Feminizing Games

Throughout McKenzie Wark's vehement defense of video games as a legitimate form of entertainment, and the debate in readings over whether video games constitute an art form, I was reminded of earlier notions applied to TV and even film as exerting a "feminizing" influence over its viewers. The stereotypical gamer is pale, soft-bodied, physicaly-unfit, and spends exorbitant amounts of time and money buying and playing games---feminized by the addiction to sedentary activity, and by constant, untempered consumption. (I remember reading an article about South Korean boot camps for teenage boys who'd become obsessed with video games. The camps were boyscout-type outdoor excursions, clearly re-masculinizing their pliant, stumbling campers into alert and active boys.) However, as we've also read in relation to TV, the feminization of the viewers of this new medium are in danger of hyper-masculinization by the overflow of violent characters and plotlines, which (it has been argued) normalize violence, and, in the case of video games, literally require simulated violence by the gamer.

Games as escapes, games as reminders

While dealing with the idea of people creating 'alternate universes' by immersing themselves within either games or MOOs, I was reminded of the game Passage.

The game itself is very simple in nature, its graphics herald back to the original Nintendo, as is the gameplay. The objective of the game is to walk along a passage, finding treasure chests which increase your score, this seems like a standard diversion, an easy thoughtless game that allows people to take some time out of "RL" and mindlessly collect treasure. However, the game reveals its true meaning as time goes on. Although I didnt notice at first, my character was slowly aging the entire time, as was the female sprite who i took to be my wife when i accidentally bumped into her, creating a love heart.

I was so wrapped up in trying to find treasure that it took me a while to recognize the changes, as they are incredibly minute, but eventually it became clear that my tiny pixelated sprite was balding, and my virtual bride appeared to be getting fatter. Undettered, I kept looking for more treasure, and sadly my wife eventually turned into a headstone and left me as a decrepit old man walking slowly around a virtual world. Then I turned into a headstone too and it was all over.

The game's author stated that he created it as a way for people to look at their own feelings and beliefs regarding their very meaning of life. Regardless of your actions in the game, it still ends the same way, with both of you dead (your points are not even displayed after your death, the logic being that your dead anyways, why do you need points?).

I thought this seemed similar to Dibbell's essay, as both use the apparently frivolous to echo real life. Although Passage does it in a very different way, I have been wondering about how much of a statement a massively multiplayer game would be able to make about the way we function as a society. Still theres no "A-ha!" moment in these communities, and people would likely continue to spend their time yelling at each other, racing to 'be the best', or focusing on sex. Then again, that could be a statement about society in itself.

You can download passage here if your interested: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=17004

when I became an avatar, I felt very silly

So my first reaction to the proliferation of bodies via cyberspace was, "What happens when the batteries die?" Or:

In regards to cyber-rape, I set out to do the reading in a state of self-conscious, highly self-policed open-mindedness, aware of how absurd I would likely find the material and seeking to move beyond my initial reactions. I sat in Blue State, laughing out loud at phrases like "cyber-rape survivor." My reactions were  because I saw cyberbodies as farcical, a virtuality whose ontology was game-like in origin. What fascinated me, however, was that I came to understand the validity of a cyber-body, and of cyber-rape. Still, though, I was plagued by questions of reality. Specifically, I accept (and even embrace) that the (neo)human exists through multiple media on multiple platforms, and yet I can still be dismissive of cyberness. Why? 

I think it is related to a valuation of the corporeal over the virtual~ again, notions of the body being "realer," or of more impact to the "self" than any external(?) projection or manifestation of identity. Maybe it has to do with the seat of agency-- I am my body, I do my avatar; in light of the notion of performative identity, however, this has little ground.

In the end, I realized that virtual bodies seemed ridiculous because they are so finite, separate, capricious... again, they cease when the batteries die, and we persist beyond them. However, the corporal body is no different. The body, too, dies. The physical avatar--the body--is just as thin as the virtual avatar. Final realization: virtuality, in its ontology rooted in phenomenological (read: not the philosophy, just the adjective) limitation, reflects human mortality. I think that virtual bodies, then, offer us a paradox: the chance to proliferate ourselves, to embody multiplicity, as well as address and embody finitude and mortality.

Play

Well, I originally intended to write about "The Death of LambdaMOO" and "Signs/Links," but my post ended up very long and showed no signs of ending any time soon. So, rather than presenting an incomplete text, I'd rather write some notes on Wark's "Gamer Theory."

I take issue with Wark's notion that "Games are places where Ideological promises are kept" and that "the gamer accepts a system as given and attempts to score within it." This is because Wark defines Play as play within the rules of the system. However, this Play is impossible without playing with the rules themselves. This means that games are in a constant state of flux, equally defined by the coder and the gamer; the coder creates the rules and the gamer plays with them, finding stress points and pressing them in order to open up the original intent to new possibilities. Take, for example, Donkey Kong; Gamers analysed the rules of the game, figured out ways to use them, get around them, and otherwise manipulate them, and proceeded to set scores thought impossible by creators, as evidenced by the "death screen" found at the end of the game, which simply kills off your character and ends the game. To pull a quote from http://www.scifi.com/sfw/screen/sfw16918.html:
One prominent story element involves a bit of video-game lore previously unknown to this reviewer. It turns out that Mario's quest to save his girlfriend from the rampaging gorilla is not merely eternal, as it seems to casual players, but by design doomed to failure, as there is, well past the point where anybody but a total obsessive could ever play the game, a feature called "The Death Screen," where the game software hits total overload and Mario himself dies for no reason, the in-game explanation, I guess, being that he's suffered a massive coronary from vaulting all of those barrels the gorilla has been raining down upon him. Mario's girlfriend is, by default, doomed to remain in the gorilla's clutches, suffering the fate King Kong's Ann Darrow so narrowly avoided. I consider this a major bummer, in context, but the gamers don't feel that way; to them, it's a substantial achievement just to last the more than two hours it takes for Mario to keel over and die. —Adam-Troy

Gamers have pushed the system so far that it eventually collapses. While current games seem to be aware of this, providing ways for the true gamers to express this desire to play with rules without fundamentally breaking the system, but this means that the "system" itself is subject to continual change as the gamer plays, discovering new tricks unintentionally hidden within the code.

To conclude, let me say this: I really enjoyed this section, and the discussions held within. Thank you all for the excellent exchanges of ideas and concepts, and thank you Jeremy for directing our conversation, for providing context in many cases where a knowledgeable interpretation was impossible without which (especially concerning Freudian analysis).

What the hell is cybersex?

Dibell's article "A Rape in Cyberspace" especially interests me because of the question of physicality in this "cyberworld." The whole idea of cybersex takes technophilia to a new level, as well as offering an interesting perspective on voyeurism, agency, vulnerability, safety in the suppose anonymity and detachment offered by the internet. Also, where does this idea place the body within this space? It occupies a mediated position; as Dibell writes, "No bodies touched. Whatever physical interaction occurred consisted of a mingling of electronic signals sent from sites as distant from each other as the eastern seaboard of the United States and the southern coast of Australia" (14). However, these experiences are exceedingly real to those who experience them: "Small wonder, then, that a newbie's first taste of MUD sex is often also the first time she or he surrenders wholly to the quirky terms of MUDdish ontology, recognizing in a full-bodied way that what happens inside a MUD-made world is neither real nor exactly make-believe, but nonetheless profoundly, compellingly, and emotionally true" (17). Where is the difference between what is "real" and "make-believe/VR"? I think perhaps it lies in the sharing of that experience with others. Communities grow around these virtual realities because there is an element of reality in the contact made with other users. But where is the body in this? Does anyone else see a striking similarity in this cyber-rape to the scene of Corinne's "confession" in Weekend?

Fictionalization. Re-evaluation and/or Annihilation

Hypothesis:

In the lecture on Wednesday, Prof. Chun posed the question of what and how do media – and the theoretical accounts more or less associated with them (and with what, for want of a better word, I will call the “postmodern” world, even though I have come to realize how problematic the term “postmodern” is) do.

One approach to this question that I would like to explore in my post – particularly in light of the readings for the past two weeks – is the issue of the re-evaluation and/or annihilation (and/or possibly “convergence”?) of the categories of “the ethical”, “the political”,“the aesthetic” (even “the economic”, by implication) – traditional categories of “dividing” and understanding reality – that media and their theoretical (more or less) counterpart might induce and which might be consonant with the (yet incomplete, I would argue) triumph of postmodernism as “a world view” (Jencks, C. (1991) “The Postmodern Agenda” in Jenks C., ed. (1991) The Postmodern Reader, New York: St Martin’s Press). Suggestive of this phenomenon(/a) is, to some extent, McKenzie Wark's re-reading of Plato's allegory of the Cave and his apparent “upside-down” paradigm (relative to Plato's), according to which games are closer to pure Forms than reality – representation becomes the matrix of reality.

Specific points - “evidence” of a necessity to re-evaluate the categories under scrutiny:

- In his essay A Rape in Cyberspace, Dibbell points to a disturbance of “the ethical” (and not only) in our “late-modern “ world: “And perhaps most challengingly it asks us to wrap our late-modern ontologies, epistemologies, sexual ethics, and common sense around the curious notion of rape by a voodoo doll” (p.12). Should the same system of values in operation in “real” life – if, indeed, we agree with Jenkins that “We have learned to care as much about creatures of pigment as we care about images of real people”, an alternative “fictional” one, or no one at all be applied in the case of the “virtual rape”? A danger that I would particularly like to point to in relation to potential answers to this question is that the application of the un-altered category of the “ethical” to/in the fiction that is the cyberspace (without differentiating between “the fictional” and “the real”) might perhaps fictionalize the category – relocate it into the realm of representation (in the Platonic sense). At the same time, abolishing the good/evil mode of evaluation for fiction (the cyberspace, the digital), situating it (cyberspace) beyond good and evil, might undermine the status of this category for/in the “real” world. If the good/evil divide is not universally applicable, why should it be applied at all? So, it seems that neither option is a desirable solution (or a solution at all).This complex apparent aporia is, in my view, a paradoxical ethical dilemma concerning the re-evaluation of “the ethical” necessary in the contemporary world.

(And, yet, wouldn't it be great if all rapes happened in cyberspace?)

- Danah Boyd – in her Why Youth (Heart) Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life – puts forth the argument that the participation in public networks creates “good citizens”. The issue that I am interested in is the notion of “good citizen” in the media-dominated contemporary world. As Prof. Chun indicated, Boyd's argument operates on a Kantian and Habermasian account of the “good citizen” as the informed citizen, fully involved in information production and consumption. As the status of information itself is being called into question, however, I believe that the notion of “good citizen” also needs to be re-evaluated and redefined in order to remain relevant. Could Wark's “gamer” (ultimately a fictional identity) perhaps become the paradigm for the “good citizen” of the (post-?) postmodern world?

- Thirdly, I would like to briefly address the aesthetic status of games that Jenkins also engages with in his article (Games, the New Lively Art). In my view, an “official” acknowledgment of cinema as “the seventh art” is connected to an acceptance of the postmodern paradigm of fragmentation. But what would the acknowledgment of games as “the eighth art” entail?

Granting aesthetic value to games, I would argue, could mean the ultimate subjugation of “the aesthetic” to “the entertaining” – an inversion that is – in a sense – in the same line with Wark's reversal of Plato's (metaphysical) theory. This acknowledgment would perhaps also put into place a model of “impotent” inescapable participation (implying playing the game while at the same time being played by the game) as a norm for engaging with art.

A (provisional) conclusion:

Perhaps the media – “pure” representation (in the Platonic notion of the term) – actually relocates the above mentioned categories in or within the realm of representation. In other words, the media somehow fictionalizes these categories, with the result of a (necessary) radical re-evaluation and/or annihilation that, for the moment, remains generally not-explicitly-and-fully-engaged with (from a theoretical standpoint).

Attempting to assess the difference that MCM 0100 made in my mode of thinking, I would claim that the realization of this induced and required re-evaluation and/or annihilation is one of the most significant discoveries that I have made in this course.

Imagine all the Lovely People

This is how I would like to express my feelings as to my experience with LamdaMOO:
:feels alienated
Lavender_Guest feels alienated
Only one person talked to me, because I thought it normal for some reason to
Look in cardboard box in Animu. [I suppose this is how you learn social skills by making these awkward mistakes...]
When I tried to say
“Hi, I’m new here
the MOO responded with
I don’t understand
By the time I could respond and try again to say
“Hi, I am new here
(Maybe the apostrophe messed something up)
Animu leaves room and door resolutely shuts behind him
: feels incredibly socially awkward
Lavender_Guest feels incredibly socially awkward

(but don’t we already know that when we communicate we put ourselves out there to be vulnerable)

(And isn’t this text format quite annoying an hard to read)

Not such a normal, social skills building experience. Nor is encountering 101 cyber characters in a hot tub. I now know how to navigate a MOO after my long tutorial though. That might turn out to be a useful like skill

But to be less cynical...
The article by danah boyd was quite fascinating. Never would I have thought that social network sites were linked to the labor movement and compulsory schooling, but that is all in the social import of these pervasive sites. Nor would I have ever thought about how they were helping me to prepare for the real world. But I sympathize totally with the girl who tells how she created her blog with pictures and descriptions of her vacations so that people would be her friend. As a 14 year old, of course I thought that having the latest music and the most insightful blog posts would cause some one who I “liked” who probably wasn’t even aware of my existence and had no reason to frequent my page. I guess that was how I made the mistake of expecting things to happen on their own.

One networked public I know very well is the Brown Class of 2012 group. As the creator, I started it because as as someone who was deferring her admission to the class of 2011 to go abroad, I didn’t fit into the 2011 imagined community. I also wanted a way to visualize the group of people who were also deferring. I watched the 2012 group transform from a small, close-knit group of seven people into a vibrant, hopping group of thousands by the time the semester started. Although I barely read any of the content of the page, because I had my own community with which to interact in Israel (and the fact that our internet sucked), others used it to find their future roommates, discuss what clubs they were going to do, and form bands. Now, the group page is totally dead. The group served as a community when it needed to be imagined but now that we no longer have to imagine it, no one but 2013 prospectives and people who are looking to advertise for their various websites and campus events use the group.

Admining a dead group takes a little bit of the pressure off of my shoulders... except when I use my admin powers to send messages the entre freshman class
:grins guiltily
Lavender_Guest grins guiltily

The Death of LambdaMOO/The Relative Nature of Signs

I wasn't considering putting this up, but hey, I've got it typed out and placed in a post already, might as well. My post entitled "Play" has a bit of an explanation as to why this is so unfinished, but hopefully you can get a sense of how I imagine the text will look like when completed.

1) The Death of Lambda Moo
LambdaMOO was eerily quiet. I wandered through the rooms, examining and playing with the various objects found within, transporting myself into odd places (at one part walking through a mirror into a Pub), yet never running into any avatar awake and aware of my presence (I even waved at a few people marked as "asleep," hoping they were they on the other side of the network, waiting for someone to wander through and "wake" them). Eventually, desperate to find an opening that would allow me a glipse into the community of LambdaMOO and perhaps passage into the interior of the community, linking me with LambdaMOO despite the small period of time spent within, I typed @who and cued up of a list of the 99 avatars. Looking at which were awake (indicated by small idle times), I decided to transport myself into a room containing people conversing (perhaps transporting myself into the conversation as well), but "La Cantina," the site of the only conversation I could find, would not allow me enterence, instead throwing me out as soon as I entered.
I was left stunned and rather frightened: how has a community once numbering 10,000 been reduced to somewhere between six and twelve active members, 87 members logged on but not active, and somewhere between 1000-2000 members completely absent from the system? What happened to the network of interactions described by Dibbel? Unsure of a response, I turned to another network, the world wide web, for an answer. I found this:
LambdaMOO -- an open letter to students and researchers
I'd like to focus on particular implication of this letter, summed up nicely in the section entitled "The Moral":
"There were some tragic incidents many years ago, which the world will not let us forget. . . . This, it seems, is our best advertisement."

This statement seems rather disturbing; the very necessity of notifying the outside of its presense in order to assure the growth of the community eventually created the events that led (or rather, are leading) to the eventual death of LambdaMOO. But keep in mind that part of the problem lies in the representation of LambdaMOO; in the minds of the "world," LambdaMOO is defined by "A Rape in Cyberspace"; the myth that has developed has fundamentally defined LambdaMOO by the rape that occured there many years ago. While Professor Chun seemed to be aware of the dangers of this myth, notifying us of the contents of the rest of the book, trying to highlight the tension between the "real" and "virtual" explored within, it is already too late: the community has already been redefined and destroyed as a result. In this case, I believe this is because the chapter we read was originally published in several magazines before the publication of the whole book; since those who had spent all their life in "RL" did not have the "background" (that is, they had not constructed signs with which an understanding of "VR" could be reached), they seized upon the one sign they did possess: rape. Thus, students, unprepared and unwilling to enter the world of LambdaMOO (or rather, to attach a new sign to their definition of themselves) found themselves asking anyone they came across about rape. LambdaMOOers found themselves attempting to resist this forced definition by continuing to foster the growth of culture within the system, closing it off to those newcomers unwilling to leap through a giant series of hurdles (thus, my experience with the locked room), but without newcomers, without some sort of connection to the exterior, the community begins to wither away, drawing ever closer to death.
Now, there are a few problems with that argument: for starters, I applied for a username, hoping to revisit later during peak hours (whatever those might happen to be, and what I assume are not the hours during which I visited) and begin to investigate, and I eventually got it, but when I first applied I was number 3 on the waiting list. Now, the other two may have been from our class, and neither of them may have any intention of giving themselves over the the community, spending hours there helping to build the culture, but there's no way of knowing. There are a couple other points of contention I can see from where I sit, but again, I'd rather choose an element of the argument and explore its meaning.
In this case, that element happens to be the nature of the definition of LambdaMOO; I want to focus on the nature of its definition by association.


Notes:
Well, this post began as "The Death of LambdaMOO," but ended up very very long and unfinished. I decided to hold onto it in order to fully give it the time and energy it needs for construction. I've posted the first section; the second section, "Linking (Hypertext)" was half-complete and has been taken out here; it is a discussion of the structure of the Internet and the nature of hyperlinking; the final section, which I am/was planning to title "Deconstructing Revolutionary Speech; Relations/Signs; Within/Without" would have looked at Barthes' admittance that myth is impossible to escape, fundamentally collapsing the notion of the separated semiological systems, meaning that it is impossible to consider the sign without the myth placing it within culture, within ideology (as the fundamental base of the sign cannot be separated from myth), meaning that signs are fundamentally relations/connections/links. I did write this: "Like hyperlinks, signs are that which bind together bodies; signs provide us with a way to relate ourselves to the external, the Other; signs are connections, and it is only by examining these connections along with the individual bodies that we may find meaning/definition." I feel as if there's more needed to really complete that statement, but it's the basic point. I've also been thinking a lot lately about Web 2.0's assertion of "separation of form and content," but I'm not sure if (or how) that fits in to my argument yet. Hopefully, what I have just said is sufficient for the creation of an understanding of the intent behind what is above.