Reading Response 3- Dara Hou

September 29, 2013

When playing a video game, one does not think about the different concepts on how the game itself works; he or she picks up the controller and play the game because of his or her desire to do so. Or as French sociologist and anthropologist Roger Caillois believes, one may play the game to escape the real life and form a second reality world inside the game (Galloway, 6). In chapter one of Alexander Galloway's book, "Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture", he explains how the video game take its action, or, as he would call it "Gaming" meaning how the video game works (Galloway, 2). The author does a great job of informing the readers the purpose of his essay: that it is not about the design or performance of the game itself but rather how video game involve different gamic actions, software and computer system. 

Alexander Galloway introduce the readers to software, how it relates to gaming. He explains that the software tells the machine to create the rules of the game therefore making the players have a better idea of what or what not to do (Galloway, 2). In order to fully develop an understanding of video games, Galloway points out two types of action in video games: machine actions and operator actions. While the machine actions are performed by software and hardware, the operator actions are performed by the players (Galloway 5). In comparison to those two, the author wants the readers to distinguish the importance of one action to another for the video game to properly function.

Furthermore, Alexander Galloway continue to breakdown the different actions and moments of gamic action. He briefly talks about the actions of configuration, which the operator executes while the machine receives (Galloway, 12). An example would be hitting the pause button- the operator hits it, the machine listens to the operator's request. More examples would be cheating and hacking the levels of the game. As Galloway continues to list and explain the actions, he wants to inform the readers that these information was passed for a reason- not the reason of throwing a bunch of information to the readers but for the readers to understand the study of medium rather than the elements of the human activity. In other words, know the gaming system. It's not necessarily important to know how the human play the game. 

Overall, Alexander Galloway's chapter one, "Gamic action, Four Moments", is very informative regarding gaming actions and video game. There are many more examples, concepts, comparisons, and elements that he continues to breakdown (Shenmue, Bataille/Huizinga's definitions of game and play, diegetic operator act, nondiegetic acts, move acts, expressive acts, etc). However, it is rather easier to mention to the important ones, which are explained above in this essay. If a reader was to get something out of his essay, then he or she should understand the four moments that Alexander Galloway use to sums up his essay towards the end (Galloway, 37). Understand those moments and analyze the given diagram and chart on page 37 and 38. To those who plays video games, you will have a different perspective next time you pick up the controller.