Video Game Auteur

128 Pages·2022·3.457 MB·English

by  Yavuz Kerem Demirbas

VIDEO GAME AUTEUR
VIDEO GAME AUTEUR
Yavuz Kerem DEMİRBAŞ

1st Edition, 2022

ISBN: 978-605-247-355-9

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VIDEO GAME AUTEUR

Yavuz Kerem DEMİRBAŞ

DORA
2022

TABLE OF CONTENTS

TABLE OF CONTENTS ................................................................................... v
FOREWORD .................................................................................................. vii

INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................. 1
VIDEO GAMES, ART AND ARTIST ................................................................ 5
AUTEUR AND AUTHORSHIP ....................................................................... 23
VIDEO GAME AUTEUR ................................................................................ 43
GONZALO FRASCA: AUTEUR OF THE OPPRESSED ............................... 89
CONCLUSION ............................................................................................. 107
REFERENCES ............................................................................................. 111

FOREWORD

This book, which has its origin in my master’s thesis, has a
somewhat unfamiliar approach to video games and needs to
put in context. Almost 20 years ago, at the end of my
undergraduate study in Astronomy, I decided to change my
field of study to media, video games specifically. In that
time, studying video games in a serious fashion in Turkey
was not common in academic circles. Game magazines were
limited and game reviews were mostly tech oriented. There
were no Youtube, twitch.tv, or social media present at that
time. Video games were seen as a childish interest. There
were no game studies or game design departments in
universities. My experience in writing game reviews for
magazines like Chip, PCWorld and Level, my love for video
games, as well as my ambition to follow scholarly work
brought me to a search for a way to combine these all.
During my graduate study in Communication Studies
Department in Marmara University, I applied to Erasmus
Programme and found myself in the Game Center of IT
University of Copenhagen. This center was one of the main
hubs of the still developing field of game studies. It had
faculty members and visiting scholars such as Espen
Aarseth, Olli Tapio Leino, Gordon Calleja, Gonzalo Frasca. I
started writing my dissertation in Copenhagen under the
supervision of Olli Tapio Leino.
Though I had solved the problem of finding the right
resources, place and people for studying video games, I soon
realized that my critical approach, with its strong emphasis
on the artistic and political role of the game maker was an
unfamiliar or even an undesired one. In that specific time,
games with auteur designers were relatively unseen, the
change of game scene with independent game titles with
artistic ambitions and new distribution platforms had just
begun. Even though there were some examples, the
authoritarian connotation of the game auteur was a negative
one. Still, it was a theory for the empowerment of players
and game makers, at least from my perspective. The school
of ludology was in search of new concepts for its formalist
approach, yet using these to create a methodology for
making or analyzing artistic, independent, critical games for
social change was uncommon. An already established link
between games, art, politics and culture in the literature was
not a radical or strong one. I soon realized that although I
was in the right place and with the right people to study
video games, there were few precursors to what I was
aiming to achieve.
I completed my dissertation in English and successfully
defended it as a part of my Erasmus requirements at the IT
University of Copenhagen. When I returned to Turkey, I
defended it again, this time in its Turkish version, for my
home institution, Marmara University under supervision of
Mukadder Çakır. The book which you hold in your hand is
based on this thesis.
As I started working again on this text, I realized that most
of the claims, foresight, suggestions that I had, have stood
the test of time. More serious matters for mature audiences
became the subject of many games. Some games with a
social critique and a distinct style won awards and were well
received; Papers Please (2013) and Cart Life (2010) are just two
examples from this domain. Molleindustria with their slogan
‚Radical Games Against the Tyranny of Entertainment‛
have many examples along this line. Modding communities
grew, nowadays a game without mod support is hard to
find. The existence of retro games and the retro-gaming
scene can also be attributed to the growing discontent
towards the polished but creatively lacking titles of the
gaming industry. Games with auteur game makers exist and
these are not only in independent production circles, but
some in industry. Alexander Mosolov’s Starsector (2011), the
auteur duo Enormous Elk and their games UnReal World
(1992), Dean Hall and DayZ (2013), Tynan Sylvester and
Rimworld (2013) are to name but a few. Should they really be
considered as video game auteurs? As you will see in this
book, that is not and has never been, the real importance of
the auteur concept. The core idea and purpose of auteur is
not to find one individual with total creative control, but to
enlarge the space for creativity and social critique, to change
the status quo of the studio system, to challenge mainstream
ideas and the established industrial interests, and to redefine
the understanding of the medium. Yet, there is no change in
world history without human subjects. After a long period
of devaluation of the subject, things like climate crisis, global
poverty, proxy wars, rising right wing populism or other
issues forced both new and old actors of history to rise up
and spread their ideas.
Yavuz Kerem Demirbaş