thinking about games

re: Marcuse, Bateson, and Bataille -- much of what is now going on in Game Studies is the process of professionalization and defining the discipline itself. At the moment it seems like Game Studies is finding its institutional home in informatics and sociology, and the humanities and Critical Theory are not well represented, in part because much of the focus is on trying to decide what a game is and what the player's relationship is to the game and to the goals that underly the game's premise. As a result, the question is not so much about what sort of leverage and insight might arise from thinking games along with Bataille, but a question of where a paper on Bataille and WoW would find a home. Informatics based game journals are uninterested, and they control the institutional dialogue, in part because the money for Game Studies comes from the game industry and the search for new ways to game. re: Game Studies and Game Theory...they are related to the extent that a particular game has rules an victory conditions which lend themselves to mathematical analysis -- moreso for closed-ended procedural/strategic games like Monopoly and Civilization and less so for open-ended narrative/persona games like Dungeons & Dragons or (to strain the category a bit) Second Life. I'm more interested in the latter type of game and the ways that persona and subjectivity interact and are reinforced. Others here are more interested in the former type of game and what that might have to say about the future of narrative itself. Hope this helps. -Loren