!
i
For my father, who didn’t let getting blown up slow him down.
ii "#$
I would like to thank all the people who made this thesis possible. There are simply too many to name them all here. However there are a number of people who deserve special mention. Without these individuals’ support and advice I would have never reached this point.
Firstly, I’d like to thank my supervisors. Over the course of my candidature I have been guided by three supervisors: Chris Chesher, Gay Hawkins and Ross Harley. This thesis is unmistakably a product of the unique talents of all three. With the crucial formative help of Chris, the astute theoretical insights of Gay, and the encouragement and motivation of
Ross, I have had an amazing team supporting me over the years.
This thesis would also not have been possible without the incredible support of my family. I am very fortunate to have a family with so much knowledge and experience for me to draw on. From considerable conceptual advice to countless hours of proofreading, this has been a family effort.
I also want to make special mention of all those people who took the visual load off me with this thesis. Researching and writing a PhD is undoubtedly a difficult task for anyone who attempts it, but with my visual impairment it would have been near impossible if it was not for all the help and support I received. Whenever my vision failed me I knew I had somewhere to turn. From the anonymous volunteer who recorded Discipline and
Punish to tape for me, to my army of proofreaders, every single person who stepped up when I was struggling was instrumental in my being able to complete this thesis.
iii
In particular I want to recognise the work done by John Golder whose tireless and rigorous proofreading and reviewing of this thesis went above and beyond what I could have possibly hoped for. My ideas only became a thesis with his extraordinary help.
I would also like to thank my friends who gave up their time to help me with the final proofread: Craig, Jules, Rebecca, Gabriel, Davina, Sarah, and Declan. All of them willingly and uncomplainingly took on this tedious task and their generosity and skill has been much appreciated. Indeed, all my friends have kept me going over the duration of my candidature be that by encouraging, challenging or, as was so often the case, distracting me. Individual thanks must go to Clair for being a great flatmate for so many years, and Amy who has done her very best to keep me sane.
And final thanks must go to my girlfriend Blanche for all her love, support and perseverance, as well as the hours of listening, discussion and proofreading.
iv "
This thesis examines single-player video gaming. It is an analysis of video game play: what it is, how it functions, and what it means. It is an account of how players learn to play. This is done through a set of close readings of significant video games and key academic texts. My focus is on the mechanisms and forces that shape gameplay practices.
Building on the existing fields of ludology and media-studies video-game analysis, I outline a model of video game play as a cultural construction which builds upon the player’s existing knowledge of real world and fictional objects, scenarios and conventions.
I argue that the relationship between the video game player and the software is best understood as embodying a precise configuration of power. I demonstrate that the single- player video game is in fact what Michel Foucault terms a ‘disciplinary apparatus’. It functions to shape players’ subjectivities in order to have them behave in easily predicted and managed ways. To do this, video games reuse and repurpose conventions from existing media forms and everyday practices. By this mobilisation of familiar elements, which already have established practices of use, and by a careful process of surveillance, examination and the correction of play practices, video games encourage players to take on and perform the logics of the game system.
This relationship between organic player and technological game, I suggest, is best understood through the theoretical figure of the ‘Cyborg’. It is a point of intersection between human and computer logics. Far from the ludological assumption that play and
v culture are separate and that play is shaped entirely by rules, I show video game play to be produced by an array of complex cultural and technological forces that act upon the player.
My model of video game play differs from others currently in circulation in that it foregrounds the role of culture in play, while not denying the technological specificity of the video gaming apparatus. My central focus on power and the construction of player subjectivities offers a way to move beyond the simplistic reliance on the notion that rules are the primary shaping mechanism of play that has, to date, dominated much of video game studies.
vi %
Acknowledgements...……………………………………………iii
Abstract…………………………………………………………...v
Introduction: Theorising Video Game Play...... 1 Play?...... 2 Origins...... 4 Power, Subjectivity and Culture ...... 10 Power ...... 10 Subjectivity ...... 11 Culture...... 12 Case Study Selection...... 14
Chapter 1: The State of Play...... 17 The “Battle” ...... 19 The Figure of Lara Croft...... 23 Theorising Play...... 27 Ludology...... 28 1999: Conception ...... 29 2001: Game Studies Year One?...... 33 2003: Re-Imagining Ludology...... 40 2004: Play Essentialism ...... 43 Media as a Cultural Reference Point ...... 47 Pleasure ...... 52 Beyond the Ludology/Media Studies Debate ...... 53
Chapter 2: Playing by the Rules...... 55
vii Tetris and The Sims...... 58 Play Theory...... 62 Juul’s Model of Games ...... 62 Rules ...... 64 The Logic of Negative Capture...... 65 The Double Logic of Rules...... 68 Video Game Restrictions? ...... 70 Rules and Power ...... 78 The Lusory Attitude...... 78 Outcomes and Goals ...... 89 Goals in Action ...... 93 Rethinking Play Theory...... 97
Chapter 3: The Cultural Logics of Objects...... 99 A Tale of Two Cities ...... 99 Theorising Familiarity ...... 101 Grand Theft Auto...... 103 San Andreas ...... 104 Video Games as a Media Form...... 105 Literature...... 109 Painting, Cinema, Television and Music ...... 112 Affordances: The Logic of Objects ...... 118 The Desktop Metaphor ...... 118 Affordances...... 120 Cultural Affordances...... 125 Affordances and Grand Theft Auto ...... 128 Media as a Cultural Reference Point ...... 130
Chapter 4: The One Free Man ...... 135 Remediating Modernity ...... 136
viii Power and Narrative ...... 139 The Adventures of Gordon Freeman ...... 141 ‘Welcome to Black Mesa’ ...... 142 ‘Rise and shine, Mr Freeman’...... 144 Theorising Freeman ...... 149 Suppression Fields and the Repressive Hypothesis...... 152 Immediacy, Realism and Naturalisation ...... 157 ‘The One Free Man’ ...... 167 Interactivity...... 171 Rethinking the Player/Game Relationship...... 176 Modernity and Resistance...... 178 Historical Specificity ...... 179 Resistance ...... 182 Poaching The G-man ...... 188 Revelation ...... 194
Chapter 5: The Disciplined Player...... 196 Pleasure and PainStation ...... 196 Whispering Rock Summer Camp ...... 199 Basic Braining...... 201 Psychonauts as a Disciplinary Space ...... 205 Hierarchical observation ...... 206 Normalising Judgement ...... 212 Examination ...... 216 Spatio-temporal Configuration ...... 219 Distribution ...... 219 Control of the Body ...... 221 Organisation of Geneses ...... 223 Beyond Discipline...... 224 Power, Play and Discipline...... 232
ix Chapter 6: The Resource Management of Killing ...... 238 Violence and Video Gaming...... 238 The Effects Debate...... 243 Posthumanism and Cyborg Subjectivity...... 245 The Cyborg ...... 250 The Cyborg in Video Game Studies ...... 253 Reading Doom as a Hybrid...... 261 Health as a Mechanism of Subjectivation...... 269 Economics and Resources...... 273 Militarism/Capitalism ...... 275 Familiar Logics ...... 279 The Game/Player Cyborg ...... 281
Conclusion: Contemporary Play...... 284 April 30th, 2008...... 284 A Record Breaking Game...... 284 Playing Grand Theft Auto IV ...... 287 Final Thoughts ...... 292
Bibliography ...... 298
Video Games, Films and Television Programs ...... 317 Video Games...... 317 Films ...... 322 Television...... 324
x %&$
Figure 1: ' %GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG)G *
Figure 2: %' %GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG *!
Figure 3: + % GGGGGGGGGGGG)) ,
Figure 4: GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG) ,-
Figure 5: .R 0$ & )G) !,
Figure 6: %"1 " R $ Q3R 3 GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG - * Figure 7: "Q RGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG)) -*,
Figure 8: Q RGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG))GGG)) -*4
Figure 9: 5" $ 6 %-4 G)))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))) -,, Figure 10: 6% Q5 RGGGGGGGGGGGGGG))))))))))))))))))) -7
Figure 11: 8 9 GGGGGGGGGG))GG)))
Figure 12: % Q5 %:R )))G))GG)) *;
Figure 13: R :< % GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG))GGG ,,
xi 9
I have spent over twenty years studying video games. First and foremost I have studied them as a player. From a young age I learnt the ins and outs of game world after game world in order to progress through them. I honed my skills and developed strategies for success. To this day I still know by heart the layout of the levels of my first game
Boulder Dash (First Start Software, 1984). I remember the Day of the Tentacle
(LucasArts, 1993) mansion, inside and out, as though I had once lived there; and I can still find all the secret rooms in Wolfenstien 3D (id Software, 1992) without pause. I have invested more time in video games than any other media form.
As a teen I studied video games as a programmer. My brother, my friends and I would spend long hours carefully coding our own games. My ambition often outstripped my talent, but I maintained a fascination with how video games worked. I learnt to understand a variety of programming languages and, while my games inevitably turned out rudimentary, it was always a pleasurable experience to craft them. I loved studying how they were constructed. I loved knowing what went on below the surface. I loved thinking about the possibilities and potential of the medium. For some time I hoped video game programming might be a career path for me, but I was never quite suited. I was too impatient, too easily frustrated by the limitations of the system; I loved thinking about the big picture, but hated the fiddly details involved in making it happen.
1 Today I study video games as an academic. It is a vocation that fits me well. It allows me to analyse and dissect this medium but does not require the technical competency of programming (which I sorely lacked). I can think through the broader issues: the politics, philosophies and logics of games. I can address the good and the bad of this medium, I can introduce the novice to the joys of gaming, and offer new ways for those already familiar to conceptualise their experience.
These three engagements with video games: player, programmer, theorist, are not as discrete as they might appear. I have never abandoned playing video games. My schedule allows me less time than I might like to enjoy new games, but gaming is still a large part of my life. After a long day of teaching, or when I have a free evening, there is nothing more relaxing than immersing myself in a game world. Game programming is much less of a part of my life than it once was, but every now and then I have an opportunity to sit down with a friend and dabble in coding. More importantly, however, the knowledge and experience gained from both playing and programming feed directly into my academic writing. This thesis is born of two decades of pleasure, and occasional frustration, with video gaming. My theoretical understanding of games comes from an intimate knowledge of this form both as a play experience and as a piece of programmed code.
Play?
Critical to each of my relationships with video gaming—be that as player, programmer or theorist—has been the question of play. As a player I asked ‘how should I play?’, as a programmer I asked ‘how do I want others to play?’, and now as a theorist I ask ‘how does play function?’. This thesis, then, is an analysis of this activity we call ‘play’, what
2 it is, how it works and what it means. It is an interrogation of the nature of this complex and compelling activity. At the heart of my study is the question of shape and form. What structures our engagement practices when we play? Why do we play in certain ways? In short, what makes game play what it is?
Importantly, I will ask: what role does culture have in the formation of play? What part do the political, social and economic institutions and logics of our world perform in shaping the practices of video game interaction? Does play, as many other theorists have suggested, operate in a space separate from the influence of our everyday lives? Is it just the rules of the game which set down limits upon our interaction, or is there more to it?
This thesis is also a querying of academic frameworks and discursive construction: what way of conceptualising video gaming best helps us understand its content, mechanism and contexts? How can we theorise the processes which mark certain play practices as allowed, while designating others as unacceptable, impossible and unthinkable?
Underlying this is a question of medium specificity. Given this medium’s technological underpinnings, is video game play fundamentally different from other, more traditional, forms of play or simply an expansion of the same principles? Can theoretical models developed to analyse other types of play like board games and sport be sufficient to explicate our engagement with this new mediated phenomenon?
By exploring, in detail, a number of different video game titles and theoretical paradigms,
I shall offer an improved set of frameworks and concepts for video game theory. Drawing on and expanding the existing work in the field, I will offer a model of video gaming as a microcosm of power relations and cultural construction. Play, I will argue, is not
3 acultural, it is always contextual and intertextual, it occurs at the intersection of the personal, the political and the philosophical. Play, I shall argue, is about power, our understandings of ourselves, and the needs of technology and culture. It is a rich, complex and fascinating subject.
Origins
This project has been circulating, in one form or another in my mind and work for over a decade. I have taken every opportunity I could find, from undergraduate assignments to my honours thesis, to explore the theoretical problem that is video game play. Over that time much has changed: in my life, in video game academia, and in the video gaming industry. However, two pivotal experiences have defined and shaped my theoretical engagement with games. The first arose from my involvement in the gaming community and from witnessing other players in action, the second from the good fortune of attending one of the very first academic conferences on video gaming. The former opened my eyes to the potential of play, the latter to the difficulties of theorising it. These two events form an essential background for understanding my purpose in writing this thesis.
The first key experience happened in 1997, when I attended, what is known as a ‘LAN party’. A group of friends and I took our computers around to a house where we connected them up for network gaming. One of the many games we played was the first- person shooter Quake (id software, 1996). Many of my opponents were extremely talented players, two of them ranked in the top ten Quake players in the country. I was not as talented, I had slaved to finish the game in single-player mode, and had no
4 experience with multiplayer. In those days before fast Internet connections this LAN party was my first opportunity to play against other people. The experience was a revelation. My friends were doing things in the game that I had never seen. They were flying around the levels at speeds I could not match. At first I suspected cheating: I thought they had hacked the game so as to give themselves an advantage. But this was not the case. They were ‘rocket jumping’.
Rocket jumping, I discovered, is a technique whereby players fire a rocket from the rocket launcher weapon into the ground just below their feet as they jump. They then
‘ride’ the explosion caused and are propelled higher and faster than is otherwise possible within the game. A carefully-timed rocket jump can be made with minimal health loss, and to great advantage. Rocket jumping gives a player an advantage in multiplayer games, enabling him/her to outpace and outmanoeuvre opponents. In single-player gaming it can totally reconfigure the game space geography, meaning that things that were previously obstacles (e.g., walls, chasms, locked doors) can be negotiated. Areas of levels that are inaccessible from each other when using other play practices become connected through the rocket jumping technique. Levels can be completed in a matter of seconds rather than minutes or hours, enemies no longer need to be killed they can simply be jumped over. The technique was not one that had been programmed into the game deliberately. It is, in gamer terminology an ‘exploit’1, it results from a quirk stemming
1 This use of the term of ‘exploit’ comes from computer hacker terminology. Hackers would hunt for exploits (flaws or holes in the programming code of a computer system) and use them to gain influence over the system. For network theorists Alexander Galloway and Eugene Thacker this practice is representative (indeed diagrammatic) of much of contemporary political resistance. Resistance in today’s networked society comes about by ‘discovering holes in existent technologies and projecting potential change through those holes’, not by opposing the system in its entirety (Galloway and Thacker, 2007: 81). I offered a similar, though far less eloquent, reading of video game exploits in my honours year thesis
5 from the designer’s competing desire for “realistic” explosions and superhuman protagonists. Like a real explosion, explosions in Quake generate shock waves that push objects and people around them away. Unlike a real person, however, the protagonist of
Quake is not always badly injured by the blast. This protagonist, who can also withstand a hail of bullets, can, if positioned correctly, survive an explosion. Skilled players soon realised that this coincidence of game logics could be used to their advantage, and rocket jumping was born.
After demonstrating their playing virtuosity and then patiently teaching me how to do it, my friends then loaded up a number of videos called Quake Done Quick, which featured players using rocket jumping and a variety of other similar techniques to finish the single- player game of Quake. It had taken me a fortnight to make my way through Quake at a medium level of difficulty, yet in these recordings players were shown finishing the entire game at its highest difficulty level in less than 15 minutes. Where I dispatched enemies, these players ran past or jumped over them. They had such an intimate knowledge of the levels that they knew which windows could be usefully rocket jumped out of, and precisely where they would land. They knew every room, every ledge and every roof of the game.
Since that time rocket jumping has become a standard technique in most first-person shooters. By the time Quake 3 (id Software, 1999) was launched, the game manual gave instructions on how to rocket jump (Connors, 1999). In 1997, however, it was a radical
(Tulloch, 2001), where I conceptualized rocket jumping as a form of ludic and cultural resistance. In this project, however, my focus is not the exploit. Rather my focus is the system itself, the video game, and the means by which it functions and persists, and tries to deny or obscure the potential for exploits.
6 new practice that opened my eyes to a new way of thinking about video game play. It had never occurred to me to use the rocket launchers as a mode of transport. Play practices and techniques, I began to understand, are as much the product of our knowledges and expectations as they are the product of the hard-coded limitations of the system.
Individual gameplay practices are learnt, they are not inherent properties of the software.
This basic realisation is central to this thesis. This thesis is about the process of learning to play. It is about the mechanisms and forces that shape the engagement practices we choose. It was at the moment I first encountered rocket jumping that I started to conceptualise play as a product of intersecting influences: the allowances of the software, cultural knowledges, and pleasures and personal choices of the player. As such it was the beginning of the project that has culminated in this thesis.
The other key moment in the genesis of this project came in 2001, when I attended my first and, indeed, one of the world’s first international academic conferences on video gaming. It was the Game Cultures conference held in Bristol, England. As one might expect for a developing discipline with researchers spread far apart around the globe, this conference brought together a rich and varied assortment of video game scholars.
However, it soon became clear that two broad factions were emerging: the self- proclaimed ‘ludologists’ and media studies theorists2. This theoretical divide subsequently took on huge significance and for many years became the dominant argument. I shall address the differences between these two approaches in detail in
Chapter One, but what struck me at the Bristol conference was that the divergence
2 This debate has long been constructed as between ludologists and narratologists but, as I will show in Chapter One, that framing is a misrepresentation of the argument.
7 originated in radically different conceptualisations of how to position play within a theoretical framework. For ludologists, video games were unique; the act of play separated and distinguished this form from older media. Video games, they argued, should not be analysed using the traditional tools of media studies. Play should be the focus of video game analysis—not story, visual aesthetics, characterisation or any other concept borrowed from other media. Conversely, for media studies scholars, video games had many continuities with audiovisual forms like film and television and, as such, the paradigms of older media could be usefully mobilised to analyse this new academic object. For these theorists play was not the defining feature, but just a single element of the video gaming experience.
As an avid video game player I had some sympathy with the ludologists. I felt uneasy with the transposition of media-studies techniques to this form; there seemed a real risk of reducing video games to a linear story, where the play element, the fun and the creativity would be marginalised or ignored. Yet as a media studies trained academic, I felt deep dissatisfaction with the hardline separation of play from other elements of the game experience that ludology proposed. Indeed, ludology, while offering some important critiques of the media studies position, ultimately seemed to severely restrict the kinds of analyses of games that were possible. Ludology’s formalism in decontextualising play from other ludic elements functioned to exclude the philosophical and political dimension. Media studies theorists offered a framework for understanding the cultural dimension of certain aspects of video gaming, but fell short in providing a useful way of talking about the act of play. Clearly, I thought, a new approach or a middle ground is necessary.
8 This project, then, started as an attempt to find a middle ground between ludology and media studies. Over the course of the following six chapters I tease out the commonalities and address the differences of each approach. But I also move well beyond the traditional scope of these paradigms into other connected, but often under-utilised, theoretical frameworks. From ludology I expand into play and design theory, and from media studies to cultural theory and post-structuralism. It is in these approaches that we find the theoretical tools necessary to build a more sophisticated and robust model of video game play.
Whilst this thesis is therefore rooted in ludology and media studies, it should not be understood as an uncritical engagement. In particular I will argue that ludology offers too limited a model of video game play; a model too focused on emphasising commonalities between contemporary digital gaming and traditional types of play, to recognise the specificity on the video game. Whilst I share the belief of ludologists that there must be a theoretical emphasis on gameplay in academic analysis of video gaming, and develop my argument through key ludological texts, my methodology and conceptual framework differs greatly from a traditional ludological approach. This project is best understood as an application of cultural and media studies frameworks in order to answer the important questions posed by ludology.
It should also be noted that in this thesis I do not aim to offer a comprehensive engagement with all branches of media and cultural studies. Many significant fields such as political economy and ethnography are not addressed here. Whilst important work continues to be done in these fields, what I offer here is a close study of the relationship
9 of the video game player to the software. My aim in this tight focus is to theorise an aspect of video gaming that is all too often assumed to be simple. My hope is that in addressing such a core aspect of the gaming experience, my work may go on to influence, and be expanded by, video game theorists from other media studies fields including those approaches I cannot explicitly engage with here.
Power, Subjectivity and Culture
My work in this thesis, while founded in the ludology/media studies debate will go beyond its traditional territory. In particular I will highlight three key concepts: power, subjectivity and culture, that I will argue need to become part of our theoretical discourse for video game play analysis. It is in the linking of these three concepts with the theorisation of play at the heart of ludology that the difference between my model of play and those already circulating lies. Bringing power, subjectivity and culture together to directly understand the operation of play offers an important and productive model for video game analysis.
Power
Video games are best understood through a discourse of power relations. By this, I mean that games require very specific kinds of engagement practices from players: players are required to strive for certain goals through the use of very particular techniques. Much of a game’s internal structure is designed to encourage the player to take on these privileged play practices. Video games mobilise a wide range of persuasive and pedagogic techniques to train the player into the strategies of engagement. Video games as such are
10 an apparatus of power: they function as a system upon the player to produce a certain kind of behavioural outcome.
Power itself is a contentious and emotive term and, indeed, many people may be uneasy with its usage in the context of an entertainment form like video gaming. The word
‘power’ tends to connote images of authoritarian excess and sinister coercion. Arguing that video games are best understood through a discourse of power seems on the surface a paranoid project which misrepresents the player/software relationship, while simultaneously trivialising oppression and subjugation in other domains. However, the model of power I use in this thesis, informed by post-structuralism, postulates power as contained within all aspects of our lives: our language, our institutions, our bodies and our play practices. Power is not necessarily a sinister force, though of course it can be, but a term for the ability to produce and change our world. Indeed, the term ‘power’ as I use it here is not about constraining or restricting freedoms, but producing ‘acceptable’ possibilities. Power works, I will argue, not through denial, but by the construction of the normal and desirable.3
Subjectivity
Throughout this thesis I shall be developing a model of the ‘subject’: that complex assemblage of flesh and ideas we call ‘I’, ‘myself’ and ‘me’. Critical to understanding the operation of play is a re-imagining of the subjectivity of the player. The term
‘subjectivity’ is used here not in opposition to objectivity, but rather to describe the way
3 This is not to say that repression does not exist; quite obviously it does. Unequal power relations produce many terrible outcomes. The point is, however, that while the effects of power may be morally negative, the mechanism through which power works is often productive in the sense that it is about the production of systems and institutions that maintain the inequality.
11 in which we define and understand ourselves and others, and the ways in which we are produced by cultural forces. The model of subjectivity I shall propose looks at the process of subject formation in the context of the play experience. The player, I contend, is not in a static self-evident natural state, but rather a dynamic context-dependent mode of being that occurs through the interfacing with the technological apparatus of the video game system. Put simply, the patterns of thought we use, the bodily movements we perform, and the interpretive frameworks we employ during video gaming are all produced through, and are productive of, the act of play. As employed here, the term
‘player’ is neither a demographic descriptor, nor a permanent identity; it is a specific subjectivity brought into being during the act of video gaming play. The player is just one fragment of a broader subjectivity, one that encompasses many other roles and contexts.
The player informs and is informed by the experiences and knowledges of other elements of the subject, but the precise configuration of the player is also very specific to the kinds of interface used and problems presented in the particular video game with which he/she is engaged.
Culture
I use the term ‘culture’ to describe the political and social institutions, systems of belief, and practices that define our lives, as well as the more basic interpersonal experiential structures that shape our everyday existence. My focus is specifically on contemporary
“Western” cultures, namely Australia, North America, UK and Western Europe. While many of the arguments I make are applicable to other gaming cultures like Japan and
Korea, other arguments are based on a player whose cultural knowledges are rooted in
12 Western philosophy and politics and thus do not necessarily translate well to all regions of the globe.
The thesis places a strong emphasis on specific cultural productions. Each chapter is based on a case study of a game (or set of games) and many also look at the connections to other forms such a cinema, television, literature, and traditional gaming and leisure activities. Such cultural artefacts give us strong and concrete examples of how a culture functions, what is seen as acceptable, desirable and enjoyable in it, and the kinds of subject formation it privileges. These ‘texts’ provide the strongest resource available for a reflexive and analytic examination of our own society.
Throughout the thesis I also address what I term ‘cultural logics’. Many of these cultural logics have traditionally been labelled ideologies. Rightly or wrongly, however, in the last few decades the term ideology has become laden with a great deal of negative baggage. It has come to be identified with a Marxist false consciousness, that is, a misleading set of understandings that hide the ‘true’ way the world works. The term cultural logic has sprung up to fill the void by offering a way of talking about the dominant discursive frameworks through which culture operates without positioning those who believe them to be “dupes”, fooled by the propaganda. As a term cultural logics has the flexibility to describe both the major superstructures of belief, such as capitalism, militarism and patriarchy, but also the micro logics that are embedded in our world views, such as our everyday anxieties and fears. An additional advantage of the discourse of cultural logics is that it enables a shared terminology to be used for the underlying systems upon which a game works (ludic logics) and those that govern society
13 (cultural logics). In a project that looks to analyse the interconnection of these two systems this is extremely important.
Case Study Selection
This thesis will be based in a study of key texts. My theoretical focus will be on archetypal and symptomatic examples of scholarship, and the video games I intend to analyse will all be significant examples of the medium. Each chapter will take a unique set of texts and examine the means by which they help us to conceptualise play. My methodology is one of close reading and close analysis, not of total coverage. There are academic engagements with video games that I have chosen not to focus on just as there is a vast assortment of video game titles and genres that I will not address. Only those works that help explicate the act of play have been chosen.
Each chapter will be based on a case study of one or two video games that are culturally and theoretically significant. Some, like Tomb Raider (Core Design, 1996) and Doom (id
Software, 1993), have already generated a great deal of scholarship; others, like
Psychonauts (Double Fine, 2005) and Half-Life 2 (Valve Corporation, 2004), have been relatively ignored. Most have been commercially successful, and some, like The Sims
(Maxis, 2000), Tetris (Pajitnov, 1985) and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (Rockstar
Games, 2004), have been extraordinarily popular. Many have stirred up controversy, over gender representation (Tomb Raider), violence (Doom) or criminal and “anti-social” behaviour (San Andreas), but all are important examples of the video game form. They are also all mainstream titles, available from local video game retailers. In order to
14 highlight the important conventions of mainstream gaming, I have deliberately avoided talking about art game projects or boutique titles.
These games are also all single-player titles. This thesis addresses single-player gaming only. The reason for this focus is simple: single and multiplayer games privilege different play practices and mechanisms. In the single-player game the player is central to all aspects of the action, whereas most multiplayer games are designed around the group: clans, teams and guilds. Broadening this study to include both single-player and multiplayer gaming examples would risk conflating two quite different experiences. In
Chapter Five I will address the significant differences between the theoretical models can be applied to single-player and multiplayer gaming. Furthermore, single-player games are
(for now anyway) the more popular form and the one with which I have the most experience. Multiplayer gaming is a vibrant and important form, but it is not the object of study in this thesis.
Finally, it is worth noting that the games which form my case studies are all ones which I have played to completion or, where they are open ended, to a high degree of proficiency.
Every game I focus on is one I am familiar with as a player. Indeed, my first encounter with all these games was as a player. I did not seek them out looking for academic curiosities, but rather for an immersive play experience. Some are amongst my favourites, some I did not enjoy, but in every case some aspect of these games challenged me and made me expand, rethink or strengthen my theoretical understandings of play.
These games, as much as the academic texts I discuss, have shaped my conceptual framework.
15 Fifty years have passed since the very first graphical video game William Higinbotham’s
Tennis for Two (1958) was created. In that time video gaming has evolved into a multi billion dollar industry. Tens of thousands of titles are available worldwide for the hundreds of millions of players to play. From its humble beginnings, the video game form has grown to become a mainstay of the popular culture landscape of the twenty-first century, offering players countless worlds to explore. From dystopian science fiction futures to lost tombs, from violent urban landscapes to worlds of falling blocks, video games offer a rich and varied range of experiences. This thesis reflects those experiences.
It is an engagement with the complex form that video gaming has become, and an appeal for theory as sophisticated and encompassing as the medium it describes.
16 +-
$: = $8
nce upon a time an epic battle raged. Two tribes fought for O supremacy. The struggle was fierce and merciless. At stake a newly- discovered territory: pristine, fertile and hitherto unexplored. The warlike larger of the two tribes wanted to conquer and remake this new world in the image of the old, while the valiant smaller tribe sought to maintain its natural uniqueness. It was an irreconcilable rift that could only be resolved by the total annihilation of one or other of the tribes. The larger tribe was named Narratology, the smaller Ludology, and the new land was called Video Game Theory ... Or at least that’s how the legend goes.
‘Play’ is the most invested and contested term in video game studies. The questions of how play should be theorised, and what paradigms are appropriate to do this, have been actively and bitterly argued over for much of the last decade. Play has become the object over which the mythic battle for the discipline of video game studies has been waged. In this chapter I shall explore how this situation arose and what it has come to mean. How has its discursive construction functioned to position play as the key concern of this field?
In other words, why has play, more than any other aspect of video gaming, become so contentious? How has such a seemingly simple and everyday concept provoked such disagreement? And how has this debate become so fundamentally tied to the future of video game studies?
17 To discover why play has become a concept loaded with such significance I shall trace academic engagements with the concept over the last decade. I shall map the emergence of play as the crucial issue facing the discipline during the prominent ludology versus narratology discussions of the late 1990s and early 2000s. By focusing on this debate, in particular on the way in which ludology claimed as its focus the practices and mechanics of play, and positioned itself in opposition to media studies on this issue, I shall explore the formation of contemporary academic understandings of play. There have been many contributions to this debate, some polemical, some conciliatory, but all reflecting the importance of this issue for the discipline (Aarseth, 2001a; Frasca, 1999; Juul, 2001a;
Jenkins, 2004; Eskelinen, 2001, Simons, 2004). The debate has abated somewhat in recent years, to a point where many theorists would gladly let it lie forgotten. As observer
Julian Kücklich aptly puts it:
[T]he concepts discussed in this debate are considered either “too hot” or “too cold” to be addressed in a meaningful way. Thus, the concepts and terminologies of narratology and ludology are either used indiscriminately, or avoided altogether. (Kücklich, 2003)
Yet, despite the vitriol and repetitiveness of much of the argument, contained within it are many fundamentally crucial ideas about video game play, and it is essential that these remain in circulation. In this chapter I will thus address the strengths and weaknesses of both sides with a view to building a productive model of play informed by the insights of each paradigm.
By offering a close reading of two key accounts of the state of video game theory Espen
Aarseth’s ‘Genre Trouble’ (2004) and Janet Murray’s ‘The Last Word on Ludology v
18 Narratology in Game Studies’ (2005), I trace a history of a lively, tension-filled, but often decidedly limited discipline. In particular, by analysing the debate over the third-person action/adventure game Tomb Raider and its controversial female protagonist Lara Croft, over whom Aarseth and Murray clash, I examine the two distinct academic objects formed by these approaches: one which sees video games as self-contained systems discrete from culture, and one which claims them to be a cultural artefact. The former takes as its focus the mechanics of play, while the latter takes the cultural experience. In fact, what I will show is neither side offers an adequate conceptualisation of the central issue for this thesis: namely, how to understand the relationship between play and culture.
Each approach offers a partial picture; it is only when we break apart the false dichotomy that divides them and understand them in relation to each other that we can begin to explore the complex relationship between play and culture.
This chapter is also about myth. It is an exploration of the legend of the formative years of the video game studies discipline4 and an alternative history to the myths of titanic battles, saviours and showdowns so often told. It is a critique of this polarised history of video game studies, a history that conceals and camouflages the lively discussion of play behind a smoke screen of rhetoric and accusations of theoretical colonialism.
The “Battle”
While video games have existed for over fifty years, it has only been since the late 1990s that a scholarly critical mass has been achieved for the birth of a new discipline to be
4 It has become common practice to refer to the discipline as simply ‘game studies’. However that term, which is strongly aligned with the ludology movement, assumes an unproblematic continuity between traditional play and video game play – an idea I query throughout this thesis. For this reason I prefer to use the cumbersome, but more precise, term ‘video game studies’ to describe the field.
19 declared (Aarseth, 2001a). Like all nascent disciplines, video game studies has had a fragile and tenuous existence, surviving on the fringes of more established fields of research. This precarious position has produced many tensions in the field – particularly over how video game studies should define itself, what its object should be, and where its boundaries lie. Many theorists in video game studies have advocated the need to remain ever vigilant against the encroachments of other fields which, they argue, are attempting to subsume video gaming as a subset of their own objects of study, be they film, literature or new media art. At stake, these theorists claim, is the specificity of the video gaming form – chiefly that unique quality called play. But for others such defensive assertions are unnecessary and counterproductive isolationism; video games, they contend, can and should be understood in context of other cultural forms.
Prominent video game theorist Aarseth’s ‘Genre Trouble’ (2004) encapsulates the territory and the tone of debate over the appropriate paradigms for video game analysis.
He outlines a troubling vision of contemporary video game studies (Aarseth, 2004: 54).
The discipline, he argues, needs rescuing from a powerful force which is threatening to completely engulf and destroy it. This perceived peril is so great that he demands immediate action and constant vigilance.
For Aarseth, the threat to video game studies comes from traditional media studies fields.
Theorists from film and literature have undermined video game studies by their simplistic use of narrative theory; their prevalence and institutional power meaning that they are already overrunning the unwary budding discipline of video game studies:
20 The sheer number of students trained in film and literary studies will ensure that the slanted and crude misapplication of “narrative” theory to games will continue and probably overwhelm game scholarship for a long time to come. As long as vast numbers of journals and supervisors from traditional narrative studies continue to sanction dissertations and papers that take the narrativity of games for granted and confuse the story-game hybrid with games in general, good, critical scholarship on games will be outnumbered by incompetence, and this is a problem for all involved. (Aarseth, 2004: 54)
For Aarseth, this is not just a debate over what theoretical paradigm is most productive but a fight to the death between competent theorists and the incoming hordes of incompetents threatening good scholarship. Video game studies is in danger of annihilation from narrative theory and the only appropriate response is militancy
(Aarseth, 2004: 54).
For Aarseth, there are two types of video games scholar, the narrativist and the ludologist.5 As I have shown, to him the former are dangerous and misguided zealots of inappropriate methodologies and the latter the only hope for the future of video game theory. Narrativists (or ‘narratologists’ as they are termed elsewhere) unreflexively apply the theoretical frameworks of other media to games. It is an approach characterised by a fixation upon games as a story telling medium which analyses narrative, visual aesthetics, characterisation and theme, at the expense of play. For Aarseth, ludology is the field that has arisen to refute narrativism and reassert the importance of play. It rejects the concept that video games are a story-telling medium and instead offers a formal analysis of the
5 It is worth noting that Aarseth rarely uses the terms ludology or ludologist. He is, however, closely associated with the movement and seen as one of its chief proponents.
21 mechanisms, structures and rules that define play and the play experience. Aarseth argues that without a massive shift away from narrativism towards ludology, video game studies will be subsumed by media studies, a discipline entirely unsuitable to theorise it.
Understandably, Aarseth’s apocalyptic vision is not shared by everyone. Indeed, it is certainly not a construction that sits well with those from a media studies background.
New media theorist Janet Murray offers a fervent critique of Aarseth’s claims in her keynote address to the 2005 DiGRA conference, ‘The Last Word on Ludology v
Narratology in Game Studies’, in which she threw into question the whole notion of video game studies as being under threat. She accused ludologists of ‘debating a phantom of their own creation’ (Murray, 2005: 3). For Murray, narratology is not a colonising strategy of the traditional disciplines, but rather the misrepresentation ludologists have produced to position their own work as radical. Narratology ‘represents the authority against which they [ludologists] have rebelled, the thing that must be repudiated in order for their own interpretation to have meaning’ (Murray, 2005: 3). As she points out, ludologists themselves have acknowledged the ironic nature of the debate, where those labelled ‘narrativists’ have little interest or training in narratology, while, as they themselves admit, ‘virtually all the so-called ludologists are actually trained in narratology’ (Aarseth, 2005 cited in Murray, 2005: 2). For Murray, narratology has simply never existed in the way ludology constructs it: ‘[N]o one has been interested in making the argument that there is no difference between games and stories or that games are merely a subset of stories’ (Murray, 2005: 3).
22 Dismissing all media studies work as narrativism, Murray argues, allows ludologists to indulge in what she calls ‘game essentialism’, which ‘claims that games, unlike other cultural objects, should be interpreted only as members of their own class, and only in terms of their defining abstract formal qualities’ (Murray, 2005: 2). The qualities she refers to are the formal systems of play, such as rules. She critiques this aspect of ludology and argues that games offer a much richer experience than this sort of analysis can recognise. With its preoccupation with the mechanics of play, ludology is unable to engage with the political, psychological and personal dimensions of the play experience.
Murray’s reading of video game studies depicts a very different discipline from the one suggested by Aarseth. This is not a polarised field, with ludology desperately holding off the hording masses of media theorists hell bent on recreating games as a story-telling medium. Rather, Murray argues, it is a field where a small divergence of approach has become systematically magnified to be understood as the all-encompassing and defining debate, despite only ever having one side enter into it.
The Figure of Lara Croft
The game that both Aarseth and Murray regard as the embodiment of the folly of the other side’s perspective is Tomb Raider, with its female protagonist, Lara Croft (Figure
1). The Tomb Raider series of video games (Core Design, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000,
2003; Crystal Dynamics, 2006, 2007), which began in 1996 and continues to this day, is one of the best known, most successful and controversial game franchises of all time.
Much of this controversy and, indeed, perhaps much of the success, stems from Lara
Croft’s improbable physique, with her 36DD bust size more widely known and discussed
23 than any other aspect of the game. Lara Croft has become an icon of the digital age and its first virtual sex symbol. Her fame now extends well beyond the video game industry, with a billion-dollar empire created around her.
Alongside the original game and its—to date— six sequels there have been two major
Hollywood movies starring Angelina Jolie,
“guest” appearances in music videos, advertisements and men’s magazines, as well as numerous novels, comic books, action figures, Figure 1: Lara Croft and other assorted merchandise. Lara Croft has become a cross-media superstar, with a fan base and level of recognition eclipsing that of any other video game character before or since.
Tomb Raider sees Croft battling her way through a series of ancient and modern landscapes, running, jumping, fighting and solving puzzles to save the Earth from devastating evil. The game follows the heroine as she traverses the globe, searching for the lost pieces of an ‘Atlantean Scion’, an ancient artefact that in the wrong hands could wreak untold destruction. From Peru to Greece, through Egypt and, finally, to Atlantis itself, she battles her way past wild animals, dinosaurs and mummies, exploring caves, tombs, temples and ruins of lost cities, Croft races her enemies to discover the lost fragments of the Scion.
24 Crucial to the debate around Tomb Raider, and perhaps to its success, is its third-person perspective viewpoint. Lara Croft is totally visible on screen at all times during play. This has heightened the significance of the design of Croft’s body. She is not just seen on the box art and in cut sequences, but throughout the entire play experience. This visual presence of Lara Croft, and her highly sexualised appearance, has been frequently debated in the press and academia.
For Aarseth, the obsession of media studies theorists with visual representation means that the gameplay of Tomb Raider is entirely ignored in analyses. He (in)famously declares that:
The dimensions of Lara Croft's body, already analyzed to death by film theorists, are irrelevant to me as a player, because a different-looking body would not make me play differently. When I play, I don't even see her body, but see through it and past it. (Aarseth 2004: 48)
When Aarseth plays, he looks beyond the visual facade to the essence of the game.6
Croft’s physique is immaterial (and, indeed, invisible) to his play practices, and his techniques and strategies are in no way determined by her appearance. In this Aarseth is advocating an idea common throughout ludology, namely that play is separate from, and uninfluenced by, culture. Play is, for ludologists, a self-contained system determined by rules and game mechanics, not gendered or enculturated understandings of bodies or worlds.
6 This too is an implicit criticism of media studies which, unlike ludology, is not exclusively the domain of theorists who are able to play games themselves, a point which ludologists like Aarseth believe leads to the lack of exploration of play in media studies work.
25 Responding to what she sees as the gross reductionism of Aarseth’s interpretation of Lara
Croft, Murray critiques the problematic nature of the ludological stance:
[Y]ou must be able to look at highly emotive, narrative, semiotically charged objects and see only their abstract game function. Indeed, to the true believer in game essentialism, even the voluptuous Lara Croft is perceived as merely another game counter, an instrument for engaging with the rules. (Murray, 2005: 2)
The focus on the formal mechanics of play that Aarseth champions Murray here labels
‘game essentialism’, contending that games cannot be understood independently of the meaning-making structure the player brings to them. Murray decries what she sees as the divorcing of video games from cultural history: for her, games are rich reflectors of cultural meaning (Murray, 2005: 1). Players, she argues, bring their own interpretive frameworks and cultural knowledges to the game; it is not just the abstract internal systems that produce the game experience. Therefore, her focus is not on the mechanics of the act of play because, for Murray, play is only one of the levels on which video games function.
We have, then, two very different ways of understanding Tomb Raider’s protagonist Lara
Croft: one proclaiming her irrelevance, the other her centrality. These are not reconcilable approaches, each marking different theoretical territory and different ludic objects.
Aarseth’s object is a formal system, a set of interacting rules and acts, his goal with theory being to strip away the extraneous and expose the underlying procedural essence of the game. Murray’s object, on the other hand, is a cultural artefact, a meaning rich experience that reflects the ambiguity and complexity of society.
26 Theorising Play
Aarseth and Murray’s articles mark out clearly the lines of a disciplinary battle; if you want to talk about the mechanics of play, you must align with a ludologic perspective, whereas if you want to talk about culture then media studies techniques and a deprioritisation of play are required. But what if we want to talk about both? What if we wish to look at the way specific play practices are shaped by cultural contexts? Aarseth’s work draws a hard distinction between the two. He assumes an uncomfortable degree of innocence and lack of self-reflexivity when it comes to play. His claims, that Croft’s highly sexualised body is invisible and that the act of play somehow transcends the entrenched gender roles of our society, seem profoundly naïve. Even if the player takes no sexual pleasure in Lara Croft, it is hard to believe his/her play engagement will not be shaped by expectations of Croft’s capabilities and vulnerabilities. A female protagonist connotes a different set of meanings from that of a male protagonist in our culture when it comes to risk and ability, particularly in the often sexist hyper-masculine world of the action video game. By contrast, Murray recognises the importance of Croft’s gender and appearance, but has exceedingly little to offer by way of suggesting how this might influence play. Her focus is on meaning, not play practices. She refutes the ludological emphasis on the mechanics of play, but ultimately fails to offer any framework for addressing such issues.
On one level it is unfair to criticise Aarseth and Murray for what they do not do. Perhaps the question of the interaction between culture and play practice is simply not within the scope of their argument. Yet both authors are setting themselves up to speak for a paradigm, and position themselves as knowledgeable representatives not just of a
27 theoretical framework, but a discipline and an object of study. The pertinent question to ask, therefore, is whether Aarseth and Murray’s accounts are reflective of their fields: is the division between play and culture so entrenched within video game studies that we have no theoretical middle ground on which to explore the relationship between play and culture?
To answer such a question we need to trace back through video game studies and understand how the field became so polarised. Both Aarseth and Murray propound quasi- histories of the discipline ludology/narratology battle and here it is necessary to offer my own. So, first, I want to trace the formation of ludology from its genesis through to
Aarseth’s pronouncement that Lara Croft’s body was irrelevant. As I will show, Murray’s critique of ludology as based on a false dichotomy between itself and narratology is accurate, but at the same time functions to allow media studies to avoid the difficult questions that Aarseth and colleagues raise. Secondly, I shall examine media studies, and consider in particular two readings of Tomb Raider, which I believe contributed to
Murray’s standpoint.
Ludology
Murray regards ludology as an aggressive and simplistic approach based on an almost wilful misreading of the work of others. For Aarseth, however, it is the sole hope for true video game analysis, the only framework concerned with the specificity of video game play. They are both right. Theorists of ludology can be a deeply problematic, defensive and isolationist approach which angrily dismisses theorists with whom it disagrees. Yet
28 ludology also asks some unique questions, previously unasked by video game theorists, pertaining primarily to the mechanism and shape of play.
1999: Conception
The ground work of ludology was laid in 1999 by two important essays, Gonzolo
Frasca’s ‘Ludology meets Narratology’ and Aarseth’s ‘Aporia and Epiphany in Doom and the Speaking Clock’; and from here it emerged, first as a methodological paradigm, then as a movement. These two texts marked out the theoretical territory of what was to become ludology and defined the approach’s basic tenets and philosophies. They also define, by opposition, another body of work, that which has come to be termed narratology, although, as Murray suggests, this is more a theoretical construct that an actual approach.
In ‘Ludology meets Narratology’ Frasca proposes ‘the term ludology (from ludus, the
Latin word for ‘game’), to refer to the [as] yet non-existent discipline that studies game and play activities’ (1999). He contrasts this new approach with a dominant existing one, which he terms ‘narratology’, in which ‘cybertexts and videogames [are understood] as a new form of or as an expansion of traditional narrative or drama’ (Frasca, 1999).
Whereas narratology, Frasca claims, analyses video games as stories, ludology would analyse them as games (Frasca, 1999). Where narratology, in drawing on literary, film and dramatic theory, looks for shared characteristics between video games and traditional media forms, ludology, Frasca argues, should find its commonalities with board games, children’s play and sport, and draw on the work of play theorists who have investigated these forms. Frasca proposes ludology in order to fill a gap in existing theory, however
29 his intention, is ‘not to replace the narratologic approach, but to complement it’ (Frasca,
1999). The view that ludology can work in conjunction with narratology, as I will show shortly, marks Frasca as significantly different from many of his contemporaries and those who have subsequently built upon his ideas.
Frasca does a number of very significant things in ‘Ludology meets Narratology’.
Obviously, he establishes ludology. He suggests play theory as a new theoretical tradition for video game analysis to draw upon, and offers new theoretical models and discourses with which to understand this form. He also queries the appropriateness of traditional media models for the video game form and attempts to shift the focus of game theorists away from analyses of narrative, towards investigations of the dynamics and structures of play. He does so, however, without seeking to reject the established approach outright, rather to extend it or to offer an alternative to it.
Less obviously, Frasca also plays a major role in establishing narratology. While the term
‘narratology’ has been used extensively in literary theory up until Frasca, it had seldom, if ever, been used to characterise a branch of video game theory. He introduced and popularised it as a way of conceptualising and labelling media studies-based analysis of gaming.7 Indeed, as with Aarseth’s ‘Genre Trouble’, Frasca’s reading of media studies theory as primarily focused upon narrative continues to frame understandings of this debate.
7 I am using the term ‘media studies’ here as a shorthand for a range of critical engagements coming from film, television, literary, drama, hypertext theory and cultural studies backgrounds.
30 In 1999, the same year as Frasca introduced his concepts of ludology (and narratology),
Aarseth published his essay, ‘Aporia and Epiphany in Doom and the Speaking Clock’, in which he outlined a more militantly charged and theoretically isolationist vision for video game studies. While the essay is essentially an analysis of the video game Doom (id
Software, 1993) and the poetry generation software The Speaking Clock (Cayley, 1995), what has been of greatest influence and is of particular interest to us here is Aarseth’s provocative introduction. It is here that Aarseth first proposes the ideas that will later form the basis of his rejection of filmic analyses of Lara Croft; he challenges what he sees as the misguided and dangerous attempts by media studies theorists to analyse digital forms using theory developed for more traditional media:
[T]he race is on to conquer and colonize these new territories [digital media] for our existing paradigms and theories, often in the form of “the theoretical perspective of
Aarseth suggests that digital media theory would do best to follow his lead, which is that
‘[i]nstead of playing the combinatorial game and applying this or that paradigm to the new phenomenon, […] new media call for new perspectives and conceptual frameworks’
(Aarseth, 1999: 32). Like Frasca, Aarseth is deeply concerned with the ways in which media theory has chosen to analyse video games and new media more generally. Also like Frasca, Aarseth takes particular issue with analyses that understand such mediums as
31 narrative based (Aarseth, 1999: 32-36). Unlike Frasca, however, as the above quotations illustrate, Aarseth does not restrict his criticism to this, but rather rejects any perspective which draws upon established theoretical models. Where Frasca offered the existing paradigm of play theory, Aarseth, it seems, wants digital media theory to establish its own set of theoretical frameworks designed to analyse the specificity of these media.
Aarseth proposes his theoretical vision not as a way of complementing existing approaches, but as a replacement for them. He describes his project as ‘a rejection of theoretical templates, but of course far from a rejection of theory’ (Aarseth, 1999: 32).
The theory that Aarseth offers for the study of digital media is the concept of the
‘ergodic’. Ergodic literature is a term Aarseth proposed in his 1997 book Cybertext, to describe a type of text which requires non-trivial effort from the reader (Aarseth, 1997: 1-
2). These texts are ‘produced by some kind of cybernetic system, that is, a machine (or a human) that operates as an information feedback loop, which will generate a different semiotic sequence each time it is engaged’ (Aarseth, 1999: 32-33). Aarseth sees a significant distinction between ergodic texts like video games, web sites, hypertexts and
MUDs8 and non-ergodic texts like traditional novels, films and theatre. As I trace the progression of these ideas, I shall illustrate how the concept of the ergodic has been broadened by many theorists to encompass not just media texts, but also play forms like board games and sport.
Interestingly, despite the implication from both Aarseth and Frasca that video game analysis is dominated by narrative studies, neither theorist elaborates on examples of this
8 A MUD is a Multi-User Dimension/Dungeon a chat room-like environment.
32 trend. Frasca fleetingly references the work of Brenda Laurel, George P. Landow and
David Porush and Todd Hivnor, but fails to illuminate why he considers these theorists to be narrative-focused. Laurel’s Computers as Theatre (1993) traces a parallel between the performativity of theatre and the agency of computer use and Landow’s Hypertext (1992) looks at the ways in which hypertext can be seen as an embodiment of post-structuralist theories of reading. While both these theorists do explore issues surrounding digital narratives, it would be difficult to claim that either makes these their primary focus, and certainly neither theorist takes video games as their focal point. Porush and Hivnor’s ‘A
Gaming Approach to Story Generation’ (1995) relates to a computer software art/theory project called Gameworld designed specifically to generate, through play, highly specific narratives based on Russian Formalist theory. Porush and Hivnor, however, make no claims that Gameworld should be read as a universal template for understanding mainstream video gaming. While Frasca positions narratology as the dominant theoretical mode, he struggles to provide conclusive evidence in support of his claim. Aarseth is even less precise in naming the ‘colonialist’ theorists who blindly use existing paradigms to analyse digital media, offering no examples. The fact that Frasca and Aarseth do not reference specific theorists who treat video games (not hypertexts) as a primarily narrative form can been seen as contributing greatly to the confusion Murray observes in contemporary video game studies regarding the precise nature of narratology or narrative-based video game studies (Murray, 2005: 1).
2001: Game Studies Year One?
The year 2001 saw the beginning of the transformation of ludology from an ‘as yet non- existent discipline’ (Frasca, 1999) into a cohesive and active theoretical approach. It was
33 for this reason that Aarseth gave to 2001 the label ‘year one’ of the discipline of game studies (Aarseth, 2001a).9 Frasca notes that it was at The Digital Arts and Culture (DAC)
Conference that same year that the term ludologist was first used as a descriptor (Frasca,
2003). Initially, the term was applied to Frasca, Aarseth, and fellow Scandinavian theorists Jesper Juul and Markku Eskelinen. By the time of the Game Culture Conference a few months later in 2001 many others declared themselves to be ludologists10 (Talbot,
2001).
The ludology of 2001 was not exactly the ludology Frasca had proposed two years earlier, however. Rather it could be seen as a synthesis of Frasca and Aarseth’s parallel, but in many ways quite different, ideas. This new form of ludology took Frasca’s terminology and mixed his use of play theory with Aarseth’s rhetoric of militant rejection of existing paradigms.
Perhaps the most radical of all the ludologists who gained prominence in 2001 was
Eskelinen. His controversial contribution to the inaugural issue of the Games Studies journal ‘The Gaming Situation’, extends Aarseth’s portrayal of media studies analysis as colonialist, while also beginning to incorporate Frasca’s contention that video games should be understood as a play form.
Outside academic theory people are usually excellent at making distinctions between narrative, drama and games. If I throw a ball at you I
9 Aarseth uses the term game studies, in part, to suggest a commonality between video games and other play forms. 10 It is worth noting that, while not restricted to Scandinavia, ludologic theory seems particularly strong in that part of the world. Five of the movement’s most prominent figures: Aarseth, Eskelinen, Frasca, Jarvinen and Juul, and, all come from this region.
34 don't expect you to drop it and wait until it starts telling stories. On the other hand, if and when games and especially computer games are studied and theorized they are almost without exception colonised from the fields of literary, theatre, drama and film studies. (Eskelinen, 2001)
Eskelinen’s provocative analogy between video games and playing with a ball serves to emphasise (and exaggerate) the commonalities between computer-based and traditional forms of play, while ridiculing those who look for narrative in video games. What is particularly interesting here is the way in which situating video games within a history of play forms is presented as commonsense and natural, while conceptualising them as a media form is seen as artificially constructing (and colonising) the object.
Murray particularly earns Eskelinen’s wrath with her suggestion that the puzzle game
Tetris can be read as
a perfect enactment of the over tasked lives of Americans in the 1990s—of the constant bombardment of tasks that demand our attention and that we must somehow fit into our overcrowded schedules and clear off our desks in order to make room for the next onslaught. (Murray, 1998: 143-144)
For Eskelinen, this reading is a ‘violent’ misrepresentation of Tetris. He argues that:
Instead of studying the actual game Murray tries to interpret its supposed content, or better yet, project her favourite content on it; consequently we don't learn anything of the features that make Tetris a game. (Eskelinen, 2001)
This reflects, he claims, the desperate need of the academy to narrativise games rather than theorise play. He is extremely critical of the notion he sees in Murray’s work that
35 only those elements of a game that have cultural significance or tell a story are worth discussing. To Eskelinen’s mind, Murray is manufacturing a story of Tetris as an allegory for capitalism, rather than describing what the game is like to play. He argues that the rules, goals, temporality, and player actions of Tetris are what should be studied, not our possible interpretations of it. For Murray, Tetris is a cultural form experienced by players through, and in relation to other aspects of culture, such as, in this case, the daily demands of their workplace schedule. For Eskelinen, Tetris is acultural: one does not need any specific cultural experience to understand how to play this game.
Here again we see the crux of the battle for video game studies. Eskelinen is right:
Murray does avoid engaging with this video game in terms of the mechanics of play. Her theorisation tells us very little directly of the experience of playing this game or the mechanics of its operation. Eskelinen, understandably, believes that these are important issues for video game theory. However, Eskelinen’s complete dismissal of Murray’s project is, in itself, profoundly theoretically colonialist. He seems unwilling to acknowledge that more than one type of analysis can be productive, and, instead, feels all theorists should concentrate on those elements of video gaming which he declares to be important. His objections to Murray’s analysis show the firm belief underpinning the ludological approach, that games have a true nature—‘the actual game’, as Eskelinen refers to it—experienced through play, which it should be the job of academics to articulate. As I will demonstrate, this lack of self-reflexivity and the privileging of a very narrow theoretical framework are prevalent in much of ludology, and, for theorists like
Murray, are amongst its most worrying features. It also leads to a situation where, instead of responding to the important issues he raises, Murray is able to attack his insistence on
36 a single theoretical framework, as she does in ‘The Last Word on Ludology v
Narratology in Game Studies’ (Murray, 2005: 1).
Eskelinen’s work combines Aarseth’s concept of ergodic literature with play theory. He argues that the work of classic play theorists like Johan Huizinga (1955), Roger Caillios
(1961) and Elliott Avedon and Brian Sutton-Smith (1971) has much in common with the concept of the ergodic literature and, indeed, can be usefully extended by this new perspective (Eskelinen, 2001). Eskelinen’s framework conceptualises all forms of play including traditional and computer-based games as configurative activities. Counter to
Aarseth’s 1999 call for the rejection of theoretical templates, Eskelinen not only builds on
Frasca’s use of play theory as a model for video game analysis, but incorporates it with
Aarseth’s work on ergodic literature and cybertexts. As his criticisms of Murray show, however, Eskelinen understands his work to be uncovering the nature of the games, rather than constructing it. Play theory is therefore understood not as colonising paradigm, but rather as a means of articulating what already exists.
Like Eskelinen, self-declared ludologist Jesper Juul seeks to critique the notion that video games are a narrative form in his 2001 article ‘Games Telling Stories?’. He offers a more moderate, but no less problematic engagement with this issue. His opening remarks clearly frame what he seeks to address:
As questions go, this is not a bad one: Do games tell stories? Answering this should tell us both how to study games and who should study them. The affirmative answer suggests that games are easily studied from within existing paradigms. The negative implies that we must start afresh. (Juul, 2001a)
37 In deciding whether games tell stories, Juul tries to find some middle ground between the extreme anti-narrativist approach articulated by Eskelinen and a ‘narratological’ one. He acknowledges that, while games do share some characteristics with narratives, ultimately these are two quite different forms (Juul, 2001a). Narratives, he argues, are tales of the past, of what has happened, games are interactive and as such about the present. ‘You cannot have narration and interactivity at the same time,’ he argues, because the two are mutually exclusive (Juul, 2001a).
What is particularly interesting about Juul’s article is not his conclusions, but the way he understands the debate. What is at stake, for him, is the very nature and future of the discipline: the debate over video game narrative will dictate how games should be studied and by whom. Ultimately, he writes explicitly that media studies’ approaches are little more than a distraction and play theory is the path this field must take:
Using other media as starting points, we may learn many things about the construction of fictive worlds, characters […] but relying too heavily on existing theories will make us forget what makes games games: such as rules, goals, player activity, the projection of the player's actions into the game world, the way the game defines the possible actions of the player. It is the unique parts that we need to study now. (Juul, 2001a)
Media studies, it seems, while productive to a limited extent, effaces the specificity of games, an effacement that can only be reversed by locating video games within a heritage of play forms and drawing upon the paradigm of play theory. Juul takes on and privileges the concepts and terminology of play theory: rules, goals and the like, as the only natural choice for video game analysis.
38 Eskelinen and Juul’s articles typify the ludological line emerging in 2001 (see Jarvinen,
2001; Aarseth, 2001a, 2001b; Juul 2001b, 2001c; for further examples) in that they do three things. First, they characterise all approaches that use existing media theory as narrativism. Secondly, they position the ludology/narratology debate as the critical one for the discipline. And, thirdly, they dismiss the idea of games as narrative forms and offer the paradigm of play theory as the only alternative. In this sense what ludology is focussing on doing is constructing a very particular history of video game studies. This history serves to produce a very narrow understanding of the discipline, one in which ludology is saviour. What becomes subjugated to such a history is the range of media/literature studies perspectives that are not focused upon the question of narrative.
The conflation of media studies with narratology functions to hide the diverse range of opinions and ideas that were emerging at this particular moment in the development video game studies. Media studies offer many readings of video games that are in no way concerned with the question of narrative.
A brief look at the field in 2001 suggests that, despite claims that the ludology/narratology debate was the central argument, some rich and varied studies were in progress. Ultimately, video games exceed the binary ludology/media studies opposition. If we take as our example the 2001 Game Cultures conference in Bristol, we can see that, despite its mythologisation as a near ‘blood feud’ between ludologists and narrativists (Jenkins, 2004: 118), most delegates were concerned with issues other than narrative. Papers ranged from an exploration of the political economy of Latin American game-console production (Lugo, Sampson and Lossada, 2002) to the economy of
Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game Worlds (Burke, 2001), from identity in
39 online gaming (Morris, 2001; Wright, Boria, and Breidenbach, 2002; Taylor, 2001) to pedagogy techniques of Pokemon (Buckingham and Sefton-Green: 2001). As Ben Talbot points out in his commentary on the conference, narrative was far from the only contentious question being explored; other issues such as how to use ethnographic methodologies for video game study generated lively debate (Talbot, 2001). It is this theoretical diversity that gets effaced in histories such as Aarseth’s (2004) and Murray’s
(2005) that privilege the debate over narrative. Interestingly, when the conference convener, Jonathan Dovey guest-edited a special issue of the Game Studies Journal consisting of papers presented in Bristol, he deliberately excluded papers on the ludology/narratology divide, stating that to publish such debate ‘probably serve[d] no purpose’. Instead, he offered what he termed ‘perhaps a more seasoned approach to extending knowledge’ (Dovey, 2002). Dovey was attempting to counteract some of the criticisms of the conference and this entire time period in video game studies, which emphasise the ludology/narratology debate.
2003: Re-Imagining Ludology
The growing disquiet of the video game studies community regarding the sensationalism surrounding the ludology/narratology debate saw a change in emphasis for many ludologists in 2003. That year witnessed Frasca reject the oppositional engagements with
‘narrative’ theory that had marked ludology up to this point. His paper, ‘Ludologists
Love Stories, Too: Notes from a Debate that Never Took Place’, offers a critique of the way the ludology/narratology debate had been understood and is a fascinating, though problematic, intervention into ludology. It offers an insider’s perspective on the
40 formation of ludology and, while it reads primarily as an apologia for the paradigm, it also makes some startling admissions.
Frasca contends that this debate never really occurred in the way it had come to be presented. The debate over narrative, he claims, is ‘cluttered with a series of misunderstandings and misconceptions’ (Frasca, 2003: 1). Of particular interest, is
Frasca’s search for narrativists. He is unable to find any theorist who can be labelled this way ‘[t]his lack of narrativists really confuses me’ he states (2003: 31). Indeed, not only can Frasca find no narrativists, but he actively refutes the characterisation made by other ludologists of Murray’s work as being narratology11 pointing to the fact that she supervised and aided his ludological thesis (2003: 3). He notes many theorists perceived as narrativists, like Henry Jenkins, Michael Mateas and Marie-Laure Ryan, do not define themselves as such, and do not reject ludology outright, but rather call for the development of a middle ground. Narratology, it seems is neither a term that people ascribe to themselves nor an appropriate descriptor of people’s work.12 This troubles
Frasca but does not make him reconsider his own role in the construction of narratology,
Frasca also assumes ludology to be the paradigm he proposed four years previously. This article can be read as an unintended attempt to reassert (or rescue) the ludology Frasca suggested back in 1999. He critiques the ‘puzzling’ conception that ludology rejects the idea that games can be analysed through narrative-based techniques by repeating that
‘[w]hen [he] suggested the term, [he] clearly stated that [his] main goal was “to show
11 Frasca attributes the characterisation of Murray as a narrativist to Henry Jenkins. The Jenkins’s article Frasca references however, mere cites Murray as an example of someone who is commonly labelled narrativist by other theorists; Jenkins makes no make no claims of his own in this regard (Jenkins, 2003: 119). 12 Interestingly, Frasca seems to feel that the blame for this confusion lies with media studies.
41 how basic concepts of ludology could be used along with narratology to better understand video games”’ (Frasca, 2003). He goes on to give a very selective reading of Aarseth,
Juul and Eskelinen, quoting some of their least polemical passages, in support of this claim. Frasca seems unwilling to acknowledge the shift from his proposed ludology to the more radical ludology that was produced by its synthesis with Aarseth’s rejection of existing paradigms.
Frasca’s assertion that ‘the accusations of radicalization of this debate are totally unfounded’ (Frasca, 2003: 7) is a difficult claim to support in view of the ferocity of the attacks mounted by Aarseth and Eskelinen. Indeed, Frasca’s evidence of ludology’s openness to media studies is a quote from Aarseth in which he barely conceals his distrust of the paradigm:
Of course, games should also be studied within existing fields and departments, such as Media Studies, Sociology, and English, to name a few. But games are too important to be left to these fields. (And they did have thirty years in which they did nothing!) (Aarseth, 2001a cited in Frasca, 2003: 5)
Certainly this is a more generous Aarseth than the one who declared all approaches using traditional paradigms to be colonising attempts, but it is far from the ringing endorsement of theoretical plurality that Frasca would like it to be. Perhaps Frasca’s desire to reposition his colleagues’ work reflects a shifting ludological “Zeitgeist” brought on by the difficulty of maintaining the radical ludological perspective in the face of the growing reliance upon a play theory paradigm, and the increasingly apparent lack of an enemy.
42 Frasca’s portrayal of ludology as open to existing theory emerged at the same time as
Juul articulated a theoretical model immersed in play theory. At the same conference at which Frasca delivered ‘Ludologists Love Stories, Too’, Juul outlined his own position on video games as a subset of play forms, drawing on numerous traditional play theorists and devising a six-point typology of play (Juul, 2003). Juul embraces existing theories of play whole-heartedly, integrating the work of seven traditional and video game play scholars13. While these theorists may not have explicitly acknowledged it at the time, in order to embrace fully the paradigm of play theory ludology needed to abandon its theoretical isolationism and apply a pre-existing framework not developed for video games but rather traditional play forms. Frasca’s generous interpretation of past ludology as never espousing any isolationism is a powerful, albeit unintentional, means by which to achieve this end. However problematic it may be, constructing a conceptualisation of ludology as theoretically open is the first step towards a field which recognises the importance of a range of perspectives.
2004: Play Essentialism
To return to the question I posed earlier, Aarseth’s ‘Genre Trouble’ (2004) and his dismissal of Lara Croft’s importance to the conceptual object of Tomb Raider are ultimately both reflective of the broad trajectory of ludology, and a step backwards.
Coming in 2004, a year after Frasca’s bridge-building efforts, it reasserts the separation of ludology from media studies, and in so doing reasserts the separation of play from culture. Where other ludologists have shifted focus from the ideological battle to
13 I will return to Juul work in far more detail next chapter. It is worth noting here however, that none of the seven theorists of play Juul draws upon represent a media studies approach.
43 developing the methodology, Aarseth has maintained his focus. This article is, in context, arguably the most militant of all ludological pieces of writing. It demonstrates how a rejection of media studies methodologies and values can lead to a rejection of the conceptualisation of play as a cultural activity, or perhaps, conversely, how a rejection of the notion of play as cultural has led to the rejection of media studies methodologies and values.
‘Genre Trouble’ also illustrates how fundamentally play theory has been adopted by the ludology movement. Gone are Aarseth’s calls for a new conceptual framework; here he attempts to reinforce play theory’s status as the appropriate paradigm for video game studies with his own mobilisation of its key terms. Rather than cementing its place, his flawed application and the lack of nuance and sophistication in his conceptualisation merely serve to reveal the problems with such an approach.
Aarseth offers a new definition of games as consisting of three elements, ‘rules, a material/semiotic system (a game world), and gameplay (the events resulting from application of the rules to the game world)’ (Aarseth, 2004: 47-48). But he does not grant them equal importance: the ‘material/semiotic system’, he regards as ‘most coincidental to the game’ (2004: 48). It has little effect on how the game is played and another material/semiotic system could as readily be substituted for it.
[Y]ou can play chess with some rocks in the mud, or with pieces that look like the Simpson family rather than kings and queens. It would still be the same game. The ‘royal theme’ of traditional chess is all but irrelevant to our understanding of chess. (Aarseth, 2004: 48)
44 For Aarseth, this is why media studies analyses of video games have been misguided.
They fail to recognise that a game’s semiotic system is irrelevant to its play practices.
Just as Tomb Raider would be the same game with a differently-proportioned Lara Croft, chess will always be chess, no matter what visual schema is used.
Aarseth’s reference to chess becomes particularly revealing in light of his next assertion:
‘[G]ames are not intertextual [… they] are self-contained’ (Aarseth, 2004: 48). This is in stark contrast to his acknowledgement that chess can be played with pieces based upon the television show, The Simpsons, which would seem to be an explicit example of intertextuality. What this reveals is a conceptual conflation of games with ‘rules’ and
‘gameplay’, the first and third of his three defining elements, but, significantly, not the second, a material/semiotic system. A game becomes merely a type of engagement with an arbitrary form determined within the scope of set rules. The intertextuality of The
Simpsons’ chess-game is irrelevant, and indeed not really part of the game, because it is not part of the rule-determined mechanics of play.
Furthermore, it is not just aesthetic elements that are being denied within Aarseth’s model, but a connection with culture in the broader sense. Aarseth is deeply resistant to the idea that culture has any impact at all on the way in which games are played. Indeed, not only does he deny that games are linked to other texts, but also that cultural knowledges may be relevant to the way we play: ‘[K]nowledge of roulette will not help you to understand Russian roulette, neither will cultural knowledge of Russia’ (Aarseth,
2004: 48). His point is that, while games might reference other games and specific cultural formations, this exerts no influence on the way we play them.
45 Applying this idea to video games, Aarseth argues that a knowledge of the film Star
Wars: The Phantom Menace, especially of its famous ‘pod racing’ sequence, will not improve a player’s performance in the video game Star Wars Episode I: Racer, which is based upon it: ‘[T]he value system of a game is strictly internal,’ he asserts, ‘determined unambivalently by the rules’ (Aarseth, 2004: 48). In other words, the systems of reward, progress, and success and failure are not produced by cultural knowledges, but the game’s hard-coded rules. It is by the rules of the game world, not any other system (such as film worlds or everyday life), that players must abide and within which they must perform. Play, Aarseth is arguing, is discontinuous and isolatable from culture.
Aarseth’s choice of example here could not have been poorer. Star Wars Episode I:
Racer is a game in which play is profoundly affected by a knowledge of the film. The pod-racing sequence in the movie features a character winning the race by taking a risky shortcut. Players familiar with that sequence not only know to search for the shortcut in the track based on the one featured in the film (which indeed features the shortcut in the equivalent location), but to search for shortcuts on all tracks. The intertextuality of this game, produced by its material and semiotic dimensions, contributes fundamentally to a player’s gameplay actions.
Aarseth’s confrontational application of play theory fails on almost all levels. It seeks to define games only by the rules and gameplay, while denying the importance of their material and semiotic schema. Yet, even in his carefully selected example, Aarseth cannot help but reveal the substantial ways in which play can be influenced by other cultural artefacts. In so doing he undermines the very basis of ludology, which assumes
46 the integrity of its gamespace. To justify a rejection of culture, games mechanisms need to be entirely self-contained, that is, produced entirely by the rules. For ludologists the disciplinary object of the video game is defined by the internal operations that bring about play. Yet as Aarseth’s example of Star Wars Episode I: Racer reveals, the defining line between internal and external is more blurred than ludologists are prepared to admit.
The material and semiotic elements of a game, be they the invocation of the Star Wars universe or selection of gender and physique of a games protagonist, influence the way a game is played.
Media as a Cultural Reference Point
Where ludology constructs video game play as isolated from culture, media studies sees it as an act performed in relation to other media forms. That is, for many media studies theorists, the relationship that players have to a game mirrors past experiences with other media forms, as games tend to repeat many of the same conventions and tropes. This means that, for these theorists, video games can be analysed using frameworks developed for traditional forms.
Analyses of Tomb Raider from the media studies paradigm epitomise this construction of the video game experience as referential to traditional media forms. Two articles in particular, Helen W. Kennedy’s ‘Lara Croft: Feminist Icon or Cyberbimbo?’ (2002) and
Anne Marie Schleiner’s ‘Does Lara Croft Wear Fake Polygons?’ (2000), show the clear way in which film, television and literature have been mobilised as theoretical reference points for video game play. Driven by an ambivalence towards Croft – an unease with her physical dimensions, but an awareness of her unique position as a female video game
47 protagonist – both Kennedy and Schleiner draw on feminist, gender and queer theory to investigate the relationship between player and game.
Kennedy offers a range of possible readings of the Tomb Raider protagonist. She explores Croft in terms of a number of filmic and cultural archetypes, from the action heroine of the Grrrl Power movement to the femme fatale, seeing her as an ambiguous character whose reception is complex and varied, and who offers unique challenges to player and theorist alike.
Understood in terms of the action heroine archetype, Kennedy suggests, Croft becomes a positive female figure challenging the masculine order of the action hero. Like her filmic counterparts, the eponymous Thelma and Louise, and Trinity from The Matrix, Lara can be understood as radically defying gender norms (Kennedy, 2002). In the profoundly masculine space of the video game, Kennedy argues, Croft can be read as confounding the form’s entrenched characterisation of women as passive victims, princesses and trophies.
Conversely, Kennedy notes, if one conceptualises Croft in line with the filmic archetype of the femme fatale, a radically different understanding is produced. To demonstrate this she builds upon Laura Mulvey’s seminal account of Hollywood cinema as privileging the male gaze, in which females are reduced to passively erotic objects for the male viewer’s pleasure, to be looked at, by the male characters, by the camera and by the male viewer
(Mulvey, 1989). Activity is thus deeply connected with masculinity. A strong female such as Croft throws down a challenge to the patriarchal order. Traditionally, however, the cinema negates any implicit threat by rendering the strong female body masculine: in
48 other words, through phallicisation the female body is made to re-enter the strict boundaries of gender norms. In this way Lara Croft’s guns (Figure 2), and other fetishistic signifiers function to phallicise this otherwise challenging figure and render her safe again (Kennedy, 2002).
Figure 2: The phallicisation of Lara Croft
Kennedy argues that the active/passive binary offered by Mulvey’s film theory begins to break down when applied to a video game like Tomb Raider. Lara Croft is both the object and the subject of this game: on permanent display, the active figure of the piece and master of her world and, at the same time, the slave of the player (Kennedy, 2002). It is in literature that Kennedy finds the best analogue for the complex subject/object blurring relationship between player and Lara Croft. William Gibson’s cyberpunk classic
Neuromancer (1984) offers a technologically-mediated relationship, in which Case, the
49 male protagonist, can experience the sensory data of Molly, his female partner in crime.
Tomb Raider, like Neuromancer, Kennedy argues, offers the possibility for a ‘utopian subjectivity which is free from the constraints of fixed gender boundaries’ (Kennedy,
2002).
Like Kennedy, Schleiner (2000) offers multiple readings of the way in which a player might relate to Croft, drawing each time on a different media archetype as her point of comparison. Like Kennedy, Schleiner’s first reading is informed by Mulvey and positions
Croft as a female version of Frankenstein’s monster, ‘an idealized, eternally young female automaton, a malleable, well-trained techno-puppet created by and for the male gaze’ (Schleiner, 2000). Her second reading is of playing Tomb Raider as a drag performance for male players, ‘players [are able] to experiment with “wearing” a feminine identity, echoing the phenomenon of gender crossing in Internet chat rooms and
MUDs’14. In her third reading she argues that Croft can be likened to a dominatrix and femme fatale; sections of Tomb Raider’s audience, she argues, ‘likely derive masochistic pleasure from Croft’s “sadomasochistic”, repeated destruction of her enemies, accompanied by the obligatory death cries and throes of agony’. Schleiner’s fourth reading makes Lara a positive role model, an ‘entry point for women into the male discourse domain of computer games’. Like the tough heroines of Cyberpunk literature,
Croft allows females a point of identification and thus entry into this traditionally masculine form. Lastly, Schleiner suggests that taking sexual pleasure in controlling
Croft is not solely reserved for heterosexual male players. ‘Why should fantasy experiences of violence be exclusively a heterosexist and/or masculine domain?’ she
14 In MUDS role playing is often explicitly encouraged.
50 asks, pointing to other fictional figures, such as television’s ‘warrior princess’, Xena, whose combination of the sexually desirable female and stylised violence attracts a large queer following.
Traditional media, filmic and literature archetypes in particular, figure largely in the comparative methodological strategies of both Kennedy and Schleiner, the latter even drawing on the new media forms of chat rooms and MUDs. In doing this—and they do it extensively—both are implicitly rejecting Aarseth’s claim that video games are not intertextual. Ultimately, however, they leave themselves open to criticism from ludology, because they fail to engage directly with the question of play.
Aarseth’s declaration that Croft’s body is irrelevant to the player must be understood in the context of the kind of academic approach Kennedy and Schleiner take here. Murray is correct in stating that ludology problematically treats Croft as ‘merely another game counter’ (Murray, 2005: 2), but in Aarseth’s framework, where play is the central question, the kinds of analysis used by media studies theorists to explore Tomb Raider offer little in the way of developed answers. Media studies hardly acknowledges Croft’s role as a ‘game counter’ at all. For Aarseth, the problem lies in media studies’ emphasis on the connections between games and other media forms. Yet, as I argued earlier, the case of Star Wars Episode 1: Racer, demonstrates incontrovertibly that their intertextuality can influence the way games are played. It is not that media studies goes too far in drawing comparison, rather that the scope of its analysis of comparison is too limited. There is a radical potential to this theoretical framework that Schleiner and
Kennedy never fully acknowledge. With Tomb Raider the question is one of how past
51 experience with analogous female archetypes influences what the player expects from, and attempts to replicate with Croft. What do players assume the female body can do and how is this influenced by our knowledges of other fictional women? For example is the player’s performance of Lara Croft influence by his/her knowledge of Xena or Trinity?
Does this affect choices such as whether to run away or stay and fight? Traditional media are used by Kennedy and Schleiner as a point of theoretical comparison; there is little discussion of how the player might be consciously or subconsciously influenced by other media experiences.
Pleasure
Although Aarseth never mentions them—or, indeed anyone else—by name, it is highly likely that Kennedy and Schleiner are among those with whom he takes issue. They embody all that he sees as flawed with the application of film studies techniques to video gaming. In particular, he highlights the use of the concepts of pleasure and the gaze to video gaming:
The pleasures of video games […] are not primarily visual, but kinaesthetic, functional and cognitive. Your skills are rewarded, your mistakes punished, quite literally. The game gaze is not the same as the cinema gaze, although I feel it will be a long time before film critics studying computer games will understand the difference. (Aarseth, 2004: 52)
The act and mechanics of play, for which Aarseth is arguing, change the relationship the player has with the medium. This is not the same objectifying gaze of Mulvey described in cinema, Aarseth argues, but something new. The ability to control the situation and the
52 joy of success are, for Aarseth, the key pleasures of video game play; but media studies theorists like Kennedy and Schleiner overlook these completely in their reliance on psychoanalytic frameworks that privilege visuality. Aarseth’s critique, then, is of fundamental importance.
If we are to build a robust theory of video game play, we must acknowledge the specificity of the kinds of pleasure that video games offer. Undoubtedly, many video games—Tomb Raider is an obvious example—offer the player sexual pleasure, but as
Aarseth observes, there are many other kinds of pleasure. For example, neither Kennedy nor Schleiner refer to the sense of achievement players feel when Croft successfully makes a perilous leap, or the excitement of exploration and discovery as they work their way through the game’s numerous tombs. It is ludology that emphasises these pleasures.
Beyond the Ludology/Media Studies Debate
The “battle” for video game studies makes it clear just how complex an academic object the video game is. Aarseth and Murray both offer histories of the formation of the discipline of video game studies. Both present a divided field, in which good scholarship is under threat. Both offer useful critiques of the other’s approaches, position and articulations of their own paradigms and values. Yet in this polarisation and territory- marking, there is little possibility of finding a middle ground, a position that satisfies both sides.
I have much sympathy for Murray, whose position is more conciliatory and less inflammatory. In particular, her claims that narratology was a construct of ludology are
53 borne out by the evidence, whereas Aarseth’s assertions that video game studies is under threat from incompetent media studies theorists is countered by the strong scholarship of the likes of Kennedy, Schleiner—and, indeed, of Murray herself. Yet, strong as Murray’s work is, it ultimately reflects the problem that has beset video game studies for the last decade. Unfortunately, rather than debate the complex issues surrounding video gaming, many of the field’s best thinkers have been preoccupied with a fictional debate over narrative. This has led to an understanding of video game theory as irreconcilably polarised: on the one side, ludologists, who want to analyse the mechanics of play, and on the other, media studies theorists, who want to understand games as cultural artefacts.
This situation has fundamentally impeded the growth of this field. Nowhere is this more apparent than with the theorisation of play itself. Ludology offers a simplistic account of play as determined, essentially, by the rules of the software. Media studies hints at, but never develops, a notion of play as intertextual. Brought into dialogue these two accounts could be extremely productive, but separate they are exceedingly limited. Together these approaches can offer a foundation for rethinking video game play. Ludology has much to offer, particularly in terms of the specificity of pleasures and mechanics of video game play. Its emphasis on rules suggests a possible starting-point for this inquiry, and it is to this issue that I shall turn in the next chapter. Media studies suggests that the broader culture, especially the media of TV and film, act as a reference point for play. Used in conjunction these two paradigms can form the basis for a new account of video game play, where play is influence both by the game’s internal mechanisms and by culture.
54 +
+.
' %
red had poor hygiene. It was making him sick and miserable. It F seemed like his wife and kids were always in the bathroom and he never had time just to take a shower and relax. Between his long, tiring days at work and hectic home life, he was run down, irritable and exhausted.
Something needed to change, but what? Should he quit his job so he would have more time to look after himself? If he did that, could they survive just on his wife’s salary? Should he quit complaining and try to save up enough money to build an extra storey on the house? It could be just for him and his wife. They could have their own bathroom that he could use whenever he wanted. But that would be expensive: even if he got that promotion at work, it would still be a long time before he could afford such a major renovation.
He could turn his study into an extra bathroom. That might work, but then he’d have nowhere to paint. Painting was his favourite hobby and without it he’d be even more miserable. He could buy a big-screen TV. Maybe that would cheer him up enough to make him start looking after himself properly. He sure loved his action movies, and it would make the kids happy too.
In his darkest moments Fred even prayed to his guiding spirit that a satellite would fall on his kids. Or that somehow a miraculous wall would appear where their bedroom doors were and trap them inside. Sure, the
55 screaming would be horrible for a while, but once they had starved he and his wife would have the house to themselves. They could start over.
There were so many choices, so many solutions to this problem. What should he do? It was such a complex world Fred lived in.
Fred’s world is not ours. In our world, malevolent deities do not instantly replace bedroom doors with brick. Satellites rarely fall from the sky and kill people. Yet it is not unlike ours. It has its own complex logic of family dynamics, consumerist fantasy and economic realties. We all have to make choices where the outcomes are anything but predictable and where we can only hope for the best.
Fred’s world is the world of The Sims (Maxis, 2000).15 It parallels many aspects of our daily lives, the trials and tribulations, the good times and the tiresome chores. But it is not simply a mirror image of our lives: the world of The Sims has its own logic, one that is hard to confuse with our own. Some players see it as a sick capitalist daydream. Some find it a disturbingly amoral nightmare without real consequences, and for others it is a hilarious parody of twenty-first-century living. The Sims is a complex game and a complex world.
The puzzle game Tetris, on the other hand, is far less complex: its ‘world’ is one of abstract forms. It requires the player to arrange falling blocks of different shapes into complete rows. Once a complete row is formed it disappears from the screen. The blocks fall faster and faster as the game progresses and when the screen has filled to the top with
15 For the sake of brevity I am including The Sims, The Sims 2 (Maxis, 2004) and the numerous expansion packs all under the rubric of The Sims. Some of the deaths mentioned in my opening paragraphs are only possible in The Sims 2.
56 blocks the game ends. It is hard to imagine a simpler video game than Tetris. But it still has its own specific logic, its own systems of cause and effect. It may lack the political, moral and philosophical complexity of The Sims, but it nonetheless presents a unique game world, in which certain kinds of action are allowed and encouraged, while others are not possible or discouraged.
Tetris and The Sims are diametrically opposed in a variety of ways. They are so far apart, representative of the opposing ends of the gaming spectrum, as to seem theoretically irreconcilable. The problem posed here for video game theory is this: can Tetris and The
Sims be dealt with in similar theoretical terms? That is, does the complexity of a game alter the way in which we should conceptualise the mechanism of play and play practice?
In the last chapter I employed the term ‘play theory’ to describe the work of theorists who have analysed the structures of traditional play. I noted both the importance of this paradigm to the ludology movement and the theoretical twists and turns by which this came to be positioned as the discourse that would “save” video game theory from being
“colonised” by media studies. In this chapter I want to extend this exploration by looking at theorists of both traditional play and video gaming in order to investigate the appropriateness of play theory for this task. My focus here will be the key concepts of
‘rules’ and ‘outcomes’. I will critique the assumption made by play theorists that the concept of rules work equally well across all play forms. I will argue that the mediation of the experience by the computer system changes the nature of play and the academic tools that can be used to understand it.
57 In this thesis I am exploring the roles of culture and subjectivity in the formation of single-player video game play. In this chapter I am offering a close reading of a set of play-theory accounts that position culture and subjectivity as unimportant or irrelevant to the process of shaping play practices. Play theory’s conceptual framing of play as shaped prior to, and independently of, the player’s engagement suggest that subjectivity and cultural experience is not crucial. That is, this discourse emphasises the internal mechanics of the game system (the rules and outcomes) and deemphasises processes relating to the structuring of the player’s understandings, expectations and strategies.
Over the course of this chapter I will analyse both the strengths and weaknesses of such an approach. I will show that this framework allows for a strong theoretical engagement with the micro-level processes operating within video gaming, with a precision and specificity lacking in more culturally focused approaches. But I will also demonstrate that underlying play theory’s model is an unrecognised reliance upon cultural contexts and subjective relationships. I will show that a truly non-subjectivity/acultural account of play is not possible and that this model implicitly functions upon simplistic assumptions as to how the player understands and engages with the game system. I will show that in video games, in particular, the player knowledge of cultural reference points is drawn upon to shape the play experience. It is only by mobilising simple examples of the video game form, such as Tetris, rather than complex ones, like The Sims, that contemporary play theorists can deny the power of culture and subjectivity.
Tetris and The Sims
One of the most successful puzzle video games ever produced, Tetris has had an extraordinary history. Created by three Soviet programmers in 1985, during the final
58 gasps of the Cold War, the game has sold more than 70 million copies, and made the fortune of more than one multi-national company (Frost, 2004). Working for the Russian
Academy of Science in Moscow, computer scientist Alexey Pajitnov conceived and designed the game. With help from colleague Dmitry Pavlovsky and 16-year-old programmer Vadim Gerasimov, he coded it in little more than two weeks (Frost, 2004).
Its addictiveness quickly became evident, with Pajitnov and his partners all transfixed by
“play testing” the software. Soon they were not the only ones. First in the USSR, and then throughout the West, Tetris became a video game phenomenon, one that continues to engross players worldwide. Indeed, when the Library of Congress decided to include in its collection video games of cultural and historic significance, Tetris was amongst the first chosen (Ransom Wiley, 2007a).
In Tetris, play takes place on a two-dimensional grid, called a ‘well’. Shapes fall one at a time from the top of the well, in a random order and at gradually increasing speed. All shapes are tetrominic, that is, made up of four squares joined together. There are seven possible tetrominoes (Figure 3), each differently coloured. The moment they hit the bottom of the well, or land on top of another block, they stop and a new tetromino starts to fall. As the block falls, the player is able, not only to move it to the left or right, up or down, but also to rotate it clockwise and anticlockwise in 90-degree steps. The goal for the player is to assemble complete lines by interlocking the blocks. Once a gap-less line is made up that line disappears. As many as four lines can be completed with a single falling tetromino. The faster players position the block and the more lines they complete at a time, the more points they score. As the game progresses and the speed of the falling blocks increases it becomes increasingly difficult to move the blocks into a useful
59 position. The game ends when the well is filled with blocks and there are no more blocks left to fall. There is no way to win the game. The aim is to play for as long as possible and to achieve a high score.
Figure 3: The seven tetrominic shapes of Tetris
First released by Maxis in early 2000, The Sims is a strategic life-simulation game created and designed by American Will Wright, the famed auteur of the SimCity series. It became an instant hit and has sold over 50 million copies (Whitehead, 2008). The its franchise is now one of the most profitable in video game history, with the original game, its sequel and their many expansion packs consistently winning awards and dominating sales charts month after month.
In The Sims, the player steers individual virtual characters, or ‘sims’, through their daily suburban lives, guiding everything from basic hygiene needs, to their careers, relationships, and recreational activities. Players create and then control their sims directly, instructing them how to behave and engage with the world around them. Players
60 can create up to four characters, either choosing from a set of pre-defined characters or designing their own, giving them a name, gender, skin complexion and personality traits.
Sims, who have rudimentary artificial intelligence, will manage some of the basics of their ‘lives’ if left alone, but to be successful they need direction. With a limited amount of money, players must buy and design houses for their sims, planning the layout, and choosing the furniture, appliances and decorations. Managing the life of a sim is not an easy task.
Figure 4: The Sims
The principal challenge of the game is to keep one’s sims happy and healthy. On-screen displays record a character’s emotional and physical state (Figure 4): there are readings
61 for ‘Happiness’, ‘Hunger’, ‘Hygiene’, ‘Bladder’, ‘Fun’, ‘Comfort’, ‘Social’ (desire for interaction with other sims), ‘Energy’ and ‘Room’ (desire for clean and spacious living).
Using these as a guide, players can create as pleasant an environment as possible for their characters. Alternatively, should they wish to act as a vengeful deity, they may make their sims’ lives extremely difficult and miserable. Like Tetris, The Sims is an open ended game, it cannot be completed. Players set their own goals for their sims such as getting rich, have a high power career, a big house or simply a happy life.
Play Theory
Juul’s Model of Games
One of the most significant recent additions to play theory scholarship was made by
Jesper Juul. Transcending the narrow ludological tradition from which it emerges, Juul’s impressive Half-Real (2005) offers a detailed interrogation and analysis of the concepts of rules and fiction in video game studies. Bypassing the well-trodden play-versus- narrative path of previous works, it seeks to re-engage with the question of internal mechanisms and fictive experience.
Moreover, Juul attempts to synthesise and build upon existing definitions of play; his study is therefore an ideal starting-place for an investigation of this paradigm. Tracing the theorisation of play through Huizinga (1955), Caillios (1961), Suits (1978), Avedon and
Sutton-Smith (1971), Crawford (1984), Kelley (1990) and Salen and Zimmerman (2004),
Juul outlines a formalist play theory discourse, which he calls the ‘classic game model’
(2005: 6). He notes that while not all these theorists share the same definitions or focus,
62 there is enough commonality of ideas to understand them all as representing a single paradigmatic approach (2005: 23-43).
Juul’s conceptualisation of gaming combines the insights of the classic game model theorists along with his own ideas. It is a rigorous and detailed model that provides perhaps the most sophisticated account yet of the points of similarity and divergence between traditional play and video gaming. In making case studies of the games Tetris and The Sims, I propose to look at the work of Juul, and classic game model theorists
Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman, and Bernard Suits, as well as post-Deleuzian philosopher Brian Massumi, in order to apply the major conceptual tools of play theory developed by these scholars and assess their applicability to video game studies.
Taking the main arguments of the classic game model theorists, Juul produces a set of key characteristics of games (2005: 36). Six features, he says, are ‘necessary and sufficient for something to be considered a game’ (2005: 7):
1. Games must be based on rules.
2. Games must have variable, quantifiable outcomes.
3. Different values, some positive, some negative, must be assigned to the different potential outcomes of the game.
4. Games must be challenging, the player needing to invest effort in order to influence the outcome.
5. The players must be attached to the outcomes of the game in the sense that winning will make them happy and losing unhappy.
63 6. The same game, played by the same rules, can be played with or without real life consequences. (Juul, 2005: 36)
This six point conceptualisation epitomises the classic game model. It incorporates the major ideas of the seven classic game model theorists, as well as Juul’s own framing. The six points Juul articulates here are all common ideas throughout play theory literature and popular discourse. But this is not to say that they are understood in precisely the same way by every theorist. What Juul has done is deliberately provide a generalised framework to enable a closer examination of the internal mechanics of gaming.
Juul’s six point schema will form the basis for the rest of my analysis in this chapter.
Contained within it are two key concepts: ‘rules’ (point 1) and ‘outcomes’ (points 2-6, where in point 6 the term ‘consequence’ is substituted for ‘outcome’ to connote outcome outside the game space) (2005: 36). These are foundational ideas in the play theory paradigm, but ones rarely scrutinised.
Rules
What are rules? This is a deceptively complex question. Rules determine that which is allowed and that which is not, what is legal and what is not, what one can do and what one cannot. But beyond generalities what are they? How do they operate?
In popular and play theory discourse rules have come to be understood as the defining mechanism of game play. They mark a game’s limits and might be said even to define its very nature. While all classic game model theorists insist that a game is a rule-based activity, they do not share a common understanding of rules. A closer examination of
64 Suits’ The Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia (1978), Salen and Zimmerman’s Rules of Play (2004), and Juul’s own conceptualisation in Half-Real will reveal just how disputed the concept of rules is. I want to focus on the two most significant aspects of rules theory: negative capture and power.
The Logic of Negative Capture
While there are earlier play theorists of the classic game model, many of them better known, play philosopher Suits’ The Grasshopper (1978) best articulates one of the most significant underlying assumptions about the operation of rules. Suits’ work emphasises what I will term the ‘logic of the negative capture’16 of rules, that is the idea that rules work by prohibiting other possible actions. This conceptualisation is best expressed when
Suits argues that:
To play a game is to engage in activity directed towards bringing about a specific state of affairs, using only means permitted by the rules, where rules prohibit more efficient in favour of less efficient means, and where such rules are accepted just because they make possible such activity. (Suits, 1978: 34)
He illustrates this with the example of a foot race on an athletics track. The rules stop competitors from cutting across the field within the track, and insist that they take the longer, less efficient, route within the lanes of the track. Similarly, rules forbid competitors in the high jump from bringing along a ladder to assist in their clearing of the
16 With this terminology I am indebted to Brian Massumi, and his critique of the idea that rules work simply by restriction. This is a critique I will return to shortly.
65 bar. In other words, rules stop the competitors achieving their goals by the easiest and most effective means.
For Suits, then, rules are about the denial of possibilities, about restricting an infinite range of possible actions to a limited and deliberately constrained set of practices. Rules are negative; they function by means of limitation, exclusion, rejection and negation, and force participants/competitors/players to use only inefficient means or methods of play.
Suits’ explanation may be the clearest, but he is by no means alone in defining rules in this way. Throughout popular and academic discourse, play is seen as an activity negatively constrained by the operation of rules, as possibilities cut back, potential denied or reality restricted.
The logic of negative capture also features prominently in game designers and theorists
Salen and Zimmerman’s monumental game design primer Rules of Play published in
2004. Rules, the authors argue, are privileged as the primary shaping force of the practices of play: ‘To play a game is to follow its rules. […] [E]very game has a set of rules [and] every set of rules defines a game’ (2004: 117). For Salen and Zimmerman, rules are the basis on which all play operates and they are what makes games unique and set them apart from other aspects of culture. As they phrase it ‘[g]ames are intrinsically artificial and separate from “real-world” contexts whereas […] other forms of rules
[etiquette, law and war] are not separate from ordinary life’ (Salen and Zimmerman,
2004: 125).
66 Salen and Zimmerman set out a number of (sometimes contradictory) frameworks through which they analyse games. The most critical of these is the following six-point definition of rules:
1. Rules limit player action.
2. Rules are explicit and unambiguous.
3. Rules are shared by all players.
4. Rules are fixed.
5. Rules are binding.
6. Rules are repeatable. (2004: 125).
The first of these points is another way of expressing the concept of the logic of negative capture. As for Suits, for Salen and Zimmerman, rules function negatively, by restricting the possible types of interactions the player may have: players do not have carte blanche to do as they will, but is made to act in a prescribed, limited manner. The authors use the dice game Yatzee by way of illustration:
[In] Yatzee, think of all the things you could do with the dice: you could light them on fire, eat them, juggle them, or make jewellery out of them. But you do not do any of these things. When you play Yatzee you do something incredibly narrow and specific. (2004: 122)
For Salen and Zimmerman, rules are about constraining the kinds of way in which players engage with the game materials. They restrict players’ actions to a finite set of approved possibilities.
67 The Double Logic of Rules
Juul takes issue with both Suits and Salen and Zimmerman for the stress they place on the logic of negative capture. He rejects Suits’ notion that rules function to force a participant to use less efficient methods of reaching an objective.
The concept of inefficient means makes sense in Suits’ prime example of the race where it is not allowed to cut across the infield and the high jump where using a ladder is disallowed. The problem is that it would always be possible to set up a game using the most efficient means possible: a racing game where cutting over the infield was allowed; a race to climb a ladder, etc. (Juul, 2005: 43)
What Juul is critiquing here is not just Suits’ limited range of examples, but the very notion that games and rules can be meaningfully understood by reference to a hypothetical, free activity. Juul is problematising the underlying assumption that rules are necessarily limitations. He expands this idea with his critique of Salen and Zimmerman, where he crucially states:
[T]he limitation view of rules only paints half the picture: you could make jewellery of the dice, but it would be meaningless within the Yatzee game. The rules of a game also set up the potential actions, actions that are meaningful inside the game but meaningless outside. It is the rules of chess that allow the player to perform a checkmate—without the rules there is no checkmate, only meaningless moving of pieces across a board. Rules specify limitations and affordances. (Juul, 2005, 58)
68 The actions of play, Juul is suggesting, are only meaningful in context of a space defined and demarcated by systems of rules. Without rules, certain possibilities simply do not exist. Rules may define limitations, but they also bring play into being.
Juul’s argument, that rules have the double action of both creating the possibilities of play and at the same time limiting it, is mirrored in an unlikely source. While not engaging with play theory at all, philosopher Brian Massumi offers a sophisticated articulation of this idea in his analysis of the function of rules in sport:
The capture and containment [by rules] is not simply negative. […] The rules are a preservative organ of the field of play. They are the condition of the play’s identity across its serial repetitions in disparate times and places. The positivity of the rules is in preservation. This is also, precisely, their negativity. Codifying capture cuts both ways. Negatively, it stops and contains variation. Positively it preserves the game for repetition. (Massumi, 2002: 79)
By arguing that play’s identity, that is, our concept of the game, is formed through repetition of the positive and negative action of rules, Massumi is expanding upon Juul’s fundamental point. It is the paradoxical nature of rules—they both allow and disallow play practices—that alone produces the game and gives it being. The identity of play does not reside in a technological object, a piece of software or an item of sporting equipment, nor can it exist prior to, or apart from, its repeated performance by players, an activity which is produced and constrained by the game rules. Far from being a denial of freedoms, rules function as a constructive force that permits play to proceed, a game to be perceived, and players’ actions to have meaning.
69 Video Game Restrictions?
Suits and Salen and Zimmerman’s failure to recognise the positive actions of rules and therefore complete reliance on the logic of negative capture undermines the usefulness of their models of traditional play. In not acknowledging the productive elements of rules, only a partial picture of traditional play is painted. This problem, however, is drastically exacerbated when such a model is applied to video games. Video games have no material reality, everything in the game world is artificial, and thus video games cannot be seen as having a natural form17 that is being restricted. The framework offered by a traditional concept of rules becomes meaningless when applied to the virtual world of video games.
The problems of applying the logic of negative capture to the artificial environments of video games stem from the implicit assumption that restriction can be perceived independently of a defined reference point. This is problematic because restriction is a cutting back of options and as such requires a reference point for comparison, that is, the thing that is being cut back. In theorising traditional play, Suits, and Salen and
Zimmerman fall back on understanding these reference points relative to the material properties of the game resources and of alternative resources that could conceivably be used. The potential physical possibilities of the game world (and the world more broadly) become the natural state in contrast to which the game is understood. The possible uses of the dice in Yatzee that Salen and Zimmerman list are based or their perceived understanding of what is physically possible with this object (2004: 122). Likewise in
Suits’ example of high jump the use of a ladder is an imaginable scenario because the
17 The concept that any object/structure/form can have a “natural” or “free” state that exists prior to, and independently of, power is one I will critique in depth in Chapter Four.
70 physical properties of a ladder would make the clearing of the bar easier, thus the ladder is a more efficient means (1978: 34). Yet with video games one cannot rely on the physical properties. Juul points directly to this difficulty when evaluating the appropriateness of Suits’ ideas for video game analysis:
[T]he the concept of less efficient means completely breaks down in the case of video games. […] If we look at any video game, how can we say that the player is using less efficient means? Would this be compared to making the game yourself? Hacking the game? Using a cheat code? (Juul, 2005: 43)
In what is a very significant, and unusual, move for a ludology theorist, Juul is observing the differences between traditional play forms and those of video games. Video games are constructed environments: there are no conceivable ‘efficient means’ of playing a game, only the means the software allows. Video games do not have a material form with which numerous activities are possible; every type of interaction a video game allows needs to be programmed in by the game designers. So, whereas a heavy emphasis on restriction is partially appropriate for the rules of traditional play, it is entirely inappropriate to those of video gaming.
In order for the concept of restriction to make sense in video game theory we must have a parallel concept of referentiality; the game must either invoke a familiar setting or conventions, or at least be understood by the player in terms of past experience or possible alternatives. The difficulty in Salen and Zimmerman’s work is that they present the notion of restriction as removed from the process of referentiality. That is, they do not define what it is that is being denied beyond broad generalities; instead they implicitly
71 assume that a stable and universal point of comparison exists, which is shared between all players, designers and theorists, and therefore does not need articulating. It is only through this manoeuvring that play can be conceptualised as shaped by restrictions while not contradicting their (and many ludologists’) belief in play’s separation from other aspects of life.
This is not a problem that Salen and Zimmerman recognise, however, for they readily apply to video gaming their conceptualisation of rules based on the logic of negative capture in traditional play. Where previously they used Yatzee to talk about traditional play, here they choose Tetris (2004: 142-144), but it is not a happy choice and betrays the problems of their rules framework. The contrast between Tetris and Yatzee is striking and, rather than showing the similarity of the two games, their argument serves ultimately to emphasise the differences between them, and consequently between traditional and video game play. Video game play is constructed and, as such, rules work through the construction of possibilities not the denial of them. Salen and Zimmerman do not recognise this and thus offer an internally inconsistent analysis of Tetris.
The difficulty comes from Tetris having no imaginable “natural” state that is being denied. Tetris cannot be understood through the framework of restriction. This is unintentionally demonstrated by Salen and Zimmerman when they attempt to compile a list of the rules of Tetris (2004: 143-144). Far from cataloguing what this game denies, this list is primarily about what it allows: it is based in construction not restriction. The very first item on the list —‘[p]lay takes place on a grid of 19 by 10 squares’ (2004: 143)
— displays the difficulty in applying their theory to a virtual object. There is no
72 suggestion that a larger grid upon which Tetris’ play might have taken place is being denied: it is the intention of the designer that the play action should occur on that grid and no other. This is not a restriction. Even when Salen and Zimmerman do articulate a property of Tetris as a restriction, such as when they note ‘[b]locks cannot be moved off the left or right borders of the grid’ (2004: 143), it is simply a negatively phrased corollary to another item on the list, in this case their first rule. Their difficulty in matching their own observations to their framework becomes even more apparent with the rule stating that ‘[t]he up-direction on the directional pad has no effect’ (2004: 143).
To find a restriction on the player’s actions, they have resorted to listing those actions that have no effect. Even in their own terms this is not a rule, as it does not directly shape the player’s play practices.
The possibilities of interaction in Tetris are indeed few: a block may be moved to the left, right, down or rotated. It would be feasible to program in other possibilities: the ability to move a block up the grid, to shoot or move over blocks in its path, to rotate the grid, or even to give blocks artificial intelligence. These are all thing we can imagine from experiences with other video games. But doing this would change what Massumi referred to as the ‘identity’ of the game, it would create a new game, and thus does not prove that
Tetris functions by restriction. Any variation of the rules means the game is no longer strictly Tetris.
The attempt to satisfy both (irreconcilable) definitions of rules: as restriction and as
‘separate to ordinary life’ (Salen and Zimmerman, 2004: 125) has led Salen and
Zimmerman to produce this confused list of the rules of Tetris, which reveals the
73 problems at the heart of the classic game model. These problems arise from the fact this discourse has no consistent way to talk about the contexts through which players understand their gaming experiences. Salen and Zimmerman conflate properties that can be understood without any reference point, like ‘[p]lay takes place on a grid of 19 by 10 squares’ (2004: 143) with properties that are only significant in reference to other objects like ‘[t]he up-direction on the directional pad has no effect’(2004: 143). The latter “rule” is only of consequence if the player has an expectation that the up button may do something. Such an expectation is referential; it would come about from playing other games where it is indeed rare for a directional button not to serve a purpose. The inclusion of things that do nothing in a list of rules makes a consistent framework impossible. There are many other actions that also do not affect the game, which are not discussed, presumably because they are deemed extraneous, but this demarcation is arbitrary. Different theorists (and players) would have different points of reference. For
Salen and Zimmerman the up button doing nothing is important. For a theorist or player with different past experiences – for example familiarity with the iPhone interface, the absence of effect in tilting or shaking the gaming unit might be significant. The theorists’ understanding of what is being restricted is formed through their own experiences; it is not a universal truth.
On the surface it seems that resolving the incompatibility within Salen and Zimmerman’s video game rules framework should be a matter of simply eliminating either one of the two conflicting elements. There would thus be two possible solutions. Firstly one could redefine rules to mean only those logics which can be understood without a point of reference. Such a solution would require disposing of the notion that rules function
74 through restriction, but beyond this could keep most of the rest of Salen and
Zimmerman’s framework. Alternatively we could expand the notion of rules to incorporate referentiality, and thus keep those rules which are understood as restrictions. ,
However, to do so would require us to radically re-imagine rules, not as an internal structure of a game that is separate from culture, but rather as a point of connection between social context and the ludic system. Yet as I will show, beyond the simple logic of Tetris neither of these solutions is practical.
To show why neither approach works and to build an alternative let us return to the second case study of this chapter: The Sims. The Sims is a particularly revealing study of how video game rules work. Where many of the problems with Salen and Zimmerman’s model were masked by the simplicity of Tetris, the complexity of The Sims demonstrates the need for a model of rules quite distinct from one developed for traditional play.
Where Tetris presents the player with a very small number of play options, players of The
Sims are tasked with managing and maintaining an active family – from designing and building a house to dealing with matters of personal hygiene. Where Tetris is an abstract game, The Sims is representational, reflecting our daily lives in much of its richness and complexity. The Sims allows players to experiment with a wide range of play practices and styles: there are countless different individual sims with their own characteristics and looks to play with, limitless design options for the house they might purchase, and hundreds of items they can buy to furnish them.
The Sims does not function through a process of restriction because although it simulates real life situations—albeit with a sense of humour and parody—the designers have not
75 started with a complete replica of the world and then begun cutting back, that is, adding restrictions. The designers had no raw physical material to use, they built the game from the ground up, adding in all possibilities through which the player can navigate. Likewise although players understand this game in reference to their lives (more on this shortly), very few would expect it to offer the same array of options as the physical world; it is a game and it is understood as such. To conceptualise The Sims as anything but a space of construction is to misunderstand the creative processes of both design and play. Such a viewpoint would also necessitate having a fully developed concept of its cultural reference point, that is, in order to know what is being restricted, one must fully comprehend the “natural”. With The Sims this reference point is human culture (or at very least, Western culture), which would prove problematic and ultimately impossible to comprehend in its diverse totality.
The Sims, therefore, reinforces the need to abandon a dependence on the notion of restriction and shift to a conceptualisation of rules as productive. Yet its representational nature means that it also very difficult to offer a model of rules as separate from referentiality. Every action, every logic of The Sims is performed in context of the simulation of the characters’ (one’s sims’) lives. Where Tetris had a number of rules that could be understood outside of cultural reference points, The Sims has very few. The game structures that shape play are designed to replicate many of those from our everyday lives and, as such, identifying a game logic outside that context is next to impossible. From players’ perspectives, they are always going to understand the rules of the game in reference to their experiences from everyday life; not as restriction, but as a mirroring of the familiar. Even where the game differs from our everyday experiences
76 like this it can be understood as a parodic and playful engagement with culture. To try to isolate a game’s rules from the experiential and contextual engagement of the player is a pointless theoretical exercise. What The Sims shows us is that our model of rules must acknowledge the shaping power of cultural experience and referentiality without conceptualising that relationship purely as one of restriction.
The traditional concept of rules needs careful re-evaluation in context of the video game form. The logic of negative capture, which was problematic when applied to traditional play, becomes dangerously flawed when talking about virtual play. The artificiality and referentiality of video game worlds makes it necessary to reconsider what rules are and how they function. I noted earlier that there seemed two likely solutions to the incompatibility in Salen and Zimmerman’s framework, but as I have shown with The
Sims it is ultimately more complex than either solution allows for. We must build a model of the shaping forces of video game play that recognises the huge role that cultural reference points have. This model must not require there to be a universal shared reference point, a hypothetical free activity or “natural” state, which the game can be understood in contrast to. And, finally, the model must reject the logic of negative capture and recognise play as a productive relationship, not one of restriction. As I have shown, video game rules work through construction not denial. If we can do all these things, we will have constructed a more practical and theoretically stable framework with which to understand this complex medium.
77 Rules and Power
To move towards a more stable and robust model of the shaping forces of video game play we need to begin by looking beyond the logic of negative capture. Many other important questions concerning the scope and source of the power of rules must be considered. Are rules binding? Are they explicit? Should we conceptualise forces that shape play, but are not binding or explicit, as types of rules? Where do forces such as etiquette and social convention fit in? Does the fact that a computer mediates the rules of a game in any way change the rules themselves? If so, how can we theorise them?
As with the concept of the negative capture of rules, the classic game model offers an ambiguous and confused account of the power of rules. It is an account that is once again made even more problematic by its application to video game theory. In Salen and
Zimmerman’s work, for example, there is much confusion as to what constitutes a rule and what does not. But in this case it can be seen as a productive confusion, one that, in illustrating the difficult nature of rules, points to the need to expand our framework for analysis. Salen and Zimmerman, this time more than Juul, are acknowledging the complexity of the term rules and our need to move beyond a narrow definition.
The Lusory Attitude
When it comes to the power of rules, the classic game model theorists, including Juul, are in basic agreement: players must agree to abide by the rules of a game before they take part. Suits coins the term ‘lusory attitude’ to describe the player’s willing surrender of his/her power to the game. In the context of his model of rules, for the game to start, a voluntary acceptance of the prohibition of more efficient means is necessary (Suits, 1978:
78 23). Salen and Zimmerman also use the terminology of the lusory attitude to suggest that
‘a game is a kind of social contract’ (2004: 98): players implicitly agree to this contract in choosing to play the game. They go further and argue that ‘[t]o decide to play a game is to create—out of thin air—an arbitrary authority that serves to guide and direct the play of that game’ (2004: 98). As they say in their listed characteristics of play, ‘rules are binding’ and ‘shared by all players’ (2004: 122-123). Moreover, ‘rules contain their own authority’ (2004: 123), to which every player must submit. Likewise, Juul, with his more sophisticated model for rules, still argues that ‘game activity […] requires that the players respect the rules’ (2005: 38). ‘Even a cheater depends on the rules to be able to play,’
(2005: 38) he adds; only a spoilsport denies the authority of the rules and, in so doing, brings the game to an abrupt halt. Rules, it seems, are inherently binding: the lusory attitude is not negotiable, but an a priori condition of play. Unless players accept the authority of the rules, play cannot proceed.
Why, then, given this apparent agreement, have I claimed that the nature of rules and the source of their power are in dispute? The answer lies in Salen and Zimmerman’s attempt to probe deeper as to the nature of rules. Alongside their six characteristics, the same authors offer another schema of rules. They suggest three categories of rule exist:
“operational”, “constitutive” and “implicit” (2004: 129-130).
Operational rules are the explicit rules governing a player’s actions, the ones that are codified in rule books for sport, written on the box of board games, or listed in the manuals of some video games. They specify which actions are legal and which are illegal in the game; they should be unambiguous and leave little room for interpretation.
79 While they are related to operational rules, constitutive rules operate independently of the player and function according to their own logic. These are the mathematical systems that function to determine the way the game is to be played. The player is not required to understand constitutive rules, as they regulate the mechanics of the game engine and have no direct impact on the player’s behaviour.
Implicit rules are the ‘unwritten rules’ of a game that govern such things as etiquette, sportsmanship, and other codes of proper behaviour (Salen and Zimmerman, 2004: 130).
They are the most open to adaptation and violation: games can be played in an unsportsmanlike manner without actually becoming disrupted. Similarly, implicit rules can be context-dependent: as Salen and Zimmerman point out, one may allow inexperienced players a degree of leeway that one would not give to an expert, or allow a child to replay an unwise move in chess, an opportunity that would be denied a professional player (2004: 130). We might call implicit rules the ‘culturally contextual’ rules that guide play.
At times this schema contradicts what is said in Salem and Zimmerman’s six-point list.
Indeed, the features described in their list can be seen to apply most often only to operational rules, occasionally to constitutive rules, and rarely to implicit rules. Clearly, the notion of implicit rules that are unstated and flexible challenges that of a lusory attitude. Participants may well differ in their understanding of, or preparedness to adopt, sportsmanlike conduct: the authority of sportsmanship, as of etiquette, originates not in the game, but in the social institutions that surround it. A bad sport who is too
80 competitive in an amateur game may face scorn and derision from his/her friends, and a similarly inclined professional player might be labelled a bad role model.
Why then do Salen and Zimmerman develop this schema of operation, constitutive and implicit rules? The reason most likely lies in their attempt to be comprehensive and thus their desire to address certain kinds of forces that influence play, but which are not neatly encompassed by other existing definitions. Salen and Zimmerman identify a range of forces operating upon players, and try to incorporate them into their existing theories using the discourse and terminology they have available. The lack, however, of an existing concept that includes non-binding and non-explicit forces, means Salen and
Zimmerman are compelled to label these forces rules. These forces influence player behaviour, and thus for Salen and Zimmerman must be defined as rules, even if this contradicts their own definition. This conflation ultimately means that these forces are sidelined within Salen and Zimmerman’s framework, yet the brief discussion that is present is suggestive of a need to broaden our theoretical understandings of how play is shaped.
Salen and Zimmerman have identified two very important facets of play: namely that hidden and non-explicit logics, as well as cultural institutions and expectations, impact upon play. While they again fail to recognise the importance here of referentiality, they are none-the-less taking the first significant steps towards a model which acknowledges the existence of a spectrum of forces that influence play practice, only some of which fit with a traditional classic game model definition of rules. Unfortunately Salen and
Zimmerman strive to correct the contradictions of their work, and in doing so ultimately
81 render the true insights of their three-part categorisation inconsequential in context of their overall project. It is necessary now then to examine the two types of rules that Salen and Zimmerman ignore elsewhere in their theory: implicit and constitutive rules; as embedded in the tangled and often clumsy theorisation that Salen and Zimmerman offer are some very important ideas.
Let us begin with implicit rules. I do so because these rules are the most marginalised type of rules in Salen and Zimmerman’s work, yet they are exceedingly important. Salen and Zimmerman make a concerted effort to deemphasise the significance and scope of implicit rules. Perhaps they do this because implicit rules fit least well into a model of gaming that separates play and culture, however that is the very reason they should be looked at. Although Salen and Zimmerman acknowledge that implicit rules ‘are crucial to understanding how [a] game functions’, they argue that when dealing with an individual game implicit rules can be ‘immediately eliminated’ as contributors to a game’s unique identity because ‘by and large the implicit rules of [one] game are similar to the implicit rules of other games’ (2004: 134)18. The flexibility of implicit rules, and the blurring of the boundary between rules and culture that they reveal, make them difficult for Salen and Zimmerman to discuss. The micro-variations of cultural context that produce different implicit expectations of games are far more difficult to track than the overt differences in written or explicit mathematical rules. This is an unfortunate oversight, as
18 The example Salen and Zimmerman discuss is the board-game Chutes and Ladders, but the idea that implicit rules do not contribute to the unique identity of a game is repeated throughout their Rules of Play.
82 implicit rules are the first framework within Salen and Zimmerman’s work that allows for the theorisation of the connections between play and culture19.
Salen and Zimmerman seem also to fail to realise the full implication of the notion of constitutive rules. Constitutive rules are the mathematical logic underpinning all game actions, and as such are absolutely critical to video gaming. By their very nature computers allow for the processing of vast numbers of equations and variables. This changes the nature of the kinds of games that can the made for this medium and how they function. It also means that in all but the most basic video games the player is unaware of the exact logic dictating play; the numerical processing of video games being too complex for even the most gifted mathematicians. As Juul points out:
[I]t is how the computer upholds the rules[… which] gives video games much flexibility, allowing for more complex rules than humans can handle; freeing the player(s) from having to enforce the rules; and allowing for game where the player does not know the rules from the outset. (Juul, 2005: 54)
Yet, when Salen and Zimmerman apply the operational, constitutive and implicit framework to video games, they do so with reference to the simplest of possible examples – computerised Tic-Tac-Toe (Noughts and Crosses). The computer version of this game varies little from its pen-and-paper counterpart and therefore little of interest is
19 In their discussion of implicit rules Salen and Zimmerman raise the key issue of gaming etiquette and, in doing so, make obvious the need to theoretically differentiate between single-player and multiplayer gaming. In single-player gaming the notion of etiquette has little impact on play, whereas in games of more than one participant its impact cannot be overstated, it is a key shaping factor. As Jakobsson and Taylor have revealed in their account of the online role playing game Everquest (2003), breaking with etiquette in a multiplayer game can have major social and ingame consequences. In part, my decision to address single- player games in this thesis was made so as avoid conflating the operation of etiquette in multiplayer games with the operation of cultural influences on all games. The other reasons I have chosen to focus purely on single-player games will be explored in Chapter Five.
83 revealed about constitutive rules. Players are able to perfectly comprehend what the constitutive rules are in this example, and it is far from representative of most video gaming. Unsurprisingly, then, Salen and Zimmerman miss the importance of their own idea in revealing the unique relationship between players and rules in video gaming, and conclude that ‘[t]he constitutive rules of a digital game are remarkably similar to those of a non-digital game’ (2004: 146). It is a convenient conclusion if one is looking to emphasise the similarities between traditional and video game play, but one that is not easily defended.
To see why constitutive rules are so important let’s look at one of the case studies for this chapter. Tetris is a barely more complex game than Tic-Tac-Toe and as such is not a particularly useful example. The Sims, however, is an entirely different story. This game has many thousands of interdependent variables, and the player never quite knows what effect a particular action may have. In my opening to this chapter I offered a narrativisation of an experience I encountered when playing The Sims; this experience reflects the hidden mathematical complexity of the game. In this scenario my goal was to bolster my sim Fred’s ‘happiness’. Put another way, I had to increase the mathematical value of Fred’s happiness variable (displayed as bar graph on screen). There were many options I could choose. I wondered whether his low happiness levels were related to his low ‘hygiene’ ratings, and whether this in turn was caused by his lack of access to a convenient bathroom. Adding a new bathroom to Fred’s house might therefore make him happy, because he would no longer have to wait for his children to vacate the other one every morning; but his happiness variable is not just linked to hygiene, it is also linked to
‘room’, ‘social’ and four other variables, which are in turn linked to each other. Thus
84 would the space taken away to build the new bathroom impact negatively on Fred’s feelings about his house, perhaps changing the way he socialises in it? Could the money used to buy the new bathroom be better spent elsewhere? As a player, one simply cannot know for sure; the exact formula for the calculation of each variable is not known.
Indeed, even if it was known (such as would be the case of for the programmers) the formula would almost certainly be to complex to calculate in one’s head. Not only are the constitutive rules of the game unknown, they are unknowable. Such is the player’s distance from the constitutive rules, and the impenetrability of those rules, that players can never fully understand the game system and are obliged to rely on guesswork and assumptions. As The Sims’ creator Will Wright puts it, ‘[t]he user is trying to build a mental model of the computer model’ (cited in Manovich, 2001: 223) but ultimately it will always be an approximation.
While operational rules are known by definition, and implicit rules are in most cases familiar in a general sense, constitutive rules are never knowable in video games. This means that in order for the video game player to understand what is happening in the game world and not just be the victim of unintelligible forces, the game must offer a means by which the player can build a relatively accurate ‘mental model’ of the constitutive rules. This is why so many games are referential. A known point of reference or the simulation of a familiar activity means that the basic frameworks of the constitutive rules will be understood. The Sims presents a version of domestic life with which most players are intimately familiar. Thus, through only a small amount of trial and error, to see what aspects of their own worlds are simulated, players can build mental models. While we know that life in the world of The Sims works in many different ways
85 from our own everyday life, we can project from our lives into the game. To judge the likely results of their actions, The Sims’ players will use knowledge derived from their daily experiences, they cannot avoid doing so. They should know that, while it would be easy to wall up and starve Fred’s children to death, this is very likely to affect the happiness and well being of Fred and his wife and is probably not the best solution to
Fred’s hygiene problem. Getting Fred a higher-paid job and building the extension is likely to be a more successful solution. The Sims allows players to experiment outside the moral codes of our culture, but its logic is nearly always firmly based within those codes.
Being a good consumerist and family-focused citizen is the most likely path to success in this game. The Sims’ players gauge what brings success in everyday life and use this as the reference point for their play strategies. They can choose not to obey the norms of society, and have fun transgressing taboos, but ultimately they know that the game privileges those practices that adhere to social norms.
New media theorist McKenzie Wark argues that The Sims can be read, not just as ‘an allegory for everyday life’ but as a hybrid of allegory and algorithm – or an ‘allegorithm’
(Wark, 2007: 29-30). Here the algorithm of play is both the programming code and the player’s procedural performance20. That play performance is produced in reference to our everyday experiences and to the constitutive rules of the game or, more precisely, the constitutive rules of the game as understood through the allegory of everyday life. It is this symbiotic relationship Wark is identifying; The Sims is not just an allegory, it has a purpose and logic of its own, but nor is it simply an algorithm operating independently of culture. It is an allegorithm, a mathematical system that through referentiality has a
20 For a fuller exploration of algorithms see Chapter Six.
86 significance and meaning to the player. Wark uses this theorisation of the allegorithm to explore the specific politics of The Sims, but it can also be mobilised to talk about power at a much more general level, to understand the operation of power in the game21.
It is the referentiality of The Sims allegorithm that gives it power. The authority of its constitutive rules stems from the fact that they replicate those of the real world. It is not simply, as the classic game model suggests, that the player agrees to take on a set of rules before play, but more that the player does not question the rules they are subject to because they are familiar. Players do not dispute that their sims need money to buy objects because this is an established practice within our culture. Likewise, they do not challenge that a sim who does not eat will eventually starve, because bodies requiring food is a medical reality. The game itself has no material reality that necessitates that the programmers reproduce these patterns, because in the artificial world of the game virtually anything is possible. However, when it does, the player accepts these patterns, generally without question.
This is not only true of The Sims. With the exception of abstract games like Tetris, almost all video games explicitly use players’ pre-existing knowledge to shape their play expectations and practices22. Flight simulators rely on players’ expectations of planes and how they handle, while battle games rely on an understanding of war. Players’ existing knowledge gives them a way of grappling with the game system’s logic, which otherwise
21 An engagement with the political dimension of the allegorithm closer to Wark’s project can be found in the final chapter of this thesis. 22 As I noted earlier our experiences of other games may shape our expectations with Tetris, but they are not so obviously invoked to train us, nor so integral to understanding the game world. However Murray’s suggestion that Tetris can be read as ‘a perfect enactment of the over tasked lives of Americans in the 1990s’ (Murray 1998, 143-144) does demonstrate that it is possible to read Tetris referentially to daily activities.
87 would be at best confusing and at worst unknowable. The line between constitutive and implicit rules, therefore, is permanently blurred. The mathematical functioning of a game is both hidden from and incomprehensible to a human: representational games are invariably shaped by cultural expectations.
In discussing Tic-Tac-Toe and Tetris, rather than a more complex game like The Sims,
Salen and Zimmerman miss an opportunity to wrestle properly with the complexity of their rules frameworks. They do no more than hint at something important: a type of referential and non-binding set of forces that must be recognised, either by incorporating it into rules, as Salen and Zimmerman attempt, by establishing it alongside rules, or else by shedding the concept of rules and formulating a new approach to the power exerted over the player. By conflating all shaping forces with rules, Salen and Zimmerman render their own framework inconsistent. They do, however, observe a range of forces in operation that is all too often ignored. What they show is that in many circumstances, and particularly with video games, the authority and the effectiveness of rules to influence play do not appear ‘out of thin air’, as they claim elsewhere (2004: 98), but from a complex interrelationship between social institutions and cultural logics. Written rules are merely the tip of the proverbial iceberg when it comes to the forces that shape play. The discontinuity between game play and culture that play theory and ludology emphasise, makes such connection difficult to acknowledge, let alone theorise.
What becomes clear, the more we examine rules, is that there is a range of forces being subsumed under the term, a spectrum of shaping mechanisms of power—from those that are binding, to those that work subtlety on the player’s expectations. The classic game
88 model privileges only those forces that bind as the most crucial to a game’s identity. The terminology of rules, and its traditional understanding as negatively binding, resonates heavily in this framework. Rules, it seems, are constrained by their past, and video game theory will simply have to accommodate them.
Outcomes and Goals
Play theory does offer another key idea that extricates us somewhat from the problems created by the terminology of rules and, in this final section of the chapter, I want to offer it as an essential concept if we are to rethink the forces at work in play. The concept is
‘outcomes’, and, as previously noted, it features heavily in the literature, in particular in
Juul’s six-point framework.
Juul argues that games have variable and quantifiable outcomes to which different positive and negative values are assigned. Players will have a different emotional response to different outcomes, and are required to make an effort to achieve these outcomes (2005: 36). Put simply, winning is encouraged by the game, losing discouraged, and the player will correspondingly feel happy to win and sad to lose.
Juul terms the construction of certain outcomes as desirable, and other outcomes as undesirable ‘valorisation’ and argues that it can be achieved in a variety of ways:
The values of the different outcomes of the game can be assigned in different ways: by a statement on the box (“Defend the Earth”); by instructions of the game; by the fact that some actions give a higher score than others; by virtue of there only being one way of progressing and making something happen; or it can be implicit from the setup—being
89 attacked by hostile monsters usually means that the player has to defend himself or herself against them. (Juul, 2005: 40)
This understanding of the process of valorisation points to three main techniques through which certain outcomes are constructed as desirable: explicit pedagogic instruction (the statement on the box); the structures of progression (the rewarding of points or the furthering of game events); and the repetition of generic conventions. These critical mechanisms are fundamental to the framework I wish to build.
For Juul, the player is essentially passive and plays no part in the production of values.
Value has been assigned to outcomes prior to the commencement of the game, to be learnt or intuited by the player upon engaging with the game (if not earlier). Juul never specifies the agency that determines valorisation, but ultimately this responsibility seems to rest with the game’s designers and is made clear to the player by the game’s structure, content, and supplementary material such as the container box or instruction manual. Juul is relying upon a model where authorial intent governs meaning production, that is, where the audience simply uncovers the meaning dictated by the author/s. He is positing a circumstance in which the intention of the game’s designers is unambiguously understood by the player. Yet ultimately he does not address the issue that post- structuralism has repeatedly noted: authorial intention is never perfectly communicated
(cf. Barthes, 1977: 42-148; Foucault, 1977b: 113-138; and Certeau, 1988: 165-176).
Players cannot simply know what the game designers want of them; there will always be a discrepancy between what is intended and what is interpreted. Players are always active producers of the game’s meaning.
90 One possible solution to the rendering of the player as the passive receiver in the process of valorisation comes through the concept of goals. The traditional understanding of goals is outlined well by Suits, and corresponds neatly with Juul’s concept of valorisation. Suits argues that ‘to play a game is to engage in activity directed towards bringing about a specific state of affairs’ (1978: 34). The ‘specific state of affairs’, the goal, varies from game to game, but the underlying principle that play is about reaching a goal remains constant regardless of genre or type. As such, goals are essential to play and are determined before play takes place. This theorisation privileges goals; without goals
Suits’ framework of rules as impediments ceases to being meaningful. It is only in relation to the predetermined and fixed goal that rules can be understood as negatively capturing or restricting play. For instance in his example of the high jump, his initial assumption is that the object of the exercise is to clear the bar. It is only in this context that the idea of using a ladder, a method “denied” by the rules, becomes thinkable.
Salen and Zimmerman significantly expand upon Suits’ insights by suggesting that there are two types of goal: ‘long-term’ and ‘short-term’, the former being the pre-assigned situations of winning (victory states), and the latter the smaller and often user-created tasks necessary to permit the player to progress through the game. For these authors, goals do not just define a victory, but signal how to achieve it. Salen and Zimmerman believe that a long-term goal will push the player towards certain types of engagement, or, as they eloquently put it, ‘[t]he goal helps the player move through the space of possibility’ (2004: 342). In other words, knowing what they are attempting to achieve will help players to align their behavioural practices with those that will progress towards this result. Short-term goals play a similar role, but on a micro-level: ‘[j]ust as important
91 as the final win condition, the macro-level goal, are the tiny movements of directed play, the micro-interactions that move a player through a game’(2004: 343). Short-term goals are ‘the navigational beacons that help orient players’ (2004: 344). They are the minor objectives and tasks players must achieve on their way to victory.
The concept of short-term goals allows Salen and Zimmerman to go beyond what Juul and Suits suggest. ‘A game can explicitly provide short-term goals’, Salen and
Zimmerman contend, though ‘it is also very common for the players to generate short- term goals themselves, in response to their current situation’ (2004: 343). This is a critical idea, as it is an acknowledgement of the player’s active role in determining what he/she pursues, that is, how the player chooses to play. Short-term goals are not solely pre- determined, or pre-valorised, but may be actively negotiated by the player in the course of playing the game. Most often, of course, a player’s goals will correspond to those intended by the game designers (a point I shall return to presently), but it must not be assumed that goals are necessarily dictated by the designer throughout the game.
In their assumption that designers set all macro-goals Salen and Zimmerman are once again caught out by the generality of their project. Because they are trying to cover all types of gaming they presume an inflexibility to long-term goals that is not true of single- player video gaming. Where one can see why multiplayer gaming of any sort needs an agreed and predetermined goal, single-player video gaming is more adaptable. Most single-player games offer a valorised goal, but play does not cease to function when the player picks a different goal for themselves, even if it is at odds with that established by the designer. There are many ways of engaging with a single-player video game that keep
92 within the rules, but where the goals of the game, as valorised by the box or elsewhere, are not taken on by the player. Likewise, as I will illustrate with our case studies, many video games do not have a single long-term goal but offer the player a variety of objectives to choose between.
Goals in Action
Tetris and The Sims do not offer a simple victory state. Neither game can be won. In
Tetris the player may aim to get a high score or last a certain amount of time, but the game always ends with them ultimately failing, the blocks filling the well to the top and no more blocks able to enter. Short-term goals are what propels Tetris forward, the players’ basic aim being to form complete lines and cause those blocks to disappear from the screen. Players may also try to form multiple lines (up to four at once), or, as the game progresses, try building their blocks up to near the top of the well and then work to clear the screen – such an approach greatly increases the difficulty as it gives players less time to respond and far less margin for error. The player is rewarded for these achievements: creating a full line scores points, and creating several full lines at the same time scores even more. By means of this scoring formula players are taught and encouraged to take on the goals the designers want. But they are under no obligation to do so; if they choose not to play for points, there is little the game can do.
It is also possible to play Tetris within the rules, but with a different set of goals. For example, a variation is possible whereby players write words for a team-mate to
93 decipher23. A player writes a word, a letter at a time, out of blocks, until his/her partner is able to guess what it is. The other team then attempts the same task with a different word.
The team that guesses its word the fastest wins. The game demands great skill and patience from the player, as well as adding teamwork and competition to an otherwise single-player game.
The ultimate goal of The Sims is even less defined than that of Tetris. It is an open-ended game, in which players may continue to play until they have achieved the highest possible career in their career path. But then there are always alternative career paths.
Similarly, they may play until they have mansions and happy families, but it is up to the individual player to determine what the macro-goal of the game should be. What keeps the game progressing are the micro-goals. Players must keep their sims alive and attend to their every need. The balancing of daily tasks is a micro-goal. Minor advancements in a sim’s fortunes—career development, housing, marital status, skills and possessions— form a developing pattern of micro-achievements that propels the player on.
Many players of The Sims choose to play the game in a way not set down by the game’s designers. One game option that permits players to take “photos” has become particularly popular—as a way of generating images for online comic book stories (for an example see Figure 5) Characters are posed, images taken, text added, and the process repeated over and over until a narrative can be told. Many authors then share their images online and some of these comics have developed a cult following. The goals of this process,
23 I encountered this variation of Tetris at a LAN party many years ago. Indeed, with the same group of people who introduced me to rocket jumping. Subsequent research online, however, has failed to find further evidence of it.
94 both short- and long-term, are quite different from those of “standard” play, but it is a process that is permissible within the rules of the game. This kind of play practice demonstrates the importance of the concept of goals. Engagements like producing a Sims comic strip demonstrate that the concept of rules (even in the broadest sense) is not adequate to explain or predict all aspects of play practice. They also illustrate ways in which players can employ their own strategies of play, which are not all pre-determined by the software.
The idea that players have the power to construct their own goals, once again brings with it culture. Players bring with them certain desires and concepts of pleasure developed in relation to other cultural forms and experiences. Video games have to accommodate such preferences and thus must recreate or build upon other culture structures. Next chapter I will outline a precise model of this process, but for now I will point to how once again video game play is understood and judged in comparison to a cultural reference point.
There simply is no neat separation of play and culture as play theorists would have us believe. The two are inevitably and permanently entwined.
95
Figure 5: The Sims 2 comic Cord Devereaux’s Saturday Night Frantic (MySimsReality, 2007)
96 The importance of the concept of goals is two-fold. Firstly and most significantly for this thesis it provides yet another example of the spectrum of forces that operate upon play that are not binding rules. Goals are ‘navigational beacons’ as Salen and Zimmerman argue (2004: 344). They propel the player towards a specific destination but do not strictly limit how the player should get there. They are the softer shaping forces of play, marking an objective and thus encouraging certain kinds of engagements, but never denying or restricting. Secondly, acknowledging goals is important to any project that recognises the possibilities of play to exceed the designer’s intent. My goal with this thesis is not to catalogue the numerous ways we can play outside of the privileged play practices (I have done this elsewhere [Tulloch, 2001]), but rather to talk about the means that standardise play. And yet it is only because these non-standard practices are possible that mechanisms of standardisation become necessary. If there was no range of play practices possible, if every player innately shared the same macro- and micro-goals, video games would not need to train the player, and this project would be unnecessary.
Rethinking Play Theory
This chapter has examined the contradictions and points of divergence in play theory, and employed the ideas of Juul, Suits, and Salen and Zimmerman, as a means of analysing the discursive construction of play. Even among the classic game model theorists there is by no means a shared and uniform understanding of play and its mechanisms. I have shown that from the intricacies and differences between theorists some profoundly important insights emerge. In particular, there are three things that need to be considered with a formulation of play. First, through Juul’s critique of the logic of negative capture, we find the need for play theory to be based on construction, not restriction, particularly when
97 dealing with video gaming. Secondly, Salen and Zimmerman’s observation of operational, constitutive and implicit rules points to the need for any theorisation to look beyond explicit binding forces and understand both the hidden mathematical logics and the cultural contexts that influence play. Through this framework we start to see that not all influences on play are simply binding rules and that a spectrum of forces, which draw their power from both the game and culture, functions to shape player subjectivities and actions. These are the forgotten forces of play, but they are crucial. Thirdly, we found the need to understand how goals operate to encourage a player towards a certain outcome through the use of certain play practices. Like rules, we found the authority of goals rests in both culture and the game’s structure. All these new understandings reveal the power of culture as crucial and the importance of understanding the process of referentiality occurring in video gaming. In the next chapter I will look explicitly at this process; I will build an alternative model to rules based upon the concept of affordances, which acknowledges the constructive and referential spectrum of forces operating upon play.
98 +;
! " ! "%% %
A Tale of Two Cities
ydney, Australia 8:25AM: I am running late. I have to be at the S university in 30 minutes or my class will be waiting. I hurry down the streets of Sydney. I take all the shortcuts, through the back alleys and laneways, behind the pub where the regulars have started early, past the hotel where the guests are checking out. Cars rush past me. Briefly, I wish I could afford a car, but the traffic jam up ahead makes me reconsider. I continue, against the tide of commuters pouring out of Central Station. I can see my bus up ahead, but my progress is halted by five lanes of traffic. A flashing red signal indicates that I’ve just missed the lights, and the cars are already zooming through. The lights won’t change. After what seems like an age I get the ‘Walk’ signal and I can cross. I sprint to my stop, but as I approach, the bus doors close and the bus drives off. Today I shall be late.
San Andreas, USA 9:37AM: My brother ‘Sweet’ has asked me to deliver a ‘package’. I’m late; I have no wheels and I need to get to the other side of town. A motorcyclist approaches. Sticking out my right arm, I knock him off his bike, which I take and ride away. I weave my way through the congestion, then, when it gets thick, I ride along the pavement, through backyards, down stairs and through a playground. Ignoring the traffic lights, I make my way through the backstreets and onto the motorway, towards downtown. I clip cars as I go, but stay on the bike. I’m going fast now. But then, out of nowhere, a car crosses my path. I smash straight into the side and fly 20 meters through the air. Fortunately, I’m not too badly
99 injured. I sprint to the car and grab the driver. He is upset about the damage to his car. Putting a gun in his face, I throw him out of the car and onto the road; no-one disrespects me like that! He runs away up the road. I get in his car, a Sabre—not my style, but it’ll do for now—and put my foot down, swerve to knock over my new car’s former owner, and continue on my way. I drive fast. This car is not so bad: I will make my delivery on time. My brother will have no reason to be pissed off with me today.
My everyday world and that of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas are very different, and yet within minutes of picking up the controller for the first time I know what I’m supposed to do. The law-breaking, gun-toting, fast-talking life of Carl ‘CJ’ Johnson is a long way from the staid world of academia; yet I do not find it difficult to switch to this persona.
Despite the fact that I’ve never held a gun before, I know the difference between a 9mm, a sub-machine gun and an AK-47. I know the circumstances to which a sawn-off shotgun is best suited, or where a simple melee weapon like a baseball bat is best. I know the purpose of a drive-by shooting and I know the fundamental principles of concealing and selling a stolen car. I understand the basics of how gangs operate: the hierarchy, the battles for territory and the codes of honour and brotherhood. Despite my law-abiding
Australian upbringing, I can take on the role of CJ with little difficulty. I come to Grand
Theft Auto: San Andreas with a set of pre-existing knowledges and experiences which shape and inform my every move in the game. The breakneck speed of CJ’s life, the drug deals, car-jackings, chases, and gun fights are a far cry from my dreary frustrations of running late for class and missing the bus, and yet, a little surprisingly, CJ’s world is very familiar to me.
100 Theorising Familiarity
This chapter is about familiarity and the ways in which video games draw on existing tropes to inform the in-game practices of the player. I will investigate how our daily experiences, as well as the conventions of other media like film, television and literature, converge to produce a range of game pleasures, expectations and understandings. This chapter is about situating video games in the context of other media forms. Distancing my theoretical framework even further from the ludological orthodoxy that play and culture are discrete entities, I want here to look at the way in which contemporary culture is mobilised by video gaming to inform the player as to the operation of the fictional world and to signify and construct their macro- and micro-goals.
This chapter is about understanding video games as a media studies object. It is about conceptualising video gaming as one particular genre of the mediasphere and examining the connections and points of divergence between life, traditional media, and gaming. It is also about addressing the shortcomings of media studies when it comes to the practical question of play. I will query the applicability of the media studies theoretical framework and show that it needs to be supplemented with a useability discourse in order to offer a productive account of game play construction. By linking the media studies notion of remediation to the useability/design-theory concept of affordances I shall suggest that frameworks of understanding are constructed, not through explicit and specific rules, but through complex and dynamic understandings of the functioning of objects.
Expanding the tentative framework that I started to build on the backs of Juul and Salen and Zimmerman in Chapter Two, here my analysis will focus on the matter of cultural
101 influences, those forces vaguely hinted at, but never developed, in play theory. Where ludology and play theory strive for an isolated, self-contained object, media theory offers a framework of interconnection and referentiality. Media theory implicitly problematises the ludological model of video games as the product of a single, linear history of play forms. It points to a messy convergence of a multitude of heritages, cultural forces and techniques. In the last chapter I touched on the way in which video games draw on familiar cultural logics and practices to create authority, and to encourage the player to adopt certain privileged play practices. I want to turn now to the mechanics of that process.
Through this discussion of familiarity and referentiality I will develop an alternative framework to the rules discourse I critiqued earlier. I will offer the concept of affordances. Affordances are the culturally-constructed understandings of the practices of use of an object. They offer us a tool for conceptualising the interplay of binding and non-binding shaping forces at work on play practices rooted in past experience, knowledge and subjectivity. Affordances, I shall propose, are the basis for a new way of theorising play as a constructive relationship of cultural power and perception.
This chapter is about the means by which players’ existing subjectivities are harnessed and refined. It is about building a model that recognises that a player does not come to a video game as a blank slate, but already has expectations and knowledge from past experiences through which they understand the game. It is the first step towards a theorisation of play as an act by an enculturated subject.
102 Grand Theft Auto
My case study here is the controversial Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (Rockstar
Games). It was released in late 2004 on the PlayStation 2 with Xbox and PC versions following six months later. San Andreas is the third game in the Grand Theft Auto III
(GTA: III) series.24 It was preceded by the original Grand Theft Auto III (Rockstar
Games, 2001) and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (Rockstar Games, 2002). These sprawling three-dimensional third-person action hits mark a radical departure from the simple top- down, sprite-based, Grand Theft Auto (DMA Design, 1997) and Grand Theft Auto II
(DMA Design, 1999). While the original two games won only modest critical and popular acclaim, GTA III proved an enormous success. Fuelled by glowing reviews and the vocal condemnation of religious and “family” groups, GTA III became a sales phenomenon. Attracted by the massive game world and flexible gameplay, gamers flocked to purchase GTA III. A mix of gross parody and social realism, the GTA games have been lauded as politically challenging entertainment, taking the video game form beyond the twee platformer and excessively serious flight simulation and, at the same time, criticised as sexist, violent and dangerous.
Throughout the GTA series, the player takes on the role of a young man working his way up the criminal hierarchy. Players walk, run, and drive vehicles around the enormous game worlds, undertaking missions, doing favours for bosses and friends, attempting to destroy their enemies, or simply earning money. While the gameplay is very open in that
24 For the sake of simplicity, unless stated otherwise, the term ‘Grand Theft Auto series’ will refer only to the GTA III-based games: Grand Theft Auto III, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. These games are significantly different from their predecessors, Grand Theft Auto and Grand Theft Auto II, in terms of aesthetics, gameplay, social impact and success, and so are more easily understood as their own franchise.
103 the player can undertake a range of missions (anything from working as a taxi driver to contract killing), much of the gameplay involves driving a variety of vehicles around the large-scale city environment.
San Andreas
San Andreas is set in 1992 in a
fictionalised California. The vast
game world includes three cities, Los
Santos (based on Los Angeles), San
Fierro (San Francisco) and Las
Venturas (Las Vegas). The player
takes on the role of Carl ‘CJ’
Johnson (Figure 6). A former
member of the ‘Grove St’ gang, CJ
has been away five years. Following
the murder of his mother, CJ returns
to Los Santos for the funeral. As he
Figure 6: Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas’ leaves the airport he is harassed by protagonist Carl ‘CJ’ Johnson corrupt local police, who take his money, threaten to frame him for the murder of a police officer and then abandon him in a rival gang’s territory. Escaping this predicament, and arriving at the cemetery, CJ finds that both his family and his gang have fallen apart while he has been away, and tensions with other gangs have escalated. He has a lot of work to do to put things right.
104 Like the previous two GTA III games, the gameplay of San Andreas involves CJ navigating the complex criminal world: accepting missions, doing favours, and making alliances to rapidly rise up the criminal ladder until the San Andreas territory is under his control. San Andreas is unusual for a video game in that its protagonist is African-
American. This choice on the part of Rockstar games has been both praised as an important step forward for gaming and condemned as reproducing racist stereotyping
(Big Smoke, 2008; Ryan, 2005). CJ’s life in San Andreas is very much a ghettoised
‘gangsta’ world, and the characters spend much of their time taking and selling drugs, battling rival gangs and committing crimes. Yet the player must take on CJ’s life, live with the police corruption and victimisation, and come to understand the way in which his family relies on him to keep them together and stay alive. San Andreas’ racial politics are anything but simple. CJ lives in a world familiar from gangsta rap and movies; San
Andreas replicates and reinforces many of the clichés about urban African-American culture. But this repetition has a purpose that is far more sophisticated than those who dismiss it as lazy stereotyping would have it25; it functions to train the player as to how to play the game and in that it is one of the most crucial elements to consider when theorising video gaming. Familiarity is an essential component of video game play.
Video Games as a Media Form
The key text for theorising familiarity is David Jay Bolter and Richard Grusin’s
Remediation: Understanding New Media (1999), a seminal media studies account of
25 This does not mean that San Andreas is free from stereotyping. But the use of stock characters and events serves an important purpose in making the game world familiar to the player. The power of crude caricature proves a real difficulty for any game trying to present original settings, characters or scenarios, and for games like San Andreas, dealing with complex and sensitive issues such as race relations in America.
105 video games, software, and digital media in general. The core concept of remediation offers a unique and powerful tool for understanding the way in which emerging media forms reuse, refashion and repurpose elements of established ones. At its most basic, remediation describes the incorporation of one form by another: newspapers using still photography, or webpages having embedded video, for example. At its more advanced it refers to the way in which media, like video games, draw on and mobilise the conventions, the practices of use, economics, and aesthetics of other forms. It is a theory of relationality between forms, but it does not simply privilege one as the originator; this is not a model of lineage – there is no beginning or end to the process of cannibalisation and repurposing. Bolter and Grusin argue that in contemporary culture media never exist in isolation; they are always part of the infinite loop of remediation (1999: 65).
Remediation describes not just one facet of a medium, such as aesthetics or use, but the full spectrum of interconnections and appropriations which make up the cultural assemblage that is a medium. The framework of remediation offers a precise toolset for conceptualising the specific processes of referentiality which I touched on last chapter.
The allegorithmic (Wark, 2007) assemblage that is the contemporary video game is built upon remediation; it is not alone in that, but the video game is a powerful embodiment of the process.
Bolter and Grusin suggest that remediation functions ‘in the name of the real’ (1999: 65).
This is perhaps the most original and significant of their ideas. Remediation, they argue, operates to efface its own mediation. Media reuse, repurpose and refashion aspects of older forms in order to appear familiar and acceptable to the audience. To use the terminology of play theory, remediation creates authority. Remediation either makes
106 transparent its technological, economic and aesthetic apparatus, and thus presents itself as genuine; or it emphasises the apparatus, and thus suggests that the activity could never occur without the medium. Bolter and Grusin call the former immediacy and the latter hypermediacy. Immediacy hides the interface, it disguises the mediation; we can, for example, see the trend toward “photorealism” in video games as conforming to this logic.
The quest for video game “graphical realism” (as defined by photography and cinema) is largely motivated by a desire for players to forget they are playing a game, forget that it is mediated, and become absorbed in the experience. Conversely, hypermediacy draws attention to the process of mediation, and consequently remediation. The World Wide
Web, for example, is made up of a multiplicity of remediated forms, text, images, video and sound which we can click between, search through, and interact with. It celebrates the mediation, that is ‘the web’ is impossible to navigate outside the interface of the web browser, while still emphasising the “reality” of the experience, in that the web does not exist outside of this mediation. In the logic of immediacy, mediation is seen to lessen the authenticity of the experience, while in hypermediacy the authenticity depends upon mediation. In both, however, remediation is key. In both, the new medium is setting itself up in relation to, but improving on, previous forms. The “photorealistic” video game offers the same graphical quality as war photography or cinema, but adds interactivity.
The World Wide Web offers text and images just like books and galleries, but it offers them in a form that is more easily searched and customised. Remediation draws on the existing form but offers the new as an improvement.
In video games the dominant logic is immediacy; very few games emphasise their own mediated nature. The goal of these games is for the player to forget the interface, forget
107 the pushing of buttons, the interacting with the controller and become immersed in the game world. As was observed in the last chapter most video games are not simple systems, and for the interface apparatus to become transparent, for the player to look beyond it, for a game to become an authentic experience, the player must know what to do and how to do it. This, I shall argue, is the primary purpose of remediation in video games. An examination of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas will show how it evokes and invokes other media in order to be familiar, intuitive and, therefore, “real” for the player.
Bolter and Grusin’s own exploration of video games offers a rich account of the way remediation functions. In their reading of Myst, a graphic adventure game designed by the brothers Robyn and Rand Miller in 1991 and released by Broderbund Software in
1993, they show how older media forms can be mobilised in the video game context.
They argue that:
[Myst] remediates several media on several levels. [It] combines three dimensional, static graphics, with text, digital video and sound to refashion illusionistic painting, film and somewhat surprisingly, the book as well. (1999: 94)
For Bolter and Grusin what makes Myst compelling, both as a game and as an academic object, is the ways in which it combines and attempts to render outmoded these three other media – aesthetically, experientially and economically. Similarly, San Andreas competitively remediates literature, painting and film, as well as television and music.
This process of remediation is key to its operation.
108 Literature
Bolter and Grusin argue that Myst’s remediation of the book is obvious from the outset.
This first-person adventure game is set in a series of fantasy worlds, each ‘contained’ within special magical books through which the player can travel. The player is tasked with solving a range of puzzles in order to discover the missing pages of the books needed to release two characters trapped inside. As Bolter and Grusin point out, Myst is unusual amongst video games as it invokes the form of the book in its narrative, structure and aesthetic. The relationship between Myst and books, however, is not simply one of reuse, but also competition, and it is perhaps for this reason that Bolter and Grusin have chosen it to illustrate their concept of remediation. They argue that Myst literalises the promise that books implicitly make, namely to take the reader into a new world. In giving the player agency, this graphic video game fulfils this possibility ‘better’ than the book ever could. ‘The allegory is obvious,’ Bolter and Grusin argue, ‘The book as text should be replaced by the book as a window onto a visually realized world’ (1999: 96). Myst is positioning itself to render the book redundant. Indeed, Myst goes even further in reminding the player of the obsolescence of the book. The ultimate failure in this game is for the player to get trapped within a book forever, an outcome the authors describe as
‘the worst possible fate in the age of graphics’ (1999: 96).
Myst is, however, a very esoteric game. The explicit use of the book is unusual, making
Bolter and Grusin’s framework difficult to apply to other games. A game like Grand
Theft Auto: San Andreas seems almost as removed from the book as a medium can be.
This fast-paced, fluid, action-packed world neither explicitly references literature, nor draws on the structure of the form. Nonetheless, it can be understood relationally to
109 literature, or at least in context of a specific genre of literature written for a young male audience.
In his article, ‘Complete Freedom of Movement’, American media theorist Henry Jenkins situates mainstream video game play within traditional forms of boys’ play and culture
(1998: 265-289). He argues that there is significant overlap between video game play and the traditional play activities that male children have engaged in for the last two centuries. A decrease in safe urban play spaces for young males has meant that traditional play practices have largely shifted to the virtual environments of video games (1998:
263). This remediation, to use Bolter and Grusin’s terminology, means that the conventions of boy culture are reused and reflected in video gaming. All the major markers of boys’ play practices of the nineteenth century are present in most contemporary video games: the sexism, the violence, the scatological humour, the feats of physical daring, and the enforcement of strict hierarchies (Jenkins 1998: 270-275).
Jenkins contends that video games are the latest in a long line of media forms to incorporate the conventions of boy culture. Building upon E. Anthony Rotundo’s study of
American masculinity (Rotundo, 1993), he traces this heritage to the industrial revolution of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, during which the dynamics of the family shifted significantly and led to a marked separation of the male public sphere from the female domestic sphere (Jenkins, 1998: 269). Boy culture emerged in this context, trying to break free of the “confining” and “effeminised” domestic space, seeking a more rugged, dangerous and, therefore, masculine experience. Before video games, adventure
110 books like Treasure Island (Stevenson, 196526), The Black Stallion (Farley, 197527) and
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Twain, 199628), provided stories of young males freed from domestic obligations and finding adventure and danger (Jenkins 1998: 278)29.
Like its literary forebears, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, can ultimately be read as a contemporary incarnation of the boys’ culture conventions. The game begins with the ultimate moment of “emancipation” from feminine control, the death of the matriarch.
The opening sequences set up the game, showing CJ receiving a phone call telling him that his mother has died; the landscape of San Andreas is now his to explore without maternal restriction. His path of danger and adventure begins here, as he fights his way up the criminal hierarchy, building his territory and enforcing his dominion. And while the game features a small number of female characters: CJ’s sister Kendl, the unstable
Catalina, and a handful of possible girlfriends for CJ, the vast majority of the characters in CJ’s world are male, women being very much secondary to the action. Likewise, while
CJ’s family features heavily, this is not a game of domestic responsibility, but one set in a hyper-masculine world of guns, violence, death, brotherhood, honour and betrayal. In stark contrast to a game like The Sims, which is targeted at a much broader demographic and is about the mundane daily chores of life, San Andreas is an action-packed adventure on a city-wide scale. The urban environment becomes the playground for CJ and his
26 First published in 1883. 27 First published in 1941. 28 First published in 1885. 29 Further developing the idea that video games are the product of traditional children’s entertainment cultures, Jenkins turns his attention to games designed specifically for the young female market (Jenkins, 1998: 181). He argues that in its structure, themes and pacing a game such as ‘Purple Moon’s Secret Path in the Forest (1997) fully embodies the juvenile gothic tradition’ of ‘traditional girls’ books’ like The Secret Garden (Burnette, 1911). While girls’ play has its own distinct heritage and remediates a very different set of conventions from those we find in boys’ gaming, Jenkins nonetheless illustrates that both are situated in a genealogy of traditional children’s leisure forms and practices.
111 crew. The unsafe outside world for modern urban youth is remediated into the lounge room and bedroom of players, where the danger and excitement are thrilling.
Painting, Cinema, Television and Music
For Bolter and Grusin, the graphic design of three-dimensional video games, like San
Andreas, borrows heavily from the aesthetic traditions of perspective painting. Presenting a precisely constructed two-dimensional representation of three-dimensional space, these scenes use a painting technique developed in the seventeenth century and, in doing so, hide the mediation occurring (1999: 24). Bolter and Grusin argue that ‘[b]y using projective geometry to represent the space beyond the canvas, linear perspective could be regarded as the technique that effaced itself as technique’ (1999: 24). Just as Renaissance artists tried to capture a three-dimensional world on a two-dimensional canvas, so game designers have to present a three-dimensional world on a two-dimensional screen. Thus, by using a familiar representational practice, San Andreas erases the two-dimensional limitation of contemporary video game technology. It denies the mediation by presenting a pseudo-three-dimensional version of the world, one that has been established and accepted for centuries. The game’s graphic engine is designed to mirror perspective painting in order to produce an experience of immediacy.
The Grand Theft Auto series of games are widely known for their explicit borrowing
(remediating) of cinematic and televisual elements in their construction of the world, characters and scenarios. New media theorist Chris Chesher (2004) points to this in his analysis of the first two games in the Grand Theft Auto III series, GTA III and Vice City.
112 Chesher argues that GTA III, which is set in Liberty City, and Vice City, are best thought of as a reflective glaze space. By this he means that the games mirror aspects of the players’ world in order to keep them engaged and enthralled in the play experience.
Liberty City and Vice City are massive metropolises, more fully realised perhaps than any game cities before them, with rich and poor neighbourhoods, high rises, suburbs and ghettos. But these are not purely invented worlds, the product of the isolated imagination of a design team; they are informed heavily by other cities. Indeed, both Liberty and Vice
City have obvious real-world analogues in New York and Miami. Chesher argues, however, that it is not the “real” cities that are recreated in these games, but rather their fictional filmic representations:
[T]he cities depicted in the GTA games are recognisable as twentieth- century urban landscapes, they are simulated composites of fragments of imagined American urban life. As the designers live in Scotland, these images are largely drawn not from personal experience, but from Hollywood cinema. The mansion in Vice City is borrowed from Scarface. Vans driven by gang members are just like those in Boyz n the Hood. (Chesher, 2004)
Indeed, the design team scheduled regular movie sessions, drawing on the rich heritage of
American iconography in film watching, as they put it. From gangster classics like
Casino, Goodfellas and the aforementioned Scarface to action standards like Bullitt, cult hits like The Warriors, and even Debbie Does Dallas, the GTA series is built upon an exaggerated filmic version of American culture or, as the designers put it, ‘anything with
113 car chases, gangs and a lot of action’ (Perry, 2001)30. Even the mechanics of driving in
GTA is not modelled on real-world experiences, but on filmic ones. GTA III producer Les
Benzies goes so far as to refer to the mechanics of driving in the series as ‘action-movie car physics’ (Perry, 2001).
Each game in the series can also be understood to draw specifically on particular cinema genres, matching and establishing each of the game’s settings. As has already been noted,
GTA III is most heavily influenced by Scorsese’s New York gangster films like Mean
Streets and Goodfellas, while Vice City borrows heavily from Scarface, set in Miami, and the 1980s’ police drama, Miami Vice. San Andreas is influenced by the 1990s’ gangsta films such as Boyz n the Hood, New Jack City, and Menace II Society and gangsta rap such as the songs of N.W.A, Ice Cube, Tupac and Dr Dre. The world of violence, drugs, poverty, racism and police brutality of these films and songs is recreated in San Andreas.
The songs themselves feature on the in-game radio stations, and the visual imagery of the films is a constant throughout the game31.
30 The impact of car-chase television is also a major influence on the game design. The slew of TV programs featuring police and news footage of high speed pursuits and crashes that have emerged in the last couple of decades to become a staple of television, offer a sensationalist insight into how police pursuits unfold and what happens when cars collide at high speeds. 31 Games like San Andreas also run a risk in remediating such material. Where gangsta films are the product of urban African-American youth culture, the same can clearly not be claimed for San Andreas. Directors John Singleton (Boyz n the Hood) and the Hughes brothers (Menace II Society) offer sharp political critiques of gangsta culture and the racial politics of modern America that produce it. In stark contrast, San Andreas offers a gross parody of American society and has frequently been accused of racism (Ryan, 2005). The game mobilises the gangsta trope while overtly offering little in the way of expansion or complication. Indeed, as Chesher puts it, ‘In the place of depth of characters in the GTA games is hyperbolic gender and ethnic stereotypes’ (2004). In an industry so dominated by white Western perspectives, like video games, it is lamentable that one of the few African-American protagonists conforms to the gangsta criminal stereotype. Yet, while this is a deeply problematic representation, it does enable some interesting perspectives. The player is encouraged to experience the prejudiced world CJ must face, the corrupt police, and racist society that push him towards gang life. More interestingly, the game is structured in such a way as to make the player feel CJ’s disempowerment. From the opening sequence, in which CJ is harassed and threatened with a false murder accusation by the police, players come to
114 As Chesher observes, these iconic films are carefully invoked by the GTA series: it is upon their world that the games are structured. Ultimately, however, Chesher’s explanation of the importance of fiction to the construction of the GTA cities simplifies the reasons behind these remediations. While no doubt the fact that the design team ‘live in Scotland’ (Chesher, 2004) is significant, it is not the whole story. The motivation for the mobilisation of fictional tropes is something far more significant than merely geographical. This remediation has a very specific pedagogic function: it renders the game’s environment and its logic instantly recognisable by, and intelligible to, the player.
The best articulation of the reasons behind San Andreas’ mobilisation of gangsta film and music is ironically in a paper advocating a move away from detailed representational games, like the GTA series, towards abstract ones. Mark J. P. Wolf’s ‘Abstraction in the
Video Game’ outlines a conceptualisation of the contemporary video game form based on the remediation of the tropes of traditional media. He argues: ‘[V]ideo games have come to rely on conventions from film and television […] to seem more intuitive and familiar to players’ (2003: 47). Wolf’s primary focus is on game aesthetics and he argues that this reuse of filmic and televisual tropes is a missed opportunity. He advocates a return to what he terms ‘aesthetically abstract’ video games, games that are not trying to recreate an already familiar world, but rather produce a new kind of experience: ‘[b]y limiting themselves to conventions established in other media, game designers have neglected the realm of possibilities which abstraction has to offer’ (2003: 47). For Wolf, the late 1970s understand that they as CJ lack power in this hierarchy. This is particularly significant in video games, as player agency is nearly always emphasised, rather than denied or shown to be limited (see also Chapter Four). Indeed, one could read the positioning of crime as the only means society gives African-American inner city youth of gaining power and control over their destinies as an interesting, though in itself not unproblematic, political critique of contemporary America.
115 and early 1980s were the golden age for abstract gaming, with classics like Pac-Man and
Tetris becoming popular (2003: 49-60). The technological limitations of the day, Wolf argues, necessitated an abstract aesthetics, but as the technology evolved and more visual
“realism” became possible, game designers moved away from abstraction towards a form of representationalism which mimics other visual media forms like television and cinema.
Unfortunately, Wolf’s focus on aesthetics means that the significant issue of the interrelation of visuality and play, that is, how aesthetics influence play practice, is never fully explored. And, indeed, his advocacy for a return to abstraction means he chooses not to engage substantially with representationality. His suggestion, however, that the replication of the conventions of film and television functions to make the experience of play more intuitive to the player is a particularly important one. While his focus may be elsewhere, in chronicling the decline of abstraction Wolf implicitly constructs a history of the rise of televisual and filmic “realism” in video gaming and underscores its deep interconnection with the growth of the complexity of the form. He notes that a ‘game’s diegetic world is easier to enter into if it resembles the real world’, or, as he suggests earlier, a familiar fictional one (2003: 47, 60). As such, representational games can offer more complexity without confusing the player; the logics of the game’s world are already familiar. Abstract games, even recent examples like the psychedelic trance experience of
REZ (2002), still feature simple play mechanisms. While acknowledging that most complex games do tend towards representationality, whereas the handful of abstract games currently available tend towards simplicity, Wolf argues that this is not an inevitable division: ‘[a]lthough abstract video games may not be learned as intuitively as
116 representational games, abstraction need not imply simplicity’ (2003: 62). There is little doubt, however, that representationality can be an aid to complex game design.
Wolf thus gives us a new way of thinking about why the GTA series is so heavily reliant on television and cinema. It is not primarily a matter of the geographic location of the production team, but rather a way to make these experiences more familiar and intuitive.
These games present enormously complex worlds and the player could easily get lost or confused in them. By drawing on ideas and forms already familiar to the player, Rockstar have made these games far more readily accessible. The player understands the basic system by which the society of the game works. As Chesher noted briefly in his analysis, referencing movies and music with familiar social orders (like gang hierarchies) and associated actions (violence, crime and gang warfare) functions as a shortcut to otherwise complex and involved expositional and pedagogic processes.
We have then the beginnings of a framework of familiarity. The complex contemporary video game remediates popular older forms as a way of implicitly invoking a set of expectations and knowledges of a world: a pre-established subjectivity. Representational video games offer a more intuitive experience than their abstract cousins. The intuitiveness allows for more complex systems to be explored. Remediation is the tool by which designers, deliberately or unknowingly, establish their game world for the player.
The concept of remediation, even when coupled with Chesher and Wolf’s work, however, is too vague on the actual mechanism and result of this process. Wolf argues that games become more intuitive, but what does that mean? What does our familiarity with the ludic space mean for the way in which play unfolds? As I showed in the first
117 chapter, in my discussion of Lara Croft, media studies has once again pulled up just short of a developed framework of play. In making aesthetics and structure the primary focus of their analysis of Myst, Bolter and Grusin ignore the real promise of their own theory.
The real power of remediation comes not in aesthetics, but in practices of use. As I demonstrated in Chapter Two, games function upon complex mathematical systems that are not always easily communicable. Remediation provides a broad model by which to conceptualise the mobilisation of existing knowledges of players, be that the action- movie physics of cars, the hierarchical nature of gangs, or the privileging of action in male play forms, to help players form a ‘mental model’ of their world upon which they are able to base their play practices. If we want to understand this in greater detail, however, we have to look further.
Affordances: The Logic of Objects
The Desktop Metaphor
In their analysis of Myst, Bolter and Grusin (1999) conform to the much critiqued (by ludology) tendency of media studies to assume video games are only worth analysing in relation to the big traditional media forms: literature, film, television, visual arts, music, etc. Indeed ludologists Eskelinen and Tronstad point to the usefulness of Bolter and
Grusin’s concept, but shy away from its employment because of the narrowness of its frame of reference (Eskelinen and Tronstad, 2003: 196). Eskelinen and Tronstad suggest that video games remediate much more than just the logics of traditional media. When analysing the video game form, Bolter and Grusin are unable to think outside of a very limited notion of media. Their analysis of other new media objects suggests otherwise,
118 however. In particular, in their account of operating systems, Bolter and Grusin break free from this limitation and productively discuss the remediation of objects not traditionally classed as media.
Bolter and Grusin point to the importance of what is known as the ‘desktop metaphor’ in operating system design. They argue that the desktop metaphor is used to make operating systems (OS) usage easier. The desktop metaphor is the basic idea underpinning most modern computer operating systems’ graphical user interfaces like Microsoft Windows,
Linux, and Mac OSX. The idea is simple; OS software presents the world of the computer as a traditional office space. This metaphor mobilises traditional objects from the office to make the interface more user-friendly. Files or ‘documents’ can be stored in folders, unwanted items can be placed in the ‘trash’ (or ‘recycle bin’). The workspace itself is known as the ‘desktop’ and items in frequent use can be placed upon it. In contrast to the command line interface of previous operating systems, like DOS, which were difficult to learn and navigate, the desktop metaphor OS is designed to be intuitive and easily understood (Bolter and Grusin, 1999: 23). This design strategy serves as a powerful metaphor, because the objects it remediates have familiar associated practices of use. Even the technologically-illiterate user will understand that a folder is used to store information and documents, and that unwanted material goes in the trash can.
The desktop metaphor shows the potential of the remediation framework, as it extends the focus beyond the aesthetics, economics and conventions of media genres to the logic of familiar objects. Trash cans, desktops and folders are not themselves traditional media, but objects from our everyday life and everyday experience. Thus, remediation has a
119 hidden potential to go beyond the limited media-privileging framework that has been so controversial, and offer a comprehensive account of familiarity in video gaming.
Remediation, it seems, can apply to both traditional media, and to everyday objects.
Significantly, this expansion allows us to incorporate theoretical work from fields outside media studies in order to complete our model of the use of the familiar in video games. In particular, it lets us bring in those theoretical fields interested in conceptualising the relationship between humans and objects. Of particular use here is design theory. With a focus on use and usability, this discipline provides a much needed discourse, allowing us to broaden our media studies understandings.
Affordances
A powerful framework for conceptualising the interaction between humans and objects comes to design theory via perceptual psychology. It is the concept of ‘affordances’. The notion of affordances offers us a set of concepts constructed to help us understand how people perceive and engage with things around them. The term affordances has been adopted by a variety of scholars for both “real” and virtual objects and, as I will demonstrate, its meaning has shifted somewhat in these different adaptations. Indeed,
Juul uses the term a number of times in Half-Real as a way of avoiding or supplementing the problematic terminology of rules (2005: 58). Affordances, unlike rules, are not based in the logic of negative capture. They offer a useful way of thinking about the authority of the game, about the way in which binding properties (or rules) are always encircled and hidden by perception, expectation and cultural norms.
120 While initially coined by perceptual psychologist James J. Gibson, the affordances concept has been popularised by design theorist Donald Norman. There are, however, major differences between the way in which these two scholars use the terminology. I want here to engage with both frameworks, as both conceptions can provide powerful insights into video gaming; indeed, it is by explicating the differences between these two understandings that we shall find the true value of the concept. For Gibson, affordances reveal the difficult nature of binding properties, and for Norman the cultural baggage all objects have.
Gibson first introduced the term affordances, in his 1977 work The Theory of
Affordances. He went on to develop his thinking about the term more rigorously in The
Ecological Approach to Visual Perception, published in 1979. These works aim to provide a conceptual framework to explain the way in which humans and animals understand and interact with their environments. He contends that all objects have specific possible uses, that is, there are certain things that the material properties of individual objects allow to take place, and other things that are simply not possible. A cup, for instance, has the affordance of holding liquid, while a round stone does not. For
Gibson, these affordances are context-specific. Affordances can only be understood in terms of the exact specificity of the relationship with the agent (human or animal); an object may only be usable in a certain way, if the agent has the necessary capacity. A sledge hammer offers very different affordances to an adult human from those it would offer to a small child or an animal. Gibson coins the term affordances, then, to describe all the possible uses of a specific object in a particular relationship (Gibson, 1979).
121 For Gibson affordances exist whether or not they are perceived by the agent. That is, whether or not a person understands that an object can be used in a particular manner does not change whether it can; the affordance is independent of perception. Affordances are not perceptually-based, but materially-determined. Thus, in any given relationship, while the use of an object may change, its affordances do not. If it can be used for something, that affordance has been there from the start. Therefore it must be said that even the simplest objects have numerous, often unknown and perhaps unknowable, affordances. Affordances are not created; they just become apparent in certain circumstances.
Despite the power of Gibson’s ideas, it was not until the publication of design theorist
Donald Norman’s The Psychology of Everyday Things in 1988 that the term affordances became commonly used in the field of design theory. However, Norman employs the term in radically different ways from Gibson, unknowingly appropriating, extending, and significantly modifying the original usage. This adaptation, and, indeed, Norman’s subsequent attempts to address it, have ultimately led to confusion over the use of the term, but have also significantly opened up its framework of meaning in order to give it a far more profound impact.
In The Psychology of Everyday Things Norman introduces the concept of affordances as the ‘psychology of materials’: ‘the term “affordance” refers to the perceived and actual properties of the thing, primarily those fundamental properties that determine how a thing could possibly be used’ (1988: 9). This definition clearly betrays the difference between
Norman and Gibson: whereas for Gibson affordances were purely about the material
122 properties of an object, Norman introduces the notion of perception. In other words, a user’s familiarity with an object becomes an issue. It is the user’s direct or indirect experience of an object that determines its affordances, not simply its materiality. For
Norman, affordances are the properties all objects have; they imply certain uses, and signify the possible practices of interaction. A door handle, for example, implies being turned in order to open a door, just as a chair implies being sat on (1988: 9-10). The concept of affordances is still firmly focused on the question of objects in use, but, unlike
Gibson’s work where an affordance is a material property of an object, for Norman an affordance is a perceptual construct.
In his later works, The Invisible Computer (1998) and ‘Affordances and Design’ (2004),
Norman seems to have become aware of the divergences in meaning of the term affordances, provoked by himself and Gibson. Far from acknowledging any responsibility himself for having created this confusion, he maintains that he has ‘spent much time trying to clarify the now widespread misuse of the term’ (1998: 124). His
“clarifications” however, add to the number of meanings circulating for the term. In an attempt to address his previous conflation of his ideas and Gibson’s, Norman suggests that affordances should be understood as either real or perceived. No longer blending the two concepts together, as he did in The Psychology of Everyday Things, he now argues that ‘[i]t is very important to distinguish real from perceived affordances. Design is about both, but the perceived affordances are what determine usability’ (1998: 124-125).
This distinction produces two quite different models of affordance, particularly when it comes to design theory. Considering ‘real material affordances’ can be particularly useful
123 when looking at where uses escape the common thinking of the limits of an object, like the technique of rocket jumping does. The intended uses of an object for its designer can often differ markedly from the eventual way in which it is used. In this example the rocket launcher becomes a mode of transport. Many uses of an object can start off accidentally, unintentionally discovered by a user, and, as we will see in the case of many games, the original intentions of the designers are subverted in unpredictable ways.
Conversely, perceptual affordances offer a tool for thinking about the way in which objects invoke certain kinds of expectation and, as a result, certain uses. As Norman argues in The Psychology of Everyday Things, the power to influence and affect does not come simply from determining what is possible, but also from controlling the perceptions of the user.
Between The Psychology of Everyday Things in 1988 and The Invisible Computer ten years later Norman has made a further shift in his thinking. Retreating from his initial argument that affordances are ‘the perceived and actual properties of the thing’ (1988: 9), he suggests that:
[A]ffordance is not a property, it is a relationship that holds between the object and the organism that is acting upon the object. The same object might have different affordances for different individuals. (1998: 124).
This is another dramatic amendment to his theory of affordances, this time back towards
Gibson’s concept. However, despite arguing for the relationality of affordances, in this later work Norman does not articulate precisely how it squares with the concept of
124 perceived affordances. The difficulty in merging these two concepts is, of course, that while ‘real affordances’ are about the individual materiality of the two parties (the user and the object), perceived affordances extend beyond the individual to broader social practices and conventions of use. An individual’s perception of possible uses may in part be determined by past experiences, but it is also shaped by social convention.
Cultural Affordances
Norman’s work is particularly useful to video game analysis when it is coupled with a concept of cultural construction and remediation. Through this we have a replacement for rules premised on familiarity. Norman’s struggle to locate affordances in the object itself
(in The Psychology of Everyday Things) and in the individual relationship (in The
Invisible Computer) ultimately misses the important role that culture and discourse play in producing expectation. He himself acknowledges the power of cultural convention in shaping our practices of use, but he shies away from expanding on this crucial idea
(Norman, 1988: 55). Yet perception is always embedded within cultural expectation and social power structures; from the language we use to describe an object, the way it is represented, the ways we are taught to use it, to the ways we witness other people using it; all impact on our understandings of how the object works and how to engage with it.
So, while a Gibsonian real affordances sits to a large extent outside such cultural construction—we cannot say ‘entirely outside’, because the affordances of an object do depend on the abilities of the agent, and the body is always inscribed by culture—
Norman’s affordances is fundamentally a product of social construction. It is ingrained in the norms, the expectations, the ethics and morals, and power dynamics of all cultural processes.
125 If we combine both concepts of affordances, however, not into one, but into a layered model, we have a very simple yet productive model. At the core of any object/agent relationship we have material affordances, the infinite potentialities of use that exist independently of user-perception. Within the wide range of possible material affordances are a much smaller number of perceived affordances. These are the affordances known to the agent from experience or cultural familiarity. Which material affordances come to be perceived affordances is dependant on what practices of use culture and context value. A chair is most commonly used for sitting on and as such that is the first affordance we perceive, but if a bar-room brawl were to break out, it may begin to look like a useful weapon. A chair could conceivably be used for a range of other activities; everything from a meat mallet to floatation device, but these are not the perceived affordances of the object; they are not the culturally-constructed norms of use for a chair.
Consequently, one of the most interesting but also dangerous things about the concept of perceived affordances is its normative power. There is a tendency to assume perceived affordances are the only possible material affordance. Not only does this reflect the way embedded cultural understandings give an object meaning and use, but it privileges the dominant conceptions. The very way in which Norman talks about affordances shows how restricted the conception of an object’s perceived affordances may be. Unlike
Gibson’s material affordances, which can be unknown, perceived affordances are produced by dominant practice. So, when Norman talks about a chair, he says: ‘A chair
[…] affords sitting. A chair also affords to be carried’ (1988: 9). It is not that Norman is at all ignorant of the chair’s myriad other possible uses, rather he reflects that in our lives, in our perceptual frameworks, there are certain activities that we readily associate with
126 specific objects. In many ways this is the power of the idea for designers, whose job it is to consider what uses the objects they design suggest. Inevitably, more radical and less common place practices become marginalised within this discourse. The perceived affordances of an object is fundamentally reflective of the dominant culture, and closes off other (practical and discursive) possibilities.
In many ways, the power of Norman’s concept is weakened, the more he attempts to realign it with Gibson’s. This is because the greatest strength of his original use of affordances (Norman, 1988), its universality, is also its greatest weakness, in that it relies on normalising assumptions and generalisation, where all agents are understood to perceive and behave in certain ways. When supplementing each other rather than competing, the problems of each become less significant. Gibson’s concept is limited to the specificity of the individual engagement, and is unconstrained by any hierarchy of possible use; an apple, for example, affords throwing as much as eating. Norman’s original affordances is much more general; it privileges certain kinds of engagements, and is applicable to all agents. While Norman’s ideas are deeply problematic in that he believes he is talking about the true object and not its social construction (which is always contingent and variable), we should perhaps not retreat from them so rapidly.
Coupled with a concept of cultural construction, and understood as a selective subset of
Gibson’s material affordances, they become usable once more, though we must be cautious in assuming any universality, of course. Norman’s use of the term affordances in
The Psychology of Everyday Things can be understood to transcend any individual relationship; it can become a way for designers and theorists to conceive of the means by which an object could be taken up by culture. Users while present in the sense that they
127 are the ones perceiving, are not so much individuals as a construct of normative cultural understandings. So, while this does not acknowledge the specificity of each interaction between user and object, it gives a conceptual framework for thinking about the formative power of cultural assumptions and trends and how these impact upon practices of use.
Affordances and Grand Theft Auto
Applied to our case study of San Andreas, the concept of affordances offers a far richer framework for understanding the player/software relationship than the concept of remediation in isolation or, indeed, a discourse of rules. If we conceptualise San Andreas as a world of objects, we theoretically engage with the game in a way far closer to the user’s experiences than any understanding of remediated forms or rules can approach.
For the player San Andreas is a world of cars, trucks, bikes, buildings, guns, knives, bats, pedestrians, friends and foes. Each has its own set of associated pre-existing perceived affordances that are shared by most players: vehicles can be driven, guns fired, bats swung, and so on, as well as a set of (virtual) material affordances that are determined by the software, that is, a “physical” presence in the game world. Some material affordances reveal themselves in play, as a result of player experimentation, but for the most part the only practices of use we even attempt are those that fit with what we expect to happen.
It is because of the need to invoke certain types of perceived affordances that remediation is so important. Remediation functions to suggest the frameworks through which the objects could be understood. It suggests to the player the kinds of practices of use that are available with each object. In a representational game like San Andreas, players bring
128 their existing knowledges from daily life and media experience to the game world. They understand the logic of the game through the lens of previous experience. By incorporating familiar objects, game designers are already instructing players in the kinds of privileged practices of use. The perceived affordances of these objects function to construct the play strategies of the game. As a world of objects, this is a world of known uses.
Remediation can thus be seen as a pedagogic strategy in video gaming. The invocation of traditional media serves to train the player and establish the game world. This process of remediation teaches and frames the perceived affordances, and allows designers to devise events outside everyday experience in which players know what is expected of them.
Players need not have fired a gun themselves, or used a baseball bat to assault someone, in order to know how the objects might be used for these purposes. Television and the movies have taught us. In guiding our play, games couple our everyday experiences of affordances and our media experiences. Even where we all have experience of an act, travelling by car, for example, either as driver or passenger, the media can function to supplement and expand our knowledge and expectations. When producer Les Benzies refers to GTA III as having action-movie car physics, it is not because real car physics are impossible to simulate, but because the expectation of the player, their likely perceived affordances, is produced by the Hollywood blockbuster. Even those players who drive are unlikely to be familiar with the physics of high-speed street racing, police pursuits, and jumps, all crucial elements of the Grand Theft Auto experience, and as such the media becomes the reference point on which expectation is built.
129 The invocation of media conventions also functions to link the individual objects to a broader system of cause and effect, namely the consequences of particular actions. They can give a better idea of what kinds of uses will bring about what kinds of results.
Driving a car at high speed and knocking over pedestrians will lead to a police chase, for instance, and changing a car’s registration plates and spray-painting it a different colour will throw the police off your tail. The remediation of movies and television render complex training and tutoring systems unnecessary. Incredibly complex games like San
Andreas, can dispense with all but minimal instructional content. The player can quickly understand their position and role from the reference points of the media artefacts.
Whether from Goodfellas, Scarface, Boyz in the Hood, or any number of action movies, the media-saturated younger generations are able to understand the game world, its hierarchies and its expectations of them.
Media as a Cultural Reference Point
The modern video game is an increasingly complex assemblage, as designers aim to create more and more immersive worlds and experiences. As games strive for a place in mainstream culture, the issue of usability has become critical. Games need to be understandable; players should be able to engage with them immediately, not left in helpless ignorance of what to do. This is why most modern games take a multi-layered approach to training the player by employing explicit pedagogic mechanisms such as tutorial levels and manuals and more subtly, as I have demonstrated in this chapter, familiar logics from the media and everyday life.
130 The video games industry is often decried as lacking many real innovations and simply offering repackaged version of older games (Taub, 2004), but one of the major reasons for this is rarely commented on. Sequels, spin-offs and clones all present a familiar logic to the player, one established in the original game, and they do not require a significant new skill or set of tactics to be learnt. The affordances of their objects are known and bypass the need to teach the player new logics. A game remediates its predecessors and others in its genre, reuses and repurposes the conventions established and taught in the earlier games. Indeed, the repetition of the conventions of existing video games is possibly the most important of all types of the remediation process (unfortunately, it is not one that Bolter and Grusin discuss). Innovative and experimental games often have a far steeper learning curve for the player, an inconvenience they try to offset with other strategies of familiarisation. When successful innovation comes, it is inevitably coupled with familiarity. The Sims features the ultra-familiar world of everyday suburban life.
Once established as a known property, it quickly went on to generate a sequel and no fewer than 12 expansion packs. Arguably, familiarity has become the most important quantity in the games industry.
On the surface, my application here of the framework of remediation to video games runs directly counter to Aarseth’s claim that ‘games are not intertextual’ and are ‘self- contained’ (2004: 48). In another way, however, I would suggest the approach is compatible with a ludological approach. Underlying Aarseth’s hardline rhetoric is a commitment to defending video game studies from approaches that privilege more traditional media forms, like cinema and literature, and an argument that games suffer by comparison. In this sense, Bolter and Grusin’s concept of remediation is quite
131 compatible. Far from suggesting that video games are the somehow inferior progeny of traditional media because they repeat certain features and conventions, Bolter and Grusin seek to understand the inevitable relationship between forms, and remove the need for an isolationist paradigm in order to talk about specificity. The fact that they are derivative does not mean that games are inferior: all forms are derivative, and borrow and steal from others. They are unique in the ways they utilise and combine elements of existing forms, not because they have no overlap. As ludology would wish, in such a paradigm games are the equal of other forms.
The accusation that media studies privileges traditional media frameworks is understandable. Indeed, this chapter has demonstrated some of its problems, however, rather than abandon these connections, we must embrace and expand them. Play not only draws on other media, it mobilises logics from a range of forms like everyday objects.
Game world objects become invested with affordances, and implied practices of use. Play is a process of learning new strategies, but also of applying already familiar ones. Far from existing in isolation, culture is manifested in even the most basic levels of play.
From the way space is present in two dimensions, to the types of pleasure offered and skills required to progress within a game, video games demand an enormous number of pre-existing knowledges.
Games mobilise older media as cultural reference points deliberately and unknowingly, as ways of communicating form, structure and privileged practices of use. San Andreas is not a replica of any actual city/ies, but a parodic amalgam of media-imagined landscapes and social hierarchies. It is an intertextual Mecca, a playground of media influence and
132 exaggerated real life. Yet the game combines these elements so seamlessly, it makes the
(re)mediation so transparent as not to be immediately visible, and perhaps the fact that extreme ludology opposes any notion of intertextuality as vehemently as it does is a measure of its success.
The concept of affordances I offered towards the end of this chapter maps well onto the rules discourse of ludology and play theory. Both are established discourses, with rich heritages about limitation/construction of action and use. There are, however, numerous advantages of the affordances/remediation model I have suggested here. Where the discourse of rules seeks to understand games as entire systems, the idea of affordances constructs them as a world of objects. Where rules imply a top-down controlling hierarchy, affordances understands them as emergent from the microsystems in operation.
The language of rules understands games as a discrete entity where rules are followed, not interpreted. The language of affordances emphasises the linkages between play and previous experience, both mediated and personal; while never free from the materiality of the object, affordances are shaped by perception. The rules discourse presents a closed predetermined system, an affordances framework offers a dynamic, contingent, and yet directed, world. Affordances can be thought of as a reworking of rules which never function in opposition to culture, but rather through it. The rules, logics and affordances of our world are translated into the game space and come to define how we play. Culture becomes a tool utilised and referenced by play. This is not independent of the process of the construction of play, but a condition for its operation.
133 The games of today require detailed and sophisticated analysis. Gone are the simple days of Pong and Pac Man; the new generation of games like San Andreas presents worlds that are unique and yet familiar. Similarly, our theoretical frameworks need to evolve.
Board games and sport can no longer provide the clues to deciphering these immersive worlds. It is in our lived experiences as part of the global mediasphere that we find the answers. Nothing in the globally-networked world of contemporary culture functions in isolation, and video games are no exception. If we understand this, we can begin to explore how this complex medium functions.
134 +*
# $ "$ > % " 9
massive alien tower dominates the city skyline, stretching up for miles, A its top concealed by a cloud canopy. This colossal metal monolith with its clean asymmetric alien lines stands in stark contrast to the once-grand but now crumbling Eastern European city at its base. Gasmask-clad, truncheon-wielding guards patrol the streets, force fields and barbed-wire fences restrict the frightened population’s movements, and the immense tower known simply as The Citadel watches over it all, its exact function a mystery, but its awesome power undeniable. Welcome to City 17. Welcome to the dystopian world of Half-Life 2.
This chapter is about power. It is about how power works, and how power appears to work. It is about myths and misconceptions, mechanisms of control and false binaries. It is also about a remarkable game and the thought-provoking questions it asks of the player, a game that gives us new ways of thinking about the operation of power in video games. The game is the first-person shooter Half-Life 2 (Valve Corporation, 2004), and through it, we will begin to see just how important the concept of power is for any account of play.
The question of power is one rarely considered in video game studies. Reserved for more
“serious” and “sinister” cultural formations than gaming, analyses of power relations are seemingly beyond the scope of this nascent discipline. To counteract this theoretical
135 neglect, I intend in this chapter to look at the micro-operation of power, the construction of player subjectivities and the mechanisms that produce and standardise play practices, which have been left under-explored and under-theorised.
Remediating Modernity
In the last two chapters I have examined the shaping forces of play, and looked at rules, goals, remediation and affordances. I want now to move beyond the limited conceptual framework of games studies (both in terms of ludology and media studies) and acknowledge what we have really been talking about: mechanisms of power. Any force that shapes play, be it binding or non-binding, explicit or subtle, is doing so by shaping the player; it is constructing the player’s expectations, interpretive frameworks and response to the game world. This is a relationship of power.
In the previous chapter I considered the ways in which remediation functioned to hide the process of mediation by presenting familiar, thus more natural-seeming, forms. Here I shall explore the reasons why this hiding of the mediation is necessary. It is not just a hiding of mediation, but a hiding of the mechanics of power. I will argue that remediation is thus a technique of power; it is a means by which certain understandings and logics are privileged, whilst others are denied.
Last chapter the focus of my account of remediation was on the way objects in video games function to draw on the player’s existing knowledge to encourage specific kinds of play practice. In this chapter my focus shifts from the micro to the macro, from objects to cultural myths and logics. I shift my attention from the affordances of objects, to players’
136 understanding of themselves: their goals, their role and their possibilities in the gameworld. This is part of the broader account in the second half of this thesis of player subjectivity. Over the course of the next three chapters I will be outlining a theory of player subjectivation (the construction of subjectivity) through the remediation of familiar techniques and technologies of power. I will demonstrate the way in which existing formations of power borne of ‘modernity’ have been transposed to the virtual world of the video game in order to shape player behaviour.
Over the course of the next three chapters I will be broadly engaging with the concept of modernity. Modernity is complex concept. Defining modernity is a next to impossible task. Definitions range from historical periods: 1500s onwards, the French revolution or
Darwin, to certain kinds of social structures and ideologies, to ways of thinking and understanding. My use of the term is best understood as an amalgam of those circulating which as Mitchell Dean observed generally consist of:
one or a combination of any of the following: industrial technology, capitalism or generalised commodity production, bureaucratic modes of administration, urbanism, the liberal-democratic state, affective individualism, the public/private dichotomy, and so on. (1994: 7)
This usage encompasses a significant time period, namely from the Enlightenment period to the early 20th century. My intention here is not to present a precise theorisation of modernity; I will instead offer a close examining of two of its most important facets: the myth of the autonomous individual and the disciplinary organisation of space. It is these two elements of modernity that perform a crucial role in the construction of the video game player’s subjectivity. My account of modernity can thus be seen as focused on the
137 18th and 19th centuries when the discourse of liberal humanism came to prominence and the regime of discipline was commonplace.
In this, the second-half, of my thesis I will demonstrate the ways in which existing formations of power borne of modernity have been transposed to the virtual world of the video game in order to shape player behaviour. This chapter will look at the importance of the ‘liberal humanist’ notion of the autonomous individual, a concept of subjectivity developed during the Enlightenment that holds its influence to this day. Chapter Five will look at other remediations of modernity in the use of spatial architecture, and reward and punishment. Chapter Six will show how the logics of modernity influence even contemporary accounts of the posthuman subjectivity. Over the course of these three chapters I shall show that despite single-player video games being a product of the digital age, a period where the challenges and critiques of the grand narratives of modernity are well established, they still rest upon, and, indeed, remediate many of modernity’s implicit and explicit understandings and myths.
Through my analysis of Half-Life 2 I will explore the paradox at the heart of single- player video gaming. This is that for games to be enjoyable to the player they have to offer freedom and agency; this, after all, is the promise of interactivity. But for a video game to offer a carefully constructed experience, it must know what the player is likely to do. I will show this is only a paradox, however, if one adopts a liberal humanist understanding of freedom as oppositional to power. In my analysis here I reject the liberal humanist paradigm, which I will show ultimately to be the reason why the logic of negative capture is so present in play theory, and argue that the player’s agency only
138 comes through the operation of power. Freedom defined as the opposite of power is a myth that obfuscates the careful process of construction occurring in video games.
Power and Narrative
This chapter is also an attempt to look at how narrative can be understood as a mechanism of play. As we have already seen, the question of narrative is a contentious one in video game studies. Here, I shall argue, narrative does not, as ludology would suggest, function in opposition to play, but rather is a contributing force. This is a reading of Half-Life 2 that seeks to understand how the game’s science-fiction narrative produces a certain understanding of the game world for the player. Narrative and setting become the contextual elements of this game; they frame all action taking place and produce the macro- and micro-goals of the piece. Half-Life 2 is a particularly narrative-, character- and setting-driven game and it is important that these elements be acknowledged and explored.
The danger of any close reading of a video game is that it risks ignoring the diversity of possible engagements with the game. Whilst my central thesis in this project is that single-player video games are structured to standardise play practices, that is very different from assuming a uniformity to all play practices. Whilst video games may be designed to limit variation, this does not mean that variation does not exist. As I have already noted, players will often seek pleasures and construct micro- and macro-goals differing to those privileged by the game. As such, a close reading of a game narrative, like I offer here, inevitably presents only one small fraction of the possible game narratives that could be constructed. Many accounts of game narratives forget this and
139 apply a straight game-as-linear-text methodology. In this chapter I will not be attempting to do this. This not a description of what ‘is’ but rather an account of a particular creative relationship between a player (myself) and game. This is a theoretical use of the resources of the video game formed through play. So whilst my reading here of Half-Life
2 (and, indeed, the original Half-Life [Valve Corporation, 1998]) may vary dramatically from that of other players/commentators the (re)construction of the narrative presented here must not be understood as a universal account of this game, nor as my understanding of the designers’ intent32, but as a narrativisation of a particular experience for exploration of the ways in which story, setting, character and power intersect in play space.
This chapter is also a deliberate intervention into this narrative debate, and my analysis of
Half-Life 2 is profoundly narratological. However, the purpose of my exploration of the adventures of Gordon Freeman is not to privilege narrative above play, but rather to show the inevitable interrelation of the two. In this case, we have a complex game offering a fantastical dystopian future. If we were to ignore narrative and aesthetics, this game would be identical to any other first-person shooter. For the most part the gameplay involves progressing around a maze-like environment and shooting enemies. Yet, in ignoring this ludologically “extraneous” material, we would miss a great deal, not just of what the game means, but of the experience of play. Narrative, like remediation, provides the context of play, and as I have suggested previously, context is crucial to the actual
32 As I have suggested earlier the intent of a game’s designers is never truly knowable. With many of the narrative and game elements I will describe, the designers almost certainly do not conceptualise them as I do. Yet, as my theoretical project of analysing the mechanism by which play is constructed and the designers’ job of producing play experiences overlap so significantly, I believe that, although the designers may not use the same discourse as I do, there would be a degree of correspondence between the ideas.
140 practices that players employ. Narrative, setting and character all function to produce an understanding of the particular game world—a motivation, but also knowledge of how the game space works—and of the techniques they can employ. Narrative devices usually invoke an established order and thus function to teach players as to how they should play.
The fascinating thing about Half-Life 2 is, however, that this familiar order is fundamentally subverted by the narrative in the game’s climax.
In this respect Half-Life 2 is an extraordinary game which not only offers us a model for how power functions in games, but offers its own commentary on that process. It allows us to rethink what power is and how it operates. Manifested in its architecture, obscured in its interfaces, invested in its characters and deconstructed by its narrative twists, Half-
Life 2 is a case study in power. Complex power relations, both visible and hidden, underpin every moment, every action, every object and every second of this gaming experience—which make it the perfect vehicle for this analysis.
The Adventures of Gordon Freeman
Half-Life 2 was released to critical acclaim and commercial success in November 2004 for the PC platform. It has gone on to sell over 4 million copies (Bokitch, 2006) and has been widely praised as the best game of 2004/2005, winning four of the nine top awards at the prestigious Game Developer Choice Awards, including Best Game and Best
Writing (Game Developer Choice Awards, 2005). In the game, players control the character of scientist Gordon Freeman as he battles to save Earth from alien invaders, known simply as the Combine, who have conquered the Earth and enslaved its population. The gameplay is typical in that it consists of exploration and combat and is
141 viewed from a first-person perspective, that is through the eyes of Freeman, as he fights his way through a dystopian world. Half-Life 2 is generic in the sense that it repeats the same gameplay mechanics as other first-person shooters, but the narrative told, themes explored and world constructed on top of this generic backbone are anything but standard.
‘Welcome to Black Mesa’
Gordon Freeman’s story began in 1998, when Valve Corporation released the original
Half-Life, a game that reinvented and reinvigorated the first-person shooter genre
(Dawson, 1998: 74-78). In Half-Life, Freeman, a theoretical physicist, is an employee of the top-secret subterranean Black Mesa research facility. He is a junior member of a science team conducting a highly dangerous experiment in teleportation which goes terribly wrong. The experiment opens a ‘dimensional breach’, allowing an alien invasion to commence. Clad in a protective suit during the experiment (known as a Hazardous
Environment, or HEV, suit), Freeman is one of the few survivors and, shielded by his suit, he must make his way to the surface and raise the alarm. As Freeman battles his way through the alien hordes, it soon becomes clear that the human authorities are not going to save the employees of Black Mesa. Indeed, rather than rescuing the trapped scientists, the military is hunting them down and executing them. Freeman’s only hope of survival, it seems, is to defeat the alien invasion himself, while avoiding the military death squads.
After fighting his way through the underground rail system, along cliff tops and through the scientific complex, Freeman is persuaded by a group of his colleagues that their best chance is for him to teleport to the alien home world and defeat the Nihilanth, a giant telepathic alien which is maintaining the dimensional breach. He agrees and, with much
142 effort, succeeds in destroying the Nihilanth; however, before witnessing the results, before discovering whether the Earth has been saved, Freeman is teleported away to meet a mysterious man wearing a suit and holding a briefcase, who congratulates him on his success. This man has been glimpsed from a distance throughout the game, both before and after the fateful experiment, and he now stands in an otherwise empty train car flying through a dimensional void. This nameless figure is known to fans as the G-man33, but his real name, like his allegiances, is unknown. The G-man tells Freeman that that he is impressed by his skills and has an offer of employment for him. Freeman can either accept the offer and live, or refuse and die. After Freeman’s choice, the credits roll, Half-
Life concludes.
Half-Life offered a level of integration between story and gameplay that had not previously been seen in the genre. The plot was told through the gameplay not through
‘cut sequences’34. The key moment of the plot, the creation of the dimensional breach, was triggered by the player’s actions. The player (as Freeman) conducts the disastrous experiment that brings dimensions crashing together. It is the player pushing a material sampling into a testing apparatus that the causes the breech to occur and the drama to unfold. If the player does not perform this action, then nothing happens. The player thus has a degree of agency in the development of the plot. This agency is limited; ultimately if the player does not push the sample into the testing machine he/she cannot progress and is forever stuck in the testing chamber, but none-the-less, the need for the player to perform the act is significant. Before Half-Life, the player had little involvement in the
33 The name G-man is derived from the file name of the character model in the original Half-Life. 34 ‘Cut sequence’ is a term used to describe ‘non-interactive’ moments in games, often pre-rendered sections where the player’s input has no effect.
143 plot of a first-person shooter. When Doom started, the catastrophe had already occurred and it was simply the player’s job to escape. Dark Forces (LucasArts, 1995) told the back-story to its missions through lengthy cut sequences. In positioning the player as central to the story as well as the action Half-Life changed the way agency was conceived of in video gaming.
This clever construction of player agency is what I will analyse in Half-Life 2, which builds upon and then subverts what its predecessor had put in motion. The two other features introduced in the original game that I will look at in detail are the HEV suit that
Freeman wears and the mysterious G-man. Both reappear in Half-Life 2 and both reveal much about how power functions and is hidden in video gaming.
‘Rise and shine, Mr Freeman’
Rise and shine, Mr Freeman. Rise and shine. Not that I wish to imply you have been sleeping on the job. No one is more deserving of a rest. And all the effort in the world would have gone to waste until…well, let's just say your hour has come again. The right man in the wrong place can make all the difference in the world. So, wake up, Mr Freeman. Wake up and smell the ashes. - The G-man (Valve Corporation, 2004)
So begins Half-Life 2. Gordon Freeman is woken up after an indeterminate number of years’ sleep, by the cryptic, stilted and almost inhuman words of the G-man, to find that the world has changed. Earth is under the totalitarian control of alien overlords known as the Combine. Coming to, or materialising, on a train, Freeman soon arrives at a heavily guarded station in a decaying and desperate city. A giant monitor broadcasts a message from Dr Breen, the former Administrator of Black Mesa and the man now in charge of
144 the entire human population of the Earth, welcoming us to his home city: City 17.
Making his way through the station, Freeman sees the downtrodden citizens, dressed in uniform drab blue clothing, and being bullied by gasmask-clad guards, known as Civil
Protection. After being pushed around by guards himself, Freeman is saved by Barney, an old friend from Black Mesa, who is working undercover with Civil Protection. He helps
Freeman to escape into the city.
This opening section of Half-Life 2 indirectly (though powerfully) references George
Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four in both the giant screens that display Breen’s face and the ironically named Civil Protection (Orwell, 1949). Likewise the ‘Striders’ (Figure 7), giant
Combine tripods that stalk the streets of City 17, which the player soon encounters, are familiar enemies for anyone who has read H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds (195635).
Through these remediations of classic works of science fiction literature, the dystopian world is quickly and effectively established. Even after just ten minutes of play, players know who the enemy is and that their (macro) goal is to resist.
35 First published in 1898.
145
Figure 7: A ‘Strider’
The understanding of the good and evil of Half-Life 2 formed through remediation is reinforced as the player progresses. City 17 has the appearance of a once-grand, but now- crumbling, Eastern European city. A single giant alien building, the Citadel, dominates the skyline, towering thousands of metres above the rest of the city (Figure 8). Dr Breen’s pronouncements to the population continue, assuring them that the ‘suppression field’ the
Combine have set up to stop human’s breeding has been done for their own good, and that they must fight their base instincts so as to ‘advance’. The small surviving population lives in fear of the Civil Protection force who terrorise citizens with frequent raids,
146 imprisonments and executions. The city streets are tightly controlled; guard towers and force fields restrict and monitor the people’s movements.
Figure 8: The ‘Citadel’
With the aid of the beautiful Alyx Vance, daughter of Eli Vance, another of Freeman’s
Black Mesa colleagues, Freeman finds a way to fight the Combine. He meets up with the resistance forces and aids their efforts. He is equipped with his old HEV suit and, when a plan to teleport him to another resistance base fails, he is told to make his own way there, following the ‘Underground Railroad’, the only safe path out of the city still remaining.
Again here we have another important remediation, this time not of science fiction literature, but of American history. Like its namesake of the slavery era, City 17’s
147 ‘Underground Railroad’ is a system of secret paths and hidden safe areas through which those resisting the Combine can follow. This remediation has a double function to invoke a powerful history of necessary civil disobedience and to justify the linear path of the game. In the narrative Freeman must follow the ‘Underground Railway’ route because any other path is too dangerous; the designers as such do not need to offer other options.
This is just one of many times Half-life 2 offers a fictive justification of a design or technical constraint. I will spend much of this chapter discussing further examples.
Once out of City 17, Freeman’s adventures take him to a wide variety of locations: from the canals and sewers to a coastal road next to the heavily drained ocean, from a Combine prison and zombie-infested townships, to numerous resistance headquarters, all of which come under attack while Freeman is present. Along the way he meets many allies, and most significantly discovers that he has a near-messianic status amongst the population.
To many he is known simply as ‘the one free man’ (Valve Corporation, 2004). This deceptively innocent moniker, which is repeated often by both allies and enemies, is crucial to what I will argue about Half-Life 2, as it embodies the careful way in which agency and power are constructed and signified in this game.
Eventually, and inevitably, Freeman’s journey leads him back to the Combine Citadel in
City 17, where Eli and Alyx Vance (who now has a romantic interest in Freeman) have been detained by Dr Breen’s forces. However, during his one man assault of the tower he is captured and taken in restraints to Breen’s office near the top of the building, where
Alyx and Eli are being questioned. Here, somewhat surprisingly, the smug Breen thanks
Freeman for his help, telling him that it was Freeman who helped the Combine Forces
148 locate the resistance bases. He implies that Freeman was hired specifically for this purpose. And, more obscurely, he tells Freeman, ‘I'm relying on you to fail again, Dr
Freeman. Just as I relied on you at Black Mesa’ (Valve Corporation, 2004). In this simple move, Half-Life 2 throws into question all that occurred in its predecessor.
With help Freeman manages to escape from his bonds and, with Alyx, pursues a fleeing
Breen to the roof. Here Breen tries to teleport to safety, but Freeman destroys the teleport, causing a massive explosion. However, before Freeman gets to discover whether this explosion brings down the Citadel, or, indeed, whether it kills Alyx who is nearby, time slows to a stop. The G-man appears. As he congratulates Freeman on all he has achieved, the world slowly fades from sight. Freeman himself is not frozen; he can still look around and move, but his movements are slow and ineffectual. In a final indignity, the ‘one free man’ is rendered completely powerless. His agency is taken away. The G-man calmly congratulates him on his success; Freeman, it seems, has done exactly what the G-man hoped he would. He has ‘done so well, in fact, that [the G-man has] received some interesting offers for [Freeman’s] services’ (Valve Corporation, 2004). The G-man adds:
‘Rather than offer you the illusion of free choice, I will take the liberty of choosing for you … if and when your time comes round again’ and, after a few more cryptic remarks, disappears. The credits roll.
Theorising Freeman
It is perhaps not revolutionary as a narrative, but the basic plot of Half-Life 2 has some moments worth close consideration. It has two key features in particular upon which my analysis will be based. The first is the labelling of Gordon Freeman as ‘the one free man’.
149 This continual refrain is indicative of a broader process of the construction of Freeman
(and subsequently the player) as functioning outside power. The second is those moments of revelation towards the end of this game, which are significant for the way in which they fundamentally subvert standard narrative practices in this genre. The first revelation, that it was Freeman’s actions that led the Combine to the resistance bases, is unusual in this genre, if perhaps not particularly surprising. The second revelation is, however, more radical. Breen’s statement, ‘I'm relying on you to fail again, Dr Freeman. Just as I relied on you at Black Mesa’, undermines and challenges the player’s knowledge of the original
Half-Life. Rather than being a heroic victory for Freeman over the alien forces, it seems that it was part of the Combine’s plans all along. This subverts the dominant narrative structure of such games, where the conquering of the enemy is total and unproblematic.
The final revelation, the G-man’s removal of Gordon from time and the congratulations he extends to the hero for accomplishing his ‘mission’, is even more significant. It thoroughly reframes the events of the entire game. Whereas the player might have previously understood her/himself as fighting for the freedom of humanity, the G-man’s pleasure at what Freeman accomplished indicates that there is another agenda at play, one that may not be about the liberation of Earth’s population. This, coupled with Breen’s hints that Freeman assisted the Combine at Black Mesa (where again the G-man congratulated him), suggests that once again he may unwittingly have aided alien forces.
These revelations illuminate the ‘one free man’ refrain in a new ironic light.
Many theories circulate amongst the playing community as to the precise motivation of the characters in Half-Life 2. These range from understanding Half-Life 2 as a retelling of
Christian mythology, where Freeman symbolises Jesus and the G-Man God, to the rather
150 less exalted theory that G-Man works for the human government and is using Gordon as a weapon in the fight with the Combine (Scionick, 2004). Perhaps the most interesting of all the theories is the one suggesting that the G-man actually represents the game’s lead designer Gabe Newell (Scionick, 2004). This theory, which argues that the G-man and
Newell both pull the strings and dictate Gordon’s possible actions, has some interesting resonances for us here. While this theory, which has not been proposed in complete seriousness, is in many ways an oversimplification of the narrative role the G-Man plays, it is certainly important to note that the G-Man does not so much play an interventionist role as establish the game world for Gordon (bringing him to this time and place) and then merely tinkers around the edges. He can, for instance, be seen at one point in the game handing a rocket launcher to a resistance leader, a weapon that is soon handed on to
Gordon. In this way it is possible to see the G-Man as the in-game representation of the game’s designers. He sets the field of play and, by a number of small actions, encourages certain outcomes but he does not have direct agency in the action.
Ultimately, however, I am not trying here to develop a definitive interpretation of the narrative of Half-Life 2: my analysis is rather a heuristic device for exploring the operation of power. What is important here is not who the G-Man or who the Combine might be, but how they function. I will demonstrate that the Combine mirrors a traditional representation of power, top-down, monolithic and oppressive. The G-Man reflects a quite different, more subtle understanding of power, not as oppressive, but as productive and bottom-up in that he operates through the actions of others. The G-Man channels
Freeman’s agency for his own purposes and, in so doing, proves far harder to resist than the Combine. As I will show, most importantly, the G-Man offers the revelation: he
151 reminds players that they are not free agents and deconstructs their path to the end of the game. In the final revelation players are rendered completely powerless, exposing the contingency of their agency on the mechanisms of the game.
Suppression Fields and the Repressive Hypothesis
What makes Half-Life 2 so compelling from a theoretical standpoint is the way the game’s sophisticated and self-reflexive design first hides the techniques of power it employs on the player, and then, in its stunning conclusion, reverses this whole process.
Half-Life 2 goes to great pains to convince players that they are free agents fighting a noble cause, only to turn this on its head and leave them questioning exactly what they have done, and what led them to do it. Half-Life 2 problematises a simplistic notion of freedom, suggesting freedom is not the absence of rules and constraints, but produced by and in relation to them.
Half-Life 2’s own meta-commentary, while sophisticated for the medium, is, however, in itself not adequate as a proper explication of the operation of power. In search of a more rigorous and nuanced theoretical approach to power, I shall turn to post-structuralism and power’s most radical theorist, Michel Foucault. It is Foucault’s model of power, as articulated in his History of Sexuality: 1 (1979), that will form the theoretical basis of this account, and will render clear the parallels between the study of video game control, that is, rules, and broader notions of power.
Foucault’s work, in particular his study of Western sexuality, seems an unlikely place to seek new ways to reconceptualise video gaming. While undeniably some of the most
152 important theoretical, political and philosophical work of the past century, Foucault’s insights may not at first glance seem readily applicable to video gaming, and a history of sexuality may seem as far away as one can get from the dystopian future of Half-Life 2.
Yet what we shall see is that because of their focus on training the individual player, single-player video games draw on and remediate techniques of power first used during modernity and most clearly analysed by Foucault36.
Foucault’s account in the first volume of his History of Sexuality is not simply of sexuality, but more importantly of how Western thought has conceptualised power. And it is here that its applicability to gaming lies. The notion of the ‘repressive hypothesis’, which Foucault analyses in detail, is a diagram of the micro-operation of discursive power. It demonstrates the way in which liberatory desires and “free” acts can function to reproduce existing relations of power. Sex has its own specificities and Foucault’s analysis cannot be entirely deterritorialised from those. But, in the ways it reflects power’s dominant discursive formation and operation, it is a profoundly productive tool.
The repressive hypothesis, which Foucault critiques, is the prevalent liberal understanding of sexuality since the Victorian period as controlled, confined and prohibited. Foucault seeks to problematise this understanding, which privileges the negative elements of the operation of power, the censorships and denials, while failing to engage with the productive quality of power (Foucault, 1979: 12). His purpose in this interrogation of the repressive hypothesis is not to argue that sex has never been subject
36 Whilst Foucault is not comfortable with the terminology of modernity, and indeed claims ignorance of its full meaning (see Raulet, 1983 204 – 205), there can be little doubt he is one of the most significant theorists of the ‘modern’ period. His seminal works including Madness and Civilization (1973),The Birth of the Clinic (1975) Discipline and Punish (1977a) and History of Sexuality: Volume 1(1979), all focus on the key reconfigurations of power and thought that produced the modern social order .
153 to censorship, subjugation and repression, but rather to examine how our contemporary understandings of sex have been produced and are maintained. Foucault’s critique of the repressive hypothesis is a critique of traditional understanding of power as monolithic, top-down superstructures that restrict and censor the subject’s “natural” actions. His goal is to find the cultural logics which produce our actual practices and understandings.
What is said to be “repressed” within a repressive hypothesis framework is “natural” sex, a supposedly instinctual, acultural and free activity. This is an understanding prevalent in the discourses surrounding sexuality, most obviously in liberatory ones, which espouse a return to sexual freedom, the extrication of sex from power and a recapturing of the
“natural” so long repressed by Church and State. Foucault’s critique of the repressive hypothesis queries this kind of logic by illustrating the constructedness of this “natural” model of sex. This model is no more or less entwined with the operations of power, but just produced through different configurations. Foucault argues that the understanding of sexuality as having been repressed brings about a specific kind of relationship to sex in itself. It functions to position anyone who engages in sexual activity outside the limited confines to which it is “restricted” (that is, to within the marital bed of the heterosexual couple) and anyone who “feels free” to talk about sex as operating outside of the reach of power. The discursive construction of such activity as resisting the self-serving and artificial dicta of power, namely the Church, State and Family can, Foucault suggests, become part of the mechanism by which the modern normative understanding of sexuality is produced and maintained. The “normal” is produced in the very act of conceptualising the transgressive.
154 It is this process of production that Foucault sees as central to the operation of power.
Relationships of power function primarily by shaping our understandings and expectations. For Foucault,
[w]hat makes power hold good, what makes it accepted, is simply the fact that it doesn’t only weigh on us as a force that says no, but that it traverses and produces things, it induces pleasure, forms of knowledge, produces discourse. It needs to be considered as a productive network which runs through the whole social body, much more than as a negative instance whose function is repression. (Foucault, 1980: 119)
In other words, power produces us. It standardises and determines what we enjoy and seek out, what we recognise and understand and the very modes of thought we use. At a very basic level, power impacts our every action: it is not just at those moments when we are being restricted or denied that we are shaped by it. Foucault terms this ‘productive power’ and throughout this thesis I will show its operation.
For Foucault, this relationship between power, our discursive frameworks, and what we find pleasurable is mutually constructive. Indeed, so much so that he groups them all under the single term power-knowledge-pleasure37 (Foucault, 1979: 11). Productive power is that which determines how we understand and thus engage with the world. It therefore constructs our sense of what is pleasurable and desirable. But, conversely, how
37 Foucault addition, in History of Sexuality: Volume 1, of ‘pleasure’ to his famous concept of ‘power- knowledge’ from Discipline and Punish (1977a: 27) is an important one to acknowledge in context of both his work on sexuality and my work on video gaming. Where pleasure is somewhat of an unnecessary concept when dealing with austere institutions, like prisons and barracks, it is a critical one when looking at the everyday practices of sex or popular entertainment. Through this triple coupling Foucault illustrates that activities the subject finds pleasurable, indeed even ones that are voluntary, are none-the-less constructions of power. By adding to his concept of power-knowledge rather than replacing it, Foucault signifies that he sees these cultural processes as reflecting many of the same processes as the more sinister institutions he talks about in Discipline and Punish. This addition marks an important development of Foucault’s ideas but also demonstrates that this is a continuation of the same academic project.
155 we understand and what we find pleasurable determine the power structures that prosper in society. Those configurations of power that offer us things we find pleasurable are the least likely to be resisted.
This complex process of parallel and interlinked formation can be readily seen in video gaming. As Aarseth noted, the primary pleasures of video games are of agency, kinaesthetic performance, and in-game success, so games that offer a strong sense of agency, kinaesthetic opportunities and challenging but reachable achievements tend to be the most popular. Thus, cultural systems, industry practices, configurations of productive power that bring about such games develop. Yet these very standards of pleasure have not simply arisen spontaneously; they have evolved over time, as video games define and redefine themselves. The pleasure derived here, in relation to the discursive construction of the video game, is not the same as that which we look for in television or film. We understand games to be about agency, and it is that which reinforces the importance of agency in games that we have come to appreciate and look for in them.
My focus in this chapter, in examining the way in which Half-Life 2 produces a very particular regime of power-knowledge-pleasure, will be on the construction of the game and the construction of the player. In doing so, I will also be critiquing a repressive hypothesis, one with many parallels to the one which Foucault offers. I will be critiquing the understanding of video games play as limited by rules, where rules are understood in opposition to agency, a model I outlined earlier. This is the discursive construction of rules as restrictive and limiting, which dominates ludological understandings of play. The logic of negative capture, which we interrogated in Chapter Two, encapsulates perfectly
156 this selective model of power. Essentially, Suits’ conceptualisation of games as systems privileging inefficient means assumes a pre-existing natural state of affairs, in which power is a force that acts upon and limits the possibilities of action—limits the potential agency of the player. In such a model, agency is seen to exist prior to or outside of power.
Power operates on, denies, and restricts the natural agency of the player. Foucault’s insights suggest an alternative understanding, in which agency is a constitutive element of power, and vice-versa. This framework forces a rethink of rules as limitations and the implication of a pre-existing/natural type of play, suggesting instead that play only comes into being in relation to rules and game structures.
So, let us now turn to Half-Life 2 and try to understand the ways in which this game mobilises the concept of natural agency and plays with the player’s expectations. Half-
Life 2 establishes a certain concept of natural and normal, before undermining it at the end of the game. Let us look beyond the interrelated primary techniques of immediacy, realism and naturalisation, to the ways in which power is effaced.
Immediacy, Realism and Naturalisation
In the last chapter we explored Bolter and Grusin’s concept of remediation, placing particular focus on the means by which the process of remediation can function through the logic of immediacy. Immediacy is the process whereby the mediation of an experience is effaced. In video games, immediacy operates to obfuscate the processes of construction by which a play experience is produced (for example, in Myst the game structurally mirrors the form of a book). The mediation of the play experience, that is the interface, the design, the spatiotemporal relations and the kinds of pleasures and roles
157 players are encouraged to inhabit, are positioned not as artificially-designed choices, but rather as “natural” and inevitable properties of the game world.
As Bolter and Grusin observe, immediacy is produced by drawing on existing conventions and so invoking an established discourse of what is realistic and what is natural to the fictive world (1999: 65). In gaming, both these processes are drawn on heavily by the repetition/remediation of familiar genre tropes. Video games reuse existing and established interface designs, so much so that genre is commonly marked not by setting or theme, as in literature, film and television (for example, science fiction, western, murder mystery), but by the chosen interface: first-person shooter, real-time strategy, third-person platformer. Games layer the familiar interface with a connected construction of realism, most commonly graphical, but also in terms of physics or even artificial intelligence. These constructs of realism do not mean the game is necessarily
“realistic” in any broad sense of that term, but they mean that the game conforms to certain standards, certain privileged representational schemas. As genres evolve, norms of realism are established and new games strive more deliberately for them. Throughout the iterations in a genre, we also often find that the positioning of the interface itself shifts, as it becomes more accepted and therefore more immediate. Some games go further, however, and seek to render the interface and other necessary game mechanisms as properties of the game world. Such a process is not the logic of realism; it is not necessarily trying to conform to a real-world analogue, but rather a process I will term
‘naturalisation’.
158 Conforming to the established realist paradigm is an important part of the logic of immediacy. Half-Life 2, which is often praised for its realism (Kvasnicka, 2005), demonstrates the complexity of the concept. In this circumstance realism is taken to refer to features like accurate damage modelling, in which virtual bodies move just as real bodies do when shot; and where materials in the game respond like the real-world counterparts, wood will shatter with the impact of a bullet, while others like brick or steel will withstand the blow. Realism in Half-Life 2 primarily means the Havok physics engine, and the Source graphics engine38. It is also used to describe those basic interpersonal cues we are familiar with in everyday life, such as people turning to face the player when they speak, and eyes that follow the player around the room (Pruett, 2005).
The praise for Half-Life 2’s realism generally refers to this important, but only superficial, physical level, and not to any attempt to model, for instance, the psychological trauma of war or a working economy. The discourse of realism reflects the focus of the designers, industry and players, and reveals those things most intrinsically valued by the playing culture. It is these factors that, if absent, would destroy the immediacy of the experience for most players. These are the privileged aspects of the world that are seen as necessary to hide the mediation of the experiences. In its turn, then, the very construction of these things as realistic perpetuates and reinforces these kinds of understandings of the “nature” of play.
However, another process occurs in video games, one that has become essential to the immediacy of video gaming. The realist paradigm operates often unrecognised by
38 Havok is a third party physics engine used in Half-Life 2. Source is a sophisticated graphical engine specially created for Half-Life 2, and since used in a number of other titles, including Dark Messiah of Might and Magic (Arkane Studios, 2007), SiN Episodes (Ritual Entertainment, 2006) and Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines (Troika Games, 2004).
159 designers, who are guided by the discourse and norms of realisms which privilege certain kinds of cultural understandings and values. However another more intentional
(professional) micro-process occurs, that of naturalisation. Like realism, naturalisation functions to efface the interface, internal structure, or technical requirements of a game, in order to heighten the immediacy of the play experience. Naturalisation is the transformation of an entrenched tradition or technological necessity into an inherent property of the game world, so that these qualities are seen as stemming from the game world itself, not the game designers. Through this process, game mechanisms that function to shape the player’s experience, understandings and actions are seen, not in terms of the very specific effects they have on the play experience, but as intrinsic properties of the world being modelled. In this way naturalisation hides the processes of power underlying the construction of these artificial worlds.
The developers, Valve Corporation, took great pains with the Half-Life series to naturalise a number of game mechanisms by making them plausible in terms of the narrative. The clearest example of this is Freeman’s HEV suit. Like the vast majority of first-person shooters in the Half-Life series, the player’s health is represented as a percentage: 100% means ‘uninjured’ and 0% means dead (I shall return to this numerical schema in Chapter Six.). This percentage value is displayed on the screen, to enable players to see how close to death they are and assess the riskiness of particular courses of action. Such a system, however, breaks with the immediacy of the experience, and emphasises mediation. So, in their quest for immediacy, Valve naturalised this reading, an important genre convention and a key game mechanism, in a simple but effective way.
Rather than display it intrusively for the player on the screen, Gabe Newell, the lead
160 designer, and his team built it into the game world by making it a head-up display on the protective HEV suit.
The HEV suit also provides a reason for Freeman’s extraordinary resilience. Like the heroes of most other first-person shooters, Freeman can survive being shot numerous times, falling from great heights and being in close proximity to explosions, all with minimal injury. Yet, unlike most other heroes, in Half-Life it is not because of superhuman abilities, but rather the protective and recuperative powers of his HEV suit, which plausibly accounts for his amazing robustness. Indeed, it is the suit that accounts for his surviving the initial catastrophic experiment in Half-Life and his ability to mount a counter attack on his own. The device of the HEV suit naturalises the hero without making him “realistic”.
In his excellent Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture Alexander Galloway (2006) adapts the term ‘diegesis’ as used in film and literary theory, in order to enable him to distinguish between those parts of the game within the fictional game world and those outside it.
The diegesis of a video game is the game’s total world narrative action […] By contrast, nondiegetic play elements are those elements of the gaming apparatus that are external to the world of narrative action [… These are] gamic elements that are inside the total gamic apparatus yet outside the portion of the apparatus that constitutes a pretend world of character and story. (2006: 7-8)
In a game like Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, one can see a relatively clear distinction between diegetic and nondiegetic elements. Many of the nondiegetic elements are
161 included to increase the ease with which the player can navigate the game world.
Objectives and building entrances are highlighted with glowing markers, and coloured shapes appear on the map to help the player find his mission’s destination. Likewise, CJ’s health is represented by a small, but visible bar-graph in the corner of the screen. Such elements are never justified within the diegetic, that is fictional, game world, but they are important parts of the gameplay mechanics.
Nondiegetic elements, however, emphasise the mediation of the experience and limit its immediacy. For this reason many games choose to use such devices sparingly. The Half-
Life series, however, by the conceit of putting the ‘health score’ on the HEV suit, transforming the nondiegetic into the diegetic, takes the quest for immediacy in another direction. Such a transformation of nondiegetic into diegetic is a key illustration of the process of naturalisation.
It is important also to consider naturalisation when it comes to the technical and structural dynamics of a game. The clearest demonstration of this comes in terms of the choices of setting and architecture of many games. First-person shooter games like the Half-Life series often have very particular spatial requirements, which need very particular settings.
Game designers must often be able to predict the direction from which a player will approach and the route he/she will take. A game set in large open space with multiple paths, say a forest or a field, will not allow any degree of accuracy in this prediction. If, for instance, an ambush seems likely to take place, the player could either bypass it altogether or else come up behind it. Consequently, most first-person shooters are set in spatially-constrained environments such as prisons (for instance, Wolfenstein 3D, 1992
162 and Return to Castle Wolfenstien, 2003), space stations (Doom, 1993; Doom 3, 2004;
System Shock, 1994 and System Shock 2, 2002), and subterranean scientific installations
(Half-Life, 1998).39 Such settings naturalise a relatively linear path as players do not expect to have unrestricted movement in such environments. While the settings are not realistic insofar as being accurate replicas of real-world places—indeed, many are from fantasy or science-fictional worlds—they are authentic and believable in the story-line’s own terms. In many ways, this stems from a familiarity created by the remediation of other fictional media, like film and literature. Doom, System Shock and Half-Life clearly evoke intertextually the kinds of claustrophobic environments used in movies like 2001:
A Space Odyssey, the Alien series, and Total Recall.
Half-Life 2 is not set (for the most part) underground, nor is it set in a prison, a space station, a cavern or a dungeon.40 Half-Life 2 is set in City 17. Unlike these other environments, cities are not “naturally” linear: from one point to another in a city it is possible to take any number of routes. Unlike the majority of other single-player first- person shooters, Half-Life 2 does not use the architecture of its setting as the primary naturalising schema for spatial limitation. It uses something far more interesting: politics.
City 17’s linearity is produced/naturalised by the totalitarian regime under which it operates. City streets are blocked off by guard posts checking sector passes, most doors are clamped shut by Combine technology, and barbed-wire fences and force fields protect
39 This convention is starting to change, particularly with the success of multiplayer first-person shooters. Vast outdoor landscapes are now becoming common. Many games, however, still feature spatially- restrictive devices, such as walls with single gates, rivers with few bridges and tunnels, in order to achieve the same effect. 40 In fact, one location in Half-Life 2 is a prison, called Nova Prospekt, it is, as one might expect, a spatially-confined environment.
163 Combine installations and separate the city. From above, the city is visible as a city grid, with interlocking streets and lane ways, city blocks and multiple possible paths, but strict state control prevents it from ever being experienced in this way. In using totalitarian politics as a naturalising schema, Half-Life 2 offers an interesting commentary on the video game form. Despite the popular claims that gaming is premised on user agency, the corresponding political landscape is one of brutal tyranny. The way space is managed in this genre, is so tightly controlled as to be almost Fascist in it severity.41
The totalitarianism of City 17 does not only function to naturalise the strictness of the game’s spatial configuration, it also functions to naturalise resistance. What could be more natural for us, coming from a Western liberal tradition, to fight against, than Fascist aliens? The lack of moral ambiguity in fighting the Combine forces functions well in
Half-Life 2 to channel our agency toward resistance, a process that, as I will demonstrate, is key to the way in which this game works (and is reinforced by many other means). The rightness, and righteousness, of the cause is also emphasised by the contrasts between the totalitarian and cold authority of the Combine on the one hand, and the warmth of the resistance family, the fatherly Eli, the jovial brotherly Barney and the beautiful love interest Alyx on the other.42 The game effaces its own techniques of power, that is the ways in which existing cultural logics are invoked to produce certain kinds of play practice, by offering the player a clear-cut villain to oppose. Nevertheless, while resisting
41 Indeed, City 17 is broken up into ghettos and enclaves. It has a clear racial hierarchy: the unfortunate Vortingauts at the bottom working as the slave-labour force, the humans divided into the Overwatch/administration and the general population. Unseen or only glimpsed, the Combine advisors preside over everything. 42 In doing so it privileges a certain audience, namely liberal heterosexuals. That does not mean, of course, that there is no room in Half-Life 2 for queer pleasure. Responses to Aleks Krotoski’s blog piece in the Guardian Unlimited ‘Homosexuality and Gaming’ suggest a desire to, or at least fascination with, the idea of queering games like Half-Life 2.
164 the monolithic Combine power, the player is still produced in relation to other more subtle forms of power: the tinkering of the G-Man and the management strategies of the game designers. The player is fighting the most obvious formation of power, but in doing so ignoring the more subtle forces shaping his/her actions
In an echo of Foucault, Valve employs its own version of the repressive hypothesis to position the player as transgressive. The repressive hypothesis is a discursive construction of sex, in which the (post-Victorian) history of sex is understood as a history of censorship, prohibition and subjugation to power. In constructing the relationship of sex to power as invariably negative, that is, one of repression, an assumption of a natural sex outside power is produced and relied upon. Those opposing this repression thus claim a natural authority for their construction of sex.
Analogously, in Half Life 2, through Breen’s public addresses (Figure 9), an association is established between the resistance movement and the natural. Breen sets this up in his answer to a letter from a concerned citizen who asks, ‘Why has the Combine seen fit to suppress our reproductive cycle?’ (Valve Corporation, 2004). Breen answers by saying that the Combine Suppression field is helping humanity advance and fight our base biological urges. He declares:
Our true enemy is instinct […] Instinct would inflict a fatal injury on our species. Instinct creates its own oppressors, and bids us rise up against them. Instinct tells us that the unknown is a threat, rather than an opportunity. Instinct slyly and covertly compels us away from change and progress. Instinct, therefore, must be expunged. - Dr Breen (Valve Corporation, 2004)
165
Figure 9: Dr Breen addressing the citizens of City 17 via a public screen
The basic framework we see in operation here echoes that of the repressive hypothesis: the natural (instinct) and repressive (sex as constituted by power) are understood in opposition to one another. Just as Foucault observes, the repressive hypothesis functions to position anyone speaking about sex as transgressive and outside the reach of power
(1979: 6), the association that the game establishes between the resistance and the natural functions to position the player and Freeman as outside the reach of power. The monolithic Combine here symbolises the institutional formation of power (the Church, the State, the Family) and resistance seems a simple act of defiance. However, as the
166 game’s final revelation makes plain, another more complex network of power exists behind the scenes43.
Half-Life 2 uses politics to hide its own mediation and its own spatial linearity. It also uses politics to encourage certain kinds of play. Immediacy is not simply about hiding the processes of mediation. It is about making invisible, and therefore unquestionable, the power relations produced through the game. This idea can be explored further by looking at the way in which the concept of freedom is mobilised in the game.
‘The One Free Man’
Half-Life 2 echoes with the refrain of the ‘one free man’. But more than a constant echo of the hero’s surname,44 these few words mark the single most important process in video game play and arguably in Western culture more broadly: the process of individuation.
Individuation is the cultural process whereby subjects come to be understood, and to understand themselves, as autonomous individuals. In this refrain Half-Life 2 makes explicit (and plays with) this production of the individual. Freeman is the ‘one free man’; he is positioned as an individual operating with autonomy outside of power strictures.
The refrain emphasises Freeman and the player’s individuality (‘one’), autonomous
43 It is worth noting that Half-Life 2 also fundamentally embodies a regime of power Foucault terms ‘biopower’ (Foucault, 1979: 135 - 159). By biopower Foucault is describing the contemporary era where the state takes the governance of life as a primary concern. Biopower functions through the construction of ‘individual’ bodies through the techniques of discipline (to which I will return next chapter) and the establishment of regulatory structures and institutions for governing all aspects of ‘life’ of the broad population. Through the technologies of hospitals, asylums, immunisation programs, abortion clinics, health care, censuses, death certificates and the like, governments achieve the ‘subjugation of bodies and the control of populations’ (Foucault, 1979: 140). Biopower renders the bodies of the masses statistical and manipulable, they are a resource to be managed and regulate. The suppression field used by the Combine in Half-Life 2 is the ultimate extension of this process dictating how and when humans can reproduce. To create a dystopian future Valve Corporation have thus employed and extended a familiar logic from contemporary society. 44 A name said to have been chosen originally in reference to the physicist, Freeman Dyson (Hodgson 2004: 30).
167 freedom (‘free’) and humanity (‘man’). The underlying implication is that freedom comes from being a sovereign individual unaffected by power, and that this is the true essence of being human. Freeman, the true individual, alone can fight the monolithic power of the
Combine and save humanity. These simple words equate freedom with individuality
(and, not incidentally, with masculinity) and as such offer a model of power as external and subsequent to the formation of the individual, a model that is, however, turned on its head by the revelations at the end of the game.
The concept of “man”45 as being essentially free and autonomous prior to the machinations of power has a long history. It is a defining concept of modernity and remain popular to this day. As Enlightenment thinker Jean-Jacques Rousseau argued in
The Confessions (195346), man was inherently good and had been corrupted by the evils of society, the unnatural world he had made. This idea that the essence of man is natural and “born free”, and that culture and power work upon and subjugate this essence is one that, as cultural theorist Nick Mansfield has argued, profoundly informs the modernist47 discourse of liberal humanism (Mansfield, 2000: 15 - 21). Liberal humanism understands man as innately capable of rational thought, that is, to see beyond the artificial operations of power, and consider the truth of the situation. This understanding and privileging of the possibility of rational thought has become deeply embedded in Western ontological frameworks. The appeal to the rational individual, that is, to the subject unshackled from power, is commonplace. It guides everything from politics to advertising, and the
45 I use ‘man’ here quite deliberately because, as Genevieve Lloyd shows in The Man of Reason (1984), discourses of rationalism always privilege male understandings of the world. 46 First published in 1782. 47 It should be noted that my use of the term modernist is as the adjectival form of modernity and not meant to imply any link to modernist art movements.
168 assumption of the autonomous individual is basic to the functioning of Western capitalist society, and, as Half-Life 2 will be used to demonstrate presently, it is even central to video gaming. This process of individuation (that is, the discursive construction of the subject as a sovereign individual) is also a key logic of Western late-capitalist culture, because it is the mechanism by means of which subjects are made to police themselves.
Because all individuals are understood as the sole source of their own action, they are held accountable by other and themselves, for their behaviour (I shall return to this in the next chapter). Thus, the ways in which those behaviours are culturally constructed are effaced and denied.
Foucault, however, offers a radical departure from this, and provides us with new ways of understanding the complexity of Half-Life 2. For Foucault, the individual does not exist prior to power. Power does not function to oppress an existing freely autonomous individual, rather ‘it is one of the prime effects of power that certain bodies, certain gestures, certain discourses, certain desires, come to be identified and constituted as individuals’ (Foucault, 1980: 98). Power produces very specific individuals who reflect, reproduce and embody the logics of power: ‘[t]he individual is an effect of power, and at the same time, or precisely to the extent to which it is that effect, it is the element of its articulation. […] The individual which power has constituted is at the same time its vehicle’ (Foucault, 1980: 98). The individual is an effect of power, in that the individual is produced by power, but is also the vehicle of power. An individual’s actions, discourses and understandings function to produce other “individuals” and to constantly perform, monitor and police the boundaries of what defines, that is, what is considered normal and acceptable for, an individual.
169 Foucault is not only critiquing the belief in the natural autonomous individual, he is illustrating that this very conception is in itself part of the workings of power. The myth of the free individual functions to hide this operation of power; it effaces the process of production of the individuals and the particular kinds of logics they embody. The specific construction of the individual becomes understood as natural and inevitable, making the power configurations which produce it invisible and unquestionable.
Thus, through the refrain of ‘one free man’, Half-Life 2 invokes a model of the autonomous individual, only finally, in one of its most significant Foucaultian echoes, to deconstruct this myth. At the very beginning of the game, Gordon Freeman is awoken/resurrected by the G-man, whose opening monologue makes clear that this awakening is not simply an act of generosity, but that Freeman has a certain part to play—though his role is far from clear. But once the G-man fades away, Half-Life 2 encourages the player to forget that Freeman’s arrival on this particular day, at this particular time, in this particular city had been planned. Freeman becomes known as the
‘one free man’. The player is encouraged to take on the role of the literal embodiment of the liberal humanist autonomous individual operating outside of power
The refrain works on players in two interconnected ways. First, it shapes their understanding of Freeman and his role in the world, establishing the player’s task; and second, it establishes a specific relationship between players and the game, and produces/reinforces players’ understandings of themselves. Despite the G-man’s control over his arrival in this world, Freeman is positioned by the ‘one free man’ refrain as the sole hope of the resistance, an outsider, unique in the world in terms of skills and
170 experience, who operates beyond of the scope of the Combine’s control. The task of the player, in a single player video game, is thus established as one of having, single- handedly, to overthrow the oppressive regime.
Yet Freeman’s status as the ‘one free man’ does not just arise from his outsider status in the world. The refrain’s primary resonance is not with the character of Freeman, but with the player. It is the player who is the ‘one free man’: the only “real” human in a virtual world and, as such, the only free agent. The refrain does not only produce a freedom myth in the game world, but it also invokes our own existing one in the real world. A stark contrast is set up between the game characters who are computer-controlled and the player who has the freedom which comes “naturally” from being human. The believability, and therefore the power, of understanding Freeman as a ‘free man’ comes from players understandings of themselves as free agents. Freeman’s power lies not in his own ability, but in being a conduit for the player’s. It is this that makes the finale so powerful, since we encounter here not just the traditional conspiracy narrative, in which it is revealed that the main character has been manipulated, but a profound critique of our own sense of agency and freedom.
Interactivity
There is another aspect to this refrain worth engaging with here, and that is its connection to the discourse of interactivity. In academia, the debate over ‘interactivity’ has raged for many years. The term grew in popularity in the 1980s and early 1990s as a descriptor of new-media technologies like computer software, video games and digital artwork. The popular usage of the term suggested that interactive forms differ from traditional media in
171 their requirement for user input. Yet from a theoretical perspective the term was more problematic; thus many new media theorists sought to construct a more precise understanding. Jens Jensen argued the term interactivity had become ‘loaded with positive connotations […] along the lines of individual freedom of choice, personal development, [and] self determination’ without ever being clearly defined (1998: 185).
Jensen saw the solution to the theoretical difficulties surrounding interactivity lying in developing a fixed and rigorous definition.
Numerous media and cultural studies scholars, however, argued that the term had broader problems than just its conceptual vagueness. Many took issue with this representation of interactive media as a rupture with traditional media. They queried the conception of digital media as being unique in requiring agency, pointing to the types of agency and meaning-making required in other forms: and suggested that the marking of digital media as interactive and, as such, discontinuous from traditional forms in terms of agency, privileges a very limited and narrow understanding of agency. New-media scholar Lev
Manovich, who rejects the term entirely, argues that:
When we use the concept of “interactive media” exclusively in relation to computer-based media, there is the danger that we will interpret “interaction” literally, equating it with physical interaction between a user and a media object (pressing a button, choosing a link, moving the body), at the expense of psychological interaction. (2001: 57).
One of the dangers of such a narrow definition is that, in marking the distinction between interactive and non-interactive as physical, it marks interactivity as a physical property of a text, rather than something dependant upon cultural use.
172 Despite such critiques, the term interactivity has remained in constant use, particularly in popular and industry discourses.48 Many accounts, like Salen and Zimmerman’s survey of the field in the Rules of Play, make brief concessions to the critiques of interactivity by flagging cognitive agency. Ultimately, however, they argue that one can still draw a meaningful distinction between interactive and non-interactive texts (2004: 60). For
Salen and Zimmerman, despite acknowledging the contested nature of the term interactivity, the assertion that ‘[a]n interactive context presents participants with choices’ is unproblematic so long as choice is defined broadly enough to incorporate non- conscious decisions (2004: 69). In this they build off a definition of interactivity from prominent human-computer interaction theorist, Brenda Laurel. For Laurel, ‘something is interactive when people can participate as agents within a representational context’ where
‘[a]n agent is “one who initiates actions”’ (1993: 112). Interactivity is thus located in texts or systems where the user can initiate action.
This understanding of interactivity as a property of a text has been problematised recently by Rob Cover (2006), who highlights how the cultural positioning of a text as interactive in itself produces new possibilities in the audience/text relationship. In such a model the designation of a text as interactive, not its “nature”, is what brings about a change in engagement practices. Cover proposes that the concept of interactivity, that is the discursive construction of an experience as being predicated on user participation, offers a radical challenge to the notion of authorship. With a text positioned as interactive,
48 Despite its problematisation, the term is also still in common usage within video game studies. Querying the term, however, has led to it being used in scare quotes—“interactivity”. The absurdity of this was made abundantly clear at the 2001 Bristol Game Cultures conference, where the conference photographer soon realized that whenever the word interactivity was used, the speaker would gesture scare quotes with their fingers. Keen to get action shots of the speakers, he soon took to leaping to his feet to take a shot whenever the term interactivity was uttered.
173 audiences understand themselves to be participants in its construction. As such, the author-function, that is, the set of institutional, legal, economic and historic frames
(Foucault, 1977b: 124) within which a text is assigned a “true” authorial meaning, holds less sway. An interactive text is not understood to have a single meaning given to it by the author, but a plurality of meanings produced through audience engagement (Cover,
2006: 145-148). As Cover succinctly puts it:
[T]he rise of media technologies which not only avail themselves to certain forms of interactivity with the text, but also to the ways in which the pleasure of engagement with the text is sold under the signifier of interactivity is that which puts into question the functionality of authorship and opens the possibility for a variety of mediums no longer predicated on the name of the author. (2006: 146)
He is suggesting that the rupture between traditional and interactive texts cannot be located solely in technological differences, but that it arises through their different cultural positioning. Interactive texts open up the possibility of a multitude of meanings, because users are made aware of their own agency. For Cover, interactivity is not locatable in a text, but is a function of its discursive construction. Definitions of interactivity, such as those of Salen and Zimmerman and Laurel, are important in the way that they produce cultural discourses of types of texts in which the author-function has less hold. To take an example: it is not the technology of the book that makes the novel non-interactive. Indeed, choose-your-own-adventure books, in which readers flip to specified pages based on their decision as to what they would have the characters do, demonstrate this. Rather it is the cultural understanding of the book that produces the way in which writers write and readers read. Writers construct the story to be meaningful
174 when read from the front/beginning to the back/end, and this is the way most readers choose to engage with it. It is not that interactivity is not real. Rather it is not solely a property of a technology, but also a culturally standardised practice of use.
The refrain of ‘one free man’ in Half-Life 2 not only echoes the broader discourse of interactivity, it suggests the possibility of a plurality of engagement practices. It adds to the existing designation of this text as interactive as an example of the video game form and informs the kinds of play practices that may be performed. The word ‘free’ in the refrain acts as a double signifier, representing both the player’s freedom (that is, agency) and his in-game political freedom (that is, Freeman’s resistance of the totalitarian regime). This is not just a convention of Valve’s to encourage players to link their agency with the fight against totalitarianism—although it certainly does that—but it reflects a deeper interconnection between popular discourses of interactivity and liberal humanism. If we return to Laurel’s definition of interactivity, we can see this more clearly. It hinges upon agency, and agency comes from the ability to initiate action.
Entrenched in this framework is a liberal humanist understanding of the autonomous individual. Agency comes from the individual (the agent) exercising his/her sovereign power to act.
However, as Foucault and Half-Life 2 suggest, such a model of agency is problematic.
The initiator of an action cannot simply be pinpointed; such a framework assumes a liberal humanist model of the autonomous individual, rather than a culturally-produced subject. As the final revelation in Half-Life 2 suggests, throughout the game Freeman both initiates actions and fulfils the will of the G-man. Freeman and the player are not the
175 sovereign individuals that a liberal humanist discourse privileges, but are formed by their relationships with broader cultural processes, whether these be manifest in the G-man, or the needs of the game’s designers, or the doctrines of liberalism (that one should resist totalitarianism), or any range of social conventions and logics. The decisions made and actions performed are not initiated solely by the individual, but are produced by the combined construction and self-construction of the cultural subject.
Rethinking the Player/Game Relationship
With a shift to a cultural construction model of both player and game, there is also a need for a change in the theoretical tools used for analysing the relationship between the two.
In Chapter Two I offered a critique of the logic of negative capture underlying the classic game model theorists in which I suggested that this model’s reliance on the notion of rules as a restrictive force was problematic, as it failed to account for the constructive shaping of play and assumed that normalisation occurs at the moment of transgression. I want now to return to this model and these critiques, in order to explore further the way in which such conceptualisations of play reflect a liberal humanist understanding of the subject and power, and what clues this may provide for new ways of thinking about the player/game relationship.
As I have argued, the liberal humanist paradigm suggests that the subject comes before power, that the subject has an essential nature prior to the restrictive force of culture. The parallels between this and the classic game model theorisation of rules as a restrictive force are marked. In Salen and Zimmerman’s quintessential encapsulation of this paradigm in declaring that ‘[r]ules limit player action’ is the implicit assumption that both
176 play and the player have a natural truth that exists prior to the operation of rules (2004:
125). The same may be said of Suits’ contention that ‘rules prohibit more efficient in favour of less efficient means’ (Suits, 1978: 34). Such models do not acknowledge the subjects’ potential plurality of engagements as produced by the specificity of their contexts, but rather assume the existence of unshifting universal possibilities in all contexts, prior to the operations of power. An understanding of play as restricted can only be suggested if play is implicitly contrasted to some other ‘free’ activity. Restriction, as a cutting back of options, is only measurable from some baseline or reference point, otherwise is not a process of restricting. While neither Suits nor Salen and Zimmerman ever make explicit what this reference point is, I would suggest that what they are relying upon is the concept of the liberal humanist individual, the unrestrained subject that pre- exists power. The difficulties with such a model become particularly clear with the video game form. Such an engagement cannot be conceptualised as having an essential nature prior to the operation of rules. Half-Life 2 has no existence, no “true nature” prior to the codes (programming, behavioural and ontological) which produce it. It is certainly possible to think of activities that cannot be performed within Half-Life 2—indeed, the list would be very long—but these are not restrictions on the player, since they have never been possibilities in this context.
The classic game model paradigm is thus reliant upon a negative model of power which assumes power to be an oppressive top-down force. Like the discursive construction of sexuality that Foucault interrogates in his History of Sexuality, play has its own repressive hypothesis circulating through both academic and popular discourses. The play repressive hypothesis functions through a very specific configuration of power-knowledge-pleasure
177 (Foucault, 1979: 11), but, like the repressive hypothesis Foucault observes surrounding sex, it is underpinned by an understanding of power as an external force which functions to restrict the individual’s freedom.
Modernity and Resistance
Before concluding my close analysis of Half-Life 2 it is necessary to qualify my use of
Foucault. Foucault’s work, whilst offering a rigorous account of productive power, is not without limitations. In the years since publication his books and articles have been thoroughly scrutinised, expanded upon and critiqued. Here I’d like to address two of the most major criticisms of his work and clarify the use of his ideas in this project. Firstly, that he fails to acknowledge the historical specificity of his ideas by not recognising the importance of radical social changes in the 20th century. And, secondly, that his account of power leaves very little room for resistance; power in his model is so pervasive that there seems no possibility of an alternative. To explore these two criticisms I will use the work of two major scholars who have engaged with Foucault’s ideas: Jean Baudrillard and Michel de Certeau. These two theorists both powerfully contextualise Foucault’s work and offer useful expansions, which help us to understand the operation of power broadly and the mechanism of single-player video games specifically.
Baudrillard’s controversial 1976 essay Forget Foucault (Baudrillard, 2007), caused an uproar in the French academic circles when first submitted for publication (to a journal of which Foucault was on the editorial board). This scathing response to Foucault’s, then
178 just published, History of Sexuality: Volume 149 was seen by many, including notable theorists such Gilles Deleuze, as an unnecessarily polemic attack (Baudrillard, 2007: 20).
It is a wide ranging critique, not just of Foucault, but also of Deleuze and Guattari, however, despite its deliberately antagonistic tone and confrontational style, it offers many useful insights into Foucault’s work and highlights some of the weaknesses of his theoretical model. In Baudrillard’s work we find an early articulation of the two major criticisms of Foucault that need addressing here.
Historical Specificity
The very perfection of this analytical chronicle of power is disturbing. Something tells us…that if it is possible at last to talk with such definitive understanding about power, sexuality, the body and discipline even down to their most delicate metamorphoses, it is because at some point all this is here and now over with. (Baudrillard, 2007: 30)
Baudrillard accuses Foucault of neglecting to recognise the historical specificity of his ideas. Foucault, Baudrillard contends, is describing an epoch that has now disappeared.
This critique of Foucault’s account of power must be understood in context of
Baudrillard’s broader project in which he maps the disappearance/death of the real and its replacement by signs and simulation. For Baudrillard, reality has come to be meaningless in contemporary mass media capitalist society (Baudrillard, 1994). Where culture once produced signs, now signs produce culture. There is no truth beyond what is known
49 Shortly I will look at other theorists such as Alexander Galloway who argue that much has changed in the techniques and technologies of power since Foucault published his key books on power in the mid to late 1970’s. Forget Foucault, however, was written only shortly after History of Sexuality: Volume 1 and thus is important in that Baudrillard is not just claiming that Foucault did not adequately foresee future developments but rather that he failed to understand power in his own epoch.
179 through mass representation on television in the rest of the media. Our lives are entirely mediated; we operate in a world of simulation and simulacrum not reality. Signs predate, render redundant and produce reality (Baudrillard, 1994: 1). Foucault’s model of power,
Baudrillard claims, operates on an assumption of power as having a reality it does not, like all things in a mass media society, it is pure sign (Baudrillard, 2007: 50 – 51).
Foucault situates himself as a philosopher of his own epoch. He terms his long term project an ‘ontology of the present’ (Foucault 1986: 96). Yet, what Baudrillard is pointing to is that Foucault is not a theorist of the present, but rather a theorist of modernity. In History of Sexuality: Volume 1, as in Madness and Civilisation (1973),
Birth of the Clinic (1975) and Discipline and Punish (1977a), his focus is on the period spanning from the Enlightenment to the early 20th century. When Baudrillard notes the importance of pornography to contemporary constructions of sexuality (Baudrillard,
2007: 38), he is pointing to more than just a simple lack of discussion of this one item50, he is signalling a lack of engagement in Foucault with the vastly increased presence of mass media in our lives. Foucault’s concern is a broad concept of discourse and discursive ‘truth’, for Baudrillard discourse is an antiquated notion in the age of
‘simulation’ (Baudrillard, 2007: 33). The mass media age with its total reliance on signs and simulacrum is for Baudrillard very different to the so-called ‘present’ which Foucault understands himself to be describing.
Whether or not one goes as far as Baudrillard in dismissing Foucault’s theories of power as outdated (and for me the charge is overstated in Forget Foucault), he makes an
50 Later works by Foucault in the History of Sexuality (1988, 1990) series do explore the concept of pornography, particularly in the classical world, but it is surprisingly absent from Volume 1.
180 important point in highlighting the historical specificity of Foucault’s work. Foucault, whilst significant in deconstructing many of the myths of modernity and thus extremely influential in the birth of post-modernity, stops short of providing a model for the mass mediated landscape of 20th century western capitalism. This is an oversight that has been made even more problematic by the major social and technological changes that have occurred since his death and that make his work even more historically specific. As
Galloway has pointed out, whilst Foucault’s work portends the radical changes that happen in the later half of the 20th century (particular in the concept of Biopower), his focus is still on early technologies and techniques of power. ‘Computers’, Galloway notes, are ‘hardly mentioned in Foucault, if at all’ (Galloway, 2004: 22). Galloway’s point is not, of course, that Foucault should have foreseen the extent of the information revolution, but rather that his framework is historically specific and therefore problematic to use to describe the political and cultural landscape of the 21st century. Like Baudrillard argued more than 25 years earlier, Galloway contends that Foucault is a theorist of an age in decline or already ended, an epoch whose technologies and techniques are fading. For
Galloway, any theory of contemporary power must address the way in which control is maintained despite the decentralisation of power through networks (most obviously the internet). Whilst Galloway does not dismiss Foucault’s ideas as universally as
Baudrillard, he claims that his conceptualisation of power no longer matches the methods and means through which it operates. For Galloway it is Deleuze and his concept of societies of control that offers a more appropriate model for contemporary understandings of power. This is a concept I will return to in the next chapter.
181 Ironically, however, it is because Foucault largely focuses on a pre mass-media age that he is useful for this analysis of single-player video gaming. As Galloway specifies, the major changes to the configuration of power that have come about come from the decentralisation of power through networks. Yet single-player video games are a largely centralised form of power, which, unlike their multiplayer brethren, are not networked.
The single-player video game software exists on a single computer or gaming console and the mechanism focuses solely on managing the individual player. As I have demonstrated through analysing Half-Life 2’s use of the myth of the autonomous individual, single-player video games are remediating the logics of modernity51. Whilst
Baudrillard is right that we have dramatically moved to a society of simulacrum (is there any better evidence than the video game form itself?), this shift has necessitated the remediation (simulation) of what came before, what is familiar, in this case the myths and logics of modernity. Single-player video games designers (I will address the more complex question of multiplayer games next chapter), in their need for a robust and effective power structure, have looked back to modernity for their inspiration. The concept of the liberal humanist individual is an Enlightenment notion which, despite being heavily critiqued (as in History of Sexuality: Volume 1), still holds sway.
Resistance
The other key idea from Baudrillard’s critique of Foucault that is worth exploring here is that of the ubiquity of power and therefore the seeming impossibility of resistance. Power for Foucault is distributed throughout all aspects of society; indeed power produces a
51 Next chapter I will illustrate this remediation of modernity further when I look at the disciplinary regimes in operation in video games.
182 society. For Baudrillard this leads to the question of how resistance can occur. Equating
Foucault’s concept of power to an unlimited magnetized force, attracting and exerting influence on everything, Baudrillard states that ‘if power were this magnetic infiltration ad infinitum of the social field, it would long ago have ceased meeting resistance’
(Baudrillard, 2007:52). This notion of possibility for, and mechanics of, resistance is a key question in this thesis. As I have noted numerous times in the preceding chapters, play practices do exist that are out of the norm. Practices such as rocket jumping resist the mechanisms of power employed by the games and produce a new kind of experience.
So Baudrillard’s assertion that a Foucaultian model of power offers little room for resistance must be explored if I am to continue building upon it.
Ultimately, as with historical specificity, Baudrillard makes a compelling and important argument, but overstates his case. Foucault does offer space for resistance, but what he fails to do is discuss the mechanisms by which it can occur on the micro-scale. For
Foucault the very possibility of resistance is brought about by the mechanisms of power itself (Foucault, 1981: 96). In marking a normal, a correct, regimes of power make possible and visible the abnormal. And whilst power’s hold can be tight, there will always be some possibility of deviation. As Foucault scholars McHoul and Grace note, implicitly refuting Baudrillard and others sharing his perspective, ‘[w]e must not make the mistake of thinking that techniques of power have crushed those natural forces which mark us as distinct types of human beings with distinct ‘personality’ traits’52 (McHoul and Grace, 1993: 72). Indeed ‘as [productive] power continually multiplied its centres
52 McHoul and Grace’s mobilization of the term ‘natural’ is at first glance problematic in that it implies an unculturated process. But one should read it not as claiming an outside of power, just an inevitability in variations between subjects, be it biological or cultural, everyone is subject to slightly different micro forces acting upon them. It is these differences that many regimes of power try to erase.
183 and localities, it produced, in the process, unprecedented sites of resistance’ (McHoul and
Grace, 1993: 83). Put simply, in creating the normal, power creates, and makes possible the abnormal. The mechanisms that push us toward ‘normalcy’ also make us aware of the possibility of abnormalcy. Resistance is not an outside of power (as it still produced by it), but a by-product that challenges the very structures that produce it.
At a general level Foucault’s account is a useful and consistent one. Despite what
Baudrillard suggests we do not require a rewrite of the whole model of power
(Baudrillard offers a reconceptualisation through a concept of seduction [Baudrillard,
2007: 52 – 55]). Yet often in Foucault’s work the concept of resistance is overlooked in favour of exploring the ensnaring force of power and, whilst the concept is there, it can be hard to find room for resistance. Likewise, on a practical level, the generality of
Foucault’s engagement with the concept makes it hard to employ. This is where we need to move beyond Foucault to really understand the possibilities for resistance.
Like Baudrillard, Michel de Certeau has claimed that Foucault tends to overstate the inevitability of the regimes of power he describes and overlook the procedures of resistance (de Certeau, 1988: 45 -53). ‘It remains to be asked’ de Certeau says of
Foucault’s work ‘how we should consider other equally infinitesimal, procedures, which have not been "privileged" by history but are nevertheless active in innumerable ways in the openings of established technological networks’ (de Certeau 1988: 49). De Certeau takes on this task, offering a close account of the practical and even mundane ways in which resistance can occur. For de Certeau the subject has far more agency at the micro level than Foucault acknowledges. Through the basic practices of everyday life, de
184 Certeau claims, there is the inevitable possibility of resistance. Social space allows the micro variations between subjects. There is always room for repurposing and the discovering of ones own pleasures.
In his most influential work The Practices of Everyday Life (1988), de Certeau offers many examples, from ‘walking in the city’ (91 – 110) to understanding spatiality (115 -
130), in which cultural resistance is an inherent possibility of every act. The idea of most use to us here, however, is his notion of ‘reading as poaching’. Heavily influenced by post-structuralist thinking, most explicitly Roland Barthes’ declaration of ‘The Death of the Author’ (Barthes: 1977), and Foucault’s own ‘What is an author?’ (where he positions the author as a discursive function upon which interpretations are based, not as an originator of meaning), de Certeau sought to further deconstruct the idea that any text has a singular true meaning. Meaning, he states, is not inherent within a work but is constructed in the relationship between reader and text. Therefore huge differences exist between each reader’s interpretation of any text (de Ceretau, 1988: 166 -169). Despite this, the widespread belief that texts have a single authorial meaning has lead to a pedagogic system where only certain kinds of interpretations are seen as valid. These orthodox interpretations are inevitably the ones that accord to the preferred readings of the elites of the social hierarchy: the Churches, governments and wealthy (de Ceretau,
1988: 172). Understandings that deviate from orthodoxy are excluded and marginalized by being positioned as misinterpretations.
De Certeau proposes that, rather than assuming that any text has a single meaning, we must reconceptualise the process of reading, the reader should not be understood as
185 someone who absorbs the true meaning of a text, but rather as an active creator of a text’s meaning. ‘Readers’, he declares, ‘move across lands belonging to someone else, like nomads poaching their way across fields they did not write’ (de Certeau, 1988: 174).
Meaning is therefore not unrelated to the text, but nor is it a singular truth that the reader absorbs. With this framework of reading as poaching, de Certeau both accounts for reader agency and the legitimacy of various interpretations without denying the centrality of the text in this process of meaning making; it is a theorisation of resistance at the micro level.
De Certeau understands the reader as a subject of power and its normalising operations, but argues the space for variation always exists and should not be ignored.
De Certeau’s concept focused purely on the act of reading the written text, indeed he shied away from expanding his concept to other kinds of mediums. Henry Jenkins, however, has applied the concept more broadly, highlighting the creative practices of audiences across multiple media genres (Jenkins, 1992). In particular Jenkins looks at the consumption practices of science fiction fans. Jenkins suggests that this group, long dismissed as passive dupes of an antisocial cultural fad, have rich and diverse active engagement practices (Jenkins, 1992: 24). Audience members of a series like Star Trek demonstrate the complexity and creative relationships with the televisual text. Not only are fans frequently participating in meaning making discussions of episode ideas, themes and characters, some often go beyond watching the show to participate in other forms of engagement from writing fan fiction and making art works featuring favourite characters, to writing and performing their own episodes. Audiences, Jenkins claims, take from the text what is useful and refashion it to be pleasurable and meaningful to them. Some, like the Star Trek fans he discusses, do it overtly, with others the process is more subtle, but is
186 none the less present. For Jenkins, then, audiences must be understood not as passive gathers of meaning, but as active ‘textual poachers’ who fashion and form texts during the process of engagement (1992: 24).
The concept of textual poaching fills the blind spot de Certeau observes in Foucault’s account of power. It suggests all engagements have an element of resistance in them at some level. This is an idea compatible with Foucault’s idea that power inherently produces the abnormal along with the normal, but one not fully developed in his work.
Such a concept of resistance is absolutely necessary when dealing with a game like Half-
Life 2. For all Half-Life 2’s plot twists and reminders of the falsity of the myth of the autonomous individual there is still the possibility for resistance. Indeed, unorthodox engagements with Half-Life 2 are thriving. Large online communities have developed in the years since the game’s release that, rather than play through the narrative, instead use the games resources to make films, comic strips and worlds for other people to explore.
Using a small modification called Garry’s Mod, owners of Half-Life 2 are able to arrange characters, weapons, buildings, vehicles and furniture in any way they like, and thus construct environments and scenarios. From developing complex Rube Goldberg machines, to making the Combine aliens dance or developing complex stories lines set in the Half-Life 2 world, there are near infinite possibilities with this game. Much like The
Sims players who produce comics that I discussed in Chapter Two, these players are setting their own goals and finding their own pleasures in the game materials. Such engagements show that whilst the identity of the player as an autonomous and free individual is a myth, there is still space in my theory for player creativity and agency. The
187 agency however is never independent of the resources of the game but rather is poached from them.
Poaching The G-man
I noted early in this chapter, that my intention was not to offer an explanation of the Half-
Life 2 designers’ intent but rather to deploy of this game as a heuristic device to explore the complex ways in which the playing subject is produced. Put simply this chapter is a textual poaching not a textual analysis. My account is based on what the experience of play was to me, and what others have written about it. These experiences could not have occurred without the resources of Half-Life 2 but my telling of them is far from a universal description of the game. This reading is a demonstration that this game can be usefully thought of as a meta-commentary on the techniques of power employed in this medium. To end this chapter then I will offer one further ‘poaching’ of Half-Life 2 in order to explicate the relationship of power in single-player video gaming. I will read the
G-Man as an embodiment of power.
The G-man in Half-Life 2 is a complex and ambiguous figure. His motives and aims are impossible to decipher, with the result that multiple readings of him are possible. Here however I offer a reading of the G-Man as means to explore our relationship to productive power. This is not the only, nor perhaps the perfect, reading, because it looks to embody a social process into a single “person”, but nonetheless it is a worthwhile reading, as it helps us understand the reason we are willing to overlook power in video game play and thus why this particular game’s denaturalisation of power is so significant.
188 It is a reading that has its limitations. The G-man is a useful analogue of productive power, not a perfect match. Where the G-man has a deliberate strategy, the Foucaultian concept of power lacks both this intentionality and sense of manipulation. Indeed, one could read the events of Half-Life 2 as suggesting that the G-man misleads Freeman and uses him as his tool, both against the Combine, and possibly also against the resistance movement. Certainly, he seems pleased about Freeman’s actions, which have led to the destruction not only of the Citadel, but also of the resistance bases. In such a reading the
G-man has mislead Freeman, or withheld information from him, thus bringing about a state of affairs Freeman would not want, the endangering of resistance fighters,
Freeman’s old friends. Such an interpretation might suggest that the G-man could most usefully be understood as paralleling not productive power, but Marxist false consciousness, which argues that power and ideology function upon the worker (indeed, upon all of us) to hide the “true” exploitative nature of society. The disadvantaged do not resist or rebel because they are either unaware of any alternative and see this state of affairs as natural, or else have an unrealistic expectation of rising out of their poverty.
One could read the G-man as embodying this sort of logic. Like the bourgeoisie, he exploits to his own ends, and Freeman does his bidding freely, ignorant of the fact that he is being used. In this sense, the G-man is another hierarchical figure, using different and more subtle methods from the Combine, but with similar aims. Such a reading is valid, but one that I feel that can be usefully extended by Foucaultian discourse. I noted earlier an idea, circulating in on-line fan discussions, to the effect that the G-man stands for the game’s designers. This seems to me a productive poaching and I should like to develop it.
189 Let me begin by emphasising two aspects of the G-man that distinguish his mode of operation from false consciousness and hierarchical repressive power. First, there is no experience of the world of Half-Life 2 outside of the G-man, since it is he who literally enables Freeman to engage with this world. Moreover, the G-man never lies to Freeman, nor does he pretend innocence. It is the assumption of autonomy that guides the player, not falsehood generated by the G-man. Thus, when the G-man reveals that Freeman has done what he desired, it can be read not as the unveiling of falsity, but of the constructedness of power.
Similarly, there is no experience of a video game outside of the world constructed by the game designer. The designer inevitably privileges certain play practices, and that is an operation of power. But this should not be read as an accusation of a sinister process.
Power constructs, it affords, it allows, the G-man offers Freeman the chance to overthrow the Combine. The game’s designers offer the player the chance to engage with an enjoyable form and experience new worlds. Power is not always negative, it circulates through everything—we should, nonetheless, be aware of its operation.
Secondly, the primary source of the G-man’s power is culture; he mobilises the desire of the player/Freeman to free the enslaved humans’ populace etc., which is a significant cultural logic of contemporary Western society. As social theorist Nikolas Rose points out in his deconstruction of the discourse of freedom Powers of Freedom (1999), ‘as the twenty-first century begins the ethics of freedom have come to underpin our conceptions of how we should be ruled, how our practices of everyday life should be organized, how we should understand ourselves and our predicament’ (1999: 61). The rhetoric of the
190 ‘pursuit’ and ‘defence’ of freedom has become the rhetoric of our time, it is mobilised to justify everything from warfare to why we should buy a certain soft drink. As subjects of the Western world, our sense of being has become fundamentally tied to a notion that freedom must be privileged, above all. In Half-Life 2 this dominant logic is used to make the player engage in a particular way. Within the game world, Freeman does not do things simply because the G-man tells him to; it is because Freeman (or the player) believes it is right that something should be done. This differentiates markedly the G-man from the Combine, productive from repressive models of power. The G-man is not an autocrat and does not operate by means of repression, but rather by situating players in circumstances that facilitate the production of certain knowledges and desires so that they will voluntarily perform in the required way. Power does not lie here with the single figure of the G-man—although he does mobilise it to his advantage—but exists in the perpetual relationships between people and logics of our society. It is, as Foucault phrases it, a ‘productive network which runs through the whole social body’ (1980: 119).
Game designers also hold great sway over what the player experiences and therefore what subjectivity they take on. The designer puts in place the mechanisms that train the player’s actions, and those that hide alternative possibilities. Yet the video game designer is not working apart from broader culture. As I have mapped out, video games draw on other cultural artefacts, from other media to everyday objects. Like players, designers are influenced and guided by the conventions and understandings of what a video game should do. They also know that if they create an experience that is not pleasurable to the player, then either the game will not be played, or players will find unorthodox ways of engaging with the game to find that pleasure. So, while they hold a certain amount of
191 influence, it is far from absolute. Power is never singular or unidirectional; it is a network of relationships.
Half-Life 2 can be read as modelling and contrasting two very different constructions of power, represented in the shape of the Combine and the G-man. The Combine functions by means of repression to restrict, deny and oppress the population. In its own way this is extremely effective, since they have enough military force to keep the majority of the population subservient. However, resistance is inevitable and the ‘freedom fighters’ operate to strike back at the Combine. The obvious asymmetry of the power relations has bred discontent and rebellion among the people. The Combine dominates the population and controls their actions, but they have not won over their “hearts and minds”. The
Citadel is the ultimate visual symbol of the Combine’s power, looming over the city, visible from everywhere; it serves as an omnipresent representation and reminder of the
Combine’s power. This monolith is a physical illustration of the Combine’s hierarchical model of power. At its very top stands the administrator Dr Breen, surveying and directing his subordinates, removed and disconnected from the population.
By contrast, the G-Man is almost invisible, since he operates from behind the scenes.
Freeman does no more than catch glimpses of him during his travels. His connections to the vast institutional structures of the game world are only hinted at. At one stage we see him talking with a resistance officer, and giving him weapons, but there is always doubt as to his real motives. As the revelations at the end of the game show, Freeman has done exactly what the G-man wanted, but what that is, we are left unsure of. The stilted speech of the G-man suggests that he may not be human, but we quickly forget to question his
192 intentions. The coincidence of Freeman finding his former colleagues, who are important members of the resistance, is ignored, or understood as fortuitous. It is only at the game’s end, when Freeman leaves the resistance vulnerable and is told by Breen that he may have left Earth open to attack in the first place, that we start to query the rightness of our actions. Indeed, it is when the G-man uses force in the final act of the game, when he takes Freeman out of time and in doing so illustrates the enormous potential of his power, that we are reminded once again to question his purpose. Before this moment the G-man never operates through restriction; rather, he enables. He enabled Freeman to come to this world; he indirectly provides him with weapons, and he enables him to join up with his rebel friends. His power works through production. He uses the resource of Freeman to his own ends, not by force or limitation, but setting the stage for Freeman to understand himself as operating autonomously.
The G-man demonstrates that it is the power we are most accustomed to that we fail to recognise, that it is the power relations with which we are in most agreement that we are willing to overlook, and it is productive power that we ignore. Like the classic ludological position which seeks to deny the impact of culture on play (Aarseth, 2004:
48), players do not recognise the constructive forces operating on them. In both cases the restriction is obvious and visible. We are well aware of the rules, and of the Combine.
But the productive elements, the cultural logics/perceived affordances and the G-man, are not seen. It is not that the player and the play-theorists are inept, but that the model of power we have been taught to recognise follows the repressive hypothesis. Monolithic power that works by means of restriction is easier to comprehend in our Western liberalist culture; the more subtle and less tangible effects of cultural construction are
193 rendered invisible. Ultimately, however, Half-Life 2 offers the important observation that it is unseen and accepted power that is harder to resist. The citadel crumbles, but the G- man remains.
The power inherent in a video game, a voluntary and fun pastime, is rarely looked for by theorists and players. We see the manifestation of power in those sinister forces we oppose, not in the working of our leisure activities. Yet power is there. It is a different configuration from the monolithic power we expect, but it underscores every action in the game world. It is the basis of play.
Revelation
The finale moments of Half-Life 2 are designed to shock. Players bring certain expectations with them to a game, certain desires for narrative closure, the formation of the couple and a sense of success. Yet, just as Freeman is on the verge of witnessing the destruction of the Citadel, he is taken out of time by the G-man. The world stops moving and slowly fades to black. Freeman can still move and look around, albeit slowly, but has nothing with which he can interact. He does not see his moment of victory, nor, indeed, whether his love interest is engulfed by the flames. He is simply rendered passive, not frozen, but unable to interact with anything, by the G-man.
This deliberately anticlimactic ending says much about how productive power operates in the video game. It takes the traditional concept of the hero and turns it on its head, not to reveal an anti-hero or villain, but rather a subject of power. It is a twist that can only work in a video game, a medium fundamentally constructed on a discourse of freedom and
194 agency as an interactive medium. The shock and outrage does not come from having been manipulated by the G-man, but rather from realising that one had no choice in the matter. The limits of the game world are brought into sharp relief, and the gleeful irony of the ‘one free man’ label is finally made clear. This is not a ‘cut sequence’. As such the sequence cannot be positioned as non-interactive in terms of prevailing discursive construction. In this final moment the techniques of power, those things kept invisible for so long, are brought into the light. The process of naturalisation is reversed. The effect of immediacy is shattered.
In this chapter I offered a general introduction to the idea of the player as a cultural subject through the heuristic device of Half-Life 2. My account, however, was broad. My purpose was not to pinpoint the exact means by which the subject is formed – although I did offer some examples – but to demonstrate that video games are carefully constructed apparatuses of power which shape the playing subject while simultaneously obfuscating that very process. I argued that by remediate a myth from modernity single-player video game teach the player to understand themselves as the sole agent in the gameworld and to ignore the complex ways their thoughts and practices are being shaped. In the next chapter I will look at the specific details of this configuration of power. Here I argued that the player is a subject of power but in the next chapter I identify the particular regime of power in operation in single-player video games, the regime of discipline. Offering power as a discourse for video gaming analysis is not enough in itself, we must also understand the micro-mechanics of its operation. And for that I will look beyond Half-
Life 2.
195 +?
%!&
Pleasure and PainStation
he PainStation is an arcade cabinet. The opponents stand facing each T other. The duel is based on pong, the well known game of console tennis from the early days.
The instructions are easily explained: The player’s right hand uses a knob to control his pad. The left hand has to remain on the PEU (Pain- Execution-Unit), so it creates an electric circuit. Then the game can start. Moving the paddle vertically the ball must be subtly returned in the opponent’s direction. If a player misses the ball, it’s not only annoying but also painful. This slip causes massive anguish. How massive depends on which PIS (Pain-Inflictor-Symbol) the lost ball hits: heat, lashes or electric shocks all, of different duration and combination, torment the left hand (the new name of “pang” comes to the authors’ minds). In case one of the competitors lifts his hand off the PEU— either out of pain overload or he blacks out—he loses the duel. (Morawe and Reiff, 2001: 1)
The PainStation is the brainchild of two German designers, Volker Morawe and Tilman
Reiff. Where other video game systems rely on virtual violence, the PainStation actualises it. ‘[W]e were both interested in games and technology and saw the potential to make something more realistic out of the gaming experience,’ Reiff explains
(McGrath, 2002: 1). This “realism” comes courtesy of electrodes, heating elements and
196 miniature whips that inflict injury on the player’s body. Many determined players emerge bloodied and burnt from bouts. This game has an immediate and very “real” impact.
Yet the PainStation is a novelty; an intellectual curio of the gallery circuit. It will never be mass-produced, and it seems unlikely that even a toned-down version would have widespread appeal. Even without considering the legal minefield such a product would create, the reasons for this are in many ways obvious; for a start, the market for the
PainStation would be select. The masochistic desire to be whipped, burnt and electrocuted by a video game system makes this a small, niche title. But while the punishment mechanisms of the PainStation preclude its commercial success, they force us to think about what role punishment plays in video gaming, and what might constitute
“acceptable” punishment.
Most other contemporary games are far more subtle than PainStation in the mechanism of punishment they use. In this chapter I will argue that the video game form is built on extremely sophisticated systems of reward and punishment. Video games are, as I have already shown, a carefully constructed apparatus of power that functions to produce certain kinds of playing subjects, playing subjects who perform within the range of behavioural practices required of them by the game.
Like all good art53, the PainStation leaves its audience interrogating their own assumptions. The PainStation denaturalises video game punishment. Like most games,
53 I am not trying to draw a strict distinction here between games and art; this is an ongoing debate that I do not see any worth in engaging with here. My use of the term art to describe the PainStation does not preclude it from also usefully being understood as a game and, likewise, does not mean I do not consider other video games works of art.
197 however, the vivid platform game Psychonauts (Double Fine, 2005), my case study in this chapter, seeks to hide the techniques of discipline it uses. Where the PainStation offers physical pain, Psychonauts offers carefully devised virtual disincentives. I want to explore how these virtual disincentives are actually far more powerful than PainStation’s overt physical ones.
In Chapter Three I demonstrated how video games mobilise pre-existing structures of thought to shape play practices; in this chapter I will show that despite that reliance upon old forms and experiences something new can be formed. I will explore the means by which the expectations and understandings that players bring with them to a game are subtly, but powerfully, refined so as to fit with those desired and required by the game.
Last chapter I offered a general account of the way in which video games can be productively understood as embodying a power relationship which functions to produce the player’s subjectivity. In this chapter I will outline the specific mechanism by which this construction of subjectivity occurs; I will outline a precise model of the process and show that it is the same post-enlightenment configuration of power that Foucault terms
‘discipline’ (1977a). The primary techniques video games use, I will argue, are those that
Foucault states are critical to any disciplinary apparatus: hierarchical observation, normalising judgement and examination (1977a: 170-194). Psychonauts neatly embodies and cleverly naturalises these three primary mechanisms of discipline and as such is a particularly suitable case study through which to explore these ideas. In video games the player is constructed to be a self-policing subject who actively seeks to play within the frameworks offered by the game. Psychonauts is the perfect embodiment of productive
198 subjectivating power, it is a unique and entertaining game hailed for its originality, but in its ludic mechanisms and game structures it is profoundly reflective of the modernist disciplinary process remediated in all single-player video games.
Whispering Rock Summer Camp
The success of games like Mario Bros (Nintendo, 1983) and Sonic the Hedgehog (SEGA,
1991) have made platform games one of the most instantly recognisable and successful genres in video gaming. Largely promoted to the family market, the colourful characters and cheerful worlds are designed to appeal to younger players. Indeed, both Mario Bros. and Sonic the Hedgehog have proved so popular with children that they have spawned numerous sequels, feature films, television shows, and major merchandising empires. Our case study here, however, Double Fine’s Psychonauts, has not had the same level of commercial success. Released in 2005, Psychonauts met with considerable critical praise, but disappointing sales. Written and produced by renowned game designer Tim Schaffer
(of Day of the Tentacle and Grim Fandango [LucasArts, 1998) fame], known for his quirky comedic work, Psychonauts is an off-kilter and imaginative tale of the heroism of a boy in a world of psychic warfare, mad scientists and mentally-disturbed sea life. It attracted much attention because of its stylish aesthetics, unique characters, strong script and bold reimagining of the platform genre. Hailed by the gaming press as ‘Essential
Gaming’ (Hull, 2005) and winning a British Academy of Film and Television Arts
Award and a Game Developers Choice Award, both for Best Screenplay (Howson, 2006;
199 Thorsen and Feldman, 2006), Psychonauts is one of the most sophisticated examples of the contemporary platform genre54.
In Psychonauts the player takes on the role of Razputin (Raz for short), a 10-year-old boy who has run away from the circus to attend the Whispering Rock Psychic Summer Camp for telepathically-gifted youth. Here Raz hopes to become a Psychonaut, a psychic crime fighter who can project into the minds of others and explore the world produced by their thoughts. As he hones this skill, Raz soon discovers that each mental world is radically different. In Psychonauts Raz traverses everything from the war zone of a military officer’s mind, full of landmines and explosions, to the confused psyche of Lungfish, where the population of a B-movie city live in dread of the fearful Goggolor, which, we soon discover, is in fact the hapless Raz himself, who at 50 times the size of the city’s inhabitants, cannot avoid crushing buildings as he walks. In each of the minds he inhabits
Raz is tasked with solving the mental issues confronting its owner, such as defeating the
“memory” of a vicious bull that torments a vanquished matador, or discovering the
“phantom” that haunts an opera singer. After having their mental demons banished, the citizens of Whispering Rock and its surrounds can help Raz on his journey to become a
Psychonaut, giving him useful advice, items or information.
The mental traumas of those around him are not Raz’s only concern; it soon becomes apparent that Whispering Rock itself is under attack. One by one, the brains of the other children there are being stolen. If Raz is to save his friends and prove himself as a
Psychonaut, he will have to unravel the mystery and defeat the twisted genius behind this
54 Despite this, however, distribution problems and difficulties in marketing to the intended audience meant that Psychonauts sold poorly.
200 evil scheme. But, in order to find out who is responsible and learn the skills he needs to thwart their plans, Raz must navigate his way through many dangerous mental worlds.
During the course of the game, Raz learns a variety of psychic skills, such as levitation, invisibility, telekinesis, pyrokenesis and clairvoyance. Raz earns access to these skills, and to training in them, by accomplishing a number of set tasks, like successfully completing a level. Many of these skills will then be necessary for Raz to be able to complete the latter stages of the game. Each skill is bestowed on Raz in the form of a merit badge (akin to those of Boy Scouts or Girl Guides) by the camp staff. Raz’s proficiency in each skill can also be increased by collecting so-called figments of the imagination in each mind. Enough figments means Raz levels up, that is increases his skill; he can then levitate higher, stay invisible longer and propel objects further.
Basic Braining
The player is familiarised with the mechanics of Psychonauts in the game’s introductory sequence called Basic Braining. Basic Braining is a perfect enactment of the disciplinary process. It mobilises (and hides) all the major mechanisms of discipline with which I am concerned in this chapter: surveillance, normalising judgement (in the form of micro- correction) and examination, as well as reflecting the specific spatio-temporal configuration necessary for a disciplinary system to function. As such I will be reading
Basic Braining as an exemplar illustration of video game discipline in action and for the rest of this chapter I will be deconstructing this illustrative sequence.
201 In Basic Braining Raz learns the fundamentals of the Whispering Rock Summer Camp, thus controlling his psychic gifts. The game begins with a lengthy non-interactive sequence, in which we are introduced to Raz as well as the other kids and the adult staff at the camp and learn that the aim of the camp is to teach gifted children how to use their psychic abilities for the benefit and protection of others.
The first piece of interaction in the game comes in the form of a dream sequence, which teaches us basic movement and the rudiments of the game economy. A combination of diegetic pedagogy from the game characters with simultaneous nondiegetic instructional text is used throughout the game to train the player in the control system and game world logic without breaking the ludic illusion. In this opening sequence, a grey-haired grandfatherly figure, Ford Crowler, instructs Raz on how to move and look around. Ford directs us to look to the right and an on-screen text box informs us that the mouse is used to do this.55 To the right we see a ‘psy challenge marker’ and are informed that we should collect these to increase our rank and earn new psychic abilities. Before we can learn anymore, however, Ford disappears and the dream world fades. As Raz awakes to a sunny morning, the other students are rushing off to start Basic Braining and telling him not to miss out.
Basic Braining turns out to be our first psychic adventure. The military-minded Coach
Oleander orders Raz into his brain and then barks instructions and insults at him. Looking around, Raz finds his immediate path blocked by an explosion crater, but the words
‘press space to jump’ appear on screen. By the player pressing the space bar when Raz is
55 This description is of the PC version of the game; the exact configuration of the control system varies on other platforms.
202 running towards the crater, he can jump over it. Soon after this obstacle another appears, a larger chasm, that a normal jump will not clear. The screen instructs us, however, to
‘press space while airborne to double jump’. Following these instructions gives Raz’s jump a midair boost which allows him to soar a much greater distance and clear the crater. Mistiming these jumps and falling into the chasm would not prove a fatal mistake: players can climb back out, but only in the direction from which they came. To progress past the crater, the jump must be performed correctly.
Soon after perfecting his basic jumping skills, Raz encounters a frightening, luminous red apparition that rises up before him. Coach Oleander’s voice is unfazed and he mocks
Raz’s shock, telling him:
Relax that’s just a figment of my imagination. You can run right through figments, they help you rank up and when you rank up you earn new psychic powers, so when ever you see a figment, suck it up soldier. -Coach Oleander (Double Fine, 2005)
Upon its collection, the nondiegetic on-screen text tells the player: ‘Your first figment!
Collect 100 figments and you’ll be promoted. If you get promoted to a high enough rank, you earn new psychic abilities!’ Thus, one of the systems of reward in Psychonauts is established. Players learn that they should try to gather as many figments as possible in order to gain access to new aptitudes.
The rest of the journey through Coach Oleander’s mind evolves along much the same lines. It involves learning more skills, such as climbing, punching, swinging and sliding.
The player is taught that Raz’s (mental) health is represented by an informatic display in
203 the corner of the screen. Three full-brain icons indicate complete health. However, if the player gets to ‘zero brains’ Raz is forced to start again from an earlier point. If he fails too many times, Raz is evicted from the Coach’s mind and has to try again from the very beginning.
Throughout the level that is Oleander’s mind, the omnipresent drill-sergeant coach barks instructions and insults. On occasion he also rewards Raz with advice, and after Raz has completed one particularly difficult task, he rewards him by blowing up two annoying competitors. His face, with its stern, disapproving expression, can often be seen as a black-and-white projection on the background scenery. He guides Raz through the landscape and, in order to progress, Raz must do what Coach Oleander wants of him.
The level gets more and more complex as it progresses. By the end of the course, Raz has achieved a solid grasp of the basic skills necessary to navigate mental worlds. On exiting the Coach’s mind, he is rewarded with his first merit badge, showing that he has successfully completed Basic Braining. Raz is also congratulated on his extraordinary performance by one of the other instructors, Sascha Nein, who invites him to visit his laboratory. Nein gives him a special button needed to access the lab. The completion of
Basic Braining thus opens up new space for Raz to visit, and, in that new space, a new mind to explore. This is the first step in Raz’s journey; the rest will follow a similar pattern. New levels require new skills and offer new powers and items, and, of course, affordances, for the player to mobilise and master. Each level builds on the previous one, but requires players to refine their techniques, and add to their repertoire of skills. While
204 Basic Braining is presented as the training level, in effect training continues throughout the game.
Psychonauts as a Disciplinary Space
In Discipline and Punish (1977a) Foucault offered a new conceptualisation of the prevalent configuration of modernist power. He outlined the basic logic upon which post enlightenment institutions—prisons, schools, barracks, and society in general—function, and the set of key mechanisms by which all these institutions work on their respective subjects to produce a self-monitoring student, prisoner, soldier or citizen. He called this set of techniques discipline.
At its most basic, discipline is a way of rethinking pedagogic practice. It is a unifying framework that describes the logic underpinning modernist systems of training and correction, many of which are still in operation to this day, or have functioned as the blueprint for contemporary systems. But it is much more than this. Discipline goes far beyond traditional pedagogy, to look at the operation of power in our world. It maps the process of subjectivation, that is, the ways and means by which we all are produced through cultural forces, and it offers a powerful account of normalisation that, unlike so many other accounts, does not rest on a concept of restriction, but rather privileges active construction.
In Discipline and Punish Foucault traces a genealogy of contemporary punishment. He charts in detail the shifting configurations of power that give rise to particular practices of punishment and influence. Mapping the transition of French punishment from the
205 spectacle of torture and execution pre-modernity, to the modern prison system, Foucault explores the varying discourses and cultural logics that underpinned, or, indeed, were produced by, these changes. His goal is not simply to analyse how the prison system came into being, but to illuminate the operations of power throughout society. The prison system in Discipline and Punish is Foucault’s metonym for the operation of society. It is diagrammatic of the operation of power; and his observations extend well beyond the prison walls.
I want to demonstrate in this chapter how the colourful and exciting Psychonauts, in terms of both form and function, operates according to the principles of discipline.
Psychonauts embodies the three primary mechanisms of discipline: hierarchical observation, normalising judgement and examination. It also exemplifies the spatiotemporal attributes of a disciplinary apparatus: cellular distribution, precise bodily control and a tiered system of increasingly difficult acts. By tracing the way in which
Psychonauts functions by means of these techniques, I shall show how video games subtly operate on the playing subject to produce a desired and manageable player.
Hierarchical observation
At the heart of Foucault’s concept of discipline is surveillance. Subjects of the disciplinary system must perceive themselves to be under constant scrutiny. Such a system, Foucault argues, will lead subjects to police their own actions. Famously, for
Foucault this logic is realised in the architectural technology of the Panopticon (1977a:
200), a kind of prison building designed in 1785 by philosopher Jeremy Bentham. The design was such that all the cells around the perimeter faced inward, permitting all the
206 prisoners to be seen from a darkened central guard tower. Inversely, the guards manning the tower could not be seen by the prisoners. The Panopticon, then, had an asymmetric visuality: the guards could see the prisoners, but the prisoners could not see the guards and did not know when they were being observed. Prisoners thus had to assume that their actions were under constant surveillance and that any deviation from the prison rules would be observed and punished. In essence, the Panopticon trained the subject to self- monitor and self-regulate.
For Foucault, discipline came to be reflective, not simply of the operation of power in prisons, but of the configuration of power throughout modern culture. Indeed for
Foucault discipline became a formative element of modernity. Prisons reflect this change neatly, but they are not its point of origin. The changes in jurisprudential practice mirror those in cultural understanding and expectations. The mechanisms of discipline, Foucault argues, have become so integral to every aspect of life that it can be characterised as a
‘discipline society’ (1977a: 195-228). The Panopticon is thus often seen as diagrammatic of the operation of power in a disciplinary society, in which all members of the population are under constant surveillance, by the government, businesses, the media, their peers and, of course, themselves. This perpetual surveillance means that the subjectivities created within such a society conform to the norms it accepts and creates.
Abnormality and deviation is observed and can be punished with ostracisation, vilification and other penalties. For the most part, however, there is no need to punish transgression because individuals in that society monitor and manage their own behaviour effectively. Power works through the individual, bottom-up, not through the
207 enforcement of a top-down hierarchy. Subjects produce themselves in line with the norms of the society, and in doing so reinforce those norms.
Video game theorist Nicholas Caldwell (2004) argues that video games can be seen to function like a Panopticon. Games, he argues, monitor player actions. They then present back to players information reflecting the ways in which they are being monitored. In
Civilization II (MicroProse, 1996), the game Caldwell analyses—a turn-based strategy title in which the player builds an empire—this information is given, in the form of statistics, on the populace’s well being, happiness and wealth. In Psychonauts this information comes in the form of health, lives, psychic rank and figments collected. Each readout offers the player insight into where he/she is at, but also what should be improved upon.
For Caldwell, this data functions as part of the subjectivating process, that is, it helps players to adjust their subjectivity in line with the game’s requirements. He argues that through surveillance and real-time feedback the game offers players a way of fine-tuning their own performance:
The vital thing to note about the way the game monitors the player's progress, is that it provides a way for the player to examine their own performance and behaviour, enabling them to correct for deficiencies in their skills and suggesting ways for the player to bring their own self into line with the kinds of subjectivity favoured by the rules of the game. (2004: 48)
Caldwell’s argument is that the information presented provides a means by which players can observe and alter their play practices according to those privileged by the game. The
208 game is thus taking the player’s subjectivity as its central focus and moulding it into a privileged one.
For Caldwell, the generation of feedback and reports in video games functions in much the same way as the Panopticon: it is a form of constant surveillance, designed to produce a certain kind of subjectivity in the player. However, he stops short of arguing that video games are a fully-functioning panoptical apparatus. He notes the difference in the visual regime surrounding surveillance. In Civilization II players have access to the informational data in the form of various reports they can access, and this, Caldwell suggests, positions the player not simply as surveyed, but as surveyor. In other words, the asymmetric power relations that define the Panopticon are not absent but reversed:
Just as with the Panopticon, it is not necessary that there really be a real, observing intelligence at work producing these reports, but merely that the impression is given that this is the case. The player does not really try to improve their performance to please the computer, but to correspond more accurately with a perfectible image of themselves that the computer offers to them. In other words, the panoptic metaphor is precisely inverted. (2004: 48)
While Caldwell’s linking of the process of real-time feedback to Foucault’s notion of discipline is particularly suggestive, his reduction of the panoptic visual regime is problematic and is an argument I reject. For Caldwell, ‘the panoptic metaphor is inverted’ because players have access to information on their own performance. Yet, as Foucault argues, the goal of a panoptical structure is to produce a subject that desires to “improve” him/herself in line with institutionally-produced norms. A player desiring to perfect
209 his/her own skill is far from the inversion of the Panopticon; rather it is its ideal articulation. Indeed, it is not an inversion, but it is an amplification. Like a one-way mirror installed in the prisoner’s cell, it renders subjects visible to themselves, while reminding them of their visibility to those monitoring them. At the heart of the disciplinary logic is the construction of the self-surveillant subject, and these constant reports encourage this formation.
Players of Psychonauts, as of all video games, know themselves to be watched. For players, the knowledge that they are under constant surveillance from a video game is essentially a given. Video games must monitor and process the player’s actions: every button-press and every mouse-movement. This surveillance is an unavoidable aspect of the interactivity of the form, the player’s actions dictating the response the software generates. What Caldwell is suggesting, however, is that this surveillance is not just a neutral technical operation, but a process whereby certain kinds of play practices are privileged. The health and life metres inform the player that any act that might injure Raz will be seen and the game will respond. Players thus know they have to keep Raz as safe and well-protected as they can. The figment metre reminds them of the importance of collecting these mental spectres. The psy-rank (a measure of psychic power and skills) reveals to them the skills at their disposal and those they should attain. Via what it monitors and what it reflects, the feedback designates what the game regards as important, and it is these things that players know they must improve.
Psychonauts also adds an extra dimension to the surveillance process by increasing the player’s awareness of being monitored. Throughout Basic Braining the player is
210 constantly reminded of the watchful eye of Coach Oleander. On occasion he can be seen, but more often it is his mocking voice that tells us our progress is being carefully observed. If you pause to catch your breath, he screams, ‘[m]y bowels move more than you do, Pokey’ (Double Fine, 2005). In Basic Braining, Coach Oleander functions as a stand-in for the computer. He makes players aware that they are under surveillance and should behave accordingly. It is not unusual in video games for there to be an unseen guide taking the player through various tutorial levels, giving instructions and advice. In using a gruff and disdainful military officer for this purpose, however, Psychonauts increases both the player’s awareness of an inequality of visuality and the desire to perform correctly, without destroying the ludic fiction. It manifests the system’s requirement that a player be aware that he/she is under surveillance (and thus taking on a self-policing subjectivity) without revealing the mechanisms of power in operation and opening them up for resentment and resistance. At these early levels, the Coach becomes the naturalising mechanism of surveillance. The game’s diegesis is not broken; the game world fiction remains intact. Power is represented in the ludic world and thus its function is preserved but its operation naturalised.
Caldwell’s analysis of Civilization II acknowledges the panoptical logic underpinning the game, but his account is still problematic and reflects a general lack of engagement with the broader processes of discipline. This is a problem certainly not restricted to Caldwell; indeed, many theorists have come to see panopticism as synonymous with discipline. Yet as a complete metonym or diagram of discipline the Panopticon is limited. While it articulates perfectly the formation of the self-monitoring subject through an asymmetric visuality—although, as Caldwell’s interpretation indicates, this is often misunderstood—
211 if it is used outside the context of Foucault’s detailed accounts of other processes of discipline, it neglects a number of major elements of the operation of this regime. The asymmetric visuality of surveillance is but one of the interwoven processes of discipline, and it is worth expanding on the others here to fill in the gaps in Caldwell’s otherwise very useful model. In a disciplinary system, hierarchical observation operates in concert with techniques of normalising judgement and examination (Foucault, 1977a: 170-194).
Each of these is crucial not only to understanding discipline, but to understanding video game play, because without these processes surveillance has no means of influencing the player directly.
Normalising Judgement
For Foucault, normalising judgement is a technique where even minor departures from
“correct” behaviour are punishable. The slightest transgression, made visible by the hierarchical observation, must be penalised. Punishment should, however, be primarily corrective, so the preferred response to a transgression, in disciplinary systems, should be exercises and intense training. Reward, not just punishment, should also be regularly used to encourage correct behaviour. Indeed, reward should be used more often than punishment, as it is a more effective motivational tool. A clear demarcation between those who are punished and those who are rewarded should also be made; a visible ranking system clearly denotes the success or failure of subjects relative to each other
(Foucault, 1977a: 177-184).
Normalising judgement, Foucault argues, has two primary means: the correction of all, even the most trivial, of wrong-doings, and the rewarding of all good deeds. Normalising
212 judgement sets up what I will call an economy of micro-punishment. Small misdemeanours result in equivalently small corrections, where the disadvantage of the penalty slightly outweighs the possible gain from the transgression. These micro- punishments subtly fine-tune the subject’s performance by means of a slight inconvenience, no real discomfort or suffering. These micro-punishments should primarily function to train and continually force subjects to repeat the training until they have mastered the technique, that is, until they behave correctly. At the same time, micro- rewards are given to the subjects when they do well, to encourage them to continue in using correct practices.
Ultimately through punishing “deviant” behaviour and rewarding “correct” behaviour the technique of normalising judgement functions to produce a normalised concept of what is natural and what is pleasurable. This is the power-knowledge-pleasure (Foucault, 1979:
11) assemblage in action. Power comes from, resides in and operates through what is understood as true and natural, and what is desired. The constant, forced repetition of actions by subjects to the practices privileged by the system and the corresponding rewarding of compliance and punishment of deviancy are designed to instil these specific understandings and values in the subject. Most subjects will thereafter seek pleasure in those acts that they have been trained to perform56. Other engagements become constructed as unrewarding.
56 That is not to say that some players do not seek out non-standard play engagements. Rocket jumping, The Sims comics and even the Tetris letter guessing game are examples of “deviant” play practices. However, such practices are almost always understood as operating to resist a “normal” mode of play. Indeed much of the pleasure of these engagements comes from this resistance. Ultimately, regardless of whether the player embraces them or not, these processes of micro-punishment and reward establish the patterns against which all play is judged and understood.
213 As in the case of many video games, one of the primary mechanisms that Psychonauts utilises for its training is health. Even a slight mistake in Basic Braining, a mistimed or misdirected jump, accidentally straying too close to a fire or onto a landmine, causes injury to Raz. The ‘brain’ health metre in the corner of the screen gives real-time feedback to players, who could lose anything from a quarter of a brain to a whole life, depending on the nature of the mistake they make. The penalty is calculated proportionately to the mistake: a long fall does more damage than a small one; the longer
Raz is on fire, the more health he loses. Minor mistakes costing only a quarter of a brain’s health cause only a slight disadvantage. However, such penalties may accumulate over time and eventually force players to restart and therefore they may make players more careful in their actions. Larger mistakes, and therefore greater penalties, have more immediate consequences. They might set players back within the level or even force them out of the mental world entirely. This schema not only signifies to players when they are performing incorrectly, but forces them to repeat until they have mastered game skills adequately.
Reward is also a significant means by which Psychonauts trains the player. The game remediates the real-world system of the merit badge. Players are rewarded with a merit badge once they have demonstrated mastery of particular skill, much like the Boy Scouts or Girl Guides. This is a deliberate invocation of those institutions by Psychonauts’ designers. It both creates humour, as unlike the wholesome badges achieved by Scouts and Guides those gained here are for skills like pyrokenesis, telekinesis and levitation, and communicates to players what their goals should be. Players’ existing knowledge of
214 merit award systems makes it easily recognisable that these are skills that are highly privileged in this world.
There are also many micro-rewards throughout the game, smaller goals that players learn to aim for and take pleasure in achieving. Seeking out enough of the ‘figments’ that
Coach Oleander instructed players to collect, for example, rewards players with high- level powers. Likewise, objects called ‘mental baggage’ allow the player to uncover elements of the back story to the game when they are discovered. It is not mandatory that a player collect figments and mental baggage, but they reward a certain kind of diligent and skilful engagement with the game. Many players therefore come to prize figments and baggage highly and endeavour to discover/collect as many as they can.
The most fundamental of rewards in Psychonauts is, however, progression. Solve a puzzle, make a jump, defeat an enemy and a new space opens up for the player to explore. The architecture of the game allows space to be offered as a prize for correct action. Progression also brings with it narrative and character development. These are desirable outcomes, not just in gaming, but across most media, and as such they are powerful motivators/training mechanisms. Most players will readily take on the privileged practices in order to advance through the game world and its storyline. Indeed this is what most players understand their role to be and what they find enjoyable, so the process of correction is not one of alteration but refinement. Players seek to improve their skills but do not need to learn new sets of knowledge or discover new pleasures. This is another reason video games are so referential; if they mobilise familiar logics and pleasures they will be powerful, if they challenge them their power will have less hold.
215 The mechanisms of power in operation in Psychonauts are deeply naturalised. Health has become a standard means of acknowledging and signifying right and wrong play in games, because it provides a believable and, importantly, easily understandable model for the economisation of punishment: greater falls “naturally” cause more severe injury, and the very structure of video gaming is based on the need for a scalable system of penalty— one that is so familiar to us that is becomes invisible as a mechanism of power. Likewise, the spatial compartmentalising of the game, where areas cannot be reached before tasks have been solved, means that rewarding a player with new areas to explore makes fictive sense.
By means of these reward-and-punishment mechanisms the designers of Psychonauts are able to teach the player the proper techniques to use, and the behavioural norms to observe. This, often subtle and deeply naturalised, regime offers the player a consistent model of the world and over time produces a self-normalising subject.
Examination
Working alongside surveillance and correction is the process of examination. Regular testing of the subject’s proficiency is central to the disciplinary regime, as it determines the subject’s progress and dictates the skills and knowledge to be privileged. Those who do not pass the examination are blocked from proceeding to a higher level of learning.
The examination determines what should be known and what it is important to know.
That is, the examiners establish a set of practices as desired and only allow to pass those who can demonstrate they have taken on and can perform them (Foucault, 1977a: 184-
192).
216 Discipline functions, therefore, by means of the construction and enforcement of a
“correct” set of practices as natural, in other words through the production of a norm.
With constant correction and examination, subjects are coerced into taking on that norm, and only those who conform to it are allowed to progress. As Foucault points out, however, these processes of observation, correction and examination are not always explicit. While institutions like the military and the school may articulate them explicitly, elsewhere they are less clearly stated. The near universality of the uptake of many norms, their embeddedness in contemporary society, and the many advantages to be gained from striving for them, means that the norms are often rendered invisible or natural. From the classification of the insane in psychiatry to the judging of the criminal in law, disciplinary institutions operate by defining and policing the normal, and correcting the abnormal: a psychiatrist treats mental illness, and the police and judges find and punish those who transgress the law. The construction and enforcement of norms underpins all notions of society.
Throughout Psychonauts the process of examination can clearly be seen. In the case of learning to jump in Basic Braining for example, players are not just told how to jump, their progression is blocked until they have mastered the skill of jumping. If they cannot, then they are confined to their limited section of the world. The divided, cellular spatiality of the levels of this game allows for regular examination. Basic Braining teaches and tests the most basic skills, each skill taught and examined individually and then in combination and at increased speed. In fact, the entire game world is divided up on this cellular principle. Players’ access to other parts of the camp is restricted until they have received the Basic Braining merit badge and Sascha Nein’s invitation to the lab.
217 Later on, their way to a mysterious island is blocked by a horrifying Lungfish and they must travel through the creature’s mind and correct its damaged psyche if they wish to proceed.
The examination takes a variety of forms, including the so-called ‘boss fight’. In a video game a boss is generically a high-level enemy who operates in a unique space, that is, one that is not to be found elsewhere, and it requires a high level of skill on the part of the player in order to defeat him. To defeat the bosses in Psychonauts a player will often need to use a newly-acquired psychic skill. For instance, it will be impossible to best a rampaging bull late in the game, unless the player has mastered the use of the ‘confusion psychic power’. A boss-fight demands a high proficiency from the player and thus is an intense examination of his/her skill and strategy levels.
Figure 10: Raz confronts a ‘Boss’
218 Spatio-temporal Configuration
The observation, correction and examination of the subject, Foucault argues, require a precise configuration of time and space. So, in order to genuinely understand video games as a disciplinary form, we must go beyond asymmetric visuality and look at spatial and temporal dimensions. Psychonauts again proves a useful case study for understanding the intersection of space, time and the process of subjectivation.
Foucault sets out four broad spatio-temporal ways in which disciplinary technologies function: distribution, control of activity, organisation of geneses and the composition of forces (1977a: 135-169). The last of these, the composition of forces, describes the arrangement and configuration of disciplinary subjects relative to each other so as to achieve greatest effect. As it is more relevant to multiplayer gaming, we shall leave aside consideration of it. The other three, however, all demonstrate the overall purpose of discipline to configure the subject’s body precisely in space and time.
Distribution
We have already noted that, for Foucault, space is configured within disciplinary technologies to confine the subject. This is critical to the operation of discipline because it facilitates the formation of the individual subjectivity. However, there is more to disciplinary distribution than this; such a formation also allows for the hierarchisation of space, different spatial positions becoming identified with different ranks and different proficiencies. A classroom space may be marked by skill level, for example, with those still grappling with the basics seated at the front. Space is thus marked identifiably by skill level (Foucault, 1977a: 141-149).
219 What Foucault is describing, then, is something we have already observed in
Psychonauts. As a single-player game, Psychonauts has its starting-point in the isolated subject (the lone player), who is then placed into the hierarchised space of the game world, where progress is dependant on mastery of skills, and demonstration through examination. The cellular architecture divides the game space into discrete levels that require completion in a certain order, the space is also divided up into discrete challenges within levels. Thus, the concept of distribution gives us a terminology and conceptual framework for understanding how Psychonauts works. The opening challenge of Basic
Braining is part of the process of disciplinary distribution and hierarchically organised space; until players learn to jump, they are restricted to a very small area. Such a spatial configuration makes the process of surveillance easier, as it organises according to the skill level (that is, conformity to the privileged norm) and so permits the task to be adjusted to the player’s particular spatial location. In video games this means that players’ skill levels can be revealed by their progression through the game and the difficulty of tasks can be matched to their skill.
This process of spatial hierarchisation is basic to many pedagogic strategies. Not that
Foucault claims that his observations are new, or that this practice has gone unobserved in pedagogic theory. Indeed, quite the reverse: he is formulating a picture of the history of theories of learning, conforming and controlling across a wide field. In so doing he offers us a unique history for understanding the disciplinary process of video games.
In the games industry, the division of game world space is often seen as a technological necessity. Only so much information can be stored in a system’s memory at one time, and
220 thus programmers/designers will split games up into a series of manageable levels, which can be loaded individually. Yet, as Foucault shows, the division of space has a far longer history than that of the video game. A purely technological explanation of the compartmentalisation of game space, while undoubtedly part of the story, fails to acknowledge sufficiently the extra degree of power and control such a spatial regime produces for the designer. The division of space is central to the operation of a disciplinary regime.
Control of the Body
Not only is the physical environment of the disciplinary technology carefully configured, but so is the individual’s action. A disciplinary system requires the careful and precise performance of the action in space and time. Temporally this means allocation of specific times for particular exercises, all of which must be kept separate. It also means the precise mapping of the specifics of the action. Not only does this prescription require the careful management of the body parts directly involved, but also a precise management of the rest of the body in order to achieve maximum efficiency. Through repetition and an acceleration of the action in its precision and speed there is a continual refinement towards an unattainable maximum efficiency (Foucault, 1977a: 149-156).
New media theorist Alexander Galloway, whose engagement with Foucualt I touched on last chapter, best articulates the way in which the player must become what Foucault terms a ‘docile body’, willing to rote-learn the privileged actions (Foucault, 1977a: 135 –
141). In exploring the logic of play Galloway notes that with many video games ‘intricate combinations of buttons must be executed with precise timing to accomplish something
221 within the game. Indeed, [certain games] hinge upon the operator’s ability to motor memorize button combinations for specific moves’ (2006: 94-95).
Galloway is pointing to the same two key elements of an action that Foucault is proposing as critical to the operation of bodily discipline: specific and precise bodily moments, and strict timing. Foucault uses the example of military drill training, but video games display this property just as well. A precisely-timed combination of movements must be performed, and by means of constant practice and repetition the movements can and should be performed at increased speed.
Figure 11: On-screen instruction in Psychonauts
In the opening stages of Psychonauts the actions that the player needs to perform are explicitly articulated. Many, like the double jump (Figure 11), are detailed both in terms of the bodily action required (‘press space’) and the necessary timing (‘while airborne’).
222 In these early sections players are constantly given instruction on how to move their bodies. ‘Look to the right,’ Ford Crowler says, while on-screen text tells them to ‘move the mouse’ in order to do this. The game is carefully configured to divide up instructions to Raz, like ‘look left’, which can be said by game characters, with the corresponding instruction to the player written on the screen: ‘move the mouse to look around’. In layering the explicit instruction, the game maintains the fiction of the game world while explaining to players the physical actions required of them.
It is no coincidence that Basic Braining occurs in a military-themed mind. Just as in the last chapter we saw that totalitarianism was an apt political context for video game
“freedom”, so here we can see that military training procedures are the best analogue of learning to play a video game. Indeed, remediating military drill is a conceit used by numerous other games; Half Life: Opposing Force (Valve Corporation: 1999) and
Vietcong (Illusion Software: 2004) are only two of many. The character of Coach
Oleander, with his drill-sergeant mentality, provides the perfect cover for a rigorous process of bodily control without breaking the reality of the summer-camp setting. But it also emphasises the common disciplinary heritage of video games, and the absolute reliance of video games on control and the need to make the player’s physical actions conform to desired practices.
Organisation of Geneses
The last, but by no means the least, of Foucault’s concepts reflected in Psychonauts is what he terms the ‘organization of geneses’ (1977a: 156-162). This is the principle that the ordering and temporal arrangement of action in a disciplinary system cannot be
223 arbitrary. Sequences of action must be carefully constructed to be of increasing difficulty.
Graduation from one step to another must take place only after the successful examination of the skills taught.
In Psychonauts the organisation of geneses translates into each individual level and the game as a whole gets more difficult as the player progresses. As Raz traverses the mental landscape of Basic Braining, the skills he must demonstrate become more complex and require faster reflexes and greater precision. Many of them are just the basic skills, jumping, punching, climbing etc, but performed in combination and with increased speed. The pattern established in Basic Braining is used throughout the game, except that the new mental worlds to which Raz gains access grow more complicated and involved as the game progresses.
Beyond Discipline
Discipline has been a widely mobilised paradigm for academic thought post-Foucault.
Yet as it is rooted in, and formative of, modernity, and as society shift way from the modernist era understandings to post-modernity the usefulness of a disciplinary framework comes into question. It has been actively critiqued and expanded upon by many scholars; most significantly by Gilles Deleuze, who suggests that the epoch of discipline is fast fading, and that the age of computerisation radically reconfigures the apparatus of power. Deleuze offers an extension of Foucault’s framework in ‘Postscript on the Societies of Control’ (1992: 3) where he argues that the disciplinary systems are being replaced by a logic which he calls ‘control’. Where disciplinary society is about the construction of the self-normalising individual through confinement and surveillance, at
224 the heart of the society of control is the ‘dividual’ and the channelling of flows. The dividual is not a coherent self-defining subject, but rather a floating, amorphous assemblage. In the societies of control we are ‘masses, samples, data, markets, or
“banks”’ (Deleuze: 1992: 5). The dividual is the product of a network society, of our numerous online identities and fragmented modes of engagement. The dividual is defined by credit histories, email passwords, healthcare and welfare numbers, bio-informatic data, and all the other sets of information that swarm around that formation we have traditionally called ‘the individual’, ‘the subject’, ‘the citizen’; while not erased, such traditional notions of identity are rendered irrelevant to society’s broader functioning. For
Deleuze, the rapid digitisation of our world and the consequent shifting of the techniques and technologies of power have rapidly reconfigured the nature of the subject. Those now recognisable to society’s apparatuses are those that can be assessed and managed by algorithm; they are neither unique individuals, nor homogenised masses, but rather data sets of information and statistics, varied in the details but managed as a mass.
Whereas a disciplinary society operates through the construction and constant correction of norms of behaviour, societies of control have no direct interest in such minutiae of subjectivity. Rather the key to the society of control is the granting or denial of access.
The password, the keycard, the code are central conceits of control. The mass of dividuals are managed and directed by the binary logic of the thresholds, where access is either permitted or denied. Power operates not to turn one into a good citizen, but to shape one’s access (to goods, services, benefits etc.) according to one’s corresponding numerical and data values. The bank loan is no longer judged by the bank manager on how well one conforms to the norms of an upright citizen and thus safe investment, but
225 purely by the algorithmic calculation of one’s credit risk based on one’s total financial data. The apparatus of power, as such, need not have the production of the subject as its central focus, just control over the vectors upon which the dividual travels, the real and virtual pathways by which society operates, be they the networks of world finance, communications, entertainment, or transport.
For Deleuze, a disciplinary society is a rigid, segregated system. Each institution, while relying on the logic of discipline, has its own set of norms and practices that it wishes the individual to incorporate.
The individual never ceases passing from one closed environment to another, each having its own laws: first the family; then the school (“you are no longer in your family”); then the barracks (“you are no longer at school”); then the factory; from time to time the hospital; possibly the prison. (Deleuze, 1992: 3)
Conversely societies of control function fluidly to modulate and refine, not replace, each set of practices (Deleuze, 1992: 4). We no longer have the expectation of a career for life, one through which we advance with a single set of necessary skills. Instead, we value- add, we multi-task, we are flexible and variable, we modify our skills to new situations, but do not begin again from scratch. The confinement of the discipline system is gone.
While this account of Foucault may overstate the separation of the systems—in so far as the ability to be disciplined (the cultural expectation of subjectivation) remains constant and defies institutionally specific confinements—it further emphasises the very different spatial and temporal configuration of discipline and control. Whereas discipline is constant, control functions at thresholds. Whereas discipline is configured around the
226 need for surveillance, control is based on points of access. Whereas discipline has the subject at the centre, control has the vectors of flight, the means of data transportation as its focus. Whereas discipline is discrete, control is modular. And, finally, whereas discipline is static, control is in flux.
Like Caldwell, Galloway highlights the importance of the constant statistical feedback to the player. Unlike Caldwell, however, Galloway’s theorisation of this feedback is not as part of a quasi-panoptical apparatus. Galloway, as I noted last chapter argues, that
Foucault’s conceptualisation of power is not appropriate for the digital age. Rather,
Galloway suggests that this numericisation reflects the broader cultural shift from a disciplinary society to a society of control. In the control societies, Galloway observes, informatics is key, and the rendering of previously abstract concepts as numerical or processible values underpins all operations of power (2006: 87-95). Civilization II likewise presents a numericised system, where all significant aspects of the world are quantifiable and the player formulates decisions based upon these values. For Galloway, the game57 is an allegory of control, a microcosm of the dominant logic of our time.
Players must access and decide based upon the informatic data with which they are presented. Just as a bank loan is decided by the algorithmic processing of credit history, the video game player is pushed to assess the informatic feedback of his/her own play performance. If players are to win, they must understand and mirror the logic of the computer; in order to master it, they must understand the systems of cause and effect by which the game operates. Ultimately, the player is conforming to the logic of control,
57 Where Caldwell is specifically analyzing Civilization II, Galloway is offering a broader analysis of the entire Civilization series. For sake of clarity, however, unless stated otherwise I will be reading Galloway’s analysis primarily in relation to Civilization II.
227 ‘learning, internalizing and becoming intimate with a massive multipart global algorithm’
(Galloway, 2006: 90). For Galloway, the player is not so much the dividual of the society of control, but a microcosm of its logic. The focus is not the player, but the allegory. This is about understanding culture through the means of Civilisation II.
As a study of the ways in which video games reflect the dominant political logics of a time, Galloway’s argument is exceptional. His central contention is not that the player is part of a mechanism of control, but rather that the game can be understood as an allegory of control. As such, what he is describing is not the mechanisms that produce play, but rather the naturalising schema in operation. Contemporary state power, as Deleuze observes, is shifting its focus from the individual citizens to numerical processing.
Civilization II offers the player the opportunity to act as controller of an entire empire; the mechanics used by players to govern their citizens are, therefore, those of control.
What Galloway does not indicate is that the mechanisms that work upon the player are still disciplinary, working on the construction of the individual by means of surveillance, normalising judgement and examination. In this case, the informatic regime functions on two levels. As I have noted, it emphasises the surveillance of the player and thus produces a self-normalising subject; and it also encodes that feedback in a recognisable schema of power, the logic of control. Control works in conjunction with discipline.
However, as a study of the actual process of play, Galloway’s work is flawed. By observing simply the allegory of control, and not the subjectivation of discipline, he assumes that control governs the player’s action without offering an account of how it operates. In their analysis of Civilization II, both Caldwell and Galloway have been
228 heavily influenced by the insights of Ted Friedman in his seminal analysis, Civilization and Its Discontents. Yet, unlike Friedman (to whom I shall return in the next chapter) and even Caldwell, Galloway fails to engage in any substantial way with the notion of subjectivation. He makes the thought-provoking point that players must themselves learn to operate with the logic of control in order to be successful at the game, even borrowing from Friedman terminology of ‘internalization’ (Galloway, 2006: 90). But he never addresses directly the question of who or what is doing the internalising, the individual or the dividual.
When we look at the micro-mechanics of Civilization II, we can see that while the informatic regime that Civilization II displays is clearly an articulation of the cultural logic of control, it is, paradoxically, functioning through discipline, as Caldwell’s work shows. The player learns and internalises the logic of the system. In other words, a
‘playing subjectivity’ is being constructed by the game apparatus according to a privileged norm. Civilization II functions on the individual player through the logic of discipline, while presenting and naturalising itself through the political allegory of control. Civilization II is undoubtedly a product of a society of control, a fact that is made clear by the ways in which the designers have chosen to recreate the world and its systems. Yet it also remains manifestly a disciplinary space, where standardising player behaviour is critical. As Deleuze himself points out, control is not fully upon us, we are in a moment of transition (1992: 4). Disciplinary society still has its sway. Games designers are still fundamentally concerned with player subjectivity, as it is, by constructing specific playing subjectivities that player behaviour can be managed.
229 For control to be an appropriate paradigm for the analysis of play mechanisms, the player must be treated as a dividual, not an individual. While a game like Civilization II offers a relatively non-linear gaming experience, it still functions to isolate, that is confine, the player and construct and manage him/herself as an individual. Players are not dividuals; they are not managed as a specific instance within a mass. To use Chesher’s term, the
Civilization II game world is ‘egocentric’: the world hinges upon the player’s each and every decision (2004). By contrast, the relatively new genre of Massive Multiplayer
Games lacks this inherent individualism. Individual players here understand themselves and are treated as part of a mass or population. Unsurprisingly, then, control has become the emerging logic of online video gaming and the possible future for all gaming, as we shift more and more into the online paradigm. The phenomenal success of Massive
Multiplayer Online Role Playing (MMORPGs) games such as World of Warcraft
(Blizzard Entertainment, 2004) and Everquest (Sony Online Entertainment, 1999), which can be played by hundreds of thousands of players simultaneously, and the rapid growth of multiplayer gaming through online networks and technologies such as Xbox Live and
Playstation Network marks a change in the underlying technological, economic and social models upon which video gaming is constructed. Many of these games, particularly those designed to accommodate large numbers of players, have significantly shifted to the new paradigm of control. The individual player is not as important as the group, the raiding party, the clan, the server. The channelling of flows has never been so crucial; flows of players in the game world, flows of items in the virtual economies, flows of data through optical fibres and phone lines. The individual subjectivity of the player is not the concern; the group and its movements are. The games are not about the
230 production of the individual through confinement, but the managing of populations. Flow and movement, not enclosure, are the guiding design principles. This is where Deleuze’s ideas become crucial for video game studies. Galloway too easily conflates video games with networks, and as such societies of control, simply because both rely on computers.
But video games that do not utilise networked technology are profoundly disciplinary in technique. Control as a theoretical paradigm only becomes crucial when talking about the networked games that have begun to emerge over the last decade.
Deleuze points to the need to relearn skills when shifting from one disciplinary system to another. Control is different, he argues, in that it is in a continual process of modulation.
MMORPGs reflect this difference. Most single-player games are finite in that they can be finished, or at least played until there is little challenge left in them. The player must eventually move to a new game, and learn a new set of skills. Skill-sets may be similar across games within the same genre, but between genres they are vastly different.
MMORPGs, however, are infinite and, due to the social element, these games are never static, nor can they ever be conquered. Players must learn to adjust to new types of challenge that emerge organically through other players’ actions, and must modulate their play to incorporate the new environment, items and quests that many developers add constantly to their product in order to maintain player interest. They need never, unless they wish to, learn a completely new set of skills, as there will always be challenges available to them. Where single-player games mirror the discrete separation of disciplinary enclosures, MMORPGs illustrate the dynamic and infinite modulations of control.
231 MMORPGs and the like give a glimpse of the possible configurations of power to come in video gaming, and Galloway presents us with a useful tool with which to understand them. The popularity of these games is growing at an exponential rate—World of
Warcraft alone boasts over nine million subscribers. Such success, however, should not be understood to imply the inevitable demise of single-player gaming. The different mechanics of power of single-player gaming offer an experience quite unlike that offered by multi-player worlds. Disciplinary systems work on the player. They teach, they shape, they subjectivate, they create a unique experience of agency and power. These individualised and individuating systems can tell more intimate stories and offer singular, more carefully constructed experiences. These games are not about the mass, but about the individual.
Power, Play and Discipline
I started this chapter by looking at the PainStation and to conclude would like to return to it. The PainStation is a fascinating success as a work of art, but in many respects as a video game it is a failure. As a work of art, it is at once repellent and intriguing.
Potentially, it highlights the infinite abstraction of violence in video games, and the very real and horrendous consequence of violence in “real life”. It challenges us to rethink our notions of play and pleasure, and to ask whether play invariably lacks any consequence.
Most importantly, it makes us question our understanding of what is natural, and what is reasonable, and how certain types of penalty can be abhorrent, while others are invisible.
As a game it is less successful. A video game is a complex system of power, an apparatus for constructing player behaviour. Yet, in using the mechanism of violence, The
232 PainStation destroys the virtuality of video gaming and, with it, its power over play. The video game is discursively constructed as a voluntary space for the player’s autonomous engagement, and the violence done to the player’s body challenges this construction. The
PainStation graphically emphasises its power over players, who have little reason, beyond pride, curiosity or masochism, to submit themselves. The goal of the
PainStation’s designers, however, would not appear to be the creation of a system which asserts absolute power, but rather to use pain as the penalty regime, and the challenge of the game. Pain is not there primarily to remind the player of the system’s authority: ultimately, the player is always free to walk away. Inevitably, then, as a video game the
PainStation has a very short life-expectancy; it is an unstable model of power. Power is most stable—and, consequently, resistance at its weakest—when its mechanisms are invisible.
Perhaps the most problematic aspect of the PainStation is the assertion made by its creators Morawe and Reiff of its realism. Indeed, rather than questioning the notion of
“realism” in any video game model, this one replaces the existing discourse with its own.
This replacement discourse, however, is politically confused. The game involved is Pong, a two-dimension table-tennis remediation and, as such, is not a coherent statement on the lack of abstraction of violence in this form. Indeed, next to the subtlety of games like
Half-Life 2 and its own interrogation of power, the use of power in the PainStation seems simplistic. By failing to engage with a disciplinary model of power, Morawe and Reiff have limited the potential provocativeness of this work. The PainStation is too far removed from contemporary video gaming to really offer its own commentary on the form. Rather, the PainStation serves as a useful point of comparison to mainstream game
233 titles like Psychonauts, and with it Morawe and Reiff have created something disquieting and shocking, but the profundity of the project is still yet to be fully realised.
In its failure as a video game, however, the PainStation raises questions. Indeed, I began by asking why certain punishment regimes become popular, while others are unthinkable.
Ultimately, what we have seen is that it is a question of effectiveness. The PainStation, in which the player gets whipped, shocked and burnt for making mistakes, fails to mobilise a coherent penalty system. It uses non-representational corporeal punishment, but does not attempt to reassert absolute power. It offers no economy of scale, nor does it produce a long-term desire in the player to engage. Punishment is thus primarily arbitrary and excessive and, most importantly, avoidable. As a system of punishment, as a game, therefore, the PainStation is profoundly unstable and ineffective.
On the other hand, Psychonauts offers the player numerous incentives and rewards. If the player proceeds according to the norms that the system encourages, a rich imaginative storyline unfolds. By means of the careful use of instruction, tight configuration of time and space, and perpetual observation and examination, this game produces a subject that desires to play correctly. It is a highly effective system that very efficiently trains the player into a very specific mode of engagement. Small wonder, then, that the disciplinary model realised so clearly in Psychonauts is the standard modus operandi for single-player gaming. This sophisticated, robust and powerful regime works extremely well in this medium, affording numerous techniques for the management and standardisation of play practices. Indeed, even Civilization II, with its veneer of control, ultimately uses many of the same mechanisms as Psychonauts. It constructs a very specific individual through the
234 process of surveillance. Civilization II’s spatio-temporality is less linear and therefore trickier to conceptualise as cellular, but the same processes are in action. Distribution
(greater skill is marked by climbing the ladder of technology and managing a larger empire), control of the body (the accompanying game manual gives detailed instructions on actions and timing) and organisation of genesis (as players rise up the technological scale, the challenges become more difficult, and the options more varied) are also crucial to normalising the player of Civilization II.
As an analytical tool Foucaultian discipline is only one of many paradigms that can be used to understand the contemporary single-player video game. Unlike any approach based on the logic of negative capture, a disciplinary framework offers a nuanced account of the full range of mechanisms that games mobilise in order to produce, not deny, play practice. The concept of discipline gives us a range of ideas and terminology to describe the otherwise invisible mechanisms of power in video games, in particular the surveillance, the normalising judgement and the unique configuration of the spatio- temporal architecture. Most importantly, it provides us with the means of understanding the processes of subjectivation involved in play. The production of the player is critical to the operation of every game, but is consistently overlooked by theorists, and discipline is perhaps the missing theoretical link needed to move beyond simple notions of binding rules to complex notions of individualisation. At the same time discipline, in contrast to the concept of control, gives us a theoretical model that explains both the mental and physical training that takes place in video game play. The embodied individual, unlike the disembodied dividual, has a privileged corporeal existence, but it is not essentially natural, rather it is produced through cultural technologies of power.
235 Discipline also situates the video game in the context of a far broader cultural project. No longer is the game simply an entertainment form operating in isolation, but it is the product of a particular moment in history, perhaps now fading, but reflected in the pervading ideas of our time. Video games are a microcosm of the operation of power in modernist culture, an articulation of the logic of the self-normalising subject constructed constantly in relation to the apparatuses of surveillance. Remediating the institutions of modernity, such as prisons, schools and the military, single-player video games configure space, time and visuality to produce a certain kind of subject body and thus a certain kind of subjectivity. The gaming apparatus produces a desire to conform to the norm, where the process of conforming is understood as a perfecting of skills and strategies.
Power has long been identified by its excesses, by the abuses and oppression perpetuated throughout our world. But, as Foucault observes, power often functions invisibly and productively in our daily routines, discourse and understandings. Video games like
Psychonauts demonstrate this by showing the subtle ways in which subjects are shaped by their engagements with the technologies and institutions that surround them.
Psychonauts reveals the double logic of power: it is at once restrictive, in that it encourages a conformity to the norm, and productive, in that this conformity empowers the player to experience a complex and fascinating game.
Video games as we currently know them could only be produced in a very particular cultural moment, one in which the disciplinary regime is in operation. As we shift from a disciplinary society to a control society, from single-player gaming to network worlds, the kinds of games and the mechanisms in use will change once again. For now, however,
236 the individual still reigns, threatened, but not yet vanquished, by the ever-expanding mass of dividuals of MMORPGS. For storytelling and fine-tuned linear gaming experiences, discipline is unlikely to be replaced as the privileged regime of game designers. Without the mechanism of discipline, sophisticated and unique games like Psychonauts could never exist.
237 +,
! $ ' $ 5
Violence and Video Gaming
n the 20th of April 1999 two teenage gunmen, Eric Harris and Dylan O Klebold, shot and killed 12 fellow students, a teacher, then themselves at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. This shocking event, the worst high- school shooting in US history, had a profound effect upon the American psyche. In its aftermath, politicians, the media and ordinary citizens were left searching for answers. Why did two young men gun down their classmates in such a callous and calculated way? What did it say about American culture? And what could be done to prevent it happening again? Many possible causes were suggested, ranging from the years of bullying the two had endured, lax US gun laws, the anti-depressant medication one of them was taking, to the Goth subculture to which the pair were connected. For many, however, both the answer and the culpability lay with violent media, in particular violent video games. Harris and Klebold, it seems, were avid first-person shooter players; their particular favourite was the game Doom.
This chapter is about bodies, the active bodies of players, the virtual bodies of video game avatars, and the tragic bodies of the Columbine High School shooting victims. It is about the body as a signifier, the body as a cultural construction, and the body as a resource. It is also about the body in politics, the body as the ultimate commodity of capitalism and militarism.
Finally, it is about the way in which common understandings and perceived affordances of the body are mobilised in video gaming so as to produce the disciplined player.
238 Being about bodies in video games, this chapter cannot avoid also being about violence. It is about the violence inflicted by virtual bodies, but also, most importantly, the violence inflicted on virtual bodies, and the ways in which video game violence is similar to and different from violence in other media. It is about the violence of cultural logics: the dominant regimes of informatics and militarism, and how they have given rise to the peculiar creature we term the
‘contemporary video game’.
This chapter is also about hybridity. It is about the point of merger of the human body and the technological machine that happens at the moment of video game play. It is about the blurring of the boundaries between military logics and the civilian life. And it is about the porous borders between modernity and post-modernity, humanist and post human. In this chapter I will offer an account of the technological saturated culture we live in and the means by which subjects are produced.
Where the last two chapters offered an account of the importance of modernist myths and mechanism in video gaming, this chapter focuses on the structures and formations of the post- modern/post-human era. I will demonstrate that it only in context of modernity and humanism that post-modernity and post-humanism can be understood and usefully employed. And I will show that it is only by acknowledging the cultural contexts of their remediation that techniques of modernity I discussed previously come to be meaningful. For all their appropriation of the understanding, spatiality and system of punishment of modernity, video games are still very much a product of the cultural logics of contemporary society. In this chapter I will explore how these modernist techniques are enacted and employed in context of the late 20th century/early 21st century thinking. I will show that by addressing the continuities, not just the ruptures, that
239 scientific, social and academic change has brought in the last decade we can understand video games as cohesively embodying both modernist and post-modernist logics to produce a robust configuration of power.
I claim no expert knowledge of the specifics of the tragic Columbine shooting incident, so have no intention of trying to explain it. Instead, I propose to interrogate the understanding of video game violence that has emerged post-Columbine and, more importantly, try to move beyond the crude discourses that have come to dominate since then. I am not looking to defend video game violence, as others have tried to do. Indeed, as I will demonstrate, many aspects of the way in which violence operates in games are deeply problematic. Rather, this is an attempt to make the debate more sophisticated, to acknowledge and explore the complexity of the way violence is used in games. This is an analysis of the function and contexts of video game violence, not a discussion of its ‘effects’.
Building on, and refining, the frameworks of affordances and discipline established earlier in this thesis, I want to consider how the representation of the body in the video game is a key mechanism of the process of subjectivation. Bodies are central to Foucault’s disciplinary model.
He argues that subjects’ physical bodies are rendered docile within the disciplinary apparatus so that they can take on the logic inscribed on them by power (1977a, 135-141). Indeed the spatiotemporal configuration that enables the individualisation of distribution, the control of activity and the organisation of genesis that I explored last chapter is all, for Foucault, focused directly upon the body. With video games, however, we have two bodies: the virtual and the physical. One subjectivity shares two distinct materialities: data and flesh. In this chapter I wish to look at how such a split subjectivity can function cohesively, how the two bodies merge into
240 one unified unit. Expanding our theoretical toolset through the cyborg paradigm, I will argue that play can only be understood as a productive merger of human and technology, self and other, object and subject, flesh and information. Cyborg theory functions as a valuable addition to our exploration of subjectivation, as it enables us to analyse the specificity of the process in video gaming. While retaining the broader disciplinary framework discussed in the previous chapter, I intend to mobilise the concept of the ‘cyborgian hybrid’ as a means of understanding the technological interfacing of the human player and the computer software. Whereas discipline describes the basic subjectivating apparatus, cyborg theory enables us to analyse the detailed inner working of the process in the context of the video game, where the subject’s body is both real and virtualised.
This chapter can also be understood as a response to the extreme ludological position, outlined early in this thesis, where play and culture are understood as discrete entities. Contrary to this position, I will show the absolute interconnectedness of play and culture. Expanding my discussion of affordance in Chapter Three into the realm of political discourse, I will argue that through the mechanisms of discipline as shaped by cyborgian technoculture, the player emerges to embody the dominant post-industrial militarist logic of late capitalism. This chapter is, therefore, about how video games produce the player (and vice-versa) by mobilising cultural tropes and contexts. My particular focus will be on the ways in which the human body and its perceived affordances are translated to the digital world; what this process of translation illustrates about contemporary cultural logics; and how socio-political contexts are crucial to play practice.
241 The case study for this chapter is the seminal first-person shooter, Doom, designed by id
Software in 1993. Although 15 years old now, Doom defined the modern first-person shooter game and remains the archetype of the genre. More importantly to us here, however, is the scrutiny to which the game and video game violence have been subjected in the wake of the
Columbine high-school shootings and the discovery that both Columbine killers had been active
Doom players and had even designed their own levels for the game.
The plot of Doom is relatively simple. Players take on the role of a space marine stranded alone on a Martian base overrun by demonic hordes. Players must then fight their way through increasingly difficult levels in order to find a way back to Earth. Doom’s mix of fast-paced action, horror and science fiction tropes, and carefully designed levels and foes, made it an instant hit with over ten million copies installed worldwide.58 The game generated two sequels,
Doom 2 (released in 1994) and Doom 3 (released almost a decade later in 2003).
58 A free shareware version of Doom containing one third of the game’s levels was released and proved a massive success. While the sales figures for the full game are high, they do not match the estimated number of downloads and installs of this shareware version.
242
Figure 12: The player confronts two ‘Barons of Hell’ in Doom
The Effects Debate
In the years that have followed the Columbine massacre, the anxiety surrounding the effects of violent video games has intensified. In early 2006, US senators Joseph Lieberman and Hillary
Clinton called for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to study the ‘effects’ of video game use (McCullagh and Broache, 2006). Lieberman argued that more needs to be known about the ‘threat posed to children by video game violence’ (2006). Prominent lawyer and anti- violent-game lobbyist Jack Thompson is putting both politicians and the industry under increasing pressure by pursuing high-profile media and legal campaigns. The message from the anti-video game violence advocates is clear: violent games cause violent behaviour and, as such, are a threat to society.
243 The extreme violence, satanic imagery, and immense popularity of Doom have made it the perennial bête noire of conservative anti-violence campaigners. Former US military psychologist
Lt. Col. David Grossman has gone so far as to claim that Doom and games like it are ‘mass murder simulators’ (2007) that are training young people in the skills, and giving them the mindset, to kill. Violent video games, he argues, are providing military quality training to children (1996) but where, for Grossman, military training serves a legitimate purpose, the training of video gaming is done merely in the name of profit. From his perspective, games like
Doom represent the moral decline of society, where the big businesses of game (and other media) companies prey on the most basic instincts of impressionable youth solely to make money
(Grossman, 2003).
Many anti-censorship advocates refute the claims of these conservative effects based arguments, arguing that these studies do not look at the context within which play takes place. Henry
Jenkins, for example, notes that play takes place in what he calls the ‘magic circle’ (2005), a phrase he borrows from Salen and Zimmerman (2004: 94). Players understand acts performed within the magic circle to be fantasy, he claims, and we cannot assume they have a direct influence on their real-world behaviour. Similarly, ludology with its rejection of any equivalence between play and culture, implicitly positions violent play as just another from of play, not a signifier or cause of violent action.
The debate over video game violence has essentially devolved into a binarised yes/no tussle. At its heart is the question of whether games influence player action in the real world. Anti-video game violence advocates believe categorically that it does, and that this influence is entirely negative. Conversely, anti-effects proponents argue that, outside the game space, games have no
244 effect on the player at all. The argument over violence is thus restricted to this extremely narrow issue, where no resolution is possible, but where the stakes are high. However, throughout this debate one key question has been neglected: what role does violence serve in video game play? It is only by formulating answers to this that we can have any sort of context for a discussion of effects. If we do not understand the purpose of the violence, we will never understand the player’s relationship to it, and that is a key to deciphering its influence.
Posthumanism and Cyborg Subjectivity
In this chapter I will contextualise the single-player video gaming experience through an engagement with theorisations of the influence of technology on subjectivity. Broadly speaking I will shift my focus from modernity to post-modernity, but more specifically my attention will be on the paradigm of posthumanism and the closely tied concept of the cyborg. Through posthumanism and cyborg theory I shall offer a precise account of the player/software relationship that produces the video gaming experience. I will counter both the effects tradition’s understanding of violence as mindless titillation, and the anti-effects tradition’s simplistic argument that violence is just another ludic element. Violence serves a very particular purpose in video gaming. It is a product of contemporary militarised culture, the object space of the video game and our entrenched emotional connection to the concept of the body; Doom will exemplify this. In short, violence is the product of the merger of player and software that is play.
In Chapter Four I offered an account of one of the key ideas of liberal humanism: the rational autonomous individual. I showed how in the video game Half-Life 2 this modernist myth is employed and then, in the games climax, critiqued. I suggested that liberal humanism, whilst a powerful and entrenched logic, is flawed in its assumption that a subject can operate outside
245 culture and power. The video game player, like all cultural subjects, is produced through their engagements with mechanism and techniques of power. Last chapter I explored the mechanisms that operate in single-player video games and showed how they function as part of a disciplinary regime. Yet, as Galloway (2006) and Deleuze (1992) have pointed to, discipline is profoundly tied to a particular historical epoch and set of technologies. Here I will show that posthumanism offers us a way of conceptualising the single-player video game subject as a product of a disciplinary system, while moving beyond the modernist apparatus associated with that particular regime of power. I will argue that whilst posthumanism is an often problematic and deeply conflicted field, it offers a rich framework for conceptualising the complex relationship between video game player and software. I will show that the related field of cyborg theory59 which focuses on the subjectivity of the posthuman is a particularly useful theoretical paradigm for exploring single-player video game play. Therefore, before returning to Doom, it is necessary to explore posthumanism and cyborg theory, and chronicle the impact these paradigms have had on video game studies.
Posthumanism is a term encompassing a wide range of theoretical perspectives. It is a fragmented and contradictory set of ideas spanning across a variety of disciplines from robotics, engineering and military science, to philosophy and feminism. In her seminal study of the evolution of the paradigm How We Became Posthuman, N. Katherine Hayles (1999) traces the development and spread of the central ideas of post humanism after World War II. Pinpointing key theorists such as Nobert Wiener, and historical turning points such as the Macy series of conferences, Hayles traces the way in which information theory, scientific and medical advances,
59 Whilst the term Cyborg is used throughout posthumanist’s literature to identify the contemporary technologically immersed subject, the term ‘Cyborg theory’ will be used here denote a specific paradigm of academic study directly or indirectly inspired by Donna Haraway’s ‘A Cyborg Manifesto’ (1991) that conceptualises the cyborg as a boundary blurring polymorphous figure.
246 and a changing relationship with technology brought about a new understanding of being that is radically different from traditional notions.
Hayles, whilst highlighting the diversity of opinions in the paradigm, outlines the four key understandings of this new posthumanists concept of being which, although not universal, are widespread in the literature.
First, the posthuman view privileges informational pattern over material instantiation, so that embodiment in a biological substrate is seen as an accident of history rather than an inevitability of life. Second, the posthuman view considers consciousness, regarded as the seat of human identity in the Western tradition long before Descartes thought he was a mind thinking, as an epiphenomenon, as an evolutionary upstart trying to claim that it is the whole show when in actuality it is only a minor sideshow. Third, the posthuman view thinks of the body as the original prosthesis we all learn to manipulate, so that extending or replacing the body with other prostheses becomes a continuation of a process that began before we were born. Fourth, and most important, by these and other means the posthuman view configures human being so that it can be seamlessly articulated with intelligent machines. (Hayles, 1999: 2- 3)
This reimagining of being inevitably means a drastic reconceptualising of subjectivity. From the perspective of posthumanism, Hayles states, ‘there are no essential differences or absolute demarcations between bodily existence and computer simulation, cybernetic mechanism and biological organism, robot teleology and human goals’ (Hayles, 1999: 3).
As Hayles points out, the way in which these underlying beliefs are engaged with by different theorists varies greatly. From roboticist/artificial intelligence theorist Hans Moravec, who proclaims that we are rapidly approaching a day when it will be possible to download ones
247 consciousness to a computer and thus be immortal (Hayles, 1999: 1), to those like neurophysiologist Warren McCulloch who think it is foreseeable that the human race will one day be overtaken and enslaved by intelligent machines (Hayles, 1999: 283).
Hayles herself offers a sophisticated and nuanced engagement with the ideas. Most importantly, unlike many of those within posthumanism who see the paradigm as a complete reconceptualisation of being, Hayles understands it in relation to predating discourses such a liberal humanism. For Hayles, posthumanism is both informed by liberal humanism and a challenge to it. She argues that despite posthumanism’s implicit and often explicit proclamation of the coming obsolesce of the human (Hayles, 1999: 283), the field is still firmly entrenched in very traditional notion of what being human means. Hayles argues that
[w]hen Moravec imagines “you” choosing to download yourself into a computer, thereby obtaining through technological mastery the ultimate privilege of immortality, he is not abandoning the autonomous liberal subject but expanding its prerogatives into the realm of the posthuman. (Hayles, 1999: 286- 287)
To explain this entrenched liberal humanism in a field seemingly so open to reinventing our concepts of being Hayles traces the ancestry of posthumanism. Through historian Otto Mayr’s account of the political and social consequences of machines in European modernity (Mayr,
1986), she argues that the posthuman subject, the ‘cyborg’, must be understood in context of its forerunner, the self regulating machine. The self regulating machine is a device, such as a thermostat, that requires no external human input to function; they use input to make ‘decisions’ independently. Hayles notes that during modernity such machines became firmly entwined with liberal humanism as they embodied this movement’s championing of the power of self regulation. From Adam Smith’s free market economics to the philosophy of enlightened self
248 interest, self regulation was a core concept within the liberal humanist discourse. Not only did self-regulating machines become a powerful example of the efficiency and workability of self- regulating systems, but they also came to be associated with other core ideas of liberal humanism, such as rational individualism. For Hayles, however, this is a problematic association. The self regulating machine and the autonomous individual became increasingly irreconcilable as technology advanced. Machines that functioned without human intervention and made decisions for themselves became a fundamental challenge to liberal humanist notions of human agency. Cyborgs were even more problematic. When humans become part of a self regulating system where they are not the sole decision making element, liberal humanist notions of agency and identity are not only challenged but fundamentally rewritten. As Hayles frames it
‘[b]y the mid-twentieth century liberal humanism, self-regulating machinery, and possessive individualism had come together in an uneasy alliance that at once helped to create the cyborg and also undermined the foundations of liberal subjectivity’ (Hayles, 1999: 86).
This tension between liberal humanism and an increasingly technologically saturated society is at the heart of posthumanism. Yet it is a tension rarely addressed despite, as Hayles suggests, being central in how posthumanism is perceived. For Hayles the rupture between human and posthuman only exists for those trapped in a liberal humanist logic.
[T]he posthuman does not really mean the end of humanity. It signals instead the end of a certain conception of the human that may have applied, at best, to that fraction of humanity who had the wealth, power and leisure to conceptualize themselves as autonomous beings exercising their will through individual agency and choice. What is lethal is not the posthuman as such, but the grafting of the posthuman onto a liberal humanist view of the self. (Hayles, 1999: 286-287)
249
For Hayles, posthumanism’s blind spot to its internal inconsistencies is a profound weakness of the paradigm. She offers a number of ways of rethinking posthumanism through an embodiment that avoids the pitfalls of positioning the posthuman as an entirely new understanding of being.
Despite Hayles’ desire to move beyond these limiting constructions of posthumanist subjectivity, in order to accurately account for the identity we encounter in contemporary society, it is preferable, indeed necessary, to acknowledge the complex nature of the construction of present- day subjectivities. If we look closer at the concept of the cyborg we find that this internal tension can be understood as central to the operation of posthumanism. It reflects the conflicted hybrid identity of its subject, caught between modernity and post-modernity, liberal humanism and posthumanism. Cyborg theory, unlike many other branches of posthumanism, celebrates the break down and blurring of boundaries.
The Cyborg
Long before the discourse of posthumanism became prominent, theorists were already talking about cyborgs. The term ‘cyborg’, an abbreviation of cybernetic organism coined by Nobert
Wiener in the 1960s, has since been made famous by science-fiction writers and filmmakers. In its popular form the cyborg represents a human body augmented by technology, its organs, limbs, and/or tissue replaced or enhanced by electronics and machinery. In academia, however, the term has rapidly garnered a new set of meanings and associations since technology and feminist theorist Donna Haraway’s influential essay, ‘A Cyborg Manifesto’ (1991),60 prompted
60 Haraway’s essay was originally published under the title ‘A Manifesto for Cyborgs’ in issue 80 of Socialist Review, (1985). The version I refer to here, however, comes from Haraway’s 1991 book Simians, Cyborgs and Woman, where it had the now more familiar title of ‘A Cyborg Manifesto’. The text of both versions is nearly identical, with changes made primarily to reflect the shift from article to book chapter.
250 the radical reinvention of the cyborg as the ontology of contemporary being. The cyborg of contemporary cultural studies and philosophy is not simply a human augmented by technology, but a subject produced in the permanent and inevitable relationship to technology. It is a posthuman construction that avoids the utopianism and theoretical simplicity of much of the rest of posthumanism. It is a theorisation of the present not of imagined future potential that complicates and reimagines contemporary embodied being. The figure of the cyborg supplants the human; the boundaries of the flesh become inadequate to describe our mode of existence, our perpetual interfacing with technological process. From the food we eat, to the clothes we wear, the cars we drive, the entertainment we enjoy, the medications that keep us healthy, the communication devices that enable our social networks—our entire lives, indeed, our modes of being, are inseparable from technology. The cyborg is the citizen of this techno-cultural world, the redefinition of who we are and how we function.
As such, the cyborg may be regarded as the ideal conceit with which to expand our understanding of the video game player. Within this paradigm, the game is neither a threat to players, nor simply a plaything that has no impact upon them; it is an active part of the never- ending production of the cyborg subject. And, as I will argue, it is also an articulation of the dominant cultural logics of our time—most importantly, militarism and capitalism. It is here that answers are to be found to the questions I posed earlier, regarding the purpose and function of violence in video gaming.
In order to explicate the cyborg properly, it is necessary to spend some time looking at
Haraway’s ‘A Cyborg Manifesto’. This work is a complex and multilayered essay which defies simple explanation. It is a call to arms, a political critique and a radical intervention into many
251 modes of thought, amongst them feminism, Marxism and humanism. For Haraway, ‘[b]y the late twentieth century, our time, a mythic time, we are all chimeras, theorised and fabricated hybrids of machine and organism; in short, we are cyborgs’ (1991: 150). Unlike the cyborg of science fiction, which is the aberration and the exception, the cyborg is the inevitable product of our technocratic culture. The bastard progeny of militarism, patriarchal capitalism and/or state socialism, we cyborgs simultaneously embody and challenge these cultural logics.61 As Haraway puts it, ‘[i]llegitimate offspring are often exceedingly unfaithful to their origins’ (1991: 151). The cyborg is produced by the machinic techno-dependent order of society, yet in the perpetual interfacing of organisms and technology the boundaries upon which culture is built break down.
Haraway’s cyborg is a polymorphous hybrid, a creature that defies and complicates such traditional binaries as organism/machine, nature/culture, self/other, male/female and heterosexual/homosexual and doing so offers the possibility of emancipation from the traditional patriarchal capitalist (and state socialist) order than depends so heavily on these neat categorisations.
‘A Cyborg Manifesto’ is first and foremost a radical response to the ideas of feminist theory.
Haraway is proposing a new kind of feminism, a reimagining of the woman (a reimagining of the human) that offers new possibilities. While she acknowledges the legitimate concerns that this offspring of militarism and patriarchy brings with it, she argues that instead of rejecting it, we should embrace its emancipatory potential. She critiques feminism’s reliance on and celebration of empowerment through the natural order in opposition to patriarchal techno-power found in discourses such as those underpinning ecofeminism and paganism movements. She argues these
61 While Haraway’s cyborg is unmistakably a product of the Cold War, the figure is equally, if not more, important in a post-Cold War world.
252 frameworks, in emphasising the bonds between femininity and nature, reinforce the unequal position of women in relation to power. For Haraway, much good lies in acknowledging that women are not simply victims of the technological order, but are produced by it. The cyborg and its polymorphous complexity offer a subject not bound by the traditionally unequal binaries or the strictures of the “natural” order. The cyborg offers a way forward for gender and for political theory more broadly, a much-needed incorporation of the realities of contemporary existence with a radical political agenda; a means of subverting the dominant patriarchal militarist paradigm by drawing out the internal hybridity of a system that already merges the organic and the technological, and yet cannot fully realise this, due to its own rigidity and essentialist assumptions. Haraway’s cyborg both destroys and reaffirms what it means to live in our contemporary society. It offers an account of posthuman subjectivity that embraces the complexity and contradictions of present-day being.
The Cyborg in Video Game Studies
The influence of Haraway’s ideas on video game studies has been relatively slight. As I have argued, while debates have raged over narrative and the appropriate paradigms of study, the question of subjectivity has been largely overlooked. Yet two important essays building on the concepts of posthumanism and the cyborg have been written: Ted Friedman’s ‘Civilization and its Discontents: Simulation, Subjectivity and Space’ (1999) and Patrick Crogan’s ‘The
Experience of Information in Computer Games’ (2003). In very different ways these two papers suggest important new conceptualisations of the relationship between software and player. The authors each develop an account of the player as cyborg: Friedman focuses on the micro-level of gameplay practices, while Crogan takes a broader approach and offers an account of the techno- culture and historical contexts in which the cyborgian player came into being.
253 Friedman explores the way in which Civilization II teaches what he terms ‘certain structures of thought’, or subjectivities, through the game mechanics. He argues that the game’s rules produce certain behavioural practices and ways of thinking. His use of the term rules differs, however, from the classic game model’s theorisation of it as limitations. Friedman suggests that rules are productive; his account goes beyond the ways that rules bind, to incorporate their greater pedagogic, and subjectivating, effects. In a key passage Friedman encapsulates this learning process succinctly:
The way games teach structures of thought—the way they reorganize perception is by getting you to internalize the logic of the program. To win, you can’t just do whatever you want you have to figure out what will work within the rules of the game. You must anticipate the computer’s response. Eventually your decisions will become intuitive, as smooth and rapid-fire as the computer’s own machinations. (1999: 136)
He calls this process ‘thinking like the computer’. It is the establishment of a cyborgian subjectivity. ‘In collaboration,’ he argues, ‘between you and computer, self and other give way, forming what might be called a single cyborg consciousness’ (1999: 138). For Friedman, this model of the player as cyborg is crucial to understanding how the game experience operates.
While he says that ‘computers can only systematically, methodically crunch numbers and follow algorithms’, playing a video game ‘can help us intuitively grasp the very alien way in which computers process information’ (1999, 147n), and the player is taught to become part of that information-processing system. Play is neither simply about the player exercising agency, nor about his or her surrender to the game’s logic. It is about a successful coupling, forming a cyborgian hybrid, in which the boundaries between player and software break down.
254 Friedman’s cyborg is clearly not the same as Haraway’s; the sophisticated feminist critique at the heart of the latter’s thinking is entirely absent here. Yet this does not mean that Friedman frames his cyborg as apolitical. In ‘Civilization and its Discontents’ he is asking whether taking on the game logic means taking on ideological values as well. He argues that Civilization II is underpinned by imperialism, militarism and scientism and that these values are privileged in the game’s mechanism. However, he is cautious not to simplistically conflate the game’s ideological values with the logics players take on in their cyborg mergers. Play provides the possibility, in its dynamism and multiplicity, of potential strategies of transcending the game’s values (1999: 146).
Like Haraway’s, Friedman’s cyborgs, it seems, can be ‘unfaithful to their origins’ (Haraway,
1991: 151). Unfortunately, however, Friedman never fully explores the extent of this potential unfaithfulness and, indeed, the political effect of ‘thinking like a computer’. The connections between information processing and cultural logics have to be sought elsewhere: Friedman’s cyborg theory provides clues to the way forward, but it does not provide a complete picture.
Another important account of the pedagogical process of play, Lev Manovich’s 2001 The
Language of New Media offers a valuable account of the specificity of the game/player cyborg.
While he does not explicitly invoke the cyborg paradigm, Manovich’s theorisation has much in common with Friedman’s.
For Manovich, playing a game is about learning its algorithm: ‘[a]s the player proceeds through the game, she gradually discovers the rules that operate in the universe constructed by the game.
She learns its hidden logic—in short, its algorithm’ (2001: 222). ‘Algorithm’ is used here ‘both metaphorically and literally’ (2001: 223). Metaphorically speaking, the algorithm of the game can be understood as a broader set of principles that the player must follow in order to succeed in
255 the game. Manovich gives an example of one such algorithm: ‘kill all the enemies on the current level, while collecting all treasure it contains; go to the next level and so on until you reach the last level’ (2001: 222). In the literal sense, games have their underlying programming code, their mathematical algorithm which determines how they operate, and the player can experience this as a set of predictable events and systems of cause and effect. Having enemies appear in the same place each time a level is played, for instance, will mean that the player ‘will literally reconstruct a part of the algorithm responsible for the game play’ (2001, 223). For Manovich, as play proceeds, the software and the player begin to share an algorithm; the player takes on the game’s logic.
The parallels between Manovich and Friedman are quite pronounced. Both understand play as the gradual taking on of the computer’s logic by the player. What Manovich offers above and beyond Friedman is tools for dealing with the specificity of the player/software relationship. As
Friedman points out, video gaming is only one example of the myriad of cyborg engagements that people have every day, from driving a car to watching television (1999: 138). Apart from observing that such other engagements are often ‘distracted affairs’ (1999: 138), whereas games provide a more focused example of the production of the cyborg, the question of what makes the computer/user cyborg unique is not one that Friedman chooses to pursue. On the other hand, while not directly engaging with the question of the cyborg, Manovich spends a great deal of time exploring the question of what makes new media forms different.
For Manovich, one of the key characteristics of new media objects is what he calls ‘numerical representation’ (2001: 27), meaning that all new media objects are comprised of digital code and may therefore be described mathematically and manipulated algorithmically. This numerical
256 property means, he says, that ‘media becomes programmable’ (2001, 27). Computer logics are based upon the processing and manipulation of mathematical code. Even objects not originally numerical are subsumed by the logic of numerical representation. Through a process known as digitisation, non-numerical objects such as photos, songs and movies are rendered numerical and thus manipulable by computer systems (2001: 28-29). What is important to note here is the absolute dependence of computer logic upon numerical representation.
If playing a video game is about learning to think like a computer, or discovering and following an algorithm, then numerical processing is the defining logic of the game/player cyborg subjectivity, and numerical representation is the key to this functioning. On one level, numerical representation is the process that Galloway referred to as ‘informatics’. It is about rendering all variables, even abstract concepts, as numbers. Yet, where for Galloway informatics was a reflection of the logic of control, as Friedman and Manovich show the informatic regime is not about replacing the individual player with the dividual, but rather subjectivation, the creation of a self-policing ‘individual’. This numerical feedback provides an exchange point between player and software. Such a point of translation is necessary, in light of the hybrid, non-totalising, logic of the cyborg. The player does not become a computer, and the computer does not have to operate like a human. Rather, Friedman and Manovich point to the process of interfacing that occurs through numerical representation. With this point of numerical exchange, we find the specificity the cyborg subjectivity in operation in video gaming.
In Chapter Two I touched upon Wark’s concept of the allegorithm (a term originally coined by
Galloway), which is a hybridisation of allegory and algorithm that Wark uses to describe the complex culturally referential system of the video game. It is the construction of allegorithm that
257 I am analysing here. The allegorithm is the culturally contextual algorithm at the heart of all video games. It is the algorithm learnt through familiar points of reference, and it is the political assemblage that comes into being in this moment. In short the allegorithm is the cyborgian relationship between player, video game and culture, which Galloway, Friedman and Manovich are all describing.
Patrick Crogan’s ‘Experience of Information in Computer Games’, a theoretically-fecund application of cyborg theory to video gaming, provides a way of understanding the construction of the allegorithm in a broader cultural context. Providing us with possible new ways of thinking about the mechanics, history and effects of the subjectivating process in operation, the essay offers us the missing link between the militarised origins of the cyborg and the informatic regime that Galloway, Friedman, Wark and Manovich observed in their own ways.
Crogan may be productively read as an expansion and explication of Haraway’s claim that the cyborg heritage can be traced back (in part) to the military (1991: 150). In particular, he offers a rigorous demonstration of Haraway’s suggestion that military information-processing techniques inform cyborg subjectivity. Interestingly, while his focus is very much upon the cyborg, Crogan himself does not situate this work in relation to Haraway’s, but rather builds his arguments upon more traditional information/cybernetics discourses and the work of French culture and technology scholar Paul Virilio62. This framework proves a useful one for the task, and offers us here the opportunity to expand our understanding of the game/player cyborg by means of
Virilio’s insight into the nature of modern warfare techno-culture.
62 In particular Crogan builds upon Virilio’s War and Cinema (1986), The Information Bomb (2000) and Virilio and Lotringer’s Pure War (1997)
258 For Crogan, the links between the modern video game and the military are profound. Broadly speaking, in arguing that, in terms of technology, representational schemas and experiential logics, contemporary first-person shooters are a product of military forebears, Crogan pursues three interlocking threads in his essay. Of these it is the third, the experiential logics, that forms the crux of Crogan’s argument, and it is upon these that I want to focus. However, first it is worth briefly touching upon some of the other important observations contained in the essay.
The design of the computer, Crogan notes, is deeply indebted to early prototype military information-processing systems. While the military origins of the Internet and other aspects of modern computing are well documented (Hafner and Lyon, 2000; Leiner, Cerf, Clark, et al.,
1997) Crogan highlights an aspect of computing that is often taken for granted: the interface technologies. He argues that the configuration of the input/output devices we use, such as keyboards, joystick, mice, screens and audio, can be seen to have their origins in Norbert
Wiener’s Second World War experimental ‘anti-aircraft predictor’ system (2003: 2). As such, the user’s position in the feedback loop of the computer system has a direct military genesis, and has evolved from a particular purpose which, Crogan suggests, is about ‘maximising the effectiveness of the enemy-man-weapon interface’ (2003: 2). In other words, the means by which current computer systems are engaged with can be seen to be the product of the particular needs of wartime weapons systems. While these technologies and techniques may have changed over time, it is important to acknowledge that contemporary practices may have a military past.
He makes a more direct link between the representational interface of first-person shooters and military simulation systems. The first-person (or ‘embedded’) perspective of these games has long been used by the military in its training software. So while:
259 the 3-D rendering engines at the heart of the first-person shooter, such as the influential “Quake III Arena” software, were commercial innovations, they owe a profound debt to the military-driven development in flight and vehicle simulation of an interface based on an “embedded” perspective. (Crogan, 2003: 4)
The graphical schema of the first-person shooter was pioneered in military simulations.
Moreover, as I will show presently, in the case of features like head-up displays (HUDs), prominent in first-person shooters, but originally developed for fighter pilots, the military continues to inform first-person shooter conventions.63
This technological and representational influence extends beyond the conventions of the software, to the subjectivities privileged by engagement. For Crogan, playing a first-person shooter game, with its military-pioneered interface, means learning to experience information in a militarised way. With first-person shooter play, he insists, the player is encouraged to assess, order, process and respond to information according to a militarised informatics model. The
‘experience of the first-person shooter game has been designed according to the model of information processing which disseminates the legacy of that groundbreaking work on the human-weapon system dyad’ (Crogan, 2003: 2). This model, which emphasises the rapid and efficient response and achievement of predefined goals, is the basic formula upon which the first-person shooter operates and, as such, the primary experience of first-person shooter play comes from learning to predict and respond appropriately to the given circumstance. Play is experiencing the information of the game world, where information is only that data which helps
63 Crogan also notes that the flow-on from the military to the entertainment industry has, in recent years, ceased to be uni-directional. The closeness of the first-person shooter genre to military simulation software has mean that the US Marine Corps, amongst others, has licensed first-person shooter software for training purposes. Crogan’s point here is strengthened by the fact that the US Army has recently tested the Xbox 360 game pad controller as the interface for remote-control vehicles (Ransom-Wiley, 2007b). The military origin of games technology and conventions is so pronounced that easy translation of software from one arena to the other is quite possible.
260 the player anticipate the future. The basic mechanics of this kind of play then is reduction; it is about filtering out the irrelevant, the extraneous, the background noise, until what is left is purely about action (Crogan, 2003: 2-3). As a result of negotiating the constant repetition of levels, enemies and scenarios, the player comes to know what to expect and how best to overcome an obstacle; how best to process the information.
Crogan’s work shows us that the algorithm of the first-person shooter did not originate with this genre, but reflects a broader military logic which flows through modern computing technology.
The game’s logic is not neutral, but deeply entrenched within a very particular reductive ontological perspective. In short, what we see is that far below the level of (violent) content or aesthetics; first-person shooters privilege a militarised subjectivity. Haraway’s assertion that the cyborg is the progeny of militarism reveals itself in Crogan’s close reading of the first-person shooter. In a cyborgian coupling, the player does not simply, as Friedman puts it, ‘learn to think like a computer’ (Friedman, 1999: 136), but to become part of a military machine. The techniques and associated values of information-processing taught by the military have become entrenched in this entertainment form.
Reading Doom as a Hybrid
Let us now return to our case study of Doom. As I will show, the insights of the cyborg paradigm will have given us entirely new ways of thinking about this video game and, indeed, all video games. Cyborg theory constitutes a radical conceptualisation of the purpose and the mechanisms of violence in video gaming.
261 Doom shows video game violence in action, a violence which is neither gratuitous titillation nor simply another play mechanism. Violence is a primary means by which culture becomes manifest in, and influential on, the formation of play. Video game violence illustrates all the ideas explored in this thesis: it the product of the allegorithm, the object space of gaming worlds, affordance, remediation, liberal humanism, the logic of discipline, and, most importantly, the merger of human and technology that is cyborgism.
We must, for now, put from our minds any notions we may have of video game violence that were provoked by the effects debate and think about it afresh. I suggested in Chapter Three that the world of a video game is an object space, which players experience in terms of questions of use. Objects have affordances that players perceive through their existing cultural knowledge and play experience. In Chapters Four and Five I looked at the ways in which models of power: liberal humanism and discipline, function to shape the player’s practices of interaction; the former functioning thorough the remediation of an enlightenment myth, the latter being the subjectivating configuration of the system. Violence has traditionally been privileged in analysis of games such as Doom, because of the cultural concern that surrounds it; thought of in this way, violence becomes the feature around which the game is built. However, violence is in itself not an object or a configuration of power. From an analytical perspective, violence is not the key feature of Doom. It is the result of a privileged object, the body; and a model of power best termed the disciplined cyborg, where capitalism, militarism, humanist logics, posthuman informatics and the fear/fascination of death are all mobilised to product a normalised playing subject.
262 Like many other games, Doom chooses to represent the player’s in-game agency in the form of an avatar. Thus, although the action in Doom is first-person, and the avatar is not visible on screen,64 the avatar’s body is the primary object of this game world. Indeed, the affordances of the body define Doom, because they encompass the players’ agency (what they can do: walk, run, shoot) and the players’ fallibility (that is, they can be injured and die). This twin set of bodily affordance, of agency and vulnerability, characterises the ways in which bodies (not simply avatars, but enemies as well) are remediated into ludic space. It is a simple understanding and rendering of the body as affording action and health. But while the actions afforded vary from game to game and designate what genre the game is, the use of health and vulnerability is near universal. Our knowledge that our bodies are not invincible is a dominant cultural perception. Agency is always bound to, and tempered by, our anxiety about injury and death.
Many of the afforded actions of the avatar’s body in Doom are violent: punching, shooting and chain-sawing are all possible in this game. In themselves, these violent acts are an easy affordance for game designers to include. Our media-sphere is dominated by examples of the body committing acts of violence. It is a familiar trope, and a relatively easy one to depict. The affordance of a gun is simple, as I suggested in Chapter Three; even if we’ve never held one, we all know how they work and the effect they can have.65
On the other hand, the affordance of health, of vulnerability, is less familiar. Bodies are complex systems, and how they respond to injury varies dramatically. Yet conventions representing health have arisen, and it is these conventions that ultimately tell us the most about the workings of
64 The exception to this is a face in the HUD which gets more bloody the more injured the avatar is. This representation of the player, however, has largely disappeared from the first-person shooter genre since Doom. 65 I mean this in term of physical effects; we are yet to see a game that attempts to models the psychological effects of guns.
263 video gaming. These conventions, which needed to be specially constructed for this medium, illustrate its inner workings, the ways in which it draws on culture, the logics through which it operates, and the difficult task of interfacing humans and technology.
As I indicated earlier, my use of perceived affordances here is a fusion of both Gibson and
Norman’s (1988) original concept expanded to acknowledge the role cultural construction plays in producing our expectations and behavioural practices. This recognition of cultural power becomes particularly important when dealing with an object like the ludic body. This object has no inherent material properties; it is created to the specifications of the game designer and the requirements of the game. All the affordances it has, therefore, are specifically selected to suit the game world and to make playing it an experience meaningful for the player.
In Chapter Four I discussed the framework of naturalisation, that is, the process whereby the game’s internal structure or technical requirements are presented in such a way as to appear as properties of the game world. I showed how Half-Life 2 used the restrictions of a totalitarian political regime to account for the linearity of the game world. Naturalisation, I argued, operates by aligning the needs of the game with the player’s cultural knowledges, and his/her expectations of the game world affordances. In considering Doom I want to take this argument one step further and show how the process of naturalisation is in essence a cyborgian merger, the meeting of the player’s desire for believable and meaningful worlds and the technological necessities of the software.
The conceit of video game health can be understood as a naturalising schema in that it functions to make the mathematical logic of the computer meaningful and in doing so effaces the mechanisms of subjectivation. In a game like Doom the bodily affordance of health is
264 constructed in such a way as to render these technological logics of the computer system familiar and understandable. Let us then investigate this naturalisation in more detail, and consider how players are taught to follow computer logic models, and how video games are adapted to offer meaningful experiences to the player. As I will demonstrate, both components of the cyborgian merger have been forced to adjust to accommodate the other.
Let us then look at the specificity of the way in which health operates in Doom. In our everyday lives health is a rather abstract concept that is not easily monitored: we can have thousands of different ailments and maladies that can affect the full range of our bodies, from a sore toe to a complete cardiac arrest. As Manovich noted, however, computers function according to a numerical system, and thus to incorporate the bodily affordance of health (the power of which I will return to shortly) a massive translation of the concept must occur.
265
Figure 13: Doom’s HUD interface
In Doom the player’s health is represented as a percentage, which is displayed at all times on the screen (Figure 13). In this framework, 100% signifies excellent health and 0% means death.
Health is lost when the player is shot, slashed or mauled by an enemy, or injured by an explosion, fall or hazardous/radioactive environment. The types of weapons used, the directness of the hit, the proximity of the explosion, the distance of the fall, and the length of time one is exposed to the chemical—all these affect the magnitude of the cost in health: a direct hit or a large fall take away more health than shrapnel damage or a small drop. Importantly, the player is never incapacitated by injury, as injury has no impact upon the player’s abilities until the health reading is reduced to zero, at which point the player dies and must restart or reload a saved game.
A reading of under 100% does not signify a loss of mobility or function. A player with a reading of 1% can move as freely and easily as one with a 100% reading—it is simply that they are more
266 likely to die much sooner. In special circumstances, health can be boosted as high as 200%, which means that the player is much more difficult to kill. In Doom, while not simple, health is understandable: it is not the infinitely interconnected set of processes that make up the human body.
Health is also dependent upon another mathematical variable, armour. Armour is, like health, represented as a percentage. The more armour the player is wearing, the less damage to the player’s health there will be from an attack or environmental injury. A reading of 0% means that the player has no protection and any injury will produce significant damage to their health, while an armour reading of 100% means that any injury cost to health will be greatly reduced. Armour loses strength with every hit it takes and so needs to be replaced (from stocks that are scattered around the various levels of the game). Armour is, however, much less critical to a player’s survival than is health, as a reading of 0% will have no consequence other than a player’s increased vulnerability.
This construction of health as a singular calculable integer articulates perfectly Manovich’s observation that numerical representation underpins all new media work. Health neatly embodies the technical requirement of the machinic, in that it is one complex algorithm; armour, proximity, type of attack etc, are all variables of a massive constantly calculated equation which determines the player’s health. In an algorithm with limiting parameters, health cannot exceed a reading of 200%, nor fall below the ‘death’ score of 0%. It is a peculiar concept of health which has little to do with everyday experience, though it can be understood as a numerical representation. This is not simply a mathematical device arbitrarily assigned the familiar name
‘health’. Doom cannot model the true complexity of the human body; even the most
267 sophisticated of computer models cannot accomplish this. Instead, Doom offers a grossly simplified version of health that corresponds with reality in a token way, but which both the computer and the player can cope with.
The representation of video game health follows the logic Manovich termed ‘digitisation’, whereby non-numerical concepts are rendered as a set of numbers that the computer system can process and manipulate. Manovich applies the term primarily to the process of converting images, audio and video to digitally manipulable forms (2001: 28-29). However, it is worthwhile extending the term and suggesting it as a useful way of thinking about how abstract and complex real-world qualities, like health, are represented in the video game world. Manovich argued that digitisation was crucial to the operation of computing and new media, and in the rendering of health as numerical. But perhaps this process has more hold over the form than he realised.
Digitisation can be understood as a specific form of remediation. As I showed in Chapter Three, the concept of remediation has been used by Bolter and Grusin to describe the repurposing of conventions and tropes from older media to new media forms in order to position the new in relation to the old. I argued that the term needed expanding beyond the narrow traditional definitions of media to incorporate the way in which familiar objects and their known affordances are used in new media to make the process of interaction intelligible and intuitive.
The body is perhaps the most important remediated object in the world of video games, which radically refashions its objects—for example, making the body numerically quantifiable—but keeps many of the associated meanings, perceived affordances and practices of use. Computers function on numerical calculation, an artificial logic and one that is unfamiliar to the player, but, by remediating the concept of health and assigning it a numerical value, the computer logic is
268 naturalised. It is transformed into an acceptable and, indeed, meaningful property, with which the player knows how to interact. Health becomes a point of interface in the game/player hybrid.
Digitised health in Doom is an example of the way in which the cyborgian merger analysed by
Friedman and Manovich operates in practice. It shows that the process of digitisation can allow the player to think in terms of an algorithm, by connecting a known concept (in this case, health) with a learnable mathematical system. The simplified mathematics of the system make it possible for the player to construct a mental model of the process of cause and effect within the game world, and predict the possible outcomes of a situation. In Doom, players learn how far they can fall without doing themselves injury, or the dangers of standing next to an explosive barrel, and incorporate this into their play practices, until as Friedman terms ‘it becomes intuitive’ (1999: 136). In essence what they are doing is internalising the logic of this game, forming a cyborgian hybrid.
Health as a Mechanism of Subjectivation
The figure of the hybrid is a useful one because it stresses the merging of self and other, the breaking down of boundaries between the technological and the organic. Thus far, however, I
(and the video game studies theorists I have used) have focused primarily on one half of the merger, one half of the allegorithm, the way in which the player must take on the logic of the game and, in Friedman’s phrase, learn to ‘think like a computer’ (1999: 136). This cyborgian coupling is, however, about more than a subject becoming machinic, it is about hybridisation.
The computer too has its concessions to make. All the mathematical processing techniques in the world are irrelevant, if the player refuses to take them on. I have said that using health makes the numerical logical meaningful to the player, but what exactly does ‘meaningful’ mean? To answer
269 this, let us look at the qualities and affordances that the concept of health brings with it when mediated into a ludic space. As Doom, and most other games, demonstrate health functions not only as an algorithmic element of play, but also a fictive motivator and signifier. As a concept health creates dramatic tension and offers an unambiguous guide for the player to ‘normalised’ play. This device naturalises the continual process of disciplinary subjectivation that is occurring.
The concept of health brings with it to a video game like Doom a simple set of understandings.
In particular, it imparts the knowledge that the avatar is physically fallible and vulnerable: it can be injured and die. The understanding that the avatar may be in peril in itself precipitates a degree of emotional attachment and is a familiar trope for creating tension. In Doom, the loss of health percentage points means more than a simple change in a numerical reading, it means greater peril for the player. The algorithm underlying Doom naturalised through health offers a reason for involvement. This naturalising schema makes caring about numerical readings not just acceptable, but also important. This is a key process of the normalising subjectivation that occurs because it means that players themselves have attached value to certain kinds of play practice, that is, they start to see actions that result in injury or death as undesirable or incorrect, and thus police their own behaviour.
What makes health so powerful a naturalising schema is the significance we attach to death and to injury in modern Western culture. Death, of course, is one of the few inevitable features of life, but nonetheless, along with pain and injury, it is generally something we try to put off for as long as possible. Such a schema would function quite differently in a culture with different
270 attitudes to injury and dying.66 Rather, it is the impact of liberal humanism that we can once again observe in this mechanism. Games, as I showed in Chapter Four, are a product of, and work through, a liberal humanist idea of the self. At its most basic this paradigm argues that we are rational individuals with dominion over our own bodies and with certain basic entitlements and rights as humans. The individual has the basic human right not to suffer pain at the hands of others, and as rational beings we should avoid pain to ourselves.
With a modern liberal humanist aversion to pain and suffering, injury and death come to act as unambiguous signifiers of incorrect action in Doom. Players will know they have done something wrong, without needing to be given a complex explanation, if they sustain damage or die. The magnitude of the injury, from a mere 1% to instant death, communicates the scale of transgression. The understandings players bring with them of injury and death makes health a powerful signifying schema for play to follow.
This power of health, however, does not solely stem from a naïve identification of players with their avatars. Players do not fear the death of the character and are not motivated to protect the avatar from injury, as they might if their own health or life were at risk—unless there are ludic associations, negative consequences for them in the game. In other words, injury only functions as an emotionally involving signifier of incorrect action if sustaining it means a loss of points, or, in the case of Doom, a requirement to reload and repeat a section. In Doom health operates as the primary mechanism of the disciplinary apparatus. It offers the feedback necessary for the player to self-police their own actions: by monitoring the circumstances in which they lose health,
66 A traditional Christian understanding of suffering as having redemptive power would, for instance, profoundly alter the way an outcome of injury or death was understood, and thus affect gameplay, but such a doctrine holds less sway than it once did.
271 players come to understand “correct” strategies of engagement. As we noted earlier, making players visible to themselves in this way is something Caldwell called ‘an inverted Panopticon’
(2004: 48). As I argued, it actually fits neatly with the basic model of visual asymmetry of the disciplinary apparatus. For such a system to work, however, the feedback needs to be precise enough to clearly enable players to see when they have strayed. This is where the numerical requirement of the computer and the disciplinary needs of the game coincide so well—and, indeed, why video games fit a disciplinary regime so well. Numbers are clear communicators of change. A loss of even one percentage point is instantly noticeable. The game can thus employ perpetual micro-punishments, and so enable players to refine their technique. Normalising judgement can thus be enforced not only with macro-corrections (death), but many repeated micro-actions (minor injury).
Injury is the naturalising schema of the micro-punishment necessary within a disciplinary system. Without any fictive justification, constant punishment would reveal itself as a coercive force and might be resisted; in the context of death it is rendered understandable, meaningful and acceptable. Injury functions perfectly for this task because of its rich cultural meaning, which makes it a useful unambiguous signifier. It naturalises the mechanics of subjectivation in operation, and, when associated with ludic inconvenience and failure, it imbues with real power the player’s need to self-normalise. If there were no associated disadvantages, then injury and death would have little hold over the player, and no power in the process of subjectivation. The pre-existing understanding of injury as something undesirable and to be avoided means that the player can immediately understand, and respond unquestioningly to the framework of micro- penalty in play.
272 Economics and Resources
The numerical construction of health in Doom allows the player to build a detailed mental model of the amount of damage incurred by specific types of play practice. The game becomes an exercise in risk assessment. Health is transformed into a commodity in its digitisation, as all actions are evaluated in terms of potential cost. Players learn that certain kinds of strategy minimise injury, while others incur heavy damage. Their task becomes to gain as much (spatial) progress as possible, while losing as little health as possible. Doom also calculates the length of time a player takes over each level of the game, and compares it to an average. Play, therefore, is not only about protecting health, but about efficiency, about balancing the need to maintain health with the need to do so quickly.67 Health may be regarded, therefore, as a tradeable commodity in Doom; something to be saved and guarded, so that it can be spent when required.
For such a system to work as a viable economy, health needs to be recoupable. Commodities that only diminish are too valuable to exchange, meaning if in Doom the player could not heal, the pace would be slow and cautious, as the player would have to be on guard at all times. But Doom offers a mechanism for recovery. Health can be regained through items in the game world called health packs, which enable the player to heal by a given percentage. These packs, which are often difficult to access in secret locations, reward skill and exploration, and redeem previous mistakes and transgressions.
The health packs come in a variety of denominations, each with its own affordances of restorative power:
67 The desire for speed does not just stem from trying to beat the average, but also from the player’s limited time and patience for the game, and desire to progress as quickly as possible.
273 Health Bonus increases health by 1%, to a maximum of 200%
Stimpack increases health by 10%, to a maximum of 100%
Medkit increases health by 25%, to a maximum of 100%
Soul Sphere increases health by 100%, to a maximum of 200%
There are also armour items, which operate in a similarly hierarchical way:
Armour Bonus increases armour by 1%, to a maximum of 200%
Security (Green) Armour increases the armour to 100%
Combat (Blue) Armour increases the armour to 200%
Thus, as well as working as a system of reward, health and armour packs radically alter the way players assess the risk of situations. Without lessening the significatory power of health, these packs transform it from simply being a quantity that must be protected at all cost to a tradeable, though privileged, commodity.
The digitisation of health and the system of penalty and reward at work in the subjectivating disciplinary apparatus affords Doom the familiar(ising) structures of late capitalism. Rewards and penalties are carefully managed in a transaction economy, and actions are assessed in terms of a cost/benefit schema. Efficiency and efficacy, not ideologies of morality and ethicality, are the primary shaping powers of subjectivity. Far from being independent of contemporary culture, as ludology argues, a video game like Doom is profoundly informed by the dominant cultural logics of our time.
274 The suggestion that the cultural logic of capitalism can be seen in video game play is not new.
Indeed, Friedman makes the point in his cyborgian critique of Civilization II. What is important to note, however, is that, where the Civilization series explicitly remediate a working economy,
Doom does not—but that it does offer a de facto economy in its digitisation of health.
Within popular gaming discourse, the term ‘resource management game’ is often applied to strategy titles like Civilization II. In these games players must balance their human power limitations with the need to mine iron ore for weaponry, farm wheat for food, cut timber for buildings, and so on. In these cases ‘resource management’ is a term usually associated with issues in primary industry; but, as I have shown with the way health functions in Doom, on a broader level almost all games are about resource management. Play is about weighing up the benefit/risk of an action in relation to one’s resources. In Doom, resource management manifests itself through digitisation: one must evaluate whether one’s health is adequate enough (that is, has a sufficiently high reading) to move on all guns blazing to a new room, or whether loading a saved game or searching for a health pack are likely to be more cost-effective strategies.
Resource management is a product of the necessary cyborgian interface that is play. Computers bring with them the logic of numbers, and the vast majority of games make those numbers meaningful by attaching them to an item or property to form a resource.
Militarism/Capitalism
Earlier I explored Crogan’s analysis of the historical link between military technologies and video games, in particular the first-person shooter. I noted his argument that in these games players are encouraged to take on a militarised informatic-processing strategy that they must
275 learn in order to predict and respond efficiently to scenarios that may arise. For Crogan, the root of this lies in the medium’s heritage in military technology.
Interestingly, the kinds of information processing that Crogan is discussing are almost identical to the ones I addressed a moment ago in Doom. Yet, where Crogan takes as his starting-point the genre’s military heritage, I worked from the cyborgian merger of numerical logic and culture understandings (and anxieties) of the body. Where Crogan sees militarism, I see capitalism.
The reality is, of course, that, militarism and capitalism are integrated.68 As I noted earlier, this argument is essential to Crogan’s work, and as such central to the model of the cyborg that I am presenting here. According to Crogan, militarism and culture are inevitably and permanently interconnected. He critiques the view of other cyborg theorists, most notably contributors to the
Cyborg Worlds anthology (Levidow and Robins, 1989), who regard militarism as a corrupting influence on culture, and thus condemn violent video gaming. He summarises their position in the following statements:
1. Computer technologies (including computer games) are products of military- driven cybernetics/technology.
2. The military and their “business” of war are a pernicious and aberrant dimension of human culture, technology and civilization.
3. Therefore, computer technologies (including computer games) are a bad influence on normal, peacetime culture, technology and civilization. (2003: 2)
Crogan then puts a contrary view:
68 That is not to say that militarism cannot exist in a non-capitalist state, but rather that the kind of militarism addressed here thrives in its relationship with capitalism.
276 1. Human culture and civilization are always already indissociable from the military and the “business” of war.
2. Computer games are part of human culture, technology and civilization.
3. Therefore, computer games are a valuable means of interrogating the relation between war and peacetime culture, technology and civilization. (2003: 2)
As Crogan argues here, games are not an aberration, and they are not a danger to society. But they are a product of that society. To single games out for negative criticism is to ignore that fact that broader cultural logics are in operation: merely to argue that games are violent and teach violent behaviour is to overlook the violence that underlies contemporary culture. Encompassed in Crogan’s term the ‘business of war’ is the militarist/capitalist symbiosis that produces the subjects, frameworks and technologies of modern society.
What Crogan demonstrates is that far from being separate, video games are the embodiment of the grand logic of Western culture. Indeed, this is also the point that Haraway makes when she declares the need for us to embrace, and so reclaim, the cyborg. It is only through acknowledging the logics that run through our culture and its artefacts that we can engage and address its more problematic dimensions. The violence of games stems from an underlying militarism flowing through the technology of the computer, and the rendering of bodies as a commodity. Moreover, far from being random, the kind of violence in operation in these games is a logistical one, it is about the prudent use of time and resources in order to achieve a defined goal (Crogan, 2003: 3).
To such an end, the numerical representation that Manovich sees as a defining feature of new media is the point of convergence; the precise representation and measurement of resources expenditure is not only easily done, but is an inherent part of the existing logic of the system.
The virtual world of the video game provides the perfect space for a logistical model to be
277 enacted, because the feedback data can be generated easily, accurately and in real time. The game/player cyborg inhabits a world of numerical feedback and internalises a logistical information-processing logic.
Crogan offers a framework for understanding the often subtle ways in which cultural products are implicitly militaristic, because, far from the common perception that war is an aberration, there is an undeniable interconnectedness between contemporary society and war. One could ask: what is militarism but the rendering of bodies and lives as a commodity to be “efficiently” traded in the economy of war? And what is capitalism but an extension of the military techniques of human resource management to all spheres of society? Doom is a quintessential product of its time. It is an entertainment form that appropriates the technology of military simulation, renders the body a commodity, makes the player a self-policing subject, and merges the human and the technological to form a cyborg. Undoubtedly, Doom embodies a militaristic logic, it is formed at the intersection of violence and capitalism, it is about using cost-effective force to dominate a situation. In this Doom is the perfect articulation of logistics. It trains players in militarised thinking—which is a far cry from saying that it trains them to kill. The constant stream of real- time information renders the playing experience of Doom one of resource management. This game is about the player’s ability to maintain a campaign, albeit with an army of only one. It is in this sense that the inaccuracy of Grossman’s label ‘mass murder simulation’ (2007) becomes obvious: it is not the logic of murder that is being represented, but rather the economy of warfare.
278 Familiar Logics
Doom is a violent game and in the wake of the Columbine High School massacre it understandably became the focus of much attention. As a cultural product Doom is a rich resource for those attempting to understand the contexts of this tragedy. However, when it is decontextualised from the cultural mechanisms that produced it, Doom is an easy and ultimately redundant target. The video games industry, with its relatively small lobbying power and culturally-disempowered playing demographic (the youth market), comes to be held responsible for far more complex social processes. If games are pinpointed as the cause of violent acts, particularly amongst teenagers, then the search for complex and challenging social and political reasons behind them can be forgotten. The power of the game comes in the way it articulates dominant cultural logics, not in the way it subverts them.
The crux of anti-violent game arguments from both sides of politics in the wake of the
Columbine tragedy has tended to be based on a concept of a corruption of the “natural” and
“normal”. In the emotive Stop Teaching Our Kids to Kill (1999) Grossman and Degaetano argue that killing does not come naturally to humans, but that violent games using similar techniques to those used to desensitise soldiers break down the players’ resistance. For them, such desensitisation, while perhaps necessary in military training, is a profound danger in a non- military context. Although on the surface the contributors to the Cyborg Worlds anthology
(Levidow and Robins, 1989) are in serious opposition to the pro-military account of Grossman and Degaetano, underlying both positions is a similar belief in a separation of military and civilian populations. For both parties, the militarised violence we see in video games is a detrimental external force operating on “normal” civilian culture.
279 Games such as Doom must be understood in the cultural context in and for which they were created. It is untenable to maintain a position like Grossman’s, where one castigates the video games industry while at the same time regards military-training techniques as valid, when we understand that the two will always be profoundly interconnected and are the products of the same cultural logics. Grossman’s distinction (1996: 196-202, 299-305) between “legitimate” training (to kill off an army) and “illegitimate” training (in a game context) is false: they are both articulations of the militarism that underpins dominant Western capitalist culture. Indeed, the legitimacy of military training comes from a culture for which such activities are acceptable, and such a culture inevitably produces popular forms that reflect, mimic and reinforce this belief. The violence of video games is an obvious example of militarism, and the moral panic surrounding new technologies makes it an easy target. The thousands of other subject-forming relationships that we have every day, with our families and peers, with other technologies, with political and religious doctrines, get forgotten in the fixation on violent games. The cultural myopia of the effects tradition (and, indeed, of many others) with its inability to comprehend the broader picture, means a focus on isolated and politically vulnerable symptoms of the so-called ‘virus of violence’ (Grossman, 1996: 299), rather than an engaged effort to treat the pandemic. Violent video games will not be curtailed by censorship: the predominance of violence will only fade when new cultural attitudes to violence/militarism become widespread.
Violent games could not proliferate and function as they do without a pre-existing militarisation of culture. The logistical model upon which games operate is not new to players when they engage with the game. It is powerful because it is already a familiar logic; the precise resources in operation may vary, as do the goals being aimed for, but the logic of efficiency and cost effectiveness are driving forces of contemporary culture. The militarised nature of Western
280 society means that we all recognise and understand the logistical paradigm. Indeed, the reduction of the world to a set of resources, with a corresponding numerical value, is an underlying procedure of late capitalism. Games are far from unique in their reliance upon logistics, but they are a superb illustration of it in action, a microcosm of its mechanics, values and affordances.
The question of effect is not flawed because play and culture are separate, but rather because they are inseparable. One cannot isolate the cause of a violent action; even something as overtly subjectivating as a video game is but one of hundreds of engagements the subject has each day which shape his/her beliefs and actions. There is little question that video games such as Doom function to strengthen militarism’s role in producing the populace, but they do not do so in isolation. If we are to be concerned with violence, then we must to concern ourselves with the reasons why it exists.
The Game/Player Cyborg
Doom, like all video games, is a complex hybrid. It is the point where subject and object, digital and analogue, humanist logics and posthuman apparatus, military heritage and civilian entertainment, computer circuitry and flesh merge. Doom remediates traditional structures of power through its disciplinary systems and emphasis on individual agency, yet is driven by the requirements of the digital system. Cyborg theory offers us a precise model of the kind of subjectivity that players are encouraged to take on during play where the process of hybridisation, the making of the machinic interfacable with the organic and vice versa, is the key to understanding the mechanics of play. In Doom, and similar violent games, we have the synthesis of two very different kinds of logics: the numerical representation essential for computer processing, and the anxiety of fallible flesh. These two characteristics, quintessentially
281 technological and organic respectively, collide to form an allegorithm, a strange assemblage in which health, injury and death are measured in percentages. As such, health is digitised, and the body is made a resource, with its management the prime concern of the player. In this hybridising, the familiar logics of capitalist efficiency and risk/benefit assessment inform players how best to engage as the micro-penalty of injury disciplines their every move.
Haraway’s radical posthuman intervention into gender and technology studies gave us the cyborg. For her it is the offspring of militarism and capitalism. Friedman finds use for the cyborg in conceptualising the playing of a video game. Along with Manovich, Friedman argues that playing is a process of discovery and learning. To play is to ‘internalize the logic of the program’
(Friedman, 1999: 136) or to ‘uncover its hidden algorithm’ (Manovich, 2001: 222). For
Friedman, play is therefore a process of becoming cyborg; the player must take on ways of processing information akin to those the computer uses. Crogan situates this cyborg firmly in the historical context in which it is produced. He points out that the methods of information processing that a computer uses did not simply arise arbitrarily, from nowhere, but rather are products of a very specific military heritage. Moreover, this heritage also informs the kinds of way the player is taught to process information. The experience of the game world that the player is taught is a heavily militarised one, based upon assessing, predicting and controlling events in a time- and resource-efficient way. The game/player cyborg is not yet Haraway’s dream of a boundary-defying emancipatory figure. It is a heavily disciplined and narrowly constructed product of a militarised culture that has emerged in conjunction with contemporary capitalism.
Doom is as much about resource management as about killing, or, to put it more accurately, it is about the resource management of killing. The onscreen display offers real-time feedback of the
282 key statistics. Like a stock-market ticker, the economy of the game world is reduced to numerical flows, and the player monitors and acts accordingly. The constancy of this feedback loop produces a very particular subjectivity, where incorrect behaviour can be easily identified and adjusted.
The cyborg is not, however, the privileged mode of being only in violent video games. All games offer resources rich in cultural meaning to draw in the play to the game world logic. Violence is dominant in the medium because of the rich military heritage and its special emotive power, but it is by no means the only possible mechanism. Even The Sims, widely acclaimed for its non- violent play, renders the body a resource with its eight wellbeing readouts. Like the protagonist of Doom, the family members in The Sims are posthuman information bodies. So while there are some games that are based solely on reflex, almost all contemporary releases hinge upon resource management of one type or another, nearly always involving an avatar’s body or a population mass, and for that reason the framework of this chapter is directly relevant.
The disciplined cyborg is a complicated creature immersed in culture and technological process, born of the anxieties of living and the cold procedures of numbers. It is neither created solely by the player, nor by the game, but comes into being at the point of intersection of the two. ‘Play’ is the word we have for this process of becoming hybrid, this messy merger of bits and neurons, of cultural invocation and machinic necessity. Play is always cultural, always political, never separate or discrete, and infinitely complex.
283 &
April 30th, 2008
The world of video gaming can change so quickly. Like many other popular media forms, video game trends come and go in the blink of eye. But unlike music, literature, television and film where there are always a handful of “classics” that resist disposability, the rapid technological change of digital computing means that it is rare to play a game released five years ago, let alone one that’s two or three decades old. Indeed, with the possible exception of Tetris, very few games maintain a shelf- and user-life for more than six months to a year. It is thus a difficult field to theorise, and a particularly daunting subject on which to do a long term project like a PhD. It is incredibly reassuring, then, to reach the end of such a task and discover not only that what you argued still holds true of current games but that the processes you started talking about two, three or four years ago have become more prominent. That was the heartening experience I had yesterday when I played, for the first time, the “next big thing” in video gaming, the game set to redefine the standards by which all other games are judged.
A Record Breaking Game
Yesterday was the worldwide launch of what is likely to become the highest selling video game in history, indeed the biggest single media product of all time (Moses, 2008): Grand Theft Auto
IV (Rockstar Games, 2008). Like many keen gamers I had been awaiting this launch with some excitement. The GTA franchise has always been fascinating to follow. The complex mix of compelling action and social satire produces an addictive playing experience and the contempt
284 shown for traditional taboos means that controversy and debate over the role that video games should play in society is never far away.
My excitement over this release was tempered somewhat by apprehension. What if GTA IV undermined my model of play? What if its designers radically rewrote the conventions of video gaming? While I had faith in my model and all the work that had gone into it, there was a precedent. When GTA III was released in 2001 it was a radical departure for the series in its move from a simple top down view to a three dimensional perspective, and also in terms of the sophistication of its narrative and characters, and its play possibilities. Before GTA III, most critics and players (myself included) dismissed the GTA games as a fun but not particularly important series. It was only with GTA III releases, and its success, that we started to realise the significance of the series and its open style sandbox gameplay. So what if, just as GTA III radically changed how I and many others interpreted GTA I and II, this sequel made all that I had argued of San Andreas redundant or no longer applicable? In short what if GTA IV undermined the model I had spent so long constructing? GTA IV was likely to rewrite video game sales records, could there be a danger it would make me rewrite my thesis? GTA IV had been hyped as offering truly open ended game play, what would that mean for my claims that single-player video games are a disciplinary apparatus which produce very particular player subjectivities?
I had another anxiety about the launch, and that came from having cut myself off from the gaming community for a year or so. In this field there is a fine line between research and procrastination, and in order to avoid the eternal temptation of claiming one more turn, one more life, one more level as justified PhD related activities I had greatly decreased the amount of gaming I was doing. In particular I had stopped gaming socially, that is, going to friends’ houses
285 and playing games with them. Watching other gamers play was consuming too much time and just encouraged me to formulate too many new questions, new issues that I would like to explore
(more on these shortly) and in order to keep this PhD focused I made the decision to withdraw, albeit temporarily, from gaming circles. But GTA IV is an Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 only game, and I own neither system, so in order to play this important title I had to do so with other people. A decade ago it was a LAN party that forced me to rethink how I understood play. There was a danger that as GTA IV drew me back into social gaming a similar crisis might occur.
I had some hope, however, that GTA IV would not challenge my theoretical framework, but rather prove its worth. Beyond the huge numbers of hours I had put into developing my model and the vast number of games upon which I built it (only a handful of which made it into this thesis), my first encounter with GTA IV suggested that this game would employ all those processes I had described. Last year Rockstar released a one minute long ‘teaser’ trailer for GTA
IV (Rockstar, 2007). What was fascinating about this trailer was the way it remediated the 1982 experimental documentary film Koyaanisqatsi and its stark Philip Glass soundtrack. Mirroring the film’s fast-cut montages of city life and reusing its minimalist musical score, this trailer introduced the player to the game’s setting, Liberty City, and the game’s protagonist, Niko Belic.
This remediation of an art-house experimental film was an unusual choice for a video game and seemed at odds with the often juvenile tone of the GTA series. What it indicated to me, however, was that Rockstar were very aware of how to repurpose an existing form for powerful effect.
Functioning as an enticing glimpse of a fully realised city for gamers and a direct challenge to those who claimed that the series lacked class and sophistication, or that games should not be considered works of art, this trailer offered a promising glimpse of a design team in full command of their medium. The remediation of this relatively obscure film (by mainstream
286 standards) suggested a canny understanding at Rockstar of how to employ cultural reference points to change public perception.
Playing Grand Theft Auto IV
Yesterday evening I accepted an invitation from a friend of mine to join a small group of people to play GTA IV. As was pointed out to me, GTA IV is likely to be the most important game release of this year (and perhaps of a few years to come) so if I want to claim a knowledge of the field I had better play it. Rather than pretend this game was not in circulation, I decided to put my model to the test.
My first feeling upon playing GTA IV was relief. Before handing over the controller, my friend gave me a quick rundown, not of the game’s rules, but rather of Niko’s affordances69. ‘You can make Niko run by tapping the A button’ he said. ‘Target an enemy by holding the left trigger’.
‘Enter a vehicle by pressing the Y button’. He was not explaining to me what I could not do; rather what it was possible for my avatar to do, and the button that an action corresponded to.
Play was not a space of denial but of possibility. GTA IV’s play practices are not constrained by the logic of negative capture, but produced by perceived and material affordances of the game world’s objects.
My next feeling was one of disappointment. Nothing seemed to have changed. The game looked much nicer than San Andreas, but that was to be expected of this ‘next generation’ console title.
It had new characters, with the troubled Eastern European protagonist Niko and his associates,
69 My friend works for Rockstar Games, the company behind the series, and after months of being bound by non- disclosure agreements and only being able to show the game to government ratings bodies and select journalists, he was keen to finally enjoy the game not as work, but simply as fun. He was therefore very experienced with the game and thus gave all the new players, including myself, advice and direction.
287 and a revamped Liberty City as its setting, but at its heart it seemed very much the same as the previous generation of GTA games. If play was, as I have suggested, a culturally contextual construction, surely the four years between San Andreas and GTA IV would mean this game should somehow be different.
The more I played, however, the more I started to perceive the subtle changes that had occurred.
The familiar key mechanisms of GTA that I have written about were still present, but GTA IV added a few new twists and flourishes. The changes I did see were not the genre-reinventing challenges to my theoretical framework that I had I originally feared, rather they were a useful example of how important it is for a video game to encapsulate and mobilise contemporary cultural logics.
The most striking difference between GTA IV and its predecessors that I witnessed70 was the central role that the cellular (mobile) phone played. Given to the player in the game’s second mission, the phone becomes the central means by which Niko organises his life. It is through his cell phone that Niko searches for and is offered most missions, and it is the means by which he forms and maintains relationships. This seemingly simple remediation of perhaps the most familiar and important of all technological objects for the younger generation renders easily understandable and navigable the complex romantic, social and business networks of Niko’s life.
Players know how to get in contact with a game character if they want to – they do what they would do in real life, they give him/her a call on their cell phone.
70 I should note that GTA IV is a huge game and I played only for four or so hours, meaning I experienced only about one tenth of the game.
288 The cell phone becomes representative of user power. Just as in real life getting a cell phone is for many teenagers a sign of independence and a rite of passage into the adult world, in GTA IV the phone represents and emphasises the player’s independent agency. The mission where the player is first given the mobile phone is even calculatingly named ‘It’s Your Call’ (Rockstar,
2008). Just as with the ‘one free man’ refrain of Half-Life 2 (Valve Corporation, 2004) this designation reiterates and reinforces the concept of player agency. It discursively emphasises the player’s centrality and power in the game world while masking the enormous control of the programmers. It also permanently links the object of the cellular phone with the notion of player freedom. And while GTA IV has a much less linear design philosophy than Half-life 2 and players have more choice, the type of choice and interaction are still fundamentally limited. The game highlights the particular choices the player does have, in part to de-emphasise the lack of choice elsewhere71. GTA IV is, as the hype had suggested, a very open ended game, but it employs the disciplinary mechanisms I identified in this thesis in order to produce players that can progress through the game world, and so that it can tell its narrative.
There is another important new technological remediation happening in this game, and that is the use of Global Positioning Systems (GPSs) in many of the cars. When Niko gets in a car fitted with GPS he now has the option to set waypoints. Interestingly, apart from the computerised voice which now informs us when to turn, this affordance existed in previous versions of the game. It was possible in San Andreas to set waypoints on the huge map, but GTA IV naturalises this feature through the invocation of the GPS technology. The setting of waypoints on a computerised map now makes sense in terms of the fictive reality of the game. Once again the
71 This is far from a criticism. As I noted in Chapter Four of this thesis one can never have complete freedom, as such a concept assumes a subject pre-existing or outside of power.
289 designers have used a contemporary technology to make the gaming system familiar to modern audiences.
For me the most exciting thing in GTA IV was the way in which it takes the process of subjectivation to a higher level of sophistication and ubiquity. There was constant feedback in clever and subtle ways throughout the game. Drive like a maniac and your passengers might jump out and run away. Drive too slowly and they will complain. Choose to go on a date rather than answer your cousin Roman’s call for help and next time you see him will be at the hospital and he will be far from happy with you. The game emphasises the surveillance of the player, and offers micro-corrections without breaking with the fictional world. GTA IV remediates the logic of the surveillance society but skews its values just enough to produce a player who can perform the fine balance needed to be a professional criminal. Niko must break the law to succeed but he must do so without getting caught. If he steals a car on the main street in front of pedestrians they will call the police. If he steals it from a back alley he is far less likely to be pursued. GTA IV constantly manifests surveillance, but so carefully naturalises it that it rarely feels like there is an excess of power operation. The processes of subjectivation are difficult to notice because they are perpetual, embedded and so familiar. The power the game has over the player is profoundly hidden by the replication of real-world structures and systems, but it is nevertheless present.
When playing GTA IV the player is disciplined into taking on a very particular cyborgian subjectivity. The player must monitor Niko’s resources of health, money, weapons, ammunition, and wanted rating – which represents how many, and what type of police are after you (get a high enough wanted rating and they will even bring out a helicopter to hunt you down). The strong (for a video game) characterisation of Niko and the importance of these resources for
290 progression makes them meaningful to players. As a player you want to progress and you want the troubled Niko to succeed. Beyond even the complexity of San Andreas, GTA IV has such intricate consequences for actions that paying careful attention to one’s resources becomes critical. Fortunately, though, because these resources work upon familiar logics, the process of keeping track of them seems intuitive.
In the day since its release, reviews of GTA IV have hit the Internet. They are almost universally positive. The game has Metacritic and Gamerankings ratings of around 99% (these sites average out all available reviews for a game from across the globe) making it the highest rated game of all time72. With sales figure exceeding high expectations, GTA IV looks set to make more money than any of the individual Spiderman, Pirates of the Caribbean, or Lord of the Rings movies, and more even than the latest Harry Potter novel (Fussell, 2008). It is undoubtedly a phenomenon that will shape the direction of the video game industry for years to come.
GTA IV, perhaps more than any other game, is the quintessential product of contemporary culture. It is formed at the intersection of surveillance society, American values, military logics, ludic conventions and player pleasure. This is not a game of rules, nor a simple narrative; it is a complex and dense world of exploration, navigation and negotiation. That is not to say that it is a perfect game – I was disappointed by its deeply problematic gender representations. It is, however, as clear an articulation of mainstream gaming as we will see this year. It is a finely polished example of what many games strive to be, and of the ways in which power, subjectivity and culture function to teach the player how to play. Far from the challenge to my theory that I feared, GTA IV reinforces the necessity of this project. There are strikingly few conceptual tools
72 This will undoubtedly drop in time, but it is worth noting these scores include the majority of the world’s major game review magazines and websites.
291 in the ludology or media studies’ toolkits appropriate for a video game this vast and this rich, and it is time we move beyond these paradigms. We must embrace the complexity of contemporary video games and look at the means by which they produce order. GTA IV is a case study in subtle subjectivation and the perfect game with which to end this thesis. It is the embodiment of all I have discussed and will be the archetype for many video games to come.
Final Thoughts
My academic journey started over a decade ago when the practice of rocket jumping forced me to reconsider all I knew about play. I suddenly realised that not everyone played like me; not only were some players vastly more skilled than me, they were also more creative. My play practices, I realised, were not an inherent product of the game software, but a set of learnt and negotiated acts. This realisation led me to seek out and explore types of play that were not what I thought of as standard for a game, and I found many. Even for the games I have analysed in this thesis, I witnessed many unexpected play techniques in use. Some, like the Tetris letter guessing game and using The Sims to make comic books, I have already discussed. Others include players who find pleasure in making Lara Croft climb to the top of the highest cliff they can find so as to spectacularly hurl her off to her death; or players who choose to demonstrate their control over
Grand Theft Auto by attempting to drive around the city obeying the road rules, not running over any pedestrians or jumping any lights. Rocket jumping is an important practice but it is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg when it comes to the potential of video game play.
All this research culminated in my honours year thesis where I looked in detail at these
‘alternative play practices’ (Tulloch, 2001). I wrote about these types of play as a form of tactical resistance and cultural subversion. But throughout the process of writing I could not shake off a
292 nagging feeling that, despite these practices being fascinating and revealing of the hidden possibilities of play, they were but a footnote to a bigger story. For all the possible alternative play practices possible in games, the vast majority of players still played games in remarkably similar ways. Yet no-one, to my mind, had adequately theorised how this standardisation was occurring. Play practices were not understood as learnt or constructed and, for all the talk of emphasising play in video game theory, few theorists were actually engaging with its complexity. Out of this perceived lack, the current thesis was born. As the question of how play is learnt took shape, my task became to explore how, out of the range of play practices that are possible, particular ones are privileged and encouraged.
In my introduction I stated the aims of this thesis were to address the concept of play: what it is, how it works and what it means, with a focus on why we play in certain ways and what constructs our engagement practices. Over the course of this work I have explored the structures, logic and mechanisms that shape play and show that we cannot conceptualise play separately from the player. Video games operate on the player. They guide his/her expectations through the remediation of recognisable forms and objects. They surveil and provide constant feedback so players can surveil themselves. They use violence, cellular spatiality and informatic readouts
(such as points or ‘money’) to signify correct and incorrect action and to reward certain types of actions and punish others. And while doing all this video games invoke entrenched cultural myths of freedom and agency to hide the operation of power in action.
At the heart of my argument has been the concept of subjectivity. Building from a Foucaultian framework where power is understood as productive not restrictive, I have demonstrated the need to reconceptualise the shaping factors of video game play. I critiqued the widespread
293 emphasis on rules in game studies, and showed that the idea that video games are a closed system fails to recognise the importance of player subjectivity to video game play performance.
Video games, I argued, construct a very particular player subjectivity that fits with the technological, gameplay and narrative requirements of the software. This subjectivity however is not made from scratch, the playing subject does not need to be entirely reinvented, rather the player’s existing knowledge and pleasures are mobilised, modified and refined to encourage them to respond to the game in specific ways. To do this games draw on the robust and widespread techniques of individual training that Foucault collectively terms discipline. This set of training methods not only seeks to correct a subject’s behaviour, but to teach the subject to correct him/herself. It is through disciplinary subjectivation, not through infixed limitations like rules, that play practices are standardised.
Over the last six chapters I have outlined my model of the key mechanisms and processes whereby single-player video game play practices are constructed. It is a model that is, I hope, flexible and expansive enough to be applied to all video games from GTA IV to Tetris, but that deals with the specificity of this unique medium. I offer my work here, not in the hope of creating a new orthodoxy to rival ludology or media studies video game theory, but as an opening up of the form to new paradigms and new ideas. This thesis presented a reconceptualisation of video gaming, starting with basic principles. I rejected the reliance on the notion of rules as the primary formative mechanism of play and showed why we must consider player subjectivity and cultural contexts. I offered a reading of play as a power relation between player and software, which allows for a new range of rich theoretical resources to be mobilised in analysis, and more sophisticated ways of conceiving the video game form. I identified the particular subjectivating regime in operation as a cyborgian form of discipline. I showed that
294 single-player video games remediate the structures of power of modernity whilst simultaneously producing a posthuman subject. Influenced by post-structuralism, I sought to provide a model of play that does not rely on the essentialisation of video gaming, nor one that is so abstracted from its object as to be theoretically rich but have little practical use. As my brief account of GTA IV above shows, the ideas of this thesis are readily and easily applicable. Ludology and media studies have offered a fertile foundation for the theorisation of video gaming but it has become time to move beyond these narrow frameworks and explore the complexity, beauty, horror and power of this defining form of our time.
This thesis is not, however, the end point of this project. There is still much left to be explored and theorised. In attempting to establish a focused framework there were many aspects of contemporary play that had to be put aside: most notably multiplayer gaming. This thesis focused entirely on the single-player experience and, as important as this type of gaming is, it is far from the only option available to players. The rise of the Internet, not just on PCs but also consoles like Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, has forever changed the face of gaming. In my fifth chapter I suggested some theoretical frameworks that should be considered when dealing with multiplayer gaming (namely Deleuze (1992) and Galloway’s (2006) work on ‘control’), but ultimately this is just one of many potential starting points for a project I have barely begun to conceive. The social nature of multiplayer gaming radically changes the configurations of power in operation, and much more investigation is necessary. We must ask: How does peer-pressure work to form players’ subjectivities? What social hierarchies form amongst players to enforce
“normal” play practices? Why are certain advantageous play practices (such as camping in first-
295 person shooters and player killing in MMORPGs73) deemed unacceptable? What emergent play formations arise unexpectedly in the vast world of multiplayer gaming? As we can see, the same basic ideas I brought to bear on single-player gaming can be used to explicate the unique issues of the multiplayer experience, but significant expansion is necessary.
Even when playing GTA IV in single-player mode it was hard to ignore the social aspect of console video game play. Those around me would offer advice and suggestions on how to play the game, or mock my performance. My focus in this thesis was on the points of interface between player and software, but these days, when gaming is rarely a solitary activity, play must be conceptualised as part of a broader social program of community and relationship formation.
For too long games were seen as the pursuit of the loner, an escape from the harshness of real life into a world of fantasy, agency and empowerment. Yet to understand video game play outside of its social element is to understand only part of the story. The theoretical model I offer here provides a framework with which the contexts of play can be considered, and it is my intention in my future work to take this further and look at both multiplayer and social single-player gaming. There is still a great deal left to be theorised.
This thesis was informed by two decades of playing video games, two decades of excitement, frustration, disappointment and addiction. As a child, over twenty years ago, I was introduced to my first video game. Now, as an academic, they still fascinate me. My passion for the form has never waned. For me and my contemporaries the video game is fast replacing traditional entertainment forms such as television, films and books as the medium of choice. Games like
73 Camping is a term for a play practice in first-person shooters where a player will hide in a well protected area and shoot other players as they go past. It is considered very poor etiquette online. Player killing is where one player attacks another, often much weaker, player simply for fun, or to gain his/her equipment. It is encouraged in some MMORPGs but strongly discouraged in many others.
296 The Sims and the Grand Theft Auto series have left an indelible impression on an entire generation of players. Such games are modern classics, blueprints for all video games to come.
Their shelf-life may be limited but their influence is not. They are extraordinary twenty-first century works of art that encapsulate the aspirations and fears of late capitalist technoculture.
Fifty years after its inception the video game is one of the richest and most complex cultural artefacts of contemporary life. It is a medium of agency and action, a medium that relies upon and reinforces existing structures of belief; a medium that attempts to mould the participant until they are compatible; a medium that hides its intricate power formations beneath the surface; a medium that rewards and punishes; a medium of capitalism and militarism; a medium of hybridisation and a medium of struggle, life and death. In the mechanisms, logics, myths and pleasures of video game play we truly find a microcosm of society. The value of studying video games should never be underestimated. The power of play should never be forgotten.
297 ( &
Aarseth, E. (1997). Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press.
Aarseth, E. (1999). ‘Aporia and Epiphany in Doom and the Speaking Clock: Temporality in
Ergodic Art’. In Ryan, M. L. (Ed.) Cyberspace Textuality: Computer Technology and Literary
Theory. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Aarseth, E. (2001a). ‘Computer Game Studies, Year One’. Game Studies, 1(1). [Online].
Available from: http://www.gamestudies.org/0101/editorial.html. [Accessed: 30th April 2008].
Aarseth, E. (2001b). ‘Computer Game Studies, Year One’. Unpublished Conference Paper from
Game Cultures, Bristol, 29th June.
Aarseth, E. (2004). ‘Genre Trouble’. In Wardrip-Fruin, N. and Harrigan, P. (eds.) First Person:
New Media as Story, Performance, and Game. Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of
Technology Press.
Aarseth, E. (2005). Blog Entry on Umea Aarseth/Jenkins Debate. [Online]. Available from: http://www.ludonauts.com/index.php/2005/02/27/p208. [Accessed: 30th April 2008].
Avedon, E. M. and Sutton-Smith, B. (1971). The Study of Games. New York: J. Wiley.
298
Barthes, R. (1977). Image, Music, Text. trans. Heath, S. London: Fotana.
Baudrillard, J. (2007). Forget Foucault. trans Dufresne, N. New York: Semiotext(e).
Bokitch, C. (2006). Half-Life 2: Episode One Available June 1. [Online]. Available from: http://www.steampowered.com/v/index.php?area=posts&id=629. [Accessed: 30th April 2008].
Bolter, J. D. and Grusin, R. A. (1999). Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press.
Buckingham, D. and Sefton-Green, J. (2001). ‘Gotta Catch Em All’. Unpublished Conference
Paper from Game Cultures, Bristol, 30th June.
Burchell, G., Gordon, C. and Miller, P. eds. (1991). The Foucault Effect: Studies in
Governmentality: With Two Lectures by and an Interview with Michel Foucault. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Burke, T. (2001). ‘Rubicite Breastplates Price to Move, Cheap: Economic Behaviour and
Regimes of Value in Digital Worlds’. Unpublished Conference Paper from Game Cultures,
Bristol, 30th June.
Burnett, F. H. (1911). The Secret Garden. London: Heinemann.
299 Butler, J. (1993). Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits Of "Sex". New York: Routledge.
Butler, J. (1990). Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York:
Routledge.
Caillois, R. (1961). Man, Play and Games. trans. Barash, M. New York: Free Press of Glencoe.
Caldwell, N. (2004). ‘Theoretical Frameworks for Analysing Turn-Based Computer Strategy
Games’. Media International Australia, 110, pp. 42-51.
Cayley, J. (1995). The Speaking Clock. London, Wellsweep.
Certeau, M. D. (1988). The Practice of Everyday Life. trans. Rendall, S. Berkeley: University of
California Press.
Chapman, N. P. and Chapman, J. (2000). Digital Multimedia. Chichester: Wiley.
Chesher, C. (2004). ‘Neither Gaze nor Glance, but Glaze: Relating to Console Game Screens’.
SCAN, 1(1). [Online]. Available from: http://scan.net.au/scan/journal/display.php?journal_id=19.
[Accessed: 30th April 2008].
Connors, W. (1999). Quake III: Arena Manual. Dallas: id Software.
300 Cover, R. (2006). ‘Audience Inter/Active’. New Media & Society, 8(1), pp.139-158.
Crawford, C. (1984). The Art of Computer Game Design. Berkeley: Osborne/McGraw-Hill.
Crogan, P. (2003). ‘The Experience of Information in Computer Games’. Fifth International
Digital Arts and Culture Conference, [CD-ROM] Melbourne, 20th May: Royal Melbourne
Institute of Technology.
Darley, A. (2000). Visual Digital Culture: Surface Play and Spectacle in New Media Genres.
London: Routledge.
Dawson, E. (1998). Half-Life. PcPowerplay, 31, pp. 74-78.
Deleuze, G. (1992). ‘Postscript on the Societies of Control’. October, 59, pp. 3-7.
Dovey, J. (2002). ‘Guest Editor's Introduction’. Game Studies, 2(2). [Online]. Available from: www.gamestudies.org/0202/editorial/. [Accessed: 30th April 2008].
Dreyfus, H. L., Foucault, M. and Rabinow, P. (1982). Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics. New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf.
Eskelinen, M. (2001). ‘The Gaming Situation’. Game Studies, 1(1). [Online]. Available from: http://www.gamestudies.org/0101/eskelinen/. [Accessed: 30th April 2008].
301 Eskelinen, M. and Tronstad, R. (2003). ‘Video Games and Configurative Performances’. In
Wolf, M. J. P. and Perron, B. (eds.), The Video Game Theory Reader. New York: Routledge.
Farley, W. (1975). The Black Stallion. Sevenoaks: Hodder and Stoughton.
Foucault, M. (1973). Madness and Civilization : A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason. trans
Howard, R. New York: Vintage Books.
Foucault, M. (1975). The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception. trans
Sheridan, A. New York: Vintage Books.
Foucault, M. (1977a). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. trans Sheridan, A. New
York: Pantheon Books.
Foucault, M. (1977b). Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews. trans Boiuchard, D. and Simon, S. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Foucault, M. (1979). The History of Sexuality: Volume 1. trans. Hurley, R. London: Allen Lane.
Foucault, M. (1980). Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977. trans. Gordon, C. Brighton: Harvester Press.
302 Foucault, M. (1986). 'Kant on Enlightenment and Revolution'. Economy and Society, 15, pp88-
96.
Foucault, M. (1988). The Care of the Self: The History of Sexuality Volume 3. trans. Hurley, R.
London: Vintage.
Foucault, M. (1990). The Use of Pleasure: The History of Sexuality Volume 2. trans. Hurley, R.
London: Vintage.
Frasca, G. (1999). ‘Ludology Meets Narratology’. Ludology.org. [Online]. Available from: http://www.ludology.org/articles/ludology.htm. [Accessed: 30th April 2008].
Frasca, G. (2003). ‘Ludologists Love Stories, Too: Notes from a Debate That Never Took Place’.
Digital Games Research Conference, Utrecht, 5th November. Available from: http://www.ludology.org/articles/Frasca_LevelUp2003.pdf [Accessed: 30th April 2008].
Friedman, T. (1999). ‘Civilization and Its Discontents’. In Smith, G. (ed.), On a Silver Platter:
Cd-Roms and the Promises of a New Technology. New York: New York University Press.
Frost, C. (2004). ‘Tetris: A Chip Off the Old Bloc’. BBC Online, [Online]. Available from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3479989.stm. [Accessed: 30th April 2008].
303 Fussell, J. (2008). ‘Release of Grand Theft Auto IV Could Be Biggest Ever’. Desert Sun.
[Online]. Available from: http://www.mydesert.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080429/NEWS11/80429005/0/NEWS0
1. [Accessed: 30th April 2008].
Galloway, A. (2004). Protocol: How Control Exists after Decentralization. Cambridge:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press.
Galloway, A. (2006). Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture. Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press.
Galloway, A. and Thacker, E. (2007). The Exploit: A Theory of Networks. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press.
Gibson, J. J. (1950). The Perception of the Visual World. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Gibson, J. J. (1977). ‘The Theory of Affordances’. In Shaw, R., Bransford, J. (eds.), Perceiving,
Acting, and Knowing: Toward an Ecological Psychology. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum
Associates.
Gibson, J. J. (1979). The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Gibson, W. (1984). Neuromancer. New York: Ace Books.
304
Grossman, D. (1996). On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and
Society. Boston: Little Brown.
Grossman, D. (2003). Islamic Zealots, Corporate Predators, and the Attack on Democracy: A
Moral Perspective on Our Current State of Affairs. [Online]. Available from: http://www.killology.com/article_islamic.htm. [Accessed: 30th April 2008].
Grossman, D. (2007). ‘Violent Video Games Are Mass-Murder Simulators’. Executive
Intelligence Review, 34(17), pp. 10-15
Grossman, D. and DeGaetano, G. (1999). Stop Teaching Our Kids to Kill: A Call to Action against Tv, Movie & Video Game Violence. New York: Crown Publishers.
Hafner, K. and Lyon, M. (1996). Where Wizards Stay up Late: The Origins of the Internet. New
York: Simon & Schuster.
Haraway, D. J. (1985). ‘A Manifesto for Cyborgs’. Socialist Review, 80, pp 65-108.
Haraway, D. J. (1991). Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. London: Free
Association.
305 Hayles, N. K. (1999). How We Became Posthuman : Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Hodgson, D. (2004). Half-Life 2: Raising the Bar. Roseville: Prima.
Howson, G. (2006). ‘BAFTA winners’. Guardian Unlimited. [Online]. Available from: http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/games/archives/2006/10/06/bafta_winners.html. [Accessed: 30th
April 2008].
Huizinga, J. (1955). Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture. Boston: Beacon
Press.
Hull, J. (2005). Psychonauts. PcPowerPlay, 119, pp. 78-79.
Jakobsson, M. and Taylor, T. L. (2003). ‘Sopranos Meets Everquest: Socialization processes in massively multiuser games’. Fifth International Digital Arts and Culture Conference
Procedings, Melbourne, 20th May: Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.
Jarvinen, A. (2001). ‘Computer Games as Spatial Toys’. Unpublished Conference Paper from
Game Cultures, Bristol, 1st July.
Jenkins, H. (1992). Textual Poachers: Television Fans & Participatory Culture. New York:
Routledge.
306 Jenkins, H. (2004). ‘Game Design as Narrative Architecture’. In Wardrip-Fruin, N. and
Harrigan, P. (eds.), First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game. Cambridge:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press.
Jenkins, H. (2005). ‘Reality Bytes: Eight Myths About Video Games Debunked’. The Video
Game Revolution. [Online]. Available from: http://www.pbs.org/kcts/videogamerevolution/impact/myths.html. [Accessed: 30th April 2008].
Jenkins, H. (1998). ‘Complete Freedom of Movement’ in Jenkins, H. and Cassell, J. (eds.), From
Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games. Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of
Technology Press.
Jensen, J. (1998). ‘Interactivity: Tracking a New Concept in Media and Communication Studies’.
Nordicom Review, 19, pp. 185-204.
Juul, J. (2001a). ‘Games Telling Stories?’. Game Studies, 1(1). [Online]. Available from: http://www.gamestudies.org/0101/juul-gts/. [Accessed: 30th April 2008].
Juul, J. (2001b). ‘Gameplay: What Are (Computer) Game Really?’. Unpublished Conference
Paper from Game Cultures, Bristol, 29th June.
Juul, J. (2001c). ‘The Repeatedly Lost Art of Studying Games’. Game Studies, 1(1). [Online].
Available from: http://www.gamestudies.org/0101/juul-review/. [Accessed: 30th April 2008].
307 Juul, J. (2003). ‘The Game, the Player, the World: Looking for a Heart of Gameness’. Level Up,
Utrecht, 4th November. Available from: www.jesperjuul.net/text/gameplayerworld/ [Accessed:
30th April 2008].
Juul, J. (2005). Half-Real: Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds. Cambridge:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press.
Kelley, D. (1990). The Art of Reasoning. New York: W.W. Norton.
Kennedy, H. (2002). ‘Lara Croft: Feminist Icon or Cyberbimbo?’. Game Studies, 2(2). [Online].
Available from: http://www.gamestudies.org/0202/kennedy/. [Accessed: 30th April 2008].
Krotoski, A. (2005). ‘Homosexuality and Gaming’. Guardian Unlimited. [Online]. Available from: http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/games/archives/2005/01/19/homosexuality_and_gaming.html.
[Accessed: 30th April 2008].
Kücklich, J. (2003). ‘Perspectives of Computer Game Philology’. Game Studies, 3(1). [Online].
Available from: http://www.gamestudies.org/0301/kucklich/ [Accessed: 30th April 2008].
Kvasnicka, D. (2005). ‘Half-Life 2 - Australian Review’. Australian GamePro. [Online].
Available from: http://www.gamepro.com.au/index.php/id;1181166017;fp;2;fpid;36. [Accessed:
30th April 2008].
308 Landow, G. P. (1992). Hypertext: The Convergence of Contemporary Critical Theory and
Technology. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Laurel, B. (1993). Computers as Theatre. Reading: Addison-Wesley Publishing.
Leiner, B., Cerf, V., Clark, D., Kahn, R., Kleinrock, L., Lynch, D., Postel, J., Roberts, L. and
Wolff, S. (1997). ‘The Past and Future History of the Internet’. Communications of the ACM, 40,
2, pp. 102-108.
Levidow, L. and Robins, K. (1989). Cyborg Worlds: The Military Information Society. London:
Free Association Books.
Lieberman, J. (2006). Faith, Family and Values. Available from: http://lieberman.senate.gov/issues/faith.cfm. [Accessed: 30th April 2008].
Lloyd, G. (1984). The Man of Reason: ‘Male’ and ‘Female’ in Western Philosophy. London:
Methuen.
Lugo, J., Sampson, T. and Lossada, M. (2002). ‘Latin America's New Cultural Industries Still
Play Old Games: From the Banana Republic to Donkey Kong.’. Game Studies, 2(2). [Online].
Available from: http://www.gamestudies.org/0202/lugo/. [Accessed: 30th April 2008].
309 Manovich, L. (2001). The Language of New Media. Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of
Technology Press.
Mansfield, N. (2000). Subjectivity: Theories of the Self from Freud to Haraway. St Leonards:
Allen & Unwin.
Massumi, B. (2002). Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation. Durham: Duke
University Press.
Mayr, O. (1986). Authority, Liberty, & Automatic Machinery in Early Modern Europe.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
McCullagh, D. and Broache, A. (2006). ‘Clinton, Lieberman Propose CDC Investigate Games’.
GameSpot. [Online]. Available from: http://au.gamespot.com/news/6145659.html?print=1.
[Accessed: 30th April 2008].
McGrath, D. (2002). ‘No Pain, No Game’. Wired. [Online].Available from: http://www.wired.com/gaming/gamingreviews/news/2002/03/50875 [Accessed: 30th April 2008].
McHoul, A. W. and Grace, W. (1993). A Foucault Primer: Discourse, Power and the Subject.
Carlton: Melbourne University Press.
310 Morawe, V. and Reiff, T. (2001). Painstation: Enhanced Duelling Artefact. Cologne, Academy of Media Arts Cologne. Available from: http://www.khm.de/~morawe/painstation/PainStation_eng.pdf [Accessed: 30th April 2008].
Morris, S. (2001). ‘Meet New People and Kill Them: Interactivity, Identity and Pleasure in
Online Multiplayer Computer Gaming’. Unpublished Conference Paper from Game Cultures,
Bristol, 1st July.
Moses, A. (2008). ‘Grand Theft Auto's Anti-Hero Steals the Show’. Sydney Morning Herald.
[Online]. Available from: http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/grand-theft-autos-antihero- steals-the-show/2008/04/30/1209234913188.html. [Accessed: 30th April 2008].
Mulvey, L. (1989). Visual and Other Pleasures. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Murray, J. H. (1998). Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace.
Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press.
Murray, J. H. (2005). ‘The Last Word on Ludology V Narratology’. DiGRA 2005, Vancouver,
17th June. Available from: http://www.lcc.gatech.edu/~murray/digra05/lastword.pdf [Accessed:
30th April 2008].
MySimsReality (2007). Cord Devereaux’s Saturday Night Frantic. [Online]. Available from: http://pics.livejournal.com/my_sims_reality/gallery/0004ek0s [Accessed: 30th April 2008].
311 Norman, D. A. (1988). The Psychology of Everyday Things. New York: Basic Books.
Norman, D. A. (1998). The Invisible Computer: Why Good Products Can Fail, the Personal
Computer Is So Complex, and Information Appliances Are the Solution. Cambridge:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press.
Norman, D. A. (2004). Affordances and Design. [Online]. Available from: http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/affordances_and.html. [Accessed: 30th April 2008].
Orwell, G. (1949). Nineteen Eighty-Four. New York: Harcourt, Brace.
Perron, B. and Wolf, M. J. P. (2003). The Video Game Theory Reader. New York: Routledge.
Perry, D. (2001). ‘Rockstar's Sam Houser Mouths Off’. IGN. [Online]. Available from: http://au.ps2.ign.com/articles/098/098185p1.html. [Accessed: 30th April 2008].
Porush, D. and Hivnor, T. (1995). ‘A Gaming Approach to Story Generation: Viktor Shklovsky and Gameworld’. In LeNoble, M. and Vuillemain, A. (eds.), Computer Generated Literature.
Arras: Artois Presses Université.
Pruett, C. (2005). ‘The Problem with Reality’. Interface, 5(3). [Online]. Available from: http://bcis.pacificu.edu/journal/2005/03/pruett.php [Accessed: 30th April 2008].
Rasom-Wiley, J. (2007a). ‘10 Most Important Video Games of All Time, as Judged by 2
312 Designers, 2 Academics, and 1 Lowly Blogger’. JoyStiq. [Online]. Available from: http://www.joystiq.com/2007/03/12/10-most-important-video-games-of-all-time-as-judged-by-2- design/. [Accessed: 30th April 2008].
Rasom-Wiley, J. (2007b). ‘Us Army Using Xbox 360 Controller in Future Combat Systems
Tests’. JoyStiq. [Online]. Available from: http://www.joystiq.com/2007/02/05/us-army-using- xbox-360-controller-in-future-combat-systems-tests/. [Accessed: 30th April 2008].
Raulet, G. (1983). 'Structuralism and Post-Structuralism'. Telos, 55, pp195–212.
Rose, N. S. (1999). Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Rotundo, E. (1993). American Manhood : Transformations in Masculinity from the Revolution to the Modern Era. New York: BasicBooks.
Rousseau, J. J. (1953). The Confessions. trans. Cohen, J.M. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Ryan, M.-L. (ed.), (1999). Cyberspace Textuality: Computer Technology and Literary Theory.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Ryan, S. (2005). ‘Fear Fixing: Computer Gamespace as a War-Zone ‘. Unpublished Conference
Paper from Culture Fix, Sydney, 26th November.
313
Salen, K. and Zimmerman, E. (2004). Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals. Cambridge:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press.
Schleiner, A. (2000). ‘Does Lara Croft Wear Fake Polygons’. Switch, 9. [Online]. Available from: http://switch.sjsu.edu/web/v4n1/annmarie.html [Accessed: 30th April 2008].
Scionick (2004). Why the G-Man Represents God And... A Bunch of Other Stuff.
[Online].Available from: http://www.halflife2.net/forums/showthread.php?t=60088. [Accessed:
30th April 2008].
Simons, J. (2006). ‘Narrative, Games, and Theory’. Game Studies, 7(1). [Online]. Available from: http://gamestudies.org/0701/articles/simons. [Accessed: 30th April 2008].
Smoke, B. (2008). ‘Racism’. Big Smoke Street Corner. [Online]. Available from: http://www.bigsmokestreetcorner.com/2008/03/07/racism/. [Accessed: 30th April 2008]
Stevenson, R. L. (1965). Treasure Island. New York: Harper & Row.
Suits, B. (1978). The Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia. Edinburgh: Scottish Academic
Press.
314 Talbot, B. (2001). ‘Compete, Command and Conquer: Playing for Space at the International
Games Cultures Conference’. Intensities, 2. [Online]. Available from: http://intensities.org/Essays/talbot.pdf. [Accessed: 30th April 2008].
Taub, E. (2004). ‘In Video Games, Sequels Are Winners’. New York Times. [Online]. Available from: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/20/technology/20game.html. [Accessed: 30th April
2008].
Taylor, T. L. (2001). ‘Druids Come in All Shapes: Women and Massive Multiplayer Games’.
Unpublished Conference Paper from Game Cultures, Bristol, 30th June
Thorsen, T. and Feldman, C. (2006). ‘Colossus Casts Shadow Over GDC Awards’. GameSpot.
[Online]. Available from: http://au.gamespot.com/events/gdc2006/story.html?sid=6146480.
[Accessed: 30th April 2008].
Tulloch, R. (2001). Virtual Hunting Grounds: Poaching and Orthodoxy in First Person
Shooters. Unpublished Honours Thesis. University of New South Wales.
Twain, M. (1996). Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. London: Bloomsbury.
Virilio, P. (1989). War and Cinema: The Logistics of Perception. Trans. P. Camiller. London:
Verso.
315 Virilio, P. (2000). The Information Bomb. trans. Turner, C. London: Verso.
Virilio, P. and Lotringer, S. (1997). Pure War. trans. Polizzotti, M. New York: Semiotext(e).
Wardrip-Fruin, N. and Harrigan, P. eds. (2004). First Person: New Media as Story,
Performance, and Game. Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press.
Wark, M. (2007). Gamer Theory. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Wells, H. G. (1956). The War of the Worlds. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Whitehead, D. (2008). ‘The History of the Sims’. EuroGamer. [Online]. Available from: http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=94927. [Accessed: 30th April 2008].
Wolf, M. J. P. (2003). ‘Abstraction in the Video Game’. In Wolf, M. J. P. and Perron, B. (eds.),
The Video Game Theory Reader. New York: Routledge.
Wright, T., Boria, E. and Breidenbach, P. (2002). ‘ Creative Player Actions in Fps Online Video
Games’. Game Studies, 2(2). [Online]. Available from: http://www.gamestudies.org/0101/editorial.html. [Accessed: 30th April 2008].
316 ) # *
Video Games
Arkane Studios (2007). Dark Messiah of Might and Magic. Ubisoft.
Blizzard Entertainment. (2004). World of Warcraft, Blizzard Entertainment.
Core Design (1996). Tomb Raider. Eidos Interactive.
Core Design (1997). Tomb Raider II. Eidos Interactive.
Core Design (1998). Tomb Raider III. Eidos Interactive.
Core Design (1999). Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation. Eidos Interactive.
Core Design (2000). Tomb Raider Chronicles. Eidos Interactive.
Core Design (2003). Tomb Raider Angel Of Darkness. Eidos Interactive.
Crystal Dynamics (2006). Tomb Raider Legend. Eidos Interactive.
317 Crystal Dynamics (2007). Lara Croft Tomb Raider Anniversary. Eidos Interactive.
Cyan Worlds (1993). Myst. Brøderbund.
DMA Design (1997). Grand Theft Auto. Rockstar Games.
DMA Design (1999). Grand Theft Auto II. Rockstar Games.
Double Fine (2005). Psychonauts. Majesco Entertainment.
First Star Software (1984). Boulder Dash. First Star Software.
Gearbox Software (1999). Half Life: Opposing Force. Sierra Studios.
Higinbotham, W. (1958). Tennis for Two. Higinbotham, W.
id Software (1992). Wolfenstien 3D. Apogee Software.
id Software (1993). Doom. id Software.
id Software (1994). Doom 2. id Software.
id Software (1996). Quake. id Software.
318
id Software (1999). Quake III: Arena. id Software.
id Software (2003). Return to Castle Wolfenstien. id Software.
id Software (2004). Doom 3. id Software.
Illusion Software (2004). Vietcong. Gathering of Developers
Irrational Games (2002). System Shock 2. Electronic Arts.
Looking Glass Studios (1994). Systems Shock. Origin Systems.
LucasArts (1993). Day of the Tentacle. Lucasarts.
LucasArts (1995). Dark Forces. Lucasarts.
LucasArts (1999). Star Wars Episode1: Racer. Lucasarts.
LucasArts (1998). Grim Fandango. Lucasarts.
Maxis (2000). The Sims. Electronic Arts.
319 Maxis (2004). The Sims 2. Electronic Arts.
Namco (1980). Pac-Man. Namco
Nintendo (1983). Mario Bros. Nintendo.
Pajitnov, A (1985). Tetris. Various Publishers.
Purple Moon (1997). Secret Paths in the Forest. Purple Moon.
Ritual Entertainment (2006). SiN Episodes. Valve Corporation.
Rockstar Games (2001). Grand Theft Auto III. Rockstar Games.
Rockstar Games (2002). Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. Rockstar Games.
Rockstar Games (2004). Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Rockstar Games.
SEGA (1991). Sonic the Hedgehog. SEGA.
Sony Online Entertainment. (1999). Everquest, Sony Online Entertainment.
Troika Games (2004). Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines. Activision.
320
Valve Corporation (1998). Half-Life. Sierra Studios.
Valve Corporation (2004). Half-Life 2. Valve Corporation.
321 Films
Clark, J. (1979). Debbie Does Dallas. USA: VCX Limited.
De Palma, B. (1983). Scarface. USA: Universal Pictures.
Hill, W. (1979). The Warriors. USA: Paramount Pictures.
Hughes, A. and Hughes, A. (1993). Menace II Society. USA: New Line Cinema.
Kubrick, S. (1968). 2001: A Space Odyssey. United Kingdom: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
Lucas, G. (1977). Star Wars. USA: 20th Century Fox.
Lucas, G. (1999). Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. USA: 20th Century Fox.
Reggio, G. (1983). Koyaanisqatsi. USA: New Cinema.
Scorsese, M. (1973). Mean Streets. USA: Warner, Bros.
Scorsese, M. (1990). Goodfellas. USA: Warner Bros.
Scorsese, M. (1995). Casino. USA: Universal Pictures.
322
Scott, R. (1979). Alien. United Kingdom: 20th Century Fox.
Scott, R. (1991). Thelma & Louise. USA: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
Singleton, J. (1990). Boyz N the Hood. USA: Columbia Pictures.
Van Peebles, M. (1991). New Jack City. USA: Warner Bros.
Verhoeven, P. (1990). Total Recall. USA: TriStar Pictures.
Wachowski, L. and Wachowski, A. (1999). The Matrix. USA: Warner Bros.
West, S. (2001). Lara Croft:Tomb Raider. USA: Paramount Pictures.
Yates, P. (1968). Bullitt. USA: Warner Bros.
323 Television
Schulian, J., Tapert, R. and Stewart, R. [series creators] (1995). Xena: Warrior Princess.
USA: Pacific Renaissance Pictures.
Yerkovich, A. [series creator] (1984). Miami Vice. USA: National Broadcasting
Company.
324