In this post, I wish to respond to our reading this week. First, I will charitably analyze one of Braid‘s essential mechanics with Wardrip-Fruin’s framework of game mechanics, operational logics, and playable models as meaning-creating instruments. Then, I will point out what I think are possible issues with this theoretical framework.
The mechanic that I wish to discuss–as you may also see from the title–is how the character we control, Tim, is able to rewind his past actions and travel back to a past position in the game. In the reading, Wardrip-Fruin defined game mechanics as “actions that players may take as supported by the game’s implemented logics and models (14).” At this most fundamental level, rewinding time is an action that the players can press the “shift” key and easily perform within the game world. The duration of pressing the key corresponds to the duration of rewinding in the game. Whereas the default speed of rewind is 1x, the player could also press the up and down buttons to change the speed–like a DVD that we watch on TV, or a cassette tape. This game mechanic allows the players to perform a series of hitherto unthinkable actions at first, such as reverting death and traveling back to an exact location, and then enables/forces the players to solve puzzles with it. On the 2D screen, we now have, through this game mechanic, a constructed higher-dimension, in which time seems to be present and manipulatable by the player.
Defined as the “foundational combinations of abstract processes with their communicative roles in the game,” operational logics are at play as the supporting components of the game play experience that tries to communicate something relating to the entire game system to the players (13). Importantly, its function is within the game world. As game mechanic is a building block of operational logic, I will continue to develop on the rewind game mechanic and analyze what it accomplishes as an operational logic. The abstract process that underlies the rewind operational logic is avatar moves in reverse-chronological order when the player presses “shift.” The communicative role of this operational logic is essentially that the avatar, which we identify as ourselves because of its correspondence to our inputs, can reverse its actions and complete things usually–in the pre-established game traditions, especially those of platformers–impossible. In the game world, what this already does is expand yet at the same time condition the player’s way of playing, offering the players a new and out-of-the-ordinary mechanic to solve the game with, but simultaneously limiting the players’ agency in the game play, for they now have to resort to this means in order to win the game. Moreover, it can be argued that the author of the game intentionally designed this game mechanic in a novel way, such that players would be incentivized to dive down the rabbit hole of trying to figure out different ways of using it. In any case, these expositions fulfill the mechanic’s operational logic.
But importantly, this construct of “time” that comes with the rewind mechanic is only “time” because the literal action of rewinding is interpreted by the human player to be as such. That is, the inherent way through which the players are able to make sense of this mechanic in fact already reflects our own reality–one in which time is a dimension outside of our control, yet we experience it and make reference to it as if it is an omnipresence. Its cultural prevalence coupled with its uncontrollability, add to the novelty of the rewind game mechanic, furthering its communicative role into the realm of culture, society, and life–a vast reality-bound world of meanings. At this point, we move on to discussion of the game’s playable model. One of the playable model’s structures, based on the rewind mechanic, is to point to how one can get infatuated by developing strategies for winning with a novel technique, such that one thoroughly neglects its inherent characteristics, and take the experience for granted. This is manifested in the final level, where players are made to realize, ironically through a rewind, that the avatar is not there to save the princess. Another arises from the culturally embedded scapegoating of time, manifested in the thought and expression of “if only I could go back in time and change that thing,” which seems like admitting a wrongdoing, but inherently is a submission to the uncontrollability of time. The game presents a game play experience in which one could control time, yet still keeps on moving forward until there is no turning back and until the revelation of the ugly truth. By doing this, the game mocks its players of thinking that the control of time would result in success, and delivers the hard-t0-swallow message–through the mechanic, the operational logic, and the game play experience–that it is not control of time they need, but a perfection and improvement of humanity at large, for it is of humanity that the players zoomed their focus on winning the game and exploring the mechanic. Thus completes the exposition of the rewind game mechanic.
Though satisfying, there are some issues with this theory in my perspective. The first issue concerns itself with what seems to me to be circular logic. Each term seems to be defined by one another. For instance, game mechanics is stated to be “as supported by the game’s implemented logics and models,” whereas the logic of the game is constructed by the game mechanics, and the model of the game requires the building block of logic. The second issue concerns itself with the assumption of an inherent “author.” It is true for the theory that the communicative role of an operational logic assumes that there is an author, that there is a message that the author intentionally delivers (13). This is not necessarily the case, as game play experiences varies for different people, and so, by definition, do the operational logics. So, it cannot be definitely said that all operational logics are intended by the author. Moreover, this assumption makes the operational logic framework sound very similar to procedural rhetoric, in which there is also an agent behind the codes and mechanics of the game that’s trying to tell the players something. A look at Chapter 6, where the author said he will be comparing his framework to that of procedural rhetoric, did not reward any substantial knowledge.
