Vishnu and the Videogame: The Videogame Avatar and Hindu Philosophy

presented at the Philosophy of Computer Games Conference, 2012 in Madrid

In Hindu scripture and philosophy, the word avatar has existed for thousands of years. Its original usage differs from the sense that videogames, online media and recently James Cameron’s blockbuster have used the term - drawn  from Neal Stephenson’s usage of it in Snow Crash (2000) and from the videogame Habitat (Lucasfilm 1986)  to mean ‘ the graphical representation of the user or the user's alter ego or character’. For Hindus, the avatar is an object of worship and is the manifestation of divinity that descends on Earth to destroy evil. The commonest English translation of the term is ‘incarnation’ (literally ‘the being made flesh’) and with this is associated the idea of cyclical appearance manifested through birth and rebirth (reincarnation). The latter concept gets more tangled in Hindu and Buddhist rebirth eschatologies where rigid codifications of reincarnation are outlined. Whether the concept of the avatar in online media retains any of its roots in Hindu philosophy is a moot question. However, after over a decade of usage of the term and the lack of philosophical enquiry into its roots, the question is still one that merits the asking. Almost every game studies discussion mentions the avatar at least once and this paper will address the issue directly, through a comparison of the videogame avatar and its etymological counterpart in Hindu philosophy.

The avatar in most online media is no god; it does not descend to another world with a specific objective (to battle evil) and neither is there a sense of cyclic return implied in this context. The videogame, however, offers a far more complex scenario. The several ‘respawnings’ and ‘rebirths’ of the videogame avatar that occur in the process of saving and reloading the game can be compared to the many appearances of the Hindu gods Vishnu and Ganesh (or  to the  incarnations of the Buddha). The videogame avatar, however, does not come in separate guises or forms unless the game allows multiple avatar selection such as in Far Cry 2 (2009) or Fallout 3 (2008). Further, unlike the avatars of Hindu deities the videogame player may fail in his/ her mission. Nevertheless, the parallel of the return to a different world to set it right exists in both.  A principal sloka (verse) in the Bhagavad Gita announces the repeated return of Vishnu for the destruction of evil. In the videogame, the reload is a key function that allows the player to set right his / her errors and complete the game (incidentally this usually ends in the victory of good over evil). Videogames also involve a temporal complexity which commentators (Atkins 2006, Mukherjee 2007) have pointed out, where it is possible to play out the same event in many different ways . As a parallel to such a temporal conundrum, the avatar in Hindu scripture has the same deity (Vishnu) existing in different avatars who even meet each other in the same time period.

To this temporal complexity, the concept of the avatar necessarily joins the idea of being involved in another body. Game Studies researchers have long struggled with the concept of immersion and its problems; recently, Gordon Calleja (2011) has introduced ‘incorporation’ as the preferred term for the phenomenon in which the player participates in a virtual body and its actions in a virtually narrated world. As the manifestation of the player, the  ‘avatar’ is a virtual embodiment within the game world. It is not a costume that a player inhabits or  a vehicle driven by the player. There is a distinct process of ‘becoming-avatar’ on the part of the player as there is a ‘becoming-player’ on the part of the avatar. The ‘becoming’ described here is a process outlined by the philosopher Gilles Deleuze (1987), which for him is neither an imitation nor a change of form. Instead it is a process that is continually being experienced. So how does this compare with the Hindu conception of the avatar?

In Cameron’s movie, with its controversial treatment of the avatar theme,  the protagonist is only able to ‘be’ his avatar when asleep or sedated. The videogame player, however, is fully in his/ her  senses while manoeuvring (within) his / her avatar during gameplay. In Hindu philosophy, the god Vishnu descends in His many avatar-forms and the manifestation of the deity occurs in a range of different ways. Hence,  avatars in Hinduism can be full or partial manifestations and the concept may vary with the different cults. The commonly accepted account of the Hindu avatar involves the god’s being in multiple manifestations at once. The avatars also often involve a merging of the human, animal and mythical bodies where the deity is at once avatar and god. The incarnation here is akin to the incorporation described by videogame commentators.

As a complex philosophical concept, the avatar resists the easy formulation within which the New Media theorists tend to apply it. However, it is in the complex idea involvement and its connected addressing of cyclic temporality and reincarnation that the concept provides a framework to exploring the gamer’s fuller experience. Without commenting on the divine and the religious elements of the concept, it is still possible to draw important parallels with the gaming experience. This paper will analyse the Assassin’s Creed (2008) games, with their complex scheme of reincarnation (or rather the remembering of past lives) and their reflection of the protagonist (himself an avatar of the player) being incorporated through memory into the avatars of his forbears, as a point of departure that might be extended to a wider notion of the gaming experience. Such an analysis will not only clarify and contextualise this ancient philosophical concept in relation to its present-day application; it will also add further layers of complexity to our notion of the avatar.

Bibliography


      Anon, 1975. The Song of God, Bhagavad-Gita, eds. Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood, London: Dent.

Atkins, B.  (2007), ‘Killing time: time past, time present and time future in Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time’ in B. Atkins and T.  Krzywinska (eds.), Videogame, Player, Text, Manchester: Manchester University Press. pp. 237-253.

      Assassin’s Creed: Director’s Cut Edition. (2008) Ubisoft, Ubisoft Montreal.

      Cameron, J. (2010). Avatar, 20th Century Fox.

      Calleja, G. (2011), In-Game: From Immersion to Incorporation 1st ed. (Massachussets, The MIT Press).

      Fallout 3: Game of The Year Edition (2009), Bethesda, Bethesda Softworks. [PC Game]

      Far Cry 2 (2008), Ubisoft, Ubisoft Montreal [PC Game]

Mukherjee, S. (2007), ‘Ab(Sense) of An Ending: Telos and Time in Digital Game’ in Writing Technologies, Vol 2.1, http://www.ntu.ac.uk/writing_technologies/back_issues/Vol.%202.1/Mukherjee/index.html [accessed 14 Oct 2011]

Habitat (1986), Morningstar C., Farmer R. et al., Lucasfilm Games [Commodore, PC]
   
      Stephenson, N. (1992) Snow Crash,  (New York, Bantam Press).

Rewriting Unwritten Texts: After-action Reports and Videogames

presented at the 'Under the Mask' Conference at the University of Bedfordshire, June 2011

Storytelling in videogames still remains a contentious issue and one that commentators have found difficult to agree on for over a decade. On the one hand, the multiplicity of possible events within the game narrative makes it difficult to employ traditional literary analysis and on the other, the stories themselves are often unfavourably compared to literary classics and criticised for lacking the depth and the significance. Despite these issues, however, players continue to enjoy playing videogames as a storytelling medium and the narrative exists, as it were, at an unstable and marginal level where it is recorded not only in the player’s memory but in walkthroughs, guides, wikis and the recent genre of fan-fiction based on actual gameplay instances and called ‘after-action report’ (referred to as AAR, hereafter). Studies of walkthroughs (Ashton and Newman 2010; Newman 2008) and cheat codes (Consalvo 2007) are slowly coming to the forefront; the after-action report or the game journal has, however, remained largely unnoticed in Game Studies. This paper explores  after-action reports and the stories they tell.


Examples based on different game genres will be analysed here, such as the ‘Rise and Fall of the House of Jimius’, an AAR based on Rome: Total War (The Creative Assembly 2004), ‘The Amateur’, which is based on Hitman: Blood Money (Eidos 2006) and Ben Abraham’s ‘videogame-novelization’ called Permanent Death (Abraham 2009).  The main aim here is to highlight the variety of the AARs, the creativity of their writers and to examine the conventions that the genre is building around itself. A comparison with older narrative media will be equally important. Indeed, the relationship between AARs and films based on videogames is worth investigating - the Hitman film and the AAR are cases in point. The same holds true for AARs and printed fan-fiction. With the combination of image, videos, game scores, strategy tips and imaginative rewriting of the game’s plot, the AAR combines many kinds of texts, ranging from the walkthrough to the graphic novel. It will also be argued here that the AAR is an important way of talking about stories in videogames.


The ephemeral nature of the story in videogames has always made them difficult to read as texts per se. However, developing on Mia Consalvo’s research, a key approach to stories in videogames is through ‘paratexts’ such as the AAR. In his original formulation of the paratext, Gerard Genette refers to it as a ‘threshold’, or an ‘undecided zone’ (Genette 1997) in which the meaning of the text is constructed. The AAR, with its crossing-over of multiple types of texts, forms such a ‘zone’. Given the AAR’s interlinking of a huge variety of media, it is an apt analogue of the textual multiplicity of the videogame itself. Any single reading od the AAR (as well as the videogame itself) would be to miss many other aspects so the present analysis proposes a slightly different model - that of an ‘assemblage’. Deleuze defines assemblages as zones where ‘you find states of things, bodies, various combinations of bodies, hodgepodges; but you also find utterances, modes of expression, and whole regimes of signs’ (Deleuze 2007). As paratexts, AARs traverse a wide-range of storytelling media some of which are even non-verbal - all of these ‘plug in’ to each other and the AAR then presents its ‘story’ as an assemblage or a combination of many entities that combine and yet do not lose their identities.  They also ‘plug in’ to the player and the world of fandom  to build a collective narrative mesh thus extending the assemblage further.


It will be instructive to see if the AAR-assemblage influences the way in which the story is told and also to think about why the storytelling of the AAR appeals to so many. Finally, this will also provide yet another perspective from which to analyse the many stories that videogames tell us.



References


Abraham, B, 2009. Permanent Death,  http://drgamelove.blogspot.com/2009/12/permanent-death-complete-saga.html ;

Ashton, D. and Newman, J., 2010. ‘Relations of Control: Walkthroughs and the Structuring of Player Agency’ in The Fibreculture Journal, 2010, issue 6, http://sixteen.fibreculturejournal.org/relations-of-control-walkthroughs-and-the-structuring-of-player-agency/

Consalvo, M., 2007. Cheating: Gaining Advantage in Videogames, Cambridge, Mass: MIT.

      Deleuze, G., 2006. Two Regimes of Madness: Texts and Interviews 1975-1995 D. Lapoujade, ed., Los Angeles, CA: Semiotext(e).

      Genette, G., 1997. Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation, trans. by Jane E. Lewin, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hitman: Blood Money, 2006. Eidos, Io Interactive.

Newman, J. 2008. Playing with Videogames, London: Routledge. 

Rome: Total War, 2004. The Creative Assembly,  Activision.

Re-membering and Dismembering: Memory and the (Re)Creation of Identities in Videogames

presented at the Philosophy of Computer Games Conference, Athens, 2011.

Perhaps one of the most natural things in gameplay is to avoid the same tactics that killed the player in the last saved game when he or she reloads and play again. In fact, it seems so natural an element of gameplay, that the act of remembering is almost unnoticed. As scholars such as Michael Nitsche (2007) and Barry Atkins (2007) have observed, however, memory plays an important part in shaping videogame actions. Remembered actions educate the player against making some decisions and as Nitsche observes, narrow down the number of possibilities in each future iteration of gameplay. Simply put, based on memory, the player does not get killed in the same way twice. Atkins and also the present author have analysed how the remembered experiences in videogames complicate the temporal schema of the game plots, thus making them problematise linear chronologies. From these initial forays into looking at the relationship between the videogame and the player memory, one salient issue emerges. Remembered actions inform the future in-game deeds of the player and these, in turn, contribute to the construction of the in-game identity. Given its influence on in-game action and by extension of the player’s in-game identity, the role of memory can almost be seen as a ‘re -membering’ (from the original sense of the word ‘member’ meaning ‘body’) - memory therefore serves to re-embody and recreate the player-character.

The question, however, is further complicated because of the nature of the memory itself. Often, the memory is a collective construct. Digital artefacts such as walkthroughs and game wikisites host a massive database of remembered experiences uploaded by players. Future players ‘plug-in’ , as it were, to such a collective memory when they seek help or context while experiencing the game. Their experiences, arguably, are modified with the involvement with the collective memories in such paratextual material.

Remembered experiences can be instinctive and ‘gut responses’: for example, before entering a narrow lane in a First-Person Shooter where the avatar might have died in a previous instance, the remembered response might be to automatically spray the area with bullets before entering. At the same time, in-game memory is also a clearly defined entity that calls for reflective analysis. Some games consciously make memory a key trope in their plots and there they address issues like temporality and identity. Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2003) and Assassin’s Creed (2008) are prominent examples where the avatar’s lived experience is governed in various remembered experiences . STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl (2007) is about a protagonist who plays out the game’s narrative in order to find out who he is - his identity and memory constantly inform each other.

The question of how the act of remembering (or re-membering) contributes to the in-game identity formation of the avatar might be problematic but whether it is an entirely new one is a moot point. A comparison with parallel concepts in philosophy would be useful, therefore, in exploring the role memory has in building in-game identities. Such a comparison would also provide concrete illustrations to support or refute philosophical models. Taking this approach, this paper explores parallels between Henri Bergson’s philosophy of memory and videogames. In doing so, particular emphasis is placed on the Bergsonian view of time and memory as a multiplicity. Like the mass of discrete yet inseparable remembered experiences that game walkthroughs, wikis and other records consist of, for Bergson multiplicity is qualitative and is characterised by both heterogeneity and continuity. Memory is categorised by Bergson into the automatic ‘habit-memory’ that is aligned with bodily perception and a ‘pure’ memory which involves thought and action.

The similarities with memory in videogames come out even in the comparison with the brief sketch of the Bergsonian model above. Despite the similarities, the process of identity-formation and its relation with the player memory still needs further clarification. Gilles Deleuze (1988) proposes a reading of Bergson that takes into account the Bergsonian multiplicity and also provides a more substantial model of perception, affection and action where in between the perception and the action, memory plays the important role where the character of the avatar can be seen to be constructed in the ‘movement of memory’. After a certain event in the game, how the player responds to it depends susbtantially on the past experience, whether it is his or her own or whether it is drawn from the collective wisdom of databanks or fellow players. The identity of the avatar is the result of actualisations that occur from within a complex space of parallel and interlocking possibilities. This space of possibilities is, however, constantly modified by the player’s previous actions as well as by what the player remembers of previous actions or in other words, his or her memory. Having analysed the function of memory in videogames and having compared it with Bergson’s concept of memory as well as Deleuze’s commentary on Bergson, this analysis will illustrate how player memory - both singular and collective - forms a key part of the mechanism of identity-formation.



Indicative Bibliography

Assassin’s Creed, 2008, Ubisoft Montreal, Ubisoft.
Atkins, B. 2007, ‘Killing time: time past, time present and time future in Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time’ in B. Atkins and T. Krzywinska (eds.), Videogame, Player, Text, Manchester: Manchester University Press. pp. 237-253.
Bergson, H., 2004. Matter and Memory, Mineola, N.Y: Dover Publications.
Deleuze, G., 1988. Bergsonism, New York: Zone Books.
Deleuze, G., 1986. Cinema 1 : The Movement-image, London: Athlone.
Nitsche, M., 2007, ‘Mapping time in video games’. In DIGRA. Tokyo. Available www.lcc.gatech.edu/~nitsche/download/Nitsche_DiGRA_07.pdf. Accessed: 12 January 2011.
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, 2003, Ubisoft Montreal, Ubisoft.
STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl, 2007, THQ, GSC Gameworld.

“Follow Makarov’s Lead?”: Ethical Conflicts in Videogames and the Controversial ‘No Russian’ Level

Published in Contact · Conflict · Combat Zur Tradition des Konfliktes in digitalen Spielen, ed. Peter Just and Rudolf Inderst

There is consensus amongst commentators that ethical conflicts in videogames are quite varied and that it is possible that game affordances and ethics frameworks deviate from the ones that players may be used to in real life. However, trying to judge player-responses to these by referring to a fixed and higher moral order have yielded problematic and incomplete analyses. With the possible increase in the number of sandbox-type games that allow numerous combinations of possibilities and choices, an increase in scenarios of ethical dilemma is very likely and problem of understanding ethical implications within videogames will become more challenging. The way forward would be to recognise that the responses vary according to the player and the total environment within which the choices are made so the analyses need to be carried out on a case by case basis rather than by appealing to a higher moral order. As observed earlier, in comparison to a response such as ‘What must I do?’, within the videogame scenario (and arguably in life as well) the more preferable response to decision trees formed in cases of ethical dilemma is ‘What are my capabilities and how can I do my utmost?’. Therefore, when the player overcomes a situation of dilemma and makes a choice, a possibility is actualised and an immanent ethics has come into play.

Videogame Wastelands as Non-places of Possibility

Presented at the Ludotopia workshop in IT University, Copenhagen in May 2010. Keywords: videogame spaces, non-places, wasteland, possibility, actualisation, perception

Recently, post-apocalyptic wastelands have become a favourite setting of many blockbuster videogames. Fallout 3 (Bethesda, 2008), the Stalker (THQ, 2007) games and Borderlands (Gearbox, 2009) all use the wasteland environment as a backdrop and other games are very likely to follow in their steps. Videogame spaces have been famously described as 'spaces of possibilities' (Salen and Zimmerman, 2004) because they are characterised by change, both procedural and random, as well as by the construction of a narrative and ludic environment as an ongoing process rather than as a fixed entity. Given their potential for flux and nomadic and unsettled experiences of their inhabitants, it can be argued that wastelands in Fallout 3 and Stalker can also be seen as non-places.

The concept of ‘non-places’ introduced by the French anthropologist Marc Augé describes places like airport terminals, supermarkets and others that are not 'relational, historical and concerned with identity'. (Augé, 1995) Void of relations and identity, these spaces are characterised by solitary individuality and the ephemeral. In games like Fallout 3, for example, the various points that the player can visit in the wasteland can be seen as non-places: the historical connections have been lost or subverted and the player, aptly named the 'lone wanderer', is an outsider everywhere. However, Augé’s definition does not fully represent videogame spaces. The wastelands in Fallout 3 and in Stalker actively shape gameplay when events are actualised from a series of possibilities that videogame spaces consist of. Considering this, it would be useful to extend notions of ‘non-place’ to include Gilles Deleuze's concept of the 'any-space-whatever' or a 'virtual space, whose fragmented components might be assembled in multiple combinations, a space of yet-to-be actualised possibilities.' (Bogue, 2003)


Although the relation between Deleuze's and Augé's ideas on space has been debated by critics, the wasteland metaphor describing videogame space explores this connection in-depth. Conversely, the connected notion of the non-place provides a route for researching the lack of identity and the multiplicity that are characteristic of videogame spaces. This paper, in viewing post-apocalyptic wastelands as non-places, argues that the wasteland scenarios not coincidental choices for game-environments but metaphors that describe how emergent types of videogame spaces are perceived.


References

          Augé, M., 1995. Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity, London: Verso. 

                      BORDERLANDS (2009), Gearbox Software, PC, Xbox, PlayStation 3

          Bogue, R., 2003. Deleuze on Cinema, New York: Routledge. 

          Deleuze, G., 1986. Cinema 1: The Movement-Image, London: Athlone. 

          FALLOUT  3 (2008), Bethesda Softworks, PC, Xbox, PlayStation 3

          Salen, K. & Zimmerman, E., 2003. Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals, Cambridge, Mass.; London: MIT. 

          S.T.A.L.K.E.R: THE SHADOW OF CHERNOBYL (2007), THQ, PC

'Remembering How You Died': Memory, Death and Temporality in Videogames

Link to abstract, presented at DiGRA (Digital Games Research Association) conference, London, 2009.

Abstract below.

‘Shall we kill the pixel soldier?’: perceptions of trauma and morality in combat video games

co-authored with Jenna Pitchford, published in 'Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds', 2.1, 2010

The western media has been eager to construct an apparent link between the so-called moral desensitization of soldiers in the 2003 Iraq War and their experience of video game combat. Commentators assert that ‘games have avoided engaging the real-life issues to which they are responding’ (Zacny 2008), including the issue of combat trauma. Contrary to such positions, many video games already simulate the trauma in their gameplay experience; this article explores this concept from Brown's definition of trauma as ‘outside the range of human experience’ (1995: 101). This evokes recent work in games studies on in-game involvement and identity-formation and raises questions about the role of morality in gameplay, especially in multi-player combat games like Counter-Strike, Call of Duty 4 and America's Army. Working from these hitherto overlooked aspects of trauma in gameplay experiences, this article challenges the oversimplified association of video games with the desensitization of US troops in recent conflicts.

Egoshooting in Chernobyl: Identity and Subject(s) in the S.T.A.L.K.E.R Games

Presented at the Computer Games / Players / Game Cultures conference in Magdeburg University, March 2009. This is awaiting publication.

The issue of identity-formation when playing an avatar in a videogame has recently become perceived as both increasingly complex and contentious. Game critics argue both for and against the apparent seamlessness in the identity-formation in videogames. However, while the case against seamlessness builds up with respect to other gaming genres, first-person shooters (FPS) are often still singled out as best representing this first-person identification whereby players were supposed to be totally immersed in their avatars while they played the game.

In the light of recent research, this article develops on earlier research to reveal further problems in assuming a seamless merging of identity even in the FPS. It argues that the very conception of subjectivity has always been problematised through the FPS and that the genre itself self-consciously keeps pointing this out. As an example of the latter, the article focuses on the examples of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R videogames to show how FPS games prompt players to question their in-game identity(ies) because the playing subject, instead of being a fixed entity, is hardwired into the process of exploration that constitutes gameplay. To explain the complex shifts between the 'I' and 'not-I' that the videogame player experiences, a theoretical framework that can analyse identity as a process as opposed to a fixity is necessary. A suitable framework can be found in Gilles Deleuze's conception of identity-formation as a process of enfolding marked by a continual actualisation of the possibilities that gameplay posits.

The Deleuzian notion of identity when applied through close analysis of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R games and the analysis of videogames in general is instructive in (re)searching the complex depths of identity-formation — both within FPS games and outside. It reveals that identity in videogames is multiple and shows that the player is simultaneously subject as well as object and player as well as avatar during the process of gameplay.

Sherlock Holmes Reloaded: Holmes, Videogames and Multiplicity

Presented at the Afterlives of Sherlock Holmes Conference at the University of Hull, 2009. Awaiting publication

Sherlock Holmes never faced his final problem. Just as he re-emerged from the Reichenbach Falls after being 'killed off' by his creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Holmes has lived on in a multiplicity narratives ranging from the new Holmes tales told by the likes of Anthony Burgess to adventures on the Holodeck of the starship Enterprise. It is this multiplicity combined with that makes the Holmes tales key predecessors of more recent forms of storytelling, especially the story in videogames. The videogame player after 'dying' in an attempt to 'complete' the multitelic narrative, does a Sherlock Holmes and replays his existence in a different way. The Holmes stories can be viewed as proto-videogames by analysing them side by side with Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened (referred to as The Awakened hereonwards), a videogame based Holmes investigates an as-yet-unsolved mystery. Created in the adventure game genre, albeit with attempts to include different visual points-of-view, The Awakened, is characterised by a multitelic structure; it also emphasises its multiplicity by placing Holmes in the Lovecraftian world of the Cthulhu mythos.

Theorists of so-called New Media have argued for multiplicity as being a key factor in determining the novelty of hypertexts, interactive fiction and videogames. However, this conception can be challenged by a closer look at earlier forms of multiple narratives such as the Holmes stories. Analysed in comparison to The Awakened, the Sherlock Holmes stories as told over the last century, emerge as far more multiple than was earlier assumed and reveal greater complexities of authorship, plot and telos. To do so, this paper will engage with Gilles Deleuze's concept of multiplicity, which makes it possible to view the stories as actualisations of a mesh of virtual narratives, where Holmes continually emerges from his various endings only to start again – almost as if he plays a videogame

Poetic Programming: The Romantic Origins of Information Technology

Published in Romanticism and Its Legacies ed. by Ralla Guhaniyogi (Kolkata: Basantidevi College and Fine Prints, 2009), pp 180 - 190.

It is difficult to imagine what Wordsworth would have done with an Asus Eee pc or how Keats would have felt after his first look at Chapman's Homer by clicking a hyperlink on a website designed in Flash. However, farfetched though it might seem, the computer and its versatile capabilities were not too distant from the Romantics. At a time when it was fashionable to philosophise about the clockwork mechanism of the universe and to conceive of engines that could reason, the basic principles of information technology were already current in Romantic philosophy and science.

Looking back, it seems that things could indeed have turned out very differently for the Romantics, if we are to go by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling's alternative history novel, The Difference Engine, where a computerised Victorian England is governed by Byron and where a certain Mr Keats's reputation lies in his expertise in creating multimedia presentations. Though Gibson and Sterling's 'steampunk' world is a fantasy, the machine after which they named their novel was already partly built during the lifetime of some of the Romantics. The Difference Engine, built by Charles Babbage, and the Analytical Engine, which he later outlined, have been universally acknowledged the predecessors of the modern computer and Babbage himself has been called the 'Father of Modern Computing'. The story of computing, however, remains incomplete without mention of another important Romantic connection: Lady Ada Lovelace, the mathematically gifted daughter of Lord Byron, also called the ‘Enchantress of Numbers’.

Even as one listens to an MP3 on the latest i-phone today, the possibilities that Lovelace saw for programming Babbage's engines two centuries ago are now coming to fruition. The technology for the media may have moved far beyond the gears and levers of Babbage's engines; the concept of multimedia is, however, not as 'new' as is sometimes thought to be.

This essay will explore how the 'poetic programming' of Lady Lovelace compares with modern conceptions of multimedia. Taking this as the point of departure, it will go on to explore other similar comparisons between modern-day computing concepts and their roots in early nineteenth-century ideas.

I am a Paddle, I am a Stalker, I am a Game: Locating the Player in the Zone of Becoming

Presented at the 'Under the Mask Conference', University of Bedfordshire, Luton, 2008, http://underthemask.wikidot.com/souvikmukherjee

Recent analyses have revealed an increasing complexity in the processes of gameplay. The resultant pervasiveness of the so-called ‘magic circle’ and the problems in separating reality from the game-world have affected another key element of gameplay: the players themselves. As Galloway maintains, games function as feedback systems with the players; hence, it is impossible to see them as absolute agents traversing a passive game-world. Instead, this intense connection with the game-algorithm raises many questions about the player’s identity and situation. Earlier ideas of her holodeck-like immersion in the game-world have been challenged by newer concepts like meta-outmersion. Yet, the experience of intense involvement in the game-world still remains. What happens, then, in the zone between the player and the screen? How do players connect to their in-game characters and reality?

When seen in terms of Gilles Deleuze’s concept of becoming, however, these questions are easier answered. Deleuze sees ‘becoming’ as a process of filiation but he maintains that what is real is the becoming itself, thus showing how intense ludic involvement is possible without losing awareness of the real. Prior to the actualization of ludic acts, both game and player exist in what Deleuze terms the ’ zone of becoming’. This paper will show how the model of the ‘zone’ is useful in situating the player. For this analysis, I shall refer to a literal example of a ‘zone’ – as found in the FPS, STALKER: Shadows of Chernobyl. The development of the player’s identity shall be revealed as she undergoes the process of becoming-stalker and becoming-ludic.

Gameplay in the 'Zone of Becoming': Locating Action in the Computer Game

published in the Proceedings of the Games and Philosophy Conference, 2008, University of Potsdam

Extending Alexander Galloway’s analysis of the action-image in videogames, this essay explores the concept in relation to its source: the analysis of cinema by the French philosopher Gil- les Deleuze. The applicability of the concept to videogames will, therefore, be considered through a comparison between the First Person ShooterS.T.A.L.K.E.R. and Andrey Tarkovsky’s film Stalker. This analysis will compellingly explore the nature of videogame-action, its relation to player-perceptions and its location within the machinic and ludic schema.

Ab(Sense) of An Ending: Telos and Time in Digital Game Narratives

Published in 'Writing Technologies' 2.1, 2008

One of the complex problems facing computer game studies is the analysis of the many possible endings (‘becomings’) of a computer game. Is the shape-shifting narrative, which emerges in different instances of gameplay, analysable at all? Of the many narratives that are possible, which ones are actualized? Furthermore, when we consider the computer game narrative, we find in it permutations and combinations of the same narrative - so how far, if at all, is each instance of gameplay a different narrative? These are obvious questions that are important for players and researchers alike and yet these issues have not been addressed adequately in recent game studies research.  This paper will briefly survey the current positions on the nature of endings in computer games before moving on to a more complex theoretical reading of the non-teleological qualities of these games.  The replayability of computer games, especially from previously saved points in the game, complicates the structure of the game-narrative. That different instances of gameplay usually have different outcomes has become a commonplace in game studies. Yet when it comes to treating the game as a story, the question of game-endings is still a moot point. Can a story have many endings, and if so, then does it still remain a story?

This paper will analyse computer game endings in terms of Deleuzian ideas about multiplicity as well as Manuel DeLanda’s  discussion of the ‘manifold’. Neither Deleuze nor DeLanda write about computer games, yet, the idea of the variable number of dimensions (as exemplified also in the rhizomatic narrative network created by computer games as described above) seems to describe the variable pathways that game narratives usually take. Ian Bogost’s recent book Unit Operations (The MIT Press, 2006) adds an important theoretical angle to the discussion by pointing out the key role that Alain Badiou’s interpretation of Deleuzian multiplicity has in describing the gameplay in computer games. The paper will engage in a discussion of current ideas in game studies such as Bogost’s concepts together with the work of key theorists addressing the problem in other contexts. It will examine how a study of computer games can benefit a range of theoretical debates on actuality and virtuality. Simultaneously, it will also come to a more theoretically complex understanding of gameplay and its processes. Finally, based on the above discussion, this paper will draw upon Deleuzian conceptions of  difference and repetition to establish whether the narratives that emerge from the various gameplays are different or merely tautological. In doing so, it addresses a key debate in game studies and at the same time will link it with wider issues in critical theory and cultural studies.

And Alice Played a Videogame: a Study of the Relationship between Children's Fantasy adventure Stories and Interactive Computer Games

Paper published on www.literature-study-online.com. My first paper on storytelling in videogames. Published in 2002 when I was doing my MA.

In this paper I would like to propose that the multiple possibilities of narrative action in children's fiction, especially fantasies such as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland or the Harry Potter stories, bring these stories very close to computer games. I believe that certain sub-genres of children's fiction work with premises similar to the computer game as regards narrative flexibility and other features. A child's dream, as in Alice or in Hojoborolo, can create an unreal world full of constant activity as in computer games. These can be shown as prototypes for computer games or games in the making. I shall therefore take two children from fiction to compare the child in literature with the child in the game: Alice in Through the Looking Glass and Harry Potter in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (also known as Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone). The chief reason behind the choice is that they are both popular and representative of their respective centuries. The other reason is purely technical: both characters have been represented in eponymous computer games. I am here using the American McGee's Alice and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, both made by Electronic Arts, as examples of such games. Since I haven't as yet played the Harry Potter game, I shall use the Alice game for a first-hand account. I shall however use screenshots and game reviews to comment about both of them.

The Devil's Morals Ethics in Machiavelli's The Prince

Paper published by the London School of Journalism. This was written as an MA assignment.

Analysis/ summary of the ethical position(s) of Niccolo Machiavelli's The Prince.

The Prince has had a long and chequered history and the number of controversies that it has generated is indeed surprising. Almost every ideology has tried to appropriate it for itself - as a result everyone from Clement VII to Mussolini has laid claim to it. Yet there were times when it was terribly unpopular. Its author was seen to be in league with the devil and the connection between 'Old Nick' and Niccolo Machiavelli was not seen as merely nominal. The Elizabethans conjured up the image of the 'murdering Machiavel' [1] and both the Protestants and the later Catholics held his book responsible for evil things. Any appraisal of the book therefore involved some ethical queasiness. Modern scholarship may have removed the stigma of devilry from Machiavelli, but it still seems uneasy as to his ethical position.

Aristotle's Poetics Complexity and Pleasure: Aristotle's 'Complex Plot' and the Pleasure Element in Tragedy

published by London School of Journalism. Written when I was doing my Masters' degree

paper on the complex plot in Aristotle's Poetics.

READING BOOKS WITH JOYSTICKS