Eludamos. Journal for Computer Game Culture
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Strategy Computer Games and Discourses of Geopolitical Order
No full textThis article presents some thoughts on the forms and functions of ‘hidden’ knowledge in popular strategy games. It concentrates specifically on discourses of geopolitical thinking to argue that actual games use and reproduce specific forms of a geographical and political knowledge which are both deeply connected to the ideas of an extreme national and political thinking of the early 20th century, and form a way of describing globalized forms of order, policy and conflict. Exposing this idea will take a three-step approach. First, the close linkage between strategy games and spatial concepts in general needs to be examined. Second, some structural arguments of classical geopolitics of the 1920s to 1960s in contemporary strategy games must be revealed. Finally, this text refers to current booms and renaissances of such geopolitical discourses. In short: this article tries to show how politics are coded as actions in space and how the German “Lebensraum”-policy is connected to Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilization via Age of Empire
Evoking the Inexpressible: The Fine Art and Business of Games
No full textThis interview is excerpted from a series we conducted in early 2010 with Brian J. Moriarty, Professor of Practice at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI). Moriarty has been developing games for the better part of 30 years, and has worked for Analog, Infocom, LucasArts, Rocket Science, Mpath, Hearme, Skotos Tech, and ImaginEngine. He has produced a host of critically and commercially acclaimed titles, including Wishbringer, Trinity, Beyond Zork, and Loom, which earned MacWorld\u27s Adventure Game of the Year in 1990
Strange Reality: On Glitches and Uncanny Play
No full textVideogames have had to struggle with balancing the requirements of \u27good\u27 gameplay with a drive toward increasing graphical and narrative realism, spurred on by constantly improving technologies of simulation and computer graphics. Despite these advances in hardware and programming techniques, videogames\u27 simulations of reality have, for the most part, remained crude and cartoonish next to the allegorical richness of description in art, literature and film-a comparison that may be unfair, but nevertheless has been relentlessly repeated. This paper attempts to highlight some of the difficulties and failures of realism in videogames through the lens of the uncanny, which, it is argued, should be understood as an essential trait of videogames in their capacity as simulations of realities, and as modern technology
Book Review: The Ethics of Computer Games by Miguel Sicart
No full textThis review describes The Ethics of Computer Games, a recent academic release by Miguel Sicart. Sicart uses a philosophical framework of various ethical and ontological theories to analyze how different games and game designs invoke or ignore the moral virtues of the culture in which they exist. According to Sicart, the most ethical games are those which take into account the complex subjective role of the player and the game community, and inscribe in the gameplay a kind of ethical system that either cultivates "virtuous" exploration or challenges the player to come to a specific ethical conclusion based on careful reflection
Screening Play: Rules, Wares, and Representations in “Realistic” Video Games
No full textIn highlighting the apparatus as the keystone for the magic circle of video gaming, we displace players—the subject of ludology—and “text”—the subject of narratology. This is not to deny the importance of players’ agency or the meanings of texts in video gaming; rather it is to reconsider these with regard to the screening of player from played inherent in the gaming apparatus. To better understand the situation of homo ludens in these more mediated play spaces, we turn to Jacques Lacan’s account of “split” subjectivity and retread it by explaining how it may well explain the operation of a magic circle spanning three dimensions of screen-play: rules (Symbolic dimension), representations (Imaginary dimension), and wares (Real dimension). In the end, we come around to the other space of Huizinga’s theory—the connections with the non-game world—to show that the value of video game play is also found beyond the apparatus, that the experience and enjoyment of video games are affected in part by social reality and, in turn, social reality is being affected by the experience and enjoyment of video games. Arriving at this point by first theorizing the video game apparatus, however, highlights matters of video game design more so than issues of audience or textual analysis. To illustrate this perspective, we conclude by defining three ways to analyze video games in terms of “realism,” proposing three types of video game realism: representational, simulative, and inverse.
Removing the Checks and Balances That Hamper Democracy: Play and the Counter-hegemonic Contradictions of Grand Theft Auto IV
No full textGrand Theft Auto IV provides an unparalleled opportunity to consider the outcomes when textual play and game play not only intersect, but operate in concert. Indeed, the two are inextricably linked to each other and to the social commentary which contributes to the game\u27s story, humor, and thematic unity. This article considers the modes of textual play in Grand Theft Auto IV, as well as the locations and situations when players encounter them while playing the game. It also explores the subversive of potential of textual play as it relies on and departs from game play, and attempts to reconcile whether or not the success of such motives hinges on the very act of playing a game, or if the specific game (and its franchise) overdetermine the result
Discourse Engines for Art Mods
No full textThis paper presents a genealogy of "art mod" (artistic videogame modification) definitions and frameworks. Such frameworks serve, either intentionally or unintentionally, to establish modding within a tradition of analysis and critique: whether participatory design, alternative media, folk art, and/or fine art. By situating the definition and history of art mods within a particular discourse, researchers construct the ground from which to make arguments towards organizing the reception and critique of these works. Such arguments include whether mods in general (and art mods in particular) are inherently political or banal (even boring), whether these works speak back at all to games themselves (and whether they should), whether these works are powerful and disruptive; or compromised (by virtue of their parasitic position), and as a result marginal. A genealogy of art mod frameworks highlights the boundary politics of the critique of art mods, and the problem of presenting transparent interpretive lenses in an interdisciplinary field such as game studies
Planets as small as your house. A review of Super Mario Galaxy
No full textThis article reviews the 2008 Wii game Super Mario Galaxy from a ‘literary,’ cultural, and aesthetic perspective. It will be argued that fictional spaces are able to afford experiences of intimacy and security, in literature as well as in video games. The game will be compared on this point with the children’s book Le Petit Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, and similarities in spatial make-up will be shown. In the end, it will be stated that although the spatial structure is similar to the book, and innovative with regard to the history of spatial representations in video games, the emotional content of the book is substantially deeper than that of the video game
Postcolonial Playgrounds: Games and postcolonial culture
No full textMany games touch upon issues that are related to the postcolonial culture we live in. Be it in the shape of referring to how it has generated ethnic differences, subscribing to (post) capitalist values of winning and gaining, or by employing militarist strategies that have been partly shaped our colonial histories, cultural notions that are related to our colonial past are often resonant in games. However, one particular strand of strategy games takes the notions of colonialism as its most central focus. Games like Age Of Empires (AOE), Civilization and Rise of Nations, may differ greatly in certain ludological aspects, but all share a strong fascination with colonial history. Through employing colonial techniques of domination like exploring, trading, map-making and military manoeuvring, players create their personal colonial pasts and futures. Even though it is evident that such games share an explicit fascination with colonial history, it remains less clear in what way they may be called postcolonial. In this article I will shed light on why and how such games can be called postcolonial and should even be conceived as one of the most significant arenas to express the tensions and frictions that are part of the postcolonial culture we live in. As postcolonial playgrounds they offer the perfect means to play with and make sense of how colonial spatial practices have shaped contemporary culture. I will argue that the very character of digital games as well as the specific game mechanisms of historical strategy games makes them postcolonial playgrounds par excellence
The Computer Game as a Somatic Experience
No full textThis article describes the experience of playing computer games. With a media archaeological outset the relation between human and machine is emphasised as the key to understand the experience. This relation is further explored by drawing on a phenomenological philosophy of technology which sketches the relation as founded on the player´s embodiment in-the-world. Through the framework of somaesthetics, three different, yet intertwined, embodied relations are outlined as facilitating somatic experiences revolving around the experiential, the representational, and the performative which displace the player´s habitual engagement with the world