Indigo Prophecy and the Rule of Choice

While many video games may claim to be all free-roaming and unlimited in their potential, every game in existence still finds itself constrained by rules. And as it may be simple and trite for video games to claim they exist in a sandbox environment where anything is possible, they are lying, as by that very term they are limiting themselves to a certain kind of gameplay environment. In a sense, it is impossible to have a game where anything is possible, that would be called that game of life, and trust me, that's not very fun.

Rules are put in place for several reasons, and as Nielsen, Smith, and Tosca define it, all games have them to "determine what you can and cannot do, and which actions or events increase or decrease the player's score." While they assess that rules are there for constraint and to limit our actions, they are also to control our gameplay and generate expected outcomes. Essentially, rules decide and determine what game we play.

Rules exist in two solid types: we have "Ludus" rules, which are the conditions to how the player wins, and the "paidia" rules, which are procedural stuff, meaning that they're the rules we don't really think about but are always present.

For example, if we were playing, say Indigo Prophecy, we would expect there to be certain "Paidia" rules, as we are playing a point and click game. We would expect that to advance the game we would need to engage nonplayers in dialogue of our choosing. We would also expect to play puzzles to advance.

Also with this game they challenge the realm of point and click as they incorporate elements of "action sequences", where the player plays virtually "Simon Says" by tapping corresponding buttons with sections on the screen. If they tap these in the correct order, the action sequence continues, if they do not, they fail and the sequence is reset and one life point is lost.


What's interesting is that with Indigo Prophecy the idea of "Ludus" rules becomes a blurred subject, like trying to see a polar bear eating ice cream in the snow (and if anyone knows what cartoon show that references they get a free cookie, good luck Kim). While not all game theorists call this "ludus" rules, are games have rules that determine how a player wins. However, the very concept of Indigo prophecy underlies this idea, as the game tries to turn itself into an "interactive movie". There is no correct way to play the game, as your actions and choices determine how the game concludes (there are several different story paths to follow, each which lead back to one of three very different endings).

Also, it's a very controlled world, you only go where the game wants you to go. Oh? You wanna go get a burger at McDonalds? Too bad, the game designers want you to go visit the crazy lady who can read minds. You want to go flirt and party? Too bad, your character's being hunted by the police and he's trying to mend things up with his ex-girlfriend. You want to fight people with crazy martial arts outta a John Woo movie? Oh yeah, I guess you can do that, the game does want you to do that one eventually.


I guess one way to think about the "winning" or "losing" elements is that if you fail to complete an action sequence correctly, you're forced to redo it until you fail entirely. You lose the action sequence, yet the game continues. Also, there is the fact that by asking certain questions in dialogue sequences you reveal new information that enables you to go deeper into the game. However, that's not to say this is a "losing point", as its kind of fun to have your characters play dumb and have no clue what their doing or what's going on.

Or there is the fact that you have a "mental health" you have to keep track of. If you let your character to get "depressed" or "stressed" it causes them to go insane, which causes you to go back to a point and redo a level. So in that sense there is a winning-losing degree to the game. Basically, keep your player sane is the lesser here.

I guess the lesson learned here is that even this game is controlled. There's no such thing as a uncontrolled rule-less game. That would be Calvinball, and we all know how fun that was (if you've never read Calvin and Hobbes, its a terrible time, and if you have not Calvin and Hobbes, you're a pathetic lowlife who needs to get out of his mom's basement).


Games are fun and possible because of rules, by controlling gameplay and options you dictate the environment the player is to expect. Indigo Prophecy is a perfect example of this, as its a clear cut case of mashing a P&C adventure and an interactive movie. We want games to tell us how to have fun, we want games to tell us that we're winning or losing. Without this drive or control, games cannot be successful. Besides, as much as you may want that burger, you'd much rather go see the old crazy lady.