[-empyre-] week 2: user-based innovation VS the crystallization of a bro-world?

[Gabriel Menotti]

Dear all,

In the last week, we have seen how the automatized rules of videogames
crystallize sort of sociotechnical fields around them – not only for
playing, but also for the creation of new gaming systems (titles,
genres, platforms). Julian Kücklich called attention to the early
history of gaming being one of almost transgressive innovation and
experimentation with the machine’s possibilities. Daniel Cook has
shown how the establishment of the “bro-world” industry trimmed down
this experimentation, crystallizing certain modes of play to attend
the mainstream audience, creating a sort of closed loop between
development and consumption. Thus, experimentation is pushed to
“minor” genres such as casual and social games.

In the next two weeks, we will be talking about these possibilities of
experimentation in terms of the different subcultures that revolve
around gaming. In this first one, we will deal with forms of
innovation that are not generated by game developers, but by the
players themselves, as they subvert or build new “rulesets” over the
machine’s and foster supplementary modes of “playing” – e.g. machinima
production, chiptune music and fighting games championships.

These practices seem to challenge the idea of playing as a form of
pure participation or immersion in a given system, evoked by Rafael
Trindade, Cynthia Rubin and others (which I'd relate to
cinematographic/literary suspension of disbelief). They present
playing as a form of appropriating the system and pushing it further.
In that sense, are these practices a sort of “human executable
multi-player rules” that Daniel was wondering about – protocols of
engagement that are negotiated not directly with the machine, but
between their users? What kind of feedback do they produce to the core
of videogame development?

To introduce these questions in our debate, this week’s guests are:

* Kevin Driscoll
Kevin Driscoll's recent research addresses the historicization of
internet protocols, Wikipedia's changing editorial community, the
ethnographic value of writing code, and the technical innovations of
young people of color in hip-hop. He is currently a PhD student at the
Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of
Southern California and formerly taught mathematics and computer
science at Prospect Hill Academy Charter School in Cambridge, MA.
http://kevindriscoll.info/

* Ian Cofino
Ian Cofino is a motion designer and filmmaker from New York. He
graduated in 2009 from SUNY Purchase School of Art and Design with a
BFA specializing in Graphic Design. He is currently finishing
postproduction on his independent film “I Got Next” which is a
documentary that follows 4 fighting game players across a year of
tournaments as they balance real life with their passion for fighting
games. He works and freelances in the New York area.

Best!
Menotti

PS: Joshua Diaz apologizes that he couldn’t participate due to the
change of dates, but he said he would be popping up eventually. =)