More things that don't make sense.

As this is our last class session and our last blog entry, I naturally still had no idea what I was going to talk about. What has interested me most this semester is story. The story of religion, the stories we play out online, the stories we play out in video games, and why humans like stories. I like stories--I have always loved to read and have learned a ton through stories, and also like to tell stories (sometimes.) But WHY do humans have this need to create a narrative that has a beginning, middle and end? Why does everything need to be neat, no loose ends, why does everything have to be part of something larger that we are working toward? Why do need to have somewhere we came from and somewhere we're going? Sometimes things just suck. Sometimes things just happen and they just....happen. Sometimes we work a crappy job to keep a crappy apartment in a crappy city and we're not really doing anything but turning our wheels and we're not living a "story" at all, but we still TELL ourselves stories. ""Well, when I get my next paycheck..." "Well, I came from a hard place..." "Well, this is temporary..." "Well, at least I'm better than before..." These are all forms of stories that make our lives seem bigger, seem better, seem larger. They give meaning to our lives in ways that nothing else can. I believe that religion and story are VERY similar....I would even argue that religion wouldn't exist without story. I mean, how do we learn about religion? Through parables, stories, sermons, ect. I feel like Christians have this notion (although probably not all, I'm speaking to some stereotype in my head here) have this idea of "this is where I came from, this is where I'm going, this is how I get there, these are some obstacles that are my plot line, and then there will be this glorious hero-esque ending." And as humans we don't want to die but we are going to die so we might as well construct some sort of meaning around that and gosh darn it stories give us that meaning, thus, religion. (I hope this doesn't sound offensive in its simpleness, because I truly don't mean it that way, but it's also not a secret that I am not religious and either don't know what I believe or don't believe in anything and I'm still working out the difference between the two.)

But here's the problem for me: I also believe that life is just messy. People die. People use you. Friends leave and come and go and bad things happen. But good things also happen--you meet people, you make some friends, you put your feet into the ocean for the first time. Blah blah blah everything in between. But what if these are just events that happen instead of stories? What if there IS NO MEANING?! What if as humans we lost this idea that we are bigger than just the cells we live between and we actually are just cells and synapses and the information that fires between them? 

Even typing this I get stressed out because I love stories, people. I love them. I can think of many stories that have changed my beliefs about life and about myself. But I also believe we can deceive ourselves with them and other people can deceive us with them. And I hate to think of myself as 1) able to be deceived or 2) capable of deceiving others. But I fear that these might be the only two roles of stories. Because if everything IS just random and life is just some sort of frenzied card dealing, we ARE deceiving ourselves through the stories we tell and form, especially large systematic stories like religion. We are assigning significance to things that don't have significance and this has the potential to be damaging.

People spend so much time in story. It's no surprise to me that things like video games and religion get compared because to me those are both just stories and we're drawn to them because humans are drawn to all stories. We watch movies, we gossip, we read books, we learn history, we play video games, we listen to other people. There is almost nothing in our culture I can think of that does not contain some sort of story. Even as consumers we are drawn to stories--TOMS shoes, for example. If you read the company's book (I've read a lot of random stuff) the founder talks a lot about the story he created around the company because people buy into stories. And people like to be part of stories. Because when they are a part of a story they matter. And people like to matter because mattering means that when we die we will still be here and none of us want to be gone. Stories also help us learn, help us grow, help us not do what that guy over there did, help us think we can get to the top too if we work hard enough. But here is where the lines blur for me: What is the value in the story of a violent video game? Is it usually set up so the person who is playing is the "hero?" This is a true question I hope someone can answer because I don't play video games, and I'm curious. Because if the story is just straight up killing and shooting, that is the kind of story that would confuse me greatly. Are they usually you vs. the "bad" guys? And if the narrative is bad, like in the Columbine game in our reading from last week, what does that mean? Is that game then "bad?" Why do bad stories have no value? Can't bad stories still teach us things?

What if this is all just pretend? What if stories are just socially constructed because our brains simply evolved too far and we can't stand our existential problems? That, friends, kind of scares the pants off of me. I know I'm not the first ones to think these thoughts and I'm going to be far from the last one to think these thoughts but I really struggle with this idea that life might not be a narrative and if it's not, what is the harm in pretending that it is? And, getting into  a new problem with technology: our lives now CAN be fully 'just a story' we tell. What does it look like when our lives DO become a narrative--through blogs, facebook, avatars....can we create a life for ourselves that is ONLY a linear narrative and does that have value? I think for sure it can have a therapeutic value, but can that caricature then stand on its own? And is it you or a different being entirely? And what aspects of your story do you add and remove and WHY and who influences that choice?

...Sometimes thinking about stories keeps me up at night. Also, here is my TED talk for the week:

(Also, just so everyone knows, when he says no one describes their life as reality show, I always do and always have. I'm happy to bask in that uniqueness for a bit.)

(Also, if anyone has found my textbook for class and can return it me, I'd be grateful. Cough cough.)

Outdated and Far Too Modern

After finishing Godwired, it seems clear that for Wagner, virtual reality is capable of performing all the functions that were once exclusive to religion. I was excited by this prospect, and I suppose I still am, but Wagner's handling of the material seems terribly out dated. By this I do not mean that she uses examples that are no longer relevant. In fact, I was impressed by her broad knowledge of contemporary digital media. No, what is outdated is her understanding of religion as an all encompassing category capable of swallowing up every bit (pun intended?) of culture and tradition. Such treatments are the vestiges of modernity in which conflict was resolved by denying differences. Racial tension provides an easy example. If skin color is a problem for us, then we must become color blind. Today we realize that ignoring the color of someone's skin easily leads to ignoring the person. We see that to really know someone or something we must be open to everything and especially that which makes them or those things unique. Wagner's definition of religion is a kind of cultural color blindness. "Religion" becomes a way of making peace between Judaism and Islam and Christianity by ignoring the conflicting elements in each. In so doing, Wagner ultimately loses sight of the particular manifestations of her abstract category. By speaking of religion in the abstract, Wagner alienates herself from Judaism, from Islam, from Christianity, from the actual content of her abstract category. Attempting to speak to everyone she ends up speaking to no one and it is tragic because we all feel like she has something very important to say.

Virtual Future

What makes a religion a religion as opposed to a cult? This is an honest question that I hope someone will answer in a comment below.

Wagner says, “Instead, make belief is the real life performative act of as-if. It is creating the appearance of the real or the meaningful as a means of generating its acceptance as real” (215).  It is make-belief instead of make believe. What happens though if people do believe something like that is real? Take the man who is in love with Twilight sparkle. Isn’t that make believe. He completely believes with his whole being that she is real, she is capable of feelings, she can think and communicate, and that they love each other. When someone believes so deeply in something it seems to me that they can make a religion out of it.

Wagner talks about people devoting themselves to movies like Lost, Twilight, and Starwars. The people who devote themselves have ‘believers’ in the form of fanatics. They recite ‘scripture’ from their holy books, aka, twilight etc. They wear designated clothing that shows their ‘god/gods’ and “pray in public and virtual forums”. This scares me to death.

How many of you have heard of Cullenism? It’s this new idea going through the twi-hard virtual community. It is a religion where the followers worship Edward Cullen and Stephanie Meyer. They have special days, holy places (forks), a prayer, and a list of beliefs. People post of forums professing their faith and saying they will live for eternity like the Cullens if they follow the rules and rituals of their faith.

All this makes me question religion. I don't know why this book made me have a dark moment, but it is true. What if future religions are based on books written by authors like Stephanie Meyer or even game designers! I'm not familiar enough with gaming to be able to talk on that but what if these forums dictate the newest and most popular religions? How will society look in 20 years? I'm terrified to find out. 

You Guessed It........Skyrim

While others are posting super pertinent and thought-provoking apocalyptic ideas, I'm going to outline my paper a bit because

a. I finally have a direction
b. You can give me feedback and it will give you class credit
c. I didn't do the reading
d. But I will before Thursday, Professors Russell and DeLashmutt

So going back to the recent conversations around violence in video games, I find myself comparing two very different instances and contexts: Skyrim and Call of Duty. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the games, I won't explain them here but I recommend a quick Wikipedia search for grounding. Basically what I hope to get at between the two is the inobvious but somehow very palpable manifestations of violence.
I will delve a bit into the conversation around humanity's violence-crave and the evidence around that - virtual games (and childplay situations) that involve heavy themes of competition/domination, instincts (CS Lewis connection to be revealed!) and the motivation they give, and even, theologically, how violence is both a part of our sinful human narrative and the one thing that turns it around.

Maybe I'm casting out too many nets here, but whatever I'll narrow down later. Anyway:
The big factor that sets apart Skyrim and COD in their utilization/inclusion of violence and first-person killing is narrative. My argument isn't that packing murder into a nice, complex storyline is okay (or even terribly clever), but that violence as an aesthetic is entirely separate from violence as a necessary element. In COD you might have campaigns and other goal-driven 'storylines', but my sense is that in any other setting (WWI, Vietnam, Crusades) the tweaks between games would be so minor. It'd feel about the same shooting someone in one as it would the other - you are meeting objective A in the ___ war.
And let's be real - most COD players only own the game for multiplayer, which is also where I will make a comparison.
Video games, by nature, need, as outlined earlier, violence. Every game needs to fill the blank: 'get a certain number/amount of ____ and you win'. Skyrim contains and sometimes necessitates violence (as it must)  but COD fills the blank with kills while Skyrim fills the blank with many things. You need to kill to achieve those things, but killing and winning aren't the point. You're free to make them your goal, sure, but in doing that you lose a piece of the game; you are robbed some of what it was meant to be. The game loses some of its soul, and soon enough all games would look the same if you chose to play that way. COD, GTAV and others tend to skip to that place (or create complexities around it? The Aesthetic Violence?) while I believe Skyrim, Pokemon, Assassin's Creed, etc (Skyrim is my paper's focus) combat (lol) that trend. The story comes first and only through it are any elements necessitated, not any necessitated story built around those same elements.
Thoughts?

Zee Katamari Ball and Other Stories

Before I write about what I will actually be discussing I would like to take a moment to look at the idea of the game "Katamari". Today William P. Young came to speak to our school about his book and in the private Q&R ( not Q&A because he is Canadian) he gave out a set of statistics. From the very beginning of human history up to the year 2003, he said, humans had gathered 5 billion gigabytes ( I think) of data. He continued on and gave the astonishing statistic that by the end of this year humans will be producing that same amount of data every 10 minutes. Can you all believe that? the amount of data since the beginning of human history until 2003 is the same amount of data we are producing in only ten minutes. Like the game "Katamari" our data systems are growing and we will never be able to go back. The "Katamari" will never shrink therefor he has lost the chance at obtaining points, like our data consumption it will never be the size it was just before a specific moment in its lifetime. Just like the "Katamari" being able to conquer new challenges we are also growing in a way that will allow us to face challenges we never had thought were possible to even comprehend.

Now on to the actual topic of this post...the construction of belief. Throughout the reading I couldn't help but involve Maslow's hierarchy of needs. In this model humans need the basics to survive, we start out with basic food, water, shelter and work our way up adding safety, love and belonging and self esteem only to be rewarded by self actualization. Building the pyramid should not be difficult for the average Joe but where, I wondered (while reading) would belief be? making belief is not a physiological need, it doesn't have to do directly with belonging or with security and I am sure one can have self-esteem without it. This all sounds acceptable but it does not sit right with me. Making belief is one of the most important pieces of the human experience, whether you believe in a deity or just in each other. Belief is what keeps people grounded, belief that Jesus is our savior and died on the cross for us is the base of a religion that millions of people ascribe to...but you have to believe. Could a person get to the pinnacle of Maslow's hierarchy of needs and end in self actualization without belief? I do not believe it to be possible. But how does one believe in an age where "choices are more overt involving competing options"(Wagner 214) so many competing options that it seems impossible to make a well educated choice without having dipped in many sources. This is where the idea of "make-belief" comes into play. In a world where a religion can be as individualized as frozen yogurt there will be a need of structure somewhere, this need of structure will show up eventually, it will create a full cycle of not having choices, to having too many  and back around to wanting less of them. Video gaming may be one of those structures. I am not making a claim that video games that are meaning/belief builders are popular for their specific religious/ritualistic nature but who knows; they may become a stepping stone towards a tech friendly religious structure having to do with the church. Does self actualization include having a "religious" belief?

That is all. 

Zombies as a Sandbox-Transmedia and the Postmodern Turn

Our lovely hero Rick from The Walking Dead, attempting to reconcile the meaning of life.

Certainly trailing off of Dr. Jeff Mallinson's ideas and his influences, I would like to engage zombies briefly here. If you are looking for something to pass the time with, give his podcast a listen:

http://virtueinthewasteland.com/3/category/zombies/1.html

I am going to make the claim that zombies have beautifully reflected and responded to our mass subconscious' fear of modernity, science, and the death of culture itself. I would make the claim that the way in which zombies have been both collaboratively made into a subject of thought within a growing context and then that subject critiques its context (society-at-large) is arguably prophetic.

Zombies, as a creative creation, have now become a transmedia phenomenon stretching from graphic novels, novels, movies, video games, web comics, and more over the past 5 decades. I am especially inspired by Rachel Wagner's engagement with transmedia and religion and how those two intersect (212 in our reading of Godwired) regarding the conversation of zombies-in-media as a possible catharsis for affluent, modernistic cultures.

I would like to say that the subject of zombies has become a sandbox dialogue. Wagner discusses what it means to have religion as a transmedia subject with a sandbox view versus an answerbox view; the primary difference landing between the interactivity of the sandbox and the fixed narrative of the answerbox (220-235).

The zombie subject is a beautiful example of a sandbox dialogue because of how the theme and representation of zombies has changed over time due to different, growing sources, contexts, and medias. At first, key zombie movies focused on the events that took place in an imaginative setting where zombies have suddenly taken over. The earliest zombie movies simply look at the moment, the particular, the accident, of zombies and a specific story. Later films depict survival strategies, reclaiming human dignities, rebuilding human needs, and everything up Maslow's hierarchy of needs, ending with love. (Perhaps the zombie theme is still incomplete in its playing-out, since individual's expression/identity and aesthetics are yet to be meaningfully constructed in an adaptation yet to date.)

For an example piece of the story, look at Romero's Night of the Living Dead/Dawn of the Dead/Day of the Dead series. The focus and engagement with the theme of zombies in his films is highly religious, shocking, momentous, and represents an interesting piece of social commentary. There is a progression of hopefulness between the three movies. But after these movies comes more important themes than simply experiencing the apocalypse, surviving the apocalypse, and rebuilding from the apocalypse. The theme of zombies becomes a reflection of the postmodern turn and then the emergence from the ashes of postmodernity. One of the fascinating parts of the transmedia conversation behind zombies is that in playing with the possibility of society's fall to the undead hordes, it accomplishes an actual process of meaning-making for the real world. The complex narrative of the zombie apocalypse, as stitched together from many different pieces of media throughout the last 45 years, represents a very real progression into and reclaiming of meaning, hope, and love from the ashes of modernity's meaningless, contagious, and violent clutches.

Mother Teresa Make-Belief-ing

It was difficult for me to understand what Wagner was really trying to get me to take away from her last two chapters (before the "expansion pack"), other than "yes, gaming and religion do have interestingly similar apocalyptic narratives," or "oh yeah, I guess Katamari Damacy and the Bible are world-building texts. SO INTERESTING."


It wasn't until Wagner's comparison of "making belief" and Mother Teresa's confession that my interest was really piqued. Here was a woman that, until I had read this (and maybe I just haven't been paying attention), I had taken for the one of the most devout, compassionate Catholic figures of our time. Admittedly, my Mother Teresa knowledge is limited mostly to what I remember hearing about her in the news before and after her death when I was a child, but even from the glimpses of information I've caught since then it is so surprising to me to read these things she thought, and the deep guilt she felt about them.


“…there is such terrible darkness within me, as if everything was dead…the silence and the emptiness is so great that I look and do not see, listen and do not hear…no faith, no love, no zeal…the saving of souls holds no attraction…heaven means nothing…what do I labor for…where is my faith…I no longer pray…what hypocrisy…”


Wagner describes her outward display as one of "making belief." Mother Teresa no longer believed in what she was saying and doing, but she performed the "belief" as if she did. In a way she was fooling the world. What could be even more intriguing to me is the subsequent quote by Pope Benedict XVI about this very thing:


"The idea of living 'as if God didn't exist' has shown itself to be deadly: The world needs, rather, to live 'as if God existed,' even if it does not have the strength to believe; otherwise it will only produce an 'inhuman humanism.'"


Setting aside the claim that "Godless" people are incapable of "human humanist" acts, I find it so interesting that the Pope would encourage people to live in a way they do not truly believe in. This is what Mother Teresa had done for so many years and was unable to find any peace in it.


I definitely don't mean to slam the Pope, just to bring up the real idea of "make belief-ing," and the real turmoil it can bring to people. Wagner brought up the idea with an example of ARGs (which I can tell you right now, I would be utterly addicted to) and cosplaying, where people take on these personas in the real world that are not their own. However, what happens when we are not able to go home and not be a part of the game? When we can't do anything but make belief?


This is where Mother Teresa's turmoil came from. She no longer believed in this thing that she held so sacred--so sacred that she couldn't quit seeming to believe.


There are many instances that I can think of that people do this--though definitely not on so drastic a scale. I have friends that hang-out and interact with people they really don't like because they just can't seem to let go of the old connection; I know people that won't let go of a job they don't need and that treats them poorly, just because they have been there so long and are afraid to break that connection. I suppose this could explain in part why Mother Teresa never did anything to alleviate her suffering. Perhaps it doesn't make sense to me because I will never be as compassionate as she was--make belief-ing her life in order to bring peace to those around her.


Do the opposing ideas (as far as make-belief-ing for real, not in a game) then come down to "making belief and a sort of security vs living in a way true to yourself and insecurity?"

Apocalypse Now. Revelations About Our Nature.

What is with our fascination for end times? Throughout the ages, humankind has been speaking doom to fragile ears, pricking eschatology to canvas, and ritually preparing for the inevitable.

Wagner explains on page 202 that we are drawn to apocalyptic discourse due to our innate enchantment for, "certainty, assurance, and a sense of empowerment."
Is it really just a power trip or quest for ultimate control over our livelihoods?
When we plug into virtual reality, we're agreeing to a system of pre-determined rules, responses, and outcomes. What 'divine authority' are we seeking when we choose to plug into a new system? In essence, are we struggling to negate determinism and accept the unfolding of events as our own doing?
As a characteristic of post-modernity, how will the negation of determinism change the rituals (religious and secular) that we participate in?
How is it already apparent in our mediums of virtual reality? I suppose I'm just full of questions right now.

And is it such a contentious issue that the boundaries between the sacred and secular become difficult to define? Globalization, pluralism, and transmedia are evolving and what is signified as sacred gets jumbled into the mess. But it seems this issue is not anything new. Culture shifts, cultural-imperialism, and other means of changing the sacred for a group of people have probably been a thing even before biblical accounts.

That's all I can conjure up out of today. I am looking forward to comments I can hopefully reply to and our last discussion for the semester (and hopefully an idea for the next topic spring term).

The Shame

Rereading my post from last night, I’ve come to the conclusion that I shouldn’t write whilst in a sleep-deprived stupor. To make up for my crappy, misspelled post, here are more random (slightly better worded) musing. Enjoy.

There are so many selves. There’s Facebook self, every avatar ever made, and things like the ‘multiple blog self’. Not only that, but there hyperidentities for each self. That is combined with millions of apps and downloads at our fingertips. It is no wonder our generation can’t pay attention to things. I did a speech in Schulz’ class about how much media we as college students consume. The average teen spends eight and a half hours interacting with media a day. Think about how much it goes up when you’re in college and on your computer pretty much everyday. Not only that, but how many of us college students use multiple forms of media each day? I listen to music and go on tumblr while I watch TV! (Don’t judge me).  I emphasize all this because I learned another interesting thing in my persuasive media class. The more choices that are presented to a person, the harder it is to make a decision, and the more likely a person is to make a bad decision. That, coupled with the influx of media, it’s a wonder we can handle deciding what to wear in the morning. Along this thread, Wagner talks about hundreds and hundreds of religious apps being on the market, readily available and most of the times free. With so many choices how often do we make a bad choice?

Expect these lovely tidbits all day.

The Institute

So like many of the things I think, this probably won't make any sense. But for the sake of my academic standing I'm just going to type this anyway.

I had a friend over tonight and she was telling me about this crazy documentary (?) she watched called The Institute, and I am just finishing up watching it right now. The premise is that these weird signs go up around some hip California city (San Francisco?) with a population best described as hipster. The signs had a phone number on it, and when you called you it gave you the address of some office building in downtown and you were to go to it. When you get there, everyone knows what you're talking about and it's kind of weird and obscure and the receptionist doesn't talk to you and she hands you a key. The keyring has directions to this other room, and once you get there you watch this video with instructions. It tells you that under no circumstances you are to open the drawer next to you and take what's inside, but of course everyone does. So there's a clue in it and you end up going on this scavenger hunt through the city and there's a picture of this girl that keeps popping up. It's kind of Alice In Wonderland-y. You end up in this world they call "nonchalance" and everyone is called an "inductee" and it's absolutely nuts basically. It points out all the coincidence in the world, sort of? Like when you're nonchalantly walking down the street and you get to your destination but you fail to see how many cars did not hit you, etc. Anyway. Over the course of their time in this game/alternate world people are told to show up places and then end up having dance parties where people with stereos show up on street corners randomly. You get to explore the city and discover things you've never seen. One of the founders says the goal is to bring "spontaneity and play to our public spaces." The point is to find this place "Elsewhere" and there are these transmissions and communications from Elsewhere. There ends up being a missing girl and a guy searching for a missing girl.......and I still have it playing on my TV so I don't know yet.

I think it adds tons of value to what we are talking/reading/thinking about this semester. Even the description of the movie on its website says "...the film looks over the precipice at an emergent new art form where real world and fictional narratives collide, creating unforeseen and often unsettling consequences. Fusing elements of counter-culture, new religious movements and street art, THE INSTITUTE invites viewers down the rabbit hole into a secret underground world teeming just beneath the surface of everyday life." I think this is almost what the investigation of tech/religion is--looking at an art form that changes the way people look at the narrative of their life and creates consequences and new religious-type movements. They go into the people that created this experiment and they call the people who participate "players." The developers so to speak describe it as an "alternate reality game." These participants are acting out a game. But in the process, it changes their world view. But at the same time there are people who insist that it is not just a game and there's something bigger and cult-ier and world changing going on.

It hits so much of what is talked about in the book and what I've sort of been thinking about all semester. One of the participants says, "you act out the game...and you become part of the story that is unfolding in the city, in the real world." Narrative and story and meaning-making play a big role in Rachel's book and connection between religion and games. On page 101 of our book Rachel says "meaning-making no longer includes just traditional religious symbolism and narrative." Meaning-making and narrative have always interested me, long before college. I think that's the part of me that pretends to be a writer. It's always been something I naturally think about and lean toward--how people create ideas of who they are and their place in the world and what they do with their time here. How these really basic human things change and morph but still somehow stay the same whether we're drawing on walls in caves or writing Facebook statuses or making meaning of our world though weird Californian scavenger hunts is fascinating.

I've been having some issues this semester because I can't connect to the "gamer" aspect of this class. I've been able to connect the theories to more "real life" things like subcultures and stuff and it's for sure not going over my head, but I felt guilty because I seriously am apathetic toward technology. This documentary has been valuable to me because it took the "game" aspect of the book out of Xboxes and made the game more real. It reframed it to involve people's real, concrete, life.  Anyway. This documentary and this class have so many connections I can't really articulate fully here. I haven't found it anywhere to stream but you can rent it on Itunes for 5 bucks and it's kind of reinforced all the content of this semester for me. I think basically everyone should watch it because it's seriously our class as documentary.

.....Now this probably doesn't make sense and I have a hundred different directions I want to go in here. But welcome to my head.

Is it Just a Game? What’s the Message Here?

Google is my best friend. I average about 15 searches a day (a conservative estimation), and value my relationship with it. Anyway, I vaguely recall searching for ‘contentious video games’ and ‘banned video games’ one day and reading it all in awe.

As I read through the Wikipedia article (being the first thing that pops up), I realized how different each country reacts to certain video games that I love… and ones I wish I never knew about.

I find it interesting how simply being raised in the U.S. has conditioned me to be apathetic towards excessive violence, sexual content, and general vulgarity in video games. I wonder if I would feel different if I was raised elsewhere. Would I still be desensitized towards it all?

I can see how games that are saturated in foreign affairs, as Wagner points out about the New York Defender video game and the comparison to Kuma/War (179), are a means of illuminating how we are conditioned. Of course, many in the U.S. would be offended by a 9/11 related video game because it was a traumatic event experienced on a national scale. Likewise, I understand that Kuma/War would be received negatively in the United Arab Emirates for content involving desecration of holy places and objects.

I’m not dissatisfied by the range that I have for experiencing (and all without consequence) activities in a safe space, known as my Playstation 3, back at home. But I feel conflicted over how much of what our media feeds us as far as common sensibilities is concerned. Our media illuminates so much about our nation, but how free am I of a thinker from this cage? Why does my moral compass tick differently about these video games?

The Continued Search of Answers

As I read the chapters assigned to us in the book a specific theme became apparent to me (no that it hadn’t before…to any of us...so all of us hehe), this theme being the symbolic search for answers within the virtual reality of video games. Just to debrief everyone, I am not a gamer and I have not had the pleasure of playing any of the games mentioned in the text (Assassin’s Creed, Halo or Zelda). Going back to the theme of searching for answers I found myself being able to put the search into different mini categories, the first being the search for meaning about ourselves, who are we and what is the meaning of us being here in the world right now. The second mini category is the quest of answering questions that are out of our reach, for these questions we are unable to use research methods and determine whether our hypothesis is true or not because we have no way of gathering data, these questions can have “believed” answers all of which cannot be proven or disproven. The first category covers the individual as a gamer and as an active participant in our society. The second category includes questions about heaven and hell and what happens after our “game” is over.

The first category I mentioned is based around the individual. Who are we? More specifically, who is the gamer? As I read through these chapters I couldn’t help but wonder about the background of gamers, their childhood, relationships and lives now. (I am going all psych on this sawy). The book mentions that apocalyptic literature was developed to fill the void of oppressed people’s needs to retaliate against their enemies. This began sounding to me like an escape for them, a way to control the buildup of stress that would otherwise stay within and may come out in the least opportune moment, maybe even in front of a Roman soldier.  Wagner finds similarities between this and the gaming world. The question that this brings up to me is- how much stress is a game designer or writer feeling in order to come up with all these apocalyptic images? Who do they feel entrapped by? This may sound like an assumption that all gamers or writers have a void themselves that they try to fill by creating this apocalyptic world not only for others to play but for their own psychological gains. What correlations would we be able to find between gamers and designers of today, and the oppressed?

The second category I mentioned was the BIG questions category. I read the chapters and it seems like all of the gaming and virtual reality leads to an answer that we would never find in real life. There is always an ending to the game where we are in possession of the knowledge we would never be able to access in our real world. The Christian game “Heaven” explores one of the largest questions to a person whether one is Christian or not, what is heaven? What does it look like? Is this right? There is something about this that doesn't feel right to me. Is it okay to answer a question and influence belief of what could be real or overwhelmingly false? The depiction of otherworldly settings is one that these games all had in common. I couldn't help but think about all the accounts people tell in near death experiences, or when people actually die. How are we able to 1. Distinguish reality from their perception while they were dying and 2. How can we separate these accounts from what we believe in?

Finding meaning in the virtual world seems to be a need, these themes aren’t just popping up in games because they are unimportant but because they are things that in the real world, real people struggle with and are manifesting themselves in the virtual world as settings to existence. 

Playing an Evil Role

Rachel Wagner's discussion of Super Columbine Massacre RPG! is probably the most interesting topic yet. So far, discussion has mostly been about religious ritual in a mostly positive sense, but in this chapter (Ch. 7) she presents the ever problematic notion of evil. If it is possible to perform pious rituals such as attending church, praying, or confessing sins in a virtual environment, then it follows that it should be possible to perform evil as well. If there is an opportunity for good is there not also for evil?

This question is one that any contemporary video gamer would have undoubtedly engaged with at some point, and to some degree I myself have given an answer, implicitly by owning and playing certain games if not explicitly. In the virtual world my rap sheet is formidable, including but not limited to: lying, theft, murder, terrorism, reckless driving, impersonating a police officer, and more murder. If there were a virtual hell I should expect to be represented there someday, but until I learned about Super Columbine Massacre RPG! (SCMRPG!), I've always believed that seemingly evil actions in game worlds were easily distinguished from true evil. Like the possible conclusion that Wagner suggests can be made when "drawing on Huizinga and Crawford," I assumed that "actions that take place within the magic circle of a game are sanitized from the realm of daily life" (171). There is something about SCMRPG! that forces me to reconsider all that.

I think that the difference can be better understood by a quote Wagner uses to highlight the difference between "video games and more rigidly structured stories": in the former "we can always pull away from [a morally reprehensible] character" while in the latter "we as players are always partially to blame" (171). This is highlighted by SCMRPG! because you are forced to play as the undisputed villains and, presumably, the conditions for winning involve recreating a situation that is universally understood to be an instance of extreme failure; of absolute loss. Not only is the narrative unchangeable, but to win, you must perform the actions yourself, you must pull the trigger yourself. The initial problem seems to be that we would allow such evil and tragedy to be placed within a magic circle at all. The situation mirrors the problems of placing holy narratives within the context of the magic circle. The difference being that, with holy narratives danger lies in having fun altering the story, but in narratives of evil the danger is that fun will be had while the evil details of the event remain unchanged, or possibly even amplified. In a sense, evil narrative is just as sacrosanct as holy narrative. It seems like there is just as much opportunity for evil ritual as for good.

So, will I stop stealing from poor villagers in Skyrim, or will I resist sniping unsuspecting city folk when I get bored of the missions in the Grand Theft Auto series? Why? Maybe because I'm still not completely convinced. Or maybe even because there is a sense in which these games can be understood to have a confessional quality. I am reminded of a Jack Johnson song that seems to have been written about the events at Columbine. In it he insists that the blame for the events cannot be simply laid on the two shooters but that in fact "It was you, it was me, it was every man/We've all got the blood on our hands/We only receive what we demand/And if we want hell, then hell's what we'll have" (Cookie Jar). Perhaps by playing a game like Super Columbine Massacre RPG! we might be able to cop up to our share of the "blame" for the events of this tragedy. Perhaps even, if we have fun playing, we will be forced to confront our own depravity, our own evil. That might not be such an evil after all.