Code, Games and Skillz

I throughly appreciated Aarseth's discussion of the level of skill a game analyst should bring to the scholarly interpretation and analysis of games. As he says "For the playing analyst, the question of which position and stratum to attain is a question of skills, experience, ethics, motivation, and time. Although expert and innovative play are always hard and sometimes impossible to reach, they do imply that the (successful) analyst has understood the gameplay and the game rules better than others."

Throughout our discussion of the role of software and code I naggingly wonder at how my almost total lack of programming skills affected my reading and interpretation of the theory of code. While none of our readings address this issue in particular (that I recall at least) I read recently, though I forget exactly where, that Friedrich Kittler has made the claim that all students (sciences and humanities alike) should know at least 2 programming language. Aarseth's examination of how skill affects gaming reflects back on our discussions of code.

I was a little disappointed that Galloway didn't explicitly discuss this in his article. However I was very pleased to see our good friend Lev Manovich weight in on the manner, by way of the blurb on the back cover of Galloway's book. Lev lets us know that "Galloway is both a leading media scholar and an expert video game player, and this gives Gaming its special edge." Here Manovich is not so subtly conflating the strength of Galloway's analysis with his skills as a gamer.

I am at least comforted to know that in our upcoming discussions on games I have ample experience, in stark contrast to the sometimes overwhelming realm of code.