I’m not quite sure what to say about the reading for today. It’s familiar territory, having read Bogost for every remotely game-related course I’ve taken, and for a few projects as well. That said, I did wonder about some seemingly loose points in Bogost’s argument from the perspective of digital fabrication (i.e. using digitally programmable machines to create physical things from digital files). In particular, thinking along the lines of electromechanical games (precursors to early video games that ran on complex electronic circuits and mechanical parts), they were programmable in a sense, and thus procedural, but pre-digital. Granted, digital systems facilitate certain things much better than systems that are electronic but not digital (displaying video, for example). And I think that’s ultimately Bogost’s argument, that video games perform procedurality differently than other procedural systems. But I’m inclined to believe that discussions toward the uncomfortable (for Bogost) blending of digital and material systems are becoming increasingly important, and I do find it a little surprising that he doesn’t address such issues in his work more frequently given the type of work that happens at Georgia Tech re: digital fabrication and electronics broadly. That said, I also wonder how prepared/interested RhetComp as a field is in pursuing such questions.