Ian Bogost's How to Talk About Video Games

The title How to Talk About Videogames might give the wrong idea when you pick up video game critic Ian Bogost’s latest book. The “how to” part of the title implies a methodical approach on the best way to do something, but Bogost entirely rejects this method as he attempts to tackle the emerging field of video game critical theory. Literature, cinema, and art theory textbooks address frameworks, theories, and methodologies that authoritatively outline the best approaches to understanding their respective mediums. This is neither how to guide nor theoretical textbook, but rather a showcase or anthology of unidentified critical approaches in action. In his book, Bogost addresses the absurdity yet necessity of critiquing video games in his introduction “Nobody Asked for a Toaster Critic.” What follows is a selection of his own critical writings on everything from the existential anguish that is the Mario Kart blue shell to how the evolution of artistry rarely shows itself in the video game medium. Each essay could be argued to operate under particular theoretical frameworks which apply to cinema, literature, and visual art, such as formalism, auteur theory, phenomenology, etc., yet Bogost never labels his critical reviews as falling under such frameworks. By doing such, by this show-don’t-tell style of “how to,” Bogost matches written form with his own theory, which is that video game theory should fall somewhere between academic and practical and that games themselves similarly fall between cultural artifact and mundane appliance.

In his approaches to various types of games, Bogost gets at some key issues in new media which we have discussed in this class, such as the topic of authorship. Who is the author of something that is created by a multitude of people in a studio concerned with financial success? How can authorship be manifested across several games created by the same people or companies? Can there be auteurs in game design? While Bogost doesn’t necessarily answer these questions, he addresses them in several of his case analyses such as the one of popular phone game Flappy Bird, the first case analysis of the book, which is appropriate because he is able to cover several aspects of gaming in a game that most people will be familiar with. His encounter with the issues of gaming aren’t quite direct, he seems to start by getting at the appeal of these games, what makes them unique, what makes them successful. Often, it is these overarching themes in gaming that are the answer. For example, it is the relationship between the author’s intent and the resulting formal elements of Flappy Bird that make it a unique case study. Bogost identifies a relationship between the attitude of the game’s creator, whose aloofness, mystery, and decision to ultimately remove the game from distribution may have something to do with the success of the game. The resulting game is one that is similarly aloof and distant, which creates a “hard to get” situation for players. The game does not reward or change to beckon the players, it simply exists as if the author created it on a whim with no intention of going above and beyond to hook players.

In this analysis of Flappy Bird Bogost judges the game based on its own merit and criteria rather than fitting it into preexisting frameworks for understanding artistic mediums. By doing this he is boldly carving out a new way of talking about an emerging technology. It could be a start to talk about the composition, narrative, audience response to, and context of Flappy Bird as one would with literature, film, and visual art, but in showing how to talk about videogames, and deciding to write a book about it, Bogost supposes that we need to go beyond existing ways of critiquing and understanding. The nature of gaming is vast, interactive, and multidimensional. A sports video game, involving aspects of existing athletics and video game mechanics, cannot be judged the same way puzzle games are. In fact, this is how Bogost starts out his chapter on puzzle games.

“It’s hard to talk about abstract puzzle games, particularly about why certain examples deserve to be called excellent ones. We can discuss their formal properties, or their sensory aesthetics, or their interfaces. We can talk about them in terms of novelty of innovation, and we can talk about them in terms of how compelling they feel to play. But observations like these seem only to scratch the surface of titles like Drop7 and Orbital. Can we talk about such games the way we talk about, say, Bioshock or Pac-Man or SimCity? Sycg games offer aboutness of some kind, whether through narrative, characterization, or simulation. In each, there are concrete  topics that find representation in the rules and environments. Indeed, it’s hard to talk about abstract games precisely because they are not concrete.” (Bogost, 2013)

In fact, Bogost often talks about video games by suggesting they are hard to talk about, but attempting to do so anyway. And he often succeeds just by drawing attention to the thing. Ultimately the take away of How to Talk About Videogames is just this: to talk about videogames, you must think about them. First you encounter them, some you like, some you dislike, but there has to be a reason why. In that way it is no different than talking about any other medium, the only difference is the answers are new, complex, and ultimately somewhere between how to talk about a toaster and how to talk about the Mona Lisa.

Media Example:

Nidhogg, to be discussed in report.

Aesthetics

This presentation of "The New Aesthetic" was loaded with tons of examples of how the digital world and the physical world have started to converge, breeding a new culture, a new aesthetic. Particularly interesting to me were two projects each attempting to question and understand certain memetic aspects of our culture that have developed as a result of digital technology.

The first is some of the experimentations with Google Earth and Google street view. In one project, the artist draws attention to the strangeness of looking at a photo taken by a robot: slightly off the ground, similar to how we see things but different enough to make it of the Uncanny Valley. These 360 cameras function to allow us to see places as we do in real life, essentially imitating the human eye. What results instead of a robot seeing as a human, is a human seeing through the eyes of a robot. It allows us to understand this world view of the digital and for the digital to understand the world view of the human, encouraging convergence between the two. Will we ever truly see as machine? Thomas Nagel, a philosopher, wrote a paper called "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" that explores this crossover of consciousness that is not truly attainable and that only inference and speculation is possible. However, maybe as our digital presence grows, so will our digital consciousness.

The second project that struck me was an artist who created finger paintings by making the gestures we use when interacting with technology, like scrolling on a touch screen or the tapping of texting. This project illuminates how certain aspects of our physiology as well as our culture have developed as a result of the technological apparatus, and how these gestures and movements have become natural to us, as natural as breathing, walking, or stretching.

Children and Morality in TH White’s The Sword and the Stone

In TH White’s The Sword and the Stone, the first part of a series of novels that make up The Once and Future King, the story of King Arthur, the future King Arthur is as far from kingly as one might get. He is a young boy, an adopted orphan named Art, whose adopted brother Kay and everyone around him calls “Wart.” A boy named Wart is our atypical hero, who will one day rule the fictional and glorious kingdom of Camelot. Stories set in the Medieval Ages like this one feature castles, knights, fights, swords, and pretty women for whom said knights can be chivalrous towards. These kind of elements allow for morality based on loyalty, honor, chivalry, and courage. However, do they allow for humility? Empathy? Wisdom? Kindness? Wart, our dear young friend, sets the tone of the entirety of The Once and Future King by being a young, meek, and compassionate boy under the care of the wizard Merlin, who prophesies of Wart’s greatness, even if his brother Kay seems like the more likely pick. The impactful morality of this story is one that has deep ties to Christianity as well: “Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the Earth.”

The story is told in a series of tales. The book itself is probably beyond the reading level of any child, but the stories are memorable and accessible for children. Disney thought so to, hence the animated adaptation of this novel, which pretty closely follows the tales in the book of Wart and Merlin. Each tale has its own moral and all together present a morality counter to the typical ethics portrayed in Medieval tales. The first tale sets this precedent. In it, Wart and Kay decide to take one of the hawks, Cully, out for some hunting. Impulsive and boarish Kay decides to release Cully before the appropriate time, and the hawk’s release is unsuccessful, getting him stuck in a tree, feeling too unsafe to return to the boys. Frustrated, Kay storms off, leaving Wart, who stays because he is concerned for Hob, who had spent so much time raising and training the Hawk. “When Cully was lost a part of Hob would be lost too,” the Wart realizes. Kay, who calls Hob “only a villein anyway,” cares only for his sport and immediate enjoyment. Wart empathizes with the frightened Cully and the dedicated Hob. In his decision to try and recover the Hawk, he becomes lost and scared himself until he encounters a very old knight, who is on a quest for the “Questing Beast” a most likely imaginary animal who continues to elude the old knight. The juxtaposition of Wart’s personal quest and the arbitrary quest of the old knight is the same between the traditional Medieval morality tale and this one. Ultimately, Wart is rewarded for his choice to do good because it is through his experience in the woods that he meets Merlin, the wizard who helps him realize his destiny. Merlin fosters Wart’s natural sense of curiosity, compassion, and wisdom by becoming his tutor and using the untraditional method of transfiguration. As he strengthens these traits, he becomes closer to the moment where he pulls the sword from the stone and transforms from Wart to King Arthur.

The story of a child who can do what an adult cannot is common and appealing to kids, but instead of portraying adults as idiots The Sword and the Stone merely highlights the natural qualities of children which are valued within Christian morality. Sir Ector is often kind, Merlin is wise, and the old knight is honorable, but it is the lowly and meek Wart who “inherits the Earth.” The Sword and the Stone is a crucial work for children ages 1-100 as we shape our personal moralities.

Winged Migration: Building Taxonomies for Children

Let’s start with children’s picture books. In class we went through a picture book meant for children which on each page had a thematically sorted conglomerate of illustrated images and their correct English label. The book is meant to be non-fiction, a visual tool for parents to teach young children the kind of vocabularies that a young, Christian, American person might need as they are learning to communicate. While this particular one was an older publication, hundreds of these types of picture books exist on various basic topics a kid might want in order to flesh out his or her vocabulary. Media as a tool for giving kids the tools of classification is incredibly important, and books are a really effective tool, because they usually require an adult’s accompaniment to engage with the child, which studies show is the best way to learn. However, I suggest that books like these are the very basic building block of a child’s taxonomy. Children’s media must be able to not only provide image/word associations, but present the observable world in action in a way that books can’t, and without simple illustrations and labels, give kids further valuable information about a particular subject. Moving image is the most effective tool for this kind of learning, and it is best demonstrated in observational documentaries such as Winged Migration (2001).

Winged Migration is a 90 minute documentary that follows the migrations of several different bird species from every continent over the course of 3 years. This documentary puts birds first and humans second with minimal human involvement, and narration is used sparingly. If you’re of the belief that the attention of kids can only be held by fast, colorful animations, than this might not at first seem like a film intended as “children’s media.” In my experience with children, their interest might be piqued by anything, so why not a film that is mostly shots of birds flying. This kind of film meets the needs of inquiry and curiosity, providing kids with a taxonomy of not only birds, but famous landmarks, geography, biomes, climates, food chains, and natural disasters. Most kids will not get a chance to see an avalanche in their young lives, but Winged Migration shows one occurring in nature. The focus of this documentary might not be avalanches, climates, or the statue of liberty, but by following the patterns and behaviors of birds, migratory creatures, they are able to see these things in context. Context is the key here that separates observational documentaries like this from the classification picture books. A picture book might be able to show basic features of a duck and label it as such, but the nature film allows for more inquiry and inference. “Look this is a duck. The duck swims, flies, grooms, communicates, and even fights sometimes.”

Children learn human behavior in their homes. They interact with their parents and siblings and watch plenty of shows about other children. Things like play, communication, and basic needs are picked up by the day to day necessities of being a young person. However, if this is all a child is exposed to, their world is small and human-centric. Winged Migration is the antithesis to it. It’s large, expansive, and rejects humancentrism. Through the documentation of birds and nature, children can learn through observation about diversity, natural environments, and understand the similarities and differences of all living things. While Winged Migration is quite educational, it also reads as spiritual. The music contributes to this of course with chamber choir music, but it is also interested in the transcendental qualities of nature, qualities that are capable of transfixing children and contributing to both their secular and spiritual inquiries and growth.

Narrative and Gaming

I appreciated how thorough Juul is in his argument that video games and narratives are separate entities although games can have narrative components. I found that as I came up with a counter argument, he addresses it without completely dismissing it. I have particularly been of the mindset that narrative is separate from any sort of medium, and that the author can chose to have narrative as its dominant or not and the spectator can also chose to interpret it from a narrative standpoint or not. However, Juul argues that the nature of traditional story telling formats is narrative, and the nature of gaming is interactive and therefore not interpretive dominant. This encouraged me to understand narrative in a new way: as something that is created and fixed. Narratives have specific components and qualities that are observable: existants, locale, agents, diagetic/non-diagetic, resolution, etc. What is usually the interpretive part is theme, moral, message, tone, meaning, etc. In stories and films, the formal elements are fixed although we have all the room in the world to interpret them. In video games, the formal elements are fixed in that the possible options are generated before hand either by design or algorithm, but what is not fixed is the structure, the order, the options the players will choose. By adding that agency, video games open up formal elements in the way that thematic elements are open in traditional narrative in that the player/spectator is necessary in determining them.

With this in mind, here is my example from new media on how this operates: how the user can determine formal elements in such a way that is not possible in traditional narrative mediums.

This is a video game adapted from a book, which is interesting in terms of the narrative argument. You glean pieces of the book as you play the game, but ultimately the experience of living at Walden Pond is in your hands.

Inquiry

This week as we explored the topic of inquiry and watched They Might Be Giant’s music video anthology Here Comes Science, I questioned the effectiveness of children’s media such as this at actually educating children with scientific principles. The lyrics and accompanied animations aim at simplifying scientific facts and making them accessible and fun. However, while the music was energetic and exciting, it wasn’t always the clearest explanation of the thing. For example, in one song the band sings the names of planets and other space objects, not clarifying the difference or what exactly it is they are identifying. In another song they claim the sun to be made of gasses, but then correct themselves in a follow up song claiming the sun is made up of plasma. But what is plasma?

Which brings me to the topic of this week, which isn’t “information” or “education” or “precise answers for children,” it’s inquiry. Here Comes Science seems to leave its audience with more questions than answers, and I think that’s kind of the point. Media such as TMBG’s album, address very basic ideas in science that serve as a kid’s gateway drug into science. Children’s media that serves an educational purpose tends to foster an interest in the subject rather than quickly fill kids’ heads with all the information. These music videos address various areas of scientific inquiry and presents them in bite-sized bits (most songs are less than two minutes long) in order to give kids a taste to pique their curiosity. If this is indeed the purpose, then the simplistic aesthetic of the music videos make sense. The band sticks to primary color schemes, simple shapes, and animations that match sound cues to make their topics as accessible and exciting for kids as possible.

This aesthetic contrasts with the complex, detailed style of Cathedral. If Here Comes Science is the gateway drug, then something like Cathedral is the hardcore stuff. It’s more interested in answering questions, providing deeper knowledge on a subject, hence the aesthetic of the detailed black and white line drawings. Something like Here Comes Science might introduce children to something, whereas something like Cathedral is where they would go to better understand their interest.

The educational style of Here Comes Science assumes that children trust what they are told, rather than needing to always see it for themselves. If children are in fact truly learning science from these dudes in a band that they can’t even see or verify the credentials of, there is something about how kids learn that goes beyond empirical evidence. In fact, this article from the Child Development journal explores the idea that how children think about science is a lot similar to how we tend to think about religion. “Children appear to conceptualize unobservable scientific and religious entities similarly,” the writers argue. They rely on the testimonies of adults to understand the unobservable world, which is perhaps why a large portion of children’s media is dedicated to teaching moral, scientific, and religious principles.

Morality in Pinocchio: Bridging the Gap Between Childhood and Adulthood

Teaching morality to children is kind of like explaining that the earth is round to people in 1000 BC. We are convinced we are right based on fact and experience, but they haven’t figured it out for themselves, so being didactic might not be the best approach. The lessons I gleaned from this week’s viewing of Pinocchio have little to do with the cut and dry messages intended for children. Instead, I learned a lot from the character of Geppetto, from the choices in animation, and I learned a lot about ignorance.

There is a trope in children’s media that often empowers children by making the adults seem stupid, clumsy, and goofy. The children in these stories know better and can often outsmart the adults. Instead of dividing child and adult, we need to be bridging that gap, and I think that the relationship between Geppetto and Pinocchio does this. Before his wish, Geppetto is a kind and nurturing caretaker. He loves his cat and his fish, and he is a masterful creator: giving attention and detail to each of his wooden creations of which there are hundreds.

Geppetto is full of love, and his wish isn’t riches or glory, but rather another soul to look after. He wishes to be a father, and because of his pure intentions, he is granted his wish. Geppetto’s unconditional love is almost childlike, which bridges the gap between child and adult. He isn’t ignorant or clumsy, but rather he embraces the aspects of childhood that Christ asks us to embrace: meekness, simplicity, the ease to love and forgive, and joy.

While Geppetto embraces the virtues of childhood, he has also learned the balance of maturity. Pinocchio’s sin that causes the conflict in the film is ignorance: he is new to existence and like Adam and Eve, is unaware of consequence and must make mistakes in order to progress. Pinocchio has not yet learned the difference between what is good for him and what is not so good, and he is easily persuaded by the snakes of the world. But when he gets in trouble and is taken away from his home, he with the help of his “conscience” Jiminy Cricket can only do so much to save himself. He is able to escape Pleasure Island only when he understands the consequences of his action, and through his mistakes he is able to shed the ignorance of childhood. As he sheds this ignorance the gap between child and adult is further narrowed. His ultimate redemption is when he seeks out Geppetto (it should be clear now that Geppetto is a Christ figure in this narrative) and they are able to escape the stomach of the whale and they receive their ultimate desire: for Pinocchio to become a real boy.

There are some obvious parallels to Christianity in this morality tale, which is interesting to me because a very preliminary reading of this film was that it is a simple black and white right versus wrong story. But if at it’s core is a Christian allegory, how can it be so black and white, when human morality goes beyond Christianity? Perhaps it seems straightforward for a WASP audience, but I am glad that children’s morality tales, while still stemming from traditions such as the wolf narrative, are showing signs of more nuance for a contemporary audience born in an age of diversity, moral relativism, and new technologies. This weekend I watched Zootopia, which struck me as a fitting morality tale for our age, as it embraces ideas such as diversity, moral relativism, and new technologies. I am fascinated by this evolution of the morality tale, which goes back to our discussion on how old fairy tales, like Little Red Riding Hood, are revisited and remixed as deemed necessary.