Interpreting Video Games through the Lens of Modernity By A

Interpreting Video Games through the Lens of Modernity
By A. Braxton Soderman
B.A., Vassar College, 1999
M.F.A., California Institute of the Arts, 2002
M.A., Brown University, 2007
A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy
in the Department of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University
Providence, Rhode Island
May 2011
© Copyright 2011 by A. Braxton Soderman
This dissertation by A. Braxton Soderman is accepted in its present form
by the Department of Modern Culture and Media as satisfying the
dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.
Date_____________
_________________________________
Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, Advisor
Recommended to the Graduate Council
Date____________
_________________________________
Mary Ann Doane, Reader
Date_____________
_________________________________
Philip Rosen, Reader
Approved by the Graduate Council
Date_____________
_________________________________
Peter M. Weber, Dean of the Graduate School
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CURICULUM VITAE
A. Braxton Soderman was born in Minneapolis, MN in 1977. He graduated from
Vassar with a B.A. in Philosophy in 1999, received an M.F.A. in Critical Writing from
California Institute of the Arts in 2003, and an M.A. in Modern Culture and Media from
Brown University in 2007. In the Spring of 2008 he taught the course ―Code, Software,
and Serious Games‖ in the Modern Culture and Media Department at Brown
University. In 2009 he was awarded an Andrew W. Mellon/ACLS Dissertation
Completion Fellowship, and in 2010, an Andrew W. Mellon/ACLS Recent Doctoral
Recipient Fellowship.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I owe my deepest gratitude to my advisor and mentor Wendy Chun. Her
confidence in my project, her continuous support, and her generous ideas and sharp
suggestions have motivated all the pages that follow. No algorithm could be written to
measure the dominion of her influence. Likewise, the insights and creative acumen of my
readers, Mary Ann Doane and Philip Rosen, have been indispensible for my thought. I
cannot express in proper words how much the entire dissertation is marked by the
influence and considerate patience of all my dissertation advisors. If theoretical and
critical thinking is a ―serious game‖ then they have taught me how to play with as much
grace and creativity as I could muster. In addition, this dissertation emerges from the
energetic terrain of Brown University where the level of intellectual sophistication and
the bountiful friendship of the community touch all who study therein. Many thanks for
the rich conversations, unending assistance, and friendship from Erika Balsom, David
Bering-Porter, Genie Brinkema, John Cayley, Yuri Furuhata, Josh Guilford, Liza Hebert,
Daniel Howe, Lynne Joyrich, Justin Katko, Julie Levin-Russo, Richard Manning, Susan
McNeil, Pooja Rangan, Ellen Rooney, Paige Sarlin, Michael Siegel, Marc Steinberg, Matt
Tierney, and Mark Tribe. I must also mention that this dissertation was completed
through the generous support of an Andrew W. Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion
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Fellowship; this award was indispensible for providing ample time for research and
reflection. Then there are those that one cannot thank enough because they are always
there, the trellis of our lives as we climb, supporting us at every criss-crossing juncture
of decision. Thus, to my family, ―Thank you!‖ Finally, this dissertation would have been
impossible to write without the help of Roxanne Carter. If family is the trellis, she
becomes the flowers that grow there. At every juncture she has gardened out the
errors and planted new ideas to grow: when the ideas that follow wither it is because I
have failed to give them enough sun, but if there are blossoms to be found then it was in
her hands that they first found cultivation.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
1-67
 The Discourse and Subject of Flow in Video Games
68-181
 For Time Flows On: Innovation and Opposition in Video Games 182-289
 Flo and Diner Dash: Killing Time, Gender, and the
Woman Who Waits
290-381
 Escaping Into the Clouds: Interactive Space in Games
382-439
Epilogue
440-448
Works Cited
449-463
vii
ILLUSTRATIONS
Figures
Introduction
1. Empty Brain
2. Fluid
3. Emptied
4. Injected
5. Monochrome world
6. The kitchen
7. Driving to work
8. The graveyard
9. Jump
10. The final scene
11. Approaching the cubicle one
12. Approaching the cubicle two
13. Approaching the cubicle three
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14. Arrival at work
15. Tuboflex, Looking out the window
16. Tuboflex, Looking at the clock
Chapter One
1. flOw title screen
2. flOw for PlayStation 3
3. A simple theoretical model of flow.
4. A ―wider‖ flow channel provided for different skilled players
5. Traffic Light
6. Understated
7. Spectacular
9. ―Camera Food‖ screenshot
Chapter Two
1. Rule changes from dramatic to epic theater
2. untitled game, Section ―Ctrl-9‖
3. Wait, A field of grass
4. Wait, Trees
5. We the Giants
6. This is the Only Level, Stage 1
7. This is the Only Level, Stage 7
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8. Tower of Goo
9. Examples of different structures
10. ―Product Z‖ Advertisement
11. Windfall: the Oil Crisis Game Title screen
12. Revolution
13. Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon
14. Braid title screen
15. Braid
16. Braid
Chapter Three
1. Hardcore Vs. Casual Gamer
2. Diner Dash
3. Gameplay elements in Diner Dash
4. Flo flees a stressful office job
5. Flo exclaims, ―I gotta lose these guys!!‖
6. Flo's revelation
7. Flo's expressions one
8. Flo's expressions two
9. Flo's expressions three
10. Flo meets the goddess
11 Flo‘s transformation
x
12 Nirvana
13. Final narrative cut-scene
Chapter Four
1. Spirit clouds
2. Towers and Clouds
3. Flo's Cloud
4. Office Windows
5. Empty Sky
6. Window of escape
7. Cloud Title screen
8. Hospital bed
9. Zoom in or out
10. Zoom in or out
11. Drawing figures
12. Company logo
13. A reconstruction of Brunelleschi‘s first experiment
14. Rectilinear and Curvilinear perspective for clouds
13. Drawing figure
14. Rendered as clouds
15. Rendered as balls
16. Rendered as points
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17. Viewer‘s perspective
18. Super Mario Cloud
19. Coin heaven
20. Spacewar!
21. Cloud Art
22. Epilogue Cloud
23. Hand on the Wall
24. ―Abstract painting of a hand I presume..."
25. The machine and user connecting
Epilogue
1. Tuboflex, Working the phones
2. Tuboflex, Looking out the window
3. Tuboflex, Looking at the player
xii
INTRODUCTION
Interpreting Video Games through the Lens of Modernity is, as any title should be,
strategic. It should strike many readers as anachronistic, with the medium of video
games mentioned within the same breath as the period of modernity. Is not such a
move a simple mistake in proper dating, placing the emergence of video games too early
in the chronology of technical media and their development, an anachronism or a
computational error concerning time? And also, does not the title place the idea of
modernity in relation to a time which is too late, a parachronism as it's called? Has not
the period of modernity been superseded by postmodernity, and would not video
games find a more comfortable home within the suburban neighborhood of
postmodernity, their obvious contemporary milieu? After all, video games and theories
of postmodernity have grown up together over the last forty or so years.
On the one hand, the title situates the dissertation within the general idea that
the forces of modernity have not been completely superseded by a new historical
rupture called postmodernity. This is hardly a startling suggestion given the multiple
theorists who have suggested that the term postmodernity should be replaced by
concepts such as supermodernity (Augé), second modernity (Beck), reflexive modernity
(Giddens, Lash), radicalized modernity (Giddens), liquid modernity (Bauman), and
hypermodernity (Lipovetsky). All of these terms implicitly suggest that something has
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indeed changed in modernity, that the forces which drove the original emergence of
modernity—industrialization, capitalism, urbanization, the waning of religious belief, the
acceleration of technical development, the arrival of technical media, etc.—have shifted
giving rise to new social formations, political realities, economic relations and indeed,
new media forms as well. Instead of asserting that these changes create a radical break
with modernity and also aesthetic modernism, the current mutations and transitions
must be thought as linked to older, historical problems. Hence, the term
―postmodernity‖ contains the term ―modernity‖ as its most immediate referent; hence,
the theoretical alternatives to the concept of postmodernity listed above all reference
modernity as the site of mutation. Even a theorist such as Fredric Jameson—who
embraces the names postmodernity and postmodernism as concepts that seek to name
the current historical situation—establishes a historical trajectory where the mutations
of postmodernity are seen as a radical furthering of historical developments, specifically
as extensions and transformations of capitalist modernity. Transformation is a key word
here. By no means do I disagree with the idea that transformations are occurring.
Indeed, the term ―modernity‖ in the title of this dissertation is not intended to mark a
period of time that ended somewhere in the 1960s or 1970s, but to encompass both its
historical aspects—vaguely positioned in the nineteenth century with the rise of
capitalist industrialization and also technical media forms—and its contemporary
transformations. Within these transformations one can expect problems and issues
associated with historical modernity and aesthetic modernism to ―live on,‖ to repeat
(though perhaps with a difference), to become micromodernities flowing within the
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macro-current of contemporary society (or first modernities embedded in the
transformations of a second modernity, or solid modernities that continue into liquid
modernity, etc.).
On the other hand, the invocation of video games beside the term modernity is
also meant to trouble the academic discipline of video games studies, suggesting that
larger historical frameworks of analysis can benefit our understanding of the video game
form while also suggesting that video games themselves can be seen as particular
aesthetic crystallizations that inform us about current cultural transformations. I have
often been struck—like a bout of déjà vu—that certain problems and issues arising in the
culture of contemporary video games harbor intriguing connections to discourses
emerging in the historical periods of modernity and aesthetic modernism, forcing me to
realize that by embedding the analysis of video games within larger historical trajectories
and discourses I could pursue a methodology that would expose continuations and
repetitions of older, historical problems (for example, repetitions of older processes of
commodification or the gendering of high and low culture) while also attempting to
reveal how these problems have changed. I also argue that theories developed in
relation to media forms such as television and film should not be ignored or excluded in
an attempt to articulate the ―newness‖ of video games, but they should be embraced as
rich resources which can be compared to the theorization of the video game form—a
methodological pursuit that is partially stymied by current theoretical trends within
game studies (which I will touch on below).
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In this dissertation I use particular video games to interpret larger theoretical
questions that have emerged in the twentieth century—questions about contemporary
forms of subjectivity that the video game positions and the ideologies which are
reinforced through this positioning, about the continued gendering of high and low
culture and the buried mechanisms within aesthetic modernism which drives this
division, about the relationship of modernist aesthetics to the hegemony of capitalist
innovation and the possibility of opposing such innovation, etc.. Certain video games
thus emerge as symptoms of larger theoretical issues, and thus this dissertation is not
simply about video games—their unique formal properties or medium specificity, how
one can define the terms ―game‖ or ―play,‖ etc.—but about using specific games in
order to interpret issues in contemporary culture and their relationship to the past.
Indeed, the title of this dissertation could have been Interpreting Modernity through the
Lens of Video Games, and at times such seems a more accurate description of the
interpretative process. My goal is not simply to engage with the video game community
but to expand interest in video games to scholars working within other disciplines that
investigate these larger theoretical issues. Nevertheless, I also wish to address the
games studies community, and thus each individual chapter intervenes in discussions and
debates surrounding video games specifically— discussions about games and subjectivity,
the gendered differences between hardcore and casual games, the oppositional
possibilities of independent games, and others. (These interventions also focus on
particular objects—specific games, genres of games, etc.—that have been largely
untouched by scholars in the field.) Thus, while this dissertation examines the medium
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of video games, contributing to an understanding of their form, it also moves beyond
this goal, putting video games to work in the service of working through larger
theoretical problems. The intertwining of these two goals marks the interdisciplinary
desire murmuring within the heart of the dissertation, attempting to speak to multiple
interests—in media studies, game studies, visual studies, in theories of modernity and
postmodernity, in theories of aesthetics and politics, etc.—while inevitably reaching for
its own voice. Admittedly, such a voice stutters as much as it sings, but the fluctuating
timbre of its vocalization is less important than its desire to communicate.
Let me first situate the dissertation in terms of these two goals, first explaining
how I am using the concept of modernity and then turning to explain my approach to
video games in terms of recent trends in game studies. Finally, I will present an analysis
of a game which helps to clarify the goals and methodology of this project.
The Flow(s) of Modernity
In order to concentrate the interpretative attention of my analysis, I have chosen
to focus on the idea of flow—a term that has become a keyword in the theorization of
contemporary society, especially in discourses that attempt to understand
transformations between modernity and postmodernity (or from an earlier stage of the
modernity into a later stage). It is not without interest that various theories and
concepts of flow emerged within in the 70s—often demarcated as the beginning of
postmodernity, post-industrial society, the information or networked society, post5
Fordism (or, depending on one's perspective, neo-Fordism), and late capitalistic society.
One thinks of Alvin Toffler's analysis of the accelerated ―flow of situations‖ in Future
Shock (1970), Deleuze and Guattari's heavy reliance on a concept of flow to construct a
theory of desire and capitalism in Anti-Oedipus (1972), Raymond Williams' concept of
flow in relation to television (1974), and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's sociological and
psychological theory of flow which he first described within Beyond Boredom and Anxiety:
The Experience of Play in Work and Games (1975). Other work that invoked the concept
of flow followed shortly after—such as numerous extensions and critiques of Raymond
Williams' concept of flow, Fredric Jameson's notion of ―total flow‖ (1991), Manuel
Castells' theory of the ―space of flows‖ (1996), and Arjun Appadurai's analysis of ―global
cultural flows‖ in ―Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy‖ (1990).
These later uses of flow were also concerned with processes of societal transformation
and globalization that emerged in the nineteen seventies and eighties. This eruption of
theoretical interest in the concept of flow indicates a desire to describe a heightened
sense of accelerated cultural change, mobility, circulation, and transformation.1
Zygmunt Bauman's recent book Liquid Modernity helps to understand how
notions of flow and fluidity are useful for discussing the continuities and discontinuities
between different stages in the development of modernity. Working within a recent vein
of sociology that seeks to displace the radical newness of postmodernity (Giddens,
Beck, Lash, etc.) Bauman theorizes a movement from what he calls heavy or solid
modernity to that of light or fluid modernity. Fluid modernity acts as Bauman's term for
what is generally called postmodernity, post-industrial capitalism, the information
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society, etc., whereas solid modernity refers to modern developments in the nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries. Generally, solid modernity identifies a period obsessed
with heavy machinery and large centralized factory production, rationalized labor forms
such as Taylorism and Fordism which manage and control the flow of production at
both macro and micro levels, insistence on spatial conquest and control, integration of
the individual into rigid social and class formations, etc.. Fluid modernity identifies the
breakdown of the structures of solid modernity where centralized factories and heavy
machinery give way to decentralized financial structures and computerization, where the
anchoring of the laborer at the assembly line is replaced with the short-term precarious
labor of the free-floating worker, where spatial conquest gives way to temporal
instantaneity that renders space obsolete, where larger social structures such as class
give way to ―life-politics‖ and the self-management of the individual, where the freemarket is further freed from regulation and control, and where the solid production of
material goods begins to evaporate with the capitalist production of immaterial goods
such as information and knowledge. These distinctions could be multiplied. Yet, while
some of these differences might strike one as typical, Bauman understands that the
liquidity and flow of modernity were present from its inception, and that the emergence
of liquid modernity was an intensification of processes begun long before.
Marx and Engels famously wrote in The Communist Manifesto: ―All fixed, fast
frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are
swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is
solid melts into air....‖ Bauman invokes this moment in the manifesto to show that the
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liquefying processes of fluid modernity were certainly inscribed within the dynamics of
industrialization and the removal of hardened traditions; from its inception capitalist
modernity embraced the ―melting of solids (that is, by definition, dissolving whatever
persists over time and is negligent of its passage or immune to its flow)‖ (Liquid
Modernity 3). In Marx and Engels' statement, the first wave of industrial modernity is
positioned as an assault of accelerated change, mutation and flow wrought by a
―constant revolutionizing [of] the instruments of production.‖ Such a force was positive
for Marx and Engels—marking the bourgeois revolution and its overthrow of stagnant
and oppressive feudal relations—yet also negative in that such changes were largely
recoded as rampant exploitation through increased alienation and division of labor—
human labor becoming ―an appendage to the machine,‖ etc.. Though Marx and Engels
suggest a lack of ossification within the dynamics of capitalism (the gases never
completely returning to solids), clearly this accelerated change was met with attempts to
manage and control it—either positively through erecting a more just and solid
communal society that would channel the dynamics of accelerated production for the
benefit of society, or negatively through the capitalist solidification of exploitation
(however temporary and malleable) where the movements of the exploited could be
directed, the ―ossified‖ skeletons of management animating living labor according to the
needs of capital. For Bauman, the true difference between liquid and solid modernity is
that, in the case of the latter, the fluidity of change and the dissolving of social,
economic, and cultural traditions was met with the desire to construct an environment
more solid, more lasting than the false solidity that had come before. For example, the
8
false solidity of a bourgeois society would be replaced with the more rigorous, solid
foundation of socialism with increased regulations and rationalized, economic planning.
Or, on a more fundamental level (which was not necessarily attached to the building of a
more just society), the traditional forms of society would be dissolved in order to pave
the royal road of ―instrumental rationality‖ which would remove inefficiencies that
plagued traditional economic structures so that a more rigorous and rational
organization could be permanently installed (e.g. the Fordist and Taylorist
rationalizations of the production line) (Liquid 4). In solid modernity, the means of
change were liquid but the ends were hopefully more solid than what came before. In
contrast, the current situation of liquid modernity concerns the general dissolution of
these desires to replace false solids with ―new and improved solids‖ (Liquid 3). Liquid
modernity supposedly erodes any sense that a more solid foundation for human life
could be discovered and implemented.
Nevertheless, Bauman is also aware that forms of solidity continue within the
shift from solid modernity to liquid modernity. In Modernity and Ambivalence Bauman
writes, ―Nothing merely ends in history, no project is ever finished and done with.
Clean borders between epochs are but projections of our relentless urge to separate
the inseparable and order the flux. Modernity is still with us. It lives as the pressure of
unfulfilled hopes and interests ossified in self-reproducing institutions‖ (Modernity 270-1).
Indeed, solid modernity lives on in the (utopian) hope that some foundation beyond the
never-ending fluidity of capitalist dynamics might be envisioned and attained. Yet, at the
same time, solid modernity lives on where the dynamics of flow are ―solidified‖ through
9
subsequent, capitalist management. Bauman writes, ―We can say that existence is
modern in as far as it is effected and sustained by design, manipulation, management,
engineering‖ (Modernity 7). Clearly such forces operate within fluid modernity, many of
which continue to center on exploitation and extracting profit. On a macro-level, fluid
modernity has certainly impacted visions of the long-term solidification of society, or as
Bauman puts it, fluid modernity has inaugurated ―the dissolution of forces that could
keep the question of order and system on the political agenda‖ (Liquid 6). Yet the
notions of design, management, and manipulation, have not melted into the air, even if
the content and form of such management is in the process of transformation.2
In their work Anti-Oedipus—perhaps the most sophisticated and extensive
analysis of the concept of flows and capitalism in general—Deleuze and Guattari argue
that a dialectic of flow and exploitative segmentation defines capitalism as such. On the
one hand, capitalism concerns ―the generalized decoding of flows, the new massive
deterritorialization, the conjunction of deterritorialized flows‖ (224), while on the other
hand it attempts to bridle these flows, manage them, exploit them: within the structure
of capitalism ―there is a twofold movement of decoding or deterritorializing flows on
the one hand, and their violent and artificial reterritorialization on the other‖ (34). This
dialectic of flow and segmentation, decoding and recoding, deterritorialization and
reterritorialization, the melting solids and their re-formation, begins to describe the
transformational dynamic of capitalist modernity based on a discourse of flows.3 Flow is
the uprooting and circulation of ―naturalized‖ societal structures, economic materials
and forms, cultural objects, etc. As Jonathan Crary writes, explicitly drawing on Deleuze
10
and Guattari's work on flow and capitalist modernity: ―Modernization is a process by
which capitalism uproots and makes mobile that which is grounded, clears away or
obliterates that which impedes circulation, and makes exchangeable what is singular.
This applies as much to bodies, signs, images, languages, kinship relations, religious
practices and nationalities as it does to commodities, wealth, and labor power‖
(Techniques 10). Yet, while flow operates as the process of cultural, economic, and
societal circulation, it also is transformed into a process that manages and contains this
heterogeneity, turning a generalized flow into a managed and profitable flow that follows
a particular, repetitive arrangement.4 This is particularly true in relation to ―media
flows,‖ flows of audio, visual, and even tactile information that are encoded according to
organizing principles that solidify the operation of these media in terms of increased
commodification—coupling these flows to subjects that have been formed into, as
Jonathan Crary has said, ―attentive consumers‖ (Suspensions 32).5
I wish to stress here that notions of solid and fluid modernity, capitalist recoding
and decoding, complicate an analysis which might posit a clear break between, say,
modernity and postmodernity or between solid and fluid modernity. Take the following
series of images (fig. 1, 2, 3 and 4) culled from a Flash animation on the website of
radical game designers Molleindustria—an Italian collective of artists and activists
founded by Paolo Pedercini who seek to make ―Radical games against the dictatorship of
entertainment‖ (as the splash page to their website exclaims). Later in the introduction I
will examine one of their games, but for now this animation seems useful in describing
11
the complexity of social reality where notions of solid and liquid modernity overlap and
interpenetrate each other.
It is impossible to convey the ―conveyer belt‖ type movement of this looped
animation—perpetually flowing from right to left: the image is in a constant state of
movement: a human figure with an ―empty‖ brain grasps a can which has been spit out
by the machine (fig. 1); the figure drinks from the can which fills up his or her brain with
fluid (fig. 2); then the machine's needle extracts (and empties) the fluid from his or her
head (fig. 3), injecting it into the capsule-shaped receptacle behind the figure; finally, the
fluid is shuttled through the machine and injected into another can (fig. 4), which is then
consumed by the figure, ad infinitum. During this process the can is ―branded‖ with a
label identical to that of the human figure's brain. (I suppose this loop could function as a
Fig. 1. Empty Brain; Molleindustria.org; Flash animation; 15 September 2009.
Fig. 2. Fluid; Molleindustria.org; Flash animation; 15 September 2009.
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Fig. 3. Emptied; Molleindustria.org; Flash animation; 15 September 2009.
Fig. 4 Injected; Molleindustria.org; Flash animation; 15 September 2009.
perfect illustration of, say, a marketing employee working for an energy drink company
that constantly feeds the employee its own product in order to generate further ideas.)
This illustration is profoundly rich in ideas and one could write an entire essay
analyzing its significance. Yet, what interests me about its structure is the bizarre hybrid
it creates between economic and cultural properties typically associated with solid
modernity (or industrialization) and liquid modernity (or post-industrialization). In terms
of the latter, not only are the machines in this animation the ―organs of the human brain,
created by the human hand; the power of knowledge, objectified,‖ as Marx once wrote,
but the human brain itself becomes an organ of the machine (Grundrisse 706); the
situation is closer to the words of the Italian Autonomist Franco ―Bifo‖ Berardi: ―The
worker (a mere machine possessing a brain that can be used for a fragment of time) is
paid for his punctual performance.‖ Thus, one might say that the loop illustrates certain
properties of immaterial labor or knowledge work: for example, the worker is not
13
producing a tangible product but rather information or ideas that are extracted from his
or her intellectual labor (i.e. ideas are extracted from the worker's brain and literally
become the immaterial logo which brands the product); the worker is not really
working, rather consuming, which, according to some theorists of knowledge work, is a
vital part of the post-industrial labor process—that is, existing in the milieu of consumer
culture is part of the productive process that generates ideas and thus valuable
information to extract (Lazzarato); the immaterial worker is not being ―managed‖ by
another individual but is seemingly working under his or her own supervision, etc..
Maurizio Lazzarato writes that immaterial labor
gives form to and materializes needs, the imaginary, consumer tastes, and so forth,
and these products in turn become powerful producers of needs, images, and
tastes. The particularity of the commodity produced through immaterial labor (its
essential use value being given by its value as informational and cultural content)
consists in the fact that it is not destroyed in the act of consumption, but rather it
enlarges, transforms, and creates the 'ideological' and cultural environment of the
consumer. (137)
In Molleindustria's flash piece the laborer/consumer literally inhabits this paradoxical
realm where he or she ―materializes needs, the imaginary, consumer tastes‖ while
simultaneously being the consumer who consumes the product that produces the
―needs, images, and tastes.‖ Moreover, the ideas of this worker are ―not destroyed in
the act of consumption,‖ but rather created, thus leading to a situation where he or she
is completely surrounded by the ideological environment of his or her own production.
Yet, within the loop one also discovers evidence that points toward properties
associated with industrialism and Fordist labor; this is not the image of a ―social factory‖
but of the traditional, industrial factory itself. Thus, the immobile worker is placed in a
14
particular position in an assembly line production. He or she is not the typical
knowledge worker sitting before a computer screen, multitasking and self-managing
their multifaceted, productive labor. Instead the worker repeatedly performs the same
operation again and again, efficiently immersed within the structure of the assembly line
and Taylorized to the extreme, responding perfectly (in time) to the action required
(drinking the liquid). John Tomaney writes in his article ―A New Paradigm of Work
Organization and Technology:‖
Taylor advocated bureaucratization of the shopfloor (through time and motion
study) as a means to solve the problems of coordination and reintegration raised
by the increasingly complex division of labour. Ford's innovation was to propose
technical solutions which established a rationalization pattern for mass production
industries. The essential underlying principle of both Taylorism and Fordism,
though, was the institution of a flow line, designed to ensure high rates of
utilization of fixed capital (177).
The fast-paced sequence of the animation depicts a highly rationalized and efficient
system, a ―flow-line‖ that continually repeats without missing a beat. It matters little that
this worker is also a consumer since consumption itself has been integrated into the
efficient processing of the flow-line. In Molleindustria's flash loop the flow-line lives on,
not simply as a residue or vestigial aspect of industrialization in a post-industrial world,
but as an organizing function that ties together their particular vision of social reality.
Indeed, even the use of the ―loop‖ points toward the ―living on‖ of a certain form of
industrialization integrated into the functioning of the computer itself. In his analysis of
the ―loop‖ form Lev Manovich argues,
Programming involves altering the linear flow of data through control structures,
such as 'if/then' and 'repeat/while'; the loop is the most elementary of these
control structures. Most computer programs are based on repetitions of a set
number of steps; this repetition is controlled by the program's main loop. So if we
15
strip the computer from its usual interface and follow the execution of a typical
computer program, the computer will reveal itself to be another version of Ford's
factory, with the loop as its conveyer belt (317).
In Molleindustria's animation the repetition of the loop is sublimated as a kind of
repetition of industrial production, though with a difference in terms of the signs of
immaterial labor which are included within its flow.
It is not my intention to debate the merits of Molleindustria's animation—for
example, critiquing its limited and simplistic depiction of what labor actually looks like in
―post-industrial society,‖ its insufficiency in terms of illustrating the reality of immaterial
labor, etc.. While this particular animation might reduce the complexities of social
reality, failing to model reality in a comprehensive fashion, it provides useful components
that help articulate the direction of analysis that this dissertation pursues in relation to
the idea of modernity.6 On a general level, the animation literally depicts the flow of
fluids through a machine, revealing a particular solidity that gives these liquids shape, that
molds them and designs their movement. Solid modernity—in terms of designing,
managing and stabilizing flows—has not given way to complete liquidity but continues to
exert its influence. Following Deleuze and Guattari's concepts of capitalist decoding and
recoding, Molleindustria's loop depicts the recoding of post-industrial labor as a kind of
repetition of recoding that occurred in earlier forms of capitalist development (see
endnote 2). While post-industrial labor began as a decoding of labor flows,
Molleindustria depicts a future (or perhaps present) reality where such a decoding has
been recoded into profitable and exploitative streams of control. While the animation
might unfairly depict these recent recodings as completely immersed within an older
16
dynamic of management—Fordism, Taylorism, etc.—the animation itself points to the
general repetition of the dynamic of decoding and recoding within the functioning of
capitalism; indeed, for Deleuze and Guattari these dynamics concern the forces of
capitalism as such; they do not link them to a particular historical period or ―mode of
production‖ (even though the content and form of decoding and recoding would be
historical). While the chapters in this dissertation do not investigate notions of
immaterial labor in relation to video games, which others have done,7 each chapter
explicitly and implicitly approaches notions of capitalist decoding and recoding.
Within contemporary society the video game medium is in the process of
massive deterritorialization and reterritorialization which present a tumultuous state of
affairs: one witnesses a repetitive recoding of the medium along the lines of previous
forms of commodification and the production of ―attentive consumers,‖ and also a
tremendous decoding in terms of video game innovations. 8 Yet, while this process of
decoding and recoding, and also the interpenetration of solid and fluid modernity, forms
a specific subtext to the dissertation as a whole, I am particularly interested in the
repetitions of issues and problems that are related to prior historical periods that seem
to reappear within discourses surrounding video games. The bizarre hybrid of industrial
and post-industrial labor represented in Molleindustria's loop presents a view of our
contemporary historical situation where problems or ideas associated with so-called
―prior‖ historical periods interpenetrate the present day. It is as if, in the great
computer program of history, the move to liquid modernity from solid modernity has
placed us back at the beginning of another iteration of similar processes; yes, the
17
variables have changed, but the code has not. If you want, call the variables ―video
games‖ and call the looping program ―capitalist modernity.‖ Thus, in each chapter I
examine notions of a return to unified subjects (chapter 1), to the mutations of Bertolt
Brecht's political modernism (chapter 2), to the feminization of mass culture (chapter 3),
and to the movements and representations of clouds (chapter 4) as they flow through
another iteration of the loop of modernity. Watching Molleindustria's animation stirs
within the viewer a theoretical sense of déjà vu, an idea that we have seen this before,
that this situation is vaguely familiar as if we lived it in the past and are now living it again
for a second time, although with a difference, and, perhaps, with a twinge of anxious
excitement or uncanny dread.
Against the New: Comparative Media Methodology as Déjà Vu
The process of media transition is always a mix of tradition and innovation,
always declaring for evolution, not revolution.
– Thorburn and Jenkins (Rethinking Media Change 12).
In the previous section I outlined my theoretical approach to the idea of
modernity, an approach which was also positioned against the notion of radical newness.
Turning now to a more explicit discussion of video games in order to situate this
dissertation within the field of digital media studies and games studies, the first step is to
reiterate a movement that is critical of the new. While digital media and new media are
not interchangeable terms they are closely related—the material structure of the
former often functioning as the fundamental technological base of the latter. It is often
18
been said that the emergence of digital media and new media mark a distinctive
historical break or rupture. In terms of digital media the material structure of the
technological form is said to radically differ from older, obsolete analog media: the
discontinuous, discrete and numerically encoded structure of digital images and sounds,
for example, radically ruptures the continuous and smooth materiality of the
photographic image or analogically imprinted sound. In terms of new media it is often
cultural, economic, political and social forms which are said to be radically transformed
through new forms of computerized, networked, and decentralized media, new ―friction
free‖ forms of economic distribution and unhindered communication, new mobile
technologies which radically reshape the experience of time and space, etc.. In their
various and expansive forms such as the Internet, mobile technologies, digital images,
electronic texts, interactive installations, video games, etc., new and digital media forms
are said to demand completely new methods of investigation and analysis; historical
methods of interpretation are supposedly rendered obsolete in their encounter with the
new, where new and digital media construct the basis of a new economy and culture
said to be unburdened from the historical forces of old, a light and liquid world ushering
in new forms of economic relations, aesthetic possibility, and social progress.
Such a vision of an acute historical rupture and the rhetoric of ―newness‖ in the
field of new media has been an implicit and explicit object of critique in works such as
Jay Bolter and Richard Grusin's Remediation: Understanding New Media (1999), Philip
Rosen's Change Mummified: Cinema, Historicity, Theory (2001), David Thorburn and Henry
Jenkins‘ volume Rethinking Media Change: The Aesthetics of Transition (2003), Lisa Gitelman
19
and Geoffrey B. Pingree's volume New Media, 1740-1915 (2004), Wendy Hui Kyong
Chun and Thomas Keenan‘s volume New Media, Old Media (2005), and Lisa Gitelman's
Always Already New: Media, History, and the Data of Culture (2006). In various ways these
and other works have investigated larger historical discourses at work in the formation
of contemporary new media, critiquing ideas of radical historical ruptures between old
and new media while (in some of the texts) analyzing prior media forms as ―new media‖
within their contemporary historical situations. In fact, the issue of the relationship
between old and new media—as radical historical rupture versus a more sober
assessment of continuity and discontinuity between media forms—has been identified as
one of the key theoretical debates and rich areas of inquiry in the rise of new media
studies: for example, the authors of New Media: A Critical Introduction extensively unpack
this debate while attempting to forge a middle ground between the ideas of ―uncritical
utopians‖ (who argue for the historical rupture of new media) and the ―critical critics‖
(who unmask the ―new‖ of new media and argue that new media are only continuations
of older forms of domination under capitalism, etc.) (Lister et al. 3-4). The middle
approach that these authors follow attempts to ―not forsake newness for history, nor
history for newness‖ (Lister et al. 3)—a slogan which frames my approach to media and
video games within this dissertation.
While an extensive amount of recent scholarship in media studies has been
replacing visions of media newness with more sober understandings of media
transformations, within the nascent rise of video game studies a schism between old
media (literature, film, television, etc.) and new media (video games) has materialized,
20
eventually becoming labeled ―the ludology vs narratology debate.‖ While there were no
intoxicated assertions that video games were absolutely new and distinct from past
media forms (to my knowledge), the logic and engine of the new was put to the task of
disciplinary boundary formation. Vulgarly stated, the so-called ludologists (ludology
meaning the study of games and play from the Latin word ludus) sought to construct
new formal theories of video games while policing the boundaries of the emerging
discipline of game studies, dismissing the ―colonization‖ of narrative, literary, and media
theorists who were supposedly contaminating the new discourse of video games with
their obsolete theoretical frameworks. Meanwhile, narratology became a codeword for
theoretical approaches to computer games which embraced narrative theory and
analyzed video games as forms of storytelling; yet, more than simply indicating narrative
approaches to games, this codeword tended to overflow its semantic boundaries,
marking any analysis of games which did not focus on games as such but used theoretical
concepts from media studies and literary theory to analyze the gamic form (particularly
in relation to theories of representation). In his editorial inaugurating the online journal
Game Studies, Espen Aarseth identified the publication year of 2001 as ―Year One‖ for
―computer game studies‖ (bold and caps in the original), a new discipline that would
mark its territory from the resource hungry colonizers of other academic disciplines. He
wrote: ―Games are not a kind of cinema, or literature, but colonising attempts from
both these fields have already happened, and no doubt will happen again.‖9 In another
article, ―Genre Trouble,‖ Aarseth again sought to dislodge approaches to video games
that relied on narrative, visual, and semiotic approaches to games, arguing that textual
21
hermeneutic models of analysis were inadequate for the examination of game forms
(which were kinds of simulations, ―a bottom-up hermeneutic strategy‖ where meaning
was generated ―Through the hermeneutic circle of simulation/construction, testing,
modification, more testing, and so forth...‖ (2004)). He argued that narrative and visual
approaches to games acted as fetishes which distracted scholars from understanding
games as simulations, that foreclosed viewing games with fresh insights instead of
unreflectively applying concepts developed in relation to older media to the study of
video games; for the ludologists, narrative and visual approaches to video games were
obscuring a deeper analysis of the ontological kernel of games, of formal game
structures (as rule systems, gameplay experiences, emergent systems, simulations not
narratives, etc.).10
In reality, the so-called debate between ludologists and narratologists was never
a debate at all but ―fueled by misunderstandings‖ of the ludologists' positions which did
not seek to completely eradicate the study of games in relation to narratives, visual
representations or cinema, but argued for a new discipline which encouraged fresh
approaches to the study of game forms; indeed, as Gonzalo Frasca pointed out, there
were not even any self-proclaimed ―narratologists‖ who were arguing with the
ludologist approach (Frasca 2003). Even Aarseth himself claimed that his positions were
deeply misunderstood, that he never attempted to eradicate approaches to games based
on representational strategies.11 In the end of his editorial address, ―Computer Game
Studies, Year One,‖ Aarseth explicitly acknowledged that
games should also be studied within existing fields and departments, such as Media
Studies, Sociology, and English, to name a few. But games are too important to be
22
left to these fields. (And they did have thirty years in which they did nothing!) Like
architecture, which contains but cannot be reduced to art history, game studies
should contain media studies, aesthetics, sociology etc. But it should exist as an
independent academic structure, because it cannot be reduced to any of the
above. These are interesting times. You are all invited!
The ludologists' position was clearly one of disciplinary foundation. Yet, the inclusive
exclamation, ―You are all invited!‖ was often accompanied by an intense rhetorical
exclusion, framed in terms of ―theoretical colonialism‖ (―Genre Trouble‖) where
scholars—for example, from literary theory—were degraded as using ―hilariously
obsolete‖ narrativist paradigms to discuss games (Eskelinen, ―Gaming Situation‖). In
Aarseth's later text, ―Genre Trouble,‖ the theoretical ―colonizers‖ were positioned as
―incompetent,‖ with Aarseth arguing that their ―slanted and crude misapplication of
'narrative' theory to games will continue and probably overwhelm game scholarship for
a long time to come.‖ Although the welcome mat was placed at the doorstep of game
studies it was simultaneously snatched away—at least for certain academic fields which
might come knocking. The targets of such rhetoric were undoubtedly scholars working
with theories and concepts derived from film and television studies, literary theory,
visual studies, etc.—concepts that were often mediated through ―Theory‖ (with a capital
―T‖) and thus scholars using theoretical paradigms such as semiotics, Marxism,
psychoanalysis, etc., might be grouped with the ―theoretical colonizers‖ as well.
While the inclusive rhetoric was present, and the doors were seemingly open to
more established forms of theoretical discourse applied to video games, the
exclusionary rhetoric of the ludologists certainly partook in a discursive construction of
the ―new.‖ Following Bolter and Grusin's arguments in Remediation, the authors of New
23
Media: A Critical Introduction link the invocation of the newness of new media to a
discourse of aesthetic modernism which appears ―whenever we hear talk of the need
for new media to break clear of old habits and attitudes, the gravity field of history and
its old patterns and practices. It is also present when we hear talk about the essential
characteristics of new media, when the talk is of the distinctive essence of 'digitality' as
against the 'photographic', the 'filmic' or the 'televisual'‖ (Lister et al. 54). Both of these
forms of discourse—in varying degrees—were certainly expressed in Aarseth's and
other ludologists' arguments: a freedom from ―old habits‖ of representational analysis, a
turn toward the ―essence‖ of games sanitized of the visual and narrative residues from
previous media forms, the embrace of methodological inquiries such as mathematics and
systems theory instead of more traditional, humanities approaches.
While I do not want to sink into the quicksand of debates concerning the proper
field of game studies (frankly, I agree with Aarseth that game studies needs its own
discipline and should include scholars working in the theoretical traditions of other
disciplines), it is important to note that the exclusionary rhetoric harbors its own
discursive blind spots which are also in danger of being propagated ―for a long time to
come.‖ Generally speaking, such discourse tends to dissuade approaches to video games
that focus on comparative analyses between games and other media forms (even though
many articles associated with ludology were highly comparative in their approach), or
approaches to games that seek to embed them in larger historical and theoretical
discourses, etc.. Incidentally, a critical analysis of the discourses which sought to exclude
certain modes of theorization while including others would allow one to uncover
24
particular theoretical regressions formed in the attempt to found a new discipline of
game studies. For example, in chapter three of the dissertation I analyze how gender
analysis was subtly excluded in Aarseth's foundational discourse of games studies, and
that essentialist approaches to video games that privilege their formal properties (as rule
systems, etc.) at the expense of narrative and visual elements have tended to propagate
a regressive theoretical understanding of gender—a regression certainly detrimental to
the critical analysis of video games. In any event, the attempt to found a ―new‖ discipline
of game studies through an exclusionary logic leads to theoretical blind spots which
inevitably impede the critical awareness of game studies itself, an insight not lost on
some game scholars such as Julian Kücklich who authored a recent (polemical) article
that engaged with the essentialist discourse of the ludologists. In this article Kücklich
signaled the arrival of what he called ―Game Studies 2.0‖—a movement away from strict
formal analysis of games toward a broadening consideration of the history, economics
and culture of gaming; the formalism of the ludologists' approach was replaced with the
affirmation ―that games do not take place in a vacuum; they are embedded in cultural,
social and political contexts.‖ One implicit conclusion of his argument was that strong
theoretical tools developed in other disciplines would be useful for examining video
games in relation to culture, ideology, aesthetics, politics, etc.. Offering examples such as
Stephen Kline, Nick Dyer-Witheford, and Greig De Peuter's Digital Play: The Interaction
of Technology, Culture and Marketing (2003), Alexander Galloway's Gaming: Essays on
Algorithmic Culture (2006), McKenzie Wark's Gamer Theory (2007) and others, Kücklich
identified theoretical approaches that investigated video games in relation to prior media
25
forms, ideology and aesthetics, and in relation to historical changes in political economy
and culture.
I mention Kücklich's article and some of the titles which might fall under his
notion of ―Game Studies 2.0‖ in order to signal recent intellectual changes in video
game scholarship which my project seeks to expand. In fact, much of this dissertation
focuses on precisely those areas which the ludologist approach (implicitly or explicitly)
attempts to marginalize—questions of visual representation, textual hermeneutics
applied to video games, examining video games with the use of media theory developed
in relation to prior media forms, and questions of video games in relation to larger
historical trajectories stemming from discourses of modernity. Instead of following the
ludologist approach which tends to focus on medium specificity (attempting to uncover
the ―new‖ of video games by excluding properties typically associated with the
specificity of other mediums) throughout my dissertation I embed the analysis of video
games within larger historical frameworks, drawing connections between video games
and the theorization of older, historical media forms, and using the video game as a lens
to view contemporary problems such as reemerging discourses of high and low culture,
the infatuation with innovation, notions of subjectivity and ideology, etc.. To some
extent my methodology will be similar to the stated goals of MIT's recently inaugurated
Media in Transition series. In the first volume of series, Rethinking Media Change: The
Aesthetics of Transition, the editors David Thorburn and Henry Jenkins state that an
approach to media transition ―will be historical—grounded in an awareness of the past,
of continuities and discontinuities among contemporary media and their ancestors;‖ and
26
furthermore, ―it will be comparative—open especially to studies that juxtapose older
and contemporary media, or that examine continuities across different media and
historical eras...‖ (ix). This comparative approach offers the benefit that both
continuities and discontinuities between historical media forms can be identified and
analyzed; one can distill both the new and the old operating within the video game form,
not by excluding other media from consideration but precisely by including them within
a comparative approach. I should note, following Jonathan Crary, that ―there are no
such things as continuities and discontinuities in history, only in historical explanation.
[…] how one periodizes and where one locates ruptures or denies them are all political
choices that determine the construction of the present‖ (Techniques of the Observer 7). I
would only offer that my choices to draw continuities with prior forms of media analysis
tend to be political in nature, believing that the often robust political dimensions of
some forms of theoretical discourse attached to representation, film and television
studies, cultural studies, etc., should not be summarily dismissed when one turns to
analyze video games. The move to dismiss these prior forms of theorization often end
with an analysis of games lost in cultural vacuums where questions of ideology, critique,
dominant forms of representation and their reproduction, political modes of resistance
in games, etc., are subsequently marginalized.
Admittedly, a variety of exploratory directions exist for a comparative
methodology that juxtaposes video games and other historical media forms. I will offer
two examples. First, one could follow the work of Bolter and Grusin's Remediation
which extends Marshall McLuhan's famous adage, ―The 'content' of any medium is always
27
another medium.‖ Here, the concept of medium specificity is replaced by an
intermingling and rivalry of media forms that constantly exchange properties and slowly
mutate into new assemblages—both new and old undergo the process of remediation
and transformation. Bolter and Grusin write, ―New media are doing exactly what their
predecessors have done: presenting themselves as refashioned and improved versions of
other media, digital visual media can best be understood through the ways in which they
honor, rival, and revise linear-perspective painting, photography, film, television, and
print‖ (15). Following this approach one could examine, for example, how cinematic
properties of visual representation and narrative development are refashioned within
the video game form (for example, as ―cut-scenes,‖ as refinements and extensions of
linear 3D perspective, or as ―film-like‖ genres such as the adventure game, etc.) and,
vice-versa, how the video game form has tended to recode cinematic structures (for
example, as the emulation of 3D rendering technology in cinematic ―bullet time,‖ as an
influence on narrative structures used by films like Kill Bill series, or even in terms of
machinima—the use of game engines to create films or television).
Second, one could follow recent developments in media archaeology which
refuse to treat the history of media as a linear narrative of progressive development
(that, for example, might see video games as the logical conclusion to the development
of visual realism and perspective beginning with Renaissance painting, then moving from
photography to film and finally to video games). Instead, media archaeology embraces a
non-chronological history of uneven development, repetition, recurrence, continuation
and discontinuation.12 Such an approach, for example, allows media archaeologists to
28
excavate technologies from the past (real or imaginary) which could illuminate current
new media forms (the old in the new), or, to use insights garnered from the analysis of
new media forms such as video games in order to investigate past media forms (the new
in the old). As Geert Lovink put it, ―Media archaeology is first and foremost a
methodology, a hermeneutic reading of the ‗new‘ against the grain of the past, rather
than a telling of the history of technologies from past to present‖ (11). Although such a
field has hardly been developed in relation to gaming culture, Erkki Huhtamo's article,
―Slots of Fun, Slots of Trouble: An Archaeology of Arcade Gaming,‖ will inevitably stand
as an early example: within this article Huhtamo traces the unacknowledged history13 of
video game arcades through 19th century ―proto-interactive‖ technologies such as
various coin-operated slot machines—the Mutoscope, shooting games, fortune telling
machines, gambling slots, etc.. Thus, he strives to expand media histories of video games
beyond their obvious boundaries, seeking to establish a historical examination of
interactive machines that extends into the 19th century. The widespread focus on the
concept of interactivity in the present becomes a lens through which to analyze past
technical formations and, recto-verso, the uncovering of affiliations with technical
devices from the past opens new terrain through which to analyze present discourses of
interactivity.
I offer these two examples of comparative methodology—remediation and
media archaeology—in order to invoke theoretical paradigms that influence the
direction of this dissertation, though not explicitly nor in a rigorous fashion. In terms of
remediation, I do not explicitly examine how video games ―honor, rival, and revise
29
linear-perspective painting, photography, film, television, and print.‖ Yet, if remediation
is defined as ―the representation of one medium in another‖ (Bolter and Grusin 45), my
comparative approach is similar in that I am often interested in how the theory of one
medium appears in another; how, for example, theories of televisual flow are mutated,
changed, revised and remediated when some of their principles are found within the
operation of video games; or even more abstractly, this dissertation views liquid
modernity as a remediation of solid modernity, the content of the former being, in some
cases, that of the latter (and all the continuities, discontinuities, and revisions which
emerge from their rivalry and affinity). In terms of media archaeology, I am not
preoccupied with the construction of an unacknowledged history of video games drawn
from prior technical forms that have largely been ignored in relation to games or within
media history more generally; such would perhaps be a ―true‖ archaeological approach
to video games. Yet, this dissertation is indebted to a certain strand of media
archaeology largely in relation to the work of Erkki Huhtamo and his methodology of
analyzing repetitions, recurrences and resonances between different historical situations
and within different media forms. He offers the following definition of media
archaeology:
I would like to purpose it as a way of studying recurring cyclical phenomena which
(re)appear and disappear and reappear over and over again in media history and
somehow seem to transcend specific historical contexts. In a way, the aim of
media archeology is to explain the sense of déjà vu that Tom Gunning has
registered when looking back from the present reactions into the ways in which
people have experienced technology in earlier periods. (3)
Déjà vu means, of course, ―already seen.‖ Snagging a definition from Princeton's
WordNet database, déjà vu is ―the experience of thinking that a new situation had
30
occurred before.‖ Throughout the dissertation, it is these experiences in my encounter
with video games, media theory, and discourses of modernity which have illuminated the
path of my exploration. For example, I experience this déjà vu when I read the design
principles behind a game such as flOw that invokes the desire to extend the duration of
gameplay just as Raymond Williams' concept of planned televisual flow was partly an
analysis of television programming that sought to extend the duration of ―watching‖
(chapter one); or, when I play a video game like Braid and feel strange connections to
Bertolt Brecht's play Galileo (chapter 2); or, when I see the reemergence of the
feminization of mass culture in the culture of video games when others have argued that
such a rhetoric has been superseded by the critical perspectives of postmodernism
(chapter three); or, when I see an affinity between the representation of clouds in video
games marking the desire to extend a form of interactive space over the video game
medium in a similar fashion to the extension of perspectival space over the space of the
sky and the clouds in nineteenth century landscape painting. Indeed, the déjà vu
moments that I focus on are not related directly to media technologies—the kind of
experiences Huhtamo might have when viewing new technologies that seem to be
thematic re-occurrences of the old—but are more related to theoretical problems that
repeat and to issues concerning the repetition of modernity or modernism within the
contemporary milieu of video game culture.
31
Interpreting the Video Game
What is at stake in this dissertation is the attempt to expand the theoretical
analysis of video games where the interpretation of the video game is not simply
concentrated on its ―gameness‖—on its ontological properties—but, as stated earlier,
on the video game as a cultural artifact that functions as a symptom of larger historical
and theoretical issues. To call certain video games a ―symptom‖ suggests closely reading
and closely playing these games, interpreting and extracting deeper meanings and
significance, treating the game as a sign of something hidden. Such an approach is not
well received in some varieties of game studies. For example, Espen Aarseth argues that
―the traditional hermeneutic paradigms of text, narrative and semiotics are not wellsuited to the problems of a simulational hermeneutic‖ (―Genre Trouble‖ 54). From this
perspective, the analysis of a game has to do with understanding its rules and how these
rules work together to model a certain reality, to create understanding as the rules are
manipulated by the player. ―The computer game is the art of simulation,‖ as Aarseth says,
and simulations create meanings that are ―bottom up and emergent‖ not ―top-down‖
and imposed (which Aarseth associates with authorial narrative construction and the
interpretation of visual signs) (―Genre Trouble‖ 52). In a well-known quotation that
disparages such top-down approaches Aarseth writes:
As the Danish theorist and game designer Jesper Juul has pointed out, games are
eminently themeable: you can play chess with some rocks in the mud, or with
pieces that look like the Simpson family rather than kings and queens. It would still
be the same game. The 'royal' theme of the traditional pieces is all but irrelevant
to our understanding of chess. Likewise, the dimensions of Lara Croft's body,
already analyzed to death by film theorists, are irrelevant to me as a player,
32
because a different-looking body would not make me play differently. When I play,
I don't even see her body, but see through it and past it. (―Genre Trouble‖ 47)
In chapter three I will examine this quotation in more detail, specifically as it relates to
the subject of gender in video games. For now, Aarseth's thoughts serve as an example
of the marginalization of interpretative methods that do not necessarily remain on the
level of ―gameness,‖ the formal system of the rules, etc.. To be fair, Aarseth wants to
invigorate new forms of interpretation that are not based on older paradigms of analysis
(for example, the interpretation of Lara Croft by film scholars); thus, his polemical
comments pursue an agenda—founding a new discipline of game studies distinct from
other disciplines. Nevertheless, when he worries that approaches to video games based
on visual and narrative representation will ―overwhelm game scholarship for a long time
to come,‖ it seems to me that the reverse is also possible, that a founding, original
discourse of the ―new‖ applied to video games and simulations could also push aside
consideration of games in terms of their cultural and social contexts ―for a long time to
come‖ (―Genre Trouble‖ 54).14 The fact that the visual elements of Lara Craft are
―irrelevant to me as a player‖ not only serves as a polemic that brackets interpretative
paradigms that focus on the narrative and visual elements of a game, but dangerously
flirts with a formalism that would bracket considerations of the critical context of
games. As Julian Kücklich writes, and as I quoted above, ―games do not take place in a
vacuum; they are embedded in cultural, social and political contexts‖ (―Game Studies
2.0‖). While Aarseth's arguments are important because he draws the attention of the
critic to the rules of the game and player actions, his arguments can serve to rob other
critical, interpretative paradigms of the visual and narrative elements that appear in
33
games, not simply as historical residue or detritus but as equally important aspects of
the game which are part of its meaningful whole. The key seems to be creating a balance
between interpreting game mechanics and also narrative and visual elements,
understanding that they reflect upon each other, deepen each other.15
From a different perspective, Alexander Galloway also seeks to move beyond a
sense of deep, allegorical interpretation which he associates with ideological critique and
media forms that are primarily representational (e.g. visual, narrative). He writes:
As I have alluded to in Jameson, the depth model in traditional allegorical
interpretation is a sublimation of the separation felt by the viewer between his or
her experience of consuming the media and the potentially liberating political value
of that media. But video games abandon this dissatisfying model of deferral,
epitomizing instead the flatness of the control allegory by unifying the act of
playing the game with an immediate political experience. In other words, The Sims
is a game that delivers its own political critique up front as part of the gameplay.
There is no need for the critic to unpack the game later. The boredom, the
sterility, the uselessness, and the futility of contemporary life appear precisely
through those things that represent them best: a middle-class suburban house, an
Ikea catalog of personal possessions, crappy food and even less appetizing music,
the same dozen mindless tasks over and over—how can one craft a better
critique of contemporary life? (102-103)
Of course, many others would disagree with such an ―interpretation‖ or immediate
experience,16 but the argument is intriguing because, as Galloway points out again and
again, games concern player actions, and thus what they do in the game is completely on
the surface, always present before the player. Later in Galloway's chapter ―Allegories of
Control‖ he discusses what he calls a ―gamic allegory‖ or ―polyvalent doing‖ where ―the
interpretation of gamic acts is the process of understanding what it means to do
something and mean something else‖ (105); here, the critic reappears as someone who
interprets an action within a game as pointing toward a meaning that is not necessarily
34
the same as that which is inscribed in the action of the game. Perhaps this form of
interpretation explains his stance on The Sims: through a ―gamic interpretation‖ the
player's actions that concern buying objects, making friends, pursuing a career, listening
to music, etc., also mean ―the boredom, the sterility, the uselessness, and futility of
contemporary life.‖ Such an interpretation is right there on the surface as well, if you
choose to see it. Of course, one can also interpret the actions of a player in The Sims as
not a critique at all, but simply as a reinforcement of action that privileges rampant
consumerism.
While I agree with Galloway's general point concerning the ―superficial‖ aspects
of games, where what players do in the game is immediately evident, I would add one
point. The quasi-narrative and visual aspects of The Sims—modeling suburban life in
America—is a key component of the game itself, and one that seemingly leads to
different interpretations. Galloway reads notions such as boredom and futility through
the visual representations of the ―suburban home,‖ the ―crappy food,‖ the list of things
to buy, coding these representations as negative which gives rise to the idea that the
game is a transparent critique.17 Others might read the gameplay in terms of these visual
elements as a celebration of consumerism. In any event, these visual representations
provide a frame which motivates the interpretation of the gameplay mechanics—in the
case of The Sims, such a representational frame feeds into different interpretative
perspectives. If, following Aarseth, one removes all the visual elements in The Sims—
leaving only the mechanics—the game would cease to function as a critique or
celebration of contemporary life; it would be difficult to attach such an imagined,
35
abstract game (i.e. employing the same mechanics but absent representational graphics)
as having anything to do with consumerism. Even if games are more than simply visual
and narrative elements, these visual and narrative elements remain in many games,
opening themselves to a hermeneutic that attempts to ―unpack‖ their deeper
significance, remaining important to the possible meaning that a game transmits. Perhaps
The Sims is not the best example, but other games certainly employ narrative and visual
elements that require—or are open to—textual analysis that deepens the understanding
of gameplay elements. Near the end of his chapter Galloway argues ―that the game critic
should be concerned not only with the interpretation of linguistic signs, as in literary
studies or film theory, but also with the interpretation of polyvalent doing‖ (105). Such a
statement perhaps summarizes my interpretative approach to games within this
dissertation—reading the narrative/visual elements and the polyvalent gamic actions,
often in relation to one another.
Not abandoning a more traditional hermeneutic approach to video games serves
as another way to work against the ―newness‖ of the video game form that discourses
such as Aarseth's tend to install, demonstrating that video games are certainly open to
textual readings that produce interesting results (similar to traditional, representational
media forms). In addition to reading video games in terms of both narrative/visual
aspects and gameplay actions, the move outward from the ―gameness‖ of the game
which this dissertation pursues—using video games as a lens to study larger historical
problems, theoretical issues, and cultural contexts—also treats the video game as
harboring deeper significance that is not an ―immediate experience‖ by any means.
36
Approaching the end of this introduction, let me analyze a game which serves as
a fine example of the points I have been pursuing within these introductory remarks.
The radical game collective Molleindustria has created a variety of games: a simulation
that exposes the nefarious corporate practices of McDonald's, a ―fighting game‖ that pits
various religious figures—God, Buddha, Muhammad, Jesus, etc.—against each other; a
game that tackles sexual abuse within the Catholic church; a simulation that critically
models the growth of the oil industry and its exploitative, self-sustaining methods; games
that approach the topic of sexuality—from both heteronormative and queer
perspectives. The collective confronts a variety of political, economic, and social issues
through the production of unique games, embracing a form of design ―that aims at
starting a serious discussion about social and political implications of videogames.‖ Yet,
their games also aim at motivating serious discussion about culture, politics, etc., not
merely about the implications of games as such. Indeed, Molleindustria produces games
that are ―not just games,‖ treating the form as vehicle for expression that does not
occur in a vacuum removed from cultural, political, and economic contexts.
In Molleindustria's Every Day the Same Dream (2009) the player awakens into a
bleak, mostly monochrome, ―rectangular‖ world (fig. 5). The player has limited
movement within this environment, being able to control the male character with the
arrow keys, moving right or left, and occasionally interacting with selected objects—for
example, the player can put on clothes by moving near a wardrobe and pressing the
space bar. In form, the game is similar to 2D adventure-style quest games like the King's
Quest series (although King's Quest was pseudo-3D in the sense that the 2D character
37
could move behind and around objects on the screen). Moving off the screen brings one
to another 2D space; so, for example, moving the male avatar off the right edge of the
opening bedroom location brings one to the kitchen where the main character finds his
wife, cooking, and a television set that is constantly flickering different colors (fig. 6).
Initially, the game appears as a mundane sequence of events, where the player awakes,
gets dressed, leaves the building, drives to work (fig. 7), parks the car, passes the boss
(who says, ―You're late!‖), finds one's personal cubicle with a computer and works until
the screen turns to black. Afterward, the player finds him- or herself awakening within
the bedroom once again, at which point the player can set out to go to work, again.
Fig. 5. Monochrome world; Every Day the Same Dream; Molleindustria; 2009; Video Game; 15
February 2010.
Fig. 6. The kitchen; Every Day the Same Dream; Molleindustria; 2009; Video Game; 15 February
2010.
38
Fig. 7. Driving to work; Every Day the Same Dream; Molleindustria; 2009; Video Game; 15
February 2010.
After treading this same path a few times (and the number of times might vary
depending on the player), one begins to look for something different, searching for
objects to interact with, trying to explore different areas of the game. Indeed, when one
enters the elevator to exit the apartment, one can interact with an old woman who
declares, ―Five more steps and you will be a new person.‖ Such an odd phrase suggests
that a goal exists within the game, that one must locate these five steps and become ―a
new person.‖ So, for example, upon leaving the apartment perhaps it strikes the player
to head left instead of right to the parking lot (where a blue ―P‖ sign initially draws the
player's attention). Doing so brings the player to an intersection where he or she can
talk to a homeless person; if one talks to the man he brings the player to a graveyard
(fig. 8) where the game pauses before fading to black and returning the player to the
bedroom to begin a new day. Other than the interaction with the homeless man, there
are four other ―significant‖ actions in the game: leaving one's car in traffic and finding a
cow in a field, stopping to catch a single leaf that falls from a tree, deciding not to get
dressed but still going to work (where the boss fires the player) (fig. 14), and finally,
39
Fig. 8. The graveyard; Every Day the Same Dream; Molleindustria; 2009; Video Game; 15 February
2010.
instead of sitting down at one's cubicle and working (where the day will then end), one
continues past the cubicle toward a little green exit sign on the right of the screen; here,
the player can climb a ledge and jump off (fig. 9). Upon completing these five tasks the
player again wakes up in the bedroom, but now the repetitive music that accompanied
the game has stopped, and though one can still explore the ―world,‖ all the people have
disappeared—a purgatory of sorts which manifests a situation of total alienation, the
Fig. 9. Jump; Every Day the Same Dream; Molleindustria; 2009; Video Game; 15 February 2010.
culmination of alienated work producing an erasure of the social. If one moves through
40
this socially empty world and back to the place where one jumped, a final sequence
occurs where one approaches ―oneself‖ from behind, watching ―oneself‖ standing on
the ledge and soon jumping off into the void below (fig. 10)—at which point the game
ends and switches back to the title screen, ―Every Day the Same Dream.‖
Fig. 10. The final scene; Every Day the Same Dream; Molleindustria; 2009; Video Game; 15
February 2010.
What Galloway said of The Sims—―how can one craft a better critique of
contemporary life?‖—seems equally pertinent here, perhaps even more so since the
visual representations within the world frame the repetitive gameplay in dark tones. The
tedium of playing through the days is manifest through the repetition of the same,
performed actions ―day in and day out‖—getting dressed, taking the elevator, driving to
work—and is simultaneously represented visually through various repetitions such as
the identical cars (fig. 7), the repeated, cloudless windows, the time which ticks away as
the elevator descends from level five to the ground floor, and the sequence of walking
to one's cubicle where the ―virtual camera‖ slowly zooms out for three sequential
―shots‖ as one slowly progresses to the right of the screen, the player's avatar receding
into frames of repeated sameness as he approaches his cubicle (fig. 11, 12, 13). Such a
41
sequence implies that the repetition could go on forever, and, indeed, the ―final‖ scene
of the game (fig. 10) suggests a looping structure where this last escape only brings one
back to the beginning, thus performing an endless repetition that is no escape at all.
Fig. 11. Approaching the cubicle; Every Day the Same Dream; Molleindustria; 2009; Video Game;
15 February 2010.
Fig. 12. Approaching the cubicle; Every Day the Same Dream; Molleindustria; 2009; Video Game;
15 February 2010.
But what can be said about this game? What is the meaning of this game? Let me
pursue an analysis which—as an emulation of the ―shots‖ which pull back from the
avatar—move outward from the game through a widening of interpretative perspective.
First, what can be said about the game itself and its mechanics? A brief
description of the game on Molleindustria's website reads: ―A short existential game
42
Fig. 13. Approaching the cubicle; Every Day the Same Dream; Molleindustria; 2009; Video Game;
15 February 2010.
about alienation and refusal of labour. Or, if you prefer, a playable music video.‖ One
might call the game a simulation of everyday life, although in a reduced form which
models the mundane activity of ―going to work.‖ The game mechanics are quite simple,
allowing for little interaction. The simple movement and constant repetition of actions
are dissatisfying and limiting, perhaps like the ―work‖ that the character within the game
is supposed to accomplish at his cubicle. Though we do not know what this work is, the
repetitive gameplay mechanics or ―going through the motions‖ suggest a similar
characteristic about the protagonist's labor. But, more than this, the game mechanics
involve the exploration of different areas or spaces within the world—a typical form of
adventure game. The initially repetitive gameplay pushes the player to discover what can
and cannot be done within the space of the game, and this dynamic is integrated into
game character's desire to escape from work, to transcend the tedium and discover an
outside to the repetitiveness—exploration of the space becomes an outside, perhaps, to
the tedium of simple interaction. As Leigh Alexander writes in an article for Gamasutra:
43
―[Every Day the Same Dream] is designed specifically for a player's natural tendency to
explore and push the boundaries of game design. And their desire to do so organically
dovetails with the wishes of the drone-hero: The player wants to test the constraints of
the game world just as much as the character wants to test the rules of his.‖ One of
Alexander's points is that the ―design‖ of the game becomes ―the message, rather than a
simple conveyance.‖ The game uses interactivity—and the limits and constraints which
are built into its possibilities—to convey its message. Such is an interesting point about
the affordances of the medium, a statement which also begins to teach that the design
and user actions should carry polyvalent meanings, as Galloway argued.
In his critique of narrative elements in games versus the formal structure of a
game‘s properties of simulation Aarseth writes, ―In the adventure games where there is
a conflict between narrative and ludic aesthetics, it is typically the simulation that, on its
own, allows actions that the story prohibits, or which make the story break down.
Players exploit this to invent strategies that make a mockery of the author's intentions‖
(―Genre Trouble‖ 52). There are certainly moments where the ―simulation‖ breaks
down within the game. For example, if one arrives at work without wearing clothes
before completing the other ―steps‖ in the game then the boss fires the player, but upon
arriving at work the following day the player is still employed. Or, if the player decides
to jump off the ledge before completing the other tasks, this does not alter the game;
the player awakens the next day as if nothing happened. Such elements create
substantial narrative inconsistencies, which are, perhaps, resolved through the idea that
the entire game is a dream (the game's title serving as an ambiguous signpost). Yet, far
44
from the player using the simulation against the narrative in order to mock the
designers' intentions, these inconsistencies are certainly intended. The narrative glitches
feed into the overall sense of futility within the game: that is, even jumping off the ledge
does not provide escape from the drudgery of tomorrow‘s labor. The designers could
have easily corrected these inconsistencies—for example, conditioning one's possibility
to jump from the ledge on the successful completion of the other four tasks that the
player must complete. It seems clear that the temporally fractured narrative is
foreground; the inconsistencies within the game are signals meant to be interpreted. A
problem arises—at least within Every Day the Same Dream—when such moments are
seen as unsatisfying, and thus the narrative aspects of the game are marginalized in favor
of privileging the gameplay mechanics. Alexander writes:
The game's ultimate conclusion, once the player has discovered all the possible
avenues of subtle disobedience, is less satisfying than the lead-up, but it's not
useful to evaluate Every Day the Same Dream on its narrative or 'message.'
There's often a temptation, with art games, to analyze what they are trying to
'say.' Every Day the Same Dream is most useful when viewed as an example of how
the specific nature of video games—with interface, interaction and natural player
tendencies—can be used to offer experiences that passive media can't possibly.
While Alexander does not mention the narrative inconsistencies, she still focuses on
what she sees as an unsatisfying conclusion (the player watching ―oneself‖ jump off the
ledge of the building). This eventually leads her to privilege the medium specificity of the
video game—the gameness of the game—over its narrative or visual elements which are
posited as ―not useful‖ for understanding and evaluating the game; even the idea that
game is ―trying to 'say'‖ something is excluded in order to focus on the gameplay
elements and the way that they convey meaning. To be clear, I have no qualms with
45
analytical methods that focus on the formal system of a game: indeed, Alexander's short
piece is instructive for game designers since it highlights the ability to create meaning
through player actions, integrating the affordances built into interactive games as
significant features. Nevertheless, within Alexander's quote one detects an additional
exclusionary move, disparaging the hermeneutic complexity of the text, bracketing
cultural contexts and political resonances which inform the meaning of the game.
Through the strict focus on game mechanics—a ludologist's approach—the game's
meaning is truncated.
What is Every Day the Same Dream's significance or message? According to
Molleindustria, the game investigates ideas of alienation and ―the refusal of work.‖
Certainly these elements appear directly in the game: for example, the inability to
communicate with other characters in the game in any meaningful fashion, the
separation of workers in their individual cubicles and automobiles, the absence of people
in the final stage of ―purgatory‖—all of these invoke the social effects of alienated labor.
In terms of the ―refusal of work,‖ the designers employ a subtle method that tracks the
progress of the player's refusal against corporate interests: each step of refusal (or
waywardness from the path of work) is represented on the financial graph that appears
behind the boss when one arrives at work (fig. 14). Initially the financial chart represents
46
Fig.14. Arrival at work; Every Day the Same Dream; Molleindustria; 2009; Video Game;
15 October 2009.
an upward movement on the left side of the graph, and if the player arrives at work
without performing any act of refusal—waiting to catch a falling leaf, showing up at work
without clothes (fig. 14), abandoning one's car to go exploring, etc.—then the graph
does not change. Yet, each act of refusal that the player performs will add one
downward ―step‖ to the financial graph; thus it tracks a loss of corporate value as one
progresses in the game. It seems here that Molleindustria's political critique and
valorized method of subversion exists entirely on the surface of the game. Through
one's actions within the game one enacts the downfall of the company; refusing to work
is the refusal of producing surplus value for the company. Galloway argues that ―video
games do nothing but present contemporary political realities in relatively unmediated
form,‖ and that they ―achieve a unique type of political transparency‖ (unlike traditional,
representational media which require allegorical interpretation to understand their
―messages‖) (92). At first this seems the case in Every Day the Same Dream. I say ―seems‖
because while the critique of work and the method of subversion is certainly present,
the ―unsatisfying‖ ending (as Alexander called it) fails to fit with the superficial message
47
of the game. Why do these steps of work refusal lead to a ―purgatory‖ situation in the
final stage where one remains in the same world, completely absent of the social,
heading off to work once again, only to see ―oneself‖ leap off the edge of a building a
second time? Why not choose to depict the outcome of the refusal—and the
downward spiral of corporate profit—as liberating, as the moment when one becomes
―a new person‖ (as the elevator lady suggests will be the player's reward)? One does
not become a new person at the end of the game but becomes the same as one was
before. True, one might interpret the moment of watching ―oneself‖ leap from the
building as an act of rebirth from this purgatory, diving headfirst into some unknown,
colorful, new world outside the space of the game, an outside that cannot be imagined.
Yet, returning the player to the title screen after this final sequence unfolds hardly
supports an idea of escape or liberation.
One arrives at an impasse here, abandoned in the midst of a contradiction where
the liberating moments of refusal are not cast as liberating at all. In fact, interpreting the
moments of escape within the game—finding a graveyard, catching a single leaf falling
from a tree, committing suicide—are not coded as liberating moments of leisure and
non-productivity but as dismal encounters with finality and the futility of escape. Within
such an impasse one must embrace an interpretative move beyond the gametext,
beginning to unpack the game and uncover its hidden meanings through a move to
understand the historical context of the game. Embracing the conclusion that the
player‘s actions transparently reveal the political message of the game leads nowhere (or
48
to the simple dismissal of the complex message as ―unsatisfactory,‖ not being useful to
understand the game). Terry Eagleton once wrote:
In post-1968 Paris, an eyeball-to-eyeball encounter with the real still seemed on
the cards, if only the obfuscatory mediations of Marx and Freud could be
abandoned. For Deleuze and Guattari, that ‗real‘ is desire, which in a full-blown
metaphysical positivism ‗can never be deceived‘, needs no interpretation and
simply is. In this apodicticism of desire, of which the schizophrenic is hero, there
can be no place for political discourse proper, for such discourse is exactly the
ceaseless labour of interpretation of desire, a labour which does not leave its object
untouched. (69)
One cannot leave the ―object‖ of the game untouched, nor the desire which the game
expresses through the player's actions, but one must continue its interpretation, beyond
merely analyzing aspects of its game mechanics or even its narrative and visual
structures. Widening the scope of interpretation provides insight into the significance of
the game that would otherwise go missing.
Fortunately, a straightforward, theoretical guide—a ―walkthrough‖—is available
to aid the interpretation of the game: Franco ―Bifo‖ Berardi's short text ―What is the
Meaning of Autonomy Today? Subjectivation, Social Composition, Refusal of Work‖ (an
article which might even be the true motivation behind Every Day the Same Dream). In
Berardi's narrative of the rise of post-industrialism—precarious labor, flex-work, the
deregulation of the economy, the rise of the information economy and knowledge work,
etc..—the refusal of work plays a key determinant role. While on the one hand Berardi
argues that the rise of post-industrial society was inevitable given the restructuring of
society and economic reality caused by new computer and information technologies, he
also argues that the drive toward the autonomy of the worker also functioned as a
motivating force in the restructuring of the economy. The desire to become
49
autonomous from factory production and the tedium of industrial labor—which Berardi
traces to 1970s in Italy—was a positive and liberating social desire but ended in what
Berardi called ―capitalist revenge:‖
The process of the autonomisation of workers from their disciplinary role
has provoked a social earthquake which triggered capitalist deregulation. […]
Workers demanded freedom from capitalist regulation, then capital did the same
thing, but in a reversed way. Freedom from state regulation has become economic
despotism over the social fabric. Workers demanded freedom from the life-time
prison of the industrial factory. Deregulation responded with the flexibilisation and
the fractalisation of labour.
The autonomy movement in the 70s triggered a dangerous process, a
process which evolved from the social refusal of capitalist disciplinary rule to
capitalist revenge, which took the shape of deregulation, freedom of the
enterprise from the state, destruction of social protections, downsizing and
externalisation of production, cutback of social spending, de-taxation, and finally
flexibilisation.
In effect, what occurred was a movement from the positive, liberating uprooting of
capitalist labor which led to a certain autonomy from the abusive regulations of capitalist
control to a ―revenge‖ scenario where the precariousness and flexibility of labor
became forced aspects of the new economy: what occurred was a massive decoding of
labor that led to a systematic recoding of control. The result of such a recoding
produced the effect where, as Berardi says, ―what used to be the autonomy and the
political power of the workforce has become the total dependence of cognitive labour
on the capitalist organisation of the global network. [...] What used to be refusal of
work has become a total dependence of emotions and thought on the flow of
information.‖ The social desire to escape from the tedium of labor within industrial
society was realized, though such a desire was captured by post-industrial restructuring
where the cognitive freedom attained through the refusal to submit to the drudgery of
50
industrialism became the driving force of the new economy. ―Autonomy is the
independence of social time from the temporality of capitalism,‖ writes Berardi. The
refusal of work was linked to the desire to gain time for using one's brain, to have time
for one's thoughts and emotions not dictated by an industrial system which rigidly
controlled such time; yet, now a reversal has occurred, where, as I quoted Berardi
above, ―the worker‖ becomes ―a mere machine possessing a brain that can be used for
a fragment of time.‖
Molleindustria even made a little game that critiques the systemic rise of
precarious, flex-time, and cognitive labor called Tuboflex. In this game—visually modeled
on simple, dedicated, hand-held games from 80s—one plays a cartoon worker who, at
unpredictable intervals, is sucked up into a tube and deposited in different working
environments (answering phones, unloading boxes from a truck, playing Santa Claus and
keeping children happy, working in a fast food drive-thru window, etc.). The player must
be ready to shift from task to task at any moment for the tube can descend at any time.
Once and a while the character is deposited into his home where he sits in a chair
between a window and a clock with a single, constantly sweeping hand. Here the player
can either look out the window (fig. 15) or up at the clock (fig. 16), waiting for the
moment that he will be sucked away for another job. Indeed, such a game reveals one
result of the recoding of labor by post-industrial capitalism where the wide-eyed
character sits paralyzed during his free-time, his thoughts and emotions caught, once
again, between a desire to escape (e.g. looking out the window) and an anxiety
concerning capitalism's temporal control (e.g. looking at the clock). Eventually the player
51
cannot keep pace with the constant, work rotations within the game and thus becomes
―blacklisted‖—homeless and panhandling on the street, the refusal of work reversed
into its dark opposite where work is completely refused by the system. Interestingly,
Berardi calls this temporal fragmentation ―fractalisation despair,‖ linking it to suicidal
terrorism where the act of suicide ―suggest[s] that humankind has run out of time, and
despair has became the prevalent way of thinking about the future.‖
Fig. 15 & 16. Looking out the window; Looking at the clock; Tuboflex; Molleindustria;
2010; Video Game; 4 May 2010.
To return to Every Day the Same Dream, the widened, interpretative perspective
that Berardi describes provides an apt frame for understanding Molleindustria's game,
not only as a political critique and call for subversion and resistance through the refusal
of work—which is certainly one part of its manifest political content—but also as a
complicated reflection on the history of the refusal to work. The suicidal repetitions
within the game and the bleak moments of escape from the repetitiveness of work no
longer seem unintelligible (or, in the case of the ending, as ―unsatisfactory‖) but as
52
reflections of despair where the worker can no longer find consolation in temporal
fragments snatched from the temporal fractalization of contemporary society. The game
is less a representation of the liberating decoding of industrial labor that Berardi
identified as occurring in the 1970s, and more a representation of social reality after the
capitalist recoding of labor in post-industrial society. All of a sudden, the video game
medium itself becomes implicated in a self-reflexive critique through Molleindustria's
game. If the video game is itself a form of temporal escape and entertainment proper to
contemporary society, and if the gameplay mechanics enlist the desire of escape from
the tedium of work only to represent those ―outside‖ spaces as dismal prospects for
liberation, then the game becomes a symptom of the capitalist recoding of media forms
that are integrated into the fractalization of contemporary time in order manage and
contain social desires for escape.
One could even interpret the television set represented within the game (fig. 6)
in terms of a vestige of control and containment, these functions now partially being
channeled into the video game form.18 Within Every Day the Same Dream the television
endlessly flickers different colors, and while one can turn it off one cannot ―watch‖ it in
any meaningful way. On the one hand it represents the epitome of distraction with its
colorful, oscillating display, but on the other hand it is, literally, malfunctioning, unable to
present images within its frame, unable to produce its typical function within the game
space. It seems completely out of place in the game, the one bright, colorful aspect of
the world which does not at all fit its monochrome surroundings. Its glaring presence
only serves to signify its glaring incompatibility with its environment. The player can only
53
pass it by, perhaps shutting it off, which turns the screen to black and causes it to merge
into the monochrome background of the world. Yet, as the only representation of
―media‖ proper within the game space—and a media form that is stereotypically defined
as a mode of distraction, as escape—it causes a moment of self-reflection concerning
the player's actual activity playing the game as also a form of distraction and escape
(which is often the way popular media speak of the video game as well). The television
does not function in this world, but the video game has perhaps usurped some of its
prior functions as a containment of the desire to ―escape.‖ When Alexander wrote
above that ―Every Day The Same Dream is most useful when viewed as an example of
how the specific nature of video games...can be used to offer experiences that passive
media can't possibly,‖ she is correct from a certain perspective, but from the
interpretative frame that I have pursued here, what might also be useful would be to see
these different media technologies (television and games) as serving similar functions,
providing an experience that—seen from the perspective of larger cultural contexts—
travels beyond the discontinuities of medium specificity while expressing continuities of
function.
One aspect of the game that I have not yet discussed seems clear at this point.
The representations within Every Day the Same Dream often appear as throwbacks to a
prior era, the wife being a fixture of the home, cooking and watching TV, a notion of
mass-standardization and cultural sameness, the ―company man‖ off to work in a suit
with a briefcase, the short, pot-bellied, capitalist boss. If it were not for the fact that the
workers all sit before computers in cubicles, one might place the historical period of this
54
game in the 1950s. To some extent this aesthetic representation of temporal shifting
may participate in nostalgia, what Fredric Jameson called a ―new connotation of
'pastness' and pseduohistorical depth, in which the history of aesthetic styles displaces
'real' history‖ (Postmodernism 20). Indeed, such an aesthetic effect does seem to displace
historical thinking in many reviews of the game which tend to notice this ―pastness‖
without taking it seriously, dismissing it as an ―interesting‖ style instead of using it as a
catalyst for historical thinking. Yet, nostalgia as a longing for the past hardly explains the
dystopic energies within the game and the complex meditation the game produces in
terms of, for example, the refusal of work. The historical temporality of the game is
probably best approached, not through the lens of nostalgia, but through the experience
of déjà vu. Déjà vu means, of course, ―already seen.‖ Such a phrase begins to describe the
moment in the final ―suicidal‖ scene of the game where the character sees himself jump
from the railing into the void, thinking, ―I have been here before, haven't I?‖ Moreover,
within the historical context of the refusal to work (which I outlined through Berardi's
short essay) Every Day the Same Dream is also positioned as video game experimenting
with the trope of déjà vu: playing through the actions of the game one might think, ―we
have been here before, we have experienced this before.‖ Indeed, the refusal of work
led to the capitalist restructuring of the economy where society‘s ―dreams came true‖
(for autonomy) in the form of a new nightmare which, in the end, is simply a variation
on an old theme (another loop through the decoding and recoding of the program of
capitalist modernity). Such perhaps is one reading of the Molleindustria's bleak game, a
55
reading which attempts to go beyond what is merely conveyed transparently while
playing it from beginning to end.
Above I quoted Galloway writing about the transparency of the political content
video games which differed from traditional media in the sense video games do not
create a ―separation felt by the viewer between his or her experience of consuming the
media and the potentially liberating political value of that media.‖ Such a separation,
according to Galloway, is a mark of representational media like cinema or television, but
not of video games where the ―liberating political value‖ is felt upfront and in an
immediate fashion. In a game like Every Day the Same Dream (and indeed in a lot of
games) I think such a separation still remains; the surface politics in Molleindustria's
game are partially transparent—the refusal of work leading to a decline in corporate
profits—but I doubt anyone who plays the game can seriously disregard the despair and
sorrow which accompanies this ―liberation.‖ Thus, one must still ―unpack‖ the game in
search of its positivity, the sublimation of its ―liberating political value.‖
Examining déjà vu as the feeling that one already experienced something in the
past is not the only way to understand the experience. Déjà vu is, it seems, the
experience of remembering an event in the past where one (supposedly) saw the future,
saw the event as it was taking place just now. Perhaps in these moments one thinks one
is remembering a dream in which one saw the future. As Peter Krapp writes concerning
Walter Benjamin's sense of déjà vu as the ―future interior:‖ ―if I have been in this
situation, I might know what will happen next; there might be a clue left for me of what
is yet to come‖ (35). Thus, déjà vu becomes a reading of the present (through the guise
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of a memory) in order to interpret possible futures or what lies ahead. To be honest, I
do not know for sure if such a ―clue‖ exists in the game Every Day the Same Dream. Yet,
it may be there in the form of what is there but not there throughout the game: sleep.
In the game the player is always awakening when the new day arrives, but the structure
of the game with its narrative inconsistencies, with its temporal hodgepodge of the past
and the present, with the ambiguity of its title which suggests that each day is actually a
dream—all of these posit a situation in which the entire game is itself a dream,
transforming its players into sleepwalkers. But sleep might be that single place (or rather
time) where capital cannot go (regardless of Jameson's statement that capital has
colonized the unconscious). Berardi writes, ―Autonomy is the independence of social
time from the temporality of capitalism. This is the meaning of the expression refusal of
work. Refusal of work means quite simply: I don‘t want to go to work because I prefer
to sleep. But this laziness is the source of intelligence, of technology, of progress.‖ Sleep
becomes a figure for autonomy, for that temporal space outside the ―the temporality of
capitalism,‖ a time for the regeneration of social desire which can appear in different
future forms. For Berardi, the social desire contained within the refusal to work may
have led to a capitalist recoding of the decoding which it initially produced, but it was
also a form of liberation and (perhaps) a force for future change as the ―source of
intelligence, of technology, of progress.‖ Thus, the fact that Every Day the Same Dream
might be occurring in the temporal interval of sleep could be interpreted as a moment
of protected possibility, of working through the residues of the day, regenerating ideas,
searching through possible outlets of escape—just as one does in the game. Beyond the
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despair expressed immediately within the game—which is a marker of the present
according to Berardi—the game harbors and secures the hope for liberation within the
protective shield of the dream where autonomy rests and gathers strength.
This interpretation of Every Day the Same Dream has demonstrated the desire
vibrating throughout much of this dissertation, a desire to move beyond a strict focus
on questions concerning the gameness of the game, the formal properties or rule
systems, and the establishment of ―new‖ hermeneutic discourses that will replace the
supposedly old and worn-out interpretative methods of textual analysis. Again, I am not
arguing against the idea that one can pursue ―new,‖ fruitful forms of analysis and
methodologies that can produce useful knowledge about video games, but this
dissertation does argue against discourses that valorize the new in order to disparage
and replace the ―old‖ and the ―obsolete.‖ The production of such discourses always
creates its own blindness. Moreover, Every Day the Same Dream provides an example of
a complex gametext that is symptomatic of changes occurring in the historical program
of capitalist modernity—looping from solid to liquid (and back again), from decoding to
recoding (and back again). The chapters in this dissertation seek to analyze various
locations in video game culture where this looping can be sensed and interpreted, to use
the historical transformations operating within modernity as a lens to understand issues
within game culture while also using video games as a lens to understand these
transformations.
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Chapter Summaries
In the first chapter I examine Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi‘s psychological concept of
flow which describes the experience of an individual completely absorbed in a
challenging activity that provides clear goals, feedback, and the possibility of increasing
one's skills. Csikszentmihalyi‘s theory is often referenced in both popular discourses of
game design and academic investigations of video game forms, yet, there is almost a
complete absence of critical engagement with the theoretical framework which subtends
his theory of flow. This chapter fills this absence. While focusing on a close reading of
the video game flOw, designed explicitly in relation to Csikszentmihalyi's theories, I
compare the concept of televisual flow developed by Raymond Williams with
Csikszentmihalyi's theory of flow activities. Through this comparison I detect design
principles in the video game form that are similar to the formal properties of networked
television flow that Williams identified in the mid 1970s. For example, both forms of
flow—televisual and video game flow—seek to increase the temporal duration of media
consumption (watching TV or playing video games for longer periods) which ultimately
leads to the increased commodification of the spectator or player. Such an expansion of
temporal duration, I argue, is intimately connected to the decoding and recoding
dialectic of capitalist modernity where disruptive media flows need to be formally
―solidified‖ and recoded in order to extend and sustain their profitable utilization.
Csikszentmihalyi‘s theory of flow influences a theoretical design model for video games
that continues historical forms of control under capitalism where an individual is
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disciplined to avoid boredom, anxiety and distraction in order to become an attentive
consumer. Moreover, his theoretical model of flow privileges a unified subject position,
a flowing subject as I call it. Such a subject becomes a conduit for ideologies that the flow
experience perpetuates —for example, the loss of critical reflection and the production
of a growth model of the self where the self becomes a mirror image of capitalist
accumulation that ultimately benefits the perpetuation of exploitation and alienation.
In chapter two I examine the recent, vibrant rise of art and political games—
―indie‖ games of often modest size created by individuals or small teams that pursue
innovative gaming experiences. In Andreas Jahn-Sudmann's recent article, ―Innovation
NOT Opposition: The Logic of Distinction of Independent Games,‖ he argues that these
games do not offer oppositional stances to mainstream game development but embrace
a relentless search for gameplay innovation: that is, indie games desire to endlessly
―make it new‖ but do not formulate a political, oppositional aesthetics similar to, for
example, avant-garde film practices in the nineteen-sixties and seventies. Beginning with
an analysis of Bertolt Brecht's innovative, modernist aesthetics (which were grounded in
political opposition), I analyze the contemporary fascination of innovation in the indie
game movement as a kind of Brechtian aesthetics that has become detached from the
political: while these indie games ―oppose‖ mainstream game forms by pursuing
innovations in game mechanics that mainstream games lack, such innovation becomes an
end in itself and a possible source of perpetual decoding that can feed back into
capitalist recodings. Through the lens of this obsession to innovate within indie game
culture, I analyze the contemporary, cultural situation of ―total innovation‖ (Liu), a
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massive fluidity of change and cultural decoding, a situation of ―total flow‖ as Fredric
Jameson has called it in his essay ―Surrealism Without the Unconscious‖
(Postmodernism). In this situation everything seems to change while nothing changes at
all. (In a sense, this situation of total flow is the dialectical opposite of the notion of
coded and managed flows which I discuss in the first chapter). Within this situation I
interrogate the possibilities of opposition that remain. Indeed, in Anti-Oedipus Deleuze
and Guattari write:
What is the revolutionary path? Is there one?—To withdraw from the world
market...? Or might it be to go in the opposite direction? To go still further, that
is, in the movement of the market, of decoding and deterritorialization? For
perhaps the flows are not yet deterritorialized enough, not decoded enough... Not
to withdraw from the process, but to go further, to 'accelerate the process,' as
Nietzsche put it: in this matter, the truth is that we haven't seen anything yet.
(239-240)
Such an answer, it seems, requires out innovating the innovators. Oppositional practices
would seek to push capitalism to its extreme in order to burst its limits. It is, in a sense,
a declaration that liquid modernity is still too solid, that it must become something like a
gaseous modernity where all that is solid will be melted into air, including capitalism.
Yet, pulling back from such an answer I instead embrace the Brechtian idea that
innovations can become renovations—that is, changes that are not changes at all but
perpetuate dominant social relations, becoming a fluid stream of decoded flows that are
easily recoded and channelled back into the mainstream. What is needed then, I argue,
is a continued interrogation of innovation while also recoding these decoded flows back
into more solid formations that can resist the onslaught of total innovation—a solution
that Deleuze and Guattari would have ―opposed.‖
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In chapter three I turn to analyze issues regarding gender and video games while
focusing on three main goals. First, I return to flow in relation to video games, in this
case analyzing time management games as an emergent women's genre through a close
reading of Diner Dash and the game's protagonist Flo—an obvious nod to
Csikszentmihalyi‘s theories. Investigating scholarship concerning daytime television's
relationship to the work of women in the home I analyze Diner Dash's relationship to
women's time in contemporary, everyday life, exposing how the casual game form is
designed to smooth over, recode, and manage the fragmented and interrupted
temporalities of women's work and leisure. Here flow is less about a dominant model of
the game's structure, and more about the relationship of ―time management‖ games to
the social function of contemporary, gendered time experience. Second, casual games
are commonly seen as simple games differentiated from more complex, ―hardcore,‖ and
masculine offerings in the mainstream game world. The emergence of the casual games
market has created a palpable anxiety in the game world, largely expressed in terms of
the feminization of gaming culture which threatens male, mainstream gamers. I interpret
this process of feminization as the reemergence of a modern, gendered discourse which
has traditionally feminized mass culture; such a reappearance suggests that the discourse
of aesthetic modernism (in terms of a divide between high and low culture) has hardly
disappeared, remaining entrenched in gendered divisions which, I argue, are a significant
driving force of modernist dynamics in general. Finally, I also demonstrate the
interconnectedness of representation (both narrative and visual) and gameplay dynamics,
intervening within the field of games studies where representation is often undervalued
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as a meaningful object of game analysis. Such a devaluation is often expressed within
traditional gendered binaries where the feminine is placed in the position of the
insignificant (e.g. representation) while the masculine is associated with the essential (e.g.
formal rule systems, etc.)—a similar binary expressed in the casual vs. hardcore divide.
In the final chapter I turn to the representation of clouds in video games. The
cloud is a figure of temporal and spatial mutation that resists closure, capture, and
delineation. That is, clouds are seemingly that which cannot be coded. Moreover, in
discourses of modernity clouds often stand as a fluid nexus of transcendent, imaginative
resistance to the static and immanent iron cage of modern bureaucracy and
rationalization. Clouds are an escape, an outside space of fantasy forms and projections,
an imaginative source of freedom; in many ways they act as forms that resist
systematization and thus become important for investigating moments when systems
break down. Since clouds are a form which can reveal the limitations of a
representational system, they can also provide insight into the materiality of a medium‘s
constraints. Analyzing clouds as they appear within many games that I discuss within this
dissertation—while including other games and artworks that make intriguing uses of
clouds—I focus on the cloud as a marker of escape, attempting to investigate the space
of video games and how such an escape is foreclosed and recoded. Comparing the cloud
in video games to the theorization of clouds in the history of painting by Hubert
Damisch and John Ruskin, I attempt to theorize the continuation of traditional
perspectival codes and visual realism within the 3D space of video games while also
describing a nascent, emergent system of interactive space and realism in video games
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which is usurping the realism of perspectival space. As a form that touches the limits of
a medium‘s ability to frame reality, the cloud helps disclose the relationship between a
medium and the reality it strives to capture.
1 In contemporary theoretical discourses not explicitly concerned with the abstract conceptualization of
flow the term is often employed in a non-rigorous fashion where one encounters talk about flows of
information, communication, capital, commodities, goods and services, labor, media, people, ideology,
etc.. In these uses flow becomes a metaphorical abstraction that also invokes mobility, movement and
circulation while simultaneously suggesting that one cannot rigorously pinpoint the series of
movements that flow is meant to signify; the term seems like a shorthand for the absence of
theoretical precision. Here, the meaning of flow indicates significance that escapes its demarcation,
slipping away, like a stream of water parting to move around an obstacle one sets in its path. Like any
metaphor, the logic of its operation eventually melts away the closer one examines the details of its
construction. Flow often seems a stand-in, a term put to work in order to complete a task without a
firm job description. I must admit that the idea of flow interests me partially because of this instability,
because of its ability to mutate and reshape itself to different contexts. Although the concept of flow
resists systematization and absolute definition (given the nature of its own meaning to constantly move
beyond itself) it is also a term which invites analysis and procedures that break-open and isolate the
parts that compose a flow.
2 The idea of ―flow‖ in liquid modernity concerns the uprooting of multiple registers of experience, of a
bewilderment in a media saturated environment, the transformation of labor practices, etc.—a second
wave of transformation in the tsunami of modernity. Yet, to think that liquid modernity is completely
unanchored from the past, at the ―end of history,‖ and forever floating free would be a false
impression. As Terry Eagleton recently wrote, ―human culture is not really free-floating. Which is to
say that it is not firmly anchored either. That would be just a flipside of the same misleading metaphor.
Only something that is capable of being anchored could be described as having floated‖ (After Theory
57). Part of the stance that I want to foreground is simply that the creations of flows in modernity are
accompanied by their simultaneous recoding, and that this process continues in liquid modernity (or
―postmodernity‖). Eagleton's statement, I should note, is an example of modernity living on as ―the
pressure of unfulfilled hopes‖ (as Bauman said above), the hope of the political and a possible (though
―partial‖) return to anchored structures and bound commitments that would have lasting, political
effect. Thus, solid modernity lives on in this hope as well.
3 The intensification and rationalization of labor practices wrought by industrial capitalism can serve as a
brief example of the decoding and encoding of flows. Consider the following from Marx's Capital Vol.
One: ―An artificer, who performs one after another the various fractional operations in the production
of a finished article, must at one time change his place, at another his tools. The transition from one
operation to another interrupts the flow of his labour, and creates, so to say, gaps in his working-day.
These gaps close up so soon as he is tied to one and the same operation all day long; they vanish in
proportion as the changes in his work diminish. The resulting increased productive power is owing
either to an increased expenditure of labour-power in a given time i.e., to increased intensity of labour
or to a decrease in the amount of labour-power unproductively consumed. The extra expenditure of
power, demanded by every transition from rest to motion, is made up for by prolonging the duration
of the normal velocity when once acquired. On the other hand, constant labour of one uniform kind
disturbs the intensity and flow of a man‘s animal spirits, which find recreation and delight in mere
change of activity‖ (374). Here, traditional flows of labor associated with the discrete tasks that
comprise the entirety of an artisanal production process is uprooted, decoded, fragmented and
redesigned in order to intensify labor and extract an increase in productivity through a rationalized
recoding of the discrete tasks in the flow of production. The previous flow of labor—which Marx
associates with a kind of instinctive enjoyment in diversity and change—is sundered (decoded) and
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redesigned (recoded) into a flow calibrated to exploit ―man's animal spirits.‖ In the early twentieth
century, processes of Taylorization and Fordism would continue to recode the uprooting of labor's
discrete elements into an intensified and structured system of activity; each gesture, each movement,
of the worker would be rationalized and formed into an efficient ―routine‖ which would be repeated
endlessly. The decoding of traditional forms of labor was followed with an unchanging routine which
re-encoded the decoded labor flow. The discrete process of diversity and change within the flow of
task-oriented labor practices was reorganized in order to minimize the inefficient expenditures which
this diversity created within the flow of production.
4 Manuel Castells writes, ―By flows I understand purposeful, repetitive, programmable sequences of
exchange and interaction between physically disjointed positions held by social actors in the economic,
political, and symbolic structures of society‖ (412). While this quotation concerns a description of
flows intimately associated with the flows of information through networks and the dispersed spatial
organization of a global network society, it also offers the beneficial insight that flows are ―purposeful,
repetitive, programmable sequences of exchange and interaction.‖ They are purposeful and thus
rationalized and intended series of exchanges; they are repetitive and thus constantly reproducing the
same or similar results; they are programmable and thus intimately connected to computerization and
the work of algorithms which structure the ―flow of control‖ of particular computer programs. These
features are algorithmic in that an algorithm can loosely be defined as a series of programmed
instructions which are intended to be repeatable, ultimately providing the same or similar outcomes
whenever it is executed. The algorithmic nature of flows denotes an already ―coded‖ flow, formally
structured and managed. One might say that certain dominant narrative structures and formal devices
in mainstream cinema operate as algorithmic flows; or, the flow of network television inscribes
dominant systems that control forms of interaction and exchange between the televisual flow and its
reception; or, the algorithmic structure of computerized games provides the ―rules‖ which outlines a
player's interaction with the video game text.
5 For example, in Jonathan Crary's excavations of changes in perception and vision within the nineteenth
century one explicit goal was to reveal how unhinging vision from an anchor in ―reality‖—mobilizing it,
dispersing it—was a precondition for the emergence of new forms of subjectivity that were likewise
malleable, manageable and sustainable: ―Thus the imperatives of capitalist modernization, while
demolishing the field of classical vision, generated techniques for imposing visual attentiveness,
rationalizing sensation, and managing perception. They were disciplinary techniques that required a
notion of visual experience as instrumental, modifiable, and essentially abstract, and that never allowed
a real world to acquire solidity or permanence (Techniques of the Observer 24). Moreover, this
―modifiable‖ vision for Crary was also a precondition for twentieth century media flows and
―technological arrangements‖ under capitalism, arrangements which he once termed ―abstract flows‖
that demanded particular forms of subjects molded into ―attentive consumers‖ (Suspensions 32-33).
These subjects required ―disciplinary attentiveness‖ that ―entailed cognitively 'processing' a stream of
heterogeneous stimuli (whether film, radio, television, or cyberspace)‖ (Suspensions 77). The fluidity of
vision uprooted from its classical (and stable) forms was a precondition for its recoding and
realignment into structures of twentieth century media flows. Indeed, one of the reasons I have
chosen to focus on the idea of flow is because of its strong attachments to media theory (especially
television)—a connection that I will address thoroughly in chapter one where I compare the concepts
of televisual and video game flow. My focus on the concept of flow (in terms of its ―recoding‖) is
largely motivated by a desire to theorize how dominant and popular video games forms are arranged
in order to manage new forms of subjectivity and temporalities—attempting to investigate how forms
of interaction, user control and ―play‖ are managed, directed and sustained through the video game
form. This pursuit emerges specifically in the first and third chapters of the dissertation.
6 I should note that Molleindustria is a firm believer in simulations and their ability to reduce the
complexity of social reality in order to rhetorically present an argument while making complex
thoughts graspable. Although this animation is not a simulation game where a player could manipulate
different aspects of the work, it nevertheless harbors a connection to the simulation form and to the
reduction of complexity that Molleindustria often embraces in their pedagogical games.
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7 See, for example, Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter's ―Playful Multitude? Mobilising and CounterMobilising Immaterial Game Labour‖ Fibreculture, Issue 5, 2005, and their Games of Empire: Global
Capitalism and Video Games (2090); Julian Kücklich's ―Precarious Playbour: Modders and the Digital
Games Industry‖ Fibreculture, Issue 5, 2005; Hector Postigo's ―Of Mods and Modders: Chasing Down
the Value of Fan-based Digital Game Modifications,‖ Games and Culture: A Journal of Interactive Media.
Volume 2 Issue 4:300-312, and his ―From Pong to Planet Quake: Post-Industrial Transitions from
Leisure to Work,‖ Information, Communication & Society. December 2003, Volume 6, Issue 4: 593-60.
8 Thus, in chapter one I analyze the recoding of the video game form through Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's
theories of flow in relation to video game design and how these theories help produce and sustain the
commodification of video games. In chapter two, I switch from the recoding of video game play, and
instead focus on the massive decoding occurring within the indie game movement, a
deterritorialization attached to an ideology of innovation that, at this juncture in time, could be used as
a stream of inventive development for capitalist recoding or perhaps emerge as an energy behind a
radical countergaming movement (although an energy which would need to be divorced from the lure
and ideology of absolute innovation). In chapter three, I analyze the emergence of casual games and
how they are being recoded in terms of familiar gender dynamics between high and low culture, and,
moreover, how the design of casual games is constructed to integrate with, exploit, manage and
sustain the fragmented, temporal flow of many women's contemporary lives. Finally, in the last chapter
I look to the clouds, for the cloud operates as the desire of decoding, of an outside to rationalization
and striation, of a continuous flow that cannot be contained spatial or temporally; here I analyze the
figure of the cloud in discourses concerning the formation of modernity and also in their use within
video games, investigating how the meaning of the clouds operates as both a desire of escape (or
decoding) while also signaling the location of a new form of spatial systematization (recoding).
9 Although certainly not a narratologist by any means, compare the following statement from Mark Wolf
from his book The Medium of the Video Game: ―As media, video games are already widespread and
unique enough to deserve their own branch of theory. Currently, they are best approached and
analyzed using conceptual tools developed in film and television theory and media studies‖ (2-3). Such
a statement would obviously be countered by ludologists, though I offer it as an example that clearly a
schism in the approach to game analysis was not completely illusory at the time.
10 Just as Lev Manovich argued that ―New media might look like media, but this is only the surface‖
(eventually arguing that new media must ―turn to computer science‖ and move away from media
studies toward ―software studies‖ (48)), Aarseth and other game scholars foreground the non-visual
and non-narrative aspects of games in favor of analyzing them in terms of non-representational
systems.
11 In an online discussion which touched on his article ―Genre Trouble,‖ Aarseth argued that his
―critique [was] directed towards naïve applications of narratology...and overgeneral conclusions, and
towards academics who never question their own methods or concepts when they apply them outside
their original empirical domain‖ (18 Sept 2004). Moreover, in this online discussion and in ―Genre
Trouble‖ Aarseth linked video game studies to the larger historical concern with games and play in
general; thus, video games are only a late, technological development within the larger history of the
cultural form of games—an expansive history that games studies would cover.
12 As Erkki Huhtamo writes: ―Continuing the Benjaminian tradition, the German cultural historian
Wolfgang Schivelbusch has shown us how such a broad concept of history can be used to shed light
not only on the topic in question - the railway, artificial lighting, stimulants – but on the ways in which
artefacts are embedded in the complex discursive fabrics and patterns reigning in a culture. From a
predominantly chronological and positivistic ordering of things, centered on the artefact, the emphasis
is shifting into treating history as a multi-layered construct, a dynamic system of relationships‖ (―From
Kaleidoscomaniac‖ 221).
13 Huhtamo's approach follows one of Siegfried Zielinski's definitions of media archaeology ―which in a
pragmatic perspective means to dig out secret paths in history, which might help us to find our way
into the future‖ (―Media Archaeology‖).
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14 ―The sheer number of students trained in film and literary studies will ensure that the slanted and
crude misapplication of 'narrative' theory to games will continue and probably overwhelm game
scholarship for a long time to come‖ (Aarseth, ―Genre Trouble‖ 54).
15 While I will cover this topic more thoroughly in chapter three, I should mention that more holistic
approaches to game interpretation which take into account both gameplay elements and
visual/narrative elements do exist. See, for example, Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman's Rules of Play:
Game Design Fundamentals; or, Jon Dovey and Helen W. Kennedy's Game Cultures: Computer Games as
New Media.
16 Video game scholar and designer Gonzalo Frasca has read the game differently: ―One of the most
controversial features in The Sims is its consumerist ideology. Literally, the amount of virtual friends
that you have depends on the amount of goods that you own (obviously, the bigger your house, the
better). Nevertheless, I met some people that firmly believe that The Sims is a parody and, therefore, it
is actually a critique of consumerism. Personally, I disagree. While the game is definitively cartoonish, I
am not able to find satire within it. Certainly, the game may be making fun of suburban Americans, but
since it rewards the player every time she buys new stuff, I do not think this could be considered
parody‖ (―The Sims‖). Here, Frasca looks to the game mechanics of the simulation in order to
uncover that the game ―rewards‖ players for consumptive actions. Perhaps Frasca's understanding of
the game reveals more clearly what the ―upfront‖ politics of the game actually are: in terms of The
Sims it is not just what the player does that matters, but how the simulation changes based on those
actions. To answer Galloway's question—―How could one craft a better critique of contemporary
life?‖—Frasca might answer that one should change the simulation, perhaps changing the friendship
―rule‖ so that if you own a lot of possessions you would lose certain kinds of friends and gain others.
17 Drawing on the work of Peter Sloterdijk and his concept of cynical reason Lev Manovich writes:
―...ideology does not demand that the subject blindly believe it, as it did in the early twentieth century;
rather, it puts the subject in the master position of someone who knows very well that she is being
fooled, and generously lets herself be fooled. You know, for instance, that creating a unique identity
through a commercial mass-produced style is meaningless—but you buy the expensively styled clothes
anyway, choosing from a menu—‗military,' 'bohemian,' 'flower child,' 'inner city,' 'clubbing,' and so on‖
(209). Galloway inhabits this ―master position,‖ or rather, he positions the players of The Sims as
inhabiting this master position, players who continue to play the game but interpret it as ironic, as a
parody, as a self-evident critique. Perhaps the game is this blatant critique while it also is a
representation of blatant consumerism, continuously navigating this blurry line in order to expand the
game‘s consumer demographic.
18 While I could certainly interpret the gendered implications of this space—where the cooking woman
stands facing the television—I will leave such an examination to chapter three in this dissertation
where the relationship between television, games and women players will be examined in full detail.
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CHAPTER ONE
THE DISCOURSE AND SUBJECT OF FLOW IN VIDEO GAMES
Fig. 1. flOw title screen; thatgamecompany, 2006; Video game;15 September 2009.
I start the game. A white, gently throbbing title appears over a light blue screen (fig.
1). The title fades in and out as if breathing slightly. I notice that the game has already
begun. I am already playing. A small bundle of connected white circles and dots wriggles
after the mouse pointer. Attached to the front of the chain of circles is a thin crescent
moon, a little jaw shaped like a ―c.‖ Pressing and holding a mouse button causes the
minnow-like creature—rendered in Flash vector graphics—to burst forward, speeding
through the blue expanse of the screen. I move the mouse behind the figure and it
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turns, curling like a little snake in the opposite direction, swimming over the game title
which remains on screen and continues to softly pulsate. Slightly muffled or submerged
tones percolate the soundtrack as I move about the blue. Here and there I can see
blurred, white objects which float around though some seem to be swimming just like
me. Soon I find a small circle with a red dot inside of it, squirming this way and that. I
point my creature toward it, and the ―c‖ closes over it. The screen zooms in briefly; the
blue becomes a little darker shade; some of the objects that were blurred have now
resolved. I'm surrounded by small circles with white dots in the center, tails attached
and wiggling. Now credits for the game design and production fade in and out. I begin to
consume the circles, and the more I eat the more my creature unfurls, circles appearing
and extending the chain which is my body. Soon, I consume more creatures marked
with red dots, diving ―deeper‖ into the blue which becomes darker with each descent. I
eat more creatures—some which look just like me. I grow longer, more elaborate. I
acquire a pair of lines which jut out like fins from the body of my creature. The deeper I
descend the more difficult it is to consume the other creatures which now zoom about,
trying to devour me, slowly plucking away the glowing circles from my body. If I feel like
I can't handle the beasts I look for an organism similar to the one with a red dot in it,
except this organism's dot is blue; consuming it sends me up a level, closer to the
surface and away from the creatures that were attacking me. I think to myself, ―Maybe I
can find more food, grow larger, and then return below to challenge them again?‖
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Fig. 2. flOw for PlayStation 3; thatgamecompany, 2006; Flash game;15 September 2009.
The game is called flOw (2006) and was created by thatgamecompany (TGC)
founded by Jenova Chen and Kellee Santiago. Now available in an extended version over
the PlayStation 3 network (fig. 2), the game was originally a free online Flash game which
now claims millions of downloads. In addition to flOw the company produced an award
winning game Cloud (which will be discussed in chapter four) and recently released a
new game for the PlayStation 3 entitled Flower—a game which references ―flow‖ it is
title and builds on the design principles of TGC's previous games. TGC produces
alternative gaming experiences, offering, as their website phrases it, ―games that
communicate different emotional experiences the current video game market is not
offering.‖ In the popular press their games tend to be categorized as innovative,
aesthetic, and even emotionally moving. TGC's logo, a disembodied hand gesturing over
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a blue background, elegantly embodies the themes of the games that they have released:
the glowing white hand is seemingly caught in movement, flowing through the frame,
perhaps like a cloud which has taken the subtle shape of this appendage as its form
lingers in the sky. The image brings to mind the hand of a dancer, captured in a graceful
pose, or perhaps a conductor‘s hand caught as it sweeps through the air, directing a
gentle sound from some unseen orchestra. In fact, these are apt analogies for the
experience of playing flOw on the PlayStation 3. Here, the player uses a wireless
controller to conduct the organism's movement. Sensors embedded in the controller
detect its pitch, yaw and roll, and the creature gracefully responds to the gestures of the
player's dancing hand. Simply moving the controller around in the air will direct the
creature. Moreover, the sounds produced when the gamer consumes different
creatures and objects are integrated into the overall mood of the game's soundtrack—
eerily minimal. Thus, one can play the game with a simple desire to conduct music,
similar to Rez or the musician Toshio Iwai's Electroplankton for the Nintendo DS. Yet,
while the disembodied hand of TGC's logo dutifully resonates with the forms of the
games that they have produced, it also marks the abstract hand of the gamer in general,
a hand which reaches into the framed screen, bringing the outside within, indicating the
presence of the gamer within the space of the game as he or she interacts and partially
controls the representations contained within the screen. The human hand remains any
hand, the hand of all gamers in general, not any gamer in particular.1 This depicts
another aspect of the TGC‘s mission, namely, to make games that will interest
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everyone, that go beyond (or between) the market for ―hardcore‖ gamers and even
―casual gamers‖ toward what TGC calls the ―core‖ gamer.
I choose to begin with flOw for a few reasons. First, the desire of TGC to
address the core gamer points toward the possibility of investigating a ―core‖
experience of the gamer linked to a concept of flow formulated as a structure of
experience—the mode of being in the flow of things, being in the zone. Understanding
this flow experience allows the possibility of theorizing a particular kind of flowing
subject and the form of games which position this subject.
Second, throughout the dissertation I attempt to think through the ruptures and
continuations that video games harbor in relation to older media forms; thus, I compare
the concept of flow in games (specifically addressed through TGC's flOw) to the concept
of televisual flow first described by Raymond Williams in his book Television: Technology
and Cultural Form (1974).
Third, flOw is ―not just a game‖ but a game created to express a concept, a
particular idea about game design. This phrase ―not just a game‖ is also meant to
combat the popular idiom ―it's just a game‖ (still widely in circulation) which is often
used to demarcate games as non-serious pastimes that harbor no meaning (or frivolous
meaning). My use of this phrase is similar to Matthew Fuller's description of I/O/D's Web
Stalker—an alternative web browser/artwork—as ―not just art‖ (61-62).2 Yet, whereas
Web Stalker is an idea and artwork which is (was) also meant to be used as a web
browser, flOw is a game that many have played but which is also meant to be
understood and analyzed as an idea. Indeed, at one point Jenova Chen calls flOw a ―test‖
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of certain game design principles (Flow in Games). The theory which subtends flOw—and
which the game tests—stems from the work of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a psychologist
and sociologist who has written prolifically over the past thirty years about ―flow
experiences‖ which he identified in many activities such as rock climbing, performing
surgery, teaching, playing chess, basketball and others. For Csikszentmihalyi, flow
becomes a key mode of experience for understanding of the structure of the (ideal) self.
In fact, his theory of flow depends upon a particular model of a subject, and thus his
ideas will form the core of my analysis of the gamer subject. Just as flOw is not ―just a
game‖ this dissertation seeks to examine video games as not just games but as media
forms determined by (and determining) larger historical forces. For example,
Csikszentmihalyi's conception of the subject can also be connected to larger historical
trajectories that have shaped modern subjectivity. His construction of the subject ―in
flow‖ draws heavily on concepts such as boredom, anxiety, attention and experience—
key ideas often discussed in theories of modernity (hence the title of Csikszentmihalyi's
first major book examining flow: Beyond Boredom and Anxiety: The Experience of Play in
Work and Games (1975)). While Csikszentmihalyi's theories are developed in the
nascent stage of post-industrial society (and certainly respond to contemporary shifts in
culture), his particular reliance on the subject as a foundation for intentional action, as a
firm ground for the remaking of society, is connected to the idea of solid modernity
which Zygmunt Bauman theorized (and which I analyzed within the introduction).
By focusing on Csikszentmihalyi's conception of the subject and the positioning
of subjectivity by video games, I am explicitly engaging what Brian Sutton-Smith has
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called the ―rhetorics of the self,‖ one of nine rhetorical and ideological frames which he
has identified in the theoretical discourse of play theory. For Sutton-Smith, the question
of the self and subjectivity in relation to play is a relatively recent category of
examination appearing in the twentieth century; it is attached to a larger, historical
process of Western ―individualization‖ and the drive of capitalism which has created a
sense of self constructed through personal consumption and the individual's choice of
commodities rather than through the process of collective production. Although SuttonSmith tends to deride the limited approaches to play based on subjectivity—where
Csikszentmihalyi ―has had the greatest impact in the last twenty years‖ (184)—he is
acutely aware that the question of subjectivity and the experiences of the player cannot
be ignored in our (Western) historical situation. He writes, ―It is quite impossible to
frame a relevant play theory without saying something about these ever-present
experiential concerns. Despite the twentieth-century relativity of the self rhetorics, we
are all, inescapably, creatures of such individualism‖ (199). Although I am aware of the
limited scope of analyzing subjectivity in terms of the wider discipline of play theory I am
also concerned with the contemporary forms of video games which Csikszentmihalyi's
theories are helping to shape and with the emergence of a flowing subject and its ideal
properties. I hope to contribute to an understanding and critique of the ―rhetorics of
the self,‖ in particular Csikszentmihalyi's version, while further investigating its
connections to the historical forces that Sutton-Smith identifies.
This chapter has two main goals. First, I compare Raymond Williams' concept of
flow with that of Csikszentmihalyi's, examining how they both function in terms of
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contemporary television and video games; while television has become more ―playful‖
and open to the kind of flow experiences that Csikszentmihalyi has theorized, I argue
that the video game form (using the game flOw as an example of a particular set of ideas
about game design) can also be illuminated through a comparison with Williams' notion
of planned flow. I argue that these two concepts of flow are fundamentally similar in
their effects when viewed in terms of the commodification of media within a capitalist
system. Second, I critically examine Csikszentmihalyi's widely popular notion of flow in
terms of the model of subjectivity which it valorizes. While Csikszentmihalyi's prolific
theories have attained, in the words of one game scholar, ―a position of almost
paradigmatic power in game studies,‖ they have not been analyzed critically in any depth
(Mortensen 1). Thus, this chapter contributes to video game scholarship by filling this
gap, critiquing Csikszentmihalyi's model of a ―flowing subject‖ while revealing ideologies
that are integrated within, and extended by, its structures.
Televisual and Video Game Flow
Csikszentmihalyi's Theory of Flow and Video Games
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's concept of flow concerns a particular experience, an
optimal experience as he calls it, a state of being ―in the flow‖ or ―in the zone‖ where one
is completely absorbed by an activity and enters into a state of intensive enjoyment.
Beginning with his book Beyond Boredom and Anxiety: The Experience of Play in Work and
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Games (1975) Csikszentmihalyi studied a variety of different activities—from playing
chess to rock climbing, from dancing to surgery—isolating a set of common principles
which came to define the experience of flow. In his later popular book Flow: The
Psychology of Optimal Experience (1990) Csikszentmihalyi outlined seven basic principles
that describe this experience: a challenging activity that requires skills, the merging of
action and awareness, clear goals and feedback, concentration on the task at hand, the
paradox of control, the loss of self-consciousness, and the transformation of time. One
can identify many of these principles within the experience of playing video games, and
indeed, play and games are key activities which invoke flow experiences for
Csikszentmihalyi. While he rarely mentions video games throughout his prolific
scholarship, when they do appear—for example, in the book Television and the Quality of
Life: How Viewing Shapes Everyday Experience (1990) co-authored with Robert Kubey—
they are mentioned as a media form that produces optimal flow experiences:
Video play is highly challenging, requires skill, and offers rapid feedback and thus
possesses all the key structural elements necessary to experiencing flow.
Because many video games are also programmed to increase in difficulty as the
player‘s skill increases, video games offer unusual opportunities for flow and
there can be little doubt that these same structural features, and the flow
experiences that they engender, explain much of the popularity of video games.
(143-144)
Since a comparison between the properties of flow and video games has been carried
out elsewhere I will only offer a few, brief descriptions of the operation of flow in
games.3 Video games often provide the experience of merging action and awareness
which is related to forms of intense concentration and attentiveness. Csikszentmihalyi
writes that this experience of merging occurs when ―people become so involved in what
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they are doing that the activity becomes spontaneous, almost automatic; they stop being
aware of themselves as separate from the actions they are performing‖ (Flow 53); thus,
the merging of action and awareness is linked to the loss of self-consciousness where
the player does not (have time to) reflect upon the self but is absorbed completely in his
or her ―doing.‖ In 1984 Sherry Turkle related this experience to what she called the
―holding power‖ of the computer and video games. Aware of Csikszentmihalyi's idea of
flow she wrote that video games require ―total concentration,‖ often transporting the
gamer into an ―altered state‖ (82). Although the mesmerizing nature of the computer
itself has perhaps passed its historical peak since 1984, video games continue to invoke
intensive states. Ted Friedman recently expressed this experience in relation to the
simulation game Civilization: ―When a game of Civilization really gets rolling, the decisions
are effortless, instantaneous, chosen without self-conscious thought. The result is an
almost-meditative state, in which you aren't just interacting with the computer, but
melding with it‖ (138). In this meditative/melded state time distortion appears; for
example, when playing a game of Civilization hours melt away without the awareness of
the player. In addition to the merging of action and awareness, video games often
provide clear goals and appropriate feedback—one principle of flow which game
theorist Jesper Juul calls ―very gamelike!‖ (139). Typical goals in computer games include
gaining a higher score, defeating human or machine opponents, progressing to the next
level, completing assigned missions or objectives, solving puzzles, furthering a narrative,
etc.. Of course, feedback is also a clear component of video games which are essentially
cybernetic systems where the computer returns information to a user based on his or
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her input to the system; and, based on the output of the computer (changes in image,
sound, feeling of a rumbling controller, etc.) the gamer returns input back into the
system in order to control or change the output.
Perhaps most importantly, video games require skill on the part of the gamer and
tend to present more difficult challenges as the game unfolds. This is a key principle of
the flow experience: balancing an individual's skill level with the present challenges and
retaining this balance as skills develop and challenges increase. Such a principle allows
Csikszentmihalyi to model the subject's movement between boredom and anxiety.
Fig. 3. A simple theoretical model of flow. Csikszentmihalyi; Flow: The Psychology of
Optimal Experience; 1990.
In this diagram of the flow experience (fig. 3), a linear progression occurs between the
threatening poles of boredom and anxiety. Flow is the zone where challenges (to one's
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ability) and one's skills (to overcome challenges) are balanced. The progressive,
―upward‖ movement of continual balancing occurs in situations where the challenges of
an activity and the player's skills do not necessarily align: if one is bored with an activity
(A2) then she has a surplus of skills in light of the present challenges; thus she needs to
increase the challenges to meet her skill level. Or, she is anxious if the challenges are
too high for the skill set that she possess (A3), and thus must increase her skills to meet
the challenges. Ideally a player would remain within the ―flow channel,‖ skills and
challenges increasing in a parallel fashion as the game progresses. One might call this
goal to achieve a balance between skills and challenges the holy grail of game design—to
avoid situations where a player becomes bored or frustrated (anxious) and thus stops
playing the game.4 Indeed, TGC's game flOw is primarily concerned with this balancing
act—allowing players to easily move between levels of game play which will
automatically adjust the challenges to their skills; in theory, different players with
different skills and styles of play should be able to find their flow zone within flOw. I
should mention that the principle of control is also essential here, for one could suggest
that the perception of control exists primarily within the flow channel; for example,
when challenges overcome skills and cause anxiety, this could be interpreted as a
moment when one loses control. Csikszentmihalyi calls this principle of flow ―the
paradox of control‖ because individuals engaged in activities that can produce flow might
not actually be in control (complete control perhaps inducing a state of boredom) but
that they acquire the ―possibility of control,‖ the chance to ―exercise‖ control, within
these activities (Flow 61-62).
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Flow Experiences and Television
For Raymond Williams, televisual flow exists as a dialectic of segmentation and
unity, between the discrete elements of the televisual text (programs, commercials,
network spots, etc.) and a ―planned‖ coherence between these discrete units which
provides a semblance of overall continuity, of overall flow. On the one hand, televisual
segments present a heterogeneous flow of diverse elements where no cause and effect
relationship seems to connect them; while on the other hand, planned flow provides the
semblance of connection between these segments and, to some extent, contains the
diversity of the televisual elements; as Williams states, planned flow operates as ―the
enclosure of diversity‖ and the ―containment‖ of fragmentation (105). One result of the
planned or ―programmed‖ flow is to decrease the potential interruptions between the
discrete segments, allowing for a more continuous experience of watching television.
Thus, a trailer for a film to be shown later in the evening prepares the viewer for its
arrival while also, perhaps, enlisting his or her interest in continuing to watch the
selected channel; or, a spot for a news program that will air later in the evening might
highlight subject matter that parallels the program it interrupts (e.g. a news spot
advertising a story about a recent string of murders is run during the commercial breaks
of Law and Order); or, even more subtly, a commercial that breaks into a program may
contain thematic associations with the program segment it interrupts (e.g. a show that
has just depicted a cell phone conversation is interrupted by a commercial for a mobile
service provider). This containment and management of interruption has, as its primary
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result, the production of a temporality that is ―undeclared‖ by the television provider.
Flow, then, for Williams was ultimately ―the replacement of a programme series of
timed sequential units by a flow series of differently related units in which the timing,
though real, is undeclared, and in which the real internal organisation is something other
than the declared organisation‖ (87). Watching television was not necessarily an
experience of watching discrete programs one after another (i.e. the temporality of the
TV Guide which lists the times a program begins and ends) but an altogether different
experience where segments were planned by the networks to create an overall ―flow‖
of discrete, though continuous, material (i.e. an undeclared, more cohesive, temporal
experience). Through this undeclared temporality the planned or programmed flow of
television contains the diversity of segmentation, reduces the experience of
interruption, and ultimately extends the viewer's time watching television. Recently,
media scholar William Uricchio argued that Williams' concept of planned flow, which he
saw as the first stage in the historical development of televisual flow, ―resonates with
the notion of ideology as false consciousness still in circulation in the early 1970s: the
timing of program elements and their organization are something other than they are
declared to be, just as the world of appearances belies its material contradictions‖ (177).
That is, viewers were subject to a constructed media experience which was not made
explicit, to some extent ―controlled‖ externally by the undeclared programming of the
televisual text.
Interestingly, Csikszentmihalyi's perception of television might align more with
Williams' notion of flow than his own, particularly in terms of television acting as a flow
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which externally controls a passive viewer. Although Csikszentmihalyi's concept of flow
was not developed in relation to media and concerns a common experience induced by
a wide array of activities, media forms do appear in his discussion of flow. In fact, in the
previously mentioned book written with Robert Kubey, Television and the Quality of Life
(1990), the authors implicitly disparage notions of an ―active audience‖ while focusing on
television and its so-called detrimental effects on everyday life. Their views have more in
common with the Frankfurt School theory of the consciousness industry than with a
positive celebration of active viewership. At one point they argue that television viewing
produces a degraded experience of flow, writing that the ―'flow' state...is in many ways
the opposite of the viewing experience‖ (141). According to them, this viewing
experience is accompanied by low levels of attention and interaction—a passive state—
where the challenges presented by television are easily met with simple skills. The
viewer does not have a sense of control while watching television, but rather the
medium controls them: ―A great deal of our thinking, reading, and learning involves
efforts to attend, while the viewing of television and films is less likely to require effort.
In one sense, attention is controlled from inside when the person invests psychic energy
to decode a complex message, or from outside by the moving film or television image as
these media tend to relieve the person of effortful control,‖ (140-141). While such a
mass media effects model of viewership is highly contentious, one can detect an
affiliation with Raymond Williams' concept of televisual flow which also marked a
category of external ―control‖ in the form of planned or programmed flow.
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Yet, this mass media model of viewership—which highlights the passive individual
directed by the planned or programmed flow of the televisual text—has been
thoroughly critiqued in cultural studies and by proponents of active audience
scholarship. This scholarship contends that audiences are not entirely controlled by
some outside force, passively consuming the images fed to them, but that they actively
construct their own complex ―readings‖ and interpretations of the programs that they
choose to watch. The media scholar John Fiske argued that the televisual text is not an
ideologically closed media form but an open, discontinuous, and segmented text ripe
with resistant readings and creative possibilities. It is not surprising that Fiske turns to
the notion of play in his book Television Culture (1987) to mark the viewer's active
control over television programming—the viewer turned player who ―explores the
relationship between rules and freedom‖ within the television text. For Fiske, television
becomes a kind of game which viewers play, seeking ―their own pleasures in relation to
the ideology which they are evading‖ (234).5 Here, one might posit a distinction
between illusion and eluding. Illusion etymologically stems from the word illudere, il-ludus
(in-play, at play)—to mock, jest, deceive, trick, or as the OED says, ―to impose upon.‖
Illusion is ideology, which seeks to trick and deceive (like Jane Feuer's diagnosis of
televisual flow as ―pure illusion‖ which is coupled with liveness to impose a sense of
unity over and beyond the significant fragmentation of the television text). On the other
hand, to elude means to ―out play‖ (e-ludus), to evade or escape what is seemingly
imposed upon one. In terms of Csikszentmihalyi's theory of flow, ―elusive viewers‖
would perhaps embrace internal control over the televisual text, focusing on their own
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complex interpretations of the television text and thus expanding the possibility of flow
experiences while viewing. This potential for control and eluding a planned flow is
further amplified by the emergence of certain technical devices. At one point Fiske
highlights the remote control as a device that enables viewers to create their own video
collages of actively constructed meanings and associations: simply put, ―the viewer is
free to construct his or her own flow by switching between channels‖ (100). It is within
the interruption, the non-closure of the televisual text and the viewer‘s potential
control over this non-closure, that Fiske finds one form of the active subject, filling in
the gaps, open to his or her own playful interpretations of the consumed images, even
constructing a personalized flow of images by switching from channel to channel.
Although Fiske's notion of the viewer as playful artist creating collages of zapped
sophistication is perhaps hyperbolic,6 the remote control acted as a historical indicator
of future trends where creating one's own meaning and flow within the televisual text
became a palpable reality with devices such as the VCR, TiVo, and DVRs. Indeed, in
William Uricchio's essay ―Television's Next Generation: Technology/Interface
Culture/Flow‖ this shift toward heightened viewer control marked a second stage in the
development of televisual flow beyond the first stage of Williams' planned flow (which
was conceptually isomorphic with ideas of false consciousness): this second stage
occurred when control shifted from the network programmers (i.e. planned flow)
toward the use of interface technologies that gave viewers more control over the
patterns of their viewing consumption.
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Moreover, with television's on-going synergistic relationship with the Internet
and the contemporary ease of digital recording, editing, and distribution, history has
recently witnessed the growth of active fan communities participating in the production
and critical consumption of dominant television programming. Since Csikszentmihalyi
and Kubey wrote their book on television, active audience scholarship has helped spawn
popular theories of convergence and participatory culture where consumers acquire a
more active role in shaping their media experiences (Jenkins, Fans and Convergence).
According to Henry Jenkins (drawing on the work of Pierre Levy), fan communities have
formed into units of emergent collective intelligences—forms of complex knowledge
production developed by active participants in media worlds, participants who often
tackle complex questions and issues raised in relation to dominant media forms, who
produce fan productions using more accessible digital editing and distribution tools, who
collectively work to investigate and expand the media environments that they most
enjoy. If Csikszentmihalyi and Kubey held that flow experiences and active control do
not exist in the typical viewing situation but when ―the person invests psychic energy to
decode a complex message,‖ then the forms of collective intelligence invested by fan
communities point toward a developing complexity within the television medium (and
video games as well). Jenkins and others have pointed out that recent shows such as
Lost, The Sopranos, The Wire, Survivor, etc., are ―complex messages‖ that require highlevel viewing skills to meet the challenges offered by the shows; with their multiple
allusions to culture, gaps in their narrative structures that allow viewers to playfully
construct their own interpretations, content spread across differing media platforms,
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etc., these shows are designed to accommodate different levels of viewer involvement
and interaction, rewarding the increase in one's skills needed to decipher the challenges
presented. In his popular book Everything Bad is Good for You, Steven Johnson even traces
a growth of complexity in television shows over the years, arguing that popular culture
in general is not corrosive (or coercive) but ultimately enlightening. Such a view
seemingly parallels Csikszentmihalyi's concept of flow where skills and challenges grow
over time; in Johnson's case, viewers' skills have presumably grown to meet the
increasing challenges of contemporary, complex television programs—programs which
have matured and outgrown their more adolescent predecessors. This connection
between Csikszentmihalyi's theory of flow and contemporary television has not gone
completely unnoticed. For example, Will Brooker suggested in his brief article
―Everything Will Flow‖ that despite Csikszentmihalyi's disdain for television his concept
of flow might be useful in discussing experiences of ―immersive viewing‖ where viewers
become absorbed in a particular television show and its transmedia content. Flow
experiences, he argues, ―could surely apply equally to the TV fan at the moment of
closest engagement with his or her favoured show.‖ Thus, the rise of viewer controlled
interactive interfaces (Uricchio), of program complexity which allows for playful
interpretations of the televisual text (Fiske, Johnson), of challenging content which
marks an increase in viewer's skills, of media convergence and participatory culture that
creates opportunities for fan involvement and production (Jenkins, Brooker)—all of
these buttress the idea that Csikszentmihalyi's concept of flow could be used to
describe certain forms of contemporary TV viewing experiences.
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One might be tempted here to claim that the passive televisual spectator of
yesterday is being replaced by an active viewer that has more control over his or her
media experience. Yet, the situation is more complex. As already suggested, one could
partially attribute the growth of Csikszentmihalyi's flow experiences during television
consumption to the rise of interactive technologies that present more occasions for
viewer control and participation: thus, Uricchio's suggestion that the first stage of
planned flow that Williams discussed was followed by a second stage of flow's
development in terms of increased viewer control through various interface
technologies. Yet, Uricchio also isolates the emergence of a third stage in the
development of televisual flow where computer technologies and interactive interfaces
create the possibility for an active filtering of televisual content that would produce ―a
steady stream of programming designed to stay in touch with our changing rhythms and
moods, selected and accessible with no effort on our part, anticipating our every
interest‖ (177). Uricchio writes that this third stage of interface development
points to a concept of flow that is fundamentally different from the two
generations thus far considered here. At its core is a radical displacement of
control. Control—which was once seen as the domain of the television
programmer and, following the widespread use of the RCD [remote control
device], as the domain of the viewer—is now shifting to an independent sector
composed of metadata programmers and filtering technology (variously
constructed as search engines and adaptive interfaces) (175).
Thus, historically, television has moved from a planned flow of external control over the
viewer, toward the rise of viewer control in terms of interface technologies such as the
remote control or various recording devices, and finally toward the contemporary
possibility of active technological agents analyzing viewer decisions, user preferences,
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viewing habits, etc., in order to control and shape the media flow that the viewer
consumes. As viewing habits and preferences are recorded and analyzed over time, the
algorithms which filter and select new content for viewers actively adapt and ―learn‖
what flow of media content the user is likely to enjoy. Just as television programmers
planned flows of content in order to provide a more continuous experience of
consumption, today's computer programmers devise filters, adaptive agents, and
complex algorithms which help plan continuous flows of related content tailored to
individualized media consumption—again, smoothing over differences inherent in the
diversity of discrete media content while partially containing this diversity through the
active construction of segments of associated content. While such a vision—only
partially realized in technologies used by Amazon and Netflix (for example) to suggest
media content based on past consumption—does not augur dystopic visions of
individuals strapped to their chairs and force-fed streams of ideological data, it is
intriguing to read Uricchio's comment that these technological transformations could
lead to a system which requires ―no effort on our part‖ in relation to Csikszentmihalyi
and Kubey's negative understanding of media forms which remove a viewer's ―effortful
control‖ through external measures. What seems likely is that Uricchio's first two
stages of flow—control in terms of the planned flow of television programmers and that
of user control through interface technologies—are being synthesized, combined into a
system where notions of planned flow and user controlled preferences spiral like a
double helix connected by adaptive programming agents.
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Beyond the technological development of adaptive agents which suggest that
planned flow will remain an important aspect of ―interactive‖ media culture,
Csikszentmihalyi's notion of designing flow experiences has become a key resource for
planning flows of interactive media use. This becomes important when television
overflows its boundaries and is remediated by the internet. In his article ―Living on
Dawson's Creek: Teen Viewers, Cultural Convergence, and Television Overflow‖
Brooker developed a concept of ―overflow‖ through an examination of Dawson's Creek
and its interactive, web-based content. Brooker's concept marks a transgression of
television's traditional boundaries where one's experience of television is no longer
confined to the moment of watching—the actual broadcast moment of a show—but this
experience overflows into website use, listening to a program's official soundtrack,
consuming goods associated with the program, producing fan materials in different
media formats, etc.. (Brooker explicitly draws on Jenkins' concept of media convergence
which the latter described as ―the flow of content across multiple media platforms, the
cooperation between multiple media industries, and the migratory behavior of media
audiences who will go almost anywhere in search of the kinds of entertainment
experiences they want‖ (Convergence 2)). While Brooker's concept of overflow is
related to Williams notion of flow,7 I would also like to read ―overflow‖ as a moment
where the importance of Raymond Williams' concept is breached and Csikszentmihalyi's
concept of flow becomes more essential to the ―planned flow‖ of the interactive
content. Following his experience of watching a particular TV show and engaging with its
interactive elements on the internet Brooker writes, ―I am witness to more than just
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the sometimes bizarre mélange of television flow which dazed Raymond Williams in the
1970s; indeed, I am not just a bewildered observer, but am becoming part of the
broader text.‖ Within television's overflow the ―viewer‖ becomes more of an
(inter)active agent in the production of the media text, a situation that
Csikszentmihalyi's theory of flow can address since it concerns an individual's actions,
forms of control, agency, etc.. Indeed, a growing body of research explicitly links
Csikszentmihalyi's theory of flow to human-computer interaction and specifically to
effective web design which aims at structuring pleasurable experiences of web use
(Hoffman and Novak 1996; Hoffman and Novak 1997; Chen et al. 2000; Rettie 2001;
Pace 2004; Chen 2006). In a brief interview with Wired magazine, even Csikszentmihalyi
offered his advice on using principles of flow to create engaging web sites. This research
is primarily concerned with marketing and the ability to offer consumers pleasurable
flow experiences to extend their time exploring interactive sites while maximizing
efforts to link user-behavior to patterns of consumption. In one oft-cited study, Hoffman
and Novak conclude:
Because consumers vary in their ability to achieve flow, new bases for market
segmentation are needed for marketing in hypermedia CMEs [Computer-Mediated
Environments]. Scholars must determine the variables that relate to a consumer's
propensity to enter the flow state. Such information can be used to develop
marketing efforts designed to maximize the chances of the consumer entering the
flow state. Because we believe that repeat consumption behavior, that is, repeat
visits to a hypermedia CME, are increased if the environment facilitates the flow
state, the marketing objective at trial must provide for these flow opportunities.
(66)
It seems clear that as media overflow their boundaries and are remediated by
―interactive‖ technologies Csikszentmihalyi's principles of flow become important tools
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for planning user behavior within these environments: providing experiences that
challenge users, absorb them completely in their current actions, allow for a feeling of
control, and distort time in order to extend their stay on a particular website or their
engagement with interactive content.
Given the contemporary situation of media convergence and the overflow of
traditional media into collages of content dispersed across media outlets, two
possibilities emerge. On the one hand, the possibility arises that powerful corporations
and media conglomerates control the flow (i.e. plan the flow, recode the flow) of a
particular program across differing media (a process underway with ―official‖ website
use, attempts to control the narrative universe of a particular media brand which Jenkins
discusses, etc.). On the other hand, the flow across multiple media forms becomes
ultimately uncertain, decoded, turbulent, cascading in directions which cannot be
controlled by the corporations in toto (for example, unofficial fan productions which
mutate original and proprietary content in ways that the industry cannot control). At
the heart of the theory of media convergence a tension exists between these two
possibilities. While Brooker's concept of overflow certainly invokes the timbre of
escape, of elusive action, of rupturing the dam of containment that notions of planned
flow suggest, one cannot ignore the possibility that capitalist energies constrain and
recode the various streams of flow across media forms, building pools of managed
profitability. Although Csikszentmihalyi's theory of flow does not explicitly arise from an
analysis of capitalism and consumption—and indeed, Csikszentmihalyi has suggested that
consumption produces a degraded experience of flow ("Materialism‖)—his theories are
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certainly being used in order to explore possibilities of managing consumer behavior and
enjoyment through the use of contemporary interactive media forms. While
Csikszentmihalyi's theories concern a general model of enjoyment across a range of
activities, one can still critique the uses of this enjoyment for managing and exploiting
subjects, a possibility that Csikszentmihalyi himself endorses: ―learning to distinguish the
useful and harmful forms of flow, and then making the most of the former while placing
limits on the latter‖ (Flow 70). Clearly Csikszentmihalyi's theory of flow is ―useful‖ for
designing and encouraging particular forms of consumption, but this utility cannot easily
be divorced from its harm.
Though initially Csikszentmihalyi's theory of flow seems opposed to the kind of
planned flow that Williams discusses (that the former signals active subjects engaged in
complex forms of participation while the latter marks a passive relationship to external
forms of control) the two versions of flow express similar properties once one views
them as design principles used to facilitate certain forms of behavior (a point which I will
return to below). Interestingly, Brooker begins his article ―Everything Will Flow‖ with a
suggestion that Csikszentmihalyi's version of flow can be related to Williams' concept of
televisual flow. Although he does not investigate this link in depth, he argues that
televisual flow, according to Williams, marked the absorption of the viewer in a
―dreamlike experience of watching American television‖ which parallels the absorbing
effects of the flow experience in Csikszentmihalyi's theory. With this potential link in
mind I wish to turn toward a closer examination of planned flow in relation to the video
game form in order to answer the following question: can video games—which have
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been theorized as media forms that are uniquely suited to the production of flow
experiences—be examined as exhibiting parallels with a type of undeclared, external,
and planned control associated with Williams' notion of televisual flow?
The Planned Flow of Video Games
Returning to the game flOw one can identify parallels between the game and key
properties of Williams' concept of flow that I discussed above: the containment of
fragmentation and the valorization of continuity, the smoothing over of interruption, and
flow's production of an undeclared temporality. On a representational level where flOw
relies heavily on visual segmentation the goal is to contain this fragmentation under
higher unities. The depths of flOw's levels are alive with smaller, discrete units which
move apart from each other and sometimes in concert. The larger, more evolved
creatures are composed of chains or segments of often repeated shapes—lines and
circles and various polygonal figures linked together in series. When one consumes
―food‖ new segments appear within the evolved creature or cause a previous attached
segment to glow or slightly change in form. Yet, the visual segmentation of the creatures
is ultimately submerged within the flow of movement and subordinated to the overall
emergence of the complex, spectacular and unified creatures which evolve as one plays
(which is the point of the game). The game itself follows the logic of managing and
containing fragmentation: fighting the fragmentation of swarming consumables by
incorporating them into larger unified beings; protecting the segments contained within
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your creature from being ―stolen‖ by other creatures; preventing the threat of
fragmentation which is visualized through the dispersion of larger creatures into smaller,
discrete food items when you defeat them. While visual segmentation is the most visible
representational form in flOw, it is rendered invisible by the articulation of these
segments into a larger, unified entity, and by the unity which marks the coupling of
player and machine in an almost ceaseless circuit of uninterrupted movement. It is
almost as if the excessive visual segmentation and fragmentation is present only to
further prove that it can be easily overcome and contained.
Beyond this simple representational allegory which privileges unity, flOw operates
in a similar fashion to the planned flow of television because its structure seeks to
remove interruption by valorizing continuity over and beyond the game's discrete
segments. For example, in the PlayStation 3 version of the game the creature you
control never stops moving; even if you put the controller down the creature still drifts
and curls over the screen, albeit staying within a certain area. Even pausing the game
does not ―pause‖ the movement; pressing the start button on the controller lifts your
creature into an ambiguous zone located away from the sea of other creatures and
drifting consumables. Yet, one can still move the creature around in this paused state;
time still progresses, interaction still occurs; it is simply a voluntary purgatory of
animated suspension where your creature cannot be harmed. This constant state of
movement incessantly acts to overcome interruption where the link between gamer and
game system is tightly coupled. In terms of a dialectic between fragmentation and unity,
every aspect of the game which might be considered a discrete segment—various levels
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your creature progresses through, the pause state, the ―menu‖ where you select which
creature to play, the credits at the end of the game—is integrated within the unity of
the game space itself. For example, the movement between large game segments such as
levels (occurrences which function as major interruptions in many games when the new
level must be loaded into memory before it is played) is handled swiftly and with
minimal control removed from the player.8 Moreover, there are no cut scenes in the
game; cut scenes being cinematic moments in the game narrative which interrupt the
player's action and forces him or her to sit back and watch a pre-rendered sequence
which follows the rules of cinematic form. Even the title sequence at the beginning and
the credit sequence at the end of the game are immersed into the play space: the player
continues to control the organism, moving it about, consuming items and evolving,
though he or she does not encounter other dangerous creatures in these moments.
Although game segments do exist in flOw, the game design smoothes the differences
between them as much as possible. Such a trend to remove interruption—loading
between levels, cut scenes, etc.—is a growing trend in the games industry.9
These observations perhaps mark a facile comparison between some of the
design elements of flOw and principles of planned flow in television, but the comparison
can be carried further by examining the core design principle of flOw which also
attempts to remove interruption from the player's experience. As mentioned
previously, flOw was produced in order to test certain ideas of Csikszentmihalyi's theory
of flow. More specifically, the game was designed as an experiment in balancing
challenges and skills for multiple player styles within a single game space. To achieve this
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feat the designers of flOw implemented a system of Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment
(DDA) which Jenova Chen describes as ―a fairly straightforward and ideal concept in the
game design field. The difficulty of a game should change dynamically based on its
player‘s skill and performance‖ (Flow in Games 8). If a player's continuous experience of a
game is interrupted when his or her skills do not match challenges, or vice-versa, then
balancing these properties dynamically (while one is actually playing the game)
potentially removes the possibility of players falling into states of boredom or anxiety—
states which can interrupt the flow of the game. There are multiple ways to avoid this
rupturing situation in game design. Many games implement a static and linear system of
difficulty adjustment where challenges increase as the game progresses in a pre-planned,
static fashion. A small degree of dynamism might be available in these games if the player
can choose their level of difficulty, for example, selecting easy or medium or hard
modes. These changes—perhaps rudimentarily similar to switching channels on a
television set—are accompanied by appropriate shifts in game content: e.g. the system
presents less enemies to kill or offers more time to complete a task if a player chooses
easy mode, or perhaps stronger artificial intelligence is used for non-player characters
on a higher difficulty setting, etc.. These choices yield static systems of difficulty
throughout the game. Yet, in dynamic difficulty adjustment systems, the difficulty is
calibrated on the fly and as the game is played. One way to accomplish this dynamism is
to design and implement ―passive‖ monitoring systems that gauge a player's skill by
collecting data intended to measure his or her performance, then changing the actual
game content according to the player's measured skill. Thus, a system might monitor a
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player's shooting accuracy and number of deaths in a typical first-person shooter: if the
results indicate poor performance then the system automatically presents fewer
enemies to kill or increases the accuracy of their weaponry; or, vice-versa, if the system
measures a high-level of player skill (e.g. high shooting accuracy and low death rate) then
the system presents more enemies to kill and lowers the accuracy of the player's
weapons. Although currently uncommon, the use of such passive monitoring systems is
growing in video game design, for example, the recent use of dynamic adjustment in Left
4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2 is accomplished by ―the director,‖ an AI system that
dynamically adjusts difficulty according to measured performance, changing various
aspects of the game as it unfolds. It is not difficult to draw comparisons between passive
monitoring systems such as ―the director‖ and the adaptive agents that monitor
television viewing habits, dynamically changing the possible flows of media consumption
that the user can then select; in both cases, the actions of a user are monitored and
then analyzed in order to present a more tailored ―media flow‖ for his or her
consumption.
In his thesis, Flow in Games, Jenova Chen points out that such passive monitoring
systems have a variety of problems; first and foremost, Chen argues that ―performance
is objective while Flow is subjective. When a player is in the Flow of just jumping around
in Super Mario Bro but not finishing any level, the DDA system will have trouble to
sense that [sic]‖ (12). While the system can collect various forms of objective data
about a player's performance, it is difficult to automatically translate these
measurements into assumptions concerning a player's flow state. Thus, the system might
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make adjustments that ultimately lead to the interruption of one's enjoyment. The basic
problem is one of control: passive difficultly adjustment systems remove control from a
player and embed it within the system itself. Chen answers the problems generated by
these systems by implementing a form of difficultly adjustment where user actions and
choices within the game itself determine the actual difficulty experienced. The player
does not chose a predetermined difficulty setting, nor does a system passively monitor
player actions and adjust the game content accordingly, but the game itself is designed to
allow for choices (in some case, unconscious) that will adjust the difficulty of the game.
The game flOw achieves this adjustment in a simple manner: the player can easily move
from level to level in the game, attempting to locate an appropriate level of challenge for
his or her skill set. If the current level presents too many challenges for one's skills, then
one can easily consume a blue organism and move to an easier level, but if the
challenges posed are too easy, one can easily consume red organisms, delving deeper
into the game space where more challenging encounters with other organisms can be
found. Other games can be cited as using this form of adjustment as well. For example,
in the MMORPG World of Warcraft players obtain quests which are color coded in
terms of difficulty based on their current level of experience; using this simple system—
e.g. green quests are easy, yellow quests are more difficult, red quests are extremely
challenging and will likely result in death—a player can choose to pursue quests
according to the difficulty that he or she wants to experience. The game designer does
not implement a passive monitoring system, but gives the players choices within the
game that determine the difficulty that they encounter.10 Chen writes:
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…most of the system-oriented DDA designs were over focused on one aspect,
balancing between challenge and ability. However, they ignored the other
important core element, to make player feel a sense of control over the game
activity. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi often describes Flow as driving a small boat in
parallel to the current. Being able to drive freely gifts a sense of control over
micro action, and being carried by the current offers a sense of control over the
macro activity, therefore [evoking] Flow (Flow in Games).
Basically, a passive monitoring system might program the ―current‖ (the overall flow of
the game) too forcibly, which removes a sense of control, a player's ability to steer the
craft within the flow. It is not without interest that this notion of ―steering the craft‖ fits
nicely with the coupling of humans and machines in cybernetic systems. As Katherine
Hayles has written: ―The Greek root for cybernetics, 'steersman,' aptly describes the
cybernetic man-machine: light on its feet, sensitive to change, a being that both is a flow
and knows how to go with the flow‖ (104). What is at stake, then, is an alignment of
system and human agent where one can differentiate passive difficulty adjustment and
active difficulty adjustment in terms of the source of control which attempts to align
these two parameters. On the one hand, a passive monitoring system privileges the
machine's ability to assess and construct the flow zone which will align the impulses of
the human and the machine; on the other hand, a video game designed around active
difficulty adjustment will privilege human choice in the balance between system and
human. In the case of flOw, an open system composed of various levels of difficulty and
an ease of control over finding (or choosing) one's level of comfort allows the game to
theoretically appeal to different types of gamers with a variety of skill levels and play
styles. Thus, such systems perhaps increase the breadth of the potential flow channel as
depicted in a graph provided by Chen (Fig. 4).
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Fig. 4. A ―wider‖ flow channel provided for different skilled players; Flow in Games;
Jenova Chen, 2006; 24 February 2010.
Both forms of difficulty adjustment in game design already point toward an
―undeclared‖ aspect of the game form. If planned flow for Raymond Williams was a
method for designing or programming the television text in order to smooth over
interruptions, to keep the viewer adhered to a particular channel, then the use of
dynamic difficulty adjustment pursues a similar goal in video games, assuaging
interruptions which might break one's cohesive play experience if the balance between
skills and challenges diverges or if the system appears to abruptly remove control from
the player.11 But let us examine the process of difficulty adjustment more closely by
analyzing a simple game made by Jenova Chen before flOw was produced. The game's
title, Traffic Light, already indicates the management of flows, but, in this case, it is not
the flow of automobile traffic, but the temporal flows of an individual's interaction with a
particular computer program. In Traffic Light (Fig. 5) the player watches a graphical traffic
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Fig. 5. Traffic Light; Jenova Chen; Video game; 15 September 2009.
light changing colors from green to yellow to red. The player‘s only goal is to press the
mouse button (where it says ―click‖ in the lower-right corner) at the precise moment
when the light changes from yellow to red. If the player presses the mouse button
within one-tenth of a second before or after the light changes to red then the player
wins a round. If not, they lose a round. Before the game begins players can use the
sliders on the interface in order to control two basic options: the temporal interval
between the light's changes and the number of rounds in the game (represented by the
circles on the top of the screen, where the red circles represent the rounds that the
player lost, and the green circles, the rounds the player won). If players choose three
rounds, then they will need to be successful two out of three times to win, if they
choose five, then three out of five to win, etc.. Yet, the most essential control
mechanism in the game is the possibility to adjust the parameter of temporal change,
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seeking to locate a rhythm of change that feels the most comfortable for individual
players: perhaps some players succeed when the light changes every second while
others succeed when the signal changes occur every half a second, etc.. To win the
game one must calibrate the temporal changes of the program to match one's comfort
zone of temporal prediction or response. Being able to adjust the time changes allows
the player to control the behavior of the game, finding a balance between the system
and user response. Following the insights of some scholars such as Lev Manovich,
Alexander Galloway, and McKenzie Wark, the player of Traffic Light must internalize the
algorithm of the game, calibrating the temporal algorithm until one has ―found his or her
groove‖ (an idiom that Steven Poole uses to discuss Csikszentmihalyi's concept of flow
in his book Trigger Happy).
I have already mentioned that forms of difficulty adjustment are undeclared
design structures that attempt to remove interruptions from the game experience,
similar to the practical goals of planned flow in television. Yet, do difficulty adjustment
systems also parallel Williams' notion of flow as an undeclared temporality? Since
Williams understood the planned flow of the television text as a temporal experience
distinct from the declared temporality of discrete programs occurring at precise and
advertised times, one might be tempted to argue that video games challenge players to
align their actions with the temporality of a particular algorithm, with the rhythms of
time structured by the code of the game. This is certainly true of a simple game like
Traffic Light and for many games which happen in real-time. Even in more complex
games, like the World of Warcraft, understanding the temporality of possible actions is
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key to mastering the game. In the late stages of World of Warcraft, for example, players
must organize a plethora of abilities into efficient, temporal rotations of a series of
mouseclicks. In order to understand these precisely timed rotations many players turn
to Theorycraft—a term for abstract and mathematical reasoning about the different
algorithms and properties of the game. Theorycraft allows the player to rationalize his
or her actions, seeking an ideal temporal rotation (―in theory‖) which will produce the
most beneficial effects; this requires an understanding of the temporality of various
abilities, some of which happen instantly, some of which occur over predetermined
spans of time, some of which can be used but then have a ―cooldown‖ period where the
player must wait to use them again. In order to obtain the most effective results—quite
important in later stages of the game—all of these different temporal spans must be
assembled into a sequence of actions where downtime is eliminated, where the player
can constantly click a series of buttons without wasting time. Often these rotations are
rationalized into time spans below a threshold of a second, sometimes even accounting
for the network latency (measured in milliseconds) which occurs in the communication
channel between the game's servers and a player's machine. Although this is only one
aspect of the late stages of the game—and many events in the World of Warcraft disrupt
this efficiency—it is a more complex form of the simple timing process occurring in a
game like Traffic Light.
While I am tempted to offer the rhythm and temporality of algorithms as an
undeclared form of time in gameplay, in certain types of games—like turn-based strategy
games (e.g. Chess, Civilization)—the real-time temporality of the game is not essential to
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their structure; that is, one can take as long as one wants adjusting different parts of the
game before these changes take effect. It seems that one must look for the meaning of
the undeclared temporality of games elsewhere. Returning to Williams, one should
recall that the discussion of the undeclared temporality of televisual flow does not result
in a clear definition of the form of this particular temporality, for the form of televisual
flow resists such definition. Even Williams understood his analysis of flow to be
―unfinished and tentative‖ (90). True, Williams discusses forms of how planned flow
operates, but a concise definition of the temporality of this experience remains obscure.
Rather, what emerges concerns the effect that a planned flow has on viewership, the fact
that viewers continue to watch television, extending their duration of consumption.
Williams wrote:
many of us find television very difficult to switch off; that again and again, even
when we have switched on for a particular 'programme', we find ourselves
watching the one after it and the one after that. The way in which the flow is now
organised, without definite intervals, in any case encourages this. We can be 'into'
something else before we have summoned the energy to get out of the chair, and
many programmes are made with this situation in mind: the grabbing of attention
in the early moments; the reiterated promise of exciting things to come, if we
stay. (88)
It is this ―staying,‖ this extension of the duration of viewership, which actually marks the
undeclared temporality of television. Such a temporal extension of media use is
replicated in the video game form, and adjusting the difficulty of the game is one method
aimed at achieving this extension. In fact, Jenova Chen's Traffic Light was produced to
test the effectiveness of difficulty adjustment in extending the duration of play. Chen
assessed the success of the game with the following conclusion: the ability to control the
game's simple parameters in order to locate one's flow zone ―extends a simple timing
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game‘s lifespan from 1-2 minutes to about 5–12 minutes‖ (Flow in Games 15). Yet, Chen
also suggests that the ability to control the functionality of the game through the simple
slider interface eventually disrupted the player's flow: ―However, the frequent DDA
choices broke the player‘s Flow. It started offering the player a sense of control, but
eventually reduces the player‘s control‖ (Flow in Games 15). In a game like flOw this
problem is seemingly resolved by removing the overt control mechanism and embedding
the adjustment of the game within the choices players make within the game itself. To
phrase this in the terminology that Alexander Galloway offers in his book Gaming, one
might say that Chen wishes to replace nondiegetic operator acts (game configurations
that take place outside the game world such as menu options concerning difficulty
settings) with diegetic operator acts (player actions that occur within the unfolding
world of the game). Theoretically, this leads to less interruptions and allows for an
extension of play time.12 As the website for flOw states, ―No matter who you are, what
kind of games do you play or not play, flOw is a game designed for you to dive in the
zone and lose track of time.‖ Extending the duration of play time and causing a player to
―lose track of time‖ emerges as a key category for evaluating flow and designing the flow
experience, which makes sense since it follows one of Csikszentmihalyi's principles of
flow: the transformation of time or the loss of time consciousness. In the end, whether
the design of a game employs a static or dynamic, a passive or active form of difficulty
adjustment matters less than its effectiveness at extending the duration of play.
Video game flow shares with television an attempt to extend the time of media
use (just as Csikszentmihalyi's theories of flow have been applied to interactive website
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design in order to extend the consumer's use of the site). The economics of television
are determined by sustaining dedicated viewers that will then be ―sold‖ to advertisers as
larger audiences exposed to their advertisements; in video games the extension of play
time is similarly attached to the profitability of a title, and not only because of increased
product placement and tie-in advertising within the video game medium. First, a game
which captures and sustains a player's attention will ultimately lead to more purchases
by creating a dedicated fan base that spreads the word about the title; this will extend
the shelf-life of the game. Second, many recent online games and services which offer a
plethora of games to play require monthly subscription fees and thus financially depend
on retaining customers over time. Third, generating continued interest in a game
through the extension of the duration of play is key to selling game expansion packs,
additional content, and branding a title for future sequels and/or spinoffs; thus, the
profitability of many games is fundamentally connected to the extension of playtime and
built into the very logic of a game's continual expansion. Moreover, many game
companies allow for the creation of user content or modification of certain aspects of a
game—level design elements (e.g. many first-person shooters), user-created skins and
objects that others can use (e.g. The Sims, Spore), add-ons that modify the interface or
particular aspects of a game's functionality (e.g. World of Warcraft), or even allowing the
code of a game to be modified by individuals which can end up creating an entire new
game which the company eventually packages and sells (e.g. Counter-Strike as a player
modification of Half-Life). This practice creates, and continually extends, a ―content
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pool‖ which players can explore, thus extending the shelf-life and popularity of a game
through the use of free labor (Postigo 2007; Kücklich 2005).
One might say that while ―liveness‖ was (and still is) an important aspect of
network television (Feuer), the idea of aliveness becomes essential for contemporary
media forms such as video games, the internet, television remediated by the internet,
etc.. One of the definitions of alive is vibrant activity, or as the OED puts it, ―a state of
commotion, stirring, or swarming with things in motion,‖ obviously a key
representational aspect of the game flOw where what one sees—and what one does—
concerns a perpetual, uninterrupted movement often in a sea of swirling commotion.
There is no down-time in flOw, and dead time (where the action is least alive) is minimal,
or simply sought out by a player who eschews intense action. The game valorizes
―liveness‖ but it is not that of television predicated on the instantaneous transmission of
a video image. Rather the liveness of the video game concerns the instantaneous
communication between the machine and the user, eschewing delay between input and
output.13 At its most extreme, even moments of non-play in a game can serve as
reminders that the machine is functioning, continuing to persist, waiting for input. The
representation of this form of aliveness might be likened to what Alexander Galloway
calls ―ambiance acts‖ which ―are a type of perpetual happening, a living tableau‖ which
the machine controls and expresses in moments when a player is not taking any action
(10). For example, pausing the screen in flOw (even putting down the controller) does
not freeze the game, but motion still occurs as a constant reminder that the program
still runs and waits for the player's action. Here, the aliveness of the game is the promise
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of the live and instantaneous connection between the player and the machine which will
resume when the player again takes action. Perhaps more important is the notion of
keeping media content current, constantly updating a blog for example, or releasing new
expansions for video games, or allowing users to continually add new content to a game,
keeping it alive. Even a game like flOw began as a free simple Flash game on the internet,
was updated in a Playstation 3 version, and was extended by a small expansion pack that
added a new creature to play (available for a minimal download fee). In the end, there
exists a profound connection between increasing the ―life-span‖ of game (as Chen put it)
through planning the flow of play and extending the ―shelf-life‖ of a product through
added content, expansions, updates, etc.. The former feeds into the latter and the latter
into the former, perpetually.
What becomes clear at this point is that the concept of planned flow in television
contains parallels to notions of designing flow experiences in video games. The concept
of flow ceases to function as a medium specific concept once one abstracts from the
forms of flow specific to particular media and grasps flow as a design principle intended
to buttress the duration of media consumption. Rick Altman keenly observed when
discussing Williams' concept of televisual flow that ―Flow replaces discrete programming
to the extent that (1) competition for spectators is allowed to govern the broadcasting
situation, and (2) television revenues increase with increased viewing. In short, flow is
related not to the television experience itself—because there is no such single
experience—but to the commodification of the spectator in a capitalist, free enterprise
system‖ (567-568). In this generalized version of flow the technical specificity of the
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televisual medium and the forms which television expresses are less the causes of flow
than the economic processes of commodification and the subject's calibration to these
processes. As Stephen Kline, Nick Dyer-Witheford, and Greig de Peuter argue in their
book Digital Play: The Interaction of Technology, Culture, and Marketing, ―both television and
video gaming are channels of commercialized culture, carrying a flow of commodified
entertainment to youthful media audiences. Put simply, the new media are built on the
foundations of the old‖ (18). Indeed, the idea of media flow is a transmedia phenomenon
related to the emergence of capitalist modernity—a process by which capitalism
decodes and encodes heterogeneous flows of information in order to create new
revenue streams. As the authors of Digital Play argue, ―while interactive games are in
many ways genuinely 'new' media, their possibilities are being realized and limited by a
media market whose fundamental imperative remains the same as that which shaped the
'old' media: profit‖ (21). One of the keys to the production of profit within a media
saturated environment is the extension of the duration of particular media use. On the
one hand, capitalist production requires the endless creation of new desires,
destabilizing and decoding patterns of habituated media use, but on the other hand, in
order to extract and maximize profit from revenue streams such a destabilization must
be met with stabilized and recoded patterns of use (at least for a while). Planned flow
acts as one method used to program the televisual medium while removing interruption
and extending the time of viewing. Similarly, the removal of interruption and the
extension of play time (through DDA systems for example) are key ideas that shape
principles of game design and signal the commodification of the video game medium.
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In light of this generalized notion of media flow—driven by commodification—
the commonplace distinction between passive spectatorship (e.g. television) and the
user as an active participant in the construction of a media text (e.g. video games)
evaporates as a paradigm for differentiating media forms. It matters little whether one
analyzes an individual watching television for hours on end or a gamer actively
overcoming complex challenges (or even spending hours programming a sanctioned
modification of a video game) when one views these ―activities‖ in terms of participation
in flows of commodification. While I do believe that discussions of medium specificity—
whether from technological, economic, social perspectives, etc.—can benefit one‘s
understanding of the unique properties of particular media, they can also obfuscate
larger historical traditions that create similarities between media forms, especially when
these discussions produce, and valorize, discourses of the ―new‖ beyond an examination
of continuities which attach the ―new‖ to older problems and situations. Indeed, the
similarities in the form of media flows that I have identified between video games and
television attaches these media forms to ongoing processes of capitalist modernization,
what Jonathan Crary has called ―the making of quantifiable and abstract flow into the
object of attentive consumption‖ (Suspensions 33). He writes:
In the late twentieth century as in the late nineteenth, the management of
attention depends on the capacity of the observer to adjust to continual
repatternings of the ways in which a sensory world can be consumed. Throughout
changing modes of production, attention has continued to be a disciplinary
immobilization as well as an accommodation of the subject to change and
novelty—as long as the consumption of novelty is subsumed within repetitive
forms (my emphasis, Suspensions 33).
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This repetition should not only be read in terms of the similar and exchangeable
products of the culture industry where repeatable forms and patterns of design specific
to particular media forms manage novelty through familiarity (such as Classical
Hollywood Cinema or repetitive genres of video games like the First-Person Shooter),
but also how generalized patterns of design are repeated over time and function to elicit
similar systems of attentive consumption across media forms. For Crary, the
construction of the modern attentive subject—which he analyzed through various
scientific, technological, and economic discourses from the late nineteenth century—
inaugurated a process that is still unfolding today. Indeed, he was acutely aware that his
work examined ―the early part‖ of a ―larger history‖—tracing the construction of
modern forms of subjectivity that could be integrated into these systems of
consumption (Suspensions 73). Television and video games are media forms that operate
in the later part of this larger history. Indeed, whatever differences between media that
one might discover through examinations of ―changing modes of production‖ (e.g. from
industrial to post-industrial production, Fordist to post-Fordist production, material to
immaterial labor) there are still fundamental similarities which can be identified; this is
not to say that these differences do not exist or are unimportant, but exclusively
focusing on them obscures larger trajectories of analysis which can benefit our grasp of
media in general.
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Video Games and the Flowing Subject
We hope to do for the concept of 'interactivity' in digital games what Williams did
for 'flow' in regard to television – making the point of convergence an analysis of
the cultural, technological, and economic forces bringing a new media into being.
In this way, we shall ground in our analysis the intentions and practices that
underlie the more immediate experience of 'playing games.' Moreover, we shall
ground these factors within specific institutional contexts and social settings in
which media influence markets and culture. (Digital Play 49)
In their book Digital Play: The Interaction of Technology, Culture, and Marketing, Stephen
Kline, Nick Dyer-Witheford, and Greig de Peuter use Williams' analysis of television as
a technological and cultural form as their model for analyzing the video game medium.
Just as Williams described television in relation to technological, social and economic
factors, the authors of Digital Play analyze multiple ―circuits of interactivity‖ which affect
and determine the player: the technological which positions the subject as a user, the
cultural which positions the subject as a player, and the economic which positions the
subject as a consumer. In what follows I wish to extend and deepen their analysis,
specifically in relation to circuits of culture which position a particular form of player, for
it is within these cultural circuits that the authors ―'read' the video game as a semiotic
apparatus that invites players to assume an imaginary identity, or, to use a more
technical term, 'interpellates' them in a particular 'subject position'‖ (53). The authors
argue against the idea that the video game medium inaugurates a new, liberated, and
active subject who participates in the actual construction of the text that they are
playing; instead, they argue that video games are designed and encoded with particular
ideological constructions which position the player, even if the player has the ability to
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make choices and intervene within the structure of the game that he or she is playing.
For the authors of Digital Play ―a key issue in the circuit of culture is the ascendency,
within the 'flow' of digital game design, of a player identity based on the positions of
what we term 'militarized masculinity'‖ (55)—a model of subjectivity evidenced in their
research not only through the dominant culture of violence expressed in many
―hardcore‖ games but also in the mass marketing techniques of the industry which sell
an escalation of violence to predominantly young, masculine consumers through
―aggressive‖ marketing strategies. While their identification of ―militarized masculinity‖
is a poignant observation—and in chapter three I extend beyond their research to
investigate the gendering of casual games and the feminization of mass gaming by the
hardcore community—this section of my first chapter examines the subject positioning
of the player in further depth, theorizing the operation of a general model of subjectivity
while exposing other ideological player formations at work within the address of the
video game medium.14 That is, I isolate additional ideological forces expressed in many
video games beyond an ideology of militarized masculinity. Of course, the authors
explicitly argue that one cannot isolate a single circuit of interactivity from others, for
this would result in a problematic representation of the experience of the gamer. While
I agree with this, I also perceive my work as an additional, refined examination of a
specific circuit within their model. Indeed, part of my argument is that the circuit of
culture (in relation to the positioning of the gamer) potentially functions to render
invisible the processes of multiple determining circuits which circumscribe the
experience of the gamer: the ―'flow' of digital game design‖ operates to neglect the
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critical faculties of the gamer, tending to obscure other historical determinants of the
experience of the gamer through the privileging of a unified, coherent model of flowing
subjectivity. Through an examination and critique of Csikszentmihalyi's model of the
subject and the psychological experience of flow, I examine both the ideologies that this
model expresses while also theorizing why this particular form of subjectivity works to
obscure critical reflection concerning other forces that function to construct and
position the subject.
Although the analysis of video games is a relatively new academic pursuit, one
can find a variety of attempts to theorize the gamer subject, even when one puts aside
the extensive literature which deals with play but which does not address video games
specifically.15 Some have addressed the gamer subject in relation to film apparatus theory
and psychoanalysis;16 others have analyzed processes of identification that occur
between gamers and the avatars they control, searching for how different games
position subjects and construct identities (these approaches often extend beyond visual
forms of identification that occur between the player and on-screen representations
toward conceptualizations of player action upon these representations);17 others have
taken a taxonomic approach, outlining different play styles and/or focusing on a
particular type of player in order to analyze subjectivity and gamers more closely.18
While all of these approaches provide insights into the construction of a gamer
subject, I have chosen to focus on Csikszentmihalyi's theory of flow. I do this for a few
reasons. First, his theory of flow offers a model of the subject that can be used to
analyze central experiences of the gamer as such. Early in his career Csikszentmihalyi
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wrote, ―Games are obvious flow activities, and play is the flow experience par
excellence‖ (Beyond Boredom 36–37). Thus, it is not surprising that today many video
game designers draw upon Csikszentmihalyi's analysis of flow and play. Jenova Chen, one
of the principle designers of the game flOw, asserts that ―most of today‘s video games
deliberately include and leverage the...components of Flow‖ and that ―Descriptions of
the Flow experience are identical to what players experience when immersed in games‖
(―Flow in games (and everything else)" 32). Thus, flow experiences provide a
unique locus for investigating core experiences of players in general.19 Second, the fact
that Csikszentmihalyi analyzes certain activities which produce flow indicates another
reason why his theories have not been analyzed in critical depth: he forms his model of
the subject largely without recourse to an analysis of language, representation, and
ideology as major, determining forces in the construction of subjectivity. While many
might consider this a blind spot, especially those familiar with linguistic models of
subjectivity, in terms of video game studies the interest in activity and action is
particularly beneficial. In the words of Alexander Galloway, ―while the mass media of
film, literature, television and so on continue to engage in various debates around
representation, textuality, and subjectivity, there has emerged in recent years a whole
new medium, computer and in particular video games, whose foundation is not in
looking and reading but in the instigation of material change through action‖ (4-5).20 In
contrast to the ―looking and reading‖ approach to subject positioning, Csikszentmihalyi
identifies flow activities that mark subjects engaged in action, in the act of doing
something. While he does not construct a theory of action (generally defining what
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action is) he does analyze why we do certain activities, especially activities that seem to
have no practical use, little or no material rewards, activities we do because we enjoy
them (Beyond Boredom 1-2). Third, though his theory has been referenced widely in
video game studies his prolific writings have yet to be examined in critical detail.21
Focusing on Csikszentmihalyi's theory of flow thus allows one to open the study of
gamic subjects in new, critical directions.
Csikszentmihalyi's Model of the Flowing Subject
In order to define Csikszentmihalyi's model of the subject two items must be
described: his general model of subjectivity and the flowing subject which is an ―optimal‖
form of this general model. Beginning with his general model of the subject,
Csikszentmihalyi declares that his concept of the self stems from ―a phenomenological
model of consciousness based on information theory‖ (Flow 25). For him, consciousness
is filled with phenomenon that one has experienced. Yet, he differentiates his approach
from ―pure phenomenology‖ where one might follow Husserl's dictum ―to the things
themselves!‖—a philosophical approach attempting to clear away appearances,
attempting to isolate how the consciousness of a subject orders and organizes
phenomena, acting as ―conditions of possibility‖ for how these phenomena appear.
While Csikszentmihalyi seems to retain the notion of an a priori, ordering subject he
also thinks of these phenomena, the contents of consciousness, as information—on a
fundamental level as bits of data which consciousness has attended to, processed,
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experienced and stored. While this move does not nullify his dependence on a basic
notion of intentionality that accompanies many forms of phenomenology (that is, an
active subject involved in the ordering of phenomena), it does redefine the contents of
consciousness as information—information which can be organized in a state of order
or exist in a state of disorder or entropy. Thus, when Csikszentmihalyi defines
consciousness as ―intentionally ordered information‖ (emphasis in original, Flow 26) this
intentionality should be understood as an active ordering of phenomena existing within
the seat of a transcendental subject (as a part of what consciousness is), but given
Csikszentmihalyi's ―non-pure phenomenology‖ of the subject this intentionality also
bleeds over into the intention of an active agent (who can control and direct the order
of consciousness). This is asserted mainly by linking his notion of consciousness as
information to an active form of attention which can be directed by an individual: one can
choose what information to focus on, what bits will enter consciousness to be
processed. While Csikszentmihalyi appropriates a phenomenological model of a subject
which assumes a certain capacity for order, unity, coherence, and stability this order is
threatened by the potential disorder of information within consciousness. He calls this
disorganized state psychic entropy and relates it to the ―disruption‖ of consciousness by
information which ―force[s] attention to be diverted to undesirable objects‖ (Flow 36).
Psychic entropy is ―'noise' in the information-processing system‖ of consciousness which
―impairs its efficiency‖ (Optimal Experience 22). While Csikszentmihalyi offers a variety of
experiences that can cause this distraction and disruption he mainly refers to them as
states of boredom and anxiety (hence the title of his first book Beyond Boredom and
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Anxiety). These are ―noisy‖ states where time is wasted, where information in
consciousness cannot be organized according to a meaningful pattern; where the
information is not complex enough to provide meaningful organization; where there is
not enough or too much information to order (the former being a state of boredom
and the latter, anxiety). Thus, while ―intentionally ordered information‖ is an ideal
possibility and goal, such order is continually challenged by disorder, entropy, chaos. In
order to combat this disorder Csikszentmihalyi posits an intentional and controlling
agent that ―masters‖ consciousness: ―the mark of a person who is in control of
consciousness is the ability to focus attention at will, to be oblivious to distractions, to
concentrate for as long as it takes to achieve a goal‖ (Flow 31). While Csikszentmihalyi‘s
general model of the subject does not assert an ideal, pure phenomenological subject in
control of consciousness but a subject oscillating between states of order and disorder
within consciousness, nevertheless his theory retains a transcendental predisposition
toward the ordering of consciousness through the ability to become aware of
phenomena and intentionally direct attention toward acting upon these phenomena.
Though order, unity and coherence of consciousness are not givens they are ideal states
retained as fundamental goals and attainable possibilities.
It is probably obvious by now that the flow experience—as an optimal
experience—concerns the complete organization of consciousness where all the
information that enters consciousness would be, as Csikszentmihalyi terms it, in
harmony or part of a meaningful pattern. Optimal, of course, points toward the idea of
optimizing a system, increasing its performance and efficiency where all parts are
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organized according to a final purpose; thus the ideal subject becomes a system based
on the criteria of performance and efficiency, a notion that was famously critiqued in
Lyotard's The Postmodern Condition. For Csikszentmihalyi this optimal experience marks a
state of negentropy where all information is ordered meaningfully—a state opposite that
of psychic entropy. The move to a basic understanding of consciousness as containing
information allows Csikszentmihalyi to posit limits to consciousness (that is,
consciousness can only attend to a limited number of bits of information) and thus
consciousness can be completely ordered because it is finite, at least theoretically. Yet,
how does Csikszentmihalyi understand this order in consciousness? He posits that the
order arises from each intended (and thus attended) experience being organized to
obtain the same goal. Thus, the rock climber directs each movement toward the
overarching goal of ascending to the top of the climb. Each concentrated moment of
attention is essentially identical as a moment in the progression toward the goal. To
forge an analogy with semiotics one might understand the goal as a transcendental
signified which organizes and anchors the meaning of each signifier in the syntagmatic
chain of consciousness. The ordering of consciousness would also function along this
syntagmatic chain where each bit of information that enters consciousness through the
active direction of attention would follow logically from the one before and so on; the
idea that the flowing subject acts in relation to clear feedback leads Csikszentmihalyi to
state that the subject ―belongs to a rational cause-and-effect system‖ where one action
causes an effect of feedback which causes an effect of another action, and so on (1975,
36). Thus, each move or action that the rock climber completes would be related to the
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overall goal and to the moves which came before and after it: order would emerge
between the connections of these parts, the discrete actions merging into a continuous
whole. Describing the experience of the rock climber, Csikszentmihalyi writes:
This fluid process of movement-balance-perception-decision-movement-balance
... forms the internal dynamic of climbing. One might visualize it as a strip of
movie film. Each synchronic slice of the action (balance, decision, movement, and
so on) is like a frame of that film. When the action is too easy or difficult, the
film stutters and the actor is very aware of the black borders of each frame, the
negotiation of the ego construct. But when the difficulty is just right, action
follows action in a fluid series, and the actor has no need to adopt an outside
perspective from which to consciously intervene. Awareness of the individual
frames disappears in the unbroken flow of the whole. ... Action merges with
awareness. The actor is immersed in the flow of his movement. The flow
experience emerges as the psychological correlate of this kinesthetic-cognitive
process. (Beyond Boredom 85-86)22
When the syntagmatic chain of actions (identified in the first sentence of the quote)
smoothes into continuous action then the orderly flow experience emerges. Flow, at its
most fundamental level, is truly the effacement of discontinuity and difference by
continuity. Here, consciousness becomes a stream of consciousness—the discrete bits
dissolving into the bit stream of continuous action. Ultimately, the goal of the climber is
not only to get to the top, but to find this optimal state of functioning when all actions
are seamlessly combined. In fact, the overall goal—or underlying goal—for
Csikszentmihalyi is to get ―beyond boredom and anxiety‖ to the optimal state of flow in
all activities of the subject, to live a completely ordered life. While Csikszentmihalyi's
general notion of the subject posits an individual threatened by noise, distraction, and
entropy—―Entropy is the normal state of consciousness,‖ he writes, ―a condition that is
neither useful nor enjoyable‖ (Flow 119)—the ideal form of the flowing subject is meant
to transcend this generalized condition.
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In order to achieve the goal of an intentionally ordered consciousness,
Csikszentmihalyi identifies flow activities that help to combat psychic disorder. These
activities assist in balancing skills with challenges, providing an optimal level of difficulty
for the participant and thus helping to remove the possibility that the order of
consciousness will be interrupted by states of anxiety or boredom. He writes that flow
activities are ―designed to make optimal experience easier to achieve. They have rules
that require the learning of skills, they set up goals, they provide feedback, they make
control possible. They facilitate concentration and involvement by making the activity as
distinct as possible from so-called ‗paramount reality‘ of everyday existence‖ (Flow 72).
Flow activities are sets of external conditions which allow the subject easier access to
order and unity of consciousness. These activities vary widely—from those that stem
from the traditional area of work and labor to leisure activities like playing games and
even doodling or talking to friends at a party. In fact, Csikszentmihalyi writes that ―flow
exists on a continuum from extremely low to extremely high complexity‖ (Beyond
Boredom 141). Activities such as whistling, fidgeting, chewing gum, daydreaming, and
―passive‖ activities like watching television and shopping are termed ―trivial activities‖ or
microflow, activities which are ―almost automatic‖ (Beyond Boredom 141). Activities such
as playing games like chess or competitive sports, creative art production, working in a
rewarding job are termed complex activities, macroflow, or deep flow activities. For
Csikszentmihalyi these deep flow activities are the ultimate form of ordered activity;
microflow activities simply provide evidence that the subject is always seeking some sort
of order, even when the activity is trivial and the order achieved is minimal.
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Deep flow activities assist in the merging of action and awareness through the
―centering of attention on a limited stimulus field‖ (Beyond Boredom 40). This limiting of
consciousness is comparable to one of Johan Huizinga's key observations about play:
that play is removed from everyday life and ―is 'played out' within certain limits of time
and place‖ (28). Order appears within this limited sphere: as Huizinga once wrote, play
―creates order, is order. Into an imperfect world and into the confusion of life it brings a
temporary, limited perfection‖ (29). Following this tenet of play Huizinga invokes the
―play-ground‖ or ―magic-circle‖ where play occurs. For Huizinga the limits of time and
space encircle the play activity, just as flow activities are ―as distinct as possible from socalled 'paramount reality' of everyday existence (Beyond Boredom 72). For
Csikszentmihalyi, these limits of the flow experience also concern consciousness and the
ability to drastically limit the space and time of attention. This is, in some respects, the
cognitive impact of the play experience. The flow experience narrows time and space to
a point where consciousness focuses on the immediate actions at hand; this defined area
of complete attention seemingly allows for the ―perfection‖ of consciousness and the
emergence of the ideal flowing subject. Yet, within this condensed and concentrated
moment an interesting phenomenon appears (or rather, disappears): ―a loss of selfconsciousness‖ as Csikszentmihalyi terms it. In this concentrated state, ample time and
space do not exist for self-reflexive states of consciousness.23 We might term this loss as
a merging of self with other (as Csikszentmihalyi has also called it), losing the self in an
external system of rules and goals. Others might see this moment as the subject
becoming object or an ultimate form of reification. In the peak of the flow experience
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action becomes automatic, and the subject—normally oscillating between order and
disorder—becomes a condensed point where order is guaranteed by the very
singularity of the subject's action. Thoughts of the self are ejected, the subject becoming,
at its peak, an ejection mechanism for self-awareness, self-consciousness, and selfreflexivity. This is a positive moment for Csikszentmihalyi because the subject is shed of
any time or space for self-criticism, shed of any ―negative‖ thoughts which might
interrupt action. But just as Huizinga says of the play experience, ―it [only] brings a
temporary, limited perfection‖ (29), the consciousness of the self reappears when the
flow state disappears. In fact, the returning self does not come back empty-handed from
the void in which it was lost, rather it returns with gifts, a surplus-value of higher-level
skills and capabilities that augment and enlarge the self, bestowing upon it a higher
complexity and presumably augmenting its ability to intentionally order consciousness.
Csikszentmihalyi argues that ―Loss of self-consciousness can lead to self-transcendence,
to a feeling that the boundaries of our being have been pushed forward‖ (Flow 64).
Indeed, the limited perfection of the flow experience ultimately leads toward selftranscendence in an unlimited expansion of the self—an accumulation of capacities and
higher skills, a kind of ―active capital‖ deposited in consciousness (or perhaps its
memory banks) that can be invested further in self-expansion. The self reduced to an
ideal, perfect point in the flow experience returns ahead of itself, more perfect than it
once was, more capable of ordering consciousness than it was before.
At this point one can see why Csikszentmihalyi‘s model of the subject has been
(and still is) largely ignored within certain theoretical traditions: while poststructuralists
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and media theorists in the nineteen seventies were analyzing the ―death of the author,‖
de-centered, split and fragmented subjects, subjects becoming aware of the absence of
full agency and intentionality, Csikszentmihalyi was advocating a model of the subject
that was fully capable of actionable intentions. While media theorists were tending to
see the unity and coherence of consciousness as ―ideal‖ positions (and thus bourgeois,
dominant, etc.) constructed by mainstream media (for example, by classical Hollywood
cinema), Csikszentmihalyi was advocating for unity and coherence as ideal goals. While
critical theorists were questioning phenomenological ideas of unified, transcendental
subjectivity and instead positing anti-humanist models of subjectivity where
psychoanalytic theories of subject formation undermined the centered throne of
consciousness (the ―central clearinghouse‖ as Csikszentmihalyi refers to it),
Csikszentmihalyi was an unabashed humanist, appropriating this centering
phenomenological model and attempting to buttress and extend the supreme seat of
consciousness.
One can note, in passing, similarities and differences between Csikszentmihalyi's
humanist position and the influential, anti-humanist position of Jacques Lacan's theory of
the formation of the subject. For Lacan, in the pre-Oedipal period (that he termed the
mirror stage) when infants see an image of themselves in a mirror they identify with this
image which is seemingly one of bodily unity and self-control; yet, such an identification
is a misrecognition precisely because the ―reality‖ of their experience is one of
―turbulent movements‖ and fragmentation. Nevertheless, this is the moment in the
formation of the subject where an image of an ―Ideal-I‖ is constructed as a future
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measure of one's subjectivity—a measure of imaginary perfection which the self can
never obtain. This Ideal-I is ―fictional‖ (not real) for Lacan, where the subject (forever)
attempts to move from its fundamental fragmentation toward the imaginary unity which
has been installed within it in, an ―asymptotic‖ movement as Lacan terms it. Seemingly
alluding to Lacan's theories, the digital media theorist Sherry Turkle once called
computers (and also video games) ―perfect mirrors.‖ For Turkle, as for
Csikszentmihalyi, the movement toward this perfect mirror has a ―positive side‖ where
one gains ―an enhanced sense of autonomy, self-esteem, a sense of being the 'actor' in
one's life‖ (87). (Of course Lacan might prefer to understand this ‗actor‘ in both its real
and fictional senses). In fact, similarities seem to exist between Lacan's model of the
subject and Csikszentmihalyi's, although one must ignore complex differences between
them in order to make the comparison. While Csikszentmihalyi's subject exists within
an oscillation of order and disorder, Lacan‘s popular theory of subject formation
inscribes a dialectic of unity (imaginary) and fragmentation (the real) which eventually
gets ―played out‖ within language (the symbolic). For Lacan, the Oedipalized subject
who has entered the symbolic retains the desire for an imaginary unity (formed in the
pre-Oedipal mirror stage) which he or she strives to attain within the field of the
symbolic, i.e. within language. This unity within language might be expressed semiotically
as a desire for the correspondence between signifier and signified, but this ideal
correspondence has been undermined since the work of Ferdinand Saussure where
signs are constituted by ―differences without positive terms‖—that is, a positive unity of
the sign and its meaning does not exist, nor ultimately between signifier and signified.
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While a subject may try to master language, produce this unity (the unity of the ―I‖) and
order language once and for all, the subject inevitably falls victim to the impossibility of
such unity. The difference between Csikszentmihalyi‘s model of a subject involved in an
oscillation of unity and fragmentation (from an ―intentionally ordered consciousness‖ to
that of a disordered consciousness struck by experiences of boredom and anxiety) and
that of Lacan‘s (from an imaginary unity to a fragmented reality experienced through the
mediation of the symbolic) might simply concern their reactions to this dialectic: for
Lacan, one strives to understand the split model of the subject (a process of perpetual
oscillation between unity and fragmentation, between control and the lack of control,
between consciousness and the unconscious) learning to live within the impossibility of
its overcoming whereas for Csikszentmihalyi, once he sees the oscillation between
ordered flow and disordered states of anxiety and boredom his response is to attempt
to overcome or prevent this oscillation, striving to create internal order through an
intentionally organized attention while simultaneously constructing ―flow activities‖ as
external conditions which will assist in the ordering of consciousness. Csikszentmihalyi's
ideal state of flow—the optimal experience of the harmoniously ordered
consciousness—could perhaps be equated with a movement toward this ideal-I where
the subject loses consciousness of the self (in the flow state) only to return with a
stronger self-concept, thus paralleling the asymptotic movement toward a full realization
of subjectivity that Lacan identifies.
I am not, here, marshaling de-centered theories of the subject in order to
ridicule Csikszentmihalyi, but rather because I want to criticize the strong humanism in
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his work. In a recent group interview, game scholar Helen Kennedy suggests that we
would benefit from an examination of video games in anti-humanistic terms, focusing on
how technology positions subjects in ways which are beyond their intentional control:
In my own work I have been very interested in moving beyond a strictly
humanist understanding of gameplay to attempt to account for the agency of the
technology and how we are brought in line with the demands of the software
and hardware in our gameplay. So I would argue that we the players are just as
much configured by the game as vice versa (and here I include everything from
code to wires, etc.). Therefore gameplay is not so much about us asserting our
agency over the game but of bringing ourselves into alignment with [its]
demands. I would even relate this to a reworking of Csikszentmihalyi's (1990)
notion of flow to suggest that flow is not so much about a state of perfect
control but more a perfect submission to the technologies. (2007)
This remark, which was not expanded within the interview, functions as an apt frame for
the investigation of Csikszentmihalyi's theories of flow that follow, for I too wish to
analyze Csikszentmihalyi's theory of the subject from a perspective that challenges his
privileging of agency and intention. But what is at stake in returning to an anti-humanist
approach in order to understand Csikszentmihalyi's theory of the flowing subject? The
reason for turning toward anti-humanist approaches always marks an attempt to take a
step back from understanding human intentions and agency as a primary and privileged
force of historical change, to gain a critical distance from humanist hubris and the
blindness that such a lofty arrogance can create. This distance allows one to critically
isolate other determinants—the technological (Kennedy's proposed approach), the
unconscious, the economic, the social, etc.—that play decisive roles in shaping historical
events and change, the construction of subjectivity, etc.. For example, in terms of video
games, an anti-humanist approach tempers the simple idea that the video game medium
augments the activity of the media consumer; that is, the idea that with the rise of video
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games and other interactive media the rapt, passive spectator has been replaced with an
active subject who participates in the production of the media text as he or she engages
with its form. In the previous section I have already shown that such a view of video
games is suspect, that video games do not simply liberate the player from passive modes
of media consumption but participate in a larger history of the commodification of the
subject—in fact, a history where distinctions between passive and active media use
distort fundamental similarities between media forms. While a humanist perspective on
video games might claim that agency and control are augmented with the emergence of
the gamer, an anti-humanist perspective uncovers historical determinants operating in a
similar fashion on subjects construed as either passive (e.g. television spectators) or
active (e.g. gamers); in the previous section this determinant was clearly economic and
stemmed from capitalist motivations of commodification.
Having produced this brief outline of Csikszentmihalyi‘s model of the subject I
have three further objectives. First, I examine and critique the consequences of this
form of flowing subjectivity, elucidating ideologies contained within it while arguing that
his humanist theory of the subject obfuscates anti-humanist approaches that might
explain determinants behind his theory of subjectivity. Of course, this obfuscation is
often how humanist ideologies function in the first place. Second, since
Csikszentmihalyi‘s theory of flow extends to a wide range of activities and is not
primarily concerned with video games, a general critique of his ideas travels far beyond
the realm of video games. Thus, I examine video games in light of the following critiques,
hoping to contribute to discussions concerning the subject positioning of the gamer.
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Third, I wish to briefly situate Csikszentmihalyi‘s humanist model of the subject as an
example of the desire to locate a solid ground that will provide a secure foundation for
individual decisions and ultimately social change—a desire firmly rooted in what
Zygmunt Bauman has called solid modernity. Thus, Csikszentmihalyi‘s theories become a
continuation of modernity in this respect, evidence that contradictions in modernity
have not been overcome.
The Growth Model of the Flowing Subject
When Csikszentmihalyi‘s general model of the subject (as an oscillation between
order and disorder) is supplanted by a flow model of the self what emerges is truly a
growth model of the subject, a self in the process of becoming ―more complex.‖ Above, I
indicated that the loss of self-consciousness that occurs within the flow state ends with
a transcendence, where ―the boundaries of our being have been pushed forward‖ as
Csikszentmihalyi frames it. The self returns from the flow state more perfect than it
once was. Describing one particular individual emerging from flow Csikszentmihalyi
wrote that this experience ―pushed the person to higher levels of performance, and led
to previously undreamed-of states of consciousness. In short, it transformed the self by
making it more complex. In this growth of the self lies the key to flow activities‖ (Flow
74). The growth model of the self simply indicates that as one adds more parts to
system while retaining order the system results in higher organized complexity.24 The
self becomes a repository for new skills and abilities as it strives to meet new challenges
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presented by the flow activities one pursues (e.g., one learns a new opening gambit in
chess, or how to use a new piece of mountain climbing equipment, or a new spell in the
World of Warcraft). The added skills needed to meet challenges reveals that the self, in a
sense, grows larger and attains a new complexity of ordered parts. After the flow
experience, ―when the activity is over and self-consciousness has a chance to resume,
the self that the person reflects upon is not the same self that existed before the flow
experience: it is now enriched by new skills and fresh achievements‖ (Flow 66).
Presumably this growth of skills allows the self to ―intentionally order consciousness‖ at
a higher state of complexity, and this complexity allows the self to better confront the
threatening disorder of reality.
Unfortunately, the reasons for the desire for growth and an increased
complexity of the self are ultimately left ambiguous. Csikszentmihalyi himself points out
that someone with low skills might choose to participate in activities with low
challenges, thus order and disorder would still be balanced but growth would not
emerge. When he does attempt to explain why individuals keep returning to the flow
state, why they strive toward growth, his responses tend to fall back on ambiguous
notions of enjoyment: ―One cannot enjoy doing the same thing at the same level for
long. We grow either bored or frustrated; and then the desire to enjoy ourselves again
pushes us to stretch our skills‖ (Flow 75). Or, he writes that one is simply not able to
―ignore challenges‖ once they are encountered (Flow 75). In his analysis of flow
Csikszentmihalyi desires to remove questions of external determinants altogether and
instead focus on what he calls ―intrinsic motivation‖ where the reasons for pursuing
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flow activities are internal to the activities themselves. According to Csikszentmihalyi, all
flow activities are voluntary and ―intrinsically motivating;‖ they are ―autotelic
experiences,‖ that is, activities that are ends in themselves (Flow 67); people do not
pursue these activities for external reasons, for financial reward or fame, etc., but
because they produce experiences which Csikszentmihalyi links with intense enjoyment.
This was the key feature of the various activities that Csikszentmihalyi studied in order
to isolate his theory of flow; he wanted to theorize the reasons why people pursued
certain activities (many of them games) without the promise of external rewards. For
example, he looked at mountain climbers and asked why people pursue (and enjoy) an
activity that could easily result in the loss of life. Or, he asked why chess players
dedicate much of their lives to mastering the game without the promise of financial
reward? Following from this, one might ask, why do players dedicate hundreds of hours
to World of Warcraft (and other games) and pay for this privilege? Csikszentmihalyi
would answer that the activities facilitate flow experiences, providing for the various
principles of flow, and ultimately leading toward an intense self-enjoyment, a movement
toward a more perfect self. (His notion of the growth of the self is, in his words, ―an
element of enjoyment‖). Identifying the determinants of this desire toward growth and
enjoyment—instinctual, psychoanalytic, ideological, etc.—would be one method for
investigating Csikszentmihalyi's model of the subject further. Simply stating that
enjoyment is an end in itself masks critical reflection concerning other possible causes of
enjoyment within flow experiences which might arise in contemporary (Western)
society and also across different cultures and historical times. Csikszentmihalyi tends to
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treat the enjoyment of flow experiences as ahistorical, universal and timeless; different
activities relative to distinct times and cultures might be devised to create flow
experiences, but underneath their principles are the same.25
Let me turn toward psychoanalysis in order to provide a brief, simple example of
identifying a determinant of flow experiences. One could link this pursuit of enjoyment
to Freud's pleasure-principle where an individual seeks to avoid pain or tension—here in
the form of boredom and anxiety—and gain pleasure through a decrease in psychic
tension. In terms of Csikszentmihalyi's model one would think that an individual
motivated by the pleasure principle would seek the easiest route toward a reduction in
tension, or would find an equilibrium between skills and challenges and attempt to stay
within the bounds of that situation. Yet, in the growth model described above the
individual does not remain in a state of equilibrium but attempts to ―stretch‖ his or her
skills further, to produce a new state of tension, to seek a certain amount of anxiety in
order to master it once again. Others who have extended Csikszentmihalyi's ideas of
flow determined that the experience usually corresponds to a situation where
challenges are slightly higher than skills. For example, both Jesper Juul and Steven Poole
have suggested that video games should attempt to keep the gamer slightly anxious. Juul
writes that ―frustration [i.e. anxiety] is a more positive factor than in Csikszentmihalyi's
description, because frustration may actually motivate the player to improve in order to
escape frustration‖ (137). A certain amount of displeasure is sought in order to
experience the pleasure of escaping it. Following from this, one might be tempted to link
the growth model of the self to what Freud later termed the death-drive, a more
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fundamental ―instinct‖ than the pleasure principle where an individual seeks displeasure
in order to master some former trauma, where an individual seeks the creation of
tension (anxiety, disorder, etc.) in order to overcome it and return to a more ordered
state. One of the factors which caused Freud to begin thinking ―beyond the pleasure
principle‖ was, in fact, an analysis of a child's game: the Fort-Da game where the child
reenacts the disappearance of the mother (an unpleasurable experience) by throwing
away an object which stands in for the mother (Fort, gone) and then recovering it again
(Da, there). For Freud, this was a curious situation where an unpleasurable activity
(which was constantly repeated) seemingly took precedence over the pleasure principle.
Freud wrote, ―At the outset [the child] was in a passive situation – he was overpowered
by the experience; but, by repeating it, unpleasurable though it was, as a game, he took
on an active part. These efforts might be put down to an instinct for mastery that was
acting independently of whether the memory was in itself pleasurable or not‖ (600).
Such a passage is telling when compared to the flow experience, especially given the
active role of the child seeking mastery and control (essential elements of flow). Yet,
Freud was reluctant to use this game as proof of the death drive given that the
displeasure experienced eventually yielded an intensified pleasure of control—a similar
movement from anxiety to control, or from frustration to its escape in the flow model.
Ultimately Freud saw the Fort-Da game (and play in general) as unhelpful in the search
for the presence of a drive other than the drive toward pleasure. Thus, for Freud, games
and play remain ―under the dominance of the pleasure principle‖ (601).
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Interestingly, Freud relates the Fort-Da game to an oscillation of disappearance
and return and footnotes another similar game in which the child ―[makes] himself
disappear‖ and reappear by moving his face before a mirror, taking it away, and then
returning again to look at himself. This is conceptually similar to the theoretical
structure of the flow experience: the disappearance and return of the self, an oscillation
of losing the self and having it return. In these Fort-Da games the self also returns with
new skills—―the child's great cultural achievement – the instinctual renunciation (that is,
the renunciation of instinctual satisfaction)‖ (601). In the case of the original Fort-Da
game the child learns to substitute the satisfaction of the game for the desired
instinctual satisfaction gained by the presence of the mother. In the case of the game
with the mirror the child obtains mastery over the disappearance of the self—an
inevitable disappearance that will occur throughout life given the influence of the
unconscious which periodically erupts to remove the subject‘s mastery and intentional
control. Could not flow activities, where the conscious presence of the self disappears
and is overtaken by automatic action, be read as forms of containment of the inevitable
loss of the self (overcome by unconscious drives, parapraxis, etc.), an experience which
becomes less threatening and which the individual masters through acquired skills, thus
turning this loss (of self-consciousness, an idea of the self-concept) into a profitable,
pleasurable return (and reaffirmation) of a coherent, privileged and centered subject?
Moreover, are not these acquired skills of containment and mastery of anxiety—these
―great cultural achievements‖ as Freud puts it—baby steps on the way to sublimation, a
substitution of socially approved outlets for repressed desire?
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My point is not that sublimation is the determinant of flow experiences (a point
that Csikszentmihalyi explicitly denies26), nor that one must turn to theories of
repetition compulsion or the pleasure-principle in order to definitively locate the
determinant of flow, but simply that Csikszentmihalyi's desire to ground the enjoyment
and pleasure of the flow experience within the experience itself might itself be his own
reaction to a certain anxiety—an anxiety over the multiple, disordered determinants
which actually structure an activity that he sees as autonomous and ahistorical, an
anxiety over determinants that undermine the prized intentionality of the masterful
subject, an anxiety that these other forces contaminate the pure action of the flowing
subject and threaten its potential achievements. The rejection of external forces from
determining the optimal experience of flow is a mark of the theorist's own attempts at
mastery, at placing limits wherein disorder can be mastered and order can emerge.
Furthermore, the ―growth‖ of the popularity of the theory of flow over the last thirty
five years is always predicated upon its application, extension, or expansion, not its
critique. Here, the theory of flow itself grows more internally complex but always at the
expense of a far greater complexity of understanding which would be achieved by
critically immersing flow within other currents of potential determination, be these
psychoanalytic, historical, ideological, economic, social, technological, etc.. Yet, such a
move toward an ―outside‖ perspective concerning the determinants of flow is obscured
by the flow experience itself, a point which I will now address more closely.
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The Flowing Subject and the Loss of Critical Distance
Although Csikszentmihalyi argues that flow experiences are autotelic, that they
are pursued as ends in themselves and provide an undetermined enjoyment, clearly this
enjoyment is also the result of a negation, an escape from boredom and anxiety, an
overcoming of a disordered life. Yet, given Csikszentmihalyi's unfettered humanism and
his participation in what Brian Sutton-Smith has called the ―rhetorics of the self,‖ this
disordered life is always positioned in terms of subjective disorders—a distracted
attention, uncertainty about the future and individual choices, constant self-criticism,
debilitating self-reflection and anxiety, etc.. Such a troubling state of the individual in
contemporary life has been observed by many. Zygmunt Bauman wrote in his book
Liquid Modernity that,
The modernizing impulse, in any of its renditions, means the compulsive critique of
reality. Privatization of the impulse means compulsive self-critique born of
perpetual self-disaffection: being an individual de jure means having no one to
blame for one's own misery, seeking the causes of one's own defeats nowhere
except in one's own indolence and sloth, and looking for no remedies other than
trying harder and harder still. (38)
As I described in the introduction, for Bauman (drawing on the work of Anthony
Giddens and Ulrich Beck), fluid modernity is the latest stage in modernization where
―the bonds which interlock individual choices in collective projects and actions—the
patterns of communication and co-ordination between individually conduced life policies
on the one hand and political actions of human collectivities‖ have melted away (6). In
solid modernity ―the compulsive critique of reality‖—the use of reason to melt away
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traditional structures which linked individuals to collective lifestyles, such as religion—
occurred in parallel with the hope that reason would establish new foundations for
these bonds (e.g. socialism) or new systems that could effectively direct individual action
(e.g. science) once the old had been cleared away. Yet, Bauman argues that in fluid
modernity such a hope for foundation begins to evaporate, and one of the consequences
is that individual choices cannot find enduring systems that will articulate meaningful
reasons for personal actions; thus, while modernization and ―the compulsive critique of
reality‖ continues within liquid modernity, it turns inward on the individual, creating
constant self-criticism and self reflection. For some, such as Anthony Giddens, this
perpetual self-reflexivity opens possibilities for new forms of ―life-politics‖ which will
influence larger political goals;27 for others, such as Bauman, constant self-criticism is a
debilitating manifestation that causes individuals to find solutions to socially generated
problems within themselves, ultimately a futile enterprise. Csikszentmihalyi also views
the present age as a loss of stable foundations which can provide direction for individual
action, or, if such foundations exist in the form of political parties, religions, fads, and
short lived communities formed through similar individual interests, these tend to
provide weak foundations or provide forms of control that remove the need for selfmastery of the individual: ―consciousness may obtain a welcome order, but it will be an
order imposed rather than achieved‖ (Flow 65). Csikszentmihalyi's response to the
situation of liquid modernity is to firmly ground the self within itself; he writes, ―There is
no way out of this predicament except for an individual to take things in hand
personally‖ (Flow 16). Flow activities and the experiences that they produce become the
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practical method for securing the self and overcoming the eruption of self-criticism,
anxiety, boredom, and distraction within liquid modernity.
Let me explain how the flow experience accomplishes this overcoming. The ―loss
of self-consciousness‖ within a flow experience ultimately results in a disappearance of
critical awareness which is the primary condition for the ―magical‖ experience of flow to
appear: ―In normal life, we keep interrupting what we do with doubts and questions.
‗Why am I doing this? Should I perhaps be doing something else?‘ Repeatedly we
question the necessity of our actions, and evaluate critically the reasons for carrying
them out. But in flow there is no reason to reflect, because the action carries us
forward as if by magic‖ (Flow 54). Csikszentmihalyi might respond that the self returns
stronger and more complex than it was before the flow experience and thus can
critically reflect upon its actions after the fact. Yet, when the self returns rewarded it is
not gifted with an increase in the active skills of critical awareness or reflection (because
these skills are precisely what is excluded from the flow experience) but with increased
skills concerning actions displaced elsewhere, into other more benign ―positive‖ flows,
perhaps as more socially acceptable substitutions (i.e. sublimation) for less socially
appreciated forms of active critical awareness and critique. If you recall the description
of the mountain climber's experience quoted above, Csikszentmihalyi explains that ―the
actor has no need to adopt an outside perspective from which to consciously intervene‖
(Beyond Boredom 85-86). Here, the flow experience becomes a mechanism to replace
the reflective movement outside the activity, to displace reflective ―actions‖ that might
search for an outside perspective: again, when the self-concept returns to itself after the
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flow experience (transcendent, stronger) the individual is not gifted with increased skills
in making this external move.
One might suggest that Csikszentmihalyi‘s desire to replace self-doubt with
uncritical action, to replace interruption with seamless flow, is a benign and socially
positive goal: after all, who enjoys constant self-doubt and continual self-criticism? The
flow experience is a way to combat the distress that is placed in the hands of the
individual once critique itself has been ―privatized‖ (as Bauman puts it). Again, such
experiences contain contradictions, positive and negative aspects. It is not my goal to
critique flow experiences in their entirety and even enjoyment itself(!)—to suggest that
people, who, for example, play in a community soccer league on the weekends need a
stern talking to—rather my goal is to critically examine these experiences in terms of
what they also may obscure (particularly as they are described and used in
Csikszentmihalyi's theories).
The erasure of an outside, critical perspective (of ―critical-distance‖) is one
definition of the experience of postmodernism as described by Fredric Jameson.
Csikszentmihalyi's theory of flow is simply a remarkable and practical example of this
erasure. One might argue that moments of internalized self-doubt and self-criticism live
on as symptoms of a repressed desire for this external outside perspective, a desire to
legitimately question and become critically aware of the social and economic systems
which determine contemporary life. In contemporary (Western) society individuals are
forced to approach historical, social, political and economic problems in terms of the
self. For example, in moments of non-flow Csikszentmihalyi and Kubey argue that
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individuals are more likely to engage in seeing themselves from an outside perspective
where they ―become more aware than at other times that [they] are in debt,
overworked, alone, or in a dead-end job‖ (Flow 167). These social, economic and
political issues of debt, isolation, overwork, etc., are confronted in terms of an internal
dialogue with the self—a process which diffuses and contains the positive desire for
changing these externally caused problems by forcing their (impossible) resolution within
the individual subject. Csikszentmihalyi's answer to this (impossible) resolution is to
annihilate the symptoms without addressing the cause(s). The flowing subject acts as a
mask which covers the scars of history without addressing from whence they truly
came. Indeed, experiences of self-doubt and self-criticism are symptomatic of these
larger determining structures, and the erasure of the possibility to understand these
structures only serves to perpetuate the debilitating and excruciating experiences of
self-questioning no matter how often we escape into the magic of flow activities.
To be fair, Csikszentmihalyi believes that his theories and practical suggestions
will solve ―the roots of discontent‖ (Flow 8). In fact, he politely chastises individuals who
―decide to attack directly the threatening symptoms‖ of discontent and focus on solving
single issues (like being overweight, or unemployed, or spending more time with one's
family, etc.) without reforming the whole of one's consciousness—the absolute root of
the problem according to him (Flow 13): He writes:
This general malaise [of unhappy individuals] is not due directly to external causes.
Unlike so many other nations in the contemporary world, we can't blame our
problems on a harsh environment, on widespread poverty, or on the oppression
of a foreign occupying army. The roots of the discontent are internal, and each
person must untangle them personally, with his or her own power. The shields
that have worked in the past—the order that religion, patriotism, ethnic traditions,
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and habits instilled by social classes used to provide—are no longer effective for
increasing numbers of people who feel exposed to the harsh winds of chaos. (Flow
12)
Although a few pages later he will mention a laundry list of social ills such as a high and
―unchanging‖ poverty rate, high crime and suicide rates, growing ―social pathology‖ and
mental illness, and a number of other statistics, these are framed as problems that can
only be solved once internal problems of the self have been overcome (Flow 14-15).
Seemingly, because the Western, privileged society he writes from (and to) has
overcome barriers to national wealth, it is the welfare of the individual consciousness
that is holding back progress (not class, not war, not class warfare, not tradition or
religion, etc.). Although he will make numerous claims throughout his prolific writings
that individuals must embrace social life in order to solve society's ills, that flow allows
one to feel connected to the external world and is ultimately the prerequisite for social
connectivity and social change, fundamentally the positive change must first arrive in
terms of the individual. Although he will theorize possibilities for social change through
―new faiths‖ based on flow (Flow 238), or the emergence of ―fellowships for the future‖
and collective cells of individuals growing in complexity (Optimal Experience 279-295),
these too are fundamentally based on first reforming subjectivity. He writes, ―But no
social change can come about until the consciousness of individuals is changed first‖
(Flow 191). While he claims that the ideas of thinkers like Freud, Martin Luther, and
Marx ―will always be useful and valid‖ (because they generated freedom in their own
particular ways), he envisions his approach as a new method which can solve
contemporary problems. His solution—which at one point he calls ―the politics of
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enjoyment‖ (Beyond Boredom)—is that the lives of individuals and society itself be
reorganized and designed according to the principles of flow. The crux of
Csikszentmihalyi's project is to extend his insights concerning flow over all of life, to
design all activities that one participates in—from leisure to work, from social
interactions to the functioning of institutions, from political engagement to family life—
as flow activities; his project, in a sense, reflects a desire to extend the ―limited
perfection‖ that Johan Huizinga identified in play activities (which Huizinga defined as
separated from real life) over life itself, to expand the magic circle of play, the
playground, over all aspects of human involvement. He writes:
Alienation, as Marx pointed out long ago, occurs when a person feels that he has
lost the ability to direct the part of his life that is invested in work. […] Flow
activities provide a means of mastering a limited area of reality and thereby
eliminate alienation, at least temporarily. It would be wrong to conclude that one
can eliminate personal and social alienation by providing more 'games' or more
flow activities isolated from the rest of experience. Instead, the whole of life must
be structured along the lines exemplified by these specialized forms of flow.
(Beyond Boredom 195)
The whole of life then must become like a game. It is only then that the ―general
malaise‖ of the populace and the conditions of alienation will be cured. Just as the
individual cannot treat the symptoms of self-criticism, boredom and anxiety one at a
time, in a ―piecemeal‖ fashion (Flow 13), the ills of society must be overcome by
restructuring society as a whole, starting with the individual.
Yet, can society truly be changed through a mastery of individual consciousness,
through the growth of the self and a community of flowing subjects? Likely not.
Csikszentmihalyi does not have a theory of power (other than the intentional power of
the individual) and does not analyze other determinants of society's ills which might
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exist beyond the grasp of individuals. The growth of enjoyment and its proposed
extension over all of life through flow experiences often seems inseparable from an
internalized coping strategy in the face of overbearing and unsatisfactory external
conditions. For Csikszentmihalyi, being a ―bored housewife,‖ bagging groceries, working
in a dead end job—all of these are situations can be turned into more enjoyable and
―productive‖ situations: ―...one may experience flow in any activity, even in some
activities that seem least designed to give enjoyment—on the battlefront, on a factory
assembly line, or in a concentration camp‖ (Beyond Boredom 36). He writes at the close
of his book Beyond Boredom and Anxiety: ―He can be in solitary confinement or in a
boring job; but as long as he knows how to respond to the few stimuli around...he will
still be enjoying himself. [...] A person who learns to flow with confidence wherever he
or she is becomes both truly autonomous and truly connected with the world. Extrinsic
rewards will be less needed to motivate him to put up with the hardships of existence‖
(Beyond Boredom 206). The potential dark side to Csikszentmihalyi's ―politics of
enjoyment‖ is that structural problems in society—the kind that lead to wars, etc.—are
not transformed but painted over, the flowers and gardens and lovely landscapes which
surround the home of the self only masking the discontent within.
Unfortunately Csikszentmihalyi's ―politics of enjoyment‖ is lacking in Politics even
though he argues that the reformation of individual consciousness will eventually result
in political endeavors. Zygmunt Bauman would disagree, in fact, expressing an opposite
formation:
...there is a wide and growing gap between the condition of individuals de jure and
their chances to become individuals de facto – that is, to gain control over their
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fate and make the choices they truly desire. It is from that abysmal gap that the
most poisonous effluvia contaminating the lives of contemporary individuals
emanate. That gap, however, cannot be bridged by individual efforts alone: not by
the means and resources available within self-managed life-politics. Bridging that
gap is a matter of Politics – with a capital 'P'. (39)
Here, the poison of anxiety, self-doubt, and self criticism cascading like a waterfall over
the ―subjects‖ of liquid modernity can only be treated and inoculated collectively, and
collectively from the beginning. As mentioned above, for Bauman the ―modernizing
impulse, in any of its renditions, means the compulsive critique of reality,‖ but this
critique has been ―privatized‖ and unleashed by individuals against their own persons.
Yet, this symptom of liquid modernity also signals that critique has not vanished from
the world but has lost its way. Its original function in modernity—to expose the aspects
of reality that were impinging on individual autonomy such as religion, the oppression of
tradition, bureaucracy, the culture industry, etc.—has been turned inside out. Thus the
task for critical theory today, Bauman says, is that the overarching autonomy of the
private self must be critiqued in order to make room for the public sphere once again
(48-42).
The problem with Csikszentmihalyi's theory of the subject and flow experiences
is that they work against forms of critical reflection that might posit other historical
determinants and causes of society's ills. Although he says that theories, for example, of
Freud and Marx—those great pioneers of anti-humanism—―will always be useful and
valid,‖ the truth is that the unabashed humanism of the flowing subject tends to obscure
its dialectical, anti-humanist sibling. As a humanism, Csikszentmihalyi's theory of the
centered, strong, growing subject and his championing of the beneficial properties of
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flow activities is an ideology; but, as an ideology it is also useful, yet only on the
condition that the usefulness of anti-humanism be restored. To quote from another
pioneer of anti-humanism, Louis Althusser once wrote:
Marx's theoretical anti-humanism, by relating it to its conditions of existence,
recognizes a necessity for humanism as an ideology, a conditional necessity. The
recognition of this necessity is not purely speculative. On it alone can Marxism
base a policy in relation to the existing ideological forms, of every kind: religion,
ethics, art, philosophy, law – and in the very front rank, humanism. When
(eventually) a Marxist policy of humanist ideology, that is, a political attitude to
humanism, is achieved – a policy which may be either a rejection or a critique, or
a use, or a support, or a development, or a humanist renewal of contemporary
forms of ideology in the ethico-political realm – this policy will only have been
possible on the absolute condition that it is based on Marxist philosophy, and a
precondition for this is theoretical anti-humanism (231).
Although his concerns are squarely aligned with Marxism and Politics as the form which
anti-humanism should take—and I do not disagree with his position—one can perhaps
generalize from his thoughts on anti-humanism and humanism. That is, anti-humanist
positions, whether they be motivated by Marxism, psychoanalysis, forms of technological
and economic determinism, are prerequisites for the formation of humanist ideologies.
In Csikszentmihalyi's case, though, the humanist ideology which gives full reign to the
growth and power of the human subject hinders movements toward positions outside
and at a critical distance from the subject itself.
I have hinted that as an ideology, Csikszentmihalyi's theories concerning the
flowing subject might be useful—though of course on the condition that they are revised
after an anti-humanist critique and, as Althusser noted, reformed as ―a political attitude
to humanism.‖ Let me, briefly identify the beginnings of such a utility. Writing about
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particular manifestations of aesthetic, modernist formations of the subject that pined for
the transformation of modern subjectivity, Fredric Jameson once wrote:
What has so often been described as a new and deeper, richer subjectivity, is in
fact this call to change which always resonates through it: not subjectivity as such,
but is transfiguration. This is then the sense in which I propose to consider
modernist 'subjectivity' as allegorical of what is called revolution. The forms of this
allegory are multiple; yet all the anecdotal psychologies in which it finds itself
dressed […] have in common that they evoke a momentum that cannot find
resolution within the self, but that must be completed by a Utopian and
revolutionary transmutation of the world of actuality itself. (Singular 136)
Just as Bauman noted, Jameson argues that the transformation of the self—perhaps its
liberation from alienation—will never be resolved within the self, but only through
radical political change. Yet, the allegorical dimension of his argument finds that the
surface expressions of the transformation of the self point toward a ―political
unconscious,‖ a repressed desire for real change. (Similarly, the relentless and
debilitating self-criticism that results from the ―privatization of critique‖ is a repressed
desire for forms of critique that can be effective, that can illuminate true problems and
their solutions.) I believe that one can read much of Csikszentmihalyi's theories of the
subject in a similar allegorical fashion for clearly he desires to completely transform
society in order to remove the ―general malaise‖ of individuals, to overcome alienation
in order to achieve a more enjoyable and rewarding life. Moreover, his theories are
certainly Utopian, where he envisions Elysian futures ―beyond boredom and anxiety‖
where people are liberated from oppression and lead completely fulfilled lives. The
political unconscious is certainly visible, though distorted through his insistence on the
self as the fulcrum for social change.
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Interestingly, the loss of consciousness of the self that Csikszentmihalyi identifies
in flow experiences can perhaps be read as an inverted image of the de-centered,
fragmented subject often identified by poststructuralist thinkers and postmodern
theorists. Csikszentmihalyi's concentrated, centered subject contrasts with this
fragmented subject where the sense of one's self is also lost, de-centered in some
overwhelming void of disorder. The emergence of this fragmented model of the subject
is, of course, indebted to strong positions of anti-humanism aimed at critiquing and
dismantling dominant, bourgeois individuality. In Fredric Jameson's characterization of
this (schizophrenic) subject the collapse of time into an eternal present is the primary
vehicle for explaining the loss of a grounded self. According to Jameson, who draws on
the semiotic and psychoanalytic work of Lacan, this temporal condensation stems from a
―linguistic malfunction‖ where the syntagmatic chain of language crumbles, leaving only
isolated and unconnected signifiers unhinged from their anchoring signifieds (27).
Jameson describes the result of this process as follows:
...the breakdown of temporality suddenly releases this present of time from all the
activities and intentionalities that might focus it and make it a space of praxis;
thereby isolated, that present suddenly engulfs the subject with undescribable
vividness, a materiality of perception properly overwhelming, which effectively
dramatizes the power of the material...signifier in isolation. This present of the
world or material signifier comes before the subject with heightened intensity,
bearing a mysterious charge of affect, here described in the negative terms of
anxiety and loss of reality, but which one could just as well imagine in the positive
terms of euphoria, a high, an intoxicatory or hallucinogenic intensity.
(Postmodernism 28-29)
There are numerous comparisons one can make here between Csikszentmihalyi's model
of the subject in flow with that of Jameson's characterization of the fragmented,
postmodern subject. For example, compare ―the breakdown of temporality‖ that
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Jameson invokes with the following description of the rock climber's experience of time
during the flow experience:
Strongly correlated with the merging of action and awareness is an altered time
sense, a distortion in the congruence of chronological and psychological time. […]
In the flow experience...the climber loses track of time altogether. Later he may
even feel that for the duration of his flowing he was lifted out of time entirely,
disattached from internal and external clocks. The temporal aspect of the deep
flow experience is characteristically reported with such oxymorons as 'an eternal
moment' (Beyond Boredom 87).
This is a description of the loss of time consciousness that Csikszentmihalyi identifies as
one property of the flow experience. In both descriptions of the subject—Jameson‘s and
Csikszentmihalyi‘s—an eternal present emerges, seemingly divorcing the temporal
experience of the subject from time as history, as having a past and future as well as a
present. Jameson's argument that this breakdown of temporality ―releases‖ the subject
―from all the activities and intentionalities that might focus it and make it a space for
praxis‖ is easily identified as the complete opposite to Csikszentmihalyi's formulation of
flow which concerns the actions, intentions, and concentrated focus of a subject within a
limited temporal and spatial field. One can also draw comparisons between the ―charge
of affect‖ at work in both models of the subject, although, while these affects are
described similarly in terms of the subject's experience they originate from different
sources. Csikszentmihalyi's concept of the flow experience fundamentally concerns
intense enjoyment and is often characterized (by himself and those he interviews) as an
intoxicating experience, a high, or an exhilarating rush—an intensity not unlike the
―euphoria‖ described by Jameson in his description of the schizophrenic, postmodern
subject. Moreover, for the flowing subject ―anxiety‖ is a category of disorder and
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overwhelming information, a negative force which drives the subject toward further
action instead of away from it, instead of arresting action in a present state of anxiety
(or euphoria). In the flowing subject, the affective response stems from an intensive
order of actions and identifies a subject completely absorbed in a ―space of praxis.‖ Of
course Jameson‘s diagnosis of postmodern subjectivity is not a valorization of it, and
though he is cognizant that history does not permit a return to some prior form of a
centered subject, he would perhaps have sympathies for forms of experience that
valorize action, that focus attention and absorb one in praxis—particularly if the goals of
the game concern a ―revolutionary transmutation of the world of actuality itself.‖
(Jameson and others might also embrace the fact that Csikszentmihalyi's ideas do not
stem from the ―linguistic turn,‖ but they take a detour around language altogether in
order to come face to face with action itself; thus, in a sense, the theoretical description
of the flowing subject avoids the linguistic pitfalls of the schizophrenic and ―deactivated‖
subject.) Jameson would certainly abhor Csikszentmihalyi's insistence on privileging a
(bourgeois) subject and his assertion that changing society first requires the self to
master his or her consciousness; for such an individual consciousness is tied to the
bourgeois subject and exists leagues apart from Jameson's (and Marx's) preferred type
of consciousness, that is, the type that is modified by a class. Nevertheless, might there
be something useful in an experience such as the concentrated praxis of flow
experiences? Might one also be able to extend Althusser's notion that useful (political)
ideologies are conditioned by a necessary anti-humanism to also state that antihumanism without useful political ideologies is also a recipe for inaction? For is not the
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stupefied and stunned subject that Jameson laments above the child of a ―radical‖ antihumanism, though perhaps an anti-humanism divorced from the practical uses of
(political) ideology? Humanism without anti-humanism leads to the same point as antihumanism without humanism: a point that becomes an eternal present without a history
or a future within which one can escape.
Video Games and the Flowing Subject
Following from the above analysis, I want to return to video games briefly and
examine parallels that emerge between the idea of the flowing subject and games
themselves. For example, if Csikszentmihalyi's theories of flow construct a growth
model of the subject, how can one unpack this growth of the self in terms of the gamer
subject? Perhaps the most obvious determinant of the growth of the self in
Csikszentmihalyi's theories would have to be located in the on-going process of
capitalist modernity. The growth model of the self cannot be separated easily from the
continued growth of capitalism, bent on securing further avenues for the production of
surplus-value, on the further accumulation of capital reinvested in the growth of the
system and the expansion of its controlling boundaries and markets. As hinted at above,
Csikszentmihalyi's theory of the flowing subject emulates these essential conditions of
capitalism though re-inscribed in terms of the individual—expanding boundaries of the
self, accumulation of new skills to reinvest in the further growth and ordering of the self,
further challenges to overcome that will profit the self, etc.. This growing self is attached
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to the development of the bourgeois, ideal subject, continually securing its stature in the
world and expanding its influence. Indeed, this growth model of the ―character‖ of the
self is an essential goal of many video games such as role-playing games and first-person
shooters (though certainly not exclusive to these genres): as one progresses through
these games the character one plays accumulates more items, skills and abilities. As Lev
Manovich states, the goal is to ―build character‖ and strive for ―self-improvement‖—a
goal he likens to the North American mentality of the expanding frontier (272).
Fig. 6 and 7.Understated & Spectacular; World of Warcraft; Blizzard Entertainment, 2010;
MMORPG; 9 Jan 2010.
For example, in the online game World of Warcraft the goals largely concern the
continuous accumulation of new equipment, talents and skills that can be used to defeat
enemies, gold that will help one purchase this equipment or the training needed for new
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skills, etc.; building one's character is a fundamental goal of the game. There are multiple
ways to interpret the growth of the self through the playing of video games. First, one
could adhere to an interpretation that I term spectacular growth which largely concerns
the visual representation of this growth but also a particular form of arresting real,
social action which is typical of spectacle. Thus, in a game like World of Warcraft, the
representation of one's character in the beginning of the game is understated and ascetic
(fig. 6), but in the later stages when the player has ―built‖ his or her character through
accumulation of elaborate equipment—ridiculously sized shoulder guards, weapons with
glowing enchantments, massive helms—the character acquires a spectacular
representation (fig. 7) symbolizing the growth of the player's character (and ultimately
the hours of ―fictional‖ labor which was required for this accumulation). Or, another
example, in the game flOw—where the player's organism evolves purely through the act
of continuous consumption—one can detect a visual allegory of the growth model of
the subject. As the gamer consumes more organisms his or her creature grows into
elaborate and intricate shapes, visual representations that are rich in abstract complexity
and intense with vibrant color (fig. 8); as the creature progresses and evolves, its
incessant, consumptive actions produce and accumulate what can only be termed a
spectacular image (often declared by players to be part of the aesthetic draw of the
game). In the words of Guy Debord, ―The spectacle is capital accumulated to the point
that it becomes images‖ (34). Yet, while spectacular growth is a visual and
allegorical element of many games—from the complex evolution of the representation
of urban spaces in SimCity to the spectacular representations of weapons and their
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effects as one progresses in many first-person shooters—it also concerns a non-visual
elaboration of unreal actions. Debord often refers to the society of the spectacle as the
Fig. 8. Spectacular Organism; Flow; Thatgamecompany, 2006; Video Game;15 September
2009.
result of an intense accumulation of capital where ―All that once was directly lived has
become mere representation,‖ where ―Apprehended in a partial way, reality unfolds in a
new generality as a pseudo-world apart, solely as an object of contemplation. […] The
spectacle in its generality, is a concrete inversion of life, and, as such, the autonomous
movement of the non-life‖ (12). In terms of video games, this ―pseudo-world apart‖ not
only concerns the representations of virtual worlds, but more importantly the pseudo153
actions of an inverted life, the autonomous actions of the self functioning in a realm
separated from ―real‖ life. The accumulation and growth of skills acquired during
gameplay is displaced into a socially accepted activity where no changes are made
outside the bounds of the game. As McKenzie Wark argues in his book Gamer Theory,
―What characterizes the gamer is a relinquishing of a role that might have qualities
beyond the game – as savior or soldier, priest or prophet, rector or revolutionary;‖ the
gamer is an individual who ―click[s] to opt out of making history‖ (165). Here the
spectacular growth of actions arrests life in the unreality of fabricated actions. The
growth of skills and abilities that one accumulates in the flow experiences generated by
many game worlds are often spectacular images of growth which are in fact empty,
epiphenomena of capitalism which displace our concentrated attention in directions
away from the very real flows of capital which continue to determine (and carry along)
our historical situation.
After the game flOw was released, a small game production company called
Supervillian Studios produced an expansion pack for flOw which one can purchase and
download over the PlayStation Network. Supervillian Studio's expansion added two
features to the original flOw. First, one could play a new creature in addition to the five
included in the original PlayStation 3 game. This new entity was dubbed ―The Little
Death Machine‖ by one reviewer and acts, perhaps, as a devilish allegory for capitalism
itself: a circular set of spinning blades that protects a mouth in the middle, blades that
rotate quickly and which the player can cause to expand outward, stunning her
adversaries before she brings their inert bodies within, devouring their energy and the
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consumables that they release, growing larger with each victory. The creature was most
likely an addition aimed at the hardcore gamer community, filling a perceived absence in
the original game with a more ―violent‖ and aggressive creature to play. The other
added element included within the expansion pack is a little organism that the player can
consume—called ―camera food‖ by fans online—which causes the game to briefly pause
and take a screenshot of the player's spectacular, evolved creature, saving it on the hard
drive of the PlayStation 3 console (Figure 9). Here, the brief interruption of the
consumptive flow, perhaps needed to technically save the image, allows for the
production of a keepsake stored outside the bounds of the game, a memory that one
can now share with other fans over the network. (It is one way to participate in the
expansion of the game's circulation, to advertise the game for free, although ostensibly it
was a method to capture the beautiful, abstract images that were produced during play.)
More importantly, it is appropriate that what is ―saved‖ is an enduring, spectacular
image of an ideology of growth expressed through the goals and representational
depictions within flOw. (I have never encountered the camera food in the initial periods
of the game where my creature has not yet grown into an elaborate form.) The term
―camera food‖ is perhaps appropriate as well, since it marks the rampant consumption
of images in contemporary culture, the commodification of spectacle. In this brief pause
when the camera food is eaten—a moment that many gamers identified as an
unfortunate glitch in the expansion's design—the flow of the game and of the gamer is
interrupted. I am tempted to read the included camera food as an unintended flash of
critique or at least a moment of ―critical pause‖ that appears in the expansion; that is,
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Fig. 9. ―Camera Food‖ screenshot; Flow; Thatgamecompany, 2006; Video Game;15
September 2009.
the pause in the game derails flOw's original design tenets, introducing a rupture in what
is otherwise a game of absolute fluidity. This interruption is accompanied by the
production of a spectacular image of the player's creature which the player can then
contemplate in its strange stillness after the game has ended. In Csikszentmihalyi's
theory of the flowing subject, the sense of one's self is lost during the flow experience,
only to return stronger when the experience ends; yet, while the image produced and
saved seems to act as a similar reminder of the growth of the self, it is only a hollow
recollection, perhaps revealing this growth as a truly static phenomenon devoid of
movement and the force of change. The consumption of the camera food organism is a
glitchy moment of parapraxis—a concept which also marks the loss of the self but a loss
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of self-control, of intention and the reassurance of a centered self. (Indeed, often in the
swirling action of the game one does not even notice the camera food one consumes—
thus, the act is unintentional, only marked by the brief interruption of the game's flow;
moreover, it is a moment that cannot be ―switched off‖ in some menu—the images will
be saved whether one wants them or not.) The camera food moment erupts into the
game, against the flow of the game, and one glimpses a snapshot of the present, still
bathed within the spectacular image of capital, an image that will be retained within the
unconscious hard drives of the players' subjectivity, until, that is, they act to delete it. Its
deletion once and for all cannot happen with a click of a button—as when McKenzie
Wark remarks that gamers ―click to opt out of making history‖—but only when it finally
clicks that the growth of the self, even to spectacular degrees, will not provide the
foundation for fundamental societal change (165). The captured, static image remains
only as a memory of what has gone nowhere. One might object that interpreting the
camera food moment as an unintended critical pause is a stretch; after all, the moment
is so brief, so insignificant, so meaningless when it comes to the true interest of the
game: its expression of the properties of flow and its aesthetic ―beauty.‖ However, even
this insignificance can be interpreted as the waning of critical pause, the disappearance of
critical interruption which was so important for political modernism (a point which I
address in the next chapter); interruption is now but a glitch (or an ―artifact‖ as they are
sometimes called in terms of computer graphics) in the seamless process of going with
the flow. Yet, this interruption still remains and one can hermeneutically detect its
presence, perhaps even taking the brevity of the moment and expanding it so the critical
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pause becomes a critical thought (just as the moment of parapraxis is endowed with
significance in the psychoanalytic act of expanding interpretation). While the photograph
(in its traditional form) marks a past-presence, and thus one could read the snapshot
taken by the camera food as marking the past-presence of the critical powers of
interruption (something for the history books), the image captured is also a spectacular,
static, and sterile image of growth, perhaps negatively marking a particular content that
we would rather see stored away in the pantry of the past, forgotten for good.
I can imagine many readers shaking their heads at this moment, especially those
who are excited about the possibilities of linking games with beneficial learning practices
where the skills that a player develops while playing games become positive attributes
for the navigation of contemporary society; that is, opposite to the position of
spectacular growth, one would argue that the skills that one learns and augments while
playing games have effects outside the ―pseudo-world‖ of the game. This might be
termed the games and learning approach to the growth of a player's skills. On a very
general level, video games introduce children to computational technology; they
familiarize children with the use of technology, invoking a pleasurable experience which
might motivate later educational choices that push them to further investigate
technology and even pursue technological careers. On a more specific level, others
might invoke a vast array of scholarship that links video games to improved
sensorimotor skills, eye-hand coordination, etc.. Still others such as Henry Jenkins,
Steven Johnson, Raph Koster, and Paul Gee (among many others) extol higher levels of
learning processes that games produce (or, more often, have the potential to produce):
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thus, tinkering with simulation games like Civilization or Spore imparts important skills for
thinking about complex systems, emergent behavior, and the interrelation of multiple
processes and behaviors; or, many games require the player to continuously solve
problems, testing hypothesis and using acquired skills in new, creative ways until a
solution is found—perhaps akin to scientific thinking; or, one learns complex skills of
leadership, interpersonal communication, social organization, resource management, and
strategic thinking in a game like World of Warcraft where some players become leaders
of large groups of people as they work together in order to overcome a difficult task.
Here, the growth of skills and the self would be substantial not spectacular, effectual not
ineffectual, real not ideological. To be honest, I agree with much of this scholarship and
believe that games can become (and already are) catalysts for improved learning,
cognitive skill development, and even deep affective experiences. The importance of the
growth of these attributes cannot be denied as such; they certainly can produce positive
effects. Yet, one must recall Marx's insight that the development of the dynamic and
productive forces of capitalism is both a positive historical development (because such
dynamism could drastically improve people‘s lives) and a negative social force (because
of its often ruthless forms of exploitation). One question becomes, are the skills that are
growing while playing games critical skills? Another question—which I will return to
below—would be, are the growth of skills in video games exploited?
In terms of the development of critical skills, I have focused on the game flOw
and Csikszentmihalyi's theory of flow because I wanted to trouble the notion that games
intrinsically impart opportunities for critical refection more than other media. (Again,
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this notion would be attached to the idea that games embrace active users and
participants instead of passive consumers.) As I argued in my critical analysis of
Csikszentmihalyi's theory of the flowing subject, the move toward outside, critical
reflection is theoretically undermined by the subject in flow who has no need to obtain
an outside perspective or ―to reflect, because the action carries us forward as if by
magic‖ (Flow 54). On a fundamental level the flow experience obviates the need for
critical reflection, replacing it with automatism; while Csikszentmihalyi suggests that such
reflection can occur after the flow experience is completed, I argued that while the flow
experience might generate the growth of skills, the movement toward an outside
perspective is precisely a skill that is meant to be avoided. My goal is to read this effect
of flow experiences against other positions which embrace the criticality of games. In his
book What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy (2007), James Paul
Gee argues that video games teach active learning skills and can potentially teach critical
thinking as well. He writes:
For active learning, the learner must, at least unconsciously, understand and
operate within the internal and external design grammars of the semiotic domain
he or she is learning. But for critical learning, the learner must be able consciously
to attend to, reflect on, critique, and manipulate those design grammars at a
metalevel. That is, the learner must see and appreciate the semiotic domain as a
design space, internally as a system of interrelated elements making up the
possible content of the domain and externally as ways of thinking, acting,
interacting, and valuing that constitute the identities of those people who are
members of the affinity group associated with the domain. (32)
The jargon in this passage aside, active learning means being able to solve problems and
challenges that the game presents, understanding how different parts of the game
operate in order to play it. If you are solving problems in a game and working within its
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design structures effectively, then you are actively engaged in learning how the game
operates (even if this is ―unconscious‖ on some level). Beyond active learning, critical
learning concerns reaching a ―metalevel‖ (as Gee calls it) by becoming conscious of how
the game and its design operates on a higher level, beyond merely knowing how to play
the game. He writes that critical learning ―leverages the design grammar at a metalevel
in a reflective way that can lead to critique, novel meanings, or transformation of the
domain‖ (34). It is stepping outside the game, not simply to reflect after the fact on how
to improve one's performance, or how to better play the game, but to critique aspects
of its design, to situate the game in relation to other games, or to apply ―novel moves
and strategies, sometimes ones that the game makers never anticipated‖ (Gee, 35). His
term ―metalevel‖ is perhaps used in a similar fashion to how I am using the phrase
―critical distance‖ or ―outside perspective,‖ but the latter terms travel beyond his
notion of the metalevel by marking a move outside the game to its larger cultural, social,
political aspects, to generate meanings and interpretations stemming from how game
was designed that connect to these wider perspectives, to begin with the game but end
outside of it in order to understand its significance. Gee also states, ―What ensures that
a person plays video games in a way that involves active and critical learning? Nothing, of
course, can ensure such a thing‖ (38). Yet, he says that good design and also discussing
the game with others who ―encourage reflective metatalk‖ can spur this movement
toward criticality (39); the later observation already moves beyond the confines of the
game and embeds it within larger social discourses. Yet, it is not my intent to counter
his arguments and claim that games do not provide active or critical learning, or are not
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capable of doing so. I merely want to suggest that the flow experiences I have analyzed
in this chapter and the form of subjectivity that they valorize are strong forces that
operate in opposition to the claims that games explicitly produce critical learning,
perhaps helping to explain why Gee says that playing games cannot ensure that critical
reflection occurs when playing. Yes, critical learning can occur when ―reflective
metatalk‖ is engaged in a classroom setting or even in the ―knowledge communities‖ of
fans that Henry Jenkins discusses. But actually playing games, getting into flow or groove,
building skills that are not necessarily skills of obtaining an outside perspective, tends to
oppose the movement of reflection. While Gee claims that ―good design‖ can produce
critical learning, ―good design‖ typically also incorporates an awareness of creating
something like flow experiences—balancing challenges with skills, increasing the
duration of concentrated attention, etc.. Thus, this forges contradictory effects within
the game design itself. Of course, a closer analysis of the game design principles that
Gee identifies would be necessary in order to juxtapose them to the design effects
produced by flow, but for now I simply want to suggest that by not addressing the
effects of flow on players one ignores a crucial aspect of design that counters
criticality.28
I now want to return to the other question I proposed above: are the growth of
skills produced in video games, and through flow experiences, exploited? I already
provided one answer to the first question in part one of this chapter, namely, games are
often designed to balance player skill levels with challenges, creating flow channels
where these skills and challenges grow over time; when a game is properly balanced one
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result is that the duration of play is extended, thus feeding into patterns of consumption
that benefit the games industry. In this case, it matters little what these skills are, but
only that the design of the game allows them to grow while presenting further
challenges that keep these skills engaged; this continual engagement increases the
duration of consumption. Yet, moving in a different direction, it has also been argued
convincingly that the growth of certain kinds of skills during video game play—forms of
multitasking, learning to operate interfaces, social communication, immaterial labor
concerned more with cognitive and knowledge work than material forms of production,
etc.—are increasingly important for the functioning of late capitalism. Although such
skills are quite general and could be acquired through different uses of digital media
technologies, games are being studied and used by businesses in order to understand
and develop the contemporary skills necessary for success in today's corporate
environments. For example, a recent study of online role-playing games (like World of
Warcraft) sought to understand similarities between contemporary management needs
and the skills of leaders in these games who, week after week, help teams of players
overcome difficult tasks and problems. The authors write:
The organisational and strategic challenges facing players who serve as game
leaders are familiar ones: Recruiting, assessing, motivating, rewarding and retaining
talented and culturally diverse team members; identifying and capitalising on the
organisation‘s competitive advantage; analysing multiple streams of constantly
changing and often incomplete data in order to make quick decisions that have
wide-ranging and sometimes long-lasting effects. But these management challenges
are heightened in online games, because an organisation must be built and
sustained with a volunteer workforce in a fluid and digitally-mediated environment.
(Reeves et al.)
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At least from the perspective of business, the growth of these particular skills in online
role-playing games indicate that these games (or tools like them) might function as ideal
training situations for management. Indeed, businesses and corporations are not only
studying games but actually using them in order to train employees and also increase
employees' enjoyment of work with the hope of spurring productivity (an intensification
of labor under the aegis of enjoyment). In their essay ―Empire@Play: Virtual Games and
Global Capitalism‖ (2009)—which serves as an excellent introduction and initial
reference source for this body of scholarship—Nick Dyer-Witheford and Greig de
Peuter call video games a ―virtual apparatus for the subject-formation of post-Fordist
labour.‖ They write, ―In the 1990s, corporate capital latched onto games as a technology
for training an increasingly digitized labour force. By the turn of the century this activity
had become an industry in itself, and a major focus of an emergent Serious Games
movement; the market for corporate 'e-learning' was estimated at $10.6 billion.‖29 Thus,
it is important to realize that the potential positive aspects of learning which video
games deliver are also being used in order to link the growth of subjects (and their skill
sets) to the growth of capitalistic forms of management, productivity, and profit.
Beyond the use of games to build worker skill sets or the study of games from a
business perspective in order to analyze forms of play which might benefit productive
labor, one can also isolate an overflow of enjoyment which is linked to the growth model
of the self. Games and play are enjoyable activities which people often pursue
voluntarily—what Csikszentmihalyi has called the autotelic nature of flow activities; they
are ends in themselves. When such enjoyment overflows from leisure activities to work
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activities—which, of course, Csikszentmihalyi advocates—a number of issues arise. With
reference to the games industry specifically, Julian Kücklich has appropriately called the
collusion of play and labor, ―playbour,‖ where play and its association with enjoyment
increasingly becomes an ideological tool for obscuring undesirable working conditions in
the games industry while also providing a method for exploiting the productive
capacities of players (Kücklich; Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter). In terms of the former,
since employees work in an industry associated with ―play‖ and making games, their
work is redefined as fun, enjoyable, and motivated intrinsically by passion and their love
of games; thus, undesirable working conditions—long hours and grueling schedules,
under pay, ―precarious‖ job security—are masked and sustained through a redefinition
of this labor as a form of play. In terms of the latter, the notion of intrinsic motivation
coupled with Csikszentmihalyi's model for producing flow experiences—where skills
and challenges are balanced while both increasing over time—becomes a mechanism for
the exploitation of free labor and the use of ―participatory culture‖ by media industries
to capitalize on user-created content, especially in the games industry. Although I have
addressed this issue elsewhere, let me provide a brief explanation.30 Once a player has
mastered (or completed) a game in the sense that its mechanisms are well-known, often
this will produce a state of boredom in the player because skills now outstrip challenges
(or no challenges remain). Yet, by adding avenues for user-created content—level design
editors, resources for building graphical ―skins‖ to share with other players, allowing for
the production of user-created game add-ons, or distributing the game's code in order
to allow for substantial modifications of the game itself—the industry opens avenues for
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a player's enjoyment to overflow into production; the player can then make use of other
skills outside of the game space (e.g. graphic or web design skills, artistic skills,
programming skills, etc.) in order to extend the flow experience to other activities (yet,
always in relation to the original game itself). For example, a player in World of Warcraft
might exhaust many of the in game challenges and obtain a level of mastery, but then
decide to produce an interface addon, start a fan site, begin writing guides to difficult
parts of the game, etc., thus extending his or her enjoyment of the game to other
productive skills in relation to the game. In this moment of overflow a player's
enjoyment of a game spills into other activities which often result in user-created
content that enriches the original game, while also providing free labor for the games
industry. Through the idea of overflow, one begins to see that Csikszentmihalyi's desire
to expand flow experiences over work in order to make labor more enjoyable perhaps
has hidden consequences where play itself transfers over into work (production) while
being still seen as ―play,‖ as part of the game, as a leisure activity. Again, the growth of
skills is positive from one perspective—perhaps players begin to develop artistic skills in
the design of different levels or skins, or learn to program because their enjoyment of a
particular game drives them to create a game modification; yet, from another
perspective the process generates an exploitation of skills, a generation of ―playbour‖
where play overflows into work while obscuring itself as such.
These different consequences of the growth model of the subject and the loss of
critical distance within the flow experience—spectacular growth, the games and learning
approach, and the overflow of enjoyment—are a few examples of the effects that flowing
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subjectivity can have in relation to games. These examples do not occur exclusively but
can co-exist together in different games and according to different arrangements. In fact,
the idea of spectacular growth functions in many games to obscure the potential positive
aspects of the games and learning approach while also buttressing the ideological draw of
games and play that can be channeled and exploited by the overflow of enjoyment as well.
The Remodeling of the Subject
Flow, flow the waves hated,
Accursed, adored,
The waves of mutation:
No anchorage is.
This quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson stems from a poem opening his essay
―Illusions,‖ published in his book The Conduct of Life (1860) though an earlier version of
the essay, without an introductory poem, was published in 1857 in The Atlantic Monthly.
The essay registers the plight of the individual confronted by a world of flowing change,
mutation, and contingency—a kaleidoscopic world of illusion where the self stands in
shifting sands, lacking foundation and stability. It is a registration of, and a response to,
the changing face of the modern world. Although Emerson's essay suggests that life
riddled with illusion is present throughout history (referencing Plato's cave, the fancies
of childhood, the prominence of illusion in myths and magic) there are clear indications
that his essay responds to contemporary aspects of social and cultural mutation. For
example, he invokes the rise of hurried urban life—―The world rolls, the din of life is
never hushed. In London, in Paris, in Boston, in San Francisco, the carnival, the
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masquerade is at its height;‖ he mentions the loss of traditional, religious foundations
that used to ―hold‖ and ―frame‖ human life; he mentions the turmoil of crowds ―which
sways this way and that‖ and ―drives hither and thither;‖ he describes a life bombarded
by the new and its distractions—―Every moment, new changes, and new showers of
deceptions, to baffle and distract....‖ Indeed, all of these invocations—of the busied
metropolis, the loss of tradition, the crowd, the new, distraction—are key concepts or
figures often used to depict the rise of industrial modernity in the 19th century, its
impact on the structures of experience which affect both society and the individual.
As the title to Emerson's collection suggests, The Conduct of Life is, at heart, a
proto-self-help book. It describes how one should live one's life in a modern world of
rapid change. Indeed, in many ways his work is akin to that of Csikszentmihalyi's, who
bridges the divide between academic and popular writing, the latter form of production
often acting as a quasi-self-help guide to conducting one's life; recall that
Csikszentmihalyi's theorization of flow experiences is an attempt to explain how to
enrich one's life for ―people who feel exposed to the harsh winds of chaos‖ (a metaphor
which resonates with Emerson's flowing waves of change).
In Emerson's essay ―Illusions,‖ he does not simply call for the rejection of illusion,
but instead suggests a complex mixture of illusion's embrace and denial. Just as the
flowing waves of change are both ―accursed‖ and ―adored‖ in the lines which open
―Illusions,‖ the ending of the introductory poem manifests a similar binary:
When thou dost return
On the wave's circulation,
Beholding the shimmer,
The wild dissipation,
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And, out of endeavor
To change and to flow,
The gas become solid,
And phantoms and nothings
Return to be things,
And endless imbroglio
Is law and the world, -Then first shalt thou know,
That in the wild turmoil,
Horsed on the Proteus,
Thou ridest to power,
And to endurance.
Here, the flow of change and illusion enters a dialectic between fluidity and solidity,
between phantoms and material things, between a catalyst for the creation of power
and also a dissipating condition that must be endured. For Emerson, the lack of
anchorage, foundation and finality, the ever changing tricks that our senses and intellect
play upon us, are not simply phantasms that must be dispelled, a roil of false
consciousness that must be uncovered and exposed, or delusions that must be exposed
for the illusions that they are, but the illusions that the modern world has wrought upon
humankind could also be embraced and used for the institution of power. He writes,
expressing ideas that would have perhaps endeared Jean Baudrillard, ―All is riddle, and
the key to a riddle is another riddle. There are as many pillows of illusion as flakes in a
snow-storm. We wake from one dream into another dream.‖ Emerson was well aware
that illusions could not easily be dispelled, and moreover, that they could also motivate
actions and serve the dreams of power. Nevertheless, in the ―imbroglio‖ of
modernization there were illusions that Emerson sought to dispel and foundations he
sought to install.
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―You play with jackstraws, balls, bowls, horse and gun, estates and politics; but
there are finer games before you. Is not time a pretty toy?‖ writes Emerson. Although in
his essay ―Illusions‖ he does not explain what he meant by this last rhetorical question,
one finds evidence of his temporal thinking within another famous lecture, ―Works and
Days,‖ supposedly first given around the same time his essay ―Illusions‖ was published in
The Atlantic Monthly (though ―Works and Days‖ appears in his later collection Society and
Solitude (1870) from which my reading stems). Like ―Illusions,‖ ―Works and Days‖ is also
a response to the mutating face of contemporary Western society, but in this case in
terms of technological development and the revolutionizing effects of mechanical
innovation and invention. Within the essay, Emerson mentions various new technical
developments in the 19th century including photography, gas-lights, ocean telegraphs, the
continued mechanization of steam-power, Charles Babbages' difference and analytic
engines, the railroads, the technologization of the body through blood transfusions,
vaccinations and dentistry—developments associated with modernity's rise through
continued industrialization, mechanization and rationalization. He even touches on the
shrinkage of space and time caused by railroads and the telegraph, the rise of
globalization and immigration, the mechanical deskilling of labor which ―unteaches‖
humans, the specialization of expertise, and predicts that ―the next war will be fought in
the air.‖ His historical consciousness of these changes is clearly a modern one, where a
temporal difference was seen between present society and that of the past.
Near the end of ―Works and Days‖ it is time that thrice appears as an illusory
culprit31 with Emerson arguing that human ―works‖ (the technical developments he
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outlined) should not be held as the true measure of humanity, but rather it is what is
done with one's ―days‖ that counts. For Emerson, the constant arrival of the new and
shifting change functions as an ephemeral reality which masks the eternity of the
moment: ―In stripping time of its illusions, in seeking to find what is the heart of the day,
we come to the quality of the moment, and drop the duration altogether. It is the depth
at which we live and not at all the surface extension that imports. We pierce to the
eternity, of which time is the flitting surface....‖32 For Emerson, flow was essentially the
ephemeral, the ―waves of mutation‖ which washed endlessly ashore erasing any sense of
the eternal, any sense of the priority of the moment. This illusory and elusive temporal
flow threatened an essential foundation of the self—a self lost in the distractions of the
day. Indeed, the poem that opens Emerson's essay ―Works and Days‖ figures the days
as the ―daughters of time‖ who ―Bring diadems and fagots in their hands,‖ items to
distract one from the moment and steal the days away. Interestingly, Csikszentmihalyi
quotes Emerson to a similar effect in the introduction to his popular book Flow: The
Psychology of Optimal Experience (1990): ―'We are always getting to live,' as Ralph Waldo
Emerson used to say, 'But never living.' Or as poor Frances learned in the children's
story, it is always bread and jam tomorrow, never bread and jam today‖ (1990, 16).
Csikszentmihalyi often framed his theory of flow experiences in terms of enriching the
moments of one's life and not losing oneself in distractions; just as Emerson invokes
―the quality of the moment‖ as something that one must embrace, Csikszentmihalyi and
Nakamura write that the flow experience's ―major contribution to the quality of life
consists in endowing momentary experience with value‖ (102). And again, as mentioned
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before, Csikszentmihalyi argues that ―The temporal aspect of the deep flow experience
is characteristically reported with such oxymorons as 'an eternal moment'‖ (1975, 87).
From the onset of modernity a desire to resist the ephemerality through the location of
the eternal is invoked. For Emerson as for Csikszentmihalyi, it is the task of one's self to
discover this eternal moment.
For Emerson the forces of modernity were, in many ways, potential distractions
from the foundation of the self, from a depth of character which Emerson—true to his
religious and moral transcendentalism—saw as an eternal spring through which to judge
humanity's ―progress.‖ Emerson's invocations of moral character, his seemingly
unabashed embrace of human agency in the ability to ―conduct one's life,‖ his
invocations of self-reliance, truth, etc., place him firmly in the mindset of solid
modernity—a sensibility that is aware of the rapidly mutating times, that even delights in
its illusions at times, but in the end seeks to find foundations that would resist this
change or at least would place this change under the direction and management of solid,
rational institutions. For Emerson (as well as for Csikszentmihalyi), this foundation was
the intention and action of a stable, centered self. Indeed, the subject was an essential
locus of the unanchoring forces wrought by Western modernity, a fact which Emerson
was aware of as the swiftly changing ―works‖ of humanity threatened to unhinge the self
from its ―days‖ and also its traditional foundations. As Jonathan Crary wrote
summarizing aspects of Michel Foucault's work:
As individuals became increasingly torn from older regimes of power, from
agrarian and artisanal production, and from large familial setups, new
decentralized arrangements were devised to control and regulate masses of
relatively free-floating subjects. For Foucault, nineteenth-century modernity is
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inseparable from the way in which dispersed mechanisms of power coincide with
new modes of subjectivity, and thus he details a range of pervasive and local
techniques for controlling, maintaining, and making useful new multiplicities of
individuals. (Techniques 15)
Thus, subjects were rendered into ―free-floating‖ forms which were then managed (in
various ways) in order to make productive use of these uprooted flows. Yet, while
Emerson registers the forces of modernity as flow, protean mutation, and ―wild turmoil‖
he did not want these forces to violate the character of the self; he wanted to combat
the situation where subjects were uprooted as ―free-floating‖ forms and thus could be
reformed by the illusions dominating the day. In a sense, Emerson did not want the self
to become a ―work‖—managed and reformed, a technology that could be integrated
into alienating possibilities. He closes his essay ―Works and Days:‖
And this is the progress of every earnest mind; from the works of man and the
activity of the hands to a delight in the faculties which rule them; from a respect to
the works to a wise wonder at this mystic element of time in which he is
conditioned; from local skills and the economy which reckons the amount of
production per hour to the finer economy which respects the quality of what is
done, and the right we have to the work, or the fidelity with which it flows from
ourselves; then to the depth of thought it betrays, looking to its universality, or
that its roots are in eternity, not in time. Then it flows from character, that
sublime health which values one moment as another, and makes us great in all
conditions, and as the only definition we have of freedom and power.
In the end he moves back to the self, to the ―fidelity‖ of one's ―character‖ as the source
of the ―flow‖ of being, the ground which can oppose transformations such as one's labor
losing its value to the temporal measurement of one's productive capacities. Emerson's
phrase ―the gas become solid‖ (appearing in the poem that opens his essay ―Illusions‖)
ushers to mind Marx and Engels‘ famous description of capitalist forces of production in
The Communist Manifesto: ―All fixed, fast frozen relations, with their train of ancient and
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venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become
antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air....‖ But the return from
gas to solids, which is a return to the self for Emerson, ultimately becomes the mark of
his desire, firmly placing him in the discourse of solid modernity which appreciates the
changes wrought by modernity but desires a ground which will always return illusions to
truths.
The title of this final section, ―The Remodeling of the Subject,‖ is meant to
invoke the notion of modernity, for both words—modernity and modeling—share an
etymological root, modus, meaning to measure. My measurement of the modernity's
continuation (on one theoretical level) is to link Csikszentmihalyi's remodeling of the
subject as a recurrence of a similar desire that operated in the essays of Emerson which
I analyzed. Reading Csikszentmihalyi beside Emerson produces an effect of déjà vu in
terms of the function of subjectivity as a continued location of solidity, as ballast against
the looping waves of mutation that have inundated society and culture over the last
century and half. While Csikszentmihalyi writes in a different time period than that of
Emerson, his insistence on the (potential) solidity of the self, on its ability to master
consciousness in order to conduct one's life in the throes of chaos, is a repetition of
one response to the process of modernization. While one often hears discourses on the
death of the subject and its ultimate de-centering—suggesting that discourses of
subjectivity have been superseded in light of anti-humanist theorizations—it seems clear
that the individualizing tendencies of modernity (the age of the ―rhetorics of the self‖ as
Brian Sutton-Smith calls it) will continue to repeat as both a solution to perceived problems
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and a problem to perceived solutions. While Csikszentmihalyi's model of the subject may
have been remodeled along the lines of information and cybernetic theory, this
remodeling changes the facade of an edifice without changing its structure.
At the end of Emerson's essay ―Illusions‖ it is the self that appears as a solid
ground which should not be melted away: ―In this kingdom of illusions we grope eagerly
for stays and foundations. There is none but a strict and faithful dealing at home, and a
severe barring out of all duplicity or illusion there. Whatever games are played with us,
we must play no games with ourselves, but deal in our privacy with the last honesty and
truth.‖ One might measure the difference between Csikszentmihalyi and Emerson in
terms of this quotation. While Emerson's use of ―games‖ was meant to signal disruptive,
external influences of illusion upon the self, Csikszentmihalyi's theories indicate that we
are now truly playing games with ourselves, but with the hope that they might help us to
rediscover the foundation that Emerson extolled a century and a half ago.
1 TGC's games are often perceived as alternatives to mainstream games like first-person shooters (FPS)
where the action is deemed more intense and dominated by fast paced violence. Thus, one could also
read the flowing hand within the logo, billowing forth from the frame, in contrast to the disembodied
hand often depicted on the screens of first person shooters (also emerging from the bottom of the
screen frame); though, of course, the hand in a FPS often holds various weapons. Thus, the
disembodied hand in TGC‘s logo marks itself against the more dominant, mainstream form of the
violent FPS.
2 I/O/D's Web Stalker is a functioning web browser which foregrounds the invisible streams of data
which structure the web. These data streams are hidden by traditional browsers such as Internet
Explorer.
3 In their book Tomb Raiders and Space Invaders: Videogame Forms and Contexts Geoff King and Tania
Krzywinska analyze Csikszentmihalyi's principles of the flow experience one by one, providing many
fine examples of how video games adhere to them closely. Yet, like other uses of Csikszentmihalyi's
theory of flow they apply his theories to video games without examining the concept of flow critically.
See also Poole, 2000; Sweetser and Wyeth, 2005; Gackenbach, 2008. Incidentally, my interest in flow
does not stem from a desire to confirm whether or not video games produce flow experiences. The
evidence—from sociological studies to the insights of game designers, from the brief observations of
Csikszentmihalyi himself to those of game theorists—suggests that they certainly do. Without doubt,
questions concerning the degree to which particular video games and genres create flow experiences
are valid and important. One can even view the game flOw as an indicator that not all contemporary
video games produce such experiences, though one must keep in mind that flOw is an attempt to
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4
5
6
7
8
9
10
refine principles of game design in order to increase and extend the experience of flow already
developed in many games.
I should mention that later theorists of flow, and some game theorists, hold that the challenges should
always be slightly higher than skills, thus provoking low levels of anxiety which might act as a catalyst
for increasing skills; yet, such anxiety should not produce frustration which can disrupt the flow
experience.
Following the work of John Ellis who critiqued the privileging of flow over segmentation in Williams‘
work, Fiske writes that ―Flow, with its connotations of a languid river, is perhaps an unfortunate
metaphor: the movement of the television text is discontinuous, interrupted, and segmented. Its
attempts at closure, at a unitary meaning, or a unified subject, are constantly subjected to fracturing
forces‖ (105). For Fiske, the multiple and diverse segments in the television text are not connected
logically but only through association. While planned flow attempts to smooth over the unconnected
nature of the segments, a complete logical closure of relations between them can never be
constructed. Only provisional associations can be given—associational structures that still retain gaps
and discontinuities between the diverse elements. He writes, ―Textual unity is an agent of ideological
closure, and resisting that unification resists that closure‖ (101). Fiske argues that the viewer is called
upon as an active participant to fill in the gaps which exist, to create associations and connections that,
in fact, were not ―planned.‖ Fiske does not deny the existence of flow—or, as he might put it, a
planned set of associations between different televisual segments constructed by the networks—but
he denies that this unity is pervasive within television as such: the television text is thus open and not
closed, it is open to ―resistant‖ and ―oppositional‖ readings, not closed down to a particular meaning
or ideology.
For example, Richard Dienst explains zapping as only a moment of contingency between different
programmed flows on separate channels. ―At best, zapping reintroduces a moment of circumscribed
chance, making a transverse cut through the grid from one programmed zone to another until sense
appears‖ (29).
In Brooker's argument, the discrete elements of one's experience engaging with contemporary
television programs is extended over ―multiple media platforms,‖ blurring the distinction between the
content of the actual program and associated content dispersed across different media forms. Thus,
the concept of overflow is partially an extension of Williams' notion of flow which generally indicated
the continuous flowing of discrete televisual segments. Yet, overflow marks the extension of discrete
segments beyond the bounds of the television text proper though intimately connected with it as well.
In fact, the movement between levels does interrupt the control of the creature by the player, though
such interruption is extremely brief and is accompanied by an automated movement of the organism
spiraling up or down in the layers of the game; though the system acquires control of the creature for
a moment, the movement remains fluid and uninterrupted. In other games the lengthy load periods
between levels can significantly interrupt play and often game reviewers will comment on load times of
particular games, either to complain about long waiting periods or to praise games with minimal load
times.
Some game designers have eschewed the use of cinematic sequences which often have a higher degree
of visual realism than sequences of gameplay because the cinematic elements can be pre-rendered,
stored, and packaged as videos with the game itself. Instead, designers have experimented with using
the real-time graphics engine of the game itself to render narrative interludes (e.g. Half-Life, often in
mini-narrative sequences in World of Warcraft, etc.). Thus the visual interruption between different
levels of perceptual realism is removed. Moreover, these games often allow the player to stay in
control of his or her character while the cut-scene happens, which lessens the interruption of
gameplay—lessens, because, while the player still controls his or her avatar its ability to progress in
the game or carry out other actions might be limited until the narrative sequence has completed;
although the interruption is lessened, players can still feel constrained in moments of narrative
progression that are rendered by the game engine.
World of Warcraft does actually use a rudimentary form of passive monitoring in later stages of the
game. For example, the game will keep track of a player's ―gear score‖—an abstract assessment of the
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quality of equipment the player has obtained. Thus, some dungeons or ―instances‖ will be locked until
the player achieves a better gear score.
11 It is intriguing that the notions of flow and interruption are built into the general functioning of the
programmable computer. In computer science terms the flow of control, or control flow, indicates how
the code structures the movement of control through the use of loops, branches, conditionals, jumps
to subroutines, etc.. Control flow stipulates the order of operations or the path of tasks that a
program executes, depending on various system states and interactions that ―interrupt‖ the flow and
potentially change the system state. The notion of an interrupt identifies a moment when an active
process is interrupted by a hardware signal (perhaps the click of a mouse button or a key on the
keyboard) thus causing another process to execute. More precisely, an interrupt functions on a lower
level of an operating system handling calls from hardware or devices that need attention for the
smooth management of a system. On the level of software, ―interrupts‖ built into the control flow of a
program are called event handlers where pieces of code ―listen‖ for potential interaction—mouse
movements, key strokes, etc.—and then respond to the input according to the structure of the flow
control. Since these event handlers rely on the lower level functioning of hardware interrupts they can
be called interruptions in a loose fashion. In terms of the active and passive difficulty systems, one
could say that the passive system is designed to emphasize the control of the software over the flow,
while the active system is designed where interruptions or event handlers allow for more human
control over the flow of the system.
12 Ultimately Chen overestimates the reason why flow is broken in a game like Traffic Light; the simplicity
of the game likely causes this rupture because more choices are not offered to the player as the game
evolves. A game like Civilization—which unfolds in turns and not in real-time—certainly invokes flow
experiences that extend the duration of play time precisely because it continually expands the
possibilities of player control. As a game of Civilization progresses the number of choices a player must
consider continues to grow and players are forced into a process of expanding ―contextualization,‖ as
David Myers has called it—a process which ultimately creates a distinct subjective experience of time
that differs from the ―clock time‖ of the game's unfolding. Yet, even Civilization uses a static form of
difficulty adjustment, allowing the player to choose between five different modes of play—from
Chieftain (easy mode) to Emperor (hardest mode)—while also allowing players to choose the number
of other computer players they will compete against. The process of contextualization ―rearranges
(transforms) information into broader categories of knowledge, which have successively greater impact
on game play‖ (451). Thus, in Civilization, for example, one might initially control a single city and a few
units, but near the end of the game the player has multiple cities and units which enlarge the context
of potential actions and which demand extensive management. For Myers, ―the subjective experience
of contextualization dominates the subjective experience of time. Until the player experiences
movement from one contextualization to another, reaching a stopping point, time does not pass‖
(451). Between turns—where multiple adjustments must be made within the current game state—the
clock time of the game's progression disappears and a subjective experience of time emerges. Myers
writes: ―This is of course exactly why it is so difficult to break away from a game such as Civilization for
the more mundane matters of eating or sleeping; there is no game-determined stopping point. The
transformations of play create each other: oppositions create new contexts, contextualizations create
new oppositions. In terms of Civilization, the player is always right in the middle of a war that depends
on a couple of different battles, that depend on several different units that have to be moved over
large distances by ships that have to be built in cities that have to be built . . .‖ (456).
13 The player and machine meet in the moment of action when a player sends a signal to the machine and
the machine responds. Such a real-time temporality of ―instantaneous‖ control and response is
perhaps the most fundamental temporality at work in flOw and within the temporal flow of any video
game. Even in turn based games where the display might itself be static like a photograph, this form of
liveness must still be present even if its possibility is not visually indicated by the representations on
the screen. If this instantaneous temporality is interrupted—through processing lags, network latency,
or any form of material eruption of delay—a latent (hidden, concealed) temporality emerges,
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disrupting the illusion of instantaneous communication between machine and player, and revealing its
foundation on an ideal and ultimately illusory concept of pure presence.
14 While the authors of Digital Play do an excellent job of conceptualizing the subject position of a
―militarized masculinity,‖ at the time of the book's writing (before 2003) they could not have foreseen
the massive rise of the casual game industry and a large growth of women players (though this is
hinted at in their work). In my third chapter I analyze the rise of the casual game while focusing on
gendered discourses which surround this ascension. Here, the hardcore gamers playing within the
interpellated mentality of a ―militarized masculinity‖ anxiously react to casual games by aggressively
feminizing them as a discursive strategy of containment. I then argue that this containment is a
structuring pillar of modernity: the mapping of gender differences onto distinct media ―genres‖ (in this
case, casual versus hardcore games) as a technique for the (warlike) preservation and privileging of
masculine culture at the expense of its ―others.‖ Thus, my third chapter implicitly extends the
formation of a ―militarized masculinity‖ to examine how such a structure of identity is used to
―combat‖ perceived influxes of feminized (and thus threatening) mass gaming.
15 As mentioned, the literature on this subject is vast; although hardly scratching the surface, oft cited
works would include Johan Huizinga's Homo Ludens, Roger Caillois' Man, Play and Games, Gregory
Bateson's influential article ―A Theory of Play and Fantasy,‖ and Brian Sutton-Smith's The Ambiguity of
Play. For a good review of theories of play in relation to media studies see Julian Kücklich's report Play
and Playability as Key Concepts in New Media Studies.
16 For an extension of film apparatus theory to the video game medium see Sue Morris, ―First Person
Shooters – A Game Apparatus;‖ for psychoanalytic accounts of the gamer subject see the early article
―Hellevision: An Analysis of Video Games‖ by Gillian Skirrow and the more recent articles ―Playing at
Being: Psychoanalysis and the Avatar‖ by Bob Rehak and ―When Seams Fall Apart: Video Game Space
and the Player‖ by Laurie Taylor. Although emerging from the tradition of psychoanalysis Sherry
Turkle's chapter ―Video Games and Computer Holding Power‖ in The Second Self: Computers and the
Human Spirit offers a more ethnographic approach to the experience of the video gamer.
17 Quality research in processes of identification and video games has appeared around the avatar of Lara
Croft from the Tomb Raider series. See Mary Flanagan, ―Hyperbodies, Hyperknowledge: Women in
Games, Women in Cyberpunk, and Strategies of Resistance." Helen Kennedy, "Lara Croft: Feminist
Icon or Cyberbimbo? On the Limits of Textual Analysis." Anne-Marie Schleiner, ―Does Lara Croft
Wear Fake Polygons? Gender and Gender-Role Subversion in Computer Adventure Games.‖
18 See Espen Aarseth's paper ―Playing Research: Methodological Approaches to Game Analysis.‖ Aarseth
draws on Richard Bartle's essay ―HEARTS, CLUBS, DIAMONDS, SPADES: PLAYERS WHO SUIT
MUDS.‖ See also Mia Consalvo's Cheating: Gaining Advantage in Videogames.
19 I am well aware of the problems concerning this generalized approach to studying gamic subjects as
such; many criticisms leveled at the totalizing forces of film apparatus theory could be applied to this
approach. For example, one should not treat subjects as universally similar and that totalizing theories
of the subject obfuscate differences between media consumption based on class, race, gender, etc..
This is a valid point, and I certainly agree that audience reception studies based on different
communities of players is an important avenue of scholarly research. Nevertheless, I hope that
producing a more universalizing description of a gamer subject—through Csikszentmihalyi's theories—
will spur critiques of this position and discussion about the limits and benefits of such an approach. For
example, Williams' notion of flow also had a quasi-totalizing effect on the theorization of television
(though that was not his intention), but over time critiques of flow lead to an examination of flow
across different cultures, or opened possibilities for understanding flow in terms of gendered
reception of television (such as in Tania Modleski's work). I am not claiming that Csikszentmihalyi's
theory of the flowing subject is the definite description of gamic subjectivity, but I think it can be useful
for understanding forces that position gamers while they play video games. Hopefully my analysis will
open more avenues of discussion—of extension or critique—concerning subjectivity and games.
20 A similar position might be located in Espen Aarseth's earlier work on cybertexts (of which video
games are a subset) where he declares that, in relation to the analysis of cybertexts, ―semiotics is not
beneficial as a privileged method of investigation‖ (Cybertext 41).
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21 When some video game scholars do criticize flow in relation to games, they usually point out that
flow experiences are produced in games but that flow does not entirely describe what occurs while
interacting with video games. Thus, Steven Poole admits that video games produce flow experiences
but that the ―control‖ experienced in these states is also a simple form of muscle memory where
pleasure arises from an almost unconscious, automatic carrying out of actions. Thus, while the idea of
flow is retained, the grandeur of Csikszentmihalyi's theory is diminished in relation to video games
(Poole 291-298). In another example, Raph Koster argues that games may produce Csikszentmihalyi's
notion of flow, but that such an experience is hard to produce for long periods of time and is
essentially an emotion concerned with moments of ―exercising mastery, not learning‖ (Koster 98).
Although Csikszentmihalyi might disagree with Koster's claim about the relationship between flow and
learning, Koster signals that flow states might be produced once mastery has arrived, though not
necessarily during the initial states of play (which is perhaps where ―learning‖ takes place).
22 One could compare this quote to Jean-Louis Baudry‘s analysis of the cinema and how it also is
fundamentally constructed to remove discontinuity and privilege a transcendental subject. In his
analysis of the cinematic apparatus, continuity and order were key processes of erasing difference and
discontinuity—discontinuity which fundamentally composed the ―material base‖ of film (a
discontinuous series of photographs that is erased by an illusion of movement when the film is
projected) and also a discontinuity of montage which is elided though the valorization of a continuous
narrative structure. Flow activities, to the extent that they produce states of continuity and order over
and above a substrate of disorder and discontinuous noise, would also emulate the positioning of an
ideal, continuous subject.
23 Csikszentmihalyi writes that, ―Perhaps the clearest sign of flow is the merging of action and
awareness,‖ which is a state in which critical reflection is lost and one is unable to adopt an ―outside
perspective,‖ unable to step outside from within the flow activity (Beyond Boredom 38).
24 The issue of complexity can lead, of course, in a number of tangled directions, though for grasping
what Csikszentmihalyi means by the term it is best to keep things simple. Complexity refers to an
interconnection or interweaving of many parts. We might borrow terms (without retaining their
precise mathematical and scientific application) from Warren Weaver's paper entitled ―Science and
Complexity‖ (1947) where organized complexity is referred to as a ―sizable number of factors which are
interrelated into an organic whole.‖ Problems of organized complexity concern a large number of
variables which nonetheless operate in a more or less predictable pattern, and thus the complexity
which results forms a system that can be understood, theoretically, without probability theory or
statistics. Weaver contrasts organized complexity with disorganized complexity stating that the latter
―is a problem in which the number of variables is very large, and one in which each of the many
variables has a behavior which is individually erratic, or perhaps totally unknown. However, in spite of
this helter-skelter, or unknown, behavior of all the individual variables, the system as a whole
possesses certain orderly and analyzable average properties.‖ The flow experience is thus an organized
complexity where all actions undertaken by the subject and all the information that enters
consciousness are intricately interwoven and ordered, again, largely in terms of an organizing principle
or goal of the actions. While disorganized complexity would concern all the information that can
potentially enter consciousness—the disordered reality of everyday life—the limitation of the stimuli
which enter consciousness during flow experiences would concern organized complexity.
25 In a rare instance where the idea of flow is criticized, Brian Sutton-Smith critiques Csikszentmihalyi's
overtly ahistorical and universal idea of flow, pointing out that flow is most likely an experience
centered in Western cultures in the twentieth century where the individual and his or her ―secular
pleasures‖ are foreground (185-186). For an example of Csikszentmihalyi tendency to treat flow as
universal and transhistorical (even identifying flow experiences as a primary force in historical change)
see his book The Evolving Self (1993), particularly the chapter ―The Flow of History‖ (252-278).
26 ―Regularities in human behavior just don't happen by chance. They are either caused or they have
reasons. In psychology, the most widely held causal explanation for why artists paint is some variant of
the notion of 'sublimation.' They enjoy painting, according to this explanation, because it is the closest
socially acceptable symbolic expression of the artists' true desires, which are repressed instinctual
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cravings. But if one observers artists at work for any length of time, the sublimation hypothesis wears
thin fairly soon. There is just too much genuine excitement and involvement with the emerging forms
and colors to explain it all in terms of substitution for something else. Any why does the artist typically
keep seeking ever more complex challenges, why does he constantly perfect his skills if the whole
point is to experience vicariously the simple forbidden pleasure of his sexual programming? Up to a
certain point sublimation as a cause might be a useful proposition. A few of the artists seemed to have
begun painting to resolve an Oedipal tangle, or even earlier repressions. But whatever the original
cause might have been, it was obvious that the activity of painting produced its own autonomous
positive rewards‖ (Optimal Experience 4).
27 See Giddens' book Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age (1991).
28 Let me provide a brief example by addressing a game that is considered to be highly critical of
capitalist tendencies and a pedagogical tool for producing critical reflection about these tendencies:
Molleindustria's The McDonald's Game. The game is a simple McDonald's simulation environment
where one must balance the operation of corporate headquarters, the agricultural space where cattle
and soy are raised, the feedlot where the cattle are housed and slaughtered, and the franchise store
itself where the products are sold. In each of these areas, the player must perform questionable
actions in order to help the McDonald's corporation continue to generate profits. Thus, one might
need to corrupt a South American politician or bulldoze rain forests in order to purchase more land
for cattle; meanwhile raising too many cattle on a plot of land will eventually destroy it, causing it to
become unarable. In corporate headquarters one can chose to corrupt nutritionists or health officials
in order to counter problems that might arise during the game (like a backlash against the healthiness
of McDonald's fare), etc.. Each action you take requires more monthly expenditures, and thus to keep
McDonald's ―alive‖ and profitable one must continue to make nefarious decisions. It cannot be denied
that the game uses strategies to create critical reflection, to educate players about McDonald's
practices, yet what interests me is that it also creates flow effects which begin to paint a blurry image
of the ultimate result of the game. Examining one online forum concerning the game ("McDonalds
Videogame‖) I encountered a mix of contradictory comments. For example, many recognize the
game as humorous satire while others call it pure propaganda. Others miss the point completely—―I
have to say that this is very educational game and a brave act from McDonalds.‖—which actually turns
critique into a form of praising McDonald's for their ―brave act.‖ Many complain that the game is
difficult and that they often bankrupt McDonald's, which leads to ambiguous comments like, ―I keep
bankrupting it...which is a good thing, because McDonalds is BS but horrible cause that means I cant
run a company.‖ Another writes, ―I think the point is that you desire Mcdo to bankrupt so the game
finishes‖ (which might be closer to Molleindustria's intentions). Over time the discussion devolves into
strategies for how to succeed at the game, leading to many comments about how much money the
players were able to accumulate and how long they were able to sustain McDonald's without falling
into bankruptcy. This exposes the desire to succeed at the game and grow the company, to ―win‖ the
game. Eventually some players even learned how to play the game indefinitely without McDonald's
bankrupting. The desire to win at the game—to grow profits over time and to extend the duration of play
as long as possible—suggest that the game does not address the ideological underpinnings of the flow
experience; as the forum list suggests, the criticism inherent in the game (which the player might
certainly ―get‖) is countered (and sometimes obscured) by the desire to grow, the desire to last, the
desire to play as long as possible. My point is simply that the ideologies of flow which I have tried to
outline above are not completely addressed or interrupted in the design of the game, leading to
contradictions and a suppression of critical reflection.
29 For a more in-depth analysis see their book Games of Empire: Global Capitalism and Video Games (2009).
30 See my article ―Intrinsic Motivation: flOw, Video Games, and Participatory Culture‖ Transformative
Works and Cultures 2 (2009). Web. May 3 2010.
31 Emerson argues against three temporal propositions that appear in modern life. First, ―One of the
illusions is that the present hour is not the critical, decisive hour.‖ Second, ―Another illusion is that
there is not time enough for our work.‖ Third, ―A third illusion haunts us, that a long duration, as a
year, a decade, a century, is valuable.‖ For Emerson, such propositions remove thought from a self-
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consciousness of the ―day‖ (the moment, the eternal) and expend it within the ―works‖ of humanity;
this expenditure, in Emerson's estimation, does injustice to self-understanding, a constant escape from
the self into a time other than that proper to the self.
32 For those familiar with the relationship between modernity and temporality a profound similarity to
Charles Baudelaire's analysis of modernity and time should be noted, especially in relation to
Baudelaire's imperative ‖to distill the eternal from the transitory‖ as the activity of a modern, aesthetic
consciousness. Though differences would outstrip similarities between the two thinkers, both reacted
to the transitoriness, ephemerality, and uprooting wrought by the forces of modernity, though one
clung to the moral (bourgeois) self as an eternal anchor while the other focused on art's autonomy as
an eternal bastion against the onslaught of historical change.
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CHAPTER TWO
FOR TIME FLOWS ON: INNOVATION AND OPPOSITION IN VIDEO GAMES
Yesterday, after playing chess, Brecht said: 'You know, when [Karl] Korsch comes,
we really ought to work out a new game with him. A game in which the moves do
not always stay the same; where the function of a piece changes after it has stood
on the same square for a while: it should either become stronger or weaker. As it
is the game doesn't develop, it stays the same for too long (88).
- Walter Benjamin (1934)
It is perhaps appropriate to view this quotation as a piece on a chessboard of
possibilities—possibilities of interpretation or interpretative moves that spread out
before the reader in multiple directions. Within the desire of this quotation vibrates the
modernist sensibility of transformation, innovation, and the new which battles a sense of
culture that has become naturalized, stagnant, and seemingly unchangeable. Just below
the surface of this modernist will toward experimentation and change trembles the
hope of a Marxist transformation of society. Indeed, the quotation stands as a succinct
and elegant paraphrase of the goals of Brecht's Marxist epic (and pedagogical) forms of
theater: to transform the traditional dramatic performance which has ―stayed the same
for too long‖ and which has caused ideological stagnation while inducing soporific
passivity at the expense of critical activity (both in terms of the spectator and theater's
overall role in society). In his aesthetic experimentation Brecht sought to redesign
theater's conventional and historically static devices (the use of Aristotelian plot
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structures, the insistence on a forth wall between actors and audience, music which
reinforces content without reflecting upon it, actors which identify with their roles
instead of inhabiting and displaying a critical attitude toward these roles, etc.). He sought
to create a theater that involved the audience and its critical faculties, that instructed
about historical processes and current historical situations, that revealed the mutability
of these circumstances with the hope that the critical reflection of the audience would
overflow the space of the theater and enter into the world of politics. Through Brecht's
molding, epic theater embraced an array of techniques or functions—innovations as
Brecht called them—which were meant to combat the ideological impression that the
world was unchangeable, that things were naturally the way that they were (just as the
traditional theatrical devices which Brecht sought to overturn were seen as theater's
natural goals, unchangeable, and simply the way things were). In the game of theater the
rules had ossified into immutable ―facts,‖ and thus Brecht sought to rewrite these rules
in order to create room for change (fig. 1). The most well-known technique of such a
theater was the act of distancing or estrangement (Verfremdungseffekt) whereby through
different means the mechanisms which produced the theater's illusions were revealed to
the spectators in order to distance them from passively consuming the play, breaking
them free from a comfortable immersion in the flow of the play's narrative or overall
effects. Through these estrangement techniques the theater was defamiliarized, and the
constructed nature of the performance was revealed to the spectators. As Fredric
Jameson put it, the estrangement effect ultimately sought:
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Fig. 1. Rule changes from dramatic to epic theater; Brecht On Theatre: The Development of
an Aesthetic; Bertolt Brecht; Macmillan, 1964; Print.
to reveal what has been taken to be eternal or natural—the reified act, with its
unifying name and concept—as merely historical, as a kind of institution which has
come into being owing to the historical and collective actions of people and their
societies, and which therefore now stands revealed as changeable. What history
has solidified into an illusion of stability and substantiality can now be dissolved
again, and reconstructed, replaced, improved, 'unfunktioniert.‘ (Brecht 47)
Here, Jameson expresses the hope in Brecht's modernity—a solid modernity as
Zygmunt Bauman would call it where conventions are dissolved but the hope to replace
and improve society remains. Thus, in the realm of theater, Brecht invented a new game
with new rules aimed at changing the basic structure of the theater apparatus itself with
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the hope that a new, reconstructed theater could be put into service of a much more
serious game: the transformation of the rules of society itself.
Brecht's use of chess as a metaphor for change was not an isolated remark
contained only in the epigraph reproduced above. In fact, the example of chess found its
way into Brecht's play Galileo. In a lengthy monologue in the beginning of the play the
character of Galileo extols the arrival and power of the New to his student Andrea:
...the universe has lost its center overnight, and in the morning it had a
countless number of centers. So that now each one can be regarded as a center
and none can. For there is a lot of room suddenly.
Our ships sail on the far seas, our stars move in far space. In chess the
rooks can now be moved right across the board.
So that the poet says: ―O early dawn of the beginning! O breath of the
wind that comes from newfound shores!‖
Here, the scientific dismantling of the geocentric model of the universe was coupled
with the discovery of the New World and also with the development of modern chess
(all occurring around the end of the 15th and beginning of the 16th centuries). Chess
appeared again in Brecht's Galileo where a game was being played by two clerks when
Galileo arrived at a cardinal's ball. Before conversing with the religious authorities about
his scientific discoveries—aided by the use of the telescope—Galileo asks the clerks
why they play the ―old-fashioned‖ version of chess and then proceeds to show them the
modern rules of the game which allowed for more expansive movements.1 After
demonstrating the rules he says to them, ―That gives room, and you can lay your plans.‖
The clerks—who are actually religious agents of the grand inquisitor sent to record
Galileo's words—reply that they are not paid enough to make such grand moves, and
thus they cleave to the older version of chess where shorter moves are made. Thus, the
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clerks are representatives of a religious worldview which adheres to convention instead
of embracing innovation, taking little steps forward instead of a ―leap in the open air of
history‖ (to use an expression of Benjamin's). Before this short segment of the play ends
Galileo admonishes the clerks, ―Who takes big steps is given big boots. One must move
with the times, gentlemen. No hugging the coast; sometimes you must put out to sea.‖
Brecht's Galileo was, in its own way, a paean to transformation and the rupture of
the new figured through scientific innovation which pressured the very foundations of
society. Brecht's use of Galileo and the scientific revolutionizing of society was an
obvious analogy to revolutionary changes occurring in the 20th century, driven by
Marxist ―science‖ against the stagnation of bourgeois ideology. Even in the sequence
with the clerks the Marxist undercurrent is thinly veiled with Brecht suggesting that
change through big moves—perhaps the seizing of capitalist modes of production by the
workers (or the clerks for that matter)—will ultimately result in greater material
reward (―bigger boots‖). Yet, such revolutionary changes were not without considerable
power struggles. Galileo's support of the Copernican Revolution and the heliocentric
model of the solar system (in the first third of the 17th century) was condemned and
banned by the church, and thus the innovations of science struggled with religious
convention. In fact, the opening gambit of Brecht's Galileo—an embrace of the New—
finished in an endgame of defeat when Galileo was forced to recant and was eventually
confined to his home with little room to ―lay his plans.‖ The fact that Galileo was
unaware that the clerks were surreptitiously recording him, that he himself was already
playing a ―game of chess‖ dominated by the old rules, was a device used by Brecht to
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suggest that Galileo was, in fact, unprepared for the struggle that erupted. While in the
end the emergence of scientific truth was portrayed as inevitable (through the fact that
under house arrest Galileo smuggled his scientific work out of Italy), Brecht portrayed
the defeated Galileo himself as a disillusioned figure, an individual overflowing with
contrition, worn down, and shamed that he had not fought for the truth of science
against the religious authorities; faced with the power struggle (and violence in the form
of torture instruments) Galileo recanted, denying the innovations and inventions that he
had previously championed, missing his revolutionary chance. Thus, through the play
Brecht taught that while innovation and the New have a substantial impact on the
changing nature of society, such innovations will be met with vigorous struggle.
In a later version of the play the innovation ascribed to scientific and technical
advances was also questioned in terms of its potential negative impacts, especially when
usurped by dominant powers and used against humanity. This version was written with
the collaboration of Charles Laughton while Brecht lived in exile in the United States,
and it was performed in Los Angeles and New York in 1947. The changes in the play—
most importantly during Galileo's final monologue—were made in order to address the
recent use of the atomic bomb. Galileo says to his former pupil Andrea,
I maintain that the only purpose of science is to ease the hardship of human
existence. If scientists, intimidated by self-seeking people in power, are content to
amass knowledge for the sake of knowledge, then science can become crippled,
and your new machines will represent nothing but new means of oppression.
With time you may discover all that is to be discovered, and your progress will
only be a progression away from mankind. The gulf between you and them can
one day become so great that your cry of jubilation over some new achievement
may be answered by a universal cry of horror.
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Hence, science has a moral obligation to work for the interests of humanity. Such a
lament about the possible future state of science is still grounded by a Marxist critique,
where ―self-seeking people in power‖ usurp scientific discoveries for the sake of
oppressive purposes. Moreover, at the end of the play Galileo argues that while the new
scientific discoveries revealed one form of falsity (that man is the center of the
universe), they did not reveal the falsity of power operating in the social realm: ―The
movements of the stars have become clearer; but to the mass of the people the
movements of their masters are still incalculable.‖ Stemming from a character who lived
in a historical reality three hundred years prior to when the play was performed,
Galileo's statement conveys the sense that the revolutions of Brecht's day were of a
different sort, and, incidentally, that they were long overdue. Yet, what emerges at the
end of the play is the possibility that innovation can fail to produce a historical rupture
of social change and instead flow back into the dominant power structure. In this
version of the play, Galileo's capitulation in the face of religious power parallels the
failure of science to oppose the destructive uses of its own discoveries (e.g. the atomic
bomb); the dominate powers thus capitalize on the capitulation of struggle. In such a
situation, scientists and the purveyors of innovation might ultimately become, in
Galileo's words, ―a race of inventive dwarfs who can be hired for anything.‖
What emerges in Brecht's Galileo, through his analogy of chess, and in many of
Brecht's theoretical writings about the transformation of theater, is that the process of
innovation can change the rules of society, opening space and room for
experimentation, ultimately allowing for the ―laying of new plans.‖2 Yet, in the later
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version of Galileo—significantly, written within the United States—innovation is
punctuated with contradictions, where the New can spark transformation but this
transformation can also become a reproduction or rejuvenation of dominant social
forms. Brecht once wrote:
Yet this apparatus [theater] is conditioned by the society of the day and only
accepts what can keep it going in that society. We are free to discuss any
innovation which doesn't threaten its social function – that of providing an
evening's entertainment. We are not free to discuss those which threaten to
change its function, possibly by fusing it with the educational system or with the
organs of mass communication. Society absorbs via the apparatus whatever it
needs in order to reproduce itself. This means that an innovation will pass if it is
calculated to rejuvenate existing society, but not if it is going to change it... (On
Theatre 34)
In the ending to Brecht's ―American‖ version of Galileo, innovation itself is problematized
in a similar fashion: innovations can lead to great changes in society but they must be
accompanied with social and political struggle, otherwise they are in danger of simply
rejuvenating society, not changing it.
Drawing on this idea, in this chapter I examine notions of innovation and
opposition in relation to video games, primarily focusing on the possibilities and
problems with the development of an alternative or independent game movement, what
Alexander Galloway has called a ―countergaming‖ movement—a movement that seeks
to change the conventional forms and dominant ideologies of mainstream game
production. Throughout the chapter Brecht‘s theories operate as a key resource,
primarily as a way to think through the power and problems of aesthetic innovation. In
the first section I test the validity of Brecht's experimental aesthetics for the production
of alternative games, arguing that the task of reinstalling critical distance in relation to
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the video game form is still a viable goal in aesthetic production, especially when
revealing ideologies that operate within mainstream game forms. In the second section, I
adhere to Brecht's maxim that ―one must move with the times,‖ and thus I draw on
Alan Lui's notion that our age is one of ―total innovation,‖ relating this concept to what
Fredric Jameson has called the ―total flow‖ of contemporary culture. Here, I argue that
total flow and/or total innovation could be characterized as the outcome of Brechtian
aesthetics uncoupled from its oppositional and progressive functions. In the third
section, I return to the epigraph provided above and enact a different interpretative
move, one that follows the theoretical gambits of Brecht's chess partner, Walter
Benjamin. In this last section I explore the topics of time and history as perhaps
underdeveloped categories for progressive potential in oppositional game production.
Interrupting the Flow of Time? Brechtian Approaches to Video Games
While interceding-oppositional practices in US independent cinema, particularly
since the 1960s, have been identified with the effort to combine a cinematic
critique of social conditions etc. with aesthetic radicality, games with an agenda
are content with using the game as a popular tool instead of designing a critical
aesthetic practice as a critique of aesthetics. (9)
- Andreas Jahn-Sudmann
In his article ―Innovation NOT Opposition: The Logic of Distinction of
Independent Games‖, Andreas Jahn-Sudmann argues that independent games do not
currently oppose mainstream game design by offering an alternative paradigm that
explicitly critiques the aesthetics of mainstream game forms. He suggests a number of
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potential reasons for this phenomena. For example, he observes that the funding and
distribution of independent games is sparse, and thus economic conditions obstruct the
development of alternative gaming visions; he muses that gamers are not dissatisfied
with the mainstream form and content of games, and thus the pressure (or motivation)
to produce alternative game designs is lacking; he suggests that while independent films
often embrace ―controversial, provocative images and topics‖ in order to oppose the
mainstream, such content is pervasive and simply an included aspect of many
mainstream games (8). Perhaps most importantly he argues that mainstream games have
not manifest a dominant logic of aesthetic and political form—or such a form remains
―too vague‖—which independent producers can then oppose, dismantle, or critique.
Whatever the reasons, Jahn-Sudmann suggests that independent games eschew
opposition for the logic of innovation. He writes:
...independent games, in general, are – compared to independent films – even less
to be understood as the 'radical other' in the face of an (imagined) mainstream
culture – despite the heterogeneity and the hybridity of practices that the label
independent incorporates in both cultural fields. (Ambitious) independent games
may from time to time bear up against products of the dominant game industry
when it comes to being innovative or creative and they may sometimes differ
distinctly from the outward appearance of mainstream games – but this difference
does not include an oppositional logic that is explicitly recognisable as negation or
challenge of mainstream game forms. (10)
While Jahn-Sudmann's brief article is lacking in a systematic, detailed analysis of a wide
variety of independent and aesthetic games that were produced before the publication
of his article, it does offer a condensed statement concerning the ―not-yet‖ nature of
oppositional games, a video game avant-garde, or the production of aesthetic and
political critiques that address industry conventions and ideologies. In a short blog post
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responding to Jahn-Sudmann's article game scholar Ian Bogost wrote, ―It's an interesting
argument, and I find myself wishing the article had been longer and more detailed.
Specifically, the alternate strategy of innovation gets short shrift, despite the title's
promise to oppose the two‖ (―Indie Games‖). Bogost observes that Jahn-Sudmann
―doesn't generalize a theory of innovation in indie games‖ and offers that one could
begin this generalization with an argument that ―indie games have tended to innovate at
the level of mechanics rather than at the level of representation‖ (―Indie Games‖). Two
points emerge here. First, Bogost claims that mainstream games tend to adhere to genre
conventions, avoiding risks in terms of developing new forms of gameplay while
innovating in terms of visual representation—i.e. continually upgrading realistic forms of
visual representation. Second, when Bogost claims that innovation is perhaps an
―alternative strategy‖ to opposition he contemplates the possibility that innovation itself
might be a form of opposition to dominant trends in game design, that innovating in
terms of gameplay already posits independent game production as oppositional. There is
truth to this statement, that general innovation in terms of gameplay does oppose
conventions in mainstream game design. Yet, Jahn-Sudmann's insistence on ―negation
and challenge‖ carries political force, as when he says that independent cinema
―combine[d] a cinematic critique of social conditions etc. with aesthetic radicality.‖
Although Jahn-Sudmann's article is focused primarily on game aesthetics, part of his
claim is that this radicality should be attached to a ―critique of social conditions.‖
Yet, stepping back from the question of innovation in relation to video games, a
useful exercise might be to examine the place of innovation itself in contemporary
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culture. Jahn-Sudmann's phrase ―innovation NOT opposition‖ could easily be read as a
moniker for postmodernism itself, where oppositional political paradigms, critical
negation, and subversion of capitalist forms have consistently been declared as outdated
positions associated with aesthetic modernism and pre-1989 political paradigms. Of
course, innovation and aesthetic experimentation were key properties of modernism,
the Poundian ―make it new,‖ the aesthetic avant-garde pounding ahead in hopes of being
one move ahead of their adversaries, the newness of innovation operating as a shock to
bourgeois sensibility and perception, etc.. Political Modernism (as it has been called)
could be characterized as innovation AND opposition, where the spirit of negation
existed hand-in-hand with innovative aesthetic and political experiments. Bertolt Brecht,
a key figure in political modernism, once wrote: ―it is not at all our job to renovate
ideological institutions on the basis of the existing social order by means of innovations.
Instead our innovations must force them to surrender that basis. So: For innovations,
against renovation!‖ (―The Radio‖). Thus, in political modernism innovations were
coupled with opposition and negation. Innovations without opposition were simply
renovations, a term which could categorize many ―innovative‖ tendencies in
postmodern culture.
When Bogost states that the ―alternate strategy of innovation gets short shrift‖
one wonders why he does not take Jahn-Sudmann to task for not providing a general
theory of what opposition in games could look like. After all, Jahn-Sudmann's short
article simply describes that an oppositional logic does not exist without developing
prescriptions for the creation of such a logic (or at least explain why such a logic is
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possible or impossible in contemporary culture). When Bogost simply states that indie
games are innovative in ways that mainstream games are not (i.e. the former innovates
in terms of game mechanics while the latter does not) his claim seems tantamount to
the suggestion that the mainstream games industry is not as capitalist as it could be; that
is, mainstream, conventional games innovate in terms of representation (a safe bet for
capital) but do not take risks by innovating game mechanics and presenting players with
new forms of meaningful action. Instead, the innovative approaches to gameplay and
game mechanics within independent game production would emulate general tendencies
in contemporary capitalism where business innovation is the ideological norm (if not the
standard practice): an ideology of constant technological change, the creation of new
markets and services, the development of new forms of business management and
profitability, etc.. Such an ideology and practice murmurs at the heart of the ―creative
destruction‖ of capitalism, as Joseph Schumpeter famously called it. Whatever you want
to call the contemporary capitalist condition—post-industrial society, post-Fordism,
postmodernism, networked culture, etc.—it is ―an age of total innovation‖ as Alan Liu
recently described it, an acceleration of the dynamic of creative destruction (8). In the
case of video games, the innovation of indie games would cleave to the spirit of
capitalism more than their mainstream, ―older‖ siblings. Indeed, there is a real danger
that innovative indie game production (and it does not matter if this occurs on the level
of representation or gameplay) will simply renovate and rejuvenate the games industry,
not oppose it (a point I return to below). Avoiding the question of opposition and
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simply calling for a different kind of innovation in games can easily end up rejuvenating
society, not changing it.
One contribution of Jahn-Sudmann's article might simply be that it brings to
attention the problem of innovation in game production—indicating that one needs to
turn a critical eye upon innovation itself, especially in relation to oppositional practice.
(To Bogost's credit, his desire for a ―general theory of innovation in games‖ also focuses
attention on this process of innovation.) Another contribution of Jahn-Sudmann's article
is the indication that oppositional practices in game development are not unified in their
strategies or approaches because a dominant overarching ideology of mainstream game
production does not exist. It is impossible to tell if such a single dominant trend will in
fact emerge although multiple ideological trends certainly exist (and are growing) within
the games industry. For example, in their book Digital Play: The Interaction of Technology,
Culture, and Marketing (2003), the authors de Peuter, Dyer-Witheford and Kline offer
the concept of ―militarized masculinity‖ as a dominant trend in game development: that
is, design forms and video game content that consistently privilege aggressiveness,
violence, and an ideological conception of masculinity infused with these traits. Pursuing
a different direction, in the first chapter I offered the notion of flow experiences as a
potential category for mainstream production that manifests its own ideological
reproductions. Doubtless there are other ideological trends which can (and will) be
exposed and countered with oppositional game designs. What seems important is that
design strategies that counter these dominant ideologies are working against the
renovation or rejuvenation of society. Ideology concerns the reproduction of dominant
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social relations, a kind of rejuvenation of these relations over time. Games that oppose
and expose these ideologies in innovative ways would thus be one form of aesthetic
critique and experimentation which is connected to a ―critique of social conditions‖
(Jahn-Sudmann) and their transformation.
One of Jahn-Sudmann's examples of an innovative, alternative game is flOw
(thatgamecompany), which I analyzed extensively in the last chapter. His diagnosis of
flOw as innovative but hardly oppositional is apt given that the game embraces a
theoretical design vision that seeks to crystallize and clarify principles emerging within
the mainstream. The game flOw, in a sense, seeks to streamline the mainstream. Thus,
the designers attempt to remove all interruptions from the game space (no cut scenes,
no lengthy interruptions between levels, not even a differentiation between titles and
credits from the space of play, etc.). This design goal is arguably one path that
mainstream games seek to trek. Yet, more importantly flOw attempts to balance player
skills with designed challenges—a goal of almost any mainstream game design strategy—
while expanding the possibilities for obtaining this balance through player choices made
during play itself (i.e. widening the ―flow channel‖ where players of high or low skill can
both enjoy a game by actively finding the balance between skills and challenges which
suits them). One only has to play World of Warcraft to understand the mainstream
effectiveness of this model where one can (pay to) play in order to level up into the
hardcore endgame (higher challenges, higher skills) or one can casually (pay to) play by
continuously creating characters that never progress beyond the lower levels (lower
challenges, lower skills). Indeed, World of Warcraft allows for multiple forms of play at
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many different levels of engagement, widening the flow channel of the game space in
order to attract a wider distribution of paying consumers. The game flOw is innovative
because it crystallizes and clarifies these design principles—less interruptions, wider flow
channel—in order to serve as an elegant theoretical design model for mainstream game
production (e.g. it presents innovations that future games can extend and complicate).
Its innovation is therefore a form of renovation.
In doing so flOw actually acts as an indicator of the emergence of a dominant
trend in game design which could operate as one strand in a general logic that
alternative or indie games could oppose. One of the reasons Jahn-Sudmann offers for
the lack of an oppositional trend in game design is ―that the aesthetic conventions of
popular games still are too vague‖ and ―have been internalised [by players and designers]
only insignificantly to enfold directed dynamics of distinction in the sense of a muchcited 'indie spirit'‖ (8). Yet, flOw helps to clarify the vagueness of this aesthetic design
logic. As I argued in the first chapter, the design principles that subtend a game such as
flOw are hardly benign. The goal of producing flow experiences within video games has a
number of consequences linked to the commodification of the video game form. First,
aiming to extend the duration of one's play by removing interruptions and offering a
design strategy which allows multiple players to balance challenges and skill levels
extends the commercial life of the product while installing gamer subjects in circuits of
continued commodification (e.g. purchasing expansion packs, paying subscription fees for
online games, even motivating free labor through user-created content which extends
the (commercial) life of a particular game). Second, designing games to produce
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extended flow experiences is obviously linked to increasing the immersion of the gamer
within a virtual world, an immersion which works against the possibility of attaining a
critical distance from the game. Third, flow experiences buttress ideologies such as the
growth of a coherent, unified subject at the expense of more collective visions of action.
Such a growth is fundamentally connected to capitalist accumulation and expansion,
replayed within the territory of subjectivity. Because of these ―flow-effects,‖ critiquing
design strategies that privilege flow experiences through the production of games that
subvert these strategies could provide one model for the aesthetic and political critique
of dominant game forms. If designing flow experiences is an aesthetic strategy that
reproduces dominant patterns of commodification then breaking flow experiences might
become one avenue for developing a ―critical design aesthetic‖ that opposes these
dominant trends.
On a fundamental level flow experiences augment the player's immersion within
a game, and as I argued in the previous chapter, this results in the loss of critical distance
between the player and game. In fact, my analysis of Mihály Csíkszentmihályi's theories
of flow (which provides the theoretical foundation for the production of these
experiences) revealed that flow tends to obviate the need for reflection, for a critical
questioning of one's actions. As Csíkszentmihályi explained it, ―in flow there is no
reason to reflect, because the action carries us forward as if by magic‖ (Flow 54). If one
goal for a critical design practice is breaking free from this ―magic‖ in order to create a
space for critical distance and reflection, then such a goal is positioned firmly within
traditions of aesthetic modernism, particularly that of Bertolt Brecht and his attempt to
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redesign theater in such a way that spectators would not fall under the sway of an
immersive, dramatic illusion but would be prompted by the play itself to critically reflect
on the ideological effects of the theater production. Brecht's aesthetic innovations were
an attempt to create a space that the critical subject could inhabit. While Brecht sought
to activate the passive spectator, one contribution of the critique of flow is revealing
that even ―subjects in action‖ can be immersed within their actions to such a point that
a critical distance from these actions is difficult to achieve.
Brecht's aesthetic innovation and experimentation was coupled with a further
requirement of opposition that tended to function as a particular form of realism. This
realism can be understood in various ways. For example, one operative function of
realism in epic theater concerns false consciousness and revealing a hidden, materialist
―reality‖ that is often obscured by the conventional structures of the immersive
artwork. This move toward realism functions to expose ―the real social forces at work
under an immediately visible surface‖ (Brecht, ―Against‖ 84). The experimental,
aesthetic functions developed by Brecht aimed at exposing these ―real social forces‖ and
were not employed without this goal in mind. Following from this, formal
experimentation is grounded within the political reality of the audience. Brecht wrote,
―one need not be afraid to produce daring, unusual things for the proletariat so long as
they deal with its real situation‖ (―Against‖ 84); that is, the work should approach real
and familiar situations that connect with the audience while defamiliarizing techniques
shatter the sense that these situations cannot be changed, that reality itself is
unchangeable. In an analysis of social realism and video games, Alexander Galloway
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recently argued that realism concerns ―a congruence requirement‖ where ―there
emerges a true congruence between the real political reality of the gamer and the ability
of the game to mimic and extend that political reality‖ (83). As examples he offers
games such as Special Force and Under Ash, two First-Person Shooters that depict
Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation and aggression; seemingly, Palestinian players
of such games would feel congruence between their in-game actions and the real
situation within which they live.
Theoretically, the experimental dimensions of Brecht's reinvention of theater
(particularly forms of estrangement and distancing the spectator) were aimed at
activating the audience, both in terms of critical reflection and motivating real action
outside the confines of the theater space. In his essay ―The ‗Piccolo Teatro‘: Bertolazzi
and Brecht‖ Louis Althusser explained this intervention further:
If [the spectator] is kept at a distance from the play by the play itself, it is not to
spare him or to set him up as a Judge – on the contrary, it is to take him and
enlist him in this apparent distance, in this ‗estrangement‘ – to make him into this
distance itself, the distance which is simply an active and living critique. (148)
Distance is achieved by pushing the spectator away from dominant ideologies, enlisting
the spectator into action as opposed to passive watching. (Importantly, this is achieved
by making the spectator into distance him- or herself, a distance from oneself, from the
lure of identification with one‘s self as complete and unified; breaking the identification
of the spectator with the actors or with the narrative of the play is translated into a
theoretical disarticulation of the subject, splitting the subject, etc.). The hope is not only
to activate critical reflection during aesthetic reception, but to nurture such an attitude
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in terms of actual, political realities where the spectator becomes ―the inexhaustible
work of criticism in action‖ outside the theater as well (Althusser 151). Such a form of
realism—where aesthetic practice does not exist in an autonomous sphere separated
from reality—is one defining characteristic of the avant-garde in aesthetic modernism,
from Dada to Surrealism to the Situationists, etc..
The Brechtian model of aesthetic production couples innovation AND
opposition, thus prompting one to ask: what can one learn through an investigation of
Brechtian aesthetics and techniques when applied to video games?3 Brechtian
approaches to video game theory and production are actually quite widespread, as is the
sentiment that immersion within video games should be broken in order to produce
critical reflection and distance.4 The uses of Brecht in game studies is varied—from
positions that uncritically port Brechtian perspectives into the realm of game studies to
more politically motivated, critical uses of his theories. For example, the following is a
quotation from the influential game designer Greg Costikyan that emerged in an online
discussion between various game producers, theorists and digital artists:
Let's take an obnoxiously Brechtian stance. To strive for immersion is to cater to
the dull bourgeois self-satisfied habits of the great unwashed, to reify the
conventions of society, to pander to the basest instincts of the Beavis and
Butthead set. What we need instead is games that purposefully distance the player
from the action, that remind him or her at every step that in fact this is an
imaginative product, the action that transpires is intended to represent forms and
ideals, and that the player is intended to think about its meaning, not lose himself
in some woozy sense of pleasurable immersion. We need, in short, revolutionary
didactic interactive works that purposefully rip the conventional sunny 'fun-loving
American' veil away, revealing the vile degradation that in truth underlies a society
that obsesses over some idiot playboy who crashes an expensive personal plane
while we cook in our own industrial waste. Down with immersion! Down with
immersion! (Greg Costikyan qtd. in Scholder and Zimmerman 97)
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It is not difficult to sense the ―distanced‖ tone in this quotation where the phrase
―obnoxiously Brechtian stance‖ colors the remainder of the diatribe where the author
self-consciously plays the role of the political fanatic in order to set himself apart from
such a stance. It is an easy case of cynical reason. In fact, Costikyan is simply having fun
at the expense of politics while expressing his actual suspicion toward immersion as an
absolute goal in video game design.5 While the hyperbolized politics remain on the
surface of the text—displayed as anarchic frustration and revolt—Costikyan desires to
separate Brecht's aesthetic experimentation from the explicit political paradigm of
Marxism within which his aesthetic innovations were embedded later in his career.
Costikyan actually designed the beginning of a role-playing game indebted to Brechtian
aesthetics entitled Bestial Acts—which he characterized as based on the ―early‖ Brecht,
who (according to Costikyan) believed that the ―human soul is fundamentally squalid and
ugly‖ instead of the later Marxist and ―romantic‖ Brecht who attributed the ugliness of
the human to soul to capitalism and forces of alienation (Costikyan). Costikyan certainly
ascribes more to a Schopenhauerian or Nietzschean worldview than that of Marxism.6 In
the end, Costikyan's invocation of Brecht parallels Jahn-Sudmann's desire for
oppositional aesthetics but such opposition is shed of political import.
Other uses of Brecht draw on his innovative aesthetic experimentation while
retaining an explicit political foundation. For example, game designer and theorist
Gonzalo Frasca has explicitly used the work of Brecht and the radical Brazilian
playwright Augusto Boal in order to theorize a political practice of video game
production that embraces pedagogy, political action, and the creation ―non-Aristotelian,
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nonimmersive videogames‖ (―Videogames of the Oppressed‖). Likewise, in his book
Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture Galloway examined the potential emergence of a
―countergaming‖ movement which implicitly engaged with many Brechtian themes. After
analyzing an assortment of seemingly subversive, artist produced game modifications,
Galloway expressed a similar sentiment to that of Jahn-Sudmann, concluding that
―countergaming is an unrealized project. An independent gaming movement has yet to
flourish, something that comes as no surprise, since it took decades for one to appear in
cinema‖ (126). Using Peter Wollen's essay ―Godard and Counter-Cinema‖ (where
Wollen constructed a typology of avant-garde film aesthetics through an analysis of JeanLuc Godard's film Vent d'Est) Galloway investigated game modifications where artists
attempted to subvert the conventional content of games. For Galloway, many of these
modifications operate primarily on the level of representation, often radically
interrupting gameplay through extensive visual manipulations which cause the artwork
to ―lapse back to other media entirely (animation, video, painting)‖ (126). Thus, the
artworks often erase the playability of the game, foregrounding visual experimentation
with minimal interaction; for example, Jodi.org's works SOD and untitled game (fig. 2)
radically disrupt gameplay, dislodging the visual coherency of the game space by toying
with the game's underlying code, foregrounding the code itself as a representational
entity, unhinging player actions within the game so they do not produce conventional,
coherent, and meaningful responses from the system, etc.. Galloway associates these
aesthetic strategies with those practiced by avant-garde filmmakers and systematized in
Wollen's typology (a typology which draws heavily on Brechtian aesthetics as did
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Fig. 2. Section ―Ctrl-9‖; untitled game; Jodi; Web; 11 July 2010.
Godard): for example, exposing the cinematic apparatus, dislodging narrative continuity,
distancing the spectator from the film instead of immersing him or her within it, etc..
Ultimately Galloway concludes that these aesthetic game modifications do not do justice
to the video game medium, subverting visual representations while eschewing the
development of new, politically oppositional forms of gameplay. Instead he argues that
artists and game designers must embrace ―radical action,‖ a form of gameplay which
subverts ―conventional gaming poetics.‖ Galloway writes:
By radical action, I mean the critique of gameplay itself. Visual imagery is not what
makes video games special. Any game mod focusing primarily on tweaking the
visual components of a game is missing the point, at least as far as gaming is
concerned. Artists should create new grammars of action, not simply new
grammars of visuality. They should create alternative algorithms. They should
reinvent the architectural flow of play and the game's position in the world, not
just its maps and characters. (125)
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In many ways, Galloway's conclusion parallels the idea that Bogost offered in terms of
indie games: they (should) innovate in terms of gameplay instead of representation. Yet,
Galloway's analysis is beneficial not only because he calls for a future oppositional
production of games, but because he provides a critique of the seemingly subversive
practice of aesthetic game modifications, ultimately exposing what he calls their
―apolitical‖ nature; that is, they employ an outdated critique of representation while
failing to operate in terms of the medium specificity of games (e.g. the construction of
game mechanics, gamic action, different algorithmic processes, etc.). The aesthetic game
modifications that Galloway critiques thus provide an example of opposition NOT
innovation; that is, while the modifications he critiques often oppose dominant
representational aspects of games (and even emerge from radical political culture in
some cases), they do not innovate new forms of opposition, namely, new forms of
gameplay which would subvert convention by reinventing politically consciousness
alternatives to mainstream, dominant forms. In the end, Galloway argues that when
subversive reinventions of gameplay arrive ―there will appear a whole new language of
play, radical and new, that will transform the countergaming movement, just as Godard
did for the cinema‖ (126).
Although Brecht is not mentioned explicitly in Galloway's chapter on
countergaming, his ghost is obviously felt. I have already mentioned the connection
between Brecht's notion of realism and Galloway's concept of the ―congruence
requirement‖ in realist game production; when Galloway writes that game designers
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should ―reinvent...the game's position in the world‖ he certainly has the congruence
between gamer and real world in mind. Moreover, the notion of reinventing games as
―Godard did for the cinema‖ echoes the reinvention that Brecht accomplished for the
theater. Yet, Galloway's dissatisfaction with the re-emergence of a critique of
representation within video games cannot be separated from a suspicion concerning
certain Brechtian aesthetic innovations and their reapplication within the video game
medium.
Such a suspicion concerning the reapplication of Brechtian aesthetics in relation
to new media objects was also asserted by Lev Manovich in The Language of New Media.
He argued that new media aesthetics embrace metarealism, which means that a new
media object ―incorporates its own critique inside itself‖ (208). New media objects
constantly expose their own illusions, reveal their own technical structures, vacillate
between immersing and interrupting the user, ―keep reminding us of their artificiality,
incompleteness, and constructedness‖ (205). (For example, while viewing a webpage the
user experiences an oscillation between immersion within the presented content and
interruption as one waits for future content to load). Manovich writes:
Compare this dynamic [between immersion and interruption] to traditional
cinema or realist theater, which aims at all cost to maintain the continuity of
illusion for the duration of the performance. In contrast to such totalizing realism,
new media aesthetics has a surprising affinity to twentieth-century leftist avantgarde aesthetics. Playwright Bertolt Brecht's strategy of revealing the conditions of
an illusion's production, echoed by countless other leftist artists, has become
embedded in hardware and software themselves. (207)
Although it might seem that Manovich is simply observing a technical manifestation and
applying it to cultural categories, in fact, his argument is quite the reverse. For him, the
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oscillation between immersion and interruption is a cultural manifestation connected to
the idea that in interactive media ―The user invests in the illusion precisely because she
is given control over it‖ (209); that is, the moments of interruption are driven by user
control and interaction which end up buttressing the illusion of mastery. Even in the
language of computer science the term interrupt is used to describe the interruption of a
process by a hardware signal which, for example, could stem from input devices such as
a mouse or keyboard. Whereas in epic theater the interruptions are designed to actively
engage the audience, creating a space for a more real and active relationship between
audience and play, in interactive video games such interruption is part of the general
functioning of the media object. Manovich writes:
The effect of these shifts on the subject is hardly one of liberation and
enlightenment. While modernist avant-garde theater and film directors
deliberately highlighted the machinery and conventions involved in producing and
keeping the illusion in their works […] the systematic 'auto-deconstruction'
performed by computer objects, applications, interfaces, hardware, does not seem
to distract the user from giving into the reality effect. […] It is tempting to
compare these temporal shifts to the shot/counter-shot structure in cinema and
to understand them as a new kind of suturing mechanism. By having periodically to
complete the interactive text through active participation, the subject is
interpolated in it. Thus if we adopt the notion of suture, it would follow that the
periodic shifts between illusion and its suspension are necessary to fully involve
the subject in the illusion. (208)
Interestingly, Manovich uses the example of military flight simulators as ―the most
successful example of such an aesthetics‖ where ―Brecht and Hollywood [are] married‖
(209). Here, the player switches between moments of immersion within quick-action
battles and moments of ―interruption‖ where one scans information panels or makes
adjustments on control panels or in-game menus. Yet, what emerges is a more powerful
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experience of illusion; illusion still exists though the methods for creating it have
changed.
When Manovich identifies the oscillation ―between illusion and its suspension‖ as
a strengthening mechanism for illusion itself and as a new suturing technique that binds
the user more firmly within the grasp of illusion, he implicitly invokes the question of
how this illusion could be troubled. Indeed, the conventional shot/reverse-shot
structure in cinema served as a formal device facilitating identification and spatial
coherence, a formal device that avant-garde cinema dismantled. One discovers an
example of how this interactive ―suturing‖ effect can be productively unhinged in
Lindsay Grace's game Wait (2005). Grace offers the following description: Wait is ―a
simple game where the player is encouraged to refrain from acting on the world. As the
player moves the world disappears, but when the player waits, the world becomes more
interesting‖ (Critical Gameplay). When the game begins, the screen fades-in from white
to depict an austere setting, a field of grass moving in the wind (fig. 3). The player
observes the world from a first-person perspective, rotating the camera view around his
or her position. If the player decides to move within this space (other than rotating the
field of vision) then the representation of the world slowly fades away, but if the player
waits, soon the field becomes filled with more objects—trees, birds, a butterfly (fig. 4).
A subtle tone sounds when new items appear, and the player earns a higher score by
uncovering aspects of the world while waiting. Moreover, if one waits too long the
world begins to fade on its own, encouraging the player to move to a new location
before the entire visual field turns to white and the game ends. As Grace says,
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Fig 3. A field of grass; "Wait‖; Lindsay Grace; Critical Gameplay; Video game; 2009; Web;
19 August 2010.
Fig 4. Trees; "Wait‖; Lindsay Grace; Critical Gameplay; Video game; 2009; Web; 19
August 2010.
―Play can continue indefinitely if the player moves and waits appropriately.‖ One of
Manovich's examples of the ―oscillation between illusion and its suspension‖ is similar to
the operation of Grace's simple game. In many virtual world games, Manovich explains,
―As the user navigates through space, the objects switch back and forth between pale
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blueprints and fully fleshed out illusions. The immobility of a subject guarantees a
complete illusion; the slightest movement destroys it‖ (206). Thus, as a player navigates
a virtual world the visual representations are rendered with less precision, but when a
player ceases movement the surrounding images are rendered with higher quality
graphical representation. In the games Manovich has in mind such an oscillation is hardly
the point of the game or the focus of the action, but Grace's game Wait foregrounds
this oscillation. Yet, while Wait might indeed foreground the graphical mechanism at
work in many games that take place in three dimensional worlds (thus performing a
typical Brechtian revealing of the apparatus), this is hardly the most significant aspect of
Wait's intervention. Rather, the waiting involved introduces a subtle temporality which
explicitly unhinges conventional game structures that eschew waiting and inactivity for
more extreme forms of flowing action. In Wait, the act of waiting is precisely what
moves the game forward as opposed to conventional games where waiting tends to
cause frustration, a problem that must be avoided at all costs; indeed, frustration in Wait
might arrive when one is forced to move, when the screen begins to fade on its own. If
one goal for a critical design practice might be to design games which break free from
the ―magic‖ of flow in order to create a space for reflection, then certainly one could
plumb the creative possibilities of boredom and frustration in order to dislodge players
from the flow channel and have them consciously reflect on the actions that they
perform. I am not arguing that one should make boring games or games which are so
frustrating that we want to stop playing altogether. While these elements are interesting
possibilities in their own right, they exist on the outer limits of inaction;7 between them
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an entire continuum exists in terms of creating pauses and interruptions that might
(temporally) suspend the magic of flow.
In fact, Grace's game Wait does just that, investigating a different temporality that
subtly pulls apart the suturing mechanism that Manovich identifies. This provides a
moment of reflection where the player does not merely act but reflects upon this action
itself. Benjamin once wrote:
Epic theatre does not reproduce conditions; rather, it discloses, it uncovers them.
This uncovering of the conditions is effected by interrupting the dramatic
processes; but such interruption does not act as a stimulant; it has an organizing
function. It brings the action to a standstill in mid-course and thereby compels the
spectator to take up a position towards the action... (100)
In Wait, action is literally brought to a standstill which allows players ―to take up a
position towards the action,‖ their actions within the game. What critical position might
be obtained? The player probably does not reflect on the exposed technical substrate
which subtends the illusion (though this could potentially become one critical insight
that a knowledgeable player acquires). In fact, the critical position that a player arrives at
could be interpreted in multiple directions. Perhaps the player begins to reflect that
incessant action, endless doing, and contemporary time pressures actually diminish
perceptive awareness of the rich details of existence (a ―stop and smell the flowers‖
mentality which Grace explicitly mentions in relation to the game). Perhaps the player
reflects on the conventions of typical gameplay and realizes that video games can be
designed around different organizing principles than those that dominate mainstream
production; that is, video games can radically (and successfully) diverge from their
current conventional forms (a movement away from models of technological
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determinism or the naturalizing effects of industry convention). Perhaps because the
world begins to fade after a while of waiting one reflects on the temporary effects of
illusion and how the video game provides an escape into illusion, for a while, for a time,
before the game ends and one returns to reality. Perhaps because the world begins to
fade when the player takes action the player begins to contemplate his or her active
construction of the illusory power of the game, beginning to understand that the
individual plays an active part in the process of desiring illusion while also retaining the
power to dispel it (complex thoughts on the process of ideology and the construction of
illusion). Whatever the position obtained, Wait is an example of Brechtian form which
provides possibilities for achieving critical distance and reflection, allowing the player ―to
take up a position towards [their] action.‖
One might object that Wait does not have a firm political sense of opposition
(though it clearly opposes mainstream formal conventions). Yet, Wait is only one game
in a larger aesthetic project that Grace initiated—an exhibition entitled Critical Gameplay.
Other games in the exhibition also interrupt industry conventions, turning standard
paradigms of action upside-down. Some of them are more manifest in their politics. For
example, in the game Healer, instead of killing non-player characters (NPCs) the player's
objective is to heal or resurrect NPCs that have been murdered in a historical massacre;
the action consists of extracting bullets from wounded or dead NPCs (reversing time in
a sense) while trying to avoid being killed by wandering soldiers; one can also sacrifice
his or her avatar to protect others. Another game included in the exhibition, Bang!,
―allows the player to kill other players, but by killing them the player must endure a long
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interruptive experience which forces the player to review the fictive history of their
victim‖ (Grace, Critical Gameplay). While the player can choose to kill others as in a
typical First-Person Shooter, doing so ―triggers‖ a narrative sequence complete with
fictive backstory and also ―found images of real soldiers in their military and civilian
lives.‖ Grace writes that, ―The goal is a forced reflection on the expense of killing.‖ In
this case, the interruption of gameplay not only ―compels‖ the player to reflect on his or
her actions (as Benjamin wrote in relation to epic theater) but ―forces‖ such reflection.
In a sense, the act of force by the player—which results in the ultimate interruption of
causing death—is returned full-force upon the player, where the interrupting memorial
sequence forces one to reflect upon the interruptive action that he or she has caused,
returning the player to the ―real‖ (as figured through actual images of soldiers) from the
immersion of fantasy. Ultimately the target of such a game is the violence of unreflective
action; the use of force within Bang! enforces the goal of reflection.
These examples reveal a productive application of interruption and Brechtian
estrangement in terms of video games. The games in Grace's exhibition Critical Gameplay
certainly ―reinvent the architectural flow of play,‖ as Galloway put it, while also breaking
the conventional architectural flow of games in order to critique dominant and
ideological elements operating in the games industry. If radical action in games is,
according to Galloway, ―a critique of gameplay itself‖ then Grace's games serve as
examples of this critique (125). Although the oppositional element of such games would
be increased through realist goals such as Galloway's ―congruence requirement‖ (and
some of Grace's games certainly operate on or approach this level), the move to reveal
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dominant trends in the games industry through the production of games that work
against its conventions indicates the emergence of a type of oppositional aesthetics that
Jahn-Sudmann declared nonexistent. Moreover, Grace's games are not isolated
examples of this form of critique; such critical games are growing at a rapid pace.
It is important to note that action itself—which Brechtian epic theater
encouraged, opposing passive qualities of reception—contains its own possibility of
soporific effects, its own potential for states of nonreflective immersion that can work
to reproduce dominant social trends. Innovating game forms that break this
nonreflective attitude becomes important for opposing the ideologies that are installed
during the dreamtime of certain forms of gameplay. Such an ―innovation‖ might not be
an innovation at all but a repetition of conventional forms of critique. To return to
Brecht's desire to change the rules of chess, one sees that this same desire runs through
the possibility of countergaming movements.8 While he has an idea about how to change
the rules, he does not suggest exactly what the changes would be: should a piece grow
weaker or stronger the longer it stays in its position? One might intuit that the change
would be more or less obvious—the weakest unit in the game, a pawn, would most
likely grow stronger while the queen would grow weaker, and the pieces on the
continuum between these extremes could go either way. Yet, the rule change remains
ambiguous, and certainly there is a sense that even pawns could grow weaker and a
queen stronger, etc.. Nevertheless, Brecht's idea for changing the rules of the game is
bound to temporality, to a certain duration of moves (of time) where a piece might
become weaker or stronger the longer it ―waits;‖ such a change begins to open a
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temporal space for reflecting on action and/or inaction, changing the architecture of the
game and interrupting its conventional flow.
While retaining operations of interruptive critique—e.g. embracing Brechtian
aesthetics and the desire to change the rules of a game—is essential in a culture where
ideology as illusion certainly persists (though it has become taboo to say so), ―one must
move with the times‖ as Brecht said and thus seriously question the function of
interruption in contemporary culture. There is, indeed, a dark side to Brechtian
aesthetics and the process of interruption that must be further examined. In light of the
seemingly productive interruptions which extend Brechtian ideas into a countergaming
practice, one can return to Manovich's argument that the ―oscillation between illusion
and its destruction‖ is formally a part of new media objects (such as the military flight
simulator). Have Brechtian aesthetic strategies (such as estrangement and interruption)
been surpassed in their critical productivity because they now operate to produce the
very illusion that they used to resist (209)? One could counter this claim and argue that
the movement between illusion and interruption that Manovich describes is not truly
Brechtian. Benjamin observed a distinction between different forms of interruption: one
form arrests action in order to provide a space for reflection on that action while the
other ―acts as a stimulant.‖ Epic theater is not concerned with the latter, argued
Benjamin. It seems clear that the suspensions and interruptions that Manovich highlights
function as stimulants. That is, interruptions in mainstream games demand more actions
without demanding reflection on the meaning of these actions. These interruptions—
built into the very fabric of interactive media—stimulate the need to act, not necessarily
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to reflect. True, an interruption within a game might cause a certain reflection in terms
of the best strategy to enact, the next move to make, etc., but a meta-position
concerning the action itself, what the action means within the game and with respect to
the real world outside the game, rarely occurs. Yet, even if this is the case, Manovich's
claims about the function of new media objects and the cultural conditions of
contemporary society strongly suggest that a particular form of interruption itself has
become naturalized. It is toward an analysis of this interruption that I now turn.
Time Flows On? Total Flow and Total Innovation
One of the striking things about television is that at a very formal level it seems
extraordinarily 'Brechtian' all the time: it's constantly interrupted, particularly in
the commercial channels where there are a whole series of conventions for
handling the advertising breaks which then structure the play and can be seen in
almost any American drama series. There are conventions which have been
developed in relation to the serial, which imposes 'epic' forms simply because it
appears at weekly intervals: it cannot maintain the unity of time which is one of
the essences of non-epic or empathetic theatre. (qtd. in Mathers 96)
Such a thought arose in a short discussion on the relationship between epic theater and
television, printed in a special issue of Screen entitled ―Brecht and a Revolutionary
Cinema‖ from 1975. It is, in a sense, similar to the kind of technological claims that
Manovich made about new media and Brechtian aesthetics: specifically, as Manovich put
it, a ―particular temporal dynamics in interactive media‖ that presented a perpetual
oscillation between the immersive continuous time of illusion and the discontinuity of
interruption which would occur when such an illusion was temporally dispelled, when
actions were demanded of the user (209); ―the screen keeps alternating between the
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dimensions of representation and control,‖ as Manovich put it (208). One can isolate a
quasi-progression from the interruptions introduced in epic theater which tried to
disrupt the play to make room for action, to commercial television which used
interruptions to produce an active consumer, to the interactive media text in which
interruption becomes a key component organized around principles of control. In the
Screen discussion responses to the idea that the television text already was Brechtian in
form were similar to those I offered in response to Manovich. For example, film scholar
Paul Willeman responded, ―The interruption represented by commercials in a television
film or drama does sometimes create a certain type of Brechtian effect, but it's purely by
accident...‖ (qtd. in Mathers 96). That is, the interruptions were not calculated to
produce the kind of reflection that interruption was supposed to serve in epic theater;
they became, as Fredric Jameson has written, ―the dominant style whereby the
consumer is reconciled with capitalism‖ (Ideologies 211). Another respondent agreed
that the general form of television paralleled devices used in epic theater but concluded,
―It's not Brechtian, it's not political‖ (qtd. in Mathers 97). Such a conclusion implies that
interruptions must be linked to the self-consciousness of political opposition, but it also
implicitly reveals that aesthetic form can easily be decoupled from the oppositional. Paul
Willeman added at the end of the discussion that Brecht himself foresaw that the
techniques of epic theater would eventually lose their force and ―would have to be
abandoned‖ for new techniques that would produce ―political intervention‖ (qtd. in
Mathers 97). Indeed, Brecht once wrote:
For time flows on, and if it did not, it would be a bad prospect for those who do
not sit at golden tables. Methods become exhausted; stimuli no longer work. New
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problems appear and demand new methods. Reality changes; in order to
represent it, modes of representation must also change. Nothing comes from
nothing; the new comes from the old, but that is why it is new (Brecht, ―Against‖
82).
Although Brecht wrote this in terms of redesigning the theater, he clearly understood
that different historical situations would demand different aesthetic solutions. Indeed,
time flows on, which is structurally the hope that meaningful change can occur for those
who do not sit at golden tables.
Yet, in the current (Western) historical situation it seems that time's flow runs at
a rapid pace only to remain at a standstill, ―leaving an appearance of random changes
that are mere stasis‖ and the sense that ―absolute change equals stasis‖ as Fredric
Jameson argued in his essay ―The Antinomies of Postmodernity‖ (―Antimonies‖ 61-62).
When Jameson analyzed the cultural effects of late capitalism he argued that individuals
are unable to represent and map the networks and complex spaces of global
capitalism—an ―unrepresentable totality which is the ensemble of society's structures as
a whole‖ (―Antimonies‖ 51). The negative aesthetic crystallization of this
―unrepresentable totality‖—the mediated aesthetic symptom through which the whole
was expressed within the part—appeared as total flow, a concept which Jameson derived
from an analysis of experimental video and television. Jameson derived his use of the
term flow from Raymond Williams' concept of televisual flow (discussed in chapter one),
extracting Williams' general notion of flow as fundamentally heterogeneous and
composed of a diverse roil of seemingly unrelated parts—a mishmash of commercials,
various genres of programs, re-purposed films and dramas, network spots, etc.. In
Williams' words the televisual text (especially within the United States as the time of his
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writing) was ―an irresponsible flow of images and feeling‖ —―irresponsibility‖ marking a
lack of obvious connections between the flowing, heterogeneous elements; the logic of
rational (and responsible) connection between elements in the television text gave way
to another undeclared logic which had its rationale based in continued consumption
(what Williams called ―planned flow,‖ a concept which introduced a subtle logic of
association between diverse elements in order to extend the time of viewing and thus
commercial consumption). Jameson's use of flow primarily concerned the irresponsibility
which Williams' invoked, not his notion of planned flow. (―Irresponsibility‖ was also a
term used by Jameson to describe the particular video text he analyzed as a substitute
for analyzing television directly (Postmodernism 95)). Although the concept total flow had
its own particular uses in Jameson's analysis (e.g. distinguishing between contained,
modernist works and open, postmodernist texts, which was also an extension of
Williams' insights), the combination of the words ―total‖ and ―flow‖ should strike those
familiar with Jameson's work as an intriguing marriage, especially given the fact that the
Marxist concept of totality was never one from which Jameson shied. In his book The
Political Unconscious Jameson referred to Marxism as ―the place of an imperative to
totalize‖ adding that it stood ―as that thinking which knows no boundaries..., and which
is infinitely totalizable‖ (Political 53). If Marxism and its dialectical advances were
ultimately a methodology for connecting the heterogeneous elements of society into
total understanding—both in order to understand the dominant trends of capitalist
development and to discover ways to undermine and transform this system—then total
flow was a negative image of this totalizing function, the term flow becoming a kind of
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poisonous addition that contaminated and corrupted understanding instead of fostering
it. Flow, for Jameson, operated as marker for what needed to be thought when
confronting postmodernism while simultaneously resisting such thought; to focus on the
totality was to get lost in the irresponsible and disorientating flow, while focusing on
one aspect of the flow was to lose any sense of the totality.
But more than this, total flow marked a temporality of continuous change that
seemed like no change at all. In the experimental video that Jameson analyzed (which
was actually a surrogate for his reflections on television in general) each discrete
element within the text was replaced as quickly as it arrived; though all was changing,
each individual change within the flow could not be identified as a definitive change that
one could grasp. The result of this, for Jameson, was that total flow explained a loss of
critical distance on the part of the spectator—the inability to interrupt the flow, step
outside, and gain a critical perspective. In fact, Jameson stated that total flow was in
reality the absence of interruption: although interruptions obviously existed they were
not meaningful interruptions (just as it was argued that the interruptions in television
where quite Brechtian, but these interruptions were not truly Brechtian because that
they failed to create a space for critical reflection). Jameson wrote, ―it follows logically
that anything which arrests or interrupts [the total flow] will be sensed as an aesthetic
flaw‖ (Postmodernism 91). This brings us back to the distinction that Benjamin made
about interruption in Brecht's work, namely that interruption can act as a stimulant as
much as a possibility for pause and reflection. It would seem then that total flow marks a
category of ceaseless, stimulating interruption. Manovich's statements about the
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perpetual shifts between illusion and interruption in interactive new media texts would
then act as the final consolidation of interruption as stimulation within the aesthetic text
itself; the interruptions of the military flight simulator become almost seamless, existing
only to create actions that are almost reflexes. Benjamin's oft-quoted observation about
the critical energy of Brechtian techniques—―For the more often we interrupt someone
in process of action, the more gestures we obtain‖—is taken to its logical limit where
the interruptive gestures endlessly accumulate to the point where one can no longer
digest them, the gesture of interruption itself serving as hardly an interruption at all and
certainly not bringing ―action to a standstill‖ as Benjamin said of epic theater
(Understanding Brecht 20).
Ultimately, the insistence on innovation and interruption within Brechtian
aesthetics may have contributed to the development of a situation characterized by total
flow (here understood not as concept specific to the functioning of television but as a
general code word for the operation of mediated, contemporary culture). One of the
techniques of Brechtian theater was to separate the organic whole of a performance
into autonomous functioning elements—the gestures of the actors, the words, the
music, the set design, etc.—so each could become potential sources of interruption and
estrangement, individualized elements which could be made to ―comment on‖ other
elements within the play. According to Jameson,
The process of aesthetic autonomization, breaking the action up into its smallest
parts, thus has symbolic as well as epistemological meaning: it shows what the act
'really' is, no doubt, but the very activity of breaking it up and 'analyzing' it is itself
a joyous process, a kind of creative play, in which new acts are formed together
out of pieces of the old, in which the whole reified surface of a period seemingly
beyond history and beyond change now submits to a first ludic un-binding, before
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arriving at a real social and revolutionary collective reconstruction. [...] Such, at
any rate, is the supplementary allegorical energy of Brechtian autonomization: its
capacity to act out our own possible and virtual actions, its use of a one-time (and
thus apparently unchangeable, but only apparently unchangeable) spectacle to
energize a public into a sense of multiple possibilities. (Brecht and Method 47)
The process of autonomization performs a ―ludic unbinding,‖ breaking apart the reified
whole of a received past in order to eventually perform a rebinding of such elements, a
reconstruction, organized around different possible futures; such a process of playful
autonomization is a privileged function of modernist strategies. Yet, the ludic unbinding
of received forms can become unbound from the requirement of reconstruction (which
perhaps leads to moments of postmodern pastiche that Jameson critiqued). Such a
detached and disconnected process is ultimately homologous with the emergence of
total flow where, according to Jameson, in contemporary culture ―reference and reality
disappear altogether, and even meaning—the signified—is problematized. We are left
with that pure and random play of signifiers that we call postmodernism‖ (Postmodernism
96). The creative play of autonomization thus erupts into an endless, random playprocess that continually repeats without a rebinding movement of reconstruction.9
Framed in the terms of the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman, solid modernity gives way to
fluid modernity: whereas the former embraced a ludic unbinding with the hope that a
more solid, rational reconstruction could then supplant what was uprooted, the latter
embraces a constant ludic unbinding without reconstruction where the playful
unanchoring of convention is the only (non)foundation available.
In terms of the independent game movement there is a real sense that such a
situation of perpetual ludic unbinding is growing exponentially. The production of small,
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innovative, independent games is frankly staggering. Attempting to plumb the depths of a
single internet game portal such as indiegames.com is daunting. Their ―best of‖ section
for the last five years already contains hundreds of different games from distinct genres
that provide alternatives to mainstream games. Some of these games are more
innovative than others—particularly in terms of restructuring gameplay mechanics—but
certainly as a group they tend to verify Jahn-Sudmann's characterization of independent
games as innovative NOT oppositional. Some of the games listed are certainly more
oppositional than others, if by opposition one means criticizing dominant game
conventions. Politically oppositional games are few and far between. Examining the list of
the ―Top Freeware Experimental Games of 2009‖ (which contains twenty games) one is
treated to multiple instances that parody, satire, reflect upon, or simplify existing game
conventions, performing a kind of ludic unbinding of mainstream game mechanics. Thus,
a game like You Only Live Once is a simple 2D platformer a la Super Mario Bros. where the
player attempts to save ―his‖ girlfriend from her kidnappers. Once you die you can press
a continue button again and again to unfold a humorous narrative about your death.
Unlike conventional games you cannot play this online game again but are treated to an
image of your grave if you attempt to reload the game. In Linear RPG (Houlden) the
work of fighting battles and leveling your character is carried out automatically as you
traverse a single, zigzagging line of progression; such a game reveals the traditional,
linear structure of many computer-based role-playing games but removes the temporal
commitment of building your character, perhaps exposing the ultimate repetitive style of
such games. Fallover (Teikari) is another 2D platformer where the movements of a
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player's avatar are governed by unbalanced physics, meaning that jumping or running
over certain objects can cause the protagonist to easily fallover and die; the game
innovates in the sense that the often ―stable‖ avatar in the 2D platformer is destabilized,
perhaps opening the design of future games in an experimental direction concerning the
physical ―rules‖ of the avatar itself. Peter Groeneweg's We The Giants allows one to play
a little black cube that can move, jump and ultimately sacrifice itself within the game
space in order to allow other players to progress further in the game (or obscure their
progress); when you sacrifice yourself, the ―block‖ (your avatar) becomes a part of the
actionable game space, a part of the game board that other future players encounter.
The goal of the game requires reaching a golden star at the top of the screen which can
only be achieved after numerous players have sacrificed their blocks in such a way that a
final, future player will be able to reach the star. Finally, when you sacrifice your
character (and the game ends) you can enter a textual piece of advice for future
generations that is recorded on a twitter feed; just as in You Only Live Once, in We The
Giants, the player is not allowed another chance to contribute to the world and
subsequent returns to the game only show the current state of the board—viewed
through a circular frame which ―opens and closes‖ as if it is a solitary blinking eye (fig.
5). The game innovates in the sense that multiple players from around the world need
to ―collaborate‖ (from a distance and without strategic discussion) in order to build a
tower that one, final player can eventually climb in order to succeed.
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Fig. 5. We the Giants; Peter Groeneweg; Video game, 2009; Web; 19 August 2010.
Another game on the list from indiegames.com, This is the Only Level, perhaps
crystallizes the sense of ludic unbinding that I am examining. As the title explains, this
2D platformer consists of only one level (fig. 6) where the player must move his or her
avatar, a blue elephant, from a start location (the tube at the left frame of the game
window) to an end location that awaits behind a single door (the tube at the right frame
of the game window). The player controls the elephant with the arrow keys on the
keyboard, seeking to traverse the board without hitting any spikes (and thus dying)
while also figuring out how to open the door on the right so the escape route is
exposed. When players succeed in escaping the level they must play the same level
again, though with a slight variation; while the spatial characteristics of the game board
do not change (fig. 7), the game mechanics that lead to escape do. To complete the first
―stage‖ one must simply jump on a button placed in the center of the board in order to
open the door and reveal the exit, but in subsequent stages different aspects of the
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game mechanics change—the controls, the function of the button, the physics which
affect the movement of the elephant, and on and on. For example, in the second stage
the avatar controls are reversed: pressing the right arrow causes the elephant to move
Fig. 6. Stage 1; This is the Only Level; Armor Games, 2009; Video game; Web; 19 August
2010.
Fig.7. Stage 7; This is the Only Level; Armor Games, 2009; Video game; Web; 19 August
2010.
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left, etc., and the player must use these inverted controls in order to guide the elephant
onto the button, which opens the door, which reveals the exit. In another stage the
button does not open the door, and the player must simply run up to the door and it
will open. In other stages the player must use the mouse to move (instead of the
keyboard), or work within a situation where gravity can be altered, or play the level
where the camera has zoomed in on the elephant (turning the game into a 2D sidescroller), or exit the game entirely and find a button in the ―credits‖ section of the game
that will open the door (truly thinking ―outside the box‖). These are just a few of the
thirty different ―puzzles‖ that one must solve in order to complete the game. (There is
also a sequel which adds even more puzzles/stages).
In This is the Only Level, truly a joyous, ludic unbinding occurs stage after stage, a
playful variation of game mechanics that exposes the multiple ways that games operate
today or could operate tomorrow. While Brecht ruminated about changing the rules of
chess because they ―stayed the same too long,‖ This is the Only Level constantly changes
the rules so nothing and everything stays the same. The only rule is experimentation
itself. Each ―innovative‖ stage interrupts the player's previous expectations: everything
changes at the same time that nothing changes at all. Indeed, in the ―middle‖ of the game
the designer even repeats the first stage, and since the player's expectations have been
radically undermined by this point this repetition becomes an innovation in itself, a
―new‖ puzzle to solve (or ―resolve‖) even though it was the first and simplest to
overcome. Throughout the game the player continually seeks to escape the only level,
but every escape leads to a ―new‖ set of conditions that must be overcome in order to
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escape again. In the end—if one can say there is an end—the space of the single level is
constantly renovated in order to take on the appearance of the new. The exit tube leads
back to the entrance tube. The player goes somewhere and nowhere at once. This, it
seems, is what Jameson called the temporal antinomy of postmodernism, ―an
appearance of random changes that are mere stasis.‖
An antinomy is a contradiction where two laws or rules seemingly oppose each
other but exist nonetheless. In this case, there is constant change that is no change at
all; innovation that does not innovate. In the game This is the Only Level there is indeed
an elephant in the room, something obvious that no one wants to acknowledge:
innovation is going nowhere. In a culture of total flow, this is the only game: the game of
total innovation. While total flow marks a form of aesthetics, it is not difficult to see the
(total) acceleration of the modernist aesthetic as isomorphic with what Alan Liu has
called a culture of ―total innovation,‖ where the postmodernist aesthetics of total flow
erupts within a ―postindustrial religion of innovation‖ (306). One might say that
contemporary culture consists of endless interruptions that act as stimulants, that
culture has become a process of perpetual estrangement (to describe it with a Brechtian
term). While playing This is the Only Level one is constantly estranged—stage after
stage—but never really estranged at all; everything remains familiar although one is
constantly defamiliarized. While This is the Only Level is only one game plucked from the
flow of numerous ―innovative‖ indie games, it crystallizes one potential outcome of the
indie spirit and becomes a hyperbolic representative of the condition of innovative game
production in general.
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Returning to the elephant in the room, it would be wrong to say that no one has
noticed it. In fact, there are many hands on the elephant slowly beginning to piece
together what it looks like. As Jameson has argued, with the emergence of total flow
and total innovation, the progressive possibility of innovation begins to disappear: ―the
supreme value of the New and of innovation, as both modernism and modernization
grasped it, fades away against a steady stream of momentum and variation that at some
outer limit seems stable and motionless‖ (Brecht 59). Through his characterization of
post-industrial society as total innovation Alan Liu also comes to the conclusion that
unfettered innovation has become problematic: ―In the age of corporatized 'creativity,'
the modernist and originally Romantic premise that critique goes hand in hand with
'renovation,' which is to say 'innovation' and 'originality,' is now dysfunctional as an
overarching aesthetic‖ (325).10 Perhaps Steven Shaviro offers the best summary of the
problem within a powerful critique of Paolo Virno's recent book Multitude: Between
Innovation and Negation:
I think that [Paolo] Virno‘s reference to Schumpeter is symptomatic, because it
offers the clearest example of how he fumbles what seems to me to be one of the
great issues of our age: which is, precisely, how to disarticulate notions of
creativity and innovation and the New from their current hegemony in the
business schools and in the ways that actually-existing capitalism actually functions.
Virno fails to work through this disarticulation, precisely because he has already
preassumed it. I myself don‘t claim by any means to have solved this problem—the
fact that we can neither give up on innovation, creativity, and the New, nor accept
the way that the relentless demand for them is precisely the motor that drives
capitalism and blocks any other form of social and economic organization from
being even minimally thinkable... (Shaviro)
Without entering into a detailed analysis of Virno's work, suffice it to say that he
embraces an intrinsic, human capacity for innovation linked to the Italian Autonomists'
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idea of a social factory and the ―general intellect‖ (derived from Marx). Here, the
creative knowledge that ignites innovation is dispersed (and also centered) among the
collective powers of the workers. The inherent capacity for innovation thus becomes a
political marker of potential change and revolution. Such a sentiment was always a part of
aesthetic modernism as well, where the drive toward aesthetic innovation was either
strongly political (as in political modernism) or, to use a phrase from Jameson, ―protopolitical‖ (in modernist aesthetic experiments that were not overtly political in nature).
While Virno claims that the innovative capacity of the human concerns a different sort
of innovative energy than that which drives capitalism (which Joseph Schumpeter
characterized as ―creative destruction‖) Shaviro argues that he does not convincingly
address the problem that innovation and the new have become powerfully ensconced
within ideologies of capitalism, business, and ―corporate creativity.‖ Indeed, Shaviro's
description of the problem of innovation is analogous to the antimony of
postmodernism that Jameson devised, an ideology where the perpetually new obscures
any real form of newness, any real sense of change, interruption, or political
―revolution‖ (what Benjamin once called the ―ultimately achieved interruption‖
(―Paralipomena‖ 402)). Given that the problem of innovation is ―one of the greatest
issues of our age,‖ one is led to ponder potential answers, solutions, or at least possible
directions of movement within/against this aporia. Thus, let me outline three potential
solutions to this problem as it relates to the issue of innovation and video games.
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Out Innovating the Innovators
One response is the hope that independent video game producers can reclaim
the concept of innovation for themselves, creating an alternative space of production
outside dominant capitalist paradigms. In this scenario the independent game community
would dislodge the notion that innovation happens within the games industry, revealing
that the production of mainstream games is actually non-innovative and stagnant, and
thus, by association, the ideology of mainstream capitalist tendencies would be one of
innovation although the truth of the system would be far more conservative (constantly
reproducing the same exploitative social relations while purporting constant change and
the ―revolution‖ of society). Perhaps there is a trace of this mentality in Bogost's
argument that innovation might be an ―alternative strategy‖ to opposition. That is, forms
of negation would be replaced by positive, innovative creation that would ―push through
empire to come out the other side,‖ as Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri have argued
(218). At the heart of this possibility is the dream of an alternative space to capitalism.
Nick Dyer-Witheford and Greig de Peuter explained in their recent book Games of
Empire: Global Capitalism and Video Games that this possibility entails ―a social
transformation that exits capitalism. It suggests a process of overcoming Empire not by
seizing power but by subtracting support for its institutions and, at the same time,
creating other ones‖ (218). Reduced to a simple formation, the goal would be to out
innovate the so-called capitalist innovators. Such a dream would not be beyond the
Brechtian desire to produce innovations that change the base of society while opposing
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renovations that rejuvenate the functioning of the base. The goal would be, in some
sense, to create a final escape for the elephant, freeing it from the innovative zoo of its
perpetual confinement into a more habitable and just environment. I must admit that
there is a certain truth to the notion that the growing independent game movement is
creating an alternative space, especially when one realizes that the vast majority of
independent games are free (not attached to the profit motive) and also motivated by
the perceived lack of innovation in the games industry (a fundamental dissatisfaction
with current conditions). In their chapter entitled ―Games of Multitude,‖ DyerWitheford and de Peuter do an excellent job of presenting an array of countergaming
production—often a vibrant form of alternative production belying an energetic desire
for opposition. Their work certainly highlights a radical, optimist wing of independent
production. Yet, in truth, the majority of independent games (e.g. on a portal like
indiegames.com) embrace a joyous, ludic unbinding but do not channel this energy into
political countergames, let alone ―against Empire;‖ just as Jahn-Sudmann argued, indie
games seem to innovate aesthetically—pushing (Brechtian) goals of undermining gaming
conventions into overdrive—without innovating in terms of opposition. When
indiegames.com asked a number of prominent designers to reflect on the power of
alternative games many expressed a sense of freedom operating outside the perceived
stagnation of the mainstream industry, while explicitly recognizing that the innovative
energy of independent production helps to rejuvenate the industry. For example, the
designer of the popular indie game Darwinia said: ―Gamers benefit from new experiences
and perhaps new emotions that only truly innovative games can deliver. The industry
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benefits through the introduction and testing of novel ideas & techniques that can be
used to enhance larger games. Larger studios are often responsible for technical
innovation, but it's independent studios that push the boundaries of creative innovation‖
(Arundel).11 It seems unlikely that unfettered innovation in independent games will
dislodge the idea that innovation is the ―property‖ of capitalism; rather, such innovation
will perform the service of renovating society not changing it, adding to the total flow not
overcoming it.
One can detect a recent trend in indie game development (on the
indiegames.com list as well) which flows into the total flow: the embrace of an
accelerated mode of game production. For example, the phrase ―created in X
day/weeks‖ or ―produced in just under X days/weeks‖ has become almost a necessary
part of a description of an indie game. For the most part these temporal markers
express short periods of production: games created in a day or two, in under a week,
maybe stretching out to three or four weeks. Rarely is this phrase used to describe
longer periods of production. Many possible reasons exist for the inclusion of a such a
temporal marker: it serves as a disclaimer for the simplicity of many of these games; the
brief duration of production accounts for the often brief duration of gameplay that they
support; it can function as a kind of hubris or ―egoboo‖ where the meaning tends to be,
―I have the skills to complete an entire finished game in a few days.‖ Yet, the phrase also
serves to indicate the game's participation in a larger movement of cultural production
that focuses on ―rapid-prototyping.‖ For example, an article published in 2005 by the
popular online game journal Gamasutra championed the use of rapid prototyping. The
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article was written by four graduate students who made fifty games in one semester,
embracing ―the goal of discovering and rapidly prototyping as many new forms of
gameplay as possible‖ (―How to‖). The rules they followed were simple: a team of
producers individually create games centered on a chosen gameplay mechanic in less
than seven days; then they move on to the next mechanic. In a section of the article
entitled ―Rapid is a State of Mind,‖ the authors declare, ―Rapid-prototyping is more than
just a useful tool in pre-production – it can be a way of life!‖ Here again one uncovers
the paradox that rapid change becomes a state, that is, something that is more or less
unchanging. The mentality of rapid-prototyping indie games and creating super-novas of
innovation is a growing phenomena. The popularity of the Global Game Jam (GGJ)
movement can serve as an example. For the annual GGJ, multiple locations are
designated around the world where individuals or groups come together in order to
make a game within 48 hours (often working non-stop). The goal? According the GGJ,
―Participants rapidly prototype video game designs and hopefully inject new ideas to
help grow the game industry. [...] We ask participants to create a game from beginning
to end in a prescribed time (GGJ is 48 hours). The brief time span is meant to help
encourage creative thinking to result in small but innovative and experimental games‖
(―Basic Questions‖). Not only does such a format prepare future industry workers for
the very real and demanding ―crunch time‖ during mainstream game development (i.e.
the last few weeks or days before the game must be completed, thus creating situations
of intensive, non-stop labor), but the point of GGJ is explicitly to rejuvenate the games
industry, confining ―creative thinking‖ into channels which might give the industry new
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ideas (often for free). It seems clear that such rapid innovation does not seek to change
the base of the apparatus—as Brecht envisioned—but to renovate its functions.
Yet, one can detect a real desire to out innovate the innovators, and the
production of innovative indie games positioned against mainstream game production
functions as a kind of allegory of political revolt. One game that emerged from the phase
of rapid experimentation performed by authors of the Gamasutra article was the Tower
of Goo (fig. 8), a physics-based ―sandbox‖ game where the player controls an array of
little, black globs trying to build towers into the sky that they can climb. In a similar
fashion to We The Giants (a game indebted to Tower of Goo), the player can sacrifice one
of the globs to create a beam in the growing structure. One by one the player attempts
to build a lofty structure using the goos at hand. Of course the structures built by the
fluid (though viscous) globs are unstable, toppling to the side if the weight of the
climbing globs is not sustained by the structure's architecture. The Tower of Goo was a
simple game touted as an innovative triumph, and soon the designers, 2d Boy, expanded
the prototype into a more extensive game, The World of Goo (2008). In this case the
rapid-prototyping model functioned as successful ―pre-production‖ tool for creating a
critically acclaimed indie game that also experienced some financial success.
Interestingly, The World of Goo evolved into a puzzle game with a semi-subversive
narrative which self-reflexively investigates the idea of innovation itself (at least, this is
one interpretative possibility concerning its rich gamic text). In the game each level
presents a challenge where the player must move globs from an entrance tube to an exit
pipe elsewhere on a board. The player has a certain number of ―goo balls‖ to work
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Fig. 8. Tower of Goo; Kyle Gabler; Flash game, 2006; Web; 19 August 2010.
with, sacrificing individual balls in order to build structures that will overcome obstacles
in the journey—building bridges to get over gaps, towers to reach pipes in the sky, and
other more bizarre structures that are required to avoid deadly obstacles or complete
certain tasks (fig. 9). The player must not sacrifice too many globs when building his or
her structure because a certain number of goos must be able to reach the other pipe
(by climbing over the structure) in order for the player to advance. Each level in the
game becomes a sequence within a larger narrative describing the journey of the goo.
The narrative begins with a few goos becoming curious about pipes they discover
in the sky and deciding to explore them. What unfolds is an epistemological narrative of
realization as the globs discover that they are being exploited by another ―race‖ of
beings (which are represented as odd, human shaped stick figures); this ―race‖ consumes
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Fig. 9. Examples of different structures; World of Goo; 2D Boy; Video game, 2008; 19
August 2010.
goos for pleasure, using them for such nefarious ends such as generating energy and
even processing them to create beauty products. The player soon discovers that this
entire business of exploitation is run by The World of Goo Corporation, which, intriguingly,
is about to introduce a new invention, the ―Z Product,‖ an innovation that ―will change
the world forever‖ (fig. 10). This product turns out to be a cube which encases the
world, introducing the innovation of 3D into a 2D world (the ―Z‖ indicating the Z-Axis
which adds a third dimension to the X-axis and Y-axis); yet, since The World of Goo is
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played in a 2D space, the game self-reflexively informs players that they (and their goos)
are ―incompatible‖ with the new world and should consult ―technical support.‖ In any
event, through various (humorous) twists and turns, the player eventually destroys the
corporation and the goos migrate to another planet of their own. On a general level,
the self-reflexive narrative suggests that the lower-tech indie game will rise to destroy
the corporate games industry which innovates in terms of representation (sophisticated
Fig. 10. ―Product Z‖ Advertisement; World of Goo; 2D Boy; Video game, 2008; 19 August
2010.
3D graphics, etc.) while indie games innovate in terms of gameplay and ―experience.‖
Yet, a deeper allegorical level functions in terms of innovation where Product Z—the
omega of all innovations—is simultaneously figured as enclosing or limiting the entire
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world while also being useless and antithetical to reality itself (which is 2D within the
game). Product Z is, in some sense, false. This false innovation is destroyed by the true
innovation of the goos—always building new structures to overcome new obstacles,
working collectively and ingeniously to invent novel forms of progression. Since the
player controls the goos, and each level is open to different innovative solutions
concerning how one solves the current puzzle, the player embodies the sense of
innovation, using the game mechanics to create novel solutions to the obstacles.
As the player advances in the game he or she encounters new types of goo
which function as different game mechanics: the original black glob that one begins with
can only create beams between two nodes in a structure and then are permanently
bound to their position; green globs can be temporally placed in a structure and then
detached to be used again; balloon goos can be attached to one node and provide a
certain amount of ―lift‖ which can help balance the structure or lift it completely in the
air, etc. The game and its puzzles evolve with these changing mechanics. At the end of
the first set of levels—chapter one—the player is rewarded with the following selfreflexive text during a cut-scene where the goos float upward in the sky and see the
world from a previously unavailable vantage point: ―In every direction, they could see
unexplored new worlds, each crawling with undiscovered new SPECIES OF GOO. The
gameplay possibilities would certainly be endless! The Goo Balls hoped a brave new
adventurer would explore their new discoveries....‖ In this self-reflexive moment, the
discovery of these different species of goo sets the stage for further (potentially endless)
innovations; here, the designers reflect on the process of design, introducing new game
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mechanics (new goos) which will combine to produce new puzzles and new possibilities
for solutions as the goos move further into unexplored territories.
There are other moments within the game when innovation is self-reflexively
approached. For example, when The World of Goo loads, and before the main menu
screen is displayed, a series of random phrases are displayed one after another, miming
and parodying ―status updates‖ that frequently greet users as they wait for software to
install or wait for a particular computer process to complete its task. Some of the
phrases a player might see during this loading process:
swapping time and space...
liquefying bytes...
scraping funds...
loading...
deterministically simulating the future...
constructing emotional depth...
sandbagging expectations...
placating publishers...
applying innovation...
debating games as art...
embiggening prototypes...
A typical text such as ―loading...‖ is supplemented by a variety of suggestive ideas, from
reflections on the process of producing the game (―embiggening prototypes...‖, ―scraping
funds...‖, placating publishers...‖) to ideas often associated with indie games (―debating
games as art...‖, ―constructing emotional depth...‖) to more abstract ruminations
(―swapping time and space...‖, deterministically simulating the future...‖). This random
sequence, which players see every time they open the game application, acts as an
alienation effect of sorts, triggering critical reflection on the game itself while also
foregrounding—in a playful fashion—elements that have figured into the game's
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production. It is not without interest that this occurs in a moment of waiting and
interruption (which Manovich argues as being a unique property of new media objects),
and thus the game designers appropriate this pause to induce critical reflection, coloring
the future play experience with potential avenues of interpretation. These phrases act in
a similar fashion to Brechtian, critical ―titles‖ which direct spectators‘ attention to
certain aspects of the performance.
In addition to the text ―applying innovation...‖ occasionally the player sees the
following, odd phrase: ―tokenizing innovation....‖ What does it mean to make a token
out of innovation? A token is a sign, a representation that stands in for another thing,
thus the phrase already prompts the player to ―read‖ the process of innovation within
the game, to see the game not just as generally innovative but, on some level, about
innovation as well. Yet, the designer's intended meaning of tokenize stems from
computer science and indicates a process that parses textual elements into ―tokens,‖
breaking larger strings of text into smaller units that are useful or meaningful; thus, a
tokenizer program might break an entire string of text into individual words for further
analysis. In terms of The World of Goo, the phrase ―tokenizing innovation‖ could be
understood as the process of separating ―the goo‖ into different, meaningful ―goo balls‖
that act as distinct tokens of meaningful, innovative gameplay mechanics; this is, perhaps,
a form of aesthetic autonomization particular to the gamic text, ―breaking the action
into its smallest parts,‖ as Jameson says. Yet, such a tokenization—as defined by
computer science or computational linguistics—is performed in order to facilitate other
processes, not just for its own sake. The tokens are rebound within another process. If
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the adjectival use of the word ―token‖ means insignificant or symbolically empty (e.g. ―a
token gesture‖), then one could oppose two forms of the tokenization of innovation in
terms of gameplay mechanics: on the one hand, a symbolically empty gesture, which
makes each mechanic into a token mechanic (e.g. in This is the Only Level), and on the
other hand, a process which makes each mechanic into a token that then can be used
for some other, meaningful purpose. In The World of Goo, the different innovative
mechanics become, in a sense, resources for the player to build innovative structures in
order to solve problems. If tokenization of innovation is a form of ludic unbinding, then
the play which the gamer then performs becomes a process of rebinding the elements
into new inventive wholes. If ―Product Z‖ is ultimately an useless innovation which limits
and encloses reality, then the tokenized innovations represented by the different goo
balls are figured as tools for producing useful innovations, useful structures which
eventually lead to the destruction of The World of Goo Corporation; the top-down
innovation of Product Z which imposes its strictures on the world is opposed by the
bottom-up emergence of innovation in the hands of the players; within the game itself an
allegory emerges that explicitly places true innovation in the hands of the collective
masses of goo.
The World of Goo is an excellent example of the desire to out innovate the
innovators, to begin disarticulating innovation and the New from dominant, corporate
interests and control. The narrative within the game is genuinely proto-political, with
the idea of ―exiting Empire‖ explicitly framed through the escape of the goo balls to
their own planet; this collective literally works its way through corporate flow channels
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(the piping system built by ―The World of Goo Corporation‖) in order to destroy these
channels. But this, of course, occurs within the game, figured as a desire for change, for
an exit or escape. To the credit of the designers, the idea of endless innovation and
ludic unbinding is not simply displayed as such (e.g. This is the Only Level), but a
reconstruction of the innovative elements occurs—in terms of both gameplay mechanics
and narrative structures. This reconstruction performs the important process of
―working through‖ the contradictions of innovation, trying to articulate a liberating
innovation from a limited and false innovation. Yet, by no means does this game prove
the thesis that one can out innovate the innovators. In fact, it may end up renovating the
games industry, not fundamentally altering it. Of course, the playful narrative of
liberation from the games industry is ultimately distributed through mainstream
channels—a game for the Nintendo Wii, a PC and Mac game downloadable over Valve's
Steam distribution network, etc.. Yet, such is the contradiction of ―pushing through
Empire.‖ When asked in an interview if The World of Goo was trying ―make a statement
about the world today‖ Kyle Gabler, one part of the 2D Boy duo, replied in full: ―World
of Goo is just a silly physics game. There were no subversive themes that snuck past the
ratings boards‖ (―2D Boy Interview‖). From a designer of a highly self-conscious video
game, such a statement must be taken with a grain of salt or a pinch of goo. Then again,
it is a ―silly physics game,‖ perhaps revealing that on the road to opposition there are
still many puzzles that require innovative solutions.
Ironically, what may be the most innovate aspect of the game could turn out to
be, paradoxically, what is often seen as the least innovative aspect of game design: the
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narrative structure that reconstructs the ludic unbinding of the gameplay mechanics into
a more, dare I say, ―total‖ whole. Absent the narrative, The World of Goo might simply
have become a game like This is the Only Level, an example of endless innovation and
change that repeatedly returns to the same. Yet, the narrative aspects consciously
reflect on the possibilities inherent in this innovation; the narrative interrogates the
gameplay aesthetics. If postmodernism concerns a form of total flow without signified,
ludic unbinding without ballast or anchor, autonomization without reconstruction, then
a return to an articulation of ―meaning‖ might foster a space for the more progressive
aspects of political modernism. As Terry Eagleton wrote, ―the fact that modernism
continues to struggle for meaning is exactly what makes it so interesting‖ (70). I should
finally point out that the rapid-prototype for The World of Goo did not attain the rich
textuality of the final production. The ―innovation‖ of meaningfully binding the narrative
with the gameplay innovations was the result of a longer process of labor, a process
which eventually built a tower—however wobbly and uncertain—from the depths of
total flow and innovation; such provided a vantage point which allowed the designers
distance to critically reflect on the possibilities and limitations of innovation itself.
Simulating Totality
While The World of Goo might partially overcome total innovation with an
investigation of narrative tightly bound to gameplay mechanics, there are indeed other
approaches to this situation. Returning to Jameson, his answer to the potential
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overcoming of total flow hinges on a particular form of innovation which is also, in some
sense, a historical return. If the independent game movement largely concerns
innovations which bathe in a quasi-Brechtian, ludic unbinding of dominant game
conventions—isolating, autonomizing, and proliferating game mechanics—then Jameson
suggests that what is needed is a new form of aesthetic realism which will reconstruct
these unbound materials. If the experimental drive of aesthetic modernism is simply
feeding into dominant capitalist dynamics then a different aesthetics is needed in order
to understand (and overcome) contemporary culture. Jameson writes:
...there is some question whether the ultimate renewal of modernism, the final
dialectical subversion of the now automatized conventions of an aesthetics of
perceptual revolution, might simply be . . . realism itself! For when modernism and
its accompanying techniques of 'estrangement' have become the dominant style
whereby the consumer is reconciled with capitalism, the habit of experimentation
itself needs to be 'estranged' and corrected by a more totalizing way of viewing
phenomena‖ (Ideologies 211).
Thus, overcoming total innovation requires innovating totality; in response to total flow
one requires a totalizing aesthetic. Jameson's term for such a positive aesthetic is the
cognitive map, a response to his diagnosis of contemporary postmodern space—a
superficial, perpetually moving, fragmented ―hyperspace‖ in which subjects (both
individual and collective) cannot adequately position themselves because of massive,
cultural disorientation. The cognitive map is a realist, representational form that
mediates one's ―immediate surroundings‖ and thus reorients subjects so that they ―may
again begin to grasp [their] positioning…and regain a capacity to act and struggle‖
(Postmodernism 54). The cognitive map connects the individual to a larger totality,
creating ―a situational representation on the part of the individual subject to that vaster
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and properly unrepresentable totality which is the ensemble of society‘s structures as a
whole‖ (Postmodernism 51). The search for this cognitive map follows Brecht's
declaration that, ―New problems appear and demand new methods. Reality changes; in
order to represent it, modes of representation must also change‖ (―Against‖). Yet, the
process of autonomization operating within a modernist sensibility is displaced by a
return to realism which seeks to re-collect autonomous aesthetic elements into a more
total representation: ―As for 'totalizing' processes,‖ writes Jameson, ―that often means
little more than the making of connections between various phenomena‖ (Postmodernism
403). Fortunately video games have found a form which closely parallels the cognitive
map: simulations.
I do not want to spend much time articulating the connection between cognitive
maps and simulations because others have done so. For example, drawing on Jameson's
formation of the cognitive map, Ted Friedman argues that simulations are a ―radically
new‖ form, displaying ―a systemic logic which connects a myriad array of causes and
effects‖ while ―act[ing] as a kind of map-in-time, visually and viscerally...demonstrating
the repercussions and interrelatedness of many different social decisions.‖ The
simulation allows the possibility of mediating discrete aspects of society that are
seemingly autonomous, bringing them into relation with one another and allowing the
individual to grasp complex phenomena through a designed model of reality. Often they
serve a pedagogical function as well (which is a key aspect of the cognitive map and one
which Jameson drew explicitly from the pedagogical aesthetics of Brecht (Postmodernism
50)). Simulations allow the user to enter into a system of discrete, interconnected
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elements while learning how they relate to one another, how cause and effect operate
(or could operate) in terms of the elements studied.12 Friedman expresses high hopes
for the simulation in terms of radical politics; in fact he ends his article ―The Semiotics of
SimCity‖ with the following: ―Sergei Eisenstein hoped that the technology of montage
could make it possible to film Marx's Capital. But the narrative techniques of Hollywood
cinema developed in a way which directs the viewer to respond to individuals rather
than abstract concepts. A computer game based on Capital, on the other hand, is easy to
imagine.‖ Of course, such a simulation has yet to be created.
Meanwhile, the simulation form has already been colonized by capitalism where
the business simulation has a long and powerful history. In fact, perhaps the first
simulation game implemented on a computer was a business simulation called INTOP,
which stood for International Operations simulation. Created in 1961 and written in
assembly language for the UNIVAC I, the game simulated international business
management. According to the designers, ―For the first time, INTOP [brought] the
vexing problems of innovation management to the fore in a business simulation‖
(Thorelli 49). Not only was it the first computerized simulation game, where the level of
complexity involved made the use of the expensive processing of the computer
―indispensable,‖ but it was the first to focus on innovation within the business
environment (Thorelli 33). Quoting from a speech given at a marketing conference in
1962 the authors describing INTOP wrote, ―A principal aim of the simulation is to focus
the attention of the participants on the challenging idea 'that changing a business –
finding it new roles, new customers, new markets – is even more important than
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operating it efficiently'‖ (Thorelli 33). Thus, the simulation was used to teach about the
power of innovation and the new. One can detect here the move from capitalist
modernity to capitalist postmodernity if one figures the former according to models of
Taylorization and scientific management—that is, optimizing the flow-line of Fordist
assembly line production—and the latter according to the diversification and
differentiation of product lines—proliferating the new until it becomes total flow; one
moves from the efficiency of mass production to niche production, from the flow-line to
total flow. I should note that INTOP has evolved into a modern version entitled Intopia,
a name that stands in stark contrast to the utopian desires of Marxist theorists such as
Brecht and Jameson since the neologism Intopia etymologically means in-place (an
appropriate accompaniment to the popular name given to a modern business: a firm).
From the very beginning of the computerized simulation game, business interests
were already mapping the complex international sphere of corporate competition and
using the simulation as a pedagogical tool which would help individuals (and budding
entrepreneurs) learn how to understand changes in capitalist development. In some
sense, INTOP provided them with a ―cognitive map‖ of such changes. Other business
simulations would follow INTOP, from the simple Lemonade Stand (1973) to Edu-Ware's
Windfall: The Oil Crisis Game (1980) (which taught how to profit in times of crisis), from
Sid Meier's trailblazing Railroad Tycoon (1990) (which has spurred an amazing number of
clones—and which had the following slogan emblazoned on its packaging: ―Empire
building in the golden age of railroads‖) to the popular, and appropriately titled,
Capitalism (1995). Even in 1980, and with rudimentary graphics that utilized ASCII
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characters, the game Windfall was able to rhetorically express and represent the
―totality‖ of its educational interests during the appearance of its title screen (fig. 11); an
interest shared by most, if not all, business simulations.
Fig. 11. Title screen; Windfall: the Oil Crisis Game; David G. Mullich; Edu-Ware, 1980;
Video game.
From a countergaming perspective, Friedman and others have embraced the
simulation form as politically full of potential. For example, radical game designer and
theorist Gonzalo Frasca has extolled the form, even channeling a Brechtian optimism in
aesthetic innovation when he declares that ―the promise of the yet unexplored field of
simulation and games is so vast and appealing that some of us can hardly wait to start
experimenting with it.‖ Frasca's optimism is centered on appropriating the simulation
form for radical possibilities, wresting it from entertainment channels for subversive,
future use:
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...simulation is the form of future. It does not deal with what happened or is
happening, but with what may happen. Unlike narrative and drama, its essence lays
on a basic assumption: change is possible. It is up to both game designers and
game players to keep simulation as a form of entertainment or to turn it into a
subversive way of contesting the inalterability of our lives. (―Simulation Versus
Narrative‖)
The Brechtian overtones are easily detected: simulations can undermine the
―naturalized‖ aspects of society and install a hope for change and future difference. Yet,
utilizing a form that has been colonized by capitalism depends on the players and
designers appropriating it. As Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter have suggested:
Eroding the monopoly of the military-industrial complex over simulation tools,
however modestly, to foster their use by ecologists, peacemakers, and urban
planners, is a welcome development. While activist-made tactical games expose
the catastrophic procedural logics of Empire, polity simulators can take a step
toward envisaging alternative procedures (201).
This work of ―eroding the monopoly‖ over dominant uses of the simulation form is
indeed important, and one would not want to erode the optimism concerning the
simulation's radical use (and even the potential ―innovations‖ created through political
experimentation with the form).13 Nevertheless, aesthetic innovation of the simulation
form does not need to be the primary focus of this appropriation, but this appropriation
should focus on the form's further development with political goals in mind. Radical
simulations such as Jim Gasperini's Hidden Agenda (1988), Antiwargame (2004) by the
Futurefarmers Collective, and Molleindustria's The McDonald's Videogame (2006) and
Oiligarchy (2008) do not radically alter how simulations function aesthetically; these
games are not innovative in terms of representation or gameplay. Rather they innovate
in terms of the reality that they depict and in terms of the rules which govern this
reality. The rules of the game change through the changing of the rules of simulation, but
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the goal is not centered on a radical, ludic unbinding, but on a radical rebinding of the
ludic to play with the possibility of different futures. This idea of bypassing creative,
aesthetic innovation segues into the final response to innovation that I want to examine
briefly.
Rejecting Innovation and Creating History
When Alan Liu describes the modernist aesthetic of innovation as being
―dysfunctional,‖ he desires to shift the goal of aesthetic practice from creativity to one
of destruction. He argues that ―what may be 'new'‖ for cultural production ―is the
rejection of the aesthetic ideology of critical innovation ('make it new') in favor of an
ideology of critical destruction‖ (9). Lui's formulation critically reverses the dynamic of
capitalism that Joseph Schumpeter called ―creative destruction.‖ The not-new aesthetics
will ―serve as witness to the other side of creative destruction: not the boundless
'creation' that has powered the market rallies of the New Economy, but the equally
ceaseless destruction that produces historical difference. […] Where once the job of
literature and the arts was creativity, now, in an age of total innovation, I think it must
be history‖ (8). In focusing on history, Lui's position against innovation bifurcates along
two different lines. First, history means for him the critical production of historical
difference through a focus on destruction, which sometimes refers to a critical
awareness of the destruction that is a part of capitalist creation but which can also
literally refer to ―committing acts of destruction against what is most valued in
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knowledge work—the content, form, or control of information‖ (8). The latter position
re-inscribes modernist avant-garde practices of shock, iconoclasm, anarchistic revolt, the
rejection of tradition, etc, attaching the idea of destructive creation to the modernist
history of attempting to unravel the institutions of art, spilling aesthetic practices beyond
the boundaries of art and into the social. Updated for aesthetic practice in the age of
total innovation and information, Lui argues that the practice of destruction must now
move within the corporate world and office space—the home of knowledge work and
innovation—operating with viral tactics that move within flows of information (331). In
terms of video games, an extreme form of such aesthetics might center on hacking
games and piracy, destroying copyright controls which function as a key component of
protecting creative innovation within the games industry. Yet, Lui rejects this form of
destruction and calls for a sense of ―ethical hacking,‖ retreating from the extreme forms
of destruction that his theoretical position implies (397-398). Although one might turn
toward aesthetic and political modifications of games as examples of ―ethical hacking,‖
games themselves can seemingly participate in acts of destructive creativity as well.14
One example might be the art collective Etoy's online game Toywar which contributed
to the destruction of the eToys.com stock price when the latter sued the former
because of similar names (Galloway 77). Drawing from the indiegames.com 2009 list of
experimental games that I mentioned earlier, the game Lose/Lose (Whyte Lyte) provides
a literal example of a game that could be characterized as focusing on the destructive
side of creation. Lose/Lose appropriates an ―unoriginal‖ shooter format where the player
controls a spacecraft that battles waves of enemy starships (e.g. like the old school
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Galaga); yet, each enemy that the player destroys actually deletes a file from the ―home‖
folder of the computer on which the game is installed; if the player dies (an inevitable
scenario) the Lose/Lose application is deleted. Thus, the game foregrounds the value that
individuals place on information, on easily deletable and intangible artifacts that
nevertheless retain so much importance. This is not a game that many would play on
their own personal computer, but perhaps its true ―home‖ might be on an office
computer, a perfect location for a disgruntled knowledge worker.
While Liu embraces acts of destruction that function to create historical
difference, his other line of thought which privileges history over the process of total
innovation moves in a different direction. Here, Liu invokes history because it offers a
slower temporal unfolding than the lurching dynamic of capitalist innovation; history
―exerts an authority that challenges the much shorter term, market-based authority of
postindustrial 'creative destruction'‖ (376). In this case, history might focus on the
patient analysis of ―things destroyed in the name of creation‖ rather than on the activity
of destroying to create history (8). Moreover, an attachment to the process of history's
slow unfolding provides a counter-project to an accelerated capitalism and a mentality
that strives to replace history with the rapid-prototyping of the near future and a rapid
obsolescence of the near past. Liu writes:
In the 1990s the corporate culture of 'creative destruction' valued 'startups' above
all. In that same period, the humanities valued what might be seen as the opposite
of startups: minoritarian survivor cultures that challenge the great, dominating
forces of postindustrial society less through overt acts of rebellion that through
the sheer endurance of their 'residual' historical values. (376)
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In this case, the move to history focuses on ―sheer endurance,‖ perhaps an attempt to
―live through‖ Empire rather than to innovate it out of existence. Here, the creation of
history is not accomplished through acts of destruction but through the process of
giving history the time to create itself, not allowing it to be destroyed in the name of
creation, not allowing the play of total flow and innovation to collude with the ―end of
history.‖
From these three (potential) ―solutions‖ to the puzzle of total innovation—out
innovating the innovators, simulating totality, and rejecting innovation to create
history—I wish to distill two related points. First, the potential processes that work
against total innovation move in directions that are not necessarily innovative in
themselves. Narrative responses to the ludic unbinding of gameplay mechanics, using
simulations from a countergaming perspective, and returning to history—all of these
movements do not necessarily rely on an aesthetics of radical innovation. This is not a
repudiation of the argument made in the first section of this chapter where I claimed
that aesthetic strategies which expose and undermine dominate ideological trends in
mainstream games can still be productive. Yet, in this section I have shown that an
aesthetic of producing endless innovations in game design—which ―oppose‖ mainstream
forms, though not necessarily the ideologies within these forms—can spiral into a
strategy of innovation which hardly opposes the mainstream but seeks to renovate it.
There is a line between the use of Brechtian interruptions to expose dominant
ideologies and the acceleration of interruption which becomes an ideology in its own
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right, feeding into the total flow of innovation and requiring a move to ―estrange
experimentation itself,‖ as Jameson noted. Furthermore, as I mentioned in the first
section, aesthetic innovations that attempt to uncover dominant ideologies in
mainstream games might be innovative in form while simultaneously being a repetition of
more traditional forms of critique. A game such as Lindsay Grace's Wait creates a new
form of gameplay that disrupts the temporal immersion of flow experiences, but its
fundamental method of critique is embedded in modernist traditions. In a sense, ―formal
ideology critique‖ also becomes a non-innovative form which might be added to the
three solutions listed above.
Second, all of these approaches are based on eroding the dominant position of
capitalist innovation, what Shaviro called the disarticulation of innovation from business
interests, breaking the joint which fuses them together. Thus Liu writes about the
―sheer endurance‖ or ―survival‖ of history; Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter call for
―eroding the monopoly of the military-industrial complex over simulation tools;‖ and,
these same authors argue that escaping from Empire concerns the invention of a new
terrain but also ―subtracting support for Empire's institutions.‖ These all evoke the
image of resistance, a theoretical term frequently bandied about which many might find
distasteful, especially energetic and activist artists (and game designers) intent on
constructing a new space for production that will push beyond Empire. Moreover, one
must be aware that total flow is a prime mover of erosion itself, a river of innovation
which not only washes away dams that are placed within it but also erodes the banks
upon which one might stand to garner a clear view of the situation. As Jameson wrote:
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Saul Landau has observed, about our current situation, that there has never been a
moment in the history of capitalism when this last enjoyed greater elbow-room
and space for manoeuvre: labour movements and insurgencies, mass socialist
parties, even socialist states themselves – seem today in full disarray when not in
one way or another effectively neutralized; for the moment global capital seems
able to follow its own nature and inclinations, without the traditional precautions.
(The Cultural Turn 48)
He goes on to argue that postmodernism is a ―transitional period‖ in capitalism, and
―we ourselves are still in the trough, however, and no one can say how long we will stay
there‖ (The Cultural Turn 48-49). Within and through this trough speeds the total flow of
innovation, yet working within and against this total flow seems a necessary fact.
Jameson also notes that ―only an ostrich‖ would see this vision of the present as
―pessimistic‖ (The Cultural Turn 48)—an appropriate image given that the ostrich is a
majestic bird which obtains incredible momentum on land but can never fly. Indeed, the
ostrich is ludicrous, as is the pessimism of resignation, but the reconstruction of the ludic
unbinding that channels into the total flow is far from ludicrous. The transition Jameson
describes is an interlude which requires, at least at this juncture, joyously eluding the
total flow while working to re-articulate forms of resistance which will erode the
hegemonic structures of an ideology of innovation. Hopefully, at least in terms of video
game production, the three potential solutions described above can be embraced with
optimism, the kind of optimism expressed by Gonzalo Frasca when he extolled the new
possibilities of political simulations (even though capital has already colonized the form).
Indeed, Shaviro is certainly right that one must not give up on the New, for therein lies
the hope for radical change: given this I am only suggesting that one takes a step back
from the new, from whirling away in the exhilarating movements of total flow, from a
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ludic unbinding for its own sake, thus eluding the lure of change that is stasis while rearticulating and re-newing the exhilaration of opposition.
Braiding the Flow of Time? Innovating History
He who hopes to learn the fine art of the game of chess from books will soon
discover that only the opening and closing moves of the game admit of exhaustive
systematic description, and that the endless variety of the moves which develop
from the opening defies description; the gap left in the instructions can only be
filled in by the zealous study of games fought out by master-hands.
- Sigmund Freud, ―On the Beginning of Treatment‖ (1913)
Yesterday, after playing chess, Brecht said: 'You know, when [Karl] Korsch comes,
we really ought to work out a new game with him. A game in which the moves do
not always stay the same; where the function of a piece changes after it has stood
on the same square for a while: it should either become stronger or weaker. As it
is the game doesn't develop, it stays the same for too long. (Understanding 88)
- Walter Benjamin (1934)
Although Freud wrote these words as a metaphor for the process of
psychoanalysis, it also seems appropriate, also as a metaphor, for the argument I have
been constructing. Thus, in the first section of this chapter I described the opening
moves of the game of innovation versus opposition in terms of the experimentation of
aesthetic modernism, particularly the political modernism of Bertolt Brecht who desired
(and produced) changes in the rules of art that were connected to oppositional politics.
Indeed, his aesthetic revolution—rewriting the rules of theater—was indebted to the
opening gambit of Marxism and historical materialism, though this opening itself had
perhaps stagnated into ―vulgar‖ precepts and the rise of Stalinism. Brecht's political
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modernism, combining aesthetic experimentation with a concerted attempt to
undermine ideology and affect real social change, was also changing the rules of Marxism
(at least from an aesthetic perspective). Such an opening must have been invigorating
given the historical situation and the real sense that Marxism and its marriage with
modernist experimentation was redolent with possibility—the latter seeking to change
the function of art and the former, society. Their combination opened new horizons of
productive potential. In the words of Brecht's character Galileo when he was teaching
the religious clerks the expanded moves of modern chess, ―That gives room, and you
can lay your plans.‖ This was the first stage of ludic unbinding which was firmly anchored
in the political. Yet, as Brecht wrote, ―time flows on,‖ and so does the game. Thus, in
the second section I described Brecht's aesthetic experimentation as becoming
dislodged from the political, overflowing into a state of total flow and innovation, a
second stage which revealed the unbound process of ludic unbinding. This is the middle
game wherein, as Freud described it, ―the endless variety of the moves which develop
from the opening defies description.‖ Indeed, this middle game concerns the transitional
stage between two modes of capitalistic production, as Jameson described it, a stage
where the dynamism of capital ―enjoy[s] greater elbow-room and space for manoeuvre‖
than its opponents. Here, Brecht's desire to change the rules of a game that stayed the
same for too long mutates into a game where even the rules appear to endlessly change,
a situation which makes the game difficult to play (at least for those not in control of
changing the rules). In this middle game—the stage we are still within—it appears that
oppositional forces are still attempting to find room for the laying of plans, still trying to
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come to terms with the seemingly endless variation of the movements of capital that
defy description (hence, Jameson's call for an imagined aesthetic of the cognitive map).
Above, I briefly described a few possibilities for countergaming practices which might be
useful in the middle game, especially in terms of working against (and within) the
bewildering movements of total flow so as not to succumb to an ideology of innovation
that, at this stage in the game, feeds into capitalistic dynamics. The middle game is where
these capitalist dynamics would like to remain, endlessly changing while staying the same
for as long as possible.
In this last section of the chapter I wish to reexamine the quotation about chess
from Brecht, attempting to find room within it to move, to begin to articulate a different
space for manoeuvre which might compliment the possibilities for countergaming
described above. To do so, I will focus on Brecht's chess partner, for while the
quotation is certainly Brecht's it is also, quite literally, Benjamin's. Brecht and Benjamin
played chess together when Benjamin visited Brecht in Denmark, where the latter spent
the early years of his exile from Germany during the rise of National Socialism. It was
during one of these visits that Benjamin recorded Brecht's statement about changing the
rules of the game. While the quotation from Brecht certainly resonates with his thinking
and desire to change the rules of the theater, to dissolve tradition and the ideology of
an unchangeable, ―naturalized‖ world, Brecht's comment may also have been directed
specifically at Benjamin, carrying a humorous undertone that related to their actual
games. Apparently, Benjamin tended to take long periods of time to think about his
moves. Benjamin's friend Gershom Scholem once recalled playing chess with him,
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―During my visit we played chess several times. Benjamin played blindly and took
forever to make a move; as I was a much faster player, it was virtually always his turn.‖
(41). Moreover, when Brecht wrote to Benjamin in 1936 and invited him to return to
Denmark, he explicitly mentioned their games of chess: ―The chess board lies orphaned;
every half hour a tremor of remembrance runs through it; that was when you made
your moves‖ (qtd. in Wizisla 59). If Benjamin did indeed ―take forever to move,‖
perhaps even a half an hour as Brecht's letter to Benjamin suggests, then Brecht's
statement that the game ―stays the same for too long,‖ might have also been a playful jab
at Benjamin. During these games (where they apparently never talked) Brecht would
certainly have had plenty of time to imagine shifting the rules (Wizisla 59). Forced from
the flow and immersion of the game by Benjamin's tactics (or lack thereof), Brecht
would have had plenty of temporal distance to reflect on the form of the game.
Fleeing from the Gestapo on the border of France and Spain, Benjamin himself
ran out of space for manoeuvre and took his own life. ―In a situation presenting no way
out, I have no other choice but to make an end of it,‖ he wrote (Arcades 445). Later,
Brecht composed a short poem for Benjamin: ―To Walter Benjamin Who Killed Himself
While Fleeing from Hitler:‖
Tactics of attrition are what you enjoyed
Sitting at the chess table in the pear tree's shade.
An enemy who could drive you from your books
Will not be worn down by people like us. (Wizisla 185).
Attrition means to wear something down by friction, grinding it down over time. Hence,
one aspect of Benjamin's elongated style of play was the possibility of temporally
wearing out an opponent. (Perhaps such a strategy was appropriate for Benjamin, since
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he was fascinated by the nineteenth century, a century which witnessed dramatic
temporal changes in the game of chess. In fact, in professional chess games during the
early nineteenth century ―deliberate attempts to fatigue and wear out the opponent
were commonplace at the time, and an average game lasted nine hours‖ (Brannon). In
the second half of the nineteenth century chess clocks were introduced to alleviate this
problem.) Brecht too was interested in the power of time's attrition. For example, he
addressed the topic in his poem ―Legend of the Origin of the Book Tao-te-Ching on Laotzu's Road into Exile‖ (Benjamin, ―Commentary…‖). In the poem Brecht described how
Lao-tzu was stopped by a customs official. While the official discovered that Lao-tzu did
not possess any tangible goods that were valuable (because he was a teacher), he did
discover that Lao-tzu possessed intangible knowledge that was indeed invaluable: when
the official asked what Lao-tzu taught, a boy who accompanied Lao-tzu said: ―That the
soft water, as it moves / vanquishes in time the mighty stone. / You understand—what is
hard must yield‖ (Commentary…‖ 246). Hearing this, the official invited Lao-tzu to his
home, and the two men transcribed the Tao-te-Ching. Later, in 1948, Brecht wrote in a
letter that, ―he has heard that [Walter Benjamin] recited the Lao-Tsu poem several
times by heart in French internment camps. 'But he himself found no frontier guards to
let him pass'‖ (Wizisla xxiv). Indeed, Benjamin was intimately familiar with the poem,
having written commentary on it that actually accompanied the poem's publication.
Commenting on the line, ―That the soft water, as it moves / vanquishes in time the
mighty stone,‖ Benjamin wrote:
This teaches us that we should not lose sight of the inconstant, mutable aspect of
things, and that we should make common cause with whatever is unobtrusive and
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plain but relentless, like water. Here the materialist dialectician will think of the
cause of the oppressed. (For those in power, this is an unobtrusive matter, for the
oppressed, it is a plain and sober circumstance; as far as its consequences go, it is
a most relentless fact.) (―Commentary…‖ 248-249)
Of course, difficulties arise if one simply attempts to port this teaching into the current
historical situation. Things have reversed themselves where the stream of total flow and
innovation seems like a plain fact that is absolutely relentless.
Total flow and innovation are the conditions that rule liquid modernity, a torrent
of fluidity which erodes and continues to erode any attempt to produce solid
foundation. Drawing on Marx and Engels‘ famous adage in The Communist Manifesto that
―all that is solid melts into the air,‖ Zygmunt Bauman has argued that,
The 'melting of solids', the permanent feature of modernity, has therefore
acquired a new meaning [in liquid modernity], and above all has been redirected to
a new target—one of the paramount effects of that redirection being the
dissolution of forces which could keep the question of order and system on the
political agenda. The solids whose turn has come to be thrown into the melting
pot and which are in the process of being melted at the present time, the time of
fluid modernity, are the bonds which interlock individual choices in collective
projects and actions... (6)
Initially the ―melted solids‖ concerned traditions that were hindering the cultural and
economic progress of humankind: outmoded forms of production, religious bonds,
anything that stood in the way of reason and its calculated effects, space as a hindrance
to communication and the movement of commodities, time as hindrance to
standardization in the form of agrarian temporalities which were not yet colonized by
the efficiency of the clock, etc.. Such was the period of solid modernity which melted
away resistances while retaining the hope of placing something more solid in their place.
In fluid modernity, all solids melt away in the flow; the hope of their reappearance,
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evaporated. Innovation overcomes opposition and erodes opposition itself, especially
any move to construct lasting, collective bonds. This historical situation seems distant
from the concerns of Brecht and Benjamin who were worried about the possibility of a
coming fascist Empire, one which was ―planning for thirty thousand years ahead‖ as
Brecht once said (Understanding 120). Such was a prospect of a frightening and
permanent solidity that had to be eroded (eventually by bomb, not by book). In any
event, perhaps they could not have seen the coming of a ―solidity‖ that was based on
absolute fluidity, where constant change would be the only permanence.
Above I described a few possibilities for countering total flow and innovation
within the countergaming movement. I want to now follow up on one of these
possibilities: history. Why history? For one, the historical seems a powerful tool that can
work against processes of total innovation without giving up on attrition tactics in our
―end of history‖ historical situation. Alan Lui invoked history as a potential answer to
total innovation because it provided a longer, slower duration to combat the
acceleration of capitalist ―creative destruction.‖ He wrote that the ―new arts [should]
mime the ruthless inexorability of history, which...exerts an authority that challenges the
much shorter term, market-based authority of postindustrial 'creative destruction'‖
(376). Here, history is what flows on, ―inexorable‖ because one cannot stop it, not only
―relentless‖ but ―ruthless‖ in its development and also in its ―permanence.‖ This sense
of history continues to provide hope if only because it teaches that this middle game of
the ―end of history‖ will also eventually become history and a topic of historical
examination. There is something solid about history at the same moment that it is not
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solid at all—―things change,‖ that is history, but even ceaseless change will change, that
is also history. The situation of total innovation does not mean that tactics of attrition
must be given up because they have been co-opted, but that in a historical situation of
perpetual ludic unbinding—which here also erodes ―the bonds which interlock individual
choices in collective projects‖—their goal has been reversed, to produce solids, or at
least frictional impediments, that will obstruct the total flow. Perhaps history can
provide such a theoretical impediment while still retaining a mutable temporality.
Why history? In terms of video games there are surprisingly few games, indie or
otherwise, that investigate the complexity of historical change or historical thinking in
any meaningful way. This is not to say that historical games do not exist; in fact, there
are endless games that purport to be about history, especially war simulations that all
too often focus on empire building, conquering all resistance, and installing what could
easily be termed the ―end of history‖ (where nothing remains to conquer, Pax Imperia).
Thus, these games present a linear trajectory that models history from the perspective
of the victors (that is, if the point of these games is ultimately to ―win‖ and conquer all).
Even Sid Meier's monumental Civilization—a prime candidate for a game about history—
concerns conquering the world and bringing an end to history; moreover, its view of
history is fundamentally attached to technological innovation as the key ingredient in
historical development. Alexander Galloway argues that, in fact, Civilization ―is about the
absence of history altogether‖ where ―the diachronic details of lived life are replaced by
the synchronic homogeneity of code pure and simple‖ (103). Following Jameson he
writes, ―history is the slow, negotiated struggle of individuals together with others in
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their material reality. The modeling of history in computer code, even using Meier's
sophisticated algorithms, can only ever be a reductive exercise of capture and
transcoding‖ (103). Since Galloway is not addressing historical games as such and seeks
to make an argument about a new era of ―informatic control‖—a topic I choose not to
address—he also argues that a similar game with radical political ideologies would
succumb to the same problematic: a conservative or progressive game that functions
like Civilization would fundamentally be more about the structures of code and
information than about their chosen content. Galloway is absolutely right that modeling
history in a computer game ―can only ever be a reductive exercise;‖ yet, this seems
tantamount to arguing that video games and reality are fundamentally different, that the
absolute complexity of the real and its transformations are of a different order than a
video game simulation. Granted, but video games are complex entities that certainly can
model other forms of temporal and historical relations. Perhaps it is simply the genre of
these ―historical‖ games about conquest—many of them indebted to Civilization—which
offer extremely reductive versions of history, something akin, perhaps, to Benjamin's
notion of ―empty, homogenous time‖ where time is grasped as a linear development of
progress, where each turn in the game presents a different set of circumstances—
armies to move, buildings to construct, resources to control, etc.—that are
fundamentally similar (if not the same) when viewed from this empty perspective of
historical progress. Let me provide a different, contrasting example: the simulation
Revolution developed by The Education Arcade at MIT. In this multiplayer simulation that
takes place during the American Revolution students choose to play different
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characters—a wealthy loyalist, a rebel-leaning carpenter, a strong-willed slave, etc.—as
they live for a day within the colonial town of Williamsburg (fig. 12). Through prescribed
narrative frames the students negotiate the political and social realities that concern the
town folk. Information gathered during the narratives and player choices concerning
their allegiances spread through the town as a form of political gossip, and thus
Fig. 12. Revolution; Education Arcade, 2004; Video game.
―different players could work together or against each other in trying to manipulate the
flow of information‖ (Camper and Weise). As described on The Education Arcade
website, ―the game teaches students an 'ordinary' experience of history that includes
passionate rhetoric and heroic battle, but also economic frustration, political
indifference, and the mundane of everyday life‖ (Haas). It would seem then that
Revolution models a different form of imagined history, perhaps approaching (from a
certain perspective) Galloway's sense of history as a ―negotiated struggle of individuals
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together with others in their material reality‖ (103). Indeed, representing and simulating
the historical is not beyond the video game form by any means.
I mentioned Benjamin's notion of ―homogenous, empty time‖ because it too
serves as a reductive description of history as a form of progress, a type of history that
Benjamin sought to dismantle. One might view the situation of postmodernism as the
culmination of this form of temporality. Galloway discusses ―the end of history‖ in a
game like Civilization by arguing that ―the diachronic details of lived life are replaced by
the synchronic homogeneity of code;‖ the code is already in place, outlining different
choices and adjustments that the player can enact in order to create what Galloway calls
―a computer-generated 'history-effect'‖ (103). Everything can change from game to
game, but nothing actually changes. The idea that ceaseless change equals no change at
all—the temporal antinomy of postmodernism as Jameson called it—begins to look even
more empty and homogenous than the empty march of time that Benjamin envisioned.
Concerning this antinomy, Jameson wrote (and I am re-quoting partially from above):
...the supreme value of the New and of innovation, as both modernism and
modernization grasped it, fades away against a steady stream of momentum and
variation that at some outer limit seems stable and motionless. What then dawns
is the realization that no society has ever been so standardized as this one, and
that the stream of human, social and historical temporality has never flowed quite
so homogeneously. (―Antimonies‖ 59)
This homogeneity can be attributed to cycles of commercial innovation that not only
replace natural, cyclical rhythms of time (as Jameson later points out), but that also
rewrite progress and historical change as only capitalist renovations in a wheel of vast
variation. If it is true that time is even more homogenous than it once was, if the uneven
development of historical change has been eroded through the smooth processing of
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the present, then ―remembering‖ Benjamin might be a way to articulate, once again, the
importance of the complexities of historical reflection.
Benjamin's reactions against ―empty, homogenous time‖ and a sense of progress
as an accumulation of unbound wreckage which cannot be ―made whole‖ again was
contained in his essay ―On the Concept of History,‖ written shortly before his death.
One can easily lose one's way in this labyrinthine essay of twenty fragments or theses,
where the threads of his thoughts on time weave together a dense texture of historical
thinking. Fortunately, I have a thread of my own to pick up which will hopefully allow
quick entrance to, and exit from, his text. In the first thesis of the essay Benjamin
famously references Wolfgang von Kempelen's chess playing automaton The Mechanical
Turk. This automaton, which toured Europe and America in the late 18th and early 19th
centuries, was a mechanical hoax where a ―little hunchback‖ (as Benjamin put it)
operated a chess-playing, Turkish ―puppet‖ from within a concealed compartment
beneath the gameboard. It was, perhaps, a stunning technological innovation at the time,
though obviously one that was false. Benjamin's use of this contraption was perhaps not
dissimilar from Brecht's use of chess to imagine changing the conventional rules of art
and politics, although Benjamin's theoretical move was aimed at rethinking Marxist
history and its relationship to temporality. He wrote, ―One can imagine a philosophic
counterpart to this apparatus. The puppet, called 'historical materialism,' is to win all the
time. It can easily be a match for anyone if it enlists the services of theology, which
today, as we know, is small and ugly and has to keep out of sight‖ (―Concept of History‖
389). Perhaps like Benjamin's chess playing style—returning to a temporally outdated
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style of play that sought to wear down the opposition—the return to theology was a
tactic that attempted to put the past in service of the present. Such a move introduced a
complex rethinking of history and time, a rethinking that my brief remarks will inevitably
fall short in describing. Nevertheless, Benjamin's invocation of theology centered on a
theory of ―messianic time,‖ a form of time that could displace the sense of history as
progressing through ―empty, homogenous time.‖ Messianic time posited that ―every
second was the small gateway in time through which the Messiah might enter‖
(―Concept of History‖ 397); thus, put into the service of historical materialism, the idea
was that a unique configuration of events—recognized through a study of the past which
communicated with the present—could cause ―a messianic arrest of happening, or (to
put it differently) a revolutionary chance in the fight for a the oppressed past‖
(―Concept of History‖ 396). The past was not a series of homogenous events that a
traditional historiographical approach could distill into a set of cause and effect
relationships, thus ―recognizing it 'the way it really was',‖ but it was a reservoir of
constellated meanings that could erupt into possible action, perhaps even the ―ultimately
achieved interruption‖ of revolution (―Concept of History‖ 391). Indeed, Benjamin's
theory of messianic time was not unlike his understanding of epic theater where an
interruption, a moment of estrangement, could ―bring the action to a standstill in midcourse;‖ if empty, homogenous time was an immersive flow of history, then messianic
time was the possibility of breaking this immersion with the hope of producing critical
understanding of the present. Ultimately, this sense of time allowed Benjamin to rethink
history as a form of temporality that worked against notions of modernization as
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―progress‖—an idea that broke apart on the shores of fascism which, at the time,
asserted itself as the culmination of human ―progress.‖15 Moreover, Benjamin saw the
leftist ―stubborn faith in progress‖ as only a capitulation to dominant forces, where
German workers, during the rise of fascism, bought in to the ―illusion that the factory
work ostensibly furthering technological progress constituted a political victory‖
(―Concept of History‖ 393). Here, the belief in progress as moving toward the
liberation of the oppressed classes was clearly, for Benjamin, channeling into a
retrograde movement. What this required then was a radical rethinking of temporality
where the notion of inevitable progress could be dislodged: it was not benefiting
opposition but undermining it.
The second point I want to make concerning Benjamin's temporal thinking—
which his use of the theological also invoked—has to do with remembrance. The faith in
progress that Benjamin critiqued was connected to an embrace of the future, expressed
in the idea that the revolution of the working class would play ―the role of a redeemer
of future generations‖ (―Concept of History‖ 394). Yet, Benjamin saw this acceptance of
―progress‖ as ―cutting the sinews of [the worker's] greatest strength,‖ making ―the
working class forget both its hatred and spirit of sacrifice, for both are nourished by the
image of enslaved ancestors rather than by the ideal of liberated grandchildren‖
(―Concept of History‖ 394). Remembrance then, which Benjamin explicitly connects to
Jewish faith and teachings, potentially acts as another vitalizing force in the use of history
for oppositional purposes.16 This is not to say that the process of imagining different
futures is unimportant; it surely remains essential. Yet, the oppositional imagination can
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also be ―nourished‖ through the activity of remembrance, the recollection of the past
oppression and sacrifice.
If the current situation is one in which time has entered a homogenous loop, an
aporia where everything changes while nothing seems to change at all, then rethinking
history is a worthwhile pursuit. Ultimately the antinomy of time bifurcates along two
poles which reinforce each other: ceaseless change which acts as the culmination of
something like perpetual technological progress and innovation; and the idea that
nothing changes at all, that we have come to the end of history. If contemporary society
exhibits a profound ―faith in innovation,‖ perhaps even embracing innovation at the
expense of opposition, then such a faith will generally feed into the progression of
history's erosion. As Terry Eagleton once wrote:
History and modernity play a ceaseless cat-and-mouse game in and out of time,
neither able to slay the other because they occupy different ontological sites.
‗Game‘ in the positive sense—the ludic disportings of disruption and desire—plays
itself out in the crevices of ‗game‘ in the negative sense—game theory, the technoscientific system—in an endless conflict and collusion. Modernity here really
means a Nietzschean ‗active forgetting‘ of history: the healthy spontaneous
amnesia of the animal who has willfully repressed its own sordid determinations
and so is free. It is thus the exact opposite of Walter Benjamin‘s ‗revolutionary
nostalgia‘: the power of active remembrance as a ritual summoning and invocation
of the traditions of the oppressed in violent constellation with the political
present. (64)
Here, the ―endless‖ cycle of positive play—which I have been calling ludic unbinding—
conflicts but also colludes with the processes of systematization which temporarily
recodes this playful unbinding into dominant capitalist trends and channels (figured in
Eagleton's quote as the techno-scientific system). Here, innovative artists, designers,
etc., ―willfully repress‖ a sense of history in order to embrace freedom through the
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innovative act and even though the conflict or collision that might emerge from such
freedom inevitably leads to collusion (to ―play together,‖ to conspire together in a
deceitful manner), a collusion with the forces that rebind the free. Actively remembering
history and the history of opposition is one method for beginning to break free from ―a
ceaseless cat-and-mouse game in and out of time,‖ of not ceaselessly changing the rules
for their own sake but doing so in order to move toward an endgame instead of
indulging a middle game with no end.
It may be that it is now historical materialism itself ―which today, as we know, is
small and ugly and has to keep out of sight.‖ Yet, this does not mean that it must stop
playing the game of opposition, nor should it, especially in an era where its opponent
has grown brazen. Today, the Mechanical Turk is probably best known not as a chess
playing hoax from the late 17th century (let alone through Benjamin's analogy), but as an
―innovative‖ labor service developed by Amazon.com. The service allows businesses to
find ―workers‖ that will complete mundane tasks for micropayments—often just a
penny or two per task. As the official website describes it: ―While computing technology
continues to improve, there are still many things that human beings can do much more
effectively than computers, such as identifying objects in a photo or video, performing
data de-duplication, transcribing audio recordings or researching data details‖
(―Amazon‖). So, for example, a user/worker finds a group of tasks on the Amazon's
Mechanical Turk website that requires him to type five keywords for each image that he
is given; for each of these completed tasks he receives a penny (although, if the work is
not accepted by the company listing the task then they can simply choose to not pay).
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Basically, the Mechanical Turk website allows companies to outsource a form of
repetitive labor at a very low cost; they do not need to hire a workforce but can use
the website to find cheap labor. Again, the website explains:
Mechanical Turk aims to make accessing human intelligence simple, scalable, and
cost-effective. Businesses or developers needing tasks done (called Human
Intelligence Tasks or ―HITs‖) can use the robust Mechanical Turk APIs to access
thousands of high quality, low cost, global, on-demand workers—and then
programmatically integrate the results of that work directly into their business
processes and systems. (―Amazon‖)
Thus, the tasks completed by humans are automatically returned, programmatically, into
a business system, meaning that the human laborer becomes (more or less) a seamless
part of the computational system itself. Whereas the machine used to be the puppet
controlled by the human, now the human is puppeted by the machine (perhaps not very
far from some of Marx's comments concerning machinery and human labor). The
analogy to the Mechanical Turk ―works‖ simply because from the perspective of the
business and its operational system, the humans that perform the ―HITs‖ are hidden
away, their labor ―looking like‖ a mechanical or computational process (again, from the
perspective of the business system which is the true ―audience‖ of this work). In a
sense, the Mechanical Turk website is figured as the puppet itself, hiding within its belly
the ―general intellect‖ of the workers. The CEO of Amazon calls this human labor
―artificial artificial intelligence‖ and recently told the New York Times: ―'Normally, a
human makes a request of a computer, and the computer does the computation of the
task... But artificial artificial intelligences like Mechanical Turk invert all that. The
computer has a task that is easy for a human but extraordinarily hard for the computer.
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So instead of calling a computer service to perform the function, it calls a human'‖
(Pontin). Amazon's Mechanical Turk marketplace is indeed a startling innovation, but
Fig.13. Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon; ―Artificial Intelligence, With Help From the
Humans‖; Stuart Isett; New York Times, 25 Mar 2007; Web; 21 August 2010.
then again, it is not an innovation at all, just a renovation of processes of reification (and
alienation) taken to extraordinary extremes. It is business as usual. Indeed, the image
provided by the New York Times of Amazon's CEO, Jeff Bezos, provides a true
illustration of the current state of ―the game‖ (Fig. 13); here Bezos, dominating the
image, smiles wryly as he reaches over a chess board and removes a conquered,
opponent's piece. There can be little doubt who the current puppet masters are and
who are the pawns. Yet, if one can extract anything ―positive‖ from this new form of the
Mechanical Turk it is a sense that it explicitly installs ―historical materialism‖ in the form
of class struggle within the belly of the beast. That is, it is not a single ―dwarf‖ operating
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within the Mechanical Turk, but a collective—no matter how dispersed and separated,
alienated from the products of their labor, and temporally reified to the extreme as they
sell brief moments of their lives for an odd penny. Recalling the end of Brecht's Galileo,
Galileo worries that if the innovators (scientific innovators in the case of the play)
relinquish opposition and struggle then they are in danger of becoming ―a race of
inventive dwarfs who can be hired for anything.‖ Of course, the true inventive dwarfs
are those working to innovate a system such as the Amazon's Mechanical Turk; they are
the ones who have maligned Galileo's words that ―the only purpose of science is to ease
the hardship of human existence;‖ instead they have created ―new machines [that]
represent nothing but new means of oppression.‖ Nevertheless, the oppressed
collective hidden behind the ―robust APIs‖ of the Mechanical Turk website reveals that
history has not been eliminated but is continuing to hurt, as Fredric Jameson might say.
To break free from ceaseless change that is no change at all the social collective must
learn to play together in order to win the game, all the while revealing the hoax that
power can be accumulated in the hand of one as opposed to the many.
For the time being, such thoughts may seem ―small and ugly;‖ extracting
―positivity‖ from the alienated collective of workers whiling away time on the
Mechanical Turk website does little more than point toward continued forms of
oppression, toward the dystopia and ―intopia‖ of capitalist dominance. It is, perhaps, a
far cry from the utopian recoveries that Jameson and others have embraced. In terms of
video games, this chapter has suggested that the embrace of innovation in the indie
community could succumb to a similar fate, the same fate which worried Brecht's
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character Galileo: becoming an inventive class within the belly of dominant capitalist
trends, renovating capital, not opposing it. Not only does this suggest that their
aesthetic formal experiments can easily become co-opted, but that the rhetoric of
innovation and its attachment to capital will be spurred, assisting the reproduction of
dominant culture. If one must embrace attrition tactics within the middle game, one way
to do so would be to fuel skepticism about the ideology of innovation itself, innovation
for innovation's sake which is never actually autonomous at all (such might reveal
similarities to Benjamin's, and Brecht's, distrust in the blind acceptance of ―progress‖). In
terms of video games, remembering history and turning productive energies toward
possibilities of active remembrance, toward a recollection of resistance, and toward a
complex rethinking of time and history is a positive goal. It is, perhaps, a move to castle
history—if such a move is embraced in both its defensive and offensive possibilities.17 In
my mind video games have not investigated the landscape of history in any great depth,
and such an investigation remains one possibility for ―innovative‖ countergaming that
might not wither into renovation but, hopefully, bloom into oppositional practice.
Indeed, Galloway's comments about Civilization (mentioned above) tend to undermine
the idea that an investigation of history within video games can be effective (even though
he might not have intended his comments to make such a strong claim). Even Gonzalo
Frasca, who perhaps has been the strongest proponent of radical video game design, has
dissuaded the marriage between video games and history. In his essay ―Videogames of
the Oppressed‖ he writes that ―videogames are not a good realm for historic events or
characters or for making moral statements. A videogame about Anne Frank would be
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perceived as immoral, since the fact that she could survive or die depending on the
player's performance would trivialize the value of human life. We all know that Anne
Frank died and the reasons for her death; her story serves to convey a particular set of
values‖ (―Videogames‖). Yet, ethical problems aside, I would not want to dissuade
designers from approaching a game about Anne Frank, if such could be done in a way
that activated remembrance of the oppressed. (Moreover, why would a designer of such
a game need to provide for the possibility of her survival? The sheer force of inevitable
defeat in some historical games might tap into emotions that Benjamin associated with
remembrance.) In any event, history is much more complex than stories about
monumental lives or, as Benjamin argued, events governed by cause and effect and thus
cannot be rethought in a different fashion. If Frasca is excited by the futural possibilities
of video games and simulations—tools for imagining a different future—such an
excitement can be supplemented by a desire to investigate history through the video
game form as well. The two possibilities can be pursued simultaneously. Even a simple
game like Revolution proves that one can creatively address history and historical thinking
through the video game form (above and beyond a general sense of homogenous history
and ―progress‖ embraced by many war simulations and strategy games). Or, a game like
Lindsay Grace's Healer (in a very rudimentary, preliminary way) suggests that the video
game form might be used for active remembrance and embracing the plight and sacrifice
of those killed in historical massacres.
In any event, the goal of this chapter has not been to delineate a precise form of
oppositional game design, but to theorize possibilities outside the traditional frame of
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innovative practice that might provide a productive focus (one among many) for
countergaming production. Moreover, the goal has been to question innovation as an
―alternative strategy‖ to opposition (Bogost) and to begin to take a step back—if
possible—from the roil of total innovation and total flow that drives a historical
situation where endless change seems like no change at all. If Brecht's idea to change the
rules of chess mutated into a landscape where endless rule changes become normalized
and naturalized, perhaps attempting to create pockets of temporality for reflection—a
kind of Benjamin interruption within the game to create room for critical distance—
would not be the worst of options. I too think that ―disarticulating‖ notions of
innovation from its corporate hold has become ―one of the great issues of our age,‖ as
Steven Shaviro put it, and following Shaviro I too do not know the exact solution to
such an issue. While innovation and the new contain within them the hope for actual,
radical change, such a change has been stymied by its corporate takeover. In this middle
game, embracing a return to history and other forms of ludic rebinding that I have
mentioned can perhaps insert frictional impediments within the wash of total innovation,
hoping to provide footholds for future opposition.
To return to innovation and video games, here, briefly at the end, I want to
invoke the recent indie video game Braid (2008) as an example of a game that questions
innovation through innovation (fig. 14). Like The World of Goo, game designer Jonathan
Blow's Braid has been touted as one of the most innovative video games to appear in
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Fig.14. Title screen; Braid; Jonathon Blow; Number None, 2008; Video game.
recent years (if not in video game history). The game appropriates the form of a typical
2D, side-scrolling platformer like Super Mario Bros. where one plays the role of Tim—
rendered as a little avatar wearing a suit coat with a red tie—as he embarks on a
journey to rescue his ―princess‖ from a castle filled with danger. Although the genre of
the game is conventional (i.e. a 2D platformer), the gameplay mechanics are anything but
typical. Throughout the game Blow introduces myriad temporal dynamics which create
unique situations for solving different puzzles; these temporal adjustments become
perpetual estrangements that constantly defamiliarize the familiar 2D platformer. One
key temporal dynamic in the game allows the player to reverse time; thus, one cannot
die, or rather, when one does ―die‖—e.g. falling into a pit of spikes, colliding with a
enemy, etc.—the player can hold down the shift-key to reverse the flow of time,
rewinding the game to a moment before his or her death in order to attempt a different
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strategy. Just as in The World of Goo, innovative gameplay mechanics are introduced in
order to present new challenges. For example, in one set of levels certain items and
objects (which glow green) are not affected by the reverse of time. Thus, in one board a
(glowing green) key lies at the bottom of a deep pit; on the other side of the pit—which
one can easily jump over—is a locked door which must be opened with the key. To
solve the puzzle one simply leaps into the pit, grabs the key, and reverses time to the
point before he or she jumped into the pit; since the key is not affected by the timereversal, it remains within the player's possession when he or she reverses the flow of
time. Other temporal dynamics are added as the game progresses: levels where running
forward (to the right) on the board advances time while running backward (to the left)
reverses time; levels where time flows backward and thus pressing the shift key moves
time forward; levels where moving back in time will create a duplicate, ―shadow Tim‖
that will then carry out any actions the player performed before he or she moved back
in time, thus giving the player a copy of him- or herself that must be used to overcome
certain puzzles.
What interests me about this game is that (just as in The World of Goo) it employs
a rich narrative structure in order to frame the temporal dynamics of gameplay. At the
beginning of each ―world,‖ which consists of a number of levels to solve, Tim can pause
and read from various ―books‖ that provide narrative insights into his actions. Two
books in the beginning of the game read:
Tim is off on a search to rescue the Princess. She has been snatched by a horrible
and evil monster. This happened because Tim made a mistake.
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Not just one. He made many mistakes during the time they spent together, all
those years ago. Memories of their relationship have become muddled, replaced
wholesale, but one remains clear: the princess turning sharply away, her braid
lashing at him with contempt.
Thus, the game immediately begins to integrate gameplay aspects—being able to reverse
time and correct one's mistakes—with a narrative concerning a troubled relationship.
The ―braiding‖ of different forms of time in the gameplay is woven with narrative
strands that enrich these mechanics. The innovative gameplay aspects—the ludic
unbinding of the traditional 2D platformer—is reconstructed into a form that begins to
interrogate these mechanics. Yet, what distinguishes Braid's narrative structure is that,
through a twist at the end, the entire constellation of narrative fragments (coupled with
the temporal experimentation in gameplay dynamics) acquires multiple meanings.
Seemingly, the entire narrative recounts Tim's obsession with saving the princess,
investigating the desires and emotional trials that have composed their ―relationship,‖
yet at the end of the game it is revealed that the princess is actually a figure for the
atomic bomb. All the obsessive work to solve the game's puzzles, to progress, and to
save the ―princess‖ are recoded as steps along the way toward scientific progress (with
all its disastrous results). In a brilliant level near the end of the game (when Tim finally
finds the princess) the player progresses through a series of challenges where it seems
as though the princess is helping Tim progress while he also assists her escape from a
threatening knight; yet, at the end of the level the action is automatically reversed,
revealing that the princess is not attempting to assist Tim in saving her but is, in fact,
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Fig.15. Braid; Jonathon Blow; Number None, 2008; Video game.
trying to escape from him; the knight which she fled from at the beginning of the level is
re-figured as the knight in shining armor which saves her from Tim's pursuit. (For
example, in fig. 15 one sees the princess at the top of the screen, adjacent to a barrier.
When time moves in one direction (and action proceeds to the right of the screen), it
seems as though she pushes against the barrier and Tim must pull a lever to raise it and
let her get by; when time is reversed (and actions are rewound as the player watches), it
seems as though the barrier—which Tim has just released with the lever—has caught
her dress; she is trying to pull herself from it.)
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When the player returns to the different narrative elements in the game this
reversal reveals an investigation of the obsessiveness of technological progress, of the
obsessive drive to innovate without reflection on the consequences. After one plays
through the epilogue in the game which reveals this reversal, Tim ―reenters‖ the game
at the door on the left of the title screen (Figure 14), the glowing orange background no
longer a simple, beautiful aesthetic touch but a mark of a city engulfed in conflagration, a
mark of sublime destruction. From a Benjaminian perspective, ―thinking suddenly comes
to a stop in a constellation saturated with tensions‖—the ―past‖ of the game leaps forth
into a present shock of reconfiguration (―Concept of History‖ 396), revising the
narrative results in a perpetual rereading of events. For example, in one narrative
element (fig. 16), reread after the princess's transformation into a metaphor for the
atomic bomb, one realizes that Tim's obsession has not lead to a palace of peace, but to
the materialization of destruction and death: the ―final palace where we can exist in
peace‖ now seems like an allusion to heaven (representationally supported by the
cloudy environment). In another example, returning to the text I quoted earlier—―Tim
is off on a search to rescue the Princess. She has been snatched by a horrible and evil
monster. This happened because Tim made a mistake.‖— the narrative doubling or
reversal begins to have overtones that, interestingly, parallel the ideas expressed at the
end of Brecht's Galileo: ―the evil and horrible monster‖ (although being Tim himself on
one level) becomes the monster of dominant forces (―self-seeking people in power,‖ as
Brecht put it) that utilize scientific innovation for destructive purposes. The mistake Tim
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Fig. 16. Braid; Jonathon Blow; Number None, 2008;Video game.
made becomes recoded in terms of his obsessions that blinded him to the responsibility
of his actions, just as Galileo's mistake in capitulating the struggle against the church lead
to a deferral of emancipation.
Moving outside the game itself, some of Blow's remarks in a recent interview
reveal that the significance of the game might be attached to the process of innovation
itself. He says at one point in the interview that,
There is this idea of chasing innovation in game design that I used to be a big
proponent of, but that I now suspect is a little bit misdirected. [...] I think
gameplay innovation can result in things that are interesting, but at the same time
it doesn‘t automatically result in something that is deep — often it‘s a gimmick. I
am interested in deepness and richness of game design. You can get that with
deliberate innovation or without; I think the issues are orthogonal. At the same
time, I think if a designer is working on something he really cares about, and is
really exploring some ideas in his own style, bringing his own particular insight to
the table, then he will automatically come up with something different than most
other games; furthermore, this will be a deeper, more-compelling kind of
innovation. (―TIGinterview: Jonathan Blow‖)
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Such words suggest a detachment from innovating for innovation's sake, from ―chasing
innovation‖ (e.g. the pursuit of The Global Game Jam mentioned above) to seeking ―a
deeper, more-compelling kind of innovation.‖ Indeed, Braid itself begins to look like a
self-reflexive text which also formulates a subtle critique of ―chasing innovation‖
through the figure of Tim's obsessive, selfish, ―scientific‖ pursuit—chasing the princess
to the utter ends of the earth. Such an obsessive search—figured through the discovery
and implementation of innovative game mechanics, a first stage of ludic unbinding—then
focuses on a reconstruction of these unbound elements through a narrative structure
that ends up being about (partially) the pitfalls of innovation itself. In the first stage, the
rules of the game are changed, and the conventional form of the 2D platformer is
shattered; in the second stage, Blow performs a reconstruction of such changes,
inscribing a ―deeper, more-compelling‖ investigation of the potential outcomes of such
changes.
Why end with a game such as Braid? It is certainly not an overtly political or
oppositional game, though it struggles with proto-political issues. First, although Braid's
use of history seems secondary, hardly historical, I find the gameplay dynamics that
radically alter temporality examples of a complex reconfiguration of time that could be
useful (as a test) for possible games that focus on rethinking ―progress‖ and historical
change. Indeed, if our current situation can be characterized as a homogenous
movement of ceaseless change that is no change at all, rethinking this temporal antinomy
may provide one method for dislodging its effects. Within fragments that were written
in connection with ―On the Concept of History‖ but not included within the published
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essay, Benjamin wrote, ―Only when the course of historical events runs through the
historian's hands smoothly, like a thread, can one speak of progress. If, however, it is a
frayed bundle unraveling into a thousand different strands that hang down like unplaited
hair, none of them has a definite place until they are all gathered up and braided into a
coiffure‖ (―Paralipomena‖ 403). A game such as Braid embodies a formal structure which
experiments with such a dynamic, refusing to think in terms of unabated progress while
questioning nefarious outcomes that can be linked to an obsession with this progress.
Games like the vast majority of ―historical‖ war simulations present history as a thread,
a thread which perpetuates ideologies of the end of history and overcoming all
resistance; perhaps Braid can serve as a signpost for radical reconfigurations of historical
transformation. Second, the idea of braiding becomes a metaphor for the reconstruction
of aesthetic elements that have become unbound through a process of autonomization.
Thus, games such as Braid and The World of Goo participate in the ludic unbinding of
modernism but resist a perpetual unbinding that leads to total innovation and total flow,
embracing a ―non-innovative‖ return to narrative that functions as a meaningful
reflection on the process of ludic unbinding itself. Which leads to my third point, Braid
and The World of Goo are two of the most critically claimed, ―innovative‖ titles that have
appeared recently; both are indie games that have garnered praise from the video game
community while accruing financial success. Yet, what interests me is that both games
also address—on some level—the problem of innovation itself. One can brush this aside
as a typical self-reflexive stance that many alternative aesthetic objects embrace, an
expression of a designer's own narcissistic involvement in his or her personal aesthetic
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process. Such would be a mistake. On the one hand, both games investigate innovation
because it is a prominent, reoccurring issue (and obsession) within the video game
industry—as a way to speak about indie games but also as an ideology that suffuses the
marketing and self-aggrandizement of mainstream games. The theme of innovation
within Braid or The World of Goo also becomes a symptom for working through anxieties
about desiring to ―oppose‖ the mainstream, where one possible outcome would be that
the ―princess‖ of opposition turns out to be the pauper of renovation. As Shaviro put it,
innovation is ―one of the great issues of our age,‖ complete with problematic
contradictions and promising hopes. While Braid and The World of Goo might signal to
future producers that a blind embrace of innovation is a suspect form of progress,
innovation still appears within these games as a symptom of a larger cultural
problematic. It does so because these games work at a distance from opposition, from
political countergaming as such, and thus, following Brecht, both games will inevitably
end as renovations, ―calculated to rejuvenate existing society‖ not change it.
1 The major changes in modern chess—often called ―Queen's Chess‖—bestowed upon the queen her
modern, superior powers of movement while increasing the diagonal movement of the bishops (which
previously could only move two diagonal spaces, though they could jump over other pieces).
Incidentally, the rook's movement was not changed in modern chess, having the same form of
movement in earlier versions of the game. Thus, Brecht's comment that the rook could now move in a
new, extended form was not true. This could have been an intentional inclusion by Brecht since he
may have wanted to obscure that fact that the ―religiously represented‖ bishop had actually become
more powerful in modern chess, thus undermining his argument in Galileo that the power of religion
was weakening or was on the brink of being overturned.
2 Incidentally, one might wonder whether this notion of opening up a room for further play might
ultimately be indebted to Walter Benjamin and his famous essay ―The Work of Art in the Age of Its
Technological Reproducibility,‖ which Brecht had read (and criticized) in 1936 (shortly before he
began work on the first version of Galileo). As media scholar Mariam Hansen has brilliantly pointed out
in an essay analyzing the early (and widely unread) version of Benjamin's essay, the concept of roomfor-play (or Spiel-Raum) was a key aspect of cinematic experimentation faced with the decline of the
aesthetic aura. Thus, as the traditional rules of auratic aesthetic production waned, the new rules of
cinematic production and experimentation (montage, fast and slow motion, etc.) literally opened new
―room‖ for play which Benjamin ultimately saw as potentially productive for radical politics.
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3 Examining the potential of Brechtian aesthetics for the medium of video games must be undertaken
with a critical sensibility which does not simply seek to import his ideas into a new field without
assessing their viability. Thus this chapter follows prior examples of more sober assessments of
Brechtian aesthetics. For example, the theoretical examination of Brecht's impact on avant-garde
cinema as analyzed in a special edition of the journal Screen in 1974, ―Brecht and a Revolutionary
Cinema.‖ Or, in terms of theater itself, the special issue ―Distancing Brecht‖ in Theatre Journal from
1987. In this latter example, Sue-Ellen Case wrote in her introductory remarks that ―the title of this
issue, 'Distancing Brecht,' implies this historical, performative, and critical move away from the prior
decades and their sense of immediate access to the Brechtian tradition.‖ Thus, one must always keep
in mind that historical realities have changed and any use of Brecht must be mediated through this
change in history; simply porting Brecht into the realm of video game studies operates as if one has
―immediate access to the Brechtian tradition,‖ which is clearly not the case.
4 See for example Gonzalo Frasca's ―Videogames of the Oppressed‖ (2004), Dan Pinchbeck's ―A
Theatre of Ethics and Interaction? Bertolt Brecht and Learning to Behave in First-Person Shooter
Environments‖ (2006), Alec Charles, ―Playing with one's self: notions of subjectivity and agency in
digital games‖ (2009), and Jason Farman's ―Hypermediating the Game Interface: The Alienation Effect
in Violent Videogames and the Problem of Serious Play‖ (2010).
5 Elsewhere in the discussion, Costikyan expresses a similar sentiment without the hyperbole: ―What
Frank [Lantz] is getting at is the sense of 'being in the flow'—Brenda Laurel's notion of immersion—a
sense of transcendence, of complete involvement in the game. [..] Many game designers seem to view
creating an immersive experience as the goal, the be-all and end-all, the ideal of a perfect game. I
disagree, actually; immersion can be powerful, but it's neither necessary nor sufficient‖(54). He then
writes about the enjoyable socialization which occurs around playing board games with his friends.
While the socialization breaks the immersion of the game, the game also ―focuses‖ the socialization,
which the participants enjoy. Thus, the function of games is not synonymous with total immersion.
6 Returning to the early work of Brecht (prior to his more explicit engagement with Marxism) is not
without its academic subscribers who wish to locate a different conception of Brecht in order to
update his theories for postmodernity. See, for example, Elizabeth Wright's book Postmodern Brecht: A
Re-Presentation (1989).
7 The aesthetic modifications that Galloway discusses, specifically the mods that destroy gameplay
altogether could be one extreme, but even these modifications (because they do not always allow for
meaningful interaction) do not produce boredom or frustration within the action of playing the game.
8 One of Galloway's examples of a radical game is Activate: 3 Player Chess (2003), a game designed by
Ruth Catlow where a third person controls the pawns within a game of chess. She writes ―In the
newly created 3 Player Chess, pawns (played by a 3rd player) preserve peace by stopping any pieces
from being captured. If the pawns succeed in blocking the aggression of the higher pieces, the
checkerboard is progressively over-grown with grass and the black and white checks disappear in the
undergrowth‖ (Catlow).
9 Of course, this perpetual ludic postmodernism is also partially an illusion since (as I argued in chapter
one) capitalist tendencies will seek to temporally ossify this ―play‖ in extended patterns of
consumption, often a process hidden by the discourse of innovation of change. Thus, in terms of video
games, the continued consumption of many mainstream games is augmented by expansion packs, other
purchasable content, the release of numerous sequels or variations of a game—all of which are
couched in the discourse of innovative new possibilities though often the actual significant changes
wrought by such extensions are minimal. One goal of oppositional countergames will be to break the
ideology of innovation which the industry uses to sell non-innovative titles.
10 I should point out that Lui uses the term ―renovation‖ in much the same way that he uses
―innovation‖ while I have been using the former as a negative form of the latter, following Brecht's
formulation given at the beginning of the chapter.
11 In another example, game designer Andy Schatz responded, ―The indie game movement is the most
important transition this industry has seen since the rise of the internet. Indie visionaries have singlehandedly created the casual game genre, brought back long-dormant genres such as the strategy,
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12
13
14
15
16
17
adventure, and puzzle games, and have created entirely new concepts within gaming. Indie games have
spurred the growth of technology that has allowed serious games and persuasive games to be created.
Indie games are the ONLY games that simultaneously satisfy the gourmand, the casual gamer, and the
revolutionary‖ (Schatz). This comment not only reinforces the idea that independent games have
provided a catalyst for the rejuvenation of the games industry, but it also indicates that indie games can
provide an outlet for ―revolutionary‖ desires.
The simulation is also formally structured in such a way that interruptions in the game allow for
greater temporal gaps for action, gaps where the player must reason through decisions, beginning to
reflect upon how the different parts of the simulation are assembled and related to one another. Thus,
if the notion of total flow contains within it a sense that ceaseless interruptions lead to an overcoming
of interruption itself, the simulation game potentially allows the player to inhabit these interruptions. I
say ―potentially‖ because, in fact, the opposite experience often happens with simulations as well. In
his analysis of SimCity, Friedman argues that play can often become ―a continuous flow,‖ and ―it's easy
slide into a routine with absolutely no down-time, no interruptions from complete communion with
the computer. The game can grow so absorbing, in fact, your subjective sense of time is distorted.‖
Here we return to a sense of total immersion and absorption in the game.
Gonzalo Frasca's brief simulation game September 12th stands as a powerful example of an innovative
use of the simulation form, stripping the complexity of the simulation, and reducing it to a
demonstration of a few basic ideas. In Frasca's game the player drops bombs on a cartoonish
representation of a Middle Eastern city (drawn in isometric perspective), trying to bomb black-clad
terrorists running around the city (carrying little guns) while avoiding killing civilians who are also
moving about the city, depicted in blue. Yet the bombs need a brief period of time to launch, and thus
the terrorists often move away from where the bombs detonate while civilians are often caught in the
explosions; the death of civilians causes more civilians in the game to morph into gun-toting terrorists.
Thus, this simple use of simulation tactics provides critical commentary on the effectiveness of
bombing campaigns in curtailing terrorism. Here, simulating simple rules instead of complex systems
creates a new form with expressive possibilities.
As an example of destructive creativity Lui invokes the net activism of jodi.org, the makers of SOD and
Untitled Game which Galloway critiques as ―apolitical‖ precisely because they destroy gameplay, thus
creating art objects more akin to experimental video than radical games.
―One reason fascism has a chance is that, in the name of progress, its opponents treat it is as a
historical norm.—the current amazement that the things we are experiencing are 'still' possible in the
twentieth century is not philosophical. The amazement is not the beginning of knowledge—unless it is
the knowledge that the view of history which gives rise to it is untenable‖ (―Concept of History‖ 392).
It is not without note that when writing about television, Fredric Jameson attached the concept of
total flow to a loss of memory, the sense that ceaseless change produces ―the structural exclusion of
memory‖ (―Antimonies‖ 71). Also writing about television Stephen Heath expressed a similar view:
―television produces forgetfulness, not memory, flow, not history‖ (279). Since I have been using total
flow as an expanded cultural category these statements encapsulate the sense that the temporality of
ceaseless change enshrines forgetfulness in the vacated lot which used to house the historical.
Castling is a move in chess where the rook and king pieces exchange places. The origin of the modern
form of the move dates to the rise in power of the queen and bishop pieces (see endnote 1),
becoming, in a sense, a defensive move that could be made in order to protect the weaker king from
quick attack. Yet, while the king would jump behind protective pawns and shuttle to the side of the
board, the rook would also escape from its isolation and enter a more prominent position for attack.
Thus, while castling might primarily be a defensive manoeuvre, it also contains an offensive adjustment
within the game. Thus, in this double movement one could imagine the protection of remembrance
(the memory and sacrifice of opposition) and the use of new forms of historical and temporal thinking
which could begin to resist, grind away, the temporal antinomy of ceaseless change that is no change at
all.
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CHAPTER THREE
FLO AND DINER DASH: KILLING TIME, GENDER, AND THE WOMAN WHO
WAITS
The last part of the title of this chapter stems from the title of a book by Francis
R. Donovan, The Woman Who Waits. Published in 1920, the book contains an enthralling
ethnographic and sociological description of waitressing in Chicago where Donovan
herself became a waitress, at first, ―merely...to see what other women, not in my world,
were doing‖ (12). Donovan's self-conscious and clever title for the book not only
marked these working women as waitresses, but as a burgeoning social formation
waiting for visibility. Her book begins with an image of the modern crowd—―the tide,
which flows to and fro‖—and immediately she focuses on the working women, offering
a vivid description of their diversity in appearance and occupation. What drives her
curiosity in this highly visible swarm of women workers is precisely their invisibility—
their invisibility to her since they are ―not in my world‖ and their invisibility to society.
After choosing to focus on the waitress Donovan's preliminary research at the libraries
confirmed the invisibility of their work to the eyes of sociology, and thus she writes that
her book ―has no other purpose than that of making a certain situation intelligible‖ (16).
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While in the beginning of the book she admits to not having any ―particular desire to
make discoveries,‖ by the end Donovan's frank and honest descriptions of working
conditions for this emerging class of women became an argument for consciousness
raising and social reform to improve the catalog of dangers (often sexual in nature) that
Donovan perceived in her experience. Waitresses became for Donovan ―the
representative of the great mass of free women. Here we have the feminist movement
and ideals embodied in a class‖ (227). Although in parts of the book the singular nature
of her title—the woman who waits—seems at times to imply a woman waiting for a
husband, waiting for a traditional family life that would save her from the moral dangers
that she encountered, at the end of the text the waitress is a ―free soul,‖ an emblem of
emancipation who has abandoned the sexual structures of the traditional family which
was beginning to disappear, who needed to organize to improve the conditions of her
work (an organization which Donovan recognized as ―already beginning‖), who waited
not for a husband but for self-progress in a collective, feminist movement.
Donovan's work could also be offered as an example of the ―attitude‖ of waiting
which Siegfried Kracauer posited as a mode of being proper to modern daily life in his
essay ―Those Who Wait,‖ first published in 1922. Kracauer identified modernity as an
―emptying out of people's spiritual/intellectual space‖ through the progression of
enlightened modernization—the rationalization of society, the loss of theological
foundations and metaphysical certainties, the individualization of the self detaching from
the communal and becoming autonomous, isolated and alienated. In response to this
emptiness Kracauer identified two common responses or attitudes to fill the emptiness
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wrought by this crisis in the modern world (129-130). First, he described the unabashed
skeptic who embraces a type of intellectual loneliness, ―turn[ing] his back on the
absolute,‖ on faith and belief (136); the skeptic continues the work of rational
demystification, uncovering a constructed truth by dismantling what he or she sees as
false. Skeptics flee reality by renouncing it and uncovering its supposed, abstract
determinations or mythical irrationalities; in the end, they further expand the emptiness
by renouncing the reality in which they find themselves. Second, Kracauer described
what he called short-circuit people, individuals who react to the emptiness of the
modern world by frantically filling themselves with different religious or metaphysical
world-views, ―staggering into one religious realm or another,‖ satiating the desire for
faith and belief without actually participating in a true, sacred experience (137); shortcircuit people flee reality by filling the lack in their being with the first available drug of
belief which, in the end, turns out to be a placebo.
Between these two figures Kracauer offered a third attitude in response to the
historical crisis of modernity: waiting. Responding to the emptiness of the modern void
in meaning and spirituality, Kracauer theorized a more positive openness; whereas
skeptics affirm the emptiness in excess and short-circuit people deny the emptiness by
filling it, those who wait treat the emptiness as an opening into possibility, a clearing in
the dense forest of modernity where one sets up camp and lies in wait for what may
arrive. For Kracauer, this waiting is not passive but ―consists of tense activity and
engaged self-preparation‖ (139). Through this tense activity the one who waits engages
with reality, the everyday—not necessarily dismantling it and demystifying it into
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abstraction nor fleeing from it through the embrace of its illusions, but ―reading‖ it,
discovering within it the signs of both possibility and decay. Donovan's work fulfills this
mode of waiting as she turns toward—and literally engages within—the quotidian reality
of the waitress, ―mov[ing] out of the atomized unreal world of shapeless powers and
figures devoid of meaning and into the reality and domains it encompasses‖ (Kracauer
139). Donovan's waiting (both literally and in Kracauer's sense) manifested the life of a
particular class of women and their everyday lives. Donovan's openness to the situation
of the waitress allowed her to refuse to condemn or praise the life of the waitress;
instead she balanced the positive and the negative, saying ―yes‖ to the emancipation of
women from limitation while saying ―no‖ to certain conditions of this emancipation. In
his introduction to Kracauer's The Mass Ornament, Thomas Levin offers a helpful
description of the one who waits: ―...it is a new relationship to daily life, a 'hesitant
openness,' which also implies a sensitivity to 'the world of reality and its domains.' This
purposive ambivalence, a simultaneous 'yes' and 'no' to modernity, is described as a
'hesitant affirmation of the civilizing trend'—that is, a careful, critical, but decided
committed concern with the compromised domain of the quotidian‖ (14).
I offer these introductory remarks because the notion of the ―woman who
waits‖ seems an apt categorization of the current development of video games in
relation to gender. For many girls and women, waiting (in the colloquial, non-profession
sense) has been an activity pervasive in gaming culture—waiting for the games industry
(dominated by men) to recognize the female demographic of gamers, waiting for games
that appeal to their interests, waiting for recognition, visibility, and representation within
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the gaming world (both as producers and as players). Of course, one also needs to
understand this attitude of waiting in Kracauer's sense as well, for certainly this has been
an ―active and engaged‖ waiting which has not only generated significant discourse on
the subject of games and gender but has led to the active creation of games for girls and
women in the past, for example, the growth of female game entrepreneurship in the
1990s with the emergence of women led game studios such as Her Interactive, Purple
Moon, Girl Games and others (Cassell and Jenkins 1998). A significant amount of work
addressing gender and games has been undertaken with an attitude of ―hesitant
openness‖— where one says ―yes‖ to video games but ―no‖ to male dominance of the
games industry, to the sexist representation of female avatars in many games, to the lack
of games which speak to a female audience. Similar to Donovan's desire to increase the
visibility of the waitress in a masculine society, the active waiting of women involved in
game culture has contributed to the growing visibility of women gamers and gender
issues within scholarship and the industry. An increased visibility of women gamers has
operated as a key goal in this scholarship: increased visibility is said to lead to the
production of more games that will speak to women's desires, which will in turn interest
more women in gaming, which will in turn lead to more women interested in pursuing
careers in the games industry, which will in turn lead to the production of more games
that speak to women's desires—a ―virtuous cycle‖ as some have termed it (Fullerton et
al. 165). While I will not offer an analysis of this ―virtuous cycle,‖ this chapter continues
the work of increasing the visibility of gendered concerns with video games. First, I
address the recent heightened visibility of women gamers through the emergence of so294
called casual games, a visibility that has created a historical repetition where ―mass
gaming‖ is increasingly feminized. Second, given that many games that women (and girls)
like to play are not sufficiently analyzed in academic scholarship, I offer a close reading of
one such game, Diner Dash—a game where one plays as the waitress Flo, a woman who
flees an office job in the business world in order to open her own restaurants. I analyze
Diner Dash as a particular manifestation of a new women's genre, time management
games, directed primarily at women audiences (at least presently); one of my goals will
be to combat the degradation of casual games, revealing the complexity of significance
operating in these games while analyzing how casual games (much like daytime television
before) are integrated into, and further shape, the temporal experience of women in
contemporary society. Third, following on the heels of my analysis of Diner Dash—
where I demonstrate the importance of both representation and gameplay analysis when
closely playing a video game—I will critique recent trends in game scholarship which
devalue representational analysis, a devalorization which is often accompanied by
regressive discourses concerning the relationship of gender and games where the
―figure‖ of woman is often attached to the devalued sphere of representation. Finally,
stemming from the overall goal of this dissertation to expand our understanding of
games by connecting them to larger historical trajectories and forces, I offer a brief
reading of temporality, gender and modernity which might shed light on the repetitions
and discursive regressions that this chapter seeks to expose.
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The Hardcore Vs. The Casual: The Feminization of Mass Gaming
Casual is a modifier attached to games that differ from hardcore offerings that
appeal to a traditionally masculine audience such as many first-person shooters, role
playing games, real-time strategy games, etc.. The recent explosion of casual games
marks a rapid expansion of the games industry beyond the traditional market of
younger, dedicated male gamers, attempting to reach a wider demographic of potential
players such as non-identifying gamers, women, young children, older players, or
individuals who might have played games in the past but who now do not have adequate
time or money (for example, because they have started families) to commit to more
expensive and temporally demanding hardcore games. The ―Casual Games Market
Report‖ (2007) offers the following definition of casual games:
Casual games are video games developed for the mass consumer, even those
who would not normally regard themselves as a ‗gamer.‘ Casual games are fun,
quick to access, easy to learn, and require no previous special video game skills,
expertise, or regular time commitment to play. Many of these games are based
around familiar game concepts that consumers played in arcades or [on] the
family Atari from childhood. In addition, casual games are usually easy to pause,
stop and restart with little consequence to the player‘s enjoyment. (―All About
Casual‖)
The summary of the report continues to differentiate casual games from hardcore
offerings. For example, casual games tend to have lower production costs than hardcore
games; they are often distributed over the Internet or used on mobile devices instead of
purchased in stores and installed on dedicated game consoles (or they can be
downloaded over console game networks and installed on these machines); they have
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more cartoonish and less realistic graphical representation than hardcore offerings; they
are less time consuming overall and play-time is broken into shorter segments; they
have simpler game mechanics and are easier to pick-up, play and advance through; input
methods are also simpler—for example, Diner Dash requires only single mouseclicks as
opposed to games which require extensive use of mouse and keyboard functionalities;
not surprising, the report compares hardcore games with stereotyped ―masculine‖
examples from cinema (e.g. Reservoir Dogs and Aliens) and causal games with ―feminine‖
television shows (e.g. Sex in the City, Friends, and ER). Popular types of casual games
include puzzle games, card games, simple action or arcade games, hidden object games,
word games, and titles such as Diner Dash (which is classified as a time management
game). Even entire game systems such as the Nintendo DS or Wii are frequently cited
as casual systems given their ease of use, simpler input devices, less realistic graphics,
and game selection which includes an array of titles that fit many of the above
parameters associated with casual games. Given that casual games are ―developed for
the mass consumer‖ in the last few years these games have become remarkably
pervasive. Even the ―Dash‖ franchise already includes a slew of titles: five titles in the
Diner Dash series and then spinoffs such as Wedding Dash, Cooking Dash, Diaper Dash,
Fitness Dash, Fashion Dash, and others.1 Indeed, the remarkable growth of the casual
games industry has led some to conclude that these games are now the ―mainstream‖
backed by the mass consumption of women buyers: ―In short, casual gaming is
everywhere. Which begs the question: Is it really a niche? Casual gaming's biggest star,
Flo [the heroine of Diner Dash]—unlike, say, Halo's faceless super soldier, Master
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Chief—is a recognizable character with a recognizable problem: She's got to keep her
diner running. Culturally, at least, casual games—and the women who pay for them—
aren't just part of the mainstream. They already are the mainstream‖ (Caulfield).
Most of the titles in the Dash series—and many other time management games
with similar play mechanics such as Cake Mania, Spa Mania, Fashion Boutique, Daycare
Nightmare, School House Shuffle, etc.—are marketed to women players, focusing on
interests, activities and professions commonly labeled as feminine. Moreover, most of
the titles employ a female character as the protagonist that the player operates. In
terms of downloadable games or browser-playable games on the Internet, women
players and consumers were, until recently, considered the primary players of casual
games. In a 2005 interview with senior members of the top casual game distributors, all
six of the (male) participants emphasized the predominantly female demographic which
subtends their businesses (Tinney, ―Understanding the Casual Gamer‖). Yet, a report
from the Casual Games Association (CGA) in 2007 undermined the myth that casual
gamers are mostly women, reporting a near even split where 51% of casual players are
women and 49% are men (although, it also found that women typically pay for these
games at a much higher rate than men, 74% versus 26%). On the heels of this report and
in a heavily cited passage that wormed its way throughout game related blogs, the
director of the Casual Games Association, Jessica Tams, suggested that ―We knew these
guys were playing these games. But the hardcore gamer who is playing Halo with his
buddies isn't going to brag that he just beat the next level of Zuma‖ (quoted in Hills).
Such an interpretation of the report—and its widespread dissemination—imply a
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masculine anxiety of feminization, repeating common historical responses to mass
culture which create a gendered divide between masculine, high culture which embraces
difficulty, complexity, activity, and concentration (e.g. hardcore games like Halo) and a
feminine, low culture which supposedly breeds ease, simplicity, passivity and distraction
(e.g. causal games like Zuma).
Within the popular press (and often in blog posts and comments from the
public) the casual game market is often feminized. The vocal game blogger Sean Malstom
offered his criticism of the CGA's differentiation between hardcore and casual titles: ―It
appears these commentators are beating around the bush to NOT explicitly say that
‗casual gaming‘ is GIRLY GAMING and ‗hardcore gaming‘ is BOY GAMING. Look at the
definition they use again and replace ‗casual‘ with ‗girly‘ and ‗hardcore‘ with ‗boy‘ and
note how they fit‖ (―Are Casual Games...‖).2 Such gendering discourse spans a
continuum of rhetoric that extends from the simple association of women with casual
games (such as the epigraph above) to sexist rants on casual games such as a video
review of the ―casual‖ game Peggle from the Escapist Magazine, which—though a bit
tongue-in-cheek—explains that casual games arose when ―bored housewives‖ decided it
was improper to have affairs with the TV-repair man and thus turned to simple games
to pass their time.3 While some articles and comments on blog posts might contain
seemingly innocuous mentions of casual games as ―chick friendly‖ (Jager), as the choice
of ―bored housewives‖ (―Net Games Lure 'Bored Housewives'‖), or as titles a gamer's
girlfriend might play, other articles avoid this rhetoric linguistically but contain images of
young or middle-aged women (and often the elderly as well) playing ―casual consoles‖
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such as the Wii or the handheld Nintendo DS.4 One such image (fig. 1) from an online
article ―Are 'Casuals' Killing Gaming?‖ depicts an exaggerated hardcore gamer in the
forefront while a middle-aged ―Mom‖ appears in the background grasping a Wii
controller, a threatening appropriation of the cultural (gamic) phallus and hence a
threatening image of feminization (castration) that must be visually contained through
the hyperbolic excess of ―hardcore‖ masculinity displayed predominantly in the image.
Fig. 1. Hardcore Vs. Casual Gamer; Gameplayer.com.au, 17 April 2008; Web; 12 Aug.
2008
Such an image is a hypermasculine display that ―attempts to visibly establish an
acceptable terrain of masculinity through exhibitions of male potency and prowess‖
(Joyrich 79). Indeed, the above image repeats a similar logic of masculine representation
in television that, following Lynne Joyrich‘s argument, commonly embraces ―exaggerated
and compensatory display[s]‖ of masculinity in order to parry the perceived ―femininity‖
of the medium (79).
In the last five years or so the rise of casual games and its concurrent gendering
as feminine has ignited a palpable anxiety in (masculine) hardcore culture where these
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gamers—once the darlings of the gaming industry—worry that the mass consumer and
the casual gamer will kill or overrun the hardcore. The hardcore gamer frets that games
will be ―dumbed down‖ and increasingly simplified, a process that supposedly will not
ignore titles traditionally viewed as hardcore as these too will absorb principles of casual
gaming in order to increase their audience and distribution. While I am not interested in
entering the snowstorm of debates concerning the exact differences between hardcore
and casual gamers, or what effect the latter will have on the former, I am intrigued that
this anxiety marks the reappearance of a supposedly outdated, modernist rhetoric
where the autonomous sphere of (white, masculine) high culture expresses worry that
the masses (in this case, figured as the ―others‖ of this privileged male position: women,
children, the elderly, ―gaymers,‖ etc.) will eventually overwhelm and destroy it. As the
evidence above suggests, the trope of aligning mass culture and the ―mainstream‖ with
women has reappeared in the gaming community. This reappearance is intriguing given
that it has been argued that such discourse belongs to the historical period of modernity
(or more specifically, aesthetic modernism). Twenty years ago Andreas Huyssen
concluded his essay ―Women as Mass Culture:‖
...it seems clear that the gendering of mass culture as feminine and inferior has its
primary historical place in the late 19th century, even though the underlying
dichotomy did not lose its power until quite recently. It also seems evident that
the decline of this pattern of thought coincides historically with the decline of
modernism itself. But I would submit that it is primarily the visible and public
presence of women artists in high art, as well as the emergence of new kinds of
women performers and producers in mass culture, which make the old
gendering device obsolete. The universalizing ascription of femininity to mass
culture always depended on the very real exclusion of women from high culture
and its institutions. Such exclusions are, for the time being, a thing of the past.
Thus, the old rhetoric has lost its persuasive power because the realities have
changed. (Huyssen 62)
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The realities have changed, again. Or, perhaps, they have not changed as much as some
critics of modernism have maintained. Huyssen's observations are not incorrect, given
that he was addressing the modernism/postmodernism debate in terms of the divide
between high art and mass culture at a particular historical juncture. Moreover, he
argued presciently that contemporary mass culture would become more threatening to
women because masculine representations of violence would subsist in mass media
forms. This is clearly the case in video games where issues of feminine representations
in video games have often circulated in terms of violence directed toward women and in
terms of the hypersexualized representations of women that project a representational
violence where man's desires distort ―reality‖ in terms of their own sexual fantasies.
Yet, contained within Huyssen's significantly entitled book After the Great Divide, the
above quote offers an implicit definition of postmodernism as a historical supersession
of the rhetorical equivalence of women and mass culture. The re-emergence of
discourses that align women with the mainstream of gaming (and its threat to the
hardcore) suggest that the discursive structures of modernism have disappeared, that
the postmodern might not be as ―post‖ as once thought. As Lynne Joyrich has argued—
in reference to Huyssen‘s argument and the medium of television—―the use of feminine
imagery to describe our ‗lowest‘ cultural form (in opposition to whatever is help up as
more respectable and ‗masculine‘—print or film) has not faded away with the passing of
modernism‖ (74). Now the ―respectable and masculine‖ form is solidifying around the
hardcore game versus the ―lower cultural form‖ of the feminized casual game.5
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One might attach this reemergence of gendered discourse to a similar dynamic
of visibility vs. invisibility that has shifted to the sphere of game culture where there
exists ―the very real exclusion of women from high culture and its institutions‖ (in this
case, gaming institutions and the technological culture which produces hardcore games).
As women gamers and women's game genres become more visible—largely in relation
to casual games—masculine gaming culture responds with discourses of threat, anxiety,
and containment—the latter accomplished by the continued degradation of casual games
as simple, insignificant, and reductive of hardcore aesthetics. As Andreas Huyssen wrote:
But when the 19th and early 20th centuries conjured up threat of the masses
'rattling at the gate', to quote [Stuart] Hall, and lamented the concomitant
decline of culture and civilization (which mass culture was invariably accused of
causing), there was yet another hidden subject. In the age of nascent socialism
and the first major women's movement in Europe, the masses knocking at the
gate where also women, knocking at the gate of a male-dominated culture. It is
indeed striking to observe how the political, psychological, and aesthetic
discourse around the turn of the century consistently and obsessively genders
mass culture and the masses as feminine, while high culture, whether traditional
or modern, clearly remains the privileged realm of male activities. (Huyssen 68)
Often one finds similar rhetoric within the hardcore community where male gamers
worry that the hardcore will be ―drowned out‖ (Sterling) by a flood of casual games,
that the ―masses‖ are ―gatecrashing the [hardcore] party in their millions‖ (Jager), or
that hardcore games are now elevated art objects threatened by the easy, less time
consuming, mass production of casual games. Whereas Huyssen positions contemporary
society as ―after the great divide‖ between mass culture and high art (thus ―post‖modernist, if modernism is seen as the historical situation where this divide reached its
apogee), a cursory glance at the gendered discourse surrounding casual and hardcore
games problematizes this assumption. Rather, one observes in gaming culture the
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nascent emergence of a high/low divide predicated on a resuscitation of typical gendered
binaries where the ―high art‖ of the hardcore (as a ―privileged realm of male activities‖)
emerges over and against the degraded sphere of the casual game as low, feminine
distraction and passivity. Yet, Huyssen is in some respects correct that the ―great
divide‖ has passed given that the current emergence of a similar divide in video game
culture contains markers of historical difference from the past: most significant is the
fact that the divide between hardcore and casual games concerns a split within mass
culture itself, not necessarily between high art and mass culture. Hardcore and casual
games are both undoubtedly mainstream. Though the production of ―artgames‖
produced by individuals or independent game studios is growing, a stable, high-art
sphere of game production predicated on modernist ideas of opposition and an
aesthetic autonomy uncontaminated by the degradations of mass culture is currently
lacking in contemporary culture (and probably will not emerge anytime soon, if at all).
(Indeed, as I argued in the last chapter, independent games concern ―innovation not
opposition‖ (Jahn-Sudmann), thus emulating the core, ideological principle of innovation
spouted by the mainstream games industry itself). There is a truth to postmodernism
(or late capitalism) since the ―great divide‖ between mass culture and high art has
eroded with the current state of game culture, offering evidence that the logic of the
commodity has won out over the imagined possibility of its aesthetic rejection.6
Nevertheless, while the rhetoric of mass gaming as feminine might not be as pervasive as
a similar rhetoric Huyssen identifies in the 19th and 20th centuries, it certainly adheres as
a ―hidden subject‖ in contemporary game culture, leading one to ponder that the
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dynamic of modernism based upon a division of the high and low still continues to
function primarily because that other, perhaps greater, divide of sexual difference (and
the persistence of patriarchy which continually motivates dynamics of feminine threat
and its discursive containment) fundamentally structures the emergence of various
modernism(s) and the privileging of masculine forms over diminished feminine forms.
Huyssen's mistake, it appears, is the linking of postmodernism's overcoming of
modernism with an unbridled optimism that postmodernist feminist critiques of
patriarchal systems and dominant forms of masculinity have also strongly eroded the
divide of sexual difference and its traditional gender hierarchies. He writes, ―it seems
clear that feminism's radical questioning of patriarchal structures in society and in the
various discourse of art, literature, science, and philosophy must be one of the measures
by which we gauge the specificity of contemporary culture as well as its distance from
modernism and its mystique of mass culture as feminine‖ (62). If such is one measure of
modernism's withdraw, then the evidence in game culture suggests a nascent formation
of the culture‘s own regressive modernism that has yet to construct its ―post.‖
Huyssen suggests that the discourse of mass culture as women diminishes, that
modernism transitions to postmodernism, because of three factors: first, because of the
―visible and public presence of women artists in high art;‖ second, the increasing number
of women producers in mass culture; and third, because of the postmodern ―feminist
critique‖ of general patriarchal structures in society and of ―multilayered sexism in
television, Hollywood, advertising, and rock 'n' roll‖ (that is, critiques of sexism in mass,
popular culture) (62). The increased visibility of these three factors in turn causes the
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discourse of mass culture as feminine to ―lose its persuasive power.‖ Within game
studies, theorists investigating gender issues are certainly pursuing these goals. For
example, many argue that an increased presence and visibility of women in the video
game industry (and in game production in general) will help alleviate the
representational violence currently rampant within games culture; important work on
gender and games investigates the reasons for the lack of women working within the
industry while attempting to combat the forces of this exclusion. I would also contend
that there has been a fair amount of criticism concerning the sexism of gender
representation within specific games (largely centered around the critique of
hypersexualized female avatars); one might view the appearance of avatars like Chell
from Portal or Faith from Mirror's Edge as evidence that critiques of sexist avatar design
have had some positive impact on actual game development. In addition to this feminist
work in game studies I want to argue for two further avenues of exploration. First,
Huyssen fails to emphasize another aspect of feminist scholarship that has gone a great
distance in curtailing the devaluation of mass culture as feminine: the critique and
positive recovery of devalued mass cultural forms aimed at women audiences. Feminist
approaches to television soap operas, romance novels, melodrama and women's films
have countered attacks on these forms as degraded mass cultural objects that are not
worthy of study, analyzing them instead as forms that perpetuate ideological control
while searching for the possibility of women's pleasure and desire that are repressed
and contained by their forms. Casual games primarily aimed at women players—
specifically the genre of time management games largely spawned by the success of titles
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like Diner Dash, Cake Mania and others—need to be examined in a similar fashion,
revealing their complexities in order to combat culturally dismissive rhetoric that links
their simplicity to a degraded femininity. As some feminist game scholars have pointed
out, there is often a lack of scholarship concerning pleasures of specific games that
female players enjoy—a problematic invisibility that I address in the next section
through a close reading/playing of Diner Dash (Arthurs and Zacharias 106). Second, I will
critique another form of rendering invisible subtly operating in the emergence of game
studies as a discipline: the devaluation of representation that emphasizes the non-visual,
non-narrative elements of games as a focus of study. Such devaluation has been
rhetorically attached to the ―figure‖ of the women, creating negative repercussions for
the study of gender and games. The rejection of representation in game studies has
incited particular forms of historical blindness which, I will argue, are fundamental to the
reappearance of the regressive forms of feminizing discourse described above. The reemergence of this regressive discourse in game culture is a symptom of a historical
invisibility—a repression—of feminist progress and insights in the past.
Time Management in Diner Dash
I am Flo, dashing from table to table, responding to the hands of customers that
pop into the air to demand attention, grabbing appetizers and orders and entrées and
dirty dishes, trying to keep everyone happy so that I garner a higher tip and thus gather
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a higher score. When my shift begins the pace is usually slow, but soon the customers
begin to line up, and the groups of seated customers are all demanding service, wanting
things at different times and desiring to be served in a timely fashion. Some customers
are quite happy with my service, while others are visibly upset, and some even leave in
Fig. 2. Diner Dash. Gamelab, 2003; Video Game; 15 September 2009.
huff causing my score to plummet (fig. 2). The chaos and pressure builds as my attention
is sent in multiple directions, making sure I bring customers what they want while also
monitoring everyone's pleasure or displeasure. Dashing around I try to keep everyone
happy at once, try to maintain order in a situation which threatens to fall into complete
chaos.
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Flo is the protagonist of Diner Dash (Gamelab 2003), a massively popular casual
game originally distributed over the Internet for PC gaming but which is now available
on mobile phones, handheld systems, and over console networks such as the PlayStation
Network. The player has two game options. In the story mode of the game—called
―Flo's Career‖—there are five restaurants that Flo must ―save,‖ each with ten levels or
discrete shifts that she must survive. As one progresses through these shifts Flo earns
money with which she automatically upgrades, restores and repairs the restaurant
(which ostensibly brings more customers in the restaurant). The game is intensely
repetitive where each shift is occupied by a similar set of tasks, where each restaurant
one works in (though it might have a different ―look‖) requires the same process of
restoring order to chaos. As one progresses through the levels or shifts the multitasking
challenges increase: more tasks are added (e.g. bringing appetizers to the customers) as
well as more tables of customers. In addition to the story mode one can play the
―Endless Shift‖ which follows an arcade style format where one plays a single
interminable shift attempting to survive as long as possible and accrue the highest score;
the customers keep coming until the player runs out of ―lives‖ which are depleted when
the player fails to serve these customers before their impatience causes them to literally
evaporate. Although Diner Dash shares gameplay elements with other previous games,7
its gameplay structure—where the player must balance a plethora of demanding tasks—
has given rise to many sequels within the ―Dash‖ series as well as to an extraordinary
number of (repetitive) clones, clones that also emulate its concise but significant use of
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narrative frames and simple visual design. Although I would not claim that Diner Dash is
purely original, its spatial, temporal, representational, and gameplay forms have given
birth to many children, thus elevating Flo as a mother of a particular (women's) genre. It
is for this reason that I turn to closely analyze the first Diner Dash game, realizing that
my observations will not apply to all, similar ―time management‖ games, though hoping
that these reflections might be useful in future readings of these games as well.
My analysis begins with a short critique of Diner Dash figured as kitsch; then I
turn to analyze Diner Dash's gameplay elements and the relation of its structure to
women's everyday life, finally ending with a discussion of Diner Dash's representational
framework, attempting to interpret the cultural significance of the game as a whole.
Diner Dash as (Theoretical) Kitsch
Although Diner Dash has been one of the most popular games in the last five
years, with a strong demographic of women players, it has not been discussed in much
depth. Recently, and significantly, Ian Bogost briefly analyzed Diner Dash as an example of
kitsch aesthetics in his recent popular article at Gamasutra.com entitled ―Video Game
Kitsch.‖ The identification of Diner Dash as kitsch is an acute observation. The game
certainly embodies many properties traditionally associated with kitsch: the ease of its
consumption, its seeming simplicity and degradation of prior (and so-called ―higher‖)
video game forms, its use for distraction and pastime, its appeal to a mass culture
audience, its cheaper production expense compared to other hardcore game titles, its
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use of reductive stereotypes for the characters within the game, its (―fakey‖) cartoonish
graphics, its so-called ability ―to deceive people about their true situations‖ as Adorno
has remarked concerning kitsch (―to fool the girl at the typewriter into thinking she is a
queen‖ (503) might be rewritten in the context of Diner Dash as fooling the woman at
the keyboard into thinking she is successful, wealthy entrepreneur). Indeed, Diner Dash
is also a perfect example of an ―original type‖ of kitsch which, ―As soon as a new type
turns up...a large group of similar compositions is created that sometimes drive out the
originals‖ (Adorno, 503)—such is exactly what happened to Diner Dash, now drowning
in a sea of its own sequels, spin-offs and unrelated clones.
In defining video game kitsch Bogost focuses on two main aspects. First, kitsch
video games ―draw on borrowed conventions, repurposing them for popular appeal‖
(―Video Game Kitsch‖). In this process of repurposing these games reduce the
complexity of the original forms which came before. Thus, in terms of Diner Dash,
Bogost writes that, ―The idea of complex, multi-action challenge endemic to games is
reduced to clicking the right object at the right time. It is here that we see the copying
and dilution of convention typical of kitsch‖ (―Video Game Kitsch‖). Gameplay is
reduced both in terms of using a simple, one-handed mouse interface,8 but also reducing
the actual complexities of managing a restaurant (which a video game could certainly
model) to a simple set of unambiguous, repetitive tasks focused mostly on the work of a
waitress and not a restaurant manager. Second, Bogost argues that games such as Diner
Dash express a ―trite sentimentality‖ where past realities are falsely sustained in the
present, or, as Adorno put it, ―kitsch precisely sustains the memory, distorted and as
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mere illusion, of a formal objectivity that has passed away‖ (501). Here, Bogost argues
that Diner Dash invokes outdated notions of the ―protestant work ethic‖ where
―sentimentalism is accomplished by invoking the moral fortitude of hard work. It is a
game in which a good work ethic, careful attention, and persistence always yield
success‖ (―Video Game Kitsch‖).
Although Bogost's article should be commended for illuminating the state of
video games through the invocation of kitsch, I cannot help thinking that there is an
element of ―theoretical kitsch‖ at work in the article. That is, he extends the concept of
kitsch—which carries its true power in the context of modernity as Matei Călinescu has
exhaustively argued (1977)—into a present moment that has changed contexts from
when the dialectic of kitsch and the avant-garde, the culture industry and high art, stood
at its peak.9 Kitsch reveals a distinct temporal logic where a past historical reality (either
its artistic forms or social structures) are continued into the present but without the
historical context which sustained their original meaning. Kitsch is the past alive in the
present, but deadened, stripped of its original force and acting only as illusion, ultimately
distorting our understanding of the present by contaminating it with a past which has
become unreal. Given my discussion of the return of discourses of modernity and
modernism in video game culture (the hardcore vs. the casual as a reinscription of the
high vs. the low) it should not be surprising that kitsch returns as well. The problem of
this return is precisely that gender remains completely unthought. Bogost ignores the
question of gender in Diner Dash (his silence re-inscribing the discourse of mass culture
and the feminine).10 For example, he says nothing about feminist recoveries of mass
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culture, popular culture, camp, and kitsch which in the last few decades have challenged
the assumption that mass culture is primarily a degraded, impoverished form. Ignoring
the impact of this scholarship while choosing to talk of kitsch as if unchanged from an
earlier historical period is precisely ―sustaining the memory, distorted and as mere
illusion, of a formal objectivity that has passed away‖ (Adorno). In this case the
theoretical kitsch serves as a distortion to mask gender and the gains that have been
made in understanding popular forms and their relationships to women audiences.
Moreover, Diner Dash's invocation of female entrepreneurship and an ethic of hard work
is seen as ―trite sentimentalism,‖ though female entrepreneurship is not a historically
outdated context (at least for women). It would seem that the logic of equality, or
―feminist progress,‖ where, for example, women begin entering the work force in the
large numbers, where they gain suffrage, where they strive for equal professional pay in
the workforce, where they begin to become entrepreneurs—all of these as seen from
the perspective of the dominant would always be a form of kitsch in so much as kitsch runs
behind the times (it is the rear-garde not the avant-garde). From a dominant, masculine
perspective the achievements of women are in danger of always being seen as
repetitions of what men have already achieved, a reduction of their previous
accomplishments. One must always remember that seen from the eyes of women,
history has taken a different course of action where what is outdated for the dominant
might be less so for the marginalized, where what is ―trite sentimentalism‖ for the
dominant becomes important strategy for others. The critique of a historically masculine
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perspective on kitsch would thus require a recovery of the complexity of kitsch texts—
a complexity unseen by analyses where gender is rendered invisible.
I am not denying that Diner Dash is kitsch (from a certain perspective), but I am
denying that it is only kitsch. I am sure Bogost would agree, and one cannot fault him for
not analyzing Diner Dash in depth given the formal constraints of his short article.
(Although it is odd given Bogost's sophisticated understanding of visual and procedural
rhetoric—the latter a concept he himself formulated—that Diner Dash would not be
treated with his usual, acute analyses.) Nevertheless, while Bogost might be right that
hard work does not always equal success, and thus the kitsch in Diner Dash concerns the
restoration of this ―false belief‖ to a present time where it has lost its force, I would
suggest that a deeper analysis of Diner Dash reveals that this message (hard work =
success), while true, is an insufficient reading of the complex dynamics occurring within
the gametext; this message is the theoretical kitsch which emerges when one ignores
key aspects of the text such as its relationship to gender and contemporary history. The
invisibility of gender and the lack of careful consideration of Diner Dash's complexity are
the preconditions for the video game kitsch which Bogost extracts. Instead, an
explication of the text orbiting issues of women's work, temporality, and desire will
embed the game in a social and historical context allowing one to reveal both the
ideological containments and the desire for change operating within these containments.
I should add that, probably more than most, feminists are painfully aware that hard work
does not always equal success, thus the ―sentiment‖ that hard work will result in success
(such as in Diner Dash) performs a strategic, ideological inoculation against the sickness
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of defeatism, a defeatism that can unfortunately be fueled by associating kitsch with
games popular to women players while ignoring questions of gender entirely.
Gameplay and the Flo(w) of Everyday Life
The term gameplay is an ambiguous term. Often it is used simply to describe the
overall experience of playing a particular video game, linking this experience to an
assortment of elements: the set of rules encoded in the game's structure that gives rise
to particular actions, how space and time operate to position these actions, the goals
and objectives that frame these actions, the user interface that allows the player to
control and act within the game. Simply put, gameplay is what you do in a game and how
you go about doing it. Espen Aarseth provides the following schema that helps to
explain gameplay: ―Any game consists of three aspects: (1) rules, (2) a material/semiotic
system (a gameworld), and (3) gameplay (the events resulting from application of the
rules to the gameworld)‖ (―Genre Trouble‖). The formal rule systems define a
―grammar of action‖ (to borrow a term from Philip Agre) which the player inhabits
when playing. The semiotic system would include elements such as narrative and visual
frameworks. Gameplay emerges between these two poles. Yet, though gameplay is
associated with the game's narrative and graphical elements, these are often seen as
secondary to the importance of rules which impact the experience of gameplay and
circumscribe the possible experiences that arise from it. The experience of gameplay is
closely tied to the rules and what events arise from their application. Thus, Aarseth
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argues that the semiotic system is the most ―coincidental‖ aspect of video games and
can be changed without impacting the rules (and, perhaps, without fundamentally
altering the experience of gameplay as well). For example, there are many different
games that emulate Diner Dash's rules and gameplay experience while the semiotic
system and gameworld representations are quite different. I will return to the function
of representation below, but for now let me offer a brief description of Diner Dash's
―grammar of action‖ and emergent gameplay experience.
Fig. 3. Gameplay elements in Diner Dash; Diner Dash; Gamelab, 2003; Video Game; 15
September 2009.
Diner Dash, like other casual games, is quite simple. The player uses only a mouse
as the interface, clicking on different parts of a simple, spatially static screen, occasionally
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using the mouse to drag objects (customers) around. When the game begins colorcoded customers appear on the left hand side of the screen. Using the mouse I click on
them and drag their cartoonish bodies onto tables within the space to seat them; if I
match a color of a customer with a similarly colored seat I score bonus points. At times
I might choose not to seat certain groups of customers (or cannot seat them because all
the tables are filled) so the line of customers begins to grow. Once I have seated the
customers I simply carry out a series tasks (fig. 3) by clicking on different parts of the
screen when these tasks demand action. Flo then dashes off to the locations I send her.
Flo can only carry two objects (orders, appetizers, entrées, dirty dishes, etc.), at least, in
the beginning of the game. For example, if four entrées are ready to be served, I would
click on two of the entrées, then click on the two tables where they should go, then
click on the two entrées left to be served, and finally click on the other two tables that
are waiting. When I click on something, Flo dashes off automatically. Importantly, I do
not have to wait for her to arrive where I have sent her, but if I am fast enough and
keep ahead of her movements, I can click on multiple locations for her to go in advance.
Meanwhile, each group of customers is accompanied by a ―timer‖ represented as a line
of little hearts which slowly bleed away as time passes; it is also a mark of the
customers' happiness level. Indeed, the customers show simple emotional expressions
of intense happiness when I serve them quickly; or, if I ignore them, their cartoon faces
express exaggerated anger when their timer of hearts ticks or beats away. If all the
hearts disappear on account of my slow service, because I have not paid proper
attention, because I have not balanced my time between many competing demands, then
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the angry customers disappear and deplete my score. Yet, I can make the customers
―happier‖—adding hearts (or time) to their patience-bar if it has been depleted—by
bringing them drinks, serving them immediately when they raise their hands, or by
talking to them from a podium while they are waiting in line. There are different types of
customers to keep track of as well, some more patient than others, some that eat faster
than others, etc.. For example, a ―business woman‖ is impatient (her timer depletes
faster when she is waiting) but tips very well, while a ―senior‖ is more patient but tips
less. Finally, if I am playing the game in story mode, then I need to earn a certain amount
of money (my score) in order to advance to the next level. There are many ways to
earn points/money, not least of which is trying to keep the customers happy so that
they tip higher amounts.
As a player I am constantly scanning the screen, keeping track of the demands of
each set of customers, keeping track of the ―timer‖ for each individual group, attempting
to enact the most efficient strategy for completing the tasks required while keeping the
customers as happy as can be. All the rules encoded within the game, and the events
that arise from them, manifest an intense experience of multitasking. Indeed, the ―fun‖
of the game emerges through an experience of this intensity where the player must
balance attention between the competing demands of multiple customers while
attempting to satisfy all of them. Thus, the gameplay of Diner Dash concerns temporal
pressure, multitasking, and the extraction of order from chaos, again and again, shift
after shift.
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In Diner Dash the player races against multiple clocks; there is not a single time
constraint within which one must complete each level, but rather the temporality is
intensive, the pressure at times nonexistent and at other times completely
overwhelming. This pressure is, perhaps, quite like the experience of an actual ―rush‖
period in a restaurant, though in the form of a reduced, concentrated mental state. The
clock show within the game measures how long the restaurant will stay open (and thus
more customers will appear in line); it is represented surrealistically—the clock hand
replaced by a fork and the clock-face by a plate of food. This reveals that one is not
dealing with a rationalized clock time (i.e. a digital timer ticking down that we must race
against), but a time that we ourselves must consume and also produce. In terms of
genre, Diner Dash is a time management game. ―Time management‖ calls to mind
influential models of Taylorization and scientific management formulated in the first half
of the twentieth century where the study and subsequent rationalization of discrete
labor tasks reduced the time needed for each individual task (or series of tasks) in order
to increase the efficiency and productivity of a worker's labor. Indeed, the instructions
for Diner Dash (fig. 3) read like a simplified flow chart of Flo's assigned tasks; although,
once the game begins the single flow-line of work is quickly split into multiple lines
which, since they cannot be performed simultaneously, must be switched between
continuously. Flo (and the player) is akin to a CPU which quickly switches between
―tasks‖ that demand the CPUs resources. In fact, one aspect of gameplay—termed
―chaining‖—rewards the player for carrying out a number of identical tasks in
succession (e.g. picking up the checks from multiple tables one after another); chaining
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in Diner Dash is perhaps the true vestige of assembly line production that often required
a worker to focus on a single individual task along the line of production; such an
element rewards the player for ―staying on task‖ in an increasingly frenzied, multi-task
environment. Thus, time management games (which are overwhelmingly set in work
scenarios) could be interpreted as ―training‖ modules for the post-industrial worker
where increasingly one must cognitively manage labor-time which is distributed across
multiple tasks. Time management games are commonly interpreted as allegories for our
post-industrial experience where continuous multitasking leads to the erosion of
concentration, where our frenzied lives require temporal management in order to
address an overabundance of competing demands.
In her book Hamlet on the Holodeck Janet Murray famously arrived at a similar
interpretation of the widely popular game Tetris (which one might consider an older
sibling of Diner Dash). Murray wrote, ―Tetris is the perfect enactment of the overtasked
lives of Americans in the 1990s—of the constant bombardment of tasks that demand
our attention and that we must somehow fit into our overcrowded schedules and clear
off our desks in order to make room for the next onslaught‖ (148). This statement
became infamous in debates concerning the relationship between narratives and games
where many saw her argument as attributing narrative and cultural significance to an
abstract game structure that did not support her claims. That is, one could potentially
interpret Tetris in a variety of fashions. As Markku Eskelinen argued, ―Instead of studying
the actual game Murray tries to interpret its supposed content, or better yet, project
her favourite content on it; consequently we don't learn anything of the features that
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make Tetris a game‖ (―The Gaming Situation‖). For those critiquing Murray, her
comments uncovered nothing about the ontology of games while applying outdated
methods of interpretation to a new media with its own specificity. I will return to this
problematic later in this chapter although I wish to point out that in contemporary time
management games (as opposed to Tetris) the representational structure frames the
gameplay and thus directs and contains the proliferation of its interpretation. Those who
argue that time management games are allegories for contemporary multitasking would
have more evidence to rely upon in order to justify their claims. If one strips time
management games of their visual and representational framework—which could be
done—one would be left with, well, something in the family of Tetris, an abstract game
governed by time which would be difficult to analyze precisely in terms of its cultural
significance. Before turning to discuss narrative and visual representations in Diner Dash,
is there more that the gameplay of Diner Dash can teach us? What about gender, which
has been absent in my discussion of the game up until now? To progress further with
gameplay in mind, one needs to leave the specific text of Diner Dash and approach it
simply as a casual game with properties similar to other casual games.
In an online article entitled ―The Death of Hardcore Gaming?‖ Mikel Reparaz
writes, ―Casual games—usually defined as simple games that are easy to get into and
relatively inexpensive to make—have been with us for a long, long time. For years now,
their biggest audience has been on PCs, where downloadable games like Diner Dash and
Cake Mania entertain a mostly older, female demographic more interested in killing time
than in killing monsters.‖ In the (western) post-industrial world of frenzied multitasking
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it might be time which is actually killing us, therefore time management is a form of
taking control of time, taming it, killing it before it kills us. The word ―to manage‖ is
etymologically connected to the Latin manus, the hand. Management marks the control
of a situation, of one's ability to manipulate and organize events and happenings,
especially when things ―get out of hand‖ or when one despairs that ―my hands are full.‖
The idiom ―I'll manage‖ means the same as ―I can handle it‖—two expressions which
embody the gameplay mechanic of Diner Dash, being able to manage the demands of
multiple customers, being able to handle it when multiple customers need attention with
their hands thrust into the air like children in a classroom. If one does not respond to
those hands then they eventually fall, and the satisfaction of the customers falls with
them. Indeed, from the narrative beginning of Diner Dash to the end the ―hand‖ appears
again and again as a key appendage which is self-reflexively engaged by the
representations within the game. Interestingly, the idiom ―I've got too much on my
hands‖ quickly transforms into its opposite by the addition of a single word, ―I've got
too much time on my hands.‖ When what we have on our hands is time, it is time that
manages us, pulling us into the abyss of our own boredom, forcing us to feel the draft of
its endless passing which is out of our control; when it is other things than time on our
hands we must manage time in order to control these things. Gameplay elements in
time management games engage our pleasure in being able to manage a multiplicity of
events that demand our attention, but these games are often ridiculed in the popular
press as insignificant games that are played because we have too much time on our
hands and need to kill it.
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As the quote above from Reparaz suggests, often it is women who are said to be
killing time with casual games such as Diner Dash, when in fact it may be that women are
the ones with no time to kill, often working a first shift (at work outside the home) and
then a second shift (when housework and child care call) and then a third shift (where
the brief segments of time which women can truly call their own are then killed by
anxiety concerning the negotiation of the first and second shifts) (Hochschild, Time Bind
and Second Shift). As Michele Bolton, entrepreneurial coach and author of The Third Shift:
Managing Hard Choices in Our Careers, Homes, and Lives as Women, has written:
If it's de riguer in your set to be a crazed working woman, up at five to exercise,
checking voice mail messages at six, dropping off kids at eight, and careening into
your first staff meeting a half-hour later, there's a certain adrenaline charge that
accompanies the start of each day. Your life is endless movement, running from
one thing to the next, multitasking your head off. [...] women today take great
pride in their ability to manage multiple roles (148).
This quote warns us that simply denouncing the multitasking intensity of women's daily
lives would mask the potential pleasure and/or pride which managing produces. Indeed,
there is immense pleasure in Diner Dash when the chaos is returned to order and one
succeeds in managing the demands of all the customers. With a twinge of dark humor
the creators of Diner Dash ironically comment on the contemporary everyday lives of
many women by calling the arcade mode of play the ―Endless Shift.‖ Yet, one should not
think about the ―endless shift‖ in the sense that women are always working and have no
free time. In a recent quantitative study, Michael Bittman and Judy Wajcman found that
men and women may have similar amounts of free or leisure time, but that women's
quality of leisure time is significantly different than men's, tending to be more
―fragmentary,‖ ―harried,‖ and ―interrupted‖ (188-189). Drawing on a number of feminist
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studies of time, Valerie Bryson writes that women ―often have to force a number of
activities into the same period,‖ and that their ―leisure time cannot be planned in
advance, but can only be snatched in unpredictable fragments (15 minutes here if the
baby doesn't wake; half an hour there if the children don't get bored in the garden...)‖
(147). Thus, it seems that the frenzied, multitasking gameplay in Diner Dash might be
quite familiar to women's lives, and its structure—as a series of relatively short, discrete
shifts in story mode or as a single shift in the arcade style mode—would also allow for
easy, short bursts of play time that could fit into the fragments of free time ―snatched‖
from the day. Moreover, as Ian Bogost has insightfully argued concerning casual game
design, ―the player has to be able to play with one hand, so she can hold the phone (or
an infant) with the other‖ (―Women Dominate Online Games?‖). Thus, the simplicity of
the user interface feeds into the possibility that casual games can be experienced in reallife multitasking situations as well. The form of casual games like Diner Dash, it would
seem, fits snuggly into the temporal situations of many women, thus being an adequate
form for a women's popular genre to emerge.11
The situation where a particular form of media fits snuggly with the social
condition of women is hardly new. For example, one can draw many parallels between
the function of television soap operas with that of time management games. In Tania
Modleski's article ―The Rhythms of Reception: Daytime Television and Women's Work‖
she argues that ―Unlike most workers in the labor force, the housewife must beware of
concentrating her energies exclusively on one task—otherwise the dinner could burn,
or the baby could crack its skull.... The housewife functions, as many creative women
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have sadly realized, by distraction‖ (―The Rhythms‖ 71). Similar to the conclusions of
the time studies mentioned above, Modleski links the state of distraction to the fact that
feminine leisure time is not as ―strongly demarcated‖ as that of masculine free time,
after work, precisely when many working women's second shift begins (―The Rhythms‖
73). Within her article the form of the soap opera is shown to habituate women to
distraction (while also making it pleasurable). Modleski states that ―women's work is a
kind of flow‖—flow in this case referring to Raymond Williams' concept of televisual
flow where the televisual text is constituted by ceaseless interruption which is
smoothed over by formal properties of association and connection between individual
segments (programs, commercials, etc.). However, in reference to soap operas and
their multiple story lines which are endlessly interrupted, resolving only to dissolve into
confusion once again, Modleski argues against Williams stating ―that the flow of daytime
television reinforces the very principle of interruptability crucial to the proper
functioning of women in the home‖ (―The Rhythms‖ 71). Television and daytime soaps
are not merely a distraction for women, nor do their narrative structures attempt to
smooth over interruptions endemic to the ―planned flow‖ of the televisual medium;
instead interruption is foreground in order to condition ―a distracted or distractible
frame of mind...crucial to the housewife's efficient functioning in her real situation‖ (―The
Rhythms‖ 74).
While the televisual form of the soap opera is integrated into a specific location
of reception—the home—the design of casual games has less to do with a particular
location of reception and more with temporal opportunities for play. It is often noted
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that casual games are played during work when one takes a short break in order to
―zone out‖ or reduce stress (Brightman), but these games can certainly be played at
home (or anywhere for that matter if one uses a mobile phone). Thus, the form of
casual games—especially time management games which foreground distraction and
interruption within the gameplay—is similar to the structure of soap operas, though
casual games are not primarily aimed at housewives but at women working an ―endless
shift‖ where leisure time is snatched in bits and pieces throughout the day. Given that
time management games overwhelmingly depict workplace environments, they primarily
address working women. In the initial narrative backstory to Diner Dash, Flo escapes
from a dreary office job in order to open her own restaurant. Nicole Lazzaro explicitly
argues that this move is integrated into play situations in work environments:
Probably most importantly…game players often play to escape workplace
frustration. This is the exact reason that [the] main character Flo quits her
lucrative job as a stockbroker and starts her own restaurant. A concept that is
made even more attractive when players are frustrated at work. Which is
exactly when, where, and why many people play casual online games. In-game
players are finally in charge of their own career. This makes it an easy fantasy to
get into. (Lazzaro 4)
While this is true, it is equally plausible that Diner Dash could be enjoyed by
―housewives,‖ where Flo's entrepreneurial endeavors might easily operate as a fantasy
of escape from the confines of the home. In any event, the temporal structure of
women's daily lives—whatever shift they may be in at the time—lends itself to the
gameplay dynamics found in a game such as Diner Dash. Whenever a moment of leisure
can be snatched—be it while a child is napping, on a work break at the office, or on a
bus headed to work or back to home—a casual game such as Diner Dash can fill the
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interstices of everyday life. The rhythms of reception of casual games align with the
working women ―in her real situation.‖
If Modleski positioned the work of the housewife as aligned with the interruptive
flow of daytime television, how can we think about the flow of casual games? Following
one of Csikszentmihalyi's principles of flow—which Flo's name certainly references—the
loss of a sense of time's passing is a key experience of activities that produce flow
experiences (as described in chapter 1). For example, in the intensive multitasking
moments of Diner Dash time flows with ease, removing the boredom that emerges from
our heightened awareness of time's passing. Time is, in a sense, killed as one focuses on
the multiplicity of actions that demand attention. Csikszentmihalyi's principles of flow
mainly concern ―deep flow‖ where challenges align with skills and one enters a ―flow
zone‖ for extended periods of time (thus losing a sense of one's self, losing a sense of
time passing, etc.). As I pointed out in the first chapter, the game flOw was designed
around the desire to extend the duration within which the player occupies the flow zone
by embedding choices within gameplay which would allow the user, on the fly, to adjust
their level of skill to the level of present challenges. In Diner Dash the challenges also
increase as the player advances (adding more chaos that one must return to order), as
do the lengths of the shifts, thus potentially allowing for ―deep flow‖ experiences if one
plays for an extended period of time and one's skills develop to meet the increased
challenges. The arc of ―Flo's Career‖ in Diner Dash certainly is one of expanding
temporal duration of play time, where successive shifts take longer to complete, and Flo
even declares before the final shift in the game, ―this is going to be the longest shift we've
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ever seen!‖ Within this temporal expansion of gameplay one might uncover the desire
for more uninterrupted spans of leisure time, a movement from casual play to hardcore
play, the latter having as a condition of possibility uninterrupted spans of leisure time
currently enjoyed by significantly more men than women. Yet, the ―longest shift‖ is
playable in thirty to forty minutes, and the narrative sequence that ends the game
(which I discuss below) is literally interrupted by time itself, arguably revealing that in the
end there is only the endless shift, only more of the same to come, another casual game,
maybe even Diner Dash 2, 3, or 4.
Though Diner Dash can be played for extended periods of time, it is not likely
that the game is generally consumed in such a fashion. Instead players turn to casual
games such as Diner Dash for short bursts of play time. We might discover a clue from
the truncation of Flo's name—which stops one letter short of ―flow‖—that casual games
also provide what Csikszentmihalyi called microflow activities. These are flow states ―at
a lower level of complexity‖ (Beyond Boredom 141), ―activities that fill the gaps in daily
routine‖ (Beyond Boredom 159) and ―make reality manageable‖ (Beyond Boredom 160).
Csikszentmihalyi refers to microflow tasks as ―trivial activities‖ which can be ―almost
automatic;‖ examples include fidgeting, chewing gum, daydreaming, doodling, smoking,
and even watching television or listening to music (which Csikszentmihalyi obviously
associates with passivity) (Beyond Boredom 141). In a chapter from Beyond Boredom and
Anxiety entitled ―Flow Patterns in Everyday Life‖ Csikszentmihalyi argues that microflow
activities give structure to daily life and even ―facilitate involvement with more
structured activities‖ (Beyond Boredom 141)—perhaps watching the soaps when doing
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repetitive household work. Indeed, Ian Bogost has described casual games in relation to
activities which could serve as examples of microflow—flipping through a magazine,
doodling absentmindedly, chatting on the phone, even knitting (intriguingly he offers
examples that are all feminine stereotypes) (―Women Dominate Online Games?‖). The
difference between the complexity of deep flow and the reduced complexity of
microflow can be mapped onto the difference between hardcore and casual games; just
as microflow contains elements of deep flow, although ―as the weakly structured, lowchallenge counterparts‖ to the latter, casual games in relation to hardcore games are
often differentiated similarly. What then would the function of microflow tell us about
casual games, particularly in relation to women's experience?
The term ―third shift‖ has come describe interstitial moments in everyday life
where negotiations between work and home are mulled over. Michele Bolton writes:
A first shift at work and a 'second shift' at home can be physically tiring, but the
third shift is psychologically relentless; it ranges over professional anxiety about
workplace assignments and self-perceived derelictions on the home front. In
essence, every day is lived at least twice, like a videotaped instant replay that
won't shut off. (1)
The third shift is the production of anxiety experienced throughout the day in those
―private, quiet times‖ snatched from the demands of the first and second shifts. It is not
without interest that Bolton's examples of these moments—taking a shower, driving in
the car, going to bed at night—seem like archipelagos in a sea of otherwise frenzied
activity (4). Yet, this ―relentless‖ third shift has the potential to appear in any of the
fragmented moments of free time experienced in the daily life of women. In chapter one
I extensively analyzed Csikszentmihalyi's theory of flow in relation to the loss of the
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sense of one's self. In a passage that could easily be applied to the psychology of the
third shift Csikszentmihalyi writes, ―‗Why am I doing this? Should I perhaps be doing
something else?‘ Repeatedly we question the necessity of our actions, and evaluate
critically the reasons for carrying them out. But in flow there is no reason to reflect,
because the action carries us forward as if by magic‖ (Flow 54). Thus, casual games—and
specifically time management games—could be positioned as external activities that
remove the anxiety generated by the third shift, remove the relentless self-critical
attitude that can erupt in these moments. Yet, Bolton argues that while the third shift is
potentially debilitating it is also a positive opportunity for meaningful self-reflection and
awareness, a reflection that casual games often manage and contain. In the end, and
solely in terms of gameplay and the form of causal games, it is difficult to judge them as
either negative or positive: as games which induce the player into an unreflective,
automatic state where one closes his or her eyes to the real world (―clicking to opt out
of history‖ as McKenzie Wark put it), or as positive tools for a much needed respite
from ―a history that hurts‖ (as Fredric Jameson has said). Probably both are true. Yet,
the respite offered by casual games has a certain social function as well; whereas casual
games are said to be wastes of time and materially unproductive (no actual product is
produced working through them) they can also function in immaterial ways as sites for
the reproduction of the relations of production. First, while casual games like Diner Dash
emulate work conditions they do so in reduced form, as reductive forms of work
accomplished with ease in order to preserve and replenish energy for productive, paid
(and unpaid) labor (i.e. casual games as ―stress reducers‖ which feed back into
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concentrated labor). Second, casual games can become activities which smooth over
both anxiety and boredom within the fragmented moments of free time in everyday
life—functioning to reduce the impact of these interruptions while simultaneously
feeding them through gameplay that is based on constant interruption (which is the
condition for women's work at home and arguably much post-industrial labor where
one must manage his or her own time in multitasking situations). If a woman's free time
might become a location for reflecting on her social condition and the determinants for
the fragmentation of women's leisure in general (e.g. unequal domestic responsibilities
for men and women socially inscribed in a hierarchical society), not to mention using
this time to reflect on how to transform this social condition, through casual games such
as Diner Dash the desires and energies of this reflection are subtly channeled back into
labor, perpetuating the existence of what one wanted to escape.
Tania Modleski once argued, ―Daytime television plays a part in habituating
women to interruption, distraction, and spasmodic toil‖ (―Rhythms‖ 71), yet in another
article she upheld the form of the soap opera as a potential source for creative
development outside traditional narrative structures that spoke mostly to men's desires
which feminists could only oppose (―Search‖). Modleski approaches the popular
women's genre of soap operas as ―a women who waits,‖ balancing a ―yes‖ and a ―no‖ to
the form she analyzes. This methodology is similar to Fredric Jameson's approach to
mass culture texts—which Modleski discusses in her book Loving with a Vengeance
(1982)—where he argues that such texts ideologically manage desire, containing it while
at the same time invoking and provoking it (―Reification‖). While desire (for change, for
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fulfillment) is repressed in the mass culture text, it is also present (and represented)
within the popular text as a desire of an unfulfilled wish. In order to understand how
this desire is managed one cannot ignore aspects of the text that one analyzes. Indeed,
in Diner Dash the narrative and visual representations help to manage and ideologically
direct interpretations of its gameplay, thus they need to be examined in detail.
In her article ―The Search for Tomorrow in Today's Soap Operas‖ Modleski
addressed the endlessness and lack of resolution in daytime television:
Thus the narrative, by placing ever more complex obstacles between desire and
its fulfillment, makes anticipation of an end an end in itself. Soap operas invest
exquisite pleasure in the central condition of a woman's life: waiting—whether for
her phone to ring, for the baby to take its nap, or for the family to be reunited
shortly after the day's final soap opera has left its family still struggling against
dissolution. (12)
Casual games in general are often framed in terms of killing time as one waits—waiting
for an infant to wake up from a nap, for a commuter train to arrive at the station, for a
colleague to arrive for a work meeting, etc.. In Diner Dash ―waiting‖ acquires
multifaceted significance: one plays a waitress who waits on the customers; the point of
the game is to prevent customers from waiting; Flo often stares out at the player from
the screen, waiting for input and direction. In the story-mode of Diner Dash the very
existence (and promise) of a ―story‖ installs in the gamer an expectation for the arrival
of an event. To quote from Modleski again, ―as several critics have observed, soap
operas do not end. Consequently, truth for women is seen to lie not 'at the end of
expectation,' but in expectation, not in the 'return to order,' but in (familial) disorder‖
(―Search‖ 12). Certainly there is partial truth to this in Diner Dash as well. While the
soap opera never ends, on the surface Diner Dash is a game with a narrative beginning
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and end, yet with many repetitive episodes (―shifts‖) of gameplay in between—episodes
where chaos must endlessly be returned to order only to fall into dissolution once
again, teaching the player to expect more of the same. Indeed, after the first initial
narrative scene which begins the game Flo (and the player) will have to ―wait‖ through
forty shifts before the next narrative cut-scene. Although events happen while playing
the game (and between shifts) where new customers are introduced, or Flo slowly
repairs and modernizes the restaurants she works at, or new tables and other elements
are added to gameplay—through all of these minute changes the player waits for
something more and anticipates the end of the game which will perhaps deliver a
narrative resolution for all the play and ―work‖ that has been accomplished. Throughout
the game Flo ―waits‖—actively dashing about in her daily routine, driven by a desire for
a different tomorrow which might, in the end, be different and not the same as today. I
turn now to examine the representational and narrative world of Flo, investigating the
―complex obstacles between desire and fulfillment‖ that operate within Diner Dash.
Representation as the Management of Gameplay
When thinking of the importance of narrative and visual representation within
video games one could return to Roland Barthes' text ―The Rhetoric of the Image‖ for
guidance, a text which was primarily concerned with the signifying structures of visual
images. Barthes was acutely aware that the image was embedded in a verbal and
linguistic culture, just as video games are today embedded within both a linguistic and
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highly sophisticated visual culture. For Barthes, part of the image's rhetoric concerned
the ―linguistic message‖ and how it operated in terms of the visual image. One function
of the linguistic message—for example, a caption next to an advertising image—was to
stabilize and contain the polysemy of the image which could ―proliferate‖ if left
unchecked. He called this the image's anchorage. The anchoring role of the linguistic
message also provided an active, ideological direction of the viewer's interpretation. In
terms of video games, visual and narrative representation can also function to anchor
the gameplay. Where the mechanics and rules of the game oscillate between
proliferating significance and an abyss of insignificance (does Tetris really have any
meaning at all?), the representational frame intervenes to anchor interpretation within a
contained possibility space. Time management games are an excellent example of this
visual/narrative anchoring where the gameplay is often framed by short comic style
narrative elements at different points in the game; like a caption to a visual image, these
representational elements are often brief though essential to a close reading and playing
of a specific game. In so far as time management games have largely emerged as a
―women's genre,‖ reducing an analysis of these games strictly to gameplay elements
would annihilate a complex reading of gender contained within the texts. Indeed,
analyzing Tetris in terms of gender borders on the absurd, but I would also argue that
analyzing a game like Diner Dash without an in-depth reading of its representational
frames would be equally absurd. Viewed from the perspective of its gameplay and
mechanics Diner Dash is an insignificant game stripped of depth and complexity, hardly in
the same league as so-called triple-A titles that the hardcore community clamors to
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elevate into the category of true art. Yet, viewed from the perspective of
representation—and here I mean the narrative and visual elements of the game—Diner
Dash quickly becomes a complex text bubbling with contradictions, hermeneutic depth,
subtle commentary and a dose of self-reflexivity often cleverly integrated into the
gameplay itself.
The initial ―comic style‖ introduction to Diner Dash's story mode provides a brief
backstory for Flo—a woman who literally flees a stressful, ―dreary‖ office job (seemingly
in the corporate financial sector) and stumbles upon the idea to open her own
restaurant (fig. 4, 5, 6). The narrative itself is grounded historically in the contemporary
growth of female entrepreneurship where, as recent scholarship suggests, some women
―are now, in response to the impenetrable glass ceiling, trading successful corporate
careers for more exciting and less discriminatory entrepreneurial careers‖ (Henry and
Johnston). Though Flo's decision to leave the corporate environment is explicitly framed
in terms of being overloaded or buried by work, her exasperation is subtly connected to
gender. For example, when during her escape she exclaims, ―I gotta lose these guys!!‖
(fig. 5). Or, when she says, ―Man! There's GOT to be something better than THIS!!‖ one
is tempted to read the expression not only in its colloquial sense, but where the ―THIS‖
obliquely refers to the designation ―Man!‖ as if offering the possibility of something
better than ―man‖ himself or at least a more rewarding experience than life within a
corporate environment traditionally inscribed as man's home away from home. Yet,
while the liberating move to self-employment and entrepreneurship is framed as a literal
escape from aggressive, ―masculine‖ demands, one might interpret the response of
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Fig. 4 & 5. Flo flees a stressful job; Flo exclaims, ―I gotta lose these guys!!‖ Diner Dash;
Gamelab, 2003; Video Game; 15 September 2009.
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Fig. 6. Flo's revelation; Diner Dash; Gamelab, 2003; Video Game; 15 September 2009.
opening a restaurant as a regressive, safe return to an occupation traditionally
associated with women's labor, particularly when gameplay in Diner Dash concerns the
semi-repetitive work of a waitress, not the detailed management of a restaurant. In the
final narrative segment (fig. 6), Flo's revelation to open her own restaurant is also subtly
coded as a return to domesticity, to the familiar, where the representation of the
dilapidated restaurant Flo encounters looks more like a small home surrounded by
nature (and thus outside the urban environment she has just fled) rather than a diner
with surrounding buildings, streets, a parking lot, etc..12 Here, stereotypical binaries of
female/male, nature/culture, and home/city are quietly re-inscribed.
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Moreover, an intriguing symmetry exists between the representation of the
occupation that Flo abandons and the eventual form of gameplay which Diner Dash
embodies. Namely, in the opening narrative sequence Flo is inundated with disembodied
hands that literally present her with tasks or ―orders‖ in the form of reports that she
must examine (fig. 4). Eventually these hands—represented as a cloud of groping
confusion—pursue her onto the city streets as she escapes the office (fig. 5). Yet,
―taking orders‖ and answering the frantic demands of multiple customers, also
represented in the game by extended hands calling the player's attention, is precisely
how Diner Dash represents Flo's newly chosen occupation. This representational
symmetry suggests that while Flo flounders under the pressures of the corporate
workplace such pressures are potentially manageable within the historically feminized
environment of restaurant service. Moreover, the disembodied hands within the office
environment suggest a truncation of bodily materiality where these appendages present
to Flo an array of rationalized, immaterial, and abstract reports for analysis; yet, when
the game actually begins, the demanding hands of the customers are attached to bodies
which exude embodied, emotional expressions (of extreme pleasure, happiness,
impatience, anger, etc.). The cruel, ―heartless‖ world of the urban office environment is
replaced with the relative warmth of the homelike restaurant where Flo is literally
surrounded by hearts while she exchanges the work of rationalized labor for that of
caring for others.
This emotional representation is also a return to familiarity. Nicole Lazzaro, the
president of the game consulting firm XEODesign, has suggested that the encoding of
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such emotion within Diner Dash could be attributed to its success (―Diner Dash”). In an
article entitled ―Are Boy Games Even Necessary?‖ she wrote, ―For Diner Dash, [game
designer Nick Fortugno] also focused on emotions that women were familiar with
rather than the emotions found in a war game. What made the game even more
successful was that there were few games offering this emotional experience.‖ Though
Lazzaro generally argues against modeling games according to gendered demographic
preferences (instead suggesting that designers need to study what makes a game ―fun,‖
thus presumably enjoyable by anyone), invoking the expressive features of Diner Dash as
―familiar‖ to women suggests that such displays of emotion might be aligned with the
particular sensibilities of female players. One must remember that Flo's ―job‖ is really
about pleasing the customers, being constantly attentive to their ―heart's desires‖ which
are represented by the lines of hearts indicating the customer's happiness with Flo's
service—the more hearts that remain filled when they leave, the higher tip Flo receives.
Such attention to the emotional state of multiple individuals has often been associated
with the labor of the housewife. Indeed, the following quote from Tania Modleski's
could easily be used as a description of Flo's job within her restaurant:
Not only is it the responsibility of the woman in the home to be sensitive to the
feelings of her family, her job is further complicated by the fact that she must
often deal with several people who have different, perhaps conflicting moods;
and further, she must be prepared to drop what she is doing in order to cope
with various conflicts and problems the moment that they arise. ("Rhythms" 70)
The work of women at home often oscillates between arduous repetition and acting as
―a large sympathizing consciousness‖—seemingly a similar dynamic in Diner Dash where
the repetition of tasks is intertwined with the need to immediately respond to
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emotional expression, especially dissatisfaction ("Rhythms" 72).13 Interestingly, these
emotional and moody customers are eerily infant-like in their responses, expressing
extreme happiness, anger and impatience in the process of being fed. While on the
surface Diner Dash has nothing to do with the home—Flo's life outside the restaurant is
never represented; there is nothing in the original game which suggests that Flo has a
family—an interpretation of Flo as a multitasking mother in charge of pleasing others
and surrounded by the familiarity of ―family‖ is hardly a stretch. Even the customer
types—the young girls, the college age boys, the adult male ―hot shots,‖ the seniors, and
the businesswomen—begin to operate as social and familial surrogates (children,
grandparent, boyfriend/husband, friend) which, day in and day out, must be tended to
emotionally, especially when they gather together in a single space for meal time. While
Flo's escape from the overload of the office work environment leads to her
entrepreneurial endeavor, this escape is managed as a return to a homelike atmosphere,
the restaurant acting as a familiar half-way point between office and home. As a
historically familiar location for women's work outside the home, the restaurant
becomes an ideal location for ―working through‖ the ongoing breakdown of the
boundary between work and home, for example, as analyzed in a recent text by Arlie
Russell Hochschild's The Time Bind: When Work Becomes Home and Home Becomes Work
(1997). While Flo certainly does not return to home and the family after escaping the
office—Flo is truly ―homeless‖ in the game—I would argue that the chosen
representations in both the narrative and visual elements of the game surround her in a
homelike atmosphere.
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I am not arguing that Diner Dash is a completely conservative text, that Flo flees
the office because she can't ―manage it,‖ that Flo returns to someplace akin to the home
in some sort of enactment of the derogatory, masculine claim that ―the woman's place is
in the home‖ or in the ―kitchen for that matter.‖ In Diner Dash, Flo is not in the home
nor in the kitchen; in fact, the cook that is in the kitchen is represented as a shadow of a
demonic, plump man, with a curled, vicious looking mouth who enacts a curiously
violent animation sequence whenever Flo places an order—dramatically slicing and
chopping and cutting with a gleam in his beady eye. The cook is, perhaps, a ―shadow‖ of
the life that Flo has left behind, though one could also interpret his presence selfreflexively as an indication of the often violent, masculine, hardcore titles that the player
has abandoned for a more ―casual,‖ less violent experience. In any event, Flo's choice to
leave the corporate environment must be seen as a positive desire for change, for
transformation, for something different (―There's GOT to be something better than
THIS!‖ she says). This change could be linked to a number of desires. Is Flo escaping a
rationalized, dematerialized environment with the hopes of discovering a more caring
community? For a more satisfying control over her future and destiny? Whatever we
answer, the ―THIS!‖ surely signifies an abstract corporate environment devoid of
personality and the social (figured by the hands without bodies in the office sequence). I
am only suggesting that the ―homelike‖ space of Flo's return signals an ideological
management of this positive desire, a re-inscription of the familiar in place of the
contours of radical difference that are always difficult to discern. Moreover, the
repetition of Flo's occupation from the office space to that of the restaurant (i.e. taking
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orders), subtly suggests that this escape has produced hardly any difference at all, save
for the appearance of actual embodied people and representations of intensive affect
that have replaced the dematerialized hands in the opening narrative. If the escape from
the corporate office world is replaced with a future where the narrative is one of selfemployment (and the self-made woman entrepreneur), and if this future is encoded and
managed in the garb of a past (the family, the housewife), then the gameplay which eerily
doubles the conditions that Flo wanted to escape suggests that only the semblance of
change and transformation has occurred. Yet, as mentioned earlier, the expectation for
transformation is sustained in the story mode of the game (which is not the ―endless
shift‖ mode); the player desires the promise for coming change, of narrative
development and end. A narrative pay off in Diner Dash does indeed arrive later in the
game which is figured as another significant transformation that I will soon address.
In order to approach this transformation I want to examine the significance of
Flo's appearance for this will be one of the key aspects of the coming transformation.
Flo's ―look‖ strangely drew my attention soon after first playing Diner Dash. In fact, Flo
directly addresses the player when she is standing and waiting for input. The cartoonish
figure with her sleeves rolled up and her hair slightly tussled looks out of the screen
with a wry, glazed expression, eyes half-closed or maybe even drooping, her mouth
wryly smiling off to the side in a coy, ironic grin. Perhaps like the visage of the Mona
Lisa, Flo's expression remains strangely ambiguous (fig. 7). Is she happy or slightly sad or
somewhere in between? Is her smile a ruse that seems to say, ―I'm okay,‖ or ―I'm happy
but....‖ Is she tired, bored, indifferent, or simply waiting for more action? When Flo
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waits for input and is not dashing around—for example, when the player has nothing to
do and waits for the customer's demands—Flo will automatically perform miniature,
discrete animation sequences: brushing something off her sleeve (fig. 8), putting her
hands on her hips and swaying back and forth, or finally, stretching her arms high above
her head while her mouth gapes in a massive yawn (fig. 9). These miniature actions
indicate the presence of boredom in the time of waiting (especially the giant yawn which
simultaneously indicates fatigue). These animations are akin to Flo's moments of
microflow, automatic gestures structuring her workday within the interstices of her
activity. In these moments of waiting Flo's expression and automatic animations seem to
address the player specifically, reaching out into the situation of his or her play and
doubling it; that is, if the player is playing in his or her own moment of boredom or
perhaps exhaustion after a day at work, then Flo reflects these characteristics in the
player. The representations of Flo killing time as she waits parallel the real-life activity of
playing Diner Dash as the player supposedly kills time while casually gaming.
Fig. 7, 8 and 9. Flo's expressions; Diner Dash; Gamelab, 2003; Video Game; 15
September 2009.
What struck me as strange when looking at the visual appearance of Flo was
precisely this mixture of boredom, fatigue and indifference which is repeated for most of
the game—especially when the narrative inscribes excitement with her change in career.
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If one fails a shift and is met with Flo's sadness or one succeeds and is met with her
happiness, when the next shift begins the same representations of boredom and fatigue
return. One must read the representations of Flo's boredom, fatigue, and indifference
while playing the game as indicating that the narrative escape from the office situation
did not produce any substantial difference. One official description of Flo's character
online reads, ―After an initial foray into the high flying business world, Flo rejected the
boring, cubicle filled life before her and decided to make a sudden, spirited change!‖ Yet,
if such a ―spirited change‖ is true, this spirit is hardly represented in the repetitive
boredom and fatigue displayed by Flo; from the very beginning of Flo's first shift, her
shift in careers—and her work shift after shift—seems hardly a shift at all.14 The only
times that Flo's expression changes are between shifts (outside gameplay) when a screen
appears where Flo expresses pleasure or displeasure in the player's achievements, or
when Flo chats with the waiting customers in line (in gameplay). In this latter event, after
a short temporal delay standing at a hostesses podium where a giant, growing heart acts
as a timer for this delay, Flo is able to please many customers at once (raising all their
happiness levels and adding hearts to their depleted timers); afterwards, Flo's avatar
turns to the player and quickly flashes a big smile and a peace sign. This moment could
be recovered as an inscription of the ―social‖ where Flo interacts with a crowd of
people not yet completely individuated, separated, or atomized as they are when they
are seated at their tables. Following a Marxist literary method of interpretation (such as
Jameson's) one could figure this as a repressed desire for the social and community, as a
moment of non-alienation where Flo's boredom/fatigue in her daily routine gives way to
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social pleasure precisely through an opportunity for human interaction. Yet, when Flo
turns to the player with a smile her eyes are actually closed, literally turning a blind eye
to the player as if implicating them in the inability to understand this moment in relation
to her other work—to see the difference between her happiness in this event and her
expression throughout the rest of the game.
Interestingly, as one's skill in playing Diner Dash increases the sight of Flo, and the
representations of boredom and fatigue which accompany her, disappear for players
precisely because they must always look ahead of Flo, beyond her, setting up chains of
mouse clicks that will keep her moving. In this way the game self-reflexively embodies its
own culturally embedded significance through the interrelation of representation and
gameplay. The more Flo dashes about the less she waits and reveals the bored
animations programmed within the game. Similarly, as one plays Diner Dash the
representations of boredom disappear into the margins, and the player—who is always
looking ahead of Flo toward her next destination—never encounters or focuses on the
images of Flo's boredom or fatigue. The representations of boredom and fatigue
disappear in the moment when the player's real-life boredom disappears, when attention
is no longer dispersed without object or goal but is concentrated on the activity at
hand—an experience of ―flow‖ as Csikszentmihalyi would call it. In these moments the
player no longer sees Flo or identifies with her; in the words of Ted Friedman, ―she or
he is identifying less with a role than with a process‖ (135). He continues:
The pleasure of computer games is in entering into a computerlike mental state: in
responding as automatically as the computer, processing information as
effortlessly, replacing sentient cognition with the blank hum of computation.
When a game like Civilization [or Diner Dash for that matter] really gets rolling, the
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decisions are effortless, instantaneous, chosen without self-conscious thought. The
result is an almost-meditative state, in which you aren't just interacting with the
computer, but melding with it. (137-138)
Here, like Csikszentmihalyi's concept of flow, the consciousness of self melts away. In
this state Flo and the player ―go with the flow.‖ If Flo is the representative of the player
within the game, as she disappears from the player's focus the player enters this same
pattern of self-dispersion.
This seems an apt moment to turn to the significant narrative development and
transformation that occurs after playing through forty shifts of the game. Just before the
fortieth shift, when Flo addresses the player with her typical explanation of the
upcoming level and is goal requirements, she says, ―I can't believe how far I've come.
After leaving that awful job, I've gone from one dingy diner to four spectacular
restaurants. But for some reason, I don't think I'm finished yet. I still feel like I'm earning
something.‖ After completing the level the player is rewarded with a surprise comicstyle cut-scene. During this sequence (fig. 10, 11) Flo is astonished by the manifestation
of an unidentified goddess with six arms, sitting on a cloud and holding a knife, spoon,
fork and menu. (I am tempted to interpret the goddess as Kali, goddess of change, time,
and death, though the visual elements do not sustain this interpretation entirely.) The
goddess tells Flo that one test remains ―to fulfill your destiny‖ and ―finally be my equal;‖
she then transforms Flo into an image of ―herself,‖ where Flo is given two more arms
and also rests on a cloud. Transformed in such a way, Flo can now carry four items
instead of only two. When the game resumes Flo is in a restaurant serving Indian
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Fig. 10 & 11. Flo meets the goddess; Flo‘s transformation; Diner Dash; Gamelab, 2003;
Video Game; 15 September 2009.
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Fig. 12. Nirvana; Diner Dash; Gamelab, 2003; Video Game; 15 September 2009.
cuisine, poised with her eyes closed, slightly glowing, hair flowing, floating on a cloud
with her legs crossed and seemingly in a state of intense calm or nirvana (fig. 12). Her
boredom and fatigue are gone as are her microflow animations from the previous part
of the game. She is, in the words of Friedman above, experiencing an ―almost-meditative
state,‖ perhaps experiencing deep flow instead of microflow, having a ―Zen-experience‖
(as many often call the state of mind one enters when playing casual games). Flo's image
says to the player, ―I can do this with my eyes closed.‖ Yet, in terms of gameplay Flo's
transformation shifts play only slightly, another repetition where, on the one hand,
having more hands would seem to allow one to accomplish more, to be more efficient,
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but on the other hand, it means more things to balance at once, an intensification of the
multitasking form of gameplay.
What seems more pertinent is that the evidence suggests that this sequence and
the remaining ten shifts can be read as a dream. Not least of this evidence is the
manifestation of the goddess, Flo's transformation into an otherworldly being, and the
fantasy restaurant where the chairs are all hands and the table tops have peaceful faces
on them. It is a dream scene. There are a few other indications that the move to the
fifth restaurant marks a dream as well. First, Flo's eyes are closed during the next ten
shifts—though this indicates meditation it also hint at sleep; second, after the ten shifts
in this restaurant are completed and the player is offered a final narrative cut-scene (fig.
13), it is suggested that the goddess that transformed Flo is actually Flo herself. After the
goddess congratulations Flo, the goddess‘ watch alarm goes off, and she winks at Flo
(and the player) saying, ―Oh, I have to get going! Gotta get back to MY restaurant.‖
Finally, if Flo and the goddess are one in the same, then the alarm itself is a ―wake-up‖
call where work calls (again), awakening the player from his or her casual slumber and
indicating that it is time for the dream to end and for the player to get back to work. If
within this dream Flo is her ―own fairy godmother‖ (as a T-Shirt from an online store
states), then she is in fact granting her own wish. But, what is the dream-wish involved?
One could approach this from a variety of angles. For example, one could
interpret from an Oedipal direction which I find ultimately problematic.15 Another more
pertinent interpretation working within the confines of Diner Dash's structure and
gameplay would be along the lines of repetition compulsion, since one could read
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Fig. 13. Final narrative cut-scene; Diner Dash; Gamelab, 2003; Video Game; 15
September 2009.
the initial narrative frame where Flo flees the corporate office as a traumatic
representation which is subsequently mastered in the repetition of similar situations
throughout the game. Thus, dreams which repeat the same events of the trauma
retroactively bind the original energy of the trauma; the gameplay of perpetually
returning order to chaos, shift after shift, would effectively master the original lack of
preparedness which led to the trauma in the first place. It is, though, slightly unclear
how one would define the ―original trauma‖ experienced by Flo in the original, narrative
sequence of the game. (Was she not prepared because she is figured as a single woman
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without the experience of family and the intense work pressures that such an
experience would impart to her? Thus, the return to the ―homelike‖ restaurant would
be a regressive way for her to gain the mastery that allows her to succeed in the
―business world‖—even if that of the restaurant business?). In any event, this kind of
retroactive binding of an original trauma seems unsatisfactory as well. Freud's analysis of
the repetition of trauma in dreams displaces the theory of dreams functioning primarily
as wish-fulfillment; yet, in Flo's dream there is undoubtedly a wish operating. Though
there is certainly a strong repetition involved, there is difference between what has
come before and what occurs within the dream. Indeed, Flo's dream represents to her
―the cure for which ['she'] hopes‖—a dream scenario which Freud indicated would be
more in line with the nature of dreams as wish-fulfillment when they concerned trauma
(Freud, Beyond12).16
The doubling of Flo's arms in the dream cannot be separated from a wish for
―more time,‖ a wish that all the tasks that she encounters could be completed in less
time thus giving her a leisure time that is less fragmented and interrupted.17 Such a wish
is not without its threats to dominant social structure, for an uninterrupted leisure time
would in fact allow for increased reflection on the social situation of women, on
problems that affect women in the (inevitable) breakdown of the boundaries between
home and work, on a transformation of social conditions which could lead to gender
equality in the quality of leisure time. There is no doubt that the less harried and
uninterrupted leisure time experienced by more men than women—a time that can be
channeled creatively, politically, etc.—is acquired at the expense of the fragmentation of
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women's ―free time.‖ Indeed, the structure of Diner Dash is built around the fact that the
duration of each shift increases as the player progresses, thus moving from shorter,
more fragmentary segments to longer uninterrupted spans of play. The structure and
experience of gameplay satisfies the very wish for more time that Flo's dream expresses;
the wish is, in a sense, granted. The irony is that Flo's desire for more time—symbolized
through the addition of appendages with which to complete her tasks at hand—is met
only with more tasks, more customers and longer shifts, more work to be done.
Though play time is extended for the player in real life, such extension is contained
through the simultaneous piling on of more work within the game. The addition of extra
―means‖ for the fulfillment of the wish is met with forever receding ends. Part of the
pleasure of Diner Dash for women audiences is that it speaks to their real temporal
situations (analyzed above) and offers up a ―cure for which she hopes‖—though the
desire for change, for something along the lines of temporal equality for all genders,
ultimately is managed by the game itself.
One aspect of the representational management of desire within the game can
be read through Flo's transformation where the means (more hands) to the end (having
more time) is literally placed on Flo herself. The ―growth of one's self‖ (as analyzed in
chapter one) becomes the path to solving all problems. As Michele Bolton has worried,
―as women we are expected to figure [our identities and problems] all out on our own,
and when we can't our third shift clicks in, reminding us that we—not society—are
somehow falling short‖ (138). The fulfillment of Flo's wish is resolved through a
strengthened sense of the self, instead of through an understanding of the social
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determinants that must be changed in order to truly fulfill her wish. There is a ―dark‖
irony to the fact that in the last ten shifts Flo enters a meditative state with her eyes
closed, a collapse into the self, where the problems in the world are no longer seen
while one ―goes with the flow;‖ even the brief moment of Flo's intense happiness with
the social—talking to multiple customers in the line—is now absent, Flo simply rests
above the socius on her transcendent cloud, eyes closed, not even turning to address
the customers. She has, in fact, solved her problems on her own, or maybe escaped
from them as casual games such as Diner Dash can be played in order to smooth over
the ―third shift‖—an active reflection on one's condition that can be debilitating, though
not necessarily so (as Michele Bolton argues); one must read the relentless third shift as
a symptom of late capitalism which points toward an unresolved problem which can
only be solved socially and not in terms of the individual.
There is also the question of the goddess as a mode of containment. Since Diner
Dash is video game and a type of new media, and furthermore, since one issue in the
study of games and gender concerns games being a potential gateway to an interest in
technology, one immediately thinks of Donna Haraway's closing lines to ―The Cyborg
Manifesto:‖ ―I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess.‖ Briefly put, Haraway argues
against a return to an essential determination of ―woman‖ as a gender category that is
natural, unified, and historically transcendent; the image of woman as cyborg, on the
other hand, positions gender as a social construct where ―woman‖ marks a potentially
―unnatural‖ condensation of properties that link to a multiplicity of categories: gender,
the social, the technological, the natural, etc.. As Janet Halberstam described the
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difference, ―The ground between the goddess and the cyborg clearly stakes out the
contested territory between the category 'woman' and the gendered 'body.' So, if the
goddess is an ideal congruence between anatomy and femininity, the cyborg instead
posits femininity as automation, a coded masquerade‖ (449). The difference between the
two figures rests on debates between gender having essential, atemporal, and
uncontaminated features or gender as a performed construct, deeply historical in its
manifestations, and without an essential anchoring (in nature, biology, etc.) that fortifies
its meaning. The added benefit of the figure of the cyborg is that it is a conceptual child
of our historical situation where gender is inevitably negotiated through technology and
science. In terms of Diner Dash, the recourse to the figure of the goddess masks the
underlying relation between gender and the material technology that subtends the
experience of play—especially at the moment when user and computer meld into a
cybernetic circuit, as Tom Friedman argued with explicit reference to Haraway (138139). When playing Diner Dash the player becomes integrated into the cybernetic
circuit, the material technology of computation becoming a key aspect of the gameplay
experience (e.g. Flo as CPU handling multiple tasks at once), yet reflection on this
substrate and its connection to the player is erased; the use of the goddess becomes a
figure for this erasure.
―The price women pay for their popular entertainment is high, but they may still
be getting more than anyone bargained for,‖ wrote Modleski (Loving 25). The price is
high simply because of all the forms of containment and management that draw
attention away from the social fulfillment of the wish which operates within them. Yet,
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one should not discount Diner Dash or other time management games as ultimately
ideological structures of containment without positive aspects. One should not
condemn this genre and its primarily feminine audience, but rather ―the conditions
which have made them necessary‖ (Modleski, Loving 49).18 In Diner Dash and other time
management games there is always a positive valorization of expectation—from always
looking ahead of Flo as you play the game, to the narrative expectation of some
resolution, ―positive‖ or ―negative,‖ which will emerge at the end. Walter Benjamin
once identified three figures which distinctly address the temporality of passing time:
―Rather than pass the time, one must invite it in. To pass the time (to kill time, expel it):
the gambler. Time spills from his every pore.—To store time as a battery stores energy:
the flâneur. Finally, the third type: he who waits. He takes in the time and renders it up
in altered form—that of expectation (Benjamin [D3,4],107).‖ In Benjamin's estimation
waiting is not an act of killing time, time's annihilation, but a process of its
transformation—consuming time in order to produce it with a difference. It seems to me
that the expectation of future change, of real transformation, is embedded in Diner Dash
(at least in the story-mode version of the game). The beginning narrative invokes a
desire for transformation which is instead inscribed as not much change at all, but the
desire persists throughout the game. Within the next narrative transformation—even
though it occurs through a ―technologically‖ regressive emblem of the goddess—
remains a desire to truly escape the burden of tasks and their time (through the use of
more hands) but this too is eventually stifled by more of the same. Nevertheless, the
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desire remains, even if ideologically managed through narrative frames which block the
desire from an ultimate, social expression.
In the last narrative segment of the game (fig. 13) it is not without interest that it
is ―time‖ itself which inevitably ends the game and also literary cuts Flo off from her
―Destiny:‖ the alarm on the goddess' watch sounds (or Flo's watch—since she is
perhaps her double in this dream), and the word ―Destiny‖ itself is truncated simply to
―Dest-‖. Flo's fate is then to awake from her dream (of uninterrupted time) into more
of the same (fragmented time), into the ―Dash‖ sequels which will bring her again and
again back into the restaurant in order to wrest order from chaos. If waiting ―renders
time up in altered form,‖ it is perhaps this desire, for a different time, for a different
social reality where women will have more ―uninterrupted‖ free time, which becomes
important. The structure of time management games—both in terms of gameplay and
representation—seem uniquely formed to further investigate the temporal experience
and challenges of many contemporary women.
If Diner Dash's final sequence of levels is a dream, then I would like to suggest
further that Flo's character—resting on a pillow of a cloud, a slight smile of contentment
on her face, and her eyes closed—is also dreaming. She is, if you will, experiencing a
dream within a dream. As Freud once said concerning the contents of the ―dream
within a dream,‖ such a scenario ―signifies the strongest confirmation of the reality of
this incident, the most emphatic affirmation of it‖ (Interpretation 265). As players we
cannot see what is within this dream within a dream, though whatever its true reality, it
must be particularly pleasant.
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The Devaluation of Representation and the Eclipse of Gender
One of my goals in the analysis of Diner Dash was to demonstrate the
importance of visual and narrative representation in the analysis of video games and to
show that the devaluation of representation negatively impacts our understanding of
games as embedded in larger social and historical contexts. Indeed, Ian Bogost's
argument that Diner Dash is a form of kitsch could provide an example: the failure to
seriously consider the actual representations in the game led to the observation that the
game was simply about a sentimental recovery of the protestant work ethic. Without
analyzing the representational details in Diner Dash led only to the invisibility of gender
and a superficial understanding of the complexities of the text. In recent video game
scholarship—gender analysis not completely excluded—visual and narrative
representation has been devalorized as an approach to the study of games in favor of
focusing on games as formal rule systems, as structures of game mechanics that give rise
to particular gameplay experiences, as simulations or models of real world systems, as
social gaming situations (often gendered) which can be studied ethnographically, etc..
The reasons for the devaluation of representation are numerous. Some scholars choose
to focus on the medium specificity of video games attempting to differentiate them from
other representational media such as television or film; some attack representation as a
strategy to differentiate academic disciplines and found a discipline of game studies with
its own particular stakes and agendas;19 some see representational elements in games as
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already highly advanced and easy to improve (because more culturally familiar) while
game mechanics lack innovation and creative development (because less familiar) and
thus present the true contemporary challenge to designers;20 others argue that
representation in games is usually superficial, insignificant and generally less meaningful
whereas action and gameplay carry the true force of signification.21
Criticism of the devaluation of representation in video game analysis has already
been undertaken and alternate, more encompassing approaches have been offered. For
example, in their book Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals Katie Salen and Eric
Zimmerman (one of the founders of Gamelab who produced Diner Dash) advocate a
multifaceted and balanced approach to game design and interpretation which focuses on
three main interlocking elements: rules (formal systems), play (gameplay experience),
and culture (systems of cultural meaning and representation). Or another example, in
Game Cultures: Computer Games as New Media Jon Dovey and Helen W. Kennedy
critique the current devaluation of representation in game studies arguing that,
Mainstream games today are rich in representational pleasures that overlay and
enhance the gameplay mechanic. ...this level of representational 'realism' is highly
desired and actively sought by designers and, importantly, players. It seems rather
futile and unnecessarily limiting for an emergent discipline to seek to establish its
methodological or analytical specificity through a refutation of this dominant
contemporary trend or to argue for the exclusion of the analysis of these
elements of the computer game (Dovey and Kennedy 88).
Throughout this dissertation I attempt to balance representational analysis with an
investigation of gameplay dynamics (which, I hope, was apparent in my exegesis of Diner
Dash above). I should note, as I did in the introduction, that I certainly support
methodological approaches that focus on the formal aspects of games. Indeed, the first
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chapter of this dissertation focused primarily on the formal structuring of video games.
Even in my discussion of Diner Dash I indicated—through an analysis of gameplay
dynamics—that the formal properties of time management games such as Diner Dash are
an important and positive element of their structure, becoming an unique form that fits
into and expresses the social and temporal realities of many contemporary women (see
endnote 18). Thus, in the following critique of the devaluation of representation in
games it is not my intention to perform the reverse operation where I devalue gameplay
and the formal analysis of its structures; rather, I only wish to critique the problematic
erasure of gender that often accompanies the devaluation of representation (i.e. saying
―yes‖ to the formal analysis of games but ―no‖ to the detrimental exclusions it can
unconsciously perform). Moreover, privileging video games as essentially formal systems
can create historical blind spots that render invisible contemporary forces that shape
the video game form: this is, in a sense, a killing of time, an annihilation of the
importance of examining contemporary and historical situations which influence and
structure the design and experience of games. Although recent approaches to the study
of video games have attempted to restore the importance of representation, what has
not been analyzed is the fact that the exclusion or ―downplaying‖ of approaches to
video games in terms of visual representation or textual analysis is often attached to the
figure of the woman; such discourse potentially blocks rich avenues for the study of
gender, and, in more disconcerting cases, enacts an implicit devaluation of the
relationship between games and gender.
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Before turning toward more ―troubling‖ examples of this phenomenon I want to
mention that even within work that explicitly focuses on gender issues and games, the
bracketing of representational concerns is also present. For example, in an interview
between Henry Jenkins and the editors of the recent collection Beyond Barbie and Mortal
Kombat: New Perspectives on Gender and Gaming (2008)—a text that revisits, extends and
forges beyond many concerns of Cassell and Jenkins' landmark text From Barbie to Mortal
Kombat: Gender and Computer Games (1998)—Jenkins pointed out that the original book
eschewed questions of representation and asked the editors why the same is largely
true of the more recent text. One editor, Carrie Heeter, responded:
...a lot of the explanation goes back to the nature of the medium. Hollywood
movies and TV shows are visual, linear and not interactive. Those media are all
about representation. Games are so much more than representation. They
involve player actions in the game, their interactions with other players, and
sometimes customization of their avatar. And, as you ask in more detail later,
what happens on the screen is only part of the game. The physical and social
context and interpersonal dynamics with other players help define and shape the
experience of playing a game.
The annoying aspects of the portrayal of women in games are not very
different from all of the other mass media portrayals of women. It is not the
most interesting aspect of gaming, and the portrayal emphasis on
hypersexualized beautiful young bodies is so pervasive that the complaint is more
about society than about games. (Kafai et. al.)
While Heeter argues that ―games are so much more than representation‖ (thus, quite
different from film and television), she also asserts that representations of women in
games are ―not very different from all of the other mass media portrayals of women‖
(thus, quite similar to other media such as film and television). Yet, though games are
both different and similar to other representational media, it is the similarity that is
often bracketed as an intriguing avenue of study. One sees in the above quote that
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gender representation in games is largely understood in relation to the ―hypersexualized
beautiful young bodies‖ of female avatars—a serious problem that feminist scholars of
games and other media must continually address and critique. My qualm is simply that a
slippage occurs when representation in general is attached to the arguably most blatant
problem concerning the representation of women in games and then subsequently
pushed aside in the same stroke as this troubling issue. From one perspective, the highly
sexualized avatars act as ―visual fetishes‖ which distract attention from more
―interesting aspects of gaming‖ (its less visible structures of interactive and gameplay
elements, its affiliation with mathematical, formal systems, the social situation of play,
the economics of gaming, etc.). From another perspective, while the ―pervasive‖
existence of hypersexualized female avatars in games offers strong perceptual evidence
that visual representation and gender in games are importantly connected, this
connection is subtly disavowed, and representation in general (as the supposed site of
the trauma) is pushed aside or deemed as a topic for a broader cultural studies rather
than that of games studies proper. I certainly would not deny the important
contribution of studying games and gender outside the framework of representation,
which ultimately has as its goal the end of sexist game content and the development of
more egalitarian (and even feminist) forms of gameplay; the two Barbie to Mortal Kombat
texts are shining examples of this work and immensely important for the study of
gender and gaming. I simply want to argue that the dismissal of the representational
elements of games undermines the extension and invention of representational strategies
which might bequeath intricate and rewarding readings of gender; moreover, such an
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approach threatens to inaugurate games studies as a discipline with fundamental
blindspots in terms of gender specific approaches to games.
While the above example of devaluing representation is relatively benign in its
effects (and certainly only a side-effect of one's desire to learn more about gender and
games), I want to turn to a few more problematic examples where in the act of
devaluing representation a complex understanding of gender itself is more harmfully
degraded. In Raph Koster's quirky book about game design, A Theory of Fun, he writes,
―The best test of a game's fun in the strictest sense will therefore be playing the game
with no graphics, no music, no sound, no story, no nothing. If that is fun, then everything
else will serve to focus, refine, empower, and magnify. But all the dressing in the world
can't change iceberg lettuce into roast turkey‖ (Koster 166). Here, the game must be
undressed of its representational system in order to ascertain what Koster views as the
essence of game, its fun-factor. In terms of gender, Koster implicitly (and predictably)
aligns the pleasure of female gamers with the ―dressing‖ of games (and forms of
simplified gameplay) while aligning male players with their abstract, complex, formal
structures. The undressing of games becomes further distressing when Koster wonders
why ―the video game industry has struggled with the lack of appeal of games to the
female audience‖ (106). After listing a series of ―complex‖ potential reasons why women
have been slower to embrace gaming—sexism in games, violence, ―juvenile themes,‖ the
relative absence of women producers in the industry—Koster reduces the debate to a
―simpler‖ conclusion that ―games are more likely to appeal to young males because
these players happen to have the sort of brain that works well with formal abstract
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systems‖ (106). Of course this form of biological essentialism has been heavily critiqued
by feminist scholars who argue for gender as a socially constructed and performed
category of identity that is shaped by dominant norms and discourses in society. Yet,
one cannot dismiss the parallelism between the removal of representational elements
from the game to uncover its essential form, and Koster's reductive bracketing of the
―complex‖ reasons why there are less female gamers—reasons intimately tied to
representational concerns or social contexts—in favor of a so-called ―simpler‖
determinant which reveals that the essence and fun of video games is ultimately the
property of male brains. The peeling away of representation from the game is eerily
attached to a massive reduction in our understanding of games and gender.
In a more academic context a similar issue arises in perhaps the most wellknown devaluation of narrative and visual representation in games, Espen Aarseth's
essay ―Genre Trouble.‖ Aarseth writes:
Are games texts? The best reason I can think of why one would ask such a crude
question is because one is a literary or semiotic theorist and wants to believe in
the relevance of one's training.
Any game consists of three aspects: (1) rules, (2) a material/semiotic
system (a gameworld), and (3) gameplay (the events resulting from application of
the rules to the gameworld). Of these three, the semiotic system is the most
coincidental to the game. As the Danish theorist and game designer Jesper Juul
has pointed out..., games are eminently themeable: you can play chess with some
rocks in the mud, or with pieces that look like the Simpson family rather than
kings and queens. It would still be the same game. The "royal" theme of the
traditional pieces is all but irrelevant to our understanding of chess. Likewise, the
dimensions of Lara Croft's body, already analyzed to death by film theorists, are
irrelevant to me as a player, because a different-looking body would not make
me play differently. When I play, I don't even see her body, but see through it
and past it. (47-48)
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In this quote the figure of women becomes a transparent medium for the masculine,
theoretical gaze that ―sees through‖ the veil of appearances in order to focus on the
essence of game mechanics and gameplay. Although Aarseth would surely not dismiss
the study of gender in games, turning Lara Croft into a ghost acts as an exorcism of
gender, a haunting symptom of the marginalization of visual representation in a key
article that seeks to ground game studies on the rock of formalism. Aarseth's approach
treats narrative and visual representations as distractions from seeing the truth. Indeed,
the well-known game designer Chris Crawford mobilizes ―the term cosmetics to
describe those elements of the game that are meant primarily to look or sound good
rather than to further the gameplay itself. Another term for the same concept is eye
candy‖ (107). Crawford argues that focusing on cosmetics when designing games ―is by
far the most common beginner's mistake, and even experienced designers often stumble
over it‖ (107). One can easily detect an isomorphism between this ―gender coded‖
observation and that of Aarseth's where the latter's claim would be that theorists (even
experienced ones) make a beginner's mistake when analyzing games in terms of their
representational systems.
While Aarseth posits that literary and film theorists have killed Lara Croft
(―analyzed [her] to death‖), arguable it is Aarseth that annihilates her iconic status as an
important, contemporary ―representative‖ of gender issues in video games.22
Representation is tossed out, and one of the most important examples of gender
analysis in terms of games goes with it. Even Aarseth's example of chess, seemingly
without the problematic of gender attached to it, covers over and obscures the highly
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gendered historical development of the most powerful piece in the game, the queen,
whose modern rule of powerful movement can be traced to Queen Isabella of Castile's
rise to power in the late 15th century (Yalom). Indeed, the visual representation of the
Queen (and the royal theme) cannot be dismissed as having, at one time, an essential
impact on the development of the formal system of chess (Moulthrop); the diachronic
change of rules was intimately entangled with a particular representation of power
during a particular historical period. As Marilyn Yalom has shown in her provocative
book Birth of the Chess Queen: A History, such a change in the rule system—where the
queen's range of movement was increased dramatically—may have even contributed to
a decline in the number of (aristocratic) women chess players; the new, powerful
movement of the queen transformed the game into a faster paced duel between men
that eclipsed hundreds of years of prior social play. Before the rise of the powerful
chess queen the game ―provided an excuse for lovers to meet,‖ and the slow pace of
the game allowed for play to intertwine with courtship and romance. True, the
representation of the queen ―is all but irrelevant to our understanding of chess‖ (as
Aarseth termed it) but only if one brackets a deeper understanding of history, of games
embedded in social and political context, of how representation can influence play and,
yes, even influence the formal systems of rules which supposedly exist independent of
representation itself.
Some readers have also noticed that the title of Aarseth's article, ―Genre
Trouble,‖ references Judith Butler's text Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of
Identity—a ―pun‖ which Aarseth admitted was ―not very deeply intended‖ in an online
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discussion of the text at the collective blog wordherders.net. Yet, the fact that he did
not intend the pun ―deeply‖ indicates that gender was not a concern, a superficial aspect
that he ―saw through‖ to get at the heart of his analysis, an appearance that was
secondary to his text just as representation was secondary to the formal systems of
games. As others participating in the online discussion pointed out, Aarseth's article
posits a strange reversal of Butler's goals: whereas Butler sought to rupture the idea of
an essential, unified and coherent subject of (heterosexual) woman who would stand as
the foundation for feminist political representation and, presumably, as the disciplinary
grounding for ―women's studies,‖ Aarseth sought a secure foundation for game studies
in order to inaugurate the discipline with an absolute origin and ―subject‖ centered on
the formal study of games and their rule systems. Aarseth (and other ludologists) must
be praised for causing ―trouble‖ and for beginning to clarify differences between video
games and other media. Nevertheless, there remains a troubling non-thought in terms
of gender within Aarseth's article and within the online discussion of the text. In his
response to questions about the potential essentialism contained in his article
(privileging formal systems as essential elements of games), Aarseth offered the
suggestion that ―Perhaps some kind of essentialism is unavoidable in this historical phase
of the field, just to make sure there is enough momentum‖ for game studies to take
root. As examples of this point Aarseth compared the emergence of the academic study
of games (a marginalized form in academy) to a kind of affirmative action and to the
historical foundation of early feminism(s): at one point he argues that, ―just as with
feminism, before we have basic visibility, there is no possibility of celebrating the
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diversity of games out there.‖ The irony, of course, is that the claim for game studies'
―visibility‖ (i.e. having viable ―representation‖ in the academy) is figured on the invisibility
and explicit erasure of gendered examples. First, the argument goes, we establish the
essential properties of game studies then we can return to representation, to history, to
gender and all those other secondary aspects of analysis. The idea that game studies first
requires a quasi-essentialist core in order to gain visibility and then can explore more
diverse analyses of games is a historical reiteration of the disciplinary and discursive
structures which normalize and distribute power which Butler was critiquing. For
Aarseth, first we must establish a norm and then we can reiterate it with a difference.
Yet, Aarseth's establishment of a norm is truly a re-establishment of an older (and
unfortunately familiar) regulatory norm where symptoms of what this powerful norm
marginalizes—representations of women, gender, sexuality, etc.—become manifest in
the examples that Aarseth, at least in ―Genre Trouble,‖ sees through without truly
seeing. Although Aarseth mentions that he ―admires‖ Butler, her thought is not
something with which to engage in order to enrich game studies, but simply to pun
upon. For Butler,
The critical task of feminism is not to establish a point of view outside of
constructed identities; that conceit is the construction of an epistemological
model that would disavow its own cultural location and, hence, promote itself as
a global subject, a position that deploys precisely the imperialist strategies that
feminism is out to criticize. The critical task is, rather, to locate strategies of
subversive repetition enabled by those constructions, to affirm local possibilities
of intervention through participating in precisely those practices of repetition
that constitute identity and, therefore, present the immanent possibility of
contesting them. (147)
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If games are figured as a marginalized minority suffering under the domination and, as
Aarseth calls it, ―theoretical colonialism‖ of narrative and visual paradigms of analysis,
then game studies (in the ludologist's view) seeks to uncover a foundational identity to
promote itself as a ―global subject‖ that deserves representation within academic
departments. Following this parallel structure further, Butler argues that an outside
position (games being outside the purview of narrative or visual representation) is
undesirable and the task is to immanently engage with (not dismiss) the dominant form
of normalized procedures, not replace it with another dominant paradigm whose
foundations are equally colonizing. While the norms established (even unconsciously) by
the devaluation of representation in game studies may eventually produce ―new‖ ways
to conceptualize gender they also (in their current uncritical form) marginalize recent,
productive strands of conceptualizing gender that have emerged from intense
engagements with theories of representation.
Moreover, the logic of erecting an original discipline with a strong foundation is
also an atemporal logic where certain elements of the past are erased while the essential
core of the origin acts as foundational norm that attempts to shape the future in its own
image. This is, in one sense, an attempt to ―kill time.‖ While Butler's view of gender and
its enactment is thoroughly a temporal logic of critical reiteration and repetition with a
difference, Aarseth's attempt to create a difference without a repeating is what causes
an uncritical repetition that re-establishes norms which have previously been critiqued
for their dominating inclusions and exclusions. What is rendered obsolete in Aarseth's
inauguration of the new is precisely theories (such as Butler's) that could have made him
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aware of his own problematic erasures. One can identify subtle manifestations of these
erasures within his text, for example, the ahistorical understanding of the game chess,
treating it as a synchronic structure of rules divorced from diachronic change and the
determinants of such change. Or in Koster's text—where he posits the identity of male
brains and the essence of video games—the killing of time is even more blatant. The
―natural,‖ ahistorical differences in male and female brains displace complex analyses of
gender based in our historical situation and on recent theoretical investigations.
One question, it seems to me, has haunted many parts of this chapter: why are
we observing uncanny repetitions in game studies such as the re-emergence of the
feminine linked to ―low,‖ mainstream gaming culture? A divide between high-culture and
kitsch? A renewed invisibility of woman gamers and the popular games they play? An
―essentialism‖ which has been highly critiqued in post-structuralist theory? Indeed, these
temporal anomalies, returns, and repetitions—these discontinuities in the flow of
time—should be investigated in terms of the gendered temporality of modernity and
modernism itself where the inauguration of the ―new‖ (for example, the emergence of
video games as a medium) not only breathes fresh life into the transformation of time
but also kills it as well. Although I cannot offer a definitive explanation for these
repetitions and returns I would like to end with a brief examination of gender and killing
time in one influential description of the temporal dynamic of modernity.
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Blindness, Time and Modernity
In his text ―The Painter of Modern Life‖ Baudelaire pens the following: ―What
poet, in sitting down to paint the pleasure caused by the sight of a beautiful woman,
would venture to separate her from her costume?‖ (31). For Baudelaire, this statement
is intimately connected to his theory of temporality in modernity wherein women play a
key explicating role. In a well-known and ―well-worn‖ passage Baudelaire insists on the
dual temporality of modernity: ―by 'modernity' I mean the ephemeral, the fugitive, the
contingent, the half of art whose other half is the eternal and the immutable‖ (―Painter‖
13). Within his text the dress and fashion of women come to mark the ephemeral,
fugitive and shifting temporality of the present. Meanwhile, the eternal is linked to a
mysterious feminine ―beauty.‖ Baudelaire claims that those interested in discovering
modernity's essence, in reading modernity, must ―extract from fashion whatever
element it may contain of poetry within history, to distill the eternal from the
transitory‖ (―Painter‖ 12). Yet, it is essential that one does not separate the transient
forms of the present—figured as fashion—from the eternal element: one can only arrive
at the eternal (which stands as knowledge, significance, or understanding of structure),
through an examination of the flowing fabric which clothes the ―now.‖ Baudelaire
writes: ―This transitory, fugitive element, whose metamorphoses are so rapid, must on
no account be despised or dispensed with. By neglecting it, you cannot fail to tumble
into the abyss of an abstract and indeterminate beauty, like that of the first woman
before the fall of man‖ (―Painter‖ 13). The first woman would, of course, not be clothed
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(and thus threatening to men from a psychoanalytic point of view). For Baudelaire, the
artist must not disregard ―his‖ own time in order to arrive at a concrete, determinable
beauty that he can capture in a poem or on a canvas, but the artist must paradoxically
see through the present (figured as the ephemeral fashion of women) in order to see
through and beyond the present and toward the eternal. This process of distillation or
―reading modernity‖ is a process that eventually extracts the eternal from the
transitory, thus eventually killing time (the ephemeral flow of time) by extracting the
eternal (which is the absence of time's flow).
Importantly, Baudelaire's influential inauguration of modernity is a cyclical
temporality. He writes, ―Every old master has had his own modernity; the great majority
of fine portraits that have come down to us from former generations are clothed in the
costume of their own period‖ (―Painter‖ 13). While there is something banal and
obvious in this statement (especially to us ―moderns‖ who are now well aware of
historical change and its imprint), it can also be read as Baudelaire's own attempt to take
a shot at the eternal, to take ―ephemeral‖ insights from his own period and extract
something eternal from them. Such an eternalizing attempt is not innocuous, for every
inauguration carries within it an attempt to form the future in its own image. While the
oscillation between the ephemeral and the eternal is framed through the figure of the
woman, this is by no means a positive, ―feminist‖ formation. In ―The Painter of Modern
Life‖ Baudelaire writes that it is women ―for whom, but above all through whom, artists
and poets create their most exquisite jewels‖ (italics in original, ―Painter‖ 30)—a phrase
which appears shortly after Baudelaire has declared that women are ―incomprehensible
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because [they] have nothing to communicate‖ (―Painter‖ 30). Thus, women are channels
for communication, a means through which men communicate though women
communicate nothing themselves. In other words—Marshall McLuhan's famous adage
―the medium is the message‖ aside—for Baudelaire women are not the message but the
medium of modernity through which men extract the incomprehensible, ―eternal
feminine‖ for their own eternal, recurring aesthetics. Superficially, one might read this
process of ―killing time‖ as the continuous destruction and appropriation of the cyclical
maternal and feminine series of generation—a masculine ―sublimation‖ of the maternal
cycle as art. This is a hallmark of modernist aesthetics (especially Baudelaire's). The
cyclical, generational time of the maternal is co-opted and replaced with a masculine
appropriation which rewrites this cyclical time in terms of successive stages of masculine
modernism and its concepts such as the new and obsolescence, the privileged high
realm of masculine art and the low of feminine genres. (I have tried to show that this
repetition is occurring within the culture of video games as well).
One could perhaps perceive a resonance between this duality—the ephemeral
and the eternal—with the separation of representation and gameplay that Espen Aarseth
(and others) have constructed in game studies. Is not dispensing with narrative and
visual representation enacting the mistake of ignoring the present, ignoring the
ephemeral nature of the video game medium which (in our present) often presents a
mixture of both gameplay and representational elements? But this seems like a facile
comparison resulting only in the conclusion that such an approach will fail to ―distill the
eternal from the ephemeral.‖ Instead I would like to complicate this parallel by
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addressing another text of Baudelaire's, ―The Gallant Marksman,‖ a text which
resonates with ―The Painter of Modern Life‖ (with its concern with time and the figure
of the woman) while also being more pertinent to my interest in the relationship
between ―killing time,‖ the feminine and games that I have discussed in this chapter.
―The Gallant Marksman‖ in its entirety:
As the carriage was going through the woods, he had it stop near a
shooting gallery, saying that it would be pleasant to take a shot or two to kill
Time. And is not killing that monster the most ordinary and legitimate
occupation of all of us? Gallantly, then, he held out his hand to his dear,
delectable, and execrable wife, to the mysterious woman to whom he owed so
many pleasures and so many pains, and perhaps a large part of his genius as well.
Several shots went wide of the mark; one even buried itself in the ceiling;
and as the charming creature began to laugh hilariously, twitting her husband on
his want of dexterity, he turned toward her brusquely and said: ―You see that
doll over there to the right, with its nose in the air and its haughty mien? Well,
now, my dear angel, I am going to imagine it is you.‖ And he closed his eyes and
fired. The doll was neatly decapitated.
Then bowing to his dear, delectable and execrable wife, his inevitable and
pitiless Muse, and respectfully kissing her hand, he added: ―Ah, dear angel, thank
you so much for my dexterity.‖
Like all the short prose poems from Baudelaire's posthumously published Paris
Spleen, ―Le Galant Tireur‖ is a text which plays with the reader, appearing as a puzzle
that desires to be solved, a game which might be won if the reader could only aim his or
her interpretative lens correctly, focusing on the right combination of signs which would
suddenly come apart and expose the rules which govern the tangle of representation at
play within the text.
Fully aware that I cannot win the game of interpretation concerning this text I
will nevertheless, and with eyes wide open, take a shot at it. ―The Gallant Marksman‖ is
an allegory for the process of reading and interpretation itself. The figure of the woman,
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substituted with the doll, is metonymically marked as Time. She is both the time of
reading and its death when interpretation hits its mark. As the doll, the woman becomes
an identifiable object within the ―text‖ or field at which the marksmen aims. The wife,
the ―mystérieuse femme,‖ is both delectable and execrable (délicieuse et exécrable) and
thus marks the alluring mystery of the textual puzzle that one seeks to solve (through
time) and also the delightful and detestable actions involved in interpretation which both
rewards and frustrates. Of course the ultimate success of the reader occurs in the
moment of blindness where the eyes are closed and the surface representations (the
meanings of the words as representations) are effectively ignored. Here, in the moment
where the husband decapitates the doll and his power of masculine vision is relinquished
as he channels the look (the aim) of his wife, he paradoxically also channels ―time‖ (as
figured by the women) in order to kill it/her, in order to effectively hit the mark and
―finish off‖ the process of interpretation and reading. The success and end of the
masculine interpretation arrives in the moment when the reader blinds himself to
textual representation—the play of signifiers which struck him impotent and caused
numerous misfires, garnering the mocking laughter of the wife. The threat of an
incomprehensible representation (causing him impotence) must be disavowed; indeed, it
is common for the figure of woman to acts as the unrepresentable for the man. Thus,
the marksman effectively sees through an illusion (of textual representation) in order to
hit the mark but only by blinding himself to the incomprehensible representations which
are figured as woman.
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Unlike in ―The Painter of Modern Life‖ where the mysterious woman is always
the object of the gaze to be dissected and seen through, in this text the wife herself
initially stands waiting, stands watching, as her husband kills some time at the shooting
gallery. Her gaze is upon the marksman and the appropriation of this active vision has
consequences. Indeed, her waiting is not passive and without effect, for she watches and
laughs at him, evening taunting his impotence as his shots misfire again and again,
mocking his inability to hit the mark and succeed at the game. If in the ―The Painter of
Modern Life‖ the woman was the transparent medium of modernity who communicated
nothing, here the woman communicates loudly, becoming ―noise‖ in the marksman's
ability to succeed in his ―interpretation‖ of the text before him. Here too, the woman is
the medium which the man must ―see through‖ but only by closing his own eyes to the
Time he kills. The woman must be killed symbolically in order for the man to succeed at
his goal (while punishing the threatening appropriation of the gaze which the woman
activates). The marksman's potency is reestablished only by failing to see and understand
exactly what he is (not) looking at. Perhaps this text articulates more clearly the
relationship of time in modernity, where modernity cannot be dissociated from various
new visibilities of women within culture and the public sphere: again, as Andreas
Huyssen put it, ―the masses knocking at the gate where also women, knocking at the
gate of a male-dominated culture.‖ Through time's progression women become less a
―silent,‖ ―incomprehensible‖ (though transparent) medium which men look through, and
more a vocal, comprehensible medium for their own communication. Figured in
Baudelaire's ―The Gallant Marksman,‖ this communication becomes a threat and a
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distraction: the wife's vocal laughter and mocking words distract him from his target,
until, that is, the source of his distraction is forcibly silenced. If the doll is a (popular)
figure for feminine play—the location of women‘s projected imagination, fantasy, and
cultural leisure—then the decapitation of the doll could be read as silencing women's
(popular) culture, a silencing which is accomplished by a masculine aggression that is
blind to the articulations of this culture because it is not able to interpret it. It keeps
missing its mark because it is perceived as an effective threat to his own dexterity.
Here temporality is not the oscillation of the ephemeral and the eternal, but a
killing of time that repeats when the woman becomes too visible/vocal and the hardcore
marksman of cultural policing must close his eyes to the present in order to establish his
own space of aesthetic reflection. Similarly, is not Aarseth's banishment of Lara Croft
(whom he claims that film theorists have ―analyzed to death‖) its own killing of her/time,
seeing through her while at the same time closing his eyes to gender and the analyses of
representation that were clamoring around him at the time of his writing? Though one
could argue that the theorists were mis-aiming by focusing on gender and
representation—missing the mark of gameplay—and that the claims of the ludologists
taught them how to aim correctly, it seems to me, and as I have tried to argue in this
chapter, that closing one's eyes to representation in games can create unfortunate
historical blind spots, especially when it comes to analyzing these texts in terms of
gender dynamics and their relationship to larger social and historical constructs. The
killing of time is a blindness to feminist critiques, progressions and theoretical successes
in the past; it is also a blindness to the complexities of women's popular culture which
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some would choose to not see and kill rather than read and understand. This blindness
is perhaps both a blessing and a curse—a curse because it is the precondition for the
uncanny historical repetitions that reappear to the dismay of feminists who must repeat
their own discoveries, a blessing because such blindness is also a ―mark‖ of the
impotence of power and its inability to ―kill Time‖ once and for all.
1 All of these games exist in the ―DinerTown‖ narrative universe, and when Flo is not the main
protagonist in these games (as she is in Diner Dash and Cooking Dash) she often appears in the narrative
episodes that frame these other spinoffs.
2 On his website he also declares that ―we all know casual is a nice way of saying DUMB!‖ To be clear,
Malstrom supports casual games, or at least creating games that people enjoy (no matter their
complexity); when he rails against casual games being ―dumb,‖ or exposes that the Casual Gaming
Association's rhetoric hides an implicit gendering of casual games, he is truly attempting to demystify
what he perceives as the game industry's misperception of casual gaming as dumb, degraded, and
watered-down versions of hardcore games. Thus, this misperception on the part of the gaming
community helps fuel the production of less interesting games. Malstrom ultimately argues that the
casual/hardcore dichotomy is ultimately misleading, leading to an unnecessary (and unnecessarily
heated) bifurcation in the video game market. Yet, regardless of his true position on the matter, his
comments about the CGA's report do recognize the implicit gendering operations at work in within
the discursive structuring of the casual/hardcore divide.
3 I place the word casual in quotations marks because the game Peggle is actually quite popular in the
hardcore community. Peggle is a supposedly simple game where one aims and shoots balls into an
arena of pegs, a la Pachinko, which are then eliminated when the ball caroms of them as it bounces
around the screen, traveling eventually to the bottom where the ball disappears. The goal is to
eliminate all specially colored pegs on the screen in order to advance to the next level; players only
have a limited number of balls to shoot at the pegs and thus must try to predict and direct the path of
each ball's descent with their initial aim. The fact that Peggle has a sizable following in the hardcore
community has led one author in a Wired article to speculate that while Peggle seems superficially
simple, random and based on luck to casual gamers, the hardcore gamer perceives complexity and
causality, attempting to predict the path of the ball's descent, to predict how the ―physics‖ embedded
in the game's programming will cause the ball to react. For my purposes, it is the title of the article
which intrigues: ―Getting Lucky: Hard-Core Gamers Penetrate Peggle's Physics‖ (Thompson). While
the body of the article does not explicitly address gender in its discussion of casual and hardcore
gamers, the article implicitly frames the differentiation in such a way as to equate hardcore attitudes
with an active, potent sexuality at the expense of casual gamers.
4 For example see McCredie, Clint. ―Are 'Casuals' Killing Gaming?‖ Jan. 16, 2009; Paulding, Joe. ―Casual
vs Hardcore Games.‖ Feb. 23, 2008 <http://g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/683070/Casual-vs-HardcoreGames.html>; Jager, Chris. ―How Nintendo Killed Hardcore Gaming.‖ April 23, 2009
<http://www.pcworld.idg.com.au/article/300491/how_nintendo_killed_hardcore_gaming?pp=1>.
5 Also see Tania Modleski‘s ―Femininity as Mas(s)querade: A Feminist Approach to Mass Culture.‖
6 In another discussion of the emergence of artgames, Ian Bogost, claims that what really needs to be
discussed and described are various movements of ―artgames‖ in order to identify trends and stylistic
sets, much like in the past movements were identified such as Futurism or Dada. Yet, contained within
this approach is a ―postmodernist‖ relativism where Bogost claims that totalizing analyses of art (grand
narratives) are bankrupt and thus the productive discussion of art and games will focus on local
movements (petite narratives). He writes, ―As the 20th century wore on, it became much harder to
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7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
distinguish art by its form or function alone; context became the predominant factor, its arbitrariness
exposed forever by Duchamp's urinal.‖ Indeed, there is a rejection of a methodology which would
pursue a discussion of art's function in relation to games and society at large because fundamentally art
is ―arbitrary‖ (―Persuasive Games‖). Thus, it would seem that discussions of art and games cannot
be made on the level of total function—such as high art's function of autonomy and rejection of
commodification under modernism—and one is left with individual interpretations of schools of
production. Such is also evidence of a flattening of art and mass culture where these games are not
opposed to mass culture products but occupy fragmented niches with the (same) market.
Games such as Tetris (1986) and Tapper (1983) are examples which share particular attributes with
Diner Dash's mechanic and gameplay experience.
Other, ―hardcore‖ games often require extensive use of keyboard and mouse or utilize a modern,
complex controller with a plethora of buttons, directional interfaces, motion control, etc..
To be fair, Bogost's argument does contain a ―difference‖ from the employment of kitsch in
modernism. Bogost does not explicitly judge and condemn kitsch (though his article ―Video Game
Kitsch‖ occasionally contains a dismissive tone such as his use of phrases such as ―trite
sentimentalism‖ and ―sickly sweet aftertaste‖ to describe the kitsch aesthetic). Yet, he suggests a new
approach to kitsch game development—the display function of kitsch which acts as a visible indicator
of ―upward social mobility‖ on the part of the owners of kitsch (a display function that kitsch video
games do not seem to share in this historical moment). Nevertheless, Bogost's indifference to kitsch
(though belied occasionally by his rhetoric) is a mark of his postmodernism—at a distance from the
condemning attitude towards kitsch which suffused modernism.
Interestingly, Bogost chooses to mention one other time management game, Airport Mania, which is
one of the few titles in the genre that is seemingly less ―gendered‖ in terms of representational
elements. While I would argue that time management games that share similar gameplay styles are
largely directed at a female demographic, Bogost chooses to mention one such game were this is not
readily evident. Such a choice also tends to distract one from the obvious gendered address of Diner
Dash, and perhaps acts as a device to justify his ―overlooking‖ of gender in his article.
While men certainly play casual games and experience the fragmentation of multitasking in
contemporary culture, they ―have many more hours of pure leisure‖ than women that is
uninterrupted and continuous (Bittman and Wajcman 189). This might account for the majority of
hardcore gamers being men given that these games require longer segments of uninterrupted play.
The broken sign with the sandwich etched upon it signifies ―restaurant‖ though it does little to contain
a reading of the image as a domicile; indeed, it is a ―broken sign,‖ unable to completely contain or
motivate one's reading of the visual representation of the building as restaurant or diner.
Modleski writes that ―the housewife is required not only to endure monotonous, repetitive work but
also to be able to switch instantly and on demand from her role as a kind of bedmaking, dishwashing
automaton to a large sympathizing consciousness‖ (―Search‖ 72). Something similar happens in Diner
Dash when the player stops the repetitive tasks of serving customers at the tables and sends Flo to the
hostess podium to talk to the folks in line. After a few seconds standing and chatting at the podium
(where a giant, growing heart acts as a timer that the player must wait for in order to trigger a
response) Flo increases the happiness of all who are in line, sending a wave of joy down the line while
Flo turns toward the player and flashes a quick peace sign. This is the only time Flo's character
expresses a gleeful happiness while working her shift—precisely acting as a large sympathizing
consciousness pleasing many customers at once.
From the visual repetitions in the game (the food, the motions of the characters, the identical
individuals within each type of character, etc.) to the repetitions of the same tasks undertaken again
and again, from the need to repeat the same shift if you fail to the distinct restaurants themselves
which differ only in look and not in the goals or tasks one must undertake, from Flo yawning again and
again to her lack of emotional change from shift to shift—all of these inscribe a pervasive logic of
repetition. For Julian Stallabras, the computer game ―elicits in the player the same entranced state, and
because of the constant repetition of elements, possesses the same structure of discovery against a
background of similarity‖ (90). While ―change‖ might occur in terms of adding another table, or an
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appetizer which the player must now bring to customers, or a new type of customer the player must
deal with—all of these are simply additions that are more of the same, minute differences adding up to
no change at all, simply the appearance of novelty against a background of repetition. One might
object—just as the quote from Stallabras seems to suggest—that all games take the form of repetition
and ―provide an aesthetics of repetition, similar to that of everyday life‖ as Torben Grodal has called it
(148). Just as Freud characterized the play of (male) children as a repetition compulsion that eventually
leads to mastery, games follow a similar movement from inexperience to mastery (Beyond). Or, one
might argue that this repetition is a manifestation of the shorter production times and costs of casual
games, where these repetitive visual and gameplay ―short-cuts‖ are determined by economic forces. I
would not disagree with such statements, although it is a testament to the rhetorical sophistication of
the designers of Diner Dash to frame this repetitive gameplay with a narrative and visual repetition that
begins to open avenues for interpretation of the text.
15 In this case, Flo's infantile wish is to fill a lack, and the repetition of arms becomes a phallic substitute.
Flo's wish would be to become her mother who has privileged access to the symbolic father, and thus
by usurping the mother's position Flo obtains a method for appropriating the symbolic phallus for
herself. In a strange reversal of castration Flo gasps in surprise as her body and hands are literally
sliced in half (fig. 11), but afterwards she emerges with more, not less. From this point of view, since
Flo encroaches upon masculine, capitalist territory—through her self-employment and entrepreneurial
success—her ―transformation‖ is symbolic of these gains. Yet, such a scenario seems inadequate or, at
least, woefully unsupported given the absence of further evidence in the game, perhaps an absence of
familial and sexual evidence that would support further interpretation; moreover, the figure of the
―mother‖ in the dream (the god-mother) becomes an odd, benevolent figure who seems out of place
in the Oedipal scenario since technically Flo would fear (and despise) the mother as the cause of her
perceived castration (precisely for desiring the father and symbolic power he wields). I should say that
in Diner Dash 2 this potential reading becomes more pronounced where Flo saves four restaurants
from being bulldozed by the corporate giant ―Mr. Big‖ who wants to build a food mega-plex where her
friends' restaurants are located; in this game—almost identical to the original Diner Dash in gameplay—
after Flo saves four restaurants from Mr. Big's destructive ambitions—thoroughly castrating him—he
abandons his desire and hires Flo to run a restaurant at the top of his corporate skyscraper. The
―transformation‖ that occurs is similar to the first Diner Dash but in this sequel Mr. Big decides to
become Flo's ―helper,‖ following her around the restaurant and carrying things for her; thus Flo has
four hands to use, though two of them are now ―appropriated‖ from Mr. Big himself.
16 The manifestation of the goddess, especially since she is framed as Flo's double, opens the possibility
to read the dream in Diner Dash as uncanny, a concept that for Freud is powerfully attached to that of
repetition compulsion. If my reading of certain signs in Diner Dash point toward a connection with the
home and the work of the ―housewife,‖ creating a familiar ―homelike‖ feeling within the unfamiliar
place of work or the restaurant, then seen from this perspective Diner Dash emits an uncanny feeling.
As Freud argued, the uncanny, das Unheimliche, includes the familiar, the ―homelike,‖ das Heimliche.
Thus, the uncanny concerns the appearance of the familiar within the unfamiliar; in Diner Dash, the
restaurant as home. He writes that the ―uncanny is in reality nothing new or foreign, but something
familiar and old-established in the mind that has been estranged only by the process of repression‖
(Uncanny148). Indeed, the emergence of the goddess could also be read as similar to Freud's examples
of the uncanny, in particular ―when the primitive beliefs we have surmounted seem once more to be
confirmed‖ (Uncanny 157). Throughout Diner Dash signs of the uncanny are evident—the goddess and
her magic, Flo meeting her double in the goddess, the repetition of the hands throughout the text, the
familiar (homelike) within the unfamiliar (the un-homelike).
17 Interestingly, in E. P. Thompson's well-known article, ―Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial
Capitalism‖ he quotes from a poem by Mary Collier from 1739 where she writes: ―when we Home
are come, Alas! we find our Work but just begun; So many Things for our Attendance call, Had we
ten Hands, we could employ them all. Our Children put to Bed, with greatest Care, We all Things for
your coming Home prepare: You sup, and go to Bed without delay, And rest yourselves till the
ensuing Day; While we, alas! but little Sleep can have, Because our froward Children cry and rave .... In
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ev'ry Work (we) take our proper Share; And from the Time that Harvest doth begin Until the Corn
be cut and carry'd in, Our Toil and Labour's daily so extreme, That we have hardly ever Time to
dream‖(qtd. in E.P. Thompson). It is, perhaps, this ―time to dream‖ that I will unpack in the rest of this
section. It should be noted that Thompson argues that contemporary women have not left the
temporal structures of pre-industrial society completely. He writes that ―despite school times and
television times, the rhythms of women's work in the home are not wholly attuned to the
measurement of the clock. The mother of young children has an imperfect sense of time and attends
to other human tides. She has not yet altogether moved out of the conventions of "pre-industrial"
society‖ (79). Such a statement would need much more attention than I can offer here, though
certainly the resonance between Collier's poem and the working women of today offers a sense that
temporal inequality between men and women has a deep history.
18 One positive aspect of Diner Dash and time management games is that they are uniquely structured to
fit into women's real life situations—for example, into their actual temporal experience of everyday
life. Moreover, there is a particular form of gameplay that is uniquely tied to the experience of women
(in terms of the temporally intense experience of gameplay). The brief narrative and visual elements
that position this gameplay are adaptations that have evolved to frame this type of gameplay itself.
Without these frames the gameplay itself could not speak to the situation of women, or rather it
would speak without direction or anchorage. Thus, the form itself can be said to be ―positive‖ in the
sense that it has adapted to fit the social situation of many women, and through a narrative frame such
as used in Diner Dash it begins to express the desires for more unharried free-time, though obviously
distorted.
19 I am thinking of Espen Aarseth's article ―Genre Trouble‖ in particular, an article which I will return too
below.
20 ―For games to really develop as a medium, they need to further develop the ludemes, not just the
dressing. By and large, however, the industry has spent its time improving the dressing. We have
better graphics, better back stories, better plots, better sound effects, better music, more fidelity in
the environments, more types of content, and more systems within each game. But the systems
themselves tend to see fairly little innovation‖ (Koster 166).
21 For example, Alexander Galloway argues against traditional ideological critique and allegorical
approaches to games partially because, ―the aesthetics of gaming often lack any sort of deep
representation (to the extent that representation requires both meaning and the encoding of meaning
in material form)‖ (Galloway 104). In his analysis of games player action and meaning are ―undivided.‖
As he says of the game The Sims, ―There is no need for the critic to unpack the game later‖ simply
because its meaning and critique of consumerism is immediately evident in the playing of the game
(103). I critiqued this position within the introduction, and through my analysis of Diner Dash I hope
that it is clear that Galloway's approach to games cannot be extended universally to all gametexts.
22 Aarseth's claim—that we look beyond visual representation and narrative toward the ontological
properties of games—was quickly countered by Stuart Moulthrop's response to Aarseth's article,
published in the same volume. Moulthrop insisted that Aarseth's approach was too limiting, extracting
games from the influence of cultural forces in which they are inevitably immersed and stymieing
possible critiques of dominant representations contained within games; for example, ignoring the
historical form ―of chess as an allegory for Feudalism,‖ according to Moulthrop, would effectively erase
an essential aspect of its development. In his response to Moulthrop, Aarseth slightly retreated from
his ―hardcore‖ position marginalizing cultural and representational critique, writing that it would be
academically healthy to counter our habitual and naturalized forms of theorization with an attempt to
think deeply about play and games as such, to challenge ourselves with inventing new discourses to
understand the gamic form. Admittedly, this is a laudable position. While Aarseth himself has
suggested that scholars have exaggerated his dismissal of narrative or representation—stating that his
polemic concerned ―naive applications‖ of literary or film theory to games not the complete exile of
these approaches from game studies—his discourse of privileging games as formal systems over that of
representation must be critiqued. If Aarseth launched his polemic because theoretical approaches to
games as representational texts threatened to ―overwhelm game scholarship for a long time to come‖,
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then it seems necessary to expose his own blind spots so we do not feel the effects of his own
discourse for an equally long time to come. While Aarseth‘s position is certainly positive in the sense
that new forms of analysis might emerge from a focus on formal systems (and, indeed, in the first
chapter I concentrate on the formal properties of games extensively), the negative discursive erasure
of gender that accompanies the devaluation of representational analysis must be addressed.
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CHAPTER FOUR
ESCAPING INTO THE CLOUDS: INTERACTIVE SPACE IN GAMES
―Clouds always tell a true story, though one that is difficult to read,‖ wrote
Ralph Abercromby—an avid cloud photographer in the late nineteenth century and a
key figure in the codification of scientific cloud names. Indeed, it is difficult to know
where to begin when writing of clouds, to begin telling a story using the clouds as
characters, figures and shifting plot developments. Yet, I have already begun this chapter
within the video games that I have analyzed—cumulus puffs against the sky of the
dissertation as a whole. I do not mean this in a figurative sense, but in actuality many of
the games I have already mentioned and examined contain a relationship to the cloud.
In Healer by Lindsay Grace, a game briefly mentioned in chapter two, instead of
the common task of killing an onslaught of enemies the player must heal injured victims
(or resurrect dead ones); instead of shooting other characters using the crosshairs of a
gun (i.e. a conventional form of gameplay) the player uses a ―red cross‖-hairs to extract
bullets from the fallen, reversing time and setting the victims free. When these victims
are healed the bullets that they have suffered float back to the healer, and a cloud of
vapor appears above them before they rise and walk off the screen (fig. 1). The
appearance of the cloud could be read a marker of the gunsmoke that reappears as time
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is reversed, but since it issues from the healed victims it most likely signals the spirit or
the soul released into life once again. Instead of the cloud providing a symbol of
Fig. 1. Spirit clouds; Healer; Lindsay Grace, 2009; Video Game; 5 August 2010.
ascension into heaven (as often the case in medieval paintings), the cloud becomes a
magical puff that marks the victim's escape from death.
In The World of Goo, also analyzed in chapter two, the player builds wobbly
towers and structures in order to complete various challenges. In the narrative of the
game the player directs an assortment of ―goo-balls‖ as they ascend through a pipe
system located on the surface and in the depths of the earth, slowly learning that they
are being exploited by The World of Goo Corporation. The narrative becomes one of
escape, of leaving the interior of the world (and its pipes) for the exterior of the sky.
Eventually the player helps the goo-balls destroy the corporation, an act which causes a
giant explosion that pollutes the sky. In the end, the player manages to ascend above the
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gloom to glimpse far away goo-balls drifting off into space to found a new planet,
escaping the polluted ―earth‖ that The World of Goo Corporation created. In another
part of The World of Goo players build towers using goo-balls that they have collected
throughout the game. The goal is simply to build the tallest tower, and players can see
the height of other players' towers (through data collected over the internet)
represented by floating clouds, each with another player's name inscribed upon it (fig.
2).1 Although the towers are ultimately unstable given the viscous nature of the goo-balls
Fig. 2 Towers and Clouds; The World of Goo; 2DBoy, 2008; Video Game; 15 August 2010
which form the joints and beams of the structures, the goal is to ascend into the sky as
far as possible before the tower collapses; this emulates the narrative structure of the
game where the globs ascend from the earthly, polluted pipe-system into the freedom of
new world.
In chapter three I analyzed the casual game Diner Dash, a time management game
where the player controls the waitress/entrepreneur Flo as she dashes from table to
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table, trying to keep customers happy so that she can garner higher tips, fix up her
restaurant, and eventually open new eateries as well. When the player reaches the final
restaurant that Flo must ―manage,‖ a goddess in the clouds appears and transforms her
into an image of divinity, granting Flo two extra arms with which to serve more
customers. In this stage of the game Flo rests on a cloud, cross-legged like a Buddha, her
eyes closed in a dreamy state of contentment (fig. 3). The cloud lifts Flo from the floor,
granting her more fluid movement, perhaps indicating that her work has become
Fig. 3. Flo's Cloud; Diner Dash; Gamelab, 2003; Video Game; 10 August 2010.
friction-free (like the ideological dream of information capitalism). The dream-wish
behind Flo's closed eyes is the desire to procure more time, to be able to complete her
labor with time to spare, time that can perhaps be spent ―off her feet.‖ Yet, giving Flo
two additional hands only allows her (and the player) to do more work, to multitask at a
higher intensity. Flo can dream on her cloud while working at higher levels of productive
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intensity, dreaming that she is elsewhere while the work drifts on, dreaming that she is
above and beyond work in some outside, imagined reality behind her closed eyes.
In another game, examined in the introduction, it is the absence of clouds that is
markedly felt. Molleindustria's Every Day the Same Dream is a brief adventure style game
cast in a bleak world where day in and day out, the player wakes up, gets dressed,
commutes to work, and sits down at his cubicle, only to wake up the next day to the
same scenario. Yet, upon exploring the space of the game—finding different areas within
the game or actions to perform that might not have been initially apparent—the player
discovers little, brief alcoves of escape from work: catching a leaf falling from a tree,
talking to a homeless man, touching a cow in a field after exiting one's car in traffic, etc..
Throughout the game, which is almost entirely awash in monochrome, there is not a
single cloud depicted; the repeated rectangular windows within the game only reveal a
bland, white background (fig. 4), and every day the skies are gray and dull (fig. 5). Such
an absence of cloud forms in this forever “overcast” world marks the futility of escape,
Fig. 4. Office Windows; Every Day the Same Dream; Molleindustria, 2009; Video Game;
10 August 2010.
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Fig. 5. Empty Sky; Every Day the Same Dream; Molleindustria, 2009; Video Game; 10
August 2010.
where each location that the player discovers ―outside‖ the mundane world of work is
haunting and lonely, acting more as symptoms of alienation than positive reconnections
with the world. The clouds do not exist in Every Day the Same Dream because the game
depicts a world without exit or transcendence. In comparison, in another game by
Molleindustria, Tuboflex (also mentioned in the introduction), a similar repetitive form of
labor is critiqued: here the player's character is periodically sucked into a tube that
deposits him into a new work situation where he must perform simple tasks—e.g.
answering phones, working at a drive-thru window. The player completes these tasks by
simply clicking on the screen in a repetitive, timely fashion. At any moment the player
could be sucked away to another numbing job, and thus the game investigates the
precarious and transitory nature of flexible labor. Occasionally the player's character is
deposited within his home where he can only sit paralyzed within a chair, either glancing
up at a spinning clock and awaiting his next ―task‖ or looking out a window with the
clouds slightly visible in the background, perhaps desiring to escape this fractured,
repetitive temporality but unable to break free from the system (fig. 6).
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Fig. 6. Window of escape; Tuboflex; Molleindustria, 2003; Video Game; 10 August 2010.
All of these games invoke the symbolism of the cloud as an escape (or lack
thereof), and often this symbolism moves within the cultural imaginary—escaping from
work, from debilitating forms of temporality, from pollution wrought by industry, etc..
The use of clouds in these games does not explicitly address the video game medium,
only perhaps as an oblique gesture to escape the space of the game itself. Continuing to
follow the thread of escape but examining a game that directly investigates the cloud, I
turn to Cloud, a game mentioned in chapter one because it was a precursor to flOw—a
game that I examined extensively. Cloud was produced by students at The University of
Southern California in 2005 (fig. 7). Part of the design team, Jenova Chen and Kellee
Santiago, would soon found the indie game outfit thatgamecompany which designed flOw
a year later.2 When one begins the first stage in Cloud a short narrative cut-scene occurs
where (through a series of still images that a camera slowly pans over) the player is
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Fig. 7. Title screen; Cloud; thatgamecompany, 2005; Video Game; 10 August 2010.
Fig. 8. Hospital bed; Cloud; thatgamecompany, 2005; Video Game; 10 August 2010.
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introduced to a boy lying in a hospital bed, gazing out of the window at the white clouds
(fig. 8). An unidentified interlocutor coaxes the boy to escape his situation by dreaming
of flying through the clouds:
For you, who landed along time ago and left the blue sky and white clouds
behind... Could you really forget that feeling of freedom...of flying headlong
through the clouds? I did... I told her that I was tired of the medicine, the empty
walls, and laying here everyday. She closed my eyes and asked me what I saw.
―Nothing...,‖ I told her. ―Try harder...‖ Clouds are waiting for us...will you join us?
―I will!‖
While one can find a more detailed backstory concerning the game online, the narrative
elements in the actual game remain quite minimal.3 As the designers note: ―The game
allows players to share the dreams of a child trapped in the hospital; the child dreams of
flying into the sky and manipulating the clouds. The player can control the child in the
dream, flying freely through the world, playing and painting the sky with different types
of clouds‖ (Fullerton et al. 51). Indeed, the child soars through the air with remarkable
fluidity, his hospital clothes recoded as flowing white robes so that he appears almost
like an angel. The game space itself contains few objects—puffs of clouds here and there
and an ocean peppered with islands below. Players can zoom in on the boy and
experience the clouds and movement on a larger scale (fig. 9) or zoom out, reducing the
boy-avatar to a point but allowing players to see the surrounding cloud formations (fig.
10). As the player moves about the world he or she can gather clouds together, building
a larger, shimmering white cloud (fig. 9) that the boy-avatar can drag around the space;
when the boy brings this cloud near other clouds (of slightly darker shades) these clouds
are converted to white and gathered into his collection. The boy can also ―consume‖
the clouds that he has collected—causing them to disappear from the screen—and then
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Figs. 9 and 10. Zoom in or out; Cloud; thatgamecompany, 2005; Video Game; 10 August 2010.
later release them back into the world. Thus, some of the goals within various stages of
the game require the player to gather clouds together, consume them, and then draw
figures in the sky by releasing the stored clouds in particular patterns (fig. 11). In other
stages which can be selected (the game allows players to choose from a menu of four
Fig. 11. Drawing figures; Cloud; thatgamecompany, 2005; Video Game; 10 August 2010.
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possible stages and also a handful of stand-alone levels) the player must stop clouds of
pollution using the white clouds that he or she has gathered; or in another level, the
player must purify and cleanse the land on the islands below by ―battling‖ dark storm
clouds with the white clouds—a confrontation which causes rain to appear. While one
can play these different portions of the game, selecting from a few stages that are
provided by the designers, players can also easily switch to an editing mode that allows
them to draw endless figures in the sky. Instead of the cultural game of gazing at clouds
and projecting figures that emerge in their drifting forms, the player becomes a
skywriter creating images with the clouds themselves.
Through the simple narrative frame of escape the game Cloud seeks to embrace
emotional experiences of play, to escape from the confines of traditional gameplay and
create games that are ―touching‖ and ―moving.‖ Indeed, when the designers were in the
midst of creating Cloud they identified one of their primary goals: ―Simulate the imagined
experience of 'touching' and shaping clouds; this visceral experience takes precedence
over all other technical features‖ (Fullerton et al. 55). Although I already mentioned
thatgamecompany's logo in the first chapter it is worth revisiting it here. The logo
depicts a flowing, white hand on a blue background (fig. 12). Like many first person
shooters the hand seems to extend from the lower left-hand corner of the frame,
though the hand does not hold a weapon but rather gestures elegantly as if part of a
dance. In truth, there is not an actual ―frame‖ for this hand, and if one views the
company‘s website the hand seems to hang in the sky of the blue background (only
framed by the browser window itself). It is a cloud drifting through the open sky of
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Fig. 12. Company logo; thatgamecompany; 10 August 2010.
information. Perhaps this image is not far from a perfect symbol for the game Cloud
where the player is allowed to touch the clouds, to use the clouds to draw images in the
sky or against the blue background of the ocean below. In the first chapter I moved to
theorize a particular form of subjectivity created through the notion of psychological
flow. Yet, here, I am less concerned with the idea of a gamic subject and more
concerned with the meaning of the ―video game cloud‖ itself, what the cloud as a
figure—as a concept, as a presence (and absence) within the game (and within
culture)—can teach us about the structure of the video game and about its space. In a
sense this hand is not only the gamer's hand interacting with and touching the cloud, but
it is the cloud itself; the more one looks at this 2D image the more one grasps that
while it reaches into the space—into the digital, the interactive ―frame‖ of the game—it
also could be seen as reaching out, the cloud touching us as much as we touch it. In
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order to approach the ―video game cloud‖ I need to detour through the cloud of
modernity and the representation of clouds on the cusp of aesthetic modernism.
Modernity through the Clouds
―Life is a hospital where every patient is obsessed by the desire of changing beds.
One would like to suffer opposite the stove, another is sure he would get well beside
the window‖ (Paris 101). So writes Charles Baudelaire in one of his prose poems from
Paris Spleen. The piece continues with an imagined dialogue between an individual and his
soul where the individual suggests places where one can travel to perhaps find a fitting
home for the restless soul. After a number of suggestions the soul exclaims, ―Anywhere!
Just so it is out of the world!‖ (Paris 102). Such a theme of escape (much more overcast
than that within the game Cloud) runs throughout Baudelaire's Paris Spleen. Often,
though, this theme finds expression within the form of the clouds. In his piece ―The
Soup and the Clouds‖ Baudelaire writes:
My dear little mad beloved was serving my dinner, and I was looking out of
the open dining-room window contemplating those moving architectural marvels
that God constructs out of mist, edifices of the impalpable. And as I looked I was
saying to myself: 'All those phantasmagoria are almost as beautiful as my beloved's
beautiful eyes, as the green eyes of my mad monstrous little beloved.'
All of a sudden I felt a terrible blow of a fist on my back, and heard a husky
and charming voice, an hysterical voice, the voice of my dear little beloved, saying:
'Aren't you ever going to eat your soup, you damned bastard of a cloud-monger?‖
(Paris 91)
In this short prose poem from Paris Spleen, the figure of the artist (lost in reverie, staring
out of the portal into the drifting forms of the imagination) is quickly snapped back to
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reality by an abrupt cuff from his beloved. As in the previous chapter one can identify
marks of Baudelaire's theory of modernity within this passage. Baudelaire declared in his
essay ―The Painter of Modern Life‖ (1863), ―by 'modernity' I mean the ephemeral, the
fugitive, the contingent, the half of art whose other half is the eternal and the
immutable,‖ and thus one could easily attach the temporality of the clouds to this
fugitive and ephemeral movement (13).4
Within ―The Soup and the Clouds‖ the cloudy ephemerality is difficult to grasp,
―impalpable‖—literally, unable to be touched or imperceptible through the sense of
touch. The dreamy futility of touching these intangible formations is abruptly countered
with the strong, physical blow from the artist's beloved, returning his thoughts to the
mundane; the cloud-merchant engrossed in the abstract production and trade of fancy
forcibly returned to the consumption of the tangible soup before him. While the
interpretation of this passage could follow numerous directions, among other things it
inscribes a certain desire to escape the mundane and the earthly, fleeing the solid
interior of the home for the ephemeral edifices and transitory architecture of some
otherworldly reality. Indeed, Paris Spleen begins with a piece called ―The Stranger‖
where the clouds are also figured as an escape, as an outside. Here a stranger is asked a
series of questions by an unknown interlocutor:
Tell me, enigmatical man, whom do you love best, your father, your mother, your
sister, or your brother?
I have neither father, nor mother, nor sister, nor brother.
Your friends?
Now you use a word whose meaning I have never known.
Your country?
I do not know in what latitude it lies.
Beauty?
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I could indeed love her, Goddess and Immortal.
Gold?
I hate it as you hate God.
Then, what do you love, extraordinary stranger?
I love the clouds...the clouds that pass...up there...up there...the wonderful clouds!
(Paris 1)
Within this final phrase one can only imagine the stranger looking upward, his glance
shifting about the sky as he declares his affection for the clouds. Here the temporality of
the mutating clouds is inscribed in the ellipsis of the final sentence, as if the pauses are
punctuated with change, change that is both a repetition of form (―up there...up there‖)
and its slow mutation. As in ―The Soup and the Clouds,‖ the stranger gives voice to an
escape—abandoning the mundane of worldly affairs (except for beauty, which is the
immortal or eternal half of the cloudy transitoriness), escaping into the sky, into an
autonomous realm, perhaps ultimately the autonomous realm of aesthetic reflection and
production. As Edward Kaplan described this prose poem, ―The stranger is indeed
estranged from God, family, and country—the conventional treasures of bourgeois
society‖ (15). Just as one might describe modernity itself as a kind of escape—from the
strictures of traditional society, from cyclical, agrarian forms of temporality, from the
rooting in place of individuals, etc.—the clouds become a figure for escape as well, a
projection outside conventional strictures. Up there, in the clouds, dreams and desire
operate through the imagination of an ―outside,‖ projecting images that are there and
not there, the idle daydreamer caught in the undefined ellipses of a poetic sentence,
wasting time and killing time while the mundane, worldly affairs of society progress
elsewhere and under a law of efficiency (and rationalization) that the languid duration of
the clouds' movements do not obey.
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A few years prior to Baudelaire's famous invocation of modernity in ―The Painter
of Modern Life,‖ John Ruskin declared in the third volume of his Modern Painters (1856)
that modern painting could be defined by ―cloudiness,‖ and ―if a general and
characteristic name were needed for modern landscape art, none better could be
invented than 'the service of clouds'‖ (Vol. 3 237). Ruskin also expressed a temporal
sensibility concerning the age in words that might strike one as remarkably similar to
Baudelaire's, though inscribed through the figure of clouds:
Out of perfect light and motionless air, we find ourselves on a sudden brought
under sombre skies, and into drifting wind; and, with fickle sunbeams flashing in
our face, or utterly drenched with sweep of rain, we are reduced to track the
changes of the shadows on the grass, or watch the rents of twilight through angry
cloud. And we find that whereas all the pleasure of the medieval was in stability,
definiteness, and luminousness, we are expected to rejoice in darkness, and triumph
in mutability; to lay the foundation of happiness in things which momentarily
change or fade; and to expect the utmost satisfaction and instruction from what it
is impossible to arrest, and difficult to comprehend. (Vol. 3 237)
This turn to the clouds, putting the landscape in ―the service of clouds,‖ must also be
read as a symptom of the changing modern ―landscape‖ not merely as an aesthetic
judgment in reference to painting. As Emerson wrote of changes faced in the nineteenth
century in his essay ―Illusions:‖ ―Flow, flow the waves hated, / Accursed, adored, / The
waves of mutation: / No anchorage is‖ (―Illusions‖). There can be little doubt that
movements and dynamics of modern life influenced the turn to the skies where the
clouds became the material through which such shifts were partially registered. If ―all
that is solid melts into air‖ as Marx and Engels summarized modern experience under
the dynamics of capitalism, then the clouds would become a perfect figure for
registering such an experience.
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In order to capture the mutation of the clouds Ruskin recommended an
accelerated technique of sketching their forms in pencil, conquering their transitory
journeys with the speed of aesthetic execution:
...it is totally impossible to study the forms of clouds from nature with care and
accuracy, as a change in the subject takes place between every touch of the
following pencil, and parts of an outline sketched at different instants cannot
harmonize, nature never having intended them to come together. Still if artists
were more in the habit of sketching clouds rapidly, and as accurately as possible in
the outline, from nature, instead of daubing down what they call 'effects' with the
brush, they would soon find there is more beauty about their forms than can be
arrived at by any random felicity of invention, however brilliant, and more essential
character than can be violated without incurring the charge of falsehood. (―The
Complete‖ 328)
Although Ruskin begins this passage indicating the impossibility of capturing the clouds,
he nonetheless suggests that the artist's task must be to cultivate techniques which
strive to contain their forms. The technique of ―daubing‖ with the brush—an imprecise
approximation of form—is replaced which the rapid sketching of a pencil that can
outline a truer representation, seeking to endow the skies with a ―more essential
character‖ and thus avoid the falsity of depiction. Ruskin's thoughts on sketching the
clouds also parallel Baudelaire's discussion of the artist Constantine Guys' creative
technique in ―The Painter of Modern Life.‖ Baudelaire described Guys as violently
attacking his aesthetic subjects (drawn from the transitory lope of everyday life),
―skirmishing with his pencil, his pen, his brush...in a ferment of violent activity, as though
afraid that the image might escape him...‖ (―Painter‖ 12). Or again, Guys displayed ―an
intoxication of the pencil or the brush, amounting almost to a frenzy. It is the fear of not
going fast enough, of letting the phantom escape before the synthesis has been extracted
and pinned down...‖ (―Painter‖ 17). Here the ephemeral must be captured and ―pinned
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down,‖ lest it escape. The lure of the transitory is also a threat of its escape, and thus in
Baudelaire's estimation the modern artist's task becomes ―to distill the eternal from the
transitory,‖ to capture an essence from fleeting appearance (just as Ruskin declared that
the artist should seek the essence of the clouds).5
While the ephemerality of the mutating clouds becomes a projected figure for
escaping traditional strictures—―the clouds that pass...up there...up there...‖—it
simultaneously marks the production of anxiety that these phantoms will escape the
grasp and touch of representation. The clouds are forms which resist management and
containment but simultaneously produce the desire to contain and represent; they are
forms which, using Deleuze and Guattari's terms, elicit the promise of decoding (of
escaping codes) while giving rise to an impulse to recode (providing codes to contain
them). For Ruskin, then, the fast sketching of clouds ―as accurately as possible‖ was an
attempt to produce the ―truth of clouds‖ (as the chapter was called from which the
above quote was extracted). Modern painters (for Ruskin, first and foremost Joseph
Mallord William Turner) sought ―the real form of clouds‖ and their ―faithful
representation,‖ approaching them as ―a subject of science‖ that needed to be enclosed
within ―aërial perspective‖ (Vol. 3 237); in the end, such a view buttressed and extended
the representational truth of landscape painting, recoding the clouds according to the
science of perspective (237). ―In the service of clouds‖ marked Ruskin's desire to place
clouds in service of the representational naturalness of the image, filling in reality and
extended the breadth and depth of realistic painting. While the cloud forms were
supposedly impossible to naturalize, harmonize, and capture, this impossibility was the
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obstacle that had to be overcome; while clouds threatened to break the harmony of
representational unity, the truth of this unity required that the cloud surrender its form
to the perspective code.
In a fascinating text on the representation and significance of clouds within the
history of (mostly) Western painting, Hubert Damisch uses the figure of clouds to
demarcate the ―outside‖ of Renaissance perspective, that which could not be subsumed
within a rational, linear system of illusion, yet that which also needed to be included in
order to solidify the scope of the illusion. In A Theory of /Cloud/ Damisch examines an
experiment by Filippo Brunelleschi performed early in the fifteenth century. Brunelleschi
painted an image of the Florence Baptistery from a single viewpoint on a wooden panel,
constructed in geometrical perspective through the use of intersecting lines that
disappeared at a vanishing point. Within this panel Brunelleschi drilled a peephole at the
vanishing point so that the viewer could hold the back of the panel against his eye while
extending a mirror at arm‘s length in front of the panel (fig. 13). ―The depicted
Fig. 13. A reconstruction of Brunelleschi‘s first experiment; Alessandro Parronchi; La
dolce prospettiva; Hubert Damisch; A Theory of /Cloud/; 2002.
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baptistery, reflected in this mirror,‖ writes Rosalind Krauss, ―would thus be guaranteed
a 'correct' viewing according to the theory of perspective's legitimate construction, in
which the vanishing point and the viewing point must be geometrically synonymous‖
(83-84). While the illusion of perspective was thus demonstrated, Damisch describes a
remarkable aspect of this experiment: Brunelleschi's image included a portion of the sky
that could not be rendered according to the geometrical lines of perspective, and thus
he ―covered the corresponding part of the panel with a surface of dark silver in which
the real air and heavens were reflected, and likewise any clouds that appeared there...‖
(124) (fig. 13). The illusion generated by the invention of perspective was subsequently
undermined and strengthened by a reflection of the real. While the clouds and sky
would not fit within the theory of linear perspective they nonetheless were included in
order to complete its illusory production:
Perspective only needs to 'know' things that it can reduce to its own order, things
that occupy a place and the contour of which can be defined by lines. But the sky
does not occupy a place, and cannot be measured; and as for clouds, nor can their
outlines be fixed or their shapes analyzed in terms of surfaces. […] So the
procedure which Brunelleschi resorted to 'show' the sky, that version of a mirror
which he introduced into the pictorial field like a piece of marquetry and in which
the sky and the clouds could be glimpsed—that mirror was considerably more
than just a subterfuge. It has the force of an epistemological emblem...to the
extent that it reveals the limitations of the perspective code for which the
experiment provided the complete theory. It reveals perspective as a structure of
exclusion, the coherence of which is founded upon a series of rejections, and yet
which has to make room for the very things that it excludes from its order...
(Damisch 124)
The location of this reflection within the signifying system of perspective is what
Damisch referred to as /cloud/: it is not a part of the painted system as an object which
the artist has depicted (perhaps as a symbol or an icon), but /cloud/ marks the place of
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―exclusion‖ within linear perspective that nevertheless exists within the system in order
to produce its ―coherency.‖ Krauss writes that /cloud/ functions as ―a 'remainder'—the
thing that cannot be fitted into a system but which nevertheless the system needs in
order to constitute itself as a system...‖(82). It is, in a sense, more the ―center‖ of
perspective than that of the centering vanishing point, marking the ―real‖ of which the
perspective construction is an approximated substitute. Describing Brunelleschi's
experiment and Damisch's exegesis, Krauss writes, ―But between those two planes of
the perspective apparatus [the panel and the mirror held at arm's length] something was
necessarily added, slipped into the construction as though it were a measurable,
definable body, but which gave the lie nonetheless to this very possibility of definition.
This something was the /cloud/‖ (84). Indeed, the lie was not only that the clouds were
the indefinable, the ―unformed‖ as Krauss calls them, but that the system of perspective
itself was a lie founded on exclusions, subtractions, limitations and rejections.
For Damisch, the appearance of the /cloud/ in Brunelleschi's experiment was also
a thin veil of paint spread over the material substrate of the canvas. While the paint
reflected the ―real‖ of the sky, it was both inside the illusion of perspective and outside,
an imposter of sorts which covered the material reality of the canvas with a semblance
of ―reality‖ itself. Thus the destiny of the illusory and ideological odyssey to erase the
materiality of the canvas—a materiality which would appear in modernist painting—was
begun with a mirror, a mirror image that the perspective system would continue to
approximate at the expense of the ―truth‖ of painting's material ground. The materiality
of the medium was subsequently erased; it was, for Damisch, the ultimate exclusion and
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rejection produced by the perspective code. When Damisch nears the end of his book
(which closes on the edge of modernism and the move toward abstraction) he discusses
Ruskin's embrace of the cloud form, ultimately concluding that perspective itself had to
be extended at the very moment of danger where the materiality of the canvas might
appear through the elusive mutability of the cloud. He writes:
'In the service of the clouds': for Ruskin the formula has the force of, not so much
a program, rather a statement of fact. Far from introducing new theories, it
reiterates the institution of perspective, with a warning note: this 'service' must
not be carried to such extremes that the system would destroy itself by
renouncing its regulatory principle. On the contrary, what it must do is
accommodate itself to extending to the sky, until then treated as a black cloth, all
the principles of organization that apply for the scene itself. […] Initially, cloud had
only found a place within the system thanks to a forcing of its principles and a
slackening...of the formal constraints that regulated the functioning of the system
as such. But such was the flexibility of that system and so extensive were its
powers of adaption that, at the very moment when it was about to be
fundamentally threatened, it appealed to that very element, as both a syntactical
tool and a factor of illusion, in order to preserve the coherence of representation
that was governed ever more strictly by the regime of perspective. (Damisch 193)
Indeed, as I noted above, Ruskin argued that the painter should treat the cloud as ―a
subject of science,‖ a subject that—in the science of painting—required the formation of
―aërial perspective.‖ Ruskin provided these sketches (fig. 14). Through their mutability
and their ―impossibility‖ of capture the clouds constituted the possibility of decoding the
system, breaking the perspective code, but for Ruskin the task was to recode the clouds
according to perspective, continuing to suppress the materiality of the medium.
Thus far, I have attempted to sketch a description of the figure of clouds
operating in the nascent stages of modernity. As transient forms, clouds open into
temporal and spatial mutations that resist recoding, management, and delineation. That
is, through their constant mutations clouds produce the hope of decoding and escape
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Fig. 14. Rectilinear and Curvilinear perspective for clouds; Ruskin; Modern Painters;
Hubert Damisch; A Theory of /Cloud/; 2002.
from traditional forms of control. As entities that exist ―up there‖ in a transcendent
space beyond the grounded architecture of everyday existence they offer the hope of
critical distance, a figurative standpoint (always changing, always renewing itself) from
which to challenge and critique the fixed forms of everyday life. Even at the inception of
the perspective code the clouds were there as a possibility for rupturing the system,
although they were also used to contain and cover the materiality of the medium. Later,
through the work of John Ruskin, one glimpses the codification of the cloud, bringing its
mutations ―into the service‖ of the reigning order. Thus clouds operate simultaneously
as the promise of escape from a system while also a challenge to the system, a mark of
its desire to overcome its own limitations.
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In the analysis of video games that follows, I trace the figure of the cloud's
operation within the video game medium and its space. While I have already shown
examples of the cloud operating as a symbol of escape I wish to now follow Damisch's
concept of the /cloud/ in order to test the possibility that such a /cloud/ can also be
identified within the video game form. This is not to say that the concept of /cloud/
retains all the properties it expresses within Damisch's description, nor do I merely wish
to use this term in relation to the continuation of Renaissance perspective within the
video game medium. The concept of /cloud/ provides an analytical tool which can
―focus‖ the discussion of clouds for it provides a description of a system in terms of its
inclusions and exclusions while also being a marker and indication of a medium's
―materiality.‖ While /cloud/ may not actually be this materiality—for Damisch it covered
this materiality with a thin veil—it exists in a location where such a materiality could be
revealed. Thus, in Damisch's theoretical history of (Western) painting since the
Renaissance the /cloud/ appeared as a cover of materiality (as a reflection of illusory
―reality‖ that obscured the materiality) but also as an indication of potential energies
which could rupture the system and reveal its material constraints and determinations.
Richard Hamblyn writes, ―As clouds race toward their own release from form,
they are replenished by the mutable processes that created them. They drift, not into
continuity, but into other, temporary states of being, all of which eventually decompose,
to melt into the surrounding air. They rise and fall like vaporous civilizations...‖ (16).
Through their changing forms clouds become figures for the rise and fall of civilizations.
Indeed, the notion that the form of clouds ―melt into the surrounding air,‖ recalls Marx
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and Engels' famous statement about the incessant revolutionizing of production in
capitalist modernity, ―All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and
venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become
antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air.‖ Clouds seem the
appropriate figure for the result of this process. Thus, it is capitalism too that constantly
escapes, going beyond its own limits: ―The need of a constantly expanding market for its
products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe,‖ like clouds that
know no boundaries. In this sense clouds are figures for the flow and fluidity of liquid
modernity—to return to the leitmotif of Zygmunt Bauman's characterization of
modernity that I have used throughout the dissertation. The fluidity which was present
in Marx and Engels' statement has seemingly only grown more fluid over time, turning
into a contemporary state of ―total flow‖ and ―total innovation,‖ a storm of new,
constantly shifting cloud formations. If for Bauman early modernity was more solid
because the fluid changes that were dissolving traditional norms were simultaneously
met with a desire to create more solid foundations for society (such as the dream of a
managed, communist society or a more regulated economy and socialist state), then late
modernity or liquid modernity occurs when such dreams of solidity disappear. Yet,
while clouds perhaps provide an apt metaphor for capitalism's constant innovation,
uprooting, discovery of new markets, new forms of profit, etc., they also fuel notions of
critique and the ability to find critical distance, to break free from dominant forms of
control, even if these forms of control are fluid like the clouds themselves. One cannot
reduce the figure of clouds to capitalist dynamics, and even for Marx and Engels the
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melting of solids into the air participated in a positive movement of liberation from
feudal social relations. Indeed, the goal of this chapter is to follow the cloud within the
video game medium, examining its forms and the desire of escape operating within its
appearances. In the contemporary situation of liquid modernity where many voices
clamor that there is no longer an ―outside,‖ that metanarratives have disappeared, that a
critical standpoint to critique the system no longer exists, then the desire fueling this
chapter is simply to look to the clouds—those figures of mutation, transitoriness, and
escape in modernity—in order to see what signs of possibility and/or impossibility that
they offer for thinking through the space of the video game.
Representation, Rendering, /Cloud/
Returning to the game Cloud what immediately becomes clear is that the player is
not engulfed within a realistic, representational space. The clouds are not actually
―clouds‖ at all. As the designers of Cloud noted, ―this visceral experience [of touching
clouds] takes precedence over all other technical features‖ (Fullerton et al.). Thus, for
example, the game occurs primarily on a (more or less) 2D plane of action where the
player can gather clouds and use them to complete particular tasks or draw with them
as in a typical paint program. While the player occasionally must build larger, ―higher‖
clouds in order that the player's white clouds will engulf the other darker clouds, such a
task is completed on the 2D plane—the clouds growing ―higher‖ automatically as the
player adds more clouds to others. The player cannot create massive, volumetric clouds
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like the vaulting cumulonimbus. Moreover, if players simply want to draw pictures with
the clouds, they work on the surface of a 2D ―page‖ which can be viewed from above
or below. While the player can break out of this 2D plane in a flying mode which allows
complete 3D movement, the 2D plane of action remains (fig. 13), the player ―snapped to
Fig. 13. Drawing figures; Cloud; thatgamecompany, 2005; Video Game; 10 August 2010.
grid‖ when he or she wishes to touch the clouds again.6 Indeed, the clouds themselves
are simply puffy interactive objects whose true form exists as actionable particles that
can be separated or globed together. When one discovers that the rendering can easily
be switched between three states within the game by pressing ―Tab‖ then the form of
the ―video game cloud‖ begins to express different valences and structural dynamics
(figs.14, 15, 16). (One can play the game within these other modes if one so wishes.)
Indeed, in these other rendered states the clouds are not free-floating forms and
realistic bodies that are constantly in the process of becoming, but systems of separable
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Fig. 14. Rendered as clouds; Cloud; thatgamecompany, 2005; Video Game; 10 August
2010.
Fig. 15. Rendered as balls; Cloud; thatgamecompany, 2005; Video Game; 10 August 2010.
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Fig. 16. Rendered as points; Cloud; thatgamecompany, 2005; Video Game; 10 August
2010.
objects defined partially in relationship to each other and partially in relationship to the
interactive forces that the player exerts upon the space. The inner circle in these images
depicts the space of the large cloud that one has gathered—a collection of particles
grouped together. The outer circle with the arrows pointing toward the inner circle
indicates the area in which other individual clouds (outside the main cloud that the
player controls) will be attracted like a gravitational force to the main cloud. The center
point of these circles marks the player's avatar. What emerges here is a multiplicity of
spaces—a representational space containing the objects one sees, a rendered space
which marks the distinct methods for representing clouds (the three images above), a
geometric and perspectival space indicated by the grid, and an interactive space primarily
indicated by the circles in the middle of the image which ―represent‖ areas of interactive
force and relation between the objects and the player (players will most likely turn off
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the grid and these lines while playing). In this collection of spaces I am primarily
interested in the rendered space and the interactive space which are two
interconnected spaces that are more or less familiar to video games above and beyond
the representational and perspectival spaces which are common across media forms.
Etymologically, rendering means ―to give again‖ or ―to repeat‖ while also being
rooted in notions such as paying back a debt, giving something up, surrendering
property (―Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's‖); moreover, it can mean to give
something in return (―rendering thanks for gifts received‖) (OED). Like representation
which repeats the present, a rendering is also a repetition—for example, a rendition of a
song. But one already senses that an artist‘s rendition is a repetition with a difference,
not a presentation of the present again or a reproduction of a present, but a form of
production that inflects the ―original‖ elsewhere. In their book Understanding Virtual
Reality: Interface, Application, and Design William Sherman and Alan Craig write that,
―Simply put, representation is the choice of what to render‖ (205). If representation is
the choice of what to render, rendering is the choice of how:
The creation of sensory images that are displayed to the VR participant can be
divided into two stages. The first stage involves choices of how the world will
look, sound, and feel to the participant. This is the representation stage of creating
a world. The second stage is how the chosen representation is implemented in
(i.e. performed by) software and hardware rendering systems. (Sherman and Craig,
205)
Through its processes rendering returns substance to the what, to the reality it renders,
ultimately altering the ―what‖ along the way. One intuits here a move away from typical
notions of representation which have been linked to the idea of the reproduction of
reality, that is, reproducing a present that once was, repeating it like a photograph
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reproducing an instant in time. Instead, representation becomes a choice, an intention, a
mental act of sorts which does not have a ―real‖ component until it is linked with the
rendering process that produces how this real will become actualized. Thus, in terms of
the photograph, representation would be the choice of what one wants to capture and
the rendering would concern first and foremost the choice to take a photograph (as
opposed to making a painting), but also the type of camera used, the lighting, use of
color filters or different lens, etc.. In terms of the video game Cloud, the representational
moment would be the decision to render clouds, while the rendering moment would
lead to a multiplicity of possibilities, three of which were included as optional graphical
depictions (figs. 14, 15, 16).
In interactive systems this rendering process is limited by time constraints in
order to produce a continuous image which can be manipulated by a user. Sherman and
Craig write, ―For virtual reality and other interactive, computer-generated media, new
sensory images need to be produced fast enough to be perceived as a continuous flow
rather than discrete instances. The ability to create and display images at a realistic rate
is referred to as real-time rendering‖ (205). Yet, this ―continuous flow‖ of images must be
maintained during user interaction as well, thus the processing of the image and the
computational work needed to produce fluid user interaction must be maintained at
high speeds. As the authors of the introductory text Real-Time Rendering define the
concept, ―An image appears on the screen, the viewer acts or reacts, and this feedback
affects what is generated next. This cycle of reaction and rendering happens at a rapid
enough rate that the viewer does not see individual images, but rather becomes
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immersed in a dynamic process‖ (Möller 1). Computer graphics are ―real-time‖ if no lag
occurs between the drawing or rendering of the graphics and user input; that is, if the
system runs without delay. Since in real-time rendering the time allowed to render
images is reduced to milliseconds, rendering processes typically subtract elements from
―reality,‖ from the ―what‖ of representation, in order to increase processing speeds. In
3D worlds, for example, objects that do not fall within the viewing fulstrum are not
rendered. Moreover, there are numerous culling algorithms–backface culling, portal
culling, etc.–that select objects or portions of objects that will not be rendered since
they might be visually blocked by other objects within the space. There is also detail
culling where the detail of objects in a 3D space is programmed to decrease when one
is moving and increase when one is stationary, and to decrease when one is far from a
viewable object and increase when one is near to it. This list could go on. Thus
rendering, which is commonly associated with filling in a model and with generating or
adding realism to the image (shading, textures, lighting and reflection, etc.) is
simultaneously engaged in the constant removal of what is there, subtracting the real.
The realistic rendering of clouds has been, and still is, an important element of
computer graphics research. Considering that the history of the video game and realtime graphics rendering is largely indebted to the work of creating realistic military flight
simulators, the clouds are certainly a necessary aspect of this realism. In an important
article, ―Real-time Cloud Rendering,‖ addressing the realistic rendering of clouds in
video games Mark Harris and Anselmo Lastra write, ―Clouds are such an integral feature
of our skies that their absence from any synthetic outdoor scene can detract from its
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realism. Unfortunately, interactive applications such as flight simulators often suffer from
cloudless skies.‖ Why is this so? Simply because, game and flight simulator ―systems are
already computationally and graphically loaded, so cloud rendering must be very fast‖
(Harris and Lastra). Or, in the words of Niniane Wang, ―Michelangelo spent years
perfecting the heavens on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, but we need to render
realistic clouds in milliseconds.‖ Clouds certainly add realism to graphical skies, but they
have been (and are still) a supplement, an extra realism that arrives when CPUs or
GPUs have free time to crunch some extra clouds of data. Indeed, Harris and Lastra
focus on rendering static clouds for flight simulators, avoiding dynamic cloud movement,
growth and change. Thus, the progression toward realistic cloud rendering continues.7
In the system of rendering 3D environments, clouds have often been excluded and
rejected from the system in order to free time for the rendering of other elements in
the graphical space, and, importantly, for the processing of interactive elements (i.e. in a
flight simulator interactive elements come first, clouds second). Whereas the ―structure
of exclusion‖ that Damisch theorized within the inception of the perspective code was
fundamentally concerned with the inability of the system to represent clouds using linear
abstractions, in the system of 3D visual rendering it is the speed and efficiency of the
system that is at stake and which leads to a structure of exclusion.
Cloud rendering in 3D spaces is obviously indebted to traditional perspective.
Harris and Lastra employ ―imposters‖ to increase the efficiency of rendering clouds;
these imposters are simply 2D ―billboards‖ (as they are sometimes called) where the 3D
model of a cloud is reduced to a 2D plane seen from a particular point of the viewer's
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Fig. 17. Viewer‘s perspective; Mark J. Harris; Real-Time Cloud Rendering for Games.
Proceedings of Game Developers Conference 2002; March 2002.
perspective (fig. 17). Thus, clouds have been subsumed under a perspectival system,
but this code is secondary to the system of efficiency within a real-time graphics
pipeline. As Harris and Lastra note, in early 3D flight simulators ―Designers...have relied
upon similar techniques to those used by renaissance painters in ceiling frescos: distant
and high-flying clouds are represented by paintings on an always-distant sky dome.‖
While linear perspective techniques are also used to render the imposters shown
above, clearly the use of sky dome techniques reveals that the temporal efficiency of the
system takes precedence over the perspective system; the use of the antiquated method
of placing static clouds on a dome is even more rudimentary than Ruskin's aerial
perspective (which the imposter system parallels—though within a 3D interactive
environment—more than the dome structure of representation). Philip Rosen has
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argued persuasively that 3D digital imaging is not ―new‖ but extends the history of
mathematical, geometric space developed through perspective systems. He writes,
―William J. Mitchell has gone so far to call the development of algorithms for digitizing
single-point perspective in the 1960s 'an event as momentous, in its way, as
Brunelleschi's perspective demonstration'‖ (310). Yet, Rosen suggests that such a
moment was not as ―momentous‖ as it may seem, since 3D computer imagining simply
extends the development of this representational system, ―mimicking‖ older visual
codes. Not only does the digital mimic the representational system demonstrated by
Brunelleschi, but in terms of clouds, early systems employed a rudimentary form of
displaying clouds on a dome as Harris and Lastra indicate. While this is not a mirror
reflection of the real which was included on Brunelleschi's panel it is similar to the
notion of /cloud/ that Damisch theorizes but in terms of the efficient system of 3D
rendering. That is, in these early flight simulators realistic clouds are excluded from the
real-time rendering system, yet this system ―make[s] room for the very things that it
excludes from its order‖ by embracing a basic form of representing clouds that will be
pre-rendered within the scene so as not to be included within the ―real-time‖ rendering
pipeline. Even Harris and Lastra's more advanced approach only simulates static clouds,
allowing them ―to generate clouds ahead of time, and to assume that cloud particles are
static relative to each other. This assumption speeds the rendering of the clouds
because we need only shade them once per scene in a preprocess‖ (my emphasis). Yet,
just as Ruskin eventually extended the system of perspective to the skies (fig. 14), the
criteria of temporally efficient rendering systems is slowly being extended to subsume
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the production of realistic, dynamic clouds that are included within the real-time
rendering pipeline. It is, in a sense, a repetition of the /cloud/ that Damisch theorized,
the continued odyssey of the perspectival code moving into a ―new‖ medium (based on
an efficient system of rendering and computation) that is based on the old. Clouds were
originally outside the system of perspective code (while also ―inside‖ through the
reflection of the sky by Brunelleschi's mirror), but eventually they were brought within
this system as a whole. Likewise, clouds were originally outside the system of efficient,
real-time rendering (while also ―inside‖ through the use an antiquated form of
representing clouds), but now are being brought within the system as well.
Fig. 18. Super Mario Cloud.; Cory Arcangel, 2003; Various formats.
In 2003 Arcangel hacked the 8-bit Nintendo game Super Mario Bros. and created
Super Mario Clouds by removing all the graphical sprites from the original game except
for the drifting clouds (fig. 18). The artwork itself exists in numerous formats: as the
hacked cartridge itself, as animated gifs distributed over the internet, as various captured
videos, as large projections of the work in gallery shows (running through the Nintendo
system), and even as a list of instructions that describes how to hack the game yourself
and create the artwork using your own cartridge of the game. In the videos, animated
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gifts, and projections one simply sees the clouds slowly moving from the right to the left
side of the screen. The movement of the clouds is not fluid, but slightly jerky as the
clouds jump a few pixels to the left at regular time intervals (somewhere beneath the
threshold of a second in the versions that I have encountered). It is, perhaps, not far
from a graphical rendering of the pauses in Baudelaire's line, ―The clouds that pass...up
there...up there...the wonderful clouds!‖ (Paris 1). Standard ways to approach this
artwork might focus on the history of appropriation art, on its nostalgic or retro
elements linking the work to a resurgence of interest in 8-bit graphics and sound, on the
themes of childhood or dreamy playfulness, on the culture of hacking, etc..8 Yet, my
interest in the artwork largely concerns the concept of rendering.
When Arcangel removes all the graphics from the original Super Mario Bros.
except for the clouds and the blue background of the sky, the subtraction of graphical
elements references one of the primary moves of real-time graphics rendering. Of
course, no one needs to remove detail from the original Super Mario Bros. in order for it
to run smoothly. But this can be read as part of the point: the removal of material from
the rendering pipeline—culling items that cannot be seen from a certain viewpoint for
example—increases the efficiency of processing; it increases the speed of interaction
and the ―realism‖ of graphics since more time can be spent on filling in viewable details.
But when Arcangel hacks through the Super Mario Bros. landscape leaving only the slow
rolling and low detailed clouds, instead of gaining valuable processing time or increasing
speed of play (both unnecessary in this case), the subtraction creates a slow temporal
unfolding. Furthermore, gameplay and interactivity are rendered out of the picture as
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well which is part of the point: pushing the subtractive logic of real-time rendering to its
extreme, the real-time speed of interaction, agency, control, flips over into another
time, a real-time not scarred by the demands of efficiency and speed in general.
Although operating in a different context, the following quote from Lyotard is
applicable here:
The decision makers, however, attempt to manage these clouds of sociality
[separate statements and elements in language games] according to input/output
matrices, following a logic which implies that their elements are commensurable
and that the whole is determinable. They allocate our lives for the growth of
power. In matters of social justice and of scientific truth alike, the legitimation of
that power is based on its optimizing the system's performance—efficiency. The
application of this criterion to all of our games necessarily entails a certain level of
terror, whether soft or hard: be operational (that is, commensurable) or
disappear. (xxiv)
I use quote to point out a homology between the efficient system of realistic graphic
rendering and the criterion of efficiency at higher levels of sociality. Such a criterion—
which Lyotard relates to the technocratic aspects of postmodernity—reveals the
extended management, rationalization, and efficient control as prime movers within
various areas of postmodern culture and society. In the terms of Zygmunt Bauman,
liquid modernity and its fluidity also contains a core ―rendering engine‖ that solidifies
cultural and social systems through criteria of efficiency, rationalization, timemanagement, etc. (thus extending notions of solid modernity that tend to rely on these
functions as well). An artwork like Super Mario Clouds performs an obvious critique of
this efficiency and acts as a projected attempt to escape from its demands (the
subtractions within the piece that free-up unneeded ―time‖ are perfectly represented by
the slow movement of the clouds—again, akin to Baudelaire's dreamy escapes into the
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sky). Moreover, the artwork creates an infinite temporal loop that is importantly not a
loop because there is no visual beginning or end to constitute what is looping. As the
clouds tick-tock in miniature pixilated jumps from the right to the left, one witnesses a
completely rationalized, calculated computer time, where nothing ever happens, forever.
Time is programmed from here until eternity. Thus, while these clouds present the lure
of escape, this escape is foreclosed through the digital temporality that meters the
clouds movements. We must give credit to Super Mario Clouds for its partly cloudy
critique; it is not sunshine nor rain, it is time rationalized to the extreme and,
simultaneously, reality freed from the fast-paced effects of this rationalization. Holding
this contradiction together marks the success of this modification.
The Interactive /cloud/
Yet, beyond the interpretation which finds a critique of the efficiency of
rendering within the artwork, there is another element of Super Mario Clouds that
reaches out and touches the viewer. When Arcangel removes everything but the clouds,
he leaves an aspect of the game which is not interactive within the original Super Mario
Bros.. The floating clouds in the original Super Mario Bros. are included only as peripheral
elements; they drift through the sky as the player moves, but he or she cannot interact
with them. The only exceptions, to my knowledge, are the secret ―coin heaven‖ worlds
where Mario can climb vines to discover a plethora of coins (fig. 19). While Mario can
―interact‖ with these clouds by running over them, they are not the same as those in
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Fig. 19. Coin heaven; Super Mario Bros.; Nintendo, 1985; Video game.
the background of the ordinary levels (which are the clouds that Arcangel uses).9 Thus,
by foregrounding the ―background‖ elements, Arcangel emphasizes a non-interactive
feature of Super Mario Bros.. As previously mentioned, I am interested in what I called
the rendered space and the interactive space of video games. These two poles
intertwine within real-time interactive systems since the processing time of the
computer must be ―spent‖ on both the rendering of graphics and on the interactive
elements in a game. Indeed, often games allow the player to change screen resolutions
and adjust different aspects of the graphics rendering process (shading, level of detail,
etc.) which allows the player to manipulate the performance of the system so that it will
run smoothly on his or her machine. If the frame rate is too low and interrupts the
smooth relay between machine and user, then the intensity of the graphical realism can
be lowered in order to create more processing ―time‖ for smoother interaction. Yet,
beyond this fundamental connection between rendering and interacting, one can also
posit an interactive ―space‖ beyond the simply 3D visual space of the world. This
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differentiation can easily be grasped through the three different rendering options in the
game Cloud (figs. 14, 15, 16); the puffy clouds, the balls, and the points are different
forms of the rendered space, but they all share the same interactive space. Indeed, the
circles which map the interactive forces surrounding the player are the same for all
three images. (In terms of Super Mario Bros. one might say that the clouds and the rest of
the visual elements in the game are part of the rendered space but the clouds are not
part of the interactive space.10)
To make this clearer still, in Cloud the rendered aspect of the clouds is hardly
important to the underlying mechanics of the game; these are not realistic, ―beautiful‖
clouds by any means, and they were never supposed to be. True, the clouds had to
express a semblance to reality, but the goal of the game was, again, to ―Simulate the
imagined experience of 'touching' and shaping clouds; this visceral experience takes
precedence over all other technical features‖ (Fullerton 55). Thus in Cloud, with the
twining elements of rendered and interactive space the latter becomes the focus. The
clouds must be able to be touched, interacted with, manipulated and changed. How they
look is less important than what they do. Instead of graphic realism taxing the system,
the interactive elements of the clouds threatened the constraints of the system. Thus
the designers of Cloud expressed relief when the particle system they used to model the
clouds was able to ―handle‖ the multiplicity of elements that produced the interactive
clouds. The system prototype ―proved we could create 'clouds' out of clumps of
dynamic particles—and that we would be able to support a lot of them;‖ the system
accommodated ―several thousand particles in a prototype environment that are
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(thankfully) not over-taxing the machine. These particles can be grabbed and shaped,
much as the team had envisioned the cloud drawing feature‖ (Fullerton 57). This is what
game designer Chris Crawford has called the ―process intensity‖ of the game over the
―data intensity:‖ ―A process-intensive program spends most of its time crunching
numbers; a data-intensive program spends most of its time moving bytes around‖ (89).
Instead of spending time rendering realistic clouds and ―moving bytes around‖ according
to shifts in the 3D system, Cloud spends most of its time calculating interactions
between cloud particles and the player's interaction with these particles.
It is here that another /cloud/ seems to appear, perhaps a /cloud/ that is more
specific to the medium of the computer. If previously the rendering of clouds—in their
realistic form—revealed a repetition of the /cloud/ which Damisch identified within the
inception of the perspectival system, if this repetition seemed to be a continuation of
the odyssey of the perspective code inflected through the criteria of an efficient realtime rendering system, then this other /cloud/ concerns the inception of the interactive,
video game medium. Paralleling Damisch's move to examine Brunelleschi's
―demonstration‖ of perspective, let me turn to one of the first interactive computer
games, Spacewar! created at MIT from 1961-1962 by Martin Graetz, Dan Edwards, Steve
Russell, Peter Samson and Wayne Wiitanen (fig. 20). Implemented on a PDP-1
(Programmed Data Processor-1) computer the game consisted of two spaceships
controlled by separate individuals battling it out on a CRT screen. The ships could
accelerate with jet propulsion (though with limited fuel) and could shoot at each other
with rockets (which were also limited and were rendered as a moving dot on the
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Fig. 20. Spacewar!; Martin Graetz, Dan Edwards, Steve Russell, Peter Samson and Wayne
Wiitanen ; MIT, 1962.
screen). In the center of the screen there was a star—a flickering glob of sorts, a
―sun‖—that exerted gravitational pull upon the star craft (though this pull did not
influence the fired rockets which moved in straight lines, outward from the ships). The
entire space in Spacewar! was seemingly ―interactive‖ since the players could move
within it, could shoot each other's ships, and their ships were constantly being pulled
toward the center of the screen by the gravity of the star (which, upon touching it,
would destroy the ship). Yet, there were other elements included in the ―background‖
of the game—a randomly generated system of points which served as renderings of
distant stars in outer space (the graphic points being all that could be supported
―outside‖ the processing time needed for the computations driving the interactive
space). These elements, these distant stars, did not have any interactive influence on the
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game but were seemingly placed there for added ―realism‖ (i.e. ―this is space, not a black
screen with some weird glowing dots on it‖). These stars would be too far away to
exert any gravitational pull upon the ships so their appearance was justified. Even
augmenting this realism Pete Samson wrote a chunk of code entitled ―Expensive
Planetarium‖ ―that would generate the actual constellations visible to someone standing
on the equator on a clear night. […] He also rigged the program so that, as the game
progressed, the sky would majestically scroll—at any one time the screen exposed
forty-five percent of the sky‖ (Levy 52-53). Indeed, the ―real‖ was there, not as a
reflection of the sky used in Brunelleschi's experiment to depict the clouds within the
system of perspective, but a ―reflection‖ of the ―real‖ nonetheless, a mediation of the
―real‖ placed in the background of the interactive space, the interactive system. This
was, to use Damisch's concept, the /cloud/ of interactive space. These added, noninteractive, ―real‖ stars were, as Rosalind Krauss wrote concerning the /cloud/, ―a
'remainder'—the thing that cannot be fitted into a system but which nevertheless the
system needs in order to constitute itself as a system...‖(82). Certainly these stars could
have been excluded, just as Brunelleschi could have depicted only an interior without
the clouds, but in Spacewar! there is already the trembling of the video game's
connection to reality and the real, a desire to connect the game to reality, to extend the
medium over ―real‖ space; that is, while the video game (and games in general) can
certainly be abstract without a link to reality (Tetris for example), from their inception
there is a certain ―debt to the real‖—a rendering of the real—set upon its path. Yet,
this is not simply an illusory reflection, a reduplication of the real (such as the Western
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representational trajectory in painting), but it laid the foundation for a new system—one
that is still very much in its infancy—an interactive system seeking an interactive realism
where things (though they are realistically rendered or not) can be manipulated,
changed, touched, etc.. The goal of this system would then be—within the video game
medium (and virtual reality itself)—making all of its elements interactive, capable of
being touched and changed.
While such a system is in its infancy, its effects and the desire for its ―realization‖
can certainly be felt. Let me provide an example. In chapter two I analyzed the game
Braid, a 2D platformer similar the Super Mario Bros. but with unique gameplay mechanics
where the player can control time in different ways—for example, reversing the flow of
time or using a ―ring‖ that slows down time in a limited portion of the screen; these
temporal gameplay mechanics are used to solve different puzzles throughout the game.
In the narrative of the game, the player ostensibly attempts to rescue a ―princess,‖ the
girlfriend of the hero, Tim. In an ingenious ending the player discovers that the
―princess‖ is really a figure for the atomic bomb while Tim is a scientist that helped
create the bomb; his obsessive pursuit of the ―princess‖ throughout the game was truly
an obsession that lead to destruction and to the creation of a particular cloud now
firmly ingrained within culture as a symbol of annihilation: the mushroom cloud.
The cloud form itself permeates Braid—from moving, billowy artwork that
occasionally frames the screen, flowing through the background (fig. 21), to cloud
platforms that become part of the actual game space which players must jump upon and
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Fig. 21. Cloud art; Braid; Jonathan Blow, 2008; Video Game; 12 August 2010.
use. Yet there is one cloud in particular that interests me, a cloud that appears in the
epilogue of the game, in the very last scene (or stage) after the player has completed all
the levels. This cloud exists as platform that rests just to the left of a castle made of
children's building blocks,11 a castle which the player can climb in order to jump upon
the cloud (fig. 22).12 This cloud has become known as the ―epilogue cloud‖ or the
―epicloud‖ on forum discussions in the internet (―The Epilogue Cloud‖). What is
intriguing about this cloud is that it does nothing at all; it is, in fact, a decoration, a
simple cloud drifting beside the tower of a castle which the player can nonetheless
reach. Yet, players have become obsessed with the possibility that some secret, hidden
purpose exists within this cloud: for example, players have left the game running for
hours hoping that after a certain amount of time has passed the cloud will begin to
move; others have thought the cloud connected to another aspect of the game, so if
one performs an action somewhere else in the game then it will ―unlock‖ the epilogue
cloud; others have even hacked the code of the game, looking to see if the cloud has a
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Fig. 22. Epilogue Cloud; Braid; Jonathan Blow, 2008; Video Game; 12 August 2010.
secret, programmed function (it does not). Why this obsession about this particular
cloud? There are a few obvious reasons. First, in video game culture dedicated gamers
constantly search for ―Easter eggs,‖ hidden secrets within a game and its code that can
be discovered through patient exploration; gamers have been conditioned to search for
these features. Indeed, Braid even includes ―Easter eggs‖ throughout the game in the
form of eight, hidden stars that can be collected—some of which can only be found
upon playing the game a second time through.13 Thus, after discovering all of these stars,
the epilogue cloud—which the player can interact with but seems to have no function—
became the final frontier of discovery. Second, this search is even more intense in Braid
because of its innovative gameplay, its complex and obscure storyline that is open to
multiple interpretations, and its unique, complex puzzles. Replete with thick, potential
meaning, every aspect of the game lures the interpretative gaze.
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If, as Abercromby wrote, ―Clouds always tell a true story, though one that is
difficult to read,‖ then what is the truth of this difficult cloud? What's its story? It is, in a
sense, a cloud which lures the desire to escape, to find a final exit path from the space
of the game, standing on a cloud at the top of the screen, seeking a final transcendence
from the frame. This cloud does not seem to serve a symbolic purpose other than a
final mark of obsession which the game critiques throughout its narrative of the
obsessive, seeking scientist. Indeed, like the artist in Baudelaire's ―The Soup and the
Clouds,‖ staring out of the window into the lull of the rolling clouds, the player that
latches onto this cloud is caught in a dream of escape, as if the architecture of the game
did not close down at this moment, did not present a threshold which cannot be
crossed. Surely players with their heads in this particular cloud need a slap on the back
to bring them back. But the question I wish to pursue is precisely where they need to
return from? This is an odd cloud, not transfixing because of its imaginative figures and
mutating forms but because one can touch this particular cloud (i.e. one can jump on it)
but it does not react; one can ―interact‖ with this cloud although simultaneously it
points toward the non-interactive elements within the game.
It is here that the cloud touches the gamer, or perhaps, it is here that the
organizing principle of the interactive /cloud/, the system of interactive realism—which
simply means the ability to manipulate and interact with as much of the game world as
possible—reaches out and expresses itself within the desire of the gamer. The epilogue
cloud does not so much mark the player's desire to escape the game, but the wish that
the game would go on, its frontiers of interaction expanding forever.
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There is a genre of video games produced online that exemplify this desire:
room escape games (or, ―escape the room‖ games). In these games—of which there a
literally hundreds if not thousands of examples—the player is typically stuck in a room
and must solve puzzles that will eventually allow them to escape. Sometimes these
games take place in other enclosed spaces—a locked car, a rocky chasm, etc.—but the
majority of them enclose the player within an architectural, claustrophobic, interior.
There are rarely any clouds in these games, let alone windows. In these games the
player attempts to find different parts of the room (or screen) to interact with, picking
up items that one might find and using them on different objects of the room, scraps of
evidence that might reveal an answer to a puzzle that one needs to solve (an entire
series of interactions with various objects which might eventually lead to one's escape
from confinement). For example, one might click on a cabinet in a room which opens to
reveal a box which contains a toothbrush which is used to scrub off a dirty smudge on
an old plaque which reveals a name which must be typed into a keypad which opens a
chest which contains an old book which must be thrown at a ceiling fan which causes a
hidden key to drop which opens a door which leads to another room, and so on and so
on. Sometimes the puzzles are logical and at other times completely baffling and
nonsensical—the latter leading the player to try numerous bizarre combinations of
activities in order to unlock a new object or progress in a puzzle.
In one of the earliest14 and most influential of these web based games, The
Mystery of Time and Space (MOTAS), the player is introduced to the game through a
textual ―sci-fi‖ storyline that describes a race of ―observers‖ that ―have witnessed every
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aspect of the universe from every possible angle,‖ a universe that ―keeps evolving into a
very complex system of interacting elements‖ (Albartus). They tell of ―an alternate
reality‖ that people can no longer see because ―their own memories and experiences‖
have caused them to see reality through a lens that excludes this other reality
(Albartus). Thus, the ―observers‖ erase the player's memory so he or she can see this
other world. The player is then thrown into the first room of the game—a game that
currently contains twenty levels with various rooms to escape. MOTAS is known for its
bizarre combination of puzzles that one must solve, and thus it is an alternate reality of
our own world—a familiar yet bewildering world containing ―a very complex system of
interacting elements‖ (Albartus). While playing the game one spends considerable
amounts of time clicking around various objects in a room, trying to locate interactive
elements. It seems to me that MOTAS—and room escape games in general—marks a
manifestation of the desire to make all things interactive, to make all aspects of the
video game space potentially touchable and manipulable. The bizarre, illogical puzzles
become simply an indication that the potential interaction is privileged over the
―meaning‖ of this interaction—that is, it is enough that something happens when we
interact with an aspect of the room than any potential meaning that emerges. It is not
that the player can interact with every element in these games—they cannot—but the
desire to do so and the need to try an interactive with everything is clearly expressed
within the space of these games.
In one room within MOTAS a self-reflexive moment occurs: the player—who
controls an appropriate ―hand-shaped‖ cursor used for ―manipulating‖ different aspects
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of the screen—is confronted with a painting of a ―hand‖ on a wall (fig. 23). One can, of
course, click on the painting. This interactive move causes the painting to tilt askew
while the text at the bottom of the screen reads: ―Abstract painting of a hand I
presume...‖ (fig. 24). Finally, a few seconds later the hand actually emerges from the
painting, shakes hands (more or less) with the player's hand-shaped cursor and then
retreats back within the frame of the painting (which returns to a straightened position).
The painting, and this interactive moment, has nothing to do with the puzzle which one
must solve to exit the room. It is saying, perhaps, ―I've got to hand it to you.‖—a
congratulatory note for solving the illogical puzzles in order to progress further in the
game. Yet, it is saying much more than this. It is, of course, self-reflexively foregrounding
Fig. 23. Hand on the wall; Jason Albartus; The Mystery of Time and Space, 2001; Video
game; 23 August 2010.
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Fig. 24. ―Abstract painting of a hand I presume...‖; Jason Albartus; The Mystery of Time
and Space, 2001; Video game; 23 August 2010.
Fig. 25. The machine and user connecting; Jason Albartus; The Mystery of Time and Space,
2001; Video game; 23 August 2010.
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the mechanics of the game: the player's hand, moving the cursor-hand within the frame
of the picture in order to interact with the image, an image that responds to the
―handshake‖ of communication—the machine and the user connecting (fig. 25). This is
also an ―abstract painting‖ and thus, in the history of aesthetic modernism, a painting
that is aware of (or becoming aware of) its own representational status, its own frame,
and indeed its own material substrate. Being within a video (or computer) game this
moment also asks the player to reflect upon the frame of the video game itself. But what
is this frame? What is the material substrate of the game which conditions the framing?
What does an aesthetic self-consciousness of the video game medium bring in terms of
understanding ―what‖ is in the process of being sublimated? What is trying to escape, or,
what is the gamer trying to escape? What is this room in the mystery of time and space?
Such questions are difficult to answer in this current historical juncture where
the video game is still in the process of unfolding its own self-understanding. Yet,
perhaps the interactive /cloud/ begins to theorize the movement of this selfunderstanding which is understandably still in progress. The /cloud/ marks those noninteractive elements within a game space which nevertheless remain. If interactive space
is a system—akin to Alexander Galloway's suggestion that ―gamic vision requires fully
rendered, actionable space‖ (63)—then this system (or gamic vision) is unfolding, covering
the /cloud/, extending its system over that which was there from the beginning but
excluded (e.g. in Spacewar!). Indeed, as the power and efficiency of real-time rendering
systems asymptotically approach visual realism, the expansion of a system of interactive
realism will continue to unfold. Many have already noted that the mainstream games
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industry has made leaps and bounds in the graphical realism of 3D visual environments,
and such advancements are perhaps returning less and less in terms of the massive
amounts of technological investments needed to obtain them (akin to what game
designer Raph Koster has called ―Moore‘s Wall‖ in terms of technological
development).15 Thus, using Chris Crawford‘s terms, data intensity (―moving bytes
around‖) will give way to process intensity (―crunching numbers‖ and expanding the
interactive aspects of games). Or rather, process intensity will be ―put into the service‖
of data intensity, meaning that instead of simply expanding the visual realism of games,
this realism will be increasingly made responsive to player actions; for example, one will
not only see realistic water (e.g. with detailed textures, waves, reflections, etc.) but will
be able to do multiple things with this water, interact with its substance in incalculable
ways. Thus if ―gamic vision requires fully rendered, actionable space,‖ as Galloway calls it,
realism will continue to expand the ―actionable‖ within what is ―fully rendered‖ (such is
the system of interactive realism).
As I mentioned earlier, the /cloud/ (for Damisch) covers over the materiality of
the medium—the materiality of painting did not appear until the perspective code
systematically engulfed what the /cloud/ initially made appear in the form of its rejection
from the system. The cloud was put in service (as Ruskin said) of the perspective system
itself; the cloud, becoming part of the perspective system, ended up covering the
/cloud/. Only after this expansion of the system did the materiality of the painting
surface appeared. Thus, it is perhaps only when the non-interactive elements of
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interactive space are brought fully within the interactive system that the material
moment of the video game medium will shine through a break in the clouds.
At the end of his book A Theory of /Cloud/ Damisch mentions that Paul Cézanne's
break from representation and his turn toward the material surface of the painting was
not made through the study of clouds or the sky but through a study of ―geological
foundations,‖ ―a mass study of rocks‖ (229). Although such a final movement at the end
of his text might seem ―easy‖ (a dialectical reversal from cloud to ground), nonetheless,
a return to the fundamentals of interaction—to those early forms of gravity, spatial
movement, collision detection, etc.—might begin to make the video game frame and
materiality more clear: a movement from the stars of outerspace (e.g. in Spacewar!)
which marks the desire to expand interactive realism over all that is known, to the
mundane and the everyday, the limits of action that circumscribe our political, social,
and cultural realities. There are signs of such a movement in many games, especially
games tending toward aesthetics, games that are not intent on building massive
interactive worlds where rendered space is progressively made over into interactive
space (e.g. Grand Theft Auto 4, Spore, etc.), but games investigating simple interactive
dynamics that allow the meaning of the video game form to emerge.
It is perhaps appropriate to end where there are no clouds and where the desire
to escape is used against itself to create new meaning. It is also where this dissertation
began: Molleindustria‘s game Every Day the Same Dream. Here in a world without clouds
the player enacts the same motions of commuting to work, day in and day out, that is,
until he or she begins to explore the interactive space of the game—looking to see what
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can be touched and where one can explore. Yet in this looping game where even the
end brings one back to the beginning, the only escape is through touching the frames
that contain one‘s actions, becoming aware of the edges of the game, of the edges of
everyday reality. As Leigh Alexander wrote:
Next-generation commercial games march ever-closer to the holy grail of
immersion and realism. Audiences criticize invisible walls, artificial constraints, and
all the places where players' reality is interrupted by the artifice of design. Rather
than combat this artifice, Every Day The Same Dream employs it, and by itself
makes a compelling case for the power of design to be the message, rather than a
simple conveyance.
She ends her article arguing that games should ―leverage, not transcend, the conventions
of interactivity.‖ Indeed, Every Day the Same Dream also teaches us the bounds which
capitalist modernity places around us while also emphasizing a refusal to work, a refusal
to flow down the path of least resistance. If the expansion of a ―fully rendered‖ visual
realism beyond its bounds into a complimentary system of expanding ―actionable space‖
is, underneath, the innovative expansion of capital creating a new spectacular reality
which we can pay to explore or pay to play, then Every Day the Same Dream touches the
limits of such an expansion, refusing the extension of a system where even the clouds
succumb to its attraction and end up disappearing. Recalling the logo from
thatgamecomany—a flowing white hand over a frame-less blue background—it is clear
that this interacting hand is a cloud. Perhaps only when this cloudy hand begins to
deform, and only when the interactive /cloud/ begins to appear, will the hand acquire
materiality and touch the meaning of the invisible wall, the invisible frame, which
surrounds it.
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1 This image is not taken from the game but from the website goofans.com which collects data from the
game in order to construct representations of the highest towers constructed by players around the
world. Nonetheless, the image provides a powerful depiction of the towers against a background of
clouds, rising into the atmosphere and grasping at transcendence.
2 Cloud now exists under the umbrella of thatgamecompany and is listed as one of their projects.
3 The detailed back story available on the web identifies the boy as Jun, a seven year-old with debilitating
asthma who must remain inside the hospital (―Cloud Project‖). Jun shares the same hospital room
with a younger girl Fei (which means ―fly‖ in Chinese). Ostensibly it is her that Yun converses with in
the opening lines of dialog, though in the actual game Fei is never seen.
4 Even the feminization of modernity that Baudelaire inscribes within ―The Painter of Modern Life‖
occurs in this passage; where in the former Baudelaire attached the mutability of modernity to
women's fashion, in the latter the clouds are envisioned as the dance of the beloved's eyes. Yet, the
movements of the clouds ―are almost as beautiful‖ as the woman's eyes, perhaps suggesting that those
eyes also hold the eternal and the immutable (the more beautiful depth of the eternal). The eyes fuse
the ephemeral with the eternal, and through these eyes—the window of the soul—the artist pursues
Baudelaire's goal of reading modernity, that is, ―to distill the eternal from the transitory‖ (12). While I
will not pursue an investigation of the gender dynamics at work here, I refer the reader to the end of
the last chapter and the discussion of Baudelaire's prose piece ―The Gallant Marksman‖ in terms of the
temporality of modernity and gender.
5 In his essay ―Illusions‖ Emerson also ended with an invocation of the eternal against transitory,
modern existence. He wrote, ―There is no chance, and no anarchy, in the universe. All is system and
gradation. Every god is there sitting in his sphere. The young mortal enters the hall of the firmament:
there is he alone with them alone, they pouring on him benedictions and gifts, and beckoning him up
to their thrones. On the instant, and incessantly, fall snow-storms of illusions. He fancies himself in a
vast crowd which sways this way and that, and whose movement and doings he must obey: he fancies
himself poor, orphaned, insignificant. The mad crowd drives hither and thither, now furiously
commanding this thing to be done, now that. What is he that he should resist their will, and think or
act for himself? Every moment, new changes, and new showers of deceptions, to baffle and distract
him. And when, by and by, for an instant, the air clears, and the cloud lifts a little, there are the gods
still sitting around him on their thrones, -- they alone with him alone.‖ Here, modern man is cast in a
sea of change where the ―instant‖ is filled with the illusion of constant mutation, but Emerson ended
his text—which grapples with the shifting illusion of everyday life—with an image of a part in the
changing clouds that reveals ―the gods‖ ensconced ―on their thrones,‖ still alive as markers of a
religious eternal which, for Emerson, could stabilize the sway of man's uncertainty.
6 One can see in this screenshot from Cloud that the 2D plane takes preference over the 3D world; that
is, one can see the clouds and the extension of the plane even behind the buildings which should block
one's view of these clouds. In this image I am in 3D flying mode, hovering below the 2D plane of
action.
7 A recent article from 2010 reveals that the progression toward the realistic rendering of clouds is still
underway. In this article the authors attempt to address dynamic cloud behavior instead of focusing on
statically rendered clouds. The authors write, ―However, due to the inherent computational intensity
of volumetric cloud techniques, it can be a challenge to apply these techniques in games. Although
there have been some cloud systems that support real-time rendering of large-scale volumetric clouds
in games, based on performance considerations, these systems generally must abandon the realistic
dynamic features of clouds at run-time‖ (Guo et. al.).
8 Alexander Galloway included this work in his critique of aesthetic game modifications, arguing that
such works are regressive, amputating the gameness of a game while reverting to an outdated critique
of representation. Galloway writes, ―Visual imagery is not what makes video games special. Any game
mod focusing primarily on tweaking the visual components of a game is missing the point…‖ (125).
While I agree with Galloway that artists pursuing methods of countergaming production should focus
on creating progressive interactive principles to counter mainstream game forms, I also think theorists
have much to learn from visual critiques that can surface from game modifications. Galloway critiques
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visual modifications of video games because many repeat a visual critique that was already carried out
forty years ago through the cinematic avant-garde (for example, the common strategy of
foregrounding the technological production of the image within the image). Granted, but comparing
certain game mods to the codes and counter codes of cinematic representation may also miss the
point of some of these modifications. If we dismiss the ―visual tweaking‖ of game modifications as
systematically non-progressive we may also dismiss potential insight into the visual construction of the
video game medium and the social and cultural conditions that influence and are influenced by this
technological change.
9 These ―coin heaven‖ clouds have a different shape and a smiley face upon them.
10 In a sense, everything within a game is part of the interactive space simply because the space in a video
game reacts to a player's action. Thus, the clouds in Super Mario Bros. are actually static in the
background and only move when the player moves and interacts with the game (unlike Arcangel's
modification where he programs movement into the clouds). Nevertheless, the clouds cannot be
―touched,‖ acted-upon, changed, or otherwise manipulated by the player—unlike the coins which the
player can collect, the enemies which can be destroyed, the mushrooms that super-size Mario, etc..
11 In Braid the player is constantly striving to find the princess in a castle where she has supposedly been
abducted by a monster. The game alludes playfully to Super Mario Bros. in this case, but in the end the
castle acquires multiple interpretations. For example, the narrative hints at the fact that the hero's
obsessive tendencies might have originated during childhood when he was denied certain pleasures
and fulfilled desires; thus, the castle references childhood, and the building blocks become early
manifestations of the scientist's theoretical and applied toolkit. Or, throughout the narrative the castle
is positioned as a future, fantasy home for the hero and the princess, and thus the building blocks
represent the fantasy construction of an ideal but ultimately false reality.
12 In the image provided, Tim, the hero, is standing on the cloud in the top, middle portion of the screen.
The epilogue cloud is simply the little cloud-platform on which he stands as distinct from the rest of
the clouds in the background.
13 When a player discovers one of these hidden stars a star is added to a constellation on the title page
of the game—the Andromeda constellation. If all eight stars are discovered an image of the
princess/Andromeda appears caught within the constellation. Of course Andromeda is known as the
chained woman who was fasted to a rock as a sacrifice to a sea monster in Greek mythology. In Braid,
she is obviously a reference to the princess who was obsessively pursued by the hero in the game; as a
figure for the atomic bomb, she also becomes the captured power of atomic energy. Of course, one
only unlocks (or rather ―locks‖) this secret through a second play-through of the game, where a player
must obsessively search for the stars which are often quite difficult to find and obtain. Thus if the game
is about obsession, the drive to unlock the secrets of the atomic bomb, then this aspect of the game is
a self-reflexive addition that rewards players' obsession through an even more violent chaining of the
princess, forever placed in the sky by their own desire to know. Intriguingly, the Andromeda
constellation is also known (or was known) as ―the little cloud‖—thus perhaps operating as an ironic
juxtaposition to the mushroom cloud (not to mention resonating in an obscure way with the little
epilogue cloud which has become the focal point of an acute epistemophilia).
14 These room escape games are obviously indebted to the long history of interactive fiction and
graphical (or textual) adventure games. Yet, for my purposes I have limited my analysis to the genre of
these simple, similar games that have appeared on the web in the last ten years.
15 See Raph Koster‘s talk "Moore's Wall: Technology Advances and Online Game Design."
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EPILOGUE
Fig. 1. Working the phones; Tuboflex; Molleindustria, 2003; Video Game; 10 August
2010.
In Molleindustria‘s online Flash game Tuboflex—which I referred to within the
introduction and chapter four—a company called Tuboflex Inc. has solved the problem
of flexible and ―on-demand‖ labor by creating an extensive infrastructure of tubes that
can quickly move workers from one job to the next, sucking them into a piping system
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and spitting them out wherever their labor is needed. In the words of the game‘s
designers, Tuboflex ―created a complex tube system that makes it possible to dislocate
employees in real-time, depending on demand.‖ When the game begins the player finds
him- or herself within a job environment such as unloading boxes from a truck, serving
customers at a fast-food drive-thru window, answering calls and operating various
communications devices (fig. 1), or even working as Santa Claus trying to keep children
happy and smiling. After a bit of time has passed a tube descends from the top of the
screen, abruptly extracting the worker from his job and depositing him in another. The
gameplay is the definition of simple: within the game space (which resembles dedicated,
hand-held games circa the 1980s) the player simply clicks on items that appear on the
screen and which demand immediate attention. If the player does not respond fast
enough—in a ―whack-a-mole‖ style of play—then some of the player‘s ―chances,‖
represented as a bar at the bottom of the screen, are depleted. When all the player‘s
―chances‖ disappear the game ends, the player ―blacklisted‖ (fig. 1), the tube sucking the
worker away and depositing him on the street where he now must panhandle.
Occasionally within this whirl of work, the tube delivers the worker to his home where
he sits in an armchair like a statue, able to look out a window to his right or up at a
spinning, one-handed clock on his left (fig. 2), that is, until the tube descends and plucks
him from his ―leisure‖ time.
Such a moment perhaps crystallizes a few of the main themes within this
dissertation. Throughout the dissertation I have referred to the distinction between
solid and liquid modernity offered by the sociologist and theorist Zygmunt Bauman. For
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Fig. 2. Looking out the window; Tuboflex; Molleindustria, 2003; Video Game; 10 August
2010.
Bauman, liquid modernity marks our contemporary (Western) moment: liquid
movements of labor and the emergence of cognitive knowledge work, flows of
information and communication technologies, a sense of subjectivity that is a ―lifeproject‖ (constantly changing like the shape of a cloud), a lack of foundation for
collective political projects, a loss of ―grand narratives‖ and the emergence of rapidly
changing commitments and communities, etc.. Solid modernity, on the other hand,
marked the rise of capitalist modernity and industrialization: the worker ensconced
before a rationalized assembly line, the use of ―heavy‖ machinery and large factory
production systems, a notion of the self grounded in class structures and firm
communities, organized labor and a sense of hope in a political narrative of emancipation
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that would install a rational and just society. For Bauman, solid modernity also contained
elements of fluid modernity: capitalist modernity uprooted tradition, creating a vast
circulation of commodities and people, sweeping away outmoded feudal relations,
catalyzing a dynamic transformation of society through the liquidity of capital, etc.. Yet,
solid modernity always embraced the hope to replace this fluid uprooting with more
rationalized, solid foundations, to ―re-embed‖ the ―dis-embedded‖ as Bauman
sometimes frames it. He argues, ―Solids were not melted in order to stay molten, but in
order to be recast in moulds up to the standard of better designed, rationally arranged
society‖ (―Liquid Sociality‖ 20). In liquid modernity such a desire to ―recast‖ the fluidity
of change supposedly drifts away, leaving only a constant dis-embedding without the
hope of re-embedding society upon a firm ground. Yet, as I pointed out in the
introduction, Bauman also argues that solid modernity lives-on within liquid modernity,
finding expression in attempts to design and manage the shifting flows of labor,
commodification, selfhood, etc. (Ambivalence 7).
Indeed, in Molleindustria‘s game Tuboflex, the fluidity of time is figured by the
one-handed clock which spins in a continuous fashion; no hour or second hands mark
time‘s discrete and discontinuous structure. Moreover, labor moves fluidly through the
constant shifts between jobs, the self becoming a ―liquid‖ that can be transported
through the piping system of post-industrial capitalism. Yet, the pipe-system itself marks
a solid infrastructure used to manage and design the flow of this labor, articulating the
liquid continuity of time into discrete segments of labor. Tuboflex represents a system
that is both liquid flow and the segmentation of this flow in a managed rotation from
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which the worker/player cannot escape (that is, until he is blacklisted and ejected from
the system itself). Deleuze and Guattari write, ―We may say of the pure flow that it is
abstract yet real; ideal yet effective; absolute yet ‗differentiated.‘ It is true that the flow
and its quanta can be grasped only by virtue of indexes on the segmented line, but
conversely, that the line and those indexes exist only by virtue of the flow suffusing
them‖ (218). The flow is at once continuous and discrete, a liquid of ceaseless change
and a segmented form that is discrete and ―indexed.‖ Just as the pure flow is articulated
through segments and the segments disarticulated into the flow, fluid modernity and
solid modernity thread together with solids melting into liquids and liquids forming into
solids.
Throughout the dissertation I have chased various ―flows,‖ examining flow in
television, video games, in culture, and in the rendering of clouds in computer graphics; I
have continually sought to examine these flows in terms of both their fluidity and
managed solidity. In doing so I have shown how the flow of gameplay in video games is
managed and designed in order to further commodify the player, drawing parallels with
the ―planned flow‖ of television as it commodifies the spectator (chapter one). I have
shown how the aesthetic experimentation of modernism erupts into the ―total flow‖ of
capitalist innovation in the independent game movement while offering ideas of how to
work against this flow, binding and bridling it through the hope of political opposition
and resistance (chapter two). I have shown how video games such as Diner Dash and the
time-management genre of casual games fit into the temporal, fragmented flow of many
women‘s lives, smoothing over the fractured time of women‘s contemporary work and
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leisure, provoking desire for more interrupted leisure time while also managing this
desire and postponing its fulfillment (chapter three). I have shown how the fluid flow of
clouds—an emblem of escape from rationalization in solid modernity—has been
increasingly captured by the efficient system of real-time rendering in video game
graphics while signaling a new interactive space which seeks to render the clouds, and all
mediated reality, as touchable and actionable (chapter 4).
When ensconced in his chair at home, the worker/player in Tuboflex is caught
within the system of these flows, able to look up at the clock with the anxiety of
anticipation or out the window at the clouds and sky, wide-eyed with the hope of
unrealized escape (fig. 2). Here, the worker/player is caught between an encompassing
temporality and the desire of critical distance. In terms of temporality, this dissertation has
theorized various forms of temporal flow that video games and video game culture
inscribe in our contemporary situation. As I argued in the first chapter, video game
flow—analyzed through the theoretical work of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and the video
game flOw by thatgamecompany—shares many similar properties with the televisual
concept of ―planned flow‖ articulated by Raymond Williams. Both forms of flow seek to
extend the duration of media consumption, integrating the spectator or player within
flows of commodification and within a temporality that absorbs one‘s attention in order
channel it into profitable extraction. In chapter two, the emergence of ―total innovation‖
and ―total flow‖ gave rise to a temporality of ceaseless change that is no change at all (as
Fredric Jameson described it), an aporia where capitalist modernity has established a
temporal homogeneity through endless innovation where the constant reappearance of
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the New creates a sense that nothing is new at all (Jameson ―Antinomies‖). The
emergence of an independent game movement is in danger of falling into this
temporality, channeling its production of innovative games, not into political opposition
but into the renovation of the games industry. Chapter three focused on the temporal
concept of ―killing time‖ where casual play is seen as wasting time, killing time, while
often being linked to notions of passive consumption and ―feminine‖ mass media forms.
Through an analysis of the game Diner Dash and its waitress/entrepreneur Flo I argued
that in a dominant, masculine culture it is truly women‘s leisure time which is ―killed‖ by
excessive fragmentation and harried multitasking, a form of negative temporality that
ultimately preserves the less interrupted flow of men‘s leisure time. Casual time
management games inhabit the interstices of women‘s fragmented time in everyday life,
promising the hope of future uninterrupted leisure while creating a gameplay dynamic
that actually intensifies interruption. Finally, in chapter four I analyzed the lulling drift of
clouds as an ephemeral and transitory temporality which is captured in terms of the
technical efficiency of graphics processing; just as the worker in Tuboflex is at the mercy
of the ―real-time‖ distribution of labor, the real-time rendering of clouds reveals a
system of (technological and cultural) processing bent on the criterion of speed and
efficiency. Throughout the dissertation these various forms of temporality arising from
the video game medium and video game culture were investigated as managing and
designing our relationship to contemporary time, often as expressions of the increasing
commodification of culture.
446
Yet, glancing away from the clock and toward the window and the clouds
beyond, the worker/player in Tuboflex dreams of escape. This is also a dream of
transcendence and a form of critical distance which could step outside the flow of
commodification, of managed time, in order to gain a critical perspective concerning
one‘s surroundings. Writing about the flow of television Fredric Jameson writes, ―For it
seems possible that in a situation of total flow, the contents of the screen streaming
before us all day long without interruption, […] what used to be called 'critical distance'
seems to have become obsolete‖ (Postmodernism 70); in fact, postmodernity or liquid
modernity is often theorized as the impossibility of critical distance or movement
―outside‖ the enclosure of a mediated reality. Being within a flow often entails an
experience of absorption or disorientation. It is difficult to step outside of a flow, to gain
distance from it, and because of this we often end up ―going with the flow‖—an idiom
that suggests an unreflective attitude toward that which we are going along with, an
acceptance of naturalized attitudes and actions expressed by society and unexamined in
terms of their (external) determinants. Moreover, the construction of a managed or
designed flow—e.g. televisual or video game flow—often strives to remove critical
distance which might open the possibility for critical reflection. The act of ―critical
thought‖ implies a notion of distance, but flow, in its attempt to suffuse discontinuity
with continuity (to smooth over difference and the discrete), is in principle an attempt
to remove distance or at least to render it invisible.
Indeed, the chapters in this dissertation have sought to recover forms of critical
distance from the loss of such distance that occurs in the managed flows of video games
447
that I have analyzed. Even if I have sought such distance only through a diagnosis of the
systems that suppress and poison it, the work of interpretation operating within the
center of this project has always had the goal of critique in mind, becoming immersed
within the flow of games in order to find a way to step outside and analyze the forms of
management and containment which circumscribe the activity of gaming. When the
worker in Tuboflex is temporarily planted within the space of his home, the player can
direct his look toward the clock or the window, but if the player does nothing then the
worker gazes out from the screen, his wide-eyed and anxious eyes meeting the eyes of
the player in a moment of pause and recognition (fig. 3). In this moment the player is
addressed by the game itself, an address that asks us to use this moment—a moment in
time before our attention is snatched elsewhere—in order to critically reflect on the
video game form itself. Throughout this dissertation it is this moment that I have
continually sought to inhabit and expand.
Fig. 3. Looking at the player; Tuboflex; Molleindustria, 2003; Video Game; 10 August
2010.
448
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