Category: Roger Caillois

Classifying the Pointing of Broken Age

During my playing of Broken Age, I was interested in the way that the game’s format as a point-and-click game affected the game itself. As a point-and-click adventure game, Broken Age requires the player to use the computer mouse to interact … Continue reading →

During my playing of Broken Age, I was interested in the way that the game’s format as a point-and-click game affected the game itself. As a point-and-click adventure game, Broken Age requires the player to use the computer mouse to interact with the world. I found this method of playing to provide a new element to the game itself, slightly altering the games classification when using Roger Caillois’ four classifications.

Using Roger Caillois’ classifications of games from his work, “The Classification of Games,” I noticed that Broken Age is clearly an agôn game. According to Caillois, agôn games are competitive games in which the player seeks to prove their superiority, be it superiority of speed, endurance, strength, memory, skill, or ingenuity (131). In Broken Age, the player seeks to prove their superior mind by solving the puzzles presented to them while progressing through Shay and Vella’s narratives. Solving the puzzles require the player to obtain objects and talk to various characters, all by clicking on them.

Broken Age does provide clues as to what objects to interact with and what non-player characters to talk to in order to gain the skills or objects needed to solve the current problem or puzzle. Through conversations with the non-player characters, Shay or Vella, and by extension the player, can hear helpful hints as to what type of objects they should be trying to find. While sometimes this is enough to aid the player, the game adds another layer of help.

This image show the gameplay of Broken Age. In this screenshot, Vella is attempting to obtain that golden egg, and must use the ladder she previously obtained that is in her inventory at the bottom of the screen.

As a point-and-click game, the cursor is an extremely important part of Broken Age as it leads to the completion of all the game’s actions. Typically the cursor looks like a normal mouse arrow. However, when the player hovers the cursor over an object that can be interacted with, the cursor changes into a starburst-type shape, cluing the player in to the fact that the object or character can be interacted with.

This image showcases the described cursor change in Broken Age. In the bottom left of the screen, the cursor can be seen in its starburst form, showcasing the ability of the covered dish to be interacted with.

This cursor changes provides the game with another of Caillois’ classifications: alea. According to Caillois, alea games are all about luck and chance, “winning is the result of fate rather than triumphing over an adversary” (133). Thanks to the ability of the cursor to change and clue the player in to what objects are interactive, the player can simply wave the cursor around until they see the cursor change into the necessary starburst. This alters Broken Age from an agôn game that requires skill to pass through the puzzles to an alea game that affords the player the opportunity to wildly wave their cursor around until a solution appears, all as a result of the game’s format.

Works Cited

Caillois, Roger. “The Classification of Games.” The Game Design Reader: A Rules of Play Anthology. Ed. Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2006. 129-47. Print.

Image Sources

  1. https://portforward.com/games/walkthroughs/Broken-Age-Act1/Broken-Age-Act1-73.htm
  2. http://www.gamezebo.com/2014/01/28/broken-age-act-1-walkthrough-cheats-strategy-guide/

Portal: Still Eyelive

Portal is a game that explores interesting concepts including space, dimensionality, and general physics.  However, I believe the most interesting facet of the game is the concept of voyeurism and vision.  Throughout the game, there is a running aesthetic of voyeurism that is achieved on multiple levels; from gameplay and mechanics to the mise en […]

Portal is a game that explores interesting concepts including space, dimensionality, and general physics.  However, I believe the most interesting facet of the game is the concept of voyeurism and vision.  Throughout the game, there is a running aesthetic of voyeurism that is achieved on multiple levels; from gameplay and mechanics to the mise en scene to the metaphysical experience of the gamer.  The player, who controls/is the protagonist, Chell, awakens to the voice of GLaDOS, the A.I. operating the lab.  GLaDOS appears to be observing you as she speaks about the environment around you and reacts to your actions.  Upon inspection, the player can observe the chamber rooms and notice red-eye cameras tracking Chell as she moves around the room.  Alongside this, the chambers are riddled with frosted glass windows several feet above the ground, which seem to peer out of an office or observation booth of some kind.  These aesthetics emphasize the fact that Chell/the player is under constant surveillance, yet the surveyor is unbeknownst to her/him.  This concept of surveillance of a subject without knowledge of the surveyor was pioneered with Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon, a type of institutional building where the inmates cannot tell who is watching them or whether they are being watched, thereby affecting the psychological and behavioral characteristics the inmates.

This voyeurism is also echoed in the artistic choices of the game.  The complex in which Chell is being held is named “Aperture Laboratories,” a title and logo that the player encounters from the very start of the game and consistently throughout the test chambers (i.e. on cubes, GLaDOS dialogue, etc.).  In optics, aperture is an opening through which light travels; most importantly, to the laymen, this commonly refers to the shutter of a camera.  This compounds the emphasis of vision and voyeurism in Portal, being that the lab, in which Chell is trapped, references the notion of being watched or recorded in its own title.  In company with the cameras encountered throughout the chambers, GLaDOS herself has the likeness of an eyeball attached to a larger machine base.  GLaDOS is made up of multiple data cores which resemble eyeballs, and at the end of the game, the player discovers a whole storage facility full of these eyeball data cores.   Along with this, the manner in which the shape of the portal and the way it functions enforces the voyeur concept.  Not only is GLaDOS watching Chell like Big Brother, but by manipulating the portals, Chell can observe herself in a manner no human has ever done.  The portals function as oblong pupils that dilate when shot at a surface.  With the proper orientation and viewing angle, Chell can observe herself by breaking the rules of spacetime.  She can see the light that bounces off her body, not by reflecting off some glass surface called a mirror and back into her eye, but as it propagates unperturbed through spacetime and enter her own eyes.  Not only this, but the player can also achieve an ilinx effect, as described by Roger Caillois, by placing a portal directly above another.  In this manner, Chell can jump through and fall at a continuously accelerating speed, watching herself fall for eternity: trying to catch herself like a dog chasing its tail.  On top of all this, there is the ultimate metaphysical experience of the player, being quite similar to GLaDOS despite playing as Chell.  This whole time, the player is observing the events occur with Chell on screen.  Although he/she may control her, he/she acts as a voyeur in a peculiarly similar fashion to GLaDOS.  Though we align our goals and actions with Chell, there is something to note about this juxtaposition, which I myself have trouble putting my finger on, though the sensation is quite palpable.  Ultimately, I believe that although Portal is a game about puzzle solving, it is replete with aesthetics and philosophies of sight, vision, and voyeurism.