Nintendo and Telos: Will You Ever Reach the End?

Abstract

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. University of Minnesota Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Cultural Critique. 5W e live in the "cybernetic age." The presence of machines and technological devices in our culture is so pervasive that it no longer makes sense to talk of technology as separate from the general sphere of human activity. In The Soft-Machine: Cybernetic Fiction, David Porush says we need look no further than today's children to find a telling barometer of the shift into this new age. Here is the sinister picture he paints of the local video arcade where the offspring of the new age are to be found:In their off hours, their fingers play over the controls of video games and "micros," their faces lit up by the light of CRT screens, bodies moving in rhythm to a complex feedback mechanism, eyes, minds and hands locked in a looped circuit of reflex and reward with a more-than-mere-game. In the video arcade, the machines are united by a single principle: ultimately, hardware defeats exhaustible and vulnerable organs and intelligences grown in flesh and housed in bone. Next time you're there, watch the players hitched to their boxes and ask who controls what. Or what controls whom (1-2) ) 1996 by Cultural Critique. Fall 1996. 0882-4371/96/$5.00. 163

Interactive aesthetics

“…As Peter Buse claims in the article Nintendo and Telos, "Video games, it seems, incarnate the perfection of the mirror, inserting the subject in to a narrative in which she or he sees herself or himself projected as the hero and potential master." [3] We are constantly engaged in an act of measuring ourselves up through identificitation with the images in the mirror. For KTV culture, the success of Karaoke Revolution Version 3 can be treated as a good example of a cultural practice that expands in the leisure entertainment.…”

serious play

“…᭹ play and pleasure, most typically taking the form of theoretical accounts of what 'play' means, its structures, functions, and outcomes, considerations of the elements of pleasure, entertainment, and enjoyment in play and games. Such work is often psychoanalytical in orientation, and is typically restricted in scope to elementary and, mostly, early childhood education (Axeline 1947, Winnicott 1971, Brougère 1999, Corbeil 1999; ᭹ studies of gaming genres, which focus on making distinctions between games and subtypes of games, including articulating the commonalities and distinctions between simulations and games (Keys and Wolfe 1990, Friedman 1995, Kirriemuir 2002; ᭹ game-development, systems, and content points of view, focusing on graphics, artificial intelligence, game-paths, rule-systems, and game playability (Malone 1981, Malone and Lepper 1987, Laurel 1990, Saltzman 1999, Brozik and Zapalska 2000, Klabbers 2000; ᭹ narrative and gaming-often based in literary theory, this literature is concerned with analyzing narrative elements, including gaming plot-structures, characterization, setting, dialogue, and so on (Buse 1996, Sherman 1997, Frasca 1998, Rockwell 1999, Mallon and Webb 2000; ᭹ psychological, behavioural, and cognitive effects of gaming, especially violence-this literature typically includes diagnostic analyses of plots, characters, gaming elements, and representations of violence for a 'violence quotient', and then attempts to build causal connections between game-play and violent behaviour in children (Greenfield 1984, 1994, Silvern and Williamson 1987, Schutte et al 1988, Kinder 1991, Shapiro and McDonald 1992, Calvert and Tan 1994, Funk and Buchman 1996, Pillay et al 1999, Van Horn 1999, Anderson and Dill 2000…”

OP‐ED Serious play

“…Such work is often psychoanalytical in orientation, and is typically restricted in scope to elementary and, mostly, early childhood education (Axeline 1947, Winnicott 1971, Brougère 1999, Corbeil 1999); ᭹ studies of gaming genres, which focus on making distinctions between games and subtypes of games, including articulating the commonalities and distinctions between simulations and games (Keys and Wolfe 1990, Friedman 1995, Kirriemuir 2002); ᭹ game-development, systems, and content points of view, focusing on graphics, artificial intelligence, game-paths, rule-systems, and game playability (Malone 1981, Malone and Lepper 1987, Laurel 1990, Saltzman 1999, Brozik and Zapalska 2000, Klabbers 2000; ᭹ narrative and gaming-often based in literary theory, this literature is concerned with analyzing narrative elements, including gaming plot-structures, characterization, setting, dialogue, and so on (Buse 1996, Sherman 1997, Frasca 1998, Rockwell 1999, Mallon and Webb 2000; ᭹ psychological, behavioural, and cognitive effects of gaming, especially violence-this literature typically includes diagnostic analyses of plots, characters, gaming elements, and representations of violence for a 'violence quotient', and then attempts to build causal connections between game-play and violent behaviour in children (Greenfield 1984, 1994, Silvern and Williamson 1987, Schutte et al 1988, Kinder 1991, Shapiro and McDonald 1992, Calvert and Tan 1994, Funk and Buchman 1996, Pillay et al 1999, Van Horn 1999, Anderson and Dill 2000, Blumberg 2000; SERIOUS PLAY 651 ᭹ gaming and gender-analysis includes the attribution of gendered play styles and game preferences …”