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I think we all agree that one very clear thing is happening: programs for game design are developing around what in science studies might be called a program of ‘intervention’ or what anthropologists call ‘applied work’: i.e. games studies is being institutionalized in programs whose job is to train people to make games.

In these kinds of places there is often a ‘soft fringe’ of scholars who provide the ‘big picture’ or ‘philosophical’ thoughts on games that are meant to stimulate the guys who are learning to model things in 3D or do motion capture. That sort of ‘enrichment’ model of games studies clearly will continue as Design departments flourish.

CK says that anthropologists are in general not too good at enclosing things (at least as compared to economists) and I think this is right. In retrospect I think it is crazy that I claimed it is a good thing that anthropologists don’t make progress developing a coherent understanding of virtual worlds! But in fact I think I, like many people educated at high-table institutions, operate on what one scholar once called an ‘atelier’ model of scholarly production: your books are works of art, and you learn the craft by spending time in a master’s studio. For ‘atelier’ approaches standardized approaches or — god forbid — ‘progress’ means a foreshortening of the horizons within which an artist might wander.

The down side of this approach… well there are many, but the one Tom Malaby mentions is that without any sort of canon, we end up having no memory or sense of genealogy whatsoever. Surely an insistence on creating scholarly projects anew in every generation is as good a recipe for amnesia as enclosure?

One way to steer a path between these two extremes might lie in the image of ‘schools’. Artists who paint together under a common teacher share a style and a broad set of conceptual references. I think we can already see certain tendencies emerging that allow people to tell a Daniel Miller person from the Kelty/Coleman person. Allowing these to grow informally through apprenticeship and recommendation sharing within communities of practice seems like a good idea to me, and is especially better than arbitrary exercises in boundary formation. Not that anyone is recommending that.

The other thing that I think might be helpful would be to say that canon formation is fine, as long as it is not tied to disciplinary boundaries. I make all my students read Bow Nigger, for example, and that is a piece of (what used to be called) ‘New Games Journalism’. I think disciplinary identity is like ethnic identity in Papua New Guinea — it is not about having an intact cultural patrimony that gets handed down undisturbed from one generation to the next, it is about creating a mix of external influences which, through borrowing, are uniquely your own.

So on reflection I think organic canon formation, which is interested in incorporating many genres of work, is the way to go. And above all, to want to read good work, regardless of what label it wears. Does that help?

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Rex, your Rx for anthropology on this challenge is exactly right, in my opinion — a long memory might be our best bulwark against parochialism. But I guess I’m struck by a contrast there with Chris’ comment. If we are “ecumenical to a fault” (and that’s something I’ve often found myself thinking as well), then how much danger is there in anthropology of shortening our memories. I’d love to hear either of your comments about that.

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And what about the handful of game studies programs that do exist? RPI, USC Annenberg, University of Georgia (Maybe Casey O’Donnell can chime in here, if he’s reading). Seems to me there are programs in existence, in process and in the works, though right now probably isn’t the best time.

If Miller is right about Malaby’s approach from the tradition of studying games, then there should be a place–a discipline even!–for game studies. On the other hand, I am totally sympathetic to the overwhelming power of institutional inertia, professionalization and lack of funding… so maybe it isn’t coming of age?

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