Practice in Context Notes (9/10/2012):

GAMES ARE SIGNIFICANT AND INTERLINKED WITH LIFE! (This is what this module will prove).

• Homosapian – Man who thinks.
• Ludology – study of play and games.
• Narratology – study of story.
• There is a strong debate as to whether Ludology or Narratology is more important in gaming.
• The lecturer wants us to constantly think about ‘what is play?’.
• Don’t be afraid to critique other peoples’ work and if you have your own opinion then stick to it.
• Always make sure you can back up your decisions without just saying, “Because I thought it looked cool”.   
• Look up more information on the new Lara Croft game as that has recently been in the news for supposedly putting the main female protagonist into compromising positions.  
• Look up Ian Bogost (2008) Unit Operations: An approach to videogame criticism, the MIT press.
• Homo Luden’s: A study of the Play Element in Culture (1938) [Johan Huizinga].
• “Play is older than culture, for culture, however inadequately defined, always presupposes human society, and animals have not waited for man to teach them their playing”. [Homo Luden]
• “Given that we’re basically hierarchical and strongly tribal primates, it’s not surprising that most of the basic lessons we are taught by our childhood play are about power and status… Games almost always teach us tools for being the top monkey”. [Raph Koster]
• Some people have an innate desire to compete.
• Play is the direct opposite to serious? Yet play can still be serious!
• Both set and unwritten rules exist in real life.
• Play is freedom?
• Play is “Superfluous. The need for it is only urgent to the extent that the enjoyment of it makes it a need”. [Huizinga]
• “It is never a task. It is done at leisure, during ‘free time’”. [Huizinga]
• You play so as to have fun so as to relax. There by playing a game when you don’t need to be entertained it my make the experience less fun.
• Huizinga & Play:

“A free activity standing… outside “ordinary” life as being “not-serious”, but at the same time absorbing the player intensely and utterly. It is… connected with no material interest… It proceeds within its proper boundaries of time and space according to fixed rules and in an orderly manner. It promotes the formation of social groupings…”

• Be able to both play and analyse a game.
• Semiotics – The analysis of symbols that mean different things in different countries.   

Task for next week:

Give in a semiotic interpretation of either the same image as last week or a new one. Focus on the signs and what they signify. What do they literally mean, and what do they imply?