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4.
THIS AIN'T YOUR PARENTS' INTERFACE
An
increase in the level by which the world is mediated for us is
compounded at the micro level of video games. They are media tools
that glorify their most direct moment of mediation: the interface.
Early home gaming consoles relied on one or two button joysticks,
sometimes with a limited range of movement strictly along the
X or the Y axis. Along with the increase of complexity in games
was a growing functionality in the handheld controllers used to
manipulate play. In what seems like an effort to outdo competitors,
console companies regularly add buttons or reconfigure their arrangement
with each generation of hardware. The Nintendo Entertainment System
consists of directional pad, a 'pause' button, a 'start' button,
and two red command buttons labeled 'A'
and 'B'. By contrast, the XBOX
controller has 12 functioning buttons and 3 separate directional
pads. While game companies strive to present more fully immersive
titles, the necessary technology for interacting with their games
demands ever greater skill and dexterity. This at first appears
to have the effect of stifling a fuller integration into the game
world by presenting a more advanced system of obstacles to overcome.
Yet, as the popularity of gaming increases along with the amount
of buttons it becomes evident that players long for that heightened
level of control. A chord dangles from the back of the game controller
to the system as an extension of the body. Able to conceive of
the series of actions that an avatar will play out, the gamer
can realize their thoughts visually following an elaborate sequence
of commands. For the experienced gamer the wires of the joystick
come to stand as extensions of the nervous system as an impulse
is carried from the brain through to the axon terminal of the
hand arriving through synapsis at the neuron/game controller.
The mental and bodily self conjoins with the gaming. As Lahti
points out, games "are a symptomatic site of a confusion
or transgression of boundaries between the body and technology
that characterizes contemporary culture"3.
As games and their hardware work to give the appearance of boundlessness,
they reinforce an unawareness of corporeal experience. The psychical
has moved outside of the body and is watched through a screen
by the physical being.
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