Video games in the English Department!?

Perhaps it's just the result of taking this seminar, or perhaps it's because I respect video games as a large part of American and especially international culture, but the idea of video games migrating into the English department doesn't phase me all that much. It seems only natural that the issues and forces at work within video games can easily be studied in terms of narratology, thematic representation, etc. In my critical theory class the other day, the topic of video games came up, and someone mentioned that they had heard of a video games course (this one) being offered. The class began to go wild with theorectical "insights" into why it was positive or negative to have video games as a part of the English department at Loyola University. One person, rather angrily and with a tone of resentment blurted out that they would "love to study wrestling for the narration and plot that stands behind it". Well...
http://cms.mit.edu/news/2007/04/mit_comparative_media_studies.php
eat your heart out! (Thanks for the link Dr. Jones)

But on a serious note, this is not anything new. We have talked about this debate in our class, and it even came up in my final project as a large part of what we talked about with Matt Kirschenbaum. I must admit, that I kept my mouth closed until the end because I was deeply interested in hearing just what it was that my fellow English majors thought constituted the pros and cons of this form of study. The problem that my classmates were interested in was similar to what we have addressed in class. One thing, was simply that they couldn't understand how it was that the study of video games pertained to anything within the English department. Some proponents of video game studies were quick to point out that video games for the most part comprise of largely narrated story lines, just like many novels and that they also offer their players a means by which to interact with the plot that they are immersed in. One classmate noted that playing some video games is very similar to reading one of those choose your own ending books. Another was quick to note that while that was true, video games offered a seemingly unending amount of interpretations of the narration of the plot itself simply by means of having some sort of agency in the form of the player holding the controller. It was an excellent discussion and I think in the end, most people were relatively open to the idea of video game studies as a form of study within some area of the college.

That was the other point that was made quite frequently. There seems to be a deep seated fear within the English major that it is being overtaken by cultural studies; that the emphasis is no longer on the literart canon per se, but rather on the way that literary works interact and involve culture. Harold Bloom is the author that we had read for the day and subsequently the cause of the discussion that ensued. Bloom embodies the fear of cultural studies in that he predicts that at some point, there will be English departments with close to no students, because they will all be sick and tired of the major because it will not have a defined canon to study. He says that the rate at which cultural studies and cultural criticism are moving into the field of English studies, they will overpopulate and force the canon out, "reduc[ing] the aesthetic to ideology, or at best metaphysics".

Terry Eagleton on the other hand argues a much different point concerning literature. He makes the interesting assertion that "value-judgements...seem to have a lot to do with what is judged literature and what is not". His most interesting assertion is that he wonders if there won't be a time when we discover "a great deal more about what ancient Greek tragedy actually meant to its original audiences" and "recogniz[ing] that these concerns were utterly remote from our own..began to read the palys again in the light of this deepened knowledge". He asserts that upon doing so "one result might be that we stopped enjoying them. We might come to see that we had enjoyed them previously because we were unwittingly reading them on the light of our own preocupations".

This idea really hits home with me. I was wondering just what it is that makes video games so unattractive to the English major given this idea. When we think about what it is that video games mean to us, now, in our present time, I think that it becomes clear that they are not all that divorced from the meanings that we can derive from ancient Greek tragedies. Not to mention the myriad of paratextual documentation that comes with each form of study... I think that the evidence for the validity of studying a topic such as video games in the English department is found in the quick paralells that many people easily draw between the narratives and the agency, as well as the issues of authorship and paratextuality that we have brought up in class this semester.


I figure that since I quoted some authors, it's probably best to have a works cited page...so here goes:

Bloom, Harold. The Western Canon. Modern Literary Theory. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. Ed. Philip Rice and Patricia Waugh.

Eagleton, Terry. Literary Theory: An Introduction. Modern Literary Theory. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. Ed. Philip Rice and Patricia Waugh.

Spore

Just in viewing the Demos, and actually, right now finishing the walk through demo with Wright talking over it, I have to say that this game seems impressive (I know, and understatement to be sure). The level of detail that is involved in making this game work and simply controlling the world all around it is amazing. What really struck me was the "Editor" within the game. When it is time for the player to move onto the next stage of his spores life, the character lays an egg (in the early stages) and the player can click on it and begin to mold it into what he wants it to become.

I was more than impressed with the level of control that the player has over the building of these characters. He can change everything, from the skin, to the number of legs, even down to the exoskeleton of the character. Also, the game engine itself is designed to be able to determine the way that the character will walk and interact witht he environtment around him. The other thing that amazed me was the way that a player can develop what Wright calls "verbs". Verbs, obviously are actions, but you can create your own types of verbs by combining two pre-existant verbs. He shows this by selecting "bite" and "move" at the same time.

The way that the interface and the engine of the game are abel to create "meanings" within each of the characters that the player can create reminded me of the way that platform influences our ability to read texts and the ways that we interact with them. The analysis code that animates the characters that the player creates is made possible throught the usage of the platform.

The point system that he talks about is interesting as well. The main point (in order to level up) is to develop the brain, at which point the game style can change. This is another aspect that surprised me. When one levels up, they can change modes and in Wright's example, the way that this is made obvious to the player is that the game play changes. He shows the move from what he calls a "First Person Eater" to a Real Time Strategy game. Something that we talked about quickly in class was that he said that the many levels of the game are representative of pre-existent games and genres that are out there already.

More to come after tomorrow's talk. I'm really excited about this game though!

The Power Struggle

It always comes down to this, I'm not sure why. Perhaps it is because of the contemporary, post-modern society that we live in, but it seems to me as though a vast majority of discourses surrounding almost any topic in the humanities can be deconstructed into a simple struggle for power. Whether it be the sociological definitions of fear of the media and video games as nothing more than a misplaced feeling of loss of control over children, to the ideas of targeting and conquering that are inherent in many video games (even the driving sims), issues of how to gain and control power are rampant in the discourses that we deal with every day.

We talked about this for a bit in class, but I think that it is important to write about this, perhaps to not only develop some deeper individual ideas surrounding the topic, but also to simply "get it off my chest" as it were. I don't believe that the idea of power as a mediator is a new idea at all, but I think that it is always the 800 pound gorilla in the room, especially when it is paired with other topcis that no one wants to talk about such as death.

In games, one of the most appealing aspects is that you, the player, have control over outcomes. Indeed, there is always some form of linearity that you must follow but even that linearity is a reality of the overarching story of humanity. We all are born, we all must complete some task in life, and in the end the narrative of our existence, as it were, must come to an end. In games, much as in life, we are born into a set of pre-determined rules from within which we must "play". The character that we control, or the car that we drive (in racing sims) must be controlled or driven within the context of the gamespace that it exists within. This interactivity is where "the tasks" that we have to complete come into play.

In life, as in games, we are able to determine those tasks, the order in which they are completed, etc. In this way, we are re-interpreting the game each time we play it; taking a different path to the objective, taking a shortcut, or completing one task before the other are all ways in which we have agency over the occurrences of the narrative of the game. In certain games, the scope of our interpretation is limited, as I said before, by the overarching narrative that has been created for us. This is where I see the idea of re-interpretation taking a new meaning. In the form of game-development, the writers and programmers have to make a choice: what part of the experience do they want to convey. In a game such as Gran Turismo, the obvious choice was to simulate a true driving experience. Much time and effort went into deatiling the race tracks and perfecting the physics of the cars, the lines that must be taken, the apexes of the turns, the track elevations, etc. in order to simulate the most realistic (at least in terms of mechanics) form of gameplay possible. In a game such as Burnout, however, the focus is more on crashing, and as a result the developers tried to get the physics of a crash to be the most realistic aspect of the game. If you were to hit the barrier head-on, the hood would crumple, the car would collapse at certain points, and glass would shatter, etc. Each game represents a form of interpretation about a similar experience: one is about the "driving" of racing, while the other is about the "crashing" of racing.

Summing this up, is the culmination of each game. I suppose that driving games aren't the best example for this (FPS's and RPG's better sum up the idea of a linear story (well, some FPS's that is)), but they will suffice. In most driving games, there is some target that is always in flux. In Gran Turismo, that target may be first place, or an incredible lap time on Laguna Seca (I think my best is just over a minute, but don't quote me as I haven't played in more than a year), whereas in Burn-Out it might be a certain number of points, or a group of cars, etc. Overarching these internal goals of the game, is the ability to unlockk new cars, or to open up new levels. At some point all these unlocks can be attained, and the game becomes nothing more than a repetition of tracks, trying to get the best time, or more points. At this time, the narrative of a Sim is, for all intents and purposes, concluded. There is nothing more to target and the game has ended.

I'm not sure what this means given the philosophical-ish beginning to this entry, but I think that perhaps a quote from Ben Franklin will suffice: "were it offer'd to my Choice, I should have no Objection to a Repetition of the same Life from it's Beginning, only asking the Advantages Authors have in a second Edition to correct some Faults of the first" (Autobiography, 3). Perhaps this is the intention of authors and game developers: to take the same life, the same narrative, and develop different editions through differing interpretations of the same topics.

The Effect of the MUD and the MOO

http://www.computerpoweruser.com/Up until this class I had never heard about MUD's and MOO's. Interestingly enough (for me at least) this semester has been full of instances where information from one class seems to bleed over (for lack of a better term) into my other classes. We were just discussing paratextuality in my 375 Colonial Encounters class. Such is the way of a good liberal arts education I suppose, but this past week has been different in that I have begun to see terms from this class pervading my "paratextual" life, if you will (my life outside of school). In some spare time this past week I sat down to read a bit of my favorite magazine http://www.computerpoweruser.com/ and noticed that they had a follow up article from their "When Real & Virtual Economies Collide" article about the blurring of the lines between the virtual economy of Second Life and that of the real world. This follow up was actually an interview with Cory Ondrejka, the CTO of Linden Labs, the creators of Second Life. The opening question posed by CPU is whether or not Second Life had its roots in MUD's and MUSH's, to which Cory replies that "none of the founders of Linden Lab were active players in those games" (102, CPU), and goes on to talk about how Second Life developed, etc.

What really interested me about this article was that the reality of the development of discourses surrounding the game space are reminiscent of all ideas surrounding the development of any other tangible artifact. What I mean by this is that when something such as Second Life comes to fruition, it does so partially as a result of the pioneers that came before it. This is not to take away from the ingenuity of the creators of a game like second life, but rather calls into question the idea of historical paratextuality and how far back we can dig to discover the "roots" of that particular area of study. In this case, the influence of the MUD's and MOO's was there, it just wasn't obvious. The idea behind Second Life is pretty well known to those of us in the class, but the basic premise is that you can build a virtual life for youself, complete with a job and your own style of clothing. There are even people who design their own houses and develop their own properties. Within the gamespace of Second Life, the sky is really the limit.

Having some limited experience with the MOO, I can see how a game like Second Life would have borrowed very much so from the "building" structure of the MOO-type gamespace. Coming to this realization makes me wonder how many other aspects of my life are effected by this same concept; how much of our lives are built upon the now-forgotten past, and really, how much does the impact that this past has on our present really matter? I think that in some ways it must be the stance of the Ludologists that the history doesn't matter at all, that it is purely outside of the game itself and therefore doesn't really matter at all. I, however, believe that this aspect of the game, its history, etc. really does matter, that it is worth studying and understanding in order to better immerse ones self deeper into the game and experience it in a whole new way. One more analogy before signing off: anyone can go and see Rome, but it is really the history of the place that gives it most of its meaning. If one views the sights of Rome with an understanding of the history that lies behind each one (ala The Marble Faun), then I would argue that they are experiencing the sights on an unprecedented level of understanding and immersion. The goes hand in hand with the history behind games. A deeper immersion in the game itself is what many (if not all) gamers are looking for, and I believe that understanding the history of the game is one of the best ways to get that much deeper into it.

Does the Audience have Agency?

In thinking about Facade and more generally the issues that came up in class today, I have been struggling with what it means to define the game as a place where the players have agency. I think that the idea of having agency, or a certain defined way of interacting with the text, movie, play, etc. is an important distinction to make when defining what it is that comprises the separate spheres (if I may) of what is called the "Game" and what is not the "Game".

In thinking about agency as a way within which we can divorce the world of the game from the other, I become interested in exactly what it means then, to interact in a passive way. I can see that this needs explication; the very abstractness of the concept causes it to be almost indescribable linguistically, so I will have to rely on the examples given in class today. In developing the idea that agency is what separates the game from the other, the example was given of a play, where there is a fourth dimension, or curtain that separates the audience from the actors. The actors are supposed to play out their roles with the commonly held "understanding" that there is no audience, and that they are simply playing out a narrative that is concrete in the way that it will be depicted. There exists, to be sure, room for the actors to embellish upon their designated role, however the narrative itself cannot be strayed from. The audience, therefore, being believed to be separate from the ocurrence of the narrative, views the happenings on stage as dis-empowered beings, having no agency to create or change the plot in any way. The result of this "disempowerment" is that they are not really a part of the occurrences on stage and therefore stage play can be defined as the "other", or not a game.

Something within this idea just doesn't register completely within me. I can say it out loud, and write it in a way that makes sense to my logic, that is, I am firmly convinced that the idea is sound and correct, but something within me, perhaps stubborness begs to differ. I begin to look for ways in which these people could be interacting, or changing the occurrences on stage; that they are empowered with some sense of agency just because they are there, they are viewing these occurrences. So I want to investigate the idea, perhaps to confound it further in my own mind, or (more likely) to confuse myself further.

I want to think about the idea of viewership as not being divorced from agency per se, in two ways: the first is that the audience, by virtue of their attendence of a play, forces the players (actors) to "do the story right". What I mean by this is that the expectation of the audience at a play, forces the actors to be "true" to the expectations of that audience, and in this way, the audience is given agency. The second is that the audience of any action has a peritextual investment in that action, especially as it pertains to a play or game. In that way, again, the audience is inherently an actor, they have some sort of agency.

I wonder if either of these ideas hold any academic weight. They seem (because they are) purely speculative, and I hope to think more and write more about these ideas as we learn more in class.

Star Wars!

I fired up the ole TV today for the first time in a few weeks (I'm not kidding) to veg and watch a good movie. There wasn't much on so I decided to check On Demand and was pleasantly surprised to see that they have all 6 Star Wars movies for free. I fired up the first movie (technically the 4th) and was really looking forward to some mindless entertainment. As I was watching, I began to draw some parallels between the movie and some of the games that we have been discussing in class. This promises to be a random blog, with thoughts interposed throughout and no general structure, so enjoy.

The first thing that really hit me was that all the scenes that occur in the hallways of the Death Star are reminiscent of many of the linear FPS games that I have played. I began to wonder whether or not the Star Wars movies' depiction of the hallway was the inspiration for the standard world that many FPS's exist within. In thinking about this, I was drawn to the idea that if the Star Wars movie was the inspiration for this aspect of the game, then it is also part of that games peritext.

On to targeting: there were several scenes in the movie that seemed to focus on targeting and what seemed to be a rudimentary form of video game. Luke and Han are in the Millenium Falcon and are fighting off some bad guys and instead of seeing the actual ships being targeted and shot at, we are presented with an archaic 3D image of the ship being targeted and the targeting system. The whole battle scene was played out in this image rather than in "real time". I couldn't help but think about what it meant to the viewer to be watching the action through a video-game like interface rather than as an image of the occurence itself. It opens up the action to different types of interpretation as well as more interaction with various types of viewers. Any fans of video games might view this scene of the movie as something that they could identify with.

Finally, the end of the movie is comepletely dependent on the idea of targeting. In order to destroy the Death Star, they needed to drop a bomb into a 2 meter wide opening in order to destroy the reactor core of the space station. It required a direct, perfect drop that was partially dependent upon the correct targeting of the objective, but also was dependent of the user interaction with the ship. The ship's pilot needed to take data from the targeting system and release the bomb at the precise moment necessary. In doing so, the movie reproduces the idea that targeting and user interaction are a way for us to overcome, in this case, and perhaps in all cases, some evil force.

What is interesting about this is that when Luke successfully drops the bomb, he does so with no assitence from technology. He switches off his targeting system and R2 is rendered unusable by a blast from an enemy ship. Perhaps in this instance the movie is commenting on the dependence of gamers on targeting systems, but in a way that seeks to assert that such systems are inherent within us all. Perhaps targeting is more than the reaction of a technological program, it is an inherent need in us all to overcome.

"Locating" the paratext

Today's class discussion really struck upon many interesting facets of what it means for us to be studying video games as a form of textual analysis. In particular, I felt as though the emphasis of the discussion was based around the paratextual world of the gamespace, an idea that is far from novel in this class. But what develops from the focus of the discussion is perhaps an idea that requires further insight and questioning. What is it that makes the gamespace so appealing?

I realize that it would seem that one facet of the appeal is the actual game itself. McKenzie Wark, for example, would say that part of what draws us to the gamespace itself is targeting, or as we saw in the machinima video interview with him, perhaps it is the idea that the gamespace is just that, a space in which we can move into.

Dave Dries, on the other hand, offers a contrasting view of what it is that makes the gamespace so appealing. From what we can see through his video, the gamespace is largely not about the game itself, but rather it is about the atmosphere (where the term "atmosphere" is loosely used to describe the paratextual aspects of the game world). For Dries, the emphasis on the paratext of the game focuses on the physical space that the gamespace exists within. By showing that the arcade exists within a mall, and that when looking out from the arcade you can see a movie theater, a music store (Records and Tapes: talk about the nostalgia!) and also a serene fountain, he extends our understanding of "gamespace" to also incorporate popular culture of the time.

I think that a work like Dries' forces us to look at what it is exactly that we can use to define "paratext". For Dries, paratext, when it is being attributed to video games, is not a simple box that a game comes in, or even the directions and cover art that are inherent in a game box either. The paratext is everything outside of the game itself that gives meaning to that game. It is the people you interact with (at the arcade at least), the setting that the arcade provides as well as the setting that the arcade is located within, it is the ways that we interact with the games (as shown by his panning across various control schemes), as well as the societal norms that are created as a result of the arcade (lining up quarters on the base of the screen to "mark your spot").

Taking the obvious importance of the paratextual world in Dries' depiction of the gamespace, I believe that we must rethink the power it holds in creating that gamespace itself. Perhaps the game is nothing more than an excuse to get together in theses settings. Certainly the popularity of pool halls and bars are evidence to that fact. Why do people pay $3.50 + tip for a beer when a 6-pack only costs a buck or two more? The answer lies in this simple fact: the beer is most likely only an excuse to go out and be immersed in an atmosphere that they feel comfortable in. I believe that video games provide much the same experience. Whether you are playing online or at an arcade, the results are the same: you are immersed in a paratextual world from which you are getting a feeling and sense of belonging, making memories and really, just having a good time.

The "Universe" of the game space

When were talking in class about the ways in which the gamespace can be viewed as a universe my understanding of the importance of understanding the peritextuality of works within gamespace and even within traditional textual spaces was re-invented. It's a strange sensation; one moment I believed that I had a decent understanding of the importance of the peritextual space and the ways in which it is useful to further ones understanding of the text itself, and the next I was blown away, thinking about all the possibilities that thinking about the gamespace as a universe offers.

Particularly intriguing to me was the idea that we can think about the instances of player (or reader) interaction with the text as being "vectors", each one of which can be used to define that specific players understanding of the text. That is to say that the vectors of interaction will inherently define the "meaning" of the game or for that player. Perhaps even more significant to the model is the idea that once you view it in the light of a universe of interaction, you can then begin to categorize the whole process in a systematic way. The elements of the system, whether they be the players interaction with the storyline, the graphics or even the music can be categorized and developed into these different vectors of meaning.

Once we are able to define what meaning is to one player, then we can also inherently claim to understand (to a point) what meaning is not. This idea opens up a whole new area for sub-thought, namely the idea that the undiscovered meanings of the universe of the game space can and do exist. In this way perhaps we can begin to define the "undefinable" in much of a Sausserian way. Saussere believed that when we develop methods of signs, we were basically defining things by what they were not. We can look at a tree and know that it is not a dog because the many signifiers (words) that society uses to evoke the image of a dog are attributable only to that meaning.

In the same way, perhaps we are able to investigate the gamespace by what it is not, using negative signification to develop theoretical ideas about what hasn't been discovered in the gamespace as a result of what has.

Alternate vs. Alternative, is there really a distinction?

To answer my own question: yes, I believe that there is an obvious distinction to be made between alternate and alternative realities. As we discussed in class, the alternate reality is a state which we are constantly moving in and out of whereas the alternative is very much a state of complete and utter immersion.

In setting up this disctinction between the alternate and alternative, it seems as though we have nicely set one apart from the other. We can define them and label one instance as "alternate" and another as "alternative". But what happens when this distinction is blurred? What happens when the lines which we seem to be able to so clearly draw lose their polarity and begin to interact with and define one another? I believe that the sphere of the "alternate reality game" does just this; it blends the alternate and the alternative and develops itself into something not completely divorced from either category, but rather is a summation (to use a mathematical term), or more descriptively, a delicate balance between the alternate and the alternative which complements each and makes them both more "real" and believeable.

This marriage of the alternate and the alternative is born out of the need for one to the other. From what was discussed in class today we came to the conclusion that at some point, an alternate reality game needs to make the claim that it is not a game at all, but rather that it is a complete reality in and of itself. In making this claim however, the alternate has become, by definition, the alternative. When a reality is "alternate" it is finite and can be entered into and exited from at the will of the person or entity which is interacting with it. But when a reality is alternative, it is by definition completely divorced from any other reality, and therefore requires complete immersion and interactivity within itself. The entity that is interacting with that alternative reality must divorce themself from any outside influences and take on the material culture, language etc. of that alternative reality. Therefore the alternative is in no way alternate, there is no possibility for an alternative reality to recognize that some other reality exists outside of itself.

It is this tension between the need for the alternate to define itself as alternative, and the need of the alternative to have nothing to do with the alternate that creates the whole of the alternate reality game. I believe that it is the result of this tension that creates the play-space of that game. Some people will view the alternate reality in much more alternative terms than others. These are likely to be the more "die-hard" fans that we have discussed in class; the ones that the marketers are looking to pander to, the ones that cannot, or rather will not divorce the reality of their "real" life from the reality of the game. On the other hand, there will be aspects of the alternate throughout the alternative immersion in the game. For example: paratexts are, by definition, outside of the game itself (assuming that they are epitexts), but people will use them to help further their immersion into a game. By using an epitext, I would argue that they are utilizing an alternate mode of immersion into the game itself, while at the same time reinforcing the alternative aspects of the game. The epitext itself is outside of the alternative, and therefore comprises the alternate, but it is used to gain further immersion into the altenative. The best example I can hive of this is the use of a game walkthrough in order to more fully immerse oneself into the game structure.

Text Within a Text

I began playing Myst this weekend. I would have begun sooner except Best Buy and the bookstore don't make it easy to get a copy of the game. I must admit that although this isn't my first experience with the Myst series of games (I have played about 15 minutes of Myst IV, Revelation), it is the most enjoyable gaming experience I've had in a while. At first I couldn't get over what seemed to be almost overly non-linear gameplay ("should I be throwing these switches, should I go left or right, if I go right will I ever get the chance to go left?") but as the game progressed I realized that it didn't really matter what I did at this point, my goal was to get that rocket ship off the ground. Anyways, I'm not a fan of linear style games at all. I started my PC gaming with Far Cry, which was touted as the most non-linear FPS of all time. I must say that Far Cry lived up to this descrition in my opinion, while remaining a great FPS (I know many who have played Deus Ex may disagree, but I'm not that far into Deus Ex to make a good comparison). It was a fantastic game.

When it came to Myst, I knew from the readings for class that we wouldn't be a linear style game, but I was surprised with how non-linear it seemed to be at first. If you don't read the books in the library then you won't really know what you are doing on the island at all, so you might run around for an hour looking for stuff to do. I must admit that I had no idea that there was a help box at the bottom of the screen until I clicked on it by accident. I figured I'd take the hint it gave me and read more than one of those books in the library. So I meandered, or rather, I clicked my way back to the library and began reading. That's when this idea hit me. Myst, at least at this point in the game, is a series of texts within one main story. Each text seems to be represented by a different world that needs to be discovered and saved. This is a common motif throughout literature, and I found it particularly interesting to be noticing it in a game. All the different worlds that are alluded to and described in the 4 or 5 books that are legible in the library represent a new story, a new place for me to go out and discover at some point in the game. This adds to the excitement: I can't wait to meet the characters that were alluded to in the blue book, or even to discover the world that always had a gray sky...

Anyways, these were just my thoughts as I began the game. I can't wait to see what happens as the game progresses. Upon launching the shuttle I realized I hadn't read all the books in the library, so I went back and did that, which is when the realization hit me that there were many different stories, all contained within one greater story going on in this game.

Happy gaming!

The "system" of textual analysis

Something that really hit me while reading today, especially the Kirschenbaum material was the idea that machine level instructions are even a form of media. Think about the way that a blank word document, in and of itself is constructed of many thousands of lines of code. Just because that code is not inherently visible to us in its raw form does not mean that it doesn’t exist and have meaning. The meaning of the code is, in and of itself, reflected to us as the lines and the white, blank space right before us. Everything on page, even the blinking cursor waiting for us to give it meaning, to formulate some grand new scheme has in and of itself a pre-determined meaning: a code which makes it blink and exist. A code that defines it. We are simply manipulating (or re-defining/interpreting) that code so that it will have the meaning that we assign to it. I suppose in that vein we could even argue that the very words themselves that we type are also comprised of some sort of coded language, and therefore the representation of the letter “p” on this screen is the result of a system of actions that must take place on a hardware level and therefore comprise their own language and code within themselves. Fascinating! Thinking about this in terms of the book, I began to understand the “technology” of the book in much clearer terms. The book itself is a measurable product of some reaction (on a chemical level for the paper/binding) or even of a physical labor. Each one of these sets of technological definition of the book also has it’s own inherent subset of technology which enable it to occur. For example, the books pages were created as a result of the technology which drives the lumber industry. From the saw that cuts it down to the chemical stripper which makes it easier to write on, a piece of paper can be viewed as a system and a language in and of itself. I suppose that is where the readings have taken me since last night when I posted: system-level thinking about the inputs and outputs which comprise the physicality of the book, whether it be on a computer or in a book form, each has a system which can be defined in non-definite, interpretive ways.

Gaming group formation and dates are pretty much set. It's really going to be an exciting adventure to think about the games that we've chosen within the context of what we have discussed in class thus far. Something that really has piqued my interest is the idea that games are a form of text, a form of representation of information that can be traced back into the roots of our culture. I suppose that I've never really thought of games as anything more than an avenue by which I could find some time to myself and engage in something that excites and involves me. Just within the first few classes I have begun to realize that games are nothing more than a new form of media, that everything, from the platform they are played on to the content and coding which makes them "live" can be viewed from a textual point of view. When I think about it, the ideas of games as a form of text and media that we are forming really isn't all that divorced from the stir that books themselves caused as they gained popularity (specifically around the Victorian era, where reading books that were not part of the canon was looked down upon).
To this end, I suppose it makes sense to mention that I am also taking Talmadge Wright's Sociology 123 course: Pop Culture and Mass Media. Much of what we are discussing seems to be matching up well with his class, and the ideas that I have been developing from each class have been feeding off of each other. One thing that I'm looking forward to investigating in the video game that our group plays is the different forms of violence that we see in games, and how the age group that a game is developed for seems to be the thermometer which decides how much "gore" a game is allowed to have. It doesn't only depend on what genre the game is, or what age group it is marketed towards that determines the amount of violence a game has. The platform it is played on is also marketed to certain groups. For example, the Wii is generally marketed towards a much more diverse group than the Xbox 360. The result is that the Xbox has more "adult oriented" games than the Wii. Also, the violence in some Wii games (not all) is less copious than in Xbox or PS3 games. This idea matches up well with the ideas of McGann in that we cannot simply look at one aspect of our "text", we must investigate all facets of what it has to offer in order to truly understand it, and also in order to ackowledge the fact that it has multiple meanings for multiple people.