Actually, I say the above frequently.
But in First Person, Mark Barrett has written a response to Janet Murray’s article on cyberdrama.
Discussion at Intelligent Artifice.
Suffice to say that video game academics (all of us) get a terrible review. If you ask me, Barrett is doing some unnuanced generalizations, and he is about as wrong as he is right.
Since he seems to heavily dislike all academic video game theory ever, I wonder what kind of theory he would like? What would industry- (or Barrett-) friendly theory look like?
Although Barrett goes way too far, I do agree with part of what he has to say.
On the subject of storytelling in games, there’s a lot of recycling going on among academics, and I’m not talking about the useful kind :/.
There’s some good stuff out there as well, though. I’ve enjoyed a lot of what you’ve written on the subject and Espen Aarseth’s writings also tend to be quite interesting.
Moo.
in an irritated moment or two I felt it necessary to put my oar in to this ‘debate’ if it deserves the dignity of that term. are we not in danger of validating this entire discourse by the very fact that we engage in it.. witness the comments on my first post. I dont know about this debate. doesnt it reify us all… I want dialogue, complexity and contradiction and all that gets produced here (and my god I end up being guilty of it too) is dichotomisation, dispute and othering… I on the whole want no part of it but feel ‘now and then’ and particulary following the other players conference – the need to give voice to an alternate way of thinking – aware all the time that this also depends on a process of othering – hateful business… h
i’m sure he’d like you if he knew you, Jesper. interesting to me that a number of game designers find murray useful.