The Rhetoric of Play: The Metroid Series

Procedurality 

When it comes to analyzing the rhetoric of games, one must explore beyond the visual, auditory, and textual aspects of the medium. Video games are unique in that they convey themselves to the player through the act of play. As Bogost points out, the imagined systems the player inhabits are explored procedurally “by imposing sets of rules that create particular possibility spaces for play”. In a sense, the freedom of play is defined and facilitated by the rules and restrictions that create the play space. Understanding games as a system of rules is what Jasper Juul––and many other game scholars–­–calls a formal system. This formal system is the structure that game developers create, and it serves as the bones for gameplay. But, the formal system is essentially a dead space until it is interacted with by the player.

Play Elliciting Emotion

Possibility and Agency

In Understanding Video Games as Emotional Experiences, Aki Jarvinen Identifies the ways in which game systems elicit emotions from the player. This is in part because the outcome of play is unknown to the player, creating tension. Events arise for the player, and a response is necessary. Jarvinen asserts that gameplay activates an emotional response that can be conceptualized as a series of phases: 

1)      appraisal – the recognition of an event as significant.

2)      context evaluation – thoughts or plans to react to the event

3)      action readiness – one’s willingness to respond with another                                                  action 

4)      physiological change – the bodily and expressive effects of                                                                emotion 

Through the embodiment that the space of play allows, these same phases can provide a framework in understanding the experience of tension video games play. Jarviven differentiates two kinds of behavior, one governed by the system and the other governed by the player. For the purposes of my analysis I will identify the former as the possibility space and the latter as the player’s agency. The interplay of player agency and the possibility space creates a tension that drives the player forward through the “taught” experience described by Zimmerman. 

Tension in each game

Metroid pioneered the 2-D, side-scrolling adventure game. Unlike other platformers on the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), Metroid rejected a linear level design–the likes of Super Mario Brothers–in favor of an open world design. Each of the worlds were separate, but connected in a maze of hidden passageways. Each new room presented a twofold challenge: how to clear the room and where to go next. I have not included a picture of Metroid’s map because there is no map accessible in game. 

Super Metroid built off of the same design idea, creating an even more vast world with even more secrets to uncover, but was nice enough to give the player a map. Even still, developers purposefully inhibited the player’s spatial awareness by only allowing areas you have already visited to be seen. The only exception being map data rooms, which would load the main areas of the world, if you were lucky enough to find them.
This tension comes largely from exploring unknown territory. With no direction, the player must make their way through the game on their own. The formal system in an adventure game is crafted to create uncertainty in the correct path to the player’s goal, which for our purposes can be called progression through exploration. This uncertainty caused by the lack of a clear path is the main source of tension for these two games. The player must recognize the significant events the formal system creates (maybe small hints or clues), interpret an appropriate response within the possibility space (possible paths to pursue), act accordingly (taking the risk of agency), and experiencing the subsequent emotion from correct action or not. Here the emotion experienced depends on whether the player made the right choice. Either they feel the relief of discovering their goal (a new item, boss room, or map data room), or become increasingly more anxious and fearful as they become more and more lost within the maze.
Fusion is much more linear though. The level design is much easier to navigate and your progress is facilitated by waypoints on the map and a narrative largely told to you by a computer that briefs you on your missions. This “on rails” gameplay removes the suspense created from getting lost in exploration, but allows for new emotions to be elicited. As stated earlier, the parameters of a play space define the experience of playing. Here, the uncertainty of the game dimishes slightly. Players may not know what lies beyond the door they are about to enter, but orientation is almost never uncertain.

Many have said that it is this breakaway from the established Metroid formula that makes Fusion a strict action game. In the next section I will argue that horror is a tone that is explored much more deeply within the constraints of linear gameplay.