Second Life Is Stupid

OK, so I know this isn’t very new, but I had to post it up here. I feel like everything I could say about Second Life is pretty well encapsulated in this video. What I still don’t understand, though, is why so many academics get so excited about it, when it’s pretty much just them and various types of lonely sexual deviants on there. It’s like they’re trying to turn this thing that has just about been proven to not be culturally viable (the average user only ever logged in for 12 minutes and never logged back in) into something to study when there are plenty of other useful things to study. And now the government is involved, so it’s just going to become an even bigger clusterfuck.

from secondlife.reuters.c posted with vodpod

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.

So I Was Meditating Outside of this Quaint Little Japanese-Style House, When Suddenly It All Made Sense!

…oh, and did I mention I was naked? And smoking a blunt the size of my head? (Image censored by the Committee for Family Values – click for NSFW version)

OK… you got me. I didn’t really do any of that – not in the physical world at least. All of those experiences were limited to my brief excursion (assigned by my New Media Theory class) into Second Life under the alias “Nokondi Mumfuzz.”

First, a technical criticism. Even though I was running the game on a fairly fast computer with plenty of memory, it still lagged like crazy. If I was in a crowded area, I would often have to wait for a minute or two before objects and people started to appear.

So, aside from technical difficulties, how did I spend my time in Second Life? Trying as hard as I could to get kicked out, of course! Almost as soon as I started exploring, a helpful fellow traveler sent me a message telling me that I was ugly, and that everyone would think I was ugly until I got some better clothes. With that thoughtful advice in mind, I began browsing for clothing options. I ended up finding “Neva’s XXX Emporium, freebies, clothing store, and orgy room” listed under clothing sales (after I turned off the adult filter, of course). It sounded interesting, so I decided to teleport there. Upon arrival, I quickly found the “freebies” area, where I outfitted myself with a killer dragon tattoo, various types of smoking paraphernalia, some “designer” clothes, and a penis. Rather than stick around to watch hordes of lonely people act out their fanatasies online, I decided to head back out to the more kosher areas of Second Life, with my newfound goodies in tow.

The first problem I encountered was learning how to wear the new things I had purchased. The first few times I attempted to do this, I ended up with a large box sticking out of my head! Finally, another helpful soul approached me and said “U gotta unpack it dumass [sic].” After figuring out how to do that, I was finally able to attach my penis, start smoking my blunt, and begin harassing people.

Which brings us back to the beginning of my story… So there I am: I’ve grown tired of pissing off random strangers. I’ve become weary of this “second life.” I take up my meditation pose (another “freebie” from Neva’s XXX Emporium) and sit for awhile to ponder the meaning of Second Life. That’s when it hit me: there is no essential meaning to this virtual world! It’s all what you make of it. You can be helpful, like the two kind strangers who reminded me of how ugly and stupid I was in the hopes that I would use their comments as impetus to better myself (I’m sure that if there was such a thing as Second Life reincarnation, they’d be coming back as cows!); you can be a total douchebag like me and waste an hour trying to offend people; or (I suppose) you could mind your own business, have a little fun, maybe meet some people… I don’t know… do what you do in your first life… or something different. It’s your call.

The second virtual world I visited for this week’s assignment was LambdaMOO, a fully text-based virtual world (referred to as a MUD, or “multi-user dungeon”). I found LambdaMOO to be a much more compelling world than Second Life, partially due to the fact that there were no technology issues. The text told me what to imagine, and I imagined it (i.e. “You are in a sewer surrounded by bugs and stinking refuse. There is an exit to the north”). Interacting with people in this world was interesting too. I had a brief chat with someone named Doom-something-or-other-I-can’t-rememer. I also gave a girl named Melki a severed arm that I found in a farm house. All of this was done by entering text commands into the interface.

After exploring for awhile, shortly before I decided to end my excursion into LambdaMOO, I read this quote on a sewer wall:

“It is said – it was a man from the far North who told me – it is said that, in certain parts of Scandinavia, there are cities within cities, just as there are circles within circles, existent yet invisible. And those cities are inhabited by creatures more terrible than imagintion can create; man-shaped but man-devouring, as black and silent as the night they prowl in.”