Final video assessment, Narratology and Ludology

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Video games are a new medium, and like all new media they are struggling to be defined. Games are a special example in that they (with the advancement of technology) are able to incorporate elements from other mediums such as film and combine them with interaction. There are some that say that this shift in focus on story inevitably takes the interaction away from the player and creates a messy indefinable hybrid between games and other media.

Final Essay

 Compare the economic and social world that video games conjure with the real world today. How close are these imagined worlds to our world, and what are the ramifications of participating in these virtual environments in regards to human communication?

Repeated consumption of new forms of communication is ensured by the societal constructs from the real world which are crucial systems involved in the large communal situation of online digital spaces. The academic analysis of familiar elements in these virtual worlds allow for a greater understanding of why participants will invest time, money and effort into an environment which mimics real world behaviours and situations. By analysing World of Warcraft's similarities to real world economic and social systems we can discern that virtual worlds stand as an extension of the real world. Just as forms of entertainment stand as a reflection of cultural values of the time, digital spaces must be created with familiar elements in order to be widely adopted by the population. The theorised bleeding between reality and cyberspace is being reached by familiarising users with large scale online games; thus making way for the preference of the illusory over the real (Torikian 2010). The purpose of this essay is not to predict that video games will become a future permanent location in which players time is entirely invested but to suggest that this new communication technology will pave the way for future adoption of virtual reality and cyberspace (Lupton 1995).

Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft (WoW) is an example of a virtual space which demands a large investment of time and money. WoW is a Massively Multi-player Online Role-playing Game (MMORPG), a genre existing to incorporate elements of story and adventure from role-playing games and apply them on a massive scale where friends can face challenges and overcome them together. The game serves as a gigantic social platform (the massively multi-player component) and it does not adhere to the same goals as more traditional video games which maintain either a score or end goal. WoW's capability for thousands of players participating on a single server provide a different measure for achievement, this measure as in the real world is often defined by gold. Some players maintain that their only goal is to experience the story or world or to socialise with others, this is often true however it is the implementation of a defaulted capitalist economic reality keeping players invested (Rettberg 2008).

The business model of all MMORPG's as forms of entertainment require a large investment in time and money from the player. Given the relatively low cost of buying into this world (the game also implements a free trial system), the main source of income for Blizzard is the monthly subscription fee required for a player to log in to the game world. A key way to keep players invested is providing a sense of immersion and escapism. WoW provides a 'capitalist fairytale' in which progression is fuelled by consistent rewards, as long as effort is applied (Rettberg 2008). This is contradictory to the real world economy however as we do not live within a perfect capitalist environment, the real world is steeped with failures and unpredictability unlike that of the 'safe' digital world. WoW also makes an attempt at avoiding typical social binaries and adopting a morally grey 'truce' (players may still fight one another in sanctioned player vs. player zones) between the two player factions the Alliance and the Horde. Both factions harbour varied races which have been warring against one another for generations but are never positioned as good or evil. This demonstrates a possible outcome of virtual environments bridging morals, values and demographics and providing a connection not previously possible on a wide scale (MacCallum-Stewart 2008).

A major theme in the work of novelist William Gibson was the separation of the human mind from the body in a kind of immortal ascension into a digital space. WoW's main purpose is to keep players invested rather than provide a world that one can enter and influence with great purpose. Blizzard developers (programmers) maintain control over the virtual space, running servers, maintenance and providing updates. The large scale expansion 'Cataclysm' completely overhauled outdated content that was no longer relevant chronologically. The trailer shows the transformation that occurs between the original 2004 content and the updated content which essentially overwrote the old (Blizzard Entertainment 2010). This change was implemented as a feature to maintain immersion for long term players by providing a sense of an evolving 'real' world. As players grow older they feel that the game world progresses with them, inviting them to return as if they had never left and enforcing the concept of WoW as a 'deterrence machine'. The term coined by famous simulation theorist Jean Baudrillard states that the role of these worlds is to defer users from real life and create a kind of dystopia in which the program rules and our bodies lose their role entirely (Crogan 2007). The crafting of these types of digital environments prepare human beings for the possibility of complete integration within cyberspace.

Mortensen (2008) describes the coding of WoW's development plan as a construct only changeable by the programmers who act as an external source of rules for the player. These programmers provide rules and constructs similar to those of the real world such as the passage of time, gravity and speed. Given the success of WoW one can assume that such wide popularity can only be achieved when following similar rules yet limited in their capacity in order to streamline the experience of life, often resulting in the games being experienced as 'better than real life' (Aupers 2007). The game world progresses with a 24 hour day cycle, yet you do not have to eat, sleep and rest; it is in this way that the digital world is an extension of real life. It is interesting to note that there are players that enter the world without the aim to take on the role of their character or to socialise but to simply exist in it. It is rather concerning then that people will spend more time in a deliberately more limited digital space and would even consider the possibility of virtual reality when that technology reaches its pinnacle.

Certain academics use WoW as a testing ground for ideas, a kind of playground where mechanisms can be analysed and player behaviour can be monitored and reflected upon for real world application. Corneliussen and Rettberg (2008) acknowledge that all essays collected in 'Digital Culture, Play and Identity' were provided by members of an in-game guild inside of WoW. They met in the virtual world to study the very same virtual world, this highlights a startling parallel between the real and digital in which one must participate within the culture to critique it. Filiciak (2008, p 88) notes MMORPG's as the 'first interactive mass medium to unite entertainment and communication in one phenomenon'. Both interaction and communication have always required a strong sense of identity that has not changed since the modernist era. Examples such as WoW generate populations the size of cities creating new identities in the form of 'avatars' and so is worthy of study.

It is interesting then that the most 'human' behaviour in WoW occurs during unpredictable circumstances. On September 13, 2005 a programming error found after a patch update resulted in the deaths of thousands of player avatars, although death is not permanent in game it is still an inconvenience at best. The incident was named the Corrupted Blood 'epidemic' due to its similarities to real world epidemics. The problem began when a debuff (negative effect) from inside a confined 'instance' on the affected servers made the transition from inside the dungeon and into the general population of the game world. Once a player left the instance the condition would spread to other characters that came within a certain radius of the other. This led to a rapid spreading of the plague once the player entered a capital city, the most heavily populated areas of the world. This unpredicted event resulted in players behaving instinctively as if it were a real world situation. Healers would come to the cities and heal the afflicted, those that could not help would flee the populated areas to avoid all contact. These behaviours were so surprising to academics that there were studies performed and documented in medical journals on this event and was taken quite seriously as an example of how humans would behave in such a situation (Lofgren 2007). Players would continue to participate in the game until the issue was fixed a week later. This problem also highlighted the fact that human beings were clearly determined to stay inside a digital space that was tearing itself apart rather than the real world.

Blizzard took incredible care in creating a world that would require player investment, through the games reward system to its artistic direction, every choice was made to immerse the player in a digital environment to supplement their own reality. User's choose to dedicate their own time to the world even when situations in the digital space have negative connotations for the user's in game identity. By researching these phenomena we are able to predict what is required of these digital worlds to incentivise users to maintain their identity exclusively in a virtual environment and separating their mental and physical realities.

References

Aupers, S 2007, '”Better than the real world”: on the reality and meaning of online computer games', Fabula, vol. 48, no. 3/4, pp. 250-60, viewed 10 September 2013, via ProQuest Central database.

Cataclysm reveal 2010, online video, Blizzard Entertainment, Irvine, California, viewed 17 September 2013, <http://us.battle.net/wow/en/media/videos/?keywords=&view#/cataclysm-reveal>

Corneliussen, H & Rettberg, J 2008, 'Introduction: “orc professor LFG,” or researching in Azeroth', in H Corneliussen & J Rettberg (eds), Digital Culture, Play, and Identity: A World of Warcraft Reader, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, pp. 1-15.

Crogan, P 2007, 'Remembering (forgetting) Baudrillard', Games and Culture, vol. 2, no. 4, pp. 405-13, viewed 13 September 2013, via Sage Publications database.

Filiciak, M 2003, 'Hyperidentities: postmodern identity patterns in massively multiplayer online role-playing games', in M Wolf & B Perron (eds), The Video Game Theory Reader, Routledge, New York, NY, pp. 87-102.

Giddings, S 2007, 'Dionysiac machines : videogames and the triumph of the simulacra', Convergence, vol. 13, no. 4, pp. 417-31, viewed 4 September 2013, via Sage Publications database.

Lofgren, E & Fefferman, N 2007, 'The untapped potential of virtual game worlds to shed light on real world epidemics', The Lancet Infectious Diseases, vol. 7, no. 9, pp 625-9, viewed 12 September 2013, via ProQuest Central database.

Lupton, D 1995, 'Cyberspace and the world we live in', in M Featherstone & R Burrows (eds), Cyberspace/Cyberbodies/Cyberpunk: Cultures of Technological Embodiment, SAGE Publications, London, pp. 97-112.

MacCallum-Stewart, E 2008, '”Never such innocence again”: war and histories in World of Warcraft', in H Corneliussen & J Rettberg (eds), Digital Culture, Play, and Identity: A World of Warcraft Reader, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, pp. 39-62.

Mortensen, T 2008, 'Humans playing World of Warcraft: or deviant strategies?', in H Corneliussen & J Rettberg (eds), Digital Culture, Play, and Identity: A World of Warcraft Reader, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, pp. 203-23.

Rettberg, S 2008, 'Corporate ideology in World of Warcraft', in H Corneliussen & J Rettberg (eds), Digital Culture, Play, and Identity: A World of Warcraft Reader, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, pp. 19-38.

Torikian, G 2010, 'Against a perpetuating fiction: disentangling art from hyperreality', Journal of Aesthetic Education, vol. 44, no. 2, pp. 100-110, viewed 13 September 2013, via Project Muse database.

For my essay due on the 20th of September I will be discussing the topic of video games in regards to real life social and economic simulation and their impact on our transition into cyberspace. 

I have derived my question from the Cyberpunk essay topic:

Choose a cyberpunk story or movie. Compare the economic and social world it conjures with the real world today. How close is this imagined world to our world and are we moving towards the imagined world or away from it?

Instead of analysing characteristics of cyberpunk stories I will be looking at certain features of video games (particularly online video games) that reflect real world occurrences as well as video game situations that act as simulations or experiments for future events.

The main example for my analysis will come from World of Warcraft. A game that I have both played and studied in the past. An example of an event that both reflected real world events and served as an analytical piece of information to be studied was the 'Corrupted Blood Incident', a virtual plague that was even looked at by medical academics as an indicator of what would occur in a real world plague (Lofgren, 2007). After this unpredictable event there was an increase in the number academics utilising virtual environments to simulate real world economical, political and survival situations.

So if I were to re-work the original cyberpunk question it would be something like this.

Compare the economic and social world video games conjure with the real world today. How close are these imagined worlds to our world and what are the ramifications of virtual environments closely resembling reality?

Lofgren, E & Fefferman, N 2007, 'The untapped potential of virtual game worlds to shed light on real world epidemics', The Lancet Infectious Diseases, vol. 7, no. 9, pp 625-9, viewed 22 September 2012, via ProQuest Central database.

Week 5: Psychology and Social Media

There is a substantial body of research growing around various psychological concerns with continuous social media usage. Addiction, stress and envy are very real consequences of the participatory culture of social media. I looked at Facebook in particular and found a German study pointing out that “passive following triggers invidious emotions, with users mainly envying happiness of others, the way others spend their vacations; and socialize” (Krasnova 2013). Further tests in this article show how partaking in social media in only a limited capacity and not contributing much content can lead to a case of social media envy. As a certain BBC article states, it is the fear of missing out; a fear which could often be seen as unfounded given the trivial nature of social media communication. As more and more people adopt social media for longer time periods there will be an increasing impact on our psychological health.

bbc.co.uk, 2013, Facebook use 'makes people feel worse about themselves'

, viewed 23 August 2013, <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23709009 >

Krasnova, H Wenninger H, Widjaja, T & Buxmann, P, 2013,

Envy on Facebook: A Hidden Threat to Users’ Life Satisfaction? , viewed 23 August 2013, <http://warhol.wiwi.hu-berlin.de/~hkrasnova/Ongoing_Research_files/WI%202013%20Final%20Submission%20Krasnova.pdf>

Week 6: Votecompass

This week we were encouraged to use abc.net's Votecompass tool, a digital survey of sorts that plots your voting preferences based on certain policies and topics you find important. As seen in my results I am inclined towards voting for the Greens, this was my voting preference before the test. Some other students that had taken the test discovered varied results to their voting preference. Although this is an in depth questionnaire it is by no means the only source of information that we should look for during an election. This tool even provides rational for a certain party's position on a policy. I regard myself as being fairly up to date with political issues and policy but there were some questions that prompted further research into topic I find less interest in.

abc.net.au, 2013, Votecompass, viewed 29 August 2013, <http://www.abc.net.au/votecompass/?hash=999e136beea1668e609da0385ad5754d1e18a6005c41377762386>

Week 6: Politics and New Technology

A topic in the lecture was the idea of censorship of free speech and access to information. I explored how government censorship of traditional or physical media is essentially now pointless. A recent example I found was the refusal of classification of the video game Saints Row IV after the Australian government created an 18+ rating suited for video game review. Something I was taking note of during the overseas release of the title was the access to information, video content and images from the title in Australia. I was able to access multiple YouTube play-throughs of the content despite the censorship and likely key word blocking from the Australian government. This would at least show that we aren't quite to the level of China's censorship. Are traditional methods of censorship still viable in an environment of new technology?

Classification.gov.au, 2013, 2013 Media Releases, viewed 29 August 2013, <http://www.classification.gov.au/Public/Resources/Pages/2013mediareleases.aspx >

Week 4: Personal Study on Cyberspace and Virtual Reality

Something most of us often forget in this digital age are how technology can change our health and mental state. The example I wish to discuss is that of virtual reality. Alternate World Syndrome (AWS) is a condition which with extended virtuality can lead to 'ruptures of the kinaesthetic from the visual senses of self-identity, a complaint we already know from simulator sickness and from high stress, techno-centered lifestyles' (Heim 1995). In essence this indicates that through continuous use of virtual environments human beings are capable of a type of 'body amnesia' in which the mind lags behind when switching between the virtual world and the real world. Michael Heim spent six hours inside a virtual experiment and recorded such effects as perceptual nausea and an illusory brightening of colours and movements. This merging of man and machine creates an unanticipated negative effect on the body and the mind.

So what does this mean for potential lovers of all things virtual? This technological lag or 'sickness' could be detrimental if such technology could be implanted into human beings. Virtual reality could be used as an escape to the extreme, an example would be an elderly user of Oculus Rift technology commenting that she would 'never leave after this'. While said mostly in jest how long do we have to wait before 'retirement' is the literal retirement of our human functions. This is an issue reflected upon in Blade Runner and one I may follow up in my essay.

Here is the video in which an Oculus Rift tester gives his grandmother a demonstration.

Heim, M 1995, 'The Design of Virtual Reality', in M Featherstone & R Burrows (eds), Cyberspace/Cyberpunk/Cyberbodies, Sage, London, pp. 65-68.

Week 3 Readings: Mind Control & the Internet

This article largely focuses on the pace in which living beings are evolving in comparison to technological developments. Halpern states "There is no Moore's Law for human beings", I understood this as an analysis of humanities overall understanding of technology as it progresses. People are less likely to examine the finer functions of programming such as how a web search engine finds pages relating to a query. This lack of curiousity but heavy reliance on technology could result in cybernetic implanting to become commonplace among the greater population; a practice currently reserved for medical treatments.

I brought up some questions in class:

What (if any) cybernetic implants would you consider regardless of medical needs, and if you needed an implant for medical purposes would you research that specific technology to understand how works?

If you had an opportunity to receive cybernetic implants regardless of your medical condition would you research your decision any further than if you were buying a phone?

The response was largely against implanting without research was not wanted. A class member made a point that many people would accept a Blackberry as an implant regardless of consequences.

Halpern, Sue (2011) 'Mind Control & the Internet', New York Review of Books, June 23.

La jetée

La jetée is a 1962 French science fiction film from the French new wave era. This film was shown to us in the week 2 lecture. Something interesting I discovered from watching the film was the connection between this weeks reading on the theory of musical jamming and the technical creation of the film. The film uses old technology (that of still images and black and white) and creates an innovative narrative by using these techniques in unique and different ways; similar to the way that musicians create new melodies while using set techniques. I am posting this video as it strikes my personal interests in film and science fiction as well as being a future example in my essay.

Week 2 Reading: Theory Jamming

The Theory Jamming concept is a reflection upon how musicians collaborate and share almost instantly their new developments in their chosen form of communication, this being a musical example. Upon reading this article I couldn't help but reflect upon my own interest of video games and how this theory applies to their role in new communication technology. While not a widely known concept, 'Game Jams' are a type of collaborative event growing in popularity, one such example is The Global Game Jam (GGJ). As stated on the Global Game Jam website their goal is to invite programmers and other contributors to try new technology to design a video game fitted to a given theme in the span of 48 hours to create an 'intellectual challenge'. These events can be closely compared to what Stockwell described as a need to collaborate and focus on the present rather than a final goal, the time limit given to the attendees serves to enforce that.

Stockwell comments that the theory-jammer is “still reliant on traditional melody, harmony and syncopation but now bent, twisted and reorganised into an entirely new story”. These events could be considered an environment of technological innovation, stepping outside the boundaries of pre-existing theory to spawn originality amongst peers.

Global Game Jam, 2013, About Global Game Jam, viewed 2 August 2013, <http://globalgamejam.org/about >

Stockwell, S 2006, Theory-Jamming: Uses of Eclectic Method in an Ontological Spiral, vol. 9, no. 6, viewed 2 August 2013, via M/C Journal database http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0612/09-stockwell.php.

Week 2 Readings: The History of Communication

When comparing sources of information regarding historical dates regarding communication it is evident that not all dates are agreed upon. Some sources remain rather linear such as The History of Communication page from About.com. Other sources are much more effective in categorising and showcasing the large number of technologies and advancements across the last five-thousand years. For example in McGaughy's summary, each technology is given its own timeline regardless of what listed technology preceded it (McGaughy 2011). Such technologies include alphabetic writing, television, radio, photography and computing. Examining both sites shows a clear pattern of a large number of developments taking place between the years 1900 and 2000. While more legitimate sources such as journal articles would be useful for further study, the two sites provide a general outline of the most crucial developments of communication.

McGaughy, W 2011, Some Dates in the History of Cultural Technologies, viewed 2 August 2013, <http://worldhistorysite.com/culttech.html#CivV-Anchor >.

About.com, 2013, The History of Communication, viewed 2 August 2013, <http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/bl_history_of_communication.htm>

Hello internets!

My name is Myles Garrington and I study Communication Technology at Griffith University. I currently live on the Gold Coast in Australia, where I get burnt to a crisp by the insane amount of sunlight. This class I will be looking at many interesting topics such as Video Games and Cyberpunk! These are particular interests of mine so this course should be rather interesting.

The purpose of this blog is to track my responses to the course content including readings and lectures as well as posted assessments.

Have fun!