【舊譯】遊戲學研究，第一年_風聞

注：此文為 2001 年《遊戲學研究》創刊號的卷首文章，僅供參考

埃斯本・阿瑟斯（Espen Aarseth），哥本哈根大學人文信息學副教授，著有《賽博文本：文學中的遍歷性視點》，主張關注遊戲性，來建立遊戲學進行遊戲文本的研究，2001 年創辦《遊戲學研究》（game studies）並獲北歐人文與社會科學研究理事會聯合委員會認證。此篇為 2001 年阿瑟斯為《遊戲學研究》創刊號所寫的卷首。

遊戲學研究，第一年。

作者：艾斯本.阿瑟斯（Espen.Aarseth）—《遊戲學研究》主編

譯：Kinostone

Welcome to the first issue of the first academic, peer-reviewed journal dedicated to computer game studies. This is a noteworthy occasion, and perhaps the most remarkable aspect is that such a journal has not been started before. As we know, there have been computer games for almost as long as there have been computers: SpaceWar, arguably the first modern game, turns forty this year, and commercially the genre has existed for three decades. So why not something like this before?

歡迎閲讀第一期致力於電子遊戲研究的第一期學術期刊。電子遊戲，這是一個期待深入挖掘的全新領域，也許目前來説，這類的期刊還未曾有過。但正如我們所知，電子遊戲的歷史幾乎與計算機一樣長：SpaceWar 太空戰爭（1962），可以説是第一款現代遊戲，今年已經變成了四十年，並且在商業上，遊戲這門生意已經存在了三十年。那麼為什麼之前沒有針對遊戲這樣東西的研究呢？

2001 can be seen as the Year One of Computer Game Studies as an emerging, viable, international, academic field. This year has seen the first international scholarly conference on computer games, in Copenhagen in March, and several others will follow. 01-02 may also be the academic year when regular graduate programs in computer game studies are offered for the first time in universities. And it might be the first time scholars and academics take computer games seriously, as a cultural field whose value is hard to overestimate.

2001 年可能會成為遊戲研究元年，遊戲學，成為為一個可行的、國際化、學術化的全新學術領域。這一年，三月份在哥本哈根我們召開了第一屆國際遊戲學學術論壇。2001-2002 學年大學中也第一次提供了遊戲學研究的學術化課程，學術界開始用嚴謹的方式去審視電子遊戲在文化領域的價值。

To some of us, computer games are already a phenomenon of greater cultural importance than, say movies, or perhaps even sports. Seen from 2001, the potential cultural role(s) of computer games in the future is practically unfathomable. It seems clear that these games, especially multi-player games, combine the aesthetic and the social in a way the old mass media, such as theatre, movies, TV shows and novels never could. The old mass media created mass audiences, who shared values and sustained markets, but the mass media communities remained imagined (in Benedict Anderson’s sense), with little or no direct communication between participants. Clearly, multi-player games are not like that. In games like MUD1, Ultima online, or Quake Arena, the aesthetic and the social are integrated parts, and this could be regarded as the greatest innovation in audience structure since the invention of the choir, thousands of years ago. 

To see computer games as merely the newest self-reinvention of Hollywood, as some do, is to disregard those socio-aesthetic aspects and also to force outdated paradigms onto a new cultural object. True, there is a considerable Hollywoodisation of the games industry at the moment, that started with the “interactive movies” failures of the early nineties, but there is also a world wide, non-commercial, collective games movement that has a better infrastructure than any amateur movement before it. Hollywood, like the record industry, is all about distribution, and now there is a distribution mechanism that rivals booth: the Internet. Even Bill Gates III failed to swallow up the Internet, and there is much less reason to believe that Hollywood will succeed. From the closed ecosystem of Nintendo to the open source games communities on the Net; game studies must study both; it would be a mistake to assume that the “Nintendo-Hollywood” industrial complex will rule, and eliminate the alternative. As a cultural studies strategy, this would be like preparing to fight the previous war.

對於我們當中的一部分人來説，電子遊戲已經成為比電影，甚至體育更具文化重要性的現象。從 2001 年來看，電子遊戲的潛在文化意義實際上是不可思議的。很明顯，這些遊戲，特別是多人遊戲，將戲劇，電影，電視節目和小説等傳統大眾媒體從未有過的方式與美學和社會相結合。舊的大眾媒體創造了大眾，他們共享價值觀和持續的市場，但大眾傳媒社區仍然是想象的（在本尼迪克特.安德森的意義上），參與者之間很少或沒有直接溝通。顯然，多人遊戲不是那樣的。在遊戲中 MUD1，Ultima Online，或 Quake Arena，審美價值和社會性是一個整體，這可以被視為自數千年前合唱團發明以來觀眾結構中最偉大的創新。

如果正如一些人所做的那樣，將電腦遊戲視為好萊塢範式的自我改造，不得不説，他們是忽視了遊戲的社會-審美複合價值方面，並將過時的範式強加於新的文化對象。的確，遊戲行業有相當大的好萊塢化 目前，這始於九十年代初的“互動電影”失敗，但也有一個全球性的，非商業性的集體遊戲運動，其基礎設施比之前的任何業餘運動都要好。

與唱片業一樣，好萊塢產業的核心是關於發行的，但現在有一個與好萊塢機制相抗衡的分銷渠道：互聯網。甚至比爾.蓋茨都沒能吞下互聯網，我們當然也沒有理由相信好萊塢的模式在遊戲中會成功。從任天堂封閉的生態系統到網絡上的開源遊戲社區; 遊戲研究必須研究兩者; 認為“任天堂- 好萊塢”工業園區將統治是錯誤的，並消除替代方案。作為一種文化研究戰略，這就像準備戰鬥前一場戰爭一樣。

認知，一次交際性革命？

A cognitive, communicative revolution?

Much hype has been produced about the ability of new technology to instigate new ways of thought and communication. Take hypertext, which was supposed to give us writing skills that adhered much closer to the way our brains worked, a more “natural” way of textual communication. So far, however, the World Wide Web, the must successful hypertext system by far, has only produced a better distribution mechanism, and very few texts actually use the nonlinear possibilities of the technology. Games, however, are often simulations; they are not static labyrinths like hypertexts or literary fictions. The simulation aspect is crucial: it is radically different alternative to narratives as a cognitive and communicative structure. Simulations are bottom up; they are complex systems based on logical rules.

Games are both object and process; they can’t be read as texts or listened to as music, they must be played. Playing is integral, not coincidental like the appreciative reader or listener. The creative involvement is a necessary ingredient in the uses of games. The complex nature of simulations is such that a result can’t be predicted beforehand; it can vary greatly depending on the player’s luck, skill and creativity. In multi-player games, social skills are needed, or must be developed. Anyone who has spent some time in a multi-player game knows that. Yet much of the industry and the academic commentators see the need for “narrative” structures in order to understand games and make games “better.” In this issue, the debate about narratives’ and narratology’s relevance to game studies is clearly visible. This is a debate that shows the very early stage we are still in, where the struggle of controlling and shaping the theoretical paradigms has just started. We expect the debate to continue, here and elsewhere, but hope that future contributions will address the points already made, and not simply make the same claims over and over again. That is what an academic journal is for.

認知，一次交際性革命？

人們對新技術煽動新思維方式和溝通方式的能力進行了大量宣傳。採取超文本，這應該比我們的寫作印刷技巧更接近我們的大腦工作方式，一種更“自然”的文本交流方式。然而，到目前為止，萬維網是迄今為止必須成功的超文本系統，它只產生了一種更好的分配機制，很少有文本實際上發揮了這種的非線性的可能性。然而，遊戲通常是模擬; 它們不是像超文本或文學小説那樣的靜態迷宮。模擬方面至關重要：作為一種認知和交際結構，它與敍事完全不同。模擬是自下而上的; 它們是基於邏輯規則的更加複雜的系統。

遊戲既是對象又是過程; 它們不能被視為文本或被視為音樂，它們必須被播放。玩耍是不可或缺的，而不是像欣賞的讀者或聽眾那樣巧合。創意參與是遊戲使用的必要因素。模擬的複雜性使得事先無法預測結果; 它可以根據玩家的運氣，技巧和創造力去創造不同。在多人遊戲中，需要或必須開發社交技能。任何玩過多人遊戲的人都知道這一點。然而，許多行業和學術評論家都認為需要“敍事”結構來理解遊戲並使遊戲“更好”。在這個問題上，關於敍事和敍事學與遊戲研究的相關性的爭論清晰可見。這是一場辯論，顯示了我們現在處於非常早期的階段，控制和塑造理論範式的鬥爭才剛剛開始。我們希望在這裏和其他地方繼續進行辯論，但希望未來的貢獻能夠解決已經提出的問題，做出更多的遊戲學研究，希望未來本研究的貢獻將解決已經提出的問題，而不是簡單地一遍又一遍地提出相同的要求。這就是學術期刊的用途。

創造新的規則！

​Creating a New Discipline

The greatest challenge to computer game studies will no doubt come from within the academic world. Making room for a new field usually means reducing the resources of the existing ones, and the existing fields will also often respond by trying to contain the new area as a subfield. Games are not a kind of cinema, or literature, but colonising attempts from both these fields have already happened, and no doubt will happen again. And again, until computer game studies emerges as a clearly self-sustained academic field. To make things more confusing, the current pseudo-field of “new media” (primarily a strategy to claim computer-based communication for visual media studies), wants to subsume computer games as one of its objects. There are many problems with this strategy, as there is with the whole concept of “new media,” and most dramatically the fact that computer games are not one medium, but many different media. From a computerized toy like Furby to the game Drug Wars on the Palm Pilot, not to mention massively multi-player games like Everquest, or the recent Anarchy Online, which was tested by 40.000 simultaneous playtesters, the extensive media differences within the field of computer games makes a traditional medium perspective almost useless. We end up with what media theorist Liv Hausken has termed media blindness: how a failure to see the specific media differences leads to a “media-neutral” media theory that is anything but neutral. This is clearly a danger when looking at games as cinema or stories, but also when making general claims about games, as though they all belonged to the same media format and shared the same characteristics.

Computer games are perhaps the richest cultural genre we have yet seen, and this challenges our search for a suitable methodological approach. We all enter this field from somewhere else, from anthropology, sociology, narratology, semiotics, film studies, etc, and the political and ideological baggage we bring from our old field inevitably determines and motivates our approaches. And even more importantly, do we stay or do we go back? Do we want a separate field named computer game studies, or do we want to claim the field for our old discipline? This is a common dilemma for any scholar in a new field; take for example digital culture studies. Today, every modern culture is also digital, so every sector of the humanities and social sciences must see the digital as part of their own territory. Hence, a separate field of digital culture is difficult to construct, and probably (after the existing fields warmed to its importance), completely unnecessary. The digital theorists will finally have found interest and acceptance back at the old discipline, and so the fellowship offered by interdisciplinary communities (such as the Internet Research Association) while still valuable, is no longer crucial when building a career.

In computer games, this is different. The old field of game studies barely exists (see Jesper Juul’s review in this issue), and seems in no shape to give the computer game scholars a safe haven. Some would argue that the obvious place for game studies is in a media department, but given the strong focus there on mass media and the visual aesthetics, the fundamentally unique aspects of the games could easily be lost.

Today we have the possibility to build a new field. We have a billion dollar industry with almost no basic research, we have the most fascinating cultural material to appear in a very long time, and we have the chance of uniting aesthetic, cultural and technical design aspects in a single discipline. This will not be a painless process, and many mistakes will be made along the way. But if we are successful, we can actually contribute both constructively and critically, and make a difference outside the academy. I am not too optimistic about influencing a multibillion industry. But in the long run, who knows?

Of course, games should also be studied within existing fields and departments, such as Media Studies, Sociology, and English, to name a few. But games are too important to be left to these fields. (And they did have thirty years in which they did nothing!) Like architecture, which contains but cannot be reduced to art history, game studies should contain media studies, aesthetics, sociology etc. But it should exist as an independent academic structure, because it cannot be reduced to any of the above. These are interesting times.

You are all invited!

創造新的規則！

毫無疑問，目前遊戲研究面臨的最大挑戰來自學術界。為新領域騰出空間通常意味着減少現有領域的資源，現有領域也經常通過嘗試將新區域作為子字段進行響應來做出響應。遊戲不是一種電影或文學，但這兩個領域的研究殖民已經發生，毫無疑問會再次發生。再次，直到計算機遊戲研究成為一個明顯自我持續的學術領域。為了使事情更加混亂，目前的“新媒體”錯誤研究域（基於電子媒介特性進行的視覺文化研究）希望將計算機遊戲作為其對象之一。這種策略存在許多問題，因為存在“新媒體”的整體概念，並且最顯着的是電子遊戲不是一種媒介，而是許多不同的媒體。從電腦遊戲到移動端遊戲，更不用説大型多玩家遊戲，像無盡的任務，或近期混亂在線，這是由40.000人同時進行的遊戲測試，電腦遊戲領域內的廣泛的媒體差異使得傳統媒體視點幾乎無用。我們最終得到了媒介理論家 Liv Hausken 所謂的媒體盲目性：未能看到特定的媒體，而差異導致了一種“媒體中立”的媒體理論，這種理論不是中立的。這導致了一種危險的想法，將遊戲看做電影或故事，但矛盾的是，在對遊戲做出一般性主張時，好像它們都屬於相同的媒體格式並具有相同的特徵。

電子遊戲可能是我們所見過的最豐富的文化類型，它擁有多種模態，從影像到文字文本再到聲音，這也挑戰了我們尋找合適的方法論方法。我們都是從其他領域進入遊戲研究：人類學，社會學，敍事學，符號學，電影研究等等，但，值得注意的是，我們從舊學科帶來的政治和意識形態包袱不可避免地決定和影響着我們的方法，我們是要留在自己的領域還是回去，遊戲作為一門全新的形式，它的特異性在哪裏？我們需要探討是否有必要設立一個名為遊戲研究的單獨領域，或者我們是否想要為我們的舊學科申請該領域，讓遊戲研究歸屬其中？對於新領域的任何學者來説，這是一個常見的困境; 以數字文化研究為例。

 今天，每一種現代文化都是數字化的，因此人文科學和社會科學的每一個學科都將數字視為自己領土的一部分。因此，難以構建一個單獨的數字文化研究領域，並且可能（在現有領域變得更加成熟之後），完全沒有這樣做的必要。數字理論家最終仍然會在舊學科去摸索興趣和規則，因此跨學科社區（如互聯網研究協會）提供的學科基礎雖然仍然很有價值，但在建立新研究時候時已不再重要。

但在電子遊戲中，這是不同的。遊戲研究的舊領域幾乎不存在（參見 Jesper Juul 在本期雜誌上的評論），似乎無法給電子遊戲學者提供安全的避風港。有人認為遊戲研究的明顯地方是在媒介研究，但大量關於媒介和視覺美學的重點關注，遊戲的根本獨特方面很容易丟失。

今天，我們有可能建立一個新的領域。我們有十億美元的產業，幾乎沒有基礎研究，我們有很長時間出現的最迷人的文本材質，我們有機會將美學，文化和技術設計方面結合在一個學科中。這不會是一個無痛的過程，在此過程中會出現許多錯誤。但是，如果我們取得成功，我們實際上可以建設性地做出貢獻，並在現有學術之外做出改變。或許，我對這門研究可能影響產業的想法並不太樂觀。但從長遠來看，誰知道呢？

當然，遊戲也應該在現有的領域和部門中進行研究，例如媒介研究，社會學和語言等。但是遊戲性太重要了，不能留太多的空間給這些領域。（他們確實有三十年的時間沒有做任何事！）像建築一樣，包含但不能簡化為藝術史，遊戲研究應該包含媒體研究，美學，社會學等。但首先它應該作為一個獨立的學術結構存在，因為它不能簡化為上述任何一種。這些都很有趣。

關於遊戲學研究，歡迎諸位入場！