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ISSN: 1329-878X |
Contents
AbstractsChris Chesher and Brigid Costello: Why media scholars should not study computer gamesIn spite of the many prejudices which surround them, many scholars have recently taken an interest in the challenge of studying video/computer games. Among these are many who identify with the media studies tradition. This special issue of Media International Australia incorporating Culture and Policy presents some new work in this emerging literature of media theorists who are studying computer games. More specifically, it asks writers to address directly how media studies methodologies can be applied to the new object of computer games. Patrick Crogan: The game thing: ludology and other theory gamesThe current state of computer games studies is critically examined in this paper by means of an analysis of the recently released computer game, the thing. Game studies is an emerging area of humanities scholarship, an emergence that exhibits characteristically ambivalent processes of defining its own object and staking out its own field of expertise from other areas of academic competence. A principal dynamic of these processes concerns the opposition between 'ludological' and narratological theorisations of the computer game. This opposition is examined for both its limitations and its productive potential by means of consideration of the thing game and its relation to john carpenter's cinematic iteration of the original short story from which it is adapted. This consideration leads away from the question of the specificity of the computer game object to some concluding speculations about the relation of contemporary computer games to the broader computer culture within which games are taking on an increasingly significant profile. Diane Carr, Gareth Schott, Andrew Burn and David Buckingham: Doing game studies: A multi-method approach to the study of textuality, interactivity and narrative spaceThe emergence of game studies is provoking a struggle between adapted older disciplines in the effort to forge a new, discrete field of study. This paper reports on a two-year project titled Textuality in Video Games1 and the range of research techniques that were employed in order to begin answering questions about role-play, pleasure, agency and narrative. The paper outlines how narratology and film theory, social psychology and social semiotics were deployed separately and in various combinations to analyse computer role-play games, the interaction between player and text, and the cultural work of player and fan communities. Sue Morris: Shoot first, ask questions later: Ethnographic research in an online computer gaming communityFor researchers investigating online communities, the existence of the internet has made the activities and opinions of community members visible in a public domain. FPS gaming culture is a highly literate culture - members communicate and represent themselves in textual forms online, and the culture makes use of a wide variety of communication and publishing technologies. While a significant amount of insider knowledge is required to understand and interpret such online content, a large body of material is available to researchers online, and sometimes provides more reliable and enlightening information than that generated by more traditional research methods. While the abundance of data available online in some ways makes research far easier, it also creates new dilemmas and challenges for researchers. What extra knowledge is required of the researcher? How can one ensure that one's interpretations of member statements are made with an understanding of meaning within that culture? What responsibilities does the researcher have in their representation of the culture under examination? What ethical issues must be considered? Nicholas Caldwell: Theoretical frameworks for analysing turn-based computer strategy gamesThis paper argues for a more specific formal methodology for the textual analysis of individual game genres. In doing so, it advances a set of formal analytical tools and a theoretical framework for the analysis of turn-based computer strategy games. The analytical tools extend the useful work of Steven Poole, who suggests a Peircian semiotic approach to the study of games as formal systems. The theoretical framework draws upon postmodern cultural theory to analyse and explain the representation of space and the organisation of knowledge in these games. The methodology and theoretical framework is supported by a textual analysis of Civilization II, a significant and influential turn-based computer strategy game. Finally, this paper suggests possibilities for future extensions of this work. Bernadette Flynn: Games as inhabited spacesThis paper introduces questions about how space might be considered in studying computer games. It argues that established concepts of media aesthetics and narrative are no longer adequate for understanding the inhabited spaces of the computer screen. First, it considers a communications 'post-narrative spatialisation' as a foundation for game play. Second, it reads the work of social space theorists Lefebvre, Massey and De Certeau into a discussion of how the navigation of space is a cultural act. Third, building on the evidence of role-playing games and Merleau Ponty's notion of embodiment, the paper suggests that gameplay is a form of spatial practice that is grounded in the player's lived-in bodily experience and subjective viewpoint. David Cameron and John Carroll: 'The story so far .': The researcher as a player in game analysisThis article outlines some preliminary research into the learning discourses of computer and video games, as expressed through the printed materials that accompany games, and the instructional elements built into game narratives. This leads to discussion of an interesting methodological dilemma - how does the interpretative ethnographic researcher analyse this content when he or she becomes part of the playing process? How do you analyse the learning mechanisms of games when you are being reflexively engaged in the training materials and systems mapped into the text by the games' designers? This article examines this 'crisis of representation' in interpretive ethnographic research approaches to games research. Andrew Murphie: Vertiginous mediations: Sketches for a dynamic pluralism in the study of computer gamesThere is much to be learnt if we situate the study of computer games in a broader 'ecology', combining media ecologies with sensory, political and other ecologies in a 'transdisciplinary metamethodology' (Genosko, 2003). This methodology enables a better understanding of both games themselves and of what games can tell us more generally about our new hyper-mediated lives. The paper departs from Félix Guattari's concept of 'three ecologies' (here taken to include the technical aspects) of self, socius and environment. Sketches are drawn from recent research into computer games that allow for the diverse, often experimental, ecological niches of games. The first is a sketch of games' historical contexts, crucially the concurrent rise of capital, aesthetics as a problem of judgment, and industrial technics. Further sketches are of games' activation of 'relational histories' (Harley, 1996: 108), the dizziness of their mediations, and what Guattari called a 'transdisciplinary metamethodology' as a response to games' vertiginous mediations. General articlesMark David Ryan interviews Lindsay Tanner: Developing the alternative communications policy frameworkThe findings of the ACCC report, Emerging Market Structures in the Communications Sector, in June 2003 painted a bleak future for the Australian communications and media industries unless some major policy and regulatory changes are made. This report, along with the very important recommendations it made, is paralleled by a number of equally important contemporary issues regarding the future of these industries, such as telecommunications regulation and the issue of Telstra, the media ownership debate, the government's digital television policy framework and the future of the ABC. With the next federal election expected in mid-2004, the objective of this interview is to gain a broad outline of the alternative communications policy framework. In doing so this interview captures the thoughts, the ALP perspective and the policy positions and priorities of the Shadow Minister for Communications, Lindsay Tanner MP on the above issues. Scott McQuire: Slow train coming? The transition to digital distribution and exhibition in cinemaThroughout the 1990s, digital technology entered film production and rapidly altered both the production process and the audience's experience, as complex soundscapes and special effects became the hallmark of cinematic blockbusters. By 1999, the prospect of an end-to-end digital cinema, or cinema without celluloid, seemed to be in sight. Digital distribution and exhibition were extolled as particularly attractive prospects, and a number of test sites were established in the United States. However, the last four years have demonstrated that significant issues need to be resolved before there will be broader implementation of digital cinema. Working from a series of interviews with key industry practitioners in Australia and the United States, this article examines the struggles currently affecting the rollout of digital cinema, and assesses the likely impact on Australian exhibition practices. Rachel Payne: Rethinking the status of female Olympians in the Australian pressThere is a common assumption among sport and media analysts that female athletes worldwide simply do not enjoy adequate media coverage. This article aims to challenge this notion by highlighting an important aspect of women's sport reporting which is often overlooked in other analyses of sportswomen in the media - Olympic press coverage. In contrast to everyday press representations of women's sport, the Sydney Olympic Games in 2000 provided several positive examples of reports written by Australian journalists about female athletes. Incorporating quantitative and qualitative approaches, the paper assesses both the allocation and content of articles printed about female Olympians during the Sydney Olympics by four major Australian newspapers. Dianne Jones: Half the story? Olympic women on ABC News OnlineA content analysis of the ABC News Online website during the 2000 Olympic Games reveals a select few female role models were available to young audiences. One female athlete was 'news-privileged'. Cathy Freeman's exposure came at the expense of her Australian team mates, especially those women who won medals in team sports. While the results indicate an improvement in both the extent of women's sports coverage and the range of sports covered, stereotypical descriptions often characterised adult females as emotionally vulnerable, dependent adolescents. Male athletes were never infantilised and were far less likely to be described in emotive terms. Book reviewsAlbury, Kath, Yes Means Yes: Getting Explicit About Heterosex
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