UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE Gamic Race: Logics of Difference in Videogame Culture A Dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English by Tanner Matthew Higgin September 2012 Dissertation Committee: Dr. James Tobias, Chairperson Dr. Keith Harris Dr. Toby Miller Dr. Lisa Nakamura Copyright by Tanner Matthew Higgin 2012 The Dissertation of Tanner Matthew Higgin is approved: ___________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________ Committee Chairperson University of California, Riverside ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Scott Juengel inspired my career. James Tobias is the smartest person I know. Lisa Nakamura made it all possible, and has shown me extraordinary grace and generosity. Toby Miller taught me to do something that mattered, and Lindon Barrett clarified for me what that was. Keith Harris gave me confidence, showed me how to run a seminar, and gifted me part of my critical framework. Carol Anne Tyler taught me how to really write. Zach Whalen and Laurie N. Taylor ushered me into the game. My #transformDH crew (Anne Cong-Huyen, Anna Everett, Melanie Kohnen, Alexis Lothian, Amanda Phillips, Martina Rivera Monclova, and all who bear the flag) has helped me stay in the game. David Theo Goldberg and the University of California Humanities Research Institute has awarded me extraordinary opportunities on two occasions. Anne Balsamo organized one of those and Heather Horst the other. The introduction to this project and the concept of displaced racialization was productively shaped by my colleagues, especially Tom Boellstorff, at the Digital Media and Learning Summer Institute 2011. Irene Chien's dissertation work has pushed me along, and so has Edmund Chang's. André Brock, Tom Apperley, Nina Huntemann, and Matthew Thomas Payne have all been there in the late stages giving me publication opportunities and/or words of encouragement and support. My students challenged me. Tina Feldmann answered every question warmly. Dr. Ng got me healthy and writing. Mom encouraged me to be bold, creative, and risky. Courtney is iv my sister in arms. My writing has been supported by fellowships from the University of California via a Dissertation Year Fellowship and a Graduate Humanities Fellowship. Portions of this research have been presented at the following conferences: International Digital Media and Arts Association, Society for Cinema and Media Studies, (dis)junctions, University of California Institute for Research in the Arts, Modern Language Association, Games, Learning and Society, and Digital Media and Learning. An earlier version of chapter three was originally published in Games and Culture. Much of this work has also existed in various bits and pieces on my blog at www.tannerhiggin.com and has benefitted from blog comments (even the trolls) and conversations on Twitter. Finally, this dissertation intersected with a period of personal darkness. To those struggling, I hope this project's completion provides some small illustration of a way forward. And to Dad, Chris, Sarah, Luna, and Laurel: you helped me realize that more than anything I needed to be a being beyond myself. v ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Gamic Race: Logics of Difference in Videogame Culture by Tanner Matthew Higgin Doctor of Philosophy, Graduate Program in English University of California, Riverside, September 2012 Dr. James Tobias, Chairperson Gamic Race: Logics of Difference in Videogame Culture makes race central to the study of videogames and videogame cultures. The project emphasizes the need for critical race theory in game studies to understand how race is informed and reshaped by the logics of gameplay resulting in the multi-layered, politically complex, and agile concept of gamic race. Displaced racialization, the project's other key concept, revises former studies of race in digital media that focus predominantly on representation, shifting interest to racialization occurring alongside or beyond bodies within game code and player experience. Moving along this trajectory, the first three chapters of Gamic Race explore different layers of gamic race and its formulation through displaced racialization: spatial, technologic, and discursive. The final chapter attempts to put theory into practice via an analysis of racially inflammatory raids of virtual worlds by users of the popular message board 4chan. These raids serve as a compelling but flawed model for future vi progressive performative interventions in gamespace. The conclusion considers how to progressively transform videogame design by placing African American expressive traditions, indie games, ethics, philosophy, and the interaction design of Erik Loyer in conversation. It's within this nexus that the project ends, gesturing toward a future paradigm of interaction and aesthetics within videogames that handles difference productively, and does not rely solely on strategies of visual inclusion. vii Table of Contents Introduction . 1 Chapter One: Spatial . 35 Chapter Two: Technologic . 82 Chapter Three: Discursive . 129 Chapter Four: Performative Play . 171 Conclusion: A New Grammar . 218 Bibliography . 248 Appendix A: Creative Commons . 267 viii List of Figures Chapter One: Spatial Figure 1.1 35 Zork map from Infocom InvisiClues booklet. Figure 1.2 40 Dust overhead map created by a player for strategic planning. CS, however, is played in 3D space from a first person perspective. Figure 1.3 44 No Mercy introduction level map. Ferrari has identified the most efficient path making an 'S' shape through the level. Alternate paths that are less successful deviate. Image Courtesy of Simon Ferrari Figure 1.4 47 Screenshot from Resident Evil 5 trailer. Figure 1.5 73 John Marston with a member of the 1911 Gang is his Gatling Gun cross-hairs. ix List of Figures Contd. Chapter Two: Technologic Figure 2.1 84 Portraits made by Du Bois for The Health and Physique of the Negro American. Figure 2.2 84 Excerpt from Part Asian, 100% Hapa. Figure 2.3 109 Creating a character in The Black Onyx. Figure 2.4 114 Sony Home avatar, Microsoft Xbox Live avatar, and Nintendo Mii (from left to right). Figure 2.5 117 Excerpt from “How to Spot a Jap.” Figure 2.6 118 Excerpt from “How to Tell Japs from the Chinese.” Figure 2.7 124 Image included with Microsoft press kit for the Kinect. Figure 2.8 124 Selecting a nose within Microsoft Xbox 360's avatar creation system. Figure 2.9 126 This is the first screen displayed when someone elects to modify his/her avatar. x List of Figures Contd. Chapter Three: Discursive Figure 3.1 142 Sheet music cover from 1834 for “Zip Coon, a Favorite Comic Song” by G.W. Dixon. Figure 3.2 143 Leeroy Jenkins Trading Card. Figure 3.3 153 Erudite character models from EverQuest. Figure 3.4 156 Erudite character model from EverQuest II. Figure 3.5 166 Player in World of Warcraft with a brown skinned avatar and the name “Blackcawk.” xi List of Figures Contd. Chapter Four: Performative Play Figure 4.1 172 Black avatars gather for a raid on Stormwind in World of Warcraft. Figure 4.2 173 "Motivational" style graphic created using a 4chan thread and found posted on /b/. Figure 4.3 175 Initial call to arms on /b/ for a raid of WOW on August 3, 2010. Text reads: “Everyone who plays wow US side log on to Earthen Ring RP server, and make a black Human male with any sort of racist name. THEN run your nigger ass to SW and go in between old town and the trade district and jump in the canals and drown yourself. Eventually it will be a giant pool of dead niggers if enough of us do it.” Figure 4.4 177 “Motivational” style image created by an anon to commemorate August 3, 2010 raid. Figure 4.5 177 August 3, 2010 WOW raid passing through Westfall. Figure 4.6 178 Player named “Nappyhair” with guild tag “Don't Lynch Me” participating in the August 3, 2010 WOW raid. Figure 4.7 179 August 3, 2010 WOW raid boat ride. xii List of Figures Contd. Figure 4.8 193 /b/lackup raid of WOW auction house in Stormwind. Figure 4.9 196 YouTube discussion of a video (now removed) taken during August 3, 2010 raid. Figure 4.10 198 /b/ raid on Habbo Hotel blocking access to the pool with a swastika. Figure 4.11 200 Anons in the Stormwind throne room during the August 3, 2010 raid. xiii List of Figures Contd. Conclusion: A New Grammar Figure 5.1 222 Player performing a loud chirp in Journey. Figure 5.2 231 Passage. Figure 5.3 237 The crucial moment of gravity reversal after the seven screen ascent and just before the seven screen descent. Figure 5.4 244 Ruben & Lullaby. xiv INTRODUCTION Cut-scenes 1982 It begins on the shaggy tan carpet of my living room in front of a wood paneled television flickering the image of a game I later find out is called Missile Command. My hands grip the rubber of the joystick and click it violently left and right, smashing the big concave red buttons in a vain attempt to stop the onslaught of lightning bolts sent from some undefined elsewhere. The bolts accumulate and splatter across the ground in fuzzy blasts of sound and flashes of light. Some time later during a street hockey game my next door neighbor peaks my curiosity when he, in a cartoonish Japanese accent, playfully raps the line “I drop bombs like Hiroshima." Years pass, and I see a documentary about the aftermath of those bombs. Scarred bodies register the violence of those flashes of light. 1987 Then I am a squat little character with a big mustache, overalls, and a cap hop hopping with sonic joy on mushrooms and turtles. Somehow this all makes sense. My character's iconography is other yet familiar and made more so in issues of the Nintendo fan club 1 magazine, via a television show with Captain Lou Albano, and through a movie I try to forget.