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Recams
Tools that support players' natural inclination to transform their experience of play into a story to re-experience and share can enhance the narrative play of a game. In addition, these tools can spawn new forms of narrative production that emerge from the game, but exist entirely apart from it. One such example is the recam.
Recams originated from the culture of the first-person shooter, from games such as DOOM and Quake that gave players the ability to record and save their game play. Known as "demos," these recordings quickly became a way for players to show off their gaming prowess. Rather than just watching a replay, players could edit the game footage, alter the perspective from first-person to third-person, post it and share it with others.The term "recam" refers to the ability of players to alter camera positions, angles, and motions after recording a replay. Dr. Uwe Girlich of Philosys Software was an early developer of tools to assist players in making these recam demos: I came into serious contact with computer games via Wolfenstein 3D and later DOOM. With DOOM I could create a recording of my game play and send this demo to other people to show my ability to solve some puzzles or complete a level in a shorter time than anyone else. I became fairly famous for my DOOM demos, but besides playing, I was more interested in programming and analyzing these demo files and so (after some research) I created LMPC, the Little Movie Processing Centre. LMPC is a decompiler/compiler. It can be used to convert a binary demo file into a simple ASCII text file (decompile). Such a text file can be edited with any editor and afterwards it can be converted back into a binary demo file (compile).It is very easy to analyze and also to alter the demo file and even to create a demo file, which is not the actual recording of someone playing the game but a purely fictional movement in the game engine.[16]
Girlich recognized players' drive to narrativize game play—even to fictionalize it. Rather than showing the match from a first-person point of view, the perspective from which the game is played, a recam allows a shift in perspective to third person. What players see onscreen in a recam varies greatly from what they see while playing the game. In a first-person shooter, the game play perspective has players staring down the barrel of a gun. Player interaction with the game space is determined by the line of sight the weapon affords. But in a recam, the point of view is literally outside of the action. There is no vantage point other than the camera itself. Recams highlight the role of point-of-view in narrative representation. The recammed match between two of the world's top Quake players, Thresh and Billox (expertly recammed by Overman of Zarathustra Studios), for example, not only lets viewers experience the game play from a third-person perspective, but situates the viewer both literally and figuratively outside of the militarized language of Quake and other FPS games. Recamming offers a point of transition between player and spectator, opening up the line of sight to include a new kind of narrative eye.
The car racing and combat game, Driver: You Are the Wheelman, gives players a very different kind of retelling play: the opportunity to produce their very own recam movie. First, a player plays through a game mission. Then the player can access editing tools to select camera angles, film stock, and edit together moments of the game play into a cinematic story. The retelling play translates the fragmented, moment-to-moment action of a game into a single, unified narrative event. Narrative play of this sort can become truly transformative. Players of Driver sometimes play the game as if they were actors in a film, making driving decisions based on how dramatic the action will look in the replay. Rather than playing the game to achieve goals dictated by the game's rules, players impose their own external, narrative goals. Playing the game to achieve a cinematic retelling bypasses the usual meaning of any action > outcome unit in the game. Actions are no longer singularly linked to goals internal to game play, but grow to encompass external, representational concerns. Play is pursued for the sake of creating story. Demos, recams, and other forms of retelling are forms of narrative play supported by one or more elements of a game's design. Created as part of a game's formal system, features such as a replay function have the potential to enhance player experience on a variety of levels. Because players have a tendency to construct stories from their game play experience and to share these stories with others, giving players tools to craft these stories strengthens social community by providing an economy of exchange. These tools also deepen player engagement, as they encourage play in new and often innovative ways. What can retelling play do for your game? [16]Personal email correspondence between Dr.Uwe Girlich and Katie Salen, November, 1999.
