Author Topic: Thief reboot / Bioshock Infinite - game theory =)  (Read 11703 times)

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Offline NGTM-1R

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Re: Thief reboot / Bioshock Infinite - game theory =)
I write Homeric epics about Minesweeper.

Sunglasses. Look it up.
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Offline Lepanto

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Re: Thief reboot / Bioshock Infinite - game theory =)
Death of the Author basically then?

Not entirely.  The biographical and contextual information about an author is important; its their intentions that are less so.  Subtext has a lot to do with who an author is, but not what they say it means (because what they say it means and what the combination of the text and the author's context reveal are often two very different things)  Tolkien insisted to his dying day that The Lord of the Rings was not meant to be in any way allegorical to the Great War and Second World War and their toll and losses incurred, yet arguments are routinely and quit successfully made that the books are indeed allegorical in practice, and that has much to do with Tolkien's personal life experiences.

I'm skeptical that literary critics writing after the fact, viewing an author's work through their own attitudes and biases, can determine the true meaning of an author's work more accurately than the author themselves can.

Why shouldn't they be able to? I'm speaking here as someone firmly in the author camp.

I'm not denying that authors might have written some works under certain subconscious influences, or made certain logical/writing errors which crippled their works' intended messages, which they were not conscious of while writing. I suppose I also won't deny that some later literary critics might discover those influences or errors, and therefore be able to undermine the coherence of the work's thematic argument, or relate the events of the work to historical or contemporary circumstances in a way which the original writer did not intend. If the author's attempt to promote theme X was flawed/hypocritical/incoherent, then it is more academically valid to point out that their argument was flawed because they missed point Y/contradicted their own theme with event Z (not to start a debate on this, but, say, any modern JRPG/anime where the protagonists achieve their goals through constant use of violence, even though the work itself narratively promotes a message of peace and understanding.) Such a less-ambitious attempt to prove that a work has failed at conveying its intended message, or can be viewed differently in regards to contemporary events, is (while not always accurate) easier to academically substantiate and constructively debate than a statement that a work was really saying something else entirely.

What I do object to, though, is the death-of-the-author idea; that later critics' own subtextual interpretations of a particular work are as valid, or even more valid, than the theme/themes which the writer themselves was trying to convey in the work. Given a sufficiently complex work of fiction, any particular critic can form numerous different personal "subtextual" interpretations of it, inevitably derived from their own preconceptions and biases. Without a highly specific and objective standard for literary analysis (something which the modern academic community certainly does not try to establish), it is difficult for any one critic to prove that their own analysis is more or less accurate than the analysis of any other critic working in the same milieu of subtextual criticism; hence, discussion of subtext will likely descend into unresolvable arguments like this thread's debate over the meaning and artistic integrity of Bioshock Infinite. When literary discussion has left the common ground of the work's plain text behind in a search for subtext, all debaters involved will be forced to fall back on "subtextual" connections which only they and like-minded individuals can see, and academic consensus becomes impossible. If one critic says that Shakespeare's Tempest is really about, say, colonialism, even if Shakespeare probably never intended to write anything of that sort, then they will find it difficult to convincingly refute someone who says that it's really about, oh, feminism. Hence, modern subtextual analyses are only "true/accurate/meaningful" to their own proponents, so the whole field of subtextual criticism is decidedly solipsist and impermanent. Such broad subtextual interpretations are merely one individual or group's attempt to derive their own meaning from a particular work of fiction, and cannot be said to be the meaning of that particular work of fiction, especially if the author was trying to say something else entirely in their work.

If you are quite willing to give people a wide range of subtextual latitude in interpreting your own writing, I'll respect that. However, I, for one, can say that I'd be irritated if I wrote a story that was plainly about (say) the nature of justice and personal relationships, as I took pains to thematically convey through the writing and gameplay, and some literary critic then came along and said that, "no, it's REALLY about supply-side economics, and my opinion is as valid or more valid than yours is, even though you wrote it and say that it's about justice and personal relationships, even though you can plainly back that up from the text."

---
I understand that subtextual interpretation is popular on the internet, and criticism of subtextual interpretation less so, but I thought I'd share my $.02 here.  :)
"We have now reached the point where every goon with a grievance, every bitter bigot, merely has to place the prefix, 'I know this is not politically correct, but...' in front of the usual string of insults in order to be not just safe from criticism, but actually a card, a lad, even a hero. Conversely, to talk about poverty and inequality, to draw attention to the reality that discrimination and injustice are still facts of life, is to commit the sin of political correctness. Anti-PC has become the latest cover for creeps. It is a godsend for every curmudgeon and crank, from fascists to the merely smug."
Finian O'Toole, The Irish Times, 5 May 1994

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Offline General Battuta

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Re: Thief reboot / Bioshock Infinite - game theory =)
Why should the argument be resolvable, though? Why demand specific, objective criteria, or call for some interpretations to falsify or dominate others? This isn't science; falsifiability isn't a driving criterion. This is art, and art exists in the relationship between the text and the reader. Even the author becomes a reader once the work is complete.

You talk about criticism leaving the work behind, yet criticism does the opposite: it establishes the text as the only necessary common ground. I don't think criticism is about finding answers and reducing a work to a correct interpretation with a consensus behind it. It's about enriching art with connections and relationships that might otherwise go missed - as in the case of the BSI discussion, where we connected the game's formal ambitions to its mechanical shortcomings and talked about whether that connection worked well for the narrative. Nobody has to win and be correct. The conversation is what's important.

If your text supports a reading about supply-side economics in addition to a reading about justice and personal relationships, what of it? Is your reading diminished by the existence of another? What if (and here is the great value of criticism!) you have been raised in a society that (say, for the sake of argument) adores supply-side economics, to such an extent that you have absorbed that ideology and aren't even aware of how it influences your writing: in much the same way that an author from the 50s might describe a man and a woman reacting to danger without thinking about why she chose those particular reactions.

LeGuin wrote The Left Hand of Darkness, one of the great works of science fiction, to challenge the way her community talked about gender. Yet her work was in turn challenged by later critics, who pointed out the way in which it contained subtle undercurrents of the very essentialism she wanted to attack. With distance - both temporal and cultural - and critical discourse, she was able to return to it, see what she had missed, and improve it.

And here, the meta-argument I so adore: one of my great difficulties in accepting criticism, as a trained scientist, came in setting aside my insistence that competing theories must be falsifiable and mutually exclusive. The ideology of scientific reasoning was so overwhelming that I couldn't even see my way out of it until a (scorchingly brilliant and gorgeous :swoon:) grad student in lit theory showed me the way. Literary criticism is about close reading in order to find support for a hypothesis - in many ways the antithesis of the scientific process! It is intentionally selective. But it works wonderfully, it benefits from its multiple competing schools, because it is able to really think about fiction from a number of angles, creating distance and parallax the individual author or reader usually lack.

I always think about subtext when I'm writing, and I make choices in my writing to defeat certain readings or enhance others. Yet, in turn, I am constantly surprised and delighted (or alarmed) by what others read in my work - and I am often unable to deny that what they see is an invisible truth I have encoded in the text without ever being aware of it.

 

Offline Mongoose

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Re: Thief reboot / Bioshock Infinite - game theory =)
I can certainly appreciate exploring subtexts that the author may not have originally intended, and seeing how they affect perceptions of the work as a whole, but overall I think I side with Lepanto: speaking personally, I find it far more interesting to examine what the author's original intents were for their work, whether they were well-executed or not, than to read another take on them.  I guess I'm not willing to separate myself from the scientific method in my approach to art: alternative explanations might be somewhat interesting, but at the end of the day I want to look at the (for lack of a better term) hard evidence take on the story more than anything else.  I'm always frustrated when you have a creator who, when asked about the meaning of something, states something like, "Well, what did you make of it?"  Yes, I know what I made of it, but I want to know what  YOU did while you were writing it...that's why I'm asking the damn question in the first place.

I'm reminded of this one elective course I took in college, which involved studying three classic tragedies: Oedipus Rex, Antigone, and Hamlet.  Particularly in the case of the latter, which the professor had actually written a book about, I remember going over all of the notes he had compiled on the subtext behind various scenes and just thinking to myself, "...you know, Shakespeare was a genius, but there's no way he incorporated even a TENTH of this intentionally."  At that point it felt like I was reading my professor's work more than Shakespeare's, and I honestly didn't see any real purpose in doing so.

 

Offline General Battuta

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Re: Thief reboot / Bioshock Infinite - game theory =)
Why does it matter what Shakespeare did intentionally? What if he made something brilliant by accident? What if he were pleased and delighted to see such careful attention being paid to his work? Put differently: what do the intentions of Zero Dark Thirty's director have to do with whether the film ends up as pro or anti-American? Nothing, except what is actually written into the film's text.

As an author I will answer that question (what were you thinking?), but only with great care to position myself as just another reader, because often the interpretations readers provide are brilliant, and if mine were given primacy, their ability to generate and present those interpretations might be confined or endangered. It's like when people ask questions about Blue Planet - 'what does this mean?' Well, the team always answers, let's see what the text says! Oh, there's nothing? What do you think?

You are doing this CONSTANTLY. You always generate a reading of a work while you experience it. Criticism is just about being conscious of that reading, and learning how to maneuver it into different places.

And awareness of subtext and criticism will make your writing better.

 

Offline General Battuta

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Re: Thief reboot / Bioshock Infinite - game theory =)
Calling the author's dicta about the meaning of a word scientific also misses the vital point that the author does not completely understand what the work means. Like a sailor trying to chart an ocean's shore while drowning in a maelstrom, the author is too close to the work and to their social context to get a good survey.

e: SUBTEXT YO there's a genuinely pretty good scene in Star Wars Episode III Revenge of the Seth wherein Palpatine talks to Anakin about a legendary Seth who could create life. In the background, space dancers at a future zero-G space opera swim in and out of a gigantic egg-like sphere, trailing their robes like tiny sperm. Does it matter whether this was done on purpose? Not from a Jedi.
« Last Edit: April 01, 2014, 10:59:49 pm by General Battuta »

 

Offline NGTM-1R

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Re: Thief reboot / Bioshock Infinite - game theory =)
I find it far more interesting to examine what the author's original intents were for their work,

There's an assumption here that the author had specific things they were trying to say, which they might, but  this rejects several approaches to storytelling. We're not all Upton Sinclair writing The Jungle and trying to say something. Sometimes you want to work a plot. Sometimes you have characters you want to play out. Sometimes you have a world you want to explore. Sometimes you just sit down and the stuff appears and you're not entirely sure where it came from or why.
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Offline CommanderDJ

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Re: Thief reboot / Bioshock Infinite - game theory =)
Calling the author's dicta about the meaning of a word scientific also misses the vital point that the author does not completely understand what the work means. Like a sailor trying to chart an ocean's shore while drowning in a maelstrom, the author is too close to the work and to their social context to get a good survey.

e: SUBTEXT YO there's a genuinely pretty good scene in Star Wars Episode III Revenge of the Seth wherein Palpatine talks to Anakin about a legendary Seth who could create life. In the background, space dancers at a future zero-G space opera swim in and out of a gigantic egg-like sphere, trailing their robes like tiny sperm. Does it matter whether this was done on purpose? Not from a Jedi.

Oh wow, that's actually pretty cool. I never noticed that but as soon as I read it I remembered the scene in my head. It makes so much sense!
On the more general topic, I've always held that it's great to get various interpretations of a work discussed, even when they may not have been intended. For example, I once wrote about 4000 words on the meaning of a song that interpreted little details like the fact that there was a cough at the beginning of the track, and everyone I told about my opinion was all like "I get where you're coming from, but I don't think that's what the song intends." I totally agree that the band who wrote the song probably didn't intend it to come off how I interpreted it, but the song's meaning . But then songs are a different medium again from what we're talking about.

Also, it's "Sith".
[16:57] <CommanderDJ> What prompted the decision to split WiH into acts?
[16:58] <battuta> it was long, we wanted to release something
[16:58] <battuta> it felt good to have a target to hit
[17:00] <RangerKarl> not sure if talking about strike mission, or jerking off
[17:00] <CommanderDJ> WUT
[17:00] <CommanderDJ> hahahahaha
[17:00] <battuta> hahahaha
[17:00] <RangerKarl> same thing really, if you think about it

 

Offline General Battuta

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Re: Thief reboot / Bioshock Infinite - game theory =)
No they're Seth Lords

 

Offline swashmebuckle

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Re: Thief reboot / Bioshock Infinite - game theory =)
No they're Seth Lords
AHA my keenly refined subtextual sonar has identified the author's delusions of grandeur

the day is mine

 

Offline An4ximandros

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Re: Thief reboot / Bioshock Infinite - game theory =)
So basically. From that point of view (From what I understand), an author's writings are nothing more than the keys to your own imagination. What you see on the road trip you decided to take across Seth-Dickinson side is yours to interpret as you wish?

 

Offline swashmebuckle

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Re: Thief reboot / Bioshock Infinite - game theory =)
So basically. From that point of view (From what I understand), an author's writings are nothing more than the keys to your own imagination. What you see on the road trip you decided to take across Seth-Dickinson side is yours to interpret as you wish?
Seth Lord -> Procreation Ballet -> Seduced by "the dark side"

Dick-in-son -> NOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Conclusion -> Vader is a homophobe

Subtext 8=====> Intention

 

Offline Luis Dias

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Re: Thief reboot / Bioshock Infinite - game theory =)
Death of the Author basically then?

Not entirely.  The biographical and contextual information about an author is important; its their intentions that are less so.  Subtext has a lot to do with who an author is, but not what they say it means (because what they say it means and what the combination of the text and the author's context reveal are often two very different things)  Tolkien insisted to his dying day that The Lord of the Rings was not meant to be in any way allegorical to the Great War and Second World War and their toll and losses incurred, yet arguments are routinely and quit successfully made that the books are indeed allegorical in practice, and that has much to do with Tolkien's personal life experiences.

I'm skeptical that literary critics writing after the fact, viewing an author's work through their own attitudes and biases, can determine the true meaning of an author's work more accurately than the author themselves can.

The relevant expression here is "true meaning". There is no such thing as "true meaning". It's a relic from absolutism and objectivism. Leave it alone and it all comes together and start make sense!


e: Having read Battuta's take on it, I should just go ahead and endorse everything he says, I agree with it absolutely!! (ar ar ar)
« Last Edit: April 02, 2014, 07:04:59 am by Luis Dias »

 

Offline Lepanto

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Re: Thief reboot / Bioshock Infinite - game theory =)
Death of the Author basically then?

Not entirely.  The biographical and contextual information about an author is important; its their intentions that are less so.  Subtext has a lot to do with who an author is, but not what they say it means (because what they say it means and what the combination of the text and the author's context reveal are often two very different things)  Tolkien insisted to his dying day that The Lord of the Rings was not meant to be in any way allegorical to the Great War and Second World War and their toll and losses incurred, yet arguments are routinely and quit successfully made that the books are indeed allegorical in practice, and that has much to do with Tolkien's personal life experiences.

I'm skeptical that literary critics writing after the fact, viewing an author's work through their own attitudes and biases, can determine the true meaning of an author's work more accurately than the author themselves can.

The relevant expression here is "true meaning". There is no such thing as "true meaning". It's a relic from absolutism and objectivism. Leave it alone and it all comes together and start make sense!

Here is the crux of the whole debate, I believe. If one believes that philosophical truth is relative/unknowable/solipsistic, then it's easy to believe that a work of fiction's only message is whatever you, personally, read into it. For someone (like myself) who believes in objective philosophical truth, it's easier to accept that a work has a specific message which it is trying to convey, which can then be grappled with on its own merits. The two worldviews are simply irreconcilable, lacking much in the way of common ground to hold a true discussion over.

Hence, I propose that, as neither side is really likely to convince the other to switch sides on a core philosophical question, that this debate over literalism/subtextualism will probably not be resolved.
"We have now reached the point where every goon with a grievance, every bitter bigot, merely has to place the prefix, 'I know this is not politically correct, but...' in front of the usual string of insults in order to be not just safe from criticism, but actually a card, a lad, even a hero. Conversely, to talk about poverty and inequality, to draw attention to the reality that discrimination and injustice are still facts of life, is to commit the sin of political correctness. Anti-PC has become the latest cover for creeps. It is a godsend for every curmudgeon and crank, from fascists to the merely smug."
Finian O'Toole, The Irish Times, 5 May 1994

Blue Planet: The Battle Captains: Missions starring the Admirals of BP: WiH
Frontlines 2334+2335: T-V War campaign
GVB Ammit: Vasudan strike bomber
Player-Controlled Capship Modding Tutorial

 

Offline General Battuta

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Re: Thief reboot / Bioshock Infinite - game theory =)
Even if you believe in some kind of objective philosophical truth (a position I think you will find hard to sustain even in the face of some of the examples posted right in this thread), who decides what that truth is? Clearly not the author, because it's trivial to pick texts that convey a message the author never intended but which is nonetheless true. So who?

'I believe in objective philosophical truth' still doesn't privilege authorial intent.

 

Offline Luis Dias

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Re: Thief reboot / Bioshock Infinite - game theory =)
Yes that's also a great point. We could dismiss the whole relativism / absolutism shebang and still manage the conversation the same way. After all, the point is that no one really holds the key to this absolute truth in terms of artistic reading and so on. At least, I am not at all convinced anyone has found a manner to do such a thing in a way comparable to, say, Physics. Thus, a reading of a work made in the seventeenth century will be different in the eighteenth, the nineteenth, the twentieth, the places, the people involved, their culture and the things they can intellectually bring to the text that are not quite there, but are influential on their reading.

Alas, this "meaning" that is not on the text but is "implied" is obviously extremely problematic but nevertheless unavoidable. Most texts are unreadable without this Con-text, and this context is the whole culture, previous books, knowledge, philosophy, etc.,etc. that the reader brings to the moment when he's "reading" (or playing or watching or whatever). It is problematic precisely because it is not on the text, but it is somewhere in "the air". Many books cannot be read in the same manner if you know Darwinism theory or if you don't. They just can't. And the ways we ought to disentangle these differences in an "objective" way (at least in a scientific manner) are so out of proportion in terms of the variables you'd have to control that such attempts at "objectivity" are laughable from the get go.

This thing about the Text bringing "subjective" reading is precisely because people will create their own very particular connections in their own brain while reading a piece of art. Some of those might be trivial and boring. Perhaps the big majority of them. But there are some that might not be so trivial, and those might be intended by the original author or might not. They might, as I had said previously, be the result of an accident. Some might be stronger than the original author intended. Some might be controversial (people won't agree, period), some might be consensual (obvious to everyone, etc.). But they will hardly ever become "objective" in that ultimate, absolute sense.

 

Offline redsniper

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Re: Thief reboot / Bioshock Infinite - game theory =)
So basically. From that point of view (From what I understand), an author's writings are nothing more than the keys to your own imagination. What you see on the road trip you decided to take across Seth-Dickinson side is yours to interpret as you wish?
Seth Lord -> Procreation Ballet -> Seduced by "the dark side"

Dick-in-son -> NOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Conclusion -> Vader is a homophobe

Subtext 8=====> Intention
Subtext 8=====> Intention
8=====>

I read this text as being an expression of the author's insecurity with his [REDACTED] deformity.
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No war; think about happy things."   -WouterSmitssm

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Offline swashmebuckle

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Re: Thief reboot / Bioshock Infinite - game theory =)
8=====>

I read this text as being an expression of the author's insecurity with his [REDACTED] deformity.
Some critics who I won't mention by name see [REDACTED] everywhere but SOMETIMES IT'S JUST A CIGAR GET OUT OF MY HEAD