The Interview

2007-04-25T21:50:00.000-07:00

Click here to download the interview file--it's 20 minutes long and 21.74 MB.

Introduction

2007-04-25T21:40:00.000-07:00

Matt Kirschenbaum knows a bit about games…

He’s researched and written on a wide range of new media objects, including both electronic literature and video games (and those objects that fall in between). In a field which has yet to settle into its permanent place in academia, Matt is a scholar helping to establish the legitimacy of new media studies. His newest work on first generation electronic objects (coming this Fall) is called Mechanisms: New Media and the Forensic Imagination, and it promises to delve into the production, dissemination, and preservation of video games, their first cousins, and their distant relatives.

When Peter Leonteos and I met to discuss topics for our interview with Matt, we decided that the best questions would be those which address some of the important issues that came up in the English 390 class, Video Games and Textuality.

This was an especially unique class at Loyola because we devoted significant amounts of time to the first-hand experience of the games we played and the topics they brought up. In this light, we decided to get Matt’s view on how students and scholars should access video games in the future—as we’ve discussed in class, playing a game on its original platform can be an extremely different experience than playing a ported or imitation version.

Given the divergent backgrounds of the students in the class, we also felt it appropriate to ask Matt where he feels video games belong in the academic community, and what approaches should be taken in their study. And, on the topic of approaches to studying games, we also wanted to know how he felt about the difference between formally and technically studying the game object itself, versus the study of the social and textual webs into which it’s woven.

Not surprisingly, Matt gave us some unique perspectives on all of these issues. His approach to FGEOs on technical, formal, and social levels help to indicate the some of the ways in which students and teachers can engage video games in the future.

If you want to learn more about some of the topics we discussed with Matt, be sure to check out his published works, his blog, and the links on the right side of the page.

Thanks again to Matt Kirschenbaum for his time and energy, and to Dr. Steven Jones for arranging the interview.

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Below, Peter discusses some of the planning and execution behind the scenes of the interview.

Peter Discusses the Interview

2007-04-25T19:38:00.001-07:00

It was after reading “Editing the Interface: Textual Studies and First Generation Electronic Objects” that my interest in the work of Dr. Matthew Kirschenbaum was piqued. And it was the result of this interest that I decided to interview Matt in order to get a deeper understanding of his stance on issues such as preservation of games, the study of games and the way in which we as students and educators can overcome the barriers that exist to the study of games and the game space.

Before writing about the actual interview and the issues that it addressed, I would like to give an account of the preparation for the project and the interview itself. The first and most obvious form of preparation was simply re-reading and becoming more familiar with the texts and terms that were going to be in question as well as some external publications that would give me a better understanding of the topic matter and a good feel for the types of questions that we would need to pose. The second way that we needed to prepare for the interview was to prep the technology itself and to secure a proper means by which we could record the discourse. We settled on using Skype, a free online voice over IP communications medium within which many types of recording software can be utilized to record conversations. Along with this came the need for a file host to upload the work to so that it could be distributed to the listeners.

Bryan was invaluable in finding Skype and getting it set up, and we each found separate recording software with which to use on our individual computers. The original plan was to have each one of us recording the interview on separate computers, just to be sure that we had the “LOCKSS” (Lots Of Copies Keeps Stuff Safe) that Matt talks about in the interview. This would ensure that should something go wrong with one of our machines, the interview itself would remain intact and useable. This was when we ran into our first surprise: you cannot record a three-way call with the free version of the software that I was planning on using. We ended up doing the interview with only one computer recording the work which also meant that we had to share a microphone and use a headphone splitter in order to each be able to hear the responses as the interview was in progress.

At the same time as doing these things, Bryan and I scheduled and meeting with the intent of developing the questions and the framing of the interview. We came up with four main areas of focus that we wanted to touch upon. These were: the academics of video game studies, the complications of study and preservation (both physically as well as in issues with software), the textual accuracy of video games, and a section that we termed “Inside/Outside” which we envisioned would deal with paratextual issues. The section pertaining to the academics of video game studies was developed with the intent of discovering what Matt’s opinion was in regards to the place of game studies in a university setting. Matt mentions one of the foundational texts that deals with game studies titled Homo Ludens, which literally translated means “man the player”. He goes on to say man is a “thinker” and a “maker” as well. It seems as though the thinking man and the making man comprise much of the study that is done, but Matt notes that man thinks, builds, and plays, and therefore each of these aspects of humanity are important to study. A subsection to the academics and study section that we were interested in was that of Ludology Vs. Narratology. Our specific interest with this area of the academics pertained to the way that this debate has shaped the structure and methodology behind the field of game studies. Matt has very interesting and enlightening answers to these questions to be sure.

Our second area of interest was that of the complications of study and preservation. In this area we were interested in the ways that students are able to access objects in order to study them. An example of the type of question we devised follows: should students of game studies study the game “Pac Man” on a sit down arcade box, or can it be experienced in the same way on an emulator? This question was developed as a result of an issue that Matt had written about in a recent blog about the “Shall These Bits Live?” seminar he had attended. He mentions in the blog that migration, emulation, and reinterpretation were potential methods of the preservation of first generation electronic objects. First Generation Electronic Objects are outlined in Matt’s work “Editing the Interface: Textual Studies and First Generation Electronic Objects” where he writes, “A ‘first generation electronic object’ is one that enjoys no material existence outside of the electronic environment of a computational file system” (20). In the end the purpose of this section was to define which type of study; migration, emulation or reinterpretation Matt believed to be the most appropriate when it comes to game studies and preservation.

The third area of study that we developed questions around involved the textual accuracy of video games. Here we were interested in whether or not Matt believed that video games were allographic or autographic, that is, did video games fulfill their ontology in reproduction, or did they betray it in reproduction. What we are trying to understand with this question is whether or not games were representative of books or paintings in that when one reads a copy of a book, they are generally believed to have read the book itself, however, of one views a copy of Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” they aren’t thought of as viewing the original. We wanted to know if the same rule set applied to video games.

The fourth area we were interested in was that of the inside/outside of the games. We wanted to investigate the ways that both internal studies of games, such as the way that Matt viewed the structure of the game Mystery House through a hex editor, as well as the exterior aspects of the game, such as the way that one can play it using an emulator change the experience of the game itself. We also wanted to investigate the way that interacting with the game through either one of these mediums potentially gives the game a sense of what Matt calls a “certain formal materiality”. We wanted to draw a parallel between the ways that the hex editor is similar to playing the game itself, while playing the game in an emulator is similar to experiencing the game in terms of the paratext.

One facet of the interview that wasn’t planned (but Matt was gracious enough to give us extra time), was the discussion about the board games. Bryan and I had read some of Matt’s work on board games and were really excited to be able to ask him questions about the research that he has been doing in that area. Some things to note about this section, particularly as it applies to class, was the section about Dungeons and Dragons. Matt notes that this segment of games preceded role playing, and that Dungeons and Dragons grew out of a game called “Chain Mail” which was a medieval warfare simulation. Another point to note is the (quoting Matt from the interview) “extreme historical accuracy” that the people who play these games have. They know so many details and try to incorporate them into their gameplay. This is reminiscent of some of the things we do in studying literature. We try to be as specific and precise as possible when studying works, even to the point of studying the types of ink and paper used in editions of books in order to determine where they were printed, etc.

I will leave it to the interview to enlighten the reader about the answers that we got to most of our questions. Needless to say the topics addressed within offered new insights into the study of video games and hopefully will be found enlightening to the listener.

-Peter

An Interview with Matt Kirschenbaum

The Interview

Introduction

Peter Discusses the Interview