Slides for a talk at the Panel: "Understanding Play Practices: Contributions to the State of the Art, at DIGRA 2009 "Breaking New Ground", International Digital Game Research Association Conference, Brunel University, London, 01-04 September, 2009

1. DIGRA 2009 International Digital Game ResearchConference, BrunelUniversity, London, 01-04 September, 2009

2. Patrick J. Coppock University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Department of Social, Cognitive and Quantitative Science, School of Communication and Business http://unimore.it http://sce.unimore.it patrick.coppock@unimore.it Research Network: game_philosophy@unimore http://game.unimore.it

3. My Title Videoludic Texts as Sites of Enactive Practice: Reframing the Text-Practice Dichotomy

4. Two types of intentional agency in text an implicit (or model) reader inscribed in the text by its empirical author, designed to model and guide reader interactions with the text an implicit (or model) author that emerges in the course of a reading or viewing of the text as a kind of trace that embodies the particular style, voice, or persona of its author.

5. The Play of Intention in Text

6. “Open” Aesthetic Works (cf. Eco 1984) “Open works” are communicative strategies designed by authors with an active interpretational role for their readers in mind “An open text cannot be described as a communicative strategy if the role of its addressee (the reader in the case of verbal texts) has not been envisioned as at the moment of its generation” “The reader as an active principle of interpretation is a part of the picture of the generative process of the text.”

7. FictionalPossibleWorlds Semioticsof Fiction (Eco: Lector in Fabula, 1979; I Limiti dell’Interpretazione, 1990) Fictionalpossibleworldsmaybecharacterisedas: “Small worlds”, “furnished” with actors and objects with certain “properties” “… alternative ways things might have been, not descriptions of these ways.” “… states of affairs … described in terms of the same language as their narrative object “Finite, enclosed”, “handicapped”, “parasitic on the real world”, must be “taken on trust” “Constructedbyhumanminds and hands”.

8. The AnthropologicalRole ofFictionalPossibleWorlds Fictionalcharacters live in a handicapped world. Whenweactuallyunderstandtheir fate, thenwe start tosuspectthatwetoo, ascitizensof the actual world, frequentlyundergoourdestiny just becausewethinkofour world in the same way asfictionalcharactersthinkoftheirown. Fiction suggeststhatperhapsourviewof the actual world isasimperfactasthatoffictionalcharacters. Thisis the way thatsuccessfulfictionalcharactersbecomeparamountexamplesof the “real” humancondition.

9. Reality, Fiction and Imagination Cf. Iser Fiction (bothliterary and lying/make-believe/simulation) mediatesbetween reality and ouranthropologicalability to imagine (and re-imagine) ourselves and our relations withvarioustypesof alterity or otherness. Fictional play spaces/textsfunction as a kindof “transitionalobject” –cf. Winnicott FictionalisingActs open up fordifferent “areasof play”, where new meanings can come intobeing

10. Reality, Fiction and Imagination Cf. Iser Three TypesofFictionalizingActs Selection–ofaspectsof reality to berepresented in fiction Combination– (generally in non standard ways) ofrepresentationsofaspectsof reality in fictionaltexts Self-Disclosure–impostion on readerby the text of a revelationofitsownfictiveness, forcing acknowledgementofits “as-if” character

11. FictionalisingActs Selectionresults in Intentionality Combinationresults in Relatednesswithin the text SelfDisclosureresults in Bracketing (suspensionofdisbelief)

12. FictionalisingActs and the World WORLD / BEING EmpiricalObjects/Material FormsofOtherness Human Culture Convention-Governed Cultural Representations FictionalisingActs Selection Combination Self-Disclosure

13. FictionalActs and the World FictionalisingActs are underliedby: Free Play –overstepswhatis and turns in the direction ofwhatisnot InstrumentalPlay –brings to light the motivationforthiswoverstepping

14. AmodalEnactiveExperience Alva Noë “Action and Perception” (2004) All perceptual experience has an uneliminableamodalcomponent. This allows us to experience concrete aspects of the physical world as co-present, in spite of the fact that some of their empirical details may be hidden from our view at any given time.

15. AmodalEnactiveExperience The inherent “reality” of our embodied phenomenological experience is grounded in the fact that we know from past experience we have real possibilities to use our physical agency and mobility to explore and “fill out” details of practical, spatial and other relationships between ourselves, our environment and its various objects in ways that can be interpreted by us as meaningful.

16. Tangible, Intangible & Mediated Cultural Artefacts

17. Material Cultural Artefacts

18. Intangible Cultural Artefacts

19. Mediated Cultural Artefacts

20. First PersonShooter

21. RPG SecondPerson

22. CharacterPortraits Freeman was born in Seattle, Washington, and from the time he was a child, he had a strong interest in theoretical physics. After seeing some teleportation experiments, teleportation and its applications became Gordon’s obsession. He eventually received his Ph.D. in theoretical physics.

23. SpeedRuns

24. EnactiveInterfaces

25. Player – Avatar Relations

26. Brain-Wave Interface

27. Player-Console Relations

28. HolisticGameplaySpace

29. HolisticCinematographicPlayspace

30. TransworldTransmediaGamespace

31. TransworldTransmediaGamespace

32. TransworldTransmediaGamespace