A Disenfranchised Youth

What is the common philosophical line between the co-editors of Austin C. Howe's "On The Ghost Of Formalism"? You've got Zolani Stewart, Lana Polansky, Iris Bull, Claris Cyarron, myself, and Austin, of course. We are all co-signers of a treatise that recognize that the systems that are commonly used to understand games is useless to us and consistently marginalizes our work.

An interesting thing to note is that some of the above signed are graduate students. And some of us didn't finish high school. We represent a range of ages, nationalities, classes, genders, and work spaces. We are critics, game designers, let's players, event organizers, writers, editors, activists, and scholars. Each one of us have been marginalized in different, life-changing ways by systems that dismiss an intertextual understanding of games. So the common point between us all? We are the disenfranchised youth.

I don't mean youth by age here: the age of those who would've been "Narratologist" game scholars fifteen years ago are now disenfranchised 30-40 year olds. Within The Debate That Never Took Place the losers of that debate were immediately ostracized as non-essential to the progress of the Great State of Games Studies. All of my mentors worked hard on close readings of lore, player interactions, themes, and spaces in games. They did this (a tradition I proudly continue alongside them within my Let's Plays) with full knowledge that this probably wouldn't help their dissertations, get them hired at a game company, be noticed by outlets like DiGRA, or even keep their blogs from expiring. Because of all of this, we've become used to having to create our own systems of representation.

So when we, the students, look to scholars for media critiques of video games, our primary outlets are anthropology lampshading as romanticized nostalgia, player-centrist close readings that end up feeding into formalist theory, and experimental hobbyist work. All of this is fantastic work, but it continues to get waylaid by formalist systems that are built to self-reproduce, franchise, crowd-out, and consume. Instead, we ask for an approach to games that respects interdisciplinary, intertextual, and auteur readings of games in which the player is not separate from the game, but inherently responsible for their play (The Anti-Ludonarrative Dissonance)

Lana says this is gonna keep happening over and over. We're gonna keep fighting about this as long as we continue falling into this disenfranchised state. So here is the real solution to Formalism: How do we support and enfranchise the youth, the scholars, and the game studies program as a whole?

If game studies can (re)enfranchise the youth, we will, without irony, achieve Post-Formalism.

Tiny-Huge Island

The following essay was written in April of 2012. It was originally part of a series of introductory essays to Solon's undergraduate thesis, "A Methodology to Understanding Video Games", which will be posted in full over the next few weeks because the primary themes of the thesis have become more relevant now than they ever were. Some details may be dated.

There is a small square island floating in the sky. You can explore this island as a giant, crushing the tiny flora and fauna and running across the island very easily, but being a giant also makes it easy to slide off the floating island’s jagged angles and lose control. However, you can also choose to explore this strange island as a tiny, dwarfed version of yourself, making the island much larger and giving you a lot more ability to explore by going into the small nooks and crannies scattered around the island. However the flora, the fauna, and even the terrain itself is much larger than you are accustomed to and threatens to engulf you as you fight to survive and explore as much as possible.

This is a synopsis of Tiny-Huge Island, the thirteenth course in Shigeru Miyamoto’s Super Mario 64. Within it you have the choice between entering the stage as a giant Mario or a tiny Mario. Either choice is disorienting in different ways and challenges the player’s notions of space. Being huge Mario gives one an enormous sense of power but also makes one very aware of the edges and limits of the very small stage. Meanwhile, being a tiny Mario makes everything seem like the world is limitless despite it simply being an adjustment of scale and perspective.

Tiny-Huge Island for me reflects the dichotomy of opposing identities and forces within contemporary video game culture. The AAA video game industry with its Hollywood-esque aspirations and budgets is this huge Mario without a lot of control or style outside of itself, whereas the comparatively smaller Independent development arena becomes engulfed not only by the harsh, unforgiving world of game development but also by the many barriers of entry that the AAA video game industry has created to make it more difficult to create games, usually by way of proprietary game engines, consoles, and other game making tools. The irony is that both parties, Huge Mario and Tiny Mario, are trapped on Tiny-Huge Island, fighting over the same resources and using the same ideas to create games by, competing for the same power stars. It is like if Tiny-Huge Island was being mined for power stars. Huge Mario strip mines the island for everything they can get, in order to power their machines, so that they can keep strip mining. Meanwhile, Tiny Mario sneaks into nooks and crannies trying to find their own power stars, although they are usually crushed by these AAA machines.

So, it is an endless cycle of two different groups that look very similar, competing over similar things, in a small, contained space. The only difference between AAA and indie is scale. They both have the same limitations, sensibilities, and mechanics. And they are all trapped on a tiny island without critically questioning if there is more out there than just Tiny-Huge Island. Is there more to games than what this status quo maintains? Are there other ways we can express ourselves without limiting games to these dichotomies? By writing this, I am not looking to simply escape from oppressive systems that the culture and industry of video games has built up, but to explore new paths for others to follow that will help us all explore new ways to imagine and understand video games.

A Five Year Intermission

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The last time I posted to this blog it was 2010. 2 years prior I'd have moved off of Myspace to be on Facebook. 2 years later I'll have been rejected for the second and third time from the University of Washington's myriad tech majors. In hindsight, one of these events I regret and the other I don't at all: Myspace was a lot more fun to play with than Facebook.

A lot has happened in five years but it also kinda feels like very little has happened too. When I was reflecting on the last post here and I feel like my writing style hasn't changed much. I'm still always trying to outsmart myself when I type words and I ramble on a lot without getting to much of a point. I guess if anything has changed it has been that I've lost a sense of wonder or self-confidence or a naiveté. If anything has changed within myself, it may be that I'm a lot more sensitive to the politics of my writing and trying to be real to myself.

I need to have a place to hold some writings that I make online. I'd like this to be that place once again.

Either way! The point of all of this is to just make a buffer post between the past and the future. I'm here again because of one thing and one thing only: "All's Fair In Love And Score" is still a good pun.

And in the end, that's what matters to me the most. Ain't gonna waste a good pun that's been collecting dust for five years, that's for sure!

Here's to the future!
Seattle's Solon

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~