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The Media and
Bodies
Media always have
exercised power over human bodies. In fact, they have continually produced
specific historical and aesthetical conventions for perceiving, presenting,
and, ultimately, experiencing bodies as aesthetically and socially significant
[1]. At the same time, the media are themselves
defined and empowered by their relationship to bodies. That is, they
depend on the symbolic power they exercise over bodies [2].
Therefore, media revolutions are revolutions of the body and revolutions
of body construction. Inferring from this, I propose the following hypothesis:
the digital media are not bodiless, neither is the net; rather they
are defined through their symbolic, their mediating relationship to
human bodies.
What, then, about bodily aspects in specific virtual worlds? What about
net-based role-playing games? In this article, I want to compare aspects
of space, time, and navigation in two different games: First, I will
look at the online version of the role-playing game Diablo II
(2000) [3], analyzing on-screen movement, speed,
tactics, and kinds of navigation through space and time. Secondly, I'll
concentrate on Dark Age of Camelot (2002) [4]
and compare this massive multiplayer game with the more action-oriented
Diablo.
Action and speed in Diablo II (2000) and its expansion, Lord of Destruction
(2001)
Just like pen-and-paper
role-playing games, role-playing at the computer foregrounds the performative
aspects of gaming: a story is enacted involving several characters whose
qualities keep being performed, developed, and changed throughout the
game. The characters do not act in isolation, rather, their standing
has to be in relation to a group of players. Often the story, the character
traits, and, accordingly, the characters' interactions are very complex.
Role-playing games set up systems of magic, and various kinds of placements
and hierarchies are fought out between the numerous participants.
In order to accomplish player commitment and establish a functional
communication network, role-playing computer games seek to establish
especially tight relationships between players and avatars, as, for
example, a television spot advertising Diablo II demonstrates
in which the first-person voice-over comments on the fact that game
characters have entered into his everyday life [5]:
"[...] it was clear that their world was becoming mine." "Their
world" refers to the world of the game's avatars as well as to
the world of Diablo II players - and this spot shows both to be identical:
in quick successional cuts, actors dressed up as Diablo II avatars
are themselves seen sitting in front of the computer playing the game
in which they are stars, thus being inside and outside of the game at
the same time. Correspondingly, these actors are inside and outside
of a movie, a game, and the everyday world. 'My world,' the narrator's
living space, is shown to be the world of middle-class suburban America
which the game characters have invaded and in which they fulfill everyday
chores like pruning hedges or lighting a barbacue fire in full gaming
gear. When the narrator wakes up in the morning, even his wife lying
next to him in bed is clad in an amazon costume straight out of Diablo
II. The spot ends with her question: "Bad dream, hon[ey]?"
Image 1: In the
Diablo II advertising video, the narrator's wife is clad in a
Diablo II costume.
The short spot uses traditional film technology: from the opening total
shot as a character runs toward the static camera, to the final shot-reverse
shot showing the narrator and his wife in bed, well-known filmic means
demonstrate the immersive aspects of a digital game. The switching between
the media - video and computer game -, between human actors and avatar
characters, mirrors the complex relationship between character and viewer,
avatar and player, between a fantasy world peopled by monsters and heroes
and American suburbia. Medially, various manners of identification and
immersion are juxtaposed: the video creates an interface between technically
induced identification with movie characters and with avatars.
One kind of identification is created through filmic means - total shots
and close-ups, shot and reverse shot, time-scanning cuts, voice-over,
dramatic music. Another kind is created by way of digital means, by
navigation through a spatial world, participation in fights and chats,
competition with other players. Beyond the difference between the specific
media, the digital means - just like the filmic ones - in themselves
can differ, they can create and then depend on specific generic conventions
and can induce contradictory forms of identification.
Now to the look and feel of the game itself. I want to demonstrate the
timing, pace, and navigation by introducing the Diablo II expansion
Lord of Destruction. The game is played with mouse and keyboard,
the pace is fast. The online-version of Diablo II allows only
up to eight players per game at one time. Even though that's not too
many, the screen constantly looks crowded, and even if there are not
too many players involved, there's always some action going on. [6]
Almost all spaces of Diablo II and its expansion are dangerous
ones.
Image 2:One of
the many dangerous spaces in Lord of Destruction.
Monsters crowd
in on the players, and a player needs quick reflexes to survive the
numerous assaults. Due to the number of non-player opponents, the fighting
consists of many identical confrontations in a row, and the action is
fast paced. Players have to concentrate, movements have to be effective,
quick, and automatized, reaction time short.
Explosions and fire balls fill the air. Machines and helper characters
add to the rather hectic impression. The scenes are exciting, some would
call them stressful. One must continually keep an eye on the vials at
the screen's bottom showing the level of the avatar's life on the left
and magic power (the 'mana') on the right.
By overlaying the so-called auto map, a map showing one's position relative
to the world's set-up, one can gain an overview. Other than that, the
player always has the same view of the game, she cannot change her perspective
on the fictional world. Via a teleporter function, one can use shortcuts
to quickly get from one scene to another. This beaming function speeds
up the game considerably, so distances between spaces and levels shrink
to almost nothing. Since speed is important, the traversing of space
isn't allowed to slow down the action.
The avatar has to prove that she is fast, strong, and well organized,
in short, a superhero. The user chooses one of five (Diablo II)
to seven (expansion) fighter characters with different qualities, skills,
and strategies and supplies it with ever more and better equipment.
She navigates this avatar in real time through four acts (five including
the expansion), each with different quests set in the middle ages. The
game can be played on three levels of difficulty. The aim is to perfect
one's avatar, to develop specific traits, and to better one's score
- the more experience one collects, the better. One fights, collects
accessories, trades pieces of equipment, barters; the players can cheat
and plunder, each establishing her avatar's specific disposition, reputation,
and rank. At the same time, the player can acquire a reputation for
herself within the community of Diablo II players.
The game has no single goal. Each player aims at developing her avatar's
four characteristics, strength, dexterity, vitality, and energy plus
30 possible skills per character. Both speed and effectiveness are important
in fights; in order to win, one has to choose the right combination
of accessories, develop complex strategies, and evaluate one's playfellows,
bonding with as many as possible.
One can click different menu buttons in order to be shown one's inventories
and to buy or exchange pieces of equipment. The return button opens
chat channels with other players. These chats are important features
of role-playing games enabling communication with one's fellow players
not only on topics concerning the specific here and now of a scene itself
but also on general strategy, or on topics beyond the game. Chats widen
the scope of game communication adding a self-referential and meta-discursive
dimension.
Boredom and Repetition in Dark Age of Camelot (2002)
As I'll demonstrate
in the second part of my statement, a massive multiplayer role-playing
game like Dark Age of Camelot relates space, time, and navigation
in ways which create immersive effects which are quite different from
those of Diablo II.
Being a massive multiplayer game, Dark Age of Camelot (2002)
stages a very complex kind of role-playing allowing up to 3,500 players
in one game at a time. Thus, an entire server represents one world with
three realms and a frontier space. On the frontier the inhabitants of
the three otherwise separated realms can fight each other.
Fighting is important to some players of Camelot. In contrast
to Diablo, there exist not only small skirmishes asking for repetitious
movements and small cooperations, but also huge battles between members
of different realms involving virtually unlimited numbers of participants
- as many players as can be rallied at a time. Yet, huge battles are
relatively rare because it is hard to get enough people together at
one time and to organize such big crowds across the complex hierarchies
formed within small groups, guilds, or alliances. In fact, the everyday
playing situation is rather dreary.[7]
The goals of this game are very complex, and, again, not the same ones
for every player. One should try to accomplish perfection in all possible
directions. There are personal accomplishments and communal goals. Among
the personal aims may be the wish to reach the highest possible personal
level, to gain the respect of one's fellow gamers, or to maximize one's
commercial success. Collectively, the inhabitants of a realm or the
members of an alliance or a guild strive to accomplish many victories
over members of another realm.
Just like Diablo, Dark Age of Camelot is played with mouse
and keyboard but the pace is very slow. Even though the realms are visited
by thousands of players and avatars at a time, the screen usually looks
rather orderly.
Image
3: In Dark Age of Camelot, the screen looks very orderly most
of the time.
There are times
when one hardly meets any player or non-player character, for example
when one is exploring the huge playing space or looking for non-player
opponents.
The game is constructed as a continuous three-dimensional space. You
don't run into people and obstacles but rather run right through them,
so accidents are avoided. In the many peaceful, meditative moments,
one has time to enjoy the multifarious perspectives which the game offers.
A player can zoom in and out, look up, down, and around, choose a radical
first-person perspective or step back from her avatar and thus choose
a third-person perspective.
First, it seems like each realm presents an ever changing backdrop:
night falls, day breaks, the vegetation changes from one area to the
next, it starts raining or snowing. Yet, after some time, the atmosphere
starts feeling ever the same. Distances are very great, and there exists
no teleporter or beaming function, so space and time are drawn out over
the hours or even days of playing.
Image 4: In Dark
Age of Camelot, travelling takes up a lot of time.
Every now and then,
the avatar even has to sit down and rest in order to recover his energy.
The sequences of Dark Age of Camelot are not held together by
a strict economy of acts. Rather, progress is measured in terms of slowly
growing skills, time-consuming travel, and complex interaction with
others.
The space of Dark Age of Camelot feels very different depending
on one's playing strategy. One can simply avoid danger by not getting
in the way of non-player monsters. In fact, one doesn't have to fight
at all but rather can barter with other player characters, build things,
or heal other avatars.
Just like Diablo I and II, Camelot presents a set recalling
the middle ages. The massive multiplayer game doesn't just present period
costumes and genre-specific magic, but also simulates a historically
specific time management and initiates social interactions slowing down
the pace to a crawl. The game's time management projects its players
back into a time when men got around by walking and riding horses, when
people lived far apart, and communication was sparse and difficult.
As opposed to Diablo, Camelot nostalgically replaces our
postmodern Western pace by a much slower one.
It takes a long time and much skill to gain craftmanship and to develop
relationships with other players. Therefore, one's free time in real
life is an important resource in Camelot. Only those players
who have the time and the money to spend much of their life in this
fictitious world can increase their standing or prove to be successful
otherwise.[8]
Some players of Dark Age of Camelot do not only communicate via
chats but also by showing videos online.[9] They
create their own private trailers introducing their personal interpretation
of the game to others, to fellow players as well as to those not familiar
with Dark Age. Interestingly enough, these trailers tend to present
the game according to conventions known from movies, especially from
action movies set in the middle ages.
For example, when a player of Camelot introduces the game's realms
and the frontier region, she pointedly contrasts not only images showing
the different kinds of architecture, costumes, aesthetics, weather,
and vegetation characterizing each region or different ways of playing
the game. She also accents the scenes by using very emotional film music,
for example from the movie The Gladiator (2000) or other musical
scores by Hans Zimmer. Whereas the inconspicuous musical scores used
in the actual game rather resemble elevator music, of a kind of generic
middle-age jazz, Camelot fans musically structure their videos,
thus making them much more dramatic than the playing actually is. Partly,
this strategy highlights the fact that this game feels distinctly different
for everyone who plays it.
But generally the private videos try to aesthetically overcome the boring
aspects and the loose structure of Dark Age of Camelot by traditional
filmic means, stressing linear sequence, a distinct sense of purpose
and plot, and often narrative development. The players create pointedly
structured stories about their life and identity in cyberspace, leaving
out the boring negotiations, the tedious role performing, and the time-consuming
repetitions.
Summary
As I showed, role-playing
games organize space, time, and navigation in ways which enforce not
only different concepts of role-playing but, at the same time, different
ways of technically mediating - one might also say technically creating
- a being-in-the-world. In comparison with Diablo II, a massive
multiplayer scenario like the one presented in Dark Age of Camelot
foregrounds the 'performative' aspects of role playing considerably.
And here I think of performativity in terms of Judith Butler's Bodies
That Matter. Camelot encourages players to take up subject positions
evidently authenticated by the interaction with a great number of other
players. By foregrounding the tedious aspects of fictional role playing,
it illustrates the interactive aspects of everyday subject positioning
- thus playing becomes repetitive, time-consuming, and at times even
boring.
Considering that all role-playing games foreground the performative
aspects of play and taking into account that they all share the same
roots, it is interesting to watch the development of different kinds
of games within this genre. I am even tempted to suggest that in the
long run, there will evolve even more distinctly different subgenres
of role-playing at the computer. The number of players alone may not
justify another generic differentiation, but the very distinct ways
of immersing players confirms Crosbie Fitch's prediction of role playing's
great future. In times of drastic generalizations about computer games,
it seems necessary to closely watch the development of genres, subgenres,
and genre mixes and point out their specific effects.
Bibliography:
Boscagli, Maurizia.
Eye on the Flesh: Fashions of Masculinity in the Early Twentieth Century.
Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996.
Bukatman, Scott.
Terminal Identity: The Virtual Subject in Postmodern Science Fiction.
Durham, London: Duke University Press, 1993.
Butler, Judith.
Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex."
New York, London: Routledge, 1993.
---. "Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology
and Feminist Theory." Performing Feminisms: Feminist Critical
Theory and Theatre. Ed. Sue-Ellen Case. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1990, 270-282.
Coco, Donna. "Creating
Humans for Games." Computer Graphics World 20, 10 (October
1997): 26-31.
Comolli, Jean-Louis.
"Machines of the Visible." The Cinematic Apparatus.
Eds. Teresa de Lauretis and Stephen Heath. New York: St. Martin's Press,
1980, 121-142.
Dark Age of Camelot.
"Homepage." 
Dark Age of Camelot.
"Player videos."
De Lauretis, Teresa.
Technologies of Gender: Essays on Theory, Film, and Fiction. Bloomington,
Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1984.
Diablo II. "Homepage".
Diablo II. "Expansion Set: Lord of Destruction."
Eco, Umberto. "Innovation
and Repetition: Between Modern and Post-Modern Aesthetics." Daedalus
114, 4 (Fall 1985): 161-184.
Featherstone, Mike,
and Roger Burrows, eds. Cyberspace - Cyberbodies - Cyberpunk: Cultures
of Technological Embodiment. London: Sage Publications, 1995.
Fitch, Crosbie.
"Cyberspace in the 21st Century: Mapping the Future of Massive
Multiplayer Games."
Holiday 2000. "'Diablo
II: It's Everywhere' Television Advertisement".
Tasker, Yvonne.
Spectacular Bodies: Gender, Genre and the Action Cinema. London,
New York: Routledge, 1993.
Anmerkungen
dichtung-digital
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