One point of discourse that pertains to close reading of games that Professor Jagoda mentioned in class is how it differs from other artistic media. “Artistic media” in the most general sense, as an umbrella term, referring to literary, visual and performance arts. To add to that cross-media compare-contrast discourse of “how are video games like/unlike movies, poetry, literature”, let’s ask ourselves whether the game designer is dead?
Specifically, let’s ask that question in reference to the Death of the Author (Barthes), a critical theory concept which Professor Jagoda also nodded to in class by talking about the intention of the artist with regards to the artwork: “the only thing we have at hand is the artwork”. The Death of the Author, and related discourses in other fields such as “is painting dead”, have parallels in critical game theory in the form of procedural vs play-centric approaches (Jagoda and McDonald). What matters most: the author’s (game designer’s) intent for the artwork produced (the game), or the interpretation (playing modality) of the consumer (gamer)? For all artistic media, this discourse feels like old news, as in, I wouldn’t bother writing a blog post about it. However, videogames complicate this classical discourse about intent, because of the difference in the mode of consumption a gamer has compared to a classical art consumer.
The classical consumer: a book reader, a painting observer, a movie watcher, a theater goer, a poetry reader, a song listener, is a passive consumer. They only have agency to mediate their relationship with the text they are consuming via two modes: interpretation and consent. At any point of consumption, they can interpret the meaning of the text differently. Or, at any point of consumption, they can choose to stop. As such, the artist has no real agency over the consumer beyond their point of consent: the artist’s artwork is consumed only as long as the consumer consents to consuming it, and the consumer can interpret the work in any way. Thus, Barthes has a point in arguing against taking the author’s intent, biography, or the context of the artwork into account for criticism: the consumer can consume the artwork in any way they want; and proclaim that the author is dead!
The power dynamic between a game designer and gamer is different however, and I’d say that the game designer is much more alive than any author ever has been. The gamer has the two modalities of mediation that are available to the classical consumer: interpretation and consent. But that consent is conditional: by agreeing to play a game, the gamer relinquishes some agency to the game designer, due to the rigidity of game rules. Even the most open-world, non-linear, sandbox games are limited by their software rules. One can capitalize on bugs and glitches (rocket jumping in Halo), mod the game all they want (Passage mods we discussed in class) and impose new social hierarchies (guilds in World of Warcraft), to make the game everything it was not meant to be, the player’s actions are still limited by the rules that the game designer intended for the game. Thus, the intent of the artist lingers in games in a way that it doesn’t in classical artistic media, rendering the game designer quite alive and well.
Bibliography
Barthes, Roland. The Death of the Author. 1977.
Jagoda, Patrick, and Peter McDonald, editors. Game Mechanics, Experience Design, and Affective Play. Routledge. Knowledge UChicago, https://doi.org/10.25846/xzr3-2k81.
I do think this is still a relevant debate, and if I had to pick a side, I would agree that the videogame designer is far more alive than the authors of other works. For starters, most of them are literally, physically alive, which can complicate a viewer’s ability to mentally kill them off. We can ask game designers what they meant or to clarify rules, and in this age of information, we don’t even have to take initiative to be the interviewer because someone else has either published their own interview or the designer themself has expressed their perspective on social media.
Then again, having to read an interview or other outside information to understand the original isn’t ideal considering the objective of the author is often to spread a message in an engaging way. In a sense, traditional authors have the advantage (if advantage means “staying alive”) because, as you/Kaan mentioned, viewers are passive. Films can present one perspective and the viewers don’t have much of an ability or motivation to fact-check that. On the other hand, film messages can absolutely be misconstrued, and the ability to fact-check in this modern age becomes irrelevant when no one cares to. Two examples that come to mind are Fight Club (movie) and Hozier’s “Take Me to Church” (song). Focusing on Hozier’s “Take Me to Church,” it condemns conservative Christianity by throwing their words back at them, but many Christians believe it’s a worship song because of the biblical references. The music video is far more explicit in its message, but consumers of the song can’t be forced to watch the music video, especially if they couldn’t be bothered to actively listen to the song. In contrast, game designers can force consumers to make certain (and active!) in-game decisions to get accomplishments. You might be able to “break” a game by modding or speedrunning or following the laws as a criminal, but you’re consciously aware that you’re breaking the game, whereas consumers of other media aren’t necessarily aware of their misinterpretations.
Hozier. “Hozier – Take Me To Church (Official Video).” YouTube, 25 Mar. 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVjiKRfKpPI
The one thing your post makes me think about in particular comes from your line ” Or, at any point of consumption, they can choose to stop”. I wonder what happens if a manipulation of the game that is part of the design is to make it harder and harder to choose to stop? Anecdotally, I remember a lot of the discourse surrounding video games during my middle and high school years, beyond their internal ethics, was the ethics of consumption by the consumer as instructed by the distributer if that makes sense? Like if a game is designed to be addicting or requires temporal check -ins frequently and stuff like that. Maybe not the original point of your post, but it still poses the question for me of what happens to our interpretation of the game when your consent as a player/consumer is tainted via the game design’s “hook” and addictiveness itself? Is that an ethical mechanic?