Phenomenology

After Reading a lot of Harden, who is great at writing about games and gameworld from a player and developer point of view, I decided to read some basic phenomenology. And In Hardens introduction he recommended Robert Sokolowskis Introduction to Phenomenology. So I've been reading that too and it is a great tool; I'm starting to get a grasp of what I can and can't do with phenomenology and it's clear to me that as a method it is what I need but at the same time it's just the beginning of an interpretive process. 

It has given me a clear perspective on one aspect of my two chosen games right from the start; Zelda BotW is an open world and the gameworld seems limitless, it spreads out en embraces me as a player inviting me to walk or ride long distances. In Mario Odyssey each little part of the world is clearly limited like a small intricate construction (a building, a cabinet, a piece of jewelry?). Mario Odyssey is a large world too - but in a very different way. I'm thinking of these spaces when I'm reading Sokolowski and I'm becoming more aware of who I see them. BotW is centrifugal, stretching out in all directions and full of space whereas Odyssey is centripetal, small concentrated and full of intricate mechanisms for exploring.

Donkey Kong



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Check-in with Max

Image
 I just had a meeting with my supervisor, who had read my manuscript to this point, and it went very well. I do not know why, but I always think that meetings like that end in disaster, along the lines of "This is terrible, what the hell are you doing?" but that never happens. I got good feedback and it was great to see how well he understood my text so far. He had a few points that I really need to address. One of them is my tendency to use a lot of empty intensifiers that just need to be edited out. No problem, I know they are there, but they always seem so reasonable when I first write them, and then I see later that they do not do anything or even weaken my text. Another thing is two long paragraphs describing my game examples, which are too long and need to be closer to my arguments. This is more difficult; I wrote them because I know art historians do not play games, so I wanted to do a thorough introduction early on; but he's right and there must be a way to shor
Read more

What am I writing about?

Image
 There is a pleasure in being in a game world, an escapist pleasure of being somewhere else, in a more interesting world where you have more agency and more capabilities. This pleasure is not new, nor specific to games, on the contrary most art has this potential for escapism; paintings, novels, theatre, opera and cinema have all been mediaforms where other worlds have been crafted. Games have one more thing than the predecessors; games are interactive and can at times provide a very open structure for how to perceive oneself to be inside these other worlds. A painted world is static but lets the viewer wander over it's surface. A narrative story is linear and we must walk through it on the path given by it's creator. Games can be very open and allow for many different paths through a world, and the gamer has agency in it.  So I will look at the effect of being in the game world with a phenomenological eye and comparing it to ways of being in worlds made through painting, sceno
Read more

Time goes by so slowly

Image
Some writing fatigue. After many months of writing and editing, I'm in a bit of a dip. I'm reading a lot and looking at my manuscript, but writing very little at the moment. I'm not panicking, I'm on schedule, so I'm really in no rush. It might even be good to slow down for a few weeks.
Read more