Blips: Drop the Vase

Source: This Vase Is A Mirror
Author: Tim Schneider
Site: Kill Screen

If you've ever been bewildered by the art market's ever-inflating auction value headlines, consider Tim Schneider's debut piece for Kill Screen an excellent introduction to what the hell is happening there, helpfully framed in the context of video games no less. I won't go into the whole backstory since Schneider does so in the article but there was an incident earlier this year where an artist (un?)ceremoniously broke an Ai Weiwei painted Han dynasty pot while it was on display in a gallery. Everyone in the press seemed eager to note the proposed value of the pot in their assessment of the situation –supposedly about $1 million. As a response, another artist, Grayson Earle, created Ai Weiwei Whoops!, a game which allows players to similarly drop facsimiles of said pots while racking up an obscenely escalating damage assessment in dollars. That's all there is to the game, and Schneider argues that's, in a sense, all there is to the current art market.

The experience of playing Ai Weiwei Whoops! is worth noting here, which Schneider goes into elaborate detail to explain. It's a game that you'll probably play for 30 seconds, maybe a minute tops; not something that is particularly thought provoking out of context. But in conversation with the smashing incident and the larger art market, the "throwaway" nature of the play experience means something all on its own. Ai Weiwei Whoops! isn't a particularly fun game; the pot crashing doesn't even grant a destructive satisfaction, just the matter-of-fact uptick of the perceived dollar amount lost to the void.

Blips: Against "Rational" Play

Source: Videogames and the Spirit of Capitalism
Author: Paolo Pedercini
Site: Molleindustria

I find that when I speak of the whole of games, I often use the term "video game industry," though it's something I'm trying to extract from my vocabulary except in instances where I'm actually speaking about the industrial aspects of game development and publishing. It's no coincidence that "industry" has become such a go-to term when referencing the sphere of games, when games themselves often reinforce this capitalist mindset. This is one of my primary takeaway's from Paolo Pedercini's talk at Indiecade East 2014. I'd encourage you to give the whole talk a look, either in video or text form (via the "source" link) which elaborates on how games typically stand in support of capitalist ideals through their designs as rationalist pursuits. Rationalization runs counter to what it means to play.

The "game" in gamification is supposed to reference how otherwise normal activities can be turned into games, but it's actually just a meta-game on top of those activities –a means to an end that benefits upper management over the "players." If only gamified experiences actually incorporated video game mechanics, there might be an opportunity to transform them into something more engaging. We do this with our own imaginations when we're bored of something and want to shake things up. However, when the "game" part of gamification is about filling up a progress bar and receiving digital trinkets for doing so, labor itself is commodified and play is all but ignored.