blogs post 4 May 24, 2007

  

Let´s play to the game of definitions 

         Every attempt of definition or characterization of game have to face an evident, known, familiar as well as complex interpretation of reality. That is why, games as social manifestation resist to any definitive “conceptual explanation” attempt. 

            Games are a way of communication and expression that combines both thinking and action; they give us satisfaction and achievement sensation. Gaming might be considered as a way to read reality, to know, to connect with other people, to work and to transform situations, in other words, to learn how to live. 

            During the last years, the discussion on games and gaming culture has been very vibrant. Lately, gaming industry has been the fastest growing sector of the entertainment industry. For that reason, there is a generation of academics who have defined and studied games: how gaming affects gamers and how games affect our society. In spite of this, it might be impossible to know games just from a theoretical perspective as well as it might be impossible to know games just from the empirical vision. Both perspectives may be combined in order to define and understand games. 

             I asked some friends from different countries what a game was for them. Most of them refer to concepts such as experience, fiction-reality, practice, sensation, entertainment, enjoyment. They referred to qualitative components of games: how a group of people decide to play, to come to an agreement in rules, the chance to modify them, the way to get in or off from the game. I got surprised because I was expecting them to link games with computer or consoles but they mostly speak about games in general and the act of playing, except one of them who made a summary of the history of video and computer games ending with references to the world phenomenon WOW (World of Warcraft) and its important influence in people. When I asked for a definition, one American boy spoke about a Youtube video entitled “expand the definition of gaming”. He suggests the difficulty of the definition since almost every year new games experiences come into view and depending of the year you were born you will define games differently. 

            On the other hand, we have groups of academics whose view is more linked to quantitative components: people or characters involved in the game, game´s support, game´s space and game´s time. It could be exemplified in definitions of games by authors such as David Kelley or definitions found in encyclopedias. The focus on qualitative or quantitative elements of the game is the main difference between my friends´ definitions and scholar´s definitions of game. 

            At the same time, it might be commented how depending on the country my friends where from or the area or subject they are studying the definition and the games they refer as examples are different. Most of the Spanish refer to board games or card games as a consequence of the old card games tradition in the country, whereas Japanese people refer mostly to videogames since
Japan is the country with more latent gaming culture. I also asked a student of pedagogy about her idea of games and she answered me with a functional definition related with free searching of fictional purpose. 

 

            As a conclusion of my research, I may say I agree with both points of view but the best way to define and understand games is combine both, experience with games and reading academics texts about the subject. A good and understandable definition may include references to qualitative and quantitative elements of games as well as be functional. An excellent example of a mix-definition is J. Huizinga who defines games as “a free activity standing quite consciously outside ”ordinary” life as being ”not serious”, but at the same time absorbing the player intensely and utterly. It is an activity connected with no material interest, and no profit can be gained by it. It proceeds within its own proper boundaries of time and space according to fixed rules and in an orderly manner. It promotes the formation of social groupings which tend to surround themselves with secrecy and to stress their difference from the common world by disguise or other means”¹ .  

February 14, 2007

little ‘girl-father’

IT´S TIME TO TAKE A BREAK AND TAKE A LOOK AT THIS CREATIVE ADVERT FROM MANY YEARS AGO, GRAZIE

February 13, 2007

Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us

Here we have a yotube video related with the course. It is in Jill´s blog but I found interesting to have it also in this blog becase it is a summary of the main ideas from our subject

January 17, 2007

This is my first day of class of Critical Approaches to Technology and Society and we are knowing each other. I found some things in common with other students, for example, Bradley, Alex and Cotello are  also international students and live in Fantoft. In relation with ice-cream flavour Lene likes strawberry as me. Catello is from a mediterran country as I am and I am sure as well as me he will miss the sun here in Norway. Hamdi, Bradley and me did the same course last semester. Øisten and Olav like Information Science as well as me.

blog post 1 January 17, 2007

TRANSMISSION OF KNOWLEDGE

Writing, always part of the culture

As Jay David Bolter says, “Each technology gives us a different space…How the reader and writer understand writing is conditioned by the physical and visual character of the books they use”.

Writing as technology contains the history of writing from cuneiform to the computer. This is an unexciting chapter from the book Writing Space where J. David Bolter describes the earliest forms of writing machines and compares print quality to handwriting. In other words, he displays about the different types of writing technology and how it has progressed over the years.

One thing that everyone in the entire world uses everyday is language and writing. Bolter deals with the subject of how we can conceptualize writing technologies in relation to social, economic, and cognitive activity. He argues that electronic writing involved contemporary economics and material culture.
Culture, maybe because these new technologies can provide a conglomerate of photography, graphic design, film, audio and video that reading a mere printed book could never offer. I agree with Bolter on the idea of how electronic and digital technologies are helping to refashion the writing space. Clear examples are cybertexts and hypertexts. I also understand how writing can be seen as an art form in a different way that it was before. In this case, the example is Flying Puppet, an online gallery of digital hypermedia created by Nicolas Clauss. As the reader or viewer analyses it, they may consider hypermedia as a new kind of art. It uses photography, video, sound and digital technologies to create its own art inspired in works of art. When the reader starts to read the different works in Flying Puppet, the reader may start from an idea as well as from an image or a sound.
As Bolter claims electronic writing is reintroducing characteristics that have belonged to a variety of marginal techniques of the past. In spite of that, I do not accept as true that the printed word, visual arts, or films will ever be neglected due to the opportunity of nearness through the use of computers. Therefore, it is not at all true when he affirms that when in the history of writing a new technology appears, it may supplement an established technology or replace it.

In the chapter it is also commented the World Wide Web and its ability to publish anything on the web as a new form of writing. The web is improving writing of our society but unfortunately our culture, as it is said in the book, chose to turn the Web into a Carnival of commercial and self promotional Web Sites.

“Individuals and whole cultures do mold techniques and devices to their own purposes”

It is true that the medium is like a window on the world. And at the same time these new forms of expression allow twentieth century artists to capture the speed, energy and contradictions of contemporary life. Multimedia has synthesized all the existing art forms and it has presented them in an environment that allows for meaningful interactivity. We can not forget painting, writing, photography, film, audio or video and we do not let them to be abandoned but we can combine both worlds. Technology can be integrated on them and we have to continue probing the potential of the medium, thinking about this new world as a creative field for us. As a result of that, a global media database would inspire more and more new forms of expression.