Atari Hacks, Remakes, and Demakes: Special Topics in Game Design and Analysis, Spring 2010. Georgia Institute of Technology.

Hacks are works produced by making modifications to existing games by disassembling binaries, analyzing the meaning and purpose of the resulting source code, identifying desirable changes (whether slight or significant) and implementing those changes.

Remakes are recreations of earlier works, irrespective of the hardware platform of original creation or recreation. Remakes have a long history in other media, particularly in film and television, as well as in commercial videogames.

Demakes are retro-inspired reimaginings of modern games, as if they had been created on earlier hardware. Demakes are not necessarily created to run on older machines, but their design and behavior are constrained by the real or perceived constraints of vintage systems.

I adore the emphasis on technological production. Notice that it is not subservient to theory, or even distinct from it: Engagement with the technology is, in itself, an act of theoria, an act of contemplation.

Review the syllabus at Bogost’s website.

via Lori Emerson.

Humanists work hard, but at all the wrong things, the commonest of which is the fetid fester of a hypothetical socialist dreamworld, one that has become far more disconnected with labor and material than the neoliberalism it claims to replace.

And again,

We are not central because we have chosen to be marginal, for to be central would be to violate the necessity of marginality. We practice the monastic worship of a secular God we divined in order to kill again, mistaking ourselves for the madmen of our fantasies. We are masochists in hedonists’ clothing. We are tweed demolitionists.

It’s important to note that the acidity of Bogost’s language is not run-of-the-mill Internet hyperbole: In my estimate, at least, it is a calculated and careful rhetoric. And that makes him worthy of our attention.

Read The Turtlenecked Hairshirt at Ian Bogost’s blog (n.b. that there are several comments worth reading, too). Bogost’s assertions are timely, but not unprecedented, and it is important to reflect on the simultaneity of the rise of the digital, the death of Theory, and recent interest in a philosophy that exceeds conventional anthropocentric bounds. It follows, inevitably, that it is time to ask what all of this means for the university, and for academe. To my mind, it is Greg Ulmer who has already done some terrific — if sometimes uncanny — thinking on the matter.

In short, Calabouço Tétrico demonstrates how narrative can overdetermine the mechanics of gameplay — no matter how familiar those mechanics may be:  As Tetris becomes a dark exercise in body stacking, the pleasure of closure that should come with every completed row quickly dissipates.

Like editorial games should, [Raid Gaza] takes a strong position. But unlike so many, it also offers coherent gameplay that is related to the conflict it critiques.

His insights here are typically acute, and deserve to be read. But I have reservations about the strong position Bogost himself takes with respect to the emptiness of what he calls “tabloid” games.

“Indeed, newsgames produced very rapidly, like the many small ones about the recent George W. Bush shoe throwing incident, risk becoming tabloid games, little meaningless pointers that commemorate an event only to draw attention to it rather than to comment upon it. These games often capitalize rhetorically: the payload of a game about throwing a shoe at President Bush is the very idea of a game about such a thing, rather than any kind of commentary on the event or its meaning.”

On his watercoolergames blog, Bogost points to one such game, Gaza Defender, with disdain.

I’ve just been made aware of another game on this topic, Gaza Defender. The player is asked to “Defend The Gaza Strip from the Zionist Bombs using your AK-47.” It’s less remarkable as a game and no more thoughtful a commentary than the many whack-a-mole clone newsgames we’ve seen in the past.

Implicit in his Bogost’s dismissal of this thought-less genre of games, of course, is his faith in the advent of a procedural literacy: A savoir-lire among the people. Bogost is worried that, disconnected from any representative or simulative engagement with the world they portray, whack-a-mole clones—tabloid games—don’t provide the opportunity for any kind of critical response in the player. As games, he therefore deems them devoid of value.

the advent of a new technology and its attendant rhetorics does not require the ouster of everything that came before.

But the advent of a new technology and its attendant rhetorics does not require the ouster of everything that came before. The advent of the written word did not require us to abandon orality. Instead, the two technics became imbricated in our every signification. Bogost’s critique of Gaza Defender is unnecessarily dismissive, and ignores the fact that the game is still a political text, in spite of the quality of gameplay.

I think it a mistake, for example, to extract the game itself from the context in which it is presented. The game itself is embedded on a page that features maps depicting (one) history of the Palestinian / Israeli conflict; a link to a Donations page at the Red Crescent website; a link to download Adobe Flash; an embedded stream of music from a Palestinian musician, Mawaal Al Quds. The page includes a tool to share or bookmark the page via any number of well-known social networking sites. This is more than a whack-a-mole clone.

Admittedly, a simple shoe-throwing game may not take advantage of the complexities of the simulative, and it may not be a sophisticated form of “procedural rhetoric.” But it is a voice that asks to be heard.

What’s more, I find myself drawn again to what M. Badiou says about theater: We go not to be cultivated, but to be struck. “Theater-ideas” are experiential, not necessarily critical-intellectual. Are we certain that there no value in arming a player with a shoe and saying, “let fly”?

The facility, which opened in August, is the first of its kind. It replaces five smaller recruitment stations in the Philadelphia area, at about the same annual operating cost, not counting the initial expenses, said Maj. Larry Dillard, the program manager. Philadelphia has been a particularly difficult area for recruitment.

Of particular interest is the Army’s recognition (already noted by scholars like Ian Bogost) that the persuasive capacity of video games extends beyond mere recruitment needs. Games are a more subtle political tool:

“We want to put people in the Army, but that’s about our third priority,” Sergeant Jennings said, gesturing to a kiosk with descriptions of 179 jobs in the Army, including details on salaries and benefits. “Most people think joining the Army means being a grunt, and that Iraq equals death. We try to show them that there’s more to the Army than carrying a gun. If people come in here and they learn that but they don’t join, that’s O.K.”

Read the entire article.