This "debate" demonstrates how "game studies" is so much hot air. Jenkins (representing the media side of the debate) seems at least to ground his discussion of videogames in the real world and technology, but Aarseth hand-waves and talks himself in circles and loves to disagree (about anything really) without then stating any concrete counter-arguments. Jenkins talks in hand-waving as well at times, but he at least appears to regurgitate facts and figures relevant to the discussion.
Some notes:
- Both of them see a problem with anyone having an overarching definition of what a game is.
- I liked the fact Aarseth notes that a game isn't a game if nobody is playing it.
- They did go on about story and narrative and game and story and narrative and... yes, they went around in circles. Haha... Aarseth said it's like a labyrinth -- yeah, of bullshit.
- I'm glad Aarseth said he never uses the term "ludology" when the host asks him to define it -- but he did say it's studying games as objects, critique, and says to look at Gonzalo Frasca's papers for more depth *groan*.
- Comparing Half-Life 2 and The Sims, Jenkins says The Sims is more a toolset for players to author a narrative, whereas HL2 is already pre-authored and players just make interactive choices.
- Jenkins talks about how games are hybrids or mixtures of narrative, story, game, performance, space, spectacle, etc. to varying degrees.
- A bit later the host invites a local game developer up on stage and asked if the academic analysis is useful to him. He said yes... the stuff to do with algorithms or social behaviour, and how to use the academic stuff in games. He wanted storytelling in a cinematic context.
- Game dev bloke brought up genre, like "romantic comedy" and he likes the concept of genre for games. Film techniques like "foreshadowing"... he really likes the film/game/story-telling thing.
- Jenkins mentions he notices that game designers take interest in film but film makers don't take as much interest in games, and how games are an emerging medium. Mentions we need terms to make it as well as critique it.
- Game dev bloke agrees videogames shouldn't communicate the same way as film or boardgames, but doesn't go further really. This sort of contradicts what he said at first.
- There's a bit of talk about the environment and labs available in Europe (as opposed to in the USA as Jenkins earlier alluded).
I watched more than half of the video, and fast-fowarded and caught a couple of sound bites at the end but it seemed the main point of the discussion -- sorry, debate -- was about defining games, as a medium, using film and other mediums, narrativity, story-telling, etc. So really not much was said at all. Or at least not much was said about actually developing games in the part of the video that I saw.
