Games for an
Uncertain World
Now Play This is a new weekend of games and game design. We have
games that take place in installations and games that take place on
walks; games for bustling groups, for screens, for strange physical
contraptions, for bodies, for the space inside players' heads. The thing
that ties these works together is an interest in game design as cultural
practice; in play as one of the fundamental ways that we understand
and interact with the world.
This is a collection of writing about the shifting nature of gameworlds,
and how and why they change. It contains both games you can play and
reflections on the how games are made and their place in our culture.
Endpaper images via the Mechanical Curator at the British Library
NOW PLAY THIS
Next time you’re on a train, count the stops till your stop then put
your headphones in and close your eyes. Keep them closed. Each time
the train stops, keep track. Think about where you are, assuming you
haven’t made a mistake. Think about where you might be, if you have
made a mistake. Think about what train stations you might dream if
you fell asleep. (Don’t fall asleep.) You win if you open your eyes
exactly at your stop.

Choose some small incident from your past. Write the details on a
piece of paper, along with the rules of this game. Seal the paper in an
envelope. Write something on the front of the envelope to remind you
of the incident, and add an instruction, something like: “if it is 2019 or
later, write down your memories of such-and-such incident, then open
this envelope”.
Now, keep remembering the incident, over and over, but
different. Change something. Keep remembering and rewriting and
remembering. Every time you think of it, write this new memory with
its tiny lie. Don’t think of this game. Just think of the not-quite-true
thing that happened.
See if you can shift your memory far enough that when
future-you finds and opens the 2019 envelope, they’re not sure which
memory is real: the one in your 2015 head now that you’re going
to write down, or the one in their head that you’re going to build for
them over the next four years.
Paper theatre. Collection: Poppenspe(e)lmuseum/Puppetry Museum, the Netherlands
NOMICS
By Kevan Davis
founder of Blognomic
Nomic is a game in which changing the rules is a move.
The game was designed by Peter Suber in 1982, as part of a book
on the logical and philosophical knots of self-modifying legal systems. Nomic
starts off as a "deliberately boring" game about adding up die rolls, but each
player can also propose a single change to the game's rules, on their turn. A
vote is taken, and if enough vote in favour, the rules are updated for the next
player's turn.
On one level, Nomic is a collaborative exercise in game design, the
players working together to create something less boring than dice rolling.
It only takes a single rule amendment to introduce a deck of cards or a
chessboard, to require forfeits, or to send players outside. The dice can be
removed entirely, and the victory condition changed. Once a new part of the
game is in place, further proposals can build on it, and fix any problems that
arise.
On another level, Nomic becomes a microcosm of democracy. As
soon as amendment votes require anything less than unanimity, it becomes
possible for higher-scoring players to attempt to strengthen their position,
or for the lower ones to team up against the leader. It's up to players whether they rely on a communal sense of fair play (in practice, a proposal to tax
a minority may be booed down even by players who would not be affected
by it), or to build their own checks and balances. Since the rule-changing
extends to the voting system itself, players can dabble with simultaneous or
secret voting, hierarchies of power or even a monarchy or dictatorship.
Exploiting loopholes is fair game. Sometimes innocuous-seeming
rules will allow a player to gain a sudden and unexpected advantage over
others, maybe even enough to win. Such a loophole might arise accidentally, or it could be placed there intentionally by a player hoping that nobody
would notice it during voting.
The ruleset printed here is a greatly simplified version of Suber's
original. The game can take any number of players, but is best with at least
five. Write new rules on a spare sheet of paper, or jot proposed new rules
on index cards and add them to the table if they're voted in. The ruleset
becomes even easier to amend and track as a document on a shared laptop
or tablet, and one of the best ways to play Nomic is the internet, with some
online games lasting for decades.
1. The players of this game are listed in the score table at the bottom of the
page. Scores start at zero and are kept as a tally.
2. The rules, and any information required to be tracked by those rules, can
only be changed when this is explicitly permitted by the rules.
3. Players may leave the game at any time, but players cannot join mid-game.
4. Players take turns in the order they are listed in the score table. A turn
consists of:
* Proposing a change to the rules.
* Rolling a six-sided die once, and adding the result to the player's score.
(If a die is not available, toss a coin instead: if heads, gain 7 points.)
5. When a rule change is proposed, every player must vote either FOR or
AGAINST it. If every player votes FOR it, the rule change is adopted and the
rules are updated.
6. After two rounds of every player having had a turn, rule changes instead
only require more votes FOR than AGAINST, in order to be adopted. This
takes precedence over rule 5.
7. Newly created rules are given a number one higher than the current
highest-numbered rule.
8. If two rules contradict, the lowest numbered rule takes precedence unless otherwise specified.
9. If players disagree about the legality of an action, the player to the right of
the player whose turn it is may settle the dispute. Their decision is binding,
but may be overturned if every other player objects to it.
10. If a player has a score of 100 or more on their turn, they win the game.
If the game reaches a state where further play is impossible, the player
whose turn it is wins the game.
OUR WORLDS ARE NUMBERED
Procedurally generated games and seeds
By Tom Betts
A Minecraft world generated from the seed “invisible”
When players explore the blocky worlds of Minecraft, they’re
experiencing places built not by hand, but by mathematics. Minecraft
uses procedural generation to create its endless terrains and winding
caverns. Similar techniques are used to produce the infinite sci-fi
planets of No Man’s Sky, and the tense dungeons of Spelunky.
At its most basic, procedural content generation builds game
structures (things like environments, enemies and equipment) from
mathematical algorithms. At their heart are strings of numbers
produced by equations like perlin noise or cellular automata (more
on those in a moment!). Those numbers are used as the basis to build
the world. Players often describe these processes as random, but in
many cases they aren’t random at all.
In programming creating random numbers is an unusual task,
because it runs counter to the predictable logic that we associate
with computers. Random number generators are vital in many areas
of computing, from gaming to security and cryptography. To produce
numbers that are unpredictable, many systems begin by sampling data
from something the computer cannot directly predict: time. So they
record the exact time (down to the millisecond) that a game is started,
and then use this number as the starting point (or seed) for the creation of the game world. Because this event is triggered by the user not
the program, it’s far more unpredictable.
This technique makes it incredibly unlikely that any two players
will end up with the same seed and related game world, because even
a millisecond difference in the seed number will change the output of
the entire system. Some games allow players to define their own seed,
enabling people to share their game worlds with others. Entering the
same seed in any copy of the game will always lead to the same
world being produced, because once an initial seed has been chosen,
the string of numbers produced by the code is purely deterministic
(following the same pattern every time). But how can something as
simple as a string of numbers be used to create the complex 3D
worlds we see in games today?
The success of any procedurally generated game rests on how
well the designers and programmers can transform the output of random number generators into an interesting series of spaces and encounters. Many games use the perlin noise algorithm mentioned above
to generate terrain because, once seeded, this function can produce
values that rise and fall in way that can easily be used to approximate
hills and valleys.
Other games use cellular automata to create caves or watercourses, using random seeds as the basis for simulated growth systems
- but the real artistry in procedural worlds comes from the subtle
ways in which these systems can be combined. The first few numbers
in a seed might be used to start the generation of the game’s overworld, while the next few could feed the beginning of a cave system
that lies beneath that terrain. Other elements, such as the positioning
of flora and fauna, can be derived from the same procedural seeds, as
can subtle but important aspects like the individual size and colour of
each.
The game designer will often limit the range of these aspects to
avoid chaotic results, and although a different seed might produce a totally different world, the style and feel of the worlds will usually remain
consistent. For instance, when generating a world the program might
Perlin noise, and a landscape generated using this technique
define planting spots randomly across the entire terrain, but it will
restrict alpine flowers to high altitudes and swamp grass to low levels.
Similarly, in Minecraft the location of precious ores is partly random
but limited to specific altitude ranges. So although the exact position
of mountains and valleys may vary from seed to seed, the geology,
flora and fauna will remain coherent and familiar.
Defining the right range of restrictions while allowing an interesting range of randomness is a challenging task. Procedurally generated games must balance the thrill of chaotic outcomes with a level of
reliability. If generated worlds are too formulaic or simplistic, they can
feel stale and boring. But if the world is too random or unstable, then
it can be hard to engage with.
The best designs often build in space for both, presenting stable
territories alongside less predictable environments. Careful layering
and filtering is part of any generated game world. It’s like gardening,
where the shape of the plant is pruned and guided, always remaining
familiar, while still allowing unique shapes to occur. A digital seed allows us to share not only the type of plant we have chosen, but also to
reproduce its exact form every time.
WHEN THE MAP INVADES
THE TERRITORY
by Darran Anderson
author of Imaginary Cities
Detail of the labyrinth in Sens cathedral
The worlds within and outside video games have a symbiotic relationship even though it is often assumed that games developed in their
own sealed environment. Nintendo was founded as a playing card
manufacturer in 1889, in the weeks between Van Gogh finishing Starry
Night and the Moulin Rouge opening. In the years before developing
Periscope, Sega made jukeboxes. It was of some satisfaction to learn,
having grown up blasting Nazis in the Wolfenstein series, to learn that
computers partly developed from code-breaking machines that helped
defeat the Third Reich.
Architects and game designers have faced the same problem;
how to recreate the three dimensional world in a two dimensional medium. They responded to the challenge in remarkably similar and interconnecting ways. Pacman eats his way essentially around a ghost-haunted floor-plan. So closely do the perspectives in games like Head Over
Heels resemble the isometric projections of the Bauhaus and the
Russian Constructivists that they make the likes of Herbert Bayer and
El Lissitzky seem pioneers of computer games before there were even
computers. It is of little surprise that generations of city-building games
like SimCity have adopted this god’s eye view. The development of games has been a process of increasingly mimicking the real world, in the hope of surpassing it. There is a
problem however. Games are restrained by technical limitations. The
flat-land perspective may have evolved into the isometric illusion of
depth but it was still boxed in. As yet unable to offer a world in which
the gamer could freely roam, designers ingeniously turned this disadvantage into an advantage. Again, they followed architectural examples.
They transformed a prison of successive rooms and corridors into a
labyrinth, and every labyrinth needs a minotaur. In 1981, the scientist
Malcolm Evans designed a maze on his Sinclair ZX to test the power
of the computer and was persuaded to turn it into a game. He did so
by adding the unlikely presence of a pursuing Tyrannosaurus Rex. The
result was 3D Monster Maze. The labyrinth model was fortuitous;
it became known as the dungeon crawl, exploiting the considerable
overlap between early gamers and Dungeons and Dragons roleplayers.
It advanced again inspired by real life architecture; namely subterranean
systems from Nazi bunkers in Wolfenstein 3D to scientific research
facilities in the likes of Half-Life.
As hardware developed, games began to break through to the
surface. In shoot-em ups like After Burner and Space Harrier, and later
racers like Wipeout and F-Zero, the foreground cascades towards
the viewer giving the illusion of travelling into the distance. The very
motion of Star Fox was inspired by walking through the Fushimi Inari
shrine in Kyoto. Since the backgrounds are never entirely reached or
explored, game designers could indulge their artistic and prophetic
sides, constructing all manner of futuristic cities. This was an old technique popular in Northern Renaissance painting where the likes of
Bosch (Adoration of the Magi, 1485) and Jan van Eyck (Road to Calvary,
1530) smuggled architectural experiments and Ideal Cities into religious allegories. It was a method then employed in theatrical backdrops
and into the age of cinema; the travellers in The Wizard of Oz dance
their towards a perspective-trick painting of the Emerald City. It is, in
essence, the tantalising Utopia on the horizon, powered by our own
imaginations.
As the cities in games became more representative of real cities,
they began to ask questions that architects and urban planners had long
pondered. Space could be used to reflect and perhaps accelerate supposed moral decay. In a spate of beat-em ups beginning with Renegade,
vigilantes would clean up the streets by beating petty hoodlums to a
pulp, battles sustained by eating roast dinners lying on the pavement.
Reflecting a gamut of puritanical thought, including zero tolerance,
prohibition and the broken windows theory, these games were an
implicit condemnation of decadent cities. Even the structure of these
games originated in religious historiography and histrionics, echoing The
Pilgrim’s Progress with its proto-end of level bosses and moral journey as much as the hierarchies of criminal gangs. With Streets of Rage
rocket-launcher toting police or Final Fight’s ‘roid rage mayor, you have
a genre satirising itself, intentionally or otherwise.
Architecture is, in part, an expression of authority; who has
power and who has not. The oppressive use of space can come actively
with zones of exclusion (demonstrated in stealth games like Metal Gear
Solid) or passively as liminal areas (as shown in GoldenEye). The subversive aspects of urban exploration and parkour have informed games like
Mirror’s Edge, where dissent and freedom is articulated by a reclaiming
of forbidden space. Where there is power, as Foucault pointed out,
there is resistance.
The future will be old and it will contain the wreckage of the
present and the past. The most visionary games have embraced this
from the retrofuture Russian architecture of Strider to the Hermann
Finsterlin-echoing blobism of Balamb Garden in Final Fantasy, the
Escher-inspired structures of Monument Valley to the expressionistic shadow puppetry of Limbo. Bloodborne absorbs memories of
mist-shrouded Edinburgh and Prague; Dishonoured adds the spectral
light of Victorian London. Anor Londo in Dark Souls was directly inspired by Milan Cathedral while the designers of Devil May Cry visited
Gaudi’s buildings for inspiration. BioShock is an Ayn Rand-mocking Art
Deco Atlantis. Its follow-up BioShock Infinite recalls World’s Fairs via
Krutikov and Jonathan Swift’s flying cities. It is even tempting to see
architects like Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright playing games with
their grand plans (Radiant and Broadacre City respectively), suggesting
that architecture has always had an aspect of the virtual. Amidst the
young people playing Minecraft today are the architects of tomorrow.
“Everyone should be able to build” Friedensreich Hundertwasser has claimed “and as long as this freedom does not exist, the present-day planned architecture cannot be considered art.” With anticipated advances in augmented reality, 3D printing and nanotechnology, this
gap may well be narrowing, just as it is between cyberspace and physical
space. With technology catching up with our imaginations, we could
well see impossibilities (the physics-defying spaces of Gravity Rush and
Portal for example) become possible. This will create new perils and resistances as much as wonders. The question we must pose, is whether
we will be the beneficiaries of change or the victims, the gamer controlling their own world or a character in someone else’s game?
AN UNRELIABLE REPORTER
By Philippa Warr
NOW PLAY THIS
Decide which direction - north, south, east or west - is the most dangerous. For the rest of the day, make sure that you're never exposed
to the horizon in that direction. Keep something between you and it at
all times - a passer-by, a building, a bus. (A window isn't good enough.)
Image via the Mechanical Curator at the British Library
There are too many games to play in a lifetime so we must pick and
choose.
And so I read blogs, check forum posts, watch game trailers,
skim press releases and plough through crowdfunding pleas. There
are many games I will play as a result of these exploratory voyages but
many more that will only be known through words on a page or images on a screen. But they are not lost. They are the foundation for new
worlds and stories in my imagination.
A character name might catch my eye and spark an entire backstory independent of what the developers intended. A combination of
place names lets me sketch my own map, adding geography and landmarks. I have a whole alternate universe in my mind where the upcoming military shooter, Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 is a cyberpunk thriller
with you playing as the megacorporation's bio-enhanced security force.
As a games journalist there's flexibility in what I write but it
centres on the reliable core of a game– understood mechanical systems cloaked in a known visual style and with reference points from
elsewhere in gaming. Unpublished are the ideas from these myriad
parallel universes. But they are not lost.
Here are two from my unreliable reporter collection:
"Blood Cloud May Help Insect Befriend Humans"
There's a game called Path of Exile. It falls outside my area of expertise
and so I've not kept up with its development and know almost nothing
about how it plays. What I do know is that a player can have an ingame pet called a Gore Weta. It's a weta – a massive grasshopper-type
insect – that follows you round in a cloud of blood, haemorrhaging a
red trail as it moves.
I started imagining what biological advantage that could offer.
Surely the blood would attract predators? So the weta of my imagination has a symbiotic relationship with the player. Maybe it lures
predators over, convincing them an injured mammal is just around the
corner, bringing them within range of your weapons so you can strike
a killing blow of your own and dine well. In exchange the weta gets
protection and other bonuses. My Gore Weta has a place in an ecosystem.
"Terror Of The Deep 'Mostly Harmless'"
Another is ARK: Survival Evolved. The developers unveil
creatures they're planning to include via illustrated dossiers. I like the
gigantic vampiric sea creature dossier. For the naming they've turned
to a genus of squid-like creatures from the Cretaceous – Tusoteuthis.
Tusoteuthis is related to today's Vampyroteuthis infernalis. That name
translates as "vampire squid from hell" but these defensive, slow-moving little creatures suck no blood. .
I wondered whether the imaginary Tusoteuthis vampyrus was
having a similar PR struggle. Perhaps "the terror of the deep" was a
casualty of some deep-seated human fear of something so alien-looking. The crushing of prey and siphoning of blood using talons on its
tentacles in the dossier were thus misunderstandings of natural behaviour. My Tusoteuthis vampyrus is a gentle giant stuck in a horror movie
ad campaign.
NOW PLAY THIS CREDITS
Director: Holly Gramazio
Digital Curator: George Buckenham
Producer: Jo Summers
Visual design and programme editor: Sophie Sampson
Identity: Dick Hogg
Custom controllers: Louis Roots
Facilitators: Alice Bowman, Mink Ette, James Hunter,
Ben Nizan
Executive Producer: Alex Fleetwood
Thanks to Paul Callaghan, Magnus Anderson, Fred Deakin,
Viviane Schwarz, Terry Cavanagh, and all at Somerset House.
Now Play This is supported by Arts Council England,
Somerset House, Ukie and Film London. Thanks also to
Playhubs, The Wild Rumpus and Hire Intelligence for help
with tech equipment.
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