DIGRA at last! When it almost looked like all chances of getting the day off were forfeit, my colleagues at work came to the rescue. Thanks Elaine and Sanj.

The troubles were worth it. Day One at DIGRA was a rewarding experience. Of course, there was much that I missed (e.g. Bernard Perron's paper). The sessions that I went to, however, were brilliant. The Bad Games panel led by Jesper Juul started with the discussion of 'camp' games and a discussion of para-gaming. Juul defined four categories of 'taste': traditional, casual, indie and 'good' (academic) taste. A 'bad' game would be breaking with the requisite elements of the above, as the case may be. Juul highlighted the need for researching 'the great unplayed' comparing this with similar work on the 'great unread' going on Literary Studies (interesting comparison coming from a Ludologist, Jesper). Having come from a department with a strong recovery research presence, the literary side of this I am only too familiar with. I certainly agree with the need to research / resurrect interest in the games that suffer years of neglect and are even tagged as 'bad'. Of course, there's a historical perspective to the creation of the videogame canon. The reasons that the prolific 'bad' game creator Ian Gray's (Anglo-Saxon , mind you) China Miner has been tagged as bad and yet draws many an addicted fan to it are worth investigating.Anyway, I dwell too long on this. All in all, I think this is a great initiative taken by Jesper and co. If your forthcoming book explores more of this, I'm certainly buying it. The two other papers in the panel were also interesting. The comparison between full motion video in earlier games and the way this remediated / even copied B-movies is interesting. The social aspect of these so-called 'bad' games is also a thing to look into.


In the second session, I mistook the panel on film and games for the session on horror games (wonder how) but luckily for me, it was a great one. Michael Nitsche brought back the issue of Ludology and Narratology; although I hope not in the old way (well, i think not) with the famous 'versus'. I have blogged about such watertight categorisations earlier and written endlessly against such positions. Michael, as far as I understood, is doing something much more intellectually informed. He says that the problems that the L-N debate brought to light should not be ignored. I agree. He mentioned the problematics of doing and telling; to me the problem is much more complex than a (mis)reading of Genette on description and narration. Michael identifies the need for a performance studies approach to videogames. Incidentally, there was another lady at the conference who told me about her work on this. Both she and Michael mentioned Richard Schechner whom I now must read / read about. We are probably moving near Frasca's work on 'live theatre' Augusto Boal and games, which I much admire. Michael's uniqueness comes from his deep knowledge of both the theory and praxis of film. He used examples of camera usage in games (read his book for some nice examples) to illustrate how the framing of the action was important in the conflation or otherwise relating of the action and the telling. For me, of course, this is a form of actualisation of the potential. Two things that Michael mentioned struck me as quite important and I'll just copy out these points straight from my notes:

Aram Barthollie FPS glasses

In Natal, how do we control the camera?

After Michael's presentation, there was another nice one by Eric Campion. Again a few points from my notes (i'm tiring out now):

Architecture is narrative

Biofeedback

Game uses different parts of brain unlike film.

Not sure I agree with everything Campion says but then again, food for thought.

I went to some other sessions and listened to quite a few papers but either they weren't particularly relevant to my interest or else I was too zombiefied from the tiredness and the tension of having to present.

(read the article here: http://au.gamespot.com/features/6214951/index.html)

Laura Parker of Gamespot Australia interviewed me a few days ago about that most contentious of subjects in videogame studies: the role of storytelling in games. Every time I speak about this, I do so with mixed feelings: I anticipate rising degrees of opposition, easy acceptance and finally, the risk of being scoffed at yet again for daring to equate videogames with the established and lofty notions of literariness. However, as the days have gone by since I first started thinking of videogames as storytelling media, academia has stopped considering videogames in the earlier pejorative light and pockets of research are emerging in the unlikeliest corners and adding academic respectability to videogames. Even as videogame studies has moved far beyond its earlier coaxial locations of some Scandinavian universities and Georgia Tech in the US, game studies has not yet decided on whether it wants to admit to the narrativity (another game studies coinage, I think) of videogames. Some of the so-called Ludologists have now softened their earlier anti-story positions and some like Jesper Juul, in his book Half Real and as quoted in Parker's article, have altogether re-evaluated the situation. I find it difficult to disagree with the spirit of Jesper's comment and I admire how much his position has developed in these ten years. By beginning to ask the important questions (particularly relevant to my interests are his notions about time in videogame narratives), he has opened up many avenues for other researchers. To comments such as that of Professor Dutton, all I would say is that they are not new. Robert Wilson was making a similar case against the ludicity of narratives and the narrativity of games as long ago as the 1960s. The Ludologists, especially those like Markku Eskelinen, Like his notions of Physics, Aristotle's conception of the plot (as might be inferred from his Poetics) have achieved a rather questionable sense of finality that most students of literature learn to question in their first undergraduate year (or so I hope). The formula of distinct beginnings, middles and ends is not universal. Neither do stories necessarily have predetermined endings. I could go on at length about how this applies also to Dutton's example of Homer's Odyssey (thinking about the Homeridae etc) but of that another time. Eastern (or shall we say non-Eurocentric) notions of narrative have always been at variance with such set parameters. Recent developments in literary theory also point towards multitelic stories. I will make another quick point here against Dutton's description of the story element in videogames as a 'window dressing' and his comparison of BioShock and GTA 4 with 'a tea-party for teddy bears'. While these make me laugh, it is quite clear that such conclusions are extremely contestable. The teddy-bear bit quite intrigues me - a very unusual metaphor considering the plots of the games he cites. As for the 'window-dressing', oh well, I think that the whole context of the games involves a supplementary narrative experience (for the Derrideans out there, the word 'supplementary' was used on purpose - read the right hand column of Ludus Ex). Finally, whoever said that we do not get inside the characters we play - I know of people (and can see at least one in the mirror) who often feel as if they are Max Payne or Gordon Freeman. Shan't say any more on this.

Anyway, I really liked Laura's article. She doesn't take sides and presents the case lucidly while also reminding people that this is important stuff. I learnt a lot from the article - Rhianna Pratchett's comments being my favourite. Am eagerly awaiting the next part of the article (coming out next Friday) - check out Gamespot Australia or watch this space. I had so much more to say on this but then my 9 to 5 job usually kills all my enthusiasm by the end of the day (game research is increasingly becoming a luxury , yet again) and I am struggling to keep my eyes open. Thanks a lot to GameSpot Australia for discussing this issue and for featuring my comments.

I am now finally and undisputably Dr Souvik Mukherjee after being awarded my PhD scroll at a grand (and expensive) graduation ceremony at Nottingham's Royal Centre on 22nd July. Later on, in between the 'official' ceremony and my celebrations with close friends, I had a mini ceremony of my own, befitting the spirit of my research so far.




Visiting GameStation in my doctoral gown.





In August Company: (from right) Dan, Phil, John and me. Dave I missed you at this one.


With my parents

Here's my DIGRA paper abstract. Here, I develop a salient point in my thesis and, in a dialogue with earlier commentary, explore the pattern(s) of time in videogames. The paper itself is work in progress and early comments are most welcome.


'Remembering How We Died': Memory, Death and Temporality in Videogames



Death is an intrinsic part of gameplay. On considering the role of killing, dying and negotiating the 'undead' in videogames, one cannot be faulted for noting in them an obsessive engagement with the act of dying. It is almost a prerequisite that the player's avatar has to 'die' many times in the process of unravelling the plot. Instead of the traditional tying and untying (desis and lusis) of narrative plots, held sacrosanct since Aristotle, videogame narratives are characterised by 'dying and undying'. The sense of an ending, as literary theorist Sir Frank Kermode calls it, is constantly frustrated by its absence in videogames. Western conceptions of ending, whether Hellenic or Judaeo-Christian, are based on telos and a linear temporality. In a culture where death is a grim finality and where resurrection is only possible by the divine, videogames seem to shockingly trivialise death by adding to it the perspective of multiplicity. Videogame theorist, Gonzalo Frasca, observes that from the perspective of real life, this reversibility can be seen as something that 'trivializes the "sacred" value of life'. This paper argues against such a conception and in doing so, it points to how videogames to a different but equally serious view of death and endings that has so far been largely ignored due to an occidental bias.

In Vedantic and Buddhist philosophy, belief in reincarnation is the norm rather than the exception. The multiplicities of death(s) is, therefore, not trivial. This, however, is not to claim a straightforward connection of the videogame endings with the rebirth cycle in these world-views, especially since there are many differences within and between them. Not to consider them at all, however, would skew the analysis, given that the characteristics of videogames though considered 'trivial' in a Western paradigm, actually connect to ideas that pre-date Christianity. The videogame protagonist, also called avatar (which requires a separate discussion), dies, lives and lives again; thus replaying the cycle of his or her existence. Within the context of the game-narrative, each death or ending is important: often, as Michael Nitsche states, death can be a way of exploring the game or of obtaining information about 'future' possibilities. That apart, each ending is connected to the assemblage that the game narrative forms. Despite their other mutual differences, in Vedantism and Buddhism the key idea of rebirth does not trivialise the event of death. Instead of a transmigration of an essence, Buddhism believes in a moment-to-moment process of rebirth dependent on the encompassing circumstances. The Gita states that 'the newly moulded inner nature will express in a new form.' The 'new' form is called avatar in Hinduism; gods are often (re)born in different reincarnations or avatars and this is part of the divine play or lila. The term avatar is rather freely used in game criticism as meaning 'player embodiment' which is but part of its original significance; its key connotations of reincarnation and immanent existence have so far been ignored.

While these non-Western perspectives indicate an alternative reading of death in videogames, their heavily moral and religious implications make any easy equation problematic. Their ideas of immanence, nevertheless, connect well to games where the same avatar re-experiences the game-world but differently, each time – a complex case of difference and repetition. This, importantly, also connects with current ideas in Western philosophy, such as Gilles Deleuze's understanding of immanence and temporality. The avatar in the game experiences events, including death(s), as actualisations of a virtuality of events. The actualisation takes place from within a combination of possible events, which in turn are determined by their spatial and temporal environments. Further, even as an actualisation takes place, the other iterations of the gameplay (such as other instances where the same section of the game was played) still remain quite 'real'. In the Deleuzian sense, this is a real virtuality or one that is 'never past either in relation to a new present or in relation to a present it once was.' For Deleuze, the different actualisations are like the dice-throws in a 'Divine Game', where they are multiple but at the same time partaking in the One. Following this, he proposes that the idea of death be treated 'less as a severance than an effect of mixture or confusion'. Traditional conventions of death are influenced by the idea of time as a chronological progression. When faced with phenomena such as videogames, where chronological progression gives way to more immanent structures; firmly believed in conceptions about death, memory and event are greatly problematised. With this in consideration, this paper will attempt to build upon the discussions on temporality already started by critics such as Jesper Juul, Barry Atkins and Nitsche. Carrying these forward both in terms of game studies and contemporary philosophical discourse, it will attempt to understand the importance of in-game death: as both immanent and imminent.

Apologies again for the long absence especially to regular readers and PKD-Day 3 attendees. This has indeed been a rather difficult time both on personal and professional fronts. Today's post is an attempt to make up for the silence and also to record the memories of a singularly entertaining conference. I mean the The Afterlives of Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes conference held in the University of Hull today. I went despite the intense stress of this week's workload and after literally writing my 'paper' and preparing my presentation in a single evening!

A brief outline of the papers as culled from my notes. For me the conference started with papers on Laurie King's Mary Russell stories – for the uninitiated, in these pastiche novels Sherlock Holmes gets married to Russell, who is a formidable detective in her own right. The discussion ranged from cross-dressing, feminist perspectives to the nature of Holmes pastiches. Sabine Vanacker's paper, while providing learned perspectives on various other aspects, particularly interested me with the analysis of the Holmes stories as taking place in a repeated presence. Sabine also pointed to the chronological anomaly in the Holmes stories and how Carole Nelson Douglas and King establish a clearer chronological relationship in their Holmes pastiches. The best part of her paper, for me, was the description of Holmes's stories as a virtual palimpsest of texts and context. Palimpsest --- that's how I would describe gameplay.

I also particularly liked Annushka Donin's first-time paper on metafiction in the Holmes and Poirot novels. She established a network of textual relations through a comparative analysis and drew out interesting parallels. This is apparently Annoushka's undergraduate work being developed here – I wish I had even one such undergrad in my seminars. She seems to be on her way to engage with more theoretical perspectives and I was obviously thinking of post-structuralist viewpoints.

All the papers that I heard were great. M. Lee Alexander made an interesting case about detective figures being 'wounded' or disabled in some way or other. She provided a long list (to which I added Max Payne) but surprisingly, all of the names on the list were male! Patricia Pulham and Jennifer Palmer both looked at aspects of historicising fiction. Patricia discussed Julian Barnes's novel on Doyle's one and only attempt at detection – I must read it. In my own panel, Harvey O'Brien entertainingly presented on the variety of filmic responses to Sherlock Holmes including 'The Great Mouse Detective' and the Christopher Plummer Sherlock Holmes ('Murder by Decree'). The other panelist, Sally Widdowson, interestingly explored the link between Sidney Paget's Sherlock Holmes illustrations and modern graphic novels such as the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Very interesting, all said and done.

What I missed though was more of a chance to socialise and chat. Though I did make up for it by joining some other presenters on a stroll through Hull. Finally, like all the conferences that I have been to recently, this one ran simultaneous panels and I missed some of the papers that I was keen on listening to. Bran Nicol's paper on Bayard, Eco and conjecture seems really interesting from his abstract and on talking to him after my session (which he chaired). Interestingly, he too describes the structure of the Holmes novels as 'rhizomatic'.

My own paper did what I expecteed it to do – I felt that it opened up Sherlock Holmes scholarship in different aspects and developed on the connection between the multiplicity of narratives and videogames. One of the questions that I was asked was how I would make a Sherlock Holmes videogame. A storyboard is already building up within the recesses of my head and it certainly isn't elementary.

Anyway, here's my abstract:

Sherlock Holmes never faced his final problem. Just as he re-emerged from the Reichenbach Falls after being 'killed off' by his creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Holmes has lived on in a multiplicity narratives ranging from the new Holmes tales told by the likes of Anthony Burgess to adventures on the Holodeck of the starship Enterprise. It is this multiplicity combined with that makes the Holmes tales key predecessors of more recent forms of storytelling, especially the story in videogames. The videogame player after 'dying' in an attempt to 'complete' the multitelic narrative, does a Sherlock Holmes and replays his existence in a different way. The Holmes stories can be viewed as proto-videogames by analysing them side by side with Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened (referred to as The Awakened hereonwards), a videogame based Holmes investigates an as-yet-unsolved mystery. Created in the adventure game genre, albeit with attempts to include different visual points-of-view, The Awakened, is characterised by a multitelic structure; it also emphasises its multiplicity by placing Holmes in the Lovecraftian world of the Cthulhu mythos.

Theorists of so-called New Media have argued for multiplicity as being a key factor in determining the novelty of hypertexts, interactive fiction and videogames. However, this conception can be challenged by a closer look at earlier forms of multiple narratives such as the Holmes stories. Analysed in comparison to The Awakened, the Sherlock Holmes stories as told over the last century, emerge as far more multiple than was earlier assumed and reveal greater complexities of authorship, plot and telos. To do so, this paper will engage with Gilles Deleuze's concept of multiplicity, which makes it possible to view the stories as actualisations of a mesh of virtual narratives, where Holmes continually emerges from his various endings only to start again – almost as if he plays a videogame.

Oh yes, I called my paper 'Sherlock Holmes Reloaded'.

My absence from Ludus ex this time was due to the fact that I was co-organising PKD-Day with Prof John Goodridge from my department. NTU had another fab event: the third successful PKD-Day. We did it again.

This was my first collaborative paper and I must say a big 'thank you' to my co-presenter Jenna Pitchford for her thorough work and cooperation despite tight schedules and other problems. In one of Jenna's presentations in our university, I realised the wider definition of trauma that she was using was vital in analysing videogame experiences and in countering the false politically motivated allegations against games. This is changing now; as Ernest Adams told us, the first console has now been installed in the White House and polemic might now turn to policy in favour of games. However, whatever happens, the need to understand that games do not merely desensitise and that they cause a different level of trauma (some can even raise moral concerns) is imminent. We are not psychologists or trauma specialists but Jenna's work on Gulf and Iraq War narratives and mine on gameplay experiences come together in stating that the problem is more complex than has hitherto been understood.

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

Shall We Kill the Pixel Soldier? : Perceptions of Trauma, Morality and Violence in Combat Videogames

It felt like I was in a big video game. It didn't even faze me, shooting back. It was just natural instinct. Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!

Sgt. Sinque Swales quoted in The Washington Post

Sergeant Swales’ comment provides an easy link from the so-called moral desensitisation of soldiers in the 2003 Iraq War to their experience of videogame combat, an apparent connection that is eagerly picked up on by Western media. Videogame criticism, surprisingly distancing itself from contemporary challenges to the notion of media effects, persists in conflating the technologically-mediated experience of the Gulf War with the increasingly face-to-face interaction in recent Middle-Eastern conflicts. Contemporaneous accounts have compared the Gulf War to the electronic experience of ‘a child playing atari’; despite vast developments in gaming, commentators still contend that ‘thus far, games have avoided engaging the real-life issues to which they are responding’. A key issue that games are accused of avoiding is that of combat trauma. Contrary to such positions, many videogames already simulate the trauma in their gameplay experience; this paper will explore this concept from Laura Brown's definition of trauma as ‘outside the range of human experience’. This evokes recent work in games studies on in-game involvement and identity-formation. It also opens up further questions against ignoring the role of morality in gameplay, especially in multiplayer interaction in combat games like Counter-Strike, Call of Duty 4 and America's Army. Working from these hitherto overlooked aspects of trauma in gameplay experiences, our analyses challenge the oversimplified association of videogames with the desensitisation of US troops in recent conflicts, and by extension, with wider issues of violence.

read the full paper here

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

Once again at 'Under the Mask'. Can't believe that a whole year has passed since I first tested out my ideas on 'egoshooting' and 'becoming' in videogames. This year's conference was better organised and even more enriching and entertaining than it was last year. Some of the presentations, particularly Gavin Stewart's, Steven Conway's and Alec Charles's, I liked and benefited from more than the others. I missed Esther MacCallum-Stewart's paper because I went to hear Steven and Jenna, my co-presenter, later told me that I had missed the best paper in the conference. My loss, but the paper is online so I presume I can read it now. On the entertainment side of it, the constant repartee between Alec and Gavin was already expected from my experience of it last year. The philosophy of computer games as recounted by Ernest Adams (the keynote) certainly entertained although I strongly disagree with most of it. There was one of the usual 'magic circle' debates among the panelists; only this one led to Pride and Prejudice and speculations about whether it was possible to find Darcy's grave. I also enjoyed Esther's description of her WoW battle with the great Espen Aarseth himself. Last but not least, perhaps the most entertaining part was Jenna's adventurous GTA-style driving on the way back. (this is a long post so if you are just after the papers download them from here)

This posting will be in part a response to some ideas I either contest or wish to develop. It will also attempt to provide a general summary of the conference.

Philosophising on Computer Games: An Alternative Response to Ernest Adams

I do not know if there is a 'philosophy of videogames' but I work with two philosophers, in the main, to formulate my own thoughts on games; so though I won't go as far as to point to a 'videogame philosophy', I'll certainly agree that there is an imminent need to think about videogames philosophically. I went to (and presented at) the Games and Philosophy Conference at Potsdam, last year and I was happily rewarded with some of the most philosophically oriented discussions on videogames. When Ernest Adams opened his keynote address on the philosophical roots of computer games, I was expecting more of such discourse. Adams has always appealed to me in the way he bashes the academia for needlessly engaging in the ludology-narratology (non)debate and in the way he understands gameplay as 'difficult to define' rather than trying to define it within a set formula. Therefore, I was surprised when he tossed game studies (if there is such a thing) between the binaries of English and French philosophy as well as the classical and the Romantic.

Videogames, he says, are number-driven and logic-driven. Their orientation is more classical than Romantic. For Adams, videogames (those that tell stories, that is) do create a tussle between the classical and Romantic identities but even these can at best compare to Norse Saga or Victorian novels. Videogames have not had their Modernist or Postmodern text. To back this up, he considers the oft-cited 'postmodern' experience of the break in the fourth wall / magic circle (or whatever you will) and claims that it is not a break in the immersion ( how i hate the word ... shall we call it 'involvement' or something else, please?) because the player is never really immersed. So much for 'flow' and Cszikzentmihalyi (pronounced 'Chicks send me high') then, if one listens to Adams.

As I said earlier, I so disagree with a lot of what he says. Against the French / English philosophy binarism: according to Adams, the philosophy of videogames has nothing to do with Derrida, Bergson and Sartre (because they are French and inductive) and everything to do with Locke, Hume and Whitehead (because they are English and deductive). I am being flippant here but this is how such a binarism sounds. I am not sure what aspects of Bergson's works, Adams considers but he certainly does not take into account how Gilles Deleuze uses, quite effectively, Bergson, Whitehead and Hume to engage in supplementing each other's concepts. The watertight binarism certainly isn't a product of nationality; nor is there a clear-cut binarism of inductive versus deductive. Or even of Classical versus Romantic for that matter. Nietzsche, whom Deleuze reads deeply, says in Ecce Homo that The Birth of Tragedy is his 'most offensively Hegelian' book because of its dialectical opposition of the Apollonian and Dionysiac (roughly corresponding to Classical and Romantic). Nietzsche clarifies that he understands 'Greek tragedy as the Dionysiac chorus which ever anew discharges itself in an Apollonian world of images.' Adams's binarism, therefore, has been challenged and disproved in philosophical terms, over a century ago. He refers to David Thomas's (of 'Buzzcut' fame) article on gaming as belonging to Pre-Socratic philosophy, which Thomas understands as 'all is number' in a very limited sense. As Keith Ansell-Pearson comments, Nietzsche explicitly connects the Dionysiac with the concept of flow and Becoming as stated by Heraclitus, a key Pre-Socratic philosopher. Deleuze goes on to develop Nietzsche's reading into an idea of Becoming that is now of legendary proportion. In my last year's paper at UTM (as well as in many other papers), I have applied the idea of Becoming to videogames, especially to describe the involvement of the player and the machine. However, I digress ...

Adams's claim about the player's immersion, i partly support. I have often likened immersion to a dip in the Ganges - under water and fully out of contact with the outside world. That does not happen in games, says Adams and I totally agree. However, if it does not happen in games, neither does it happen in books and movies as Adams seems to claim. Normally I have to challenge the other extreme argument that claims that games are like the Holodeck - hence, this new claim is rather amusing for me. Typically, then this would problematise even the relocation of the fourth wall (after Steven's paper, I shan't say 'breaking' ever again) - for Adams, the experience does not include the deep involvement that Esther pointed to while describing her deep gaming experience which made her oblivious to other passengers on the train. In sum, Adams makes a rather extreme claim for the game experience and it is one that does not account for the deep involvement. I believe that extreme and dialectically opposite positions should consider the experience as being more processual and engage with ideas such as Becoming to explain this.

These problematic conceptions also prompt Adams to conclude that videogames are sans their Modernist or Postmodernist examples and should rather be compared to Pre-modernist literature. However, any literature student will know that chronology does not work as a categorising element in literature - not any more. Consider the Modernist and Postmodern implications of Tristram Shandy or Tom Jones. One more point that I cannot resist making although it is a sort of digression.

Adams claims that Victorians did not use their machine to create art. He has probably forgotten Ada Lovelace who wished to use Babbage's Analytical Engine for 'poetic programming' or weaving artistic patterns with music (in other words, being a computer DJ). Babbage himself used to impress his guests with automata built to entertain. Cultural Babbage offers many examples as does my own article on the subject. Even in the 'steampunk' novels that Adams refers to, there are ample examples: in The Difference Engine, John Keats (otherwise famous in our world) earns his living as a 'clacker' (hacker/programmer) who programs for the cinema.

To return to my main contention, however. Adams neglects many videogame titles that do not correspond to the Norse saga structure that he sees in Duke Nukem or Quake. Many games problematise the idea of good and bad binaries. Max Payne, Stalker (which Adams was consulted on), Fahrenheit, GTA etc in their own ways relate to current theoretical and philosophical positions. In yesterday's conference, ironically most of the philosophers discussed by the presenters were French and postmodern (i use this term loosely and rather unhappily). I've just found out that Adams' paper was first published in 2004 - a year before I started my PhD. It is to my discredit that I did not find it earlier - or else I would challenged it more substantially within my thesis. However, even in in 2004, there were games like Blade Runner that would, in essence, challenge the simple story structure that Adams claims for videogames. It just shows how important it is to start studying the stories in videogames in more depth instead of endless quibbling over things like player studies versus game studies.

Steven Conway Relocates the Fourth Wall

Steven if you are reading this, then you'll see that the masthead of Ludus Ex is all about what you said in the conference. 'I was in a computer game. Funny as hell it was the most horrible thing i could think of'. In fact, even in RL (which one of Sherry Turkle's respondents calls 'another window') I sometimes feel a relocation of an imaginary 'fourth wall' (or nth wall) which in a Phildickian way seems to surround us (assuming that life is an ARG, ha ha).

Back to academic blogging (see i've already relocated the fourth wall).Snap!

I liked the way in which Conway spoke of the relocation of the fourth wall rather than the breaking of it. He basically proved previous commentators wrong in one neat slash and numerous examples from other media that many game critics hadn't considered. The examples are too many to recount and I sincerely wish I could share his presentation with the readers of Ludus Ex. However, he spoke of how Max Payne refers self-reflexively to its identity as a videogame and how Psycho-Mantis 'reads' the player's mind in a faux-psionic way and makes the player perform acts outside the game in order to defeat him. Other critics would call this being pulled 'out of the game' but Conway contends that it is instead an extension of the game. It could be a contraction or the expansion of the fourth wall but it is still the maintenance of the 'as if' that the play involves. I am not one for magic circles or Hamlets on Holodecks, but Conway, if I read him right, is not either. As far as the play is concerned, I think the idea of the relocation is spot on. To illustrate this in terms of Brechtian 'alienation effect' (Snap! Correct me if I err, Steven. I am not writing like an academic now. The punctuation is intentional and many 'rap' poets relocate the fourth wall thus), in the game, the spectator is being reminded of a reality A that is different from the game's reality B while existing in another reality C which corresponds closely and almost resembles reality A. I agree with the concept of relocation also because it implicitly negates any final watertight (or even semi permeable) boundary which we have to 'break'; instead it shifts the experience to a different level of Becoming. This fits in with my conception of a Deleuzian Becoming, as well.

I was only intrigued that Conway does not refer to Gonzalo Frasca's use of the concept of the 'spect-actor' as borrowed from the drama of Augusto Boal. In a sense, Frasca also seems to support the relocation argument on a more general scale. Frasca talks of 'outmersion' where the player is conscious of being involved in the game and then he describes 'meta-outmersion' where the player is simultaneously conscious also of being 'outmersed'. If the spectator is simultaneously the actor, this is a constant process and the wall (or whatever imaginary membrane) of the act does not really break but it is relocated. All said, however, this is was a very interesting paper from Conway and I would certainly like to read more.

Shifting Boundaries: Gavin Stewart's Presentation on Paratexts and 'Inanimate Alice'

The other paper that I will briefly discuss in Gavin Stewart's. I had never heard Gavin present but I always had a deep respect for his work when he was at my university (i even called him 'sir' for the first two times i met him, he reminds me). Gavin spoke about a website called Inanimate Alice, Genettian ideas of paratext (as (mis)used by Mia Consalvo) and Bioshock game covers. The talk woke me up to the fact that I usually unconsciously take in so much from game covers. Must add this to my post-doc plan. Gavin also eloquently pointed to how even non-game objects are ludic to a degree, as they require. Inanimate Alice can, therefore, be a ludic entity at times. Similarly, ARGs can be a 'real life' entity as well as a ludic entity. It is also interesting to note how the paratexts of games affect our readings and play and also how games themselves work as paratexts. Finally, the often neglected (in my previous theoretical work, especially) element of the market needs to be considered in-depth. I will need to explore this further in my own research and thinking.

General Observations

First, I'd like to thank the organisers for having invited us (Jenna and me). The interest that the event evoked among the many gamers (you wouldn't use this term if you were there at yesterday's debate) was very encouraging. Among the other papers, I enjoyed Alec Charles' paper (thanks for thanking me about 'egoshooters'; credit also goes to my friend Mark Butler). The concept of 'hailing' in Althusserian terms has already been used by Will Slocombe in his essay on ludic agency (Digital Gameplay ed. Nate Garrelts). I am not sure I agree. I've said a lot of about agency already. Click here for an example. Of the others, I thought Maria Baecke could have developed her interesting study a bit more and also that the paper on gamer mothers could have been more representative and supplied more details. I was happy to meet Philip Lin who presented on a somewhat similar topic as ourselves -- the US Army and 'militainment'. Philip is developing his PhD plan now: all the best. Adrienne Shaw presented a interesting case study of Finnish gaming and how it relates to the global experience. We should see more of these coming up... soon, hopefully. Finally, I must say I was slightly disappointed by Vicente Gandasgui's paper on spectatorship. I am not sure King Kong is the best example for game-film comparison and Gandasgui did not seem to be aware of ground-breaking work on cutscenes (such as Rune Klevjer's) and dismissed them by saying that his friends find them boring so they really don't count as parts of the game. He also missed key research in the area – especially by Tanya Krzywinska (who is also a film theorist in her own right) and Michael Nitsche. I am sure he will develop his research further as he progresses with his research in what is a very interesting topic.

And so we came away from 'Under the Mask' driving through the heavy spray, tired but quite satisfied with a great gaming day.

All the papers are now available here.