Game Work: Language, Power, and Computer Game Culture

PART 2, INTRODUCTION TO PART 2

In chapter 1 I provided an overview of the in®uences on and of computer games, demonstrating that although gaming’s effects on players are well recognized , the interpretations of those effects are contradictory and complex. I also suggested that those societies in which computer games have become popular are also transforming; virtually every aspect of life is being touched by the in®uence of computer games, from art to business, and from education to entertainment. Because there exists a tangle of opposing views on what these transformations mean—personally and societally—scholars recognize that computer games stand at a point in the dialectic where a variety of forces may be manipulated such that dominance over competitors, technologies , players, concerned citizens, and/or the media can be a result. As these forces are manipulated, concentrations of power shift, advancing some sociopolitical agendas while others lose ground and altering both personal and collective understandings of what constitutes “play.”These shifts, I have proposed, are one way that computer games do real work in the world. Both the creation and the playing of games require different kinds of work, all of which manufacture values ranging from the economic to the moral, and gameworks are the medium through which these values are articulated and reproduced. Computer games, like most cultural artifacts, are materializations of a broad set of integrated sociopolitical interests. Games are designed to appeal to children, youth, and adults of all ages, males and females, who are from many parts of the world. Some games have strong heterosexual elements , while others represent homosocial and homosexual relationships. There are games that appeal to players’ desires to hunt, solve, maneuver, and plan; the scenarios in which these desires are met are sometimes lifelike and sometimes fantastic. Despite all of these variations, however, one fundamenPART 2 Introduction to Part 2 tal concept ties them together: play. Regardless of the genre, all computer games purport to facilitate play. And play, it is important to remember, is also always instructive. Another important component of the ¤rst chapter was its characterization of the computer game complex as being determined by struggles on many fronts: social, scienti¤c, economic, instructional, and so forth. On an almost one-to-one basis, each culturally determined claim about computer games has been met by an equally authoritative contradictory claim. These con®icting discourses point out the variety of logics that inform interpretations of mass culture generally, and computer gaming especially. This rich variety of con®icting discourses suggests that profoundly important interests are at stake and that computer games and gaming are not only sites of struggle themselves but are also representative of broader struggles—struggles being engaged at the cultural and societal levels and within which computer games are only ®ashy but small-time players. In chapter 2 I examined the notion of play and its relationship to the computer game complex and from this examination developed a method—a grammar of gameworks—by which scholars might usefully critique the computer game complex within the context of a multiperspectival dialectical analysis. I also suggested in that chapter how an understanding of the dialectic might emerge through analyses of material culture. The primary advantage of such an interpretive lens is that it is necessarily historical and is always already situated within a framework of struggle. Consequently, dialectical analyses not only always result in personal transformation but also provide a crucial foundation upon which one may ground social transformations. The next several chapters demonstrate how the grammar of gameworks may be used to interpret the content and mechanisms of a variety of dialectical struggles currently being engaged in and around the computer game complex. To demonstrate the method’s pliancy, each of the following three chapters draws on different combinations of the elements that together comprise the grammar of computer games. In chapter 3 I examine the techniques of computer game development, focusing particularly on how game designers articulate their objectives, assumptions, and motivations. In chapter 4 I look at how game audiences respond to games as a community by studying both formal and informal computer game reviews. Finally, in chapter 5 I examine one particular game—Black & White—from an economic perspective. By “economic” I don’t only mean “monetary.” Instead, I refer to systems of value and exchange and to how those systems are substantiated, propagated, internalized, and resisted. Two ¤nal notes on these next chapters: ¤rst, since they each attempt to 68 introduction to part 2 [18.223.0.53...