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At the beginning of each level, gamer and character, linked by the controller, go out together to confront time, which hurls at gamer and character alike these killer signs. By destroying these mere appearances, time itself — not merely the appearance of time — is defeated. In defeat, a character dies; in victory the gamer wins. The oscillation between character and target doubles that between gamer and character. (See Fig. 6) The act of aligning gamer, character and target in the act of targeting risks the integrity of the self against the possibility of defeating time. If the character lost, replay the level again. And again. Repeat this same, strange, digital time, until you win. The time of the game, which can be repeated, over and over, an eternal loop of the same time, is not violent. Nothing changes in game time. Time is a constant, measured out in identical, digital units. Even in a game where time speeds up, it does so in the same way, for the same reasons, over and over, every time you play. Within this digital time, the gamer steps out to call into being and destroy its nemesis: analog time, violent time, this river that is never the same way twice.

137.

Flying along, weightless on a rail, here all around are clusters and pods, flights and flocks, moving with algorithmic precision, but rarely appearing as under the command of a central node. Rez is about battling along a line, not across a front. The pulsing, phosphorescing quality of Rez gives the gamer a feeling of a particularly intense loss of self. Your senses mesh into a network of lines, of moments, spread across the screen. The payoff, if one targets accurately, is the coalescence of the self back again into a heightened level of coherence precisely through victory over the pulsing dub-trance time that confronts it. The two-bit code of press and release on the trigger switches between the line dividing and the line connecting self to other, cutting out any ambiguities in between.

138.

The purpose of a targeting game is the overcoming of death through the targeting of the other, freeing the self to be itself — temporarily. The goal, the target of the target, is to stop playing while still alive. Having done so, the gamer rejoices, for the moment, before collapsing back from the game into the vagaries of the networks and networks of lines and lines that are gamespace. There’s nothing for it but to play again, and again. Save the game — freeze time — and come back and try again for the next level. The only real problem with Rez is that it does not have enough levels. Victory is temporary, or rather temporal. You can defeat time in the game, but only for a time. And having won all there is to win, boredom looms…

139.

The space within which one battles in Rez is an allegory of topological space itself. It is all nodes and networks. It is a battlespace rather than a battlefield. There is no front line. One cannot hide behind the lines. One’s character, on its rail, propels itself through space following the line of a net to its node. The node may be a center, but there may not really be a center of centers. The game levels out leaving the gamer with the uneasy feeling that the center you conquered is not the center of centers, even if this is what the storyline claims. The gamer knows better. Every point connects through every other, every shape can be transformed into another. It can fold, stretch, morph and bubble. Time is constant, but space is not. It can pulse and bulge, warp and wobble. It is a network. And while every point can in principle be connected to every other, in practice it cannot. There are protocols governing which points can open to which other points. Alex Galloway: “protocol is an algorithm, a proscription for structure whose form of appearance may be any number of different diagrams or shapes.” The game is an exercise in negotiating protocols to gain access to more and more of the network.

140.

Nets are a problem. In gamespace one is continually getting tangled up in them. In gamespace, both space and time are elastic. In gamespace, nets tug at one’s extremities, contaminate one’s senses, blur the bounds of self itself. One can’t do without nets but they do one in. It’s a paradox, an inescapable tension. In the game, at least time is held constant, digital, repeatable. This consistency enables a reduction of action to targeting. To target is to deny any debt to the network which enmeshes one with the other. The ‘work’ in a network is in identifying a target that constitutes its limit. In Rez, pulling the trigger targets, but does not shoot. It puts the emphasis on the former rather than the latter. Samuel Weber: “… the act of targeting is an act of violence even before any shot is fired.” The act of targeting has already cut the net connecting one to the other. The gamer’s debt to the net remains unacknowledged — other than in the repetition of the ritual of playing the game.

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Christian McCrea

posted: 7/13/2006

Your diagram is equally gorgeous and inexcusable! I have recently been going back over Rez and over music games to find myself the constant reference to language; the enemies are not pure abstract, but linguistic elements from the cultures represented. Mizuguchi begins his talk of Rez with footage of poor women in South Africa in 1991 banging drums to call and response, and he points out carefully that it is the shouting that sets the rhythm, not the drumming, and that synaesthesia is more about a break in lucidity that comes only when we have gathered enough language to break down in the first place.

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McKenzie Wark responds to Christian McCrea

Call and response is an important reference here. I’m not yet convinced there’s anything to be gained by taking the ‘cultures’ referenced in the game seriously, tho’. But perhaps you would like to persuade me…

Well if the enemies are made up of pre-lingustic fragments, and your journey through to Eden is by the repeated hacking of these languages – and the *styles* of languages represented by the four cultures. Watch how as you pass the great wall motifs, the enemies appear as script. Its merely a motif, and I agree that they can’t be taken seriously, but there’s a very thick connection in Rez between language and music that remains forceful. You are hacking histiography, after all. World 5 represents the digital-natural, evolving worm-viruses etc.

None of this really touches on targeting which is your concern in this area, but may be of use elsewhere or in other discussions.

What do you think of the work of the CCRU, Nick Land and Sadie Plant in this respect? Loaded question?

CCRU was like a magnificent zepplin of thought, equal parts lofty concepts and hot air — which crashed and burned for mysterious reasons.

I can almost see how this could be tied to targeting, but not quite.

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(2) Comments for 138.

Gardner

posted: 2/13/2007

Salutations Prof,

It’s Gardner from class, and I quickly jumped at the chapter focusing on REZ after seeing the video in class. After reading, a question that I had was what about the possibility of REZ being a game, not where the player becomes a trifler, but where the player continues playing even after completing all the levels. I wonder about this for a few reasons. Playing cyclically, the player could still be attempting to survive (thus not denying the goal of the game), but perhaps he or she is trying to survive for the pure joy of survival as opposed to the hope of beating the temporal element. I don’t propose that the temporal element isn’t the primary impetus to play but just that maybe the game could continue after that.

Now I realize what is truly preposterous about this comment is that you’ve played the game and probably found it boring after you won. I haven’t ever played it. However, I’ve become so taken with the idea of this game that I can easily see myself playing the game over and over again. This process might be similar to the way I might watch a great movie repeatedly. If a movie is great knowing the plot doesn’t mean a viewer won’t enjoy (the first and second view maybe totally different experiences because you can enjoy the same elements in a new way). Then I guess the question is whether there is enough beyond the temporal element to hold the game up.

As you might imagine, I find the concept of synesthesia, the rave experience and the way they work to create a loss of self is REALLY cool. The other thing that the game has on it’s side is that when I hear someone talking about house beats pounding and colors spinning, speeding, shooting and flashing I get a little sense of vertigo. I can imagine that the game might be able to play into the Caillois’ ilinx dimension. In addition to the mesmerizing spinning and whatnot, the game seems to play heavily with the feelings of a loss of self, which seems is a factor of ilinx. I mean the experience of vertigo is definitely part of the rave scene.

In an attempt to ground this rambling in something I know: I’ve seen Fantasia multiple times and REZ seems like it would be similar in that they both explore synesthesia in sensationally titillating ways. The fact that I can enjoy Fantasia’s sensory fun repeatedly might indicate a potential in REZ to entertain beyond the first play through. Though this is a measure of playability that might not strike home with a stereotypical gamer (to whom all non-victory condition elements of the game might be taken as additional bells and whistles) it might still point towards a the future measure of a game: The degree that the player can lose a sense of self beyond the game (and perhaps even within the game).

Just some thoughts.
~Gardner

McKenzie Wark responds to Gardner

posted: 2/17/2007

Gardner writes: “I can imagine that the game might be able to play into the Caillois’ ilinx dimension. In addition to the mesmerizing spinning and whatnot, the game seems to play heavily with the feelings of a loss of self, which seems is a factor of ilinx.”

It’s a good observation. It may be why the game failed, however. If you really have had the experience of ilinx in the rave scene, the game might be disappointing. On the other hand if you prefer games to nightclubs, you might not get why synaestehsia would be all that interesting anyway. Caillois suggest that certain categories of the game experience just don’t mix. Rez might be the proof.

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