Situating Myself, the Readings, and Videogames

Foss

• Quote:
• “If an artifact functions to memorialize someone, for example, such an evaluation would involve discovery of whether media, colors, forms, and content actually accomplish that function” (309).
• Why/How Provocative:
• I found this particular approach to visual rhetoric far more interesting after having read Berger, and seeing the photographs of Tito on page 77. And how after rebranding himself as “socialist” the photos that were taken became “useable.” This was a clear case of how a given photograph based on its content can be used for a given effect. If for a “communist” leader a photograph is deemed “unusable,” yet once the image of the leader has changed, the value of the photographic image increases, then clearly a photograph can serve, as Foss suggests, as something that can “actually accomplish” the function of “memorializing someone.”
• Connection to educational/scholarly experience
• The combination of styles and modes involved in the medium I'm interested in provides e with several instances where I'm forced to wonder how precisely the “function” of an artifact can be gauged. Take, for example, the Legend of Zelda series. They all follow a similar narrative—a boy saves the princess and the kingdom from destruction. I choose to view the games as a series of adaptations on this source tale, yet, every game has a very distinct art direction, which engages a surprising variety of “modes” and “colors.” The tactile feedback introduced by Ocarina of Time and the Rumble Pak, the 3D effect achieved by the 3D re-release of the same game for the Nintendo 3DS, and the realistic sword strikes afforded by swinging the Wii Motion Plus remote in Skyward Sword offer an interesting combination of ways of interacting in multiple ways and multiple modes with what is essentially the same story of a boy named Link saving a kingdom called Hyrule and a girl named Zelda. The visual styles range wildly as well, from the cell-shaded style of Wind Waker to the realistic approach of Twilight Princess. So, how, then, can these games be evaluated? Given the range of styles, modes of interaction, and consoles they appear on? Some with elements of touch, motion, and tactile feedback included, and others not. Most digital forms of expression have experienced similar shifts in technology, but I wonder how best to evaluate games as artifacts given the extreme range of experiences, art directions, and hardware they can be experienced through. These are questions I hadn't considered prior to this approach.

Hill

• Quote:
• “(And would we really prefer that the advertisers use surly, tough-looking teenagers, playing violent video games and smoking cigarettes, in a more ‘honest’ attempt to stir fathers’ emotions?)” (118).
• Why/How Provocative:
• It’s hard for me not to take the bait on this one, so I don’t see myself with much of a choice—why define videogames in this way? Better yet, why does an example of children playing videogames need to be lumped in with “tough-looking,” “surly,” and “violent”? It connects to a very surface-level understanding of what games do or can do, and what they’re associated with. I’m well aware that this is a stigma that I have to fight against, but nonetheless, it’s frustrating to see that this is the counterpoint being presented to the advertisement in question of the baseball playing boys. Would it have really been so bad to show two kids playing Nintendo together in the house that was protected by the insurance policy? Would that not be at least a bit more “honest,” in the quoted fashion seen in the Hill line? I understand the logic of the ad, and why it works, but it is equally frustrating to me to see that when crafting his example of the opposite, “honest” version of this scenario it involves videogames and violence.
• Connect to educational/scholarly experience:
• Certainly my favorite part about James Gee’s What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy is that he goes out of his way to use examples which might be considered by some to be counterintuitive to the points he’s making. His examples feature games like Deus Ex and Wolfenstein 3D, first person shooters which feature more than their fair share of blood, gore, and controversy. In direct response to Hill’s off-hand comment hidden in a set a parentheses, Gee takes up the mantle for violent games to be a meaningful way of learning. Patterns and ideas presented by battling enemies challenge players to use skills in unique ways, making learning and transferring skills crucial to playing games successfully. Certainly the point that games are educational can best be made by picking poster children like Valve’s Portal series which is being used in schools as I type to teach math and science, and yet, even in the “violent” games being played by “surly” or “tough-looking” teens are educational and therefore serve as a weak counterpoint to what constitutes “common cultural values.”

Berger

• Quote: 
• “This photograph offers irrefutable evidence that this man, this horse and this bridle existed” (86).
• Why/How Provocative:
• Between advanced gameplay engines, 3D modeling, and the Adobe suite of wizardry, how certain can we be that a “photograph” of something is real? I found it interesting that he says a photograph is “irrefutable evidence,” which seems to suggest to me that even if these items were edited together using something like Photoshop, they all existed separately at some point. But then, can we really be 100% sure of that now? Rather than simply posing the question, here’s a shot from a game engine developed by Metal Gear Solid producer Hideo Kojima: 

•  Can you easily tell the difference between the two? Sure, once you stare really hard and close, you’ll probably notice the differences and be able to tell which one is a real photograph (the chair backs gave it away for me). Were you presented with the Fox Engine renders alone, however, would you be certain it was fake? Or would this be considered “irrefutable evidence” of a moment in a board room? What conversations might we have about this “photograph” of a place that may have never even existed? Yes, in this case, it’s modeled after a real place, but once the Fox Engine is in the wild, so to speak, the places represented will be fictional as well. Do we know these photographs are “irrefutable evidence” anymore?
• Connection to educational/scholarly experience:
• The question of what is real becomes all the more significant as software becomes available which enables users to create a certain reality. There’s already plenty enough instances of image hoaxes which center on the use of programs like Photoshop, but what happens when this goes to the next level, with photo-realistic scenes, renderings, real-world physics…what then? Can we be 100% sure of what’s real and not? This opens up very realistic and interesting possibilities to entertainment, however, what does this do to the nature of the photograph? Berger considers the photograph a quote. What does a rendering in Kojima’s Fox Engine become to the untrained eye? Is it still a quote? A “made up quote”? How might all of this factor into what we can believe when it comes to images and video we see? As someone interested in a medium which digitally represents the real world (both through computational means and physical renderings) the blurring lines between them raises interesting questions of just what we can choose to believe that we’re shown. Consider the leaps made since the 1970’s. What will physics engines and lighting effects be capable of in 40 years when the hardware and software capabilities have advanced that much further? Considering that in the case of game engines these events can unfold in real time, how much can we trust these visual experiences? Are these images-as-quotes simply air quotes at that point?

Overall Connections:

• I suppose it makes sense in a lot of ways that I see myself connecting to these things through the visual medium I find most compelling in my own research, but I found myself considering it in a lot of different ways. I was able to see clear connections between the evaluative approach discussed by Foss which wouldn't have existed without having also read Berger. Furthermore, while nobody mentions games specifically (save for Hill...), it's good to see these connections feeling natural (to me, at least) rather than forced. As such a decidedly visual medium, videogames lend themselves to many approaches, including those which relate to things ranging from photographs like Berger (any screenshot of a game accomplishes roughly the same thing), to Foss's evaluation of artifacts. I found my gripe with Hill to be an exceptionally personal one, and one which I have trouble connecting as easily to the rest, yet no problem connecting to my own research. I'm glad to have read enough in different areas to have a response to asides like Hill's through Gee's work rather than resorting to “not-uh!” or something similarly baseless. I feel like I'm off to a good start in being able to find connections between points in these readings and in my research at the same time. I knew with some prodding these things would become clear as videogames are, by definition, a visual medium, but it's nice to have these points of contact come to me more organically than forced.