Velvet-Strike:
War Times and Reality Games
(War Times
From a Gamer Perspective)
When
I first heard about the attacks on September 11, just a
fraction before I felt a wave of sadness, a nauseating thought
passed through my mind. What terrible timing–with this
president in office, perhaps even more so than previous
ones, he could use this event as justification for dangerous
actions on a global scale and at home. A few weeks later,
I left for Spain to give a workshop on modifying computer
games. When I arrived the next morning at the workshop I
learned that the U.S. had declared war on Afghanistan. The
workshop organizers had installed a new demo of "Return
to Castle Wolfenstein", a remake of an old Nazi castle
shooter game, on all the PC’s. The sounds of the weapon-fire
echoed off the concrete walls of the workshop warehouse
space--what I once approached with playful macho geek irony
was transformed into uncanny echoes of real life violence.
At that moment, that room was the last place I wanted to
be. Joan Leandre, (one of the artists presenting at the
workshop), and I discussed creating some kind of anti-war
game modification.
Not long
after the Sept 11 attacks, American gamers created a number
of game modifications for games like Quake, Unreal and the
Sims in which they inserted Osama Bin Laden skins and characters
to shoot at and annihilate. Since the Sims is not a violent
game, one Osama skins distributor suggested feeding the
Sims Osama poison potato chips. If you cant shoot him, then
force him to overeat American junk food, to binge, death
by over-consumption, death by capitalism. (The Sims is essentially
a game whose rule sets are based on capitalist algorithms,
although according to the Sims designers these rules are
balanced by other factors.)
The most
disturbing Osama mod I saw was on display in October 2001
at a commercial game industry exhibit in Barcelona called
Arte Futura. To give the exhibition organizers the benefit
of the doubt, they were probably unfamiliar with urban American
ethnic cartography. In this mod, Osama is represented as
an Arab corner grocery story owner, as is common in many
tough inner city neighborhoods in North America. The goal
of the mod is to enter the corner liquor grocery store and
kill the Arab owner. (At the time I saw this I had just
gotten an email from my sister in Seattle describing how
she and other college students were taking turns guarding
mosques from vandalists.)
Harmless
release of tension or co-conspirator in the industrial war
complex? Playful competition or dangerous ethnic and gender
politics of the other? The first computer game, created
at MIT by Slug Russell and other "hackers", was called "Spacewar",
an outer space shooter influenced by cold war science fiction.
Since Spacewar, computer games evolved and bifurcated into
multiple genres, some related to war and fighting simulation,
(and using technology occasionally directly funded by the
US military), and others less so. (RPG, Real Time Strategy,
Shooter, God Game, Action/Adventure, etc). In the 1990’s,
within the shooter genre, characters evolved from white
guy American soldiers into oversize funny male monsters
of all shapes and stripes and pumped female fighting machines.
It seemed to be about a kind of monster fantasy workshop,
humorous macho role-play, taking things to their frag queen
extremes. Within online Quake and game hacker culture, gender
restrictions and other boundaries opened up.
Then
beginning with Half-life and continuing with shooter games
whose alleged appeal is "realism", a kind of regression
took place. In terms of game play games like Half-life are
universally seen as advancements. Yet in Half-life you are
only given one white guy everyman American geek guy to identify
with. And all of the NPC researchers and scientists in the
game are male. Half-life remaps the original computer game
target market back onto itself, excluding all others and
reifying gamer culture as a male domain. (Not that I didn’t
play Half-life but I would have enjoyed it more if I could
have played a female character.)
The trend
towards what male gamers call "realism" solidified in 2000
with the Half-life mod "Counter-Strike". Counter-Strike
is a multi-player game where you choose to play on either
the side of a band of terrorists or on the side of counter-terrorist
commandos, (all male). The tactics of the terrorists and
the counter-terrorists are essentially indistinguishable
from each other. (Perhaps this similarity between terrorist
and counter-terrorist is telling about the current situation
in Israel and other places where the "war on terrorism"
has been forged for a while or is only just beginning.)
People
who love Counter-Strike have told me that the appeal is
the "realism"–its not about "silly" muscly monsters
bouncing around space ports like in the Quake Series –in
Counter-Strike you play realistically proportioned soldiers
and commandos killing each other in stark bombed out bunkers.
When you are killed in Counter-Strike your character really
"dies" instead of immediately regenerating. (Although you
get to play again in a few minutes as soon as the next round
begins.) So "realism" is not about faster game engines,
graphics processing and "photorealism". It is about reproducing
characters and gameplay environments that are considered
closer to "reality" and farther from fantasy.
But now,
in the wake of Sept 11, are these games too "real"? Or is
the real converging with the simulation? Who defines what
is real? According to an email rumor, President Bush recently
approved of a deal between an American television network
and the US military to create a series of wartime docudramas
of US soldiers fighting the "war on terrorism" abroad. The
news section of the TV network was apparently miffed at
the arrangement because they had been unable to gain access
to reporting on the war in Afghanistan. (Recall in Orwell’s
1984 the merging of state controlled war time news and docu-fiction.)
The trend in brutal reality TV, beginning with popular shows
like Cops, and continuing with a slue of reality game shows
like "Survivor" is another field of convergence.
You are
for or against us, you are with us, "the one", or you are
with the enemy is the underlying logic of the West, as I
understood a talk by Marina Grzinic at an international
cyberfeminist conference in Germany in December 2001. (Pre-axis
of evil.) Although computer games replicate this binary
competitive logic maybe there is something ultimately subversive
in the knowledge that it is only a game, that at any moment
you may switch sides with the "other", you may play the
terrorist side in Counter-Strike. But reality games pretend
to erase this awareness. And if you are going to converge
network shooter games and contemporary middle eastern politics
into a game, (Counter-Strike), then you leave out a number
of complexities such as economics, religions, families,
food, children, women, refugee camps, flesh bodies and blood,
smell etc.
Maybe
the problem is that convergence with "reality" is happening
with the wrong game genre. Instead of replicating the binary
logic of the shooter genre, of Cowboys and Indians, of the
football game, if the US government borrowed tactics from
real time strategy gamers or RPGers, we might be looking
at a different global response. (But then again given who
our leadership is now, its unlikely he is capable of the
intellectual planning required of a strategy gamer.) "Winning"
or advancement in massively multi-player Role Playing Games
like Everquest is enhanced by strategically building social
bonds amongst players. And strategy games like Warcraft
and Command and Conquer, while directly enacting tactics
of imperialist colonialist expansionism, at least take into
account other factors in addition to military might.
After
playing Counter-Strike for a couple weeks I must confess
it incorporates social maneuvers beyond shoot and kill,
(and I must also confess to enjoying many aspects of the
game--I have actually always enjoyed shooters.) Team play
and communication between members on your side are complex,
including live voice radio, and a number of coded chat "smileys"
and automated radio commands that take some time to learn.
Formulating strategies is also necessary for survival, as
in other network shooters. As a Counter-Strike newbie I
was sometimes even able to solicit help from my enemies,
indicating a clear awareness of the game as fictional play
space. Some of the combat environments are quite beautiful.
But I still am critical that this domain, the network of
thousands of international Counter-Strike servers spanning
Taiwan to Germany, has been reified as an exclusively male
"realistic" combat zone. (You can hear live audio
voices of male players on many servers.) I am also disturbed
that the binary logic of the shooter is being implemented
on a global military scale.
Personally
I would like to see computer games move towards fantasy,
away from military fantasy which pretends to "realistic".
I like fantastic environments where there is more room for
imaginative habitats and characters. Japanese games for
children and adults are engaged in this undertaking, filled
with curious animal Pokemon creatures, Robo-cats, transformers,
Anime people, monsters, demons and fairies, of all genders.
I identify more with these characters than with counter-terrorist
or terrorist soldiers and they are what I want to be my
reality. Reality is up for grabs. The real needs to be remade
by us.