The Zone of 'Becoming': Game, Text and Technicity in Videogame
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The Zone of ‘Becoming’: Game, Text and Technicity in Videogame Narratives Souvik Mukherjee A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of Nottingham Trent University for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. School of Arts and Humanities Nottingham Trent University Clifton Lane Nottingham, NG11 8NS September 2008 Title: The Zone of ‘Becoming’: Game, Text and Technicity in Videogame Narratives Name: Souvik Mukherjee Degree: PhD Abstract: Videogames have emerged as arguably the most prominent form of entertainment in recent years. Their versatility has made them key contributory factors in social, literary, cultural and philosophical discourse; however, critics also tend to see videogames as posing a threat to established cultural parameters. This thesis argues that videogames are firmly grounded in older media and they are important for the development of the notions of textuality, technicity and identity that literary and cultural theories have been debating in recent years. As its point of departure, the thesis takes the contested role of videogames as storytelling media. Challenging the opposition between games and narratives that is posited in earlier research, the framework of the Derridean concept of supplementarity has been adopted to illustrate how the ludic and the narrative inform each other’s core, and yet retain their media-specific identities. It is also vital to consider how the technicity and narrative of games inform their perception as texts. Videogames provide a direct illustration of this but they develop on similar principles in earlier media instead of doing something entirely ‘new’. The multitelic structure of videogames tends to be looked upon as symptomatic of novelty; in reality, however, they illustrate more clearly the inherent nature of telos in all narrative media. Videogames point out how narrative endings exist as the actualisation of possible events and identities. These events exist in a zone of potentialities. Between the perception of an occurrence in the game and the player’s response to it, there exists an ‘affective’ interval, where a number of potential events coexist: from among these, one event is actualised. The player’s identity, both in-game and in interaction with the game, also evolves accordingly. Seen as an ongoing process, this corresponds well to the Deleuzoguattarian idea of ‘becoming’. The space of possibility in which game instances exist is, therefore, a ‘zone of becoming’. The intense involvement that players experience is seen as resulting from the continual shifting of identities arising out of the actualisation of possible events. This engagement is not a fixed relationship between the player and the game: instead, it is a ‘becoming’. The framework of ‘becoming’ is vital to the understanding of videogames as narrative media. ‘Becoming’, however, has already been applied by Deleuze and Guattari to characterise older narrative media such as novels and cinema. Videogames, therefore, not only show that games can be read and books played, but more importantly they also highlight the fact that this has always been the case. Acknowledgments From Reading Games to Playing Books Acknowledgments ‘The Zone of “Becoming”’ owes a great deal to the immense support that I received from my family, colleagues and friends. My parents have been simply amazing in the way they supported me through extremely trying circumstances. Mum and dad, I do not have enough words to thank you. The two people whose help has been absolutely invaluable are my supervisors, Dr Phil Leonard and Dr Dave Woods. I am more than grateful for their encouragement, insights, criticism, their support in everything else and finally, for always making our supervisory sessions so enjoyable. I would also like to thank them for having introduced me to two of the most exciting videogames in human history: Phil, for properly introducing me to Half- Life 2, and Dave, for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. This project could not have been completed without the ORSAS awards and the Charles Wallace India Trust’s top-up grant. I am very grateful to these awarding bodies. I would also like to thank the British Council, Calcutta, for providing me with the necessary information. I am very grateful to other members of staff in Nottingham Trent University. Professor John Goodridge, Mr Mahendra Solanki and Professor Tim Fulford have been the most sympathetic and supportive of friends. The English Division has been very helpful in providing me with a computer and sponsoring my travel to the Games and Philosophy Conference in Potsdam. I am also grateful to Professor Martyn Bennett, Basia Filipowicz, Sophia Smithers, Kate Booth and others in the Graduate School for Arts and Humanities for their help and support. I would also like to thank all my professors in Calcutta, especially Professor Amlan Dasgupta and Professor Malabika Sarkar for their encouragement. I would like to specially thank Dr Mark Butler for his extremely helpful insights. It was a thrilling experience to be able to interview Dr Celia Pearce and Alexei Pazhitnov in GameCity 2007; I would like to thank them for their suggestions. I would also like to thank the organisers of games conferences at Brunel University, University of Potsdam and University of Luton for having given me the chance to participate and meet other researchers. I am PhD Thesis, 2008 -i- Souvik Mukherjee, Nottingham Trent University Acknowledgments From Reading Games to Playing Books also grateful to Writing Technologies for having published a shorter version of my sixth chapter and to all reviewers of my publications for their constructive criticism. The PhD would have been a horribly lonely affair without my friends in Nottingham and elsewhere. I would especially like to thank Cristina Bermejo, Maria Marti, Tobias Mueller, David Munoz, Juan Moreno, Liliana Maligłówka, Jenna Pitchford, Beth Davies, Dr Kerri Andrews and Marco Ruberto for being such superb friends. I would also like to thank my friends from India and elsewhere, who are too many to list: you know who you are. Last but not least, I would like to thank Lorenzo, my artificially intelligent friend. Lorenzo, perhaps more than anyone alive, has helped me most in reading games and playing books, and of course, the reverse. PhD Thesis, 2008 -ii- Souvik Mukherjee, Nottingham Trent University Table of contents From Reading Games to Playing Books CONTENTS Page 1 CHAPTER 1: Introduction: From Reading Games to Playing Books SECTION I: MACHINE Page 30 CHAPTER 2: Machinic Stories: The Literature Machine, Technicity and the Computer Game CHAPTER 3: (W)reading the Machinic Game-Narrative Page 65 SECTION II: GAME Page 105 CHAPTER 4: Gameplaying Games: Concepts, Processes and Elements of Play Page 147 CHAPTER 5: Playing Games with Stories: Games, Narrative and Supplementarity SECTION III: STORY Page 189 CHAPTER 6: Ab(Sense) of an Ending: Telos and Time in Videogame Narratives PhD Thesis, 2008 -iii- Souvik Mukherjee, Nottingham Trent University Table of contents From Reading Games to Playing Books CHAPTER 7: Playing in the Zone of Becoming I: Agency and Page 223 Becoming in the Videogame Page 265 CHAPTER 8: Playing in the Zone of Becoming II: ‘Becoming’ as Identity-formation in Videogames Page 310 CHAPTER 9: Concluding Remarks: Videogames Versus Books, or the Egg-endian (Non)Debate Page 328 BIBLIOGRAPHY PhD Thesis, 2008 -iv- Souvik Mukherjee, Nottingham Trent University Chapter One Introduction From Reading Games to Playing Books CHAPTER ONE Introduction: From Reading Games to Playing Books Start this mission by entering the red marker at the Johnson house. Carl decides to refresh his memory by looking at old photos of the Johnson family. Smoke enters the room with a baseball bat, preparing to whack CJ. He realises who it is, and gives a short welcome before driving CJ to the cemetery to meet his brother. […] Sweet describes the poor situation that Grove Street are in, before leaving the cemetery. The Ballas [a rival gang] perform an unexpected drive-by shooting, destroying Smoke’s car. Hop on the bicycle and follow Sweet, repeatedly tapping ‘X’ to build up momentum. —Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Walkthrough Is this a story, is it another violent episode in a soap-opera, or is the reader being mistaken for a member of a real-life criminal gang? The uninitiated reader will probably be having serious doubts about what is happening in the above quote. At first sight, this extract seems to be the story of a certain gangster, Carl Johnson; if it is, then, the story strangely seems to want the reader to begin it and to even start identifying directly with the protagonist. The part about ‘repeatedly tapping "X" to build up momentum’ makes it seem even stranger: it is as if, besides all the possibilities described above, there is also some kind of interaction with a machine. Given this hybrid scenario, the reader must be excused if she does not guess that this is an extract from a ‘walkthrough’, or a set of possible solutions for playing the PhD Thesis, 2008 -1- Souvik Mukherjee, Nottingham Trent University Chapter One Introduction From Reading Games to Playing Books videogame called Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Videogames, today, are a fast emerging medium of entertainment and they have started raising major questions about traditional conceptions of ludicity: such questions indicate that these games need to be understood in terms of their machinic characteristics as well as their relationship with narratives. Through their intrinsic association with electronic