This past week was our first week of Discord class. Our main discussion topic this week was based on Chess’ Ready Player Two as well as an introduction into the game Life is Strange. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to participate as much this week as I had to buy the book again. The primary purpose of the book seems to be discussing the role of “Player Two” and how that role is treated in the gaming community. From our class discussion, “Player Two” is predominantly described as those who do not fit the stereotypical gamer, although it primarily focuses on women. It is the people who do not fit the marketed identity of your average gamer. The rest of the Chapter transitioned to identifying how game designers market their games and what characteristics are common in more inclusive games.

Personally, I found the chart at the end of Chapter 1 to be a bit interesting. The purpose of the chart is to identify whether a game was made to be inclusive for women or not. It displays a variety of traits and commonalities between multiple games and tally them up to create a score of sorts. While I understand the purpose and the parallels it is drawing, I feel that some of the traits are pretty vague and opinionated. This leads to varying perceptions of what the final score should be. In my personal opinion, I feel that Grand Theft Auto, which received a zero in all categories, should fit for a few of the categories like collaborative/social and creative expression. I’d even argue that it’s fairly low in harassment as well since you can play the entire game solo or play online in passive mode which prevents other players from being able to interact with you at all. Also, I generally viewed the game as fairly casual when it comes to time commitment. My friends and I only really got on to mess around and goof around. I never really felt that the game was time-demanding with a sense of mastery and skill. Rather, it was more of a social time waster to hop on and blow some stuff up with some friends. Conversely, my friends and I used to play a lot of Clash of Clans back in high school. The chart identifies the game as low risk and low harassment, yet as you upgraded your base higher, the game became progressively more competitive. You needed a lot of gold and elixir to continue upgrading and building your armies, meanwhile your base is always at risk of being attacked by other players. If a player successfully raids your base, they took over half of your resources, meaning you would lose your only means of progressing in the game. We also saw a common theme where people would intentionally lose trophies, effectively deranking themselves, in order to be able to attack weaker, lower leveled players. In Clash’s case, I feel it was a bit more competitive than the way the it had been evaluated in the text.

This past week we talked about how nostalgia affects how we remember older games and how some newer games are made. Nostalgia affects the way we perceive games that we used to play, especially the ones during our childhood. We tend to remember things based on our experiences, causing us to experience restorative or reflective nostalgia. Vanderhoef’s “Shovel Night: Nostalgia” discussed in great detail how the game brought out both restorative and reflective nostalgia when playing the game. We discussed in class that restorative nostalgia is the act of returning to a previous time in its purest form. It would be like going back and playing 007: Golden Eye for the Nintendo 64 and enjoying it on the original console with all its positives and negatives. Even though the controller isn’t very comfortable for a shooter and the game would occasionally freeze if the cartridge slot was dusty, you wouldn’t want to have it any other way. Reflective nostalgia is when we reminisce on past games and enjoy the good times but also recognize the negatives. For example, I used to love playing Super Smash Bros for the Nintendo 64 with my brother. I don’t think I was even in elementary school yet but I remember having a ton of fun. I’d love to go back and play it but at the same time I kinda don’t want to either. I really hated the N64 controllers and much preferred the Dreamcast’s controllers which had a similar layout to modern controllers. Something I also realized is that compared to newer Smash games, many of the characters in Smash 64 had incredibly broken move sets. Some characters had obviously overpowered moves while others had near useless attacks or were even missing moves in their move set. It was definitely an incredible game for its time and I’d love to go back a play a few matches but I think I’d much rather play the newer games on a regular basis.

Regarding nostalgia, many times we tend to forget the worst aspects of the game. Buinicki’s “Nostalgia and the Dystopia of History in 2K’s Bioshock Infinite” shows an excellent example in which people may look back on terrible events and twist them into a positive event or time. In Bioshock Infinite, the Battle of Wounded Knee is remembered as a glorious and heroic victory over the attacking Native tribes when in reality, it was a severe overreaction that led to the massacre of hundreds of unarmed Natives. It serves as an exaggeration in which some people may look back at the event with nostalgia and see the event in a much more positive light than it actually was. I feel that this tends to be common when experiencing stressful and difficult events. I seem to notice this quite frequently in military veterans. Their service in a combat zone is marked as one of the most stressful times in their lives. Many service members who fight in a combat zone can’t wait to leave and get back to their normal lives. Yet many veterans become nostalgic of their time overseas. I remember one veteran described it as the only thing he had to worry about was getting shot in the face. Meanwhile as a civilian, he has to worry about taxes, rent, work, wife, kids, mental health issues, politics, etc. Meanwhile, he reminisced on his time overseas as being comparatively carefree when in reality it probably was not the case. And I know at the time my brother wanted to rejoin the Army as well but I did my best to make him remember that through all the nostalgia it wasn’t worth going back. The film “They Shall Not Grow Old” also seems to touch on the topic as well except this time for soldiers during World War One. Towards the end of the war, neither side really cared who would win at that point. A common sentiment felt by the soldiers on the frontlines was “screw the war, we just want to go home.” Yet once the armistice was signed and the news was spread that the war was over, there was no cheering to be had in the trenches. Soldiers began to wonder “what do we do now?” after this long and brutal war has ended. Many veterans began to feel nostalgic and miss the armed forces, so much so that many veterans would volunteer as World War II erupted twenty years later.

Last week, we discussed how coding and technology affects our perception of games and gaming culture. We read a number of articles and passages covering different topics, but the ones I’d like to focus on are Bogost’s Pelé’s Soccer: Platform, Sicart’s Queering the Controller, and Tveten’s Code is Political. Bogost had made the argument that older, simplistic games are sub-par and inferior to modern games because of their technological limitations. From our class discussion, I believe the common consensus was that, yes, the games were simplistic and technologically limited; However, if we look at the game for what it was capable of for its time, it turns out to be quite advanced and innovative. I feel its a pretty ignorant way to look at games, or anything for that matter, by deciding its value based on the present. Its like saying the sword was terrible and worthless because we have firearms now.

Another topic that was covered was the Sicart’s piece which argued that we should explore the controller based on pleasure. The article within itself was a bit strange to me and the sentiment seemed to be shared by a few other classmates. The author uses a lot of references to sex toys and pleasure to argue that we should look at creating a more emotional medium to the games we play as it will increase immersion. Overall, I felt the article was a bit off putting and that the message could of have conveyed in a easier fashion. While I don’t totally agree with the author’s “manifesto”, I definitely see the merit in exploring what a person wants and finds pleasurable when playing games. There have been similar notions amongst the corporate world on employee treatment. Traditional corporations enforced restrictive rules which push conformity while expecting the employee to give their body and soul to the company. In more recent years, many large corporations began encouraging employee health with fitness programs, flexible work hours, more paid leave and vacation time. By looking at what people want and what makes them happy, we have improved quality of life. So to some degree, I do feel there is a purpose to exploring what makes us happy when we use a controller.

Finally, we have Tveten’s article which argues that coding is inherently political because the common coding languages all use English. Personally, I heavily disagree with this article. One of the examples the author uses is how an Arabic-based coding language is incapable of reaching any lengths due to its inability to integrate with preexisting languages. Coding was popularized in the 80’s and 90’s in the US; despite the various nationalities and backgrounds of prominent coders, English became the common language to use. The language used in various code is arbitrary and not political. For example, “popMatrix () ;” by itself pretty meaningless is entirely meaningless to the average person. No matter how fluent your English is, you wouldn’t know that this function helps translate objects. The programming language, Processing, which is based on JavaScript, is simply utilizing English syntax to represent a built in function. If simply using a language makes something political, then couldn’t you argue this very blog post is political with imperialistic undertones because I’m speaking English. Then numbers and math would be political because most of the world uses Arabic numerals. Why can’t we all just use Chinese numerals instead? I feel the author is grasping for straws in this article with very little substance to back up their claims. Throughout the rest of the article, the author brings up coding languages like C+= and TrumpScript as evidence. These languages were developed by people who wished to use coding as their political soap box; it doesn’t mean that coding as a concept and profession is inherently political. On a similar note, a video was shown in class that argued on a similar vein. I didn’t quite catch the name of the video but it claimed that AI is racist because a facial recognition program had misgendered several black women. Coming from an electrical engineering and software background, I wholeheartedly know that it is extremely difficult to design and perfect AI. One of the pictures being mistaken had said the woman had a handle bar mustache due to the dark shadow from her smile. Such programs tend to struggle with darker colors, often mistaking them for shadows caused by poor lighting. The AI learns from evaluating previous pictures in which a common trend is for men to have shorter hair and defined facial features. The notion that the AI is inherently racist and the people who designed it are racist simply because their program isn’t perfect is ludicrous and down right insulting. I would like to invite the individual who made this claim to develop their own facial recognition AI that is perfect and flawless. It irritates me to know that these people who take risks to innovate and push technology forward are being falsely accused of racism simply because their program made a mistake.

Last week we discussed the importance of character creation and how we choose to represent ourselves in games. Specifically, the Shaw article, “He Could Be a Bunny Rabbit For All I Care”, and our time playing World of Warcraft had piqued my interest. Character creation is important in that it allows us to create a custom or personalized avatar; however, each person’s choices and the reasons behind them vary greatly. Shaw explores the varying ways of how we identify ourselves with the fictional characters and how it is much different than reading a novel or watching a film. During our World of Warcraft demo, we found that some people liked to create characters that were similar or best represented who they are in real life. Some liked to be characters that are contrary to their personal appearances while others enjoyed the aesthetic of how some races and armors looked. I believe this ties in well with the Shaw article, where narrative-based games seem to correlate with player identity. Narrative games provide a basis for players to connect and empathize with the characters in-game. When a customizable avatar is added to the mix, people are better able to immerse themselves in the game using a caricature of themselves or their interests if they wish.

Looking back at my personal experience with gaming, I feel that it is quite rare for me to fully identify with a character. When a main character is presented and I have little choice over their narrative decisions, like in The Last of Us, I tend to feel like a third person watching these events unfold. Although I may control Joel’s actions, I feel like I’m exploring and empathizing with the individual character himself rather than feeling like I am Joel. Even in narrative heavy games with ample character creation, I don’t like calling my character an “avatar” since most of the time they don’t represent who I am. I’m not exactly sure where the lines are drawn either. When I played open world games like Skyrim or MMORPGs like Tera Online, I created female characters but not because I identify as them. Aesthetics became quite important in these cases as I cared about the female armors and looks more whereas the male equipment I was pretty uncaring towards. However, this isn’t exactly consistent across each genre for me. When I played Borderlands 2, I loved playing as Zero, who I tended to characterize as myself in many ways. Also, in the MMORPG, Maplestory, I primarily played a male assassin which I heavily customized to my liking. It actually just occurred to me that I didn’t really care much for the narrative in the world of Maplestory. The game primarily became a social hangout for my friends and I with the added benefits of questing and dungeon running. One thing that does seem to remain fairly consistent is the naming of your avatar. Personally, I hate using my own name in nearly every game I play. I much prefer to come up with a name for my creation as it becomes incredibly jarring if my name is spoken in game. The only exception would be Maplestory, where most of my friends knew me in-person and would use my name rather than my character’s name. I suppose my character creation choices heavily depend on what aspects of the game pique my interest.

Citations:

Shaw, Adrienne. Gaming at the Edge : Sexuality and Gender at the Margins of Gamer Culture, University of Minnesota Press, 2015.

This past week, we discussed how different groups of people are portrayed in video games and its effects. The Shaw and Friesem article highlighted how LGBTQ people tend to be represented as jokes and villains in games. We, also, took a look at Dream Daddy and The Guild as good and bad examples of representation in gaming culture, respectively.

The primary topic that stood out to me is how precise the execution of representation must be. Just because a group is represented, doesn’t mean it is always good. One of our in-class examples was Leisure Suit Larry, where the player can unintentionally sleep with a trans woman, resulting in negative outcomes. Although one may argue that transgender people are represented in the game, they are belittled as nothing more than a bad end in the game. Sure, it is just a fictional game which was meant to appeal towards straight men but gives a poor impression. It positively reinforces heterosexuality and punishes the player for going against what is considered normal. This may create a negative image in the minds of ignorant and susceptible people. This reminded me of a recent video I watched called, “What Teaching English in Japan was REALLY Like” by Abroad in Japan. Mid-way through the video, he mentions when he first met his Japanese girlfriend’s mother, she was incredibly scared of him because she had never seen a white person before. I think its possible that she had a potentially negative image of what white people are like due to media. I expect games to have a similar effect where a few inexperienced and ignorant people inadvertently create biases on these groups of people being misrepresented.

Another important aspect of representation is portraying people through stereotypes. There comes a grey area where a group of people may be represented as stereotypical but it may actually accurately represent some. The example used in class is that lesbian women are commonly portrayed as the tough, butch type and gay men are flamboyant and effeminate. Though a stereotype, we can’t completely dispel these portrayals since there are lesbian women and gay men who may identify as such. If we denounce it as homophobic and bigoted to represent queer people as stereotypes, then it may alienate the people who they accurately represent. The issue is when is it okay to represent people as stereotypical? Where do we draw the boundaries of too much or too little? For example, is it acceptable to have an African American who enjoys fried chicken and watermelon in a game? Personally, I would say that would be a rather offensive portrayal; however, if we use the previous argument in this case, there may be a person out there that identifies with such a character. Overall, it can be rather difficult to properly represent a person especially when attempting to represent stereotyped personalities. I believe that all forms of media suffer from representation issues, not just in video games.

Citations:

Abroad in Japan’s video: youtube.com/watch?v=5VDnj8IEWNc

This past week, we discussed the purpose and effect that narratives have in games. One of the articles, “Video Games Are Better Without Stories” by Ian Bogost, stood out to me in particular. He asserts that films tell stories infinitely better than a video game ever could; therefore, games should forgo complex narratives in favor of straightforward entertainment and settings.

I highly disagree with this article on a personal level. I have been playing games all my life and I can confidently say that some of the most memorable games were the ones with incredible narratives. For example, I played Nier:Automata a few years ago and was absolutely blown away by it. On a surface level, it is a grindy, beat-em-up game about androids with fan service strewn about. The gameplay and story are entertaining enough but what really stood out to me was the multiple endings. Many of the characters and philosophers they’re meant to portray are intended to make the player contemplate where we derive meaning and purpose in our actions. It explores various ways we create purpose for ourselves and highlights the potential dangers in which we rationalize purpose. (Spoiler warning) And once we have completed the game, which took me around 300 hours to complete, we are given the choice to sacrifice our save game in order to help a random stranger beat the final boss easier. And I chose yes. The story’s purpose was to teach us to feel empathetic towards each other, and to sacrifice for each other even if we gain absolutely nothing from it.

From a business stand-point, it wouldn’t make any sense at all to remove narratives from video games. Some of the most successful games of the industry have narratives intertwined within them. To name a few: Skyrim, Warcraft, Legend of Zelda, Metal Gear Solid, and Fallout would be a hollow shell without the intricate narratives that immerse us into their respective universes. If we, theoretically, removed these games from existence, the video game industry we know today would be much smaller and less popular. This would only harm and limit the capabilities of game developers as well as reduce the social acceptance and diversity of games in culture. Also as a side note, I feel open world games like Skyrim and Fallout would be extremely difficult to portray as a film due to their heavy reliance on the player’s decisions.

At the end of the day, why should it matter whether a complex narrative is added to a video game or not? Personally, I see video games as a modem for people to share their creations. Whether it be a story driven “walking simulator” or a mindless, fast-paced shooter, it shouldn’t really matter.

References:

Bogost, Ian. “Video Games Are Better Without Stories.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 25 Apr. 2017, http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/04/video-games-stories/524148/.