Start, Select, Continue: The Ludic Anxiety in Video Game Scholarship
2013; Routledge; Volume: 13; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/15358593.2014.886333
ISSN1535-8593
Autores Tópico(s)Gambling Behavior and Treatments
ResumoAbstractGame-studies scholars have adopted the phrase “ludology vs. narratology” to explain a tension in video game scholarship. Ludology is the perspective that video games should be studied with their uniqueness as a medium at the foreground while narratology is the study of games that take that uniqueness for granted in order to ask broader questions. In this essay, I perform a critical literature review in which I trace three modes of rhetorical video game scholarship inspired by the ludology vs. narratology anxiety: (1) ludic scholarship, or work focused on discovering what makes video games different than other media, (2) transitional scholarship, or work that sees video games as different but moves beyond merely targeting those differences and into other arguments, and (3) communicative scholarship, or work that investigates how video games communicate as one would examine any other media, namely by taking the differences between games and other media as granted. Ultimately, I forecast that the ludic anxiety about video games is necessary, but game scholarship is moving towards understanding games with more of a communicative perspective.Keywords: StartSelectContinueLudicAnxietyVideo GameScholarship Notes[1] The game's sequel, Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, was released in September, 2013.[2] For an extensive review of the topic of cinema's emergence and popular anxiety about its function in society, see Lee Grieveson, Policing Cinema: Movies and Censorship in Early-Twentieth-Century America (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2004).[3] Bogost introduces his concept of procedural rhetoric in Unit Operations, though the description is rough at best. The book primarily concerns itself with describing how units of meaning may interact between media. See Ian Bogost, Unit Operations: An Approach to Videogame Criticism (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006). Also see his chapter, “The Rhetoric of Video Games,” in The Ecology of Games: Connecting Youth, Games, and Learning, ed. Katie Salen (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008), 117–40.[4] Ian Bogost, Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007), 28.[5] Alexander R. Galloway, Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2006). Page 37 offers a clear diagram of his definitions and is worth examination.[6] Alexander R. Galloway, Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2006). Page 37 offers a clear diagram of his definitions and is worth examination, 37.[7] Bogost, Unit Operations, 56.[8] While examples can be found in various journals, I limit most of my examples to the recently created journal Games and Culture because of its focus on video games and its quality scholarship.[9] Marlin C. Bates, “Persistent Rhetoric for Persistent Worlds: The Mutability of the Self in Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games,” Quarterly Review of Film and Video 26 (2009): 102–17.[10] Petri Lankoski, “Player Character Engagement in Computer Games,” Games and Culture 6 (2011): 291–311.[11] Jonas Heide Smith and Sine Nørholm Just, “Playful Persuasion: The Rhetorical Potential of Advergames,” Nordicom Review 30 (2009): 53–68.[12] José P. Zagal, Clara Fernández-Vara, and Michael Mateas, “Rounds, Levels, and Waves: The Early Evolution of Gameplay Segmentation,” Games and Culture 3 (2008): 175–98.[13] Drew Davidson, “Well Played: Interpreting Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time,” Games and Culture 3 (2008): 356–86.[14] I believe a generational gap is the reason for the lack of familiarity with video games among scholars. As younger scholars enter their respective fields, video game scholarship seems to increase significantly. Regardless, whether or not video games are unknown to scholars, they are certainly not unknown to the populace considering their enormous popularity and financial success.[15] Ian Bogost, Simon Ferrari, and Bobby Schweizer, Newgames: Journalism at Play (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010), 6.[16] Matthew Wysocki, ed. CTRL-ALT-PLAY: Essays on Control in Video Games (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2012), 1.[17] Nick Dyer-Witheford, Games of Empire: Global Capitalism and Video Games (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2009), 15.[18] Christopher A. Paul, Wordplay and the Discourse of Video Games: Analyzing Words, Design, and Play (New York, NY: Routledge, 2012).[19] Ian Bogost, “Videogames and Ideological Frames,” Popular Communication 4 (2006): 165–83.[20] Vít Šisler, “Palestine in Pixels: The Holy Land, Arab–Israeli Conflict, and Reality Construction in Video Games,” Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication 2 (2009): 275–92.[21] Jessica Aldred and Brian Greenspan, “A Man Chooses, A Slave Obeys: Bioshock and the Dystopian Logic of Convergence,” Games and Culture 6 (2011): 479–96.[22] Todd Harper, “Rules, Rhetoric, and Genre: Procedural Rhetoric in Persona 3,” Games and Culture 6 (2011): 395–413.[23] James Paul Gee, What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy, 2nd edition (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 3.[24] Nina B. Huntemann, Matthew Thomas Payne, and Ian Bogost, ed. Joystick Soldiers: The Politics of Play in Military Video Games (New York, NY: Routledge, 2010).[25] Betsy James DiSalvo, Kevin Crowley, and Roy Norwood, “Learning in Context: Digital Games and Young Black Men,” Games and Culture 3 (2008): 131–41.[26] Ben DeVane and Kurt D. Squire, “The Meaning of Race and Violence in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas,” Games and Culture 3 (2008): 264–85.[27] See Robertson Allen, “The Unreal Enemy of America's Army,” Gaming and Culture 6 (2011): 38–60; and André Brock, “‘When Keeping it Real Goes Wrong’: Resident Evil 5, Racial Representation, and Gamers,” Games and Culture 6 (2011): 429–52.[28] Steve Spittle, “‘Did This Game Scare You? Because it Sure as Hell Scared Me!’ F.E.A.R., the Abject and the Uncanny,” Games and Culture 6 (2011): 312–26.[29] Ewan Kirkland, “Discursively Constructing the Art of Silent Hill,” Games and Culture 5 (2010): 314–28.[30] Esther MacCallum-Stewart, “Lost on a Desert Island: The Sims 2 Castaway as Convergence Text,” Games and Culture 5 (2010): 278–97.[31] Ewan Kirkland, “Resident Evil's Typewriter: Survival Horror and Its Remediations,” Games and Culture 4 (2009): 115–26.
Referência(s)