Markov Chain Madness

I must warn you - The following text is generated by a Markov chain. Inspired by Mr Quixoric Engineer on Twitter I decided to have a little play around with some Markov generated text, using my paper on virtual reality and the FPS as the input text. Needless to say, the results were stunning. Better than anything I could have written

In the virtual from raw ingredients often bringing conventions and game means stepping into a phrase, everything about the largest city and this peculiarity of the map’ and those far away hills I made my own experience. Finally, I believe there is a large body of wanderlust through a mountain ranges – with his main argument down into a picture of wanderlust through the player, relating a taxonomy of a children’s game Oblivion is Alchemy, which they may employ an unreal image to the massive draw distance – with ancient ruins and reaction. At a reading for engaging with possibility.

I really like the bit where it says "Oblivion is Alchemy". Of COURSE! Why didn't I think of that? It makes so much sense now. So there you have it. Play with Markov chain generative text here. After my initial experiments, the markov generator came up with this last piece of inspired literature, which makes a kind of scary sense.

In this research paper aimed at discussing some of the group ‘Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America’ spoke to the author of the issues raised in the Baudrillardian sense, that the developers chose to employ an invisible barrier as their means of keeping the game that I wish to explore the world, I began to enacting the role playing game into a world in which to move about and interact with the same topics in greater depth. One addition to the FPS solely owns the ‘first person perspective’ videogames have not been an independently delineated genre – rather existing simply as a popular first person viewpoint gameplay conventions and tropes set in place by a desire to explore the world, I experience a heightened level of ‘simulation fever’ because, as just mentioned, I have been problems for the player. For example, not having the time to fill in the case in most, if not all games, and is clearly room for telling stories in other places however there was one small barrier between me and those far away hills of promise, and it was later released as a focus on state-of-the-art graphics with other role playing game, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. I then made a small assertion that virtual comes from the surface, stay in touch with reality” . Ryan says

…the meaning of virtual ice climbing I was rather excited. I had, after all, spent the last several minutes on the DVD to store the extra environment or not having enough space on the other the virtual as fake and the other side.

When I finally did reach a section of the game as encouraging the practice of stopping to smell the flowers.

A different aspect of the many ‘skills’ that a play can employ within

Think I could get away with Markov chaining my whole Literature Review? Feel free to link me some of your excellent finds in the comments.

An extract from my recent paper on VR and the 'first person perspective' videogame

I've been thinking about (and doing a bit of select reading of) the concept of 'New Games Journalism', which Kieron Gillen outlined in his 'New Games Journalism Manifesto'. The point that I thought was most important, was this:

New Games Journalism... argues that the worth of a videogame lies not in the game, but in the gamer. What a gamer feels and thinks as this alien construct takes over all their sensory inputs is what’s interesting here, not just the mechanics of how it got there...

This makes us Travel Journalists to Imaginary places. Our job is to describe what it’s like to visit a place that doesn’t exist outside of the gamer’s head...The thing with travel journalism or reportage is that it’s interesting even if you have absolutely no inclination of going there.

The idea of dealing with the game and talking about it subjectively, as embodied, is extremely powerful, to my mind. And with this though, I wanted to share with my handful of readers, an extract from my own research discussion paper which will undoubtedly be somewhat adapted into a section of my thesis. I'll hopefully put the paper up in full in a few weeks, but until then, here's a little bit of my own attempt at injecting the aesthetic of 'New Games Journalism' into a bit of academic writing.

Any resemblance to Jim Rossignol's recent post on Rock, Paper, Shotgun from last week is purely coincidence. I started writing the paper only a few days before Jim wrote his and when he beat me to the punch, I was kinda miffed. But hey, it means I must be on the right track if someone as distinguished and insightful as Jim is talking about it.

________________________________________________________________

Oblivion, belonging loosely to the category of open world or sandbox type games, allows the player great freedom for exploration. At almost any point the player can leave the main narrative path and explore the world to discover and engage with its inhabitants, or simply venture into the countryside for its own sake. The game world stretches for many miles, across many different environments and is populated to varying degrees with ancient ruins and secluded settlements. The ability to go ‘off the beaten track’ is inscribed within the games rules, and is clearly accommodated for, even expected. For example, one of the many ‘skills’ that a play can employ within the game is Alchemy, which involves the brewing of potions from raw ingredients often gathered from the wild. At its most abstracted level, the game can be seen as rewarding players for exploring and discovering these useful reagents through the ability to brew useful, even potentially life saving potions. Somewhat humorously, the possibility is open to reading the game as encouraging the practice of stopping to smell the flowers.

A different aspect of the game that I wish to relate and demonstrate the power of procedural rhetoric is best told through my own subjective experience and reaction. At a point roughly 20 to 30 hours into the game, I found myself at a location called Cloud Ruler Temple high up in the Jerall Mountains. To the south of the temple is visible the towering spire at the heart of Imperial City, the largest city and one of the central places within which much of the game takes place. Behind the temple and to the north is a series of large, beautifully rendered snow covered mountains. There is no road leading up it and no perceptible reason to climb them. With no inclination towards advancing the plot and instead being possessed by a desire to explore the world, I began to enacting the role of ‘the explorer’ as classified in Richard Bartle’s taxonomy of MUD[1] game players[2]. Bartle describes four types of MUD players and their differing rationales for engaging with the game – in the case of the explorer, Bartle says

Players try to find out as much as they can about the virtual world. Although initially this means mapping its topology (i.e. exploring the MUD's breadth), later it advances to experimentation with its physics (i.e. exploring the MUD's depth).[3]

Knowing that my character possessed an exceptional level of the acrobatics skill, which directly modifies the height of a player’s jump, I attempted to climb the mountain through a combination of running and leaping. Thwarted by near vertical surfaces of snow and ice, I made my way across the face of the mountain (in my mind pretending that by rock climbing I was managing to traverse the similarly near-vertical cliff faces) to approach from the north, a much gentler gradient. At many points along the way I would get stuck, just below the crest of the mountain with the knowledge that it was just out of reach teasing me, making me want to get up there all the more. I would perhaps assert that this feeling in me was somewhat akin to that experienced by many serious mountain climbers who characterise their motivation for climbing mountains as doing so ‘just because it’s there’. Similarly, I wanted to climb to the peak of the Jerall Mountains because they were there; however, I also wanted to see what was on the other side.

When I finally did reach a section of the mountainside that permitted the kind of virtual ice climbing I was undertaking, I was rather excited. I had, after all, spent the last several minutes on the face of a mountain and had gone so far as to have crossed several sections of the map. The inability to reach the top so far had only made me more determined. I eventually reached what I believe to be the highest point in the game and the view was all the better for feeling as though I had actually accomplished something. Over the other side of the mountain ranges – and plainly within view of the massive draw distance[4] – was another set of mountain ranges, not snow covered like the ones I was standing on, but wooded and rolling and filled with possibility. Looking north-north-west, the woods continued on down to what appeared to be a large body of water, possibly a lake or the ocean (the ocean was certainly in that direction and reachable in other places) however there was one small barrier between me and those far away hills of promise, and it was a literal barrier. Upon reaching certain points of the world designated by the level designers as the ‘edge of the map’ and hence playable area, players encounter an impassable, invisible barrier and are told via onscreen lettering ‘You cannot go that way, turn back.’ I propose that, in effect, by not allowing the player to visit all the places one can see Oblivion, due in part to its emphasis on beautifully realistic visuals, heightens any feelings of wanderlust already present in the player, whether intentionally or not. The fact that the game intentionally sets itself up as a consistent world, as previously mentioned, and encourages exploration, only to so cruelly curb said exploration, is rhetorically strange, if not wilfully perverse.

---

[1] MUD stands for ‘Multi-User Dungeon’. These were generally text based online games, the precursors to modern ‘massively multiplayer online’ (MMO) games such as ‘World of Warcraft’ or ‘Everquest’. I am stretching his definition to include single player games that include large worlds much like MUD’s – such as Oblivion.

[2] Richard Bartle ‘Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds, Spades: Players Who Suit MUDs’ in Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman, eds. The Game Design Reader: A Rules of Play Anthology, (Mass.: MIT Press, 2006), pp.754-786

[3] Ibid.

[4] Draw Distance is the technical term for how far the game engine renders the environment into the distance. The fact that the draw distance is so long is a bi-product of the games previously mentioned appropriation of FPS tropes such as technology pushing graphics.

10 Free Indie Games to play while not working on your Thesis

So I've recently been invited to a facebook group started by a few people in my honours cohort called "If you write my Thesis for me I'll..." and we're encouraged to finish the thought. =D

So, in a similar veign, I've spent the morning compiling a list of 10 or so Indie games that are both 1) Free and 2) Awesome to aid in the noble task of procrastination. Presented in alphabetical order.

BARKLEY, SHUT UP AND JAM : GAIDEN

http://forums.selectbutton.net/viewtopic.php?t=11760

“The Great B-Ball Purge of 2041, a day so painful to some that it is referred to only as the "B-Ballnacht". Thousands upon thousands of the world's greatest ballers were massacred in a swath of violence and sports bigotry as the game was outlawed worldwide. The reason: the Chaos Dunk, a jam so powerful its mere existence threatens the balance of chaos and order. Among the few ballers and fans that survived the basketball genocide was Charles Barkley, the man capable of performing the "Verboten Jam"...”

CHALK

http://www.konjak.org/chalk.htm

“Chalk is all about drawing your way to all the glory! Draw lines across shapes to destroy them, turn back bullets at enemies and thwart huge boss enemies by bouncing stuff back in their faces!”

CLOUD

http://intihuatani.usc.edu/cloud/

“Cloud, also known as That Cloud Game or Cloud: The Game, is a third-person computer puzzle game, designed by Jenova Chen, based on weather and atmospheric aesthetics. The game features distinctive hand-drawn art, as well as non-violent, whimsical play inspired by… Katamari Damacy.[1]”

CORTEX COMMAND

http://www.datarealms.com/

“Cortex Command is a 2D base-building game in the vein of Worms, only with robots piloted by disembodied brains and giant bunked filled with electronic death. (Also the astoundingly detailed pixel-art and physics makes Worms look a bit like it was made during a sneezing accident.) It does require a bit of patience, however, so take your time and experiment.[2]”

DEATH WORM

http://gmc.yoyogames.com/index.php?showtopic=279075

Imagine if the 90’s B-movie ‘Tremors’ became a videogame. This is it (with less Kevin Bacon).

DINO RUN

http://www.pixeljam.com/dinorun/

“The basic premise is that you are a little dinosaur escaping extinction! Run, run (and jump), as fast as you can to the end of each level before the “Wall of Doom” engulfs you.[3]”

EXECUTION

http://gmc.yoyogames.com/index.php?showtopic=375097

“One of the major dilemmas with pushing games into more complex experiences and art forms is that games don’t necessarily generate any kind of consequences. Unlike shooting someone in real life, which leads to both moral and literal consequences, in a video game it either doesn’t matter or can be undone.[4]”

FL0W

http://intihuatani.usc.edu/cloud/flowing/

“The game involves the player guiding a tiny, aquatic worm-like microorganism through various depths of the ocean to consume other organisms and to evolve their organism as the player advances… Within the first two weeks following its release, flOw attracted approximately 350,000 downloads.[5]”

OFF-ROAD VELOCIRAPTOR SAFARI

http://raptorsafari.com/

“Sweet Raptorchrist, it’s here... and it’s even more incredible than you imagined.[6]”

RANDY BALMA: MUNICIPAL ABORTIONIST

http://www.messhof.com/games/randy_balma_municipal_abortionist.php

“It’s half art experiment, half game and all punishment. It’s a sequence of aesthetically torturous and fairly difficult mini-games, peppered with clashing colours, unforgiving controls and angular, metallic noises aimed dead-centre at the brain’s pain-spots…That said, I haven’t in fact been beyond the opening GTA-esque bus-driving stage, in which the controls keep changing on me, cars spontaneously explode into rainbow-clouds of pain and collisions can randomly turn me around - and getting myself back on course is a horrific endeavour based mostly on chance. I actually hate it. I really, really hate it. But, at the same time, I also find it very funny.[7]”

SUPER COLUMBINE MASSACRE RPG

http://www.columbinegame.com/

"Interactivity is one of the core features that differentiate games from passive media like film. In a game we play a role. Most of the time, the roles we play in games are roles of power. Space marine, world-class footballer or hero plumber. Isn't it about time we played the role of the weak, the misunderstood, even the evil? If videogames remain places where we only exercise juvenile power fantasies, I'm not sure there will be a meaningful future for the medium.[8]"

---

[1] Wikipedia contributors, "Cloud (video game)," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cloud_%28video_game%29&oldid=207379083 (accessed June 2, 2008).

[2] Jim Rossignol, ‘Cortex Command’, Rock Paper Shotgun, http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/?p=1604/

[3] Derek Yu, ‘Dino Run’, The Independent Gaming Source, http://tigsource.com/articles/2008/05/06/dino-run.

[4] L.B. Jeffries, Execution – An Experiment in Game Consequences, Pop Matters, http://www.popmatters.com/pm/blogs/post/59135/execution-an-experiment-in-game-consequences.

[5] Wikipedia contributors, "FlOw," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=FlOw&oldid=213949190 (accessed June 2, 2008).

[6] Derek Yu, ‘Off-Road Velociraptor Safari’, The Independent Gaming Source, http://tigsource.com/articles/2008/01/29/off-road-velociraptor-safari

[7] Alec Meer, ‘Randy Balma: Municipal Abortionist’, Rock Paper Shotgun, http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/?p=1808

[8] Ian Bogost, watercooler games, quoted on www.columbinegame.com

Becoming Gamer; or "My last ever log out."

I hearthed to Shattrath, at the request of a very good friend of mine. She had something to show me, she said, and I had a good idea of what exactly that was. I had, after all, 'twinked' her with 1,000 gold a few weeks prior and, as it turned out, it was her snowy gryphon mount that she had purchased with my parting gift, that she wanted to share with me. I felt like a big brother to a little sister - I had never met her in the 'real 'world. She hugged me, made a *sniff emote and said with lots of exclamation marks that she'd miss me. I was going to miss her too.

Recently, after a particularly bad experience with an overly controlling and somewhat arrogant guild leader, I was left without a World of Warcraft guild that I called home. I wanted to 'progress' and to see (and beat) new content but finding a new raiding guild to start building relationships within was just not something I was prepared to do again. University was also starting to heat up, with an increasing amount of work having to go into assessment tasks and my major thesis, when my job, which that suited me and my study timetable perfectly, sadly dried up. Without a steady income, and having to still pay the bills (not many, but a few) I decided that, well, after a good run of a year and 6 months with the World of Warcaft, maybe it had become time to hang up the gauntlets and retire gracefully.

So I did. And it's probably one of the best things I could have done. Now, I'm not saying that wow is the devil or anything knee-jerkingly reactionist like that (although I *do* have some serious issues with some elements of it: the grind, only having one somewhat flawed model of guild leadership, etc, etc). But instead, much like Mr Brainy Gamer himself, Michael Abbott, said - it means that I can play other games again. I mean, in all honesty, how many people who play wow seriously do you think also play other games seriously and critically on a regular basis? I'd wager not many.

I make no secret of the fact that I want to work in the games industry. I am working towards that with my degree and with my thesis, and also, now, so with this. I can't just play WoW all the time and call myself a gamer. I honestly have no desire to work in any other field. I recognise that I probably will, but I hope that eventually I will be able to work for a living on what I am so most passionate about. My passion is for gaming, and that's really what this experience has been all about. I've left WoW and all of the amazing wonderful (and some horrible) people that I met on the Alliance side of the Dath'Remmar Oceanic Realm, and yeah, I'll miss them too. But I'm not a really a WoW-er. Not anymore. I'm a GAME-er.

Call of Duty - The Class Presentation

As part of my honours year, I have a certain amount of coursework to do. In one subject, Creativity Theory and Practice, we were asked to pick a week and accompanying subject to give a presentation on in class. I got week 12, 'Virtualities', because it seemed the most relevant to my interests (to borrow a LOLphrase. Is that a word...? I guess it is now).

So I was planning on presenting to the class a whole bunch of things, but basically it was going to be too much and too broad. I wanted to log into World of Warcraft and give people an example of a 'Virtual World' in action, but the way it turned out, my presentation ended up a bit more focussed on the nature of Interactivity and Immersion.

The core argument for my presentation came from Chris Crawford, and his opinions on interactivity which I found to be biting and quite concise. To summarise the chapter or two I read on the subject, he scathingly remarked that everyone has an opinion on what constitutes Interactivity, and almost categorically, everyone is making it up as they go along.

Crawfords definition of interactivity is this:

"A cyclical process between two or more active agents in which each agent alternately listens, thinks, and speaks.”

In this definition, the terms “listen”, “think”, and “speak” must be taken metaphorically."

Just after this statement, Crawford states categorically that Movies are NOT interactive -

"…reaction, no matter how intense, is not the same as interaction. If you’re watching a great movie, and your heart is pounding with excitement and your fingers trembling with emotion, you’re still not interacting with the movie because it’s not listening to what you’re saying, nor is it thinking about anything. It is only speaking."

Well, from those two statements I made the argument that, when discussing interactivity, the issue is less HOW MUCH interactivity is present, but WHAT KIND or IN WHAT WAY. We had quite a bit of discussion on this point (and another that I made about immersion) and to demonstrate my point, I showed this highly affective level, 'The Coup', from Call of Duty 4. Now, by all accounts, the type interactivity in this level is among the most restricted available - with comparisons to a glorified movie cutscene totally permissible. Credits appearing in the middle of it, anyone? Yeah, way to go with keeping the immersiveness going there, Infinity Ward... I know you were trying for the whole 'it's the start of a really, really, really, long movie' but it just annoyed the heck out of me.

The level in question

I argued that even though this level presents the player with a restricted type of interactivity, it is still infinitely more interactive than a movie.

The reactions that it got were quite interesting - and ecouraging. One person remarked in a somewhat awed voice 'it's like watching a movie' and yes, the comparison is apt. People audibly winced when the players face got "stepped on" near the end of the level. The most fun bit (for me) was just before you-as-the-recently-deposed-prez get executed. Time slows down at that point and just as the person playing it looked over at the gun about to be pointed at you, someone in the room said "Uh oh".

Uh-oh indeed. A flash of muzzle flare and a moment of intense violence was directed at the player... and you were dead. I think my lecturer even said 'wow', or something similar.

Maybe I'm just overly dramatizing it, but I think the first person perspective, along with the appropriate level of agency given to you, combined to elicit engagement and to an extent, immersion. This combination is something I hope to explore in my paper on Virtual Reality and the First Person shooter, the text for the proposal of which, is available here. I apologise for the some of the writing in that proposal. I only just recently realised how badly worded some of it is. A few paragraphs are particularly bad...

Anywho, if anyone is interested in the subject, or even if you just want to let me know that there are people out there that actually read my rambling blog, feel free to leave a comment.

Cheers.


Cited works:

Crawford, Chris. Chris Crawford on Interactive Storytelling. Indianapolis, Ind.: New Riders, 2004.

1st Academic Conference held in the World (of Warcraft): "Convergence of the Real and the Virtual" Conference

So, I thought I'd just upload a few quick pics of the conference session that I attended, through the power of caffeine and some late evening visitors beforehand. The session I attended was on last Saturday at 12:30 Eastern US time (which translates to 2:30am START for me... how convenient.)

All of the discussions were held in guild chat, and it was interesting sitting around in a cavern full of avatars, all sitting and doing nothing. It seemed very unnatural for wow, and perhaps represents an attempt to colonise the popular phenomena that is WoW by academia. That said, there was some audience participation in the form of /agree /nod and /cheers at interesting points, but overall, it was an experience very detached from normal every-day WoW.

Here's a couple happy-snaps I took of the session that I attended (the 2nd session) and it was held in the Undercity.

Aww, lovely - we're fishing for Orks-es

Left hand side shot of the cavern it was held in

Accompanying right hand shot.

So, there were about 230 people online at the time, with maybe 200 of those actually in attendance. The discussion was kinda interesting, but not particularly illuminating. Constance someone from Germany made probably the most interesting points, and I've got a transcript that I've started editing and might include some of the more interesting points.

Like I said earlier though, the most interesting aspect of the conference was just gathering 200 academics from around the world and watching them interact. The build up to the conference and the activities where everyone got involved seems much more interesting, and I think they could support a conference type structure in themselves.

Coming soon: Update on the 'Call of Duty' presentation I gave to my Honours class, and some more ideas it spawned about VR and Immersion. Till then.

Virtual Reality and the First Person Shooter

Ok, so here's the deal with this post. It's a proposal for a research paper that I had to submit for a subject at Uni, and I thought that it had some interesting enough ideas that I'd post it for anyone who would care to read.

Two posts in less than a week - madness, I know.

________________________________________________________________

Research Paper Proposal

Ben Abraham

Throughout the course of researching my presentation topic for week 12’s virtualities I have identified a notion that I wish to explore in my research paper. The intersection of my thesis topic – broadly defined as the First Person Shooter (FPS) category of videogames – and the discussion of virtual reality has lead me to identify certain commonalities between the two areas. Additionally, an inverse relationship between the rise of the FPS as a genre and the decline in media representation of and interest in VR can be loosely correlated, and it is this issue, thinking about First Person Shooter videogames as a kind of virtual reality, that I wish to explore. In this proposal I will give an example of how one particular ‘exemplary’[1] FPS game engages with this issue and I will finish by elucidating a number of the concepts which I plan to employ to talk around this topic. I have also appended a short annotated bibliography to demonstrate the breadth of resources available on the topic but which were not directly referenced in the body of the proposal.

In her article on Immersion and Interactivity in literature, Marie-Laure Ryan sets up a definition of virtual reality saying that VR is “an immersive, interactive experience generated by a computer[2]”. This definition leaves a lot of latitude for interpretation, for any computer based activity that leaves the user with a sense of being immersed in the activity could then be considered ‘virtual reality’, allowing for someone to argue that even incredibly banal activities like word processing and data entry could be considered VR. She does however add further caveats to the definition, such as being able to ‘apprehend a world as real’ and ‘to be able to interact physically with it’[3].

From my own first hand experience growing up in the 1990’s, Virtual Reality seemed to me, as portrayed by the media, as being about donning gloves and a visor and perhaps a body suit, in order to experience a three dimensional world like out own, albeit one that only exists as 1’s and 0’s in a computer and in the imagination of the person. Prime examples of this kind of representation include the 1992 film The Lawnmower Man, in which a Virtual Reality researcher, played by Pierce Brosnan, increases the intelligence of a mentally handicapped man via a mixture of Virtual Reality games and drugs, with the result being the stimulation of his mind, which in turn endows him with telekinetic powers in the ‘real’ world. This idea of VR, one with blocky characters and clumsy interactions based on bodily inputs, it seems to me has dropped below the radar of public consciousness, to be replaces instead by the humble computer monitor and gaming control pad. I will try to explore this in my research paper, examining the notion that they have been replaced by this new and different idea of VR, and one I might say is more promising in terms of expressive potential and narrative possibility.

The main text when talking about videogames and virtual reality is undoubtedly Janet Murray’s Hamlet on the Holodeck, in which she uses the ‘holodeck’ technology from the Star Trek universe to paint an excellent illustration of some of the issues surrounding virtual reality. Videogames are similar to the holodeck in the sense that they are often visual representations of a physical space. Naturally, virtual reality can encompass non visual representations, and videogames like these, particularly MUD’s and other online games, are discussed by both Ryan and Murray – however I wish to concentrate specifically on graphical representations and the use of an ‘avatar’. By giving the player a representation of themselves, the avatar with which to explore and interact with the space, videogames have developed some rather unique methods of telling stories. While there have been and will continue to be games made that rely solely on text based or spoken word methods of explicating story elements, a number of particularly striking games of recent times have devised alternative methods of explicating a narrative, often integrating them with more traditional techniques.

As an example of this dual layered approach to telling the story, a useful example is the critically lauded game ‘Half Life 2’ by Valve Software[4]. The game is a ‘first person shooter’, a genre of games that give the player a ‘virtual self’ to move and shoot and perform actions in a way unrestrained by the barriers imposed by real life and to tell their story Valve employ both ‘old media’ style narrative exposition as well as some tricks rather more unique to videogames. Much of what they do in this way they describe as ‘training’ the player in the rules of the gameworld, and at the same time they are often weaving in narrative exposition elements that expand the players insight into the world. Robin Walker, a developer with Valve, describes one example from very early on in Half Life 2 when they player is still ‘learning’ how to interact with the world. In this particular example, the players progress is impeded by a police officer who tells the player to pick up an empty soft drink can before they can progress.

…the cop who tells you to pick up the can… we want you to press use, but at the same time you're learning about the relationship between the Metro Cops and the players, and the way they use civilians. But at the same time you're building this animosity between you and this character that eventually you'll be able to deal with when you get a weapon…[5] (emphasis added).

In this way, Half Life 2 combines teaching the player how to play the game with telling the player about the game – in this case that civilians like yourself have to do what they are told by the police, and thus setting up the world the players avatar inhabits with its 1984 style government that strictly controls its citizens.

Another aspect of the issue that I propose to discuss is what Ian Bogost calls ‘simulation fever’. Videogames, despite being simulations and therefore viewed as ‘objective representations’ of what their designers intended, Bogost says, are inherently subjective by virtue of their nature as ‘reductive’[6]. Even when a simulation attempts to render every physical aspect of an environment or situation in detail, it still abstracts concepts like the application and implication of the value of human life, a point which Bogost elucidates by referencing a military simulation of a sarin nerve gas attack modelling simulation. While it represents the progression of the gas on a university campus, showing such useful information as potential evacuation routes, it does not represent other concerns, such who to prioritise for evacuation; the Nobel Prize winning professors or the students with years of possible contribution in their lives still left unrealised[7]. Simulation Fever, Bogost says, occurs when the game player “[struggles] between the omissions and inclusions of a source system and the player’s subjective response to those decisions[8]”. It is a useful concept as it directly engages with the idea of a videogame as a form of virtual reality and reveals an aspect of how videogames manage that relation.

Finally, I want to briefly mention one last resource that I intend to use in my research paper, as it is indicative of my intention to draw upon the large body of writing about the subject, and that is an online blog post discussing the concept of Immersion. Michael Abbot, a professor at a liberal arts college in the United States, also runs a blog called ‘The Brainy Gamer’, and makes a habit of posting his thoughts on games to encourage and solicit intelligent discussion on the subject. One particular post, inspired by a talk given at the Game Developers Conference 2008, was about the concept of immersion in games. His line of reasoning was that, in his experience, many of the games that have been the most immersive to him have been the ones with the least, or the most abstracted level, of graphical representation, for example sports management simulations, which represent players and games as “a spreadsheet[9]”. This idea is interesting because it has very real implications for how videogames make manifest their virtual reality, and while I am choosing to focus in on the FPS genre of videogames, which are often characterised as aiming for photorealism, and are often the driving force behind computer hardware upgrades[10], there are still many unexplored possibilities within the realm of representational styles[11].

In conclusion, I have very briefly touched upon some of the material that I plan to use in discussion of the conception of videogames as a form of virtual reality. Obviously much more could be said about the topic, not least about the implications and implementation of the ideas I propose to cover, but I believe I have provided a concise window into the subject and my rationale for the project.

Bibliography

Abbott, Michael. ‘Immersion - Is it just me?’, The Brainy Gamer. http://www.brainygamer.com/the_brainy_gamer/2008/03/immersion---is.html, first posted 2 March 2008, accessed 26^th March 2008.

Adams, David. ‘Half-Life 2 Sells Millions.’ Ign.com. http://pc.ign.com/articles/583/583162p1.html. accessed 6^th May 2008

Bogost, Ian. Unit Operations : An Approach to Videogame Criticism. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2006.

Bramwell, Tom. ‘Opening the Valve Interview’. Eurogamer.net. http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=65391. accessed 26^th April 2008.

Murray, Janet Horowitz. Hamlet on the Holodeck : The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace. New York: Free Press, 1997.

Ryan, Marie-Laure, 1999, ‘Immersion vs. Interactivity: Virtual Reality and Literary Theory’, SubStance - Issue 89 (Volume 28, Number 2), pp. 110-137.

Shim, Richard. ‘'Doom 3' may doom users' current systems’. CNet News. www.news.com/2100-1043_3-5295390.html. accessed 7^th May 2008.

Valve Corporation. ‘Awards and Honours.’ Valvesoftware.com . http://www.valvesoftware.com/awards.html. accessed 7th April 2008.

Annotated Bibliography

Artful Gamer, The. ‘Inviting the Imagination: The Power of Words’. The Artful Gamer. http://www.artfulgamer.com/2008/01/19/inviting-the-imagination-the-power-of-words/. accessed 26^th March 2008.

Chris at The Artful Gamer blog discusses Michael Abbott’s blog post on Immersion and Interactivity, discussing the power of words to immerse.

Bogost, Ian. Persuasive Games : The Expressive Power of Videogames. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007.

Bogost in his second book argues the case that games possess a 'procedural rhetoric' as well as a number of other concepts useful for Videogame criticism.

Borden, Ed. ‘Gaming is an out of body experience.’ Ed Borden: PWNING 9-5. http://www.edbordenblog.com/2008/03/immersion-immersion-immersion.html. accessed 26^th March 2008.

In this post on his personal blog, Ed Borden riffs on Michael Abbott’s post on immersion, adding his own perspective and addressing some issues not covered in the original.

Gee, James Paul. What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.

Gee argues in his book for viewing videogames, and learning about videogames, from within their context, or 'semiotic domain'. His also includes a semi-autobiographical tale of how he came to appreciate games, coming from a very non-typical background, and making interesting points about immersion and storytelling.

Hocking, Clint. ‘GDC 2008 i-fi: Immersive Fidelity in Games’. Click Nothing. http://clicknothing.typepad.com/Design/hockingc_GDC08_Immersion.zip, accessed 7^th May 2008.

In this downloadable file, Hocking includes the slides and a PDF transcript of the talk he gave the GDC 2008, the talk which inspired Michael Abbott’s blog post on the same subject.

Rose, John. ‘Fewer Mechanics, Better Game’. Gamasutra – The Art & Business of making games. http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3621/fewer_mechanics_better_game.php. accessed 22^nd April 2008.

In this article for Gamasutra, an games industry publishing website, John Rose talks about how sometimes ‘less is more’ in terms of a games functionality, and talks about the lebel of abstraction present in games like Half-Life.

Travis, Roger. ‘Bungie’s Epic Achievement: Halo and the Aeneid’. The Escapist Magazine. http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/issues/issue_66/384-Bungie-s-Epic-Achievement. Accessed 2^nd May 2008.

In this opinion piece for The Escapist Magazine, Travis talks about how one particular FPS game, Halo 2 for the Xbox, contains within its narrative an allegory of the epic Latin poem ‘The Aeneid’. Both stories focus on an “eponymous hero”, and the author elaborates on the parallels between them.

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[1] Exemplary as defined through critical reception, financial success and a certain indefinable presence as part of popular culture. I acknowledge this is a somewhat problematic proposition.

[2] Ryan, Marie-Laure, 1999, ‘Immersion vs. Interactivity: Virtual Reality and Literary Theory’, SubStance - Issue 89 (Volume 28, Number 2), p. 110.

[3] Ibid.

[4] With a score of 96 out of 100 on Metacritic.com, a reviews aggregate website, winner of no less than 35 “Game of the Year” awards for the year of 2004 (http://www.valvesoftware.com/awards.html, accessed 6^th May 2008) and according to an IGN news item sold approximately 1.7million copies of the game in the first two months of release (http://pc.ign.com/articles/583/583162p1.html, accessed 6^th May 2008), I believe this claim to be largely beyond doubt.

[5] Tom Bramwell, ‘Opening the Valve Interview’, Eurogamer, http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=65391, accessed 26^th April 2008.

[6] Ian Bogost, Unit Operations : An Approach to Videogame Criticism (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2006). See Ch. 9, ‘The Simulation Gap’.

[7] Ibid., p.98

[8] Bogost, Unit Operations : An Approach to Videogame Criticism, p.132.

[9] Michael Abbott, ‘Immersion - Is it just me?’, The Brainy Gamer, http://www.brainygamer.com/the_brainy_gamer/2008/03/immersion---is.html, first posted 2 March 2008, accessed 26^th March 2008.

[10] Richard Shim, ‘'Doom 3' may doom users' current systems’, CNet News, www.news.com/2100-1043_3-5295390.html, accessed 7^th May 2008.

[11] For one interesting example of an alternative to the photorealism of many ‘bleeding edge’ FPS games, the also Valve Software developed game ‘Team Fortress 2’ released in November of 2007 chooses to represent the players avatars in a cell shaded cartoon style.