<nettime> Velvet-Strike: War Times and Reality Games

[anne-marie]

chere bobig,

si vous plais exposez quotidiennement quelques des images de 
velvet-strike dans les jeux en réseau (team fortress, etc) To see you 
expose them daily on online games would be beautiful! c'est un bon 
travaille--spreading love tendrails in the world.

Merci beaucoup!
Velvet-Strike Team



>http://www.bobig.com/tag/
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>----- Original Message -----
>From: "anne-marie" <amschle at cadre.sjsu.edu>
>To: <nettime-l at bbs.thing.net>
>Sent: Friday, May 17, 2002 1:17 AM
>Subject: <nettime> Velvet-Strike: War Times and Reality Games
>
>
>>
>>  Velvet-Strike: War Times and Reality Games
>>  (War Times From a Gamer Perspective)
>>
>>  When I first heard about the attacks on September 11, just a fraction
>>  before I felt a wave of sadness, a nauseating thought passed through
>>  my mind. What terrible timing-with this president in office, perhaps
>>  even more so than previous ones, he could use this event as
>>  justification for dangerous actions on a global scale and at home. A
>>  few weeks later, I left for Spain to give a workshop on modifying
>>  computer games. When I arrived the next morning at the workshop I
>>  learned that the U.S. had declared war on Afghanistan. The workshop
>>  organizers had installed a new demo of "Return to Castle
>>  Wolfenstein", a remake of an old Nazi castle shooter game, on all the
>>  PC's. The sounds of the weapon-fire echoed off the concrete walls of
>>  the workshop warehouse space--what I once approached with playful
>>  macho geek irony was transformed into uncanny echoes of real life
>>  violence. At that moment, that room was the last place I wanted to
>>  be. Joan Leandre, (one of the other artists presenting at the
>>  workshop), and I discussed creating some kind of anti-war game
>>  modification.
>>
>>  Not long after the Sept 11 attacks, American gamers created a number
>>  of game modifications for games like Quake, Unreal and the Sims in
>>  which they inserted Osama Bin Laden skins and characters to shoot at
>>  and annihilate. Since the Sims is not a violent game, one Osama skins
>>  distributor suggested feeding the Sims Osama poison potato chips. If
>>  you cant shoot him, then force him to overeat American junk food, to
>>  binge, death by over-consumption, death by capitalism. (The Sims is
>>  essentially a game whose rule sets are based on capitalist
>>  algorithms, although according to the Sims designers these rules are
>>  balanced other factors.)
>>
>>  The most disturbing Osama mod I saw was on display in October 2001 at
>>  a commercial game industry exhibit in Barcelona called Arte Futura.
>>  To give the exhibition organizers the benefit of the doubt, they were
>>  probably unfamiliar with urban American ethnic cartography. In this
>>  mod, Osama is represented as an Arab corner grocery story owner, as
>>  is common in many tough inner city neighborhoods in North America.
>>  The goal of the mod is to enter the corner liquor grocery store and
>>  kill the Arab owner. (At the time I saw this I has just gotten an
>>  email from my sister in Seattle describing how she and other college
>>  students were taking turns guarding mosques from vandalists.)
>>
>>  Harmless release of tension or co-conspirator in the industrial war
>>  complex? Playful competition or dangerous ethnic and gender politics
>>  of the other? The first computer game, created at MIT by Slug Russell
>>  and other "hackers", was called "Spacewar", an outer space shooter
>>  influenced by cold war science fiction. Since Spacewar, computer
>>  games evolved and bifurcated into multiple genres, some related to
>>  war and fighting simulation, (and using technology occasionally
>>  directly funded by the US military), and others less so. (RPG, Real
>>  Time Strategy, Shooter, God Game, Action/Adventure, etc). In the
>>  1990's, within the shooter genre, characters evolved from white guy
>  > American soldiers into oversize funny male monsters of all shapes and
>>  stripes and pumped female fighting machines. It seemed to be about a
>>  kind monster fantasy workshop, humorous macho role-play, taking
>>  things to their frag queen extremes. Within online Quake and game
>>  hacker culture, gender restrictions and other boundaries opened up.
>>
>>  Then beginning with Half-life and continuing with shooter games whose
>>  alleged appeal is "realism", a kind of regression took place. In
>>  terms of game play games like Half-life are universally seen as
>>  advancements. Yet in Half-life you are only given one white guy
>>  everyman American geek guy to identify with. And all of the NPC
>>  researchers and scientists in the game are male. Half-life remaps the
>>  original computer game target market back onto itself, excluding all
>>  others and reifying gamer culture as a male domain. (Not that I
>>  didn't play Half-life but I would have enjoyed it more if I could
>>  have played a female character.)
>>
>>  The trend towards what male gamers call "realism" solidified in 2000
>>  with the Half-life mod "Counter-Strike". Counter-Strike is a
>>  multi-player game where you choose to play on either the side of a
>>  band of terrorists or on the side of counter-terrorist commandos,
>>  (all male). The tactics of the terrorists and the counter-terrorists
>>  are essentially indistinguishable from each other. (Perhaps this
>>  similarity between terrorist and counter-terrorist is telling about
>>  the current situation in Israel and other places where the "war on
>>  terrorism" has been forged for a while or is only just beginning.)
>>
>>  People who love Counter-Strike have told me that the appeal is the
>>  "realism"-its not about "silly" muscly monsters bouncing around space
>>  ports like in the Quake Series -in Counter-Strike you play
>>  realistically proportioned soldiers and commandos killing each other
>>  in stark bombed out bunkers. When you are killed in Counter-Strike
>>  your character really "dies" instead of immediately regenerating.
>>  (Although you get to play again in a few minutes as soon as the next
>>  round begins.) So "realism" is not about faster game engines,
>>  graphics processing and "photorealism". It is about reproducing
>>  characters and gameplay environments that are considered closer to
>>  "reality" and farther from fantasy.
>>
>>  But now, in the wake of Sept 11, are these games too "real"? Or is
>>  the real converging with the simulation? Who defines what is real?
>>  According to an email rumor, President Bush recently approved of a
>>  deal between an American television network and the US military to
>>  create a series of wartime docudramas of US soldiers fighting the
>>  "war on terrorism" abroad. The news section of the TV network was
>>  apparently miffed at the arrangement because they had been unable to
>>  gain access to reporting on the war in Afghanistan. (Recall in
>>  Orwell's 1984 the merging of state controlled war time news and
>>  docu-fiction.) The trend in brutal reality TV, beginning with popular
>>  shows like Cops, and continuing with a slue of reality game shows
>>  like "Survival" is another field of convergence.
>>
>>  You are for or against us, you are with us, "the one", or you are
>>  with the enemy is the underlying logic of the West, as I understood a
>>  talk by Marina Grzinic at an international cyberfeminist conference
>>  in Germany in December 2001. (Pre-axis of evil.) Although computer
>>  games replicate this binary competitive logic maybe there is
>>  something ultimately subversive in the knowledge that it is only a
>>  game, that at any moment you may switch sides with the "other", you
>>  may play the terrorist side in Counter-Strike. But reality games
>>  pretend to erase this awareness. And if you are going to converge
>>  network shooter games and contemporary middle eastern politics into a
>>  game, (Counter-Strike), then you leave out a number of complexities
>>  such as economics, religions, families, food, children, women,
>>  refugee camps, flesh bodies and blood, smell etc.
>>
>>  Maybe the problem is that convergence with "reality" is happening
>>  with the wrong game genre. Instead of replicating the binary logic of
>  > the shooter genre, of Cowboys and Indians, of the football game, if
>>  the US government borrowed tactics from real time strategy gamers or
>>  RPGers, we might be looking at a different global response. (But then
>>  again given who our leadership is now, its unlikely he is capable of
>>  the intellectual planning required of a strategy gamer.) "Winning" or
>>  advancement in massively multi-player Role Playing Games like
>>  Everquest is enhanced by strategically building social bonds amongst
>>  players. And strategy games like Warcraft and Command and Conquer,
>>  while directly enacting tactics of imperialist colonialist
>>  expansionism, at least take into account other factors in addition to
>>  military might.
>>
>>  After playing Counter-Strike for a couple weeks I must confess it
>>  incorporates social maneuvers beyond shoot and kill, (and I must also
>>  confess to enjoying many aspects of the game--I have actually always
>>  enjoyed shooters.) Team play and communication between members on
>>  your side are complex, including live voice radio, and a number of
>>  coded chat "smileys" and automated radio commands that take some time
>>  to learn. Formulating strategies is also necessary for survival, as
>>  in other network shooters. As a Counter-Strike newbie I was sometimes
>>  even able to solicit help from my enemies, indicating a clear
>>  awareness of the game as fictional play space. Some of the combat
>>  environments are quite beautiful. But I still am critical that this
>>  domain, the network of thousands of international Counter-Strike
>>  servers spanning Taiwan to Germany, has been reified as an
>>  exclusively male "realistic" combat zone. (You can hear live audio
>>  voices of male players on many servers.) I am also disturbed that the
>>  binary logic of the shooter is being implemented on a global military
>>  scale.
>>
>>  Personally I would like to see computer games move towards fantasy,
>>  away from military fantasy which pretends to "realistic". I like
>>  fantastic environments where there is more room for imaginative
>>  habitats and characters. Japanese games for children and adults are
>>  engaged in this undertaking, filled with curious animal Pokemon
>>  creatures, Robo-cats, transformers, Anime people, monsters, demons
>>  and fairies, of all genders. I identify more with these characters
>>  than with counter-terrorist or terrorist soldiers and they are what I
>>  want to be my reality. Reality is up for grabs. The real needs to be
>>  remade by us.
>>
>>
>>  About:
>>
>>  Velvet-Strike is a collection of spray paints to use as graffiti on
>>  the walls, ceiling, and floor of the popular network shooter
>>  terrorism game "Counter-Strike". Velvet-Strike was conceptualized
>>  during the beginning of Bush's "War on Terrorism." We invite others
>>  to submit their own "spray-paints" relating to this theme.
>>
>>  The Velvet-Strike Team:
>>
>>  Anne-Marie Schleiner opensorcery at opensorcery.net
>>  Joan Leandre retroyou at retroyou.org
>>  Brody brody at tmpspace.com
>>
>>  http://www.opensorcery.net/velvet-strike/
>>
>>
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