Mechanics As Art Part 1: Mechanics As Art Support


The Idea

This week, I want to change my tac­tics a lit­tle bit.  Usually, in this col­umn, I have a ten­den­cy to dis­cuss a game’s writ­ing when I dis­cuss its aes­thet­ic value.  This prob­a­bly stems from the fact that writ­ing and music are the two parts of game devel­op­ment with which I am most famil­iar.  I can­not draw to save my soul, and my cod­ing knowl­edge is lim­it­ed to

10 Print “Eternal Loop”
20 Goto 10

but writ­ing is some­thing I have at least some idea how to do, so I can crit­i­cize a game’s writ­ing with­out feel­ing too much like a poser.

What I want to do for the next two weeks, though, is take a look at how a game’s mechan­ics can not only be cru­cial to its art, but actu­al­ly be art in and of them­selves.  This week, I wish to focus on how mechan­ics can serve to enhance a game’s artis­tic value beyond sim­ply pro­vid­ing the struc­ture in which the game exists.  Next week, I will dis­cuss how mechan­ics can be art in and of them­selves — how some games, with­out plot, char­ac­ter, or even nec­es­sar­i­ly much in the way of visu­al design, can be art.

Mechanics As Support

Obviously, a video game can­not real­ly exist with­out mechan­ics, as mechan­ics are nec­es­sar­i­ly what makes the video game inter­ac­tive.  In that sense, then, the notion that mechan­ics serve as sup­port for a game’s art is clear­ly uncon­tro­ver­sial.  What I want to talk about today, how­ev­er, are a few ways in which a game’s mechan­ics, with­out nec­es­sar­i­ly being ter­ri­bly art­ful in and of them­selves, can nev­er­the­less serve to high­light and under­score the game’s themes, char­ac­ters, and atmos­phere.

Mechanics seem to be able to do this in at least two ways.  In the first place, there are mechan­ics which remain con­stant through­out a gam­ing expe­ri­ence, and then, in the sec­ond, there are moments in a game when the mechan­ics are sud­den­ly changed to mir­ror a change in the story, char­ac­ters, or atmos­phere.  The first might be termed a game’s mechan­i­cal “envi­ron­ment,” and the sec­ond, instances of mechan­i­cal “mir­ror­ing.”

Mechanical Environment

Planescape: Torment is a game about a lot of things, and if you haven’t already played it, stop read­ing this and go play it.  If some­one held me down and forced me, through some act of hyper­bol­ic vil­lainy, to pick one video game as being the “best video game of all time,” there is a very real chance I would pick Torment.  You can buy it for $10 on Good Old Games, and it’s old enough that it should run on more or less any PC from the last five years.  Go ye forth and play it.  It’s not with­out its flaws, but it will make you a bet­ter per­son.

It is also an excel­lent exam­ple of a game where the mechan­i­cal envi­ron­ment serves an artis­tic pur­pose.  The Nameless One, pro­tag­o­nist of Torment, is per­haps most chiefly char­ac­ter­ized by the fact that he can­not die.  Stab him, burn him, drown him, and he sim­ply awakes some hours later, amne­si­ac and scarred, but oth­er­wise unharmed.  This is not only dis­cussed in the nar­ra­tive, but is part of the fun­da­men­tal mechan­ics of the game: if, in the course of the game, he should be reduced to 0 hit points, the screen will fade to black, and you will find your­self back in the Mortuary, wak­ing up again and restored to full hit points.  Further, his many years of deal­ing with death have taught the Nameless One how to manip­u­late the life-force of oth­ers, such that up to three times a “day” (peri­od between 8 game-hour rests), he may res­ur­rect his fall­en allies.

I can think of no bet­ter way to dis­cuss how these mechan­ics  relate to Torment as art than to cite Eurogamer author Robert Purchese’s neg­a­tive review of the game, from 2000: “…it cheap­ens death… This approach to death may appeal to some peo­ple, but for me it made the lives of my char­ac­ters rather cheap and mean­ing­less. They were just cannon-fodder, and no mat­ter how many times they died I could always bring them back.”

Yes, Mr. Purchese.  That is exact­ly the point.  For The Nameless One, death is cheap.  He has no fear of death, and, in fact, longs for it.  His own immor­tal­i­ty can cause him, depend­ing how you play him, to lose all respect for the mor­tal­i­ty of oth­ers.  Past ver­sions of him­self (remem­ber that he loses his mem­o­ry every time he dies par­tic­u­lar­ly vio­lent­ly) have been shown to cal­lous­ly dis­re­gard the lives of those around him at the slight­est hint of per­son­al gain.

The fact that the game lacks a death-triggered Game Over screen (there are a few ways to get a Game Over, but you usu­al­ly have to try pret­ty hard) does two things.  First, it under­scores and rein­forces Torment’s under­ly­ing themes and con­ceits.  It would be dif­fi­cult to imag­ine telling a story about an immor­tal man while still main­tain­ing any kind of seri­ous penal­ty for death.  Second, and most impor­tant­ly, it dras­ti­cal­ly reduces the dis­tance between the play­er and The Nameless One.

Character death is never any­thing but an annoy­ance in video games.  Sometimes a very severe annoy­ance, if it has been a long time since you have saved, but never any­thing more than annoy­ance.  While Isaac Clarke lies bleed­ing to death on the floor, regrets flash­ing before his eyes as he painful­ly expires from the vio­lent stom­ach wound he has just received, the Dead Space play­er, at most, sighs, shakes his or her head, makes a face at the gore, and reloads from a pre­vi­ous save.  This is a fair amount of dis­tance, and it is usu­al­ly more or less unavoid­able.  (As a side note, Dead Space and many sim­i­lar games try to avert this by hav­ing the death sequences be excep­tion­al­ly graph­ic, hop­ing to dis­turb the play­er as pun­ish­ment for fail­ure.)  But in Torment, the play­er and the char­ac­ter feel much the same way: irri­tat­ed, frus­trat­ed, and pos­si­bly embar­rassed.  Death is just a minor incon­ve­nience for both par­ties.

Mechanics as Mirroring

When play­ing a game, we get used to the way the rules work.  Much of the fun of play­ing a lot of games is found in learn­ing how to best manip­u­late the char­ac­ter with­in the frame­work of the game’s mechan­ics, fac­ing stiffer and stiffer chal­lenges as we become more and more famil­iar and pro­fi­cient with the game’s rules.  When the rules remain unchanged, every­thing is nor­mal.

As such, one par­tic­u­lar­ly excel­lent trick in the game design­er’s pock­et is the abil­i­ty to sud­den­ly alter the way the mechan­ics work at a par­tic­u­lar­ly rel­e­vant moment in the story, to break the rules to which the play­er has become accus­tomed.  This throws the play­er out of his or her com­fort zone, and is usu­al­ly done in an attempt to force the play­er into sym­pa­thy with the char­ac­ter by mir­ror­ing the char­ac­ter’s men­tal state, thus less­en­ing the dis­tance betwixt the two.

A par­tic­u­lar­ly sim­ple exam­ple can be found in BioShock, when, as Fontaine uses what men­tal con­trol he has over Jack to try to force his heart to stop beat­ing, Jack begins to suf­fer occa­sion­al reduc­tions in his max­i­mum health.  This forces the play­er into sym­pa­thy with Jack — both won­der if Fontaine real­ly has enough influ­ence to out­right kill Jack, and both find them­selves scram­bling about all the faster to try to put an end to Fontaine’s men­tal con­di­tion­ing.  In this way, by break­ing the rules and reduc­ing the play­er’s max­i­mum health, rather than doing straight­for­ward dam­age, the game sud­den­ly shifts its core mechan­ics in such a way that it throws the play­er into sym­pa­thy with the char­ac­ter.

There are many other exam­ples, but a more com­plex one that comes to mind from a game I played not long ago is from the sin­gle play­er cam­paign of Splinter Cell: Conviction.  One of Conviction’s new addi­tions to the Splinter Cell fran­chise, for bet­ter or for worse, was the “Mark and Execute” sys­tem.  By dis­patch­ing a foe in hand-to-hand com­bat, the play­er earns an “exe­cute token,” which enables him or her to “mark” sev­er­al foes in a room and, by press­ing a sin­gle but­ton, watch as Sam Fisher exe­cutes every one with unerr­ing pre­cise head­shots.

Normally, the play­er can only have one exe­cute token at a time, forc­ing him or her to make quick deci­sions about when to use a token and when to save it for later, as well as giv­ing him or her some incen­tive to enter hand-to-hand com­bat with cer­tain foes rather than sim­ply hang­ing back and pick­ing them off one at a time with a firearm.

At one point in the game, pro­tag­o­nist Sam Fisher dis­cov­ers the truth behind an over­ly com­pli­cat­ed con­tro­ver­sy con­cern­ing the sur­vival of his daugh­ter and the true nature of his recently-deceased best friend.  The details aren’t ter­ri­bly rel­e­vant, and Conviction’s plot is prob­a­bly bet­ter when not exam­ined too close­ly, but the gist of it is that Fisher’s friend betrayed his trust by fak­ing his daugh­ter’s death, there­by keep­ing her safe from those mad at Fisher, but also to ensure that Fisher can remain a focused agent, untrou­bled by fam­i­ly com­mit­ments.

Unsurprisingly, this makes Fisher very, very angry and con­fused.  But rather than treat­ing the play­er to long sequences of Fisher deliv­er­ing angst-ridden speech­es or brood­ing, it prefers to show us Fisher’s men­tal state through a quick shift in mechan­ics.  Immediately after this rev­e­la­tion, Fisher must escape the build­ing he is in before it self-destructs (no, I did­n’t know build­ings could do that either, that’s not the point), and is con­front­ed by waves of angry guards on his way out.

Normally, deal­ing with this many hos­tiles would be quite dif­fi­cult, and would require a lot of sneak­ing around and catch­ing iso­lat­ed guards one at a time.  Fisher, how­ev­er, A, does not have time right now, the build­ing is explod­ing, and B, is in no mood to deal with mooks.  He has just dis­cov­ered that the last two years of his life were wast­ed, that his daugh­ter might actu­al­ly be alive after all, and that his best friend betrayed his trust, how­ev­er noble his inten­tions might have been.

So, the play­er sud­den­ly, with­out any fan­fare, dis­cov­ers that he is now pos­sessed of an infi­nite num­ber of exe­cute tokens.  Sam marks a few foes, guns them down, and then imme­di­ate­ly gains a new exe­cute token.  This means that Sam can effort­less­ly stroll through the explod­ing build­ing, unerr­ing­ly killing numer­ous ene­mies with one shot to the head each.

Why is this rel­e­vant to the game as art?  Because the fact is that Sam is not real­ly think­ing about the burn­ing build­ing or the num­ber­less mooks between him and the escape.  He is fully stuck in his own mind, try­ing to make sense of the infor­ma­tion he has just received, oper­at­ing in the phys­i­cal world on autopi­lot, let­ting his years of train­ing and expe­ri­ence do the work for him with­out any mis­takes or pause for remorse.  If Sam Fisher isn’t pay­ing atten­tion, why should the play­er have to?  This sud­den break­ing of the rules allows the play­er deep­er insight into the sort of man Sam Fisher is, and dras­ti­cal­ly reduces the dis­tance between the play­er and the char­ac­ter.

Obviously, this sort of trick can only be pulled so often in a sin­gle game.  It only works if the play­er is already accus­tomed to the game’s rules, such that he or she will real­ly notice the change, and it needs to hap­pen rarely, or it will lose its nov­el­ty and effec­tive­ness.  Used cor­rect­ly, how­ev­er, mechan­i­cal mir­ror­ing can be one heck of a tool.  Few game­play sequences in recent mem­o­ry have had as much effect on me as Sam Fisher’s emo­tion­less, jug­ger­naut slaugh­ter on his way out of the Third Echelon build­ing.

To Be Continued

Next week, I will dis­cuss ways in which a game’s mechan­ics can serve not only to under­score a game’s more tra­di­tion­al nar­ra­tive ele­ments, but can actu­al­ly com­mu­ni­cate ideas and artis­tic insight in and of them­selves.  There is also prob­a­bly anoth­er arti­cle dis­cussing ways in which mechan­ics can end up actu­al­ly detract­ing from a game’s artis­tic worth if they are incor­rect­ly imple­ment­ed.  In the mean­time, I would love to hear of more exam­ples of mechan­i­cal envi­ron­ments or mechan­i­cal mir­ror­ing in video games that you find par­tic­u­lar­ly notable.  There are many more than those men­tioned above!


Bill Coberly

About Bill Coberly

Bill Coberly is the founder and groundskeeper of The Ontological Geek, now that it has shifted over to archive mode. If something on the site isn't working, please shoot a DM to @ontologicalgeek on Twitter!