Logic as a medium

• Main Author: Warnke, Martin
• Other Authors: Klevjer, Rune (Response)
• Format: Others
• Language: English
• Published: Universität Potsdam 2010
• Subjects: The arts
• Online Access: http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-42710; http://opus.kobv.de/ubp/volltexte/2010/4271/

Computer games are rigid in a peculiar way: the logic of computation was the first to shape the early games. The logic of interactivity marked the action genre of games in the second place, while in massive multiplayer online gaming all the emergences of the net occur to confront us with just another type of logic. These logics are the media in which the specific forms of computer games evolve. Therefore, a look at gaming supposing that there are three eras of computation is taken: the early synthetical era, ruled by the Turing machine and by mainframe computers, by the IPO principle of computing; the second, mimetical era, when interactivity and graphical user interfaces dominate, the domain of the feedback loop; and the third, emergent era, in which the complexity of networked personal computers and their users is dominant.