Wargaming and Computer Games: Fun with the Future


Crogan Patrick
2003 DiGRA '03 - Proceedings of the 2003 DiGRA International Conference: Level Up

This essay explores aspects of the history of wargaming in order to develop fresh perspectives on the analysis of contemporary computer games. Wargaming is considered in relation to the ludological approach to games studies with a view to developing an understanding of the marginality of narrative content in games that ludology takes as its point of departure. Wargaming is interpreted as a forerunner of contemporary modelling and simulation practices. It is associated with the modern project of programming the future by the rational means of mathematically-based measurement and projection. The influence of wargaming on contemporary computer gaming is discussed and the appeal of computer games is explored in terms of a modulation of this modern project.

 

Playing Through: the Future of Alternative and Critical Game Projects


Crogan Patrick
2005 DiGRA '05 - Proceedings of the 2005 DiGRA International Conference: Changing Views: Worlds in Play

This paper explores a number of experimental game-based projects (including Tekken Torture Tournament, Painstation, September 12th: A Toy World, Under Ash, Desert Rain) in order to interrogate the critical potential of computer games. Gonzalo Frasca’s proposition this this potential arises from the nature of computer games as simulations will be evaluated with reference to Bernard Stiegler’s conceptualization of the mnemotechnical forms humans have developed for the recording and interpretation of cultural experience. In this light, simulation will be compared to narrative and theatrical forms, the forms to which Frasca opposes it in his account of simulation as the “form of the future.” We will see that the past of computer simulation, a past dominated by military techno-scientific developments, comes with it and must be considered in any theorisation of its critical potential as a cultural form.