141.
Targeting games would seem the least likely to need the support of a framing storyline, and yet they almost always have one. A gamer might watch the introductory cut scenes, or idly scan the back story printed on the insert inside the box, but no more than once. Yet these storylines have a purpose that they fulfill simply by existing, even when they are ignored. Storylines release the gamer from entrapment in the net. They draw a line between a character and its enemy. They polarize a net into antagonistic fronts — even if these fronts are not spatially separate. Indeed, there may be dark labyrinthine twists that fold one front around and against the other, as in games such as Deus Ex. Storylines have a particular role in framing the action of targeting, it relieves one of responsibility toward that from which one cuts away a self. Storylines frame the possibility of separating self from other, so that the other may legitimately become a target. The defeat of the other reopens the instability between self-other that is characteristic of a network, hence the need for the story to regenerate the separation all over again.
Let me preface by saying a few things:
-I find your concept for this book fascinating, especially because I feel that in order for gaming to gain popular respect as a social art form, rather than an entertainment commodity, we need to explore ways to criticize it. Part of the reason games are marginalized as an art form is that nobody knows quite what to make of them yet – all the aesthetic tools previously used for analysing things don’t quite fit. In a similar fashion to what had to happen when film began to emerge as a new form, new strategies and tools must be devised to make sense of this new medium. I therefore wholeheartedly support what you’re working toward with this book.
-I have not yet had a chance to read the entire book, nor this whole article – I am reading this first because I am especially interested in Rez for several reasons I’ll mention in a moment.
-That said, I feel you may have missed the especially interesting part of Rez. What you are discussing here (the act of targeting, the self/other relationship, etc) is valid and interesting, but it applies to virtually all battle games – the difference in Rez is simply the exact method of targeting (holding a button and then releasing; in most games this act would be a purely mental one.) The truly interesting part of Rez is the fact that playing the game is an act of musical creation. Everything your character does has a sonic equivalent, and it’s all sequenced in time with the pulsing soundtrack. Different enemies emit different sounds when locked onto or killed, and different tones are emitted depending on how many enemies you lock onto at once. You can also control when the background groove advances to the next bar of music by deciding when to finish off that little floating thing at the end of each section.
Wouldn’t it be interesting to explore Rez as a new mode of musical creation? We are traditionally used to the idea of a musician sitting down with an instrument specifically to engage in the act of music. In Rez, on the other hand, the creator is sitting down to play the game – the music is created incidentally.
Another thing you might not have known about Rez is that it has enjoyed success in certain subcultures as a sex toy. The PS2 version was released in Japan with an extra device called the “Rez Trance Vibrator.” It plugged into the USB port on the PS2, and vibrated in time with the music in the game, including the actions of the player. It’s anyone’s guess exactly what the device was actually intended for, but it’s fairly obvious what it was used for. Because of the degree of interactivity in the use of the device, it became not just a masturbatory aid, but also part of foreplay/lovemaking for couples.
Here’s a bit more info about this stuff, it’s an article I wrote for The1880, an independant Emerson blog. Take a look if you like! http://www.the1880.com/2007/03/27/rez-the-synthesis-of-interactive-media-electronic-music-and-auto-erotic-stimulation/
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This is so cool! Our minds becoming such that we long to not break connection with this abstract world.
To quote 150: “The whole pulses and jives to this tempo of making, breaking and remaking alterity, the bounds of one and zero, presence and absence.”
It seems that Rez embraces the digital gaming medium as self aware and in doing so increases the sense of suspended disbelief. And in this the gamer constantly fights time to keep the moment intact to remain connected. So many games attempt to recreate our reality instead of encancing digital reality in it’s own right. With our capacity to reason in the abstact it is a shame there are not more games that totaly self aware as digital embraces itself and alows the mind to morph into it’s rules.
Razi writes: “It seems that Rez embraces the digital gaming medium as self aware and in doing so increases the sense of suspended disbelief. And in this the gamer constantly fights time to keep the moment intact to remain connected.”
That’s a terrific summary of the idea here.
This discussion was fantastic; I want to add only an anecdote to elaborate on the points made here. I met Tetsuya Mizuguchi here in Melbourne a couple of years ago and quizzed him about Rez’s status of a game about game history.
He was adamant in saying that this was not the purpose, but was keenly aware of the implications of making a game in which “you shoot down languages, each enemy is a letter in a dead language” (which he means very literally) and intimated Rez is actually “about learning how to use computers, and then going beyond use, and then going beyond that again, always beyond.. but not exploration, more like a long fall”
His presentation of the history of Rez began with his inspiration: washer-women songs of contemporary South Africa with their call-and-response, sending vibration and sound to respond to a single singer’s improvised action.
He went on to show footage of Rez before he had to comprimise with Sega – available on You-Tube and a mighty companion to the finished game.
So card/page 145 is very true in its reading of closure, I think, especially given this anecdotal experience, and the alibi notion rings true.
I am looking at fig. 6 and thinking where ‘target’ is situated. Part of me thinks this model is readable for all but the most important part of the game; not Eden, but the Running Man boss battle. Victory there is survival over dread and Callois’s vertigo model resurfaces briefly before shattering into a hundred yellow squares and reaffirming the system.
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