비디오 게임 연구에 대한 공식 전략 지침
: 비디오 게임의 문법과 수사학
미시간 주립대학 철학박사학위 청구논문
Nathan Clinton Garrelts
http://www.msu.edu/~garrelt1/garreltsdi.doc
THE OFFICIAL STRATEGY GUIDE FOR VIDEO GAME STUDIES:
A GRAMMAR AND RHETORIC OF VIDEO GAMES
By
Nathan Clinton Garrelts
A DISSERTATION
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
College of Arts and Letters
Program in American Studies
2003
ABSTRACT
THE OFFICIAL STRATEGY GUIDE FOR VIDEO GAME STUDIES:
A GRAMMAR AND RHETORIC OF VIDEO GAMES
By
Nathan Clinton Garrelts
Video games constitute a significant portion of our documentary culture, and
as such they not only reflect our values, but also are in constant
conversation with them. Although there have been many studies that comment on
the connection between video games and culture, and several other studies
that attempt to understand how playing video games may affect audiences,
almost no video game studies actually study the formal, substantive, or
interactive qualities of video game content. Of those studies that do discuss
video game content, most are incomplete because they treat video games as a
pre-composed static media, which cotemporary video games are not. The
consequence of this is that we have a very shallow understanding of video
games and have no systematic way for understanding the ways in which
ideological content may be communicated when people play video games.
The first chapter of this dissertation briefly outlines the history of video
games, surveys popular focuses and methodologies of video game studies, and
identifies problems with the current trajectory of video game scholarship. In
the second chapter, I draw on past video game studies and propose a
terminological framework to objectively dissect the video game as a dynamic
and interactive medium. At the end of the chapter, I propose that this
framework provide the base for a grammar of video games. The third chapter of
this dissertation analyzes three games in the Final Fantasy series: Final
Fantasy, Final Fantasy VII, and Final Fantasy X, and tests the effectiveness
of my framework for elucidating dynamic video game content, and locating and
informing current video game studies. The fourth chapter proposes that the
content presented in video games, with which players make the reality of a
game, is rhetorically structured, and that identification and interaction
with the content is directed through various orienting systems. The fifth
chapter demonstrates the use of this model by studying the rhetoric of the
previously studied three games in the Final Fantasy series.
In the final chapter of this dissertation, I evaluate the effectiveness of my
proposed terminology, grammar, and rhetoric for contributing to our
understanding of video games. I assert that throughout the development of the
medium, advances in technology (and the interests of the culture industry)
have resulted in an increased sense of reality and complexity in games and
simultaneously strengthened their postmodern textual qualities and
correlative relationship to the current situation of United States dominated
late-market global capitalism. I also point out that, in the future, video
game studies must take the individual utterance of the played game into
consideration and attempt to understand the ways in which game-play results
in accordance or dissonance with various ideological structures within a
particular video game.
Copyright by
Nathan Clinton Garrelts
2003
For Judy and David.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This manuscript reflects the coursework and professional influences that
shaped me as a student at MSU, and those same influences that will continue
to shape me as a professional in academia. Thus, my indebtedness and
acknowledgements expand a bit beyond than document.
I would especially like to thank my dissertation chair, Dr. Kathleen
Geissler. Throughout the writing of this dissertation her continual feedback
and encouragement have been invaluable and her guidance and encouragement
throughout my studies at Michigan State University have helped to shape me
into a professional academic. No doubt, this was not an easy task.
Nevertheless, Dr. Geissler mentored me with genuine concern and tact, which
made her an excellent adviser. I would also like to extend a special thanks
to Dr. Danielle De Voss who often reminded me of the value of my academic
pursuits, and listened patiently as I tried to express half-formulated
ideas—not always dissertation related.
The contributions of others toward my successful completion of this
dissertation and completion of my degree program are also notable. In my days
as an undergraduate student at Michigan State University, Dr. Larry Landrum
exposed me to literary theory in one of his senior level English courses. I
distinctly remember struggling to understand and apply the theories he taught
us to the texts we were reading in the class. It was this experience, and
challenge, that prompted me to take several literary theory classes as a
master’s student at Ball State University and continue taking theory classes
when I returned to MSU as a doctoral student. The first two courses I took
were an American Studies methodology class with Dr. Dean Rehberger and a
Media Arts theory class with Dr. Gretchen Barbatsis. While Dr. Rehberger
introduced me to various cultural studies theories, among other things, Dr.
Barbatsis introduced me to more cultural studies theories, as well as reader
response theories, and applied media aesthetics. I later took an independent
study course on rhetorical theory with Dr. Geissler and an independent study
course on film studies with Dr. Landrum. The influence of all these teachers
and the knowledge they shared with me is obvious in this dissertation.
I am also thankful for my close friend Jeremy Martin who since childhood has
kept me informed about video game culture. His continual enthusiasm for video
games has several times reminded me why I began studying this medium.
Finally, I would like to thank my wife Beth who always kept my coffee cup
full, made sure that I didn’t starve, and gave me continual encouragement.
PREFACE
I grew up with video games. In fact, at about the time that PONG invaded
homes across America, I was just old enough to hold a video game controller.
Of course, I was also small enough to have the controller ripped from my
hands by older cousins vying for a spot on the floor in front of a small
black and white television at my grandparents’ house. As a child it seemed
that I played video games everywhere I went. I played games on an Atari 2600
while at my parents’ friends’ house and Intellivision at another parents’
friends’ house. When my family went to the local roller rink I watched the
teenagers play arcade games--many of which I was still too short to play--and
waited for my turn. I also played games with friends on one of the most
popular personal computers of the 80’s, the Commodore 64. It wasn’t until
1986 that I had my first video game console. That summer I had managed to
save enough money to buy a Sega Master System and asked my parents if they
would go to the store and buy it for me. My parents not only came back with
the system that I sent them to buy, but also came back with a stack of video
games. Since then, I have owned countless game consoles and personal
computers. I am a gamer and cannot remember a time that I was not a gamer.
Accordingly, when I began thinking about what I wanted to write about in my
dissertation, a video game related topic sounded like a great idea. As I am
among the first generation of academics raised on video games, I thought that
I might be able to bring a unique perspective to the existing discourse on
video games. Plus, video game studies seemed particularly urgent in the world
beyond the ivory tower. As Craig Anderson and Karen Dill assert in “Video
Games and Aggressive Thoughts, Feelings, and Behavior in the Laboratory and
in Life,” “the active nature of the learning environment of the video game
suggests” that video games have a greater affective ability than “TV and
movie media” and for this reason video games warrant immediate study.
Unfortunately, I quickly learned that the opportunity to study such a new
media did not come without a cost. Whereas I initially anticipated that the
published literature on video games would be limited and manageable, when I
began writing this dissertation, to my chagrin, I discovered otherwise.
Video game studies today are as methodologically diverse as cultural studies
and draw from whatever disciplines seem to be useful. Unfortunately, as video
game studies gain critical mass, the interdisciplinarity of video game
studies is proving to be problematic. First, it is very difficult to find the
most recent video game studies scholarship unless one is pointed in the right
direction. Much of the current scholarship is published in a wide variety of
journals, and many of the most recent and best essays are only available on
the internet in published conference proceedings, in on-line journals, and
through dedicated video game studies organizations. The difficulty of finding
recent scholarship is worsened by that fact that, at the moment, there are
(almost) no published collections of essays on video game studies and very
few books on the subject. Of the currently published books, many focus only
on violence/gender, or are otherwise problematic because they study the
culture surrounding video games and not video games themselves. Because of
the openness of video game studies to new theoretical approaches, there also
seems to be a contingent of academics that enter video game studies without
having actually played video games, or having played only one or two games.
These non-gamers often misrepresent video games or use obscure examples in
their studies.
As more video game players come of age, the continual influx of new scholars,
websites, conferences, and organization dedicated to studying video games has
begun to correct these problems. Yet, it seems to me, as an academic and
someone who has grown up playing video games, there is a greater problem.
Like (popular) cultural studies, video game studies is still struggling to
legitimate its object of study as worthy of academic attention. For example,
given that video games “remediate” elements of several different media,
video games are being studied as narrative text, cinematic text, and new
media. While such studies reframe video games in terms of media that are
already valued in academia, thus legitimizing the study of video games as a
worthwhile academic endeavor, the application of theories designed for other
mediums has resulted in studies that pervert the medium of the video game.
When one subtracts the sum of canonized media from video games there is often
something left over —the difference is a profound amount of choice and
interactivity. Indeed, most current video game studies only consider a
handful of the individual images, essentialize the narrative, and then
quickly digress to the world outside of the game. Almost no studies address
the increasingly interactive and dynamic quality of video games and the
varied content and narratives that result from different types of
interactivity during game play--video games are treated as simple and static
texts. This perversion of the medium has given academic studies of video
games a poor reputation among gamers and game developers, and prevented video
games studies from developing an accurate critical media literacy of video
games.
To be sure, representing one medium in the terms of another also facilitates
analysis when no other alternatives are given. This transference of theory
from one medium to another also entails making choices about what content to
discuss and what content to ignore, and whatever medium is being represented
will be in some way distorted. This task is even more difficult when working
with a medium whose content refuses to be pinned down, filtering it through
the lens of film studies, or narrative studies, etc. and then translating it
to prose. Indeed, as I began to study video games and present conference
papers in preparation for writing the dissertation, I immediately noticed
that while I had a lifetime’s worth of knowledge about video games, I found
it impossible to articulate what I knew and experienced. As a result, as I
struggled to discuss video games, along the way I developed a terminology,
grammar, and rhetoric, which combined what I knew about video games from
experience with what I learned about video games from studying the
scholarship. It then became possible for me to talk very specifically about
video games in a way that, for me, captured the essence of the medium. As I
proceeded to write my dissertation, I found that the best contribution that I
could make to video game studies was not to study an individual game, as I
anticipated in my initial dissertation proposal, but to provide video game
studies with a useable framework so that everyone can finally study video
games themselves and not just the issues surrounding the games.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
LIST OF FIGURES…………………………………………………………………..…xiii
CHAPTER 1
VIDEO GAMES, VIDEO GAME TECHNOLOGY, AND VIDEO GAME STUDIES:
COMPLICATIONS DURING THE REBIRTH OF VIDEO GAMES……………….…..1
CHAPTER 2
A GRAMMAR OF VIDEO GAMES: A TERMINOLOGICAL FRAMEWORK FOR DISSECTING AND
DISCUSSING VIDEO GAMES…………………………….……37
CHAPTER 3
ANALYSIS: A DISSECTION OF THREE GAMES IN THE FINAL FANTASY
SERIES…………………………………………………………………………………...72
CHAPTER 4
A RHETORIC OF VIDEO GAMES: THE STRUCTURE OF IDENTIFICATION AND INTERACTION IN
VIDEO GAMES…………………………………...………….….116
CHAPTER 5
ANALYSIS PART 2: IDENTIFICATION AND INTERACTION IN THE FINAL FANTASY
SERIES………………………………………………………….…………..139
CHAPTER 6
THE FUTURE OF VIDEO GAME STUDIES: IDEOLOGY, POSTMODERNITY, AND AGENCY IN
VIDEO GAMES…………………………………………………....…...163
APPENDIX……………………………………………………………….……...……..177
BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………….…….……..180
