I'm gonna make you sweat (sweat, 'till you got sweat no more)

I was really amazed when I read THIS STORY . I guess I shouldn't have. the piece is from the NY times and it tells the story of World of Warcraft (WOW) sweatshops where Chinese people plays/works almost every day of the month for 30 cents an hour. they achieve magical weapons and artifacts (+5 anti-wrist infection stone) and their bosses sell them online. it was obvious at some point when big money got into the industry that things like that would happen but it made me think about few things that I would like to share here.

WoW. behind every strong man there is a chinese swaetshop worker.

First of all, is it the job of the ludologist to address phenomenas like this. the real question is should ludology perceive itself as a meta-critique or just a cultural-texts-analyzing-machine. should we speak about those Chinese at the same time we speak about important issues like Lara Croft's hooters or the psyche of the gamer. can we talk seriously about Agon (competition) or Alea (chance) when there is no category for abuse.

As it seems (and as always) there is no simple yes or no answer. but I think that if we imagine our ludic field of knowledge as a field that can embrace every phenomena of the human experience we can see right away that there is a lot of work need to be done. maybe the six categories of our fathers ( Huizinga's and Caillois's) are insufficient to hold all the ludic situations. Huizinga described games as a voluntary activity but can it be voluntary for those chinese ?is it not gaming than? is patching Nike logos for 20 hours a day can be voluntary or is it just one of a very few possibilities some people have to survive. on the other hand, can we imagine an athlete that sprint's for 10 years do anything else than sprinting in the next 10 years to come. or maybe most of us don't have as many possibilities as we would like to imagine.

Thomas More. Neo Ludo is not my cup of tea. bling bling is.

I wouldn't like to draw an Antihumanism conclusion, but at glance the neo ludology is not an emancipating project . maybe when society would understand itself as nothing much than a platform for characters to interact, when goals are valuable only until the next goal arrives, maybe there we can find some freedom. is freedom of consciousness is real freedom?what is real freedom? as i see it maybe the key is for people to take life like it was nothing more than a game. accept the limited possibilities. people can go behind their given options but it is nothing more than a bug, a glitch, in the system not the goal. do you already feel better?

From pre to neo ludology

The first major work on gaming in the western world was written in Spain at 1283, by king Alfonso the 10th, AKA Alfonso the wise. the book was a complete game guide, with rules for games like Chess, Backgammon, dice and cards. It was dictated by Alfonso to three monks and he truly felt that it is god's will for people to play. I couldn't agree more.

"...those who like to enjoy themselves in private to avoid the annoyance and unpleasantness of public places, or those who have fallen into another's power, either in prison, or slavery, or as seafarers, and in general all those who are looking for a pleasant pastime which will bring them comfort and dispel their boredom. For that reason, I, Don Alphonso... have commanded this book to be written."

Alfonso X. It was certainly wise of him to bring his own Wiimote and nunchuk.

I Love this introduction. games help you deal or avoid with the unpleasantness of public. next time when i think of grabbing a beer at my local, I will re-think it through and turn on my box360 or my PS2. though probably when he wrote the book he didn't saw through the relation ship problem that might arose, or to be more specific the game-envy that your significant other might develop.

this help us to draw a line that starts with the pre-ludo which is mainly about the game as set of rules and/or as a part-time activity. the modern ludology which started with Huizinga's "Homo ludens" or Caillois's " Les Jeux et les Hommes" or even with fresca's "ludo vs. narratology" that address games as an important cultural texts. and the Neo -Ludology (which I will dedicate my life to develop) that will see the games , as life, as a whole, which through understanding games we can analyze and critic the whole cultural structure. neoludo will see every phenomena or situation as a ludic one, one that consists of conditions of possibility which by the way the character ( the person) or the game (society) symbolizes will lead to an outcome that can be important or not by the same standards (person or society or both symbolization).

Homo Ludens. Yes... it is practically our ludic bible.

of course what I offer here is an insufficient outline partly because I myself cant see the full picture (yet.. I hope). but from very close reading of the current ludic work, It is easy to see that there is a lot of work need to be done. and the episteme or the cultural ground that is based on is mainly modern/structural episteme (and even more common is to use a hip post thinker and subordinate him to his terms and/or to a structural theory). neo-ludo should give the respect to video games as a a new form that couldn't be described or analyzed by the old categories. it is no longer sufficient to speak about the Author but the experience. the spotlight shouldn't be on the character but about the person in the dark, the gamer and his real and virtual spatial experience.

What do we care about a bunch of illegal workers?

I got myself XBOX 360 a week ago and since than I played Rainbow Six: Vegas for hours. Rainbow six is a series of games, that was written by Tom Clancy and in which you play an Anti-terrorist group. I had a few thoughts in mind while playing and wanted to share them with you.

1. When you elect the difficulty level your only options are between normal and realistic.I find it an amazing dichotomy. isn't the unfortunate truth in life is that normal is realistic.

2. At one point in the storyline you have to save illegal workers from a syndicate that mistreats them. when you go over to save them one of your teammates (Paid by the US tax payer) challenges you with the question : " What do we care about a bunch of illegal workers?" , and than you answer " Those people deserve a better life". . . . . now I'm sure I should have chosen realistic.

Rainbow Six. "Doctor ,I think I'm Realistic, Is that normal?"

Few notes on Harris's filmic game theory

I was doing my daily visit at Gamasutra.com and I stumbled upon Dow Harris's work Up From the Feuilleton: Theory of the Filmic Game. I wouldn't say that this paper changed my life, but it is interesting for most parts. Dow Harris recognize that one of the problems in the western culture is that we are too materialists. that is wrong observation in my opinion. we are not a materialist society, at least not according to Marx's sense of materialism. we do give meaning to our action and not judge our action by is definite value. I think i don't need an example, just to say that we reason or rationalize everything we do, that's the exact opposite of true materialism. we, and by that i mean western society, don't want to learn from the east. the all capitalist machine want to subdued the east and swallow it whole to be a part, a member, of the giant octopus. to say than that " we incline for action not reflection" is merely true. our entire phallocentric philosophy is all about the observing, its all about the eye, the gaze. Something exist only if we can see it.

East. No, thank you.

To be honest I didn't really understood what Harris have been trying to say. I think the model he offers for filmic games is something that already been around. not completely but games like MAX PAYNE or even the not so clever, though great fun, TRUE CRIME. the difference between cut scenes and the filmic experience, as I understand it, is merely a semantic one. in my vision I would imagine a series, lets take THE GODFATHER game for instance, that will give you the movie between the game or vise versa. if you haven't play the game, your character is a family member that didn't exist in the film but as the game goes along you discover that he is the one that did all the dirty jobs for the family, for example he is the one that puts the horses head in the director's bed. but my idea is for something completely original. imagine a police series like CSI or LAW AND ORDER that you play a criminal, you have the crimes you have to commit and than you watch , lets say, for every hour of gamer pure Violante fun you'll get a 30 min. episode resolving the crime, analyzing your disturbed personality. that will get you closer to your character, which in every media is the key element for fun, success and depth.

The Godfather - The Game. Might be a door to Filmic Gaming.

At some point of his article Harris quotes Ebert saying:
"Video games by their nature require player choices, which is the opposite of the strategy of serious film and literature, which requires authorial control. I am prepared to believe that video games can be elegant, subtle, sophisticated, challenging and visually wonderful. But I believe the nature of the medium prevents it from moving beyond craftsmanship to the stature of art. To my knowledge, no one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great dramatists, poets, filmmakers, novelists, and composers".

This is such a stupid remark by the famous film critic. first of all games don't really requires a gamer choice. that is the whole story of gaming, the game make you fell like it is your choice but it is not. gaming experience is what Jacque Lacan would have called an Extimate experience. it is an external experience disguised as an intimate and personal one. and that is, in my opinion, the definition of art. I'm not really a big fan of the whole genius/modern politics, I don't think there is such thing. I believe in timing, hypes, momentum, but even though, I think it will be fairly easy to name a lot of games that can stand tall in a list with all other geniuses if we follow the imaginary standards Ebert's ( and his kind) applies.

Kratos. God of war III will take place at Ebert's house.

I love the quote from Baudrillard. there is no truth - that's why the simulacrum is the most ethical choice, cause it doesn't hold no a-historical, metaphysical truth. it reminds me of ZIZEK observation about masturbation as the most ethical form of love making. there is no common belief it has to sustain by sustaining a whole set of empty signifiers.

One ring to rule them all

Sometimes i am thinking/fantasizing about the future of gaming, when there will be bluer blu-ray and HD-HD-DVD, I think that what we will find in a game will be a completely different content than what we got used to until now ( next-gen included). first of all I imagine that the real change of huge disk space and powerful processing will obviously upgrade the graphics but the real deal will be possibilities inside the game. A game could start as THE SIMS, you will bring a boy to the world, fight your way in school BULLY style or even TEKKEN style and than fulfil your childhood dream of being a NASCAR driver or a SINGSTAR.

BULLY. Choices and possibilities

all these option are open to us, the gamers, by switching games in our console, but for now those options are closed to our characters. I would like to emphasis that I believe that gaming's future is all about narrowing the gap between gamer and character not with VR or smell effects but possibilities are the answer to the gap. in this way a player could come to a games from behind, as Deleuze would have said, and make him a bastard son, the specific character, built like all of us from his choices.the outcome and the split between the game (as a set of possibilities) and the gaming as the specified path you chose.

Deleuze. your character is the bastard son you made with the game

That will led toward two gaming catastrophes. first of all it will be the death of the genre, because every game will offer much more than one genre as i mentioned before, that will lead to more localized games. second point is that we will be left without the winning/losing dichotomy. cause maybe you lost as the NASCAR race but you succeeded in the fire-fighter mini game/ sub mission. who can judge or score ones life. every event is just a small link in a chain of small losses and gains like life themselves. how will that effect the gaming immediate wining/losing core, that is a question i will leave open for now . . .

Captain planet and the soccer kids

In this excellent time-wasting game, http://www.flashgames.it/freekick.mania.html your goal is to score penalty kicks, choosing between 3 soccer stars like Beckham, Roberto Carlos and Park. You have to be blind (or at least color blind) to ignore the fact, that player have been chosen not because of their skills but because of the color of their skin. is this a gaming affirmative action, if so, where is the female (obviously a Muslim player is out of the question). i wouldn't mind scoring with that nice US soccer player that toke her shirt off after the winning penalty kick few years ago. that remind me of the same politics that assembled the kids from Captain Planet, although it made me think maybe there were more powerful and skillful contenders that didn't qualify for Planet's gang just because their skin color was already taken.