Future Cinema

Course Site for Future Cinema 1 (and sometimes Future Cinema 2: Applied Theory) at York University, Canada

Week 8 Questions – Grayson

As game cultures are more and more “mainstreamed”, more emphasis (inside and outside of gaming circles) has been placed on the beneficial effects of investment, individuation and relationship-building within game worlds. By encouraging emotional/social connection and development, are games behaving counter to the (maybe less so, lately) narratives of violence and isolation pushed by influential interests in media and politics? Have they always been this way, and simply misunderstood, or is this development part and parcel with the growth/maturation of the communities involved?
Dovetailing with our discussion last week around the issue of bias in AI, how does this temper our enthusiasm for learning/growing in and through virtual environments?
If games offer users the ability to inhabit a subject position within historical events, either as observer or to “play” the role of an important figure, they undoubtedly expand the possibility for emotional engagement/understanding of complex (and often alien) narratives. On the other hand, they necessarily exercise a degree of artistic license and/or revisionism. Weighing the pros/cons of the practice, does this extend, or rub against, journalistic ethics?
Being transparently self-serving, here: is it politically useful to think of experience design, community building and emotionally-engaged practices of digital-worldmaking as opportunities/spaces for the workshopping of otherwise possibility? Can the game space model alternative ways of being together in the “real” world, or rather, can the game space create entirely new spaces for the unfolding of social and political life?

1. As game cultures are more and more “mainstreamed”, more emphasis (inside and outside of gaming circles) has been placed on the beneficial effects of investment, individuation and relationship-building within game worlds. By encouraging emotional/social connection and development, are games behaving counter to the (maybe less so, lately) narratives of violence and isolation pushed by influential interests in media and politics? Have they always been this way, and simply misunderstood, or is this development part and parcel with the growth/maturation of the communities involved?

2. Dovetailing with our discussion last week around the issue of bias in AI, how does this temper our enthusiasm for learning/growing in and through virtual environments?

3. If games offer users the ability to inhabit a subject position within historical events, either as observer or to “play” the role of an important figure, they undoubtedly expand the possibility for emotional engagement/understanding of complex (and often alien) narratives. On the other hand, they necessarily exercise a degree of artistic license and/or revisionism. Weighing the pros/cons of the practice, does this extend, or rub against, journalistic ethics?

4. Being transparently self-serving, here: is it politically useful to think of experience design, community building and emotionally-engaged practices of digital-worldmaking as opportunities/spaces for the workshopping of “otherwise possibility”? Can the game space model alternative ways of being together in the “real” world, or rather, can the game space create entirely new spaces for the unfolding of social and political life?

Wed, October 30 2019 » Future Cinema

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