Gaming Matters: Art, Science, Magic, and the Computer Game Medium

Gaming Matters

Art, Science, Magic, and the Computer Game Medium

JUDD ETHAN RUGGILL AND KEN S. MCALLISTER

The University of Alabama Press

Tuscaloosa

Copyright © 2011

The University of Alabama Press

Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487-0380

All rights reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

Typeface: Adobe Caslon/

The paper on which this book is printed meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Ruggill, Judd Ethan.

    Gaming matters: art, science, magic, and the computer game medium/Judd

Ethan Ruggill and Ken S. McAllister.

       p. cm.

    Includes bibliographical references and index.

    ISBN 978-0-8173-1737-9 (cloth: alk. paper)—ISBN 978-0-8173-8559-0 (electronic) 1. Video games. 2. Video games—Study and teaching. 3. Video games—Social aspects. I. McAllister, Ken S., 1966–II. Title.

    GV1469.3.R84 2011

    794.8—dc22

                                                                                                                    2010043922

Contents

Acknowledgments

1. Idiosyncrasy

2. Irreconcilability

3. Aimlessness

4. Anachronism

5. Duplicity

6. Work

7. Alchemy

Appendix: Gameography

Notes

Works Cited

Index

Acknowledgments

In the most profound and elemental sense, this book was collaboratively produced. Since beginning the project, we have spoken both formally and casually with dozens of people about its central ideas, propositions, and provocations. We asked our editor, Dan Waterman—easily one of the savviest academic press editors working today—if we could use a tiny typeface and include everyone's names on the spine, but he suggested that wouldn't be practical. We then toyed with the idea of inventing a name, some kind of witty collective appellation that would signify all of our esteemed collaborators. Unfortunately, we could only come up with names that even a minimal understanding of the black arts of marketing indicated would only enervate the book's sales (e.g., Sigasmando Malatesta Nickletibbs Bopp). And so we were left with the conventional solution—namely, to identify as many people as we could think of who had helped us with the project (and that would fit on our allotted pages). Thus:

Many, many thanks to all the faculty, staff, students, and administrators who helped us at our respective institutions to complete this book. In particular, we are grateful for the support of Toni Alexander, Damian Baca, Maha Baddar, Adele Barker, Patti Bellew, Laura Berry, David Bresler, Pat Brooks, Mark Bryant, Ellen Burgess, Lourdes Canto, Theresa Darras, Diane Davis, Phil Davis, Alison Deming, Lyn Durán, Richard Edmiston, Theresa Enos, Deg Farrelly, Carla Fisher, Anita Furtner, Cynthia Gaffney, Mary Jo Galvez, Diane Gruber, Anne-Marie Hall, Mary Beth Haralovich, Jerry Hogle, Sandy Holm, Sara Howe, Jeff Kassing, Tom Keil, Karen Kellen, Doug Kelley, Chris Kiesel, Amy Kimme Hea, Jan Lacey, Marvin Landis, Elizabeth Langland, Justin LeBreck, Linda Lederman, Adela Licona, Jun Liu, Mary Lopez, Jim Martin, Meg McConnaughy, Lindsey Meân, Sharonne Meyer-son, Alison Miller, Kerstin Miller, Tom Miller, Carol Mueller, Majia Nadesan, Vance Neill, Jill Newby, Debra Olson, Stephanie Pearmain, Ramsey Eric Ramsey, Suresh Raval, Lorenia Romero, Kevin Sandler, Kris Sansbury, Charles Watkins Scruggs III, Bev Seckinger, Barbara Selznick, Ian Shaw, Bill Silcock, Debbie Spargur, Angela Swift, Hale Thomas-Hilburn, Bonnie Travers, Michael Vereshchatsky, Vince Waldron, John Warnock, Linda Waugh, Jeremiah Webb, Susan White, Peter Wild, Mary Wildner-Bassett, Greg Wise, Leisy Wyman, and Josh Zimmerman.

Thanks also to all of our national and international colleagues for their intellectual support of and contributions to the ideas in this book, especially Suellen Adams, Tim Anderson, Ari Berk, Stefan Böehme, Ian Bogost, Joe Chaney, Andrew Chen, Steve Conway, Chris Crawford, Caren Deming, Daphne Desser, Jennifer deWinter, Leslie Donovan, Ken Dvorak, Rafael Fajardo, Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Harrison Gish, Conrad Gleber, Jonathan Gray, Daniel Griffin, Tom Hapgood, Phil Heldridge, Damien Huffer, Damla Isak, James Johnson, David Jolliffe, Ryan Kaufman, Jamie Lee, Eileen Meehan, Kevin Moberly, Ryan Moeller, Devin Monnens, Brian Moriarty, Mike Mo-shell, Aki Nakamura, Randy Nichols, Rolf Nohr, Marcel O'Gorman, Marc Ouellette, Darin Payne, Matt Payne, Bryan Pearce, Jeffrey Reed, Patrick Roddy, Stacy Rogers, Jeff Rutenbeck, Sally Sanchez, Avi Santo, Ron Scott, James Smith, Jim Sosnoski, Jason Thompson, Phil Villareal, Nick White, Serjoscha Wiemer, Diane Wiener, and Michael Thornton Wyman.

And of course we are deeply appreciative of all the support and encouragement our family and friends have given to us. They are the ones with whom we play, and in our play our energy to work is restored. Thanks, then, to Stephanie Battle, Greg Colburn, the Coleman family, Gwen Downey, Nick Dunford, John and Karin Hardin, the Hendrickson family, the Johnsons, Jonathan Madog, Barbara Kienzle, Paula Klein, Maxine, Gideon Myles, the Paige/James family, the Pearce family, the Poster/Goethals family, Amiee Reggin, Lee Renda, Gil and Barb Richardson, the Richter/Zahn family, Rocco's Little Chicago, the Ruggill family, Joel Francis Rutkowski, the Salz family, the Sanders family, SARA, Dan Shindell, Simon, Sky, Rachel Srubas (Ken's TLA) and the Srubas and Srubas-Giammanco families, the Wagenheim family, the Wiens family, Yrgl, Gina Hernandez, and the Zamudio family.

Finally, we want to acknowledge a few people whose impact on this book is immeasurable.

Ken S. McAllister

As far back as I can remember, my mother, Susan Reggin, instilled, nurtured, and sharpened in me a sense of indiscriminate curiosity that has now become one of my defining qualities as a scholar, teacher, and friend. No matter what captured my imagination—geology, magic, electronics, poetry, programming—her response was always, That's amazing! What else?

And her father, J. Stuart Reid, took some calculated risks with his curious grandson over the years, supporting him at times when doing so must have seemed a bit of a game—or at least a gamble—itself. It is to my mother and my grandfather, then, that I dedicate with infinite gratitude this singularly curious work of collaborative scholarship and play.

Judd Ethan Ruggill

JMH, RZR, and JSR

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 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 is edifying, thrilling, and cathartic. We thus speak whimsically not only because as real collectors we cannot help but do so, but also because the computer game medium demands it. Play is the language of computer games, and games are the idiosyncratic grammatical response to that language.¹⁰

Play—or in this case, plays, for there are a number of different kinds of play involved here—notwithstanding, we also speak whimsically out of functional necessity. Despite often seeming otherwise, even the simplest of computer games are inordinately complex, engaging both the humans who play them and the machines on which they run in nested and multifarious ways. Indeed, the computer game medium is quintessentially transdisciplinary; it sits at the nexus of engineering, mathematics, hermeneutics, logic, kinesthesia, narratology, performativity, art, and many other ways of seeing, understanding, and interacting. Exploring the interplay among the constitutive elements and meaning-making processes of the medium, therefore, is as much about acquiescing to complexity as it is about distilling it. Computer games exist because of the élan of a multiplicity of perspectives, not the hegemony of just one. They are synergistic artifacts whose nuance really only begins to make sense when approached in kind.¹¹

Fortunately, whimsy is an avenue to synergy. It offers access to openness—to (relatively) untethered exploration and experimentation—and thus to ad hoc methodological and discursive combinations. Whimsy provides the epistemological flexibility not only to take computer games on, but also to take them on in situ—that is, to pursue archaeologies, genealogies, and analogies based on what particular games in particular situations have to say about the medium particularly. Since the goal of this book is to attend to the computer game medium particularly, whimsy makes an ideal fulcrum. It enables a critical approach based on computer games’ own cultural and mediated languages, as well as providing the leverage to support the theoretical weight of an interdisciplinary tool set.¹²

Whimsy is also an avenue to good-natured provocation, which is key to the formation of new and unusual syntheses of knowledge production. Paradigmatic shifts, to borrow science philosopher Thomas Kuhn's famous phrase, are frequently the result of conscious prodding, for the decision to employ a particular piece of [critical or instrumental] apparatus and to use it in a particular way carries an assumption that only certain sorts of circumstances will arise (59). Oftentimes the only way to move beyond such assumptions is by playing the devil's advocate, a role we expressly take on here because this book is not meant to provide all the answers, or even necessarily many of them. On the contrary, it is intended primarily as a playful prompt, as an initiation (not a conclusion) to a conversation about the complexities of the computer game medium. Computer games have been one of the most powerful (not to mention maligned) cultural forces in the United States since the mid-1970s. They have been invoked by presidents to justify foreign policy decisions,¹³ by social psychologists and media watchdog groups to explain increases in youth violence,¹⁴ by senators to revivify questions of censorship,¹⁵ and by the armed forces to recruit and train soldiers.¹⁶ Computer games have also proven to be a puissant economic and pedagogical force, moving billions of dollars through the global economy each year and stimulating the creation of game studies programs at all levels of academe.¹⁷

And yet the scholarly community knows relatively little about the dynamics of the medium, at least formally. Despite ferment in the field, computer game studies remains largely inchoate, having only recently begun to produce academic journals and consistently publish scholarly books. This incipience is especially striking given the fact that the medium has existed since the beginning of the 1950s and was conceptualized even earlier (as the Goldsmith and Mann patent attests).¹⁸ Our intent is to push at the field's inchoateness deliberately and provocatively. We want to roil and then harness computer game studies’ creative and critical juices for the purpose of clarifying the complex and protean nature of the medium. As media theorist Marshall McLuhan mused more than forty years ago, the medium is the message (or at least a significant part of the message). Not knowing what constitutes the medium of the computer game—even in the broadest terms—means not being able to fully decipher the messages it embodies and evokes, and thus not being able to thoroughly understand and analyze its cultural, economic, and pedagogical import.

THE COMPUTER GAME AS MEDIUM

There is yet a curious but tangible limen to the computer game, as if scholars were unsettled by the medium's idiosyncrasy (we certainly are). Some have circumnavigated this confounding condition by focusing on the large-scale and transformative implications of new media more generally (e.g., Bolter and Grusin; Manovich). Others have taken a nadiral approach, working to reduce game idiosyncrasy to its most inornate and fundamental elements, e.g., rules, unit operations, play mechanics, and so on (e.g., Juul, Half-Real; Bogost, Unit Operations; Galloway, Gaming). Both approaches have yielded remarkable insight into the atomic workings of the medium and the impact of those workings on human communication and communicative processes. In so doing, however, they have also unintentionally created an aporia: in the field there is a profound vision of what games can be in the grandest, most abstract sense, and a similarly deep understanding of what games are in the most concrete, distilled sense, but little that works to link the two together. How is it that the same rules and technologies can produce unbridled and critically acclaimed fun in one constellation (Halo 3) and an absolute, virtually unplayable disaster in another (Haze)? What are the mechanisms by which unit operations (to use Ian Bogost's insightful theoretical apparatus) percolate, generating recursive, discursive, and productive syntheses that transform mere algorithmicism into immersive, memorable experience?

The answer, we contend, is magic: computer games are magical things in both the occultic and legerdemainic senses of the term.¹⁹ On the one hand, they are careful constructions designed to hide their constructedness and create a sense of wonder, and on the other hand, that wonder often transcends the materials used to produce it, taking on an inexplicable, even ungraspable quality. More simply, computer games are both machinic and organic, measured as well as accidental. This is not only true of games, in fact, but to some extent of all media: as visual theorist W. J. T. Mitchell explains, "A medium is more than the materials of which it is composed. It is . . . a material social practice, a set of skills, habits, techniques, codes and conventions" and the constantly shifting articulations between these things (203; emphasis in original).

This dynamism, this magic, seems particularly salient in emerging media—perhaps because they have yet to be codified by tradition or tamed by repetition and sedimentation—and is likely part of the reason these media prove exciting, vexing, and unsettling to scholars. There is a distinct challenge in attempting to corral the pullulating expressive forms of the information age, for example, particularly when, like all magics, these forms reveal different powers at different times to different audiences. For Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin, the magic of emerging media lies in the act of recycling and refashioning: [A] medium is that which remediates. It is that which appropriates the techniques, forms, and social significance of other media and attempts to rival or refashion them in the name of the real (98). For Lev Manovich, by contrast, the magic is in connection and counting; he argues that unlike new media, traditional or analog media are mostly continuous and never quantified (28). For Peter Lunenfeld, the key is the placelessness of the moment: the very term ‘new media’ is ambiguous. Is video still a ‘new’ medium? Are operating systems media? Is hypertext a different medium than the electronic book? In the end, the phrase ‘new media’ turns out to be yet another placeholder, this time for whatever we eventually agree to name these cultural productions (Screen Grabs xvi). And for Mark B. N. Hansen, there is magic in embodied experience (3), in the unique framing of a technology—and the data it contains—by a particular person.

We see the magic of the emerging medium of the computer game in the specific transformation of its atomic processes into macroscopic phenomena. To call on the automobile as a metaphor, we see magic more than logic or science in the ways in which the fundamental structures of an engine—steel, rubber, aluminum, petrochemicals—combine to produce phenomena as vast, intricate, and life altering as urban transportation systems. In other words, we see magic in the fact that there is magic at all. As a result, we offer this book as an exploration of the occultic, legerdemainic, and ludic magic of the computer game medium. In so doing, our goals are to (1) stir up and sift through the