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By
comparison to this position as viewer, I found myself critically
detached from the role of gamer. While playing a video game, although
I make myself sufficiently comfortable, my body is tense and to
some degree animated. Beyond the necessary dextral movement upon
my console's controller, my physical self can become so engaged
with a game that I begin to inadvertently imitate the motions
on screen, craning my neck to look up or moving my arms in the
direction my character is headed. Although some amount of anxiety
or frustration can arise because of my inability to perform certain
in-game tasks, there is no emotional attachment to the events
unfolding. By investing very little in the medium, I have found
that I am able to turn a game off at a whim if I feel it has bored
me. Until recently, my position was one very willing to take up
a role in a digital environment and participate to the best of
my ability, but one which refused to consider what value my role
had. At the moment of gaming, all critical receptors would seem
to shut off. It is from this new curiosity regarding what exactly
I am engaged in when I play a video game that I begin my examination
of the medium.
*
* *
Somewhere between utopian
fantasies regarding the possibilities of simulation, and dystopian
nightmares of detachment from the corporeal self in a negation
of morality and an unstoppable invasion from the digital, I struggle
in negotiating an ability to use the physical and cultural apparatus
of video games to my advantage. The ever-growing popularity of
the form is partially hopeful for its creation of knowledgeable
and technologically adroit citizens. While a curious child of
the 1960s may have taken apart a toaster in their parents' absence,
increased accessibility to computers (and to knowledge about how
they operate) has led to the emergence of a generation of reverse
engineers, able to dismantle the tools of consumerism and tweak
them to their liking. Games are frequently coded to allow for
the implementation of home-brewed programming with the potential
for personalizing and subverting the experience. Yet the mass
proliferation of these electronic things has increased the capital
going into their production, streamlining the system in which
they operate and thus creating greater limitations on digital
freedom. And gamers don't seem to mind. Now functioning in a multibillion-dollar
industry, game companies are able to produce a product which appeases
consumers. Users are willing to allow concessions on freedom for
enhanced graphics and more rapid gameplay.
This making of the mainstream
has built itself upon the easily digestible form of mass entertainment;
of the Hollywood blockbuster in particular. Through a denial of
the possibilities of the medium and the reiteration of standard
leisure practices in a shiny new package, the assumption that
players won't mind is essentially affirmed. Fooled to consider
narrative texts as the form of communication par excellence, gamers
ignore the implications of partaking in a practice which removes
them from their subjective positions and truly does immerse them
in a world that is set out for them. Rather than freeing an individual
from the stringent rules of the world via fantasy, games more
commonly impart even tighter restrictions on what is expected
of a social being. Through an examination of some of the key texts
surrounding video games, and a reflection on my somewhat schizophrenic
viewpoints of the medium, I hope to touch on many of the facets
of gaming which merit critical discussion and lay the groundwork
for an approach to its analysis.
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