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LUDIC DISPLACEMENT OF A BIBLICAL MYTH

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The Binding of Isaac, a 2011 video game by Edmund McMillan, is a postmodern take on the biblical episode of the same name which can be characterized as a displacement, in terms of Lubomír Doležel’s Heterocosmica. It presents a radical intervention on the original narrative, one that creates a polemical anti-world transmitted through the perspective of Isaac, a boy suffering abuse from his televangelism obsessed mother. The main fabric of the game is his grotesque, gamified fantasy about encountering the delusional parent, which is filled with anxiety about his own sinfulness, with a counterweight that can be found in entities imported from popular culture, especially videogames. The game’s roguelike genre enables a procedural expression of the experience of abuse through an iterative storytelling technique, with the interplay of difference and repetition forming a cyclical narrative about the (im)possibilities of contemporary ludism to amend trauma.

/ 1968
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TO BE OR NOT TO BE – SHAKESPEARE AND VIDEO GAMES

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The paper analyses video games in the context of new media and considers their artistic potential from the perspective of Game Studies. Using To Be or Not to Be, an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet as an example, the paper presents a theoretical examination of the game’s structural, textual and narrative features and ludic elements, so as to elucidate the principles of adaptation and transformation of a literary text into a new digital form, as well as the advantages and the disadvantages of such processes. Trust in the narrative, along with adequate game mechanics and the player’s perception have proven to be crucial for accomplishing intention of the game. At the same time, the analysis serves as a basis for interpretive framework that would lead to affirming the aesthetic potential of video games and thus give rise to uncovering the artistic potential of other algorithmic structures.

/ 1968
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LUDOLOGY AND NARRATOLOGY – LEGEND ABOUT THE BATTLE

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The paper provides an overview and an analysis of the narratological and ludological approach to the study of video games and a review of the establishment of the fledgling field of game studies. The starting points of both theoretical positions, derived from the same literary theoretical corpus, are presented. The state of this discipline and the academic tensions in this field also indicate the ways in which academic community functions, as well as the mechanisms of their division or complication in the organizational and methodological plan. The ludological approach, which reduces the study of video games to the description and classification of rules and game mechanics, is regarded as reductionist, but also useful and applicable for understanding the specifics of video games. It is concluded that ludology, together with narratology and other academic disciplines in the field of humanities, forms a complete corpus of video game studies.

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MEDIA CONVERGENCE OF VIDEO GAMES AND FILMS

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The starting point for defining the relation between film and video games is the well-known thesis that each new medium assumes some formal and contentual characteristics of its predecessors, although the previous medium reconfigures its own and absorbs the properties of the new medium as well. The aim is to present a broader theoretical framework, which would serve as a basis for further exploration of this relation. A multidisciplinary approach will be used based on the concepts of media studies, game studies, film studies and cultural studies. Video games are often based on cinema’s thematic, narrative and genre models, while the recursive narrative logic of games is present in films. The use of film language is noticeable in video games, while in movies, it is modified by the aesthetic properties of games. Hollywood industry and the videogames industry are synergistic and offer users many ways of consuming products in different media.

/ 1968
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GAMES IN THE AGE OF EMPIRE

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This is a part of the introductory essay of the now already canonical study on gaming culture, written by Nick Dyer-Witheford & Greigde Peuter – Games of Empire: Global Capitalism and Video Games (University of Minnesota Press, 2009). Regardless of the year of publishing, it still represents an extremely useful review that is not without serious critical insights. Placing the culture of video games in the epistemological passe-partout determined by the Empire theorists Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, the authors had laid one of the key foundations for critical game studies, based on a deep understanding of the logic of virtual games, as well as their teleology and reception. The authors’ cultural-political analysis of the media illustrates how central video games have become the very structure of our contemporary global order: both as a means of governing and as a (virtual) space of struggle and resistance.

/ 1968
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EDITOR’S NOTE

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/ 1968
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OTHERS IN HERITOLOGY

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The museum is a permanent, non-profit institution in the service of society and its development, open to the public. It collects, preserves, researches, communicates and exhibits material testimonies of man and his environment, for the purpose of study, education and entertainment. In recent times, museums are primarily communication centres thatretain and develop all other functions of a traditional museum. The main form of communication is an exhibition, although any transmission of information is considered as communication. However, the museum is not the only institution where objects of this purpose can be found. Namely, there are many alternative types of collecting and storing things from the past, although not enough attention has been paid to them or real significance attributed. A true collector is a special type of collector, their purpose being to put together a collection of related items as complete, unique and as representative as possible. A collector is a person who is passionate about collecting specific items for his own pleasure. There are a large number of people like this, because in fact it is very difficult to think of any object that nobody would collect. Some of the typical examples vary from the collectors of works of art and precious vases, to the collectors of the most ordinary, trivial, useless, discarded items that are searched for in attics and basements, sometimes even in the landfills… In search of at least one such unusual collector, I came across a small heritage museum created based on geographical affiliation: the objects collected in this collection are all representative of the past of Banat.

/ 1968
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DEVELOPMENT OF ROMANIAN LITERARY CREATION IN VOJVODINA AFTER THE FIRST WORLD WAR

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In this paper we will analyse the historical progress of the development of the Romanian intelligentsia in Vojvodina, the establishing of Romanian institutions as a result of intellectual activism, but also the emergence of the first magazines and writers in Vojvodina who contributed to the development of Romanian mentality and culture in this area. In the first part of the paper, we will present the historical context of the appearance of the first publications in Romanian, then the presence of literary works in Romanian magazines, publication of the first books in Romanian and the beginnings of the publishing house Libertatea from Pančevo. The aim of this paper is to show to a wider readership the development of the Romanian writing culture in Vojvodina after the First World War until the last decades of the twentieth century, when the Romanian books can be placed side by side with the books of other minorities in Vojvodina. Romanian literature, although relatively “young”, developed rapidly, reaching the level of the literature in the home country in less than a century. Due to its geographical origin and intercultural permeation on the territory of Vojvodina, Romanian literature is unique, interesting and can be explored as a special cultural phenomenon.

/ 1968
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BOOKS AND EDUCATION AS A MEANS OF NAZIFICATION OF VOJVODINA GERMANS

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This paper analyses the book as a means of Nazi indoctrination of Germans in Vojvodina in the 1930s. The paper presents books by Nazi authors that were used as the main literature for ideological indoctrination in the Nazi spirit. Less well-known data are given from the Novi Sad bookstore “Kultura”, which specialized in wider scale Nazi literature. The Private German Teachers’ School in Novi Vrbas, which was the centre of Nazi propaganda, is a special focus. This isimportant to mention because future teachers used their position toideologically guide their students in the Nazi spirit through books. It was published and reported in the Serbian press of that time about the Nazi propaganda that was conducted in the area of the Danube County (Dunavska Banovina). The conclusion of this paper suggests that the books had a huge impact on the nazification of Germans as a Yugoslav minority, at a time when other media (except the press) were hardly present in the national community.

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TRANSLATION WORK OF ROMANIANS FROM THE TERRITORY OF PRESENT DAY VOJVODINA IN THE 19TH AND THE FIRST DECADES OF THE 20TH CENTURY

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The paper presents different aspects of the translation work o fRomanians from the territory of the present day Vojvodina (Banat)during the 19th and the first decades of the 20th century, up until theSecond World War. The translation work in administration, education, religious institutions, and primarily in journalism and literature, has played an important role in the multicultural society of Banat. Various languages, cultures, traditions and religions interacted and intertwined there, and the society functioned on principles which enabled mutual understanding and cooperative work of all those who lived in Banat, regardless of the differences. The first translations in the Romanian language, primarily from German and Serbian, appeared in the 18th century, for the needs of state administration, education or religious work. The translations became more diverse and of a higher quality thanks to the work of the first elite Romanian intellectuals from the period of the late Enlightenment, the representatives of whom were Paul Iorgovici, Constantin Diaconovici Loga, and Sofronie Ivacicovici. In the 19th century, the translations got new content in the form of publication of multilingual posters, invitations, association rules, monetary instructions, newspaper articles, religious books, but also literary works, among which the most prominent were the translations of Hungarian literary works to the Romanian language, done by the writer and publicist Alexandru Țințariu. In the period between the two World Wars, translation work also gained new content because translations from German and Hungarian to Romanian stopped as the focus was placed on translations from Serbian to Romanian and viceversa.