Gameology: Commentary and Resources for the Game Studies Community

Unit Operations effectively puts all its eggs in the Badiou basket, to the extent that a large chunk of a small book is taken up with criticising other kinds of thinking for not being as unit-operational as Badiou's. However, if Badiou's work is not unit-operational in the first place, I'd say that's a problem. Badiou has a philosophical system, and lifting bits out can be a problem - especially if vital concepts (for example, presentation and representation) lose their critical function in the process. Badiou's 'meta-ontology' isn't a 'higher' form of ontology, but rather a way that he connects the study of Being with other situations - and as such Bogost would be attempting a meta-ontology because games are another situation than Being, obviously.

I'm not sure about software and programming talking about humanity, but they certainly shape our contemporary experience as much as we use them to perform tasks made necessary by that experience. I enjoyed reading the book and think it will stimulate debate as the study of games develops, which is a major goal of a work of criticism and a great achievement for a scholar. However, it did feel incomplete, especially with regards to the role of the social. This incompleteness isn't incidental or a simple oversight; it's reflected in the theory and the criticism.