Bogost, Minecraft, & September 12

            The idea of procedurally presented in Bogost’s paper presented a very interesting point, that game creators “authors code that enforces rules to generate some kind of representation, rather than authoring the representation itself.” This idea that much like artists or writers who directly author representations in their medium, videogame authors write rules which then allow that representation to occur. Take for example the political message in September 12 represented by the visual shift of civilian to terrorist sprites. This representation can only be triggered by player input (shooting missiles), and civilians are morphed into terrorists. This rule embedded into the games code, that missiles create terrorists and ceasefire turns them back shows how rules affect the way that the message is delivered.

            Another interesting point in Bogost’s article is the idea of games as a “possibility space” within the constraints of the algorithms written by game designers, and how these constraints encourage creativity and play. Take for example the popular indie game Minecraft (PC) where players spawn into a world with no tutorials, goals, or formal rules. Players venture into this blocky world with absolutely no rules, but they soon discover that they are constrained by their health and hunger bars, the passing of time (monsters appear at night), and the materials available for crafting tools. Within these constraints, players have created marvelous structures and machines using their knowledge of the algorithms that compose the world around them. For example, one way of obtaining food is through farming crops, which is a tedious and repetitive process. In response to this, many players have constructed automated harvesting machines, utilizing the in game physics of water and the properties of crops to make harvesting easy. This perfectly illustrates the creative potential in “possibility space” within a cage of rules.  

\

The "World's largest Auto-Harvester"