Month: September 2016

PAB Entry #3: “Computer Game Studies: Year One”

Aarseth, Espen. “Computer Game Studies – Year One.” Game Studies, vol. 1, issue 1, 2001. http://gamestudies.org/0101/editorial.html. Accessed 20 September 2016.

While relatively short, Aarseth’s article ambitiously sets out to demarcate an official beginning for computer game studies as an “emerging, viable, international academic field”. Aarseth, known for his 1997 book Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergotic Literature, makes the case for formalized study of computer games as a field separate from, though drawing on, a range of related disciplines from computer science to anthropology, and film studies to aesthetics.

Studies in Literary Criticism and Theory: Intro to Game Studies
University of California at Santa Barbara: Studies in Literary Criticism and Theory: Intro to Game Studies

While the article seeks to define computer game studies as being something “too important to be left to” individual fields like English Studies, it also does not exclude scholars of literature, communication, and writing from being a part of the conversation. Indeed, to imply that English Studies has a greater claim on the field than other disciplines such as interface design, computer programming, animation, film studies, or sociology would be both selfish and unproductive, as they all have a role to play in the development of a truly interdisciplinary field. Aarseth warns against attempts by individual departments to stake a claim over Game Studies, pointing out that, “Making room for a new field usually means reducing the resources of the existing ones, and the existing fields will also often respond by trying to contain the new area as a subfield.” However, this seems to ignore the fact that the very sources of funding that make up these resources often come in the form of tuition dollars from students interested in a new major being drawn to a school, as well as research grants – largely absent in the case of English Studies, but more likely in new media fields, especially those with close ties to multimillion dollar industries.

SCAD Department of Interactive Design and Game Development
Savannah College of Art and Design’s stand-alone department of Interactive Design and Game Development

But how does Aarseth’s establishment of this field impact, restrict, or invite the participation of English Studies scholars? He allows that with the development of a new area of study, everyone is a newcomer, stating, “We all enter this field from somewhere else … and the political and ideological baggage we bring from our old field inevitably determines and motivates our approaches.”  But should we really consider methodologies, historical perspective, and knowledge of cultural context to be “baggage”?  As English scholars, we have much to contribute to this field, whether it is the formalized study of language, a deep and rich understanding of storytelling conventions and traditions, or the ways in which digital literacies inform and shape our verbal and written interactions through the medium of a game. Aarseth’s point is well taken, though; we can bring with us the knowledge and methods that have served us well in the past, but we must enter into the conversation with an open mind, willing to consider and incorporate other disciplinary perspectives that are different from, perhaps even contradictory at first glance to our own.

Just as English Education studies cannot exclusively be claimed by either departments of English or Education, and Cultural Studies will always include contributors from the social sciences, arts, and humanities, Game Studies can prove to be a fruitful and fascinating area for English scholars to explore and contribute to, but we will never have exclusive rights to it – nor should we. Its essence is interdisciplinary and Aarseth’s article helps to define the field, its roots, and the contribution it can make not only to academia, but to the larger community.  While it could not remotely be considered to be staking a claim over this new discipline on behalf of English departments, it has established the need for formalized study, research, and (implied, if not explicitly stated) pegagogy.

Additional Resources
A much later contribution to Aarseth’s Game Studies journal, “Game Definitions: A Wittgensteinian Approach” explores the many ways scholars have defined the concept of games.
Showing the way the field of game studies has branched out from Aarseth’s initial definition, “Feminist Game Studies: Defining the Field” similarly carves out a subfield within this new discipline.

“Extra Credits” contribution to the discussion of what a game is – in which Portnow disputes the usefulness of narrow definitions, and claims definitions are “the intellectual version of chasing your own tail”.

 

 

Paper #1 – History of Game Studies

The academic study of video game design has deep roots in many disciplines, stretching across the humanities, the social sciences, and computer science. Since it is a truly interdisciplinary field, there are as many claims to being the “first” to study them as there are subspecialties within it. Although my own area of interest draws strongly from composition studies and pedagogy as well as game studies, it is dependent on the idea of computer games having the potential to be immersive stories, and as such, much of the seminal work on this dates to the late 1990s.

Aarseth's Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature
Aarseth’s Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature

In Volume 1, issue 1 of Game Studies, Espen Aarseth states “2001 can be seen as the Year One of Computer Game Studies as an emerging, viable, international, academic field.” His book, Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature predates his “year one” by four years, as does Janet Murray’s seminal Hamlet on the Holodeck. While not the first works to ever explore the interactive potential for fiction, their work is among the most influential long-form explorations, which laid thegroundwork for more widespread acceptance and formalized study.
 

Hamlet on the Holodeck
Janet Murray’s Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace

Two of the first universities to begin interdisciplinary programs to study computer games were, unsurprisingly, MIT and Georgia Tech. Hamlet on the Holodeck was written while Murray was at MIT, where she began teaching “interactive fiction” in 1992 (Murray, Hamlet ix). She later went on to lead the Information Design and Technology program at Georgia Tech, among the first graduate programs of its kind (Murray “From Game-Story…” 6). Both these schools, sharing both a rigorous program of study in fields that fed into game studies and a student body with a passion for roleplaying games (live and tabletop) as well as computer games, proved fertile ground for new research programs. Over time, degrees in “Game Design” have sprung up at colleges and universities at all levels. However, most focus primarily on the art and technology that go into the creation of games, with analysis being pragmatic and not theoretical.

The high level of interest on the part of students, and the increasing demand for highly skilled workers in the ever-expanding field of video game design and production, has led to the development of these programs as a means of credentialing and training students to fill these roles. Beyond the notion of filling a market demand on the part of students and industry, Aarseth states a more philosophical imperative for the establishment of formalized video game studies, stating, “Today…we have a billion dollar industry with almost no basic research, we have the most fascinating cultural material to appear in a very long time, and we have the chance of uniting aesthetic, cultural and technical design aspects in a single discipline.”
However, some designers, like “Extra Credits” James Portnow, argue that game design programs often fail to provide the broad humanities base necessary to prepare students to be professional designers (Extra Credits). Turf wars over the disciplinary relationship between game studies and more established departments must take into account the primary purpose of schools, after all – the teaching of students. There exists a potential conflict between what is best for students (broad-based undergraduate programs with a strong liberal arts component, and more specialized, in-depth graduate study of games) and what may be best for career academics, who have a career imperative to carve out their own niche and identity as researchers.

I would argue, however, that for a well-rounded understanding of the field, study – whether formal or informal – of multiple disciplines is necessary. Individual disciplines may provide a theoretical framework for analysis, as well as their own rich traditions of the many elements that make up game design. And while Aarseth allows that “games should also be studied within existing fields and departments, such as Media Studies, Sociology and English,” he then goes on to say that “games are too important to be left to these fields.”

The demand on the part of students and industry for game design programs means that departments will continue to exist at least as long as the tuition dollars are there, and they have an important research contribution to make to the university community as well. There will be scholars who identify with these departments exclusively, and see researchers from related disciplines as interlopers. Such is the nature of interdisciplinary studies and departments, and Game Studies is not the first, nor will it be the last, to experience this conflict.

In the case of English Studies, studies of game design and game narrative open up new possibilities to explore issues underlying writing pedagogy, as well as an evolving definition of narrative that allows for agency on the part of the “reader” as well as the writer. Scholars of English Studies have much that they can contribute, and much that they can learn as well from this burgeoning field…if disputes over who has the “right” to study games do not get in the way.

 

Aarseth, Espen. “Computer Game Studies, Year One”. Game Studies. July 2001. http://gamestudies.org/0101/editorial.html.

Extra Credits. “Educating Game Designers – Too Much “Game” at Game Schools – Extra Credits.” YouTube. YouTube, 20 Apr. 2016. Web. 22 Sept. 2016.

Murray, Janet. Hamlet on the Holodeck. MIT P, 1997.

Murray, Janet. “From Game-Story to Cyberdrama” in First Person, edited by Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Pat Harrigan. MIT P, 2004, p. 2-11.

PAB Entry #2 – “Gaming, Student Literacies, and the Composition Classroom: Some Possibilities for Transformation”

Alexander, Jonathan. “Gaming, Student Literacies, and the Composition Classroom: Some Possibilities for Transformation.” College Composition and Communication 61.1 (2009): 35–63. Web. 15 Sept. 2016.

In “Gaming, Student Literacies, and the Composition Classroom: Some Possibilities for Transformation,” Alexander examines the experiences of two gamers as a way to explore multiple literacies, as well as utilizing games for analysis and as a mode of student writing in the composition classroom. Although much of the article consists of a recap of existing scholarship on the topic, and his incredulity at his subjects ability to juggle multiple technologies at once may strike a technologically savvy reader as quaint, he addresses writing as a means of knowledge production in contexts related to the game but not a part of actual gameplay. The artifacts produced as a result constitute an important paratextual resource for understanding and interacting with the game world.

Alexander’s analysis addressed the many ancillary texts outside of gameplay that are created by World of Warcraft players, which include reading and writing message board posts, strategy guides, and wikis. Students who may balk at a three-page paper for school will often churn out thousands of words for these ancillary texts as a component of their overall gaming experience. It should also be noted that these texts are often highly collaborative, with many people participating in the conversation, and even editing, adding to or subtracting from texts created by others. Alexander describes the planning of a guild raid as an argumentative text, not unlike what students are called on to create in Freshman Composition classes, that these written conversations “are taking place as students are collaboratively working on one text. Again, such collaboration is not uncommon in many professional fields, but I wonder to what extent we in our writing courses are teaching students not just to write but to write collaboratively“.

He cites examples of establishing the credibility of the author, suiting the tone and diction to the writer’s audience, and other elements that we strive to impart to students in basic composition classes, and demonstrates the ways in which students are using them in creating these ancillary game texts.

While I agree with his assertions, and have seen many examples of people who did tremendous research, and even mastered complex skills only tangentially related to a game they were playing, I don’t feel that Alexander drew a clear enough line between what is occurring in games, and how to apply that as part of composition pedagogy. Knowing that it happens is interesting in understanding process and the ways in which students reflect on their writing outside a classroom setting. But how does that impact how we teach? Without the many, many hours it takes to become immersed in a game setting and form a strong bond with characters, and to become effectively subject matter experts, how are these skills transferable?

Alexander states that, “in particular, literacy reflectivity, trans-literacy connections, collaborative writing, multicultural literacy awareness” can be developed through gaming. I agree, and his suggestion of the creation of multimedia texts, for example, can provide students with skills that will serve them beyond the classroom.  But most of his suggestions and example deal with students creating these writing assignments and then reflectively drawing out lessons from them that can be applied to other kinds of writing. This is great…if you have a class full of gamers. The time requirement to develop subject matter expertise and passion for the subject matter make the application of what has been learned in this study problematic for the composition teacher. Furthermore, for this to work as Alexander suggests would require a sea change in the way that we approach composition courses – the “transformation” that he alludes to in the article’s title. While this is arguably a laudable goal to work toward, it may not help professors now who have to teach to a set curriculum with little flexibility.
Additional Resources:

Gaming the First-Year Composition Course is a blog posting that is less focused on abstract theory or recapping scholarly literature, but one that echoes some of the same themes. It is more pragmatic, however, in their application.

It’s About the Game Design and the Learning – “In the case of education, it’s about the game and the learning, but the point is lost if the game isn’t fun.”

A nonscholarly post on “4 Things I Learned About Writing from Playing World of Warcraft” for novice professional writers.

PAB Entry #1 – “Composition, Computer Games, and the Absence of Writing”

Moberly, Kevin. “Composition, Computer Games, and the Absence of Writing.” Computers and Composition 25.3 (2008): 284–299. Web. 15 Sept. 2016. Reading Games: Composition, Literacy, and Video Gaming.

Moberly’s article, written in 2008, begins with the idea that in games like World of Warcraft and Second Life, the written word was becoming scarce. As player communication moved from text-based to voice based, and given that game content was delivered primarily through sound and visuals, it seemed that writing (and reading) were becoming obsolete.

Text from a World of Warcraft chat window
Text from a World of Warcraft chat window

However, Moberly states that, “If writing appears to be absent from these games, however, it is not because the games have evolved to the point where writing is not useful or relevant but because, in order to appear magical, the games must disguise the degree to which their technology is dependent on writing.” Certainly, the writing of design documents and dialogue as part of the game’s design and production is vital, though it is largely invisible to players. But while actual written words may be scarce on the page, the player goes through many of the same processes that a writer does.

Composition is occurring, in that the thought processes required to define a character visually using the symbolic language of the game is much the same as choosing words to describe something to an intended audience. An important lesson that can be applied to the composition classroom, is that “whether reading and writing takes place in the context of a computer game or a research paper, its effects are ultimately not manifested on the screen or on paper, but on the individuals who, in expressing themselves through the surrogate of the screen or paper, produce the discourse communities in which they are involved.”

Rhetoric and communication are happening in MMORPGs, even if they are being done through symbols and game mechanics. The choices players make in crafting identity can be applied as lessons on audience and tone, as well as relation to a discourse community. What impression do you want to give to your reader, or in this case, other players? A scantily clad Night Elf sorceress is going to send a very different message than a stout Dwarven warrior – one which can be deconstructed in terms of gender, race, social standing, and a host of other factors. As a player, are you going to make choices based on that character’s cultural background, or just do what feels fun? How much will you roleplay the character, through your words or actions?

The
Sometimes player dialogue choices are limited

Ultimately, Moberly is addressing one of the elements I feel is fertile ground for study – the ways in which games can help students learn the underlying elements that have to be in place before effective, fruitful writing can be created. In the case of World of Warcraft, issues of discourse community, relation to an audience, and finding a unique voice from which to write from are all inherent in game play. From a pedagogical standpoint, though, students will not necessarily absorb these lessons in a conscious sense – for a game to be applied in a practical way to composition studies, there has to be a teacher to act as a catalyst for students, to see these applications.

Additional Resources:
“Extra Credits” is a web series on game design. In their episode “Symbolism 101,” they discuss uses of symbolism from a design standpoint, and address issues including player identity.

“Narrative Mechanics” addresses how a story can be told through the mechanics – the way that a game works, the rules that govern gameplay.

 

 

My take on the theory vs. practice debate

I’m still processing the Phelps article, “Practical Wisdom and the Geography of Knowledge in Composition,” but the quote from Nick Fury in “The Avengers” immediately came to mind. Prior to entering academia, I worked as a professional writer in publishing and corporate communications, and in the 10 years since my last degree, I have taught college-level composition. As a result of both of these, I look at writing as a very pragmatic discipline, with an underlying foundation in critical thinking. I see the value of theory, but there comes a point when I lose patience with writing that I feel is needlessly convoluted and theoretical, and long for something more practical. That is how I felt while reading some of the assignments for this week, and it’s an undercurrent in my frustration with “theory” in general.

To paraphrase Nick Fury, I recognize that the learned scholars of academia have formulated theories, but given that sometimes theory is out of touch with practice, or is expressed in such a way as to make what should be a straightforward idea unnecessarily complicated, I have (up until now) chosen to ignore them. However this being graduate school, I recognize the need to better understand abstract theory, so unlike the Director of SHIELD I no longer have the option to ignore theory. Phelps discussion of the three “moments” – attunement, critical examination and practical experimentation (865)  reassured me, to some degree, that this was a kindred spirit who was interested in pragmatic applications as well as abstract theory.

This is also one of the reasons why I defected to the Composition side of the English Studies field from Literature; my pragmatism has led me to prefer “what works” based on my own experience in the trenches of teaching Freshman Composition.  While I’m apprehensive about venturing out into the deep end of theory, I am glad there are others who have a similar perspective. I still wish that academics would write in a more straightforward way, but I understand that you tailor your writing to your audience, and credibility depends on having a voice of authority….which unfortunately means writing that grates on my sensibilities from years of teaching clarity and brevity.

EDIT:

Having read further, some additional thoughts –
There seems to be a disconnect, at least in some of the scholars the author is quoting from (especially North), in that there is a belief that pragmatic, procedural knowledge is in some way uncritical.  While that *can* be the case, it certainly isn’t always that way. When I began teaching, I was frankly terrified – I knew how I did what I did, but I didn’t know how to explain it to others. If that’s all you know, how can you possibly teach? What works for one person doesn’t always work for another, and if you can’t articulate your reasons why you do what you do, you don’t really have a “how” that can be taught and applied to more than one situation.  I had to become reflective about my own processes as a writer, and rather than just saying “do this” I had to think about why I did what I did, and come up with ways of teaching that helped students to discover the “why” through analyzing models, and then discuss the “how” of ways to put that “why”into practice.

“Lore” seems to be used as a kind of informal “best practices” – if you do this, you’ll get a good result. However it’s hard for me to conceive of a pedagogy that isn’t at all self-reflective. When I got to the point that I was just doing things by rote, I took a term off from teaching to get my head together, and came back with new approaches based on an analysis of what had and had not worked, refocusing on what the goals of training student writers should be based on the needs of the institution and the job market, and aimed at students where they are now, rather than where we expect they should be. I guess that when people are overworked and constrained by overly restrictive institutional requirements of what and how to teach, that discourages reflection. If you have no power to change assignments or innovate in your teaching, why reflect?