Interpreting Video Games through the Lens of Modernity By A. Braxton Soderman B.A., Vassar College, 1999 M.F.A., California Institute of the Arts, 2002 M.A., Brown University, 2007 A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University Providence, Rhode Island May 2011 © Copyright 2011 by A. Braxton Soderman This dissertation by A. Braxton Soderman is accepted in its present form by the Department of Modern Culture and Media as satisfying the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Date_____________ _________________________________ Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, Advisor Recommended to the Graduate Council Date____________ _________________________________ Mary Ann Doane, Reader Date_____________ _________________________________ Philip Rosen, Reader Approved by the Graduate Council Date_____________ _________________________________ Peter M. Weber, Dean of the Graduate School iii CURICULUM VITAE A. Braxton Soderman was born in Minneapolis, MN in 1977. He graduated from Vassar with a B.A. in Philosophy in 1999, received an M.F.A. in Critical Writing from California Institute of the Arts in 2003, and an M.A. in Modern Culture and Media from Brown University in 2007. In the Spring of 2008 he taught the course ―Code, Software, and Serious Games‖ in the Modern Culture and Media Department at Brown University. In 2009 he was awarded an Andrew W. Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowship, and in 2010, an Andrew W. Mellon/ACLS Recent Doctoral Recipient Fellowship. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I owe my deepest gratitude to my advisor and mentor Wendy Chun. Her confidence in my project, her continuous support, and her generous ideas and sharp suggestions have motivated all the pages that follow. No algorithm could be written to measure the dominion of her influence. Likewise, the insights and creative acumen of my readers, Mary Ann Doane and Philip Rosen, have been indispensible for my thought. I cannot express in proper words how much the entire dissertation is marked by the influence and considerate patience of all my dissertation advisors. If theoretical and critical thinking is a ―serious game‖ then they have taught me how to play with as much grace and creativity as I could muster. In addition, this dissertation emerges from the energetic terrain of Brown University where the level of intellectual sophistication and the bountiful friendship of the community touch all who study therein. Many thanks for the rich conversations, unending assistance, and friendship from Erika Balsom, David Bering-Porter, Genie Brinkema, John Cayley, Yuri Furuhata, Josh Guilford, Liza Hebert, Daniel Howe, Lynne Joyrich, Justin Katko, Julie Levin-Russo, Richard Manning, Susan McNeil, Pooja Rangan, Ellen Rooney, Paige Sarlin, Michael Siegel, Marc Steinberg, Matt Tierney, and Mark Tribe. I must also mention that this dissertation was completed through the generous support of an Andrew W. Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion v Fellowship; this award was indispensible for providing ample time for research and reflection. Then there are those that one cannot thank enough because they are always there, the trellis of our lives as we climb, supporting us at every criss-crossing juncture of decision. Thus, to my family, ―Thank you!‖ Finally, this dissertation would have been impossible to write without the help of Roxanne Carter. If family is the trellis, she becomes the flowers that grow there. At every juncture she has gardened out the errors and planted new ideas to grow: when the ideas that follow wither it is because I have failed to give them enough sun, but if there are blossoms to be found then it was in her hands that they first found cultivation. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction 1-67 The Discourse and Subject of Flow in Video Games 68-181 For Time Flows On: Innovation and Opposition in Video Games 182-289 Flo and Diner Dash: Killing Time, Gender, and the Woman Who Waits 290-381 Escaping Into the Clouds: Interactive Space in Games 382-439 Epilogue 440-448 Works Cited 449-463 vii ILLUSTRATIONS Figures Introduction 1. Empty Brain 2. Fluid 3. Emptied 4. Injected 5. Monochrome world 6. The kitchen 7. Driving to work 8. The graveyard 9. Jump 10. The final scene 11. Approaching the cubicle one 12. Approaching the cubicle two 13. Approaching the cubicle three viii 14. Arrival at work 15. Tuboflex, Looking out the window 16. Tuboflex, Looking at the clock Chapter One 1. flOw title screen 2. flOw for PlayStation 3 3. A simple theoretical model of flow. 4. A ―wider‖ flow channel provided for different skilled players 5. Traffic Light 6. Understated 7. Spectacular 9. ―Camera Food‖ screenshot Chapter Two 1. Rule changes from dramatic to epic theater 2. untitled game, Section ―Ctrl-9‖ 3. Wait, A field of grass 4. Wait, Trees 5. We the Giants 6. This is the Only Level, Stage 1 7. This is the Only Level, Stage 7 ix 8. Tower of Goo 9. Examples of different structures 10. ―Product Z‖ Advertisement 11. Windfall: the Oil Crisis Game Title screen 12. Revolution 13. Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon 14. Braid title screen 15. Braid 16. Braid Chapter Three 1. Hardcore Vs. Casual Gamer 2. Diner Dash 3. Gameplay elements in Diner Dash 4. Flo flees a stressful office job 5. Flo exclaims, ―I gotta lose these guys!!‖ 6. Flo's revelation 7. Flo's expressions one 8. Flo's expressions two 9. Flo's expressions three 10. Flo meets the goddess 11 Flo‘s transformation x 12 Nirvana 13. Final narrative cut-scene Chapter Four 1. Spirit clouds 2. Towers and Clouds 3. Flo's Cloud 4. Office Windows 5. Empty Sky 6. Window of escape 7. Cloud Title screen 8. Hospital bed 9. Zoom in or out 10. Zoom in or out 11. Drawing figures 12. Company logo 13. A reconstruction of Brunelleschi‘s first experiment 14. Rectilinear and Curvilinear perspective for clouds 13. Drawing figure 14. Rendered as clouds 15. Rendered as balls 16. Rendered as points xi 17. Viewer‘s perspective 18. Super Mario Cloud 19. Coin heaven 20. Spacewar! 21. Cloud Art 22. Epilogue Cloud 23. Hand on the Wall 24. ―Abstract painting of a hand I presume..." 25. The machine and user connecting Epilogue 1. Tuboflex, Working the phones 2. Tuboflex, Looking out the window 3. Tuboflex, Looking at the player xii INTRODUCTION Interpreting Video Games through the Lens of Modernity is, as any title should be, strategic. It should strike many readers as anachronistic, with the medium of video games mentioned within the same breath as the period of modernity. Is not such a move a simple mistake in proper dating, placing the emergence of video games too early in the chronology of technical media and their development, an anachronism or a computational error concerning time? And also, does not the title place the idea of modernity in relation to a time which is too late, a parachronism as it's called? Has not the period of modernity been superseded by postmodernity, and would not video games find a more comfortable home within the suburban neighborhood of postmodernity, their obvious contemporary milieu? After all, video games and theories of postmodernity have grown up together over the last forty or so years. On the one hand, the title situates the dissertation within the general idea that the forces of modernity have not been completely superseded by a new historical rupture called postmodernity. This is hardly a startling suggestion given the multiple theorists who have suggested that the term postmodernity should be replaced by concepts such as supermodernity (Augé), second modernity (Beck), reflexive modernity (Giddens, Lash), radicalized modernity (Giddens), liquid modernity (Bauman), and hypermodernity (Lipovetsky). All of these terms implicitly suggest that something has 1 indeed changed in modernity, that the forces which drove the original emergence of modernity—industrialization, capitalism, urbanization, the waning of religious belief, the acceleration of technical development, the arrival of technical media, etc.—have shifted giving rise to new social formations, political realities, economic relations and indeed, new media forms as well. Instead of asserting that these changes create a radical break with modernity and also aesthetic modernism, the current mutations and transitions must be thought as linked to older, historical problems. Hence, the term ―postmodernity‖ contains the term ―modernity‖ as its most immediate referent; hence, the theoretical alternatives to the concept of postmodernity listed above all reference modernity as the site of mutation. Even a theorist such as Fredric Jameson—who embraces the names postmodernity and postmodernism as concepts that seek to name the current historical situation—establishes a historical trajectory where the mutations of postmodernity are seen as a radical furthering of historical developments, specifically as extensions and transformations of capitalist modernity. Transformation is a key word here. By no means do I disagree with the idea that transformations are occurring. Indeed, the term ―modernity‖ in the title of this dissertation is not intended to mark a period of time that ended somewhere in the 1960s or 1970s, but to encompass both its historical aspects—vaguely positioned in the nineteenth century with the rise of capitalist industrialization and also technical media forms—and its contemporary transformations. Within these transformations one can expect problems and issues associated with historical modernity and aesthetic modernism to ―live on,‖ to repeat (though perhaps with a difference), to become micromodernities flowing within the 2 macro-current of contemporary society (or first modernities embedded in the transformations of a second modernity, or solid modernities that continue into liquid modernity, etc.). On the other hand, the invocation of video games beside the term modernity is also meant to trouble the academic discipline of video games studies, suggesting that larger historical frameworks of analysis can benefit our understanding of the video game form while also suggesting that video games themselves can be seen as particular aesthetic crystallizations that inform us about current cultural transformations.