Performance & Audience

Our colleagues brought to class two case studies to illustrate the theme “performance and audience”: DotA and DotA 2, and Guitar Hero. These example show the two apparent “trends” of performance: the “embodied/dance-like” and the “strategic/sports-like”. The literature analyzed brings that dichotomy too, which is an interesting dichotomy and shows how ‘confused’ we are when we talk about performance in video games. 

Outside the realm of games we use the term ‘good performance’ to evaluate different criteria. In class, Isaac gave the example of the guitar player in a rock concert. In this case, it seems there needs to be an extra theatricality showed by the artist for the audience to consider it a good performance. It isn’t enough to be a good player to capture the audience. A guitar player is, most of the times, required to do “extra things”, he needs to show-off, to prove he can play the guitar in strange situations - with his teeth or feet, holding the guitar behind his head, etc... In this case, besides being good at doing what he’s supposed to do, he needs to add something the audience can see and understand even if they don’t play a guitar. This is the kind of performance we usually associate with “more physical” games like guitar hero. The videos our colleagues showed, however, problematized this notion. 

The two examples of “good performance” in guitar hero showed people who scored high in the game, their skill was recognized by the game itself (through the score) but they didn’t really add the ‘extra’ the real guitar player needs to add in order to perform well, according to the audience. To me, those videos illustrate a non-embodied performance more than an embodied one. What they were doing with their bodies wasn’t different from what the starcraft professional gamers do. There’s an important difference between objective and subjective evaluation of performance in games, and that distinction is tied to the embodied/strategic distinction. An objective evaluation of performance is one made by the machine - score, winning a battle, etc. In this case, the game itself quantifies performance. The evaluation of performance can only be subjective when players add something extra to the quantified performance that the machine can’t really “read”. This is the case of the DDR dancers who added a whole choreography on top of the moves required to have a perfect performance for the machine. In this case, the performance sort of has two layers, if I may say so, the machine performance and the bodily performance, added just to capture the audience. This doesn’t mean, though, that a quantified performance doesn’t please the audience. It means that a quantified performance demands knowledge of the game while the second one can be pleasing even for those who don’t know the game. 

Tied to what I call a performance of “objective evaluation” is the concept of deep play (borrowed from Clifford Geertz by Christian McCrea). Deep play depends on a culture surrounding the game, this culture helps creating a narrative around the game/situation that can be shared by the group - players and fans/audience. The audience engages in the playing situation not because the ‘performer’ is doing “something extra-game”, but because there’s a culture around the game that makes every game event meaningful and part of a shared narrative. This is what happened with DotA, it became part of the culture, reaching a lot of players all over the world and creating a competitive community around it. Performances, in tournaments, or in a battle, is evaluated by both the machine, other players or the audience, in tournaments. This audience, though, doesn’t evaluate something “extra-game” players do to show-off, they are interested in the game itself and the way it is played, the strategies used to attain what the machine tells is a “good performance”. In this case, players and audience share this culture around the game and understand its stakes.