Animationxpress.com’s Ishpreet Chandock caught up with Souvik Mukherjee, a teacher of Literature and Digital Humanities at the Nottingham Trent University and also an independent researcher with an interest in philosophy of videogames and videogame paratexts.
Here, Souvik talks about his passion, videogames as a storytelling media and more.
Meanwhile here are the excerpts…
First of all, thank you so much for taking out time for speaking to us, can you tell the readers of our portal more about yourself and your work?
Thanks a lot for your interest. I am a researcher in digital games, my main thrust being on the storytelling aspect of videogames. Games tell stories and some games tell them rather obviously and engagingly. In the same way one critically analyses films and novels, one should also be able to appreciate and comment on the stories in videogames. Although the Humanities academia is increasingly becoming interested in the digital world, videogames have still not made their way into curricula as objects of serious consideration. What I have been calling for, therefore, is greater academic attention to videogames as a cultural phenomenon.
My background is in English Literature and Cultural Studies and I am an assistant professor in English Literature at Presidency University (formerly Presidency College), Calcutta. No surprises, therefore, that I should like my students to ‘read’ American McGee’s Alice (the videogame) just as they do Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. I view the videogame-text as a multiple text where the story is told differently on each reading. Indeed, the reading here is also a wreading (a combination of ‘writing’ and ‘reading’) because the players write their stories in the process of reading them.
I completed my PhD from Nottingham Trent University, UK and have pursued research on various aspects of storytelling in videogames since. Right now, my interests lie in introducing Game Studies (already a popular subject abroad) to Indian academia.
In your experimental research, how do you account for the participants who regularly play video games from those who have little to no experience?
People who have little or no experience in gaming are usually a control group for me (one that I check the other results against). In the main, I focus on gamers – when I actually run such surveys, that is. As I do theory-led research, surveys do not play a big part in my work yet although this may change.
Do you feel that your research has or will have an impact on the video game industry? If so, what impact do you think it will have?
A similar impact as film criticism and the whole baggage of film research has on the film industry, perhaps? Certainly, I am looking at a more artistically and culturally aware industry which will also create games that make people rethink their otherwise set ideas. Games that make a difference to society. After all, gaming is a powerful way of engaging with problems of all kinds as well as experiencing fun.
On a more mundane level, my research aims to create a database of stories and play-experiences that the industry can draw upon. Generally, the player’s creative experience with the game is the element of gameplay that is often ignored; mainly because its hard to describe it. Research on the story experience in videogames will be able to create a ready source for designers and developers to access and analyse. Kind of like what filmmakers and story writers do when they search archives and are influenced by earlier work.
In your thesis one can notice substantive links with the concept of the ‘supplement’ by Jacques Derrida? Tell us more about it?
Well, there was a time when Game Studies preferred a binary position – some scholars claimed that games were all about storytelling while others said they were something very different. Writing my thesis at such a time, I found it necessary to question this easy demarcation of game and story. For me, the French thinker Jacques Derrida’s work came in handy. Derrida’s concept of the ‘supplement’ (‘That Dangerous Supplement’) is a useful way of looking at so-called centred structures and binaries and exposing the problems involved in doing so. For example, when one says ‘Game’ does one totally deny any possibility of thinking about ‘Story’? Derrida’s ‘dangerous supplement’ is dangerous because it threatens any centrality or essence from within. ‘Story’ exists as a supplement to ‘Game’ but this is a supplement that is not a forced addition; it is something that changes the very concept of ‘Game’. Take Chess, for example: it is a game bound by set rules but somehow one cannot ignore the fact that it is the story of a battle between the black and the white armies Bring this into focus in a game such as L.A. Noire – the story element is much more obvious. Hence, Derrida – the relation between the binaries of story and game is a relationship of play: it is unfixed, changing and each of the elements is intrinsic to the understanding of the other. To cut a long story short, Derrida helps to establish why stories are important even in the very thinking of the concept of gaming.
What are some of the stronger arguments against your research? How do you counter those arguments?
Mainly, these would lie in the Ludologist camp or those who still argue against the importance of considering the story as a gameplay element. There aren’t very many people who say this but those who do are perhaps reacting to another extreme pole that claims that all videogames are story-driven. I do not say so and I have no intention of saying that Tetris is a rich story-experience. What I do say is that there is an unfortunate tendency of researchers to generalize and simplify instead of accepting the complexity of videogames. I also have critics who are not as convinced that videogames are worth the academic analysis. Again, they are getting fewer by the day and after all, the so-called Digital Humanities is the new hot topic in Humanities research.
Do you have any plans for the future implementation of your research? How should your research be applied to schools, home, everyday life, etc.?
Well, as I said in my NASSCOM GDC talk and earlier, I’d love to see videogames in the curricula – whether at school or university level is a moot question though. If we can have Film Studies then what’s wrong with games. It’s all about engaging with another form of storytelling. Back in them days, people could not even think of watching films as a culturally acceptable activity and now they talk philosophy in terms of film theory. Again, so what’s wrong with games?
As far as everyday life is concerned, gamification is the buzzword doing the rounds the world over. To gamify is to make the experience fun and arguably easier to assimilate. This is just a pointer that I’ll leave you with; there are many controversies related to gamification but these are for another discussion.
You’ve mentioned before that computer game theory is growing up. What do you mean by that?
Well, as I said, when I started working on this way back in 2001, videogame research was new and generally uncool except among a few people in the US and in Scandinavian countries. Researchers divided themselves into camps and they either argued for the story or for the game. In theoretical terms too, the frameworks used were dated and not in synch with current research in well-established Humanities disciplines. Those days are now over, thankfully. There are loads of publications on videogames, many academic journals published by reputed names and certainly, a concerted effort at moving away from oversimplified thinking. There is also an improvement in the connection with the industry and that is a healthy sign for academic research and its relevance.
You have said earlier that people who play computer games should write about them. Could you elaborate on that claim?
Oh yes! When I said that (and I forget where), I was annoyed with certain people who presented papers on videogames at conferences while at the same time asserting that they hadn’t played a single game in their lives. Poor them!
Anyway, I believe that one needs to be familiar with medium to be able to comment on it. Watching Youtube clips of games without ever having played them is just not in my books.
Is there a need of two separate fields of ‘the videogame’ and ‘videogames’ to be pursued as distinct entities?
I am not in favor of ‘the videogame’ so much; I see things as multiplicities. However, if as you say, it must be done then let such research declare itself as such. If we generalize, then let us not forget to consider the diversity. This is true of all media and not just videogames.
You had a short stint of postdoctoral research on cognition, language and emotions at the Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi. Tell us about your experience?
I enjoyed my time at IITD. The Language, Emotions and Culture project (LEC) headed by Professor Rukmini Bhaya Nair is one of the first of its kind in the world and certainly in India. LEC aims to explore the link between the onset of emotions and that of language in humans. I was involved in analyzing the dataset of interviews given my mothers about their children as per a set questionnaire. This was narrative data and as such the challenge was to convert it into a form over which we could apply quantitative analysis.
During this time, I was also able to meet up with some really bright Mathematics students at IITD and to start planning a videogame. I left shortly afterwards and that has remained a regret.
What are you working on presently?
Two things really –
1. I’m working on a project involving the analysis of walkthroughs and player diaries to better understand the story-experience of players.
2. I’m writing a book chapter on videogames in India for an international publication.
You’ve mentioned before that the computer game theory is growing up. Can you elaborate more on it?
Well, as I said, when I started working on this way back in 2001, videogame research was new and generally uncool except among a few people in the US and in Scandinavian countries. Researchers divided themselves into camps and they either argued for the story or for the game. In theoretical terms too, the frameworks used were dated and not in synch with current research in well-established Humanities disciplines. Those days are now over, thankfully. There are loads of publications on videogames, many academic journals published by reputed names and certainly, a concerted effort at moving away from oversimplified thinking. There is also an improvement in the connection with the industry and that is a healthy sign for academic research and its relevance.
Where do you think video game research will go from here?
Hard to say. Trends change so quickly in this field. I would look forward to a more industry-focused and player-focused future.
What conferences/activities are on the list for you and the computer game theory?
I’ve just done three conference papers in the past three months so I’m going to go easy on the conference front this winter. Will be sending in an abstract for the The Philosophy of Videogames conference next year, though. I also plan to organize a conference for students on Digital Humanities and games.
You conducted a session at NASSCOM in Pune, How was your experience? Were you happy with the response? What are the highlights of it?
I think it was a very good event and I am happy that I was invited. One highlight for me were Stefano Gualeni’s talk which combined David Hume’s philosophy and bioinformatics in a fun way that promises to change the shape of game design. The following talk on broken games and the concept of designing a game about the glitches and disturbances in games seems to me a fascinating idea that challenges the very concepts of game design. I also enjoyed hugely the women in the Indian gaming industry panel and the Indie games panel.
What are your views about the current scenario of the gaming sector in India?
I think videogames and gaming are here to grow and to grow very big. There is a lot of potential in the industry but I am really looking forward to some blockbuster titles coming out of Indian studios. Personally, although I see the designers’ point in promoting mobile gaming, I mourn the lack of any console / PC game titles worth the name, here. Finally, coming to my own research, I find that despite India’s rich storytelling tradition very little has been done to bring Indian stories to videogames. Sad.
You are working as an assistant professor of English Literature in Presidency University. Tell us more about it? What drives you to teach?
I returned to India with the hope of starting off research in the Digital Humanities ( a new and fast-growing discipline that deals with the ways in which digital media shape our attitudes towards texts and culture). Therefore, being called to pursue my research and to teach at such a prestigious institution as Presidency University (earlier Presidency College) was the ideal opportunity. While I get the chance to pursue the intricacies of the Digital, I am also able to engage with more traditional areas such as Renaissance Literature and Romanticism. I particularly enjoy teaching the Classics, Renaissance texts and literary theory.
I teach because I think my students are simply marvelous. I admire their curiosity and enthusiasm concerning everything from Dante to Doom 3; it’s a nice learning curve for me too.
Where do you think video game research will go from here?
Hard to say. Trends change so quickly in this field. I would look forward to a more industry-focused and player-focused future.