Galloway: *Counter-gaming* (2006)

Galloway: “Counter-gaming” (2006) • Artist-made game mods (usually “game-art”) • Mod visual design and software, not rule—do not modify gameplay • Qualities (normal games vs. art mods): – – – – –

Transparency vs. foregrounding Gameplay vs. aestheticism Representational modeling vs. visual artifacts Natural physics vs. invented physics Interactivity vs. noncorrespondence

• Calls for indie game movement, “radical action,” critique of gameplay itself

Tom Bissell, “Braided” (2010) • Jonathan Blow: “dynamical meaning”—theme and mood developing out of gameplay • Story vs. challenge (p. 93) • “touching people authentically and deeply” • “It feels as though the person who created it was trying to communicate something, however nameless and complicated. It feels like a statement, and an admission. It feels, in other words, a lot like art.” (p. 101) • Is art narrative (or narrative-related) for Blow/Bissell?

Ian Bogost, “Art” (2011) • Roger Ebert’s objection—no authorial voice • “art-games”—use proceduralism to make art • 5 qualities: – Procedural rhetoric (making a claim by modeling its processes, rather than description or depiction) – Introspection – Abstraction – Subjective representation – Strong authorship