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Unit Operations: An Approach to Videogame Criticism Ian Bogost

Synopsis
This book features a critical approach that marries literary theory and information technology, reading digital and cultural artefacts - whether videogames, literature, or film - as configurative systems of interlocking units of meaning. In "Unit Operations", Ian Bogost argues that similar principles underlie both literary theory and computation, proposing a literary-technical theory that can be used to analyse particular videogames. Moreover, this approach can be applied beyond videogames: Bogost suggests that any medium - from videogames to poetry, literature, cinema, or art - can be read as a configurative system of discrete, interlocking units of meaning, and he illustrates this method of analysis with examples from all these fields. The marriage of literary theory and information technology, he argues, will help humanists take technology seriously and technologists better understand software and videogames as cultural artefacts. This approach is especially useful for the comparative analysis of digital and nondigital artefacts and allows scholars from other fields who are interested in studying videogames to avoid the esoteric isolation of "game studies." The richness of Bogost's comparative approach can be seen in his discussions of works by such philosophers and theorists as Plato, Badiou, Zizek and McLuhan and in his analysis of numerous videogames including Pong, Half-Life, and Star Wars Galaxies. Bogost draws on object technology and complex adaptive systems theory for his method of unit analysis, underscoring the configurative aspects of a wide variety of human processes. His extended analysis of freedom in large virtual spaces examines "Grand Theft Auto 3", "The Legend of Zelda", "Madame Bovary", and "Joyce's Ulysses". In "Unit Operations", Bogost not only offers a new methodology for videogame criticism but argues for the possibility of real collaboration between the humanities and information technology.

from Amazon

Cheating: Gaining Advantage in Videogames
by Mia Consalvo

Synopsis
This title presents a cultural history of digital gameplay that investigates a wide range of player behavior, including cheating, and its relationship to the game industry. The widely varying experiences of players of digital games challenge the notions that there is only one correct way to play a game. Some players routinely use cheat codes, consult strategy guides, or buy and sell in-game accounts, while others consider any or all of these practices off limits. Meanwhile, the game industry works to constrain certain readings or activities and promote certain ways of playing. In "Cheating", Mia Consalvo investigates how players choose to play games, and what happens when they can't always play the way they'd like. She explores a broad range of player behavior, including cheating (alone and in groups), examines the varying ways that players and industry define cheating, describes how the game industry itself has helped systematize cheating, and studies online cheating in context in an online ethnography of Final Fantasy XI. She develops the concept of "gaming capital" as a key way to understand individuals' interaction with games, information about games, the game industry, and other players. Consalvo provides a cultural history of cheating in videogames, looking at how the packaging and selling of such cheat-enablers as cheat books, GameSharks, and mod chips created a cheat industry. She investigates how players themselves define cheating and how their playing choices can be understood, with particular attention to online cheating. Finally, she examines the growth of the peripheral game industries that produce information about games rather than actual games. Digital games are spaces for play and experimentation; the way we use and think about digital games, Consalvo argues, is crucially important and reflects ethical choices in gameplay and elsewhere.

from Amazon