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The Last Word on the Last Word on the Ludology/Narratology Debate Debate

While I was glad that it was by no means the central issue of DiGRA, the Ludology vs. Narratology debate was still going on. As the title of my blog post attempts to suggest, we have already had more than one paper or presentation that attempted to be the “Last Word” on the debate, which of course signals that despite the best intentions, we haven’t reached the last word on narratology vs. ludology yet. As such, I thought it might be good for me, if no one else, to lay out my own journey through games studies and how I got to be where I am today.

LIke most people who study videogames, I have played them more or less all my life — we had a Pong machine when I was a very young kid (actually, I’m fairly certain it was one of a million knock-offs and not an official Pong machine) and I’ve played games ever since. WHile the first console may be different for other people, I’m sure the majority of us have similar journeys, so I won’t bore anyone with that. What I’ve learned from talking to people at DiGRA, was that out academic journey to games studies is unique for each person, and that is what I’m going to talk about.

As an undergrad at Ball State University, I was an English major and a Math minor and while I liked reading the classics and found pleasure in the problem solving of Math, I was a fairly unremarkable student. I was much more interested in genre fiction such as sci-fi, sword and sorcery, and pulps as well as comic books. The point of this is to say that I’ve read many of the classics, and I’ve got a better than average math background. I’m no expert on narratology, but I’ve got a shelf full of Norton anthologies that are gathering dust.

In one class, we read White Noise by Don Delillo which was inspired by Bowling Green’s Department of Popular Culture. While the book kind of satirized the department, it sounded really fun, so when I realized that I didn’t want to be a high school teacher, I applied to that program and got in.

At Bowling Green, I spent the first semester kind of trying to keep my head above water while I took the mandatory 6 credit hour theory class that threw me head first into cultural studies stuff. I had originally thought I was going to do my Master’s thesis on comic books, but I was a bit dissatisfied with that. I finally figured out that I wanted to write about videogames and began to look around for anything written about them. That’s when I ran into the Ludology vs. Narratology thing.

At first I was really attracted to Ludology simply because my English background had totally burned me out on narrative. I still often say, only partially in jest, that plot is for losers. I’m all about spectacle. Give me kicking, shooting, lasers or zombies over some deep story any day of the week. So I knew I wasn’t a narratologist, so I thought I was a ludologist. Now I’m not so sure. I don’t think I’m either…

In the Department of Popular Culture, one of the other requirements was a Folklore class. While I found the old — mostly narrative centered and thinking about origins of folk tales and such — to be very boring, the more modern incarnations of folklore such as that practiced by Greertz and Turner to be really interesting. That’s when I realized that I was really interested in people a lot more than I was in videogames. Here at IU, I’m in the Department of Communication and Culture and there is a Performance and Ethnography component and that has only reinforced my opinion that people is where it is at. Which is why I am not totally satisfied with ludology.

Unlike any other medium, videogames are really only complete when the consumer is engaged in them. Film and Books and Movies are technically the same for every person, even if we the consumer always consume them differently, but videogames aren’t. So if we don’t talk about the player, then how can we be talking about videogames? This is why I am becoming more and more tired of the ludology vs. narratology debate. In doing a quick search through some of the papers in this debate, the word “player” is conspicuously rare. You can talk about stories and game structures all you want, but maybe I’m just crazy, but when I’m playing I’m not worrying about the story. I’m enjoying the experience. While thinking about stories in games and structures of games certainly is important, centering on it to the exclusion of the player seems overly narrow to me.

I think the main frustration that I have with this debate is that, like many debates, it tends to act as if these two approaches are the only game in town. Those of us that are advocating other approaches don’t seem to have a place in the debate. I’m not a narratologist, and I’m fairly certain I’m not a ludologist. I’m an ethnographer and a student of popular culture and youth culture. Perhaps if we really could get to the last word in the debate then those of us that aren’t interested in EITHER option wouldn’t have to nod politely whenever it comes up.

Back in the USA

Well, here I am, finally back home from DiGRA2005. I hate travelling ever so much. As someone who is 6ft 4, 225lbs, I am not made to ride in teh back of a crowded plane! Thankfully it was only two timezones away. Those brave souls from other continents have my sympathy.

The conference was grand. I’ll post more of my thoughts on specific things in the days to come as I recover from the travel. For someone who grew up in a small town in Indiana, Vancouver was quite an experience. Because I am cheap, I went to Orbitz and booked the cheapest relatively close to the conference hotel I could find and, unfortunately, I booked a hotel in the ghetto and the hotel room was the smallest EVAR. The taxi driver who took me from the airport even told me not to go out after dark. It was really weird that even though my hotel was on the hotel was on the same street as the conference hotel and only 15 blocks away, about 10 of those blocks were full of boarded up buildings, hoemless and crackheads. Then suddenly, after those ten blocks, it was full of skyscrapers, suits and tourists. Citys are odd places. However, I didn’t have any problems — although I find the suits more repugnant than the homeless…

The best part of the confernce for me was to finally be able to put some faces with names of my fellow bloggers. I had a good time talking with Lars Konzack, and Cyberzel among lots and lots of other people — including someone from Indiana University I had never heard from before!!!

To finish this post up, here is a round-up (in no particular order) of bloggers who beat me to the punch and already posted about DiGRA (some folks more than once!):

Greg Costikyan
Robin Hunicke
William Huber
Cindy Poremba
Andrew Stern
Greg Lastowka
Lars Konzack
Cyberzel
Jason Rhody
Jonas Heide Smith
Jesper Juul .

And there are lots of pictures as well (including some of me looking really enthusiastic!):
Flickr pics
Grand Text Auto and
shinyspinning

Leavin’ Here!

Well, this time tomorrow I’ll be on my way to Vancouver for the DiGRA conference. I’m presenting a paper Friday about our perceptions of our body as we play First-Person Shooters. Unfortunately, not only am I on one of the short paper panels, but I also ended up on a panel with 5 people instead of four. That means that I get a whole 10 minutes to talk — and I thought cutting my paper down to 3000 words for the proceedings was tough! Oh well, still, it will be great to hobnob with other gaming people and to get to put some faces with names.

Unclean! Unclean!!!

Last night G4 aired the first episode of Video Game Vixens. Yes, it is exactly what it sounds like. I tried to make it to the first commercial break, I really did. However, it was just too lame for me, the prude that I am…

However, the first five or so minutes were more than enough for me. The show is hosted by Hal Sparks. I supposed this is the biggest celebrity that G4 has ever had on a show. To make the show kewl, he is introduced by a DJ. But then again, so is Ellen DeGeneres and while I like Ellen and her show isn’t horrible, cool isn’t one of the words I would use to describe her. Nor is it one of the words I would use to describe the Video Game Vixens. The “Videogame Vixen Judges” are an “eclectic” group to put it politely. Even though she was sitting in the middle and not on the end the first person they introduced was “WWE Rookie Diva of 2005,” Joy Giovanni. It is odd that even though I am a fan of professional wrestling, I didn’t recognize her. The second judge was game writer Seanbaby who does a pretty funny column for EGM. The last judge was some guy from MTV’s Road Rules. I guess now we know what happens to former reality show participants.

Interestingly, even though the show is Video Game Vixens, according to the website, the judges are “Videogame Vixen Judges” which means that rather than take a side in the “videogame” vs. “video game” debate the show just uses both versions of the word. That’s on purpose, I’m sure and not the result of shoddy production values.

Then they started showing clips of videogame characters and I decided to go and actually play a game.

The show did get off to an interesting start, though. They did a sketch of a beauty contest and then Laura Croft, Bloodrayne and some other woman came in and kicked ass. Since they were portrayed by living breathing women, it was kind of interesting. However, I suppose that the fact that the highlight of the show was the opening is faint praise.

Lest anyone think I’m judging the whole show on just watching the first 5 or so minutes, I did record it and plan on watching the whole thing sometime this week. If there is something more of merit to Video Game Vixens, I will post a retraction.

Commence holding breath…

Gamer Br Mini-review

Last weekend, I wrote about a gamer documentary I ran across. I hadn’t seen it then, but now that I have seen Gamer Br, I can recommend it to those interested in the Brazilian gaming scene. The film is mostly in Portuguese but there are English subtitles. Mainly covering the computer gaming scene, the film highlights some of the legal issues that gamers are facing as well as talking to some of the gamers. Overall, it is fairly similar to the Modern Day Gamer film and its sequel, but Gamer Br does offer insight into the gaming culture of Brazil and also gets credit for talking to some of the government officials who are responsible for making the policy decisions regarding videogames. If you have the bandwidth, it is certainly worth your time to download the film.

Still ashamed to be a gamer…

Unfortunately, little seems to have changed since I first announced that I was ashamed to be a gamer. While I haven’t seen any magazines as gratuitous as those, the spectacle of E3 has brought it’s fiar share of shame.

Over at Games.Slashdot.org they had a link posted to GameGal.com’s column on their 2005 E3 Hall of Shame in which the have pictures of a few of the “Both Babes” they found most offensive (The also have a rundown of their Historic Hall of Shame features “Booth Babes” of years goine by).

I’m not so ashamed by having “Booth Babes” pimping the games, as I am by the negative reaction to the article that many of the posters on Slashdot had to the idea that there *might* be something wrong with having “Booth Babes” to sell your product and how hard people try to justify it. It is funny to see shuch a gorup of people that are so quick to judge others as sheep refuse to stip and think that maybe there might be another way to get people interested in your games…

..of course that is only once you get past the lengthy discussion on how much money strippers make…

I wonder how you say “l33t” in Portuguese???

I just ran across Gamer Br, a Brazillian documentary on videogaming. I haven’t had a chance to watch it, yet, but according to the site:

Gamer Br is a Brazilian documentary about the game scene around here. It gives voice to gamers, producers, lanhouse owners, journalists, psychologists, anthropologists, politicians, government representatives and game enthusiasts about questions as professional gaming, market, ‘addiction’, piracy, policies of incentive, censorship and the so discussed ‘violence’ in games.

It sounds pretty cool and is available for download either via Archive.org or from LegalTorrents.com. The only thing you have to risk is your bandwith, so you might as well download it! It is 765 MB and, according to Archive.org, “The video is mainly Portuguese-spoken, with the according subtitles in English; when the interviewee speaks English, the subtitles are in Portuguese.”

Hopefully, I’ll be able to watch it this weekend and give a brief blurb on it soon!

Oh goody…

Watching the Jane Pauly show on “videogame addiction” and, oh joy, they have David Walsh on. Guess what, he says that playing online is a new thing! I guess I was halucinating back in 1992 when Doom came out and I thought I was playing online… (and before anyone says it, I know Doom wasn’t the first game to have online multiplayer, but it was the first game I played online)

Oh goody…

Watching the Jane Pauly show on “videogame addiction” and, oh joy, they have David Walsh on. Guess what, he says that playing online is a new thing! I guess I was halucinating back in 1992 when Doom came out and I thought I was playing online… (and before anyone says it, I know Doom wasn’t the first game to have online multiplayer, but it was the first game I played online)