Page 112 - AC/E Digital Culture Annual Report

112Games and their relationship with other areas of cultureThe advent of game design as a discipline is a symptom of how the digital media are changing media ecology. Although other artistic elds and expressions such as literature or musicstill tend to be used as a means of establishing game design as a legitimate cultural activity, the fact is that the tables are being turned and game design is helping us incorporate other cultural expressions into the digital media. Itis not that we make video games because the new generations like them more, which is rather condescending, but rather, as pointed out, that the discipline of game design has long been exploring how to design interactive experiences; its interdisciplinary nature helps integrate other cultural areas and expressions into the digital medium. The language of the digital media is increasingly accessible and is now part of the cultural landscape, though admittedly we run the risk of creating a digital gap between those who have access to technologies and those who do not; indeed, the latter risk nding themselves excluded from the spaces of cultural expression created by video games and new technologies.The new generations expect the traditional media, from novels to plays, to be participatory as well. Readers have probably seen the video of the infant girl swiping the pages of a paper magazine as if it were an iPad because she doesn’t realise they have to be turned (https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXV-yaFmQNk). The image of the girl bewildered by the unre- sponsiveness of the magazine’s inert pages is a symptom of how the digital media are changing how we relate to the media today.The digital media are changing the traditional media models. Today a computer or smartphone screen enable us to switch from the day’s news to our music playlist, watch the day’s viral video and end up playing Candy Crush Saga (2012). This is a process of unstoppable convergence(Thorburn and Jenkins 2004), which has been taking place over the past two decades and is fully accepted today. We have gradually been shedding technologies that are only valid forone type of content, such as radios and record players, which have become museum pieces or cult objects. Traditional models of communica- tion like that of Shannon and Weaver (1963) are no longer of any use; instead we have digital interactive media in which not only does the message have to be decoded but the recipient must manipulate it and can change it through his involvement; Espen Aarseth uses the term cybertext to explain how digital technology has changed how we read texts, as it requires certain actions in order to be read. Digital technologyis accustoming us to being able to interact with content, going further than interpreting it, so that we can explore and modify it and even contribute to it with our own creations. Games have been encouraging players not only totake part in ctional worlds but also to create content for them. An example of this is a study by Pearce (2006) on the online game Myst Online: URU Live (2003-4), which examines the case of a community of players who reproduced the virtual world in other virtual worlds such as Second Life (2003–present) and There (2001-10) after Uru was shut down early. Pearce points out that several players among this virtual world diaspora learned to use digital production tools to create 3D objects with their relevant textures in order to recreate a space with sentimental value.The discipline of game design has long been exploring how to design interactive experiences; its interdisciplinary nature helps integrate other cultural areas and expressions into the digital medium.Games have also been used as a means of re ecting Spain’s cultural heritage, though some of the games in question have not been widely distributed. One of the earliest examples is Don Quijote (1987), a video game produced by the Spanish company Dinamic, which convertedGAME DESIGN AS A CULTURAL DISSEMINATOR · CLARA FERNÁNDEZ VARASmart culture. Analysis of digital trends