The Following Phrases

A new issue of dichtung-digital edited by Patricia Tomaszek came out a few days ago. I have an article in the issue which analyzes Molleindustria’s game Every Day the Same Dream. I am still making my way through the other articles in the issue, but I am completely impressed by what I have read so far. Definitely worth checking out. Other contributors include Eduardo Navas, Davin Heckman, Roberto Simanowski, John M. Vincler, Scott Rettberg, Nele Lenze, Martina Pfeiler, and an elegant editorial introduction from Patricia.

The Electronic Literature Collection Vol. 2 just came out.  There are some canonical texts/projects included, but some fresh fantasticness too. It’s definitely worth some exploratory peregrinations. I have one piece included, mémoire involuntaire no. 1, which I did awhile ago. I should post other similar texts I did back then…the project was, after all, entitled no. 1, and I made other permutations that I didn’t bother posting. Anyway, I hope to read through the collection soon and maybe post some reactions when I get a chance…

Extinction Level Events

A few days ago I posted about the Miami Global Game Jam, before it began. After the jam I wrote up a review of the games produced during 48 hours in Oxford Ohio. You can read the original post at Miami’s blog here. I did not actually attend the jam since I will be at Miami in the Fall. Yet, being an outside observer (or player) was ideal for writing up the review. I have some distance from what was produced… Some of the games are more complete than others, but one can find some amazing ideas at work here. Reviewing the games makes me realize that the innovate creativity of Global Game Jams is certainly important. The model of innovation can produce fascinating ideas; it is beyond doubt. Yet, thinking through this model of innovation and its relation to dominant ideologies of the games industry is still important: indie game production, rapid-prototyping, etc., will still feed into the game industry more than challenge it. The production of innovative “game mechanics without politics” is fodder for the same-old, same-old of the game industry, even though what we witness is the absolute, interesting new. This is not to say that the games created at Miami are not amazing and astonishing in their own right. They are! I suppose I just want to take the criticality further. What would be a political, progressive model of the GGJ based on production models that do not feed dominate industries but subvert them? Brecht said that innovation is only renovation if it is not attached to true political motivations for change. It may be that GGJ are generators of (amazing) renovation, but not (dare I say) innovation. True innovation would require, as Brecht said, the “revolutionizing” a medium’s aesthetic production. But, of course, the methods of Brecht were eventually co-opted, as was the notion of “revolution” itself. So, it remains to be determined, both theoretically and practically, what “true innovation” would be…in the meantime…check out these rad games from Miami U!

» Read the rest of this entry «

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.

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. Likewise, the dimensions of Lara Croft’s body, already analyzed to death by film theorists, are irrelevant to me as a player, because a different-looking body would not make me play differently. When I play, I don’t even see her body, but see through it and past it.

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. Though the example of Lara Croft is immediately intriguing (and has caught the eye of many others) what leap into my mind upon this rereading was the dismissal of semiotics and the use of the chess example, given that Ferdinand Saussure (founder of semiology) uses practically the same chess example to illustrate his rationale concerning the inauguration 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 privileged 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.

» Read the rest of this entry «