Christiane Paul
Unit Operations is a major milestone on the path to establishing a framework for analyzing videogames as important cultural artifacts of our time. Proposing a comparative approach to videogame criticism that is equally relevant for humanists and technologists, Ian Bogost weaves philosophy, psychoanalysis, literature, and film, media theory, informatics, software, and videogames into a narrative that reveals how these seemingly disparate fields relate to and inform each other. Unit operations—discrete, programming units of meaning—are used as the conceptual tool for unpacking complex relationships between different worlds: criticisms and computation, genetics and complex adaptive systems, and narrative spaces from Casablanca and Half-Life to Ulysses and Grand Theft Auto.
Endorsement
Unit Operations is a major milestone on the path to establishing a framework for analyzing videogames as important cultural artifacts of our time. Proposing a comparative approach to videogame criticism that is equally relevant for humanists and technologists, Ian Bogost weaves philosophy, psychoanalysis, literature, and film, media theory, informatics, software, and videogames into a narrative that reveals how these seemingly disparate fields relate to and inform each other. Unit operations—discrete, programming units of meaning—are used as the conceptual tool for unpacking complex relationships between different worlds: criticisms and computation, genetics and complex adaptive systems, and narrative spaces from Casablanca and Half-Life to Ulysses and Grand Theft Auto.
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Christiane Paul, Adjunct Curator of New Media Arts, Whitney Museum of American Art
From the Publisher
Bogost challenges humanists and technologists to pay attention to one another, something they desperately need to do as computation accelerates us into the red zones of widespread virtual reality. This book gives us what we need to meet that challenge: a general theory for understanding creativity under computation, one that will apply increasingly to all creativity in the future. Not only that, but we get an outstanding theory of videogame criticism in the mix as well. Highly recommended.
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Edward Castronova, Department of Telecommunications, Indiana University, author of
Synthetic Worlds: The Business and Culture of Online GamesUnit Operations is a major milestone on the path to establishing a framework for analyzing videogames as important cultural artifacts of our time. Proposing a comparative approach to videogame criticism that is equally relevant for humanists and technologists, Ian Bogost weaves philosophy, psychoanalysis, literature, and film, media theory, informatics, software, and videogames into a narrative that reveals how these seemingly disparate fields relate to and inform each other. Unit operations—discrete, programming units of meaning—are used as the conceptual tool for unpacking complex relationships between different worlds: criticisms and computation, genetics and complex adaptive systems, and narrative spaces from Casablanca and Half-Life to Ulysses and Grand Theft Auto.
—
Christiane Paul, Adjunct Curator of New Media Arts, Whitney Museum of American Art
Edward Castronova
Bogost challenges humanists and technologists to pay attention to one another, something they desperately need to do as computation accelerates us into the red zones of widespread virtual reality. This book gives us what we need to meet that challenge: a general theory for understanding creativity under computation, one that will apply increasingly to all creativity in the future. Not only that, but we get an outstanding theory of videogame criticism in the mix as well. Highly recommended.
