gamestate

In The Handbook of Inaesthetics, Alain Badiou assembles ten “Theses on Theater,” which, at first glance anyway, offer game studies some compelling parallels. Indeed, he begins generously, furnishing us with the very link that we require. The purpose of the theses? “To establish—as we must for every art—that theater thinks” (72; emphasis mine).

In a happy echo of Anne Munster’s vocabulary, he calls theater “an assemblage.”

He writes: “It is an assemblage of extremely disparate components, both material and ideal, whose only existence lies in the performance, in the act of theatrical presentation.” The components are gathered together repeatedly, “each and every time time, the performance is evental, that is, singular.” This event, “an event of thought,” produces “theater ideas,” unique and unprecedented. “The idea arises in and by the performance… The idea is irreducibily theatrical and does not preexist before its arrival ‘on stage’” (72).

Of course, Frasca (and after him, Bogost) has already made use of a linkage between theater and games, via the work of Boal.

Indeed, Badiou’s observations about the nature of theatre call Bogost’s characterization of simulation to mind: “Theater is an experiment,” writes Badiou, “—simultaneously textual and material—in simplification” (emphasis mine). He even goes so far as to point out that simplification, for mathematicians, at least, is not always simple. Tout court, Simplification is all.

In Badiou’s further consideration of theater, I see parallels with Munster and Levi. “The theater-idea comes forth,” he writes, “in the (brief) time of its performance, its presentation.” But this presentation is not an interpretation: It is a complementation (and herein lies the parallel with Munster’s discussion of virtuality). “Every performance or representation is thus a possible completion of [the theater idea].”

Finally, a propos lengthy discourse on the artful nature of games, Badiou has this to say about theater: It does not serve to cultivate, but to provoke. “The public…comes to the theater to be struck. Struck by theater-ideas. It does not leave the theater cultivated, but stunned, fatigued (thought is tiring), pensive… It has encountered ideas whose existence it hitherto did not suspect” (77).

I can imagine elegant M. Badiou listening quietly to these parallels and then letting out a polite, but dismissive, laugh. But it is on the back of his weightier theses that I intend to investigate the dimensions of “game thought.”

Today’s New York Times features a brief article on video games and U.S. Army recruiting efforts in a Philadelphia mall.

The facility, which opened in August, is the first of its kind. It replaces five smaller recruitment stations in the Philadelphia area, at about the same annual operating cost, not counting the initial expenses, said Maj. Larry Dillard, the program manager. Philadelphia has been a particularly difficult area for recruitment.

Of particular interest is the Army’s recognition (already noted by scholars like Ian Bogost) that the persuasive capacity of video games extends beyond mere recruitment needs. Games are a more subtle political tool:

“We want to put people in the Army, but that’s about our third priority,” Sergeant Jennings said, gesturing to a kiosk with descriptions of 179 jobs in the Army, including details on salaries and benefits. “Most people think joining the Army means being a grunt, and that Iraq equals death. We try to show them that there’s more to the Army than carrying a gun. If people come in here and they learn that but they don’t join, that’s O.K.”

Read the entire article.

For December, among American gamers who play Warcraft, Nielsen finds it played on average over 11 hours / week.

Years ago, I was a “Nielsen family.” The unwieldy set-top box, hard-wired into the TV and the Cable Box, was a mysterious, exciting presence, and leant an air of authority to my cable TV watching choices (however dubious they seemed to girlfriends at the time).

I don’t own a TV now, but do have several game consoles and a WoW account. It seems that since the mid-90’s, Nielsen and I both have changed. Now, Nielsen tracks games: mobile, console, and PC. And, according to the latest data, World of Warcraft continues to be the most popular PC game title in the US.

For October 2008 specifically, WoW netted a 12.509 share, and was played (among people who play PC games) an average of just over 9 hours / week. [As in TV, a "share" is a percentage of total audience: Thus, 12.5 gamers out of 100 were playing WoW in October.]

Nielsen also estimates the Total Minutes Played (out of all PC games measured): WoW here earned a 62.280%.

For December, among American gamers who play Warcraft, Nielsen finds it played on average over 11 hours / week.

It is interesting to speculate about how many “PC Gamers” there are in the US. While they provide no specific definition of “PC Gamer” in this press release, Pew has noted that upwards of 53% of American adults play at spend some time playing computer games.

According to Nielsen, 0.723% of “PC Gamers” are playing Warcraft during any given minute.

According to a recent press release, Blizzard’s World of Warcraft now boasts 11.5 million subscribers world-wide.

Subscriptions and virtual-world populations are a frequent topic of discussion in game studies, but the facts are notoriously hard to come by, since population density — often perceived as an index of popularity — is a selling point, and therefore subject to spin. Blizzard is generally regarded as one of the most forthcoming and transparent of the online gaming services, as their definition of “subscriber” refers clearly to members who pay a monthly fee:

World of Warcraft subscribers include individuals who have paid a subscription fee or have an active prepaid card to play World of Warcraft, as well as those who have purchased the game and are within their free month of access. Internet Game Room players who have accessed the game over the last thirty days are also counted as subscribers. The above definition excludes all players under free promotional subscriptions, expired or cancelled subscriptions, and expired prepaid cards. Subscribers in licensees’ territories are defined along the same rules.

This differs substantially from online services like Second Life or MMORPG competitors like Atlantica (which calls itself “#1 ranked”): While SL and Atlantica boast many million “subscribers,” their definition of a subscriber includes those who sign up for free (and may never even have subsequently returned to the site). Blizzard’s pricey subscription may be the source of much complaint, but that cost guarantees the relative equivalence of subscriber base and shard population.

I’d like to research this further, but for the moment, the math on WoW is sufficiently interesting. If, as of Dec 28, 2008, there are 11.5 million subscribers, and approximately 236 known shards (“realms” or game instances, probably equivalent to physical servers), then there is a mean of roughly 48,700 subscribers per server. One difficulty with this number: I’ve no way of knowing how many avatars each subscriber maintains: I have 3 characters on Thrall, 2 on Crushridge, and 2 on The Underbog; based on anecdotal evidence, I doubt that my arrangement is atypical. Consequently, that 48.7k subscribers/shard mean fails to reflect the reality of individuals who play across several servers.

Contrary to the oversimplified characterization of a “magic circle” of bounded, inviolable game activity, gamic activity — and video game-play especially — always unfolds over otherwise rigid boundaries. Video game-play makes simultaneous and unbridled use of multiple media, unfurls across imbricated (and frequently exclusive) narratives and procedural norms, and often challenges the player to gauge against contradictory ontological horizons.

This afternoon, in Darnassus, I ran across some NPCs flirting with one another in a corner of the local inn. Their clothing — pointy felt caps and cotton-trimmed smocks in bright red and green — is utterly out-of-place here, but the significance is clear, nonetheless: It is a Christmas card from Warcraft’s developers to the players. Later, in the dwarven keep, I met some shady NPCs hawking cheeselogs from “Smokeywood Hollows.” If you have ever grappled with a salesperson from Pepperidge Farms during the holidays, you cannot help but smile.

Part of gaming is reading playfully: It is how we learn to unfold the screen’s codex. In the end, I am attracted to these Christmas card not because of what they do, but what they do not do: They do not spoil the game. Smokeywood Hollows and the flirty elves demonstrate the limitations of a faith in the “willing suspension of disbelief” model of immersion in synthetic worlds.

GameSpot: Shakespeare booked on DS

“The Times of London reports today that Nintendo has partnered with preeminent book publisher HarperCollins to bring a slate of literary classics to the DS. Labeled The 100 Classic Book Collection, the software will reportedly include works from Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, and the Bronte sisters. Details on the title’s interface weren’t expounded upon, though The Times did note that users will turn pages by way of the DS’s touch screen.”