The Formal Qualities

of the Video Game: An

Exploration of Super
Mario Galaxy With
Gilles Deleuze
Colin Cremin
1
Abstract
Approaching the video game Super Mario Galaxy on the Nintendo Wii console using
Deleuzian concepts, the article identifies a series of formal qualities it is argued
pertain to all video games. Concepts from Gilles Deleuzes books on Francis Bacon
and cinema are appropriated for this purpose. Three qualities in particular are
identified; they center on the role of the player in contributing to the finished form,
the nature of the players canvas, and the sensations that return back to the player
when traversing the video game field. It is argued that the concepts used to define
the formal qualities of the video game can be deployed to distinguish where a video
game succeeds or fails. On the basis of the position developed here, it is argued that
Super Mario Galaxy is a masterpiece of the form.
Keywords
affect, Deleuze, nintendo, rhizome, sensation
1
The University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
Corresponding Author:
Colin Cremin, The University of Auckland, Human Sciences Building, 10 Symonds Street, Auckland,
Private Bag 92019, Auckland 1142, New Zealand
Email: c.cremin@auckland.ac.nz
Games and Culture
7(1) 72-86
The Author(s) 2012
Reprints and permission:
sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/1555412012440309
http://gac.sagepub.com
Introduction
The theoretical mapping of concepts developed within one field or medium to
another has proven useful in the development of a conceptual language of the video
game. Rune Klevjer (1990), for example, explores the relationship between a video
game player and representation through Waltons Mimesis as Make-believe. This
described the way representations can enable us to perceive or imagine ourselves
in a novel, a painting, or a sculpture. The video game, it is argued, crosses a bound-
ary between the screen depiction and the player perception to create a tangible sense
of copresence. There is tangibility in a world-made miniature for a virtual avatar that
a player in-a-sense embodies.
1
Deleuzes work particularly lends itself to video game analysis with his focus on
nonrepresentation, affect, and movement.
2
In the paintings of Francis Bacon,
Deleuze finds a nonrepresentative presence. In cinema, Deleuze finds a perceptive
illusion of movement and time. An aim of this article is to demonstrate the value
of Deleuzes work for video game analysis by applying his specific concepts to the
medium. However, if video games are aesthetically distinct from other media, con-
cepts developed from an analysis of painting and cinema will need adapting.
Deleuzes mobile concepts are intended as pragmatic tools
3
; some will be adapted
here for the purposes of analyzing video games. So, the neologisms of this piece are
also intended as pragmatic concepts in motion.
Three distinctive and interrelated formal qualities of video games are proposed
and unpacked in sequence. First, that while the program is sold complete, the art
of the game designer or studio team is only fully realized and brought to life when
the player adds her contribution: the video game involves the collaboration of two
artists: designer-artist and player-artist
4
conceived here as ludo or play-creator and
ludo-apprentice. Their desires enter into assemblages with one another as the player
adds their force constitutive of a formal subcategory. Second, the ludo-creator
paints onto the video game canvas nonrepresentational patchesa fluid architec-
turegenerating the possibility for sensations, called a ludo-diagram. Third, friction
appears as an entity in itself in the video game. The friction-image enables the player
to sense the virtual world and its otherworldly dynamics and enter into proximities
with it.
These qualities are distilled from one game in particular, Super Mario Galaxy
5
(SMG) on the Nintendo Wii console (Dir: Yoshiaki Koizumi, Nintendo EAD Tokyo,
2007). SMG is very much otherworldly; it is an impossible space that the player
inhabits. It is a rich, varied, and rewarding game, and, alongside its sequel, the most
critically acclaimed video game of the current generation of consoles,
6
winning the
2009 British Academy of Film and Television Arts award for best video game
against competition from Grand Theft Auto 4 (Rockstar, 2008) and Call of Duty 4
(Infinity Ward, 2007). But a game of such complexity differs from those conceived
in the early period, where technical limitations impeded the form, and from more
narrative-based games today. So the task in this article is to strip SMG to its essence
Cremin 73
and identify formal qualities that can be found in all video games irrespective of
genre, complexity, or technological sophistication. Narrative, for example, is not
a vital quality of all video games so even though vital to some is not included
as a category here. The concepts while not presumed to be exhaustive of the
medium can be utilized to judge the quality of every video game prior to consid-
erations about the quality of graphics, sound, representation, and so on relative to
genre. The critical value of this approach is touched on in the conclusion.
Interpreting the Video Game
Words such as technology (see Crogan & Kennedy, 2008), pleasure, immersion, and
interaction (Ermi & Mayra, 2005; Kerr, Kucklich, & Brereton, 2006; Dovey &
Kennedy, 2006; Kiousis, 2002) are often found in video game analysis. Wilson
(no date reference found in original source) considers whether the player interpas-
sively enjoys a video game, what Slavoj Z

izek (1997, p. 112) refers to as the object

that enjoys on our behalf. Nick Dyer-Witheford (esp. with Dyer-Witheford & de
Peuter, 2009) has developed a theoretically rich and informative account of the video
game business. However, it seems that an analysis of the video game is incomplete
without an exploration of the capacity it generates for (virtual) play.
The quality of a video game is often judged according to how playable it is.
7
The video game is like a playground and the players are the online, offline, and
computer-generated opponents competing within a striated space, the delineations
of the programs code. Deleuze and Guattari (2003) describe striated spaces as struc-
tured spaces that delimit options for movement such as we find in enclosed spaces of
property or the prescribed movements of chess pieces. Smooth space, by contrast, is
open-ended like the ocean prior to codificationand territorializationin degrees
of longitude and latitude and along which, like pieces in the game of Go, desiring
intensities assemble and reassemble in nonpredictive, nonlinear, and nonrepresenta-
tional ways. Play according to Huizinga (1955) is a free activity, presubjective, and
noncommodified, in this respect fitting the description of smooth space. Callois
(1962) explores the relationship between play (ludus) and game (paidia). Video
games can be seen to include elements of the two: free activity, unproductive, spa-
tially and temporally defined, uncertain in outcome, and also governed by rules,
made up of actions, happenings, characters, and setting (see Eskelinen, 2001). From
a Deleuzian perspective, video games, like the striated space of cities, include within
their design smooth spaces in which desires flow freely. This point is elaborated on
later.
There is a pleasure in simply wandering around the game world in SMG. If Mario
performs a long jump on a planetoid (a sphere, a cylinder, or an irregular object
floating in space) he enters into a momentary orbit around it. But eventually we have
to get down to the task of completing objectives. As Sweetser and Wyeth (2005)
suggest, a video game has to have clear goals in order for the player to compete.
Pleasure, according to Kerr, Kucklich, and Brereton (2006, p. 68), is created by a
74 Games and Culture 7(1)
submission to rules of play and by testing or resisting the limits of rules in the
process of play. The player is compelled to act according to the game designers
rules.
8
Nevertheless, play, according to Sutton-Smith (1997), is ambiguous. It is
contained in frames but also disruptive of them. Variability, he says, is the key
to play, and that structurally play is characterised by quirkiness, redundancy, and
flexibility. (Sutton-Smith, 1997, p. 229).
9
Play is therefore not chaotic and this is no different in the virtual form of video
game play. Slavoj Z

izeks (1997) argument that in the virtual world we are not inhib-
ited by social norms and therefore, in a certain sense, we are closer to our true
selves should be qualified in view of this point. Following his logic for the moment;
in the real world, our behaviors can be ridiculed and punished; in the virtual space, a
male can take on the identity of a woman without fear of social opprobrium or, in
many video games, kill civilians without fear of imprisonment. In virtual space, it
seems, we are closer to a Real kernel because there is no superego authority to pun-
ish us, nobody to fear, nothing to feel guilty about. However, in the video game,
objects of desire are predetermined in the completion of a level, a high score, a new
ability or, in SMG, the rescue of Princess Peach from Bowser. The banal reality of
the virtual in video games is that unlike other media we cannot simply allow the fan-
tasy to run riot without there being consequences. The rules of the game forbid
us from possessing or killing whomever we unconsciously/consciously please. The
superego punishes us for our attempt to acquire the object of desire. It prescribes new
obstacles to overcome in order to sustain our interest. Take Call of Duty 4 as an
example. I can imagine when playing that game that instead of shooting Arabs I
am, in fact, shooting U.S. and U.K. imperialist forces. But if I get carried away with
my own fantasy, I may start shooting the in-game symbolic referents of real-world
U.S. and U.K. soldiers and their machines of war. This is not permitted in Call of
Duty 4. If I try to bomb a Chinook helicopter the game ends, play is stopped. It is
the same outcome when I spray too much friendly fire in the direction of my
teammates. Objectively, one cannot kill anyone but a symbolic enemy posited as
an obstacle that must be overcome. The Oedipal Father enters the screen punishing
us if we do not follow the rules, bringing the fantasy to an end when finally we get
the object of desire.
Playfulness disrupts the frame of the game (cf. Sutton-Smith, 1997) only when
the player is able to embark on their own virtual journey exceeding the perimeters of
the code through an affective encounter with the video game world and its charac-
ters. We do not simply interact with Mario in his world, we become Mario and in
doing so embark on hitherto impossible lines of flight or journeys that exceed into
space.
The game is only really alive through the manipulations of the player. The player
must apply her art to the video game so that the video game can reveal itself as such.
The player is herself included as the artist who completes the work by realizing it as
a video game. In the nonrepresentational act of playing a game, lines of flight of
mastery are taken: the video game player is an artist in becoming but is never master.
Cremin 75
Artist and Apprentice
SMG is an assemblage of multiple desires, the animator, the composer, the chief
designer, the programmer, and the game tester. Together these form a Body without
Organs (BwO), a temporary assemblage of desiring intensities. The packaged video
game is the actualization of the multiple desires of the members of the production
studio entering into a new BwO when the players intensities are added through the
force of play. Miyamoto, the game maker or artist, captures and codifies the inten-
sities of the video game team. He denotes a certain standard, style, and approach to
form and content but it is only by taking flight from Miyamoto when playing SMG
that the video game becomes open ended. The BwO is more than the assemblage of
the desires of the production studio; it becomes part of an assemblage with the player
herself or the many players depending on the video game in question. The BwO of
the team of players, killing zombies in a video game such as Left 4 Dead for example
(Valve Corporation, 2008), enter into new assemblages with computer-generated
players. They are drawn into a BwO that encompasses the desires of everyone
involved in its design. The BwO of Miyamoto as signifier of an assemblage of
desires producing the video game enters into ever new and productive assemblages
with the inexhaustible combinations of the desiring intensities of players around the
world. Hence, the video game exceeds striated space and becomes smooth space.
In Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation, Deleuze (2008, p. 33) describes the
BwO as flesh and nerve:
The body is completely living, and yet nonorganic. Likewise sensation, when it
acquires a body through the organism, takes on an excessive and spasmodic appear-
ance, exceeding the bounds of organic activity. It is immediately conveyed in the flesh
through the nervous wave or vital emotion.
The BwO incorporating designer and player is excessive, spasmodic, and vital to the
form. We can think of this as a force that exceeds representation.
In the paintings of Francis Bacon, representations of people appear deformed. They
appear to share human characteristics but in their deformations they reveal forces that
are external to the form. These forces lie outside of representation. Bacon does not
paint a figural representation of a human, rather an interminable presence, a figure:
The insistence of the smile beyond the face and beneath the face. The insistence of a
scream that survives the mouth, the insistence of a body that survives the organism, the
insistence of transitory organs that survive the qualified organs. And in this excessive
presence, the identity of an already-there and an already-delayed. Everywhere there is a
presence acting directly on the nervous system, which makes representation, whether in
place or at a distance, impossible. (Deleuze, 2008, p. 36)
Mario is also a figure but in a different sense. Without the players input, Mario is
entirely figurative, a crude stereotype. But he becomes a figure through the
76 Games and Culture 7(1)
manipulations of the player. The player applies force upon Mario as we see him glide
across different surfaces, hit objects, and leap around planetoids. The player feels the
different effects of gravity (see on friction-image below). Miyamoto, as signifier of
one assemblage, creates Mario but not the figure: the force is latent and so the game
designer creates only a potential for force. By applying force, the game player
engages in an endless process of creating the figure Mario, a becoming-Mario. The
work of the video game artist must remain incomplete if there is to be a player to
vitalize the video game as a distinct and open-ended artistic form. What makes a
video game a smooth space rather than a striated space, a rhizome rather than abor-
escent, is the endless capacity for recreating a BwO.
In A Thousand Plateaux, Deleuze and Guattari (2003) describe the rhizome as a
nonpredictable web of possibility. In nature, rhizomes are root systems that spread out
across the soil horizontally through a series of connecting nodes. Additional saplings
grow from various points in the rhizome. By comparison, the arborescent tree has
branches that split in fractal form from a central source and is therefore predictable.
The rhizome, on the other hand, is that of antigenealogy, short term or anti-mem-
ory operating through variation, expansion, conquest, capture, offshoots (Deleuze
& Guattari, 2003, p. 21). Sutton and Martin-Jones (2008) compare the video game
Pac-Man (Namco, 1980) to a rhizome. Although its labyrinths are fixed, by consum-
ing pills the Pac-Man reterritorializes or recolonizes space. In the updated Pac-Man:
Championship Edition
10
(Namco Bandai, 2007), the labyrinths are reconstituted when
the avatar eats a fruit. However, the transformations are already predetermined by
the design. A player cannot exceed the code without corrupting the program.
It is not with respect to the representational space that video games are rhizomatic;
it is how the video game is only alive through the manipulations of the player and in
turn howthe player is affected by those manipulations, the nonrepresentational aspects
of play. The writer, Deleuze and Guattari (1994, p. 176) say, twists language,
makes it vibrate, seizes hold of it, and rends it in order to wrest the percept from per-
ceptions, the affect fromaffectations, the sensation fromopinion. By the same token,
the player twists the video game, makes it vibrate, to the extent that the video game
ceases to be representation, and instead becomes an appendage of a broader force
involving the design team and player who endlessly creates the figure in motion: the
figure is constantly being recreated by the players manipulations.
11
Every video game is the product of a game-maker. But Miyamoto creates the
condition for the possibility of the figure in its many deformations. Miyamoto is a
master of the form. However, the video game figure is present whether it is Mario
in SMG, the manipulated falling blocks in Tetris (Alexey Pajitov, 1984), or the
appearances of force through the players actions in first-person shooters such as Call
of Duty 4 (explosions, opening doors, etc). This is the art the game-player makes.
The success of the project then lies in the manner of the collaboration between the
two artists and the assemblages they form. If the video game is too easy, the art of the
game player is never properly tested. If the controller is poorly mapped to the game,
the player-artist can rightly blame her tools for a poor rendering. If the platform that
Cremin 77
the avatar jumps on is not accurately represented on screen, the player-artist cannot
with any precision perform her task.
Miyamoto is the name of the play or ludo-creator enabling the game-player to
embark on line of flights of mastery within the game. For the video game to become
art, there has to be a capacity for lines of flight of mastery for the player to learn her
craft according to the rules of the ludo-creator. The player never ceases to be an
apprentice of the game as there are endless labyrinths of forking paths for the player
to traverse but never exceed. The relationship is imbalanced, however the
ludo-apprentice will be able to forget this if the video game is finely crafted, in
which case it is possible to lose herself as it were in the virtual world through the
act of play (application of force). This corresponds to Chaim Gingolds (2003,
p. 8) description of the video game as a world in miniature into which players wrap
their heads, hands, and hearts. The video game as an object of creation is like a
bridge connecting, reassembling, and thus vitalizing the BwO. The video game
exceeds virtual reality as it enters into virtual modes of desiring production. Virtual
in a Deleuzian sense refers to a virtue of becoming or movement as opposed to stasis
or the actual closed formations of identity and so forth.
Ludo-Diagrammatic Sensation
The ludo-creator invites the ludo-apprentice to embark upon a hopeless quest to
recover a lost object in order to realize the art of the video game. The ludo-
apprentice brings to life the figure of Marioa becoming-Marioand renders visible
the art of Miyamoto the ludo-creator. The ludo-apprentice is Miyamotos double and
also doubles up as an artist and appreciator: she appreciates the design but also
the affective force of play on her body (see Dovey & Kennedy, 2006 on affect).
Miyamoto has created a canvas upon which the ludo-apprentice applies details.
Calleja (2007) maps the digital game experience with reference to Fines
appropriation of Goffmans Frame Analysis. Included in the schema is narrative,
affective, performative, shared, spatial, and tactical involvement. Elements of these
are found in SMG. The diagram of the video game is a latent force brought to life by
the ludo-apprentice. Deleuzes (2008, p. 72) description of the diagram in the work
of Bacon compares to the rhizome: chaos, a catastrophe, but it is also a germ of
order or rhythm. He continues, diagram are the zones, line-strokes and colour
patches upon which recognizable forms are created. Its function is to be sugges-
tive, a possibility of fact (Deleuze, 2008, p. 71). The diagram is the work of artistic
preparation, producing non-representative, nonillustrative, nonnarrative . . .
asignifying traits. (p. 70). The ludo-diagram is all of these things. The force that
distorts the figure in the video game is an invisible presence in the zones, line-
strokes, and patches: the possibility for sensation in the virtual field upon which the
ludo-apprentice applies her brush strokes. Because the figure of the video game is
distorted through the act of play, the force and the figure are nonrepresentative,
nonillustrative, and nonnarrative.
78 Games and Culture 7(1)
Guattari (in Trend, 2001, p. 43) describes the way a diagrammatic machine . . .
develops in coordinates that are more numerous and more deterritorialised. The
subjectivity of the machine is set up in universes of virtuality that everywhere
exceed its existential territoriality. (Trend, 2001, p. 45) Patches appear to the
ludo-apprentice in SMG as patches of colour, switches that create momentum,
vines that Mario can swing on. While the force is not represented, the potential for
force is. The ludo-diagram seduces us into playing, wrestling to capture us but for-
ever failing to take full possession. It promises the feeling of giddiness when we
first run around upside down on a planetoid. It suggests vertigo from walking along
a precipice or the rush of excitement when honing in on the coveted power star.
Wherever we go in SMG, we feel the effect of the ludo-diagram, its presence.
When the ludo-apprentice adds her brush strokes she feels the force of the ludo-
diagram on Mario and ludo-diagrammatic sensation or kickback on herself. The
lines of flight of the ludo-apprentice are extra-terrestrial (the momentary
appearance of force in the moving figure)/extravirtual as sensations exceed the vir-
tual environment. The sensation passes from one order to another, one level
to another, one area to another (Deleuze, 2008, p. 26).
Whereas the diagram of a painting occupies a fixed physical space, the ludo-
diagram operates across a fluid virtual space and so as the ludo-apprentice traverses
and takes flight the diagram itself decomposes and deterritorialises in the visual
plane. In this respect, the player has a nomadic relationship to the ludo-diagram,
always reterritorialising on a deterritorialising canvas. It appears to move across
space, to produce one sensation, and at a flick of switch to produce another. It is
fluid within its limits, smooth in this respect, not striated: it alternates and
intensifies with the help of the ludo-apprentice. We can think of this with reference
to McMahans (in Wolf & Perron,2003, p. 78) discussion on Char Davies Osmose;
these are environments, akin to scuba diving, that are slightly blurred and without
horizon lines. Here, users move from space to space by breathing or adjusting their
balance. As the ludo-apprentice applies force, she tests the environment by impress-
ing herself upon the ocean of the ludo-diagram and senses the kickback of and is
affected by her own desire. The player stimulates herself as she begins to visualize the
friction-images that present themselves within the ludo-diagram.
Miyamoto presents us with a ludo-diagram that is in constant flux. But the shift-
ing, transmogrifying nonspace is also signposted. We learn in SMG that the flow of
gravity will change with a change in the direction of an arrow. We learn that we are
safe to run underneath a planetoid because there is no black patch symbolizing a
black hole to suck us into oblivion. These various signs operate in accordance with
the friction-image of the video game.
Nonlinearity and the Friction-Image
Summarizing the argument so far, two core features of the video game aesthetic have
been noted. First, the video game involves the player-as-artist. Miyamoto is not
Cremin 79
simply a technician/game-maker working to a formula but a ludo-creator/video
game artist who provides the canvas upon which the ludo-apprentice develops her
mastery. The ludo-apprentice embarks on lines of flight. She animates Mario and
transforms him into a figure to make visible the art of the ludo-creator thus recreat-
ing a BwO that incorporates players and production team/Miyamoto. Second, the
canvas of the video game is a ludo-diagram of preprogrammed potentialities caught
in the nonspace of the virtual environment, with signifiers that hint at what might
happen if we apply force to the canvas. Signifier is signified in the friction-image:
signifier and signified become tautological.
Drawing his influence from Bergson, Deleuze in Cinema 1 (1997) and 2 (2005)
develops the idea of the movement-image and the time-image.
12
The movement-
image is sequential; temporal pauses between one still image and another creates
a sense of movement and a linear perception of time. There is no actual movement
in film, nothing moves as such, but time/movement are embodied in the interval
between stills. Movement is perceived from the stationary position of the viewer and
in this way we see movement. In Cinema 2, Deleuze (2005) fleshes out the concept
of the time-image. This, he says, concerns the way cinema presents time in a pure
state. The time-image is out of joint, nonsequential, and scattered. A film captures
different moments in time by fragmenting narrative. Cinema foregrounds time and
so reveals time as a fragmented object that exists independently of our ability to con-
trol it.
Unlike in cinema where the perception of movement is created when one still
image covering the entire field of vision replaces another still image, in video games
the perception of movement is created by the alternation of pixelated particle effects
on parts of the screen. There is a linear movement-image when particles transform
sequentially onscreen to create the impression of movement. But these impressions
are localized in alternating patches of the ludo-diagram. In the video game, there is a
patchwork of movement-images. Movement ruptures across multiple alternating
sections of the screens smooth surface. Clusters of particles manufacture the image
of movement escaping the screen to the body and back again through the force of the
ludo-apprentice.
The time-image of the video game resembles the time-image of cinema except
that time fragments can be manipulated by the ludo-apprentice. In Viewtiful Joe
(Capcom Production Studio 4, 2003) on the Nintendo Gamecube, time can be slo-
wed down and reversed. In The Legend of Zelda: Majoras Mask (Nintendo EAD,
2000) on the N64, the follow-up to Ocarina of Time (Nintendo EAD, 1998), Link
has to rescue Zelda before the moon collides with the land of Termina. But he has
the power to return to the beginning of time, to start the day over again. All the
objectives he completed during that day carry over into the same day in a repetition
of difference. Links actions are subordinated to the time-image, time moves, time
fragments, but Link remains in the same place.
The action-image of cinema relates to the movement-image. Deleuze (1977)
describes this as a sequence from recognition of a problem to overcome, the action
80 Games and Culture 7(1)
to overcome it, and the outcome of the action. For example, in a standard Hollywood
film we see a ticking time bomb, the bomb has to be defused, the hero rushes to the
scene but he is too late: the bomb explodes. In video games, the sequence is enacted
by the ludo-apprentice; however, the outcome is never predetermined in the form. In
early video games such as Space Invaders, the action-image is linear in that each
sequence is enacted before the next one is embarked on. In more sophisticated video
games such as SMG, sequences can be disrupted in mid flow. There are side mis-
sions with their own minisequences, or trail off points within the sequence for
embarking on alternative action-images. In this respect, video games contain non-
linear action-images and smooth space is recreated in striated space.
In order to negotiate the patchwork of the ludo-diagram and work through non-
linear action-image sequences the sensation of friction is needed. Friction is implied
in the diegesis of cinema only appearing as an object to us when represented in an
unusual ways such as in films set in space. Friction holds no particular value in the
cinematic form per se; it is only in video games that there is a friction-image proper
to the form. SMG brings our encounter with the friction-image to levels of intensity
that no prior game has arguably achieved. By thinking of what takes place in SMG
we can conceptualize the taking place of the friction-image.
In SMG, we sense gravity in our manipulations, registering its presence across the
game world as we enhance our skills. We have to think about the surface, the size of
the planetoid, and the effect of the small blue floating stars used as slings to propel
Mario between them. When we play SMG for the first time, we have to think about,
look for and see friction, we have to think about the ways its intensities will affect
our movements. We have to get used to the sensation of running around different
sized planetoids with their varied gravitational effects and how the presence of ice,
represented figuratively, will affect our movements, or what happens to those move-
ments when ice turns to liquid. In each nonlinear sequence, friction materializes as
an object, first as something to consciously think about. The friction-image is
the form that mediates between the work of the ludo-creator (the form of the
ludo-diagram) and the ludo-apprentice (the form of force) reforming the BwO.
The friction-image creates perceptions of gravity latent in the ludo-diagram to
enable mastery as we refine our skills with every jump taken. Friction is sensed
in every movement the ludo-apprentice creates through the application of force
on the patchwork of potentialities of the ludo-diagram.
The friction-image is generated by an interval of a kind between particle effects,
the Mario before the jump (the arrangement of particles prior to the ludo-appren-
tices actions) and the Mario after the jump (the arrangement of particles after the
action). Within the interval there is Mario the figure, a momentary sensation and
flash of representation. The interval here is not determined by the time between stills
but instead in the time between the ludo-diagrammatic sensation, or kickback from
the action, and the conscious registering of the particle effect (representations) of the
apprentices brushstrokes upon the ludo-diagram. The interval is the time lag
between affect and registration of the representations revealing the friction-image
Cremin 81
and the sensation of movement these help create. The interval segues the particle
effects to produce sensations of movement, time, and action which, in their complex
and multiple ways, are negotiated with the aid of the friction-image. Ultimately, the
interval between percept and affect becomes imperceptible.
The figure comes to life through the manipulation of brushes: Wii-mote and
nunchuck (the dual shock of the Playstation console). However, a good game lets
us forget the device by enabling us to concentrate on the action rather than the but-
tons we press. For a competent ludo-apprentice playing a well-designed game, it is
irrelevant whether it is a motion-sensitive device or a traditional controller being
used. SMG is finely mapped to the game world so that at a certain level of mastery
the controller becomes like a bodilymachinicappendage. SMG makes friction
perceptible and sensational but ultimately imperceptible as the ludo-apprentice
melds with the game world. At this stage, signifier (image-as-patchwork) and signif-
ied (concepts of friction), ludo-diagram and friction-image, merge, become tautolo-
gical and the impossible world of SMG begins to feel natural, real even. When
friction is no longer accompanied with a psychic image of what happens when we
do such a thing at such a location, SMG becomes more than a sequence of represen-
tations of reality, it becomes real life, a telepresence or feeling that we inhabit a
mediated world (see Steuer in Wolf & Perron, 2003, p. 72).
The basic aesthetic of the video game is essentially the same whether the opponents
are online (e.g., Left 4Dead) or offline (e.g., Wii Sports, NintendoEAD, 2006). The gen-
res are different manifestations and intensities of the same thing. This is not to say that
qualities such as narrative are unimportant. Clearly a video game such as The Legend of
Zelda: Ocarinaof Time (NintendoEAD, 1998) needs a strongnarrative for it tosucceed.
The qualities defined in this article are essential elements of all video games though.
Carnival: Funfair Games (Cat Daddy Games, 2007) on the Wii console is a for-
mal failure. The game rewards randomeffect and so the ludo-diagram, at odds with the
friction-image, short-circuits the lines of flight of the ludo-apprentice. A simple video
game such as Geometry Wars 2: Retro Evolved (Bizarre Creations, 2008) on Xbox 360
Live, on the other hand, rewards mastery even though the ludo-diagram and friction-
images are limited. If a game rewards random effort and execution, the ludo-
apprentice is merely a game player, not an artist of the game but a docile machine:
the video game becomes, or so appears, socially retarding. The graphical limitations
of Carnival could be overlooked much as it is with Wii Sports if formally it succeeded.
If cinema is the reality of the virtual, the video game is the reality of the impos-
sible. Video games that rely on figurative renderings of material life are not neces-
sarily realistic and very few of these are as realistic as SMG. A video game of the
quality of SMG allows for a realism more real than the reality of many figurative
video games. In this respect, immersion depends on the quality of the formal design.
When we encounter design limitations the ludo-creator actualises itself as a block to
creation, undermining the relationship between creator and apprentice, preventing a
BwO, as the ludo-diagram operates against the friction-image. All video games can
be critically evaluated according to these criteria.
82 Games and Culture 7(1)
Conclusion
The article has aimed to show the value of a Deleuzian approach to video game
analysis. While there is not the space to conduct an extensive experiment here,
my contention, having thought about their broader application (e.g., to those men-
tioned above), is that the forms defined here pertain to all video games irrespective
of graphics or sophistication. Deleuze applied his concepts to look critically at art
and cinema. By the same token, video games that do not obey these basic criteria
can be judged to be formal failures.
Thinking about this in regard to some of the earlier classics, in terms of complex-
ity, the ludo-diagram of the original Space Invaders (Taito Corporation, 1978)
would be primitive compared to SMG. The distortions are limited by the simplicity
of the ludo-diagram and singularity of the friction-image. But with a limited technol-
ogy, it was still possible to create a ludo-diagram that could seduce would-be ludo-
apprentices into applying force to it. The same can be said for other early examples
such as Donkey Kong (Nintendo, 1981) and Defender (Williams Electronics, 1980).
The friction-image revealed itself in the effect of the action upon the ludo-diagram:
the base in Space Invaders, the jumpman in Donkey Kong, the fighter craft in Defen-
der. They all produced ludo-diagrammatic sensations on the body of the player. In
these seminal video games, the ludo-diagram is perfectly attuned to the technology
and controller.
Super Mario Galaxy is perfectly attuned to the Wii console. The quality, com-
plexity, and multiple deformations of the ludo-diagram and its signature friction-
images are the many rewards for mastery that help explain why SMG is a great video
game of our time and, in view of the position this article takes, for all time. Super
Mario Galaxy 2 repeats this success.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship,
and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of
this article.
Notes
1. For a systematic attempt to define the structural elements of games see Zagal et al., 2005.
The Game Ontology Project identifies the important structural elements of games and
the relationships between them, organizing them hierarchically (http://games.soe.ucs
c.edu/sites/default/files/OntologyDIGRA2005.pdf) in terms of their interactive, spatial,
and temporal aspects.
2. Sutton and Martin-Jones, 2008 and Galloway, 2007 have, among others, applied Deleuze
to video games.
Cremin 83
3. See translators introduction in Deleuze and Guattari (2003).
4. The relationship of player and artist, or consumer as artist, can be explored on a number of
levels through different examples in art and literature but as this article is intended as a
showcase of Deleuzes work vis-a`-vis video games, my only point of reference to art as
much for the sake of brevity is his book on Francis Bacon.
5. Notable studies on Super Mario include Chaim Gingold, 2003 and Andrea Babich (http://
www.ludologica.com/images/indice_babich.pdf).
6. I refer to two sources on critical reception of video games: the online metacritic which
provides an aggregate score from a range of reviews (SMG 97%) and the influential Edge
magazines The 100 best games to play today list compiled for their 200th edition of
April 2009 (SMG was 8th). There are methodological flaws in the way metacritic ascer-
tain their aggregate score (see Edge, 199), so it is useful to refer to both sources where
possible.
7. On video game play, see also Kerr et al. 2006; King and Krzywinska, 2006; Dovey and
Kennedy, 2006
8. See Ang, 2006 who explores the abstract and narrative layers of game rules.
9. Given its commonsense connotations as something trivial or childish and the fact that
play is not specific to video games, play is a problematic concept for describing the activ-
ity of playing video games. Perhaps, it is more accurate to refer to the activity as an appli-
cation of force but such a convoluted term would make for ugly prose. Play, with its
limitations noted, is used throughout this article to refer to the act of engaging with the
video game.
10. 83% metacritic score, no. 79 in Edge top 100.
11. See Chris Crawfords (2002) The Art of Interactive Design who provides a detailed
description of the relationship between game structures and the consumer-cum-
producer of interactive entertainment.
12. See Wolf, 2001 on time and space in video games.
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Cremin 85
Video Games Referenced
Call of Duty 4 (Infinity Ward, 2007).
Carnival: Funfair Games (Cat Daddy Games, 2007).
Defender (Williams Electronics, 1980).
Donkey Kong (Nintendo, 1981).
Geometry Wars 2: Retro Evolved (Bizarre Creations, 2008).
Grand Theft Auto 4 (Rockstar, 2008).
Left 4 Dead (Valve Corporation, 2008).
Pac-Man (Namco, 1980)
Pac-Man: Championship Edition (Namco Bandai, 2007).
Space Invaders (Taito Corporation, 1978).
Super Mario Galaxy (Nintendo EAD, 2007).
Super Mario 64 (Nintendo EAD, 1996).
Tetris (Alexey Pajitov, 1984).
The Legend of Zelda: Majoras Mask (Nintendo EAD, 2000)
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (Nintendo EAD, 1998)
Viewtiful Joe (Capcom Production Studio 4, 2003).
Wii Sports (Nintendo EAD, 2006).
Bio
Colin Cremin teaches sociology at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, focusing on
critical theory and visual culture. Capitalisms New Clothes: Enterprise, Ethics and Enjoy-
ment in Times of Crisis was published with Pluto Press in 2011. iCommunism is published
with Zer0 Books in 2012.
86 Games and Culture 7(1)