Man, that is an exciting title! Okay – I have long had a fascination with interfaces. To me, the interface is the meeting point of user and information, the middle ground between human creativity and the raw materials with which to create. It was this I was thinking about recently as I watched people run around this Christmas for a Nintendo Wii. After all, the success of the Wii is predicated upon its interface, in the new way in which you interact with what happens on the screen. The ‘fun’ of the Wii is not solely in how brilliant the games are in theme or execution, but in how they ‘play’.

Though it may seem like an odd segue, this focus on ‘how and not what’ is something that pops up quite often in literary studies, and I couldn’t help but think of the relationship between some approaches to literature and how we think of video games. I am soon to read a whack of Russian Formalism, an early twentieth century literary school that focused upon what made certain texts literary and others merely informative or practical. Formalists like Roman Jakobson basically ended up stating that literary language differed from regular language because it drew attention to itself and its own ‘literariness’. When Wordsworth’s narrator says “A slumber did my spirit seal” rather than simply ‘I was out of it’, he or she deliberately slows down the reading process, asking the reader to pay attention to the form of what is said as much its content. The key to being ‘literary’ (according to some, anyway) is not in conveying information as effectively as possible; instead, it is the interplay between what is said and how it is expressed.

This distinction – between what is conveyed and how – is one that might also be applied to gaming. Let’s take Wii Tennis as an example: if one wanted to simulate what it is like to play tennis, the aim would be realism. You would need to replicate the physics of the racket swing, the motion of the player and the various effects of different surfaces, spins and weather conditions. The goal here would be the replication of a specific experience in much the same way that the purpose of journalistic or technical language is to convey a message or idea. The focus is on utility, on the end rather than the process. But similar to the way in which literary language focuses upon the experience of language itself, Wii Tennis does not attempt to realistically recreate the experience of tennis per se, but the fun of experiencing the interface. It is the Wiimote and how it is used that is key, the enjoyment not coming from the specific recreation of what it is like to play a sport or, conversely, participating in a war, but by creating a set of virtual rules which one then plays within using the interface available to one. Thus video games are themselves akin to sports: there is no inherent joy in placing a ball in a hoop or catching a pigskin. It is the rules of the game that create the potential for fun, pleasure coming from the joy of the process rather than the achievement of a goal. As such, a good game, one that game critics would say ‘controls well’, gives the player the maximum amount of freedom and choice within the given arena of the game through its interface.

Thus the ‘fun’ or enjoyment of a videogame lies in playing an approximation of an experience with a focus on the experience of the interface rather than completing goals. Pleasure lies in the combination of the ‘feeling’ of the movements and controls of the game and what those inputs then achieve. This is crucial for a number of reasons. First, the argument that first-person shooters are ‘killing simulators’ misses that the satisfaction in those games comes from the actions and techniques of ‘achieving a kill’ rather than the kill itself – it is the rules and restrictions of the game rather than the game’s end that is the source of fun. Secondly, in much the same way that literature’s focus upon its own ‘literariness’ provided an ‘in’ for a wealth of analysis, it is the interface in gaming that will provide an avenue for reading video games in a sophisticated academic manner. For the best example I’ve seen of this yet, I highly suggest you read Chris Sullenstrope’s brillaint reading of Bioshock. For now though, it’s Christmas Eve and my head is getting heavy with beer, so I apologise if this is still a bit unclear. If you wish to add to my slightly intoxicated thoughts, hit the comments and let me know what you think