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.