Intro Post - Questions for Exploring

Introductory post for class - gone as soon as credit is received.

Here are some things that I want to explore over the semester:

1. Can narrative be an actual game mechanic? 1a: how, exactly, is a game mechanic defined? Is this a flexible or rigid definition, or has it even been solidly established yet?

2. How in the world to talk about a game like Achron (http://achrongame.com/), which permits two opposing players to move through a window of time on a real-time basis. For example, a structure that is capable of creating a new unit does so, and that unit travels backwards in time to before it was created - and it then destroys the building that created it, before it was created. I have a mental image in my mind of how exactly to /think/ of this, but expressing it in words proves difficult. Paradoxes are fun .. or something.

3. I take to the literary criticism school of thought that authorial intent is irrelevant, and that the only important detail in a work is what the author /does/ say, not what he tries to say. This becomes more important as the length of time elapsed between the work published and the author’s death (hah) grows longer; we can never ask Shakespeare exactly how we should interpret the character of Feste in Twelfth Night, for example, and are thus left to contextual evidence and our own interpretations for validity. Does this apply to video games, particularly when developer commentaries are so prevelant? Is it at all fair for looking at games based on what they /could/ have done, rather than what they did? I find the only relevant detail to be how the game exists in it’s current state - so how does that apply to game patches and downloadable content? Can you judge World of Warcraft at release in the same way that you can in it’s current state? As, ultimately, the patch is nothing more than the “author” trying to “get at what they really meant to do the first time.”

4. Should a game journalist/critic actually beat each game they examine, and if not, what percentage of a game should they complete before forming a solid opinion? Book critics certainly have to, and to effectively analyze a poem one might spend hours on fifteen lines of text. How does this apply to video games? 4a: I’m working with a theory that uses similar concepts to statistical polling; if one reads (samples) 33% of a book, can one draw reasonable conclusions about the book, as one could with populations of people? Surely, the conclusion of story arcs can merely be guessed at, but is it fair to use that 33% (or whatever other number you like) to draw conclusions about the mechanics, dialogue constructions/political messages and styles as one, I would argue, can do with a book?