Stranger 109

I know it’s been a little while since my last post. I was in Tokyo the past week both for the Tokyo Game Show, and I also presented a paper on Videogame Activism at the University of Tokyo for DiGRA. A few comments on TGS: Drake’s Fortune lived up to the hype generated from this year’s E3. Having had a chance to play it, I can attest that its a title that will make me finally happy that I own a PS3. It’s a beautiful game that plays like a Tomb Raider meets Gears of War. I also finally got to play Assassin’s Creed (on the Xbox360) and was very impressed. It’s a stealth action game, but has a unique context sensitive gaming mechanic that opens a number of possible playing styles. In addition the city is massive and fully explorable. On the other end of the gaming spectrum, DiGRA is the largest international gathering of gaming researchers that meet every two years to share in their work. I had the opportunity to meet a number of the people I have been citing for the past years in my own work and hear their new research.

Today’s spotlight comes out of one of those sessions. For those not familiar with the work of Douglas Thomas of USC, I highly recommend you check out his Hacker Culture. It is easily the most comprehensive look into the history and culture of hacking. During a panel on game design to effect social change, Thomas showed Javier’s Cantina Crawl XII as an example of what he called civic engagement that gamers often participate in as part of larger gaming communities. In this particular instance, a group of players in Star Wars Galaxies take issue with Sony’s mishandling of their concerns about the entertainer profession within the game that allow for live dancing performances in the cantinas. Set to the music of Linkin Park, the film follows in suit with the previous 11 cantina crawls as performance dance pieces set to music. However, this one differs in its use of the lower third to detail in chronological order the particulars of the protest. While many may find this form of protest or civic engagement as laughable considering it all takes place within the context of a game, it is important to note that it may be too easy to write this off as gamers being overly involved in a game. Instead, this sort of action demonstrates that communities formed within MMORPGs take similar shape to those formed in the “real” world. Therefore, issues that concern that community can function as a mobilizing force that results in protest videos like this. In this instance a group of gamers reacted to the developers overlooking the community impacts of changing the entertainers profession through several patches and they responded in a collaborative effort. So the upshot of all of this is not so much that games provide some catalyst to becoming politically motivated (though that is also possible) but instead show that these virtual spaces hold a level of significance for the citizens that reside within them that they will stand up against a corporation like Sony to protect those interests. I applaud Javier’s effort here both for providing a great example of live performance set in a MMORPG as well as using machinima as means of political expression.