Back on track

Like I promised yesterday, I will now try to briefly summarise what my upcoming thesis is about.

My hypothesis is that digital games are lacking the basic grammar of emotion, and this lack is hindering their evolution, their maturing up if you will, as a medium [I am aware of the issues related to games being called a medium, better suggestions are warmly welcomed].

A majority of digital games are first and foremost challenge structures, not least due to goals being seen as one of the defining elements of games. I am going to challenge this view and claim that the most important and defining element of games is player activity and that emotion should be created first and foremost through this. Giving the player the illusion that they are in control and free to do what the game implies possible at all times is crucial for upkeeping the 360° illusion* but also for creating emotion with games’ own means.

‘Hold on a minute!’, you say. ‘Games do create all sorts of emotions already! I became really distressed just a few days ago when I was playing Bioshock 2 and Big Sister attacked my character and almost got it killed!’. And I say you are absolutely right. But here’s a question for you: did it make you feel anxious because you got scared of Big Sister, or because you got scared of your character’s health getting too low? If your choice of answer is the latter, we are, again, talking about games as challenge structures. The first one, however, is the one I feel is often lacking in digital games: diegetic emotions**.

Diegetic emotions are emotions that are connected to characters, events and things only true in the game’s world but not outside of it. Diegesis in general, as well as diegetic emotions, unlike the game’s basic rules and goals, are strongly subjective and dependent on each player’s personality, past experiences etc. The good thing about digital games is that they have all the means of previous mediums, such as literacy, movies and comics, at their disposal for building a shared diegesis for all players, but also their own means for creating diegetic emotions through player activity.

‘Oh come on, why couldn’t games just use the previous medias’ means for creating emotion? Why do it the hard way?’ you ask. This is why: creating games’ basic grammar of emotions is what is required for games to rise to the next level, for until this is done, games are forced to lend the tools of previous mediums, thus being stuck as a mere leeches and not a medium by their own right.

Now, this is all pure hypothesis, so I need something to prove me right – or wrong. Since many of the now mainstream phenomenon were once underground ones, I figured I should go and consult indie game designers on what they make of my hypothesis. I will do this by executing a number of thematic interviews, using IRC and similar real-time chat environments. I believe that of all the people I could interview, the people who design games are the ones who might have the best insight on games’ potential in evoking emotion by their own means. Another reason is the fact that although game players have been studied numerous times from numerous viewpoints, the people who actually design the games being played have mostly been disregarded.

I have already started grounding work for the thesis through two test interviews and looking through previous research, but a lot more needs to be done, both interview wise and hypothesis wise. So, all suggestions and critique concerning my thesis is welcome, as well as suggestions for further reading and useful terms.

[* and ** Thanks for both the term '360° illusion' and the term 'diegetic emotions' goes to Annika Waern. I decided no to put any references into this post since wordpress doesn't have any smart way for doing it.]

Back on track – the prelude

I figured I should finally try to face the facts and try to fix the situation: since master thesis topics tend to change more often than bed sheets (at least on my ‘once in two weeks’ changing rhythm), the last time this blog was up to date was October.

I had, of course, realised this ages ago. However, the crucial ingredient required for change, it seems, was a seminar held at University of Tampere last week, called Games Research Methods. As is usual in such events, the socialization that took place outside the actual sessions (or during them on an IRC shadow channel) were the most fruitful ones. A thesis topic that had been stuck for weeks took some giant leaps towards (temporary) completion in just two days, and special thanks goes to all the people I talked with during the seminar. Not only did I get some excellent ideas on my topic, I also got a lot of practice on trying to explain the focus of my upcoming thesis.

So, I figured I should probably give it a try in writing too. Keep your eyes peeled for my post tomorrow, for I’ll be waiting for your comments on it!

Games as Art (manSEDANse09 -style)

First of all, let me point out that old jazz is so good I’m at a loss of words. Yes, I do realize this doesn’t seem to have any connection to games as art whatsoever. But it does, oh yes it does.

I’ll get back to that claim later. Now, back to the actual business. I had a fair share of “games meet arts” -debating today, starting with a some theorizing with Annakaisa Kultima at the soon-to-be-renamed Hypermedialab at University of Tampere, and continuing with a panel discussion at an event called manSEDANse09. As if that wouldn’t have been enough, the discussion continued after the actual panel was over, with Jaakko Stenroos (one of the panelists) and a fellow master student. After Jaakko left, we still continued the debating for an hour or two (or three) in a coffee house nearby.

The value of the “Games as Art” -panel discussion wasn’t so much in it offering me new information, nor in the panelists surprising me with their stance in the Holy War of Art and Non-Art. The value was in me obtaining good questions that didn’t get answered satisfyingly enough. For example, the classical question “are games art?” was flipped upside down by Jaakko Stenroos, resulting in “can art take the form of a game?”. Continuing from this question, and assuming the answer is yes, the next question would be “are games good art?” and “is there any artistic value in games?”. The original question Jaakko came up with was shot down by Jussi Holopainen with a counter-question: why couldn’t we just take games as art the way they are, in stead of using them as a material for making art?

Some excellent points were also made, about the true nature of art, and about the topic of the panel:

Art reveals something unexpected of the human nature and the society, something that makes you stop and think about the big questions in life, like “why are we here?”,  ”where will we go?” and “what the fuck?” (Holopainen)

The artistic aspirations don’t match with the current trends in the gaming industry. — An art game has to be unique, but when you make something unique, it’s hard to make people understand what it’s all about. This gets us back to the Dinosaurs versus Small Hairy Animals -notion in my previous post.

The division between art and games isn’t as steep as it seems. (Stenroos)

We don’t have game criticism, it just doesn’t exist. What we do have is game reviews. (Stenroos)

The panel ended with the panelists happily disagreeing on what kind of art games are, and me wondering about the question one listener posed: would someone play a game for the art-experience? I know I would, but what about the rest of the world? The Average Joes for example, would they do it?

The Unbearable Heaviness of Defining a Research Question, part II

As I stated in my previous post, my willingness to take part in the Holy War of Art and Non-Art is nil. Trying to circumvent this issue, I struggled figure out what exactly is the thing I want to know about the combination of people, games and art/high culture. Thus, I delineated various versions of my focus around the same basic components: “do people consider games to be an art form?” or “people’s view on games as an art form”  or  ”the cultural status of games as an art form”. Somehow, all these questions felt incomplete , or even flawed.

Then it hit me. Although I do want to know the current status of games, the thing that really gets me ticking is delineating the possibilities that an interactive and powerfully expressive media form like games offers to people. What kind of a tool could they be for making art? What kind of feelings could be awoken, what kind of stories told, what kind of attitudes affected by using the technologies that already exist, or will exist in the near future?

Now, this is as far as I got, and although the focus feels a bit less flawed now, I feel like it’s still lacking something essential before I can really get down to business. Discussing the topic with my friend, I got a hint that might turn out to be more valuable than I first thought. The friend suggested that maybe the necessary tool that I need for narrowing down the topic might be doing the interviews I’m planning to do. Giving it some thought, I realised the wisdom of this notion. If I have a very strictly specified research question when doing the interviews, the possibility of me guiding the conversation to a certain conclusion increases a lot, maybe (probably?) too much. That would quash the whole point of my research, which is to let the people define what art is, not me defining it for them. So, should I take a leap of fate and let the people define the focus of my research?

The Unbearable Heaviness of Defining a Research Question

Incredible but true, I’m still not feeling sleepy one bit, although it’s already 4:30am (GT +3 due to DST). This obviously a perfect time for some Intellectual Scientific Theorizing (from now on simply IST). On the other hand, I already had issues when trying to figure out the spelling for ‘theorizing’, so this might turn out to be either interesting, embarrassing, or both. Personally, I’m trying to keep up the flickering hope of something useful turning up, so here goes, for your entertainment if nothing else.

The heading is unusually long and heavy of me (I tend to do the long and heavy -part in the actual text), but I could not imagine affiliating anything lighter with this topic. Judging from what I’ve done and learned this far, defining the research question is the Ultimate Trial. Once one has overcome the Challenge of Challenges, coming up with a new, well-defined, shiny and bright Research Question, everything else falls into place by itself. Yes, yes, of course I’m exaggerating. Nevertheless, once figuring out a good research question, the rest of the work gets a heck of a lot easier, starting from source-hunting and ending up all the way in the actual thesis writing.

Although the almost-mythical Research Question seems elusive as ever (not only judged on the hearsay of graduate students, but also on my personal experiences), certain general ideas, topics and words keep catching my eye and ear time and time again. First and foremost, game studies. Mostly from a humanistic or a sociological point of view, although I’m also trying to understand the technological side of it. Narrowing down, I used to end up with game cultures, but recently the words have changed places or even form, and I’m sitting there with topics like “Games as Culture”, “Games and Culture”, “Games as Art” and “Games as High Culture”. Why? Let me open it up for you a bit.

Art as a whole is a phenomenon that has always intrigued me. Especially visual arts, like painting, sculpting and architecture never seem to lose their grip on me, and once I realized digital games is the area I want to specialize in, this art-fixation of mine started to hunt me more than ever. After my realization, some other topics have of course come up, some of them forgotten immediately, some still lurking in the back of my mind. Take Japan, for example. Some heavy lurking going on with this topic, since it even made me travel all the way to the other side of the globe for a year. While spending most of my time studying the language, I did also manage to wade some room in my schedule for getting to know the thing I went to Japan for: games. Especially people who play games, or even better, make them. Getting to know a number of people who work in the business was the final factor convincing me on the essentialness of including their views in my thesis, maybe even making it the focus of the research.

This brought up another thing that had been circling in my mind: finding out what people think about games. Game developers’, indie or commercial, but also gamers’ opinions. Very soon after coming up with this, I realized I also want and need the views of Average Joe and those of people who don’t work in development, but could otherwise be considered experts in the fields of digital games, art, Japanese gaming culture, and all these combined. The last group of people is quite a mixed bag of course. So, I’ve got both the question and the people to pose the question to, why am I still saying it’s heavy business?

First of all, I’m doing a master thesis, not a doctoral one. There is no way on earth I could even dream of including all that in a hundred-or-so -pages and ending up with a good thesis. An easy problem, granted, and solved, for example, by simply narrowing down and focusing on one group of people. That’s what I did, and ended up with this: “Are games art?”. This is the oldest version, and very, very intimidating. Defining the research question like that, I’d be forced to define not only what digital games are, but also take part in the dreaded What Is True Art -conversation.

Most of my antipathy for this debate actually results from something quite different from fear: it seems to me a very pointless and endless fight, sometimes inducing eerie similarities with that of different religious groups, and at others sinking to the level that makes a fight over which are tastier, strawberries or blueberries, seem sound. Come on people, face it: there is no absolute definition for art! I know it’s hard for a human mind to accept some things can’t be defined the same way as the tectonic structure of our planet, but that’s just how it is, so live with it. Art is something that has a different meaning and manifestation to each and every individual on this planet, and that’s the closest we’ll ever get of having an absolute definition for art. Take it or leave it, get all emotional or don’t give a shit, it doesn’t change the fact one bit.

Not wanting to take part in this Holy War of Art and Non-Art, I tried my best to find a more eloquent research question, and maybe did. Unfortunately that has to wait for another time (maybe tomorrow?), since I’ve stayed up ridiculously long and should go to bed. Stay put for another episode of some hard ISTing and exemplary Holy War -avoidance, it might be coming up sooner than you expect!

As a side-note: Damn I wish this thing had a footnoting-system. Another side-note: No laughing at typos and aberrations, it’s frigging 6:43 am here.