Time to get writing

 So I'm doing a lot of teaching this time of the year, and there is Christmas t enjoy. And I need to produce a few new lectures. But I have also set myself a deadline for a seminar at the beginning of February and I need to write a good part of my chapters on experiencing gameworlds. On small problem here is that I need a lot of writing on the materiality/production of games tjat leads up to this - but for reasons I have decided to have a seminar on that part of my text in May. 

I really need to test ut my most important ideas about phenomenology and games from the start. If that part is understandable and good then I can work out the rest from there.

Christmas is (almost) over, or at least it's Monday, and i was going to start writing and I had nothing to say. So I sat down to read Sokolowskis Introduction to phenomenology some more and I was back in the flow of thinking about games. There are som many ways of disseminating the experience of being in another world ta get from phenomenology; Sokolowski points out three formal structures and they are great tool. Just a short hint here, I will save the fuller explanations for my manuscript: 

1. "Parts and whole" opens up a discussion on games seen from a player or developer perspective. 

2. "Identity in manyfolds" is helpful in writing about a game as an object experienced by many different player with very differens styles of playing.

3. "Prescence and abscense and identity between them" does a lot for thinking about one way games drives us on, and about the differences between my two examples here.

Gladden uses the same ideas (he has read Sokolowski) but renames them and adds an initial fourth: 

1. "The self-manifesting object and the outreaching mind" that is very similar to "the spectators share" in Art History.

2. "The whole and it's parts" similar to 1 above.

3. "Identity and variability" similar to 2 above.

4. "Engagement and isolation" a bit like 3 above but not as clear to me.

Today I will read more, and tomorrow I need to get this down in my manuscript properly. There is plenty of time! It is very good to just sit down and read for an hour and get back into thinking again!

Super Mario Odyssey

 

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