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Videogames as Critical Artifact

Videogames as Critical Artifact. Week 5 Semester 2 2010. 3 Areas for Today. Videogames as Media Videogames as Games Videogames as Unique Artifacts. Videogames as Media. What is ‘media’ ? What is ‘The Media’ ? (note capital letters). Media & The Media.

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Videogames as Critical Artifact

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  1. Videogames as Critical Artifact Week 5 Semester 2 2010

  2. 3 Areas for Today • Videogames as Media • Videogames as Games • Videogames as Unique Artifacts

  3. Videogames as Media • What is ‘media’ ? • What is ‘The Media’ ? (note capital letters)

  4. Media & The Media • Medium: an object or system that can be imprinted with meaning and used as a means of communication. • The plural of medium is media, not mediums not medias. • Name some media?

  5. The Media • Relatively new term. • Describes the cultural, industrial, political and technical systems of (mass) media in the modern era. • Human communication systems • Use processes of industrialized technology for producing messages • Generally aim to reach large audiences • Affected by popularity and commercial concerns

  6. Artistic Endeavour • Art forms are media • Often separated from the Media by the concern for profit • Film, contemporary novels, music all commercially-driven • Shakespeare and Mozart both got paid for their work • Can an artist be paid for his work?

  7. The Media Industry • Media studies takes a long perspective • Society at large • Cultural capital • Hegemony • Ideology • Capitalism • Construction of society via media • Can art exist within capitalism?

  8. Criticism • What is Criticism? • What do we Criticize? • Who are the Critics? • Why do they do it?

  9. Videogames as Games • Games are thousands of years old • Play is much, much older, and an instinct • Play serves very important purposes • More of this in Week 8

  10. Games are Rules • Games have Rules • Rules can be coded into automatic systems • Videogames use computer algorithms to automate rules • Videogames use visual language to describe the system and its behaviour • Videogames are not only games

  11. Games of Emergence • Relatively small rule set, “core mechanics” • Wide variety of possible circumstances and outcomes • Unpredictable, unique during each play session • Chess, Sports, Children’s Pretending, FPS Human v Human Deathmatch • Oldest form of gaming

  12. Games of Progression • Newer form of gameplay • A set path through a number of challenges • Used to present a set story in bits and pieces • How do you ‘progress’ through chess? • How do you ‘progress’ through Super Mario Bros?

  13. Videogames as Medium • Videogames are uniquely suited to switching between both modes of play. • Nothing wrong with a videogame of progression. • Difficult to switch back and forth between progression and emergence in one game. • Important to identify the kind of game you are criticizing accurately.

  14. Reading Videogames • Critical reading requires heightened awareness of the forces acting on a given artifact • Literary criticism focuses on the text as art, against aesthetic and poetic criteria • Media studies, ‘cultural criticism’ focuses on the artifact’s relationship to the society from which it came • Not a given, the two schools of thought battle back and forth

  15. Ask Yourself • Is it important when and where Shakespeare grew up, how he was compensated for his work, and how much it cost to see a play? • Is it important for a novel to be unified, internally consistent, and use particular prosaic style? • Is it important for a TV show to adhere to a 3-act structure, to not breach the ‘4th wall’ ?

  16. Reading Games • Narratology: reading games for/as story • Ludology: reading gameplay • Contested ground, two schools struggling for dominance • There must be a happy medium!!

  17. Narrative & Aesthetics • Established in other fields • Narratology is a ‘Structuralist’ theory • All narratives can be broken down into chunks that make up its structure, independent from content. • How well do games present stories? • Visual & Aural aesthetics well-established fields of study

  18. Reading Gameplay • What is the goal of a videogame? How do we judge whether the gameplay is successful? • Gameplay is made up of arbitrary rules, as are the events in a plot. • Should be crafted in order to encourage interesting gameplay, as a plot should be interesting.

  19. Gameplay & Aesthetics • How do the rules interact with the story? • More on this in week 8

  20. Critical Theory • Interpretation of art is not a science (no matter how hard they try) • Thousands of years and millions of pages of critical theory • Changes frequently, think of the ‘-isms’ you know • More in Week 8

  21. Why do we Bother? • Why do we make art? • Why do we criticise it? • Why is aesthetic criticism important? • Why is cultural criticism important?

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