The Gamer's Quarter

Harveyjames · the meteor kid Joined: 06 Jul 2006 Posts: 3636

Further to discussions in the postmodernism thread. Feel free to sticky/rename/delete this thread.

This is for reading that will increase our understanding of videogame theory and give us a solid foundation of shared knowledge from which to develop our own theories, values and principles.

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Wikipedia article on Postmodernism - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodernism

-because in a thread about Postmodernism it transpired that few of us had much of a grasp on what Postmodernism actually was.

DonMarco · . Joined: 02 Mar 2005 Posts: 349 Location: 33903

I do not recognize the word "videogame" and therefore will not contribute to this thread, Harveyjames.
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klikbeep · . Joined: 27 Nov 2006 Posts: 35

Nana Komatsu · weak sauce Joined: 17 Jul 2006 Posts: 1293

I never could relate to The Great Gatsby. I realize it may be the great American novel, but it really never did anything for me.
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Swimmy · . Joined: 16 Sep 2005 Posts: 990 Location: Fairfax, VA

It's online.
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Harveyjames · the meteor kid Joined: 06 Jul 2006 Posts: 3636

Harveyjames · the meteor kid Joined: 06 Jul 2006 Posts: 3636

A note on print books.

Since the aim of this is to be a non-elitist knowledge primer for newcomers to the forum and established members, I don't think full-length print books should be included. Reading them involves spending money, leaving the house to track them down, or at the very least investing serious amounts of time. We should assume the reader is actually going to read the texts we suggest and can do so easily through the internet.

klikbeep · . Joined: 27 Nov 2006 Posts: 35

GSL

Harveyjames · the meteor kid Joined: 06 Jul 2006 Posts: 3636

klikbeep · . Joined: 27 Nov 2006 Posts: 35

It was actually a pretty good idea, Harveryjames.

silentmatt · Posted: Sat Jan 20, 2007 6:38 pm Post subject:

The main thing is, when I do read.... it is either a) online articles/news (not really relevant for this discussion), b) for school (which, again, while interesting... doesn't have any relevance for this purpose) or c) full length books - which could be (read: are) relevant for this discussion.

Which means: I would have no idea/knowledge about things to reference in the context you are asking for.

Plus... you know, there are things called libraries where people can borrow books for free, if they feel an absolute need to read one of the recommendations from within this thread and don't have the money to purchase it.
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klikbeep · . Joined: 27 Nov 2006 Posts: 35

helicopterp · . Joined: 13 May 2006 Posts: 1435 Location: Philadelphia

Harvey, I love the idea. My own personal silence here has been because I have nothing to add to the list yet.

To counter part of Great St. Louis's devil's advocate post:

I don't think we're trying to create an authoritative anything by assembling this reading list. This isn't the definitive word, just a helpful resource. Just because it will be limited by our input as a community doesn't mean it will be useless.

I second the notion to expand the 'texts' to any resource that we can link to online, and I hereby submit for approval Tom Kim's fatpixels/gamasutra/gdc-radio podcasts, which are frequently enriching and always interesting. I'm terrible at computer-izing things, though, so someone else might have to take care of the link for it.
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dhex · Posted: Sun Jan 21, 2007 1:38 am Post subject:

Mr. Mechanical · Friendly Stranger Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 1276

Jeez guys, you know you can buy pretty much any book ever from amazon.com right?
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Redeye · . Joined: 02 Oct 2006 Posts: 986 Location: filth

I got this as a gag gift.

What's the hollow space for?

It's an empty signifier.
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GSL · Posted: Sun Jan 21, 2007 2:50 pm Post subject:

Put the marker inside. The marker has now become the Great American Videogame. Praise be to the miracle of transubstantiation.

Harveyjames · the meteor kid Joined: 06 Jul 2006 Posts: 3636

klikbeep · . Joined: 27 Nov 2006 Posts: 35

Harveyjames · the meteor kid Joined: 06 Jul 2006 Posts: 3636

I suppose worthy stuff could take the form of interviews, transcripts from seminars, essays, exceptional articles, book excerpts. Could be not strictly just games but stuff written on other mediums that also applies to games.

I know this stuff is out there but I'm not sure where. One day I'll make a concerted effort to find some things.

I think we should by and large have pretty much an 'anything goes' attiude to this otherwise
It's going to be difficult to agree on what should be canonized and what shouldn't. Whatever we submit should lean towards the academic, I guess, but besides that you should be free to add anything you like, within reason.

It might be fun to take a sort of mad scientist attitude to it. Try and surprise people! I'd never have known Tartar sauce went well with fries until I stuck them together!

Scratchmonkey · . Joined: 02 Mar 2005 Posts: 1439

I'll throw something out there to start with.

And there's a lot of good stuff on GameStudies, if that's the sort of thing you're looking for. There's a lot of awful iffy stuff as well. Frasca, even if you disagree with what he thinks/argues (and I do a fair amount of the time) is a good writer and does a good job of getting his ideas across while still being accessible.

Scratchmonkey · . Joined: 02 Mar 2005 Posts: 1439

Miniature Gardens & Magic Crayons

internisus · . Joined: 25 Nov 2006 Posts: 354

I can't believe this obviously useful idea came up against so much resistance. I have a lot of links that I've saved, and I'll be pleased as punch to share them when I get home.

Harveyjames · the meteor kid Joined: 06 Jul 2006 Posts: 3636

Excellent.

You know the main problem with this idea is that it's too much like hard work.

Nana Komatsu · weak sauce Joined: 17 Jul 2006 Posts: 1293

Harveyjames · the meteor kid Joined: 06 Jul 2006 Posts: 3636

I read the shit out of books. You should have seen me when I first discovered Phillip Pullman, and I found they had all his shit at the library. I worked at Toys 'R' Us in Cardiff at the time and the only reading material in the lunch room was The Daily Mirror or the little menu on the coffee machine. So I got out a book. Then every other day I'd be taking the train to get to university in the next city over. What am I going to do for an hour each way, lock myself in the train toilet and JO? You've never seen a motherfucker read as many books as I did that year. Reading books is not the problem here.

The problem is this. Getting your hands on one book requires little investment. Amazon.com and you're done (tm). But say we really, seriously make this list and there's a list of like 10+ books up there? And you're supposed to buy all of them? You'd be like 'fuck this'. It's an unreasonably large investment to expect people to make. Like I said, we fill this list with links and it's an online resource. Fill it with books and it's just a list.

internisus · . Joined: 25 Nov 2006 Posts: 354

I've been working on some basic definitions for interactive media, and I took a break to search the web for writing regarding the need and criteria for such a discourse. I also asked selectbutton, but they laughed at me. Anyway, I didn't really find what I wanted, and most of what I did find regarding the need for this language made me angry due to its laziness and small-mindedness, especially since they seemed well-intentioned. I did find one article that I thought was excellent, however. It's a very well-stated and thorough state-of-the-medium sort of thing, articulating the need for industry and academic cooperation.

There Are No Words (Yet): The Desperately Incomplete Language of Gaming

Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

Scratchmonkey · . Joined: 02 Mar 2005 Posts: 1439

He's a really nice guy too.

Intern, you should check out Trigger Happy by Steven Poole. I'm so not kidding.

internisus · . Joined: 25 Nov 2006 Posts: 354

Thanks, I'll be sure to look into both of those.

I've been reading through IGDA's Ivory Tower column -- which is the stuff that made me angry -- and The Lost Garden.

Here are some other things I've found that I haven't read yet:

The Art of Computer Game Design by Chris Crawford

The Language of New Media

A Clash Between Game and Narrative by Jesper Juul -- Juul's IGDA columns -- and a few of his other articles, as well -- particularly frustrated me, so I have low expectations here.

Computer and Video Games Come of Age

Is It Possible to Build Dramatically Compelling Interactive Entertainment?

Playing with Players: Methodologies for MUDs

Some things I've read recently:

Play Dead: Genre and Affect in Silent Hill and Planescape: Torment This was alright, but sort of pointless, and it failed to touch on the most distinctive aspects of those games by not delving to a base enough level.

Ludologists Love Stories, Too I liked this, as a brief introduction to the narrative and ludological perspectives, and I appreciate the harmonic spirit in which it was written. There are also some quotes of excellent observations, such as: “In his excellent article about configurative mechanisms in games, The Gaming Situation, Markku Eskelinen rightly points out, drawing on Espen Aarseth’s well-known typology of cybertexts, that playing a game is predominantly a configurative practice, not an interpretative one like film or literature." It's a nice pointer to other material.

Computer Games Have Words, Too: Dialogue Conventions in FFVII This was alright, though, again, a tad pointless. The parts that I liked focused on the peculiar investment players feel in expository dialogue compared to non-interactive formats.

Also, I love to have the Inform7 page up all the time for inspiration. "A design system for interactive fiction" So beautiful.

Anyway, I've also got all this crap related to design documents, and most of that is annoying. They're all so reductionist as to be useless symptoms of a confused medium. So. Does anyone have anything focusing on criteria for a discourse on videogames? Something that discusses what a new language for talking about the medium would need to be capable of?

Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

Scratchmonkey · . Joined: 02 Mar 2005 Posts: 1439

I like it; a lot of people don't. Actually, I don't think I've ever met anybody who felt as positively about it as I do.

We'll see how it does for you!

Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

I've read a few quotes from it, which was why I got it. They were good quotes.
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klikbeep · . Joined: 27 Nov 2006 Posts: 35

Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

nICO · . Joined: 19 Feb 2005 Posts: 120 Location: WVUSA

trigger happy is worth reading. nothing amazing and already outdated, but better then almost every other videogame book on my shelf. the only exception being alexander galloway's gaming.

the main problem i had with trigger happy was simply that it didn't make me think much. it was too easy...too obvious. it was like an extended magazine article that drags on a little too long. i don't regret reading it and guardedly recommend it to interested people, but i also don't feel like i learned a damn thing from it.

galloway's book infuriates me and i even disagree with the basic premise. i think it's a better book, though, because it did make me think. i ended up disagreeing, but it helped clarify some of my own views.
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Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

I’m about halfway through the book thanks to the airport.

The description of it being a magazine article that goes on a bit too long is pretty apt. It’s pretty amazing finding out all this stuff that I write/think about was written about 7 years ago (though I can’t believe that he introduced the word “sneak-em-up” as a genre…).

I have to say that the best part about the book is seeing what has/hasn’t been applied to study/theory/design since then. It’s kind of like Nintendo looked heavily at his input section.

It’s not bad, and no where near as dated as I expected it to be, but it is dated.
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“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"