Gameplay-- To Be Revisited
Jenkins' preoccupation with the potential for video games-- and gameplay generally-- as fertile, yet unexplored ground for new storytelling potential suggests his inability to accurately understand where the joy in gameplay lies. Under contemporary (neoliberal) capitalism, expectations of productive output, efficiency, and tangible (usually financial or material) growth/gain have reached all-time highs, encouraging the average individual to adopt a more bot-like mentality and modality. In a world which we are constantly reminded of our expendability by virtue of our humanity, we fear losing our jobs to robots and yet, if our usual off-ramp to get to work were to close, most of us would need a robot to figure out how to get to work. The technology we produced to ease our existence is now predicated on human obsolescence and the anxiety this phenomenon breeds is, understandably, palpable. And thus, the rise of gaming.
Wishing the universe of the game, the contemporary person may exercise their agency in the truest sense of the word. They find themselves within a different, yet not totally dissimilar, world built and fed by speed, ruled by villains and refereed by a few, lone good guys. There are several iterations of this game: Grand Theft Auto allows you to indulge in hyper-masculine violence without fear of prosecution of stares from the women in your office, the Madden franchise allows you to dominate on the field and, presumably, off the field with a CGI cheerleader, and so on and so on. But no matter the format, no matter how dubious the morality of yer world of the game is, the gamer is meant to feel justified in pursuing any means to their end. This idea is insidiously propagated throughout our culture, yet is often spoken against; but, in gameplay this contradiction does not exist, the gamer does not have to feel bad for looking up cheats online or berating a minor through their Xbox headset. What a joy it is to engage in an activity that celebrates the animal in our humanity, a hobby where one can howl into a headset while ferociously gesticulating their thumbs...
The beauty of Run Lola Run, is its commitment to exposing its modes of production: Tom Twyker-- director of the 1999 film-- employs the visual cues of gameplay yo expose how mechanized our daily lives have become, while simultaneously referencing game architecture, narrative and play as a means of implicating gaming as yet another head of the Cerberus called capitalism. Like most technological innovations we enjoy today, gaming arose out of a need-- a need to feel engaged, yet disengaged, constantly moving while remaining still-- but in satisfying the surface need, or symptom, it feeds the underlying cancer that is isolation (or iSolation available only on iOS 307.9). Claudia Mesch, in writing about Run Lola Run, describes the setting of the film in terms that echo those used to describe game architecture, "the grid, emblem of modernity and structure of the metropolis, the semiconductor, and puzzles of a virtual environment, is necessary for mobility and speed, and is performed by the figure Lola. The grid is also apparent in the trajectories of traffic of speeding bikes, subway trains, and airplanes passing overhead, which all parallel Lola's movements in the film. The city- virtual environment is thus an idealised nexus of local, national, and global lines of mobility and communication." (Mesch 2). When building a city, much like any game or 3-D animation, the engineer must start with the grid; the grid is paramount in creating a navigable realm, imbedded with rules to make travel easier, safer, more predictable. The difference between our relationship between the two kinds of grids, the distinctiveness of our feelings towards the two has made possible the presence, or lack thereof, of a horizon. The grid which we are all born into, live in and depend on, seems never-ending, it's vanishing point is synonymous with the setting sun, is that line on the horizon Pythagoras proved we could only ever inch toward ad infinity without ever reaching it. However, the grid which rules the video game is as deep as the gamer's LCD screen, its presence only noticeable when the gamer activates the game, inserts it into the console and presses play (or A or X or...) and just as effortlessly as she conjured its hegemony, she can just as easily dismiss it. Frustration is inherent within both systems of the grid, but within gameplay, the gamer is given chances, many lives and so engagement feels more fair, more exciting. The possibilities are endless when you know you have two whole other lives to count on.
By describing the nature of Lola's trajectory across the grid of the film, Mesch accurately describes where the audience is able to find pleasure within the mania of the movie. She writes, "In Run Lola Run, Berlin is represented as an idealised space of bodily and psychic mobility where the instantaneous technology of cyberspace is physically realised as a utopia of speed." (Mesch 1), and continues to suggest, "Urban mobility as circuitry is performed by the films super-athletic Lola." (1). Once Lola hangs up the phone in the beginning of the film, thus accepting her mission, she remains within a constant state of urgency, panic. She sprints through tunnels and bridges, now made iconic by these running montages, and is only brought to a halt when she is overcome with dread when faced with yet another obstacle. For example, Lola is temporarily paralyzed when she realizes someone has stolen her moped, and even once she regains her bearings on the situation, she is not able to ramp up her speed in time to stop the culprit. Similarly, in the first iteration of Lola's task, she stops outside a supermarket window as she sees her boyfriend, Manni, unsuccessfully try to rob the market. Lola, our unnaturally athletic, enduring protagonist can suddenly not muster any more strength to continue running and stop this mistake from taking place. And why this need for speed? As mentioned previously, efficiency and speed are the pillars of our society today, the prevailing virtues that shroud us, while also serving as our guiding lights. Within the neoliberal state, the individual is valued by their dexterity per capita, their "productive output" per capita (Mesch 4), and so to slow down is to lose out because time is money, after all. However, the importance and desirability of speed within Run Lola Run is taken to a comedic, almost slap-stick, level of extreme; Lola adopts the velocity of a weightless 3-D animation in the film the way we would expect our own avatar to move within a video game. The joy of traversing this farcical terrain within the film's universe of gameplay is that, unlike our average gamer outside of the game, Lola is somehow equipped with the superhuman speed, stamina and vocal capabilities necessary to make mobility possible and seductive within the landscape.
When addressing the importance of the environment while arguing for a further investigation into narrative potential within gameplay, Jenkins concedes that it is only natural that the game designer, begin with the environment and then begin to concern her of himself with the various narrative devices to be imposed upon the landscape. This separation of "level design" from "plotting or character motivation"(Jenkins 121) is a dangerous, and unnecessary distinction to make for it posits a false binary. Any narrative must be grounded within a setting, much as our human existence relies on our habitable planet; if we did not have an abundant water source, a hearty atmosphere to shield us, and a benevolent sun, man would not have been afforded the luxuries of reason for he would not have been able to advance from protozoa. Life, in the way we think of it-- culture, reason, logic, humanity-- was and is possible by our interactions with fin its natural resources, innovation has relied upon scarcity, scarcity has bred competition, which has bred excellence. If Odysseus had no sea to traverse, I doubt the average person would have even heard of the archaic great. I do not mean to say that Odysseus could not have trekked through a mountain range, or a desert, or a swamp and readers would have still been able to find morality within the text, but I do mean to suggest that this classic tale would look and read exceptionally different had the landscape been different. And this begs the question: Was the journey or the sea considered first? The contemporary reader does not care because the sea is there and so is the story. The Odyssey serves as a classic tale of trial and error, of human folly and hubris, but it also could have had enormous potential to serve as an introduction into basic navigational skills. Should we not re-examine the text and consider it, within our context, as fertile ground for cartographical discourse? I think most of us would agree that this investigation is not warranted, because we understand that the importance, culturally, the book serves is in its ability to describe the zeal, puerility and perils of humanity.
Throughout his essay, Jenkins is exceptionally concerned with the impairment of mobility and free will within the video game that relies on narrative structure too heavily. Conceding that linear narrative structure do have the potential to harmfully curtail spontaneity within gameplay, he is still adamant that narrative considerations should not be thrown out the window, and tries to select a few examples of older modes of entertainment. In describing hyper-performative genres of entertainment such as slap-stick comedy, Jenkins argues:
These performances or spectacle-centered genres often display a pleasure in process- in the experiences along the road-- that can overwhelm any strong sense of goal or resolution, while exposition can be experiences as an unwelcome interruption to the pleasure of performance. Game designers struggle with this same balancing act-- trying to determine how much plot will create a compelling framework and how much freedom players can enjoy at a local level without totally derailing the larger narrative trajectory. As inexperiences storytellers, they often fall back on rather mechanical exposition through cut scenes, much as early filmmakers were sometimes overly reliant on interfiles rather than learning the skills of visual storytelling. Yet, as with any other aesthetic tradition, game designers are apt to develop craft through a process of experimentation and refinement of basic narrative devices, becoming better at shaping narrative experiences without unduly constraining the space for improvisation within the game. (125-6).
Yet again, Jenkins is adamant that narrative devices have potential for being problematic in constructing a spontaneous, interactive playing field, but refuses to abandon narrative considerations when describing the importance and ubiquity of gameplay. I do not mean to suggest that narrative structure should be ignored when discussing gaming culture, aesthetics and architecture-- all games need some governing logic, or plot-- but I do think narratives present within video games are somewhat beside the point. Jenkins notes early on in his essay, "Many games do have narrative aspirations. Minimally, they want to tap the emotional residue of previous narrative experiences. Often, they depend on our familiarity with the roles and goals of genre entertainment to orient us to the action," which suggests that narrative, within the gaming realm, is merely a tool used to situate the viewer/player so that they may launch into action, and know what the action should look like. The narrative does often rely on narrative tropes we have seen before, or may even reference a cinematic narrative that has now been adopted for the game console, but the narrative is not required to swell beyond this introductory phase. The narrative establishes the governing logic that makes action possible, worthwhile, and meaningful, but the joy in the game is deprived from the gamer's participation with the landscape and plot.
Writer, artist and filmmaker, Hito Steyerl, describes the pleasure of the proxy within the contemporary climate, positing that thew proxy-- or the avatar, bitmoji, etc.-- allows the inundated individual to enjoy the sensation of participation without being taxed by actual action. She describes the incessant anxiety that is born out of constant availability; with the rise of the smartphone and other predictive communicative devices, the individual is made ever-available to virtually anyone. This threat of constantly being accessed, imposed upon, is exhausting but this is also what we asked for. Once the reality of our greatest dream become too suffocating, the individual sought a realm of escapism, in which they can feel human by employing strategic and flexible thinking, while also being fooled into feeling as though they are moving, being fooled into believing they are the avatar on screen. In describing the mechanical logic of Run Lola Run, recall Mesch's focus on the governing quality of the grid. The grid plays a pivotal role in governing actions within Run Lola Run, within metropolitan cities, and subsequently contemporary life; the structure its existence was meant to provide is now in effect, but has morphed into a hegemonic maze. In describing contemporary design imperatives, Steyerl explains how design logic works hand in hand with modern economics enslaved by industry. She writes, "Disaffection is a part of the overall design structure, as well ad the feeling that all of this is too difficult to comprehend and too specific to unravel. Yet this place seems to be designed as a unique case that just follows its own rules, if any. It is not included in the horizon of shared humanity; it is designed as a singular case, a small-scale singularity." (Steyerl 13). The idea that the logic which rules the individual city is not a part of some larger, neoliberal imperative, is the crux of the entire, global phenomenon and it is this contradiction which breeds a sense of alienation within the metropolitan subject. Mesch addresses this notion of the ubiquitous grid and how it appears in every major city today. In describing the specificity of the location of Run Lola Run, Mesch argues the film's director, Twyker, was unconcerned with Berlin serving as a specific city to situate the narrative within the film would function the same it it were to take place in "New York or Beijing" (Mesch 3). In this contemporary hell-scape, predictive technologies have bred an isolation so deeply seeded, that innovation is now predicated on capitalizing on these feelings of alienation and helplessness. Policies and procedures are implemented so as to create "algorithmic confusion" whereby everyone is becoming increasingly aware of the growing gap between them and the people they find themselves contiguous to.
The pleasure derived in watching Lola traverse though this impossible environment, with unnatural speed and determination is that she rejects her humanity for the sake of mobility and Lola is not made to feel less than for choosing objectivity over subjectivity. While Jenkins views gameplay as a landscape in which the player may escape into an all-encompassing narrative, and thus narrative devices should be the central focus of gameplay, the real importance lies in the ways in which the gamer is not required to care about the specificity of the conditions they find themselves under. Within in the game, the gamer is primed with just enough information so that they may draw a parallel between the game universe and the corporeal one they reside in. Too much information, and the gamer becomes passive, submissive to the trajectory of the story, which he or she has no control over. This is what movies are good for: passive projection. However, the beauty of the game is that one is still passive-- they are inert, eyes glued to a cancerous blue light-- and yet their mind is alive and engaged, engrossed with so much stimuli that it is happy to place itself within the farce. The gamer is passive in that he or she has no control over the why or how of the game, and this is what she craves for she is constantly riddled by the same nagging questions regarding her very real existence. Though disengaged in classical problem-solving and existential anxiety, she is asked to engage in pure action, no thought involved, just going, moving, freely, angrily. This is the engagement the average disenfranchised, metropolitan, neoliberal subject craves, and this safe haven is exactly what the game experience, and Run Lola Run offers.
Pardon the errors, I'll be fixing them soon (once I expand the essay and repost) :*
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