[editor's View] On How a Medium That Cannot Eat Approaches the Instinct to Eat
30
GG Vol.
26. 6. 10.
Eating is essential to an animal's survival. Humans are animals too, so we die if we do not eat; every human being is, at bottom, bound up with the act of eating. Yet the fact that we call what humans eat not "feed" but "food," "provisions," reveals that human eating is not composed of physiological need and the survival instinct alone. To gather ingredients and cook them into a dish—or to accumulate those same ingredients and process them into the resource we call provisions—is a process that is at times social, at times political and economic, and in many cases one we read back through a cultural frame.
GG attends to digital games because what this medium takes as its source material is the human being, together with the society and culture that humans form. Seen that way, the food and cooking that digital games depict are an important object through which to examine how a cultural inheritance—built up by humans over a long history—is represented through the medium of the game. And the game's own distinctive mode of representation, unlike that of other media, can become a device that lets us reconsider, from a fresh angle, the food and cooking woven into our daily lives.
Now reaching its 30th issue, GG looks back, with this purpose in mind, at food and cooking as represented in games—both as outcome and as process. From the mechanic of biological need and its satisfaction, through processing and accumulation, spoilage and depletion, plating, and on to social meanings that run beyond mere nourishment, digital games have sought to realize, across many facets of food and cooking, both the significance and the pleasure that representation-as-process can hold. Through these several essays, each following its own thread, we hope this issue becomes an occasion to chew over once more just what the human act of eating is.
Alongside the launch of issue 30, GG is also opening its 5th Game Criticism Contest. The number of people who study or critique digital games is still small, and we are always hoping that new companions—and more of them—will join us. We ask for your attention to the announcement that follows, and hope you will share it with those around you.
Thank you.
Lee Kyung-hyukEditor-in-Chief, GameGeneration
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(게임제너레이션 편집장)
유년기부터 게임과 친하게 지내왔지만 본격적으로 게임이야기를 업으로 삼은 것은 2015년부터였다. 평범한 직장인으로 살아오다 일련의 계기를 통해 전업 게임칼럼니스트, 평론가, 연구자의 삶에 뛰어들었다. 『게임, 세상을 보는 또 하나의 창』(2016), 『81년생 마리오』(2017), 『게임의 이론』(2018), 『슬기로운 미디어생활』(2019), 『현질의 탄생』(2022) 등의 저서, '게임 아이템 구입은 플레이의 일부인가?'(2019) 등의 논문, 〈다큐프라임〉(EBS, 2022), 〈더 게이머〉(KBS, 2019), 〈라이즈 오브 e스포츠〉(MBC, 2020)등의 다큐멘터리 작업, 〈미디어스〉'플레이 더 게임', 〈매일경제〉'게임의 법칙', 〈국방일보〉'전쟁과 게임' 등의 연재, 팟캐스트〈그것은 알기 싫다〉'팟캐문학관'과 같은 여러 매체에서 게임과 사회가 관계맺는 방식에 대해 공부하고 이야기한다. 게임연구소 '드래곤랩' 소장을 맡고 있다.
