Consider the work you created for project 1. Is this work actually a game? Why/why not?
“Prince Charming” is both as a game and as a non-game-ish movie at the same time.
As a game, it is multiplayer literally, with the unique characteristic of responding to the will of the entire audience, as opposed to other games, which are controlled by individuals.
Zimmerman defines a game as “a voluntary interactive activity, in which one or more players follow rules that constrain their behaviour, enacting an artificial conflict that ends in a quantifiable outcome”, summarizing in essence the components of a game discussed by Costikyan and Caillois.
Playing a game is a voluntary activity, or else it loses its joyous quality as a diversion, as argued by Caillois. We are certainly not forcing anyone to play, although this point is contestable during class presentation, when everyone was forced to sit through it. (Haha...) Even so, anyone who does not wish to participate could keep silent and watch it like a show. The fact that the audience was making noises to direct the character is clearly voluntary on their part. In a sense, it is a game to these participants and a movie to other begrudged members.
Secondly, a game is interactive, with the game state changing in response to the user’s decisions, and hence affecting the outcome. In “Prince Charming”, users can decide the main character’s actions by the volume of noise they make. The audience fulfils the role as player(s). In addition, no game can exist without rules to constrain or demarcate the “magic circle” in which gameplay is held. In “Prince Charming”, the audience can only make a decision at a specific instance of time. Game space is the entire area where sound can be captured. Artificial conflict exists as the struggle to emerge victorious – marry the princess, which is the quantifiable outcome. However, audience may also view victory as seeing the other endings, and the struggle as the attempt to get to them, or even coordinations with participants. Interestingly, there are two layers of interaction and struggle – between the audience and the game, and amongst the audience.
Caillois would probably classify “Prince Charming” as a mimicry-ludus. However, as hinted, “Prince Charming” can cease to be a game and become a movie instead. Games have goals and players behave as if the goals are important. In what Costikyan calls “masochism”, players submit themselves to the restrictions of the rules. For those who do not wish to involve themselves, they are but a spectator, watching a movie with no control in the direction the film is heading.
Hence, “Prince Charming” is both a game and a movie at the same time, depending on the perspective of the viewer.
Author's Comments: Wah... I think it's rather hard to express everything in 400 words. I have a question here though... Does a game have game-ish and non-game-ish qualities at the same time as well, depending on whether you are the player or the by-stander? If that's so, the part on "Prince Charming" existing as a movie concurrently is kind of redundant and it conforms entirely to the structures of a game; although to tell the truth, we initially planned for it to be a movie, with some game-like characteristic. But I guess it becomes a game and not a movie when we included the interactive element in accordance with Costikyan's suggstion that all interactive entertainment are games.
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The 400-word limit is to force you to be concise... and to stop me from dying reading them all... :)
I think you're right that a game can have both game-like and non-game-like qualities. An important part of a game's "game-ness" is the activity of playing the game, as suggested by Zimmerman's difinition. So really a game is only a game when its being played, and is only a game from the player's point-of-view. I'd say that any game is something else from the spectator's perspective. Its also very much a temporal state - the player can switch between being a player and being a viewer at any time. So I guess "Prince Charming" is indeed a game and a non-game-ish movie at the same time.
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