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Book Review: How to do Things with Video Games by Ian Bogost

Context for this Review
For money, I work as a liaison between Information Technology and not-so-stereotypically luddite college faculty. It is my job to translate how and what IT folks say about college services and technical issues into language anyone can understand. As a Sociologist-in-training, I have found this work valuable but amazingly frustrating at times. How can you explain, in 30 seconds or less, to someone who doesn’t want to know, why a digital movie file’s compression corresponds with whether or not a computer can display that file.

“What is a codec? Why would it matter? Just make the file work!”

We all have portions of our lives we know very little about. I don’t know how a car works or the equations behind factor analysis. I don’t know how a computer processes data and I don’t understand how cooking really works.

Most people, given their technical inability paired with their technical illiteracy and lack of intrinsic desire to understand computing, really don’t care about video games. This apathetic stance on technology also goes the other way. People who care about technology more than likely do not care about those who do not care about technology. Metaphorically, these two groups are standing in the same room together spreading negative rumors about each other.

textminingacademia

A Year in Review 3: Journal Articles

In addition to the many books I had to read, I think I should include academic journal articles and other bits from the academic world. Apologies for no pictures in this post. Academia is a boring, pictureless world of grey graphs and grey lines in multiple shades…of grey.

It is sort of amazing how much knowledge I have consumed in the past year. It’s little wonder I felt overwhelmed, tired, depressed, and withdrawn at the end of it.
Reading these sorts of things is extremely necessary (or so I have been socialized to think) to cut through the personal biases, generalizations, and other noise that comes with culture. You cannot completely cut through these things, but it sometimes helps to try. Each article represents a unique moment in time, or catalogs an event over a period of years.

A Year in Review 2: Books

I read a lot this year. In fact, I think I read more this year than I have in most years previous. In the light of the new year, despite being 4 days in, I thought i’d put up a quick retrospective on the books I read for 2010. As I tried to do in the last post about the new year, I am including books that weren’t first published in 2010 though some of the stuff I read was just released.

Because this is about 2010, i’ll put up 10 books that impacted me. I will put these in alphabetical order by author.

Week 2: Book Reviews

I have never been a very good gamer. I love video games, but I often play through games because i’m more interested in the story than I am in the mechanical aspects. This has proven to be the biggest challenge in doing this sort of thing, I just don’t really like doing it. Of course, this is a defensive maneuver on my behalf so I can distance myself from the tedium of playing certain games over and over and over. Of course, I really only dislike it when the game is particularly bad.

This week, i’ve tried to learn to get past this. In particular, I did this through reading about two different things, Japanese Otaku Culture and Procedural Rhetoric.
Book Review (ok, not a book review but things that are useful to me).
This book is proving to be really invaluable for more reasons than I had initially intended. I wanted this book to be a reference for otaku culture as I understood it. However, this book functions more as an overview of post modernism.
Earlier in this blog’s life, I wrote a lot about modernization theory. This is to say, the period of time in which the powerful european nations attained industrialization and then proceeded to modernize. We typically signal the end of modernization around the end of the 80s. For Bruno Latour, this end was signaled as the initial meetings about environmental concerns. For him, he tells us Modernization actually began when we realized the world we were living in was able to be hurt.
Now why does this matter? In short, this quote sums it all up:

…modernity equals the west, post modernity equals Japan.

This is sort of straight forward. In the European sense, Japan’s modernizing times were far removed from them. Despite the fact that most of the modern marvels (like the clock) were probably created in the Asian countries, Europeans began using them in much different ways, ways that would eventually allow them to do the things that the Europeans did.
And then the war happened.
World War 2 is a pretty terrible time for the Japanese. Not only were the Japanese utterly destroyed, their emperor defiled, and their country sacked, they were forced to succumb to modernization as the Europeans had done. Japan was forced to belong to a culture that they themselves had no part in. While the Japanese took, as they had done with many other cultural ideas (the musket, for instance), they excelled and perfected the idea of modernization. It is at this point that this book comes into play.
Hiroki Azuma writes that the Otaku are a symptom of the culture that was forced upon Japan and it is that symptom, cultural item, or meme, that is so symbolic of the plague infecting the rest of the world. The Otaku, “…is one of adaptation – of how to “domesticate” American Culture (11). The interesting thing about this is that the Otaku have roots to ancient Japan, not the Japan that existed during the war. It is a past that American perception of Japan has installed within the Otaku culture. This means of the otaku spread during the economic boom in japan during the 1980s. Azuma states:
“The image of Japan that obsesses otaku is in fact no more than a U.S. produced imitation, yet the atmosphere described above was the very thing that allowed people to forget about these origins.”
He then goes on to describe in detail, the culture surrounding the Otaku. For me, the usefulness of this book are the sentiments described above. Sitting at the crux of this book is the statement,
“In order for human beings to be human, they must behave in a way that negates their own environment…they must struggle against nature.”

The Otaku, Azuma states, do not. The Otaku has spread, anywhere there are superfans, the same cultural impulses are guiding them, animalistic database creation or in a simpler sense, otaku and those like otaku are merely concerned with filling out databases.
In video game terms, you could point at social games as another symptom of post modernity in Azuma’s interpretation.
I have been wanting to really read Simon Ferrari’s thesis for another project I have been doing some preliminary work on. In preparation for the preparation I wanted to reread some aspects of Persuasive Games. In particular, I wanted to read the section on politics.

Now, politics are interesting because we often do not recognize the impact that they have on our lives. Wages, interest rates, moral compasses, are all guided by politics and those politics, especially in this country are based on what Weber called the Protestant work ethic. In particular, Weber refers here to the Calvinistic ideal of predestination but in any sense, Christianity is the backbone of the American means of doing just about everything.

And those things make it into the games we play. With this in mind, I wanted to read what Ian Bogost had to say about ideological frames and how procedural rhetorics reflected those ideologies. This book has been picked apart at length so I will only post a quotation that pretty much summarizes what it was I was looking for (75):

“Political videogames use procedural rhetorics to expose how political structures operate, or how they fail to operate, or how they should operate. Videogames that engage political topics codify the logic of a political system through procedural representation. by playing these games and unpacking the claims their precedural rhetorics make about political situations, we can gain an unusually detached perspective on the ideologies that drive them.”

In this quote there sits, I believe, my major criticism of Perusasive Games. Bogost makes the claim that ideologies (however base they may be once codified to a procedure) make their way into videogames but does not really, as far as I can tell, take this to the ultimate conclusion that different cultures designing games will codify procedures differently. In truth, the book itself is already complicated enough without bringing these ideas into it so I can understand that.
Another aspect of this book I find useful is Bogost’s criticism of James Paul Gee. If you get a chance, buy the book and check it out.
With that, I have summed up this week. My intent to write everyday has been compounded with the fact that a new semester is about to begin. Planning and implementation of new policy have made my days extremely busy. Once it is over with (around mid-September), I hope to get into a much more regimented writing habit.

Week 1: Day 1: The beginning and Otaku: Database Animals

Because I’m heading into the last year of my graduate studies, I am in the process of beginning my thesis. For Sociology, this thesis typically takes the form of something we find interesting in the world we have studied. For me, my thesis is taking the form of something outside of school combined with exploratory studies that have been in process for the past 2 years. This blog reflects my wanderings in such a way that if one were to begin reading this at the beginning, by the end, I would imagine that you would be as confused as I am.

Social science is at a strange crossroads. The old methods, the new communication media, the radical changes in perception of the world (modernizing to post-modernity, environmentalism, and the affect of feminism to name a few) have all lead to a sociology that is just as confused about itself as it is about its future. It is as if a gigantic paradigm shift occurred but so many of the old sociologists either didn’t notice or didn’t care that the ensuing war about whether or not the shift happened at all was mostly ignored.

Sociology today is much the same as it has always been. Most graduate students write the same papers we have always written, deviance-based writing, class or privilege studies, influence of some factor or the predictability of a scenario given a specific model within a large group of people (statistics). As a whole, Sociology still ignores the influence of non-human entities on human actions or beliefs. As a whole, Sociology faculty members seem to be against (almost entirely) changing or rectifying certain errors of judgment the founders of our discipline installed. Ontologically, especially in America, we are still obsessed with “the little guy.” “Whose Side Are We On” is an article about this obsession. So often we want to study the outliers that we often forget that whole other part, actual society.

This is where I am when I start on really getting into my thesis. I do not want to study the same issues we have been studying for years. I do not want to ignore non-human/human codependency; I do not want to ignore the rest of society.

I am naïve. People tell me this quite often. I find this naivety to be extremely helpful in these situations. I don’t want to lose it.

Over the next 20 weeks or so I’m going to try and write at least something about whatever I’m doing for my thesis. I’m hoping I can write 1000 words a day for 20 weeks straight. Perhaps I need to just to keep things in order in my head.

First up, I’ve been reading this book: Otaku: Japan’s Database Animals by Hiroki Azuma. This particular book is one of the first real pieces of work I have found about modernization / post-modernity issues. Further, it is the first real theory piece on social theory from a Japanese Author who was trained by other Japanese theorists. It is an important book…sadly, it was printed in 2001 and already has a sequel. It made it into English this year. Of note in this book are some points on the history or set-up for why this book had to be written. An example and the general premise of this book (emphasis mine: from the translator’s note xv-xvi):

“Through his examination of otaku as consumers (and producers) of cultural products, Azuma develops a new understanding of our historically bound sociocultural situation after the rupture and breakdown of moder ideologies. Azuma examines what is left in place of the absent grand narratives and the effects of this absence on human behavior. The book proposes a model of the “database animal” as a new type of consumer in the postmodern information era, arguing that, rather than reading the stories in a “human” mode of consumption that longs for the existence of and searches for deeper meaning, the cravings of “animalized” otaku are satiated by classifying the characters from such stories according to their traits and anonymously creating databases that catalog, store, and display the results. In turn, the database provides a space where users can search for the traits they desire and find new characters and stories that might appeal to them. Here “database” is not simply the kind of computer program or Website for storing and retrieving information that humans are finding it increasingly difficult to live without, but rather a model or a metaphor for a worldview, a “grand nonnarrative” that lacks the structures and ideologies (“grand narratives”) that used to characterize modern society.”

Of note here, he is using an interpretation of a Hegelian interpretation from one Alexandre Kojéve. This is a difficult sentiment I have been having trouble with fully comprehending. It goes something like this:

After World War II, America entered a “post-historical” period whereupon we also entered into a “classless society.” In essence, the United States entered the Marxian period of Communism with other countries being at various stages toward it. In addition, he claims, humanity returned to its animal like nature insomuch that we were always in the present and simply did as we needed to when we needed to because we could. Japan also had American values hoisted upon it but, as Kojéve states, “snobbery in its pure form created disciplines negating the ‘natural’ or ‘animal….[I]n spite of persistent economic and political inequalities, all Japanese without exception are currently in a position to live according to totally formalized values…”

However, the Japanese themselves state, “To put it simply, in today’s Japan there is nothing. And so no margin for recovery.” – Karatani. It is an active ideological power, this “nothing.” If one were to compare Japan to children’s movies, Japan is the nothing that envelops the world in The Neverending Story.

This author, Hiroki Azuma, responds to this sentiment saying that it was the American values forced on the Japanese that created the animalization of the Japanese people and that animalization took the form of Otaku. Otaku, if you do not know, are: “…those who indulge in forms of subculture strongly linked to anime, video games, computers, science fiction, special-effects films, anime figurines, and so on (3).”

In essence, the appearance of the Otaku is a “symptom of post modern society.”

This book is unfortunately timed. The post modernity period in America is mostly done at this point. Having confused itself into who knows what exists now, you could say that the Otaku has spread through the entirety of this country. An interesting thing of note though is that while this seems to be a bit bleak, the appearance of the Otaku is also a chance at newness.

As with most things involving the Otaku, the sentiment about them is generally negative and thus little studied. Social Science often has to (as does all science) provide topics of interest in order to keep funding, public interest, academic interest, or create a new movement. For Otaku in Japan, the attachment of negative sentiments is linked to a series kidnappings and rapes during 1988-89 by one Miyazaki Tsutomu. In American Culture, the installation of Japanese products signaled the appearance of Otaku who have mostly been lumped into the old pen and paper, now PC gamer groups (an example of how and when the negativity for these groups started can be linked to Tom Hanks).

This is just from the opening of this book. I am excited to get into the meat of it. I got some names of several Japanese sociologists/important scholars I need to look up:

Otsuka Eiji (Monogatari Shohiron (Theory of Narrative Consumption))

Miyadai Shinji on kogal (high school girls deeply immersed in the urban culture)

Osawa Masachi on Aum Shinrikyo or the cultu responsible for the 1995 sarin gas attack.

Also Asada Akira and Kojin Karatani (post modern theorists)

I hope to finish this book by tomorrow.

Building Blocks: Cultural Proximity

Another step in the direction of a sociological justification for game studies is cultural distance. The main article for this is:

Aoyama, Yoko and Hiro Izushi. 2003. “Hardware Gimmick or Cultural Innovation? Technological, Cultural, and Social Foundations of the Japanese Video Game Industry.” Research Policy 32: 423-333.

This article acknowledges the fact that without companies like Sony Computer Entertainment, Nintendo, or Sega, the video game industry as a whole would not be as viable an operation as it is today. It traces the penetration of the Japanese video game industry into the global market by tracing the Japanese video game’s association with Manga, Anime, and a rich creative environment that lead to a collaborative environment with hardware manufacturers that systematically leveled the playing field of video gaming and stabilized it. Unlike the American market lead by Atari, Japanese companies were slower to catch on but much more active in the overall dissemination of their product into the market.
Because of the cultural proximity of hardware manufacturers to software manufacturers, Japan lead all video game industry discussions. Aoyama says,
“Evidence shows a presence of cultural proximity between platform developers and third-party software publishers, as it has been observed in other industries. Japan’s software publishers have been in a unique position to access, almost exclusively, dominant platform developers particularly at the early stages of the industry’s development. There are multiple ways in which cultural proximity matters, yet in all cases it functions to reduce barriers of communications and facilitates the flow of information.” (Aoyama 2003: 434)

So, basically, these authors are saying that the cultural proximity of the group of engineers of a piece of hardware will allow them to create software that probably works better for it. I think that this is a fair sentiment. A thing to note here is that this article was written in 2003 and already the effect of the Xbox was being seen. The authors note: “The entry of Microsoft with Xbox may undermine the exclusive advantages of cultural proximity…” Looking with the eyes of 2009, this is definitely the case. Aside from the Wii, which enjoys the celebration of its cultural proximity while also tackling the idea of the “Gamer” generic type, Japanese gaming has been on the decline.
This is where the justification for studying the video game comes in. For the first time in decades, games from American Developers are being created for American gamers on a system created for a system from America. This shift of cultural proximity allows for influence of video games from a culture that plays and creates them to be studied.
Evidence of Japan’s Decline: