3.2 On Numbers

Chaos Wars is, in a way, a form of abstract art.

All video games are. The fundamental basis of game creation is the ability to turn life into numbers. That's art. That's the beautiful type of honest abstraction that requires us to think about the way we live. You never think about how long you are going to live until you learn that most people only last until a certain age. If you are like me, you add that number of years to the year that you were born and carry that new number with you everywhere you go. It's just a number. And not a statistically viable number at that. But my own existential dread is tied to four-digit number and that's beautiful.

Despite the insistence of psychologists, philosophers and mathematicians, numbers by themselves are appealing because they are reliable. They are not abstract at all. Think about the way that you teach a child to count. You pour open a bag of M&Ms. It's so simple to illustrate - you give and take the pieces of candy away. Two becomes one after Dad eats a piece of candy. That's all it takes. If we thought that numbers were somehow unreliable, do you think money would exist? We turn time into money (figuratively) because nobody can (logically) argue that a one dollar represents anything more than a one dollar (on a purely numerative basis).

Do you see what I did there? I managed to undermine my entire point at the end of that paragraph by adding qualifiers. The stability of numbers is easily undermined by their application. Abstraction is the addition and subtraction of context. Ayn Rand's "A is A" statement means nothing when you talk to somebody that doesn't know the alphabet. A "slam dunk" means something completely different if you are talking to a tall guy that is amazing at basketball.

Video games have done well when it comes to making figures that act like people, despite the fact that anybody who plays a game is quite aware of how un-human games are. Uncharted tries to do it by having the protagonist's movements simulate that of a clumsy white man. Street Fighter does it by offering three different strengths of punching and kicking. That new UFC game has limb control mapped in a way that corresponds with limb placement on the body. When we play these games, the correspondence between character and real life is pretty direct. I am a clumsy white guy, so the figure in Uncharted takes on human characteristics to me. I can punch with different amounts of strength and so on. If my context as a player is to find some human characteristic in the numbers disguised as a person, these elements are abstract but relatable. I'm not literally swinging another person's arms or stumbling around, but it looks that way so that it feels more natural as an observer.

Of course, our experience as observers only allow us to look in as far as the game's frame is willing to extend. That's the difference between playing a video game and immersing yourself into some alternate reality (not possible technologically, but I've heard great things about drugs). The white guy from Uncharted walks in a way that seems relatable, but I have no idea whether or not he tastes grapefruit different than myself. Or if his knuckles have an ache or if it is more of a stinging pain when he is shooting bad guys on top of K2 (or wherever he is, man). I know him as a walker, a climber, a shooter because that is what I am capable of controlling. In the case of Uncharted, all the abstractions in the game exist to help me along in shooting and climbing and walking. The ability to disguise numbers as specific experiences is the fundamental strengths of games as a medium.

In the early days of video games, games were a bit more honest about the ways that numberjumbles were meant to be an abstraction of some type of real-life experience. Or maybe they were just less imaginative. Either way, people who have played games for a while seem to be comfortable with numbers. And why wouldn't they be? Numbers, either in accounting or Mario, are reliably representative. If you have three continues and need to continue once, then you will have two continues.

But like most things, games took numbers too far. These numbers were always meant to represent...something. But the gap between numbers and something has become far shorter. If an in a game like Gears of War drops an enemy's life points below the threshold required for that enemy to die in the game's logic, we don't literally see those numbers move, and we don't think about it unless we are a very particular type of person. More than likely, we shoot the monster in the head, watch the enemy drop and proceed to high-five whoever is sitting next to us. Developers ascribe numbers to human characteristics because they have no choice, but it certainly makes sense to try and cover that up. A lot of very good games do a great job of covering that up.

Of course, good games shouldn't feel obligated to cover that up. Take Shiren the Wanderer, for instance. In that game, your character gets hungry after too much physical activity. It's a neat idea, and serves well as a balancing tool for players that might want to touch every corner of every room in a game that is about surviving in a harsh environment. But it would be difficult to effectively represent hunger in a way that would mask the numbers as effectively as shooting someone is in Gears. So in Shiren, you can check your hunger number whenever you want and when that number gets low, you get a message that your stomach is grumbling. If you are hungry, you eat. If you don't eat, you die. It's pretty simple.

Since we know that Chaos Wars is not a good game, let's talk about the way that characters in Chaos Wars are assigned numbers. Each character in Chaos Wars has 17 different statistical categories. These statistical categories exist as numerical representations of aspects of that character's existence. Just for fun, let's assign these 17 statistical categories on a 1 to 10 scale to a character that is well-established outside of the game, Will Smith:

Hit Points: This represents the character's general health. Will Smith looks pretty healthy, so let's give him an 8.

Skill Points: Here's the first stumbling block. Skills represent your character's ability to interact with anything that can be interacted with in the game...which means that this is a numerical representative of a person's ability to do anything that they are capable of doing. Since I am ready to assume to Will Smith is capable of doing anything that Will Smith can do, he would probably have a 10 although I should note that characters in this game do have wildly varying skill points.

Special Gauge: To quote GameFAQs walkthrough author Georgi Samaras: "The special gauge starts at one and increases when a fighter takes damage or performs an action". I have no idea what that means or how it might be different from a skill point. Will Smith gets a 1, I guess.

I'm not going to keep up with this. I hope I've made my point. We all know who Will Smith is. But if he were a character in this game, there would be numbers assigned to characteristics that in no way help to identify or define him. You can argue that the manipulation of numbers in itself can be a game, and that is completely valid. But the manipulation of these numbers in a game like Chaos Wars is completely disconnected from what is actually going on while the game is being played. The numbers no longer remain abstract because they no longer represent anything. Characters in Chaos Wars increase in their mentality statistic, but there is no noticeable change to the expression of that character's intelligence. In real life, if Will Smith's body statistic dropped from an 8 to a 2, I'm pretty sure we would all notice.

Games won't stop with numbers anytime soon. Dragon Quest IX is a perfect example. When word got out that the traditionally numbers-based play would be replaced with a more active component, Japan collectively acted like it lost its keys. Apparently to people who play video games, the thrill of watching numbers that represent doing something is more engaging than actually doing something. And this isn't me slamming Japan either. Look at the popularity of fantasy football in the US. Or better yet, just try to get together enough people for a real football game.

I'm not arguing that numbers in games need to go away. But numbers existed in games as comfortable, stable and universal ways to represent ideas and concepts that are difficult to gamify (a word I may be but am probably not coining to mean the representation of a concept as an act of play). As game development has matured, the number of concepts that cannot be turned into an act of active play are slowly shrinking. We no longer need to settle for numbers that exist without real context. A game like Demon's Souls gets numbers. In Demon's Souls, the flux of numbers directly corresponds to the way that you play. The fondling has a purpose because you can feel it. An increase in your dexterity statistic means that your character noticeably moves faster when you press the button to do that. The way that games like Chaos Wars use numbers is an insult to the beautiful, glorious real math that makes up actual living. The numbers serve only to represent the things that aren't there, only for the sake of giving the player something to do. It is game slop. And for the sake of play, it needs to be cleaned up. Numbers in games may serve to represent real things, but games can't replace real life. They aren't meant to. Life and games skip hand-in-hand. We all play something.

3.1 Playnotes

MINUTES:

1:22: After a few minutes, I get this message: "Mission complete!" I was on a mission this whole time?

1:23: ACTUAL DIALOG ALERT! Time Wizard: "Now we can use the summon function!" Protagonist: "Right, whatever that means."

1:25: Hubs in games are fantastic for killing tension and forward momentum. For those unfamiliar with the term, the different stages in a game are sometimes broken up by a hub area that allows you to interact with some ancillary features before choosing to continue to the next level. Chaos Wars, as it is apt to do, not only requires me to navigate a hub world, but I must also go to a computer to interact with a menu to choose which intangible key will open some intangible door. Using the imaginary key in the imaginary door menu allows me additional menu options in the level select. The whole experience makes me feel terrible.

1:27: The game allows you to take additional quests in addition to the linear progression. Out of some form of morbid curiosity (or extreme confusion), I choose a mission titled "Jelly Demon".

1:30: Our stern knight character hits a slime with a scythe, which increases her "mentality". When the next character kills that slime, that character increases in six different statistics. This type of unnecessary abstraction is one of the most egregiously senseless trends in video games and a fertile topic for future discussion.

1:46: There is a red sphere interface in the uppper-right hand corner during this battle. Right now there is one pie piece lit up. As the battle continues, the number of pie pieces stays constantly in flux. I have no idea what this means.

1:48: Killing slimes nets me a "Schoolboy's Uniform" and a "Young Devil's Horn". I know that it may seem a bit silly of me to expect logic out of the game's setting, but itemization in games is a constant source of consternation to me. I'll try to discuss this in the future.

1:51: This notes the first time that I've been hit since beginning this quest. Every enemy does zero damage.

1:54: I've finished the "Jelly Demon" quest. A menu informs me of this, as well as, for the first time, actually describing my goal in taking this quest. To quote, "Jelly Demon are getting together. Do something about it." If I hadn't gained the self-satisfaction gained from working earlier in the day, I would have probably attempted hanging myself from the despair gained by actively contributing to something so pointless. I had to settle for auto-erotic asphyxiation instead.

That said, although none of my characters took any damage during this quest, the quest classified as being "Rank 3" - which implies that this quest is at least more important than something else in the game by two entire ranks.

1:58: After this despicable experiment, I decided to continue the linear level progression. I'm playing a character who seems to be from another game, not that Chaos Wars bothers to let me know. This character is unique because his defensive skills allow me to engage in Quick-Time Events. This is the equivalent of going to your own birthday party hosted by some relatives that you don't like and learning that they've surprised you by bringing along the neighbors that keep stealing your newspaper.

2:00: I've discovered that the L2 & R2 buttons allow me to fast forward through all of the game's combat animations. Of course, a game developer should probably not create anything that any consumer would ever have the desire to fast-forward through but this feature will probably make playing Chaos Wars a bit more pleasurable. Unfortunately, L2 & R2 don't work as well as the eject button.