#ContextsOfGame&Play

[finleymbct]

Contexts of Game and Play: Readings Week 5

Yep, skipped one, my bad.

Things of Beauty: Super Smash Bros. as Spectator Sport (Innuendo Studios, 2015)

I was pleasantly surprised to discover that one of the readings was from a YouTuber who I recognized. Innuendo studios has done some pretty interesting commentary on games news, and it was the video about Phil Fish and fame that got me onto his channel. (want a fun fact? It contributed to Notch selling MineCraft and leaving games development)

Anyway, I did find the video quite interesting actually, in spite of never being a fan of Super Smash Brothers Melee, I was aware that there was still an eSports scene around - somehow - after 16 years. I guess this video did a lot to show what was so fascinating about the game, particularly as a spectator sport - on some level I can relate, having watched more than a few Counter-Strike tournaments. The difference between Melee and CSGO is pretty stark however. CSGO is still being updated; just recently they patched the R8 revolver and Negev in an attempt to give them some viability, and even the smallest tweaks to staple weapons such as the M4s, AK-47 and AWP can have much of the community, competitive and otherwise, in uproar. Smash isn’t going to ever change however, - everything that is possible now is equally possible sixteen years ago. The Game is fundamentally imbalanced, as Innuendo Studios discusses in the video: characters are tiered by the community in terms of viability, but even though there have been no changes whatsoever to the characters, their rankings have been known to change simply as a result of player meta. 

To me it’s quite bizarre to see a game live on with a community that relies on sixteen year old hardware, battered CRT televisions and actually having to be in the same room to have multiplayer. 

Set and Setting

A quick Wikipedia article, which seems to be mostly about psychedelic drug trips. The title describes ones mindset going into the trip (the “set”) and the physical and social environment (the “setting”) in which you have the experience. The importance of these both is that they will influence the participant’s experience - Timothy Leary describes it as:

“ the drug dose does not produce the transcendent experience. It merely acts as a chemical key — it opens the mind, frees the nervous system of its ordinary patterns and structures. The nature of the experience depends almost entirely on set and setting. Set denotes the preparation of the individual, including his personality structure and his mood at the time. Setting is physical — the weather, the room's atmosphere; social — feelings of persons present towards one another; and cultural — prevailing views as to what is real.”

I guess this does somewhat relate to gaming, as it can be a highly immersive medium. I’ve certainly learned that going into a game pissed off usually results in poor performance and exacerbates my own frustration. As for setting, it often doesn’t matter as much so long as I’m comfortable. I’m reminded of year 12 English, where we studied the film Inception - how the whole dream thing was a metaphor for cinema, where you get totally immersed in a world that doesn’t exist in a physical sense. You ever notice the feeling of disorientation after you get up after a movie in the cinema.

What is ontology? Introduction to the word and the concept -  Kent Löfgren

This one was pretty short; a discussion of ontology, a philosophical and non-philosophical context. In philosophy, it’s about what is and isn’t real, so what are the fundamental parts of the world, and how do they relate to each other. He uses the example of shoes and walking, are shoes more real than the idea of walking? They’re certainly related, as shoes are designed for the purpose of walking, but obviously you don’t require them in order to do so. 

He discusses two schools of thought in ontological philosophy: ontological Materialism, which is that physical things, such as particles, matter, chemical reactions and energy are actually more real than things such as the human mind. It’s the idea that reality exists regardless of a human being there to observe it. I guess it goes back to the old question, if a tree falls in the forest but no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?

The other school of thought is ontological Idealism, which is the belief that immaterial phenomenon, like human consciousness. It’s the idea that all of reality is constructed in the mind of the observer, and that the only thing I can say is true is that I exist as some kind of conscious thought. It kind of brings up the thought of “if this is true and the world is just a figment of my imagination, why should we care?” The answer which I found, funnily enough, was from the game VA-11 HALL-A: Cyberpunk Bartending Action (which I still haven’t gotten over), where one character had an existential crisis based on that very question. The answer was, you’re able to feel emotions and care when reading a book, watching a movie or listening to music, so you should be able to care what happens around you, even if in the end we’ve been living in the matrix and nothing is real.

In a non philosophical context, ontology is the description of what exists in a determined and specific field, such as every piece that exists within a set. This also includes the relationship and hierarchy between each of these parts. It’s more for researchers than those concerned with philosophy, and what is “real.” Much more objective, I suppose.

Serenity Now - Crash a Funeral in Winterspring

This one was mostly people being dicks and crashing a in game memorial - but also somewhat people underestimating trolls. While what the troll guild did wasn’t very cool, it was also stupid to try to hold a memorial in a PvP zone. The game wasn’t built with such things in mind, and the area in question was made for people to kill one another, gather, so Serenity Now were conforming to the system that was already in place. The next reading delves further into this very moral conundrum.

Serenity Now bombs a World of Warcraft funeral: Negotiating the Morality, Reality and Taste of Online Gaming Practices

If you put do something stupid, but well meaning, does that make it right for someone to take advantage of you? If I walk into a dark alleyway in a neighborhood that I know is rough, and end up getting mugged, does any blame lay on me for doing something stupid and risky? Mugging someone is clearly wrong, and the law is quite clear on that. Is it my fault that I got mugged in that instance, for getting into that situation? Is it the fault of the mugger in question, for waking up and deciding that my money would be better as theirs rather than mine? 

People will tell you that the mugger was wrong, but often they’ll tell you that you were stupid for getting into that situation. This moral discussion extends to all sorts of topics, and can get quite heated for some people based on the moral standards to which people hold not only themselves, but other people. When people say “she was asking for it” after someone rapes a drunken and scantily clad woman at a party, it’s much the same discussion - but people will obviously feel a lot more strong about it based on their perception of the victim, the crime and circumstance. Fundamentally I believe that blaming the victim is stupid, and anyone who takes an opportunity to commit harm to another person is just a guilty as someone who premeditated, but that doesn’t mean that people should be so trusting. It would be a much kinder, more caring world if we all treated one another with decency and respect, but the world isn’t that way, and naivety isn’t a good way to live. 

Going back to something maybe a little more lighter in tone, does crashing the in game funeral for a player who died in real life make you a douche, or does that make you foolish? Is having a funeral in a game about role-playing as warriors, mages and hunters inappropriate? I think that everyone has a right to remember someone in a respectful manner, even if it was just online, but people really should bear in mind the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory, as named by Penny Arcade.

Play and interpret: 'Year in Review'

This one was a pretty simple game, just keep hitting the N and O keys to slow your drowning. You spam NONONONONONONO as you hear a voice-over pleading “pleasepleaseplease nononono”, and eventually your character disappears beneath the waves, and you’re shown a screen that shows: Your 2015 was a <number of times you hit N and O> out of 10. I guess the most immediate "meaning” I picked up was that the developer’s year was shit and that they felt they were drowning - a common metaphor for being overworked. One way or another, at the end of the game you drown, it’s over, you get a score.

I wonder if they made a game for 2016...

Play and interpret 'Slave of God'

This is probably the most bizarre game I’ve ever played. The colours, thumping (but pretty good actually) and deliberate visual glitches are downright headache inducing, and most certainly not for those suffering epilepsy. I think I finished this one, so here’s a rundown by memory:

You walk into the club, lights flashing, people dancing.

You get a couple of drinks from the bar out the back, and give one to a person sitting next to the dance floor. Every time you stand near where you put your drink down, you drink some, and it apparently never runs out.

You take a piss in the bathroom.

you visit two shady looking types below the stage, to the right.

car crashes next to the dance floor. How it got there is anyone’s guess.

you stand next to someone frantically dancing with a light beam coming out of their head. It catches you in it’s rapture, which is difficult to escape, and you can “pull” them away from the dance floor, getting to the final stage

you then follow a glowing path to see a window, at which point you see a “sun” come up. The games stops, and apparently ends

it was pretty interesting, though to be honest the presentation was difficult to get past. It worked well as a simulation of clubbing while drunk or high, as one moment blends into the other, and everything is reduced to abstract shapes and still images. I don’t know if there was an underlying story, though it reminded me somewhat of some sequences from the first Trainspotting film.

Play and interpret: 'Cyberqueen'

A sci-fi horror text adventure. It reminded me a lot of Systems Shock, which I admittedly have not played but know a fair bit about thanks to a few YouTubers. One such video describes the series antagonist, SHODAN, a sentient AI who takes over a space station and slaughters everyone aboard after the protagonist hacks her I finished the game, and clearly wasn’t imagining things. SHODAN becomes a megalomaniac with a god complex, frequently calling the protagonist and humans in general “insects”. Cyberqueen is pretty horrifying, describing in graphic detail your own dissection and subsequent melding with the AI, with things taking an often erotic-horror tone towards the end. You can choose to masturbate, high on your own power as you become one with the machine. It’s an awful lot like the themes of H.R. Giger’s art, with humans and machines locked in erotic embraces as one melds seamlessly into the other.

Play and interpret: 'Dr. Langeskov, The Tiger, and The Terribly Cursed Emerald: A Whirlwind Heist'

The most premium feeling “Game” of those in the readings. Made by Crows Crows Crows (A studio which I know from a VR experience they made for the HTC Vive called Accounting) and a guy Called William Pugh who directed The Stanley Parable. It’s quite clear that TSP had some influence on this one, they have a similar storytelling style and work to mock and satirise a particular aspect of games - TSP mocks the notion of player choice, whereas Dr Langeskov mocks a lot of the contrivances that occur in any story - you’re the man behind the scenes, making the rain happen, the tiger escape, etc etc. Maybe it’s some kind of author tract regarding the role of the game’s director in making everything “happen”. 

Christ alive, I’m done. Where are my thirty pieces of silver