i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i Herlander Elias First Person Shooter The Subjective Cyberspace LabCom Books 2009 i i i i i i i i CREDITS Publishing House: LabCom Books Covilhã, Portugal, 2009 www.livroslabcom.ubi.pt Communication Studies Series Director: António Fidalgo Cover Design: Herlander Elias (Layout) Translation: Pedro Guilherme, Catherine Hshin & Herlander Elias Desktop Publishing: Marco Oliveira Legal Deposit number: 294384/09 ISBN: 978-989-654-019-7 Title: First Person Shooter: The Subjective Cyberspace Copyright c Herlander Elias, Author, 2009 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Herlander Elias. c Videogame Image Credits: From the videogame Mirror’s Edge TM (2008) developed by Swedish DICE, an EA (Electronic Arts) studio, for PlayStation 3TM. Used with permission. All rights reserved to DICE and EA. Thanks to Jenny Huldschiner at DICE, Sweden. i i i i i i i i Dedicated to... Júlio Semião Elias, My father iii i i i i i i i i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Marisa Alexandra Elias, Júlio Semião Elias, Rui Aguadeiro, David Gorjão Silva, António Fernando Cascais, Mónica Miranda, Gisela Gonçalves, Erik Davis, Miltos Manetas, Palle Torsson, Tobias Bernstrup, Marc Laidlaw, Fer- nando Poeiras, Mário Caeiro, Orlando Salvador, Sónia Alves, Catarina Ruivo, Catarina Campino, Jorge Martins Rosa, Óscar Mealha, Anabela Gradim, Paulo Faustino, Paulo Ferreira, Amélia Sousa, Paulo Serra, António Fidalgo, José A. Bragança de Miranda, Ivan Pinheiro, Graça Maria Simões, Nuno Rodri- gues, Sónia Silvestre, SCEP-PlaysStation, Sandra Páscoa, Vanda Rosário, Revista MediaXXI (Formal Press), Revista Dance Club, Manuel Valente Al- ves, Nina Szilasko, Francisco Merino, Luís Nogueira, Rita (CECL, FCSH- UNL), Alberto-de-Alvim Costa, Fernando Sobral, Pamela Grant-Ryan, Ni- cholas Cronbach, Guilherme Pires, Jenny Huldschiner (DICE, Sweden), Laura Santinhos (EA, Portugal) and Marco Oliveira. iv i i i i i i i i Contents FOREWORD1 INTRODUCTION3 AUTHOR’S NOTE: MIRROR’S EDGE5 1 THE CONCEPT OF FPS9 1.1 WHAT IS A FPS?........................9 1.2 IN YOUR FACE........................ 19 1.3 THE SCREEN AS MASK................... 24 1.4 SUBJECTIVE SHOOTER................... 26 1.5 GRAPHIC ENGINE...................... 29 1.6 A REAL VIRTUALITY.................... 33 1.7 THE TARGET-IMAGE..................... 36 1.8 PERSPECTIVE DEVICE.................... 41 1.9 TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE................ 44 1.10 NEW CULTURE, NEW GAMING............... 48 2 INSIDE CYBERSPACE 53 2.1 SLICED REALITY....................... 53 2.2 CYBERSPACE – A VEHICULATION SPACE........ 57 2.3 TRON: THE ELECTRONIC WORLD............. 60 2.4 UNCHARTED TERRITORY?................. 63 2.5 ART OF HUNTING...................... 68 2.6 THE CINEMATIC EXPERIENCE............... 72 2.7 MEDIUM CONFIGURATIONS................ 79 v i i i i i i i i 2.8 TYPOGRAPHY AND TOPOGRAPHY: BEYOND CHAT.. 81 2.9 THE MATRIX – A SUBJECTIVE LANDSCAPE....... 88 3 MACHINE-SUBJECTIVITY 93 3.1 THE TRAJECTIVE SUBJECT................. 93 3.2 SYNTHESPIANS........................ 97 3.3 SUBSTITUTE SUBJECTIVITY................ 101 3.4 SHARED IDENTITY...................... 105 3.5 FELLOW PATRIOTS: CAPTURE THE FLAG!........ 108 3.6 ALTERNATIVE FIRST PERSON............... 111 3.7 MULTIPLAYER – MULTIPLE SUBJECTIVITY....... 115 3.8 NEW COMMUNITIES..................... 120 3.9 DANGEROUS NETWORKS.................. 122 4 CONCLUSION 127 GLOSSARY 131 AFTERWORD 141 BIBLIOGRAPHY 143 VIDEOGRAPHY 159 FILMOGRAPHY 163 CHRONOLOGICAL APPENDIX 165 vi i i i i i i i i "Virtual reality enacts a subjective, point-of-view aesthetic that our culture has come to associate with new media in general". Bolter, Jay David & Gruisin, Richard, Remediation: Understanding New Media "Videogames weren’t just iconic bits of plastic. They were more like music. They were a mental state". Herz, J.C., Joystick Nation i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i FOREWORD In the still scarce essayistic literature on videogames, the current study by Herlander Elias cannot be otherwise than an unavoidable reference in the Por- tuguese background. This importance is due to this study’s subject being a specific sub genre in videogames – the First Person Shooter – about which, as far as one knows, this endeavor is unprecedented. If the field of Ludology is still taking its first steps, Herlander Elias has gained a foothold in it, with a career that, although commenced by collaborating on publications directed to videogames, is being consolidated by merging with higher scientific research. In a theoretically well informed fashion, where names such as Marshall McLuhan, Jean Baudrillard, Paul Virilio, Lev Manovich, Espen Aarseth, David Bolter and Ricard Gruisin, Howard Rheingold, Mark Dery, Claudia Gianetti, Katherine Hayles, Derrick de Kerckhove, Michael Heim, Nicholas Negro- ponte and Sherry Turkle echo, the author provides us with a very intuitive summary of the critical reflections on technological devices and the research on the changes performed on subjectivity by communication technologies. However, this work does not display the features usually related to the results of academic research. Nevertheless, First Person Shooter – The Sub- jective Cyberspace fits in a more vast process of opening of the Portuguese University to the contemporary world, where the creation of tools to under- stand reality and the action within it is at stake. This will mean appropriating and incorporating, as cognitive sources, languages and images belonging to contexts strange to the academic framework, having those at least – besides being a means of performing empirical questioning – the merit of dusting and airing the ponderous academic jargon. On the other hand, this book plays a valuable role on making publicly available and shedding some light on a language still significantly cryptic for not only the public in general, but also 1 i i i i i i i i 2 First Person Shooter: The Subjective Cyberspace for academic readers, to whom it is as unfamiliar as swift is the inexorable evolution of computer technologies and the cyberculture coupled with them. It is not accidental that Communication Sciences, under whose wing Her- lander Elias’ work is taken, constitute an epistemological culture set apart from Humanities and play an eminent role on mediating the latter and tech- nological sciences. One has to comprehend this study within the scope of re- flecting upon modern techniques and, particularly, communication sciences. It must be pointed out that these reflections have been undertaken in the sphere of Communication Sciences, achieving patterns of excellence unparalleled in any other field of knowledge. It may be said that they are in a privileged position in order to do so thanks to their being close to communication tech- nologies, which would, in this situation, constitute a challenge not to be left unanswered. Although true, this assertion’s being taken into consideration without further views would only lessen Communication Sciences. In their aforementioned reflection, they resort, indeed, to conceptual instruments fre- quently drawn from many other fields, although providing them with unprece- dented developments along with the original theoretical tools, which will, in turn, stimulate the thought on modern technoscience, as well as the research on socio-techniques that have been developed, respectively in Philosophy and Sociology. Whatever is to be written in the field of Ludology will also have to come through here. António Fernando Cascais, Ph.D. Professor of the Communication Sciences Department of FCSH-UNL Lisbon, Portugal www.labcom.pt i i i i i i i i INTRODUCTION The present goal in the making of this essay is to explain the First Person Shooter concept in the frame of an image theory. By beginning to assume that Virtual Reality failed as a project mostly related to the HMD (Head-Mounted Display) and the DataGlove, but not just like that, I try to make clear how the First Person Shooter is the kind of videogame that rescues the project of the Virtual with a dynamic of its own, even though it is usually experienced through screens. Crossing science-fiction and electronic image theory, as well as the cri- tique on the language of new media, in this essay I explain the foundation of the project of the Virtual that has as its aegis the FPS. As a consequence of this conceptual part I carry on to relate it to questions associated with technolog- ical change and subjectivity. The first chapter is focused on the First Person Shooter concept, as the second chapter requires revealing how the science- fiction project surrounding the “cyberspace” is mirrored in the creation of the First Person Shooter. In the third chapter, at last, the objective is to show the implications on subjectivity for real; to expose what is implicit in the way the subject is related to these subjective images of the FPS cyberspace. The path explored in this essay is the one of making the reader famil- iar with terms as “cyberspace”, “virtual reality” and the “trajective subject”, among others. Present in this entire monograph is a certain critique to the graphical reformation that the FPS is able to implement in the electronic lu- dic image. In order to elucidate the reader in the best way I explain the military origin and the warfare nature of the FPS images, as well as its relation with typography (in the form of text) and topography, film and sculpture. Under- standing the First Person Shooter is to experience in a certain way its subjec- tive cyberspace, it is to accept the entrance in the trap of the virtual, that au- 3 i i i i i i i i 4 First Person Shooter: The Subjective Cyberspace thors like Atkins (2003) mention as being an “entrapment” phenomenon. One attends to a programmed ambush inside the subjective cyberspace of the FPS, designed to test the skills of the user-player; the game has challenges, dilem- mas and demands an exploration and evasive behavior; a “flânerie” rethinked by the next-generation graphic system.