Games, Cathexis, Desire
Lots of boingboing links related to digital games, desire, pleasure:
During my preparatory meetings for the dissertation defense, and during the defense itself, my committee and I spent a lot of time talking about affect, desire, cathexis, fun: the emotional components of games.
The past year replayed, Usual Suspects-like, for me as I realized that, in an attempt to legitimize these popular entertainment forms, to make an argument for their complexity and sophistication, I had foreclosed much commentary on their pleasure, the mobilizations of desire that make them compelling. I touch on aesthetics in the last chapter of the dissertation, and I have talked about affect here, but in the big paper it’s a big silence: I-as-theorist have stepped on me-as-fanboy.
Worth mentioning that Bob Rehak and Mia Consalvo both have good essays addressing related topics of pleasure and identification in the Video Game Theory Reader.
This is something I’ll be exploring in revisions for publication (and here, I imagine).