Space Modders: Learning from the Game Commune By Alex Kypriotakis-Weijers

TU Delft Faculty of Architecture, Urbanism & the Built Environment Explore Lab Studio Research paper Supervising Tutor: Stavros Kousoulas

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Whole Earth Catalog / Steward Brand et al.

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Space Modders: Learning from the Game Commune By Alex Kypriotakis-Weijers TU Delft Faculty of Architecture, Urbanism & the Built Environment Explore Lab Studio Research paper Supervising Tutor: Stavros Kousoulas Winter 2020

Abstract This essay attempts to investigate the workings and potentialities of videogames as a medium for participatory design and practices of commoning in architecture. The analysis begins with exploring videogames as non-normative experiences and the effects of those experiences on the players which lead to the emergence of the game commune; a force that is affecting they way games are being made. These phenomena are becoming more than individual and collective interactions as they are capable to generate highly innovative and unique virtualities in digital spaces. If architecture, as it is itself a mean of generating virtualities, adopts the commoning practices similar to those of the game commune, it could lead to a more inclusive and open- source building tradition. Keywords: video games, architecture, Simondon, commons, play, identity, tools

Introduction Let me begin paradoxically stating the problem of this research by talking about problems. In architectural practice we tend to treat design questions/problems as a set of existing conditions of a specific moment in time that when altered, result to a desired condition in the form of a building. The information about the site, its environment and the wishes of the stakeholders goes through the process of being investigated by the architect through multiple layers of nature, engineering, society, law, finance and so on. The result is the arrangement of this information in the form of drawings, models, plan of execution and other documentation that we consider as an “solution” to the design question. The issue with this process is that it provides a design solution by and for several individuals that existed under specific conditions, on a specific time with specific beliefs and desires. Even with the most noble of intentions to make a design future-proof in terms of environmental and social sustainability, it is still a solution to answer a specific question at that time and give speculative answers for questions of the future. Furthermore, it is a solution that remains closed inside an environment that was generated by selecting pieces of information under a certain perspective, thus forming a separate, unique reality of its own. In a sense, information is formation according to a specific input. The architect therefore follows a specific narrative assembled by the information that according to their perspective deemed relevant for their design. Additionally, the narrative of how they have arrived at their design solution is by itself irrelevant to the actual result. If the

4 architect used big data, dancing or a game as a tool of analysis it is a trivial fact to the architectural objects themselves: they are still objects designed through the process of some data. This cycle derives from the fact that architects are searching for THE solution or THE method that can be applied everywhere, anytime to anyone or to a specific somewhere, moment or someone. But what about the problem or the design question itself? That seems to be the stage that is subjected to subjectivity the most. Who gets to decide and have the most say in that? The actors? Science? Nature? Politics? Ethics? The architect? Every possible scenario deriving from all these influencers will result to something tailored to the one with the most influence but is that enough to constitute THE problem? If that was the case, then it would be totally justifiable to be talking about THE method that lead to THE solution. Problems are complex and their definition will always differ dramatically from different sides therefore it is futile to seek solutions based on performance or desirability alone. So, what would be a good way to address spatial problems that is as inclusive, efficient and fluid as possible? Algorithms base their solutions within the boundaries of their parameters and cybernetic connections therefore fail to include what is out of the reach of their perceptual instruments. It is less time consuming, but this is no better solution than the ones eventually made by architects and technicians. If we want to get out of that closed cybernetic network loop, we need to establish a new relation between actors and machines. Gilbert Simondon mentions the production of alienation not on basis of ownership of the means of production by the industrialists or the workers but based on power between men(sic) and machine(Simondon, 2017). 19th century craftsmen had power over the tools (things that make and measure to a lesser extent) and the instruments (things that only measure) as means of production but with the advent of factories, workers were left only with tools and were alienated from the power of measuring and adjusting their tools in order to create. They became practically a component of the factory machine themselves. This is still the case even in our current times. As an example, fake news might be instrumental in pushing dubious political agendas, but they wouldn’t be anywhere if it wasn’t for that sense of spreading individual influence through a machine. People are allured by social media not because they provide instant gratification per se, but because they give the illusion of power over a machine that has in turn power over others. An illusion because the machine is still in control over what becomes trending and what not, causing more trouble than solving any through its algorithms. Adding a note on the close-system flaw of machines: The algorithms that were set up to prevent the spread of fake news on YouTube ended up linking videos on facts about 9/11 with the fire in Notre Dame in Paris just because the similarity of the smoke and the two bell towers visually resembled the events of the Twin Towers in New York, thus framing the news story in the eyes of the public as a potential terrorist act (Paul, 2019). The machine didn’t have the ability to foresee the social implications of making such an assumption and voided the purpose it was specifically designed for. While it is a machine that possesses tools and instruments, as means of reading information and acting on it, it fails to quantify the unforeseeable psychological and qualitative parameters that it is supposed to be monitoring. Another point of focus on alienation in relation to power is consumerism, loosely connected to the Marxist approach. Take almost any product available for purchase: there is an extremely small percentage of individuals who are active in the production of that product in comparison

5 with the rest of the population who is on the receiving end. Let’s take a pair of sport trademark shoes as a first example; an object designed by a few specialists that have measured the correct traction and pressure necessary to provide a comfortable running experience on the feet of the user but has to comply with the managerial decisions that have profit as their objective; this is the first stage of alienation between designer and the industrialist. It is then manufactured by skilled workers who have no say in the design process, if no say at all in anything, and only execute the design thus falling under the second stage of alienation. The third stage is about the consumers who buy the product who have no idea how the product is made, where the materials are coming from, actual cost, the knowledge behind shoe design and so on. It becomes an object devoid of technicity for the one who is using it thus reducing it to something expendable, temporal and insignificant while it is a product of technical expertise. Since now the consumer cares only about its use and not about its process, it is usually the case if not always that they do not think of repairing, improving or refurbishing that pair, but would rather discard it; a product to be consumed. The same example goes for packed grocery products from overseas to smartphones and buildings. We have very limited knowledge about the technics of our buildings and cities even though we spend the entirety of our lives within them. This complete disconnection between humans and technicity is not only solely an issue of estrangement of an individual with their humanity as defined by Marx, but an issue of estrangement with the ecologies they occupy and have a direct or indirect effect on. This estrangement with the working and production of technical objects shows that there is a lack of knowledge and practice therefore human thought must establish an egalitarian relation, without privilege, between technics and man. This task must still be accomplished, because these phenomena of technical dominance […] maintain an inadequate relation between human reality and technical reality (Simondon, 2017, p. 104). However, there is a certain media and group of individuals involved around it that seem to have bridged this gap between human and technical reality in a paradoxically and unreal (pun intended) way: Videogames, their makers and players. Videogames, as products of creation and interaction, are an example of how technical and human reality have a balanced relation with each other. As products of creation, videogames are platforms of expression that consist of core mechanics, storytelling/narratives and elements of interactivity (Rollings & Adams, 2003, p. 9). The way that the elements of interactivity and core mechanics are being designed by game developers most of the time are done in such a way so that there is not a relationship of dominance of the game over the player or the player over the game1. This is what makes a game fair and the introduction of storytelling/narrative is enhancing the experience of the player’s engagement with it. If a game is either lacking any challenge and provocation for interaction or its extremely hard to the point of making it impossible to play, then it is simply not worth for the player to immerse and invest and in it. In the terms of Simondon, the egalitarian balance between technical reality, the game, and the human reality, the player seems to be there. While a game designer is the engineer who has mastered coding languages,

1 There are exceptions. In the triple-A game industry there has been an increase in the appearance of gambling and mechanics that are enhanced by implementing methods of keep players as engaged with the game as possible. This is a relationship of dominance between players and large game companies for the sake of financial profit. This has led to regulatory measures by government bodies specially to tackle the severity of gambling phenomena. In a recent study it is suggested that the gambling-like features of loot boxes are specifically responsible for the observed relationship between problem gambling and spending on loot boxes. (Zendle & Cairns, 2018).

6 visual and narration arts to create a digital environment, the player is the one who masters the tools (gamepad, mouse, keyboard) and uses the instruments (screens, speakers, VR ) provided to interact with that world with accuracy, intelligence and speed. Even though most players are not aware of the technicity behind the game in the way that the game designer is, they utilize every bit of information that is available through the game environment or even its installed files in the computer in order to overcome the challenges or to transform their gaming experience entirely. The game is not providing the rationalized technics that are behind its creation, but its users are using instinctively whatever they can to interact with it and in the words of Simondon: […] if a very poorly rationalized technics requires an extremely precocious initiation of learning, then the subject will, even as an adult, retain a basic irrationality in his technical knowledge; he will possess it by virtue of a very profound acquisition, due to his early habitual immersion; as a result, the technicians knowledge will not consist of clearly represented schemas, but of a manual dexterity possessed almost by instinct, and entrusted to this second nature that is habit (Simondon, 2017, p. 106). This might sound a bit too pessimistic in terms of lacking the knowledge behind the technicity of videogames, but s is largely true when it comes to the players mastering the required skills of beating a game with the highest score, the shortest time or simply according to their own perception of beauty and type of amusement. Yet for some, the gratification of winning or allowed measure of creativity is not enough. There is a considerate number of players who desire to take their fascination a step further in altering the game itself by modifying its core mechanics (modders) or even try to create a whole game by themselves. Initial encounter with the medium might have encouraged learning based on habit and instinctive dexterity but when one would discover that the game files and codes were available for manipulation, they would tinker with it on their own or collectively. Before the advent of the internet, magazines in the 1980s such as Amstrad Computer Magazine or Compute! would teach to amateurs programming languages in order to create their own software and acted as community platforms through mail correspondence. They were the first form of informalized distribution of technical knowledge regarding digital technical objects, giving the opportunity to anyone with a personal computer to do so. Prior to all that, there was another short-lived printed publication between 1968 and 1972 that did the same but for the physical realm. The Whole Earth Catalog (TWEC), the counterculture magazine published by Steve Brand, was encouraging low- and high-tech DIY solutions focusing on ecology and sustainability under the slogan “access to tools”. Initiatives like TWEC have paved the way for the propagation of knowledge that has established the current operating system of design […] and […] point to the importance of the distribution of knowledge and access to performance and quality through the items presented (Sanchez, 2014) in the catalog2. These forms of knowledge distribution are releasing information about technical objects from the nuances and formalities of academic education. The era of computer printed magazines might have come to a pass, but wiki pages and forums have taken their place. From Wikimedia to stackoverflow.com, online sources on technical objects are the modern equivalent of an encyclopedia. The encyclopedia is a summary of technical information that allows for the reader to have not just an understanding but also inflame the curiosity to

2 It is not by chance that TWEC has been pivotal in the development of Sanchez’s game Block’Hood (Plethora Project, 2017) and upcoming Common’Hood.

7 study, practice and experiment on that piece of knowledge. Simondon spends a great deal in his writings on highlighting the importance of the encyclopedia. Although the following piece was written before the times of online education, it describes the influence of the encyclopedia, as publication, on anyone who comes across the knowledge it conveys: The greatness of the Encyclopedia, its novelty, resides in the fact that its prints of schemas and models of machines, which are an homage to the trades and to the rational knowledge of technical operations, are fundamentally major. But these prints do not have the role of pure, disinterested documentation for a public eager to satisfy its curiosity; the information in them is complete enough to constitute a useable practical documentation, such that anyone who owns the book would be capable of building the described machine or of further advancing the state reached by technics in that domain through an invention, and to begin his research where that of others who preceded him leaves off (Simondon, 2017, p. 110). Sanchez makes a similar point concerning the passing and appropriation of knowledge allowing the emergence of new inventions in the digital realm. The human brain can only absorb a limited amount of information in a given time limit, and properties of encapsulation of software, prevents people from having to reinvent the wheel each time. This is especially true if such software uses a free software ethics or is open-source, allowing access to the core of the encapsulated knowledge, enabling both higher and lower level access.(Sanchez, 2014) With that said, the difference between computer magazines and TWEC was that programmers were handling a technical object that that was not just an instrument and a tool3 but a whole ecology of its own. When a child is opening a radio and getting introduced in the world of electronics it still needs a screwdriver, an ohmmeter, soldering iron and other tools in order to start experimenting on it, therefore it is bounded by the limitations of material properties and physics. Yet in the case of programming, one is not constrained by the lack of physical tools or components to create any type of software. In a computer we can generate processes and experiment on them until our skill surpasses the technical capabilities of the machine which are not necessarily a hindrance as in the case of a radio. A radio is a receiver of electromagnetic waves on a certain wavelength that produces sound as an output. The classical compositions played by a certain orchestra might be the products of human culture but the radio itself as a machine is limited on transmitting a message and the same goes for more complex machinery such as televisions and even computers. Without disregard to non-game programming such as media processing or BIM software, it is still a process that simply receives creative input and produces output data in the form of information which can be visual and/or auditory; a one- way communication between the author and the audience, just like the orchestra example. In the case of a videogame however, and its programming thereof, is a process where creativity is not just practiced by creator but also encouraged and consequently practiced by the audience

3 Very much alike to the example of the hammer provided by Simondon when distinguishing technical objects as tools and instruments. The hammer is primarily a tool but acts as an instrument to the hand providing feedback about vibration and pressure (Simondon, 2017, p. 130).

8 as well. The synthesis of a game might be the combination of various creative processes such as visuals, music, hardware and code4 but the output of the game developer interacts with the audience, allowing the output content to be modified within or outside the initial rules of the game. While a videogame is a closed system, it can be affected by the unlimited creative drive of humans which is a non-quantifiable input in a binary setting. Take Block’Hood (Plethora Project, 2017) as an example. The player must achieve certain resource goals by placing blocks that have a set of placement and interaction rules. While the selection of blocks is based on performance and tested on cause and consequence, it is up to the player to go for a sustainable and esthetically pleasing composition of the blocks. While the availability of more than 200 blocks with different inputs and outputs is facilitating a closed system, the player composition is a result of an external to the game reality, that of the built environment. The same can be said for many building and management simulation games. It is not merely the problem-solving ability that is of interest here but the way a problem is being posed to be subjected for solutions. Due to their digital dynamic state, video games allows us, unlike other mediums, to engage thousands and sometimes millions of new users with complex simulations when playing a new game, and those users are able to quickly scan the possibility space of a given system, engage with it, and through their gameplay provide the best feedback any system designer could wish for.(Sanchez, 2014) Are the individuals who play and create videogames managed to a large extend to cease the means of production? This might be happening in a simulated reality, a machine, but in comparison to architects who are doing the same thing in BIM, they get to evaluate and adapt to the conditions of the problem posed in the game in real time. We must be aware that gamers and game developers are trapped as much as architects; They in the simulated worlds of a machine and architects in machine logic. Yet have these individuals managed hint the way for architects to brake the black box of the input-output fallacy (Kousoulas, 2018)? Or are they perhaps the key to create a new culture/tradition of building and making that embraces technicity5? Games ,as media, are machines of capture of the unsayable and unrepresentable (Horl, 2017, p. 10), therefore becoming a way to pose a situation that invites the player to interact, engage and become part of the narrative. Like games, stories are rehearsals for life (Rose, 2011, p. 7) and thus as performances, they can be used as a way to test problems and retrieve solutions from them. They provide a highly dynamic continuous cycle of information that if quantified can help in reading through the concretization (concrétisation)6 of technical objects related to the built environment in the case of architecture. That quantification can be achieved through

4 Just like in the case of the orchestra music transmitted by the radio which if demodulated, it could be broken down to musical theory, instrument manufacturing, electrics, materials, cultural influences, anatomy (breathing, seeing, hearing) and so on. 5 In reference to Simondon; […] in order for it to be accurately known, according to its essence, and rightly integrated into culture, technicity must be known in its relation with the other modes of mans being in the world (Simondon, 2017, p. 163) 6 Concretization describes the relationship of the metaphysics of information to the ontology of the technical object. Concrétisation is not quite like the English transitive verb “concretization” which defines a specific result […] “given form to an idea”. (Iliadis, 2013)

9 videogames due to their digital properties and the engagement with the medium can be enhanced by the projection of digital built environments, which similarly to architectural models their seduction lays in its implicit promise to represent what has to come, and inflame the observer with libido aedificandi7 (Scolari, 2015). So, it all comes down to this: Is the introduction of digital gamification a way to bridge the gap between the public and the technics of architecture to allow the emergence of more inclusive solutions? Can collective intelligence, of players and game developers alike, be expressed in architectural design and what could the mechanics that allow that be like? This research is not about promoting an absolute new method of architectural design processes but will attempt to establish a new relation between instruments, tools and actors; to de-alienate the actors from the means of technicity of the built environment.

7 Desire to build

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Gris / Nomada Studio (2018)

From Character to Player

“I started hanging out at the arcade almost every night…this was the real thing. Another life was just one credit away. Down here I found new worlds and new meaning. I could be whoever I wanted to be; Travel to outer space, experience fantasy and fear or just take a walk on the wild side of town… …It wasn’t just about the escape; it was about transformation. For every visit I made, every game I uncovered, every move I mastered I felt stronger, more confident. Some guy said I was nothing but a dreamer, completely out of touch with reality, but I don’t know. Down here, I was free! I was in control! No one told me where to go or what to do. The only bad part about it was having to come back up to the real world…” -Kid from 198X (Hi-Bit Studios, 2019)

It is difficult to refrain from approaching the subject without etymological analysis of the word “character” which derives from the Greek verb χαράσσω which means to carve, to trace; a word that is used to signify a person’s or a thing’s8 identity ,which is something immaterial, qualitative and abstract, derives from a technical act that would require the use of a sharp edge that can generate depressions on a surface and produce imprints in the form of points, traces and signs. But this might also be the reason why it is a rather binary term; it is either that one is carved or uncarved; traced, untraced and re-traced. “Tracing” therefore has become synonymous with the description of what constitutes the identity of a human or a thing

8 Even in the case of a letter character, it encompasses information that makes sense only to humans.

11 in most Latin and Greek-origin speaking languages, the western world. In contemporary terms, when we try to understand the motives behind a personality we try to “trace” back to their physical and social origins. In the case of sensationalized murder cases: A serial killer has or has not had a challenged childhood, if not A then scenario B is more probable and so on. It is a sequence of binary selection of scenarios that will exclude or include a “tree” of possibilities. It closely resembles the structure of the genetic axis as described by Deleuze and Guattari. A genetic axis is like an objective pivotal upon which successive stages are organized; a deep structure is more like a base sequence that can be broken down into immediate constituents, while the unity of the product passes into another, transformational and subjective, dimension […] It is our view that genetic axis and profound structure are above all infinitely reproducible principles of tracing (Deleuze & Guattari, 1983). Yet this binary method of tracing the origin of things can result to extremely biased interpretations of the world. It is a fallacy that ignores the links to things that are beyond linearity. When we describe someone’s character as A, then we tend to have a whole precondition of scenarios why that individual is A and how they got there; if A, then that individual will be associated with social archetypes related to A. As an example, if we determine that an individual’s character is “charismatic”, that means that they are either destined for politics or they will be very successful in their romantic escapades but that doesn’t say anything about their moral standing, mood or aspirations. In Daniel Smith’s terms, it is a proposition of inclusion (Smith, 2012) which while there is a lack identity between the individual A and the proposition “charismatic”, there is a logical necessity filled with all the archetypal associations we have about charismatic people. This type of information is literally in-forming or rather ill-informing the image we have about an individual; it makes us ignore the conditions that are related to the affects of that individual as a whole. Smith is also pointing out that such statements of identity principles are certain but empty; they do not force us to think (Smith, 2012). Rather than analyzing man[sic], social and political thought classifies and judges him by putting him into categories defined by qualities and ground forces, just as religions classify and judge by placing each individual into the category of the sacred or the profane, or the pure or impure. (Simondon, 2017) Deleuze and Guattari have been explicit about mapping the relations instead of tracing them saying that what distinguishes the map from the tracing is that it is entirely oriented toward an experimentation in contact with the real (Deleuze & Guattari, 1983). I wish to attempt to rebuke the binary fallacy through analyzing that exact experimentation in videogames, which is ironically a system created on binary logic just like the word “character”. In games and therefore videogames, game characters are by default designed with a very specific tracing. Although not hindered by any of the nuances of the physical world, they are nevertheless inspired from it. It is yet the players, primarily humans, that must interact and experiment with those tracings which I interpret as the rules. Even in real life, normativity is based on the tracings, the rules that we associate with societal roles that are determined by

12 the “character”9. The playground game of hide and seek is a condition of authority versus the ones who dispute it; one player enforces it and the others evade it; the constable vs the culprits. Both seekers and hiders voluntarily submit to rule-roles and action rules of win-losing conditions and assimilate to their roles. Yet through this act of playing, both groups will use all their skills, tricks and conditions at their disposal to have an advantage against the other. No rule in the game stipulates that you can’t hide one meter away from the seeker, hide on top of a cupboard that is a no-go area by the parents or fool the hiders with the use of words or sound. These acts to achieve a win are experimentations that test the limits of the rules. If the participants have an issue with these actions, then they will devise new rules that eventually will be surpassed again by other means. Rules define a play domain with unambiguous measures of success and failure and a clear-cut distinction (Grimes & Feenberg, 2009) so if you can cheat undetected then might as well keep doing it. The difference between the game and the world outside it is that the game has no negative physical or mental consequences, because as bad as losing can be we get over it eventually. On the contrary, outside of the game if you were to evade a speeding ticket or skip a day at work then you would put your well-being in jeopardy. Yet regardless of consequences or not, these games as rehearsals for life (Rose, 2011) and the freedom of experimentation within these rules is what generates events that are invaluable for our experience of being. The player’s opportunity to reenact, transgress, and otherwise make sense of larger systems of social order in videogames (Grimes & Feenberg, 2009), questions and repositions themselves within these systems. But non-digital games have limitations on their duration. Rules and the observation of their implementation is depended on other individuals therefore the submission to the rules comes eventually to an end due to boredom or exhaustion and replay value decreases. In videogames however, it is the machine that tirelessly assumes the role of monitoring the rules of play and giving feedback on the player on winning or losing conditions. The difference with non-physical games, however, is that the dictated rules are applied unconditionally without any negotiation. Additionally, a machine might make a game difficult, but it will never cheat. Like slot-machines at the casino, they are simply programmed to make a profit for the casino, not for the visitors. It is feedback that allows us eventually to see the patterns of how the machine operates the game and win the jackpot. Yet humans will always try to cheat and try to create their own rules just like in playground negotiations. It is software bugs, the oversights of the game designers and the exposure of the code that will be taken advantage of by the players to win, in actions which are beyond the intended gaming experience. This is how mods, dedicated blogs and YouTube channels on speed running, the abuse of game glitches and exaggerated role- playing reenactments of games are emerging in the internet. There are, however, attempts to curb this un-regulated cyberspace. The capitalization of games has generated rules that go beyond the rules of the game that can have consequences on the players outside the game in the form of suspending accounts in case of cheating or monetary copyright claims in case of piracy or intellectual material distribution. Platforms like EA’s Origin, that allow online play

9 In the example of the “charismatic” character mentioned before, the resemblance between real life and role-playing games is rather evident. Players who decide to invest in “charisma” traits in a game will be more likely have a game experience that benefits them in socially savvy situations such as bartering for better prices with a shopkeeper or negotiating for the bloodless resolution of a given quest that might result in better rewards. In some games, by investing exclusively in such a trait generates by default a character archetype that is identified or encouraged by the game rules as an agent or a diplomat.

13 only on many game titles, thrive on monetizing every aspect that is irregular to the basic game experience such as the selling of special skins and clothes that can be applied on the playing characters for the whole online community to admire or frown upon. Yet even if playing experiences become more confined through capitalization, players find ways to protest and force corporate game industry giants to concede to their demands10. Videogames become […]a site of struggle between players and corporations over the design and usage of game environments and their contents (Grimes & Feenberg, 2009). Videogame players are therefore in possession of a peculiar prerogative in comparison to the machine. It is the fact that humans have more sensory inputs than the machine itself when playing with it which allows them to maintain the control over their experiences and experiment with them. However, this experimentation goes way beyond the ways of play, creation of mods and gameplay media content. It is in the ecology of the gamespace that player identities are also being modified and question the norms that are expected to be kept outside of it. Therefore, the “character” that has been assigned to us as a rule outside of the game, is also being put into question and subjected to experimentation. This is a pivotal moment that can be observed throughout online platforms, social media and even more in games. Games offer some level of multiplicity through their binary premise and the issue of player identity mediated through a videogame character is crucial for one to invest in playing them. Game designers must set an agenda, a motivation on the game character so that the player can invest in. According to James P. Gee there are two types of game character identities that provide different scales of investment and effects on the player. Good games offer players identities that trigger a deep investment on the part of the player. They achieve this goal in one of two ways. Some games offer a character so intriguing that players want to inhabit the character and can readily project their own fantasies, desires, and pleasures onto the character. Other games offer a relatively empty character whose traits the player must determine, but in such a way that the player can create a deep and consequential life history in the game world for the character. (Gee, 2008) Yet in my opinion, especially with the emergence of ‘indie’ games in the mid-2000s, we must make a distinction within those two ways described by Gee. For the sake of the argument let’s call the first as predefined and the second as user-defined character design. In both cases there can be a large or lower degree of experimentation in relation with our own identity regardless of linearity and the amount or perception of choice in a videogame. I will attempt to highlight this distinction by elaborating on characters in two games from the first category and two from the other. Starting with Mario from ’s the Super Mario series and (Nomada Studio, 2018), Mario is a predefined iconic character where the premise is well-established from the beginning and his background is very specific; Italian, male, plumber, princess savior. There is little room for the player to explore the motivations and worries of the character since they are limited to collecting coins, avoid traps and dealing with Goombas. The player immerses with the character of Mario on basis of performance and goofy tropes such as his accent. Gris on the other hand, is a character with whom we gradually learn more about as the game

10 One of the most recent examples is the failed launch of 76 that resulted in refund lawsuits and condemnation on online platforms due to faulty game mechanics and exposure of user data among other issues.

14 progresses. The worries and wishes of the character are revealed through the level design in combination with the abilities of the character. Without any dialogue or text, the player gradually empathizes with Gris’s journey to recover her voice through highly symbolic stages which are related to the coming of age and womanhood, proving how imagination can become a gendered space (Braidotti, 1994). Therefore, the difference between these two characters is not just about the way that the player immerses with them but what that immersion entails; experimentation of the player’s identity through an interactive story envisioned by the game designer, who on their part, express their identity through the game. Afterall, identity is based on events, not phenomena (Smith, 2012). When I have married my personal goals and values to the virtual character’s ‘in- game’ goals, I see the game as both a project that the game designers have given to me and, simultaneously, I project my own goals, desires, values, and identity into the game world, melded with the ‘in-game’ identity and goals of the virtual character. The ‘project’ now becomes ‘mine’ and not just something imposed on me, because I have ‘projected’ myself into it. (Gee, 2008) In the second category of player-defined character design, role-playing games are usually associated with freedom of character creation and the recipe is most of the time the same. In : Skyrim (Bethesda Game Studios, 2011) players can choose their race, body features and through their gameplay experience they can determine the skills through a tree of options and decide on how they will complete a quest. The traits, characteristics and courses of action generate an illusion of choice about what the player can project on their game character. No matter if one chooses to play as a Khajiit that goes against the stereotypes11 and becomes a respectable spellcaster of the Mages Guild, they are still a character that operates within the world of The Elder Scrolls and its premise. Identity experimentation with different bodies, actions and skills yet with predetermined linear archetypes related to the story. On the other hand, in games such as The Witness (Thekla Inc., 2016) , a first-person exploration puzzle game, the player is given no premise or background about their game character. The player assumes that it is themselves who are exploring the island and try to make sense of its architecture, statues and open to interpretation background. In between solving the pattern puzzles scattered around the isle, the occasional encounter of playback devices with quotes from philosophical literature and film is inviting the player to an experience of thought and search for meaning, not just about the whereabouts of the island but also about the world outside of the game. In this case, The Witness calls for the experimentation of the player’s identity on existential issues while seeking solutions to puzzles and the origins of the elements they encounter.

11 In the Elder Scrolls series Khajiit are culturally oriental-themed feline race and associated with trade and illicit activities such as theft and drug production, therefore frequently victims of discrimination and slavery.

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The Witness / Thekla Inc. (2016)

Post-Human Play & the Game Commune Beyond the categorization between exploring oriented and non-oriented identities, there are games that question the aspect of humanity in ourselves, as bodies and minds. As mentioned briefly with the example of playing a Khajiit in Skyrim, it is experimentation within an epic fantasy premise, but it has a metaphorical rather than a literal reference to experiencing a different race. One could argue that the tropes regarding the Khajiit in the Elder Scrolls universe represent stereotypes of peoples of African or Middle Eastern origin, but such a relation is never explicitly addressed. I could name more examples commenting on the amount of identity experimentation but I will take the liberty of saying that indie games, as a complex assemblage made up of many cooperating and competing elements (Parker, 2013), seem to be offering the most opportunity for that kind of experimentation since their creators are very explicit about the messages they project though their characters which are closely related to their experiences. Games such as That Dragon, Cancer (Numinous Games, 2014) and Hyper Light Drifter (Heart Machine, 2016) are explicit about the experiences around terminal illness by their creators. The player is therefore encountering the human body in these examples in a state which is apropos very real and consequential in the physical world; a transformative process of realization of the human condition. Then there are games that pose beyond human narratives. In SOMA (Frictional Games, 2015) the player is confronted with the implications and shock of transferring consciousness to a machine and in (, 2014) the game is constantly questioning them about what makes a human different from the machine. The Shelter series (Might and Delight, 2013) shows the hurdles of raising a family as an animal in the wild while the VR experience Tree (New Reality Company, 2017) the process of growth and destruction as a Kapok tree in the Peruvian Amazon. By territorializing technology and nature in videogames, they are offering not only a gateway to other perspectives but a refuge to

16 incubate our own selves. It is precisely that incubation process that generates a different kind of being that is at the same time beyond and close to the precedence of how human society defines each of us; being our gender we learned to perform and the one that’s not; being the human and the non-human; being the living and the non-living. We could condense all these processes as the transformative experience of being a cyborg12. Back on the subject of the binary fallacy of real world “character”, Donna Haraway mentions how writing has been used by the West as a mean to perpetuate myths about distinctions between oral and written cultures, primitive and civilized mentalities and therefore how contests for the meanings of writing are a major form of contemporary political struggle (Haraway, 1985). On the subject of spreading the literature work of women of color in the US as an act of seizing power on the issue of writing, she proposes: “Cyborg writing is about the power to survive, not on the basis of original innocence, but on the basis of seizing the tools to mark the world that marked them as other. The tools are often stories, retold stories, versions that reverse and displace the hierarchical dualisms of naturalized identities. (Haraway, 1985) I wish to take the liberty and say that this might very well be the case how videogames manifest themselves through gameplay and narrative and they are in their own way works of cyborg writing. They are a cyborg language of their own which makes use of multiple artistic and technological mediums. Videogames are not always dependent on common writing languages to convey their story13 and with the advent of Indy games that has become even more apparent. Games such as Hyperlight Drifter, Journey (, 2012) and Gris do not provide any dialogue and instead make use of hieroglyphics, symbols, gestures, visuals, music and sounds of their own unique design to guide and immerse the player through their story. Independent developers have become increasingly and exceptionally good, without knowing it, at seizing the tools that question the dualisms of naturalized identities and societal “characters”. One important route for reconstructing socialist-feminist politics is through theory and practice addressed to the social relations of science and technology, including crucially the systems of myth and meanings structuring our imaginations. The cyborg is a kind of disassembled and reassembled, postmodern collective and personal self. This is the self feminists must code. (Haraway, 1985) Surely most game designers have not been purposely designing games to promote socialist- feminist ideals on players, but recent popular independent works have been more inclusive and intersectional because more designers wish to express themselves in a non-militarized manner and there is a player base that supports that. On the other hand, when Haraway wrote the Cyborg Manifesto in 1985, she mentions something specifically about videogames that could

12 One doesn’t have necessarily to play videogames to be a cyborg since we all are one way or another at this point. We might not look like the cyborgs portrayed in sci-fi media but since we are extremely dependent on technology for our survival and we consume and produce information about things and beings that surround us, we are by definition extending our mental and physical abilities beyond our original limitations with the use of technology. 13 With the exception of the early text-adventure and the more recent visual novel games.

17 explain a lot about today’s toxicity in online gaming communities that has risen in recent years: That the culture of video games was heavily oriented to individual competition and extraterrestrial warfare and that high-tech, gendered imaginations were are produced 14 (Haraway, 1985). Of course, not all games were designed like that but there was certainly a trend to cater to young male populations15. The clash that is currently happening among gaming communities, with escalations such as harassment and defamation campaigns such as Gamergate, can be attributed in part to the generation that grew within that largely militarized and predominantly masculine videogame environment (Cambell, 2018) and now tries to defend its gendered space, which is now thanks to the internet unavoidably assimilating ideas, issues, groups and organisms that were completely miss-and-unrepresented before such as women16, lgbtq+ communities and people of color. In reality, it could loosely be described as the introduction of left discourse into a space where corporate capitalism has had exclusive representation for a very long time. Regardless of which side of the argument one stands , In this immense cyberspace with developers balancing between expression and making a living on the one hand and their communities fighting for power with the use of the “carved”, binary definitions of written language on the other, videogames and their affiliates accelerate the emergence of queer identities; new bodies, new genders, new abilities within new ecologies. Within this clash common writing, the carving, gives way to memes, emojis, codes and play as the new language because it is unable to transmit the differences in culture, history, gender and perspectives of millions in one coherent narrative. The process of carving constitutes an act that cannot be reversed, it can only add or re-write information on an existing surface. Simondon makes a case where human perception distinguishes forms, perceptual units, when looking at or listening to recorded documents. But the recording itself does not really contain these forms. The inability of the data-preserving function of the machines is relative to the recording and reproduction of forms (Simondon, 2017). Language, the etching of characters on a surface as its most ancient form, could be perceived as a method of recording that contains information, but it is through human perceptual interpretation that generates forms. The notion of “character” is unable to capture the perceptual essence of humans and things; making the information contained within only relative to the formation of the concept of “character”. Therefore contemporary writing, as a mechanism or a technicity, is failing to create communication between different worldviews and frameworks because there are multiple interpretations of the same thing depending on the framework from which someone is operating17 (Thorn, 2019).

14 This largely true if we think of the early video games which were heavily themed around outer space and were naturally inspired by the space programme competition between the US and the USSR with most notable examples Space Invaders (Taito, 1978) and Asteroids (Atari Inc., 1979). 15 Violence can be manifested in different ways in a game such as hunting; a very primal behavior that can be observed on animals and humans alike which in fact ends up into be a competition without the nuances of hunger and actual physical survival. 16 Ironically, computer programming was originally a feminized profession. Kate Miltner on an interview for explains that Programming was seen to be menial labor, like secretarial work and therefore assigned to women (Cambell, 2018). This can be traced back in the historical fact that in the 1930s and 1940s, people who were employed to do calculations-and it was predominantly women who performed this clerical labor were called "computers." (Hayles, 2005) 17 On the film “Arrival” by Denis Villeneuve (2016).

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The deficiency of words, symbols and visual information is that they cannot communicate experience from one person to another. We can agree to agree, but remains only mutual incomprehension. You only know what you like or like what you know. Yet still there is that desperation of trying to communicate. To reach some understanding of one another’s experience and preconceptions we must submit cause and effect to higher contradiction. We must construct a living paradox, which is able to recognize conflict without emotion. The experience of what is, without naming it, brings about the freedom of what is. (Chalk, 1972) Games, and not just digital ones, have been and are a way of communication and assimilation of roles and identities because they place their participants under the same framework, the same fiction within new bodies that interact in a new reality through events. While “characters” and character design are a subject of study and debate within the game industry and community platforms, videogames are about us embracing our cyborg self and relinquish our naturalized identities and realities, our “characters”. It is in a way what Rosi Braidotti meant by the burning of the body and the need to leave our naturalized identities due to the pain of being real, being grounded and the right of wanting our own cyber dreams18 (Braidotti, 1994). This is not just an escape from reality, but an act of liberation, catharsis, mourning and exploration19 of the (post)human condition; a death wish (Braidotti, 1994). Games allow us to all these things and become a mean to perform beyond human limitations and frameworks and embrace subjectivity through play. My argument is that the posthuman enables us to track, across a number of interdisciplinary fields, the emergence of discourses about the non/in/trans/meta/posthuman, which are generated by the intersecting critiques of humanism and of anthropocentrism.(Braidotti, 2018) Videogames is a field that unexpectedly explores these discourses, and it is not academics who are on the helm of this process, but the developers and gamers who produce works of art, literature, political discussion and action that is conducted in unprecedented speed and means of expression that question the human condition. Whether we play as women, non-gendered species, animals, non-living, and the like, videogames and online play are the living example, or rather the fields of practicing post-humanist discourse, where post-human bodies are a progress, a step forward in the name of nature (Braidotti, 2015). The ideological clash within cyberspace, and especially when it occurs in the field of videogames, allows for the emergence of more empathetic, multi-gendered, more non-human perspectives. Rather than a process of domination it becomes a process of creation and consideration of unconventional viewpoints, not just in terms of designing a game, but also by creating additional gaming content through modding, visual essays and commentary on YouTube, performative gameplay on Twitch, game journalism and reviewing on behalf of the audiences. This is what I tend to describe as the Gaming Commune, a collective system where

18 In reference to women during a lecture at the ICA 1994 conference. 19 As the quote from the game 198X describes.

19 new cyber languages are being developed to articulate non-normative contexts, which operates inside and outside of a specific game environment20. Subjectivity is not restricted to bound individuals, but is rather a co-operative trans-species effort (Margulis & Sagan, 2000) that takes place transversally, in- between nature/technology; male/female; black/white; local/global; present/past – in assemblages that flow across and displace the binaries. These in-between states defy the logic of the excluded middle and, although they allow an analytic function to the negative, they reject negativity and aim at the production of joyful or affirmative values and projects (Braidotti, 2011, 2018; Lloyd, 1996). It is exactly those joyful or affirmative values and projects that emerge from the gaming commune; the amount of influence and impact that it exerts on the gaming industry, most notably and effectively in development, cannot be stressed enough. It might appear fractured and anarchistic, but it has nurtured the publication of great works of narrative and visual art. Through online observation and personal experiences where I have been conversing with game developers over the last year, game design based on online and live feedback from the community is a detrimental force in the process. It is no longer a creative field where development decisions are taken exclusively by corporate parties; a cyber collective is now affecting the content and context of videogames. In reality, the gaming commune is testing and bending the rules of existing narratives in gaming just like in the example with hide and seek earlier. If this complex and interdisciplinary technicity allows the potential for rules to be altered and changed with the participation of its userbase in the digital realm, why this is not happening in the physical world, namely in architecture?

20 One does not have to be actively playing a game in order to exert influence on it or the future development of other games.

20

2B2T server on / Mojang (2009)

Building Ludology: Individuation & Minecraft As we explore our identities within the setting of a game, we also explore the space it takes place and the objects it comprises. Taking hide and seek again as an example, the space is in theory every place on earth but due to the setup of the rules, players will tend to stay close to the starting point so that seeker and hiders alike can have good chances of winning. The original space is being transformed to a virtual space of opportunities for hiding from the seeker; existing contexts of the space are stripped from their original meaning and seen as objects of the game’s rules which demonstrate the consequence of win-lose scenarios. As explained before, nothing stops a hider to be very close to the starting point of the seeker; if the seeker is counting down on the bark of a tree and a hider climbs on a branch on top of it undetected, it is still part of the rules until they are amended. The tree in the original context was perceived as a system that produces oxygen, beautifies the space, provides shade and so on, yet when it came into play in the context of the game the player starts to study its accessibility to the top, the density of the foliage, the sturdiness of the bark and branches in relation to sound and stability and any other aspect that can be used in the player’s advantage. The object tree, and any tree, is being perceived with a specific focus to serve the players as a hiding place or a distraction for the seeker. When the senses are considered as perceptual systems, all theories of perception become at one stroke unnecessary. It is no longer a question of how

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the mind operates on the deliverances of sense, or how past experience can organize the data, or even how the brain can process the inputs of the nerves, but simply how information is picked up (Gibson, 1983) Humans and other organisms manipulate their environment in order to exploit its offerings (Magnani, 2013) but evidently this manipulation depends on the framework on which we wish to benefit from this exploitation. The setting of a game therefore is creating a specific framework in which the players must operate in order to win. The players become experts in perceiving the space according to the context of the rules and their lack thereof. The same formula can be applied to most games with or without explicit physical properties. Chess is a battle between two medieval armies on a grid representing the battlefield where you assume the role of a king who must survive21 against the opposing monarch. Therefore, your ability to control the rest of the pieces is related to your king’s position on the grid. The role in combination with the position in space is what makes a game of chess something more than a logic puzzle. Through abductive reasoning, we are capable to submit to the roles and rules of chess without having to dress in royal gowns or command literal armies in battle; minimalistically sculptured wooden pawns are enough to convey all that. Yet for that exact reason, nothing stops a child, or anyone, from using the chess pieces as they please without any consideration for the traditional chess rules to create new narratives inside and outside of the grid such as catapulting pieces on each other. Stacking playing cards or domino pieces are an example of that; players do not test their arithmetic skills but their ability to create structures by learning the physical capabilities of materials in space, which in turn has led to the emergence of new games while retaining the physical characteristics of the original setting. It is hard to see these new appropriations of game components apart from their original game setting; making card structures wouldn’t be a sensation if it wasn’t for the existence of playing cards themselves. It is because of a component which is specifically purposed to be part of a game that transcends to become a new type of game. However, here are very few children’s games, or rather settings, which allow for the physical manipulation of space without purchasing prefabricated components such as LEGO bricks, Play- Doh, wooden blocks, domino’s, cards, etc. while at the same time satisfying the same libido aedificandi as in architectural models (Scolari, 2015). These would be a playground’s sandbox, a sandy beach, snowfall conditions, a forest, discarded objects in public and private spaces such as derelict yards and waste. Children try to assimilate adult roles with the use of their surrounding environment and its materials. A stick becomes a sword or a beam, pinecones become projectiles or currency, sand or snow takes form of a castle or a house and so on. What is however needed at some point are tools to explore and use various properties on the materials found. Plastic buckets, shovels and rakes become essentials for children on a beach to build a sandcastle while as they grow up, they dare to use hammers and nails on discarded materials to build treehouses usually without adult supervision because they are deemed physically harmful or dangerous tools. Building a treehouse or hut, is the appropriation of power that comes with assimilating adult roles through play. That power manifests itself through the engaging act of building; a castle is a symbol of self-determined authority and a treehouse is a refuge where all the secrets and angsts of teenage life can be kept safe far away from parents.

21 Worth to note that losing the queen piece does not result in losing the game. Regardless of the strategic handicap when the queen pawn is lost, the player assumes the role of a male leader to preserve the linage.

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Gestures which while small in scale, have great power for the individuals who create and interact with them22. Yet this exploration of identity within an existing, not catered, space which allows to be manipulated becomes scarcer due to strongly coded urban planning/structuring and climate change. Derelict yards or neighborhoods with pellets and discarded woodchip boards become no-go zones, are fenced-off or are being dismantled, shorelines become privatized or become leisure services-oriented spaces, playgrounds are industrially standardized and global warming makes snowfall a occurrence. Acts of spatial resistance are entangled in a multiplicity of configurations of diverse urban processes (Sohn, Kousoulas, & Bruyns, 2015). Spontaneous acts of movement, building or modifications in public space are perceived by the state and middle- higher classes as a sign of vandalism, failure, lawlessness, non-normativity and anarchism - that would include parkour, skateboarding, homelessness, squatting, graffiti and appropriation of space as a hangout for youths. In highly gentrified areas we even see specific urban design choices being implemented such as spikes under covered spaces, single-seating benches, surveillance, policing, densely paved ground, private “public” spaces and advertisement boards/displays to prevent the occurrence of such acts. Spontaneity and experiencing virtuality, which while we are young is (measurably) encouraged, is then being stifled by law, capital interest and social norms. Although the desire to engage in virtuality is becoming more of a regulated, catered and capitalized condition, coded according to the image and interests of power establishments, (online) videogames is a space which is the bastion of freedom for such desires to be expressed - the digital sandcastle. Videogame realms are not addictive solely because some of those games are designed so for the benefit of corporate profit, but because the alternatives of space manipulation, modification and movement are becoming increasingly limited. A theory on that frustrating predicament can be analyzed by looking on the 3 top best-selling games of all time (Sirani, 2019): Tetris (Elektronorgtechnica, 1984), Minecraft and Grand Theft Auto V (Rockstar North, 2013). Tetris, as an action puzzle game, is communicating the physicality of space though virtual gravity and collision on a 2D plane. In this fabricated physical reality, the player is challenged to create a solid continuous structure from falling blocks. It might seem as a game of quick reflexes, but in reality, it is turning the player to a creative expert in developing strategies to complete an unlimited spatial challenge. On the other hand, Grand Theft Auto bases most of its charm on the fact that it allows players to explore an open-world in a chaotic, non-lawful setting by either traveling with an abundant array of vehicles while braking all traffic laws or by simply bringing havoc through weapons and explosives without any regard to social order. A controversial premise in the series which has been scrutinized since the beginning for allowing the expression of frustration in the most destructive, yet physically harmless, manner. Minecraft, however, is encompassing more accurately the current condition of being free to experience virtuality in our own image, especially in younger players. Minecraft is an open- world game in which everything that young and old building enthusiast would wish for; an immense sandbox which has almost double the surface area of planet earth. Minecraft is commonly referred to as digital LEGO but while LEGO blocks are a finite and expensive commodity, Minecraft has little computing requirements therefore it is more accessible since it can be played on computers and mobile devices alike. A Minecraft world can be played alone or with others but in either case, players create their own (community) playgrounds which are

22 More on the issue of power and scale further on

23 the visible form of a system of rules, the architecture which gives space to the player’s performances (Iacovoni, 2004). The gaming commune can create the environments which explicitly reflect its desired or developing identities with detail, scale and movement. Minecraft and indie games23 (sandbox or otherwise) share this common trait: they provide freedom of virtuality through exploration of identity (collective or individual) and the spaces that facilitate them. These digital playgrounds can be seen as an accelerated process of, according to the complex analysis of Simondon, individuation in the digital age. In The Genesis of the Individual he argues that individuation is not a pre-defined principle but a continuous process where the focus is on the stages of the formation of an individual rather the becoming of one. In other words, it is not about the individual but about conditions or events; being through becoming which in turn has nothing to do with how an individual perceives things but rather that those things simply are. The living being resolves its problems not only by adapting itself - which is to say, by modifying its relationship to its milieu (something a machine is equally able to do) - but by modifying itself through the invention of new internal structures and its complete self-insertion into the axiomatic of organic problems. The living individual is a system of individuation, an individuating system and also a system that individuates itself. (Simondon, 1992) Simondon however makes a distinction between psychic and collective individuation. In short, psychic individuation can be interpreted as the stages of change that happen in an individual internally and collective individuation as the process which individuates as a collective unit24. Both types of individuation can be observed in the example of the sandcastle: the willing submission to assimilate to a role other than your own (preindividual) and expressing that through spatial forms is the psychic process - while the selection of roles with specific connotations and forms (power, technology) is the result of a collective process of individuation. The two individuations, psychic and collective, have a reciprocal effect on each other; they allow us to define a transindividual category that might account for the systematic unity of internal individuation (psychic) and external individuation (collective).(Simondon, 1992) While distinct processes with specific fields of relations, psychic and collective individuation operate together at the same time. The act of building a sandcastle wouldn’t come to fruition without both; the “why” (role) and “how” (per-form) of building a sandcastle. This is further supported by Combes:

23 Minecraft was initially released in 2009 during advent of indie games when platforms became common place (2005-2014). At that time, before it became the multimillion enterprise owned by in 2014, it was considered an indie game. 24 “Individuation in its collective aspect make a group individual, one that is associated with the group through the preindividual reality it carries within itself, conjoining it to all other individuals; it individuates as a collective unit”.(Simondon, 1992)

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…the transindividual appears not as that which unifies individual and society, but as a relation interior to the individual (defining its psyche) and a relation exterior to the individual (defining the collective): the transindividual unity of two relations is thus a relation of relations.(Combes, 2013) Following this line of thought, the gaming commune is a process of transindividuation which contains systems of individuation: players, developers, content creators and games as milieus. This is further supported by Crogan, referring to videogames as temporal industrial objects, who describes individuation as the link between the individual and the collective. This challenge to individual and cultural becoming, then, is related to – indeed it coincides with – the challenge to critical thinking of and in the coming digital age. […] Being precisely a dynamic relation between individuals and collectives, individuation is always mediated by specific techniques, technologies and technological systems (online forums, videogames). Individuation rolls on at the always technical and prosthetic nexus of the “and” between individual and collective. (Crogan, 2015) Therefore, the gaming commune as a collective of transindividuals, fosters the creation of evolving game narratives and environments which in turn are themselves systems of transindividuation. The vast diversity of individuation processes of each player or creator is communicated with unprecedented speed on online communication and gaming platforms. Whether we play a game on our own or with friends, play as the experimentation of rules, roles and space, is the nexus between the individual and collective experience. The Minecraft anarchy server 2B2T25 is exemplary on how individuation is affecting radically spatial qualities within the game. The server runs on original game settings without any mods by its administrator and has virtually no rules, no staff, and no chat filters ("2b2t Wiki," 2019) which makes the server a notoriously toxic place for online social interactions. Without going in too much detail about the server’s history, amateur works of architecture have emerged by collective and individual player actions parallel to the development of techniques for creation, defense and destruction of those works. Some of these techniques were never tested or hinted by the game developers such as aircrafts and mass wall-building. Since 2010, the world map is constantly transforming due to the player procedural creation and destruction, resulting in impressive landscapes and mega structures 26 . In such Minecraft communities and similar sandbox/survival games, the game rules instead of being a hindrance or nuisance, become an incentive for individual and collective individuations to develop resulting in dynamic manipulations of space.

25 Abrv. “2Builders2Tools” 26 Such as a massive cube structure and walls whose purpose is to contain the spawn area of new players, who in turn must escape to prove their survival skills.

25

Baltic Street Adventure Playground / Assemble Studio (2014)

Play as a Practice of Commoning Yet what does the parable of sandbox play tell us about the architectural practice? The individuation processes in the practice of architecture, whether in an academic or a professional context, consist of choices, studies and representations of space at a miniature scale. Surely, the practical benefits of working on smaller scale are obvious but it comes with a consequence: Writing, power, and technology are old partners in Western stories of the origin of civilization, but miniaturization has changed our experience of mechanism. Miniaturization has turned out to be about power; small is not so much beautiful as preeminently dangerous, as in cruise missiles. (Haraway, 1985) While Haraway in her segment is referring to the miniaturization of electronic mechanisms, the same thing could be said about architects and the way they experience the mechanism of architectural design, through miniaturized depictions of materials, buildings, landscapes, organisms and their stories. The subjects of these depictions are not experienced on an equal footing with the architect; the architect assumes a position of technical, political and contextual power which is no different from building sandcastles and train dioramas. The architectural process of individuation is based on relative assumptions affected predominantly by scale. The scales in which we study a design matters, and it’s an issue of power relation with the ones affected by that design. A development project which will dislocate local residents becomes keener to the eye when presented through a glossy scale model or fly-by animations on a screen because it offers the opportunity to judge it from a position of power – a giant, a celestial being, a divine entity. Flying miniaturizes everything – architects work consistently in scale or flyby perspectives in BIM and CAD applications; a power trip is unavoidable for they are setting themselves apart in terms of time and space. They rarely, if ever, assimilate the

26 scale, perspectives and speed/movement of the people they design for; they speculate but never become them. The drawings, plans and models are for the clients, exhibitions and publications, not for the ones who will live and use the designed space. The architectural design process, as it is being taught so far, is codified in terms of control and regulation not in terms of experiences and cooperation; the language used to define those who inhabit the space is indicative of that attitude with terms such as client, user, resident being commonplace. This perpetuates a binary between the ones who have technical knowledge and those who don’t. The game commune on the other hand, becomes engaged because it allows itself to experience games from a scale or perspective of a transindividual body, which is their representation of being in a virtual and dynamic environment. Players feel empowered by developing cognitive skills within games and by the availability of tools, technologies and design oversights: they create narratives, form communities, become engineers, researchers, technologists, specialists, record-breakers. It could be argued that the game commune, regardless of the attempts by private practices to regulate and codify how videogames are being made, distributed, played and even presented, manages to appropriate games and their resources (stories, art, technology) as commons, and even better, to purposely preserve and treat them as such. Modding, hacking, indie games, crowdfunding, streaming, content creation are some of the practices that challenge the public/private binary in the same way acts of spatial resistance do as mentioned before. By challenging existing frameworks, such as the public/private binary […], they facilitate the emergence of differentiated forms of social and political subjectivity. It is through the appropriation and management of the commons that latent possibilities within the socio-spatial domain are awakened. But in order to examine commoning practices we need to account not only for what they are and how they are managed, but also for what they can do. (Sohn et al., 2015) The erection of a homeless shack, a treehouse, an abandoned yard or the squatting of a building, while having different grades of impact on the urban code, are disturbing the public/private binary. The mere presence of discarded/scrap materials and unoccupied/derelict spaces as commons, are the elements that awaken the spatial possibilities and promises that humans are attempting to claim through appropriation and management. The moment that commoning practices take place, they are a direct objection to the monopoly of the public/private institutions on spatial virtuality-the creation of worlds. According to Maurizio Lazzarato, capitalism, including public organizations operating within, is not a mode of production but a production of modes. In the societies of control, the aim is no longer to appropriate as in societies of sovereignty, nor to combine and increase the power of the forces as in disciplinary societies27, but to create worlds. […] Capitalism is a mannerism. In

27 As described by Deleuze, a disciplinary society’s purpose is to exert power by regulation, restriction, distribution of space (confinement), time management, engineering of a productive force. Societies of control are replacing disciplinary societies by providing freedom of movement, time and choice for the purpose of collecting information and voluntary subjugation of individuals (Deleuze, 1992).

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societies of control, the alternatives that are open are even more radical and dramatic than those afforded by disciplinary societies (Lazzarato, 2004). Indeed, an occupation of a factory today has less impact than being able to produce similar objects that factory could produce from a 3D printer. While the retail branches will seek other manufacturing sources to satisfy their consumer demand, localized and decentralized production managed by a community hijacks the processes of the free market28. Whether it is games or other digital media29, the appropriation of tools, codes and resources which were initially products of capitalized worlds, have now become the arsenal of commoning practices through the cooperation between minds30. With all that said, a large part of the architectural practice has been an accomplice in the design of capitalized worlds by adhering on the one hand to the codes of disciplinary societies (building regulations and program based on policy) and on the other by promoting opulence in material, scale and form as a criterion to propagate a society of control (gentrification). …it is arguable that private practices (from neoliberal institutions to monopolization) actively confine the virtual. They neutralize the power of invention and creativity; they codify repetition, draining the power of variation and ultimately turning everything into simple reproduction.(Lazzarato, 2004; Sohn et al., 2015) It is therefore pivotal that in the same way that the gaming commune has appropriated the digital commons and adopted commoning practices to create spaces of narrative, empathy and participation, that architects work towards nurturing the emergence of such practices in the built environment. Instead of giving explicit instructions on how commoning can or should be practiced, we should first make available commons visible and accessible, provide communities with the tools and spaces to manage them and lastly give any necessary supervision or knowhow. See it as providing a selection of wooden planks, barrels, rubber tires, ropes, waterproof clothes, hammers and nails to children at a muddy field like in the Baltic Street Adventure Playground in Glasgow by Assemble Studio; playworkers are supervising the children in order to prevent injuries but they are not dictating any design choices. Unique designs of treehouses, castles, pirate ships and bridges emerge because of the availability of common resources and tools with the minimal of training for their proper use and not because of catered, pre-defined forms. Another example is the emergence of hacker and maker spaces over the last decade and a half as proof that there is a need for applying the overflow of interdisciplinary knowledge available in the digital commons in designing permanent and temporal industrial objects. If the codification of the urban space excludes people from applying commoning practices in architecture, it is the architects that should help legitimize these practices by offering technical supervision and handle the (un)necessary bureaucratic procedures for such projects to come to fruition. This doesn’t mean that we should cease to be involved in the design process. Architects can be participants and developers, players and playworkers, gamers and

28 As a mechanism for a society of control. 29 Videogame industry and social media could arguably be seen as means for a society of control since they provide promises or simulations of societal change without direct action or actual consequence. 30 Cooperation between minds expresses a power of co-creation and co-realization which means, in this specific domain (computer software), the capacity of creating and realizing (free) software. (Lazzarato, 2004)

28 game developers at the same time. An architect-developer can define the setting in which the players get acquainted with their abilities, resources, the existence and experiences of all other organisms - while the architect-player is the companion and an active mentor for the player community. Creating platforms for communication, creativity and experimentation, in which the possibilities of digital and physical commons are being examined and managed simultaneously, can be valuable tools in achieving broader participation31.

31 In a personal conversation with Rosi Braidotti, she gave a word of advice regarding the use of video games as a tool for participatory design: Since such media (still) appeal to specific audiences and require specific skills and technological means, it is important to avoid stratification which could leave groups under-represented or not represented at all in such processes such as older generations, less- tech savvy individuals, persons with special needs and animals (Braidotti, 2019).

29

Common’Hood / Plethora Project (expected in 2020-21)

Conclusion In the architectural discourse there is certainly no lack of “characters” and archetypes. When during my bachelor education I was confronted with real-estate and management courses, we were being taught on compartmentalize human users into various classes based not just merely on income but on basis of life goals and agendas; students, starters, young families, empty nesters and so forth. This intricate system of analyzing wishes and translating them into real- estate objects with specific properties which makes sense from a market growth-oriented perspective, is a prerequisite to legitimize a design proposal in our educational setting. An input of financial, spatial and social data that must be translated to architecture. The individual and collective perspectives and frameworks in such a process are diminished because it is rationalized under the linear framework of parties with economic interests. As mentioned in the introduction this is one of the major binary fallacies that the practice of architecture has been facing; designing under the premise of a specific problem-posing position in which the architect must make compromises to produce a working proposal. This is just one example of the systemic complexity yet fragmentation of the architectural practice, in which the human end-user has barely any influence on in comparison with the specialists in construction, finance and politics; a traced, carved process rather than a dynamic map of elements that have equal footing in how they influence each other – a focus on the carving but not the clay. I use the term human user because there is surely no representative voice on the matter by the non-human entities that share the same space32. The built environment is an anthropocentric

32 I consider the term “non-human” problematic and too anthropocentric but in lack of a better term it will be used further for the sake of clarity.

30 term. It comes with the preposition that an environment is built and fit for human needs, with disproportionate balance of satisfaction grades among them. It becomes something separate, mono-functional, serving man’s aggressive acquisition of land and its resources. It is interesting that the term ‘built environment’ differentiates itself from what could as well be called living or natural environment. Modern academic discourse encourages the use of such distinctions narrow down the scope of research but is doubtful if they are really helping us map interactions of all systems with each other. It is the same case with the distinction between the digital and the ‘real’ world, consequently the distinction between video game realities and our own. The way we immerse and interact in digital/game environments is based off our experiences in the physical world but the resulting experimentations and cyber values that are developed within, resonate and affect back to the physical world. Videogames could help in the process of mapping of our one common reality, the common environment; be used as a non-linear time tool of cartography for humans to interact, experiment and create with multiple frameworks at once since each of us, in our concept, expresses or contains the entirety of the world (Smith, 2012). If we can make sense of social systems and generate inclusive or empathic ecologies, values and projects within the field of videogame play and content creation, we could attempt the same in the field of architecture. As stated before, we should not consider humans as a mere categorized input in the design process but an entity that is capable of understanding, questioning and creating themselves the milieu they live in, just like other animals and organisms do. Architects might just as well be projecting their own selves within their creations; expect the users of their architecture to behave and experience in accordance with what they have designed. But just like in games, the events triggered by humans and non-humans when a design is introduced to a milieu is certainly not fully predictable or scripted. Rules and programme will be broken due to societal change or decay, cultural significance will shift or be void, materials and technologies will deteriorate or fail with time, animal (including humans) and plant species will be de- territorialized and new ones will be introduced. A reposition of the role of the architect must take place in order to make themselves and humans aware of each other and everything else within their ecologies by breaking the boundaries of given identities. The philosopher, comparable in this role to the artist, can help in raising awareness of the situation within the technical ensemble, by reflecting it within himself and by expressing it; but, again just as the artist, all he can do is be the one who solicits an intuition in others, once a definite sensitivity has been awakened and allows the grasping of the sense of a real experience. (Simondon, 2017) In that sense, what Simondon suggests is that the architect has to encourage awareness on others in order for them to realize the events and processes that are happening within the ecology in which the architect has been called to design. This also applies in the case of the game designer who seeks to communicate a non-normative experience to the audience. By following this train of thought, architecture is in a way the introduction of a non-normative experience for humans and non-humans alike with spatial properties in the form of a structure that must abide to the rules of physics, human law etc. That structure forces species to adapt and assimilate to a new condition; from humans trying to improve their living conditions while suffering consequences of climate change, to plants and animals which try to survive due to imbalances in biodiversity. This simplified cycle keeps going around with the new conditions

31 being considered for the next spatial intervention. While the same concept can be used to interpret the cycle in the development of videogames which operate in the same environment as in the previous example, there is a key difference: The ability to quantify all the intermediate steps while retaining a great measure of human control and participation over the whole process is what makes the medium of videogames bloom by generating values and projects at a staggering rate. It is the rapid feedback loop towards players and game developers that allows the emergence of new narratives and frameworks to be exposed and to have an impact to the rest of the milieu. There is a space between the individual idea and ideas shared by a collection of individuals that may only be understood through participation (Chalk, 1972). In the practice of architecture even with the best of intentions and effort, such dynamic participatory action is near impossible to be achieved due to extreme specialization in the field, lack of access to tools and materials (geographic and financial barriers) and rules that bar humans and non-humans from even having the opportunity to determine the forms in which they want to live – barriers which players and developers in videogame realms are able to break. In recent years there have been some attempts to utilize videogames in order to quantify and distribute spatial ideas and concepts to the broader public such as the charity project Block by Block. In 2012 Mojang (Minecraft) set up the charity to support the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) in which communities participated in the design process by using Minecraft as a tool to improve living conditions in developing countries. With the supervision of architects and urban planners, participants of all ages could co-design public spaces in a digital modeling environment through play. The results were used to let the organizers understand what the needs of communities were not just as a future programme checklist but as a visual representation of a collective effort that was provided with a design tool. This project proved to be a far more intuitive method of communicating architectural language on an immersive scale to people who haven’t seen a floor plan or a cross section in their lives33. Although if we wish broadly implement such participatory design methods without the time- consuming organization of workshops and meetings, we should be wary of the risk of stratification because there are still issues such as technological illiteracy or lack of access to a computer/smartphone that might exclude large portions of a community. Therefore, not all contact should be conducted on a digital setting and the development of such processes should include as many specialists and representatives as possible from a diverse range of fields of sciences, arts, cultures, local and marginalized groups. Yet more than participatory design, we as architects must investigate participatory making of forms and rules. If our engagements with the public remain in the stage of design, then the risk of stratification remains in the sense that projects will be solely dependent on policy makers and financial institutions to be realized thus cutting off a large portion of communities having a stronger bond with the project and with the milieu around it and with the rest of the living organisms within. Under this pretext, the architect, in cooperation with people from other disciplines, has to have a regular and more permanent presence within a community as a guide throughout the whole process which might not end with the construction of one project, but multiple ones within the same area which benefit ; a circular and dynamic process that creates a bond of trust with communities, especially young people, who can learn to be more keen and participate on issues of design,

33 As seen on the interactions with local communities in the documentary Gaming the Real World (Eklund, 2016)

32 materialization, context, coexistence, sustainability and entropy. Using videogames as a digital aid in this process, participation and understanding of different perspectives and systems existing in the same ecology can accelerate an architecture and urban design of the commons based on living feedback.

References

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