Since we had a relatively light reading and preparation load this week, I’ve been waxing philosophical about some of the key terms of our class. What is procedure? And then, somewhat differently, what is proceduralism and what are its virtues? Dwarf Fortress is pretty clearly procedural in every sense of the term that I can think of. It is obviously procedurally programmed in a coding language, like any other computer game or program. On top of that, the world you play in is procedurally generated in the sense that it is produced by automated machine processes rather than being deliberately designed by a human working in tandem with the machine, like it would be if someone made an accurate Middle Earth map for Dwarf Fortress (I really hope this exists). It is also an example of proceduralism, in that it seems to deliberately call attention to its own procedurality. Very little is abstracted in DF, you have to micromanage your dwarves’ job assignments and your fortresses designations. The primary method of learning to play involves following the Wiki’s step by step process.
Let’s now compare DF to another game noted for being difficult and frustrating: Dark Souls. For those who don’t know, DS is an infamously difficult action rpg. The challenge of DS comes primarily from the difficulty of successfully executing the twitch-based skills and moves to defeat enemy forces that seem to continually increase in both numbers and strength. There is a strategic element in that you have to learn what weapons and moves work well against which enemies and have a plan for surviving the difficult gauntlet your avatar has to run. In some sense, DS ontologically has to be just as procedural as DF—after all a computer is running it. Certainly a higher component of DS’s process intensity is taken up by graphics. My question is, is the gameplay, or user interaction with the game, procedural? On some level it seems it has to be. You learn, adapt and get better at the game over time just like DF. Does the fact that it incorporates twitch-based elements make it less of an example of proceduralism? The more kinesthetic process of moving my fingers over the controller still must be a process on some level, involving neurons, synapses, muscle tissue, etc. But it seems that some of the writers we have looked at for this class would want to maintain that DS is less procedural, somehow, than DF.
It seems that if someone were to memorize the procedural information contained in the Wiki prior to ever playing the game that it might be said that they know how to or can play DF. But if you read a manual or wiki for DS, I submit that no one would claim that you therefore know how to play it. You have to experience the twitch-based combat and die a few thousand times to establish the muscle memory necessary to be successful. It seems there’s a bit of an analogy to be made between these two games and something like geometry versus something like rhetoric. If you memorize a geometry textbook, it might be said that you know geometry. But if you memorize Beebe and Beebe (our “beloved” public speaking textbook) I submit that no one would claim that you know how to deliver a public speech.
It seems that Bogost might say that life is procedural, and so are games, but that not all games call attention to life’s procedurality. Perhaps proceduralism or a strong procedural rhetoric is (gaming) procedure that calls attention to (real life) procedure rather than obscuring it? Throwing a football involves a procedure, but an attempt to understand the steps of that procedure will probably make you worse at executing it. Playing DS may be similar in that regard, you can probably “overthink” what you are trying to do.
How far can we stretch the idea of proceduralism or procedural rhetoric? Should we confine it to computation, or even more specifically to games like DF that wear their proceduralism on their sleeves? Or should it be more widely applicable? And what about the master term, computation? When we play DF, the computer computes, and to play successfully we “compute” with it. The computer computes when DS is running. Do we humans “compute” when we play DS?
I am intrigued by your comparison of Dwarf Fortress to the game Dark Souls. Although I’ve never played the latter game, you explained the similarity and differences between the games very well, so I feel as though I have some handle on the distinctions. It seems that, as you’re reflecting on terms we’ve explored this semester, it’s appropriate to bring up another. Specifically: procedural literacy. It seems like both of these games require a sort of procedural literacy, but that in the case of Dwarf Fortress it is possible to play the game WITHOUT being procedurally literate (though it would be less fun). Namely, users can, as you said, follow the manual step-by-step or memorize before playing, and then execute the actions without necessarily being procedurally literate. It seems that in order to truly be literate, the user must go “off book” and actually develop their own mechanisms based on their experiences with the game. So perhaps Dark Souls inherently requires a greater degree of procedural literacy from the start? Or maybe not?
I’ll hope to extend Amiga’s comment and your post. If it really is “procedures all the way down” the way to MAKE with a game (rather than just follow its procedures, via Brown’s emphasis that procedures are authored as much as they are followed, and to MERELY follow is to defer decision-making to the machine) is to understand its mechanics in order to invent with those procedures in mind (to exploit them) or to create new procedures through understanding those mechanics. I think that’s what you mean by going “off book,” but depending on how the game was built that kind of exploit might be intended in its very making. My earlier example of this on the blog was Minecraft, where the mechanics make themselves visible pretty quickly and BEG to be made use of (e.g. water flows for 8 blogs, making it useful for pushing items around, etc.). I, too, am unfamiliar with Dark Souls, but I did a little looking into it. In general, RPGs just seem to me to invite a different kind of procedurality. For instance, I can imagine (again, not having played the game) that in such games you can still author constraints to determine how you’ll proceed through the game, restricting yourself to only picking up and improving one kind of weapon, or something like that. That would be a procedural approach to playing. I suspect that these kinds of procedures depend on fluency with the game as a way to reinvent gameplay and investment if you’ve already been through a lot of what is possible, though that’s without having a whole lot of experience with RPGs. But that kind of procedurality might not necessitate fluency with the game’s procedures, but rather fluency with its narratives.
Looks like the interwebz are also invested in making this comparison, and in arguing over which game is “harder.” https://www.reddit.com/r/darksouls/comments/1dxz71/dwarf_fortress_creator_plays_dark_souls_to_relax/
So the phenomena that gets spoken about in competitive videogaming is a concept of muscle memory. Individuals identify that it is not productive to think about what you’re doing while action and reflex are involved, instead opting to let your body react upon its own trained accords. This sounds scarily close to how procedure functions. Procedure seems to be akin to the term techne. It functions as the necessary parts of completing a task that tends to be heuristic (we tend not to cogntiively think about them as they would functionally slow down all of our mental processes), however, can be modified to increase/decrease efficiency at the present task at hand. Procedure seems to be the opposite side of the rhetorical coin. Whenever excess gets diminished socially, it turns into a procedural action/interaction/and form of social communication. I really like your questions on procedure and would love to talk to you more Stefansky.