Video Games sales in the U.S in 2008 totaled over $21
billion
Slide 2
Early computer and video games were developed five decades ago
running on platforms such as oscilloscopes, university mainframes
and EDSAC computers. Tennis for two (1958), Spacewar (1962), Pong
(1972)
Slide 3
Oscilloscope Games Not photorrealistic Hypermediated Called
attention to the interface Frenetic pace
Slide 4
Film Crossover from video games to other cultural industries
like Hollywood (i.e. Final Fantasy, Doom, Lara Croft, etc.)
Slide 5
Film Directors are going to gaming: John Singleton (Boyz N the
Hood), Bryan Singer (X-Men), John McTiernan (Die Hard), et al.
Slide 6
Video Games like Grand Theft Auto have been the focus of news
media (i.e. 60 Minutes, Guardian, NY Times, etc.).
Slide 7
Slide 8
It is not for kids anymore. The average age of the video game
player is 30
Slide 9
female game characters: wise old women (fantasy), objects
waiting for male rescue or fetichized subjects of male gaze
Slide 10
Narratology Literary theory and narratology have been helpful
to understand cybertexts and videogames
Slide 11
Narratology Narratological approaches used Aristotelian Poetics
Russian formalism poststructuralism
Slide 12
Slide 13
Videogames Stories? Narratology Games? Ludology
Slide 14
Roger Caillois founded the College of Sociology as a reaction
to the Surrealist movement that was dominant in the 1920s College
of Sociology SurrealistCollege of Sociology Surrealist sought to
move away from surrealism's focus on the fantasy life of the
unconscious and focus instead more on the power of ritual and other
aspects of communal life. sought to move away from surrealism's
focus on the fantasy life of the unconscious and focus instead more
on the power of ritual and other aspects of communal life. Caillois
left France in 1939 for Argentina. During the war he was active in
fighting the spread of Nazism in Latin America. He was responsible
for introducing authors such as J.L. Borges or Alejo Carpentier to
the European public. Caillois left France in 1939 for Argentina.
During the war he was active in fighting the spread of Nazism in
Latin America. He was responsible for introducing authors such as
J.L. Borges or Alejo Carpentier to the European public.1939J.L.
BorgesAlejo Carpentier1939J.L. BorgesAlejo Carpentier
Slide 15
Play occasion of pure waste: waste of time, energy, ingenuity,
skill, and money. a free and voluntary activity that occurs in a
pure space, isolated and protected from the rest of life.
Slide 16
Play 1. free 2. separate 2. separate 3. uncertain 4.
unproductive 5. regulated 6. fictive
Slide 17
Types of Game ludus are games containing a rule that specifies
a winning condition while paidia are play-activities with rules but
no winning condition
Slide 18
Matrix of Games agon games are games based on direct
competition between players. agon is the ancient greek word meaning
contest or challenge. alea are games that based on chance, games
that we consider forms of gambling. Latin name for the game of dice
mimicry refers to role-playing games, such as "playing house".
Mimsis in Aristotles Poetics is translated as make-believe. Mimicry
is incessant invention. ilinx (vertigo) games centered on the
pleasures of movement. Greek for whirlpool.
Slide 19
Videogame as Narrative 1) all literature is to some extent
indeterminate, nonlinear, and different for every reading 2) the
reader has to make choices in order to make sense of the text 3) a
text cannot really be nonlinear because the reader can read it only
one sequence at a time, anyway.
Slide 20
Ergodic Literature nontrivial effort is required to allow the
reader to traverse the text from the Greek ergon & hodos,
"work" and "path."
Slide 21
a text can never be reduced to a stand-alone sequence of words.
There will always be context, convention, contamination -Espen
Aarseth
Slide 22
Pacman--------------- Fully two-dimensional Completely Opaque
Nothing behind or beyond the interface Immediacy of the experience
can come only through acknowledging the medium
Slide 23
Videogames Repourposed TV set
Slide 24
Fantasy RG Books Photorrealistic attention to detail Antiquated
prose and poetry Videogames Myst remediates several media on
several levels Cinematic POV
Slide 25
Slide 26
Sex & Violence Computer games attacked because they
remediate immediate media (TV & film) Books are not
attacked
Slide 27
Hierarchy of Immediacy Text (book) Graphic (comic book)
PhotographyTVFilm Cybersex or teledildonics hypermediacy
Desire for immediacy Every photo is a failed attempt Digital
photography complicates and mocks the desire for immediacy
Slide 34
If photographs are images, and films are moving images, then
video games are actions
Slide 35
Slide 36
computerized visuality is no longer about light but is instead
about space. computerized visuality is no longer about light but is
instead about space.
Slide 37
Slide 38
in film, the subjective perspective is marginalized and used
primarily to effect a sense of alienation, detachment, fear, or
violence.
Slide 39
first-person perspective holds forth the possibility of action
that makes it such an uncomfortable technique in cinema, but such a
natural arrangement in gaming
Slide 40
since gaming is an action and not an image, realism should be
imagined on different terms. a better kind of realism for gaming
would follow the model of neorealism in film in which a film's
neorealisticness depends on its narrative and not its form (e.g.,
its degraded style)
Slide 41
an index for the very dominance of informatic organization and
how it has entirely overhauled, revolutionized, and recolonized the
function of identity
Slide 42
the opposite of history, not because the game fetishizes the
imperial perspective, but because the diachronic details of lived
life are replaced by the synchronic homogeneity of code pure and
simple
Slide 43
Godards cinema, broadly speaking, is within the modern
tradition established by Brecht and Artaud, in their different
ways, suspicious of the power of the arts- and the cinema, above
all- to capture its audience without apparently making it think, or
changing it. - Peter Wollen
Slide 44
Counter cinema 1.Narrative straightforwardness (transitivity)
vs narrative intransitivity (gaps, elipses, digressions, episodic
constructions, disjuncture, excess). 2.Identification vs
Estrangement 3.Transparency vs Foregrounding 4.Single vs Multiple
Diegesis 5.Closure vs Aperture 6.Pleasure vs unpleasure 7.Fiction
vs Reality
