#patterns of play

Whenever you approach a new medium, it’s important to pay attention to what makes the medium distinct from its predecessors. A video game is not as easily defined as “a movie where you press buttons to progress.” If this were a reasonable assessment, FernGully on VHS was the first video game I became obsessed with. Others have already spoken at length attempting to come up with a definition for video games that is both concise and comprehensive. Rather than retreading their territory, I’d rather focus on attempts to buck these definitions since they were put forward. Looking at the ways in which Players Unknown: Battlegrounds defies the cultural understanding of video games is undoubtedly more interesting than trying to prove it has something in common with Call of Duty.

Recently I have identified a piece of terminology that has been repeatedly useful in organizing my understanding. The idiom is “pattern of play,” pluralized as “patterns of play.” A pattern of play is a series of common player decisions and responses based on a predefined set of video game scenarios. This is useful in putting to voice an understanding of how particular scenarios suggest their own interpretation, and factor into an overall understanding of the work. When pluralized, patterns of play allow us to more formally analyze how others understand the game while playing rather than reflecting. (For reference, see games produced by Telltale Studios. Told in narrative heavy chapters accentuated by critical decision points, Telltale gathers data on what players chose and presents it at the end of each chapter.)