一塊地 Piece of Land

This week I read Ian Bogost’s “Videogames and Ideological Frames” (2006) and Gonzalo Frasca’s “Videogames of the Oppressed: Critical Thinking, Education, Tolerance, and Other Trivial Issues.” These two light readings (29 A4 pages in total) were digestible and inspiring. Both of Bogost and Frasca attempted to expand the role of videogames in our modern culture. By applying critical perspectives, Bogust focused on the political ideological framing presented in political videogames, while Frasca claims that videogames could indeed deal with human relationships and social issues. I find it interesting reading these two pieces together: Frasca argues for creating possibilities for educational and sociopolitical awareness via open-source game design, on the contrary Bogost reveals to his readers that how videogames design can be manipulated by political use.

The topic of gaming reminds me of our previous class discussion about virtuality and reality. I believe Bogost had noticed the relativity because in his article he used ample real-life experience and empirical-based theories to support his argument for the metaphor of visual rhetoric in those videogames. Meanwhile, Frasca chose to ignore the line between virtuality and reality—he believes that the ‘simulation’ that forms games has always been presented in our culture, as a type of representation of civilization. I consider Frasca overly expect the possibilities of ‘the possibility of change,’ which he referred from Augusto Boal’s “Theater of the Oppressed” as an experiment between actors and audience to foster their critical thinking. Here I quote from Rob Shields’ book The Virtual:

 “Deleuze argues that the virtual is constitutive but ineffable. It is not opposed to the real and is therefore not realizable in the same way that the (non-exising) possible is. Axiomatically, the possible is an image of the real, a negation. Realization is a process of bringing the possible (the abstract or the probable) into existence in a matter that resembles it.  In contrast, the virtual is fully real but can be actualized as the concrete.” (Shields: 2003, ch. 2) 

In other words, for Deleuze, virtuality is the ineffable real that could be actualized; however, it is the possible real that can be realized into existence. In his article, Frasca didn’t further define the line between games and reality. By proposing to grant gamers to modify their internal characters in the game design, I wonder if the ‘near-reality’ in a game would still be limited in the box of virtuality, not serving as an alternative solution for real issues in one’s life. 

//