Run and Jump by Peter D. McDonald

Author:Peter D. McDonald [McDonald, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: platformer; genre studies; semiotics; structuralism; game feel; level design; close reading; Mario;
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: 2024-01-17T00:00:00+00:00

Figure 3.1

Mega Man attacking a Metall C-15, or Met, in Mega Man X (1993).

Why should such a power be vested in enemies rather than another game element? As chapter 1 argues, action on a 2D plane is the language of platformers. Movement, force, and violence become signs that an object exists in the same world with the player. Of all the objects that exist in game space, enemies occupy it in a uniquely reciprocal fashion. Enemies can touch the player, and she can collide with them. Enemies can hurt the player, and she can destroy them. The player is passive in the same way an enemy is passive and active in the same way it is active. All of these mirrorings differentiate enemies from the brute environment, from coins and switches, from friendly characters and the user interface. The floor and walls, for example, stop the player and exert force on her but cannot be influenced. Without a full simulation of Newtonian physics, a level’s boundaries lack the equal and opposite reaction of inertia and become simply inert. A nonplayer character like Dr. Light speaks to Mega Man, but the player can never respond in kind. Other characters might sell an item or save the game, but the player rarely reciprocates these interactions. Even as bodies in space, these friendly characters exist on another plane and do not impede or touch the player. Rather than offering an obstacle, the avatar simply passes through them as if they were ghosts. The platformer’s generic emphasis on movement thus makes physical force into a medium of communication and exchange. The violent confrontations between player and enemy are an outgrowth of that framing. However we understand the meaning of violence, it demonstrates a prior communion through shared vulnerability.4

Game mechanics are a language that the player learns to speak, but without enemies, the player is stuck in a monologue of movement and survival. Through the reciprocal relations of speed and force, enemies become interlocutors in a conversation with the player where combat expresses a conflict over the proper uses of space.5 Some enemies share the player’s vocabulary and grammar of movement but are guided by an entirely different worldview. They walk endlessly back and forth across a platform or hold fast to a single position within a level. Other enemies introduce new mechanics into the language of motion by flying where Mega Man must walk or attacking with unprecedented speed. In individual encounters, the player learns about the possible differences and variations that the game’s space allows. At the same time, fighting through hordes of robots reveals how these individual encounters belong within a complex system.

We previously considered how individual action signs such as jumping belong within a system of mechanics and that other verbs also shape the meaning of a jump. However, we did not examine the nature of that systematicity itself, and it is a crucial concept for structuralism. For thinkers like Ferdinand de Saussure, there is a fundamental difference between speech and language.

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