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On the Subject of Play: Digital Game-Play As Models of Ideologies

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On the Subject of Play: Digital Game-Play As Models of Ideologies ON THE SUBJECT OF PLAY: DIGITAL GAME-PLAY AS MODELS OF IDEOLOGIES L.A.W.J. DE WILDT / 0615196 RESEARCH MASTER THESIS LITERARY STUDIES FACULTY OF HUMANITIES LEIDEN UNIVERSITY SUPERVISOR: PROF. DR. F.W.A. KORSTEN (LEIDEN UNIVERSITY / ERASMUS UNIVERSITY ROTTERDAM) SECOND READER: DR. RENÉ GLAS (UTRECHT UNIVERSITY) 12 JUNE 2014 2 ABSTRACT Digital games provide a fruitful comparison to ideologies because they resemble ideologies as an organizing structure entered into and because they serve as a systematic test case for alternatively organized (ideological) worlds. They do so perhaps more so than linear narrative media, as game-play presents both fictional worlds, systems and a spect-actor present as participatory agent. By addressing the structural parallels between ideology and digital games as organizations of quasi-natural conventions, I argue in this thesis that games have the capacity to model, propose and reflect on ideologies. Comparing roughly twenty years of scholarship on ideological play, ludology, narratology, game design, proceduralism and play-centred studies, I argue that games dynamically present stylized simulations of a possible world, occurring to the subject of play in a here-and-now that at once grants autonomy while doing so in a paradoxically rigid structure of affordances, constraints and desires. That subject of play, meanwhile, is split between played subject (the presented avatar and the game’s content), the playing subject as demanded by the ludic power structure of rules and the interpreting subject that is tasked to understand and inform the process of game-play. Through close analyses of Cart Life, the Stanley Parable and Spec Ops: the Line I argue for game-play as a dialectical process, past academic scholarship that posits either games as procedural systems of interpellation or play as mythical unrestrained creativity. An understanding of game-play as dialectical process akin to the relation between subjects and ideological power structures furthermore demands a recognition of the critical potential of game-play. Through theatrical techniques of enstrangement, game-play may reveal uncritical familiarity with the quasi-natural conventions of ideology – be they generic, social or political. KEYWORDS Digital games, ideology criticism, game-play dialectic, enstrangement, split subjectivity 3 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First of all, I must thank my supervisor Frans-Willem Korsten for his comments and feedback throughout the writing of this thesis. Without his aid and experience I would have encountered insurmountable difficulty in articulating my argument. I am also grateful for my second reader René Glas’ acceptance to read and grade the finished project despite having no obligation to do so as I am a student outside of his university. On that note, I have profited immensely from the exchange of knowledge possible between Dutch universities. As a research master student at the Cultural Analysis-orientated department of Literary Studies in Leiden, I was nonetheless able to profit from other, differently Media-orientated departments and courses at the University of Amsterdam, the Research School for Media Studies (RMeS) and the Media and Culture Studies department at the University of Utrecht. Notably, I have been able to benefit from the excellent guidance offered to me in two courses at the University of Utrecht: Rules of Play and Media & Performance Theory. I am thankful to René Glas for allowing me to struggle with Sicart’s play-centred approach to game studies, taking me beyond a proceduralist paradigm; and to Joost Raessens and Chiel Kattenbelt. The case study of Spec Ops in relation to Brechtian Lehrstücke was first developed in an early stage under their guidance, and parts of that paper find their way into this thesis. I am very grateful to them for their feedback and theoretical background, which gave me the confidence to pursue this grander, overlapping project. Beyond that, work in progress was presented at the 60st anniversary conference for the European Association for American Studies under the title “Participation, Conflict and War,” where I presented a formalist reading of the way in which games may function as ideological propaganda. I would like to thank the audience present there, specifically Matthew Wall (University College Dublin), for their helpful questions and criticism. DECLARATION I hereby certify that this work has been written by me, and that it is not the product of plagiarism or any other form of academic misconduct. For plagiarism see under: http://www.hum.leidenuniv.nl/studenten/reglementen/plagiaatregelingen.html 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ............................................................................................................................................ 0-2 Keywords ......................................................................................................................................... 0-2 Acknowledgements .......................................................................................................................... 0-3 Declaration ....................................................................................................................................... 0-3 Table of Contents ............................................................................................................................. 0-4 Table of Figures................................................................................................................................ 0-5 0. Introduction 6 0.1. Methodology: Scope ................................................................................................................... 11 0.2. Methodology: Theoretical Framework ....................................................................................... 13 0.3. Methodology: A Working Definition of Ideology ..................................................................... 16 1. Organizing Play 22 1.1. Case Study .................................................................................................................................. 24 1.2. Presenting Possible Worlds ........................................................................................................ 25 1.3. Cart Life as Stylized Simulation................................................................................................. 29 1.4. Conclusion: Possible Worlds, Ideological Systems ................................................................... 37 2. Precarious Play 39 2.1. Case Study .................................................................................................................................. 40 2.2. Interpellation versus Deconstruction .......................................................................................... 41 2.3. Games as Power Structures ........................................................................................................ 43 2.4. Stanley Decides for Himself Now .............................................................................................. 47 2.5. Subjects of Presence ................................................................................................................... 49 2.6. Conclusion: the Subject of Play ................................................................................................. 55 3. Enstranged Play 57 3.1. Case Study .................................................................................................................................. 58 3.2. The Split Subject ........................................................................................................................ 59 3.3. Me/Playing/Walker .................................................................................................................... 63 3.4. Killing for Entertainment ........................................................................................................... 67 3.5. Conclusion: Game-Play as Lehrstück ......................................................................................... 69 4. Conclusion 72 5. Works Cited 80 5.1. Bibliography ............................................................................................................................... 80 5.2. Cinematography ......................................................................................................................... 87 5.3. Ludography ................................................................................................................................ 87 5.4. Softography ................................................................................................................................ 89 5 TABLE OF FIGURES Figure 1. “It folds into hales,” (Cart Life, Richard Hofmeier, 2011) .................................................... 23 Figure 2. Steps of actualization ............................................................................................................. 28 Figure 3. Melanie Emberley (Cart Life, Richard Hofmeier, 2011) ....................................................... 32 Figure 4. “Congratulations on doing so well,” (Cart Life, Richard Hofmeier, 2011) ........................... 35 Figure 5. Two Doors (The Stanley Parable, Galactic Café, 2013) ........................................................ 41 Figure 6. Third person (The Stanley Parable, Galactic Café, 2013) ..................................................... 49 Figure 7. Opening menu (Spec Ops: the Line, Yager
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