetical distance (counterfactual claims and alternative endings) are all ways of traversing psychological distance. Psychological distance encourages us to use the strategic mind, the part of the mind that slows down, thinks hard and chugs through details as we reflect.

The notion of psychological distance is useful in embedded design to actually help players connect with difficult topics. It may seem counterintuitive, but shifting into a fantasy setting in order to address a real-world problem can allow players to feel more open to the message or the "moral of the story". In order to address bias in scientific fields and in academic programs, for example, we thought repositioning women's struggles in science would possibly be more engaging and cause players to invest if the scenario were psychologically distanced.

In one of my laboratory's research projects, we sought to understand whether or not a game could increase self-confidence in women scientists. In our digital point-and-click adventure puzzle game entitled The Enchanter, our team employed our embedded design strategies to help female scientists reposition the biases they faced and restructure the lingering sense of self-doubt they reported feeling. To play the game, players take on the role of Gertie who has been named the head alchemist, but on her way to the research lab, she encounters bias and discrimination. For example, an authority figure will not let her enter the lab because he is expecting the head alchemist to be a man – not a woman. The (unreliable) narrator undermines Gertie by casting doubt on her abilities. To make progress in the game, players must learn to fight back against these doubting voices on Gertie's behalf and not give in to negative self-talk (e.g. "maybe they are right and I'm not smart enough).

In our study, we looked longitudinally at the effectiveness of *The Enchanter* on women's attitudes, and in particular, on women's self-doubt as it relates to academic achievement and science. Women college students studying science were involved in a two-week study wherein participants came into the lab to play the game at the beginning of the research period, in the middle and at the end of the study, answering questions along the way. The research results showed that playing just one session of *The Enchanter* game decreased self-doubt immediately and that players maintained this feeling for at least a week after playing the game. Thus, the game became the framework through which the young women scientists could silence negative thoughts and focus on overcoming obstacles by externalizing "negative self-talk". *The Enchanter* offered provocative results: they suggest that people who are the victims of bias, such as women in science, can be able to overcome real-world effects of biases (like self-doubt) by fighting against negative self-talk, something that can be practiced in a computer game.

## **SUMMARY**

The three approaches to the embedded design concept presented in this essay show how, from a psychological standpoint, narrative mechanics can operate around difficult topics. Obfuscating, that is changing the frame or the narrative to lower psychological reactance to challenging materials; intermixing, or using relevant and non-relevant content in a game; and psychological distancing, using some kind of distance, including employing the power of fiction, to increase engagement in the game. These techniques can increase what is effective and possible with narrative mechanics.

In closing, I wanted to contextualize the attention to psychology in this essay. By discussing these science-backed approaches, I am not arguing that everything humans produce needs to be quantified and measured. But designers don't always understand the role our games can play out in the world. The Gamez and Rulez conference was filled with astute talks and inspiring projects, and I am honored to be among people who are really digging into what "story" means in games, and how game mechanics, informed by psychology, not only determine what the player can and cannot do within the environment, but what it means and how they feel about it from a psychological perspective. The psychological impact of narrative mechanics, goals and player choice, more than anything else, determines what kind of stories the player will experience.

I have offered some ideas about embedded design approaches and discussed experiments that reveal that games can work to engineer social change. While games are no panacea to the world's problems, game designers can create "microsolutions" to some of these challenges. I have shown that one can use techniques from embedded design to hopefully boost measurable impact as narrative mechanics increasingly become concrete in the analog world. I hope this essay inspires you to push the connections among traditionally disparate disciplines – philosophy, social science, design, play and more – as you seek to understand and craft games that change the story and make sure the best game stories become real.

## **HOW CAN GAME DESIGNERS BETTER UTILIZE NARRATIVE MECHANICS?**

#### **Some practical tips**

*Do:* Know that messages in games don't have to be directly on-topic to be effective.

*Don't:* Be heavy-handed with your message.

*Do:* Use the ideas in embedded design: obfuscating, intermixing and psychological distance to name a few, to your advantage, just like artistic techniques such as metaphors and symbols.

*Don't:* Avoid the responsibility of understanding what your game is doing.

*Do:* Use fiction to your advantage. Fiction can be powerful.

*Don't:* Think games have to "tell the truth" about a social issue, acting like a documentary film.

*Do:* Get players hooked before you delve into difficult subjects, delay the reveal of any particular perspective or "agenda". Remember that all games have messages and carry cultural values, whether the designer intends them or not.

*Don't:* Think fun and serious issues can't go together.

*Do:* Work with researchers to run experiments if you really want to know in what ways your game is changing the story.

*Don't:* Think researchers or game players won't be interested. They will be!

## **REFERENCES**

#### **Literature**

## **Ball Games and Language Games**

On Wittgenstein, Football Fan Culture and Pop Culture

*Martin Lindner*

Doesn't the analogy between language and games throw light here? We can easily imagine people amusing themselves in a field by playing with a ball so as to start various existing games, but playing many without finishing them and in between throwing the ball aimlessly into the air, chasing one another with the ball and bombarding one another for a joke and so on. And now someone says: The whole time they are playing a ball-game and following definite rules at every throw.

And is there not also the case where we play and—make up the rules as we go along? And there is even one where we alter them—as we go along.

(Wittgenstein, *Philosophical Investigations* 1958, No. 83)

It is probably no coincidence that it was in Great Britain in the late 1920s that Wittgenstein found his model of the "language game" – according to an occasional legend, inspired by a 'wild' football game in a park.<sup>1</sup>

<sup>1</sup> This is almost certainly just an anecdote. What is certain is that the metaphor "game" appears for the first time in a very abstract form, when Wittgenstein moves from a view of language as a mechanical "calculus" (metaphor chess) to a view of language

Wittgenstein used his metaphor to refer to the rules by which people played on the grass: how exact or blurred they were, how children learn such games, namely by doing and imitating rather than studying the set of rules, and to what extent such rules become apparent to the observer while they watch the seemingly chaotic processes. The parallel game played by the fans in the stands, which has become increasingly dense and complex (in its semiotics) over the course of now more than hundred years of football, can be viewed in much the same way.

The wider game, which is not limited to the 22 players, consists of at least four levels: the clear demarcation lines (sections of the pitch, hand play, clear foul play), the blurred demarcation lines (offside, unclear fouls), the patterns effective in the game (the characteristic play of individual teams and players), the patterns projected from outside (e.g. fight and discipline as "German virtues", self-sacrificing British "kick and rush", Brazilian "samba", etc.) … and finally the semiotic games of the fans in the stands, which are necessarily related to the football game as a reference, but largely develop their own internal logic and dynamics.

This fan culture is no atavism, even if it is reminiscent of old village rivalries. Evidently, there is some kind of border that divides a homogeneous space into two parts and subsequently is charged with meaning. This usually happens not because there is a particular conflict, but because of a basic drive in people or the socio-cultural system to create meaning where there was none before. <sup>2</sup> In

as a "game" with fuzzy rules (metaphor ball game; cf. *The Big Typescript*, section 47, published in 1933). For this purpose, "ball games" are then actually used in the philosophical investigations and compared with the game of chess (paragraphs 66 and 83). There is a – of course British – Wittgenstein sweatshirt, which adapts the famous text of paragraph 83 specifically to the world of football: "Imagine people playing football, kicking the ball in the air, chasing, fouling each other … "

<sup>2</sup> The rival clubs West Ham United and Tottenham Hotspur are based in two close quarters in traditionally proletarian North-East and East London. The Munich clubs FC Bayern München and 1860 München share one of the most semiotically fertile 'enmities', and they even originate from the same neighborhood: Giesing was a so-called "shattered glass quarter" [a socially deprived area] of Munich. In this sense, according to a favorite saying by Franz Beckenbauer, "Obergiesing vs. Untergiesing" was actually played here. In the process, an opposition was formed between the proletarian 1860 ("Untergiesing", so to speak), and the rising FC Bayern (quasi "Obergiesing") personified by the 'football Kaiser' Beckenbauer himself, who came from the most modest of Giesing backgrounds. Interesting from a semiotic perspective, by the way, is that 'proletarian' 1860 seems to have been far more susceptible to National Social-

20th century Europe, this old game of demarcation is particularly associated with football, the new game of the working class and urban mass culture. The elaborate fan culture itself, with its associated semiotic games, probably did not emerge until after Wittgenstein's death: parallel to the triumphant advance of the new medium of television over the course of the 1960s.

The semiotic games that now proliferate around the game of football have a thoroughly contradictory relationship to media. In a certain sense, they are the exact opposite, because they insist on the almost caricature-like 'tangible' reference, something that is more and more lost in the age of media: it is all about a round ball, a game that lasts 90 minutes, and the tangible, sweaty bodies of the players, who have to deliver "honest work". Even if the true fans are not primarily concerned about winning, as the motto of *www.topspurs.com*, the fansite of Tottenham Hotspur F.C., states<sup>3</sup> , competition still remains a necessary condition for the semiotic games of the fans. The fans present themselves in opposite ends of the stadium as a uniformly dressed "block", singing and waving flags. In the peculiar, self-contained space of the football stadium, their actions function as unmediated physical acts in a way that is otherwise hardly possible in contemporary culture. No one actually needs radio or television on site. Their place is taken by the stadium, as it were, the "medium" of urban "mass" culture. (This has changed with the technical innovation of the digital scoreboard that shows slow motion and, not least, the audience itself.)

Nevertheless, the semiotic games of the football fans are no longer comparable to medieval spectacles such as the *Paglio* in Siena, where participants wear the colors of their respective neighborhoods. Especially in football, the game of the modern urban "masses", they are determined to a considerable extent by the media. And not only because the fans perceive and reflect their own chants and visual patterns on the radio and television as a work of art. The new British fan culture did not emerge until the new media culture brought about the disintegration of the old social milieus and with them the neighborhood cultures which, up to that point, had provided quasi "organic" semiotic material. Thus, the need for new boundaries arose. And at the same time, the free-floating semiotic game ma-

ism and anti-Semitism than FC Bayern, which has always been considered 'snotty'. (cf. Fischer/Lindner/Marschik 2000)

<sup>3</sup> The TOPSPURS philosophy: "The great fallacy is that the game is first and last about winning. It's nothing of the kind. The game is about glory. It's about doing things in style, with a flourish, about going out and beating the other lot, not waiting for them to die of boredom." Danny Blanchflower (TopSpurs Website, 2003/2020).

terial that was available to fans hungry for signs and meaning grew exponentially through the media.

Football fan culture developed parallel to pop culture, which is also a mediaaffiliated disintegration product of the old urban milieus. Nick Hornby in his popular novel *Fever Pitch* (1992) was not the first to draw attention to the striking closeness that connects the two subcultures. Both are expressions of an uninhibited semiotic game that serves to generate new vital energies out of nothing, semanticizing and involving the body, the traditional bearer of the most primary reference, in a complex way.

Indeed, the pop-oriented youth subcultures, which in turn emerged for the first time in Great Britain in the 1950s, knew not only the tension between performers and audiences, but also that between competing groups with their own sign systems: around 1964, the legendary street battles between "Mods" (soulfans in suits) and "Rockers" (rock'n'roll fans) took place, which were later repeated by Teds vs. Punks and then Punks vs. Skinheads. Also in the mid-1960s, new British TV comedy was born. Without inhibitions, respect or good taste, it ripped every sign out of its context and subjected it to grotesque games. <sup>4</sup> At the very beginning, there was the now legendary series *Till Death Us Do Part* with Warren Mitchell as the fascistically inclined East-End tory "Alf Garnett". It was first aired between 1966 and 1969 to great success, and also played an important role in connection with the "Yids" from Tottenham<sup>5</sup> .

At the end of the 1960s, Great Britain was the experimental semiotic laboratory of European media culture, where the game of language and signs intensified considerably. It included traditional "heavy signs" (Baudrillard): On the one hand, the violent subculture of skinheads emerged, which, against the media trend of devaluing all signs, brought the "proletarian" body into play as a pseudo-primary reference and thus an anti-sign. While that group incorporated the British Union Jack into its newly constructed pop-chauvinism, the heavy signs of National Socialism appeared elsewhere in strange contexts: The British glam-

<sup>4</sup> These include the "German/Nazi" jokes of Harry Enfield and ex-Monty Python John Cleese (*Fawlty Towers*) or, more recently, the politically extremely incorrect jokes of Sacha Baron Cohen (alias "Ali G.").

<sup>5</sup> The word "yid" and its related term "yiddo" refer to the supporters and players of Tottenham Hotspur. Originally, they were used in a derogatory manner by rival fans, but the Tottenham fans started using them as a self-designation in a nonpejorative sense.

rock proles6 of The Sweet, who had numerous singles in the charts between 1971 and 1977, combined camp make-up and high heels with swastika bandages. One of the alter egos of David Bowie (besides Ziggy Stardust and many others) was the "Blond Fuehrer" around the same time. And the demonstratively 'degenerate' and 'sick' Sex Pistols, who also integrated the swastika into their deliberately chaotic mix of signs, recorded a punk song in 1976 entitled "Belsen Was A Gas" – a song that referenced the Nazi concentration camp Bergen-Belsen but refused to convey any particular message. <sup>7</sup> For the glam rockers and punks, the reference to Nazis and anti-Semitism worked as a provocative game with seemingly empty signs. Nevertheless, it was and is dependent on the remnants of the old heavy connotations and references that still stick to it. It is only because there were bodies, millions of dead bodies, that these extreme signs still work in a totally mediatized media culture in which there can no longer exist a foreign body.

Since the end of the punk cultural revolution, i.e. since 1978 at the latest, the postmodern findings of Bowie and Baudrillard have become everyday experience. The semiotic game that commercial pop stars such as Madonna continue, has become the domain of advertising. The profusely circulating signs no longer refer to anything 'real', but through them alone, no taboo can be broken or bourgeois parents shocked. There is no longer any policy that is not media policy, and there is now in Europe, too, no clear social order that is impressed upon the individual. Since then, young TV generations have been zapping from sign to sign. Their members are basically able to deal with signs just as freely and ironically/cynically as advertising is now doing more and more radically – something that was previously the prerogative of the artistic avant-gardes (Dada, Surrealists, Situationists).

One could interpret this as meaning that we are now finally freed from the shackles of reference to enter a more humane, postmodern age under the sign of

7 "Belsen was a gas I heard the other day In the open graves where the jews all lay Life is fun and I wish you were here They wrote on postcards to those held dear oh dear oh dear oh dear." (Sex Pistols 1976)

<sup>6</sup> Characteristic of the British delight in playing with signs, strange conversions were apparently possible without any problems. Slade, another very popular teenybopperglam-rock band, around 1970 had still appeared as first-generation skinheads. On the cover of their first record, re-released in 1976 under the title "Whatever Happened To Slade", they pose in full-on glam outfits and smile at photos in the background showing them as skinheads.

play. This is what the German buzzword of "Spaßkultur" ("the culture of fun") ultimately meant: an eternal children's birthday party that dissolves the boundaries between entertainment, advertising, consumption and 'real life'. But in contrast to Baudrillard's use of words, there are no "empty signs". Postmodern media culture does not escape the basic law that every sign must have two sides so that semiotic and social energy can flow between these poles. Not only does the empty body always seek out new signs and meanings – the apparently empty signs of media culture also soak up physical-material reality time and time again.

In media culture especially, the specter of reference cannot be banished, as pop theorist Diedrich Diederichsen states using the example of the disintegrating punk subculture, which was finally dragged down by the burden of the originally anarchically empty signs that "became increasingly laden with meaning and interpretation" over the course of their use. The end result was the undead caricature of "punk", the sincere and rebellious beer punk with the leather jacket and the spiky hair, who shows "the system" their middle finger (Diederichsen 1983: 174). It was the very experience of the semiotic catastrophe brought about by the media and marked by punk in 1976/77 that led to a reactionary return to the body, to the "roots", to authenticity. But these primary experiences, in turn, had to be conjured up through secondary games of signs and symbols. Consequently, people from punk circles revived the proletarian cult style of the skinhead, which had been extinct since about 1974: "Just like the exis [Existentialist youth movement in 1950s Hamburg], the skins need the heavy signs: The fascistic [...] is almost only a coincidence of this discourse [...]. The skin is the hard nut, and it does not matter with what content he fills the sign." (Diederichsen 1983: 173) A casual remark by Dick Hebdige fits in very well here: he reminds us that the skinheads of the first generation already imitated the tone of "Alf Garnett", the contemporary TV caricature of the narrow-minded working class chauvinist from the East End (Hebdige 1983: 93).

*This text was originally published in the German language as part of the essay "Sem und Antisem. Sekundärer Antisemitismus als Zeichen- und Sprachspiel in der Neuen Medien-Kultur." in: Frank, Gustav und Wolfgang Lukas (hgg.) (2004): Norm + Grenze + Abweichung. Kultursemiotische Studien zu Literatur, Medien und Wirtschaft. Michael Titzmann zum 60. Geburtstag. Passau: Verlag Karl Stutz, pp. 321-356.*

## **REFERENCES**

#### **Literature**

**Case Studies**

## **Florence**

A Playful Narrative Experience That Lingers in Your Heart and Mind

#### *Mela Kocher*

About a year ago, I played *Florence* for the first time, and it deeply impressed me – not only because of its delicate sound design, the effectively reduced, carefully colored visuals (stills and very few animations), or the humble, almost sober story. First and foremost, *Florence* impressed me by the unique way in which game mechanics are applied for storytelling purposes: its game mechanics are, in every detail, narrative mechanics, serving the purpose of the story.

*Florence* is not a game as such, even though you still play it in some way. Game-wise, the player is, throughout the 20 chapters, confronted with a set of mini-games, many of which consist of visual puzzles or click-based actions. But those mini-games are not fun to play, in other words, you would not play them for entertainment purposes.

*Florence* is, in a certain sense, an interactive story. Yet, it is not one of those interactive stories or cybertexts that let the player choose between different paths and experience the same story from different perspectives. There is just one story – the life of a young woman named Florence and her first love relationship with Krish, a young musician. The reader cannot alter or influence the story, nor can they choose the perspective. Functionally and aesthetically, *Florence* resembles a comic in which the reader scrolls down or right, depending on the chapter. Sometimes one can interact within the frames, sometimes it is only possible to observe. But seeing *Florence* as partly storytelling, partly mini-games, does not explain its fascination.

## **FEEL – NOT TELL, SHOW OR PLAY**

*Florence* is, as a story-*telling* piece, situated somewhere in the matrix of "show & play". "Show, don't tell" being a rule for drama writing, to make the plot more lively by showing/acting, not narrating it. Applying this strategy to the designing of stories for games, the new guideline proposes "Play, don't show", as a way to play around with narrative scenarios, to interact and to influence the plot (Fine 2011).

It skillfully *shows*, in six acts, a piece of Florence's life centered around the love story. It allows the player to *play* some parts of that life, lets them assist Florence eating sushi, drawing a painting, communicating with her mom, meeting Krish. None of them are extraordinary things per se. It is the specific framing inside the narrative setting which expands the "tell – show – play" line into the *feel* range. The player is not just told or shown the story, nor can they really play it. Instead, they are allowed to *feel* it: feel the essence of the story, feel empathy with the characters, the lightness and anxiety of falling in love, the sadness and anger when falling out of love, and, at last, to feel the sweet, distant memory of the first love, while life goes on with new perspectives, when Florence finally realizes her dreams on her own.

#### **INTERTWINED GAME AND STORY**

In its way of using game mechanics as narrative mechanics, *Florence* is as unique as the well-known *The Secret of Monkey Island* (1990) – which conveyed, in a humorous manner, the mechanics of sword fighting as a sparring match with words. Close to it comes *Heavy Rain*, an action-adventure game with a certain micro mechanic. In some narratively meaningful sequences, for example when trying to help a drowning child, the player rapidly has to push certain controller buttons displayed on the screen. This challenging game task results in a stressful feeling, especially since the player will often not succeed, which has consequences for the subsequent story. Therefore, the stressful feeling the player gets from playing – from engaging with the game mechanics – matches the narrative feeling the story wants to convey. This works well in *Heavy Rain*, even though the represented actions (pressing matching symbols on the screen with the game controller) that the players need to execute, have no connection to the content of the story.

The mechanics of pushing depicted buttons in a certain sequence has been used in other games, of course, such as *Fahrenheit*. Mostly it is not embedded cleverly in the narrative scenes. In *Fahrenheit*, you have to push buttons to help a character climb a wall – there, the stressful player activity does not match the narrative, thus leaving the player strung out; this effect is heightened as this mini-game appears too often and is hard to master.

This narrative functionality of game mechanics is brought to a whole new level in *Florence*, where everything the player does in *play* has a meaning in terms of what is being *told* and *shown*.

## **NARRATIVE MECHANICS OFFER DIFFERENT ROLES**

Since this is an interactive and playful piece, the reader/player does not just scroll and look, but participate, sometimes even against their will. This playful narrative experience comes with a variety of roles – that of spectator (even voyeur), observant participant, conspirator, helper, destructor. These roles change during the progression of the story.

*Florence* is divided into six acts (and 20 chapters), which mostly relate to the Shakespearian five-act structure (*exposition*, *rising action*, *climax*, *falling action*, *resolution)* (cf. King 2004), with Acts 3 and 4 falling in the *climax* category. According to these six acts, the mini-games proceed and the game mechanics change or assume new narrative meanings. They all work, with a few exceptions, with one button or, respectively, one touch (being an iOS and Android game). At the beginning, the player starts with Act 1, Chapter 1. After having read and played it through, the next chapter unfolds for the player, and so on. In the following section, the main mechanics and their narrative function will be explained.

## **"SIMULATION" OF THE ORDINARY MECHANIC**

The exposition of the first act focuses on the everyday life of Florence. The player has to carry out a set of ordinary activities to get to the next chapter: Put sushi in Florence's mouth. Wiggle her toothbrush back and forth. Choose Florence's evasive answers in awkward phone conversations with her mother. Like the social media posts of her friends. The gaming activities all seem quite dull, simulating Florence's everyday, uninspired life, and the monochrome colors (white, gray/black) and sound design support that message. The first time that color (in the visual, and also the narrative sense) pops up, is in the second chapter "Memories", when Florence remembers how she loved to draw in as a child, and the player gets to color a butterfly painting.

A few chapters later (in "Dreams"), Florence finds that very drawing in an old memory box in her storage closet, and her wish to apply her artistic skills returns – a key element in her personal development. It is brought about through a small detail, but makes the story coherent, and emphasizes the agency of the player: her or his actions matter.

## **PUZZLE MECHANIC**

*Figure 1: To begin with, it takes a while to get the conversation going for Florence (left). Later, during their argument, the puzzle pieces become angular and fast-paced (right).*

Source: screenshots (Kocher)

In the second act, after Florence has met Krish – drawn to him by his spherical cello playing on the street – the player becomes Florence's collaborator in helping her get closer to him through conversation (Chapter 5, "First Dates"). This is cleverly done through a very simple gameplay: In comic-style animation, Krish's speech bubbles appear fast. Florence's bubbles have to be put together first. At the beginning, her conversation bubble consists of eight puzzle pieces which the player needs to drag and drop into the speech bubble. Therefore, it takes a while until Florence can respond to Krish. Soon, the puzzle pieces become fewer, and their conversation flows more smoothly. Florence and Kish move closer to each other, and when there is only one piece to put into her speech bubble, they kiss.

In Act 4, Chapter 9 ("Groceries"), the couple fight for the first time. The puzzle pieces change shape now. The connecting shapes are still round at first, but become angular as the conversation turns into an argument. The conflict is also visible in the screen design: Krish and Florence do not fit on the same screen anymore, but the player has to scroll a little sideways, to get from one to the other. The dynamic of the conversation also changes: it is not really turnbased anymore as Krish's bubbles become faster. He does not wait for (or listen to) what Florence says, and leans forward, while she leans back at every bubble emerging from him. The player cannot help Florence fast enough with her conversation anymore.

In Act 5, Chapter 14 ("Fight"), the couple fights again, this time in a much fiercer manner. This is visible at the level of the game mechanics: there seems no end to the angular puzzle pieces the player has to put together. While the color of the puzzle pieces – during the couple's first argument – used to be bright turquoise and pink, they are all red now. And, to bring the puzzle mechanic to a new level, the following chapter presents a picture of the couple sleeping in bed at night, facing away from each other, both disassembled into puzzle pieces. The player can only put each person together as a whole, but there are no connecting pieces that match. The couple cannot be made whole again.

And in the last act, after their breakup, in Chapter 17 ("Fragments"), Krish has to literally be removed from the picture, puzzle piece by piece. At the end, just Florence is left in the picture, looking at an empty spot next to her.

## **RUB MECHANIC**

Rubbing a spot on the screen is used several times during the game, in order to literally and figuratively bring something to the surface. For example, the player has to rub a gray picture, and the underlying dream of Krish becoming a famous musician, or of Florence becoming a joyous artist, are then visible in full color. Alternately, in other mini-games, the player rubbing on the screen represents the waving of polaroid photos. Waving makes the photos become colorful and sharp; in doing so, the player discovers the activities the young couple has been enjoying, such as skating, hiking or going to art galleries.

The rubbing goes both ways, from reality to dreams, and back to reality: In Act 5, Chapter 13 ("Erosion"), the player has to rub on a picture of Krish proudly playing the cello, where everything glows in bright yellow. Gradually, reality's surface is exposed, toned in gray as Krish plays with hanging shoulders.

#### **TURN THE WHEEL OF TIME MECHANIC**

In the "Erosion" chapter, the player has to turn the minute hand of a clock to fast-forward through the relationship of Florence and Krish. This makes it possible to observe how each of them will behave in the next months: from hugging each other and standing close, to her looking at her smartphone and him eating a sandwich, closing his eyes. By turning the wheel of time with the focus on Florence's desk, the player discovers that the watercolors which Krish gave to Florence as a gift are now buried under a pile of papers.

#### **IDLE MECHANIC**

Probably the most difficult interactive game task in *Florence* is presented in the last act, Chapter 18 ("Let Go"). Florence and Krish are walking. He then lags behind more and more, his silhouette slowly fading out. When the player taps Krish, Florence stops until Krish is catches up, his outline being black and clear again. The two of them keep walking, and again, Krish is falling back. The chapter does not close until the player remains idle and lets Krish fall back forever, out of Florence's life. This mechanic shows how difficult it can be to let go, and how tempting – yet futile – it sometimes is to hold on. Also, it forces the agency of the player – now taking an active part in their breakup.

## **CONCLUSION**

The game mechanics of *Florence* do not create an exciting gameplay at all. On the contrary, they are repetitive, do not challenge the player, and are simple and short. Nevertheless, the way they work as a narrative driver is unique: the literal actions that the player has to carry out match exactly what they figuratively represent in the unfolding narrative. Sometimes the same game mechanics, especially in the puzzle mini-games, convey different messages depending on their coloring and sound design, their pace and narrative meaning. In this way, the mechanics also define the changing roles of the player, from helping the couple get closer to playing an active role in ending their relationship. The result is a compelling, close, unforgettable emotional experience that indeed, as the developer's website states, "lingers in hearts and minds" (Mountains 2018).

## **REFERENCES**

## **Literature**

Fine, Richard (2011): "Opinion: Play, don't show." In: Gamasutra. April 11, 2011 (https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/124172/Opinion\_Play\_Dont\_ Show.php).

Mountains (2018): Craft Games Melbourne (http://mountains.studio/).

King, John (2004). "Shakespeare's Five Act Structure." In: No Sweat Shakespeare (https://www.nosweatshakespeare.com/plays/ five-act-structure/).

## **Games**

*Fahrenheit*, Quantic Dream, Atari, 2005. *Florence*, Mountains, Annapurna Interactive, 2018. *Heavy Rain,* Quantic Dream, Sony Computer Entertainment, 2010. *The Secret of Monkey Island*, Lucasfilm Games, 1990.

## **The Last Guardian**

Narrating through Mechanics and Empathy

*Beat Suter*

In my dream I was flying. Flying through the darkness … I awoke to find myself in a strange cave. I noticed with a start that I was not alone. Beside me lay a great man-eating beast. (*The Last Guardian* 2016)

Thus an older man begins with a deep voice from offstage and tells in retrospect his story, which he experienced as a boy. The poetic beginning is quickly replaced by the presence of the boy and the beast that have to get familiar with each other and find their way in a foreign environment. Together they learn the mechanics of interaction and progress.

The narrative mechanics of the game *The Last Guardian* couldn't be easier at first. A boy and an animal find themselves in a chasm, which looks like a dungeon. The large beast is chained and injured. The boy wakes up from unconsciousness and does not know where he is. It quickly becomes clear that the boy and the animal are in mutual dependence to each other. One cannot move forward without the other.

## **EMPATHY AND SMALL NARRATIVE INTERPERSONAL INTERACTIONS**

It takes time for them to get to know each other and develop mutual support and cooperation. It is a slow approach. The boy tries to win the trust of the animal, which is much more powerful than him. This is the only way he can free the animal from the chain and pull the spears from its wounds. And the boy can get the animal to help him reach the openings in the rocky ruins that hold both creatures captive. But the beast does not always do what the boy wants. It is an idiosyncratic and independent creature. The boy has to listen to it, watch its behavior and be patient. Certain interactions change the beast's behavior, and often the beast indicates where to go. The narrative mechanics of the small interactions between man and beast are the core of the game. This empathetic beginning is formative because the boy embodies the avatar role of the player and every approach and setback is experienced directly by the player.

The critic Mark Brown calls this "design by subtraction" (Brown 2015) – reduced design. This applies not only to the mechanics and the environment, but also to the narrative. The story begins, with as little baggage as possible, in a closed area: a prison. This is what game designer Fumito Ueda had in mind when he did his first sketch for the game with the beast behind prison bars (Ueda 2018). The two characters have to feel their way through this environment and get to know each other and bond. And the player has to learn the mechanics with which the two characters can advance through caves and ruins. The boy brings the animal food in the form of glowing barrels. The animal lets the boy climb on its back and ride, and lifts him up to ledges, which highlights the unusual vertical orientation of the game.

Due to the slow build-up of empathy, the player in the role of the boy is later able to trust and always count on the big beast, Trico. The player knows they can rely on Trico to catch them at the right moment after a jump into the void or to come to the rescue in time when the guards attack and threaten to kill them.

#### **SPATIAL PROGRESS STORY**

This empathetic, interactive relationship of mutual dependency, which seems so simple at the beginning, is embedded in a more complex framework of a spatial progress story as well as a very complex backstory that is hinted at by the narrator's persona from offstage, but is only slowly revealed as the game progresses.

The game world and its sequences of rooms are constructed in such a way that closed claustrophobic rooms are replaced by taller ones, until finally an outdoor area is reached that allows you to breathe and marvel. You start in the Cave, a very small-enclosed area that feels like a prison. Then you go forward through the mountain, across slightly larger rooms towards a first small outdoor area. From there you can already see the big tower for the first time, which is the setting for the final events of the game. Next, the game world reverts back into the mountain, across the fallen-statue bridge, through partly cathedral-like rooms in the mountain and out into the second outdoor area, from where you can see up into the sky, but also encounter some fog that limits your view. The journey continues in a spiral movement through the strange world of ruins and rocks called the Nest, which leads upward, becoming higher and higher.  And during this part, you will temporarily lose height by falling down or rescuing Trico.

The locomotion takes place as a spiral from bottom to top, through a labyrinthine world with strange ancient equipment. One room after another must be mastered. The boy must climb beneath a high ceiling, balance himself over wooden beams, climb up on ropes and chains, squeeze himself through ledges, and call out to the big animal, Trico. Trico usually finds another way and can jump up onto unreachable walls. Sometimes the boy has to climb on the animal's back or head and hold on while it jumps over spiky rocks or runs over rickety wooden scaffolding to reach the next play area.

As the world is gradually explored, the game gains speed and becomes faster and faster, so that in the end the player is under permanent pressure and therefore has to act a lot quicker.

## **FLASHBACKS AND BACKSTORY**

The backstory is hinted at in the third cutscene, "The First Antenna", with some pictures that remain mysterious for the time being. Seven or more hours of playing will pass before it is explained in the longer cutscene, "Capturing the Boy". Up to this point the player is left in the dark. Only after the boy has fainted again and lies in a delirium in the next antenna room, is his story revealed. But until then. it is the relationship between the two characters and the carefully increasing gameplay that enables immersion and a narrative path. After that the backstory becomes important for the further progression of the game.

Almost at the top of the tower, the player begins to realize that they are in a funnel of ruins or a crater which serves as a nest for big animals. You realize how the crater world (The Valley) is laid out, structured and limited – and that there is probably a world outside. And finally, in the fourth cutscene, it is revealed how the boy and Trico ended up in the cave prison ruin in the first place!

The game has classic, but inconspicuous and cleverly embedded cutscenes – seven in total (Glaser 2017: 254ff.). Two short cutscenes at the beginning (Setting the Scene, Awakening), a disordered delirium cutscene (The First Antenna), and the story of the encounter of the boy and the beast in the Memory Dream (Capturing the Boy). The fifth and longest cutscene in three parts is the live fight scene in the tower (Atop the Tower). In the following sixth cutscene (Saving the Boy) the boy has destroyed the master core of the tower, which now explodes live, whereupon he is rescued by Trico and brought to his village unconscious. The backstory is hinted at in the first and third cutscenes and told in the fourth cutscene. The second, fifth and sixth cutscenes are embedded in the live gameplay. And the seventh and last cutscene (Many Years Later) brings the story to a conclusion with the boy as the grown-up older man – the one that tells the story.

## **MYSTICAL AND MECHANICAL PREMISES**

The backstory is the tribal history of the boy, as well as the story of the enslaved animals, of which Trico is one. Thus, an extraordinary or even alien power or energy is fought in the last third of the game. The two types of creatures became enemies through the action of a technical apparatus or unit located in the tower. This could already be perceived from far below as something apart and clearly different in its technological construction from the rest of the ruins of buildings in this crater world.

## **CHANGE OF PERSPECTIVE**

Anyone who has played the game will inevitably ask the question: which is the main character, the boy or the animal Trico? The answer takes some getting used to: the player only plays the sidekick as the avatar of the boy. The main character is played by an amazing AI – Trico! This change of perspective is deliberately employed by Fumito Ueda, the designer of the game. The boy may partly lead the beast Trico, but at many moments it is Trico who leads and drives the game. Trico probably means "the third Ico" (Brown 2017). The first two were played in Ueda's games, *Ico* and *The Shadow of the Colossus*. So the boy takes the role of the companion, which in the first game, *Ico* (2001), was played by the girl Jorda who was not able to carry out any actions herself. The boy is able to act and give orders but cannot progress alone and does not show signs of character change. By contrast, Trico undergoes a character development, overcomes the fear of the colored glass eyes and in the end is able to fly again. Finally, he saves the boy and brings him back to his village. Trico then takes off alone and flies away into a liberated world. Years later, the children of the village find the light shield again. The boy, now grown into an older man, begins to tell his experiences retrospectively. And the narrative circle is completed – formally and fictively – with Trico who has established his home in the Cave.

*The Last Guardian* is one of the best examples of a game in which the narrative is told through mechanics. The story is conveyed through gameplay and gradual (spatial) progress in the game. The most important prerequisite, however, is the empathetic relationship between the boy and the beast Trico, including the noticeable character development of the beast into a very reliable companion and friend.

## **REFERENCES**

#### **Literature**

#### **Games**

*Ico*. SIE Japan Studio, Team Ico, Sony Interactive Entertainment, 2001

#### **Videos**

## **Murder at the Museum**

Narrative Audio Games for Museums

*Stefan Schmidlin*

*Murder at the Museum* (*MaM*) is an experimental audio game featuring a multilinear crime story that turns the museum's exhibits into witnesses and suspects. Players take on the role of a grumpy detective and help him solve a murder case: they decide which suspects they want to question by choosing a path through the museum and, ultimately, which one they want to accuse as the prime suspect.

With *MaM* we tried to overcome a common issue of many museum games which tend to shift the visitor's attention to the game app and away from the museum itself. Therefore, we developed the game as an audio-only experience that barely requires any screen interactions.

In this case study we will discuss the design process with a special focus on the narrative design and game experience. In particular, we will show how the use of open-world games helped us deal with the unpredictable movement of players in the museum.

#### **MAIN CONTENT**

#### **Game experience**

Two variations of *Murder at the Museum* (*MaM*) have been created and playtested, one at *Stadtmuseum Aarau* and the other at *Ortsmuseum Küsnacht*, two local history museums near Zurich, Switzerland. Typically, museum games are location-specific and cannot be transferred to other museums easily. Each version of *MaM* features its own location-specific detective story, but they both share the same game system and design tools as well as the same player-avatars, Detective Bissig and sidekick Isabel Minischock.

The game experience revolves around the idea of an interactive audio book in which museum exhibits come to life by turning them into life-like characters: a fancy-looking swan-shaped sled is turned into a chatty older lady; a small toy figurine in a display cabinet into a sweet but sad gentleman who is frustrated at being locked in and unable to visit his wife. The interaction between the player and the characters adds emotions and liveliness to the museum visit. It is a multilinear story, similar to those children's books which allow readers to decide how to continue the story by choosing one of the page numbers. In *MaM*, by contrast, decisions are location-based: walking to the "swan lady" instead of the "toy gentleman" will make the story progress differently.

*Figure 1: Basic game loop.*

Go to next Location

We used Bluetooth beacons to track players' locations in the museum. Beacons function as proximity sensors and automatically trigger the next section of the story as soon as the player arrives at their destination.

Thus, the basic game loop (Figure 1) resembles a tabletop role-playing game with story prompts, player actions and the narration of the outcome following in turn. During the 20-30 minutes it takes to complete one session, players gather clues and are then able to accuse suspects of the crime. At the end of the game, players receive a star rating depending on their choices in the game.

Source: Stefan Schmidlin

### **Development process**

Despite the simple game mechanics, the experience was not initially selfexplanatory. A lot of effort was spent on the on-boarding process and the polishing of the game experience.

We adopted an iterative design process as is common in game development. In the first version of the game, players did not have an avatar. Suspects spoke short monologues and a narrator then offered options as to where the player could go, referring to a color-coded map of the museum. Players reported that they had struggled to follow the instructions (which they could hear but not see) and read the map. Holding both the map and the navigation device in each hand was cumbersome, too. In addition, players found the monologues to be lacking interactivity.

*Figure 2: Player with iPad and headphones looking at one of the exhibits that appears as a character in the game.*

Source: Stefan Schmidlin

We replaced the map with color markers which we positioned next to the path. This allowed us to use instructions like "follow the blue markers". Players could follow these more easily because they were actionable. To address the issue of interactivity, we invented the role of Detective Bissig who acted as the player's avatar and led the conversations with the suspects. With the help of the avatar, we were able to turn the monologues into conversations, which made the interactions feel more natural and helped immersion. During this same step, we also replaced the narrator with the in-game character Isabel Minischock who acted by Bissig's smart sidekick and cheeky assistant. Isabel became the tutorial voice, narrated the players' choices and also occasionally teased Bissig about his clumsiness with technology and inability to navigate.

As the next important step in development, we introduced a neck pouch to enable hands-free play and let players almost forget that they were wearing the device. In combination, these measures demonstrably made the game feel more immersive.

Young players especially were not yet satisfied by this level of interactivity through dialogue, and wished for more game-like interactivity. Hence, the version of the game used in Küsnacht featured a puzzle which had players combine several objects to reveal a code that provided an important clue.

#### **Story and narrative design**

*Murder at the Museum* is a detective story, revolving around a murder or the disappearance of an exhibit at the museum. The genre was determined early on because it lends itself well to a narrative game in a museum: the crime inherently establishes the task that players have to solve and primes them to take an investigative mindset. Additionally, the classic detective story has a long tradition in the German-speaking world and has remained appealing for older and younger players alike.

The character-led nature of the story involved selecting exhibits that we could turn into interesting characters and then shaping them, and was the key driver of the writing process. We let ourselves be guided by intuition, visiting the two museums' permanent collections many times, looking at exhibits, assigning character traits, voices and personalities based on the historical facts, their appearance or position in the exhibition. We then wrote sample dialogues in which the characters would interact with Detective Bissig to assess if the characters worked well in the setting. A few characters dropped out at this stage because they were simply not interesting enough.

When testing the early prototypes, it became obvious that players would often stray off-path, either because they got lost or because they just found something intriguing to look at that had nothing to do with the game. Museum visits should of course reward such exploration and discovery, but our prototype did not support that mode of play. It assumed that players would choose one of the proposed options and walk there immediately. Yet this model, which was based on a multilinear storybook offering limited choice, proved to be wrong! Physical space affords a degree of choice that is nearly unlimited. We had to factor unpredictability into our design, so we made it a paradigm that every previously discovered character would always have something to say. They would either help players to get back on track, or open up secret paths or a shortcut. This open-world approach was more complex, because instead of just two or three options, players could now choose to visit every character in the game world at any time. We modelled this concept using a world state as shown in Figure 3. If players discover a crucial piece of information, the world state then changes (represented by the vertical lines), and characters adapt their dialogues to offer meaningful help relating to this new state (represented by the little numbers next to the letters each of which stands for a character). Characters that are not so important in a given state do not necessarily say anything new, but still give useful hints (represented in gray). If players are inactive for too long, Isabel will give them hints, too.

*Figure 3: Using world state to drive the story enables players to always interact with any of the known characters and obtain pertinent information.*

Source: Stefan Schmidlin

The physical layout of the museum's exhibition had a strong influence on story progression. There were two important factors to take into account: the players' perceived *cost* of taking a decision and the *design limitations* associated with the use of Bluetooth beacons and the open-world approach.

**Version 1:** When returning from C, players must pass B and trigger unintended interactions

**Version 2:** Avoids unintential interactions with B.

That *cost* was a factor became apparent in the earliest prototypes: players did not make decisions based on the rationale presented in the game, but rather based on a ratio of *cost* versus the promise of fun. For example, players would rather visit a new character than one they had already met (backtracking), and prefer to stay on the same floor rather than climb stairs (physical cost). In Aarau, the exhibition is located in a historic tower spanning seven floors, so the *cost* is obvious. Play testers mentioned that they thought backtracking was boring, even more so if it meant climbing down stairs they had ascended before. For us, this meant that we modelled the story to progress as players climbed to higher floors, which allowed visitors to discover new areas of the museum with each decision and thus conveyed a sense of exploration. But we also exploited this in order to reward players who engaged in more exploration. Secret routes, shortcuts and side quests often meant having to backtrack.

The *technical limitations* stem from our decision to create a hands-free openworld experience. The use of beacons meant that they would trigger whenever a player walks up to a character, and the open-world design dictated that the character would always say something when the player approached them. For comparison, in a normal open-world adventure, game designers are free to remove a NPC when they have nothing to say. In a museum, said NPC being a physical exhibit, it cannot just disappear. We opted to remove characters that would provoke unwanted interactions due to their geographical location, instead of inventing idle dialogue. This is visualized in Figure 4. At B, the player has to decide whether to backtrack to A or visit C. Most players would want to choose C because it is the explorative choice. In Version 1, players visiting C would invariably come into the proximity of beacon B on the way back, and trigger a reaction from the character. If players had not planned to talk to B, they interpreted this as a mistake. In Version 2, we dropped C in favor of D. After D, the player could choose to go back to B or A without unwittingly visiting any characters. This felt more natural.

The short duration of a game session lent itself well to a simple three-act structure. The adventure hook and in-story familiarization with the game system are followed by a phase of free exploration where players can widen the field of suspects, until they finally discover a decisive clue that allows them to identify the murderer. What makes the game experience stand out is the juxtaposition of fictionalized characters and the reality of the exhibition. This allowed many visitors to form an emotional connection with the exhibits and left them interested in learning more.

## **OUTCOME AND CONCLUSION**

We conducted studies at both museums. Our goal was to evaluate players' experiences and assess the game's ability to enhance the museum visit and make it more memorable.

Overall, the game was very well received at both locations. Three out of four respondents awarded it at least four out of five stars. More than half of the players responded that they would visit a museum just to play this game, and would like to play more episodes. Among the negative points the most frequently mentioned were low interactivity and slow pacing, a feedback that mostly came from young adults who were used to playing video games. The inclusion of a puzzle in the second version of the game received a lot of positive feedback, and we estimate that including more puzzles could further improve the game experience.

Using beacon technology and neck pouches to allow for hands-free play proved to be crucial in keeping players focused on the museum's exhibition and the story, rather than being glued to the game app.

## **REFERENCES**

## **Game**

*Murder at the Museum,* Stefan Schmidlin, Game Design, Zurich University of the Arts, in Collaboration with Engagement Migros and Stadtmuseum Aarau, 2019.

## **Even** *Missile Command* **Tells a Story**

#### *Beat Suter*

Many games without stories still manage to tell good stories. *Missile Command* (1980) is one of them and may serve as a good example for two kinds of narrative mechanics: gameplay mechanics that are used as narrative elements, and a political context that is embedded in such a way that players can experience an ethical dilemma about the consequences of their actions while under threat.

It is the year 1980, at the height of the Cold War. Politics and the older generation practice nuclear deterrence and generate an atmosphere of fear and anxiety. So much so that the younger generation declares a new ice age, starts a rebellion in the streets and adopts ironically absurd slogans. The possibility of nuclear war hangs over everybody. Any day could be the last one. Any day could be the "day after". It is all forgotten now, but it was tangible and concrete then. These days, the nuclear threat is not so concrete, even though many missiles are still ready in their silos, and the leaders in control are as unpredictable as ever.

### **PROTECT YOUR ENVIRONMENT**

*Missile Command* is a game that lets you feel these things in an intensely immersive way. In this arcade game, you are under threat and use a trackball and a crosshair to fire missiles from three missile defense platforms, targeting and then shooting at incoming projectiles. You have to protect six cities from an unending rain of these intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). The graphics of course don't seem too impressive. After all, it is 1980. Incoming missiles are singlepixel glowing dots, cities are bichromatic skyscraper silhouettes, and the sound of explosions has that great old Atari rumble (Extra Credits 2012).

Believe it or not, if you look at it from the player's perspective, the game is non-violent. The player never launches a nuclear missile. You never fire at an enemy. The enemy, in fact, is unknown, and the game is entirely about trying desperately to save lives. The player, rather than assuming a dominant position as is often the case in games, is in a weak position here, with merely reactive and very limited options. There is not enough time to revel in nuclear explosions or heroically shoot down enemy planes, ward off spaceships or go after the enemies themselves. The player is simply at the receiving end of a nuclear strike, something that could have happened any day in 1980. In this way, the experience of playing the game is very human and down-to-earth.

## **A DECISION GAME**

The player takes the role of a local missile commander who controls three bases of missiles and has to defend six cities close-by. This is something easy to identify with. Unfortunately, the missile bases have limited resources, yet there is a seemingly unlimited onslaught of incoming ICBMs. The player soon realizes that they cannot defend all six cities and have to make decisions about which ones and how many to defend. And they also have to keep the missile platforms alive in order to protect as many cities as possible. It is a tough dilemma: Do you sacrifice cities with civilians just to keep a military installation with your soldiers functioning? How many can you keep alive? Do you sacrifice two cities containing presumably millions of people, so that the other cities with their own civilians may survive? There is no time to think about this. The tension builds up. You have to make the decisions instantly. Maybe you can manage to keep one city alive?

"I always ended up sacrificing cities to save others, ran out of missiles, lost bases… no matter how hard I tried, I always, ALWAYS lost in the end. Now I know why." (Mind Fracture 2017 in: Extra Credits 2012)

You can't win the game of *Missile Command*. There comes the time when your last city burns and explodes. You can't win a nuclear war. The message is clear.

"To paraphrase Joshua from War Games, 'Nuclear war is a strange game. The only winning move is not to play.'" (Mind Fracture 2017 in: Extra Credits 2012)

*Figure 1: Front of manual for the Atari 400 and 800 versions of Missile Command (left), defending against incoming missiles and blasting them out of the sky in the arcade version (1980).*

Source: Mobygames, screenshots (Suter)

Basically, in Missile Command, as in many arcade games of the 1970s and 1980s, the simple background story serves as a narrative framework for a crucial gameplay that totally immerses the player in an action and reaction scheme. But Missile Command works in a much more direct way. The narrative framework is fictional, yet at the same time it reflects realistic political and mass psychological conditions and forces the player into a quasi-real role. The fiction is so closely interwoven with reality, and especially with people's real fears, that players experience emotional tensions themselves. This was definitely the intention of the developers of Missile Command.

## **MISSILE COMMANDER IN BUNKER WITH TRACKBALL AND RADAR**

The screen interface remains very technical and simple, as in many other simulation games Atari produced at that time. And if you look closer, you realize that the arcade machine interface seems to be designed in order to familiarize the player with operating a radar screen. An important component is the trackball that makes sure there is free and quick movement for the cursor. Developer Dave Theurer refers to military history when he states in an early memo that the screen would mimic a real radar display: "The color monitor will display a radar scan view of the coast and the offensive and defensive missile action. [Missiles] will appear as a blip on the monitor as the radar beam scans over them. A cursor will be displayed on the screen and guided by the trackball." (Temple 2016) This brings the player even closer to a realistic situation of defending their environment from a bunker and making difficult decisions. In this respect, it is an early ethical decision-game, maybe even a serious game.

Game designer David Theurer recalls having had nightmares – first as the inspiration for the game, but also during its development. "Missile Command embodied the Cold War nightmare the world lived in. [...] I had nightmares about nuclear attacks", Theurer said in an interview with game critic Alex Rubens in 2013. "During that time, I lived near Moffett Field, where the Air Force would randomly launch spy planes, which made a tremendous roar when taking off. I'd wake up, and while half asleep, hear the launch sounds and for a moment wonder if it was an atomic blast." (Rubens 2013)

#### **REAL NIGHTMARES**

Theurer's nightmares were recurring events during the development of the game for Atari. This was a very sobering experience for the game designer. "I would dream that I was hiking in the mountains above the Bay Area, with the fabulous views of the San Francisco Bay. In the dream, I'd see the missile streaks coming in and know that the blast would hit me while hiking there on the mountain." (Rubens 2013). This internalization of the events in the game naturally also had to do with the obsessive way Theurer went about his work, creating numerous scenarios and reprogramming them again and again. And finally, they also helped him to focus on the essential events and elements the game needed. Various additional elements were then deleted in order not to dilute and endanger the immediate experience.

## **ADAPTIVE NARRATIVE FOR A "SERIOUS GAME"**

And finally, the closing point of the game stems from those nightmares. In line with the real political references, there was no sneering "game over" screen at the end, but a simple "THE END". Symbolically, Theurer thus created a nuclear explosion with the appearance of the words "THE END" as the conclusion of the game. "Missile Command was a social commentary ahead of its time." (Rubens 2013) A reminder that you will never be able to win a nuclear war. And a reminder that a real-world context may very well be able to generate direct emotional immersion in a video game as well as awareness for that context, while playfully simulating the immediate consequences and scenarios of precarious social and political situations.

The narrative mechanics of *Missile Command* are nothing less than the direct transfer of a real political situation into a scenario: the defense of one's own environment against an attack from outside. The player is given a decisive role in which he or she is faced with an immediate ethical dilemma. Dave Theurer had first planned a concrete geography in which six named Californian cities had to be defended. In that version, it was also clear that the enemy leading the attacks was called the Soviet Union. Just as he discarded parts of a more complex GUI with flashing scores, he also deleted the geographical references so that *everyone* could feel directly addressed. Thus, in the published version, the player is allowed to interpret their own geography and their own enemy.

## **REFERENCES**

#### **Literature**

#### **Game**

*Missile Command*, Atari, Atari, 1980.

#### **Video**

Extra Credits (2012): Narrative Mechanics – How Missile Command Tells a Story. In: YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQJA5YjvHDU&t= 323s&ab\_channel=ExtraCredits).

## **Shave**

Playing with Conventions in Society and Game Design

*Sonja Böckler*

*SHAVE* (Böckler 2018) is an art game which explores the social conventions surrounding shaving and hair within a game system. The main mechanic of the game comprises the task of completely removing the hair from a variety of hairy objects. The player can interact with the objects directly via touch input on a mobile device. During the game the combinations of hair and object become more and more bizarre, and players begin to question the sense of their actions. Diverse sensations and associations emerge, which point beyond the actual game.

## **THE BACKGROUND**

*SHAVE* was developed in the context of a master's project at Zurich University of the Arts. Based on the premise that we have many implicit expectations and fixed concepts relating to the games medium, art games were examined as a tool for expanding the limits of conventional game design. These are mostly short games, produced in small teams and with little focus on commercial success, and therefore offer game designers the necessary creative freedom in order to develop strong and extraordinary experiences.

## **THE THEME – A GAME ABOUT SHAVING?**

In the field of Triple-A computer games, certain topics are repeatedly dealt with, including war, territorial power struggles or rebellion. Their narratives are formed from archetypes, cultural-historical clichés and stereotypical themes that can be easily read and understood by the player. Content in which we can predict what kind of experience will await us is appealing, and many Triple-A computer games operate according to this lowest common denominator. For comparison, imagine a visit to a fast food restaurant which promises us a predictable and consistent experience. By contrast, an experimental food choice, such as molecular cuisine, offers new flavors and taste combinations – with the high risk that it may not be for everyone. And you probably won't order the same food twice. The motivation for visiting an experimental kitchen is not pure pleasure, but entertainment, which also contains an element of surprise and curiosity for the new and unexpected.

Source: Sonja Böckler

## **THE AMBIVALENCE OF HAIR AND PLAYING WITH UNPLEASANTNESS**

There is no conventional story in *SHAVE* to guide the player through the game. Instead, the game engages the player by means of a topic from everyday life that almost everybody can relate to: body hair and our weird conventions around it. In our society this topic contains a great ambivalence of meaning, and it illustrates how our interpretation of one and the same thing vastly depends on the context. Full thick hair on the head is considered beautiful, representing health and youthfulness. But as soon as the hair is no longer anchored to the head and eventually ends up in the drain or in the soup, we feel disgusted. Hair on women's legs or under the armpits is unattractive, but a hairy male chest can stand for masculinity.

These ambivalent views about hair are the essence of the intended gaming experience. The player is confronted with abstract fur-covered objects and the simple task of shaving them. In this basic set-up, different meanings, stories and interpretations arise. It is useful that people tend to recognize meaning and context in everything they encounter, but, to keep the disgust in the player's imagination, the style of the game is very clean. Soft-looking objects float in a clean white room, reminiscent of a clinical facility or futuristic laboratory. The simplicity and reduction to the essentials also supports this imaginary space. Only the strong contrast between hair and skin invites the player to intervene.

Some players are already disgusted as soon as they touch the virtual hairy objects. They get goose bumps from the noise or cannot watch how the hair falls down while shaving. Others feel great joy when they remove the inappropriate hairs from this otherwise clean world. A field of tension opens up between sensual pleasure and disgust. The experience can even take on a symbolic or metaphorical character, and so a rather untypical gaming experience is created.

At some point the player is introduced to a popsicle which is completely devoid of hair. When the popsicle is touched, hair starts growing on it. The shaving mechanic is reversed and the goal in this level is to cover the whole popsicle with hair. Players often reacted with disgust, because they could not avoid associating the sensual delight of licking a popsicle with their feelings of disgust at having a hair in the mouth at the same time.

*Figure 2: Popsicle with hair growth.*

Source: Sonja Böckler

## **ACTIONS CREATE MEANING**

Big game titles often rely on tried and tested mechanics, for instance, a firstperson shooter or a strategy-building game. Just like the similarities in the themes chosen, games are based on the same game design ingredients that have worked so many times before. Therefore, the mechanics are often not perfectly tuned to the narrative and the interactions the player performs. In *SHAVE*, the mechanic and the setting both contribute to a certain curated experience. Based on the idea "Do It, Don't View It" (Mechner 2008), the experience is created through the player's interaction with the game, with a special emphasis on the sensations encountered. To challenge our common sense of purpose and targetorientation, every level in *SHAVE* ends with a pleasant sound and burst of hairy confetti raining over the screen, highlighting the absurdity of the goal that the player is aiming for.

## **SURREALISTIC REFERENCES**

In this game, various motifs from surrealism are employed and thus further scope for interpretation is invited into the game experience. The shapes, animations or colors of the objects deviate slightly from reality: through a nuanced shifting in the representation they appear subtly different and slightly disturbing.

A fur-lined teacup, for example, is inspired by Meret Oppenheim's *Object* (1936). The delicate porcelain is hidden under the wild hair, and the players usually very much enjoy freeing the cup from the hair. As a further homage, reference is made to René Magritte's *The Treachery of Images* (1929). The original painting features the famous text "C'est ne pas une pipe", which plays with our perception of reality and representation. In the 'hairy' context of the game, this pipe raises questions such as: Does it make a difference to my sensation whether I shave real or virtual hair? And is my emotional response as artificially generated (perhaps through social conditioning) as the pipe I am shaving?

#### **PLAYING WITH EXPECTATIONS**

Most objects and shapes in *SHAVE* seem to be easily readable, and players can tell which object is hidden under the hair by its silhouette. Others toy with the expectations of the player. For example, a hairy triangular object is presented. At this point the player has already learned that they can 'shave' the objects with one finger and turn them with two fingers. But now, when they start to rotate the object, it is no longer stiff, as they learned to expect from the tea cup, pipe or egg they shaved in the previous levels. Instead, this object wobbles vividly as if it were made of soft flesh. While turning and watching the movement of the object, the player still cannot see what is under the hair. Only after shaving is a disembodied fleshy nose revealed.

In another level the player is presented with a dog, on which only the bright eyes are not covered by thick brown fur. The form underneath is not clearly discernible due to its long hair. From the stiff pose, one might think of a stuffed animal. But as soon as the player starts to 'shave' the dog, a bright pink plastic skin appears under the hair. The sound of rubbing a balloon is heard and the part of it that is being shaved dents a little, as if the material is yielding. The whole interaction here is only slightly different from the previous levels, but the player now thinks of the sharp razor blade one generally uses to shave. Unlike before, they now fear that the balloon dog will burst if they touch it.

*Figure 3: Will the hairy balloon dog burst if the player is not careful enough?*

Source: Sonja Böckler

## **FINDINGS**

*SHAVE* is not just a game that is enjoyable and entertaining, but it also invites the player to reflect on their own attitudes towards hair and how rarely we fundamentally question whether our conventions make sense at all. If we understand conventions as rules of our society, then the transfer of these rules into a game can make the essence of a convention visible. In this way, simply shaving objects is contributing to a larger discussion. Keeping it symbolic and not too concrete allows the player to find their own meaning in their actions within the game. Consequently, players did not feel instructed by the game, but rather invited to reflect on the justifications behind the real-life conventions concerning hair.

Deliberately limiting the entire game to one particular experience, with a strong focus on a specific interaction throughout its duration, has highlighted the need to adjust common game design approaches and develop custom solutions instead. Furthermore it can be very inspiring introducing a somewhat unusual topic into the medium of computer games and shaping one's own expressive voice to suit the game.

Not relying on proven game and motivation design patterns made it difficult to predict the outcome of certain game design decisions. That in turn made the development probably more extensive than an out-of-the-box approach would have done. Sometimes I consciously broke with common game design patterns. Because many people have a certain expectation of how games work, there is a risk that gamers become so irritated that they stop playing, which also reveals our narrow expectations of games. However, games that invite new themes and new storytelling approaches in game design are an important element in the evolution of computer games.

## **REFERENCES**

#### **Literature**

Mechner, Jordan (2008): The Sands of Time: Crafting a Video Game (jordanmechner.com/articles).

## **Art/Games**

Böckler, Sonja (2018): Shave, Zurich: Zurich University of the Arts.

## **The** *Twitter* **Game**

Game Mechanics of *Twitter*

*René Bauer*

Many people use social media as a kind of game, but the individual *Twitter* (2006) player doesn't even notice that they are playing.

However, the motivational mechanisms of using *Twitter* are all too often similar to games, ranging from simple single-player games with links, retweets and tweets to epic multiplayer games with long epic battles of insults, arguing in endless threads – and all this every day! It is a kind of social media '*EVE Online* game' (*EVE Online* 2003). It uses all kinds of narrative mechanics: from simple text, images, animations, links, interactive surveys to clever rhetorical tricks but also simple insults and plain provocations. Keeping up appearances is paramount. Facework as a skill of constantly maintaining the face (Goffman 1967) becomes a dominant strategy for the individual *Twitter* users. Their aim is to receive the respect they think they deserve. Establishing and sustaining a preferred social identity during interactions is so important that its techniques underlying this process become completely lost in the magic circle of social media games – something that is very common in games.

Of course, *Twitter* users pursue different goals and directions. Is it ultimately just about the fun of getting attention from other people? Or is there more? From a more playful point of view we might draw an analogy from the taxonomy of player types developed in the Bartle Test (Bartle 1996). In MultiUserDungeons (MUDS) there are four different types of players: socializers, explorers, achievers and killers. The group of socializers is mainly interested in meeting, getting to know each other, doing something together. The explorers are looking for new information, new ideas, new territory. The achievers want to solve all kinds of challenges. And the killers take up rivalry, want to win, want to be the best and crave maximum attention. These four different player types emerge on *Twitter*  when narratives and assertion-driven statements come into play.

#### **'TWITTERGAME'**

*Twitter* is a game and therefore has a game mechanic that motivates and drives the *Twitter* player. But how is this game mechanic built and designed? Most games use simple motivational mechanisms such as challenges, options, selections and rewards or punishments via the system. Whoever gets involved in this system is pulled deeper and deeper into the game and, in the best case, ends up in the flow of this social media game. The challenges are designed so that they are neither too easy nor too difficult. To ensure this, games usually have simple rating systems, so that the players can be easily rated and the reward or punishment can be easily operationalized.

## **CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT**

The first focal point of narrative activity – often real-world references are used here – can begin with the profile picture and the accompanying text. The character profile itself offers more than most games: Avatar or real name? Avatar or real image? Personally chosen background image? Text about yourself with possible references, perhaps a web address and location? And if necessary, you can also attach a post as pars pro toto. Additionally, there is automatically generated information like followers (trophies) and a view of the timeline. Thus, there is a wide choice of optional narrative mechanics just in the profile area. This means you create a fictitious character even if you use your real name. Others will only know of you what you tell them. This gives you the opportunity to carefully construct an image of yourself that focuses on a special activity of your life, on an opinion, an economic or political view or, for example, your preferred cultural interests. You create a public image for yourself that amplifies certain traits and activities but also reduces your character to something that is tailored for the social media streams and mostly targets a specific audience. It is no wonder the *Twitter* profile is advertised as "your personal landing page" and as being most important for "your personal brand". A *Twitter* profile may indeed work like a personal brand. When you follow someone, they have to make the decision on whether to follow you back in a few seconds.

*Figure 1: Three examples from Swiss Twitter users.*

Source: *Twitter*, screenshots August 8th, 2020 (Bauer)

Of course, there are many other profiles and completely different ways to use the profile picture. But what mechanics does the 'Twittergame' use?

## **NARRATIVE AND ASSERTION-DRIVEN MECHANICS**

The mechanics most frequently used in social media are assertion-driven mechanics. They occur in a composite form, especially in narratives paraphrased as "The right-wing scene has the solution for all things", "The market solves all problems", "Together we are strong", "Nature is good", "America the great", "Freedom is the most important thing", etc. It is an endless list of pretentious assertions.

It seems at first that assertion-driven mechanics might come from a scientific context. In the subsystem of science (cf. Luhmann 1997), these assertions take the shape of hypotheses which are then evaluated, or in other words, corroborated or falsified by the scientific community. For this purpose, there are different formats – from Master to PhD theses, from papers to books, and from lectures to conferences on specific topics. Scientific hypotheses are always discussed on the basis of the difference "true/untrue", accepted into science or rejected (and even suppressed for years). The resulting knowledge is then stored in books for the long term and further disseminated in education. The formats range from short articles to books.

The picture is very different for narrative and assertion-driven mechanics in social media battles on platforms like *Twitter*: Here, everything is renegotiated almost every day. Nothing is older than yesterday's tweet, nothing falls apart faster. What is not in the timeline, is no longer reproduced in the system. Furthermore, there is no verification of the various assertions. In fact, they are mostly just 'verified' by individual communities in their own narrative or assertiondriven thinking. This makes them perfectly suitable for social media. They can only be answered with yes/no and are therefore ideal for evaluations. For the follower of a narrative, it is then also clear whether or not an assertion supports the narrative. Thus, it is not surprising that many conspiracy theories are actual narrative mechanics and contain many assertions that are adaptive and adaptable to a situation.

*Twitter* favors assertion-driven mechanics and narratives with only 280 characters of basic text. Consequently, every tweet is already an assertion and functions as a micro mechanic based on its content, what it refers to and whatever comments it provokes.

What we have here is a community that uses narratives, develops its own logics, partly also its own concepts and its own language. "Freedom", for example, has a different connotation for a liberal than for a democrat. The word "liberal" alone is used differently by various communities: as comprehensively liberal, as economically liberal, as socially liberal. It is interesting to note that all these increasingly radical "liberal" narratives were once part of a narrative of the "liberal" that was supported by left and right. This collapsed when it became clear that our planet does not have enough resources for everyone. Consequently, the Paris Climate Convention was revoked and a better future for all buried (cf. Latour 2018).

## **JOURNALISM OF ASSERTION – ESCALATION AS MECHANICS**

An entire branch of journalism shows how well assertion-driven mechanics and their complex forms, the narratives, function. Here, assertion-driven mechanics are used to fill news portals or newspapers. Nothing is easier to write than an assertion: just gather the pro-arguments and leave out all counter arguments or trade-offs. Moreover, this is easy to monetize: an assertion-driven text not only invites the supporters of the assertion-driven narrative to read it ("What are the reasons given?"), but also the opponents of the assertion ("What is their point? What are their reasons?").

In the following example, the title suggests that Montessori schools create geniuses, an assertion that literally went around the world.

## **IN THE SCHOOL OF GENIUSES**

*Figure 2: Article in Swiss paper states that Montessori is the "school of geniuses" since people like Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg attended it.*

Source: Tagesanzeiger, screenshot (Bauer)

The mechanics of assertion-driven journalism is thus the opposite of weighing up and including all points of view in order to allow the reader to form their own opinion. Clickbait can be easily instigated with pro and con texts – preferably spread over days. Logically, the clicks, likes and comments also give rise to increasingly radical opinions. Whether an assertion or hypothesis is true or false is not important, because every assertion can gradually get more support, so it may become plausible one day. They are only "pending judgments" or "floating narratives". But unlike in news portals or forums, the discussion does not end in one location as a single commentary but can be shared exponentially via the channels of social media platforms and spread further via timelines and notifications.

## **NARRATIVE AND IDENTITY**

The mechanics mentioned above can also be found in social media – especially since some of the articles reappear as tweets. But social media games go a step further, because the assertion-driven narrative is linked to the personality of the user. Just like in journalism (with the exception of political reporting), the most important factors are the sale of news, advertising, subscriptions or user data – the topic, however, is rather a means to an end. And so even marginal topics can be skillfully dealt with and brought into the mainstream.

One can even go as far as to ask the question: Do the followers of a narrative in social media create a social field in the sense of Bourdieu's (1987) Field Theory? Or a system in the sense of systems theory where certain narratives even explicitly exclude others? Is the 'Twittergame' – at least in its political variant – a field and system game? The individual players want to keep their own system alive at all costs, but it permanently falls apart through new tweets and news. Therefore, it is also their own identity that is up for negotiation. Because more than any other players, those engaged in *Twitter* understand that only constant reproduction can keep their system alive and weaken others.

## **MOTIVATIONAL MECHANICS – CHALLENGES**

The challenge in the social media game follows a certain logic: maintaining one's own narrative (or assertions) against all odds in order to maintain one's own identity or job. And unlike in the scientific system, where a scientific community wants to find the truth (and is paid to do so) and truth is the transcendental signifier (cf. Luhmann 1997), in social media everyone fights against everyone else for followers, supporters, arguments, counter arguments, or simply for power. These are systemic struggles or struggles for narratives and their subordinate assertions.

Of course, every assertion and every narrative are constantly threatened, no matter how good it is and how many supporters it has. And the threat in social media consists of ever newer messages and facts spreading like wildfire, whether they are tweeted journalistic texts, new facts, new assertions, new narratives or new comments, new links and connections.

The constant supply of new challenges is therefore ensured. If this is not enough, then everyone can of course write their own comments to stave off the disappearance of the topics, the assertions or their own narrative. Luhmann might say: it is the fight against the disappearance of their own system, or presumably even more aptly with Bourdieu here, people fight for their own field or the field that provides them with monetary, symbolic or social capital.

*Figure 3: A tweet can confirm your own narrative/assertion and be included (+), neutralized or left as a correct point (-).*

Source: René Bauer

To draw a comparison with the game universe: Like in *Tetris* (1989), it is raining information, and tweets and assertions have to be accommodated and classified for the player's own community as well as for or against the 'enemy narratives'. In *Twitter* as in *Tetris*, things have to be cleaned up and put in line.

## **PROTECT THE TREASURE: THE NARRATIVE AND ITS ASSERTIONS**

At first glance things look very simple: widen your field, find new users, convince others, reject all hostile tweets. All this earns you points in your own community, strengthens the narrative, respectively your field.

But most narratives today are already much more complex. They have long since mirrored their competitors' narratives within themselves and built entire constructs to neutralize them. The counter-assertions with all the trimmings are embedded and tell you why they are void and that only one's own assertion is the right one. And in every argument, the reasoning grows and with it the possibilities how this narrative can react to others.

This means that the multiplayer game that is *Twitter* only appears clear and simple to the individual in their own narrative. The multiplayer aspect makes the game rather complex. In the following example, two self-contained systems fight each other: radical market advocates turn against social market economy advocates.

*Figure 4: The respective view of the other narrative. The counter-assertion narrative is already included each narrative.*

Source: René Bauer

The next figure (5) is an example of how such narratives shape and adapt a specific perception of the world. The Nazis become Socialists via a quote and a picture of the economist Friedrich A. Hayek.

In the eyes of radical market proponents, Hayek's ideas form a perfect open and closed core for a narrative. The free market is everything and ultimately 'decides' (about truth as well). Through an unregulated market anyone gets the chance to be successful (regardless of differing possibilities and capital). This often results in a closed pseudo-Darwinian reasoning which assumes that 'economic selection' will lead to the best product, company or society (economization). A free-market economy appears as a 'natural' continuation of evolution and has supposedly always been around. Objections and responses from newer economic findings are thus disregarded. This increasing closedness becomes allencompassing when anything else but the market is labeled as non-market and therefore as 'socialist'.

*Figure 5: A quote built into a tweet and authenticated by a picture of the author.*

Source: Twitter, screenshot (Bauer)

Of course, such narratives can also be completely closed and therefore applied to every context. The logic of a narrative then overlays the world with its complexities and offers simple assertions for highly complex contexts. In this way, the world itself becomes a narrative – from the narrative of "the West", for example, to the views of an American president, and fully fledged, absurd conspiracy theories.

## **GAMEPLAY OF THE** *TWITTER* **GAMES**

What concrete possibilities do *Twitter* players have in the battle for their narratives? How do they fight? Or in other words, how and where do the players make decisions?

The first thing that stands out is the possibility to generate content directly, for example as a new tweet or a reply. In their tweets, however, players often make use of everything that *Twitter* provides in order to generate intertext: from inserting external articles, images and references to adding hashtags or addressing the other party directly.

*Table 1: A Twitter player has the following options for action with tweets.*

Since players have to expose themselves when writing tweets, there are many other possible actions at their disposal that need far less justification than a tweet. They can use 'private' likes to show support, they can just do retweets to reiterate an idea or they control their own feed of information with actions relating to those of other users.

*Table 2: And these are a Twitter player's additional options for action.*

## **MULTIPLAYER: ENDLESS STREAMS OF PROVOCATION**

Whoever dives into this game has to swim all the time and therefore must be constantly motivated. *Twitter* does not provide a protected environment with habitats in which you can create your narratives in an undisturbed atmosphere. It is a tool that fights for its existence and its daily survival – and the community does the same. Every minute, every hour, every day, every week and every month is about existence and survival, about not becoming the dreaded boring platform it might turn out to be without all the silly, idiotic and radical provocations.

Likes, retweets and followers are the easiest and most objective reward and punishment systems in the 'Twittergame'. However, this is only half the truth. The ways in which to be rewarded are manifold and sometimes much more individual. For the socializers, it is important to maintain the community. The achievers win on points when new arguments supporting their narrative emerge. Killers, on the other hand, enjoy nothing more than beating their 'opponents' with a news item. Every individual and every group have their own resources and capital which they don't need to share with other narratives and their communities.

Social media games are especially explosive through the embedded 'social' distribution mechanisms such as the timeline and notifications. These simple sorting and messaging functions spread narrative mechanics exponentially into other (opposing) narratives. This is where cybernetics turned into software unfolds its true explosive potential: it creates an infinite number of provocations and contradictions in 'opposing' narrative communities. And the conflict grows and is radicalized simultaneously in all narrative communities.

Thus, sets of multiplayer game mechanic waves of provocation and escalation endlessly roll to the shores and fulfill themselves anew every day: they grow larger, more radical and become faster and faster.

## **SOCIALIZE TECHNICAL POSSIBILITIES!**

The constant modifications of the medium *Twitter* show how much and how fast the 'Twittergame' changes – at least in its designed mechanics. For example, the maximum number of characters was altered from 140 to 280 to enable more detailed information and longer opinions. And the possibility for a user to restrict replies was introduced in order to help stop abuse.

It is never quite clear whether the intended effects will be achieved or whether the community will use the technical possibilities differently. A longer tweet also allows for a longer rant. A targeted restriction of replies may be used to silence critics. This is what social media games are all about – users tend to 'socialize' them for their own needs. The 'Twittergame' is purposefully used and abused when it is adapted to suit its users' narratives.

## **REFERENCES**

#### **Literature**

#### **Games**

*EVE Online*, CCP Games, CCP Games, 2003. *Tetris*, Nintendo, NIntendo, 1989 [1984]. *Twitter*, Twitter Inc., Twitter Inc., 2006.

#### **Tweet**

Hartmann, Martin (2019): In: Twittter, @hardmanpolitics, October 5 (https://twitter.com/hardmanpolitics/status/1180481883760726017).

## **Commander Kurz**

A Short Essay on Videoludic Heroes and Political Strongmen<sup>1</sup>

#### *Eugen Pfister*

What does Sebastian Kurz have in common with Commander Shepard from the *Mass Effect* computer game series? One is currently the democratically legitimated chancellor of the Austrian Republic, the other commander of a spaceship in a fictional future. What purpose is there in comparing two such different characters? The Austrian politician, who, after a hiatus, returned to form his 2nd government in 2020, is often said to have a great talent for staging himself as a political victim and savior. But what if all he is doing is in fact only adopting a narrative already successfully established in pop culture?

"Das Parlament hat bestimmt. Das Volk wird entscheiden!" ("The parliament has determined. The people will decide!"), commented Sebastian Kurz at the end of May 2019 on his resignation as chancellor of Austria (Krieghofer 2019), in consequence of a vote of no confidence, which had been passed by MPs for the first time in the Second Republic's history. Some journalists and politicians were irritated by Kurz's statement (Wolf 2019). After all, the parliament is charged by the sovereign people to represent their will. What is parliament, if not the representation of the people? Surveys however showed that Sebastian Kurz had successfully managed to present himself and his party, the ÖVP, to the public as victims of an "undemocratic" party-political intrigue (Seidl 2019). But how is it possible that a large part of the Austrian population put more trust and hope in a toppled chancellor than in the National Council they had previously elected to

<sup>1</sup> The following text is a revision and translation by the author of an essay originally published in the online edition of *Der Standard*, July 1st, 2019 (https://www.der standard.at/story/2000105478011/commander-kurz-was-der-altbundeskanzler-miteiner-videospielfigur-gemein-hat).

represent them? I deliberately chose a comparatively moderate case as an example for my thoughts: the Austrian Federal Chancellor, who challenged basic democratic principles when faced with a vote of no confidence. There are, in fact, many more extreme examples of powerful men in politics worldwide today who are undermining basic democratic principles in a much more vehement way, such as Viktor Orban, Donald Trump, Recep Erdogan, to name but a few. The number of convinced democrats seems to be: "[R]egulative constitutional institutions, such as the judiciary and law enforcement, enjoy considerably more trust than representative institutions." (Bertelsmann Stiftung 2019: 10f.) The idea that one single man (women rarely choose this role) can solve all the problems of a nation and clean up the corruption and sclerosis of inefficient political systems sells a dangerously tempting solution to all possible problems to disenchanted voters (Triffitt 2018). It is literally too good to be true. However, this political idea did not come out of nowhere. Part of the explanation for its success can be found in our popular culture, where we have been learning to rely on these solitary heroes for decades. Because of this, an analysis of the history of ideas of the motif "lonely political hero vs. corrupt system" can help us to better understand this phenomenon.

Allow me, therefore, to conduct a thought experiment. If we analyze the best-selling video games of recent years, the sentence "The Parliament has determined. The people will decide!" (this was the shortened advertising slogan that the ÖVP put on banners) suddenly no longer seems like a contradiction in terms. In digital games we normally do not come across an elected parliament. Instead, we encounter political action almost without exception in the guise of the morally acting individual – usually the protagonist, a figure which, incidentally, also often crops up in most Netflix series and movies. Here, of course, the logic of digital games (meaning maximum agency for the players) and the tradition of the hero in our culture in general, also play a defining role.

Political compromises and consensus apparently have no place in the fastpaced and often dystopian world of digital games. They are "unsexy" in popcultural terms. Instead, in games we expect individual characters to save the world: Joel in *The Last of Us*, Gordon Freeman in *Half-Life*, the Inquisitor in *Dragon Age: Inquisition*, Iron Man, Batman, etc. We are also used to the fact that established political structures in these games are usually either no help to our protagonist or even obstruct the character's attempt to do the "right thing": the Council in *Mass Effect*, the Environmental Protection Commissioner (!) Walter Peck in *Ghostbusters*, Senator Stern in *Iron Man*.

Even more important than the (occasional) discrediting of democratic institutions is, in my opinion, the extreme valorization of the individual in these games. We have faith in our digital heroes because they never choose their own fate. They were chosen by it, or were simply in the right (or wrong) place at the right time. They dare to speak "uncomfortable truths". They have to make decisions for the good of society – even if it means personal sacrifice and isolation – because no other character is prepared to take action. Unlike the democratic institutions portrayed, they can react immediately and "rightly" when necessary. When the player's game world is threatened by zombie dragons, mass-murdering machines, evil characters such as Bowser from the Nintendo *Super Mario* franchise or other digital alien lifeforms, the game simply allows no time for political compromise and complex decision-making.

Of course, one must never overestimate the "influence" or even the "impact" of mass media on individuals. Players are not blank slates that simply adopt the political ideas presented to them. At the same time, however, we are exposed through our popular culture to new role models every day, who offer us another possible worldview. Here we learn the limits of the "sayable" and the "thinkable": a world in which moral heroes act quickly and correctly.

In doing so, we like to forget how unrealistic it is to expect a single person to be able to solve the world's problems in the real world. Even a brief glance at human history reveals the limits and dangers of political savior figures. And yet it is terribly comforting to believe that we only have to wait for the "right" person to save us. Especially today, many popular autocrats like Trump, Orban and their ilk are happy to adopt the narrative of the "lonely hero". On the other hand, if a party lacks such a charismatic leader, we automatically see it in crisis. And this crisis narrative is often even adopted by the parties themselves. The search for a savior is, then, paramount.

Digital games are not the "cause" of the public's apparent skepticism towards democracy, as illustrated by the Kurz case. They simply reproduce narratives found in popular culture and make use of dominant discursive statements. Or, in other words: successful narratives will be further consolidated. Popular culture also functions here as an amplifier of processes that have potentially originated in political environments, as long as there are no real counternarratives.

But what does all this have to do with the Sebastian Kurz?

And, as absurd as the comparison with the game series *Mass Effect* may have sounded at first glance, in the end, Commander Kurz remains at the helm of the Normandy. He was deposed by the Council but came back nevertheless to save the world from a dark threat.

## **REFERENCES**

#### **Literature**

#### **Games**

*Dragon Age: Inquisition,* Bioware, Electronic Arts, 2014. *Mass Effect*, BioWare, Microsoft, 2007-2009. *The Last of Us*, Naughty Dog, Sony, 2013.

## **Authors**

*Tarn Adams* is the co-founder of Bay 12 Games with his brother Zach, where they work on their fantasy simulation, *Dwarf Fortress*, one of the first video games acquired by the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He has been writing procedural interactive narrative projects for over 20 years.

*René Bauer* has an M.A. degree in German philology and literary studies, biology and computer linguistics from the University of Zurich. Presently, he works at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK) as a lecturer, researcher and head of Master's education in the subject area of Game Design. His interests encompass coding, game mechanics, game studies, art in/with games (www.and-or.ch) and social media/knowledge systems (www.ixistenz.ch).

*Sonja Böckler* studied design at the University of Applied Sciences Nuremberg before finishing her Bachelor's (2016) and Master's (2018) degrees in Product Design with a specialization in Game Design at Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK). Since July 2018 she has been working as a research associate at ZHdK developing serious and applied games for various purposes. Sonja Böckler's main areas of research concern arthouse games and new fields of game design: exploring the potential of translating human experiences into playable systems in order to reveal the underlying structure of our perceived world. In her M.A. project, she analyzed the mechanics and narrations of uncommon video games, which express human experiences of various kinds. Her game prototype *SHAVE* showcases the established patterns of the culture around shaving body hair. In her B.A. project in 2016, in collaboration with Michael Müller, she developed a new concept of interaction in virtual reality. The resulting game *Meantime* was exhibited at several festivals in Europe.

*Teun Dubbelman* currently holds a position at Avans University of Applied Sciences. He is considered an expert in interactive narrative design and storytelling in the new media landscape. He was vice-director at HKU University of the Arts Utrecht, where he started the professorship of Interactive Narrative Design and created the world's first minor pathway on the topic. Dubbelman received his PhD at Utrecht University, with a thesis on narrative game design. He was a Fulbright Scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), working in the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab. His recent research focuses on the topics of design pedagogy, narrative game mechanics and design for change.

*Florian Faller* is a Zurich-based game designer, playful media artist, lecturer and researcher. The co-founder of the Swiss studio Bits & Beasts teaches at Zurich University of the Arts in the Department of Design's subject area of Game Design, with a focus on visual arts, animation, game feel and game culture. His projects revolve around artificial liveliness, animacy, playfulness and emergence. Their vivid, physics-based worlds are brought to life by untamed AIdriven creatures, organic visual styles and dynamic and emergent gameplay. Faller's work ranges from independent games and experimental projects to commercial titles and serious and applied games. Before starting his career as a game designer, he studied German philology and literature at the University of Basel and lived in Berlin for several years, where he produced electronic music and worked with various audiovisual media.

*Mary Flanagan* is an artist, author and game designer with works exhibited at museums and galleries around the world such as the Whitney Museum, the Guggenheim, Tate Britain, and institutions in Spain, New Zealand, South Korea, Germany, China and Australia. In 2018, Flanagan won the Award of Distinction at Prix Ars Electronica in the Interactive art+. Flanagan was awarded an honorary PhD in Design by Illinois Tech, has held numerous honorary fellowships, and holds a distinguished professorship at Dartmouth College, USA. Flanagan is also author and co-editor of numerous books, such as *Critical Play* and *Reload: Rethinking Women in Cyberculture*. Her research laboratory in Hanover, New Hampshire, is www.tiltfactor.org.

www.maryflanagan.com

*Robert Glashüttner* holds a Master's degree in communication sciences and a Bachelor's in recording arts. He is a senior editor at Radio FM4, part of the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation ORF, where he is in charge of the game culture department. For about 20 years, he has been reporting and researching on digital games mostly as a journalist and sometimes as an academic. Special research interests are video game journalism and pinball culture. Glashüttner is a presenter, consultant and writer for different initiatives and media outlets like Die Presse, SUBOTRON or WASD Magazine. Also, he is still the reigning runner-up world champion of Pac-Man.