egoshooting, presentation at magdeburg games conference 2009
DESCRIPTION
EgoShooting in Chernobyl:Identity and Subject(s) in the S.T.A.L.K.E.R Games As the player 'walks into' a first-person shooter, does she retain her real-life identity or is the 'I' (or 'eye') that sees not so simple after all? Even as the case for the complexity of identity-formation in videogames builds up, FPS games, nevertheless, are singled out as representing a seamless first-person identification that is unique to videogames. This paper develops on earlier research to reveal major problems in such a claim: it argues that the very conception of subjectivity has always been problematised in the FPS and that the genre itself self-consciously keeps pointing this out. The recently-released FPS, S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Shadow of Chernobyl (called SOC, hereafter) and its second-part 'prequel' are important cases in point. In SOC, the player enters the game after being dumped for dead and picked up by a passing body snatcher who sells him as a 'live' corpse to the local trader. He wakes up as an amnesiac and devoid of any identity save for a message on his PDA that says, 'kill the Strelok'. The gameplay, then, is the player's quest for identity. Ironically, however, one of the game endings reveals that Strelok is the player himself. Further, in the second game, the player will again find himself being asked to kill Strelok: his own 'self' in the first game. Who, then, is the 'I' in these games and who shoots whom? This paper finds a more appropriate representation of this phenomenon in the German term for FPS: 'egoshooters'. In this scenario, it is a term that can be translated both as 'I, shooter' or 'I-shooter', thus further complicating notions of player-subjectivity and identity. To take this a step further, the very notion of 'player' is brought under scrutiny in the S.T.A.L.K.E.R games. SOC derives its tale from the Russian sci-fi novel, Roadside Picnic, and Tarkovsky's film Stalker. In both these pre-texts, the lone explorer protagonist moves through the Zone, a landscape that is 'alive' and reacts to the actions of those who travel on it. The Stalker's experience in the Zone is comparable to the player's moment-to-moment survival attempt in the face of the feedback loop created between player and Zone (game) in SOC. The formation of identity is influenced by the machine code that makes up the game program. Identity is, therefore, complicated further with the realisation that the 'I' in the FPS is after all a machinic selfhood. These complex planes of subjectivity cannot be analysed by the limited critical appartus of immersion and seamless identification as used by current game theory . In this context, the Gilles Deleuze's concept of identity as a continual actualisation of potentialities emerges as a more apposite framework for understanding the complex subjectivities of the FPS shown in the S.T.A.L.K.E.R games. The Deleuzian framework will also illustrate how instead of being exclusive or 'new', videogames develop on questions of identity already addressed by earlier narrative media. SOUVIK MUKHERJEENOTTINGHAM TRENT UNIVERSITYUNITED KINGDOMTRANSCRIPT
Egoshooting
On Halloween night, 1227 zombies gathered in the Nottingham city centre. They set a
Guinness record.
Hours earlier, many of them were shooting zombies
and trying to break the Resident Evil record...
This Paper is NOT About Zombies.
This paper is about the contested idea of
identity in videogames.
It is about the first-person in videogames and the problems in perceiving the
‘I’ and the ‘eye’.
Finally, this paper is also about shooting yourself.
FPS
Acronym for First Person Shooter. General term for 3D action games seen from a first person perspective, usually involving firearms.
- Jesper Juul, 'A Dictionary of Videogame Theory', Half Real, http://www.half-real.net/dictionary/
iDENTITY IN VIDEOGAMES
1. perceived as very 'different' from traditional texts.
OR
2. seamless 'immersion' in the game world and experience of
'true agency' unlike in earlier textual forms.
CONCLUSION: VIDEOGAMES PROVIDE A NEW FORM OF IDENTITY.
Really ?
Figuring Out Your I
'I encounter a confusing world and figure it out'
'I encounter a world in pieces and assemble it into a coherent whole'
--- Janet Murray, Hamlet on the Holodeck
From Double Consciousness to Multiple Consciousness
‘Play is a process of […] a double-consciousness in which the player is well aware of the
artificiality of the situation.’ Salen and Zimmerman, Rules of Play.
‘Double Consciousness is the notion that when you're playing a game your identity is working
on two levels: your general self and your agency in the game.’ Patrick Dugan, ‘King Lud IC’
weblog.
It is evident that the identification that occurs between the player and the game is a varied
experience comprising of various ways of experiencing points-of-view and to equate it simply
with the holodeck-experience would be erroneous. […] A more representative description of the
experience would be to call it a ‘multiple consciousness’. Souvik Mukherjee, ‘I Am a Stalker, I
Am a Paddle, I Am a Game: Locating the Player in the Zone of Becoming’’
Identity Crises: COSPLAY
A contraction of 'costume' and 'roleplay‘, cosplay describes the act of dressing up as characters
from popular animation, film and videogames. […] Cosplay, then, is partly concerned with
exhibition and display and partly with the craft and invention of couture […]
We might instinctively think that cosplay offers the most undiluted means of embodying game
characters, literally stepping into their shoes and taking control of them.'
– James Newman, Playing with Videogames.
‘Otaku cosplay makes their body into pure signifiers of playfulness, refuting a
unified identity.’
– Lien Fan Shen, ‘Anime Pleasures as a Playground of Sexuality, Power and Resistance’
Identity Crises: COSPLAY
A contraction of 'costume' and 'roleplay‘, cosplay describes the act of dressing up as characters
from popular animation, film and videogames. […] Cosplay, then, is partly concerned with
exhibition and display and partly with the craft and invention of couture […]
We might instinctively think that cosplay offers the most undiluted means of embodying game
characters, literally stepping into their shoes and taking control of them.'
– James Newman, Playing with Videogames.
‘Otaku cosplay makes their body into pure signifiers of playfulness, refuting a
unified identity.’
– Lien Fan Shen, ‘Anime Pleasures as a Playground of Sexuality, Power and Resistance’
Identity Crises: After-Action Reports
Identity in After-Action Reports
A guard confronts The Amateur at the door and we exchange serious yet good-sounding
dialogue. The Amateur tells him he’s not my friend and smash [sic] his head on a gate. The
Amateur considers whether that could be his calling card, but figures carrying the gate around
would not be worth the hassle. Up ahead there are more guards.
- Jiiim, ‘Send in the Clowns,’ [Weblog entry], ‘The Amateur: Blood Money May Have Been Involved’
Identity in After-Action Reports
A guard confronts The Amateur at the door and we exchange serious yet good-sounding
dialogue. The Amateur tells him he’s not my friend and smash [sic] his head on a gate. The
Amateur considers whether that could be his calling card, but figures carrying the gate around
would not be worth the hassle. Up ahead there are more guards.
- Jiiim, ‘Send in the Clowns,’ [Weblog entry], ‘The Amateur: Blood Money May Have Been Involved’
Seamless identity ... till you bring in the mirror
jjj
Identity in FPS
Of course, shooters don't care much for mirrors …
But they get upset when their avatar can't run as fast as they can in RL.
… Or when they can't scale a wall, in-game, that's too easy even for an eight-year old.
… Or when they fail to blow the brains out of an irritating 'friendly' (non-player) character.
Shifting identities
Problematising the FPS: Fallout 3 allows a shift from first-person to third-person camera
Defining Identity through the Multiple (non)Philosophy of Gilles Deleuze
A Deleuzian multiplicity takes as its first defining feature these two traits […]: its
variable number of dimensions and more importantly, the absence of a
supplementary (higher) dimension imposing an extrinsic coordination, and hence, an
extrinsically defined unity [...].This alone makes it natural and immanent.
- Manuel DeLanda, Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy
Assemblage, plugging-in and identity
An assemblage is not a set of predetermined parts (such as pieces of a plastic model aeroplane) that are then put together in
order to or into an already-conceived structure (the model aeroplane). Nor is an assemblage a random collection of things,
since there is a sense that an assemblage is a whole of some sort that possesses some identity.
--- John McGregor-Wise, ‘On Assemblage’
‘Plugging in’, in the Deleuzoguattarian sense, means a multidirectional process wherein any entity may form flexible and
variable attachments with others.
A component part of an assemblage may be detached from it and plugged into a different assemblage in which its interactions
are different. […] Assemblages may be taken apart while at the same time […] the interaction between parts may result in a true
synthesis.
-- DeLanda, A New Philosophy of Society: Assemblage Theory and Social Complexity
The i-phone as assemblage
The i-phone as assemblage
Extract from Cybergypsies: A Frank Account of Lust, War,
& Betrayal on the Electronic Frontier
The ‘real’ people in the room were never invited to the party. They’re here on sufferance, mere
emissaries of the real guests: it’s the personas who are meeting here. ‘Hi, I’m Louella the half-
Elven,’ a forty-five year old man with an alcohol and tobacco-ravaged face announces and, turning
to his shy girlfriend adds, ‘and this is Psychopath the Singing Blade’. No wonder so many people
are loth to reveal ‘real’ names.
--- Indra Sinha, Cybergypsies
Subjectivity in Deleuze
Even in an early work like Empiricism and Subjectivity, Deleuze sees the subject as being
'defined by movement'; according to him, 'the subject transcends itself, but it is also
reflected upon.’
The subject, here, is both intensive and extensive, its operations are directed both inwards and
outwards. In his later works (e.g. The Fold), Deleuze describes this as the 'folded‘ subject,
which inflects and is inflected by the mental and geographical milieus it occupies.
In Deleuzian terms, such a subject can be called a ‘cracked I’.
Close-reading the Cracked I
The Story of the Stalker
I
The radioactive reaches of the Zone present dangers unknown to the outside world. Where mutation has become mundane, who can judge what is normal? Where science is warped, who can determine what is truth? Survival is the underlying aim of every single inhabitant of this deserted land [...] As a stalker, you will awake with no knowledge of your past and little hope for your future. Survival is necessary but beyond that? Will you surrender to the urge to kill Strelok, a figure whose shadowy presence lurks in your subconscious? Or will you root out the valuable artefacts , altered by the Zone [...] a reason, perhaps, why man made hell.
WELCOME TO CHERNOBYL.
Identity-Crises: The Stalker pre-texts
A spiritual crisis is an attempt to find oneself, to acquire new faith. […] This, too, is what Stalker is about: the hero goes through
moments of despair when his faith is shaken; but every time he comes to a renewed sense of his vocation
--- Andrey Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time
He had stopped trying to think. He just repeated his litany over and over: "I am an animal, you see that. I don't have the words,
they didn't teach me the words. I don't know how to think, the bastards didn't let me learn how to think. But if you really are ...
all-powerful ... all-knowing ... then you figure it out! Look into my heart. I know that everything you need is in there. It has to be. I
never sold my soul to anyone! It's mine, it's human!
--- The Stalker Redrick Schuhart in Boris and Arkady Strugatsky’s novel, Roadside Picnic
The Zone and subjectivity
Kill Strelok!
The Different Names of the Stalker
The ‘Marked One’ in Shadow of Chernobyl
Scar in Clear Sky
Clear Similarities: in Name and Otherwise?
Strelok= Russian for 'shooter'
Kill Strelok = Kill the Shooter ?
(in FPS, the player is the 'shooter')
Egoshooter: German for FPS
Roughly translates as 'I Shooter'.
Egoshooting and 'Strange Meeting'
"... I am the enemy you killed, my friend.
I knew you in this dark: for so you frowned
Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.
I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.
Let us sleep now . . .“
Wilfred Owen, 'Strange Meeting' (1918)
A more complex Egoshooting
I-shooter OR I, Shooter ?
