Expressive Processing: Digital Fictions, Computer Games, and Software Studies

by Noah Wardrip-Fruin

What matters in understanding digital media? Is looking at the external appearanceand audience experience of software enough--or should we look further? In ExpressiveProcessing , Noah Wardrip-Fruin argues that understanding what goes on beneath the surface,the computational processes that make digital media function, is essential. Wardrip-Fruin looks at "expressive processing" by examining specificworks of digital media ranging from the simulated therapist Eliza to the complexcity-planning game SimCity . Digital media, he contends, offer particularlyintelligible examples of things we need to understand about software in general; if we understand,for instance, the capabilities and histories of artificial intelligence techniques in the context ofa computer game, we can use that understanding to judge the use of similar techniques in suchhigher-stakes social contexts as surveillance.

Genres: Games, Technology, Nonfiction, Game Design

482 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2009

Reviews

[Carl]

Recommended by a friend who researches narrative and artificial intelligence. Or something like that. I suppose I will most likely never do any work in this field, but I can't really be in the humanities in the 21st century without at least trying to be aware of digital media.

[Kathleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I used this as the textbook for my interactive narrative class! It was pretty great. One chapter in the end went into detail about "procedural literacy" and how we should have more ways of increasing our literacy and understanding of (expressive) computational processes.

[Jonathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting and approachable book for the topic of software, digital fiction, and games study.