Thesis - 3/4 draft
OK, so I sat down last week and churned out a VERY ROUGH first draft. This is where I think I’m going with this thesis. Feel free to download it and read through it and post any comments or feedback that you think might be useful (not that there are any “you” who read this thing)
This is mostly just an emergency dump in case my hard disk dies or something goes horribly wrong - I havn’t even spell checked this version yet so don’t expect much 
Thesis update
OK, so the thesis has been struggling from lack of, well, anything
I got distracted and the thesis was the first thing to suffer. I am going to make a concerted effort to churn out a very very rough first draft next week.
Watch this space
The Insight of the Computer Game
How insights give people (not “cause”, perhaps allow?) a certain view on an event - sometimes more indepth, sometimes more biased, but always limited.
Let me delve for a second into a post just on a building block of my thesis - insights.
I think people would call this a meme - a basic building block of cultural knowledge:
A meme, (IPA: [mi:m]) as defined within memetic theory, comprises a unit of cultural information, the building block of cultural evolution or diffusion that propagates from one mind to another analogously to the way in which a gene propagates from one organism to another as a unit of genetic information and of biological evolution. Multiple memes may propagate as cooperative groups called memeplexes (meme complexes).
(ahhhh Wikipedia)
However, Rather than use the less common term of meme and all the explanatory extras that it might carry (the “discourse” which surrounds memes) that I dont understand and might mistakenly add to my argument, I am going to borrow a plain English word from commentry at Manifesto Games on Super Columbine Massacre RPG:
And a game such as Super Columbine Massacre can lend insight into the events of that terrible day that newspaper reports, or somber and thouthful essays, cannot. Not necessarily better insights–but different ones–precisely because it makes you complicit in recreating the events. [emphasis added]
I love that way of explaining it because it’s so simple and think it says most everything that it needs to, but let me try to expand on it just because I should bring it into my own realm of meaning.
Our knowledge and understanding of the world can be seen to be comprised of a collection of insights. These can take many different forms and come from many different sources, they can be contradictory or complimentary: an equation learned in physics class; being told about getting sunburned, then actually getting sunburned; being told Islam is a tollerant religion, or being told Muslims are terrorists, whilst having a Muslim friend, etc. Insights and how they combine, interact, reinforce or contradict each other are, like memes, the Lego blocks which build who we are and what we “know”. They create the chemistry which interacts to form our understanding of the world, they create a filter (let me call this filter common sense) through which all other information is first passed and scrutinized before ultimately being rejected, accepted or assimilated in a modified form.
Ever since human kind could pass on knowledge, we have been doing so through small building blocks (insights) like this. Perhaps the most common and simplest method of passing on these insights has traditionally been in the form of stories: cave paintings which pass on history, phables which pass on morals and ethics, fairy tales which serve to teach (or condition) children not to lie or to stay in bed etc. These stories all taught something, either overtly or covertly, and most people would probably be able to point to the “moral of the story”. These examples represent ways in which stories were used to intentionally pass on what I will call situational insights. In other words, parents, teachers, elders, or storytellers could pick these stories to provide insights on what they thought would be the right thing to do in a certain situation:
“The boy who cried wolf” provides insights into what happens in a situation where a child lies all the time - you get into big big trouble, like getting eaten.
“The Tortoise and the Hare” provides insights into what happens in a situation where someone/something is cocky vs. methodical - The cocky person loses while the methodical one wins.
“Snow White” (or was it Cinderella?) provides insights into what happens when you are in a really unhappy situation - you wait, do your chores, be a pure kind young lady and wait for Prince Charming to save you.
These are obviously all very simple and to the point insights because to a large extent that is the assumed purpose of these kinds of stories. They were overt attempts to suggest how people should think or act and are created very much inside the existing cultural, religious or social order (the examples above, for example come from a male dominated, “western” perspective). Today, the insights we get are much more well hidden and are usually much less intentional - today, we see and use stories primarily as modes of entertainment rather than the for the dissemination of knowledge, but that is perhaps a overly simple misconception.
Today, the stories we listen to are primarily formulaic with the intention of making someone money: movies sell an entertainment formula; news media, a sensationalism formula; novels, one which will keep people turning pages and create media hype. Today, we are bombarded by stories from a million different sources in ways which engage the sense very differently than simple fairy tales and people will struggle to point to the “moral of the story” of, say, The Bourne Ultimatum…but that does not mean there isn’t one - Narratology has for a long time told us that narrative and narrative structures can affect our perceptions for example.
Thesis in a nutshell
OK, so I dropped the ball on following up on that whole Internal
Discrepancy thing, I just couldnt get excited about it and right now I
have the luxury of being able to wait until I do.
In the mean
time, I spent the weekend out in the woods with the new members of my
uni’s outdoors club and found myself answering “so what exactly is your
thesis on…I know you’ve explained it 27 times already but still…”
way too many times. So, I have to attempt to clarify for myself and the
people who ask me, what my thesis is on - in simple and to the point
terms.
So here’s attempt number 1
This is an exploration
of the differences between how Counter-Insurgency is presented to “the
masses” in Computer-Games-As-Story vs. how experts suggest how
Counter-Insurgency should be conducted. It looks at how insights
provided by First Person Shooter games which attempt to re-create
realistic scenarios in fun ways might not be counterbalanced by insights from real life experience and the details
of actual and successful real life missions. It will then attempt to
look at how this incomplete view may be affecting public policy,
war-to-peace transitions, peacebuilding and prioritizations in
politically motivated military actions surrounding Insurgencies. I hope
to bring in opinions from military leaders, soldiers, political
analysts and commentators, game designers, naratologists and
ludologists and of course gamers themselves. Yes, I do plan on playing
(at least the demo of) the games I am analyzing as part of research.
This paper is not intended to add to the pile of literature on “Gaming does/does not have a causal link to violence”
arguments. I am not a game basher not a defender, rather this is an
attempt at looking at more abstract and “fuzzier” outcomes of gaming.
It’s way too long and still rambling.
For
millenia people have told stories to (indirectly) pass on knowledge,
moralities, and entertainment in the form of situational insights. This paper will look at how the insights
presented in the storyline of First Person Shooters (intentional or
not) may be affecting public perceptions of one of the most common (and
well funded) foreign actions the US government is currently involved in
in developing countries - Counter Insurgency. I want to see how (in)complete the insights
gained may or may not be, how military leaders and game developers feel
about their role vis-a-vis FPS-as-story, how political commentators and
analysts see public policy being affected by this and how people-as-
and soldiers-as- gamers feel about the impact these games have on their
perceptions of on-the-ground military actions taken as part of a larger
Counter-Insurgency program. In an attempt to break from the “games
(dont) cause violence” debates, this paper will intentionally deal with
perhaps “fuzzier” areas of analysis rather than attempting to find a
(dis)provable causal link.
I’ll let that sit for now, I
know, it’s still crap and confusing, but I want to move back to reading
about China’s new Counter-Terrorist training program using CounterStrike and the commentary being provided on it. It’s much more interesting
Internal Discrepancies
So the last post was on how this paper will look at FPS games as a genre rather than individual games. The next few posts will look at the 4 categories (genres) of people involved in this paper and see if I can group them or if they should be looked at as individuals. The four groups are:
- Military Leadership - those reading and writing FM3-24 type documents.
- Boots on the ground - those who are not so concerned with the over-arching “plan” or creating doctrine, but following orders and accomplishing a mission.
- Game Designers - those creating games and setting precedents in pop-culture.
- Game Players - those playing computer games and gaining “insights” from them.
Obviously I’m attempting to draw parallels between Military Leadership and Game Designers on one hand and Boots on the Ground and Players on the other. There will no doubt be a lot of crossover between these two, and no doubt be huge discrepancies within and between them, but it’s somewhere to start. Some primary research would be interesting here - to see what actual soldiers define COIN as compared to their leadership, see what designers think their games are defining it as vs what their players see it as and how the two groups differ on basic definition. That aside…
ok, before I start, this is going to be confusing for me because Boots are often Players too (most boots have probably played a FPS, but FPS players do not all become boots) so there might be 3 sections to this:
- Leadership - Boots
- Boot - Players
- Players - Developers
I dont see the connection right now between Developers and Leadership except in funding and in anomalous cases such as full spectrum warrior or http://www.dodgamecommunity.com/ (the military branch responsible for creating or modifying computer games for training). I’m not sure that dev-leadership connection is there, and perhaps it should be so that games can provide more, different, insights. Not that I want MORE military influence over games, there are far too many military games and too much military funding into a specific kind of gaming technology which propogates FPS and single goal storyline graphically intensive action games…but that is another thing all together, read Ed Halter’s “From SunTzu to Xbox” for a great and very readable look at the connection between military, computer games, academics and industry. OK, that was a tangent.
Let me start then with if there is a fundamental divide in the
desires of the commanders and the perceptions of the “Trigger Pullers”
- if the boots on the ground were brought up with FPS, what does that
mean.
If the “steel on target” doesnt see the target as anything
but an immediate ends rather than a means to a larger thing, does this
come from, or lead to, a larger problem with the discrepancy between reality and desire on the part of leadership?
The problem of just “being a grunt” in the games we play.
One of the obstacles I’ve been repeatedly hitting up against in my
coming to terms with this topic is that I may be dealing with apples
and oranges here.
I constantly find myself reading that the
“military” desires a certain type of operation in COIN, but in games,
we often deal with single person military “grunts” - i.e. not the
leaders and planners which the field manuals address. So, when I look
at the discrepency between the two, how do I reconcile this difference,
do I need to at all, and will it still be a useful paper.
I had
a great long post on this that Windows Vista managed to kill (I;ve been
fighting it the whole time Ive had it) and will only re-produce a small
portion here probably.
OK, FM3-24 (as is the trend right now):
This
field manual/Marine Corps warfighting publication establishes doctrine
(fundamental principles) for military operations in a counterinsurgency
(COIN) environment….
and
The primary audience for this manual is leaders and planners at the battalion level and above.(FM3-24, preface)
So,
what I’m looking at from the military side is the attempt to establish
best practices for the overarching operation (big picture). On the
other hand, games tend to look at the jobs (missions) prescribed to a
single person or team which is commanded by “the player” (i.e. the
small picture).
It is to be expected that the mission level (if
I have the scale of mission and operation the right way round - mission
here is small, single goal where operation would be a campaign,
multiple missions, with the end goal of stability) of action would
shroud a certain amount of the planning that FM3-24 discusses and in a
game this is even more so, as in the entire length of an FPS there is
maybe room for 50 minutes (roughly 2% of a game play time) of
dedicated story line or plot (often delivered in a cut scene) according
to James Portnow of Activision
(http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7153&Itemid=2).
50 minutes spread out over 40 hours of play time is not a lot in order
to get across all the complexities of COIN political action.
So,
I am looking at two different levels of action here - the desires of
the military at the planning level, and the actions of a person wanting
to shoot stuff and get an adrenaline fix on the other.
The best
way to look at this, in my mind, is to take it to a slightly more
abstracted level on the side of the games - by looking at the genre
rather than specific games.
This is probably obvious when you think
about it, of course I’m looking at the genre, but then I’m a little
slow at times and this is my thought process
The problem then becomes not that individual games portray COIN ops as shoot to kill, only shoot, always shoot, but rather that the
majority of FPS portray a system where COIN has a primarily military
solution and that military action is a solution in itself.
Let me come back to an earlier post on
“insights” which are provided by games (I will expand on the notion of
“insights” later on) - Most of us (again, “us” refers primarily to
north america and europe in all my posts) get our insights into
military COIN ops from 2 sources, unless we are related to or know
someone in the military, which I would assume is not most people. These
2 sources are a) the (TV) media (FOX, CNN, BBC etc.) with their
“embedded” news media which has been invented in the last few years and
being the sole provider of “from the field” coverage which would be too
difficult for most to access for travel reasons. And b) computer games.
Let me go into that “b) computer games” part because, well, that’s why I’m here.
Computer games, since their inception have strived for greater
immersion, reality, graphical representation - something
theatre/movie/story people call the suspension of disbelief (I have to
give credit to Rick for introducing this theory to me with the
creative, if childish, use of a teddy bear). The end goal of all the
R&D money being poured into gaming technology is to come up with
hardware, software engines and story lines which allow people to
believe they are running actual military style missions. Games are
marketed as “designed with general x” or “modeled on real historical
battles” or “relive the storming of x”. Gamers are told, and have
little reason to believe otherwise, that games are made and modeled on
real events with real military experts to lend credability to these
statements. when they are then confronted with a realistic looking
enemy, responsive and immersive gaming systems and allow them to
suspend their disbelief, then gaming and the action involved in it
becomes a legitimate (in the players’ mind) source of “insights” into
war/COIN.
Again, however, all insights are inherently limited and without other
sources of insights, peoples’ “knowledge” of a topic can become
slanted. Let me draw analogies from TV shows.
CSI, the popular crime drama, has led several police forces to comment
that it is making their lives more difficult - people seem to believe
now that all police forces have extremely advanced machines, always
find a hair, blood stain, rare fibre or other tiny insignificant piece
of material evidence, run it through said expensive equipment, look at
eachother with surprised faces and then get a confession out of someone
previously thought innocent - all in the space of a 1 hour eppisode. In
other words the limited “insights” provided by CSI have slanted public
opinion on crime fighting because they havnt been balanced out by
people’s first hand experience with the boring, tedious and long
process which it actually is - and why would they, it’s boring.
24 - again, a popular TV drama, this time involving someone
interrogating (torturing) a witness at the last minute before all hell
breaks lose and in order to stop it breaking lose, then it is ok, or
even necessary to “cap someone in the knee” to get useful information -
which they always do. Someone high up at West Point (it;s somewhere on
the Small Wars Journal if
you want to read about who, I am reproducing this from a 2nd hand
source, so go find it yourself before you re-quote a re-quote that
might be wrong) had such a problem with new recruits having such a
slanted opinion of interrogation from the limited insights provided by
24 (that is gets useful results in a short period of time and is always the only answer to solving the impending crisis
when in realitiy it usually backfires, you get bad information, it
takes a long time, and only creates more enemies, especially when it is
inevitably leaked to the media) that he actually flew to hollywood to
ask the producers to stop or make a show where it does backfire - i.e.
to provide a different set of insights.
So, what I need to do is to identify the insights provided by the genre
of FPS games, how to they match the reality that the military is trying
to produce and how much stronger are these insights than those created
by news media, soldier accounts, independent reports etc.
Once I do that, then I can relate the two together, look at how the
gaming industry treats the insights it might provide, why non-military
sides of COIN were deemed “un-fun” and maybe, how to get them into
games to provide a more rounded set of insights.
So, Thought o’ the day:
By aggregating FPS games and their “insights” into a genre, I can
see where the discrepancies between the insights provided by FPS meet
or diverge from those desired. Then, by adding in an industry point of
view, I can see where these insights were left out and where they can
perhaps be added back in - but that might be for another paper.
The lack of “other organizations” in FPS games
OK, reading through FM3-24 (that counter insurgency field manual) there are a couple of things that hit me straight away about the discrepancies between pop-gaming and desired reality. Most significant of them is the discussion of the need for coordination between military and non-military entities.
This is perhaps the most glaring difference I can think of right now between the depiction of the undertaking of counterinsurgency (COIN).
In a broad, grotesque generalization of both military and gaming COIN I’m going to say that FPS focus on creating the hero “army of one” image where you single handedly (tactically and very skillfully) blast (point and click with auto-target) your way to victory. On the other hand, FM3-24 states that:
As important as they are in achieving security, military actions by themselves cannot achieve success in COIN…Essential though it is, the military action is secondary to the political one… (sections 1-29 and 2-1)
And the document goes so far as to explicitly state that Focus[ing] special forces primarily on raiding (section 1-29) is and “Unsuccessful Practice” - yet that’s what’s most “fun” in an FPS: The adrenaline pumping raid on an enemy stronghold.
I cannot think of a mainstream FPS that deals with COIN which included anything to do with coordinating with NGOs, politicians, community organizations or other non-military entities except to escort, assassinate, interrogate, or provide civilian shields for terrorist in missions where the primary goal is to “kill the bad guys”
Obviously, as a military game the player has to be engaged in action (that is why they bought it) and the action should be military in nature (i.e. killing or defending against (by killing) bad guys) because it is a military based game. Driving down a road in front of an aid convoy and keeping a starving populace shouting at you in a language you don’t understand in order without shooting would be a hard sell in an action game.
So, quick thought o’ the day:
Is there a medium somewhere, where you can get this coordination idea across in a meaningful way without glorifying the go-it-alone rambo/delta force military only, military always underpinning?
And now for something completely different
After a discussion with my adviser (Rex Brynen), the topic for my thesis, or at least the details, have changed rather dramatically.
The previous plan -
Now seems like a rather (very) haphazard plan to look through some literature, and analyze computer games and “the stories they tell” from a socio-political perspective and then apply that to how it might translate into public opinion on how development policy and programmes are implimented on the ground.
The new plan -
Evaluate the division (in the U.S.) between the popular culture portrayal of counter insurgency (COIN) in first person shooter (FPS) games and the reality which the army and marine corps are trying to teach to new recruits through an analysis of FM3-24 and other military documents for field training and COIN operations.
Then apply this to modern policy decisions (public, military, legal), the potential impact it has on perspectives of US interventions in mass media (i.e. non-game popular culture) both domestically and internationally, and the impact on potential recruits and soldiers who grew up with a certain view of what COIN is like only to be re-trained in something completely different.
Resources available -
The Small Wars Journal - “Small Wars Journal facilitates and supports the exchange of information
among practitioners, thought leaders, and students of Small Wars, in
order to advance knowledge and capabilities in the field.” - Blog, analysis, articles and a forum which seems to attract a large number of very intelligent/knowledgeable COIN people who might be interested in helping add a touch more reality to my analysis (me being a tree hugging liberal pacifist and all).
FM3-24 - “With our Soldiers and Marines fighting insurgents in Afghanistan and Iraq, it is
essential that we give them a manual that provides principles and guidelines for counterinsurgency operations. Such guidance must be grounded in historical studies. However, it also must be informed by contemporary experiences.”
- Completed at the end of 2006, this new field manual attempts to address the new needs of a military fighting a different kind of war. This is what the army/marine corp WANTS counter insurgency training to look like.
Undecided computer games - FPS are easily the most popular, purchased and played games around today. They have massive budgets and massive-er returns. Many involve both single player and multi-player components. I will attempt to look at both the most popular (by sales, reviews) and the most relevant from a training perspective (i.e. America’s Army, Special Ops I and II, Full Spectrum Warrior (FSW): Military and COTS versions).
Developers - With any luck, locally based game developers (current wish list: EA Montreal’s Chris Ferriera, lead designer of “Army of Two”). “Games” by their very nature have to be fun, otherwise they wouldn’t be bought, played or developed. FSW:M has a rediculously low life expectancy of something like 30 seconds vs the FSW:COTS version because it was designed as a military trainer. What choices do developers add in, leave out, why and why can’t they make them a new challenge. Why is dialog cut and dry (very little ambiguity in translation/interpretation, on local “flavour” thrown in for “authenticity”) and why dont we see more non-verbal cues (darting eyes, tell tale signs etc)
By looking at the basic ideological underpinnings of these games - what triggers what kind of response, what actions are available to the player (torture, war crimes, negotiations, interactions etc) and the outcomes those cause, end goals, character portrayal, cut scene story line, basic political tenants etc. - we can begin to see (perhaps) a difference between what the military WANTS and what people EXPECT.
To bring this back to the development thesis is is supposed to be, a look at how games create expectations during the formative years of a person’s life (majority of players are in the x-y age group, who may or may not have opinions set yet on politics and war), how players may be getting specific (and limited) “insights” from these games while not getting other specific and limited insights from other more overtly analytical and in-depth sources (i.e. newspapers, TV, radio, field)
ok, on to reading a 260 page field manual and 1000’s of posts and articles on SWJ and other military stuff before I get to playing games.
Sutton-Smith and the video game (not) as automaton
Reading “A Brief Biography of Computer Games” by Lowood and he quotes Sutton-Smith 1986 as saying:
Of all the toys that are machines and that work by themselves and can be enjoyed in solitude for endless periods of time, the apotheosis is undoubtedly today’s video game. The “video game” is an automaton that might have made Descartes shout with delight. (pp. 61-62)
Now, I must admit an ignorance of Descartes’ “automaton” but the idea of video games being the apotheosis of “machines that can be enjoyed in solitude” is a bit odd.
One thing that games, these days especially, are not is something solitary. Every gaming experience, whether online or offline is a shared experience simply by the fact that players have a common experience. Common reference points, cultural outgrowths, “insights” into the topic at hand, etc are all things which “solitary” players share.
yeah, ran out of thought there…I know there was a great example I thought of a couple days ago that summed it all up, but can’t remember it now….
Playing Video Games, the Shelf o’ cool books and Affective Disposition Theory
I love being back at a library that actually has books…most of the time.
I went looking for a book by Ian Bogost on Persuasive Games (which wasnt there and I still need to track down) and found a whole shelf of good books to read.
Resisting the urge to grab all of them and greedily check them out to the shagrin of all others, I took only two. Having sunk my teeth into actual academic published literature on my topic of choice, all I can say is “yay!” other people to plagiarize borrow theories and legitimized quotations from.
I’ve been struggling with exactly how this text will look - content analysis of games, a review of the literature, my usual flow of consciousness type writing, or something completely different.
Sitting down with the intro to “Playing Video Games: Motives, Responses, and Consequences” gives me plenty of places to draw from and I thank the editors greatly.
Interesting discussion on Affective Disposition Theory (p. 4) which apparently involves us deciding if the character we are watching/playing is good or bad and then wishing either positive or negative outcomes (respectively) for them
Now, in a traditional game where you play the (good) protagonist of the story within the social context it is intended, this creates a fairly non-surprising outcome: Master-Chief saving the world from the Covenant; US soldiers defending against insurgents in America’s Army; The mayor of your SimCity - we all (mostly, generally) want them to “win” (a positive outcome).
But what happens when we are asked to play the reverse roll of a socially defined good/bad dichotomy. In cinema or literature, this is not so confusing because if we are watching/reading from the “bad guy’s” side, then we can still wish upon them negative outcomes and the main character of the film should just die/get caught/be hurt/embarrassed/poor/worse off in the end. But, when we are the “bad” guy within our social context (Night of Bush Capture, Super Columbine Massacre RPG, Bully, parts of GTA etc.) the player might become conflicted - they, by this theory, would wish negative outcomes on the character they are playing for being bad, but at the same time, positive outcomes for themselves (there’s a little thing called “winning”).
In this situation, where a player is asked to, in some ways, morally compromise themselves in order to “win” what happens - is this something teaching a player to believe that killing Bush is a good thing (if they didnt already believe that) or that killing/beating up other kids in school wins you a prize? not really.
As Greg Costikyan over at Manifesto Games points out in his defense of Super Columbine Massacre:
But the insight Super Columbine Massacre provides about its
subject matter derives precisely from the fact that the player is
forced to take the roles of the pepetrators. The player is exposed to
their world: the music, the games, the heedless cruelty of high school
life, the thoughts and words of Harris and Klebold themselves. Few
people of intelligence and sensitivity emerge unscarred from the
relentless anti-intellectualism and the cruel cliques of the American
high school, and while most of us are not driven to murder (rather more
to suicide), this game does a good job of evoking the thoughts and
emotions of Harris and Klebold–without glamorizing or exculpating them.
What he is saying, in essence and in my opinion, is that by forcing people into a situation where they are uncomfortable, and are forced to make choices based on stepping outside of their accepted social context gives people a wider view on world events, something more in depth and prepares them better to accept or reject those computer-mediated events when they happen in the real world.
I am not claiming this is a good or bad thing, just that perhaps it is a thing. Again pulling from Costikyan:
And a game such as Super Columbine Massacre can lend insight
into the events of that terrible day that newspaper reports, or somber
and thougthful essays, cannot. Not necessarily better insights–but
different ones–precisely because it makes you complicit in recreating
the events.
Now, coming to where this fits into development; SimCity, America’s Army, Night of Bush Capture, Counter Strike, and even (perhaps especially) Disney’s Cinderella: Dollhouse 2 all allow the player to “play a game” (experience a set of events) from a certain moral perspective which, according to their Affective Disposition, is seen as deserving of a positive or negative outcome. Regardless of their disposition however, the game will tend to direct them towards certain acts and away from others and in doing so, expand the players’ insights into that set of events.
Now, because the majority of games being sold (27.1%) and favoured (57.5%) are action and shooter games, respectively (ESA stats for 2004 I believe), are we disproportionately giving players more “insights” into solving problems through war rather than diplomacy? Is the fact that the easiest way to win even Civilization 257:Total Universal Domination (not yet a real game, but we will get to #257 eventually) is to build schools and universities to educate your population so that you have tons of science research to pour into military advances to crush your opponent - rather than convincing everyone to vote you to being the Sec. General of the UN or whatever the “political victory” condition is - giving players more “insights” into the “best/easiest” way to solve international cleavages (i.e. through military research and deployment and that education is only a means to this military end). Is Disney insighting (oh, look at the clever word game!) children the world over to demand a materialistic capitalistic imperialist world order through asking mommy and daddy to open their wallets and buy them a castle dollhouse and accessories?
So, Thoughts o’ the moment:
Library good.
And
By forcing players to assume a certain role within a certain socially acceptable space, or challenging their Affective Disposition, can we games give them insights into the world outside the computer generated one and does that happen more when it is reinforcing or challenging existingly held assumptions, knowledge and morals?
But while we might not be ready for games that have something to say,
the games themselves are talking, and sometimes it’s worth listening. (Elanor Lang, Kill Pixels, Not People @ WorldChanging.com)
Saint Jerome, Foucault and “What is an Author”
Reading through this suggested text by one of my profs, who called it “a very readable text” makes me realize, perhaps I can’t read, or perhaps my prof really is a genius because it’s anything but “easy.”
But that aside, I want to focus on a couple of thoughts/quotes:
The author’s name is not a function of a man’s civil status, nor is it fictional; it is situated in the breach, among the discontinuities, which give rise to new groups of discourse and their singular mode of existence. (p 123, language, counter-memory, practice)
According to Saint Jerome, there are four criteria [for attributing a work to 1 author]…the author is defined as a standard level of quality…the author is defined as a certain field of conceptual or theoretical coherence…the author is seen as a stylistic uniformity…the author is thus a definite historical figure in which a series of events converge. (ibid. 128)
So, if we are talking about a computer game, who is the author? The lead designer, the script writer, the programmers, the studio?
The lead designer is responsible for quality control, the studio usually gets its name associated with the body of work it has created (except, for example “Sid Meier’s…” games where the game is given credit because of the author of it. this being the later stages of the creation of an “author”), there is no one historical entity which exists in a set period of time, the games industry is still too young to see how long game houses will exist, but they will definitely outlive their staff and many designers, studios etc change genres, and styles - at least the big ones do.
Then there is the question if if games even have authors - do they create a discourse or are they more in line with what foucault says about people who originate scientific disciplines.
So, thought o the day, because my brain is too tired to tackle the problem of if games have authors or not when, as interesting as it is, it is really rather minor to the task at hand:
Assuming games have an “author” who is that author, and what discourse are they creating - amongst which discontinuities do they exist and what discourse can we say they create or encourage?
There has been significant discourse around violence (GTA, FPS etc), the role of face to face interaction in society (second life, WoW, Facebook et al.) but is that the continuation of an existing discourse, or can we see the authors of games creating it?
Perhaps this whole trip through the looking glass has been in vein, and perhpas Dorfman’s quote from Reading Donald Duck is more appropriate:
The father must be absent, and without direct jurisdiction, just as the child is without direct obligations.
p 31
The “author” (father) must be absent from their game and has no say on how people play or what they learn, while the player (child) has increasingly less obligation to play the game as intended (”emergent gameplay”) and can take from it what they wish.
Disney as a common cultural heritage?
“Apart from his stock exchange rating, Disney has been exalted as the inviolable common cultural heritage of contemporary man…and amidst so much sweetness and light, the registered trade mark becomes invisible.”
How to read Donald Duck, p 28
that’s all
Night of Bush Capture - the other side of the coin
In the name of research for my thesis, and at great personal risk to my sense of security and privacy (the NSA, HS, FBI, CIA and a guy named Bob are now no doubt watching my every online activity) I got my hands on a copy of “Night of Bush Capture” released by the Global Islamic Media Front (GIMF) - who I need to find out more about - and played through the first 30 seconds of the game.
From reading other “reviews” of the game, my general understanding is that you have to find and kill George Bush, Tony Blair, and various other decadent western evil types.
For my interests, however, I’m more interested in the language used, representation of the enemy other, game mechanics and in game graphics.
My favorite two notables of my 30 seconds of gameplay are the replacement of “Loading” with “Jihad Beginning” and the fact that US soldiers take only 1 shot to kill.
two possible mesages intended by these: jihad, much like the game, required the player to kill in order to win, that killing is the only way to win and that anyone who gets in your way will try to kill you unless you kill them first. A fairly simple message, standard accross most games in this genre where choices are limited to shoot now or shoot later.
the second message which is more subtle is that us soldiers are not as strong as you, the jihadist. Now, I am in no way claiming that anyone would be naive enough to think that they could take multiple shots without any noticable effects where as us soldiers will die at a single shot in the leg, but it gives the overall impression that jihad is easy, the jihadist is superior not only in cause but also in physical ability and that enemies will simply roll over infront of you.
I do not subscribe to the camp that says “violence is caused by video games” nor do I believe that the “it’s just a game, let it be” camp is facing reality. Games plant ideas, in the same way stories have for millenia. By looking at the stories games people play tell we can perhaps begin to understand a part of the prevailing mentality, atmosphere and attitudes of different sides of similar conflicts.
dont know why this was here, or why or when i forgot to hit publish, but here it is in its possibly unfinished form
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Gender Studies and Foucault
One of my professors came through with some help I never expected, and as always from an angle completely unexpected.
Pulling old notes from a “Sexual Ethics” class (one of the more interesting classes I ever took I must add) has led me down the path I spoke about yesterday - that In
order to legitimate itself, the law first produces then conceals the
production of its subjects.
And then this got extended by Foucault’s “What is an Author” (which I still have to read) but as this prof notes it is:
about the creation, and subsequent hiding, of the modern
author. This might be of interest to you as games have authors. And games,
maybe even more so than novels, need to hide their authors.
One of the things I have been struggling to put into words in my own head is the way in which games are stories written by a biased (perhaps interested is a better word?) author/developer and that story is then passed off as just a game, completely harmless, completely safe for consumption (minus the blood, guts and ass of course) by all ages - much like disney or sesame street.
The interesting thing about games however, much like Brynen and others point out in their analysis of TV and movies, is that they tend to reflect, and push the boundaries of, existing global socio-political events.
It is easy to see the progression of bad guy themes from Russian Communisits to Chinese and North Korean Communists, followed by a brief stint of WWII military games in the wake of “Saving Private Ryan” and now we are on to Arab/Islamic terrorists - themes which are in the mind of the population, on the news and needing exploring or release.
But more on that another time.
Though o’ the day:
Game authors are real people with real bias, but in order for games to be “just games” for the mass consumer, they must hide the fact that their stories were created. They present themselves as a legitimate source of fun and more importantly here, content, which just “is” and is just the way it was meant to be played to steal someone’s marketing phrase. This can allow the re-enforcement or creation of stereotypes and perceptions in a way that involves minimal challenge because it is both just a game and just there.
I think I will avoid going into the male gaze too much in this thesis, but the gender boundaries of male/female may be interesting to look at from a development perspective.
Perhaps the portrayal of women-as-prostitutes in GTA as they relate to under-developed US neighborhoods (such as Harlem)
Culteral Imperialism, Judith Butler and Computer Games
Started reading “How to read Donald Duck” today, and something Kunzle said in the introduction jogged the brain a bit and brought together a few different thoughts:
If we are talking about games and development, then we cant look only at the cultural imperialism which is imposed (in terms of both morals and values they hold and the viewpoint/bias they hold counter strike vs. night of bush capture) bus also the fact that these values are then hidden as “natural” within the current world system.
We cannot deny that we live in a world which by in large is “run” by a capitalist system built upon a generally Christian/Western morality base. When this coincides with the content and storyline of a computer game, then it is seen as acceptable (i.e. counter strike) otherwise, it is shunned as a propaganda tool made by extremists (i.e. night of bush capture).
Judith Butler (I think it was her) wrote about how systems (specifically the “male” in the gender system) create a power hierarchy, legitimize it and then hide the creation of it to make it seem natural…or something like that - I’m trying to track down the exact argument to see if it applies.
But, if it is the argument I think it is, then we can see how that could fit into the system of cultural imperialism in gaming quite closely - the “it’s just a game” and the western-centric view of acceptable content come together to create a system where we play “a game” and dont question where that content came from, the bias it may represent, or the impact it may be having on a population’s collective psyche.
So, thought o’ the day:
Do computer games present themselves as naturally “just a game” when in fact they are an outgrowth of a military-industrial-academic-entertainment complex (Ed Halter and others) imposing a western system of what is right, wrong and indecent upon the rest of the world?
Does this then play into the legitimization of certain actions by western governments - such as the war on terror (counter strike is good, NoBC is bad - attacking islam is good, attacking bush is bad?) or perhaps the distribution of foreign aid based on the rules of games like Civilization or Sim City.