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Robert
Praxmarer is a core member of the Ars Electronica
Futurelab, and Virtual Reality Research Department. He works
on concepts, visions, realizations in the fields of science,
technology and art. He also writes for RebelArt
Magazine.
Andy
Deck is an American media artist specializing
in Internet art. His work addresses the politics and aesthetics
of collaboration, interactivity, software, and independent
media.
Josh
On's Antiwargame 'lets a player act as the US President
and lead the USA into a war against terrorism...It is the
President¹s challenge to keep up presidential popularity
while pursuing whatever strategy might appeal to the player's
sense of gameplay or political outlook.'
Kipper is the creative
director of Escape From Woomera, an online first person, 3D
adventure game, being developed by an Australian collective
of games developers, artists and activists. The game invites
players to assume the character of a modern day refugee, and
attempt to escape from a well-known detention centre in Australia.
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Net Art and Games as Protest
Media- Interviews
Robert Praxmarer:
Why do you think that
games are an appropriate medium to communicate
a message of critique or protest?
Andy Deck >
People have demonstrated
an eagerness to play games with computers
for decades, but today many don't even know
that online art exists. For interactive
software art, if it is not to be elitist
and directed only at people who are already
familiar with art software, games are an
interesting form to adapt. Familiarity is
something that can be used.
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I think EVERY medium is appropriate
for dissent. That doesn't mean that
every medium is suited to the message
of course. I think that the best medium
for dissent are physical actions like
protests, strikes and sit ins. They
bring people together in physical space
to share their ideas and opinions. We
learn who is on our side. For example
in a strike police will attack the strikers
and protect the scab labor. The situation
is exactly the same in a lock out. But
we need space to develop our theory
too, to record the memory of these struggles
and generalize from them, that is where
books, journals and papers come in to
play. If we are to win this class war
and get rid of classes forever we must
be clear in our objectives and informed
about our strategies. Videogames fall
into the larger category of cultural
dissent. I don't think it works the
same way as the more direct action,
propaganda and organizing. Nevertheless,
we are enduring a cultural assault from
the right. There are multiplexes full
of war propaganda like Black Hawk Down,
and the Army has put out a recruitment
war video game. I think this demands
some symmetry. We should fight them
on all fronts, of course we should be
tactical about it, and I don't think
that the would of videogames is where
we should put too much of our energy!
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Firstly, gameplay is inherently
about struggle and interacting with
and challenging boundaries and rules.
In a cultural and historical sense the
videogame is a subversive medium that
inspires passion in young people. It
offers a level of broad social relevance
and empowerment for delivering progressive
ideas that you can't get so much anymore
from traditional media.
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Robert Praxmarer:
What about the drawbacks of this medium, are
there any? Like people could say it's an infantile
or immature way of dealing with serious topics,
where people losing their lives or it's about
serious politic questions.
Andy Deck >
Of course the
styles of the popular games demand alternatives
that the game industry has failed to deliver.
There are ways to approach the game-as-form
that are serious. Many artists working with
games have imitated the violence of the
industrial mode. Actually, this is partly
for technical reasons, because the easiest
way to build a game is to hang new wallpaper
in an existing game framework. It's much
harder to build something original from
scratch. So if there is a drawback of this
form, it's that technically it is very challenging
for an individual to produce a video game
comparable in its sophistication to the
ones that are built by the game industry.
By sophistication' here I'm referring to
technical qualities and complexities that
are immediately perceived by game enthusiasts.
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I think there is a problem with "fighting"
on the cultural front in general. Which
is that using art didactically often
produces poor art with a sloppy message.
There are exceptions to the rule of
course. There are some great children's
books like Raymond Briggs' Where the
Wind Blows for example. I don't know
that cuteness is a problem per se. There
are great political cartoons which employ
cute characters to convey serious political
messages. In the USA there is a great
comic strip called the Boondocks which
often comments on the racist institutions
from the point of view of two young
African American kids.
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The major drawback of
this medium is that production and distribution
is largely controlled by a corporate
elite. Only once this control is seriously
challenged can we truly find out how
much the problems and perceptions of
the videogame medium have to do with
inherent limitations of the form versus
how much they actually have to do with
the content that is created for it.
I also think there is no distinct line
that can or should be drawn between
entertainment and serious topics in
games - after all, 'serious' novels
and films are still given aestheticised
treatments.
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Robert
Praxmarer:
Do
you think the message communicated with
games has the same kind of impact you
as an artist would want to achieve?
Andy Deck >
To some
extent, yes. Some people are thinking
about games and their symbolism
in new ways because of the existence
of art/game alternatives.
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I can't claim Antiwargame to
be a great success. I don't
really think it works that well
as a game - or as a political
statement. But it was an attempt
to do both. Games are such a
specific form of culture, there
is a magic component called
gameplay which requires a strange
mix of math and art. There are
very few games of any genre
that are really successful.
Part of the process to creating
a successful game is a lot of
time spent play testing it,
which is something I did a minimal
amount of due to time constraints.
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We are still seeking
production funding to finish
our game so we can't yet tell
whether we've achieved what
we set out to achieve. But the
response from lots of Australian
gamers and refugees so far has
been great - many seem to instinctually
understand what we're trying
to do.
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Robert Praxmarer: For
sure the younger generation are the principal
participants in games. Do you think they are
getting the right messages? Or is the emphasis
on everything being fun, making them unable
to distinguish a protest game from an ordinary
shoot-em up game ?
Andy
Deck >
The games I've
made are not very fun and they don't deliver
the kind of satisfying results that one
might expect. So I don't think there's much
danger that people are going to mistake
my work for pure entertainment. In general
I mistrust this tendency to focus on what's
wrong with kids today. Adult political "leaders"
are treating real people as if they were
avatars in a video game without consequences.
Let's begin by accusing them and deconstructing
the schemes of representation that are used
against the interests of the young.
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I think young kids a pretty smart on
the whole. I am not sure whether Antiwargame
was coherent enough, but I hope that
some of what I was trying say got through:
it was business calling for war, troops
would rather get stoned than fight,
this will end in nuclear war or revolution.
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I think gamers recognise
that lots of commercial games are overtly
political and always have been. The
only real difference between our game
and a commercial game will be the politics
- we're hoping to make it just as fun
because we see that making a good quality
game is essential to achieving one of
our major goals. That goal is to help
prove that it is possible to make a
playable game that wholly embraces the
medium - ie beyond conceptual art -
whilst engaging with challenging and
progressive themes.
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Robert Praxmarer: How
old are you? Do you belong to the gamer generation?
What's your favorite game, and do you play any
computer games at all?
Andy
Deck >
Mezzo del cammin.
When I was fifteen I met the local tycoons
of the video game parlor. They were all
in their early twenties. My personal dislike
for them led me to stop playing games because
I didn't want to help them buy more fancy
sports cars. Up until that point I played
hand-held and arcade games, but now I hardly
ever play electronic games.
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I am 31. I don't play many videogames,
though I have worked in a couple of
games companies. I play a lot of board
games and card games, and I used to
play a lot of Sid Mier's Civilization.
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I'm 27, and we're (the
EFW dev. team) mostly in our late 20s
and early 30s. My favourite game of
all time is Deus Ex because of its depth
of content and ideas but for sheer pleasure
the game i've played obsessively is
Counter-strike. Because I've worked
in the game development industry I know
lots of hardcore gamers - which makes
me realise that I'm not hardcore, maybe
somewhere in between a "casual"
and "moderate" gamer.
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Robert Praxmarer: Why do you think games
(ordinary ones as well, like chess) have such
a long tradition? Is it a meta layer for human
social-interaction? -which leads me to the next
question. What about the one player scenario,
just you and the computer, does that mean that
we are growing a generation of sociopaths?
Andy
Deck >
Again, I think
the generation of sociopaths is all grown
up and, where I come from, they're in charge
of the government. I'm reminded of a slip
of the tongue by Norman Schwarzkopf during
the first Gulf War. When asked whether war
had become too much like a game, he denied
it. He then went on immediately to say,
"[A]t this stage of the game, this
is not a time for frivolity on the part
of anybody." Games and game cults are
so pervasive that it's hard to avoid being
influenced by them. I guess if there's a
hopeful aspect to this situation, it's that
the commodity-orientation of electronic
games generates expectations of novelty.
As games continue to evolve, there will
be more and more opportunities to sustain
meaningful, quasi-literary experiences.
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There has been a long history of solitary
games. But on the most part games a
structured form of social interaction
that help us connect with each other.
Even one player videogames have a sort
of one way interaction going from the
designers through to the players. But
more and more games are being made that
connect people together. People with
games consoles can connect them to the
internet and speak through headsets
to other players they met online. People
are social creatures, that is why those
gaming parlors are so popular around
the world. I don't think that we have
a generation of sociopaths growing up.
Even kids who sit there alone playing
shoot em ups for hours, understand that
this is "just a game." As
the contradictions of this profit driven
world increasingly prevent us from living
meaningful and fulfilling lives, we
seek meaning where we can find it. I
hope that there are generations of revolutionaries
growing up, but that will take more
than videogames, more than art. It will
take lots of reaching out to those who
are angry at the system and joining
with them in struggle, all the time
discussing what it will take to change
it!
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There's been a lot of
assertions from Moral Panickers about
the supposed brain-numbing and anti-social
nature of gaming - but isn't reading
a book inherently an anti-social experience?
Most gamers I know love network gaming.
Some of the closest bonds I've formed
with my workmates have been due to LAN
gaming. I guess that would count as
a meta-layer for social interaction,
because I've found that you can tell
alot about someone's personality and
interactions in the real world from
how they play a multiplayer game. I
guess it's the same in traditional games.
Many people have said that one of the
important roles of games is to provide
a safe space in which you trial and
act out risky actions without fear of
real-world consequences. Videogames
have the potential to take this to a
whole new level in a social/political
sense with massively multiplayer games
and persistent worlds.
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