This month sees the second anniversary of the release of the videogame Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, generally hailed as one of the best games yet made (yes, ok; best after you’ve spent four hours comprehensively modding it for the PC). So where’s the critical and academic literature on the game? Absolutely nowhere, it would seem, from my search of Google, Google Books, Google Scholar, DIGRA, and the main academic search engines. There’s just one PhD blog from Karen Josh Tanenbaum at Simon Fraser University, who’s apparently set to base a thesis around a “close reading” of Oblivion.
In what other form of media than videogames could an industry-bigger-than-cinema release its best-yet masterwork, sell two million copies in the first three months (5 million by now), have it played by perhaps 10 million people, win a truck-load of awards… and then see it completely ignored by cultural critics / academics for the next two years?
Apparently some of the dusty scholars of the medieval romance have noticed that the medieval Fisher King-style epic/quest storytelling form is alive and well and living in Oblivion and its ilk, although almost nothing has been published yet, let alone anything about Oblivion. There is one lonely Nov 2007 conference paper “Social Presence and Cultural Presence In Oblivion“ (PDF link) although, on reading it, it turns out to be more industry-facing — asking ‘how might we make player interaction with NPCs more immersive?’.
by Josh Tanenbaum
09 Apr 2008 at 17:15
It’s true that Oblivion has been woefully under represented in scholarly discourse. I saw your incoming link and figured I’d surface from writing about it briefly enough to point you towards a few of the sources I’ve found since starting the thesis:
You’ve found Eric Champion’s paper on Social and Cultural Presence. Eric is one of the few academics writing about Oblivion. He has another, more philosophical piece called “When Windmills Turn into Giants: The Conundrum of Virtual Places” that touches briefly on Oblivion, but does not dig very deeply into it.
There is a case study on character believability fromPetri Lankoski and Steffan Bjork that was presented at DiGRA 07 that explores the life of a single NPC in Oblivion. It is called “Gameplay Design Patterns for Believable Non-Player Characters”.
Finally, one of the most well reasoned discussions of Oblivion I’ve encountered is from Mike Rozak, who is a designer based out of Australia. His two articles on Oblivion are more interesting than anything I’ve found in scholarly work.
Then of course, there is my work, most of which remains locked up where no-one can see it. I DO have an upcoming presentation on Oblivion at this year’s Canadian Game Studies Association conference, which will mean one more paper on Oblivion in the world.
Cheers –
Josh Tanenbaum (Note: Karen is my wife. She’s working on her PhD in Ubiquitous Computing, User Modeling, and Ambient Intelligence…I’m finishing my MA on Interactive Storytelling, and then continuing on with my PhD in the Fall. Pleased to meet you!)
by Erik
12 Jun 2008 at 01:59
Hi. Eric Fassbender is using Oblivion as a cultural heritage story telling device…
http://www.ics.mq.edu.au/~eric/Fassben.de/VirSchool_files/07%20Is%20Music%20the%20Key.ppt
…he is (as above) esp interested in the musical side.
My admittedly tentative paper was reviewed and changed quite drastically for the International Journal of Role Playing, a new journal on, you guessed it, role playing. And, yes, Rozak’s articles are very interesting and more people should be looking at Oblivion. It has been used by architects and urban designers at CASA UCL (London)…
http://digitalurban.blogspot.com/search/label/Oblivion
…but it seems very lonely on the academic humanities circuit.