Espen Aarseth gave the closing plenary at the Gothenberg ALLC/ACH 2004. His talk was a masterful tour through the field of computer games research leading to thoughts on what the humanities have to offer. Espen reminded us that he used to go to the ACH/ALLC but didn’t find it appropriate to his interests.
What follows are some notes from his talk.
The talk was titled, “Old, new borrowed, blue? (What) Can the Humanities Contribute to Game Research?” and he opened with the question, “Can the humanities contribute to game research?”
Who owns game studies?
He talked about how game studies is trying to distinguish itself from other communities. He quoted Ernest Adams, a game designer, “To those of you who come out of dramatic and literary critism: if you do to this medium what you have done to literature and drama, then communication between us is at an end.” Sounds like we are heading into turf wars – who owns game studies, and who has authority. What nonsense! As if excluding people will have any effect other than legitimizing them and making the bigots look stupid in retrospect. What will be interesting is to watch this turf battle work itself out in the editorial policies of journals, conferences, and industry perks. It’s not clear where Espen stands on this – I sense he is both tempted to use his authority while knowing the dangers of this.
Definitions
Espen was more interesting when he tried to define what games are. He presented an equation:
Computer games = social + aesthetics + technology
For Espen games are an interesting amalgam of these three components that are not seen in other artefacts. He looks at “games in virtual environments” – these have a game-space (world), user-activity (play), and game-structure (rules). I wonder where characters (avatars) fit in? Are they part of the world?
Espen argued that “games are not fictional” and gave the example of research into game economies. This argument, which to be fair he didn’t have time develop, doesn’t work. That something has economic value doesn’t mean it isn’t fiction. People pay for first edition copies of novels, their economic value doesn’t make them any less of a fiction, unless we mean by fiction the “text” as opposed the printed book, a distinction that has problems. If we take the etymology of “fiction” – that which is made – artefacts – then games are fiction – made through imagination. I think Espen was trying this out as an argument against those who read games as narratives – the great debate as whether they are narratives.
He showed images from Jesper Juul’s online definition of “game” which identifies the following characteristics to games:
- fixed rules
- variable outcome
- valorization of outcome
- player effort
- player attached to outcome
- consequences are negotiable
See The Game, the Player, the World: Looking for a Heart of Gameness.
Questions
Some of the questions and tasks Espen sees ahead are:
- We have to understand the gameness of games.
- Is it possible to combine theories into a unified theory of games?
- Is game studies a coherent discipline or interdisciplinary?
- What would a game studies curriculum look like?
- We need to develop open source game systems for research.
- What should the relationship with industry?
Final quote, “Ask not what games can do for the humanities (and humanities computing), but what the humanities can do for the study of games.”
Comments are closed.