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2Irreconcilability We must be ready to receive every moment of discourse in its sudden irruption; in that punctuality in which it appears, and in that temporal dispersion that enables it to be repeated, known, forgotten, transformed, utterly erased, and hidden, far from all view, in the dust of books. Discourse must not be referred to the distant presence of the origin, but treated as and when it occurs. Michel Foucault, — Archaeology of Knowledge What is it that people talk about when they talk about computer games? Rules? Play? Performance? Storytelling? Excitement? Frustration? Violence? Technology?The answer is, inevitably, as varied as computer games themselves. For developers, computer game talk often means constructive discourse— that is, talk about the building blocks of games and how those blocks can fit together to produce not just playable but pleasurable (and thus ultimately payable) artifacts. For players, game talk is often more experiential, focusing on game segments that evoke eye-watering concentration, ludic styles that bore or delight, and franchise trajectories marked by anticipation and perhaps eventual disappointment. Pundits—the politicians, parents, and media watchdogs who comment on, yet often do not play, computer games—tend to talk about the medium scientistically and referentially, with discourses that work to popularize particular viewpoints by articulating political ideologies , economic elements, and sociocultural observations. Computer game scholars, for their part, generally talk about games hermeneutically and with a range of registers that runs from grammatical and mathematical to narratological and philosophical.1 Given all of this talk from all of these viewpoints, it is little wonder that there are more than a few moments of disagreement in the discourses that surround and help constitute the computer game medium. Developers, play- Irreconcilability 17 ers, pundits, and scholars all have very different ways of understanding how computer games work,the pleasures and potentialities they afford,the extent of their merits and malignities, and their general sociohistorical meanings. One way to think about these moments of disagreement—or “irreconcilability ” as we term them—is that they emerge from the differences attendant with each respective analytical perspective.2 Approached this way, of course computer game developers and pundits will quarrel over the importance and meaning of voice-overs: to the former, voice-overs tend to be assessed according to project budgets, play mechanics, licensing agreements, available voice talent, and story advancement; for the latter, voice-overs are more understandably evaluated in terms of a particular game’s or company’s ideologies and social mores. Likewise, when computer game players and scholars talk about franchise devotion, they regularly talk at cross-purposes, with players often meaning something affirmative (e.g., a constancy of quality and meaning) and scholars something pejorative (e.g., consumer naïveté or the industrial manufacture of desire). None of these parties are incorrect in their assessments. On the contrary, their idiosyncratic yet at times seemingly similar talk is driven by different objectives and understandings of the computer game medium. As a result, the very same descriptive and analytical terms—terms that appear in all kinds of computer game discourses (e.g., “play,”“immersion,”“fun”)—can mean strikingly different things depending on who is deploying them and for what rhetorical purpose. As game theorist James Newman explains,“There is a surprising confusion among consumers, producers and scholars of videogames as to just which experiences or products constitute a ‘videogame’” (9). This, we contend, is no accident but is an unavoidable consequence of the medium’s ulteriority. This chapter pursues the discursive divisiveness at work in the computer game medium, from the people who talk about games to the games themselves .3 We contend that the computer game medium is an intractably irreconcilable one, that its dizzying breadth and diversity—from abstract puzzle games (Qix), to military-grade tactical trainers (Full Spectrum Warrior), to massively multiplayer online role-playing games (Ultima Online), to hardcore pornography (Virtual Valerie)—are a manifestation of both an internal and external discord. In other words, the computer game medium is not only difficult to reconcile with itself (How are Rez, Swedish Erotica: Beat ’Em & Eat ’Em and Riven:The Sequel to Myst of a piece, for example?), but also difficult to align with other media despite persistent attempts by developers, players, pundits, and scholars. This medium-based and discursive discord, we argue, amounts to a kind of magic in that the phenomenon of disjunction is difficult to apprehend as a logical, synthetic, and mundane process. Rather, 18 Chapter 2 it appears in iteration after iteration...

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