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Social Realism & Allegories of Control By Trent Cobb, Brittany Weimar, & Jeremy Lesser DMS448
Social Realism & Allegories of Control
By Trent Cobb, Brittany Weimar, & Jeremy Lesser
DMS448
Realism“The conventional wisdom on realism in gaming is that, because life today is so computer mediated, gamers actually benefit from hours of realistic gameplay The time spent playing games trains the gamer to be close to the machine, to be quick and responsive, to understand interfaces, to be familiar with simulated worlds.”
*Bartender VR SImulator
Representation“One of the central theoretical issues in video gaming is how and in what way one can make connections between the gaming world and the real world, both from the inside outward in the form of affective action, and from the outside inward in the form of realistic modeling. In previous theories of visual culture, this is generally referred to as the problematic of representation.”
Representation“Representation refers to the creation of meaning about the world through images. It is no longer sufficient to talk about the visual or textual representation of meaning. Instead the game theorist must talk about actions, and the physical or game worlds in which they transpire.”
The Columbine Theory“Realism in gaming is about the extension of one’s own social life. The Columbine theory claims the reverse, that games can somehow exert “realistic” effects back onto the gamer.”
Realism’s Congruence Requirement
“...there must be some kind of congruence, some type of fidelity of context that transliterates itself from the social reality of the gamer, through one’s thumbs, into the game environment and back again…”
Postal 2Game’s tagline:
“Remember, it’s only as violent as you are!”
Realism’s Critical Reflection
“...game studies should follow these same arguments and not turn to a theory of realism in gaming as mere realistic representation, but define realist games as those games that reflect critically on the minutiae of everyday life, replete as it is with struggle, personal drama, and injustice…”
Parents for Decency Protesters
They protest the game company Running With Scissors (RWS) by chanting “Games are bad, they make you mad.”Then they shoot up the RWS office.
“Health” Pipes
My Experience with Postal 2
Main takeaway: How you minimize, or maximize, violence is analogous to real life confrontations.
(A pacifist run is near impossible!)
Postal 2’s Criticisms of Society
•Hypocrisy (Protesters, Catholic confessionals)•Drugs•Violence (Police brutality, your own violence, protester violence)•And more…
These are important issues to address in society. However, there are better, and less offensive, ways to explore, address, and solve these issues.
Postal 2 Reflection
Allegories of control
Allegory definition:allegory is a metaphor whose vehicle may be a character, place or event, representing real-world issues and occurrences.
>this can be seen in many forms of art including video games
More info
>Allegories can be used as metaphors for politics ,gender and other aspects of society.
example
“control is precisely the most important thing to show on the screen if one wishes to allegorize political power today.”
To win means to know the system. And thus to interpret a game means to interpret its algorithm
Button mashers
“Tekken or Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater hinge on the operator’s ability to motor-memorize button combinations for specific moves. The algorithms for such moves are usually documented in the game sleeve by using a coded notation similar to tablature for music (“Up X-X-O” on a PlayStation controller”
>Still supports the notion that the player has control within an algorithm.
Continuing
“Video games are allegories for our contemporary life under the protocological network of continuous informatic control. In fact, the more emancipating games seem to be as a medium, substituting activity for passivity or a branching narrative for a linear one, the more they are in fact hiding the fundamental social transformation into informatics that has affected the globe during recent decades.”
Sources● https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/sep/16/gta-5-review-grand-theft-auto-v● https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCo_IB5145EVNcf8hw1Kku7w● http://freddy-fazbears-pizza.wikia.com/wiki/Thread:67249● https://www.wattpad.com/79446912-five-nights-at-freddy%27s-the-real-story-the-story● https://kotaku.com/someone-actually-tried-testing-out-if-gta-v-cops-are-ra-1691180811● https://youtu.be/AxhyOy9yrcA● https://www.gamespot.com/articles/postal-2-banned-in-new-zealand/1100-6114067/● https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_2● http://store.steampowered.com/app/223470/POSTAL_2/● https://gamesgenderandsociety.files.wordpress.com/2017/01/dms448-galloway.pdf●
