Prototype worlds of video games

In this paper the author analyzes the phenomenon of prototype worlds – synthetic environments of simulators, video games and other types of software – used to conduct experiments at the level of user sensorium, environmental physics and social design. The author presents the evolution of the concept, beginning with Buckminister Fuller’s World Game project, moving through media experiments in the field of game design, and finally presenting contemporary applications (such as a drone pilot training project for the U.S. Air Force) and their implications.In this paper the author analyzes the phenomenon of prototype worlds – synthetic environments of simulators, video games and other types of software – used to conduct experiments at the level of user sensorium, environmental physics and social design. The author presents the evolution of the concept, beginning with Buckminister Fuller’s World Game project, moving through media experiments in the field of game design, and finally presenting contemporary applications (such as a drone pilot training project for the U.S. Air Force) and their implications

Sixteen candles

Encyclopedic entry concerning the movie Sixteen Candles

Gaia\u27s Game

James Lovelock’s vision of Earth as a living cybernetic system is popular again. The surprising new preacher of Gaia is Bruno Latour. He uses the concept to refer to a holistic understanding of Earth, in which mankind is situated as integral part. Gaia becomes the catalyst and fundament for his philosophical attempt to design a new believe-system in the time of ecological crisis. But the concept of Gaia is characterised by a tension between the idea of a powerful but indifferent nature and a grandiose vision of total control over it. This tension reveals itself to be deeply rooted in cybernetic thought. It is not only apparent in Lovelock’s own writing, but also in simulation programs based on the Gaia hypothesis such as the Daisyworld model and the computer game “SimEarth: The Living Planet” (1991). The article will distinguish Lovelock’s from Latour’s concept of Gaia and relate them to first- and second order cybernetics as well as to two different approaches to computer simulation: system dynamics and cellular automata

Liberal Sims?: Simulated Difference and the Commodity of Social Diversity

My paper focuses on the different kinds of audiences represented in Electronic Arts’ hugely successful game The Sims, isolating the female player from the male player, the queer player from the straight player, and the racially or ethnically marginalized player from the Caucasian player. It will focus on how The Sims, praised as socially progressive for its liberal views towards same-sex relationships, absence of racial stereotyping, and non-sexualized presentation of women, is interpreted by, targeted toward, and marketed to these various different audiences. The paper will conclude that this recent spike in social liberalism may not be the result of a socio-cultural change in ideology, but a change in economic strategy and the marketing of cultural and sexual difference. The history of the video game medium is glaringly phallocentric and greatly mono-cultural. The traditional target market for all types of digital gaming is male – and predominately young, white, middle-class, and principally heterosexual males. While early games featured abstracted avatars and characters that might have appealed to everyone regardless of gender, sexuality, and race – nothing in the game play of Atari/arcade era games like Asteroids (1979), Missile Command (1980) or Space Invaders (1978) suggested the personal details of the unseen characters involved, and it was hard for players to identify with nonrepresentational figures like Q-Bert and Pac-man on the basis of ethnicity or sexuality – more photo-realistic games emerging in the mid-eighties depicted playable heroes in such a way to appeal to target audiences. The vast majority of playable characters from this era were male, customarily white when depicted as humanoid, and presumably heterosexual, since female love interests were frequently being rescued by the male heroes (examples from contemporary and classic digital games are provided in the paper). Theories concerning this lack of diversity are, of course, rooted in Western culture’s histories of patriarchy, hetero-normativity, and Caucasian-centred thinking, but are also influenced by other sociological factors affecting how gender, sexuality and race are intertwined with technology and new-media. According to Brunner, Bennett, and Honey, women and people of colour avoid taking advanced level courses in mathematics, science and technology more often than Caucasian males, leaving the industries responsible for designing digital games dominated by white men (72). This warrants regarding video games and technological advances on a whole as material commodities "developed, controlled and directed by a ‘patriarchal’ capitalism, and as unequally distributed and hence differently accessible [to women and minorities]" (Bryson & de Castell 256). Thus a circular pattern appears: games designed by white males come to reflect the interests, experiences, and biases of their designers, and are consumed primarily by white male audiences. The "others" not included in this pattern – women, same-sex desiring people, and people of marginalized races and ethnicities – often get misrepresented, stereotyped, or ignored in the medium. However, in recent years, several digital games have emerged that fulfill the representation and identification interests of traditionally "othered" audiences – The Sims being one such game. I argue that the reasoning behind such inclusions does not necessarily reflect a sudden change in cultural liberalism, but instead reflects a change in how traditionally marginalized people are marketed to in late capitalism. Gaming companies have been targeting non-traditional gamers since the mid-to-late nineties, when, according to Henry Jenkins, increased competition began to limit the profits any one company could earn from the core market of young white males: [The] game market had entered into an age of heightened competition at a time when, in fact, ninety percent of American boys were already playing computer games. To survive, these game companies understood that they would need to expand their market and thus, then as now, there were… [new] targets… (Jenkins, "Further Reflections") Given my hypothesis of a correlation between late-capitalist marketing and the representation of difference, I will begin my analysis by discussing how the setting of The Sims, the North American suburbs, is intimately linked to how difference is perceived in the game: the suburbs carry with them a set of constructed expectations and values that cannot be ignored when thinking about difference in the game. Suburbia was created for the middle and upper classes to escape from overcrowded urban centres, and from the increasingly impoverished, increasingly different people inhabiting them (Flanagan; Spigel 3, 16). I want to suggest that The Sims holds a contradictory relationship with its deeply coded setting, a relationship that is both progressive and regressive. While it does not necessarily conform to the cultural, familial, and gender role definitions associated with the postwar suburbs – people of colour are welcome, families don’t have to be nuclear, and women don’t have to be domestic caretakers – The Sims does conform to the suburban philosophy of sameness. The social, sexual, and ethnic differences included in the game do not define the characters involved. Despite the array of different kinds of people featured, everyone is standardized into one category of "normal." While standardization on the basis of social equality is not what I’m arguing against, I am instead weary about the mould for this standard, which is detectably aligned with the traditional patriarchal, heterosexual, and Caucasian-centred suburban space. This theory forms the base of my subsequent arguments. Since the debut of The Sims in early 2000, the bulk of the criticism surrounding it has stated that its players are "more often than not" female (Brooks 58). That women and girls are thought to make up the majority of players for this mainstream video game is significant given widespread assumptions that the medium is unappealing to females, and that the dominant demographic of players is made up of boys and young men. Indeed, it is regular to theorize video games as a part of "boy culture" (Jenkins, "Complete Freedom" 269-270). However, The Sims, more so than any other PC product right now, allows for the complication of gender norms. This is perhaps surprising since it manages to do so while still ascribing to historically gendered settings (the home, the commercial district) and activities (home decoration, caretaking) and in such a way that keeps any deviations from social normativity the option of the player, not a preprogrammed aspect of the game that must be addressed by all players. Similarly, the homosexual acts performed in The Sims do not define the identities of the preprogrammed characters - sexuality is an action, not an identity, at least not in the game elements offered by Electronic Arts. By not creating gay identities to choose from, EA avoids being accused of generalizing or essentializing perceived and perhaps stereotyped traits of people who identify as gay or lesbian (Consalvo 186). They avoid the sticky problems confronted by toy companies like Mattel, the makers of Barbie, when creating dolls or figurines meant to represent difference. Cultural critic Ann duCille explains how Mattel, facing criticism for not making their black Barbie dolls distinct from their classic blonde, white Barbies began producing dolls that reinforced and emphasized racially stereotyped physical features (558). The producers of The Sims seem to have side-stepped the issue. By putting the tools of identity creation into the hands of players, EA can still appeal to homosexual consumers, while not having to determine themselves what "gay" or "lesbian" looks like. But would this tactic work the same in a game with fixed characters and narrative? Is difference only depicted where it is profitable? Does the fact that The Sims is directly marketed to non-traditional audiences factor into its content? Of course, just the possibility of queer relationships in a high profile mainstream video game is a progressive step forward for our traditionally heterosexist culture – but one arguably taken only to welcome traditionally "othered" consumers into the culture of late capitalism. The same is true for ethnic and racial difference in the game. Beyond the shade of skin tone, there is no difference between any two Sims created; ethnic and cultural differences are not programmed aspects of the game. While this ensures that every Sim is given equal footing socially and there is no discrimination on the basis of skin colour (a positive thing, however unrealistic), there are no differentiations among people of different racial make up – meaning everyone conforms to the same cultural lifestyle – that of the middle class, Caucasian suburbanite. In this regard, The Sims assimilates ethnic difference into white American society. Being more melting pot than multicultural paradise, the preprogrammed world of The Sims denies ethnic players the particularities of their culture in the game: while it is possible to create and import a Musalla prayer rug into the game, players do not have the power to program or animate their conceived Muslim characters to use it. This elimination or impossibility of cultural difference has made the history of the characters playable in The Sims very much the history of the white American suburbanite. I conlcude by asking why there has been this sudden spike in social liberalism, at least on the surface, in such games as The Sims. I suggest that it could be, as Naomi Klein states, a kind of exploitation of diversity initiated by targeting untraditional markets to better tap into the consuming potential of millions of non-white, non-male, non-heterosexual people – what Stuart Hall sees as the commercial appropriation of difference (Hall 273). Klein argues that in the early nineties, corporate producers and marketers of pop culture embraced Generation X’s demand for more liberal diversity and positive representation of marginalized peoples, but did so not out of conversion of political belief, but because of the financial rewards involved (Klein 110-111). I believe this applies to the "identity and gaming" issue proposed for the conference

Striking a Balance between Property and Personality. The Case of the Avatars

Virtual worlds, as powerful social platforms of intense human interaction, gather millions of users worldwide, producing massive economies of their own, giving rise to the birth of complex social relationships and the formation of virtual communities. By enabling the creativity of the player and figuring as an outstanding example of new online collaborative environments, virtual worlds emerge as context for creation, allowing for users to undertake a digital alter-ego and become artists, creators and authors. Nevertheless, such digital egos are not merely creations, but a reflex of their creators, an extension of their personalities and indicia of their identities. As a result, this paper perceives the avatar not only as a property item (avatar as the player’s or [game-developer’s] property) but also, and simultaneously, as a reflex of our personality and identity (avatar as the projection of one self in the virtual domain, as part of an individual persona). Bearing in mind such hybrid configuration, and looking at the disputes over property rights in virtual words, this essay makes three fundamental arguments. Firstly, it proposes a re-interpretation of intellectual property rights (namely of copyright law) according to its underlying utilitarian principles, as such principles seem to have been forgotten or neglected in the sphere of virtual worlds. The idea is to re-balance the uneven relationship between game owners and players perpetuated by the end-user license agreements (EULAs), recognising property rights to users over their own virtual creations. In order to evaluate whether a user’s contribution to the virtual world amounts to an original and creative work and is worthy of copyright protection, the essay proposes the image of a jigsaw puzzle as a tool and criteria to carry out such examination

História e Memória em Assassin's Creed (2007-2015)

Este artigo pretende apresentar e problematizar as representações sobre História e Memória na série de jogos eletrônicos Assassin’s Creed entre 2007 e 2015. Esses games pretenderam reconstituir diferentes e múltiplos tempos históricos a partir da imersão de um personagem do presente nas experiências de um antepassado por meio da tecnologia. Os jogos eletrônicos, setor cada vez mais importante da indústria cultural, representam o passado por meio de mecanismos particulares: narrativa contada através de eventos, ambientes que permitem a exploração espacial e, sobretudo, as possibilidades de interatividade com esses elementos. Através da dimensão popular da circulação de mercadorias culturais audiovisuais, condicionam e impactam o imaginário de certos momentos históricos ao reinterpretá-los à luz de discussões contemporâneas e de seu próprio formato. No caso de Assassin’s Creed, essa releitura constitui uma visão supostamente multicultural do passado lido em uma conspiração dicotômica entre a luta entre dos Assassinos, defensores da liberdade, contra os Templários, que utilizam mecanismos sociais para a ordem, o controle e a tirania. Fundamentam estas perspectivas, interpretações próprias sobre a “verdade histórica”, a memória coletiva e o objetivo de criar um produto de entretenimento.Palavras-chave: História. Memória. Videogame

Spielerisch romantisch

Seit Jahren schon existiert eine hitzige Debatte zwischen Vertretern der Narratologie und der Ludologie. Im Kern des Konflikts dieser Fachbereiche steht die Frage wie ein Spiel zu behandeln ist, als Text welcher zu rezipieren ist oder als durch Regeln und Interaktion geprägtes Erlebnis. Ebenfalls in diesen Konflikt eingebettet sind die unterschiedlichen Darstellungen sozialer Beziehungen (Freundschaften, Liebesbeziehung und sexuelle Beziehungen) in Videospielen. Die Frage, die sich bei diesen stellt, ist, sollen sie im Dienste der Handlung sein oder sollen sie sich der Interaktivität verschreiben? Um diesen Konflikt, und die Art wie soziale Beziehungen in Videospielen durch ihn beeinflusst werden, geht es in dieser Arbeit. Es wird gezeigt, dass sowohl hinsichtlich der Narrativität als auch der Interaktivität immer gewisse Einschränkungen gegeben sein müssen. Wie sich diese Einschränkungen gestalten können, wird anhand ausgewählter Beispiele („Mass Effect 2“, „Final Fantasy X“, „Heavy Rain“ und „Ico“) und auch unter Berücksichtigung filmanalytischer Methoden untersucht. Das Ergebnis bestätigt den Einfluss von Film und Fernsehen sowie des technologischen Fortschritts auf die Gestaltung von Geschichten und sozialen Beziehungen in Videospielen. Es zeigt weiters, dass entweder eine strikte Trennung von Narrativität und Interaktivität in Videospielen besteht, oder ein Verhältnis, wobei, wenn der Fokus auf einem der beiden Aspekte liegt, der andere entsprechend darunter leidet – ein Umstand, der sich auch in der Einbindung von Beziehungen in Videospiele zeigt.There is an ongoing debate between representatives of narratology and ludology. At the core of the conflict of these departments is the question of how to treat a game: as text or as something defined by rules and interaction. Also embedded in this conflict are the different representations of social relationships (friendships, romances and sexual relationships) into video games. The question that arises is, should relationships serve the narrative or should they further the interactivity? This conflict, and the way social relationships in video games are influenced by it, is the topic of this paper. It is shown that both in terms of narrativity and interactivity certain restrictions must be met. What these restrictions might look like is discussed using select examples ("Mass Effect 2," "Final Fantasy X," "Heavy Rain" and "Ico"), also taking certain film analytical methods into account. The result confirms the influence of film and television as well as technological progress on the design of stories and social relationships in video games. It also shows that there is either a strict separation of narrativity and interactivity in video games, or a relationship, wherein, if the focus is with one of the two aspects, the other suffers accordingly - a fact which is also reflected by the way relationships are integrated into video games

Theory Wars: An Argument Against Arguments in the so-called Ludology/Narratology Debate

This paper attempts to offer an alternative to the agonistic debate presented by Gonzalo Frasca in "Ludologists Love Stories Too," in Level Up, DiGRA 2003 conference proceedings. While Frasca’s position is that the ludology/narratology debate is spurious and fraught with misunderstandings, his paper simultaneously succeeds in deepening the gap by further polarizing the alleged two sides of a debate that, in Frasca’s words, "never took place." Furthermore, the paper adds to the misunderstandings by further mis-quoting and decontextualizing some of the points made by other authors. In this paper, I will argue that there is little value in categorizing scholars into two "camps," even if one is doing so in an attempt to bridge the gap. I will further build on arguments I have made in the past, some of which compliment the work of other game scholars, that to think about games in the simplistic terms of "narrative/not narrative" is neither useful nor productive, especially when applied in vague theoretical terms. Over the past decade, I have made the argument that games should not be looked at in terms of whether or not they are narratives by various theoretical definitions, but that "narrative" should be framed as an adjective rather than a noun. The more interesting question is not "Are they/are they not narrative?" but "In what ways are they narrative?" I have advocated the notion of "narrative properties," an approach which is outlined in my paper in First Person (Pearce, 2004) and which echoes work by other scholars such as Janet Murray (1997). In it, I propose an approach to narrative that privileges the player experience, rather than some particular theoretical and abstract school of thought. Thus, we can look at specific games and ask: In what way do they use narrative elements to enhance the player experience? Far too much of game scholarship is spent debating ideas in vague, broad terms, while greater value can be derived from looking at specific player experience. It is interesting to note that in "Ludologists Love Narrative, Too," while many theorists are named, only a single game is mentioned—chess—cited (and mis-quoted) from the paper mentioned above (Pearce, 2004). If you talk to the average game player (an easy task for any college professor), you quickly find that players have a very clear idea of the connection between story and gameplay. Many gamers I have talked to find cut scenes gratuitous and interruptive, offering little enhancement to the gameplay experience. On the other hand, they understand that a narrative encasement around gameplay, especially one that fits the game mechanic well, creates a higher level of engagement and a stronger connection with the game and its characters. Often cited by players is the introductory sequence of Half-Life. Here you are thrown at the onset into an in-game scenario which provides contextualized directions, and plunges you, in character, immediately into the story. Through a specific example such as this, we can begin to better understand the ways in which gameplay and story fit together. We can also look at the role of agency where the story is not told (as by a narrator) but lived through (as by a player.) A useful exercise is to look at the ways that stories have been adapted into games. We can begin with the popular Indiana Jones series by LucasArts, which builds its mechanic around the inherent game-like qualities of the films. Another example is Blade Runner by Westwood Studios. In this game, the key question the main character (the player) must ultimately address is whether he himself is a replicant. The game AI attempts to analyze the players’ shifting perception of his own identity through modeling player behavior. If the player behaves in a sympathetic fashion towards replicants, the game directs the player down one path; if he exhibits antipathy, he finds himself on a different path. (Pearce/Castle, Game Studies, 2002). This game was a bold attempt to integrate a genuine ethical struggle into a game. Here story and game are so intermingled that they are virtually indistinguishable from one another. While these are examples of ways to develop a game mechanic around a narrative framework, there are a range of games which take what could be called the "story kit" approach. In games such as The Sims or Everquest, players are given a set of options that allow them to craft their own stories through game play. This is an example of what I have referred to in the past as "emergent authorship," wherein players construct their own stories, many of which are meant to be shared with others, whether in the form of the social co-performance within the mechanic of an online game (Everquest), or through uploading storyboards or games in-progress for others to play (The Sims). This is less literary and more akin to techniques of improvisation and theater games, where performers (players) are given a set of parameters through which to develop impromptu stories. Alongside others in the field, such as Jenkins, Ryan and Murray, I have also advocated the notion of spatial narrative as applied to games. Game designers liberally borrow from a long legacy of spatial narrative practices, ranging from temples and cathedrals to theme parks. Myst is probably the most canonical example of this. Here the spatial design is inextricably tied to the game mechanic—there is really no way to separate the two. Furthermore, the narrative is embedded in the space in a deconstructed form (in fact, the game’s goal is precisely that—to reconstruct the story.) We can also easily see how spatial narrative and emergent authorship can merge in a games like The Sims or Everquest. These are just a handful of examples, but they illustrate the complexity of the game/story problem, and set the stage for a richer, deeper discussion of the relationship between story and games which this paper will both advocate and illustrate. References (Additional references will be included in the final paper) Frasca, G. (2003). "Ludologists Love Stories, Too: Notes from a Debate that Never Took Place." Level Up, Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA) Conference Proceedings, November 2003. Murray, J.H. (1997). Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace. Cambridge, MIT Press. Pearce, C. (1994). "The Ins & Outs of Nonlinear Storytelling." Computer Graphics, Volume 28, Number 1, May 1994. Pearce, C. (1997). The Interactive Book: A Guide to the Interactive Revolution. Indianapolis, Macmillan Technical Publishing. Pearce, C. (2002). "Story as Play Space: Narrative in Games." King, L. (ed.) Game On Exhibtion Catalog. London, Lawrence King Publishing Limited. Pearce, C. (2002). "Emergent Authorship: The Next Interactive Revolution." Computers & Graphics,Winter 2002 Pearce, C. (2002). "Sims, BattleBots, Cellular Automata God and Go: A Conversation with Will Wright," Game Studies, Volune 2, Issue 1. Pearce, C. (2002). "The Player with Many Faces: A Conversation with Louis Castle," Game Studies, Volune 2, Issue 2. Pearce, C. (2004). "Towards a Game Theory of Game." in Wardrip-Fruin, N. & Harrigan, P. (eds.). First Person: New Media as Story, Performance and Game. Cambridge, MA, MIT Press. Jenkins, H.. (1998). "Games as Gendered Playspace." in Cassell, J. & Jenkins, H. (Eds.) From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games. Cambridge, MIT Press. Jenkins, H. (2004). "Game Design as Narrative Architecture." in Pat Harrington & Noah Frup-Waldrop (Eds.) First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game. Cambridge, MIT Press. Games Cited Blade Runner EverQuest Half-Life Indiana Jones series Myst NeoPets PacMan The Sim

Ökologien der Erde: zur Wissensgeschichte und Aktualität der Gaia-Hypothese

Ökologien der Erde bestimmen die Gegenwart. Dabei gewinnt die in den 1970er Jahren von James Lovelock gemeinsam mit Lynn Margulis entwickelte Gaia-Theorie heute neue Erklärungskraft. Wenn Gaia bei Bruno Latour sogar zum allgemeinen Modell der Welterklärung im 21. Jahrhundert wird, gilt es, nach der Plausibilität zu fragen, die die Rede von Gaia aktuell entwickelt. Die vier Beiträge des Bandes geben hierauf eine Antwort, indem sie die metaphorologischen und begriffshistorischen Linien der Gaia-Theorie nachzeichnen und ihren Bezug auf zeitgenössische Computersimulationen in den Blick nehmen. So wird der gegenwärtige Ort des Wiederauflebens Gaias deutlich - und damit die Verschränkung von kybernetischen und organizistischen Ökologien mit der Annahme einer Programmierbarkeit von Umgebungen