Gaming Rhythms: Play and Counterplay from the situated to the local

Current Details

2010-09-05T20:50:00.003+10:00

My publications can be found on my institutional profile. Most of them are available free and are linked there, but if you can't find one and want to read it go ahead and hit me up.

Pdf of the main project is available here, through the Institute of Network Cultures.

UNE School Presentation 28/05

2010-05-28T11:06:00.001+10:00

Piracy in the Caribbean on Prezi

New Job, New Corporate Logo

2010-01-13T11:23:00.003+11:00

Refractory - Issues 13 & 16

2008-06-05T00:11:00.002+10:00

Issue 13 Refractory with Darshana Jayemanne and Christian McCrea.

Issue 16 Refractory with Justin Clemens.

Enjoy.

Good News

2008-01-20T11:51:00.001+11:00

Dean Chan also invited me to be on his panel at the Asian Studies Association of Australia conference in Melbourne next July, the theme of which will be popular culture. Its gonna be refereed (stoked).

What Happened to Me?

2007-12-17T01:28:00.001+11:00

I don't suppose there is anyone still out there that reads this. But just in case I'm not dead. I've just been really busy.

Highlights:

New job at Deakin University - I'm a Research Fellow in Literacy Education

Hundreds of hours playing Nintendo DS, Playstation 2, and Xbox (and a few PC games also)

The blogs staying alive until I finish my PhD at least.

Abstract - Open Source Culture

2007-04-20T23:17:00.001+10:00

Open Source Culture: Participatory Culture and the Digital Divide

Henry Jenkins’ recent publications on convergence have focused on the way that the active audience, equipped with the productive and distributive tools of digital technology might transform the waning public sphere in the USA, at the expense of effectively excluding discussion of the transnational and uneven practices of cultural convergence. However, in his work the stakes of convergence culture are clearly established: empowered consumers (potentially) have an active role in transforming – and democratizing – governments and corporations. This article will examine what this emergent politicized form of consumption/production means in the context of the unevenness of global participation in the information economy.

By focusing on the tactics of participation that are deployed in the global ‘South’ through a case study of media practices and consumption in Venezuela this article will demonstrate what is at stake in the shift to a media paradigm of convergence. In particular I will focus on the role that media piracy plays in providing a heterogeneous space of participation outside the news and telecommunications media, which have come under increasingly strict government controls since Hugo Chávez’s 2006 re-election.

To address this precarious participation in global media production, enabled through illegal practices that are disciplined by both local and global forces, I will turn to the work of Néstor García Canclini and George Yúdice on the uneven relationship between consumption and citizenship in order to contest dominant dialogues of piracy. Finally the article will re-examine piracy in the context of open source, in order to argue that to extend the consumer/citizen empowerment of convergence globally the notion of open source must be extended to include hardware, and education, as well as software.

Hunkering down

2007-04-13T15:34:00.001+10:00

Its time to get the rest of my PhD out of the way. No commitments for the next six weeks (apart from teaching), so I need to do some good solid writing.

The trip to CSU Dominguez Hills was cool, I still don't understand how I was there for 3 days and was gone from Audtralia for five. Time is confusing, especially when combined with space.

Interesting that no one that I spoke to in the USA has heard of Second Life, or even of America's Army.

Abstract - Border Politics of MMOs

2007-04-03T14:22:00.001+10:00

(with Dr. Katarina Damjanov)

The Border Politics of Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games:

Gaming in the ‘Free’ World

As a notion of place ‘the border’ has been deployed in a number of ways, of particular interest to this article is the way that ‘the border’ has been invoked as a shifting and immaterial boundary, and a metaphor for global mobility and hybridity. In this regard we wish to highlight two aspects of Pablo Vila’s (2000) work: his critique of a homogenous concept of ‘the border’; and his focus on uneven dynamics that borders impose.

The concept of the border will be used in this article to explore the exclusionary boundaries of massive multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs), both in regard to access to the games, and of access within the games themselves. This investigation elaborates on the established uneven power dynamic in MMORPGs between the corporate owners of the game, and the players of the game. The aim of the article is to open up the category of players of MMORPGs to explore stratification within, and between, games that is derived from an unevenness of access.

The article will examine the ways that this unevenness stems from economics, technology, and culture through an ethnographic investigation of MMORPG play in Belgrade, Serbia, Melbourne, Australia, and Caracas, Venezuela. The discussion will focus on games popular at all sites: Tibia (CipSoft, 1996), Flyff (AeonSoft, 2004), and Second Life (Linden Labs, 2003). Through an analysis of this empirical data, the notion of the border in relation to MMORPGs will be explored, to argue while this genre of videogames represents a form of international space, that the inequalities and unevenness that characterize the demarcation of borders between states are carried through to the virtual game worlds, replicating and reproducing off-line hierarchies. Of particular interest will be the stakes and status of playing these games for free, vis-à-vis a system that allows people who are free-players and fee-paying subscribes to both play together and co-produce a virtual economy.

References
Vila, P. (2000). Crossing Borders, Reinforcing Borders: Social Categories, Metaphors, and Narrative Identities on the U.S.-Mexico Frontier. Austin: University of Texas Press.

More Rejections... ...But Some Hope

2007-04-02T09:05:00.001+10:00

I got another rejection letter from RMIT, this one was worded very kindly, thanking me for the effort I had made in applying. I had read their mission statement, and specifically addressed how I could help them achieve their mission.... anyway they wish me luck in my future career, which I can say without sarcasm is kind of them, because no one else has bothered to say that!

Still waiting for a rejection letter from Swinburne, I know that I didn't get the job because my colleague and buddy Christian McCrea got the job. Well done Christian!! Still haven't congratulated him in person, but Swinburne has made a smart move snapping him up.

As for me, I'm of to the USA for a job interview this week at California State University - Dominguez Hills, in the College of Liberal Arts, Department of Communication. Should be cool, definitely my biggest challenge yet.

Its Almost All Over

2007-03-11T12:16:00.001+11:00

I have my PhD completion seminar coming up this week. On Thursday afternoon, the panel will be Sean Cubitt, Umi Khattab and Nikos Papastergaidis. Not to sure about all the details right now, but I'm working towards a 25 minute presentation that includes a chapter summary, and addresses the objectives, methods, findings and significance of the research.

And the Big News...

2007-03-04T10:48:00.001+11:00

I scored a gig with Christian (McCrea) and Darshana (Jayemanne) guest editing issue 13 of Refractory: A Journal of Entertainment Media. Which has to be ready for upload by August 1st (Ulp!!!).

Still figuring out the theme within the general topic (videogames of course).

Made the DiGRA Deadline

2007-03-03T12:56:00.001+11:00

What a week, lots of stuff happening. First, the Cultural Studies Review has asked me to review an article on videogames for them. Its just a small gig, but I hope a promise of things to come: (1) more refereeing for me (2) more articles on videogames in 'straight' journals. I also submitted an abstract for the fibreculture 'after convergence' issue, which was pretty rushed so I think has a pretty slender chance of getting accepted (but the awesome thing is, if it doesn't get accepted I don't have to write it). And I got my review of Henry Jenkins Convergence Culture in to Media International Australia (should be appearing in August). Then on friday I managed to get DiGRA in, its a substantially revised version of 'Everyday Empowerment', the paper that I presented on the 9/2 at Victoria University, it was submitted paper number 153 - only 50 papers will be accepted, so its very competitive. Great thing is its in Japan, so if I don't get accepted I don't have to figure out how to get there!

On top of that I started teaching at the University of Melbourne last week, and applied for two jobs, one at Swinburne University of Technology and one at RMIT University. The Swinburne one was for a position (level A) in the Games program, the RMIT job was in the Communications area, focusing on teaching the masters program. Also got a rejection letter from RMIT about the job I applied for in the games program there.

My Project for Tal's Burda Centre Book

2007-02-13T13:06:00.001+11:00

Of Sins, Vices and Pecados: The Cultural Context of Videogame Play

Using a case study of Grand Theft Auto 3: Vice City this paper will examine the cultural context of videogame consumption in Caracas, Venezuela in Summer 2005. Using data gathered through ethnographic fieldwork, participant observation and interviews over that period, this paper will examine the features of Vice City that made it the most often played single player game in Internet cafes. I will argue that in this case rather than any graphic or narrative elements that the game contained, it is the flexibility in terms of styles and approaches to play the game allowed that led to the game becoming a standard feature within Venezuelan gaming life. I will maintain that his is because it both catered to the requirements of the intense social space of the offline interactions within the Internet café, and superseded the limitations and difficulties imposed by the various social, economic and technological factors facing the game playing audience in Venezuela.

Mo(ve)ments paper: Everyday Empowerment

2007-02-09T16:09:00.000+11:00

Hi Folks, I'm putting this one online for a while, until I can figure out what to do with it. Drop me a line if you want me to mail you a copy... the footnotes didn't come out...

Everyday Empowerment? Videogames in the Developing World:
A Situated Study of Caracas, Venezuela

Abstract:

In her groundbreaking book Playing with Power in Movies, Television, and Videogames: From Muppet Babies to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1991), Marsha Kinder maintains that the interactive nature of videogames gives children a sense of empowerment. A key caveat that she places on this sense of empowerment is that it is linked to acts of consumption, both within the game, and outside the game. Kinder locates this phenomenon of empowerment through the play and consumption of videogames in a global context. In this paper, I will re-evaluate Kinder’s claims in the light of the inequality of the power relations between the global videogame industry and their audience. In order to do this I will turn to the ethnographic data gained during fieldwork in Caracas, Venezuela from March through July 2005.

My intervention in Kinder’s argument takes the form of the following question: Can the interactivity of videogames be empowering in the developing world, in the same manner as they are in the wealthier countries of the ‘developed world’? This paper examines the ways in which game players’ that are otherwise excluded from consumptive practices due to lack of resources may nevertheless be empowered through game-play. Through a investigation of videogames in the context of the everyday lives of the players’ I will argue that empowerment in the context of Venezuela, is not so much linked to empowerment through consumption; but rather to empowerment through community, participation, and creativity.

Keywords: Global Media, Participatory Culture, Software Piracy, Videogame Industry

These youngsters on the street[s of Caracas], with their Nintendo dreams and Nike shoes, experience life in the larger context of global and transnational processes (1999, Márquez, p. 220).

Patricia Márquez in her book The Street Is My Home, a detailed ethnography of street and barrio children in Caracas, Venezuela, argues that the children in her study construct their identities in relation to various global and local media. The role of traditional media like Venezuelan music and telenovelas, is emphasized, along with the growing importance of transnational media forms, such as gangster rap, and important for the concerns of this paper, videogames. By drawing on fieldwork conducted between March and July of 2005, as a part of a larger project that examines the role that localized situations have on videogame consumption, and reception, this paper’s aim is to explore the significance of the ‘Nintendo dreams’ of Caracas’ youth. With this purpose in mind, I will first examine the notion of ‘participatory culture’; then I will use this notion to highlight the uneven surface of – and contradictory attitude towards – global participation, through an examination of the context of videogame play in Caracas.

Participatory Culture

Participatory culture is often evoked in order to mark the change from mass media notions of media reception, production and dissemination that is understood to be precipitated by the qualities which are associated with new or digital media. In the following discussion I would like to highlight a shift in how participatory culture has been conceptualized by contrasting the approach taken by Marsha Kinder in Playing with Power (1991), and Henry Jenkins in Convergence Culture (2006). In the fifteen years between the two publications the internet became the key object of discussion for scholars of participatory culture. While Kinder’s discussion predates the introduction of the term participatory culture, her concern is to examine the new subjectivities that were emerging through children’s engagement with interactive media. In this sense Kinder and Jenkins are engaging with the same phenomena, but on a sliding scale of cultural significance. Interactivity, ghettoized in videogames in 1991, is in Jenkins’ description of convergence culture now paradigmatic for the understanding of media, and media cultures.

In Kinder’s writing she regards the key innovation of videogames to be the choices and physical challenges posed by interactivity. This suggests a new form of empowerment, albeit one that is defined by consumption. At the game screen – which is not simply eyes looking at the screen, but also hands and fingers on controls and buttons – they are constructed as ‘consumerist subjects who can more readily assimilate and accommodate whatever objects they encounter’. For Kinder, videogames ‘help prepare young players for full participation in this new age of interactive multimedia – specifically, by linking interactivity with consumerism’ [my emphasis]. Kinder reads this link at the textual level, her study conducted with the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) version of Super Mario Bros: Mario Madness (1988) notes how empowerment – and transformation – within the game is always through consumption. In addition Kinder reads this trope linking interactivity with consumerism at a meta-level, where she recognizes videogames as heralding a new media aesthetic, that she dubs ‘transmedia intertextuality’, and an imbricated form of commodification, the ‘supersystem’. In this configuration, the consumption of one text leads to directly to another through deliberate intertextual linkages forming a contained media supersystem that crosses many media platforms. The Matrix (1999-2003) trilogy affords an excellent example of the supersystem, the three films containing deliberate lacunae that are filled in by other The Matrix® products, The Animatrix (2003) collection of anime, The Matrix Comics (2003), and the videogame Enter the Matrix (Shiny Entertainment, 2003). Space precludes elaborating this supersystem, which expands far beyond what I have described here.

P. David Marshall in his recent publication New Media Cultures (2004) reiterates the tension that Kinder has located between commodification and technological empowerment. Marshall regards the supersystem as a commercial usurpation and structuring of play that is: ‘designed to have a complete system of interaction for the audience with all forms of investment and engagement made possible and realizable’. This closed system of engagement envisioned by Marshall is the antithesis of the creativity and dynamism that is typically associated with ‘free play’. In fact, Alexander Galloway in Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture (2006), recently argued that the interactivity that is so-valorized in discussions on videogames, is an allegory for what Deleuze in ‘Postscript on Control Society’ dubbed ‘the control society’, a shift from confinement in molds – Foucault’s disciplinary society – to confinement through modulation.

The imbrication of play and commerce follows Deleuze’s argument that in the society of control nothing is ever finished, that there is a breakdown of the discreet activities of the disciplinary society into coexisting unfinished and open, metastable states. I suggest that this means that the subjectivities produced through play, are not solely playful, experimental, or creative, but linked to, and imbricated in, a modulated system of controlled consumption. During my fieldwork in the cyber café Avila, I noticed one man, in his early twenties, whose ragged clothes and homemade tattoos, suggested association with malandro – a criminal underclass – subculture playing Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002), several times. Once I was caught by the owner of the café watching at this strange figure, slouched down in his chair, gazing intently at the screen where he was guiding Harry Potter through the game with subtle motions of the mouse. The owner remarked – without fear of being overheard because of the headphones the malandro was wearing – ‘this guy is crazy, this game is for children’. Although I never spoke with this Caraqueno I don’t understand his actions in this way. The ‘Nintendo dreams’ of the Caracas youth must be read in the context the breakdown between work and play, and also between the romanticized notion of the free and creative play of childhood and that of the empowerment of interactive consumption. While videogame play performs a liminal role in opening spaces of escape from the pressures of the everyday, it also allows the players to consume media culture on a global level.

In Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (2006), Jenkins situates transmedia intextuality in a radically new form of media culture, which is characterized by the participatory power of the audience precipitated by digital networked technology. Behind this is a global system of co-operation between media industries through conglomeration, partnerships and licensing. Jenkins describes the participatory audience as ‘migratory’, in the sense that they will: ‘seek out new information and make connections among dispersed media content’. Jenkins emphasizes the audiences’ productive role and how this shapes and influences narrative arcs and genres by mobilizing their collective power. However, again this can be read in the context of the society of control; what occurs through the internet is a metastable modulation of the audience and the media producers. Fans’ productions are imitated by corporations as promotions; the participation is encouraged and organized into channels, and individuals productions become genres of, and assets within, the supersystem. Jenkins reads the phenomena in positive light and while I cannot say I share his enthusiasm, I suggest that the significance of the audience and media being in a state of metastable coexistence is the notion that media products are produced through a process of modulation that must simultaneously encapsulate the commercial imperative of the industry, the integrity of the intellectual property being developed, and the audiences’ expectation of participation.

Kinder is explicit in underscoring the global nature of the videogame phenomena, but specifically with reference to Japan. She suggests that the dominance of Nintendo in the USA’s videogame industry since the 1985 release of the NES foreshadowed the end of the dominance of USA owned companies in the entertainment industry. Jenkins’ also focuses on the USA. This is a problem, especially when we consider the stakes that Kinder and Jenkins place on participatory culture. Because if participation is equated to empowerment, then the inability to participate equally dis-empowering. In the gigantic mall of Sambil, the three shops selling videogames were mostly empty, but outside them often children would congregate, to watch the displays endlessly repeating the start sequence of Super Mario Sunshine (Nintendo, 2002), or FIFA Football 2005 (EA Canada, 2004). Reduced to watching an interactive media, these children were – at that moment at least – locked out of participatory culture, readers in a world increasingly defined by the interplay of reading and writing, observers in a media, and media paradigm characterized by action.

Global Videogames Industry

In order to explore the viability of participatory culture globally I will now examine the state of the global videogame industry. In Digital|Play: The Interaction of Technology, Culture, and Marketing (2003), Stephen Kline and his co-authors, locate a specific inequality that they describe as being a contradiction between ‘enclosure and access’ in the global patterns of consumption of videogames. This problem is manifest in three areas of the industry:
• The uneven global labor practices that locate the software industry in the ‘North’ – primarily Canada, Japan and the U.S.A., even Europe is relatively periphery –while the videogame consoles are generally produced in the maquiladoras of the ‘South’. In contrast, both the software and hardware are generally consumed in the ‘North’. The global industry is exclusionary in practice because hardware is material: videogames require expensive hardware, and potentially – for many contemporary games – a high-speed internet connection. This expense was felt heavily in Caracas, where even after the release of the Xbox 360, the original Xbox console was still selling for 800,000 Bolivars (480 Aus$), approximately a month’s salary for a newspaper journalist.
• The orthodox production cycle of commercial videogames mobilizes the audience in the production process, through beta testing. ‘patches’, and open source releases of game development tools. This breakdown between play and work, and the proprietary and legal issues that it raises has become something of a refrain in videogame scholarship. I suggest that this is an example of industry practices that are adjusting to capture the migratory audience, and harness their creative and productive power.
• This breakdown between consumer and producer is linked with the conflict between the software industry and pirates. Kline and his co-authors state that: ‘piracy is the shadow aspect of the interactive play industry’s own labor practices’. A substantial proportion of the global videogame piracy industry involves the black market software economy in countries of the ‘South’ that is a tactical response to global inequalities.
Deleuze points out that piracy is one of the few remaining dangers that remains to the control society, so the existence of a global media culture of pirated videogame play potentially challenges the global smoothness of that notion. In addition piracy plays an important role in equalizing global variances in the ability to take part in the comsumerist empowerment of participatory culture.

Piracy in Venezuela

Piracy was ubiquitously evident in my ethnographic research. On the streets, stalls selling pirated software, DVDs, playstation one games, and music CDs – not to mention bootleg publications of popular books – were common, especially in Libertador the municipal district of Caracas in which I made my investigation, which has a large area of barrios (shanty towns) and a predominently chavista local government (supporters of President Chávez). But even away from the streets, piracy was common. The videogames stores, empty of customers, kept a few dusty originals in glass cases, but my inquiries about games were met by the clerk producing either a folder or file of pirated games that were available from behind the counter, which if desired could be brought in from the back room. The clerks of the stores where I tried to buy pirated games were bemused and vague at the question of the location of the games origins: Chino or Asia was the standard reply. Only console games were available this way, computer games were so easily copied and cracked across ‘warez’ networks, that the transnational black market could gain no toehold in Venezuela.

The street-sellers – the homegrown entrepreneurial ‘hackers’ – of Caracas uniformly confessed to obtaining their games using file trading protocols, transnationally, either with strangers or in many cases acquaintances: relatives, friends, or partners – members of the post-Chávez middle-class diaspora that support folks back home by sending them software. Some businesses used a publish-to-order system, for example the innovative street hackers tu pana (Australian translation: your mate), running a business from home, downloading software, films and music to order, and delivering them anywhere in Caracas by motorbike. These combined methods were efficient, a new game being available readily on the street within 48 hours of its North American release was a standard that I witnessed many times, especially with much anticipated high profile releases like The Sims 2 (Maxis, 2004).

Interview subjects described to me how they would watch the game sellers carefully while they were walking on the street, in order to see if there was anything new which sparked their interest. With a cost of just 6000 Bolivars (4$ AUS) for most games, some players told me they would buy their own copies of the game even if they did not have a computer at home, so that they could ensure they could play a game that interested them. Taking it to the cyber café them selves and giving free copies to staff, to make sure that it ended up on the computers there. On the second or third day of my fieldwork, a café employee copied all of the games I had brought with me, all of which were historic strategy games in English that I had with me for a project I was working on. He then installed several of the games Medieval: Total War (Creative Assembly, 2002), Victoria: An Empire Under the Sun (Paradox Interactive, 2003), and Civilization II: Test of Time (1999), all of which were played sporadically by customers over the next five months. Other games would be installed and then just as quickly removed, as the café strove to keep up with consumer interest.

The media industries in Venezuela have been adversely affected, and are deeply critical of the lack of official response to the endemic piracy. The most critical anti-Chávez media outlets accuse the President of adopting a ‘bread and circuses’ approach to the poor masses in Caracas’ many barrios. Since Chávez’s presidency, the media has become a key site of contestation between the President and his opponents. In the first case this means that the content of media has become focused on political issues, either pro- or anti- chavista. However, beyond this it also means that the production of media itself has become an increasingly political act, which is subject to intense regulations and scrutiny by the government; primarily because the privately owned media is perceived as having global business concerns which compromise their coverage of the Revolucion Bolivariana. This has been the key motivation for the development of Telesur, a Pan-Latino network with links to al-Jeezera, widely perceived in the USA as being a propaganda tool for Chávez, that will be used to export the Revolucion Bolivariana across Latin-America. This was the also motivation behind the government’s recent refusal to renew the license for Radio Caracas Television that will expire this March.

Conclusion

This ideological conflict with the perceived USA-dominated global media and Chávez’s desire to make life easier for Venezuela’s millions of jobless barrio-dwellers has created a situation where piracy of global entertainment media is almost universally ignored, while media covering local issues are under severe restrictions. I suggest then that that stakes of videogame play in the context of participatory culture in Venezuela are dual:
1. Videogame piracy allows consumers to participate in a new, and global media culture;
2. Videogames are one of a few media that are outside the control and regulation of the state in Venezuela.
Thus I will conclude by suggesting that the Nintendo dreams of the ‘children’ of Venezuela have a political subtext that extends beyond the new form of empowered consumerism outlined by Kinder and Jenkins. Videogame play in this part of the globe is precarious in that it is caught between the global regulation of intellectual property and the local regulation of global media.

Works Cited

The Animatrix. (2003). Peter Chung, Andy Jones, Yoshiaki Kawajiri, Takeshi Koike, Mahiro Maeda, Kôji Morimoto, & Shinichirô Watanabe [Directors]. Village Roadshow Pictures, distributed by Warner Brothers.

Banks, J. (2003). Gamers as Co-creators: Enlisting the virtual audience – a report from the netface. In Virginia Nightengale & Karen Ross (Eds.). Critical Readings: Media and Audiences (pp. 268-278). Maidenhead: Open University Press.

Castronova, E. (2003). On Virtual Economies. Game Studies, 3(2). Retrieved 9 January, 2006, from http://www.gamestudies.org/0302/castronova/

Chávez to Shut Down Opposition TV. (2006, December 29). BBC News. Retrieved February 8, 2007, from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/6215815.stm

Darley, A. (2000). Visual Digital Culture: Surface Play and Spectacle in New Media Genres. London: Routledge.

Deleuze, G. (1995). Negotiations 1972-1990 [Trans. M. Joughin]. New York: Columbia University Press.

Enter the Matrix. (2003). Shiney Entertainment, USA. Published in the USA by Atari and Warner Brothers Interactive.

Flew, T. (2005). New Media: An Introduction. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press [Second Edition].

Flew, T. & Humphreys, S. (2005) Games: Technology, Industry, Culture. In Terry Flew (Ed.). New Media: An Introduction (pp. 101-114). Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press [Second Edition].

Galloway, A. (2006). Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture. Minneapolis; London: University of Minnesota Press.

Herz, J. C. (1997). Joystick Nation: How Videogames Ate Our Quarters, Won Our Hearts and Rewired Our Minds. Boston: Little, Brown & Co.

Humphreys, S. (2003). Online multi-user games: Playing for real. Australian Journal of Communication, 30(1), 79-91.

Humphreys, S. (2005). Productive Players: Online computer games’ challenge to traditional media forms. Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 2(1), 37-51.

Humphreys, S., Fitzgerald, B., Banks, J., & Suzor, N. (2005). Fan-based production for computer games: User-led innovation, the ‘drift of value’ and intellectual property rights. Media International Australia, 114, 16-29.

Jansz & Martens. (2005). Gaming at a LAN event: the social context of playing video games. New Media & Society 7(?). 333-355.

Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press.

Jenkins, H. (2006). Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers: Exploring Participatory Culture. New York; London: New York University Press.

Kerr, A. (2006). The Business and Culture of Digital Games: Gamework/Gameplay. London; Thousand Oaks; New Delhi: Sage.

Kinder, M. (1991). Playing with Power in Movies, Television, and Videogames: From Muppet Babies to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Berkley: University of California.

Klang, M. (2004). Avatar: From deity to corporate property: A philosophical inquiry into digital property in online games. Information, Communication, and Society, 7(3), 389-402.

Kline, S., Dyer-Witheford, N., & Peuter, G. (2003). Digital|Play: The Interaction of Technology, Culture, and Marketing. Montréal: McGill-Queens University Press.

Lugo, J., Sampson, T., & Lossada, M. (2002). Latin America’s New Cultural Industries Still Play Old Games – From Banana Republic to Donkey Kong. Game Studies 2(2). Retrieved February 5, 2007, from http://www.gamestudies.org/0202/

Manovich, L. (2000). The Language of New Media. Cambridge; London: The MIT Press.

Márquez, P. C. (1999). The Street Is My Home: Youth and Violence in Caracas. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Marshall, P. D. (2004). New Media Cultures. London: Arnold.

The Matrix. (1999). Wachowski Bros. [Directors]. Warner Brothers.

The Matrix: Reloaded. (2003). Wachowski Bros. [Directors]. Warner Brothers/Village Roadshow Pictures.

The Matrix: Revolutions. (2003). Wachowski Bros. [Directors]. Warner Brothers/Village Roadshow Pictures.

Kücklich, J. (2005). Precarious Playbour: Modders and the Digital Games Industry. Fibreculture 5. Retrieved on 9 January, 2006, from http://journal.fibreculture.org/issue5/kucklich.html

Lastokwa, G. (2006). Law and Game Studies. Games and Culture, 1(1), 25-28.

Mazinger Z. (1972-1974). Toei Animation, Japan. Created by Go Nagai.

Mazinger Z Salva a Venezuela. (2002). Mediatech, Venezuela. Published in Venezuela by Mediatech.

Moore, C. (2005). Commonizing the enclosure: Online games and reforming intellectual property regimes. Australian Journal of Emerging Technology and Society, 3(2), 94-108.

Morris, S (2004a). Co-creative media: Online multiplayer computer game culture. Scan: Journal of Media Arts Culture, 1(1). Retrieved December 22, 2005 from http://scan.net.au/scan/journal/display.php?journal_id=16

Pearce, C. (2002). Emergent authorship: The next interactive revolution. Computers and Graphics, 26(1), 21-29.

Pearce, C. (2006). Productive Play: Game culture from the bottom up. Games and Culture, 1(1), 17-24.

Postigo, H. (2003). From Pong to Planet Quake: Post-Industrial transitions from leisure to work. Information, Communication, and Society, 6(4), 593-607.

Ruggill, J. E., McAllister, K. S., & Menchaca, D. (2004). Gamework. Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 1(4), 297-312.

Super Mario Bros: Mario Madness. (1988). Nintendo, Japan. Published by Nintendo for the Nintendo entertainment System.

Takahasi, D. (2002). Opening the Xbox: Inside Microsoft’s Plan to launch an Entertainment Revolution. New York: Prima Lifestyles.

Tayor, T. L. & Kolko, B. E. (2003). Boundary Spaces: Majestic and the uncertain state of knowledge, community and self in the information age. Information, Communication, and Society, 6(4), 497-522.

Telesur and al-Jazeera Sign Deal. (2006, February 11). BBC News. Retrieved 17 January, 2007, from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4669268.stm

Wachowski, L & Wachowski, A. (2003). The Matrix Comics. Brooklyn; London: Burlyman.

Yee, N. (2006). The Labour of Fun: How computer games blur the boundaries of work and play. Games and Culture, 1(1), 68-71.

Unaustralia Article Online

2007-01-16T18:24:00.001+11:00

Alright, looks like my contribution to the CSAA (Cultural Studies Association of Australasia) 2006 conference on Unaustralia is online. [September 2010 - sorry its not on line anymore fee free to request it directly from me].

Situated Play: Negotiating Place and Identity in Global Gaming Networks

2006-11-29T16:39:00.002+11:00

Gunbound: World Champion is a free Internet-based computer game, that is made by the Korean company Softnyx, which is popular in many parts of the globe. Taking Gunbound as a case study, my research explores gaming as a global and transnational phenomena, in particular the flow of gaming products from the North to the South, and the new assemblages of networks that this flow allows. Using data gathered during ethnographic fieldwork in Melbourne, Australia during the summer of 2005-6, this paper will focus on the specific local contexts of the play of Gunbound. Rather than approaching the game as a text, my concern is to examine the ways by which this game is insinuated into the everyday life of various Chinese speaking diasporic communities, to maintain pre-existing – and establish new – social networks. In this paper I will argue that Gunbound acts as a space in which diasporic players may enter into negotiations between a variety of sites, in particular the local and the global. For these players the stakes of play include exploring issues of place and identity in relation to transnational global networks.

Mo(ve)ments Conference Abstract

2006-10-30T09:27:00.000+11:00

Everyday Empowerment? Videogames in the Developing World: A Situated Study of Caracas, Venezuela

In her groundbreaking book Playing with Power in Movies, Television, and Videogames: From Muppet Babies to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Marsha Kinder maintains that the interactive nature of videogames gives children a sense of empowerment. A key caveat that she places on this sense of empowerment is that it is linked to acts of consumption, both within the game, and outside the game. Kinder locates this phenomenon of empowerment through the play and consumption of videogames in a global context. In this paper, I will re-evaluate Kinder’s claims in the light of the inequality of the power relations between the global videogame industry and their audience. In order to do this I will turn to the ethnographic data gained during fieldwork in Caracas, Venezuela from March through July 2005.

My intervention in Kinder’s argument takes the form of the following question: Can the interactivity of videogames be empowering in the developing world, in the same manner as they are in the wealthier countries of the ‘developed world’? This paper examines the ways in which game players’ that are otherwise excluded from consumptive practices due to lack of resources may nevertheless be empowered through game-play. Through a investigation of videogames in the context of the everyday lives of the players’ I will argue that empowerment in the context of Venezuela, is not so much linked to empowerment through consumption; but rather to empowerment through community, participation, and creativity.

The conference is subtitled 'Local, National and Global Carribean Popular Culture', as I recall Venezuela is on the Carribean so its vaguely relevant, and at least the conference is in Melbourne.

Burda: Research Proposal

2006-10-02T09:40:00.000+10:00

Here is a copy of the research proposal I sent the Burda Centre, it was pretty rushed so it isn't as tight as I would have liked it to be.

Independent Videogame Production: Creative Industries, Local Content and Global Markets

Project Overview

The videogame industry is dominated by large media concerns like Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo. Focused in Japan and North America the dominance of these companies effectively prevents the smaller developed, and developing, countries from either sustaining a local industry or entering the global market. Consequently, the majority of videogame play outside these dominant nations involves the use of imported content; with a subsequent loss of creative talent, and a lack of local content in this important and growing media stream. This project will examine the potential sustainable industry models that independent videogame development can provide for videogame production within the creative industries, and the production of local content for both the domestic and global market.

Background

Literature Review

Recent writing on videogames has emphasised the transformation that the growing importance of videogames has effected on both the cultural landscape and the traditional media industries (Ruggill et. al., 2004;). While the growth of the videogame industry has disrupted the typical dominance of the US as content producers, due to the prominent role played by Japanese companies (Kinder, 1991; Kline et. al., 2003; Wark 1994), it has remained difficult for other nations to enter into the industry on the global stage (Kerr and Boyle, 2003; Lugo et. al., 2002). While opportunities for game developers to flourish outside of the mass global market do exist (Zimmerman, 2003), research has focused on how these companies survive by taking creative approaches to content generation (Banks, 2003).

Videogames are situated as a key part of participatory culture (Marshall, 2004; Cover, 2005). Participatory culture is characterised by a level of engagement with the media that shifts from consumption – whether configured as passive or active – to production (Jenkins, 2006). This phenomenon is closely associated with the increasing availability of digital media (Lister et. al., 2003). Studies focusing on the benefit to the videogames industry of content generated through videogame player’s production have determined that its contribution is worth hundreds of million dollars annually (Castronova, 2003 & 2006; Yee 2006).

This practice has been seized upon by the proponents of the creative industries as being the key to the development of videogames industries in smaller economies (Hartley, 2005; Jenkins, 2005). For example, in 2003 the Australia Council’s New Media Arts Board funded a project that involved making a ‘mod’ (the term for a computer file designed to modify certain aspects of a videogame) for the videogame Half-Life: Counter-Strike (Valve Software, 2003), the game while controversial was able to sustain Australian-based designers and generate Australian-themed content, that can be distributed freely at a global level, for a game that is popular on a global scale, without violating and property right of the original games developers’.

Another area where it is possible for smaller players to enter the game development industry is by developing games for mobile phones (Finn 2004, Kerr 2006). Games designed for mobile phones need to take into account the new context of consumption that the devices engender. As gaming becomes mobile it becomes more temporally bound as the practice must fit into small periods of time; also the visual design demands a simple approach due to the small size of the screens. This means that games for mobile phones can be both short and have simple graphics and still be successful. The use of JavaScript for mobile phone interfaces means that there is no problem of compatibility between different platforms and brands. This combined with the ease of distribution through digital networks suggests a model of game design that has a considerably lower capital threshold than the typical industry model.

Method

Based on contemporary scholarship on videogames in the field of Media and Communications there are four main approaches to the study of videogames: Industry studies (Kerr, 2006; Kline et. al. 2003); Textual Analysis (Bogost, 2006; Jull, 2005; King & Kryzwinska, 2006); Ethnographic studies (Castronova, 2006; Taylor, 2006); and Pedagogical studies (Gee, 2003). The concern of this project is with industry; however, in order to examine how participation in the industry may be distributed more evenly I will also be scrutinizing the practices of audiences (ethnography), and using textual analysis to see if there are particular genres of videogames that are more appropriate for alternative models of design and distribution. Kline et. al. (2003) remark that any study made of the videogame industry is incomplete without and understanding of the practices of play – that is the practices of the audience of videogames – and the objects that the industry produces, as texts. However, on the last point, the textual analysis of videogames, it is important to note that the current thinking in the field has moved away from regarding games as another kind of media text (e.g. Murray, 1997); and shifted to a notion of understanding gameplay (the interaction of game and player) as a dynamic operation (Galloway, 2006; Myers, 2003; Newman, 2004).

Proposed Research

This research will focus exploring alternative models for videogame development. This will focus on three main areas: the impact that new developments in technology are having on the industry; the role that new genres of videogames are having on the diversifying the market; and the practices of the audiences which can be harnessed by smaller companies. This will involve a three-pronged approach to research.

In the case of the technological developments in the industry, as well as conducting research from industry documents, I will make online interviews with game designers and distributors that are utilizing these new technologies. For this I hope to be able to take advantage of relations that I have developed with Paradox Interactive a Swedish game design company that has recently launched its own online game publishing and distribution system, and CipSoft GmbH, a German company that has been an innovative an popular producer of Massive Multiplayer Online Games and mobile phone games.

New genres of games which are diversifying the videogame market include newsgames, serious games, advergames and alternate reality games. I will make a survey of industry reports to gauge the impact of each of these genres on the videogame market, and make interviews with designers from the Uruguayan company Newsgaming, pioneers of the use of videogames for political advertising.

The final thread of the investigation centres on the practices of players. Here I will be examining general trends in the industry as they have responded to player demand, as well as the innovative practices of the audiences themselves. Here I will focus on content creation, the growing incorporation of players into technical roles in the game design process, and the use of gamers to maintain and organise ongoing gaming communities. By interviewing with twenty players from around the world involved in the industry at these levels I hope to demonstrate the key importance that these groups play in sustaining the industry now, and suggest how alternative models of production and distribution may ensure and constructively manage their contributions.

Contribution to Research

The key contribution of this research will be to explore how the power dynamics created by an uneven distribution of content creation may be overcome by looking at alternative practices in the margins of the game industry which can be nurtured at a local level but still have a global impact. This approach is also innovative because it combines industry analysis, with analysis of games and game genres, in the context of the practices of the audiences.

Research Plan

2006	Research
March	Research on gaming technology; Conduct interviews with staff of Paradox Interactive
April	Research on gaming technology; Conduct Interviews with staff of CipSoft GmbH
May	Research on gaming technology; Progress report to Burda Centre
June	Research on Gaming Audiences; Conduct Interviews in Hong Kong and China; Present Work at Edutainment 2007 Conference in Hong Kong;
July	Research on Gaming Audiences; Conduct Interviews Online; write Report on Edutainment 2007
August	Research on Gaming Audiences; Conduct Interviews Online; Progress report to Burda
September	Research on new game genres; Present Work at DiGRA 2007 Conference in Tokoyo; Fieldwork in Uruguay: Interviews and Research at Newsgaming
October	Research on new game genres; Prepare Publication; write Report on DiGRA 2007
November	Research on new game genres; Final Report to Burda; Submit Publication

Budget

Item	Cost
Materials (Tapes, photocopying, games)	1400
Return Flight Melbourne-Hong Kong	900
Return Flight Melbourne-Tokoyo	1850
Return Flight Melbourne-Montevideo	2500
Per diem allowance (accommodation, transport and food)	2400 (16 days)
Total	905

Delivery of Research Outcomes

The aim of this project is to produce useful information for policymakers regarding the funding and support of the videogames industry. In this regarding I will submit a final report on my research to the Burda centre in November 2007. Prior to this I will submit two short progress reports in May and August 2007. This final report will be approximately 60-80 pages in length, and I would enjoy the chance to come a present these findings in seminar form at the Burda Centre, if possible.

In June and September 2007, I will travel to Asia to attend the Edutainment 2007 conference in Hong Kong and the DiGRA (Digital Games Research) 2007 conference in Tokoyo. I will present at both conferences work from the project under development with the Burda centre, with the aim of soliciting feedback from international academics in the field of games research. Each conference also publishes its full proceedings online, and I would write a brief report of the conferences to be published in a prominent Media and Communications journal.

Finally, I will use the material from the project for an article to be published in a prestigious interdisciplinary Media and Communications journal (e.g. Media, Culture, and Society), to be submitted in November 2007.

Finished the CSAA Paper

2006-09-30T11:26:00.002+10:00

Wow, some serious work this past week and a virtual all-nighter last night (just 3:30am) and now is its done. Well I sent it to my sister for some editing, and then I'll look over it again tonight before I actually submit it.

Its so strange to actually make the deadline for something... ...whats happening to me?

Unaustralia Conference

2006-09-19T10:00:00.001+10:00

So the annual Cultural Studies Association of Australasia Conference is coming soon in December. The theme is Unaustralia, and I managed to do a bit of a procrustean feat on one of my old research streams that I have been looking to publish. Basically, its going to be an update of the final chapter of my honors thesis, with current literature (its amazing how much stuff has come out on strategy games - and how much my research skills have improved), and refocused on Europa Universalis (Paradox Interactive, 2000) and Victoria: Empire Under the Sun (Paradox Interactice, 2002). The dissertation version used Civilization III and Medieval: Total War, both of which are getting a bit long in the tooth, and also importantly don't explicitly reference the Australian colonial period. In EU2 Australia is unclaimed by any European power, and its colonization can take place during the game, in Vicky South and East Australia are Bristish colonies but anything can happen, I've played games where the Netherlands colonized North and West Australia, and one where Britian traded Australia to Brazil for the Phillipines. Here is the abstract that got accepted:

Virtual Unaustralia: Videogames and Australia’s Colonial History
In this paper I will discuss the representations of Australia in the videogames Europa Universalis II and Victoria: Empire Under the Sun. The first game deals with the historical period of 1400-1820, the second from 1838 to 1920. In both games Australia is portrayed as an empty space on these games’ map, which may during the course of play, be revealed and colonized. Many scholars over the past few years have made a point of arguing these games involve players uncritically accepting and applying the logic of colonialism. However, an examination of the community forums of these games reveals what I believe is a more complex picture of the players’ engagement with the representations of colonialism within the games. Drawing on these sources, and on textual analysis of the games I will argue that these games reflect the colonial ideology by exploiting the potentiality of the empty map which portrays Australia as a virtual non-space waiting to be actualized. Following from this, despite a dominant logic of colonialism an examination of players’ reports of their games reveals that this non-space may be actualized in multiple ways, leading to trajectories of history being actualized within the game that radically diverge from traditional representations of the past. Finally, that by opening up the notion of Australia to a multiplicity these games confronts the players with alternatives to the reality of the colonial moment, which can be considered more or less ethical than what actually occurred.

This has to be finnished by the end of the month, so I am starting my write up of the new draft featuring the Paradox Interactive games today.

Sad But True

2006-09-18T20:17:00.001+10:00

Flux Conference Panel Proposal

2006-09-18T16:29:00.001+10:00

Here is the proposal for a panel on Actor-Network-Theory that my buddies Bjorn and Michael and I have put together for the flux postgraduate conference run by the cinema studies department this November.
Panel: Assembling the ANT: Ventilators, Maps, Videogames
This panel seeks to bring together diverse work within cultural and media studies that utilises the framework outlined by Bruno Latour and Actor-Network-Theory. This approach broadly redefines sociology through an inclusive methodology that attempts to capture movements; it is an act of tracing associations between heterogeneous elements. Crucially, it redefines our understanding of the social world, arguing that the heterogeneity found in such associations is not exclusively composed of human ties, and that focusing solely on the human entails a fundamental misunderstanding as it ignores the participation of objects, technologies and non-human entities in the social world; from mechanical ventilators, GPS technology and videogame algorithms.
Keywords: Actor-Network-Theory, Bruno Latour, Non-humans

Machine Breaths
-Bjorn Nansen

The term flux operates as a kind of metonym for the mutable conditions of postmodernity, suggesting a range of movements, fluidities and becomings. These familiar tropes saturate our current milieu, and cluster prominently around conceptions of the body, identity and self as something able to be constructed, changed and transformed through modes of consumption and a range of fashion, dietary and exercise practices. Even more radical are the potential transformations enabled through medical technologies of transplantation, prosthesis and reconstruction.

As such, both essential and regulated images of the self are abandoned in favor of choice, agency and flexibility. Inherent to these notions is a popular celebration in possibility and a common sense perception of technology as instrumental. Alternatively, technology is framed as autonomous, threatening and destructive to the human; this view is aligned with a sense that fluidity translates into fragmentation and erasure. The mechanical ventilator is a technology generally framed within this dialectic; either radically destabilising human life, creating new and ambiguous states such as brain-death; or as a simple prosthetic device, serving an instrumental purpose through simulating the function of breathing for patients whose own ventilatory abilities are diminished or lost.

Bruno Latour argues, however, that this perpetuates a false dichotomy; humans and technologies are not separate, but continuous and co-emergent; and objects mediate and act within the social world. Latour’s inclusion of non-humans invites us to re-assess the ways entities are mutually constituted through their relations, and how each participates in defining and redefining each other.

I want to deploy Latour’s methodology and idiom to consider the reconfigured and distributed ontology of the human-mechanical ventilator relation; to trace the tensions between enabling and attenuating bodily practices; and to discuss how this relation complicates notions of fluidity and choice privileged in contemporary life.
Keywords: Actor-Network-Theory, Embodiment, Medical Technology,

Objective Memories: On Assembling Things through Locative Media
-Michael Dieter

Locative media has routinely been understood through theories concentrated on spatial analysis and the virtual annotation of urban landscapes. Such discourses often rely on a utopian desire to recover stable relations and place-bound modes of community in a global era characterised by the flux of compressed networks of time-space. Paradoxically, these practices rely on the very technologies of reproduction and simulation that Andreas Huyssen understands as being ‘leading players in the morality play of memory.’

My paper will apply the recent work of Bruno Latour on political assemblies, ‘matters of concern’ and object-orientated democracy in order to examine the instrumental position that projects like Proboscis’ Urban Tapestries or Milk by Ieva Auzina and Esther Polak maintain in relation to imagining technologies. In particular, I want to examine how a reflexive approach, inspired by actor-network-theory, might bring into consideration the function of new media in these works as non-human actants. That is, if such projects are based on a reflexive approach to memory, the role of forgetting or disappearance should not be overlooked, especially concerning the material apparatus itself. This is of critical importance, I will argue, in order to distinguish the function of mobile and digital devices from the imperatives of control, surveillance and commercial spectacle characteristic of the contemporary urban experience.
Keywords: Actor-Network-Theory, Locative Media, Memory.

Analysis through Design: Examining the Technological and Social Actors in a Videogaming Ecology
-Thomas Apperley

This paper will argue that – rather than ‘great graphics’ or a ‘compelling story’ – the key to a videogames’ acceptance and adoption by an audience is the appropriateness of its design in relation to the context of its play. Through an ethnographic examination of two situated videogaming ecologies in Melbourne, Australia and Caracas, Venezuela I maintain that factors aside from narrative have a crucial role in shaping the experience of play. Of particular importance are the interoperability of the gaming technology, which takes effect in the relationship between software and hardware, and the capacity of the game to be played across a network. This points to the role of both the technological and the social in shaping the videogame experience, and being equally important as narrative or visual concerns when selecting what game is played in a given context or situation. The paper will argue that the practices involved in the consumption of videogames constitute a complex ecology, formed by the interplay of both the social and the technological contexts of their play. I will examine the influence of technology and the social on shaping the experience of play through Latour’s (2005) notion of Actor-Network-Theory. Using Latour’s notion as a starting point I will outline, and argue in favor, of a theory of videogames based on design, that incorporates narrative and visual aesthetics as elements without privileging them, using the game Gunbound: World Champion (softnyx, 2005) as an example of the utility of this framework.
Keywords: Actor-Network-Theory, Media Ecology, Situated Gaming, Videogame Design.

Mobile Media Abstract Accepted!

2006-09-18T14:35:00.001+10:00

The organizers of Mobile Media: an international conference on social and cultural aspects of mobile phones, convergent media, and wireless technologies, Larissa Hjorth and Gerard Goggin have accepted my abstract to the conference. Good news for me, have to have a written version of the paper availible for refereeing by the 15/01/07, thats a long time away now.
Don't have much other information about whats going to happen, except for that its on the 02-04/07/07, and its in Sydney. The organizers say there's going to be a lot of people there from around the world so should be cool.

Videogames: Issues in Research and Learning

2006-09-16T23:56:00.001+10:00

So in December 2005 and March 2006, the Sage Journal Simulation & Gaming published a two part special issue on videogames. Included was my article on Videogames and Genres, which appeared in the March 2006 issue (stoked!). Don't know why I haven't mentioned it until now, been out of blogging mode I guess. Anyhow sheck out their site and hopefully you can find out a way to download it legitimately (or just click the link on the bottom of the sidebar).
The editors describe my research: "Apperley examines the aesthetic components of video games, contrasting market-driven genres that pigeonhole video games into prior media genres versus genres based on visual aesthetic or narrative structure. His conclusions highlight the disassociation of video game play, content, and analysis from previously embedded conventions of market, culture and critique." Could not have put it better myself, I love it how some people can just explain to you what the hell you are doing, its like the whole situated play epiphany I had a few moments ago after I discovered what the rest of the world was calling the kind of research I do.
Bottom line for me is that genre is a useful was to explore the complex interrelation between the narrative, the representational and the ludic. That is not all that I think genre can do for Game Studies... ...but more on that later.
Anyway the article is still in the journals top-ten most downloaded (read) articles, at number nine after six months, it was number one from April-June, before slipping to number five and then 8. It has consistently been the most popular from the symposium issue. Hey I guess someone had to write an article about videogame genres didn't they?

Situated Play - I'm Part of a Meme

2006-09-16T23:28:00.000+10:00

It turns out that other scholars out there, namely those that select the topic for the 2007 DiGRA conference are also interested in the context(s) in which gaming takes place, however, they called this 'Situated Gaming'. Nice for me, a new key word and a sense of validation in the value of my project and the direction its been taking over the write-up period.
Starting to think maybe I should join them, so many things to spend money on. Darshana went to the conference they had last year in Vancover and said it was pretty cool, I think I was in Venezuela at the time, or maybe stuck in Melbourne teaching.

Urban Hellraisers in Vice City

2006-09-16T00:33:00.000+10:00

On the 21st of November 2005, CSI: Miami (apparently the most popular USA TV show worldwide - certainly one of the most reactionary) featured an episode called 'Urban Hellraisers' in which a fictional videogame of the same name was being used by university students to learn how to commit crimes. The game shared many features with Grand Theft Auto (primarily the cover aesthetics), enough at least to be considered a clear reference to the game.

It is not the first time that gaming has been a theme on CSI:Miami, the episode 'Game Over' from season three shared a similar theme. This time based on the cut-throat game design business and a murder that took place in a special skateboard bowl/ramp which was being used to motion capture special moves for a skateboarding videogame.

So we see one side of Miami confronting the other: CSI: Miami, the official side which often plays on the threatening elements of popular culture (Spring Break, Girls Gone Wild, Marijuana, Videogames - among others) to associate them with serious crimes, and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City - a simulacra of Miami, that draws upon many representations of Miami from popular culture, in particular those associated with crime, drugs, and the creolization of American Culture (in particular with regard to the influence of Latin American and Carribean immirgrants).

This led me to reflect upon the particular status of Miami in American (both North and South) popular culture. One a a few North American cities which has been particularly transformed by Latin culture. Its location makes it the closest part of the North American continent for the Carribean and South American Countries. It could be seen as a liminal zone, which while politically and geographical belonging to North America, culturally it is connected to the South. Indeed Miami featured large in the imaginations of Venezuelans.

Intersected with the spatiality of Miami is the time in which the game is set, 1986... ...a key date associated with the games main cultural reference Miami Vice. For Miami this time was characterized by a creolization of culture cause by a large influx of immirgrants from Latin America and the Carribean. For Venezuela this period was the last years of the oil wealth benefitting the general population, a time that was characterised with good relations with the USA, and for even the middle class holidays to Miami for shopping (particularly for clothes and other luxury goods like electronics).

Miami is also the centre for the anti-chavistas, since Chavez has come into power more and more of the Venezuelan rich have been locating themselves in Miami. So Miami postulates a complex amalgamum for the global imaginary of Venezuelans: part better times, part refuge, part resort and part cultural centre. It represents a shift in peripery alligeance from metropolitan Europe (Spain: Madrid), to Metropolitan United States (Miami), a shift from the 'Old' world to the 'New' world, from the old 'Imperial' centre to a new centre which is liminaly both inside and outside of North America, where the various assemblages of creolization of the contentents meet and reformulate new connections. Connections which have culturally transformed the North America, and provide an important source of rejuvination for South American culture - both as a market for and a producer of Latin culture.

MU: Online v Nintendo & City of Heros v Marvel

2006-09-14T22:19:00.000+10:00

I was just looking over some of my fieldwork material today and noticed a few references to Mu: Online. I had seen this game being played a lot - along with Tibia, another free MMORPG - during August-October 2004, but hadn't really noticed any significant play of it when I was in Caracas from March-July 2005. Anyway I was looking over the games site and saw that it had switched to a mixed free/pay service (pay service is called premium) this April. This meant that free players would be limited to four of the game-worlds, and to 60th level, while pay players would get unlimited access. The pay only worlds were also promoted as being bug free (bugs and third-party mods plagued MU: Online back when I was doing my research on it).
So I was looking around on the internet for some news on what happened with MU, because the buzz around the game was pretty big because of the huge size of its regular community (I use community here in the loose sense - but lets say at least it had a hell of a lot of players) all I could find was wikipedia claiming that it was sold by webzen (the Korean developers) to K2 (the current owners) for 2,000,000USD.
During my search I also discovered that Nintendo had been on webzen's case for allowing (out of 1,000s of possibile combinations) characters to be customized that looked like Link (of Zelda fame), in one of the new games it has been beta-testing, S.U.N. (Soul of the Ultimate Nation). Nintendo didn't sue just issued a stern warning. Now apparently this issue has cropped up in the past, according to Gamespot News, with players in City of Heros customizing their characters to closely resemble various Marvel favorates. The dispute between Marvel and City of Heros went from November 2004-December 2005, and resulted in an undisclosed settlement payment to Marvel. Wired News states:
"Considering that defendants own no comic characters themselves, it stands to reason that the comic books to which they refer are those that depict the characters of Marvel and others," wrote Marvel's attorneys in the complaint. "Defendants' Creation Engine facilitates and, indeed, encourages players to create and utilize heroes that are nearly identical in name, appearance and characteristics to characters belonging to Marvel."
The Story is also covered by USA Today.

What I'm wondering is what is the story with the Habbo Hotel game's jedi/sith roleplaying factions?

Mobile Media

2006-09-11T09:26:00.000+10:00

Stayed up late last night writing this abstract for the Mobile Media conference in Sydney next year. Was pretty interesting doing the research. Mobile gaming has a whole lot of interesting issues... ...and its pretty obvious that those who have waxing lyrical about this in various forums I have attended have just read 'Smart Mobs'.

Anyway I found the summary of the issues by Mark Finn in AJETS to be pretty sweet, and Aphra Kerr's book had some good stats, I'll have to get around to reading it soon.

Here is the abstract (its over 100 words too long :$) :

Games without Borders: Globalization, Gaming and Mobility in Venezuela

Using fieldwork data from ethnographic research conducted between March and July 2005, this paper will examine the impact of mobile games on the videogames industry and audiences in Caracas, Venezuela. I will argue that mobile games represent a tactic through which Venezuelan game developers can create content This dovetails with the Venezuelan markets’ readiness for mobile games due to the already largely public context of gaming, which means that the conceptual shift that other videogame markets face with the development of the mobile game sector will be ameliorated.

Kerr and Flynn (2003) argue that the structure of the global videogames industry is such that it potentially prohibits many small countries from developing this sector. Lugo et. al. (2002), underscore the unevenness of the development of the videogames industry, noting that while Latin America lacked a significant stake in the development of software, it was significantly the location of the production of many Xboxes in Mexican maquiladoras. While the people of Venezuela – in this case – are able to participate in the global culture of videogames, they relied on content produced elsewhere (the North). Finn (2005) and Kerr (2006) both note that mobile games create a significant intervention in the industry model for videogame production and distribution, both in terms of the cost and time associated with production, and in terms of controls and restrictions based on licensing and distribution. Potentially, this sector offers countries excluded from producing game content an opportunity to foster local talent and creativity.

Hall (2005) describes the impact that mobile gaming has had on videogame content. Play takes place within a particular context defined by time and space, the stability of this model is challenged by mobile games, which can be played in numerous contexts. Further to Hall’s understanding of context I will argue, based on my own experiences and observations, that culture and social bonds have a particular impact on context. Content, as in the type of game played has a strong correlation to these contexts. Particular contexts suit particular games (content), and vice versa, this explaining the ubiquity of certain games in Venezuela. Hall and Finn both point to the shift of videogames to the public sphere is the central contextual innovation of mobile gaming. This paper will argue that cultural context like that of Venezuela –where a considerable portion of videogaming takes place in public spaces already – is ready to be receptive of mobile games.

Its been a long time....

2006-07-13T20:50:00.000+10:00

Wow, such a long time since I have posted. Been so busy, but now its time to finnish this thing. Working on a chapter at the moment. Due in just 7 months, its gonna be crazy over the next few months as I type away.

New Project

2006-02-01T10:08:00.001+11:00

A new research team made up of myself Aravindhan Kinniah, and Michael Dieter have begun the process of writing up the data from a project started in July 2005 on World of Warcraft players in Melbourne Australia.

New Head of Program

2006-01-06T10:41:00.001+11:00

I was down at the pub last night having a beer with a couple of colleagues and as I walked out I happened to bump into Sean Cubitt. Now that was unexpected, he should be in New Zealand! Well it transpires that he will become the new head of the Media and Communications Program at the University of Melbourne. So a new year and a bit of a change here at the rather strange institution that is the media and communications program. Good for me.

But well I hope things stay cool at the Screen Media Department at the University of Waikato (Sean's old haunt). It was nice to know that there was a University somewhere in Australasia that was keeping it real with Games Studies. Their media lab was cool, and they were pumping out the old research.

Thinking About My Dissertation

2006-01-05T20:48:00.001+11:00

I've been having a hard think about my dissertation. I want to get it out of the way (that's what I've been advised by a few people). So I've been planning it all out.... even though I haven't quite finished the old fieldwork. End result, is that my old chapter one, the one I posted here last January is no more, no good, dog food or something. So someone please tell me what to do with it....

Everday Empowerment?

2005-12-20T17:16:00.001+11:00

Everyday Empowerment? Videogames in the Developing World: A Case Study of Venezuela

In her groundbreaking book Playing with Power in Movies, Television, and Videogames: From Muppet Babies to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Marsha Kinder maintains that the interactive nature of videogames gives children a sense of empowerment. A key caveat that she places on this sense of empowerment is that it is linked to acts of consumption, both within the game (e.g. when the Super Mario Brothers consume mushrooms they become giants), and outside the game (e.g. through the consumption of the various non-game commodities: Super Mario Brothers lunchboxes; TV shows; films; etc.). Kinder locates this phenomenon of empowerment through the play and consumption of videogames in a global context. In this paper, I will re-evaluate Kinder’s claims in the light of the inequality of the power relations between the global videogame industry and their audience. In order to do this I will turn to the ethnographic data gained during fieldwork in Caracas, Venezuela from March through July 2005.

Keywords: Consumption; Ethnography; Everyday Life; Videogames.

And Today....

2005-12-19T16:20:00.000+11:00

I guess I hadn't got around to telling y'all that I got accepted to the conference in Toronto! Great news. Sent of another abstract to a book called Adolescent Medievalism: The Past Packaged for Children and Young Adults, here is the abstract:

Rethinking History: Playing with ‘Historical Authenticity’ in Videogames.

History and historical events are common themes in videogames, and have been from their pre-commercial days. This chapter will argue that history is typically deployed in computer games in two ways; either as a diegetic backdrop and aesthetic influence (e.g. Medal of Honour, Crimson Skies), or as a simulation of the flow of history, in particular the development of a culture through time (e.g. Civilization, Age of Empires). In particular I will examine one game from the second group: Civilization III; in order to focus on the productive and creative ways that these games are utilised by their players.

Taking the form of an on-line ethnography, and utilizing site-based fieldwork and interviews conducted with children in Melbourne, Australia and Caracas, Venezuela during 2005, this paper will shift the focus from the games themselves to the way in which the two games are used by their players’ to negotiate the concept of ‘historical authenticity’ in relation to the demands of entertainment. In his recently published book The Nature of Computer Games: Play as Semiosis (2003) David Myers examines the earliest computer games and earmarks an underlying contradiction that governs the experience of game-play that exists between the law of physics and the law of play. Myers’ observation pinpoints a major division in the players of Civilization III.

This paper will argue that this contradiction has become of key importance among a certain segment of this game’s players, who deploy significant historical knowledge to critique the games, and also to a certain extent combine their historical knowledge with a minor knowledge of programming in order to customize more ‘authentic’ or ‘entertaining’ versions of the original games. Specifically, I will demonstrate that the strict adherence to the historic ‘facts’ incorporated into the game design, combined with an engaged and productive audience creates a potential for a critical reading by its audience that suggests Civilization III, and other simulation games that model history, or historic events, may provide a space for critical evaluation of history that contradicts the generally held opinion that in the postmodern era historical references in children’s media and generally nostalgic, meaningless examples of surface play that lack depth, or critical concerns.

Tom Apperley is a PhD student in the Media and Communication Studies Program at the University of Melbourne, Melbourne. He has recently returned from fieldwork in Caracas, Venezuela.

Knights of Honour

2005-12-01T00:32:00.000+11:00

I've been staying up late playing Knights of Honour, the new game from Paradox. It's pretty interesting, with a big focus on micro-management (opposite to the usual trend in strategy games). It has a 'retro' aesthetic, kind looks like a more pretty, less garish version of the first Age of Empires. It really difficult, I'm still getting my ass kicked on easy, need to learn to pay more attention to the politics going on at the kingdom-to-kingdom level outside my own sphere.

Hand Book of Computer Game Studies

2005-11-29T13:27:00.001+11:00

Well I finally got the copy from the library here at the University of Melbourne, the catalog says that they have two, but one has disappeared into the void that is the library already (along with Myers' The Nature of Computer Games, Gee's What Videogames Have To Teach Us About Learning and Literacy and a couple of others). So it looks really good, I saw a couple of chapters immediately that drew my attention, stuff about participatory culture and counterfactuals, as well as some interesting stuff from contributors like Turkle, Everett and Schliener. Its got a lot of stuff by Europeans, but only one that I see from the Copenhagen School. I'll start reading one chapter a day, that should last me until Xmas.

Also I have heard back from various people about the events in Sydney last weekend (IE & CSAA conferences). Greg Wadley mentioned that the IE was pretty good and that he and Martin Gibb are thinking of putting in a bid to host it in 2007.

Johan Huizinga

2005-11-28T21:35:00.001+11:00

I suppose there are a few people out there who have read Homo Ludens. It one of those books that gets cited alot, but never really has an in depth discussion of his actual argument, apart from the usual cliches about play being a time and space of its own. He is a lot more famous for his work as a 'Cultural Historian', than his is for his work on games. However, I think his perspective on games and their relation to culture is important to the development of Game Studies. Escpecially in terms of countering some of the extremeness of Aarseths 'game is a game' position (see his discussion with Stuart Moulthrop in First Person).

Anyway I'm up late tonight giving Huizinga a close reading... ...lots of fun!

Rejected: Again

2005-11-26T17:26:00.001+11:00

Here is an abstract that I sent to Dr Nathaniel Garrelts for his forthcoming edited collection of GTA:

Of Sins, Vices and Pecados: The Cultural Context of Videogame Play

Using a case study of Grand Theft Auto 3: Vice City this paper will examine the cultural context of videogame consumption in Caracas, Venezuela in Summer 2005. Using data gathered through ethnographic fieldwork, participant observation and interviews over that period, this paper will examine the features of Vice City that made it the most often played single player game in Internet cafes. I will argue that in this case rather than any graphic or narrative elements that the game contained, it is the flexibility in terms of styles and approaches to play the game allowed that led to the game becoming a standard feature within Venezuelan gaming life. I will maintain that his is because it both catered to the requirements of the intense social space of the offline interactions within the Internet café, and superseded the limitations and difficulties imposed by the various social, economic and technological factors facing the game playing audience in

Venezuela

.

It was promptly (and politely) declined, as the editor wished to focus on "essays that specifically addressed a Grand Theft Auto game from a defined theoretical perspective". I'm pretty sure he got about 1000 abstracts considering just about every paper at the PCA/ACA conference was on GTA. In fact theres a big scandal about the 'Hot Coffee' scences in Australia at the moment, thats got a special panel devouted to it at the IE in Sydney this weekend (that I couldn't go to - because no $$$). In fact I'm starting to the GTA can stand in for computer games as a whole... Grand Theft Auto Studies, sounds cool? I mean it's not like it's a lame game, but I'm kinda over it... ...I guess every academic is just studying what the kids are playing (it means they can watch them over their shoulder rather than playing them, themselves!!), and games like Grim Fandango are irrelevant and researching them could not possibly reveal anything about computer games.

Anyway I'm happy because it means I don't have to write it right now, although I'm working on something to do with GTA because I just got so much data about it on my fieldwork in Venezuela.

Abstract - Place and Identity

2005-11-26T17:17:00.001+11:00

Place and Identity in Global Networks: a Cross-Cultural Examination of Gunbound

Gunbound is a free Internet-based computer game, that is made by the Korean company Softnyx, which is popular in many parts of the globe. Taking Gunbound as a case study, my research explores gaming as a global and transnational phenomena, in particular the flow of gaming products from the North to the South, and the new assemblages of networks that this flow allows. Using data gathered during ethnographic fieldwork in Caracas, Venezuela and Melbourne, Australia during 2005, this paper will focus on the specific local contexts of the play of Gunbound. Rather than approaching the game as a text, my concern is to examine the ways by which this game is insinuated into the everyday life of the players. In this paper I will argue that the nature of Gunbound is such that the player enters into a negotiation between the local and the global during the course of play, that it becomes a technologically and culturally hybrid site in which players can explore issues of place and identity in relation to transnational global networks.

Keywords: Identity, Transnational, Ethnography,

Lazarus Post

2005-11-26T17:00:00.001+11:00

Well its been a long time since I've made a proper post here. I've been pretty busy since I cam back from Caracas at the end of July. Tutoring media futures at Melbourne Uni and lecturing Perspectives in Communication at Victoria Uni. I also made a number of guest lectures at Swinburne, Melbourne and Victoria Unis. And have presented three times various aspects of my data (all at in house forums unfortunately). At the same time I've been writing up my field work: expect to see something soon here on that, and working on some chapters and publications.

Imagining Japan Abstract

2005-02-07T10:53:00.001+11:00

I submitted the following abstract to a recent cfp on 'Imagining Japan' at Monash University Melbourne:

‘The Japanese Colonization of the “Nintendo Generation”: Participatory Media, Hybrid Cultures, and the Cybernetic Commodity.’

At the end of their article ‘Nintendo® and New World Travel Writing’ Mary Fuller and Henry Jenkins ask: ‘what exactly is the cultural status of a Nintendo® game?’. In the global media networks, dominated by flows from West to East, and North to South, the domination by Nintendo, a Japanese company, of the home console market from the mid-eighties to the early-nineties represents a significant disruption. The phenomena was unprecedented a generation of Western children grew up playing with – and in – Nintendo.

In this paper I will argue that Nintendo is implicated in three key developments in the global media system. First, Nintendo represents the first mass use of household interactive entertainment, and the Nintendo generation were the first to be familiar with this new form of participatory media. Second, Nintendo was key in introducing the notion of cybernetic commodity as a marketing system. This form of commodification refers to the media product that is designed as a closed interactive system that structures and organises play and entertainment. Finally, Nintendo games precipitated a distinguishable hybrid aesthetic among videogames that utilizes both Japanese and Western iconography. This hybrid media played a key role in proselyting Japanese popular culture in the West.

Draft Copy of Thesis Chapter

2005-01-30T07:01:00.001+11:00

Opening Ludology's Magic Circle:
Videogames at the Margins of Play and Space

The old and new game components, their dynamic combination, the registers, the necessary manipulation of temporal, causal, spatial and functional relations and properties not to mention the rules and goals and the lack of audience should suffice to set games and the gaming situation apart from narrative and drama, and to annihilate for good the discussion of games as stories, narratives or cinema (Eskelinen, 2001: 7).

Eskelinen desires to isolate videogames in order to get to the roots of the ‘gaming situation’. This desire reflects the problems inherent in defining videogames as a new area of study. Tension arises between notions of videogames as a unique medium and notions of it as one of the many new digital mediums. While many have argued in favour of one or the other of these positions. While those that favour understanding videogames as unique are faced with (re)-inventing a unique discipline, those that regard games in a continuum are in danger of obscuring the substantial difference involved between playing a game and watching a film, for example. That is the videogames mode of participation and the form of communication and community that it engenders. In this chapter I will argue that videogames should be understood in terms of both positions. This tension need not be resolved; I suggest that it is not a case of an either/or polemic, rather videogames are both a unique medium and located in a dominant media paradigm that share many common characteristics.

While it must be acknowledged that in the contemporary media age of digital convergence videogames share many of the same networks of production, technology and marketing, as do other entertainment media such as cinema. Nor do videogames operate alone to produce meaning; rather they exist in a vast mediascape that has among many other characteristics a notable tendency towards self-referentiality. However, this aside, videogames are also distinct from other media in several senses, the most prominent and oft refrained by advocates of isolation is that videogames are games. Tautological as this claim may seem it makes an important point. Marshall McLuhan once claimed that new media was old wine in new bottles; in the case of games I suggest there is something new in the bottles. While games certainly existed prior to the invention of videogames, the new videogames in addition to repurposing old media content introduced play into the media system. While other media may be used playfully, to experiment or create an aberrant or parodic reading, it is only videogames that must be played, and furthermore can only be consumed through the act of playing.

This chapter will begin by surveying the field of Game Studies, in particular the influence of – and reaction to – those scholars who argue that videogames should be studied in isolation from other media, and theories that have arise from the study of those other media. Second, the notion of play as it pertains to the study of videogames will be discussed, with a focus on critiquing the use to which it has been put by those scholars who construe the field narrowly, in order to establish ways that play theory can be used to make connections between the play of videogames and the culture(s) in which that play occurs. Key also in the discussion of play is Roger Caillois’ notion of play existing in a margin or latitude of freedom within the rules. Finally, strategies by which the diverse field of videogames can be conceived of as a coherent field are outlined, highlighting four key ordering features, for distinguishing between games – variance in platform, genre, mode and milieu – and locating one general feature which all games share, an intersection of space and play within space that resembles the latitude or margin of freedom outlined by Cailois.

The Field of Game Studies

In Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature Espen Aarseth argues that: ‘to claim that there is no difference between games and narratives is to ignore essential qualities of both categories’ [my emphasis] (1997: 5). This claim establishes the basic opposition that can be found in the study of games between scholars who seek to understand games as narratives, and those that prefer that they are understood on their own terms. In the following section, first the merits of the latter position will be explored, and then it will discuss two crucial shortfalls of the approach. The isolation of videogames in an attempt study them purely as games ignores both the way that games deploy narratives and the cultural context of the games production and consumption.

Introducing Ludology
At the core of the contemporary game studies debate lies a rather questionable dialectic. This ostensible opposition is posited between two theoretical camps: the ‘ludologists’ and the ‘narratologists’. The key texts that mark this divide in the field are Aarseth’s Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature (1997) and Janet Murray’s Hamlet on the Holodeck: the Future of Narrative in Cyberspace (1998). Murray’s work in the course of exploring the narrative potential of computers, applies narrative theory to videogames. To Aarseth Murray’s exploratory project is a case of ‘narrativistic colonialism’ (2004b: 49). A grossly problematic application of the ‘theories of literary criticism to a new empirical field, seemingly without any reassessment of the terms and concepts involved’ (Aarseth, 1997: 14). In the editorial of the inaugural issue of Game Studies (2001), he outlines his position further: videogames were simulations that presented a ‘radically different alternative to narratives as a cognitive and communicative structure. Simulations are bottom up; they are complex systems based on logical rules’ (2001: 2). Videogames from this perspective are simulations, and simulations and narratives are mutually incompatible.

Murray’s position is deprecated further in Markku Eskelinen’s article ‘The Gaming Situation’ (2001). He argues that ‘Instead of studying the actual game Murray tries to interpret its supposed content, or better yet, project her favourite content on it’ (Eskelinen, 2001: 6). I suggest that Eskelinen is correct in this claim; however, the way that he (and the other ludologists) demarcates the argument suggests that in many ways the disagreement stems also from an incongruent understanding of the object of study. Aarseth’s notion of the simulation argues that games are rule-based systems, which limits the object of enquiry into how these rules and systems operate with the contribution of the player to deliver an experience that is understood as playing a game. His notion of the distinction between description and narration illuminates the ludological position regarding the object of study. Aarseth divides narrative into two levels: description and narration, arguing that videogames contain description, but not narration. He states: ‘the game may be narrated in a number of ways, but like football, narration is not part of the game’ (Aarseth, 1997: 95). Ludologists are solely concerned with the game. In ‘Simulation versus Narrative: Introduction to Ludology’ Gonzalo Frasca elucidates this position, while ostensibly games and narrative both contain the descriptive content that make up a narrative, in games they are produced by a different signifying system: simulation (2003: 224). It is the operation of this signifying system that is the object of study for ludologists.

This desire to isolate the object of study has shifted the focus of analysis from what is traditionally regarded as the text to the relationship between the player and the text. Videogames are characterised by the player both reading the ‘output’ from the screen and ‘inputting’ responses. As Frasca remarks: games ‘cannot be understood just through output’ (2003: 224). While this approach is able to adequately conceive the feedback loop relationship between the player and the game, it also, to the discipline’s disadvantage, conceives this feedback loop hermeneutically. The consequence of this is demonstrated in the argument between Aarseth and Stuart Moulthrop in First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game over among other things, the status of Lara Croft vis-à-vis the game Tomb Raider. Aarseth claims that Tomb Raider would be the same game with or without Lara Croft (2004b: 48). Moulthrop then argues that Aarseth’s approach ignores the cultural implications of her ‘salacious anatomy’ by focusing on ‘the player’s engagement with the rule system’ (2004: 47). To which Aarseth replies that while Lara Croft has significance that extends beyond the gameplay that it is insignificant in terms of what it can tell us about the gameplay it self (2004a: 49). Aarseth’s rebuttal reflects the problem of defining the object of study for videogames in such a narrow manner. Here, I suggest that Moulthrop and Aarseth’s failure to see eye to eye is caused by a underlying disagreement as to what precisely is the object being studied, and consequently over what is the scope of the field defining itself as ‘game studies’. Moulthrop is correct to argue that by constricting the study of games to the formal elements, or rules that make them work, Aarseth, and the other ludologists, are ignoring other equally important issues in the study of games. However, the ludological position is that these issues are separate from the experience of playing within the bounded rule system of the game simulation, and that this experience is non-narrative. As Eskelinen succinctly puts it: ‘If I throw a ball at you I don’t expect you to drop it and wait until it starts telling stories’(2001: 1).

While ludologists seek to maintain the integrity of the videogames unique status, their efforts reflect what Patrick Crogan describes as a basic ambivalence towards narrative and literary theory (2004a: 13). He notes that the foundational works of ludology, in particular Eskelinen (2001), but also Juul (2001a), Kücklich (2003), and Aarseth (1997) all use basic narrative theory, in particular semiotics to make their ‘anti-narrative’ arguments (Crogan, 2004a: 13). There is also accompanying their resistance to narrative, an underlying resistance to capital ‘T’ theory in the ludologists work. Frasca explicitly states that ludology is a ‘formalist discipline’ (2003: 222). While he acknowledges the limitations of this approach he argues that it is ‘probably the easiest way to uncover the structural differences between stories and games’ (Frasca, 2003: 222). Here I suggest that Frasca is marking ‘ludology’ as non-equivocal to game studies, but rather as a ‘formalist discipline’ within it. This dissertation will argue that the study of ludology, as a distinct area of game studies has much to offer the study of videogames. However, what ludology has to offer must be understood with a strict caveat regarding the limitations and underlying assumptions associated of the approach.

Narrative in Videogames
I suggest that the primary flaw in the ludological approach is its desire to understand games in isolation. By reducing the study of game to the study of their formal rules and structure they neglect what Aarseth has designated as ‘cultural inputs’(Crogan, 2004b). Crogan uses the notion of cultural inputs to refer to both narrative and broader cultural context of production and consumption, the first of these issues will be explored here and the second will be discussed in the flowing section. In this first sense cultural inputs are the way in which videogames “draw on narrative modes of more traditional media” (Crogan, 2003: 282). James Newman in Videogames suggests that the narrative elements of games, such as the cut scene, are equally important to understanding the experience of play (2004: 72). The existence of narrative element in videogames is for Crogan evidence that narrative remain crucial but secondary concern (2004a: 14). Newman, however, focuses on the way that narrative elements have been worked into the structure of the games (2004: 98). Newman, I suggest, is highlighting the imbricated nature of the narrative into the ‘ludic’ structures of the game. The net effect of opening up the narrative aspect of games as a relevant field of inquiry, is to acknowledge their connections to other cultural forms, and in particular their relationship to other media (Crogan, 2004a: 7).

Ludology ambivalent relationship to narrative, combined with its rather audacious claims lead Crogan to describe it as a ‘somewhat notorious provocation’ (2004a: 11). However, he quickly, and correctly, acknowledges that ludology has been valuable in ‘generating the necessary discussion on the nature of the objects of study for this emerging field of empirical work’(Crogan, 2004a: 12). For Crogan and Whalen the provocation of ludology is a strategic move that usurps the smooth application of narrative theory to new media (Crogan, 2004a: 12; Whalen, 2004). The polemical position taken by Aarseth and the other ludologists in defining games in opposition to literature, I suggest, is a deliberate move to prevent videogames from being unproblematically absorbed into literary studies. The ludologists point has been made, it is now generally accepted in game studies that narrative is no longer the primary defining characteristics of game, but rather one among several (Aarseth, 2000; Crogan, 2003: 275; 2004a: 13; Darley, 2000: 155, 194; Flynn, 2004: 53-4; Frasca, 2003: 222; Tong & Tan, 2002: 99). This is supported by Sean Cubitt’s argument that narrative is just one possible system of organising new media, and suggests that the structure and use of new media like Photoshop encourages a system of organisation that he dubs ‘post narrative spatialization’ (2002: 27; see also Manovich, 2002). The ludologists concern that narrative is not entirely relevant for understanding games is accompanied by a more deep-seated ambivalence among some scholars within the field of new media towards narratives.

The notion of games as simulations that has been developed by Frasca (2003) and Aarseth (2004), addresses the ludological position on narratives. While narrative theory can adequately describe parts of the game, to rely on it potentially proscribes a limit on the analysis. Crogan describes the difference between simulation and narrative as distinguishing between a system designed for modelling a simulation for solution and a past sequence of events that is recalled for contemplation and interpretation (2004a: 16). This is not to say that videogames are not interpreted or regarded contemplatively, indeed for Newman one of the functions of the narrative interludes in games is to allow this kind of activity, a point to which Aarseth and Crogan agree (Aarseth, 1999: 37-8; Crogan, 2004a: 15; Newman, 2004: 79). This point is crucial, as it both emphasises the way in which simulation and narrative intersect and inform the overall experience, and the way in which they are differentiated temporally. The process of simulation generates the material that is then retrospectively constructed into a narrative during an interlude in the play. This process is informed by videogames’ use of traditional media aesthetics during these interludes to frame the past events and potentially to foreshadow the next episode.

However, this turn away from narrative should be accompanied by an acknowledgement that videogames, as well as being games are also, at least in part, textual. That they make reference to what is outside of the game. Newman and Mia Consalvo rally against the notion that all meaning in games are derived independently of context (Consalvo, 2003: 331; Newman, 2004: 128, 143). Videogames, they argue independently are understood intertextually, through other media texts and through the shared experience of gaming. Aarseth – based on his understanding of games as rules only – argues that games cannot be understood intertextually (2004b: 48). Consalvo contradicts this arguing that games are understood intertextually, and that game players bring to bear a wide range of medium-specific and general media to bear in the production of meaning from a game: ‘They do not... …discard knowledge of all other media while engaging with a primary text. Rather, they approach all of these media intertextually with knowledge of all informing all of their actions’ (2003: 31-2). (2003: 231-2). In support of this notion Newman states:

Videogames do not exist within a vacuum. Rather, they reside, are produced, and are encountered within a web of intertextuality in which explicit and implicit references to other media forms proliferate in videogames, and in which videogames are referred to aesthetically and stylistically within other media. As such, advertising and marketing materials, not to mention the various and extensive tie-ins and spin-offs such as movies and cartoons, must be considered alongside the content of the game (2004: 57-8).

Here Newman alludes to what Kline et. al. would call the ‘circuit of marketing’ in which computer games are located. In New Media Cultures, Marshall discusses the way in which the commodity status that intertextual marketing creates through its various permutations across the media creates a structure that regulates and organises play and engagement, importantly marking that within these systems of circulation the various texts will contribute and shape, or ‘cue’[i] particular meanings (2004: 23). This notion that certain meanings may be cued is supported by Sharon Sherman’s analysis of Super Mario Brothers in ‘Perils of the Princess: Gender and Genre in Video Games’ in which she notes that the games meaning is constructed through intertextual references to other texts and mediums. Sherman notes the divergence in the kind of reading that the game would be give by a child, and the reading given by someone involved in ‘drugs subculture’[ii] pointing to the games’ potential for myriad and polysemous meanings which are dependant on the knowledge of the player (1997: 254).

Broader ‘Cultural Inputs’
Crogan is also gesturing toward the cultural context within which games are produced, distributed and consumed. As he points out, by making contextual issues marginal to the understanding of gameplay, the ludologists ignore the impact that cultural factors, in this case the computer and the simulations origins in the military-industrial complex, have had on their development (2004a: 15-6). He is not alone on this point, in Digital Play: The Intersection of Technology, Culture and Marketing Kline et. al. devote some time to trace the connections between the US military infrastructure and the development of cybernetic theory on the development of the technology of gaming, and argue that these origins are reflected in the kinds of games simulations that are available (2003: chapter four; see also Marshall, 2004: chapter two).

Kline et. al., Sue Morris, and P. David Marshal all advocate a more holistic approach to understanding computer games. The approach outlined by Kline et. al. suggests that the videogame is a ‘complex composite of technological, cultural, and marketing forces’ (2003: 59). That is located in a imbricated, interactive nexus of the circuits of marketing, culture and technology that ‘interpenetrate and dynamize each other’ (Kline et al., 2003: 58). In order to understand this mesh of influences both Morris and Marshal adapt the cinematic apparatus theory. For Morris this is important as it recognises the ‘interconnected technical, environmental, textual, psychological and social processes… …involved in audience interaction with the media form’ (2002: 81). The play of videogames has implications far beyond the ludological structure of the game simulation, earmarking an opening of the hermeneutic feedback loop between the player and their game that draws connections to the social, economic, technological and political systems within which videogame play is located. Marshall argues that the ‘technological’ apparatus of new media operate together to produce the new form subjectivity: ‘Like the cinematic apparatus the technological apparatus surrounds, mediates and becomes part of our identity and relationship to the world’ (2004: 33). The authors vision of videogames is a far cry from that conceived by the ludologists, however, there is a danger that in some cases in their efforts to trace the context of games through these circuits they lose site of the play of the game itself (Kücklich, 2004). Here I will argue that Kücklich’s criticism of Kline et. al. is a pertinent reminder for scholars of computer games to mark – as the ludologists’ do – the specificity of gaming as a practice whilst also exploring the context in which it occurs.

This section has earmarked the key contribution of Ludology to the field of Game Studies. However, it has also highlighted the shortcoming of that approach in adequately explaining certain key issues: First Game Studies needs to understand the interplay of narrative and play, and the way in which videogames are understood intertexually. However, in this enquiry narrative should not be seen as the medium’s dominant organising principle. Second, Game Studies needs to be able to critically conceptualize the relationship between game play and the wider cultural spheres in which its consumption is located. However, these wider concerns need to be grounded in the specificity of play as a practice distinct from other forms of media consumption. The distinctive qualities of play will be discussed in the following section.

Play Theory

Frasca places Ludology in a continuum with the study of pre-digital games (2003: 222). By strategically claiming their historic roots in the study of play, ludology positions narrativism as an outside influence. However, in this section I will demonstrate that the ludologists reading of pre-digital play theory is idiosyncratic, focusing on particular arguments that support their claims, while ignoring aspects of the theories that would problemitize their arguments. The section will reflect on the readings of the foundational works of play theory Roger Caillois’ Man Play and Games and Johan Huizinga’s Homo Ludens. Then it will turn to a more contemporary source: Brain Sutton-Smith’s The Ambiguity of Play in order to propose a more general and open method of defining play, that includes in and expands upon the ludologists narrow definition.

Paidia and Ludos
In ‘Ludology’ Zack Whalen points out that the problem with narrative theories of games is that they are often too far removed from the act of playing. It is this that Murray is accused of by the ludologists. It is not that she does not play, but rather that she does not engage in her writing with the act of play, instead she relies on what Marie-Laurie Ryan dubs the ‘holodeck myth’ (2001: 3). This myth suggests that videogames are the current technological expression of what will one day be three-dimensional virtual reality environments. Murray is theorizing what play could be, not what play is. Theories of play have for decades existed independently from literary or narrative scholarship, usually within social sciences disciplines. A key part of the agenda of the first Game Studies journal was not only to criticise the narrative approach, but also to demonstrate exactly what it was that this approach lacked. This demand that understanding of videogames be routed in the context of the notion of play remains the crucial contribution of the ludological scholars. This notion highlights new medium’s existence in a continuum with practices that are more commonly understood as a social or cultural, rather than as a media form. Ludological scholars emphasized this link as an important critique of narrative derived understandings of games. In particular Jesper Juul in ‘The Repeatedly Lost Art of Studying Games’ earmarked the work of the anthropologists Brian Sutton-Smith and Julian E. Avedon as being key to the structural understanding of games (2001b: 2-3). Later works of ludology also adopt, and adapt, prior scholarship on games and play to the study of videogames, in particular the work of Roger Caillois in Man, Play and Games(1961). He has been used by Frasca to make a key categorical distinction within videogames (2003: 229-31). Caillois categories of paidia and ludus – and to a lesser extent agôn, alea, mimicry, and ilinx – have been accepted as key categorical tools by a remarkable number of scholars within the field (Darley, 2000; Lister, 2003; Newman, 2004; Perron, 2003; Salen & Zimmerman, 2004).

As Frasca points out Caillois’ categories are loosely defined (2003: 230). In response he reframes the two categories in a way that I will argue, according to my reading of the text obscures a key aspect of ’ original configuration. describes paidia as “an almost indivisible principle, common to diversion, turbulence, free improvisation, and carefree gaiety…” while ludus is characterised by “effort patience, skill or ingenuity” (1961: 13). Ostensibly, has set up games into two more-or-less opposing camps. However, Frasca argues that to understand ludus and paidia in opposition is incorrect, he prefers definition based on allying paidia with play and ludos with game. They are two separate categories that are demarcated according to their goals: while ludus games have a clear winner or loser, paidia games lack one (2003: 230). Subsequently, all videogames are defined as either ludos or paidia (Frasca, 2003: 230-1). I believe that Frasca’s use of the terms misses a key point in Caillois argument that I suggest elucidates the practice of playing itself, irrespective of the kind of game that is played.

Frasca over-emphasises the distinct qualities of the category. By marking the notion of a clearly defined goal as the fulcrum by which a game is designated ludos or paidia he is setting up a binary opposition between types of game that, I ague, could be more usefully understood as existing within games. The two concepts – far from being the static markers that Frasca suggests – exist together in productive tension. As Caillois states:

The game consists of the need to find or continue at once a response which is free within the limits set by the rules. This latitude of the player, this margin accorded to his action is essential to the game and partly explains the pleasure which it excites. It is equally accountable for the remarkable and meaningful uses of the term ‘play’, such as are reflected in such expressions as the playing of a performer or of a gear, to designate in the one case the personal style of an interpreter, in the other the range of movement of the parts of a machine [the author’s original emphasis] (1961: 8).

This passage, come before Caillois defines paidia or ludos, thus I believe they need to be reconsidered with those categories in mind. sets up a certain dynamic, a contradiction, a ‘margin or latitude’ within the rules that is free within the limits set by them. To follow Frasca and align rules with ludos, and consequently this margin of freedom with paidia, highlights the imbricated quality of the two categories. Games are not characterised by their ludos or paidia, but by ‘the margin or latitude’ afforded to the player by the dynamic interplay of these two contradictory forces.

Huizinga’s Magic Circle
The extension of the notion of play by Caillois into the metaphorical dimension of the movement of a machine foreshadows Henry Jenkins’ emphasis on videogames as spaces characterised by ‘freedom of movement’ (Fuller & Jenkins, 1995; Henry Jenkins, 1993, 1998). The space is created from within this latitude or margin and thus it is the extent and potential of this marginal space that is the key factor in delineating the experience of play. In Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture (1970) the seminal work of Johan Huizinga, first published in English in 1949, play is distinguished from everyday life by its temporal and spatial boundaries. Play requires the recognition of a spatial and/or temporal boundary within which everyday rules do not apply (Huizinga, 1970: 28-9). Huizinga argues that within the limited time and space of play, play “contains its own course and meaning”(1970: 28). It offers the player an ephemeral world “within the ordinary world, dedicated to the performance of an act apart” (Huizinga, 1970: 29). The space created by and for play is a space that, for Huizinga, is both outside and within the space of the everyday. The temporary world of play is established through rules; however, manifest within the rules is the intervention of uncertainty – which I suggest is what Caillois would describe as paidia – which is the central attraction of play. Thus the pleasure of play arises from a contradiction - to rephrase Caillois and Jenkins – it comes from the margin of uncertainty that provides freedom of movement within the rules. These rules not only define the practices of play but also its temporal and spatial bounds.

Huizinga’s invocation of the ‘magic circle’ to describe the separation of play from everyday life resounds throughout ludology (1970: 28). The notion of play as a space apart has been challenged by Rebecca Farley in her article ‘Game’ where she notes that the conflict of play continues outside the time a space that is set aside for it (2000). Not only does Farley’s critique disrupt the notion of the ‘magic circle’ it suggests that to examine games in isolation from the cultural context in which they take place ignores the way in which events within the magic circle impact upon the broader social sphere. Newman takes this point and uses it to point to the limitations of the ludological approach vis-à-vis the audience and culture engendered by videogames (2004: 109). However, those who have used his notion of the space apart to justify analysis of game outside of strict cultural contexts have obscured Huizinga’s own position. He argues that: “the feeling of being ‘apart together’ in an exceptional situation, of sharing something important, of mutually withdrawing from the rest of the world and rejecting its usual norms, retains its magic beyond the duration of the individual game” (1970: 31). Clearly Huizinga believes that the ‘magic circle’ extends into and affects relations in the everyday. Here is where the ludologists depart from Huizinga, to their more agreeable, particular structuralist reading of . For, ultimately, Huizinga argues “culture arises in the form of play” (1970: 66). Thus the two concepts: play and culture are inexorably linked. It is not that ludologists necessarily are denying this link; it is simply that they wish to understand the relationship between the player(s) and the rules that govern the game.

In this sense of wishing to examine the object of play in isolation, the ludologists move from an understanding of play as inherently social and thus focused outward, and subject to influences from beyond the ‘magic circle’, towards a more hermeneutic understanding of play akin to Brian Sutton-Smith’s definition of ‘toy’ in Toys as Culture (1986). Unlike play, which is a particularly difficult notion to isolate, the toy is a concrete and isolable play object (Sutton-Smith, 1986: 66, 76). The toy, according to Sutton-Smith is a play object designed to teach children the skill of solitary concentration (1986: 75). While this notion has some very interesting applications to understanding the pedagogical role that games might play in contemporary society, the fact remains that videogames are not consumed in this manner. To illustrate this, Sutton-Smith notes that approximately half the time spent playing videogames by children could be more accurately described as socializing (1986: 67). What is lost in the strict ludological approach is any understanding of the games outside their isolated ‘toy’ function.

Defining Play
In The Ambiguity of Play (1997) Sutton-Smith explores the ambiguous nature of the concept of play. To him the key reasons for its ambiguity are: the diversity of play forms and experiences, the diversity of players, play agencies and play scenarios, and the diversity of play scholarship (Sutton-Smith, 1997: 3-7). It is difficult to understand ‘play’ as a unified concept as it takes place across heterogenous groups, in diverse context and in multiple forms; furthermore, it is studied under many different scholarly rubrics. For Sutton-Smith concepts of play are constructed rhetorically and reflect the underlying cultural assumptions towards play (1997: 8-12). In order to move away from studying the rhetorics of play, and to understand the activity itself, he draws attention to the divergent ways in which the object of study for play has been constructed. Sutton-Smith notes three major ways in which play is conceived: as an intrinsic system, as an extrinsic system and as something that is defined by its players (1997: 16-7). To extrapolate these concepts, first, the intrinsic system refers to a system of classification that is based on mapping the boundaries and rules of the play and the patterns of behaviour that occur within those boundaries, this position is that of , and is similar to that taken by ludologists. The second, extrinsic classification of games suggests that games reflect culture in some way and that what is studied is the connection between play and culture, this is the position of Huizinga. The third category is where the scholar allows the players’ to define the meanings of their practice, which is similar to the ethnographic approach taken by Sue Morris, outlined in ‘Shoot First: Ask Questions Later: Ethnographic Research in a Online Games Community’ (2004). I would suggest that each of the three rubrics that Sutton-Smith mentions as defining play has a particular place in the study of play. Ludology closely adheres to one of the positions, leaving the field of Game Studies open to ‘extrinsic’ and ethnographic inquiry.

By combining these three approaches an accurate understanding of the phenomena of videogames can be developed. As I have suggested previously although the ludological position has certain limits, it is not without its benefits, primarily that they seek to understand games, as games. While this position is ostensibly a tautological one. I suggest that it is important to note the benefit of understanding them intrinsically, or as Aarseth would describe it as ‘a bottom up hermeneutic’ (2004b: 52). The advantage of this approach is that it focuses on the specificity of the videogame medium, in an era where engagement with new media is characterised by the notion of play. As Marshall states: ‘play has been colonized in the era of new media cultures to expand the impact and investment by users in the new technologies’ (2004: 44). Both play, and interactivity have come to stand it as characteristics of the new media as a whole that marks the break between old and new media. Videogames uniqueness within the grouping of new media can only be established through an examination of the structural and mechanical nature of play. Otherwise the specificity of the medium will be overlooked in the general technological and aesthetic convergence that characterise the new media age.

The intrinsic perspective is also valuable. Primarily because it seeks to draw connections between play and culture. In this case the extrinsic perspective opens up the study of games to include the ‘cultural inputs’, first this locates the practices of the videogame audience in the wider culture of new media, and second it opens videogames to broader enquiries vis-à-vis the marketing, technological and cultural forces that shape them. Crucial in terms of the development of game studies beyond ludology, the extrinsic approach allows videogames to be understood in the context of intertextuality. By opening play to an intrinsic examination the connections between play, everyday life and the ubiquitous media are marked and mapping the intertextual web of polysemous meanings that can be attributed to the text becomes possible.

The third strategy for defining play, that which involves seeking knowledge from the players’ perspective is crucial, as through this first we can begin to understand not only the intrinsic pleasures that the play excites, but also the way in which the players make meaning from the extrinsic material. Key in this last factor is the social way in which the games are played and the communities or networks of players that arise from play. Furthermore, by investigating the players’ own definition(s) of play, an enquiry into what is at stake in play becomes possible. While in theory, videogame play – like most pastimes – is considered a pleasurable activity; the practicality is that game play often involves intense frustration, confusion and boredom. Clifford Geertz in ‘Deep Play: a Description of the Balinese Cockfight’ argues that in play what is at stake is status rather than pleasure (1976: 667). Certainly game communities involve status, but Geertz argues it is the status that is at stake in the game that makes it meaningful to the player and to the culture as a whole (1976: 668). Obtaining data on the communities of play makes it possible to interpret the cultural significance of play within that community.

The player-defined approach will require a clean negotiation of the disjuncture between the ‘commonsense’ understanding of everyday life and the complex critical enquiry demanded by academia. By understanding and utilizing categories that are meaningful to the informants an emic perspective of videogame play can be usefully contrasted with the etic perspective where the categories are defined by the researcher (Schroder, Drotner, Kline, & Murray, 2003: 81). By mapping an etic perspective on to the emic understanding, the validity of the informant’s categories acknowledged, while retaining a critical perspective.

Despite the Ludologist favouring an approach to videogames that incorporates prior scholarship on play. Their use of such theories to validate their approach is questionable. First the creative tension between ludos and paidia that exist within games is overlooked. Second, while arguing that play is a space apart from the everyday like Huizinga, they ignore his argument that play extends into the everyday in the form of social connections formed through play. Finally, as Sutton-Smith illustrate, play may be defined in several ways, of which the ludologists use the most narrow, ignoring other definition which are also used in play theory. I have advocated a mixed definition, as I anticipate a broader definition of play will allow play to act as a unifying feature of the diverse media of videogames.

Locating the Medium of the Videogame

To address computer games as a consistent genre or medium is highly problematic. From Tetris on a mobile phone to Super Mario on a Gameboy to Everquest on a Midi-tower Windows machine there is a rather large span of different genres, social contexts, and media technologies (Aarseth, 2004b: 46).

Aarseth argues that the videogame medium is so diverse that the defy categorization into a single cohesive felid. Certainly given the forty-year history of videogames and the divergence of aesthetics, genres, and technologies during that period, means that scholars are faced with a field that is characterised by diversity. This section will first examine various ways that the field might be organised into useful groupings or genres and then pinpoint two particular features of videogames that point to common characteristics within the medium despite its extreme diversity; space, and – harking back to the previous chapter – play.

The extreme divergence of games as a medium has a serious effect on scholarship. On one hand useful scholarship on one game, or several similar games can be difficult to apply to other games. On the other hand scholars who are making arguments about games in general are able to support their theory with one, or two popular games that appear to support their argument, while ignoring other games that are otherwise inconvenient. Thus both Jull and Eskelinen use Tetris to support their claim that videogames are not narratives (Eskelinen, 2001; Juul, 2001a). Darley is able to claim conversely that games share the same general aesthetics as cinema, precisely because he ignores these games and focuses on Myst and Doom (2000: Chapter Seven).

In response to the divergent characteristics of videogames useful scholarship has been done in an effort to establish a notion of genre. This helps to put a rough framework on the divergent field. Ludologists, in general, are resistant to any notion of genre that questions the established industry categories (for example see: Juul, 2001b: 3). Thomas Schatz’s notion that film genre classification a consensual agreement between the audience and the producers has been posited by Mark J. P. Wolf as relevant for videogames (see Schatz, 1981: 16; 2002: 113). However, I suggest that genre is another category that needs to be rethought with an etic perspective in mind. This is because the current established genres accepted by the audience and industry does not take into account the complex layering of genre that occurs within computer games. In the introduction to ScreenPlay: cinema/videogames/interfaces Geoff King and Tanya Krzywinska argue that games can be categorised on four levels: ‘according to platform, genre, mode and milieu’ (2002: 26-7).

· Platform: refers to the hardware systems on which the game is played, this includes personal computers, various consoles (Sony PlayStation 2, Nintendo GameCube, Microsoft Xbox etcetera), as well as hand-held devices such as Game Boy Advanced, PDA’s and cell phones. While this may seem unimportant, as it is common for popular games to shift across the various franchises, both Newman in Videogames and Will Brooker in ‘The Many Lives of the Jetman: A Case Study in Computer Game Analysis’ point to the specificity of design to a particular console, may not be replicated when the software is adjusted to other hardware. Consequently, the experience of playing the game may be drastically different because of adjustments made to cope with a different style of controller or graphic interface (Brooker, 2001; Newman, 2004: 44). Newman argues that playing the game on the platform for which it was designed is of particular concern to ‘hardcore’ gamers (2004: 52).

· Genre: refers to the industry/audience consensus that typically divides games into such categories as action, shooter, strategy, platform, puzzle, etcetera. I suggest that this particular level of categorisation needs a re-examination under a critical lens. David Myers in The Nature of Computer Games: Play As Semiosis argues that few games are ‘pure and simple exemplars of the genres to which they are assigned’ (2003: 92). He argues that particularly in expert play, that the styles of play associated with an individual genre become blurred (Myers, 2003: 67-8). Myers also points out that game genres are the result of a particular dynamic of technological contexts and popularity and are therefore neither ‘fundamental or stable’ (2003: 97). In The Medium of the Videogame Mark J P Wolf suggests an alternative taxonomy of genre, that concentrates on the types of interactions that are available in the game, as distinct from the visual iconography (2002: 114-6). I suggest that this notion replace King and Krzywinska’s notion of genre as it is a more useful critical category that is able to distinguish between games that are ostensibly of the same genre.

· Mode: this is the least clear of King and Krzywinska’s levels of category. This refers to the mode in which the game world is experienced by the characters, specifically in relation to the visual arrangement in the space of the game and the temporal arrangements of the game. I suggest that this be expanded to include the whole sensorium through which the game is experienced (the visual, temporal, spatial, aural and tactile senses are all engages in some way in the game play). Importantly, here King and Krzywinska note that multiplayer games can show important variations within this level depending if they are played single- or multi-player. This is supported by Sue Morris’s ethnographic work, in ‘First Person Shooters’ – A Game Apparatus’ she argues that the shift from single to multiplayer creates a different experience of game play (2002: 83-5).[iii]

· Milieu: this level refers to the generic iconography of the videogame. Several distinct established game milieus exist: science fiction, fantasy and horror being prominent. While Aarseth claims that this kind of ‘visual’ aspect of the game is irrelevant to the mechanical rules of the simulation (2004b: 48). Running counter to this a growing body of work on horror genre games, argues that the effectiveness of the horror milieu is enhanced by using particular structural rules (Carr, 2003: 2, 7; Kryzwinska, 2002: 207; see also Ndalianis, 2002). Thus, I suggest to construe this element of games as completely irrelevant is to ignore a key element of how games are structured, and – as noted by Angela Ndalianis –how game genre operates intertextually to produce understanding of the games structure and the players motivation goal during play (2002: 512).

While King and Krzywinska’s levels of description aid in fleshing out the concept of genre in videogames by setting up useful categories they no do not locate a common aesthetic factor that allows videogames to be construed as a continuum. I suggest that turning to the considerable work that Henry Jenkins has done on videogame spaces, will solve this problem.

In the article ‘Nintendo and New World Travel Writing: A Dialogue’ (1995) Jenkins and his co-author Mary Fuller compare the exploration process of videogame play to the descriptive travel writing of the explorers of the New World. Arguing, by way of Michel de Certeau’s notion of spatial narrative that the process of playing computer games involve exploring and unfamiliar ‘place’ and turning it into a ‘space’ that was inscribed with the readers – or, in this case the players – own meaning. Jenkin’s continues in this vein, in his article ‘“Complete Freedom of Movement”: Video Games as Gendered Spaces’ he contests that the virtual space of play is replacing the kinds of outdoors and unsupervised play that characterised boys play in the first half of the twentieth century (1998: 263). However, the crucial point that Jenkin’s makes in his spatial oeuvre is in ‘The Art of Contested Spaces’ co-authored with Kurt Squire (2003). Here Jenkins consolidates his work on videogame spaces, arguing that videogames are spatial not narrative: ‘if games tell stories, they do so by organizing spatial features’ (2003: 65). I suggest, what Jenkins is inferring here – given his past work on, and predisposition for de Certeau – is that the narrative is derived from the audience actively organising the games spatial features. However, it is Jenkins and Squire’s overarching analysis that gestures towards a useful link that enables videogames to be regarded in a continuum. The article illustrates how the idea of space cuts across game genres and the various aesthetics and technologies that games might use. Thus space organises all games into a continuum where they can be compared and analysed with one another and not with a similar aesthetic medium. This is done through a similar framework as Murray’s notion of the maze and the rhizome, by contrasting free movement, with movement which is basically linear (1998: 130-1). Jenkins and Squire use the rather less theoretically (and politically) invested terms, ‘hard rails’ and ‘soft rails’ to distinguish between games in which the players movements are tightly structured and those games which are multi-directional and multi-linear (2003: 69). Recalling from the previous section ’ notion that the experience of play came from exploring the margin of movement – like the play of a machine – that the game allowed within its rules. I suggest that Jenkins and Squires taxonomy of games that characterises them according to the flexibility of movement implies that the common feature that videogames have is their ‘margin or latitude’ of play. Thus the common characteristic of videogames is the intersection of space and play within the virtual environment.

While it is difficult due to videogames extreme diversity to characterise them as a genre it is not impossible to find distinctive organisational categories. Suggested by King and Kryzwinska are platform, genre, mode and milieu, I suggest that these are useful for making distinction between games with the proviso that genre be understood in a critical etic manner in relation to interaction, rather than the everyday usage. Following the work of Jenkins I locate the common feature of videogames at the intersection of space and play. I suggest that this usefully enables a conception of computer games as a coherent field as they all share these common characteristics. Furthermore I argue that this intersection of space and play is aligned with what Caillois describes as the central feature of play: the ‘latitude or margin’ of response that is free within the limits of the rules (1961: 8).

Conclusion

While I do not agree with the ludology position, I argue that ludology makes a crucial argument in favour of videogames being understood as play. However, ludologys' focus on the formal attributes of videogames means that key issues involving the convergence and connectivity between media and the shaping relationships of other cultural factors are overlooked. In their demands for an understanding of videogames grounded in an understanding of play, ludologists have taken some liberties with the arguments of those they use to provide an alternative foundation for the Game Studies discipline. The canonical works on play do not shy away from connecting play with its cultural context, indeed Sutton-Smith demonstrates that the ludological position represents just one – the most narrow – of several definitions of play. Thus I argue ludology does not comprise the entire field of Game Studies, that it is one of several positions; a self acknowledge formalist one. Finally the chapter argues that videogames are a distinct media, which despite extreme divergence in aesthetics contain several common distinguishing features and a unified aesthetic depiction of virtual space. This virtual space is characterised by different degrees of flexibility of movement, or play within the physical parameters of the videogame.

Videogames cannot be understood in isolation. The ludogical hermeneutic between game and player focuses on the specificity of the relationship between the player and the game, to the detriment of all other relationships. I argue that the game player rests on a nexus of relationships, all which contribute to the meaning of the experience. Not only is the do games have the potential to create communities of shared experience, this experience must be contextialised vis-à-vis both the global subculture of gamers or otaku and the local culture(s) of which the player is a part. Furthermore, the player is located in a global network of participatory media. This means that the games’ meaning is shaped intertexuallly through these other media, as also is the experience of participation. Videogames demand participation, and in many cases order to solve the various challenges that the videogame poses the player will resort to some form of communication with the wider community of gamers. In this sense they provide a forum for the player to experiment with the boundaries of production and consumption, providing a valuable introduction to participatory culture.

Bibilography
Aarseth, E. (1997). Cybertext : Perspectives on Ergodic Literature. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Aarseth, E. (1999). Aporia and Epiphany in Doom and The Speaking Clock: The Temporality of Ergodic Art. In M.-L. Ryan (Ed.), Cyberspace Textuality: Computer Technology and Literary Theory. Bloomington; Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
Aarseth, E. (2000). Allegories of Space: The Question of Spatiality in Computer Games. Retrieved 30/04, 2004, from http://www.hf.uib.no/hi/espen/papers/space/
Aarseth, E. (2001). Computer Game Studies, Year One. Game Studies, 1(1).
Aarseth, E. (2004a). Espen Aarseth Responds in Turn. Retrieved 18/1, 2005, from http://www.electronicbookreview.com/v3/servlet/ebr?command=view_essay&essay_id=aarsethr2
Aarseth, E. (2004b). Genre Trouble: Narrativism and the Art of Simulation. In N. Wardrip-Fruin & P. Harrigan (Eds.), First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game. Cambridge; London: The MIT Press.
Bennett, T., & Woollacott, J. (1987). Bond and Beyond: The Political Career of a Popular Hero. Houndmills; London: MacMillan Education.
Brooker, w. (2001). The mnay Lives of the Jetman: A case Study in Videogame Analysis. Intensities: The Journal of Cult Media(2).
Caillois, R. (1961). Man, Play, and Games (M. Barash, Trans.). New York: The Free Press.
Carr, D. (2003). Play Dead - Genre and Affect in Silent Hill and Planescape Torment. Game Studies, 3(1).
Consalvo, M. (2003). Zelda 64 and Video Game Fans: A Walkthrough of Games, Intertextuality, and Narrative. Television & New Media, 4(3), p321(14).
Crogan, P. (2003). Gametime: History, Narrative, and Temporality in Combat Flight Simulator 2. In M. J. P. Wolf (Ed.), The Video Games Theory Reader. New York London: Routledge.
Crogan, P. (2004a). The Game Thing: Ludology and Other Theory Games. Media International Australia(110), 10-8.
Crogan, P. (2004b). Games, Simulation & Serious Fun: An Interview With Espen Aarseth. Scan: Journal of Media Arts and Culture, 1(1).
Cubitt, S. (2002). Digital Filmmaking and Special Effects. In D. Harries (Ed.), The New Media Book. London: BFI Publishing.
Darley, A. (2000). Visual Digital Culture : Surface Play and Spectacle in New Media Genres. London ; New York: Routledge.
Eskelinen, M. (2001). The Gaming Situation. Game Studies, 1(1).
Farley, R. (2000). Game. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 3(5).
Flynn, B. (2004). Games As Inhabited Spaces. Media International Australia(110), 52-61.
Frasca, G. (2003). Simulation versus Narrative: Introduction to Ludology. In M. J. P. Wolf & B. Perron (Eds.), The Video Game Theory Reader. New York London: Routledge.
Fuller, M., & Jenkins, H. (1995). Nintendo and New World Travel Writing: A Dialogue. In S. G. Jones (Ed.), CyberSociety : Computer-mediated Communication and Community. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.
Geertz, C. (1976). Deep Play: A Description of the Balinese Cockfight. In J. S. Bruner, A. Jolly & K. Slyva (Eds.), Play: Its Role in Development and Evolution. Lodon; New York: Penguin.
Huizinga, J. (1970). Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element In Culture. London: Paladin.
Jenkins, H. (1993). 'X-logic': Repositioning Nintendo in Children's Lives. Quarterly Review of Film and Video, 14(4), 55-70.
Jenkins, H. (1998). "Complete Freedom of Movement": Videogames as Gendered Play Spaces. In J. Cassell & H. Jenkins (Eds.), From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games. Cambridge; London: The MIT Press.
Jenkins, H., & Squire, K. (2003). The Art of Contested Spaces. In L. King (Ed.), Game On: The History and Culture of Videogames. London: Lawrence King Publishing Ltd.
Juul, J. (2001a). Games Telling Stories?: A Brief Note on Games and Narratives. Game Studies, 1(1).
Juul, J. (2001b). The Repeatedly Lost Art of Studying Games. Game Studies, 1(1).
King, G., & Krzywinska, T. (Eds.). (2002). ScreenPlay : Cinema/Videogmes/Interfaces. London: Wallflower Press.
Kline, S., Dyer-Witheford, N., & De Peuter, G. (2003). Digital Play : the Interaction of Technology, Culture, and Marketing. Montréal ; Ithaca, N.Y.: McGill-Queen's University Press.
Kryzwinska, T. (2002). Hands-On Horror. In G. King & T. Kryzwinska (Eds.), ScreenPlay: Cinema/Videogame/Interfaces. London: Wallflower Press.
Kücklich, J. (2003). Perspectives of Computer Game Philology. Game Studies, 3(1).
Kücklich, J. (2004). Review of Stephen Kline, Nick Dyer-Witheford and Greg De Peuter's Digital Play: The Intersection of Technology, Culture and Marketing. Retrieved 19/1, 2005, from http://www.game-research.com/art_review_kline.asp
Lister, M. (Ed.). (2003). New Media: A Critical introduction. London: Routledge.
Manovich, L. (2002). The Language of New Media (1st MIT Press pbk. ed.). Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Marshall, P. D. (2004). New Media Cultures. London: Arnold.
Morris, S. (2002). First-Person Shooters - A Game Apparatus. In G. King & T. Kryzwinska (Eds.), ScreenPlay: Cinema/Videogames/Interfaces. London: Wallflower Press.
Morris, S. (2004). Shoot First, Ask Questions Later: Ethnographic Research in an Online Computer Gaming Community. Media International Australia(110), 31-41.
Moulthrop, S. (2004). Stuart Moulthrop's Response. Retrieved 18/1, 2005, from http://www.electronicbookreview.com/v3/servlet/ebr?command=view_essay&essay_id=moulthropr1
Murray, J. H. (1998). Hamlet on the Holodeck : the Future of Narrative in Cyberspace. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Myers, D. (2003). The Nature of Computer Games : Play as Semiosis. New York: Peter Lang.
Ndalianis, A. (2002). The Rules of the Game: Evil Dead II…Meet thy Doom. In H. Jenkins, T. McPherson & J. Shattuc (Eds.), Hop on pop : the politics and pleasures of popular culture. Durham, N.C. ; London: Duke University Press.
Newman, J. (2004). Videogames. New York; London: Routledge.
Perron, B. (2003). From Gamers to Players and Gameplayers: The Example of Interactive Movies. In M. J. P. Wolf (Ed.), The Video Game Theory Reader. New York London: Routledge.
Ryan, M.-L. (2001). Beyond Myth and Metaphor: The Case of Narrative in Digital Media. Game Studies, 1(1).
Salen, K., & Zimmerman, E. (2004). Rules of Play Game Design Fundamentals
Schatz, T. (1981). Hollywood Genres : formulas, filmmaking, and the studio system. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Schroder, K., Drotner, K., Kline, S., & Murray, C. (2003). Researching Audiences. London: Arnold.
Sherman, S. R. (1997). Perils of the Princess: Gender and Genre in Video Games. Western Folklore, 56(3-4), p243(16).
Sutton-Smith, B. (1986). Toys As Culture. New York; London: Gardner Press Ltd.
Sutton-Smith, B. (1997). The Ambiguity of Play. London; Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Tong, W. L., & Tan, M. C. C. (2002). Vision and Virtuality: The Construction of Narrative Space in Film and Computer Games. In G. King & T. Kryzwinska (Eds.), ScreenPlay: Cinema/Videogame/Interfaces. London: Wallflower Press.
Whalen, Z. (2004). Ludology. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture.
Wolf, M. J. P. (2002). The Medium of the Video Game (1st ed.). Austin: University of Texas Press.

[i] This is the terminology adopted by Tony Bennett and Janet Woollacott in Bond and Beyond: The Political Career of a Popular Hero (1987) to describe the relationship between the various promotional media could shape the meaning of the primary cinematic texts.
[ii] For those readers unfamiliar with the game Super Mario Brothers the particular contested site for subcultural meaning in the game is the giant mushrooms from which Mario gets his various powers.
[iii] For example she notes that the single player version of Half-Life is played in a series of incrementally different levels against the computer, while the multiplayer is played against other players, either in teams or a free-for-all, in which the difficulty is determined by the skills of the other player(s). Civilization 3: Play the World also features several different versions for multiplayer, all based around finding a way to increase the pace of the single-player game, by offering a number of different real-time goal-based scenarios.

The Urbz

2005-01-27T06:26:00.000+11:00

Me and Jane Playing The Urbz

One of the latest permutations of The Sims, I haven't had much time to play it yet!

Profiling Videogame Scholars in New Zealand

2005-01-25T01:11:00.001+11:00

To Be Updated as Required

General Note: (1) the only papers that I could find teaching anything about Games, were in the Computer science Department of the University of Otago and the Screen and Media Studies Department of Waikato University. However, the ubiquity of special topics and the difficulty or administrators in understanding the relevance of such a subject suggests to me that many deprtments may have games studies lurking within them under this aegis.

(2) I'm (still 2010) waiting to hear back from the University of Auckland about their research interests in the area.

Auckland University of Technology

Leon Tan : The Title of his PCA/ACA Conference paper is: 'Avatars in Analysis: MMOGs, Performance Art, Psychoanalysis, and Enjoyment'

Massey

Graham Slater : School of English and Media Studies: 'And is beginning research on children and computer games.' quote from department site.

Otago

Brett Nicholls : Department of Communication Studies: See Brett and Simon's work for the '03 DAC in Melbourne, and for the First Issue of Scan.

Simon Ryan : Department of Languages and Cultures: see the links above for the work he and Brett have collaborated on.

Mark McGuire : Department of Design Studies: see mark's '03 DAC Melbourne Paper.

Victoria

Roy Shuker : School of English, Film and Thearte: Roy wrote a journal article 'Videogames: Serious Fun: Globalisation and the Media in the Third Millenium' Its in Continuum 9(2) so check it out!

Rob Cover : School of English, Film and Thearte: Reserch interested quoted from university site 'New Media, Electronic Gaming and Identity' (now at University of Adelaide)

Melanie Swalwell : School of English, Film and Thearte: Dr Swalwell's work in online, the listed interest from the University site is 'In relation to games, my current research has three main strands to it. I am interested in gaming as a) an aesthetic and affective engagement with technology; b) in the social aspects of gaming (see the lanning project, below); and c) in the experimentation which gaming entails. I would include here experiments with the games form (by artists, independent game developers, and modders), as well as playing itself, as it often entails important experimental qualities. ' (Now at University of South Australia).

Waikato
The Screen and Media Studies Department has a third year B semester paper 'Game Studies'.

Gareth Schott : Deaprtment of Screen and Media Studies: from site ' Recent and ongoing projects include: girl gamers and their relationships with game cultures, game fan-cultures, textuality in videogames (narrative, interactivity and role-play) and educational applications for game technologies.' Dr Schott's work can be found in Media International Australia 110 and Visual Communication 3(2).

Lisa Galarneau : PhD Candidate (Now has PhD -2010) - Department of Sreen and Media Studies: Check out Lisa's excellent website socialstudygames.com, its full of valuable resources and prototypes of Lisa's own work. Thanks Lisa!

A Day in the Life of Stewart Woods

2005-01-23T13:43:00.000+11:00

I wish I'd done that much work some days!

When Stewart Woods isn't writing emails, he's updating his blog, or writing articles for Game Studies.

Up All Night

2005-01-22T23:41:00.000+11:00

I feel like this alot.

How do you spell Xbox?

2005-01-22T03:10:00.000+11:00

Ever wondered?? Well if so, check out the International Game Journalist Association site and see their discussion of the use of videogame terminology.

Warning-Bitter Rant!(I found it useful, I've been suffering from angst about videogame terminology ever since the vicdeogame/computer game incident during my honors year, of yeah and having to write a fifty word footnote explaining the function of a 'smart bomb' in Defender. That really annoyed me! I've been writing about 'jump cuts' for years and no one evr blinked but talk to a civilian about a jump cut and they'll look at you like your some kind of jumped-up smartypants, however, they might know what a smartbomb was, or at least what Defender is.)Okay Spleen Vented!

On this topic, has anyone figured out what to call 'computer games', the library here at melbourne university rolls a dice (d4) to choose electronic game, digital game, computer game, or video game, makes finding things in the catalogues hard thats for sure. IGJA say they're videogames (one word), unless you are talking about a specific kind of platform, then refer to the platform. Thoughts anyone???

For an example of the problem of terminology see Chris Chester's Neither Glance nor Gaze but Glaze: Relating to Console Game Screens because Chester doesn't explain his use of terminology are we to assume his work does not apply to computer games? Its kind of the same problem I had with my supervisor back in the day, but doesn't console game sound awfully specific over something more general like videogame (common parlance) or computer game (reference to technology ), while console means console?... thoughts on that people??

Some discussion of the Issue
From Will Brooks' Jetman article: "Both Poole and Herz use the term 'video game' to cover arcade machines from Pong to Time Crisis, dedicated domestic consoles from the Atari VCS to PlayStation 2, and home or work computer-based software from Spacewar to Myst. However, there has historically been a generally-understood distinction between dedicated consoles which are largely designed to play games, barring the odd educational 'Computer Intro' cartridge, and home computers which can also play games but are primarily intended for programming. The former would more usually be described as 'video games', and the latter as 'computer games' the 1980s magazine Computer and Video Games, for instance, clearly saw them as two separate but related categories.

Technical Convergence: The distinction becomes more blurred as new consoles like the Play Station 2, Microsoft Xbox and Nintendo GameCube begin to offer internet access, and was arguably already problematised by the fact that most teenage owners of home computers like the Spectrum and Commodore 64 used their machines almost exclusively for playing games rather than learning BASIC. Of course, on a technological level every games machine from the 1970s arcade to the Nintendo Entertainment System is a computer; a huge Defender booth at the end of a pier is a computer game as opposed to a mechanical game, just as Super Mario Brothers on cartridge is a computer game rather than a board game. In a linguistic sense, the term 'video game' is all-encompassing, referring to the act of seeing rather than to any detail of hardware or technical specifications 'the OED defines it simply as a 'computer game played on a television screen'.

How To Cite Games Using MLA? Harvard?
Refractory: "Computer games followed by the name of the production company and year of release. Example: Phantasmagoria (Sierra On-Line, Inc., 1995)"

Sounds fine, I wonder is the production company the developer or the producer? Maybe references should include both. Thoughts??

Profiling Dr Aphra Kerr

2005-01-22T01:09:00.000+11:00

Dr Kerr has been involved in some big research projects on games at the Dublin City University. Where she co-authored the reprt 'New Media New Pleasures?' with Drs Roddy Flynn and Pat Brereton, and Julian Kucklich (of sept '04 'Ludology Controversy').

Aphra runs another website of resources for games developers in Ireland.

Her personal website inlcudes links to some of her other games/digital media based research. Her site also includes links to most of her publications in this area. How I discovered her was through an Article in Convergence 9(1) 'Revisiting Globalisation through the Movie and Digital Games Industries' co-auther with Roddy Flynn, which naturally was of interest to me because of my case studies in Venezuela and Australia.

Another link I found on Aphra's site led my to this very interesting piece from the Irish Communication Review 9 'Live Life to the Power of PS2': Locating the digital games industry in the new media environment.

Another useful contribution Aphra has made is ‘ 'Women Just Want to Have Fun: A Study of Adult Female Gamers’ Paper presented at Level Up, 2003.

Aphra is now at the University of Ulster (that's in the UK) at the Centre for Media Research.

Thanks for the additional links Aphra!

Gaming Subcultures

2005-01-21T13:03:00.000+11:00

While it is relatively common for scholars to claim gamers are a subculture, I am yet to see any work that constructively locates this subculture within the area of scholarship know as Subcultures Study. It's not a huge area, the key work is Subculture and the Meaning of Style by Dick Hebdige and has been for the past 30 years.

Contemporary work on subcultures is summarised in the Subcultures Reader (1997) edited by Ken Gelder and Sara Thornton, Dr Ken Gelder will be publishing a second edition of the Subcultures Reader shortly, until then check out his Global Popular Fiction Project an excellent resource for scholars of genre fiction.

(note: the Subculture Reader link sends you to a site where you are required to nominate which country you are in, then you can see the chapter listing for the book).

The notion of gaming as a specific subculture has existed since the early days of videogame scholarship, in Mind At Play: The Psychology of Video Games (1983) Loftus and Loftus devote one chapter to this topic.

Within the culture studies discipline the much maligned John Fiske put forward a rather interesting reading of computer game subcultures in chapter four of Reading the Popular (1989), supplemented by various interesting but dispersed interjections in Understanding Popular Culture (1989). While on one hand Fiske's work has been largely ignored in the USA (Jenkins makes remarkably similar arguments regarding USA pop culture, and essentially occupies the same academic space), on the other hand he has been widely criticised by British (and implicitly Australian) Cultural studies, in particular David Morley as he is regarded as taking the notion of the active audience too far, at the cost of ignoring ideological content. Recently P. David Marshall made an interesting argument to reclaim the validity of Fiske's position in New Media Cultures.

In the past decade of game scholarship several scholarly trope have emrged regarding games subcultures. Some investigate and/or critique the notion of gaming as a masculine activity. Exemplar amoung these works are Alloway & Gilbert (1998). 'Video Game Culture: Playing with Maculinity, Violence and Pleasure.' In S. Howard (Ed.), Wired Up: Young People and the Electronic Media, Cunningham (2000). Moral Kombat and Computer Game Girls. In J. T. Caldwell (Ed.), Theories of the New Media : a Historical Perspective. makes a particularily valuable contribution with her work connecting the relation of women/girls vis-a-vis games to McRobbies discussion of women in subculture in general. Schott & Horrell (2000). Girl Gamers and Their Relationship to Gaming Culture. Convergence, 6(4), note that while women gamers exist, they lack the strong social networks that exist among male gamers. Consalvo, M. (2004). The Monsters Next Door: Media Construction of Boys and Masculinity. Feminist Media Studies,3(1) talks about th media construction of the game subculture.

Another trope locates games within children's culture: see Sonia Livingstone Young People and New Media,
Buckingham & Sefton-Green (2003). Gotta Catch em all: Structure, Agency and Pedagogy in Childrens Media Culture. Media, Culture & Society, 25(3) and Fromme (2003). Computer Games as a Part of Children's Culture. Game Studies, 3(1).

Other scholars focus on the productive activities of subcultures: Consalvo (2003). 'Zelda 64 and Video Game Fans: A Walkthrough of Games, Intertextuality, and Narrative'. Television & New Media, 4(3), 'Heavy hero or digital dummy? Multimodal player–avatar relations in Final Fantasy 7' (2004) Burn & Schott, Visual Communication 3(2), Schleiner (1999). Parasitic Interventions: Game Patches and Hacker Art.

Other work focuses on online anthropologies of games and/or gamers, the contrubutions of Sue Morris in this regard are remarkable: 'First-Person Shooters - A Game Apparatus'. In G. King & T. Kryzwinska (Eds.), ScreenPlay: Cinema/Videogames/Interfaces (2002). 'Shoot First, Ask Questions Later: Ethnographic Research in an Online Computer Gaming Community.' (2004) Media International Australia(110). ' Co-Creative Media: Online Multiplayer Computer Game Culture'. Scan: Journal of Media Arts and Culture, 1(1). 'Make New Friends and Kill Them: Online Multiplayer Computer Game Culture'. In G. Goggin (Ed.), Virtual Nation: The Internet in Australia. Also noteworthy are Jakobsson & Taylor (2003). 'The Sopranos Meets EverQuest: Social Networking in Massively Multiplayer Online Games', Tosca (2002). 'The Everquest Speech Community' and Swalwell (2003). 'Multi-Player Computer Gaming: 'Better than playing (PC Games) with yourself''. Reconstruction, 3(4).

Finally James Newman has been involved in ongoing research about the notion of the computer games audience, a summary of his excellent contribution to the field can be found in Newman, J. (2004). Videogames. New York; London: Routledge.

I hope that this will be of help to anyone who is thinking about gamers as a subculture.

Sean Cubitt's New Book: The Cinema Effect

2005-01-21T03:41:00.000+11:00

Here is a review of Sean Cubitt's latest book The Cinema Effect. If Sean's past two publications on digital cinema, [that can be found in New screen media : cinema/art/narrative (2001) edited by Martin Rieser and Andrea Zapp, and The new media book (2002) edited by Dan Harries - both publishe BFI publishing, London], are indicative of the argument he will develop in The Cinema Effect then this book could be a very important one for theorists of 'new' media in general, especially vis-a-vis Sean discussion of the shift from narrative to spatiality that he has developed in those afermentioned publications.

Congradulations Sean!

The Introduction To Rethinking Computer Games (My Honors Diss)

2005-01-20T17:33:00.001+11:00

Preface

The 1984 film The Last Starfighter (Castle) confronted its largely pre-adolescent audience with a metaphorical expression of the effect of arcade games upon their youthful players. The film takes the form of a technological bildungsroman, the story of Alex Rogan, a youth whose obsession with the arcade game ‘Starfighter’ allows him to escape the banality of his small-town, trailer-park existence, and the pressures of adult responsibility. After reaching a new high score in ‘Starfighter,’ Alex is visited by an alien who solicits his help in an intergalactic war. Unbeknownst to humanity, a galactic federation is defending the galaxy against an evil threat and they are in need of new recruits. The game is revealed to be a complex military training simulation. Alex’s skills learnt in virtual space are now applicable not only to the self-contained digital game-world, but to the wider film universe. The skills that he developed in the game’s micro-world become the means for his propulsion into outer space, into the unknown space of the wider universe, and into a confrontation with the ‘Other’ that resides there. The arcade game in The Last Starfighter serves a similar narrative function to the black monoliths of 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 1969); it becomes the mystical vehicle for transformation to a new level of human consciousness, imbued with an encompassing macroscopic vision of humanity’s place within the cosmos. Alex’s focused internal gaze enabled him to see the larger picture: the microscopic game-world was a map of the macroscopic world-view. In Terminal Identity: The Virtual Subject In Postmodern Science Fiction, Scott Bukatman explains that the post-modern era is characterized by a change in the symbol of technical aspiration: the rocket has been eclipsed by the personal computer to reflect a changing concern from outer to inner space; the explosive thrust of the rocket has given way to the implosive investigation of cyberspace (2). The Last Starfighter stands on the fulcrum of this changing metaphor, exploring both outer and inner space, and clearly conflates them. By focusing on this enduring theme, the tranformative power of computer games, it is possible to redeem a film that could be otherwise regarded as a puerile ideological expression of the Reaganesque fantasy of war and technology. Although the complexity and appearance of computer games has vastly increased since the time of the film’s production, the question that The Last Starfighter poses regarding computer games remains the same: In what ways do computer games affect the ways in which the players’ perceive and conceptualize their external and internal worlds?

This dissertation approaches the critical analysis of computer games with the above question in mind. To date discussions on computer games have been conceptualized (and contextualized) within the broader field of media studies. More precisely, analysis of computer games has been undertaken through the critical lens of media studies. One issue confronting such an analytic paradigm is the collapse of difference between computer games and other media forms; the other is the closing down of possibilities of opening a critical approach beyond those available within the field of media studies. Against this, the purpose of this inquiry is to establish a framework for analyzing computer games, one that acknowledges the specificity of computer games and the need for an analytical approach that addresses this specificity. To do this, I will identify the unique attributes of the computer game text, and the peculiarities of computer games, which require media analysis to move beyond the engagement between individual and text, and into the broader community that the practice of gaming engenders.

Whilst it would be unfair to categorically criticize the majority of past scholarly work on computer games and gaming, in general I have found most writing on the topic to be somehow lacking, in that it was incongruous with my own experiences of gaming.[1] I am inclined to suspect that this is because it has been written without committing considerable time to playing computer games. A commitment to playing the games has a positive effect on critical analysis as it is through play which the people who make up the games’ audience experience the text. I am not arguing that only those who play computer games can critically comment on them. Rather, ignoring the element of interaction - between humans and between humans and machines - that takes place within the activity of play privileges the visual aspects of computer games over the social. The elevation of the visual invites two particularly reductive conceptions of computer games. First, the privileging of the visual makes the concatenation of computer games with television and film unproblematic. Second, by ignoring the interaction, and the unique modes of socialization enabled through interaction, computer games can be conceived as a passive medium.[2] It is against the reductionism aforementioned that this dissertation argues that computer games can be productively negotiated through play.

While the notion of play remains a central concern, equally important to the appreciation of computer games as a unique medium are the particular forms of interactions that take place within play: play with the computer and play with other human players. The first involves an appreciation of the complex, reciprocal relationship established between the human player and the computer during play. The second involves grasping the novel forms of human-to-human communication that game playing opens up.

In order to emphasize these overarching concerns, the dissertation will focus on a particular type of computer game - historical strategy games - that highlights the way in which computer games exceed the theoretical parameters of approaches taken to established media. This genre is a subset of the industry genre of the ‘strategy’ game, and will be referred to as historical strategy games, in lieu of an official designation.[3] This particular sub-genre lacks many of the features that other theorists have identified as points of aesthetic congruence between computer games and other mediums.[4] Thus discussion of them in this context does not involve complex negotiations and refutations of prior analyses.[5] As historical strategy games do not fit any of the established models of textual analysis because they lack ‘spectacle’ or ‘viscerality’, they serve to stand in for the way in which computer games as a whole exceed analyses that focus on the visible. Thus historical strategy computer games articulate the need for an approach to analysis of computer games that acknowledges their unique mode of technological engagement.

Introduction

The approach I have taken to computer games conceives them as marking a shift in technological mediation. Like all forms of mediation, computer games precipitate a particular perception and understanding of the world. It is this shift in perception that accompanies the shift in the technology of mediation that is the subject of The Last Starfighter. However, computer games must not only be conceived in terms of its perceptual paradigm shift at the level of the individual. The imbrication of gaming and telecommunication technologies, and the novel modes of socialization that computer gaming enables require an examination of how this perceptual shift in the subject affects the constitution and focus of the gaming community. A second form of blurring, a changing notion of the ‘real’ that defies and subverts official versions of ‘reality’ accompanies this blurred boundary between the game and its community of interest. These three categories – the subject, the community and the ‘real’ – which are affected by the shift to computer games as a form of representation are described in turn in the chapters of this dissertation.

The focus of the historic strategy computer game reflects the multiple potentials of gaming technology unfettered by ‘rearviewmirrorism’. In her article ‘The Scene of the Screen: Envisioning Cinematic and Electronic “Presence”’, Vivian Sobchack identifies the predominance of electronic or digital media with changes in perceptions that accompany the cultural shift to the postmodern (141). Computer games constitute a part of the electronic or digital media that are associated with this shift. That creates a radically different experience of embodiment from that of the primarily visual medium of cinema. The games that are theorized as ‘interactive films’ are not aligned with this perceptual shift, as they rely on the same techniques and aesthetics as cinema.[6] Historical strategy games exceed this type of analysis as they recreate a different aesthetic. These games offer a visually less spectacular form of engagement to those of the popular ‘shoot’em up’ games. This engagement is more cerebral than physical, and is not necessarily dominated by quick decisions and reflexes, but by long-term strategic thinking. Thus, at stake in the examination of historical strategy computer games is the appreciation of this shift in perceptual engagement and its consequential effect on the subjects’ experience of time, space and embodiment.

The experience of play can only be understood from the perspective of one of its everyday practitioners. The player of the game does not necessarily know how the game works in a technological sense, but they understand how to move and act within the world created by the game. While this experience may be obtained through play, an examination of play practices must appreciate computer games’ plurality of usage. This does not necessarily require interviews with players, as the experience of play is documented on the Internet in various official and unofficial game-related on-line forums. An examination of these sites reveals the complex and contradictory ways in which players put computer games to use. Crucially, they act as an indictment of the notion of computer games as passive. The sites encapsulate the complex participatory nature of computer games, which exist as a shared site of meaning between many players who put the games to myriad and multiple uses. At stake in the examination of on-line gaming communities is the conception of the computer games' audience as active participants in the production of meaning.

This technologically instigated perceptual shift also affects the category of the ‘real’ as it changes individual subjectivity, and creates new communities around the experience of new forms of subjectivities. It also engenders a particular way of viewing the world. As the subject matter of historical strategy games is historical, in this case it is the subjects’ view of history that is affected. This has an impact on the category of the ‘real’, as game play involves the creation of various different historical trajectories. Although many of these trajectories are extremely implausible, the more significant point is that the games represent history as an opened category, and encourage a different understanding of history and history making. Potentially, computer games represent a powerful tool for examining the past, not necessarily to establish any historical ‘truth’, but rather to reveal history to be a construction justifying a hegemonic vision of the future. Historical strategy computer games are a form of representational media that portray the past as a field of multiple possibilities. Thus, what is at stake here is that this technology enables the past to be represented in ways that disrupt ‘official’ history.

Tensions

However, it is crucial that any discussion of the perceptual shift associated with computer games acknowledges both the negative and positive consequences of this shift. While the players of historical strategy computer games have access to both creative and radical potentials, these games simultaneously subject the player to new forms of interpellation. The negative consequences of computer games are emphasized in much of the academic work on computer games,[7] while the positive benefits are ignored, serving to legitimize myopic moral panic tracts that focus on potential threats to children’s health, morals, and sense of ‘reality’. Against these negative positions, the work of Henry Jenkins seeks to examine the computer game as a radical space of libratory potential, particularly for children. However, his work does not address criticism that the possible creative and radical potentials of computer games are effectively mitigated and muted by their commodity status. Early films on computer games, like The Last Starfighter and TRON (Liseberger, 1982), negotiated this territory and challenged the commodity status of computer games by focusing on their libratory and empowering potential. While this potential is the focus of the dissertation, I will also address arguments that claim computer games are irreducibly constrained by their commodity status, to establish a view that balances both the positive and negative potentials of the medium, rather than focusing on one at the expense of the other.

Both of these polemical criticisms arise because of a proximity to media models that are insufficient for computer games. The notion that computer games interpellate their audience relies on the outdated hypodermic needle or media effects model. This is also influenced by a focus on the visual or spectacular aspect of computer gaming, which again harkens back to the hypodermic needle model. Computer games are theorized under the aesthetic of the ‘spectacle’ by Andrew Darley for example, who locates computer games alongside other digital media as part of what he calls the resurgence of the spectacle: a mode of visual engagement that combines the fascination for a realistic verisimilitude of the image with a fascination for the technological means by which that image is created (52). By focusing on the visual engagement of the viewer, the notion of the spectacle encourages, but does not necessarily require, a jejune reading of computer games, which despite their very obvious interactivity regards them as fundamentally passive. This regressive application of imported media models does no credit to the potential of computer games. However, any analysis of a computer game must acknowledge the way in which they constrain the choices of their players and how these constraints may reflect ideological concerns. A crucial issue at stake in the elucidation of the notion of play is the way in which play as a mode of engagement with the text allows the player a large degree of freedom that subverts the ideological constraints imposed by the game.

Computer games embody the cutting edge of the congruence between technology and capital. Thus they encapsulate a creative visualization of the telos that equates capitalism with technical progress and utopianism. This telos is further emphasized by computer games' status on the cutting edge of a new paradigm of media commodity, what P. David Marshall describes as the new intertextual commodity (69). The commodification process involves the creation of a mass media event that proliferates across the various terrains of a multi-faceted mediascape. This causes an aesthetic convergence as games become films and films become games, with the product itself being derived from and also then transferred to other media forms. [8] As a result the dominant aesthetic reflects a desire to produce media texts that are clearly recognizable across the myriad forms and to recreate the allure of the original text in its subsequent permutations. This aesthetic, derived entirely from the computer games’ commodity status suggests that computer games lack any form of libratory potential; as they are submitted to the circuits of capital. Again, this view lacks an appreciation of the active role that the player takes on within the game. It shuts down the possibility of conceptualizing the ’play’ or ‘creative engagement’ with computer games as subverting the totalization of capital.

Thus far, I have marked out, in general, the central concern of the thesis to suggest that what is at stake in the critical analysis of computer games is a practice that potentially challenges the dominant system from which it emerges. In Chapter One I will discuss the technological aspects of the computer game, and focus on how the technology of computer gaming creates a radically altered form of subjectivity that affects the players’ notion of self, space and time. By focusing on the relationship established between human and machine during the process of play, this investigation also seeks to understand the active role that the computer performs in this new subjectivity, as it is formed in reaction to, and in interaction with, the computer.

Chapter Two of the dissertation will explore the concept of play as it pertains to computer gaming. In order to establish the radicality of ‘play’, I will examine the unique potentials that it has to produce spaces outside of the everyday rules. In order to refigure the game audience in a productive rather than consumptive model, this chapter will turn to the practices of the game communities, to illustrate the active role of the computer game audience. It will then focus on the postmodern and poststructuralist conception of ‘free-play’, to further entrench the notion of play to open up the over-structured and over-determined space of the computer game to creative and radical potentials.

Chapter Three focuses on the creative potentials of the historical strategy game for representing multiple, alternative views of history. By employing the notion of counterfactual history, this chapter explores how historical computer games open up the past to re-examination by allowing multiple historic trajectories to be explored. To disrupt the notion of ‘official history’ as a hermetically sealed and homogenous site. The chapters that follow negotiate the three central concerns that animate the dissertation: technology, play and community, and radical potential. The constant thread that flows through each of these concerns is the tension between the games’ disruptive potential and its status as a consumer good.

[1] Exceptions to this are the works of Henry Jenkins, Ted Friedman and Brett Nichols and Simon Ryan.
[2] See Kolker Film, Form and Culture p 188.
[3] The official designations of Real-Time Strategy (RTS) and Turn-Based Strategy (TBS) are not particularly useful here as they include other games that are not based on history, like Starcraft (1998).
[4] See Darley Visual Digital Culture, Bolter and Grusin Remediation, and Manovich The Language of New Media for theoretical frameworks that conceive the computer game as part of an aesthetic continuum with other new or digital media.
[5] The only scholarly analysis of historic strategy games that I have found to date has been Freidman “Civilization and its Discontents: Simulation, Subjectivity and Space” and Caldwell “Settler Stories: Representational Ideologies in Computer Strategy Gaming.”
[6] For analysis of these types of games see Darley Visual Digital Culture, Berger Video Games: A Popular Culture Phenomenon, Manovich The Language of New Media, Bolter & Grusin Remediation, and Wolf The Medium of the Video Game.
[7] For example see Provenzo “Video Games and the Emergence of Interactive Media for Children” and Stallabrass “Just gaming: Allegory and Economy in Computer Games.”
[8] For example the Harry Potter franchise began as a series of books, was then made into a series (to date two) of films and subsequently into video games: Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, published in all platforms by EA Games. In the other direction the PlayStation game Tomb Raider first proliferated across all other game platforms, spawned numerous sequels and eventually inspired the films: Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (West, 2001) & Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life (de Bont, 2003).

Drew Davidson

2005-01-19T23:29:00.001+11:00

Check out Drew's Website http://waxebb.com/

He's working on a bunch of computer games and new media projects. He wrote the August '03 column for the Ivory Tower Games and Rhetoric.

I Go International

2005-01-19T21:48:00.001+11:00

Monique de Haas of the Netherlands cites my work in her policy paper Crossmedia Communication in the Dynamic Knowledge Society that was presented to the European Commission in November last year. Here's a link to the Pdf: http://www.dondersteen.nl/ISTMaster.pdf

On The Trials and Tribulations of Studying Computer Games

2005-01-18T14:33:00.000+11:00

Here are a list of incidents that I (now) find amusing. They're all about the kinds of problems that I assume everyone studying computer games encounters. I was lucky that when I began to study computer games I was working with two very sympathetic academics in the School of Communications at the Univerisity of Otago: Dr Vijay Devadas and Dr Jo T. Smith (Dr Smith has shifted to the University of Auckland now). After that I worked with a couple of guys at the Australian National University: Dr Paul Turnbull and Chris Blackall, they were very supportive of developing computer gaming as an area of research. So what I'm trying to say is I kind of had a sheltered life, so I'm imagining other could have had much worse experiences.

(1) Mark Wolf's new book had arrive in the university library and I was the first to take it out, I excitedly showed it to my (then) supervisor (it was the first book that the library had solely on computer games). He asked me how the book was relevant to my studies? I looked at the book, did I have the right book in my hand? Yes, I turned to him quizzically. He explained its about Video games, I though your dissertation was on computer games.

(2) Recieving Markers feedback for my honours project. I discovered that I should have referred to Poole more. Which was interesting as my dissertation was on Civilization, and Poole describes strategy games for half a page, and writes them off as Tamaguchi's (which makes him as smart as Zizec right?).

(3) Complaining about how shitting my office computer was to a member of my departmnet, who looked at me disapprovingly and said I wrote my PhD on one of a similar quality and it was fine. His dissertation was on print media!!!!

(4) Being told at a conference presentation that players could not identify with third person avatars: to paraphrase this woman claimed that during my presentation of a video-tape of BMX XXX she had not been able to identify with the avatars 'deriere'. When I tried to explain about how identification worked with third person in games I was told that it was impossible, that narrative theory could not allow third person to be used in that way.

(5) Having middle aged academics thank you for helping them understand their children after presenting a paper on computer game fan culture (not really a problam but still pretty funny, after all I'm not Oprah).

If you have any other similar experiences you wish to add, post a comment or email me and I can add them.

Playing the Past Abstract

2005-01-17T23:13:00.001+11:00

Notes From the Texas Book Depository:
JFK: Reloaded and the critical potential of History in Computer Games

This paper will examine the computer game JFK: Reloaded. Specifically it will demonstrate that the strict adherence to the historic ‘facts’ incorporated into the game design, combined with its ideological underpinnings creates a potential for a critical reading by its audience that suggests simulation games that model history, or historic events, may provide a space for critical evaluation of history that contradicts the generally held opinion that in the postmodern era historical references are simply nostalgic, meaningless examples of surface play that lack depth, or critical concerns.

History and historical events are common themes in computer games, and have been from their pre-commercial days. Generally, the use of history in games can be divided into two main forms of representation. The first uses history as a diegetic backdrop and aesthetic influence (e.g. Medal of Honor, Crimson Skies), the second group simulates the flow of history, in particular the development of a culture through time (Civilization, Age of Empires). Both these categories of games are evaluated by their audiences in terms of the two potentially contradictory demands of ‘historical authenticity’ and ‘playability’. In fact in the case of JFK: Reloaded it is the strict adherence to the historic ‘facts’ that has led to its criticism in the mainstream media. The developers of the game Traffic Games have offered a $100,000 reward to the player who can most closely re-enact the assassination according to certain versions of the events. Thus the challenge in JFK: Reloaded is to recreate the virtuoso performance of Lee Harvey Oswald.

PCA/ACA Conference Abstract

2005-01-17T22:55:00.001+11:00

Title: Getting Stuck on Level One: Designing a Research Method Appropriate to XBox

This paper reconciles two threads of research; one a textual analysis of gaming genres, and the other a broad search for a suitable research method. Much of my initial work on gaming genres involved evaluating various justifications and denials of the unique status of gaming within the mediascape. From the research on gaming genres, I suggest that X-box games should be primarily understood as virtual pedagogical ecologies that are differentiated by degrees and interplay of performance, transformation and contextualization. This demands that X-box be understood both as a unique media and as a unique site in a transmedia network. This dual status is informed by, and reciprocally informs the methodology of the overall project. The project, tentatively titled, Rethinking Computer Games as a Trans-national Practice utilizes media ethnography, discursive realism and multi-modality to enrich the analysis of X-box games as texts, technologies and practices. Together they enable the development of a research paradigm that conceives X-box games as the hybrid, ephemeral and complex media objects that the textual analysis demands.

Preliminary Report on Venezuelan 'Gaming Situation'

2004-12-23T05:01:00.000+11:00

Summary of Findings
-X-Box less common in Venezuela, both as purchases and as rentals for home use.
-Extreme price difference in X-Box between Venezuela and Australia.
-Sony Playstation and Nintendo Game Cube most common home consoles in Venezuela.
-Reflection of gaming in terms of total computer/Internet users in Venezuela, lack of personal/home access compared to Venezuela.
-Abundance of public Internet connections in Venezuela.
-Factors affecting availability of X-Box
(1) Public Rental of X-Box in Cafes and Arcades.
(2) Widespread pirating of Software makes it more affordable.
-The X-Box is more suitable to the widespread pirating market because of the ease with which it can make and use pirated software.
-A disjunction between the way that Venezuela represents itself in games and how it is represented in games made by X-Box.
-The Venezuelan console and game market is open to change through shifts in the focus of the world games industry.

Summary of Conclusions
-The different patterns of consumptions of computer games and the Internet create an environment that allows easy access to these technologies.
-Beyond different patterns of consumption the Venezuela audience is characterized by forms of resistance to certain types of messages that are contained in computer games.
· The different modes of distribution in Venezuela have an important impact on ‘youth’ culture, as it allows Venezuelan youth to participate in the same kinds of activities as the youths of ‘First World’ countries.
X-Box in Venezuela

While X-box products are available in Venezuela, their use is not as prevalent as in Australia. This is, according to my observations and deductions, due to three interrelated factors stemming from the economic inequality between the two countries. First the lower average wages in Venezuela, combined with the higher relative cost of the X-Box console compared to Australia mean that less people can afford to purchase it. Second, the console and game rental market is dominated by PCs in Venezuela, with limited rentals of Game Cube and Playstation. Unlike Australia, there is no market for the rental of console machine for home use from Video/Dvd rental outlets (in any case these outlets are very rare in Venezuela). Third, the X-Box lacks the market penetration that in has in Australia, in Venezuela the market is dominated by the cheaper Ninetendo Game Cube and Playstation One, subsequently a much wider range of games is available for these consoles, both in official and in pirated versions.

Digital Divide
The barriers created by this economic disparity reflects the gap commonly know as ‘the digital divide’ between First and Third world countries. This divide refers not simply to the prevalence of the technology but to the availability of access to the technology itself. The World Bank records that in 2002 five percent of Venezuela’s population had access to the Internet, while in the same year in Australia the Internet was available to 48% of the population.[1]
However, this wide margin of difference between the two countries does not reflect the widespread existence of business hiring out computers and connections for short periods of time (‘Internet Cafés’), in Venezuela. Typically asking approximately 70-80 Australian cents for one hour of Internet time these cafes make the Internet widely available to those who for financial reasons are unable to afford a computer and/or connection. While Internet Cafes can also be found in Melbourne, they are much less common than in Caracas. For example, one Mall I visited in Bello Campo the business area of Caracas had seven Internet cafes, while on street in San Bernardino, a poor residential and light commercial area there were five Internet Cafes within the space of two blocks.[2] These represents extreme examples of the typical situation in Venezuela, in cities, at least, Internet Cafes are abundant. In Caracas the cafes are busy, particularly in the afternoon when children are not at school, often customers will be required to wait until a computer becomes available. Activities that occur in the cafes were, I observed usually the use of IRC or the playing of both networked and non-networked games, although they were also used by some people to do homework or to surf (notably for pornography).[3] The activities were generally divided along gender lines with women and girls using IRC and Men and Boys playing games, although these lines were somewhat flexible in both directions. (why is this relevant to internet).

‘¿Cuánto Cuesta?’
The cost of the console in Venezuela places its ownership out of the reach of all but the extremely wealthy. The console costs roughly six times the average weekly wage in Venezuela. In contrast the cost in Australia is about half of an average weekly wage. However, many game retailers, and some arcades have consoles that can be rented in the store by the hour for a sum equivalent to approximately 90 cents Australian. This practice makes the technology more easily available. While they are not as common as Internet cafes, shops of this type will be found at every major commercial centre.

Beyond the console itself, the games come at a considerable cost. New release games in Australia cost the better part of one hundred dollars (93$). I did not find any new release games in Venezuela, however, older games (more than one year since release) were selling for about 60 Australian dollars, whereas in Australia such games would generally be sold for something between 45 and 60 dollars. In Australia the high cost of games is off-set by the readily availability of games for hire at major video rental outlets, a facility which is unavailable (to my knowledge) in Venezuela.
However, more readily available in Venezuela were pirated copies (copias piratas) of X-Box games. These copies included more recent releases than the few non-pirated games that were available, and were considerably cheaper, the as low as the equivalent of five or six Australian dollars. In order to play these games, it was necessary to have purchased a ‘mod chip’ for the X-Box that cost another 80$ or so in Venezuela.

‘Vendedor de Video Juegos’
In the shops selling Game products the general practice was to have a few legitimate games in a glass display case. These games were often old and obscure titles. When asked the staff would produce a box of copias piratas that were available for purchase and produce a home-made catalogue of games that were available on request. In the shops the normal price for a copia pirata was 15,000 Bolivars, that is approximately $10.50 Australian.

On the streets of Caracas street vendors would sell copias piratas for about half this price. The sale of pirated merchandise from street stalls is common in Venezuela in particular music cds and Dvds. Less common but also prevalent are stalls selling PC software, PC Games, Playstation One Games, Play Station Two Games and X-Box Games. These merchants often have little control over what is available to the customer. However, they do get new good very quickly, for example most stalls had copies of The Sims 2 within a week of its official release. But often they would have no idea when they could get more copies after they had sold out of something. The most common games stalls sold Playstation One or PC Games. The stalls in close proximity to the Universidad Central de Venezuela are as far as I know the only place where games from a wider variety of platforms, including X-Box were available.

‘Copias Piratas’
The official government legislative policy on pirating is superficially similar to most Northern or First World countries. This is legislation and policy is promoted in a way that is similar to in Australia, for example advertising condemning the practice is played before every feature film at the cinema. However, considering Venezuela has so many police and soldiers on the street, the practice of selling pirated goods is, in effect, tolerated. While most games shops have pirated games hidden behind the counter, in some areas of Caracas street vendors selling pirated materials are ubiquitous. They primarily sell DVDs, CD’s, and CD-ROMs. The CD-ROMs may be of games, software, mp3 files or even of pornography (in AVI files or pictures). Less common are stalls selling pirated console games.

One vendor, ‘Alfredo’, suggested that the reason that console games were less commonly sold by vendors of pirated goods was due to supply problems. He told me that copied console games were imported from ‘Asia’ (he could not specify further than this- however this was confirmed at least as a commonly held opinion by other workers in the ‘legitimate’ games industry). This meant that often many games would be unavailable (they had not been released in the Asian market- a common practice with all game platforms), or simply that demand would outstrip supply so that popular games would quickly disappear. ‘Alfredo’s’ explanations reflected the stock of x-box games sellers’, often the stock would be extremely old, unpopular or combinations of the two. I noted that especially prevalent among was what available were product-tie-in games (e.g. Enter The Matrix (Atari, 2003), and more ‘child-oriented’ games (Shrek (TDK Mediactive, 2001) and Sponge Bob Squarepants: The Battle of Bikini Bottom (THQ, 2003)).

PC games were more commonly found because they were easy to copy. ‘Alfredo’ claimed that the games he sold at his street stall were either downloaded from the Internet using a file-sharing-protocol called Bittorrents or sent to him via the Internet by a friend/colleague in the United States of America. The ease of access to pirate PC games explained the price discrepancy between them and pirated console games. Most PC games being in the range of 2-5000 Bolivars (approximately $1.50-3.50 AusD), while pirate console games would be between 10-15000 Bolivars (approximately $7-10.50 AusD). Also PC games were priced according to how many CD-ROMs they used, the CD-ROM being the basic cost for the vendor of producing the pirated good.

It is in the area of indigenous pirating that the X-Box has an interesting potential in the Venezuelan console games market. Of all the consoles the X-Box is the most easy to use to pirate games. This is because of its design that is more similar to the PC, in that it has more potential for customization. This means that its uses are relatively open-ended, and therefore unlike PS2 and Game Cube it can be used as more that just a game console. The primary design feature that creates this potential is the X-Box’s built-in hard-drive; this allows, with simple alterations, for the console to copy games that it has stored on it, turning the game console into a game copying machine. It is this potential that could be harnessed by the Venezuelan pirate industry to create a market for locally pirated X-Box games similar to the one that already exists in Australia. While I am yet to encounter such a practice, it is quite possible that it exists, or will exist as the X-Box gains in influence in Venezuela.

Mazinger Z Salva a Venezuela (Mediatech,2004)
The English Translation of the title of this locally designed PC game is ‘Mazinger Z Saves Venezuela’. The game is a rather simple sideways scrolling game featuring battles between giant robots and military forces. The background of the game features prominent landmarks of Caracas, such as Plaza Altamira, Parque Central and Plaza Venezuela. The player’s avatar in the game is the giant robot Mazinger Z, the main character from a cult anime of that name created by Go Nagai in 1972 that is still popular in Venezuela.[4] Mazinger Z must save Venezuela from other marauding evil giant robots, and the army which has been turned into cyborgs and are aiding the evil robots. Mazinger Z Salva a Venezuela has an explicitly political theme.

“Nos robaron el referéndum”
Sólo dos jóvenes podrán detener
el imperio de terror.
Prepárate a salvar a Venezuela
y al mundo del imperio Mikene.

“They stole the referendum”
Only two youths can stop
the reign of terror.
Prepare to save Venezuela
and the Mikene empire world.

Mazinger z

The game was produced during the political crisis of 2002-4. It reflects the political concerns of the period, that President Hugo Chavez was using fraudulent election results and should be removed from office. The actions against the army (who are dehumanized machines) in the game are implicitly an anti-Chavez message as the President is closely associated with the army (he attempted a military coup in 1992 before entering politics as a ‘civilian’, he still makes many public appearances in military style uniforms, and his supporter wear red military-style berets). Furthermore, the plea “Nos robarón el referéndum” links the evil robots in the game to the alleged practices of Chavez. This direct political message is lacking in games produced commercially in Australia. Games with political messages have been produced, but with government funding.[5]

X-Box Imperialism
In contrast to the locally produced Mazinger Z Salva a Venezuela, which reflects the concerns of a substantial segment of Venezuela’s population is the game Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six 3 (Ubisoft, 2003). This game which was originally released on the X-Box platform, proved to be one of the most popular and critically acclaimed games of the first-person-shooter genre for that console.[6] The game is based on the novels of Tom Clancy, and features the same kind of adherence to realism that his novels are noted for. It is of the variety of first-person-shooter that, rather than portraying blood and guts mayhem like Unreal 2: the Awakening (Atari, 2004) and Halo: Combat Evolved (Microsoft, 2001), recreates an environment that requires alertness, stealth and accuracy in order to survive. This kind of game has proved successful in the past on the X-Box console with other Tom Clancy inspired games like Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell (Ubisoft, 2002) and with original concepts such as Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance (Konami, 2002). Rainbow Six 3 features a Latino avatar, Domingo Chavez, who is the leader of the Rainbow Six counter-terrorist team, which works for the United Nations at the request of national governments. The action in the games takes place around the world, but the aim of the Rainbow Six team is to protect United States oil interests in Venezuela, which are under threat from South American terrorist groups. The game is based on the writing of a North American author and developed by a North America company, for use on a North America platform; unsurprisingly it reflects a particular world-view. Venezuela in this case is important only so far as it supplies the United States with oil.[7]

Rainbow Six 3

During a discussion with ‘Havier’ an employee at a video games store in Chacao I was alerted to this game.[8] Subsequently I mentioned this game to other people in conversation I discovered that while the game was universally admired for its game-play and technical excellence, there was a general feeling of ambivalence towards the subject matter of the game. In short, while people were pleased that Venezuela was the setting for such a prominent game, they felt that the scenario was implausible. I interpreted this as a cognitive dissonance with the world-view of the game, which was designed with a North Americans audience in mind. To its intended audience the game was located within pre-existing tropes of anxiety involving terrorism, oil supplies and the Latino ‘Other’. These anxieties were projected into the plot and setting of Rainbow Six 3 to create a portrayal of Venezuela which meant little to Venezuelan players. The intensely political concerns of the Venezuela people that are reflected in the game, Mazinger Z Salva a Venezuela, can not relate to the Venezuela of Rainbow Six 3. This Venezuela is emptied of local political concerns, instead reflecting the geo-political economic concerns of North American neo-imperialism.

‘Generación Nintendo™’
For a period in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s the brand Nintendo was synonymous in many minds with video games. While the brand does still exist, it has lost ground to competitors in the three major markets of Europe, Japan and North America. In these markets the Sony Playstation Two is predominant, with the X-Box a distant second. Venezuela (and apparently much of Latin America), however, is still dominated by Nintendo Game Cube, these consoles being more affordable and consequently more readily available. Stores have a larger variety of official games for sale and these consoles were most commonly in use by customers, especially to play FIFA Soccer 2004 (EA Sports, 2003). This game was by far the most popular of any console game, judging by how often I saw people playing it, and indeed it was the only console game I saw being played by adults.

The reason for the market dominance of Nintendo Game Cube, and Sony Playstation is primarily due to the relative cost compared to X-Box and Playstation Two. The reason for this difference in cost is due to two factors. First the Game Cube is cheap because it has a smaller market share than anticipated in the major console regions (Europe, Asia and North America) and the company is looking for alternate markets for its products. The Playstation is cheaper because it is outdated technology, that has been replaced by the Playstation Two by most consumers in their primary market areas. The Latin American market is used to ‘dump’ the remaining game software and hardware that is outdated and the local market is happy to pick it up because of the price.

However, in the next year the market in both Latin America and the primary console market is likely to be changed greatly by the impact of what is called the ‘Third Generation’ of game consoles. The industry has been anticipating that both Sony and Microsoft will launch new versions of their consoles. It was announced in October that the X-Box 2 would be revealed to the public in January 2005, with a release date later that year.[9] The release date of the Playstation3 is yet to be confirmed. Once these ‘Third Generation’ consoles are released, I presume that the X-Box will become cheaper in the Venezuela market as the remaining X-Box consoles and games get dumped in periphery markets. Consequently, I predict that the X-Box will become a more common household item in Venezuela over the next twelve months.

Conclusion
I believe that further research in Venezuela will garner interesting results especially more thorough empirical investigations into game audiences. The Venezuelan audience differs substantially from the Australian in the mode in which the activity of gaming is organised into the lives of the players both temporally and spatially. Furthermore, while Rainbow Six 3 is a particularly provoking example (at least to Venezuelans), my investigations suggest that the world-view of the player does to some extent affect their reception of the game. While several people I spoke with were displeased about the portrayal of Venezuela in that game, no one mentioned that this had effected their enjoyment of the game-play, the actual ergodic process. In terms of political economy, of interest was the integral role that the black market of copias piratas played in the Venezuelan games industry. This has led me to think more carefully about the practice of pirating as it pertains to the gaming industry in general and to Australia in particular. In Australia the pirating industry is officially condemned and associated with terrorism, but continues unabated in the gaming industry, and is especially prominent among the users of X-Box on consoles. While Venezuela also officially condemns these practices they are unofficially tolerated. One effect of this toleration is that it allows Venezuelans access to technologies that they could otherwise not afford. This suggests to me that copias piratas have an import role in bridging the ‘digital divide’. While lack of access to videogames is not often considered to be a major consequence of the digital divide. I suggest that recent research that emphasises the pedagogical role of these games in acclimatizing children to both computer technology and to computer-based learning bring new relevance to this issue. Like most ‘Third World’ countries Venezuela has a youthful population, thus, the issue of the digital divide, and how it can be effectively challenged is pertinent in this issue. Potentially what is at stake is higher than merely access to entertainment, but access to a key pedagogical tool for the contemporary global media milieu.
While the X-Box is relatively rare in Venezuela compared to Australia, it is still a readily available, high profile and desired commodity. Changing economic factors within the gaming industry also make it reasonable to predict that the X-Box console will become cheaper in Venezuela in the near future and thus more widely available. Despite its relative scarcity, different social usage of the X-Box, makes it easily available to all interested parties. Thus the study is feasible, because a large number of people have exposure to the X-Box (are members of the X-Box audience). Furthermore, the different practices of the audience in Venezuela will make a comparative study with Australia informative in terms of the raw data obtained and in the way that this data might challenge current understandings of audiences and the social practice of gaming.

[1] Statistics from http://www.worldbank.org/data/
[2] In San Bernardino the streets don’t have names, the blocks (manzanas) have names, thus the two blocks I’m speaking of would be referred to as Manzana Mirador, Manzana Avilanes, Manzana Tendero and Manzana Desamparados.
[3] IRC’s used were MSN Messenger and Yahoo. The most common networked games were Battlefield 1942 (EA Games, Digital Illusions, 2002) and MU (http://www.muonline.com/). The most common non-networked game was Grand Theft Auto III: Vice City (Rockstar Games, Rockstar North, 2002).
[4] The information on Mazinger Z comes from The Anime News Network http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=1100 . Mazinger Z is considered to be the first animation that portrayed a battle between good and evil robots over humanity. This theme has become a standard theme in animation, and has also produced numerous product spin-offs, e.g. Transformers and …….
[5] For example Escape from Woomera, http://www.escapefromwoomera.org/ .
[6] The game was release on the Playstation 2 and Game Cube platforms in 2004, but was received much less enthusiastically, see http://www.gamespot.com/finder/findgames.html .
[7] This sentiment is felt bitterly in Venezuela, many believing that Chavez’s landslide victory in the recent referendum was bought from the United States in through agreement to continue to supply the USA for the next 20 years.
[8] Chacao is a wealthy suburb of Caracas, with first-world style commercial and residential enclave.
[9] http://www.gizmodo.com/archives/xbox-2-to-be-unveiled-at-ces-023602.php .
[10] See page 12 of The PhD Handbook.

Tomb Raider Project

2004-08-24T21:34:00.000+10:00

Here are some of the Tomb Raider sites I'm using for my research on Lara Croft. I'll get around to explaining what they all are some day. Watch out some of the links are to pornographic 'fan' art, or 'fictional' pornographic interpretations of the Lara.

Lara Porn (Commercial)
http://freetoons.cartoon6.com/nuderaider.php
http://www.toonaddict.com/lara/
http://www.hentaiexplorer.com/lara-croft-hentai-pictures.html
http://adult.toonlist.com/cartoon-porn/3D-Tomb-Andventure/
http://freepornotoons.com/free/raider/index.html
(Watch out for pop-ups)

Lara Porn (Fan Art)
http://www.nuderaider.xw.hu/
http://www.exclusive-design.at/lara/
http://goodtime.web1000.com/menu.html
http://www.laracroft.doo.pl/fotki/index.html

Lara Croft Porn Film (Live Action - as opposed to animated)

Nude Raider Patch Site

Lara Croft Look-a-Like Community
http://www.tombraiderrepublic3.cjb.net/ (another extensive look-a-like community)

Lara Croft Cos-Play Community

Lara Croft Site Index (Semi-official)

Tomb Raider: Official Website

Developer's Website (Core Design)

Lara 'Fan' Film DV Animation

Fan Communities
http://www.larasanctuary.com/sitemap.html (Includes details of every outfit and how to make)
http://digilander.libero.it/laracroftvertigo/ (Fan Fic and Art)
http://home.wanadoo.nl/laracroft/index.html (Fan Fic, Songs, Poetry and Jokes)
http://www.planetlara.com/index.asp (Huge Community, with everything imaginable)
http://tombraider.ugo.com/comics/news.php?id=115
http://www.tombraidergirl.com/ (Fan Fic, Art and Comics)

If you have any good Tomb Raider or Lara Croft links please send them!!

Interactivity and 'Game Studies'

2004-08-23T19:51:00.000+10:00

work in progress

Interactivity
What is at stake in identifying and describing this unique form of interactivity allowed by the computer game is the existence of Game Studies as a unique discipline. Establishing the uniqueness of the computer game cybertext has a vital role in marking the break between computer games and other media texts. This consequently highlights the importance of taking a calculatedly different approach to the study and analysis of computer games. This new discipline of Game Studies seeks to analyse and critique computer games on their own terms. In the canonical text of Game Studies Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature Aarseth maintains that computer games need to be understood as games, not as narratives [1]. This approach which focuses on the interactive production of the text defies many of the more orthodox theories of narrative, leading Andrew Darley in Visual Digital Culture: Surface Play and Spectacle in New Digital Genres to argue that the two categories had a reverse reciprocal relationship [2]. In The Medium of the Video Game Mark J. P. Wolf disputes this position, arguing that interactivity rather opens new potentials and possibilities for the notion of narrative [3]. What is certain is that in the study of computer games narrative can no longer be seen as the most important formal element. This issue of interactivity thus becomes not only the core feature of the fledgling discipline, but an iconoclastic challenge to the relevance of narrative theory (‘narrativology’) as a tool for the analysis of ‘New Media’.

In 2001 Espen Aarseth launched the first academic journal devoted to Game Studies with an editorial titles “Game Studies Year One”, in which he proclaimed 2001 to be the first year of Game Studies. However, in year four of game studies still much of the academic research on computer games is done outside of the game studies paradigm. The focus was on computer games aesthetic and narrative qualities rather than on their unique ergodic qualities. Major works that analyse games in terms of theatre [4], literature [5], cinema [3] and semiotics [6] pose a challenge to a purely games based approach by subordinating the interactive function of games to their story-telling potential. This practice places computer games in a procrustean continuum with other new media. It fails to acknowledge that computer games are one of the only forms of computer-based media that does not have substantial links to pre-digital media. In Remediation: Understanding New Media Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin describe all new media as being remediated, a new technological articulation of past media forms [7]. They regard computer games as remediated cinema (largely due to their reliance on Myst and Doom for their analysis). Thus in their logic computer games are not a significant break, rather a continuation of a past aesthetic using new technological means. However, I disagree with their conclusion. While to a certain extent some computer games are remediating the aesthetics of film, I would add that computer games also remediate sports, card and board games, and role-playing games. Furthermore, I suggest that it is this incorporation of a social milieu that is not traditionally associated with media that makes computer games exceptional.[1] However the key to appreciating the radical break from past forms of mediation that computer games represent is an examination of the issues that stem from the notion of interactivity.

Interactivity and the Ergodic Cybertext
The notion of interactivity is used as an all-purpose catch phrase to describe digital technologies. Aarseth describes the situation as: “The word interactive operates textually rather than analytically, as it connotes various vague ideas of computer screens, user freedom, and personalized media, while denoting nothing” [1]. Through hyperbolic overuse, concatenating interactivity with ‘new’ media in general, the concept has become conflated with that of simple useability. Interactivity evokes a myth of new media of similar proportions to that of Bazin’s myth of total cinema. This myth performs the ideological function of associating a fantasy of freedom and control with computer-based media, and further implies an attitude of technological determinalism.

The mythic nature of interactivity poses a problem in developing critical tools for the analysis of computer games. These texts can only be distinguished from other forms of media by their particular mode of interactivity. Aarseth proposes two alternative terms, which avoid the empty denotations of interactivity; cybertext and ergodic. The cybertext is a text that is created in a cybernetic feedback loop between the reader and the text [1]. Ergodic refers to the process of ‘reading’ a cybertext [1]. Thus the cybertext is a product of an ergodic process or reading.[2] This makes a useful distinction between the process of interaction (ergodic) and the product of the interactive process (cybertext).

In order to understand the ergodic process it is necessary to devise a formal framework that offers objective measures of interactivity. I suggest that the kinds of interactions demanded by computer games during the ergodic process vary widely between games, and even within the same game according to the preferences of the individual player. Thus, I maintain that any attempt to objectively measure the formal attributes of interactivity must be matched by a similar investigation into the subjective experiences of the players’ ergodic journey. In Computers as Theatre Brenda Laurel argues that definitions of interactivity based on objective rules, ignore that the experience of interactivity arise from the users relation to the computer rather than from any external factors [4]. I suggest that one line of enquiry examines the ergodic structure of the cybertext, creating a detailed map of movements, objects, actions and events, while the other approach investigates the individual experience of the ergodic journey. These two approaches dovetail to reveal the dynamic imbrication of the interactivity between the formal programmed structure of the interactive text and the subjective experience of the game player.

Encoding/Decoding as a Model of Cybertextual Production
Causing additional confusion regarding interactivity, this particular term has been used to refer to another phenomena within the context of Literature and Media Studies. The term becomes further obfuscated due to the fact that the critical tools for analysing computer games are drawn largely from that same discipline. In audience based studies interactivity has been used to describe the process of the individual creating their own meaning from a mass media broadcast. This notion is articulated by Stuart Hall in “Encoding/Decoding”, in which he argues against the idea of a text having a dominant meaning Hall????777Hall, Stuart????Encoding/decoding'">[8]. Maintaining rather that all texts are given meaning by a process of decoding that allowed the individual to potentially make a negotiated or oppositional interpretation of the text. Thus the sender did not determine meaning. Rather, the audience interpreted meaning through ‘interaction’ with the text in the process of decoding. Hall’s model has its shortcomings, but for the purpose of analysing cybertexts it is useful as it makes a crucial distinction between two phases in the process of ergodic reading where actions (that could be described as interactions) are required. I suggest that the encoding/decoding dyad can be equated with the distinction between the ergodic journey and the players’ interpretation of that journey.

The ergodic journey, a series of responses to events initiated by the computer that require action from the player is an invitation to participate (albeit in a limited manner) in the encoding of the cybertext.[3] Encoding describes actions such as making Lara jump in Tomb Raider, building a city in Civilization, or shooting a Nazi in Castle Wolfenstein. While not an act of encoding in the same sense as writing a novel or newspaper article, I suggest that these action are the opportunity to enter a variable into the text at the level of encoding, which will affect the subsequent form of the cybertext.

Decoding describes the process of ‘reading’ the produced cybertext. It is at this point where the player interprets the cybertext developing before them. Such decisions as whether to colonize Africa in Europa Universalis II, in this case a hegemonic reading might regard the incorporation of the slave trade as a realistic depiction of history, while a subversive reading might regard the logic of the game connecting the slave trade to mercantilism as an implicit critique of the capitalist system. These two categories of player inputs are imbricated, often players will make decisions in the ergodic process based on a preferred outcome or reading that they wish to make of the cybertext. For example a player of Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri may make decisions from the very beginning of the game based on a desire to achieve certain short-term (the building of certain wonders) or long-term outcomes (obtaining victory through unusual and difficult conditions, like the economic or diplomatic victory). However, players may also make readings of the cybertext based on the ergodic choices that they have available to them. In a game like Dead Or Alive: Extreme Beach Volleyball, the player is given a choice between different bikinis in which to dress the characters. This kind of choice, I suggest, implicitly encourages the female characters of the game to be interpreted as sexual objects. Thus the encoding/decoding paradigm outlined by Hall is useful in conceptualizing the cybertext produced through the ergodic functions of the player and the game within the broader milieu of contemporary culture.

Interactivity and the Active Audience
The encoding/decoding paradigm of communication also brings an important concept to the discipline of Game Studies that audiences are active constructors of textual meaning. The active audience consciously interacts with the text to produce meanings that may defy the official authorial meaning of the text.[4] This notion that the text may be strategically decoded in myriad ways allows a conception of the cybertext that may take on multiple and heterogeneous meanings to the diverse communities and subcultures that make up its audience. What is at stake in the notion of the active audience is critically important to computer games, that the meaning of mass media texts may be constructed in such a way that negotiates or opposes the intended message. This practice allows otherwise marginalized communities to form or flourish through the practice of cultural production, by re-using and re-interpreting the cultural productions of the dominant or hegemonic groups. Henry Jenkins’ in Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture argues that the importance of the phenomena is not simply the way in which the practice of the active audiences allows the culture (or subculture) to resist the dominance of the hegemonic group, but the challenge that this practice poses to their continued hegemony. Jenkins’ argues that the tactic of ‘textual poaching’ (a term he borrows from Michel de Certeau) challenges corporate ownership of the textual media of their media products, citing George Lucas’s attempts to prevent or stifle some of the fan productions based on Star Wars [9].[5] This issue remains significant to the study of cybertexts as the computer game industry is characterised by a conflict between producers and consumers that stems from the practices of the gaming subculture threatening the viability of the computer game as a product.

Types of Interactions
While all computer games are ergodic to a degree the kinds of interactions allowed differ greatly from game to game. In order to appreciate the ergodic process further, I suggest that a distinction be made between different types of interactions. In the introduction to On A Silver Platter: CD-ROMs and the Promises of a New Technology Greg M. Smith outlines two types of interactivity that computer games may provide. First, the player should be able to manipulate objects within the text [10].. This means that the text present is divided into objects that can be acted upon independently of the text as a whole. For example, the player (or their avatar[6]) is able to pick up objects (Doom), look at them more closely (Myst) or act upon them, for example by pulling a level or opening a door (Tomb Raider). This enables the player to make changes to the texts physical appearance, and the actions carried out upon the objects should have some connection to the second aspect of interactivity identified by Smith, the players’ input into the narrative of the game.

Second, an ergodic text should present the player with choices which affect the narrative flow and outcome of the game [10]. This aspect is often over-emphasized, and the future possibilities of interactive narrative are discussed with more vigour that the state of the contemporary. More often than not these narrative choices are not really choices at all, but rather a performance of the text that requires the player to flow the linear plot of the computer game. To move away from the narrative progression dictated by the game results in an untimely death, and the game is rebooted at a point backward on the narrative trajectory, allowing the player another chance to perform the correct actions to allow the narrative to proceed. So the ability to affect the narrative outcome is closer to the ability to choose whether the mission fails or succeeds, which is not necessarily based on preference for a certain result, but rather on the players’ skill and mastery of the game. Games do exist that do have more open possibilities, games such as Dues Ex and Civilization III allow the players to choose variable goals and tactics in order to win the game, and thus they allow the game to be played again and again in order to achieve the more difficult and obscure victory conditions. For example, Civilization III allows the player to win the game through military, scientific or diplomatic means. The first and the second methods of winning are relatively unsubtle, and are easily completed on the lower levels of difficulty in the game, the diplomatic victory is more elusive and achieving it is considered by the Civilization online community to be the sign of a truly skilled player.

In addition to Smith’s two types of interaction, I suggest a third type of interaction exists; that of interaction with the rules of the interaction themselves. This type of interaction is radically different, as it allows the player to change the cybertext by altering its ergodic structure, rather than by making choices within that structure. The practice of altering the cybertext in this manner is known as ‘moding’. This practice is actively encouraged in some games, like Civilization III, where the game includes and editing function that allows the players to alter almost any variable in the game. Other games like Doom or Call to Power have open source codes, which means that the information to alter and reprogram the game is in the public domain. Some companies keep their source codes confidential and also take a hardline approach to the ‘moding’ of games they have produced; most prominent in this category is the Tomb Raider series. These three types of interactions within the ergodic process are a starting point for more thorough formal and theoretical distinctions. The critical reason for drawing these distinctions is to show that the ergodic process of forming a cybertext is a complex interplay of several types of ergodic action, that may not necessarily be motivated from inside the game-player feedback loop, but by the larger socio-political milieu in which the relationship takes place.

Cybertext: A Circuit of Multiple Inputs
The computer game cybertext is not a closed circuit. As the cybertext is formed from a complex interaction of the interactions permitted by the game, the player’s own ergodic choices and the decoded meaning that the player gives to those choices. The decoded meaning may be informed by any number of different intertextual materials (films, literature, television programmes, card games, general genre fiction, sports, popular culture and current events). Furthermore, the interpretation of the game will be profoundly effected by the players contact with the community of gaming, which may be accessed through specialist magazines (about 12 are commonly available in Melbourne newsagents, of which 3 are Australian based), or websites (notice boards are most common). As gaming becomes more oriented towards online play with the success of online PC gaming and the introduction of online console gaming in 2003 (X-Box LIVE), a new community forum is ascending in importance, the online games themselves (many of which have albeit limited chat functions), and associated chat forums. Finally, gaming takes place within the broader social context of contemporary society. Computer games are informed by contemporary events, reflecting current political struggles. Contemporary gaming deals with such issues as terrorism (Counterstrike), covert operations (Superpower), and military coups (Revolution). Thus, I suggest that an account of computer games as meaning producing texts requires a framework that incorporates the flow of meaning from the game into the cultural milieu and vice versa.

The analysis of computer games must therefore extend beyond that of their narrative (or their potential for narrative). I agree with the approach outlined by Stephen Kline, Nick Dyer-Witheford and Greig de Peuter in Digital Play: the Interaction of Technology, Culture, and Marketing. They argue that a critical approach to computer games needs to recognise “the interplay of technologies, culture, and economics” [11]. Therefore, any discussion of interactivity or the kinds of interactivity allowed within a computer game should be understood in the context of the technical, cultural and marketing forces which shape the industry [11]. This sentiment is also expressed my Sue Morris in “First Person Shooters – A Game Apparatus”, she argues that computer games are not simply textual, but also extend into the realms of the technical, the social, and the psychological. However, Morris’ approach is more oriented towards a focus on the audience of the text. I suggest that a middle ground be struck between a primarily industry based, and primarily audience based approach, instead focusing on the particular actions and inputs which each contribute to the production of the cybertext. Morris suggests that in order to unravel the imbricated flows of meaning that the apparatus theory of Jean-Louis Baudry be adopted for Game Studies [12]. Ted Friedman in “Civilisation and Its Discontents” also with little conviction hints at this type of holistic approach, suggesting the actor-network theory of Bruno Latour may help to theorise the role that the computer game plays in the construction of the game [13].[7] I suggest that the cybertext be understood as an interactive circuit at a nexus of many inputs. While the cybertext is primarily based on the ergodic actions of the player, these actions are affected not only by the players’ predilections but also by the social world of gaming, and the wider local and global influences. Furthermore, the text is constructed in a way that reflects the influence of hegemonic society values and paradigms.[8] The actions taken but the player and also the actions available to take are influenced by many factors, thus the feedback loop model must be expanded to include other influential factors.

New Issues Affecting Interactivity
The schema I have outlined here applies most pertinently to the older model of computer game, where the player plays against a computer opponent. This is increasingly giving way to multiplayer gaming, both on and off-line. The play may either be agonistic or co-operative, but requires a new stance on interactivity. This is because in some cases the player is no longer interacting with the computer but through it, and the ergodic nature of the game is affected more by the agency and decisions taken by other players than by the structure of the game. Online play suits certain types of games, and as Morris notes, the games that are played online often become transformed in order to cater for multiplayer and online play [12]. The narrative becomes minimal and the game is transformed social environment, geared around co-operative agonistic competition [12]. I agree with Morris’ argument that ergodic interaction in online gaming is profoundly affected by the social environment of the game-players [12]. This suggests that online gaming creates an even more open and flexible ergodic feedback loop than traditional games, as it is constantly open to the shared influences of the subcultural group.

Game Studies

The fledgling discipline of Games Studies suffers from similar problems to those that have faced other emergent disciplines in the past. While excellent scholarship on computer games is conducted in a variety of disciplines, until Games Studies is acknowledged as an area of interdisciplinary scholarship these various disciplines are in danger of not productively engaging with one another. This consequently slows the pace of productive, groundbreaking research as each discipline struggles to cover the same ground. For example, in the current state of the discipline, it is possible to publish a book on computer games without making reference to any other specific research on the topic.[9] I am not suggesting that work be assessed by the contents of it bibliography, simply that the quality of research could be enhanced by engaging with the current state of the discipline. My intention is not to establish some kind of orthodox hierarchy of citations, but rather to encourage academics working in the same or similar fields to work with and use research conducted by others. As a new discipline, Games Studies is also faced with difficulties concerning the newness of its medium. Many academic libraries do not have computer games, and those that do force librarians to learn new skill sets that are not easily defined, or readily available outside of direct experience. Problems include issues such as copyright, access to memory, incoherent classification, and difficulty in purchasing games themselves.

The immediate problem that faces Game Studies is the lack of a set of consciously determined categorical tools. As I have mentioned above a substantial amount of the discipline’s terminology has been imported from literary and media studies. While this is not universally to the new disciplines detriment, if applied uncritically there is the danger that certain key attributes of computer games will be overlooked. In addition, much of the terminology used to describe computer games is industry and gamer derived. It is not my intention to ignore the kinds of knowledge(s) and insights that gamers (or designers) have of the ergodic game-texts, but rather I believe that a scholarly analysis requires a different degree of precision, and a more questioning and reflexive attitude towards these ‘essential’ or fundamental categories. Take, for example, the basic notion of distinguishing one type of game from another and then assigning them into groups based on shared characteristics. This process appears to be simple, and has been remarkably unquestioned in Game Studies. Indeed it appears almost universally that the notion of ‘genre’ is used to distinguish types of games from one another. However, I believe that questioning the categories that game studies has inherited is fruitful as there is a great deal at stake in this process.

Genre: An Equivocal Term
The orthodox position on game classification follows a basic classification that has been established between the industry and the consumers of games in order to identify the types of interactions that will take place in the game. In The Medium of the Video Game Mark J. P. Wolf notes that in addition to this interactive genre, many games also borrow from a set of iconography of an established fictional genre [3]. Examples exist of action (Duke Nuke’em), fantasy (Everquest), science fiction (Dune II), Horror (Silent Hill), and teen-exploitation (Dead or Alive: Extreme Beach Volleyball). This iconography acts as an intertextual marker to locate the play of the game within a pre-existing cultural narrative [2, 14]. But these gestures to the outside world do little to alter the interactions that are allowed within the game, although superficially they may alter the narrative. The fact that the player is shooting at oncoming targets in a three dimensional environment is more useful in describing the ergodic process of play. Games that share common environmental design, in terms of the kinds of spaces explored, and interfaces in terms of the visual arrangement of information and actions allowed within the environment create a similar player experience despite any differences in the iconography. No matter if the virtual foes are demons, Nazis, terrorists or aliens, the types of (inter)-action permitted within the game makes the games remarkably similar. The typical ‘genres’ in this system are action, further divided into first person shooters (Quake, Doom) and third person shooters (Tomb Raider), strategy, also divided into real time strategy games (Warcraft III) and turn based strategy games (Civilization III), simulations (Need for Speed, SimCity 4), role-playing or adventure games (Baldur’s Gate). Somewhat difficult to classify in this system are puzzle games (Tetris) and what are described now as ‘classic’ games (Defender, Space Invaders). When applied in this context the notion of ‘genre’ has a degree of similarity with the notion of genre as used in film and literary studies. The genre imposes an important structuring principle on the game, but to the inputs of the player, the ergodic process, rather than the final output, the cybertext. However, genre in this case is largely an ergodic structuring principle that does not necessarily determine the narrative element of the game.

The conflation of visual and ergodic styles under the aegis of genre in the classification of computer games has deep implications for Game Studies. As each genre develops its own visual style they are often conflated with other representational technologies that share a similar aesthetic. Singled out in particular has been the aesthetic of the action genre of computer game, especially the first-person shooter. The convergent aesthetics of films and games has been well documented [2, 15, 16]. But even among the exponents of new media are theorist who reductively conceive computer games as ‘interactive’ films [7]. In the bizarre mythology of the technological over-determinalistic future the destiny of both computer games and cinema are to merge into mass participatory, fully immersive, interactive, virtual worlds al a David Cronenberg’s eXistenZ. The myth of total interactivity aside, the aesthetic convergence between films and games tells us more about the contemporary dominant visual aesthetic than about computer games. My claim is not that film theory has no place in the study of games, rather that film theory can only usefully aid our understanding of the games visual features and has to be substantially revised in order to cope with the ergodic mode of engagement. This revision is, I believe, more useful to the discipline of Film Studies than it is to Game Studies as the usurpation of narrative by interactivity echoes cinemas loss of privilege in the media hierarchy as the dominant mode of media marketing, production and consumption becomes dominanted by transmedia intertextuality making cinema one of the multiple linkages to the new media commodity.

While the visual remains important in computer games, I wish to emphasize that the visual component of the game, the interface should not be privileged over ergodic interaction between the player and the game. It is this ergodic process that delineates the difference between computer games and other entertainment media. Thus the direct important from film studies to game studies of critical terminology requires careful consideration. Take for example the distinction within the action genre between first and third person computer games. This is based on the players’ perspective. The first person game take place ‘as if’ the action taking place on the screen was the players’ own vision, while third person games use an avatar, a digital proxy that the game-player simultaneously watches and manipulates. First person in film is uncommon, and is used as a technique to create identification. Third person is more common, in fact it is pervasive in contemporary cinema, many films being shot entirely in this style. The third person film is characterised by the viewer watching the action unfold through the camera narrator rather than through the eyes of a particular character.

This visual distinction collapses within the computer game medium for two reasons. First, players must be able to identify with their avatar in third person games. The avatar is a virtual prosthetic that acts as the connecting point between the player and the virtual environment. Acting rather like a cursor does in a more conventional computer mediated environment (Microsoft word or explorer), to link the function of the hand and the eye. The player is able to identify with the avatar, even through they are viewed in the third person, through the intervention of the ergodic relationship. Second, all first person games utilize some technique that creates a static object that function as an avatar to link the hand and they eye within the virtual world, in the form of a gun, snowboard, or arm that extends out from the bottom of the screen into the virtual world or a gun-site superimposed onto the centre of the screen. This shows that crucially in order to experience the virtual world of the game, the player and game must be linked by a static physical locator that acts as an indexical axis indicating the players’ relation to the virtual spaces of the game.

The division of these two sub-genres obfuscates these two related issues. I suggest that the division they impose are not as apparent as is commonly perceived under the current nomenclature. There is not a clear division in style of identification or narrative experience as the use of first person and third person would suggest, rather there is a more subtle difference in how the player is visually located within the virtual space. Both subgenres seek to engage our phenomenological experience in order to overcome the disjunction between the body in front of the screen and the virtual game world. In this sense they engage the two phenomenological modes described by Marcel Merlau-Ponty in Phenomenology of Perception, immanence and transcendence. Immanence is the experience of perceiving something, while transcendence is lacking any perception of an object but knowing it is there [17]. While I type this the keyboard is immanent, my bookshelf is transcendent and my body is the play of both. By using graphic that simultaneously hide the body (because the player sees out from it rather than looks at it) while showing us a part of the body (or its cybernetic prosthetic), he first person game utilizes a play of immanence and transcendence in order to locate the player in the world, making it similar phenomenologically to the experience of the body. However, in the ‘third person’ game we are able to see and manipulate the avatar, making it an immanent object. I suggest that by applying this phenomenological analysis to the game interface it is possible to engage with games on a more experiential manner.

The experience of play is the experience of acting inside a virtual space. The interface that locates us within that space should be defined in relation to the way that the interface sutures our bodies into a phenomenological continuum with the virtual space. The importing of the terms third and first person into computer gaming technology may work fine on a simple descriptive level. But on the analytic level they become indistinct. Both forms rely on a form of cyborg identification, described by Scott Bukatman as terminal identity [18]. Furthermore the ergodic process requires identification to complete the cybertext, it is always produced by the actions of an individual, thus the events that unfold within the game can always be linked to a causal ‘I’. Furthermore as I will now illustrate this phenomenological approach to game classification earmarks space and spatial relationships to be the key categories for understanding the experience of play and thus should be the key qualitative features by which categories of games should be organized.

The Polemics of Play
Scholarly inquiry into computer games at this point in time is divided into two major schools ‘narratology’ and ‘ludology’. Gonzalo Frasca, ludology’s most passionate advocate describes ludology as a disciplinary approach to games that argues that narrative is not the central structuring principle of video games [1, 19]. In addition to representation video games operate “on an alternative semiotical structure know as simulation” [19]. Narratology, however, regards computer and video games as merely a new medium of narrative potential. However, this approach is dominated by the dual politics of what Aarseth identifies as “apologetics and trivialization” [1]. The apologists believe that games have the potential to become great, just the right people aren’t making them, while trivialists believe that computer games cannot be taken seriously by literary studies [1]. While I believe it is safe to merely dismiss the trivialists at this point, the apologists require further discussion. Apologetics in this case is inherently imbricated with technological determinalism, and the myth of total immersion. It is work that is concerned with what video games may become rather than understanding them as they are. They are assuming that the computer game is destined to become another form of narrative. Which, of course, they are, but within a narrative system where narrative is no longer the predominant structuring principle.

However, I believe that strict adherence to the school of ludology is not constructive beyond the point made above. Even the most orthodox ludologist must acknowledge that games do try to tell stories, or at least to give the players’ the raw materials to construct the story themselves. Aarseth acknowledges this by dividing narrative into two levels: description and narration. Computer games are rich in description, they show us visually & aurally the material the player requires in order to construct a story, while they are poor at providing a narrative voice. While games are often narrated in is outside the specific context of the game that the narration is made [1]. The point is that within the game a different set of concerns is operating. Frasca describes games as operating within the rules of a simulation rather than a narration [19]. The simulation or cybertext is distinct in that it has both inputs and outputs from the player, while narrative is solely output. In this sense I agree with the ludologists, the emphasis of computer game analysis must not focus on the produced cybertext but on the dynamic interactions between human(s) and computer(s).

These interactions take place within a space defined by the rules of the game. Different games provide vastly different qualities of space, but I maintain that it is the freedom that can be found within these latitudes that defines a game over any other factor. While Grand Turismo, Midtown Madness and Grand Theft Auto III are all ostensibly from the same genre: simulations, and more specifically the same subgenre, as they are all driving sims, they have large differences in their ergodic processes. Grand Turismo takes place on a racetrack, the movement is linear and although many tracks are available they are only more complex in the challenges they provide the player in the linear ergodic process. Midtown Madness is more open allowing the player to drive in the traffic and streets of a busy city. Grand Theft Auto III is even more open, the player can get out of the car, run around get into another car drive anywhere in the virtual city, crashing into cars and hitting pedestrians. While they all involve simulations of driving, some games have a greater degree, or margin, of flexibility. Roger Caillois in Man Play and Games argues that each practice of play is defined within a dual system that describes the practice’s relationship to strict rules. The games most subordinate to rules are described as ludic while those characterized by spontaneity and creativity are classified as paidia [20].Importantly, these categories are not exclusive as the two styles of play are allied and always present. While all the games have ludic qualities, Grand Tourismo is clearly the most ludic of the three games while Grand Theft Auto III has the most piadia. This characterisation of the game space in terms of the latitude of movement provided by piadia within the games ludic structure suggests that the spatial framework for understanding games devised by Henry Jenkins and his collaborators over the past decade has a great degree of credence. By conceiving games spatially we can free them from the aforementioned difficulties that come from analysing games in categories like visual genre, furthermore, it allows games of radically different technological levels to be assessed in a continuum [21].

The Question of Pleasure
Beyond the ludology/narratology polemic is a collection of related issues that all stem from the activities engaged in during the ergodic process by the player. Aarseth states: “The ergodic work of art is one that in a material sense includes the rules for its own use, a work that has certain requirements built in it that automatically distinguishes between successful and unsuccessful users” [1]. What are the characteristics of the successful reader? Grahame Weibren argues in ‘Mastery (Sonic C’est Moi)’ that the successful reader is one that masters the virtual environment [22]. Torben Grodal elaborates this point in ‘Video Games and the Pleasures of Control’ arguing that it is from the experience of mastery that game-players derive pleasure in computer games [23]. Darley assents also to Grodal argument, suggesting that it is this pleasure that replaces the pleasure of experiencing the narrative found in most other media [2]. Kinder argues that a crucial part of a child’s enjoyment of computer games comes from their ability to control the presence and absence of the characters on screen [24]. While I would hesitate to conceptualize computer games as a virtual games of fort/da, the unique pleasures that can be found in computer games that derive from the players ability to control (to a certain extent) their environment is crucial in understanding the conceptual differences that separate computer games from other media.

Technological Genres
Further complicating matters it has been the practice of some authors to refer to computer games themselves as a ‘genre’ of new media. Using the term so flexibly endangers its utility. However, this does not mean that matters of technology should not be incorporated into our understanding of genre. The question of genre in gaming is focused on the kinds of inputs allowed and the technology used to play affects the style of inputs. Computer games can be played in many ways, each technology coming with its own unique set of issues and concerns. The most distinctive difference within gaming technology is that between the PC Games played on a computer and the home console games played using a television for the game monitor (Playstation, X-box, Ninetendo, Sega). In addition there are also hand held consoles with their own screens (Gameboy), and Arcade games. Gaming technology is also integrated into cell phones, calculators and watches… anything with a digital display. While the difference in the consumption of these technologies can hardly be called an issue of genre, this issue is of crucial importance. Notably they lack a hierarchy of importance, like the theatre to DVD to television flow of cinema that gives any one medium an artistic or cultural authenticity.[10] However, that spaces and practices of consumption vary greatly, on-line gaming for example was the sole domain of the PC until the 2003 release of the X-box Live, making PC and console gaming quite distinct.

Further complicating matter are the variations within the games themselves. As Morris notes, computer games are often transformed by the switch from single to multiplayer [25]. The differences between single-player, multi-player, on-line and LAN gaming within the individual game text itself have a crucial impact on the players understanding of the text and furthermore place conceptual pressure on most conventional audience reception models as the text shifts from a ergodic interaction between a human and computer actor to a computer mediated interaction between human players. For example the style of play in a game like Civilization III, switches from a turn based strategy when played in single player, but includes a real time version for use when playing against other players online.

Citations
1. Aarseth, E.J., Cybertext : Perspectives on Ergodic Literature. 1997, Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press. 203 p.
2. Darley, A., Visual Digital Culture : Surface Play and Spectacle in New Media Genres. Sussex studies in culture and communication. 2000, London ; New York: Routledge. x, 225 p.
3. Wolf, M.J.P., The Medium of the Video Game. 1st ed. 2002, Austin: University of Texas Press. xvi, 203 p.
4. Laurel, B., Computers as Theatre. 1991, Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley Pub. xxv, 211 p.
5. Murray, J.H., Hamlet on the Holodeck : the Future of Narrative in Cyberspace. 1998, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. xii, 324 p.
6. Myers, D., The Nature of Computer Games : Play as Semiosis. Digital formations, v. 16, ed. S. Jones. 2003, New York: Peter Lang. xiii, 200 p.
7. Bolter, J.D. and R.A. Grusin, Remediation : Understanding New Media. 1999, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. xi, 295 p.
8. Hall, S., Encoding/decoding. ????
9. Jenkins, H., Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture. 1992, New York: Routledge.
10. Smith, G.M., Introduction: A Few Words about Interactivity, in On A Silver Platter: CD-ROMSs and the Promises of a New Technology, G.M. Smith, Editor. 1999, New York University Press: New York
London. p. 1-34.
11. Kline, S., N. Dyer-Witheford, and G. De Peuter, Digital Play : the Interaction of Technology, Culture, and Marketing. 2003, Montréal ; Ithaca, N.Y.: McGill-Queen's University Press. x, 368 p.
12. Morris, S., First-Person Shooters - A Game Apparatus, in ScreenPlay: Cinema/Videogames/Interfaces, G. King and T. Kryzwinska, Editors. 2002, Wallflower Press: London.
13. Friedman, T., Civilization and Its Discontents: Simulation, Subjectivity, and Space., in On A Silver Patter: CD-ROMs and the Promises of a Newq Technology, G.M. Smith, Editor. 1999, New York University Press: New York
London.
14. Ndalianis, A., The Rules of the Game: Evil Dead II…Meet thy Doom., in Hop on pop : the politics and pleasures of popular culture, H. Jenkins, T. McPherson, and J. Shattuc, Editors. 2002, Duke University Press: Durham, N.C. ; London.
15. Elsaesser, T. and W. Buckland, Studying contemporary American film : a guide to movie analysis. 2002, London: Arnold.
16. King, G. and T. Krzywinska, eds. ScreenPlay : Cinema/Videogmes/Interfaces. 2002, Wallflower Press: London. ix, 229 p.
17. Merleau-Ponty, M., Phenomenology of Perception. 1962, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
18. Bukatman, S., Terminal Identity: The Virtual Subject in Postmodern Science Fiction. 1993, Durham: Duke University Press.
19. Frasca, G., Simulation versus Narrative: Introduction to Ludology, in The Video Game Theory Reader, M.J.P. Wolf, Editor. 2003, Routledge: New York London.
20. Caillios, R., Man Play and Games. 1962, London: Thames and Hudson.
21. Jenkins, H. and K. Squire, The Art of Contested Spaces, in Game On: The History and Culture of Videogames, L. King, Editor. 2003, Lawrence King Publishing Ltd: London.
22. Weinbren, G., Mastery (Sonic C'est Moi), in New Screen Media: Cinema/Art/Narrative, M. Riesler and A. Zapp, Editors. 2002, The British Film Institute: London.
23. Grodal, T., Video Games and the Pleasures of Control, in Media Entertainment: The Psychology of its Appeal, D. Zillmann and P. Vorderer, Editors. 2000, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc.: Mahwah.
24. Kinder, M., Playing with Power in Movies, Television, and Video Games : from Muppet Babies to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. 1991, Berkeley ; London: University of California Press. xi, 266 p.
25. Morris, S., Co-Creative Media: Online Multiplayer Computer Game Culture. Scan: Journal of Media Arts and Culture, 2004. 1(1).

Footnotes
[1] A notable exception to this is Marshall McLuhan’s Understanding Media: the Extensions of Man.
[2] Aarseth uses the term ‘traverse’ to describe the process of ergodic ‘reading’.
[3] This manner is limited only by the level to which the player is prepared to interact. If they chose to interact on the ‘metalevel’ of interaction then a much higher degree of control over the encoding process is available.
[4] The question of the relationship between the author of the game and the players’ interventions could not really be considered one of co-authorship. The players authoring role is limited and usually subordinated to the choices available by the corporate authors of the game.
[5] Literary experts on Science Fiction such as Brian Aldiss in turn accuse George Lucas’ work of being a fan production of the universe created by E. E. Smith in the 1930’s pulp magazine serial ‘Lensmen’.
[6] This term is used to describe the characters on-screen proxy in ‘third person’ perspective games.
[7] This theory is outlined in Aramis, Or, The Love of Technology (1996).
[8] Crogan, Herz and Kline etal. All note the influence of the Cold War on gaming technology.
[9] See Barry Akins (2003). More Than a Game.
[10] This is true of contemporary games… classics belong in the medium of the original. Thus Galaxian is only ‘authentic’ when played on an arcade machine. (note emulators).

Getting Stuck on Level One: Designing a Research Methodology Appropriate to Xbox

2004-08-23T19:47:00.000+10:00

Work in Progress

The title of this paper “Getting Stuck on Level One: Designing a Research Method Appropriate to X-box” reflects my current mental state about my progress in my PhD research. Although the process of PhD research and gaming in general have few intersections, I feel that Espen Aarseth’s use of the notions of aporia and epiphany to describe the progress of the player through the game has certain resonances with the process of ‘writing’ a PhD [1,2]. Aporia describes the repetitious action of wandering through the previously explored, and often empty space of the game, looking for the object or combinations of objects that allows either an escape into new space, or a re-contextualization of the space that renders it transformed. This moment is coined epiphany by Aarseth. In my own research I long simultaneously to escape from the current media/literary paradigms for understanding games and to design a research paradigm that encapsulates the transformations that computer games wreak upon the emergent ‘new’ media-scape. My concern in this study of x-box gaming is not only the transformation that the player is able to elicit within the text, but also the possible transformations that the technology elicits within the gamers themselves. Walter Benjamin in the ‘Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’ speaking of the potential that cinema had for allowing new perceptions, knowledges and understandings to emerge, states: “then came film and burst our prison world asunder with the dynamite of the one-tenth of a second” [3]. I begin my research with a similar incendiary assumption regarding x-box and my basic research question seeks to test this assumption by investigating the way that games are incorporated into everyday life. This inquiry begin by asking how do people contextualise x-box games within their lives, and reciprocally how do games contextualise people own experiences? In order to answer this question I suggest that the computer game text be understood not simply as a as a text alone but also as an intersection of discourses, practices, and technologies.

I will elaborate each of these issues in turn, but wish to highlight now that what I see as the chief advantage of conceiving the computer game text in this way, as a text residing at a particular nexus of discourses, practices and technology is that this acknowledges their complex, hybrid and polysemous potentials.

General discourse about games in the popular media, as opposed to the discourse of the gamers’ themselves is dominated by conception of the industry as highly profitable, the gamers themselves as a subordinate sub-cultural group and the games themselves as violent (or in the case of Australia overtly sexually orientated) [4]. These issues are echoed in the entertainment media, with gamers and games often being used as a symbol for the collapse of reality and fantasy, for example David Croenenberg’s eXistenZ (1999), Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game and Boyle’s The Beach (2000). However recently more interesting uses have been made of gaming aesthetics in other media to invoke feelings of alienation in Van Sant’s Elephant (2003) or identification in Eminem’s White America, and 50cent’s Heat for example [5].

Academic inquiry into games reflects the concerns of popular media. Media effects studies of the violence in computer games are mind-numbingly common; the issue of games and gaming as masculine pleasures and practices is dealt with more interestingly. While many scholars locate gaming as another domain of masculine hegemony and use luminaries such as Lacan and Deleuze to contextualize games as oedipal or sadomasochistic and dismiss them as masculine power fantasies. Other scholars such as Schott and Morris have traced the role that women gamers have played within the development of game culture and in producing their own libratory understanding of the activity [6,7]. In terms of the critical understanding of the flows of aesthetic borrowings from games in popular culture, much has been written on the convergence of cinema and computer games. The best of this material acknowledges that such a comparison is beneficial to the discipline of film studies as it offers them new insight into the understanding of film [8], while the most objectionable conceptualizes games in a procrustean manner as interactive cinema [9]. In opposition to this intellectual colonization of computer games by film and literary scholars a small group of scholars known as ludologists have deliberately eschewed conceptual borrowings from other disciplines in order to understand games as games [10]. While this position has some merit, this position often requires the reinvention of the wheel, as it reworks issues that have been dealt with in other disciplines. Here is where film studies I believe becomes useful, as within the last 40 years this discipline has grown from within other more establish traditions within the academy and faced similar challenges in proving its own legitimacy. For example in order to understand my own inquiry into game genres I looked at the historical development of the use of genre in film studies. The concept was borrowed from literature, but quickly developed certain nuances borrowed from art history to cope with the visual aspects of cinema that literature obviously lacked. This makes it entirely appropriate to understand computer game genres in a completely new light, in order to cope with the differences between them and cinema or literature. In my mind the genres should be based on categories of ‘physical’ interaction, the key feature that they have that both cinema and literature lack. While the popular genre categories developed for games function in a similar role to those in cinema in that they acts as an implied consensus between the consumers and producers over the contents of the text. I believe that these categories lack sufficiently critical qualities to be of use to a scholar.

As well as the popular and academic discourse on gaming, the gamers themselves generate a large amount of discourse. Gamers meet on the Internet to discuss particular games in bulletin boards and chat rooms. This discussion of the games generates further extra-textual practices, when for example shared tactics are written in document form to create an overarching guide or walkthrough for the game. Furthermore, these spaces often involve the exchange of ‘mod’ files that alter or customise one or more aspects of the game. This practice may also become documented, creating a guide for anyone who wishes to alter or customize that particular game. Games also generate intense creative products of a more traditional cultural studies conception of the fan, fan literature, art and practices such as cosplay [11]. Beyond the interests that gamers may have in particular games, there are sites and newsgroups developed of interest to the community as a whole were illegal pirate versions of games and semi-legal mods such as no-cd cracks or quasi-pornographic patches are exchanged. More traditional sites review games software and hardware in much the same way as other cultural products are evaluated, although significantly many of these sites lack a strong editorial presence and the editorial voice of the site is often effectively drowned out by advertising material and opinion pieces.

Games are also a particular technology, or rather intersection of technologies. While I do not believe entirely that the medium is the message, I wish to mark the medium of the x-box as introducing new and unique ways to recreate and socialize. While on one hand the x-box is a fusion or convergence of new technologies, modem, computer, mp3 player and DVD it also makes use of long established technologies like stereos televisions and telephone lines inscribing them with new contexts. I believe that the technology of the x-box is significant in that it represents the beginning of ubiquitous networked entertainment computing in the living rooms of the first world. This significance stems from the beginning in late 2003 of ‘x-box live’ which enabled x-box users to play against each other online. Console gaming need no longer be considered a symptom of telecity, but rather a social practice. This social practice has the potential to link players with thousands of others. However, it is important to note that currently these games are agonistic, characterised by competition. X-box claims however to this year be releasing two Massive Multiplayer Online Role-playing games (MMORPG’s). This potential for interactive co-operative play that links people across the imagined boundaries of nation is of particular interest to me as this form of play encourages the bulding of communities within the game that I presume will extend into other online forums and possibly even into ‘real-life’ relationships.

The technology and practices associated with gaming encourages a new model of commodification and consumption. The transmedia intertextual commodity: here I am refering to the current ubiquitous trend in the mass media to remediate the same content across all media platforms. The Book/Film/Game/Happy Meal phenomena that is associated with most contemporary mass media products. While I believe on one hand this is a calculated marketing tool in the sense of a product reaching all kinds of demographics, to put it crudely a shotgun effect. On the other hand this form of commodification encourages a deliberate process of intertextual assemblage during the audiences production of meaning, which allows the audience to experience a sense that each product is a part of a wider mediated universe that is largely constructed in the minds of the audience through the process of assemblage of the disparate medias. An explicit example of this interweaving of transmedia intertextuality into a large mediated universe (or ‘Buffyverse’), is seen in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer games. Both the x-box games Buffy the Vampire Slayer (2001) and Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Chaos Bleeds (2003) are located within the narrative of the television series as lost episodes that explain or contextualise inconsistent events within the series themselves. This tactic is also deployed in the relationship between the film The Matrix: Reloaded (Wachowski, 2003), The Animatrix (Jones etal., 2003) and the x-box game Enter the Matrix (2003). In this case the game fulfils a minor, but crucial, side story in the greater narrative of the film. I wish to investigate the way that this phenomena impacts on the players understanding of the game and reciprocally how the game affects their understanding of the wider transmedia forms. Furthermore, I wish to understand the mass media transmedia intertextuality in relation to the game players own intertextual productions. Marsha Kinder in her book Playing with Power locates computer games at the cutting edge of the phenomenon of the transmedia intertextual commodity. Implicitly she connects the playful engagement of the game, and the expansive worlds of the game text with the practice of assemblage of transmedia intertextual commodities into ‘metatexts’ [12]. In my mind the growth of the phenomena in the thirteen years since the publication of Kinder’s book represents an attempt by media producers to colonize the creative space of fandom, located by such theorists and Henry Jenkins, and turn it into not only a commodified practice. In short I will argue that media texts in general and computer games in particular are designed with this form of transmedia commodification in mind.

This kind of inquiry locates the specific questions I have about games in the understanding of everyday life, to broader questions on the role of global media networks. The emergence of such a network in the contemporary era has been linked by scholars to various overarching theories such as globalization, postmodernism, telecity, and capitalism. Each of these theories and without doubt many others offer a particular context for understanding the role of gaming in everyday life, and I also believe are made sense of by players in light of their experiences through play.

There is always a danger when addressing the larger issues that the x-box games, my original object of inquiry will become lost, merely used as an example to illustrate my theories. My concern is that by imposing an academic grid upon people’s everyday knowledge I will be obfuscating and consequently undervaluing that knowledge in favour of a particular academic point that I wish to use computer games to prove. As an aside I will state that this practice is endemic in so called scholarship on computer games [13]. This is why I intend to invest in a rigorous practice of play, to conduct my research primarily as media ethnography and secondarily as a textual analysis. To borrow a turn of phrase from de Certeau I wish to know the practice of gaming as a tour rather than a map [14]. To many of the academic writings on computer games are conducted with the respectable distance that is appropriate for other texts, but completely inappropriate for understanding the particularities of play. Part of the academic reluctance to engage fully with games, may come from the sheer size of the texts, I have spent over 60 hours playing the x-box game Star Wars: Knight of the Old Republic (2003), spent another 25 taking notes as a secondary player (or spectator), with the end of the game only just coming in sight. I proudly completed my first ever x-box game Beyond Good and Evil (2003) in about 20 hours to discover that it was regarded as a ‘short’ game. Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (2003), another short game, took me about eighteen hours to complete. The only reason I was able to complete it in this time was that I had the game set to ‘easy’, a setting that is, unfortunately, unavailable to PhD students that are having difficultly meeting deadlines.

In negotiating this disjuncture between the ‘commonsense’ understanding of everyday life and the complex critical enquiry demanded by academia I will turn to the tools of anthropology. One of the tasks of the anthropologist is to utilise the categories that are meaningful to the informants. This is called an emic perspective, and is contrasted with the etic perspective where the categories are defined by the researcher [15]. The role of the ethnographer is to build on the emic perspectives an etic understanding, that while acknowledging the validity of the informant’s categories is able to create a critical perspective. With this notion in mind I wish to return to my research on computer game genres.

Gamers understanding of genre categories can become quite nuanced, but I will argue here that they come back to four broad categories. The categories are action, role-playing, simulation and strategy. In order to clarify these genres in my head I embarked on a two-week project to play as many x-box games, from as many genres as I could. Writing up my notes from this extravaganza was informative. By playing several simulations I started to see a variance in the genre that resonated throughout the medium, some games required constant maintenance, they were performative, others operated through a combination of surveillance and intervention. For example, the activities involved in a driving simulation like Project Gotham Racing 2, are characterized by detailed attention to the game-screen and constant interaction with the controller during play. In games of this type the player has to constantly perform kinaesthetic actions, manipulate the controller, following the visual cues supplied by the screen. How well they integrate these activities and are able to contextualize them within the physical rules of the game world determines their eventual success or failure at the game. However, the activities involved in playing Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis are of a different kind, in this game the player must integrate information from, and make calibrations on, several screens in order to make effective interventions on a process of development that is already underway. The player has to manipulate the simulation as it progresses through time in order to get the result with the most utility. This may involve long periods of surveillance, where no direct interventions are made by the player, as they accumulate funds, or anticipate the success or failure of a particular decision that can only be revealed in the process of time. While ostensively these practices are similar, I believe that they can be divided usefully into two non-exclusive categories of games, the first group are characterised by the players crucial role in performing the text, while the second group are characterised by the interventions the player must make to bring the ergodic process to the desired end.

This distinction I found repeated in the strategy genre, although more explicitly acknowledged in the original genre categories by the division between real-time and turn-based strategy games. My examination of the action genre uncovered what I would call a hyper-performative sub-category that involves the player performing the desired action by selecting combinations of inputs. For example, in the action game The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (2003) in order to attack a foe the character must manoeuvre their avatar in range of the selected foe and then select an attack based on a combination of buttons, the effectiveness of the combination will vary according to the type of foe faced, the more powerful the foe, the increased difficulty in performing the attack that is most useful against them. To slay an orc champion, the player could use the combination Y, Y, B, Y, called the ‘Shield Cleaver’ which will first smash the foe shield, then knock them to the ground, and they strike them while they are vulnerable. However, failure to follow the sequence with the precise order and timing will result in a less effective, or even ineffective attack. This is in contrast to many other games like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (2003), where the player selects a target and the selects an attack, the computer then determines whether the attack fails of succeeds based on the skill and abilities of the character the avatar represents rather than the skill of the player. This type of action game, exemplified by The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King is hyper-performativ; the abilities possessed by the avatar of the player must be activated by a technical performance by the player that is based on a strategic decision. This type of performance, of game-play virtuosity, represents a considerable effort, and furthermore, this effort suggests a type of ‘textual’ mastery that represents a significant break with prior media.

Finally my examination of the role-playing genre highlighted to me that a rather predominant form of epiphany within all genres of gaming, but most explicitly in roleplaying games is epiphany that occurs rather than through a passage into previously unexplored space, but an epiphany which transforms the abilities of the character or avatar that transforms the characters relationship to an already explored environment. For example, the player of Beyond Good and Evil (2003) is initially bound by rather strict parameters, but these parameters are expanded and the space within the parameters transformed during the process of the game. Early in the game the players’ avatar modifies her hovercraft so it can jump, which allows access to new islands and also to new spaces within the already explored spaces, later the she finds a space ship which enables the player to fly first around the game area, exploring areas inaccessible without flight and then for the games climax allows her to leave the planet for its satellite.

This initial inquiry into computer game genres is an exercise that may have nothing to do with my final dissertation. However, I am satisfied that my analysis has foreshadowed the problems I may have in discussing with gamers their experiences of gaming. This encourages me not only to carefully think about how to address the issues I wish to address when speaking with game players, but also how to approach the ethnography in a manner that allows the gamer to speak their own understandings of their experiences [7]. Thus I propose a method of triangulation, in addition to the traditional media ethnography, I will conduct interviews with the gamers themselves, do textual analysis of the games and discursive analysis of the online communities. In addition to this my ethnography will combine the traditional media ethnography, with a virtual ethnography of both the online play and the online communication between players [16].

In order to enrich my approach and to solve problems that I anticipate in my research I have taken on board two additional research paradigms that I believe are complimentary, both to each other and my chosen topic. For a start both paradigms complement my mixed methods approach, agreeing that triangulation is the best way to approach a particular text. The paradigm Multi-modal analysis is useful for two key reasons. First, multi-modal analysis approaches text with the assumption that meaning is produced by a synergy of modes [17]. For example x-box games operate to produce meaning through a combination of aural, visual and tactile modes. Importantly to the study of games and other multi-media, multi-modal analysis seeks to see the ways in which these modes operate together to produce meaning rather than assigning the various modes hierarchal ranks in the meaning producing process. In film, for example scholars such as David Bordwell assign the visual a privileged place in the meaning production to the visual, with sound taking an ancillary role [18]. Second, Multimodal analysis not only seeks to understand the way that a particular meaning(s) is produced by the text, but also how that meaning(s) is made sense of in terms of the wider discourse(s). Furthermore, this paradigm conceives the stages of design, production and distribution as key stages in the creation of meaning, and demands that each stage be placed under similar scrutiny as the text itself [17,19]. Again this is beneficial to games as certain gaming practices move from the purely discursive (discussing the game), to the design, production and distribution of websites, reviews, fictions and walkthroughs about games, the production and distribution of gaming mods, and the (re)distribution of pirated copies of the games themselves. For both these reasons I suggest that Multimodal analysis will prove useful in unravelling the transnational intertextual commodity. The other paradigm I wish to utilize is that of discursive realism, my attraction to this methodology rests on its commitment to a holistic approach in media based research. Taking the text as their central object of study this approach seeks to place the text within a frame that contextualize the text as a communication product that links producers to audiences. Thus it involves understanding the relationship of the organizational context of the media producer to the everyday life of the media audience. Following this the method of discursive realism argues that the communication processes should be contextualised and framed again within broader socio-cultural practices [15]. Thus the method is appropriate for the study I propose which involves contextualising the game players everyday understanding of the gaming process as a unique clustering of producer/consumers within the growing networks of global techno/capital.

From here, then where? Currently I am in the doldrums of aporia regarding the next step in the development of my method, which is establishing what kinds of questions to pose to informants that will allow them to speak about the issues that I am interested in without directing them toward the kinds of answers that I both desire and anticipate. I feel as though I must end this summary of my research process with an apology for having brought you here with the promise of explaining why x-box games are pedagogical ecologies. Unfortunately time constraints led me to drop this somewhat elaborate point from today’s discussion. However, out of a combined feeling of guilt and duty I will send a copy of my paper on genre to anyone who wishes to read this argument, with the proviso that they contextualize the paper as a work in progress.

Notes
[1] Aarseth, E. (1997). Cybertext: Perspectives On Ergodic Literature. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.
[2] Aarseth, E. (1999). ‘Aporia and Epiphany in Doom and The Speaking Clock: The Temporality of Ergodic Art’. In Marie-Laure Ryan (Ed.). Cyberspace Textuality: Computer Technology and Literary Theory. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
[3] Benjamin, W. (1968). ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.’ In Hannah Arendt (Ed.). Illuminations. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World.
[4] Flew, T. (2002). New Media: An Introduction. Melbourne: Oxford University Press.
[5] See http://www.gnn.com/ for quicktime versions of both videos.
[6] Schott, G. and Horrell, K. (2000). ‘Girl Gamers and Their Relationship with the Gaming Culture.’ Convergence 6:4: 36-53.
[7] Morris, S. (2004). ‘Shoot First, Ask Questions Later: Ethnographic Research in an Online Computer gaming Community.’ Media International Australia 110: 31-41.
[8] King, G. and Kryzwinska, T. (Eds.). (2002). ScreenPlay: Cinema/Videogames/Interfaces. London: Wallflower Press.
[9] Bolter, J. D. and Grusin, R. A. (1999). Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge: MIT Press.
[10] Frasca, G. (2003). ‘Narrative Versus Simulation: An Introduction to Ludology.’ Mark J. P. Wolf (Ed.). The Videogame Theory Reader. New York; London: Routledge.
[11] Jenkins, H. (1992). Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture. New York: Routledge.
[12] Kinder, M (1991). Playing with Power in Movies, Television and Video Games: From Muppet Babies to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Berkeley; London: University of California Press.
[13] The Game Studies Journal specifically asks for articles on games that are structure in this way not to be submitted to them.
[14] de Certeau, M. (1998). The Practice of Everyday Life. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
[15] Schroder, K., Drotner, K., Kline, S. and Murray, C. (2003). Researching Audiences. London: Arnold.
[16] Hine, C. (2001). Virtual Ethnography. London; Thousand Oak; New Delhi: Sage Publications.
[17] Burn, A and Parker, D. (2003). Analysing Media Texts. London; New York: Continuum.
[18] Bordwell, D and Thompson, K. (1997). Film Art: An Introduction. New York: The McGraw-Hill Companies.
[19] Kress, G. and van Leeuwen, T. (2001). Multimodal Discourse: The Modes and Media of Contemporary Communication. London, Arnold.

Lara Croft Article

2004-08-23T19:45:00.000+10:00

Work that is Extremely in Progress

‘Rethinking Homo Ludens:
Queering the Game Player.

Popular media portrayals of the activity of computer gaming, with few exceptions, associate the computer game with a male audience. In this article I will explore the implications of this linkage in order to foreshadow problems in the ethnographic enquiry I propose on the uses of x-box games and the x-box in everyday life. Part of my project here is to try to understand, how should I approach the gamer as an ethnographic subject. By considering gaming as an ‘a-priori’ masculine activity, I suggest that I would be ignoring the myriad practices and activities of female, gay and transgender gamers. My project in this article is to open the quotidian practices of gaming to include the heterogenous practices and pleasures that can only be accounted for by detaching games from the dominant discourse of masculinity in which they circulate; in short it is to ‘Queer’ the predominantly masculine field of games.

The particular ethnographic problem that I wish to foreshadow here is the issue of the perceived power imbalance between the academic ethnographer and the gamer as a subject. Certainly there is a responsibility to allow gamers to speak with their own voices, but not at the expense of an academic critique. If gaming and game culture is dominated by masculine voices, then to what extent should I seek to find alternate voices? I suggest that by deliberately seeking out marginal voices I am not simply – and rather patronizingly – allowing the subaltern to speak. By recounting their particular practices of gaming, the marginalised gamer will also add to my understanding of the polysemous potential of the game-text.

Subordinating Masculinities

In order to open this inquiry I will begin with the assertions made by the Cultural Studies scholar John Fiske in Understanding the Popular:

So video arcades are popular, particularly among subordinated males (subordinated by class, age, race, or any combination of the three), because they can be used to think through, to rehearse in practice, the experiential gap between the masculine ideology of power and performance and the social experience of powerlessness. The players use the machines as symbols of our capitalist society, so that playing (against) them becomes a re-enactment of social relations, but the retelling is from the point of view of the subordinate – the meanings and pleasures they produce in playing are theirs, and therefore the relationship between human and machine is the reverse of that normally experienced in social life. [emphasis added][i]

From this quote I suggest that the crux of Fiske’s observation is that games are a space for negotiating the ‘experiential gap between the masculine ideology of power and performance and the social experience of powerlessness’. However, two key caveats should be placed on Fiske’s schema. First, Fiske’s identification of the various forces of subordination, omits sexual orientation. His claim is therefore associated with males that are any combination of working class, young or of a racial minority (what would this be in Perth in the 1980’s), but not with homosexuals. Second, the space of empowerment that Fiske identifies need not be coded as a masculine. There are other subordinated groups who might also wish to experience the pleasures that Fiske describes. Here, I am referring to both heterosexual and homosexual woman. With these caveats in mind I wish to explore Fiske’s notion that the subordinate is able to produce their own “meanings and pleasures” with the aim of opening these pleasures and meanings to include those produced by people subordinated by gender and sexual orientation.

Fiske’s own exploration of the “meanings and pleasures” of gaming to subordinated males lacks a firm grounding either in textual analysis of the games or in empirical evidence from the player’s themselves about their uses and pleasures. I suggest that these steps are appropriate to test Fiske’s hypothesis, and the modified hypothesis I have postulated. An investigation of previous theoretical work on textual analysis of games and fieldwork carried out on gaming culture both supports and challenges Fiske’s assumption that gaming is a purely masculine activity.

In the popular media games are often criticised for being violent and for their offensive portrayal of women. Media emphasis on content of this kind operates to concatenate gaming with masculine pleasures in the popular imagination. While many games employ neither violence, nor hyper-sexualized women, it is these games in particular that are used as ‘evidence’ that gaming is a masculine pleasure. While there is a possibility that female or homosexual subjects may take pleasure in these games this pleasure will always be within the context of a pleasure designed for another. Dianne Carr in ‘Playing with Lara’ describes her own experience of playing Tomb Raider [sic]: “When I play Lara, I play in the company of her creators, and in the shadow of the desiring gaze that her breasts and short shorts were formed to address”.[ii] Carr implies that the preferred reading, that it is the intention of the game’s creators is to make a text that can be enjoyed in this way, thought the visual pleasure taken in the body of Lara Croft. While it is clear that in many ways the hyper-sexualization of Lara Croft is a deliberate and cynical ploy of the game’s designers to appeal to their target audience, I suggest that Carr is theorising her own particular position in a proscriptive way. The implied consensual community of the masculine “desiring gaze” is potentially disrupted by an empirical enquiry that describes the pleasures derived from playing Tomb Raider from those outside this particular target group.

The work of Anne-Marie Schliener illustrates the diversity of pleasures that may be taken in Tomb Raider [sic]. In ‘Does Lara Croft Wear Fake Polygons? Gender and Gender-Role Subversion In Computer Adventure Games’ she argues for four particular alternate subject positions that that disrupt the totality of the heterosexual male gaze.[iii] These four positions that she describes are that of ‘drag queen’, ‘dominatrix’, ‘role-model’ and ‘queer female desire’.

Desiring the Avatar

Schliener’s description of the ‘drag queen’ configuration of play focuses on the implications of Lara as an avatar, which is the object in the game that the player controls and uses to act upon and within the game world. The crux of this point being that in Tomb Raider the male player is playing with, and identifying with a female avatar. The avatar is identifies by Espen Aarseth in Cybertext: Perspectives on Cybernetic Literature as a contested site.[iv] This In this case I suggest that Schliener’s observations locate the contest between the subjectification of the masculine gaze and the identification that comes with play. Schliener locates this virtual tranvesticism within the experimental gender space of the Internet chatroom.[v] This reading of computer games as potentially disrupting strictly defined gender roles, and providing a space for experimentation is also noted by Marsha Kinder in Playing with Power. Observing her son and his friends playing Super Mario Brothers 2 she explains the selection of a female avatar ‘Princess Toadstool’ due to her characteristics within the game as coming with the “risk of transgender identification.”[vi]

Here I believe it is important to distinguish between games that have primarily female avatars and those that allow the player to select a female avatar if they desire. A player faced with numerous choices over their avatar, is likely to experiment to discover the different abilities and characteristics of each avatar and chose the avatar with the characteristic that she or he prefers. In Kinder’s description she implies that her sons selection of a female avatar is weighed against the safer option of choosing the more masculine avatar of Mario or Luigi, but that his decision is finalised on the basis of the characteristics of the female avatar that give him some advantage in the game world – in this case Princess Toadstool’s ability to hover when she jumps. This kind of choice leads James Newman in ‘The myth of the ergodic videogame’ to argue that understanding avatars in terms of representation and identification is ignoring a peculiar set of evaluations taken by the player during the course of the game which enable them to define the character not only in a representational sense as a male or female, but “as sets of capabilities, potentials and techniques”[vii] that are made available to the player within the game. This is not to say that the gender of the avatar becomes irrelevant! Rather in games where different avatars are available, other considerations apart from gender identification become important – if not paramount factors – in the player’s decision.

Tomb Raider and many other games are deliberately different in this regard, as the player must chose to play a female avatar, there is not other intervening valuing system that affects how the player’s decision. Thus the play of these games by males involves more certainty than “risk” when it comes to transgender identification. This tension between identification and objectification in the avatar, needs to be explored without being simply resolved in favour of one or the other. I suggest that during the course of play identification with Lara is necessary in order to make sense of the action that occurs on the game screen. This form of identification is prosthetic, the player identifies with Lara because she is the tool that enables them to act within the virtual world. The player cannot make sense of their own actions within the game without understanding that they are acting through Lara.

This identification with Lara the avatar opens up the play of a game such as Tomb Raider that uses female avatars to more than the pleasures of the male gaze. The heterosexual male player has to negotiate the contested space between Lara as ‘I’ and Lara as ‘Other’. Thus I suggest this particular configuration of play, those games with conspicuously gendered avatars, have a peculiar possibility for exploring issues of sexuality and identity. Beyond the possibilities in Tomb Raider, there are games with male avatar – Serious Sam, Metal Gear Solid and Max Payne for example – the female games could also use is a similar manner. This possibility is opened further once the position of women gamers’ vis-à-vis female avatar is considered.

Digitized Femininity

The tension between objectification and identification is played out in a different manner with female gamers. The negotiation is between identifying with Lara Croft in Tom Raider, for example, and Lara’s construction as a male ideal of femininity. Scliener points out that even though Lara is visually a heterosexual male stereotyped fantasy, she does not fit the typical bimbo stereotype, as she is both highly educated and physically competent. Furthermore, as game playing has an important role as a pedagogical tool for teaching general computer skills, women and girls, in particular, who play games are empowering themselves in a ‘real’ sense.[viii] To take Carr’s position that the potential pleasures of games like Tomb Raider are somehow flawed due to their address of an intended heterosexual and masculine audience does not acknowledge this empowering aspect of the game, and games in general to female gamers. Rather it serves to entrench a homogenous gendering of the game audience and consequently the pleasures of game-play.

[i] John Fiske Understanding the Popular, Unwin Hyman, Boston, 1989, 139.
[ii] Dianne Carr ‘Playing with Lara’, in Greg King and Tanya Kryzwinksa (eds), ScreenPlay: Cinema/Videogames/Interfaces, Wallflower press, London and New York, 2002, 174.
[iii] Anne-Marie Schliener ‘Does Lara Croft Wear Fake Polygons? Gender and Gender-Role Subversion in Computer Adventure Games’, Leonardo, 34:3, 2001, 223.
[iv] Espen Aarseth Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature, John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1997, 120.
[v] Schliener, 223.
[vi] Marsha Kinder Playing With Power In Movies, Television, and Videogames: From Muppet Babies to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, University of California Press, London and Berkeley, 1993, 107.
[vii] James Newman ‘The myth of the ergodic videogame’, Game Studies 2:1, 2002, 6.
[viii] Schliener, 224.