Video games and the Spirit of Capitalism

[clyde]

Paolo Pedercini explores how the inherent ideologies of capitalism and computation are expressing themselves in our expectations of what computer games should or should not be.

http://www.molleindustria.org/blog/video games-and-the-spirit-of-capitalism/

Depending on Pedercini's claims, I'd love to make a simulation-heavy game where the objective is to use a small quanity of seed-money to improve the most people's lives, the most significantly. A good name would be "Bang for the Buck! a charity simulator"

I wonder if the tendencies that Pedercini identifies are actually more attributable to increased centralized power. If so, I could see why single-player games would tend towards the objectives and reduction that Pedercini describes. Single-player games which give the player increased levels of control would express the centralization of power in any environment or circumstance that they use as theme because the alternative of expressing decentralized power would end up reducing player-influence; right?

[prettyunsmart]

So would you imagine your charity simulator as a positive spin on the more insidious version of rationalization that Pedercini lays out in his talk? In a way, it seems to fall into the same category of a large, logical system in which a player can expect to wield a great deal of power in a logical, organized system. I'm not saying that it sounds like a bad idea, but that it might just end up providing another version of the instrumental rationality we see in games all the time (as an aside, there's an interesting critique of charity in Slavoj Zizek's book The Universal Exception that suggests that large scale charitable efforts by capitalists such as Bill Gates are often attempts to seed the lower classes with funds that can be later extracted by the multinational corporations they own/partner with).

 

I'm a little suspicious of his later claims about how film used editing techniques like montage and parallel composition to sidestep rationalism. On the contrary, a lot of film theorists have written that this kind of classical style helped to reinforce the stable, rational vision of film as indexically realistic. 

 

Still, it's heartening to see someone thinking about games in terms of ideas like Weber's and considering the kind of implicit aspects of design that we take for granted. It is a little hard to imagine a game that operates outside of the ideology instrumental rationalism as games generally are made up of rules and systems, but I'd certainly like to see more people push up against that idea.

[clyde]

I imagine the charity-simulator would reveal the inherent scope and dehumanization of optimization to the player. I need to state that I am deeply motivated by optimization when I play games. One of the reasons I'm interested in Pedercini's talk is that I have a hard time figuring out what motivates me besides optimization when I play games. I also have a hard time imagining an argument against using currency or resources in the most efficient manner when doing large-scale charitable works. I think there is one, I just don't know what it is. 
Maybe the charity-simulator game could take place on two scales. There would be the grand scale where resources are collected and distributed with general policy, and then there would be the human scale where you appear as a player character in the environment where the charity is targeted. I'm fascinated by the question "Does efficiency free us or enslave us?" When people do things inefficiently, it seems like a waste; but I would be completely demotivated if I had to do everything the most efficient way all the time.

[prettyunsmart]

I think the idea of motivation is interesting, because in the game, you would be driven to optimize because it is a game, and you want to win by providing the greatest amount of good for the most amount of people. It could create some interesting conflicts between the desire to help a smaller, more local unit a greater amount, or providing some rudimentary assistance to a wider group of people (like providing comprehensive funding to one impoverished school district or making more modest contributions to schools nationwide). 

 

The problem with tackling this question in games is that games are systems, just as administrative bureaucracies are. In the kinds of systems Weber described, governments and corporations strive to maximize production/utility without dealing in things that are harder to quantify like the physical toll taken on workers or their non-monetary desires. As a player, if you are in the role of the administrator, optimizing your systems, you will probably always choose that path. Maybe some kind of narrative system could come into play like Hotline Miami's "home" segments that show the cost of your optimization efforts. I don't really know where I'm going with this.

[clyde]

The Idle Thumbs cast had a discussion at some point around Hotline Miami, where they discussed how games whose message is that games tend towards violent mechanics don't really say much more than that. I think the same issue could come up with games like Papers Please, Greed Corp. and some of Pedercini's games; they point out that optimization can make any process dehumanizing and result in a manifestation counter to the initial motive, but what do they say beyond that? Personally, I want to play more games like these because I'm trying to understand how alienation works, but I can see how it eventually will not be enough. At some point I'd like to play a game that explains to me how optimized strategies and centralized power can be compassionate to the individual and account for externalities.

[TychoCelchuuu]

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[philberto]

I'm a little suspicious of his later claims about how film used editing techniques like montage and parallel composition to sidestep rationalism. On the contrary, a lot of film theorists have written that this kind of classical style helped to reinforce the stable, rational vision of film as indexically realistic. 

 

In my understanding, techniques such as montage, in both its literary and filmic form, emerged as a reactions against rationalization and are later subsumed into that logic. Its appropriate that literary montage emerges first in German Romanticism and its reaction against instrumentalized conceptions of art and nature. It emerges out of its particular historical context in a way that it does not when you see montage externally applied in a Hollywood film. So, I'm not sure literary montage could be effective anymore, especially since, as you say, it has been exploited in order to reinforce precisely the form of experience it was meant to subvert.

 

Basically, I think the big problem is less the application of a specific technique, but, rather, the emergence of a form or technique that is specific to video games. I mean, in a way the games that Pedercini criticize are interesting because they're so directly reflective of our experience in a capitalist society. Of course, they don't subvert that experience, but exploit and reinforce it. What I find so interesting about games such as Papers, Please and Prison Architect is that they directly implicate the player in that experience while also forcing at least some level of reflection. There, I think we find a technique emerging that is specific to games while also being reflective of the social reality in which they are created.

[catfishmaw]

I know this isn't exactly the subject of Pedercini's talk, but do you think this argument necessitates the premise that, as we become more comfortable with, and more naturalised toward, rationalising mechanics in video games, we as individuals become more inured to the rationalisation capitalism subjects us to?

 

The obverse seems to be his goal in game design: that by making rationalisation mechanics in his games less elegant, or suboptimal, he hopes to alert players to the subordinating reality of rationalisation in daily life, or at least to the potential consequences of uncritical gameification. (I can't help but be amused by the irony Pedercini himself notices: that because a game is a mechanical system, even a game designed explicitly to provoke inelegant solutions, or to unbalance the player's obsession with optimisation, will inevitably still motivate some version of optimisation in some players.)

 

Anecdotally, my experience with emotionally engaging games is very different from my experience with games which stimulate my rationalisation drive. I love The Walking Dead, but I've given over much more time to Rymdkapsel.

[philberto]

Thanks for the really interesting post. I'm afraid I'll now continue the move away from Pedercini's talk, something I think I probably initiated.

 

I think you're right, but I also think that capitalism is more pernicious than that. For me, it's important to understand that the cultural sphere is not something completely separate from society and our experience. As something material, something produced, art reflects and is directly implicated in the dominant mode of production even (or, perhaps, especially) when it tries to portray itself as autonomous and external to our experience. Bad art tends to exploit its appearance as something external. In portraying itself as something autonomous, it can appear as the justification of the natural and the familiar It's like comfort food, we consume it and it makes feel okay for a little while even though in the long run we know its probably really bad for us and not all that good. At the same time, good art cannot simply be critical in the polemical sense, i.e., something simply negative. That too tends to reconcile us to reality. It acts as a kind of catharsis. We take our bad medicine and move on with our day. The consumption of the artwork is substituted for any actual critical reflection. So for me, good art is not simply critical in the polemical sense, but is something that fundamentally estranges us from the familiar. At their best, both art and criticism open up a horizon of possibility, something that is not possible from the perspective of an form of art that merely reconciles us to what appears most natural.

 

I'm just finishing a PhD now on Marx and a guy named Walter Benjamin. I'm basically looking at their concepts of criticism, but I've only really thought this through in regards to the criticism of art in a more narrow sense, basically as literature. I haven't really thought it through regards to video games. For Benjamin, at least, it was important to not think of culture and cultural objects as separate from the social form under which they were produced. To make use of a boring technical term, culture is not an ontologically separate sphere distinct from society. Basically, I think it's safe to say that video games are a form of art that are particular to capitalism; in a sense, the capitalist mode of production is the ground of their historical possibility. If I'm right, this creates an interesting paradox for video games if they are to be critical of capitalism: they have to criticize the very ground of their own possibility. I'm really not sure how this could be confronted. I also think it's because of this you get the irony that Pedercini alludes to.

 

Sorry for the ramble. Going to stop before I get any more abstract (as if that's even possible!). [Edit: I also should not that I don't think its necessarily the job of video games to confront or criticize capitalism, . Nor do I mean it as a negative judgement to suggest that maybe that cannot, I actually think it's problematic for art in general. I just think it's interesting to confront the question of how such a confrontation might be possible, given that video games have certain characteristics that I think make that endeavour paradoxical.]

[catfishmaw]

Thanks for the really interesting post. I'm afraid I'll now continue the move away from Pedercini's talk, something I think I probably initiated.

 

I think you're right, but I also think that capitalism is more pernicious than that. For me, it's important to understand that the cultural sphere is not something completely separate from society and our experience. As something material, something produced, art reflects and is directly implicated in the dominant mode of production even (or, perhaps, especially) when it tries to portray itself as autonomous and external to our experience. Bad art tends to exploit its appearance as something external. In portraying itself as something autonomous, it can appear as the justification of the natural and the familiar It's like comfort food, we consume it and it makes feel okay for a little while even though in the long run we know its probably really bad for us and not all that good. At the same time, good art cannot simply be critical in the polemical sense, i.e., something simply negative. That too tends to reconcile us to reality. It acts as a kind of catharsis. We take our bad medicine and move on with our day. The consumption of the artwork is substituted for any actual critical reflection. So for me, good art is not simply critical in the polemical sense, but is something that fundamentally estranges us from the familiar. At their best, both art and criticism open up a horizon of possibility, something that is not possible from the perspective of an form of art that merely reconciles us to what appears most natural.

 

I'm just finishing a PhD now on Marx and a guy named Walter Benjamin. I'm basically looking at their concepts of criticism, but I've only really thought this through in regards to the criticism of art in a more narrow sense, basically as literature. I haven't really thought it through regards to video games. For Benjamin, at least, it was important to not think of culture and cultural objects as separate from the social form under which they were produced. To make use of a boring technical term, culture is not an ontologically separate sphere distinct from society. Basically, I think it's safe to say that video games are a form of art that are particular to capitalism; in a sense, the capitalist mode of production is the ground of their historical possibility. If I'm right, this creates an interesting paradox for video games if they are to be critical of capitalism: they have to criticize the very ground of their own possibility. I'm really not sure how this could be confronted. I also think it's because of this you get the irony that Pedercini alludes to.

 

Sorry for the ramble. Going to stop before I get any more abstract (as if that's even possible!). [Edit: I also should not that I don't think its necessarily the job of video games to confront or criticize capitalism, . Nor do I mean it as a negative judgement to suggest that maybe that cannot, I actually think it's problematic for art in general. I just think it's interesting to confront the question of how such a confrontation might be possible, given that video games have certain characteristics that I think make that endeavour paradoxical.]

 

I think I disagree, but it might be because I have an ambivalent relationship to the Frankfurt School. I'm going to have to apologise, too: I'm really much more familiar with Adorno.

 

After Adorno and gang returned to Germany (minus Benjamin, who died in 1940), they were surprised to find that they were seen as reactionaries by modern German students. That probably has a lot to do with their complicity with the filth, but I like to believe that a set of critical tools resembling some form of proto-Cultural Studies had taken hold among the postwar left, i.e., that even the basest form of mass-produced entertainment had cultural value of some kind. Perhaps that value derives from the way its rhetoric is deployed, rather from the elegance of its construction, but that doesn't mean it doesn't matter in our society.

 

Triple-As would have repulsed the troop much more than the products of Hollywood, I think. I like to imagine their horror at contemplating the WoW-addicted hoards.

 

Ultimately, given their distaste for facsimiles of art objects, I don't think they would have survived contact with the Internet, where facsimiles of every cultural artefact are the order of the day. But certainly Adorno's more liberal modern advocates must derive comfort from the indie "space" (I wanted to say "scene", but I think that's actually worse). More of us are having more personal relationships with more contrived works. By all accounts, a good video game requires phenomenal skill to construct, and solicits a deep emotional impact on those who play it. If that isn't legitimate because their form was generated "by" capitalism, then I'm flummoxed. Wasn't every modern art form? Are we supposed to make art with only the tools created by extra- or pre-capitalist societies?

 

(Probably got a load of shit wrong because I've never read Benjamin. Sorry.)

[Gormongous]

Having retaught myself how to play Victoria II after it went on sale this week, I wonder how many of the things discussed find expression in that game. There is very little winning or losing in Victoria, at least on the battlefield. It's mostly about managing populations and riding the wave of modernity where you want to go (or usually, unless you're very good and very lucky, where it wants to go). You need money for the state to run, but if you tax too much, the rich won't build and the poor won't eat (although you come to find that people are a more renewable resource than coal or steel). Education and literacy drive all your research, but also make the people more aware of and desirous of change (not to mention, the purveyors of education are mostly clerics, who'll be one of the most conservative groups when those winds of change start to blow). In short, Victoria is an excellent lesson both on the limits of the state's ability to control its people and the power of money and violence to change the state.

 

For example, I played as Belgium, which is a good place to start the 1836 campaign so long as you roll over when the Netherlands come knocking for Limburg and Luxembourg. You have a large population, an advantageous position, and several Great Powers to whom you can cuddle up. I buddied up with Britain, worked on building literacy, and was a Great Power myself by 1850, with Spain, Portugal, and most of South America in my sphere. I had a tiny military, but no one attacked me, because annexing my two pitiful provinces would just wipe out the wealth and industry that made them desirable. Better to trade with my citizens and enjoy their low prices thanks to subsidized exports (which I paid for with a 45% tax on the poor; I didn't want them buying my exports anyway). Eventually I had near ninety percent literacy and started trying to build my army, stripping the farms bare of fathers and sons to put me on par at least with the newly unified Italy. I always gave social and political liberties the moment they were requested, because long-term stability was more important than short-term profitability, and in general tried to shift my population as Liberal as can be, although never Socialist, so that I could have a happy, educated populace that didn't fight me when I tried to act in their interests.

 

I think it all paid off, mostly. I'd won the scramble for Africa by 1890, thanks to a healthy and technologically advanced army, so now I'm exporting huge amounts of rubber and cotton. A world war broke out in 1896 over Slovak independence in Istria, mostly because I wouldn't back down, knowing a conflict would give me a shot at British possessions in Benin and Kenya. Britain and Austria fought against Belgium, Germany, and France. Austria was immediately occupied and Britain lost ground in Africa over the course of several years, eventually losing everything north of Zambia, the economic and cultural shock of which brought the government to its knees and replaced it with a communist dictatorship. I know I got lucky there, because I know too well that war is expensive and risky in Victoria 2, unlike almost any other strategy game.

 

In the end, no matter how you play Victoria 2, you can't help flexing your muscles as the state. It doesn't hurt that Paradox designed a game that vindicates nineteenth-century ideas of how the state (and how people) work. Still, Victoria 2 is great because it asks the player to make a choice between direct but inefficient control or indirect but efficient influence. A Reactionary government with a state-run economy will allow you to manufacture all the goods your population needs at home, but you might lose out to a Laissez-Faire country that just lets its capitalists spend their money where they want. Or not! The capitalists might spend all their money building luxury furniture factories, go bankrupt, and start a depression that drops the country into second-tier status. The presentation of a toolbox and multiple avenues, both political and economic, to success feels so much more interesting and authentic than your typical positivist and capitalist framework for grand strategy and 4X games. I became the fourth-biggest power in the world by being an enlightened and prosperous Liberal constitutional monarchy, but a friend I know united Germany as a Reactionary absolute monarchy and even managed to push Britain out of its first-place status by 1910. It's not for everyone, but it's sure something.

[catfishmaw]

Having retaught myself how to play Victoria II after it went on sale this week, I wonder how many of the things discussed find expression in that game. There is very little winning or losing in Victoria, at least on the battlefield. It's mostly about managing populations and riding the wave of modernity where you want to go (or usually, unless you're very good and very lucky, where it wants to go). You need money for the state to run, but if you tax too much, the rich won't build and the poor won't eat (although you come to find that people are a more renewable resource than coal or steel). Education and literacy drive all your research, but also make the people more aware of and desirous of change (not to mention, the purveyors of education are mostly clerics, who'll be one of the most conservative groups when those winds of change start to blow). In short, Victoria is an excellent lesson both on the limits of the state's ability to control its people and the power of money and violence to change the state.

 

For example, I played as Belgium, which is a good place to start the 1836 campaign so long as you roll over when the Netherlands come knocking for Limburg and Luxembourg. You have a large population, an advantageous position, and several Great Powers to whom you can cuddle up. I buddied up with Britain, worked on building literacy, and was a Great Power myself by 1850, with Spain, Portugal, and most of South America in my sphere. I had a tiny military, but no one attacked me, because annexing my two pitiful provinces would just wipe out the wealth and industry that made them desirable. Better to trade with my citizens and enjoy their low prices thanks to subsidized exports (which I paid for with a 45% tax on the poor; I didn't want them buying my exports anyway). Eventually I had near ninety percent literacy and started trying to build my army, stripping the farms bare of fathers and sons to put me on par at least with the newly unified Italy. I always gave social and political liberties the moment they were requested, because long-term stability was more important than short-term profitability, and in general tried to shift my population as Liberal as can be, although never Socialist, so that I could have a happy, educated populace that didn't fight me when I tried to act in their interests.

 

I think it all paid off, mostly. I'd won the scramble for Africa by 1890, thanks to a healthy and technologically advanced army, so now I'm exporting huge amounts of rubber and cotton. A world war broke out in 1896 over Slovak independence in Istria, mostly because I wouldn't back down, knowing a conflict would give me a shot at British possessions in Benin and Kenya. Britain and Austria fought against Belgium, Germany, and France. Austria was immediately occupied and Britain lost ground in Africa over the course of several years, eventually losing everything north of Zambia, the economic and cultural shock of which brought the government to its knees and replaced it with a communist dictatorship. I know I got lucky there, because I know too well that war is expensive and risky in Victoria 2, unlike almost any other strategy game.

 

In the end, no matter how you play Victoria 2, you can't help flexing your muscles as the state. It doesn't hurt that Paradox designed a game that vindicates nineteenth-century ideas of how the state (and how people) work. Still, Victoria 2 is great because it asks the player to make a choice between direct but inefficient control or indirect but efficient influence. A Reactionary government with a state-run economy will allow you to manufacture all the goods your population needs at home, but you might lose out to a Laissez-Faire country that just lets its capitalists spend their money where they want. Or not! The capitalists might spend all their money building luxury furniture factories, go bankrupt, and start a depression that drops the country into second-tier status. The presentation of a toolbox and multiple avenues, both political and economic, to success feels so much more interesting and authentic than your typical positivist and capitalist framework for grand strategy and 4X games. I became the fourth-biggest power in the world by being an enlightened and prosperous Liberal constitutional monarchy, but a friend I know united Germany as a Reactionary absolute monarchy and even managed to push Britain out of its first-place status by 1910. It's not for everyone, but it's sure something.

 

Dang I want to play this game.

[Gormongous]

Dang I want to play this game.

 

It takes a lot of patience and a willingness to make mistakes, but anyone can just find a wiki, boot up Brazil or Belgium (two countries with a lot of room to grow, one through resources and the other through people), and take it as slow as possible. Even if fascists seize control of your government, the game doesn't end, it just becomes very different.