[editor's View] On How Memories beyond the Record Resonate with Games
31
GG Vol.
26. 8. 10.
We live, love, and think upon the system called language — but not everything in the mind operates in linguistic signs alone. Memory is the prime example. Memory, at times, exceeds language. The sunlight that fell on the playground where you ran as a child, the peculiar scent of air freshener in the first PC bang — the Korean gaming café — you called your regular: we put these into words in order to tell others, but the memories themselves are not language. In a sense, every medium we use may be a codified means of sharing the feelings our memories give us.
Games, too, approach memory in their various ways and unfold it in forms of their own. Issue 31 of GG is built around the points where memory and games interlock. Within games, memory functions at times as theme and subject matter, at times as the record of play itself, and at times as an aid for carrying a player’s memories onward through virtual space. Rather than forcing these varied relations between memory and games into a single context, we chose to lay the phenomena out in their breadth and survey them.
From save data, numbers written to a small memory chip, to the feelings a player carries after a game is over, we survey the wide surface of a lake called memory. Some writers, drawn by a small ripple on that surface, will dive beneath it. We invite you to listen to the many things games can say about the memory that lies beyond the record.
Meanwhile, the GG Game Criticism Contest continues, now in its fifth year. If you are a reader of GG with much to say, there is no need to hesitate. Do check the deadline in the announcement once more.
GG will return with a new theme when the air turns cool.
Thank you.
Lee Kyung-hyuk, Editor-in-Chief, GameGeneration
Tags:
기억, GG, 게임제너레이션, game critic, save, memory
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Game critic and researcher. Since 2015, he has made games his life's work—as a critic, examining how games relate to society, and as a researcher, exploring how games, as commodities, take their place within it. He is the author of Mario, Born in '81 (2017) and The Birth of In-Game Spending (2022), among other works, and has contributed to documentaries including EBS's Docuprime as well as columns across various outlets. He received his PhD from the Graduate School of Communication at Yonsei University for his research analyzing digital games as time-rights commodities. He is the director of the game research lab Dragon Lab and serves as editor-in-chief of Game Generation.
