Unit Operations: An Approach to Videogame Criticism

Intellectual Property / Language / Technology

Fri, 23 Mar 07 12:45:06 -0500

Keywords: Intellectual Property / Language / Technology
Text: "If the move from real to intellectual property is what fueled the burgeoning technology industry of the past thirty years, then jargon is the raw material that helped industry form that intellectual property."
"Jargon ... is a way of laying groundwork for novel production."
Bogost, xi
Date: 03/23/07
ID: 7696

Biology

Fri, 23 Mar 07 12:45:06 -0500

Keywords: Biology
Text: Bogost: "Over the last two hundred years, biology has revised its conception of natural life from the random wholeness of natural selection (Darwin) to the command-and-control directedness of genomics (Mendel, Crick, and Watson) to the periodiciy of punctuated equilibrium (Gould) to the complexity of autocatalysis (Kauffman)."
Date: 03/23/07
ID: 7697

Systems

Fri, 23 Mar 07 12:45:06 -0500

Keywords: Systems
Text: Bogost: contemporary systems are "the spontaneous and complex result of multitudes rather than singular and absolute holisms" (4)
Date: 03/23/07
ID: 7698

Systems

Fri, 23 Mar 07 12:45:06 -0500

Keywords: Systems
Text: "The first form of complexity was conceived in the 1940s, as biologist Ludwig von Bertalanffy's systems theory."
-Bogost, p.4
Date: 03/23/07
ID: 7699

Philosophy: Harman / Network / Relationships / Artifacts / To Read

Tue, 14 Aug 07 11:45:32 -0500

Keywords: Philosophy: Harman / Network / Relationships / Artifacts / To Read
Text: philosopher Graham Harman's "object-oriented philosophy"
a development of Heidegger's Zuhandenheit ("readiness-at-hand")
Bogost: "Harman suggests that all objects in the world, not just humans, are fundamentally referential, or form from relationships that extend beyond their own limits."
see his "Tool-Being: Heidegger and the Metaphysics of Objects"
Date: 03/23/07
ID: 7701

Systems / Biology

Fri, 23 Mar 07 15:36:01 -0500

Keywords: Systems / Biology
Text: Francisco Valera + Humberto Maturana
"autopoetic systems theorists" who "showed that the neurology of the frog operates as a system that regulates the organism's behavior." (Bogost 6)
Date: 03/23/07
ID: 7702

System / Culture / Communication / Border

Fri, 23 Mar 07 15:36:01 -0500

Keywords: System / Culture / Communication / Border
Text: sociologist Niklas Luhmann believes that social systems regulate themselves by "creating and maintaining a difference from their environment, and [using] their boundaries to regulate this difference."
Bogost: "In Luhmann's systems theory, communication is the basic unit of social systems." (6)
Date: 03/23/07
ID: 7703

Systems

Fri, 23 Mar 07 15:36:01 -0500

Keywords: Systems
Text: Bogost, 6: "[S]ystems imply a fundamental order that an agent might 'discover,' one that exists by natural, universal, or common law."
a "totalizing" system, distinct from "complex systems in which individual units relate", which are "autopoetic or at least arbitrary, and characterized by exploration or interpretation rather than discovery."
Date: 03/23/07
ID: 7704

Systems / Philosophy: Heidegger / Energy / Concept

Fri, 23 Mar 07 15:36:01 -0500

Keywords: Systems / Philosophy: Heidegger / Energy / Concept
Text: Bogost: "Heidegger called the grasp of totalizing systems Gestell, or Enframing. Enframing is the modern condition of ordering the potential of structures in the world only to conceal and hold onto their energy for future use."
see also Heidegger's Bestand, "standing reserve" and poiesis, "bringing-forth"
Date: 03/23/07
ID: 7705

Systems

Fri, 23 Mar 07 15:36:01 -0500

Keywords: Systems
Text: Bogost: "We cannot escape systems, but we can explore them, or understand ourselves as implicated in their exploration." (7)
Date: 03/23/07
ID: 7706

Philosophy: Heidegger / Art / Technology

Fri, 23 Mar 07 15:36:01 -0500

Keywords: Philosophy: Heidegger / Art / Technology
Text: Heidegger suggests that the goal of art is to reconfigure the elements of Enframing / Gestell
art becomes "expressive units that reconfigure our relationship with technology in new ways" (Bogost)
Date: 03/23/07
ID: 7707

Systems

Sun, 25 Mar 07 17:09:08 -0500

Keywords: Systems
Text: "Complex networks are open, adjudicated by the nonsimple interaction of variety of constantly changing constituents." Bogost, 8
Date: 03/25/07
ID: 7714

Philosophy: Spinoza / Memory

Sun, 25 Mar 07 17:25:14 -0500

Keywords: Philosophy: Spinoza / Memory
Text: "[W]e clearly understand what memory is. For it is othing other than a certain connection of ideas involving the nature of things outside the human body."
Bogost understands this as a merging of "ontological and epistemological materiality" (9)
Date: 03/25/07
ID: 7715

Philosophy: Spinoza / Network / Systems

Sun, 25 Mar 07 17:32:15 -0500

Keywords: Philosophy: Spinoza / Network / Systems
Text: Bogost: "Spinoza's philosophy sets up a network-like superstructure for almost any kind of material relation ... [This] sets the stage for future forms of complex systems."
Spinoza sees relationships between objects as "innumerably re-creatable"
Date: 03/25/07
ID: 7716

Philosophy: Badiou / Math

Sun, 25 Mar 07 17:40:40 -0500

Keywords: Philosophy: Badiou / Math
Text: Alain Badiou develops an interest in set theory--
"A set for Badiou is a collection of elements selected from the infinite possible collections of elements. These elements in turn must be thought of as multiplicities, as sets themselves." (Bogost)
there's a way that this is applicable to the "Everything Device" notion ... ?
Date: 03/25/07
ID: 7717

Process / Emotion / Poetry: Eliot

Sun, 25 Mar 07 17:43:09 -0500

Keywords: Process / Emotion / Poetry: Eliot
Text: T.S. Eliot's notion of the "objective correlative" is a "literary formula for the production of an emotion" (Bogost)
connected to Janet Murray's notion of "procedurality" ?
Date: 03/25/07
ID: 7718

Hypertext

Sun, 25 Mar 07 17:46:20 -0500

Keywords: Hypertext
Text: Espen Aarseth's "cybertexts" rely on "configuration as a formal property" (Bogost, 14)
"Aarseth articulates a 'traversal function' that assembles a particular string of readable signs (what he calls 'scriptons') from a possible array of textual signs (what he calls 'textons')"
Bogost's unit-operations-based criticism is similar, although instead of locating these notions in a "work," Bogost applies them in the service of "a particular critical practice"
Hm
Date: 03/25/07
ID: 7719

Philosophy / Form / Reality

Sun, 25 Mar 07 23:48:26 -0500

Keywords: Philosophy / Form / Reality
Text: Bogost: "The problem of universals is one of the oldest in philosophy. It asks whether abstract concepts (universals) that range over individual things (particulars) exist in some realm outside human understanding." (21)
realists (i.e. Plato) v. nominalists (i.e. Ockham)
Date: 03/25/07
ID: 7725

Philosophy: Aristotle / Form / Experience

Mon, 26 Mar 07 00:06:34 -0500

Keywords: Philosophy: Aristotle / Form / Experience
Text: Bogost: "Aristotle makes a decisive gesture in the philosophy of universals ... [He] shifted the position of universals from without to within human experience."
For Aristotle, "universals (forms) do exist, but only in *matter,* in the material world of experiences."
universal modes vs. particular modes
"For Aristotle, matter and form are fundamentally tied"
It is only a "mental function that allows us to gain an unverstanding of the form in the matter, the universal in the particular. He calls this faculty *abstraction*" (22)
This maneuver is a "simultaneous individuation and generalization" of forms (23)
Date: 03/25/07
ID: 7726

Philosophy: Aristotle / Form

Mon, 26 Mar 07 00:05:17 -0500

Keywords: Philosophy: Aristotle / Form
Text: Bogost: "Aristotle posits a specific notion of causality. Final causality is the natural procession of matter toward the realization of its form ... The final cause is the purpose objects work towards as they change. In this sense, Aristotle's world is deeply teleological; things seek a formal, ideal purpose. Such striving relies on a purposiveness that orders and regulates the universe; a system that directs the movements of objects towards a directed end."
Date: 03/25/07
ID: 7727

Philosophy: Derrida / Systems

Mon, 26 Mar 07 00:14:00 -0500

Keywords: Philosophy: Derrida / Systems
Text: Bogost: "Derrida is obsessed with dismantling totalizing systems" (24)
"However, taken as a whole, deconstructionism can also be said to exhibit remarkable systematicity. ... [T]he process of deconstruction itself threatens to become a closed, static system."
Date: 03/25/07
ID: 7728

Computers / Timeline

Mon, 26 Mar 07 00:17:58 -0500

Keywords: Computers / Timeline
Text: "[I]n 1945 ENIAC engineer and renowned mathematician John von Neumann suggested that computers should have a simple physical structure and yet be able to perform any kind of computation through programmable control alone rather than physical alteration of the computer itself." (Bogost 25)
the "von Neumann architecture" or "the stored-program technique"
Date: 03/25/07
ID: 7729

Media: Digital Media

Mon, 26 Mar 07 00:27:21 -0500

Keywords: Media: Digital Media
Text: Bogost: "the force and power" of digital media "comes not only from their material structure, but also from an amalgam of their logical and functional structures--the fashion in which computational and cultural works are created and used."
Date: 03/25/07
ID: 7730

Media: Digital Media

Mon, 26 Mar 07 00:29:53 -0500

Keywords: Media: Digital Media
Text: Bogost: "In The Language of New Media, Lev Manovich claims that binary digital data signals a sea change in representation; digital computers manipulate content previously of different media forms (audio, video, text, image, etc) and represent that content in unitary structures."
However, "it is wrong to claim that digitalization introduced the notion of universalism to computation." (28)
Date: 03/25/07
ID: 7731

Systems / Cyborg / Patterns / Chaos

Mon, 26 Mar 07 00:32:08 -0500

Keywords: Systems / Cyborg / Patterns / Chaos
Text: Bogost: "N. Katherine Hayles's approach to cybernetics [suggests] that cybernetic systems function within a dialectic of pattern and randomness. In the immense world of binary data, meaning emerges where authors or users create or recognize patterns."
Date: 03/25/07
ID: 7732

Computers

Fri, 06 Apr 07 10:34:11 -0500

Keywords: Computers
Text: Bogost: "Software must exhibit four properties to be considered object-oriented: abstraction, encapsulation, polymorphism, and inheritance."
Unit Operations, 39
Date: 03/27/07
ID: 7861

Technology / Reality

Fri, 06 Apr 07 15:34:52 -0500

Keywords: Technology / Reality
Text: Bogost: "The common thread in analyses like those of [Friedrich] Kittler and [Neil] Postman is that even a word processing program limits the way humans relate to the world in a radical way, almost to the point of constituting an ontological threat." (37)
Date: 03/27/07
ID: 7862

Computers / Timeline / Math / Philosophy: Leibniz / Reality

Fri, 06 Apr 07 17:00:15 -0500

Keywords: Computers / Timeline / Math / Philosophy: Leibniz / Reality
Text: "Leibniz developed the first system of digital arithmetic, the basis of all digital technology"
from this, Leibniz concludes "that all reality is therefore constructed of extensions of this notion, Being (1) and Nothing (0)."
Bogost, 37
Date: 03/27/07
ID: 7863

Computers / Timeline / Mind / Information

Fri, 06 Apr 07 16:54:05 -0500

Keywords: Computers / Timeline / Mind / Information
Text: object technology "descends directly from John von Neumann's dream of unviersal computation"
and is popularized by Alan Kay's SmallTalk, created at Xerox PARC in the early 1970s
an attempt to get computers to "manage information in the same way as human cognition"
Date: 03/27/07
ID: 7864

Intellectual Property / Computers

Fri, 06 Apr 07 16:56:26 -0500

Keywords: Intellectual Property / Computers
Text: the way that Windows (for instance) encases or encapsulates functions into "component objects" (dynamic link libraries, or dlls) is a "method of encapsulating intellectual capital" (Bogost) in a set of "black boxes"
--object technology
Date: 03/27/07
ID: 7865

Intellectual Property / Computers

Mon, 09 Apr 07 10:18:04 -0500

Keywords: Intellectual Property / Computers
Text: Bogost, 41: "the primary basis for the defensible intellectual property of software systems" is in "encapsulation"
which "hides the internal workings of a particular operation"
Date: 04/09/07
ID: 7873

Technology: ATM Machine / Work / Capitalism

Mon, 09 Apr 07 10:20:22 -0500

Keywords: Technology: ATM Machine / Work / Capitalism
Text: Bogost points out that the "encapsulation" of an ATM surcharge into the "withdrawal operation" has the effect of making us accept the fact "that access to the exchange value of one's own labor comes at a cost"
Date: 04/09/07
ID: 7874

Media / To Read / Narrative

Mon, 09 Apr 07 10:24:43 -0500

Keywords: Media / To Read / Narrative
Text: Jay Bolter + Richard Grusin's book, Remediation
develops the McLuhan-like claim that "all media articulate or pay homage to previous media, thus 'remediating' previous media forms" (Bogost's summary)
Bogost connects this, somehow [?] to his process of "encapsulation," claiming that Bolter and Grusin see the "encapsulation of cultural prodcts as an artifact of the process of remediation"
(the example is the way that Batman recurs in various media)
could this be connected to that thing where the Matrix attempts to tell its meta-narrative across media?
Date: 04/09/07
ID: 7875

Capitalism / Media / Design

Mon, 09 Apr 07 10:27:48 -0500

Keywords: Capitalism / Media / Design
Text: Bogost points out the cross-media development of the Hello Kitty archetype:
"Since 1976, the Japanese company Sanrio has done nothing but license its popular Hello Kitty character for use in other forms of cultural capital ... Licensing is an example of the fungible use of a unit operation in the cultural, commercial, and legal registers." (42)
Date: 04/09/07
ID: 7876

Memetics / Concept / Culture / Capitalism

Mon, 09 Apr 07 10:31:57 -0500

Keywords: Memetics / Concept / Culture / Capitalism
Text: Ryan Mathew and Watts Wacker have promoted the notion of the "devox" -- a "memelike superentity ... which effects cultural change through the promulgation of deviance."
in footnote, Bogost clarifies: "Deviance in this case refers ... to the notion that cultural units begin as marginalized units before becoming mass-market"
Date: 04/09/07
ID: 7877

Literary Criticism / Bricolage / Philosophy: Derrida

Fri, 18 May 07 10:44:51 -0500

Keywords: Literary Criticism / Bricolage / Philosophy: Derrida
Text: "Gerard Genette draws a direct correlation between bricolage and cultural criticism; it is a process of borrowing concepts and putting them to use."
(Bogost)
apparently Derrida develops Genette's idea?
Date: 04/09/07
ID: 7878

Media: Videogames / Interactive Fiction / Communication

Mon, 09 Apr 07 10:44:05 -0500

Keywords: Media: Videogames / Interactive Fiction / Communication
Text: Espen Aarseth wants people to study "videogames and related technologies" (Bogost) "for what they can tell us about the principles and evolution of human communication" (Aarseth)
yet simultaneously he thinks that focusing on games as literature-- "applying the theories of literary criticism to a new empirical field, seemingly without any reassessment of the terms and concepts involved" --is a problem
leading him to say things like "interactive fiction [is] an unfocused fantasy rather than a concept of any analytical substance"
Date: 04/09/07
ID: 7879

Game

Mon, 09 Apr 07 10:46:15 -0500

Keywords: Game
Text: Frans Mayra (head of the Digital Game Research Association or DiGRA): "Games have their own distinctive features and fundamental character or ontology, which are not shared as such by other cultural forms."
Date: 04/09/07
ID: 7880

Computers / Media: Videogames / Form / Genre / Intellectual Property

Mon, 09 Apr 07 10:52:55 -0500

Keywords: Computers / Media: Videogames / Form / Genre / Intellectual Property
Text: Bogost: "Common gameplay in works of the same genre makes it possible to develop new games on the code written for existing games."
the "common substructure" here creates an angle through which games can (should?) be analyzed
"Game engines move far beyond literary devices and genres ... [G]ame engines regulate individual videogames' artistic, cultural, and narrative expression."
also: "[G]ame engines are IP. They exist in the material world in a way that genres, devices, and cliches do not."
Date: 04/09/07
ID: 7882

Film / Industrial Age / Corporations

Mon, 09 Apr 07 10:50:36 -0500

Keywords: Film / Industrial Age / Corporations
Text: Bogost: "[T]he film industry remains the dominant example of an industrial art, where large teams of individuals with specific skills (both artistic and technical) produce a work often, but not always, funded by large corporate investors."
Date: 04/09/07
ID: 7883

Media: Videogames / Genre / Technology / Form

Mon, 09 Apr 07 10:57:09 -0500

Keywords: Media: Videogames / Genre / Technology / Form
Text: Bogost: "[F]irst-person shooter game engines construe entire gameplay behaviors, facilitating functional interactions divorced from individual games. ... Game engines differ from genres in that they abstract ... material requirements as their primary-- perhaps their only --formal constituent." (57)
Date: 04/09/07
ID: 7884

Media: Videogames

Fri, 20 Apr 07 12:30:58 -0500

Keywords: Media: Videogames
Text: Bogost: "After the success of Doom, its developer iD Software recognized that they could capitalize not just on games they created, but also on helping other developers create similar and derivative games ... iD turned that idea into the Quake Engine, which has become the basis for dozens of titles released since, including HeXen 2 and Half-Life"
Date: 04/20/07
ID: 7909

Media: Videogames / Intellectual Property

Fri, 20 Apr 07 12:34:05 -0500

Keywords: Media: Videogames / Intellectual Property
Text: "Valve Software ... released Half-Life in 1998, based on the Quake II engine. Half-Life in turn spawned a multiplayer edition called Counter-Strike, which remains among the most popular Internet/LAN games today."
see also the relationship between Tank and Pong
"Both Tank and Half-Life demonstrate how formal intellectual property relationships between games and their developers or publishers encourage growth that benefits both." Bogost, 61
Date: 04/20/07
ID: 7910

Media: Videogames / Intellectual Property

Fri, 20 Apr 07 12:37:02 -0500

Keywords: Media: Videogames / Intellectual Property
Text: "[E]ffective criticism of [video]games as cultural works may need to take the licensing operation [the relation between a game engine and a derivative game] into account in understanding how a work functions discursively."
Bogotst, 62
Date: 04/20/07
ID: 7911

Media: Videogames / To Play

Fri, 20 Apr 07 12:39:52 -0500

Keywords: Media: Videogames / To Play
Text: Notable first-person shooters or FPS include
Warren Spector's Thief, in which "the main goal is to *avoid* conflict, sneaking through shadows and darkness to avoid detection"
and Warren Spector's Deus Ex (built on the Unreal game engine) which adds a "moral tenor" : "each violent *and* nonviolent player decision affects the outcome of the game"
Date: 04/20/07
ID: 7912

Media: Videogames / Narrative

Fri, 20 Apr 07 12:43:41 -0500

Keywords: Media: Videogames / Narrative
Text: Facade utilizes ABL (A Behavior Language), a "reactive planning language" [?]
ABL is based on Hap, a "computational system for goal-directed activity developed at Carnegie Mellon University"
Note that Wikipedia has entries on neither Hap nor ABL-- start from the Facade page and work outwards?
Date: 04/20/07
ID: 7913

Media: Videogames / Narrative

Fri, 20 Apr 07 12:46:27 -0500

Keywords: Media: Videogames / Narrative
Text: "[Michael] Mateas and [Andrew] Stern [the creators of Facade] ... break down master narrative into story beats, a term they borrow from screen writing. In film, story beats simply refer to plot points within a larger story; in Facade, they refer to short segments of goal-driven, flexible interaction ... [T]he platform queues subsequent beats to progress the experience along a given story arc, a bit like narrative pathfinding." (Bogost, 65-6)
Date: 04/20/07
ID: 7914

Media: Videogames / Narrative

Fri, 20 Apr 07 15:13:04 -0500

Keywords: Media: Videogames / Narrative
Text: Bogost: "[Jesper] Juul concedes that games and narratives share common properties: we use narratives to make sense of experiences, and games have embedded stories and backstories that are undeniably narrative. Juul shows how even a 'simple' game like Space Invaders relies on a narrative backstory to motivate gameplay" (67)
Date: 04/20/07
ID: 7915

Media: Videogames / Narrative

Fri, 20 Apr 07 15:38:31 -0500

Keywords: Media: Videogames / Narrative
Text: Bogost: "Juul's fundamental point is that games disturb the relation between reader and story that narratives require."
Juul: "the player inhabits a twilight zone where he/she is both an empirical subject outside the game *and* undertakes a role inside the game."
sort of like Will Wright's claims about feeling pride or guilt / shame while playing
Date: 04/20/07
ID: 7916

Media: Videogames / Game / Narrative

Fri, 20 Apr 07 15:39:54 -0500

Keywords: Media: Videogames / Game / Narrative
Text: Jesper Juul, on "what makes games games":
"rules, goals, player activity, the projection of the player's actions into the game world, the way the game defines the possible actions of the player."
Date: 04/20/07
ID: 7917