I am the Game Studies Facilitator for the #Metagame Book Club (http://bit.ly/metagamebookclub). This is my Week 5 Lecture on "Overview and Conclusions." This is an overview lecture of major concepts and theories I have discussed during Weeks 1-4 lectures. Please see my previous slideshows for clarification of the ideas discussed in this slideshow. Live Video Lecture - The live recorded youtube video of this lecture is included toward the end of this presentation. Join the Metagame Book Club - We welcome all educators interested in gaming in education, game-based learning, gamification, and game studies to join the #Metagame Book Club. #Metagame Book Club (July 15 - August 16, 2014) http://bit.ly/metagamebookclub Find us on various social media with the hashtag, #Metagame

1. #Metagame Book Club
Track 1: Game Studies
Week 5: “Overview and Conclusions”
Sherry Jones
Game Studies Facilitator
@autnes
http://bit.ly/metagamebookclub

2. Overview of Weeks 1-4
In today’s discussion session, I will be reviewing some of the Optional Texts
assigned during Weeks 1-4. The Optional Texts serve to clarify and/or extend
concepts and theories mentioned in the Main Texts we have read so far.
In consideration of time, I will only address the major arguments presented in
each of the selected Optional Texts for discussion.
Let’s Go!

3. Game Studies Texts for Analysis
Review of selected Optional Readings from Weeks 1 - 4:
● [BOOK CHAPTER] "Genre and the Video Game" (Chapter 6 of The
Medium of the Video Game by Mark J. P. Wolf
● [ARTICLE] Adapting the Principles of Ludology to the Method of
Video Game Content Analysis by Steven Malliet
● [BOOK] “The Meaning of Video Games” by Steven E. Jones - Ch. 5 -
The Wii Platform
● [ARTICLE] "Molleindustria: 10 Years Of Radical Socio-Political Video
Games" by Chris Priestman, IndieStatik

4. Review of Week 1: “Play, Game, and
the Magic Circle”
“Genre and the Video Game”
(2000)
by Mark J. P. Wolf

5. What is Genre?
● Genre (latin genus) = class, kind, style, or sort.
● The term first appeared in Aristotle’s The Poetics. Aristotle discusses
Tragedy and Comedy as objects of imitation (represent human nature).
Clinton explains: “Aristotle establishes genre in terms of both
convention and historical observation, and defines genre in terms of
both convention and purpose” (Dan Clinton).
● Modern definitions of genre:
○ Genre is a style formed by similar conventional forms (Karlyn Kohrs
Campbell).
○ Genre is a form of social action (Carolyn R. Miller).
○ Genre is the ground for writing invention (Anis Bawarshi).
● Each of a genre’s constituent elements can be influenced by external
forces/ideas and change form. Thus, a genre is always in flux.

6. What are Video Game Genres?
Mark J. P. Wolf argues that video game genres are different from literary and
film genres, since video games provide interactivity, and call on the player
audience to participate in the diegetic world of a game. Wolf further explains
that:
“The game’s objective is a motivational force for the player, and this,
combined with the various forms of interactivity present in the game, are
useful places to start in building a set of video game genres. The object of
the game can be multiple or divided into steps, placing the game in more
than one genre, just as a film’s theme and iconography can place a film in
multiple genres (the film Blade Runner, for example, fits both science fiction
and hard‐boiled detective genres)” (Wolf).

7. Taxonomy of Defined Game Genres
Constituent elements of a video game genre, such as specific types of actions,
objectives, purpose, sequences, scenarios, help define it. A game can be
categorized in multiple genres if it contains other genre elements:
● “Adventure - Games which are set in a world usually made up of multiple,
connected rooms or screens, involving an objective which is more
complex than simply catching, shooting, capturing, or escaping, although
completion of the objective may involve several or all of these” (Wolf).
● “Collecting - Games in which the primary objective involves the
collecting of objects that do not move (such as Pac‐Man or Mousetrap),
or the surrounding of areas (such as Qix or Amidar). . . . This term should
not be used for games in which objects or characters sought by the
player‐character are in motion” (Wolf).

8. Genre of Pac-man in Space?

9. Review of Week 2: “Two Schools:
Narratology vs. Ludology”
“Adapting the Principles of Ludology
to the Method of Video Game
Content Analysis” (2007)
by Steven Malliet

10. Qualitative Video Game
Content Analysis
Seeking to synthesize various video game study methods proposed by
narratologists and ludologists, Steven Malliet calls for a “qualitative video
game content analysis” study method, which applies the ludologists’ formalist
principles to analyze video games. Referencing Gonzalo Frasca, Malliet finds
that most studies fail to address a game’s formalist elements:
“Following Frasca (2003), it can be argued that these studies have
investigated elements of representation rather than elements of
simulation, and consequently, that a number of characteristics that are
essential to the game play experience have been overlooked” (Malliet).

11. Representation vs. Simulation 1
Malliet creates a scheme for analysis with the following criteria:
Elements of Representation
1. Audiovisual Style - Analyze “graphical explicitness and level of graphical
detail, in addition to the filmic atmosphere that is created.”
2. Narration - Analyze action scenes that unfolds in the game, and how the
action scenes influence characters’ behaviors.
Elements of Simulation
1. Complexity of Controls - Analyze “the mental and physical efforts are
analyzed that are required of a player in order to successfully and
efficiently interact with the game program.”
(Malliet)

12. Representation vs. Simulation 2
Malliet proposes a scheme for analysis with the following criteria:
Elements of Simulation (Cont’)
2. Game Goals - Analyze three main types of game play, which are:
“competitive play, explorative play and narrative play.”
3. Character and Object Structure - Analyze “the complexity of these
systems . . . as well as the ideology that is hidden in the rewards a player
is given.”
4. Balance between User Input and Pre-programmed Rules - Analyze
degree of player’s freedom and influence over pre-programmed actions.
5. Spatial Properties of the Game World - Analyze the geography of a
game, sometimes represented by a map mechanic. Or, evaluating the
realism of the game environment. (Malliet)

13. Review of Week 3: “Cultural and
Social Dimensions of Games”
“The Meaning of Video Games: The
Wii Platform” (2008)
by Steven E. Jones

14. The Wii Universe

15. Platform Studies - Wii
In Chapter 5, Steven E. Jones calls for platform studies to examine how a
player’s experience of games is influenced by the platform. such as the Wii:
“The Wii has rejected sheer power and its affordances (such as realistic high-
definition graphics, or the ability to play DVDs) in order to be smart and fast,
the fittest rather than the most ferocious dinosaur,and thus to survive in a
place -- the [family] niche to which it is uniquely adapted--set apart from the
main competition between Microsoft and Sony. . . . The Wii’s simple white
box is both the symbolic representation and the literal embodiment of
this targeted adaption model. It’s smaller -- roughly 6” X 8.5” X 1.7” as
opposed to roughly 10” X 12” X 3” for the Xbox and PS3 -- what its marketing
has referred to as the size of three DVD cases and lighter”(Jones).

16. Platform Studies - NES
Steven E. Jones further discusses Nintendo’s software culture that is closely
tied to its hardware platforms; game software becomes the family “branding”
for the hardware:
“Super Mario Bros. was released for the NES and was closely associated with
the innovations of that system, and lent its own aura to the system in turn, in
a kind of symbiotic development loop. . . . Kohler argues that Super Mario
Bros. was a breakthrough in 1985 in terms of gameplay and narrative, the
most complex and extended game to that point, and it was the first game of
its era to make reaching the story’s conclusion the primary goal; though you
were scored, the point was really to save the princess and see what happened
in the conclusion” (Jones).

17. Meaning and Platforms
Meaning we infer from a game is contributed by several layers - a game’s
software design, the gaming platform’s hardware design, and game design,
all through various designers’ socio-cultural lenses. Jones references
Montfort and Bogost’s argument on the meaning of platforms:
Montfort and Bogost argue that a “platform is a perspective,” an abstraction,
a way of conceptualizing a system for delivering a video game to the game
player. In this sense, any platform is a ‘virtual console’ -- a cultural construct as
much as a hardware and software construct” (Jones).
“Miyamoto has also said that the Wii was designed to overthrow the
stereotype of the antisocial video game player; again the goal was not
technological but cultural” (Jones).

18. Review of Week 4: “Constructs of
the Real and the Rhetoric of Games”
"Molleindustria: 10 Years Of Radical
Socio-Political Video Games” (2013)
by Chris Priestman, IndieStatik

19. An Interview with Paolo Pedercini,
aka Molleindustria
Paolo Pedercini is a Professor of Experimental Game Design at Carnegie
Mellon University’s School of Art, and a distinguished artist and political
activist. He expresses political critiques and leftist ideologies via the medium
of video games, all personally created and published under his moniker,
Molleindustria.
Molleindustria games daringly address and challenges a wide range of
polemical real world issues, such as religion, sex and gender, terrorism,
capitalism, and copyright laws. In his interview with Chris Priestman, Paolo
Pedercini reveals his intentions for expressing via the game medium.

20. On Games and Simulations for
Sensemaking
“I want to see games and simulations being used to make sense of the world
around us; I want to see them next to text or moving images – and not in an
ancillary role. I want to see more journalism, more philosophy, more history
education, more experimental geography, conceived natively for interactive
media.”
(Pedercini)

21. On Game Design Creating Myths
“Interactive media come with an exceptional bias toward ambiguity. You can’t
quite make a clear argument, as you would with plain text or speech. People
play and interact in different ways and tend to apply their pre-existing mental
models to interpret what happened and why – something that, in computer
games, isn’t always explicit. Intentionally or not, game designers create a
constellation of meanings and allow players to explore it. If you are a
critical gamer, you may try to test the limits of this constellation, find out
what worlds are possible, what actions are forbidden. You may want to
map these design choices against your understanding of “real world” systems.
You may realize, for example, that all the cities allowed by SimCity are
essentially manifestations of the same urbanist idea/myth.”
(Pedercini)

22. On Designing Critical Play
“I think the role of a socially conscious game designer is to foster this type of
critical play. . . . This is, however, very different from Bioshock’s approach to
politics and history. Ken Levine claims that the Bioshock titles work as
Rorschach tests, since some players see them as a love letters to
Objectivism, while others as attacks to Tea Party or Occupy Wall Street
movements. This ambiguity is built in and intentional; it’s a way to infuse a
dumb shooting game with a sense of importance, a way to give the idea of
dealing with serious and complex issues while cowardly withdrawing from any
position or judgement. Or, as Levine says, these games are about *not*
buying into any of these “extreme” ideas. Guess what. That’s also an
ideology. It’s Liberalism, and it’s about putting patches here and there
while keeping things as they are.” (Pedercini)

23. A Molleindustria Game
“Every Day the Same Dream” by Molleindustria

24. Watch Webinar To This Lecture

25. Lecture By:
Sherry Jones
Game Studies Facilitator
Philosophy, Rhetoric, Game Studies
@autnes
Writings & Webinars
Access Slides: http://bit.ly/gamestudies5