Neoliberalism And Cardboard In Virtual Worlds And Games

Over at Los Angeles Review Of Books (LARB) Elliot Murphy, who is completing a PhD in neurolinguistics at University College London has had an epic and fascinating essay published regarding computer games and politics : Always a Lighthouse: Video Games and Radical Politics . This is a long and rather riveting read. Whereas the essay is largely about games and the narrative they portray, Second Life does get a mention :

But while many games traffic in radicalization, and often revive the trope of “evil corporate” antagonists, most are themselves more corporate than ever. Owned as they are by multinational conglomerates, it is of little surprise that video games have merged with other corporate forms of entertainment. The X-Men have their games, Max Payne has his film, and World of Warcraft has its novels. Universities and businesses also regard the virtual world of Second Life (celebrating the economic interactions and institutional structures of corporate capitalism) as a “fun” platform from which students and employers can “socialize” and host meetings, while companies like Apple and Nissan flood its poorly textured streets with electrifying logos and adverts. These and other franchises promote the core tenets of neoliberalism: privatization, deregulation, commodification, and a celebration of personal profit. Other games like Saints Row and Need for Speed buttress a consumerist culture, often exulting in greed and self-indulgence.

At first glance this looks a bit heavy and deep and yet the article points out that the power of video games and by extension virtual worlds, we see this in the introduction to the essay :

VIDEO GAMES, as Robert Cassar recently noted in his Games and Culture essay “Gramsci and Games,” are often “sophisticated texts that can represent not just ideas but entire worlds, which invite players to explore them.” Video games contain a unique combination of expressive dimensions, including audiovisual language and narrative along with their distinctive ludic and interactive elements. Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown, in their essay “The Play of Imagination” also for Games and Culture, make the crucial point that through these elements, games can introduce novel pedagogical practices that differ from other interactive and educational media.

As I said, the essay is a long one and I suspect that people on the left and right will find issues with it. The author definitely seems to lean left and for point of clarity, so do I personally, although I don’t generally engage much with politics in virtual worlds or games. This doesn’t mean that I don’t see the potential for politics playing a large part in video game and virtual world culture, especially as the medium grows. We are seeing this today in many online debates about where the computer gaming industry in particular should be heading.

Virtual worlds, especially ones that allow people to create their own vision provide a different platform to a game in an author’s image. The directions are potentially endless and whereas Second Life does have a strong emphasis on the market, there are also plenty of freebies, sharing of ideas and resources at play, which aren’t really touched upon in the essay.

However immersion is a forthcoming challenge to and it’s on that point that I move on to cardboard, more to the point, Google Cardboard. Loki Eliot has blogged : Would Casual Cardboard VR be better suited for Second Life Users than Oculus? The answer it seems, is quite probably. We have to remember here that Second Life isn’t really made for immersive virtual reality, the matter of frame rates has been raised more than once. Loki informs us :

So i recently invested £12 into getting a Google Cardboard 2.0 from ‘I AM CARDBOARD’ and i was quite surprised how cool it is. I’d compare it to the Oculus DK1 in terms of that ‘this is awesome’ feeling you get from experiencing immersive VR for the first time, but the iPhones retina display gives a much clearer image all be it a smaller field of view. I assume you could probably also use an iPod Touch?

Loki tested Google Cardboard with a variety of apps, and then moved on to musing about Second Life :

I started to imagine building stuff in Second Life with my Desktop computer then picking up my cardboard and quickly getting my avatars view of the world before putting down the carboard continuing with building. Or imagine arriving at a Music venue typing hello to all my friends then picking up the Cardboard to experience the live act from my Avatars point of view. Such a thing i can imagine would be better suited to how people use Second Life.

The issues of HMD’s, peripherals and how immersive people will get with VR have been raised many times already. Loki makes good points about casual use and I think he makes some great points, especially with his conclusion :

Second Life’s immersive VR problems are probably unique to Second Life with solutions that can’t be borrowed from other more recent platforms. Project Sansar may be built with extended immersive VR use in mind, but i’d hope that for veteran platform Second Life , perhaps a more casual immersive VR feature could be implemented once the VR Hardware giants settle their tech.

Just how immersed do we really want to get and as we move forward, as our experiences get more immersive, will the powers that be try and take advantage of a more immersive environment to convince us that their way is the right way? Immersion is something that needs to be handled with care, I think I’ll be far happier with a casual approach, but will I be able to resist the temptation of the more fully immersive options? Time will tell.