Folded Paper

***if you read this before about 8:00 on 2/08, then you listened to the wrong file. It has since been fixed. sowiez.

It seems like I’ll never finish that essay. For now, another sound piece.

As usual, stored on megaupload: here

I’ve been thinking about adding video to these and putting them on youtube. Reasons either for or against that:

1) People might see them on youtube and say something about them.

2) I’m invested in pure audio… the visual seems to have sort of domineered aesthetic experience, perhaps even for music somewhat with the music video, and so presenting something as an auditory experience i think makes an interesting statement, which means I could possibly just put up files with only minimal visuals or just a black screen.

3) using video would allow to do the thing I’m good at: i.e. arrange words on a surface

3a) I feel like a lot of what I was trying to do with poetry was to cross this gap that i’ve now already crossed and what I speak in these pieces suffers from that: especially apparent is my attempts at appropriation in poetry which works fine on paper but then is ineffectual in the sound piece– as video, these poems might work again in some form. I’m thinking of performing real-time erasures?

4) can’t think of anything else.

So– about this piece. I’m pretty excited about it… first one I’ve made in a while that I’ve felt good about. Last 3 or so have been kind of garbage. I’m trying not to hide my voice as much, so this one has a lot of raw footage, of my voice especially. But a lot of raw in general. The process this time was somewhat different– I exported the project to vegas only once: after like 3 records in audacity, and continued to use that same file with different effects throughout, but everything after that was not processed again. I sort of / kind of did this one entirely live, only totally not. At least it is seeming like less of a stretch to me to have performed it live. I think if I had simply arranged the tracks in audacity sequentially (as oppose to layering them on top of each other), it would have made a fairly interesting experience, though pretty long, and more ambient… it seems totally possible for me to do this live in accompaniment/collaboration to/with poetry reading. Once I get a decent palette of sound going, it kind of carries itself and I’m pretty free to vamp on top of that. So, for this one, I established that palette pretty earlier then messed around and kept relayering as usual. The editing process for this was actually slightly longer than I’ve liked to do, but I think worth it, and it makes sense to do so when creating an artifact. It was fairly simple though– I basically went through each track as a solo and muted the parts I didn’t find particularly interesting, quieted places that were too cacophonous, or where a boring cacophony was covering a more interesting one,  then did a little bit of arrangement and added some sound from megaman 3.

But uhh…. yeah. Two days of work. Tell me what you think.

Continuing Digressions

So, I wanted to put up another audio file. There’s a lot about this that I’m unhappy with, but it is getting closer to what I’ve been wanting. I talk for a bit about some thinking, so you can skip to the end to get the file. Or, actually, I’ll link it here too.

A while ago, I read some articles about sound art on soundtoyz.net. The interactive audio things are generally unimpressive, and I have critical disagreements about the purpose of them insofar as they are “interactive” — as though they weren’t just a mediation between the user and code, presented the user with a very limited experience that is never creative, but gives the impression of allowing creative expression as long as you play by the rules– that is, as long as your artistic sensibilities conform with the coder’s. But whatever– my complaint is largely formed by the articles I read on their website here, which are great. I recommend Audio Art in the Deaf Century by Douglas Khan (holy shit xml makes life easy)  and, to perhaps a lesser extent,  Cooling Hot: redundancy and entropy in a critique of interactivity by Alan Peacock, especially…. I’m sure other ones are good, too, but I didn’t read them all.

Moving on, those helped me frame my ideas for this project within an existing discourse. Specifically, what Kahn says about audio art is very much like what is being said about the prose poem– that it is a sort of monster set to consume all other forms. While prose poems move rapidly from one register of discourse to another, audio art seeks to contain all forms of noise. Outside of youtube poop, my closest relatives are poets (Jack Spicer, esp.) and noise musicians. For now, I won’t talk about poetry.

Noise musicians are great. It’s hard to find a good video on youtube, but here you go. Most people reading this don’t exist, and don’t need explanation, though.  The (inappropriate) use of traditional instruments alongside (and as well as) non-traditional instruments function both to critique conventions of musicality, but also re-envision our relationship with objects, the world. To be totally crude, the “inability” of noise musicians to make “music” represents my frustration at being drowned in a world of utilitarian objects where ideas of beauty have been forgotten, or at least pushed to the side, left to the experts. If noise music is “annoying” or hard to listen to, long story short, go read Adorno (no poetry after Auschwitz, etc. etc.).

But noise music is not necessarily so difficult. An early animal collective (before they got so poppy) moved through multiple registers of musicality, at times just “noisy,” but other times evoking moments of ephemeral beauty, sadness, exhilaration… etc.etc.etc. By moving through these as possibilities, I think the critique of music becomes much more effective and the auditory experience is much richer– if I have a complaint about noise music is that it gets to be monotonous… the frustration ceases to surprise once it is expected. Every musical possibility is heightened by its proximity to the others— the way classical AM radio can sound more fleeting because it is heard through static, or how music from a passing car can be shockingly melodic against the noise of traffic. But I feel like I’m losing track of my digression

(Words that are sung remain musical insofar as 1) it is conventional 2) meaning is derived from the tone of voice, musical context, etc. 3) the word itself is pulled out of its natural state to fit the song’s melody 4) etc. “lyrics” are thus always secondary to melody– this is more complicated in rap music, where melody is often secondary or dependent on the language, but often it is the melody the words create, not the words themselves, which, in the end, takes precedence… rap is still a useful model for me– anyway, I don’t want to just “sing” or “rap” (though I’ve been known to sing) because that would not be poetry, it would be lyricism. Anyway, )

My departure from noise music is that I don’t want to limit myself to the realm of music. I want this art to consume all forms, but never pay allegiance to any particular genre. Thus the collision of movies, poetry, video games, music (of all genres) etc. etc. etc. The goal is to get at an understanding of the experience of sound. I’m a long way off. Here’s another one. I’ll post more soon and make more. Still not sure how to talk about these specifically… any comments would be great. The thing is uploaded at megaupload: here

enjoy (or not) and let me know what you think

Challenge vs. Difficulty

So, as I was writing the second part of the post I promised, I got into this huge digression trying to identify a term I want to start using. I’m just going to lift that digression and make it its own post so that I can post the other post as a solid unit without a huge Shandyian digression in the middle of it. So…. here you go.

Here, I’ll attempt a definition and/or explanation of what I mean by challenge, and hopefully by the time this article is done, I’ll have a concrete statement about it. So, challenge:

The game only challenges once the difficulty has reached a certain threshold or breaking point at which no further progress can be made using the same methods. Imagine a TD in which mazing is possible, but not necessary (as is often the case during the early levels)—this depth of strategic thinking is not called out by the challenge because it is not required to overcome the difficulty. (It could be argued that since the potential to maze is still there, whether necessary or not, that higher order of thinking is still attainable. That does not, I want to argue, make it more challenging. While it is possible to beat up an old woman with all the vigor necessary to fight a bear, one is not challenged to do so—and when doing so, notably, one would necessarily rely entirely on previous fighting experience; the old woman does not present enough of a challenge to necessitate innovation. The challenge is independent of the player. I’ll explain this better in a bit.). A wave of extremely fast creeps would necessitate a new technique, mazing, in order to overcome the challenge. So it would seem that as difficulty scales, challenge increases, but this is not necessarily true. In IWBTG, for example, the challenge is limited to mechanical input,  memorization, and small amounts of strategy and puzzle solving. The extreme difficulty does not open to a new level of play. The game presents a very specific challenge. (For IWBTG, I think this limitation is artistically interesting, and I’ll talk about this eventually—my point is that I am not saying it is as simple as more challenge is “better”).

While difficulty is a measure of the disparity between effort required to complete the task and the ability of the player, the challenge is a virtual property of the game. Though it can only be realized through the player’s actions, the challenge is a formal property of the game, irrespective of player or interface. Halo’s port from Xbox to PC is a clear example of how a changed interface delineated difficulty from challenge; the superiority of the mouse/keyboard for dealing with fps situations allowed for such ease of play that the game became fluff, too boring to challenge the serious gamer. Thus what may have appeared as challenge in the Xbox, was in fact only a false difficulty imposed by the clumsy method of input. Although the increased difficulty of playing with a controller may have spurred innovations for Xbox players, such as strategies for map control (as certain weapons are much more valuable to the hard-of-aiming), faster than it would have for PC players, these innovations are still applicable and possible for the PC player, though he may have less need of them unless the competition is particularly heavy. In short, the constraints imposed upon the player by the interface only ever increase difficulty. The same is obviously true for noobs who have difficulty just navigating the field of play, or for a player with an injured hand. These external difficulties can lead to a lower threshold at which the challenge occurs, but the game’s net/actual/real?/full potential for? (not sure what word goes here) challenge remains the same.

I do not intend to limit difficulty and challenge to matters of physical virtuosity. Nor do I want to place difficulty on the physical side of play and challenge on the intellectual. Difficulty and challenge are two intensities at work in both the physical and intellectual (I try not to even make the distinction). I’ll give a full reading of a game in these terms later, but for now I want to just make a quick example. Games create difficulties in pockets. Sprout TD (why do I always come back to TDs?) is quite simple in terms of physical input, like most TD’s (notably not BBSI TD), preferring to place difficulty in strategic thinking. One could begin by simply building clusters of towers in key locations, but soon it is necessary to maze. On higher difficulties, the only way to survive is by separating waypoints so creeps must pass through the maze multiple times. As the maze expands, these two difficulties come into conflict. On one hand, it is vital that towers are placed in the right location—a slow tower is only useful if the creeps it slows are near other towers that deal damage, but on the other hand, a good maze needs to have branches leading off from the main cluster of towers to block off waypoints. (If you’ve never played Sprout TD, or games similar, then you have no idea what I’m talking about, I know, I’m sorry). I don’t know how to say this without sounding mystical, but to solve the problem and build an effective maze, two previously distinct techniques, concepts, abilities, etc. must come into unison. The resultant operative force is capable of handling the task neither element could have singly.

This is important to study not simply because of the aesthetic experience this unity can create, but because this challenge, in fostering the growth of certain sections of the self, forging unity between some areas and neglecting others, actively generates patterns of thinking, forms of thought, types of humans. I have argued elsewhere that games have potential to foster our growth as humans, but also to assimilate us into machinic thinking. In identifying what I’ve called challenge, I believe I’ve located the lens through which we can understand these potentialities in specific games, rather than continuing to make sweeping claims that have no real impact. In short, my hypothesis is that the greater the challenge, the more the game pushes for fusion of all elements of the self, the more that game will foster our humanity. Thus the extreme importance in delineating difficulty from challenge. Most people, it seems, tend to see difficulty in video games as a de facto indication of their tendency to foster mechanical thinking. As the complete inability of computer scientists to create a computer capable of defeating top Go players attests, this is far from the truth. Yet our culture’s belief in this stereotype (the pale skinned computer nerd who has more in common with his computer than other people) has meant we have routinely ignored the extent to which video games have served as grounds for real humanist development. Instead, cultural critics have insisted upon examining procedurally simple games, which offer little to no challenge, and in failing to do so, I would argue (plan to argue eventually) these games cannot help but be didactic—that is, to enforce a mechanical mode of moral/aesthetic thinking. But enough of that for now. Must return to my essay…

“Gaming” Mice

another quick side note– I use an MX310, which logitech doesn’t make anymore, and is quite old.  It is light, comfortable, and handles well at high speeds. With 800 dpi. People lately seem to think you need a mouse with above 1200 dpi… the high-end gaming mice have 4 or 5 thousand dpi. They also brag about their 1kmhz polling whatever that brings your mouse delay down to 1ms.

As though this matters.

First: none of that means shit if you can’t aim in the first place.

Second: you’re probably playing WoW, in which case: lol, and btw you don’t have to aim. But have fun with your fifty extra buttons that make the mouse cumbersome and awkward.

Third: or you’re playing TF2, in which case good aim  only matters if you’re playing sniper (and not the fucking bow sniper). Similarly, if you’re playing one of those “realisitic” games (CoD, BF, CS, etc. etc.), your weapons have inaccuracies so the kind of precision these mice offer is irrelevant. Memorizing the map is more important than knowing how to aim in any of these games. (I mention CS because every shot is essentially a flick shot: the kind of precision offered by a 5000 dpi mouse isn’t going to really matter, as long as it can track at high speeds, which my MX310 does perfectly)

Fourth: You’re playing online? Oh. So then you’re already dealing with 50-100 ping if you have a good connection, which is going to fluctuate anyway, so that difference of 7ms your mouse offers means absolutely nothing.

Fifth: Have you ever thought to yourself: “damn, if only I had moved my hand 1/5000 of an inch to the left, then I would have shot that guy!” No, you probably haven’t, unless you’re just making excuses, but the human hand isn’t capable of that kind of precision anyway (at least at any speed that would matter) –further, your resolution probably isn’t high enough for that to matter, either.  And, considering your OS and the game you’re playing each affect the sensitivity of your mouse, usually making it lower, none of this matters. (Although having the ability to adjust your dpi sounds pretty cool) This is like listening to hi-fi music on your built-in laptop speakers. There’s no sense in sending a high dpi signal into a low precision environment.

Finally: and this is my main point, game companies refuse to make games that require skill anymore (don’t want to scare away the casual crowd!) so aiming is becoming a thing of the past. To expand the market, the industry has to cater to lowest common denominator. It’s funny that the “gaming” mouse should catch on concurrently with the extinction of “gaming” as such. Now, instead of developing skill, one buys objects to mark oneself as a dedicated gamer, apparently to convince themselves that they are confronted with a difficult task requiring specialized tools and skills.

And they cost at least twice as much. Razer sells a mouse for up around 150$. I guess there are people out there who really need to feel special.

more of a personal note…

title my essay on IWBTG “I Wanna Be the Guy: The Movie: The Game: The Essay”

also: as far as I can tell, no one has done this yet. I hearby officialy call dibs.

On Difficulty (Hard On)

I want to write more in this thing, but I am lazy/working on other things. So, this post is something of a preliminary to talking about I Wanna Be the Guy: The Movie: The Game. I’m going to write a good, big thing eventually, but this is not it yet, though it keeps growing… without further ado, my thoughts:

When I want to talk about games, the term I keep coming back to is difficulty. (Good) games defer from most mass culture insofar as they do not easily commodify themselves—they require a fair amount of effort on the part of the player. The traditional divide between intellectual or artistic works and mere entertainment has been along this same line. And so my work is often an effort to align the practice of gaming with that of “high” art, like poetry, modern painting, whatever. Moreover, I believe that thinking about games can help us understand this often murky division; games provide an interesting example against which we can measure our experiences with other forms: painting cinema, w/e because the extent to which they are “difficult” is much more obvious than traditional art forms.

Brief Aside: (Of course, this is inextricably bound with what I believe art is, or more specifically, what art should do. In short, I’d say that art is the sport of the mind. Running, swimming, jumping, etc. is physically demanding and when engaged regularly the body strengthens; like so for art, only this growth is ethical, intellectual, aesthetic, whatever, etc. I’m not going to give this issue full treatment here, but even if you disagree I think the distinction is still useful, if in a less profound way. Moving on,)

The prevailing attitude is that all products of the entertainment industry are artless commodities, games included. This attitude is based, primarily, upon a certain image of the movie-goer. The movie-goer sits in the theater, is given popcorn and a comfortable chair, needs to do nothing but watch the movie reveal itself. The movie must be decoded to become meaningful, but decoding movies requires little effort. As the viewer, along with the directors, actors, etc., becomes thoroughly practiced in genre conventions, the ease of interpretation increases. And of course genre conventions include scripts not just for the actors, but the audience as well. This is clearest in the scoring of films, where the music can signal to the viewer when to be compassionate or apathetic to the events on screen, but also, quite paradoxically, when to be surprised.

The game, however, does not reveal itself without reciprocal effort on the part of the player. e.g. Mario does not move unless you push buttons, and thus, as the saying goes “We gotta find the princess… and YOU gotta help us.” The plot of the game can only be revealed through effort by the player: let’s call this interactivity. But interactivity is not necessarily difficult, it does not necessarily challenge the player, and is thus not by itself sufficient grounds for aligning gaming with art.

A good place to begin is with pornography, which blurs the boundary between game and film insofar as it is already interactive: that is, the intended pleasure to be derived from pornography requires effort on the part of the viewer. (This activity I will label as “second order” because it is inessential to the advancement of the movie, while the interactivity visible on the screen and required for the completion of the movie I will label as “first order.”) Likewise, the pornography industry was first to embrace DVD technology by making “interactive” films. Such films allow the viewer to choose between angles, positions, actresses and their clothing, etc., but this interactivity remains minimal, amounting to little more than changing the channel.

On the other hand, there is a growing multitude of Flash “games,” which hardly qualify as such. Games like the “Meet’N’Fuck” series made by VadimGoD and produced by Games of Desire (GoD for short: ironic? Don’t know yet.) are often entirely linear. “Meet’N’Fuck: Intensive Therapy,” for example, begins as the avatar (always male, average, face never seen) wakes up inside a hospital. Looking up through his eyes, the player is immediately approached by two young nurses, their breasts (inexplicably and perpetually bouncing) barely contained by their skimpy nurse uniforms. The player navigates through the game by picking from pre-scripted dialogue; only one of the choices will advance the player to the next screen. If the player chooses incorrectly, the women respond harshly, though the player is free to choose again: this time with the incorrect choice made unavailable. This can repeat until there is only one option left and the player has no choice but the correct dialogue, and no amount of error will affect the narrative, which remains almost entirely linear and predetermined.

The reward for completing dialogue is two short Hentai: one with each nurse. These scenes are advanced toward climax by clicking a “harder!” button which appears once the “pleasure bar” located vertically along the side of the screen reaches predetermined levels (In some games the player may elect to return to an earlier level, the pleasure bar will not rise and climax is not impossible without passing through the final level). Although the interactivity here seems trivial, it can be inferred that this feature is implemented as a way for the first and second orders of interactivity to come in synchrony. (If you know what I mean). Along the same lines, the first order of interactivity must be kept simple so as not to interfere with the second order. Clearly, second order interactivity takes priority over first order interactivity; the player is not challenged (at least not significantly) or resisted by the game itself—any challenge the player has fulfilling the requirements of second order interactivity is (lol) a personal problem. The game, like the girls in it, is there purely for (presumably) his pleasure, resisting only slightly, so as to appear chaste enough to make the player feel a sense of accomplishment and exclusivity. (metaphor/ambiguity intended).

The interactive DVD, in some cases, actually offers as much or more interactivity and allows the viewer more freedom than these games. It would thus be easy to conclude that the distinction between game and movie, like the distinction between flash fiction and prose poetry, appears to be entirely artificial, relating more to publisher than genre. But I’ll not settle so easily. Rather, I will insist that interactivity alone does not make something a game (how, for example, could these be called a “series of interesting choices” when there are effectively no choices being made?), but that something is a game insofar as it challenges its players (and the quality of the game can be measured by the extent to which it challenges), and that the pleasure (call it what you will) one derives from gaming lies in being challenged, and is thus intrinsic to the gameplay itself.

To understand this claim, we’ll need to examine more games representing at least a partial spectrum of possible difficulty… I’ll do this in the next post

Noisy Noisy

So, I don’t know. I posted some stuff to youtube, but the audio didn’t work for whatever reason, which completely defeated the puporse….. but yeah. Instead, I am having posted a file to megaupload because I’m ghetto like that. The link is here: though I’m not sure how permanent megaupload is… so, get it while its hot, or whatever.

I don’t think it’s particularly good, though it has good sound quality… I’m just trying out the different things I can do and figuring things out. Whatever. No energy today.

What I think about Q3A

I wrote this too. But really, it is only a summary of the article I mention “Zigzagging Through a Strange Universe,” which is much more accurate and in-depth, plus a little bit of my commentary. But this is more what I want to be writing…. I wish I just had more time to talk… maybe I’ll read really fast.

 

 

The Player Is Co-Creator of Procedure: A Concise History of the Strafe-Jump

 

Enter the world of Quake, an early FPS game for the PC, the birthplace of the strafe-jump. But what is a strafe-jump, you ask? In gamer terms, the strafe-jump is one of those things that separates the pros from the noobs. You have before you a  series of platforms; the space between each greater than the last. How do you get across? Common sense dictates that the fastest route between two points is a straight line, so you run straight ahead and jump. Maybe you make the first jump, but not the second. If the second jump looks hard, look at the last one. Clearly, nothing you know about jumping will get you over this gap. Yet the solution to this problem is not a rocket pack, a grappling hook, a speed boost, or anything else provided by the game; in fact, it never occurred to the designers of Quake that players would ever be able to jump this far. The solution, of course, is the strafe-jump. The strafe-jump is a technique, discovered by gamers, that exploits the physics of the game to increase one’s momentum while jumping.

Seemingly the only written history of the strafe-jump is by one of the gamers who helped develop the technique: Anthony Bailey. In a 1997 editorial, “Zigzagging Through A Strange Universe” posted to Planet Quake, though now missing from that website, Bailey describes how the strafe-jump developed. Before Quake, players of DooM discovered that running at an angle by strafing to one side while running forward combined the speed of both movements, making it possible to traverse the diagonal of a square at the same speed one could travel along any of its sides. When developing Quake, id sought to remove this exploit by adding the command “sv_maxspeed” to the physics engine, which attempted to cap the running speed of players. However, this was only a brief setback. “sv_maxspeed” had two shortcomings: first, it only applies to running speed, movement through the air is unaffected; second, it is bound by the force of the friction mechanic and thus does not restrict speed instantaneously. Working within these limitations, gamers developed what is today called strafe-jumping.

For many people, including some members of id, strafe-jumping was considered a form of cheating. During the development of Quake II, id made attempts to remove strafe-jumping, but it was left in at the game’s release. To make a long story short, when QuakeLive was released in 2007, it included this (point) training map along with video tutorials teaching players how to strafe-jump. Similar patterns, though perhaps none are as strong as this one, have played out in other games as well, such as “wave-dashing” in Super Smash Brothers: Melee, and “skiing” in the Tribe franchise, to name a few. The important thing to note is that the players are co-creators of the game’s procedure. For procedure is only ever virtual: it has no concrete existence until actualized. As long as the system is open and relatively complex, players are able to decide how they wish to engage with that system. Even in games that have not been affected by developments like strafe-jumping, the players with similar interests are often able to control their position in the game through a number of ways (e.g. competitive servers, role-playing servers, “no sniper rifles” rules, etc. etc. etc.) Clearly, if we wish to gain a genuine understanding of video games, as if you’re not sick of hearing it, we need to abandon the artist/spectator framework and pay serious attention to how the game is actually played, instead of continuing to reserve interpretation for anything but already ambiguous terms like the “artist’s intent.” Further, this requires an in-depth knowledge of the game, and an attention to technical detail as yet unprecedented by critics of video games.

how am I going to cut this down???

So- I organized my paper into two parts. The first part is done, but it is already as long as my whole paper is supposed to be… need to find a way to cut this down. Here’s part number one: tell me what can go.

 

Introduction

 

In an essay considering the possibility of a Chess-playing machine, the mathematician Claude Shannon presents an interesting dilemma: “chess is generally considered to require ‘thinking’ for skilful play; a solution of this problem will force us either to admit the possibility of a mechanized thinking or to further restrict our concept of ‘thinking.’” In a similar vein, McKenzie Wark theorizes, in his work GAM3R 7H3ORY, how the subversive element of “play” has been removed from contemporary video games, which instead “[respond] to the boredom of the player with endless games of repetition.” Such games would require nothing more than “mechanized thinking” as proposed by Shannon. Further, Steven Poole, in his essay “Working for the Man,” has argued that video games are often little more than exercises in following the rules, and the most successful player is the one who follows the rules the best. If this is true, then we should find that contemporary video games discourage creative thought, training their players to “think” like machines. Further, the more difficult or competitive the game, the more its players are assimilated to mechanized thinking.

Video games, then, would be a primary site of what, in “The Question Concerning Technology,” Martin Heidegger calls “Enframing:” that is, the force of technology to recode the world in its image, and thus condition us to think only within its terms, while hiding the true essence of the world. The gamer, by being “enframed,” gives up his humanity in exchange for an image of the “human” as that which interacts with the computer: the “U” in UI. Or, as Adorno explains it: “The movements machines demand of their users already have the violent, hard-hitting, unresting jerkiness of Fascist maltreatment. Not least to blame for the withering of experience is the fact that things… assume a form that limits contact with them to mere operation, and tolerates no surplus” (40).  As those extraneous motions fall into disuse and are lost, something new is formed: closer to machine than human. As the possibility of creative expression deteriorates, experience itself is slowly drained of meaning.

Yet Heidegger, quoting Hölderlin, insists that “But where danger is, grows / the saving power also” (28). In short, this “saving power” is that which may reveal the world in its true essence. Heidegger identifies the arts, which are centered around the poetic revealing of poiēsis, as holding this saving power. Following the root of poiēsis, however, Heidegger discovers that the arts and technology were once both called by one name: technē (34). The division which has grown between the arts and sciences, specifically that which forgets the human basis of technology, which couples art to the human, but allows technology to run free, this division, Heidegger argues, has obscured the essence of both art and science, thus hiding their shared root: technē. If we do not reclaim technology as our own, “[it] may entrench itself everywhere to such an extent that someday, throughout everything technological, the essence of technology may come to presence in the coming-to-pass of truth” (35). That is to say, if we continue to give technology free reign, we may at last learn the essence of technology only by noting what has been lost at the moment technology disjoins itself from the human entirely. Only by discovering human creativity, the “saving power,” within the technological, can this fate be avoided.

Is it possible that in video games there waits such a “saving power”? If so, why hasn’t it been found? By closely examining several games and critical writing on games, I hope to display the very human creativity of gamers, and explain why this has been overlooked by most critics of video games.

Octet

The most appropriate place to begin solving this problem is with an explanation of my paper’s title: “Beginners Play Atari.” To most Americans, the word Atari refers to a company, producers of the Atari video game consoles. Anyone who has followed the development of video games can attest that early games are, in many cases, much more difficult than games are released today. So when I say “beginners play Atari,” I mean to refer not to the difficulty of the games, but to a certain concept of gaming, in which a single player pits his or her skills against a computer opponent. In these games every element of the playing field is programmed except for the actions of the player’s avatar (which is often already very limited). This is “for beginners” insofar as it provides an easy framework for interpretation. Most critical work on video games seems to be stuck under this model, which parallels the traditional artist/spectator dichotomy. Under this model, the player/spectator, although granted token agency, has no real freedom outside of performing the actions prescribed by the designer/artist. As difficulty increases, freedom is further limited.

Using such games as case studies, it is easy to see why critics have continued to use the general outline of the artist/spectator model. The player has as little control over her avatar as the museum patron has over a painting: choosing to not to follow the game’s objectives offers as much escape as closing one’s eyes. In order to ascribe creativity agency to the gamer, it is necessary that we abandon this model.

Attempts have been made in this direction, but I feel they have been largely unsuccessful. Ian Bogost, in Persuasive Games, is perhaps the first critic to account for the actions of the player as significant to the interpretation of a game, in what he calls “Procedurality.” A game does more than present viewers with a series of sounds and images; it establishes procedures for the players to follow. Bogost claims that these procedures should be the primary object of study when interpreting a video game. But that shift in focus has as yet done nothing to break the artist/spectator dichotomy. The game’s design retains its position as determining force, and the player still obediently follows procedure. Bogost’ response seems to be advocating for a more responsible approach to game design, one that would perhaps encourage creative thinking, but this still places creative agency entirely within the hands of the designer, and is thus self-defeating.

There is another approach available, which takes into account the fact that many of today’s games are multiplayer. The possibility for social and political action could open avenues for creative expression not available in single-player games. Leading this approach is Henry Jenkins, who has shown that players of games like The Sims are politically active within the game’s world. But The Sims is designed to facilitate community building and politics, so it is not clear how much this could be considered anything more than following procedure. Further, it is questionable how effective Jenkins’ approach would be when applied to other, less obviously open games. Moreover, Jenkins makes little or no mention of the UI or controls for The Sims. The political events Jenkins examines are, at worst, only  adjacent to the game itself. At best, insofar as they are not innovations in the operation of the game, they affect the content of experience, but not the form. The technology of The Sims might, in Heidegger’s terms, “bring to presence” the “essence” of sociality, and how new media have provided new and interesting platforms for human interaction, but Jenkins has not turned toward the essence of technology itself. The division between the human and the technological remains intact.

Before admitting the gamer is nothing more than a slave to the system, even more so than the television viewer because he actively works toward his own subjugation,

there are a few other options. We could examine how the gamer can be creative through a “pro-sumer” model: using modding software to create her own content, but again this does not look for creativity within the gameplay itself. Another avenue to investigate, which I don’t have time for in this paper, is the casual gaming movement, whose focus is on the quick apprehension of a system of rules, and whose wide market frees the player from commitment to any specific rule set. For this paper, however, my focus is on what are called “hardcore” games, generally produced for mass audiences. It is my belief that, contrary to the general opinion, the highest levels of creativity in gaming are to be found in competitive games, and that, contrary to what is found under the designer/gamer dichotomy, it is precisely hardcore games’ difficulty and competitive nature that makes possible, encourages, and even necessitates creativity.

To follow this line of thinking we must return to the phrase “beginners play Atari,” which is a translation of a “proverb” from the ancient Japanese board game, Go. The general idea is that the most obvious route to victory, if pursued, will be easily defended against, leaving the aggressor worse off than when she started. More often than not, putting an opponent’s piece into Atari, in an attempt to capture it, is a wasted move. The experienced player grants her opponent the small victory and secures her position elsewhere on the board. The nuances need not be elaborated further, for the problem is the same everywhere. The beginner has only a coarse understanding of the game and hastily makes decisions, neglecting the broader implications of her actions. As scholars, we must heed this advice. Without an adequate understanding of our subjects, we can do nothing more than fight over minor victories that have little bearing on the overall game.

Video game studies, if it exists at all, is very much in danger of making itself irrelevant by ignoring the subtleties of its subject. McKenzie Wark, in his formulation of a game theorist, claims that “For a gamer to be a theorist might not require the ability to play any particular game especially well. The prizes have nothing to do with thinking the game.” While I agree that it is possible to rely on the testimony of skilled players if you have little experience yourself, this still requires the view of an expert. If it is not already, it should be clear by the end of this presentation that the veteran and novice gamer have fundamentally different understandings of the game. The theorist who makes claims as a novice gamer does so with the same authority with which a reader may appraise a novel written in a language he does not speak.

This same false sense of authority allowed Ian Bogost to publish the following description of the game Counter-Strike: “Strategy in Counter-Strike is grounded in free-for-all: players often use “bunny hopping,” or continuous jumping, to avoid fire; they respawn immediately when killed; they can fire effectively while running or jumping. Players enter the game and start scuffling immediately, without the need for preparation of any sort” (75). While several games might fit the description Bogost has given, Counter-Strike is not one of them. Spending any significant amount of time playing this game would directly contradict nearly every one of these claims. I won’t take the time here to adequately debunk these statements; my purpose is only to point out how basing one’s claims on a novice skill level can lead to a highly flawed interpretation. On the subject of Proust, Adorno remarks that “it is Proust’s courtesy to spare the reader the embarrassment of believing himself cleverer than the author” (49). For true critical work can only be done from a position of respect, and although Bogost grants this respect to the makers of so-called “serious games,” he generally denies it of games produced by the entertainment sector: especially “hardcore” competitive games, like Counter-Strike. In neglecting to take “seriously” non-“serious games,” Bogost fails to discover the creative creative potential of video games and gamers.

 

 

 

 

after this, is the part I’m actually excited about writing, where I give detailed descriptions of some games, etc. etc. But yeah… shit.

A brief aside (HL2)

I’ve been thinking about what the G-Man says to Gordon at the end of HL2: “rather than offer you the illusion of free choice, I will take the liberty of choosing for you…”

Valve plays a dangerous game. Their attempt is to create the illusion of an open world while at the same time offering only one path. At times this really works. The first few scenes I remember running scared, ducking into whatever doorway I could, getting ambushed and doubling back, finding a different path open, leaping from windows, etc. etc. But as soon as their illusion falters, and you take a “wrong” turn, you’re at a dead-end. You quickly realize, when it comes down to it, that despite all the 3D and dynamic environment bullshit, you might as well be running in a straight line. The magic of the game is lost at this moment, and everything to come afterward is tainted by that feeling. That conveniently placed dumpster; that “hidden” ammo box.

The moment you see that everything in the world is put there for a specific purpose is precisely the moment those objects cease to mean anything.