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 a forum for the uses of videogames in advertising, politics, education, and other everyday activities, outside the sphere of entertainment
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My latest colum: Performative Play June 27, 2008 - by Ian Bogost Gamasutra has published my latest "Persuasive Games" column, this one on how gameplay can literally alter the real world, not through changes in attitude but via gameplay actions themselves. "Performative" is a name for speech acts that do things themselves when they are uttered. The classic example of the performative is the cleric or magistrate's declaration, "I now pronounce you man and wife." In this case, the utterance itself performs the action of initiating the marriage union.
Other examples are promises and apologies, christenings and wagers, firing and sentencing. "I promise to come home by midnight"; "I dub thee Sir Wilbur"; "You're fired!"; "I bet you $100 I can beat Through the Fire and Flames on Expert." When we utter such statements, the act of speaking itself issues the commitment or regret, the naming or the bet.
In every video game, players' actions make the game work: tilting an analog stick to move Crash Bandicoot; pressing Y to make Niko Bellic carjack; strumming the fret of a Rock Band guitar to puppet the on-screen guitarist. Such is the definition of interactivity, after all. But there is another, rarer kind of gameplay action, one that performs some action outside of the game at the same time as it does so in the game.
The notion of the performative offers one way to understand such actions. In these cases, things a player does when playing take on a meaning in the game, but they also literally do something in the world beyond the game and its players.
You can read the whole article over on Gamasutra. POST A COMMENT
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