User:Ssstephen/Reading/Well Played
Read it here.
More articles in this series here.
teens doing the floss while they wait at crosswalks
Does this sentence rhyme?
[Video games] have superseded cinema and TV to be the dominant visual medium of our time.
...video games specifically and culture more generally as a reproductive technology. That means that their major role in capitalist society is not simply to produce profit — although of course they must do that — but also to re-create the order required for this society’s perpetuation.
Media as reproductive or re-creative: This article doesn't seem to be concerned with the productive and creative aspects of media, games can create or communicate new or different ideas, and can change the balance or composition of ideology in a society. Ideas need to spread and be talked about or exercised in order to be believed, and media are (in a competely literal sense) the way this is done, they mediate.
Where once perhaps mythology, indigenous relationships to habitat or tightly knit communities provided that rationale, under capitalism, mass media — alongside forms of political participation, law, and ownership — have played the role of legitimation.
Mass media is presented here as separate or different to other forms of cultural reproduction, I don't think this is absolutely the case.
Vic seems to be saying cinema -> tv -> games, as par tof the collapse of the 20th century middle class and the attempt of the modenr worker to "try to stay one step ahead of automation and obsolescence". The word entrepreneur could have evolved differently to mean "undertaker", "under" or "entre" seem to imply that the actor is controlled by the action, they are "under" the domination of the taking.
Video games emerge as workers need to engage creatively in the most mundane of tasks to get an edge over fellow workers, glamorizing the violence of competition and the otherwise mundane process of learning arbitrary information and gestures through play. The arc of most games involves getting better and better at recognizing a particular set of patterns and deploying a particular set of skills — activated by button presses — to the point where the actual controls become second nature and the player experiences the fantasy of seamlessly inhabiting the character or scenario she plays with.
How does this fit with the music of the 21st century? Does it have the same ideals? What about 21st century film/tv shows, art, books? The bit about inhabiting the character is certainly an obviously strong aspect of games that possibly other media dont have. This description really fits speed running. This description really fits learning an instrument or musicking in general. Also learning a sport. In this aspect games seem to be more similar to these actions than the passive media of the 20th century. Was passive media an anomaly, did it exist before the novel?
Workers also need to constantly manage their increasingly anxious and fractured mental health. For this, video games provide a soothing domain of control, power, guaranteed progress, order, and orderly narrative in a world of work and daily life where such guarantees are in short supply.
What about scary games? Or fallout? Maybe they fit this description too I'm not sure.
Video games, then, are the (highly profitable) media of consolation specific to neoliberalism
Media of consolation, nice. If games are all about competition why are there team games, squads? I think the view of capitalism as being synonymous with competition is a bit to simple, there has been competition in plenty of other societies. If the argument is for collaboration over competition (which is a good argument), these might be more useful terms to use directly.