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
DissertationDOI
The Empathy of Immersion: An Exploration of Battlefield 1 Through the Lense of Empathetic Virtual Reality
Infrastructure for recombination: The work and ethos of Plethora Project
TL;DR: The Plethora Project as discussed by the authors is an architecture studio that has attempted to hybridize the practice of architecture with forms of entertainment in order to allow cultural engagement and ultimately communicate the challenges that architecture faces not only from a perspective of technological progress but from one of social progress.
Book ChapterDOI
New Materialisms and Digital Culture: Productive Labor and the Software Wars
TL;DR: Both the coders and users of the Open Source Initiative software are in many ways participants in a diffuse and fluid “class war” against proprietary software platforms and the conventional Microsoft.NET model.
Book Chapter
Survival interventions in GTA: on the limits of performance in virtual environments
TL;DR: In this article, the authors survey a number of artistic experiments that pick up traditions and concerns of performance art (in particular the critiquing of socio-political power systems through the radical, performative use of bodies) in order to address conflicts at the intersections between the individual and the system(s) that frames its existence.
Journal ArticleDOI
Isto é um jogo de vídeo: jogos de vídeo, autoridade e metacomunicação
TL;DR: In this paper, a leitura radical da teoria de Bateson no contexto dos jogos de video is presented, in particular, as caracteristicas, as especificidades e as implicacoes da mensagem “isto e um jogo de video”, which define an enquadramento psicologico entre os jogadores.
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.