Essay

Essay Question

‘Examine the informational structure and interactive possibilities of one piece of ‘conditional design’ (game, narrative, collaborative process) of your choice. Explore these as examples of interaction, with particular reference to the role of the audience and designer in each’.



The following essay is going to be analysing the informational structure and interactive possibilities of the sandbox game ‘Minecraft’. To understand these, I will be covering what the aspects in which make something a ‘game’ are, what a sandbox game is and the level of interactivity sandbox games offer, as well as how the audience is able to interact within the game along with the level of control audience has. With regards to the following topics, I will be reviewing the role of the audience and the designer throughout.
To begin with, I would like to start by giving a brief explanation as to what ‘Minecraft’ is and why it’s referred to as a ‘sandbox’ game.
The makers of the game ‘Mojang’, summarised their game with the following description, “Minecraft is a game about placing blocks and going on adventures. Explore randomly generated worlds and build amazing things from the simplest of homes to the grandest of castles. Play in creative mode with unlimited resources or mine deep into the world in survival mode, crafting weapons and armour to fend off the dangerous mobs”.
The game is essentially an open world exploration game that works to a cube block system that allows to audience to interact with every single piece of its map. The reason Minecraft is referred to as a sandbox game is due to it’s level of control offered to the audience with a multiple option non linear narrative. Stated by by ‘Gonzalo Frasca’ “Generally, play is interesting because of the player’s ability to affect the system through her performance”. Sandbox gaming follows the system that allows the audience to have the control to impact the world they’re in, which in the case of Minecraft is the entire game world. Although Minecraft is perceived as a game, ‘Gonzalo Frasca’ states “if both play and game have rules, which is the main difference between them?” he then goes on to say “Games have a result: they define a winner and a loser; plays do not.” If you propose this concept in relation with Minecraft, you can identify that Minecraft doesn’t infact follow the system of a game as their is no final verdict as to who’s the winner and the loser in the game due to their being no rules in place to allow for a victory. Due to their being no rules in place for victory, this gives the audience the opportunity to create their own games within Minecraft by making their own rules to then allow for a winner or a loser.For example; the players may establish a rule based on who can build a particular structure the fastest, this then can determine a winner and a loser and therefore creates a game within a play.
Now a rough outline as to what Minecraft is and the system it works to is, I will now go on to examine the informational structure and interactive possibilities of Minecraft.
At the first point of interaction for the user, there is a menu consisting of 5 titles: ‘Play Game’, ‘Mini Games’, ‘Leaderboards’, ‘Help & Options’ and ‘Minecraft Store’. Each of these titles is presented with a grey box containing text. If the audience is to move down each title, the informational structure comes into place by changing that particular grey boxes colour to the colour blue. This input from the author gives the audience an indication of what action will be taken to if they proceed. I will be focusing on the title ‘Play game’ as this is where the audience is directed to first as it’s already highlighted and is first on the list of titles. This same informational system is presented in most if not all games as it’s where the user is actually able to play the game. With regards to the other menus, each is presented in number of importance, with the game based actions presented nearer the top of the page and miscellaneous actions presented nearer the bottom of the page. Menu title two, ‘Mini Games’ consists two options, ‘Battle’ and ‘Tumble’. These options both contain a create mode, which allows the user to simply create their own battle or tumble, as well as a join mode that gives the user the option to team up with other members also within the ‘Mini Games’ section. The next menu ‘Leaderboards’ presents the user with information recorded by the author within the game such as ‘distance travelled’, ‘distance fallen’ and ‘distance sailed’. With the menu ‘Help & Options’, the author has given the audience a much larger scale of control, allowing them to become the author of this particular section themselves. In this section, the user can change their ‘Character Skin’ which is the outfit in which the character of the game is wearing. A how to play title is given where the user can learn the controls of the game and gain and understanding of how and what to do before entering the game. The final piece of interactivity in this section is ‘Settings’. This section gives the user control over the game difficulty, languages, game sensitivity, audio, and user interface. Each of these aspects have each been set to a particular value by the author which you would assume is because this setup is what will give the audience the most engaging experience. The author does however give these options to allow for the user to set the game to how they want their experience. The ‘Minecraft Store’ menu is essentially a store where the user can buy expansion packs to add to their game world such as character outfits and materials.
When the audience is ready, they are able to chose the ‘Play Game’ option presented at the top of these menus to begin their Minecraft experience. Once play game is clicked, the audience is again put in the position of the author where they are given the opportunity to customise and create the game to their preference. These options include naming their ‘world’, selecting if they’d like their experience to be ‘survival mode’ which includes: finding food to live, tools can break and materials need to be mined.Or creative mode where the user has no limitations to resources where all materials are pre collected with unlimited use to them. Once the user is ready to begin, they are directed to a ‘create world’ option where they can then play. For any player starting the game, a pop up informational structure has been imported by the author to give the audience some guidelines as to how to play the game and learn the rules. The first pop up message contains the text “Minecraft is a game about placing blocks to build anything you can imagine. At night monsters come out, make sure to build a shelter before that happens”.This is also presented with the button command below the text with the message “press (button depending on platform) to continue”. This is visually telling the audience how to progress further and learn more. The user must be able to learn the rules to play the game, Jesper Juul states “To play a video game is therefore to interact with real rules while imagining a fictional world, and a video game is a set of rules as well as a fictional world”. This pop up informational structure presented by the author engages the audience to learn the rules to play the game, however the information is presented in an interactive manner that is not limiting the audience with rules, but simply guiding how to progress with them. Jesper Juul also states “the enjoyment of a game depends on these easy to use rules”. Minecraft follows a structure that gives the audience very few limitations with only basic rules to follow. Not only is it an interactive and fun experience, but also according to Jesper Juul “playing a game is an activity of improving skills in order to overcome these challenges, and playing a game is therefore fundamentally a learning experience”.
After pressing the particular button in the informational pop up, the user is then only given information at each new point of interactivity. In the tutorial, the author has presented a physical game map that forces the audience to interact with each interactive possibility throughout the game world. The first of these being water. The user is given a destination to follow and to do so must pass through water. Once the user goes into the water the character begins to sink and lose health which is when the informational pop up system shows, telling the user to press a particular button and hold it to float back up and surface. This is the audience and the author working together to overcome a challenge while learning the game rule ‘press (desired button) to swim’. Following this, the user is lead to a wall which is blocking the path and must be mined away to progress. Once the user is at the wall the pop up system presents a new particular button and the how the button can be used to overcome the challenge, in this case to mine away a wall. This again is the audience following the informational structure presented by the author and overcoming the challenge in order to learn and play. If the audience does not follow the tutorial rules, they are physically blocked by what gamers call an ‘invisible wall’. This is essentially where the author has provided a lock which can only be opened by following the informational structure in order to progress.
After completing the tutorial, the game world is now in the power of the audience. They have learnt the rules in how to play the game and can work with them to create anything they desire. The final point of interactivity for Minecraft is mining and building. For every block within the game world or even materials that follow a different structure such as water or lava, the author gives the user the power and control to change the game environment and have an impact in any way they like. Using the buttons learnt in the tutorial, the audience is able to explore the game world and collect resources to go and create their own house or explore dark caves to collect valuable materials such as diamond and gold. Each material in the game world has multiple functions and interactivity. For example, the audience is able to mine large amounts of stone and then place the stone into a furnace to create one block of brick for every four stone. By telling the audience you need four blocks of a material to make one block of another, gives the a user the philosophy that the one block of material is more valuable. This is the author inputting a hierarchy of value into the game world, which engages the user to feel joy and excitement when they find materials of a high rarity or value. Not only is this the author adding value to the game world, they are also adding emotion to the player when they feel happy when finding these valuables in the game. By engaging the audience emotionally as well as visually, the experience of the audience may be captivated to a higher level where they enjoy the game they’re playing and want to continue.
The following essay has analysed what Minecraft is and how it works as well as the informational structure the game works to with the role of the audience and designer in each. I have referred to the author as the designer throughout the essay as I believe the author is the designer through the way the informational structure for the game is set out for the audience to take the role of the designer and follow the author’s footsteps.
After analysing these aspects of Minecraft, I have come to conclusion that the game is indefinitely a non linear play where the audience can take the role of the designer and create their own games within Minecraft with their own rules.


Bibliography:
Fracas, Gonzalo. Ludology meets Naratology. 1999 http://www.ludology.org/articles/ludology.htm
Fracas, Gonzalo. Play the Message. 2007 http://www.ludology.org/
Jesper Juul Half Real http://www.half-real.net/sample/half-real-introduction.pdf
https://mojang.com/games/
https://www.techopedia.com/definition/3952/sandbox-gaming