Techniques of Regulation and Strategic Action in Popular Computer ...

Rolf F. Nohr, Serjoscha Wiemer, Stefan Boehme

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Techniques of Regulation and Strategic Action in Popular Computer ...

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• Publié par: ykijarac
• Nombre de lectures: 83
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

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Research Project: ›Play Strategic. Techniques of Regulation and Strategic Action in Popular Computer Games (at the Example of Economic, Military and Planning Simulations)‹ Strategie Spielen. Steuerungstechniken und strategisches Handeln in populären Computerspielen (am Beispiel von Wirtschafts-, Militär- und Aufbausimulationen) Institute for Media Research Braunschweig University of Art, Postfach 2538, 38015 Braunschweig Germany http://www.strategiespielen.de/

Papers presented at the 30 th Annual Meeting of the Southwest Texas Popular Culture and American Culture Association, Albuquerque 27 February 2009

Contact:

Rolf F. Nohr – [e-mail] Stefan Böhme – [e-mail] Serjoscha (Josh) Wiemer – [e-mail]

Rolf F. Nohr

From Zoo Tycoon to Age of Empires: Video Games as Interdiscourse Playing the campaign mode of the computer game A GE O F E MPIRES 3 (Ensemble/Microsoft 2005) the player finds himself in a situation to increase his income by the establishment of toll station at a road through the playing field. Additional income is granted by the player’s establishment and defense of toll stations in regular intervals - symbolized by regularly stagecoaches or railways driving on that road. On the narrative level this situation can be described as follows: the player can secure himself resources (duty) thereby occupying a strategically important place on the map and receiving additional income from a neutral party, without any additionally economic obligation or the necessity of an alliance. On the ludic level, the moment represents itself as an action of the player, trying to place figures and buildings at pre-defined places in the play topology. In this perspective, the availability of additional resources is the motivation for the player’s behavior. The granted resources will be converted into further play advantages. In my point of view it does not make any sense to divide the ›narrative‹ and ›ludic‹ perspectives on the same situation. Both perspectives are adjustments to a specific knowledge, which is typical for a computer game. It is an adjustment at two articulations of the same ›object‹: first, to the cultural meaning of the situation (a knowledge about tolls and custom duty), and second, to the medial meaning of the situation (a knowledge about the idea, that resources bringing up advantages in the play or a knowledge about an hierarchy of reaching intermediate mission goals before reaching the final goal). This idea of two aspects of a detail from the campaign mode of A GE O F E MPIRES opens a discourse-analytic interpretation of ›narrations‹ in computer games. It will be demonstrated in the process that in the context of a critical discourse analysis, ›knowledge‹ can be understood as a form, and can be described as a discursive strategy, wherein the playing subject calls and stabilizes adjustments of the self.

Critical Discourse Analysis First, we have had to look briefly at the theoretical background and the method. The interpretation of computer games under the assumptions of a critical discourse analysis puts a focus on the working out of common samples, forms, symbolisms, meanings or narrations, which pull crosswise to obvious differences and levels of articulations through and within societies. Media discourse analysis cannot be thus an occupation with individual works or texts. For example, a hermeneutical interpretation is incompatible with the idea of discourse analysis. A hermeneutical analysis would persist in separation of narration and subjective action. Such an analysis wants to reveal hidden structures of meaning which flow through the narrative, ludic, aesthetic and technical levels of a computer game. Thus, the knowledge of a game would be not implicit to conceptualize as a part of a ›distinct object game‹, but has to be thought as a broad class of most different objects. To analyze the knowledge of a game we have to look at paratexts to the game (for example, manuals, walkthroughs, internet based fan talk or game-reviews), at reference texts (like films, books, pictures or myths of similar

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