Liminal gaming

The movie Tron has that great scene where Jeff Bridges’ character is digitised and zapped into the computer game system. It’s a great example of crossing boundaries from the ‘ordinary world’ to the ‘video game world’ in a literal sense. The character is shifting from being human, to being digital, being a user as well as a gamer. This type of liminal, in-between space is a little bit like the term ‘prosumer’: you’re between a producer and a consumer – you’re doing the work of producing (game modding, etc) but you’re often not being paid for it and you’re still seen as a consumer of the product.

What types of liminal experiences and places exist between the game world and Hobart. Access points where you cross over from the ordinary world to the video game world? The McDonalds in Moonah/Glenorchy seems like you’ve stepped into GTA3 with some young ‘hoodlums’ in the car park?

Access points in Hobart to new media

Are there any portals in Hobart where non-media professionals can get to rub shoulders with media-as-it-happens? I’d love to think there’s some possible chance of a point of contact with me and the video game world here in Hobart, or the manga and anime world.

Couldry identifies two access-points for non-media people to connect with the process of media production:

1. Journeys to mediated places. eg: media tourist locations: “sites where the boundary between the ‘media’ and ‘ordinary’ ‘worlds’ is symbolically, but playfully, confirmed”
2. Sites of mediated conflict. eg: protest sites: “sites where it emphatically and perhaps shockingly revealed” (where people get close up to the media process which represents them)

Are either of these access-points here in Hobart? Eg: Within the world of cinema, I wonder if the new horror movie filmed in Tas last year will cause any media tourism to the site it was filmed?
And, for the second access point, there must have been some local moral panic newspaper reports in The Mercury uncovering the darker side of video gaming (WoW obsessions, GTA desensitisation)?

There are access points if you look for them, and Hobart starts looking a little bit closer to a new media node once you see them.

Game anchors

How do games journalists talk about gamming. Taking a leaf out of Swidler’s and Couldry’s idea that some media practices order or anchor other practices I think we can see that, as Swidler argues, there are two ways we organise things around ‘gaming’.

1. By linking a whole bunch of practices under the broader umbrella term of ‘gaming’. (eg: pwning someone, modding, user-generated content, etc).
2. But every once and a while there’s a gaming practice that causes a ‘dynamic change’ that reformulates what we though gaming was, and it changes the context in which you can claim and perform a gamer identity. Examples of this might be the impact of the Columbine shooting and the moral panic around gamer culture, and stigma associated with calling oneself a gammer as the media image of gaming became dominated with first-person-shooter images and links to that shooting.

There are still as many different ways to talk about gaming and do gaming, but certain associations have become priviledged in these contexts. There was an ordering of other cultural practices around gaming. “Oh you’re a gamer – you must be into first-person-shooters, do you need counselling”, etc …

I’m wondering if there have been any recent gaming anchors, eg: some new terms taken under the umbrella of gaming (new terms to discuss trophy collecting on the PS3?), or larger shifts in gaming practice caused by a ‘dynamic change’ practice (Little Big Planet and the IPR/copyright crackdown by Sony putting a dent in user generated content enthusiasm).

Media anchor

Couldry poses the question: “what [does] it means to live in a society dominated by large-scale media institutions”? He suggests looking at media practice, rather than simply at the text, the effect of media, audiences, or institutions. An aspect of this ‘practices’ approach is to really listen to what ‘non-media’ people (that is, people who are not media professionals and have little to no insight into the workings of media producers) do when they come into close proximity with media-as-it-happens. He ask the following two questions:

1. what types of things do people do in relation to media?
2. what types of things do people say in relation to media?

Couldry’s media practice approach is an attempt to move beyond “media consumption to encompass a broader range of cultural participation”.The hope is that by looking at how people use and talk about media in the everyday exposes some of the ‘anchoring’ and ‘ordering’ of other social practices.

While we’re not strictly non-media people , over at Behind Anime Lines Al, Evo and I explore how manga and anime sometimes anchors aspects of life for us here in Hobart. I think we’ve really been able to use our show to anchor manga and anime culture to Tas, to give manga and anime a bigger profile here through the Edge Radio weekly presence. We;ve really given manga and anime culture a sense of order and grounding here. For example, our promotion of the manga drawing classes at the State Library, our call to get a maid-cafe going, etc. I hope we will continue this to become a more authoritative source on manga and anime culture. Maybe we will start to more actively define what it means to be an otaku in Tasmania.

Some media ritual

Couldry (2004) discusses “how the ritualised dimensions of media practice may have an ordering role in relation to other practices. The difficult question” he goes on to point out “is how far this anchoring role extends across social practice in general”. He mentions “as seen on TV” and aspects of celebrity culture as examples of media practice anchoring other social practices (shopping etc.)

This has some similarities with Crawford and Rutter’s idea that the social impacts on how gamers game, as well as gamers drawing upong gaming frameworkd and approaches in non-game social settings. I discussed this in my last post, and if we now add Couldry’s idea of media practices ordering or anchoring other social practices more generally we can see a bigger framework emerging that includes gaming practice within the broader everyday social world we live in.

While this isn’t a gaming example, I’m reminded of a friend’s amusement at me when I was in Japan, he’d asked what drink I wanted from a vending machine and I’d replied “anything with a character on it”. I’m wondering if this “anything with a character on it” has some equivalence to “as seen on TV”. That is, both are types of media practice that tell us about another type of practice, in this case choosing a drink (consumerism, quenching ones thirst, etc). But my choice of the 7 or 8 types of drinks was ordered around media practice – which of the drinks did I see as more valued, desirable because of its anchoring in the media/merchandise practice.

Game Practice

Recently I’ve been reflecting on my gaming habits, and how these practices occasionally spill over into the workplace or home. Crawford and Rutter (2007) make three interesting points about video gamers drawing upon game resources and material in everyday contexts:

1: gaming is not simply a solitary pursuit; it is social and performative and impacts on wider social spaces.

2: gaming facilitates and informs social performances both in-game and in wider social practices

– even if playing individually gamers will bring their “social, cultural, and psychological selves to the games they play”

3: gamers bring their in-game knowledge into other social arenas

These social and performative aspects suggest game research should widen its lens of analysis to also look at the connections and parallels between fans, audiences and wider social groups. For example, the intertextuality of gaming (drawing upon film and TV texts, etc) suggests there’s already cross-over within the text. The performances of gamers in in-game and other social setting should also show intertextual dimensions.

I think Crawford and Rutter are spot on when they speak of game knowledge and resources informing “social performances and interactions not directly related to gaming”. For example, Gran Turismo 5 prologue has recently given me a crash-course in car knowledge and I’m tempted to think that I could draw upon this knowledge by Christmas to impress my non-gamer car-obsessed friends with a new found knowledge and passion of some of the more obscure cars on show in the game. It’s also complementing a new found enjoyment “Top Gear” and their skill in extending the car experience into broader social performances. More on that when the new season starts airing here.