Introduction to Game Analysis

Clara Fernández-Vara

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781351140065
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Media Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

This accessible textbook gives students the tools they need to analyze games using strategies borrowed from textual analysis. As the field of game studies grows, videogame writing is evolving from the mere evaluation of gameplay, graphics, sound, and replayablity, to more reflective writing that manages to convey the complexity of a game and the way it is played in a cultural context.

Clara Fernández-Vara's concise primer provides readers with instruction on the basic building blocks of game analysis—examination of context, content and reception, and formal qualities—as well as the vocabulary necessary for talking about videogames' distinguishing characteristics. Examples are drawn from a range of games, both digital and non-digital—from Portal and World of Warcraft to Monopoly —and the book provides a variety of exercises and sample analyses, as well as a comprehensive ludography and glossary.

In this second edition of the popular textbook, Fernández-Vara brings the book firmly up-to-date, pulling in fresh examples from ground-breaking new works in this dynamic field. Introduction to Game Analysis remains a unique practical tool for students who want to become more fluent writers and critics not only of videogames, but also of digital media overall.

1
The Whys and Wherefores of Game Analysis

Introduction

Waiting in line on the first day of PAX East 2009, I overheard two video-game fans talking about Dragon Age. They were sharing their opinions about the game, which they had enjoyed. They talked about how the writing was great, as one could expect of Bioware, but the graphics still needed another pass; the smooth gameplay made up for some of the graphical glitches. The game was the right length; this mission was fun. Then they moved on to talk about a series of fantasy novels, whose title I did not pick up. According to these fans, the novels had very engaging characters, whose story across the novels was consistent but also surprising; they particularly loved how believable the dialogue was, which managed to blend contemporary language with a fantasy setting. The writing style was not pretentious, and it built a world they wanted to be part of. They recapitulated their favorite chapters, and why they liked them.

What shocked me about this overheard conversation was the difference between how they discussed videogames and novels. While their opinion of Dragon Age: Origins (2009) rated a laundry list of high-level concepts of game reviews, they discussed fantasy novels from their experience as readers, using a much more specific vocabulary, and providing arguments based on specific aspects of the novel. Their opinion of videogames was based on a series of sliding scales (gameplay, graphics, story), whereas their discussion of the novels centered on a more nuanced discussion on why they liked them.

The difference in discourse made me realize one of the main problems of videogame analysis and criticism. Videogame fans talk about games by borrowing terms from game reviews, which at the same time cover the talking points provided by marketing: Fantastic graphics! Immersive gameplay! Hollywood-like stories! It is not a problem of literacy—these two fans were able to provide thoughtful criticism, and they knew the game well. However, their vocabulary to talk about games was not on a par with how they discussed novels. In my own experience as a teacher, I have seen the same shift in students who can produce a thoughtful and solid film analysis, but then shift to a casual, shallow register when they write about a game.

The guidelines presented in this book are based on my own experience as a media and game studies teacher, as a researcher and as a developer. Conversations like the one I overheard at PAX are part of my inspiration for this book—I want students who are passionate about games to snap out of their shallow discourse and use their knowledge to discuss games with the depth and nuance they deserve, since they often demonstrate the knowledge and capacity they need. My goals also include reaching out to those who may not consider themselves “gamers” or “board game geeks,” but who would like to learn more about games by playing them. A third group this book is intended for are scholars with a background in the humanities and social sciences, who want to extend their appreciation of media to games, both digital and non-digital. Although they may feel comfortable applying the theories and methods of literature, film, or communication studies to games, the aim here is to highlight what the aspects of games are that not only define them, but also distinguish them from other media.

For those readers who may already come from an established humanistic or social sciences field, the main hurdle to entering game studies is perhaps a pervading skepticism about whether games, digital or not, can become a medium worthy of study, as literature, theater, or film already are. Games discourse is not usually associated with academic conferences or specialized journalism, but rather online streamers talking over the games they are playing for their audience, or newscasters talking about the uproar about the violence in the latest bestselling game. The academic study of games, however, is much older than people may think—Johan Huizinga’s Homo Ludens, one of the foundational texts of game studies, discusses play as an essential aspect of cultural practice, and was first published in 1938;¹ psychologist Jean Piaget discussed the role of play in child development in his book, La Formation du Symbole chez l’Enfant: Imitation, Jeu et Rêve, Image et Représentation in 1945.² Although the field of game studies is relatively young in comparison with other disciplines, it is also becoming an established academic field rather fast. At the end of the 1990s, scholars like Espen Aarseth or Janet Murray started calling attention to games as their focus of study;³ the first issue of the academic journal Game Studies was published in July 2001,⁴ while the Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA) conference started back in 2003.

As we will see in the following chapters, a sophisticated discourse on games does exist and it is becoming more widespread. Unfortunately, only a reduced group of scholars and a smaller number of practitioners and critics are familiar with it these days. At present, mainstream videogame journalism and industry dominate the creation of analytical models in relation to popular culture—it is more likely that videogame fans will watch a video-game review on YouTube, or read a development blog than any of the papers given at the DiGRA conference. This is why these pages introduce readers to exemplary texts from a variety of sources, focusing on academic analyses of games.

The influence of marketing on the discourse, particularly in the area of digital games, is not negligible. Game reviews are one of the first (and often only) types of game writing that mainstream audiences are exposed to. This type of writing can be subject to a series of economic pressures that may condition its content. An online visit to some of the major websites specializing in videogames will probably reveal a site plastered with huge advertisements for the latest videogame releases. Publishers may also provide journalists and videogame reviewers early access to the games provided they do not publish anything before a specific deadline.⁵ If a site posts any news that breaks the embargo, its staff may not get advance copies of games and publishers will withdraw their advertisements from the site, preventing the site both from having advance content and taking away revenue from advertising. Subjectivity is inevitable (and even necessary) in reviews; the issue is that, in some specialized sources, the revenue model can influence the content to the point that some reviews are overtly biased toward the positive.

There is a space for videogame reviews as consumer reports; the problem is that those reviews can be skewed by economic interests.⁶ Plus, there are other types of journalistic writing, written in a way that is accessible to the general public, which reflects on the cultural role of games and players. The state of videogame reviews is steadily changing thanks to new journalistic models and approaches, and it is not a problem that will be tackled directly here. My concern is that there is no reason for writers outside certain specialized sites to replicate that kind of discourse, particularly in academia. Scholars should be able to talk about what we like and what we do not with a certain level of nuance, understanding our role as players and how our experience may differ from other people’s, being able to explain what it means to have a user interface that does not follow conventional configurations, or discuss the differences between the male and female player characters in terms of mechanics. There is so much more that game analysis can talk about beyond the quality of the graphics or the difficulty curve.

A more sophisticated way to talk about games is useful to both scholars and players. The aim of this book is to make the tools of academic analysis more accessible to everyone. Many schools have incorporated the study of games in their curricula, particularly in departments of social sciences and the humanities, and it may be difficult to know where to start or how the new subject fits with the rest of the materials covered. Game analysis is also relevant to practice-driven schools or computer science departments, because they need to be familiar with pre-existing works and what they have done in order to understand them as well as create innovative games.

My aim is also to encourage everyone with an interest in games to learn more about them and produce thoughtful reflections. If you consider yourself a gamer who breathes and lives in game worlds, my aim is to take advantage of your expertise and apply it to examining games systematically, within a specific academic domain and approach. Having an extensive knowledge of games is obviously helpful to analyze games; in my classes, I try to take advantage of the personal investment my students already have as a motivation. My teaching focuses on the aspects of games that can provide material for analysis, their interrelationships, and how those aspects can be tackled from different perspectives. Analysis is also a tool for budding game designers, who can learn about diverse design aesthetics and develop a vocabulary to understand games better, as well as to communicate their designs to the people they work with. Being aware of the different processes that generate meaning in games is essential to understanding their role as a cultural and artistic expression.

The guidelines in this book should also be helpful to those who do not consider themselves game experts. The strategies here are not strict guidelines; they provide some considerations to be made when tackling games, a map of the different building blocks of the analysis, and a series of comparative examples. The idea is to help writers find their own way into games and how to talk about them, making use of what they already know, even if it is not games but other media. We must also remember we do not have to limit ourselves to videogames, and that there are many types of games— playground games, card games, board games, arcade games, casual games, shooter games, escape the room activities, to name but a few—which can all be dissected and discussed.

By providing tools to analyze games in a cultivated way and promoting the generalization of academic discourse, my hope is that the readers of this book realize that there are many ways to talk about games. Improving the discourse will allow players to engage with games in novel ways and become more critical of what they play. In filmic terms, it is similar to the difference between a moviegoer, who is someone who goes to the movies regularly to be entertained, and a cinephile, who is a more demanding audience member, has an extensive knowledge of film history, and can articulate the relevance of a movie and relate it to other works. In a similar way, we need more diversity of ways to engage with games, ranging from the casual player to the ludophile who knows about the history and form of the medium in depth.

The foundation to a more sophisticated discourse on games is to understand them as texts. The methods I propose here are strategies for textual analysis applied to games, both digital and non-digital, derived from a humanistic background. This raises a set of questions, which I will address in the following sections: How are games texts? What is textual analysis? What can we learn through the analysis of games?

How are Games Texts?

The term text is usually associated with the written word, which is also part of the dictionary definition. Because the practice of textual analysis has a strong tradition in the humanities, particularly in literature, the phrase has persisted in relation to reading and writing. As someone with a strong background in literature, I studied poems and novels, for example. When studying theater, however, it became evident that the text alone was not enough, because the meaning of the text would also depend on the way the actor would deliver a certain line, and the context of the performance. In this case, the term text also applies to the performance of the play or an excerpt from it. “To be or not to be” means something different depending on the actor playing it and the overall concept of the production, even if the words do not change. I realized that what text means extends to other artifacts that can also be objects of study: from literal text, such as a novel, philosophical essays, or historical documents, to non-written or even nonverbal text, such as movies or paintings, to sports events or broadcasts. This is not my discovery—French theorist Roland Barthes, in his book Mythologies, provides a classic example of how the concept of text can be applied to activities and artifacts that may also be a form of human expression.⁷ The articles included in the book examine the cultural status of items such as red wine and detergents, to activities such as professional wrestling or striptease.

Textual commentary can also take many shapes and forms, from a very systematic analysis that helps develop specific theoretical concepts. For example, Gérard Genette’s Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method is a book-long analysis take on Proust’s multi-volume novel À la Recherche du Temps Perdu [Remembrance of Things Past], which at the same time is developing a conceptual framework to understand general structures of narrative discourse.⁸ A very different form of textual analysis can take advantage of the properties of digital media, creating a free-form multimedia essay, such as Peter Donaldson’s article on Shakespeare’s The Tempest, which invites the reader to explore the essay to convey the multi-layered, complex nature of the play and one of its film adaptations, Prospero’s Books (1991).⁹

This broad understanding of the term allows us to approach games as texts, whether they use cardboard, computers, or spoken words. We can study games as a cultural production that can be interpreted because they have meaning. Their cultural significance can derive from the context of play: who plays games, why and how, how the practice of playing relates to ...