'What is a Game?' reading games MMU module 07/01/2024

This essay will discuss the way in which Eric Mill’s website, isitchristmas.com, conforms to the conventions of a ‘game’ in such a rudimentary way that it simultaneously outlines the parameters for the definition of a ‘game’. In order to categorize the site as such, I will compare it to Chris Crawford’s ‘taxonomy of creative expression’ from his book, ‘Chris Crawford on game design’ in which he outlines a set of prerequisites a work must meet before it can be classified as a game. Crawford’s taxonomy categorizes potential works into 6 categories: art, movies/books etc., toys, puzzles, competitions, and games. (Crawford, 2003) My aim is to argue some aspects of isitchristmas.com are the most elementary paradigms of a game, therefore outlining the definition of games by establishing a benchmark. In order to do so, I will compare the site to each step of Crawford’s taxonomy.

The site seems rudimentary at first. Its purpose is to inform the user if it’s currently Christmas day or not. It does this by simply presenting the user with nothing but a large ‘NO’ if it isn’t the 25th of December, and a ‘YES’ if it is. Around the 25th of December, the site is altered to temporarily conform to the conventions of a game. Visually, the page still consists of just one word. However, your mouse cursor has been replaced by a flag of your country. You’re also now able to see other user’s ‘flags’ move around the page in real time. There are somewhat primitive avenues of interaction available; you can use the mouse to move your flag around the page, right-click to temporarily leave a stamp of your flag and use the scroll wheel to rotate your flag in place. There’s also a more hidden feature in the source code of the site; if the user navigates to the console, they’ll find it’s been modified to allow them to chat with other users.

Although the site is still fundamentally a blank page with a singular word on it, the systems it temporarily puts in place around Christmas gamifies the fundamental systems of a website. The cursor moves the same, but it’s been retextured and therefore recontextualized to be more self-representatory; it could be considered an ‘avatar’ in this state, based on Goldberg’s definition; he considers ‘avatars’ to describe representations of real people, and ‘agents’ to be autonomous software, existing without player influence. (Goldberg, 1998, pp. 161–181) I argue that the flag that represents the player on isitchristmas.com is an avatar; as each player is represented by a ‘real’ factor of their lives; their country. Taking this a step further, utilizing location spoofing software like VPNs would allow users to intentionally change their flag, adding a level of customization based on their preferences. This is likely most rudimentary way of characterizing something as an ‘avatar’ instead of an ‘agent’.

The webpage of isitchristmas.com remains visually unchanged around Christmas, but the presence of other users and vague interaction recontextualizes it to conform to the base fundamentals of a ‘Networked Virtual World’ (NVW). Singhal and Zyda define an NVW as an environment which provides “a shared sense of space, in terms of creating the illusion to the users that they are being located in the same place; a shared sense of presence, which is mainly related to the virtual representation of the users that is commonly realized through human-like personas called avatars as well as to the visibility of others participants entering or leaving the environment; a shared sense of time, in terms of being able to see other participants’ actions when they occur; a way to communicate, which can be achieved through gestures, typed text and voice and finally a way to share, in terms of being able to interact realistically not only with other participants but also with the virtual environment itself.” (Singhal and Zyda, 1999). Isitchristmas.com conforms to each of these requirements. The website itself provides the ‘shared sense of space’, the visualization of the other users creates the ‘shared sense of presence’, the ability to ‘spin’, ‘stamp’ and send messages in the console chatroom provide a ‘shared sense of time’ alongside being an avenue of communication. It’s undeniable that if you follow these parameters, isitchristmas.com is a ‘Networked Virtual World’ in its most primitive form.

While the site may conform to some definitions of a ‘Virtual World’, this doesn’t say anything regarding its status as a ‘game’. A more effective comparison to determine isitchristmas.com’s status as a ‘game’ would be using Crawford’s ‘Taxonomy of creative expression’. The first step of Crawford’s taxonomy questions the artistic integrity of the property it’s being applied to. The primary motivation of the creator is called into question; “If the creator’s primary goal is to make money, then I call the result entertainment. If the creator’s primary goal is to make something that is beautiful, then I call it art” (Crawford, 2003). Applying this concept to isitchristmas.com would likely result in it being immediately categorized as art, making it unable to be categorized as a game under Crawford’s methodology. However, using a tool that allows you to view older iterations of websites (The Wayback Machine), you can see that if you clicked on the word ‘NO’ or ‘YES’ from 2009 to 2018, it would redirect to an external website. This knowledge could reframe the site’s purpose to being an advertisement for some, therefore altering the primary goal of the site to have monetary motivation. In its current state, the site doesn’t feature any immediately accessible links to external pages. There are links to Eric Mill’s website and social media pages located in the source code and on a subdomain, ‘isitchristmas.com/humans.txt’. It could be argued that the inclusion of these links multiple times makes the creator’s primary goal a self-advertisement, therefore making it monetary. Crawford’s ideology that games cannot be art is a complex argument, contested by many others. Even Crawford himself has referred to games as art. “A game is an artistically simplified representation of a phenomenon.” (Crawford, 1984). For the sake of my argument, I am going to classify isitchristmas.com as being ‘entertainment’.

The next step of Crawford’s Taxonomy evaluates the interactivity of the property. Isitchristmas.com’s temporary shift in identity during the Christmas period makes it unique – it’s sometimes interactive, sometimes not. It could be argued that the restricted access to the gamified version of the site invalidates its ‘interactivity’. However, similar systems of limited-time content are present in many ‘Live Service Games’ like Fortnite: Battle Royale (2017). Certain content is only available temporarily, known as a ‘Limited-Time Mode’. It could be said that isitchristmas.com’s gamification is a Limited-Time Mode, therefore classifying it as interactive. Crawford then focuses on the goals associated with the property, questioning...

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