THE GAME WITHIN - EXAMPLES OF PLAY

Part III of Our Narrative Games Series

Labyrinth at Usgalimal

See Part I of the Games Within; See Part II of the Games Within

There seems to be no game more beloved of children in all lands and all times than the one called Pretend.

—Carlo Lorenzini, Pinnochio: The Story of Puppet

As we’ve seen, every fiction worth the name hosts a carnival of games, a veritable arcade or boardwalk of them, but good game-making recognizes that not every story has the same distribution or types of games, and not every game (even when well-designed) will work with every reader.  Part of the reason stories host a multitude of games is to give readers enough backup play for when some portion of your fiction’s games inevitably fail or miss the mark.  If your agôn games fail, hopefully your mimicry games make up for them, and so on.

Narrative games play best in that sweet spot between too much control and too little.  A game without rules — a game that doesn’t provide enough material or guidance — a game with too much gap and too little collaboration is not much of a game, just a pile of random bullshit.  A game with too many rules, where the playscape has been whittled down to a command, is not much of a game, either.  Just a bunch of zugzwang masquerading as play.

Good narrative games provoke readers to draw conclusions from — or dance creatively with — the material. Broken games, however, provoke readers to draw conclusions from no evidence, or counter-sign conclusions that have already been reached for them.  Forget dancing. 

Good game-making understands that narrative games might guide a reader’s play but will never over-determine it. 

A game that cannot withstand the reader defying the writer’s play-plan is also not much of a game.

Likewise, a game that has only one possible play is not a game — it’s a tyranny, miniaturized. 

Narrative games thrive on variety — both within each game and across the story’s carnival.  

2

“I’m afraid that some times you’ll play lonely games too. Games you can’t win ‘cause you’ll play against you.”

—Dr. Seuss

If you’re interested in the Games Within, seek them out everywhere you can.  Learn from the best and the worst.  Notice how even the best stories stock their carnivals with enough strong games to make up for their weak ones. 

Direct explicit learning is the best way to back up our implicit game learning. But since nothing teaches a game quite like being given examples of play, here are a few that I hope will illuminate:

Ann Patchett’s novel Bell Canto — a superb combo of mimicry-agôn-alea.  The characters in the novel are in a hostage situation (agôn), both hostage and guerilla alike are liable to be killed at any moment for factors beyond their control (alea) and Patchett allows us to inhabit both sides of the gun magnificently (mimicry).  The mimicry game here is truly awesome as readers jump from character to character, and the increasing stress of the hostage situation as the novel progresses varies — and intensifies — the mimicry game.  The puzzle game also gets a work-out as we assemble the story from the various points of view, and the judgement game is also strong, given how we are exposed to the minds and hearts of guerilla and hostage alike, and how in this situation choices and non-choices could have terminal consequences.

Bram Stoker’s Dracula — Dracula is a deadly Gothic puzzle that the heroes must solve collaboratively, and the novel’s dossier construction foregrounds the way the reader must assemble the novel via the puzzle making game.  Harker’s opening ignorance invites a whole lot of judgement game as does Lucy’s inexorable destruction. 

David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas — another mimicry game masterpiece and equally a masterpiece of puzzle-making as readers inhabit multiple characters that serve as stepping stones from our colonial past into our dystopian future, and whose connections we must figure out.  Not all the characters and their plights hit equally, but enough land to keep you deep in the mimicry game, as does the overall pull of the puzzle game.  Each of the characters have their own strong Conflict, which sometimes registers as mimicry — and sometimes as agôn.  But the mysterious reasons all these particular characters form this particular novel provides endless opportunities for the judgement game. 

JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings — a mimicry game that continues to hold us in its thrall.  Not only because our heroic Fellowship represent a captivating tapestry of difference with a hero for every inclination, but Tolkien’s fictional raciology is a puzzle game so “addictive” that thousands of books and games have copied it in piece or whole cloth.  And then there’s Tolkien’s genre-defining worldbuilding — Middle-Earth is a site of mimicry and puzzle-making par excellence; its languages, its deep history, the barely-glimpsed legendarium that moves so much of the action.  And looming above all the others like towers are two games upon which the fate of all hinges: an agonic game centered on the ring and a judgement game centered on Gollum / Smeagol. 

JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series — its Wizarding Houses mimicry riz, and its magic spell puzzle-making…

Suzanne Collin’s The Hunger Games — Katniss' defiant, selfless, and non-conforming gender identity and tribune-training (aka consumer-facing packaging) are awesome opportunities for mimicry and judgment games, but for my dollar it’s the titular agonic game that is literally a deadly game puzzle that must be solved — and that so absorbs the reader that Katniss’ agôn transforms into one’s own. 

No one was a deeper, darker (in every sense of the word) game-maker than Octavia Butler.  Whether we’re talking Kindred or Dawn or Clay’s Ark or The Patternmaster, Butler’s gift for estranging the hellscapes of African diasporic history into insidious puzzle worlds of peril has no equal.  Consider Kindred.  Butler begins the novel with its protagonist Lilith in a mysterious state of imprisonment (puzzle-mimicry game) and Lilith’s resilience and courage in the face of that mystery invites deep identification (mimicry).  By the time the horrifying nature of the survival game (agôn and alea) that Lilith’s been conscripted into is revealed we are far too invested in Lilith (mimicry) not to feel her agôn personally.  As for the Oonkali, they are an alien institution that Lilith must struggle to understand (puzzle) in order to overcome (agôn), a game that requires her to play games of self (mimicry) for both her captors and for the human survivors she must help.  The Oonkali are a minor ilinx game as well, as they disorient and blur human ontologies. 

Samuel R. Delany’s Dhalgren.  This is the apogee of puzzle-making — to navigate / assemble this fractured mirror / prism / lens / labyrinth of a novel requires Joycean faculties and every string on your Ariadne spool.  The language game requires patience, heart, erudition.  The violent crime that consumes the warped city of Bellona (no spoilers) evokes the worst of American racial history, but also draws readers into the judgment game that agonized history has taught us all to repeat, and which the novel grants us the freedom to accept or defy.  But most importantly of all, Dhalgren possesses one of the most extraordinary ilinx games since Ulysses.  It’s not only the narrator whose perceptions and identities are spinning; by book’s end the reader will join Kid in his possible delirium.  Dhalgren is a book whose ilinx game will make two suns rise within you. 

Up next: The Game Within, Part IV: How To Win