Playing with Grammar

Grammar is the template for communication – and the play of a videogame can be seen as a communication between the game and the player. So what are the grammars of this play?

In language, grammar is the common template to the usage of words that allows us to interpret what is meant by any given sentence. Crudely speaking, every sentence concerns an acting agent (the subject noun of the sentence) who performs an action (the verb). In the case of transitive verbs, the action also acts upon something (the object noun of the sentence) – for instance, ‘He is crying’ requires no object, but ‘He is making’ requires an object, as in ‘he is making games’. 

In general (although it may become contrived) all communication has an essential grammar to it – a template to which the communication is fitted. Ordinarily, communications are bidirectional – if you speak to the bartender, you and the bartender both use the same grammar. But in the play of videogames, the communications can be more disparate.

For example, we can imagine that there are two separate channels of communication in a most videogames: 

• The game communicates to the player what is required, expected      or possible (the goals or possibilities of play)
• The player communicates to the game their desired action

These forms of communications have different grammars. The “goal grammar” which tells the player what they should be doing (or what they could be doing) is generally delivered in natural language – e.g. “collect 30 coins” – but it could equally be expressed directly through the grammar of play. 

In Play with Fire, for instance, the player is taught by early fields that the goal is to touch a particular type of block – and once the player has experienced this goal (which is never stated in words outside of the manual) the player knows that this is the goal. Of course, how this goal is achieved varies from field to field.

This is a rare example of wordless communication of goals, but although it without words it is not without grammar. The grammar of play appears to presume the existence of a goal – only the undirected experimentation of toyplay is “goal-less”, and even in this context players may still look for goals, and in the absence of stated goals they begin to create their own.  

Is it the case, therefore, that the grammar of play presumes goals, even in “goal-less” toyplay? I am uncertain, but my instinct says this might be so.

The player’s communication with the game is what we have already discussed in the context of play specifications. In general: 

            Avatar performs [Action] {on [Object]}

Where the Avatar is the subject of the “sentence of play”. The language of the Action is the language of the interface – press a button to evoke an Action (for instance) in a typical console game, or write a literal sentence in a text adventure. The language of Action may also be context sensitive (which is not uncommon in spoken language, either – in Japanese, for instance, the subject of a sentence is often implied and not stated). 

As for the Objects, these may be acquired automatically by the Action, but still there is some obligation for the game to identify the legitimate subjects – in so much that most games do not allow interaction with all the nouns in the game space. This leads to the requirement for a visual language which demarks the different forms of subject nouns, as can be seen clearly in the Lego Star Wars games which mark the subjects of different verbs (such as the places where a grapple may be launched, or something that can be forced, or built) with a particular visual language (a target mark, a glowing effect, or jittering Lego fragments).

Of course, some games do not have a single Avatar, and here the form becomes: 

            [Subject(s)] perform [Action] {on [Object]}

In these cases, it is necessary for the subjects to be chosen by the player. Just as the limitations of our vocal chords and hearing define the limits of spoken language, so the limitations of the interface device set the limits of subject selection in play – the mouse-driven RTS uses dragged selection boxes to denote subjects, for instance, while party based cRPG games require clicking or menu selection to choose the subject. All of this adds to the complexity of the “player grammar”, and hence to the degree of learning required for the player to begin to play the game, although of course by reusing elements of the player grammar in games of similar genre this learning curve is effectively truncated for experienced players. 

The grammar of play appears to be implicit to biological life – cats, dogs and squirrels appear to play according the assumption of goal, for instance, but the player grammar and the goal grammar are artefacts of the design of a game.

Are there more artful forms of goal grammar? More elegant forms of player grammar? Are there better grammars for play than those we currently use? Probably. But as already mentioned, we are limited by our interface devices, and also by the complexity barrier whenever we try to invent a new language of play for a game, instead of borrowing from the language already in place. 

Perhaps the more interesting question is: can we catalogue the grammar and language of existing game genres and learn something about the language of play that currently exists in videogames? I am curious to see how if such an endeavour is indeed viable.

The opening image is Communication by Joe Bartz, which I found here, although his site appears to be here. As ever, no copyright infringement is implied and I will take the image down if asked.

Comments

[Patrick]

Unifying more theories, the "goal grammer" you describe is congruent to the game's formal constraints, and the "player grammer" you specify comprises the material constraints, and the experience happens in the space between.

[Jason Preston]

You know, it's interesting that on November 9th, a year ago, you made a post titled "A Game Design Grammar," which is so totally almost on-topic.

It's also interesting that while poking around for an image to go with my round table post, I came across said post...

[Arto]

I think the best take so far on "game design grammar" is the Game Design Patterns, although it is a bit more centered on contents of a game rather than the acts of play.

I am working on a Master's Thesis about story-driven game content description language (in XML) so the grammar of games is something I've been looking in to. So if there's any (preferably scientific) material on the subject somewhere, I'd be happy to know :)

[Chris]

Arto: I don't know of anything more than the discussions here on this blog, I'm afraid, but there's been quite a bit of discussion of game grammar here, including a week long symposium on play specifications which may be relevant.

Best of luck with your thesis!