The Groundhog Day effect in video games

Have your ever had that feeling of being repeating the same actions over and over again in a video game? I'm not speaking about the same set of mechanics within a game (which, in fact, can also make you feel that way), but repeating the very same actions and killing/collecting/running through the same enemies/items/corridors. Dark Souls, for instance, could be seen as the paradigm of this particular Groundhog Day effect, but almost in every game you have the chance to feel it. Here's an example of this kind of experience based on Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth (in the last attempt almost got it, or that's what I thought, but at the end I failed miserably - once again):

Another good example would be Gods Will Be Watching. Actually , all the game is designed with that idea in mind, you fail and repeat all the time. An endless and painful trial and error process. Even the mechanics are designed to be repetitive, day after day, task after task. You can only manage contextual menus to perform the actions required to progress in the game in a turn-based game. It can be frustrating, but that's the core mechanic of the game: learning the proper strategy, the adequate sequence of actions. Somehow, it makes you keep trying and trying again until you succeed. If you're patient enough, obviously.

The interesting thing is how the mechanics merge into the narrative during the game. Near the end, you realise that all this Groundhog Day vibe is justified and is a fundamental part of the story (and also explains why some characters reappeared even if they were dead, well, sort of). There are random events in the game, little variations that echo through the continuum space-time, but it's always the same situations, performing the same actions.

Is this Groundhog Day effect frustrating? It is, indeed. But why do we keep trying? Do we pursue the temporary relief experienced after overcoming a groundhog-day's segment, even if we know it's just a question of time to bump into the next one? Is it all about a sense of achievement or of a controlled safety? This makes me return to known subjects that are constantly appearing in my research: are video games interactive experiences used for a temporary escapism (the exceptional) or do they belong to the mundane activities we carry out in our daily lives (the ordinary)? On the one hand, video games can be seen as breaks from reality, the quotidian one, because they let us experience unique universes - fantastic or realistic - in which we momentarily detach ourselves from what surrounds us. On the other hand, video games have been integrated into everyday life as part as the many actions, including dull tasks, we carry out on a regular basis. 

What happens when these two situations are closely intertwined in the same experience? In other words, what happens when the Groundhog Day effect makes an appearance? Are we escaping from the monotonous aspects of everyday life just to enter into another land of repetitiveness? Are this repetitive quests and actions reassuring in some way? Is this effect that, sooner or later, we all feel playing video games what makes them exceptional? How do we know we're playing any more? Are video games subverting their own playful nature?

I have recently come across Twelve Minutes, a video game in development that its main mechanic seems to be principally based on the Groundhog Day effect:

TWELVE MINUTES is a top down “point-and-click” adventure game in real-time. You are doomed to live the same twelve minutes inside your apartment unless you use your knowledge of what is going to happen in order to change the outcome and break the loop.

This means, along with the other examples mentioned, video games are starting to include, more or less explicitly, the Groundhog Day effect as part of their core mechanics, logic and narrative. They're playing with it. Subverting the subversion?

[An extended version of this post in Spanish can be found here at Deus Ex Machina]

The magic rectangle of Twitch and the rear windows to what goes beyond the act of gaming

In the last post I launched an hypothesis on the magic circle theory, an important issue within games studies. I basically said that what makes possible the magic circle as a bounded experience is the same thing that traverses it and, up to certain extent, breaks it. This entry will approach that subject using an emerging phenomenon: Twitch. 

If you happen not to know anything about Twitch, just visit the site and wander around its several channels. Basically, it's just people broadcasting their gameplay while they're speaking about what's happening on the screen or any other issue that might be, or not, completely unrelated to it. There's a chat where viewers are able to speak their minds to the broadcaster or other people on the chat. These players can be followed by thousands, hundreds or just a few guys. Some of the most popular gamers (and that doesn't mean to be necessarily followed by too many) have set up ways in which people can make donations to their 'cause' or subscribe to their channels for a monthly amount of money. On this kind of 'professional gaming', see my former entry on how video gaming is becoming a serious thing. 

Somehow Twitch manages to confirm the existence of the magic circle in the most unexpected way: using a rectangle. How is that? On the screen, we can watch the actual gameplay of the player in the shape of a big rectangle. We can even go fullscreen. It's marvellous, the self-content reality of the video game accessible from all around the world. You can see and feel it as a finite experience. You are able to focus exclusively on the gameplay. An open window that perfectly frames the magic circle. But, wait, that's not the only window on the screen. There are more. The rear ones.

What can we see through those rear windows? Precisely what happens during the act of playing. Or at least a tiny but significant part of it. We are invited to peep at the gamer's face and context of play. We are able to see how they look like, hearing the tone of their voices, how they express themselves, how they are dressed, what their room's colour is, if there are other people or animals next to them and so on. We even are in the position to start judging them: Are they tidy and clean people? Do they care about their appearance? Are they ugly, handsome, attractive, disgusting...? Do they have an exciting life or is it more likely to be sad and dull? No matter what our assumptions are, the important thing is the fact that we have the possibility of witnessing what is beyond the magic rectangle of the gameplay thanks to another 'magic rectangle' (or square, depending on the gamer's cam configuration). If the bigger rectangle may be described as the main window to the magic circle of gaming, the smaller one can be regarded as the rear window to what happens around and beyond the very act of gaming. I could have said that is a window to what happens off the screen, but in fact we are watching it on our own screens, so it would have not been completely correct. And what happens when you sneak a glance at that rear window? You observe the mundane ordinariness of everyday life. Let's have a look.

In this case, while she is playing and broadcasting her gameplay through Twitch, she's also having a casual conversation with the people on the chat and with unknown (for us) people using her mobile phone. The chat is another rear window opened to those who are watching the broadcast. That obviously goes beyond what is just happening in the game itself. Who knows what else they are doing at their homes while watching her on Twitch (watching TV, browsing the Internet, reading a book, speaking with their friends or family, having a drink...). At times, or maybe often, the gameplay is the less important thing in the process. It's amazing how frequently they 'speak' about topics completely alien to the games played. Windows to everyday life issues. There's nothing extraordinary in it. No magnificent worlds of fantasy and promising adventures. The magic of the circle (or rectangle, it doesn't matter) is broken.

Therefore, this is an example of part of the different things that might happen beyond the act of playing a video game. An example of the limited scope of the magic circle theory and its drawbacks. Nevertheless, and according to the other part of my hypothesis, the superimposed collage of different windows in and out the gameplay are making more evident and explicit the boundaries of the magic circle-rectangle. It is highlighting the weirdness among the ordinary of everyday life. Gaming is odd and mundane at the same time. Again, what is breaking the experience of the isolated magic circle, is helping to make it possible at the same time. Of course this must be confirmed by more empirical evidence but I will keep this line of thought for a while.

The magic circle: a hypothesis

The magic circle is a subject which I will keep coming back to several times in this blog. Its definition is well known among game studies companions and I won't dig deep in the matter. However, the magic circle being a key notion in game studies main debates, I will briefly summarise what I think are its most important features (take this as a very simple outline of the theory, almost a caricature):

• The act of play sets boundaries to every game. This means that the experience of playing a video game is bounded, perfectly framed.
• The game has its own well delimited space-time. The magic circle is where the game takes place. You enter in and get out of it. You're in the game or not.
• As no liminality seems to be possible, the reality of the game is self-contained and bound to rules. Rules that only apply to that particular game and make sense inside the magic circle (or at least they have a particular meaning that is not necessarily shared when they're invoked outside). 
• Obviously the experience of play is not completely detached from the social context in which takes place, but the magic circle works as if it were an exception or interruption in the general norms and rules that govern the regular social relationships.

The magic circle theory has been equally praised and criticised. Some have completely refused it while others have accepted it almost without criticism. Most academics have probably taken pieces of it and have developed it in different directions (either closer to its negation or its appraisal). Although I stand closer to those who criticise it fiercely, I would like to launch a hypothesis that could explain its resilience and partially accept it. Let me elaborate the hypothesis a little.

On the one hand, it is almost absurd to consider that any activity, experience or interaction happens in some sort of social void. Even if we consider that games and the act of play are bound to special (social) rules, it would be almost equally absurd to think that doesn't apply to the rest of social interactions: a wedding, a lecture in a classroom, a visit to our doctor, a meeting with friends, standing in a queue in the supermarket and so on. The reality is full of mediations. Everything is mediated by the actions of other actors (human or not). In a way, there is no thing which doesn't depend on other things. There can't be a magic circle independent from the social reality where it dwells. In fact, it's part of that social reality, shaping it and being shaped by it. 

On the other hand, we still experience some activities, like video gaming, as being enclosed, attached to their particular rules, meanings and interactions. A finite experience. One in which people put all their senses. How often do we hear video gamers saying how they lose all sense of time when they're playing and how they feel the immersive experience of gaming as though they were in another world? Should we ignore and discard these discourses and experiences? But if there are an almost infinite number of events that happen before, after and during gaming, interactions that are not related to the game itself (though they might help to make it work), how can we sustain the magic circle theory? And if we get rid of the magic circle, how can we explain the common experience of video gamers of being immersed in a particular world almost detached from the rest of their social context?

And here it goes the hypothesis. In my opinion, we should not think about the magic circle as a starting point but as what needs to be explained: how the experience of being in a magic circle detached from the rest of the social reality emerges, even if we know there is no social interaction - formal or not - that can exist on its own. Furthermore, my hypothesis states that what 'breaks' the magic circle is precisely what helps to construct its boundaries. It sounds paradoxical, but it makes sense. Keep an eye on future posts and you'll see. I promise.