Mazes

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====Third-Person Mazes====

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What's most remarkable about these user-designed maps of mazes in ''Adventure'' and ''Zork'' is that they transform textually represented second-person mazes into fully-represented third-person mazes. Such maps convey a sense of mastery of the maze, but as noted above, third-person mazes do not guarantee safety or solubility. Perhaps it is this paradox—the pretense of mastery undercut by the promise of difficulty—that makes third-person mazes the most common in computer culture. In fact, one is tempted to pin the advent of maze craze to the release of ''Pac-Man'' in the U.S. in October 1980, followed by ''Ms. Pac-Man'' in 1981, and the popular (though problematic) subsequent ports of those games to the Atari VCS in early 1982 (''Pac-Man'') and late 1982 (''Ms. Pac-Man''). ''Pac-Man'' appeared on the Commodore 64 itself in 1983. It was standard to recognize the ''Pac-Man'' playing field as a maze: ''The New York Times'' called Pac-Man "a circle with a big mouth that eats up dots in a maze while other big mouths try to eat it up" (Latham 1981), while ''Newsweek'' mentioned the "maddening Pac-Man maze" (Langway 1981). But even before they hit the mainstream in ''Pac-Man,'' mazes were a staple of computer culture, and on-screen maze-like structures abound [1] in the early days of video arcades and home computers.

+

When players draw maps of the mazes in ''Adventure,'' ''Zork,'' or other interactive fictions, they transform textually represented second-person mazes into fully-represented third-person mazes. Such maps convey a sense of mastery of the maze -- even though a third-person perspective on a maze does not guarantee its safety or solubility. Computers themselves, of course, often represented mazes from above, sometimes to demonstrate their dexterity at producing and solving them and sometimes to provide spaces for play.

−

Procedural mazes are mazes in which the entire structure of the maze does not coherently exist in physical or visual space. The maze resides in code. Or rather, the potential of the maze resides in code. Only a portion of the maze is ever available to be traversed at any given time; the rest remains to be generated by algorithms. There are two types of procedural mazes found in the 1970s and 1980s: textual and visual.

+

The third-person computer maze could be glimpsed as early as 1959 in ''Mouse in the Maze,'' but it truly erupted, in the Unites States at least, less than two years before the release of the Commodore 64, in October 1980. This is when the original ''Pac-Man'' arcade game arrived from Japan. In Japan, the genre of games inspired by ''Pac-Man'' is named after dot eating, but in the United States such games are called maze or maze chase games.

−

The 10 PRINT program's output is a visual, procedural maze; an on-screen maze generated by an algorithm.

+

Of couse, Pac-Man cannot thread his way through the environment to find an exit -- except for the tunnel that links the left and right side of the screen together. Nevertheless, the playing field was called a maze from the beginning. ''The New York Times'' called Pac-Man "a circle with a big mouth that eats up dots in a maze while other big mouths try to eat it up" (Latham 1981), while ''Newsweek'' mentioned the "maddening Pac-Man maze" (Langway 1981). The puzzle that is posed to the voracious Pac-Man, or to the player controlling him, is not to get out of the maze but to run through more or less all of it, avoiding the pursing monsters. The player can certainly identify with the abstract figure who is controlled via joystick, but this figure has a life of his own, portrayed in some of the earliest cut-scenes and seen in attract mode, which features Pac-Man running around on his own.

−

It would simply be impossible to use the word "maze" within the semiotic domain of computers and without recalling these games to some extent. The various sources from the early eighties that called the 10 PRINT output a "maze" tapped into a cultural history of mazes that home programmers and game players would be aware of.

+

One very standard feature of 'Pac-Man'''s maze is that it is aligned to the axes of the display: The paths are either horizontal or vertical.

=== Context of Expectations: Computer Graphics and Games ===

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@@ Line 151: / Line 151: @@
 ====Third-Person Mazes====
-What's most remarkable about these user-designed maps of mazes in ''Adventure'' and ''Zork'' is that they transform textually represented second-person mazes into fully-represented third-person mazes. Such maps convey a sense of mastery of the maze, but as noted above, third-person mazes do not guarantee safety or solubility. Perhaps it is this paradox—the pretense of mastery undercut by the promise of difficulty—that makes third-person mazes the most common in computer culture. In fact, one is tempted to pin the advent of maze craze to the release of ''Pac-Man'' in the U.S. in October 1980, followed by ''Ms. Pac-Man'' in 1981, and the popular (though problematic) subsequent ports of those games to the Atari VCS in early 1982 (''Pac-Man'') and late 1982 (''Ms. Pac-Man''). ''Pac-Man'' appeared on the Commodore 64 itself in 1983. It was standard to recognize the ''Pac-Man'' playing field as a maze: ''The New York Times'' called Pac-Man "a circle with a big mouth that eats up dots in a maze while other big mouths try to eat it up" (Latham 1981), while ''Newsweek'' mentioned the "maddening Pac-Man maze" (Langway 1981). But even before they hit the mainstream in ''Pac-Man,'' mazes were a staple of computer culture, and on-screen maze-like structures abound [1] in the early days of video arcades and home computers.
+When players draw maps of the mazes in ''Adventure,'' ''Zork,'' or other interactive fictions, they transform textually represented second-person mazes into fully-represented third-person mazes. Such maps convey a sense of mastery of the maze -- even though a third-person perspective on a maze does not guarantee its safety or solubility. Computers themselves, of course, often represented mazes from above, sometimes to demonstrate their dexterity at producing and solving them and sometimes to provide spaces for play.
-Procedural mazes are mazes in which the entire structure of the maze does not coherently exist in physical or visual space. The maze resides in code. Or rather, the potential of the maze resides in code. Only a portion of the maze is ever available to be traversed at any given time; the rest remains to be generated by algorithms. There are two types of procedural mazes found in the 1970s and 1980s: textual and visual.
+The third-person computer maze could be glimpsed as early as 1959 in ''Mouse in the Maze,'' but it truly erupted, in the Unites States at least, less than two years before the release of the Commodore 64, in October 1980. This is when the original ''Pac-Man'' arcade game arrived from Japan. In Japan, the genre of games inspired by ''Pac-Man'' is named after dot eating, but in the United States such games are called maze or maze chase games.
-The 10 PRINT program's output is a visual, procedural maze; an on-screen maze generated by an algorithm.
+Of couse, Pac-Man cannot thread his way through the environment to find an exit -- except for the tunnel that links the left and right side of the screen together. Nevertheless, the playing field was called a maze from the beginning. ''The New York Times'' called Pac-Man "a circle with a big mouth that eats up dots in a maze while other big mouths try to eat it up" (Latham 1981), while ''Newsweek'' mentioned the "maddening Pac-Man maze" (Langway 1981). The puzzle that is posed to the voracious Pac-Man, or to the player controlling him, is not to get out of the maze but to run through more or less all of it, avoiding the pursing monsters. The player can certainly identify with the abstract figure who is controlled via joystick, but this figure has a life of his own, portrayed in some of the earliest cut-scenes and seen in attract mode, which features Pac-Man running around on his own.
-It would simply be impossible to use the word "maze" within the semiotic domain of computers and without recalling these games to some extent. The various sources from the early eighties that called the 10 PRINT output a "maze" tapped into a cultural history of mazes that home programmers and game players would be aware of.
+One very standard feature of 'Pac-Man'''s maze is that it is aligned to the axes of the display: The paths are either horizontal or vertical.
 === Context of Expectations: Computer Graphics and Games ===