Lingua Gamca

Believe it or not, you know another language.

In literature, rules for spelling, punctuation, diction, and grammar are used to eliminate noise. If, for some reason, the agreed-upon rules create noise instead, then the rules are discarded because they are subservient to creating a noise-free channel of communication. Such a channel creates the immersion, or engagement, necessary for hours to pass like minutes. Good engagement makes it seem as if the author is directly in the brain sharing experiences while the physical processes of reading the words and turning the pages disappear from consciousness.

Similar to literature, games have their own agreed-upon rules to create a noise-free channel of communication. Such rules form the language of games.

One aspect of the language of games is the controls used for input. For example, first-person shooters have controls that persist across games and sometimes across platforms. As with spoken language, such controls are difficult for non-native speakers at first, but become easy with practice. Consider the following foray into teaching the vocabulary of controls.


DualShock 2


Non-native speaker: "How do I pick up that item on the ground?"

Native speaker: "Press triangle."

Non-native speaker *looks at the DualShock 2, pauses the game*: “That didn’t work.”

Native speaker: "Press . . . the . . . circular button that has a triangle printed on it."

This conversation, presented verbatim, highlights the obstacles non-native speakers must overcome. Such obstacles are a barrier to entry to the fun promised by native speakers, and to some the seemingly arbitrary rules that make up the language of games is not worth the work of overcoming the obstacles. After all, fun should not be work. Bad engagement, especially during the learning of the language of games, makes what should be an hour of fun pass like a year of work.

A large aspect of the language of games is the conventions of the genres. Q: How do you know to advance right instead of left, up, or down? A: Because you are playing a platformer. Q: How do you know that a crate can be destroyed while a cabinet on the wall cannot be destroyed? A: Because you are playing a first-person shooter. One of the most famous examples of using language occurs in Metroid, which uses the language of Super Mario Bros. to make a statement about itself. Throughout Super Mario Bros., the player advances from left to right. At the beginning of Metroid, the player that advances right, as was customary at that point in the evolution of the language, finds herself blocked by a large wall with a small tunnel underneath. After failing to access the tunnel, the player admits defeat and returns to the starting position. The player is forced to explore by advancing left, and the player is rewarded by immediately finding an item used to access the tunnel. As such, Metroid uses the language of Super Mario Bros. to make the statement, “This is a game about exploration in every direction.” 



Scribblenauts

Though not as recognized, Metroid uses the language of Super Mario Bros. in other ways as well. In Super Mario Bros., the player begins at the far left of the screen facing right. In Metroid, the player begins at the center of the screen facing out of the screen, again encouraging exploration in any direction. In Super Mario Bros., the first enemies (and most thereafter) are defeated by jumping on them from above. In Metroid, the first enemies have spines on top of them, indicating that jumping on them (and most thereafter) will not defeat the enemies of Metroid. In Super Mario Bros., the player jumps with a fist in the air, encouraging striking objects from below. In Metroid, the player spins into a ball during moving jumps, foreshadowing vertical corridors requiring precision jumping. This use of language is not, and cannot be, coincidence; rather, such use is the attempt to create good engagement with a skeptical audience in a relatively immature medium.

Similar to the slang and wordplay of spoken language, jokes can be formed in the language of games by subverting rules, expectations, and meanings. Briefly mentioning one out of many examples, a crude type of joke is an item causing the opposite of the conventional effect. As with slang, a player not “in the know” will not understand the joke. As the language of games evolves, this type of playful communication becomes subtler and more meaningful, resulting in less noise and better engagement.



A fun way to encourage non-native speakers to understand the language of games is to present them with the name and perhaps a picture of the director of a particular game they are playing. Mention that “this is the person trying to tell you something.” Upon hearing the inevitable praises and curses of the non-native speakers during playthrough, such as “Miyamoto, you sly fox, that was tricky!” or “CliffyB, you magnificent jerk, that was cheap,” native speakers will soon understand that in providing an outlet for pseudo two-way communication, they are really teaching an understanding of how to interpret the one-way communication of the language of games.

Another World



One aspect of learning to appreciate a particular game is the ability to draw from experience of the language formed by other games to evaluate the particular game, similar to appreciating a fine film. After the language of games has been understood, and the message of the particular game is delivered with good engagement, comes the fun part: What does the message mean?