Gameology: Commentary and Resources for the Game Studies Community

Jesper, I got an even wider difference between the two at something like 60 million to 11 million. I think "video game" may get slightly inflated numbers because it's possible to find sentences where "video" falls before "game" without referring to video games, but the majority is clear. The question of use is interesting because, although I think the general public still knows what we're talking about if we say "videogame" it may give pause long enough to get something interesting across. Incidentally, if you do a google site search on each term, you find about the same distribution.

As far as the question of who uses which, I confess I haven't been at all conscious of which I use and I go back and forth. I think I probably do tend to use a longer term in the beginning of a paper and switch back to just "game" as the paper moves along and the reader understands what I'm talking about.

This conversation is really interesting, though, because it shows there clearly are different reasons for being conscious about terminology. I posted this entry because I'm attempting to write the introductory chapter to my dissertation, and in looking for a way to get into the different strands of game studies, I thought I could argue that the vocabulary writers use reflects their assumptions about the topic. That may work as a rhetorical ploy, but I don't know if it's true.

Still, I think it's possible to come up with a critical narrative (besides the rhetorical strategy Ian mentions) that explains a given writer's choice regarding the space. Since the current section I'm working on in my chapter pits Half-Real and Unit Operations against one another, and Jesper and Ian are both contributing to this thread, I'll use them as examples. Jesper uses the term "video game," and his argument is that video games are composed of rules and fiction. Since rules are an essential component of games, and fiction is co-involved but, in his words, "immaterial" to the definition of the game, there's something of a rift between the game elements and everything else, including video or whatever technology is being used. This means that the argument is adaptable to different types of games, and separating the terms as "video game" leaves "video" appropriately as a conditional modifier.

For Ian, on the other hand, unit operations are all about the interlocking of available discrete units to produce expressive meaning. This happens in other media, but what makes videogames interesting is the way they can capitalize on the different kinds of units like code, rules, and display technology to accomplish their unique expression. So the term "videogame" combines two discrete elements in describing a medium which uniquely capitalizes on their coming together.

How does that sound? My point is not that either are correct, just that there are different uses that do seem to have some plausible relationships to the theoretical context.

Another nuance I didn't mention and that seems less common is to speak of "video gaming" (or whatever kind of gaming). The only example I could find on my book shelf is Alexander Galloway's Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture. His use of the verbal form does seem to anticipate his central claim that "if photographs are images, and films are moving images, then video games are actions."