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Ludus Novus Episode 028: Candy Land: Game as Critical Lens

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Hi, welcome to Ludus Novus, the podcast dedicated to the art of interaction. I'm Gregory Avery-Weir. In this episode, I want to talk about what is a "game?"

0:57  
It's a old chestnut; it's a very popular topic. As in many disciplines, we're very interested in discussing the definition of the thing that we're talking about. But I'm much less interested in definitions that people often are when they have this discussion, because definitions generally exist in the context of having a purpose.

1:21  
So you might want to define a word for purposes of taxonomy. For instance, if you are running Steam -- if you're running an online storefront -- you want to be able to say, what is a "game?" What do we let on this service. And so in that context, you want to have a definition of game which is effective in the marketplace, which is good marketing, good branding. And you also are facing certain ethical or gate-keeping concerns with: "Who are we excluding when we say this is a game?"

1:53  
That's not what I'm talking about here. I'm also not talking about kind of the philosophical or political content concept of what should be called a game in order to be part of this culture, part of this subculture. Rhat's boring to me at this point honestly.

2:08  
But I'm interested in talking about the word "game" in relation to analysis using games as a critical lens. Because I make games. I study games, I make games: video games, tabletop games, live action games. And when I want to look at things to further that craft, to further that art, I want to look at them as games.

2:35  
So I can learn a lot from something if I look at it as a game. That thing might not be something you call a game in everyday life. It might be useful to look at the operation of a coffee machine as a game... and that's not to say that should be sold on Steam as a game or that it should be included in the Smithsonian's exhibit on Greatest Game Art, but it's to look at a thing and put it within the context of viewing it as a game. Using that as a lens -- a critical lens -- which is a term that comes up in literary analysis and various you know English major-y stuff for, "how do we want to look at this thing? How do we want to analyze this thing."

3:21  
And in my case, I find it incredibly useful in my work to look at things as games. So with that preface out of the way, if we're looking at things as games, we still kind of need this working definition of what games are in this context. I've sometimes been very flippant about the definition of games and said, well, it's easy to tell something is a game: do you play it?

3:51  
And that's, of course, an incredibly flippant way of putting it. But it's also I think, pretty close to the truth in the sense that when we talk casually about games, we provide evidence for the descriptive definition of a game. What do we actually mean when we tend to talk about games, rather than what should "games" mean.

4:15  
My critical lens for games has to include all of the things that people call games, so as a shortlist, things that people call games include Soccer, Candy Land, Sim City, Doom, and Gone Home.

4:30  
These are all things that are pretty darn different from each other. Three of them -- three of the five -- take place on computers. One of them is a sport, one of them -- Sim City -- doesn't particularly have a, an end condition or a goal that's explicit in the in the context of the game. Gone Home doesn't have really a sense of conflict in it. It's exploration-y, you're sometimes figuring out puzzles, but not in a way that's presented, at least within the games narrative as adversarial. Doom is sort of the archetypical video game, right? It's very violence focused, it does everything short of issuing you points for for hurting things and Candy Land... I think it's actually particularly interesting in this discussion.

5:20  
Because when I talk about games, my less flippant definition of of "game" that I often use when I'm talking about the sort of critical lens is: a game is an interactive simulation with an implicit or explicit goal. So that simulation thing is is kind of important to the way I look at games.

5:40  
Soccer is a simulation of a battle or conflict, right? Soccer is a battle over territory, you carry out a series of rules in order to transform the situation and either push the front of battle one way or the other. This look of simulation, this abstraction of some sort of real world or testing scenario, is something that shows up in Sim City. It's a simulation of a city of city planning of urban development. Doom is a simulation of combat. Gone Home is a simulation of both exploring a space and also a simulation of the emotional journey of being a family member, unfamiliar with who your sibling has become; the simulation of the emotional journey of exploring the coming out of a family member, etc, etc.

6:28  
But Candyland, while narratively, it's a simulation of sort of a Phantom Tollbooth style journey through land that is candy-themed, isn't really interactive in the same way a lot of games we talk about are. Because many people talk about games in terms of choice. Sid Meier famously described games as a "series of interesting choices." And Candyland doesn't have choices

7:00  
Candy Land game once you draw cards or spin a spinner, and you find out what color you get. And that color or, rarely, location, or something like that definitively describes the next step you should take. You need to move this token to this location.

7:16  
At no point do you get to decide "I want to draw a card or not." Or given this card, "I have this decision that I am making." And so Candy Land, even though I don't know that it all controversial to say that it is a board game, doesn't have that sense of choice, of control, of agency that virtually every other game we think of has.

7:40  
Candy Land does have rules. It has things that you're supposed to do in response to certain stimuli. But it doesn't really have that choice. It doesn't have affordances, agency.

7:53  
So the question is, is it actually a game? Is it useful to look at Candy Land as a game using this lens? Even though it kind of violates that definition? It violates the "interactive" bit. You can interact with it. But is the simulation aspect of it interactive?

8:10  
Is it just dancing?

8:13  
Right? Like, if you perform a ballet, assuming that you've got a direction that's somehow faithful to the original intent of the creator, which is, of course, ridiculous. But if you're following a set of very formal defined choreography, is that the same as Candy Land?

8:32  
And I say no, because the work in the case of a choreographic portrayal of a ballet is that set of movements, right. Like you can reproduce the performance of a ballet. It might be different depending on the director, depending on the performers, depending on a whole lot of factors. But there will be certain definite similarities in sequence and in style, throughout the whole time of the ballet.

9:00  
But with Candy Land, every game of Candy Land is different. And that's because it requires player action in order to continue. It's designed in such a way that you have to do something. You have to draw the card, have to move the token. And without that, it is not Candy Land.

9:18  
Candy Land requires that randomization and requires your action in response to that. Because you can't anticipate the outcome of a game, assuming you've shuffled the cards in such a way that you're not aware of what cards are, player action is required. There is interaction necessary in Candy Land in order for it to be a game of Candyland.

9:39  
All games in my opinion, are potential art, potential narratives. Ther are descriptions or sets of rules that allow you to create a manifest narrative in actual experience.

9:56  
A game is a work of art, which is potential in nature, because it requires someone to interact with it in order to make it a thing. And Candyland, if you read the rules of it, if you look through the cards, you're not actually getting the experience of Candyland. Even though you're not making any choices, you need to do a thing. You need to participate in this situation in order to bring a game of Candyland into being.

10:23  
So if dancing isn't the same thing as Candy Land, if dancing isn't a game, what about square dancing? Square dancing, line dancing, contra dancing, these are all forms of dancing in which there's a caller. There is a person who calls out moves that you should follow as part of a group. And in time with the music you perform the actions that the caller is calling.

10:46  
And you can do square dancing or similar things in response to a record, but sort of the canonical way of doing so is with a live person who's making decisions as to which actions should be taken at time. The caller of a square dance is essentially a randomizer. They're an entity that provides prompts for the players in, yes, the "game" of square dancing.

11:12  
Because square dancing is a highly regimented, formalized, rule based game. Allemande left means the same thing every time you play a square dance. When you do-si-so, that is a definitive thing. I mean,  there's room for creative interpretation. There's room for interpersonal interaction. But at its core, the practice of square dancing, contra dancing, is a game.

11:36  
There are a set of affordances you have: a set of dance moves you can make, there's sort of a boundary, a sense of "these are the things that we have to do and these are the things that we can be flexible in." And there's that sense of interaction, of complicity.

11:51  
Games require you to be complicit in their execution. A game requires your cooperation in order to play it.

12:00  
It's one of the reasons why I often get a little annoyed at games, which are very clever and say, "Well, one option for interaction here is to stop playing it." Because that action of stopping to play before something bad happens: it's outside the magic circle, to use an academically popular term. The game requires you to interact with it in order to continue. And so to stop playing the game is not to do something within the game. It's to pause the game or to end the game.

12:31  
And so I think that looking at things like Candyland, like square dancing, like politics, like formalized war, as games is an incredibly useful critical lens. Not necessarily to understand those things, because you really don't understand much about how to square dance by looking at square dancing as a game. But it's incredibly informative when designing games, to look at square dancing and to say, "Wow, what is this about this that is interesting to people? How can I take things from this call and response of square dancing and incorporate it into my game? How can I look at the weirdly specific rules of war and use those in a context that's much more benign and much more creative when I make a game."

13:23  
So I want to see people step away from using definitions of game taxonomically or as methods of gate keeping or methods of marketing and instead look at definitions in a way that doesn't require there to be one proper definition of "game." Because the definitions are most useful, I think, in an artistic context, when you use these terms as lenses, as ways to view systems in order to gain insight into them, which can sometimes give you insight into the system itself and allow you to affect it, participate in it better, but also to give you insight in creating new systems, new games that have resonance or relevance or serve as a refutation of those things that you've examined as games.

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This has been Ludus Novus. It's available under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial Share Alike 3.0 license. I'm Gregory Avery-Weir. You can find me on Twitter @gregoryweir and on the web at ludusnovus.net.

14:39  
I'm a part of Future Proof Games which you can find more about at futureproofgames.com. We've recently released a tabletop and live action role playing game called Rosette Diceless which is very consent focused and story focused and collaborative and is designed to create a play experience and a community which is healthy and sustainable. It's available in PDF and ebook and paperback print on demand and so on. For more information you can go to rosetterpg.com/diceless.

15:17  
If you enjoy this podcast, you might enjoy the other podcasts I work on. There's Audacious Compassion, which is a show I do with my partner Melissa Avery-Weir where we explore how to be compassionate in the most difficult places in daily life. And you can check that out at avery-weir.net: AVERY dash WEIR dot net and there's also the Future Proof Podcast which shares brief news about stuff we're working on at Future Proof Games you can check that out at futureproofgames.com.

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My theme music is "A Foolish Game" by Snowflake, Admiral Bob, and Sackjo22 on ccmixter under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license. Thanks for listening.