The postmodern temptation

Plenty of writers of more or less unreadable critical and theoretical works have claimed that their books are intended for that mythical beast ‘the general reader', and I am not keen to join their company. I have, therefore, attempted to keep the amount of theoretical jargon (rather than serious thought) to a minimum. Nor am I alone in my scepticism towards some of the more extreme language that can be used when this new technology is up for discussion.
As Jon Covey has argued in his introduction to Fractal Dreams, ‘Each onslaught of hyperactive technobabble becomes more tedious than the last, until we become just plain bored would not even attempt to glorify my own argument - it is intended to be introductory, preliminary, and to raise questions as to where we go next as critics and readers, as much as it is intended to provide comprehensive answers about the past, present, or future of the computer game. The endnotes are there for those who want them, although not to any length or extent that would protect this work from possible charges of being overly reductive in aiming for clarity of argument over fullness of scholarly reference. The computer game-fiction is a form of popular fiction and I, like many other critics who work in the hinterland of what goes under the name of cultural studies, would argue that scholarly rigour is as essential in approaching such popular texts (and I use Roland Barthes' term ‘text’ selfconsciously, just as I have insisted on the italicisation of their titles as if they have equal standing with films or novels) as it is when approaching the supposedly high-cultural textual artefact. This present work, however, is primarily intended as introductory in tone and content -1 do not want to bury my arguments for what is new, distinct, or different in this form of popular entertainment too far under a language or methodology that is undeniably popular in academia, but is rarely accessible, understood, or even particularly popular beyond its confines. I seek to inform, but not to validate my arguments through either jargonistic ‘technobabble’ or philosophical musings that are not firmly anchored in observation.

That said, I freely admit that I have drawn far more on theories of narratological analysis (and to give an early example of the kind of simplifying gloss I will be guilty of throughout this study, I would define narratology for my purposes here as the study of how stories are told) than on poststructuralist or even postmodern thought.3 My ambition is relatively limited - the games I isolate as my examples, I contend, require informed reading as fiction and as texts. They deserve, and get in this study, no more and no less. To give an early indication of where 1 hope to have travelled to by the end of this study, my provisional answer to the question of whether the computer game is ‘more than a game’ is a qualified ‘yes’ - it can also be a form of fiction making, and in the cases I isolate presents a fictional text that rewards close critical scrutiny. Is it ‘more than a game’ in that it requires a reformulation of our understanding of self, identity, art, or culture? Is it representative of a truly radical break with the ways in which we have previously told ourselves our stories? ‘No’, or at least ‘No, not yet'.

This is a form of self-denial and self-restraint, and not always of ignorance. This is not intended to be a work of theoretical enquiry, but a work of close textual criticism. In concentrating on specific game-fictions as fictions, and looking in detail at concrete examples of the form, I try to avoid making too many hyperbolic claims, and to restrict myself to that which can be supported by readings sourced in the texts themselves. Specifically, I have recognised in myself a tendency to make too much of an apparent correspondence between the texts I have been reading ‘through’ or ‘on’ my PC and PlayStation, and those I have been reading that exist within works of contemporary critical theory. What I have termed the‘postmodern temptation’ in this section heading is something I have sought to both recognise and deny, partly to keep this study manageable, and partly to try and avoid moving too far into abstraction and generalisation. In particular, I have tried to avoid ‘applying’ theory to texts, and using the tricks and tropes of rhetorical argument to patch over the resulting gaps and absences.

Before I completely alienate a possible academic reader-ship, however, I would like to make it clear that this is not an anti-theoretical move. What I want to suggest is that it is far too tempting for the academic critic to consider the future possibility of what the computer game might become, rather than address the mundanity of the object we actually have access to. This is not that potentially oxymoronic thing, an ‘untheorised reading’. Rather, it is a reading that draws on namatological and structuralist thinking and criticism for the most part, and tries to leave its more speculative digressions until the closing chapter. Those who wish to read about Tomb Raider, Half-Life, Close Combat, or SimCity are advised to skip ahead to the beginning of Chapter 2 and read on. Those who wish to see if I have anything new to say about the future possibility of the computer game might be best advised to endure this section of the text and then skip ahead to Chapter 6. Much of the (hopefully unobtrusive) theoretical material that follows and informs this study emerged out of enquiries into supposedly‘simple’ or ‘primitive’ narrative forms such as the fairy tale or folk tale, and seems to have particular utility in the examination of the computer game if we recognise its own ‘primitive’ or ‘simple’ current state. What theoretical material there is that talks to and about intimately related cultural phenomena such as ‘virtual reality’, however, is concerned with a far more complex and sophisticated object of study. Jean Baudrillard’s essay ‘Aesthetic Illusion and Virtual Reality’, discussed in Chapter 6, for example, would seem to be as astute and as forcefully argued as much of his other work, but not to be straightforwardly applicable to the world of ‘left click this’, ‘hit that shortcut key’ and ‘save the game’.

The very materiality of the experience of playing the computer game, its engagement with bits of plastic and metal, silicon and glass, fix it still within the age of mechanical reproduction that was identified by Walter Benjamin even as there is a potentially digital or even cyber’ age evolving or revolving about it.s Things might be about to change, but the reality of playing computer games at the turn of the twenty-first century requires a mass of cables and plugs and extensions. Wires snake about everywhere. Get too involved in playing and your back will ache, your eyes will suffer strain and your mouse hand will begin to cramp. The computer game takes its toll on the body even as it promises a disembodied and virtual experience. Next time we feel inclined to chuckle about our digital forebears and find it amusing that huge mechanical monsters used to occupy the computer departments of our universities, we should take a long hard look at the cables and peripherals that trail across the floor of our living rooms or underneath recognition that the compound term game-fiction I deploy throughout this volume incorporates rather than rejects the game element within game-fiction, it is certainly a case of‘play* over‘purpose’, as so much of the negative criticism levelled at the computer game has made clear.9 Less certainly there is the presentation of chance over design - as the game reproduces the effect of‘chance’ (the availability of plural possibility) over‘design’ (the inevitability of a singular outcome, some kind of fixed and ‘authored’ outcome). Similarly, we see in that plurality of possibility a ‘dispersal’ rather than a ‘centering,’ and at least the illusion of the scriptable (writable, privileging the reader) over the Usable (readable, privileging the author).10 What we would lose if we succumb too readily to such critical temptations, however, would be this need for a specificity of analysis. As enough literary critics have found, if we are not careful in our definitions we are in danger of finding ‘the postmodern’ in every time and place, in the history plays of Shakespeare, and in the very first novels in English. I sometimes wonder what we might make of the prehistoric cave art of Lascaux if we always carry our postmodern critical apparatus with us when we confront an artwork.