Balance of Power - Crawford 1986

Notes from Balance of Power, a book by Chris Crawford published in 1986.

Games vs simulations

Games differ from simulations in three ways. First, games carry an artistic message, with unquantifiable concepts and feelings. Second, games simplify reality: they only keep the conflicts inherent in the situation, and unlike in real life, they provide clear and emotionally satisfying resolutions to those conflicts. Yet games maintain a level of realism appropriate to the audience. Finally, games are accessible; there is no need to study the manual.

Balance of power, in short

The player controls one of the two superpowers, the USA or the USSR, during the Cold War. Each turn, both superpowers send money, weapons, troops, or diplomatic pressure onto other countries to trigger insurgencies, coups d'etat, or Finlandization favorable to them. For example, the USSR can send money to Cuba.

If a superpower contest the actions taken by the other superpower, then a crisis testing the player's brinksmanship follows. Either the player stands firm on its ground (whether s/he was contesting or not), and brings the crisis one DEFCON level higher, ie one step closer to World War III and a nuclear holocaust, or s/he pulls back. For example, think about the Cuba missile crisis of 1962.

When a superpower stands firm and wins the crisis, it gains prestige points. A minor country such as Nicaragua is worth 2 points, while a country like East Germany is worth 200 points. The further down in a crisis a superpower backs down, the more it loses prestige. When the highest DEFCON level is reached, the game is lost for both players.

The game ends after eight turns. The superpower with most prestige points win.

Balance of insurgencies

Insurgencies consist of rebels trying to take over the government of a minor country. The strength of any armed faction is measured from its number of soldiers and its number of weapons. If 100 government forces share 1 weapon, then the government's power should be low, and a superpower providing a couple weapons would really increase its strength. Similarly, 1 government force with 100 weapons should be weak. Thus, the strength of an armed faction is the harmonic mean of the number of soldiers and the number of weapons. It is optimal when each soldier has a weapon.

Balance of crises

Nastiness is a game-wide variable; it describes how slippery taking actions in the world has become. When nastiness is high, the AI is more likely to contest the player's actions, start crises, and refuse to back down. Nastiness increases after each crisis or military intervention of a superpower, and decreases slowly every turn.

Pugnacity is a superpower variable; it describes how trustworthy the superpower is considered by minor countries. Pugnacity increases when the superpower is aggressive and wins crises, and decreases when a superpower backs down in crises. If a superpower backs down late in a crisis, it loses a lot of pugnacity.

Combined, nastiness and pugnacity amplify the amplitude of missteps; an error in judgement can cause the end of the game. This is exactly what Crawford was trying to convey about brinksmanship.

Reactions to Moral Kombat - politicians, industry and academia

This post follows this first post and this second post. It is a bit long, so here is my
tl;dr: The Good (Henry), The Bad (attorney) and the Queen (industry) (and shake your head)

Movie premiere and Thompson-Lanning debate at VGXPO

The premiere of the movie happened at the Video Game Expo (VGXPO) in Philadelphia on November 3rd, 2007 (see page 12 of the press clippings). A panel was held shortly after the movie at VGXPO the same day: Jack Thompson was sitting to the left of moderator N’Gai Croal, with Lorne Lanning on the right (according to Gamelife). Maybe mentioning a little bit about Thompson and Lannings could be useful. Thompson is an attorney anti-violence in video games. He is supposed to be the "bad" guy in the story. His bodyguard first tells the audience that informed the crowd, in no uncertain terms, that he would not be putting up with any bullshit during this debate. Lannings is a game industry guy, so at VGXPO he was supposed to be the "good" guy. That is why some journalists suggested before the debate: we are about to witness a nightmare.

This event was largely covered by game journalists. In random order of popularity, Wired/Gamelife, thebbps.com, 1up.com and Joystick had journalists at the debate to take notes (they were first in the media line and then sitting together at the front where they chatted amiably). I think these 3 articles combined give a quite neutral and detailed report of the debate. qj.net refers to the article as a via Joystick so I guess no journalist from there was at the debate. Kotaku quotes some bits of page 12 of the press clippings, so I guess no one from Kotaku was there either. ripten.com fully quote Joystick for their coverage of the event. For the journalists who were there, they could only take notes as In the theater itself, no photography or filming is permitted, save the cameras already on tripods in front. [...] the panel's taping is planned as Moral Kombat's DVD bonus footage (source).

Gamepolitics.com collected some quotes from a post-debate interview of Lannings by gamesindustry.biz (second part of the interview). Gamepolitics.com also mentioned a motion filed to the Florida court by Thompson on November 5th, 2007. In this motion, Thompson who wanted to appear to the next Board of Governors' meeting put forward the fact that he went into the “lions’ den” in Pennsylvania. Thompson also wrote:

Because of the quality and coherence of my presentation, I was then asked by the GDC to reprise the Philadelphia debate, this time in February in San Francisco in a 5000 seat arena, as the keynote event.

There has been a big mess following this news: more than 500 comments such as:

• Well well, THompson overinflated his self importance again
• Allow me to offer you the first, "Heil Mein Furor," salute, JT. Heil Thompson!
• What would be nice is if [Thompson] was able to debate without taking cheap shots at people and making gamers out to be worse than paedophiles.
• I see the folly in debating Jack Thompson now. [...] So debating this man is not constructive; it just gives him a sense of position and authority to continue making the crazy claims once he's out of earshot of smart people.
• Dear Manta: First of all, stop being a coward and use a real name. (comment from Thompson)

But finally, the GDC committee, surprised by this news, denied that the Thompson-Lannings debate would happen again at GDC, as is reported in gamepolitics.com: It is, perhaps, unfortunate, but given today's controversy it looks like any potential debate involving Thompson and GDC is a dead issue. Thompson answered to the GDC committee that Since this is how the video game industry treats its critics, no wonder it has a public relations problem with parents. I share the conclusion of gamepolitics.com: In the end, one has to wonder exactly what Thompson hoped to accomplish here. Had the deal been finalized, the GDC event could have been fascinating for attendees and beneficial to Thompson in an image sense. Very little, if anything, was to be gained by adding the prospect of a GDC appearance to the U.S. District Court record, which publicly exposed it to media scrutiny.

Thompson and the video game community

The selfish, childish video game industry accepts no harness. Their freedom is pure license. They are about to pay a wicked price, and I aim to make sure they pay it.
-- Jack Thompson, at cbsnews.com in February 2005

Federal regulation of your industry is coming because you folks simply can’t figure out why parents don’t trust you. Fine. When the regulation comes, and it will, don’t blame me.
-- Jack Thompson in a letter to the GDC Committee, November 2007, retrieved from gamepolitics.com

Thompson has been keeping a certain level of permanent buzz in the video game community (industry and players) since at least 2005. He is one of the principal opponents of the game industry lobby group. In this lobby group is the Entertainment Consumer Association (ECA). One of the websites of the ECA is gamepolitics.com, which contains more than 300 posts in its "Jack Thompson" category (which started in September 2006). As a comparison, the Obama category of gamepolitics.com only contains less than 120 articles (since January 2008).

While Thompson's warhorse only is violent video-games and not video games in general, many among the video game community have been considering him as the main video games opponent. Gamepolitics.com writes: To be sure, GamePolitics wasn't the only game site in Thompson's crosshairs. He filed a lawsuit against Kotaku in 2007. He threatened My Extra Life over a Jack Thompson Photoshop contest. He tried to get the Seattle Police to bust Penny Arcade, and when he found out PA isn't actually in Seattle (doh!), he called the FBI, instead. Interestingly, he has become the man who united gamers to the same cause. According to gamepolitics.com Thompson definitely helped to rally gamers together, even if, by and large, they rallied to oppose him. Indeed some gamers tried to launch grou protests, such as the United Gamers Against Jack Thompson (i started this band to see how many people agree. and Slogan: HUNT HIM DOWN!!!) or Gamers Unite to Stop Jack Thompson (United like this, we can stop him.). Meanwhile, other very famous politicians in the US and in other countries have taken strong stances against violence in video games. Hilary Clinton protested against the GTA:SA Hot-Coffee mode, Barack Obama about kids playing GTA IV and Hugo Chavez government outlaw the sale of video games (reaction of a player from Venezuela at boingboing). But none of them has been rallying gamers as much as Thompson did.

The reactions of industry leaders to Thompson's attacks have been very different. Doug Lowenstein had chosen to ignore Thompson. Lowenstein was followed in 2005 by David Walsh who asked Thompson to stop using his or the group's name to give people the impression that the NIMF supports his efforts. Thompson answered about Walsh's decision: A child psychologist who would give a heads up to Doug Lowenstein in such a matter without confronting me directly man-to-man is a person who has lost his way. Others like Hal Halpin have decided in December 2007 to reply to Thompson's pikes, finding that Lowenstein's strategy did not work: Turns out that the “ignore him and he’ll go away” strategy backfired... [Thompson]... is intelligent, articulate, passionate, and camera-ready. [...] It’s time to fight back!. In September 2008, Lowenstein sent a letter to Kotaku in which he asked for Kotaku not to give Thompson a platform he might not have had for as long as he did. Lowenstein wrote that Kotaku can help set the tone for mainstream media coverage and if you validate extremists you give license to the less informed to follow your lead, ie Kotaku should ignore Thompson for a while. Gamepolitics.com (publication of the ECA which founder is Hal Haltin, Spencer Haltin's brother) strongly disagreed with Doug Lowenstein's position: by refusing to respond, Doug dropped the ball. Thompson, finding no resistance from the top of the video game industry, was empowered to push harder.

Academia

I could not find a lot of reactions from the academia about Moral Kombat: the only articles I found are from terranova and Henry Jenkins.

Terranova

Terra Nova actually mentions violence in video games a lot, but no coverage of Moral Kombat has been done. There was a shy attempt to mention Jack Thompson and game regulation policies in August 2005, and a joke about the ascendancy of Jack Thompson to Emperor in May 2006. Another note in December 2007 mentioning that Polemical rhetoric [...] taken too far, one diminishes one's credibility (Jack Thompson is a pro at this). The closest I could find to Moral Kombat was a report from Dan Hunter about the Canadian Red Cross asking video game developers to stop using their logo in games. In cause was the demonization of games and the whole "Jack Thompson and Hilary Clinton and Every Other Politician vs The Games Industry" Punch-and-Judy show, this quote being a link to a gamepolitics.com article. But this article was written in February 2006 ... So little about Thompson from terranova and nothing about Moral Kombat.

Jenkins

Henry Jenkins played himself in the movie so he surely has a reaction. Jenkins even reviewed the movie just after its premiere. The first article deals more with the content of the movie (ie violence in video games) but the second article praises the movie for its artistic innovations and creativity. The beggining of the first article is very straightforward: Spencer Halpin's Moral Kombat is perhaps the most important film ever made about video games and you should see it if you get a chance.

At the end of the first post, Jenkins wrote some quotes he found interesting from some participants. Put in a nutshell, some interviewees recognized there was violence in video games, others put forward that games are artistic, that parents should realize what games really are, and it was also mentioned that game designers are responsible for the content of the game. I already mentioned these points in this post.

Jenkins also explains that the media tend to polarize the debate into 2 clans while the contrast is more gray/grey. When I start to describe the film, most people want to know "which side" it takes. I see this as both a reflection of how polarized the debate often becomes and also how accustomed we have become in thinking about documentaries as a form of public advocacy. Moreover, the fact that longtime video game critic and trial lawyer Jack Thompson appeared to be a central focus poured kerosene on the flames. Having watched the trailer through a gamer and somewhat academic eye, David Sutherland commented that the movie smacks of sensationalized tactics often employed in arguments against video games. This could explain the hostile reactions of players to the trailer: death threats thrown to Spencer Haltin and people in the game community who wanted to censor [Spencer Haltin's] work because of what they perceived as its pro-censorship bias. But these reactions only followed the trailer put on Youtube, and Jenkins points out: don't judge this film by its preview because the preview presents such an unbalanced perspective on the issues. Finally, the researcher underlines that The absence of game designers in public discussions of game violence allows stereotypes about who they are and what they think to gain traction. One of the reasons why Jenkins paeticularly liked the movie is because game designers (such as Lannings or McGee) appeared in this movie and talked about their art. So Henry Jenkins is the "good" grey guy in the story.

Interestingly, Jenkins reply to a (supposed) comment from Thompson wanting to debate these issues on a college campus. Jenkins replied he could certainly see why a "bout" between the two of us would generate a great deal of buzz and hype around the issues -- a bit like a battle between a cheetah and a giant squid, say. This seems to indicate there have been (being?) frictions between Thompson and Jenkins.

Reactions to Moral Kombat - Trailer and Players

This post follows my previous one introducing Moral Kombat.

Since the movie has been screened only a few times (once at VGXPO in Philadelphia, once at USC and once in few other movie festivals), the only material most people have had until now to appreciate Spencer Halpin's movie was its trailer.

I found the trailer, put on youtube in December 2006, was a mirror of the first 25 minutes of the movie: it focuses on the anti-violent video games side of the debate. Kotaku also found this difference between the overall movie and the trailer: The documentary seeks to provide unbiased views from both sides of the battle against violent video games, despite its own trailer which projects a definite anti-video game vibe. Even Henry Jenkins explained in November 2007, just before the movie premiere: I will admit to having had a crisis of faith when I first saw the trailer. It felt sensationalistic and one-sided. Jenkins also suggests: don't judge a book by its cover and don't judge this film by its preview That is why I understand it was badly received by the gamer community: 1.5/5 stars rating on youtube, more than 2400 comments for more than 240,000 views. Even Spencer Haltin admitted in November 2009 how a negative reaction (that) the trailer got on YouTube [...] from gamers who were concerned that the film would be biased. Most of the time, the Youtube comments came from players who wanted to write how much they disliked the trailer. Some examples (taken from the first page of the video comments as of February 2010):

• god danm it!! old people are taking away our gamez!! (lol :D )
• tl;dr- Sensationalist rubbish at it's very best.
• yeah death to america
• So when I play Borderlands I really am a Brick? What? Are you saying I'm dumb?

Some gamers even slightly misinterpreted the meaning of sentences pronounced in the movie. For instance, sk-gaming.net explained: Spencer Halpin's upcoming hullabaioo documentary film Moral Kombat takes on videogames violency and blames that videogames caused the 9/11 incident and lpcepxress.org reports According to a documentary titled, "Moral Kombat" by Spencer Halpin, violent video games caused Sept. 11. But the only mention of the 9/11 accident (at 1:20 of the trailer) is: they learned enough from a flight simulator to fly jets they had never touched before into the World Trade Center.

The comic above from pennyarcade was another reaction from players about the movie trailer (it was published in May 2007, far before the premiere of the movie in November 2007). As of 2009, this video of Q&A between Halpin, Lannings and game journalists shows that things seem to have calmed down a little.

[Cinema] Moral Kombat

Moral Kombat is a documentary from Spencer Halpin published in 2007. Apparently, the movie could be free to watch for only 20 days (ie until the end of February) at babelgum.com, so hurry! The Video Info says

Moral Kombat takes a look into the controversial subject of violence in video games. Director Spencer Halpin shows the constant conflict between the game creators' first amendment right to make a violent game and the imminent threat that violence poses on the next generation. In addition, the film is full of the latest green screen and high-definition technology that allow watchers to actually envision the world of gaming. Filled with interviews from lead game designers, politicians, parents, and psychologists, this film provides a candid take on the influence games have on youth today.

Moral Kombat was the first movie made by Spencer Halpin. Still, it required $650,000 (Wikipedia says between $650,000 and $1M) and was entirely shot, edited and finished in HD.

I feel like it is more relevant to first detail which parts of the movie are about what. This might be useful for those who have not watch the movie and do not want to spend time watching it. I also write down, from time to time, the comments I had while watching the movie [inside square brackets]. So much has been said, written, debated and repeated, that the post-Moral Kombat reactions are worth another entire post. In this post, I will rather bring the quotes from the people [stars?] who were interviewed during the movie. You will see when I do not remember who said exactly what ...

Quotes and talks

The first 15 minutes introduce violence in video games with games such as Doom, Mortal Kombat. Virtual flesh and blood. Senator Lieberman, attorney Jack Thompson and head of Mothers Against Violence in America Pamela Eakes as well as some video game industry insiders mention how video games are violent. [idealist.org mentions mavia.org is the MAVIA website, but mavia.org looks pretty broken. Maybe it has been hacked, maybe MAVIA do not have any website?]. Lorne Lanning explains that since the early video games like Pong or Asteroids, it was easier to cancel things from the screen/system than adding things. [this echoes what Montfort and Bogost write in Racing the beam about their Atari VCS and the inherent game design of its games]. A publisher says if we as publishers say what is inside the product we have done our job.

Columbine: Pamela Eakes says that video games may have contributed to their deadliness [of the murderers], it's more to it than a video game. A voice [that I did not recognize, Thompson?] says when it came time for them to act out their anger, where did they get the ideas?. Other voices say lots of studies over the years have shown connexions between violence in the media and violence in real life, games have played a central role in killings, a kid became an expert shooter because of games. [Instead of forbidding games, forbid guns!] Jenkins report that there has only been badly designed research about violence in video-games and kids.

At the 25th minute, I found the tone changed, it became a kind of response of the pro-video game side and the game developers. Jenkins mentions that the 60's moral panic was comic books and that video games can become like movies, going up, or down like comics. [there has been a lot said in the last few months about comparing video games to other medias, both in the research community and in the industry; by the way, I do not really think comics are a lower-zone media than movies: some European or Japan comics are very deep and can be compared to movies]. Jason Della Rocca mentions the speech from Stephen Limbaugh Sr.: "video games contain no conveyance of ideas, expression or anything else that could possibly amout to free speech" and reacts: He had no understanding of games as an art form.

People talk about GTA. A publisher [was it John Marmaduke?] notices that since 7 million people have bought this game they may consider it acceptable. [poor defense...] Jenkins says we have not pushed this medium to ask what the role of violence in society is. Jenkins also adds that nothing suggests a normal kid is likely to become agressive simply because he played a violent VG. Nearly everyone seems to agree that our society is violent: we have a gun society, we need to see violence, we are naturally attracted by violence. [but no one says the utopic "why do we not change it with games?"]

Then about the Sims: from a genius are words that come back [but the background images are Picasso, Dali or Renaissance paintings ... there is not even any photo of The Sims' designer, Wright! That is a shame!].

An interesting part follows: there is a difference between your right to make something and your moral or ethical right to make something and As an editor, you have editorial responsibilities were said by a publisher. Jenkins continues we think of video games as violence only [while there could be one violent choice and another choice to solve the same issue in a game; there could be diminishing violence rather than decreasing]. Fable is mentioned. Hal Halpin does not think violent games are not a responsibility for designers, they are a responsibility for publishers: designers and developers want to create but publishers want money, and violence sells.

Then the discussion turns towards parents: someone says he would rather have his kid play a RTS with no gore than a FPS war game. [once again, the background only shows images from FPS war games with blood everywhere!]. A publisher [I think?] says the industry has to be honest with themselves. Pamela Eaks remarks that sex and violence sell and someone else reports wheteher it's a game, a movie, or music, the sales grow as violence grows. Back to GTA, Rockstar is gonna make the game that sells.

Retailers are in the spot light of the discussions [even though no one represents them among the participants] for a while: some retailers have seen it as part of their responsibility to keep inapropriate materials out of the hand of kids, other retailers have done absolutely nothing. But the parents responsibilities quickly come back: all we can do is talk with our child about the game. Maybe Michael Rich [good link?] compares games and other art forms and the parents' awareness of these art forms for their kids. FOr instance, parents will go out of a concert if it is bad for their children. So parents should play with their children, and if they do not, they have big problems and have no communication. If the child gets GTA from the parents, it is a failure of the parents, no one else. There is no silver bullet: it is parent's role.

Finally, the last words from Thompson: the industry needs to be careful. Eakes asks video game developers to face a mirror and ask "Am I doing something good for children?" all the time. [but not all games are for children ... It is not because in general older people do not play that only children play. Currently, youth often means video games, but the opposite is false.] Jenkins suggests we should grow up as parents, as government and as designers about what we can do with this media. A publisher wonders what is our responsibility as publishers? At some point, the line is going to be completely lost between what's right and what's wrong.

Apologies

Looking back, I feel I have put too many comments above and not been precise enough. I have completely forgotten some people's names and not taken notes really seriously. But I did not want to spend 4 hours watching the movie. So once again, if you want to make your own mind about it, watch it. I apologize, but I have more to say about the movie making in itself.

I did not like the mise en scène. The background images were very complex, useless and above all irrelevant to the speaker's point. For instance, showing printed circuit boards in a transparent background when someone is talking, or replacing a Serious Sam monster's head by the speaker's head seem to emphasize on the urban legend grey goo-like fear that machines are going to invade our society insidiously and kill us all. Henry Jenkins seems to agree: Watching the film twice, I still struggle to make sense of the relationship between spoken words and images. In the same kind of low-level image-words matching, when someone mentioned hard science from university the background turned into E=mc²... The videos we see in the background of World of Warcraft or Serious Sam for instance are only the violent parts of these (not-totally violent) games. WoW early trailer and Serious Sam battles do not show at any time the exploratory side of the game, or even the stealth part.

In the speakers, there were politicians, people from nearly any level of the industry (lobbyists, game designers, publishers, journalists) and people from the society on a broader view (parents). But only Jenkins for the research community. Even though Jenkins is a cheetah and he is very good at what he does, I think one is not enough.