Comments on: QWERTY: Games are not Films…they're Plays http://www.thegamecritique.com/recent-posts/qwerty-games-are-not-filmstheyre-plays/255/ A Critical Assessment of Video Games Mon, 06 Feb 2012 06:16:55 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Simon Ferrari http://www.thegamecritique.com/recent-posts/qwerty-games-are-not-filmstheyre-plays/255/comment-page-1/#comment-256 Simon Ferrari Thu, 02 Apr 2009 04:40:45 +0000 http://www.thegamecritique.com/?p=255#comment-256 Been reading awhile, and while I sort of understand the QWERTY thing as full of half-truth and jokes... 30 years into film history we had French Impressionist, Soviet Montage, and German Expressionist cinemas. We also had Dreyer making Vampyr and the Jean d'Arc (probably the peak of silent film). So filmmakers were already at art, and they had already advanced numerous theories on the essence and strengths of the cinema as its own medium. Not to mention that even though Edison's and Melies' films were basically stage plays, the Lumiere films were roughly 1/4 "plays" and 3/4 documentaries. I suppose it's possible that the Swain already knew this, but QWERTY didn't? Anyhow, while there are certainly performative lessons we can take from theatre, there are already quite a few ludologists who've laid out the formal properties of games as unique from other media... in fact, we had a lot of these theories back when games were a lot slower, that is, when they were board games and sports. Homo ludens was 1938. Videogames already had basic theories in place when they were -50 years old. Computational theories came around 1987, when Chris Crawford explained the difference between process and data intensity. QWERTY needs a reading list. Been reading awhile, and while I sort of understand the QWERTY thing as full of half-truth and jokes… 30 years into film history we had French Impressionist, Soviet Montage, and German Expressionist cinemas. We also had Dreyer making Vampyr and the Jean d’Arc (probably the peak of silent film). So filmmakers were already at art, and they had already advanced numerous theories on the essence and strengths of the cinema as its own medium.

Not to mention that even though Edison’s and Melies’ films were basically stage plays, the Lumiere films were roughly 1/4 “plays” and 3/4 documentaries.

I suppose it’s possible that the Swain already knew this, but QWERTY didn’t? Anyhow, while there are certainly performative lessons we can take from theatre, there are already quite a few ludologists who’ve laid out the formal properties of games as unique from other media… in fact, we had a lot of these theories back when games were a lot slower, that is, when they were board games and sports. Homo ludens was 1938. Videogames already had basic theories in place when they were -50 years old. Computational theories came around 1987, when Chris Crawford explained the difference between process and data intensity. QWERTY needs a reading list.

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