Please don’t stop reading after the next sentence. My essay will be about a video game. Thank you for continuing to read. I wish to address issues of simulation, simulacra, post modernism, and post structuralism in a popular Nintendo franchise, Paper Mario. The series is a spin off of the already ever popular Super Mario parent franchise. The references I have selected to use are as follows.
1. Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation. Michigan: The University of Michigan Press, 1994.
2. Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995.
3. Bogost, Ian. "Comparative Video Game Criticism". Games & Culture January 2006: 1-6.
As the majority of my referential preference, Baudrillards “Simulacra and Simulation” will be my main source. I am about halfway through the book and my brain is having digestive problems. It’s like the result of eating taco bell and oat bran all day. The book is dense. I am beginning to get some of it and should be really helpful in the construction of my essay.
My second source is the Barry book. This is because I was able to get the broad picture of postmodernism from it.
My final source is a critical article about issues of postmodernism in the entire market of video games. It highlights a few titles but does not go into much specific detail about individual cases. I feel that this article will help me localize my thoughts to the complicated realm of entertainment software.
I believe the game itself to be a simulation of a Mario Brothers that was lost. Its origin falling out of existence. This is because as younger and younger generations are not being exposed to the same library of titles that the “console boomers”(our generation) have heralded as staples in the canon of the video game archive, they are losing touch with the origin. The Mario games that exist now bare resemblance to their origin but only as altered images and representations that misconstrue the original meaning. I may not entirely grasp what I believe to be there now but by the time I finish S&S and play through Paper Mario again I think I will have a good idea.
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2 comments:
What about video games in general?
I immediately thought of Mega 64 for some reason. Mario characters in real life doing Mario-ish things.
Why does no one write about Halo 3? I mean they're not "real" bullets, right? Eh.
Video games is a sweet topic, though I'll confess I haven't been a big Mario fan since SMB3, but whatever. Anyway, there's a couple "video game theory readers" out there that might be useful.
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