Playing with spoilers/informed playing

It's not as important for me anymore to go in blind into things. Sure, if I'm going into something which lasts an hour, I'd rather go in blind - I can replay it anyway. But if it's something longer and my hype isn't through the roof, I just might search out some more information concerning the alleged experience. I do this because one sees different things when one has knowledge of what's about to happen, or have some sort of context through which to analyze what's going on. If I've read that the game concerns itself with some sort of theme, or has a tragic ending, I can from a narrative and game-design perspective scan the game for thematic clues. It just might be a more interesting experience, especially if the game is convoluted in its handling of themes or I just don't have the mental powers to glean them myself. Another plus is that if I already know "what's about to happen", then there is a smaller chance of my playing just to find out what happens, which means that I can quit the game even if it's so-so but I want to know how it ends.

If would be cool if there was some sort of game wiki thing which worked as a sort of primer for specific video games and what one could be expecting from them upon play. It could be just a breakdown of conventions explored, or just questions one might try to answer when playing the game. For a game such as Life Is Strange, it could be things like "who writes what type of grafitti, what patterns can you discern and what functions do they serve?", "there are some animals in Life Is Strange - why these specific animals, why does Max happen upon them when zie does, and in what ways do they inform our understanding of different characters?", or "can the color coding of npc clothing reveal something or be read in interesting ways?".

I guess I just which there was more study/teaching material for video games in the same way that there are for books in American highschool movies. Resources where one could find study assignments for each chapter of a video game that makes one appreciate video game design more, to make one think more critically or just get a greater sense of meaning and context of the work as a historical piece, as part of a design school, as part of a genre, etc. I guess one thing that books have going for them is that spoilers aren't considered as important because the books that are being read are classics - we know already that Madame Bovary becomes insane, that Raskolnikov goes to prison, and K is executed and so we can discuss those things in the context of the whole book right from the first page. In that sense we need more Citizen Kane type videogames for sure.

Inför Spelcirkeln - Våld

Violence can be surprising, but it is not interesting or exciting or involving in itself. What caused it may be interesting. Its effects may be of intellectual interest. But it is not emotionally interesting in and of itself. On the contrary. The psychological use of violence in art is, paradoxically, not to engage our emotions but rather to put our emotions on hold, heighten our perceptions, and get us ready to think. But since so few public narratives—as offered by television and film—give us much to think about, most of it is wasted.

Rollspela vs vara sig själv.

Vara vs kontrollera, inlevelse bland gamers vs icke-gamers (slippery slope av våld i tvspel - Virtual Reality och större realistisk fidelity)

"Beauty of being removed from intense investment" och dess relation till våld.

"To equate violence by the avatar with the player’s supposed internal desire for violence."

Empati/sympati för spelar-avataren och andra npcs i världen som möjliggörare/förhindrare av våld.

Sadism vs våld

Problem att rollspela annat kön/sexualitet/etc - brist på empati eller förmåga att leva sig in i världen som främjar/försvårar?

Könsaspekt av våld - mot vilka (kvinnor som blir monster, psykiskt sjuka som zombies), målgrupp, begreppet "gamer", kvinnor som krigare (Rayman Legends), våld mot män status quo

Våld som lösning vs orsak

Våld som realism (one shot kills mer ärliga, sanitized våld och educatonal considerations), mogenhet som mogna lösningar och inte bara innehåll vi döljer från barn/mature representation (våld som något edgy/vuxet - Brittisk ny våg, Game of Thrones, MGSV, This War of Mine)

Värde av våld - som pekpine, empowerment (power fantasy vs revolutionära aspirationer), Opera Omnia och avhumanisering/lager av abstraktion

Vad förhindrar alternativ till våld i spel? (förväntningar på choice i narrativa spel, player privilege, Mass Effect 3, det konstiga i att göra spelmekanik av vardagliga relationer)

Våld som spektakel och belöning/bestraffning (stealth games, fatality, RE4, Tomb Raider/Uncharted ludonarrative dissonans)

Where the wild things game

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Take this post for what it is. Whatever it is.

I just came back from a video game gathering where nerds sit down (and nowadays even stand up!) to play video games for a whole week. This was the summer gathering, which means people actually did leave the premises, even if only to get some air not drenched in the smell of sweat.

First and foremost it differs from LAN-parties such as dreamhack, mostly in size. We also have way more sofas than chairs compared to LAN-parties, so it definitely makes for a more comfortable environment. We also have more drums and popnmusic-controllers than LAN-parties. Drummers may sit down, Bemani players may not. If they’re not playing Beatmania.

"I´m not going to take your insolence sitting down!

Your hemorrhoids are flaring up again, eh?"

(I just had to) Anyway, with the swine flu rumours around, and dirty gamers around, I though I didn’t want to stick around THAT much. Also we had sun, but only on the outside, so as typical Swede with seasonal affective disorder I wanted to go to the beach as much as I could, but found myself having trouble finding others who did. People slept during the day, which is fucked up in my book, video gaming or not. Hm, I didn't think I'd make gamers the subject of my anthropological interest as soon as in my fourth post, but here we go. I guess I should keep my distance not to go native as well, though.

Gamers (and games) are easy targets though. And since I'm one of them I have legitimacy to hurt people’s feelings! Ah, the joys of being able to both be and not to be. We even make fun of ourselves, do we not? Not only by saying that games aren’t art and that what we’re doing isn’t important and doesn’t contribute anything to society as a whole, but we do ourselves in even when gathered together—more so than putting gaffer tape on the ground and letting people know that wrestling is allowed within those boundaries. Oh, well, we played Mafia (that’s Werewolf to the Americans out there) and on the reveal after a night where the mafia kill a villager, the game leader says "… The chances of getting laid have just lowered". Yes, it was someone perceived as a girl who had been killed. And yes, my prejudice concerning video gamers is justified.

There wasn’t much discussion concerning video games as a form of art or subject of critical analysis going around, which is usual, and casual, but sometimes irritating because I myself do not know how to approach the subject. I’ve started to accept that the internet is a great forum for these kinds of discussions, but it does strike me as rather odd that people who spend four, sex, or eight hours a day playing video games haven’t read any game theory, not even on an academic level!

Positivist knowledge though, is high in demand for the people attending the gathering, as; quizzes always are successful. Who knows most about Nintendo, or recognizes the most video game songs, and so forth. Different forms of competition, which makes sense since we’re gaming. The most fun discussing video games I had was probably fighting games, because we at least got into the discussion of the core mechanics and I got some questions answered, including why Street Fighter IV is barely in the top ten list of most popular arcade games in Japan right now (fast projectiles plus high priority long range attacks *cough* Sagat).

I guess XBL achievements have something in common with positivist knowledge; it’s quantifiable. People at the convention I was at have a very special jargon with a lot of irony and insider jokes, so normally I wouldn’t be sure what to make of it when I ask someone for advice if I should be selling a game and they look at me and say “If you managed to get all the achievements”. WTF. Achievement whore!!!!!11

Sorry, it could have been hurtful of me to use ‘whore’ as a derogatory description of someone doing the video game moral equivalence of fast-food eating (Thanks, Jonthan Blow). The journey is the destination; thank you, Braid. Hm, I just realized most of you aren’t Swedish, so you wouldn’t know that the Swedish word “mål” means both “destination” and “meal”. Darn.

Perhaps I should change the name of my blog after this post to have some credibility left? Oh, wait, I could ask people to recommend books concerned with critical analysis and making of video games instead. And then I could bring them to the next video game gathering!

PS: The association which made this gathering possible is Terebi-gemu.