This paper is a theoretically informed reading of the television series 24, which we argue to be a prominent and instructive example of ludification, ie. the use of game design elements in non-game methods with which he tackles and deploys speed television series alters the architecture of narrative into a ludified system obsessed with modes of representing speed and controlling territories of aggression and danger. Ludification, ludology, theory, cinematic television, new media studies and story structures residing in the threshold between (non-linear) games and (linear) stories [7].
Nowadays, video games influence
surrounding media, motion pictures, television series,
commercials, web content, even journalism and
social media communication [
objects threshold between (non-linear) games and (linear) stories. The analysis of 24 focuses on how a fictional character increasingly transforms into avatar, notably by becoming the very physical personWe argue that there is a close connection
Likewise, ludo-interpretation (ibid.) is our term for the methodical readings that pay close attention to the ludic foundations of contemporary media stories, such as 24 (Fox 2001-2010, 2014), a prominent and instructive example of ludic storytelling.
With regards to the development of the
science of ludification, our paper contributes on
three levels: 1) Theoretically, by broadening the
scope and subject of ludification by distancing
the term from gamification, which is very much
focused on feedback and motivation in respect to
learning; and furthermore to produce a specific
vocabulary for the kind of gamified [
(ludification) both in cinema and on
television that adopts various techniques from
computer games. 2) Methodologically, by
showing how ludo-interpretation systematically
operate when critically applied to a media text (the
case of 24). 3) And, finally, analytically, by
tentatively paving the way for other readings and/or
adaptations of playful [
Although ludification ties in with both
gamification and the concept and practice of
transmedia [
e.g., television series. Thus, a ludification of storytelling a ludification across media and platforms emerges at the intersection between convergence culture and gamification and 24 is a perfect example of such dynamic.
Games have enjoyed astonishing popularity
from the industrial triteness of Pong (Atari 1972)
to the polished triple-A production of Assassins
Creed (Ubisoft 2007-). Economic and cultural
impact are on an unremitting upward trajectory
and has placed play, games and media at the heart
of a dispersed ecology of practice ranging from
local identity creation to global cultural
production and usage as well as a heightened sense of
imagination and manifestation of imagery [
The result of all this spirited media
convergence (which is a far cry from only being
subculture) is a complex tie-in between the game
industry and big budget contemporary films and
television [
A few examples: True Detective (HBO
2014) with all its Lovecraftian twists and weird
mythology is also a reference to the split between
who knows the system and the plot from the
inside. The fiction presents characters who
experience traumatic events. But afterwards, when they
narrate to the viewers (and fellow detectives)
what really happened, they lie. Who (or what) are
we to thrust? Images (experience) or words
(narrative)? Indeed, this split between what happens,
and how it is told or represented, is a basic trait
of playing games: I am and am not the character
I play [
This can of course only be hinted at here, but the disparity between protagonist and narrator is elevated to both meta-fic
- (and sarcasm) in the first-person exploration game The Stanley Parable, a (Galactic Cafe 2011).
The surprise hit series Dark (Netflix 2017-)
German underdog and now a major Netflix
installment extends the intricacies of time travel
and time paradoxes to a point where spectators
thrillingly lose their footing, very similar to game
players losing sight of direction in complex
mazes. The chaos cinema [
In television series 24 (2001-2014) we follow Jack Bauer, played by Kiefer Sutherland, a pro-Bush, strike-first Rambo 2.0 armed with a smartphone and highto say that 24 fashioned a new visual generation of cinematic television dressed up as video games: In reality, 24 is an action game without a controller.
The following reading investigates how a fictional character increasingly transforms into avatar, notably by becoming the very physical personification of the abstract notion (and sensation)
claim that there is a close Bauer and the various methods with which he tackles and deploys speed, and furthermore how the television series itself alters the architecture of narrative into a ludified system obsessed with modes of representing speed and controlling territories of aggression and danger.
The avatar of Kiefer Sutherl
in the television series 24, is not playable in the
traditional, physio-ontological sense, using a
controller and a gaming interface [
[
mselves? As we shall see in the reading of 24 this question is very much tied up with Arabs, daughters, and game mechanics of firearms and cars loaded with smart technology.
Our paper is structured the following way:
Taking off from a list of game elements in 24, we
look closer at how the organization of screens,
viewpoints, and representation of information
become not only means to piece the narrative of
24 together, but further how they together
conA
tors of speed and power and the various moving
vehicles of Bauer follows next along with
readings of how this territorialization contributes to
the representation of 24 as a game world with
game rules [
There is a scene in 24 where Jack Bauer, exhausted, stripped of all his American prerogatives, stares into the camera. Intuitively (at least to invoke the tradition of puncturing the fourth wall of storytelling, turning this rather banal scene into a sign of self-referential cognizance,
But this is not the
case. Bauer does not gaze into the camera as if to
question his own fictional partaking. He is not
some stupid action hero well, some might think
he is scooped by imprudent rules that keep him
trapped inside fancy vehicles and a fast-paced
movie. Jack looks into a monitor that belongs to
the sophisticated telecommunication gear of
CTU, no more no less. If there is any classiness
in his frantic stare it does not stem from a
reproduction of the spectator gaze. Rather, it refers to
the omnipresence of the kind of televised
equipment necessary for regional dominance and
control of power: people watching Jack while Jack
watches others. Jack Bauer is a playable gamer:
we play him while he plays the game. This is
almost like watching games brought to life on
Twitch [
24 is a dence of a growing trend in cinema and television: the ludification of story objects and story structures. 24 is an example of how a traditional, Aristotelian story with a beginning, middle, and an end, has become ludified and which therefore calls for a type of enquiry a ludo-interpretation rooted in computer game theory (ludology).
We propose the following list of game (or ludified) elements in 24. Note, that the list is deliberately made up of standard industry terms; features that occur in almost any commercial game.
Main character/avatar/gamer: Speed aka Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland).
: The Bauerall of whom are ludic devices set within a confined game world with game mechanics and obeying game rules.
(their AI): Potential destructors of through spaces or levels.
: Keep car stable and operSetting (game world): Los Angeles (or New York or London).
Rules for transgressing game world: Travel to China, get captured and tortured; return with a full beard.
This only happens between seasons. As does potential divorce(s), drug addiction and recovery, and aging. Core mechanics: Special use of weapons, Armor, Catch-Up, increase/decrease of Class, general XP and HP.
Time: Real-time, 24 hours (minus commercials).
Cutscenes: Presidential orders, rogue instructions, tially all of them). Can be combined using splitscreen.
Sites on the game board: 1) Officiary facilities, 2) rain, each equipped with core mechanics and a symmetrical amount of AI to keep Bauer busy.
Game Balance: Constant asymmetry bet Goal: Save the world.
Save game: Every 24 hours. Micro-save during commercial breaks.
The TV series 24 first aired on the American
Fox Channel in November 2001, problematically
close to the events of 9-11 [
The first twenty-four episodes take place on the day of the Presidential primary in Los Angeles, where Jack Bauer, chief field agent at the Los Angeles-based CTU (Counter Terrorist Unit), and his distinguished team of men and women uncover a plot to gun down Presidential contender David Palmer. With only 24 hours to dealso deal with his stressful marriage and the unexpected disappearance of his troubled teenage daughter. This juxtaposition of big-time political conflicts and micro-sociological issues becomes an enduring theme of the narrative from this point on. In Season Two, now-President David Palmer reaches out to Jack, who is called upon to stop another terrorist plot with global implications. A nuclear bomb is set to go off sometime that day in Los Angeles. Of course, Jack is the only one who can stop it. Three years later (in fiction time), in Season Three, Jack captures and detains a powerful drug lord named Ramon SalUS Government with the threat of releasing a virus that will kill millions if they do not set him free. Palmer seeks re-election for a second term, together with a crooked chief of staff, and a girlfriend who may not be telling him all he needs to know.
Interestingly, 24 can be viewed as a massive
commentary on and use of dromology, or speed
[
Paul Virilio argues that the role of speed has
previously been overlooked in accounts of the
organization of civilizations and their politics, and
that speed is crucial to the production of wealth
and power [
24
[
Later on, we shall see how Jack uses the art of
dromology to his advantage in the pursuit of
saving the world, mastering the mechanics of the
fiction he is placed within and winning the game.
24 was one of the first major TV shows to
present its story across several platforms; television,
web, PC games, and websites, constantly
overstepping the demarcations that used to define the
specificity of media and their contents [
An enduring trademark of the 24 brand is the porous network of screens and sub-screens. The effectiveness of this technological stamp is verified in the beginning and finale of an episode.
When the plot thickens, and the digital watch
approaches full hour, we are reminded each week
that Jack has more than a few calamities to take
care of [
However, the screen is also designed so that we may concurrently access different layers of information and embark upon story trajectories similar to strategy and role-playing games (e.g. Bal
1-2 Black Isle Studios), StarCraft-series (Blizzard Entertainment 1998-), and World of Warcraft (Blizzard Entertainment 2004-). This spatial technique is called external focalization that feeds from frequent shots of computer screen as props and gadgets within the story.
CTU headquarters has of course lots of them, but Jack himself also employs a choice of palmtops, devices including the allusion to shooters and strategy games are part and parcel of the intrinsic tension between logistics and structure on one side and chaotic density on the other. And since the audience cannot rise above the visual representation of real-time that would acquire flash backs, switching time sections, etc. the characters of 24 do the job for us. They provide overviews, get hold of status reports, sneak up reliable intelligences, and download intelligible crime topographies.
As already mentioned, dromology operates on the basis of speed and paths through terrains.
Both relate to the spaces that the characters
inhabit and pass through, for instance, the urban
space or military facilities [
24 as a
pher Hight claims that Jack Bauer uses
transportation and telecommunication equipment to
move through zones of war and conflict where
each scenario seems to seamlessly trigger the
next [
Moulin Rouge (20th Century Fox 2001) and The Great Gatsby (Warner Bros Pictures 2013).
Anna Karenina (Universal Pictures) from 2012 also springs to mind. prime vehicle, the Chevy Suburban SUV, as a literary sign rife with allegorical and ideological meaning, the communication and transportation
ransform into deterritorializing vectors: forces that pose as threats to a territory. The kind of vectors that Jack possesses must be mobile, which is fitting for a special agent always on the move; they must be fast, and operationally efficient. However, all these props also serve the imminent conflict and unbal
. At all times they may destabilize his path, knock him down from the belt or otherwise interfere with the seamless trajectory.
In 24, vector quantities are equally or perhaps more important than speed itself. While speed (50 miles per hour) is a scalar, and the same goes for distance, velocity (60 miles per hour south) is a vector. Vectorization implies both the magnitude and the direction of an object, such as driv
r swiftly from point A to point B.
Vectorization transforms an open territorial
space, a space that can be negotiated (a
playspace) into a closed and structured space (a
game-space) [
Vectorization happens within territories, thus
serving as bridges
and those of the non-player characters (the
the world. His actions are constrained similar to
a game with fixed rules, quantifiable outcome,
and a semantic of winning or losing. The
structuring of this area and its topographical nodes
dog his measures. From a political and military
perspective, territory is a space to be defended
and secured, and to be invaded and colonized
[
ssive,
apocalyptic allusions and disorientation: the city is,
simultaneously, the desert, and the desert can
easily be mistaken for the city [
Ultimately, 24 can be put on a formula: Momentum + direction = mission.
It embodies the oldest mode of storytelling questing with an in-build drive towards the rai
of real-time [
These errands can be grouped into three: 1)
The task of protagonist is to locate nodes
within a network in which case Jack is a
space
as time rushes by, and he gets wounded more and
more, is a testimony to his enduring
professionalism. 3) Finally, Jack must pursue focal points
within a topographical space. This latter activity
positions
the lookout for new levels, access points, and
passages leading from one region of space to
another. The frenzied pace of unlocking new levels
local sites to each other in 24
appears cynical: He has already been there; he
has already done that; floating on top of the
conveyor belt. At other times, however, there is a
sense of novelty and fresh panic invested in the
many hidden, disorienting, and vulnerable areas
of Los Angeles and its vicinity. The vectorization
of speed suggests that the unfolding of space is
important, not only in the obvious sense that it
participates in the conventional extrication of the
plot and its structures, but also because the
unfolding is set here within a networked, abstract
space in which qualities of surfing, interpreting,
and gaming are vital.
play: the formalized interaction that occurs when
a player follows the rules of a game and
experiences its system through play [
Sometimes, Jack pauses and tries to understand the rules of the world that demand a certain outcome of him and dictates a specific position on
-time scheme of things, which translate to the physical and pragmatic environment, there rarely seems time enough to question neither the nature of the underlying frame of fiction or the superficial game missions. Jack rarely if at all verbalizes the stress that comes with such a double bind. He shares this trait with Jason Bourne who cannot and must not reflect on his fighting mechanics while caught in the actual (boss) fight. Both of them just keep going, on top of their conveyor belts.
The narrative commotion in the opening
Jason Bourne movie (Universal Pictures 2002)
ciradvanced strategic capabilities. The character,
played by Matt Damon, is not aware, to begin
with, that he even has such potential. The kind of
action that Bourne performs, kickboxing, taking
down multiple enemies at once, using
complicated, semi-automatic rifles, climbing down
rooftops, seems transgressive, somehow outside
his realm. And yet the viewers know exactly that
these features firmly connect to the game Bourne
is playing [
Just like the Bourne universe 24 encompasses a game world, game rules, and game mechanics.
The fictional world (made up of finite territories) is commonly the city of Los Angeles (later on New York and London). Rules address the attempt to secure a territory (think the map
Counter-Strike (Valve Software 1999), disentangle a conspiracy (as in the video game Deus Ex (Eidos Interactive 2000), and prevent a catastrophe from happening. The most obvious parallel, however, is to the Grand Theft Auto game franchise (Rockstar Games 1997-).
Notably GTA San Andreas (2004), which happens to take place in an LA-like urban environment stigmatized with discrete boundaries between both hostile and friendly sites, and which like 24 channels the action through speed, motion and the use of violent and de-territorializing conveyor belts.
Mechanics, in 24, apply to the adjustable,
usually movable, damageable, and, to a certain
terms from Pure War, game mechanics involve
those instruments that accelerate and intensify
speed [
As a character Jack Bauer continues the tradition of the Hollywood action hero. The typical action hero can be grasped as a cultural commodity and a composite made of game parts. The hero typically comes with three pre-installed features. 1) He or she are modifiable to the extent that they
ill set. 2) They are location-based, implying that they simply have to stick to the confines of the game board. 3) And, finally, they are vehicles of (speedy) accomplishment. Very often, they are forced to take control of their own vehicle (a car, their own bodies, weapons); and equally often someone or something else takes control of them and uses them as a vehicle. Heroes always act as (sometimes from God, in Blues Brothers (Universal Pictures 1980), and they always drive themselves toward a goal. In fact, they are the ultimate, cliché ridden God of structuralist poetics,
[
heroes does not relate to their ethos or other such moral or psychological constitution. Instead they owe their existence to a mode of elasticity enabling each and one of us, the consumers and interpreters, to fuse Jack perhaps teaming up with the semi-ironical and very British brutality of Jason Statham lage of action characters. In short: Action heroes are one-dimensional, yet flexible things.
Jack follows rules. Not just by doing what he is told by the President or other superior figures but by subjugating his will to that of the game. If he (or we) does not abide to the absolute, nonnegotiable rules of the game there is no game. He moves (fast) within the confines of the board and its parametrical edges. As such, the way that Jack acts out the mission equally combines narrative, space, and gaming. 1) In the narrative regime by fulfilling one quest after the other of the plot. 2) Spatially by securing and regaining power of a territory under siege. 3) And in terms of the game he is playing by combining cartographic and networking knacks with those that allow him to interpret the various deceptions as means to steer effectively through the game and follow it right to the end of the line.
It goes without saying, that were he to overstep this line, he would essentially, and literally, rantino way of thinking, but in the overtly pragmatic sense of aborting the game. If he goes to China, for instance, this happens between seasons, or as a kind of preparation for (the next) gameplay. Is he a toy? Sure, Jack can be treated like a toy, much the same way as the iconic action heroes James Bond, Jason Bourne and John pict the whereabouts of the fictional Bauer they may be playing with him, because they activate
-like attributes and free him from his platform, aka the television series. But still they duplicate exactly the board of Greater Los Angeles (now on the real Google Maps) thus echoing what Jack Bauer fundamentally does best: Play by the rules = stick to the board. In many ways, Bauer is the last of the dead serious action
of irony or self-referentiality in him. As such, he is the quintessence and reference point of ludification.
In the attempt to read 24 as a ludic fiction, we should not confuse the installment of weapons, telecommunication, and transportation devices with understated signifiers of geopolitical, urban worry. There is a tendency to treat such devices, guns, phones, and cars, as either parts of a narratological framework, repeated over and over in movies and television series, or as food for alle
24. On the contrary, one could imagine a hermeneutician insist, it is a symbol of modern struggle, a subtext revealing the complex interaction of control and territorial dominance, on the one hand, and alienation and territorial threat, on the other. But what if this rich container of significance and allegorical prominence was deliberately emptied? Intro ludo-interpretation, at least in its bleakest, purest and most cynical form.
What ing vector; the car as an amalgamation of velocity and momentum; the car as an enclosed space within which and upon which Jack Bauer, our hero, plays out his game and defeats his enemies, one by one. The trick is to think of something that enables a move from A to B, the action that this movement involves, rather than the sumptuous meaning and socio-cultural concern it brings erary style in the age of computer games. Symhas to figure out before one can observe the real truth about this car. The same thing would happen if one were to ask a Freudian scholar armed with an analytical apparatus of suspicion to stop treating dream scenarios as symbolic significations. This would be almost impossible. In ludointerpretation, ideally a train is a train is a train and not a token of sexual intercourse. A car in 24 is a car, a vehicle, a vector, and a game mechanic. owe her functionality in the show to a commitment to the ethos of Jack Bauer, as character and dramaturgical cliché. Instead, Kimberley (Elisha Kushbert) is merely a non-playing character, an NPG, that has to be collared and eliminated, efwithout too much damage, and without overtly
Ludo-interpretation thus becomes a strategy of hermeneutical negation. Its sufficiency is equivalent to the ruling out (rather than the taking in) of socio-cultural, political, and narratological signs in order to arrive at the ludic nucleus of the story-game. In this paper we have tried to unravel the bits and pieces of this nucleus and at the same time demonstrated what ludification is and is all about.
Viewed from a materialistic, and ontological, understanding of linear media, a television series can never count as a truly interactive form. However, as we have explained through our dromos infused case study of 24, it is the epistemological markers of game-like qualities (speed, weapons, conveyor be that not only question the more general claim that computer games represent a new, spatial mode of storytelling but also dictates a methodological rethinking of the factual elements we see on television. The danger is of course that such a methodology, and a fitting case, end up becoming a rhetoric attempt to use game metalanguage to describe a TV series. In this paper we have tried the exact opposite: to read 24 as a stone-faced, epistemological game.