Hackers and EULAs and Mods, Oh MY!

[This post is part of a presentation on games for the New Media Theory class at U of I. I will try to put some of the information in context, but it is primarily a collection of reference links I will be using in the presentation.]

Early History: From Playful Hackers to Big Money

It all started with “Spacewar,” which was originally a hack created by two researchers in the early 1960s. Eventually, it was adapted into the first arcade game and paved the way for future arcade titles. Home consoles hit the market in the early to mid-70s, but their success was unstable until the mid-80s when Nintendo released the Nintendo Entertainment System.

Distribution of Games: Industrial Capitalism vs. the “Information Wants to be Free” Ethic

The World of Warcraft Terms of Use and End User License Agreement (EULA) is a good example of the standard legal boilerplate that comes packaged with all games nowadays. Important to note is the quote within the Terms of Use that states:

“All rights and title in and to the Program and the Service (including without limitation any user accounts, titles, computer code, themes, objects, characters, character names, stories, dialogue, catch phrases, locations, concepts, artwork, animations, sounds, musical compositions, audio-visual effects, methods of operation, moral rights, any related documentation, “applets” incorporated into the Program, transcripts of the chat rooms, character profile information, recordings of games played on the Program, and the Program client and server software) are owned by Blizzard or its licensors.”

Emulator Zone is one of many sites that hosts emulators, which are software applications that mimic various video game consoles. Some of these sites also host “roms,” which are disc images files of games that can be stored on a computer and run using emulators. Sites like this frequently come under fire from game publishers for hosting reverse engineered software and other copyright protected material, even if they are explicitly hosting “abandonware” or games that are no longer in print. In response to the popularity of the “abandonware” movement, some of the major game publishers have begun to offer backwards compatibility on their consoles and are making older games available for paid downloads. The Nintendo Wii is probably the most notable currently for including downloadable games from five old consoles (Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis, Turbografx 16, and Neo Geo) with rumors of more being included in the future. Gametap is another officially licensed service, where people can subscribe to gain access to a library of older games from several consoles. The only drawback for the corporate licensed archival sites, though, is that their libraries tend to be limited due to legal issues.

The Pirate Bay (whose website claims that they have just moved all of their servers to Sinai due to legal pressure in Europe, although this could be an April Fool’s joke), are a P2P file-sharing search engine, who represent a bastion of the “information wants to be free” mentality that initially surrounded gaming culture.

Modding, Hacking, and Repurposing: Artistic Expression or Malicious Copyright Infringement?

Cory Arcangel is a New York-based artist who has done a lot of work with old video game cartridges. One of his first pieces, “I Shot Andy Warhol,” was a modification of the game “Hogan’s Alley” from the Nintendo Entertainment System, and was created by directly cutting and soldering circuitry in the game cartridge. Arcangel replaced the characters from the original “shooting gallery” style game with easily recognizable pop culture icons.

Arcangel is also famous for his “scrolling clouds” exhibit – an installation piece that features three large screens displaying slow-moving clouds from the original “Super Mario Bros.”

Finally, there is his “Super Mario Bros. Movie”

Arcangel has escaped legal problems due to the fact that he exclusively uses old games, and his hacks/mods generally only appear in local art exhibits.

Most machinima does not actually alter the original code of the game, and therefore would not be considered hacking or modding. Based on the language of most EULAs, however, game publishers automatically own the rights to anything produced using their software.

MMOs: Bridging the Gap between Corporate Ownership and Communal Space

An MMO’s success is based on the community that it attracts. This community translates into economic gain for the developers.

In spite of corporate ownership, player’s have a great amount of control over their world in MMOs. Some companies take a more open stance than others in relation to player input. Several attempts have been made to develop a “gamer’s bill of rights” covering issues of gameplay, fair use, virtual ownership, etc.

One of the more open virtual worlds, Second Life, has recently settled an ownership issue in court (Bragg v. Linden)

Another issue at stake in MMOs is the right for players to capitalize on their achievements. Developers take varying stances on this. Blizzard is notoriously iron-fisted regarding people attempting to make money off of their game. They generally cite the use of “bots” or automated programs that players can use to control their character and “farm” resources, but even in cases where bots are not used, they generally ban players who attempt to resell their virtual “property” outside of the game.

The Study of Games: Ludology vs. Narratology

Keane mentions some of the conflicting views on game study in his article. Initially games were studied in relation to other media – particularly film. This approach, known as narratology, focuses on the narrative aspects of the genre and imports aspects of film and literary theory. In response to what some researchers refer to as academic colonization by narratologists, the field of ludology was developed to study games as unique systems requiring unique theories and research methods.

Fandom: Perpetuating Virtual Worlds through Community

In relation to the points made in “Playing on the digital commons,” Stephen Keane explains that virtual worlds are perpetuated by the community that forms around them. This includes virtual worlds established in games, film, books, comics, and any other media (particularly serialized media).

Games as Films and Films as Games: the Cycle of Remediation

As Keane points out, games and films share a mutually beneficial marketing relationship. On a deeper level, they also remediate each other in terms of form and content. Games borrow narrative and visual conventions from film (chronology, cinematic camera angles, lens tricks, etc.), while film owes much of its special effects developments to video games.

These FMV cut-scenes from Resident Evil for the Sony Playstation exemplify the problems with this particular remediation of film – the difference in style from the rest of the game as well as poor acting, costuming, and props all serve to break up the game narrative

Here is the introduction to the Nintendo Gamecube remake of Resident Evil, which also uses cinematic effects, but maintains the visual style of the rest of the game through 3D rendering.

The use of Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) like “I Love Bees” is a marketing strategy in which the release of a movie or game is foregrounded by the creation of a website (or a network of websites) that draw the user into solving a series of puzzles, riddles, etc. that introduce or perpetuate the narrative of the game/film.

Games and Identity: Embodiment vs. Representation

First off, I’d like to give major kudos to Sheila Murphy for using the word “rad” in the opening paragraph of this article. Why did that word ever fall out of popular use? Let’s work on bringing it back into the vernacular, folks!

Murphy establishes several dichotomies in her article: gamer vs. viewer, embodied player vs. avatar, author vs. user, etc. These all relate directly to an individuals identity as a player of video games. Game identity is largely about the player-character’s relationship with navigable space and the other non-player-characters they come across. Identification with a character requires that the player be in control of that character – cut-scenes interrupt player control and limit the player’s ability to identify with the character. Camera perspective also plays an important role in the player’s ability to identify with a character. Player’s identify more with first-person character representations than third-person ones.

The screen (and Murphy also implies speakers when she mentions audio in games) is important in terms of player-character identity, since it is the window through which the player views the character. Game controllers are also an important part of the “immersion” experience, providing the means to control action on-screen and also providing “force feedback” to introduce tactile sensations in response to in-game actions. At the time this article was written, the Nintendo Wii was not yet out. Here is a site dedicated to Wii related injuries and property damage – talk about issues of emodiment in digital media! There are people are getting whacked in the face! I’m sure they felt pretty damn embodied then!

Some Questions for Discussion

What do you think about the “information wants to be free” mentality?  How does this relate to terms like “free labor” and “gift economy” that tend to circulate regarding new media economics?

Is there any validity to Coleman’s and Dyer-Witheford’s concept of the “digital commons” when all the spaces to which they refer are explicitly owned by game development corporations (including everything created by users – refer back to the WOW Terms of Use)? (This even applies to Second Life, which, according to this post on Terra Nova re: the Bragg v. Linden lawsuit, is not owned by users, but by Linden Labs)

How does the question of ownership of digital property effect player’s interactions in virtual worlds (particularly MMOs)? How does it effect player-character identity in MMOs?

How does the “information wants to be free” mentality relate to Keane’s concept of fandom?

Corporate game developers have a love-hate relationship with the hacking community that initially spawned their industry. Is it possible for these two conflicting mentalities to continue to exist? Is there a possibility for games to be both open source “digital commons” and still be commercially viable?

Recent trends in gaming include gamer’s making physical actions in order to control their avatar on-screen – Nintendo and Sony both have motion-sensitive controllers. How does this relate to Murphy’s thoughts about identity and embodiment in games?

References

Coleman, Sarah, and Nick Dyer-Witheford. “Playing on the Digital Commons: Collectivities, Capital, and Contestation in Videogame Culture.” Media Culture and Society. London: Sage, 2007. http://mcs.sagepub.com.

Murphy, Sheila. “‘Live in Your World, Play in Ours’: The Spaces of Videogame Identity.” Journal of Visual Culture. London: Sage, 2004.

Keane, Stephen. Cinetech: Film, Convergence, and New Media. New York: Palgrave, 2006.

Billy Bragg Says His Piece about Royalties

I found this op-ed piece by Billy Bragg (musician) today while perusing the intarwebs. I think that he makes several very interesting but contradictory points regarding free culture that I would like to contextualize with my own previously stated ideas.

First off, I want to assert that when I talk about “free culture” I don’t mean free in a monetary sense – I mean freedom from corporate control and regulation. Corporations use the laws of supply and demand to attempt to determine the maximum amount of money anyone would be willing to pay for a specific item, then charge the same price for all similar items. The problem is that cultural objects (art, music, etc.) do not have intrinsic value – their value is determined by the response of the culture in which they are created. The value of an object is established by how much people are willing to sacrifice in order to enjoy it. That value can also be perpetuated by the opinions of well-respected people (we generally call them critics) who share those opinions with the public. In the end, the value of a particular cultural object is determined on an individual level: if you are not willing to pay $18 for the newest album by Mr. Bragg, then you don’t have to. Your refusal to buy something indicates your opinion on the value of that object. Perhaps several months later you find the same album in a used CD bin for $5, and you buy it. Once again, your decision has communicated your personal opinion on the value of that cultural object.

As Bragg points out in his op-ed, technology is not just something that has the capacity to free culture, it also has the capacity to be exploited by corporations who are smart enough not to fight it (I’m looking at you RIAA and MPAA!). The point at which I disagree with him is in regards to his comparison between radio and a band’s music appearing on a social networking site. Radio is an inherently selective medium, but social networking sites are not. If a band’s music is played regularly on the radio, it can be almost guaranteed that their song will be heard by a relatively large number of people. If a band starts a Myspace page, there’s no guarantee anyone will even look at it!

The fact is, a large part of the Internet economy works on a sort of networking “barter system.” In other words, if someone has a social networking site that has x number of users in its network, the value of that site is based on the network. Individuals and artists have the opportunity to take advantage of that network by adding themselves to it, thereby increasing the value of the network for everyone and allowing the owner of the site to rake in more ad revenue and potentially sell the site for an exorbitant amount of money. Essentially, by being part of a social network, you make use of a particular service that someone else (advertisers) pay for. I think this formula becomes problematic when people let the sites fall into corporate control (it’s like local store owners happily selling their businesses to Wal-mart so that a new “superstore” can be built), but on the other hand, I can’t really blame someone for accepting millions of dollars for something that probably didn’t take them that long to make in the first place (relatively speaking)! Based on the article, it seems that this is more the problem that Bragg is decrying, and I agree with him ideologically; however, I disagree with his statement that the owner of the networking site he mentions owes the artists a cut of what he made off of the site. It’s a nice thought, but the problem is that every user of a social networking site is like a customer. Even bands (I should probably clarify by saying “good” bands) are customers who are making use of the site’s network. If someone sells their business in the physical world (vs. online), do their customers get a cut of the profit?

I respect Billy Bragg as a musician and gladly support his art, but there’s an inherent contradiction in his statements: he plays the morality card in reference to Bebo.com sharing profits with musicians on the site (a blatantly socialist statement), while taking a very capitalist stance regarding music. He fails to consider the fact that Bebo.com is someone else’s “intellectual property.” If it is morally right for the owners of Bebo.com to share the wealth when they capitalize on their intellectual property, then shouldn’t the same be true for artists? If, as I stated before, the value of art is external and culturally-based, don’t popular musicians owe their critics, their fans, and anyone else who supports them for helping establish the value of their art?

There’s a lot to think about here, and I’d of course be interested in hearing how Mr. Bragg would respond. In the meantime, I will side with him in encouraging people to spend some money and support independent artists. Go to an art show, go to a local performance (play, concert, dance), go to an art theater, buy an independently published album or film, donate to the open-source movement, etc. Remember that your decision to consume these things helps to establish their cultural value.

ADDENDUM: I just wanted to add one more quick thought.  If you consider the nature of new media, royalties are actually extremely difficult to assess.  The idea of paying an artist royalties every time her/his music is played publicly worked well because media was difficult to duplicate.  Now, not only is media infinitely duplicable, but it is also possible to have thousands of people streaming the same audio file at once.  This makes the whole idea of royalty-based pay more and more implausible.  This is part of the problem with the current state of the music industry – their entire economic system has been undercut by the technological advances over the last decade.  Rather than fighting to maintain the viability of a pay system that has become outdated, artists should be striving for something new to match the needs of the culture.  As I’ve stated before, artists like Radiohead, Nine Inch Nails, Chuck D, etc. have all made positive moves in this direction.  This is what the industry needs to focus on; and by industry, I don’t mean conglomerate corporations – I mean the artists.

Free Culture

A colleague here at the University of Illinois pointed me in the direction of this presentation by Lawrence Lessig (professor at Stanford Law) from the 2002 Open Source Conference (OSCON).  In this presentation, Lessig makes the same arguments I’ve been trying to make on this website regarding intellectual property, copyright law, and the advancement of culture.

One of his most interesting points here relates to the hypocrisy of some of the corporations that are the most dogged defenders of copyright and intellectual property law.  Lessig calls out the Walt Disney Corporation, Microsoft, and various politicians and lobbyists in the presentation.  The picture he paints is one of corporate greed and a consolidated attempt by small groups of wealthy people to maintain a stranglehold on cultural and technological advancement in order to amass more wealth for themselves.  In my opinion, this is the ultimate perversion of capitalism and the “free” market economy.

In my Blogroll, I’ve included a link to Lessig’s original presentation (including an audio recording, a flash version of his powerpoint presentation, a full transcript, and various other goodies) as well as a link to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which is a group dedicated to the protection of freedom of expression and culture in the information age.  I encourage everyone to read more about this issue and form your own opinion.

Cool Things I Know About Urine

Yes, I do now know things about urine. Cool things. Over the last couple of days I’ve had a blog comment “discussion” about how urine is both popular among chemists and people who dye fabric by hand due to its various wonderful chemical properties as well as its low cost and availability.

Apparently, it’s also drinkable, if you’re in a truly desperate situation.

Oh, and you most likely drank some the last time you went swimming. A wonderful thought, considering I just came back from the pool!

Speaking of the pool, I made it to 850 yds in 30 min today, beating my previous record. I also got up to a grand total of 1000 yds in only 35 min. I’m going to have to push for 1200 yds next time.

On another note, Nine Inch Nails has released a new instrumental album via the intarwebs: Ghosts I-IV. The full album (about 2 hrs of musick) is available for paid download on their website with CDs available for pre-order; however, the big news is that they also officially released Ghosts I (the first quarter of the album) as a torrent download on The Pirate Bay. For anyone familiar with the ongoing media war being waged on the digital frontier, The Pirate Bay has long been one of the biggest thorns in the side of conglomerate pigs like the RIAA and the MPAA. Currently, The Pirate Bay is under investigation due to pressure by these organizations, but the site hasn’t been shut down yet.

By officially releasing an album on a website like The Pirate Bay, NIN is making a pretty clear statement about where they stand on this front. A few years back, Trent Reznor also released the song “The Hand that Feeds” from “With Teeth” in multi-track Garageband format, allowing the public to remix his song however they saw fit. For this release, he’s going to make mixable versions of all of the tracks available (for a fee, according to his website). As far as I know, this hasn’t caused Trent to lose any money – quite the opposite, I’m sure, since cutting out the record labels (who usually take an exorbitant cut of album profits) allows him to pocket a higher percentage per album/download sold.

Personally, I have tons of respect for this kind of DIY ethic. Radiohead got a lot of positive media for releasing “In Rainbows” last year on a “pay whatever you feel like” basis. A couple of years back, Wired Magazine released an album featuring several artists who were releasing their music using the Creative Commons copyright (including The Rapture, Le Tigre, Thievery Corporation, Spoon, and others). Other artists who have previously showed similar foresight include The Smashing Pumpkins (who released their last album before their breakup as a free download) and Chuck D (who has vocally supported the file sharing movement since the late 90s through media appearances, court testimony, and his website Rapstation.com).

As I’ve mentioned before, I believe that our culture needs to discard old-fashioned ideas about “intellectual property.” Personally, I think that we could be on the verge of a sort of renaissance in which collaboration and group authorship become the norm. Open source software is probably one of the biggest pieces of evidence that I can point to in support of this claim, but I think that the same sort of thing can happen in the arts and in entertainment. People are starting to discover that they don’t need bloated corporations to help them create and distribute their work. The ready availability of production software and access to the Internet now serve those needs.

Of course, the conglomerates still have power – they have lots of politicians in their pockets, and they’re trying to enact laws to stave off their inevitable obsolescence. A couple of things to pay attention to in the political arena are the federal “pirate” laws, that would make downloading and distributing copyrighted material a federal offense, and the current debate over ISPs being allowed to limit bandwidth allocation to P2P file sharing services.

Show your support for the file sharing revolution and go download Ghosts I from The Pirate Bay – I’ve been listening to it as I’ve been typing, and it’s a solid bit of electronica. If you want II-IV, you may have to wait awhile as NIN had to temporarily disable the download site due to overwhelming amounts of traffic, but based on what I’ve heard so far it’ll be worth the wait (and $5).

[UPDATE: I finally was able to download Ghosts I-IV in its entirety. It's basically an electronic/instrumental concept album with each track corresponding to an image. I've been a fan of NIN for awhile, but this is some amazing work right here!]