Death of the Author in Video Games

And this isn't a moan about difficulty in Alan Wake...

I recently read Roland Barthes’ essay The Death of the Author (http://www.tbook.constantvzw.org/wp-content/death_authorbarthes.pdf), and started thinking about the applicability of this to video games as a medium. I’m not the first to think about this, but it’s an important viewpoint.

Games have had the privilege for a long time of having anonymous creators- a publisher screen or a creator logo- and the nature of the medium has forced the player to interact with the game in their own way. Is this Bartes’ birth of the reader in action?

There’s a thrill that the reader (in this context, the gamer) can interact with the game without foreknowledge and create their own text (again, in this context, their own experience).

This is a privilege rarely experienced- the ability to interpret and interact without too much associating. Knowing, say, that Pikmin is based on Shigeru Miyamoto’s own garden doesn’t add anything to the experience- it channels the reader’s own thoughts and limits their potential experience. Even finding this out after playing and after creating your own experience about Pikmin limits your own experience- it’s an association that could reveal, but then makes assumptions about the meaning.

And, unfortunately, this ability to experience is being lost as those involved become higher profile, and commodities or brands themselves.

Apsley House by Night in 300 words

Number 1 London these days sums up much of England- a Classical frontage, seemingly designed as an add-on to a tremendously busy road. Armed with little knowledge of the Duke of Wellington (for it has his collection) and even less knowledge of the house itself, we went to an evening viewing.

And it doesn’t disappoint on the main fronts. It has plenty of Arthur Wellesley’s spoils of war- including a dining set in the shape of Egyptian monuments, a little armoury of trophy weapons, French banners, an excellent set of paintings, a shockingly colourful porphyry table and a couple of Canovas. Robert Adam makes a couple of brief but memorable appearances too- anyone familiar with Kenwood will recognise the barrel-ceiling, apse and window arrangement of one of the rooms.

It’s hard to see Napoleon in the same light after seeing Canova’s effort- a gigantic classical nude of Bony, with a small bronze fig leaf covering his modesty, sits at the bottom of the stairwell. It’s both sublime and ridiculous- in itself a fitting tribute to a man who ruled over much of Europe by force of personality.

Speaking of light, the evening tour is seen in candle-bulb light. Aside from a canny opportunity to sell visitors a small led torch, it also gives some idea of what the place must have been like at the time. Gloomy but also rather magnificent. The mirror room, vast shining silver and the colours of the striped wallpaper come through a haze of softness.

It’s not the ideal time to see the paintings themselves, but lets us see how the previous occupants would have seen them. Velasquez is well-represented, and the Duke liked the Dutch masters. There are precious few battle scenes- it’s more a reflection of Wellington’s taste than a shrine to him.

Entelechy

I sent my Soul through the Invisible, 
Some letter of that After-life to spell: 
And by and by my Soul return'd to me, 
And answer'd "I Myself am Heav'n and Hell"

The Rubaiyat 
By Omar Khayyam 
Written 1120 A.C.E.