My Experience Gaming and (Virtual Reality....Can virtual be Reality?)

Breaking All The Rules: My Brother and I as Nonconformist Gamers

Reading the “Game Design as Narrative Architecture,” got me back to thinking about the videogames I used to play back home with my younger brother, and just how angry the people that designed them would probably be if they ever saw the way we played them. I’m just about certain that I have never actually “finished” a video-game or completed one of their stories; in fact I rarely, if ever, play games the way they are supposed to be played to go along the narrative the designers laid out.
Whenever my brother and I played Grand Theft Auto Three, we would just drive around and blow things up, seeing who could evade the police the longest. The point of the game was actually to make money and complete different missions presented by characters in the game, but we never did those. We didn’t find those particularly fun or interesting, so we made our own rules and constructed our own narrative. We appropriated the virtual world that the creators of GTA 3 designed for us, and made up our own way of playing in that virtual space, completely ignoring the complex storylines and intriguing narrative the designers included.
My favorite type of video games are the ones that leave you free to do what you want, like the multiplayer levels in the old James Bond games, for instance. I found it much more fun when my friends and I were free to come up with our own way of playing the games.
It’s interesting, because in a sense, what we are doing by making our own rules and designing our own type of game play is essentially what kids across the world have been doing for ages. The only difference is they normally did it outdoors. The Calvin and Hobbes clips we saw in lecture just made me think of this; but kids have always taken old games, made up new rules, and essentially created their own game or style of play. Normally it is with more “traditional” things, like when Calvin and Hobbes come up with new ball games. Everybody knows the real rules of football or baseball, yet that didn’t satisfy Calvin and Hobbes, so they adopted the basic system, recreated the rules, and made their own type of game-play. People have done it in their backyards forever. Just think of any time you aren’t tagged “It” because you were standing in the no-tag-backs-yet-only-for-me zone.
The way my brother and I played our video games was the same thing, only in a different space that hasn’t existed quite as long. We are remaking the rules of games in a virtual space on the television. It’s interesting to see the way our tendencies have transferred. We are doing the same thing in the game world that we do in reality: creating our own rules and making our own games. It is almost frightening to pair the two, thinking about a classic game of capture the flag transposed with videogaming. It shows just how far we have come in terms of technology. It has diffused around the globe, with video game spaces becoming just as frequent as backyards; and kids are learning to navigate them both in the same way they always have- by making their own narratives.
I just hope that these video games and other virtual environments don’t make the classic space for your own narration extinct: the cardboard box. Kids aren’t going to need the cardboard box to play rocketship if they have videogames that can make them appear on the screen. It will be interesting to see the way things turn out as technology becomes more widespread and more and more people turn away from reality. Perhaps traditional things like playing outside, making up imaginary stories in cardboard boxes, and building forts will go to the wayside as technology enables us to play games where we can create our own narratives, play in ways not physically possible, and build entire civilizations. How will kids learn to navigate this new virtual space? Will they transpose the same tendencies they have in reality to these new games and devices? It seems like that’s what my brother and I did.

It's interesting to see what the creation of this new virtual space has made possible. Will we just project our real-life tendencies onto the screen, or will we begin to create new ways of interacting in and with this new environment? Also, what will happen as images and experiences in these games on the screen begin to become "more realistic" than reality? After all, watching an IMAX film of shark attacks is much more exciting than just going and watching sharks swim in tanks, even if the sharks in the film aren't real....right? I know typical essays, responses, and blogs probably aren't supposed to be so question-based, but that is pretty much all I can do at this point. I know this blog poses more questions than answers, but that is my response to this new virtual space at this point; a plethora of questions that I don't think I can answer myself, or can be answered just yet for that matter. Maybe they never will be able to be fully answered, as new spaces are constantly being created and "virtual visuals" just keep getting closer and closer to the real. I've actually heard people say that the images on the screen looked more realistic than the real thing....so I'd like to end with that, because it is something that has been knawing away at me since I heard it. What does it mean when the virtual has become more realistic than the real? Is that possible? I'd love to hear what everybody thinks, so feel free to post comments answering the many, many questions brought up in the blog. After all, it is for us to decide how we navigate this new space that we have been given. This is going to the the world we live in. We get to make the rules and figure out how to interact in it...so let's work together to figure out just what that should be.

If it Can be Done, It Will Be Done...Why you can get the view of a NASCAR driver without ever leaving your living room

NASCAR, which many consider a fairly simple sport, if one at all (go fast, turn left, repeat) is ahead of the learning curve when it comes to media coverage and giving their audience advanced options for viewing their races.
Scanning the headlines this weekend, I saw an article titled "As Daytona arrives, TV networks give viewers more options." I had been hearing buzz about the way NASCAR was changing the coverage of its races to make them more exciting and appealing to viewers, but had pretty much ignored it because I am one of those still unconvinced of NASCAR's validity as a sport. I don't even like being a passenger in a car...why in the world would I want to watch somebody else driving on TV? Personally, I think if you watch an entire NASCAR race you either a) are amused way too easily as seen by the fact that cars making left turns all day keeps you excited, or b) are simply waiting for a nice firey crash.
Anyway, I kept reading this particular article because of the sentence that followed the headline. "Future generations might be amazed that people used to have to attend NASCAR races to see the action in three dimensions. If so, historians might look back to this weekend as the turning point." Now this just lends itself to a blog entry the very week our reading was on visual technology changing the way viewers see things. Apparently, a new technology has been developed that will allow viewers to see the cars in a new type of 3-D coverage, allowing them to see things they have never seen before. The way it works is through a new system that collects various information about the car's speed, position, etc. via satellite, and then uses it to create what Fox Network called, "a camera shot that basically floats-like in a video game-so users can choose between three virtual views."
I'm not sure which amazes me more; the fact that we now have the technology to do something like this, or the fact that we are using this technology to do something like this for a sport like NASCAR. I guess that proves the famous maxim that if it can be done, it will be done. Either way, it represents a significant moment in that it presents an entirely new way to watch a sporting event, giving the viewer much more control over what they see. Technology has enabled viewers to basically attend an event without ever leaving their homes. Advances in visual technology have changed the ways these races will be watched, allowing viewers to not only see more, but choose what they see.
The technology available has also been adapted to suit NASCAR culture in an interesting way. Apparently NASCAR fans are famous for their loyalty to specific drivers, so various networks have taken advantage of the new technology, and developed driver-specific coverage that allows viewers to become way too involved with their favorite drivers. "ESPN will use 60-75 cameras..Each driver's channel will include two announcers — one in a TV production truck and one in the driver's pit — and will let viewers flip among such shots as a driver's in-car camera or a camera focused on his crew chief." Networks have made use of the new media options to basically allow fans to feel like they are sitting right next to the driver, seeing what they see and hearing what they hear.
This has drastic implications for the way sports are viewed. The new technology has made coverage much more driver-centric, and has given fans many more options. It has also made the entire experience of viewing a race seem much more "real." It's amazing to think that you used to actually have to go to a racetrack to see these things. Now you probably get a more complete or detailed experience by staying at home and watching on your couch.

Technology Changing the Way we See...and Not Just Through Corrective Eye Surgery

Reproduction and Visual Technologies…where in the world to begin. I have lots to say about this topic, so I apologize in advance if the blog seems disjointed or rambling.

First, I would like to thank Sturken and Cartwright for giving me a profound new understanding or appreciation for Modernist art styles like Impressionism and Cubism. Previously, I dismissed them as strange paintings done by somebody either half-drunk or severely disoriented. Well, that’s a bit extreme. I thought that the paintings did have value, but I just couldn’t see it. Now I do. While they may not look like the more “realistic” perspective pieces that accurately depict an image, they depict the act of looking. As Practices of Looking says, Monet used light and water in his Impressionist style to show the complexity of vision, which I think is a much harder task than simply trying to paint something the way it looks. In my mind, I see one representative of the end result, while the other focuses more on the process. Perspective pieces focus on what we say, but the modern abstract pieces focus on how we see.
It’s interesting that many people consider the perspective pieces more valid or true to the real world, despite the fact that this couldn’t be farther from the truth. These pieces completely lack and recognition of just how complex the looking process is, and disregard how our vision works.
More recently, people have come to recognize or assume that photographs are more realistic or truthful representations of the world than any painting or drawing would be. For some reason, they are more confident in digital photography because they are more confident in computers. They probably feel that the computer remove a certain element of human fallibility. What they forget is that there is a human behind the camera or computer operating it, many times with more control and opportunity to manipulate the image. I have a very limited artistic ability, placing several constraints on anything I might try to draw or paint. But with a camera and computer at my disposal, I can make anything look exactly the way I want it. People have created images like sharks jumping out of the water at helicopters, and they have some validity because they appear to be photographs. It is much easier for us to dismiss paintings as representing fiction, even if they may happen to represent real events. Technology may make us able to make images that look more valid, and it may seem like it allows us to more accurately depict reality, but really, it has opened the doors and increased our ability to manipulate images, only making fiction look more real.
Technology has also led to the reproduction of images, and Sturken and Cartwright talk about the implications this has for images as political tools. After reading this chapter, I came across an interest article in The Economist titled “Rebranding Canada…Tenacious, smelly- and uncool.” After double-checking to make sure I was still reading The Economist, and not The Onion, I read on. The article was about Stephen Harper, the country’s prime minister, trying to decide which animal best captured the national image. Apparently, after much deliberation, Harper decided that “…the national image was best captured by the wolverine, a sort of weasel.” In making his decision, he said that he wanted an animal that accurately depicted all that is Canadian. The wolverine shows that “Canada is no mouse beside the American elephant, but a wolverine next to a grizzly bear. We may be smaller but we’re no less fierce about protecting our territory…”
The article went on to describe Harper’s political agenda, and then discussed other animals that serve as images for different countries, like the American bald eagle or the Russian bear. It was interesting to read the way Harper was encoding the image of the animal with the traits that he believes to be Canadian. Personally, when I think Canada, I think moose or hockey, but maybe that’s just me. (Note to self: pitch Moose holding hockey stick to prime minister Harper as Canada’s new national animal). I had never really thought about the process of selecting an animal to convey the image of a nation, and it is amazing to think that Canada is now going to reproduce this image of the wolverine to sell the public on just what it means to be Canadian.
So aside from enabling nations like Canada to try to cast their image through an animal, what else has technology enabled us to do? Well, as Practices of Looking says, “the question of artistic ownership becomes increasingly complex in digital media, which make accessible to the average consumer many of the processes of reproduction.” Essentially, technology has made it so we have all become producers. In the past, there was one painter and many viewers, or one producer and many consumers. Now we are all both. Sure, there remain a select few that get paid the big bucks for what they do, i.e. Lucas and Spielberg, but with the advent of the digital camcorder and simple computer editing software, we can all do it. Visual technology has made it so anybody that wants to can produce, for better or worse. This has created an environment where creativity can flourish.
Some may argue that this technology has mainly resulted in reproduction, and hence, creativity dying off as people are just copying other people or appropriating somebody else’s ideas. That is not necessarily true, as many times the reproductions are far more creative than anything entirely “original” would be. Take “mashups” for instance. I am not a big fan of rap music, but there is this certain song that combines Jimi Hendrix’ Voodoo Child with Jay-Z that is simply amazing…far better than any supposedly “original” entirely redundant rap song with the same kind of beat about the same kind of things would be. New technology is stimulating creativity, not hampering it. It is just manifesting itself in new ways, like compilations and altered reproductions. http://http://www.timgmusic.co.uk/ (There's a link to the site where you can check out a bunch of different mashups in the "Streaming Bootleg" section. Enjoy.)

Power Flows Both Ways

Times have changed, power has shifted hands.

In “Spectatorship, Power, and Knowledge,” Cartwright and Sturken discuss the idea of spectatorship and the gaze, and describe the relationships of power involved. Traditionally, male spectators hold power over the female images they gaze at. Cartwright and Sturken do mention that the concept of the gaze has changed greatly, as women are stepping behind the camera and taking on positions of power. They also mention the different ways subjects can confront or avoid the gaze to take some of the power away from the spectator. What the authors did not bring up, however, is that maybe sometimes the relationship of power between spectator and subject isn’t what it appears to be. Many times, today’s relationships of power between the spectator and subject does not fit the traditional model at all.
Traditionally, it is thought that it is the male spectator gazing at the female subject that holds the power, or more recently the female spectator gazing at the male subject. Neither of these formulas takes into account the possibility that it is the subject, not the spectator, that really has control in the relationship. Think about it. Who is really the dominant one in this relationship: the viewers that flock to gaze at various star subjects, or the celebrity subjects that quite literally command our attention? I think it is them in control, not us. They command our attention and direct our gaze…we are simply passive viewers anxiously awaiting what ever image or video they churn out. While it may appear that the man is in a dominant position when he is staring at a picture of Paris Hilton, it is really quite the opposite. She is the one that has made the man stop in his step to look at whatever poster or ad campaign she is part of now. He had to buy the magazine or find the picture. All she had to do was sit there; and she is the one getting paid.
The subjects have turned the table on spectators to a large degree. Just think about all the crap we watch on TV. Who is really in the submissive role in that relationship; the no-talent B-lister appearing on some new reality show, or the viewer that puts time aside every night to watch devotedly? While viewers do get to choose what they watch, and may feel like they have the upper hand on the cast they watch fighting on TV, many times those actors or nobodies are laughing all the way to the bank. Sure, they may be getting humiliated on national TV, and viewers may feel superior as they get to peek in on these people’s lives, but look a bit closer at what is really going on. Viewers are taking time out of their lives to watch what Nancy Nobody or Loser Larry will do next. The subjects are humiliating the viewers by constantly drawing their gaze with things not really worth a modicum of their attention. Viewers of reality TV shows spend time gazing at what these subjects are doing instead of being invested in their own lives.
This change in the dynamic of power between spectator and subject has also been accompanied by a change in who spectators and subjects are. Traditionally, the government and people of authority have been spectators, while we citizens are the subjects being gazed at. This relationship of power was discussed in Michel Foucault’s “Panopticon,” which described the effective the omnipresent gaze of authorities in power is in disciplining populations and keeping people in line. This goes for prisons, hospitals, and even schools. We are subjects in this Panopticism every day. Just look at the signs in many of our classrooms; “Class may be videotaped.” Is it or isn’t it? We have no idea if anybody is actually really watching or filming the class, yet many times this sign alone is enough to keep students from cheating or vandalizing the classroom.
The flow of power in this Panopticism has been somewhat reversed recently with as the traditional occupants who occupy the roles of spectator and subject have changed. Technology has made us all spectators. As digital camcorders have become more affordable, we have all become directors. More importantly, with the advent of the video phone, we can all be spectators recording our subjects at any given time. And these subjects aren’t just our fellow students or citizens; they are people in positions of authority as well. Now everybody has to tiptoe around, not knowing if they are on or off camera. Video phones have enabled us to hold those in power in check in the same way they do to us: by having them feel that there is always the possibility that we may be looking. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyvrqcxNIFs
It was because of the video phone that we know what happened during Saddam Hussein’s botched hanging. This same technology has been responsible for a plethora of evidence in police brutality cases, and more locally, the UCLA taser case. Slowly, authorities are realizing that they are going to have to be more careful in upholding their responsibilities and acting appropriately because there is always the chance that somebody is watching, waiting to capture any sort of travesty on their video phone to quickly be posted on YouTube. They now must realize that citizens are looking back. Panopticism isn’t just one way any more. It flows both ways ast hose that are spectators and those that are subjects have changed.

Leaflet Explanation

My leaflet is going to be dropped on USC football fans at the Coliseum. The message I want to convey is that while they appear in droves to support the football team, which has always been great, they are completely disregarding the basketball team, which is on the rise.
To get this message across, I put a picture of Quarterback John-David Booty, a packed Coliseum, and football fans on one side to show the support the football team gets, with O.J. Mayo (the number one recruit in the nation) and an empty Galen Center on the other to highlight the lack of support the basketball team gets. I then inserted text to make the message abundantly clear: support the basketball team.
I made cards out of the pictures of the players to enhance the fact that they are star athletes, and chose cardinal and gold, which are USC’s colors, because they are symbols of the teams. The indices are the pictures of the stadiums and the fans, or lack thereof, as they prove who was and wasn’t there. The pictures of the players are also indices, and the fact that Mayo is wearing a Trojans jersey proves that he has been recruited by USC. The players also function as icons of their respective teams, as they are the stars that represent the squad. I also included leather from a football in Booty’s card and the hardwood floor of a basketball court in Mayo’s card as icons to make it clear what sport each of them plays.

Studium/ Punctum Strategies

When I started the studium/punctum assignment with the image of the woman holding the baby, the first thing that came to mind was, “where are her kids?” To highlight these racial and class elements of the image, I pasted in another image from the Robert Frank series of black children riding in a car. The image of the black children in the car is a stark contrast to the white baby, who is quite literally being babied by his black nanny. The black boys in the car seem to be unruly and unhappy, suggesting a sort of social chaos.
While the two are clearly different images, by merging them together it gets the viewer thinking about the social dynamic. Perhaps the black children would not be so unruly if they were receiving the same treatment as the white baby, but that white baby is the very reason they are not receiving that attention. The black woman, potentially their mother, has to look after the white child, so she doesn’t have time for them.
In addition, the children in the car are all looking away from the woman holding the baby, showing that the two are living in completely different worlds. The way one of the children in the car sticks up in-between the woman and the baby’s face strengthens this sentiment. It is clear that this image is a composite of two separate images, but they seem to fit together perfectly to relay the racial and social message that I got from the image.

When Decoding Goes Terribly Awry

Lost in Translation

I’m not sure if I should be laughing or crying about this http://smallscreen.monstersandcritics.com/news/article_1254327.php/Aqua_Teen_Hunger_Force_stunt_brings_Boston_to_a_halt story I heard in the news today, but either was it illustrates Cartwright and Sturken’s idea of viewers making meaning beautifully. Essentially what happened is a woman in Boston saw something that she believed to be a bomb, and called the police to report a terrorist threat. What she failed to realize was that her “bomb” was really just one of the pieces of electronic art figures that Turner Broadcasting put around the city as part of a marketing campaign for their show “Aqua Teen Hunger Force.” This panicked phone call shut down the city of Boston for hours, created a widespread panic, and wound up costing thousands of dollars.

So why did this happen? I mean how in the world is an electronic sign of one of the characters on Aqua Teen Hunger Force in any way menacing? Well, it all comes down to the viewer’s interpretation. As Practices of Looking says, the “factors that impact meaning…include age, class, gender, and regional and cultural identity…political and social events in their respective worlds…” This provides insight into at least two aspects of why this entire situation occurred.
First, the woman that reported the threat was a middle-aged woman on her way to work…probably not a regular viewer of the “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” program. Because of her age, class, identity, and experience she has a certain set of knowledge that she uses when decoding images and trying to decipher their meaning. In this case, the character depicted was not in her repertoire. Instead, she saw the wire and lighting as something that presented the potential of being a bomb. The signs had been up in various cities throughout the nation for days, so others walked right past them fearless. They were either oblivious to the facts the signs were there or happened to be familiar with the characters the signs were representing. In either case, what the image meant to the viewer was significantly influenced by their background.

Now, the second part of the Practices of Looking explanation indicates why the woman and all the other panicked citizens of Boston believed that what they saw was a bomb. Their interpretation of the image was based on the “political and social events in their respective worlds,” which at this point in time, is dominated by the “war on terror.” Because of this pervasive fear of terrorism, any unknown mechanical object with wiring was assumed to be a deadly weapon designed to be used in some grand terrorist scheme. It is this same attitude that allowed the fear and confusion to spread as rapidly and easily as it did. In our culture, where the threat of terrorism is constantly looming in the back of our minds, our interpretation is largely shaped by this fear.

This entire situation is terribly unfortunate for Turner Broadcasting and the advertising agency behind the campaign. I’m pretty sure terrorist threat wasn’t the message they were trying to convey, which highlights Sturken and Cartwright’s “Producers’ intended meanings,” quite well. They were aiming for humorous ad campaign designed to promote their show. Instead they got “terrorist threat.”

Sadly, this isn’t the first time something like this has happened. Producers failing to convey their intended meaning to the audience got Paramount Studios in trouble this spring when they placed MP3 players in newspaper stands to play the Mission Impossible theme song in anticipation of the release of Mission Impossible: III. A customer purchasing the LA Times thought the device looked like a bomb, so they called the police, who proceeded to neutralize the threat by blowing the stand up.

Why can this same sort of thing happen twice in such a limited time? Because of the way we have come to make meaning of things. Had this been ten years ago, the people that didn’t understand the images would probably have just kept walking, thinking they were some silly something or other. But after September 11th, anything unknown and electronic has immediately become a dangerous device. This really highlights the way the specific time, place, a current events influences the way we make meaning.

Now, on to the question that everybody is asking: how should Turner Broadcasting and those responsible for the ads be punished (if at all)? One interesting article said that they shouldn’t be reprimanded in any way. They believe that it is us, the viewer that needs punishment because of our paranoia and gullibility. All the advertisers that produced the Aqua Teen Hunger Force images were trying to do was increase the popularity of their show. They were going for a laugh, not a scare. It was us, the misguided viewer of the image that was responsible for the panic that ensued. That is a very interesting way to look at the whole situation. After all, is it their fault the meaning they wanted to convey was lost upon the viewer that had never seen the character before? If it is the viewers that make the meaning, then it was the viewer that created the scare, not the company.