Category: games

The International Herald Tribune reports of a current discussion in Italy of whether Nutella (the chocolate spread) is left- or right-wing.

“Only Italians could turn something like this into an ideological question,” said Gigi Padovani, who put the question to a group of students at the Velso Mucci Institute, a technical school for chefs and waiters in this small town in northern Italy.

As the dark creamy treat turns 40, intellectuals throughout the country have been debating what Padovani calls the “cultural, social, artistic and gastronomic phenomenon” that is Nutella.

I often discuss ideology in games with TL, Gonzalo, and my other colleagues. I am always the one saying that ideology is partially a matter of interpretation and that you can’t really determine the ideology of Sim City or the Sims.

The Nutella discussion makes me realize that the problem is that I don’t really think ideologies work. That is, we do have ideologies, but ideologies are simply not able to describe and evaluate the world to the detail that we imagine.
I think that actual ideologies are flawed piles of contradictory beliefs, and that most of the actual world is too complex to be understood (or ruled) by a single ideology.

That is, we may believe ourselves to have a complete, good, and amazingly coherent ideology (left- or right-wing, for example) but in actuality each of us entertains numerous wildy contradictory beliefs a the same time.

Especially when it comes to art (and food), many of the actual determinations (left wing or right wing?) are going to be completely random. There is nothing in Nutella to give it affinity with any particular ideology (left or right).
The Russian composer Shostakovich was denounced as “formalist” (shudder) several times under Stalin. Now, while there certainly was an ideology that all things, art included, had a completely objective and determinable ideology, I think we would be hard pressed to claim any compelling connection between Marxism and being against “formalist” musical compositions.

Returning to games, Hans Petschar has an analysis of the history of chess across different cultures, where the introduction of diagonal movement for the queen and bishops is a “dynamization of space” and reflects European thought. I don’t find this terribly compelling either.

Many games just don’t “really have” an ideology, yet some games do convey messages and beliefs.
When is the ideology we see just a mirror of our expectations, and when is it really there?
How can we tell the difference?

With the discussion of academia vs. industry/practice blossoming at Intelligent Artifice and Terra Nova, a comment at the Zen of Design blog strikes a chord:

Double-coding is the practice of creating a work of art that speaks to two different audiences in different ways. It’s most often used to describe Children’s shows that also entertain adults. For example, Animaniacs and the classic Bugs Bunny cartoons are double-coded well – they have many references that a child won’t get but will amuse an adult. ‘Blues Clues’ is not double-coded – and as such, an adult watching it will be put to sleep.

Double-coding is what we, the academics (pick one) are / should be / shouldn’t be doing: Creating work that speaks to academics and to developers at the same time.

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?