Alexander R. Galloway,
Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006.
ISBN: 0 8166 4851
US$17.95 (pb)
168pp
(Review copy supplied by University of Minnesota Press)

In the last few years, the field of game studies has reached critical mass as new and established scholars alike have turned their attention to focus exclusively on digital games. The resultant explosion of ideas has produced dozens of publications. One such publication, reviewed here, is Alexander Galloway’s Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic culture.

Gaming presents its ideas in the form of five essays on a range of gaming related topics. Though there is some overlap between these essays, there is no sustained argument to tie them all together. Because of this, it makes sense to discuss Gaming chapter-by-chapter, rather than as a whole.

“If photographs are images, and films are moving images” writes Galloway, “then video games are actions”. Defining games as actions is a novel idea that challenges accepted definitions of games as rule-based or narrative systems. In his first essay, Galloway examines how different “gamic moments” might be classified according to the types of actions that comprise them. Galloway sets up a Cartesian plane, plotting the degree of machine or operator action along one axis (that is, whether the moment is driven primarily by the player’s actions or the game’s), and the diegetic/non-diegetic nature of the action along the other axis.

Galloway’s taxonomy is a good beginning, but it is not perfect. The differentiation between diegetic and non-diegetic action overlooks the possibility of extra-diegetic action; while Galloway’s method accounts for a range of action that occurs within the game software, it does not take into consideration any physical control scheme, and how a player’s physical actions map onto virtual action. That the Nintendo Wii differentiates itself from other games consoles by way of its motion-sensing control scheme suggests that physical action is just as important a consideration as virtual action, and this needs to be addressed.

Although chapter two purports to explore the origins of the first person shooter, it is perhaps more accurate to say that this essay looks at how the use of the first-person perspective has been experimented with to varying degrees of “unsuccessfulness” in Hollywood cinema. Galloway argues that the first-person perspective suggests a feeling of agency that increases immersion in games, but that in cinema this feeling translates into a reminder of the viewer’s awkward status as a voyeur. However, much of the essay is spent simply noting the uses of the first-person perspective, from early films noir, to Hitchcock, to Terminator (USA 1984) and RoboCop (USA 1987). While the essay on action argues a way forward, this essay sticks to making some rather uncontroversial observations on the past.

In the third essay in Gaming, Galloway turns his attention to the notion of “realism”. The author attempts to divert discussion of realism in games away from matters such as representation and simulation, and concentrate on games in terms of social realism. Drawing on his earlier argument to define games as action, and with a nod to Bazin and Reichlin’s model of neorealism, Galloway suggests that realism in games comes not from the visual representation, but from a game’s ability to create narrative and action that connect with the social reality of the player. Unfortunately, it seems there are few (if any) games that possess the kind of realism that Galloway describes; his best example, which applies only to the small number of Palestinians with access to a computer powerful enough to play first-person shooter games, is Under Ash, which depicts young Palestinian man during the intifada.

Allegories of Control, the fourth essay, looks at games as control systems, in which the player is free to act within the limited choices offered by the game. Galloway argues that this emulates daily life, which increasingly revolves around selecting options from series of menus. Quoting Deleuze, Galloway notes that the American highway system, while restricting and controlling, allow the driver a great deal of freedom of movement.

In the fifth and final essay, Galloway explores the idea of “countergaming”, reasoning that such a thing must in some way subvert the ideals of contemporary gaming. The author identifies and lists several experiments that he identifies as countergaming, including, most interestingly, games which crash on purpose (foregrounding the gamic apparatus). It is worth noting the implications of such games; in many cases these experiments become unplayable or uninterpretable.

Gaming is unique in its approach. While most scholars have tended to concentrate on only one or two ideas or aspects of particular games, Gaming explores a number of at times seemingly unrelated ideas. Following the sentiments of Deleuze and Guattari, author Alexander Galloway writes that he wishes his ideas and arguments “to be as ad hoc, as provisional, as cobbled together as theirs were.”

The ideas presented in this book may well be ad hoc, provisional, and cobbled together, but that is precisely what makes this book interesting. Those expecting fully developed theories to be handed to them on a platter will be dismayed to learn that Gaming engages the reader as a kind of sounding board for ideas. One presumes the goal here is to encourage the reader to think about games more broadly, rather than in terms of any single theory.

Martin Manning,
Flinders University, South Australia.

Created on: Tuesday, 5 June 2007