Ludonarrative Style and Pitfall:
Observing the storytelling ghosts of game industry’s past
DISCLAIMER
This dissertation was uploaded to Open Thesis following its submission to London South Bank University as part of my final year assessment in June 2016. Due to linking issues, the full text has been published and uploaded here as close as close to the original format as possible for preservation and research purposes. Text begins after the following image:
ABSTRACT
Eric Zimmerman wrote a piece for ‘First Person’ responding to the dearth of quality storytelling in modern gaming despite its high demand. He aimed to “discipline” the commonly skewed terms: ‘Narrative’, ‘Interactivity’, ‘Play’ and ‘Games’ in relation to each other, with their concrete definitions combined argue that every facet of a game from design to in-game logic, visual inspiration and explicit exposition all contributed towards a purposeful artistic intent unique to the game’s creator(s). My dissertation solidifies this concept as “Ludo-narrative Style” through brief comparisons with similar academic works and a special template (Table 1). I shall explore how various studios’ artistic relationship towards this concept has changed across each generation using the Pitfall series as a referential thread. By analysing the design of each game and comparing their ludonarrative styles against one another, I argue that the franchise has undergone a gradual push away from contextual coherency and story detail in favour of following Nintendo and their contemporaries, slipping into mundanity in the process. This notion is reinforced as I conclude with a brief look at the history of the wider game industry surrounding the Pitfall series, aiming to explain why Zimmerman perceives a lack of innovation in ludonarrative.
Keywords: Zimmerman, Pitfall, ludonarrative, style, narrative, rules, limitations
INTRO
From the late 1970s to the early 1980s, Atari, Mattel and Coleco dominated the then flourishing Western market. After several Atari employees escaped from what Schuett (2002) called, the company’s “towel designer” stranglehold and formed Activision (p.3), they helped foster innovations and designs that would arguably go on to serve the foundations of gaming today. Zimmerman (2004), in reference to narrative expression in modern interactive entertainment, laments however that, “For as much as we seem enamored by the possibilities of digital media, we seem just as soundly dissatisfied with its current state” (p.154). He chronicles a “frustration with the lack of cultural sophistication in the gaming industry; frustration with the limitations of current technology; frustration with a lack of critical theory for properly understanding the medium” (p.154). To wit, he feels that “The dissatisfaction with game-stories is a dissatisfaction with the way that games function as storytelling systems” (p.161). In deciphering the root of this apparent metamorphosis of narrative paradigms, a reference point will be needed to help fill the blanks between these moments in video game industry history: David Crane’s Pitfall (Crane, 1982) is unique in being one of the only Atari frontrunners to have spawned a continuous franchise spanning subsequent console cycles with significant departures between installments. As such, it shall be the chief exemplar for Zimmerman’s interpretation of what shall be referred to here as, “ludonarrative style”.
The wide definition of the term, “ludonarrative” as related by Toh (2015) is described as such: “Ludonarrative refers to an imagined “whole” of which every video game is comprised. Every video game consists of both gameplay (ludo) and story (narrative)…”Ludo” involves rules, which determine what the player is allowed to do…”Narrative” provides the context and gives the player a motivation when s/he is asked to do something” (p.2). “Ludonarrative style” shall be defined in reference to how Zimmerman describes stories as they emerge from gameplay, “As the player participates with the system, playing the game, exploring its rule-structures, finding the patterns of free play that will let the game continue, a narrative unfolds in real time” (p.162). Zimmerman’s observation of what could constitute a narrative were broad to the point that he suggested, “All forms of narrative end up being interactive…but they can be interactive in different ways,” (p.158) and that for all intents and purposes, “A game of chess could also be considered a narrative by this scheme,” (p.157) in much the way that Juul (2001) acknowledged in his article’s conclusion that “many computer games contain narrative elements” (Conclusion section, para.1).
Zimmerman further posits with Salen (2004) in response to popular theories over the significance of play, “The meaning of an action in a game resides in the relationship between action and outcome” (p.34). In the case of Ludonarrative Style, different actions, different rules and different outcomes constitute different kinds of significant meanings and therefore, different stylistic frameworks for different games, allowing for different emotional responses from the player. Zimmerman argues that, “All games have rules. These rules provide the structure out of which the play emerges. It’s also important to realize that rules are essentially restrictive and limit what the player can do” (p.160). It is through this emergent structure as established prior, that different Ludonarrative styles can emerge. His words parallel those of Huizinga (1955) as he lays out the principles of the Magic Circle: “Inside the play-ground an absolute and peculiar order reigns. Here we come across another, very positive feature of play: it creates order, is order. Into an imperfect world and into the confusion of life it brings a temporary, a limited perfection. Play demands order absolute and supreme. The least deviation from it “spoils the game,” robs it of its character and makes it worthless” (p.10). The contextual tenets that dictate “order” in the magic circle in any given game can be seen as a vital component of a game’s ludonarrative style. Juul (2005) once again reiterates Zimmerman’s points by stating that “Rules specify limitations and affordances…and this affords players meaningful actions that were not otherwise available; rules give games structure” (p.58). Despite these points, Zimmerman pointed out “Play exists in opposition to the structures it inhabits, at odds with the utilitarian functioning of the system. Yet play is at the same time an expression of a system, and intrinsically a part of it” (p.159). Costikyan (2007) makes some very similar points about player freedom, being that a game, “constrains what (players) can do, but they must feel they have options; if not, they are not actively engaged…If they are constrained to a linear path of events…they’ll feel…that nothing they do has any impact, that they are not playing in any meaningful sense” (p.6). As Zimmerman states again, if one “breaks the structure by cheating and skipping ahead, that is merely another form of play within the designed system” (p160). Nitsche (2008) even builds on this notion by stating, “Some game designers have embraced such rule bending and offer what might appear to be a bug as a conscious playable feature of the game space,” (p.29) in reference to the underground ceiling shortcuts in Super Mario Bros. (Miyamoto, 1985).
“There is a tremendous amount of interest in the intersection of games and stories” (p.154), Zimmerman says, as many modern games in the wake of Pitfall have come to reference his ideas in some form to subvert traditional player-system boundaries, providing various answers to Zimmerman’s question, “In what ways might we consider this thing (such as a game) a ‘narrative thing’?” (p.157). Specific examples include Spider-Man 2 (Moriwaki et al, 2004), in which thanks to some deceptive UI design, the player unexpectedly fells the hilariously egomaniacal villain Mysterio with a single punch, while the comparatively more dramatic God of War II (Jaffe et al, 2007) strips away player agency for a mechanically unwinnable duel against an almighty oppressor. There are even games like Red Steel 2 (Vandenberghe, 2010) where difficulty decreases relative with player progress to serve the rags-to-riches revenge plot. There have even been games such as Limbo (Jensen et al, 2010) and Dark Souls (Miyazaki, 2011), both of which exploit player failure as the core of their ludonarrative styles. The Stanley Parable (Pugh, 2013), as viewed by writers of the Journal of Communication (2014), touches on the exact same subject that was explored by Zimmerman in that, “this game uses game mechanics to provide a meaningful experience by manipulating the satisfaction of needs…it shows how game design (level layout, narrative, affordances etc.,) limits the autonomy of the player” (p.535).
Parker (2014) however objects, “In spite of this expansion of the market, the industry relies on established genre and gameplay formulas, pre-sold series and franchise properties, and emulation of previous successes to ensure maximum returns, particularly in its AAA offerings“ (p.102). This could likely be why Zimmerman feels that “so much of this interest is driven by a kind of love/hate relationship with the medium” (p.154). The true nature of this gradual creative change shall be identified by examining every single game in the Pitfall canon in release order, analysing their executions of ludonarrative styles as they evolved and changed between installments and ending with a historical look at the wider game industry’s market development.
PITFALL HARRY’S JUNGLE ADVENTURE
Activision published Pitfall in 1982 for the Atari 2600 the very same year as Jungle Hunt (Taito, 1982) and the Raiders of the Lost Ark (Spielberg, 1981) tie-in game (Warshaw, 1982) for the same console, an event that was no coincidence in terms of inspiration. As Bogost and Montfort (2009) observed as they looked back on the game’s development, “Crane acknowledges that the movie inspired the idea for an adventure in the jungle,” though they also theorise, “The inspiration for Pitfall wasn’t the side-scrolling jungle adventure, but rather the running man. The adventure just gave him a reason to run” (p.4). The player’s objective in Pitfall is to collect all 32 treasures populating the labyrinthine map before 20 minutes pass and the game ends (Fig.1). The player cannot extend this time limit in any way, forcing them to be expedient and make as few mistakes as possible along the way. Since the game is laid out in a “circular” fashion, the player can also travel both left and right on their journey. If the player steers Pitfall Harry into a hazard, he will lose a life and continue at the beginning of the screen he had just reached. Once three lives are lost, the game is over and the player cannot gain any more extra lives, emphasizing Harry’s mortality and vulnerability against the dangers that await both him and the player.
The treasures grant the player points, contributing to a high-score that is given to the player at the end of their session. Considering the time limit and the finite amount of treasures that can be collected in order to beat the game, Pitfall is designed with a clear end state in mind. By attaining 20,000 points or more, players could opt to claim a “prestigious” Explorers Club Emblem in the mail if they sent the company a photo of their high-score as proof, but beyond that, a player could only be as good as the maximum score count would allow. This made Pitfall one of the earliest games of its kind that could be ‘beaten’ without entirely incentivising high-scores.
Fires and cobras cannot be touched lest they cost the player a life. Crocodiles can be jumped on but only when their jaws are shut, in reference to a cartoon of Heckle and Jeckle (Terry, 1946) which also exhibited a similar jungle theme (Claiborn, 2011). Logs are the only hazard that can be touched without losing a life, but they constantly roll along the screen leftwards towards Harry and will immobilise him for a while, costing the player precious time. If Harry approaches a log from the left instead of the right, the player can move with the log as it rolls and be unharmed by it. Quicksand and tar pits open and close in short intervals allowing the player small windows of chance to run across them, while holes and lakes stay completely still. Harry can grab onto a vine when one is available and bypass these hazards as it swings, but these vines move on their own accord, forcing the player to wait until they swing in their direction before they can grab on and drop down.
Any combination of these elements can appear in any of the 255 scenes (Valdes, 2002) in the game and Harry has no way of fighting back against the hazards or removing them from view, so the only way for him to be clear of danger is to jump over it. He can cover more range by jumping while running, but his range is limited and cannot be altered in mid-air, giving him the relatively realistic physical limitations that a human being has in the real world. Harry’s default running speed cannot be fine-tuned in any way, keeping events at a fixed continuous pace at almost all times. The player can skip whole scenes by taking one of the underground tunnels via stepladder but risk running into scorpions in doing so. These hazards are the largest in the game and also scuttle back and forth.
All these gameplay elements centralise reflexes, timing and precision as the main factors being tested in the player since most, if not all of the hazards in the game are just large enough to clear from one exact last-minute leap. Zimmerman notes however that, “There are many story elements…that are not directly related to the gameplay,” in reference to the arcade cabinet that would usually house a game (p.162). In this way, one can consider the instruction manual that comes with Pitfall as an extension of the game’s ludonarrative style along with the interactive aspects, especially as it give a voice and a fame-driven motivation for “world famous jungle explorer and fortune hunter extraordinaire,” Pitfall Harry with David Crane himself providing play tips for both him and the player. He even suggests the player “Make a map of the terrain each time you play,” since, “Knowing the jungle and planning the best route to all treasures is the only way to insure success time after time”. Despite the player having full control over the actions of Pitfall Harry, he proclaims to be, “Your guide through the jungle, and I’m one of the best,” suggesting that Harry and the player are two consciences who share the same avatar (AtariAge, Pitfall, 1998).
So, along with its design choices, audiovisual techniques and manual exposition, Pitfall’s ludonarrative style intends to encourage the player to think and feel like a daring risk-taker in the face of hectic odds in a filmic and adventurous race against time. Pitfall purposefully cast its player in the role of the retaliator rather than the instigator and restricted interaction to non-violent self-preservation. Adding to the jungle adventure influence is the use of sound design, such as Johnny Weismuller’s ‘Tarzan Yell’ (Van Dyke, 1932) being replicated for use during the ‘vine’ swinging sections seeing as he was, as Bogost and Montfort once again put it, “the original vine-swinger”. Zimmerman also suggests paratexual elements, “the player’s experience of the game-story…includes not just the gameplay itself but…the marketing of the character and its penetration into pop culture at large,” (p.162) which is arguably seen with the tie-in Pitfall TV series that aired as part of The Saturday Supercade (Kuch, 1983). The show starred two original sidekicks who traveled the world on Harry’s adventures: his niece Rhonda and his pet lion, Quickclaw, both of whom would feature prominently as side-characters in the video game’s sequel.
LOST CAVERNS
Pitfall II: Lost Caverns (Crane, 1984) was released for the Atari 2600 in 1984 and tasked players with exploring the Lost Incas City of Machu Picchu to rescue Harry’s niece Rhonda and his lion Quickclaw while also tracking down the lost Raj diamond along the way. The game is declared finished when all three are found, except in the case of the “Adventurer Edition” in which a second additional cavern must be traversed by collecting items in order to “charm” a golden rope back up to ground level with the help of a snake charmer. There are many differences between this game and the first: there is no time limit pressuring the player on like last time and the layout of these Peruvian caves is far less circular with repetitive layouts and open verticality (Fig.2), the likes of which would not truly catch on until Metroid (Okada, 1986) or Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (Igarashi, 1997). In addition, the mechanics of player failure have also been retooled and incorporated into the game’s ludonarrative style. There are no lives; each failure only deducts points from the high-score while the game transports Harry back to the last “Energised Healing Centre” (marked with a red cross on the ground) that the player previously passed over.
The high-score can be increased by finding an ancient stone rat or collecting one of 28 gold bars each of which were stolen from Fort Nox, complete with the returning option to send the high-score in exchange for an “Activision Cliffhangers” emblem. But Harry stresses in his “diary” within the instruction manual that, “my contract only requires the recovery of Rhonda, Quickclaw and the diamond. Everything else is gravy.” (AtariAge, ‘Pitfall II 2600’, 1998). Elaboration is afforded to details that could have been easily overlooked and this level of detail gave evidence of a gaming landscape that was beginning to open up to the possibilities of narrative design; near the release of the first Pitfall game, Yars’ Revenge (Warshaw, 1982) also boasted many innovations according to Logudice and Barton (2014); along with a complete excision of high-scores, “went a step further and helped create a comic book (included in the box), The Qotile Ultimatum, to explain the backstory” (p.52). Similar expository techniques were utilised by many other developers (AtariAge, ‘Comic Books’, 1998) to help expand upon their game’s respective ludonarrative styles.
Pitfall II retains the rest of the controls of the first Pitfall game along with the character’s jumping limitations, however pits no longer harm the player directly, instead leading to sheer drops that take them deeper into the caves while taking points off the high-score. Vines have been removed completely. In its place are Rhonda’s steam balloons that can be grabbed on to and be used to ride cross-cavern along the wind current. Pitfall Harry can also now swim through water, save for the electric eels that swim through it. Scorpions are the only natural hazard that returns from the first Pitfall game in favour of a whole new line-up of creature hazards that include poisonous frogs that leap over climbable ladders, bats that flap around in erratic patterns and condors that fly up and down in a repetitive loop. Every one of these new dangers require a level of near-perfect timing and luck that wasn’t present in the last game making failure a frequent occurrence especially in the Adventurer Edition’s second cavern; there is once again no way for Harry to properly defend himself. The game’s demonstrably steep difficulty level is emphasised by Pitfall Harry’s feelings of despair while lamenting that he “may have gone too far” and appeals to the developers of the game itself, “If ever you see this diary, I hope you’ll read it and come to my aid” rounding the diary off with a “Famous Last Words” page.
Because of this change of pace with more room for error and a newfound emphasis on exploration dependent on map memorisation and world building story elements weaved into the instruction booklet, the adventure film influence has evolved past the first game’s high-octane adventure sequences, lending closer to a ludonarrative style that now feels much slower and more methodical, but no less intense or adventurous. Thanks to this sequel’s expanded cartridge memory, the music design has been made much more fluid and reactive. Cues include a triumphant piece that plays when an important pick-up is retrieved, a sombre piece that plays when the player runs into a hazard, an adventurous piece that plays at all other times and an excerpt from the Sobre las Olas waltz which plays when Harry grabs on to one of Rhonda’s balloons, an appropriate choice as the waltz has American cultural connotations with Wurlitzer brand automated fairground organs and trapeze artistry (World Public Library, 2015).
Pitfall II was released a whole year into the console market crash and so it, as well as its predecessor were both overhauled for a combined arcade remix (Sega, 1985) while also being individually ported to many other console and home computer platforms. It’s worth pointing out however, that the various console and computer ports of Pitfall II (Coleco Box Art, 2005) along with the first game (Games Database, 2014) came with paired down instruction manuals that offered no diary entries, virtually bereft of any meaningful context outside of a basic framing device. Even the versions of Pitfall II that included the hidden level revealed no information as to its details, only to “solve its surprising mystery of freedom” (AtariAge, ‘Pitfall II Atari 5200’, 1998). This excising of ludonarrative style elements would only be exacerbated by the very next game to come.
SUPER PITFALL
Super Pitfall (Micronics, 1987) is a loose remake of Pitfall II complete with central music cue intact, released for the Nintendo Entertainment System two years after the console’s wildly successful release. The player’s goal once again is to move Harry through the mazes (Fig.3), find the Raj diamond, rescue Quickclaw this time by freeing him from his cage with a key and rescue his niece Rhonda who requires a curing antidote, having this time been turned to stone for no rhyme or reason. The packaged manual now makes no mention of Fort Nox, Incas tribes, or any incentive to retrieve the Raj diamond (World of Nintendo, 1996). The game still ostensibly takes place in Peru like Pitfall II, though this claim is contradicted somewhat by the presence of Egyptian pyramids, satanic skulls, floating Moai heads and ancient Greek support columns littering the background art. On top of that, there are many visual and gameplay elements such as ladders that lead to dead ends and waterfalls that expel water in brief bursts and many more things that lend to a wildly inconsistent visual design and ludonarrative style.
All natural hazards can be jumped over or shot down with a gun, a first for the series. Harry starts the game with 20 bullets that can be replenished by collecting pistols strewn about the game world. Cavemen can be shot with ease while scorpions, tarantulas and snails are all too short to shoot while standing up and Harry is unable to shoot at all while ducking down. Poisonous frogs are prone to gunfire while in the air and snakes become vulnerable when they stop moving and arch their bodies up, allowing the player to line up a shot. Bats and birds can be shot down while jumping, but physics are changed from the first games; the player’s descending speed is faster than their ascending speed and their course can be completely reversed allowing the player to jump backwards in mid-air giving Pitfall Harry all the weight and inertia of an astronaut on the moon. The gun can inexplicably be fired while swimming underwater to shoot eels and fish, but cannot be discharged while swinging on ropes or climbing on ladders. Waterfall spurts can immobilise the player and drag them down to ground level while lava, spike pits, falling rocks and every other hazard mentioned prior will take away one of three lives upon contact much like the first game and eject him back to the moment before he died. Each time Harry re-enters the game he flashes to indicate momentary invincibility and once all lives are gone, the game starts over and the high-score is reset but this time, more lives can be accumulated by finding eyeballs in the game world or gaining a specific number of high-score points. Points can also be gained from acquiring important items, collecting gold bars and killing enemies, prioritising destruction and hoarding instincts in the player for them to attain success instead of survival reflexes or world building. It is worth noting that the Pitfall Harry of the Atari 2600 games could never resort to out and out violence.
Crystal balls can be collected to open up shortcuts marked with their corresponding symbols but most of these crucial items are invisible until the player reveals them by jumping in their general vicinity. This includes many other items such as spare pistols, lives, invincibility trinkets and items vital to the game’s completion. There are “Instant Travel” points that teleport the player into hidden caverns that house items crucial for the game’s completion, but there’s no way for a player to know where a travel point is until they have already jumped into it, or if it could be accessed again after being used once. In one case, there exists a travel point hidden inside a bird that looks exactly like enemy birds that would otherwise kill the player. The manual makes notes of almost all of these elements as though they were purposeful decisions, but there’s no contextual narrative excuse as to their presence. Rhonda’s balloon even makes a re-appearance, serving the same gameplay function as in the original Pitfall II with the same music cue intact but again, no story-related reason for how or why it exists.
Once Rhonda, Quickclaw and the Raj Diamond have all been acquired, the player must take a special route marked out by instant travel points to get back to where they started the game and find another hidden travel point that warps the player to a congratulations screen. If the player gathers enough gold bars, they will be presented with the chance to “try another world,” only for this ‘other world’ to be the exact same ‘world’ as before, only with every item in the game selectively spread to new and random areas of the map. Add to the character-freezing glitches and jumbled level design, the ludonarrative style of Super Pitfall appears at odds not only with its predecessors, but also with itself. The same goes for the PC-8801 port of Super Pitfall (Pony Inc., 1986), a more linear, more consistently designed experience that nonetheless seems to suffer similar narrative and gameplay inconsistencies. The other thing absent from the NES version is an utterly incongruous in-game market for purchasing items complete with signage and an employee at the vendor (Mia, 2007). Activision’s cancelled sequel Super Pitfall II, comprised of little more than a localised version of the three-year-old Japanese Famicom game, Atlantis No Nazo (Sunsoft, 1986), an otherwise unconnected adventure themed game. The only relation to the first Super Pitfall was that it was somehow even more mechanically obscure and stylistically inconsistent than before. The game was scheduled for release in 1989, but never saw a release. A true sequel would not see the light of day for another five years.
THE MAYAN ADVENTURE
Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure (Redline Games, 1994) was released for many home consoles (Fig.4) including the Super Nintendo, Sega Mega Drive, Atari Jaguar and later, Game Boy Advance. The story this time concerns Pitfall Harry’s son, Harry Jr., a “hip 18-year old,” “with a bit of an attitude,” who grew up with a similar adventurous legacy to his father and brings across his personality with the occasional exclamation of “Whoa!” Both have travelled to the “Heartland of the Mayan Empire” in Central America searching for “The Lost Treasure of Uaxactun” (The Nintendo Wiki, 2005), with every facet of the game from locations to hostiles referring to very real Mayan locations, entirely romanticised and picturesque in their depiction here. Everything from background details to character animations and sound design evoke an adventurous mood along with more imbued elements of ancient magic, especially with the main antagonist, Zakelua, an evil warrior spirit defeated thousands of years ago returned from lost memory who kidnaps Harry Jr.’s father, forcing him to trudge through jungles, mines, rapids and temple ruins, each full of challenges and hazards more taxing than the last.
Harry Jr.’s physical prowess is much more versatile than that of his father’s: as well as swinging on vines and being able to tank multiple losses from a health meter before losing a life, he can crawl, climb ropes, pull levers, jump off bungee cords, ride inside runaway mine carts while changing tracks to make up for the lack of brakes, jump around on “skate carts”, cross pegs, use select parts of the environment as a trampoline and speed down zip-lines. Input has a realistic delay but comes with generous and unnatural physics that allow for mid-jump course correction. Following in the footsteps of Super Pitfall, confrontation with foes both hostile and blameless in The Mayan Adventure is entirely permitted in order for the player to make progress. Snapping crocodiles make a return from the first game, retaining the same gameplay function and with them come swift jaguars, swooping hawks, slinking snakes, wild boars, leaping monkeys, stone gargoyles, ghosts skeletons, fire-wielding “Chaac” spirits and in a skewed reference to the original game, pits that literally open and close in timed intervals.
Where Super Pitfall occasionally encouraged players to conserve their munitions and featured foes that couldn’t be shot, The Mayan Adventure forces players into conflict rather than letting them carefully navigate around them especially in the regular mandatory battles with stronger predators and deities, rewarding them with high-score points for killing just as Super Pitfall did. The level design retains a few branching pathways to incentivise exploration akin to the original games, but the way forward is still quite forcibly linear. Harry Jr. can hold multiple weapons that can be switched between at any time, a multi-faceted sling that he can use as a whip for close range or to toss rocks he finds and puts in his sack. He can also wind up shots for more effectiveness and use it while jumping. Other weapons include exploding stones that eliminate all hostile animals onscreen and a powerful boomerang that must be recovered after each throw before it disappears.
The game’s sense of mysticism extends not only to the timed bonus worlds that grant rewards for completing a quick challenge, but also to the collectibles. These include a Time Keeper that temporarily freezes time after being touched, a Chili Pepper that endows Harry Jr. with super strength and speed, a Sacred Heart that restores a portion of lost health, a Location Idol that inexplicably points the player towards the direction in which the game continues as well as acting as a recovery point should the player lose a life and finally, a Golden Idol that grants the player an extra life. Amassing coins, jewelry and bars adds gold points, 50 of which also grant an extra life, explicitly encouraging the collection of trinkets despite the fact that the main objective of the game’s story has been established as Harry Jr. rescuing his father “before it’s too late”. This is said in the manual even though there is no imposed time limit whatsoever.
No motive is given for the acquisition of the lost treasure of Uaxactun hat was referred to at the beginning of the game, be it to wrest it away from those who would seek to exploit it, to preserve and archive it for future generations or even simply to attain wealth and fame from its discovery. In fact, the treasure is never referenced or referred to a single time more after the game’s opening text crawl. Not even after Zakuela is defeated and Harry Jr.’s father is rescued is any treasure talked about or heard of again. Harry Sr.’s role is revealed to be an anticlimactic call-back to the series’ own history, played entirely for laughs, as he is depicted to be exactly as he was rendered by Atari graphics hardware in the original Pitfall games down to the very last pixel. But even that isn’t the end.
There are letters scattered throughout the levels for the player to collect, which all spell out the game’s title when presented at the end screen and make no contribution to Harry Jr. reclaiming his trophy of a father. If the player ignores the letters however, the game chastises the player anyway until they collect them all, the reward being the opportunity to, “take a photo to document [their] triumph”. So far then, the Pitfall series has transitioned to a ludonarrative style that despite still adhering strongly to its swashbuckling forebears, has the player partake in empty and arduous tasks, asking them to see the task’s completion as the reward in and of itself, while conditioning them to accept the simplest and most basic context to explain away all the actions and choices they make. As long as the player is allowed to topple gods, steal treasures and destroy everything along their path towards moral validation though, that’s all that matters. This theme of ludonarrative style would persist into Harry Jr.’s jump into 3D.
BEYOND THE JUNGLE
Pitfall 3D: Beyond the Jungle (Luxoflux, 1998) was released for the PlayStation in 1998, a time when movies were a driving inspiration for many game designers of the time. Majek (2011) relates, “Since the 90’s, games have continued to cinematicize their gameplay with continually improved rendering, texturing, and modelling, as well as the now wide-spread use of voice-acting” (p.6). Gallagher (2014) elaborates that developers of this time “were captivated by the idea that games could become a storytelling medium to rival cinema, and the combination of save game facilities and CDs (which afforded room to pack games with recorded music, speech samples and pre-rendered videos and images) catalysed a swath of narrative-driven single-player epics” (para.4). Zimmerman observes this as, “suffering from a peculiar case of cinema envy” (p.157). All of this is evident with Pitfall 3D from the comic book slideshow interludes to the in-depth backstories laid out by the instruction manual and prominent voice-work by actor Bruce Campbell as Pitfall Harry Jr. This particular Pitfall game leans more heavily towards science fiction with talk of pseudo-galactic tribes, power hungry dictators and dimension hopping (Fig.5). The story begins with Pitfall Harry Jr. exploring the South American jungle hoping to find a path to fame and fortune, when he finds a glowing blue crystal resting inside a cave. As he picks it up, he is called through an inter-dimensional rift by a “cute little monk” called Mira to help save the fictitious Moku civilisation from a being known as The Scourge; she has used molten lava to tamper with the “Lucense” life energy over many years of her life to manipulate wildlife, build an army, imprison the Moku people in their own city under a “force dome” and finally, invade Earth using a cross-dimensional gateway. No sooner has Harry Jr. jumped at the promise of “beautiful girl, suicide mission,” he is ordered to break into the prison complex and free Mira and the prisoners so they can cut off The Scourge’s energy influx, storm her fortress and defeat her once and for all.
This being 3D, Harry Jr. can now move in eight directions on the ground and though he can’t crawl, he can roll while crouching. He exhibits an unnatural stop-start sense of stiff movement while running, jumping or swinging on vines while being able to control the path of his jump in mid-air yet again. The only time he experiences momentum is while floating inside “Lucense spills”. Harry Jr. now wields a pickaxe as his close range weapon of choice, which he can swing while running, crouching and jumping. He can also use the pick to grab to jump and swing between hovering power rings, travel along zip rings and lift himself up and onto ledges, but only by using a designated hoist ring. Harry Jr. can also switch between more power-ups than ever including a flash bomb that destroys every enemy on screen, a remote time bomb, a lightning ball that independently circles and protects Harry from enemies for a short time, a ranged boomerang that returns to the player each time it is used, the ability to rain lava bombs from the sky, a power boost that fells all enemies with a single pick swing and at last, an orb that pummels any nearby foe simply called, “It”.
Harry faces foes such as the old scorpion standbys along with homing fireballs, swiftly flying and impaling “darters”, the nimble and monkey-like “Papwa-Ipo” that hurl projectiles from a distance, “demonic” floating Imp heads that knock Harry around, biting demon bats that can pick Harry up and place him somewhere else, rocky humanoid “rollers” that lunge towards Harry at any chance they get, the werewolf-like “Bornswags”, the ground-burrowing rock throwing Earth Soldiers, the fire infused “Magmoid”, the floating “Fire Djinn” and more opening and closing pits from The Mayan Adventure. Harry Jr. has a health bar again which can now be extended by exchanging any blue crystals he’s collected at a “Health Station”. Gold bars are worth ten crystals. When the health bar is depleted, Harry will lose a life and teleport back to the last Moku symbol he touched, much like the Incas Healing Stations from Pitfall II only without the narrative context. The presence of directional markers to point the way, designated jumping spots, prominent level exits and floating memory cards for saving the game in case the player runs out of lives along with rotating blades, linear environment design and automated turrets that constantly fire rockets into walls, makes this game’s ludonarrative style feel less like a daring guerilla uprising and more like an elaborate obstacle course.
Mira is described as being born into leadership with resourcefulness and combat prowess in spades (Cheat Code Central, 1999). She’s the one giving orders to Harry, the one who fronts the assault on The Scourge’s fortress and though she is captured again after being freed, breaks out at the last minute to hold The Scourge down so the player can deal the killing blow. At the end of the story however, Mira is sucked through the portal to Earth with Harry Jr., cutting her off indefinitely from her native land, beset in a world she doesn’t understand, as the trophy for a man she can barely claim to have any knowledge of or feelings for. Harry ends up taking all the credit in his closing monologue, saying “It was worth it; I went home with the girl,” as though saving an entire home planet from imminent annihilation wasn’t enough motivation for the player. The manual attests that Harry Jr. is going through an arc as he initially sees this as an opportunity to “spread his reputation” only to start “opening his heart and falling in love with Mira,” but this arc is not evident in any of the comic cutscene dialogue and the two share absolutely no visible chemistry along their quest.
With the scrappy resistance and evil conquering warlord, Pitfall 3D’s ludonarrative style also appears desperate in justifying the player’s killing of enemies and ransacking of treasures, even more so than in The Mayan Adventure or Super Pitfall. For example, the Scourge has “enslaved” every foe the player slays anyway and for moral convenience, Lucense is split into two polarised colours, which doubles as a way to differentiate hazards from everything else while also simplifying a completely binary conflict into blue equals good and red equals bad. So, acts that would be framed as selfish and destructive out of context are framed here as morally righteous and vital to survival under such conditions especially since for the third time, extra lives are attained through a high-score system which is increased by killing enemies and collecting treasures. This would imply that for players to free the land from tyrannical rule they must keep killing and amassing riches to maintain their vitality. The whole story presented in the PlayStation version is functionally excised from the heavily abridged Game Boy Colour version aside from level locations and an endgame appearance from The Scourge, but it all hinges upon high-scores anyway.
THE LOST EXPEDITION
Pitfall: The Lost Expedition was released for the Sony PlayStation 2, Nintendo Gamecube, Wii (as Pitfall: The Big Adventure), Xbox (Edge of Reality, 2004) and Game Boy Advance (Torus Games, 2004) after another long series hibernation, with many differences between versions but also with plenty of similarities: both start with a brand new Pitfall Harry in the 1930s with a team of explorers on a cargo plane looking for the legendary city of El Dorado. The plane is struck down by a storm leaving everyone scattered over the Aztec jungles and mountains. Both plots involve an evil shaman named Pusca and his scheme to travel back in time to the city he was banished from so he can conquer it with the Spanish invaders he conspired with. They both involve a fellow explorer called Nicole looking for her father, who was working with Pusca to find the city before he was killed by his magic. Harry is tasked with exploring an open world, hunting down relics that allow him to travel back in time to El Dorado and save it before Pusca gets there first. Both also involve Quickclaw, making his return from Pitfall II as a jaguar cursed with the alienating power of speech, determined to help Harry in his adventure.
Regardless of the version one plays, Pitfall Harry hasn’t displayed physical feats so superhuman since his appearance on The Saturday Supercade TV series. With double jumping, spin kicking, running at lightning speeds over lava, destroying precious stone monuments with a single punch, rolling around curled up like a ball and able to whisk ever-burning torches in and out of his backpack without the flame snuffing or engulfing him, the cartoonish physics and suspension of disbelief at play make events feel more in line with a Hanna-Barbera cartoon. Harry gains these abilities and more in either version by collecting scattered pages of the Hero’s Journal through the levels within the hub-based overworld in exchange for treasures he finds scattered around each world area. He also has to find and rescue stranded teammates that were scattered and injured in the plane crash, but not because they provide emotional fulfilment or are vital to the mission, but because they often have something in their possession that the player requires in order to make progress. Penenberg (2013) succinctly regales the words of Bogost and the effect that “exploitationware” can have on a game, in that “friends are not friends; they are mere resources” (p.2). In the case of The Lost Expedition’s ludonarrative style, Harry’s allies become objective-based accessories as opposed to characters in their own right.
The home console version (Fig.6) differs in that once Harry has completed the local tribe’s initiation rites (after pummeling their natives into submission in several incidents beforehand) he can partake in “ancient games of skill”. These are basic side-activities that award idols at the highest difficulty, turning the console version’s jungle setting into more of an adventure themed play center than a world with a tangible sense of life and agency. There are also pieces of equipment unique to this version such as a gas mask that allows Harry to pass through noxious fumes, a canteen that lets Harry store water from springs that can revive portions of his health meter, an inflatable dinghy that lets him slide down cliff faces, a shield that acts as a river raft allowing him to float on water and TNT which is the only defense against strong adversaries and thick walls.
Regular Pitfall animal foes include scorpions, bats, eels and crocodiles that can still be used as stepping-stones but will attack if Harry swims near them in the water. Piranhas also patrol the waters and wait to strike, poisonous plants expel poisonous gas that will kill Harry if he isn’t wearing a gas mask, howler monkeys will attack if awakened by the player forgetting to tiptoe around them, mega monkey babies will try to grab on to Harry prompting the rage of their mother who can only be properly defeated with TNT, penguins will snap at the player if they steer Harry too close to their egg nest, snow scarabs that drop snowballs from above, swinging monkeys that leap at Harry whenever the player is trying to make a tricky jump and Porcupines that shoot quills from a long range. The inclusion of “Pit Monsters” began with The Mayan Adventure as a visual misinterpretation of what were actually supposed to be tar pits and quicksand in the original game. In The Lost Expedition they appear to have gained a set of teeth as well. Indigenous “babbling” natives are also an abundant threat, especially in the Game Boy Advance version; some hide in foliage, some wear giant masks for protection, some camouflage themselves in snow before charging, some spin in circles while carrying a sharp blades, some carry TNT, some carry stink bombs and others throw watermelons. Adding to the rather questionable depictions of these human natives is the fact that in the home console version, some natives are different to the ones that sell items because their eyes don’t glow red.
Harry starts out characterised in the story as a smug lovelorn egotist constantly belittling and hitting on Nicole while blatantly failing to win her affections, before gradually opening up in the many dialogue heavy cutscenes and diary journal entries to become more honest, respectful and deeply aware of his own shortcomings with a desire to improve upon those flaws. This is brought about by his relationship with Quickclaw and also when he’s forced to confront and regale the terrible fate of Nicole’s father. Both versions end with Nicole as the damsel in distress and Harry as the hero who “gets the girl” so to speak and though there is logical and progressive build-up to that point, their relationship is still indicative of male dominated demographic catering, if the alarmingly buxom female character designs weren’t a large enough giveaway.
The game’s focus on attaining mastery over labyrinthine traps, exchanging treasures to strengthen physicality, killing animals as well as human natives and destroying wildlife to complete objectives, along with the aforementioned activity center styled “ancient games,” frames the world as something not to be explored and understood, but to be “beaten”; with a ludonarrative style that revolves entirely around the player and makes them feel like an indisputably important figure of heroism who is told they can do no wrong, even when they are. In the home console version, Harry is literally prophesied to be the chosen one who will save an ancient city for a second time in two installments. Most combat can be avoided as it was with the first Pitfall games, but combat is still ever-present. The other element that sets the console versions apart is that not every upgrade is required for the game to be beaten, but just with The Mayan Adventure’s endgame, the game pesters the player to complete everything anyway, rewarding them with secret access to emulations of the first two Pitfall games.
PITFALL!
Pitfall was “rebooted” (The Blast Furnace, 2012) for download on touch-based storefronts (Fig.7), Android and iOS App Store that features a mountainous pile of mechanics and nary a cutscene cinematic or expository text booklet to be found. Heier (2015) outlines Activision’s eagerness to tap into the “freemium” market, “The model is structured so that developers release the core functionality of their games for free, while offering upgrades, features and additional content for a price with in-app purchases” (p.2), “it is estimated that Candy Crush Saga makes $1,000,000 per day from in-app purchases” (p.5). This choice for the Pitfall franchise to follow in the stride of Candy Crush Saga (King, 2012) and the like is reflected visibly (Fig.7) through the ludonarrative style of this latest instalment. Prompted to “anger the volcano god” by his tablet device and forced to run from a volcano’s fiery wrath, Harry must run, dodge, jump, slide, whip, swing, cart-ride and motorcycle his way past obstacles to cover as much ground as he can before an inevitable errant mistake brings their escapade to a sudden end. Players tilt their device and swipe their fingers on the screen up, down, left and right to guide and control all of these actions as he automatically runs forwards into danger.
Crocodiles can either be jumped over or incapacitated by tapping the screen to lash Harrys whip at them, but snakes and scorpions must be felled in any case. The only things he must avoid at all costs are spike traps, falling rocks, walls, fireballs and sheer cliff drops. The action moves faster when Harry finds a bike and becomes much more controlled when he finds a mine cart. Neither of these vehicles will last and will become unavoidably out of commission before long, forcing Harry to continue his run on foot.
So in the heat of gameplay, this game’s ludonarrative style gives off more focused adventure film homage with naturalistic sound design, a constant pace of high action and as Chris Plante observes, “incessant brassy action film score making every run feel like the climax of a Spielberg film” (Plante, 2012). However, it’s when the player starts hankering for another round of endless running that a different intent is revealed. Zimmerman would say that, “There are as many approaches to the question of “games and stories” as there are designers, artists, technologists, and academics asking the questions. The truth, of course, is that there are no right or wrong approaches” (p.155). Though Pitfall’s ludonarrative style isn’t necessarily “wrong”, it certainly does not follow through on its apparent Spielberg homage.
Players are able to amass two forms of currency in this new Pitfall game: silver bars are collected during each play session as they run along the beaten path and are spent on performance enhancing assistances and obscenely expensive alternate outfits that must be worn on certain days to reap daily rewards. For those who opt to bypass collecting bars and forgo playing the game entirely, they can acquire those items faster by spending real money on the second currency: gems. If the player runs for long enough, they will reach a checkpoint, but they are forced to spend more gems to unlock each one and even then, the player will need to buy a Macaw Token from the store to use that checkpoint at all, but only once; the instant a Macaw Token is spent, the player must part with even more currency for another one and thus the cycle begins anew. Completing two minute long Relic Rush challenges nets the player one gem for free but if the player fails mid-run, they have the option to continue from the exact spot where they stumbled which happens to also cost one gem. The alternative that allows the player to not spend any money or currency is much more tedious; they must travel the entire distance of the course to get back to the checkpoint they already cleared before they fail again in trying to do so. But for all of the distance they cover, the player can never hope to escape the volcano’s wrath; the road travelled by Harry stays exactly the same, hazards and all and there are a seemingly finite number of checkpoints to mark progress, giving off only the illusion of finality. But those checkpoints will only multiply in population as the player keeps running and new paths will be generated every time. Even in the time trial based Relic Rush mode that features definite start points and end points, true completion of the entire game is impossible.
So what we have here is a ludonarrative style that rewards those who pay up with short bursts of high adventure and punishes those who don’t by forcing them to partake in monotonous busywork, in which acquisition of treasures is fulfilled so the player can purchase the right to continue playing the game itself and to keep acquiring treasures on more playthroughs, feeding into an endlessly tantalising and repetitive cycle. As established by Ducheneaut and associate writers (2006), such a game “begins with almost instant gratification but, as soon as the player masters the initial tasks and they become trivial, they are replaced by slightly more difficult tasks — along with the promise of better rewards (e.g. more skills, travel to new zones, etc).. Before long one-click rewards disappear and players find themselves spending dozens of hours trying to obtain a new sword, or spending “just a few more minutes” to reach the next level” (p.409). They liken the outcome to “playing pinball in a crowded arcade, where spectators gather around the machine to observe the best players” (p.413). This skinner box approach to convex difficulty design as a measure of player success, was implemented as far back in the Pitfall franchise as The Mayan Adventure and negatively compared to Campbell’s (1949) “monomythic” narrative template (p.28) by Higham, as implied by the very title of his New Media Journal article, “Stop Putting the Hero’s Journey into a Skinner Box” (para.1). With the play mechanics of Pitfall so intent on creating a repetitive time sink to feed coin into just to make one’s own number go higher than anyone else’s, there’s little the treasure hoarding jungle adventure window dressing can hide.
The spinoff game formed as a sponsored contest for Kellog’s Krave cereal (The Blast Furnace, 2014) ironically features no secondary currencies or micro-transactions in its ludonarrative style, opting instead for chocolate pieces that can be collected and spent on temporary powers. It also features a more standard level-by-level structure using the same swipe-centric automated running gameplay and a more defined narrative: Pitfall Harry retrieves a giant idol from a tribe of savage Krave monsters synonymous with the cereal but the pieces are scattered along crucial paths forcing Harry to retrieve them before he is overwhelmed by the chocolate cannibal cretins.
CONCLUSION
Now that the entire Pitfall canon has been examined for its shift in ludonarrative style, it shall be directly compared with the events surrounding it to find the possible root of Zimmerman’s “collective dissatisfaction with the current state of the game-story” (p.163). Activision was born of a creatively independent ideology and, as Montfort and Bogost (2009) put it, “a distinctively non-Atari corporate identity” that gave due credit to hard working designers and programmers (p.100). Demographics were broad and vague, to the point that people like O’Riada (2007) would compare the broadness of the Atari 2600 “fad” to “Rubik’s Cubes or yo-yos” (p.2). Writers like Tuckle (1984) were even recognising the cornerstones of “ludonarrative styles” two decades before Zimmerman, simply by observing a girl in a café trying to master a game of Asteroids (Logg, 1979), ”The holding power of video games, their almost hypnotic fascination, is computer holding power and something else as well. At the heart of the computer culture is the idea of constructed, “rule-governed” worlds” (p.67). This was reflected in the ways that third parties followed in the wake of the first two Pitfall games with such intelligently designed, emotionally nuanced systems as Utopia (Daglow, 1981), the first environmentally conscious god game before either SimCity (Wright, 1989) or Populous (Molyneux, 1989), the quietly innovative Campaign ’84 (Sunrise Software Inc., 1983) that extracted child-like humor exaggerating American presidential policies into everyday trivialities, and Atlantis (Koble, 1982), a sci-fi turret defense shooter that used high-scores as a measure of how many citizens were evacuated from the doomed underwater city.
Nintendo resurrected the console market, they put a cap on third party releases and in doing so, shut out many artists and designers, according to Chopra (2001) : “To get the Seal of Approval essentially meant relinquishing all control of a game to Nintendo…now they could make a lot of money from the fruits of other companies’ labor, with very little effort on their part. All because of good brand image and aggressive business policies” (p.3). Sheff (1999) details another one of Nintendo’s tricks: “The lock-out chip and Nintendo’s monopoly of the industry interfered with competitive pricing, allowing Nintendo to control the supply and prices of cartridges available to consumers” (p.250). This is despite games of many levels of qualities being approved for release anyway, the likes of which often required hints from Nintendo Power magazine or an advisory hotline to complete, all of which in Kline’s (2003) opinion, was “one long Nintendo advertisement” to the point of, ”bordering on the insidious” (p.120). Li (2010) even goes as far as to describe Nintendo as a toy company, “As Nintendo is a traditional manufacturer of making playing cards and flower cards…the “toy” image of videogame was even stronger. This image limited the development of Famicom and Nintendo as well.” (p.96).
Jenkins (1998) says that the biggest of this company’s “limitations” was their marketing bias towards young males: “Some games have always been attractive to girls as well as boys, although they were not explicitly targeted for the girl’s market…girls were an incidental part of the intended market-a luck byproduct rather than a consciously pursued demographic” (p.9). This as Lien argues, demonstrably “created something of a chicken-and-egg situation,” in regards to gender appeal and competitive marketing (Lien, 2013).
On top of Nintendo’s enforcements, Ernkvist (2008) argues that “Decreased entry barriers, diminished opportunities for differentiation and liabilities of newness and smallness might not have created a full-blown crash if it had not been accompanied by disruptive technology in the form of the home computer” in reference to the console market crash of 1983 (p.186). Inevitably, many developers including David Crane himself, jumped ship to personal computer platforms, which many designers had been using prior as a canvas to re-appropriate complex pen and paper narrative systems made famous by Dungeons & Dragons (Gygax, 1974), eventually allowing the very first Action Role Playing Games series such as Ultima (Garriot, 1981) and Graphic Adventures like Mystery House (On-Line Systems, 1982) to flourish. Kent (2010) links this sudden migration to the success of the Commodore 64, “Unlike Atari and Coleco…Commodore sold hardware profitably and did nothing to discourage outside software development…every time a developer created a good program, he created a new reason for people to buy a Commodore computer” (p.260).
PCs quickly became the narrative platform of choice with the release of Elite (Bell, 1984), Jet Set Willy (Smith, 1984), Maniac Mansion (Gilbert, 1987) and David Crane’s own Little Computer People (Crane, 1985). As for everyone else, Hadzinsky (2014) describes in great detail Nintendo’s silent influence on how companies developed their games: “They had to be of the highest quality and meet the approval of critics and users alike…developers starting using the term “AAA” to refer to these blockbuster projects…the term has become more synonymous with big-budget than with its original definition…companies believe that pouring money into development is the way to bring in big revenues” (p.16) ”if a producer is going to spend hundreds of millions of dollars developing a game, they need to be sure that people are going to like it and buy it. This results in a lack of innovation as companies rely on replicating games that have sold well in the past. While consumers continue buying these games because they have the brand-name that they are familiar with, this repetitive process has many yearning for something more“ (p.17–18).
Before console crash of 1983, the term “gamer” according to Peterson (2014) was only ever applied to those who hunted animals for “game” or played “wargame” simulations (Market for Gamers section, para.2). Today, Golding (2015) summarises the “gamer” as, “an identity still tied up in ideas of otherness, outsider status and masculinity” and furthermore, “When the playing of video games moved beyond the niche the industry had always targeted, the gamer identity did not adapt. It remained uniformly stagnant and immobile”. “For decades, the gamer was told by advertising, branding and, most importantly, by gamers themselves, that they were the lords of their domain” (Gamer Identity section, para.3). Some of the biggest brands as PlayStation (Sony, 2015) and Call of Duty (Activision Blizzard, 2015) implicitly chose not to associate with gamers, instead referring to their audience as “Players” (Fig.8) and “Video Game Fans” respectively. Even if it doesn’t fully rationalise Zimmerman’s “dissatisfaction with game-stories,” (p.161) we at least have a suspicion for why Harry grew a moustache for a Nintendo release.
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