Book•
Unit Operations: An Approach to Videogame Criticism
01 Jan 2006-
TL;DR: In Unit Operations, Ian Bogost argues that similar principles underlie both literary theory and computation, proposing a literary-technical theory that can be used to analyze particular videogames and argues for the possibility of real collaboration between the humanities and information technology.
Abstract: In Unit Operations, Ian Bogost argues that similar principles underlie both literary theory and computation, proposing a literary-technical theory that can be used to analyze particular videogames. Moreover, this approach can be applied beyond videogames: Bogost suggests that any medium -- from videogames to poetry, literature, cinema, or art -- can be read as a configurative system of discrete, interlocking units of meaning, and he illustrates this method of analysis with examples from all these fields. The marriage of literary theory and information technology, he argues, will help humanists take technology more seriously and hep technologists better understand software and videogames as cultural artifacts. This approach is especially useful for the comparative analysis of digital and nondigital artifacts and allows scholars from other fields who are interested in studying videogames to avoid the esoteric isolation of "game studies." The richness of Bogost's comparative approach can be seen in his discussions of works by such philosophers and theorists as Plato, Badiou, Zizek, and McLuhan, and in his analysis of numerous videogames including Pong, Half-Life, and Star Wars Galaxies. Bogost draws on object technology and complex adaptive systems theory for his method of unit analysis, underscoring the configurative aspects of a wide variety of human processes. His extended analysis of freedom in large virtual spaces examines Grand Theft Auto 3, The Legend of Zelda, Flaubert's Madame Bovary, and Joyce's Ulysses. In Unit Operations, Bogost not only offers a new methodology for videogame criticism but argues for the possibility of real collaboration between the humanities and information technology.
Citations
More filters
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine the different types of knowledge that MMORPG players develop as they learn and play a game and present a matrix of complex gamer knowledge types intended not only to expand the reader's understanding of the robust variations and nuances in gamer knowledge but also to serve as a potential example of how to articulate that richness in future research.
12 citations
TL;DR: This article is an attempt to understand cheating in digital games as a practice that highlights the machinicity of the process of digital gameplay.
Abstract: This article is an attempt to understand cheating in digital games as a practice that highlights the machinicity of the process of digital gameplay. The significance of this endeavor lies in the fact that digital gameplay is often naturalized—by the digital games industry, by players, and by scholars in the burgeoning field of digital game studies—which leads to an obfuscation of the inherently cybernetic character of videogames. Cheating and other ``de-ludic'' practices can counteract this naturalization and reveal the process of ``becoming-machine'' that lies at the heart of digital gameplay.
12 citations
01 Jan 2016
TL;DR: This paper outlines a framework and conceptualization of combinatorial design, a term coined to describe non-parametric design strategies that focus on the permutation, combination and patterning of discrete units within virtual reality environments to allow for an enhanced decision making process.
Abstract: This paper outlines a framework and conceptualization of combinatorial design. Combinatorial design is a term coined to describe non-parametric design strategies that focus on the permutation, combination and patterning of discrete units. These design strategies differ substantially from parametric design strategies as they do not operate under continuous numerical evaluations, intervals or ratios but rather finite discrete sets. The conceptualization of this term and the differences with other design strategies are portrayed by the work done in the last 3 years of research at University of Southern California under the Polyomino agenda. The work, conducted together with students, has studied the use of discrete sets and combinatorial strategies within virtual reality environments to allow for an enhanced decision making process, one in which human intuition is coupled to algorithmic intelligence. The work of the research unit has been sponsored and tested by the company Stratays for ongoing research on crowd-sourced design.
12 citations
Cites background from "Unit Operations: An Approach to Vid..."
...Systems seem to play an even more crucial role now more than ever, but they are a new kind of system: the spontaneous and complex result of multitudes rather than singular and absolute holisms” (Bogost, 2006)...
[...]
...(Bogost, 2006) For Bogost, meaning emerges from the coupling of units without belonging to a larger holistic system....
[...]
...However, as Heidegger’s suggestion advises, such operational structures must struggle to maintain their openness, to avoid collapsing into totalizing systems” (Bogost, 2006) This is a further distinction between the formal expression of combinatorial systems and parametric ones....
[...]
...However, as Heidegger’s suggestion advises, such operational structures must struggle to maintain their openness, to avoid collapsing into totalizing systems” (Bogost, 2006)...
[...]
...…role now more than ever, but they are a new kind of system: the spontaneous and complex result of multitudes rather than singular and absolute holisms” (Bogost, 2006) In the studies of combinatorial strategies, the research team has addressed these multitudes in design as granular assemblies....
[...]
TL;DR: This article contrasts with it the interactive ‘serious’ game of chance, RuneCast, which brought together four female artists/performers who interpret the Viking mythworld through explorable 3-D art combined with video and authentic stories and songs, originally articulated (in the early middle ages) in a female voice.
Abstract: Myth is an increasingly popular matrix for game-fiction experience. In her latest console adventure, Underworld (2008), long-running character Lara Croft, ‘Tomb Raider’, has to acquire Thor's Hammer to enter a neo-Viking mythworld, to find the mother who disappeared when she was a toddler. However, despite the female-centred journey, the environment and form of her quest are arguably conceptually ‘masculine’. This article contrasts with it the interactive ‘serious’ game of chance, RuneCast, which brought together four female artists/performers who interpret the Viking mythworld through explorable 3-D art combined with video and authentic stories and songs, originally articulated (in the early middle ages) in a female voice. The material is contextualised within issues of screen language, gendered space, 3-D environment/interaction design and storytelling. Must play in 3-D worlds be based on orienteering, control, dominance and destruction? Or is it fun to chance losing—and finding—yourself in a different ...
12 citations
Cites background from "Unit Operations: An Approach to Vid..."
...Certainly games scholarship has grown, and become more rigorous and comparative, as, for example, Raessens and Goldstein (2005), Carr et al. (2006), Atkins and Krzywinska (2007) and Bogost (2008) demonstrate....
[...]
TL;DR: This work proposes that video games can be regarded as action-based artefacts and a call to awareness for game designers that when designing for action they are working with the foundations on which video games are built upon.
Abstract: This article summarises our Ph.D. thesis – an analytical view on the player-game relationship through the lens of an action-oriented framework, centred on fundamental entities defined as actors, entities through which action is enacted in the game and of which the player and the game system are a part of. With this in mind, the grounding principles of this framework are seeded in a transition of action into experience, based on communicational systems that structure the dynamic formation of networks of actors from which distinct behaviours emerge, which, in turn, promote the enactment of diverse sequences of events establishing narrative, which is a source of experience of the player. Chronology, responsiveness, thinking and actuation, transcoding, focus, depth, and traversal are the 7 dimensions we unveiled through the lens of this action-oriented framework. This work proposes that video games can be regarded as action-based artefacts and a call to awareness for game designers that when designing for action they are working with the foundations on which video games are built upon.
12 citations
Cites background from "Unit Operations: An Approach to Vid..."
...[12] For more information on procedural rhetorics see Bogost (2007). For video game rhetorics see Frasca (2007)....
[...]
References
More filters
TL;DR: In this paper, it is argued that the degree of overlap of two individuals' friendship networks varies directly with the strength of their tie to one another, and the impact of this principle on diffusion of influence and information, mobility opportunity, and community organization is explored.
Abstract: Analysis of social networks is suggested as a tool for linking micro and macro levels of sociological theory. The procedure is illustrated by elaboration of the macro implications of one aspect of small-scale interaction: the strength of dyadic ties. It is argued that the degree of overlap of two individuals' friendship networks varies directly with the strength of their tie to one another. The impact of this principle on diffusion of influence and information, mobility opportunity, and community organization is explored. Stress is laid on the cohesive power of weak ties. Most network models deal, implicitly, with strong ties, thus confining their applicability to small, well-defined groups. Emphasis on weak ties lends itself to discussion of relations between groups and to analysis of segments of social structure not easily defined in terms of primary groups.
37,560 citations
TL;DR: The discipline and practice of qualitative research have been extensively studied in the literature as discussed by the authors, including the work of Denzin and Denzin, and their history in sociology and anthropology, as well as the role of women in qualitative research.
Abstract: Introduction - Norman K Denzin and Yvonna S Lincoln The Discipline and Practice of Qualitative Research PART ONE: LOCATING THE FIELD Qualitative Methods - Arthur J Vidich and Stanford M Lyman Their History in Sociology and Anthropology Reconstructing the Relationships between Universities and Society through Action Research - Davydd J Greenwood and Morten Levin For Whom? Qualitative Research, Representations and Social Responsibilities - Michelle Fine et al Ethics and Politics in Qualitative Research - Clifford G Christians PART TWO: PARADIGMS AND PERSPECTIVES IN TRANSITION Paradigmatic Controversies, Contradictions and Emerging Confluences - Yvonna S Lincoln and Egon G Guba Three Epistemological Stances for Qualitative Inquiry - Thomas A Schwandt Interpretivism, Hermeneutics and Social Constructionism Feminisms and Qualitative Research at and into the Millennium - Virginia L Olesen Racialized Discourses and Ethnic Epistemologies - Gloria Ladson-Billings Rethinking Critical Theory and Qualitative Research - Joe L Kincheloe and Peter McLaren Cultural Studies - John Frow and Meaghan Morris Sexualities, Queer Theory and Qualitative Research - Joshua Gamson PART THREE: STRATEGIES OF INQUIRY The Choreography of Qualitative Research Design - Valerie J Janesick Minuets, Improvisations and Crystallization An Untold Story? Doing Funded Qualitative Research - Julianne Cheek Performance Ethnography - Michal M McCall A Brief History and Some Advice Case Studies - Robert E Stake Ethnography and Ethnographic Representation - Barbara Tedlock Analyzing Interpretive Practice - Jaber F Gubrium and James A Holstein Grounded Theory - Kathy Charmaz Objectivist and Constructivist Methods Undaunted Courage - William G Tierney Life History and the Postmodern Challenge Testimonio, Subalternity and Narrative Authority - John Beverley Participatory Action Research - Stephen Kemmis and Robin McTaggart Clinical Research - William L Miller and Benjamin F Crabtree PART FOUR: METHODS OF COLLECTING AND ANALYZING EMPIRICAL MATERIALS The Interview - Andrea Fontana and James H Frey From Structured Questions to Negotiated Text Rethinking Observation - Michael V Angrosino and Kimberly A Mays de Perez From Method to Context The Interpretation of Documents and Material Culture - Ian Hodder Re-Imagining Visual Methods - Douglas Harper Galileo to Neuromancer Auto-Ethnography, Personal Narrative, Reflexivity - Carolyn Ellis and Arthur P Bochner Researcher as Subject Data Management and Analysis Methods - Gery W Ryan and H Russell Bernard Software and Qualitative Research - Eben A Weitzman Analyzing Talk and Text - David Silverman Focus Groups in Feminist Research - Esther Madriz Applied Ethnography - Erve Chambers PART FIVE: THE ART AND PRACTICES OF INTERPRETATION, EVALUATION AND REPRESENTATION The Problem of Criteria in the Age of Relativism - John K Smith and Deborah K Deemer The Practices and Politics of Interpretation - Norman K Denzin Writing - Laurel Richardson A Method of Inquiry Anthropological Poetics - Ivan Brady Understanding Social Programs through Evaluation - Jennifer C Greene Influencing the Policy Process with Qualitative Research - Ray C Rist PART SIX: THE FUTURE OF QUALITATIVE RESEARCH Qualitative Inquiry - Mary M Gergen and Kenneth J Gergen Tensions and Transformations The Seventh Moment - Yvonna S Lincoln and Norman K Denzin Out of the Past
26,318 citations
Book•
[...]
01 Jan 1927
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present an interpretation of Dasein in terms of temporality, and the Explication of Time as the Transcendental Horizon for the Question of Being.
Abstract: Translators' Preface. Author's Preface to the Seventh German Edition. Introduction. Exposition of the Question of the Meaning of Being. 1. The Necessity, Structure, and Priority of the Question of Being. 2. The Twofold Task of Working out the Question of Being. Method and Design of our Investigation. Part I:. The Interpretation of Dasein in Terms of Temporality, and the Explication of Time as the Transcendental Horizon for the Question of Being. 3. Preparatory Fundamental Analysis of Dasein. Exposition of the Task of a Preparatory Analysis of Dasein. Being-in-the-World in General as the Basic State of Dasein. The Worldhood of the World. Being-in-the-World as Being-with and Being-One's-Self. The 'they'. Being-in as Such. Care as the Being of Dasein. 4. Dasein and Temporality. Dasein's Possibility of Being-a-Whole, and Being-Towards-Death. Dasein's Attestation of an Authentic Potentiality-for-Being, and Resoluteness. Dasein's Authentic Potentiality-for-Being-a-Whole, and Temporality as the Ontological Meaning of Care. Temporality and Everydayness. Temporality and Historicality. Temporality and Within-Time-Ness as the Source of the Ordinary Conception of Time. Author's Notes. Glossary of German Terms. Index.
16,708 citations
Book•
01 Jan 1988
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a very different view of the arts of practice in a very diverse culture, focusing on the use of ordinary language and making do in the art of practice.
Abstract: Preface General Introduction PART I: A VERY ORDINARY CULTURE I. A Common Place: Ordinary Language II. Popular Cultures: Ordinary Language III. Making Do: Uses and Tactics PART II: THEORIES OF THE ART OF PRACTICE IV. Foucault and Bourdieu V. The Arts of Theory VI. Story Time PART III: SPATIAL PRACTICES VII. Walking in the City VIII. Railway Navigation and Incarceration IX. Spatial Stories PART IV: Uses of Language X. The Scriptural Economy XI. Quotations of Voices XII. Reading as Poaching PART V: WAYS OF BELIEVING XIII. Believing and Making People Believe XIV. The Unnamable Indeterminate Notes
10,978 citations
Book•
01 Jan 1984
TL;DR: In this article, the status of science, technology, and the arts, the significance of technocracy, and how the flow of information is controlled in the Western world are discussed.
Abstract: Many definitions of postmodernism focus on its nature as the aftermath of the modern industrial age when technology developed. This book extends that analysis to postmodernism by looking at the status of science, technology, and the arts, the significance of technocracy, and the way the flow of information is controlled in the Western world.
10,912 citations