I find it interesting that while there's only really one way to view the main text, there are multiple ways of dealing with the comments, either as sidebars to the main text, or as pages all by themselves organizable by time posted or card (added this past June). It feels to me like an attempt to add legitimacy to the comments, or perhaps make them seem more important or intergral to the work than they actually are. Because a lot of the comments don't feel particularly useful to the reading of the text, and seemed to really taper off once people adjusted to the format of the primary text.

I read Wark's "Agony" entry and I'm not sure what to think about the attempted parallel with Plato. In Wark's chapter, he wants us to think about getting beyond the dark game room, where there is nothing but playing the games. I think that a comment posted by Michael Hardt shows some of my concern. It is difficult to insert a chunk of Plato into a piece that also talks about a "map of the 'hood.'" It takes some skill, at any rate, and perhaps a more impeccable translation.

Some of the comments on this section also portray frustration that Wark seems to say that gamers are "loners apart from the reality of life." I've been reading some critical literature lately that wants to oppose this sort of view by showing that participation in games can be closely tied to "real life." Even by playing games with our friends, we retain some of the "real life" aspect. Also, perhaps some of the games represent many of the serious issues we face in the real world.

On the GAM3R 7H30RY site, there's an interview with Wark (that, oddly and appropriately enough, is made so it appears that the interviewer and Wark are in the game Halo, complete with sound effects. The form of the interview is quite amusing, so you should check it out if solely for that reason). In it, Wark says that having his book put online and allowing comments is like having people shoot at you. But, he added, the comments ended up being critical in a positive way and helped him. Because of this, he said, "It brings out what writing is anyway, which that you're sort of the DJ of other people's thoughts and ideas, and this just makes it manifest."

Although I'm not sure how well it achieves its goals of collaboration, I really like the ideas underlying the GAM3R 7H30RY project. Like Wikipedia, in theory, it allows users to rule; it privileges the voice of the common man/woman (ok...not really common. By "common", I mean the computer-savvy person reading the book), and it helps break down the boundary between author and reader. (And yes, I think I'm most fascinated with this right now because Scott Rettberg commented on my blog post.) Because of the nature of the comments (which I'll get to in a minute), like Lulu, I wanted to privilege the index cards over the comments. However, because I wanted to look at this as a piece of collaboration, I was most interested in the comments, so I made a deliberate effort to study them.

Apparently GAM3R 7H30RY has made something of a splash in the media.

Here is an article from The Chronicle of Higher Education that includes an interview with Wark, interviews with some of the people responsible for GAM3R 7H30RY (how I hate typing that) at the Insitute for the Future of the Book, plus some quotes from our very own KF (!).

I've been writing quite a bit on GAM3R 7H30RY (caps lock seems to help) this weekend for my paper, so my head's sort of spinning with it--to the point that I'm not sure what I've read/written/seen blogged about... But one of the important aspects that the above article brings up is the future of online publishing. The author, Jeffrey Young, paraphrases Ben Vershbow (an IFB employee) saying: "the networked e-book is ideal for scholarly books, or any work dealing with big ideas that might be difficult for a lone author to tackle..." KF goes on to suggest a new model of online publishing, with peer review done by vetted scholars through the publisher.

I talked a little before about format in GAM3R 7H30RY, and now I wanted to comment a little on the actual content.

I enjoyed reading the first few chapters in the "book," but as the author started getting overly theoretical with his ideas and new words like agon, alea, heterotopia, and atopia, I had a difficult time following along. I thought it was interesting that McKenzie chose to talk about these ideas in such an extensive manner and didn't actually concretely define what he meant by each term until the fifth section, "Atopia." By then, he starts defining alea as "chance" and agon as "competition," (card 115) and I literally had to write down all his definitions and constanty refer to them in order to remind myself of what he was referring to.

Going back to an issue Shock and Awe raised in an entry a few weeks ago about form vs. content, I'd like to ask that question again in relation to GAM3R 7H30RY.

I noticed that this week's topic on the syllabus is "the networked book" and GAM3R 7H30RY (which is a huge hassle to type because of the author's decision to alternate between numbers and letters) is our sole reading. I know that this in no way limits our discussion of GAM3R 7H30RY to just issues relating to the networked book because GAM3R 7H30RY itself has a lot of interesting ideas in it about gaming/theory that we could definitely talk about, but I realize that its strange and unique form is a huge topic of discussion in itself and may replace discussion of the content itself. I mean, look at me right now. I'm merely talking about the format rather than the actual content because the format is such an interesting issue.

Waaaaay back in the beginning of the semester, I posted something about how blogging wasn’t for perfectionists, because it thrives on a kind of spontaneity that is in tension with the planning and revision that perfectionists need.

Reading (browsing? surfing? floating in?) GAM3R 7H30RY, I felt a similar tension—between linear and nonlinear modes of reading. In GAM3R 7H30RY, you read the text itself, on those digital index card-looking things, and then you have a choice about whether or not to read the comments. Now, it seems that the comments are often the most interesting part of the text, so you really shouldn’t skip them. On the other hand, the importance of the comments doesn’t seem to lessen the value of Wark’s text, because without the original text, the comments wouldn’t exist. So although there certainly is some sensation of the linear, of accomplishing something, of moving progressively forward as you advance from card to card, this sensation is undercut by the “digression” (into the most important part of the text) that is required when we choose to read the comments.

There are *exactly* 25 paragraphs per chapter. It strikes me as...weird. I'm not the sort of person who usually counts paragraphs. The way the site is formatted, though, the entire structure revolves around this constant.

Is it a weird coincidence that the web-designer(s) decided to capitalize on? Or are there paragraphs missing, or fluffy filler put in for aesthetic reasons, that will be changed around when it's published as a book? The further along in it I get, the more awkward the form feels.

So I'm reading GAM3R 7H30RY (and let me tell you, it freaks me out that even though a part of my brain processes that it's not all standard alphabet, most of my brain reads it like perfectly normal text), and was struck by the passage on card 10: "Work becomes a gamespace, but no games are freely chosen any more. Not least for children, who if they are to be the winsome offspring of win-all parents, find themselves drafted into endless evening shifts of team sport...Play becomes everything to which it was once opposed. It is work, it is serious, it is morality, it is necessity."

I grew up in a family that never really encouraged joining sports teams. My father had been on a lot of teams as a kid and enjoyed it, and we were never told we *couldn't* be on teams, but it was never really pushed. My parents felt it was more important to run around the backyard and play amongst ourselves than get caught up in the cut-throat competitiveness of suburban rec leagues.

But we played cards and board games for blood.