In Game Work: Language, Power, and Computer Game. Culture, Ken S. McAllister ... By Ken S. McAllister (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama. Press, 2004).
Game Work: Language, Power, and Computer Game Culture. By Ken S. McAllister (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 2004).
In Game Work: Language, Power, and Computer Game Culture, Ken S. McAllister seeks to help “scholars actively engage the rhetoric and dialectic of computer games with a clearer understanding of how the computer game complex has effected individual, communal, and social transformations in the past….[and] to understand how these processes are continuing and changing here at the dawn of the third millennium” (McAllister xi). In order to do this, the author presents a new multiperspectival analytical framework with which scholars can examine games. For McAllister, the computer game complex, his term for the gaming industry and those involved in it, is inherently a question of power in a broader dialectical struggle consisting of rhetorical forces. In Game Work, he details the role of this struggle and how it can be altered. McAllister begins his work by examining a “nexus of forces” that he believes are critical for examining the computer game complex. For McAllister, computer games can be seen as rhetorical forces in five ways: computer games as mass culture, mass media, psychophysiological force, economic force, and instructional force. These forces represent significant sites of power tension in the dialectic. By studying the rhetorical events involved in these struggles, scholars can gain a better understanding of power and bondage in gaming. In order to help scholars do this, McAllister proposes a “grammar of gameworks” consisting of five elements: agents, 35
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Reviewed by Nabeel Siddiqui, George Mason University
Schuylkill Graduate Journal
functions, influences, manifestations, and transformative locales (McAllister 2). The first component in McAllister’s “grammar of gameworks” are agents. Agents represent those individuals involved in the computer game complex. These include producers, players, marketers, and virtual agents. Each of these, with the exception of virtual agents who have shared agency, manages meaning through the second element of gameworks: functions. Here, McAllister expands on the idea of functions purported by Barry Brument. Brument argues that functions exist on three levels: exigent functions, which address pressing issues; quotidian functions, which address the ways in which individuals make daily decisions; and implicative functions, which roughly correspond to societal norms. Although some of these functions are largely unconscious, other functions, especially exigent functions, can help scholars understand those parts of the dialect where struggle occurs. The third components of the grammar of gameworks are influences on rhetorical events. These influences roughly correlate with the five rhetorical forces of computer games. It is important to remember that, in the analytical methodology that McAllister presents, influences are both exerted from and exerted on the computer game complex (McAllister 50). Together, these forces help shape the way that rhetorical events are made discernable in manifestations, the fourth component in the grammar of gameworks. Manifestations focus around four key elements in the study of games. Here, McAllister draws on Chris Crawford’s components of gaming: representation (games represent a subset of reality), interaction (games are “alive” and change with the player), conflict (games require an obstacle to overcome), and safety (games provide an escape in which the cause and effect of the world is subject to the control of the player) (McAllister 55).
By understanding the way that these components 36
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are made visible in computer games, scholars studying the dialectic power struggle in the computer game complex have a better understanding of their role in transformative locales. Transformative locales, the final piece in the grammar of gameworks, helps identify the way in which the rhetoric of computer games has effects on broader cultural changes. According to McAllister, these changes can occur on the individual, communal, or societal level (McAllister 59–61). The second part of McAllister’s work is dedicated to three chapters that demonstrate some of the ways in which McAllister’s method can be applied to the study of games. In the first chapter, McAllister examines the way that the rhetoric of game developers can help scholars understand pressing issues that surround the computer game complex. McAllister continues his study with a chapter detailing the role of gaming reviews. Together, these two chapters help demonstrate the issues that those in the computer game industry deem valuable. By examining the exigent rhetoric in these communities, the author demonstrates some of the ways in which power is negotiated in the computer game complex. The final chapter of McAllister’s work may be the most pertinent to those interested in games as artifacts. In this chapter, the author examines the game Black and White to demonstrate the way that “agent/developers embedded an economic system that works enthymematical to engage agent/players while it simultaneously reinforces remarkably unimaginative understandings of both in-game and real-life social and political economies” (McAllister 142). Here, the author examines three key resources in the game: natural, spiritual, and temporal. Together, these resources help bring about change in the temporary locale. In this case, the game helps players have a greater understanding of real world economies and their workings. Nonetheless, despite the significance of McAllister’s
Schuylkill Graduate Journal
work, it is not without flaw. The methodology has a large producer slant. It should be noted that this is intentional as McAllister expands on the work of Richard Ohmann’s understanding of “mass” culture. For Ohmann, the power relation between producers and consumers in contemporary media is largely skewed towards the producers’ side and represents a significant change from historical consumer society. While McAllister states that the relationship is not necessarily one-way, he shares the desire of Ohmann in focusing on the production aspect of games (McAllister 10– 11). Still, this emphasis on the construction of games seems to ignore a great deal of fandom studies, especially those in other cultures. For example, while gaming in American society is often a part of the “mass” culture that McAllister describes, gaming in countries such as South Korea have a much more diverse gaming culture, which includes a large deal of fandom and consumer power. Another key shortcoming of Game Work, although not necessarily a fault, is that it requires a large deal of previous knowledge of critical theory. While McAllister does attempt to outline the basics, for those unfamiliar with critical theory, the work may need to be supplemented with other research to help those outside of cultural studies apply McAllister’s analytical framework to their own analysis of games. Furthermore, his particular methodology, while it does seek to be interdisciplinary, provides little idea on how to go about examining games outside of literary criticism. Ultimately, for scholars of games, Game Work: Language, Power, and Computer Game Culture provides a much needed analytical framework for games. McAllister’s emphasis on power relations helps explain the importance of dialectical analysis in understanding the cultural influence of gaming. Most importantly, the analysis of gaming can help understand ways in which dialectic struggle imposes power. 38
