Comments on: Roger Ebert and David’s butt http://www.sicher.org/2005/12/01/roger-ebert-and-davids-butt/ Random thoughts from a Game Designer Thu, 25 Mar 2010 13:44:21 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 By: sicher http://www.sicher.org/2005/12/01/roger-ebert-and-davids-butt/comment-page-1/#comment-6 sicher Sat, 13 May 2006 17:23:30 +0000 http://www.sicher.org/wordpress/?p=27#comment-6 <p>Yes, there is a difference between "linear" and "ergodic", but I believe the thing with games (and other digital narrative) is that they span the whole spectrum, from linear with no narrative player interaction to much more interaction-demanding experiences, like "Façade". I'm not entirery sure that there is a clear limit where a work transforms into an ergodic form.</p> <p>Still, I wonder if this is an important issue with Ebert. I finished reading "Hamlet on the Holodeck" last night and Janet Murray writes about just this:</p> <blockquote>"We will need time to grow accustomed to combining participation with immersion, agency with story, and to perceiveing the patterns in a kaleidoscopic fictional world. Most of all, the procedural medium will challenge our notions of authorship. In a print model we think of an authored environment as fixed and not open to variation. A mutable, kaleidoscopic world can feel to some like an unauthored world." (p. 275)</blockquote> <blockquote>"Future audiences [...] will accept their exercise of agency as part of the aestetic experience in the same way we now take it for granted that we have to walk around a Degas sculpture to experience its full beauty rather than merely stand in front of it as we do with his paintings." (p. 276)</blockquote> <p>Murray also argues that digital narrative allows for investigations of what it means to be human that no other medium permits with the same expressive force. This is absolutely contrary to what Ebert believe. I have a strong sense that Murray is the more right of the two.</p> Yes, there is a difference between “linear” and “ergodic”, but I believe the thing with games (and other digital narrative) is that they span the whole spectrum, from linear with no narrative player interaction to much more interaction-demanding experiences, like “Façade”. I’m not entirery sure that there is a clear limit where a work transforms into an ergodic form.

Still, I wonder if this is an important issue with Ebert. I finished reading “Hamlet on the Holodeck” last night and Janet Murray writes about just this:

“We will need time to grow accustomed to combining participation with immersion, agency with story, and to perceiveing the patterns in a kaleidoscopic fictional world. Most of all, the procedural medium will challenge our notions of authorship. In a print model we think of an authored environment as fixed and not open to variation. A mutable, kaleidoscopic world can feel to some like an unauthored world.” (p. 275)

“Future audiences […] will accept their exercise of agency as part of the aestetic experience in the same way we now take it for granted that we have to walk around a Degas sculpture to experience its full beauty rather than merely stand in front of it as we do with his paintings.” (p. 276)

Murray also argues that digital narrative allows for investigations of what it means to be human that no other medium permits with the same expressive force. This is absolutely contrary to what Ebert believe. I have a strong sense that Murray is the more right of the two.

]]> By: George http://www.sicher.org/2005/12/01/roger-ebert-and-davids-butt/comment-page-1/#comment-5 George Sat, 13 May 2006 17:22:59 +0000 http://www.sicher.org/wordpress/?p=27#comment-5 <p>This 'interactive' nature of non-interactive media is considered to be a fundamentally different type of interaction. There's a strong difference between acting on a work in an interpretative way (which is just what walking round David, or watching a film, or reading a book is), and acting on a work in a configurative way (changing the nature of the end product in a measurable way). The academic description of something as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergodic_literature">ergodic</a> is relevant here.</p> This ‘interactive’ nature of non-interactive media is considered to be a fundamentally different type of interaction. There’s a strong difference between acting on a work in an interpretative way (which is just what walking round David, or watching a film, or reading a book is), and acting on a work in a configurative way (changing the nature of the end product in a measurable way). The academic description of something as ergodic is relevant here.

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