Aesthetic Theory and The Video Game by Graeme Kirkpatrick

Ludology, space and time quotes

DEFINITIONS:

Ludology - study of games and types of play

Narratology - study of narrative, narrative structure and how are perspective is affected.

Ergodicity - derived from the fusion of the greek words, 'ergon' meaning work and 'hodos' meaning path. "in ergodic literature, nontrivial effort is required to allow the reader to traverse the text."

Noematic - of or relating to the understanding.

QUOTES:

"The overall argument is that ludology correctly identifies what is essential to the video game as a cultural object, namely, its character as a from of structured play."

"...the discussion here acknowledges the importance of meaning-oriented video game analyses, which have forced ludology to reflect on the differences between traditional games and their modern, digital variant."

"Scholars who emphasize the story element in games jump the gun when they assert that attention to meaning and to the story telling dimension of video games is the correct way to address the deficit in ludology's approach."

"...the way they structure the temporality of gameplay - its rhythms - opens up the possibility of a formal aesthetic method of video game criticism that does not re-centre analysis on the meanings of play as projected by the game's ostensible narrative content."

"...the way video games play on our expectations creates and experience of 'time and space' that the form shares with dance."

"interactivity actually deprives us of any handle on their specificity, the thing that makes them interesting and distinct. Aarseth's preferred conceptual solution, in his pre-ludological work, was to introduce the notion of ergodicity, which he says is derived from a fusion of the greek words, 'ergon and hodos' meaning "work" and "path". in ergodic literature, nontrivial effort is required to allow the reader to traverse the text."

"the physical structure of the ergodic text is modified by its reader, or user, in ways that do not apply to other texts or media objects, but perhaps more importantly it also foregrounds the nature of the commitment that is required from the human subject of the text."

"Readers of books and films are 'safe' and their 'noematic responses' are limited to eye movements or turning pages, but playing a video game, or navigating a cybertext, involves the risk of rejection by the text - you can die in games."

"Aarseth's advocacy of 'ergodicity' became the starting point for modern ludology, the study of play and games. This view of video games situates them in the long history of games and prioritizes that lineage over more contingent associations, with visual or story-telling media."

"he proclaimed the cultural importance and newness of video games and the implicit conservatism of the methological programme of computer games studies - games as such pre-date even Classical culture and, as a cultural innovation, the video game bears comparison with the Greek chorus."

"it announces the arrival of something both new and profound, which is a highly unusual combination in the sphere of culture, if not science, the inauguration of game studies involved violence too."

in reference to sports games - "the player of a computerized version of a game is pursuing a completely different goal or end state than the people who play these other games. Indeed it seems that a lot of assumptions are imported into the discussion when we talk of video games as versions or 'counterparts' of other games."

^^^ - "We should not be misled by game packaging that projects a strong relationship between them - in aesthetic terms it might be more accurate to say that the resemblances of a video game to some real world counterpart are part of its charm, they do not touch on its substance."

"Video games provide experiences of emergence too, but they also contain an unusual gamic structure, which Juul calls progression. Progression is the facility for sequential exploration of a series of states or scenarios."

"games of progression that directly set up each consecutive challenge in a game, and games of emergence that set up challenges indirectly because the rules of the game interact. (2006: 67)"

"Adventure games, in which players explore scenarios and solve puzzles in order to move between them, are games of progression, while games like chess and Pong (Atari 1972) exhibit the 'more primordial' structure of emergence. Most video games involve some hybridity of the two forms, but its progression that distinguishes video games in the history of games."

"Play is enjoyable because of the emergence structure, which generates patterns, tension and other aesthetic properties that are enjoyed by players of chess. Games of progression, however, do not work like this. They may contain a puzzle element, but their central dynamic is one of exploration and the kinds of pattern unlocked through this process are enjoyed consecutively, rather than experienced as a surprising outcome of intervening unpatterned states."

"The pleasures of progression are essentially those of reading a visual image, or knowing the significance that is attached to a representation. Adventure games are enjoyable because by solving a puzzle (not strictly a part of progression) we are able to meet a new character, to find out something new about the game world, or simply to see something that we could not see before."

"..we have to concede that this aspect of video games makes them less abstract than traditional games. In this sense, games of progression are games that tell stories."

"In having fictional worlds, video games deviate from traditional non-electronic games that are mostly abstract, and this is part of the newness of video games. The interaction between game rules and game fiction is one of the most important feature of video games ... This interaction gives the player a choice between imagining the world of the game and seeing the representation as a mere placeholder for information about the rules of the game. (Juul 2006: 2)"