Perhaps one of the most overlooked aspects of game design is the level of technology involved. Whether we recognize it or not, this is a very technologically-driven job. Game designers do not develop new technologies; they repurpose devices that already exist. With this, they change our relation to the technology employed in the game. The results are such that new applications may be found, which furthers the life of a device in fields it was not originally intended to support. Games are a way of breathing new life into a concept as much as other more recognized art forms.
Games force players to experience objects in new ways and to imagine the experience as legitimate uses of the devices as such. For example, in a game of hide-and-seek, players may be called upon to envision a tree, lamppost, telephone pole, etc. as “home.” This is a mental construct that stands in for the object envisioned: a zone of respite. While not a complete analogy, it is similar to what games do when integrating devices into the fabric of their rules. To show how the change occurs, let us look at some actual “technological” devices to set the reference point into this inquiry.
Two devices based on similar properties are the Eye Toy and the Kinect. Both are effectively webcams. One is stereoscopic, which lets it take advantage of technology used by other fields. The Eye Toy is little more than a webcam that uses collision detection from one two-dimensional object with another two-dimensional object. The device could not do much more than turn the image of a player in the camera’s line of sight into a flat graphic. In fact, this has long been the problem of remote imaging systems for most of their history. From photography to cinematography, we have relied as much on our experiences as we have the scale and relative plane an object is on in relation to others (basically how near or far by what is on top of other objects in the frame). When stereoscopic cameras were first employed, the use was for military and scientific application, such as the Mars Rovers. The Kinect uses the same principle by linking two webcams and using the data to read body motion and depth to then turn it into instructions to relay how the screen should change from the input.
The feedback loop used in the video game works the same way as the programming instructions for the rovers. The distance involved necessitates that the vehicle be semi-autonomous to avoid hazards in real time that the earthbound operators cannot foresee. In the play space, we have turned the technology back on ourselves by making the machine observe us as the objects of study for our own amusement. This is a case of how we change the relation to the object from tool to toy. Just about every device has undergone this transition outside of the most complex industrial machines. But, even then, they have given rise to recreational devices.
The wheel has become a hoop to toss objects through or to keep in constant motion. The mallet and club has become the club for golf, baseball, croquet, and cricket. Dice and cards also fit in for their various roles as tools, games, and religious/spiritual objects. Even pen and paper falls into this repurposing and relational shift pattern. Other than record keeping and communication purposes, writing has been used to codify social edicts, codify laws, and even create art. While a roleplaying game falls under this type of game, it is not the only one. Before Battleship, the game was played on a 10 x 10 grid on paper. Lest one forgets, there is also tic-tac-toe. The latter probably predates paper given its simplicity. The point being that the vitality with pen and paper make it a good example of how technology is repurposed. It is not longer the canvas in which an image is sketched and an emotion is experienced, it is a map that a gamer can interact with for an entirely different experience. The image is no less a form of art, only a new relationship to it.
War games shrunk the battlefield so that officers could explore strategic and tactical plans and test them against real world data. Over time, these games evolved not only to take advantage of new innovations in technology on the field, but also the data of each engagement reported. Along with the measures of weapons from precision tests, rates of fire, and field operations, the collected data of all equipment and troop readiness helped build the strengths of a given army. Adding effects of terrain, weather, and the unforeseen, reliable statistics for chances of success emerged. What changed were the ways in which wars were fought. Conflict was now mathematically governed and required greater precision by the orchestrators of troop movement and deployment. An example of some of these developments in games would be the use of boxes, curtains, or other obscuring devices to hide the composition and number of troops in a player’s forces as seen in H.G. Wells’ Little Wars.
In repurposing technology, game designers take on the role of artificer by forging new links, often between concepts and seemingly too disparate to rate as sharing commonalities of any sort. Such combinations are often confusing at first. The play space and each player’s cultural and social experiences become the site of a generative first. Game designers effectively provide an engine which players discover what they can do with it. Therein lays the secret: you change yourself by connecting to others within the narrow confines the rules impose and the devices you have to see anew to overcome the game’s varied obstacles.
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Anatomy of Game Design: A System for Every Occasion?
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Anatomy of Game Design: The Social Contract/Magic Circle