Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature By Espen J. Arseth
Outline by Dave Murphy
According to Aarseth, the reading of a cybertext constitutes an act of physical construction that various concepts of reading fail to account for. He refers to this method of reading as being ergodic which means “work” and “path”.
Many literary critics claim that cybertexts:
Aren’t essentially different from other literary texts because all literature is to some extent indeterminate, nonlinear, and different for every reading.
Readers must always make choices in order to make sense of the text, and a text cannot really be nonlinear because the reader can read it only one sequence at a time.
However, these objections commonly come from people who have never experienced such a text. In addition, these people are focusing on what is being read instead what it is being read from.
For Arseth, when you read from a cybertext, you are constantly reminded of inaccessible strategies and paths not taken. Each decision will make some parts of the text more, and others less accessible. Readers of traditional texts can be strongly engaged in the unfolding of a narrative, but still powerless to influence the outcome. He or she is a safe voyeur, but the cybertext reader is not safe, and therefore it can be argued that they aren’t a reader (hence the term gamer).
The cybertext puts the reader at risk because its takes a lot more energy to understand a cybertext and there is no guarantee that the reader will reach a meaningful interpretation of the text. This creates a complicated situation in relation to narrative desire as readers struggle for interpretative insight and narrative control. In some cases there is success as the story will tell what the reader wants it to, but in other cases the sense of individual outcome is illusory, but still the result of the readers manipulation. (IN Short there is no guarantee that cybertexts will tell the reader what he or she wants even if they can manipulate it)
All Well and Good
But then he attempts to conceptualize cybertexts within the realm of literature :(
In order to do this, Arseth proposes a model of the labyrinth: a game or an imaginary world, in which the reader can explore at will, get lost, discover secret paths, play around, follow the rules, and so on.
However, he also acknowledges that the problem with such a metaphor lies in the fact that it leads to a spatiodynamic fallacy where the narration is not perceived as a presentation of a world but rather that world itself; a short circuit between signifier and signified creating a suspension of difference that projects an objective level beyond the text. From this perspective, games don’t constitute real space, so they should only be seen as texts.
At this point, I begin to have some major problems with the article. In my opinion throwing out concept of “adventure games” containing spaces that can be negotiated through is not a good idea since many users seem to engage with the games in this way.
In addition, I believe this conception is largely fueled by the fact that Arseth repeatedly refers to video games as “adventure games”, which already carries connotations of the presence of an adventure narrative. I hate to break it to him, since he’s presumably set himself up as a gamer, but the term “adventure game” harks back to pitfall on the old Atari system, and is clearly nothing more than a reductionist conception of gaming. While it is true that many games contain aspects of narrative adventure, there are numerous examples that do not. I have a hard time conceptualizing pong as an epic battle where two bars hurling a small disk shaped object at each other.
Arseth still maintains that cyber texts make it possible to explore, get lost, and discover secret paths, but only through the structure of textual machinery. He claims this is not a difference between games and literature, but rather between games and narratives; however this difference isn’t clear cut, and there is significant overlap between the two (which he negates to elaborate on).
He also insist that in terms of spatio dynamics critics often see narratives as being linear, but he prefers to conceptualize literature and cybertext narrative by relying on an older dual meaning of the labrynth, so unicursal (a labrynth with one true path, winding and turning, usually towards the center) and multicursal (a labrynth that faces the wanderer with a set of critical choices, and contains multiple paths) texts may be examined under the same theoretical framework.
Arseth goes on to give various examples of historical texts that can be conceptualized as functioning like cybertexts (in my opinion “like” is the key word here).
From this perspective, he argues that the cybertext is not a new revolutionary form of text that breaks away from old fashioned textuality through new technology, but insists that it is a new perspective on all forms of textuality.
I would disagree with such a statement because it seems to be advocating for the use of gaming studies in order to better understand literary concepts, such as narrative. I believe video games are different from literary texts in enough ways as to necessitate there own area of critical thought. In short, I see Arseth as a bit of an English snob for insisting that a literary approach would be the best way to approach gaming studies.
Questions
1.
Are video games revolutionary, or just an extension of impulses existing in early literature? Should we be attempting to conceptualize video games in terms of literary theory, or should new models be developed? Should games even be grouped with cybertexts?
2.
Arseth believes that games are often conceptualized in ways which represent a spatiodynamic fallacy where narration is not perceived as a presentation of a world but constituting the world itself. From this perspective, he seems to be claiming that games are texts instead of environments. Do you think this model is useful? What can be gained and/or lost by viewing video games in this way.
3. How does narrative work in gaming? Does playing a game constitute the act of reading or inacting, or both? How do these notions affect theories concerning the affect of violence in video games compared to other media?