Patterns of Pleasure

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Patterns of Pleasure

The patterns of pleasure that emerge within and between games offer special kinds of enjoyments. Game designer Brian Moriarty uses the word entrainment to refer to this kind of rhythmic pleasure. Entrainment comes from the French word "entrainer" and has two meanings: to carry along, and to trap. The word has commonly been applied to a range of physical and natural phenomena, from circadian sleep rhythms to the sonic play of a thunderstorm. According to holistic thinker Dr. Stephan Rechtschaffen, "Rhythmic entrainment is one of the great organizing principles of the world, as inescapable as gravity. It explains how one rhythm works with another, and how separate entities, from molecules to stars, will fall into rhythm as automatically as a pulse beats or a butterfly flaps its wings."^[17]

As used by Moriarty, entrainment is the process of falling into a patterned activity, such as when baseball fans spontaneously create a stadium-wide "wave" in a co-authored, massively multi-player spectacle. One can also apply the concept to the play rhythms evoked when playing a game. In 1998, Moriarty gave a talk at the Game Developers conference about entrainment and game design:

Rhythms and patterns exist in all games, if you watch.Watch someone playing a game sometime. Not the game itself, lest you be sucked in, but the player, and the space around him or her. Watch the rhythms emerge, and how the player and the game interact. It will become clear that a game is really an entrainment engine. The job of the gamewright, therefore, is to reinforce patterns, and dampen dissonance."^[18]

The notion of entrainment combines pattern, interactivity, and the same-but-different quality of games into a rich and powerful design concept. If entrainment is a form of pleasure, it is a pleasure at once structural and experiential, both mathematically regular and playfully flexible. Entrainment is not a phenomenon completely unique to games, but it does come very close to identifying the curious structural pleasure that all game experiences seem to contain: the meditative patterns of Tetris; the turn-taking, clacking cadence of Billiards; the rhythmic shooting pattern of Space Invaders; the pulsing flow of cards, hits, and chips of Blackjack. Each of these game experi-ences-every game experience-can be framed as an instance of entrainment.

Entrainment is the experience of the same-but-different. As players explore the space of possible game pleasures, progress through the space occurs through patterned repetition, the drumbeat driving the heart of a game experience. Entrainment sometimes literally takes on form: the recurrent bleep of a laser blast, or the relentless throb of a marathon runner's steps. But ultimately, entrainment manifests in a more pervasive fashion, occupying not just perceptual sensations, but modes of thinking and feeling as well.The double-sided definition of the word entrainment, to carry along and to trap, is entirely accurate. The patterns of a game initially draw us in, moving us forward, encouraging us to play. But somehow, at some point, something changes. We find ourselves not just playing a game, but being played by the game as well. Pleasure is a mighty force, and it can carry along those trapped in its wake.

^[17]Dr. Stephan Rechtschaffen, The Omega Institute. <www.omega-institute.com>.

^[18]<http://www.xyzzynews.com/xyzzy.16f.shtml >.