Gameplay Design Patterns Research Papers (original) (raw)

Ever since the emergence of the first Metal Gear Solid (1998) game on the PlayStation, the Metal Gear Solid franchise (1998-2015) has been the videogame equivalent of blockbuster releases, combining gameplay focused on methodical sneaking missions and a story orchestrated through extensive dialogue and cinematic sequences. Yet, the basic narrative premise of each title appears roughly similar. As Denis Brusseaux et al. aptly summarise: “Each game describes the adventures of a spy on a mission to neutralize a nuclear threat, which comes in the form of a Metal Gear, a bipedal tank equipped with nuclear weapons that can reach any location in the world.” (Brusseaux et al.: 6) The spy in every game, with one exception, carries the codename of “Snake.” Yet, despite this seemingly spare innovation of tropes and themes, the Metal Gear Solid franchise utilises the recursiveness of its own narrative to convey philosophical concepts and implications far beyond comparable Triple-A videogame releases.
Alas, within academia the titles of the series have enjoyed very little attention, as gaming studies as an area of research is still coming of age, trying to define the boundaries of its own discourse. This paper is an attempt at focusing on a specific trope within the franchise, namely the recursiveness of its own narration, to offer a ‘zero point’ for a focused and detailed close reading within the field of cultural studies. However, due to the sheer extent of the Metal Gear Solid franchise the analysis can only cover a minimum of the multitude of potential academic stimuli offered, and accordingly the series must be limited to a specific selection for purposes of this thesis.
The analysis will thus define the Metal Gear Solid series within this paper as containing of the four titles Metal Gear Solid (1998), Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty (2001), Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater (2004) and Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots (2008). This is not an artificial selection, quite on the contrary. These four titles served as the main entries in the series, being released on the home video game consoles PlayStation – MGS1 – PlayStation 2 – MGS2 and MGS3 – and PlayStation 3 – MGS4 – respectively, and while almost all titles in the entire franchise contribute to a common storyline, these four games are most tightly associated in creating a narrative arch that specifically begins with MGS1 and ends with MGS4. In fact, following the thesis of this paper, the change to Roman numerals in the last two entries of the series, Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes (2014) and Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (2015), as well as their titles become quite telling. While the other games certainly offer further options for investigation, the choice was thus made to allow for a concise argument and a coherent organisation.
The main assumption of this paper can thus be summarised as follows: The Metal Gear Solid series, e.g. the four titles as defined prior, can be regarded as an “information narrative” in accordance with Katherine Hayles’ stipulation of the term, meaning a narrative in which “pattern is the essential reality, presence an optical illusion.” (Hayles, Posthuman: 35f) The games portray a struggle for control between different systems that attempt to subjugate the perceived randomness of their opponents to the own pattern and can therefore be designated as autopoietic. The games incrementally blur the lines between the storyworld and the gameworld, eventually even meta-narratively incorporating an implied player into the equation.