Power Up

The Play Research Group, UWE, Bristol
studying the technologies and cultures of games and play

Jon's thoughts on fun, play and work are an important counter to the uncritical articulation of 'fun' in recent debates. Play, pleasure and fun are not synonymous of course. Agonistic play can be very serious, 'fun' is a thoroughly ideological concept, and as a social ritual can be deeply unpleasurable (visit bars in Whitley Bay if you don't believe me, or take it from Iggy ), and some forms of pleasure (as Laura Mulvey has pointed out) are profoundly anxious experiences. "It is said that analyzing pleasure, or beauty, destroys it. That is the intention of this essay" .

posted by: sethgiddings at 11:17 | link | comments |

Does anyone know anything about Gadamer ? I found his piece on play in Truth and Method right interesting but couldn't quite a grip on his context - might this form the basis of a future session ? - are there dates for future sessions ? ‘If we examine how the word play is used … we find talk of the play of light, the play of waves, the play of a component in a bearing-case, the inter-play of limbs, the play of forces, the play of gnats, even a play on words. ….The movement which is play has no goal which brings it to an end; rather it renews itself in constant repetition. The movement back and forwards is obviously so central for the definition of a game that it is not important who or what performs this movement. ‘ (Gadamer 1981 : 93 Truth and Method Sheed and Ward London UK)

posted by: JonDovey at 23:12 | link | comments (2) |

I've been doing a bit of work,playfully, on work and play. Thought it might be interesting in the context of the discussions earlier this month about 'fun' to make another serious European contribution but from a very different context. Thats to say thay maybe we should see the play and the pleasures of gaming in the context of a culture that seeks to make our pleasures produtive and our work pleasurable. By suggesting there is an historical development from work based structures of social epistemology to play based forms of commodity and meaning production I do not mean to participate in a celebration of ‘play’ that erases work and labour. Any culture of play is likely to be based on someone else’s culture of exploitation. Moreover play, through its functions under the sign of consumerism, has itself become a form of work, ‘Post modern consumer culture … converts play into the engine of insatiable consumption, which drives the economy without leading to personal fulfillment.’ (Oriard 1991 : 484) Jeremy Rifkind argues that the commodification of culture is a primary drive in contemporary capitalism, and that since, playfulness is at the root of culture, ‘ the commodification of culture is above all else, an effort to colonize play in all of its various dimensions and transform it into purely saleable form.’ (Rifkin 2000:260 cited Kline et al 284) Debates within the mass media public sphere (from Habermas onward) have been characterized by anxiety about the disappearance of seriousness. Susan Sontag claimed that part of her mission as a novelist was ‘To keep alive the idea of seriousness. You have to be a member of a capitalist society in the late 20th century to understand that seriousness itself could be in question.’ (Garis 1992 : 43) Within the Media these debates have been particularly acute at the interface between news – the hard core of the idealized public sphere - and entertainment, (Dovey 2000 : 16-17). In this context we should note how televisual reality itself is now constructed as a game in the formatted ‘Reality TV Game Show’.

posted by: JonDovey at 23:03 | link | comments (1) |

Good points, Seth. I would agree that any position influenced by screen-theory will tend to overvaluate the visual. Hell, we don't even have a sound-theory (mind the hyphen) of film. Much less do we have a clue about haptics and games (although I think Torben Grodal mentions this in passing in his contribution to the otherwise underwhelming Video Game Theory Reader). I like James Newman's concept of non-registered input (NRI), because all that swaying left and right when playing Gran Turismo is an integral part of the experience. BTW, I just picked up Newman's new book, in which he writes: "An examination of the ways in which players engage with the gameworld through the interface allows us to problematize some of the taken-for-granted visualism prevalent in academic and developer communities" (141). Newman uses the term first-hand participation (or FHP; he really seems to have a faible for abbreviations) and points out that FHP "is not necessarily contingent on first-person viewpoint" (142).

Now, let's step back for a moment from all this academic claptrap and look at a real game. I just finished Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time last week and those of you who have played the game will know that you frequently have to jump up zig-zag-style between two walls. A walkthrough that I picked up from gamefaqs.com describes this situation as follows: "Run up one of the moving walls, and then jump off. Press [X] every time your controller vibrates." In other words: don't trust your eyes, trust your hands! Or to paraphrase Susan Sontag: "In place of a hermeneutics we need an erotics of games."

posted by: julian at 22:41 | link | comments |

Picking up on Julian's post (Feb 20th, below) on Chris Chesher's essay in Scan... There are some useful ideas here, and I liked the distinction of the 'glaze' from the (cinematic) gaze and (televisual) glance (though the analogy with the distorting reflections of ceramic glazes was pushing it a bit). The critique of Screen (and screen) theory is timely, though I wonder if this approach is still over-emphasising both the visual and the notion (in part influenced by film theory, in part by general humanist anthro-centrism (yes, I'm making this up as I go along)) that the player's primary engagement with a videogame is via identification with the avatar (ref. Friedman on identification in sim games).

Thinking from the haptic could be useful - Chesher skims over the role of hardware (joypads) in the 'glaze' and I wonder if we could think about 'virtual haptics' - the sense of engagement with, and intervention in, a gameworld that is predicated in an awareness of the gameworld's space, rules, and algorithms that is abstract (i.e. not figurative or anthropomorphic) yet palpable and real.

If Chesher's tentative analogy with driving a car holds true (and as someone who has recently learnt to drive I think it does) then the 'glaze' should be as much about the mobilisation of the full range of vision (especially peripheral vision) - to register movement, danger and the semiotics of engineered vectors, in the context of actual cybernetic loops between vision, hardware, system/environment and NPCs - as any 'liquid adhesion' to a screen.

posted by: sethgiddings at 11:21 | link | comments |

Most of us have been following the debate between Barry Atkins, Jesper Juul and Espen Aarseth last week. But in truth we all just want to get along, as demonstrated by Ian Bogost's plea on watercoolergames.org: "More than anything, I'm afraid of continuing to build a divide between so-called ludology and so-called narratology." Well, here's your chance to practice getting along. Download this Game Studies Family starter kit, containing Espen, Jesper and Barry. Additional family members will be available soon. Play nice!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted by: julian at 19:52 | link | comments (5) |

Narratology is dead, long live narratology!

Did that get your attention? Good. As this is blatant self-promotion I thought I'd make it as subtle as I could. It will probably just elicit a shrug from you wizened travellers of the electronic suberhighway if I tell you that I have a blog now. But this blog is different! Really! I blog about fiction (like The Ludologist), I blog about cheats (like Mia on MemoryCard), but I also blog about games! And I think it would be unfair to exclude you from this revolutionary development. So without further delay, I present to you - Particle Stream. Enjoy!

posted by: julian at 23:47 | link | comments (3) |

The ScreenPlay weekend in Nottingham this weekend was great fun. A stimulating and convivial meeting of 'game makers, thinkers and players'. Highlights for me were a programme of Lillian Schwartz's innovative computer animation made at the Bell Labs in the 1970s and Stelarc's Prosthetic Head performance. The PowerUp presentation was rather 'improvised', but luckily we had a great audience who kicked off a fascinating discussion about the possibilities (and desirability) of 'arthouse' games amongst many other issues.

posted by: sethgiddings at 14:15 | link | comments |

Beyond the Sims and Barbie Magic Hair Styler! A Women in Games Conference University of Portsmouth, UK on 10th and 11th June. 'Two days of empowerment for women working in the games industry' and offering important continuing professional development. Speakers will include: Sheri Graner-Ray from Sony Online Entertainment in Texas, the author of 'Gender Inclusive Game Design', Helen Kennedy from the Play Research Group at the University of the West of England and Aleksandra Krotoski, presenter of Thumb Bandits and Bits on Channel 4, who is researching into games for her PhD at the University of Surrey. Karl Jeffery, the CEO of Climax, Europe's biggest independent game developer, is giving an opening address and Tara Solesbury from Wired Sussex is talking about her Game Girl initiative, aimed at attracting girls to the games industry. For more information talk to Mark Eyles or visit www.womeningames.com

posted by: sethgiddings at 13:48 | link | comments |

Template by motime.com  |