Ludopolitics Videogames against Control Liam Mitchell Winchester, UK Washington, USA First published by Zero Books, 2018 Zero Books is an imprint of John Hunt Publishing Ltd., No. 3 East St., Alresford, Hampshire S024 9EE, UK [email protected] www.johnhuntpublishing.com www. ze ro - boo ks. n et For distributor details and how to order please visit the 'Ordering1 section on our website. Text copyright: Liam Mitchell 2017 ISBN: 978 1 78535 488 5 978 1 78535 489 2 (ebook) Library of Congress Control Number: 2018932660 All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, ro part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publishers. The rights of Liam Mitchell as author have been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. 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Contents Preface 1 Introduction: Gaming Time 4 The Politics of Play 6 The Eternal Return of the Game 11 Technology and Time 12 The Idle Ideal 18 Ludopolitics 20 Chapter One: Controlling the Political 26 Gamer Theory as Media Theory 33 Clockwork Worlds 38 Ontotheology 43 Play 52 Chapter Two: Design against Control 55 Open Worlds: Fallout 3 59 Immersion: BioShock and Spec Ops: The Line 64 Resentment: Braid 83 Exhaustion: Undertale 97 Chapter Three: Bastion 113 Caelondia 116 The Eternal Return of the Same 119 Safe States 122 Save States 127 The Twilight of the Idols 131 Evacuation, Not Escape 137 Chapter Four: Play against Control 139 V\a\ iuu\ C'ountorplay 142 ^i|tmlrunning Super Mario Bros. 146 1 Ihulcrinlc 153 Mylliningi/in^* 1 wiUh Plays Pokemon 164 11tiling Time 172 C'hrtplor live: rok^mon Plays Twitch 175 l u"l-八糾InU SpmJmmiing 177 TASHol 184 Aihilrnry Code Hximtion 188 C ilih h 193 Total Control 200 C'onsnli's iiml Computers 209 Com Ins ion: Memento Mori 214 Knd notes 219 Bibliography 298 Ludography 326 Index 330 Preface What can videogames tell us about the politics of contemporary technoculture, and how are designers and players responding to its impositions? To what extent do the technical and aesthetic features of videogames index our assumptions about the world, or about what exists and what is denied the status of existence? And how can we use games to identify and shift those assump­ tions? This book responds to these questions. Through close read­ ings of both the design and play of videogames, Ludopolitics of­ fers a critique of one of the defining features of modern tech- nology: the fantasy of control. Videogames promise players the opportunity to map and master worlds; they offer closed sys­ tems that are perfect and perfectible, in principle if not in prac­ tice; and although they provide players with a means of escape from a world that can be unpredictable and unjust, they aren't only escapism. The numerical, rule-bound, and goal-oriented form of the videogame corresponds, albeit imperfectly, to the form of other digital media, expressing assumptions about both the technological world and the world as such. As an index of our assumptions about what the world /s, vid­ eogames also suggest what we feel the world shoulii be. I hoy express the desire to see it changed. We can therefore look U) the dominant ways that videogames are designed and played in order to identify the ways in which contemporary cultural and political phenomena coalesce around the pursuit and valoriza­ tion of technological control. At the same time, we can look to different forms of design and play for a different sort of politics. It wouldn't be fair to call these other modes of gaming marginal, subversive, or even alternative, both because many of them are so commonplace and because the opposition between dominant and alternative im- l Ludopolitics plies the possibility of an escape. The technological and onto­ logical form of power that this book examines - a form in which "politics" doesn't mean the violent coercion that we normally associate with the term, but rather entails the definition, delim­ itation, and disclosure of existence - calls for an aesthetic re­ sponse that doesn't resort to an outside. This is a response, con- veniently enough, that can already be found in contemporary, critical practices of videogame design and play. Designers craft power fantasies to satisfy players' desires for control, but they also make games that leave players feeling impotent, guilty, or confused - in a good way. Likewise, players enjoy the sensation of power that the seamless integration into a digital system can deliver, but they derive just as much pleasure from exploring and repurposing those very systems - even if that pleasure is of a different sort. Fun and critique come in varied but similar shades, and they can be used to color within the lines just as compellingly as without. Because there are more than enough popular and academic commentaries dissecting the problematic politics of many vid­ eogames and much of game culture, and because critical forms of design and play are as beautiful, complicated, and delightful as they are underappreciated, Ludopolitics turns to them instead. Moreover, rather than focusing on design and play practices that pose explicit criticisms of the unconscious pursuit of control, Lu­ dopolitics highlights examples that work indirectly, addressing mainstream audiences in the process. Games like Spec Ops: The Line, Braid, Under tale, and Bastion are at once critical and a whole lot of fun, and play practices like speedrunning, theorycrafting, and myth-making are no longer strictly peripheral hobbies, if they ever were. As a theoretically-minded exploration of the politics of a technocultural form, Ludopolitics makes reference to political theory, media theory, and game studies. It is not, however, a purely academic text. The first chapter is a dense and sometimes 2 Preface philosophical articulation of the problem of control that the fol­ lowing chapters critique through cultural objects and practices: the second and third chapters focus on game design, and the fourth and fifth on play. While the book is therefore intended to be read from start to finish, readers who find themselves more interested in games than theory should feel free to skip Chapter One. Any book, like any cultural object, is an expression of the au­ thor's understanding of the world and a working-out and solid­ ifying of what that understanding is. As the product of several years of thinking about videogames and of many more years of playing them7 Ludopolitics is no exception. I am indebted to many colleagues, friends, and gamers for their help in the com­ position of this book and the framing of the problematic that guides it: to the editors at Zero Books, for the opportunity to write between the popular and the academic; to Loading...The Journal of the Canadian Game Studies Association, where I initially published a shorter version of Chapter Three; to the Department of Cultural Studies at Trent University, the Department of Po­ litical Science at the University of Victoria, and the Canadian Game Studies Association, for years of institutional support; to Keith Barron, Michael Epp, Hugh Hodges, Jeremy Leipert, Brad Pejril, Daniel Perry, and all of the other friends with whom Tvi* gathered around a table over the years; to Cole Armitage, Martn Bashovski, Bradley Bryan, Suzanne de Castell, David Cecchot- to, Allan Cecil, Dwayne Collins, Kelly Egan, Jennifer Jenson, James Kerr, Arthur Kroker, Gary Larsen, Matthew Lilko, Paul Manning, Michael Morse, Karleen Pendleton-Jimenez, Danielle Taschereau-Mamers, Joshua Noiseux, and Liam Cole Young, for conversation, editorial labor, and inspiration. Above all, I wish to express my gratitude for Jeanette Parker, without whom this book would not exist, and for Maeve, who plays. 3 Ludopolitics Introduction: Gaming Time In the fall of 2014, game developer Almost Human released end o/Gnmrocfc 2. As a grid-based, fantasy-themed action-role­ playing game in the vein of classic dungeon crawlers like 〇/ the Beholder, Grimrock 2 appealed to me for a number of reasons: it presented satisfying puzzles, fun exploration, and challenging combat, and it scratched a nostalgic itch that I, as a child of the 1980s growing up with a personal computer, knew that I had. I was in my third year of university teaching at the time, and I couldn't wait for the semester to end so that I could devote a week to the game. Christmas came and went, and, with my partner away for two weeks visiting family, I devoted the week before New Year to the game. I beat it within four or five days of fairly continuous play, but I knew, by the end, that my first playthrough had left something to be desired. My characters could have been stron­ ger if Td balanced their attributes differently; I could have outfit­ ted them with better and more interesting equipment; my party could have been improved by choosing different characters en­ tirely. I went online to read other players' strategies and creat­ ed a second, improved party. Armed with my knowledge of the now-demystified Island of Nex, I ran through hard mode with a satisfying efficiency, defeating the Island Master and complet­ ing the game's optional ending. "So you’re done with it now, right?" My partner was on the phone. "I mean, classes are starting soon, and I’ll be back in just a few days…〃 Of course I was done with it. I wasn’t going to rush back into teaching, but I was going to turn my attention to another new game, Supergiant's Transistor - something that I would be "reading," something that would be "serious” and "important” and contribute to my "work.〃 "Good, she said. "Hey, how’s that turkey soup you made?” 4