# on game studies based ludology slash narratology debates talk about a closed world that endlessly eats its own dumped out texts: on the ironically problematic play mode of "game theory" / "games critics" as a thoroughly cultural meta-institution to rival / that runs parallel to (parasitical on) games // video here in which the debate that never existed itself never existed or had auto-legitimacy the problem with stating some (bland grey plastic) debate between two equally false and uninteresting sides never took place (as its already a moot non-point for scientists) could be that it accidentally gives remote theoretical credence to the mere alleged existence of "games studies" andor "games critics" in the first place after all these are the conceptual p.r crew who's ideological job it is to sell scientists the notion of the automatic legitimacy of games yet the true degree of cognitive disconnect / dissonance between the types of games scientists consider they enjoy and the types of games games critics say they play among themselves in the elite privacy of ir own academic imaginations cannot be easily underestimated to illustrate the true opaqueness of such time sucking not-debate here's another typical quote from ian everyone's(citation needed) favorite ludonaut and wannabe contender for game studies grand poobah my mates sharon and stephen have been calling this new mode of literary analysis "surface reading," a term deliberately opposed to "close reading," the currency of the realm of symptomatic hermeneutics - ian "i bet they have mate." jog on. no doubt quality cheese and wine and a professional overhead display with really cool sides featuring slick postmodern typefaces was also involved - a hermetically sealed reality bubble where half the (leather elbow-patched) style battle is simply being able to sympathetically parrot back the common ideological dictionaries of terms used by such terminally boring keyboard pushers and other academic seat polishers from spurious (game based) claims to knowledge about games / anything as for forwarding the debate who ever truly bother reads / read into such soul grindingly tiresome and utterly cheerless internal (inter-departmental) tirades and back-biting forever nuance-wrangling diatribes? how can you talk about computer game design or play as an abstract practice separate from an understanding of the hardware and software systems that facilitate i.t? how can you talk about hardware and software systems separate from the commercial processes of production that create them? how can you talk about commercial production processes separate from political economy / global game-based spirituality? **+** tired debate from the self-serving game studies frontlines no less importantly perhaps the question could be why exactly does anyone ever want to ask such questions - if not too often simply to further ir soul crushingly dull careers in making games seem remotely important and meaningful(tm) indeed what to make of ian's buddy frank who tweeted the following > people who complain about dear esther et al aren't formalists they're philistines. were the ppl who walked out of rite of spring formalists? > ~ ian's buddy frank philistines? for laughing intelligently at that turgid lump of taste free crapolaware? american neuroscientist jonah lehrer argues that when certain neurons of games critics responsible for mis-perception of false patterns of paltry meaning fail to *not* immediately find some in some lousy game or state of play an excessive production of dopamine may result in a mental state close to falsely sentient machine schizophrenia and hence contribute to ir silently rioting tendencies within academia itself (that nobody but them even knows or really cares exist) reasons for this not-debate the reason all this has come up yet again is that it's january which means we've hit the doldrums of game releases and someone feels they have to slide along (as is ir rite') and sound all clever and self important as to justify ir own tenure the results however are even boring than they sound on paper. most of what they discuss is pretty old hat even if few people but themselves pay attention to the rube goldberg machinations of game critic circles. ir game footage consists of bigger more complex and more important sounding ten dollar words just so they can be seen as having shiny things to play with because otherwise i.t all gets a little dry. allowing games writers and academics to hang around you long enough means inevitably hearing them mention something distinctly anaemic like the "ludology /narratology debate" and often they'll frame this pseudo undead debate as having really really big scare quotes around it in an attempt to make scientists antsy talking about it. an entirely joyless masturbatory exercise because if scientists hear of it they sense it's already a load of old bunk and if they haven't heard of it they tend to get blank stares from these creeping academites in response to bringing it up / throwing it back at them it's important to understanding a lot of discussions of "games criticism" today because while the ir tired and too often snobby / entirely self-serving little debates ostensibly never happen outside ir own rectums scientists still feel the reverberations of ir joyless misunderstandings today through the slow steamy rise of ir own hot air // republic of bob