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1Idiosyncrasy [E]verything said from the angle of a real collector is whimsical. Walter Benjamin, — Illuminations Admittedly, it is a little odd to begin a scholarly book with an epigraph suggesting that all the text to follow will be whimsical. After all, whimsy runs counter to the very ethos of scholarly publishing, where rigor, vigor, and methodicalness —not play, ataraxia, and caprice—are the touchstones of truth and respectability. And yet we cannot in good conscience deny the fact that we often speak whimsically in this book, because we are ineluctably “real collectors” in the most Benjaminian sense of the term. We have spent more than a decade building one of the largest computer game archives in the United States.1 It houses hundreds of game systems, thousands of games, and a nearly uncountable number of peripheral materials, including books, magazines, souvenirs, and other game-related paraphernalia.2 In contrast to other large collections, such as Game Informer magazine’s venerable “Game Vault,” ours is an open assemblage that is used by scholars of all levels—from schoolchildren to endowed chairs—from around the world. As such, it exists in perennial flux, never quite moving beyond a “disorder of crates that have been wrenched open, the air saturated with the dust of wood, the floor covered with torn paper”—the sights and smells of a library being unpacked (Benjamin, Illuminations 59). Both new and antique artifacts are routinely added and loaned out, shifting the topography and textuality of the archive in a dance that tends to thwart the “mild boredom of order” that Benjamin talks about so poignantly, and yet in the process reveals the surprising breadth and nuance that computer games in toto have achieved. It is from the middle of this dynamic assemblage—from the deep and diverse knowledge of computer games that we have gained from collecting and studying them in their manifold permutations and associations over 2 Chapter 1 the past years—that we offer this book, a sustained, cohesive, and steadfastly theoretical examination of the interplay between the constitutive elements and meaning-making processes of the computer game medium.3 The whimsy we speak with, therefore, is not only meant to evoke the surficial play of our archive and the tactical play of collection, but also the diverse and multivalent play at the heart of computer games themselves.4 Though computer games represent the indulgence in, distillation of, and attempt to tame the wildness of play and its pleasures, they are nevertheless intrinsically idiosyncratic (as, indeed, are all media). How could they not be, when the play acts they rely on and enable are themselves equivocal? As inveterate play theorist Brian Sutton-Smith explains about the phenomenon of play in general, “We all play occasionally, and we all know what playing feels like. But when it comes to making theoretical statements about what play is, we fall into silliness. There is little agreement among us, and much ambiguity” (1).There are simply too many different kinds of play, too many different kinds of players, and—if noted play theorist Johan Huizinga is to be believed—too many different kinds of cultural and ideological processes informed by the act of play generally, for the structures, meanings, and experiences of computer games specifically to be anything but idiosyncratic.5 Even were this not the case and play were somehow something physically, culturally, and intellectually uniform, computer games likely would still be both discrete and peculiar because the medium is so plastic. We will expand on our understanding of “medium” later in this chapter, but for now suffice it to say that not only do computer game aesthetics and technologies evolve regularly, even geometrically, but the medium itself openly invites exploration and expression. While games are rule-based, there are no inviolable rules for designing and building them.6 Games can look, sound, and play in ways limited only by taste, imagination, and technology.The medium is, for all intents and purposes, a sculptor’s blank from which developers can carve whatever they want, however they want.7 This plasticity8 explains both why there are so many different kinds of games,and why it is not uncommon for new kinds to emerge every year (e.g., LocoRoco and Killer 7).9 It also explains why postmorta—detailed explanations by developers about the creation of specific games—figure prominently in trade magazines and industry websites. To insiders, learning about how colleagues have manipulated the medium successfully or not...

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