SIMULATION 101: Simulation versus Representation

2001by Gonzalo Frasca (Simulations require the Flash 5 plugin)

Here is the first in a series of articles where I will deal with the issue of simulation as the basic tool for understanding videogames. I will focus on the particular characteristics of simulation as an alternative to representation and narrative. These articles will be illustrated with small web-based simulations. My objective is to reach the broader possible audience and this is why I will try to omit technicalities while attempting to remain rigorous and clear in my explanations. While I am definitively dealing here with theory, I do want both game designers, artists and academic researchers to feel at home. If you have read some of my previous writings, you may know that I am part of a rather small group of theorists including Espen Aarseth, Markku Eskelinen, Jesper Juul, among otherswho claim that videogames should not be viewed as an extension of narrative, literature, theater or cinema. Nevertheless, the majority of theorists see no problem in linking games with narratives. The idea that videogames and other interactive software is an extension of narrative is very strong in our culture and has been developed both by academia and the industry. Recent games such as Metal Gear 2 do really try to look and behave like an interactive movie. I find that "interactive fiction", "interactive theater" and other "interactive" flavored inventions do miss the point by trying to force games into something that they are not. Respected theorists such as Janet Murray, Lev Manovich, Brenda Laurel and Henry Jenkins insist on explaining games by analyzing their similitude with previously existing media forms. While I do not necessarily discard these approaches, I think that games are ontologically different from narrative because they are not just based on representation. Instead, they rely on simulation, which is a way of portraying reality that essentially differs from narrative. My main goal in these series of articles is to explain these differences. Simulation 101 Historically, we have relied on representation to portray both reality and fiction, generaly articulating it under the form of narrative. However, the introduction of the computer has unleashed a new way of communicating and understanding our world and thoughts: simulation. Simulation does not simply represents objects and systems, but it also models their behaviors.

Lets start by taking a look at representation through a simple example. Here is Magrittes La Trahison Des Images (The treachery of images). Its a famous painting and many things have been said about it. I will simply mention that the image portrays a pipe but, as the text explains, the image itself is not an actual pipe but a representation. The word pipe is also a textual representation. In other words, it is not a real pipe, but an image with words. Representation has been the way of choice for humanity for depicting, explaining and understanding reality. The image of the pipe tells us a lot about the actual object. We can learn about its shape, its colors, its materials and maybe even its size. The painting describes the pipe: it shows us some of its characteristics. Obviously, representation is never exhaustive: there will always be some characteristics that will not fit into the painting. In other words, representation is always an incomplete task. Ok. Until now, we have reviewed semiotics 101, pretty basic stuff. Lets imagine that now we want to explain to somebody that never saw a pipe how the pipe works. The traditional way of doing this has always been through narrative. We can, for example, make a film about somebody smoking or, even better, to create a series of comic-book style, serialized illustrations. So, here is how our story goes: you suck on one end of the pipe and you will be able to get your fix of smoke. In addition to this, more smoke will come up through the other end. This, of course, is a fairly basic description of how a pipe works. It mainly focuses on the mechanics of the pipe, but for the sake of simplicity, it leaves out of the equation several elements (i.e. you have to pour tobacco in it and then light it up). Voila! I have just explained how a pipe works by using narrative. I am now going to explain the mechanics of a pipe by using a different rhetorical tool: simulation. In this Flash piece, we have the pipe and a button. If you press the button without releasing it, you will see the smoke coming through the small end of the pipe. After releasing it, smoke will come up through the other end. At first sight, representation and simulation seem quite similar: after all, they are describing the same behavior. Well, they say the devil is in the details, so lets pay attention to them. The Flash simulation is modeling the mechanics of the pipe through a mechanical rule: if you suck from one end, you will get some smoke, and later more smoke will come up through the other end. Basically, the same rule that we narrated on the previous example. The difference, as I said, is that here the rule is shown through a model. Nothing happens if you dont press the button. The difference between this Flash movie and a comic-book style narration of the action of smoking seems to be very subtle. After all, we could see the Flash simulation simply as a hypermedia example, where the button is basically doing

the equivalent of flipping through pages or images. Actually, this is how one of the most popular games ever, Myst, was built (by using a hypermedia environment calledHypercard).

A comic-book style narration of smoking Let's now return to our pipe example, by now taking a look at a more complex simulation. While this example could have been theoretically built as a hypertext -by crafting all the possible varitions of size and density of smoke- it would have taken an awful lot of work. This simulation shows thousands of different kinds of smoke, depending on how the user manipulates two variables ("Sucking" and "Tobacco Quality"). Certainly, each outcome could be considered as a narrative, just like any videogame session of Super Mario Bros. could also be viewed as a story (even if most would be quite strange by traditional narrative standards). And this is the reason why so many people insist to call videogames and simulations "interactive narrative": for an external observer, the outcome of a simulation is a narration. But the simulation itself is something bigger than narrative. It is a dynamic system that yes, contains thousands of potential "stories", but it is larger than the sum of its parts. The simulation itself is not a narrative, it is something different, in the same way that a kaleidoscope should not be understood as a collection of possible images but instead as a device that produces images according to certain mechanics. Notice that I said that the outcome of a simulation is a narration "for an external observer". This is because in many simulations, particularly in videogames, the player does not feel like she is being told a story by a narrator, but rather experiencing events as a personal experience. Unlike what happens in theater, these events are not just being enacted, but the player has a certain degree of control over them. Phenomenologically, the player generally experiences videogames more as an alternative reality where she has certain freedom to act than as a story.

Sure, we could say, as some people do, that simulations are a different flavor of narrative, but by doing this we risk to turn "narrative" into a very vague term that could be applied to almost everthing (because, after all, for an observer ANY mediated event could be considered as a narrative). Besides, based on the examples that I just gave, it seems that they are certain differences between narrative and simulation that justify their distinction. For these reasons, I think that studying simulations and videogames as narratives does not allow us to fully understand the potential of the medium. Certainly, my oven "produces" cakes and I can infer some characteristics of the oven by analyzing those cakes. But if I really want to understand its mechanics, I would definitively chose to study the oven itself. I view simulations as dynamic systems that produce outcomes, and in order to understand dynamic systems we can use tools as cybernetics and simulation theory.
If simulations are not narratives nor "interactive narratives", what are they? The provisionary definition that I am most happy with goes like this: "Simulation is act of modeling a system A by a less complex system B, which retains some of A's original behavior". I put together this definition by slighty modifying several definitions of "computer simulation". The reason why I do not here give a more traditional "simulation theory" definition is because, generally, that discipline is more concerned with the prediction of the behavior of the simulated system than with representational issues. If you want more details on this, you should check Chapters III and IV of my Thesis. For example, Sim City 2000 (system B) simulates a city (system A). As a system, Sim City is less complex than an actual city (i.e. there is not graffitti on the walls in Sim City, nor advertisements on the streets), but it retains some of its behaviors (i.e. buildings need electricty and roads cost money to build). Probably a better way to understand the difference between simulation and representation is to compare their characteristics. Since I just have used the example of a city, let's compare a representation of a city (London, by Monet) and a simulation (Sim City 3000). Obviously, I just used an image of Sim City 3000 since I can not embed the whole simulation into this text, so use your imagination and pretend that the first one is an image while the second one is a simulation).

Let's start by pointing out their similitudes. Both show the city graphically (even if Sim City also includes sounds). Both include one of the biggest characteristics of cities: buildings -and those buildings follow a certain order. Both can be interpreted or misinterpreted: some people may recognize London on the paiting, while other may recognize NY or any other city on the other example.Both are also partial: they do not show the whole city, but a fragment of it from a certain perspective. Here is where the differences start to arise. Actually, Sim City could be a 3D model of the city, allowing us to see it from every possible perspective (something that Picasso tried to achieve within paiting) through time. However, we should agree that since the model can not be perfect -otherwise it would be a real city!- the representation is always fragmentary. One could say that the difference between Monet and Sim City is time: you need time to play the simulation. True, but representation can also be timebased: music and films, for example. Still, we could say that Monet is representing a very particular (foggy, in this case) day in London, while a simulation could show the city under sun, fog, rain, snow, etc. Actually, Monet tried in a different series of pictures to show the Rouen Cathedral under different kinds of light. Each one of these paintings is a particular image. If Monet had a 3D package like Lightwave or Maya, he could have modeled the Rouen Cathedral and then have access to infinite variations on how the light reflects on it. That model would have to include certain rules. In this case, these rules are rules of optics, that can model how light reflects on different surfaces. Sim City is a model that also includes rules. The user can add and remove buildings, create roads, etc. Those objects also have certain rules: i.e. a factory will produce goods only if you connect it to the power station through power lines. The key concept here is behavioral rules. Sim City is a dynamic system that behaveslike a city and also has many characteristics of a city, while the painting only provides the characteristics. Certainly, instead of using a painting as an example, we could have used a film documentary that showed the mechanics of the city. This film would show narrated events: i.e. a technician connecting the factory to the power station through power lines. Through that story we can infer that factories need electricity, but that rule was interpreted by whoever is watching the film. In other words, the rule can not be dynamically applied to the film: I cannot disconnect the cables on the factory in scene 3 to see if it shuts down. Usually, narrative works in a bottom-up sequence: it describes a particular event from which we can generalize and infer rules (this is why narrative is used so much in education). On the other hand, simulation is usually top-down: it focus on general rules, which then we can apply to particular cases (this is why

simulation also works great as a tool for teaching complex rules because, unlike narrative, it allows experimentation). When systems are not very complex, it is usually better to use representation and narrative to describe its mechanics (remember our first pipe example, the one with the button). But as systems get more complex, simulations become a more attractive tool because they can model the rules that govern the system. If you don't believe me, try to teach somebody to use the gears of a car just showing him a movie or a book. A simulator (as an actual car) can definitively do a better job, because the simulation can portray certain rules like "if you release the shift very quickly, the car will shake and the engine will probably stop" with first-hand experience of the actual relationship between the shift, gear and engine. Simulation versus representation As I previously said, simulation and representation are two ways of dealing with reality. Until now, both have coexisted in our culture, but representation, along with narrative, have been dominant, mainly because complex simulations require a level of technical sophistication that is impossible without a computer. Nevertheless, there are plenty of excellent examples of non-computer based simulations, such as mechanical automatae, dolls, war games, or even texts such as CortazarsHopscotch or the I-Ching. A doll that says Im hungry when you press her tummy is a simulation, but a fairly simple one. A Tamagotchi that needs to eat, sleep, play and be cured, is based on the sample principles, but it is far more complex. You probably noticed that I have been using the terms "simulation" and "videogame" almost as equivalents (a similar thing has happened between "representation" and "narrative", even if I stated that narrative is a way to structure representation). Actually, there are important differences among them that I have omited for the sake of clarity, but will be described on my next article on the series. Please also notice that the definition that I previously gave of "simulation" is provisory and actually too long: a more sophisticated one will be provided in a next article on "simulation and interpretation". In addition to this, I want to stress the fact that the study of simulation as an alternative to representation is still under construction. This is why I encourage readers to email me with comments and critiques. We are living in exciting times. For the first time in our history, we have the tools for pushing simulation into new frontiers. Simulation can now be used to model systems that were before way too complex to deal with. We now have a powerful alternative to representation and narrative to explain and understand our world. And simulation does not necessarily have to be a tool for education, but also for art and entertainment (as it happens with videogames). Unlike narrative, simulation offers a first hand experience of a dynamic system (and if the term "dynamic system" doesnt' sound very excn you, you can replace it with "family", "society", "person" or whatever is that you would like to simulate). Simulation is a great tool for understanding rules and relationships among them.

Certainly, representation has its own strengths and it would be very nave to believe that simulation will replace it. The main problem is that representation is such a powerful ideology and is so ubiquitous in our culture that is hard to make the difference between it and simulation. In this particular article, I simply wanted to introduce some of these differences, but I do not consider the question to be settled. In future articles, I will go further into this thread, exploring such issues as the rhetorical particularities of representation and simulation; the need for an expanded semiotic model to understand simulation interpretation; the differences between representation and modeling; the relationship between play, games and simulations. It is important to notice that this article is not printed in paper. The simulated examples that I crafted in Flash are, in my opinion, essential to illustrate the characteristics of simulations but would not have been possible on paper and ink images. My main goal as a researcher is to better understand (and explain) the potential of simulation as a communicational tool, particularly for designing videogames. Videogames are now a major medium, but I do not think that they will reach their full potential if we do not first understand the characteristics of simulation.