GTA and video game spectatorship
No GTA IV until finals are over, and that's okay- I haven't found myself caught up in the wave of excitement, even though I was obsessed with GTA III back in the day. I'm sure it's just end of term exhaustion, and Ill happily be spending long hours on my couch stealing cars soon.
Bob's recent post on the subject is full of fantastic insights, and is emblematic of all the ways the GTA series has been/could be approached. It's one of those video games that's equally rich for gamers and scholars alike. I'd also put Bioshock in that camp, but their pleasures are fundamentally different- I'm on the same page as Bob, I never finished GTA III or Vice City, heck, I never even made it a priority to complete missions. I vaguely recall hitting a particularly tough timed mission in GTA III and giving up after 6 failed attempts, content to see if I could outrun the fuzz after stealing cars directly in front of the police station. Simply put, I wonder if anyone cares about the end/closure of GTA IV, the pleasure is in the play. I know Bob takes some issue with the "sandbox structure" qualification, but I think it's apt.
Clearly, I was obsessed with Bioshock when I created this lj (hence the name/icon), though at the time I was spending more time watching my boyfriend play than actually playing myself. And I'm no gamer widow, I watched the gameplay as I might a movie, anxious to see how characters would develop, how choices would impact the plot, where everything would end up. I'm not the first to call Bioshock a narrative masterwork, and I won't be the last, but I haven't heard anyone discuss how this translates into pleasure for spectators of games (or, conversely, how a game like GTA III or IV limits such pleasure).
So, a question and a call to arms: Does anyone know if studies have been done on video game spectatorship? Would such work be considered unproductive, taking video game studies back to the early days of trying to squeeze it into old film studies/narrative theoretical models? Anyone share this interest, or has watching Portal scrambled my brain?
The comments on Bob's blog seem to indicate (e.g. watching Travis Bickle vs. being Travis Bickle) that play and spectatorship are still being seen along the active/passive binary. Maybe video game spectatorship exists in some liminal space that deserves exploration...or, put another way, where's the fun in watching another person be Travis Bickle, and how is it fundamentally different than watching him or playing as him?
Bob's recent post on the subject is full of fantastic insights, and is emblematic of all the ways the GTA series has been/could be approached. It's one of those video games that's equally rich for gamers and scholars alike. I'd also put Bioshock in that camp, but their pleasures are fundamentally different- I'm on the same page as Bob, I never finished GTA III or Vice City, heck, I never even made it a priority to complete missions. I vaguely recall hitting a particularly tough timed mission in GTA III and giving up after 6 failed attempts, content to see if I could outrun the fuzz after stealing cars directly in front of the police station. Simply put, I wonder if anyone cares about the end/closure of GTA IV, the pleasure is in the play. I know Bob takes some issue with the "sandbox structure" qualification, but I think it's apt.
Clearly, I was obsessed with Bioshock when I created this lj (hence the name/icon), though at the time I was spending more time watching my boyfriend play than actually playing myself. And I'm no gamer widow, I watched the gameplay as I might a movie, anxious to see how characters would develop, how choices would impact the plot, where everything would end up. I'm not the first to call Bioshock a narrative masterwork, and I won't be the last, but I haven't heard anyone discuss how this translates into pleasure for spectators of games (or, conversely, how a game like GTA III or IV limits such pleasure).
So, a question and a call to arms: Does anyone know if studies have been done on video game spectatorship? Would such work be considered unproductive, taking video game studies back to the early days of trying to squeeze it into old film studies/narrative theoretical models? Anyone share this interest, or has watching Portal scrambled my brain?
The comments on Bob's blog seem to indicate (e.g. watching Travis Bickle vs. being Travis Bickle) that play and spectatorship are still being seen along the active/passive binary. Maybe video game spectatorship exists in some liminal space that deserves exploration...or, put another way, where's the fun in watching another person be Travis Bickle, and how is it fundamentally different than watching him or playing as him?