Augmented Reality Games and the Real World

This week’s readings are somewhat different, as we move from computer games to analyse a Japanese anime series, Dennou Coil – coil a circle of children. The word “Dennou” in the title literally means “electronic brain, and “coil” refers to how is surrounds and encompasses the children in a cyber reality. A brief overview of the anime, Dennou Coil, as derived from the first two episodes, depict it as a science-fiction story set in a futuristic Japanese city called Daikoku City. In this city, daily lives are enhanced by virtual reality, layered on the real world through augmented reality glasses, whose users can browse the internet, track down people and pets, and view virtual elements such as computer viruses and obsolete space that are not visible in the real world. Similarly, as mentioned in my previous blog entry, the city seems to be chosen as a playground for military battles again, this time as an augmented reality layered onto the real world, where playful hackers (the children) and the government of the city (the Megamass corporation) pit their technologies (the augmented reality glasses and various other appliances) against each other.

It is interesting to see that although these glasses are used by adults, they are used as a technological tool to assist their daily working lives. However, the children take it a step further and use these glasses as part of their social lives, using it to hack into the limitless virtual reality system surrounding the city to play their own make-believe games that are given visual form through the glasses. For example, an imaginary pet becomes a virtual pet that could be seen and touched through the use of these glasses. Padia is seen in the sense that these children seem to be having fun with the available technological tools at hand, creating their make-believe games as and when they feel like it, or coming up with conspiracies surrounding the glasses and the city police, the “Searchamotrons” also know as “Satchii”. The reason why these games seem so natural to their play is because the glasses allow virtual reality to be super-imposed onto their everyday lives, where they can interact with virtual objects in the setting of the city they live in.

While watching the first two episodes, I was struck by the similarities in our two societies. The children in the anime seem to be heavily involved in their virtual playground, going to the extent of property destruction and evading threats on their lives, even forming groups that compete against each other to gather “metabugs” (a material available only in the cyber world), that is not real. In our current society, we also see children being so addicted by computer games that they could spend days, weeks even, playing the same game over and over again. Some are so engrossed in the game that they forget that they live in the real world, sometimes bringing about elements of gaming into their real lives, believing that it was true. For example, school shootings such as the Virginia Tech campus incident a few years ago.

I wonder why these children go to so much trouble just for something that exists virtually? (The first episode where Densuke, the protagonist’s virtual pet went missing). Is it because of the sense of attachment to the pet that seems real because of the virtual pet’s ability to respond to her cues? Why were they so frightened of virtual threats (the computer viruses also known as illegals) even though they knew that it could not harm them physically and that they could end it by taking off their augmented reality glasses at any time? Sometime later, I realised that it was because their lives were so integrated into virtual reality that perhaps they could no longer differentiate what was real and what was not. The virtual world becomes as “real” as the real world and not being able to access it seems just as horrifying.

The Dennou Coil anime series might be aimed towards children, but it covers several adult themes addressing the more mature audiences, one example being the notion of social control by an oppressive corporation in the city. Gilles Deleuze, a philosopher, suggests in one of his works, the idea of disciplinary societies (where individuals are disciplined within closed environments of family, school, barracks, factory, hospital and the prison) transiting into societies of control, where the large corporation encompasses all power, pitting individuals against each other, dividing each within.

As evident in Dennou Coil, the Megamass corporation, an overall large corporation controls information and limits access to it for the “good” of the people. Satchiis’ are deployed to police the city, carelessly destroying any illegal goods and repairing hacker disruptions, with no distinction between what is good and bad. (Saatchi tried to destroy Densuke even though it was a harmless pet). Although there is some remaining freedom where Satchiis’ cannot enter shrines, schools and houses, majority of the city is still controlled and regulated by the corporation with no exceptions. Due to this sense of control and being stifled, the children in the city attempt to rebel though engaging in hacker play and avoiding the police as a form of a game.

Having only seen the first two episodes, I might not be fully aware of the subtle underlying themes and concepts of this anime series, but I thought that the initial introduction into this world of augmented reality could be a mirror of what might occur in our society many decades from now. Perhaps technology might advance to the extent of being able to develop augmented reality glasses for use in real life as seen in the anime, or that might be a large corporation that imposes some form of control over society through the use of tracking technology, I do not know. However, I believe that in the case of such circumstances, we would need to be able to understand where the boundaries of reality lie, and not immerse ourselves in a virtual reality that might seem real, but in actual fact is not.

Discussion Question: With the advancement of technology, augmented reality games might become part of our future. How then, can we control the extent to which we incorporate such games as part of our lives in such a way that we remain conscious of reality as we know it?

 

An Analysis of Virtual Cities as Military Playgrounds

In chapter four: City as Military Playground: Contested Urban Terrain of her book, Schleiner describes virtual cities in first-person shooter (FPS) computer games as a military playground where M.O.U.T. (Military Operations in Urban Terrain) is tested. Roger Stahl explains the phenomenon of an “interactive war”, where civilians are invited to “play at war” in a game, further blurring the boundary between computer games and military operations. Paul Virilio states that asymmetrical warfare (ability of advanced technology to allow a smaller group of soldiers to maintain control or cause greater damage than before) has caused operations to shift from external battlefields to urban cities.

All of these studies promote the trend of a shift from FPS computer games as a form of padia play and entertainment to a more ludic play of such games becoming a testing ground for military operations and training. In addition, the emergence of hactivism where hactivists hack into games purely for the purpose of disrupting such operations.

In DoA, some aspects of this phenomenon are true. For example, the virtual cities are indeed a favoured site of conflict. DoA allows players to build a city and outposts to gather resources, train troops and fight against the other players. Cities and outposts have several differences. Players can only build one city but can build several outposts as long as they have the necessary resources. Although outposts can be used to gather resources, there is limited space and the resources need to be sent to the city in order to be used. Hence, the player has to personally go to the outpost and collect the resources which will in turn be stored infinitely in the city. With such limitations, players generally tend to attack cities which have more resources. Similarly, asymmetrical warfare posits soldiers to attack actual cities as their “population density makes it vulnerable to a small amount of attackers who can cause a large amount of damage”.

Schleiner also mentions that the regenerative re-spawning of the computer game soldiers after combat mimics the perceived immortality of the technologically advanced soldiers. DoA also supports this idea of regeneration, where dragons cannot be killed, but will slowly regenerate and heal themselves after suffering damage from battle. I thought that it was interesting how computer games sort of mimic what was occurring in reality, such as FPS games like America’s Army’s similarity to their actual war with Iraq. DoA might not be very similar to real life due to its elements of fantasy, but the game play itself comprises of warfare with groups of alliances battling against each other, somehow linked to actual wars that occur in reality. Perhaps the reason as to why we (as civilians) play such violent games could be linked back to our real lives where we feel frustrated and unable to do anything behind real wars in our world. Thus, we play them for the therapeutic release of our frustrations with our own lives.

The architectural of such virtual cities are often designed to encourage balanced confrontations against other players, such as the use of tall buildings for sniping. DoA also encourages confrontations by ensuring that attacking other players gives one more benefits than being inactive and only aiming to grow one’s city and gathering resources. This is achieved through the formation of alliances where each group tend to go to “war” with each other. Attacking outposts and fields also do not give as much resources and gold as compared to cities. I do agree with this notion that there has been a trend towards military operations from external battlefields to cities, but this is mainly due to the fact that cities contain more resources and that attacking it would cause greater damage to one’s allies while incurring fewer losses. Perhaps then, the military could learn from this and come up with tactics that could prevent such losses by their enemies, through playing virtual reality games of city invasions as a form of training.

In response to this military control over these virtual cities, Situationist play emerges, where hactivist artists hack into the city’s system, and attempt some form of playful intervention and disturbance of the game. For example, modding anti-military “digital graffiti” to spray on the walls and floors of Counter-Strike, a popular FPS computer game. Such interventions are not really evident in DoA, other than modders attempting to cheat the game by creating mods that give unlimited rubies. However, players with high power do attempt to create disturbance by continuously attacking other players (also called “farming”) purely for the satisfaction of destroying others rather than for gaining resources. These players also created alliances for the purpose of farming as many players as possible, creating the moniker of “dark” alliances that destroy players.

I thought that the concept of virtual game cities becoming grounds for military operations and training was rather intriguing. Who would have expected that games could be militarised in such a manner? It is strange to realise that many of the computer games we play are derived from concepts and issued from the real world, such as FPS games (e.g. Counter-Strike) from war or trading games (e.g. Elite) from stock markets. I believe that as demand for these types of games grows, it is inevitable that developers would produce more of such games, while hactivist artists continue their disruptions and playful interventions in the game.

My question for discussion is: What are some examples of computer games (other than those mentioned in the reading) that that have been derived and simulated from real world conditions?

 

Modding and the Game Industry: Parasitic or Symbiosis?

What is “modding”? As defined by Anne-Marie Schleiner in a book chapter: Game Modding: Cross-Over Mutation and Noisy Gifts, it refers to the “modification and transformation of a computer game by players”. The origins of game modding lies with the First Person Shooter (FPS) games that developed in the 1990’s, where ordinary players, tired with the generic appearance of the game characters, created their own version of “skins”, which could be pasted on their characters to alter their appearances. Inspired by the open source movement’s sharing of code, these players created a revolution of modding in the gaming industry, becoming ludic mutators (game artists who makes, unmakes and passes game material on for further transformation) that were able to modify the play material as they like.

Michel Serres, a French philosopher, explored the concept of ” the parasite” in relation to a host body, as “noise in an informatic system”. Similarly, by likening the practice of modding as parasitism, we see that modders take advantage of the game system, poaching and thieving its ideas, modifying and transforming its content into their own.

In Dragons of Atlantis (DoA), mods are evidently part of the community. Mods to cheat by getting instant rubies, items and troops, auto-collecting resources without logging into the game, upgrading buildings and research immediately have been uploaded regularly on online file-sharing websites, forums and video-sharing platforms.

 

The relationship I see seems to be mostly parasitic, as modders take advantage of the game system to cheat outrageously, often gaining huge amounts of power in the game in an instant, and using said power to crush other players through battle or discourage them by selling resources at a ridiculous price far above the norm (e.g. ore is sold at 10 times per unit).

On the other hand, in his classic work, The Gift, French sciologist Marcel Mauss argues that gifts are never “free”. He adds that “human history is full of examples that gifts give rise to reciprocal exchange, and to not reciprocate means to lose honour and status“. Hence, people would feel obligated to reciprocate. By adapting his theory to the issue of game modding, we can say that modders and the game industry is that of a symbiosis, where modders serve as a means for game designers to further develop and improve the game based on their mods and game designers gift modders the means to modify the game at their own discretion and the satisfaction of being the one that influenced further game developments or even monetary gains.

However, this is not entirely accurate either. Different forms of obligation exists in our society. Legal obligations like providing for your parents can be enforced by the law. Social obligations like accepting an invitation for lunch is enforced by social pressure. Is there really an obligation for the game industry to reciprocate if they make use of the creative mods posted on online sites to enhance their own game development and vice-versa? I doubt so.

In DoA, game moderators discourage the creation of mods by asking hosts sites to take down the relevant information, as it is against their regulations. Despite their attempt to regulate such mods, game modders continue to put up their creations online, and it is easy enough to download mods provided that one knows where to find them. One could also say that the existence of mods has led to disorder in the virtual world, where one player holds an extremely large advantage over the others. How fair would it be to play a game where you can never win despite all of your efforts? Then again, how fun would it be if you were the supreme ruler and there was nobody to compete with you? There is a need for a balance as to how far one can go when hacking and modifying the game.

With this, we link back to the previous entry on paidia and play as discussed by Roger Callois. If paidia refers to a disorderly, creative kind of chaotic action unbounded by rules, couldn’t we say that modders having been attempting to play paidiacally all along? If so, how could modding be wrong since this is merely a form of disorderly play?

In all, it is difficult to say define the relationship between modders and the game industry due to several factors supporting both sides of the argument. Whatever the conclusion, there is no doubt that game mods have indeed inspired game designers to further enhance and improve their game world. Hence, perhaps its existence is not unnecessary after all.

Thus, I leave you with this question. Are modders truly amateur co-designers of games with a symbiosis relationship with the real game designers, or are they disruptive hackers, acting as parasites, intentionally poaching and disrupting gameplay?

 

Of Paidia and Sandbox Games..

Sandbox games are video games where a player explores a virtual world and is free to choose how exactly to approach the game. For example, in an online game, Dragons of Atlantis (DoA), players can build their own empire, raise dragons to defend their cities and conquer enemies. Players are free to play the game in their own way, be it building armies for attacking or making alliances for support.

With the development of such games, comes the Greek word ‘paidia‘, which prefers to unstructured and spontaneous activities (playfulness) associated with games. However, what does this ‘play’ mean, and how does it relate to the games we play?

On the Definition of Play

In 1938, Johan Huizinga, a Dutch historian published a book Homo Ludens, defining ‘play’ as follows:

“a free activity standing … outside ‘ordinary’ life, … absorbing the player intensely … activity connected with no material interest, and no profit … proceeds within its own boundaries of time and space according to fixed rules and in an orderly manner…”

This is true to a certain extent. From the example of DoA, we could say that sandbox games are voluntary activities, where the player is free to play and free to leave the game any time he wants. DoA stands outside our real lives as a separate form of entertainment, within precise limits of time and space (time in DoA runs even when the player is not logged in).

To say that ‘play’ demands absolute order and fixed rules is rather extreme. DoA presents an exploratory world where players attempt to play the game in their own way. While there might be standard ‘quests’ that players are encouraged to follow (via rewards), one can still ignore these goals and explore alternatives like earning more gold instead of doing further research.

Huizinga says that ‘play’ creates no material wealth. At the end of the game, all players start over again with no material capital incurred. However, many sandbox games are actually designed to profit off players by encouraging them to buy further upgrades and bonuses with real money. Of course players can decide not to buy such upgrades, but the temptation does exist, especially when their online friends expand their cities at a faster rate than themselves. Claiming that such games are connected with no material interest or profit is false.

Therefore, despite Huizinga’s attempt to define play, the complexity of this concept still leaves the definition open to interpretation.

The Classification of Games

French Sociologist, Roger Caillois wrote a book, Man, Play and Games in 1961, identifying four patterns of play – Agon (competition), Alea (chance), Mimicry (simulation), and Ilinx (vertigo). He added that games could be placed on two opposite ends – paidia, where “free improvisation and impulsive exuberance” is dominant, and ludus, comprising of “structured activities with explicit rules”.

I observed that there is a tendency of play to gradually evolve from paidia to ludus. When starting to play DoA, paidia is more dominant as I find ways to engage and experiment with the game world, often finding new surprises. In DoA, a player may compete by attacking other players and conquering land (a form of agon); playing Fortuna’s Vault for a chance to win free bonuses (alea); or pretend to act out his fantasy of ruling a kingdom mimicry).

Some activities may seem more fun than others, but as I regularly return to the same activity (gathering resources and fortifying my city), the same patterns of play develop, as I perform the same action every time. Times of exploring the virtual world turn into repeated actions of gathering resources, building armies and upgrading buildings. Paidia might seem to be the definition of play, but it is short-lived and evolves into ludus over time.

I feel that to design a sandbox game that expresses paidia, designers would need to create a framework that could evoke spontaneous play and creative experimentation for the entire game, maximizing the time for players to ‘play’ instead of following strict rules that dictate the gameplay itself. How then, could sandbox games increase its elements of spontaneity and free engagement in gameplay?