For Tuesday read all of Ian Bogost’s Unit Operations. After you have finished the book post your thoughts here regarding the reading.
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For Tuesday read all of Ian Bogost’s Unit Operations. After you have finished the book post your thoughts here regarding the reading.
If Koster is using fun with an alternate definition, as Bogost says in Chapter 8, why must we apply it to everyday meaning as Bogost does? The example dialogue that Bogost writes on page 119 seems to use fun in a sarcastic manner, so that adds another layer of defining fun. Bogost also seems to agree on Crawford’s “Fun doesn’t quite fit the adult’s experience.”
What defines what is an important topic? We were discussing that last week about the technologies or information men tended to talk about were considered important while the topics women tended to talk about weren’t. People can write messages into fictional stories (and that’s how a lot of writers could get out their messages without being incarcerated or worse), and those should not be taken for granted or ignored just because they aren’t explicitly labeled as their underlying message.
If Bogost is after the unit operations, then wouldn’t games for fun still hold a meaning of some sort at the base of the mechanics? He uses the non-combative classes in SWG as an example that can be seen as waiting on tables. In the last sentence in that chapter, it seems like he concludes video games cannot be entertaining and serious at the same time. It’s odd to me that people take such a polarized stance (or make an issue polarized to strengthen their stance). Bogost seems to suggest that Koster defines the success of games to their “fun” value. What is wrong with attributing more than just fun or just seriousness to determining the success of games? Why does the argument have to be one or the other?
Bogost’s main point, from my understand, is that creative works of any type can be broken down into individual units of meaning. Video games, for example, have a game engine with elements that we are familiar with (gravity, bloom, rag doll, etc.) Most games will use the same game engine. The Doom 3 and Half-Life engines come to mind; many programmers use those interfaces to create new games. What makes a title unique is how it blends “unit operations” to create a whole. A game would be ‘unique’ if it blended unit operations to create a complete reworking of rag doll physics. This concept becomes more apparent when the theory crosses all types of media.
My interest in this reading was Bogost’s point of view on fun. It reminded me a lot of a group project in a video game criticism class I took during my senior year of the bachelor’s degree where we had to describe what is “fun,” which becomes a repetitive word that holds so little meaning. I’d have to agree with lo that Bogost uses a more sarcastic meaning of fun, but the question “why must we apply it to everyday meaning as Bogost does?” is something I’m attempting to tackle. I don’t believe the Bogost was saying that we have to apply fun everyday, rather, that we subconsciously do so. We equate the word fun to anything that is enjoyable. We don’t use any unit of measure for fun. Either something is fun, or it’s not.
The ‘Against Fun’ section in Chapter 8 was entertaining. Simply because as a gamer who has played through a year and a half of SWG, the comparison of the Star Wars universe to southern California is silly and Bogost was reading way to much into Koster’s design.
This book is one of the most interesting and intriguing for me so far. I find many places where I am in disagreement with Bogost and others where I see his point. In particular, I find the passage on page 64 starting in the the last paragraph where Bogost makes remarks regarding Bolter and Grusin rather discursive.
As a programmer and designer for internet applications I empathize with him where he descibes that the programmer actually does not seek to remove the traces of his or her presence (p.65). However, to imply that a programmer’s presence is perpetuated by the fact that they program in a certain object-oriented code is a bit of an exaggeration.
Perhaps my analysis of Bogost’s perspective on this is off, I hope to get a clearer view of it in class.
On a side note, Bogost does provide an interesting look at applying unit operations to a wide arrange of fields. However, I do not feel it is all that beneficial to limit ourselves to the thought that all these fields can potentially be broken down into units to better relate them to one another.
I think this book would be a great addition to anyone taking a gaming course. As a whole I thought, like some of our readings, this is kind of a hard topic between computation and humanism to comparative video game criticism. This is more of a thought experiment more than anything but I was just wondering what would happen if the logic of unit operations gets flipped around? That is, if unit operations is a feature of both criticism and programming which merge in the analysis of video games that is both programmatic and expressive, is there any way to approach criticism in away that stays true to unit operations in a thorough sense? In other words, would there be a way to create video games that express critical arguments themselves? I think that would be interesting.
I feel as though one of two things is taking place here: either I need to read every one of Bogost’s sources in order to fully enderstand his arguement, or I don’t think his concept of unit operations is as revolutionary as he’s claiming. I could be wrong about this, but the sort of analyses that he uses to illustrate unit operations do not seem at all new to me. I’m open to differing views on this.
I, too, had an eyebrow raised through most of the “An Alternative to Fun” chapter. Having read Koster’s _Theory of Fun_ this semester for the Game Design course, I have to say that I came away from it with a very different interpretation. Also, we talked about what happened with Star Wars Galaxies in that class, and there was a series of drastic changes that were made to the game space that alienated the players. I don’t know what the timeline was, so I don’t know how much of it happened before Bogost wrote this, but I think the cantina/bazaar thing might not have been the only thing that filled the forums with player hate.
This is a pet peeve. This idea that games are limited by their association with entertainment? Makes me laugh. As far as I’m concerned, this is one of their strong points. being entertaining doesn’t necessarily mean being trashy, trite, or thoughtless. (Wow, three T’s. Didn’t mean to do that.) What’s wrong with engaging people? Isn’t that what every artform strives for?