All Work and Play - Game Invaders: The Theory and Understanding of Computer Games - page 174

technology and are translated into appropriate movements of a steering wheel ren-
dered in the gamespace, in turn changing the speed and direction of the racing car.
The effect is that the player is in a real sense in the game.
In the fi nal two rows this process is taken one stage further. In these two games
the player is not only the sign of intervention but also the interactive sign itself. In
Brain Training the player talks to or touches the DS Lite screen and objects and
relationships are changed appropriately: there is no interactive sign, no playable
character. In Kinect's proposed quiz game two families sit around on the sofas in
their own homes and answer questions put to them by a virtual game host. They are,
quite literally, inside the game.
CBS have enabled us to identify a defi nite shift in the relationship between the
player, the interface technology, and the game. At fi rst glance this might seem a
natural, almost inevitable progression of development. But is it? Is the gameplay
situation of rows fi ve and six better than rows three and four; and are they all better
than rows one and two? People have been quick to point out that such basic actions
as walking and running and going up stairs are going to be problematic for the types
of technology represented in rows three, four, fi ve, and six. Players will have to
adopt walking or running on the spot actions instead of actually going anywhere.
Turning is even more problematic because if you turn to the left or right you won't
be facing the screen anymore. So such actions might have to be even more conven-
tionalized. In other words, Kinect users, for instance, might well require an addi-
tional, abstract gesture language for those actions that don' t fi t naturally with the
player being both the signs of intervention and the interactive sign. In other words,
these new intuitive interfaces will require new symbolic gesture systems in order to
accommodate all the types of actions required by most modern games.
The interesting thing about the technologies represented in rows one and two
is that between player and game is an abstract mapping from the signs of interven-
tion onto actions programmed for the interactive sign. What this means is that the
kinds of anomalies thrown up by the technologies represented in rows three through
six don't happen for the older technologies of rows one and two. In their case, all
actions are essentially abstractions; none is more natural or less natural.
This is not to say that these new, more intuitive interface technologies won' t
fi nd their place in the interactive entertainment industry, because they almost cer-
tainly will. The point is, we have to choose carefully what types of games they are
good for. From our analysis, however, it does begin to look as if the Wii offers both
the game designer and the game player the most fl exible and coherent set of options.
Using CBS to answer the question “Where is the player?” has allowed us to see
through the sophisticated graphics and novel interface technologies and get to the
heart of the work of gameplay and the player's place in it.
SUMMARY
To understand computer games we have to understand the relationship between the
player and some very complex technologies. How can such a complex system as a