Despite the pervasive rhetorics of immersion and embodiment found in industrial and social discourses, playing a video game is an exercise in non-linearity. The pervasiveness of trial and error mechanics, unforgiving game over screens, loading times, minute tweakings of options and settings, should lead us to consider video games as a medium that cannot eschew fragmentation. Every Game is an Island is an analysis and a critique of grey areas, dead ends and extremities found in digital games, an exploration of border zones where play and non-play coexist or compete. Riccardo Fassone describes the complexity of the experience of video game play and brings integral but often overlooked components of the gameplay experience to the fore, in an attempt to problematize a reading of video games as grandiosely immersive, all-encompassing narrative experiences. Through the analysis of closures and endings, limits and borders, and liminal states, this field-advancing study looks at the heart of a medium starting from its periphery.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS INTRODUCTION A BOOK ABOUT EXTREMITIES Ryu’s closure Every game is an island and no game is an island Against currentness STRUCTURE OF THE BOOK Three levels and some wordplay 1. TWO NON-DEFINITIVE DEFINITIONS WHAT IS A VIDEO GAME? Doing away with definitions Video games change through time What I mean by “video game” THE EXCEPTIONALITY OF VIDEO GAMES Digital exceptionalism The inflexible code Authoritative video games COMPUTER-MEDIATED GAMES Interaction? State machines and cybertexts The cybernetic player DESIGNED PROCEDURAL EXPERIENCES The project of experience Design Procedures Experience 2. GAME GAME CLOSURE The finite model of an infinite universe An archaeology of digital closure Finishing the game Closure in Super Metroid CAESURA Continue? Prescribed ending The death and rebirth of game over Game over and over: A rhetoric of repetition Bodily pleasures: Game over as spectacular device in Dead Space 2 ENDLESSNESS Playing indefinitely A compact history of infinite games From arcade to casual The utopic castle: Battlezone OPENNESS Video games as toys Expressive players and simulation savvies Super Scribblenauts The winged guitarist 3. GAME METAGAME FRAGMENTATION Overlooked and underrated Player-operated breaks: PAUSE Machine-operated breaks: LOADING Is this life reality? Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem METAGAMING Playing outside the game The legacy of dice Knights of Pen and Paper: role-playing revisited IMMERSION The utopia of total immersion Immersive fallacies Immersion, metacommunication, incorporation Through the eyes of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay HOLISM Flow: a scholarly tradition Designing for flow? Total interface: Uplink 4. GAME GAMES UNIQUENESS In search of the golden cartridge Curiosity and A Slow Year Distancing strategies A game I will never play Chain World EPHEMERALITY Reconsidering OSGONS Catharsis and procedures Review your choices: One Single Life MODULARITY Opera aperta 2.0 Mods and modules: Game engines as branch systems The flex of the wrist: Garry’s Mod SERIALIZATION Playing nostalgia Xbox Live Arcade: series and/as archives Sub-series, meta-games Old new games: Final Fight Double Impact 5. CONCLUSIONS FROM THE OUTSIDE IN Mom’s heart Games are about ending Moving forward BIBLIOGRAPHY LUDOGRAPHY FILMOGRAPHY
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…Every Game is an Island is an important work in formalist game studies, one which serves to situate the video game object in relation to wider discourses of textuality and the media object.
An exploration of borders, endings and extremities in video games and digital play practices.
Develops a novel theory of video games, conceived as designed procedural experiences in which constraints and limitations – aesthetic, technological, economic, etc. - are just as valuable as choices and affordances both for the designer and the player
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Produktdetaljer

ISBN
9781501316616
Publisert
2017-02-23
Utgiver
Vendor
Bloomsbury Academic USA
Vekt
449 gr
Høyde
229 mm
Bredde
152 mm
Aldersnivå
U, 05
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Innbundet
Antall sider
208

Forfatter

Biographical note

Riccardo Fassone is a post-doctoral research fellow at the University of Torino, Italy, where he works on the history of the Italian video game industry. He is among the founders of GAME. The Italian Journal of Game Studies has published several articles and book chapters on the history and theory of video games, and their intersections with other media. He has a background in film and media studies and has worked as visiting researcher at the Georgia Institute of Technology and as research fellow at The Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, NY.