Saint Jerome, Foucault and “What is an Author”
Reading through this suggested text by one of my profs, who called it “a very readable text” makes me realize, perhaps I can’t read, or perhaps my prof really is a genius because it’s anything but “easy.”
But that aside, I want to focus on a couple of thoughts/quotes:
The author’s name is not a function of a man’s civil status, nor is it fictional; it is situated in the breach, among the discontinuities, which give rise to new groups of discourse and their singular mode of existence. (p 123, language, counter-memory, practice)
According to Saint Jerome, there are four criteria [for attributing a work to 1 author]…the author is defined as a standard level of quality…the author is defined as a certain field of conceptual or theoretical coherence…the author is seen as a stylistic uniformity…the author is thus a definite historical figure in which a series of events converge. (ibid. 128)
So, if we are talking about a computer game, who is the author? The lead designer, the script writer, the programmers, the studio?
The lead designer is responsible for quality control, the studio usually gets its name associated with the body of work it has created (except, for example “Sid Meier’s…” games where the game is given credit because of the author of it. this being the later stages of the creation of an “author”), there is no one historical entity which exists in a set period of time, the games industry is still too young to see how long game houses will exist, but they will definitely outlive their staff and many designers, studios etc change genres, and styles - at least the big ones do.
Then there is the question if if games even have authors - do they create a discourse or are they more in line with what foucault says about people who originate scientific disciplines.
So, thought o the day, because my brain is too tired to tackle the problem of if games have authors or not when, as interesting as it is, it is really rather minor to the task at hand:
Assuming games have an “author” who is that author, and what discourse are they creating - amongst which discontinuities do they exist and what discourse can we say they create or encourage?
There has been significant discourse around violence (GTA, FPS etc), the role of face to face interaction in society (second life, WoW, Facebook et al.) but is that the continuation of an existing discourse, or can we see the authors of games creating it?
Perhaps this whole trip through the looking glass has been in vein, and perhpas Dorfman’s quote from Reading Donald Duck is more appropriate:
The father must be absent, and without direct jurisdiction, just as the child is without direct obligations.
p 31
The “author” (father) must be absent from their game and has no say on how people play or what they learn, while the player (child) has increasingly less obligation to play the game as intended (”emergent gameplay”) and can take from it what they wish.