PATHS, PLAYERS, PLACES: TOWARDS AN UNDERSTANDING OF MAZES AND SPACES IN VIDEOGAMES ALISON JANE GAZZARD A dissertation submitted to the University of Hertfordshire in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of PhD The programme of research was carried out in the school of Creative Arts, Faculty for Science, Technology and the Creative Arts September 2009 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES..................................................................................................................4 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS......................................................................................................6 ABSTRACT..............................................................................................................................7 1. INTRODUCTION................................................................................................................9 2. GAME STUDIES: PATHS, MAZES & SPACES..............................................................16 2.1 Introduction.......................................................................................................16 2.2 The Paths of the Hypertext...............................................................................20 2.3 Videogame Space and the Screen.....................................................................26 2.4 The Maze and Videogames...............................................................................31 2.5 Conclusion........................................................................................................34 3. DEFINING VOCABULARIES & METHODS..................................................................37 3.1 Introduction.......................................................................................................37 3.2 Defining Routes from A to B............................................................................38 3.3 Mazes as Special Types of Route.....................................................................42 3.4 Tracks................................................................................................................45 3.5 Defining Videogame Paths...............................................................................46 3.6 Defining a Methodology...................................................................................50 3.7 Conclusion........................................................................................................55 4. DO VIDEOGAMES REWORK OUR IDEA OF THE MAZE?........................................57 4.1 Introduction.......................................................................................................57 4.2 Mazes in the Beginning....................................................................................58 4.3 Understanding the Maze in Literature..............................................................62 4.4 Separating the Labyrinth and the Maze............................................................63 4.5 The Maze in Videogames.................................................................................69 4.6 Conclusion........................................................................................................74 5. MAPS TO MAZES: THE DUALITY OF THE MAZE.....................................................75 5.1 Introduction.......................................................................................................75 5.2 Map and Experience: A Case Study of Pac-Man.............................................76 5.3 Text Adventures and Identifying Landmarks...................................................78 5.4 Introducing Map and Experience in 3D Videogames.......................................83 5.5 Conclusion........................................................................................................90 6. PURPOSEFUL AND APPROPRIATED PLAY................................................................92 6.1 Introduction.......................................................................................................92 6.2 Defining Purposeful Play..................................................................................96 6.3 Defining Appropriated Play..............................................................................99 6.4 Player Motivations..........................................................................................102 6.5 The Multiplayer Game....................................................................................111 6.6 Conclusion......................................................................................................113 2 7. A MORPHOLOGY OF MAZE PATHS...........................................................................115 7.1 Introduction.....................................................................................................115 7.2 Unicursal Paths vs Unidirectional Tracks.......................................................116 7.3 Common Maze-emes......................................................................................120 7.4 What is an Aporia?.........................................................................................126 7.5 The Aporetic Experience................................................................................127 7.6 Aporetic Uncertainty.......................................................................................128 7.7 Learning to Play the Game through Aporetic Uncertainty.............................132 7.8 Bridges, Keys and Rewards............................................................................135 7.9 Gates...............................................................................................................137 7.10 Dead-Ends.....................................................................................................139 7.11 False Objects.................................................................................................140 7.12 Conclusion....................................................................................................142 8. WARP DEVICES AND BREAKING THE PATH..........................................................144 8.1 Introduction.....................................................................................................144 8.2 Warps as Devices............................................................................................146 8.3 Revisiting Time in Videogames.....................................................................148 8.4 Categories of Warp.........................................................................................149 8.5 Aporetic Warps...............................................................................................151 8.6 Jump Warps....................................................................................................152 8.7 Return Warps..................................................................................................153 8.8 Portals.............................................................................................................155 8.9 Swap Warps....................................................................................................156 8.10 Inadvertent Warps.........................................................................................158 8.11 Pausing and Re-generation...........................................................................160 8.12 Cut-scenes as Special Case Warps?..............................................................161 8.13 Conclusion....................................................................................................163 9. CONCLUSION.................................................................................................................169 GLOSSARY..........................................................................................................................179 APPENDIX...........................................................................................................................181 BIBLIOGRAPHY.................................................................................................................182 3 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1.1 Overall view of Monument tothe Murdered Jews of Europe, Berlin, 2006.........10 Figure 1.2 View from path inside Monument to the Murdered Jews of Europe, Berlin 200610 Figure 2.1 On the borders of the classic game model.............................................................18 Figure 2.2 The complete graph...............................................................................................23 Figure 3.1 Categories of routes...............................................................................................38 Figure 3.2 Categories of paths................................................................................................39 Figure 3.3 Path worn into the grass.........................................................................................41 Figure 3.4 Bike and pedestrian signs on pavement.................................................................42 Figure 3.5 Categories of maze paths.......................................................................................43 Figure 3.6 Unicursal labyrinth................................................................................................43 Figure 3.7 Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfigher 2Co-op split screen mode......49 Figure 3.8 Lego Indiana Jones–two players on one screen..................................................50 Figure 3.9 A fictional time of a year takes a few minutes to play..........................................54 Figure 3.10 Real-time games: The play time has a 1:1 projection to the game world’s fictional time...................................................................................................................54 Figure 4.1 Saffron Walden Turf Maze....................................................................................61 Figure 4.2 Labyrinth mosaic, Thurburdo-Majus, Tunisia, A.D.372.......................................61 Figure 4.3 Separating ideas of unicursal and multicursal structures.......................................63 Figure 4.4 Labyrinth at Chartres Cathedral, France................................................................67 Figure 4.5 Glendurgan Maze, Cornwall, UK..........................................................................69 Figure 4.6 Characteristics of labyrinths, mazes and videogame mazes..................................72 Figure 4.7 Clue found on the floor of a path at the Dragonfly Maze, Bourton-on-the-Water, UK..................................................................................................................................73 Figure 5.1 Labyrinth symbol at entrance to St John the Baptist church, Alkborough, UK....76 Figure 5.2 Pills remaining after death of Pac-Manavatar......................................................78 Figure 5.3 Metroid Prime 3in-game map (top right hand corner)..........................................85 Figure 5.4 Metroid Prime 3out-of-game-world map.............................................................85 Figure 5.5 Door in Metroid Prime 3.......................................................................................86 Figure 5.6 Signs in the corridor in Doom III..........................................................................88 Figure 5.7 Out-of-the-gameworld map of GTAIV...................................................................89 Figure 6.1 Locating the cultural logic in games......................................................................92 Figure 6.2 Edited version of Caillois’ “Classification of Games” highlighting the arrows between paidia and ludus...............................................................................................95 Figure 6.3 We Love Katamaritutorial level............................................................................97 4 Figure 6.4 Disruptive Vs. Contributive Aberrant Players.....................................................102 Figure 6.5 Motivations for appropriated play.......................................................................103 Figure 6.6 The flow channel.................................................................................................104 Figure 7.1 The paths of Flower.............................................................................................116 Figure 7.2 Tracks with active volition..................................................................................117 Figure 7.3 Maze paths broken down into maze-emes...........................................................119 Figure 7.4 Common maze-emes...........................................................................................121 Figure 7.5 Loop Along in Gears of War 2Co-op Mode.......................................................125 Figure 7.6 The aporetic experience.......................................................................................127 Figure 7.7 Sensory input, player output, and internal player cognition................................130 Figure 7.8 Aporetic uncertainty loop....................................................................................131 Figure 7.9 Levels of aporetic uncertainty in solving the puzzle...........................................132 Figure 7.10 September 12Title Screen.................................................................................133 Figure 7.11 Kabul Kaboom!Title Screen.............................................................................134 Figure 7.12 Open bridge + key = closed bridge....................................................................135 Figure 7.13 Keys and Rewards.............................................................................................136 Figure 7.14 Gated paths........................................................................................................138 Figure 7.15 Dead Ends..........................................................................................................139 Figure 8.1 Tracks with suspended volition...........................................................................147 Figure 8.2 Warp device in Toki Tori(depicted by outline below avatar).............................153 Figure 8.3 Player’s avatar viewed through a warp in Portal................................................156 Figure 8.4 Glitch in Super Mario Bros.................................................................................158 Figure 8.5 Alternation between play time being a prop for fictional time and fictional time being narrated by cut-scenes........................................................................................163 Figure 8.6 Characteristics of warps.......................................................................................165 Figure 8.7 Warp characteristics players are unlikely to experience together........................168 Figure 9.1 Categories of routes, paths, maze-paths and tracks.............................................170 Figure 9.2 The designed path (straight path, key, straight path, loop along)........................171 Figure 9.3 Player Experience 1 (straight path, key)..............................................................172 Figure 9.4 Player Experience 2 (straight path, key, straight path, inadvertent warp)...........172 5 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to acknowledge my thanks tomy principal supervisor Mr Alan Peacock, for all his help, advice and cups of tea over the last three years.I would also like to thank the other members of my supervisory team, Dr Ivan Phillips and Professor Michael Biggs as well as my colleagues within the research community of the Faculty for Science, Technology and the Creative Arts, University of Hertfordshire. I would like to thank my parents for their encouragement and support. I would also like to thank them for taking me to various mazes in the UK as well as holidays to France and Tunisia to see other designs abroad. I would also like to thank Sam for playing numerous co- op games of Lego Star Warsand going on adventures to find mazes around the country and Henry and Helen for Sunday night Mario Karttournaments and introducing me to the card game Fluxx. Finally I would like to thank fellow delegates at the following conferences for their feedback on my papers and presentations: ICAT2007, Denmark, for my poster presentation, “Playing in a Virtual World: Exploration and Aspects of Play.” SSAHRI conference, University of Hertfordshire, May 2008, for my paper, “Maps and Mazes in the Videogame.” ISEA2008, Singapore and ISEA2009, Belfast conferences, for my papers: “Folded Space: How Videogames Rework our Understanding of the Maze” and “Play, Skip & Jump: Warp Devices in Videogames.” GDTW2008, Liverpool conference for my paper: “Moving through Game Space: The Paths of the Videogame.” DiGRA2009, Brunel University, London conference for my paper: “Tunnels, Teleporters & Time: Understanding Warp Devices in Videogames.” 6 ABSTRACT This thesis contributes to the field of academic game studies by reworking and updating the established theories of Espen Aarseth, Janet Murray and Marie-Laure Ryan in understanding the path in videogames. It also draws upon the more recent theoretical discussions of figures such as Jesper Juul, Lev Manovich, Frans Mäyrä and James Newman in order to explore the player’s experience along these paths in the gameworld. By defining a vocabulary of routes through space, the thesis uses the maze in particular as a way of understanding the paths of videogames. The research starts by examining our cultural understanding of the maze within videogames. Various mazes around the UK were walked in order to understand their design and how this may translate into the virtual world of the videogame. The thesis examines the uses of real world mazes through the work of Penelope Doob, and Herman Kern to discuss how the videogame may rework our cultural understanding of the maze due to its increasingly ubiquitous nature. This enables a discussion of maze-paths found within many videogames that are not necessarily categorised by what is often discussed as the maze genre of games. A morphology of maze-paths is devised through comparing the mazes of the real world and the virtual mazes of the videogame. This is achieved by breaking down the maze into separate path types and shows how these paths may link to one another. The thesis argues that the paths of the videogame are generated by the player’s actions. Therefore the focus of this thesis is on the player’s experience along these paths and the objects found at points on them. In acknowledging how to overcome obstacles along the path it is also possible to understand the role of the path in the player’s learning and mastery of the gameworld. This leads to discussions of different types of play experienced by the player in the videogame. Play is separated into what I term purposeful play, being the activities intended by the designer, and appropriated play which is the play formed out of the player’s exploration of the game system. These two terms help to understand player’s incentives for playing along the ruled paths of the gameworld as well as exploring the game’s system further to find new types of play outside of the pre-determined rules. As this thesis is concerned with videogames involving the player’s avatar having a direct relationship with the path, the research also investigates what happens when certain devices break these paths. It was discovered that warp devices reconstruct both temporal and narrative elements within the gamespace, and cause the player’s avatar to temporarily move 7 on tracks through the gameworld. In defining a vocabulary of movement through space on a fixed track, as opposed to a player-determined path, there is a further understanding of the player experience related to each type of route taken in the game. Through an understanding of the maze and defining a vocabulary of maze-paths, tracks and objects found along them, this thesis adds a new contribution to knowledge. It also acknowledges the importance of different types of play within videogames and how these can shape the player experience along the paths of the game. 8 1. INTRODUCTION In 2006, I found myself wandering between the concrete blocks of the Monument to the Murdered Jews of Europe near the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. Not knowing anything of the histories or meanings behind its construction and design I made my way down one path between the blocks. All of a sudden the perspective shifted from seeing a landscape of different blocks to walking in amongst them and finding myself immersed deeper into a space of concrete towers metres high, surrounding my every view. Walking further into the memorial I explored the sections of paths at various crossroads, wondering what was around each corner. Moving from one side of the memorial to another the path takes you from an aerial view above the blocks (Figure 1.1), to being immersed amongst the towering grey concrete structures (Figure 1.2), to returning to the other side and being faced once again with an overall view of the memorial’s layout. One viewpoint does not relate to the other in terms of the experience of the different blocks until the path itself is walked. Walking in amongst the memorial changes the relationship withthe landscape. It is possible to feel lost within the confines of the structure as you walk further in amongst the taller concrete blocks and your view starts to become more restricted. The memorial created a feeling of being lost even though the pathwaysout of the walled landscape were clearly marked. This same feeling is created through walking a maze, except this time decisions have to be made in order to reach the finish and find the way out of the bounded walls. The maze can be seen to rework a path, and the act of walking a path, into something of additional significance. This research focuses on the paths and mazes of the real world as a way of then discussing how the videogame may rework our understanding of the maze in a virtual world. The physical mazes of the past have to be visited whereas the virtual mazes of today are readily available through artefacts such as computer games. Game designers Andrew Rollings and Ernest Adams discuss the use of the maze in game design.1However, there has beenlittle research into how the development of display media such as the computer game has changed cultural perspectives of mazes. It is this key question of ‘do videogames rework our idea of the maze’ that is the starting point of this thesis. 1Andrew Rollings andErnest Adams, Andrew Rollings and Ernest Adams on Game Design. (Indiana: New Riders, 2003), 231. 9 Figure 1.1 Overall view of Monument to the Murdered Jews of Europe, Berlin, 2006 Figure 1.2 View from path inside Monument to the Murdered Jews of Europe, Berlin 2006 In playing a videogame the player controls events in the gameworld by use of a game controller or the button presses and mouse moves of peripheral devices attached to the computer terminal. These movements translate to actions on screen as can be identified through Janet Murray’s notion of “agency” which is “the satisfying power to take meaningful action and see the results of our decisions and choices.”2It is these actions that allow players to move their avatars through the space of the videogame whether it is through 2Janet Murray, Hamlet on the Holodeck(New York: The Free Press, 1997), 126. 10