My absence from Ludus ex this time was due to the fact that I was co-organising PKD-Day with Prof John Goodridge from my department. NTU had another fab event: the third successful PKD-Day. We did it again.

This was my first collaborative paper and I must say a big 'thank you' to my co-presenter Jenna Pitchford for her thorough work and cooperation despite tight schedules and other problems. In one of Jenna's presentations in our university, I realised the wider definition of trauma that she was using was vital in analysing videogame experiences and in countering the false politically motivated allegations against games. This is changing now; as Ernest Adams told us, the first console has now been installed in the White House and polemic might now turn to policy in favour of games. However, whatever happens, the need to understand that games do not merely desensitise and that they cause a different level of trauma (some can even raise moral concerns) is imminent. We are not psychologists or trauma specialists but Jenna's work on Gulf and Iraq War narratives and mine on gameplay experiences come together in stating that the problem is more complex than has hitherto been understood.

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Shall We Kill the Pixel Soldier? : Perceptions of Trauma, Morality and Violence in Combat Videogames

It felt like I was in a big video game. It didn't even faze me, shooting back. It was just natural instinct. Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!

Sgt. Sinque Swales quoted in The Washington Post

Sergeant Swales’ comment provides an easy link from the so-called moral desensitisation of soldiers in the 2003 Iraq War to their experience of videogame combat, an apparent connection that is eagerly picked up on by Western media. Videogame criticism, surprisingly distancing itself from contemporary challenges to the notion of media effects, persists in conflating the technologically-mediated experience of the Gulf War with the increasingly face-to-face interaction in recent Middle-Eastern conflicts. Contemporaneous accounts have compared the Gulf War to the electronic experience of ‘a child playing atari’; despite vast developments in gaming, commentators still contend that ‘thus far, games have avoided engaging the real-life issues to which they are responding’. A key issue that games are accused of avoiding is that of combat trauma. Contrary to such positions, many videogames already simulate the trauma in their gameplay experience; this paper will explore this concept from Laura Brown's definition of trauma as ‘outside the range of human experience’. This evokes recent work in games studies on in-game involvement and identity-formation. It also opens up further questions against ignoring the role of morality in gameplay, especially in multiplayer interaction in combat games like Counter-Strike, Call of Duty 4 and America's Army. Working from these hitherto overlooked aspects of trauma in gameplay experiences, our analyses challenge the oversimplified association of videogames with the desensitisation of US troops in recent conflicts, and by extension, with wider issues of violence.

read the full paper here

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Once again at 'Under the Mask'. Can't believe that a whole year has passed since I first tested out my ideas on 'egoshooting' and 'becoming' in videogames. This year's conference was better organised and even more enriching and entertaining than it was last year. Some of the presentations, particularly Gavin Stewart's, Steven Conway's and Alec Charles's, I liked and benefited from more than the others. I missed Esther MacCallum-Stewart's paper because I went to hear Steven and Jenna, my co-presenter, later told me that I had missed the best paper in the conference. My loss, but the paper is online so I presume I can read it now. On the entertainment side of it, the constant repartee between Alec and Gavin was already expected from my experience of it last year. The philosophy of computer games as recounted by Ernest Adams (the keynote) certainly entertained although I strongly disagree with most of it. There was one of the usual 'magic circle' debates among the panelists; only this one led to Pride and Prejudice and speculations about whether it was possible to find Darcy's grave. I also enjoyed Esther's description of her WoW battle with the great Espen Aarseth himself. Last but not least, perhaps the most entertaining part was Jenna's adventurous GTA-style driving on the way back. (this is a long post so if you are just after the papers download them from here)

This posting will be in part a response to some ideas I either contest or wish to develop. It will also attempt to provide a general summary of the conference.

Philosophising on Computer Games: An Alternative Response to Ernest Adams

I do not know if there is a 'philosophy of videogames' but I work with two philosophers, in the main, to formulate my own thoughts on games; so though I won't go as far as to point to a 'videogame philosophy', I'll certainly agree that there is an imminent need to think about videogames philosophically. I went to (and presented at) the Games and Philosophy Conference at Potsdam, last year and I was happily rewarded with some of the most philosophically oriented discussions on videogames. When Ernest Adams opened his keynote address on the philosophical roots of computer games, I was expecting more of such discourse. Adams has always appealed to me in the way he bashes the academia for needlessly engaging in the ludology-narratology (non)debate and in the way he understands gameplay as 'difficult to define' rather than trying to define it within a set formula. Therefore, I was surprised when he tossed game studies (if there is such a thing) between the binaries of English and French philosophy as well as the classical and the Romantic.

Videogames, he says, are number-driven and logic-driven. Their orientation is more classical than Romantic. For Adams, videogames (those that tell stories, that is) do create a tussle between the classical and Romantic identities but even these can at best compare to Norse Saga or Victorian novels. Videogames have not had their Modernist or Postmodern text. To back this up, he considers the oft-cited 'postmodern' experience of the break in the fourth wall / magic circle (or whatever you will) and claims that it is not a break in the immersion ( how i hate the word ... shall we call it 'involvement' or something else, please?) because the player is never really immersed. So much for 'flow' and Cszikzentmihalyi (pronounced 'Chicks send me high') then, if one listens to Adams.

As I said earlier, I so disagree with a lot of what he says. Against the French / English philosophy binarism: according to Adams, the philosophy of videogames has nothing to do with Derrida, Bergson and Sartre (because they are French and inductive) and everything to do with Locke, Hume and Whitehead (because they are English and deductive). I am being flippant here but this is how such a binarism sounds. I am not sure what aspects of Bergson's works, Adams considers but he certainly does not take into account how Gilles Deleuze uses, quite effectively, Bergson, Whitehead and Hume to engage in supplementing each other's concepts. The watertight binarism certainly isn't a product of nationality; nor is there a clear-cut binarism of inductive versus deductive. Or even of Classical versus Romantic for that matter. Nietzsche, whom Deleuze reads deeply, says in Ecce Homo that The Birth of Tragedy is his 'most offensively Hegelian' book because of its dialectical opposition of the Apollonian and Dionysiac (roughly corresponding to Classical and Romantic). Nietzsche clarifies that he understands 'Greek tragedy as the Dionysiac chorus which ever anew discharges itself in an Apollonian world of images.' Adams's binarism, therefore, has been challenged and disproved in philosophical terms, over a century ago. He refers to David Thomas's (of 'Buzzcut' fame) article on gaming as belonging to Pre-Socratic philosophy, which Thomas understands as 'all is number' in a very limited sense. As Keith Ansell-Pearson comments, Nietzsche explicitly connects the Dionysiac with the concept of flow and Becoming as stated by Heraclitus, a key Pre-Socratic philosopher. Deleuze goes on to develop Nietzsche's reading into an idea of Becoming that is now of legendary proportion. In my last year's paper at UTM (as well as in many other papers), I have applied the idea of Becoming to videogames, especially to describe the involvement of the player and the machine. However, I digress ...

Adams's claim about the player's immersion, i partly support. I have often likened immersion to a dip in the Ganges - under water and fully out of contact with the outside world. That does not happen in games, says Adams and I totally agree. However, if it does not happen in games, neither does it happen in books and movies as Adams seems to claim. Normally I have to challenge the other extreme argument that claims that games are like the Holodeck - hence, this new claim is rather amusing for me. Typically, then this would problematise even the relocation of the fourth wall (after Steven's paper, I shan't say 'breaking' ever again) - for Adams, the experience does not include the deep involvement that Esther pointed to while describing her deep gaming experience which made her oblivious to other passengers on the train. In sum, Adams makes a rather extreme claim for the game experience and it is one that does not account for the deep involvement. I believe that extreme and dialectically opposite positions should consider the experience as being more processual and engage with ideas such as Becoming to explain this.

These problematic conceptions also prompt Adams to conclude that videogames are sans their Modernist or Postmodernist examples and should rather be compared to Pre-modernist literature. However, any literature student will know that chronology does not work as a categorising element in literature - not any more. Consider the Modernist and Postmodern implications of Tristram Shandy or Tom Jones. One more point that I cannot resist making although it is a sort of digression.

Adams claims that Victorians did not use their machine to create art. He has probably forgotten Ada Lovelace who wished to use Babbage's Analytical Engine for 'poetic programming' or weaving artistic patterns with music (in other words, being a computer DJ). Babbage himself used to impress his guests with automata built to entertain. Cultural Babbage offers many examples as does my own article on the subject. Even in the 'steampunk' novels that Adams refers to, there are ample examples: in The Difference Engine, John Keats (otherwise famous in our world) earns his living as a 'clacker' (hacker/programmer) who programs for the cinema.

To return to my main contention, however. Adams neglects many videogame titles that do not correspond to the Norse saga structure that he sees in Duke Nukem or Quake. Many games problematise the idea of good and bad binaries. Max Payne, Stalker (which Adams was consulted on), Fahrenheit, GTA etc in their own ways relate to current theoretical and philosophical positions. In yesterday's conference, ironically most of the philosophers discussed by the presenters were French and postmodern (i use this term loosely and rather unhappily). I've just found out that Adams' paper was first published in 2004 - a year before I started my PhD. It is to my discredit that I did not find it earlier - or else I would challenged it more substantially within my thesis. However, even in in 2004, there were games like Blade Runner that would, in essence, challenge the simple story structure that Adams claims for videogames. It just shows how important it is to start studying the stories in videogames in more depth instead of endless quibbling over things like player studies versus game studies.

Steven Conway Relocates the Fourth Wall

Steven if you are reading this, then you'll see that the masthead of Ludus Ex is all about what you said in the conference. 'I was in a computer game. Funny as hell it was the most horrible thing i could think of'. In fact, even in RL (which one of Sherry Turkle's respondents calls 'another window') I sometimes feel a relocation of an imaginary 'fourth wall' (or nth wall) which in a Phildickian way seems to surround us (assuming that life is an ARG, ha ha).

Back to academic blogging (see i've already relocated the fourth wall).Snap!

I liked the way in which Conway spoke of the relocation of the fourth wall rather than the breaking of it. He basically proved previous commentators wrong in one neat slash and numerous examples from other media that many game critics hadn't considered. The examples are too many to recount and I sincerely wish I could share his presentation with the readers of Ludus Ex. However, he spoke of how Max Payne refers self-reflexively to its identity as a videogame and how Psycho-Mantis 'reads' the player's mind in a faux-psionic way and makes the player perform acts outside the game in order to defeat him. Other critics would call this being pulled 'out of the game' but Conway contends that it is instead an extension of the game. It could be a contraction or the expansion of the fourth wall but it is still the maintenance of the 'as if' that the play involves. I am not one for magic circles or Hamlets on Holodecks, but Conway, if I read him right, is not either. As far as the play is concerned, I think the idea of the relocation is spot on. To illustrate this in terms of Brechtian 'alienation effect' (Snap! Correct me if I err, Steven. I am not writing like an academic now. The punctuation is intentional and many 'rap' poets relocate the fourth wall thus), in the game, the spectator is being reminded of a reality A that is different from the game's reality B while existing in another reality C which corresponds closely and almost resembles reality A. I agree with the concept of relocation also because it implicitly negates any final watertight (or even semi permeable) boundary which we have to 'break'; instead it shifts the experience to a different level of Becoming. This fits in with my conception of a Deleuzian Becoming, as well.

I was only intrigued that Conway does not refer to Gonzalo Frasca's use of the concept of the 'spect-actor' as borrowed from the drama of Augusto Boal. In a sense, Frasca also seems to support the relocation argument on a more general scale. Frasca talks of 'outmersion' where the player is conscious of being involved in the game and then he describes 'meta-outmersion' where the player is simultaneously conscious also of being 'outmersed'. If the spectator is simultaneously the actor, this is a constant process and the wall (or whatever imaginary membrane) of the act does not really break but it is relocated. All said, however, this is was a very interesting paper from Conway and I would certainly like to read more.

Shifting Boundaries: Gavin Stewart's Presentation on Paratexts and 'Inanimate Alice'

The other paper that I will briefly discuss in Gavin Stewart's. I had never heard Gavin present but I always had a deep respect for his work when he was at my university (i even called him 'sir' for the first two times i met him, he reminds me). Gavin spoke about a website called Inanimate Alice, Genettian ideas of paratext (as (mis)used by Mia Consalvo) and Bioshock game covers. The talk woke me up to the fact that I usually unconsciously take in so much from game covers. Must add this to my post-doc plan. Gavin also eloquently pointed to how even non-game objects are ludic to a degree, as they require. Inanimate Alice can, therefore, be a ludic entity at times. Similarly, ARGs can be a 'real life' entity as well as a ludic entity. It is also interesting to note how the paratexts of games affect our readings and play and also how games themselves work as paratexts. Finally, the often neglected (in my previous theoretical work, especially) element of the market needs to be considered in-depth. I will need to explore this further in my own research and thinking.

General Observations

First, I'd like to thank the organisers for having invited us (Jenna and me). The interest that the event evoked among the many gamers (you wouldn't use this term if you were there at yesterday's debate) was very encouraging. Among the other papers, I enjoyed Alec Charles' paper (thanks for thanking me about 'egoshooters'; credit also goes to my friend Mark Butler). The concept of 'hailing' in Althusserian terms has already been used by Will Slocombe in his essay on ludic agency (Digital Gameplay ed. Nate Garrelts). I am not sure I agree. I've said a lot of about agency already. Click here for an example. Of the others, I thought Maria Baecke could have developed her interesting study a bit more and also that the paper on gamer mothers could have been more representative and supplied more details. I was happy to meet Philip Lin who presented on a somewhat similar topic as ourselves -- the US Army and 'militainment'. Philip is developing his PhD plan now: all the best. Adrienne Shaw presented a interesting case study of Finnish gaming and how it relates to the global experience. We should see more of these coming up... soon, hopefully. Finally, I must say I was slightly disappointed by Vicente Gandasgui's paper on spectatorship. I am not sure King Kong is the best example for game-film comparison and Gandasgui did not seem to be aware of ground-breaking work on cutscenes (such as Rune Klevjer's) and dismissed them by saying that his friends find them boring so they really don't count as parts of the game. He also missed key research in the area – especially by Tanya Krzywinska (who is also a film theorist in her own right) and Michael Nitsche. I am sure he will develop his research further as he progresses with his research in what is a very interesting topic.

And so we came away from 'Under the Mask' driving through the heavy spray, tired but quite satisfied with a great gaming day.

All the papers are now available here.

Haven't blogged in ages now. In fact, I have even had a rather long period of ludic stagnation. 'This gaming life' has been eventful in other ways - some good and some not. Two events that I have attended deserve special mention. One was the LINK event held in Loughborough University in mid-May where the gathered academics and postgraduate students provided me with some important insights on publishing the PhD thesis. Besides this, there were some interesting postgrad papers - the one that interested me most was, predictably, on cyborgs and disability. The hybrid identity of the cyborg was flagged up as the connecting link for discursive alliance for women and the handicapped. What particularly intrigued me was how world war 2 disfigurement was seen as cyborgean and how people were seen as being regendered (remasculinised). My notes have to be aided by faded memories and I am afraid that I do not do justice to the paper. I've learnt my lesson about why one shouldn't leave things unblogged for too long.

This was the very thing that Jess Lacetti, prolific blogger and new media researcher at De Montfort, told us at the CEDAR workshop. Lacetti, interestingly, calls weblogs 'online academic business cards' and asks academic bloggers to concentrate on topical content. Good advice, for sure - in fact, I was pulled up slightly for suggesting something more in the nature of 'Ludus Ex'. Lacetti's solution is to maintain different blogs and not conflate their purpose. She gives the following three reasons for academic blogging:

i exist online

i participate with other scholars

i am able to think through writing

Nice. One thing I know and keep forgetting is the importance of tagging. There are no tags to this post but there will be more in any future post ... i promise. Tagging obviously gets the web-crawlers attention with all the meta-data and also helps create easy links between topics. My external examiner, Will Slocombe, was also one of the speakers at the event. He spoke on the importance of blogging as a teaching tool, how it is important for 'keeping in shape' for writing and how it enables peer-review. Astrid Ensslin, editor of the Journal of Gaming and Virtual Worlds, also spoke on her blogging experiences as a PhD student, about the importance of blogs in disseminating ideas, sharing posts, networking with other academics and the importance of rss feeds. Together with the rest of the team from Bangor (researchers Lyell Skains and Sonia Fizek), she showed us how to use Google Sites and Google Forms. Very useful for me - I was even able to use these examples for a job interview!

All said and done, however, much as I agree with the need for academic blogging and find the tips provided useful, I personally find it immensely more pleasant to read about someone's research and thoughts in a non/quasi-academic blog like QBlog (maintained by Richard Bartle , mentioned in an earlier entry). It's about the style and also the way it points out something very different to what I would normally expect in my real, virtual and possible lives (getting a bit too Deleuzian already) that I like so much more than some very dreary academic blogs that I have to plough through occasionally. For me blogging is about the in-between spaces of one's research and thinking. Of course, this is a very personal view and I know I need to be more of a disciplined and organised blogger.


Speaking of 'in-between spaces', as always these were for me the best part of the event: as I've always maintained, the smooth spaces of interaction that exist alongside the striated organisation of events are extremely important. In between the talks or (rather rudely) even during them in whispered conversations, I learned more about other people's work on game design, new stuff that people were doing and (importantly) where to get good Indian food in Leicester.

After the nice food (idli and sambar rather than Biriyani though), the final event was a demonstration of a mathematical tool designed for mapping creativity. I must say I wasn't convinced and was rather too vocal about it. At least, it shows that scientists and artists are still happy to talk to each other. I had almost lost hope after hearing a science PhD (a rather stuck-up one, as well) student, who is unfortunately an acquaintance of mine, say a million times how worthless the people who degrees in the Humanities are ... Well my friend, at least some of your colleagues recognise our importance although I squirm at the methods they use to 'map' us.


Finally, the pathbreaking event in my life: I learnt that some people, somewhere in the world actually think that I am a little turtle (in Polish, apparently my name means 'little turtle').

No actually that's not the pathbreaking thing that's changed my life ... it's the fact that I've begun to believe that what these people think is true. Yes, I am a little turtle.

Raphael, Michelangelo, Donatello, Leonardo and Souvik ....

The comment about Pacman in my previous post reminded me of this fab video that I found on the Ludologist.

http://www.dailymotion.com/swf/x9003r

Enjoy!

Once again, Hinduism makes its way into 'Ludus Ex' but this time in a full-blown post devoted to it. The reason for writing this is that I recently read two rather conflicting views on the first game blockbuster in the Indian market: a game called Hanuman. A few days back, Edge reported a 300 % growth in the profits of Sony Playstation India and judging from the words of Atindriya Bose, the country manager, India's somnolent gaming industry seems to have stirred a bit. Hanuman is even supposed to ship to the UK (good news although I'm not a console gamer) and South Africa. This is a proud moment for any Indian gamer, I'm sure. Not for all Indians, though. The second news clipping that I came across told me that a Hindu group wanted the game withdrawn because it apparently offends the Hindu religion. I saw a number of comments on various forums branding these people 'fundamentalists' and one person even facetiously comments that Indians need to 'stick to Pacman'. The cloud, however, remains and the Indian gamer is at risk of being ignored altogether. Let me try to voice his or her thoughts, here.

First, the group concerned is more keen on publicity than in practising religion. If they have read even a tiny bit of the Hindu scriptures, this self-taught Hindutva will sound very hollow indeed. Mind you, these people are based in the US and are not really connected to the Indian scenario. Hanuman, the game concerned, is about a Hindu God - the super-powerful monkey-god who moved an entire mountain and flew across the country (much before anyone ever thought of Krypton). Hanuman is a major character in the Hindu epic, The Ramayan (he also makes a cameo appearance in the Mahabharat). I can understand the umbrage of people who cannot imagine how their god can be put in the hands of reckless children wielding their joypads and insulting the power of their god. After all, one hasn't made a videogame on Jesus, Jehovah or the Islamic heroes.

There is, however, a subtle difference that is missed in such simplistic conclusions. What is missed, however, is of great import: the entire ethos of Hinduism (the problem of using this term is something I shan't go into, here) is missed here. In Hindu literature, the importance of play is paramount. The gods themselves indulge in leela or 'divine play'. Strangely enough, the hardcore critics of the game have forgotten that leela is characteristic of festivals related to the Ramayan. Ram-leela as it is called is an important part of festivals and if you go to the holy cities like Benares, many a roadside trader will try to sell you dolls of the characters from the Ramayan. Needless to say, Hanuman is a prominent attraction. Indian kids have played with Hanuman for millennia because Hindu culture has constantly highlighted the relationship between the ludic and the divine. With the new Hanuman videogame, therefore, they will not be doing anything to insult a god; rather in an ancient culture whose values are being eroded by 'Westernisation', this symbolises the power that Hindu texts have of rejuvenating themselves generation after generation. Moreover, the rich narrative of the Ramayan can now be explored again and again even in places where people do not know anything about the richness of the Indian epics.

Such anti-videogame reactions are not new and neither are they restricted to Hindus or even to religion. As in most cases, the ignorance about videogames and the problem in recognising them as texts gives rise to such ignorant comments. The first thing that we need to learn, whether from Western scholars such as Huizinga or from the ancient Hindu scriptures, is that play is serious and that mistaking the ludic for the ludicrous can lead to very grave consequences.

Finally, all the best, therefore, to Hanuman and to Indian gaming.

There's been a lot to write about but I have been lazy. Lazy? Well, not really ... besides being busy with millions of emails and job application letters, I have managed to finally conquer the Egyptians, the ever-truculent Scipii and even the indefatigable Britons with my Roman legions (all this in Rome: Total War, of course). Only two cities in Parthia stand against me but it's not too long before my legions will lay siege and conquer. Great as this achievement may be and worthy of being chronicled by none less than Livy the 2nd, it is not why I return to Ludus Ex today. A few days back, the Nottingham Trent University's press office showed interest in my research and asked me if I would agree to a press release. Being busy in my quotidian battles - in the world of applications by day and in fighting the Parthian horse archers by night - I agreed without entirely realising the importance of this. Now I know and I would really like to thank them for their interest.

The Guardian Gamesblog has now written about my research. They have even included a picture of the Inferno videogame and I'm chuffed (I was once unceremoniously ejected for suggesting that Dante's Divina Commedia was very like a videogame). I have always been a serious reader of the Gamesblog - I like its style and range. Many a time, have I wished to respond to Keith Stuart's or Alex Krotoski's posts but have always been too shy. In fact, I even met Keith at GameCity last year in the videogame quiz that he conducted ( a great quiz despite the sad memory of being totally outshone by our betters, despite Andrew and co.'s valiant efforts). Anyway, as I read the GamesBlog today, I'm having a think about Keith's comment in today's posting. The title 'Games As Valuable As Books in Terms of Literary Worth' is a comparison that is not mine - however, the fact that videogames provide a vital and much neglected perspective on our reading experience certainly is. For myself, I'd rather not go into 'value' as literary worth (which would be making a 'grandiose' claim) but rather focus on the importance of deeper readings of videogame narratives. The comment on the Gamesblog goes thus:

Hmm, I think it's rather an analytical leap to compare the provision of multiple story endings with a fully interactive experience. It's also a difficult sell in terms of the quality of video game story telling. The examples he provides are Half-Life 2, Bioshock and Assassin's Creed - all credible narrative experiences sure enough, but will we ever be dissecting a videogame plot, or its underlying meaning, with the same voracity that we approach a novel by Dickens, or George Elliot, or Stephen King?

Will we indeed? The 'analytical leap' is one that has been the bone of contention between ludologists and 'narratologists' (as the ludologists call them - they need not necessarily be clubbed with Gerard Genette etc). Multiplicity, when understood in the framework employed by the French philosopher, Gilles Deleuze, does show significant similarities between literature and videogames. Deleuze points to Kafka's stories form an 'assemblage' --- with themselves as well as with other assemblages and also how they form an assemblage in terms of time and endings. I have earlier commented on the classic example from Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, where the Prince says, 'no no , that is not how it happened at all' thus highlighting the (non)negation of a perfectly legitimate ending. Think of a Dickens novel now (let's not go into more obviously ludic literature such as Cortazar's Hopscotch). Great Expectations originally ended with Pip and Estella not getting married but, on the suggestion of Bulwyer-Lytton, Dickens revised it giving it a happier ending - 'no no, that is not how it happened at all'. As we traverse the plot to unravel 'meaning' in a novel, there is interaction certainly (albeit of a different media-specificity, it needs to be emphasised) and there are many more temporal schemes and endings than are apparent. The videogame narrative points this out even more clearly than earlier media and instead of letting us rest content with quick conclusions like 'this is a story about Pip's love for Estella', it further problematises the very idea of narrative by pointing out the multiplicity in what is apparently single and obvious.

Whether this means that games should be taught for A-levels and GCSE I honestly do not know (would be fun though). What concerns me, however, is the academic negligence of a narrative medium (yes, the ludology-narratology debate is history) that tells us more not only about our reading experience today but also about how we have always been reading. This will change, hopefully. After all, a few years ago many institutions that now specialise in Film Studies would have been sniffy even at the very name. Mind you, even English Literature wasn't a university subject until the twentieth century despite its long and rich history.

Besides the GamesBlog, some other gaming websites have reported on my research. Some of the ones that I picked out are Gamer's Daily News and Gamezine.co.uk. Thanks a lot - it feels good to know that there is a significantly high level of interest in issues related to videogames.

Has anyone of you played Noby Noby Boy ('stretchy stretchy boy' in Japanese)? I haven't and there is little likelihood that I will - it's made solely for PS3 and I don't see myself ever possessing one (I don't even have a tv). Despite no familiarity with the gameplay, I can safely say that one of my most unforgettable gaming experiences is connected to this game. I saw the game being demo-ed on a large screen by the designer Keita Takahashi who was delivering the GameCity 2007 vision statement. I can't describe the game - it's too bizarre for words: effectively, it's got a couple of stretchy characters that stretch from planet to planet, winding themselves around creatures. Do wikipedia it to learn more about what happens in it ... I'm not even going to attempt a description. By the way, the designer's the same guy who made Katamari Damacy.

It's because of him that I can't forget this game. He stood in front of us, barefoot, on the podium and said the only words he knew in English: 'I don't speak English.' The conversation that followed was in Japanese with the interpreter struggling to translate the world of Takahashi into English. I don't think he was speaking and us listening --- rather, it was some weird sort of collective imagination. He drew houses, lorries with smiling faces and showed us his house on Google Earth. He also said that he would grow weeds upward from his balcony so that they would reach the flat of the noisy couple upstairs. Then someone asked him what games he would make next and what games he played. 'None', he answered for both questions. He wants to build playgrounds for children and he wanted us to see Noby Noby Boy. Suddenly two stretchy characters were wriggling around each other and entwining themselves around random objects onscreen. It was a trance-like feeling. Recently, after the game was released, Takahashi was asked if he was high on drugs when he conceived the game, an allegation he was quick to deny. Keita Takahashi, I believe you. One only needs to have seen the man to know.

I can see the Noby Noby game as a game-design metaphor. Imagination. Limitlessly stretching, entwining and more forming complex patterns that are deceptively simple. I wonder what Takahashi's imaginative playgrounds will contain, if he ever gets to build them.