Blips: My Shape

Source: What the Next Generation of Health and Fitness Software Can Learn from Wii Fit
Author: Michael Thomsen
Site: Forbes

OK, I'm not back on normal posting schedule yet, but I'm recovering from surgery, so give me a break. Anyway, perhaps appropriately as I lie here considering my own bodily existence, I've also read this piece my Michael Thomsen on Wii Fit, Wii Fit U, and electronic fitness monitoring systems. I'd never really paid the original Wii Fit much mind, which is crazy considering how popular it was, but Thomsen's description of the way it pushes you to elaborate on simple instructions with subtle body movements is really profound notion. This especially in light of how most games ask very little of the human body but perform complex feats of virtual athleticism on screen, as Thomsen explains. This is before even getting into the angle of who has time for these kinds of tracking devices (hint: not the people who can't afford to shop at Whole Foods).

I have used video games as a fitness tool myself. In college I began playing Dance Dance Revolution PS2 games on a regular basis with the intention of lowering my heart rate. I played a lot, and burned through a couple sets of dance pads and a handful of DDR sequels, and achieved my fitness goal. Also, I got pretty good at DDR; not competition good, but still. However, one thing I liked about this was that I didn't have to guilt myself into playing, and the game never tried to shame or motivate me from a fitness perspective. I'm pretty sure there were "calorie burner" modes in some of those games, but I never touched them. DDR was a fun game to play with physical health side benefits, but I did adopt a regular workout regimen with the game, aided by the social context of a friend in college that would play along side me. It was a perfect confluence of factors to make me feel happy and healthy, one that I haven't experienced since.

Nowadays it seems like "games as fitness tools" is its own industry, so any electronic device that involves exercise is designed with the "workout session" in mind. DDR predates this, and to me, makes it more approachable. Who knows, maybe DDR is a poor exercise tool, maybe it's bad for your knees or bad for your eyes since you have to stare so hard at a screen. I'm probably better off just going out for a run, but running sucks (I've trained for and run a half-marathon in my post-college years) and, for me, requires the external motivation of training for a race. In the end, it's not just what the tools at your disposal are capable of, but how they make you feel about yourself and how they fit into your life. From my experience, physical fitness has everything to do with circumstance, and the factors that play into that aren't tracked in a calorie counter.

Blips: Shipping Out

Source: Who Built That Video Game?
Author: Michael Thomsen
Site: The New Yorker

If you've sat around for the credits on any video game with a big budget or from a large studio, you've probably noticed how long they seem to go –much longer than they used to. While maybe some have slowed the scroll, more often it's because a greater number of people is required to make these kinds of games than it used to take. As Michael Thomsen's recent New Yorker piece speaks to, this has lead the majority of video game companies to outsource at least one aspect of their development process. This means that some element of most games (probably art assets) was produced outside of the country where the game company is based because it's cheaper to do so. Why keep 20 artists on staff in California when you can pay for 20 artists in Malaysia for a fraction of the price?

Thomsen also points out that these low paying outsourced jobs can be economic opportunities for the laborers that acquire them, but as far as general corporate practice goes for the commissioning corporations, it's a race to the bottom. The video game industry has a difficult enough time providing decent labor conditions for their in-house staff, let alone the responsibility for conditions of workplaces on other continents. I certainly don't expect an industry with a reputation for "crunch" labor and a high rate of worker burn out to approach a dicey practice like outsourcing with careful oversight. I'd love to see the game industry get its own house in order first, but I fear that outsourcing might actually be seen as a solution to those domestic issues instead of a simple matter of expansion.

Blips: Who Watches the Watch_Dogs?

Source: Video Games Are Making Us Too Comfortable With the Modern Surveillance State
Author: Michael Thomsen
Site: New Republic

As I was reading Michael Thomsen's piece on video games and complacency with the surveillance state (which is dead on, by the way), I couldn't help also wondering about how quickly players also sign away their privacy when it comes to playing online. I haven't read Sony's or Microsoft's terms and conditions, and I don't know anyone who has. Even on the basic level of leaderboards, I can't play Pac-Man CE DX+ while connected online without sending my scores up to the publicly viewable cloud. Though, truth be told, I don't exactly mind if everyone can see my scores, and knowing where I rank actually motivates me to want to get better at the game, which itself is fun to play.

It can get a little creepier when the data isn't score-based though, such as the moral decisions you make in The Walking Dead. Even though your personal playthrough information is not shared publicly, it is collected and then shown anonymously in aggregate. Again, I found this feature to ultimately enhance the gameplay experience by adding a subtle social element to an otherwise solitary game that actually plays on that game's core themes, but it takes a certain confidence in a developer and a platform to trust that your information won't be exploited.

Still, I wonder if an opt in/opt out information sharing choice should be part of the future for games. It's true that, even on the new consoles, you can always just unplug the system if you want to be disconnected, but this is a tedious and extreme measure to have to take for what could be a simple question with a "no, thanks" option. Unfortunately, I don't see these changes being implemented because the amount of players who actually seem to care about these concerns are an all-too-small minority. So, not only do games reinforce a necessity of national surveillance with simplified cause and effect scenarios, but their players are also perfectly happy with companies monitoring their progress in those very games. Instead of "we need your information to keep you safe," it's "we need your information to make better games." For now, video games haven't betrayed players' trust (Kinect paranoia aside), but I still think it would be reassuring of them if they would just ask next time.

Blips: Cheaters Are The Real Players

Source: Cheating: Video Games' Moral Imperative
Author: Michael Thomsen
Site: Fanzine

Cheating remains one of the most fascinating issues in video games. Where do you draw the limits between "cheating" and "following the rules?" Everyone seems to have a different answer. You've got the laws of the game world that are bound to hard code, and then you have the more flexible rulesets that are socially determined that establish a level playing field for competitive environments. Rocket jumping in first-person shooters is exploiting the game's physics system, but doing so is strictly within the original tools given to the player, which hardly seems like cheating. However, competing with a modded character that has infinite rockets or some other advantage that other players do not have, would be cheating. The differentiation for me is that the act of bending or breaking the games' laws and boundaries in itself is not cheating, but when you violate the social contract between competitors, it becomes cheating.

Michael Thomsen sees cheating, as it's more broadly defined as a general disruption of a game's restrictions, as the most ethical way to play video games. Cheating in video games is about testing boundaries, which is what humans do when they play in every other setting. Most games don't actually encourage play though, instead asking willing participants to adopt a prescribed set of actions and to execute those actions when the game tells you. Playing video games without making attempts to subvert their rules is a tremendously submissive activity. Though linear, restricted play has opportunities for developer expression and player interpretation, most games take this opportunity to force players into a time-intensive struggle that makes players perceive their rewards as sweeter because of the effort required. However, the expressive and interpretive possibilities of these struggles are limited and rarely justify the considerable time and effort required to achieve them. Thomsen argues that cheating demonstrates just how cheap these rewards are, since players can acquire them all the same without undergoing significant struggle.

Now, I've previously defended JRPG Xenoblade Chronicles' immense duration (90+ hours) as an experience that builds an empathetic relationship with characters that is not achievable in short games, and do think that had I cheated my way through the game that I would have lost that connection to the characters. Cheating makes video game playing a first-person narrative experience, and subverts the story that has been written by the game developers. Sometimes the stories told by developers are actually worth experiencing in their unaltered form, but I'd like to ammend my Xenoblade defense by stating that I can only play a game like that once every few years. Struggling through hour after hour of predetermined roadblocks is not a healthy lifestyle, but I'm willing to submit to vice every once in a while. I don't know how MMO players do it.

Blips: Against the Rules

Source: Reign in Drool
Author: Michael Thomsen
Site: The New Inquiry

Is it accurate to say that we "play" games? The use of the word "play" to describe what game participants do when operating the mechanics of a game doesn't seem wholly accurate to the historical understanding of the term. To "play" is to engage in chaos, to let your imagination run wild, totally ignorant to the constraints of systemic rules. Games on the other hand, are logic puzzles defined by their rules. While the macro activity of participating in a game often aligns with the frivolity of free form play, the act of "playing" in games often feels like anything but.

This is one of many issues brought up in Michael Thomsen in his wonderful recent essay for The New Inquiry's Games issue. He goes on to rail against gamification as taking the complacency-generating aspects of games and applying them to just about anything. Instead of using game mechanics to subversively reflect the already game-like systems workplace and political hierarchy, gamification adds a new layer of abstraction that further distances "players" from the reality of the situation. In games where you play against the computer, where the goal is to win, there is always a power dynamic between the the rules of the game (the master) and the player. Upon beating the game, you've conquered all of the challenges, but you never overtake power from the game. The game allows the player to possess enough power to satisfy, but you can never become the master. Why would we want to invite this kind of system into non-game environments?

Where I'll be critical of Thomsen is in his scope of video games. The term "game" has been going through its own identity crisis as of late with several titles of note leaning away from the traditional goal oriented structures of win/lose scenarios. Ironically these games have been chastised by vocal connoisseurs as not being games at all, but something else. In general, games are in a taxonomical predicament right now, and the most sensible solution seems to be to expand the scope of the word "game" to include all comers. "Games" really are the new "art," it seems. In light of this Thomsen also dismisses the expressive possibilities of games too quickly, which seems shortsighted at a time when developers are making significant strides in that realm.

That said, it's all too easy to get caught up in a defensive position about something that you care deeply about, so I welcome Thomsen's critical look at games and what it actually means to play.