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Afterword: Don't Forget the Participant
Before departing a discussion of cybernetic systems entirely, we would like to make a few critical comments on the field. Cybernetics is clearly a formal way of understanding systems, which is why the schema of Games as Cybernetic Systems belongs within our RULES primary schema. However, as with all formal schemas, there are many things that cybernetics fails to address. As a field, cybernetics initially considered a system as a completely self-contained entity. Cybernetics played into the classical scientific idea that the observer of a system had no effect on the operation of the system.This initial model of a cybernetic system was rocked by the introduction of second-order cybernetics into the field. Second-order cybernetics took the observer into account as a part of the system itself, undermining the "objective" stance of classical cybernetics. The insight of second-order cybernetics is that to observe a system in operation is to be part of that system. Although many thinkers, such as Katherine Hayles in her book How We Became Post-Human, have since criticized second-order cybernetics for falling into many of the same objectivist traps as its predecessor, second-order cybernetics went far in attempting to understand systems within a larger context. What does all of this mean for game design? For the purposes of this schema, we made use of the more "classical" first-order cybernetics. We looked at games as self-contained systems, ensconced entirely within the magic circle demarcated by the rules. Occasionally we peeked a bit at the way formal changes play out in the experience of a game, but by and large we kept to the formal mechanics of game systems. This formal emphasis, of course, is what the RULES schemas are all about. The conceit of looking at games as formal systems is to leave out all of the emotional, psychological, social, cultural, and contextual factors that influence the experience of the game for the players. In the PLAY and CULTURE sections of this book, we do in fact look at games as much more than self-contained systems. For the time being, however, we continue our rules-based investigations. Even considered as purely formal structures, there are still many layers to the complex phenomena of games for us to uncover.
