Thought I should link to Graham’s helpful and positive comments on Bogost’s research.
Many many times in conferences and seminars, (particularly the critical theory ones), I’ve had to bring in one or two academics to task on certain off-hand points, regarding videogames. Bogost’s work always provides ample defence on such occasions.
Outside of game studies, I’ve found that Videogames are generally discussed under two methods;
1. The Off-hand Mirror Conclusion – Games reflect cultural concerns back to us in the form of lessons and textual readings. This isn’t done with any detailed conviction, just an off hand method of stating that ‘X’ is, a bit like a escapist videogame. This often feeds from the cliched, commercial side of game industry. Zizek’s obviously the task master of this, offering critical U turns where safe. But I’ve seen plenty of academics who casually reduce the complexities of game design to human concern or enjoyment, (I remember watching a certain cultural psychoanalysis lecturer (not Zizek) read a paper on how subjects were now directly achieving ‘joussiance‘ through the pleasureable act of gaming.)
2. The Detailed Structuralist Conclusion – Games are instrumental for understanding the dominant cultural questions today. They can reveal formal structures of, say, capitalist systems, or realms of sense-effect. This is the theoretical realm of academics such as Alex Galloway and McKenzie Wark for example. Galloway in particular is excellent at detailing the structure of videogames as a template for Deleuze’s post-Foucaultian ‘Control Society’. McKenzie Wark’s Baudrillaudian take, simply argues that culture is just a huge ‘winner-takes-all’ MMO. Content is addressed, but the formal properties are considered important in comparison to the formal structuralist (or post-structuralist) properties of human concern.
The first method fails to even attempt to understand videogames as a legitimate vehicle of expression. Although the second method is vastly more accepting of videogames than the first, both consider videogames as tools which tell us something (usually cultural) about ourselves, something we should know. Bogost’s work pushes games harder in this sense, in that games can actually tell us things we didn’t know before.
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The first approach is definitely common, but somewhat puzzling to me, coming especially from cultural-studies types. If you were to ask the proverbial Man on the Street what medium is most purely escapist, I suspect many would answer film/television. And indeed a large proportion of the output of that medium is aimed at getting commercial success via mass entertainment. Yet most cultural-studies scholars would be quick to object to someone equating the medium as a whole with escapist entertainment. The only explanation I can really think of is that film has a longer academic history, and the scholars in question personally have films (or even TV series) that they like, but don’t personally play games.
Thanks Mark,
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head regarding these paradoxes. I’ve tended to shy away from the generational answer, as it sounds too obvious (besides videogames have been around for 40 years in some form or another), but with the majority of film theorists now entering their 60s/70s, perhaps it is as obvious as a lack of familiarity.
That said, my own PhD supervisor (who is a highly distinguished film historian/artist professor in his 60s /70s) hasn’t really played videogames, but in conversation has very positive things to say about them. Furthermore, he’s argued in casual conversation that games studies may have to confront the dilemma that film studies has had to contend with in the 1980s/1990s. Namely, the huge popularity in the 1950s/1960s followed by a decline as it was consumed by culture and media studies. Personally, I think we might see the crisis in obverse to film studies if anything; A continued escape as videogames continue to increase in proficiency of expression in conjunction with mass entertainment.
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