This week's readings have really inspired me, especially since I focus mostly on games. For this post, I'd like to connect Chun's remarks on programming and Galloway's analysis of modding and its possibilities.
In the section on Casual Pleasure, Chun discusses the pleasures of programming, and notes that the "distinction between programmers and users is gradually eroding" (46). Here, I also saw shades of Kay, with "users" needing the skills to both access and "generate" materials to be truly literate in a medium (125). With gaming in particular, as Galloway remarks, there seems to be a dissolve between "makers" and "players", since modding is actively encouraged and even celebrated by the gaming industry. (Valve's pick up of Counterstrike and the acceptance of Garry's Mod are great examples of this.)
Chun's mystification of programming is important, too, as it allows those who understand its language to "enter a magical world" (46). Here, I'm particularly interested in that way that programmers then earn a kind of mythical status, since source code as a fetish "enable[s] a sense of control over future events" (50). In the act of modding, I think players are also getting that same sense of influence, and they are able to see change in real time.
Later in that same section, Chun notes that the insatiable nature of programming and hacking can lead them to become "a technique, a game without a goal and thus without an end" (48). I mention this because I think there's an interesting connection to Galloway's remarks on how some artists strip away interactivity and render games as more like sculptures or images. During my reading, I found myself often asking if this form of modding was missing the medium's main draw and purpose by "leaving the player at a loss for any type of faithful interactivity" (121). I was happy to see Galloway make this assertion himself, calling for artists to "create new grammers of action, not simply new grammers of visuality" (125). At the very end of this chapter, he asks for alternative algorithms and reinventions of the "architectural flow of play" rather than a focus on the visual aspects (125).
This type of "radical gameplay" is something I'm personally really interested in, and I'd like to point to some games here that I think are accomplishing this, though not necessarily through modding (125). In general, gaming is well-suited for this, since it cannot fully hide its apparatus; it appears to us with the icons and "nondiegetic" information on the screen (124).
There are also games that "foreground" the gaming apparatus through integrating coding into gameplay itself. For example, in else Heart.Break(), players interact with the world by writing commands (code) in order to use or hack objects (http://elseheartbreak.com/).
In addition, the loss of interactivity could be explored by looking at games that take control away from the player at key moments. During certain runs of Undertale, for example, there are times where control is taken away from the player and we are made to watch as actions happen based on our previous choices. This, to me, is a really poignant way to change the "architectural flow of play", even if these examples remain within a pre-programmed narrative (125). Overall, I do think developers are finding a way to radicalize gameplay and expand its limits, even if this isn't exactly the type of radicalization Galloway is thinking of. I would be interested to see further how mods can be used to do more than changing characters, stats, or visuals.
Works Cited
Chun, Wendy. "On Sourcery and Source Codes" Programmed Visions. 2011: 19-54.
Galloway, Alexander. "Countergaming" Gaming. 2006: 107-126.
Kay, Alan. "User Interface: A Personal View." 1989: 121-31.
Great questions!!
The coding process is mostly an internal gaming mechanic with its own internal coding language, so it wouldn't be something that could be used outside of the game, but it is (I think) very cool to think about the player learning this second language as a part of the game's world? Because that code that we use then has to match or fit with the code that forms the foundation for the game, too. There are games out there, particularly for younger audiences, that do teach an amount of coding that can be used outside the game (Nancy Drew: Codes & Clues).
I do think that this coding element probably isn't a subversion of gaming itself, at least…
I'm interested to know if in else Heart.Break, the coding process teaches the user to sort of do some amount of radical building as you go, or if it's more of an aesthetic choice / genre in the colloquial sense. I know nothing about coding, so I also mean to ask 1) if the coding language you use and things you do in it can be grafted onto other gaming experiences outside of it // if that's in some way the point of this game too (to build knowledge), and also if 2) you think the command prompt element is more about being in concert with the bit-instead-of-atom narrative as opposed to a subversion of gaming itself. Really interesting t…
Based on our discussion yesterday, I wanted to add a question that I was pondering! Since in this post I discuss developers integrating these ideas into their games, I'm wondering if this actually fits Galloway's idea of radicalizing gameplay. If it's now part of the narrative and pre-programmed world, and not a mod, does it fit with his vision? What exactly is his vision of radicalizing gameplay, and what would mods look like if they did more with interactivity and less with visuals? My group discussed examples of changing the hardware - like modding so you'd play Dark Souls with a Guitar Hero controller, but we weren't sure if this also fit. I'm curious to see what others think!