Seen as simulations, games are dynamic systems that construct representation through play. Asteroids, for example, represents the feeling of vast space through the inertial drift of the player's ship. The game designers could have created any navigational scheme they wanted, such as a space ship that could start and stop instantly and turn on a dime even when in motion. Instead, the player must maneuver the ship retro rocket-style, taking into account acceleration and momentum. Through this designed activity, the game expressively depicts deep space. In the Lord of the Rings Board Game, the dark force of Sauron is represented as a figure on a track that moves steadily toward the players; his evil nature manifest in his terrifyingly inevitable advance as well as in the deadly ramifications of an encounter with him on the board. The board game Up the River playfully recreates the experience of a flowing river through the unusual format of its board, which is made out of horizontal strips. Each turn, a player takes the strip from the rear and places it in the front. In this way, the sailboats belonging to the players must battle the steadily flowing water current as they race to be the first to reach the dock.
In these three examples, formal and experiential elements of the game work to create a representation that emerges out of the procedures of game play. We call this form of depiction procedural representation. The term "procedural" is shorthand for all of the process-based ways that games can signify. A procedural representation might arise from the functioning of a computer program's AI; it might be an emergent result of players following the rules of a game; or it could be an expressive core mechanic that references a particular action outside the game.
A miniatures-based wargame is a representation of war partly because the pieces themselves resemble miniature soldiers and because the battlefield can be painted to look like a contested landscape. But these visual signs make up only one part of the game's larger representation. Wargame representation is also procedural, created through the rules of the game and player choices that the rules engender. For example, units in a wargame generally have a movement rating, representing the number of hexes or spaces through which the unit can move in a turn. In a typical wargame, a cavalry unit will have a higher movement rating than an infantry unit. This statistical difference between types of units is not only a formal distinction; it is a form of representation.
The fact that a cavalry unit moves more quickly in the game than an infantry unit is an act of signification that is fundamentally different than the visual aesthetics of the game token. Its representation is procedural, based on the unit's formal identity and its interactive capabilities within the game system. Of course, the units in wargames have many other kinds of formal statistics as well, from offensive and defensive abilities to movement strengths and weaknesses on different types of terrain. All of these formal designations are based on the simulated characteristics of various battle units. As the game is played, these formal identities become systemic relationships that constitute a dynamic, procedural representation of war.
We can consider games as procedural representations on two levels. Borrowing concepts from Games as the Play of Meaning, we know that games are representations and also that they can represent. The idea that games are representations means that an entire game can serve to depict something. Considering procedural representation on this macro-level, a game represents as a whole. Pong is a procedural representation of Table Tennis; Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 is a procedural representation of skateboarding. The notion that games can represent means that games contain smaller, internal depictions. This also holds true when considering the procedural aspect of game representation. We can look at the structure of a game on a micro-level and identify the procedural representations that make up the whole, such as the movement rules for cavalry and infantry wargame units.
Macro- and micro-level procedural representations can be embedded in each other. A card game that depicts social life in an eighteenth century royal court is a game that as a whole simulates a particular historical moment. But within the game, we find several micro-procedural representations. There might be one set of rules to simulate swordfight dueling and another to simulate the current political climate of the court. Of course, these micro-procedural representations are linked together within the complete system of the game that constitutes the overall simulation. The same is true of digital games, where the code that simulates light falling on 3D objects is generally separate from the code that simulates the behavior of computer opponents. Although they simulate different aspects of the game's subject matter, these components are all contained within the larger macro-system of the game simulation.
Because procedural representations emerge out of the play of a game, the player's participation is crucial in bringing the signifying procedures to life. As with all game representations, however, procedural representations also grow directly from the rules of the game, gaining meaning as players interact with them through play. Following are three examples of games that make very different use of procedural representation. In each case, the representation is brought to life through both the formal rule structure and the experience of play.
Diplomacy
The board game Diplomacy is a complex representation of World War I political negotiation. The game takes place on a map of Europe and (depending on the particular edition of the game) the tokens used by players might resemble land-based and naval military units, or they might be abstract shapes. Each player assumes the role of a European military power, vying to occupy a number of key cities and conquer the continent.
The game is played in turns. Each turn, players negotiate in public and private for a limited amount of time (usually about 10 or 15 minutes). At the end of the negotiation period, players write down and simultaneously reveal their selected actions. The outcomes of their actions that turn are contingent on the decisions of other players. For example, during a turn one player moves an army into a territory occupied by another player. Support that the invading player has garnered from other players determines the success of the invasion. If the invasion pits one attacking unit against one occupying unit, the action is unsuccessful. However, if the invading player received support from another player with a unit in an adjacent region, the attack is successful: the strength of the invasion becomes two units acting against one. These rules make advancement of your armies on the board difficult, requiring players to make alliances and coordinate their actions.
The formal game mechanics of Diplomacy result in a dramatic procedural representation of negotiated alliances, uneasy agreements, and broken peace treaties: a representation, in other words, of diplomacy itself. Only one player can ultimately emerge as victor, and it is usually just a matter of time before deceit festers and player alliances are broken, reshuffled, and reformed. Which of your allies are going to betray you—and how? In the game of Diplomacy, as in the diplomatic processes it depicts, social skills are at least as important as strategic thinking.
Diplomacy as a whole procedurally represents the subject matter of diplomacy, and it does so through a number of internal representations that combine to form the overall simulation. For example, although Diplomacy could take place on an abstract map and still maintain the same sense of diplomatic intrigue, the map is also used as a means of procedural representation. Switzerland, for instance, is a central but impassable neutral territory, mirroring its isolationist role in World War I. Each country's starting forces are a representation in miniature as well, appropriate to the time period: England has the strongest naval force but a weak army.
Diplomacy is a wonderfully engaging procedural representation of World War I political negotiation, but it only achieves status as a simulation because of careful design decisions. Procedures embodied in private player negotiations, simultaneous player action, contingent action > outcomes, the ability to support other players' actions, and procedural use of the map and tokens combine to create a complex representation of diplomacy. This representation is a product of the process of play; a representation that only gains meaning when it is experienced as a system of dynamic relationships driven by player interaction.
Vampire
Vampire is a game that relies on procedural representation as well. The game comes from the New Games Book, which lists the following rules:
To start, everyone closes their eyes (Vampires only roam at night) and begins to mill around. You can trust the Referee to keep you from colliding with anything but warm living flesh. However, you can't trust him to protect you from the consequences, for he is going to surreptitiously notify one of you that you are the vampire.
Like everyone else, the vampire keeps her eyes closed, but when she bumps into someone else, there's a difference. She snatches him and lets out a blood-curdling scream. He, no doubt, does the same….
If you are a victim of the vampire, you become a vampire as well. Once you've regained your composure, you too are on the prowl, seeking new victims. Now perhaps you are thinking that the game too quickly degenerates into an all-monster convention? Ah, but then you didn't know that when two vampires feast on each other, they transform back into bread-and-butter mortals.
Will the vampires neutralize each other before all mortals are tainted by the blood-sucking scourge? Why don't you try a little experiment and see? There's always hope, even in the midst of a blood-curdled crowd.[2]
The referent that Vampire simulates is quite different than the referent of Diplomacy. Whereas Diplomacy procedurally represents a real-world historical situation, Vampire comically evokes images of vampires ripped straight from the pages of pulp fiction. The way the game design achieves its procedural representation, however, is no less sophisticated.
Because Vampire requires no game materials (no map or game pieces), it relies entirely on the activity of the players' bodies to generate play: game representations emerge solely from the interaction between players. The initial limitation on the game, the fact that players must keep their eyes closed for the duration of play, orchestrates a certain kind of representational experience. Enclosed in darkness, the player is taken out of the ordinary world and placed in the imagined world of the vampire night, a setting whose drama is amplified by the fact that players spend the entire game stumbling through an unfamiliar space, feeling around for each other.
This tension-filled core game mechanic makes every meeting between players a surprise. There are three different ways that an encounter can play out, from two non-vam-pires exchanging thankful sighs of relief to a screaming vampire attack, (or double-attack, if two vampires collide). As players wander aimlessly, the sound of shrill yells map the darkness surrounding the players, transforming their invisible game world into a screamingly theatrical sonic landscape. In addition to supporting the goofy-horror flavor of the game, the sound component allows players to "see" the larger playfield, signaling areas of action. Are those bloodcurdling yells coming from somewhere safely far away? Or perhaps from RIGHT BEHIND YOU! These simple procedures (wandering around with eyes closed, meaningful chance encounters, screams erupting in the darkness) together create a coherent and distinctive vampire experience for every player in the game.
Furthermore, as with many New Games games, Vampire plays with the conventions of winning and losing. Does an individual player win at Vampire? How? Do players try to become bitten? Or do they try and remain safe? As vampires, are players seeking new victims? Or a cure for their condition, in the form of another vampire? How will the game end? With a field full of vampires or with the group purged of their vampiric tendencies? The emergent representational system of the game, in which players collide like charged particles, takes on unpredictable patterns.The fact that the game can end in one of two states heightens the drama of the experience and gives the overall game play the suspense of a thriller.
Vampire creates a representation through a number of procedures, from the game's immediate core mechanics to the long-term trajectory of play. Vampire is successful as a representation because it is squarely focused on the player experience. From the outside, Vampire looks like a silly group activity. It is only inside the game that the procedural representation works its magic.
Illuminati
We first mentioned the board game Illuminati in Breaking the Rules. The game design is remarkable, among other reasons, because it offers a play variant that encourages rule-breaking within certain boundaries. Although Illuminati uses many means to simulate its subject matter, we focus here on how rule-breaking itself acts to create a procedural representation.
Illuminati is based on the Illuminatus books of Robert Anton Wilson, and the subculture of conspiracy theory associated with them. Players in Illuminati assume the roles of shadowy power brokers that manipulate world events and political structures to their own devious ends. There are groups that players can control and link in the game, from the FBI to Trekkies to the entire state of California. Each of these elements is represented in non-pro-cedural ways (through illustrations and text descriptions), as well as in more procedural ways (each group is represented through a set of attributes, making California, for example, a much more lucrative group to control than the Trekkies).
When players use the rule-breaking variant, a completely different kind of representational experience results. The premise of the game requires players to twist existing social structures and institutions to the mysterious—and often ridiculous—ends of the Illuminati. A player might arrange things, for example, so that Trekkies control the FBI, and the FBI in turn controls California. Therefore, the idea of reworking existing power structures to devious effect is already an important part of the overall representation of the game. But by breaking the rules, players take the act of manipulation one step further. The game rules themselves become a representation of the staid rules of society, which the players, as shadowy power brokers, subvert. The action of breaking the rules is itself a procedure, representing the way players turn the game world upsidedown in order to undo existing power structures and the well-laid plans of other players.
This kind of game play takes players right to the edge of the magic circle, as they engage in an experience that actively plays with the destruction of the game's authority. This is precisely why it is such a powerful representational device, because breaking the rules allows players to play with genuine power. The authority of the rules, the social contract of a game, the safety and trust of play, all become radically undermined, as the game flirts with its own destruction. Can you imagine a better way to represent the topsy-turvy world of the Illuminati?
[2]Andrew Fluegelman and Shoshana Tembeck,
The New Games Book (New York: Doubleday, 1976), p. 109.