Introduktion til medier

Introduktion til medier
og kommunikation

15. november

Konvergens og computerspil

Convergence

•
”Media convergence is more than simply
a technological shift. Convergence alters
the relationship between existing
technologies, industries, markets, genres,
and audiences. Convergence alters the
logic by which media industries operate
and by which media consumers process
news and entertainment. Keep this in
mind: convergence refers to
a process,
not an endpoint
” (15
-
16)

Quentin Tarantino’s
Star Wars

•
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h57X
yqVYU_0


Convergence impacts
consumption and
production

•
”In turn, media convergence impacts the way
we consume media. A teenager doing
homework may juggle four or five windows,
scan the Web, listen to and download MP3 files,
chat with friends, word
-
process a paper, and
respond to e
-
mail, shifting rapidly between
tasks. And fans of a popular television series
may sample dialogue, summarize episodes,
debate subtexts, create original fan fiction,
record their own soundtracks, make their own
movies
–

and distribute all of this worldwide via
the internet” (16)

Top
-
down og bottom
-
up

•
Digitale medier gør, at produktion og distribution
bliver billigere og nemmere og i princippet kan
brugeren have større indflydelse end før
(arkivere, annotere, cirkulere, distribuere,
appropriere, remixe)

•
På samme tid oplever vi
koncentrationstendenser, hvor ganske få
dominerer den globale underholdningsindustri

•
Konvergens er både top
-
down corporate
-
driven
proces og bottom
-
up consumer driven proces

Noisy consumers

•
”Convergence requires media companies to rethink old
assumptions about what it means to consume media,
assumptions that shape both programming and marketing
decisions.

•
If old consumers were assumed to be passive, the new
consumers are active. If old consumers were predictable
and stayed where you told them to stay, then new
consumers are migratory, showing a declining loyalty to
networks or media. If old consumers were isolated
individuals, the new consumers are more socially
connected.

•
If the work of media consumers was once silent and
invisble, the new consumers are now noisy and public”
(19)

•
Fan kultur: Internettet har givet disse kulturer ny
synlighed
–

distribution for amatørproduktioner

•
Digitale fan film er hvad punk var for musikken
–

græsrødder, eksperimenter, nye teknikker og nye
relationer til publikum

•
Industriens reaktioner:
Prohibitionists

vs
collaborationists

•
Amatør produktioner plejer at være af dårlig
kvalitet, men man har brug for at rum, hvor det er
ok at lave dårlige værker, til at modtage kritik og
blive bedre

•
Internettet som sted for eksperimenter og innovation
–

amatørerne driver innovation, udvikler ny praksis, genrer, der
ofte får kult status

•
De kommercielt succesfulde bliver absorberet ind i
massemedierne

•
…og også omvendt
–

mainstream media kan give inspiration
til amatørerne og flytte populærkulturen i nye retninger

•
Det store spørgsmål er om det kan betale sig på længere sigt
at give ophavsretten ”fri”

•
”Once you put creative tools in the hands of everyday people,
there’s no telling what they are going to make with them
–

and
that’s a large part of the fun” (166)

1.
Teknologisk konvergens

2.
Indholdsmæssig konvergens

3.
Netværkskonvergens

4.
Platformskonvergens

5.
Branchemæssig konvergens

6.
Social konvergens

7.
Æstetisk konvergens

8.
Kulturel konvergens

Bruhn Jensen, K. (2003).
Dansk mediehistorie

(Vol. 4). Frederiksberg: Samfundslitteratur. P. 19f.

Otte slags
konvergens

•
Tjenester (telefoni, broadcasting, online)

•
Tv
-
sendenet (jordbaseret, satellit, kabel)

•
Terminaler/platforme (telefoner,
computer)

Teknologisk
konvergens

•
Multimedier, “atomer til bits”
(Negroponte)

•
Tekst

•
Lyd

•
Billeder

•
Video

Indholdsmæssig
konvergens

Negroponte, Nicholas. (1995).
Being digital
. London: Hodder & Stoughton.

•
Et netværk
–

alle tjenester

•
Hybridnet

•
Satellitforbindelse

•
Mobilt internet

•
DVB (Digital Video Broadcasting)

•
DVB
-
T (Terrestrial)

•
DVB
-
C (Cable)

Distributionsmæssig
konvergens

•
Samme terminal kan klare
forskellige medier

•
Tv
-
apparat: fjernsyn, tekst
-
tv,
radio, videospil

•
Forskellige terminaler kan
modtage samme medie

•
Radio via antenne
(analog/digital), kabel, internet

Terminalmæssig
konvergens

•
Forlag

•
Filmselskaber

•
Musikproducenter

•
Softwarehuse

•
Telefonselskaber

•
TV
-
stationer


•
Who Owns What

Branchemæssig
konvergens

•
Flermedial mediebrug, multitasking (sker
i mediebrugerens hovede, ikke specifikt
digital)

•
Spil + tv + Facebook + sms + musik

Forbrugsmæssig
(eller social)
konvergens

•
Remediering (WWW remedierer
pressemeddelelsen, brochuren, avisen,
bogen, magasinet, radioen, filmen, osv)

•
Lån af visuel æstetik, f.eks. Flash
-
lignende animationer som pauseskærm
på tv

Æstetisk konvergens

•
Lokale kulturer flyder sammen over
grænser

•
Asiatisk films indflydelse på Hollywood

•
Fusionskøkken

•
Samtidig bliver det muligt at skabe
kulturelle fællesskaber omkring langt
mindre fænomener

•
Nichemusik

•
Seksuelle kulturer

Kulturel eller global
konvergens

Pixelvision

•
Sadie Benning: It
Wasn’t Love

Spil

Leg og spil

•
Leg er biologi (nature)

•
Alle pattedyr og nogle få andre
dyrearter leger

•
Spil er kultur (nurture)

•
Første spil, vi kender, var Senet (ca.
4000 fKr.)

Schools in Game
Studies

•
The simulation community

•
Game theory

•
Video game studies community

•
Narratologists [Janet Murray]

•
Ludologists [Jesper Juul]

•
Situationist group

•
[Henry Jenkins]

Four major types of
analysis

Type of analysis

Common methodologies

Theoretical inspiration

Common interest

Game

Textual analysis

Comparative literature, film
studies

Design choices, meaning

Player

Observation, interviews,
surveys

Sociology, ethnography,
cultural studies

Use of games, game
communities

Culture

Interviews, textual analysis

Cultural studies, sociology

Games as cultural objects,
games as part of the medie
ecology

Ontology

Philosophical enquiry

Various (e.g., philosophy,
cultural history, literary
criticism)

Logical/philosophical
foundations of games and
gaming

Spil som kultur

•
Popular culture

•
Low
-
brow

•
Dangerous! Violence, overweight, a
-
sociality

•
Guilty of massacres

•
Let
´
s censor!


Rules vs. fiction

•
The basic argument here is that video
games consist of two levels that are both
distinct and intertwine in many complex
ways:

•
The levels of the rules of the game; the
game
-
as
-
system.

•
The level of the world created by the
game; the game
-
as
-
fictional
-
world
(Juul 2005: 5).

•
“To speak of rules and to speak of
meaning is to speak of the same thing;
and if we look at all the intellectual
undertakings of mankind, as far as they
have been recorded all over the world,
the common denominator is always to
introduce some kind of order” (Lévi
-
Strauss 1995: 4).

Lévi
-
Strauss, Claude. (1995).
Myth and Meaning. Cracking the Code of Culture
. New York: Schocken
Books.


•
Caillois classifies games “into four rubrics, depending upon whether, in the
games under consideration, the role of competition, chance, simulation, or
vertigo is dominant:”

•
Agôn (competition): football, billiards, chess. “The point of the game is for
each player to have his superiority in a given area recognized” (15).

•
Alea (chance): roulette or a lottery. “All games that are based on a decision
independent of the player, an outcome over which he has no control, and in
which winning is the result of fate rather than triumphing over an adversary”
(p. 17).

•
Mimicry (simulation): pirate, Nero, or Hamlet. “All play presupposes the
temporary acceptance […] of a closed, conventional, and, in certain
respects, imaginary universe” (p. 19). “With one exception, mimicry exhibits
all the characteristics of play: liberty, convention, suspension of reality, and
delimitation of space and time. However, the continuus submission to
imperative and precise rules cannot be observed” (p. 22).

•
Ilinx (vertigo): “when one produces in oneself, by a rapid whirling or falling
movement, a state of dizziness and disorder” (p. 12). “They derive the same
kind of pleasure from the intoxication stimulated by high speed on skis,
motorcycles, or in driving sports cars. In order to give this kind of sensation
the intensity and brutality capable of shocking adults, powerful machines
have had to be invented.” (pp. 25
-
26).

•
“I created my first video game at the
age of 10, a
racing game

built on an
early computer terminal: I drew a race
track made of Xs on the screen and
moved the cursor around the track as
quickly as possible (timing it using a
digital watch), carefully making sure that
my car (the cursor) did not collide with
the barriers (the Xs)” (Juul 2003: 1)

Juul, Jesper. (2003).
Half
-
Real: Computer Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds.

(Ph.D. dissertation), IT
University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen.


•
“What had I created? No doubt it was a
game, since it had rules and goals. It was
also a video game, since it took place on
a screen. But it […] was not a computer
game: though the terminal was not much
of a computer on its own, being simply
designed to connect to a large mainframe
computer, it did have some processing
power, and I had therefore designed a
game on a computer. But it was not a
computer game in the usual sense
since it
was me, and not the computer, that was
taking care of the rules
” (Juul 2003: 1).

Rules and fiction

Juul, Jesper. (2007).
A Certain Level of Abstraction
. Paper presented at the DiGRA 2007, Tokyo.
http://www.jesperjuul.net/text/acertainlevel


Representation ”for”
and ”of” reality

•
A blueprint of a house in one mode is a
representation ”for” reality
: under its
guidance and control a reality, a house,
is produced that expresses the relations
contained in reduced and simplified
form in the blueprint.

•
There is a second use of a blueprint,
however. If someone asks for a
description of a particular house, one
can simply point to a blueprint and say,
”That’s the house.” Here the blueprint
stands as a
representation or symbol of
reality

(Carey p. 29)

Carey, James W. (1989). A Cultural Approach to Communication. In
Communication as Culture. Essays on Media
and Society

(pp. 13
-
36). London: Unwin Hyman.


Blueprint
for

drawing a
man

Leonardo da Vinci, ca 1487
(efter Vitruvius’
De
Architectura,

3. bog)

Blueprint “for” a car

Virtual design

•
Citröen Eole blev i 1986 vist
frem på biludstillingen i
Genève

•
Den var den første
fuldstændig
computerdesignede bil og
havde en luftmodstands
-
koefficient på 0,17

•
Den kom aldrig længere
end til prototypen, men
vigtige detaljer blev
inkluderet i XM
-
modellen

Citröen Eole og
XM

Computer Aided Design/ Computer
Aided Manufacturing (CAD/CAM)

Optagelser af lyd til
computerspillet Gran Turismo

“My car” (blueprint as a symbol
of

reality)


Still fra computerspillet Gran Turismo 4 (2005)