Winter 2023 Research Review and Spring 2023 Plans

 Winter 2023 Review

• Studied statistical analysis and how to use such techniques in research
• Became proficient in statistical software SPSS
• Literature review on engagement and presence in digital games.
• Game feel: analysis and literature review on jumping in digital games.
• Game Genres: analyzed early game genre systems as counterpoint to my own research, may form a possible null hypothesis against my own theory 
• Atari
• Mattel Electronics
• "The Gamester" Paul Kordestani
• Game designer Chris Crawford
• Game scholar Mark J. P. Wolf
• Wrote a two-part analysis of Wolf's spatial structures of video games and compared my Taxonomy of Virtual Spaces to Wolf's system and similar systems by Clara Fernández-Vara and Dominic Arsenault.
• Added case data for (almost) all game titles mentioned in the game genre reviews (above) into my NVivo "Video Game Space and Motion" research database (ongoing work). Also coded all cases with genre data from above sources. Currently at 98 items.
• Added platform data as an attribute to game title entries in research database.

Preliminary cluster diagram of coding similarity, "Video Game Space and Motion" (Rowe, unpublished)

Spring 2023 Plans

My theory posits that a distinct way that humans experience digital games as aesthetic objects is through the embodied, "cyberkinaesthetic" experience of navigating virtual spaces.

The visuo-spatial configuration of a virtual space is the geometry of that space (defined by dimensionality, metrics, and extents), and the methods used to project that space onto the screen (or pair of screens, for binocular vision) of the game apparatus that serves as interface with the player.

A player has certain affordances within the game's field of action allowing them to take actions with other actors and navigate within virtual space. These affordances are moderated by the dynamics that determine the rules of interaction within the virtual space.

A game's spatial paradigm is defined by both the visuo-spatial configuration of its virtual space and the player's affordances for navigating that space.

I will be pushing my research toward defining specific spatial paradigms in my existing body of data.

• Fine-tune Taxonomy of Virtual Spaces based on analysis of what attributes should be included or removed in order to be informative for my research. Make edits to Taxonomy document to match.
• Complete existing qualitative analysis of game spaces for a broader selection of digital game titles using Taxonomy of Virtual Spaces.
• Analyze player navigation in the above games and develop system for codifying the results.
• Use statistical analysis to find patterns of similarity that signify Spatial Paradigms, Spatial Refinement, and Paradigm Shifts.

(Not) Game Genres, pt. 7: Wolf's Elementary Spatial Structures of Video Games (part two)

Continued from the previous post (these post titles are getting too long).

Wolf's spatial structures of video games, from "Inventing Space: Toward a Taxonomy of On- and Off-Screen Space in Video Games" (Film Quarterly (Fall 1997, vol. 51, no. 1) and republished in The Medium of the Video Game (2001)), was an inspiration for my own "A Taxonomy of Virtual Spaces" (Rowe, 2021, unpublished). Before I delve into the differences between my own taxonomy and Wolf's, I'll review Wolf's work through the eyes of two other scholars who influenced my work: Clara Fernández-Vara and Dominic Arsenault:

Clara Fernández-Vara and her team at Georgia Tech took issues with Wolf’s methods, stating that, “his analysis lacks a historical perspective, and the strict comparison to film misses what the intrinsic properties of the digital medium bring to videogames” ("Evolution of Spatial Configurations in Videogames," Fernández-Vara, Zagal, & Mateas, 2005). The paper rightly ignores Wolf's structures 9 (split screen) and 11 (mini maps) as these are augmentations to spatial representation, not a specific structure of playable game space. They also exclude structure 1 (text description) and full-motion recorded video as the team was not interested in games that "import spaces from other media" (2005).

The Georgia Tech team's paper declares that "the screen is the basic unit of space in videogames, since it frames the interface" (2005). I've adapted this into my own research as it provides a measuring stick usable in so many games, especially 2-D games. However, I can't agree with excluding games with text descriptions of spaces and full motion video from my research. I am working toward a method of understanding the aesthetics of games that can also be applied to other forms of digital media. Excluding the entire swath of text adventure games (interactive fiction), full-motion video games, and countless other games with "imported spaces" from other media would leave a massive gap in the system's usability.

Dominic Arsenault and his team at the University of Montreal took issue with Wolf’s spatial structures, citing that, “Wolf’s focus on historic, early 2-D game spaces led to him creating fine details between different types of scrolling spaces, but little detail for later 3-D game spaces” ("Game FAVR: A Framework for the Analysis of Visual Representation in Video Games," Arsenault, Côté, & Larochelle, 2015).

The University of Montreal team notes that much of Wolf’s spatial structures are focused on “scrolling spaces,” or what they call the Framing Mechanism Mobility. This deals with the player’s ability or inability to access off-screen spaces (if there are any) within the digital game, which as I discussed in the previous post, was the focus of Wolf’s essay. This means that Wolf’s categorizations give mostly superficial definitions of the spatiality presented within the screen’s frame. Like Arsenault’s example, Wolf lumps all 3-D spaces into the same category, no matter what method is used to project a 3-D space onto the screen. In Wolf's defense, he does have a detailed section of "Ways of Representing Three-Dimensional Space" (2001, pp 70-75) that concludes the article. However, the section doesn't differentiate between, say, 1-point (Maze Wars), 2-point (Battlezone), and 3-point (Quake) perspectival methods or pre-recorded film and video clips (Dragon's Lair, Myst) or the different ways they may affect the player's sense of space.

The four image planes of the Game FAVR system (2015)

The Game FAVR system developed by Arsenault’s team is specifically designed to define graphics, not spatiality. It uses a multidimensional approach to define by categories of ocularization (through what “eyes” the game world is presented), frame mechanism (how the frame moves across the game space), and plane analysis (how the agents, in-game environment, off-game environment, and intangible interface are projected to the screen). I took a similar multidimensional approach in the structure of my own taxonomy of virtual spaces, focusing on spatial construction as conveyed through graphics. A sense of space is mostly conveyed through graphics, so much of the methodology (like plane analysis) works equally well for my purposes.

As example, here is a direct comparison between my taxonomy and Wolf's classification:

1. No visual space; all text-based - I classify this spatial structure's image planes (to borrow a concept from the Game FAVR) of agents, environment, and background/foreground elements are all "rendered" in text description (something that neither the Georgia Tech nor the University of Montreal systems account for, by their designs).
2. One screen, contained - This is a fixed framing device with no mobility (in other words, the game "camera" doesn't move).
3. One screen, contained, with wraparound - Wraparound screens imply one of two types of topology, either cylindrical (wraparound two edges of the screen, like Pac-Man) or toroidal (wraparound all four edges of the screen, like Asteroids). Rarely, there are other topologies (like the cubic topology of E.T.).
4. Scrolling on one axis - This is a framing device with smooth scrolling 2-D mobility in one direction along either the vertical axis (Xevious), the horizontal axis (Super Mario Bros.), or a diagonal axis (Zaxxon). Xevious and Zaxxon are examples of auto-scrolling framing devices (what Game FAVR calls authoritarian).
5. Scrolling on two axes - This is a framing device with smooth scrolling 2-D mobility in any direction (Gauntlet). I have other specifications for games like Metroid where, due to technical restrictions of the Famicom/NES hardware, the game space may be vertical scrolling or horizontal scrolling, but not both at the same time.
6. Adjacent spaces displayed one at a time - This is a framing device with discrete 2-D mobility (sometimes called "page flip"). Some have single axis mobility (Pitfall!), others have two axis mobility (Atari's Adventure).
7. Layers of independently moving planes (multiple scrolling backgrounds) - Wolf describes two different cases here. The first is a background layer or layers (often in orthogonal projection) scrolling at a different rate than the player avatar in parallax motion to create an illusion of depth (he wrongly gives examples of Zaxxon and Super Mario Bros. - neither of which use parallax motion. Moon Patrol and Sonic the Hedgehog would be good examples). The second case is and example of a layered space, where there are multiple 2-D planes of gameplay that the player avatar may move between. Either there is a jump layer above the typical gameplay plane (Bump n' Jump, Pac-Mania) or the avatar may move into a background layer (Super Mario Bros. 3, Warioland).
8. Spaces allowing z-axis movement into and out of the frame - Wolf gives examples like Tempest and Night Driver. I call this a framing device with 3-D mobility in the Z-axis only.
9. Multiple, nonadjacent spaces displayed on-screen simultaneously - This is just split-screen multiplayer (Spy vs. Spy, Super Mario Kart, Final Lap). Multiple frames on a single screen do not make a new spatial structure, in my thinking.
10. Interactive three-dimensional environment - This is a catch-all category that I discussed above.
11. Represented or “mapped” spaces - For the most part, Wolf refers to a mini-map, which I note as a spatial modifier in my taxonomy (Rally-X, Bosconian). It can enhance the player's understanding of the game world in its entirety, but isn't really a navigable, playable space unto itself. The map usually appears at the edge of the screen (Defender) or replaces the gameplay frame (Spy vs. Spy) or the map is diegetically displayed in the game world (Myst). In some cases, the game is still playable with the overlay (Doom), but that is not the intended way to play.

Wolf also includes "god's eye" map games like SimCity and Caesar II in this category. I consider these to be games with an environment image plane that may have use plan orthographic (SimCity (1989)), dimetric (SimCity 2000 (1994)), or trimetric projection (SimCity 4 (2003)), or three-point perspective (SimCity (2013)), or numerous other projection options.

Video game imagery is hybrid in nature. Images are montages constructed from various visual elements, overlaid upon one another, transforming and animating, and often projected to the screen in different techniques for reasons of clarity, technical limitation, or stylistic choice. Such a complex and varied visual form for displaying space cannot be described with only eleven categories. It requires a multidimensional approach that accounts for the various conceptual planes (to borrow from Game FAVR) of an image in order to document, classify, and create a framework for studying its expression of a virtual space.

(Not) Game Genres, pt. 6: Wolf's Elementary Spatial Structures of Video Games (part one)

In my last post, I analyzed a system of video game genres developed by game scholar Mark J. P. Wolf and published in his book, The Medium of the Video Game (2001). This time, I am switching to the topic of spatiality, a chapter subject that Wolf included in The Medium of the Video Game, but was previously published as the article "Inventing Space: Toward a Taxonomy of On- and Off-Screen Space in Video Games" published years earlier in Film Quarterly (Fall 1997, vol. 51, no. 1).

Film Quarterly (Fall 1997, vol. 51, no. 1)

This means that 25+ years ago, Wolf devised a taxonomy of digital game spatiality, much the same as my current research. I previously analyzed Wolf's taxonomy in my own unpublished essay, "A Taxonomy of Virtual Spaces" (Rowe, 2021). Our works don't completely agree, but certainly applaud his early stabs in the dark at defining something so nebulous and undefined as game spaces.

He based his analysis of the spatial structures of digital games on his background of film and television theory, but made a prescient call that "video games are certainly deserving of their own branch of theory" (Wolf, 1997). Within a few years of that quote, game studies (or ludology) started to be recognized as an academic study and the first journals dedicated to the subject started to be published.

Wolf felt that video game theory would likely be "in close kinship to film and television theory" (1997), and much of early game studies reflects this notion. When he first published the essay, many game developers sought to converge digital games with cinema. 1997 was in the midst of the "Silliwood" (Silicon Valley/Hollywood) era when studios invested heavily in making "interactive movies" using full motion video (FMV) of live action actors mixed with digital elements. The fad boomed with the proliferation of CD-ROM drives, but most FMV games simply weren't very good. It isn't easy to create a dynamic and interactive world from pre-recorded film clips and many of these games were sold more for spectacle and star appeal than for substance. [As a personal aside, I got my start in the industry in 1996 as a tester for Voyeur II by Interweave Entertainment and later worked for DreamWorks Interactive, publisher of games like Steven Spielberg's Director's Chair. So, my game design career is a product of this Silliwood era.]

Inside Adventure's Blue Labyrinth and Black Castle image from "Space in the Video Game" (The Medium of the Video Game, Wolf, 2001)

As Wolf's essay title alludes, he was interested in how games create a sense of space, both on and off the screen, to create a sense of a cohesive world. He notes how, in games, these connections between spaces may create impossible, non-Euclidean worlds that cannot exactly be mapped on a rectangular topology (such as the example of Atari's Adventure, shown in the image above from Wolf's revised 2001 version of the essay, where screens have impossible connections to one another and an entire multi-screen labyrinth is "inside" of a smaller castle object). He likens these spaces to similar "impossible" spaces in film and television, the the TARDIS from Doctor Who. 

Wolf's 11 Elementary Spatial Structures of Video Games

1. No visual space; all text-based
2. One screen, contained
3. One screen, contained, with wraparound
4. Scrolling on one axis
5. Scrolling on two axes
6. Adjacent spaces displayed one at a time
7. Layers of independently moving planes (multiple scrolling backgrounds)
8. Spaces allowing z-axis movement into and out of the frame
9. Multiple, nonadjacent spaces displayed on-screen simultaneously
10. Interactive three-dimensional environment
11. Represented or “mapped” spaces

I'll go into more details on Wolf's spatial structures and compare them to my own spatial topology in the next post.

Game Genres, pt. 5: Mark J. P. Wolf's Interactive Genres for Classifying Video Games

Previously, I reviewed early game genres as developed through the lenses of marketplace leaders, an expert player, and a professional game developer. This set of game genres was developed by an academic, Mark J. P. Wolf. Wolf was one of the earliest scholars in the field of game studies and has written and published 23 books, mostly on the subject of digital games.

The Medium of the Video Game, Wolf (2001)

Wolf's The Medium of the Video Game (2001) includes the chapter "Genre and the Video Game" where he outlines what he sees as the core categorizations for digital games.

Wolf takes guidance from Ed Buscombe's essay "The Idea of Genre in the American Cinema" in that genre elements may appear in a film's iconography, structure, and theme. Iconographic genres like "Western" and "science fiction" (what I previously referred to as milieu) may work for narrative games, especially those inspired by cinematic tropes, it doesn't really work for nonnarrative and abstract games. Additionally, two different games in the same iconographic genre or theme may be very different experiences for the player. Wolf moves away from these cinematic concepts of film genre by focusing on the classifications of interactivity seen in digital games.

Wolf notes that games may best fit into multiple genres (Pac-Man is primarily a "Collecting" game, as the player's primary objective is to eat all of the dots on the screen. Secondarily, it also falls under the "Escape" and "Maze" genres).

• Abstract - Arkanoid, Breakout, Q*bert, Tempest (with Shoot 'Em Up), Tetris (with Puzzle)
• Adaptation - Games that are adapted from card games (Casino), cartoons (The Simpsons), comic books (X-Men), film (Star Wars), sports (Atari Football), etc.
• Adventure - Games set in a freely explorable "world" usually made up of multiple, connected rooms or screens, involving an objective more complex that catching, shooting, capturing, or escaping. Adventure, Tomb Raider, Venture.
• Artificial Life - Games involving the growth or maintenance of digital creatures. The Little Computer People, The Sims (with Management Simulation).
• Board Games - Board game adaptations and digital games that play like board games. Culdcept, Monopoly, Quest for the Rings.
• Capturing - Capture objects or characters that move away from and evade the player character. Keystone Kapers, Surround (with Escape).
• Card Games - Card game adaptations and digital games that play like card games. Solitaire, Uno, Casino (with Gambling).
• Catching - Catch objects or characters that do not move away from or evade the player character. Stampede, Circus Atari, Kaboom!
• Chase - "See Catching, Capturing, Driving, Escape, Flying, and Racing."
• Collecting - Collect objects that do not move. Pac-Man (with Maze and Escape), Amidar (with Abstract).
• Combat - One vs. one shooting challenge. Combat, Outlaw.
• Demo - Demonstrate games or system.
• Diagnostic - Test the functioning of a system.
• Dodging - Avoid projectiles. Frogger (with Obstacle Course), Journey Escape.
• Driving - Night Driver, Pole Position.
• Educational - Games designed to teach. Basic Math, Mario Teaches Typing.
• Escape - Escape pursuers or get of of an enclosure. Pac-Man (with Collecting and Maze), Surround (with Capturing).
• Fighting - One on one fighting without the use of firearms. Boxing (with Sports), Mortal Kombat, Tekken.
• Flying - Flying games where shooting an opponent is not the main objective. Flight Unlimited (with Training Simulation), Solaris. 
• Gambling - Slot Machine, You Don't Know Jack (with Quiz).
• Interactive Movie - Dragon's Lair, Space Ace.
• Management Simulation - Aerobiz, M.U.L.E.
• Maze - Dig Dug, Lode Runner, Tunnel Runner.
• Obstacle Course - Frogger (with Dodging), Pitfall!, Jungle Hunt.
• Pencil-and-Paper Games - 3-D Tic-Tac-Toe, Noughts and Crosses, Hangman.
• Pinball - Pachinko!, Sonic Spinball, Video Pinball.
• Platform - Crazy Climber, Donkey Kong, Lode Runner (with Maze).
• Programming Games - Player writes short programs to control an agent in the game. Omega, CRobots.
• Puzzle - Tetris (with Abstract), 7th Guest, Myst (with Adventure).
• Quiz - Fax, You Don't Know Jack (with Gambling), Trivial Pursuit (with Adaptation).
• Racing - Win a race or cover more ground than an opponent. Mario Kart 64 (with Driving), Slot Racers (with Dodging).
• Rhythm and Dance - Keep time with a musical rhythm. Beatmania, PaRappa the Rapper, Samba de Amigo, Space Channel 5.
  
• Role-Playing - Diablo, Phantasy Star, Ultima, Interstate '76.
• Shoot ’Em Up - Shoot at and destroy a series of opponents or objects. Asteroids, Berzerk, Galaga, Zaxxon, Missile Command.
• Simulation - "See Management Simulation and Training Simulation"
• Sports - Atari Baseball, Bowling, Fishing Derby (with Catching), Pong (with Table-Top Games), Sky Diver.
• Strategy - Ataxx (with Abstract), Chess (with Board Games), M.U.L.E. (with Management Simulation).
• Table-Top Games - Table-top games that require physical skill or action. Battle Ping Pong, Electronic Table Soccer!, Pocket Billiards!, Pong (with Sports), Virtual Pool.
• Target - Primarily aim and shoot at targets that are not in motion. Air-Sea Battle, Carnival, Shooting Gallery.
• Text Adventure - Planetfall, Zork.
• Training Simulation - Games that simulate a realistic situation for the purpose of training and usually the development of a physical skill (such as driving or piloting). Comanche 3 (with Flying), Flight Unlimited (with Flying), Police Trainer.
• Utility - Have a purpose beyond that of entertainment, although they may be structured similarly to games. Basic Programming, Diagnostic Cartridge (with Diagnostic), Infogenius French Language Translator, Sped Reading.

This is a highly detailed system of genre classification. I see the usefulness of classifying games by a core game mechanic (like Capturing, Escaping, or Target), but some categories are non-games (Utility and Diagnostic), confusing (I would expect Table-Top Games to be board, card, and role-playing games), or questionably applied (in what way is Q*bert abstract?).

Looking closer at Wolf's definition of "Abstract" games, he describes them as having "nonrepresentational graphics" and often a non-narrative objective, which may involve "visiting, filling" or "destroying the screen," though they may have characters that are "anthropomorphic in design" (2001, pg. 117). Wolf's non-narrative objective aspect puts his definition in line with "abstract strategy" board games and puzzles, such as chess, checkers, Othello, and peg solitaire. However, he specifically does not include digital versions of such board games in this genre.

My problem is that almost all of Wolf's "Abstract" examples (Arkanoid, Amidar, Ataxx, Block Out, Breakout, Marble Madness, Pac-Man, Pipe Dream, Q*bert, and Tetris) use representational graphics. Ataxx and Pipe Dream play like abstract strategy board games, which he would exclude from the genre if they were adaptations. Arkanoid, Block Out, Breakout, and Tetris all feature shapes that are more than abstract geometric forms (the shapes are meant to represent bricks and blocks). Amidar, Marble Madness, Pac-Man, and Q*bert all feature cartoonish characters existing in representational, if sometimes impossible, spatial structures (Q*bert is no more abstract than the famous works by M. C. Escher).

Some of his examples arguably have abstract elements. Tempest's high-speed, neon world of geometric shapes in conflict is akin an electronic edition of Lissitsky's Suprematist Bolshevik propaganda works like Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge (1919). [Side note: for a true digital game version of Suprematist works, you must play Chris Totten's Lissitsky's Revenge (2015).] In both cases, the shapes are more symbolic than abstract.

Qix (Atari, 1982, arcade game)

Qix is one case of a game with a truly abstract element: the titular Qix, a shapeless series of rainbow-colored lines that undulate around the environment and threaten the tiny, diamond-shaped player avatar. Where Tempest's lines create identifiable and distinct shapes (bow tie-shaped "flippers," the staple-shaped "blaster" player avatar), the Qix has no specific form. It is an unpredictable, chaotic force that the player must work to contain and control as they claim the game's territory by drawing walls on the screen.

EarthBound (Ape Inc., 1995 (originally Mother 2 in Japan, 1994))

A good example of what I'd consider abstraction in digital games is seen in battle sequences in the Super NES game EarthBound (see image above). Most of the game world is presented with typical CRPG spatial structures (with some brilliantly unexpected breaks in reality, as I've written about before). When a battle starts, the environment is replaced with a truly abstract background comprised of multiple colored, morphic shapes layered on top of each other. This puts the scene in ambiguous space, a term I adapted after attending Bruce Block's lectures on cinematic production, which he later collected in The Visual Story (2013). The subject of the scene (the Starman Jr. enemy) is clearly represented but its location in the world is unspecific, non-representational, and non-symbolic (in other words, abstracted). Wolf did not use EarthBound as an example of an abstract game in this essay.

Next, I'll review Mark J. P. Wolf's classification of game spaces, something much more applicable to my own research.

Game Genres, pt. 4: Chris Crawford's Taxonomy of Games (1984)

Continued from part three.

The first two genre systems I analyzed were developed by manufacturers for purposes of marketing and informing consumers. The third genre system was developed by an expert player based on experiential analysis of each game. This fourth genre system is the first (that I know of) developed by a game designer and programmer, someone who understands the mechanical and technical underpinnings of digital game's systems and creation.

Chris Crawford's "Taxonomy of Computer Games"

The Art of Computer Game Design (Crawford, 1984)

Chris Crawford wrote what is now considered the first "game studies" text with his pioneering book, The Art of Computer Game Design (1984). Chapter two of the book describes his "Taxonomy of Computer Games," his attempt "illuminate the common factors that link families of games, while revealing differences between families and between members of families" (pg. 19).

Crawford explains that we game designers can "learn a great deal about game design by establishing a taxonomy of computer games." A well-constructed taxonomy would "suggest previously unexplored areas of game design," and, "reveal underlying principles of game design" (pg. 19). Crawford does not consider his definitions to be definitive, he admits that "a number of games do not fit into [his] taxonomy" (pg. 29), but it serves as an early effort to study and understand this then-new aesthetic form.

Crawford states that a taxonomy "is only one way of organizing a large number of related elements" and that "[constructing] several alternate taxonomies may be a useful way to examine the common traits of computer games" (pg. 29). This is exactly why I am undertaking this examination of early game genre systems and will incorporate all the information from these blog posts into my personal game research database.

Crawford broadly groups most games into "Skill and Action" games ("emphasizing perceptual and motor skills" (pg. 19)) and "Strategy" games ("emphasizing cognitive effort" (pg. 19)).

Skill and Action

• Combat Games ("direct, violent confrontation" (pg. 20))
• Maze Games (including Maze Craze, Dodge 'Em (driving game, but in a maze), and Pac-Man)
• Sports Games
• Paddle Games (covers the "PONG-based games" (pg. 28), what is otherwise called the ball-and-paddle genre (like in Video Games (Len Buckwalter, 1977, pg. 33)))
• Race Games (standard driving games like Night Driver, but also includes Dog Daze (1981), a game where two players (as dogs) race to be the first to "tag" fire hydrants that appear on the screen)
• Miscellaneous Games (games that Crawford couldn't decide how to characterize, including Donkey Kong, Frogger (or Preppie in the book's first printing), and Apple Panic (an unlicensed Apple II clone of the arcade game Space Panic))

Strategy

• Adventures (text adventure and graphic adventure games)
• D&D Games (CRPGs)
• War Games (like Computer Bismarck and Crawford's own best-selling Eastern Front 1941)
• Games of Chance (includes craps and blackjack. He states that these games "have not proven very popular" on computer and "show the folly of mindlessly transporting games from one medium to another" (pg. 37). I recall casino skill games like blackjack and poker being fairly ubiquitous during the 1980s. Perhaps their popularity was due to the string of strip poker titles published once home computer graphics reached a certain level of fidelity.)
• Educational and Children's Games (includes classic mainframe computer simulation games like Hammurabi and Lunar Lander, as well as Warren Robinett's pioneering Rocky's Boots, designed to teach kids about logic gates)
• Interpersonal Games (an undeveloped category at the time of writing, but one that would include Crawford's unpublished Gossip (1983) and later games like The Sims, Facade (2005), and probably the entire dating game genre)

It is a sign of the times that Crawford's Miscellaneous Games category shows he had difficulty classifying early platformer games like Donkey Kong and Apple Panic. This was still a fairly new concept and earlier titles (like Space Panic and Crazy Climber) were often referred to as "climbing" or "ladder" games. Crawford describes Donkey Kong as "like a race game with intelligent obstacles" (pg. 29) and Apple Panic as "like a maze game in some ways and like a combat game in others" (pg. 30). He concluded that he would need to "wait for other developments" (pg. 31) before refining his taxonomy. Donkey Kong was only the first button to include a jump button, and the platformer genre would quickly evolve to be a dominant game mode by the late 1980s. Looking at the games now, I am tempted to personally classify platformer games without jumping (including games like Lode Runner) into the category of Maze Game.

Crawford realized that his taxonomy would soon be obsolete due to the faced-paced evolution seen in the computer game industry. His Interpersonal Games category is a sign of that, a prescient game categorization for a portion of the game industry that hadn't even developed at the time of publication. 

Game Genres, pt. 3: The Gamester's Types of Video Games (1983)

Continued from part two.

After reviewing two different game manufacturers' systems of "game genres" used for marketing and selling their titles, here is a player's-eye analysis of different arcade game types. The author takes an almost phenomenological approach: he classifies each game type by the interface through which he experiences the game. Delineating titles by these distinct interface designs, shared among games of a common genre, happens to tend to classify games by their affordances given the player to navigate virtual spaces. Each interface is built around those affordances of navigation and action. This probably wasn't Kordestani's intent with the system, but I see it as a side effect that correlates with my own studies of cyberkinaesthetics.

The Gamester's "Types of Video Games"

The Gamester's Guide to Arcade Video Games (Paul Kordestani, TAB Books Inc., 1983)

Paul Kordestani's The Gamester's Guide to Arcade Video Games (1983) is a hard-to-find, early guide to winning arcade game strategies. Many early texts about digital games are focused on tips and tricks to impress the other players at the arcade or maybe get ahead at tournaments. Kordestani is billed as a business consultant and arcade game enthusiast and founder of GAMESTER, Inc., "an arcade game player's support group."

The book's publisher, TAB Books, is better known for publishing guidebooks on all manner of technical subjects: electronics, lasers, robotics, and computers (I've owned TAB books on all these topics). TAB's other book on video games (that I know of), How to Repair Video Games (1978), is much like the other tinkering and repair guides they publish. Kordestani's Gamester's Guide is unusual as it is a different type of technical guide that describes gameplay and techniques more than electronics design or computer architecture.

Part I of this book consists of general information about games gleaned from Kordestani's "17 months of research and writing" (pg. vii). As the title implies, this book focuses on video arcade games, and there is information on game cabinet styles, general functionality, popularity, terminology, history, and even controversies. Chapter 3 is where Kordestani describes his "Types of Video Games," a sort of game taxonomy based on control methods and movement affordances. This is an unusual take on the concept of game genre, but is one that ignores in-game representation and focuses mostly on the human-computer interface through which the game is controlled. Each game type is classified by letter.

• Type A: One-Lever Maze Games ("lever" is Kordestani's term for joystick. These games focus on movement in a 2-D plane, especially maze games like Pac-Man and similar games like Q*bert.)
• Type B: Lever Plus Action Button Games (these games focus on movement through an environment in a 2-D plane with the addition of one button for taking an action like jumping (Donkey Kong) and punching (Popeye). It is unknown how Kordestani would classify more maze-like games that have an action button (like Wizard of Wor and Mr. Do!)
• Type C: Upward-Shooting Games (Space Invaders started this genre that encompasses (in 1983) what Kordestani estimates to be "approximately one-third of all video games" (pg. 15). The player controls a vertically-shooting base that is restricted to movement along the horizontal axis near the bottom of the screen. Some examples have an additional button for some limited power effect (presumably, like Phoenix and its Force Field button).)
• Variations of Type C (upward-shooting games where the player's base may move vertically in a restricted area at the bottom of the screen, like Centipede)
• Type D: Automatically Sideways-Moving Games (side-scrolling games with an auto-scrolling framing device (also called "Authoritarian" by Dominic Arsenault and his team in "The Game FAVR: A Framework for the Analysis of Visual Representation in Video Games" (2015)). Examples include Moon Patrol and Scramble.)
• Type E: Total Maneuvering Games (rightly called "the most challenging control boards" and Kordestani incorrectly asserts that "Asteroids was the original of this type" (pg. 19). Maybe he never played Computer Space or Space Wars before. This type of game is a momentum-based multidirectional shooter. The controls allow the player to rotate their avatar right and left, thrust forward, shoot, and often include an additional action like shield or hyperspace.)
• Variations of Type E (side-scrolling but freely moving games like Defender and its sequel, Stargate.)
• Type F: Three-Dimensional Games (first-person games showing a perspectival view of a 3-D environment, like Red Baron and Battlezone. This category is not classified by its interface, though Kordestani notes that the controllers in the example games (one 4-way joystick in Red Baron, two 2-way joysticks in Battlezone) are "substantial" and "much larger than the usual control levers" (pg. 20). These "substantial" joysticks contribute to the experience that the player is controlling a military aircraft or armored fighting vehicle.)
• Miscellaneous Games (games that don't quite fit into the other categories, like Missile Command and Tempest)

It does not appear that Kordestani's "types" influenced any other genre system. Kordestani doesn't even use the system in the book's Part II, playing techniques for 41 different games that were prevalent in 1983-era arcades. However, it does stand out for classifying games by interface rather than representation (eschewing milieu categories like "science fiction" or "horror").

Game Genres, pt. 2: Mattel Intellivsion's Networks (1979)

Continued from part one.

Another early attempt at categorizing digital games into specific genres was taken up by Mattel Electronics to organize their own line of game cartridge titles, which appears to have begun with the system's test market launch in late 1979. Note that this appears to predate Atari's own "contents" system of genres by at least one year.

Mattel Intellivision's "Networks"

Example of different game boxes for different "networks," Intellivision Catalog (1983)

Mattel's take on game genres is that each game belongs to a specific "network," capitalizing on the Intellivision being an "intelligent television." Each Intellivision game cartridge comes in a colorful box matching the color of its home network. This system of color-coded networks appears to have been designed from the earliest days of Intellivision: game cartridges were color-coded even during the early days of test marketing. The system evolved over time, with new networks like Space Action Network and Arcade Network added later.

• Major League Sports Network (high-quality sports games with unrivaled graphics set Intellivision games apart from their Atari VCS competitors. Mattel shows their love for licenses with NFL Football, PGA Gold, NHL Hockey, and other sports licenses.)
• Action Network (most arcade-style games are in this network. Note that Space Action is a spinoff from this network.)
• Gaming Network (casino-style games, many with a "Las Vegas" moniker at the start of their title. Note that Horse Racing falls under this network rather than Action Network.)
• Strategy Network (mostly games based on classic board games, with the addition of Don Daglow's Utopia, one of the first examples of a real-time strategy game. ABPA Backgammon uses a license from the somewhat obscure American Backgammon Players Association.)
• Children's Learning Network (only two games released were Electric Company Word Fun and Electric Company Math Fun in 1980. Interestingly, the TV show Electric Company had ceased production in 1977, but Mattel used the strength of licensing to lend an air of legitimacy to their software titles.)
• Space Action Network (this network is an offshoot of the Action Network. Two early games in this category, Space Battle and Space Armada, were first published in the red boxes of the Action Network.)
• Special Intellivoice Cartridges (games designed to use the Intellivoice voice synthesis hardware module released in 1982.)
• Arcade Network (only Vectron was added to this short-lived network. Later arcade game ports like Burgertime were released without a network classification)

Like Atari's system, Mattel's genre system is designed around marketing needs and informing a population of consumers. It serves as another data point of how early digital game manufacturers organized their own individual works as they saw best.

Game Genres, pt. 1: Atari's Catalog Contents (1981)

My research work is focused on the development of an "art history" of digital games, a diachronic view of game history as the creation and development of aesthetic styles, rather than simply a history of technological advancements. My work is often confused with the establishment of game genres (platformer, FPS, RTS, etc.), which isn't exactly correct. However, I realize that certain spatial paradigms are commonly shared by certain game genres and I thought it would be a good idea to look at how the concept of "genre" came to be applied to video games.

One early attempt at categorizing games into specific types comes straight from Atari, a dominant force in arcade video games and home console games throughout the 1970s and early 1980s.

Atari Catalog CO16725-Rev. D

Contents page from Atari Catalog CO16725-Rev. D (1981)

Atari produced several different full-color catalogs to showcase the "Video Game Program cartridges" available for their programmable Atari VCS (later renamed the Atari 2600) home console. Previous Atari consoles were dedicated to play only one game or a small selection of games that were stored in fixed ROM chips. The VCS was their first console where the game programs could be swapped out, allowing for a potentially unlimited number of games to be played.

Atari's first "Innovative Leisure" catalog features the eight different game cartridges that were available near the system's launch in 1977. By early 1981 when catalog CO16725-Rev. D was published, the VCS catalog had grown to 45 different cartridge titles (not including titles that had been dropped from production in the intervening years). For the first time, Atari needed to organize the expanding catalog into chapters, breaking up the titles into a number of game genres.

These genre categories remained consistent, almost unchanged through 1983's catalog CO21776-Rev. A. By 1983, Atari had also released the Atari 5200 system and the VCS was newly dubbed the 2600. 1984's catalog CO25618-Rev. A showed off the then-new (and ill-fated) Atari 7800 system, in addition to the 2600 and 5200, and the genre categories were given revised names. [The 1984 names are noted in brackets, below.]

• Skill Gallery [Skill & Action] (Breakout, Pac-Man, Circus Atari, Video Pinball)
• Space Station [Space] (Space Invaders, Missile Command, Asteroids)
• Classics Corner (casino and board games)
• Adventure Territory (Haunted House, Adventure, Superman)
• Race Track [More Adventures] (car driving games)
• Sports Arena [Sports and Atari RealSports] (sports games, including Video Olympics (a collection of Pong variations))
• Combat Zone [More Adventures] (Air-Sea Battle, Combat, Outlaw, Warlords)
• Learning Center [Kid's Library] (BASIC Programming, Codebreaker (includes Nim), A Game of Concentration, Hangman)

The implied purpose behind this system is one of informing consumers about a product line and as a marketing tool to show the wide variety of games available from Atari (important in the light of competitors like Activision cropping up to produce VCS cartridges that competed with Atari's own line). So, it may be less useful as a tool for research than a system intended to be a formal taxonomy of digital games would be. However, there are still some formal aspects that can be teased out of this organization.

Some of these game genres are similar to film genres (Space Station/science fiction, Combat Zone/war movie). These are categories focused on the aspects of representation rather than qualities of interaction (Thomas H. Apperley, "Genre and Game Studies: Toward a Critical Approach to Video Game Genres," Simulation & Gaming, Vol. 37 No. 1, March 2006 pg. 7) that describe the milieu (pg. 11) of a specific game. Presumably, from a marketing standpoint, fans of related forms of entertainment in other media (film, television, or literature) may be inclined to play digital games in a related genre (sports fans may tend to choose games from Sports Arena, for example).

Some categorization options are puzzling. Space Station game Missile Command is about defending cities against attack in a nuclear war, which thematically seems more appropriate for Combat Zone. Combat Zone game Warlords can mechanically be described as 4-player Breakout, but it is not included in Breakout's Skill Gallery category. Hangman and A Game of Concentration (the flipped-card matching game variously called pairs or memory) are "classic" game examples, seemingly fitting of Classics Corner, but are included in Learning Center. I suspect that Atari wanted to give the impression that the VCS had plenty of educational titles and padded out their Learning Center category with games that are playable by younger children.

Interestingly, all categories are named after a type of place (gallery, station, corner, territory, track, arena, zone, or center). This implies a location where games of a certain genre may be found and experienced. Flipping through an Atari catalog is almost an early, transmedial, analogue version of navigation through digital media. 10+ years later, this same sort of locational language would often be used to organize locations for different types of digital files on web sites (and even on BBS services before that). Together, they form the World of Atari.

The Adventure Territory games all happen to share a common mechanical quality. Adventure, Haunted House and Superman are games where the player's on-screen avatar explores a large, multi-screen environment. As the avatar reaches one edge of the screen, it reappears on the opposite edge with the screen framing the next section of the gamespace. 

Atari's genre system can be used as a contrast to the more analytical types of systems that I analyze in the following Game Genres blog posts.