What Does a Game Mean? Half-Real and Meaning
“We interpret an everyday word differently in the context of a poem, and an ordinary object takes on new meaning when displayed in a gallery. We prefer not to be involved in traffic accidents, but we may play video games about creating traffic accidents. We may prefer not to have to clean the house or take out the garbage, but we play video games about this anyway. A game is a frame in which we see things diferently. Literature can make us focus on the words themselves. In the game, we seek the beauty of the activity itself.” (201)
Jesper Juul comes to this conclusion in the closing pages of his book, Half-Real. He argues here that all art invites us to ponder figurative meaning. When we read the words of literature, hear the tones of music, or experience the component parts of any art form, they become a figure for some idea. The experience of a video game, which he calls “the activity itself,” is gameplay.
Jesper Juul approaches gameplay like this: “Gameplay is not the rules themselves, the game tree, or the game’s fiction, but the way the game is actually played” (88). To understand what he means, I want to share Juul’s take on rules and fiction.
“Rules describe what players can and cannot do, and what should happen in response to player actions” (55-56). In other words, rules are more or less the lines of code in a game: how high Mario jumps, how fast he runs, and the fact that he dies when he touches a goomba or he clears a level when he reaches a flagpole. We can argue whether code that changes Mario’s sprite would be a rule, but Juul largely discusses rules as they outline possibilities and challenges for the player.
The rules of a game describe everything that is possible, creating a state machine. The term “state machine” just refers to the idea that a program can be in different states: Mario can be in 1-1 or 4-1, he can be jumping or standing still, he can be small or super. Juul calls the state machine for a video game the “game tree” (56).
When Juul discusses fiction in games, he refers to the world that we imagine when we play a game. “While all games have rules, most video games also project a fictional world: The player controls a character; the game takes place in a city, in a jungle, or anywhere else” (121). The world can be bigger than the game itself. “The fictional world of Hamlet is presumed to be as large and detailed as the actual world. The work not only cues the reader to imagine the states of affairs described by the play, but also to make inferences about the larger world of Hamlet on basis on [sic] the text” (122). For example, since we know that Toadstool is a princess, we can imagine her as the daughter of a monarch who exists outside of the game.
So, Juul says that gameplay is not the rules, and it’s not the game tree: gameplay is not the raw programming of a game. He also says it is not the fiction of the game: gameplay is not the imaginary world that a game shows us. Instead, he says that it is “the way the game is actually played”: interacting with a piece of software while witnessing its fictional world. This interaction itself, Juul says, gives video games their meaning as artworks.
But players might not care about a game’s world, and they might not pay attention to a game’s rules. Some players will derive more meaning from rules, some from fiction. He introduces “foregrounding” to explain that players can place their focus on different aspects to appreciate a game.
For instance, take a game where the fictional world makes little sense. How is it possible that Mario comes back from the dead? “Breaking the coherence of the fictional world does not so much foreground the way the game projects a fictional world as it foregrounds the rules, the game as an activity” (195). Mario’s impossible reincarnation does not break the game, but it is instead a sign that rules are more important.
In games with more coherent worlds, players may give them more attention. So-called “walking simulators” shift focus away from the rules of a game by lowering the challenge. By doing this, they “foreground” the fictional world of the game.
The foregrounding process can change the meaning of a game over time, as well. As players get more competitive, they might choose to ignore a game’s fictional world: “Experienced players shift their focus from the fictional world of the game to the game as a set of rules” (139). On the other hand, as a player’s skill in a game grows, the challenge it provides can become trivial. With diminished challenge, the player may focus on the game’s fiction.
Jesper Juul describes gameplay as a subjective interaction with a piece of software, where the user plays according to rules, witnesses a fictional world, and can distribute focus on either one as they see fit.
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