Ludology grab bag: video games and authenticity, semiocapitalism, and geography

• Tim Biggs wrote an article at IGN considering video games in relation to the human search for authenticity:

The postmodern condition presents a constant struggle and conflict between our own desires and a world that seems fully available to experience but devoid of concrete or objective meaning. Video games, by virtue of their most basic structure, allow easy access to the feeling that your chosen actions and goals are both informed and legitimised by the overarching rules surrounding them. This is the very definition of authenticity.

None of this is to say that games are better or preferable experience to real life or other media, but it is to suggest they’re uniquely placed at this point in time to provide satisfying experiences. Indeed, matching the appeal of video games with the search for authenticity goes a ways to explaining the particular trajectory of gaming’s prevalence, from largely rejected as a toy in the production-focused late eighties and early nineties, to an explosion of mainstream acceptance as the global media and advertising machine makes up more and more of our everyday lives.

• Forbes contributor Michael Thomsen reports on an independent video game that touched on symbolic representation, labor and productivity, and even namedrops Franco Berardi's "semiocapitalism":

In most videogames, the semiotic meaning of the system is accepted by players before they begin playing—they don’t know what tactics they’ll use to win, nor whether they’ll play long enough to do so, but they know that winning or completion is the organizing metaphor. Players aren’t often encouraged to question the values of competitive systems, but only asked to internalize the responsibility of making them work as efficiently as possible, postponing the anxious reality of failure for a few magical moments that we’ve agreed to describe as fun.

In contrast, Rehearsals and Returns overflows with signifiers placed in a system that remains indifferent to their interpretative meaning, and which consciously obscures the player’s desire  to interpret them in terms of winning or losing. The system acknowledges player choices—whether you chose to tell Hilary Clinton something hateful or nice—but the game doesn’t interpret the player’s choice, nor does it tie the economy of collectible conversation pieces to any allegorical meaning. It uses the game as a sort of digital confessional chamber, in which familiar units of social and political meaning are taken out of their historical narratives and given to the player in an incomplete space meant only for self-reflection.

• Ian Bogost recorded an interview for the Go For Rainbow podcast, discussing "gaming culture as it relates to geographical space, and when and when not to whip out the PhD cred". Full audio is available here.