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Defining "Simulation"
A video game is an imaginary world: its inhabitants are nonexistent creatures that nevertheless the eye can see, and the hand can move. It is imaginary in the sense that there is no solid reality behind the picture. A bouncing ball may be faithfully simulated, but that moving blip of light has no real mass or elasticity. The ball's position, velocity, mass, and elasticity are just numbers stored in the computer that controls the video game; and the laws of physics that govern the ball's trajectory and its bounce are just mathematical equations stored in the computer's program.—Warren Robinett, Inventing the Adventure Game
In Inventing the Adventure Game, Warren Robinett, the game designer and programmer best known for the Atari 2600 game Adventure, looks at games through the lens of simulation. He is particularly interested in the way that digital games are "imaginary worlds," as he puts it, in which players experience blips of light and sound as a representation of some other real-life situation. His description of a simulated bouncing ball, in which the sensory components of position, velocity, mass, and elasticity are peeled back to reveal the underlying mechanisms of the programmed software, reminds us of the often hidden relationship between the formal structure of a game and the experience of that structure through play. Robinett specifically addresses the way that representations in video games "mimic" real-world phenomena as diverse as bouncing balls and warring soldiers."A video game is a simulation, a model, a metaphor," writes Robinett. What exactly does he mean? What is a simulation? How are games simulations? Is every game a simulation? What is the relationship between a simulation, a model, a metaphor, and the real-world? We tackle these thorny questions in the pages to follow. But first, let us take a moment to define the concept of simulation. The educational game reference A Handbook of Game Design provides a good starting point: A simulation can be defined as "an operating representation of central features of reality." This definition again identifies two central features that must both exist before an exercise can reasonably be described as a simulation. First, it must represent an actual situation of some sort—either a situation drawn directly from real life, or an imaginary situation that conceivably could be drawn from real life (invasion by extraterrestrial beings, for example). Second, it must be operational, i.e., must constitute an on-going process—a criterion that effectively excludes from the class of simulations static analogues such as photographs, maps, graphs, and circuit diagrams, but includes working models of all types.[1]
The authors Eddington, Addinall, and Percival identify two components that make a representation a simulation. First, a simulation represents something: an "actual situation," which is either a circumstance from real life or an imaginary situation that is conceivably real. This component points out the referential qualities of a simulation: a simulation refers to something in the real world. It is significant that the authors use the phrase "central features of reality" rather than just "reality" when describing what a simulation represents. As we will see, a simulation cannot depict every aspect of something; it has to choose a very small subset of characteristics around which to build its representation. The second component of the definition identifies the fact that a simulation is a very particular type of representation, what the authors call "operational." According to them, a simulation is a representation in the form of "an on-going process" instead of a static representation such as a diagram or flowchart. This component of the definition describes the systemic character of simulations. A simulation is a dynamic system: a set of parts that interrelate to form a whole. A simulation is therefore a procedural representation, one achieved through an ongoing process. In the case of games, the ongoing process is play. Eddington, Addinall, and Percival's statement, "A simulation is an operating representation of central features of reality," offers quite an efficient little definition. In proposing our own definition, we would, however, like to make three small adjustments: first, in keeping with our system-based terminology, we replace the word "operational" with "procedural." Second, we generalize the idea of "central features" to "aspects" of reality. Third, we add quotation marks around the word reality. The result is the following definition of simulation: A simulation is a procedural representation of aspects of "reality." Both components of this definition, the fact that simulations represent procedurally and that they depict elements of "reality," represent surprisingly complex concepts. In the pages that follow, we look closely at these two aspects of simulations, considering each in turn. [1]Henry Eddington, Eric Addinall, and Fred Percival, A Handbook of Game Design (London: Kogan Page Limited, 1982), p. 10.
