Paper Abstract - Ole Ertløv Hansen

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ABSTRACT

A Cognitive Theoretical Approach to Computer Games and the Aesthetics of Repetition

Ole Ertløv Hansen

Ever since the earliest writings on the aesthetics of computer games one topic has dominated the discussion: the question of whether computer games are or can be narrative. It has been argued that computer games oscillate between being interactive and being narrative whereby interactivity and narrativity is seen as the opposing ends of a continuum. But it has also been argued that interactive narratives are just around the corner if we just can figure out how to implement the structures of the narrative, as we know them from other audio-visual and the interactive environment of the game.

Though it seems that everybody can agree on one thing: computer games being interactive. But taking a closer look onto what we actually use this possibility of interaction for. Well, it seems to me that we fight hard to cope with the interactive possibilities in such a way that we are able to master the right way to shoot, race, fight; do the right things in the right order; or make the right decision at the right moment. And we do this over and over again until it feels just right - I can help and this let me go on to the next level of difficulty.

So computer games are not characterised only by being interactive they also, at the level of the individual work, have an important element at you don't find in other audio-visual art forms

The questions you might ask then are:

Are the process of repetition, in it self, the motivation for playing computer games? Is the goal of playing a computer game actually the processes more then getting to the end of the game?

This way of describing the gaming experience is not absolutely new. Csikszentmihalyi's concept of 'Flow' has been pointed out as one possible way of describing this experience. But, as I shall argue in this presentation, a far more systematic approach can be found inside resent film theory or more precisely in the work of Torben Grodal. Grodal's theory, inspired by, or build upon, theories of cognition and emotion, lists four categories of aesthetic experiences, or reactions: telic, paratelic, associations and autonomic responses. And as I shall try to argue computer games, in contradiction to, or far better then, most other audio-visual art works, activated wish for paratelic aesthetic experiences.

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