Blog 9: Freestyle

In chapter 10 Author Bogost makes some interesting claims comparing the first Brownie camera from Kodak to tools used today for creating videogames. To Bogost the Brownie represents a shift from a professional to an at home do it your self photographer.were once it took a professional to take and develop images, the Brownie’s cheap camera and film allowed for the average person to take shots. Furthermore, Kodak made it simple to develop images as the user would have it developed by Kodak so all the person had to do was press the button while Kodak did the rest (70-71). In fact, Kodak used the phrase You press the button and we do the rest (Bogost 71). 

However, the interesting claims came when bogost compared the Brownie to current hardware and software tools used today to create videogames. For example, Bogost argues today’s computer culture values a similar strain of creative populism. Websites and software provide tools that promise to ‘democratize’ the creative process (Bogost 71). He further explains that because of such tools at everyones disposal that  professional fields such as video editing and DVD production can now be practiced by everyone (Bogost 71). The comparison gets further interesting with his examples of Microsoft’s Popfly Game Creator which as Bogost claims are taking a similar role as the Brownie camera. Microsoft’s Popfly Game Creator never-minds the professional and instead invites the average user to create their own unique game with ready made tools. The ready made tools have a potential to spur something new if it has not already, like the Brownie did for snapshots. 

In agreeing with Bogost I connect his arguments with the term wysiwyg which is what you see is what you get. The term has come about to refer to the editing a person does to a document that resembles the look and feel of the end result. Perhaps most importantly is the fact that the user does not have to remember any special code nor commands (Wikipedia Contributors). This is because the very nature of how wysiwyg works allows for users to easily do what once took an expert in the field to do. Lastly, Microsoft’s Popfly and Adobe’s creative suite utilize these wysiwyg tools allowing average people to do nearly professional work. In closure, as Bogost argues perhaps such tools can allow ordinary people to not only appreciate the craft but also allow game creators to show other users how to include them into their own lives (Bogost 76).