Gameology: Commentary and Resources for the Game Studies Community

Just a comment about the distinction I make between unit operations and system operations. While it is true that there is a preference the book for units as a corrective to system thinking, no logics would be possible at all without systems. From the book (p. 4): "We need the integrity of systems to identify physical, conceptual, or cultural phenomena. But these new types of systems are fluctuating assemblages of unit operational components rather than overarching regulators." Arguments by their very nature are systems. They are systems that can become units in other systems, or systems that can be broken down. Here too, perhaps, the system works from the inside out.

Aesthetically, functionally, Gamer Theory's aphorisms are unit operational. I read the game of Gamer Theory 1.0, with its cards of aphorisms, as encapsulated units of its argument. The structure and function of the website also perform the logic of its critique, the blog-like game to speak more, or more often, or more cleverly, or more profoundly. Certainly this logic is also at work in the intellectual performances here, on this very page -- the academic's desire to stump or cause to fumble, raising the credibility of one and reducing that of the other.

And I could also read the book's argument as such: the rendering of contemporary society as game system could simply be understood as social adoption of the very logic of unit operations itself, the "ruling order" as a unit operation for another unit operation, that of the game.

But I still believe that games are not merely cultural unit-allegories for the state of culture itself, but also representations -- not utopias or mere cultural signals, but cultural texts. Perhaps this is where our approaches diverge although I must reveal: I was unable to play Gamer Theory 1.0 effectively, and have not yet acquired the upgrade.