From Pong to The Sims, the way we have played video games
have never before evolved this much. By being fascinated from moving the white
bar to orchestrating the life of a character, participation in the game has
changed. This notion is prevalent throughout Raessen’s reading, whereby
“computer games are re-mediating participatory culture, where one is able to
interpret, reconfigure and construct within the game” (Reassen 2005, p. 24).
There is now further interaction with the game, where we are provided more
options and more power over our game play. Whether you are a video game junkie or
not, it is undeniable that the structure, form, and content of video games have
also transformed. However the more they move towards interactive gameplay, with
rich content and story lines, the more the games are representing reality and
echoing dominant discourses.
As there is a transition from simplistic gaming to narrative
gaming, there is also a shift towards higher levels of interpretation. As one
of the three pillars to Raessen’s participation, interpretation explains the
process of encoding and decoding. According to Hall (1973, p. 57), media texts, or in this case video games
can be interpreted with a “dominant, negotiated or resistant code”. Now in the
current world of games, with the rich content, narrative, and in depth
story lines, players can determine the meaning or significance of the game in
the following ways.
1)
Dominant Code
A player with a dominant code will interpret the game according to the preferred reading, which has the “institutional and ideological order imprinted in them” (Hall 1973, p. 57).
2) Negotiated Code
A player with a negotiated reading will “understand the preferred reading, but in terms of their own personal experience.
A player with a dominant code will interpret the game according to the preferred reading, which has the “institutional and ideological order imprinted in them” (Hall 1973, p. 57).
2) Negotiated Code
A player with a negotiated reading will “understand the preferred reading, but in terms of their own personal experience.
A player with an oppositional code is clearly
aware of the preferred ideology, and out rightly opposes it.
One example that displays this domain of participation is from The
Sims. During the initial stages of the game you are allowed to create your own
characters or select a default house. Let us say you are given a default house
with two occupants being male and one female. Automatically
you make the male find a job and work for the house, while the female will do
all the housework, eventually establishing their relationship and furthering it
on to creating a baby.
Source: The Sims 3 Forum
This is an interpretation that is relevant
to a dominant reading, whereby the above is your conventional family dynamics.
Negotiated readings on the other hand, may make them as just friends as it can
be related to their current social situations. As the antithesis to the
dominant reading, the player will notice the dominant reading, and
actively oppose it by allowing the male to look after the child and let the
female to work for the house.
Therefore, from the above, interpretation can be taken on many paths
in gameplay. However in the land of the Sims, it is tied down by one main idea
that permeates every command executed in the game. This idea, contended by Sicart
(2003, p. 9), sees the game as one that revolves around a capitalist society,
to which the amount earned and owned, determines the conditions of happiness. Furthermore,
Charles Taylor’s “The Ethics of Daily Life” also dictate that an individual is
successful if work and family are successful, along with a sense of community
in friendships. This all constituted a “good life” (Sicart 2003, p. 6).
For the duration of the game, the player can allow their Sim to
experience the “good life” purchasing certain items, developing relationships,
and satisfying their basic needs. However what is most imperative is the need
for a job, thus when playing the Sims, one of the initial stages involve the
player to use a newspaper or computer to seek work.
Source: Bakatard
According to Sicart, the above cannot be
avoided. In one of his experiments, he attempted to create a Kurt Cobain
inspired Sim, to which the Sim would take joy in playing guitar all day and
taking happiness in solitude.
[SimCobain in the moment]
Source: The Sims 3 Forum
Source: The Sims 3 Forum
Yet eventually his “SimCobain” proved to be difficult to
play with, as he “refused to play guitar or watch TV: [instead] he wanted to
have friends, a job and to be nice to his wife” (Sicart 2003, p. 8). Following
that, Sicart (2003) observed how the game took control and guided SimCobain in
remaking his life. Consequently there is no progression within in a game if one does
not follow the rules of it. Bolter and Grusin (Garite 2003, p. 9) draw on this
by writing that “ the player must continuously defend the equilibrium of the
game by ideologically defending or reestablishing the status quo”. The status
quo, in this case, is the capitalist society.
As a result, although we have the freedom to interpret within games,
we do not necessarily have the freedom in the game to fulfil our interpretations.
It is the workings of the game, the ideological cogs and gears, which restrain
us as players.
Alternatively, another pressing issue refers to the distinction
between the lines of virtual and physical reality through games. Addressing Reassen (2005, 374)
“digitally produced reality can have effects which are comparable with effects
of factual reality”. Thus, the ideologies present in our virtual reality can
have
reinforcing effects that dictate behaviour in the physical world. On the same note, Sarkeesian (Dean 2012) explains that the stories that games relate to are being passed onto the next generation, "giving us (primarily children) cues as to how we should behave and what our expectations are". What Sarkeesian especially sees as undesirable passed onto the next generation, is the disempowerment of female characters.
reinforcing effects that dictate behaviour in the physical world. On the same note, Sarkeesian (Dean 2012) explains that the stories that games relate to are being passed onto the next generation, "giving us (primarily children) cues as to how we should behave and what our expectations are". What Sarkeesian especially sees as undesirable passed onto the next generation, is the disempowerment of female characters.
[Sarkeesian, 2013]
In part 1 of her Damsel in Distress series, Sarkeesian
analyses the ongoing prevalence of the vulnerable and passive female character,
to the strong and able male in video games. Typically, female characters are
almost always relegated to a position to which they are kidnapped and depicted
as vulnerable. According to Sarkeesian (Damsel in Distress: Trope vs.
Women in Video Games, 2013), “this damsel trope make men the subject of
narratives, while women the object. The female characters are objectified as
they are acted upon, reduced to a prize to be won, a treasure to be found, or a
goal to be achieved”. Furthermore, as the damsel in distress, the female is
shown as powerless and incapable of engineering her own escape, only being
allowed to wait for her saviour. Yet when it is the male archetype that is
imprisoned or placed in a moment of weakness, he relies on his intelligence,
and cunning skills to engineer his own escape, gaining back his own freedom.
This just goes to show that the male archetypes within games are capable and
strong, and most importantly, needed desperately by the damsel. In turn it is
this exact relationship, prevalent in countless games, that “fosters the
paternalistic idea that the power imbalance between the strong male and
vulnerable woman is appealing, expected and normal” (Damsel in Distress:
Trope vs. Women in Video Games, 2013).
Source: Kotaku
The above
normalisation is made even more stronger by a games nature in providing high
graphic, dynamic worlds in a box that focus our attention on what is important,
and what is to be ignored in a world (Kurt 2006, p, 7). As a result,
since women are underrepresented within games, it presents to players the idea
that they are insignificant. In the “world in the box”, games show the aspect
of our world that idolises men and under represents women, hence having players
focus on what is shown and ignore what is omitted. As they say, out of sight
out of mind.
Furthermore is that within this gaming microcosm, players are conditioned by the dominant ideas again and again. As Kurt (2006, p. 10) notes, the active player learns the game through “cycles of doing, seeing and being”. This repetitious behaviour continuously embeds the ideas and processes of the game into the player, eventually being internalized in them. For instance, by incessantly saving the damsel in distress, the player will find it normal for women to be vulnerable and in need of rescuing. Henceforth, games naturalize relationship between player gestures and on screen effects by demanding repetition of these gestures (saving the damsel). In order to keep the player to responding in this way, the game rewards them, whereby this action is then entirely internalized into the player (Garite 2003, p. 3).
Furthermore is that within this gaming microcosm, players are conditioned by the dominant ideas again and again. As Kurt (2006, p. 10) notes, the active player learns the game through “cycles of doing, seeing and being”. This repetitious behaviour continuously embeds the ideas and processes of the game into the player, eventually being internalized in them. For instance, by incessantly saving the damsel in distress, the player will find it normal for women to be vulnerable and in need of rescuing. Henceforth, games naturalize relationship between player gestures and on screen effects by demanding repetition of these gestures (saving the damsel). In order to keep the player to responding in this way, the game rewards them, whereby this action is then entirely internalized into the player (Garite 2003, p. 3).
As a result, under all these levels, characters and narratives, the
underlying ideologies always prevail over the player. The real controller of
the game is the “inaccessible system core that is known as Read Only Memory,
which cannot be touched or changed’ (Garite 2003, p. 7). Therefore the same
misrepresentations, dominant discourses and unequal power relationships will
remain the same, until game developers tweak the ROM to create a more equal
representation of the world. We can challenge these
representations and fix the problems by first identifying them. If gaming is
all about enjoying ourselves, then it should matter to all of us that it be
inclusive and representative (Dean 2012). The same way that equality is supported
and advocated for our physical environment, it is time that we do the same in
our virtual environment too.
Damsel in Distress: Trope vs. Women in Video Games 2013, Video Recording, Feminist Frequency, March 2013, date retrieved: 1st
October 2013, <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6p5AZp7r_Q>
Dean, P 2012,
“Tropes vs. Women in Video Games: Why it Matters”, date retrieved: 7th
October 2013, <http://au.ign.com/articles/2013/05/31/tropes-vs-women-in-video-games-why-it-matters>
Garite, M 2003,
The Ideology of Interactivity: Or Video Games and Taylorization of Leisure.
Level Up. Digital Games Research Conference, edited by M. Copier and J.
Raessens. Utrecht: Utrecht University
Hall, S. 1973, Encoding and Decoding in the Television
Discourse, Birmingham England: Centre for Cultural Studies, University of
Birmingham, pp. 507-17
Kurt, S 2006,
“From Content to Context: Videogames as Designed Experience”, Educational
Researcher, Vol. 35. No. 8, p. 1 – 30
Raessens, J. 2005, ‘Computer games as
participatory media culture’, Handbook of
Computer Game Studies, MIT Press,
Cambridge, Mass, pp. 373-388
Sicart, M 2003,
Family Values: Ideology, Computer Games, and The Sims. DiGRA conference, Utrecht, The Netherlands
