Game Work: Language, Power, and Computer Game Culture

Preface

Technically speaking, computer games—the term I use to designate any game that requires a computer to work, including those for desktop machines, console and coin-op systems, and handheld devices—are software applications, just like word processors, image editors, and database programs.1 Anyone who plays computer games seriously, however, will tell you that games are not essentially the same as Microsoft Word, Photoshop, or Oracle, but rather are much more: they are works of art. Using unique combinations of image, sound, and interactivity, computer games draw players in, getting them to think and act, to use their imaginations to solve problems, and to have fun in make-believe worlds. Not all games succeed equally as artworks, of course, but these rough criteria indicate how gamers can quite reasonably lay claim to that designation. But computer games are really “works”in the broadest sense of that term. They require work to create; they require players to work to engage with them; they are themselves both works of art and industrial works; and ¤nally, they do work, particularly rhetorical and cultural work. Computer games are always condensates of all this work, yet they often seem to stand estranged from it. Splinter Cell, for example, is just another game to most consumers , perhaps at most associated with spy novelist Tom Clancy. But Splinter Cell required the work and labor of hundreds—perhaps even thousands—of people, and in an important way changed the computer game industry by advancing the art of computer game writing—not writing code but rather writing skillfully crafted language around plot twists, scene descriptions, and dialogue. So why aren’t the names and faces of Splinter Cell’s writers— Clint Hocking and J. T. Petty—noted prominently on the packaging? The simplest answer is that where games are concerned, looks are more compelPreface ling to most shoppers than promises of “good storytelling” or “sharp dialogue .” So, does the art of the sale ultimately trump the musical, graphical, and verbal arts in the computer game industry? Often—many would say too often—the answer is yes. But the game industry is highly competitive, and a good sales pitch or celebrity eye candy will go only so far if the game itself doesn’t deliver. The game Daikatana, for instance, received massive media hype and had very well respected developers behind the project, but when it was endlessly delayed and then failed to impress (or even entertain) critics and gamers, Daikatana became the poster product for how good work can go bad. To those who study computer games, then, the work that makes games what they are in a sociocultural context is dynamic, multidisciplinary, and frequently rendered invisible. Computer games are, in a word, complicated . As artifacts, computer games are extraordinarily dif¤cult to study because they are so socially complex; recollections of how they were inspired and of the myriad collective and negotiated decisions that gave them their ¤nal form, as well as explanations of how and in what contexts they are eventually to be experienced, are dif¤cult to identify and reconstruct. To paraphrase Sigmund Freud (who was actually writing about “dream work,” not the gamework): the game is meager, paltry, and laconic in comparison with the range and copiousness of the in®uences that made it what it is. The analyst’s work, then, is to try to “recollect” some of these in®uences in order to see other meanings of the game and its contexts.2 This book sets out a method for doing just this sort of recollection and does so (I hope) without sacri¤cing too much of the complexity that makes computer games so unique as a medium of expression, instruction, entertainment, and moneymaking. I should confess here to having mixed feelings about computer games. According to a recently developed survey instrument that types game players from “Non-player/Ultra Casual” to “Obsessive/Ultra Hardcore,” I fall well within the latter category. I am, however, probably unlike most other “ultra hardcore” gamers in that much of the time (though not all) I spend playing, researching, and thinking about games is from a critical perspective. I puzzle over the ways ideology is coded into games, follow the ways legislators and industry lobbyists dance uncomfortably around issues like media violence and censorship, and study the ways that game developers describe the work they do. I admit that I derive a vicarious thrill from all of this. Should anyone in the computer gaming industry read...