{"id":14537,"date":"2015-01-25T00:03:15","date_gmt":"2015-01-25T00:03:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/formalism-once-more-with-feeling\/"},"modified":"2015-01-25T00:03:15","modified_gmt":"2015-01-25T00:03:15","slug":"formalism-once-more-with-feeling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/formalism-once-more-with-feeling\/","title":{"rendered":"Formalism: Once More With Feeling"},"content":{"rendered":"

dropouthangoutspaceout<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

So discourse being what it is, we (and by \u201cwe\u201d I mean a subset of game studies academics, game designers and critics) have somehow found ourselves back discussing the merits or pitfalls of formalism<\/a>, alongside the creation of the (what I think is misguided) concept of \u201cludoessentialism<\/a>\u201d. I think, for all the frustration I see many of my ilk have (\u201chere we go again!\u201d), that the conversation has been somewhat productive, especially in regards to Cameron Kunzelman\u2019s post<\/a> that dissects Lantz\u2019 form and content distinction and complicates it by thinking through the problem of what constitutes an assemblage in Deleuze and Guattari\u2019s work on aesthetics and assemblages.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On the level of my own thoughts on on the core of the debate, and if there is such a thing as ludoessentialism, I go back to a post I made in 2013 when everybody was in a huff about\u00a0Bioshock: Infinite<\/em> and games made on twine:\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n

The problem with formalism is never so much in the typologies themselves, but rather when they become\u00a0prescriptive<\/em>. High Modernist poetry was both at its best in its practice by the likes of Pound and T.S. Eliot and at it\u2019s most conservative and dare I say it \u2013 fascist \u2013 when it became prescriptive.<\/p>\n

I love the games I have played in Twine so far because\u00a0they are themselves undisciplined in regards to the typologies of previous formalisms of games<\/em>. That doesn\u2019t mean, however, that there isn\u2019t a formal practice embedded in these communities. Rather it just hasn\u2019t been explicated \u2013 there hasn\u2019t been a manifesto of form \u2013 rather than has been more of a demand \u2013 to make games, no matter who you are<\/em>. I look forward to when these designers (and those theorists who pay close attention to the games) wish to expound on their formal practices, what they see as the structuring elements of what they do, what they think makes for an evocative game on these platforms.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

For me I would emphasize that fascist tendencies of prescriptive formalism. That\u2019s dangerous and should be questioned whenever we see it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The problem, however, is that Lantz and others aren\u2019t advocating for prescriptive game design that conforms in whole to a formalist typology. Instead they are advocating for a\u00a0method of analysis<\/em> that is entirely ex post facto<\/em>. One thing we should always remember about disciplines of design and academic analysis is that they are quite often demarcated by their methods, and certain game design cultures will advocate for their methods of analysis over others. We should be not be surprised that Lantz advocates for his (it is his job to, after all). Thankfully, however, I don\u2019t think he thinks it\u2019s the\u00a0only<\/em> way to study and understand what games are, otherwise he would have a lot of cultural studies scholars like myself asking him a lot of questions about what the hell we are supposed to do now.<\/p>\n

Maybe the real problem that the advocates of ludoessentialism are worried about is a\u00a0hegemony<\/em> of thought, much like what Brandon Keogh criticized in his journal article <\/a>last year. I responded by contextualizing the historical context of the various disciplines that make up game studies<\/a>. I thought the problem wasn\u2019t so much that there were authoritarians telling us not to conduct close readings of videogames in academia, but that the institutional cultures of our various disciplines alongside the political economy of the university was more the culprit here.<\/p>\n

I would say that we face a similar problem today, but it\u2019s not just about us tacitly accepting it as common sense but also as a function of wider structures of power. Game design programs are more likely to focus on (and hire those who specialize in) ludic, formalist analysis as a form of teaching because the university sells game design programs as professional development, rather than as a fully realized degree in the humanities (and even the humanities film studies and English have long standing formalist traditions). That we see a lot of these designers who become members of the academic and critical community with a visible position in the industry as well, we should recognize that it\u2019s not so much a hegemony in the wider culture about how to think about games (because Lantz is right, the formalists are just a powerless towards the AAA game industry as those of us in cultural studies like me using Marx to analyze Steam) but rather a small institutional preference and platform for certain modes of thought. I think that at the end of the day there is no one person we can point to and accuse for \u201cludoessentialist\u2019 thought that prescribes as much as it analyzes, at least in the academy, anyways. If there are critics whose entire practice is prescriptive formalism, I doubt they will listen to any critique of their work, because it is ridiculous.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So how do I position myself in this ludic knife fight? Where do I stand in regards to Lantzs distinction of form and content? What about the very real concerns of those with the over emphasis of criticism and analysis on systems and mechanics?\u00a0<\/p>\n

For both I rely on assemblage theory to help piece together, and make sense analytically, of what a game is. Both as an individual object and as a piece in a larger assemblage. It is simultaneously made up of its mechanics, code, and the cultural signifiers that Lantz describes as \u201ccontent\u201d. Assemblages also allow us to think through the problem of micro and macro scale of interactions that comprise how games function and come into being. I have a journal article that uses them to link the formal qualities and aesthetics of independent video game production with urban geography and cultural policy<\/a>. My good friend Lee Knuttila and I wrote about this in our chapter in the Routledge Companion to Video Game Studies<\/em>. Our chapter dealt with the prompt of \u201csingle and multiplayer games\u201d. We worked through this distinction with assemblage theory. I\u2019ll sign off with this section from it:\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n

A key aspect of any assemblage is the way it exercises different sets of capacities, which\u00a0can lead to macro-assemblages or micro-assemblage with individual capabilities. Thus,\u00a0just as a wide net is required to understand how the Call of Duty<\/em> and Assassin\u2019s Creed<\/em>\u00a0franchises operate against (or with) fiscal pressures, user expectation, and established\u00a0gameplay mechanics, types of multiplayer and single-player games are both strengthened\u00a0and weakened across platforms. With the ongoing proliferation of games for\u00a0mobile phones and tablets, the particular propensities of single-player\/multiplayer games\u00a0change. Although the entry into the market may be smaller than consoles and bear\u00a0more similarities to the PC, the mobile game market remains highly saturated, meaning\u00a0individual titles and games attempt to gain consumer visibility on several fronts.<\/p>\n

The interactive entertainment company Kabam makes free-to-play games that mimic\u00a0mechanics of popular MMOGs. Their title Arcane Empires<\/em> (2012) designed for iPhone,\u00a0iPad, and Android devices draws upon the city-building play of strategy games with\u00a0players constructing different sets of buildings, raising armies, and managing population\u00a0resources and happiness, while the game also angles into MMOG systems of peer-versus-peer battle, alliances, global chat, and so on. Temporality is a key aspect of the\u00a0game system, as most tasks rely on elapsed real-time counters, which purchasing ingame\u00a0coins can circumvent. Unlike PC MMOGs that rely on complex control schemes,\u00a0titles such as Arcane Empires must develop key schemes based on a touch screen. One\u00a0element recurrent to many multiplayer titles, especially MMOGs, is extended play sessions\u00a0allowing multiple player tasks and community actions such as raids to play out,\u00a0which conflicts with mobile gaming\u2019s function as frequent and temporary entertainment.\u00a0Granted, iPads and mobile phones garner great attention for prolonged periods,\u00a0yet popular titles often function equally well between bus stops or for hours at home.<\/p>\n

Economic choices (the free-to-play price but pay-for-convenience structure) and\u00a0gameplay elements (simplified control structures) attempt to draw in the widest swath\u00a0of players through hybrid game types, employing aesthetic styles that hold some cultural\u00a0cache (in the case of Arcane Empires, steampunk), and all of these aspects effect a game\u2019s\u00a0development, advertising, lifespan, player interactions, and so on. It is tempting to align\u00a0the popularity of single-player titles such as those of the Angry Birds franchise to the\u00a0playful aesthetic or simple controls yet this overlooks a wide network of factors. Equally,\u00a0while the charms of the briefly popular Draw Something (OMGPOP, 2012) may seem\u00a0to be the delight of player-to-player exchanges against the limits of the drawing palette,\u00a0there is an array of factors at work. On multiple fronts, mobile titles frequently perform a\u00a0balancing act of capitalizing on assemblages with strength (game type, aesthetic trends,\u00a0temporal player tastes, familiarity or curiosity in the casual game market, and so on)\u00a0with simultaneous attempts to destabilize others in order to gain traction, especially\u00a0in gatekeeper distribution platforms such as the iTunes store. Seeking out how spaces\u00a0of play (from desks to train seats to sofas), the borrowing of other platform styles, and\u00a0the rebalancing of them against the limits and abilities of a platform, drive yet another\u00a0questioning of monolithic categories such as cooperation or competition, while opening\u00a0new avenues to think of material and expressive effects at work.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

dropouthangoutspaceout: So discourse being what it is, we (and by \u201cwe\u201d I mean a subset of game studies academics, game designers and critics) have somehow found ourselves back discussing the merits or pitfalls of formalism, alongside the creation of the (what I think is misguided) concept of \u201cludoessentialism\u201d. I think, for all the frustration I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10],"tags":[519],"class_list":["post-14537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-words","tag-signal-boost"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6PWot-3Mt","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14537"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14537\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}