[-empyre-] baggage and utilitarian tools

[Simon Biggs]

Baudrillard's concept of sign value, extending the notions of use and
exchange value, long ago (1972) accounted for how everything has baggage and
just how expert we all are in interpreting it.

Best

Simon


On 30/12/2010 11:37, "Mathias Fuchs" <mathias.fuchs at creativegames.org.uk>
wrote:

> I completely agree with Micha.
> To consider games as "utilitarian tools" and to forget about the
> historical context is as shallow a view as can be.
> The historical and cultural dimension of software and hardware is most
> important when the tools are announced to us as being utilitarian,
> value-neutral, non-historic... That is when ideology slips in big time.
> 
> Nobody would consider a car as a mere tool to go from A to B and
> everybody acknowledges the difference of a Ferrari and a Volkswagen in
> regard to going from A to B. It is not only the speed and the sound, it
> is the social connotations, historical framing aso. The same is of
> course true for games. The question that Adorno asked in regard to music
> is interesting for games as well. Why do I prefer to listen to certain
> musical styles? Why do I prefer to play certain games?
> An interesting inverstigation on that is by Garry Crawford and Victoria
> Gosling: "Who plays?" But even in Huizinga and Caillois one can find a
> lot of hints on the aspects of games beyond rules and efficiency. If one
> sees "game designers fundamentally as engineers" one does not see how
> games are received by the players. One does also not see that game
> designers who consider themselves as mere engineers carry consiousl or
> unconsciously a huge bag of historical and social framing and that they
> drop elements of that into the products they create.
> 
> Mathias Fuchs
>    European Masters in Ludic Interfaces
>    http://ludicinterfaces.com
>    Programme Leader MA Creative Technology and MSc Creative Games
>    Salford University, School of Art&  Design, Manchester M3 6EQ
>    http://creativegames.org.uk/
>    mobile: +44 7949 60 9893
> 
> residential address: Ratiborstrasse 18
>    10999 Berlin, Germany
>    phone: +49 3092109654
>    mobile: +49 17677287011
> 
> _______________________________________________
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Simon Biggs
simon at littlepig.org.uk
http://www.littlepig.org.uk/

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