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Role-Playing Games
The second game "limit case" is role-playing games. Off the computer, these are games such as Dungeons & Dragons, in which players are cast as characters in an imaginary world. Digital role-playing games can be single-player adventures like the classic Ultima games, or multiplayer community worlds like EverQuest. In both cases, the player controls and evolves a character over time within a narrative setting. Role-playing games (or RPGs) certainly have the trappings of games. A paper-based, tabletop RPG usually involves dice, rulebooks, statistics, and a fair amount of strategic play. Role-playing games clearly embody every component of our definition of game, except one: a quantifiable outcome. As an RPG player, you move through game-stories, following the rules, overcoming obstacles, accomplishing tasks, and generally increasing the abilities of your character. What is usually lacking, however, is a single endpoint to the game. Role-playing games are structured like serial narratives that grow and evolve from session to session. Sometimes they end; sometimes they do not. Even if a character dies, a player can rejoin as a different character. In other words, there is no single goal toward which all players strive during a role-playing game. If a game does end, it does not do so quantifiably, with players winning or losing or receiving a score. Gary Gygax, co-designer of Dungeons & Dragons, would concur: "Advanced Dungeons and Dragons is, as are most role-playing games, open-ended. There is no 'winner,' no final objective, and the campaign grows and changes as it matures."[18] This is true of both digital and non-digital multiplayer RPGs. (Note that single-player digital RPGs are structured differently—usually with an adventure game-style winning outcome.)
From this description, it would appear that multiplayer role-playing games are not, in fact, games. But this seems like a ridiculous conclusion, because RPGs are so closely bound up in the development of games and gaming culture. Our position is this: RPGs can be framed either way—as having or not having a quantifiable outcome. If you look at the game as whole, there may not be a single, overriding quantifiable goal. But if you consider the session-to-session missions that players complete, the personal goals players set for themselves, the levels of power that players attain, then yes, RPGs do have quantifiable outcomes. In this sense, an RPG is a larger system that facilitates game play within it, giving rise to a series of outcomes that build on each other over time. Game designer Greg Costikyan puts it this way:"No victory conditions, true. But certainly [RPGs] have goals; lots of them, you get to pick. Rack up the old experience points. Or fulfill the quest your friendly GM has just inflicted on you. Or rebuild the imperium and stave off civiliza-tion's final collapse. Or strive towards spiritual perfection. Whatever." [19]
It is possible, of course, for RPGs to become more game-like. At game conventions, there are often "tournament-style" games, in which players or teams earn points for completing certain actions and accomplishing goals, and a single winner can in fact be declared. Conversely, there are RPGs that de-emphasize power, statistics, and advancement and instead focus on storytelling and narrative.This form of RPG seems very unlike games as we have defined them. Role-playing games are not the only kind of play activity that exists on the border of our definition. A computer program like Sim City does not have explicit goals, and in that way is more like a toy than a game. However, as its designer Will Wright has often stated, players can turn it into a game by constructing their own goals. Does this make Sim City an informal play activity or a formalized game? It all depends on how it is framed. Sometimes the answer to the question of whether or not a game is a game rests in the eye of the beholder. Any definition of a phenomena as complex as games is going to encounter instances where the application of the definition is somewhat fuzzy. Rather than seeing these moments as a breakdown of the definition, we view them as valuable opportunities to understand games as a whole. The terrain along the borders of more rigid definitions offers fertile ground for insight and investigation. In these playful and liminal spaces, assumptions are challenged, ideas evolve, and definitions change. It is this kind of transformative play that is at the heart of our model of game design. [18]Gary Gygax, Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Players Handbook (Lake Geneva: TRS Hobbies, 1978), p. 7.[19]Costikyan, "I Have No Words and I Must Design." <http://www.geoci-ties.com/SiliconValley/Bay/2535/nowordsl>.
