game studies

This international collective monograph brings an understanding of the problematic of changes in artistic communication in the context of the cultural practices of the post-digital era and simultaneously asks new questions about it. This book presents the keystones of electronic literature research that are based, among others, on the digital character of the text, on multisensory reading, playfulness, hypermediality, experimentation and Internet communication. Its aim is also to map digital literature in the cultural environment of Central Europe. Researchers from Slovakia, The Czech Republic, Poland, Slovenia and Croatia collaborated on the publication. The monograph is a printed textual tapestry of various approaches, theories and perspectives that communicate among themselves, react to each other and together clarify the structure that literature personifies in the new media realm.

Contributions by Zuzana Husárová, Jana Kuzmíková, Gabriela Magová, Mira Nabělková, Andrzej Pająk, Katarina Peović Vuković, Mariusz Pisarski, Michal Rehúš a Jaroslav Šrank, Janez Strehovec, Bogumiła Suwara, Jaroslav Švelch

Source: publisher's information

This article presents a critical review (not a rejection) of the concept of “ergodic literature”when applied to computer and video games. Therefore it goes back to some ofthe sources Espen Aarseth triggered when he appropriated the term from physics in1997 for the subject of cybertext and explains the necessary consequences of the term“ergodicity” for literature and games when it is not merely used metaphorically. A morecautious use of terms and concepts from other disciplines is suggested, especially as theterm “ergodic” in physics has a different but relevant meaning in the context of thesegames. The article tries to mediate between some of the general anthropological claimsof cybertext theory/game studies and the understanding of “ergodic systems” in thermodynamics and statistical physics. The problems that result from this mediation can beseen as symptomatic for the challenges of game studies in the more general mediationbetween different perspectives on games.

(Source: Author's abstract)

Equally interested in what is and what could be, Cybertext Poetics combines ludology and cybertext theory to solve persistent problems and introduce paradigm changes in the fields of literary theory, narratology, game studies, and digital media. The book first integrates theories of print and digital literature within a more comprehensive theory capable of coming to terms with the ever-widening media varieties of literary expression, and then expands narratology far beyond its current confines resulting in multiple new possibilities for both interactive and non-interactive narratives. By focusing on a cultural mode of expression that is formally, cognitively, affectively, socially, aesthetically, ethically and rhetorically different from narratives and stories, Cybertext Poetics constructs a ludological basis for comparative game studies, shows the importance of game studies to the understanding of digital media, and argues for a plurality of transmedial ecologies.

(Source: Continuum online catalog.)

The Interactive Fiction (IF) genre describes text-based narrative experiences in which a person interacts with a computer simulation by typing text phrases (usually commands in the imperative mood) and reading software-generated text responses (usually statements in the second person present tense). Re-examining historical and contemporary IF illuminates the larger fields of electronic literature and game studies. Intertwined aesthetic and technical developments in IF from 1977 to the present are analyzed in terms of language (person, tense, and mood), narrative theory (Iser's gaps, the fabula / sjuzet distinction), game studies / ludology (player apprehension of rules, evaluation of strategic advancement), and filmic representation (subjective POV, time-loops). Two general methodological concepts for digital humanities analyses are developed in relation to IF: implied code, which facilitates studying the interactor's mental model of an interactive work; and frustration aesthetics, which facilitates analysis of the constraints that structure interactive experiences. IF works interpreted in extended "close interactions" include Plotkin's Shade (1999), Barlow's Aisle (2000), Pontious's Rematch (2000), Foster and Ravipinto's Slouching Towards Bedlam (2003), and others. Experiences of these works are mediated by implications, frustrations, and the limiting figures of their protagonists.

(Source: From the author´s website)

What matters in understanding digital media? Is looking at the external appearance and audience experience of software enough—or should we look further? In Expressive Processing, Noah Wardrip-Fruin argues that understanding what goes on beneath the surface, the computational processes that make digital media function, is essential.Wardrip-Fruin suggests that it is the authors and artists with knowledge of these processes who will use the expressive potential of computation to define the future of fiction and games. He also explores how computational processes themselves express meanings through distinctive designs, histories, and intellectual kinships that may not be visible to audiences.Wardrip-Fruin looks at "expressive processing" by examining specific works of digital media ranging from the simulated therapist Eliza and the first major story-generation system Tale-Spin to the complex city-planning game SimCity. Digital media, he contends, offer particularly intelligible examples of things we need to understand about software in general; if we understand, for instance, the capabilities and histories of artificial intelligence techniques in the context of a computer game, we can use that understanding to judge the use of similar techniques in such higher-stakes social contexts as surveillance.

(Source: MIT Press)

The first volume of the Cybertext Yearbook.

Note: All articles published in the Cybertext Yearbook series are now also published on the Cybertext Yearbook Database.