When attempting to describe a video game or other media object, it seems there are (at least) three potential choices in orientation to take at the outset—one could choose to focus on what the object is, what it means, or what it does.

Focusing on what the object is leads towards an object-oriented perspective. We might follow Bogost and dissect Atari machines to try to achieve some understanding of what, really is going on inside a video game console or what it’s like to be a computer. Focusing on what the object means requires making a pronouncement on the significance of presenting or publishing a software object in a given social context. Wardrup-Fruin makes a strong case for focusing on, or at least starting with the question of what an object does.

He frames this question in the very pragmatic terms of operational logics. Understanding individual operational logics does not require the ability to produce or read code, nor does it require that we understand what is happen when electrons, light flashes or what have you race around the silicon inside of a computer. Operational logics are the basic categories of how a program communicates or expresses itself to humans. Conveniently, it seems that most gamers already make use of this category to talk about games (“WoW doesn’t have “collision detection” but it has a “reputation system,” etc”). Without knowing much about code or computers I can say quite a lot about the operational logics games use for expression. This is really a theory of expressive processes as media, something that mediates, between the silicon and human world. It is a theory of how processes strike a blow upon the human.

As a result this seems like a very useful tool for game designers or critics. They can break down games into their constitutive operational logics—and perhaps come up with new ones. His discussion of the various Eliza, SimCity, and Tale-Spin effects also offers a compelling theory of good versus bad game design. The focus on these individual logics is useful, but it may also have some limitations.

I’m not usually one to drink the Burke Kool-Aid, but I couldn’t help but imagine the essay he would write in response to this book. Wardrup-Fruin is focused almost entirely on “Agency,” or the how of the actual process. Consider his discussion and critique of the failings of the quest tree process in KOTOR. I submit that most gamers were not overly put off by the narrative incoherence of the side quest line problem on Dantooine. A good bit of the pull of a game like KOTOR comes from participation in the “Scene” of the Star Wars universe. For the Star Wars fan who just wants to explore a bit more of the galaxy, it’s not critically important if the side quest makes narrative sense or not; really they just want to get a sense that they are wandering around and acting in the “frontier” environment of Dantooine. Personally, I was much more bothered when KOTOR’s light side/dark side “system” didn’t match my expectation of Star Wars cosmology, (i.e. you acquire light side points by going far out of your way to help everyone you meet, when of course such behavior demonstrates excessive attachments, which we should all know is really the path to the Dark Side). The game process is entirely obvious, internally consistent, and accessible to the user but still at times unsatisfying due to a mismatch with Scene. Could we extend operational logics beyond the software itself to describe how a game interacts with external elements?

In addition, multiplayer games are almost entirely absent from Wardrup-Fruin’s account. (He does describes the experience in a MMO of having an enemy mob he has just killed reappear, destroying narrative coherence, which, of the many complaints I’ve heard from MMO gamers, has never really been one of them). Adding other human players to a game certainly has to change the equation. What can expressive processes and operational logics tell us about human-to-human interactions mediated by software, rather than human-to-software interactions?

Finally, on a relatively unrelated note, I couldn’t help but speculate on the relevance of this books’ terms outside of game and software studies. I haven’t had much time to develop this idea, but if we take the Eliza, Tale-Spin and SimCity effects and map them onto real world regimes of knowledge organization what would we get? The SimCity effect corresponds with Newtonian physics. A set of rules, perhaps mysterious at first, but readily available through experimentation or “play.” The Tale-Spin effect corresponds to statistics and probability. It completely obscures the material causes and the actual physical interactions of the things it measures and reports only the surface values of correlation. And what could the Eliza effect be? Considering its reliance on surface over depth, it seems like the closest match is rhetoric—or at least the commonplace negative view our venerable discipline. What does it mean? Probably nothing, but I thought I’d leave it here anyway.