Gameology: Commentary and Resources for the Game Studies Community

McKenzie Wark said:

If, as you say, there is a media theory in the book, its a pity you did not say what you think it is.

Maybe my formulation was a bit imprecise: I wouldn't say there's a media theory in there, but certainly elements of a media theory. And I am reluctant to uncover the connections I see between them, because I think that's the job of the author, not that of the reader.

At the same time, I wouldn't want to suggest that Gamer Theory 3.0, if it ever sees the light of day, should be more monolithic than the present version. Rather, I would suggest that the present version confuses ergodicity with playability.

In other words, a book isn't necessarily more fun to read, because it's more work to read. And the playability derived from leaving the concepts unconnected is undercut by a certain dogmatism which becomes apparent in binary logic statements such as the following:

"Behind the subordination of the analog to the digital is the subordination of play to game."

This creates a rule system which is much too rigid to be rendered playable again - whether through cheating or through hacking -, so ultimately the book operates, in Ian Bogost's terminology, by a system-operational logic, not by a unit-operational logic.

The fact that the theoretical concepts presented by the book remain unconnected ultimeately leads to a form of theoretical closure. This may seem paradoxical, but of course a paradox is only a paradox as long as we operate within Aristotelian logic.

Moving beyond this paradigm, we can see that openness and closure can co-exist (just like they can co-exist in 4-dimensional "bodies" such as a tesseract) - and this is certainly true of gamespaces as well, although you are right in pointing out that Gamespace tends towards closure.

Playability derives precisely out of a boundary state between openness and closure, between over-connectedness and under-connectedness. This also explains why the under-connectedness of Gamer Theory ultimately results in a form of over-codification.

Having said that, Gamer Theory brilliantly brings this interplay to light, and there are certainly glimpses of what a gamer theory could look like. The operational space of such a theory would certainly not be limited to games, but would include other media as well.