Ludeus Maximus

I just read a very interesting conference book called Bioapparatus about the future of virtual worlds. A lot of it, even according to the final responses, devolved into misunderstanding between the artists, feminists, art theorists, and techies who attended, but it provided some interesting insight into the current state of gaming. Looking at virtual reality as an interactive medium in its infancy led them to a lot of interesting conclusions about what to do with it, many of which could serve as models for developing current interactive experiences regardless of the game industry’s lack of a fancy interface. A lot of their musings have already come true, especially one about the use of sound in virtual reality which has numerous parallels to the way sound is used in games today. I found a lot of the feminist participants who were uncomfortable with technology silly; they seemed to be saying that since technology like this is controlled by men it is evil. Obviously we need more female participation in the games industry, but them making a binary male/female, rational/intuition, technology/nature distinction is really dumb. What I really took from the book was a fresh insight into the possibilities of the medium (because its limitations weren’t discussed very much) as well as cautionary urgings not to misuse it or allow it to be misused by corporations, military, and government.

It’s an interesting philosophical question:

Is it possible to create a game that’s more complex than real life?

I’d answer yes. One possibility is, once we’ve discovered and recorded everything about the universe and thus can simulate it, to add one more feature (time travel or an extra element on the periodic table). In terms of simply making a game more difficult there are already games that are impossible to beat. When I say complexity I mean sheer number of possible states/actors and outcomes. Obviously we may never discover and be able to simulate the universe but we may create our own. In terms of sheer processing power we aren’t even close, but one can imagine in the future an alternate game world that’s more complex than our own. If nothing else it would be possible to make the user feel as if the world was more complex, as we are limited to a human understanding of the world. It’s then a question of whether using imagination/creativity we can conceive of or design a world more complex. Certainly a computer more powerful than the human brain could, but I would also argue that we can add complexity to a game without understanding what we are adding entirely (since we don’t understand anything “entirely” anyways).

In the short term we could settle with making a game more complex than a sport [also a game, for those sports fans out there who deny video gaming can be a sport. Just like games are art (if mostly bad art), video games can be sports (just bad sports although Counter-Strike and Starcraft are pretty good examples)]. Obviously games exist, like the ones I just mentioned, where there is enough complexity that no human can play the perfect strategy and win every time. This means that there is the possibility of competition for mastery; although one can compete to master almost anything in terms of time spent or average success, these sorts of games are more interesting. A sport, in terms of complexity due to physical, human, and social interactions is much more complicated although perhaps similar in terms of human understanding. So, like our earlier problem, the key is to make a game more complex in terms of human understanding. Uniball I think comes closer than maybe CS or SC especially in terms of being open about what it is (the former two are only sports when played by the hardcore, although perhaps that’s what defines a sport). But to challenge sports, it’s easier to move towards more complicated interactions and a 3D space. Wii bowling is an example, and I’ll quote John Harris’ recent Gamasutra article Game Design Essentials: 20 Unusual Control Schemes on the subject:

“Bowling: The best-realized sport on the disk. Moving the controller like a bowling ball may not be exactly like real bowling, but it’s close enough for most people, and it’s not too much easier to bowl a perfect game. The game even infuriates sometimes with the degree that unintentional wrist twists can put spin on the ball — and that is like real bowling.” (bolding mine)

So there’s my challenge, although obviously no million dollar cash prize for the first video game to do this is coming from me. Army simulation people, however, do get huge government grants to develop realistic training games. And EA Sports are making megabucks from their (relatively speaking) simple sports simulations.

     Me and my roommate Dan were some of the handful of students at the aesthetics talks today in the library that lasted (if you count the reception) from 9 am to 7:30 pm. It was really interesting and I met a lot of cool people.

The debate felt like a real, though not exactly world-changing, philisophical debate. The reception food was good and the conversation excellent. Even though I should have been doing  homework instead I don’t feel guilty at all. And I met one of the speakers whose student is doing a thesis on the aesthetics of  video games which is really exciting work. I found out that if I want to be a game philosopher instead of a game designer there are only 3 or so other people even involved in the field. Basically fresh territory that any man can claim and conquer. And I came up with enough thought material for the next ten weeks of writing.