电脑游戏研究元年

Computer Game Studies, Year One
by Espen Aarseth, Editor-in-Chief
电脑游戏研究元年（本文是学术性游戏研究网站www.gamestudies.org的主编在开站的序言，2001，http://www.gamestudies.org/0101/）
Welcome to the first issue of the first academic, peer-reviewed journal dedicated to computer game studies. This is a noteworthy occasion, and perhaps the most remarkable aspect is that such a journal has not been started before. As we know, there have been computer games for almost as long as there have been computers: SpaceWar, arguably the first modern game, turns forty this year, and commercially the genre has existed for three decades. So why not something like this before?
欢迎来到第一个致力于电脑游戏研究的同行评审的学术性期刊。这是一个值得注意的事件，其中最值得关注的因素是这样的期刊以前从未出现过。我们都知道，电脑游戏出现的时间几乎和电脑一样长，第一款现代游戏《宇宙大战》已经问世40年，商业性的游戏也已经出现了30多年。为什么之前没有出现这样的期刊呢？
2001 can be seen as the Year One of Computer Game Studies as an emerging, viable, international, academic field. This year has seen the first international scholarly conference on computer games, in Copenhagen in March, and several others will follow. 01-02 may also be the academic year when regular graduate programs in computer game studies are offered for the first time in universities. And it might be the first time scholars and academics take computer games seriously, as a cultural field whose value is hard to overestimate.
2001年可以作为电脑游戏研究作为一个浮现出的，自足的，国际性学术领域的第一年，今年三月在哥本哈根举行了第一个关于电脑游戏的国际性学术会议，之后还会有一些。01—02年也是大学里提供电脑游戏研究正规学位项目的第一个学年，学者和专家们第一次将电脑游戏作为一个难以忽视其价值的文化领域来严肃对待。
To some of us, computer games are already a phenomenon of greater cultural importance than, say movies, or perhaps even sports. Seen from 2001, the potential cultural role(s) of computer games in the future is practically unfathomable. It seems clear that these games, especially multi-player games, combine the aesthetic and the social in a way the old mass media, such as theatre, movies, TV shows and novels never could. The old mass media created mass audiences, who shared values and sustained markets, but the mass media communities remained imagined (in Benedict Anderson’s sense), with little or no direct communication between participants. Clearly, multi-player games are not like that. In games like MUD1, Ultima online, or Quake Arena, the aesthetic and the social are integrated parts, and this could be regarded as the greatest innovation in audience structure since the invention of the choir, thousands of years ago. To see computer games as merely the newest self-reinvention of Hollywood, as some do, is to disregard those socio-aesthetic aspects and also to force outdated paradigms onto a new cultural object. True, there is a considerable Hollywoodisation of the games industry at the moment, that started with the "interactive movies" failures of the early nineties, but there is also a world wide, non-commercial, collective games movement that has a better infrastructure than any amateur movement before it. Hollywood, like the record industry, is all about distribution, and now there is a distribution mechanism that rivals booth: the Internet. Even Bill Gates III failed to swallow up the Internet, and there is much less reason to believe that Hollywood will succeed. From the closed ecosystem of Nintendo to the open source games communities on the Net; game studies must study both; it would be a mistake to assume that the "Nintendo-Hollywood" industrial complex will rule, and eliminate the alternative. As a cultural studies strategy, this would be like preparing to fight the previous war.
对我们当中有些人而言，电脑游戏的文化重要性已经超越了电影和体育。它在未来的将扮演的文化角色在2001年就已经显得毋庸置疑。很显然这些游戏，尤其是网络游戏，以一种以往所有大众媒介——如戏剧、电影、电视、小说——所不可能的方式将艺术性与社会性统一了起来。传统媒介拥有大量观众，分享价值观和持续的市场，但这些大众媒介的群落依然只是一种“想象”（本尼•迪克特语），成员之间很少，甚至几乎没有，直接的联系。显然网络游戏就不是如此。在《MUD1》、《网络创世纪》、《雷神之锤竞技场》这些游戏中，艺术性和社会性是统一的，这可以被认为是自千百年前歌队创立以来，观众构成上最大的革命。有些人将电脑游戏仅看作是好莱坞最近的自我更新，这种想用旧瓶来装新酒的看法忽视了电脑游戏的这种艺术-社会性。不错，从九十年代初期失败的“互动电影”开始，游戏工业开始出现值得关注的好莱坞化，但同时，还出现了一个世界范围内的，非商业性的共同游戏运动，这个运动比以往任何业余运动都有更好的群众基础。好莱坞，就像唱片工业一样，最重要就是发行，现在有了在发行机制上挑战票房的：互联网。即使是比尔•盖茨也没本事吞并整个网络，好莱坞就更没有理由能够如此。从任天堂的封闭体系到网络上游戏社区的开放资源，游戏研究必须两者兼顾，认为“任天堂—好莱坞”体系将控制、乃至消灭其他形式的看法是错误的。作为文化研究的策略，这将如同准备打一场过去的战争。
A cognitive, communicative revolution?
认知与传播的革命？
Much hype has been produced about the ability of new technology to instigate new ways of thought and communication. Take hypertext, which was supposed to give us writing skills that adhered much closer to the way our brains worked, a more "natural" way of textual communication. So far, however, the World Wide Web, the must successful hypertext system by far, has only produced a better distribution mechanism, and very few texts actually use the nonlinear possibilities of the technology. Games, however, are often simulations; they are not static labyrinths like hypertexts or literary fictions. The simulation aspect is crucial: it is radically different alternative to narratives as a cognitive and communicative structure. Simulations are bottom up; they are complex systems based on logical rules.
鼓吹新技术将带来思维与传播新方式的言论已经很多了。例如，超文本被认为是更接近大脑工作方式的写作手段，一种更加“自然”的文本传播方式。但是，迄今为止最成功的超文本系统，互联网，也只是提供一个更好的发行机制而已，几乎没有文本是真正应用了这种技术的非线性可能。但是，游戏往往是仿真的，它们不仅是如超文本或者文学性作品那样的静态迷宫。仿真是至关重要的因素，这是对认知与传播结构的根本改变。它也是颠覆性的，是基于逻辑规则上的复杂系统。
Games are both object and process; they can’t be read as texts or listened to as music, they must be played. Playing is integral, not coincidental like the appreciative reader or listener. The creative involvement is a necessary ingredient in the uses of games. The complex nature of simulations is such that a result can’t be predicted beforehand; it can vary greatly depending on the player’s luck, skill and creativity. In multi-player games, social skills are needed, or must be developed. Anyone who has spent some time in a multi-player game knows that. Yet much of the industry and the academic commentators see the need for "narrative" structures in order to understand games and make games "better." In this issue, the debate about narratives’ and narratology’s relevance to game studies is clearly visible. This is a debate that shows the very early stage we are still in, where the struggle of controlling and shaping the theoretical paradigms has just started. We expect the debate to continue, here and elsewhere, but hope that future contributions will address the points already made, and not simply make the same claims over and over again. That is what an academic journal is for.
游戏也是对象和过程，它们不能像文本一样被读，也不能当作音乐听，它们必须被“玩”。游戏行为是整体性的，和读者与听众并不一致。游戏的作用之一就是创造性的包容。仿真的复杂内涵之一就是结果难以预料，完全依靠玩家的运气、技巧和创造力而变化。在网络游戏中，还需要社交能力，或者必须发展社交能力。这一点任何一个打过网游的人都知道。而很多业内人士和理论评论者认为，理解并更好地发展游戏，需要认识到对“叙事”结构的需求。在这个问题上，关于叙事和叙事学与游戏研究关系的争论就显而易见了。这一争论说明了我们处于多么初级的阶段，控制与规划理论范式的斗争才刚刚开始。我们期望这些争论能够继续，到处开花，但希望未来的贡献会记住已经完成的结果，不要简单地一遍遍重复同样的言论。这就是一个学术刊物所要做的。
Creating a New Discipline
建立新规则
The greatest challenge to computer game studies will no doubt come from within the academic world. Making room for a new field usually means reducing the resources of the existing ones, and the existing fields will also often respond by trying to contain the new area as a subfield. Games are not a kind of cinema, or literature, but colonising attempts from both these fields have already happened, and no doubt will happen again. And again, until computer game studies emerges as a clearly self-sustained academic field. To make things more confusing, the current pseudo-field of "new media" (primarily a strategy to claim computer-based communication for visual media studies), wants to subsume computer games as one of its objects. There are many problems with this strategy, as there is with the whole concept of "new media," and most dramatically the fact that computer games are not one medium, but many different media. From a computerized toy like Furby to the game Drug Wars on the Palm Pilot, not to mention massively multi-player games like Everquest, or the recent Anarchy Online, which was tested by 40.000 simultaneous playtesters, the extensive media differences within the field of computer games makes a traditional medium perspective almost useless. We end up with what media theorist Liv Hausken has termed media blindness: how a failure to see the specific media differences leads to a "media-neutral" media theory that is anything but neutral. This is clearly a danger when looking at games as cinema or stories, but also when making general claims about games, as though they all belonged to the same media format and shared the same characteristics.
对电脑游戏研究最大的挑战将无疑来自学术世界内部。为一个新学科腾出地方就意味着要减少现有学科的资源，而后者通常的反应就是将新的学科划作自己的势力范围。游戏并非电影，也不是文学，但是来自这两个领域的殖民尝试已经发生，且无疑要一次次发生下去，直到游戏研究发展为一门自足的学科为止。更让人看不懂的，是当下所谓“新媒体”（主要是称呼基于电脑传播的可视化媒体研究）的伪学科打算将游戏研究收编在旗下。这一策略会带来很多问题，就好像整个“新媒体”概念本身一样，更有意思的是电脑游戏并非一种媒体，而是许多种不同的媒体。从FURBY公仔到PalmPilot掌上电脑游戏《药品之战》，以及网络游戏《无尽的任务》，或最近公测的同时在线人数超过40000的《乱世在线》，在电脑游戏内部巨大的媒介差异使得以往的媒介观念几乎失效。我们用媒介学者Liv Hausken命名的“媒介盲目”来结束：由特殊的媒介差异而带来的“媒介中立”媒介理论却除了中立什么都是，这是多么失败的事情。很明显，当我们把游戏看作是电影或故事，或者对游戏进行常规性的概括，是非常危险的，尽管它们都属于同样的媒介形式，共享相同的特点。
Computer games are perhaps the richest cultural genre we have yet seen, and this challenges our search for a suitable methodological approach. We all enter this field from somewhere else, from anthropology, sociology, narratology, semiotics, film studies, etc, and the political and ideological baggage we bring from our old field inevitably determines and motivates our approaches. And even more importantly, do we stay or do we go back? Do we want a separate field named computer game studies, or do we want to claim the field for our old discipline? This is a common dilemma for any scholar in a new field; take for example digital culture studies. Today, every modern culture is also digital, so every sector of the humanities and social sciences must see the digital as part of their own territory. Hence, a separate field of digital culture is difficult to construct, and probably (after the existing fields warmed to its importance), completely unnecessary. The digital theorists will finally have found interest and acceptance back at the old discipline, and so the fellowship offered by interdisciplinary communities (such as the Internet Research Association) while still valuable, is no longer crucial when building a career.
电脑游戏也许是已知的最丰富的文化品种。这对于寻找合适的方法论提出了挑战。我们都是从其他学科进入这一领域的，人类学、社会学、叙事学、符号学、电影研究，等等，从原有学科中带来的政治与意识形态包袱将无疑决定或激发着我们的研究。更重要的是，我们是留下或是回去？我们是要一个独立的名为电脑游戏研究的学科，或者为之辩护只为了维护我们的旧观念。这是任何一个新学科的学者的常见困惑，例如数码文化研究。今天，所有的文化都是数字化的，所以人文和社会科学的每个部分都将数字化视为自己的领域。于是，独立的数字文化学科就很难形成，可能（在现有学科对其重要性热衷之后）也是完全不必要的。数码理论者将最终回到旧有的规则下来获得利益和认同，于是，本来还有价值的跨学科研究团体（例如互联网研究协会）提供的奖学金，在设计职业生涯时也就不再重要了。
In computer games, this is different. The old field of game studies barely exists (see Jesper Juul’s review in this issue), and seems in no shape to give the computer game scholars a safe haven. Some would argue that the obvious place for game studies is in a media department, but given the strong focus there on mass media and the visual aesthetics, the fundamentally unique aspects of the games could easily be lost.
在电脑游戏里，这是不同的。旧式的游戏研究几乎不存在（参见Jesper Juul对这一问题的评论），也不可能给电脑游戏学者以安全的港湾。有人会说游戏研究明显应该呆在媒介系，但是考虑到那里对大众媒介和视觉美学的强烈关注，游戏的根本性的独特因素将很容易被遗漏。
Today we have the possibility to build a new field. We have a billion dollar industry with almost no basic research, we have the most fascinating cultural material to appear in a very long time, and we have the chance of uniting aesthetic, cultural and technical design aspects in a single discipline. This will not be a painless process, and many mistakes will be made along the way. But if we are successful, we can actually contribute both constructively and critically, and make a difference outside the academy. I am not too optimistic about influencing a multibillion industry. But in the long run, who knows?
今天，我们将有可能开创一个新的领域。我们拥有数以亿计的产业几乎没有任何基础研究，我们拥有将在相当长时间内存在的最迷人的文化材质，并且我们有机会在同一种准则下整合美学的、文化的和技术性设计元素。这不会是一帆风顺的过程，路途中将会犯下很多的错误。而一旦我们成功了，我们将提供建设性的和批判性的建树，并在学术之外引起改变。我并非对于影响一个数亿计的产业过于乐观。但长远来看，谁知道呢？
Of course, games should also be studied within existing fields and departments, such as Media Studies, Sociology, and English, to name a few. But games are too important to be left to these fields. (And they did have thirty years in which they did nothing!) Like architecture, which contains but cannot be reduced to art history, game studies should contain media studies, aesthetics, sociology etc. But it should exist as an independent academic structure, because it cannot be reduced to any of the above. These are interesting times.
You are all invited!
诚然，游戏可以由现存的各学科和部门来进行研究，例如媒介研究、社会学、英语文学等，还能说上一堆。但游戏的重要性使之不能归属于其中任何一门学科（这些学科在30年的时间内什么都没干）。好比建筑学包含着艺术史研究但不能归为艺术史，游戏理论也包含了媒介研究、美学、社会学等等。它应该作为一个独立的学术架构而存在，因为它实在不能为上述种种理论所简化。
正是有趣的时候，欢迎你的加入。