Bernard Perron, "From Gamers to Players and Gameplayers: The Example of Interactive Movies"

(In The Video Game Theory Reader)

- Interactive movies almost bridged the gap between games and movies, but failed
- Myst (a "movie game") as distinct from interactive movies
- Narrative and style in interactive movies is B-grade, game elements are more interesting
- Narrative interruptions for player decisions
- Interactivity in these games is perceived to be illusory
- There is always a player, and thus a mind/consciousness that accepts the rules
- Interactive movie players act as if/pretends that options are not limited, "creating belief"
- Shot-reverse-shot is rare in games but fairly common in interactive movies/movie games
- Menu-based adventure gameplay in movie games (click on objects, etc)
- Not about competition or action
- Repetition as punishment for bad choices
- What kind of player position do interactive movies create? Different from other kinds of games?
- Movie games: adventure/puzzles with live-action sequences
- Interactive movies: choices made at key points alter the story
- More about play than games
- Reactions, not actions (minimally interactive)
- Players might be disappointed, but do not "lose" in the conventional sense
- Play occurs within the rules of the game (same attitude as free-form play?), can undercut narrative coherence
- Determining a goal in the game shifts paidia to ludus, regardless of the type of game
- Games/texts that assume an ideal reader/player vs more open games
- Some players take an active role by developing in-game tricks, metagaming (expansive gameplay)
- Perron argues that we need to distinguish between players (paidia, exploring, proceeding through) gamers (ludus, competing, playing to win/succeed) and gameplayers (ludus, metagaming, exploring and creating rules)
- As Perron notes, these terms are easily confused and are generally seen to be interchangeable. Questionable utility?

Mark J.P. Wolf & Bernard Perron, "Introduction"

(In The Video Game Theory Reader)

- Perron and Wolf position the volume as a milestone for the discipline, even though it is still emerging, emphasizing the diversity of approaches.
- "Video" versus "computer" games - not identical terms, they choose "video games" because they feel it implies the right things (personally I prefer the more platform-agnostic "digital games")
- The introduction traces a brief history of so-called video game theory
- Early stages: ethusiasts, hobbyists, programmers
- The rise of the arcade and industry writing/reviews
- Home computer magazines and strategy guides
- Early histories of the industry and the medium
- Chris Crawford's design-oriented theory
- Psychology/affect-oriented approaches
- Concepts of new media and multimedia (importance of the CD-ROM)
- Placing games in an industrial context (political economy, franchises)
- Importance of the web, online communities of gamers/game theorists
- The first school for digital game design (DigiPen institute in Vancouver)
- France: LeDiberders on games and art/aesthetics, much attention from the Cahiers de Cinema
- 1990s nostalgia for older games, arcades
- Aarseth is positioned as the first serious academic video game theorist (conspicuously, no mention of Murray as part of the historical survey... she does not appear until later in the introduction)
- Debates about games and gender (both theoretical, industrial and cultural)
- More theoretical approaches to journalistic criticism, aesthetics (Trigger Happy)
- Society for Cinema Studies expands to include Cinema and Media Studies
- Pretty suspect list of essential "firsts" that differentiate video games from other media: algorithmic, real-time play, hand-eye coordination (really?), player-controlled surrogates (an argument could be made that each of these pre-date video games)
- International perspectives (mostly European, apparently little academic work on games in Japan)
- Video game theory as a field, rather than "video game studies" more generally (but nevertheless includes a wide range of approaches, not all of which are theoretical per se)
- Looking to demarcate an agreed-upon, shared terminology for video game theory
- Problems of definition (why does anyone still bother with definition?), irreducibility of video games as a concept
- Essential features of "all" video games: algorithm, player activity, interface, graphics (probably accurate, but who really cares? Different forms and media exist on a continuum and overlap constantly, as they note elsewhere in the chapter)
- Claim that Murray and Manovich are saying the same things with different vocabularies
- Interested in the "possibilities and potential" of video games and recording the history of what games are and have been... is that really all there is to it? I don't really see why the possibilities and potential of the medium matter to video game theory. Shouldn't the emphasis be on understanding them, now, as a (cultural, technological, social, aesthetic, formal, experiential etc.) phenomenon, not pushing them forward towards some grand future or documenting a nostalgic past?
- They end with the notion of "games embodying theories." Worst idea ever - there's a place for theoretically-minded art (although more often than not it ends up being terrible, as evidenced by way too many student films), but it's hardly equivalent to the actual work of theory.