Have you ever been “experienced”?

The more I’ve researched games and media, the more that term “experience” comes to the foreground.  In the title of this post, I want you to think of “experienced” not so much as an adjective describing a person, but as a verb actively influencing its subject.

In my paper I’m trying to pass through SIGDOC’s review process, I’ve managed to sharpen some thoughts on experience as a conceptual term that can be applied to culture studies.  A 2003 article by Torben Grodal in The Video Game Theory Reader has led me to see narrative in a fashion that is a bit different from what literary studies has made of it.  Grodal posits storytelling as essentially a cognitive process composed of four elements: perception, emotion, cognition, and action.  Below is a passage from my paper in which I lay the foundation for an analytical model I’ve been working on in some fashion for about six months:

Microsoft’s “Project Natal”

Microsoft dropped a lot of information and celebrities at their E3 Press Conference yesterday.  They had frikkin’ Paul and Ringo, as well as Stephen Spielberg, show up on stage.  And for the third time in three or four years, they pried an IP out of Sony’s ever shrinking hands of exclusivity.  Sony used to be the one-stop shop for all your GTA, Final Fantasy, and Metal Gear Solid needs.  Sony used to have exclusive rights to all of these franchises, or at the very least their players got the games long before Microsoft’s did.  A lot of Sony’s marketing strategy last year depended on Metal Gear Solid 4.  Now, if Kojima is opening up the publishing rights to the game to go multiplatform, it becomes one more feather falling from Sony’s wilting hat.

Sony will have to bring some real firepower today.  Microsoft further proved their understanding of online interconnectivity and service by announcing a partnership with Facebook.  I cannot figure out why Sony hasn’t fostered a better set of touchpoints and service with their online services.  To be sure, the redesign of the Sony Online Store helps tremendously.  But, they touted Home as the next big thing over the last couple of years, and then kind of rolled it out with a whimper.  Users are willing to pay a modest fee for XBox Live if they feel like it is a superior service.  The answer here seems obvious for Sony:  ape the hell of XBL and offer it up for free.  But, I suspect Sony is hamstrung at this point by a business model that has the gaming division losing money like they’re an auto maker.

But, moving onto some real thoughts on Microsoft’s presser…

The real interesting announcement for me yesterday was “Project Natal.” Check out the video Microsoft showed off: