Galloway: “Counter-gaming” (2006)

1. Galloway: “Counter-gaming” (2006) • Artist-made game mods (usually “game-art”) • Mod visual design and software, not rule—do not modify gameplay • Qualities (normal games vs. art mods): • Transparency vs. foregrounding • Gameplay vs. aestheticism • Representational modeling vs. visual artifacts • Natural physics vs. invented physics • Interactivity vs. noncorrespondence • Calls for indie game movement, “radical action,” critique of gameplay itself

2. Tom Bissell, “Braided” (2010) • Jonathan Blow: “dynamical meaning”—theme and mood developing out of gameplay • Story vs. challenge (p. 93) • “touching people authentically and deeply” • “It feels as though the person who created it was trying to communicate something, however nameless and complicated. It feels like a statement, and an admission. It feels, in other words, a lot like art.” (p. 101) • Is art narrative (or narrative-related) for Blow/Bissell?

3. Ian Bogost, “Art” (2011) • Roger Ebert’s objection—no authorial voice • “art-games”—use proceduralismto make art • 5 qualities: • Procedural rhetoric (making a claim by modeling its processes, rather than description or depiction) • Introspection • Abstraction • Subjective representation • Strong authorship