Identifies symbiotic relationships between theory and practice in different disciplines (particularly with reference to film) and outlines ways for Digital Game Studies to benefit from incorporating design experiments as a playful means of knowledge creation. Cf. http://agd.swerning.org/ for more information.

1. Slide No. 1 of 16GAP Summer School – Utrecht – August 21st, 2014
Analytical Game Design.
Digital Game Studies between theory and practice.
Dr. Stefan Werning (University of Utrecht)

2. Slide No. 2 of 16GAP Summer School – Utrecht – August 21st, 2014
Problematizing ‚the‘ digital game studies
• Ian Bogost: „a mess“ (2009) *
– Few consensual terms and concepts
– ‚Imported‘ structural metaphors such as „design
patterns“ (Christopher Alexander) are still often
limited to specific sub-discourses
– Limited corpus of examples
• E.g. >40 references to Psycho Mantis in game-
analytical texts on Google Scholar (as of July 2014)
– Focus on discursively ‚claiming‘ new subject areas
and phenomena
– Limited demonstrability of hypotheses since
games are more volatile as ‚proof‘ than e.g. films
• Reconsidering the role of practice
might be one way to address this* Bogost, Ian. 2009. Videogames are a Mess, online:
http://www.bogost.com/writing/videogames_are_a_mess.shtml.

3. Slide No. 3 of 16GAP Summer School – Utrecht – August 21st, 2014
‚Analytical‘ practices in different arts and disciplines
• Literature
– Oulipo: Prototyping ‚littérature potentielle‘
– Literatur based on ‚algorithms‘ (or: rules of play)
• S+7/N+7, snowball, palindromes, univocalism
– Allowed for ‚testing‘ the feasibility of literary techniques
– Explored the relation between textual and procedural rhetoric
• E.g. Raymond Queneau, Un conte à votre façon (1967)
• Music
– Variations on a theme
– Alexander Skrjabin; Theodor W. Adorno
• Reenactment and games in historiography
– Includes aspects of corporeality into historical analyses
• E.g. spatial experience, weight and texture of weapons
– Kevin Kee, Rob MacDougall, Timothy Compeau
• Using ARGs in teaching history
• Architecture
– Parametric design practices
– Iterative and intrinsically playful

4. Slide No. 4 of 16GAP Summer School – Utrecht – August 21st, 2014
The role of practice in film studies
• The ‚Kuleshov experiments‘
– Part of an ‚experimental culture of filmmaking‘
• cf. e.g. ‚creative geography‘ und ‚creative anatomy‘
– Situated within the opposition between performance
(actors) and montage (editors)
• Conceptually similar to the early opposition between ludology
and narratology
• Experiments facilitated a productive resolution
– Fostered a quantitative perspective on film
• Kuleshov drew on the quantification of actors‘ movements in
time and space following Frederick Taylor (Prince/Hensley)
• Notation syntax for on-screen movement
• Faciliated the ‚rapid prototyping‘ of aesthetic ideas

5. Slide No. 5 of 16GAP Summer School – Utrecht – August 21st, 2014
The role of practice in film studies II
• Only iteration and comparison
produced new insights
– The singular experiment propagated montage rather
than analyzing it
– ‚Testing hypotheses‘ about film syntax
– Made viewing conventions and bias observable and,
thus, analyzable
• Call for a „Citizen Kane of videogames“
– http://thecitizenkaneofvideogames.tumblr.com/
– „Citizen Kane moment“ (EDGE Online)
– Instead, we rather need lots of video game
experiments following the example of Kuleshov

6. Slide No. 6 of 16GAP Summer School – Utrecht – August 21st, 2014
The role of practice in film studies III
• Supercuts and video essays as analytical
‚tools‘
– Kogonada: Kubrick // One-Point Perspective
• Several ‚experiments‘ within a single
video
– Implemented by recontextualizing the same footage
within different contexts
• Adds an ‚aesthetic quality‘ to the
hypothesis
– E.g. through the juxtaposition of images and music
• Already used in institutionalized film
analysis
– Cf. e.g. Catherine Grant on ‚direct addresses‘ in
Bunuels Los Olvidados

7. Slide No. 7 of 16GAP Summer School – Utrecht – August 21st, 2014
Reflective playing practices I:
Theorycrafting
• Speedrunning as a conceptual
‚precursor‘
– Quasi-analytical playing practice
• Theorycrafting
– Methodical iteration on player behavior and
documentation of the ‚results‘
– Hypotheses on game-internal parameters
– Mostly with reference to MMO(RP)Gs
– Analyses are limited to game-internal
phenomena
• E.g. used to optimize playing strategies
• Do not generate ‚new‘ insights
• I.e. rather a self-referential activity

8. Slide No. 8 of 16GAP Summer School – Utrecht – August 21st, 2014
Reflective playing practices II:
In-Game Photography
• ‚Testing hypotheses‘ on aesthetic
aspects
– perspective and framing
– Genres such as architecture, portrait or still life
– mis-en-scène
• ‚Testing hypotheses‘ on photographic
and ‚touristic‘ practices and
perceptions
• Deemphasizes the element of ‚ludus‘
• ‚Photos‘ are being archived,
documented, evaluated and used as
the basis for new ‚experiments‘

9. Slide No. 9 of 16GAP Summer School – Utrecht – August 21st, 2014
The role of practice
in Digital Game Studies
• Reflective practitioners in game
design/analysis
– Ian Bogost, Dan Pinchbeck, Jesper Juul
– Perform similar functions as Eisenstein or Kuleshov
• Rationalized media practice
– Second of six ‚phases‘ of media theory (Rainer
Leschke)
– Lindley/Eladhari: Causal Normalization: A
Methodology for Coherent Story Logic Design in
Computer Role-Playing Games
– Bjork/Holopainen: Patterns in Game Design

10. Slide No. 10 of 16GAP Summer School – Utrecht – August 21st, 2014
The (potential) role of practice in game studies:
Video production as a form of analyzing games
• Videography as a form of
knowledge production with a
long tradition
• EXAMPLE: Recutting game
footage according to
cinematographic syntax
– ‚Analyzes‘ the game and its relation to
other narrative media
– Makes structural incompatibilities
evident and more easily analyzable
„The main reason this game is often criticized is the fact that it is extremely
repetitious. Even with the editing I did, you will definitely notice this to be true.
However, I hope the form of editing I did helps move the story along smoother
than actually playing the game does, which should allow this game to possibly be
more watchable as a movie than playable as a game.“
„I've done my best to try to bring out the movie experience in this game. I've
removed as much of the HUD as I could, and as with the Uncharted series, I've only
included the bare minimum gameplay necessary to understand the story.“

11. Slide No. 11 of 16GAP Summer School – Utrecht – August 21st, 2014
The (potential) role of practice in game studies:
Game experiments
• Which? and More Which?
(Nekogames, 2012)
– Differentiate between outwardly identical
objects
– Experimental setting through iteration
– E.g. hard/soft, full/empty, 2D/3D
– ‚Analyzes‘ the (im-)mediacy of game-internal
perception
• Triggers the introspection and self-reflexivity of
the player
– Does not produce ‚answers‘ but rather
important follow-up questions

12. Slide No. 12 of 16GAP Summer School – Utrecht – August 21st, 2014
Analytical game design
• The independent game scene already
‚iterates‘ on concepts through sheer
quantity
– Sophie Houlden, The Linear RPG
– Nekogames, Parameters
• Hypotheses need to be tested through
iteration and remixing
– Problem: Existing games are not easily remixable
and repeatable
• Adapting methods from (commercial)
software development
– E.g. game analytics (Google analytics)
– E.g. split testing as used in web and app
development
– E.g. platforms for collaborative code editing
• Forking and embedded comment functionality

13. Slide No. 13 of 16GAP Summer School – Utrecht – August 21st, 2014
(How) Can games ‚answer‘ questions?
• Bryan Lawson: „How Designers Think“
– Always multiple ‚solutions‘, none of which is clearly
‚ideal‘
– Every solution can only be assessed in its practical
application
• Design as „conversation and perception“
• Even the DT heuristic of the Hasso-
Plattner-Institute (Stanford) is being
constantly varied and ‚redesigned‘
– Understand
– Observe
– Define point of view
– Ideate & choose
– Prototype & test
– Implement

14. Slide No. 14 of 16GAP Summer School – Utrecht – August 21st, 2014
Playful knowledge production, or:
The digital game studies as a game
• 1) Game prototyping as a game in itself
– Iterative process allows for quick recombination of design elements (paidia)
– Scripting language as ‚ruleset‘ (ludus)
– Optimization problems similar to common gameplay mechanisms
• 2) Similarly, analytical game design encourages playful heuristics of
knowledge production
– Playing with the parameters of the experiments /prototypes (paidia)
• 3) Games can and should be part of the ‚dispositif‘ of game studies
– Cf. e.g. Beat Wyss: slides/diapositives and Powerpoint as the dispositif of art history
• Collecting, taxonomizing, organizing as educational principles
• Philology rather than philosophy

15. Slide No. 15 of 16GAP Summer School – Utrecht – August 21st, 2014
OUTLOOK: Thematic links to the workshop
‚Reading and Writing Game Poetry‘
• Game poetry (Ian Bogost) as
one potential manifestation of
‚analytical game design‘
• Goal of the workshop
– Designing new ‚gameplay vignettes‘ that
allow for approaching the concept of
(game) poetry from different angles
• Slides will be available online

16. Slide No. 16 of 16GAP Summer School – Utrecht – August 21st, 2014