One thing that has always nagged me was the dichotomy of ideology critique and what he calls informatic critique–the former occurring in a vertical, allegorical fashion based on a depth model of interpretation and the latter being horizontal, a process of scanning the surface of a text, and largely in relation to his previous work on the flexible structures of protocol through which control is asserted.

Of course, the attack on the depth model of interpretation is a primary facet of postmodernist thinking, but in (Marxist) authors such as Jameson, Eagleton, Perry Anderson, and even Linda Hutcheon (to some extent) the abandonment of ideology critique is a frightening symptom of critical thought. Indeed, part of Jameson’s critique of postmodernism is that signs are detached from reference, from “deep” history, where signifiers circulate unattached to anything “below” them such as signifieds, or god forbid, an anchor of reality. Thus, in postmodernism everything is upfront and out in the open; nothing is hidden; interpretation does not excavate deeper meanings let alone the political unconscious.

In terms of video games, this is exactly the approach Galloway takes to games in his chapter of Gaming called “Allegories of Control.” He will say things like, video games present their politics in “relatively unmediated form” (an abandonment of the key Marxist concept of mediation?); or,  games are “politically transparent;” or, a longer example:

“As I have alluded to in Jameson, the depth model in traditional allegorical interpretation is a sublimation of the separation felt by the viewer between his or her experience of consuming the media and the potentially liberating political value of that media. But video games abandon this dissatisfying model of deferral, epitomizing instead the flatness of the control allegory by unifying the act of playing the game with an immediate political experience. In other words, The Sims is a game that delivers its own political critique up front as part of the gameplay. There is no need for the critic to unpack the game later.”

Whereas Civilization for Galloway acts as a transparent surface display of the totality of informatic control – its interlocking algorithms, the flexibility of various paramaters that players can investigate, adjust, and change – The Sims is a direct display “of life lived as an algorithm.” It’s all there right before us in these games which act as indexes to the form of control and societal structures–postmodernist, post-industrial, informatic (call it what you will)–that exists around us. One doesn’t need to unpack how Civilization represents history, because it is right there in the mirror before us–as mathematical, informatic models which ultimately act as the erasure of history itself. One does not need to deeply interpret The Sims because it is right there before us as “an immediate political experience:” the revealing of our contemporary lives as insipid, repetitive, algorithmic tasks as we play the game itself.  I actually have no qualms with these analyses, they point back to the structures of control (stemming from Deleuze) that Galloway has extrapolated in his work on protocol. But this sense of immediacy of the political, a privileging of surface over depth, seems like a unnecessary (postmodern) annihilation of ideology and the work of interpretation needed to think through it, which, in my opinion, still remains an important political task. In fact, perhaps a task I am trying to do right now in seeing through how Galloway’s notion of “informatic critique” is working ideologically itself.

Take an article from 1984 or 85 from Terry Eagleton entitled, “Capitlaism, Modernism, and Postmodernism” where Eagleton dismantles the ideologies within both modernist and postmodernist thinking.  For example, Eagleton attacks Deleuze and Guattari (figures of utmost importance to Galloway):

“In post-1968 Paris, an eyeball-to-eyeball encounter with the real still seemed on the cards, if only the obfuscatory mediations of Marx and Freud could be abandoned. For Deleuze and Guattari, that ‘real’ is desire, which in a full-blown metaphysical positivism ‘can never be deceived’, needs no interpretation and simply is. In this apodicticism of desire, of which the schizophrenic is hero, there can be no place for political discourse proper, for such discourse is exactly the ceaseless labour of interpretation of desire, a labour which does not leave its object untouched.”

Now, reading this quote beside the longer quote from Galloway above, it seems that for Galloway the video game places its politics right up front, without mediation (of visual representation or narrative for example), without the need for ceaseless interpretation, without the construction and hard work of political discourse, leaving its object untouched (because, well, the critic does not need to unpack The Sims because it’s meaning is right there in front of us as we play) . Of course, there is “interpretation” of an informatic kind (maybe “interpretation” in the computer science sense where code is executed or carried out as is) which always leads back to the same structures–protocol, the informatic system, etc..

Or take Galloway’s notion that “the shooter is an allegory of liberation pure and simple” and an allegory “of the purest surrealist act: the desire to burst into the street with a pistol,” wildly attacking the oppressors: here it is, desire that just is, purely and immediately expressed in the gameplay of shooters. Are all shooters like this? How about stealth shooters? Would Metal Gear Solid or Mirrors Edge fit into this analysis? No. But it would seem that following Galloway the politics of these games would need to be right up in front, somewhere, and ultimately and inevitably pointing to the informatic system which underpins them.

But let me get back to the point I want to make about Ideological Critique and Informatic Critique. At the end of his “interpretation” of Civilization Galloway writes, “Thus the logic of informatics and horizontality is privileged over the logic of ideology and verticality in this game [Civilization], as it most likely is in all video games in varying degrees.” Thus, ideological analysis and interpretation should always take a back seat to informatic critique in Galloway’s estimation. Yet–and this is where things get a little more interesting–at the end of the chapter Galloway tells the reader that, “In modernity, ideology was an instrument of power, but in postmodernity ideology is a decoy….” A decoy: something that distracts, a misrepresentation that misleads us, that tricks us into following after it as the truth escapes elsewhere, like ducks drawn to our false brethren just before the hunters unload their guns. Is this not, in truth, the model of ideological analysis? In Galloway’s analysis it is ideological critique itself that is the decoy (false consciousness, the distortion, the trick that leads us astray) while an informatic or “protological” system hides away beneath it. But here we are again in the depth model of ideology, where only now it is ideology itself which is the ruse. But my point is, Galloway’s method of revealing the informatic beneath the so-called decoy of ideology is simply an ideological critique in itself. My point being that the so-called retreat of ideological analysis in games is arrived at only through the reiteration of its own theoretical methodology.

In the end this both pleases and displeases me because the chapter itself does not embody an “informatic critique” but formally uses the (“modern”) model of ideological critique that it purports to destabilize. It displeases me because I think Galloway’s work on protocol and informatic systems of control is intriguing and I would like to understand more how an informatic critique can be more useful as a model of analysis than simply returning to the reiteration that, yes, we do indeed live in a world of protocol/information, etc.. It pleases me because, well, I simply do not accept the death or uselessness of concepts such as representation, false consciousness, depth models of interpretation, etc. upon which ideological analysis rests, and, this includes the medium of video games.

If anything Galloway’s chapter should teach those of us interested in analyzing video games that ideological analysis should not be abandoned in our approach to video games, that the depth model of interpretation continues to be powerful and productive even when it is not recognized (or even explicitly denied!) as such. If there is ideology at work in Galloway’s chapter, it is the ideology that ideology and its critique have been superceded in video game analysis. (I should mention that Galloway has a much more complex analysis of ideology as such elsewhere, though not in relation to video games; thus, I am not claiming that Galloway thinks ideology as such has been superceded, only that a certain form of its critique in relation to video games seemingly has been).

One other point I would make is that representation and narrative–often the scourge of Ludologists and even Galloway at points (for example the last chapter on “Countergaming”)–are mediations of the informatic, of protocol, of game play and game mechanics. It is often through them that we arrive at the game, and they should not be dismissed so easily. The Sims and Civilization might be border cases that privilege informatics over representation/narrative/history, etc. (thus are the most “transparent” when it comes to informatic analysis), but many other video games are still ripe for ideological excavation.  The transparency and immediacy of politics embedded within cultural artifacts such as video games is a ruse we cannot afford (or pretend) to forget.

]]> http://thefollowingphrases.com/pretending-politics-ideology-and-informatic-critique/feed/ 0 http://thefollowingphrases.com/synchronic-vs-diachronic-game-studies/ http://thefollowingphrases.com/synchronic-vs-diachronic-game-studies/#comments Wed, 01 Jul 2009 04:12:15 +0000 braxton http://thefollowingphrases.com/?p=59 My original intent in starting this blog was to provide a public place for thinking through my dissertation, for providing a salvage yard of sorts where I could place some of my current thoughts–odds and ends which might prove useful or not for the dissertation. Hopefully they will also be useful for others interested in thinking critically and theoretically about video games. I plan on posting more regularly in the future.

So, with that said, this first post about games arises from a recent re-reading of Espen Aarseth’s “Genre Trouble“  a key text in the ludologist vs. narratologist debates (as they have unfortunately become to be known). In particular the following quote spurred my thoughts:

Games are not “textual” or at least not primarily textual: where is the text in chess? We might say that the rules of chess constitute its “text,” but there is no recitation of the rules during gameplay, so that would reduce the textuality of chess to a subtextuality or a paratextuality. A central “text” does not exist — merely context. Any game consists of three aspects: (1) rules, (2) a material/semiotic system (a gameworld), and (3) gameplay (the events resulting from application of the rules to the gameworld). Of these three, the semiotic system is the most coincidental to the game. As the Danish theorist and game designer Jesper Juul has pointed out (Juul 2001b), games are eminently themeable: you can play chess with some rocks in the mud, or with pieces that look like the Simpson family rather than kings and queens. It would still be the same game. The “royal” theme of the traditional pieces is all but irrelevant to our understanding of chess. Likewise, the dimensions of Lara Croft’s body, already analyzed to death by film theorists, are irrelevant to me as a player, because a different-looking body would not make me play differently. When I play, I don’t even see her body, but see through it and past it.

Thus, game studies would ideally focus on the rules and gameplay–though the latter would seemingly require some analysis of representation or the “semiotic system” given that gameplay emerges within the relationship between gameworld and rules. Though the example of Lara Croft is immediately intriguing (and has caught the eye of many others) what leap into my mind upon this rereading was the dismissal of semiotics and the use of the chess example, given that Ferdinand Saussure (founder of semiology) uses practically the same chess example to illustrate his rationale concerning the inauguration of semiotics. Of course, Aarseth’s use of the word “semiotic” is really a codeword for narratives and visual representations which frame the game system within a gameworld; less a reference to actual semiotics (and Saussure for that matter), the word is intended to indicate a certain brand of theory – perhaps of the poststructuralist flavor – and practitioners of this theory who mindlessly port their training (developed through the study of literature or media such as film and television) to the field of game studies. (Incidentally, Aarseth explicitly denies the privileged usefulness of semiotics proper to the study of electronic texts in his book Cybertexts). Nevertheless, Aarseth’s choice to frame the other of game studies as semiotics is intriguing given that the methods of the ludologists to create a stable foundation for game studies share traits with Ferdinand Saussure’s attempt to ground the field of semiology. Indeed, Saussure claims that “language must, to put it correctly, be studied in itself; heretofore language has almost always been studied in connection with something else, from other viewpoints.” If one replaces “language” with “games” one arrives at Aarseth’s basic qualms concerning the state of game studies and the unreflective porting of theories derived from literature & film to games. But, let’s look at the chess examples Saussure uses.

Ironically, Aarseth’s example of chess (through Juul) could have been directly supported with quotations from Saussure such as:

Take a knight, for instance. By itself is it an element in the game? Certainly not, for by its material make-up—outside its square and the other conditions of the game—it means nothing to the player; it becomes a real, concrete element only when endowed with value and wedded to it. Suppose that the piece happens to be destroyed or lost during a game. Can it be replaced by an equivalent piece? Certainly. Not only another knight but even a figure shorn of any resemblance to a knight can be declared identical provided the same value is attributed to it (110).

For Saussure, of course, the unimportant representational qualities of the chess pieces relates to the concept of the arbitrariness of the signifier where the materiality of the signifier has no positive relationship to the signified. Saussure’s dismissal of writing as an external representation of speech, a signifier of a signifier, and non-essential to studying the system of language could be compared with the externality and arbitrariness of representation that Aarseth posits in relation to the formal system of the game. One could perhaps continue thinking about “the arbitrariness of the signifier” in terms of game systems – i.e. treating games as semiological systems – where rules of the game become the differential values (in the Saussurean sense) that make up the “language” of the game, but this is not my intent; honestly it is difficult to see how such a comparison would become significant  (though I do not outright dismiss the potential usefulness of this comparison). The point I want to make is simply about method: whereas Saussure attempts to uncover the general rules (not the grammar) that govern the signifying function of language (thus arriving at useful concepts such as arbitrariness, the syntagmatic versus paradigmatic axis, differences without positive terms, etc.) one might characterize the approach of the ludologists as attempting to uncover the general rules which govern certain collections of games (not the “rules” of individual games, but the rules which govern formal systems of games as such or genres of particular game structures; Aarseth’s delineation of “user functions” in his analysis of cybertexts might be akin to the useful concepts that Saussure extrapolates: i.e. interpretative, configurative, etc.).

At first glance, game studies as envisioned by the ludologists would seem intent on analyzing games as synchronic system of rules, for example, looking at contemporary chess in terms of its rule structure at a particular instance in time, as a temporal slice removed from the historical changes which have influenced its development. This was also the proclivity of Saussure (or, at least, his academic reception which often teaches his thoughts on the synchronic axis of linguistics, not the diachronic). The following from Saussure will illustrate:

Language is a system that has its own arrangement. Comparison with chess will bring out the point. In chess, what is external can be separated relatively easily from what is internal. The fact that the games passed from Persia to Europe is external; against that, everything having to do with its system and rules is internal. If I use ivory chessmen instead of wooden ones, the change has no effect on the system, but if I decrease or increase the number of chessmen, this change has a profound effect on the “grammar” of the game (22-23).

There are truthfully two external elements of language that Saussure rejects here: historical change and the material, visual representation of the pieces. It is the latter which ultimately becomes the true external to linguistics as Saussure patently denies the relevance of both phonetic materiality and visual materiality of language (terming them arbitrary) while extensively analyzing the former in terms of language in the less studied and acknowledged second portion of his Course in General Linguistics, “Diachronic Linguistics.” Even in this section though Saussure is bent upon both dismissing phonetic changes as important to the synchronic study of language (i.e. having a determined effect on transformations in the “meaning” of words) while also dismissing, though not outright, potential determinants of phonetic change over time such as historical disturbances (times of political, economic and social unrest), race, fashion, nature and climate, childhood inaccuracies in language acquisition, etc..

But, what does all this have to do with games and their study? Well, even though there is seemingly a simplistic parallel between Saussure’s founding of semiotics and certain attempts to ground game studies, it is clear that games are not language. First and foremost, games and their rules are not arbitrary, at least not to the same extent as “living language.” Saussure’s principle of arbitrariness means simply that language evolves without firm, direct control over its temporal changes: individuals cannot affect its course, and even the determinants he articulates in the section on diachronic linguistics are seen as suspect, unsatisfying and ultimately untenable given that even in the absence of these determinants change still occurs. Yet, it seems to me that games and their rules are cultural articulations to some extent existing outside language (as Aarseth’s quote above suggests); they are created by humans, changed by humans and (possibly) ultimately determined by historical forces and situations. Rules are motivated. This is not to say that they are motivated completely, but more so than language and its relatively uncontrollable flux.

Now, it also seems to me that game studies could be pursued in both a synchronic and diachronic fashion–the latter being a path that has not been followed as much as the former. While synchronic game studies would isolate rule systems at a particular time (or generalize about a set or genre of games and their rules in order to make theoretical arguments) diachronic game studies would study the development and changes in rules or game systems over time attempting to locate historical determinants that might have shaped these changes and thus have shaped how games are played, formed, and enjoyed. Indeed, sometimes transformations in games might be akin to language change…say, for example, children playing a traditional game with a slightly different–perhaps local–adaption of rules which then becomes more culturally widespread. In this (obviously vague) example perhaps the change in rules was spontaneous creating a mutation in rules over time that is hard to pinpoint and explain. Yet, other temporal changes in rules might be explained more forcefully by historical determinants–be these cultural, political, technological, etc.. Those studying games diachronically might isolate changes in rules in order to describe and theorize changes in particular historical periods (when the changes occurred), or they might even pursue general laws which illuminate changes over larger periods of time.

In contemporary computer and video games one vector of change would surely be technological mutations–thus changes in rules (or “innovations” as the industry might say) could be linked to developments in hardware, software, programming, etc.. which allow for systems that were not previously possible. Yet, diachronic game studies would seek other determinants as well, using changes in rules to diagnose cultural changes. Would changes in the formal system of games and rules over time (say, for example in the evolution of Final Fantasy or Metal Gear Solid) illuminate cultural changes beyond the forces of the technological? Whatever the answer such an inquiry stands as an intriguing possibility.

Although to my knowledge there are not many studies that would fit within diachronic game studies, one could mention a few examples. Jesper Juul’s paper “The Game, the Player, the World: Looking for a Heart of Gameness” might fit as an example of studying the forces of technological determinants in games, tracing as it does differences in a classical game model versus the imapct of computerization on gaming. More interesting in reference to Aarseth’s quote above might be Marilyn Yalom’s Birth of a Chess Queen where the historical appearance and subsequent development of the queen within the game of chess is delineated and diachronically outlined. For example, the development of modern “queen’s chess”–where the queen becomes the most powerful piece in the game through a shifting of the rules governing the movement of the queen piece (from a short diagonal movement to her modern, extended range of movement)–is linked to the influential role of Queen Isabella of Spain.  Diachronic game studies might pursue a similar course of analysis in terms of other games.

One point that emerges–directly in reference to Aarseth’s quote above–is that in the diachronic analysis of games representation becomes a stronger force, not readily dismissed such as Aarseth’s move to ignore the representation of Lara Croft. Take chess again. Raph Koster wrote that, “It’s very likely that chess would not have its long term appeal if the pieces all represented different kinds of snot.” This is Koster’s way of saying that representation does matter (though he is quick to point out that it does not matter as much as other aspects of that game). My point is simply that, for example, the representation of the queen in chess was likely a key component of the radical change in rules that the system of the game underwent; the link of this representation to actual social/political functions in the historical period of the change would likely be a factor in the sedimentation of the new rule and the change in the “system” of chess. I am not saying that representation is the only determinant in this change, but that it  shares a determining role in the mutation of the system of chess. Afterall, if the pieces where not “royally themed” (or thought of in terms of this representational schematic) would the transformation of chess in terms of a more powerful queen have occurred?