Playtest

Reflecting on the difficulties I’ve had writing this week last night, I realised that at least one of my problems is that I didn’t have an audience in mind. Potentially that audience will be the select club of myself, my supervisor, my examiners, and my mum, but the examiners are the ones I’m pretty sure I should focus on, at least that’s my hunch. I don’t know why this didn’t cross my mind earlier, but my writing practice is somewhat, I’d like to think ‘naturalistic’ or words to that effect, but really lazy is most likely a more suitable adjective.

Another problem is that I’m not really sure who my examiners might be. Quite aside from the fact that I’m not supposed to know anyway, there are two problems as I see it. Firstly, videogame studies is relatively new, so there isn’t a large pool to start with. Second, it’s a pretty diverse field so suitable scholars within the pool are even fewer, particularly as there aren’t any experts on videogames and phenomenology or embodiment that I’m aware of, and those who do study the body and videogames are often early career researchers.

Anyway, hopefully going to ACMI’s GameOn exhibition this weekend, hopefully a lot of people have gone during the school holidays this week so there won’t be too many cues to play some of the games. Even though there are a million clones of Computer Space online it will be cool to use the original cabinet with its complex controls.