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.

Death of the Avatar

NOTE: This one is best read as a follow up to the one about violence and the one about the next level of gaming. I am, admittedly, rather disappointed in this particular essay, but I want to see what others think before I scrap it entirely. Particularly the end—it smacks of being too preachy. You tell me. Also, there is a footnote. Just FYI.

Death of the Avatar

Roland Barthes in 'Death of the Author': “Writing is that neutral, composite, oblique space where our subject slips away, the negative where all identity is lost, starting with the very identity of the body writing” (Image, Music, Text, 1977). Replace 'writing' with 'gaming', and we have a new instance of death within video games--indeed, may very well be the only death within video games that matters. “[Gaming] is that neutral, composite, oblique space where our subject slips away, the negative where all identity is lost, starting with the very identity of the body [gaming].”

Much has been said about the almost irrelevance of dying within a game. At most, the gamer loses an hour or two of play time--but what, really, has been lost? Time spent in the forum of entertainment is, by some counts, a zero-sum game anyway. To the noncritical gamer, it certainly seems worse: full perdition of digital goods, experience, attainments. Catastrophic loss, perhaps, of a corpse that wasn't looted soon enough, as though the unreal has full bearing on the real. (Perhaps that's the line of where unreality and reality truly converge; when one cares enough to emote over the unreality, it has become a type of reality...even one of worth?) Even critical gamers suffer frustration, irritation, and disdain for 'wasted' time in the game when the avatar's death damns the progress, despite knowing that the original intent of the game was to do what so many poorly-trained apologists and conversation stoppers claim its purpose is: “It's only a game. It's for fun.” (A trite phrase that effaces importance and gives a false sense of purpose and completeness; in reality it does nothing but provide saccharine-coated justifications.) On the earliest level of meaning, the video game is for fun. And on that same level, death is designed to be a minor setback to the goals of the gamer.

Other articles and thoughts about gaming as a design concept have belabored the point of death being a difficult part of the game creation process. When looking at the tripartite theory of Stephen Dinehart and dramatic play, it becomes apparent that there is a need to consider death on all three levels:

• Narratologically: The death of the avatar is/is not an aspect of the narrative. Generally, this is frowned upon, as the death of the avatar results in the end of the gaming structure, and the (sometimes too) well-known 'Game Over' screen breaks over the gamer. Metal Gear Solid 4 manages to allow the screen to be a recapitulation (in the form of brief screenshots) of aspects of the recent narrative, though the end result is the same. The hero dies; the story ends tragically.
• Ludologically: The death of the avatar is/is not included in the way of play. Generally, it is what should be avoided, an obstacle that ought to be eschewed. Occasionally, a game will allow a restoration through mini-games (Prey, Batman: Arkham Asylum), animations (Prince of Persia), or respawn points (BioShock) obviating the nuisance of the 'Game Over' screen. The hero dies; perhaps this can be fun? More often, it's a punishment for a failure on the part of the gamer.
• Schediologically: The death of the avatar is/is not designed as integral. Beyond the 'Game Over' screen, the death is little more than a brief step to the GUI urging a reload. Many RPGs and action games (Devil May Cry, Final Fantasy, Fallout 3) suffer from limited schediological intent, sometimes giving scant seconds of 'death animation' before allowing the gamer to select the desired load slot or reloading the last checkpoint.

On just the surface, then, death has an impact on the gamer that is likewise superficial. Taken in context of Dinehart's tripartite theory, it could be argued that dying may be a crucial hurdle that must be overcome before a game can truly be overcome.*

Heidegger and Death

German philosopher Martin Heidegger, in Being and Time, argues that death is intensely personal--the most personal thing, since one can only die once. But the avatar can argue differently, since the death is not only immaterial to an avatar, but even more temporary than its existence--the precise opposite of the gamer holding the controller, whose brief existence will inevitably end in a permanent death (depending on one's religious beliefs). The ontological crisis of the avatar is dissimilar from the ontological crisis of the gamer. For the former, the greatest annihilation stems from the power switch, the permanent ejection of the disc. That is the most permanent of an avatar's temporary death (resurrection can occur with the flick of the selfsame switch, or be permanently instilled by loss of the disc or outright ignoring of the avatar by the gamer).

Example: By the second act of Metal Gear Solid 4, Old Snake has gained an additional expert on the other side of the codec--Rosemary, a character who first debuted in Metal Gear Solid 2. Rosemary can be contacted whenever the gamer needs additional information about how to best survive the trying circumstances that the aged Snake has to endure. Of particular interest here is a dialogue, rendered after dying and continuing without leaving the game in between. Snake opens up the conversation by saying that he has this feeling, like he has 'died once already.' Depending on the mode of death (gunshot, explosion), the dialogue will vary a little. The same approach comes from the analysis that Rosemary puts on the experience, chalking it up to Snake's instincts trying to preserve him in the battlefield. She even points at the distinct connection between the gamer and the avatar, asking Snake what he would do if he saw a teammate acting recklessly. “I'd tell him not to get himself--or me--killed.” She insists that “There's another 'you' inside your subconscious...” (or, more accurately, inside a living room) that doesn't want Snake to die. Again. In another conversation, Snake comes to the conclusion that his 'dreams of death' that have been plaguing him of late are showing him being shot, and he should be careful not to repeat the same mistakes that got him killed in his 'dream.'

Example: In Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, the Prince can--and often does, depending on the skill of the gamer--make a fatal mistake. One of the schediological imperatives of the game is the capacity to rewind time, to redo and make accommodations to rectify any mistakes that lead to the demise of the Prince. If, however, too much of the time-warping sand is used, the Prince will meet a more final death. The narrative intersects with this nicely, because the voice over that comes on the continue screen reports a number of variations on the same theme: “That wasn't what I meant. Let me try again.” The avatar reasserts itself as the narrator of the game, explaining away the mistake not as an error on the part of the gamer whose skills have failed, but instead by asserting a narratological explanation--that the Prince, who is narrating the game, accidentally made up a story in which he dies.

These two examples are rare exceptions to the idea of how the avatar responds to death, and though they are interesting counterpoints to the general movement of death, there is another avenue that should be explored.

Violence and Death

My thoughts on violence within the game already partially explained, I want to push the overarching theme of games as the ideal that Wark proposes in Gamer Theory as a deeper exploration of what death may mean.

Herein lies another aspect of appeal that the game has within an entertainment-industrial complex (and Wark's military-entertainment complex being another tone on the same topic) such as the one that video games enjoy. Heidegger argues that death 'limits possibilities', a type of curtailing of what could be--and that, he posits, is what we hate and fear of death. But in the game, that limit is erased. There is almost endless possibilities, if not in a single game, then certainly within the genre as a whole. Possibility after possibility, each one being a new quasi-life, a new chance at rectifying past mistakes. This is the ideal into which the gamer wishes to tap, the recycling not of lives (though there is that, too), but of life, that the avatar can overcome what has only been beaten by the greatest of gods and heroes before. Perhaps that is why the Hero's Journey is such a predominant theme within the game, for it is taking Homer's Odyssey and letting each person participate as Odysseus, rather than simply hearing of him. When Odysseus crosses the river Styx in an attempt to learn how to return home, he journeys to the underworld--a place, almost by definition, the quickened cannot enter--before coming back to the living. This impossibility is made possible by the narration, and so for the gamer it is made possible vicariously through the game. There could be no leaders on the leaderboards were each death a permanent strike against the avatar. The perpetual respawning of avatars, particularly in FPSs, allows a perfection at a secular resurrection that is participatory and superficially permanent--though, in reality, it never lasts longer than the time of the match.

Death is cheapened (in both its positivity and its negativity) in games. There is a deterritorialization between the living analog and the 'living' digital, and the gap is never greater than when the latter shows its unkillableness--and, perhaps, superiority--over the former.

Death's Power

The last concept stems from this same idea, but on the inverse. The power that comes from being able to take away the 'life' of another is one that is rightly forbidden in society, yet arrives as the purpose of play within games. Michel Foucault is not alone in noting the ways that power becomes the very motivation for everything that humans strive for: power in work, in home, in conversation...and in play. The idea of being able to participate in the 'harmless violence' of the game, while simultaneously imbibing on the nectar of greater power (and significance?) is simultaneously addicting and eroding. The gamer needs more power (and thus levels up or somehow sharpens the necessary skills), all with the danger of letting what occurs become desensitizing, demoralizing, and devaluing. If anything, a recognition of the power of taking life should be a prerequisite for understanding the game.

*Not all games require death, just like how not all games require violence. However, the concept of a success/fail binary is locked within games. It is this binary that has to be the focus of the decisions on the game. What happens to a Sim in Sims 3 if food and sanitary conditions are refused? What happens to a Nintendog that is neglected? What happens to the avatar when the proposed objective fails? Those questions are the same that are explicit in the most basic concept of death in video games.

Virtual Unreality

There's a gap, somewhere, as necessary as a space between words, yet perplexing all the same. Video games are unique in many ways, but the most important here is the unreality of the experience, connected via a tiny umbilical cord (now wireless) streaming from the participant to the spectacle. This is not 'naïve realism' versus 'representative realism' or any other philosophical thought experiment. Instead, this is the real experiment of what can constitute definitions of reality, but placed inside of a virtual realm.

The game is flat, despite having 3D graphics (or the redundant title of 'stereoscopic vision' being added to give the illusion of dimensional depth to games). The game is silent, despite having 7.1 Dolby Digital sound pumping through the speakers. The game is independent, despite being a console attached to a wall attached to a TV attached to a gamer. Perhaps in a quasi-Buddhist way, we could ask, “If no one is around to play the game, is it still played?”

We can ask 'What is real?' for eons (as philosophers already have) and still come up with only partial answers and glimpses of potential subjective truth, but let's look at it from a more physical standpoint. We sense ourselves, we sense the couch beneath us, we sense the controller in our hands (for now). We can see the screen, hear the fans whir as the game loads, the click of the buttons as we impatiently wait to begin the next step in Petitor's adventure. If we take this sense (everything the mind gives us, from the level of hunger in our bellies to the amount of irritation we have at the boss to the other things we're ignoring to play the game) as real, as the benchmark, as the first level, what happens when almost everything else is pushed aside for the unreality of the game?

Level One: The game is real in terms of visibility: The screen changes from black to blinding, high definition white, filling the room with a paleness akin to death. The colors change and flicker, refreshing themselves 60 times per second, playing the player a simple play of who designed the play itself, the producers, the distributors, the creators, the self-advertisements sliding past as fast as the Start Button is pressed. The game is real in terms of touch: Tactile senses are limited to that of the controller, regardless of Force Feedback or Motion Sensors, but still real for the input. Even games that don't use such gimmicks are relegated to the sensation of the rubber analog sticks and plastic buttons beneath the thumbs. The game is real in terms of sound: The chimes as the cursor slides from 'New Game' to 'Load Game', the click as the depressed button is released, the sound effect as the game acknowledges the selection. The game is real in terms of these three senses, leaving out the senses of smell and taste (for now).

But the gap persists. There is something within the game that cannot be extended outwards, a boundary that is as much an algorithm as the mathematics dictating the way the game starts. Petitor cannot break free of his square prison, cannot turn about to face an outward reality, a focus only on the internal reality that Petitor can perceive. Here is the world where creatures attack him; he is compelled by the X Button to respond with violence. The digital world celebrates the vanquishing of the digital creature, none of which is real to the gamer, all of which is real to the game. This dichotomy of 'our real' versus 'his real' only exists in level one.

Level Two: The game is unreal in terms of visibility: The screen puts up a veneer, a facade, a fiction that is then believed by the player to be the game. Here we have Plato's Allegory of the Cave in a traditional sense, of the shadows on the wall being taken as real, perceived as real, but in reality are completely unreal. (This is the pun, that the game's graphical fidelity to the fiction of the game's own world is rendered by an engine of the same name.) The game is unreal in terms of touch: Forever distant, the only connection between the gamer and the game is molded plastic, clasped in sweaty hands and sometimes receiving the fury of a mistimed jump or the superior skills of an opponent. The weight of Petitor's sword does not numb our arms after hours of violent swinging. Heat reflecting from the sands of a vast yellow desert does not prickle our brows to sweat. The crunch of the gravel road is not felt beneath our feet. The game is unreal in terms of sound: Recorded at time apart from the experience, every sound is like the image--pure digital. There cannot be the sound of a wagon wheel creaking in front of Petitor, for no such wheel exists. The foley artists (true artists in their craft) deceive with simplicity--what sounds to be a broken bone is really a rent stalk of celery; what sounds like a footstep in a roofed amphitheater is but a footstep in a darkened room, perfectly recorded.

This world of Petitor's seems real to him, and we lie to ourselves to say that it seems real to us. The thin, transparent material that divides his world from ours is only semipermeable, and then it's such only one way. We can control him. In Level Two, he cannot control us.

Level Three: The game is real again: The console is turned off. The screen has gone black. The controller is put away. The speakers fall silent. Within us lurks Petitor. We can see him, as Hamlet does of his late father, 'in [our] mind's eye', an avatar of what once was and is now dead. Petitor's experiences become ours; his memories one with our own. The experienced recollection of the game has replaced the action of the game. As in Coriolanus, 'For in such business/action is elegance', an elegance that has extended backward through the game and into the gamer, whose very business is action. Thus the gamer is rescued from lack of the real upon reversal and reflection. Petitor becomes a second-generation control, one that harnesses the gamers' mind and thus indirectly manipulates those who thought they were controlling him. The unreal becomes real as the reverse asserts itself.

The game itself is gamer-less, yet gamer-contingent for perception. The same can be argued for ourselves; that the world itself is without us to perceive it, yet us-contingent for perception. The opposite can be argued, too: The game itself is only real when perceived by the gamer (the world itself is only real when perceived by humans).

Petitor doesn't know the difference. The creatures he fights are real to him, no matter what the Man Behind the Controller would say. Hence Raiden is correct (to an extent) when he yells at the Colonel in Metal Gear Solid 2: “We're out here, we bleed, we die!” To Petitor, reality is what is in front of him, all digital, all binary, all yeses and nos. He is compelled at all times--that is part of his reality. When the game is off, he does not perceive, he does not dream, he does not exist, he does not suffer. He is in the same status as when the game was saved. He is not real, not only because his game has not been (nor, indeed, can be) made, but because the digital manifestation of him is unreal.

Bonus Level: The game is unreal again: This is a different type of unreal, one that is called such not because it does not exist, but because it is the anti-real--hyperreal, a type of real that has become much more (and, paradoxically, much less) than the real itself. It is the currency of our times. Baudrillard would say that the hyperreal is “the generation by models of a real without origin or reality” (1). Is this not the game, then? 'Models of a real' person, such as any 'realistic' avatar (Petitor), who is without both origin (the gamer can give an address, but what about Petitor--or any avatar, for that matter. Where is he located? Where on the disc can one point and say, “There, there is Petitor, in all his potential!”? Scattered over the reflective plastic, the only traceable, significant locus for a character is inside the gamer, in Level Three) and reality.

The hyperreal is the evolution of reality in modernity. Symbols and signs argue for significance, an argument that stifles itself with its own bombast and ferocity. Within the game, comes the ideal once more, the idea that what matters in the world of the game is noticeable above all other signs. This impossibility in the 'real world' is easily and frequently invoked in the 'game world.' Keys sparkle, healing items shimmer, important documents are the only readable areas of the desk, arrows point the way to the next destination. Would that such a convenience existed in the 'real world'!

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.

Moving away from the theory, a question is raised by Petitor, who has just killed his father (a common enough motif in a game). Now is the chance for the narrative to assert itself, to make Petitor seem real as only fiction can be. Now is the chance for the avatar to wonder what he has become, who he truly is, why he does what he does. Instead, Petitor grabs the sword his father wielded and hurries away, not a backward glance, for the gamer wants to get some more orbs in order to level up.

Why is there no ontological crisis of reality in most games? Why do most games avoid the question of selfhood, the duplicity of potential reality, the wonder at existence? Games aspire to hide behind natural human desires--of violence, destruction, sexuality, creation--yet cannot come to grips with what it is--or is not? Perhaps this is why MGS2 is so important and difficult a text. Perhaps this is why the ending of Resident Evil 5 is simultaneously correct (Chris comes to an answer that has plagued him throughout the game) and erroneous (Chris fails to realize the price that must be paid for the thousands of human lives he and Sheva have snuffed out). Until the game is brave enough to consider the repercussions of the dark side of the human soul, instead of just its outward forms of violence and depravity, the genre as a whole will be unable to step into and accept the very hyperreality that it embraces--one in which signs are one more thing under human control.

Next Level

Games As Narrative or Play?

Narratology versus ludology, an old question in a new medium of theory, has become stale and stalemate. Wark plays on this in Gamer Theory (67):

But where gamer theory gets stuck is in the tension between thinking games through the forms of the past and the desire to found a--somewhat hasty--claim to a new 'field' or 'topic' of scholarship around some 'new media.' Is the game about story or play? Is the authoritative method 'narratology' or 'ludology'? Questions too ill-framed to answer.

Theory cannot answer the question of which is better; the medium, though new, is touching upon a long-held understanding of both concepts. We have never been without play. We have never been without story. The melding of the two is not new, nor is it novel. For fear of sounding tautological: What it is, it is. The game rests on three pillars, as Stephen Dinehart explains. In his article "Dramatic Play," he explores the three areas that meld into the dramatic play that encapsulates gaming excellence, adding a crucial third criterion to this debate. Beyond narrative and ludic properties is also the game design, which touches upon the other two in separate aspects. Where the three converge, argues Dinehart, is 'interactive narrative design.' In other words, the ludological, narratological, and schediological (taken from the Greek word for 'design') confluence.

Game Design as a Criterion

Why add this, and how does schediological influence differ from ludological? After all, the ludic elements are how the gamer interacts with the medium, the play of it all. But the play itself is barren in a video game, as any who has been caught by a part of the gameplay mechanic yet left ultimately unfulfilled knows. Konami's Rock Revolution provides a great example of the ludic existing in a familiar format--game simulation of playing music, a la Rock Band and the Guitar Hero franchises--yet being ignored by consumers and panned by critics. Rock Revolution lacked the narrative as a matter of course (even with Guitar Hero: World Tour's attempt at a storyline taken into account, the genre as a whole is essentially narratively empty), contained a ludic element of play, yet failed to capitalize on either with its schediological approach.

Stephen Dinehart: "Dramatic play systems invite the player to co-create a plot through a world that is influenced, if not shaped, by their actions. In this role play, the question is begged of the player 'what kind of character do you want to be?' Begetting the formation of a particular desire in the player, a desire to be. By actively pursuing that desire, the player becomes an active protagonist." Therein lies another avenue of power, another tapping into the ideal, another drug in the addiction. This is where the play becomes limpid and the story becomes intrinsic and the design becomes seamless. When all three mesh, each one complements the other.

Examples, Please?

The examples appear to be few. Large blockbuster sellers like Halo, Gears of War, and Metal Gear Solid fail to fully achieve it. For Halo, the story itself is overwhelmed by the ludic aspect of the multiplayer component. Particularly in the first game, the schediological component, while flawless on the graphics and the controls, failed on level design. Duplication of textures and uninteresting maps mar the effort. For Gears of War, the design was executed flawlessly, and even the ludic aspect of the game worked on multiple levels. Yet, from a narrative point of view, the game was satisfied with stereotypes and cliches to power what should have been a phenomenal science fiction epic. The premise of the story--and the power that it could have derived from it--got lost behind the glitz and the gore. For Metal Gear Solid, the schediological, the ludological, and the narratological components all shined appropriately, but the balance of them became muddled. MGS4 as proof: Too much narrative at certain points, letting the play lapse. The excellence of the design of the levels lead to exploration, but caused a greater disconnect when the narrative asserted itself. The fun became frustration when a perceived unfairness in the final fight lead to hours of repetitive gameplay.

So where can we turn for a perfect mix of all three? Independent games often shine with two of the three criteria: Flower and echocrome both have fantastic design, intuitive controls, but little to no story. Castle Crashers and other games like them suffer from similar problems. Even a game like Siren: Blood Curse attempts to create a credible storyline, but ends up repeating levels and/or missions (poor schedology) or having lackluster and uninspiring control schemes (poor ludology).

Perhaps this is the key to where we should hope to get to. There is no Citizen Kane of the digital interactive medium because there is no one who has thought through all three criteria. Those classically trained storytellers (David Cage springs readily to mind; Hideo Kojima fits this, too) are stuck in certain types of expression that derive from passive visual media and passive textual media, though they can handle schediological approaches well. Those trained in powerful ludological avenues (Masahiro Sakurai) do not fully grip narrative expression, despite possible schediological capacity. Those who capitalize on schediological excellence (Cliff Blezinski) often fail to integrate narrative and, sometimes, even ludological importance.

In order to get the greatest game ever, there must be a perfect balance and harmony: A story of lasting significance, a gaming experience of pure entertainment, and a game design of perfect clarity.

Who's up to it?

On Violence

NOTE: This is a long one. It's also a lot more theoretical than conversational. If you have a question, please feel free to post so that I can try to be more clear.

There is little debate on what the greatest debate is when it comes to video games: Does the imaginary violence of the game translate into violent behavior in the real world? It seems to be very much a 'depends on your point of view' type of argument. Not only does it depend on one's point of view, but also the particular study itself, what it focuses on, and how well it's managed. It is also important to note the rhetorical tricks of the debate*, since most of the data are coming from second or third sources. But I am no statistician, so numbers do nothing to help me to understand the issue. In fact, numbers about this argument are superfluous, since the entire point of gaming (whether the gamer/designer/critic is aware of it or not) is the individual as the ideal. Let's look at violence, then, shall we?

Violence Within the Digital

The 1980s and early 1990s: Within the dark cave of the video game arcade comes the perpetual sound, flashing lights, and endless shouts--a child-sized spectacle. Skeeball, Whack-A-Mole, and Ticket Wheels are relegated to one corner, the 'child-friendly,' benign entertainment that provides the paradigm for gambling in later years. This is the Big League Chew of Las Vegas, the innocuous imitation of a larger social entertainment, one that is arguably destructive in and of itself. This is the addiction of the game but with bumpers and rounded corners.

Separated from the rest of the glitz are the free-standing black boxes with instantly recognizable controllers, molded plastic that is shaped to look like an uzi, a sniper rifle, a hand gun. Sometimes they're painted a pastel pink or a boyish blue to disperse the judgment that the toys are really trying to imitate what's outside the walls of the arcade, that instead they are pain free, consequence free, and repercussion free--all for the price of a quarter.

The decades shift; the games find a new home at home. No longer is the violence isolated, no longer kept within the cave of the arcade. Like MMA and UFC, the fight has lost its law, every hold is allowed. The possible perniciousness of what violence argues, what it demands, what it is can now be viewed and seen and felt endlessly. Even the price of the quarter is swallowed up in the overall price of the console system. Violence has come home to roost--more chillingly, perhaps it has simply come home.

The vulture of violence is perhaps what is most to blame here. Violence has long been embedded in us. Humans killed, kill, and will kill again for as long as they are humans. Wars have progressively sought to establish a type of order, a type of reality in which what was done within the war became right. Interpersonal, domestic, and civil violence has always been propelled by this same urge. Perhaps it is intrinsic--if so, how does one exorcise it? Perhaps it is extrinsic--if so, why has it yet to be fully censored? Violence, a malignancy and a virus that simultaneously debases and empowers those who use it, is indeed vicious, indeed necessary. Violence overpowers and destroys so that reconstruction can come. Destruction is the fertilizer for growth--or so the animal kingdom operates. This argument is part of a mask, an attempt at abdication for violence's heavy claims, a deficit-spending model of meaning. While it may be true that violence is inherent--perhaps even inherited--it does not make it right.

Rationality is of no use against violence bent on expression. There is no recourse in words when actions are given full sway. The world itself, every life lived, suffers a type of violence--language, relationships, eventual death. Violence can lead to death, but it isn't violence's fault. Death does not lead to violence per se; rather death is violence par excellence. And if ever there is something that the West wants, it wants it par excellence.

Perhaps the focus then is Westward. Perhaps it's part of the American way of thinking. 'Go big or go home.' 'Don't mess with Texas.' The idea that the rightness of one's cause is directly proportional to one's mightiness may be an indicator of why violence is prevalent. The simple premise of many war games helps to underscore this. When a problem arises for the gamer, the response is unequivocal and uncompromising: violent retaliation. Often, games will invoke a 'first-strike' mentality, or take any slight hostility as purposeful. Accidents happen in real life, but not in games. Attacks against the protagonist are wrong because they are wronging the gamer, not because of a moral 'wrongness' to them. Any assault upon the avatar is grounds for total war, in which the end result will be a pile of corpses left in the trail of the protagonist. Like the movie Iron Man, the insult of abduction of a rich white American male is grounds for utter obliteration--done thanks to the endlessly superior technology of America.

Accidents happen in real life, but in the game they are ignored or never forgotten, nothing in between. Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion has the option for the gamer to sheathe her weapon and attempt to open up a dialogue in the case of accidentally striking a benign NPC. Full forgiveness; insult forgotten. Resident Evil 4 has no apology feature for having accidentally knifed Ashley--the Game Over animation bleeds across the screen, the insult of violence utterly unforgiven. Diplomacy rarely rears its head, almost never inserts its rational approach to potentially violent situations. No ambiguity remains, for in a digital world where everything is ultimately encoded in a yes or no answer, there isn't space for diplomacy and shades of gray.

Hence war as spectacle and war as drama and war as theater and war as game. Ambiguities become irrelevant when the war is a just war (if there is truly such a thing). Resistance and Halo provide the gamer as the victim first, the victor at any cost. The body count rises based upon the gravity of the original insult, the original attack. War as game has pushed into history, recreating the wrongness of Nazism for its perpetual destruction (Wolfenstein); war as a spectacle has been explained into existence thanks to technology, allowing it to become a blood sport that ends in no lives lost (Unreal Tournament III). Violence has become something else, no longer outward across social lines but inward through personal boundaries. Jean Baudrillard: "A whole other violence appears today, which we no longer know how to analyze, because it escapes the traditional schema of explosive violence: implosive violence that no longer results from the extension of a system..." (71-72) But new systems come to mold this form, new systems that go by many names: PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Wii...

Still, there is a shadow of a mask on the face of this argument--a reflection of reality is claimed, yet it's argued that it can only flow one way. Violence is absorbed into the game from society through a type of conscious osmosis, but proponents argue that society doesn't absorb the violence back from the game? The question then becomes whether or not violence and art (or violence in art?) can be reduced to a one-way valve, like the chambers of a heart. Does the traffic flow from society and into games where it pools and festers? If this is so, then the game is the paradigm for release, purely emancipatory and escapism in every significant way. All attitudes, all mores, all restrictions should be challenged and given over to play. If all negative humanity can be released and expressed in a game, then all games should be given. Religions of every type should lose sacred space to the game, for the rebellion of them in the digital does not translate to the analog of reality. All that humanity holds as being of value--from priceless works of art to even the fragility of the human life--must end up on the screen. For me, these things cannot be. Erotic games, getting so much press as of now, raise questions about what the difference is between play and reality. Should such games be banned? Not if the traffic flow is only one-way.

Complete social reduction into games can only be answered if violence has finally found a resting place inside of the digital, a place where it is infinitely confined by the delimited storage of hard drives and networked servers. If the answer, however, is that violence is nature and it will, as Dr. Malcom quips in Jurassic Park, "If there is one thing the history of evolution has taught us it's that life will not be contained. Life breaks free, expands to new territory, and crashes through barriers, painfully, maybe even dangerously." Violence contained? What naivete is this? By its very nature violence breaks free--much like life. To assume that the game is the haven of violence is to assume that the game provides a simulacrum for violence, putting it into a constant self-refferential loop that prevents it from harming anyone or anything. With such destructive power, it doubtless will shatter its bounds and push outward both painfully and dangerously. And yet the game is necessary.

Baudrillard brings this to light indirectly with his comparison of remainders to mirrors. He says, "Perhaps only in the mirror can the question be posed: which, the real or the image, is the reflection of the other?" The real life violence or the image of violence that is contained in the game? This is the 'chicken or the egg' question of the digital age, and it is to the digital that we must look.

Shrugging away the violence portrayed within many games is not the correct response to the question. Pointing out comparisons to other recreations (hunting, high-impact or extreme sports, gambling) does little to clarify the responsibility that games have to society and society has to games. Monocausational accusations will do little to correctly respond to the question, too--bad parenting, violent video games, too much caffeine, and any other lazy label to explain human behavior will never do. Viewed as a whole, we must consider whether or not violence is permanent, if it is worth accepting, and what it shows of humanity.

Let us ask: Why does violence matter? Is it natural? Should it be avoided? Even if we take the claim that violence is a part of being human, we fall into a worry when it comes to games. Games participate in a type of 'harmless violence,' as McKenzie Wark argues in Gamer Theory, "[F]or here is violence at its most extreme--and its most harmless." (23) Hence the problem with video game violence: It is new. Because it is new, the tools to analyze it are lacking. The idea of a game becoming an indicator of violence is real: The recent case of Daniel Petric and the murder of his mother because she took away Halo 3 has provided a post hoc fallacy for anti-gaming proponents. (I most wonder: What if Petric's parents had taken away his copy of Nintendogs or Animal Crossing? Would there be as much of an uproar?) The tragedy of this is less that Halo 3 is maligned and more that within Petric the violence swung from its most harmless to its most extreme. When it comes to violence in games, understanding whence the violence comes makes it all right (capitulatory) and right now (instantaneously), though hardly right.

Explored well enough violence in its negativity, is there any positivity within interactive violence that makes participation therein worthwhile? Admittedly little, it seems, for the very reason that Baudrillard states: We do not have the tools with which to analyze the problem. We can dismiss it or defend it only partially.

Natural appeal: Violence has always been part of human- and animal-kind. Classical appeal: Ancient poems retraced the daring-do of heroes, sometimes describing in graphic detail the results of the battles and fights. Commercial appeal: Action movies frequently make significant money through box-office revenues (and, unsurprisingly, they cost the most, too). Imperial appeal: Wars fought to ensure the proper spread of civilization--usually a group that claims to desire peace. Patriotic appeal: Because of revolutions against despotism, the world we enjoy now was created.

No matter how we reshape the idea, we are always left with the rank hypocrisy that mars all of the current wars: war on terror (when war is terror); war on drugs (to prevent the violence inherent in illicit drug use, we will use force); war on gangs (lest youth lead astray by gang teachings react with violence...); war on the family (a war of words, yet incitations to great violence against abortionists and those of different sexual orientations).

From destruction some creation occurs, and from that comes a large justification for the violence that games embrace. We will never know if reality would have been better if the world had grown without bloodshed. We do know it would be different. Because of the game, the harmless violence of the digital can be experienced and learned from. Further, the impossibility of knowing what a world would be like without one of mankind's greatest vices (violence) can be briefly simulated: When Master Chief lowers his weapon, the Covenant wins--violence upon the avatar is guaranteed. Perhaps the reason for violence in a video game stems just a little bit from the desire of the gamer to be recognized as having worth--a worth that is worth defending.

------

*In a simliar vein, the USA Today posted a story about video games being addictive, and that there is actually a percentage of children who can become addicted to video games. Its statistic is "8.5%" or, as the opening paragraph states, "Nearly one in 10 kids" has an addiction to video games. Looking closely at the verbiage, it could just as easily be said "less than one in ten kids" or "less than ten percent" of children have an addiction to video games. More optimistically: "More than 90% of kids do not suffer from video game addiction." The oft-quoted statistic of divorce being somewhere in the 50% range should be a greater worry for the children. I would much rather have a class where 1 in every 10 students struggled with something as crippling as addiction, rather than 1 in every 2 students suffering with something as difficult as their parents' divorce.

Further: the idea that games are inherently addictive is often used to enforce the anti-gaming violence argument, though the idea that kids could be addicted to something else with that sort of consistency is apparently unthought of. A casual Google (and Bing) search for the phrase 'how many kids are addicted to sports' pulled up, on the first page, a number of stories reporting the same statistic I mentioned earlier--about video games. It's an unfair comparison to put sports and other recreation against video games--they are different things, and no one needs an 'apples to oranges' accusation--but it should be kept in mind that the studies have their inconsistencies, too.

On Prince of Persia

NOTE: If you haven't played the most recent Prince of Persia games, please be aware that I will not tell you when spoilers erupt from the essay below. This blog post is full of them. Also, the formatting in this blog is different from how I actually wrote it. Don't worry about the lack of italics or bold or whatever. It just doesn't matter enough for me to change it. Also, there is a footnote at the end of the essay, but it is not hyperlinked. Chalk it up to laziness.

Blast From the Past

I have a distinct memory of my first experience with Prince of Persia. It was the original Apple II game from 1989, developed by Jordan Mechner. In it, the gamer controls the dynamic hero through a set of fiendishly difficult traps in an attempt to save the princess. Standard fare, by all counts. My memories are a bit blurry, in part because I was still very young. I don't think the game was new when I was first exposed to it, but even then I can't be sure. I do remember this:

I was at my friend's house. His dad was a casual gamer of the late '80s, and was instrumental in introducing me to a number of classic titles, including an animated 3-D chess game, an updated version of Pitfall (released for the Windows 95 OS) and the original Wolfenstein. What was remarkable to me, though, with PoP, was the difficulty I had (when I tried it) of simply playing the game. Jumps were tricky, requiring precise timing and endless practice.

There was a brutal time limit counting down, adding to the stress of the situation. Worse than that, with a keyboard full of potential buttons, I never knew what to press when stuck in a fencing match with one of the poor guards who was forced to keep me in my dungeon pit. I remember watching my avatar crouch over three possible vials, not knowing which one might be poisonous--and invariably finding that one, instead of the 'full life' vial I had been searching for. More than anything, though, I remember watching my friend's dad's hands tremble on the keyboard (he has a type of palsy that makes his hands twitch--it wasn't because of passion for the game or anything). That image has taken up a permanent residence in my mind.

Now, two decades later, I have just finished the latest Prince of Persia, a very interesting addition to the franchise. (This, to be clear, is the one that was released for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC in 2008.) Though not as difficult as previous titles, I did find that my hands occasionally trembled on the controller--more from incontinent rage about 'the computer cheating' (an accusation that I level frequently at the PoP games) than anything else. Still, I found PoP to be fulfilling and worthwhile from both a ludological and narratological point of view.

Digging Deeper Through the Desert

There is a missed opportunity within PoP that bears reconciliation. This isn't accusatory, for the narrative told was told this way for a reason. Still, the possibility of what it could have been--indeed, the ghost of every murdered choice haunts us in this as in real life--should be considered.

Secondary NPC, primary character, Elika is the love interest, the moving force, and the exhausting gimmick of the game. As an NPC she is pure utility--useful for propelling the Prince as much as the plot, but little else. As primary character within the narrative, she is the motivation for the wall-runs and the numbing battles. As love interest she falls into a cliched deontological paradigm of being worth the sacrifice of the entire world. As the moving force, she operates as the encyclopedic expression of the diversity and richness of the world now Corrupted. As exhausting gimmick, she circumvents the conventions, providing a 'life-animation' instead of a 'death-animation' when the gamer fails.

The game's eponymous Prince has a past that is loosely described by him, yet fails to reveal--either in the main course of the game or in its overpriced epilogue--how the game should have derived the Prince of Persia title. Granted, the land is barren and desert-like, reminiscent of the Arabian Nights. Yet any mention of Babylon or Persia is missing. The Prince's past is best explained by the manual, in which it says that he is prince "in name only." Though he is prince in name, he is not in the game. With an obvious refusal to acknowledge his royalty within the confines of this first installment, the game would perhaps be better called Elika, for she is what, in the end, matters in the game.

Herein lies the missed opportunity. The game has already eschewed the logical connection between it and its predecessors, an opening that allows growth outward in an industry that seems to fears intellectual expansion almost as much as it craves audience expansion. With this gap available, why make the Prince the playable character? Why have Elika be relegated to a 'damsel in distress' stereotype only slightly fractured by her useful and necessary role? She is no Ashley Graham (from Resident Evil 4), but she is no Lara Croft (from Tomb Raider) either. With a possibility so broad, why ultimately regress into standard gender roles?

Lara as a Leader

The idea of Lara Croft being what the Prince calls himself (a 'tomb raider') may be a slight explanation for wanting to avoid casting Elika as the main character, but comparisons between the two dry up rapidly.

Lara Croft is buxom (always, though the degree has changed over the years) and oozes a latent sexuality in every animation. This very characteristic of hers was capitalized upon by casting Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft in the movie offshoots. Elika, conversely, though aware of her femininity, does not use it as a tool to manipulate the Prince (he does it to himself by falling for her). She is--for a video game character--modestly dressed in her default costume* and recognizes that, despite the Prince obviously sending out signals, she is focused on the task at hand.

Lara is also extraordinarily proactive (a natural extension of being the playable character), a trait that plays well into her abilities as an avatar. Elika, on the other hand, is passive almost to a fault, only stepping forward when it's to save the Prince from death. Every other action she does only occurs when the gamer (via the Prince) presses the Assist Button.

Lastly, the motivations that drive the two characters are about as opposite as possible. Lara's long history has also lead to a lot of retconning of her past, her family, and why she does what she does. Yet it all started with a tank-top, short-sporting should-be model shooting exotic animals and solving centuries-old puzzles inside of tombs. Her motivation is similar to that of Indiana Jones': Go on adventures because it'll be adventerous. The higher motivations failed--in part because the idea of deeper complexities within a character had yet to be recognized within the gaming form. Elika intially rejects the Prince, trying to push him away so that he would not get harmed by assisting her. Her goal is to undo the terrible damage that she is indirectly responsible for, an atoning action that forces her every step of the way--to the point that she ultimately abandons the Prince at the end of the Epilogue, knowing that what they have done is an irreparable harm to the world she sought to save.

Still, the comparison still fits in that both women are intelligent, capable, athletic, beautiful, and other important characteristics. Nevertheless, there is enough difference between who Elika is--gameplay mechanics and visual style aside--that sets her apart from her longer-lived sister. Wanting to avoid comparisons to Lara Croft could never be a justified reason for pushing Elika into her subservient role.

But aside from this juxtaposition, how else is Elika slighted by her stance as secondary character? It is notable and lamentable that the story served the Prince more than the princess, but even within the confines of the game and its story there is a subtle statement about worth. Not only is the Prince essentially invincible (in a fight, even if the gamer fails to execute a QTE command properly, death is not the result; instead, the opponent is forced back by Elika and heals back some of its lost health), but Elika, quite pointedly, is not. In fact, she dies twice, before the beginning and at the end. Life for men, it seems to insinuate, is endless, but the life of women is transient, fragile, throw-away.

This type of comment is probably rejected by most readers, and the developers certainly weren't thinking about making a statement about the worth of women's lives over men's. And I do not think that the game ultimately argues that. It should be pointed out that this woman's life is of such great worth to the Prince that he undoes everything that the gamer has done throughout the entire game! In a more literal sense than Metal Gear Solid 4 could ever hope to do, the Prince takes Prince of Persia and brings it back to zero. All effort, all violence, all near-death experiences are rendered void for the simple expression that is most frequently sung about and most rarely understood: love.

Elika cannot be the main character when the story's exploration is about how a man who has never cared for much (save 'carpets this thick!') now cares more than the world for a single woman--who may or may not reciprocate. The unrequited love theme is a trope, is an archetype, and is enhanced by the way this game plays.

When looked at from one angle, it is because of how important, subservient, and 'pushed back' she is that the Prince begins to understand how deeply he needs her. At the very end of the game (not the Epilogue), the Prince has to destroy the four trees that he and Elika have spent the entire game ameliorating. Without Elika, the process of climbing up to where the trees are is more laborious and requires additional innovation. In other words, her absence makes life more difficult. This realization pushes the Prince to do the unthinkable; it seems to provide a counter-argument to the idea of the worth of Elika's life.

What Works, What Doesn't

As the gamer moves the Princely avatar from one Fertile Ground to the next, performing acrobatic feats that would green any parkour runner with jealousy, a sense of immortality arises. This comes, in no small part, from the fact that Elika is always there to save the Prince. Any misstep, failed jump, or poorly aimed run will result in an instant 'respawn' at the last flat surface--carried out by a brief animation of Elika reaching down and plucking the Prince from doom, their hands clasping together as she carries him to safety. This is part of the redemption of the religation to subservience that Elika suffers--though she is not the one in control (nor being controlled), she is the only one that is capable of completing the task. She may not be the titular character, but she is the only reason the game works.

As I said earlier, this is not necessarily an attack on the game. It wouldn't work if the roles were reversed, in part because natural archetypal baggage is at play within the game that allows the gamer to take mental, narrative shortcuts. (Princess-in-peril: this provides an easy reference for goals that the gamer should already know, a shorthand that gives the story a mesh of preconceived narrative bits, ideally allowing the story to move forward without scaffolding additional background motivation.) More than that, however, the Prince in this game is much more helpless than he lets on, which allows Elika additional expansion as a character.

The Prince is pointedly ignorant of what is going on--done so that gamers have a relatable character with whom they will learn about the world they now inhabit. Thanks to his naivety, one of the important steps in developing video game narrative is exposed: plot progression at the pace of the player. The gamer is allowed to reference Elika for hints, recommendations, and backstory. This is accessed by speaking with her (pressing either L button), and can be done at almost any time. Those who are interested in learning why Ahriman is eroding the world are welcome to hear more; those more interested in the next wall jump can proceed immediately to it.

What works is the concept of control; the gamer is allowed to control the quantity of story that is fed in--whether it be much or little. The dialogue also furthers the relationship that the two have, the way they learn to trust each other, and an understanding of the Prince's interest in Elika as a potential love interest. All of this compounds together to enhance the storytelling, a beautiful execution and acceptance of the paths that interactive storytelling provides.

There is a flaw in this, however. Despite the fact that when the story is revealed, it still, of necessity (it seems) breaks into brief cutscenes, during which time only the slight manipulation of the camera is possible. When Elika is explaining about the Corruption that's infesting her home, the gamer cannot be simultaneously exploring it. This is for the best; the story would be lost in the spectacle of incessant bounding and climbing. However, it has again fallen into the trap of traditional storytelling in an untraditional format.

Lastly, there is an issue with the necessity of the Epilogue to describe what actually occurs within the story's architecture. The game's ending fits the game, the Epilogue provides enough closure to allow for patience until the sequel is (and should be) released. But what is most important for the Epilogue is establishing the fractured relationship that Elika and the Prince now share. She had knowingly sacrificed herself to prevent a worser evil, but the utilitarian philosophy that she espouses grates against the more deontological view that the Prince adheres to. This fundamental difference provides a lot of growth (narratively) for the characters, but also exposes the rationale that the Prince uses for justifying his actions of releasing the Dark God. He claims that her death is precisely what Ahriman wanted, since with her death so dies any chance of resistance. Yet the attentive gamer can't help but feel that he felt guilt for having not fully performed his duty toward her in protecting her from Ahriman, while simultaneously coming to grips with the love he feels for her--a love that she has essentially expressed as being one-sided.

The Epilogue pursues these threads fairly well; the price tag for continuing not even 2 more hours of the game, however, is a little steep. Monetary gripes aside, the Epilogue ultimately ends up being an essential part of the experience, as well as providing the wanted closure that keeps the game from suffering from the Assassin's Creed syndrome.

Closing Thoughts

Prince of Persia has moved video games forward, I think, in some small but notable ways. But, as will always be the case, the characters' depth and complexity, their burgeoning respect and (possibly unrequited) love for each other making for a more vested interest in the game. The mechanics are wonderful, the levels brilliantly designed, and the semi-open ended approach is a refreshing take on the franchise. More than that, however, there is a sense of wonder at the world that was explored, a sentiment of awe that provides the best kind of games--the type that live in the imagination and memory long after the disc has stopped spinning.

*Bonus content: One of Elika's alternative costumes is a remake of the outfit worn by Jade in BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL, which casts a very strong, independent, and un-stereotypical woman in the leading role. Jade is strong, smart, and resourceful--the same as Elika--but she carries the title, rather than Elika's religation to the back seat.

Of course, it would be remiss not to mention that Farah, the silk- and scantily-clad love interest of the earlier PoP games is also available for Elika to wear. This only further emphasizes the arguments in the essay.

Snippets of Thoughts

Two little things to contemplate:

Thing First—

Having muscled my way through the majority of Simulacra and Simulation by Baudrillard, I am excited to say that there are some amazing things that this text will be bringing to Press Start (by the way, I just took the time to Bing (not Google!) Press Start and I think I'll need a new name. Well, that's why it's just a working title). I read it to Gayle, geeking out all the while. She nodded and said it sounded good. Anyway, here's the quote. I know it isn't in full context, and you have to know what simulacra means (the OED defines it as "something having merely the form or appearance of a certain thing, without possessing its substance or proper qualities; a mere image, a specious imitation or likeness, of something), but I'm excited about it:

simulacra of simulation, founded on information, the model, the cybernetic game—total operationality, hyperreality, aim of total control.

This is, in my mind, the theory behind the game, summed up in (for once) an easy to understand phrase. It is what Baudrillard calls the 'simulacrum of the third order', or most detached and aloof of all simulacra. More than that, this piece (written in 1981) predicts how games are a false reality—though he uses the more generous term of hyperreality—and the necessary foundations of the game: Founded on information (not just the information that the computer decodes and encodes, nor the binary that provides the digital DNA, but even the information that the gamer has to have in order to operate the game itself), the model (character models are an essential aspect of the overall look of the game, from the most minimal to the most complex), and the obvious concept of the game being a type of cybernetic interaction. Of course, the final three clauses (total operationality, hyperreality, aim of total control) have great import as well, since those are the three goals of the game.

Complete prediction of what the game is, decades before the game could become that. It's even more interesting a bit later on in this part of the book, because he confesses his inability to even anticipate what could be an example of this third order of simulacra. Well, it's the game.

My book should show how.

Thing Second—

The next part intersects interestingly: I was looking up some sites that Bing and Google pulled about simulacra, and I happened upon this site, called the Simulacrum. It's a place for DLC of the original The Sims game. In a sense, it is its own simulacrum, but that's neither here nor there (as Shakespeare—and, since Othello came out, countless others—once said).

The reason this pertains is that my wife just informed me of a church meeting that her parents attended the other Sunday. In it, the well-intentioned teacher went on a diatribe against The Sims as not only a black hole of time, but also a satanic game because it blurs the ability to recognize the value of having what all mortals—theists and atheists alike—have yet Lucifer does not: a mortal body. Because, went the argument, we have bodies and Satan does not, he insidiously inspired the creation of The Sims to corrupt the youth into thinking that incorporeal existence is as worthwhile and significant as corporeal existence—you don't have to have a body for life to be good.

The likelihood that I am misquoting or receiving a misrepresentation of the story is high. But the crux of the idea is worth pursuing, and I'll dedicate the rest of this blog exploring it (this might take some time. If you've got something better to do, feel free to do it.......You back? Ready? Okay, good.)

Satanic Subterfuge or Simply Sims?

For the nonce, let's put aside the overtly religious hostility to hobbies and pastimes. There's ample to analyze there, but it often sounds sanctimonious and condescending, so I'll avoid it for awhile.

Instead, let's focus on what is being argued: We'll grant that being embodied is better than being unembodied, that having this perception of reality filtered through our brains via the sensory input is greater than the alternative of complete annihilation and sensory deprivation. Does The Sims argue to the contrary?

Every iteration of The Sims is focused largely on the third of the goals that I listed above: total control. As technology has advanced, so too has the capacity to control your individual Sim. Sliders, the almost ubiquitous way of fine-tuning your avatar, are increased in their specificity. Not only is height, hair color, and general disposition malleable, but its capacity has deepened in the latest version. If you were so inclined, you could create an evil kleptomaniac that has a penchant for clumsiness and a horrendous beer gut. Control, it seems, is almost limitless.

With this kind of possibility, what is left for the human behind the avatar, the god of the game who will control the life of the Sim in a myriad of ways? What is the game communicating to the gamer while the gamer is communicating to the game? Is it preaching a message of corporeality (or its lack thereof)? Is it arguing that the life of the Sim is superior to the life of the gamer?

In answer to the last two questions, I would argue no. It seems ludicrous to think that the game itself is preaching either posit. For the former, The Sims is more interested in letting avatars reflect their own lives as quasi-autonomous 'lifeforms'—and letting the gamer inject her own preferences within that life. What it is doing is allowing what cannot be controlled—you can't fight your genes, after all—to become subservient to the gamer in a fictive world. If anything, it should be that that alarms us, not a diabolical distraction that assaults one's perspective of the body.

As for The Sims being superior to real life, I think I will capitulate to Robert Nozick for this one and his thought experiment of the Experience Machine. If you're not in the mood to read through Wikipedia's explanation of the experiment, let me give a brief sum up insofar as I understand it: Pretend you have the option of being plugged into a super computer that, like the movie The Matrix, implants all of the experiences you've ever wanted to have straight into brain, letting you 'remember' experiences that you only think you've had. Ever wanted to hike Mt. Everest? You can implant the memory of having done it, without leaving the full virtual reality seat in which you are sitting. Want to have the highest score on Rag Doll Kung Fu? Same thing; just plug in and it's yours. The question, however, is, do you personally plug into this machine and gain false memories? If you do, what's the difference between those memories and the ones of your real, true experiences?

My answer: (1) I don't know yet. I haven't thought about it long enough. (2) Yes. There is a very important difference—for me, it's one of honesty—between the real experiences and the real remembrances of a false experience. It is subjective.

Back to The Sims. Is the life that the Sims show on the screen superior in some way because of the control it provides? My answer: No. The aspect of control is also (perhaps tacitly) a part of the Experience Machine. Once you've experienced everything—once you've been in control of everything—what else is there to do? If you plug in all of the time and eventually go through every man-made simulation, what would you have left? Nothing, really. And the same pertains to The Sims. If anything, the game is arguing that prima facie unlimited choice is actually limited—perhaps not by the game itself, but by the limited mortal using it. If anything, the game is preaching that what we have as real humans is superior because we have it. It is not the predestination of an algorithm that controls a human's life, but one's own free will and choice. Contrary philosophical arguments between fatalism and agency aside, this is what the game is saying to me.

More Questions, More Answers

The idea of what the game is communicating fascinates me. I am not so alarmed at the possibility of an insidious eradication of personhood as I am at the quasi-hedonistic celebration, the bacchanalian embrace of unbridled avarice and blatant consumerism that the game endorses. I will agree that The Sims 3 gives unparalleled possibilities for user-generated storytelling, the passing of the narratological baton to the gamer. That cannot be a step backward (though I will not go so far as to say that it's a step forward, either) for a purely narrative sense. However, the context of the game is one of pure and simple acquisition, insatiability, and constant desire of what is not (not theirs, not available, not cheap enough...).

There is a bizarre relationship between designers of the game and the consumers of it, and it seems like a simulacrum of the third order with a heightened irony that a game can be sold to a gamer who will in turn take his Sim and make him into a consumer—and, if so desired, let the Sim become a gamer as well. (What will the Simgamer do to his Sims? Make another microcosm of Sims, one of whom will be a Simsimgamer? And more after that?) This takes the idea of Wark's military entertainment complex to a disturbing and pervasive level. If ever there is something to boycott in The Sims 3, it is this: letting anyone play a game that echoes life so fully—for if they think of it as a game, how in the world will they be able to take it seriously enough to participate in endless consumption in real life?

Closing Thoughts

There is a post hoc fallacy running through this Satanic-argument that is part of the fear that hegemonic society has towards video games. The idea that one thing, because it precedes another, is the cause of it is inconclusive at best, and fallacious at worst. Simply because there is time invested in a game like The Sims does not necessarily mean that it is time that is spent pushing an unembodied-is-better-than-embodied agenda any more than sending text messages is doing the same. (Though it can be argued, using this same train of thought, that it is; after all, a text message is not hand written—it's purely digital, completely removed from 'natural' forms of communication. No voice is heard, no face seen. Text messages are endorsing the diabolic dichotomy that not having a body is better than having a body.)

There is a valid fear about what games can do. There is genuine and valid concerns over the addictive properties of games. Let's discuss those in a rational light, and leave out inflammatory, fallacious rhetoric, shall we?