harveymollony: I think you’re right that Murray was arguing for agency in “theater” games. I also think that just the introduction of rules and the magic circle implies agency, and that’s an interesting way to understand games, and it implies and interesting way to approach even “theater” games. If we can assume that the introduction of rules immediately enhances the feeling of agency, we can very easily see why rules are so important in even “open ended” titles.

Nakama: I actually am fairly friendly with the SFFG crowd, though not as much in recent years. My roommate, however, is still extremely connected with that group. Of course I’m only tangentially connected to the WPI crowd

As for your points, I agree that agency and fun are mutually exclusive, and there are other theories on what makes games fun. Personally, I think it’s really interesting you spent lots of time with a game that you didn’t find “fun,” because you obviously liked it, which goes to prove Warren’s (and my… I’m not giving Warren all the credit! ;)) point about “fun” games. Entertainment can exist where fun is absent. I’d just ask you to ask yourself the question, “Why did I play Morrowind. What about it was so enticing?”

As for the last paragraph of points, what you’re talking about is agency: the ability to manipulate the world meaningfully, be it in the “game” sense or in the “story” sense. I’ve argued in my own thesis what you say is “limitations on agency so that meaningful interaction is more meaningful and relevant.” I call it “the Willing Suspension of Freedom,” and it’s why I think aproaching all games from the agency perspective is interesting. A key component of agency theory is that there is a magic circle that defines the manipulations and defines their meaning. By closing off the different ways to manipulate and instead making each manipulation more meaningful, you actually increase the feeling of agency, not decrease it.

There’s more to this, and I hope more blog posts will make everything a bit more, well, clear.

Not only that, I’m not sure that hailing agency as a sole focus is a good idea. Take Oblivion. That game is certainly hailed for its enormous sense of agency — players can do just about anything and have it impact the game world in a manner signifcant to the player’s experience. But I would argue that it doesn’t make the game fun. In fact, while Morrowind was a very addicting game for similar reasons — I certainly spent more time than I should have with it — I didn’t have all that much fun with it, and while that Escapist article argued that such wasn’t necessary, I feel that if a game doesn’t have any purpose beyond mere entertainment then fun is pretty important.

I’d like to see more of a paradigm where — instead of giving players penultimate agency being seen as the greatest gaming good — the agency istelf has a kind of agency: the meaning generated by player choices is meaningful to the game/story as a whole. In a sense, games become more like film — players are invited into the director’s world, except that player choices can have a significant impact on that world, or at least seem like such is so. Don’t mistake me for saying that games should follow that tired story-game-story-game alternating sequence, though. I just feel that game designers are certainly allowed and should exercise some limitations on agency so that meaningful interaction is more meaningful and relevant to the play experience than, say, dumping your equipment in a swamp and having it still be there later.

By the way, hi. We seem to have run in vaguely concentric circles. I’m loosely connected to the SFFG crowd of a few years back (I don’t know if you were friends with them at all, though), and equally loosely connected to the WPI-graduated game people.

This is the best formulation I’ve heard of a “games as art” argument, maybe someone should write a “Theory of Agency” book.

I’m considering writing a whole bunch of articles all concerning Agency Theory and the Willing Suspension of freedom before GDC and assembling them into something I can bind together and hand out. We’ll see how that goes over.

I think that concentrating on agency is very important - in fact, I wrote many months ago that rules were simply a kind of red tape to glue agency to content. So, it’s safe to say that I agree completely.

Anyhow, this essay gives me a lot of inspiration and ideas, so I’m extremely happy you wrote it.