The first chapter in Alexander Galloway's Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture, Gamic Action, Four Moments, clearly serves as both an introduction to the book and an introduction to the serious study of video games as a medium and art-form. The chapter is dense with easy to grasp ideas, which act as a springboard for the more complex concepts introduced in the later chapters (in my opinion, these ideas are especially helpful with the notions Galloway puts forth in chapters 3 and 4).
From the start, Galloway makes it clear that he is examining video games as a medium, specifically, and not tackling the more all-encompassing task of examining play as an overall concept. He then sets about delineating video games from other, older media, as follows: photographs as images; film as moving images; games as actions. The idea of games as actions is one on which the entire book turns, as he argues that until games are played, they are simply inert code. The possibilities for what games may enact is present in that code, but until the code is actively engaged, those possibilities remain academic (pg. 2,3).
From this idea, he establishes a feedback cycle description of gaming: player (via input device) – game (hardware and software registering input and interpreting it) – player (receiving feedback from hardware/software via output device) (pg. 1,2). While he does define machine actions from operator actions, one being performed by the hardware/software and the other by the player, respectively, he argues that these actions are ontologically the same, working symbiotically to create the whole experience of 'video game' (pg. 5). This cycle, taken in combination with the idea that all games are code, establishes the seeds for the arguments Galloway will make in chapter 4 about games as data, and thus informatic, systems.
Galloway then proceeds to offer his categorizations for the four types of actions which he feels occur in the experience of a video game. In order to do so, he adopts and adapts the filmic ideas of the diagetic and non-diagetic. He argues that the diagetic acts as Callois' 'second reality', the world of the game itself. The counterpoint is the non-diagetic, which, in gamic terms, is still part of the game but not of the game world, such as menus, heads-up displays, etc. (pg.7,8).
In adopting these concepts, Galloway is able to introduce his first category of gamic action: diagetic machine acts. He discusses 'at-rest' states in games such as Shenmue and Grand Theft Auto III, in which the player does nothing but the game world continues around him/her. An important clarification he offers is that the game world is not simply moving on without the player, but rather that the game world is moving around the player. The game world is in a form of stasis where nothing important happens without the player's input. Instead, ancillary characters proceed with their motions, clouds drift by, waves lap on shores, etc.
The main issue with this categorization is that he makes a hard division between at-rest states and pause states, citing micro-movements as the dividing line. The problem is that many pause states feature these micro-movements: the river continuing to flow in the first level of Vice: Project Doom; machinery continuing to whir away in the background (Castlevania III; Sonic the Hedgehog); avatar-characters blinking (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV). Galloway offers a better delineation between pause and at-rest states in the idea that they are inverses of each other; at-rest states are where the game keeps functioning but the user is on hold.
Also included in the diagetic machine act category are in-game cut-scenes (or cinemas). His reason for this inclusion is that these scenes are diagetic, taking place in the world of the game, and also require no input from the player (an idea obfuscated by the introduction of Quick Time Events (QTEs) in games like Shenmue or God of War). The main difference with these cut-scenes is that they are important, moving the story of the game forward and providing motivation for the player beyond the simple win/lose binary.
The second categorization Galloway offers is the non-diagetic operator act. He defines the category as any act made by the player which takes place outside the world of the game, such as pausing, cheats, menu interaction, etc. This category is broken up into two distinct aspects: set up acts (eg. setting game preferences, loading/saving, entering cheat codes) and gameplay acts (eg. role-playing game battle menus, real-time strategy game on-screen interfaces). This is an important aspect of gaming in that, as Geertz argues, action is a text, making play a form of text and subject to textual analysis. Therefore, menu-based play is symbolic of the larger cultural transition to an information-based society. Galloway supports this idea by citing the notion discussed by both Huizinga and Callois that play as culture and culture as play are one and the same.
Third in Galloway's list of categories is the diagetic operator act. Simply, this idea is any action the player affects within the game world proper. These acts can be framed as move acts (any change in physical position or orientation of the environment) or expressive acts (eg. shooting, interacting with objects, opening doors). The interesting point to take from this category is that these acts take two forms simultaneously: the in-game enactment by the player-avatar, and the physical act of the operator, either by way of standard controller button presses or the more expressive Wii or Kinect-based motion controls.
The final category is the exact opposite of the diagetic operator act, the non-diagetic machine act. These actions are performed by the machine, are integral to the game experience, but are not contained within the world of the game. There are two components to this last category: enabling acts and disabling acts. Enabling acts are aspects of the game which assist the operator in the playing, such as power-ups and heads-up displays. Disabling acts, on the other hand, as as an opposition to the player's success, either by design (game over state) or instability (network lag; glitches). Galloway does suggest a possible third compnent: machinic embodiments. These embodiments are the restrictions on design imposed by the technical capabilities of the machine itself (eg. pixel capacity/polygon processing) as well as the location/social function of these selfsame machines (arcade games are social, short, pay-per-play; home consoles are more individual, longer, one-time purchases).
Perhaps the wisest rhetorical move Galloway makes in delineating these four categories of gamic action is recognizing that these are not hard divisions, but instead exist on a continuum. He acknowledges, by way of Derrida, that the diagetic and non-diagetic may interplay and even blur with one another (eg. The menu and HUD in the Assassin's Creed series is integrated into the fiction and world of the game). This allows for an exploration not just of the game world or mechanics, but of the entire experience. These categories merely offer a base structure as a starting point.
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