Janet Murray

Janet Murray is a professor at Georgia Institute of Technology, where she is the director of graduate studies in their Information Design and Technology program. Before coming to Georgia Tech in 1999 she was a Senior Research Scientist in the Center for Educational Computing Initiatives at MIT, where she taught humanities and led advanced interactive design projects since 1971.

Murray's major book is , a seminal text in video game theory. In this book, she discusses the nature of cyberdrama , a category she uses to include, among other things, video games, interactive fiction, and live action roleplaying games. The category also includes future technology, such as the holodeck. Murray's goal is to do for cyberdrama what Aristotle did for traditional drama in The Poetics.

To this end, Murray argues for the centrality of three terms to cyberdrama - immersion, agency, and transformation. Roughly, immersion describes the ability of the world of the cyberdrama to seem real and complete - it addresses both sensory aspects of the cyberdrama, such as graphics and sound, as well as narrative aspects, such as the ability to have a suspension of disbelief. Agency is the way in which a cyberdrama allows one to control a character - often called an avatar, and to directly affect the world. Another word for agency might be interactivity. Finally, transformation describes the way in which a cyberdrama causes one to become another person, taking on their identity. Murray argues that the interplay of these concepts provides the basis of an aesthetic conception of cyberdrama.

Critics of Murray attack her argument on three fronts. First, she is criticized for simple inaccuracy in many of her claims, particularly those about video games, or for her seemingly selective use of examples.

Secondly, it is argued that her concepts of immersion, agency, and transformation are either not unique to cyberdrama, or do not actually exist in cyberdrama. For instance, many argue that television is just as immersive as a cyberdrama. Lev Manovich argues in The Language of New Media that the notion that video games are interactive (and thus that the player has agency in them) is a myth, comparing it to Althusser's concept of interpellation . And many people have claimed that there are transformative aspects of traditional literary works (Consider the concept of escapism), while many other critics - notably those in the Chicago School such as Elder Olson have argued against the notion that there is any possibility transformation going on in narrative works - arguments that can readily be carried over to cyberdrama.

Thirdly, Murray is criticized for her focus on future technologies, and her insistence on defining current forms like the video game in terms of fictional ones like the holodeck. Her critics contend that this puts the cart before the horse, and that it is unlikely that, should the holodeck develop, it would be exactly as Murray described. These critics suggest that it would be more prudent for Murray to describe the existing forms of cyberdrama directly, instead of depending on fictionalized metaphors.

Janet Murray is a professor at Georgia Institute of Technology, where she is the director of graduate studies in the School of Literature, Communication, and Culture. Before coming to Georgia Tech in 1999 she was a Senior Research Scientist in the Center for Educational Computing Initiatives at MIT, where she taught humanities and led advanced interactive design projects since 1971. She is well known as an early developer of humanities computing applications, an seminal theorist of digital media, and an advocate of new educational programs in digital media.

Murray's major book is Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace, which asks whether the computer can provide the basis for an expressive narrative form, just as print technology supported the development of the novel and film technology supported the development of movies. She provides an optimistic answer. Murray’s analysis rests on an understanding of the computer as a medium of representation with a distinct set of properties. She argues that the computer is procedural, participatory, encyclopedic, and spatial, and that it affords three characteristic (but not unique) pleasures: immersion, agency, and transformation. She defines interactivity as the combination of the procedural and the participatory property which together afford the pleasure of agency. She connects research work on artificial intelligence with cultural forms such as games, movies, literature, and television. Murray’s main point is that the new computer formats expand the possibilities of expression available for storytelling.

Murray’s work has been referenced by game designers, interactive television producers, filmmakers, and journalists. It has been criticized from opposing directions, by writer Sven Birkerts as a threat to print culture (in HotWired Magazine and in a televised debate) and by ludologists as an inappropriately literary approach to games (see Game Studies vol 1 number 1). For other views of videogames, see Lev Manovich who argues in The Language of New Media that the notion that video games are interactive (and thus that the player has agency in them) is a myth, comparing it to Althusser's concept of interpellation.

See also

Video game theory