[Previous entry: "Beyond Paper Writing"] [Close Window] [Next entry: "DiGRA column on IGDA"]

03/04/2003 Archived Entry: "Political Games and the Rhetoric of Interactivity"

Jill Walker comments on a variety of political Flash games and (in comments) interactivity and openness (wish I knew how to track back-- apologies!). Non-interactive game components really draw attention to themselves, and as such provide nice examples of the rhetoric of the gameplay itself, rather than solely on a narrative level. One of my advisors, Jim Bizzocchi, is currently looking at some of the ways the game interface itself affects meaning in the game: he's done a lot of work with Ceremony of Innocence and the subversion of the cursor function. We talked about this briefly with 4th year students in Jim's Game Production class, and some of the other games that came up were GTA 3: Vice City, Redneck Rampage, Eternal Darkness: all involving some manner of altering of player control to enhance narrative/context. Although, to be honest, I think some of these political games may just be suffering from an excess of political zeal, but an unfortunate lack of design talent...

BTW, Jim's in San Jose right now-- lucky bastard!