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What Is a Schema?
Schemas are the building blocks of our RULES, PLAY, CULTURE framework. But what is a schema, really, and why is it a concept appropriate to the study of games? In his essay,"The Schema," [1]Ben Martin traces the history of the concept back to Plato and Aristotle. According to Martin, Plato used the word schema to mean "important rather than exhaustive information." This property, summarization, is the primary characteristic of a schema: "A schema acts as a reduced description of important aspects of an object or event." [2]Martin then traces the concept to Kant's formulation that "knowledge can only come to us through schemata," that schemas are the frameworks that construct our knowledge about the world. [3]In more contemporary times, the concept of schema falls under the domain of psychology and cognitive science, through the work of psychologists Frederic Bartlett and Piaget, as well as cognitive theorists such as Marvin Minksy. For these thinkers, schema refers to the way that the mind acquires, represents, and transforms knowledge. The use of the concept of schema as a way of organizing the study of game design draws directly on this tradition, even as it appropriates and transforms the concept.
David Rumelhart and Andrew Ortony, in their essay "The Representation of Knowledge in Memory" [4]undertake a detailed theory of schema that draws on the disciplines of both cognitive psychology and computer science. Rumelhart and Ortony point out four qualities of schemas: Schemas have variables. Schemas provide a framework into which new information from the environment is integrated. Schemas can embed. In other words, the schema that constitutes a framework for understanding the concept airplane may contain a schema for representing information about wings or even about the process of traveling. Schemas represent knowledge at many levels of abstraction. For example, schemas can represent information about objects in the environment, but they can also represent information about the way objects interact or the nature and structure of events. Schemas represent knowledge rather than definitions. Schemas are essentially "encyclopedic" rather than "definitional." [5]
All four of these qualities are important for our use of schema. The first quality, that schema are a framework for understanding information, is the primary sense in which we use the term. Game design schemas provide frameworks for understanding the formal, experiential, and cultural aspects of games. The second and third qualities of schema, that they can be embedded in each other and that they can represent knowledge at different levels of abstraction, are also key. These qualities refer to the flexibility of schema as critical design tools. Rather than isolated frameworks, schema are linked together through common concerns. The schema Games as Social Play is embedded within the larger primary schema of PLAY, for example, as are the schemas Games as Narrative Play and Games as the Play of Pleasure.
Last, the idea that schema represent knowledge, rather than definitions, is critical. Although we offer many definitions of concepts in the following pages, we never define schemas themselves in absolute terms. As lenses or general frameworks for understanding games and the practice of game design, schemas are useful because they allow us to sort through the complex phenomena of games in a loose and intuitive fashion, highlighting particular features of games. Schemas are not defined concepts-they are ways of thinking that allow us to assimilate the knowledge of a game. In this sense, schemas act as a counterpoint to the more clearly defined concepts that we construct throughout this book. [1]George Cowen and David Pines, Complexity: Metaphors, Models and Reality (Santa Fe: Addison Wesley Longman, 1994), p. 263-277.
[2]Ibid. p. 265.[3]Ibid. p. 268.[4]David Rumelhart and Andrew Ortony, "The Representation of Knowledge in Memory." In Schooling and the Acquisition of Knowledge, edited by Richard Anderson, Rand Spiro, and William Montague (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Earlbarm, 1997), p. 99-135.[5]Ben Martin, "The Schema." In Complexity: Metaphors, Models and Reality, edited by George Cowen and David Pines (Santa Fe: Addison Wesley Longman, 1994), p. 272-273.
