A recent game release that has been in the works and has been extensively previewed prior to its release, Portal, I feel challenges the classic ideas of space and toys with the idea of genre. Portal, for those who do not know, is a game that plays like it is a first person shooter, where the perspective is from the “character’s” point of view, and you see everything they would see, and there is a gun that you control. However, Portal is a game that is not based on shooting someone before they shoot you, or team work to capture a flag. Instead portal is a puzzle game. The premise of the game is that a gun is invented that opens portals that will transport a person from the entrance of one "window" to where-ever the other "window" exit is. This becomes the only tool in the game, requiring you to stretch your use of the Portals to solve different problems. This really expands the ideas of “space” in the game because there are several small things you can play with inside the game itself.
One example, placing a portal on the ceiling and the floor, results in an endless loop of falling. Similarly, placing two portals nearly facing each other results in you running through one portal to come out the other portal seeing yourself run through the initial portal, which can result in a common dog like activity of chasing your own tail. So you can see that the ideas of space are the very things that are being played with in order to create environment of meaningful play.
The very interaction with the space you occupy and the portals that distort the space create a very intense sort of interaction. These interactions with the portals and how they behave soon becomes discernible and your involvement with the game more profound, encouraging the player to develop theories about what you can accomplish. The actions you make are almost immediately integrated with the game on a lager context as a decision to place a portal in a poor location can result in your death or a dead end that halts progress in the game.
Thus we can see that Portal fits the requirements that the game provides Meaningful Play. “Meaningful Play occurs when the relationships between actions and outcomes in a game are both discernible and integrated into the larger context of the game. Creating meaningful play is the goal of a successful game design.” (Handbook of Computer Game Studies. Chap. 4 pg. 61). These very interactions and outcomes that define meaningful play are almost exclusively what Portal is about. This innovative game incorporates and encourages interaction with the environment. As a very old “educational cartoon”, Magic School Bus would say “Take chances, get messy and make mistakes.” Portal gives you this world and theoretical capability and says the same thing, go out there and find out what happens when you explore new opportunities, what they lead to and what new ways of thinking can you create, all simplified into one word, “play.”
1 comment:
First of all I do not think I could play this game. As simple as it sounds for the player to navigate through a maze, I would have a difficult time understanding the rules and guidelines since they appear to be so open ended. When comparing the game I chose to write about, Pac-Man, and Portal in which fall under the same genre make me really think about the direction of development of games. Don't get me wrong, I think it great that developers are able to create such a game that encourages creativity from the user to have more flexibility and freedom. However, I being a much different type of player would not prefer to have such. I like the organization and structure of Pac-Man. But I guess this variability is the best of both worlds for the different kinds of players.
Is there a time limit?
In the demo, it did not suggest so.
How many lives does the player get?
Is there a way to earn more lives?
And what I really want to know is how does the player stop the endless loop if he/she shoots at both the ceiling and floor?
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