Comments on: Georges Poulet and a terrible visual pun

By: “Fate:” Owen, IKnight, and Haruki Murakami « Super Fanicom BS-X

“Fate:” Owen, IKnight, and Haruki Murakami « Super Fanicom BS-X — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 00:46:34 +0000

[...] offers its players/readers aren’t enough to render the experience very game-like in terms of interactivity and setting. It may be more akin to a light novel than to film, as its images are largely static. [...]

By: “Fate:” Owen, IKnight, and Haruki Murakami « Pontifus

“Fate:” Owen, IKnight, and Haruki Murakami « Pontifus — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 02:58:00 +0000

By: lelangir

lelangir — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 22:30:53 +0000

I still need to read the rest of this post, but you guys might like this video

http://video.nytimes.com/video/2008/11/21/magazine/1194833565213/immersion.html

By: Cuchlann

Cuchlann — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 13:19:43 +0000

You guys are articulating questions I’m dealing with as well. I hope to read over this stuff again soon and maybe add to what I’ve said. I tend to take the “authorial consciousness” as a combination of Barthes’ author and a sense of what the text is supposed to do. That is, Wordsworth as a way to collate certain poems, along with the sense of sublimity one could argue is present in Tintern Abbey. That is, I think it’s basically the “stuff” readers, players, and critics get out of the text normally. It’s just useful to put it into these terms because of how the reader/gamer responds — it’s as though the gamer constructs a temporary consciousness. That’s why, for example, poor controls make for poor games, rather than “more challenging games” — they pose a block between the gamer and their construction of the consciousness. Probably. :D

By: ghostlightning

ghostlightning — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 09:49:00 +0000

@ Pontifus

Thanks for articulating something I couldn’t. I can follow Cuchlann’s Poulet in so much that the reader/player is actively responsible for the experience of the subject by enacting the ‘authorial consciousness’. I do wonder about how all this plays out in the construction of meaning. Is the ‘authorial consciousness’ static? Or is its behavior/meaning fluid contingent to the reader/player enacting it?

By: Pontifus

Pontifus — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 07:54:21 +0000

I need to give all this some thought before I can respond with any kind of thoroughness. I may address some of the things you bring up here in a related post at some point. To be brief, though, it’s an interesting approach to the question of player responsibility in games, and Poulet seems particularly applicable to games, even if I don’t quite know what to do with his idea of “authorial consciousness” when it comes to novels or film. I don’t think such a thing could play an active role in the construction of meaning (or, even if it could, it’s not the be-all, end-all as Poulet seems to suggest), but it appears very active in the construction of the narrative itself, which seems to be our question when it comes to games. I may be misunderstanding Poulet’s idea of authorial consciousness anyway.

By: Cuchlann

Cuchlann — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 20:01:24 +0000

@ghostlightning: Welll, you’re the only one commenting, so you can clarify as much as you want. : D

That’s an interesting question, actually. My first impression would be yes — any game that was necessarily authored would fit this conception — that is, the rules of basketball were written, but not the conception of how the game will go, but even something like Chutes & Ladders has some authorial intention behind what happens to the players. Even where other authors are involved, like pen & papers, there was still a driving authorial force behind the construction of the system.

However, with something like D&D, I’m not sure how useful it would be to describe it in terms of phenomenology. Could be, though.

By: ghostlightning

ghostlightning — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 17:57:28 +0000

@ Cuchlann

Yes, enact works much better IMO.

>>The gamer transcribes the experience — not writing it, but not viewing it either; the gamer goes through the actions and builds up an individual experience.

Not to act like I need to be impressed or I’m the person who has to approve of this; I think it’s a great way of looking at the activity of gaming. However, is this limited to video games? How about board games, table top strategy games, and/or pen and paper RPGs? Can this theory apply?

By: Cuchlann

Cuchlann — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 06:48:45 +0000

@ghostlightning: But I’m not claiming that “the game is playing” you. In fact, my idea here is predicated on the activity of the gamer. If you don’t like the term “dispossessed” we can come up with something else. “Enact” may be good. A gamer, in the act of playing a game, enacts the authorial consciousness, creating for themselves an experience of touching another consciousness through the activity of the game. The gamer transcribes the experience — not writing it, but not viewing it either; the gamer goes through the actions and builds up an individual experience.

By: ghostlightning

ghostlightning — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 11:51:16 +0000

Basically, the reader absorbs the objects of the written consciousness, replacing the book with the world within, and the consciousness of the reader is dispossessed and is filled in, for a little while, with this author-consciousness.

It seems the assumption here is that the reader passively ‘gets it’ (right), whatever the authorial consciousness is. Or, the reader is impotent, and whatever the author-consciousness is, it takes over the reader’s consciousness.

Action in video games, requires the reader’s consciousness to re-assert itself; ignoring the author-consciousness because the reader is playing and not reading.

But you also indicate that the activity in the game being played becomes ‘mastered’ to some extent, and becomes less active. The end result is that there is less focus on button pressing and/or platform jumping as individual units of action; rather the player becomes more like a ‘reader’ in that she experiences the text by following the rules of the author-consciousness.

But you also say, the activeness in reading (books) is the effort to absorb the authorial consciousness (I agree with this because Kant was a bitch to read which is why I fail at phenomenology), so my impression that the ‘authorial consciousness dispossesses the reader’s’ is inaccurate/problematic.

Help me, I’m struggling here. I seem to be stuck in the conversation of agency of the reader/gamer. The idea of being dispossessed reminds me too much of passivity/victimhood/something is done to me. The book is writing my impression, the game is playing me.

I can’t say I agree with this theory.