Code, Software and Serious Games

I've been building an MMORPG...

2008-10-04T02:31:00.000-07:00

...for the Hip-Hop community!

Yeah, I know it sounds random, but the innovative ideas usually do ;) I think I'm on to something here, and pretty soon I'll have a version to share with you here on the blog (assuming we still have some readers...).

You can catch a little YouTube teaser over here: http://youtube.com/watch?v=V_uMZryr-MI

-jason

READ MY BLAGOBLAG

2008-06-13T14:16:00.000-07:00

I put up a new post on my personal blog! It's all about gaming so you guys should read it:

http://s0dk.blogspot.com/

The Ultimate ARG

2008-06-12T16:38:00.000-07:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/12/garden/12puzzle.html?_r=1&ref=style&oref=slogin

This is a NYTimes article about a 5th avenue apartment that gets converted into a sort of "game" without the client's knowledge, where clues, riddle, and puzzles are imbedded into the house almost like a computer mystery game or an online ARG. Check out the slideshow (my favorite is the door knockers that combine into a crank which opens a hidden apartment) for some examples, but when I see this I just can't help feel that this is reality imitating old games like "Myst".

I have no idea

2008-05-30T19:56:00.001-07:00

http://www.yyyyyyy.info/

Moar Blogz

2008-05-27T09:36:00.001-07:00

Hay guys,

I'm starting a blog about games, life, cooking, music, etc. You can reach it here: http://s0dk.blogspot.com/

Drop by! I just started it last night and I think it looks pretty ugly but I'll be working on it this summer.

Look what I found!

2008-05-22T18:07:00.000-07:00

An Essay on Shadow of the Colossus

I'm going to read it, play the game, and post some form of response. Stay tuned.

Bored? PLAY THIS GAME AND WRITE A PAPER ON IT!!!

2008-05-19T20:21:00.000-07:00

So EVENTUALLY I'd like to post some thoughtful discourse and analysis on games/codeart/digital media on this blog, but tonight I'm tired, lazy, and bored so I thought I'd post a few links to games that I have and have not played in hopes that at least someone else's boredom will be staved off for a few hours or minutes.

Darkside Adventures
The Dude's website
A fun game designed in the style of old Genesis/NES games. It gets pretty hard, and I'm definitely stuck on the last level. Still, it's got a fun retro feel to it.

A review of Ether Vapor
Torrent
A fun Japanese Doujin Shmup. Japanese Doujin computer game industry is truly fascinating, and it's almost like an official indie gaming market which is really cool. Anyways, I was going to have links to the game demo proper, but apparently the whole company website is down/missing. Maybe they just moved, or are temporarily down, or gone for good, but it's definitely a fun game, judging by how many times I played it during screening on mute. It gets pretty hard, and there's a cool system where the number of shields and continues your allowed to have increases as you play more times, so you're allowed to mess up more often the more times you die.

That's about all I feel like posting up for now. Later on in the summer, I'll write up a bit about http://0100101110101101.org/ or The Marriage but right now Robot Chicken should be coming on so I'm signing off.

Gnite Folks!
-Jason "The Basin" Lee

Random News

2008-05-14T17:58:00.000-07:00

Revive, ye sleeping blog! Revive!

From one of the links on the page (because I'm too lazy to summarize myself):

"The project will culminate in a series of activities in virtual worlds tailored to bring together Muslims and non-Muslims. It will also produce a range of audio, video, and transcript products, along with a policy recommendation paper which will include a list of specific recommendations for the U.S. government on how to use virtual worlds to promote international understanding. The paper will be distributed through government briefings."

Understanding Islam Through Virtual Worlds

Also, there's this article from GamaSutra, which even gives a name-check to You Have to Burn the Rope:

How can a game be subversive?

Final Post?

2008-05-01T10:55:00.000-07:00

Game Game Game Game Game Game Game Game Game ...

Final Paper Proposal

2008-04-29T11:36:00.001-07:00

I plan on writing on Rez as well as its relation to games such as Guitar Hero and Dance Dance Revolution. I will write on the fascination with association of sound and image as well as the interactivity with the soundtrack. Guitar Hero, moreso than the other two games mentioned, can serve as a promotional vehicle for newer artists, allowing them to be measured, played over and over again next to classic songs. My paper will detail the effectiveness of rehearsed playback yielding familiarity, yielding affinity with regards to the music featured in the game. While Rez allows the user to create music on a more abstract and visually stunning way, both Guitar Hero and Dance Dance Revolution pound their songs into your head by making them a fun challenge to overcome.

WTF?

2008-04-27T11:19:00.001-07:00

http://www.gamegirladvance.com/archives/2002/10/26/sex_in_games_rezvibrator.html

A VERY INTERESTING review of Pathologic (dammit, I wanna play it now)

2008-04-26T02:01:00.000-07:00

http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=67124

Representing Gamespace

2008-04-24T12:22:00.000-07:00

Saw this and thought of McKenzie Wark's idea of the "GameSpace" here used to sell XBox 360's, which would no doubt support Wark's belief in dialog between games, game cultures, game industries, and the larger world.

2008-04-22T17:18:00.001-07:00

Link

Open Source Games

2008-04-21T11:37:00.000-07:00

In light of my recent presentation I felt it was appropriate to mention another phenomenon besides modding that's going on right now:

http://www.wesnoth.org/

"Battle for Wesnoth" is an open source developed turn based strategy game that is released for free and not commercially developed. Although the game itself is not very rhetorically interesting in the context of most of the things we talk about in class, its means of distribution and development are. Furthermore, it comes with its own editing tools along with source code, making its "open sourceness" readily available on multiple levels of computer knowledge. I'm going to look a little more into this but in the meantime enjoy that game along with a wikipedia list of other open source games out there:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_open_source_games

Pokemon Modded for 2008 Election

2008-04-20T16:15:00.000-07:00

THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE AN ANIMATED GIF,
but apparently Blogger does not support that, so check it here.

Found on the interwebs. I'm not completely sure if it constitutes a mod (I know it would fail the Galloway definition), but interesting none the less.

sorry for the late post!

2008-04-17T08:51:00.001-07:00

In his chapter on Countergaming, Galloway defines the differences between gaming and countergaming. He identifies 5, to which he adds another, largely unrealized difference: gamic action versus radical action. Through the fulfillment of this, he believes, countergaming will realize its true potential as political. Galloway argues that thus far examples of radical action have been difficult to find. Instead, most avant-garde artists have focused on game mods that focus on other mediums such as painting, video, and animation. Instead, he calls for new grammars of actions and alternative algorithms as opposed to new grammars of visuality. He identifies Jodi’s work as apolitical (juxtaposed with Jean-Luc Godard’s work as “hyperpolitical”) because it seeks only to abstract, not to modify gameplay. He calls for an era in which artists subvert traditional expectations of gameplay itself, as New Wave cinema once did for film—it eventually realized countercinema as cinema. Galloway is also concerned with the productive relationship thus far between fans/artists and corporations, citing appropriation and redistribution of fan game mods by fans. He argues that this is noteworthy because most, if not all other mediums have had a contested battleground between fan and corporation (the Star Wars corporation suing fan fiction writers, etc.). Although I tend to agree with Galloway, that avant garde games have not yet realized their potential for subverting traditional grammars of action, I wonder about his dismissal of subverting visual grammars as categorically apolitical.

One point he makes that I found interesting is his insisting on a different definition for reality for game use. More specifically, he finds that the distinction between reality and fiction itself is not useful so he dismisses it as an unproductive category for gaming/countergaming. Galloway writes that there are numerous examples of games that reject fictional narrative in favor of “real-life scenarios” such as a restaging of 9/11 (122). He argues that the “conceit of real-life simulation” has been a staple of game mods for several decades. Reality is also a staple of traditional games that are based on increasingly more representative “real-world” maps. He defines this as apolitical because, as opposed to cinema, reality is not a political import. He thus dismisses reality versus fiction as a useless classification for gaming. Considering the very political hype around increasingly high verisimilitude violent video games, is this dismissal productive? I am skeptical that a game reconstructing the events of 9/11 is necessarily rejecting the traditional narrative tradition of video games in favor of a “real life scenario.” Where does his term “simulation” fit into the debate between reality/fiction?

Beyond Sexual Representation: Sexual Transgression and 'Orgasm Girl'

2008-04-15T21:49:00.000-07:00

Where sexualized female avatars, voyeuristic fan culture, and fetishisized video game characters draw a line of propriety, 'Orgasm Girl' makes direct game play out of the seduction, and arguably rape, of a female character. Your objective, as listed in the game's Tutorial is to "giv[e] young girls intense orgasms while they're asleep." The tutorial then re-emphasizes the need for the targeted girl to remain sleep: "give the sexy girl an orgasm while she's asleep WITHOUT waking her up. If she wakes up, it's game over."

From this first introductory direction, a societal transgression seems to be taking place. They culture of "giving girls orgasms while their asleep," is immediately associated with the act of rape, sexual harassment, and sexual abuse. It is firstly non-consentual, as one individual (constituted by the player) acts upon another, without the latter's consent or agreement that would be notably suggested by consciousness. Secondly, 'Orgasm Girl' involves an invasion of privacy, legal and societal, that is visually suggested by the bed, and undergarments that the target girl will wear in the game. She appears to be somewhere private, at ease, while the player's character appears to be an intruder, someone trespassing upon private property, into a visual and sexual realm likewise regarded as private.

It is worth considering here, how these notions of transgression and trespass, that present the game as social uncouth, may be a product of what Michel Foucault has called "the Repressive Paradigm" in the his History of Sexuality. In this paradigm, sexual practice and discourse are made taboo by social factors connected to changes in the economic-political landscape of 18th century Europe. Today, Foucault argues, there is a the rhetoric of release, "liberation" from sex as a tabooed act, and thus 'Orgasm Girl' might be read as a direct challenge to the way privacy, rape, sexual abuse and advancement, are treated and controlled by paradigms born of repression. In short, 'Orgasm Girl' may be construed as a challenge of conventional sexual practice and glorification of the liberation of sexuality that Foucault details in his History.

But even if this is the case, 'Orgasm Girl' clearly disrupts 'appropriate' sexual practice, with a problematic alternative, and it is this act of sexual gaming that we must critically engage.

Aesthetic Overview

From the onset, 'Orgasm Girl' stresses the "adult" nature or its gameplay. "18+" warns the first title seen in the Flash game's intro, "contains scenes of strong sexual themes and nudity." The game then flashes to the game developer's animated banner: "Dark-Street.com Development," with a single star-like reflection edging along the first "D." "Dark-Street.com" is an ironic, if not ominous title for a company that would develop a game relating to heavy sexual themes, the suggestion of rape, and the depiction of non-standard sexual narratives. "Dark Street" would seem to be an appropriate location for such transgressive sexual acts.

Next, 'Orgasm Girl' presents the legs of a woman, covered with nylon tights, framed by a pink border with the camera panning suggestively up, following the legs of the woman to a short skirt, a bare midriff, a bosom barely covered by a thin scrap of white shirt, and a face heavily covered in make-up. Above this woman, a halo blinks strangely. The woman lets her hands rest on her wasp-thin waist, and stares at the user.

In the Tutorial, the user is instructed that this is his/her character, "Orgasm Girl the hottest lesbian angel around and she has only one objective: giving young girls intense orgasms while they are asleep." The halo then, oddly placed on the woman on the title screen connects this description with who the player controls. The player is this woman, and this woman is "Orgams Girl." The Halo also suggests an odd semi-divine quality, either referring to the "lesbian angel's" ability to gain access to the private space of the target girl, or engaging in the old cliche "you look like an angel," angel being a metaphor for beauty.

Clicking "start" one goes to a new "info" intertitle, providing a logistical data to the target girl. She is given just a first name, "Ashley," an age "18," eye and hair color, "green" and "blonde" respectively, and a "shaven" prompt with the word "yes" next to it. Each of these characteristics construct a highly sexualized object of desire. The age, "18," reminds first that she is legally of the age of consent, and second that she is of age to appear in pornographic material. Both of these qualities are problematicized by the fact that she is not awake. She may well be of the age of consent, but her conscious consent is still required. Appearing in pornographic material likewise requires a certain conscious agreement of the depicted subject. Eye color seems completely ironic, as you never see the eyes of a sleeping individual who must stay asleep. The "Shaven" category is left unexplained with the tacit assumption that it doesn't need to be; the type of character playing the game understands completely what this means. And in that regard, the "yes" answer, seems to be the desirable response.

Hands On Gameplay

Click Start again, the game begins. The player is suddenly afforded a near-totalizing view of a girl at sleep. The view is raised slightly as if to suggest that the player is poised over the target girl, not lying down beside her. The totalizing view, perhaps meant to suggest the floating perspective of an angel also allows for substantial access to the target girl. So in this way, the perspective becomes indicative of the power dynamic. The player is entirely in control of the target.

The player interacts with the body of the target girl. He/she is afforded a number of 'tools' to exchange out the default "idle" mouse point. There is "rub" marked visually with a small hand, "grab" signified by a snatching hand, "items" marked with an intersecting tool and wrench, and "shop" marked with a shopping cart.

Navigating the body, the user finds that the "rub" tool allows for the massaging/stimulating various regions of the girl while "grab" allows for the pulling down and removal of the girls cloths. Each stimulus/wardrobe adjustment causes a change in the interfaces "orgasm" meter and "state" bar graph. The orgasm meter is the game's objective: pushing the needle from rest into the orange and then red zones will not only score points for the player, but elicit "sexual" noises from the girl, and obviously, increase her state of consciousness. Perhaps the bouncing needle of the orgasm meter suggests an erect phallus, rotating with arousal into an upright position.

The game's only winning condition is orgasm. Its only losing condition is "Ashley's" waking up. Being too cavalier, perhaps too 'masculine' and direct, like removing her skirt and immediately massaging the vagina, will inevitably cause Ashley to wake up before she orgasms, and lose the game for the player. No, a rapid approach will not work. Instead, the player is forced to develop a strategy of patience and gradual escalation. Massage this, remove that, wait for the sleep state to return to normal, then make an attack.

Interestingly, satisfying Ashley is difficult, even frustrating. Simply stripping her, to reveal an anime-like sexualized cartoon, may satisfy the player's voyeuristic urges, but will not beat the game.

Ultimately unable to beat the game on my own, I sought help. A short how-to video on GameTrailers.com had all the answers, the procedural rhetorics I had either not realized or employed. But on top of the video, at moments of patience or repeated action, commentary condemned the would-be player of the game. "Use this time to reflect on how much of a pervert you are" stated on title, superimposed over the waiting for Ashley's full sleep state to return. Or "It may take a while (to massage Ashley's breasts into arousal) oh well, it's not like you've got a real womans boobs anyway." Each of these messages may explicit what players (particularly male, heterosexual players) are feeling at this time.

In any case, the way to win "Orgasm Girl" is to 1. remove the skirt 2. wait til sleep state normal 3. massage right nipple in circular pattern til orgasm meter leaps into orange. 4. massage pubic area of the vagina until into red orgasm meter zone. 5. purchase sleeping pills 6. apply sleeping pills. 7. massage pubic area until orgasm. This rhetoric will work every time, though the games "win screen" suggests that there 3 secrets to be unlocked, and that certain bonus will be awarded to the player based on getting the skirt off, the underwear off, the bra off, etc. After winning, the player is given 1500 points and put back into the game.

The most suggestive part of the winning procedure is the use of "sleeping pills," again recalling the transgressive, rape dynamic of the game's pretense, and also suggesting a creepy dynamic wherein an already sleeping girl is drugged. After the winning the game, and armed with 1500 points, the player is given the opportunity to buy even more sleeping pills and therefore dose Ashley even more. This will allow the player to achieve "the bonuses" buy stripping Ashley completely without her waking up. This also cements that game as a direct engagement with a form of rape/sexual transgress.

Play Orgasm Girl

Eternal Darkness

2008-04-15T19:20:00.000-07:00

Since spring break, I have played a game (not finished yet...) which my suitemate has been badgering me to play since last year: Eternal Darkness, Sanity's Requiem. The basic premise of the game is simple enough: after the mysterious death of her grandfather, a young (naturally attractive and blond...) female protagonist returns to her family home in Rhode Island to unpack the circumstances surrounding his death. Lovecraftian in mood and heavily influenced by Gothic literature (gameplay begins with an Edgar Allen Poe quote), ED at first seems like nothing more than a standard puzzle-solving adventure game where you happen to encounter supernatural opponents to destroy. You take turns alternately playing (3rd person perspective) many of the historical figures who play a role in the century-sprawling narrative of the story surrounding the return of evil unknowable forces to our world.

However, the interesting thing about the game for me is not so much the gameplay or the narrative, though the narrative is particularly engaging and almost unrelentingly dark. Rather, it is the concept in the game design of 'sanity' as an attribute. Gamers will be familiar with health, mana, maybe even ammunition or stamina bars which deplete with use in many games, but this is the first game I have ever known to contain a sanity meter representing with a green-colored bar just how badly the character's interactions with the supernatural have affected his or her ability to perceive the world. You start with a full bar of sanity and every time you encounter a monster, your sanity depletes, but you may recover it by performing a special finishing move on a monster after you have dispatched it.

So what does the bar do and why is it interesting? When your sanity gets too low, the first thing you notice happening is a shift in the orientation of the camera, similar to cinematic reframing, that moves your view on the gamic world ever more skewed and asymmetrical. The actual game camera gets less and less coherent, and the angles shift askew and too close to your character. The camera already resists any sort of omniscience, dependent as it is on moving your character to specific locations before shifting the view. This makes for a deliberately antagonistic gameplay experience mitigated only by your ability to 'heal' your sanity meter later in the game, a facet which, though narratively cohesive, seems almost like cheating. It wouldn't even be fun to do but for the gravity and sheer 'what the fuck value' of the hallucinations your character starts to experience when your sanity almost depletes.

WARNING SPOILERS FOLLOW!!!

So here is the interesting part: when your sanity gets really low, your character starts having hallucinations represented in-game by programming designed specifically to break the fourth wall and mess with the player's head. For example, your character will walk into a room with low sanity, and at this point you will probably already feel a little uneasy with the skewed camera and creepy music and graphics, and then all of a sudden, all of your limbs will start falling off one by one, slowly enough for you to start freaking out before the screen flashes white and you reappear back in the room you just left, whole and in exactly the same position you were in before.

As you all are probably aware of, I am really interested in subjectivity, and particularly interested in how video games reinforce a certain kind of subjectivity in gamers. Eternal Darkness seems like it tries to break this. It deliberately antagonizes the character in a way that is non-competitive. That is, there is nothing you can do plot or goal-wise to prevent these hallucinations or beat them, they simply happen and you endure them. After you gain the ability to heal your sanity, a very curious conflict arises in the gamer: do you keep your sanity low and risk freaking out, or do you secretly enjoy the hallucinations?

I find this to be a phenomenally interesting question, and it raises many other thoughts on subjectivity: does a game have to reinforce an ideology of teleology to be successful? How does this kind of antagonism function in games as opposed to old media like film and the novel? If in fact hallucinations affect your gameplay, how does that construe your subjectivity and aim in the game differently than in other games which would superficially appear to be similar puzzle-solving types? How would any of the theorists we have studied so far respond to this?

One last hallucination (this one really freaked me out): I navigated to the menu screen to save my game. I pressed the save game button only to see a pop-up declaring 'deleting all save games' followed by a progress bar which moved for a brief few seconds that felt like an eternity. Afterwards, the game flashed me the message 'all saved games deleted' before flashing back to my character in the room I had been in previously, leaving me standing in a dark room somewhat hyperventilating over the perceived loss of nearly 10 hours of time.

The developers Silicon Knights are coming out with a new game soon called Too Human based on Norse mythology. I'll be the first in line at GameSpot.

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

2008-04-15T14:34:00.000-07:00

Preliminary Game Analysis

The game I chose to play was Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare on the Xbox 360. At the most basic level possible, the premise of the game is that there are terrorists abroad that must be stopped before they do something terrible. While the story is purely fiction, it serves as a powerful commentary of the “modern” world. This analysis will focus on the political subtext of the game as a whole and on a specific mission that I found particularly interesting.

The very title of the game tells the player that this game is going to take place in the present. This is important in understanding what it illustrates about today’s world. One of the most blatant political positions that the game takes lies in the role that the player takes on. In this game, the “good guys” are the British and the United States and the “bad guys” are fictional Eastern-European/Russian terrorists. This clearly reminds one of the politics of the Cold War. I also find it interesting that the designers chose to make up an enemy, but chose to use real-world “heroes.” Furthermore, like many games, it is always assumed that the position of the main character is the correct one and the game never stops to question the motivations of the terrorists. We never get to explore both sides of the conflict. This political subtext is clearly indicative of the position that it is the role of the United States and its allies to police the world. The game makes it look like it is our responsibility to do this because nobody else will.

There is a mission in the game where the player is in the gunner position on a helicopter and his job is to protect friendly forces on the ground. The mission is played through the lens of an infrared camera that positively correlates the heat of an object with how white it is. The only way to tell who is on your side is by the presence of a flashing strobe on the friendly characters. I found this mission to be particularly telling of the ideological framework under which this game operates. For example, this mission is incredibly easy on all the difficulties. Nobody ever shoots at you and the only way to fail is essentially to shoot the wrong things. You are given the option of choosing between three completely different weapons. The first is an extremely powerful machine gun that makes people explode when you hit them. The second is a grenade launcher that fires pretty quickly and can take out hordes of people in one reload. The third is a huge missile that takes out large areas and reloads slowly. I go into details on the weapons because it becomes clear to me that the mission is only there for “fun.” In this mission, you essentially get to take out dozens of lives from an omnipotent, overhead position in any way you please. The fun is supposedly derived from the simultaneous lack of danger and desire to kill as many people as possible in a short amount of time. This becomes even more interesting when one discusses the few ways to fail the mission. For example, you’re free to destroy whatever buildings you like except for a large church. The church doesn’t have any implications to the game besides the fact that you’ll fail if you hit it. Although blowing up civilian buildings and homes is perfectly acceptable, the game suddenly has a problem with the destruction of a Christian house of worship. Similarly, it doesn’t matter if an enemy kills a friendly soldier because you can only fail if you kill one. You don’t fail if you kill civilian. The existence of these rules perpetuates the idea that casualties are acceptable as long as they aren’t allies. This mission is a perfect example of the real-world political subtext under which this game operates.

Characters and Player Placement in Nancy Drew: The Crystal Skull

2008-04-15T10:37:00.000-07:00

In following last week’s discussion on gender gaming and the relationship between the player and the avatar, I decided to analyze the most recent installment in Nancy Drew PC game serious: The Legend of the Crystal Skill. The company (Her Interactive) that developed the game, so perfectly fits the “entrepreneurial female” run company described in the Jenkins and Cassel article (and its leaders are quoted several times in the articles) that I was very curious to see an implementation of the a “girl game” at the hands of females developers.

From the website: “The games appeal to girls' natural curiosity and problem-solving skills by placing them in the role of Nancy Drew, where they encounter puzzles, brainteasers and a cast of characters straight out of the classic detective series.”

Gameplay Quick-Overview:

The gameplay is based on the explorative first-person style made famous by Myst in 1993. The player navigates a series of semi-static screens looking for active items and solving mini-games and puzzles to progress through the story with some cut-scenes in-between. Despite the statement above implying that puzzle solving is gendered gameplay, in itself, the gameplay seems “gender neutral” or rather it conformed to a traditional unmarked playing style that was naturalized in the genre.

Gendered Characters?

It is important to note that we never see these characters in-game, their appearance is a left to be manifested by the player. I feel this is done impart to engross the player in the game and in part a safety mechanism against introducing more avenues for possible gender stereotyping.

Nancy Drew: The player assumes the roles of the teen female detective Nancy Drew, (the game tag line is “imagine you as Nancy Drew”). In the game, she travels to New Orleans with the intent of vacationing with her best friend Bess in the Big Easy while making a stop at her boyfriend Ned’s request, to check up on his friend who recently lost his only living relative. On her visit to the house, she is entangled in a mystery involving a legendary skull, suspicious relationships, and secret societies. In a tone similar to Diner Dash, she surrenders her vacation time and want of shopping for work. Though in this narrative it is more excusable, as she is serving her own curiosity instead of obliging others and her detective abilities are a well developed hobby as opposed to an official position. As Nancy Drew, we get the feeling that she is enjoying the experience of the mystery as much as we are.

Her equipment does not screen “girly” either, she carries a phone, a backpack (not a purse), and a notebook that she fills with observations, no lipstick or compact for this girl!

Ned: The relationship with Ned is not heavily touched upon in the game, there is a sentence here and there that implies that there is a long standing relationship between the two, but unless you have prior awareness of the back story, he is not confirmed as her boyfriend. Our interaction with Ned is limited to our ability to call him, but in that there is a disturbing revelation: he is a looming male caretaker that emerges as the player struggles through the trickiest of the puzzles and has not yet given up enough of their dignity to console an online walkthrough. Ned not only listens to the progress of investigation, but with no prior knowledge himself, can provide frightenly knowledgeable hints at how to solve the difficult puzzles in the game, often noting places and items that you have not yet explored or communicated their existence to him. Not only is a disturbing break from the narrative, it also is negating a bit to the independent character of Nancy Drew to have a boyfriend who has the answer to the entire puzzle and is just letting her play along.

Bess: Bess is Nancy’s best friend who accompanies her to New Orleans for the means of shopping and fun. She is regularly forced to deviate from her vacation by Nancy to do some snooping of her own in her convenient location in a hotel in New Orleans, and she justifies this break by thinking that she might be sooner reunited with Nancy for some more shopping and fun. She is flirtatious with suspects, careless with evidence, and is only armed with her compact, but she preservers along and does her job well to the end. Whereas Nancy is the anti-stereotype, Bess is a stereotype that embraced her feminine qualities without letting them prevent her from engaging in same activities as Nancy. What is comforting about her microcosm in the New Orleans hotel is the realism of the narrative. There is no omnisent Ned, the only guidance she has is from Nancy, the experienced detective, and the guidance always shows a refreshing tone of natural uncertainty. Her intercourse with her friend coupled with the player’s engagement as both characters at different times provides a false yet comforting sense of female camaraderie that creates a safe yet adventurous world for the female gamer.

Conclusion

While the gameplay doesn’t break any new grounds, I think that this game compared to the other gendered games we played, makes best strides towards creating a comfortable environment for female gamers without gendering the gameplay narrative and or reinforcing stereotypes.

Original Starcraft

2008-04-15T10:34:00.000-07:00

I played the game starcraft for a couple weeks.

It was a game I had played before online, but never indulged the single player option. I went through the story as best I could, but found myself needing the cheat codes to complete the game. I found myself interested in different things having revisited the game as a more educated gamer than when I first played it many years ago. When I was younger, I noticed more the ability to micromanage a small city/army. Before, most of the games I had played placed me in the position of a single character capable of action within the narrative or world of the game. My fascination with Starcraft rested within the ability to do many things at once with many different characters. The terran (human) campaign starts you off by making sure you can perform the basic functions of the game. They ask for you to build necessary buildings and raise 16 fighting units. The game moves sequentially utilizing the skills you attain from the levels before. In a few missions, the game strays away from the multi-tasking, town management aspect and takes you into puzzle oriented levels. Much of the game forces you to manage resources, as well as special characters (which of course cannot die during the mission).

Revisiting the game now, I notice things such as the personalities behind the characters you click on. If you click to alert the characters, they give different responses and gladly follow your orders…..unless of course, you continue to click them. They start to send you the message that they are annoyed with you wasting time and poking them. I notice the fact that even though you are managing different characters, you technically are a character as well. The position of power the game places you in presents an interesting take on omnipotence and reification in games. If you were to pretend to be in the world of starcraft, your character would be in a similar position of telling a mass of soldiers what to do from some kind of computer.

Bow Street Runner

2008-04-15T08:52:00.000-07:00

Preliminary Game Analysis

Bow Street Runner is a game produced by a small indepdendent company as a commission for Channel 4, a British television station, to promote their historical fiction series City Of Vice. The game (and series) focus on mid-1700s London, and center around the creation of the Bow Street Runners, the first government-funded police-like force.

The game has the player walk through solving a series of murder cases as a Runner, with an interface generally somewhat similar to Myst (click-exploring), but with a more restrictive set of choices, plus smaller tasks which vary but whose interface frequently bears resemblance to Trauma Center (one of the mini-tasks is in fact suturing the stab wounds of a potential murder victim).

One facet of this game which strikes a bizarre contrast with other games we have studied this semester is the balance between winning and failing. The game consists of five 'episodes,' each of which is one case (though they intertwine quite a bit). Each episode plays a short introduction, then places the player at one scene. There are a certain number of tasks to be performed at each site, some of which are optional and not ultimately useful. The others are considered required (gathering specific evidence or listening to witnesses), and the game does not permit you to leave one scene until all required tasks there are complete. The game does not allow you to shoot yourself in the foot and completely miss a piece of information you will need later. In addition to this, the game itself provides very clear hints of what needs to be done at each scene; clicking the question mark box at any time presents a box giving a number of hints about tasks to do. At the end of each episode, after following the trail and gathering evidence, you must present your case to a magistrate to acquire a warrant for an arrest. You are asked a series of questions, and asked to place pieces of paper representing people and evidence into an evidence box to answer or support an answer to each question. You may answer incorrectly 4 times before you have "failed" and are scolded by your superior. However, if you fail to get a warrant, street justice takes its toll, or the criminal simply disappears, and you progress to the next episode regardless. Even the minigames cannot truly be failed. One example is the several instances where the player is expected to pickpocket evidence or keys from unaware suspects. Failed attempts either have the character say "Hey!" and then turn back around, or get up and help you in the door you wanted to get through to begin with.

We have discussed things such as rhetoric of failure, where the impossibility of winning, or the inability to progress in any meaningful way are the author's method of making a point. However, you cannot lose this game except by inaction. In fact there is only one episode (the last, produced some time after the first four) in which you can die, in a brief gun fight. And even this death is not meaningful, as after a couple deaths one has essentially memorized the locations of enemies, and can simply shoot them in the order they appear. There is no limit to the number of times one can die and restart right at that shootout. There is no meaningful penalty for dying. So even the one place where you can die doesn't actually contribute to any sort of loss.

This has interesting tie-ins with the narration of the game. As one might expect of a commissioned game about the first police force, the game casts the player as a rising hero. The dialog in the game makes frequent praise of law enforcement. The final line of the game when you "win" is that "the future of the Bow Street Runners was assured, and with it, the fate of London," implying that London had no future without law enforcement. This and other lines, along with the inability to fail, carry a heavy "inevitable triumph of justice" message.

Another interesting aspect of the highly restricted game play is the moral implications. When talking to uncooperative subjects, you are often given the choice of taking some agreeable demeanor (sympathetic, charming, etc.), or being harsh. But being polite frequently fails (perhaps a smaller scale rhetoric of failure), and the game disables that option, leaving only harsh conversation. Frequently this also fails, and the only remaining choice of action becomes either 'slap' or 'punch.' At one point, while interrogating an arson suspect, there's a good 5 minutes where the only action you can take is to punch the suspect in the face. Eventually he gives up information, but only after you've punched him in the face about a dozen times while he's shackled in a chair. This is considered the correct course of action.

This game is intended to be relatively true to the time period, so much of this the authors would likely attribute to that. However the extent to which these things are drawn out suggest the authors had other influences as well. This of course does not even begin to tackle some of the other non-gameplay aspects of the game, as the games female cast contains exactly one grieving widow, and all other women in the game are prostitutes (the first episode uses the word 'harlot' more times in an hour of play than I think I've ever heard used in any context before).

Toy Coasters and Doll People

2008-04-15T07:58:00.001-07:00

Roller Coaster Tycoon is a fairly aged game that, during its time (1999), was quite popular and caught on in the “casual” game crowd. It is a simulation business strategy computer game in which the player must successfully run a theme park, complete with gentle kiddie rides, needlessly dizzy spin machines, proper food and drink stalls, restrooms, staff, and of course, roller coasters. The game is played across a variety of scenarios, each one offering a unique landscape or partially functioning theme park and a set of specific goals that must be reached. In most cases the scenarios either call for a certain number of guests or park value to be reached by a certain time limit, although in the expansion packs there are some interesting scenarios where all the time and money restrictions are lifted, or where you have to finish several incomplete roller coasters.

In the game you are placed in a godlike restriction where your only restriction seems to be money (and in some scenarios even that restriction is lifted), your abilities reaching as far as picking up any individual and placing him anywhere within your park, including any large bodies of water. The color of your rides, the layout, the terrain, and the scenery are all changeable provided you have the proper budget, but with enough money there are no consequences for plucking out all of the wildlife, leveling all the mountains, and building over lakes or the ocean. Only in one scenario are you told “local wildlife officials prohibit you from removing trees”, but this serves not as a delicate environmental awareness, but a nuisance and annoying hindrance to the player who must simply build around them. Likewise, in the world of your theme parks there is ever no representations of outrage or politics at what you do, the theme park merely exists and is given space to exist, with no interference from communities protesting against whatever construction or destruction you choose to enact.

In this way, Roller Coaster Tycoon creates something of a toy world, with its own strange currency, physics, and aesthetics. The bright and colorful graphics are evocative of the colorful and childlike aesthetics of theme parks themselves, and the graphics go for more cartoonish than realistic representations. However, the roller coaster aspect of the game takes itself quite “seriously”, offering graphs measuring g-forces, ride times, train length, etc. Customization gets extremely detailed in some cases and the assault of statistics codes the roller coaster aspect of the game as highly technical, masculine, and “real”. On the other hand, people are simplified down to the level of commodity; you can peek into the inner lives of guests, and immediately see their statistics ranging from aspects of their current mood to their ride preferences to their money on hand to their thoughts. This level of godly omnipotence is interesting in of itself, but even more so is how race, gender, and any other identifiers are wiped from guest identities. When picking up people, your hand icon turns into a little toy crane device, further reinforcing the idea of “toy world”, that these guests are not their for their enjoyment but your success.

Ultimately, I feel that Roller Coaster Tycoon draws on similar appeals The Sims and other casual games do with a sort of dollhouse/toy world aesthetic. With seemingly godlike control over your little amusement park world, the absence of “real world” concerns to impede your progress and the detailed statistics of rides creates this idealization of running a “perfect” or “toy world” utopian theme park where environment is either a tool or a obstacle, identity only exists in a few relevant statistics, and rides are given more detail and realism than anything else in this gamic world. The end result is at least an interesting study in what is considered to be “relevant” in a highly destructive and obtrusive business in real life.

Croftian Evolution

2008-04-14T16:36:00.000-07:00

It's worth looking at Lara Croft as diachronic subject and not simply as a static signifier.

Over the past decade, Lara Croft's visual characteristics have changed, begging the question of why? Is it simple graphics upgrades, or does Lara Croft need to be perpetually reinvented for the next generation? Are certain avatars more sexualized than others? Is this a response to shifting social norms or does Lara continue to stress the same qualities of sexual identity?

It is also worth considering Croft's evolution against the evolution of other popular characters like Mario or even more androgynous character like Pikachu or Kirby.

What qualities are repeated to impart the 'essence' of the character and what changes to keep the character 'contemporary' ?

Wedding Dash makes me want to never get married

2008-04-14T16:15:00.000-07:00

Preliminary Game Analysis

Game: “Wedding Dash” http://www.shockwave.com/gamelanding/weddingdash.jsp

The protagonist of this game initially gets roped into organizing her best friend’s wedding last-minute. After doing such a “great job,” she begins to get booked as a wedding planner every weekend. To play the game, you must pay attention to each couple’s desires for food and wedding location so that you can “order” the correct items. You also must pay attention to whom the guests request to sit next to (and whom they specifically request not to sit next to), as well as which table they want. The game player also controls a second, nameless character who serves dishes and cleans plates. The main protagonist does little except watch the wedding and occasionally put out mini-disasters such as feuding bridesmaids and swarms of bees.

The ambiguity in the title, “Wedding Dash” is evident upon game play. Although the protagonist is literally dashing around through weddings or at least from one wedding to the next, the subplot in the story is her desire for a wedding herself. After her first string of successful weddings, she is congratulated by her friend Flo (of “Diner Dash” fame). However, her reply is not happiness with accomplishment of making money or being an excellent wedding planner, praised by both happy couple and guests alike, but instead is with her happiness that she received a date. She is elated with all the single men available to her and replies, “The best part is that the best man asked me out a date! Too bad I’m booked for the next 7 weeks!”

This seems to reinforce the traditional idea that a successful woman must either delay or sacrifice a personal life; she cannot have both. It also seems to suggest that the female character is motivated not by personal or professional reasons but instead is motivated only by a desire to meet “single” men.

Later in the game, when she goes on the delayed date (these scenes are relayed via a cartoon) the dinner is interrupted by a call to the protagonist’s cell phone. She excuses herself to take the callm, which we find out is from work. While she is gone, her date chats with a blonde waitress and ends up leaving with her. Again, this makes a clear argument that a woman can either have a professional or personal life, but not both—in order to keep a man happy, a woman must constantly be available for him or else he will run off with someone else who is.

The game also contains a narrative of the failure of marriage. The newlywed couples are constantly having bubble conversations in which they are simultaneously elated (“Lets’ have her plan our 50^th anniversary” and “I am so happy!”) and ignorant or incompatible (i.e. “You do want 10 kids, don’t you?”). This is not restricted to any one couple but instead each couple seems to be set up as an object of ridicule, as doomed to fail. Still, our protagonist constantly makes offhanded comments about how she wishes she were getting married instead of planning the weddings, despite the fact that they seem doomed to fail.

Spatially the protagonist seems incompetent as well—she does not really do anything. With the exception of consoling Aunt Ida, who cries at weddings, and preventing other “disasters” (Disaster averted! 200 points!), she simply watches the wedding from afar, something that seems to reiterate the fact that it is not her who is getting married or participating in marriage. When the user plays the game she is generally playing as the waitress rather than as the protagonist. The main character of the story is distanced from the user; we do not as much identify with her as we do her work for her (she is incompetent and just wants to date). Although we play the role of the employee (the waitress), we are not being ordered by her and instead have the ability to make our own decisions, and, in some cases, order her (to extinguish cooking fires, etc). This places the female protagonist in an extremely weakened position; she is essentially an airhead (who always dresses in skirts/dresses) who wants to get married. The confusing identification Flanagan writes about is therefore nearly impossible as the protagonist literally does nothing.

The Wiki World of Warcraft

2008-04-14T15:33:00.000-07:00

Annie Marie-Schleiner's "Parasitic Interventions" article makes an interesting point of conclusion.

Online massively multi-player RPG's (Role Playing Games) like Ultima Online and Everquest are one gaming enclave ripe for future culture hacking... Opening up the source code of RPG's to hacking and to allow game editors to be developed for popular usage would enrich the experience of inhabiting the game world allowing player to "interface" with their surroundings rather than inhabiting an environment preordained by dungeon masters/ deities. - Page 9.

In other words, Marie-Schleiner is interested in editable Worlds of Warcraft, MMORPG's with the potential to be modified, distributed and reconstructed to account for the considerations of the players. Her suggestion, characterized by the phrase "ripe for future culture hacking,"(my emphasis) acknowledge that this has yet to take place. Instead, RPG's remain aloof from cultural open sourcing and game mod paradigms that have become standard in gaming, as they are controlled by "dungeon masters/ deities." People whose status is attached to their current power and control in the world of MMORPG's.

I think that Maria-Schleiner's observation is a fair one. Indeed, RPG's remain notably outside of the game mod phenomena. But there are also obvious reasons for this, relating to the nature of the RPG and especially the MMORPG, which must be engaged with.

Why can't we wiki the World of Warcraft? Because the game is not about missions, landscapes, or avatar modification, that conventionally form the nature of things modified by game hackers and cultural remixers. Marie-Schleiner for example, traces the way Doom, Quake and Marathon have been open game sourced and modified. Where these games set up a limited number of 'official' missions, levels, and game experiences, modifications extend the game, creating new spaces to play once the old ones have been exhausted.

World of Warcraft, or Ultima Online and Everquest as Marie-Schleiner cites, are fundamentally a different type of game. They are a game world, whose coherence as a reality requires a sort of cross game fidelity that First Person Shooters and narrative games do not. Unlike narrative games, MMORPG's are non-linear and are designed to feel limitless. They are open spaces for exploration, which is notably different that the closed track gameplay of narrative games that allow little latitude in how levels are cleared.

RPG's like WOW, Ultima, and Everquest, also feature other human players, interfacing between multiple individuals where narrative/conventional games only allowed the negotiation of an individual to a pre-programmed space. As a result, there is a practical consideration for the exclusion of modifications. Namely, how can individuals negotiate with one another when the protocols through which they act, play, and communicate are open for constant individual editing. Like pick-up games of football, MMORPG's require the adoption of local rules, standards among players that will allow everyone to compete fairly. Ironically, while Marie-Schleiner argues that allowing individual mods of MMORPG's would allows for "the enrichment" of RPG's, only the opposite seems true. That ability of individuals to freely edit their world would compromise and destroy the richness of that gaming reality. Marie-Schleiner notes that these games have "immersive worlds complete with their own economies of exchange" but does not consider what these very real economies require, namely, fidelity and restrictions to modification. Consider this CNET article that engages with how online economies develop as a result of trust in the stable value of certain goods, services, and forms of currency employed in online spaces. Without such fidelity, the worlds would devolve into anarchies and not the type of utopias that Marie-Schleiner seems to attach to realms of free and easy modification.

A Quick Article

2008-04-11T08:24:00.001-07:00

http://blog.wired.com/games/2008/04/poll-sex-in-gam.html

2008-04-10T10:41:00.000-07:00

I found Consalvo's Hot Dates and Fairy-Tale Romances to be an interesting read. A couple parts of her analysis of The Sims, however, stuck out in my mind, because Consalvo did not discuss the practical considerations which she mentions in other parts of her analysis at all for these important areas.

First, it comes up in the following passage discussing the creation of custom Sims:

Finally, the manual makes and interesting move in conflating gender with biological sex, and reifying both as a primary signifier of identity... Feminist scholars such as Judith Butler have correctly challenged the sex/gender conflation, arguing that genders (and their constituent attributes) are assigned to sexed bodies in an artificial manner... (Consalvo 184)

While this is certainly a valid criticism of the game, for whatever reason, Consalvo omits any discussion of practical reasons for this. As she mentions elsewhere, The Sims is foremost a commercial product from an established large-scale game company, where avoiding alienation of the target audience takes priority over social statements the authors may wish to make. The sex/gender distinction is useful, but unfortunately making it an explicit consideration when creating a Sim would likely confuse or simply be lost on much of the target audience; this is a potentially-contentious topic, which is further from the core themes of discourse than some other areas where the game has already hedged its bets (such as gay marraige).

The presentation (or rather, lack of forced presentation) of homosexuality in the game is another place where Consalvo is purely critical of the game, but omits practical considerations. She raises the issue of gay-window gaming, where homosexuality is permitted, but it is possible (even easy) to avoid seeing homosexuality in the game at all. She writes:

Options not explored will not surface... [The Sims'] appeal is based in part on its attempts to accurately "model" human life... (Consalvo 188)

She then continues on to discuss how the game is more realistic with gays in it, but this is not required by the game. This is certainly true, but it seems there may be another reason for this (which I have no evidence to support) other than simply not desiring to alienate the homophobic portion of the target audience. We've talked a lot about how the game designer's potentially-subjective viewpoint on matters tends to slip through and come across as a message in games. It seems reasonable to expect that the designers of The Sims were aware of this, and made some decisions to consciously avoid having the game perceived as what they (the designers) thought it should be, and to allow the reality it models to be whatever reality the players choose to see, and remove as much subjectivity as they felt they could. This might explain why gay marriage does not exist in the game (when it was released no states had made gay marriage officially/legally recognized), among other things. The result of this tact is sort of disturbing, they they're intentionally allowing people to live in fantasy worlds of their own creation, but seems like a point worth thinking about.

A quick study of Portal

2008-04-10T09:43:00.001-07:00

In one of my other classes in a tangent, we started talking about the Valve game Portal as an area of strong feminist critique. The main thing that Portal does, which ties closely to Mary Flanagan's "Hyperbodies" essay, is force the player into a female position, unlike games that either make you a male (Gordon Freeman in Half Life) or give you a choice of avatar that is unessential to gameplay narrative (Alex D. in Deus Ex 2). But unlike games like Tomb Raider or Parasite Eve, Portal does not offer a 3rd person distanced perspective, but collapses the identity of the player inside the female, creating a narrative not of godlike control but of being a female in imminent danger from the crazed GLADoS. Following Half Life's philosophy of never interrupting game environment with cutscenes that disrupt the illusion of control or shock the player awareness outside the game character, there is never any distance from player relation and character control. Gender only appears objectified or apparent when you "mirror" yourself by staring through a portal pointed towards you, creating a sudden disconnect in the player at the sudden surprise (the game in fact forces you to do this during the opening sequence). Add a deserted, non-violent and puzzle environment with no monsters or aliens, but an invisible omniscient female technological beast, and there's something very atypical of Portal's gender dynamics and placement.

I'm ranting a bit aimlessly right now, but we can delve more into this: instead of weapons that "pierce" and "kill", like the childish AI gun turrents, you have a weapon that only creates spaces (spaces that keep you safe), or "orifices", if you will. The final deranged boss fires a giant laser, which you use your portals to redirect it back onto itself then grab the "ball" nodes and throw them into a fire. And you aren't "superhuman" or "superhero", the only real superhuman thing you can do is fall from great heights without getting hurt, which is narratively explained by scientific fancy footsprings. The narrative is more closely not of the male blasting through the alien base, but female in the deserted horror house of the abandoned science facility, absent of monsters but full of dangers in a masculine technological space.

Is this a revolution in gender gaming? Or is it somehow troubling that the non-sexualized, non-objectified mainstream female protagonist must inhabit a different space than the male, where she is not allowed to shoot aliens but navigate through a dangerous environment that she cannot shoot at, but create portals (or perhaps femininize the space with orifices?) to navigate and essentially gain control over? And Glados is a female computer. Just saying.

EDIT: Consalvo - "For example, the original Donkey Kong (1981) game featured the player as the male plumber Mario attempting to rescue Princess Zelda from the giant male ape."
Princess Peach, not Zelda.

Also, one thing that immediately pops out to me is that Consalvo is forgetting there is a very strong difference between the construction of gender in Japanese video games and American. There's more of a sterilization of sexual promiscuity I feel, the "hentai" or overtly sexual being marginalized off of the mainstream, and the "romantic" aspect of FF9 is something I feel of a Japanese response to girl gamers in Japan, but in a very troubling way. Final Fantasy has always been very concerned with narrative, and fantasy has always had a gendered appeal to females (just take my word for it). Are they just throwing a little "for-the-girls" add-on? I notice a lot of similarities with some FF storylines and girl anime. Furthermore, Consalvo's arguement about the feminist masculine portrayal of Zidane fails to take in account of Bishouju, or "pretty boys", who in Japan are somehow "more masculine" or attractive by being long haired, overly romantic, somewhat girly (by American standards), and "pretty".

I think that Consalvo's erotic love triangle argument is a little weak in a cultural context, but then again in America there is a very different reception of Japanese gaming narrative norms. I don't know how many gay jokes have been made about Marth (the Nintendo Super Smash Bros token Bishi), since there have been so many. There is a huge slash culture surrounding other FF characters like Cloud and Tidus (FF9 never really caught on), and the homoeroticization of Japanese video game protagonists are there. It's just that I'm not sure Consalvo has the right take on it.

The newest Final Fantasy game features a female central character. Before the game has come out though, (American) gamers are accusing her of simply being a "Cloud with a Vagina". Hmmmmm...

EDIT EDIT: By the way, this isn't my one page analysis of Portal. Just a response to this week's post.

need to brush up on your dating skillz?

2008-04-09T23:09:00.000-07:00

haven't been out for a while? need to refine your game? desire a brief flash of anime porn?

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/66766

re: not safe for work environment

Gender and Identity in Games

2008-04-09T22:25:00.000-07:00

I was surprised by the direction that Thursday’s readings took. While I was expecting them to expand on the ideas covered in class on Tuesday, they opened my eyes to a new way of examining gender in video games. The main idea that I took away from the Flanagan article was related to how the player can identify with the main character. I always thought of character identification in terms of a strict dichotomy. One could either see oneself as the main character or as a spectator to the characters actions. I’ve never thought of the possibility that multiple “I” identities could exist simultaneously. I agree with Flanagan that this “double consciousness” creates some serious questions about gender in video games. In talking about the feminist science-fiction work Proxies, Flanagan is demonstrating in a more concrete way that multiple identities can share the same “body.” The reason why I’m drawn to this concept, is because I’ve never thought about how women identify with male characters. While I’ve always been well aware that gaming is highly skewed toward males, I’ve never considered how this affects the critical process of identification with the main character for women. Even after these readings, I’m still confused about how women identify with male characters. Does the existence of this double-consciousness allow women to identify with the character? Some people like Uma Narayan feel that people who aren’t members of oppressed groups cannot identify with characters that are. At least for me, I feel like I have to agree with Narayan. From my personal experience, I feel like I identify with female characters less than I do with male ones. I don’t know whether this is because it is a rare occurrence that I’m not used to or whether it is because I’m male. If it was more common, could it become something I could get used to? Do women identify with male characters in the same way that men do?

With regards to the article by Mia Consalvo, I was surprised by the problems raised by The Sims. I’ve played the game before, but never noticed most of the things that the reading pointed out. It really seems like The Sims is pushing heterosexual, white, male norms on its players. The writers of the game made conscious decisions to program the game the way they did and even write the manual the way they did. I’m not saying they should be progressive in their product or that they should push a liberal agenda. I just don’t understand why they chose to make the decisions they made. I don’t think giving players the option to marry gay characters or providing players with an equal number of character models to choose from is very radical. Making skewed decisions like this is something common to many games and something the industry should address in my opinion.

A comic

2008-04-08T12:53:00.000-07:00

http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=254

Just a link

2008-04-08T05:30:00.001-07:00

Felt it was appropriate for this week:

http://www.feministgamers.com/

Gamer Girlz

2008-04-07T18:10:00.000-07:00

“Some argue that the core assumptions of the girl games movement involve a ‘commodification of gender’ which will necessarily work against any attempts to transform or rethink gender assumptions which American culture.” (Cassell and Jenkin, 1)

This sentence resonates with me the most from the Cassel and Jenkins article and the recent criticism of the female gaming clan, the FragDolls. The FragDolls are a Ubisoft sponsored female gaming clan that exist under the glossy goal to “represent their [Ubisoft] video games and promote the presence of women in the gaming industry.” The clan has come under fire for being no more then a more active version of a booth babe, and for tailoring their image to the “hot” female gamer stereotype. Ubisoft is also criticized for exploiting the sexuality of the female clan members to promote their video games and thus undermine the objective to promote the presence of women in the gaming industry. In defense of the FragDolls, the image of a young, attractive female has long been exploited by the advertising industry to attract consumers to a product. I’m arguing that the FragDolls are no more an exploitation of female sexuality for selling Ubisoft games then Maria Sharapova is for selling Nike sports attire. Since the formation of the Major Gaming League in 2002, video gaming has become a sport and the gamers athletes. Gamers dedicate their time to perfecting their strategy and technique, they retire young, and the superstars are the heroes for their younger fans and a source of admirations for the rest, in a commercial sense they are perfect platforms for pushing gaming products. The FragDolls get more attention then other clans because of their gender, but their sponsorship and identification with products should not strike such a tender note with feminist critics, underneath it all they are female athletes who are kicking ass on the same platform as male gamers. “We can too, as good as you, and in heels”.

“We female gamers tend to make things worse on ourselves either by flaunting our girl gamer status, or by demanding the industry cater to us and in the long run, all we need to do as my one of my fellow writers would say, is shut the froag up and just play games. “ (gamer blog)

I feel that female gamers struggle with a sense of identity as a female, in fright of conforming to a female stereotype, they feel that the best way to become part of the gaming community is through assimilation of the male gamer ideology and mimicry.

“On the outside, you attempt to conform to an order which is alien to you. Exiled from yourself, you fuse with everything that you encounter. You mime whatever comes near you. You become whatever you touch. In your hunger to find yourself, you move indefinitely far from yourself, from me. Assuming one model after another, one master after another, changing your face, form, and language according to the power that dominates you. Sundered. By letting yourself be abused, you become an impassive travesty.” (Irigaray, "When Our Lips Speak Together," trans. Carolyn Burke,)

The struggle of female identification in a male dominated medium is a long one. In the quote above Irigaray talks of female writing, the struggle for identification within a male dominated language and to create a feminine text without falling into the plots and themes of “silly lady novels” (Elliot, 1856). Even though female gamers now comprise 38% of video game market (ESA 2008), the female gamer and game development community still struggle with the same lack of identification that Irigaray and George Eliot faced in the 18th and 19th centuries: parading in pink isn’t acceptable, but mimicry and assimilation seem to be a cop-out. As a female gamer how do you retain your gender identity without falling into the pits of gender classification? As a female game developer how do create a feminine game within a dominant ideology which is not your own without acting within and reinforcing an identifying stereotype?

Gender Essentialism in Games

2008-04-07T12:34:00.000-07:00

I am deeply troubled by the Jenkins article "From Barbie..." from a gender perspective because of the seeming obviousness with which Jenkins treats boy and girl gamers. Jenkins' entire analysis of the reason the Girl Games failed but nonetheless influenced modern approaches to the female demographic is deeply infected with the specter of sexual essentialism.

When he maps out the differences between the modes of interaction and interests of boy and girl gamers, he is only reinforcing the societal conception that there are essential characteristics of the personalities of each gender. I do not believe that this is a productive way of analyzing the discrepancy between the numbers of male and female gamers. In fact, analyses such as his are part of the very reason, in my opinion, why there still is such a discrepancy. In my experience the divisions that Jenkins borrows from Laurel are vague over-generalizations of what games have been traditionally targeted towards each gender, NOT what each gender wants to do.

With the current generation of games in mind, it is especially important to consider the individual relation to the game as something transcendent of gender/race/class boundaries because, as we have been told over and over again by some of the theorists we have read, games fundamentally reconceive our subjectivity in gamic terms. Hence, there is no reason to simply assume that gender etc. enters into this newly mediated relationship in the same way it does in our outside lives.

Perhaps what would be more productive than simply trying to make games that boys or girls might like would be the creation of some sort of Bogostian persuasive game that challenges gender roles through a gamic structural paradigm free of any gender bias or intent.

2008-04-07T09:38:00.000-07:00

The Cassell/Jenkins article is useful in terms of outlining the various and often opposing or conflicting views on gendered gaming. One tactic stood out though: that of creating girls' games that respond to market research and focus groups. While it does seem like a practical and financially low-risk way to begin to establish a market for female gaming, something about its resignation (for lack of a better word) to create games based on the current trend of products marketed to girls -- the equivalent of packaging them in pink boxes -- doesn't sit well with me, even if it's only supposed to continue until the market is more firmly established. Admittedly, the whole category of "girls' games" doesn't sit well with me in the first place, for no reason I can adequately explain other than some weird aversion to acts of categorization in general. But if we are considering girls' games as a separate genre, I'm not sure simply responding to market research is the way to go about making any significant changes in the industry. While these kinds of games may convince girls that computers aren't just for boys, they run the risk of creating an entirely new dichotomy that posits certain computer practices (such as digitally designing clothes and accessories) as female and other practices (such as more exploration-based gaming) as male. I agree with Jenkins that a game like The Sims should act as a model of what we should strive for, although claiming that it sits apart from what Jenkins labels "boys'" games seems a bit much. It's not that it fits within the category of girl gaming that makes it successful in this regard, but that it seems to resist these kinds of gender-based genres.

On a more personal note, I distinctly remember playing Barbie Fashion Designer when I was younger, as well as another Barbie game in which players style her hair and do her makeup (for that game in particular, I remember getting the most pleasure out of creating some of the least Barbie-esque styles, such as combining blue lipstick with bright green streaks in her hair). I'm not sure these games are what sparked my interest in computers, though. I'm pretty sure the more gender neutral, education-based games are what made me think of computers as fun -- off the top of my head I can remember Zoombinis, JumpStart 3rd Grade Adventure (both of which were somehow still fun in high school), Put Put and Pep's Dog on a Stick, Oregon Trail, and a virtual interactive 3D dinosaur museum (being chased by a roaring, bloodthirsty 3D T-Rex was scary enough that I'll probably remember it for the rest of my life).

I do remember at one point buying a Barbie that came with a small plastic computer and software that was supposed to sync up to this Barbie-computer combo. If set up correctly, Barbie would say different things at certain points while you played the game on your own computer. I was so excited to finally be able to interact with Barbie and to have her give her own feedback rather than me simply projecting my thoughts onto her. Unfortunately, my mom and I could never get it to work properly. I was so disappointed that I didn't go near a computer again for a long time. I suppose if we're going to rely on girls' games to encourage girls to play with computers more, we should make sure the games function in the first place -- a game that doesn't work may end up alienating a girl from computers even further.

The Redistricting Game

2008-04-03T07:20:00.000-07:00

I noticed that the Redistricting Game is on the syllabus for this week (today), and it reminded me that I have been absolutely delinquent in posting what remains of my GDC notes. This one's particularly relevant because it's actually about the Redistricting Game. The guy who made it came to the GDC to solicit other serious game designers' thoughts on improving the game, which he recognizes is not perfect yet. Have any of you played through the game yet? I'd be curious to know if you come up with the same critiques that were mentioned at the GDC.

It seemed to me that what most of the other designers wanted out of this game was something that would be more striking, more upsetting to the people who played it. The cartoony graphics and the abstraction of the dots representing Democratic and Republican voters didn't give the game the immediacy that many thought the game needed to make an impact - especially after hearing how passionate the original designer got about this issue.

Although the designer wanted this game to be objective, several of his reviewers felt that it needed to make people angry, and that he should have invested more of his own feelings about redistricting into his game in order to make his players feel as strongly about the subject as he did. A few suggested that he ought to make a stronger push for media attention, and one came up with a kind of 'War of the Worlds' scenario that would make people really afraid of the fact that this kind of thing is going on /right now/. At the very least, many agreed that people should be able to see themselves reflected in the gameplay, by giving them something that's easier to identify with than colored dots on the screen. Allowing them to play at gerrymandering with real districts (rather than a made-up one) might help give the game that personal feel.

None of this is to say that the Redistricting Game has been a failure. In fact, the game has had great success getting people to write Congress, and getting Congress to take notice. We're playing it in class, aren't we? But in general, players were dissatisfied with the end-game survey as a way of motivating civic action. They felt that you have to lower the bar for people to get involved. One person came up with the idea of a button (which you can click at any time during game play) that allows you to send messages to your Congressman as soon as the game makes you angry enough to want to do so. Others suggested an idea from those livejournal quizzes that are everywhere these days: give players who finish the game something to post on their journals. How many voter blocs did you screw today?

http://www.redistrictinggame.org/
response: has gotten more Congresspeople to sponsor the Tanner bill than any other effort
critique #1: simplify the context as far as tiny dots representative of Dem/Rep, because it's hard too differentiate dots from each other
critique #2: passion in the presentation from the guy who made it was ... can you get into it faster? Needs brevity of message
designer: objectivity was the most important thing here; didn't want to alienate people by being overbearing with a political stance
does note that the most popular thing about the game is the (very slanted!) opening video, but insists that you need to be objective or people won't be convinced
critique #3: art style, which is very cute, felt very disarming, very pleasant ... inappropriate
critique #4: call to action was a survey, suggest that there's a share with friends feature (a la every LJ quiz ever), add zip code feature that links to write your representative, etc.
how do you generate civic action from games? "One Click Civic Action"
another guy to chips in to add, from his experience, that the people to lean on here are not the Congressmen but the state legislators. He's very invested in this project :)
suggestion: incorporate the 'call to action' into the game from the start, rather than wait to the end for a survey; have, e.g., a button they can click at any time to send angry letters. Angry!
critique #5: there's no personal connection with the blue/red dots on the screen; you want citizens to say 'That's me being manipulated!' and get pissed off
difference between objectivity and sterility! >:-( It comes across as a lecture, not insight
information does not change behavior; affective
suggestion #1: make it a War of the Worlds spoof, get a lot of press attention with it, etc.
How would the game be different if the first thing you put on the chalkboard was "We need to make people mad?"
critique #6: don't make it an abstraction, show them that it really affects them and their area
suggestion #2: play from viewpoint of the people who have initiated lawsuits
critique #7: doesn't teach people the actual reasons some of these districts get drawn like this
story: when redrawing a district, one party started at the top, took what they wanted; the other party started at the bottom, took what they wanted ... middle got lumped in
story: redistricting in a black neighborhood guaranteed a black rep, inciting Democrats to sue each other over the racism of it all, but it also guaranteed two Republican reps in the districts that were created from the overflow
can you make it fun to be mad, teaching things like this?

Cynicism and Social Realism

2008-04-02T19:54:00.000-07:00

Earlier this week Melanie examined the ways in which an assumed though unarticulated liberal ideaology was at work in Bogost's writing. In reading Galloway I was struck by the fact that his notion of Social Realism was necessarily critical. Galloway makes an illuminating assumption in crafting his concept of Social Realism.

In discussing Bazin's notion of realism Galloway inserts his own telling interpretation. Galloway claims that realism for Bazin "approximates the basic phenomenological qualities of the real world." This is a pretty logical assertion.

It gets problematic when Galloway defines "real life" as not simply a visual representation but also "real life in all its dirty details, hopeful desires, and abysmal defeats." This vision of real life is terrifyingly cynical yet, it forms the basis for Galloway's conception of Socail Realism. It is peculiar that the details of life must be "dirty." That desires should be "hopeful" hardly discounts the fact that the represent a lack in the first place. It seems cynical hyperbole to claim that all defeats should be abysmal. This notion of the real is problematic. I'm sure many people would concieve of the "real" in cheerier terms. Even for the marginalized and oppressed does life not also contain fulfillment? Success? Delightful details?

Galloway goes on to claim that "Because of this [realism as a phenomenological approximation of a dirty, defeated and at best hopeful real world] realism often arrives in the guise of social critique." It is out of this cynicism that Galloway can go on and explicitly tie realism with social critique, going so far as to claim that "the realist game designer" must "capture the social realities of the disenfranchised" (84). This claim that realism must be critical stems from a view that a realistic representation of life is necessarily negative because life itself is inherently grim. While I think the notion of social realism is highly promising, I do think that some of Galloway's assertions about how oppression and realism are causally linked is worthy of a second look.

Regarding the 'Rhetoric of Failure'

2008-03-31T21:03:00.001-07:00

Is it a Product of Time, Frustration, or Indifference?

This was the question that occurred to me in regards to Ian Bogost's theory of the 'Rhetorics of Failure.' Namely, what is it that produces failure in a game more specifically then the games abstracted design; why does it fail? And how does the way it fails (a 'technique of failure') reflect the rhetorical argument made by the game?

Let's review the concept of 'Rhetorics of failure' for a moment. According to Bogost, "If procedural rhetorics function by operationalizing claims about how things work, then videogames can also make claims about how things don't work" (85). Or as Bogost quotes of Shuen-shing Lee, "A you-never-win game could be considered a tragedy, for example, a game with a goal that the player is never meant to achieve, not because of a player's lack of aptitude, but due to a game design that embodies tragic form" (85). Finally, near the end of the chapter, Bogost explains "Videogames that deploy rhetorics of failure make a subtly different statement than those that are simply unwinnable, or that actively encourage play loss. In Kabul Kaboom, the rules inscribe a playable game that eventually and inevitably end in loss, similar to arcade games like Pac-Man. In September 12, the rules depict the impossibility of achieving a goal given the tools provided" (87-88).

So what the 'rhetorics of failure' seem to be essentially, is a style of conclusion, like "tragedy" as Bogost writes, because it preordains and requires the game to end with failure. Not because of "the player's inepitude" as Lee argues, but because this is the form of the game, and this prewritten failure is part of the game. This act, the eternal manifestation of failure at a game's end, according to Bogost's implications, is a subversion of the standard gaming conclusion where the objectives are attained, and the game is solved, beaten, completed. Against this standard that unwinnability of a game seems to make the game like a pair of loaded dice, unerringly progressing to the same conclusion.

To return to my initial questions: how is that you fail a game, Bogost provides several examples of differentiated categories but does not create a taxonomy. What this leaves unresolved is the idea that the way you fail is important. That the logic of failure or the propulsion to lose is the most important element of the 'rhetorics of failure,' a conclusion that Bogost never gets around to. Briefly, I'll try to sketch some categories and show what I mean.

1. "The Onslaught Failure" - As in Space Invaders, pushes an individual to the point where their ability is overwhelmed by the progressive betterment of the program they play against. This sort of rhetoric of failure produces the understanding that no matter how vigilant you are, you cannot keep the enemy in check. Growing bored, or becoming overwhelmed (as in onslaught) the game defeats you, leaving nothing but a score, or in the case of Kabul Kaboom, nothing at all. The speed at which you are defeated, and the inevitability of your defeat produce a sensation of futility, which is a common message of political satire. The message: Nothing can be done to win (bring peace, prosperisty, etc.) until the conditions of the game (government, war, environment, etc.) are changed.

2. "The Immoral Failure" The McDonald's Game makes you think you can win, but it never reaches an end game, as the game's clock just keeps running, and the ways to stay ahead of the game's drive to make you lose keep shrinking. So you are forced, out of the conditioned drive to win (which Bogost does not discuss, but deserves attention), to perhaps do the the immoral thing (if you haven't already) to try to win. But even this is not enough. You still lose. And though you continue to change the variables and strategic approaches to the way you play, you continue to lose. Here, the game is playing you, as your engagement with the game causes you, the player, to change, while the game remains the same. The morphing of the player, all in the attempt to win, is revealed when the player understands that the game is unbeatable, and then must assess all of the ways he/she changed to try to win, and consider those actions, or more importantly, that drive. I think the most important conclusion of the McDonald's Game 'rhetoric of failure' is how capitalism is embedded within the concept of the game, exemplified by the player assuming he can win, and changing strategies multiple times before realizing otherwise.

3. "The Wrong Tools Failure" This is the one 'rhetoric of failure' that Bogost does engage with, as he suggests that the conclusion of September 12 (or one conclusion) is that you cannot do your job of ridding the world of terrorist with an oversized bomb that is time delayed and kills other, innocent people in the process. Therefore, the argument is that the game, or more metaphorically, the American Military does not have the adequate approach to defeating terrorism. If we want to defeat terrorism, we must change our weapons entirely, perhaps even stop using weapons altogether.

Bogost

2008-03-31T19:28:00.000-07:00

Most of the problem I have with Bogost’s chapter on political gaming is that it does not acknowledge that it itself operates within or is affected by ideology in a very material way and that the interrogation of political issues as procedural systems is as well. He acknowledges or seems to subscribe to the various interpretations of ideology that identify the ability of ideology to distort material practice in a totalizing way and yet offers the claim that by playing games and unpacking their claims about political rhetoric, “we can gain an unusually detached perspective on the ideologies that drive” the games (75). A very clear example of how ideology operates in the article is his unabashedly liberal interpretation of Hurricane Katrina, and his also left-leaning interpretations of laissez faire political philosophy and practice and “America’s Army: Operations.” His offhanded criticism of laissez faire politics, for example, I believe, would not be possible without the Rawlsian-esque liberal ideology that succeeded such things as the Potato Famine and laissez faire politics. In his interpretation of America’s Army (which again is suffused with left-wing interpretation) the ambiguous task of interpreting ideology manifests itself when Bogost acknowledges the two main possible interpretations of the lack of realistic deaths: that the game is aimed at teens and therefore kept the gore to a minimum for rating purposes or that the Army does not perceive battles to be macabre. This task of interpretation seems to be far from removed from the influence ideology and certainly not detached. Thus, I have several questions. One, is gaining perspective on political institutions and ideologies itself driven by a specific ideology? How is interrogating political issues as procedural systems affected by the same ideologies it seeks to interrogate? Is it possible to have a detached perspective on ideologies, especially? Considering these questions, what is the value of specific claims made by video games about interrelations between political processes? How can we most effectively interpret them?

2008-03-23T22:29:00.000-07:00

Here is the beginning of my post. And here is the rest of it.

The Control Allegory

2008-03-20T07:14:00.000-07:00

In Galloway's "Allegories of Control," a shift occurs between non-computerized culture and computerized society. This shift, highlighted by Deleuze, is "characterize by a movement away from central bureaucracies and vertical heirarchies toward a broad network of autonomous social actors" (88). We study this as a move from a disciplinary society to a control society. We are not forced to live within one system, but instead we are controlled within a vast set of systems.

Games contain a form of control known as informatic control. Instead of imposing a single ideology on the player, they impose a total system of control that the player must live within. Interpretation of video games involves canning a game for large patterns instead of recognizing a dominant ideology. Games "flaunt informatic control" therefore we must "Interpretive patterns".

Specificities, such as the racist use of nationalities in Civilization, give way to the variableness that can just as easily swap the inferior Iroquoi nation for the Soviet Union or the Babylonian empire. Yes, while a game can still have a racist undertone, the actual material history that formed that racist undertone is swept away since "informantic organization... recolonized the function of identity" (102). We play according to the "synchronic" or multiple mathematical equations/controlling code of the software system, not the "diachronic" or single/static point of the Iriqoi game character icon.

This variableness highlights flexibility within informatics and late-capitalism. Just changing the variables of the system does not change the control system of the game: "To be entirely clear: mine is an argument about informatic control, not about ideology; a politcally progressive 'People's Civilization' game, a la Howard Zinn, would beg the same critique" (103).

If the individual variables do not matter, how do we interpret or scan the text?

First, we must understand that playing a game involves understanding the system of control. Galloway states that our desire to win the game leads to our desire to master knowledge of the game algorithm. The only way to win a game is to live perfectly within its system of control. "The digital can't exert control with architecture, so it does so with information.... I see this fetishization of the "knowledge triumph" as a sort of informatization of the conspiracy film" (94). Playing a game in any manner (such as a suicide player, a PKer, an explorer, etc.) forces one to learn the rules of the system.

From there, if we understand that a game is an allegory, we can interpret these processes correctly. By constantly following these rules and acting within them, we can try to understand the larger system working behind the game: "When one plays civilization, there is action taking place, but there is more than one significant action taking place" (105). We constantly do this while playing a game- we do not always fixate on the racist Iriqoi icon but the implications of starting off the game as any "nation" throughout history. "There is no need for the critic to unpack the game later" (103).

Questions:
When a game designer creates a game, is a system of control always implicit? Is it even possible to make a game that does not have a system of control? In what ways can this control system prove beneficial? If Zinn's Civilization game just changes variables, what are some examples of game changes that would alter the system of Civilization?

If we focus on informatics as opposed to ideologies, does it even matter how "racist" a game is? Commercial game makers built Colonization, but there was a much larger public outcry against that game than Civilization. While I do not think Galloway dismisses the analysis of individual ideologies within a game entirely, it seems like the public still analyzes ideology within games with much greater scrutiny than Galloway proposes we should.

Galloway critiques informatic control as creating false realities and ignoring actual material conditions. Because of the computer age, he says, Bangalore has a booming economy but also a giant economic gap. He then goes on to say "the claims I make here about the relationship between video games and the contemporary poltical sitatuions refer specifically to the social imaginary of the wired world and how the various structures of organization and regulation within it are repurposed into the formal grammar of the medium" (89).

How might one take apart the imaginary wired world (e.g., Bangalore as an outsourced workers' paradise) and rewrite the grammar video games (i.e., alter the political context of video game)? Is the McDonald's game an example of this rewriting in action? Or is the McDonald's game just another imaginary construct of the digital world?

Galloway says games "solve the problem of politcal control, not by submiating it as it does the cinemea, but by making it conterminous with the entire game?" (92).

What is Galloway's "problem of political control here"? Is political control the same as informatic control? Does Galloway see political control as completely negative?

Simulation Games: Interactivity and Discovery

2008-03-19T19:35:00.000-07:00

In reading Friedman, I find myself agreeing with most of what he says, but at the same time wanting to challenge the limits of some of his arguments. For example, in the section titled “The Power of Interactivity” Friedman talks about how games can restructure perception. While I agree that a game may temporarily alter ones way of looking at the world, I don’t think it can become dangerous. Friedman says that video games may make us lose our grip with reality and become desensitized to the human consequences of violence and war. It is here that I think he is going too far. Games like Full Spectrum Warrior and America’s Army may have been developed largely by the United States Army, but they certainly don’t make the impact of war any less horrific. Games, at least for now, haven’t crossed the boundary between the game world and the real world. The player doesn’t forget that he’s playing a game because it maintains the structure of a game. Even in Ender’s Game, the kids never knew it was real and that’s why it was so easy for them to do what they did. When Ender found out it was real, he was flooded with all the emotion that war brings. I don’t think this will change until the day comes that shooting a person in a video game looks like a video of someone being shot in real life.

Friedman also talks about how gamers form a cybernetic consciousness with the computer where gaming can be described by the constant back and forth player-computer interaction. I really enjoyed Friedman’s analysis of how powerful this experience can be. This is because it’s hard for me to describe to non-gamers how it’s possible to play something for 8 or more hours straight. Superficially it sounds extreme, but it’s something that I’ve done dozens of times. Friedman even alludes to that specifically when he says “It’s very hard to describe what it feels like when you’re lost inside a computer game, precisely because at that moment your sense of self has been transformed.” I want to add that this has actually been a dangerous for some people. Forgetting to eat or even sleep is a common result of this level of gaming. A great example of this type of danger is the South Korean men who played Starcraft for 50 hours with very little food or sleep and died.

I don’t really have much to say about the Galloway reading besides going over a two points that I liked and agreed with. He started off briefly predicting a golden age for video games in the next decade and alluded to how very few media critics consider it as a worthy art form. I find it especially interesting that video games have gotten a lot more media coverage and annual industry revenues have risen significantly since he wrote this in 2006. The other point that I wanted to talk about goes back to a few classes ago when we debated how much play was needed to really understand a game and critique/analyze it. Galloway writes that in games,

“The game is learning, internalizing, and becoming intimate with a massive, multipart, global algorithm. To play the game means to play the code of the game. To win means to know the system. And thus to interpret a game means to interpret its algorithm (to discover its parallel allegorithm).”

This argument that we should try to understand the allegorithm of a game is dependent on extensive play. He goes on to say later that doing this allows us to “understand contemporary political realities in a relatively unmediated form.” I wanted to mention this because I feel that this is a strong argument for why there should be a “close playing” of video games.

Separating Simulation and Reality

2008-03-19T18:09:00.000-07:00

Late in the chapter Illusion, Narrative, and Interactivity, Manovich says:

Games modeled after simulators - first of all, first-person shooters such as Doom, Quake, and Tomb Raider, but also flight and racing simulators - have been quite successful. In contrast to interactive narratives, such as Wing Commander, [... ] first-person shooters are based on the coexistence of the two states - which are also two states of the subject (perception and action) and two states of a screen (transparent and opaque). As you run through the corridors shooting at enemies or controlling the car on the racetrack, you also keep your eyes on the readouts, which tell you about the "health" of your character, the damage level of your vehicle, the availability of ammunition, and so on. (Manovich 210)

This mention is brought out in reference to systems which blur the line between the illusion and the periodic breaks out of it. I find the case of the racing simulator particularly interesting. Many racing simulation games offer an in-car view of the race, and have options to disable readouts such as relative track positions.

In this case, the simulation presents the same point of view, and the same sort of split action cycling between simply driving and checking gauges like the speedometer required in real driving. The user actions in the simulation and in the real life action being simulated are the same. With a pedal/wheel accessory for the system on which the simulator is run, even the physical actions are the same. But Manovich touches on this interesting point but drops it (or misses its value), even though it bolsters his point. It supports him in his argument that the oscillation between the system and action is not necessarily a limit of current technology; in the case of a driving simulator, this arrangement is an ideal goal for the game designer.

It also complements his notion that "the user invests in the illusion precisely because she is given control over it" (209) because this argument is a rationalization for why users surrender to illusions which break themselves periodically, while since there is virtually no break in this case there appears to be less need to rationalize the user's acceptance of the illusion. The readings we've gone through of late all seem to agree generally with, for example, one of Bogost's definitions of simulation, that it is "a representation of a source system via a less complex system that informs the user's understanding of the source system in a subjective way" (Bogost 107). But when the simulation is simplified in only obscure ways - such as the inability to open your door and evacuate a vehicle at 80 miles per hour - both Manovich's and Bogost's discussions seem as if they might lose relevance. Both are predicated on significant differences between simulation and source system. How closely can the simulation approach its source model before the distinction is too small for the discussions of submitting to illusion to be relevant? How close can they become before the more relevant factors become which exact points the user relies on to distinguish the two?

Some Cool Digital Art

2008-03-13T01:23:00.000-07:00

Two cool things I found in the past day:

flickrvision displays photos uploaded to Flickr as they go, correlated on a world map.

Alex Dragulescu's Malwarez is a visual rendering of a few internet worms, based on analysis of their code.

2008-03-12T13:30:00.000-07:00

One part I found interesting about this first part of Bogost's book Persuasive Games was hisdistinction between persuasive games and persuasive technology, later termed "captology," a subject that he seems eager to critique. I'm not sure I agree with Bogost in giving this field of study/practice the overtly negative label "manipulative technology." Nevertheless, there seems to be a somewhat dramatic distinction between persuasive technology and what Bogost chooses to focus on in this book. The way I would try to summarize this difference is by saying that while persuasive games try to persuade via some form of rhetoric, persuasive technology persuades via psychology, methods that one might use or study within a controlled, experimental environment.

On perhaps a less trivial note, I think it's particularly interesting to look at this book in light of what we talked about in Tuesday's class, namely software and games as allegories of social structures and processes. Because of the computer's increased ability to create representations of processes, Bogost chooses to focus on games and algorithms ("procedures") that "present or comment on processes inherent to human experience," such as processes that affect economic, political, social, and cultural conditions and behaviors. In other words, his focus seems to rest on games that stand as allegories for social processes (maybe more explicitly than the processes at work within software in general). As he argues, "procedural expression must entail symbol manipulation, the construction and interpretation of a symbolic system that governs human thought or action" -- a definition that I think one could apply not only to procedure, but also to ideology.

A quick look at the other sections of the book suggest that this connection isn't all that far-fetched. Bogost separates the rest of the text into three categories -- politics, advertising, and learning -- all of which correspond to the ideological state apparatuses presented by Althusser. Therefore, I think one could make the argument that an important part of procedural rhetoric is the mirroring and, in effect, critiquing of the processes at work in certain ideologies, or in ideology as a whole.

Intense Processing

2008-03-12T12:42:00.000-07:00

Crawford's Process Intensity article brings up an interesting distinction that may have gone un-parsed in class up until now: the distinction between process and datum, or, more generally, between actions and things. The most interesting thing about this distinction is that it allows us to use the vast body of texts dealing with those distinctions on a metaphysical/philosophical level with respect to gaming. As we could see from Galloway, computer gaming has no real physical 'game.' It is always dependent on auxiliaries, intermediaries and the very act of playing a game for a game to emerge from the disparate elements of executed code, twitchy thumbs and eyes glazed-over.

This points to a conclusion: that the subjective experience of playing a video game can be understood as an property emergent from material components, like art or life, whose emergence can not be understood. Crawford's concept of process intensity qualifies the strength of this emergent property, the enjoyability of a game is directly dependent on its own strength of action.

Bogost seems also to be pointing at this kind of analysis of gaming as process, as his concept of procedural rhetoric serves to emphasize the game as action.

Then, with this in mind, we may have new powerful tools in our theoretical arsenal to defend game studies against those who would relegate it to methodological analysis, as Aarseth does. Methodological approaches presuppose that their subject matter is already a 'thing' or a cohesive unified single entity capable of being analyzed like any other 'thing.' However, if what makes a game a game is its process intensity or emergent properties, such an analysis can not assume objective properties in games and thus the entire method of inquiry would be called into question.

Code, Games and Skillz

2008-03-10T17:10:00.000-07:00

I throughly appreciated Aarseth's discussion of the level of skill a game analyst should bring to the scholarly interpretation and analysis of games. As he says "For the playing analyst, the question of which position and stratum to attain is a question of skills, experience, ethics, motivation, and time. Although expert and innovative play are always hard and sometimes impossible to reach, they do imply that the (successful) analyst has understood the gameplay and the game rules better than others."

Throughout our discussion of the role of software and code I naggingly wonder at how my almost total lack of programming skills affected my reading and interpretation of the theory of code. While none of our readings address this issue in particular (that I recall at least) I read recently, though I forget exactly where, that Friedrich Kittler has made the claim that all students (sciences and humanities alike) should know at least 2 programming language. Aarseth's examination of how skill affects gaming reflects back on our discussions of code.

I was a little disappointed that Galloway didn't explicitly discuss this in his article. However I was very pleased to see our good friend Lev Manovich weight in on the manner, by way of the blurb on the back cover of Galloway's book. Lev lets us know that "Galloway is both a leading media scholar and an expert video game player, and this gives Gaming its special edge." Here Manovich is not so subtly conflating the strength of Galloway's analysis with his skills as a gamer.

I am at least comforted to know that in our upcoming discussions on games I have ample experience, in stark contrast to the sometimes overwhelming realm of code.

Dreamlines

2008-03-06T11:40:00.000-08:00

It's pretty cool. As Max was saying, this would make the coolest screensaver ever.

http://solaas.com.ar/dreamlines/

Ceci n'est pas une pipe?

2008-03-05T20:01:00.000-08:00

That felt like a nice little reunion episode; what joy to find all our friends from previous readings (Manovich, Hayles, Kittler, etc.) coming together in this article.

I was curious about Galloway's assertion that code has similarities to narrative (page 327). It seems odd to me that so many of our discussions of code come down to making it something else - that is, code as language, code as art, or code as narrative. I'm beginning to wonder whether you couldn't make the same arguments across the board, likening narrative to language and art to narrative (in fact, I think you could in both instances), and the cynic in me pops up to say, 'So what does it mean to re-classify code in the first place? Why can't we just call code 'code' and accept that while it has similarities to other, more familiar categories, it's something unique?' Well, it wouldn't be as fun that way.

Don't get me wrong: I think there's something to be gained from making comparisons. It brings our attention to the ways code works, by highlighting the ways it's the same or different from whatever it's being compared to. (For example, when we're talking about code as language, we have Hayles' argument that code, unlike spoken language, is 'performative.') I do think that trying to re-classify code at the end of the discussion is counterproductive, though, because now that we've talked about all the similarities between code and language, or art, or whatever, it seems like we're supposed to ignore or forgive all the important differences and go "Yep, gotcha, code is X." Code is code, dude.

All that said, Galloway cites Aarseth but doesn't really explain how he likened code to narrative, and as a narrative geek I'd be curious to hear more about that. So long as we don't conclude that they're the same thing.

A Mac Life

2008-03-05T19:57:00.000-08:00

"A corporation like IBM of course has the clout to try and force its standard on everyone else, but in fact it is more likely to be the State in the form of the IRS or some other large bureaucracy,..."

Bowles goes on to describe Macintosh's strategy of enforcing its ideology through "absolute adherence to what are euphemistically know as 'the Macintosh guidelines'" onto its users in order to create a Macintosh community, rather than simply a Mac user. Apple's newest products heavily promote the idea of an Apple ideology. On the iPhone, the iPod, iTunes all interract in a manner proving most somewhat pressing needs and entertainment can be solved by a Mac product. The advertisements, while somewhat funny, let us know exactly what they think of people who don't recognize the Mac lifestyle as superior. While Justin Long is always portrayed as hip, yet secure in his dominance, the PC always tends to have those familiar problems that don't bother Macs.
It seems through advertising techniques, Macs have constructed what is a representative portrayal of the ideal Mac user: Someone who gets it. Similar techniques are implemented in cults and pyramid structured marketing schemes in order to flatter their unsuspecting recruits into liking themselves more . Those atop the hierarchy of the pyramid scheme or cult tell those they look to recruit that they have an answer to how to live better, how to "get it" even though others may not. Commercials on TV tell you how to work from home and quit your day-job all while making hundreds of thousands of dollars. Just call the number on the screen and they will show you how to "get it". I am not saying that Macs products are shams and aren't as good as advertised. I am simply implying their techniques of identifying their target market utilize ideology to promote their products as a better lifestyle.

2008-03-05T18:11:00.000-08:00

I really enjoyed, if am confused by, Galloway’s discussion of fetishism. He writes on page 319 that he is posing software as “an example of technical transcoding without figuration that nevertheless coexists with an exceedingly high level of ideological fetishism and misrecognition.” Drawing from Chun, he writes that “Software is based on fetishistic logic” and then poses the idea that perhaps it is an allegory for fetishistic logic instead. From Marx, he writes that fetishism is perceiving value in something that has none. Then he goes on to write that fetishism is derived from an empirical (he reads this to mean “technical”) set of relations and thus, he concludes, a dialectic of technical transcoding and fetishistic abstraction has existed since the start (319). He then poses one of the central ideas of his paper, that the relationship between software and ideology is best understood as an allegorical one in which “ideological contradictions of technical transcoding and fetishistic abstraction” are resolved within the software itself (319). His justification for this comes much later when he argues that software-as-allegory can only be understood in the “larger social context” as software’s dialectical movement between “fluidity and fixity” is the same as the “political problem” posed by ideology (327). Its forced divorcement between the poetic and the functional are, he writes, a “projection” of the “agonizing scars of fragmentation” of social life (327). I am having trouble placing fetishism in terms of allegory — in what way exactly are technical transcoding and fetishistic abstraction (of ideology) resolved within software? How are the dialectics of poetic/functional, private/public, fulitidy/fixity related to the “original” dialectic of transcoding/fetishistic abstraction? How exactly is Galloway using and defning the central term “ideological fetishism”? Do we agree with his definition of fetish as contrary to technological transcoding?

A Base of Femininity

2008-03-03T21:51:00.000-08:00

What interested me the most about Chun's article was her exploration of gender politics in early computing and the gendering of computers in general. It seems that as software became more of an ideology, where higher levels of coding became more representational and further divorced from the "real conditions of existence". Yet this construction of software, the current system in which levels of software (a.k.a. 'onion') both create the illusion of transparency and control while hiding the automatic voltage switching drudgery from the computer. To be fair, I read the other posts before putting up my reply, and I must respond that I think Chun writes the article the way she does because she is trying to point out the evolution of early wire/switch flipping as being a gendered, clerical, mechanical female task that became automated and programmable with the advent of the first set of programming languages. This is where the ideology of software arises, for at that moment the physical action of "programming a computer" becomes represented by a machine language, and then in turn is later represented by a programming language. In this sense, the feminine clerical task is regulated to the computer, and hence the gendering of programming as "male" when the clerical voltage switching is regulated to the machine.

To what extent is programming language based off of the initial, pseudo-mechanical (almost assembly line work) of the clerical woman programmer? The cultural representation of programming has always been gendered (for example, Swordfish) in a certain way in that when computing was clerical and mechanical, it was women's work. With the advent of "creativity", "control", and "power" enabled by the programming language, programming is male. But what about the purely representational level? Have we reached a place of gender-neutrality when software has resembled nothing like it's reality of on-off switches?

2008-03-03T21:07:00.001-08:00

I apologize for posting so late!

Wendy Chun’s article “On Software, or the Persistence of Visual Knowledge” interested me on various levels.

The first section I would like to comment/concentration/question: “Programming’s clerical and arguably feminine underpinnings- both in terms of personnel and command structure- was buried as programming sought to become an engineering and academic field in its own right. Such erasure is key to the professionalization of programming- a compensatory mastery built on hiding the machine.” What Chun seems to insinuate here is that hardware’s role of hiding software and code is directly linked or influenced by a chauvinistic revision of history in erasing the role of women in programming and computer science. While I agree that such revision has taken place, I wonder if it is a strictly “chauvinistic” influence to blame. While I don’t want to go to into feminine theory, especially in the context of cyborgs and computers, Chun herself writes that there are “historical and theoretical ties between programming and what Freud called the quintessentially feminine invention of weaving, between female sexual as mimicry and the mimicry grounding Turing’s vision of computer as universal machines. (In addition, both software and feminine sexuality reveal the power that something which cannot be seen can have).” As a result, I begin to wonder that if we are to give an argument relating software and programming with female sexuality, if perhaps the very essence of female sexuality, the hidden, the unseen, the ultimate lack, contributed to the hidden role of women in computer science and consequently, the hidden role of programming in computers.

The other section I wanted to comment about was Chun’s comparing of software to ideology. While I agree that software and OS produces “users” as ideology similarly produces “subjects”, I thought an even more interesting argument could have been produced by a seemingly offhand comment Chun made in this section “Software is based on a fetishistic logic.” Rather than viewing the abstraction produced by OS and software as a form of ideology (which is somewhat problematic in Althusser terms as his ideology was constructed by his notion of interpellation- something which I don’t believe exists in the software-user relationship as there is no “pre-ideological user”), I think it may make more sense, and more useful, to see it in terms of fetishization. After all, my insistence on calling a computer folder a folder is not because software is trying to construct me, the user, in its own image, but rather my desire to attribute qualities to an inanimate object: fetish.

2008-03-03T17:21:00.000-08:00

I have to say, I'm confused as to the reason for the presence of several sections of Chun's article, On Software, or the Persistence of Visual Knowledge. The overall article makes a clear point about the need to avoid considering software as merely a flat set of instructions with no life of their own, so to speak, unlike Manovich's proposed idea of transcoding. But between the two end points, the article takes several lengthy and seemingly unrelated arcs into areas I feel are interesting and worthy of further discussion, but seem to be left hanging in the article, and which I'm having trouble connecting to the main point of the article.

Probably the most notable of these is less of an explicit change of topic, and more of a narrative interwoven with other discussion: the role of women in programming's development. In the first third of the article (mostly throughout the Automatic Programming section), Chun frequently makes reference to the fact that many of the very early programmers were women. In the description of the history of ENIAC, FORTRAN, and early developments in compilers, Chun seems to stress the role of women, making several interesting points about the genders of typical descriptions of programming (calling it at times feminine and masculine). She even makes offhand comments about how ignoring the historical gender consideration is distorting history, and makes negative insinuations about Vannevar Bush who was cited as desiring the removal of females from the field of computers. Yet she never goes anywhere in particular with these comments, and upon reaching the Hiding the Machine section, the references fade without further deep consideration. I can't tell if this is just Chun's personal views about the importance of women in computing manifesting itself in her article, or if the intent was more focused than that, and I missed it. Either way, I'm surprised she didn't explicitly mention that Grace Hopper, discussed frequently in the article, built the first compiler - a fact which must have been unavoidable in her research. I feel that the gender issue probably deserves some amount of discussion, particularly as this is so far the only place we've seen it surface (the syllabus lists a week on gender gaming, but gaming and coding are more than somewhat different).

I also wasn't sure how the discussion of causal power contributed to her argument. She mentions Laurel's thoughts on causality (that it allows users to interact with the system more easily by making it easier to relate to), but this line of thought seems to dissolve as the discussion shifts to a general discussion of ideology in user interfaces, and at that point the causal power discussion doesn't seem to support any particular part of Chun's larger argument.

I'd also like to discuss in class the Software as Ideology section in particular, as I find it interesting (despite minor technical objections), and am curious to hear the opinions of others on this section.

WolfQuest

2008-03-02T21:46:00.000-08:00

Educational games for school kids are usually designed to end in about 40 minutes (which fits into the typical computer lab schedule). That's not really enough to make an impression, however: studies show that people learn most from the period after the lesson, when they look back on what they saw or heard and discuss it. Commercial games often inspire this kind of reflection, because their players seek out things like online message boards where they can discuss strategy, ask questions, and talk about their experiences.

WolfQuest, the game, is something of a foil for WolfQuest, the community. Developed in partnership with the Minnesota Zoo, this project tries to get kids excited enough to study wild life and ecology on their own, after the game catches their attention and makes them want to discuss what they find in it. Helpfully, the website you can download the game from (for free) has plenty of links to wild life resources - and the official WolfQuest forum.

That said, the gameplay element of WolfQuest is key. It's not designed for short spurts in the classroom, but for the free time kids might otherwise be spending on commercial games - so it must be good enough to rival them. Yet the budget was nowhere near that of commercial games, and they had limited time. Yipes.

They also had to balance the game between reality and romanticism. A wolf's life is not that interesting: they hunt a lot, and they often fail to catch anything. Who wants to play that? Additionally, the developers wanted to tap into the emotional bond between (human) player and (wolf) character, but how to handle communication? It would break immersion to have the wolves speaking the words players type, but the players wouldn't understand the body language wolves do use to communicate. For that matter, neither do researchers: many of the wolf's behavioral patterns have yet to be modeled.

The answer was a lot of compromise, much of it shaped - handily enough - by the game developers' blog, where they attracted a small community even before the game was released, and often solicited their opinions about aspects of the game. (Should the wolves receive 'loot' as a reward for a successful hunt?) The result? On February 18, when I heard the speech, the game had received 110,000 downloads (since release on 12/20/2007); the website gets 2,500 hits per day, and there are multi-player sessions going on all the time. A lot of people have hit up the message boards asking questions about, for example, elk behavior (is it realistic for them to keep hanging around after a wolf hunts down one of their herd?). The gameplay raises these questions, but leaves them unanswered, so that players can figure it out on their own.

Anyone up for some WolfQuest? I want to hunt elk.

digression: 10+ years ago (when there was less publisher control?) programmers would pick up a topic they were interested in, like the life of a wolf, and make a game about it; now it's interesting to see many serious games duplicating these same ideas
theme: designing a serious game for an unserious audience (school kids)
idea: wolves, like people, are social animals with complex ways of communicating
create an affective connection with wolves
ambition: take an audience that already spends a lot of time on computer games, make a game about wolves, and inspire them to get out into real environmental studies
reflection is a key part of the development process: no matter how well-designed the game, the player needs a chance to think it over/talk it over with others
previous games were fitted to a classroom computer lab schedule, approx. 40 min, which wasn't enough time to foster that reflection process
James Gee (What Video Games Have to Teach Us): point out that gamers (mainstream) do in fact spend a lot of time reflecting on the game, e.g. on internet message boards
wanted: a "real" game, "addictively fun," with a realistic 3D world and novel gameplay
situation: small team, indie budget, tight timeframe, free distribution so can't go overbudget
encourages people to check out "unity," a user-friendly tool for serious game developers
core challenge: finding the right balance between fantasy (wolves romanticized, wolves as demons) and reality (wolf lives a mundane life)
developers kept a blog while making the game; one post about in-game loot (e.g. necklaces for the wolves) got 346 very argumentative comments
another argument: should they show blood in this game, or is it too violent?
problem: in real life, 80% of hunts fail for the wolves ("wolves always play on Legendary"), but can't frustrate the players that much ... if you make it easier, does it change the message?
trying to model wolf hunting patterns, which even biologists haven't modeled fully yet
how do you set wolves' wide variety of actions to programming verbs?
wolf communication is subtle and cryptic, rooted (of course) in body language
answer: create a dialogue tree, and when the player clicks it, the wolf adopts the appropriate posture - e.g. "I'm boss!" makes him raise his hackles and stiffen his tail
note: in packs, wolf social interaction is functional and hierarchical, not conversational
on the player-side, needed to ensure safe multiplayer chat so they developed a lexicon of 4,000 words that players can use to communicate on channels with each other
most common question zookeepers get: who would win in a fight, a wolf or a grizzly bear?
really, wolf would just avoid conflict with grizzly because he'd get his ass kicked
gameplay answer: grizzly as a hazard; you can't beat it (though next month will see an expansion where a grizzly might come across as you're taking down an elk?)
what kind of game an important question, because it helps the game fit with player expectations ... put it to their fans, and were told to call it 'Wildlife Simulation Game.'
Game in action!
allowed to customize your wolf, e.g. color and size, which he says players loved
compass in the corner shows the way to missions, e.g. to W you see an elk
wolf's default action is a trot; in game, they can run faster, but it exhausts their energy bar
separate 'scent view' that helps you locate your prey
look at the different elk; you can see their health bars and determine which to attack
hunting takes a while; sometimes you get close enough to bite the elk, but it kicks you in the face! In the face!
note: rock music :)
WolfQuest is not just a game: it's located on a website with a lot of information about wolves
their preview video was lampooned on "Attack of the Show," but it created a huge hits spike
110,000 game downloads since 12/20/07; 2,500 visitors to the site per day, etc.
always several multiplayer sessions going (even during school day, tsk tsk)
theory: much of the learning takes place in the extended experience, not just in the game, e.g. on the community forum (where players post walkthroughs, strategy tips, etc.)
emergent behavior: one of the players figured out a way to make coyotes attack elk for you
example: one player comments that it seems stupid for elk to resume grazing after the wolf attacks a member of their herd, but another points out that they really are that insenstive :(
plot for the game (some episodes will be added later): find a mate and a pack, fend off grizzly hazard, establish territory with a den, protect your wolves' pups, raid a sheep ranch (oh dear)
how to engage kids? emphasize emotional engagement, hone the verbs, design hooks - discrepant events - to prompt questions and discussion beyond the game, create opportunities for reflection and discussion (and facilitate it), make it fun!
esp. with limited budget, needed to use as few verbs as possible and then iterate those over and over so they wouldn't be stuck spending their whole time on this interface

Can Code Make You Feel?

2008-02-28T23:00:00.000-08:00

The Mateas and Montfort article provides an alternative view to the reading by Geoff Cox. In "A Box, Darkly” Montfort and Mateas analyze code aesthetics through the obfuscation of code and weird languages. It even sites the Cox reading when it says, “the aesthetic value of code lies in its execution, not simply its written form.” I found it interesting that both articles started off with common ground, but took completely different approaches to the study of aesthetics. Although the Mateas article gives credit to the execution of code, it mostly focused on its written form. In the beginning, it talks about “beautiful” code, which is something I can understand from my limited experience with coding. When I think about the aesthetics of code, the concepts of elegance and grace immediately come to mind. I share the authors’ opinion that certain styles of coding can be a “genuine pleasure to read.” However, I feel like any discussion about aesthetics should also cover the emotional attributes that something may have. It bothered me that the authors decided not to go into this subject because it brought a really good question to mind. Can code elicit sentimental feelings or emotions? At first glance, I think it can because of how code is constantly paralleled with spoken language. After thinking about it though, I can’t come up with any examples of how written code could make me feel anything. Instead of going into this, it talks about what weird languages and obfuscated code say about code as an aesthetic form. The authors feel that investigating these two phenomena as unexplored areas of aesthetic code is important. I guess I’m just more interested in getting at the heart of how code can be included within a discussion of aesthetics in the first place.

The other article, “The Aesthetics of Generative Code,” is fixated on the executionable aspect of aesthetic code. I feel like the authors were completely ignoring the elegance and grace that a programmer could bring to his/her creations. In their discussion of aesthetic code, they held up code against poetry to identify its aesthetic attributes. I have a problem with this because code isn’t poetry and doesn’t have to be in order to have aesthetic value. The authors stretched definitions so that they could prove code was structurally like poetry and thus an aesthetic. They didn’t, however, actually address the emotion or message that poetry is all about. They danced around that by talking about how both have similar functions and “execute” in similar ways. While both, for example, may play with the structure of the language they’re written in, the result of that play is completely different. Poetry plays with language to get across attitudes, feelings, and ideas. One can play with the language of code all day and still produce the exact same result.

For class tomorrow, maybe we can spend some time talking about whether or not code can make people feel something.

The Purpose of a Language

2008-02-28T22:27:00.000-08:00

In our discussion on the multiple aesthetics of code, we mainly focused on form and function. A few made arguments that when analyzing aesthetics of code, one shouldn't take into consideration the aesthetics of English (or, however it is humans communicate — we just happen to use English), but instead the fact that this code is made for a machine — a machine which doesn't share our same notions of form and structure.

Throughout this discussion, however, I feel something important was overlooked — namely "purpose". What's the purpose of code? Why do we have programming languages?

In the early stages of computing history, the sole purpose of code was to control a machine. Because of this, it made sense to have the structure of the language match the structure of the machine. Obfuscation of code was simply a bi-product of this fact, seeing that your instructions had to match the specific features of the machine — not a human being.

As time went on though, and as more scientists made advances in mechanical computing, more machines would pop up. IBM had their machines, Cray had theirs, and Digital Computing Equipment shipped a whole bunch of PDPs, so writing software for each of these machines meant bending your brain to convert your thoughts into however each individual machine "thought". That is, each time you wanted to think of something for the computer to do, you had to not only think it through yourself, but then also think of it in the way that the computer understands data — whether it meant having a certain series of switches flicked to the "on" position, or specific holes punched out in paper tape, you had to convert your human logic — each time — into whatever arbitrary system a hunk of hardware happened to use.

The purpose of computers was to alleviate our own minds of repetitive and tedious computation, but instead, we found ourselves enslaved to them at this point. We were not only forced to think how one particular machine thought, but every particular machine that anyone ever made.

Clearly you see the problem.

The form and function of mechanical computation was undoubtedly preserved, but the purpose of mechanical computation was lost.

This led to the creation of possibly one of the most important programming languages in existence — C. The idea behind C was to bridge the two "modes of thinking" (that of human, and that of machine), without sacrificing the human's ability to harness the power of the machine. Two employees at AT&T Bell Labs decided that they tired of their previous choice of programming language's inability to harness more of their machine's features, and so made C to improve upon it. Yes, we're writing instructions for machines, but ultimately we are humans. We want to be able to think and map out ideas in a way that makes sense to us, and our peers. Plus we want it to work efficiently. And on a multitude of machines. Does that sound like too much? Or perhaps overly demanding? Well we made the darn machines right? We're smart folks, why not get it right (or at least try to)?

Anywho, back to aesthetics. I believe that to say the aesthetics of the language should be determined based on the structure of the hardware its used on is to completely ignore the purpose of computing in general. We did not invent computers to enslave ourselves to a lifetime of conforming to each individual machine's architecture. We're smarter than that. We're humans — remember? We invented computers to liberate our own selves by allowing a way for our own human thoughts to be performed quickly by an external entity. Therefore, if the aesthetics of the language doesn't coincide with the same set aesthetics we would apply to instructions written for another person (or in other words, if the code is not easily read and understood by the human writing, reading, or editing the code), then it doesn't matter that your code is beautifully in sync with the underlying machine. You've added yet one more hurdle a human mind must clear in order to get that machine to do what he or she means. Yes, this is my opinion, but I believe this counters the purpose and goal of mechanical computing. Until the day when machines write code for other machines, the code should support the aesthetics of its (human) author.

-JTF

2008-02-27T22:30:00.000-08:00

My efforts to put these GDC things under a cut just seem to break HTML on the board, so I'm just going to post them straight up, and my apologies if it gets too spammy.

IBM's Bluegrass tool was developed to deal with the social drawbacks of having teams of programmers who work in different facilities in different parts of the world. The program creates a pseudo-social environment, you might say, where employees (through their avatars) can travel around and meet each other in a virtual world that's specifically designed to appear welcoming: it's a sunny, open meadow. The employees all have avatars to represent themselves, and these avatars can 'speak' in word bubbles typed out by the user.

Each avatar in Bluegrass travels around with information about the employee who uses it, such as their company contact info, past projects they've worked on, and what they're doing right now. Mousing over the avatar will cause this information to appear; right-clicking on this information turns it into a game, such as a jigsaw (of their employee photo ID) or crossword (of their personal information), which all nearby users can see and interact with. This creates a kind of dinner party mood, with everyone pitching in to offer random comments or help with the puzzle. In the process, they learn about the person who's been clicked on.

Users can move from the meadow into different environments. The one we were shown in the demonstration was a boardroom - of sorts. In this boardroom, you can create tangible speech bubbles that can actually be picked up by anyone and moved around the room. Since the room is divided into 'Yes,' 'No,' and 'Maybe' sections, you can imagine it makes the decision-making process much more clear.

programmers, at work, put their heads down and work on code, but occasionally stop to get food, etc., so they see people from their team and other teams
now many teams are scattered over different areas, don't get to see each other
IBM created Bluegrass, giving every worker an avatar and bringing them together in a virtual world that looks like an outside park
live RSS feed tells user what others are working on, where they are going
mouse-over people's avatars produces a picture of them
first theme, therefore, is visualization
top-down 3rd person view chosen over first-person because it creates a common perspective, more useful in brainstorming sessions
can type up a suggestion as a tangible chat bubble, e.g. "make sure network cable is plugged in;' there's a boardroom screen where you can move these chat bubbles around into no/maybe/yes categories
replicates the experiences of a boardroom from afar
note: the IBM guys are actually connected to this program right now, and can't help but goof around with it during the talk
features for socialization are next!
each avatar emits little bubbles with personal information about the player, e.g. their profile from IBM's internal 'Blue Book' with contact information, list of projects worked on in the past ... can be potential ice breakers
any object, including this contact information, can be right-clicked and transformed into a game (e.g. jigsaw puzzle) that different players can work on together
on-screen quotes from IBMers: 'haha I got the first piece!' 'w00t!' 'grrr.' Goofs.
players create their own games, esp. when empowered by avatars, e.g. two of the programmers racing each other to the top of the hill during code breaks

Classic Coding and New Coding: a Dialectic?

2008-02-27T21:56:00.000-08:00

Mateas and Montfort ("A Box, Darkly") define the aesthetic we often use when thinking of code as a "classical aesthetic." The typical programmer expects to listen to good code like "a symphony, because every instruction [can do] two things and everything [comes] together gracefully.” Classic coding aesthetics attempts to make it easy for the human and computer to read code simultaneously in a straightforward format whilst conveying as much information as possible.

Code in this sense is beautiful much like classical literature: code is easily readable, flows logically in chronological order, and contains multiple layers of truth. Stylistic rules reign supreme, highlighting the "importance of the human reading the code" as well as the syncing of man's logic with that of a machine's. We end up with canonical pieces of classic code that serve as the basis for all future coding endeavors.

We can use some of the theoretical framework from "The Aesthetics of Generative Code" by Cox, Mclean, and Ward to look at the implications of this classic code aesthetic. Perhaps this type of code aesthetic harkens back to a pre-Kantian aesthetics, or aesthetics as objective beauty? Code in this sense tries to restore the language and thought of an earlier time when logical rationalists could solve the mysteries of the world and empiricists could discover the underlying structures of the universe. This code might act as a reaction to how contemporary language often complicates meaning, where the artist's craft (i.e., elegant, beautiful code) restores meaning. Classic code form does not factor in subjectivity for it believes an "if-statement" means exactly an "if-statement."

Mateas and Montfort, looking to turn classic code on its head, bring up obfuscated code and esoteric languages as counterpoints to elegant code . These two fields complicate the former belief of code as a pure language that sheds all subjectivity. Such odd languages "refutes the idea that the programmer' s task is automatic, value- neutral, and disconnected from the meanings of words in the world." This code layer bears as much burden as any postmodern language system. Thing like obfuscated code and enigmatic programming languages critique and deconstruct the supposed naturalism of classic code. They force us to struggle with the idea of code as a restorer of objective beauty by making "the familiar unfamiliar.. [we] wrestle with the language in which it is written." The form of code is destroyed and all that is left is a function of the code. An "if-statement" is not just an "if-statement," but instead can emphasize, weigh, or make ambiguous a conditional statement.

Various practices combat elegant code, from the simple action of removing all whitespace from code to the creation of languages like Malboge that actually oppose the man-machine, buddy-buddy system. Code no longer sits there to let itself be molded, but fights back against the programmer!

Are these the new aesthetics of coding?

Cox, Mclean, and Ward seem to combine the two overarching methods of classic coding and new together. Sure, they argue that like the anti-art Dadaists, obfuscation succeeds as the anti-code by rejecting "the aesthetic conventions of perfection and order, harmony and beauty, and all bourgeois values and taste." However, code, down in its very heart, is a functional language meant to execute itself. We need to understand that code is ambiguous, but code is never left to "chance arrangements, [for] attention to detail is paramount when it is encountered in written form." Instead, this new aesthetic of coding tempers classic coding, but does not destroy classic coding (in much the same way anti-art did not completely wipe out classic art practices).

We are welcome to write as much obfuscated code as we want to remind us that code has no natural aesthetic form; nevertheless, we are reminded by unexecutable perl poetry that code is meaningless if it does not function. Thus, as is stated often in the essay, form and function must go hand in hand- as if to say the lessons of obfuscated code can add subjectivity to the formerly objective practices of classic coding.

Links of interest:
Funny Unix Commands (referencing the bilingual nature of code)
http://www.bga.org/~lessem/psyc5112/usail/library/humor/funnycommand.html

xkcd comic (with a "shoutout" to Montfort)
http://xkcd.com/380/

Questions related to "Giver of Names:"

If form and function should go "hand in hand" according to Cox, Mclean, and Ward, is it required that we see the code of "Giver of Names" to understand the function of the artwork?
Or are we able to successfully reverse engineer how the artwork abstracts reality, similar to what Mateas and Montfort call a "reading" of code?
The blackboxness of the artwork alludes to how this artwork attempts to represent objects, but perhaps the form of the code is much more advanced or meaningful than the code's visible function?

2008-02-27T12:53:00.000-08:00

The Mateaus & Montfort article brought up different issues about analyzing code and actually interacting with it that I have felt confused about. In the essay they write that, "code has been made legible to people." Now, I haven't had much experience with code, but when I do see it I have found it quite illegible, as I am sure that most individuals do. So when they say "people," I ask myself, 'what kind of people?' Are only those familiar with the language of code invited to read code? If not, how can others benefit from code?

They then refer to 'weird' coding, something that I had never even heard about, and they explain it as languages made to make any program difficult. After reading this, a person who is not so familiar with readig code may become even more confused. Why would they create a code just to confuse people and make their job of reading code even more difficult? However, when they actually give examples of some weird coding, such as the language Shakespeare, I became more involved with its analysis than I have become for 'traditional' i.e. not 'weird' coding. The comedic aspect, the puns, and the difficult challenge of reading weird language suddenly manifested itself as an art form. To be honest, I was a bit put off when Mateaus and Montfront reffered to code as possibly being poetry, of being elegant. When they quote, and I requote Knuth as saying, "plodding and excrutiating to read, because it just didn't posses any wit whatsoever. It got the job done, but it's use of the computer was very dissapointing," I was shocked. Why is the elegance and poetic feature of code more important than getting the job done. Is not codes main function to get the computer to get the job done? Clearly, for many it is important that it be both aesthetically pleasing and get the job done. But then we have the weird languages of coding. These languages may be entertaining to read, and aesthetically pleasing, but they "are not designed for any real-world application or normal educational use; rather, they are intended to test the boundaries of programming language design." So, if the weird languages fulfill the aesthitic requirment, but do not fulfill any practical use, where do they stand? What becomes more important to the reader of the code? The aesthetic quality or its ability to fulfill a real world comandment?

It became apparent that to Mateas and Montfront the aesthetic quality is quite important for they say that in order to appreciate the code we must be able to see it. The essay "The Aesthetics of Generative Code," by Cox, McLean, and Ward, seems to slightly contradict this idea. They argue that we must be able to "sense" the code in order to really appreciate. Although they fnd the aesthetic quality of the code important, they establish from the beginning paragraph that, "the aesthetic value of code lies in its execution, not simply its written form." They also find our interaction with code important, but they seem to imply here that the code must be executable, otherwise it may not be wholy appreciated. The codes function is also important. They say, "to separate the code and the resultant actions would simply limit the aesthetic experience, and ultimately limit the study of these forms." This make much more sense. Although being able to see the code is crucial, being able to sense the code in all of its forms and performities enables us to become more absorbed into the code and its qualities. We may learn to read it, and enjoy that challenge without neglecting an aspect.

2008-02-25T21:32:00.000-08:00

Last week, as I mentioned in class, I was away at the Game Developers' Conference where, among other things, there was a summit on serious games. I went over there for a couple of sessions, and have my notes typed up for all of them, but I'm going to limit myself to posting one at a time because apparently Blogger has trouble with these things.

That said, the first session I attended was picture-perfect for this class: linking software development to serious games. Well, except that it's more from a developer's perspective than our MCM view on things; it was still an interesting session. This one has two parts, but I'll only cover one of them for today.

These two guys worked for a company whose business is "building gaming into day-to-day work." They presented a product of theirs called "Bug Hunter" which offers incentives for employees to report and repair broken code. They explained the basic philosophy behind their game, which is to entertain and reward people but NOT challenge them as it gets them to work on some aspect of their job. There's a pretty complicated interplay going on here, as they also have to consider competition/cooperation among players, ways to curtail cheating, and the overall impact on the company.

Bug Hunter: A Productivity Game for Software Testing

Windows Defect Prevention Team: Robert Musson and Ross Smith
building gaming into day-to-day work
philosophy: let everyone win, simple prizes, align the game to the job, simple games
let everyone win: getting people into the game more important than challenging them
simple prizes: enough incentive to play but not enough to cheat
align the game to the job: get ppl to focus on core elements fo their jobs
simple games: simple interfaces using existing tools
purpose: motivate behavior, facilitate education, (foster) team working
design: set the goals, set the rules, determine organizational impact
issues: unhealthy competition, conflicting organizational messages, conflicts between players and non-players
Bug Hunter: person who discovers a bug enters information, others vote on its location, resolution, root cause, etc.... quality of information determines how many points they get
sample prizes: latte coupons --> prize booklets --> prize lottery (allows anybody to win, even if they don't play often) ... also give players accolades, e.g. expert, hero, legendary
cheating is not really productive, as the program doesn't recognize it (and it's so hard to falsify a bug that you may as well spend your time actually finding one?)
if you want to test a certain area, e.g. wireless, you can add point multipliers for reports on that kind of code
http://www.defectprevention.org/Pairs.aspx : vote on various game elements, incorporates Wisdom of Crowds (Surowiecki) and Thin-Slicing (Gladwell) ... HINT: try the candidates one, it's silly

If it ain't Brecht, don't fix it

2008-02-25T11:45:00.000-08:00

In Ramsay and Rockwell's essay, they bring up an interesting and as yet undiscussed point for us to turn our finely-tuned powers of analysis towards: the issue of the Brechtian in code, or, what reminds us in code that we are in a representation of reality, and not in reality itself. Is this everpresent in code? Is it not code's very own specific telos?

Yeah, probably, I'd say to both these questions. Ramsay's quotation of Abelson is here particularly telling: "'programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute.'" This points us to an awareness of code as representation for reality, for the realness of the machine for which we write, as well as an implicit understanding that code is necessarily a representation, a mediation or even a translation. It is a representation of this 'reality' which we desire to change. I want that bit to turn on. I want my screen to show iTunes. I want my browser to 'scroll.'

We mediate these, our desires, through an interpretive language written for an audience that is never only one, but always many. We cannot write or talk just for the machine, as to do so in it's most pure fashion is impossible, unless you're that kid from Heroes. We've got to write for other people to understand so that someone somewhere can go in and say "OK, this is what this is doing in my representational view of reality. I have no comprehension aside from a theoretical one of the exact nature of the electrical currents running through this circuitry. Good thing this code is a way for me to figure it out!" Code, in this way, is always a Rosetta Stone to a language more than dead to us and always completely inaccessibly 'in-the-real-world.' To the good Brechtian's horror, though, it seems as though this foregrounding of representation has become so given, so taken for granted, so unequivocally natural in every area from computer science to the layman's ability to understand how computers work, that the very act of foregrounding representation has itself faded into the background oblivion of 'the obvious,' thus closing itself off to any further debate.

I know I'm reading code, Brecht. I am never just 'reading' when I read code the way I just 'watch' a movie like Transformers. Duh. The foreground of representation is explicit, not hidden, and therefore ever unable to be analyzed for there is nothing to 'draw out' or 'unpack.' Representation is the purpose of code whereas communication is the purpose of language. Though, we need communication to actually make the representation work. We do not talk to the machine, we shape reality through it. The only curious part here is that the representation is itself explicitly the telos of code (and we all know it), but the act of representing is the implicit underlying mental process occurring in our minds lying uninterrogated.

So I guess in a way, I disagree with the authors that code is writing and can be separated from the end-computer executable function. Code is writing AND translation, and never just one or the other. We cannot merely analyze it as if it were a kind of writing. When we code, we want an understandable (to other people) symbolic system AND we want the computer to just follow our script.

Which brings me to the most interesting part of the essay:

ramsay: It says here I'm supposed to smile. I don't want to smile.
rockwell: Very clever. Come on, follow the script.

2008-02-24T14:46:00.000-08:00

One thing I found a bit disappointing about Hayles' essay was her strict adherence to theories of speech and writing put forward by Saussure and Derrida, when a lot of what she writes seems to hold particular relevance to Barthes' Mythologies (itself largely influenced by Saussure's theories). What struck me specifically was that her discussion of the structure of signifiers and signified in code closely resembles the structure of myth that Barthes proposed. For Hayles, "voltages at the machine level function as signifiers for a higher level that interprets them, and these interpretations in turn become signifiers for a still higher level interfacing with them. Hence the different levels of code consist of interlocking chains of signifiers and signifieds, with signifieds on one level becoming signifiers on another" (45). This process by which signifiers become signifieds is reminiscent of the way in which signs (consisting of signifier and signified) become new signifiers in the "second order semiological system" of myth. Hayles' also discusses the ways in which the layering of code helps to naturalize its own processes, similar to the way in which myth masks over its own history and presents itself as nature and common sense; "the more the worldview of code is accepted," she argues, "the more 'natural' the layered dynamics of revealing and concealing code seem. Since these dynamics do not exist in anything like the same way with speech and writing, the overall effect... is to validate code as the lingua franca of nature" (55).

The way Hayles' structures the functions of signifiers and signifieds in code holds some key differences with the ways in which they function in myth for Barthes. For example, while Barthes' theory accounts for mainly two layers of the signifier-signified process - meaning and myth - Hayles proposes that this process occurs throughout many more layers within the computer and in two directions (low level to high level to low level, and so on). Nevertheless, the similarities still exist. So this begs the question, ARE these dynamics as unique to code as Hayles' claims? What are the significances of these similarities? I would argue that the layering of code and the dual directionality of the signified-signifier relationship could be applied more broadly and metaphorically - that, in some ways, computers as we experience them today are something like myth-machines, constantly constructing and deconstructing ideologies and offering them up as common sense. At this point that may seem an obvious statement, and I suppose it could be applied to just about every medium and every technology. But the argument that this layered process of signified turning into signifier is fairly literally acted out within the hardware of the computer itself, in the form of voltages, binary, commands, etc., is something I'd never considered before.

Note: I haven't read Barthes in a while, so I apologize if I've horribly oversimplified his arguments...

2008-02-20T19:10:00.001-08:00

Manovich rather brashly claims that “the software artist makes his/her mark on the world by writing original code.” He seems to insinuate that this “original” act is superior the mere poking of the postmodern media artist’s attempts to break down and interpret “media” itself. In claiming that “an artist who samples/subverts/pokes at a commercial media can never compete with it,” Manovich constructs what seems to be a problematic binary; original code is good, deconstructing commercial media is bad/dated.

Manovich overlooks that fact that software (an interface for or an abstraction on top of hardware) is primarily a commercial media. A few shining examples (Firefox, Linux, etc.) aside, the majority of software is proprietary and developed by large, commercial organizations (Microsoft, Apple, Sun, Facebook…) While the contemporary “software artist” that he celebrates as the new romantic is undoubtedly an important figure the need for critical analysis of the new media of software and interface is still very important and the role of sampling/subverting/poking at media is still paramount. If media art and media artists are fundamentally concerned with breaking down and understanding the media of our lives, it seems that the prevalence of [new] media in our lives demands the attention of [new] media artists. Works like Auto-Illustrator, Carnivore, and Webstalker are all commentaries/deconstructions/subversions of commercial and/or governmental software.

In fact, in many ways the real value of Manovich’s software artist is in examining the very fabric of digital media, code.

Separately, Florian Cramer’s discussion of Composition 1961 No. I, January by La Monte Young and her examination of James Joyce were fascinating to me. The way in which Joyce packs volumes of information into single sentences and even non-words always resonates with me in contrast to Manovich’s claim that the modern artist is “genius who creates from scratch, imposing the phantoms of his imagination on the world,” particularly considering the density of cultural references in Joyce’s work. It often seems that Joyce imposes the phantoms of the world (through references to Shakespeare, Aristotle and thousands more) onto the minds of his characters.

As a final note, the discussion of literature and musical scores as seminal pieces of software art makes me wonder about the role of theatre and scripted action in relation to our discussion of performativity. Like code, a script literally does what it says, when run through the right hardware (a theatre, trained actors who have the script memorized). Just a thought.

I don't know

2008-02-20T18:27:00.000-08:00

I thought I understood the point that was being made about all computer art being reducible to binary code, but I'm confused by some of the latest stuff. Cramer and Gabriel seem to think that it's a mistake to look at digital art as a media art in the sense that analog representations are media art, because this focuses rather on the arbitrary image on a computer screen that represents the collection of ones and zeros that is "really" the work. It would appear to me that this is missing the point--isn't computer art interesting because of the different processes that lead to similar results, i. e. visual representations on a monitor, verbal or otherwise? So we have Joyce creating a collage of words, some from different languages, with several different levels of meaning. I guess the idea is to play with meaning, and see the different ways it can shift around--there were those who thought Finnegan's Wake was complete nonsense, but meaning has certainly been found in it. How does the concept of "meaning" apply to the poem Gysin and Burroughs made with an algorithm?

Anyway, this is a pretty cool thing: http://kotaku.com/358459/pc-psychic-controller-hits-this-year
This is probably going to be a failure commercially, but it says a lot that this kind of thing is already being mass-produced. Apparently this machine can tell apart different thoughts to execute different functions. I wonder how far away that is from being able to represent an internally visualized image on the screen?

Ubiquitous Computing?

2008-02-14T13:23:00.000-08:00

Capture as Surveillance

2008-02-13T20:47:00.000-08:00

While Surveillance in a "Big Brother" sense is easy to visualize and identify the negative implications of, the Capture model seems to achieve the same level of surveillance with regards to notable moves on the internet (items purchased, conversations through email, websites visited). Is the fact we do not see the physical face of a "Big Brother" the main reason we as a society do not object to the capture/surveillance capabilities of the internet? Are most people simply enamored with the abilities to communicate on the internet and not thinking of where the information they give can be logged? While most people are aware of viruses and what spyware can do, they do not think of those in power of social networking sites (facebook, myspace) and the "private" information they post on them. While it becomes more and more normal to (and strange not to) conduct business and socialize on the internet, it becomes more and more normal for all of these activities to be logged. Since these logs can be monitored and accessed by someone in power, the Big Brother seems to exist in the modern capture model.

Surveillance, Control, Capture & Why We Are Becoming Computers

2008-02-13T18:49:00.001-08:00

It feels like a big jump in conceptual frameworks to move from interrogating the mere presence of software, to reflecting upon how we are mapped and controlled by technology at large. That said, Philip Agre's approaches to control in the media culture we live in does a great deal to demonstrate just how blurred cultures and computing have become (recalling again Lev Manovich's cultural and computer layer).

What Agre's argument? In a few words, Agre seems to be updating a Gilles Deleuze concept of "Control Society" for the digital, computational age. His update could be called "a capture society" which is contrasted not only with the Deleuze theory (though not explicitly) but also with the surveillance culture, that Agre attributes to Bentham's Panopticon, but again not to Michel Foucault the critic who famously theorized the panopticon as a culture-wide paradigm of control. The glaring oversights of attribution aside, Agre argument is relatively convincing. For each of his arguments, he provides real-world examples that though dated (circa 1994) a re persistent in our culture.

Chiefly, Agre discusses a sort of technophobia that persists in a society that is growing more and more invested in technology, mostly in computing. His analysis, as other analysis before his own revealed (p. 743) that as computers collect more and more information on human subjects, the rising level of security begins to cause anxiety and fear in mankind. As Agre points out, the general rise in computing and informatics related to computing has challenged pre-existing (and by this I mean pre-computer) concepts of privacy, and largely trampled them underfoot.

Here there seems to two questions we should ask. First, what is privacy? Who gets to define it? Are there inalienable standards of privacy that cannot be trespassed upon in human society? Or as Agre himself points out, many times, are humans simply naturalized to ever-shifting standards of privacy.

The second question would relate to the technology that is felt to be invasive. Is it possible for a technology (from the Greek techne for art, craft, or tool) to transgress boundaries of human privacy? Because if that's true, it would seem to follow that mankind has begun to attribute a sort of consciousness to technology, no longer seeing as a tool-craft, inanimate and non-intelligent, but instead as a sort of sciential entity. This may be because in Agre's capture society, technology seems to be a mediation of another human being. Such that all technology archives its experience and can be made to 'betray' its master but providing a record of use and vision. And this would not just be for personal computers. On a larger scale, lots of technology (cellphones, iPods, GPS devices, televisions, cars, etc.) "phone home" to check in with some other entity (human or non-human).

In this way, Agre may be pushing for an understanding that along a teleos of human society and attempts at structuring it, man has moved from watching (surveillance) to directing (control) to archiving (capture), all in the attempt to further regulate how man relates to one another and the artificial structure of governing to which he relates. Along this trajectory, it would seem that we are growing more and more controlled the more we relate and become related to technology. "A 'Computer' - understood as discrete, physically localized entity- begins to lose its force"(743). And we become the computer.*

Which explains the latent paranoia.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

*To allude to Katherine Hayles and "How we became Posthuman." The prologue alone of which feels really relevant to this discussion.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - --

Another few thoughts

1. Is surveillance not a form of capture?
This was the question haunting me throughout the reading. It would seem to me that Agre only differentiates the terms for the same of his argument and that they are not empirically separable. Nevertheless, Agre's boxing off of the term surveillance (which would seem to operate extensively in capture and vice-versa) seems problematic. I wonder if we the readers also consider the terms separable, and if not, why not?

Though it may seem like trite consideration, the very construction of this post (and by extension the blog, the computer I am using, my operating system etc.) are deeply ingrained in what Philip Agre argues is a system of capture, and implicitly, control.

I Dis-Agre

2008-02-12T22:43:00.000-08:00

In “Surveillance and Capture,” Agre makes the distinction between surveillance and capture. Writing that “surveillance is a cultural phenomenon,” he argues that the surveillance model of privacy derives from historical experiences such as secret police. The alternative, the “capture model,” he argues, is predicated on linguistic metaphors for human activities as well as structural metaphors.
Towards the end of his argument, he writes (speculatively) that according to Ciborra’s theory of “transaction costs,” information technology, when “applied accordance with the capture model,” by accelerating the reduction of ambiguity in market-interaction, can reduce transaction costs through defining more clearly relationships between economic actors (753-754). It can also reduce, he argues, information costs because of the “grammars” that it can impose upon an organization’s activities (which, he writes, structure the relationship among the organizational members). What exactly is Agre’s theory of political economy of captured information and commodifed information? As information becomes a commodity within a market economy, as Agre writes, it is possible to think of captured information as a commodity. He then writes that captured information is simultaneously product and representation of the human activities on which it is imposed (755). Capture, he writes, by imposing “previously unformalized activities” prepares them for the transition to market-based relationships.
Earlier in his essay he raises some interesting questions about truth and information, writing that information is presumed to be true because of the historical way in which computers have been used, not because of any existing/real properties of computers (745). What is the relationship between truth, commodified information, captured information, and the political economy of captured information?

Kittler's Reality Machine

2008-02-12T03:14:00.000-08:00

While both of Kittler's articles for Tuesday touched on the failings of computers as a universal representation system, I will keep this post limited to the essay "There is No Software" as it focus solely on digital representation and does not wander off into the field of visual theory.

First off, what does "There is No Software" mean. Essentially, software is a slave to hardware. All developments following the building of these programmable hardware systems simply abstract from the electric pulses that run through a machine. As Kittler points out, the engineers that took these natural materials (silicone and oxide) to build the computer in essence created everything that we do now: 1 or 0.

"The last historical act of writing may well have been the moment when, in the
early seventies, Intel engineers laid out some dozen square meters of blueprint paper.... This manual layout of two thousand transistors and their interconnections was then miniaturized to the size of an actual chip, and, by electro-optical machines, written into silicon layers."
(Kittler, 1)

Kittler then writes about our society using this machine as a representation medium. His argument states that by following the building of the computer, we are a part of this computer's technological system. This system, first theorized by Turning, allows for a collection of machines to communicate with one another endlessly. The binary system would thus classify as our "language"- superseding hardware, software, and allowing for universal representation (a Universal Touring machine).

Such "Universal" implications pave the way for the Church-Turing hypothesis. This hypothesis says "nature itself a universal Turing machine" (Kittler, 1). With a fast enough computer, we could theoretically map and simulate all processes. While Kittler argues that such a computer will never exist, the computer still holds weight in regards to many human-technological practices. All software, writing and other digital media technologies depend on hardware since they are simply higher level layers of binary, or "far reaching chains of self-similarities" (Kittler, 2).

In this scenario, the computer hardware is the end all be all. It is "the linguistic agent ruling with near omnipotence over the computer system's
resources, address spaces, and other hardware parameters" (Kittler, 2). The burning of silicone in transistors gives hardware material agency as well. The computer reduces everything to "signifiers of voltage differences" (Kittler, 3). In an effort to deal with the postmodern world, a world that lacks meaning, the computer establishes itself as the meaning maker.

Kittler argues that we mistake this binary world of the computer as our own natural world, and we are therefore forced to submit to technology, like to the "books and bucks" that Western civilization has submitted to before. Some realize this and enjoy the subservient role (Turning liked to read Hex code) while others need the GUI to mask the onus they carry for the machine. Hardware is our universal language, and hence we forget it and think of software as our universal controller. The computer makes us value work that reduces tasks, thoughts, and concepts to the simplest algorithm possible. Commerce, art, and culture rely on hardware to establish meaning, and that leads to belief in the computer logic as our nature.

The mistake that we can mirror reality in the computer falters on the assumption that we have Turing's computer, "a machine with unbounded resources in space and
time, with infinite supply of raw paper and no constraints on computation speed" (Kittler 5). We cannot place some things in binary form- namely nature. Programmability works when everything has "some notation system" which reality itself doe not. Kittler says computers are great for representing anything... as long anything is representable within boolean logic. Even the basic elements that make up these discreet machines (oxide and silicone) are prone to logical errors: "there is electronic diffusion, there is quantum mechanical tunneling all over the chip" (Kittler 6). Nature is complex, connected, and it would take an impossibly fast computer just to simulate reality.

But....

Kittler leaves room for a machine to fill the Church-Turing hypothesis. A machine that is non-programmable and focused on "maximizing noise," not reducing itself to a basic set of binary numbers. Although the machine would take algorithms, it would "work essentially on a material substrate whose very connectivity would allow for cellular reconfigurations" (Kittler 6). Such a machine would be capable of representing reality in all its complex forms.

Questions:
1. I assume Kittler's proposed machine would have no software to speak of, not even our imagined software. But how exactly would "cellular configurations" be purely hardware? Is he talking about something like chemical/biological machines? Aren't machines just incomplete representations? You would need a machine that could represent reality to work as stated.

2. The following quote challenges our notion of the originator because of our reliance on the algorithm: "In other words, the value of a message is the amount of mathematical or other work plausibly done by its originator, which the receiver is saved from having to repeat" (Kittler 4). Do we have any concrete examples of this? Or perhaps even a re-worded definition?

3. Most importantly: how do we now define software? Are you convinced software is just an abstraction of hardware? How might things like social networks change Kittler's reliance of software on hardware?

Is this a post?

2008-02-11T19:17:00.001-08:00

As Kittler’s “There is No Software” still continues to confuse after multiple reads, I’ve decided to lay out the framework of what I believe he seems to be saying before I tackle my own questions and opinions.

Kittler says that through a “system of secrecy”, “perfect graphic user interfaces, since they dispense with writing itself, hide a whole machine from its users. Secondly, on the microscopic level of hardware itself, so-called protection software has been implemented in order to prevent "untrusted programs" or "untrusted users" from any access to the operating system's kernel and input/output channels”. If I am reading Kittler’s non-writing to any semblance of correctness, this premise that everything and its processes are hidden and obscure results with the operator having no understanding of what is actually going on as he types into his computer. This ignorance results in the operator losing ownership over what he has written- in fact there is nothing to own at all, as the operator cannot touch nor understand the computer memory’s transistor cells, “written texts- including this text- do not exist anymore”. In addition, Kittler seems to be saying that we must emphasize hardware- the corporeal, the electronic signals, the mechanical- over software as out ignorance over the relationship between software and hardware leaves us dangerously vulnerable to those few (and those corporations) who do understand.

There are a couple of things that I feel inclined to disagree with here. Firstly, “There is No Software” seems to me like another death of the author article which is not new in terms of postmodern literary criticism. However, after spending some time with the line “we do not write anymore” and “written texts- including this text- do not exist anymore”, Kittler goes beyond just the death of the author, he is claiming the death of literature and the actual process of writing itself. Does new media theory render literature obsolete? Does the obscurity of the internal processes of computers and their hidden programming cause operators in turn to become obsolete and ignorant? Do we really have no authorship over the activities of our computers?

If we believe Kittler’s statement that because we don’t understand how our computer works, because software is veiled in layers and layers of protected secrecy, then we don’t own or understand our work, then how about the fact that I have no idea how electronic signals work in my own brain to form these thoughts and how they are then coded into further signals that trigger muscles I am unaware of: do I not then own my own thoughts and muscle movements?

In all, I think “There is No Software” is more sensational than productive. Kittler makes grandiose statements that are ringed with condescension and expectancy, as if we should already know what he is saying.

2008-02-11T16:48:00.000-08:00

Well, I'm quite dizzy. I tried looking up the Church-Turing thesis that was mentioned in the "There is No Software" article, but Wikipedia is no help at all. Anyone have a dumbed-down explanation they could share? I'd appreciate it. Without knowing what it is, I have a hard time figuring out how Kittler's using it in terms of that article.

Bearing in mind that I may have missed one of his maint points, I keep trying to draw lines with Kittler and I keep coming up short. If we can reduce software to the point that there is no software anymore, how do we define hardware any differently? I want to say that the hardware is where the action ultimately happens, but even that's kind of arbitrary, because there are yet more layers of technology behind the hardware - and they're as impenetrable to me as software or Church-Turing theses.

I don't find it very productive to reduce a computer all the way back to Mother Nature, so I'd like to have a line drawn somewhere, but I don't think that Kittler does that. That's why the argument fails for me: if I'm going to draw lines arbitrarily, I may as well start with software. Is there a better way to delineate between the two, or have I misunderstood Kittler's reasons for not recognizing software in the first place? It's an interesting idea.

2008-02-10T12:14:00.000-08:00

If anyone's looking to exercise their brain a little (or a lot), try Notpron. Look at the clues in the image and accompanying text to figure out how to get to the next image. The riddles get harder as you get farther along in the sequence (hint: after the first few, there's a lot of source code and HTML manipulation involved). Enjoy!

We should do this

2008-02-06T22:17:00.001-08:00

Well, perhaps code does have a life of it's own

Coderly Texts

2008-02-06T20:00:00.000-08:00

Nanaca Crash - I got 3999.51m. Dammit! .41m short!

In reading Adrian Mackenzie's "Introduction: Softwarily", I was reminded a bit of my previous readings on Readerly/Writerly texts and the ideas of Work vs Text by Barthes. The line that did it for me was "consumption is not a passive activity but a highly complex and variable process" (8). Indeed it is, and according to Barthes any form of reading/consumption is also a act of writing/production; when talking about books he describes how a work that is read is assembled into something greater than simply the words on the page by the reader who receives: a text. In such a way, not only does the author of a text have agency in writing something, but the act of reading also has consequences in creating something new in the reader, giving the reader agency.

Now I feel Mackenzie's ideas about Agency in software fit in nicely with Barthes's theory on texts, works, authors, and readers, but in some ways is also problematic because of the nature of code. Mackenzie describes how both Originators and Recipients both have agency in creating the repercussions and use of a software. Eventually, he admits that the barriers between originator and recipient sometimes collapse into one, much like Barthes describes how the reader is also a producer of meaning (and later how Jenkins talks about fanculture grassroots production).

Now I haven't really shut up in class about how code is socially formed and forms society, and its interesting to note how originators create software with a specific use in mind (their own agency), while recipients use the code in their own way (changing or adopting it, applying their own agency. Sometimes the code is structured around a model or prototype (again, the imitated object has exercised agency on the programmer, code, and user who all have the prototype culturally ingrained in them). However, sometimes unintended effects from the code that are neither a result of the coders or users, nor do they imitate the prototype they are modelled on; things such as a bug, crash, or memory dump are things that lie in the agency of the code. What's interesting to note here is that while Barthes admits that texts are influenced by "prototypes", in a sense, the executability of code gives agency to the very text being studied.

Where lies the "authorship" of code's agency? Are originators responsible for the actions code takes that are unintended and unexpected? Or are users responsible for "misusing" the program (although their agency lies in using the program any way they want, even taking it apart and rewriting it literally)? Or can we say that it is other code, such as a new OS, that can cause a code to act in an unexpected way when operating in relation to other pieces of software on a machine (an out of date computer game running on Windows Vista, per se)? The idea of the code having agency seems to be an idea that has potential of developing a dangerous idea; that the inanimate software has the potential to be animate, or have intention is somewhere I don't want to go yet. Yet all other compromises to deny such seem unsatisfactory, and possibly Mackenzie's four divisions need to be reassessed. Perhaps Barthes needs to be reassessed. I guess this will be my point of discussion.

1/7/08

2008-02-06T18:56:00.000-08:00

Similar to previous readings, the Mackenzie reading, Introduction: Softwarily, made me think about software and code in new ways. One idea I found particularly engaging was that of attaching agency to software. He starts off by pointing out there is a difference between an AI’s capacity for “full-blown” agency and the more widely recognized secondary-agency that most software possess. I’m surprised Mackenzie didn’t go into detail on the agency of AI; especially in light of the questions he raises at the end that section. I would like it if we discussed in class whether or not software like that in an elevator or street-light truly possesses any agency. Should agency be attributed to the programmer for outlining what a piece of software can do or to the software for actually performing the action? Is a conscious choice a prerequisite of agency? One could go in circles all day without clearer definitions of what is agency in the world of software.

The other reading, The Performativity of Code: Software and Cultures of Circulation, was mostly about the Linux kernel, its evolution, and the nature of its existence. Reading about where Linux came from and how it exists in cyberspace today was extremely interesting. It also brings some good questions to mind. For example, can Linux truly exist outside of the traditional sense that it is just code? The reading talked a lot about the many incarnations of Linux and it made me wonder if RadioFreeLinux truly qualified as another version of Linux. For me at least, the fact that it operates as code on a machine is central to its definition. It seemed to me that Mackenzie was suggesting that any incarnation of the code was equally valid as Linux. Like the other reading, I think this would make for an interesting discussion during class because one could go back and forth all day.

Mistaken Premises

2008-02-06T18:22:00.000-08:00

All page numbers are from the PDF link sent to the class.

In The Performativity of Code: Software and Cultures of Circulation, Adrian Mackenzie attempts to describe the role of the Linux kernel as a cultural object. He walks through much of the history of Linux, and examines how different aspects of its development may have affected how it developed into the cultural force it is today.

While he makes many valid, interesting points, much of his analysis is flawed due to inaccurate or incomplete background research.

One major component of Mackenzie's analysis of Linux revolves around its licensing scheme, under the so-called "copy-left" (as opposed to copyright) GPL. Mackenzie cites how the GPL "prevents the software itself being sold," (Mackenzie 6) which is a common misinterpretation of the GPL. The GNU Project, the group responsible for the GPL, has a page which addresses this:

"Free software is a matter of liberty, not price..."

Mackenzie repeatedly alludes to the fact that there is no money necessarily involved in acquisition and use of Linux, but I question what portion of his conclusions are affected by the fact that working on free software challenges only notions of accessibility, not necessarily economics.

Mackenzie also ascribes great weight to the fact that Linux started out testing some i386-specific hardware (18), and while he does not explicitly state it, he implies strongly that Linux was the first to do so. However, Microsoft of all companies was selling its own version of UNIX - Xenix - which ran on the i386 processor, 5 years before Linux was conceived. So it was not Linux which brought UNIX to commodity hardware. Linux certainly made it more affordable, but was not the first to make UNIX on a widespread hardware platform a new possibility.

Similarly, Mackenzie also stresses how Linux's plethora of differently branded distributions differentiate it(11). He alludes to UNIX having a similar past when he mentions how the lack of official support for UNIX "forced users to share with one another" (16). But he neglects to explore the depth of this influence, as not only did UNIX users share with each other, but UNIX implementations splintered in various ways, similar to the divides between various Linux distributions. The most significant fork eventually became its own operating system, Berkeley UNIX (also simply called BSD), which has since evolved into a number of others: notably FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD. Reading the names alone hints at the philosophical underpinnings of the branches. It has often in fact been theorized that were it not for a lawsuit against Berkeley over BSD (around the same time as Linux's inception), BSD would have held the place currently possessed by Linux: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USL_v._BSDi

Despite these shortcomings, Mackenzie accurately detects the cultural icon that Linux (or more generally openly available kernel code) represents. I have a copy of a book, Lion's Commentary on UNIX 6th Edition, which contains the full source code and explanation for 6th Edition UNIX. The book was originally a pair of manuscripts produced at one university, and then circulated for years via photocopy, and it is a fond memory for many experienced kernel hackers. I'll bring it to class tomorrow. It's interesting to me to see things similar to this (verbal readings of Linux source), which I simply absorbed in the past, drawn out as significant trends in a larger culture.

2008-02-06T16:16:00.000-08:00

After reading "The performativity of code: software ad cultures of circulation" by Adrian Mackenzie, I was interested in the idea of one program cloning another program. What made Linux better than Unix was that people could update the software and get help with it. Although Unix did not make any profit and Linux was free, it reminded me of the conversation that we had in class last tuesday, when someone asked why we rely on technologie advancing. Another student answered that it was for money. However, in the case of Linux, it was not for money but for freedom. Today, companies more often than not 'clone' software ideas from other companies. For example, shortly after Apple released the iphone, Verizon released a phone that also featured a touch screen. Modern situations like this indeed do perform based on money. Advances in technology exist in order for corporations to make a profit. The creator of Linux seemed interested in the idea of software freedom therefore creating a program "by hackers, for hackers." My question is, are people actually satisfied with the limited freedom that many software gives us, or do people feel that it gives us enough freedom? Should more people create software clones for freedom witout profit? Or has this idea become against our cultural norms? Do we want the freedom or are we comfortable with the amount that we have?

2008-02-05T02:09:00.000-08:00

This is a famous screen of Word at it's worst, it was always in the back of my mind when reading about the mountain of features in Fuller's Microsoft Word article.

When Office 2007 premiered, the UI was redesigned. The tabbing and context sensitive menus where meant to eliminate the search for features by presenting those features which the user would more certainly need based on the tasks that the user was performing. The reorganizing of icons into more work-driving tabs, also meant to elevate thinking and instead allow the user's instinct to guide them to the proper tab. It was surprising and worthy of a note, that many first time users felt that they needed to learn a whole new system, which was designed to eliminate the concept of a system. Either the Usability experts missed their mark, or (what is quite probable) the old system was so ingrained into the users' habits that it took some effort adjusting to a more intuitive interface.

What particularly rings a bell is quote from Heim in Fuller's It Looks Like You're Writing a Letter: "As the user learns the new system, the language installs the user in the system." I believe it is quite relevant to acknowledge the reserve: the system installs itself in the user. The user conforms to a model defined and designed by (in this case) the usability experts at Microsoft. In the reading from last week, Fuller mentioned Alan Cooper's HCI approach, which is driven by a "stereotypical user": "they are imagined as full 'characters', users of the system which is reworked...in order to meet an aggregate of their needs." It is necessary to acknowledge that Microsoft's approach is just this, these 'characters' are referred to as archetypes and are often referred in design documents and drive the feature scenarios. Fuller acknowledges this as a flaw and even mentions the disappeared of the user from system's HCI design. In an alternative view, we can even take Fuller's argument and use it to counter the first quote, the users are not installed into the system, their archetypes are packages within and it is only the reverse, the incorporation of themselves into the model, that holds true.

What is also interesting to note, is that the main bar which was described by Fuller as showcasing most essential features (in contrast to text animation which is hidden deep within the font formatting menu), is often echoed in word professing software, such as this blog, gmail, etc. It makes me think of last week's Fuller reading that touched upon Open Source software and its fatal attention and conformance to propriety software's standards. Is makes me think whether this standardization of the main bar is because this is the most efficient way to provide access to the what is considered the essential word processing features? Of has this standard installed itself so much into ourselves that we have made it so without question?

2008-02-04T14:13:00.000-08:00

I found this week's reading especially interesting in relation to last week's material, particularly when comparing Fuller's "A Means of Mutation" with Galloway's "Code" and our discussion about executable code and performative language. Whether or not we agree that code is the only language that is executable, one of the most important aspects of code as it is most frequently used is that it is functional - it makes things happen. Yet Fuller argues that the surface aspect of code (i.e. software and browser composition) achieves the exact opposite. He states that commercial software "is continually dragging this space of composition, network, computer, user, software, socius, program production, back into the realm of representation... rather than putting things into play, rather than making something happen" (64, italics mine). In other words, by focusing on graphic representation and the page metaphor, web browsers are typically coded so that nothing happens, even though making things happen seems fundamental to code itself.

Our reading contains a lot of similar paradoxes, and I think it would be interesting to discuss or try to determine where these paradoxes come from and why they exist. For example, Fuller's article "It Looks Like You're Writing a Letter" suggests that as Microsoft Word abounds with more and more tools that seem to give users more options and more ways of styling text and documents, features such as spelling and grammar checks and pre-defined templates constrict the user's scope in terms of document design and use of language. In Word, tools can be used only as the program intends them to be used. Thus, more tools and options do not free the user, but rather increasingly enable him or her to get lost within the menu structure of the program and its hierarchy of applications. Is this a result of Microsoft's commercial nature, economic/historical/cultural factors, user expectations, or even aspects of the code itself? These are questions I hope to be able to at least touch on briefly during our discussions.

More Metaphors

2008-02-04T11:48:00.000-08:00

In A Means Of Mutation Fuller exposes and problematizes the seemingly natural metaphors present in modern-day computer terminology. He exposes these metaphors for what they are, necessary media for the human interpretation of raw data. He cites 'page,' 'desktop' and 'wastebasket' as examples of these metaphors, but we could easily extend the analysis to 'file,' 'folder,' 'button,' 'window,' etc. The sheer volume of such metaphorical representation of pure code are mind-boggling, as is their necessity for the base functionality of the processes that they can perform.

Rather than beat this to death, I wish to draw attention to another metaphor left implied but unarticulated in It Looks Like You're Writing A Letter. When describing the interface construction of word processors, namely Microsoft Word, Fuller tells us "you have to go through several layers of interface to switch off 'Grammar' and 'Spelling,'" and thus reinforces, as he does several times throughout the essay, the metaphor of depth that runs rampant to the logical organization of human computer interfaces. We can observe this in our own everyday computer lingo: it is easy to imagine saying "I had to look around inside My Music for, like, half an hour until I found that MP3," or, "the virus is so deeply embedded in your system now, you'll have to go inside your system registry and edit the file." Perhaps even the code itself is a metaphor of {[(depth)]}. What would be interesting to examine, given that the metaphor of depth pervades any properly deep analysis (let's unpack what that means...) even in the non-computer theoretical world, is how this metaphor works with respect to code as it does in everyday parlance with respect to truth.

2008-02-03T19:01:00.001-08:00

2008-02-02T10:32:00.001-08:00

Welcome

2008-01-18T22:17:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the blog for the Spring 2008 course "Code, Software and Serious Games" at Brown University. This blog will be a source for student reading responses and general discussion of class materials.