Machines for living
Part III.
Get Good: Meritocratic Ideals in Game Design
In sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s The Logic of Practice, the concept of habitus is defined as: “[s]ystems of durable, transposable dispositions, structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures, that is, as principles which generate and organize practices and representations that can be objectively adapted to their outcomes without presupposing a conscious aiming at ends or an express mastery of the operations necessary in order to attain them” (Bourdieu 1990).
​
In other words, “habitus” has come to encompass all of the deeply ingrained mental habits, skills, classifications, actions, and dispositions we have come to acquire from our life experiences; it takes the form of an embodied “feel” for how to navigate social situations and environments. These intuitions can be so deeply ingrained that we can mistake it for being naturally-occuring, rather than culturally-developed. Different social fields, or arenas, of our lives (such as academic institutions, professional workplaces, hobbyist communities) may or may not overlap, but have their own unique sets of rules that require their own habitus ("Habitus: Pierre Bourdieu").
​
Habitus is built up through mimesis, or imitation, of the real world through mediums such as art and literature, and its very existence serves as the basis for the reproduction of the prevailing social structure.
We’ve seen how game design can reproduce reality, but how do AAA games influence the way we engage with it?
​
Knowing what we know now about how video games imitate certain dimensions of the real world, it is not too far of a stretch to presuppose that these virtual imitations, and the act of habitual gaming itself, forms a mimesis that creates a
GAMER HABITUS.
But what are the qualities of this GAMER HABITUS? What habits, dispositions, and ways of being are used in and reinforced by popular games?
The reproduction of meritocracy
In 2018, media critic Christopher Paul authored The Toxic Meritocracy of Video Games: Why Gaming Culture is the Worst. An avid gamer since childhood, Paul is understandably upset with the recent downturn of a vocal subset of gamer culture — one that bullies and “trolls” others for not being within a certain norm, opinion, or gender — that views itself as objectively correct and beyond reproach. He says that these feelings of superiority and competition are cultivated and reinforced in large part by nearly-universal elements of Western game design that transmit meritocratic ideals.
​
Meritocracy is most often seen in the “American Dream” narrative: if you work hard enough, regardless of the structural barriers you may face due to your race, gender, orientation, disability, etc., you can “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” and succeed (Paul 2018:10). Meritocratic ideals rely on smoothing over structural inequalities and making each individual responsible for their own success or failure; this leads to billionaires-by-birth feeling as though they have “succeeded” in life and have the necessary skill and savvy to dictate the lives of the hundreds of millions of people under their boot, or to the attitude that people living in poverty will somehow suffer if they were to receive “handouts.” Paul says that meritocracy “is predicated on inequality of character and effort,” and the ideological drive behind it is “to sort people based on their ability and talents” (108). In a meritocratic social system, an individual’s placement within the social hierarchy is dependent upon their own talent and effort, and does not recognize the influence of existing social class or wealth (12). While meritocracies are meant to be a “just” way to make decisions, in the real world it is nearly impossible to properly isolate and judge one’s merit, due to “structural biases that create an inequality of opportunities” (13).
​
By designing games to be fair and balanced, each player has only themselves to blame when they fail to complete an objective; this idea is reinforced by leveling mechanics that evaluate the player’s merit and reward systems that affirm their superiority over other players. Regardless of its permutability to the real world, when the message of “If you’re strong enough, you can beat the boss and save the princess” is pushed enough times, in enough ways, across all genres of video games, it is perfectly reasonable to expect that the GAMER HABITUS is one that views predetermined success as the direct result of one’s own efforts. In justifying this ingrained disposition, common “gamer” behaviors such as grinding and 100%ing (completionism) are encouraged and duly rewarded. Christopher Paul believes that video games, with their blend of narrative and game design, form the perfect meritocratic rhetoric. Each of the below images will reveal more information about how this is accomplished.
Fair and Balanced Gameplay
Contemporary AAA games, despite the multitude of different stories and worlds they offer, are usually designed around a consistent set of expectations: balance, fairness, skill, and rewarding time investment (as opposed to money, like in pay-to-win games) in order to advance (Paul 2018:93). While each aspect makes sense from a design standpoint, their ubiquitous use in AAA games creates a “specific way of thinking about symbol systems in games” (94). In practice, Western video games develop formal and informal rules to limit the role of any outside agents, often banning particular characters, teams, or stages in certain phases of online play, or practicing competitive matchmaking by pairing up similarly-skilled players, all in an effort to “level the playing field” and minimize the effect of prior status or luck (95). As a result, when a player “wins” in this environment, they are lead to believe that they are the most talented and, as most self-fulfilling prophecies do, overlook the structural or technical inequalities that contributed to their victory. Players who find themselves at the bottom of a leaderboard feel compelled to play "one more game" to try and improve their status, while those at the top become obsessed with maintaining their own superiority signifiers.
Games that are not balanced are criticized as being “broken,” since a player can’t effectively metagame, the process of parsing out the rules of the game in order to come up with the best, most foolproof strategy (95). Such gamer frustration can be observed in the Japanese-developed racing game, Mario Kart. The infamous “blue shell” item can be obtained and deployed by players who are near the back of the pack, sending an explosive surprise to whoever is in first place, often slowing them down to the point where they drop into second or third. Western players are bewildered by the blue shell, since it does not even benefit the person in last place as much as it does whoever is in second place, but Hideki Konno, one of Mario Kart’s designers, is appealing to a different kind of balance, “one based on keeping the game competitive and interesting for all, rather than on ensuring that the most meritorious player wins” (98).
The Protagonist
The driving narratives of most AAA games feature a central character who starts out weak, disgraced, or powerless, but who over the course of the game transforms into a capable, skilled hero. “As the player becomes more powerful, the character is also,” says Paul, “reflecting processes carefully wrapped in a narrative where those who are talented and who work hard become powerful and successful through their own individualized actions" (Paul 2018:104). Some examples from recent AAA games:
​
-
The Warden from Dragon Age: Origins: The prologue to this Bioware RPG allows the player to choose from six potential origins for the main character, each with their own personal conflict to overcome — human noble, human magi, city elf, dalish (nomadic) elf, dwarven commoner, or dwarven noble — that always culminates in the character being inducted into the legendaric Order of the Grey Wardens, who defend the continent of Thedas from breakouts of darkspawn (Dragon Age’s zombies). It is implied that the Warden survives the Joining — an infamous ritual where a Warden recruit must drink corrupted darkspawn blood in order to be “forever connected” to the abominations — due to their skill, constitution, and spirit. No matter the criminal or poverty-ridden upbringing the Warden hails from, they achieve mythical status by the end of Origins through their own efforts to recruit useful party members and broker powerful alliances.
-
Lara Croft from Tomb Raider: Lara is an English archaeologist whose 2013 origin story was reworked to portray her as an inexperienced graduate who had to survive a violent shipwreck and her imprisonment on a dangerous island before becoming a successful treasure hunter, rather than being raised with her extraordinary skills as a privileged young aristocrat or the daughter of a prominent archaeologist, as she had been in earlier iterations of the franchise.
-
Aloy from Horizon: Zero Dawn: Nearly a thousand years after self-replicating machines eliminated all life on Earth, remaining human populations live in isolationist hunter-gatherer societies. Aloy lived as an outcast from the Nora tribe since birth, for unknown reasons, and the first act of the game covers Aloy’s twelve-year training for the Proving, a ritual where youths must prove themselves as full-fledged members of the Nora. After a rival tribe massacres most of Nora’s warriors, the newly-inducted Aloy is anointed as a Seeker, and is tasked with stopping the rival tribe. Although later in the game Aloy’s lineage is tied to the events that sterilized the Earth, the story and characters of Horizon emphasize that Aloy earned her place among the Nora on her own, and in the face of great odds and prejudice.
These meritocratic “self-made” narratives are not only easier for players to identify with and feel empowered by, but establish worlds where “all players are asked to play by the same rules,” allowing for one to distinguish between the skilled and the unskilled (106). The responsibility to “get good” falls upon the player, lest they be responsible for the death of the character they’ve come to identify with, resulting in a blood-red Game Over/Mission Failed/You Have Died screen. While reality provides less assurances that hard work will be satisfyingly recognized, video game narratives promise the protagonist that persistence will be rewarded.
Leveling
Leveling, or the progression to the next tier of experience by way of accumulating points from in-game activities, serves an important design purpose when it comes to areas and abilities of the game that are accessible to the player at any given time. However, leveling is also a way of quantifying player effort into observable points and beats of character growth, thus driving an “underlying narrative of forward progress” (Paul 2018:106). The integration of new options allows for further character specialization, which allows players to better showcase their own abilities. Leveling can take many forms of achievement aside from levels themselves: there are points (experience, reputation, talent, redeemable), badges, leaderboards, and skins (rare customizable clothes or character appearances). There is one game series that comes readily to mind regarding leveling:
​
-
The Pokémon franchise: In any classic Pokémon game, you play as an ambitious young trainer who wants to catch and train a team of fictional creatures called Pokémon. In your journey to become “the very best,” your team battles other trainers’ teams, and you prove your mettle against established Gym Leaders spread throughout the region. Upon defeating a Gym Leader, the trainer is awarded a Gym Badge, which serves as a symbol of your skill and progress. Each of the player’s Pokémon has their own experience level, which is raised with each successful battle against another trainer or Pokémon found in the wild; some Pokémon, upon reaching a certain level or some other quantifiable factor (such as “happiness,” which is directly related to how much the player feeds or battles with them), will “evolve,” or metamorphosize, into a more advanced species. Pokemon who are at their final evolution are considered to be stronger than those at the lowest evolutionary stage, and going into battle with the latter past a certain point in the game is seen as foolhardy or delusional.
With leveling, it is imperative that every player start from the same place. Because meritocracies seek to sort people based on their abilities, leveling introduces a transparent kind of inequality that is a result of player choice, rather than as a result of preexisting status. The former makes the noumena of a game fun, while the latter makes it soul-crushing (107). Leveling has become so omnipresent in games that it has fundamentally affected how players interact with one another, since levels and achievements demarcate levels of effort without necessarily taking into account that one player could be a high school sophomore, while another could be a mother of two children with a full-time job. This attitude could contribute to the perception among the toxic gaming subculture Paul is referring to that “video games are for boys,” despite the fact that women accounted for nearly 46% of all gamers in the United States in 2019 (Gough 2019). One can’t ever truly appreciate or reach full mastery of a video game unless they’ve reached this level, beat this boss, played this many hours, has this badge or this piece of equipment; this sense of superiority that the game instills in players who have reached these milestones is threatened by the enjoyment nevertheless experienced by a “casual” gamer, who cares about none of these things.
The ubiquity of these game design elements are made even more noticeable upon their absence; Undertale, a 2015 game made by indie developer Toby Fox, subverts and parodies the ideas of a hardscrabbling protagonist and the merits of advancement. Originally marketed as “The friendly RPG where nobody has to die,” the player controls a child (whose default name is “Frisk”) who has accidentally fallen into the Underground, a world of monsters separated from the child’s world by a magical barrier. When Frisk is first trying to find their way around, they meet a strange flower that encourages them to gain EXP and strengthen their soul through killing monsters in order to raise their LV, or LOVE. A unique feature about Undertale is that, as the player progresses through the Underworld, they can actually befriend almost every monster they encounter, choosing to spare them rather than attack. Ultimately, the game’s major conflicts can be resolved without violence, and the monsters can reintegrate with the humans on the surface while Frisk can choose to accept Toriel, the first monster they meet in the Underground, as their adoptive mother.
However, should the player follow the flower’s advice and seek to gain experience points and raise their LV/LOVE, presumed to be “level” by a virtually literate player, they will trigger what is colloquially known as the “Genocide Run”: the tone of the game shifts drastically as the remaining monsters warn each other about the merciless child; major events of the game are changed, and characters who would otherwise be Frisk’s friend attack them on sight. “EXP” is revealed to be “execution points” — “a way of quantifying the pain you have inflicted on others”— and “LOVE” to be “Level of Violence” — “a way of measuring someone’s capacity to hurt” (Kuryree 0:54). After killing quite literally everyone in the game, Frisk falls under the influence of the spirit of a previous fallen child, and ultimately destroys the universe with or without the player’s consent. If the Genocide Run is completed, all future playthroughs of the game will be permanently altered; even if the save file is deleted, the other characters remember bits and pieces of the choices the player made “in a past life.”
The way that Undertale breaks immersion and goes against the grain in terms of its unique design — subverting design elements that “go unquestioned in many games” — has earned it universal acclaim (Couture 2015). The way of playing the game that would normally reproduce a meritocratic ideology results in almost no rewards, and goes to great lengths to emphasize that growth comes at the expense of one’s morality, to the point where the player loses the ability to even control their own character’s actions.
Undertale is the opposite of a AAA game; it was crowdfunded through Kickstarter and made almost entirely by Toby Fox, who had little experience in game development but was “bored” by traditional RPGs, where all the monsters were the same and never expressed how they were feeling as individuals, and “there's no meaning to that” (Bogos 2013). Fox sought to blend the medium with the story, providing a much-needed looking-glass to gaming culture.
An Exceptional Exception
In an already individualist, competitive Western society, multimillion-dollar AAA games seek to gain the largest profit margin by appealing to the widest possible audience, using stories and mechanics that leverage a latent desire to be recognized and rewarded for our efforts. This meritocratic mimesis, over time, bleeds through our television screens and into our skulls; in other arenas of our lives, we seek every exploit, motivate ourselves through narrative overlay, and exhaust every possible avenue in order to be “the best.” GAMER HABITUS ascribes individual achievement (and individual failure) to individual skill, rather than the multitude of forces and structures that sow disadvantage or shower with opportunity. The built environment of video games simplifies certain parts of living on this rock in a controlled, meaningful environment, but in doing so teaches gamers to simplify real life, as well.
​
The last part of this investigation will briefly touch on evidence of this habitus at work in the physical world.