Video Game Studies 101
Schmeink, Lars. "Video Game Studies 101," Feature 101. SFRA Review #298 (Fall 2011): pp. 9-16.[1]
Schmeink starts by asserting (convincingly) the ubiquity and importance of video games,
US consumers have made video games the biggest player in the entertainment industry: enter- tainment software accounted for $15.9 billion in sales in 2010 while the music industry claimed $6.8 billion and the motion picture industry claimed $10.6 billion.3 Video games can be found in 72% of American house- holds—and it is not just the teenage boys that play them. Instead, the average gamer is by now 37 years old and 42% of all gamers are female. (p. 9)
Schmeink then moves on to the history and concepts of video game studies: "For the purpose of science fiction studies, the most relevant aspects of gaming rather lie in their function as cultural texts, as stories presented in a specific me- dium and with meaning structures that can be decoded via the tools of text and media studies." (p. 10).
One of the key arguments against a purely textual approach (no matter which text form is chosen, i.e. film, prose, drama) is that it neglects the specific medium of the game and does not incorporate the involvement of the player in constructing textual meaning. In 1997, Espen Aarseth in his seminal study Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature, therefore proposed to conceptualize video games as a non-linear textual form that needs non-trivial work (not just turning the page) from the user/reader in order to physically construct the “semiotic sequence” (1) of the text.
Highly relevant here, Schmeink quotes Aarseth on how "The cybertext reader is a player, a gambler; the cybertext is a game-world or world-game; it is possible to explore, get lost, and discover secret paths in these texts, not metaphorically, but through the topological structures of the textual machinery. (4, emphasis in original)" (Schmeink, p. 10). Both like and unlike literary texts,
In virtual realities such as video games, on the other hand, “we act within a world and experience it from the inside,” through the “projection of a virtual body” (20f.) and are thus able to reconcile immersion and interactivity by acting as if we were the avatar. The only thing that stands in the way of com- plete immersive interactivity is the interface that still requires us to click a button instead of actually moving, but game interface development is progressing in this regard so that at some point fully realized virtual worlds might seem possible. As William Gibson has shown us so phenomenally well when he described cyberspace in Neuromancer (1984): science fiction can influence the mundane world; it just takes time. (Schmeink, p. 11)
In addition to a brief Works Cited of works in or useful for Video Game studies, Schmeink gives an annotated list of SF-related video games and notes this on the relationship of the games and older types of SF.
There is the obvious question of how games as a technology, as a medium and a social arena, participate in ‘classic’ sci- ence fiction media. Many examples can be found since the inception of video games in the 1970s. In particular, visual science fictions have tried to explore virtual gaming worlds, either as a reflection of and training ground for real life challenges (WarGames [1983], Starfight [1984],[sic] Stargate Universe [2009-]),[2][3] as an alternative or parallel world to be explored (Tron [1981], Tron: Legacy [2010], Caprica [2010]) or as an allegory for political or personal conflicts (Avalon [2001], eXistenZ [1999], Gamer [2009]).[4] Literary depictions of gaming have been fewer but exist in cyberpunk (via some depictions of virtual realities) as well as contemporary (science fiction) literature such as Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake (2003) or Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother (2008) and For the Win (2010). Add to that the growing amount of video game adaptations that rework gaming experiences into cinematic narratives–sometimes with more success (Final Fantasy – The Spirit Within [2001], Resident Evil [2002]) sometimes with less success (Wing Commander [1999], Doom [2005]) – and you have a fairly interesting body of texts in ‘classic’ media that deal with gaming and science fiction. All of that can be dealt with outside video game studies and with classic literary or media studies approaches. [***] [M]any a game classic cannot be fully grasped without science fiction in mind: Space Invaders (1978) – inspired by H.G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds (1898) — as well as the science-fiction themed Asteroids (1979), future-war themed Missile Command (1980) and Defender (1980), and of course the video game adaptation of the film Tron (1982). (Schmeink, p. 12)
RDE, finishing, 8Ap21, 23Ap21
