Unit Operations: An Approach to Videogame Criticism [Hardcover]

Ian Bogost (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 10, 2006 | ISBN-10: 026202599X | ISBN-13: 978-0262025997

In Unit Operations, Ian Bogost argues that similar principles underlie both literary theory and computation, proposing a literary-technical theory that can be used to analyze particular videogames. Moreover, this approach can be applied beyond videogames: Bogost suggests that any medium--from videogames to poetry, literature, cinema, or art--can be read as a configurative system of discrete, interlocking units of meaning, and he illustrates this method of analysis with examples from all these fields. The marriage of literary theory and information technology, he argues, will help humanists take technology more seriously and hep technologists better understand software and videogames as cultural artifacts. This approach is especially useful for the comparative analysis of digital and nondigital artifacts and allows scholars from other fields who are interested in studying videogames to avoid the esoteric isolation of "game studies."The richness of Bogost's comparative approach can be seen in his discussions of works by such philosophers and theorists as Plato, Badiou, Zizek, and McLuhan, and in his analysis of numerous videogames including Pong, Half-Life, and Star Wars Galaxies. Bogost draws on object technology and complex adaptive systems theory for his method of unit analysis, underscoring the configurative aspects of a wide variety of human processes. His extended analysis of freedom in large virtual spaces examines Grand Theft Auto 3, The Legend of Zelda, Flaubert's Madame Bovary, and Joyce's Ulysses. In Unit Operations, Bogost not only offers a new methodology for videogame criticism but argues for the possibility of real collaboration between the humanities and information technology.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Bogost challenges humanists and technologists to pay attention to one another, something they desperately need to do as computation accelerates us into the red zones of widespread virtual reality. This book gives us what we need to meet that challenge: a general theory for understanding creativity under computation, one that will apply increasingly to all creativity in the future. Not only that, but we get an outstanding theory of videogame criticism in the mix as well. Highly recommended."--Edward Castronova, Department of Telecommunications, Indiana University, author of *Synthetic Worlds: The Business and Culture of Online Games*

About the Author

Ian Bogost is Associate Professor in the School of Literature, Communication, and Culture, at Georgia Institute of Technology and Founding Partner, Persuasive Games LLC. He is the author of Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames and Unit Operations: An Approach to Videogame Criticism, and the coauthor (with Nick Montfort) of Racing the Beam: The Atari Video Computer System (2009), all published by the MIT Press.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 243 pages
• Publisher: The MIT Press (March 10, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 026202599X
• ISBN-13: 978-0262025997
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,361,686 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Hi, I'm Ian Bogost. I am a designer, philosopher, critic, and researcher who focuses on computational media--videogames in particular. I'm also an author and an entrepreneur. I am a professor at Georgia Tech (a university), a Founding Partner at Persuasive Games (a videogame studio), and a cofounder at Open Texture (a small media publisher).

Research and Teaching
In my academic life, I am Professor and Director of the Graduate Program in Digital Media at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

My research focuses on videogames as cultural artifacts. In particular, I'm interested in contextualizng games in the long history of human expression (game criticism), in how games make arguments (game rhetoric), and in the relationship between computer hardware and expression. These three subjects are the respective topics of my recent books: Unit Operations: An Approach to Videogame Criticism (MIT Press 2006), Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames (MIT Press 2007), Racing the Beam: The Atari Video Computer System (MIT Press 2009, co-authored with Nick Montfort), Newsgames: Journalism at Play (MIT Press 2010, co-authored with Simon Ferrari and Bobby Schweizer), and How To Do Things with Videogames (University of Minnesota Press, 2011).

Much of my work concerns the uses of videogames outside entertainment, including politics, advertising, learning, and art. But I'm also very interested in mainstream commercial videogames and historical approaches to videogames, as well as experimental, independent, and artistic games. I write frequently in the videogame trade press.

More recently, I've been looking at on the way hardware and software platforms influence creative practice. Nick Montfort and I co-edit a book series on this topic called Platform Studies, and we've written the first book in that series, on the Atari, mentioned above. I'm fascinated to the point of obsession with the Atari, and I often use it in teaching, research, and in my own artistic practice.

Through my work with platforms, I've also developed an interest in new trends in philosophy, particularly speculative realism and object-oriented ontology. My philosophical study of the phenomenology of objects, Alien Phenomenology, will be published by the University of Minnesota Press in 2012.

Game Design and Development
I am the co-founder of Persuasive Games, an award-winning independent videogame studio that makes games about social and political issues. Our work covers a wide variety of topics not usually found in videogames, including airport security, disaffected copy store workers, global petroleum market, Christmas shopping, tort reform, suburban errands, and pandemic flu. Our games have been played by millions of people and exhibited internationally at venues including Laboral Centro de Arte (Madrid), Fournos Centre for Digital Culture (Athens), Eyebeam Center (New York), Slamdance Guerilla Game Festival (Park City), the Israeli Center for Digital Art (Holon) and The Australian Centre for the Moving Image (Melbourne).

We also create games for advertising, learning, corporate training, and politics. Our clients have included Dominos Pizza, Cisco, Chrysler/Jeep, and Cold Stone Creamery. We've also focused on "newsgames," a genre that blends videogames with editorial cartoons. In mid 2007 we published games with The New York Times, who ran our games in the op-ed section of their online paper.

Publishing
I'm also a co-founder of a small media publishing company called Open Texture. We are a small, independent publisher of books and media, focusing on new approaches to classic forms. From helping children learn Ancient Greek to bringing poetry to videogames, we're reinventing familiar ideas for the twenty-first century.

We've published an ancient Greek curriculum suitable for anyone, from kids as young as 2nd or 3rd grade up through adults. I leant my voice to the Elementary Greek series, reading the audio companions for all three years of the course.

More recently, we've started publishing independent videogames, starting with my own title A Slow Year. We're particularly interested in bringing work to market that offers an alternative to current trends in digital distribution, focusing instead on the creation of thoughtful, deliberate physical products.

Background
In the past I've worked in financial services, graphic design, advertising, technology, business consulting, and entertainment. I was CTO of an interactive studio in Los Angeles during "Bubble 1.0." Before I settled down to do my dissertation on videogame criticism, I was a scholar of poetry, mostly European modern, contemporary American, and Greek Lyric. I have a Bachelors degree in Philosophy and Comparative Literature from the University of Southern California, and a Masters and Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from UCLA.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Criticism and Computation, September 4, 2008

By 

lacanthropy (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Unit Operations: An Approach to Videogame Criticism (Paperback)

Bogost's begins with a promising venture into the video game territory. This time we are promised that video games are distinguished from books and films, and that the "ludology" of video games is recognized as an independent field. Bogost uses philosophy in order to accomplish this mission. Although when it comes to critical arguments, Bogost's approach is mainly Badiousian, he sets forth a rich array of classical and contemporary philosophies, from Plato to Spinoza, Deleuze, and Harman. I have this feeling that at some point Bogost emphasizes too much on the narrative and cultural aspects of video games and therefore, his project falls into the same category of mainstream cultural critiques of video games. But there are sections which penetrate right into the structure of games and their architecture. In these sections, Bogost uses a heavy deal of Badiou's axiomatic set theory to back up his theory of unit operations. This is not essentially a negative point but he could develop a genuine theory of his own and eliminate the risk of associating video games with philosophy which for the most part has the same restricting role of literature (the narrative) and cinema (the filmic) for video games. Overall, Unit Operations is a rich and an insightful book, but falls short in some of its ambitions.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Slightly misleading, June 24, 2011

By 

Labouts (Ojai, CA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Unit Operations: An Approach to Videogame Criticism (Paperback)

This book isn't what it sounds like at first glance. It is a view of video games from a literary criticism perceptive. Don't buy this if your interested in game design if you don't also have a passion for literary criticism.

17 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Criticism Reloaded, March 28, 2006

By 

Ian McCarthy (Kirkland, WA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: Unit Operations: An Approach to Videogame Criticism (Hardcover)

Unit Operations is every bit as brilliant - and damn fun a read - as those of us lucky enough to've had early glimpses at Bogost's project had hoped.

It's tempting to write a review of this book in the form of a treatment for a mega-million-dollar console game, and that temptation seems to me no accident: this book will change the way you pay attention to ALL, in both senses of the word, coded systems you yourself use.

The backstory of the book's authoring is itself almost too Hollywood (or new Hollywood, since EA, Blizzard, and LucasArts are the MGM, WB, and Disney of our era): author was a Chief Technology Officer for an A-list interactive marketing agency in L.A.; author leaves the biz to become a professor working on recombining the DNA (and languages and ontologies) of software development with the DNA (and languages and ontologies) of literary and cultural criticism; his mutant creation is now on the loose.

Your mission, reader, is to...

To what? Because in the game of Unit Operations, the first-person shooter is transformed into something of an Eleatic archer: where before our attention would just race to the next target, Unit Operations teaches us new ways to listen to the Bow.

The open-source software movement has from its beginning been particularly well-attuned to games with written language's units of operation. Unit Operations provides a long-awaited common ground for both technological and literary culture.

Not since first reading Geertz' Interpretation of Cultures have I had the sense of encountering so path-breaking a work in the level of its critical innovation and the clarity of its readings.