Consumption

In the game, the purpose is almost always to acquire. In many ways, the original Pac-Man continues to provide the motif and core of the game, despite its advances in rendering technology and sundry interactivity possibilities. But the game encourages the gamer to consume--a gluttony that would be punished in the Fifth Circle of Dante's Hell (both the game and the original poem)--in a way that surpasses most media's insistence on consumption. All media urge the audience to consume: more movie tickets, more DVDs, more clothes, more food, more gas, more knowledge. This is an oblique compliment and an obtuse insult, for it is a natural thing that media--or, perhaps, society--can convince their audience to do par excellence.

And yet the game's purpose is a distillation of the real, making the consumption--though virtual--more pressing, more incentive-driven, more intense. This is part of its allure. This is part of its danger. This is part of its future. This is part of its strength. For this type of consumption's greatest threat is never eventual starvation due to a surfeit of indulgence, but rather the inversion of the target to the point of self-consumption. (Self-examination, then, is the precursor to intellectual self-consumption, a radical event that grows off of that which it feeds--a twist on Hamlet's observation of "...[a]s if increase of appetite had grown/By what it fed on...", though the Prince of Denmark anticipates this rapacious consumerism in his prescient lines. Whether or not one's self-consumption actually transpires seems implausible: Has one ever thought oneself into madness?) With the game, however, its self-consumption can constantly hold satiety in abeyance, in part because of the endlessness of its product, its endless repetition of the buttons, its refusal to end on the terms of the gamer--always on the terms of the game. But more than that, the game can generate its selfsame indefinitely, for it isn't limited by natural resources. Its limits come from algorithms, yes, but if the algorithm is its boundary, then time only will delimit it to the point of effective infinity. It is the most harmless kind of consumption within the world of the unreal, and it is a nearly-disease kind of consumption in the world of the real.

The (Un)Real World


It is Skyrim where we see this consumptive desire played out in its endless expanses. Acquisition for its own sake is the metaphorical name of this game. Pots, body parts, weapons, ores, clothing, and so many other miscellanea that a list is worthless perpetuate themselves throughout the game. The gamer can never consume it all--there is always more to take and to sell, to weigh down Lydia with, to hoard in one's home. The game yields its bountiful crop each time the gamer enters its frosty hills.

But it is more than just the quasi-tangibles of the game, those items that weigh down the character and make for endless scrolling. The acquisition of levels, of spells, of perks, of trophies/achievements--all of these join in and expand upon the expansiveness of Skyrim. One can journey from one end of the map to the other, passing stunning vistas (that eye-candy that is visually devoured as rapidly as real-world candy) and avoiding roaming giants, yet the experience is not satisfying. The lack of satisfaction doesn't come from disappointment--it comes from the impulse of addition. Finding every homestead is not sufficient; other locales may yet need discovering. The exploration fuels this, yes. After all, there is a small thrill to finding some ruins that bandits have taken for their own, expelling them, and adding another mark to the map. But within the gamer lurks this insistence that there is yet something to accomplish.

The Real World Consumption


The game turns itself outward, then, as what was harvested and harbored in the game again becomes insufficient. New games are then purchased--too many games to ever keep up with. Casual games of produce harvesting (consuming the virtual representation of that which turns into the most fundamental consumptive product) generate real world money for unreal world acquisitions. Birds with temperament disorders insist on the possibility of not only more stars, but more levels--thematic for the seasons--and external product of the unreal (plush toys, board games, keychains, and more). Thus the game turns in on itself while simultaneously turning outward, consuming the world that it never should have been able to, blurring the line between the real and the unreal, the analog and the digital, the finite and the infinite.  

Literature, Warfare, Omelas, and Rain

A New Literature

J. Hillis Miller: "The end of literature is at hand. Literature's time is almost up. It is about time. It is about, that is, the different epochs of the different media" (On Literature, 1). This is true, for the death of the Author would inevitably lead to the death of literature, an appropriation of the narrative by the audience in the absence of authorial command and content. The phoenix of literature and narrative will break outward, explode, while, because of its age and its culture, implode. Hamlet: "This is the imposthume of much wealth and peace,/That inward breaks, and shows no cause without/Why the man dies..." (Hamlet IV.iv). The deterritorialization of modernity and postmodernity can no longer insist on definitions, no longer conscript meaning within the purview of the hegemony. Narrative qua narrative, literature qua narrative--this is the game, the reterritorialization of the audience as author. The old death of the Author, with reader response and deconstruction, must capitulate to the new death of the Literature as the game moves outward, expanding into and exploring the form of what it means to be.

Theory can predict in loose outlines the path the game must take, but the game itself is powerless to take any form and any path independent from the gamer. Theory can sketch the outward forms, the inward importance, of the game, but the game itself must take the gamer to those signposts. Yet the gamer misappropriates power, assuming that the game exists for the outward expression only. Or the gamer misinterprets the narrative, assuming that the game's story speaks for the inward exploration only. The gamer is always already outside the game--literally and theoretically. The game exists without the gamer, but without the game, there is no gamer. The ideal contingency of what is transcribed within the algorithm has context only based upon the unideal within the gamespace, the reality of the world perceived.

The game points to the Enlightenment more forcefully than other media, as it stands alone in being the unreal responding to the real, a bundle of secondary qualities that can only operate through a medium of something with primary qualities. The oral history (and live performance) is transient and remembered only, incapable of being relived. The novel (and writing) is static and permanent, incapable of adapting to new times (rather, the times must readapt to the novel, for there is too much of worth to abandon the novel, despite the way the world advances). The film (and television) is static and capable of being relived, though what it relies on heavily is the spectacle of itself (much less than the game, yet still in a way that betokens the ambivalence of the medium). Al Gore: "Individuals receive, but they cannot send. They absorb, but they cannot share. They hear, but they do not speak. They see constant motion, but they do not move themselves" (Assault on Reason, 16). Thence comes the game in its ideal (the ideal of an ideal). The game is dynamic and capable of being relived, though its reliance on spectacle and its greatest strength (interaction) also weaken it to a point far from transcendence.

Modern Warfair

War has changed. In the digital, as in the real, there are rules of engagement. Some are unwritten and unsigned (don't camp; headshots get extra points), while others are unflinchingly imposed (Geneva conventions may be ignored in Abu Grahib and Gitmo, but no gamer can usurp the authority of the algorithm). The war outside of the game and the war inside of the game are inversions of each other. For the real soldier, there is no health pack, recharging of shields, or respawn point. For the virtual soldier, there is no politics, past life, or outside considerations. What preoccupies one does not preoccupy the other. The virtual soldier cares about reaching a checkpoint to prevent a loss of progress. The real soldier cares about reaching a safe haven to prevent the loss of life. The terms of the two represent each other only superficially, for the death in the game is immaterial, frustrating the ludonarrative impulse alone. Death on the battlefield is material and ambivalent, for the real soldier who dies does not know it.

Hence there is no playing at war, for war is not fair. The most skilled do not 'level up' or even make it home. Just war theory bears this out, as the premise for conflict is circumscribed by conditions that do not gel inside the new unreality of the game. Games such as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Brothers in Arms, and the Halo franchise do not at all represent war. Even the in-limbo Six Days in Fallujah cannot make a game out of war. The lines are too dissimilar within. Yet the superficiality of the game and the war allow for parallels that bear analysis.

• Example: Those who are denied the right to play and the right to war are given to complaining (with forums, petitions, and creation of new accounts for the unreal, and forums, petitions, and creation of new laws for the real).
  
• Example: There are ethical dilemmas that, upon completion, may warrant awards (positive/negative karmic trees for the unreal, and positive/negative press for the real).
  
• Example: Those who participate in the game and the war are of a volunteer ethos, and both have a duty imposed by the exercising of volition (no one is forced to play Ghost Recon 2, and there has been no conscription to the armed services in America since 1973).
  
• Example: The use of violence will resolve the conflict, even if the conflict is, itself, violence.
  

Violence par excellence is promised in both, but the delivery is distinct. The game strips away the inconveniences of the war, creating a condensed experience of fighting, with bloodbaths that pause only long enough for the next level to load. The daily grind, hours of vigilance, endless heat, perpetual stress of being in a war zone comprises the majority of many soldiers' lives. This discrepancy, long leveled at books and movies, now takes aim at the video game--and the charge still stands. The violence of the real battlefield is tangible in all the ways that the digital is not, driving a wedge between expectations and results.

None of this is to say that the games do not lead some to think of war. No reflection of humanity is truly complete without a component of the violent and the dark. The holy books of the three major monotheistic religions of the world all discuss violence as a part of reality, and every derivative and inferior narrative that stems outward from such books must, at the very least, take it as implied that violence exists in the world.

On Omelas

"The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas", a marvelous short story by Ursula K. LeGuin, describes a utopia that may be. People are free, happy, and capable of pursuing destinies of their own choosing. Holidays and work are enjoyed in equal measure, people are not puritanical nor licentious, but instead all live in harmony. In the depths of a closet, however, hidden deep beneath the city, a single child suffers and moans in the privation of its soul, caked in filth and starving its life away. Every person in Omelas knows about this child, and all know that it is because that child lives and suffers that everyone else can enjoy the life they have. Some few people feel that there is something inhumane about this, and choose to walk away, abandoning a life of tranquility bought with the suffering of an innocent for a life that they live independently.

This may very well be a story, not of those rejecting a potential utopia in favor of an unknown world, but instead an allegory for the thinking gamer, one who, rather than reveling in the utopia of the ideal made unreal and accepting it as such, instead turns his back on the pure ludological appeal of the gaming world and wishes to explore outward to additional lands and narratives. The price of playing is not as dramatic, but the effects are similar. Much is sacrificed for the ludic, and it is important to respond to what is being offered outside of the game. Hence the banality, futility, and idiocy of the phrase, "It's just a game." Yes, there is much in the game that is ludological, schediological, or narratological. These are the pillars on which the game itself rests. But there is much outside of the game that provides the context to what is being played. No civilian can play a soldier like a returned veteran can. No child can play a parent like a father or mother can. The context of the real is what allows the unreal its freedom. To those who cannot walk away from the game to see the world beyond--nor see the world beneath, the deeper signs and signifiers of the game--then there is a distinct loss. The context of the real makes the impossibility of the unreal conceivable, believable, and worth desiring.

The fear of how obsessive some people are over video games (above and beyond writing a book of essays about them), the constant, almost desperate attempts to link antisocial, violent, or aberrant behavior to video games, the imposition and regulation of video game sales, and all attendant disinformation about the medium, now comes into sharp focus. Those who look inward at Omelas will see one of two things: a world of bliss and understanding; or a world built on what they cannot accept. Those who only see the former are blinded by the brilliance of what the game can do; those who only see the latter are confident that all within the walls are benighted devils deserving of censure and reproach. Neither attitude serves the reality of what the game can be. And little wonder: there are precious few examples of that in the gaming world.


The Heaviest of Rain

Quantic Dreams has taken the narratalogical and schediological challenge of moving the video game into Hillis' "different media" with their brilliant and horribly undervalued Heavy Rain. The ludological component is somewhat lacking, proof that the industry is not quite capable of fully utilizing the game on its own terms. But there is much that works in the game; so much so that it overcomes its ludological shortcomings beautifully.

Heavy Rain relies on the same thing that thatgamecompany's Flower attempted (successfully) to invoke: emotion.^* The characters of Heavy Rain contain almost every necessary component for well-rounded and fully realized fictional beings: believability, sympathetic flaws, and honesty. Heavy Rain also handles mature issues well, performing the story for the audience, rather than pandering to it. The main purpose of the story is to allow the gamer to get to know its main protagonists. It is this level of detail in the mundane that works strongest for--and against--the game.

The tiniest minutiae--brushing teeth, shaving, playing with one's children, trying to work as an architect--push the gamer more and more heavily into the character's shoes. When it works, it is phenomenal. The empathy and care that is generated in the gamer can only be felt via this constant presence and control. It is here, however, where the ludic fails, as many gamers, so attuned to the spectacle of gaming and the type of response that they demand and are accustomed to the controls, cannot engage in the story to the correct degree. It is, as it were, too steep of a learning curve. The QTEs that play a predominant role in the control of the game are not tiresome, difficult, or poorly done; they are simply a more overt showing of what the controller normally does. It is a complex piece that must be sight-read as it is played, rather than a memorized ditty that can be rattled off like a thirty-lives code. This complexity offends the gamer who is more attuned to playing by rote than by improvisation.

Still, despite this minor setback (and it is minor), Heavy Rain stands far above other narratological media. It is, within the boundaries of the story, two-way. It gives possibilities, closes doors, opens windows, unlocks treasures, and refuses to let the ineptitude of the gamer halt the progress of the story. Rarely will a game allow such freedom with the choices in an almost genuine way. Unlike sandbox games that provide the greatest, most hollow promises of freedom, Heavy Rain allows the gamer to manipulate not the world around the character (an impossibility in the real world that is actually matched in the game world), but instead the story itself. The possibility of the death of the avatar is real, but the idea of not finishing the game is impossible. This allows the story to be told according to the whims of the game and the gamer, a symbiosis that is as beautiful as it is difficult to articulate.

Heavy Rain is not a game that should be precisely emulated. It must be expanded upon. The idea of sitting down with this game to 'play for a few minutes' is absurd. It is not that kind of game. It does not need (the laughably ubiquitous) multiplayer option. It needs a greater control option (perhaps it will be achieved with Move) and greater appreciation from gamers. It needs to be used as a model of what is possible, and an inspiration to push games toward what should be.

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*While Quantic Dream's masterpiece pushes emotions of fear, anger, stress, and empathy, Flower instead focused on emotions of tranquility and calm

Metal Gearl Solid I Act III: Shadow Moses

Backup Crew
The other characters of Metal Gear Solid round out the cast, provide additional context and content, and reside on a continuum of pertinence to the gamer, though their relevance to the narrative remain untouched by the gamer's machinations.^¤ In a sense, Master Miller, Mei Ling, and Nastasha are vestiges of the game's narrative in a formal, primal way--the game operates independently of their participation, though the attempt by MGS to incorporate them is noticeable. 

This isn't to disparage these tertiary characters. The gamer can succeed without interaction with Nastasha and Master Miller--success can also be accomplished without listening to Mei Ling's sagacious dispensations of aphorism, though each is thoughtfully added to the game to help enhance the gamer's perceptions of just what Snake is having to accomplish. Still, their importance is always narratological; Mei Ling proves her value in how effortlessly she is replaced by Otacon in MGS2. The similar role, played by Para-Medic in MGS3, does little to redeem Mei Ling's essentially empty presence in the original game. Despite these characters existing only for the narrative, they are there to heighten the attachment of Snake to his mission, to provide the occasional ludo- or schedieological purpose, and overall enhance the accomplishments of Snake.

Secondary Characters and Secondary Stories

Hal Emmerich (Otacon), Meryl Silverburgh, Colonel Roy Campbell, Naomi Hunter, and Revolver Ocelot are characters whose stories move beyond the tragedy at Shadow Moses. The remainder (Vulcan Raven, Decoy Octopus, Sniper Wolf, Psycho Mantis, Genome Soldiers, et al.) are mostly corpses, left to frozen tombs or savagery by the indigenous wildlife. Even Ocelot's arm is left behind. This is the life of Snake--the death of others. But each secondary character has a purpose that is beyond just the narrative's need for supporting cast.

Otacon

Narrative: Otacon provides the necessary lightning rod of the MGS's science fiction, grounding it with a tenuously-plausible genius who created the doomsday machine. He is the gentleman in distress, the intellectual foil to Snake's rugged machismo and masculinity. As a counterbalance to the incredibly violent Snake, Otacon is a pacifist by default--not having the skills to be a fighter--and, at the end chooses to become more of a generator of his own actions, rather than merely a reactionary.

His tropes are familiar--genius scientist whose well-meaning inventions threaten humanity--yet as his character is explored throughout additional games, he becomes more and more rounded. His back story is pure narrative--one never plays as Otacon (which many would consider a boon)--yet his foibles become recognizable. His foray into the world of creating Metal Gear is not his first mistake. MGS2 gives additional detail about Otacon's pre-Shadow Moses life, and it is quickly understood that the man easily falls into temptations. His perpetual resolve to never mess up again provides a sidelined tragedy that is played out in every game. His statement on the snowmobile is enlightening and tragic: "I'm just tired of always being a spectator in life. I'm ready to live. I'm gonna stand on my own two feet. I'm not gonna hide anymore." Despite such brave words, by the time he is seen again in MGS2, he is once again hiding in the digital world (a digital character in a digital world--a simulacrum of the simulacrum). His mistakes with his stepmother are perverse and strangely humanizing from a narrative point of view. His seduction by Naomi in MGS4 is, by now, expected. His constant heartache and heartbreak (he cries in every game) comes from wanting to be so much more than he is. The tears are not just of sadness but frustration at his perpetual humanity: He wishes he could be the ideal that Snake embodies, but he is--unlike Snake--all too human.

Meryl

Like Otacon, Meryl's back story is provided elliptically, and the gamer never has the chance of controlling her directly.^¤¤ Her desires are forged out of a childhood that she doesn't appreciate, and while the truth about her parentage isn't given until MGS4, her vulnerabilities because of her sex come through powerfully. Snake stands as an ideal man in that he doesn't judge Meryl based upon her gender (though he does think her butt is cute), but rather her abilities on the battlefield. Meryl, at first, stands as an ideal woman in that she is capable of overcoming the stereotype of a woman whose capacities are diminished because of her sex. This is not a permanent standing, as Meryl often has to be saved by Snake. However, each act of salvation feels less of a trope and more of a natural motive between two characters whose identities mingle, goals overlap, and mutual appreciation is apparent. 
 
The expected sexual tension between Snake and Meryl is subtle, and most likely reflects the gamer's desire for some sort of romantic consummation to exist in the lives of the characters on the screen. This tension is explicitly exploited by Psycho Mantis when he takes over Meryl's mind. After demanding of Snake to know if he likes her, she moans, "Hurry...hurry! Make love to me!! Snake, I want you!" The declaration may or may not be what Meryl felt for Snake at the time (though, by the end of the game, one gets the feeling that she has fallen for the rugged hero of Shadow Moses), but it taps into the necessary emotional responses that helps the illusion of control within the game. Once an overt overture of attraction is given, the desire to save Meryl when she's trapped by sniper fire later stems not from the schedieological, but from the emotional.

Because of the emotional connection that the two characters should have, the schism of the two separate endings of the game becomes more pointed. To save Otacon, the gamer must succumb to Ocelot's torture techniques, a move that is irrevocable within the game--short of reloading a prior save, Snake must live with the choice of having abandoned Meryl to rape and death while saving his new-found friend. This betrayal of Meryl is rarely something that the gamer has to reconcile with the rest of the narrative--according to the canon of the series, surviving the torture and getting the 'Meryl ending' indicates that Otacon survives the ordeal as well--as she is never heard from again. Even Campbell, her 'uncle', takes the news with little time devoted to grieving.

And yet, here the narrative breaks down because of the ludology: The gamer can choose Otacon because a second play-through will be 1) easier (on account of the stealth camo item that Otacon will give to Snake); and 2) one ending of two possible solutions. Unlike a novel, play, film, or any other narrative, the game--and the game alone--can allow such a multiplicity of potential endings. The illusion of control here is emancipating, but the damage done to the narrative is profound. No longer can authorial intention and expected emotional connections be sufficient to give the story its due. Instead, the story is manipulated because of ulterior motives--the gamer always picks up the controller with an ulterior motive to that of the characters.

Colonel Campbell

Campbell is also featured in prior games, not the least of which is MGS: Portable Ops, when he first meets Naked Snake--Solid Snake's father--in South America. Aside from his obvious role as a commander, Campbell moves beyond the avuncular to a demigod status. His orders are absolute, even if his original ideas require fine tuning by additional recommendations of his staff. His powers are limited--even his body is invisible. (He gains something resembling corporeality in MGS2, but that isn't even the real Campbell; it isn't until MGS:PO and MGS4 that Campbell is shown to be a real person.) It is perfectly fitting that Campbell become the voice of the Patriots in MGS2, as he is the one responsible for the generation of Snake's motives. As a fairly empty character, Snake needs the direction for his motivations (namely, to kill). Snake's rapid acceptance of Campbell's orders indicates a type of reliance on a greater authority, a type of validation for why he does what he is doing. Hence the import of Snake operating solo at the beginning of MGS2, and the significant change in Snake's character as he listens to the lengthy mission briefings of MGS4.

While Campbell may be the god of Snake's world, dictating where he should go and whom he should kill, he is a flawed god--one whose personal foibles makes for a more natural and realistic character. After all, his motivations for sending Snake in aren't originally expressed in the mission briefing before Snake is launched into Shadow Moses. His care for his daughter (though, in MGS, Meryl is called his niece) impels him to lie, deceive, and make unreasonable demands on his field agent. Not very professional, but definitely natural.^¤¤¤

Shadow Moses

The location of the game is its own character, too. Much like the Mississippi River is another crucial character to Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Shadow Moses becomes not just a backdrop to the espionage, but a pertinent and powerful part of the overall narrative. The snow encrusted buildings, the endless flurries, the darkness of the rarely-glimpsed sky--it all adds the necessary presence. While the Big Shell in MGS2 is also its own character, it is the inverse of this in every conceivable way (bird-poop encrusted boxes, endless visibility, almost to the distant shoreline, the brightness of the blue sky), and as a character it fails to be as ominous or as memorable. The severity of the circumstances within Shadow Moses adds a dimension of isolation and desperation. Like Snake, it is utterly remote--socially for the former, geographically for the latter--and that sense of the alone compounds not only the exceptional prowess of Snake, but the scope of the potential success when Liquid is finally defeated.

Additionally, Shadow Moses' name itself conjures a dual significance: The Fox Archipelago (located on the spur of islands off of Alaska's southwestern tip) is itself frequently in shadow due to heavy fogs that plague the islands; religiously, Moses of the Old Testament and Torah, was similarly tasked with a massive undertaking of salvation of a people (Israelites in place of America, though both are sometimes viewed as beneficiaries of a Promised Land--a heaven outside of the world and her problems). He, too, operated essentially alone, only having his brother, Aaron, as an assistant. While Snake is not a religious figure, he operates on the same tropes as Moses, including through the reception of commandments through voices that he alone can hear.

Windswept, hostile, and inhospitable, Shadow Moses acts as the tough-love character, the one that is unforgiving in its punishment of Snake for his audacity to try to conquer it. Of all the enemies Snake must face, Shadow Moses is the most omnipresent. Of all the allies that Snake must leave behind, Shadow Moses is the most haunting. While Gray Fox is later remembered in MGS4, it is Shadow Moses where the most of the Flashback Events take place, where Snake must reconcile what he was and what he has become. Otacon even says, upon opening the door into the access chamber to where REX's bones rest, "Welcome home." Shadow Moses has defined Snake in the minds of gamers and in his own mind in such a way that it is only while in Shadow Moses can Snake ever have identity. 

---- 

¤Like any traditional narrative, games contain the typical character hierarchies (primary, secondary, tertiary, etc.), thus giving a formal acceptance to pure narratological expressions. In MGS, however, many of the tertiary and lower characters are the endless reams of victims for the violence. The spear-carriers are often literally that in video games, and MGS is no different, save that the gamer--the audience--is directly responsible for the principle actor's response to all of the characters.

¤¤There is a notable exception to this: When Snake squares off against Psycho Mantis, the gamer has to 'control' her--a vicious, vicarious type of control that is one step away from domestic abuse. She appreciates what Snake has to do (it saves her life, after all), but there is a residue of guilt over this type of control. Instead of being cathartic and exploratory, as much of the digital violence ends up being, it is twisted and Machiavellian--a perfect type of Psycho Mantis.

¤¤¤Naomi and Ocelot will get character analyses in the essays on Metal Gear Solid 4.

Extra Lives

I just finished reading Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter by Tom Bissell. Part memoir (mostly memoir), part analysis (definitely a reader response type of analysis), the book goes to great lengths of establishing why video games matter to Tom Bissell. This is not a bad thing, but it isn't quite what I had hoped for when I got my early Father's Day present. Still, what is most remarkable, for me, is that it wasn't what I am trying to write, at least not entirely. I have divided my book up into four categories: Tutorial, Exploration, Experience, and Exit. (I am toying with changing Tutorial to "Exegesis", but that might be too complex a word, despite the delicious alliteration; also, with its overt religious connotation and strained synonymic paring with the ideas of tutorial, I will probably just leave it as is.) Anyway, the Experience category is one that I am writing about my own personal experiences with the game in question, whether it be or Resident Evil or Prince of Persia or whatever. Reading Extra Lives was very much like seeing what it's like to be on the other side of the conversation for the Experience chapters of my own book. Fortunately, I liked it. Even though I hadn't played most of the games he was discussing, I felt comfortable with my knowledge, enough so that I could appreciate his experience and the way that it worked for him.

Despite how well it was written (I had to look up a number of words that he used, which was an unfamiliar experience, to be honest), I felt that the last chapter was too heavy a confession of Bissell's cocaine addiction and not enough substance. Then again, I have always been bothered by drug users--more the idea than any particular person--and I struggle to stow away judgments about patent stupidity when I hear someone being, well, so patently stupid.

Along with a skimming over of my notes from Baudrillard (a major resource for the book), I've really been feeling the itch to write more on this blog and flesh out more of the essays. Two problems: 1) Baudrillard feels prescient in so many ways apropos of gaming that I fear the book will have nearly endless quotes from him; 2) Thinking a lot about video games makes me want to go play video games. I have a possible solution for each problem, though I worry about actually taking advantage of them: 1) Write just one essay that really explores the Baudrillard connections, and be happy with that; 2) My son is recovering from heart surgery, so my monopoly on the only gaming console in the house has been preempted. Neither solution really makes me want to smile (especially number two, though it has nothing to do with the sharing of the PS3, which I'm happy to do for him), but I will probably end up using these answers anyway.

I know this is somewhat bombastic, but I just wanted to repost something that I wrote earlier, because, when I reread it, my jaw hit the floor:

Thus the hyperreal of the video games reterritorializes what has been subsumed in the hyperreal of modernity, a standing against oversaturation of symbolism by limiting significance into the confines of the game. Little wonder, then, that morality within the game is limited, too.

If this statement is right, then Peter Molyneux's statement to Tom Bissell is totally correct: "We're going to change the world and entertain in a way that nothing else ever has before" (201). Here's why: the symbols and signs that we typically interpret and summarily take for granted have drowned out meaning. Think of traffic: blinking lights, different colored lights, off ramps, on ramps, lanes, changing speeds, pedals, wheels, radio noise, speaking on the phone, and the list trolls on. There is this 'oversaturation of symbolism' rippling throughout the world. One of the things that video games limit--out of technological necessity--is how many signs and symbols are put onto the screen. Sometimes it's spartan, like Tetris, with a relatively small handful of icons to manipulate and respond to.

Sometimes it's egregious, like World of Warcraft, with a major portion of the screen's real estate littered with tiles, titles, bars, numbers, chat, and graphs.

But it still doesn't hold as many codes as does real life:

So the main gist of the quote is that part of the allure of the gaming world is, for all its complexity and difficulty, and facades of depth, it is still vastly more simple than the typical world in which we navigate--the game reclaims that simpler life, the one after which so many hopelessly pine.

Rendered at 60 FPS

The view outside of the home's window is static, changing superficially with the passage of daylight and weather. The same brown fence, the same loop of traffic (only minor variations occur, the specific details being lost in the bulge of traffic's enormousness), the same sky, mountain, angle. Yet outside of the home's real window is a real world, the separation of glass protecting the subject from the object and vice versa. Exiting the home allows the subject to interact with the brown fence, slightly disrupt or somehow become involved with the traffic, breathe in the air that comprises the sky, hike the mountain, change the angle. Returning inside, the real becomes confined and framed by the rectangle, a sheen of glossy unreality in the form of the window causes a breakage, a separation--a small one, but a separation nonetheless.

The screen acts as a window to other worlds, a rectangle in the forefront with an illusion of depth. The stillness is illusory, for each second passes with up to 60 frames of the same picture flicked onto the screen. Movement is likewise an illusion.

This is not gaming's illusion, for it is the nature of the glowing rectangle. The screen is a compilation of still images that is flashed across the surface so rapidly that the appearance of movement is created. Screenshots, therefore, are not simply a sampling of what a game looks like, they are literally cells of the game's corpus, the visible DNA of what is played.

Two illusions seem to make a right, for the illusion of the screen mingled with the illusion of interaction is what causes the game to become worthwhile. The glass wrapped-world behind the window is not fake, its motions are real and continuous, yet they are devoid of meaningful manipulation. The plastic wrapped-game world within the screen is not real, its motions are fake and fragmented, yet they gaps in between allow for manipulation.

If there is a real and a hyperreal, we must have a hyporeal as well. The real, then, is within the home and the selfsame angle, while the hyporeal is the traffic and the birds and the sky. The hyperreal is encapsulated within the screen's rectangle, an attempt to fuse the hyporeal with the real--a simulacrum of Frankensteinian proportions. The monolith that is created is the game, it is what is both static and fluid--a digital squaring of the circle.

The access to the success of the game is only monetary to the hyporeal, what is 'real' outside of the purview of the gamer, what is outside the window. The access to the success of the game is only transitory when it flits through the hyperreal of the game, what is inside the screen. The access to the success of the game is only significant and lasting when it bridges into the real, when it affects the gamer, when it causes the thought, the passion, the response, the craving, the solace, the understanding that comes when the mind is rightly and truly engaged with what it is observing.

That is why games matter.

Metal Gear Solid Act II: Solid Snake

There is great difficulty when approaching the Everyman that is supposed to be Solid Snake. His appearance in subsequent games--most canonical, some not (Super Smash Brothers Melee and the Ac!d games come to mind)--has slowly, almost reluctantly revealed the explosive past and personality of a character who was originally designed to be more transparent. Hideo Kojima explains in an interview: "When I created the main character [Snake], I knew he is essentially the player...I wanted the character to be vague. That way, players will project their own personalities onto the character, and form a stronger connection with Snake." This technique is not unique to games, yet the tropes of transparent characters rarely see such success. Few narratives can readily rely on a blank Everyman, though some do (Moby-Dick is perhaps the greatest example). The result is perhaps crucial to Snake as an avatar.

That isn't to say the character doesn't have personality or a past. The transparency must actually be a translucency, allowing some interpretation to filter through. Games like Doom and Quake are shallow beyond merely repetitive gameplay--their protagonists have no motivation because they require none; their depth is no greater than the thickness of the screen. Snake's storied past is baggage that allows the trip through the frozen Alaskan nuclear waste site to flow more smoothly.

Indeed, the back story that Snake has is rare--it is a continuity that has spanned over five or six console generations, with the occasional offshoot in the mix. More than that, however, is the intricacy and necessity that it has on the character. Snake may have had very little personality when he first parachuted into Outer Heaven on the Nintendo Entertainment System, but, as any remarkable character does, his experiences molded and shaped him.

By the time MGS begins, the patricidal Snake has not only grown older, he's actually retired. His previous exploits, only partially explored in other titles, bear down on him. He sounds irritated that he has been asked to participate in the infiltration of Shadow Moses, and there's a thread of exhaustion going through.

Significantly, Snake is injected with the latest in nanotechnology at the commencement of the game, an action that plays heavily into later games, as well as the convoluted plot upon which he is about to embark. There is more to this injection, however, than transmission of the FOXDIE virus and the requisite nanomachines and polypeptides that keep him from freezing in the Alaskan weather. The insertion of the nanomachines laden with a sleeper virus is a parallel for Snake's role as an active agent being inserted into Shadow Moses. Both have been designed from the genetic ground up to be killers.

Within the gamer theory, this is a representation of the analog being overrun by the digital, the technological subverting the natural order. The penetration is violence, and the end result is a lethal virus that has the precision that has become the hallmark of all technology--violence begetting violence. Perhaps some of the latent fear of video games is a similar paranoia. The needle's tip is small, the pain passing--but the potential for what it could become inside of the host is entirely out of the realm of control. And everything about the Metal Gear series is, in one way or another, about control.

Genes and Nukes

Baudrillard argues that there is a relationship between genetics and nuclear designs*. "The imaginary of representation...disappears in the simulation whose operation is nuclear and genetic..." (2). He goes on to say, "[In the biological] dimension, everything converges and implodes on the molecular micromodel of the genetic code" (35). This is, he observes, the "simultaneous assumption of two fundamental codes of deterrence..." Solid Snake, born of genetic manipulation and the proliferation of nuclear armament, combines within himself both codes of deterrence. In a sense, the clones of Big Boss are more than soldiers par excellence, but rather the "apotheosis of technology" and military. They represent--and Solid more than his brothers or his father--the greater streamlining and reduction that technology attempts to promise.

Snake is born because of nuclear proliferation. His part in the Les Enfants Terribles project comes about thanks to Operations Virtuous Mission and Snake Eater, but those missions themselves are instigated because of the Cold War and the tensions between east and west. Naked Snake, though castrated while a prisoner on the San Hieronymo Peninsula, 'fathers' (arguably) greater causes of warfare and death than the Manhattan Project did. In terms of direct lethality, only Liquid approaches the desire to create as much death as the atomic bombs dropped on Japan did, though the potential for Solid Snake to become his own weapon of mass destruction is shown throughout MGS4. Furthermore, the violence that Big Boss and his sons create is not maintained in one area, restricted to two single acts of aggression. Instead they span decades, causing a tidal wave of violence, counter-violence, death, and global control in the hands of the Patriots.

In the Shadow

But what of Solid Snake himself? His growth as a character and a soldier is significant in the way that he impacts the world. Through canonical reckoning, he saved the world from potential ruin at least five times, with the gamer capable of controlling him through four of those missions. Even his involvement at the Big Shell helped postpone the disaster that the Guns of the Patriots wrought on the planet, and helped prevent the deaths of thousands at the hands of Solidus. Despite this great service to humanity (perhaps part of the reason he was drawn to a group like Philanthropy?), he has always lived in shadow.

Beneath his father's umbra, Solid is one of three clones, but he is not the first snake. His father, somehow twisted from a patriot for his country, becomes the force behind Outer Heaven, a world in which soldiers would always have a place. This dream, inherited from Gene in San Hieronymo, is realized only through the creation of the very weapon that Naked Snake's progeny would fight over in the next generation: Metal Gear. Part of Naked Snake's shadow is Metal Gear, and, by the time the crises at Shadow Moses arrives, it is the only shadow of Big Boss' that has substance. In Operation: Intrude N313, Snake commits patricide, an act that doesn't seem to bother him very much. (Judging from some of Liquid's comments, Big Boss and Liquid had some sort of relationship, during which time Liquid felt his inadequacy as a son--perhaps fueling his hatred for his father and his loathing for his brother, who had the task of killing Big Boss.) Again in Zanzibar Land, Snake grapples with his inheritance: a genetic capacity for murder. After defeating the physical representation of nuclear proliferation, as well as fighting Gray Fox to the death in a minefield, Solid Snake's killing should have reached a catharsis.

Perhaps that is why his involvement on the island is so crucial for him. In terms of his character, his motivation--on the surface--appears to be a willingness to do as ordered, to perform his duties because he is 'asked' to. As Raiden later comments, there must be something that Snake has to motivate him to survive a sneaking mission, "Something higher." But as the mission proceeds, the realization that he has yet to fully escape the long stride of what his father let loose on the world helps to compel him. The impossibility of the task doesn't faze him, though it should. Rather, there is an intrinsic motivator that Snake can never explain, save perhaps through his introductory lament in MGS4: "War has changed."

Snake's Fate

What of fate? What do avatars have to look forward to save a renewal of the battle? A game can be put down, just like a film or a book, and never returned to. Yet the battle always awaits, encoded within the flimsy plastic of the disc or cartridge. What kind of a future does an avatar like Snake have in the darkness of Shadow Moses?

Liquid's observation seems pertinent: "You can't fight your genes, Snake." Genes 'tell' us to do certain things, though it's usually more subtle than an outright declaration. In the case of a fictional character like Snake, his genetic coding is actually digital coding, the compulsion of input streaming from the controller to the avatar. His existence is purely digital, so it fits to have his genes be of the same (im)material. The endless sneaking, hiding, killing--it is all a part of what Snake wishes he could end, what he could stop. This is his great curse: to be good at killing. This ability is necessary schediologically and ludologically, but narratively speaking, it is his greatest sin--to excel at something.

There is a lot of debate about the way real people live, whether or not their lives are predetermined and how much agency or 'free will' actually exists.

As a character, Snake's free will is circumscribed by his genes--traitorous genes that eventually threaten the whole of the world in the form of an eroded FOXDIE virus. While on Shadow Moses, Snake loses his ability to call off the mission, to dismiss the call, to avoid the peril. Only when the game is defeated or turned off can he find escape. In a sense, herein lies the ideal, for who would not wish to be able to 'change the game' or 'switch the channel' on the disasters of life?

As an avatar, Snake's free will is circumscribed by the algorithms that define his actions and movements--algorithms that grow with the technology of the consoles on which his drama is enacted. His time on Shadow Moses can be brief or lengthy, depending on the skills of the gamer. It is not enough that Snake is a skilled spy, one whose best assets are to avoid detection. The gamer's skill must be transmitted to the agent, becoming a puppet with pretended abilities. The fact that Snake cannot become more than what the gamer can accomplish is perhaps more imprisoning than the gamer's lack of accomplishment at the hands of genetic deficiency. At least, for the gamer, he has his parents to blame. But for Snake, he knows not the hand--or, as the case may be, the thumb--that guides him.

__________

*The atom bomb imploded; the effect of so much mass pushing inward knocked loose atoms from the radioactive elements, sending an outward domino effect in three dimensions. The rogue protons ripple throughout the bomb, splitting other atoms, and multiplying the force of the blast exponentially. Similarly, genetic sciences lead inward, down smaller and smaller until the genes themselves are manipulated. Once forced in the correct way, the domino effect of outward expansion and genetic proliferation continues, kept in check only by the blueprint the DNA itself contains.

Metal Gear Solid Act I: Liquid Snake

NOTE: As always, there's a standing spoiler alert for any game I discuss on this blog. Here, I will be talking about Metal Gear Solid for the first PlayStation. Most of the discussion will focus on and spoil only that storyline, but because the five games that comprise the saga (as of this writing, with MGS: Portable Ops taking a necessary place) are linked, it's important to know that some things may get spoiled if you haven't played everything.

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On Liquid

In a certain sense, Metal Gear Solid is Liquid's game. Ever one to want to emulate the Patriots--albeit a type of radical, hate-twisted emulation, similar to the one that he has for Big Boss--Liquid takes it upon himself to manipulate, control, and twist Snake's progress. If anyone controls Snake, it should be Liquid, not the gamer. The controller in the hands of the audience is happenstance, for the entire ballet of Shadow Moses is conducted beneath the baton of Liquid. From the commencement of the game, when he first makes an appearance on the elevator, Liquid's shadow darkens all of the remote Alaskan island.

The master of the game, Liquid's motives are simultaneously ennobling and perverse, a wicked sense of humanity's worth. A charismatic, dynamic, powerfully motivated character, he stands as the perfect opposite to the purposefully-empty Snake. The greatest of villains always stand at the polar end to the heroes, and Liquid does so in almost every significant way. He is eloquent, erudite, and smug. Like his brother, he adapts, but his adaptations are causal, rather than reactionary. He creates a better situation perpetually. Every set back is used to his advantage. Even his deception as McDonell Miller had been taken into account. Upon the death of the real DARPA chief, Miller was killed in his home, meaning that Liquid's plan to infiltrate Snake's camp as stealthily as Snake would infiltrate Shadow Moses commenced long before Snake even hit the frozen Arctic waters.

Would Liquid have attempted to usurp the Patriot's control at Shadow Moses had Solid Snake been the one sent in? Doubtful. Knowing of his twin brother, their freakish conception, and the fratricide on the part of Snake, Liquid probably knew his plan would lure in his opposite. Snake had already had a couple of 'run-ins' with Metal Gear; it would be logical that Snake would arrive to 'save the day.' Each is the other's Moby-Dick, and Ahab would never set sail if he didn't think the white whale would one day be visible.

Despite his brilliance, Liquid missed part of high school biology: a gene's dominant (or recessive) qualities are neither superior nor inferior to other genes. They are simply more or less likely to be expressed. A child with blue eyes is not suffering from inferior recessive genes (if those genes responsible for the eye color were, indeed, recessive). Similarly, the twist at the end that Liquid is the one laden with Big Boss' dominant genes helps to show why his hair is blonde instead of brown (apparently, Naked Snake's hair color--and all of his physiology, even down to the voice--is a recessive gene, meaning Solid Snake's identical look to Big Boss comes from the recessive--though not necessarily superior--side). As noted in Metal Gear Solid 4, Solid and Liquid Snakes have a very small genetic difference in them--a matter of only a couple percentage points. Very small differences at one point can lead to drastically different ends.

This distortion of reality works well for furthering Liquid as a character, for not only is he more capable than Snake in almost every way, but he is a well-rounded character from a narratological stand point. He is flawed in his reasoning, just like many other people are. Despite his fantastic ability to think, he still misses small details. Similarly, Liquid provides the necessary contrast to Solid by being hot, rash, bombastic, and self-aggrandizing in posture, speech, and assumptions. Snake, when asked about the death of his father, is remorseless and cool. Liquid, on the other hand, holds the grudge of patricide against Snake for all of the wrong reasons. He feels cheated that Snake was able to become Big Boss' murderer.

There is more to Liquid than there is to Snake, at least at the beginning. He is a more capable fighter, a faster thinker, and more adept manipulator. In fact, it is traitorous genetics--the one thing that he fought longest to control, yet never could--that killed him, not one of Snake's well aimed missiles or punches. The gamer never can kill Liquid, just like the gamer never can kill Vamp; they are both impervious to the manipulations of the gamer. They both are free of any sort of control; they are exactly what the Patriots hate.

One of the many things that differentiates MGS from other stealth/war genre games is the overt anti-war, anti-nuclear weapons message that powers the narrative. Death, in fact, is often a subject of conversation. Liquid rightly surmises, "We were accomplices in murder before the day we were even born," when explaining the fact that six (well, five, though Liquid didn't know of Solidus) other fetuses were originally in their mother's womb. These potential snakes were all aborted to encourage stronger fetal growth for the three remaining clones. This overture of death is important to Snake, but is something that Liquid seems to relish (yet another difference between the two). Liquid's idea of utopia is one of endless war, an Outer Heaven in which soldiers always have a place. Implicit in that dream is that a soldier's place only exists to exterminate another's. Though Liquid was an accomplice in murder before birth, his is the goal of continued death and destruction. Nuclear proliferation, for Liquid, is only one possible way toward death proliferation, his true goal. In the purest (and most distorted) Machiavellian form, Liquid seeks freedom from the Patriots' control in order to do lead others to do what he loves most: killing.

For the gamer, this is the greatest irony, the harshest reality that the unreality can create. Summed up in the shouted accusation, "You enjoy all the killing!" This is not just something Snake has to face; it is what the gamer is forced to recognize. The game is just a game (supposed to be fun) and it fulfills its digital destiny at the expense of endless digital deaths. The game is not sold on the pretense of being a look at the perils of nuclear proliferation; nor is it sold on the grounds of high quality voice acting; nor is it sold as a fantastic character study of conflicting philosophies, purviews, and experiences, though it is all of that and more. The game is marketed as "Tactical Espionage Action," a game of strategic spying, interspersed with the sugar-coated noun for violence: action. Prima facie, this game is not tactile beyond the controller (despite excellent DualShock progaming), and the spying is an orchestration by Liquid--Snake's presence has been noted almost immediately, and nothing was given to him that was not deemed permissible; hardly a very good spy. No, the game is touted as action, though in this, as in almost all design choices, the action itself is subverted. The guards are not supposed to be harmed. They are not supposed to die. They are supposed to be avoided, distracted, and fled from. Yet there are many deaths throughout the game that come--it is unavoidable; it is the reason for the game.

This should be more distressing to the gamer, but the unreality of fiction has wrapped up the minds observing this fascinating spectacle, shielding the gamer from the guilt of simulated murder with the thin veil of plastic and glass. This same phrase, echoing through Old Snake's memory in MGS4 causes a violent reaction in Old Snake, causing him to retch and lose Psyche. "You enjoy all the killing!" is the very reason the game--specifically and generally--is a success.

In the end, Liquid dies of FOXDIE, an appropriate end to the leader of FOX-HOUND. His genius, however, at encouraging others by participating in his philosophy of 'those who can, should' remains, a spore of an infected hatred for the world that is, in a twisted, sad way, his victory. His desire for the Outer Heaven of Big Boss' dreams only comes to fruition in the millions of hands that manipulate the puppet he most wants to control (and never can): Solid Snake.