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Framing the Simulation
Children know that they are manipulating their thoughts about reality, not reality itself; and they know that their play self is not the same as their everyday self.—Brian Sutton-Smith, The Ambiguity of Play
In Games as the Play of Meaning, we introduced Gregory Bateson's concept of metacommunication, the unique form of communication that takes place in the context of play. To use Bateson's own example, when a dog nips another dog, the nip signals two things. On the one hand, the nip signifies a bite; it is a stand-in for the action of a real bite. On the other hand, the nip signifies just the opposite of a bite: it signals the fact that the two dogs are playing and not actually fighting. This kind of metacommunication—communication about communica-tion—is present not just in informal play but in games as well. It is a significant part of the complex mechanisms games use to construct meanings for their players. Why is the concept of metacommunication so important, especially in the context of simulation? Metacommunication makes it clear that to play a game is to take part in a kind of double-consciousness. Game actions refer to actions in the real world, but because they are taking place in a game, they are simultaneously quite separate and distinct from the real world actions they reference. A kiss in Spin the Bottle or a frag in a Quake deathmatch refer to kissing and killing, but at the same time are actions that communicate I'm not kissing or killing you. I'm just playing. The magic circle is the space within which such paradoxical signals become meaningful. In "A Theory of Play and Fantasy," Bateson uses the following diagram to illustrate the paradoxical state of mind embodied in play:[15]
This schematic is a riff on Epimenides' Paradox, also known as the Liar Paradox. The Liar Paradox is the philosophical problem of someone asserting "I am lying." If the speaker is a liar, then he is telling the truth, and vice versa: the liar's statement is a logical paradox. In the diagram, the first sentence, All statements within this frame are untrue, echoes this classical logic problem. But significantly, it locates the statement within a frame, a limited context within which the paradoxical sentence asserts its meaning.For Bateson the frame is a psychological and philosophical construct that delimits the peculiar space of play. For game designers, Bateson's frame offers another way of understanding the magic circle of a game. It is a boundary that makes the paradoxical meanings of play possible. At the same time, the frame is only sustained by virtue of the continued metacommunicative assertions of play. In Bateson's illustration, the frame enables the statement's meaning, even as the frame's own meaning comes directly from the statement itself. The magic circle is both a prerequisite and an effect of play. It is a robust context for the exhilarating experiences of game play. But it is similarly fragile, and vanishes quickly when a game ends. Bateson's diagram is a schematic of the cognitive frame of play, a visual retelling of the state of mind of a player in the midst of a play context. As a way of understanding what happens when a player enters into the magic circle and plays with a game simulation, it is a subtle and powerful illustration. What about the other two statements, I love you and I hate you? These statements are also part of the paradoxical meanings captured within the frame. The two sentences address a larger point Bateson makes about set theory, and whether some or all of the statements within the frame could be considered true or untrue. For our present purposes, we will sidestep his larger argument to make a point of our own. Bateson could have included any two contradictory sentences in the frame. But he chose emotional statements about love and hate, statements seemingly addressed to someone else outside the frame. These two little sentences, signals of pure emotion, remind us that the questions of play and meaning, of metacommunication and paradox, are not just abstract philosophical chatter. In understanding how games construct meaning, we are address-ing the deeply felt ways that players engage with games and the emotional and social realities games reflect and construct. The metacommunicative state of mind is deeply intertwined with the unique pleasures and experiences of play. [15]Gregory Bateson, "A Theory of Play and Fantasy " in Steps to an Ecology of Mind (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972), p. 184.
