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Music and How it influences you outside the game


I feel like I would have been able to come up with something better if I played more videogames. This is a song that I literally heard like fifty times when my roommates were playing Fifa ’10 and it was real catchy so I sat down, played the game and then downloaded the song. Props Fifa ’10 for influencing me outside the game world.

Games change culture?

I feel like I would need to re-read Galloway about nine times before I fully understand him, but this passage in particular confused me:

“Acts of configuration are a rendering of life: the transformation into an information economy in the US since the birth of video games as a mass medium in the 1970’s has precipitated massive upheavals in the lives of individuals submitted to a process of retraining and redeployment into a new economy mediated by machines and other informatic artifacts… The new “general equivalent” of information has changed the way culture is created and experiences. The same quantitative modulations and numerical valuations required by the new information worker are thus observed in a dazzling array of new cultural phenomena, from the cut-up sampling culture of hi-hop to the calculus curves of computer-aided architectural design” (16-17).

I start out following him just fine in the passage before this one, but he loses me here. How exactly is culture being changed here? By what? In what context? What is this “general equivalent?” It seems like I’m missing quite a bit of context for his claims.

And thus, although it is nondiegetic, the command cooperates with the diegesis rather than threatening it…well obviously.

To be completely repetitive, I felt the same as many of the others in the class in that the reading was suprisingly manageable. It was also very interesting, with a lot to take in. I would say rather than being confusing, it was extremely dense, with many new area’s of video game study to digest. There was one passage that I read several times and still cannot comprehend.

It is perhaps important to stress that, while many of these enabling acts are the center of most games…Thus the “xyzzy” comand in Adventure,  which teleports the player character to and from home base, is technically a nondiegtic machine act, but its nondiegetic status is covered over by the narrative of the game, which insists that the command is a magic spell, and thus, although it is nondiegetic, the command cooperates with the diegesis rather than threatening it….This wormhole through space and time reveals the tension often present in games whereby deigetic objects are used as a mask to obfuscate nondiegetic (but necessary) play functions.

On the opposing side, I want to point out one passage I thought was really interesting that I had not considered before which is on pages 18 to 19 and discusses the role of the player within the game.  It was interesting to see a comparison of a relationship between the machine and game itself and the play, and what implications this has on gameplay, and the players role in the game.

Just ask Mike Green, he was on the ice the entire time

I’ve found the Galloway reading to be relatively straight-forward so far, which could be due to the experiences I’ve had with video games in my past and what little I remember from taking a programming class in high school; but there was one section that befuddled me to no end. On pages 25-26, where Galloway is quoting Jacques Derrida’s concept of the term “play”, I was very confused as to what point Galloway is trying to raise. I suppose it could be the fact that I don’t see much of a connection between video game theory and the “very nature of language” (pg. 26), or it could be that I am confused at how in the same paragraph the author could say “After citing Levi-Strauss on the practical impossibility of arriving at a total understanding of language…”

In general, I am not so much confused about what Galloway/Derrida is trying to say in this passage as much as I am confused as to how this relates to the points that Galloway is making in this essay. Literally in the passage before he was describing how Half Life had a keyboard set up that directly represented move and expressive acts in clusters of keys, and then all of a sudden we are subjected to an almost nihilist discourse on the nature of language, which is quite exhausting. I am almost left wondering if this section is entirely relevant, as Galloway’s earlier handling of the subject of the definition of play seemed very adequate to me, even though admittedly we did spend a great deal of time reading Huizinga (kind of) and Caillois (no doubt about it).

In totality, talking about diegetic acts of video games, like the reaction of characters in NHL 10 to the impressive hits of Mike “Game Over” Green or the nondiegetic actions of choosing whether to wear the current sweaters of the Caps versus one of the classic eagle jerseys seems to make a lot of sense, but going on a discourse of the nature of language doesn’t. But although I was able to “pause” my reading of Galloway to write this blog in confusion, I know that when it comes time to unpause the game, Mike Green will be on the ice. And as we have all learned, knowing is half the battle.

The Play of the Structure

I, too, approached this reading prepared to have most of the material be over my head, and was surprised when I was actually able to grasp a decent portion of the chapter. Granted I don’t have a very firm grasp on all the ideas and concepts presented thus far, I understand the very (very!) basic gist of what Galloway attempted to convey. I felt that the majority of my struggle dealt with digesting unfamiliar words. Once I had an idea of what a word meant, I was able to get the basic gist of the sentence or passage that the word was used in. I employed this process countless times throughout the chapter, and each time (for the most part), I would realize that Galloway was referring to something maybe not so complex, but describing it in a complex way.

However, I was not able to use my two-step process successfully on pages 26 and 27. These pages deal with The Play of the Structure, and quite honestly, there was not a single line I could comprehend. How does play explain the nature of language? “As soon as it comes into being and into language, play erases itself as such.” (27) Uh… what? As I was reading, I felt like Galloway had switched gears here, and all too suddenly, since I was just getting more comfortable with the idea of diegetic and nondiegetic. But somehow, as Galloway says, “it comes full circle.” Once Galloway went back to discussing nondiegetic acts, I was able to get back on track.

Diegetic or Nondiegetic?

While for the most part I found Galloway’s writing to be interesting (though dense) the main issue that I had was Galloway’s treatment of diegetic or nondiegetic operator acts.  Some of his disconcerting and confusing language can be seen in the following passage from page 12:

The second moment of gamic action refers to a process with spontaneous origins but deliberate ends.  This is gamic action as a subjective algorithm.  That is to say, in this second moment, video game action is a type of inductive diachronic patterning of movement executed by individual actors or operators.  We are now ready to explore the second quadrant of gamic action: nondiegetic operator acts.

While I was able to grasp the general idea, I believe he could have chosen to describe these two concepts in a much more straightforward way, and in doing so, it would have made his writing much more approachable to non-academics.

Thorough insights

I have to agree with many things that Jake has said. I was a bit worried when Professor Sample explained the difficulties that we might face with the reading. However, as I began to read the essay, I became interested enough to keep reading. Galloway took an approach toward video games which is along the lines of what I am used to. The explanations and descriptions were detailed yet in logical manner. Yes, he did get technical with his statements but overall I enjoyed the passages. Being a chemistry major, I am used to seeing things and understanding things with clear outlines and concise flow. He took the reader on a journey to understanding each and every corner of a video games. Even if the reader was a gamer, he or she would be able to understand the content of this essay pretty well. Games, of course, are difficult to define and so is the idea of play and fun. But Galloway defines games and their components quite well. It was interesting how he referred to a gamer as an operator and a game as a machine. This sounds horribly boring, as he hinted but to be honest even though I play games on a daily basis, he is right. When it comes to bare bone of things, playing a game is actually like being an operator of something. There was one passage which was interesting to read since I have never noticed what he was talking about in real life. He compared the difference between arcade games and console games at home. Having a fixed amount of life compared to having a health that needs to maintained is something I have never even thought about but the comparison sets a great distinction between the two types of games.  This is probably narrative gameplay was more realistic, and more fun on arcades compared to game consoles. Since there are limited life, and limited time, there are only few chances to succeed in the games, whereas in game consoles now-a –days, gamers can save games before doing something daring or taking on challenges. Which gives the game a more unrealistic feel.

Cockfight

In the first chapter of Alexander Galloway’s book, the connection between culture and gaming is discussed over several pages.  Galloway claims that “play is a cultural phenomenon that has meaning” and that “play is a symbolic action for larger cultural issues.”  These statements, along with hinting that games indirectly let the player interact with social realities, are agreeable and understandable.  However, Galloway’s first mention of culture is not as relatable:

“In the essay, ‘Deep Play:  Notes on the Baliese Cockfight, ‘Geerts offers a fantastically evocative phrase:  ‘cultre, this acted document.’  There are three interlocked ideas here:  There is culture, but culture is a document, a text that follows the various logics of a semiotic system, and finally it is an acted document….(…Geertz’s observation, then, is not to say that culture is a text but to say that action is a text…) (14).

After reading (and failing to understand) the above passage, I continued to search out all of Galloway’s cultural references.  I found myself not only understanding these future references, but also agreeing with them.  However, I was unable to find either an explanation or reference back to this passage.  I don’t understand how culture can be defined in a document.  Furthermore, I don’t understand the connection between video games and culture as a document.

Expressive Acts

“Firing one’s weapon is used interchangealby both to attack and to open doors. In fact, experientially these acts are equivalent:they both exert an expressive desire outward from the player character to objects in the world that are deemed actionable. That one expressive act opens a door and another kills a nonplayer character is insignificant from the perspective of gamic action” (Galloway 24).
Maybe I am interpreting ‘gamic action’ the wrong way but what I consider gamic action to be completing the mission, winning the level and the steps to achieve said goal. From this perspective I am having trouble seeing how these two actions do not affect the action. For instance, In Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six and other similar games, if you kill a hostage then you fail the mission. By Galloway’s logic should there be no difference between killing the hostage and the terrorist? Galloway lost me here. Please help.

Anyone else trying to figure out where some of these words even came from…?

I understood a decent amount of the reading from Galloway, but a lot of the lingo made things hard to understand. I felt like I was able to get the gist of what he was trying to say due to the context, but after as more and more words I had never even seen came into the picture, this became harder as the reading went on. The concepts that he is getting across could be explained in simpler terms in my opinion, but since he is obviously not writing to appeal to a casual audience, it makes sense why he uses the language that he does. Below is an example of a passage I found confusing:

“One example is multithreading and object oriented programming that creates the conditions of possibility for certain formal outcomes in the game. When one plays State of Emergency, the swarm effect of rioting is a formal action enacting by the game on the experience of gameplay and incorporated into the game’s narrative. Yet the formal quality of swarming as such is still nondiegetic to the extent that it finds its genesis primarily in the current logic of informatics (emergence, social networks, artificial life, and so on) rather than in any necessary element in the narrative, itself enlisted to “explain” and incorporate this nondiegetic force into the story line (a riot) after the fact.” (32-33)

I can take enough out of this passage to talk about it, but not to explain what exactly he means.. I think that what he doing is explaining a way that game developers program certain scenarios to seem somewhat random, even though they aren’t, but I could also be totally off because I get lost in his rhetoric. I did enjoy much of the reading though (the parts that I understood at least), and was happy that I recognized/had played many of the games that he mentioned throughout the chapter.

Chunking & Aging

This has absolutely nothing to do with video games– absolutely nothing– so Professor Sample, please feel free to delete it if you’d like.

I was just reading this article on why life seems to go by faster as you get older: linky linky linky~ The middly bit made me think of this class.

“Of course, you can see this in everyday life,” says Eagleman, “when you drive to your new workplace for the first time and it seems to take a really long time to get there. But when you drive back and forth to your work every day after that, it takes no time at all, because you’re not really writing it down anymore. There’s nothing novel about it.”

This seemed really similar to the “chunking” process that Koster introduced in the earlier chapters. Apparently chunking really does happen in everyday life, outside of video games, and it’s also what makes time seem to go by faster when you’re old. You’ve already chunked everything, and are just repeating it over and over… (like Every Day the Same Dream?). Interesting.

The evolution of music in videogames

Music has always been a vital component in videogames but its role has expanded over the years.  According to this article the role of music in videogames has evolved with games.  Starting as a simple tool in Space Invaders to calm people during the game, music has evolved as a instrument to bring out specific behaviors.  The article also reports that composers have run into several problems in making music for videogames.