On May 20, V2_ (“Institute for the Unstable Media”, based in Rotterdam) hosts another Test_Lab event. The Test_Lab series has been a unique opportunity to look into development trajectory of media artists as well as discussing them in an open setting.
Previous editions I have visited (‘Tools for Propaganda‘ and ‘Intimate Interfaces‘) have proven to be well-organized and often quite exciting. With opening talks from Franco Berardi and Alessandro Ludovico and presentations of installations, devices or applications that range from ever-evolving prototypes like Tele_Trust (Studio Roosegaarde and Maartje Dijkstra) or The Advertiser (Damian Stewart) to well-rounded artworks like World Skin (Maurice Benayoun) – although almost every project is experimental in some sense – the events are interesting in both a theoretical as a pragmatic view.
A screen is a powerful medium in an artist’s hands, and public space is an appealing domain for encounters between an artist and his or her audience. Urban screens can therefore be seen as an ideal tool for artistic public interventions as well as an exciting new exhibition format. Despite an ongoing increase in the number of digital urban screens in metropolitan spaces, their potential for artistic intervention and exhibition is however only seldom exploited. Not only do the commercial motives behind many urban screens compete with their artistic potential, when artists do get a chance to use them as a platform, the medium itself often appears to fall short of its promises. Some artists nowadays even reject the urban screen as an artistic medium and decide to go guerrilla, treating any part of the city surface as a potential projection screen. What does this say about the urban screen’s artistic agenda? Will artists end up merely designing urban screen savers, or can a thorough look at the artists’ current demands contribute to defining a stronger artistic agenda for the urban screen, thereby ‘saving’ the urban screen as an artistic medium?
Rather than debating the medium’s hypothetical possibilities, Test_Lab: Urban Screen Savers will critically reflect on the urban screen as an artistic medium on the basis of live demonstrations. Which shortcomings of the urban screen can be distilled from present-day urban hacker culture? How do artists that make use of urban screens cope with our media-dense urban environments? And which topics do these artists aspire to address through urban screenings? As is customary at V2_’s Test_Lab, the audience will form a hands-on critical test panel for the demonstrated artworks.
As mentioned in the earlier post about the Bonobo Band gigs, I’m admittedly a fanboy of the hip-hop / electronic music label Ninja Tune, founded by the sampling pioneers Coldcut. While I’m not familiar with the entire catalogue and also dislike a few of the contracted artists, the label has released a lot of triple A records over the years.
This year, the label also happens to exist for twenty years, which is celebrated with a series of gigs, luxury box-sets and yes, giveaways like downloadable tracks of their first 12″ release (more to be announced)! Because of their anniversary, I decided to compile a list of 20 albums and 20 tracks that have personal nostalgic (although many of the albums still sound contemporary) or emotional value.
Last Monday I had the chance to attend at the sixth edition of the immensely popular event called This Happened, held at the HKU (Utrecht’s art academy) theatre. With the registations being closed within merely 58 (!) seconds you’d figure that there would be some quality keynotes to be held. And actually, there were some good ones.
Drumroll anyone?
First up, the co-creators Mijn naam is Haas (a pun that’s translated as ‘My name is Hare’) presented their findings and future plan around their graduating project that they continued to refine after their study. The main concept consists of an interactive learning-tool that helps toddlers train their language-skills. Especially the product’s artwork is outstanding, also their hands-on experience with fine-tuning of the product resulted in some valuable insights concerning the interaction between the software and the target group.
Thereafter, Matt Cottam (from Tellart) elaborated on his design study, entitled Wooden Logic, in which he mixed physical computing, affective computing, and experimented with different organic shapes and materials. The presentation was followed up by Sebastiaan de With, who developed an e-reader application for the iPhone that was visually appealing and used clever user interface design. The project was nice executed in both form and functionality, but not exactly mind-blowing. (Anyhow, for more extensive writing on these previous speakers I’d like to refer to Iskander Smit’s report).
The last presenter, Keez Duyves from the PIPS:lab collective, presented his experience with the music performances the lab developed. With their show called Archie and the Bees (a geeky reference to the RGB color-pallet), each musician would wear a solid colored suit (red, green or blue). Each suit would correspond with a certain sound sample (snare-, bass-drum or hi-hat), subsequently the samples triggered when a rotating marker ‘touched’ a body-part (or a colored object). With both the performer’s bodies projected on the ceiling as an interface, they were able to adept to the movements of their fellow musicians and thus engage in a generative music performance.
At a certain point in the show, the public would also be involved by pointing a webcam at them (again, the rotating marker recognized color and brightness) which would add another layer of generative sound. Additionally the artists would use ‘prototypical instruments’ to improvise upon the created loops. The instruments themselves also seem arbitrarily controlled and by doing so extend the concept of chance electronics.
Anyway, here’s some footage of the refined version (the original installation was created in 2009).
(Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem the show will be re-launched anytime soon. In the meantime: check their agenda for upcoming shows).
Overall, the keynotes were quite inspirational while they discussed interaction design from different angles. Personally, I found Tellart’s Wooden Logic and PIPS:lab’s Archie and the Bees projects to be more appealing due to their conceptual nature and theoretical approach, opposed to the work that relies more on conventional design methods.
Hiya, again it’s been a while again. I just decided turn this blog towards a bit more informal one, starting with an announcement of upcoming gigs of Bonobo. Being one of the long-runners on the Ninja Tune label, I’ve been following him (and well, the entire label) for years now and adore most of his work. From the remixed tracks (like those of Four Tet and Quantic) to the collaborations with vocalist Bajka (on the Days to Come album). I find it to be an artist that constantly reinvents himself while staying true to the desolate yet atmospheric sounds.
The Bonobo Band will fill the stage at the Melkweg (May 11th), and to Tivoli (May 17th), there are still tickets for both gigs!
Drumroll: Here’s the Bonobo Band performing Flying Lotus’ Tea Leaf Dancers.
This post below was previously posted on the Masters of Media Research Blog. Note that the keynote brought together many of the inquiries done by boyd. So, if you’re familiar with her work, this won’t be groundbreaking. (I still had a blast though).
Last week I had the chance to attend at a symposium held at the Tilburg Institute for Law, Technology and Society (TILT) entitled as ‘Privacy and Social Network Sites’. The keynote speaker of the day would be danah boyd, who has worked in many think tanks in the past (going way back to Friendster) and currently works at Microsoft’s research department.
Her presentation was split up in five sections: youth practices, networked publics, visibility, privacy and publicity. In the first section there was a focus on how it came to be that youngster felt so attracted to online social networks. One of boyd’s theories about this large-scale migration was ascribed to the teenagers being both pulled toward the public spaces (in example shopping malls and cinemas) while at the same time obstructed from these spaces due to possibilities of shoplifting and the public discomforts of hanging groups. Together with an increasingly feeling of insecurity at the parent’s accounts (partly imposed by media and governments), they saw no other choice than to keep their offspring indoors. Thus hanging out simply ends up happening in Social Media.
According to boyd, hanging out in these (virtual) environments is just as crucial as it’s ever been, as it’s a social process of creating meaning of the world around you, and a way to learn about the social world. While the original network sites has been developed for goals other than just ‘meeting up’ (namely either for business networking or for dating), youngsters have developed their practices to create their own social space. What’s noticeable in their use, living double-lives and maintaining invisibility for unwanted audiences has been at times very successful (for example by by setting their age to 100).
In the second section, networked publics, boyd started out by outlining some of the intrinsic characteristics of digital networks. These aspects range from persistence (every expression is automatically recorded and archived), searchability (disclosed content can easily reach large publics through networks), scalability (blogs can be infinitely be indexed even if they’re not actually read) and invisible audiences (not all audiences might be visible or co-present at the moment of posting). According to boyd, these specifics together would’ve cause the social networks to represent a collapsed context since “the lack of spatial, social and temporal boundaries makes it difficult to maintain distinct social contexts”. Eventually, the coming of these fundamental different contexts would also demand a constant adjustment in our behavior.
In the next section, visibility, boyd elaborated on many case studies in which teenagers struggled with their double-lives. One of the named examples was a girl who posted the outcome of a quiz called ‘What drug are you?’, after her father was outraged after finding his daughter being involved in such practices. Fortunately, the conversation that followed turned up to be a valuable one after the daughter explained to him what it meant to participate in such a quiz in a social environment. In another example, a student (coming from Compton) was rejected from a scholarship after the board found his MySpace which was filled with hip-hop and gangster references. In the latter case the board had probably no idea that youngsters in suburbs like Compton have practically no other choice than to adopt these street culture to simply survive.
Thereafter privacy was covered that boyd defined as “control over how information flows”, in social networks this would also mean conveying texts how it is meant, to the audiences it was meant for. In most cases, this privacy is not always just about hiding; the mantra of ’security through obscurity’ is maybe not a weird start since people seek an audience all the time. Although teenagers acknowledge that their content might be watched by undesirable audiences, the ones that they most fear are the ones with ‘real’ power over them, such as their parents or teachers.
boyd continued that we often have certain expectations of the system’s architecture concerning privacy, and overlook for example the changes terms of use that were recently imposed by FaceBook that privileged publicity by default. In many cases though, people weigh their possible gains and losses while exposing themselves online. In one case, a girl put up very exhibitionistic pictures of herself to become a model in the same way Tila Tequila did. Additionally teenagers rely very much on social norms, meaning that because it’s just out there, it’s not meant for anyone.
In the last section, of publicity, boyd compared two networks (Twitter and FaceBook) in terms of their intended publicity. While on Twitter, people often want to reach a larger audience, FaceBook users tend to prefer a network of people they know, build on mutual relationships. As with the Tila Tequila case: teenagers want to become celebrities, but in many cases overlook the possible social consequences of such a status, for example paparazzi. However, this doesn’t mean that on Twitter people want to bluntly reach the largest possible audience, but more often expand it to the level of “comfort with public”.
Concluding, many teenagers approach social networks as an opportunity to express themselves in disclosed online environments (‘disclosed’ as in amongst friends online), which doesn’t mean the content is meant for anyone. Consequently, parents’ fears of this publicity lies in the fact that they might encounter things they wouldn’t want to see (bullying for example). These gaps calls for education that goes beyond parents and youngsters, as anticipating to online behavior needs different approaches and insights. With the four intertwining areas that Lawrence Lessig introduced in ‘Code’ – namely market, law, social norms and architecture – we constantly need to reshape the role and place of policy in these networks, and try to understand the profound implications these technologies can have.
Last week I had the opportunity to attend at a symposium held at the Tilburg Institute for Law, Technology and Society (TILT) called ‘Privacy and Social Network Sites’. The keynote speaker of the day would be dr. danah boyd, who has joined many research groups in the past (‘way back’ to Friendster) and currently works at Microsoft’s Social Media research department. Much of her work as an ethnographer focusses on media use of American teenagers.
boyds keynote was divided in five sections, namely youth practices, networked publics, visibility, privacy and publicity. In the first section, boyd elaborated on how it came to be that youngster felt so attracted to online social networks. One of the driving forces behind this large-scale migration was ascribed to the fact that teenagers were both being pulled toward the commercialized public spaces (for example shopping malls and cinemas) while at the same time being obscured from these spaces due to the possibilities of shoplifting and the public discomforts of hanging groups. Together with an increasingly feeling of insecurity on the parent’s accounts (partly imposed by media and governments), they saw no other choice than to keep their offspring indoors. Thus hanging out simply ends up happening in Social Media.
According to boyd, hanging out in these (virtual) environments is just as crucial as it’s ever been, as it’s a social process of creating meaning of the world around you, and a way to learn about the social world. While the original network sites has been developed for goals other than just ‘meeting up’ (namely either for business networking or for dating), youngsters have developed their practices to create their own social space. What’s noticeable in their use, living double-lives and maintaining invisibility for unwanted audiences has been at times very successful (for example by by setting their age to 100).
In the second section, networked publics, boyd started out by outlining some of the intrinsic characteristics of digital networks. These aspects range from persistence (every expression is automatically recorded and archived), searchability (disclosed content can easily reach large publics through networks), scalability (blogs can be infinitely be indexed even if they’re not actually read) and invisible audiences (not all audiences might be visible or co-present at the moment of posting). According to boyd, these specifics together would’ve cause the social networks to represent a collapsed context since “the lack of spatial, social and temporal boundaries makes it difficult to maintain distinct social contexts”. Eventually, the coming of these fundamental different contexts would also demand a constant adjustment in our behavior.
In the next section, visibility, boyd elaborated on many case studies in which teenagers struggled with their double-lives. One of the named examples was a girl who posted the outcome of a quiz called ‘What drug are you?’, after her father was outraged after finding his daughter being involved in such practices. Fortunately, the conversation that followed turned up to be a valuable one after the daughter explained to him what it meant to participate in such a quiz in a social environment. In another example, a student (coming from Compton) was rejected from a scholarship after the board found his MySpace which was filled with hip-hop and gangster references. In the latter case the board had probably no idea that youngsters in suburbs like Compton have practically no other choice than to adopt these street culture to simply survive.
Thereafter privacy was covered, a term that boyd defined as “control over how information flows”, in social networks this would also mean conveying texts how it is meant, to the audiences it was meant for. In most cases, this privacy is not always just about hiding; the mantra of ’security through obscurity’ is maybe not a weird start since people seek an audience all the time. Although teenagers acknowledge that their content might be watched by undesirable audiences, the ones that they most fear are the ones with ‘real’ power over them, such as their parents or teachers.
boyd continued that we often have certain expectations of the system’s architecture concerning privacy, and overlook for example the changes terms of use that were recently imposed by FaceBook that privileged publicity by default. In many cases though, people weigh their possible gains and losses while exposing themselves online. In one case, a girl put up very exhibitionistic pictures of herself to become a model in the same way Tila Tequila did. Additionally teenagers rely very much on social norms, meaning that because it’s just out there, it’s not meant for anyone.
In the last section, of publicity, boyd compared two networks (Twitter and FaceBook) in terms of their intended publicity. While on Twitter, people often want to reach a larger audience, FaceBook users tend to prefer a network of people they know, build on mutual relationships. As with the Tila Tequila case: teenagers want to become celebrities, but in many cases overlook the possible social consequences of such a status, for example paparazzi. However, this doesn’t mean that on Twitter people want to bluntly reach the largest possible audience, but more often expand it to the level of “comfort with public”.
Concluding, many teenagers approach social networks as an opportunity to express themselves in disclosed online environments (‘disclosed’ as in amongst friends online), which doesn’t mean the content is meant for anyone. Consequently, parents’ fears of this publicity lies in the fact that they might encounter things they wouldn’t want to see (bullying for example). Noticing these gaps call for education that goes beyond just parents and youngsters, as anticipating to online behavior needs different approaches and insights. With the four intertwining areas that Lawrence Lessig introduced in ‘Code’ – namely market, law, social norms and architecture – we constantly need to reshape the role and place of policy in these networks, and try to understand the profound implications these technologies can have.
Hi all. It’s been an awful while since my last blogpost, so here’s a small update on what I’ve been working on lately. On March 18th, the last meeting of the New Media Master course Scopic Regimes of Virtuality took place, in these meetings topics like ‘the other Self’, Augmented Reality, virtual time and space and virtual communities were covered, all with great readings like those of Brian Massumi, Thomas Boellstorff, Wendy Chung and Slavoj Zizek. Every week, each group of students had to propose the readings that’d fit within their chosen subject (my group chose ‘virtual communities and ethics’), unfortunately this subsequently leaded to an inconsistent bibliography in terms its quality. (Although it seemed that the everyone was well aware of this afterwards, so the texts were maybe still.. productive in a way).
Anyhow, every week blogposts were submitted on the course blog (here are my contributions), and I might take time to repost them here, and probably rewrite them slightly.
As an end result of the course people could choose to write a paper (of ‘just’ five thousand words), or to initiate an art project (that of course also involves some of the topics around virtuality). I couldn’t resist to choose for the latter option although I didn’t have a clue of where to start with it for ages. However, in the last few weeks I’ve been able to outline concepts and fill my sketchbook with doodles. All I can say for now is that the project will emphasize on virtual identities (‘identity branding’) in a non-conventional environment, and explore the boundaries of non-visual interfaces.
Of course, there’s also still the Master thesis, which I’ll continue to work on in the coming few months (graduating is so close, yet so far..), and will update you on in a follow-up post.
The Dutch consumers union, the ‘Consumentenbond’, wants to reach new audiences. With their monthly magazine, readers can figure out which broom or coffee machine is the best buy, often leaving out impurities of production methods (well, not always). This time, noticed by a friend, they announced a debate to be held on Twitter. The topic would be Network Neutrality and people could instantly participate by using the hashtag#downloaddebat. At first sight it looked innocent, innovative, and maybe even useful. But when it actually took off, all kinds of flaws came to mind:
Why wasn’t there a proper overview of who would be participating in this debate? If anythings essential for being able to discuss it’s knowing your opposition and the positions of each participant.
Deriving from that: Where did all the representatives go? I didn’t notice any politician or entertainment industry spokesman contributing to the debate, why bother to have a discussion with just consumers? (Of course, consumers plea FOR Net Neutrality).
Why Twitter? It has so many inappropriate aspects in respect to a proper debate. Real dialogue is nearly impossible due to several factors: (1) asynchronous messaging (2) following behavior: every user’s timeline differs, unless everyone knows how to find the #downloaddebat timeline, and (3) moderation is undoable because of lack of orientation.
Also, why would it be a good idea to discuss by using limited amounts of words? Of course, aphorism could be considered a poetic format in which people could express themselves, but is it useful in a debate? I don’t want to sound as a nostalgist, but aren’t nuance and elaboration two key features that mainly come to their right in a traditional debate? Maybe by using the communication platform, the Consumentenbond thinks it’s okay to have debates through mere oneliners? Or maybe they just wanted to get an estimation of the opinions across Twitter? (Why entitling it a ‘debate’ then?). It leaves me wondering what the initial intentions were with the discussion, and why Twitter would be considered a suitable platform for it.
Last Wednesday I attended at the discussion night organized by Xi-Online (the student magazine of Media Studies) and Bashers (a collective of bloggers that aim to write about the cultural aspects of videogames). The discussion panel consisted of Jan Meijroos (freelance game journalist), Jurrie Hobers (vicepresident sales & marketing at Codemasters), David Nieborg (game researcher at the UvA and freelance game journalist) and was moderated by Niels ‘t Hooft (game journalist and writer). The main subject would be in what’s the position the today’s game journalism, how the journalist considered as independent and how revenues are being made.
Througout the debate, the audience frequently provided the needed criticism. The smaller game sites (I can’t even recall them..) as well as the larger ones (i.e Gamekings) were represented. Although it was interesting to hear so many different experiences, there also appeared to be fragmented interests concerning game journalism. Some Web sites of the smaller scale segment have the reputation of proudly admitting that they bluntly copy press articles (sometimes even literally), sites like Bashers tend to look outside (or around) of those PR hypes.
Moreover, the debate sometimes swiftly shifted from several definitions of the game journalist. As Blammo founder, Boris van de Ven, replied on Twitter a ‘reviewer’ is in no way comparable with a ‘journalist’. Although I don’t necessarily agree with that (doesn’t every preview report include some kind of qualifying descriptions?), it is essential to specify these terms in such a debate.
Also one of the repeatedly raised arguments was that in-depth writing should be considered of more cultural relevance than the ‘overdone’ reviews. In general, I think there’s no proper reason to dismiss game reviews (or in that case, any kind of review) as abundant or inferior. As mentioned in the debate, it still remains the starting-point for a lot of consumers, and obviously they’re still popular in most game-magazines. This being said, it should rather be the discussion what proper game critique should consist of (why is a game significant? What kind of authority should the reviewer present?). All these minor aspects of current game journalism were categorized by David as ’short-term discussions’, being less important than the overall potential of the field. But essentially, I think that these minor aspects altogether show us what is to be considered as quality in these writings, and how to shape the field any further.
Another discussion was if there’s a market for the more extensive writings that focus for instance on smaller parts of gaming culture or software studies that discuss games. According to David, there’s a potential for the current media and journalism scholars, that increasingly move to the field of gaming. Unfortunately, this argument was fought by economical objections (to survive as a blog, you have to conform to a certain publish rate), and lack of ‘proof of concept’.
Lastly, it appeared that succes of game-journalism would be ascribed to different factors, as some Web sites claim that PR determined news items is viable because their public reach and sufficient bannering revenues. This point makes the discussion a bit awkward. First and foremost because the field is clearly scattered in terms of intentions and ambitions, and secondly, because the different platforms were mixed up (magazines, newspaper, blogs) without taking in consideration their fundamental characteristics. For instance, isn’t it so that an extremely active news-site like Kotaku is incommensurable by definition with traditional ways of publishing? Here, the different medium allows different approaches.
In conclusion, the debate left some crucial questions unanswered. According to David, the journalistic field struggles with structural problems (the stereotypical isolement, dependency on game-producers et cetera). However, it would still have a greater potential with, for example, reporting from a broader viewpoint and reaching a more myriad audience. Personally, the most prominent questions are what kind of content journalists should produce and what qualities it should hold? More importantly, what other ambitions can be formulated coming from the writers themselves instead of what has been accepted by (or sold to) older audiences.
Whenever there’s something happening in the Massive-Multiplayer Online RPG field, I find myself searching for what all the fuzz is about. This time it was with Dungeons & Dragons Online (DDO). In this case, especially as D&D newbie, it is again very hard to find the significances. But hey, I take it as a challenge.
Not very suprisingly, the realm doesn’t depart much from the D&D conventions, which is nothing that you haven’t seen before. It’s got Halflings, Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Warforged and Drows (a fancy name for dark elves) to choose from, and offers the straight-forward class archetypes ranging from different spellcasters, melee and rogues (although mixing class skills is also allowed, as with Runes of Magic). You start off as the only of survivor of a shipwreck, from this point the usual questing and raiding starts.
What sets DDO apart from other MMO’s when it comes to gameplay is the direct control over a character. While the control scheme itself is quite similar to other third person games, it plays a lot more like a hack ‘n slash game in contrast to the static MMO’s in which you sequentially activate skills while standing still. In order to attack your foe, you got to have your target in your crosshair, and sweep your weapon with one mouse-click. This demands more of an active play, which also makes PvP’ing a more hectic experience. (The aiming mechanism is most welcome, but not all revolutionary, it’s been implemented earlier in e.g The Chronicles of Spellborn.)
Tragically enough, besides the controls it’s the common MMO stuff including the usual points and levelling systems. I’m seriously beginning to wonder if these games are being developed for people OTHER then those who gave up on World of Warcraft to look for something fresh (although probably they won’t find much satisfaction here). The world feels bland and stitched together by numberous dungeons (there are plenty of those), that all feel similarly generic. My biggest problem with DDO would be that besides questing, there’s no profound neccesity that people will actually interact with each other. Most likely, you’ll merely stumble upon other players in front of some of the harder dungeon for the sheer purpose of raiding.
Yet, I’m still waiting for an greater dynamic in which player skills and actions complement each other (and not just in the form of archetypes) and where gameplay isn’t split up in small instances that are deliberately isolated from the world as a whole. Warhammer Online already implemented scenario’s that were triggered when groups of players coincidently run into each other to participate in an instant quest. Ultimately, this group mechanic alone did not lead to a more balanced world in stead of a ego network, but it was a starting point.
The MMO genre, in my opinion, has been stuck in an long-lasting identity crisis of not being able to combine group dynamic and individual character-development. Why not ignore all of the artificial point systems and focus on gameplay, player interaction or, for instance, the design of possible hypernarratives that involve the worlds as a whole? And if the latter idea seems too big to implement, why not scale the whole project down and make it at least more comprehensively balanced? DDO in that way feels like an aged iteration that constantly raises the feeling of lack of relevance while playing.
A while ago, when hanging out at my place with a few friends, we we’re checking out the different games I had download on my Playstation 3. As I eagerly demonstrated them one by one, I didn’t really succeed at enthusing Battlefield 1943 (BF1943) for what I think it is: a blend between an arcade shooting game and, much less, a war simulation. When one friend stated that he a priori disapproves any shooter with a historical settings, I began to wonder how this game deals between the fantasy and the factual.
For those who don’t know the concept: In BF1943 (which was re-released for the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 online stores), you play as the United States Marine Corps (USMC) or as the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN). There’s only one gametype, conquest, in which you capture checkpoints (flags) and defend them with your team. The matches are held in one of three Pacific locales.
Now, the first and foremost aspect to take in consideration when discussing BF1943 is how much it simulates, or rather the historical accuracy. It must be said that the game doesn’t try hard on outlining the actual war between the two nations, there’s no political or diplomatical backdrop, no motivation, to introduce what you’re actually playing for. The loading screens are mostly filled with gameplay tips, instead of a clear description of the historical situations. Avoiding these burdensome topics raises a crucial question: does it do so for promoting war without noting the obscurities of WWII, or is there another possible consideration? I’ll come back to this question later.
The second aspect would be how much biased the game is. For instance, you could look at the team balancing. I would say that the game doesn’t accept much preference of one team over another. On what side you play is completely random, and the classes and strenghts are evenly balanced. Here, the simulation part is again mainly non-existent. Of course, the warcries and looks of the avatars are modelled to the two opposed nationalities, but this could be defended from a gamedesign standpoint; you need the opposed team to look different to keep the play effective. Sociologically, this is completely banal argumentation, and it reaches to the most basic objections about warfare. But maybe there’s some comfort in the final game aspect.
Thirtly, I would like to discuss the self critique in war-based shooters. As there’s a great array of ludic shooters like Timesplitters, Team Fortress, Battlefield Heroes, Duke Nukem, or even Quake, they all take the morbid subjects and transform them into a cultural products. As with Battlefield Heroes (a free-to-play spinoff of the original Battlefield iterations), the opposing teams are based upon the Nazi’s (National Army) versus the Brittish forces (Royal Army), presenting itself as a colourful parody instead of a gore warsimulator. I think that a large segment of today’s First Person Shooters (FPS’s), have a sound self-awareness when combining (real) violence with fantasy and gameplay conventions (exceptionally, this is relation is more skewed with i.e America’s Army).
Beyond these points, it’s probably a good thing to stay alert on how biased wargames are presented in modern times, and what the actual ‘play’ consists of. I also think there’s a great diversity in the depiction of conflictual events that can be attributed by different factors like consequence (as a moral tool), team balance or the overall depiction and semiotics of the game. In this perspective, there’s a wide grey area in which violence and play blend together in sometimes controverse or otherwise creative ways. After all, I think BF1943 in its core, is enough of a abstracted shooter to enjoy as a game, rather then one to argue the controversy of.
(Please don’t hestitate to start a discussion; I just wrote some quick thoughts down )
I'm a New Media MA student at the University of Amsterdam, carry a bachelor degree on Communication and Media Management, do design-work and am known as a notoire media junkie.
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