Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1065920
16 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 23 DECEMBER 2018 INTERVIEW To some people, it may seem strange that a University devotes an academic institute purely to the subject of games. Digital games, perhaps… ranging from the humblest of apps for a mobile phone, to the gaming industry equivalent of a Hollywood blockbuster movie. Yet still, we call them 'games'… a word that connotes 'playthings for children'. Is there more to the digital gaming universe than mere child's play, though? What is it about gaming that attracts so much academic interest these days? One of the most famous quotes by [Canadian media scholar] Marshall MacLuhan was concerned with the fact that our lives were getting longer; and that technology was helping to reduce some of the toil that we are exposed to every day. So, he suggested the idea that, now that we are liv- ing in a technological age, we have to remain children for longer. So in a sense, 'popu- lar culture' – including games, movies, comics, which are all disciplines currently being tackled academically at the University of Malta – is also becoming part of what was tra- ditionally regarded as 'serious' culture. It's no longer just as- sociated with 'entertainment' or 'leisure'; popular culture can also engage with political or philosophical discussions. You've probably already heard, for instance, how there has been a huge political upheaval in the gaming world in the past couple of years. Game design- ers came in for heavy criticism over sexism, or for their right- wing positions, or for implicit violence, and so on. That led to a rapid shift in that particular culture, affecting the output of game developers. To me, it is an important indication that we are no longer taking things like gaming lightly. We're no longer talking about the culture we consume as something that is innocuous, or 'neutral'. We're taking it seriously. Gaming is in fact one of the key, formative ways in which we receive cul- ture today: similar, perhaps, to theatre or public speaking in ancient Greece and Rome… Like theatre and other classical art-forms, video games also create artificial worlds. There is an element of fantasy and imagination programmed into the entire concept to begin with. Do you see digital gaming as a legitimate successor to the more traditional vehicles of 'serious culture'? If so, to what extent can a video game be realistically compared to, say, a classic novel or play? That is in fact one of the ques- tions I am asking myself right now. My academic background is in philosophy of technology, and together with a colleague who is a literary scholar, we are busy tracking and mapping the differences in representa- tion between traditional fiction and virtual reality. What kind of rhetoric or academic impact can virtual worlds lead to, in comparison with the world of literature? I also have a back- ground in the gaming industry itself: I have been, and still am, involved in the 'entertainment' side of things. Specifically, I make games to explain philo- sophical points: showing that there is more than one way a 'text' can be interpreted. Texts have their limitations; as do vir- tual worlds. Virtual worlds are in fact very limited. But maybe a combination of the two uni- verses – the digital game, and the traditional text-based nar- rative, or philosophical treatise, etc. – might lead to better re- sults. Maybe we will eventually think thoughts that can only ever emerge from those rela- tionships. So not only is there a transition from classical culture to gaming; but it is also opening up new possibilities for litera- ture, philosophy, theatre and so on. Gaming technology now plays a part in so many different media platforms: there are in- teractive media tools that may change the way we listen to or experience music, for instance. So I don't think we're living in a society that can realistically separate 'high culture' from 'low culture' any longer. Gam- ing culture has had a lot to do with that transition… to me, the only strange thing is that we didn't give it the same academic attention sooner. Could it have something to do with the sudden accessibility of affordable technology? For example: software that was previously too expensive (or simply too huge) for the average home computer are now widely available to everyone. You can download open-source game engines from sites like Steam. Has this played a part in the explosion of digital gaming as a cultural phenomenon? The diffusion of the Internet, and high-powered computers, is certainly part of the answer. But running parallel to that is an evolution of a more political nature: the 'democratisation' of the production tools. Now, it is possible to make a game, and launch it to the world, in just a few weeks. Before, you needed a team of game designers and programmers, a publisher, a chain of distribution, and also some exposure in the media so that people get to hear about your games. Today, all that is up to a point 'taken care of': you can simply upload your game onto the Internet, where it is instantly within reach of every- one… But surely there is a downside to that. To make a quick comparison with the music industry: any musician or band can now produce music and upload it onto the Internet, without any agents or record label. Whether they can make a living out of it, however, is another question. Has there been a similar affect in the gaming industry, in the sense that it is easier to produce and distribute… but harder to make money? Similarly to Spotify – and this is a very Marxist point of view – the people making money in the gaming world are still the people who own the infrastruc- ture. If you want to push your Video games have undergone an astonishingly rapid evolution, from early prototypes like Space Invaders and Pacman, to Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs) played by millions of dedicated gamers worldwide. STEFANO GUALENI, lecturer at the University of Malta's Digital Gaming Institute, explains why the 'video game' is a cultural phenomenon one ignores at one's own risk Raphael Vassallo Raphael Vassallo rvassallo@mediatoday.com.mt More than just a 'game'