TOM APPERLEY GAMING RHYTHMS: PLAY AND COUNTERPLAY FROM THE SITUATED TO THE GLOBAL A SERIES OF READERS PUBLISHED BY THE INSTITUTE OF NETWORK CULTURES ISSUE NO.: 6 TOM APPERLEY GAMING RHYTHMS: PLAY AND COUNTERPLAY FROM THE SITUATED TO THE GLOBAL Theory on Demand #6 Gaming Rhythms: Play and Counterplay from the Situated to the Global Author: Thomas Apperley Design: Katja van Stiphout DTP: Margreet Riphagen Printer: ‘Print on Demand’ Publisher: Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam 2010 ISBN: 978-90-816021-1-2 Contact Institute of Network Cultures phone: +3120 5951863 fax: +3120 5951840 email: [email protected] web: http://www.networkcultures.org This publication is available through various print on demand services. For more information, and a freely downloadable pdf: http://networkcultures.org/theoryondemand. This publication is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial No Derivative Works 3.0 Netherlands License. No article in this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means without permission in writing from the author. GAMING RHYTHMS 3 For Raina J. León 4 THEORY ON DEMAND CONTENTS Acknowledgements 6 Introduction 7 Chapter One - Digital Game Ecologies 11 Mapping the Digital Game Ecology 12 Media Ecologies 13 Interactive Circuits 14 Global Industry? 16 Gaming and Everyday Life 18 Rhythmanalysis 19 Resonances 21 Rhythms of Control 23 Cybernetic Subjectivity 23 Allegories for the Control Society 25 From Protocol to Algorithm 27 Conclusion 28 Chapter Two - Bodies, Computers and Other Aggregations 34 Situated Gaming 35 The Gaming Body 36 Ambiguous Rhythms: Training and Practice 41 Compulsions 43 Adaptations 44 Dressage 47 Conclusion 48 Chapter Three - Situated Ecologies 53 Method 53 Background 55 Cybercafé Avila 57 Cydus 62 Conclusion 65 Chapter Four - The Social Milieu 67 Cyclic Rhythms 67 Offline Sociality 70 Learning to Play 74 Cheating 78 Conclusion 81 GAMING RHYTHMS 5 Chapter Five - Local Rhythms, Global Rhythms 84 Imagining Miami: From Caracas to Vice City 84 GunBound and Global Rhythms 89 Real Time Rhythms 95 Conclusion 99 Chapter Six - Segues: Play Rhythms/Work Rhythms 101 Counterplay 102 The Creative Industries 103 ‘Serious’ Games 105 Digital Game Art 109 Conclusion 113 Chapter Seven - Blockages: Censorship. Piracy, and Participatory Culture 117 Censorship 117 Mercenaries 2: World in Flames 118 Escape from Woomera 119 Piracy 121 Global Participatory Culture 124 Digital Games and Knowledge Economies 124 Productive Consumption and Citizenship 127 Conclusion 129 Chapter Eight - Counterplay and Algorithmic Culture 132 Counterplay Practices 134 Configurative Resonances 136 ‘Exploits’ 138 Playing the Margins 140 Conclusion 144 Conclusion 147 Works Cited 149 Art Works Cited 163 Digital Games Cited 164 Media Cited 168 6 THEORY ON DEMAND Acknowledgements There are many people to thank for helping me over the years that it took me to write this book. It could never have happened without the generous people who supported me in both my pro- fessional and private life. Thanks to my family in New Zealand: Jane Apperley, Mark Apperley, Bella Hannah, Felix Hannah, Kate Hannah, Lane Hannah, Zoe Hannah, Samir Lee, Wendy Lee, and especially my grandmother Enfys McKenzie. My friends in Venezuela also deserve a special mention. I could not have done the most important part of this project without your support. Muchas gracias: Susana Mendez, Hector Hannibal Rattia, Pavel Rojas, and Javier Saavedra. To my colleagues, thank you for your friendship, guidance and wisdom—Justin Clemens, Sean Cu- bitt, Michael Dieter, Nicole Heber, Darshana Jayemanne, Kyle Kontour, Umi Manickam-Khattab, Christian McCrea, Bjorn Nansen, Nathaniel Tkacz, and Christopher S. Walsh—this book would not exist without your helpful advice and encouragement. Thanks also to my students at the University of Melbourne, University of New England, and Victoria University, particularly: Phillip Anderson, Sindre Buchanan, Jun Shen Chia, Djorde Dikic, Adrien Husson, Rachel Law, Diego Leon, Dale Leorke, Andy McPherson, Archana Prasanna Kumar, Jia Wei Ng, Elizabeth Redman and Kathryn Sullivan. More than anyone, they have been the collective victims of my interest in digital games. Thanks also to Geert Lovink and Margreet Riphagen at the Institute of Network Cultures in Amsterdam for generously allowing me this opportunity. Finally, thank you to Scott McQuire for his helpful, inspiring, and kind mentorship. This research was made financially possible through an Australian Postgraduate Award, and travel and fieldwork grants from the Faculty of Arts at the University of Melbourne. GAMING RHYTHMS 7 INTRODUCTION The word ‘digital games’ evokes an immense repertoire of possibilities. It is difficult to provide an exhaustive list of the hardware, the software, the people who play them and the spaces where they are played. Beyond this, there is a vast amount of materials that are ancillary to actual play— in the form of after action reports, FAQs, guides, walkthroughs, and wikis (to name a few). Digital games are ubiquitous, promoted as a technology for the whole family by wholesome stars like America Ferrara, Nicole Kidman, and Beyoncé Knowles. Negative accounts also abound; every time there is a school massacre journalists race to pin the crime on one game or another. The mainstream press and media industries have a rather two-dimensional approach to digital games: horror stories about addiction, isolation, obesity, and violence; or excitement over the latest in- novation Blu-ray, iPod apps, Project Natal, and such. An audience does exist who are willing to understand gaming in a more ‘culturally’ sophisticated way, demonstrated by examples such as the Canadian cult television series JPod—based on the novel by Douglas Copeland—and the cult ‘stoner’ film Grandma’s Boy produced by Adam Sandler, which both parody the banality of labor in the digital games industry. Although usually digital games are not dealt with sophisticatedly, for example Reign Over Me uses the digital game Shadow of the Colossus as a metaphor for isola- tion felt by the main protagonist. Prone to locking himself away for marathon gaming sessions in order to block out the grief over losing his family, we know that when at the end of the film Charlie Fineman (Adam Sandler) starts playing the game with others that he finally is recovering. But despite the growing preeminence of digital games in the media—and in culture more generally— there remains a sense of unease. Beneath the hype about the latest game technology are con- cerns: what are digital games are doing to us (or even worse to the children)? A concern that this book will argue should be supplemented by: what are people doing to—and with—digital games? This book is about digital games, the people who play digital games, and how they play them. This poses a large problem: even when discussing one game, each instance of play is different. Combine this with the thousands of digital games, and the millions of players, and it is apparent that the number of individual instances of game play is unfathomably large. What these instantia- tions do have in common is that they are enacted locally. There are many variables involved in establishing the local—which is always a contested and shifting site—experience of digital game play: drink, food, friends, hardware, light, mobile phones, music, and software. The mundane real- ity of classes, commitments, deadlines, homework, internet bills, sleep, and work, must also be negotiated. This book aims to demonstrate the significance of nexus of the everyday and the lo- cal instantiation of game play as starting point for concept building in the study of digital games. Through case studies of two internet cafés, in Melbourne, Australia and Caracas, Venezuela, this project demonstrates how useful and generalizable concepts can be developed from understand- ing digital games as they are played. The specific localized experience of play can be connected to a global experience of digital game play, which ameliorates, exacerbates, and rescales the unease about the dynamic between games and players. The concept of rhythm—via Henri Lefebvre’s Rhythmanalysis: Time, Space and Everyday Life— provides the tool for examining the negotiations between rhythms in the local instantiation of 8 THEORY ON DEMAND digital game play, and for scaling the rhythms at the local level through tracing their connections to global rhythms.1 The multiple manifestations of digital game software provide a flexible, poly- rhythmic repertoire of possible games (and experiences within games), that intersect with the everyday rhythms of the location. In the context of everyday life the local rhythms intersect with and enact the global through a process of adaptation, configuration and harmonization on the part of the players. Positioning digital game play in everyday life is significant. Play is not a rupture, and digital games should not be understood as fantastic, virtual experiences but as embedded and situated in the material and mundane everyday. This is illustrated by the normalcy of digital games in contem- porary computerized, networked life: they are used to advocate, educate, proselytize, and train. More importantly, they are regarded as a pathway into intangible forms of knowledge—collective, creative, procedural, systemic—that are essential for post-industrial labor. The rhythms of digital games are not just playful, they insinuate themselves into the necessities and compulsions of everyday life.