My thoughts on 'Game Studies, Year Fifteen' by Ian Bogost

My understanding of Ian Bogosts 'Game Studies, Year Fifteen' is that he is implying that games have more meaning than what we believe to know. I will try to break it down as he has wrote it.

The idea of 'Ludologism' being the combination of ludology and narratology is something that debates with me entirely because it gives off a formalist view which he mentions. The idea of studying a story and the structure of it is something that needs to be looked at differently, it's very hard to combine them both if you are say reading from a book. The great thing is that he allows the combination of the two to come together through games and bringing narratology into ludology. The idealist thinking behind this was to generate a story through visual effects which is what most games try to achieve.

Formalism is something he speaks very strongly of but does not wish to go into detail entirely so that he keeps peoples minds open and not allowing them to choose a path, he is letting everyone have these separate options so they can choose themselves, much like what games do today. He writes 'It's interesting to note that elsewhere in cultural criticism, post structuralism led to a many decades long rise of the hermeneutics of suspicion' here is something that I can agree on for once with his writing. I believe that culture and religion changes peoples opinions on the matter but some people refuse to look past their stubbornness and decide rather to ignore what is either fact or something that is proven to be real (normally close minded people).

Rather than rambling on about his writing I prefer to give my own opinion on the piece, the blog itself always manages to bring itself back around to game studies and how they're perceived. The issue I have is that he has minimal relevance with a lot of the writing such as saying 'after the 2008 global financial collapse' when realistically if you look at how games have been taking over way before this period and way after it so why does it need to be included other than him shoving some useless information in there to make him sound intelligent. This is just how I feel about it and others may feel the same if not more strongly about it. I just wanted to say that this piece was very insightful but also unnecessary at times.

My thoughts on 'Computer Game Studies, Year One' by Espen Aarseth

Computer Game Studies

To those who believe computer game studies are to be renounced this article may be able to persuade you otherwise. To me though it means much more. Going through history is all well, but to get a point across you need to look at the now and how it has changed the world either for the better or for the worse.

In Aarseths post he mentions how games are like normal medias such as Texts or Films, but they are something that is to be 'played'. He continues to mention many other comparisons to games such as 'hypertext' etc. These don't matter too much as I believe he nailed it in the coffin with the idea that the minor medias such as texting or film aren't anything near what he wishes games to be. 'Games are both objects and process' This quote taken from the sub genre 'A cognitive, communication revolution' is the best quote I found in the text. The reasoning behind this is that it's down to the player or person whether or not to objectify it or make it a reality. The player themselves are the ones who determine the success or the failure of a game, movie, text or any type of media. As soon as we stop listening or paying attention it will disappear. Given people still believe that games aren't to be studied or produced is unproductive in the way the world is evolving, especially around the new medias such as Twitter, Facebook & more. 

If you believe that games aren't to be studied and produced at a higher quality, you need to re-educate yourself to understand how the world works and how we're moving into a era of where people would rather fixate on the imaginary rather than seeing their world be destroyed around them.