Marc Arthur

Halter describes many recruitment efforts in From Sun Tzu to Xbox, all of them directed by huge corporate media giants. It's as if joining the army and buying Kraft cheese were the same thing. This article speaks to our cultures lack of literacy to things other than ourselves. So often it seems that TV commercials are the final answer. I used to think this had something to do with the "couch potato" attitude. But now with the advent of video and computer games people still have this attitude even while they are being proactive and "thinking" within a game like America's Army.

The precautions the army took in presenting their game with out an aura of propaganda is evidence that most Americans don't read into video games any more than what's at face value. All the Army seemed to need to do was write a few paragraphs in the "parents section " of the game and have philosophical vision of unity in the ad campaign for people to take to it.

One of the most troubling aspects of the article was learning about "TTTS" or Takin' It To The Streets. America's Army's audience are people who have computers. The African American high-school students probably don't have access to computers based on the the fact that the army must bring an "interactive arena" to the campus for them to play on. Is joining the army the only way for these students to access media? How can people at a disadvantage have a chance at using the media in interesting ways if it is controlled by wealth and power?

Halter, Ed. From Sun Tzu to Xbox. Thunder's Mouth Press

"Superschmoozio, The Game of the International Art Market is an interactive online game. Played and/or simulated, live and/or archived. It replicates the aggressive drive of climbing the ranks of a career in high profile top dollar art from the perspective of the "professional artist". Superschmoozio is currently being workshoped via utilization of visual chatware. In collaboration with DestopTheater this improvisational approach challenges concepts of hierarchy through the exploration of the myths surrounding 'art', 'advancement' and 'success'."
-Jack Waters (Creator/Artist)

The programming for this game (Desktop Theater) is very dated, and makes it frustrating to play. The games concept is what really works for me. With some better software and more funding I think the game could be more complex, accrue a larger audience be and a huge hit.

Now that the art world has also jumped on the boat of online social networking with online artist networks like Saatchi Online, or more non-commercial sites like Wooloo Productions, there seems to be a facade of democracy or at least a sense of agency for artists with in these online art worlds. All of these sites seem to blatantly ignore the notoriously vampiristic and money driven social aspects that control the art world. "Superschmoozio" uses online social networking as a medium to critique and potentially change rather than just become part of the fascist art machine.

Check it out: Superschmoozio

Until last class, I had never heard the term "serious games." Wikipedia defines them as "...a software application developed with game technology and game design principles for a primary purpose other than pure entertainment" (WIKI). It makes sense that this shift in conciseness occurred during the 90's at a time when all technology was becoming a utilitarian commodity. Now, I think it would be more difficult for me to distinguish the differences between a "serious" game and a not "serious" game. Although games may be intended for pure entertainment, it is difficult to believe that they are not also capable of functioning as subversive education or literacy, especially with the high quality graphics being produced.

It seems like deeming a game "serious" or not "serious" is the same as choosing to define yourself as a pacifist or not. Everything has a latent content that will affect a person, especially games which are so involved and participatory.

The game I have chosen this week is a prime example of the kind of pacifism I am describing. It is Kuma Games "Kuma War". A game where headlines are literally torn from the real world and then made into a war gaming scenario where one must fight the enemy. Whether gamers and the industry consider this a "serious" game is unclear to me. This very issue has raised much controversy and praise in the media. Is it possible for such a game to be purely entertainment? Can any game, or art, ever be pure entertainment?

http://www.kumagames.com/
http://www.gamesfirst.com/index.php?id=884
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serious_game

While I find the game well intended, it seems to be lacking in the most basic of qualities a game should possess: emotion. What is exciting about "serious" games is the marriage of entertainment and education. AFMP seems to have completely thrown out any emotion from an extremely rich emotional content. The game is dealing with liberating oppressed people... where are the oppressed people?

Working on the form would be the place to start. It is completely unclear who the player is in relationship to other players in the game. What makes 1rst person games compelling are the complexities of the character you are entering into, the choices you have to make and the relationships you have with other characters. Like a good literature, character arcs or story arcs in a game can make or break a game. There are no story or character arcs in this game other than the structure of the game itself, which feels extremely hopeless most of the time.

It is amazing how much power a character really has in engaging the player. The moment where I really quit was when one of the members of my faction told me "People really hate our message and aren't going to be willing to help us." AFMP is am example of how dry a game can be with out an interesting and developed 1rst person character.

"Even if important insights can be gained from the study of extraliterary phenomena with the instruments of literary theory, it does not follow that these phenomena are literature and should be judged with literary criteria" (11, Aarseth).

I think it is important to establish terminology to describe changes in the medium of a text. Aarseth seems to be getting caught up in the exciting capacity of new media like digital computing. This medium changes the form of a text dramatically. I agree that when looking at the form, digital text should be considered "ergodic" or "cybertext". I'm not so convinced that these texts are not literature or should not be at least "judged with literary criteria".

Some of the greatest insights into culture and politics have come out of literary theory. Even when the "literature" or "text" was not a narrative novel some of the greatest insights have come from literary theory. Literature comes with a lineage centuries back, to blatantly ignore this is juvenile and stupid. If anything, computer games are receding back into a form of literature that old and boring compared to some of the more "traditional (in form) literature being produced today.

For example, while playing Kings Quest, I felt like I was reading King Arthur. As exciting as it was to participate in the game, to be able to "traverse the text" (1, Aaseth) I still felt like I was being read a children's story- moral, giants et all. I am in no way convinced that the actual story was different from what has been being written for decades. To generalize, I would say the same is true of most video games. Though the medium has become more exciting, the people writing the stories for these games are the same people who are writing for Hollywood films. The industry of writng for entertainment hasen't thought critically of itself for a while now. I think what is more important than distinguishing the form of a text is to be able to critique a text out of our cultural lineage of literature. The discussion of form should come after this.

Here are some notes on the game "Torn City" I've been playing.

a link to the article I referenced on electronic poetics: http://www.ubu.com/papers/andrews_electronic.html

Here is the interview with a player of "Torn City"

As a game player, what would you say keeps you coming back to "Torn City"?
boredom

Do you ever use tactics or concepts from "Torn City" in real life?
yes, if I'm ever in jail or hospital I just refresh until Im out

What has been the most exciting moment in "Torn City" for you?
there was this hot boy who tried to sell me vicodin and kept talking about his penis

What has been the most dull?
getting to level 25

Do you consider yourself existing as a rebellious outsider or someone
who fits into the mold of "Torn City"? Please explain your grounds.
I am succeeding in my goal to be a low class two-bit hoodlum, while others are real capos.

Are your goals in "Torn City" congruent with your goals in life? What
is lost in between? How do you compensate?
yes in that it's small goals easily attained. time is lost. I have a big penis.

The developers choice of branding Indigo Prophecy as an "interactive film" rather than an adventure or third-person action title says a lot about the game for me. The strengths of the game are not in its action- the "action" in the game falls flat compared to any number of shooter games. And while the game utilizes a lot of "adventure" game techniques I wouldn't necessarily say that adventure- the kind of adventure found in a game like Zelda or Kings Quest- is one of its strengths either. "Interactive film" is a perfect fit. What Indigo Prophecy does that no other games that I have played can do is tell a compelling story. Like a good film, the story is the driving force. Indigo Prophecy has employed all the essential techniques to story telling from forms like the monomyth to the classic Hollywood action story arc filled with on point character development and Freytag's dramatic structure. The characters are interesting enough for the story move, and what’s even more exciting is that to some effect you can control them.

I'm not sure that Aarseth’s concept of “ergodic literature” is applicable to this game. The game does succeed in not being a book or a movie in that the text must be activated extranoematically as Aarseth says: "The performance of their reader takes place all in his head, while the user of cybertext also performs in an extranoematic sense. During the cybertextual process, the user will have effectuated a semiotic sequence, and this selective movement is a work of physical construction that the various concepts of "reading" do not account for”. As a player of Indigo Prophecy you prompt questions, the player is responsible for the health and well being of characters the player "fights” other players. But all of those actions, as exciting as they are, still work at the service of an already written plot.

Aarseth's concept of cybertext does not account for such an already existing plot: "cybertext shifts the focus from the traditional threesome of author/sender, text/message, and reader/receiver to the cybernetic intercourse between the various part(icipant)s in the textual machine. In doing so, it relocates attention to some traditionally remote parts of the textual galaxy, while leaving most of the luminous clusters in the central areas alone." Just because the game is not opensource does not make it a bad game. The game would fail if it were open source, in the same way it would fail if all the characters were doing was shooting each other.

The game takes the already existing form of film and translates into interactive media. Rather than having elements lost in translation, the game makes film immediate and almost real. I feel like I really know Lucas Kane. I feel closer to him, because I have lived as him, and I do things for him. I have taken a shower with him. In the same way New York feels even more real in this game then it would in a movie because I get to traverse the landscape rather than just look at it. With out the story I think I may get bored after a while. Say this were an opensource game, and I was exploring looking for things and people to network with after a while I would have to make up my own story that the system probably could not support. Indigo Prophecy allows space for the player to be involved yet enough structure to keep them interested.

http://www.hf.uib.no/cybertext/Ergodic.html