Video games. Having devoted much of my time into the analysis, production, and playing of them in recent years, most of my thoughts, when it comes to visual rhetoric, inevitably float back to video games and how any theory, in practice, is used in connection to that medium. It’s just how I roll — as the kids say.

So, in that regard, the flow of information — heck, the Flow of anything, really — is linked back to video games and how interface design, representation, or image analysis is used in connection to the medium, its communities, and the practices that surround them. I sometimes even think in terms of command blocks, too. In using any one theory, like the more mathematical based use of Shannon and Weaver’s communication model in Reading Images or even Norman’s levels of processing, my mind moves through structures of how to move between parts and the modularity of their interconnectivity. The output of one feeds into the input of another, in other words.

With such a mental framework (influenced by my undergraduate time as a computer scientist), it would be inevitable, then, that I’d produce something with a connection to video games. That my output, as it were, would be itself a video game through the process of synthesizing all these, sometimes conflicting, theories into some product. That I’d make a game to both talk about and to the games in its genre or community. Meta. Meta. Discourse. Discourse.

In the addressing modes other than visual, there’s not much to write about video games. That is, there is probably an infinite amount of analysis and study to do, but nothing that directly relates, at least in a strong enough way to discuss it at length, to the theories reviewed and used in the class. We didn’t really touch on the other modes too much and, although they are a part of video games in a strong way, I guess I don’t feel like I could write about them without some theoretical framework in place for the discussion. (As Dr. Rodrigo would say here, “Does that make sense?”)

So, in a super informal conclusion to this, video games. All the time, video games. All the answers, video games. Oh, and video games.

Update (after class, 16 April 2015):

Affordances, right?
Constraints, literacies, genre
Oh, god! Thanks, Summer.

And the tweet I wrote, too.

I choose a few events in my long-running relationship with the Legend of Zelda series of games as my “digital experiences with design” to create a timeline for. My thinking was, instead of concentrating on a specific interface or even technology, I would reflect on the changes within my own lifetime in how games are “played” and the dynamics of the associated interface framing of them as a result.

I make that distinction, the quotations around played, because they have transitioned from a an experience of me alone with the game to, by the end of the timeline, having moved from the platform the game was originally released on to a purely digital experience: instead of pressing buttons on a gamepad, I was using a keyboard at a computer that was acting as input device and game console all virtually rolled into one.

When The Legend of Zelda (after which the series is named) first came out, it was for the Nintendo Entertainment System. You plugged in the cartridge, which contained both the ROM and RAM, and the system ran it. The game itself existed wholly on some hardware and was “played” in so much that it had to be connected to the system itself. They ran as a unit together.

Later, jumping nine years or so into the future for Ocarina of Time, the system now ran its own software. The game still needed to be plugged into the system, yes, but it was an extra component and not as symbiotic as the NES was to its cartridge. The system existed outside of the game and, in fact, wrapped around it in places, supplying functionality not exclusive to it.

This trend of layering software became even more apparent for the last two items on the timeline, too. For these, I played them via emulation. Beyond simply extending the game itself through software, the “console” used to play the game existed virtually. Some software was running the system software that was, in turn, running the game. The “system” of the console was now just a component itself, an interface between, among, and for other interfaces.

Beller, J. (2013). Kino-I, Kino-World: Notes on the Cinematic Mode of Production. In N. Mirzoeff (Ed. ), The Visual Culture Reader, 3rd Edition. (pp. 249-270). London: Routledge

Grounded in Marxist theories of commodification and the Lacanian understanding of the “the cut” within both words and especially in film as the gap for the unconscious, Beller (2013) details the inner and outer workings of “the cinematic mode of production” (CMP), a description of cinema as both value-production and a form of synecdochic transformation of sensual labor. As Beller (2013) notes, that while “Looking has long been posited as labor by capital” (251) simultaneously “capital [also] co-opts the ever-increasing abilities [of groups] to organize themselves” through the very cybernesis that is presented as freeing (254).

Exploding the definition, Beller (2013) explains cinema as the “means of production of instrumental images through the organization of animated materials. These materials include everything from actors, to landscapes, to populations, to widgets, to fighter-planes, to electrons. Cinema is the material practice of global scope, the movement of capital in, through, and as image” (255). For Beller (2013), cinema is the all-consuming suture point into which both the self is lost and is reconstructed again through visual collision with the capital apparatus in which contact both provides scopophilic pleasure and an effect of being rewritten.

The image itself is a “condensation,” notes Beller (2013). It is a “matrix of partially unconscious forces that means something else” (255). For, as language tries for a complete categorization of the visual, it also fails and with that failing comes a “cinematicity of domination for consciousness” (256). States Beller (2013) simply, “Though not everything is an image, nearly everything is con(s)t®ained by them [sic]” (256).  And it is through this fetishization of the image that leads to the “severance of community appearing as an object” as well (262). We seek in the spectacle a false connection to a greater community through its very commodification; “an image of a commodity, [which is] itself a higher order of commodity” (263).

From within this fascinating look into the suturing of subjective-objectification of the gaze through cinema by Beller, I was most drawn to the leveraging of the visual as labor. What does it mean, I was thinking while reading this, if the interfaces of systems become increasing cinematic (if they are not already such)? How are users seduced into the belief of a connection to a larger community through the display of other player’s scores and standing? Is the pursuit of the score or the prestige of placement something directed through the spectacle? In constraining the possibility space of player identification within the system, is the shaping of the interface directing them toward greater commodification through visual avatar “customization,” for example, or does this seeming expressing of individuality push them ever deeper into a submission to the system and its inculcating, capitalist ways?

• List 3 connections between Kress and Van Leeuwen and 2-3 other readings we’ve covered. (Not every article you choose needs to have a connection to every other article. Look for common threads.)

1. Well, it’s a bit of an obvious one, but Barthes is mentioned in many places. The use of the sign and signifier are used, as is the term anchorage early on in chapter one.
2. There is a general connection to Porter and Sullivan, too. The use of “design consistency” (Porter and Sullivan, 293) links over to Kress and Van Leeuwen’s very detailed application of Shannon and Weaver’s Communication Model to understanding Participants and Narrative process in chapter two.
3. The same with Kelly, as well. The incorporation of Shannon and Weaver’s Communication Model is something shared between both Kelly and Kress and Van Leeuwen. In fact, I’d state Reading Images might take it a bit too far in its application and use of geometric shapes to explain relationships.

• List 3 thought provoking or provocative ideas. What makes them so?

1. While, on the one hand, I thought Kress and Van Leeuwen might have taken the use of geometric shapes and flowcharts into a land bordering on obsessive, I did like much of the early analysis as a way to describe relationships. Much of the comparisons between the seemingly unconscious trusting of squares and rectangles was particularly spot on, I thought. The use of the paradoxical instability/stability of triangles as a way to describe the communication triad of participant, vector, and directionality was a great insight.
2. Along those same lines, I at first liked and then grew quickly tired of the constant use of hierarchies of various things. There are different versions of Narrative Processes and Conceptual Representations, as two examples, that spiral out to over a half-dozen taxonomies of various descriptions and usefulness. So, while, yes, it can be provocative to give labels to things, maybe not so much? Maybe? Many of the descriptions didn’t seem useful other than to cover some small part left out by the other categories.
3. Much of the conceptual relationship descriptions felt very object-oriented to me. The ways of describing if something was part of an attribute or identity seemed to come right out any number of ways of categorizing is-a and has-a relationships between objects. Something that, honestly, I’m a little undecided on as it applies in this context. Between the fierce use of the communication model and never-ending hierarchies, adding proto-OOO is maybe not the best move.

• List 3 questions you jotted down for yourself while reading. What sparked them for you and why?

1. A great deal of emphasis on children. I get that Kress and van Leeuwen come from a background of research in this area, but isn’t it a bit too much? Isn’t it?
2. The question “is the move from the verbal to the visual a loss or gain?” (31) is definitely an important one to consider? (Indicates question via inflection?)
3. Yeah, I think, with the above, a closing question I have concerns the book itself. While much of it seems potentially useful, I couldn’t help but to think about Kress and Van Leeuwen kinda writing themselves into a corner because of the more mathematical (or, at least, technical) usage of the communication models to explain everything. Was that wise?

Tuesday (Heuristic developed and applied)

Heuristic Developed

In a paper called “The Affect Heuristic”, Slovic et al. (2007) proposed that “images, marked by positive and negative affective feelings, guide judgment and decision making.” For each object and event encountered, people “consult or refer to an ‘affect pool’ containing all the positive and negative tags consciously or unconsciously associated with the representations” (1335).

Building on the work done by Robert Zajonc (1968) and Winkielman et al. (1997), Slovic et al. (2007) include “controlled exposure” as an influence on how an image will affect people (1336). Changing this slightly to work within the realm of a heuristic, I am proposing the first aspect be a familiarity with the artifact. Having seen or interacted with an artifact before influences the degree of how much a person is affected by it.

Describing the work of Hsee (1996a,b, 1998), Slovic et al. (2007) introduce the concept of “evaluability to describe the interplay between the precision of an affective impression and its meaning or importance for judgment and decision making” (1337; original emphasis). In action, it is the “weight of a stimulus attribute in an evaluative judgment or choice is proportional to the ease or precision with which the value of that attribute (or a comparison on the attribute across alternatives) can be mapped into an affective impression” (1340). For the inclusion within a heuristic, I switch this to evaluative knowledge. Having experienced the artifact before or not influences affects how a person understands an object and associated judgements.

Cataloging the work done on gambling and assumed probabilities, Slovic et al. (2007) list a fourth aspect of their research as a collision between affect and knowledge of outcomes. Slovic et al. (2007) write, “When the quantities or outcomes to which these probabilities apply are affectively pallid, probabilities carry much more weight in judgments and decisions. However, just the opposite occurs when the outcomes have precise and strong affective meanings — variations in probability carry too little weight” (1340). Changed for a heuristic, this becomes affective assumed outcome. Through having a strong affective meaning tied to an event or object, the probability of the outcome does not matter as much.

Developed, then, the completed affective heuristic becomes:

• Familiarity
• Evaluative knowledge
• Affective assumed outcome

Heuristic Applied

I have played the video game Journey for the PS3 many times. Developed by Thatgamecompany, it represents for many (including myself) one of the clearest implementations of Csíkszentmihályian Flow, purposely avoiding many of the immersion-breaking aspects of other games like long cut-scenes or lack of control during places. The game is designed and presented in such a way to illustrate the journey both down into a dark space and the triumphant rise back out, too, demonstrating a direct encoding of the monomyth.

Approached from the affective heuristic, I have a large degree of familiarity with the game. Having completed it many times, I am knowledgeable of its environments and puzzle aspects. However, because when played online it will pair you with another random player (whom you cannot direct communicate with), the game also includes an unpredictable element. While I am familiar with the mechanics, I am unfamiliar with whatever actions another player may take.

My ability to judge the game also comes from these extended experiences. My evaluative knowledge, therefore, is increased. I can make choices within and about the game based on my previous experiences and positive associations. However, having those positive feelings also affective me in negative ways. By being overly positive, I might overlook choices within and about the game.

This also plays into my understanding of the probabilities within the game. My overly positive feelings on the game color my interpretation of the events and chances of things happening. There is a distance between an objective understanding and my emotional one.

Wednesday (Heuristics Reviewed)

Maury’s  (Comment link)

Ashley’s (Comment link)

Works Cited:

Slovic, Paul, Finucane, Melissa L., Peters, Ellen, and MacGregor, Donald G. The Affect Heuristic. European Journal of Operational Research. European Journal of Operational Research 177 (2007) pp. 1333–1352 doi:10.1016/j.ejor.2005.04.006

(Be sure to click on the window to give it input focus.)

Summer’s

Being a collage of different images, the role of juxtaposition comes to mind. So too does the collision of cultural assumptions, as I try to decode both the center outward and the whole as an image itself. That is, viewing the “man” outwards, there could be the argument of “white man” being the center around the outer diversity of people.

On the other hand, the incorporation of “protest” images versus the centered “man” could be a relationship in itself, too. Are they “against” each other? Or are they all part of the same culture, competing against each other for discourse space?

Charlie’s

Commercialization of the promise of health. Okay, maybe that’s unfair. By including “popular” images of fitness here, that’s what comes to my mind immediately.

Then there is the inclusion of feminine images. Is this a promotion of positive feminine imagery? Or a case against the commercialization of the female body?

Chvonne’s

Exclusion of history that is inconvenient for primary white audiences? That’s what came to mind for me, looking at the narrowing down and thus “left out” category of Black History. It’s a category of answers people — white, college people in the picture — did not want to answer.

My own:

Ha, well, it was a rather complicated mess, no? While I did make some claims of some sort, maybe, it was mostly a game made as a mess with the argument that simple arguments are hard when it comes to games. And also nostalgia too. That was in there with the GameBoy inspired art, layout, and style.