The Potential For Deep Play In DotA

The assigned literature for the lecture on Performance and Audience elaborated upon the manner, in which the player can use the cybernetic feedback loop between the state machine and the ergodic agent in order to establish an embodied aesthetic expression. In the article The Role of Onlookers in Arcade Gaming Holin Lin and Chuen-Tsai Sun would for instance conduct an ethnographic examination around the embodied or mimetic player performance surrounding a number of dance games within the Taiwanese arcades such as Dance Dance Revolution and Para Para Paradise. However, both Henry Lowood’s article It’s not easy been green as well as Christian McCrea’s article Watching Starcraft, Strategy and South Korea were on the other hand more concerned with the strategic interface performance surrounding real-time strategy games at major e-sports tournaments. During the presentation the group therefore decided to present two different case studies in the form of Defence of the Ancients (DotA) and Guitar Hero, which allowed us to highlight as well as somewhat problematize the ontological division between the embodied and the strategic performance within game studies. Building upon the discussions as well as the observations from the lecture the group will within the following blog-post then attempt to utilise Clifford Geertz’s influential concept of deep play in order to understand the cultural implications as well as spectacles surrounding the contemporary computer game phenomenon known as DotA.

The DotA franchise originated from a player-created custom-map made for the popular real-time strategy game Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos from Blizzard Entertainment. In DotA the overarching objective for the player revolves around the destruction of the opponents’ so-called Ancients, which should be understood as a group of heavily guarded structures located somewhere in the opposite corner of the map. The members from each team must both utilise a number of powerful heroes, who gain additional experience points, skills and as abilities throughout the course of the game, as well as a variety of computer generated units, or creeps, in order to annihilate the opponents’ structures. Before entering the actual battleground the player must however choose between the 102 different heroes inside the game, with each possessing a number of unique abilities that can be leveraged in different strategic ways during the hectic battle scenarios. One could argue that the DotA computer game affords an enormous space of possibilities for strategic performance, since the members from each team can combine the unique strengths as well as weaknesses of the 102 heroes to conduct powerful meta-strategies. Furthermore, the balanced gameplay mechanics and the enormous space of possibilities have spawned a dedicated player community around the influential custom-map for Warcraft III, and the game was likewise played at both local LAN-parties as well as major e-sports tournaments around the world.  

In 2009, one of the designers behind the DotA mod decided to release a commercial computer game for Microsoft Game Studios called League of Legends, which attempted to perfect the successful competitive playing formula found within the original game. Furthermore, the influential computer game publisher Valve decided to hire the other designer from the original DotA game back in 2006, and he has, during the last five years, been working together with a small programming team in order to create DotA 2, which will be released on the Steam service later this year. In order to promote the upcoming game, Valve decided to host an enormous e-sport tournament called The International at the Gamescom conference 2011, in which sixteen of the most skilled DotA teams from all over the world competed against each other for a cash-price of one million dollars. While the original DotA map mainly was driven by the dedicated player community, where the different users for instance could post ideas for new heroes or items on the surrounding online forums, the successful formula behind the game has today evolved into a major commercialized product and spectacle with titles such as League of Legends and DotA 2.

The DotA phenomenon is a relevant case study in the light of the readings discussed in class, both by its scale, as mentioned above, and by its peculiarities that differentiate it from the StarCraft example discussed by McCrea and Lowood. The concept of deep play, as coined by Clifford Geertz and used by McCrea, seems to be a good starting point for the analysis of DotA as an e-sport, in which performance and audience assume extreme dimensions. The high stakes involved, both in highly commercialized professional matches as in amateur competitions, are not only a consequence of the meta-structure designed to organize competition, but actively serve as the enhancing “means and devices” to the exchanges of meaning in the play of the game. A match involving teams from distant countries in a launch event of the new game (DotA 2) after a decade of waiting and with one million dollars at stake lends itself easily to chronicling and a certain notion of epic, of larger-than-life events. As in the StarCraft example, as described by McCrea, the game certainly stands in the intersection between spectacle, fan culture, narratives of class and cultural values.

However, DotA is not as localized as StarCraft is. The association of StarCraft with the place where it found most widespread adoption, South Korea, does not bind DotA to any specific country. In McCrea’s discussion of StarCraft, the scale and boundaries of framing StarCraft in the Korean context is useful in making connections with the situated historical and socio-cultural values at play in the game. How can a game with a global but not concentrated presence be analysed through this deep play concept? The scale and spread of DotA show that the game is successful in engaging large and diverse player communities, but how to understand the reasons behind this similar meta-structure? These questions probably could only be answered by further research, but they are important points of consideration.

Another aspect of DotA that differentiates it from StarCraft and might be relevant is the player organization involved in its gameplay. The dominant player organization in StarCraft has an individual focus, while DotA is mostly played as a team game in which collaboration and proper communication are required to function well in a competitive level and famous performances are remembered by the teams that made them, not individual players. The creation and maintenance of these micro-social structures is a demanding and usually long process, through which bonds and relationships are created around the game and through it. Training and competing in a team necessarily adds a whole range of intra- and inter-group dynamics which are at play in the performance of the game, in which the transitions between strategy and tactics and the fluidity of their hierarchy has to be negotiated and coordinated in a group. Going back to the deep play concept, these dynamics add to the migration of status onto the game and help to raise the stakes involved higher, catalysing more meaning into the performance of the game.

Immediacy Versus Hypermediacy

Immediacy Versus Hypermediacy

Some theoretical nonsense about embodied and material play

 

The three articles for the second class in Game Culture revolved around the topics of embodied and material play within computer games. The traditional discipline of object-focused game studies has often overlooked the material or embodied dimensions surrounding the interacting agent. However, in the article Bodies and Machines Jonathan Dovey and Helen Kennedy argue that an analysis of the cybernetic feedback loop between the computer and the interacting agent instead should be approached from a twofold perspective, since “[…] we are embodied subjects whilst engaged in our experiences of ‘virtual reality’. But we are also re-embodied […] in these virtual spaces through the interface and the avatar.” According to Dovey and Kennedy, the understanding of embodied or material play must therefore revolve around both the so-called ‘cyborg at the machine’ as well as the ‘cyborg in the machine’, which is why the player never will be able to loose the connection to his physical body while being immersed within the digital world. While the concept of the ‘cyborg at the machine’ is build around the physical layer outside in the sociocultural environment surrounding the computer game, the idea behind the ‘cyborg in the machine’ is instead centred on the virtual re-embodiment inside the game world. Therefore, Dovey and Kennedy argue that both the physical dimensions as well as the virtual dimensions are equally important to understand, and the cyborg is throughout the article used as a metaphor for the constant exchange of information between the ‘cyborg at the machine’ as well as the ‘cyborg in the machine’. Furthermore, looking more at the ‘cyborg at the machine’ suddenly opens up a number of interesting research areas such as virtuoso play, performative play as well as e-sports, since “Gameplay cannot be understood by recourse solely to the game itself, but has to be understood through careful attention to it as a materially, temporally and spatially determined process […]”.

In the article Geek Chick Bart Simon likewise argues in favour of understanding the more material dimension surrounding the ‘cyborg at the machine’, since physical case modding can result in a unique aesthetic experience for the player. First, Simon depicts the long historical tradition behind the two opposing traditions within the discipline of computer or interface design, which Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin have encapsulated within the concepts of immediacy and hypermediacy. While immediacy refers to the transparent interface that “[…] erases itself, so that the user is no longer aware of confronting a medium, but instead stands in an immediate relationship to the contents of that medium.”, the idea behind the concept of hypermediacy will instead “[…] makes us aware of the medium and reminds us of our desire for immediacy.” Simon then argues that the designers throughout the last thirty years have been trying to enhance the more immediate dimensions behind the computer, by for instance building invisible cases as well as bigger monitors, since this approach could afford a more immersive experience for the interacting agent. The focus on the more immediate or immersive aspects have however diminished the critical reflection towards these technologies, which is why some artists have created a number of hypermedial software applications that should animate a more Brechtian awareness within the interacting agent. However, Simon highlights that the more material or physical dimension behind the computer still is present during LAN-parties, since the players often modify their computer cases with blinking lights as well as transparent plexiglas in order to establish a more hypermedial awareness around the actual medium. Furthermore, the hypermedial awareness that is created around the modded computer cases can afford a different aesthetic experience for the player, since “[…] the case mod turns the machine and the body into a source of pleasure that may be coexisting with the game itself.”

In the final article called Controller, Hand, Screen Graeme Kirkpatrick attempts to highlight the historical importance behind the physical controller, since “[…] controllers and our use of them are repressed in gameplay and […] this repression facilitates a diversion of the player’s energy that helps explain the compulsive nature of good games.” The physical controller acts as a transparent mediator between the ‘cyborg at the machine’ as well as the ‘cyborg in the machine, and the player must therefore learn to master the required interaction patterns in order to meet the preferred performance for the computer game. Therefore, Kirkpatrick is likewise emphasising the importance behind the more embodied or physical dimensions of computer games, since the controller often becomes a cybernetic link between the material world and the digital dimension. Furthermore, the game designers can choose to use the physical dimensions of the controller in order to instigate more hypermedial or Brechtian experiences, which could force the player to reflect upon his individual role as a cybernetic agent within the sociocultural context.

The two case studies from the lecture likewise managed to illustrate this somewhat two-fold relationship between user and technological artefact, since The Sixth Sense project attempted to enhance the immediate potential behind the computer while the 3D-tattoos for The Nintendo 3DS instead revolved around a more hypermedial approach. Throughout the eighties as well as the nineties a number of researchers attempted to create the perfect virtual reality simulation, which should allow the user to become immersed within a parallel dimension. However, the virtual reality technologies, which had attempted to materialize William Gibson’s futuristic ideas about cyberspace, never became a commercial success outside the research laboratories. And in the book Understanding New Media Lev Manovich correlated the ontological failure behind virtual reality with the required material dimension surrounding the technologies, since “[…] VR imprisons the body to an unprecedented extent […] Like today’s computer mouse, the body was tied to the machine.” Even though the virtual reality technologies had promised to immerse the user within a parallel dimension or multi-verse by means of an Albertian window, the required material equipment such the enormous headsets as well as the uncomfortable chairs constantly reminded him of the material body outside in the surrounding sociocultural context. Instead of immersing the user within the virtual environments by means of the virtual reality technologies, various researchers therefore began to augment the physical or material world with additional digital layers, which The Sixth Sense project should be understood as another example of. Both augmented realities as well as ubiquitous computing technologies have throughout the last decade attempted to enhance the everyday lives of the user by means of additional digital layers and invisible computers. Therefore, The Sixth Sense project could be understood as an augmented reality interface that tries to establish a more intuitive as well as transparent interaction paradigm compared to the standard WIMP-interfaces, since the user should be able to navigate the different menus as well as folders by means of his fingertips. While the virtual reality technologies tried to mimic William Gibson’s original ideas about Cyberspace, The Sixth Sense project is instead inspired by Steven Spielberg’s vision about the interface of the future that can be found within the movie Minority Report. And the historical developments behind digital interface design has on the whole been driven by a strong sense of technological determinism, which assumes that the ultimate interactive paradigm inevitability will be discovered at some point in the future. 

The second case study about the augmented reality tattoos for the Nintendo 3DS console is on the other hand an example of a more hypermedial approach to technological design, since the computer here is emphasized as an artefact that the user has been able to master as well as domesticate through his material body. Furthermore, the hypermedial approach to technological design has often been employed by software artists in order to establish a more critical awareness or reflection within the mind of the user, since the emphasis on transparent or immediate technologies, according to theorists such as Anthony Dunne and Bill Gaver, will create unreflective individuals in the long run. Within his book Truth and Method Hans-Georg Gadamer calls attention to the paradoxical fact that “[…] the game masters the players. [...] The real subject of the game [...] is not the players but the game itself.”, and the critics behind the immediate design paradigms are likewise afraid that the cybernetic feedback loop between the user and the machine will become a one-sided monologue rather than an actual dialog. However, one could argue that the ontological contradiction between immediacy and hypermediacy is untenable in relation to computer games, which is why the designers instead should blend the important characteristics from both these traditions within their game worlds. The failure of the virtual reality technologies has proven that the user never will be able to forget about his material or physical body while being immersed within the digital dimension, and the designers should therefore remember to accommodate for both the ‘cyborg in the machine’ as well as the ‘cyborg at the machine’.    

Simon