Liberating Play

‘We’ve constrained play and forced it into games. I would like to liberate play from games.’—Miguel Sicart.

Here’s an interesting premise: that games—and, in particular, videogames—incarcerate play. That play increasingly has become subject to commodification. Play as the product of games or, as Miguel Sicart suggests, play as a sausage disgorged from the ‘sausage machine’ of commercial game development.

In this short series of posts, I will attempt to collate my reactions to a number of readings I’m doing in preparation for a talk I’m giving next month. A talk about SMM of course, but also about histories of play and design. How, in this instance, my story of SMM (if not Mario Maker Mondays in particular) is one informed by two, quite contrastive, percursory tales: Nintendo’s own (or, at least, how it has been written as such); and the much less visible, oft ignored, tales from the trenches of the “illegal” speedrunning and ROM hacking communities. An official versus unofficial fables of Mario.

I begin by drawing upon a series of three articles appearing in a special edition of the Journal of Games Criticism which collates a series of papers from the Extending Play: The Sequel conference held at Rutgers University, 17-8 April 2015.

First up, Anne Gilbert’s interview with Miguel Sicart and Anna Anthropy entitled ‘Liberating Play’.

As introduced above, both Anna and Miguel are fearful of what appears to be a trend within game studies, a (cynical) move towards the ludification of our cultures. Here Anna and Miguel draw upon a recent debate instigated by Eric Zimmerman’s Manifesto for a Ludic Century circa 2013, a debate that is difficult to effectively summarise here but one that most certainly displaced much water in its wake. The crux, as I see it, is an overarching concern that many approaches to the study of games (most notably the formalist discourse) privilege the object over its action — what a game is over what a game does for example. That somehow, by applying game design techniques to the modelling (measuring) of our “real” world situations (through simulation) will expose the architectures (and architects) of their design. That somehow, by exposing these mechanisms for what they truly are, we, the laypeople, will be magically transformed into the designers of our own destinies which, in turn, will enable us to collectively alter our habits and activities forming new patterns and identities that will inevitably reshape our societies for the betterment of us all. Certainly, an overly deterministic view if nothing else.

The criticisms are numerous, mainly orienting around the fact that everything game-like may not be best understood through methods of analysis and process — quantified, measured, hanged, drawn and quartered. That doing so may only count want can be counted, not necessarily what may actually count (as William Bruce Cameron might have once said). I can’t help but draw parallels between this debate and age-old discussions that attempt to differentiate between games and play (games as a subset of play, play as a subset of games) which are, for me, irresolvable conflicts often dependent upon for whom the answer serves and from whose perspectives it draws from. Nevertheless, games cannot be reduced to, nor best captured via datasets cast in the mould of optimal and maximal return, as Anna contends:

There’s a really formalist discourse around games. It focuses on quantitative and technical games. When you consider this really mathematical and formalist idea of games, it leaves out a lot of the work that marginalized play and game designers are doing: Work that doesn’t fit the quantitative and competitive model of games.

I guess the question for me is that we play both within the systems of games—we collectively agree to abide by its rules and structures insomuch as by doing so we make possible the game-as-it-to-be-played—as much as we play with games and reconfigure them through creative, playful acts of modification and self-expression. All in all, how we do so via what means notwithstanding, we converse through play.

Whether we choose to playfully engage with our “real’ world or not (to approach our world as a set of systems to be played with, or not) must be a choice that we make. To play is a decision that is ours alone to make. If not, and we do not engage with consent, then play it cannot be. Certainly, the what, when, where, and how we play should not be determined by some quantitative measures within allocated timeframes, nor circumscribed by anyone else. As Anna contends:

We’ve compartmentalized play. We’ve compartmentalized play in a way that’s consistent with the structure of capitalism. We have a time for work and a time for play. We have safe, predetermined spaces of play.

The games we play are not sausages from a sausage machine.

I’m inclined to see videogames as an abstraction: as Chaim Gingold attests, videogames are ‘miniature worlds’ designed to engender wonder and enchantment. These virtual (read fictive) worlds afford the means for us to approach situations from perspectives other than our own and to share these experiences with others. Whilst I feel it deeply unlikely that ludification and its promise will ever equip us with the means to peel back the metaphorical layers of our reality granting us a direct and unmediated access to the matrix within, I am, however, tempted to suggest that playfulness (and all of its incongruencies and inconsistencies) may be just the right kind of tonic required to render visible the ideologies behind those that are inclined to present our world as “ludified” and knowable as such. To peer, metaphorically speaking, not only behind the curtain but also behind the theatre itself.

I see gameplay as a liminal experience. One that is all too ready to reveal the artifice of its creation. To reveal its secrets as a system that is false. An abstraction, a magic crayon, a dolls house, or, even, a toy. Exploring the boundaries of these systems (to discover and to probe, to reveal and to share) is what is interesting about videogames. Playing, not necessarily abiding by the systems and structures therein, but rather toying with them. Pushing outwards towards (and hopefully beyond) the confines themselves. To break, tinker, remix, and fake videogames. These are the predicates of our interactions: creative, playful modes of engagement that recast our computational media as the tools for self-expression that they always already were. As Anna contends, it is worth noting how the practice of tinkering has very much been written out of our everyday use of computers, commerce having repressed these expressive tools into mere consumer products:

The creativity has been designed out of computers in a lot of ways. It was a really deliberate effort to change the user base of computers from tinkers to consumers.

This is why I draw great affinity with Anna’s opening gambit and their desire to distance themselves from the label ‘game designer’ towards ‘play designer’ instead. To move away from seeing play as a product (of games), instead to reclaim play as the interactions between people; their activities, performances, and practices. Play as a form of communication. To design; a practice that creates our tools to communicate with:

The discourse around play—especially in academic spaces—privileges games, and particularly video games. It embraces the idea of play as product, and not the broad range of ways that we interact with people through play. In this turn, we lose both the expressiveness of play, and a rich cultural and ritual history that predates game technology.

[…]

We need to view technology as an integrated part of play, instead of its source. In my own work, I’ve been thinking of games as experiences, instead of as media— performances. For me, this is a more interesting way to think about the kind of interactions that people have together around games.

Miguel takes a similar stance, albeit one that focuses on the label ‘games scholar’ and its ramifications:

A games scholar cannot look at people, they cannot look at communities, they cannot look at babies, they cannot look at playgrounds [sic] toys. A games scholar cannot look at all of the things that we, as humans, do while we are playing.

Although I appreciate the sentiment behind Miguel’s opinion when alluding to this schism between games and play that must be bridged, games scholars most certainly have and do look at all these things, depending on their (chosen discipline and) approach taken. My list is far from exhaustive (and my reading of them even less so) but Taylor, Pearce, Giddings, Dovey and Kennedy, Newman, for me, all prioritise the acts of playing over the game itself.

Perhaps Miguel is right to resort to hyperbole as a deliberate way to highlight how such approaches to the study of videogames have been marginalised (which is certainly true within mainstream games criticism) to the point of becoming invisible. None more so than within videogame histories it seems, with its inclination to fetishise material objects as the more easily obtained, returnable and archivable documents, rather than approach the far more challenging task of developing methods suitable to adequately account for the multiplicities of these media performances — in this case, the elusive, transient, situated practices or playings of videogames. Or, as Miguel puts it:

It’s always been difficult to write a history of play because it’s transcendent—it vanishes over time. The only things that we have to hold onto are the objects that it leaves behind. Those, typically, are games, toys, and the spaces that we play in. The problem is that we fetishize video games—an object. It’s a disservice to what computers can be, in the context of play, that we fetishize games in this particular way. There is no history of play because we fetishize what the video game object is.

This reifying or concretizing of our cultures is nothing new, something archival practices and historical methods have been “doing” to our collective histories for hundreds of years now (and with much graver consequences than are being addressed here). For what is lost via such translation is telling, as Anna mentions whilst discussing their book entitled ZZT which itself puts forward an account of a ‘submerged continent’ of shareware game designers:

It’s sad to me that so much history is being lost, just because we’re not paying attention. My most recent book was specifically about these ephemeral communities, it’s called ZZT. It’s about the communities of sharer games designers in the 90s. Those sorts of communities have fallen off the established history of games, which is really corporate-centric. It’s about Nintendo, about Sega, about the people who won. […] Unfortunately, our history watches over these stories, in an effort to idealize an elite few working for giant corporations.

Miguel adds to this by questioning the validity of venerating hero designers, seeing authorship as the misstep in our retellings of play:

It’s also a challenge for historians to write the proper history of video games. All these communities and games matter, but how can we learn about them? We need to abandon this idea of authorship. It makes no sense in the context of games. We should talk about the organizers of communities, but that’s not how we document games.

“[H]ow we document games.” Perhaps I should adopt this as the subtitle of my doctoral thesis. For now, however, what it eludes to feeds directly into my preparation for the presentation I’m delivering in a couple of weeks: how Mario’s history does not necessarily belong to Nintendo.

Things I’ve learnt from ‘reading’ MarioMaker subreddit, part two

This is a continuation of an earlier post, a part two of two. Part one can be accessed here.

If I recall correctly, during part one I made two hopefully somewhat connected points. First, about the propensity of players to focus on the possibilities of videogame systems–the actual and potential, real and imagined, present and future possibilities that videogames as systems afford; second, to consider further the influence online community-building practices have in shaping videogame development (although, to be fair, I only really mentioned that aspect in passing at best).¹

Right, continuing on from three:

4. Thinking ‘outside the box’

Thinking outside the box in terms of mechanics (Mostly SMW-Hack inspired) from MarioMaker

For me, this post as above by Reddit user Malorak speaks quite literally to the proclivity for players to play against the, what we may call, “intended” play of a game system. Here we can use Malorak′s ‘thinking outside the box’ to refer to exactly that; attempts to design Mario levels inspired not only by the level design of Mario games released prior, but also the alternative, unofficial Mario games developed by and for the ROM-hacking, speedrunning, and TAS‘ing communities themselves. Techniques that extend and subvert what we may call “out of the box” Mario design, leading to the brutal game design of Kaizo Mario and Pit hacks for example. Techniques born out of communities that take pride in developing these super-human performances and exceptional play (see also the third section in part one of this two-part, extended post). Techniques of play that Nintendo have a long history of condemnation, even more recently targeting the videos of recordings of “Mario” games using (some form of) emulation from some of most prominent — and therein visible — figures within these communities.

In order to demonstrate this ‘out of the box’ thinking, Malorak refers to two videos from the TAS and speedrunning communities. First, a shell jump tutorial video created by dram55 included in full below:

dram55 is a well known SMW speedrunner and contributor to SpeedRunsLive, often a prominent performer at the speedrunning marathon charity event organised by Games Done Quick.

What stands out here for me is dram55’s commitment to building said community, willing to share his knowledge, insight, and expertise amongst his peers. dram55 is also founder of smwwiki.com, a wiki-site devoted to speedrunning SMW, documenting potential “strats” and techniques, routes and variations depending on the type of run attempted. Not only that but check out these two recordings of dram55 performing at Games Done Quick and listen to his running commentary: a run-through of SMW at AGDQ 2013; and an equally, if not, even more impressive completion of Kaizo Mario World at AGDQ 2015. I also recognise CarlSagan42 as one of the commentators describing the level of difficulty involved in the feats performed, someone else whom I recognise as giving much back to and contributing to the community itself.

Second, the TAS performance recorded by sotel11, mainly of the Keep Moving! stage in Mario Must Die, an SMW ROM-hack created by sokobansolver as cued up below:

Perhaps we are able to take Malorak’s ‘out of the box’ to refer to another facet true of TAS runs — the Tool-Assisted-ness of Tool-Assisted Superplay. For all TAS runs rely upon proprietary tools and emulators to enable such feats to take place. These tools are, of course, not officially supported by the publishers if not illegal, operating as they do in a grey area between intellectual property, copyright, and fair use legislation. These tools and techniques allow their users to peel back the layers of the game as it performs under these, perhaps, unusual conditions. Emulators create a runtime environment that enables players to peer inside the “black box” of the hardware/software instructions encoded within the consoles and cartridges associated with “ordinary” play. Acquisition of such knowledge and the ability to recode the game under these conditions enable TASers to perform and record ‘cyber-play’ as the loopholes and glitches are exploited and sequenced together to enable these super-human feats to be performed. As such, these communities collectively build and share extensive records of “gamer knowledge”, a repository that constituents an impeccable understanding of how a game (or at least how a set of coded instructions) actually perform. For example, check out this repository of Game Resources for SMW. (And, if like me you enjoy scrubbing back and forth through animated .gifs a frame at a time, may I suggest installing this bookmarklet to your browser, loading the page again and having a fiddle.)

5. Imaginative act(ion)s

Fun Ways to Utilise: The Collection from MarioMaker

Two months before the release of SMM, Reddit user RotomGuy begins what becomes a series of daily threads entitled ‘Fun Ways to Utilise’ (abbreviated to FWtU) devoted to discussing potential (fun) ways to utilise the various objects, power-ups, enemies, and other elements predicted to be accessible within SMM. What begins with this post about Beetles created Tue Jul 21 22:34:07 2015 UTC ends neatly, 51 days later and one day before SMM release in North America, with this post about, quite fittingly, Bowser, created Thu Sep 10 21:30:04 2015 UTC. Captured within this collection (as embedded above) we can find evidence of the numerous ways contributors have begun to design the puzzles and challenges they hope to create within SMM, forging plans for potential future activities of design and play, play and design, inspiring others to think about and share their own potential designs and ideas.

Perhaps in itself, this collaborative brainstorming is the clearest demonstration of my overarching point: that speculation towards potential activities feature as part of and make possible the interactions themselves. These imaginings are creative acts that explore the potential of a given situation, inform what is possible even before the act, action, or even interaction can take place. SMM exists in the minds of players before its exists as a playable thing.

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1. At the initial time of writing this post, I ended up veering severely off course into realms of unfettered prose and conjecture. A moment of madness revealed in the clarity of hindsight. In the end, I realised that as arduous as it was to write (and as torturous as I imagine reading it to be) such writing shouldn’t be wasted. Instead, I decided to relegate my ramblings to this link contained in this footnote. Proceed at your peril, for what lies within is feral, untamed by the constraints of academic rigour and discourse. With that said, my objective in writing was to simply provide context to these ideas presented here, in this (two-part) post. Although I feel I may have failed to deliver to the extent I would have liked, I see merit in keeping track of those thoughts nonetheless. ↩

Relegated to a footnote

Whilst noting my thoughts about the SMM subreddit page (which itself became split over one and two parts), I later decided to extract a large section and repost here, relegated to a link contained in a footnote.

Mainly I felt my extended thoughts added little to the points I was attempting to make at the time. A background noise that was becoming too loud to talk over. I felt they offered little more than a confused set of poorly articulated ideas conceived through a mishmash of the readings I’d done prior and writings conceived of elsewhere. My thoughts enmeshed in what I referred to at the time as one, big Katamari of discombobulations.

Below is verbatim what I wrote. Hopefully, I can look back at a point in the near future where at least some of these buds will have bloomed.

— x —

Thinking about it again now, maybe I was trying to highlight some of the ways players become imbricated into the “ideals” of play, rather than ways in which players actually play. Traditional notions of “gameplay” (often so narrowly focused on describing controller-in-hand play) often fail to address the imbrication of observers and audiences in co-constructing play. Spectators can invest in the act(ion)s that result in the unfolding of videogames, just as much as any “actor” may do themselves. Any such limited notion of “gameplay”, I fear, may omit the wood for the trees.

Videogames exist within social contexts and perform social functions. These contexts provide their meaning. They shape the game-and-its-play as the neologism “gameplay” (as the construct of ‘game’ and ‘play’) so obviously describes. We cannot (should not?) isolate “game” from its playing. Play provides a context if not purpose to the act, even if that is purposely to merely sustain the activity of being-at-play itself. Whether solo and meditative or social and performative, play is an activity that in itself can provide its own reward.

In the case of videogames at least, gameplay combines this purposiveness of play with the software encoded to run on and by virtue of the hardware required. Software performed by both human and machine (although not always exclusively). Somehow, I think we could add “speculation” in our formation of play. Speculation as an acknowledgement of the fantasy of play; its promise and untapped potential. With speculation comes a desire to play, to be-at-play as a state of being. For play is an attitudinal shift, a different perspective, a declaration of “being at play” that makes “being at play” possible. Play is not something we find in the rules, playing pieces, or computer simulations. Rather play is an attitude that we bring to an activity. Play turns rules, playing pieces, and computer simulations into props to play with, alone or with others.

I must confess that much of this offers little new. Actually, all I’m doing here is confusing much of the reading I’ve done around games and play already, which, evidently it seems, I’m just not yet that good at articulating. Whether or not I can (or even should) iron these thoughts out we shall see. For now, at least, I feel their recording is an important part of this process.

I want to contend “playing videogames” refers to more than just the controller-in-hand play we usually think it does. The idea that “gameplay” connotes not only the embodied acts of playing but also the imaginative acts of imagining play, whether acted upon ultimately or not. Play is as much an imaginative act as it is a social one, and to pretend–to make believe–takes effort.

To focus on the form of a videogame at the expense of its context is to ignore the mechanisms by which meaning is made. To focus on form over context (which appears to have become custom within the ludic tradition¹) deemphasises the efforts and activities involved–by both human and machine–that enables the fictive to take hold. Effort is not something intrinsic to any given medium, it is an activity framed by an attitude; an intentionality that yields to the pleasures of permitting oneself to get caught up in the actions necessary to “make believe”. For one is transported, suspended, enraptured, captivated only when one is willing to meet the “text” halfway–to abide by its terms of engagement, go forth and embrace the limits that enable its pretending to be a pretence–for “make believe” to happen. We must do what is required of us to go along with and play by its rules and constraints in order to “make believe” happen. In this way, “make believe” requires effort — something as true for books and films as it is for videogames.

OK, I digress and yes, you are right, I certainly require more time to unpack these ideas more fully. For now, however, these tentative notes will suffice as a placeholder for something I shall (may) return to in good time. From the outset, I see value in finding ways to converse about some of the less immediately obvious ways we can think through how players entangle themselves in play acts. How our expectations and aspirations may feature as part of the pleasures associated with play, seeing play as a negotiated, situated, and creative activity.² To move forward with the idea that videogames encourage us to play into the drama–to play our part in “acting out” the drama–in both literal and figurative ways. As I have put it here, to make believe takes effort.

I know I am casting my thoughts here amidst some other ideas inspired by relatable (although somewhat tangential) readings I’ve done about software performances. Indeed, I’ve just written a piece about videogame preservation which argues for rethinking videogames as unfinished objects — hence presenting a challenge for those wanting to preserve them. I argued for videogames as processes that go through multiple phases of existence as each enactment (or, even, interactment) is uniquely performed. For now, however, I shall move such thoughts aside so I can return to the matter in hand.

In the context of what I discussed last time, rather than bemoan the various ways in which videogame hype has been deployed (and yes, whether perceived as failure or success, we should always remain critical of how hyperbole is construed), my point was to simply acknowledge hype (and its many guises) as very much a part of videogame development and the cultural practices therein, for better and worse. Hype as part of the marketing strategies interwoven into the practices of commercial videogame development. The ‘circuits of interactivity’, as I mentioned Kline et al proposed, situating ‘marketing’ as one of the three interconnected flows that circulate within videogames development (the other two being ‘culture’ and ‘technology’). This circuitry provides a useful means to describe how each flow gives form and shape to videogame content development.

For a while now I’ve been trying to find ways to articulate my thoughts about creative practices especially in relation to videogame design. I’m not interested in a simple “this is how you do it” or “this is best practice” (akin to many game design books) because I do not perceive there to be one. Practices are always situated and contextual, individual and unique. What is “best” for one set of circumstance doesn’t necessarily automatically translate to another (although may do in part), and certainly, the agency of players is rarely considered in any prescriptive analysis such as “this is how you do it” purports to provide. Whilst Kline et al eloquently paint the broader picture–locating videogame development within the political economy of a post-industrial, information age–how best does one tackle questions regarding development practices on a more localised level? This isn’t to say we should strive to account for each individual case–nor to turn away from acknowledging these broader structural, political, socioeconomic, and cultural frames–but rather to think through strategies that provide us means to usefully unpack the interdependencies that emerge in each case, localised and historically informed. Practices evolve and develop over time, influenced by larger cultural shifts and patterns, but also by local agents and situations: these also need addressing as well.

Why videogame development provides such a difficult “text” to study, I think, is that the target is always one in constant motion. All practices evolve over time, but it is the digital state of videogames and their primary currency of play that should give us reason to pause. On the one hand, the malleability and fecundity of digital form is not unique to videogames (lots of medium are “born digital” so to speak), but then again, lots of media perform without additional input beyond automated (i.e. non-human) means. I just want to avoid overstating the additional human effort required to animate said entity as necessarily the delimiter between what videogames are or are not. The mechanisms involved in unfolding videogames require not only nontrivial effort, but also the contextual framing that being-at-play provides. For me right now, play is as much an activity as it is an attitude, one that complicates this (as it does any) discussion about videogames.

Again, I acknowledge I need to spend more time to properly substantiate such claims. My overarching imperative: to discuss videogame development as a practice that relies heavily upon both the imaginative acts of those who develop them, and, significantly, the imaginative acts of those that purport to co-construct them during moments of play. It is both “ends” that make videogames possible as it is both ends that “make believe”.

I also can’t help but think how, by approaching all of this from another angle, one may be able to more easily identify the common behaviours between designers and players.

Another tangent, thinking back to the co-constructedness of videogames, I am reminded of Joseph Tobin’s introduction to Pichaku’s Global Adventure where he creates two hypothetical accounts of Pokémon’s success; its rise (and apparent “fall”) as a global videogame phenomenon. On the one hand, Tobin describes a “top-down” account where corporate-driven strategies and heavy-handed marketing campaigns belabour (child) consumers into submissive consumption. On the other, Tobin recounts a scenario where “bottom-up” discourses part agency onto both developers and players as co-creators, both performers of creative acts and as active agents engaged in two-way conversations that enable the product(s) to continually evolve. Of course, Tobin is quick to dismiss any either/or scenario, instead suggesting it is much more likely to be a question of perspective, where both sides of the coin can be represented, as each chapter does, to a greater or lesser degree.

To “make believe” takes effort, effort from both “ends”.

One final final note (I promise!) before I move on, I can’t help but park all this against Ursula K. Le Guin’s inspirational and quite unforgettable acceptance speech, words that have stuck with me ever since I first heard them many moons ago. Le Guin, clearly a visionary in her own right, calls upon the power of imaginative acts and their ability to affect change. To see the world–our world–through the lens of other worlds, fantasy constructs that enable reimaginings of our human society to take place. Her words, eloquent as always, speak towards the idea that all writers, poets, and visionaries alike are bearers of great responsibility as purveyors of the power of imagination. Here I extend her classification of ‘visionaries’ to include other creators which, of course, includes videogame designers. For Le Guin is less interested in telling us about how things are, rather how they could be if we only dare to imagine. As Le Guin suggests, these visionaries are the “realists of a larger reality”.

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1. Certainly ‘gameplay’ should not refer to the mechanics of a game–its rules–as though they can be separated from their visual, auditory, or haptic sense. According to the ‘Gameplay’ entry on Wikipedia, some “ludists” go as far as to isolate game mechanics from their presentation (as though one can exist without the other), something I think Brendan Keogh refutes quite convincingly in his excellent piece on the bodily experiences of gameplay. ↩
2. Much of my reading has amalgamated into one, big Katamari woefully inadequately articulated here. With that said, a couple of scholarly pillars are worth mentioning here: Thomas Apperley whom discusses the rhythms generated by everyday life and everyday play in his rather excellent Gaming Rhythms; and James Newman whom amongst other things highlights the propensity of players to not only play along with videogames in a traditional sense, but to also play against videogames in his rather excellent sequel to his book Videogames, appropriately enough entitled Playing with Videogames. ↩

Kaizos are generally not “fair” in terms of typical level design… but they are not intended to be fair, either. In a sense, many of them are not “real levels” because the design criteria that determines whether they are “good” or not are totally different to normal levels. They are obstacle courses designed for a particular community of people who enjoy testing their skills and overcoming challenges that require things like technical ability and quick reaction time.

—SA-Y, Discord Mario Maker channel user and ‘Yatta Enthusiast’, comment in #general text channel, 9:26AM, Monday 12 September 2016 AEST (UTC+10)

The Magic of Mario

The magic of Mario is that anyone can pick up a game and instantly start playing and this time we’ve made it even simpler to begin.—Shigeru Miyamoto

Mario has finally come to iOS. Although, from what it looks like, it’s not really Mario at all. Rather its just Flappy Bird in cosplay. Maybe that’s a good thing actually.

The above quote taken from Miyamoto’s presentation at Apple’s annual keynote calls to hand a familiar aphorism within game design: that games should be ‘easy to learn and hard to master.’ Accessible enough to pick-up-and-play, yet deep and complex enough to warrant repeating.

However, both “learnability” and “mastery” fail to adequately account for what is really going on. Both these terms are misleading. Something that Ian Bogost considers at length during his repeal of Bushnell’s Law which states:

All the best games are easy to learn and difficult to master. They should reward the first quarter and the hundredth.

This “law”, attributed to (Nolan) Bushnell, founder of Atari Inc. and famously creator of Pong, purports to teach us two valuable lessons: that games must have both easy to learn controls and contain enough emergent complexity to remain appealing over multiple playthroughs. However, Bogost suggests it actually doesn’t mean what we think it does.

First, Bogost suggests that it is not the “learnability” of a game that holds the key, rather our familiarity. Pong for example is most obviously a reimagining of tennis. Tennis and its many variants as popular leisure activities, their basic rules and conventions familiar to most. Pong is easy to learn not because it has simple controls (although this plays a part) rather because within this new context of electronic machines sits tennis. As Bogost notes, the rules of Pong are straight forward: ‘avoid missing ball for high score.’ It is tennis however that provides the conceptual frame that makes playing at “not missing the ball” possible. The same can be said of Wii Sports, the conventions of tennis are appropriated and recontextualised within the act of swinging a Wiimote as substitute for a racquet.

Miyamoto can be found reciting this point elsewhere, where he says:

Really, a game is about helping the player remember what they know.

In the context of this quote, Miyamoto is referring to the ability of sound to remind the player of somewhere familiar (in this instance to create an illusion of being in a forest in the upcoming Zelda title) although my point here is the same: whether we are dealing with perceptual cues or activities, to remind the player of something they already know, to build upon the conventions of something familiar.

Second, that “mastery” as the pursuit of proficiency is an attribute that is at once both attractive as it is alienating. Bogost refers to this as a ‘sublime mastery,’ a ‘fearful wonder.’ Bogost suggests that whilst the “appeal” of games like Chess for example provide deep play through emergent complexity, their inherent high-ceiling to mastery is mainly off-putting for most general players. Mastery is often an ideal, not an experience. Most people don’t want to become masters.

In contrast, the “allure” of Pong is that it rewards the first and hundredth quarter through the dynamics of its social situation. Pong offers limited emergent complexity unlike Chess or G0 for that matter. Pong rewards return play through its social dimension. As with many bar sports, you play Pong as an opportunity to socialise with your friends over beers, to rejoice in the ‘froth-moments’.

Bogost suggests the allure of most games is less about mastery, rather it is more about habituation. Games with a lower threshold to competency cultivate habits quicker. As Bogost says:

people like to be conversant in these games so that they can incorporate them into various practices, moving beyond the phase of learning the basics and on to the phase of using the games for purposes beyond their mechanics alone.

This is as true for Pong as it is, if not more evidently so, within casual and mobile games. That games such as Zuma for example appeal not because the repetitious action leads to increased performance (although true in part), but rather that the habitual action itself provides a way to ‘zone out’, to achieve a mediative state of mind. The reward is implicit in the act itself.

Bogost reintroduces “familiarity” and “habituation” as important concepts in game development and concludes with the notion that “catchiness” might neatly encapsulate the sentiments of both. Certainly “catchiness” is a much preferred term over “addicting” as Bogost suggests, removing the less desirable connotations often associated with videogames (videogames are drugs, they create addicts etc.). Whilst Bogost is not dismissive of the idea of creating games that are hard to master, he suggests “catchiness” more appropriately captures the design goals served by Bushnell’s Law. Agreed.

To go back to Super Mario Run, it is certainly true that it appeals to both the familiar and habit-forming activities that satisfice this “catchiness” of Bogost. However I can’t help but think (and of course I’m basing this on the trailer) that such a reimagining of Mario appeals only because of these qualities; rather than aspiring to become something else. Something more, shall we say, worthwhile.

Whilst Bogost’s reimagining of Bushnell’s Law provides a more useful reading, I also can’t help but think the ‘ludic sublime’ that mastery alludes to is a goal worth pursuing in all cases; not just in the exceptional few. That once familiarity and habituation take hold, the truly great videogames keep giving the more time you spend with them. Not necessarily because you become a better player (although true in part), but because the game has been designed in such a way that it reveals more ways to play–and possibilities for play–the more that you engage with it.

In these ways videogames keep unfolding. Videogames contain secrets. Something Derek Yu explains so well in his rather excellent book-length post-mortem of his game Spelunky.

 

Knock, knock. Who’s there?

A game within a game within a game. Marios, all the way down. Serves no other purpose than to add personality. Brilliant.

Tool-Assisted Superplay (TAS)

I have a suspicion that I’m probably going to be spending a lot more time with TAS videos in the near future. In preparation, watch this little beauty (in all of its 60fps goodness), created by YouTuber shadowdragon121TASer uploaded 6th March 2015, which is sort of demonstrative of the extremity of herculean effort required not only to ‘play’ it, but also contained within its design. TAS Item Abuse 3 in 7:05.47 is just one example amongst the very many other recordings of exceptional performances exhibited on TASVideos.org, the community site for superhuman play. These are performances by elite, ‘cyborgian’ actors–records of superplay performed by humans and machines.

Dropping this here affords me opportunity to note some of the links in the video’s description: the original listing of Item Abuse 3 uploaded by PangaeaPanga over on SMWCentral (a community-driven hub for all things ‘hackable’ in SMW); alongside ShadowDragon121’s playnotes he made during his marathon run, thoughts on each room’s design and the self-inflicted duress suffered:

Room 2 (More Shell Abuse):
Before any questions are asked, I did make the attempt to bypass the green koopa here. However, persistence is nothing in the presence of impossibility. Discovered in this room are more simple yet difficult obstacles, again making the player question if he or she would really like to commit to continuing on.

Was it all worth it? I think the exceptional play demonstrated in video stands testament to that.

Further bookmarks:

• ShadowDragon121’s  *Inner SMW Blog* which appears to go into great detail regarding the specifics (and maths) involved in TAS’ing SMW;
• ShadowDragon121’s ‘TAS career’ captured through his posts on SMWCentral;
• The SMW-specific ‘tricks’ compiled over at TASVideos itself.
• The whole idea of Pit hacks, SMW hacks created specifically for tool-assisted play.

All these things I shall return to in time.

Mario Maker Mondays, Season #2

I’ve been tuning into Mario Maker Mondays, a SMM community-driven tournament now in its second season, an event coordinated by live-streamer iateyourpie sponsored by Twitch.tv in association with StreamBig.net and MakersofMario.com. This is a competition for both speedrunners and level creators (limited to North America residents only). Week three out of the four-week season has just finished, current standings available here. Each week features a series of eight custom-made levels for the racers to play through blind, aiming to achieve the fastest time possible. The top sixteen racers advance through to the playoffs which are scheduled to coincide with the one-year anniversary of SMM. The two finalists win an all expenses paid trip to Twitchcon 2016 to compete head-to-head across five brand new levels crafted by the winner of the level design contest. Upcoming schedule and competition details here and also here, with full rules posted here.

In this assemble of bodies and machines, one thing that stands out is the MakersofMario.com website, a community-developed ‘portal’ devoted to the curation and exhibition of SMM levels. MoM extends the features of both the (poorly implemented and later to be modified) level selection feature built in to SMM and the official website added by Nintendo during a later update.¹ MoM users are given a much easier way to navigate, share, and collate their own and other people’s levels respectively. Considering the sheer glut of SMM levels available not being able to browse through them effectively is understandably frustrating. In fact, given that level creation and sharing are at the heart of SMM and not just some half-baked ‘creator mode’ feature tacked on as an afterthought, doubly so. Where the official SMM Bookmark website goes some way to rectify this, clearly it does not go far enough. This is where MoM steps in, built by the players for the players, developed by what appear to be well respected members of the SMM community themselves emanating from within the (North American) Super Mario speedrunning community itself.²

MoM extends play by introducing some of these much requested features. Not only the ability to search, tag, and bookmark levels, but also to group levels together in the form of playlists, a feature notably absent from SMM itself. This enables users to create and distribute Worlds (directly named after the Worlds in the original Mario games) that can be exported to SMM and played as a sequence of bookmarks, a ‘setlist’ to be later performed. When combined with a synchronised timer, users are able to create and host Races, as GrandPOOBear describes in this extract from the website below:

“Makers of Mario is the one stop shop for Mario Maker Races, playlists (or worlds as we call them) and advanced level searches. We are happy to be home to Mario Maker Mondays to make your racing experience as easy as possible. Joining a race is a simple as -Making an account -Installing the Warp.World chrome extension or providing MakersofMario with your Mario Maker Bookmark cookie (which allows us to add levels straight to their WiiU -Clicking the Race tab and hit enter next to Mario Maker Mondays, which is located on the features tab!”

For MMM to happen, lots of elements must align. It is undeniable that SMM features at the heart of this ‘event’, but so does MoM feature as a platform that delivers and regulates how this event takes place. MMM relies not only upon SMM being installed and running on Wii U consoles, but also the numerous ‘actors’ involved in sustaining the infrastructure that makes running such an event possible. For example, to participate in MMM all runners must be simultaneously broadcasting a livestream feed of their run via Twitch. These streams are then potentially recast alongside other feeds the same, in much the same way as a television broadcast will draw from a number of camera sources during coverage of a live sporting event. The scenario is a familiar one, albeit one now cast over datastreams rather than transmitted across airwaves. The performance of each runner is captured and streamed to a central ‘station’ whose job it is to select which feeds to recast and when, ‘narrativising’ the action as it unfolds. Watching the race ‘live’ is of course a construct, influenced and shaped by the action itself and the choices made by the production team.

Such observations may well appear obvious, but MMM is a good example of how videogames are not only enacted through play, but also how play is influenced and shaped by the social and technical frames in which it takes place. MMM is a great example of such an event shaped by the numerous factors and influences invested in its orchestration, particularly so given the high stakes involved, and the virtuosic performances exhibited. Play that is at once regulated by the affordances of the videogame itself, and by the great many multiple and layered contexts in which this type of play takes place.

Whilst MoM is still in development (still in beta), I’ll keep a list of each weeks’ races up to date below, if for no other reason than to test the markdown features on WordPress.com. Let’s see how well I can create tables following these guidelines for posting SMM levels onto Reddit:

Week 1 – 8th August 2016

(Race results and full listing here.)

Level	Name	Code	Maker
1.1	Fat Mario Hits the Gym	7BE1-0000-0280-CF1C	Linkums
1.2	All Roads Lead to Streaming Big!	BEEC-0000-0280-CF32	Jaku
1.3	Beware of Bouncy Shells	6112-0000-0280-CF39	CometStriderX
1.4	Crossing the Line	EEAF-0000-0280-CF13	DarkBonesDaku
1.5	Ice Climber Mondays	09DC-0000-0280-CF3B	jumpypenguin
1.6	muhBonez	B7C0-0000-0280-CF26	Nosraef
1.7	GO CASTLE	542C-0000-0280-CF0C	drac
1.8	Evel Knievel’s Final Ride	A12A-0000-0280-CF17	Mario_Lab

Week 2 – 15th August 2016

(Race results and full listing here.)

Level	Name	Code	Maker
2.1	Toadette’s Mining Adventure	87DE-0000-0285-F882	cloudx7x
2.2	Goomba Caverns	9396-0000-0285-F878	Legendary3rdCar
2.3	Learn to Bounce with Style!	EFAE-0000-0285-F879	Bilbo
2.4	Shoeship Showdown	65D1-0000-0285-F88E	nichehobbyrobot
2.5	Night in Pipe World	8399-0000-0285-F886	Glackum
2.6	Tokimeki Bob-omb Rush!	A74F-0000-0285-F87E	x1372
2.7	Catch you on the flip side	6D26-0000-0285-F880	Danthemanwithnoplan
2.8	Collapsing Crania Catacombs	135D-0000-0285-F887	gizgaz

Week 3 – 22nd August 2016 – Theme: “Zelda”

(Race results and full listing here.)

Level	Name	Code	Maker
3.1	Keychain	4DF5-0000-028B-4A06	DarkBonesDaku
3.2	Mario’s Awakening: Tail Cave	6C21-0000-028B-4A0A	CometStriderX
3.3	Mario and the Pit of Four Trials	286A-0000-028B-49FC	jumpypenguin
3.4	Sheik The Surfer!	E10F-0000-028B-4A28	Mario_Lab
3.5	Link’s Upside-down Hat	2BF6-0000-028B-4A10	draculantern
3.6	Wind Waker X Meatboy	47FC-0000-028B-4A7A	Nosraef
3.7	Super Mario RPG – 7 Red Coins	3A99-0000-028B-4A14	Iateyourpie
3.8	Quadforce of Crawling Wall Chasm	DAEB-0000-028B-4A02	Linkums

Week 4 – 29th August 2016 – Theme: “Water”

(Race results and full listing here.)

Level	Name	Code	Maker
4.1	Bill Blaster Trash Compactor	33AD-0000-0290-646D	Legendary3rdCar
4.2	Kids vs Squids Final Showdown	E523-0000-0290-63E9	cloudx7x
4.3	The Underwater P-Switch Mansion	B709-0000-0290-6413	gizgaz
4.4	Stellar Starfy’s Slip N Slide	6177-0000-0290-641C	Danthemanwithnoplan
4.5	Take Shellter!	5C18-0000-0290-64EB	Bilbo
4.6	Car Boys	69DC-0000-0290-63DE	nichehobbyrobot
4.7	Chomps-More Than “You Can Chew”	AA5E-0000-0290-63E5	x1372
4.8	Cooties vs Cannons	3835-0000-0290-63FD	Glackum

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1. Nintendo’s Super Mario Maker Bookmark website introduces the ability for players to share and bookmark levels more easily via web-browsers, a feature included in the version 1.30 update released 27th December 2015. ↩
2.  In the MMM description, Carl_Sagan, GrandPOOBear, and Jaku are name-checked as leads in the MoM community, individuals also known for their speedrunning and, more recently, livestreaming activities. ↩

Things I’ve learnt from ‘reading’ MarioMaker subreddit, part one

Gamers love to speculate on the potential offerings of a videogame well before it is released. Speculation and its cultivation generate hype — a fuel that burns brightly within the ecosystem of videogame development.

Hype establishes certain expectations within players. By describing what gameplay features a videogame may include, hype engenders a sense of what playing a videogame may be like. Hype is a provocation; an enticement to imagine a possible future event in which one can play a part. A future construed from a tangible present — a box cover, teaser trailer, concept art, napkin sketch.

Of course, ‘box art’ and ‘trailers’ are most obviously created in the service of hype, deployed as a means to entice players to play (or perhaps, more accurately, to buy and then play). But aren’t preliminary artwork and sketches also crafted in order to stoke the fires of imagination? Perhaps not initially aimed at the public but certainly pointed at internal developers. Purposely deployed to inspire action, their potency to inspire a measure of their worth.¹ Indeed, whether these images were ever confined to the privy of developers or not,² once they become released in the public arena their potential to provoke action is one now recast in the perpetual melodrama of ‘socialised media’, unwittingly swept along by the currents that careen through the systems and ‘circuits of interactivity‘.³

These systems must draw sustenance in order to remain healthy and these artefacts, with their propensity to inspire, are potent sources of such nourishment. This ecology is one regulated by (and therein dependent upon) both our ability to (inter)act through play, alongside our ability to imagine what playing may be like. It is here that a sense of play is construed. Play as something that is both imagined and real. Both fiction and fact — a promise, a proposition, a possibility space.⁴

Recently I’ve been “reading” through early posts on the (Super) Mario Maker subreddit /r/MarioMaker, the main subreddit devoted to SMM.⁵ Here are some observations I consider worth noting:

1. /r/MarioMaker subreddit was created 10 June 2014

Unsurprisingly, the day of Nintendo’s E3 2014 announcement trailer.⁶ That’s one year and three months prior to its debut weekend.⁷ The first post recorded on 11 June 2014 was made by the reddit user Pooh_Bear whom I originally mistook for one of the more prominent SMM community members GrandPOOBear. At the time, this made perfect sense yet, after a little investigation, whilst Pooh_Bear posts a lot about Nintendo he makes no explicit reference to SMM again.

2. GameXplain’s forensics

Trailers are fertile grounds for those wanting to invest in the future potential of play. Moderator cupknifespoon links to another subreddit thread which contains GameXplain’s 12’30” analysis of the 1’10” new trailer premiered at The Game Awards 2014 uploaded 5 December 2014 .

Much of the analysis focuses on the differences introduced since the E3 demonstration almost six months prior. New game styles based on the four Mario games featured are acknowledged alongside the course themes and different areas available in each. Given particular attention is speculation on how Mario’s abilities may be affected by these different game styles, noting in each case that each game has its own different sense of physics. Additional speculation is given on how power-ups, items, and enemies may or may not translate between each game style.

Observed is how the staple horizontal scrolling now features additional dimensions. Fundamentally a sideways-scrolling game, vertical travel introduces a much welcome height whilst layers contribute to a sense of added depth. A parallax effect introduced in the New Super Mario Bros. U theme alongside the drop-shadows included in the other three (taking influence from the NES Remix series) accentuate these new spatial features. Additional visual effects provide added embellishment, the visual “stutter” (or visual artefacting caused by the limitations of the hardware running on the original consoles) has also been reworked creating “smoother” animations on the rotating Fire Bars for example.

This display of expertise and knowledge, alongside the forensic interrogation these materials are subject to, is revealing. Not only as a testament to the extreme lengths these analysts will go to, but also how revered such detailing appears to be within the communities they serve. These reveals are in high demand, the conversations they inspire central to the formation and acknowledgement of expertise within these domains.

To demonstrate this point further, GameXplain release a part 2 just over one week later (15 December 2014) which draws explicitly upon many of the insights and ideas put forward by their subscribers/viewers whilst also extending some of their own. Amongst other things I love how they deduce the permittable size of levels by interrogating the interface. Using the scrollbar at the bottom of the creator screen they speculate on the maximum length of each level (twelve screens they suggest). As shown in the captured frames taken from the video below, they describe the height of levels (two screens high by the way) by compositing screen captures stacked on top of each other:

This demonstration reminds me of the world maps created by GameFAQs contributors such as DEngel’s Overworld Map for The Legend of Zelda on NES:

To take this full circle, about four months later GameXplain release a part 3 in the series this time scrutinising the footage of SMM revealed in April’s Nintendo Direct presentations from North America and Japan. (The latter now sadly removed. However, check out this insane list on Wikipedia!)

For completeness, here’s their earlier dissection of the now defunct Japanese website for Mario’s 30th Anniversary, uploaded 11th April 2015:

Although somewhat tangential, it is interesting to think about, now that the 30th Anniversary “event” has finished and its website officially “closed”, how video recordings such as these may be the only way to revisit them, unless others have taken steps to “capture” the website’s performance prior to its demise. In fact, should we not also consider the historical value of these and other recordings captured at trade shows and the like, as documents of earlier pre-release versions of SMM? Collections such as those GamerRealms links to on Reddit , a playlist of supposedly “all” SMM footage from E3 2015.

However, I digress.

3. Community serves community

Here I draw upon @gamesthatexist Alex Pieschel’s rather excellent notes on speedrunning to make a point. Due to the (apparently unexpected) popularity of Alex’s earlier exposition examining the ‘Debug Room’ in Final Fantasy VI–a piece that amongst other things was critical of the ‘rhetorical braggadocio’ shot through a GameFAQ author’s attempt to legitimise certain approaches to speedrunning whilst being overly damning of others–came across as overly dismissive of the speedrunning community as a whole, something that Alex felt compelled to redress. Here I draw upon his latter notes to, as he does, point out a facet of this community that is worth our celebrating:

Therefore, I would like to hereby declare my sincere admiration for speedrunners and speedrunning communities. Speedruns may very well be an antidote to Protestant Work Ethic. They’re creative, anti-consumerist, community-driven performances that double as oral histories.

Further:

Speedruns aren’t thoughtless maximizing of a game’s intended design. In many ways they’re anti-design, especially in the context of narrative games. They thrive on seeking out ambiguity, exploiting gaps in the technology and inefficiencies in the design. Performance allows speedruns to appear efficient, but rehearsal & research takes years, sometimes decades. Speedrunning is “an occasion of pure waste” that might otherwise be spent consuming and keeping up with the cult of the new. Runners establish community networks and preserve them over long term, working together to discover ways to rupture and break the intended design of a game. They construct timelines and credit specific users for contributions to the community. They preserve their history and tell stories about it as part of the performance.

Recognising the benefits of working together to achieve common goals provides a setting where extending play can take priority and a so-called “superplay” can evolve. Superplay as an extended form of play for an extended form of player. Not just to move beyond the intended design of a videogame (although this is certainly true in part) but as an extension of the traditions and ritualistic practices upon which this community is built. To recognise and maintain the habitus that has come to define it.

Certainly, for anyone to stand tall amongst these gaming giants requires an extraordinary level of commitment, discipline, and devotion to the cause. As Alex suggests, to ‘appear efficient’ (to make possible what appears to be impossible) requires an inordinate amount of time, skill, and effort. Within this competitive space, the goalposts are always shifting as new competitors enter the ring, new practices are developed as new techniques are discovered, and new world records are performed.

However, just because we can find evidence of the speedrunning community supporting its own, one cannot assume therefore that such attitudes are a given, nor fundamental to its cause. Of course, Alex is right to condemn the adolescence and one-upmanship he discovers therein. (Something that, unfortunately, appears quite evident within other online community spaces it seems.) My point here is to explore whether there is value in drawing parallels between these speedrunning community-building practices–motivated by the celebration and continual development of virtuosic gameplay as superplay–and the “participatory cultures” and practices that underpin other similar exhibitions of expertise.

With these thoughts in mind, I’ll highlight two of the community-building threads that surfaced during the early formation of the SMM subreddit. Threads like this one, posted by Confuzet on 30th July 2015, one and a half months prior to the SMM release. Modified and updated over a period of three months with the last edit recorded 12th Nov 2015, a comprehensive list of Frequently Asked Questions or FAQ. What this post begins, the community extends. Turning what was ostensively the first draft–a semi-comprehensive list of FAQ garnered from the sources available at the time–into a final edit, a more comprehensive and definitive list (or at least “definitive” according to the needs of the community it serves). My point here is to highlight that posts like this do not simply come into existence as oracles of information, but rather as provocateurs. They demand attention to be given to its higher calling. In this instance, to elicit contributions from the community that it aims to build and serve.

Posts like these are quite obviously cues for conversation. Callouts to the community to help carry out its duties: to collate what has already been spoken whilst enticing others to contribute to the extent of its reach. As such, facts become checked and rechecked, carried forward and refuted, subject to constant appraisal and review. The consequence, like a pebble on the beach, a more rigorous, polished version of itself refined over time by the many hands involved.

Another quite obvious example of this community-oriented behaviour is this self-named [Mega thread] instigated by landi_kong 17th June 2015, last edited 15th August 2015 (according to its code source). Whilst this thread is less ambitious, it too collates information garnered from early SMM reveals, as landi_kong notes:

After analysing Day 1 Super Mario Maker footage during the recent Nintendo Treehouse showcase, I compiled the following list of revealed content. If I missed anything, please point it out!

This list again is quite comprehensive including snapshots taken from the footage released as a means to authenticate its claims. If landi_kong intended to become recognised as a valued member of this community then they succeed, as cupknifespoon promotes landi_kong to subreddit moderator status:

Hey, landi_kong . I’ve added you as a mod mainly because you seem to contribute decent content and interact with people postively. Please accept and keep doing what you are doing. [sic]

This is only one amongst many examples that can be found, evidence of the community spirit involved. However, I hesitate to suggest this denotes anything beyond an ordinary business as usual when it comes to online community building, gaming or otherwise. Here, as noted, it appears as shot through with the bravado and technomasculine cultural traits as any other (fair cop, I require further evidence to validate this claim so I apologise in advance). My point here is not to highlight how such a community is riddled with the same troubles as others. Rather my provocation is to first acknowledge that videogaming culture develops alongside the seismic developments in online culture, and second, to ask how centrally these online practices have influenced videogame development practices as a whole. Something I am ill-equipped to provide answers to right now, but something I hope to return to in time.

Right, I’ve noticed this post (my first real post) is getting overly long. Therefore I’ll split my thoughts over two. Part two can be accessed here.

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1. I’m drawing upon the etymology of the word ‘concept’; from both the Medieval Latin conceptum ‘draft; abstract’ and the Latin concipere (or Modern English conceive) ‘to take hold; become pregnant’. Interestingly, ‘potential’ has a double lineage; from Late Latin potentialis meaning ‘possible’ and Latin potentia ‘powerful force’. Both antecedents appear quite apt. ↩
2.  Anjin Anhut’s excellent article speculates of the reality of concept art, questioning whether what is often presented as concept art was actually developed during production or not, or just for promotional purposes. ↩
3. Borrowing from Stephen Kline, Nick Dyer-Witheford, and Greig De Peuter. (2003) Digital Play: The Interaction of Technology, Culture, and Marketing. ↩
4. Will Wright is often accredited as coining the phrase in relation to games; the ‘possibility space’ of a game is the gap between its beginning and end states. Here I take liberty by extending his ideas to include all possible actions that can take place. ↩
5. Actually, my recent web-browsing activities have become somewhat augmented. Since I’ve been thinking/writing about archiving practices recently, I’ve been exploring the potential of recording/archiving my browsing activity using Rhizome’s out-of-beta web-recording tool Webrecorder, which promises to automagically generate an archive ‘on the fly’ whilst you continue to browse. (Unfortunately, however, this process has at least doubled the time it takes for pages to load/record, and thereby I’m unsure for how long I can or even should keep this going. Whilst it still exists, here’s a link to the archive that’s being created.) ↩
6. You’ll have to look in the page source as therein traces of its creation date are still present: Tue Jun 10 16:43:05 2014 UTC to be precise. ↩
7. According to Wikipedia, SMM was released in Japan, 10 September 2015, North America and Europe, 11 September 2015, and Australasia, 12 September 2015. ↩

Maybe something may be.

Maybe means ‘perhaps’.

May be means ‘is possibly’.