The Following Phrases

My original intent in starting this blog was to provide a public place for thinking through my dissertation, for providing a salvage yard of sorts where I could place some of my current thoughts–odds and ends which might prove useful or not for the dissertation. Hopefully they will also be useful for others interested in thinking critically and theoretically about video games. I plan on posting more regularly in the future, daily if I am able.

So, with that said, this first post about games arises from a recent re-reading of Espen Aarseth’s “Genre Trouble“  a key text in the ludologist vs. narratologist debates (as they have unfortunately become to be known). In particular the following quote spurred my thoughts:

Games are not “textual” or at least not primarily textual: where is the text in chess? We might say that the rules of chess constitute its “text,” but there is no recitation of the rules during gameplay, so that would reduce the textuality of chess to a subtextuality or a paratextuality. A central “text” does not exist — merely context. Any game consists of three aspects: (1) rules, (2) a material/semiotic system (a gameworld), and (3) gameplay (the events resulting from application of the rules to the gameworld). Of these three, the semiotic system is the most coincidental to the game. As the Danish theorist and game designer Jesper Juul has pointed out (Juul 2001b), games are eminently themeable: you can play chess with some rocks in the mud, or with pieces that look like the Simpson family rather than kings and queens. It would still be the same game. The “royal” theme of the traditional pieces is all but irrelevant to our understanding of chess.

Thus, game studies would ideally focus on the rules and gameplay–though the latter would seemingly require some analysis of representation or the “semiotic system” given that gameplay emerges within the relationship between gameworld and rules. What leap into my mind immediately was the dismissal of “semiotics” and the use of the chess example, given that Saussure uses practically the same chess example to illustrate his rational concerning the founding of semiotics. Of course, Aarseth’s use of the word “semiotic” is really a codeword for narratives and visual representations which frame the game system within a gameworld; less a reference to actual semiotics (and Saussure for that matter), the word is intended to indicate a certain brand of theory – perhaps of the poststructuralist flavor – and practitioners of this theory who mindlessly port their training (developed through the study of literature or media such as film and television) to the field of game studies. (Incidentally, Aarseth explicitly denies the usefulness of semiotics proper to the study of electronic texts in his book Cybertexts). Nevertheless, Aarseth’s choice to frame the other of game studies as semiotics is intriguing given that the methods of the ludologists to create a stable foundation for game studies share traits with Ferdinand Saussure’s attempt to ground the field of semiology. Indeed, Saussure claims that “language must, to put it correctly, be studied in itself; heretofore language has almost always been studied in connection with something else, from other viewpoints.” If one replaces “language” with “games” one arrives at Aarseth’s basic qualms concerning the state of game studies and the unreflective porting of theories derived from literature & film to games. But, let’s look at the chess examples Saussure uses.

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Returned home a few days ago from a wonderful trip to Providence for the opening of the Inappropriate Covers exhibition I co-curated with Justin Katko. The opening was held on April 10th and a few days before we organized a film screening for The Magic Lantern at the Cable Car Cinema. The screening went quite well with films such as a selection from the Lossless series by Rebecca Baron and Doug Goodwin (we screened #3 and #5), Robert Arnold’s “Morphology of Desire,” Matthew Suib’s excellent work “COCKED,” and other videos. Here’s a description of the films we screened.

The opening for the exhibition was wonderful with Stephanie Syjuco giving an excellent and “appropriate” artist talk; we exhibited her piece “Body Double.” Other artists in attendance were L. Amelia Raley (showing “I should have never ever ever did those things”) and Ted Riederer (showing “The Resurrectionists”).

From the press release: “Inappropriate Covers includes multimedia works by 11 established and emerging artists, chosen for the aesthetic tensions they generate through acts of appropriation, reconfiguration, and erasure. Works in the exhibition range from the refined to the outrageous, according to JoAnn Conklin, director of the Bell Gallery. Jim Campbell’s elegant sculpture muses on memory and loss: the artist’s own heartbeat and breath sets the frequency of a layer of fog that appears on a glass, covering and uncovering photographs of his parents. At the other end of the spectrum is Kelly Heaton’s Live Pelt (The Surrogate). Heaton refers to the cloak, made from 64 used Tickle Me Elmo dolls purchased on E-bay, as her “substitute lover.”  In addition to Campbell and Heaton, artists participating in the exhibition are Brian Dettmer, Kenneth Goldsmith, Christian Marclay, L. Amelia Raley, Ted Riederer, Brian Kim Stefans, Stephanie Syjuco, John Oswald, and Mark Wallinger.”

Inappropriate Covers @ The David Winton Bell Gallery, Brown University. Running until May 29, 2009:

A vlog about Inappropriate Covers made by Julie Levin-Russo for HASTAC:

Press Release from Brown University:

More Text, from The Brown Daily Herald & Yankee Magazine.

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A few weeks ago the second volume of Transformative Works and Cultures went online. The issue is called “Games as Transformative Works” and contains a short article of mine: “Intrinsic motivation: flOw, video games, and participatory culture.” The article was published in their “Symposium” section, a space intended for shorter pieces that address both the academic community and general public. The ideas in the piece stem from the first chapter of my dissertation which contains a larger examination of Csikszentmihalyi’s theory of flow in relation to video games (but also in relation to Raymond Williams’ concept of televisual flow). The chapter attempts to fill a gap in game scholarship which often mentions Csikszentmihalyi & flow, but rarely with a critical eye. The article in TWC doesn’t go into much depth in the theoretical discussion of “flow,” but instead attempts to draw a relationship between the (sometimes) intrinsic motivation of modding and Csikszentmihalyi’s notion of “intrinsic motivation” which is attached to flow activities such as, potentially, video games. The gist being that at some point - when the player reaches a skill level where the game is no longer (or less) challenging - modification might be a choice to continue the “flow experience” cultivated in the game; thus, the intrinsic motivation of playing the game overflows into the immaterial labor of work (often to the material profit of others, not necessarily the modder). Anyway, take a look if you’re interested. There’s a brief discussion of the game flOw in relation to World of Warcraft actually… The rest of the collection looks fascinating as well, though I have only been able to read a few articles as of yet.