Audrey Anable's "Casual Games, Time Management, and the Work of Affect" challenges the "gendering" of casual games much in the way that game studies as a genre of scholarship has been gendered. I found her analysis quite compelling and convincing, particularly in her examination of how "casual" games fit into the in-between spaces in our lives.
What I find less convincing in Anable's argument is her definition of "kitsch" - that is, "art urging overt sentimentality." By framing Diner Dash and other casual games as a paean to the value of hard work, the equivalent of a workplace motivational poster of a cat "hanging in there," Anable asserts that by playing the game the player is putting herself in Flo's shoes. I don't buy this completely - Anable herself refers to Diner Dash as a "click management" game, and the player clicks and clicks and clicks to command Flo which action to perform next. The screen itself is a representation of the entire restaurant, not Flo's POV, and to me Flo seems a little more like a worker to be commanded rather than an extension of the player. The "affectively charged relationship" between the working woman onscreen and the "working body of the player" seems more reliant on command and hierarchy than Anable's definition of kitsch allows for. Most tellingly, the player doesn't manipulate Flo's individual movements - all that can be done is to click to tell her where to go, and Flo will independently move there in the most expedient fashion. As Anable says herself, the actual experience of labor is compressed into clicks in Diner Dash. All of Anable's points about the gendering of the work undertaken by Flo still stand, but because of the game's graphics and mechanics it's difficult for me to see Diner Dash as fully "affective" when the player doesn't have a full connection to Flo's body. When playing Diner Dash, it's actually less efficient to track Flo - rather, the player must keep an eye on every table and its current status, anticipating the tasks that need to be accomplished next rather than keeping an eye on Flo. The player trusts that Flo will accomplish the tasks she needs to as long as the player can adequately prioritize what those are, therefore ensuring that the player takes an overarching view of the entire restaurant rather than affectively connecting to Flo and her body. Flo is like one ant scurrying around an entire ant farm in this way, and the vast majority of people take a look at the goings-on of the entire farm.
I think the degree to which players command Flo's actions actually speaks more highly to Anable's points about the gendering of the work undertaken in Diner Dash. If time management games are "mediations of women's work," then what are the politics of a male, or a woman of higher socioeconomic status, manipulating Flo's actions and commanding her within the restaurant? Anable acknowledges the problematic depiction that by opening her own restaurant, Flo basically becomes the diner's only glorified waitress. When playing Diner Dash (and I revisited the game after reading Anable's article, you know, for additional research) I personally felt like the owner of the restaurant commanding an employee, rather than empathizing with Flo as the "boss." Diner Dash's premise and mechanics actually deprive Flo of agency over her actions and her own restaurant, and as I asserted before Flo is left only to figure out the quickest route to the destination at which she has been commanded to arrive. The glorification of Flo's decision to open the restaurant as depicted in the opening sequence is problematic as well when considered against the reality of her work. Flo allegedly leaves a mundane office job to open the diner, yet her work in the diner seems no less robotic or stressful than her office work. I don't see much room for "sentimentality" other than in the cutesy graphics and satisfaction when a level ends, but this affect does not seem to beget "kitsch" in the way that Anable asserts.
The concept of "affect" as introduced by Anable was a captivating one, and the emotional and stressful response engendered by Diner Dash is a new way of looking at how we play games - more than most other art forms, video games have the power to truly create an "affective" response. I wonder how this affect factors into the way casual games are played, however. We play these games in the spaces between location and location, work and home, on the train or on the bus. These games, in Anable's words, function in "ambiguous time and space between the myriad tasks we do on digital devices" - they are "both incidental and taking over our lives." What does the stress response, Anable's "affect," do to fill in these gaps in our lives? Does it improve our focus or make us more scattered?
I agree with your description of the game Diner Dash. I do not think that it can really be said that gamers put themselves in Flo’s shoes when playing the game. This would be like saying that every single person who plays this game either wants to work in a restaurant or wants to be a waiter/waitress. Going along with your description (in which you mention that gamers of Diner Dash simply click) it would be better to say that gamers of Diner Dash enjoy leading a character or making decisions. The definition of Diner Dash as a “casual game” is evidence of this fact. By definition this is a game that is played during someone’s free time. By definition, then, it is not like gamers are putting themselves in the shoes of someone working in the restaurant business because in their free time they would be interested in relaxing, not thinking about “work.” (I say “work” because we are talking about a game). Ultimately I think we may be overanalyzing this game just a bit. I used to play this game. All that I was interested in doing was playing something where I did not have to think. As Alex said, all that is required is clicking and nothing more.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, even after our class discussion and re-reading Anable’s article, I’m still not sure I entirely understand the affect as a concept and how Anable is using it to make her argument. But I agree with certain aspects of her argument, especially her ideas about the rhythm of casual games. Personally I don’t play a lot of casual games (mostly because I get easily frustrated and quit quickly) but I can relate with her characterization of casual games as “rhythmic interludes that mediate the gaps, pauses, and glitches that are part of everyday digital rhythms.” Casual games are filled with repetitive and somewhat therapeutic tapping, clicking, and swiping. However, I felt underwhelmed by Anable’s thoughts and conclusion about the gendering of casual games. Even though she notes that casual games (and casual gamers) are feminized and that time management games like Diner Dash typically depict “women’s work,” it is never addressed as problematic in the piece. While Anable says that casual games allow players of all genders to experience “women’s precarious status as workers,” and that “the field of game studies, casual games are meaningfully gendered,” I didn’t feel like her ideas about gender and casual games were underplayed.
ReplyDeleteIn her article, Audrey Anable explains that casual games function as affective systems through “the interplay between their digital procedures, representational practices, and gameplay actions” (Anable 14). As such, the experience of playing a casual game provokes affect. While Shira Chess has focused on the affective labor present in Diner Dash, Anable is more interested in how “affective processes…get called up into representation” (Anable 19). Thus, as Alex explained, casual games allow for significant affect on players’ bodies, especially in that they mirror the flow of work responsibilities in the “ambiguous time and space between” them (Anable 1).
ReplyDeleteFor me, one game that seems to epitomize the affective response generated by casual games is Tap Wars by iPhonig LLC. This game was created by a friend of mine, and has a simple game play –“you can race the clock in Single Player to see how many taps you can achieve” or you can play multiplayer on the same device or over Bluetooth (iPhonig). This game is not complex, lacks animated graphics, and any representations of labor–unlike Dinner Dash. But nevertheless, it causes an intense non-conscious experience of intensity that seems illogical (because there is no storyline or motivation for tapping) and unwarranted. Thus, this game shows how a casual game creates an affective response within a player.
Further, I think I understand Anable’s argument about how casual games represent a flow/rhythm within a digital landscape. But, to complicate Anable’s ideas, I want to highlight The Impossible Quiz. This flash game, a genre of casual games that seems to be most popular among kids and teens, does not have a steady flow of action. Rather, it is a set of ridiculous questions that have tricky and hidden answers. This game does not seem to allow for a player to play to a simple rhythm, as it requires much guessing and checking. However, this game might actually support Chess’ reading of affective labor because The Impossible Quiz mirrors labor in that one learns from previous experience, one must eventually learn how to succeed, and in how players teach another the gimmicks of the game.
Accordingly, I am not sure what to conclude about casual games offering a rhythm, but I do understand how casual games function as affective systems.
Tap Wars Screencaps: http://forums.toucharcade.com/showthread.php?t=38459
The Impossible Quiz: http://www.addictinggames.com/puzzle-games/theimpossiblequiz.jsp
(p.s. can anyone get past level 15? I am stuck there)
ReplyDeleteHi Alex, thanks for your critical reading of Anable's article! Even after our class and after multiple re-reads, I'm still struggling to get a grasp on what an affective system actually is. I'm interested in the last question that you raised. What does "affect" do to fill in the gaps in our lives, does it improve our focus or make us more scattered -- I guess, what's really the significance of the affective response produced by casual games? One part I wanted to examine was in Anable's last paragraph. She discusses how affect "speaks to the spaces, forces, and moments that fall outside of the discursive boundary lines of work, house, or our social lives" and that these spaces, while difficult to articulate, "form the closest thing we know to be 'everyday life.'" The casual game as an affective system holds potential for "reanimation of longing and complaint" because it "always seems to escape the boundaries of any single ideological discourse or institutional practice." I think Anable is trying to explicate how casual gaming can call into question a fragmented labor culture that upholds gender inequality, and does so without being constrained within an ideological discourse or institution, since it exists in this in-between space (tiny moments of "everyday life" which doesn't often get theory produced about it) between discursive spheres of life. I'm still trying to work through what this means though.
I also think enjoyed Anable's argument about how casual gaming transforms the "labor saving digital device." She writes that the "physical acts of touching a touchscreen or maneuvering a mouse are detached from their usual search and selection functions and replaced with the abstract though quite material repetitive labor of click management," and thus the device--"the way we feel it and feel about it"--is momentarily transformed. Casual gaming and affect can temporarily transform our relationship with our phones, but in doing so, it also can make visible how much labor and work we put into our digital devices
While Alex's blog post was a great read on the whole, I was most struck by his argument that “it’s difficult […] to see Diner Dash as fully ‘affective’ when the player doesn’t have a full connection to Flo’s body,” which is an extremely interesting point to make. In one sense, I disagree with Alex’s statement that Diner Dash isn’t “fully ‘affective’” because of the lack of any such connection, as while the player might not play the game from Flo’s perspective or fully control her actions, “affect,” as Anable defines it, hinges less on the player relating to Flo than it does on the player’s emotional response to the interplay between the different aspects of whatever game is being discussed. Indeed, Alex himself makes this apparent when he states that he didn’t feel like Flo insofar as he felt like “the boss of a restaurant ordering an employee,” a statement that is in and of itself indicative of an “affective” reaction, one predicated on the player’s alienation from Flo rather than any supposed “connection” to her. Far from preventing the player from having an emotional reaction to the game, the disassociation of the player from their on-screen character can potentially cultivate it.
ReplyDeleteThat being said, though, I think Alex is largely correct in how he connects the concept of “affect” to gameplay mechanics. Games might consist of more than just the actual gameplay components (and that’s before one gets into how one’s definition of “good gameplay” can vastly differ depending on the person), but it’s still an integral part, and probably the one that fascinates me the most. There’s actually a lot that can be said by what a game allows you to do, not to mention by what its rules are, and that’s nowhere more obvious to me than with A Fitting, which was presented by Blair Kuhlman at the Interplay Convention this October. While there’s so, so, so much to say about the game, the short description of the game (which is meant to be played at exhibitions) is thus: using the Microsoft Kinect, the player is asked to imitate a woman in a mirror, with their “performance” being judged by an incredibly hard-to-please upper class Victorian crowd and, of course, a score. As the game goes on, however, the woman’s poses (which were already difficult to imitate due to the fact that the player has to match her poses exactly, to the point where they have to contort their body to match her height and physique) start becoming more and more uncomfortable to imitate (in more ways than one), especially in light of the fact that the player is being watched both in the game and outside of it. Ultimately, the game (quite deliberately, as Kuhlman stated at the conference) aims to evoke the feeling of being judged based on one’s appearance, as well as the inherent impossibility of living up to society’s unrealistic womanly “ideal,” by applying normal game mechanics (such as a scoring system) to such a task, exemplifying both how impossible such a task is and, in a sense, the sort of “affective” experience Anable seeks to discuss (go to http://blairkuhlman.com/index.html#about to learn a bit more about the game if you’re interested).