Game World Phenomenology

 The seminar with the musicologists went very well, it's good to get perspectives from outside. I was warned about some dichotomies in my text (which I had taken from the literature I had read), which was actually much less binary and more on a scale, so I was able to adjust that. Some of my concerns about the descriptions of music and sounds were brushed aside, they work well here. And some of the discussion ran down rabbit holes beyond what I will be writing about. But even that made me realise one thing: the two games I chose are special; they're examples of exceptional game design with an emphasis on world-building, and not all games are, and not all players play those kinds of games. The types I'm avoiding here, namely FPS and indie games with artistic aspirations, were more popular with some participants. I have to mention that in my introduction. Another outcome of the discussion with Max was that I read Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception with regard to...

 So I had my seminar, with a short text (9 pages) on the technical side of images; from renaissance perspective to film editing to interactivity in games; my three main stations. It was about creating three-dimensional worlds where the viewer wants to be present in one way or another, and trying to sort out all the different technical aspects that have been taken from whence into the visual machine that is games. It's a bit complicated to write a text that should be understandable to both gamers and art historians without being too basic for either of them. Hopefully I will be able to write something that makes the field a little more understandable for both. The seminar went very well, with lots of good feedback, from details to inconsistencies that found their way into the text. For some reason, I do not always manage to maintain a stable terminology, so now I need to revise the manuscript to use player, gamer, and viewer in a coherent way. Anyway, I am ready to keep writing beca...

I got some new hardware, and it's pretty much focused on Nintendo. And thats because Nintendo makes the kind of games I enjoy (Zelda, Mario). So at home I have a Wii U and a Switch, and at my office I have a Switch and a PS3. I also play on my iPhone, iPad and Mac. But no PS5, no Xbox and no gaming PC (so none of the major platforms). This might be a problem and then I might have to get some more hardware, but I'm planning to compensate that with Twitch. Twitch is a livestreaming platform for (mostly) gamers playing game and talking. It makes it really easy to see games in action, and by not playing myself I can see more and take notes although I miss some central aspects of gaming itself. I'm a viewer and not a player.  I am thinking about this now; I do not plan to write about playing but about being in the game world. There is a difference. But perhaps I need to play more varied games. On the other hand I feel very little difference considering the "being-in-the-gam...