After listening to the class discussion on Tuesday and reading through the blog posts, it’s clear that Galloway has challenged our usual perception of video games. His division of Gamic Action into four categories based on who’s playing (the person or machine) and where the playing is done (inside the game or outside the game) is certainly a doable classification, and will help us analyze all aspects of games critically.

However, I have a big complaint about Galloway’s way of classifying games.  Through class discussion, and in some blog posts, people pointed out examples of Gamic Action that didn’t quite fit into a distinct quadrant.  My mind went directly to playable cutscenes that blur the line between Pure Process and Dromenon.  Furthermore, diegetic and nondiegetic acts seem to blur together when the decisions made by the player are not based on just the rules of the game, but also the rules outside of the game.  For example, I play a game differently if the game has checkpoints, or a menu option to save progress.  This nondiegetic action of saving my game has a distinct effect on the Dromenon.  This leads me to my overreaching point:  Gamic Action that exists between two quadrants isn’t an exception, but actually more common than Gamic Action that fits purely into one quadrant.  This fact means that Galloway’s categories, the four moments, are over simplifications of what’s actually going on.  I’m afraid that placing a part of a game into a quadrant will hide more than illuminate.  For example, if we categorize an action as Dromenon, it hides all nondiegetic and machine aspects of the action.  I agree with professor Sample’s insight that there’s more of a continuum rather than four discrete categories.  Rather than place a Gamic Action in a quadrant, we should acknowledge every diegetic, nondiegetic, operator, and machine aspect of the action.