This blog is the blog of Cameron Kunzelman.
Email me at robot dot kunzelman et google male.
Twitter: ckunzelman
It is mostly research, a way of thinking through the things that I feel and see and experience and perform and weird asides that are vaguely related to that.
As you have probably noticed, I talk about video games and comics a lot, and I switch off between them pretty regularly. I see a fundamental connection between the two media, especially in how they force the reader/player into a relationship with the text. Both require participation. Ian Bogost does some work for me here:
McCloud argues that readers understand the intricacies of narrative in a comic by filling in the details that are missing between the frames. Drawing on Scott McCloud’s work, [Will] Wright purposely leaves out portions of the simulation from the computer model and allows the player to fill in the details in his or her mind. Wright describes the gameplay as a process of “bringing our different mental models into agreement.” (Unit Operations 102)
So video games and comics both make us, as players and readers, complicit. They draw us in. They create ways of thinking, of pulling us together and yet separating us into our own murders, outcomes, or stories.
Comics and video games are both about constructing.
