Open AccessBook
Unit Operations: An Approach to Videogame Criticism
TLDR
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.read more
Citations
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI
From Authorship to Authoring: Critical Literacy, Expert Users, and Proprietary Software
TL;DR: It is argued that new authoring environments fundamentally change the authorship paradigm and four kinds of critical literacy may be useful to produce computational media that responds appropriately to the larger rhetorical context of software culture.
Journal ArticleDOI
Introduction: The Other Caillois: The Many Masks of Game Studies:
TL;DR: The legacy of the rich, stratified work of Roger Caillois, the multifaceted and complex French scholar and intellectual, seems to have almost solely impinged on game studies through his most popular work, Les Jeux et les Hommes as discussed by the authors.
Journal ArticleDOI
FEMINISM AND TECHNICAL CAPITAL: The case of the computer game
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that the embodied aesthetics of technology use are an important dimension of its implication in gender, drawing on ideas from Pierre Bourdieu and Nigel Thrift, the discussion rejects analyses that focus on video game content and asserts the importance of looking at what players do with their hands during game play.
Researching digital game players : gameplay and gaming capital
TL;DR: In this article, a play and player centred approach is presented to research gaming capital in educational contexts that posits researching video games be grounded in the practices of game players, and suggests strategies for researching and teaching about these digital spaces through collaboration with high school teachers and cultural and educational institutions.
Book ChapterDOI
Interactivity in Games: The Player’s Engagement
TL;DR: This paper considers two radically different games, an interactive fiction designed by the student’s of ENJMIN, “Fear Window” and a formal probabilistic game based on the finite drunkard's walk process “Drinking around Crocodiles”, and tries to show that the core of the game design and, as a consequence, the aesthetic is the way to let the player feel his responsibility in the progress of thegame.
References
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI
The Strength of Weak Ties
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.
Journal ArticleDOI
Handbook of Qualitative Research
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.
Book
Being and Time
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.
Book
The Practice of Everyday Life
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.
Book
The postmodern condition : a report on knowledge
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.