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.

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