Run and Jump: The Meaning of the 2D Platformer

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Regarding Peter D McDonald's
"Run and Jump: The Meaning of the 2D Platformer"

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[AB]

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(Notes from the subway)

4
. . . we cannot bypass a thick description of . . . mechanics, organization of space, hordes of enemies, piles of coins. Attending to these elements roots the genre's popularity in the desires and anxieties of a larger culture.

9
Starting with the release of Alien Hominid in 2002, a flood of crass, half-baked, and experimental platforming games appeared in a wide range of places. Works like Cave Story (2004), N (2005), La-Mulana (2006), Within a Deep Forest (2006), Knytt (2006), Noitu Love and the Army of Grinning Darns (2006), and Frozzd (2007) are the flowers of a rich and widespread cultureof borring, hacking, and reimagining the genre. These games often appear as a joke, a prototype, or an homage without any clear commercial aspirations. The period between 1998 and 2008 was metamorphic and frothy, not one of stagnation.

i got surprisingly emotional about this description of this period of time

13-14
structures themselves [e.g. "platformer" as a genre structure to which a work may relate either more or less] are historical and can rupture. As Todorov argues, "Every work modifies the sum of all possible works, each new example alters the species." . . . a structure exists as part of an ongoing interpretive conversation. . . . differences reveal a cultural argument. . . . The conflicts that arise in the history of the 2D platformer thus become social messages internal to the genre itself, representing approaches that any game can draw on to create a consensus among different audiences.

[droqen]

[ A. McDonald has chosen to analyze platforming games through structuralism. Why? Why is, or was, this worth doing?
  B. McDonald's claim is that other more contemporary approaches exclude 'a whole range of ludic meaning.' Some elements of that lost range, perhaps, which may be recovered:
  - unintentional currents of communication
  - things irreducible to a single effect or message
  - local relationships between procedural, visual, auditory, textual registers
]

19

When game studies scholars rejected structuralist semiotics. . . they were excluding something central to the way games communicate. // By returning to platforming games through a structuralist lens, my goal is not simply to apply one more academic theory to games. . . . [I believe that structuralism] has some fundamental flaws. Still, it is crucial to recover a whole range of ludic meaning that has been foreclosed by the discipline.

. . . our resources for thinking about games have been improverished. . . . Structuralist semiotics shows that we always say more than we mean to; it reveals eddies and currents of communication that pull us unknowingly into new thoughts and ideas. Alongside the arguments of procedural rhetoric,

20

I want a procedural poetics, procedural metaphors, atmospheres made of procedures, feelings organized procedurally, each one irreducible to a univocal argument or singular effect. In such an expansion of ludic meaning, the procedural cannot be isolated as one register separate from the visual, auditory, or textual; they all mingle and enter local relationships that cannot be universalized. This book is about dallying with the mess in platforming games.

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20

. . . topics that at first glance seem merely functional: the distribution of abilities to different buttons, the height of a passage, the timing of an enemy's attack. In each, I work to bring out their rich and ambivalent meanings. The four chapters organize a handful of short investigations into larger themes characteristic of the genre: jumping, level design, enemies, and items. My hope is that by creating an assortment of tools, a wide range of readers will find something useful here. [
- platformer fans: deepen their appreciation
- humanities educators: how to apply close reading and interpretation to games
- game designers: exercises for honing expressive and communicative choices (this is me! i might actually do these.)
- academics in game studies: fresh look at relationship of genre, form, and meaning
]
Ultimately I hope readers feel free to pick and choose from the claims in this toolbox, discarding some and adapting others, for the expansive work that a semiotics of games opens onto.

Thank you, McDonald. I will.

[ A. What's McDonald doing here? What will I get out of this?
  B. This work aspires to offer a toolbox which many may find useful in different ways...
  C. I have personally begun to feel that 'my' genre is very constrained in terms of what meaning even can be expressed through it. It's frustrating. To this end I am of course interested in the practical-sounding "exercises at the end of each chapter for honing expressive and communicative choices" but to my larger goal, which is to revive a creative and cathartic relationship to my games and especially my platformers, I am very interested in "deepen[ing my] appreciation" of them as an avid player might; applying the "skills of close reading" as I practice them here, and of course renew my idea of how "genre, form, and meaning" interrelate. Especially meaning. ]

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1   Jumping

21

This chapter is about the meaning of jumping . . . Jumping holds nostalgic childhood memories, conjures up scenes of game designers talking about their craft, draws in moral panic about addiction, and tethers academic accounts of procedural rhetoric.

I'm struggling with this. But I like the next bit.

21

Most important, the player attaches a meaning to jumping as she plays. That experience of acting in a game world is an underexplored dimension within the study and design of games.¹

Hmm. Where does this '1' go?

142

1. I am indebted to Anna Anthropy and Naomi Clark for presenting a clear and expansive version of the idea that games are languages. Anna Anthropy and Naomi Clark, A Game Design Vocabulary

ah, this old thing! hmm. I don't understand how this connects to the player's... ohh, acting. I thought McDonald mean acting like in a play, not acting like 'taking an action.'

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22

each of the . . . jumps a player makes over the course of a game is singular and unique.

24

A player jumps in order to accomplish something specific in the game world, and the meaning of each jump is directly tied to that goal. . . . It is common to use verbs like jumping to capture this language of action, . . . However, verbs are also ambiguous. They group together several acts that each might mean something significantly different to the player.

VERY TRUE.

25

Nis Bojin argues that we should instead think in terms of situated actions. . .
   . . . A ludeme . . . moves from the technical interaction to a "choice-experience," . . .
. . . a ludeme is essentially a sign that conjoins the act (as signifier) to a strategy (as signified)

I very much like the idea of rooting the verb in the player's goal, their experience of action. You do the thing, of course, but why do you do it? This is of the utmost importance. The exact same action may have a different, unique, meaning depending on why you undertake it.

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25

. . . the signified choice can only be understood within the full pragmatic context of play. Bojin lists several contextual factors that might change the meaning of a jump, but only to the extent that they affect strategic considerations.

Nooo! Wrong!!!

26

When a player jumps on an enemy, she may feel rage or regret without either emotion registering in the jump, but her action does express a decision to attack. . . . Jumping has as many meanings as the choices it affords, and it slots the player's impulses into a systematized set of available moves.

Noooo!!! McDonald, I believed in you!!!
I don't like this. My understanding is that it is a straightforward statement that a jump may only take on multiple meanings to the extent that the player is able to make different jumps.
Do I think that's the case? I suppose earlier he does write that "each of the . . . jumps a player makes over the course of a game is singular and unique." Hmm.

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26

. . . jumping is a method for traversing space.

27

. . . platforming games use jumping to transform time into a resource. . . [Yes!!!]

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32

Designers often discuss game feel as either good or bad. . . From a semiotic perspective, however, game feel is better understood as creating nuances within the meaning of an act. . . . a designer can imbue a jump with dozens of different physical and emotional qualities: Alucard feels heavy, Mario feels slippery, Mega Man feels sharp, Sonic feels acrobatic.

There are a few variables further described. What I'm interested in is not the specific variables, but... what is the range of such variables? What can be expressed by a jump, and what can't?

heft, consistency, grace, spryness, soft, bubbly, nimble, willowy, majestic, crystalline, frantic...

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36

In some sense, the purpose of flying is to highlight the half-measures of jumping, as if to say, "The designer could have allowed you this freedom but chose to withhold it." As a result, jumping signifies something between constraint and freedom.

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I am not sure about all this -- I do like the idea of approaching the act of jumping with some kind of reverence, instilling it with emotion and intent. But the specific wording... McDonald provides things which jumps signify, making no attempt to suggest subjectivity or locality. Are these interesting signs? Sure. They are. Which is why I am going to quote them here. But these are all optional readings... Maybe i don't understand sign theory well enough, and all signs are always in fact optional.

I am thinking about The Jump as a Tarot Card. It signifies things... when the jump signifies something we may use that sign to inspire a meaningful interpretation, or we may dismiss it when it gets in the way. If this is what it means to signify, then I do not mind saying that the jump and its parts 'signify' these things.

39-42
First, the upward motion of jumping signifies energy, power, escape from the law, rebellion, and freedom. . . .
Second, and reciprocally, falling after an initial ascent signifies vulnerability to enemies, helplessness to prevent the fall, and the crushing revenge of the rules. . . .
Third, jumping signifies craftiness, turning a bad situation to good account and manipulating fate. . . .
Fourth, the whole jump signifies glee, spontaneity, rhythm, and creativity. . . .
Fifth, jumping signifies exploration and progress. . . .

These five themes are the basic elements that have been repeated and reinforced since the inception of the genre. . . . At the same time, these themes are not inevitable. Each one arises from a collection of design decisions and habits that have become common through repeated use. . . . Nevertheless, the weight of the tradition has a powerful force that colors and shapes every jump.

Ok, this was a pretty great read. Additional detail from upward and falling motions:

39-40

While jumping piggybacks on a widespread metaphorical association between upward motion, progress, happiness, and strength, its positive valence in the game world should not be naturalized. Rather, these associations are actively cued by the challenges that the player surmounts. It is entirely possible, if rare, for games to valorize falling instead and have levels progress downward. . . . there is nothing natural of inevitable about [the association of falling with vulnerability, helplessness, revenge]. It is established by the regular use of pits to kill the player and similar design choices. It is no more difficult to put deadly spikes on the roof than holes in the floor, but games rarely challenge the player to shorten her jump height, and when they do, it is for claustrophobic effect.

One more further detail quote about falling, which I love.

39

As the player reaches the peak of her jump, gravity reasserts itself. Each subsequent frame narrows the scope of possible actions as the player's increasing speed makes the consequences of any decision harder to judge.

This is such a great, powerful dynamic. It is of course very intuitive and simple, but I don't think I've seen anyone call it out so straightforwardly, so explicitly. This is one facet which a jump may (or may not) have, and having (or not having) (or otherwise modulating) it has a significant, but also very specific and specifiable, impact on the miniature emotional universe accessed by the whole jump.

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43

Ferdinand de Saussure. . . remarks that mutton in English and mouton in French cannot be translated simply because the latter refers to live sheep as well as meat.
. . . conceive of translation as an art rather than an act of mere substitution, one that tries but necessarily fails to account for subtle shifts in meaning across languages. The same principle applies to the player's act of translating "jumping"

[droqen]

46, 47 (each line is a separate quote pulled from the book)

the player's identification with the avatar
the human body will always be found wanting in relation to the exaggrated motion of game avatars
Jumping in 2D platforming games. . . hovers at the edge of the possible as a dream of what our own body could be like if it were stronger, more precise, less weighty, less exhausting
When a palyer tries to translate the idea "I can jump . . . in order to" into the language of the game, any valorization of her own bodily capacity has no hope of surviving the transition.
a fantasy of shedding the weight and complexity of muscles and fat
games create a split internal to the player's sense of embodiment
(1/2) a rich sense of physicality with quirks of sensuous feeling and rich histories of meaning
(2/2) a generic antipathy to these same qualities when they are discovered in the player's own body

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48

. . . jumping . . . tells us what the avatar wants, reveals the quality of its movement, and shows us its capcities. The themes of the genre tend toward an individual heroic avatar struggling against an anonymous and overbearing force.