A critical theory analysis of different aspects in gaming and ISA/RSA structures.

1. C R I T I C A L T H E O R Y
J O S E P H A G N E W
Portfolio

2. The dystopian game Fallout 3, uses a 1950’s aesthetic throughout to signify that time
stands still. Using images and audio (like the Ink Spots clip above), to set a tone. It
promotes escapism, into an imagined and impossible world. It takes a post-modern
approach, mixing sign’s from the past, present and imaged future to produce a
‘hybrid form’. (Lane,J,R. 2001, 85)
I like many others spend time gaming.
It offers us a simulation within a
simulation, the transfer of signifier to
image. The images in the games are
designed to bewitch and beguile our
senses, all sense of reality melts away
and we begin to embrace
‘hyperreality’, Baudrillard's 3rd order
simulation. It begins to sever it’s
relationship with reality, forging anew
the laws of physics, timelines and
writing the future in order to create
worlds that we imagine ourselves
inhabitants of. We love the meaningless
images because of their lack of
meaning, they distract us from the
absence of reality in 'The desert of the
real‘. Just as ‘Prisons hide the fact that
we are incarcerated in society’
(Lane,J,R, 2001, 89), so too, do
games hide the unreality around us. We
inhabit a world of representation, where
signs and phrases stand in for
reality, ‘reality has now become a
function of phrases, of senses’ .
(Williams.J, 1998, 72). Lyotard
refers to the conflict between these
different senses as the differend, 'His
politics is in opposition to the
philosophies, systems and practises that
affirm right ways of pursuing a
dialogue‘ (William.J, 1998, 70).
Having now being incorporated in the
game, the 1950’s theme in a futuristic
world, is in conflict. In one sense the
referent (Fallout) represents the
future, and in another , the distant past.

3. Roleplay
There is a significant amount of
males who when confronted
with the initial character
choice, choose a female avatar.
The avatar that would represent
themselves inside the game.
This could be linked to the
Oedipus complex. During the
phallic stage of development a
child is ‘beginning to learn
about the structure of society in
general, and his place within it’
(Hough,M, 2010, 69). It
seems only natural that when
confronted with a simulation of
a different society, one may
choose to reinvent their image.
Choosing a female avatar could
have the same motivations as
choosing a fantastical
creature, because of the exotic
aspects of the other, the other
often has the ‘motif of
insinuating danger’
(Said,W,E, 2003, 57) and
excess, which could excite.

4. In gaming as with cinema, we see, seeing. Narrative cinema and the gaming industry almost always assume the males gaze. This is
possibly even more fixed because of the gender bias in gaming. New online game Wildstar has a 70% male gaming community, and
massively multiplayer online games are well known for having an even distribution, relative to the industry as a whole.
http://watchwildstar.com/census#share-all-dividedby-character_gender – Wildstar survey.
Upon inspection of the imagery we can see how the developers are aiming for a male demographic
using a very particular structure. The imagery involves, scopophilia, the pleasure of looking and
what Barthes called ‘pleasure in the image’ (Calvet,L,J. 1994, 219). It is however not necessarily
sexual, it is independent of the erotgenenic zones. Perhaps inside the simulacrum of the
game, Plato's original definition truly comes to light, the images become perfect, ideal forms of
themselves, with the expression of pixels and polygons, bits and bytes it is possible to construct
mathematically flawless creations that we find ourselves preferably integrating with.

5. The complete images, often avatars that we come into contact with in games and in cinema and other
forms of media stand in for ourselves, they allow us to attain a wholeness that we otherwise cannot. It
pushes against the sense of fragmentation that we have left over from the mirror stage of
development, ‘the transformation that takes place in the subject when he assumes an image’
(Easthope,A and McGowan,K. 1992, 72) The imago. It is the ‘objective notion of anatomical
incompleteness’ (Easthope,A and McGowan,K. 1992, 73) that manifests itself in our dreams, that
could be part of our desire to take on an imagined form. While limited by the ‘reality principal’
(Hough,M, 2010, 65) as Freud postulated, the simulated world of games could act as readily as
dreams in satisfying libidinal desire.

6. Roleplay
Gaming
Continued
The studium of roleplay
games, and this image, is that the
objective is to be immersed in an
alternate reality. The punctum is
that while you are selecting your
avatar, you are weighing up
choices on the characters
abilities, stats and powers, the
decision therefore becomes far less
about who you would like to
represent you for the purposes of
immersion, but rather which
character will perform
better, which is an essentially
mathematical decision. All games
both on and off the computer use
calculations to determine
outcomes, intensely objective
calculations that can detract from
the escapism. It punctures the
intended communication. It
interferes with the humanisation of
the characters and gives them
machine like characteristics. The
idea of a system of code governing
actions within a simulation is
something explored in the film The
Matrix.

7. Narrative
Gaming narratives achieve a
great deal of their expression
through
appropriation, displaying
characters reactions as appose
to narrating thought. This
approach often gives people a
sense of inferiority toward the
narrative style. Any narrative
discourse that takes place in the
gaming world is inextricably
engaging in a
metalanguage, claiming to have
access to the reality within the
simulation, oftentimes leading
the gamer on with
foreknowledge. Within the
confines of the game the truth
of the simulation, of the images
can be realised, but it is a
product of a mind outside of the
simulation, within the world we
inhabit and because there is no
position that we can access
outside of our world, then any
grand truths are inescapably
fixed inside our own simulation.

8. ISA/RSA

9. ISA/RSA
The hegemony, the dominant discourse, the
leading ideology is maintained at the cost of
repression ‘Modern cities are centres of
power, projecting their economic, cultural and
moral superiority across the world’
(Lane,J,R, 2001, 106). In the right image, we
can see at least two examples of ISA
systems, healthcare and organised religion, the
two become interchangable for a lot of people but
offer similar structures.
As someone with Bipolar I must repress my
attitudes and behaviour in order to interpolate
myself into society, however I can never truly
achieve this,‘repressed material does not go
away, but continues to exist in the unconscious’
(Hough.M, 2010, 72). Freud also noted of
repression that release of repressed desire gives
rise to art in a form of wish fulfilment, expressing
our innermost wants. Because language never
accesses reality, we can never truly voice our
desires, in this way art can be a truer means of
accessing them.
The threat of imprisonment looms over anyone
who behaves in a manner unbefitting of societal
norms, defined only by what we have come to
define as abnormal. Our prisons help to simulate
the illusion that our capitalist society isn’t
founded on criminality. Through my experiences
and the prevailing attitudes, my condition has
become synonymous with suffering and loss of
control, this falls in line with Freudian principles
on the impossibility of aligning civilisation with
the raw human psyche. As Foucault noted
‘madness has no presocial essence'
(McNay,L, 1996, 17).
By operating within these apparatus we come to
give ourselves an identity constructed mostly by
subservience to an imagined state of reality and
only marginally by our own equally fabricated
ideology. The category of the subject is
constructed by ideology

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