sarah spangler's List: Games

• Through employing colonial techniques of domination like exploring, trading, map-making and military manoeuvring, players create their personal colonial pasts and futures.
• As postcolonial playgrounds they offer the perfect means to play with and make sense of how colonial spatial practices have shaped contemporary culture
• One prevailing definition focuses on how former colonized people and nations deal with their colonial past and celebrate the end of colonialism. Hence the emphasis is put on how former colonized cultures deal with their colonial past in the present.
• On the other hand we are dealing with more personal spatial activities of exploration, which he calls touring.
• In the games under scrutiny in this article touring becomes exchangeable with cartography and mapping is no longer a clearly delineated and ordered practice either.
• De Certeau relates maps to the act of looking and going to the act of touring.
• Such a mutability of maps and landscapes cannot simply be described as a reproduction and continuation of colonialism. Surely such games entail nostalgia for being a colonial military strategist and/or new world explorer that marks out 'new' territory,
• Being a new world traveller is not so much re-constructed, but rather transformed into a playful activity, in which mastering space becomes more a personal power struggle than an accurate historical re-iteration of how spatial relationships have been shaped by external hegemonic forces

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• Most noteworthy in  this exclusion is that the critical commonplaces of violence, racism, sexism  and the presumed effects on young audiences have generally escaped scholarly  and popular scrutiny.[1]
• Examinations of violence, gender stereotypes,  anti-social behaviour abound, but David Leonard finds that "critical  examinations of the relationship between games and the hegemonic practices of  the military-entertainment complex are virtually absent." Th
• I want to analyze video games which function allegorically (at the  very least metaphorically) and pedagogically through their imbrication with the  web of so-called "post-9/11" narratives
• "Rather than eschew games as irrelevant child's play  or lowbrow popular culture, educators must begin to think about ways to use  video games as means to teach, destabilize, and elucidate the manner in which  games employ and deploy racial, gendered, and national meaning, often  reinforcing dominant ideas and the status quo.
• Through an  examination of the games' content and pedagogical functions, the tension  between audience expectations and the media's ideological manipulations will be  examined, including how this occurs in and through the playing of the games.  While this type of analysis has been common fare for studies of post-9/11  radio, television, journalism and film, scholars have not considered the ways  in which video games are, as Bourdieu says of television, "permanently  subject to trial by market" and the extent to which that market is created  rather than found (71).
• However, the presidential call to demonstrate American solidarity and resolve  placed a return to consumerism—including the consumption of film,  television and of present concern, video games—on a footing roughly equal  to the variety of security measures adopted concurrently
• They bear the signs of the entertainment  industries' graduated responses to the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001. Syphon  Filter 3 was scheduled to be released on 19 Sept. 2001. However, Sony  Computer Entertainment America, Inc. delayed the release until 23 Dec. 2001.  More subtle in its implementation, but no less effective in terms of its  message, was Stephen Spielberg Productions' allegorical treatment of the  Pacific Theatre of World War II in the Electronic Arts release, Medal of  Honor: Rising Sun, which was released two years later.
• he histories included in the gameplay  and in the cut-scenes give the game a pedagogical function.
• The game, which was originally  announced at the E3 trade show, in May 2001, and which was part of an  long-running series, had too many reminders of current events.
• Ostensibly, the logic behind  Sony's decision to delay the release of Syphon Filter 3 derives from the  "reality" of the game's fictive world, or what game developers and  players call "player immersion.
• during the Soviet  occupation of Afghanistan. This might remind players of a topic which has been  taboo since the terror attacks of 11 Sept. 2001: the American support (and  subsequent abandonment) of the Afghan resistance, including the Taliban, during  that conflict. In a rather Orwellian turn, popular media elided previous US  involvement in Afghanistan.
• In both cases, the player is rewarded  with a bonus minigame for choosing the benevolent option. In its reward  structure—its "goal rules"—then, the choice of whether to  inflict "collateral damage" does have an implication in terms of the  game's moral choices (Frasca, 2003 232).
• depends on the player's  choices. Ian Bogost writes of GTA3 that "those who argue that one  can 'do anything' in Liberty City are mistaken; the game constantly structures  freeform experience in relation to criminality" (157).
• However, I  do not think that an analysis of a game's narrative elements needs to be  considered separately from its play. Here, the addition of "elements"  is an acknowledgment that many games do not have fully elucidated plots and  this does not detract from play at all.
• urthermore, as Bogost writes,  "Ludology has been characterized by its coverage of the unique features of  games, and narratology in the traditional sense of the word is the study of  narratives across media, including oral and written language, gestures, and  music. Interestingly, this variety of narratology is much more similar to  ludology than its detractors may acknowledge" (68).
• Thus, verisimilitude is a public, institutional and  industrial expectation for any production. Neale further differentiates between  "cultural verisimilitude"—that is, cultural credibility and  "generic verisimilitude"—that is, a production's fidelity to  members of its class.
• Increasingly, the ideological criteria are those of the Bush regime and this  remains largely unquestioned, both among reviewers and among scholars
• Thus,  "Day of Infamy" has two pedagogical functions: first, to teach the  player the controls of the game; second, to teach the player the history of  World War II. The trip from the depths of the Oklahoma to the deck adds to the  history lesson through game play and through a reward for that game play.
• one could conclude that the intersection of story and action registers the myth  that America stood peaceful and innocent. Certainly, what
• Making Pearl Harbor the focus of the cover art, one-quarter  of the game, its didactic core both for controls and content, and its most  carefully animated section reinscribes the popular mythos surrounding not only  this event but those that followed, along with their contemporary analogs. The  player's minimalistic participation—save everyone like you; kill everyone  else—reaffirms this central message. It simply does not reduce to a  matter of the first level being a training and/or introductory level.
• n all of these levels, America is not under attack; rather, the  American way of life is under attack. This is a key reason why the player does  witness or participate in the war until he or she reaches the main deck of the  ship. At that precise moment, the game removes control from the player and shifts  to a cut scene. The cut scene centres on a Japanese plane slamming into the  superstructure of the USS Oklahoma.
• In other words, it is  not enough that the Japanese are animated as other, their behaviour sets them  apart and their language is replete with stereotypical grunts, groans and  shouts of "Banzai!"
• Shehla Burney examines the narrative strategies  through which the American media deploys its recent collective memory to define  the currently accepted version of nationalism. She finds that in times of crisis  culture is often aggressively deployed to differentiate the nation from its  rivals; that is, "us" from "them":
• In a  very real way, war games construct racialized meaning, thereby providing  ideological sanction for America's War on Terror and its aggression in the  Middle East." Based on his students' responses to games which portray Arabs  in contemporary settings as savage or primitive warriors, Leonard argues for a  greater emphasis on media literacy.
• However, Schaffer also finds that the when  witnesses made comparisons between the terror attacks and movies, the  "question of the moving image's fidelity to the real did not arise."
• In other words, movies became the standard against which extraordinary events  are gauged—at least for this event—as opposed to the other way  around.
• skelinen who echoes Aarseth in  writing, "ludology, like the games it studies, is not about story and  discourse at all but about actions and events, the relations of which are not  completely fixed"

• Frasca recognizes that "simulation [. . .] is an ideal medium  for exposing rules rather than particular events" (2004 87). He also  cautions that "videogames are not a good realm for historic events or for  making moral statements" (2004 86). Yet, that is what happens in Medal  of Honor: Rising Sun through play and through narrative.

      
• Spielberg's game makers turned  Pearl Harbor into a slaughter; a slaughter of Japanese. I mention this because  the combined efforts of all American forces and losses due to attrition  accounted only for only twenty-nine Japanese planes lost during the battle.
• he event functions almost like a cut-scene  but with two notable exceptions. First, there is no break in the animation of  the scene despite the player's control of the game being suspended. Second, the  player cannot skip the episode as in a typical cut scene. The overall effect is  that "to be 'one the scene' of a life and death event, in the very midst  of the action, is not like being 'on the scene,' but far more like being  a spectator"
• Simply put, there is no way to avoid  watching—witnessing—the bombs' inevitable impact on the deck of the  doomed ship. This event clearly evokes the scenes of the ill-fated 767s flying  into the twin towers of the World Trade Center.
• David Leonard puts it succinctly:  "Americans of all ages are thus able to participate collectively in the  War on Terror and in Operation Iraqi Freedom, just as if they were members of  the military." More than cinema, video games offer the player the chance  to "be there" but not as a mere witness.
• "Typically, the ethical critique of spectacle proceeds on two  flanks. First, it's alleged that spectacle brings us too close to  particular events, and hence prevents us from thinking through their broader  implications [. . .] The second complaint is just the opposite:  spectacle distances us from violent events, rendering us indifferent to  the suffering of [the] victims." Cinema must placate both concerns  simultaneously. However, video games work to dissolve the distinctions. They  offer the possibility of being close and yet removed, watching and yet in  control.
• This combination of narrative and play ambiguity certainly lends more credence  to the position that the game might be "too sensitive" for viewers in  the opinion of its producers and their cohorts in government.
• Landy  concludes that the popular adoption of Hollywood-style metaphors does not  necessarily signal that the American consciousness is indebted to Hollywood.  Instead, scholars should consider whether "Hollywood is indebted to these  visions of American exceptionality [. . .] and the sense that  Americans have an ordained destiny in the world, which may involve the uses of  war and violence to stop those forces that seek to impede [their]  'progress'"
• like so many  other Spielberg productions, appeals to this sense of entitlement and its  contingent revenge motive. It also suggests that the makes do not trust players  to make choices by limiting not just their choices but also their actions.
• Either consumers of video games are more  concerned with their own recreation than the implications of the terror attacks  or they are not sufficiently media literate to recognize the collusion between  the entertainment industry and the Bush regime; the metaphorical linkages  between what they are seeing and the project of nationalism. A third, and  worse, possibility is that they simply do not care.

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• This line of questioning, about the relationship between stories  and games, is one of the major themes of  First Person, and is addressed by theorists and practitioners from a wide  variety of backgrounds.
• Yet we began by talking about literature. Surely "story" is not  all there is to literature in new media; if we are talking of  literature, where is text -- where are the words? The Sim characters for  which the game is named don't utter sentences that tell a story -- much  less language that edifies or entertains -- but rather communicate  through icons and gibberish to indicate what is on their simple  minds
• the exploration  of new textual experiences -- and other new literary/linguistic  experiences -- created by artists, poets, programmers, and fiction  writers
• In  First Person  we provide examples of textual/literary practices (including  hypertexts) that in their internal procedures or audience interaction  can be thought of as performance or gameplay, or that provoke us to  reconsider these terms

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• Is friending actually creating and supporting more true friendships? Or rather are we addicted to something that approximates real connection but is actually very mediated and done only alone?

• he growth in popularity of short downloadable games, the phenomenal success of the Wii, and the prevalence of quick, simple games on mobile devices have contributed to a shift in popular culture wherein it is rare to find people who don’t play video games in one form or another
• In discussing the elements of casual game design, his argument is that casual games typically present a positive fictional valence and intuitive usability, that they are designed to be played in short periods of time - to be interruptible - and tend to feature lenient punishment for failure combined with excessive positive feedback. The term Juul uses to describe this feedback is “juiciness” - a wonderful addition to the lexicon of game-related language.
• The analysis of the way games have changed to bring about the “casual revolution” is only half of the picture. Throughout the book there is a constant interplay between what games are and how players experience them. Juul draws on a survey of 182 players of casual games, identifying price and time as the two biggest reasons that these players choose casual over more traditional video games. He discusses the reasons why some games are attractive to some players and not to others, identifying the way that particular games “fit in” with player’s lives. The ageing demographic of video game players increasingly demands that players be able to drop in and out of play without being penalized for doing so. As is to be expected, respondents to Juul’s survey tend to be “hardcore” casual game players in terms of the amount of time they spend playing. Nevertheless many indicate the importance of being able to put down a game at short notice and return to it later. This pick-up-and-play quality is an important consideration in the growth of the casual games market. Whilst it does not exclude the extended play of casual games, it does explain why traditional hardcore videogames are difficult to fit into player’s lives. As Juul observes, “a casual game is sufficiently flexible to be played with a hardcore time commitment, but a hardcore game is too inflexible to be played with a casual time commitment” (p.10).
• n A Casual Revolution the move away from solitary towards social play is an area that feels somewhat under-explored. It

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• This, in essence, is the problem of collective action - in some situations an individual may enjoy the benefits of a collective good without contributing to its procurement or maintenance. Consequently, nobody may wish to contribute and the good is not made available at all. Simply put, such goods are vulnerable to free-riders, people who take no responsibility for the maintenance or construction of the resource.
• game as rule system and the gaming situation
• o the study of certain game-related phenomena but neither can answer every relevant question we may have. It is the responsibility of the game researcher instead to be clear about his or her level of analysis and to be acutely aware of which game elements are obscured by the choice of perspective.
• The result is a self-governing system in which community-destructive behaviour is strikingly difficult and where the tasks of central management are quite modest.
• As to personal commitment, clans often explicitly remind their members that membership is a privilege, that continued membership depends on acceptable behaviour, and that individual behaviour reflects back on the clan itself.
• On a more general level the article has argued that multiplayer gaming situations are nearly similar to social phenomena studied for centuries and, by consequence, that there is no justification for ignoring this work. People are still people when they go online, even if they log into World of Warcraft.

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• It was the first sign that something was fundamentally shifting in the videogame industry.
• By the early 1980s a distinctive videogame culture had indeed developed and gamer demographics narrowed. It was during this period that the stereotype of the young male videogame fiend was born, and not without reason. Both mall arcades and home consoles came to be dominated by adolescent boys.