Myth Of The Ergodic Video Game example essay topic

James Newman wrote an interesting paper concerning the issue of video games. The paper is called The myth of the ergodic video game and it expresses the authors attitudes towards the development of the game industry within the conceptual frameworks of the whole e-commerce industry. This paper can actually be classified as descriptive essay with the elements of explanation in it. Academics have recently begun to devote much-needed attention to a cultural form in which the processes of testing, habituation, distraction and simulation are central.

This is because Newman describes the industry's best examples of video games and also gives a short overview of the audience for those games. There is a clear question stated by the author in his article on which he is trying to find the answer through the research. Video and computer games provide ready made worlds, strange spaces into which thousands of people launch themselves every day. Is it possible to say that players inhabit the game-space?

Do video games inaugurate new modes of perception in a manner comparable to that of film or photography? This can be considered the main assumption of the article which finds its justification as the article dings deeper into the concept. James Newmans article, The Myth of the Ergodic Videogame, performs a kind of thought experiment, taking a traditional notion of narrative art - the character - and examining how the concept changes when situated in the video game. This operation is worth taking into consideration here, as an example of a traditional artistic category and how it is inflected in a video game context. Newman suggests that the relationship between character and player is not one of representation, but one of action. Newmans pugnacious article asks a simple question: how ergodic are video games?

Many games make significant use of representation, with recognisable characters and cut scenes where the player is in fact a spectator without any control over the course of the game. This does not mean that video games can be considered narratives, however. While games make use of increasingly sophisticated methods of representation, and actively adapt representative techniques and codes from other media (including methods of characterization), this propensity should not blind critics to the nature of player engagement in the game world. The player utilizes and embodies the character in the game world. While it may retain significance on the box, in adverts, even in cut scenes and introduction's within the game, during On-Line engagement, the appearance of the players character is of little or no consequence.

By this, I mean to suggest that the level of engagement, immersion or presence experienced by the player - the degree to which the player considers themselves to be the character - is not contingent upon representation. On-Line, character is conceived as capacity - as a set of characteristics. (Newman) The author tests the of his assumptions by providing the necessary research that deals with the actual users of the software and by examining their attitudes and thoughts concerning the subject. According to Newman, what is important about a character for the player of a video game is the set of capabilities that character represents, rather than personality or appearance which may be more meaningful in traditional or conventional forms. Thus while initially the player will be attracted to the most visually or narrative ly appealing character (the importance of this is obvious as it affects which game they are playing in the first place), once they begin to learn the of a game, their preference may change.

As they grow accustomed to the objects within the space and the ratios between those objects, players become habituated; they more comfortably inhabit the game. Characters in this space lose a degree of their character as it is traditionally or conventionally conceived in favour of what Newman calls a vehicular relationship with the player, but retain recognizable visual or acoustic features that act as signifies for that characters particular abilities. The game needs me... We can see that as characters move between mediums they both gain and lose traits as the particular form demands.