Mc1week 5 09

Virtual Reality: Playing Games

Week 5: Media Cultures 1NEWM1001

Tracey Meziane Benson

Walter Benjamin

‘By close-ups of the things around us, by focusing on hidden details of familiar objects, by exploring commonplace milieus under the ingenious guidance of the camera, the film, on the one hand, extends our comprehension of the necessities which rule our lives, on the other hand, it manages to assure us of an immense and unexpected field of action.’

‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’, Illuminations, New York: Schocken Books, 1968, 236.

Slide credit: Catherine Summerhayes

Some ideas for thinking about computer games

Transcoding Interactivity and Intervention Immersion Body training


Transcoding

1. One meaning: shifting between platforms

2. Manovich’s meaning: the relationship between the ‘computer layer’ and the ‘cultural layer’.


Transcoding

1. One meaning: shifting between platforms

2. Manovich’s meaning: the relationship between the ‘computer layer’ and the ‘cultural layer’.

Immersion

‘the experience of being inside the world of a constructed image… the experience of the user of certain new media technologies (particular VR, but also video games) in which the subject loses any sense of themselves as separate from the medium or its simulated world.’

Lister, Martin et al. New Media: A Critical Introduction, London and New York: Routledge, 2003, 387.


Virtual Reality: networked

2. ‘… a way of imaging the invisible space of communication networks … The VR of online networks (as in the worlds of MUDs or MOOs…) is the product of text. (The places and persons in these kinds of virtual worlds are described in written language much as they have been traditional in literature. In fact, certain genres of literature predominate).’


Virtual Reality - Immersive

There are two main kinds that can be distinguished:Lister et al. pp 35-36

1. Immersion: ‘a site-specific enclosure in technology … predominantly an image environment, in which the aural and tactile senses are also engaged.


Older and New VRs

That real/imagined space of communication The term is also retrospectively being used to

describe reception of cinema and telephonic communication. It could also possibly be used to describe the world of letter-writing: snail mail?

New thoughts include how we are now able, through this term and concept, to imagine our own bodies and identities – new forms of embodiment


VR and Playing

and two different kinds of playing:

1. Ludus – rules, playing within the rules

2. Paida – creative play


Kinds of Games to Play (Roger Callois)

Schechner, R. Performance Studies. An introduction, London: Routledge, 2002, 84.

1. ‘Agon or competition… where there are winners and losers. The outcome is determined by the skills and/or strength of the players – sports, chess. Strict rules. Playing within the rules (or not! Eg scrabble)

2. Alea or chance … where fate, luck, or grace determines the winner – dice, polka


3. Mimicry or simulation. Playing within an imaginary make-believe, or illusory world. – theatre, children’s make-believe play.

4. Ilinx or dizziness. Playing to induce a disorientating experience or state of mind – spinning, roller-coaster rides, getting “crazy drunk”.’


The business of building characters and stories

Games are like ‘action movies’ where it is not so much about who the character is – s/he has a mysterious past – but what s/he does.

The game character is more an avatar for our own agency, constrained by the rules

Things change a bit though with simulation games …


Narratology and Games

‘Even when they present players with narrative experiences, then, video games force an experience of that narrative that differs in vital ways from getting a story through a film or novel.’

‘Everquest, narratology and world-view’

Wesp and Hyot 2004, PMC 14:2 http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/postmodern_culture/v014/14.2hayot_wesp.html


Narratology and Games

‘Even when they present players with narrative experiences, then, video games force an experience of that narrative that differs in vital ways from getting a story through a film or novel.’

‘Everquest, narratology and world-view’

Wesp and Hyot 2004, PMC 14:2 http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/postmodern_culture/v014/14.2hayot_wesp.html

Playing the software – challenging the rules (Lister et al. p 278)

the idea that in a game we are not so much identifying with a character as with the software itself –

with the game and its rules, with the software as a narrative as a mapping of the software


The Sims as community

Community: http://thesims2.ea.com/ Modders: http://www.modthesims2.com/ Online: not as good?


Body Training ‘Computer simulated immersive environments are clearly an

effective tool for bodily training, demonstrated by their use in civil aviation and in the military… So while the electronic game industry vehemently counters claims that interactive electronic games have any real-life consequences, psychotherapists employ simulation technologies precisely because they have effect in people’s lives.’

‘Representation, Enaction, and the Ethics of Simulation’, Simon Penny in First Person. New Media as Story, Performance, and Game, Eds. N. Wardrip-Fruin, P. Harrigan, Cambridge, Massacusetts, London, England: The MIT Press, 2004, 74.


Sims as an antiterrorist tool …

‘… the [US] Navy has been using The Sims to model the organisation of terrorist cells (Kaplan 2001).’


Kinds of Computer games

Translated Games: chess, golf etc First Person Shooter Role Playing – playing of self? Multi – User Domains (Dungeons) (MUDs) - games Massive Multi-User Online Role-Playing Games

(MMORPGs) Simulations and creating narratives with Computer

Generated Images Any others?


Everquest A Massive Multi-User Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG) When Wesp and Hyot were writing, 430,000 players, up to 3,000

at a time, across 48 servers. (6-7) Community formation Rules, game structure and playing produce a ‘balance’ between

different groups, no one group will win in the long term. (10) This can bring about a sense of a homogenous, ideal community

which in turn is supportive of a particular world-view, and ‘as players interact, kill things, advance their characters… it may be that they experience little that is narrative at all.’ (11)


An interview with Sims maker: Will Wright

‘I wanted to ask you about this idea of experimentation as a play mechanic. That seems like a big aspect of your games, that play and experimentation are working together.’

Pearce, Celia: "Sims, BattleBots, Cellular Automata, God and Go: A conversation with Will Wright." in Game Studies, Volume 2, issue 1.

URI: http://www.gamestudies.org/0102/pearce/


Gonzalo Frasca’s site and article

http://ludology.org/staticpages/index.php?page=20041216022502102

http://www.ludology.org/articles/ludology.htm


Grand Theft AutoFrasca’s ode to its freedom from the constrains of narrative.http://www.gamestudies.org/0302/frasca/

‘Every once in a while, an important game is released. By "important" I mean a game that can change our idea of what games are supposed to be.’

‘Freedom is the ultimate promise of so-called new media: virtual reality, the internet and videogames aim to empower their users with freedom (or at least the illusion of freedom).’


Ibid. ‘GTA3 allows you to perform a lot of actions in an immense

playground. To mention just a few: you can hit and kill people, carjack and drive an enormous variety of vehicles, use several cool weapons, play vigilante, be a taxi driver, repair and paint you car, listen to several radio stations, have sex with prostitutes and burn people alive. And these are just some of the possibilities.

Traditionally, this kind of freedom was only available in roleplaying games (RPGs) and, more recently, in massively multiplayer online worlds.’

i.e. Not bogged down or constrained by narrative requirements laid down in the game’s rules


Games as art?

Art: where virtual realities created on screens require the audience to interact and participate in order to ‘drive’ the performance of the art work.

Art for art’s sake? Ethics and conventions


Game as Art ‘In more recent years, games have caught the eye of the art

community at large, opening a new channel for the future of games in art, as presented by artists using new media and museums. Austria-based Ars Electronica, for the first time in its 20-year history, awarded a 2001 Golden Nica prize to an online interactive computer game, Banja, developed by TEAMcHmAn in France. MASS MoCA presented Game Show, a 2001 exhibition and catalogue, aimed to explore how artists are using game structures in their work.

http://culturalpolicy.uchicago.edu/conf2001/papers/sandor.html

Game as Art ‘In more recent years, games have caught the eye of the art

community at large, opening a new channel for the future of games in art, as presented by artists using new media and museums. Austria-based Ars Electronica, for the first time in its 20-year history, awarded a 2001 Golden Nica prize to an online interactive computer game, Banja, developed by TEAMcHmAn in France. MASS MoCA presented Game Show, a 2001 exhibition and catalogue, aimed to explore how artists are using game structures in their work.

http://culturalpolicy.uchicago.edu/conf2001/papers/sandor.html


Is this a game? …or is it art?Chris Chesher 2004 National Gallery of Australia, 24 April 2004http://www.nga.gov.au/Home/Frameset.cfm?View=../Menus/events.htm

‘Look at examples of computer games and new media art, and you’ll see clear immediate differences in form, style and content. The worlds represented by games tend to follow certain formulae: sci-fi dystopias, battlefields, magical forests, medieval shires, sports fields, and decaying cities. Games usually have clear objectives, and give challenges you have to overcome. Activities for players most often follow some standard clichés: shooting, fighting, driving, or being boss of the world! Characters within games tend to be stereotypes: women and men with unlikely figures; and an array of animals who look like they’ve escaped from a Star Trek make-up room. And blood. Lots of blood.’


On new media art On the other hand, if you look at examples of new

media art you’ll find quite a different range of work: robotic installations, large-screen projections, head-mounted displays, or other specialised apparatuses, using various customised configurations of hardware and software that work more or less reliably. Images often tend to be more abstract, and less discernible as representations or simulations. In a game you usually know if you have won; in new media art the outcomes tend to be more obscure and open to interpretation.

Chesher 2004


And the similarities However, many examples seem to contradict these patterns.

Games like Rez look more like art works. In some games, such as The Sims, or many social role-playing games, winning or losing seems quite unimportant. And there are many game-like artworks: for example, Blast theory’s Desert Rain, which features a collaborative game narrative in virtual environment. Even Char Davies’ work has a game-like dimension. Artists like Feng Mengbo use games engines to create art works that play just like a game, and feature scenes of extreme violence because they are, well pretty much games. The machinima movement, which uses games engines to create works that are somewhat cinematic, has quite an ambiguous position, outside any clear status as cinema, art or game. The website selectparks features a large catalogue of art games.

Chesher 2004


And Selectparks

http://www.selectparks.net/

http://www.artificial.dk/articles/artgamesnetworks.htm

Games and art in common:

Art and games have many things in common, largely because their operations relate to sensation, affect and narrative. That is, they explore techniques that generate sensations, feelings and emotions and tell stories. Artists and players of games tend to be particularly sensitive to historically specific and distinctive ways of relating to others: rituals, cultural arrangements, and patterns of all kinds. They play around with perceptions, affects and imagination.

Chesher 2004


Games as Personal/Political

Political Art: eg. Escape From Woomera:‘Players are challenged to escape using the

means at hand – refugee action groups, sympathetic lawyers, bureaucratic means, digging tunnels or scaling fences – all based on actual events’.

David Marr quoting The Age, in The Sydney Morning Herald, 10/10/05 p13.

What do you think?

In 2003, this art/game was funded for $25,000 by the Australia Council’s New Media Arts Board, and drew strong criticism from the Government Ministers for the Arts and Immigration at the time.

Now it is available to view and use in the Image Games Lab in ACMI.

BTW: the New Media Arts Fund was given notice by the Federal Government in 2004.


Games References (1) Computer Games and Serious Play Games exhibitions Games for Change:

http://www.seriousgames.org/gamesforchange/ Selectparks: http://www.selectparks.net/ State of Play (ACMI): http://www.acmi.net.au/state_of_play.jsp Game studies Ludology (Gonzalo Frasca): http://ludology.org/ Game Studies: http://www.gamestudies.org/ Game Culture: http://www.game-culture.com/ Artificial on

Artgames:http://www.artificial.dk/articles/artgamesnetworks.htm

Games References (2)Books and articles Atkins, Barry, More than a game: the computer game as fictional form,

Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003. Frasca, Gonzalo, "Ephemeral games: Is it barbaric to design videogames after

Auschwitz?" http://www.ludology.org/articles/ephemeralFRASCA.pdf Frasca, Gonzalo, "Videogames of the Oppressed," electronic book review,

http://www.electronicbookreview.com/v3/servlet/ebr?command=view_essay&essay_id=frasca .

Galloway, Alexander R., "Social Realism in Gaming," Game Studies 4.1 (November 2004), http://www.gamestudies.org/0401/galloway/.

Juul, Jesper, "Games Telling stories? A brief note on games and narratives," Game Studies 1.1 (July 2001), http://www.gamestudies.org/0101/juul-gts/.


Games References (3) King, Lucien, ed., Game on: the history and culture of videogames, London:

Laurence King, 2002. Poole, Steven, Trigger happy: videogames and the entertainment revolution,

New York: Arcade, 2000. Wardrip-Fruin, Noah, and Pat Harrigan, eds., First person: new media as story,

performance and game, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2004 Wolf, Mark J. P., and Bernard Perron, The video game theory reader, New York:

Routledge, 2003 Wolf, Mark J. P., ed., The medium of the videogame, Austin: University of Texas

Press, 2001. Woods, Stewart, "Loading the Dice: The Challenge of Serious Videogames",

Game Studies 4.1 (November 2004), http://www.gamestudies.org/0401/woods/. Russell Smith, 9 May 2005


Date post:	12-Jan-2015
Category:	Technology
Upload:	tracey-m-benson
View:	666 times
Download:	3 times

Mc1week 5 09

Technology