after the presentations

We finished our presentations, interesting to see the viewpoints. It goes without saying that the topics were chosen based on personal preference, but it was interesting to see how the individual affected the information being presented. The perspectives on games varied from historical, , personal, commercial, educational, artistic. It impresses the idea that games mean different things to different people. For some they're a career choice, a passion or nostalgia.
The study of games reveals more paths and facets than can easily be explored, but I have begone to consider the place of the medium in society. What has traditionally been an insular area has seen an explosion in interest, the ongoing question is, are games living up to their potential?

The big writeup

I nominally chose Ludology vs Narratology as my big essay title. I'm already thinking of another title as it seems that the original seems less about the actual content of games, and rather more about aggrandising points of view, point and counter point till one camp is chosen. i think ill write about individual games and what they benfitted or lost from each view.

7th

Schizoanalysis.

This confuses me, I've always preferred simplification on the grounds of learning. Guattari seems to move towards complexity. I suppose this is a way to explore a concept with more freedom.
Further reading prduces this insight "a praxis of purposeful deterritorialization that doesn’t fall into the usual trap of reterritorialization" My God that's pretentious! Does anyone actually understand what that means? in fact many of the articles available off a web search are similar. The material is unforgivably dense. However this article seems to suggest that there is some secondary writing that better explains the concept (notably by avoiding Deleuve and Guattari's own terminology)http://www.warwick.ac.uk/philosophy/pli_journal/pdfs/appleby_pli_9.pdf.
My main concern is how I could apply the approach.
If I understand the psychoanalytic approaches to subject matter, like a film, it seems almost harsh and accusing. What are the characters motivations? What is the writer/director revealing about themselves? What's the hidden meaning? This seems to be looking for an underlying flaw(which I suppose is what psychoanalysis was originally intended for)
The other approach of looking at the parts as relating to the greater whole seems gentler. it encourages tangnetial exploration rather than a mad rush towards a root theme/concept.For example, yes, the game Bioshock deals with free will, but it also deals with the issues of family, identity, ethics, perception of public figures etc.
With an endless interlocking system of unit operations, would schizoanalysis produce a true concrete analysis, or simply a highly subjective view?

Balance

Back to the Ludology/Narratology debate. It occurs to me that there may well be no s=uch thing as a pure narrative either. So what's the game? For example, when watching a movie, we are supposed to be passive, but in fact, while we have no influence over the events, we do 'play' in our heads. We attempt to predict the endings, we place ourselves in the place of protagonists. The act of constructing inner narratives, intrerpreting the plot etc. can be seen as a form of game.

4th

I've been considering the marketing view of games, specifically the cost factor. This cost is measured as being perceived benefit - perceived cost. Apart from the obvious financial layout, games may have other costs, for instance, the waiting to install a gmae in the case of pc gaming, loading times in others. When I owned an amstrad 464, loading times of 17 min were possible! Modern technology has reduced that so it is rarley a concern. So in terms of time, the biggest cost I perceive is in actually playing the game, and more often in the case of story-driven gameplay, playing itself is not neccessarily the payoff, but rather a means to advance the story. This also seems to be the case in competetive games, where the experience itself is more of a tense, adrenaline-fuelled one, whereas the 'hit' may be got from winning. In these cases, the games are asking the player to invest often a considerable amount of time to get the maximum benefit.

3rd

Ludology = gameplay is everything
Narratology = everything has a narrative.

I have to lean more in favout of ludolgy. On personal experience, I've played games which have no clear narrative(Tetris), arguments against this seem to impose a narrative rather than reveal an existing one. Having said that, I do love a good story with my games, I play less and less of the more abstract twitch games as time goes by. I'll never be a 100% narratologist though, a good story with poor gameplay is just not an enticing mix. Special mention should go to the Metal Gear series, where the gameplay has remained relatively unevolved next to the cinematic narrative. It's unusual in that the cut scenes have been so lovingly crafted, and yet remain bat-shit insane. Focus on the narrative does not neccessarily result in a quality story.

2nd

Strange business college, nobody likes being bogged down in work, but waiting till you can start hacking away at projects is almost as tedious (almost). Plenty of reading to do tho.

First post

OK, ive transferred my blog from the UL SULIS(in the process making the creators of SULIS cry). Starting over's not so bad, only 2 entries in anyway. The skinny so far is I'm finally in 4th year of my course. It's the second week, and things are in full swing with projects, reading, this blog, and even my FYP(just about) ready to go.