Galloway: Gaming

Playing the Algorithm:

Video games change the order of things, if we look back at how cinema affected the viewer we can see that cinema has total control and, with video-gaming, while there are rules to follow and code to discover gaming offers the gamer some control because they are offered the opportunity to change the outcome of a narrative, as long as, they figure out the parallel algorithm.  The control is still there..."controlled mobility", however, autonomously as an active participant.

In Playing the Algorithm by Galloway we see how the informatic age plays a role in today’s society.  He compares how film and video games have affected the viewer/player…with film, the viewer is controlled subliminally, while the effect of video-gaming the control is allegorical.  To know the game, its code, and play by its rule is to win.  This control he refers to as allegorical control:

“So today there is a twin transformation; from the modern cinema to the contemporary video game, but also from traditional allegory to what I am calling horizontal or “control” allegory.  I suggest that video games are, at their structural core, in direct synchronization with the political realities of the informatics age.” [91]