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Overview
In How Pac-Man Eats, Noah Wardrip-Fruin considers two questions: What are the fundamental ways that games work? And how can games be about something? Wardrip-Fruin argues that the two issues are related. Bridging formalist and culturally engaged approaches, he shows how the tools and concepts for making games are connected to what games can and do mean.
Wardrip-Fruin proposes that games work at a fundamental level on which their mechanics depend: operational logics. Games are about things because they use play to address topics; they do this through playable models (of which operational logics are the primary building blocks): larger structures used to represent what happens in a game world that relate meaningfully to a theme. Game creators can expand the expressiveness of games, Wardrip-Fruin explains, by expanding an operational logic. Pac-Man can eat, for example, because a game designer expanded the meaning of collision from hitting things to consuming them. Wardrip-Fruin describes strategies game creators use to expand what can be said through games, with examples drawn from indie games, art games, and research games that address themes ranging from border policy to gender transition. These include Papers, Please, which illustrates expansive uses of pattern matching; Prom Week, for which the game's developers created a model of social volition to enable richer relationships between characters; and Dys4ia, which demonstrates a design approach that supports game metaphors of high complexity.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780262044653 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | MIT Press |
| Publication date: | 12/15/2020 |
| Pages: | 384 |
| Product dimensions: | 7.31(w) x 9.25(h) x 1.19(d) |
About the Author
Table of Contents
Series Foreword xi
Preface xiii
Acknowledgments xv
Introduction xix
Part I
1 Operational Logics and Playable Models 3
Passage 3
Talking about What Games Are About 7
Defining Logics and Models 12
2 Alternative Approaches 17
Gone Home 18
Game Genre 20
Gone Home's Alternative 21
Gone Home's Reception 22
3 Expansive Approaches 27
Papers, Please 28
Two Approaches to Tile Matching 30
Broader Context 35
4 Six Questions about Logics and Models 41
Are Logics and Models Natural? 41
Are Logics and Models Inevitable? 42
How Are Logics and Models Implemented? 43
Are Logics or Models Another Name for "Mechanics" or "Systems"? 45
What Logics Are There? 49
How Do Logics and Models Work Together? 57
5 Inventive Approaches 67
Beyond Metaphor 67
Games and Social Models 68
Social Volition in Prom Week 71
The Prom Week Interfaces 75
Two Directions for Social Models 81
6 Understanding Games through Logics and Models 89
Understanding Grand Theft Auto IV 93
Related Approaches 96
Rule Breaking and "My Trip to Liberty City" 98
Critical Play, Complicity, and The Sims 101
Why Logics and Models? 104
Sunset Valley and Liberty City in the Rearview Mirror 111
Part II
7 Inventing Graphical Logics 117
Continuous Spaces and Graphical Logics 119
Collision, Movement, and Physics: Tennis for Two 120
Navigation, Combat, and Scenario Design: Spacewar 125
Combat in Games 131
The Importance of Implementation: Computer Space and Pong 133
Logics and Models as a Historical Lens 139
8 Refinement 141
Adventure and Adventure 142
WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgame$ 148
9 Doubling 151
Tax Avoiders 151
Experiencing Overloading 153
Conceptual Metaphors 154
Game Metaphors 157
Dys4ia 160
Lyric Games 171
What Can Become Conventional 172
10 Logic Structures 175
Rhetorical Affordances 179
Game Structures and Spaces 186
Game-o-Matic 191
The Limits of Spatial Structures 196
The Necessity of Other Art Forms 200
Logic Structures and Game Meaning 205
11 Conclusion: What Games Are About 209
Skinning Games 211
Playable Models 213
Operational Logics 222
Agency 225
Making Games about More 233
Notes 241
Bibliography 301
Index 339
What People are Saying About This
“In drawing out the connections between the deep logics and models of games and the interpreted meaning that players derive from them, Wardrip-Fruin has taken an important step toward a poetics of games: a way to think about them that bridges formal analysis and player responses.”
— Raph Koster, author of A Theory of Fun for Game Design
“For years USC’s freshman coding course has used Noah Wardrip-Fruin’s Expressive Processing as an essential text to understand video games as both technologies and experiences. Now, with How Pac-Man Eats, Wardrip-Fruin has provided us with the next level-up in game studies. This is essential reading!”
— Peter Brinson, Professor of Practice, USC Games and the School of Cinematic Arts
“Approachable and filled with examples, Wardrip-Fruin’s book is an essential read for designers wishing to deepen their design vocabulary. It introduces advanced conversations in game design that move beyond notions of games as a collection of ‘mechanics.’ What results is a thoughtful organization of the ludic logics at work in games. Marvelous!”
— Mary Flanagan, Sherman Fairchild Distinguished Professor of Digital Humanities at Dartmouth College; coauthor of Values at Play in Digital Games