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Philosophy of Computer Games 2012, Madrid: A Player’s Diary

Souvik Sunday, February 05, 2012 , , No comments

Madrid and the Matadoria

Madrid, I found, is a smiling city. We had smiling people, bright sunshine, artistic adventures, sumptuous food and of course some great game philosophy. This was my third Philosophy of Games conference. Potsdam, Athens and Madrid – I now am a veteran.  On looking back through my memory-glass, I see yet another wonderful piece of gameplay although there are some places where I would have reloaded.  That was my complicated gamer way of describing my likes and dislikes.




The organisers were absolutely fabulous and the venues were excellent. I particularly liked the Matadoria or the former slaughterhouse turned art gallery – its motto is ‘not slaughter but art’. I couldn’t help being moved.  This conference has always been about people interacting with each other, about making friends and about exploring the new. In an earlier post, I had written about the in-between spaces in a conference and I frequented all of the possible in-between spaces, all short of those in people’s mind, I think.  Over lunch, during stolen smoke breaks and in Twitter, the papers were being commented on constantly. Ren Reynolds and someone with a lonely guitar (Twitter handle) were constantly tweeting; Armin Papenfuss  and some other remembered faces were rethinking game design and we even had a long discussion on game ethics following the perfect lunchtime question of whether eating animals was ethical. So is it ethical to make and play a game which is about a socially controversial issue? The discussion was unfinished and we returned to the conference.




Keynotes

Keynotes usually disappoint me but Don Ihde kept us all spellbound.  Ihde started by drawing a geometrical figure and asking us to rethink its spatiality. The diagram was, for him, a proscenium stage, a Mayan temple a many-headed robot and many things besides.  Ihde pointed to this and to the duck-rabbit diagram (used by Wittgenstein) to indicate the multiplicity of the player experience.  He showed how the sense of directionality varies from the Western compass-oriented notions to the South-Pacific islander’s notion of directionality as proximity. With respect to avatars, Ihde finds their position in the game interesting and increasingly complex.  Arguing against a perfect semblance where an avatar could be considered in a Laplacean universe, he instead advocated a model based on what he calls ‘multistability’.  Multistability is all about re-orientation and redefining of game space / experience.  Like the Bushmen who use the stretched bowstring to make music (instead of shooting arrows), videogames too are multistable systems where the player experience is reoriented according to the context. I brought back with me a poignant Ihde quote: ‘there is no space for fundamentalism in a multistable universe’.  View the keynote address here.

The other keynote that I liked was Gordon Calleja’s talk on incorporation. Calleja brought a fresh dimension into the debate about the immersion / involvement / flow concepts. I’ve read his book In-Game and I recommend it to any student of Game Studies.  Here’s the bit that I used in my paper:
The player incorporates (in the sense of internalising or assimilating) the game environment into consciousness while simultaneously being incorporated through the avatar into that environment. […] Put another way, incorporation occurs when the game world is present to the player while the player is simultaneously present, via her avatar, to the virtual environment.
Calleja sticks to FPS titles where this definition works well. In the question session, Patrick Coppock (oh yes, the man with the fantastic questions) wondered whether incorporation was possible in games like Solitaire and I would extend the question to real-time strategy games like Age of Empires. Over dinner, we had a quick ponder over the problem and my answer to this would be a Deleuzian one that would combine my notion of a ‘multiple consciousness’ concept and Mark Butler’s excellent piece on ‘becoming-zerg’ which will be familiar from my report on last year’s conference.  I also had a slight gripe about the comment that books and films do not evince incorporation but this is perhaps a literature student’s instinctive resistance – I’ll think about this more. View the keynote here.

The other two keynotes disappointed. In the first, Greg Currie from a Literary Studies background unfortunately was quite unaware about the discourse of videogame research and also perhaps not quite in agreement with established poststructuralist positions on the multiplicity of the text (see Barthes on the readerly and writerly text or Fish on reader-response). Graeme Kirkpatrick presented a well thought out paper on whether videogames can become art basing his notion of art on that of Pierre Bourdieu and then on that of philosopher Jean Ranciere. Kirkpatrick’s argument was complex and he even harkens back to the Ludology/Narratology debate from earlier on in Game Studies. Indeed, he goes on to point out that the really important characteristic of videogames is their emptiness. While I am not much familiar with Ranciere (next on my reading list) and the little experience I have with the aesthetics of videogames, I think such a stark contrast with the visual arts is problematic.  Here’s the video, however, and I’ll leave you to find out for yourself.

Philosophers and Gamers

In his closing speech, Olli Leino remarked that this iteration of the conference did not have people saying either ‘I am a philosopher and not a gamer’ or ‘I am a gamer and not a philosopher’ – the meld certainly worked out.  People are getting more receptive to the idea and the talks I attended clearly showed this.  I enjoyed the presentations of Geert Bruinsma, Paul Martin, Tom Hehir, Carolyn Jong, Jeffrey Dunn and Alex Baker-Graham among others. These were all new faces although I had met Paul and Carolyn earlier. The papers are all available online so I’d best leave you to form your own opinions. However, I cannot resist the urge to comment on a few of these.

Carolyn spoke on the ethics of the non-player characters in Dragon Age and this made me wonder if the ethics of the player-avatar constantly changes  /reconfigures with the different non-player characters she encounters.  I didn’t get a chance to ask her.

On the same subject of ethics (which had made its way into the main conference from our lunchtime conversation), Dunn’s presentation highlighted the asymmetry thesis which seems to say that actions committed in the virtual world are not real and hence do not count as far as morality is concerned.  Dunn went on to compare in-game actions to those in dreams (on which, however, the subject arguably has less control). His conclusion, after testing the asymmetry thesis , its opposite and one where elements of both apply, is as follows: it does point to a trade-off: ‘we can have a very realistic virtual world, or we can have a world that satisfies the Asymmetry Thesis, but we cannot have both. In the virtual as well as the real, it seems, everything comes with a cost’. Fair enough. My one main problem is that he does not refer to any previous work on game ethics, i.e. Miguel Sicart’s book, Christoph Klimmt excellent essay on moral desensitization, Will Slocombe on in-game morality and my own essay. Personally, I think the way forward is to replace any analysis of morality with ethics, especially as outlined by Spinoza in his letter to the rice merchant Blyenbergh. I discuss this at length in my essay on Deleuzian and Spinozist ethics as a way of addressing the ethics of in-game action.



Again, at the risk of sounding too fond of self-advertisement, I would perhaps also mention my papers on temporality and memory (from the Athens conference last year), in connection to  Hehir’s presentation.  As a hardcore and longtime proponent of narrativity in videogames, I really liked Hehir’s introduction of Paul Ricoeur into the analysis of videogames.  The narrative machine for me sounds great and I really liked the introduction of Virilio’s vision machine as a parallel. However,  I have a small observation on Hehir’s discussion of the reiteration of game narratives.  For Hehir, played experience and lived experience collapse into an imbricated relation such that the constructs begin to mirror each other, creating the possibility for experience unbeholden to reality.  Reality enters into a cyclical or teleological relation with fiction, such that fiction becomes lived as reality. This last bit from Baudrillard if it separates reality from the virtual  is problematic for me. In my earlier work on the difference and repetition (following Deleuze) of in-game iterations, I have argued how memory, play experience, imagination and the game’s immediate space of possibility are involved in the action that occurs. The Halo player’s experience that Hehir describes is  undistillable and perhaps beyond the pale of Baudrillard’s hyperreality.

The other paper that I liked a lot was Geert Bruinsma’s on the Deleuzian affection-image in videogame action. Not only was this an in-depth look at something I focused on in my earlier conference paper at Potsdam (which Geert kindly cited) but also this marked yet another new friendship. Geert introduces Merleau-Ponty, Alva Noe as well as Deleuze into the analysis of the videogame image. He applied his and earlier analyses of Deleuze’s movement-image  as an analytical model that would also test itself by analysing Doom 3, Fallout 3, and Shadow of the Colossus. Again,  the full scope of his argument is best revealed in his paper.

The rest of the conference time, with Geert  and others, was spent in the Prado, pubs and the lovely Madrid gardens. I also attended a fun workshop ongender and gaming where I learned how pathetic I was at playing Mirror’s Edge and where Patrick Coppock and Euridice Cabanes proved that gender wasn’t a watertight entity in influencing player action.

Avatar

Last but not least, a few words about my own presentation.  I heard the phrase ‘shameless plug’ used quite a bit at the conference so here’s my shameless plug. I presented on the concept of avatar in games and its hitherto unheeded roots in Hindu philosophy. My talk was meant more as an intervention – a necessary introduction of non-western philosophical discourses into Game Studies. I know Luke Cuddy has done something similar with his chapter on Halo and Buddhism and I myself spoke on Buddhist reincarnation and gaming at DiGRA ’09. This time it was different. Gamers the world over use the word avatar without bothering to check its etymology  - yet, unknown to them the word itself, in its original meaning,  incorporates the player experience in an excellent manner. My abstract below will provide an idea of what this paper is about:
Vishnu and the Videogame: The Videogame Avatar and Hindu Philosophy
In Hindu scripture and philosophy, the word avatar has existed for thousands of years. Its original usage differs from the sense that videogames, online media and recently James Cameron’s blockbuster have used the term - drawn  from Neal Stephenson’s usage of it in Snow Crash (2000) and from the videogame Habitat (Lucasfilm 1986)  to mean ‘ the graphical representation of the user or the user's alter ego or character’. For Hindus, the avatar is an object of worship and is the manifestation of divinity that descends on Earth to destroy evil. The commonest English translation of the term is ‘incarnation’ (literally ‘the being made flesh’) and with this is associated the idea of cyclical appearance manifested through birth and rebirth (reincarnation). The latter concept gets more tangled in Hindu and Buddhist rebirth eschatologies where rigid codifications of reincarnation are outlined. Whether the concept of the avatar in online media retains any of its roots in Hindu philosophy is a moot question. However, after over a decade of usage of the term and the lack of philosophical enquiry into its roots, the question is still one that merits the asking. Almost every game studies discussion mentions the avatar at least once and this paper will address the issue directly, through a comparison of the videogame avatar and its etymological counterpart in Hindu philosophy.


Unfortunately, I had to rush the paper towards the end and there was hardly time for questions.  The general feeling was that people welcomed the intervention and I had many people coming up to ask more about the Hindu concept of the avatar. For those interested here’s my paper and my slideshow.

I am back in Delhi now – still a bit jetlagged and still missing Madrid. As I close my eyes in what is early morning here, I see the Las Meninas. Only the figures seem to be moving. As in a videogame.


The Avatar Experience

Souvik Monday, February 15, 2010 , , , 2 comments
I'm struggling to keep up with things. I watched Avatar about three weeks ago and I would settle for no less than the much-feted 3-D version. Since then, I've been meaning to write about it. I found the film riddled with cliches to the extreme. War on terror, battle for resources, environmental issues and colonisation - all the boxes were ticked. That's not to say that I didn't enjoy it - specially the fun way in which Hollywood constructs everything that's not Western as quaintly primitive (blue skin, long ears and the capacity to link with ancestors through your ears) but bizarrely pristine and mystical. However, that's not what I'm going to talk about.

It's the title that intrigues me. Avatar: not many know that it's a Sankrit word meaning reincarnation, especially the famous ten incarnations of Vishnu. In recent cyber terms, 'avatar' has taken on a slightly different meaning - thanks to Neal Stephenson's novels. It is an 'incarnation' literally but excluding the sense of temporal recurrence that accompanies the Hindu use of the word. The movie uses 'avatar' just so - as the cyber embodiment of a character. As a game researcher (and long time gamer), I am quite familiar with this meaning as well. In my DiGRA paper I've argued that the understanding of avatar in game terms remains incomplete if we do not consider its temporal aspect as well. I won't shout about that now ...

What I do want to talk about is the film's use of the concept from the gaming scenario. On the CNet News site, David Terdiman quotes virtual worlds expert Bruce Damer as saying, "If you combine the Wii or (Microsoft's Project Natal) with augmented reality glasses or...just (hold) up your smart phone, you will 'see' into the virtual world that is cast all around you," Quite possibly.
If Natal delivers what it promises that will be amazing, there is no doubt about that. Whatever be the level of engagement with the 'virtual' world, the awareness of the player is not totally immersed in the experience of the videogame. Instead, there is what Gonzalo Frasca calls 'outmersion' (the awareness that you are not immersed or completely in the game world) and meta-outmersion (the awareness that are aware of being outmersed).

The film, Avatar, does not, contrary to many, simplify the process of identification of the avatar-body and the human operator. In a way, there is a similarity as well as a difference between this film and the slightly earlier release, The Surrogates. The humans in the latter seem more absorbed in their surrogate existence. The whole world lives and plays out in their surrogate existence or using their avatars, barring a small enclave which refuses to use surrogates. Jake, the protagonist in Avatar, however, is always aware of his other existence because the avatar he uses / inhabits is also aware that he is on a fact-finding mission. Further, in his avatar he is actually dealing with real creatures. In Surrogates, the protagonist (Bruce Willis) gets to encounter real humans as well, although other characters don't experience this as much. In Surrogates, people use their avatars to do things in their real day-to-day world whereas in Avatar , the use of avatars is restricted to a unexplored alien world. The externality of the avatar depends on this to an extent. In both cases, the real world interferes and clashes with the avatar. In the movies, real-world characters attack the avatars as well as their real world selves - sometimes simultaneously in the two different zones of real and avatar activity. An example of this in Avatar is when the US Marines move in to destroy Pandora and have to fight one of their own, Jake, in his avatar-self. Almost at the end of the movie, the chief antagonist tries to kill Jake's real and virtual selves simultaneously thus demarcating the differences while showing how they function together. There are scenes in both movies where it does seem that the involvement of the real and the avatar self are seamless but both the movies, albeit to a different degree, question the seamlessness that they point towards in their own way. The involvement with the avatar is not one of straightforward immersion and 'flow'; rather, it incorporates an experience of outmersion and meta-outmersion. The endings of the movies, of course, move towards extremes: Surrogates ends with the rejection of avatars and Avatar ends with the total passage of Jake into his avatar self. Taken together, both movies complicate our understanding of the 'avatar' as understood in current videogame parlance: the fact that two movies linked with a somewhat similar entity end in such diametrically opposite endings makes it difficult to deem any of the endings as a plausible way of understanding the avatar-experience. Instead, this reiterates the point that the experience of involvement in a virtual world through a mediated self is complex and varied. Immersion in the sense of submergence in a virtual reality does not explain this situation and it is great that a much contested idea in videogames (however involving and realistic) is being discussed by older media such as cinema with due attention being paid to its complexity.

In sum, I'm quite happy that both the films throw open more questions about the mediality of the avatar. As for the temporal aspect, I believe that although it is intrinsic to the understanding of the avatar, we will see it emerging in discussions and representations by the media in due course.



Responses to Some of the Questions at my DIGRA Paper

Souvik Thursday, September 03, 2009 , , , , , , , , , , , , No comments
Presenting at DIGRA was a dream come true.Back in them days, when I used to I used to wait for ages for my dial-up to download a DIGRA paper and suddenly the infamous Calcutta power-cuts would frustrate all my endeavours... II never thought I'd be at one of these conferences.

Well, I made it and now my paper's done. As my earlier post said, the paper was on Indic eschatologies and the multiple temporality in videogames. Not surprisingly, I re-traversed my favourite topic of difference, repetition and endings. Again, not surprisingly, I went back to Deleuze.

I am quite satisfied with the paper - in the way I never am, because all I aimed to do was to open up some perspectives and not to defend a thesis. The upshot of it all was that seen from alternative viewpoints (theological and philosophical), the multitelic instances of gameplay complicate the very idea of narrative itself. Through its obvious presence videogames, this complexity is also revealed in earlier and more canonical forms of narrative. Indeed, coming from a literary background, my prime concern happens to be narrative in the videogame.

The paper itself is not in the conference proceedings - because I messed up and did not submit on time. So I'll put it up here. I still use (and will forever use) the very idiosyncratically British MHRA citation system but I'm sure you can put up with it. Fact is, it took me almost three years to get the hang of it.

Now, for some answers to the questions I was asked:

Q1: how can the difference and repetition (and Karma as actualisation of potentialities) idea be squared with recorded instances of the game (i.e. in games where you can switch on the recording mode and replay your record - not 'replay' as in reloading a savegame but an action replay as in a football telecast)?

I view even that as a different event that paradoxically is the same. the difference here lies in the fact that the event is actualised under different factors (singularities) , for example, the pressing of the record button.

Q2: I don't remember the exact question since I was half-dead with fatigue by then - in short, why is all this linking with karma etc useful? We already know that games have repeating instances.


Well, I am interested in narratives in videogames and one of the reasons why game-narratives are considered problematic is because of their multiple instances - which effectively confuse the hell out of formalist narratologies. To analyse the story(ies) in the game is to grapple with the problem of repetition. And no, the problem of repetition is not a given and is far more complex than game studies yet can tackle. Fresh perspectives are therefore necessary. This, however, has not fallen from the sky ... ancient philosophies were already engaging with this : games add to this serious philosophical discussion. another reason why games are important. my conclusion was pretty clear about this. And yes, Deleuze is very important in engaging with this. Game theorists the world over are now beginning to approach game studies from the Deleuzian perspective (read Bogost and Galloway for a start). I was also heartened that the commissioning editor of MIT Press, Doug Sery, made the obvious connection with DeLanda (himself an important commentator on Deleuze) and videogames --- something that academics in the field have often missed.

This also partly answers another question I don't see death in games as being trivial - because I'm looking at the narrative aspect. Even if you look at it like Frasca does ('it trivialises life' etc), as I say, this is a limited response based on a linear theology.

And after that little lecture, a question which though answered somewhat clearly at the time, is beginning to make me think in retrospect:

Q3: Is there a connection between videogames and the religious experience?

I'm not sure and i think I need to think this through. The paper, however, uses the theology in its philosophical aspect and shies away from religious commentary. This question, however, opens up a whole new angle (by the way, The Escapist was supposed to do an issue on games and religion).

Jesper Juul's comment on board-games also involving similar issues is interesting. I know I need to do something on Indian conceptions of play (Lila and khel/ krira etc) but am hesitant because this will involve a rather heavy study (parallel to the work on Huizinga etc) that I am reluctant in undertaking just yet, especially with my scant knowledge of the field.

Arnav Jhala's comments backing up my response about the Indian gaming situation were helpful: I didn't know that some people have tried making a Mahabharat game.

Anyway, got to get some sleep before leaving home at an ungodly hour to attend the last day of DIGRA. Apols for the stacatto writing. And I'll upload the paper tomorrow after cleaning it up a bit.

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