by Cuddy, Luke
At the time Halloween hit theaters in 1978, I was riding my Stingray to my cousin’s house to spend the afternoon playing with his Atari 2600. Those were the days when videogames were less about what they attempted to represent than what they were: simple skill games made up of clusters of pixels, accompanied by blips and beeps. Pong may have been modeled after table tennis and Space Race a trip through an asteroid field, but no one playing actually believed they were playing ping-pong or piloting a spaceship, and there were few real-world skills required that were related to the actual activity. I’m going to sound like Grandpa here, but before there was the pressure to create the fastest rendering game engine or most convoluted storyline, games relied on a different kind of innovation that had its own beauty, a kind of visual reductionism that earns artists’ praise. I’m talking about the superlow-res graphics the designers of Atari 2600 games had to work with. Yet, they somehow managed to represent everything from E.T. the Extraterrestrial to a Wild West shootout and we could almost always figure out what we were looking at.
Before the perfection of 3D graphics, videogames were not too far from animated board games that could stretch on and on sideways or up and down. I loved my side-scrolling platform and shooting games, especially the strange ones imported from Japan with little or no cultural translation (like Cloud Master for the 8-bit Sega Master System in which the player tried to shoot down flying bowls of ramen and gyoza). Much like in the early days of cinema, the action was confined to a planar world, bounded by the frame of the TV or computer screen. No matter how active the imagination of the player, there existed a gulf between the player and the game-as-object. The FPS genre, combined with technology that allows the creation of a three dimensional world that operates by its own clock, has eliminated that gulf. As a result, games are more demanding on players than ever before. Suddenly, we need to know how to move and shoot in every direction. Mastering the controller became much more difficult. In Mario 64, the mustachioed character’s 3D platform debut on Nintendo 64, you needed to learn how to look all around you in addition to knowing how to move in all directions.
Once you figured out the controls, navigating three-dimensional space was fairly intuitive. However, there was one aspect of this new gamespace that took some getting used to. I remember playing Doom for the first time and suddenly realizing I needed to turn around because something was attacking me from behind. This sense of a “behind me” was palpable and new. I wondered, where exactly is the behind I need to be concerned about? Certainly not between the back of my chair and the bedroom wall. According to the game’s story, I was on some hellish Martian moon, so “behind me” was whatever would be behind me if I were in a hallway on a military base on a Martian moon. I would have to turn around to see. I’m not a programmer, but I’m pretty sure that monster or storage locker or escape hatch behind me wasn’t there until I turned around—at least in a form that I could see. (I suppose that monster /locker/hatch existed in the form of rules or lines of code much like that character sneaking up behind me in a movie exists in the mind of the screenwriter.)
This feeling of being surrounded is the primary component of what is commonly referred to as an “immersive experience.” I’ve had an uneasy relationship with the term, and it’s not just because “immersive” isn’t really a word in the English language. It is most often used in one of two ways: as a synonym for “compelling” or “engaging,” or to describe an experience that puts you somewhere you are not. For sure, immersiveness (which is even less a real word) is a quality of many movies and games, but anybody with critical faculties can tell you, is not in itself indicative of quality. Yet, immersiveness persists as a goal in both movie and videogame industries and the term continues to be tossed about by marketing departments as if it were the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.
The ultimate immersive experience has been vividly portrayed in the Star Trek world as the “holodeck,” a three-dimensional virtual reality machine that produces sight, sound, physical matter, and—I’m not certain about this, but why not?—smell. The trajectories of movies and games meet in this imaginary space, for the goal of many game design teams is to create convincing three-dimensional worlds, usually as an arena to run around and kill things. Nothing wrong with that. Hollywood, not content with their flat rectangle of real estate, has resurrected 3D movies. Avatar in 3D Imax was spectacular, but was essentially the world’s longest cut scene. When do I get to shoot?
The inevitable merging of movies and videogames begins to make sense when we consider the parallels in their opening up of imaginary space and their shared goal of the ultimate immersive experience. In both cases, the experience is no longer a thing to behold; it’s a place to be. And not only a location, but a world that invites interaction.
Just don’t forget to turn around—there’s something sneaking up on you, and it just might be a Covenant soldier.
UNSC Personnel
BEN ABRAHAM is a PhD candidate at the University of Western Sydney and can occasionally be found teaching the designers of the future at the University of Macquarie. He’d tell you his Xbox Live gamertag but would probably just embarrass himself.
SHEROL CHEN is a PhD student in Computer Science with interest in telling stories through games. She’s part of the Expressive Intelligence Studio at Santa Cruz and specializes in Artificial Intelligence for narratives and believability. She’s also interested in Philosophy of Mind and the overall impact that technology has on people, as she’s trying to find her own way to change the world. She loves Jazz music, Jesus, and had a crush on Super Mario when she played her first video game at the age of five.
LUKE CUDDY is the editor of The Legend of Zelda and Philosophy and World of Warcraft and Philosophy. He teaches philosophy in Southern California. Sometimes he hears a woman’s voice in his head, claiming to be an AI inhabiting his consciousness, but then he realizes that it’s just his girlfriend telling him to stop playing so much Halo.
TYLER DEHAVEN is a student at Ithaca College studying philosophy and anthropology as a double major. When not attending college, he can be found at home playing video or computer games in his basement as a way to unwind after work. Despite his love of videogames, Tyler understands that he cannot shoot his professors on sight, as he would a Covenant soldier, after receiving a nasty assignment. Currently, Tyler remains undecided about what career he wishes to pursue, though he intends to go to graduate or professional school. Born and bred in a small Pennsylvania town, Tyler lives with his mother, father, brother, and little sister.
MONICA EVANS is an Assistant Professor in computer game design at the University of Texas at Dallas. Her current research focuses on the design and development of university-level educational games, narrative for interactive systems, and digital ethics. She’s spending most of the 2010–11 academic year creating a series of games focused on bioethics and human enhancement as part of the Values Game Initiative. While she admires his persistence, she feels that Guilty Spark 343 could learn a lot from GLaDOS and SHODAN.
A wholly unrepentant camper, SHANE FLIGER is a full time graduate student in Literature Studies at The University of Akron, and holds a bachelor’s degree in English with a minor in Philosophy from the University of Akron as well. His primary focus of study is the evolution of narrative structure through interactive media, and has nightmares of laughter in alien tongues at his pitiable efforts to survive. Wort wort wort!
GALEN FORESMAN teaches philosophy at North Carolina A&T State University and is the author of Why Batman Is Better than Superman and Making the A-List. When he’s not teaching or writing, you can find him online, schooling noobs in the art of virtuous spawn camping. Class is in session.
JOYCE C. HAVSTAD is a PhD student in the Philosophy Department as well as the Science Studies Program at the University of California, San Diego. At school, she battles with ideas, arguments, and words. At home, she prefers to be armed with an energy sword and a sniper rifle.
CHRIS HENDRICKSON grad
uated from Ithaca College with his Bachelors in Planned Studies: Games and Society. A self-proclaimed ninja, he enjoys practicing with his carbon-steel sword, exploring nature, and riding his motorcycle. You can find him on Xbox Live, running to the front lines and using the armor lock ability to make himself temporarily invulnerable to bullets, rockets, plasma, and confused n00bs.
SÉBASTIEN HOCK-KOON is a funded PhD candidate studying learning in videogames. He followed the game design course of SupInfoGame. Usual princess rescuer and kingdom protector, he saved the galaxy for the first time by devastating a gigantic alien space donut with the autumnal explosion of a nuclear pillar.
MICHAEL JENKINS graduated from San Diego State University with his Masters in Philosophy. When’s he’s not pretending to be a logician, he can be found hiding on a cliff or under a bush, sniper rifle loaded, waiting for an unsuspecting Covenant. Though he isn’t afraid to get down and dirty with some old school pistol whipping.
PETER LUDLOW is Professor of Philosophy at Northwestern University. He is co-author (with Mark Wallace) of The Second Life Herald: The Virtual Tabloid that Witnessed the Dawn of the Metaverse (2008) and is also author of lots and lots of papers on technical philosophy of language. In 2006 mtv.com called Ludlow one of the ten most influential videogame players of all time, but his daughter is unimpressed because (a) that was sooo long ago it was probably before The Flood and (b) she has more achievements on Xbox than he does.
ROGER NGIM is an artist, educator, and former arts critic who has seen every Friday the 13th installment but has never seen any of the Saw movies. An obsessive gamer, he has taught courses in games and culture at the University of California at San Diego and has a collection of more than six hundred board games.
FELAN PARKER is a PhD student in Communication & Culture at York University specializing in cinema studies and digital game studies. He is currently studying the “games as art” debate as a popular discourse. His favorite form of expansive gameplay in Halo is Jeep Tag. One player is “it” and gets a Warthog, and scores points for running over other players; everyone else gets rocket launchers and frag grenades. When somebody kills the “it” player, they take over the vehicle. Explosions, high-flying jeeps and hilarity ensue.
CHIARA REPETTI-LUDLOW is in ninth grade at the Earl L. Vandermeulen High School on Long Island. She has mad skilz at gymnastics, trapeze, Latin, and Italian, but those are all part of her plan to be the next Ezio Auditore da Firenze. And yes, at the end of the day she likes Assassin’s Creed even more than Halo.
JEFF SHARPLESS is a recent graduate with his MA in philosophy from San Diego State University and has a BS in psychology from Southern Oregon University. An avid Halo player, he would often talk to his fellow players while playing online multiplayer, “Do you think Master Chief’s thinks about whether his life is worth living? I mean, think about it, he was stolen from his family and genetically engineered to be a super-soldier” His fellow players would often respond, “Dude! You think too much.”
PATRICK TIERNAN is Chair of Religious Education at Boston College High School where he teaches courses in religion and science, ethics, social justice, and world religions. He is currently a doctoral candidate in educational administration at Boston College. Sometimes he feels his classes de-evolve into the Flood and has to resist the temptation to pull a Forerunner by annihilating everyone. But in the end, he sees the value of disconnecting once in a while and remembering it’s just a game.
ROGER TRAVIS is an associate professor of classics at the University of Connecticut. He’s also the director of the Video Games and Human Values Initiative, and he writes the blog Living Epic at
FRED VAN LENTE is the writer of the American Library Association award-winning comic-book series, Action Philosophers, used across the world to teach thinkers from the Pre-Socratics to Derrida, as well as the chronicler of Master Chief’s colleagues Spartan Black in the Marvel graphic novel Halo: Blood Line and in the bestselling prose anthology Halo: Evolutions.
RACHEL WAGNER is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Ithaca College in upstate New York. She has published a number of book chapters and articles dealing with the relationship between religion and popular culture, and is at work on a single-author book on religion and virtual reality called Godwired (2011). She has a particular interest in virtual reality experiences that construct other-worlds with multiple media streams, such as Halo, Avatar, Harry Potter, and The Matrix. She is grateful that Ithaca College student Tyler DeHaven (co-author in this book) knows that Halo isn’t real life and isn’t going to shoot her for giving difficult assignments.
Index
Aarseth, Espen
absolute war
Achilles
Aeschylus
aesthetic self-fashioning; ethical substance of; ethical work of; mode of subjection of; as social practice; in sports; telos of
Agamemnon
AI research: in game technology; and Turing test. See also Artificial Intelligence
AI systems, early
Alexandersson, Mikael
Alien (movie)
anima
animus
apocalypse; ascent in; devotees of; God in; otherworldly mediators in; as quietist; and technique; time in; visionaries of
The Apocalypse of Abraham
“The Apocalypse of Weeks,”
apocalyptic literature
Aquinas, St. Thomas
the Arbiter
archetypes
Aristotle; Poetics
Artificial Intelligence (AI); definitions of; in game echnology; what it is not
The Ascension of Isaiah
Asimov, Isaac
Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence
Audiosurf
audiovisual synchronization
Augustine, St.
Aune, David
avatar: as Bodhisattva; perceptions of
Banks, Ian M.; Culture series; The Player of Games
Battlefield 1942
Beckett, Samuel
Berkeley, George
Bester, Alfred
Biblical Literature Apocalypse Group
Bioshock
Blacking, John: How Musical Is Man?
Blade Runner (movie)
Bodhisattva
Bogost, Ian; Persuasive Games
Book of Enoch
Book of the Watchers
Borderlands (game)
Braveheart (movie)
Brave New World (novel)
Buddha
Buddhism: first noble truth; repetition in; second noble truth
Bungie
The Bungie Guide to Sci Fi
campers/camping, in multiplayer games; as bad strategy; covering value for; definition; evaluating context of. See also spawn camping
Camus, Albert
Carpenter, John
Chalmers, David
Chardin, Pierre Teilhard de
Chernoff, John Miller: African Rhythm and African Sensibility
Chinese room thought experiment
Chion, Michael; Audio-Visual
ChronoTrigger
Church, Dr. Leonard
Cicero
Citron, Marcia: Gender and the Musical Canon
Clapton, Eric
Clarke, Andy
Clarke, Arthur C.
Clausewitz, Carl von; On War
Cloud Master
Clute John
Collins, John J.; The Apocalyptic Imagination; Encounters of Biblical Theology
computer games: meaningful progression in; science-fiction elements in; weapon choices in
Copeland, Jack
Cortana; and Turing Test
the Covenant; weapons, sounds of
covering values
Curtis, Jamie Lee
Dajez, Frédéric
Dalai Lama
David, King
Davidic messiah
Dead or Aliv
e 4
Deleuze, Gilles
Devadatta
Disch, Thomas M.
dominant strategy
Doom
Downes, Steve
DukeNukem 3D
Dune
Ebert, Roger: on videogames
Eckenrode, John
Ellison, Harlan
emulators
Encyclopedia of Science Fiction
enlightenment
Enoch
Epictetus
equivocation
Euripides
evaluative terms
Evenson, B.K.
Everyday Shooter
expansive gameplay; and aesthetic self-fashioning; jeep jumping; “Pacifist,”; and practices of freedom; role-playing in; as simulation; speed running; “Zero Shots,”; “Zombie,”
experimental philosophy (X-phi)
“Explicit Information On-Demand and Just-in-Time Principle,”
extended mind hypothesis
Fahrenheit 451
Fangoria
Fawkes, Guy
Final Fantasy
Final Fantasy 7
First Person Shooter (FPS) genre; as 3D world
Flannery-Dailey, Frances
the Flood
Fodor, Jerry
the Forerunners
Foucault, Michel; on aesthetic self-fashioning; on games of truth; on knowledge and power; on power/opposition; on practices of freedom; problematizing the self