【旧译】游戏学研究,第一年
注:此文为 2001 年《游戏学研究》创刊号的卷首文章,仅供参考
埃斯本・阿瑟斯(Espen Aarseth),哥本哈根大学人文信息学副教授,著有《赛博文本:文学中的遍历性视点》,主张关注游戏性,来建立游戏学进行游戏文本的研究,2001 年创办《游戏学研究》(game studies)并获北欧人文与社会科学研究理事会联合委员会认证。此篇为 2001 年阿瑟斯为《游戏学研究》创刊号所写的卷首。
游戏学研究,第一年。
作者:艾斯本.阿瑟斯(Espen.Aarseth)—《游戏学研究》主编
译:Kinostone
Welcome to the first issue of the first academic, peer-reviewed journal dedicated to computer game studies. This is a noteworthy occasion, and perhaps the most remarkable aspect is that such a journal has not been started before. As we know, there have been computer games for almost as long as there have been computers: SpaceWar, arguably the first modern game, turns forty this year, and commercially the genre has existed for three decades. So why not something like this before?
欢迎阅读第一期致力于电子游戏研究的第一期学术期刊。电子游戏,这是一个期待深入挖掘的全新领域,也许目前来说,这类的期刊还未曾有过。但正如我们所知,电子游戏的历史几乎与计算机一样长:SpaceWar 太空战争(1962),可以说是第一款现代游戏,今年已经变成了四十年,并且在商业上,游戏这门生意已经存在了三十年。那么为什么之前没有针对游戏这样东西的研究呢?
2001 can be seen as the Year One of Computer Game Studies as an emerging, viable, international, academic field. This year has seen the first international scholarly conference on computer games, in Copenhagen in March, and several others will follow. 01-02 may also be the academic year when regular graduate programs in computer game studies are offered for the first time in universities. And it might be the first time scholars and academics take computer games seriously, as a cultural field whose value is hard to overestimate.
2001 年可能会成为游戏研究元年,游戏学,成为为一个可行的、国际化、学术化的全新学术领域。这一年,三月份在哥本哈根我们召开了第一届国际游戏学学术论坛。2001-2002 学年大学中也第一次提供了游戏学研究的学术化课程,学术界开始用严谨的方式去审视电子游戏在文化领域的价值。
To some of us, computer games are already a phenomenon of greater cultural importance than, say movies, or perhaps even sports. Seen from 2001, the potential cultural role(s) of computer games in the future is practically unfathomable. It seems clear that these games, especially multi-player games, combine the aesthetic and the social in a way the old mass media, such as theatre, movies, TV shows and novels never could. The old mass media created mass audiences, who shared values and sustained markets, but the mass media communities remained imagined (in Benedict Anderson’s sense), with little or no direct communication between participants. Clearly, multi-player games are not like that. In games like MUD1, Ultima online, or Quake Arena, the aesthetic and the social are integrated parts, and this could be regarded as the greatest innovation in audience structure since the invention of the choir, thousands of years ago.
To see computer games as merely the newest self-reinvention of Hollywood, as some do, is to disregard those socio-aesthetic aspects and also to force outdated paradigms onto a new cultural object. True, there is a considerable Hollywoodisation of the games industry at the moment, that started with the "interactive movies" failures of the early nineties, but there is also a world wide, non-commercial, collective games movement that has a better infrastructure than any amateur movement before it. Hollywood, like the record industry, is all about distribution, and now there is a distribution mechanism that rivals booth: the Internet. Even Bill Gates III failed to swallow up the Internet, and there is much less reason to believe that Hollywood will succeed. From the closed ecosystem of Nintendo to the open source games communities on the Net; game studies must study both; it would be a mistake to assume that the "Nintendo-Hollywood" industrial complex will rule, and eliminate the alternative. As a cultural studies strategy, this would be like preparing to fight the previous war.
对于我们当中的一部分人来说,电子游戏已经成为比电影,甚至体育更具文化重要性的现象。从 2001 年来看,电子游戏的潜在文化意义实际上是不可思议的。很明显,这些游戏,特别是多人游戏,将戏剧,电影,电视节目和小说等传统大众媒体从未有过的方式与美学和社会相结合。旧的大众媒体创造了大众,他们共享价值观和持续的市场,但大众传媒社区仍然是想象的(在本尼迪克特.安德森的意义上),参与者之间很少或没有直接沟通。显然,多人游戏不是那样的。在游戏中 MUD1,Ultima Online,或 Quake Arena,审美价值和社会性是一个整体,这可以被视为自数千年前合唱团发明以来观众结构中最伟大的创新。
如果正如一些人所做的那样,将电脑游戏视为好莱坞范式的自我改造,不得不说,他们是忽视了游戏的社会-审美复合价值方面,并将过时的范式强加于新的文化对象。的确,游戏行业有相当大的好莱坞化 目前,这始于九十年代初的“互动电影”失败,但也有一个全球性的,非商业性的集体游戏运动,其基础设施比之前的任何业余运动都要好。
与唱片业一样,好莱坞产业的核心是关于发行的,但现在有一个与好莱坞机制相抗衡的分销渠道:互联网。甚至比尔.盖茨都没能吞下互联网,我们当然也没有理由相信好莱坞的模式在游戏中会成功。从任天堂封闭的生态系统到网络上的开源游戏社区; 游戏研究必须研究两者; 认为“任天堂- 好莱坞”工业园区将统治是错误的,并消除替代方案。作为一种文化研究战略,这就像准备战斗前一场战争一样。
认知,一次交际性革命?
A cognitive, communicative revolution?
Much hype has been produced about the ability of new technology to instigate new ways of thought and communication. Take hypertext, which was supposed to give us writing skills that adhered much closer to the way our brains worked, a more "natural" way of textual communication. So far, however, the World Wide Web, the must successful hypertext system by far, has only produced a better distribution mechanism, and very few texts actually use the nonlinear possibilities of the technology. Games, however, are often simulations; they are not static labyrinths like hypertexts or literary fictions. The simulation aspect is crucial: it is radically different alternative to narratives as a cognitive and communicative structure. Simulations are bottom up; they are complex systems based on logical rules.
Games are both object and process; they can’t be read as texts or listened to as music, they must be played. Playing is integral, not coincidental like the appreciative reader or listener. The creative involvement is a necessary ingredient in the uses of games. The complex nature of simulations is such that a result can’t be predicted beforehand; it can vary greatly depending on the player’s luck, skill and creativity. In multi-player games, social skills are needed, or must be developed. Anyone who has spent some time in a multi-player game knows that. Yet much of the industry and the academic commentators see the need for "narrative" structures in order to understand games and make games "better." In this issue, the debate about narratives’ and narratology’s relevance to game studies is clearly visible. This is a debate that shows the very early stage we are still in, where the struggle of controlling and shaping the theoretical paradigms has just started. We expect the debate to continue, here and elsewhere, but hope that future contributions will address the points already made, and not simply make the same claims over and over again. That is what an academic journal is for.
认知,一次交际性革命?
人们对新技术煽动新思维方式和沟通方式的能力进行了大量宣传。采取超文本,这应该比我们的写作印刷技巧更接近我们的大脑工作方式,一种更“自然”的文本交流方式。然而,到目前为止,万维网是迄今为止必须成功的超文本系统,它只产生了一种更好的分配机制,很少有文本实际上发挥了这种的非线性的可能性。然而,游戏通常是模拟; 它们不是像超文本或文学小说那样的静态迷宫。模拟方面至关重要:作为一种认知和交际结构,它与叙事完全不同。模拟是自下而上的; 它们是基于逻辑规则的更加复杂的系统。
游戏既是对象又是过程; 它们不能被视为文本或被视为音乐,它们必须被播放。玩耍是不可或缺的,而不是像欣赏的读者或听众那样巧合。创意参与是游戏使用的必要因素。模拟的复杂性使得事先无法预测结果; 它可以根据玩家的运气,技巧和创造力去创造不同。在多人游戏中,需要或必须开发社交技能。任何玩过多人游戏的人都知道这一点。然而,许多行业和学术评论家都认为需要“叙事”结构来理解游戏并使游戏“更好”。在这个问题上,关于叙事和叙事学与游戏研究的相关性的争论清晰可见。这是一场辩论,显示了我们现在处于非常早期的阶段,控制和塑造理论范式的斗争才刚刚开始。我们希望在这里和其他地方继续进行辩论,但希望未来的贡献能够解决已经提出的问题,做出更多的游戏学研究,希望未来本研究的贡献将解决已经提出的问题,而不是简单地一遍又一遍地提出相同的要求。这就是学术期刊的用途。
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