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A blog about game scholarship and other goings-on in the ivory tower
What better way to start this blog than with an event that I've known about for some time but have only now figured out the details and underlying theme of. This Tuesday, I'm giving a one-hour guest lecture for an introductory game studies course on Starcraft and methodologies for studying history. [[If you're in Melbourne and you want to attend, PM me.]]
Why, Imagist, those sound like pretty wildly unrelated topics!
It does sound that way, but actually, they aren't. Now, I'll be the first to admit that academics make tenuous connections between barely related things. There are certain attitudes and people that I blame for this, mainly Immanuel Kant's attitude and him specifically.
Hold it, Imagist, what does a moral philosopher who propounded the ethical notion of a categorical imperative have to do with academics writing intellectually dubious stuff?
Actually, an awful lot, since the modern university has been organized around his ideas and those of the then-Prussian Education Minister, philosopher Wilhelm van Humboldt. Their ideas combined formed the basis of the modern university (the first example of which is the University of Berlin, founded in 1810 by Humboldt.) The idea of a philosopher in such a position today is sadly laughable, but then again, it may be for the best considering the gripe I'm about to make. In any case, Kant proposed the organization of the university centering around the development of increasingly specialized sub-fields and bits of knowledge. Because of the university being organized toward this, that's exactly what a lot of academics do, and why they make such bizarre connections in their writing.
Nice tangent, wiseass.
I'll take that. I like to rant about it for reasons I may explore in a future blog entry. But let's get back on topic, then. Starcraft is what we came to read about.
Perhaps the biggest problem that people have discussing the cultural phenomenon of Starcraft is assuming that there is something particular in the Korean national psyche that lends itself to this phenomenon picking up. The problem: You can't verify it and your conclusion can only be a stereotype. If we avoid that, what's left? As it happens, an awful lot.
There are three particularly useful ways to look at the Starcraft phenomenon historically. There are probably even more, but these strike me as especially important. These are:
- Material History: Looking at the economic conditions around an object, activity, state or society.
- Social History: Looking at the way that people form groups and relationships in relation to an object or event.
- Design History: Lookng at the way that design strategies affect designed objects and their reception over time.
None of these, on their own, are adequate to explain why Starcraft caught on to the extent that it did, becoming an e-sport, pardon me, E-SPORT, and cultural phenomenon in Korea, and differently elsewhere. This is partly because they are overlapping parts of the entire history of any event, not just Starcraft, which provides an excellent and topical example.
It isn't enough to say that economic conditions alone led to Starcraft's success, this ignores design factors and player/spectator/community dynamics.
It isn't enough to say that social conditions alone led to Starcraft's success, this still ignores design factors as well as the role of economic conditions.
In spite of this community and some of its figureheads (hi Artosis!) claiming that Starcraft is the best-designed game ever, a plausible if debatable claim, that isn't enough to explain its success on its own, which might be as surprising to this community as it was to my students when I lectured on a similar topic in a third-year course last year. Again, those other two sets of factors, economics and social dynamics, are crucial to a domplete understanding of the Starcraft phenomenon.
Of the three, I think that this community is more likely to understand and relate to the role of communities and group organization (obviously, given what this community is and does), as well as the role of design. The economic history, however, is instrumental, and something that I'll expand upon at a later date, either in long-form writing or preferably with the lecture materials, because it's a huge topic.
Next blog, Imagist gives you a roadmap to these analyses by posting his PowerPoint slides and an audio recording of the lecture if one is available, along with more views from the academy, perhaps including responding to questions and feedback on this blog.
