GAM3R 7H30RY

There are four ways in which the topology of gamespace can come to an end and be superceded by a new topos — at least according to the game Deus Ex: Invisible War. (If you have played this game you may know there is also a fifth ending, of which protocol demands the withholding until the puzzle of the other four endings unlocks its significance.) In the game, your character has to choose between aiding the victory of one of four organizations, all of which are at odds with each other, and each of which has its own idea of how to realize a permanent atopia beyond gamespace, a topos beyond topology. Working backwards from these four endings it is possible to plot the backstory, not just of Deus Ex but of the military entertainment complex — at least as it can be understood from within the game, from within The Cave™ itself.

177.

The four endings of Deus Ex can be pieced together by arranging them in two pairs. The first, more ‘personal’ pair of endings pits the victory of the Templars against that of the Omar. The Templars are a fanatical religious order devoted to the body’s purification of all ‘biomods’. The Omar are a no less fearsome collective organism of black marketeers, in which the body has been subsumed into technology. The second, more ‘political’ pair of endings pits the victory of the Illuminati against that of ApostleCorp. The Illuminati are a secret cabal of power-brokers hidden behind organizational fronts, dedicated to restoring order under their control. ApostleCorp is a techno-intellectual faction dedicated to bringing about a just and democratic but no less ‘posthuman’ civilization. You, the gamer, play a minor character, who can nevertheless tip the balance between these powers and their goals.

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Deus Ex is a shadowy world. Some of the organizations who at first appear so powerful are just fronts for others. For instance the neo-liberal WTO and the religious fundamentalists of The Order, which appear antagonistic to each other in every way, turn out in classic conspiracy theory style to be but masks secretly controlled by the Illuminati. This chain of unmasking can be extended even beyond the game. Behind the final four powers — Templar and Omar, Illuminati and ApostleCorp — is at least one more unmasking. The first pair of endings — Templar and Omar — masks an agon between the complete assimilation of the human into the machine (Omar) versus the complete rejection of the intercourse of body with machine (Templar). Along this axis, the problem of where gamespace is heading is ‘personal’, a question of the boundaries of the body and its other. The other pair of endings — Illuminati and ApostleCorp — is less about the immediate relation of body to machine as something ‘personal’. It is about something not personal, something that is perhaps political. Here the ends of gamespace are an agon between a democratic relation, in which all bodies communicate equally with machines; versus the hierarchical, where all communication passes via a controlling power. The personal is political, but the impersonal is political, too.

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For the gamer, it is always a matter of starting at the beginning and playing through to the end. In the original Deus Ex and its sequel, Invisible War, there are different ways of getting from beginning to end. It can be done by stealth, by violence, or negotiation, but either way the game reveals itself level by level, from start to finish. For the gamer as theorist, perhaps in Deus Ex it’s a matter of taking the end as the starting point. The question of what can constitute an end state is the question of what occupies the limits to thought within gamespace. Why these four endings? If they are just arbitrary, random possibilities, then they may be fun for the gamer to play through to but not much fun for the gamer theorist to start out from in this other game — the other game of the relation between the allegorithm of the game to the allegory of gamespace. But perhaps the four endings of Deus Ex are not random but are rather the pieces of a puzzle.

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Behind the four organizations who vie for power in Invisible War are four more abstract, more impersonal antagonists who stalk the fantastic vistas of gamespace itself. Either technology trumps the human, or vice versa. (Templar vs. Omar.) Either democracy trumps hierarchy, or vice versa. (Illuminati vs. ApostleCorp.) But beyond that, perhaps the game reaches a certain limit. Behind this mask is not another mask; behind this power is not another power, but something else — a diagram of the avatars of power. The four endings exhaust the possibilities within which gamespace can think about itself. They are its endgame. But while there is not at this point another character to unmask, there is a puzzle to solve in the arrangement of these masks. These endings, and what they mask, enter into quite definite relations. The four terms invite the gamer theorist to a new kind of game.

(7) Comments for 176.

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kgs

posted: 5/24/2006

Gah, re-write the section using the first Deus Ex game. Not only was it a much, MUCH better game, but the player base was much greater and you’re more likely to grab the readers attention if they are familiar with your subject matter

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Mr_Staypuft

Yes, definitely use Deus Ex 1 instead.

It appears in many “top 10 PC Games of all time” lists,
whereas the sequel certainly does not.

McKenzie Wark responds to Mr_Staypuft

posted: 5/25/2006

DX1 was a a better game, wasn’t it? I’ll have to adddress that. But it doesn’t have the ending that DSX2 offers.

alexbb

posted: 6/5/2006

Actually, the first game also has three different choices at the end, which are each more compelling than anything offered by the second game.

One of the things I didn’t like about Invisible War is that it sought to make it so all three endings came about, and then rehashes what is basically the exact same story. (I could go on and on about what’s wrong with Invisible War, from a game design point of view…)

McKenzie Wark responds to alexbb

well, that’s the reason to talk about DX2 rather than DX1 — *because* in some ways it doesn’t quite work. And not just because of compromises involved in making in a console rather than a pc game. It sets up a structural problem for itself and doesn’t quite know how to resolve it.

There’s enough celebratory writing about DX1. It’s time to move on.

Christian McCrea

posted: 7/13/2006

If you have time to play more games, and alter the text here, consider Blade Runner. Possesses 12 endings, and constitutes a critique of the adventure genre in the process. Everything that Deus Ex played out is considerably rooted in the game, if you can find a copy, it could be highly informative. Sets out to be an aesthetic equal to the film and succeeds in demolishing Ridley Scott’s somewhat fey moral play while installing an entirely radical and polyvocal ambiguity. I, the player, failed the Voight-Kampf test, as PKD may have imagined.

McKenzie Wark responds to Christian McCrea

Haven’t played that one — thanks for the tip!

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(2) Comments for 177.

JohnR

As someone who has completed the first Deus Ex several times, but never played the sequel to any meaningful depth, perhaps I am not qualified to comment on what you have written.

However, it seems to me after having read it, I question whether you are not reading too much into the symbolism of the game itself.

I think the game designers set out to create a thoughtful game with more depth than one might expect from many games, however it behooves the player (and perhaps the theorist) to keep in mind that the main objective of the designer was to provide a piece of entertainment with broad enough appeal to sell to many potential players. In creating his design, I don’t think a reasonable designer will incorporate one more whit of theory than is necessary to maximize appeal.

I realize that the gamespace relation to reality is most likely only playing out in a subconscious level (perhaps shared?) with the majority of players, but I still have to question how much such consideration actually enters into it to derive entertainment from playing the game.

I myself am a neophyte when it comes to consideration of game theory (I don’t know much about theory, but I know what I like to play), and I liked Deus Ex because it tied in so well with my preference for stories like those presented in the X-files television series. But I am skeptical that either can be taken as a true skewed projection of perceived reality–by which I mean, I think all the conspiracy stuff and wheels-within-wheels plotting is vastly entertaining, but I certainly don’t give the actual powers-that-be in ‘real life’ enough credit for the kind of cleverness that these games suggest such governing bodies have or even aspire to.

I hope my comments are of some use to you.

McKenzie Wark responds to JohnR

posted: 5/26/2006

It’s not so much to do with ther designer’s intention, as what they had to work with. The pattern is in the material whether the designers want it there or not.

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(2) Comments for 179.

Sam

posted: 10/17/2006

Isn’t the experince some combination of stealth, violence and negotiation, meaning isn’t the puzzle assembled in play-time (different passes and lives and restarts) instead of in games-pace?

McKenzie Wark responds to Sam

posted: 10/25/2006

Sam asks: “isn’t the puzzle assembled in play-time (different passes and lives and restarts) instead of in games-pace?”

Yes, but that would be a different book. Somebody with more of a gamer sensibility should write that book. Nobody’s done it since david Sudnow’s Pilgrim in the Microworld.

An aesthetics, or indeed a phenomenology of playtime is a door i hope i’ve opened in this book, but is for other people to write.

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