Operational Logics-Mateas
#notesFromPaper Year : Tags : Authors: Mateas Wardrip-Fruin
Operational logics: How does a game represent more complex systems?
Formal definition: Operational logics are a strategy for representation, supported by abstract processes or lower level logics, for specifying the behaviors a system must exhibit to be understood as representing a domain to its audience.
Similar modes of representation are grouped into certain logics.
Pong is attempting to represent a ball bouncing. It represents it by displaying a pixel on screen. The movement of the paddle is a navigational logic, while the pixel representing the ball is a graphical logic (probably the most common type)
Factorio is concerned with representing limited resources by creating production, consumption, resource tradeoffs, etc. (Resource management logic)
KOTOR operationalizes moral decisions by representing moral status as a point in n-dimensional space. (It does not operationalize it just by “offering choices”)
Operational logics probably shouldn’t be used for any abstractions, especially multifaceted, multilayered abstractions. They are a specific strategy for representation. E.g. the idea of “opening a file” abstracts away bit streams etc. but isn’t a strategy for representing something.
Another negative example brought up is how the conceptual shifts possible by a skilled IF author can feel like the shifts required to solve a riddle. This isn’t an operational logic either though, because while this shift can feel like solving a riddle, there’s no specific strategy invoked other than “good writing”
A system has effective authorial affordance when the processes and strategies couple for effective representation.
Is there a list of operational logics?
Would friendship meters be operationalizing the idea of friendship?
