Unit Operations: An Approach to Videogame Criticism
Citations
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12 citations
Cites background or methods from "Unit Operations: An Approach to Vid..."
...To address these questions, we use Ian Bogost’s (2006a) concept of unit operations to evaluate the concept that ‘‘hard work is rewarded’’ as it relates to various media, including films and videogames, and to analyze the historical and theoretical implications of the concept....
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...Bogost believes units are a worthy level of analysis for two reasons: units describe and influence the systems in which they function, and units chart the progress of a particular concept across media history. We established that, in film and television, the ‘‘hard work’’ unit manifests itself typically as montage. However, in digital gaming, the montage is not an option, and this is the key quality of games that analyzing the hard work unit makes apparent. Consider a situation drawn from Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty (MGS2), which Newman (2002) has spoken about in the context of human–game interactivity....
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...delight? To address these questions, we use Ian Bogost’s (2006a) concept of unit operations to evaluate the concept that ‘‘hard work is rewarded’’ as it relates to various media, including films and videogames, and to analyze the historical and theoretical implications of the concept....
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...Bogost believes units are a worthy level of analysis for two reasons: units describe and influence the systems in which they function, and units chart the progress of a particular concept across media history. We established that, in film and television, the ‘‘hard work’’ unit manifests itself typically as montage. However, in digital gaming, the montage is not an option, and this is the key quality of games that analyzing the hard work unit makes apparent. Consider a situation drawn from Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty (MGS2), which Newman (2002) has spoken about in the context of human–game interactivity. One major task the game asks players to perform is the disarming of six strategically placed blocks of C4 explosive around an offshore ocean cleanup facility. Each block of C4 is on a different ‘‘strut’’ with six in total, arranged like a hexagon and connected one to another so that access between them involves moving around the perimeter. For the traditional media use of ‘‘hard work,’’ imagine that MGS2 is an action/ espionage film, since the combat and stealth action of the game map reasonably well to that cinematic genre. Watching the player character (in this case, MGS2 protagonist Raiden) move slowly between struts, hunting down, and then disarming all six blocks of C4 would be ridiculously boring. Thus, montage comes into play. Our theoretical action film would show this activity as a series of edited scenes, perhaps, in the rapid style, Bordwell (2002) lays out as ‘‘intensified continuity....
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12 citations
Cites background from "Unit Operations: An Approach to Vid..."
...This formed a surprising point of contact between games studies literature (Bogost, 2008) and physics literature (Roundtree, 2014), (Winsberg, 2010)....
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...In this sense, the artwork becomes a “configurative system” (Bogost, 2008, p.ix) and unit operations are the interlocking components of meaning within any artwork or medium....
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12 citations
Cites background from "Unit Operations: An Approach to Vid..."
...Advocates of video gaming often insist that games constitute a new artistic medium: It would be very strange indeed if they were almost uniquely incapable of transforming people’s character (Bogost, 2006)....
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12 citations
Cites background from "Unit Operations: An Approach to Vid..."
...According to Ian Bogost (2006), games are transmedial systems, but this does not solve the problem....
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