Unit Operations: An Approach to Videogame Criticism (Hardcover)

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• This item: Unit Operations: An Approach to Videogame Criticism by I Bogost

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• Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames by Ian Bogost

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• Gamer Theory by M Wark

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Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames by Ian Bogost £26.55

Gamer Theory by M Wark £12.49

First Person: New Media as Story, Performance and Game by N WardripFruin £16.10

The Ultimate History of Video Games by Steven L. Kent 4.2 out of 5 stars (8)  £10.49

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Review
""Unit Operations" is a major milestone on the path to establishing a framework for analyzing videogames as important cultural artifacts of our time. Proposing a comparative approach to videogame criticism that is equally relevant for humanists and technologists, Ian Bogost weaves philosophy, psychoanalysis, literature, film, media theory, informatics, software, and videogames into a narrative that reveals how these seemingly disparate fields relate to and inform each other. Unit operations--discrete, programmatic units of meaning--are used as the conceptual tool for unpacking complex relationships between different worlds: criticism and computation, genetics and complex adaptive systems, and narrative spaces from "Casablanca" and "Half-Life" to "Ulysses" and "Grand Theft Auto,"" --Christiane Paul, Adjunct Curator of New Media Arts, Whitney Museum of American Art

Product Description
This book features a critical approach that marries literary theory and information technology, reading digital and cultural artefacts - whether videogames, literature, or film - as configurative systems of interlocking units of meaning. 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 analyse 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 seriously and technologists better understand software and videogames as cultural artefacts. This approach is especially useful for the comparative analysis of digital and nondigital artefacts 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", "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.

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First Sentence
To unpack the relationships between criticism and computation, I will rely on the notion of unit operations. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover

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