Grand Text Auto

Hi Noah,

On the first and last lines here, I think the first blunt and direct comment on this subject I know of was made by Ermi and Mayra (2005), ‘Fundamental Components of the Gameplay Experience” from DiGRA in Vancouver — and the full ref would be to the edited volume of papers — but that was certainly the position that informed the editorial of Videogame, Player, Text, and a fair few of the essays in that volume. I don’t know how footnote heavy this volume is going to be, but if you are going to make the ‘little mention’ move do you think some citation of that growing body of work (at least in game studies) might be?

Actually, I am an idiot — I was missing the referent of the ‘so far’ as being to your internal monologue on the book, and was thinking about the state of criticism, where the absence of recognition of the player in early game studies has kind of been addressed recently. Sorry (and shows that I have more problems doing this kind of thing on screen than I do with hardcopy), I’ll shush now.

For additional commentary (and one of my favorite expositions of code’s agency), you might want to (re)visit the first chapter of Alex Galloway’s _Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture_.

Galloway’s model does not immediately jibe with the definition of “interaction” you outline in paragraph no. 5 (i.e., Galloway’s discussion of non-diegetic machine action allows for machinic capacity to influence code or process), but might help push the scope of this particular chapter a bit.

Sure thing, Noah. I shouldn’t have initially posted so hastily between other tasks, because my response and suggestion became somewhat ambiguous. Hopefully I can provide more detail now.

I think the phrases “processes . . . don’t operate on their own” and “media are . . . only truly realized in contact with audiences” made me think immediately of Galloway’s chapter because the first chapter of _Gaming_ seems to point to gamic moments in which process can in fact operate apart from human intervention (moments such as ambience acts). For instance, Galloway calls an “ambience act . . . an action executed by the machine and thus emanat[ing] outward toward the operator (assuming he or she has stuck around to witness it)” (p. 11). I take this to mean that process can operate independently of human presence — that video games, for instance, can in fact “operate on their own.”

Galloway also seems very explicit about the fact that process is much more than merely “what humans ‘make’ of it.” This is to say: is a process really no-thing until a human comes into contact with it? Galloway’s work aims to “resist equating gamic action with a theory of ‘interactivity’ or the ‘active audience’ theory of media. Active audience theory claims that audiences always bring their own interpretations and receptions to the work. instead, I embrace the claim, rooted in cybernetics and information technology, that an active medium is one whose very materiality move and restructures itself . . .
(p. 3).

I understand the aim of your book is to directly explore the way(s) in which human beings interpret code, and thus your concern lies more squarely in the notion of audience and interpretation. However, would a nod to previous work on the ontology of various action(s) be appropriate here?

Thanks for taking the time to listen to my ramblings. I’m enjoy the book so far, Noah!

Ah! I now read your third paragraph as a more direct exposition of your work’s locus. I doubt anything further would be necessary (i.e., a footnote or re-write).

In paragraph no. 4, you preview the many facets of your argument regarding the “relationship between the audience’s perception of a work’s processes and the actual internal operations.” The “effects” of this relationship you detail in this paragraph seem to favor the “human” or “operator” axis (if we’re still thinking in terms of Galloway’s model) — that is to say, the way audiences experience media, the way processes are suitable for human needs, and the way humans “make sense” of media. I wonder how the “other side” of this relationship might look: how processes constrain human experience or agency, how the materiality of processes is altered in interaction (with humans or non-humans), or how this materiality structures various subjectivities? Appreciating the action and motion of code and process might help us view it as something other than that which is merely lying dormant, waiting to be “read” or “interpreted” by the almighty human observer.

Second sentence insert “there” before “should be”

I can try, Noah!

Lately I have been trying to think through what McKenzie Wark in _Gamer Theory_ calls “the final question for gamer theory” (paragraph 233). Namely: how does one “move beyond the phenomena of gaming as experienced by the gamer to conceive of gaming from the point of view of the game?” (ibid). I find this such a poignant challenge that I return to it every time I attempt to read, write, or think about video games and the practice of video gaming. I know how I “interpret” the games I play, but I wonder how the digital apparatus is complicit in constituting the subject who’s making those interpretations. How is the material space in which those interpretations take place always already structured by the code or process or algorithm?

Galloway and co-author Eugene Thacker in _The Exploit: A Theory of Networks_ carefully note the ways in which “human action is parsed according to specific physical algorithms” (p. 113) And they prompt: “Imagine the ‘noise sequences’ that have been erased” (p.113) in situations of _processes_ “interpreting” _operators_.

How are infinite complexities parsed by/for machinic and algorithmic entities? Exploring the “effects” of audience-operation relationships (the project your book undertakes) must be sensitive to the ways in which the audience is also such an effect. Yes, “the operations of digital media are . . . only truly realized in contact with audiences.” But how am I realized by the informatic systems that modulate, modulate, modulate to structure possible spaces for my activities, my existence? The value of a wiki’s processes are important indeed, but what of my value in relationship to them? When certain voices are privileged by an algorithm — realized in a database — how do I materialize from the “point of view of the game [or process]?”

One final quote from _The Exploit_ (since I just love it too much to let it sit here on my desk): “. . . [F]orms of informatic play should be interrogated not as liberation from the rigid constraints of systems of exchange and production but as the very pillars that prop those systems up. The more video games appear on the surface to emancipate the player, raise his or her status as an active participant in the aesthetic moment, the more they enfold the player in codified and routinized modes of behavior” (p. 115).

Hi Noah,

have you thought about the relation between your operational logic to the cognitive structures of Piagets Theory?

Barbara

Piaget studied the development of forms of thinking and acting. Such a form is the cognitive structure or the organizational procedure of human processes.

Here I use my understanding of process: the organizational procedure as ONE dimension of the activity process, including the materiality of the process as the other dimension.

I follow you in that we can reduce a process to the abstract functioning and strip off the material dimension.

But as soon as we analyse concrete processes even computational processes without any audience we encounter the effects of the material dimension.

Piaget understands those formal structures like we understand software as (mind-)maschines.

Yes, I definitely recommend _The Exploit_! Happy reading!

I don’t necessarily agree that the issues we’re discussing are part of “the relationship between the audience’s experience and the system’s internal operations” — though they do influence audience experience. When describing the materialization of bodies as they are real-ized by informatic systems, I’m thinking of moments that are pre-concious, or logically anterior to conscious experience. Understanding audience interpretations is critical — for sure! — but we can’t forget that the bodies that could potentially produce these interpretations are rendered in particular ways _even before they’re privileged with the capacity for interpretation_. The moment of “contact” you describe above — and that’s the perfect word to use, too — marks a fissure that enables-constrains action and opens-closes what you call “possibility spaces.”

So I suppose I would say “yes” when you state that I’m “talking about how the structures of digital media shape who we are when we experience and interpret it.” But this process is not always one of conscious experience.

I agree, Noah, and will continue to contribute what I can as the review process continues. As you indicate, a note for the final manuscript might be warranted — or perhaps a brief nod to work that might complicate the issue of works’ agency (which is, I think, where this whole discussion began).

Thanks for a nice chat!

That’s a nice addition, Noah. I like it. I’m wondering what you mean by the use of the word “reflexively” in the statement: “. . . for many games the process of successful play requires becoming trained to reflexively take the actions that are recognized by the system.” I would probably also argue that the pads on a DDR machine do encourage players’ dance flourishes, but that might be a discussion for another time! I like that you note the intersubjective influences on play, too.

Funny you should mention _Pilgrim_, as I’m also currently working with it. I think it’s a great text to invoke here, especially as it seems to counterbalance Galloway and Thacker. This is to say that for Sudnow, nothing could have been more sublime than complete and utter immersion in an informatic system. In fact, the phenomenologist claims he was most successful when his body and the game apparatus’ (that of the Atari VCS) seemed to be working in complete unison — an aesthetic in-corporation of operator and machine.

PitM would be a great way to begin a course on computer gaming; I can imagine that beginning with embodied, lived experience and tracing some of these vectors in and through technical or processual issues really opened some neat spaces for discussion.

I also like the revision to the note!

Okay, this is similar to my previous note, but isn’t there potentially a surface between the outside processes and the processes of the work — or do we imagine that those happen in an exchange without surface. To push this further, can those “outside” data sources be audience members?