Theory vs. Craft in Computer Game StudiesJerz’s Literacy Weblog)
In a comment attached to my blog entry on The Muse of the Videogame, Eyejinx makes an excellent point, an excerpt from which is below:
Unless and until those involved in game studies seriously work with the development process (and perhaps the developers themselves), any proposals for how to go about making games remain in the realm of theory.
In the meantime, as a nascent field of study, those involved in game studies should, perhaps, strive to identify where their work falls in the criticism/craft divide.
I’d agree that theorists often make impractical suggestions, but choosing a starting point that privileges production and development over theory is naturally going to find a theoretical piece lacking. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course — academics do write mostly for each other, and specialists in any field tend to develop an elite language, partly out of necessity, but partly as a social signal. (And if you think I’m only talking about the ivory towers, don’t forget the 1337 h4xx0r culture.)
Most people who aren’t professional athletes have a favorite team; most people who couldn’t act their way out of a paper bag have some idea of who their favorite actors are, and can recognize and be moved by a good performance. On the other end of the scale, theorists may call for the production of certain texts that don’t exist, but that would need to exist in order for them to fully explicate their theories… thus, in literature, we have a tradition of visionary authors writing traditional books about imaginary books (Borges and “The Garden of Forking Paths,” Stephenson and “The Diamond Age,” even Douglas Adams and “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”). People who study the history of the American Revolution aren’t necessarily trying to write a how to manual for future revolutionaries… Likewise, if I were to write a paper examining the development of the cave setting in computer games, or the development of inventory-based puzzles, or the rise and fall of text adventures, I wouldn’t feel any obligation whatsoever to tell my readers what to do in order to produce these games. On another note, the best practitioners aren’t automatically the best teachers, so I wouldn’t be so hasty to elide the difference between teachers of the craft and practitioners of the craft. Obviously theorists need stuff about which to theorize, but their discourse does not necessarily need to be focused towards teaching other people how to create more of the kind of thing that they study… a theorist might instead focus entirely on the effect a particular work had on its surroundings, and if the article or book in question did a good job with that, I certainly wouldn’t fault it for not overtly addressing ways to help game development companies make more money. Plato wrestled with similar issues — his “Ion” is a dialogue between Socrates and a “rhapsode,” a sort of actor/orator/composer who insists that, because he tells good stories about generals, he’d make a better general than the professional soldiers. (We are meant to laugh at this overextension — after all, since Plato isn’t a professional rhapsode, so what does he know about what a rhapsode would say? At the same time I think it’s meant to be satire at the expense of the contemporary military leadership.) It’s a simple truth nowadays that among the people whose lives are being affected by computer games include many who aren’t computer programmers, who have never taken a course in computer programming, and who aren’t very good at the kind of logical, iterative, procedural creativity that programming requires. Having said all that, I do introduce my students to Inform (the most popular language for creating text adventures), in order to get them to appreciate the effort that goes into creating, beta-testing, and perfecting a computer game. While the computer game industry is, at bottom, driven by money, what might be called the “theory industry” is stacked with people who are very intelligent, who have been trained their whole career to think in abstract and theoretical terms, and who are completely mystified by things that computer gaming designers take for granted. These non-programmers and non-designers are the ones who hired me, the ones who sign up to take my classes, and the ones who decide whether to publish the articles I write or the books I propose, and they’re an important part of the audience for all the game study scholarship that’s coming out. I was recently told by a theatre history specialist that, although my background is English lit, my book on American Drama from 1920-1950 was worth recommending as a theatre history text. Art history and art practitioners, mathematicians and math teachers, politicians and speech writers, creative writers and copy editors… The intellectual life is full of uneasy pairings. It’s because of the existence of literary criticism as a profession that people can major in English literature (which amounts to reading novels, poems, and plays, and talking about and writing about them). It’s because of the existence of film criticism as a profession that people can major in film studies (which amounts to watching movies, and talking and writing about them). And because the students are lining up to take these courses, schools can fund “artist in residence” programs, where established authors or filmmakers can do their thing, free (for a while, at least) from the pressures of producing something that will make money. If literature and film programs limited their focus to doing nothing but producing the next generation of creative writers or filmmakers, these programs wouldn’t have nearly the cultural capital that they do; in the market economy, producers need consumers, and educated, critical consumers are probably better for the long-term health of a genre. (I’ll save the elitism/populism debate for another day!)Similar:
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All excellent suggestions, Eyejinx. I wonder if it’s only creative people, or whose whose tastes have been informed by education (including, possibly, criticism) who respond negatively to “more of the same” — after all, somebody’s got to be buying the games that sell well. Perhaps one of the ways the theorist/critic can assist the craftspeople is to educate the general public about the asthetics involved. Of course, to do that, we’d need to settle on a terminology, and I know you probably have something to say about that! ;)
Fair enough. I suppose my argument isn’t really with you so much as the original author (Ian Bogost), and I should really take it up with him at some point.
As for the issue of sequels and knock-offs, there may be more effective ways for academics to apply their skills to that problem.
For example, a study on how creative games have historically driven the industry, creating entire genres of games as well as being profitable themselves, might shed a light on why it’s in publishers’ self-interest to support and produce creative games. From Adventure to Doom and Myst and The Sims, the landmark products have all followed this model (something akin to Eliot’s “Tradition and the Individual Talent”).
Or, through calling attention to less high-profile but more sophisticated games by arguing they are furthering the art of game-making, they could enhance the market for these types of games, giving publishers a reason to invest in them (Dominions II might be a good example).
Or, a solid sociological analysis of how and why people respond so strongly to creative games (and so negatively to “more of the same”) could provide another bit of ammunition in the same fight.
Or, perhaps a Bloomian analysis of the anxiety of influence in games might provide interesting insights into the difference between knock-offs and re-inventions.
As a working game designer, I can assure you that there is no lack of inspiration in the field. That does not, however, mean that there are not significant ways that academics can contribute to the betterment of the craft.
Eyejinx.
You pose a variety of good points in this piece, and I suspect that our opinions are actually quite similar on the role of academics in relation to the fields they study.
Certainly, there is nothing that requires a critic to have any experience with production, and in fact one could argue that this distance is an important part of the critical process.
Nor do I mean to elevate production over criticism as being the more privileged term within the dichotomy. In my understanding, the relationship between craft and criticism is more along the lines of Arnold’s “sweetness and light” where there are two related yet distinguishable traditions, rather than Derrida’s opposition between speech and writing, with its politics of presence and priority.
The fundamental question, for me, is not whether game studies is valuable or not, but how it constructs its value proposition within the marketplace. One could argue that within the postmodern era all performances are entertainment and thus that the field of game studies works to the extent to which it produces an audience willing to pay for this form of entertainment. Or, one could take Lyotard’s argument about narrative and apply it to game studies: as long as the story it tells makes sense to its audience, it needs no outside support.
However, my particular bias is towards the humanistic tradition and the notion that knowledge has a utility value, that the students at institutions of higher learning are not merely passing their time in a ritual of transition to maturity, but that the training they receive has a value beyond the experiential: it can be applied in the world. In my opinion, this is a particularly solid ground on which to build the institution of game studies.
So, for example, while literary criticism, and even moreso literary theory, may appear at first to have little to no utility value, the students who are taking these classes are doing more than simply reading and discussing works of literature. They are being trained to be more astute readers. They are learning about the history not only of literature but also of the cultures that have produced it. They are learning how to read forms as well as content, to analyze systems of meaning and their rhetorical formations.
This training can be taken well beyond the ivy-covered walls, as the students become readers of culture, politics, history, not as artifacts but as the medium of their very existence, for every event is informed by the culture it takes place in, every decision and relationship is political, and every action is informed by the history of the actors, their environment, and so on.
In other words, English departments do not simply entertain their students with books, they train them to be better readers (in the broad sense). History departments do not simply tell tales of the past, they train their students to uncover its artifacts and to assemble them within logically rigorous and consistent forms. Philosophy departments do not simply expose students to the great philosophers’ ideas, they train them to analyse the forms of experience and knowledge with all the depth, subtlety, and nuance that can be brought to bear.
So, what does game studies do? On the crassest of levels, it provides jobs for academics, but that’s hardly a project to rally the faculty around.
As a critical movement, game studies could potentially take all of the traditional humanistic methods in interesting and new directions: training students to read games, to test and try the limits of game systems, to recognize common dynamics and strategies, and to identify the connections between the game and its cultural history. Certainly, this work would require “people who are very intelligent, who have been trained their whole career to think in abstract and theoretical terms”. The abstraction and theory of such criticism is not a weakness but a strength, in that it provides frameworks that can be translated, applied to other arenas, stretched, and reworked.
That is one purpose to which game studies could be oriented. However, there is also that other tradition of craft. While learning craft most certainly involves some of the same training in reading of forms, knowledge of history and tradition, and frameworks of meaning, it has a different value proposition. In promoting craft, the argument is not that it provides a broader and more sophisticated understanding of the world, but that it gives you the specific skills necessary to work in the field.
This is a peculiar moment in the formation of game studies, because on the one hand, there is a tremendous hunger for the training in craft: students want jobs in the games industry, and they’re willing to spend a great deal of money and time to better their chances of getting one. Just recently, the craft programs have started to move beyond the vocational educational system and into the traditional university system. But, the university is not focused on craft, it is driven by research.
This is where, for me, the divide between craft and criticism is tremendously important. There are two different purposes here, two different pedagogies, and two different goals. To collapse them into one may make sense in the short term for pitching classes to the administration, but in the long run, it muddies the water and does a disservice to field and its students.
Just as English departments have an affiliate or sub-group that focuses on craft (creative writing) because the two pursuits are dissimilar enough to require different methodologies, game studies may need to differentiate its own practitioners into similar categories.
Not all producers make good trainers, granted. However, to sell training in production and deliver solely analytical and theoretical approaches to it is an act of bad faith. The role of criticism is distinct from that of craft, and it is dangerous indeed to try and derive the latter from the former.
For example, I would point out that all three of your examples of the fictional text were not called for by theorists but produced by writers. I could point to several others (Calvino’s “If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler…”, Nabokov’s “Pale Fire”, etc.), and in fact I would argue that these texts are fundamentally agonistic representations of the relationship between criticism and craft. In the aftermath of the “death” of the author, it is hardly surprising that writers produce stories that call into question the possibilities, practices, or purposes of criticism. It is perhaps a greater irony that these texts have themselves simply engendered yet another opportunity for critical analysis and academic career-building.
However, I am not trying to dispute the value of game studies nor to challenge particular methods of pedagogy. If my critiques seem personal, I apologize. My original point was simply that to call for work (craft) from the perspective of theory (criticism) represents a basic misunderstanding of the role of criticism. To decry the lack of sophisticated forms of emotional representation in games today is not only arrogant and misinformed, it also undercuts the very notion that games are currently a field that can justify the kind of critical attention people in game studies would like to give it. To claim that developers need to be inspired by critics (or academics in any form) postulates that they are currently lacking in inspiration, have no ability to create that inspiration, and are desperately floundering due to this supposed lack.
Just as English departments are better serving humanity by encouraging students not to become writers (for, after all, there are far too many bad writers already) but to become better readers, I have to believe that there is a rationale for game studies beyond inspiring students who are already so desperate to be involved in making games that they’re mortgaging literally years of their lives to have that opportunity.
As I said at the beginning, I believe that our understanding of the role of academics within the marketplace, of game studies within the academy, and of the value of criticism and theory are more similar than they are different. I do believe, however, that there is enough at stake in the debate over what game studies does that these materials deserve rigorous investigation.
Again, apologies for having run on at length, but my academic background does incline me to enjoy wordy arguments.
Eyejinx.
No need to apologize at all, Eyejinx.
The literary works I mentioned were all in some sense about an imaginary text that did not exist… by you’re right, those works exist because a writer wrote them, not because a theorist called for them. I would have done far better to present them as examples of a complex relationship, and to draw more attention to the imaginary works that don’t exist (The Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer, for instance, plays a central role in Stephenson’s “The Diamond Age”). Theory isn’t so powerful that a theorist can will a text into existence! Have you seen The Invisible Library? The site appears to be down (tragic!) but I’ve linked to The Wayback Machine’s cache.
And I wouldn’t say that the game designers themselves are lacking in creativity or inspiration… it’s just that, now that games are a huge industry, the production of sequels and knock-offs seems a surer financial bet than investing in a designer who really does have a creative idea (one that may or may not find a mainstream audience).
I haven’t read that particular work, but I do remember the buzz “The Rise and Fall of English” created five of six years ago.
Are you familiar with the way Robert Scholes taxonomizes English studies in “Textual Power”? He remarks on the distinction between the consumption and the production of texts (consumption, he says, is privileged), and makes an additional distinction between “literature”, “pseudo-literature” (stuff that has those hidden and deeper meanings of literature, but that doesn’t get studied in English departments), and “non-literature” (stuff that is merely functional, produced in reaction to the daily exigencies of life). Nobody in English deparmtents actually produces literature, but they consume literature, and that consumption — called “interpretation” — is accorded the highest position. Next down the rung is the production of pseudo-literature, called “creative writing”. “Reading” is the consumption of non-literature, and then, lowest of all, is composition: the production of pseudo-non-literature.
How does that fit with your ideas about theory and practice?