Gamer Theory is a book about ideology in video games.
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Gamer Theory is a book about ideology in video games.
About this project
"Wow... This introduced me to a whole new, fascinating world... I predict that the robots [at Kicktraq] will be wrong and that [Mr. Spindler's] Kickstarter campaign will succeed." --Dean Strang of Strang Bradley, LLC, defense attorney from Netflix's Making a Murderer and author of Worse than the Devil: Anarchists, Clarence Darrow, and Justice in a Time of Terror
What is Gamer Theory?
Gamer Theory is an update/response to another author's book of critical theory about video games.
My book is divided into two parts. The first part is a point-by-point response to McKenzie Wark's excellent Gamer Theory (2007, Harvard University Press). The second part offers an expanded definition of Gamer Theory, complete with suggestions for ways the reader can think critically about gaming and still enjoy the hell out of it. The working title for my book is Game Space.
What makes me qualified to write this book? I'm a published freelance journalist with training in literary critical theory and media theory. I write for smashthegamestate.com and gamemoir.com. I've got a Literature degree. Games and words are my two favorite things.
You'll find more technical details regarding the book's content below. Essentially, the questions I am asking in the book are:
- As information technology, entertainment technology, and communication technology become more and more tangled up and matted together, how is gaming changing?
- What do these changes mean for gamers?
- What sorts of questions should gamers be asking themselves as they play games?
I'm interested in asking questions and teaching myself and others how to ask better questions. I do not plan on pandering to a specific ideological perspective.
Now for the technical part:
Wark's concept of the "gamespace" is an application of the Situationist International's ideas of psychogeography, detournement, and recuperation to modern video games. Since 2007, the gaming world has undergone a number of significant changes. The gamespace's topological threads have only become more interwoven, as in the case of developers interacting with fans via social media and other forums, and, in some instances, more tangled, as in the case of a few militant misogynists' recuperation of "ethics in gaming journalism" for nefarious -- and categorically unethical -- ends. If Gamer Theory is to avoid obsolescence, it must address the current issues affecting the gaming world and the gamespace.
Check out the backers. McKenzie "Ken" Wark is on board. You should be, too!
If you're a fan of Zero Punctuation, Penny Arcade, The Jimquisition, and Extra Credits, then my book is for you.
I am collecting scholarly articles, meeting with game devs and mapping out the book's trajectory. If you are an indie game dev and you want to get your masterpiece some more exposure, this is the perfect opportunity.
If the book is funded, I will be marketing it in bookstores and distributing it to libraries nationwide. Hence the $5,000 USD goal. As Abraham Lincoln once said of his log cabin, "Go big or go home."
Why Gamer Theory?
My good friend Nick lent me McKenzie Wark's Gamer Theory (2007) a long time ago and I never returned it. I really like its concept of games being played in a digitally realized "gamespace." It's a fantastic book. That said, it's serious critical theory and can be difficult for a gamer to parse.
Where Your Money Goes
Self-publishing is expensive. Whatever money is leftover from research, writing, editing, and publishing will go towards advertising and distribution of the book. I do not stand to make a profit on the book unless it is amply distributed.
Serious Criticism
Here is an incomplete list of the theorists and writers whose work will directly influence (in unequal measures) my take on Gamer Theory:
- Kathy Acker
- Ernst Block
- Jean Baudrillard
- Jacques Rancière
- Guy Debord
- Judith Butler
- William T. Vollmann
- Donna Haraway
- Slavoj Zizek
- Byrne Fone
- Barrington Moore, Jr.
- Alan Watts
- Howard Zinn
- James Baldwin
- Jacques Derrida
- Shingy, AOL Time Warner's Digital Prophet
Games!
The book will feature analysis of AAA games and indie games whose content, for whatever reason (and the reasons vary widely), merits in-depth study.
Here's an incomplete list of games that I will write about in my book and potential topics for conversation:
- Woah, Dave! -- platforming physics and natural law
- Towerfall, Towerfall: Ascension, and Dark World -- color-coded gender inversion and local multiplayer gen
- SanctuaryRPG -- roguelike gaming as exploration of historicity
- the Dead Space series -- isolation and the meaning of dead in the gamespace
- Bulletstorm -- detournement/recuperation of shooter tropes
- the Bit.Trip franchise -- indie gaming as metafiction
- Saturday Morning RPG -- the ideology of retro nostalgia
- Dying Light -- apocalypse as playground, tower as societal structure, gamespace as freedom
- The Binding of Isaac and The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth -- on the roguelike genre and its obsession with revisionism
- Bardbarian -- music in the gamespace
- Wolfenstein: The New Order -- gamespace as non-historical document, history as fodder
- Injustice: Gods Among Us -- superheroes and society's critical mass for individual unique identities; superheroism's fixation on meritocratic valuation; invisible fascism in the gamespace
- VVVVVV -- gamespace as arbitration
- Marlow Briggs and the Mask of Death -- state machine as wish fulfillment machine
- Shadow Warrior -- gamespace and cosmology
- Dead Rising 2, DR: OTH, DR:3 -- weapon-fashioning and adaptability in the gamespace
- State of Decay -- survival genre as double-inverted gamespace
- X-Tactics -- data streams in the mobile gamespace
- Skullgirls -- gamespace as mind-expansion, gamespace as headache
- Painkiller Black -- gamespace and cosmology part II
- Pillars of Eternity -- crowdfunding and nostalgia
- Battlesloths -- game jams and gamespace
- the Hotline Miami series
- Deadly Premonition
- D4: Dark Dreams Don't Die
- HuniePop
- Prototype 2
- the Tomb Raider series
- Skulls of the Shogun
- Earth Defense Force: Insect Armageddon
- One Finger Death Punch
- Corporate Life Simulator
- Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days
- Starwhal
- Dark Souls
- Binary Domain
- Cthulhu Saves the World
- Party Hard
- Rogue Legacy
- Sine Mora
- Atom Zombie Smasher
- the Red Faction series
More games to be discussed:
If there is a Steam or mobile game you want to see covered in my book, suggest it in the comments section below! Be sure to state your case for the game's inclusion, what it represents about the gamespace, why it's important, etc. I can't promise that the book will feature commentary on every game suggested but I will do my best! (Remember, this is a book of critical theory, not Tips and Tricks, not Easter Eggs, not Reviews.)
So, why a book?
I want to have the means to knuckle down and develop my ideas about gaming more fully.
Why not just put it in the blog? The blog's scope is limited by its form. While the blog allows for images, sound and gameplay footage from memes, YouTube, and other web sources, these visual and acoustic enhancements pull the reader's focus from the text. These interruptions are essential to the blog form. Not many people would want to read a longform blog post on gaming with no pictures, no screenshots, nothing but a wall of daunting text. A blog must be designed to be navigable and interactive.
Ah, but a book excites different expectations and satisfies different desires. A book without pictures, without sound, without embedded video requires in-depth research and exercise of longform technique. A book's extended scope gives an author space to develop criticism into theory, ideas into ideological analyses, a million half-baked notions into one singular vision. Such space is not to be found on a blogroll.
Why Kickstarter?
Writing a book requires time and money, and having time costs money. At the present moment, I simply do not have the means to do the research, write the book, promote it and distribute it without ending up in debtors' prison. Kickstarter offers a chance I wouldn't otherwise have. So I've put together this Kickstarter campaign.
I estimate that the research will take three months. I estimate the book will be 100,000 words. I am asking for a minimum of 5,000 dollars to pay research costs, proofreading costs, printing costs, shipping costs, promotional costs, cover art costs, all that jazz.
I will devote as much time as I can to writing the book. It will not be my only project. I am a freelance writer with professional commitments.
The book is set for a December release.
Book Samples
Sample 1
What happens on-screen is a Platonic shadow on the cave wall, as Wark points out. The images on-screen -- the sprite-sheets sequenced into frame-by-frame anims, the level layout, the platforms themselves -- exist to us only because they are cross-referenced and brought to simulated life by the ideal logic of the game’s invisible state-switching machinery. When time is bent (as in the bullet-time made industry standard by the Max Payne series) and where space itself is made to misbehave (as in the Portal series); even in an instance in which clipping has been disabled and the character can walk through walls (as in Doom), it is the references that have changed. The ideal relationships upheld by unseen physical laws encapsulated in the programming language cannot be changed -- else, the game crashes.
Sample 2
Digital games show how physical space so often becomes secondary to topological space -- that is to say, the metaphysical space created by video games and the internet and GPS satellites and all the other instantaneous delights of the modern age; the same metaphysical space wherein many aspects of our lives are tracked at warp-speed. Just take a look at all the in-game data collected topologically in Steam, Microsoft, and Sony user accounts. A player can be given incentives to record X amount of hours in such and such game. Indeed some gamers pride themselves on holding the record for in-game hours in a particular game. For these gamers, even the act of choosing a game to play has become gamified...
For more, check out my book!
Technical Specs!
The physical edition of the book will be 6” by 9” soft cover.
The book is estimated at 100,000 words (including appendix materials). The typical 6” by 9” book fits 250 words per page. So, 100,000 words divided by 250 words per page gives us 400 pages. I’ve added 25 extra pages to my pricing estimate to cover things like title pages, copyright, index, table of contents, et cetera.
Let's make this book happen, yeah?
Risks and challenges
There is the possibility (alright, probability) that, as I try to translate Ken Wark's more esoteric concepts, I will completely misinterpret, misconstrue, and misrepresent the original work.
Other risks: under-estimating the overhead costs; research taking longer than expected; theft of intellect by sorcery and/or lesser magics; famine; plagues.
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