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Electronic Mediations

Gaming: Essays On Algorithmic Culture (Volume 18)

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Video games have been a central feature of the cultural landscape for over twenty years and now rival older media like movies, television, and music in popularity and cultural influence. Yet there have been relatively few attempts to understand the video game as an independent medium. Most such efforts focus on the earliest generation of text-based adventures ( Zork, for example) and have little to say about such visually and conceptually sophisticated games as Final Fantasy X, Shenmue, Grand Theft Auto, Halo, and The Sims, in which players inhabit elaborately detailed worlds and manipulate digital avatars with a vast—and in some cases, almost unlimited—array of actions and choices.

In Gaming , Alexander Galloway instead considers the video game as a distinct cultural form that demands a new and unique interpretive framework. Drawing on a wide range of disciplines, particularly critical theory and media studies, he analyzes video games as something to be played rather than as texts to be read, and traces in five concise chapters how the “algorithmic culture” created by video games intersects with theories of visuality, realism, allegory, and the avant-garde. If photographs are images and films are moving images, then, Galloway asserts, video games are best defined as actions.

Using examples from more than fifty video games, Galloway constructs a classification system of action in video games, incorporating standard elements of gameplay as well as software crashes, network lags, and the use of cheats and game hacks. In subsequent chapters, he explores the overlap between the conventions of film and video games, the political and cultural implications of gaming practices, the visual environment of video games, and the status of games as an emerging cultural form.

Together, these essays offer a new conception of gaming and, more broadly, of electronic culture as a whole, one that celebrates and does not lament the qualities of the digital age.

Alexander R. Galloway is assistant professor of culture and communication at New York University and author of How Control Exists after Decentralization.

160 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

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Alexander R. Galloway

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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
Profile Image for Sean.
58 reviews212 followers
August 24, 2018
I appreciate Galloway's material/formal mode of analysis, and think game criticism at large would benefit from a similar privileging of medium-specific gamic qualities rather than that which merely tangential (visuals, narrative, culture, etc).

The first essay, the most notable of the collection, outlines a Rosalind Krauss-esque formal schematic of gameplay with regard to "operator/machine" acts (roughly, the distinction between acts performed by the player and those performed by the game itself) and acts of diegetic/non-diegetic registers (paralleling the canonical definitions from film theory, but extrapolated for the more complex levels of participation at stake in the game medium).

A salient game criticism should attend to how these dualities are negotiated through the very act of play -- for example, Morrowind lets players warp between major world locations through the use of paid "silt-striders" (effectively taxis), inventory items such as scrolls, or spells requiring mana and appropriate skill allocation. The "warp" itself is, of course, a gamic mechanic to obviate the hindrance of backtracking, but is contained within and justified by the confines of the game's universe, rather than existing at the level of a non-diegetic operator act. Because a machine act is tied to each option (gold is deducted from the player's inventory, a scarce scroll is used up, mana is depleted) the shortcuts are still beholden to a risk/reward dynamic reinforcing both actant control and the mimesis of the diegetic world.

Skyrim, on the other hand, adopts a fast travel system in which players can instantly warp to any previously-visited location on the map. The problem here is that a level of diegetic mimesis is lost -- fast-travel can only justified in terms of sheer player demand, and forsakes an appropriate machinic response in order to streamline gameplay. There is no 'penalty' for using fast-travel, even though one could assume that within the parameters of the diegetic universe, health/mana and items would be lost were the trek to be made manually. And without such a penalty in place, there is no reinforcement to retain the mimesis proper to role-playing, of which travel is a major constituting aspect. Indeed, this mechanic bypasses role-playing as such, and is but one of many design choices reflecting an overall attempt to dilute the complexities of classical RPG mechanics.

Or consider the vast chasm separating the original Thief game from its 2014 reboot: in the former, one navigated using a "hand-drawn" map giving only the roughest approximation of the level layout (I even recall one mission which does away with details altogether to coincide with a turn in the the narrative). One therefore had to navigate through the levels diegetically, assuming the phenomenology of the game's avatar, taking notes of landmarks, remaining attentive to sound cues, and so forth. (It should be clear by now that the simplest of design decisions on these registers have tremendous impacts on the holistic gameplay experience). The reboot eschews organic design in favor of a transparent, "artificial" map overlay which breaks mimesis and produces a linearized, hand-holding level layout. There is both an excess of non-diegetic operator control (in which the player readily "knows more" of the avatar's surroundings than he does, at the expense of gameplay potential) and diegetic machine control (scripted events or cutscenes in which the gamic is usurped by the cinematic). One could say that the game is streamlined to the point where "it plays itself", but it may be more accurate to say that there is hardly a game as such to play at all.

I would also like to highlight Galloway's critique of "art games", in which gamic qualities are eclipsed by "countergaming" strategies (essentially subversive Godardian estrangement) or narrative/cinematic devices, which ultimately serve to regress the medium. I've always harbored a similar skepticism towards the designation of the "art game", and find that the titles most deserving of that accolade are rarely granted it. I would instead name games such as Tetris, Super Monkey Ball, Thief, Katamari Damacy, WipEout, Tony Hawk, and Quake 3, none of which cultivate "artsy" significations but are each distinguished, in various ways, by their novel forms of interactional and ludic potential -- the grounds by which games should be substantiated as art.
Profile Image for xenia.
545 reviews335 followers
July 12, 2024
Gamic Action (ch1) and Allegories of Control (ch4) are solid 5 stars. Deluezian explorations of video games as processes (actional rather than representational) and systems (flat rather than deep).

Actional: an enactment between operator and machine, that generates agential configurations. Even if the player is privileged (in, say, an FPS), they must still perform (to) the code. A giveaway when an awed teammate exclaims 'You're a machine!' after you dunk on an opponent. (Pretty sure gamers don't talk like this, but my Hons supervisor said this to me during lockdown . _.)

Systems: rule-based simulations that regulate subjects though networks of feedback loops. The body a multitude of stocks; quantities to be modulated towards optimal performance. Galloway uses the example of 4X games, where the menus and statistics are on full display and every unit (person, battalion, city) has attributes in need of regulating. Another example would be min-maxing in RPGs.

However, Galloway can be quite totalising at times. His analysis of 4X games applies well to other strategy games, but it makes little sense in relation to story-driven games such as Journey or Heavy Rain.

The rest of the chapters are okay. Despite Galloway's claim at the beginning that he's going to start at games to theorise about games, he keeps returning to film and film theories, undermining his ontological foundation. In Origins of the First Person Shooter (ch2) he barely even talks about games; instead, he traces the POV shot across cinematic history. I'm pretty sure carnival games and military weapon interfaces have had far more influence on FPSs than Hitchcock films.
Profile Image for Philip Cherny.
40 reviews36 followers
February 11, 2012
This book heavily stresses the cinema-studies approach to video games—sometimes to such an extent that I wonder how much experience Mr. Galloway has actually had playing video games. For instance, in the first chapter, he suggests that the “subjective” first-person perspective in shooter games ultimately derives from conventions established in film. Sure okay, but he distinguishes them as such: “Where film uses the subjective shot to represent a problem with identification, games uses the subjective shot to creative identification.” (69). This might hold true, but he completely ignores the gameplay benefits of firs-person perspective particular to shooting games—tellingly, the most popular VG genre to utilize this perspective. While third-person shooters (which the author does not even mention in the chapter) offer players a “whole” (as in Lacanian mirror-stage “whole”) perspective of their avatars, the first-person view offers the players the most accurate control over aiming at targets, the primary element of shooting games. Some third-person shooter games like Jet Force Gemini (1999) have inventively dealt with the issue of the characters blocking the line of sight by turning them translucent when aiming. Zelda games utilize certain third-person shooting mechanics, allowing players to move Link around while firing a bow by holding down a button that locks the camera and character’s direction. Such game mechanics offer players (frankly underrated) control challenges much different from those of FPS games, and arguably serve as the primary determining factor when developers decide on game dynamics—not, as Galloway suggests, the way in which a player “identifies” with the controlled character.

This book offers a multitude of examples from cinema and video games. One could skim through many of them and still get the gist of author’s argument. I personally find a few of his arguments a bit opaque, such as the distinction he draws between P.O.V. and subjective shot, which I feel he could elaborate on just a little more instead of elucidating different examples. Nonetheless, I would still contend that this book offers quite a few interesting, if not compelling insights into video games in comparison to film. It fails where it overstresses certain points that make me think, “Yeah, okay. Maybe to a certain extent...but not exactly.” To give another example from the first chapter: Galloway distinguishes games from movies in that “Games have the luxury of being able to exist outside real, optical time” where movies don’t (65), then describing the “bullet time” effect in the Matrix as an example of “gamic cinema” that serves as an exception. I’m sorry Mr. Galloway! I think I see what you’re trying to get at here, but the way you word it, I’m just not buying your argument. All you had to say is that unlike movies (save the pause button on a recorder), games give players the control over time and space (relatively speaking). You make it sound as if directors do not manipulate time with ellipses and other effects.
Profile Image for Franz Scherer.
76 reviews8 followers
May 22, 2018
Das erste Essay ist sehr gut und bietet viele kenntnisreiche Einsichten (Videospiele sind zuerst mal Software, außerden erforden sie einen handelnden Spieler um erfahrbar zu sein), der Rest ist nur so mäßig interessant.
955 reviews19 followers
April 27, 2012
This is one of those books where the subtitle is particularly important--"essays on algorithmic culture." Galloway's book is divided into five chapters, each of which stands (and can be read) fairly independently from the rest. He will refer to the others when relevant, but no essay depends on knowing the other four. The book starts with a fairly formalist discussion of videogames, creating a "quadrant" system where games may be located along a machine/operator access (or game/player, if you prefer), and along a diegetic/nondiegetic axis. Chapter two studies the perspective of the first person shooter genre through the lenses of the subjective shot in film. Chapter three considers what realism could and should mean in games, settling on something less aesthetically real and more real in terms in action; Galloway pays particular attention to games that model themselves as military training simulations. Chapter 4, Allegories of Control, takes Deleuze's concept that we've moved past a society that emphasizes control through restriction, and are now in a place where control operates through immaterial networks, and the videogame is an exemplar form of that operation. The final chapter discusses countergaming, contrasting indie games with indie films, and updating Peter Wollen's theses on counter-cinema for indie games.

It's unfair to say that the five essays are entirely without connection. Two themes in particular stand out. First, and most important, Galloway argues that the basic unit of the game is the action, and this emphasis on action permeates all of his discussions on how games need to be interpreted and studied. Second, as you may have noticed, there is a persistent turn towards cinema as the best medium for understanding videogames. Honestly, I don't really have a lot of patience for this course of action; while it works well enough in the final chapter, where Galloway updates and modifies the filmic theories, in other places, such as chapter two, it takes up so much of the discussion that it's really more an essay on film than game per se. And while I'm complaining, I might as well just list the other problems: the formalist discussion felt both totalizing and reductive; the chapter on realism was interesting, but all too brief; and I'm not sure his distinction between informatic control and ideology in chapter 4 totally holds up. But despite those complaints, I'd recommend the book--it's engaging, and the issues it discusses are worth discussing, whether you agree with his conclusions or not.
Profile Image for Ibn Cereno.
74 reviews7 followers
November 20, 2025
Of the handful of academic games studies books I've read, this one is the best—so here's the 2/5 it deserves.

Chapter 1 lays out a formalist framework for thinking about videogames as inter-action between an operator (player) and a machine (systems, mechanics, code, etc) on diegetic and non-diegetic registers. This framework is more useful than the common "gameplay-first" focus, though your mileage will vary depending on how far you take action as the primary lens for looking at videogames (as opposed to a higher-level e.g narrative one).

Galloway's social theory of videogames is much weaker, and I think it basically comes down to the weakness of his Deleuzian framework. (I'll give Deleuze himself the benefit of the doubt until such time as I familiarize myself with more of his work,* but when someone writes that "information" is the "general equivalent" of the modern economy, my hackles are raised.**) He gets a lot of mileage out of equivocal usage of words like "algorithm," which in extreme cases results in the sort of bad theory that trades in "the death of the author" for a view of individual artworks as almost unmediated expressions of the societies in which they were produced. At one point, Galloway actually tells us that enjoying in-game ambience is a sadomaschistic exercise in submission to the desires of the algorithm. In contrast, his criticism of Sid Meier's Civilization, in terms of the violence it does by submitting perhaps otherwise incommensurable modes of life to a single flattening quantitative rubric, is insightful. (He thinks this criticism supercedes the more obvious ideological one, but they are clearly supplementary. Galloway is misled by Deleuze's notion of the "control society," which, however useful a lens it may be, easily lends itself to periodizations as rigid and thought-cancelling as those of any vulgar Marxist.)

That covers chapters 1 and 4, which are the two that are worth reading. The rest, by privileging concepts imported from film theory, do more or less the opposite of what Galloway says he is doing at the beginning of the book.

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* Edit: Nah.
**Galloway must have no idea what "general equivalent" means. What does he think wages and dividends are paid in? Information? It's difficult to even imagine what an "information economy" would look like: given the ambiguity of the word, perhaps some kind of barter economy?
Profile Image for Andrew.
11 reviews
June 9, 2016
The five essays in this book work well to extend film theory to video gaming. While this allows productive insights, such as the four moments of gamic action described in the opening chapter, it does perhaps miss an opportunity to develop a born-digital gamic theory that does not rely on analogy to non-digital genres and modes. It may be a bit anachronistic to level this as a critique given the recent rapid development in video game literature, but it is worth noting that Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames was released around this time. Bogost's book does a bit more to take on video games as a genre in their own right without relying on critical approaches from other genres in the way that Galloway uses film.
In any case, I don't intend this as a criticism so much as something to note when reflecting on the scope and application of Galloway's theories. Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture remains an influential work and is relevant to anyone interested in building a deeper understanding and appreciation of video games and a more precise vocabulary with which to explore their role as a contemporary form of expression.
Profile Image for Ansh.
21 reviews4 followers
August 14, 2015
Strongly distinguishes itself from the former definitions of "play" and describes the four "gamic" actions in interesting ways. But it's two biggest achievements are how it connects the Deleuzian control societies into "enacted allegories" to develop a better theory for postmodernist era where action and processing go hand-in-hand and where the illusion of freedom and choices barely conceals the ideological biases underneath.
Also, *brillIiant* last chapter on counter-gaming and artist-made mods where Galloway associates Godard's formal experiments in the French New Wave in 60s and how it broke from Hollywood's model with that of these gaming mods. Ultimately a critical look at some of the more persistent and popular theories in game studies that's written in a precise, to-the-point manner.
Profile Image for Katie Chico.
6 reviews1 follower
March 5, 2009
I thought this book was really pretty interesting. There were times that I had to seriously question his interpretation of the major semiotic works he quotes, but for the most part the book got me thinking again. I especially enjoyed his connections of realism/realisticness/and the Italian film movement of neorealism.
Profile Image for Steen Ledet.
Author 11 books40 followers
May 21, 2015
Good, insightful book on gaming and video games, which does not take the obvious route. While not exactly formalist, Galloway's approach still blends aesthetics with cultural approaches, forging a new, strong path for video games studies. While I don't exactly agree with his combination of algorithm and allegory, his argument is undeniably strong.
Profile Image for Douglas Pearce.
5 reviews4 followers
October 16, 2007
If gaming literature needed an academic upgrade, this is it. It formalizes many concepts in gaming by drawing largely upon film criticism. This may end up being a foundational text for future criticism of gaming.
Profile Image for Kyle.
79 reviews73 followers
August 27, 2013
Really bad tips n tricks, no cheat codes whatsoever, and a total lack of level maps. 3.5/5
Profile Image for DAVID.
13 reviews5 followers
July 8, 2016
A quick but insightful read.
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