I recently saw Lita Crociani-Windland (research student and lecturer in the School of Sociology) give a paper on her research into Italian festivals and questions of humour, play, and aggressiveness. I've invited her to come and talk to the Play Research Group next term, but in the meantime, you can read some of her work in UWE's Journal of Psycho-Social Studies:
http://www.btinternet.com/~psycho_social/Vol5/JPSS5-LW1.htm
if you open the link below you can track a newly invigorated (or reheated and stale) version of the narratology v. ludology debate coming to you courtesy of an online 'debate' set up by First Person media team. I would be interested in starting a discussion about Espen's initial statements, the responses made to his essay and his 'riposte'. If you use the search function on the electronic book review homepage you can also find Eskelinen's contribution and Julian Kucklich's response.
Here is a snip from the riposte Espen makes to Moulthrop's response to his original essay.
Beneath Stuart Moulthrop’s characteristically entertaining and mildly ironic comments there is, as always, a serious and timely warning. Cut off the study of games from the study of their cultural context, he in effect says, and you end up with a sterile, dogmatic discipline. And one would be a fool – or a fundamentalist – to disagree with him.
But fundamentalism has its uses. In academic discourse, a clear, uncompromising, radically different position can be invaluable simply by forcing the rest of the field to do more critical thinking. If we “naturally” assume that games are cultural texts without questioning that assumption, then we will have very little chance of finding out what is unique about them. We might as well be studying the use of computer graphics in advertising, or the latest Star Wars episode. Only by asking ourselves what games are not, or what they need not be, can we find out what they really are.
There are of course reasons why we might not want to do this. Games are increasingly popular, big business, and technologically, they are cutting edge. If we can appropriate them as traditional cultural or literary objects, ready to study with conventional methods, we are home free. And if games are texts, then we’ve got what it takes, oh yeah. So why rock the boat? We all know what killed the cat.
My argument was simply that we should take one step back, and do some background research before we launch the grand cultural and narrative analyses. Brian Sutton-Smith has defined games as “voluntary control systems.” What did he mean by that? Perhaps we don’t care, since we’ve got it all figured out in advance. Cultural theory is good at that. It has also been very good at ignoring (or deploring) games. Is this a coincidence?
In an article on narrativism and games, there is no room for a general discussion of the richness and cultural significance of the genre. Not to mention the paratexts of game products. To paraphrase Moulthrop, the polygonal significance of Lara Croft’s physique goes beyond the gameplay. But that doesn’t mean it tells us much, if anything, about the gameplay, does it? The famous collection of polygons gets analyzed because it is a popular icon, not because it is in a game.
