Just an Ordinary Day - Game Invaders: The Theory and Understanding of Computer Games - page 99

about getting stuck followed by the sense of release we experience when we are
unstuck.
Routes are linear sequences of attractors that lead us around a level or through
a city and thus draw us to places of interest: retainers. In SinCity, such things as
ladders, ledges, girders, fi re escapes, the crane, rooftops, and other parapets work
together to form routes, which we internalize after a while. They become mental
attractors in our minds. In a DM level like SinCity part of the pleasure of the game
is learning the limited number of possible routes through the level and the health,
ammo, and weaponry that can be picked up on the way around.
Perceptual maps have much in common with the way painters arrange the
composition of a work so as to catch the viewer's attention and lead it around the
canvas in a particular way. Although it is not possible to tell a story in all games in
the same way as in a fi lm or a TV program, there is nevertheless an important nar-
rative potential in games that needs to be designed for. This refers to the purposeful
accumulation of experience, which allows players to exchange stories about their
ways through the game. A perceptual map is the basis upon which such narrative
potentials can be designed.
Sureties and surprises in games work together much in the way jokes do:
1. My dog has no nose!
2. How does he smell?
3. Terrible!
The fi rst two lines are unremarkable and mundane, sureties. The third line comes as
a surprise but is plausible from the logic of the fi rst two statements. All jokes seem
to be much like this: you set up an imagined and consistent, however fantastical,
world, and then give it a bizarre, implausible twist, which must somehow be deriv-
able from the former. Sureties and surprises in games work together, supporting each
other and thus the virtuality they inhabit by seeking to catch and retain the attention
of the player and thus maintain presence and belief. If a perceptual map represents
a kind of gameplay labyrinth (see Janet Murray's labyrinth [1997]) then sureties are
the means by which this labyrinth is grounded, virtually, in a believable world.
The attractors for SinCity display an even balance of objects of desire and
objects of fear. This indicates that reward and risk balance out. In SinCity we can
redeem ourselves by acquiring new health and resources. In SinCity all guns, ammo,
health, and power-ups are essentially alien because of the way they fl oat just above
ground. Health is directly connotative in that the object health represents a concept,
the individual's physical well being.
If we look at the rewards we see that in SinCity they are concerned with high
level objectives such as increasing the frag count but also lower level objectives
such as increasing health, weapons, and ammo. SinCity is very much about rising
and declining fortunes and the player's control over them.
This brings us on to patterns of intention, and their setting and planning. In
SinCity it is the normal pattern of game play to have a number of intentions and
their connectors, plans, and so on active at any one time. There are always the overall