Die Tryin (Derek A. Burrill)

DIE TRYIN’ VIDE®GATMES, MASCULINI-+Y, CULFURE ~

DEREK

A.

|

BURRILL

Diss TER AIRNG

Toby Miller General Editor Vol. 18

PETER

LANG

New York * Washington, D.C./Baltimore * Bern Frankfurt am Main ® Berlin ® Brussels * Vienna ® Oxford

Derek A. Burrill

DIE Ral: Videogames, Masculinity, Culture

“= PETER LANG New York * Washington, D.C./Baltimore * Bern Frankfurt am Main ® Berlin * Brussels * Vienna * Oxford

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Burrill, Derek A.

Die tryin’: videogames, masculinity, culture / Derek A. Burrill.

p.cm, — (Popular culture and everyday life; v. 18) Includes bibliographical references and index. ited States. 1, Video games—Social aspects— United States. 2. Masculinity—Un gy. I. Title. Technolo 4. States. ed on—Unit ns innovatio ical technolog of ect 3. Men—Eff GV1469.34.S52B87

794.8—dc22

2007019932

ISBN 978-1-4331-0242-4 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-4331-0091-8 (paperback) ISSN 1529-2428

Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Bibliothek. Die Deutsche Bibliothek lists this publication in the “Deutsche Nationalbibliografie”; detailed bibliographic data is available on the Internet at http://dnb.ddb.de/.

Cover design by Joshua Hanson

The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council of Library Resources.

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All rights reserved. Reprint or reproduction, even partially, in all forms such as microfilm, xerography, microfiche, microcard, and offset strictly prohibited. Printed in the United States of America

Contents Ackno wledgm ents

Introduction

vii

1

I

Masculinities, Play, and Games

II

Videogames: Performance in Digital Space

13

III The Arcade: Sites/Sights of the Games

45

61

IV

Masculinity, Structure, and Play in Videogames

73

V_

Digital Culture/Digital Imaginary 85 Conclusion: Technology/Masculinity/Ideology

137

Notes

143

Bibliography

Index

167

157

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Acknowledgments First, | would like to thank Mary Savigar and Sophie Appel (and all) at Peter Lang for their careful guidance and attention during the formation of this manuscript. You made the process easy and enjoyable. Thank you to the Ford Foundation and the Center for Ideas in Society at the University of California, Riverside for their gener-

ous support. Cheers to the former faculty in the Department of Theatre at University of California, Davis for their leadership and help in the genesis of this project-—

W.B. Worthen, Janelle Reinelt, and Karen Shimikawa—and, in particular, my mentor, Sue-Ellen Case. Also, Philip Auslander aided me from afar. My deepest gratitude to Toby Miller for being particularly supportive of this project. Thanks, mate. Along the way, my comrades, Andrew Strombeck, Robert Balog, and Thomas Heise helped me focus and kept me on the path. My stay at UC Riverside has been invaluable, as have my colleagues in the Department of Dance: Anthea Kraut, Susan Rose, Anna Scott, Jaqueline Shea-Murphy, Priya Srinivasan, Linda Tomko, Fred Strickler,

and Neil Greenberg. I am humbled by your passion, creativity, and kindness. To the

members of the Media and Cultural Studies Department: I look forward to working with you more closely. Thanks to Ellen Wartella and Chuck Whitney for the dinners and advice, and, in general, thank you to the campus community at UC River-

side, a vibrant and exciting place to work and call home. Thanks to my family for being supportive of my work and career. Good on ya to Matt, Ruthie, Jeff, and An-

toine for keeping me sane and happy in Riverside. Finally, I could not have completed this without the help of my colleague and closest friend, Rebekah Richert. I live and work by your example.

Sections of Chapter IV appeared in Text Technology (Number 1, 2004).

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Introduction You wake up on a beach, dizzy from loss of blood seeping out of a day-old gunshot wound, Standing over you is a red swimsuit-clad lifeguard of the ‘Babewatch’ type— blonde, buxom, curvaceous. She asks you questions, tends to your wounds. Then she helps you to your feet, beckoning for you to follow her to the lifeguard station for first aid, You slip in and out ofconsciousness, falling to the sand in a fog of memories and the traumatic past. A ship. Nighttime. Voices. Gunfire. Your body is knocked over the railing by the AK slug, and you plunge into the icy water as bullets riddle the ocean in a smooth, snaking arch around you. Again, the lifeguard picks you up, leading you forward, buttocks cascading out of her red swimsuit, breasts heaving like your water-logged chest. As you stumble toward a building in the distance, you pass out, drifting into more dream sequences involving a Kennedyesque presidential assassination and a sinister shadow

conspiracy. A tattoo gun traces the Roman

numerals

“XIN” on your skin. Blackout. You awake to a throbbing soundtrack, watch as the lifeguard is cut down in a hail of bullets from automatic gunfire, and quickly realize

it’s time to spring into action. As the cut-scene ends and game play begins, you notice the words tap, tap, tap walking across the screen. Footsteps, just out of eyeshot, near the door on the left. Fully armed, a henchman awaits. Another paces outside the back door, waiting to send you back to the fishes. Armed

with a knife and your pre-

programmed skills, you duck and move stealthily toward the center of the room, assessing your options. . . I open with this narrative segment, and with this particular game— Ubisoft's

XTII (2003)—for ‘masculine fantasy “skills” of combat) cinematic address,

several reasons. The game itself is a complicated amalgamation of signifiers (the lifeguard, the narrow escape, the preprogrammed and videogame conventions (cut-scenes, first-person point of view, in-game structural cues). In addition, the game is rendered in

graphic-novel/comic-book style, so that a number ofthe cut-scenes are configured as

paneled drawings (albeit these panels often feature a type of cinematic movement dynamic) with accompanying textual cues, such as the “tap, tap, tap” of feet and the “bam!” of agun, heightening the action of play through a kind of moving comic-book format. Finally, the soundtrack (both diegetic and nondiegetic), ‘cinematography,’ mis-en-scéne, dialogue, and mode of address all feel distinctly as if they were borrowed from the action film genre, marking the game as a type of intertextual representative experience predicated on the player having existing knowledge of comix, action films, and other similar videogames, all based on an intimate knowledge of how this specific type of action/spy hero masculinity is ‘supposed’ to operate. And

2

Dir Tryin’: Vipgocames, MascuLInity, CULTURE

one another, although there is a surfeit of games and films that borrow and steal from game as a this arks this type of representative strategy—the digital graphic novel—m concepts, polyvalent incursion into this project and its objects of study. All of these the boyon based figurations, and their intertexuality coalesce to construct a world

hood nostalgia for comix, the erotics of digital representation (and its attendant techa nophilia), and the hyperaggressive antics of the action hero represented throughout variety of media, over multiple histories.

At the heart of XZ/Z, and so many others in this genre (and in videogames in general), is a predicate understanding between gamer, avatar, interface, and culture on (and between producer, player, and the market) that, although what is happening masscreen is not real per se, requires an investment in and commitment to a type of

culine performance that is based on the Real (particularly if one is interested in “winning,” pummeling your opponent, kicking ass, etc.). Thus, at root, this book seeks to inspect and theorize how videogames function as a performative space in which forms of subjectivity, particularly masculine-coded subjectivities, are produced, reproduced, and maintained. In some sense then, this book inspects what is at stake in the games and how this inflects and reflects the surrounding culture, particularly what I have termed the ‘digital imaginary.’ While other books on videogames have sought to outline the intrinsic qualities of the games themselves—whether they are a new medium or simply an extension of film and TV, what the specific genres are, the history of the

field, and so on’ (often called ‘ludology’)—or how the games make meaning (the ‘narratological’ approach), I want to pursue a different line of argument, one that emphasizes the games as another aspect in the postmodern debates surrounding the nature of the subject in relation to digital technologies. The cultural imaginary that produces and reproduces this conception of technology accentuates and emphasizes a particular masculine subjectivity, the ‘digital boy,’ a subject who is equally at home behind the keyboard and the game controller, who implicitly understands how to hack an iPod, and who has amassed fortunes in online worlds. In many ways similar to Scott Bukatman’s notion of “terminal identity,” this specific, gendered, historically situated subjectivity, what I call ‘digital boyhood, serves as a lynchpin' of this study. Boyhood

can be theorized as the regressive nature of first-world, capitalist masculinity, where the pressures of the external force the man back to a type of always-accessible boyhood, Videogames in the 21st century serve as the prime mode of regression, a technonostalgia machine allowing escape, fantasy, extension, and utopia, a space away from feminism, class imperatives, familial duties, as well as national and political responsibilities. It is a space and experience where the digital boy can “die tryin’,” tryin’

to win, tryin’ to beat the game, and tryin’ to prove his manhood (and therefore his place within the patriarchy, the world of capital, and the Law).

INTRODUCTION

3

My project here—to analyze the relationship between videogames, gender, and digital culture and the performative nature of this relationship—involves studying not only performative cultural technologies such as gender, sexuality, and class, but also technologies that are themselves performative. In this work, the performative

technologies “under the knife” are largely videogames, although cinema, fiction, space, and other aspects of the digital imaginary will be useful objects of study. Paul Virilio describes these newer technologies in relation to other, older technologies, particu-

larly in relation to movement, location, and communication: If the vehicular technologies (balloon, airplane, rocket . . .) have led us progressively to separate from the full body of the earth, the primary axis of reference of all human mobility, fi-

nally, with the moon landing 20 years ago, causing us to leave it behind altogether, the extravehicular technologies of instantaneous interactivity exile us from ourselves and make us lose the ultimate physiological reference: the ponderous mass of the locomotive body, axis, or more exactly, seat of comportmental motility and of identity.”

Similarly, in my work, I employ Claudia Springer’s designation between absent

and present technologies to identify the difference these technologies present in the realm of culture and gender, as well as in the growth and spread of the digital imaginary—the sum cultural total of all things represented, produced, and reproduced as manifestations of digital code. For Springer, technology is directly linked to the rigidity of the two-sex system and the oppositional gender system. Older, industrial tech-

nologies represent the “dry solidity” and “hard physical strength” of the male, whereas

computer and digital technologies represent the opposite: concealment, intimacy, internalization. According to Springer, “With both electronic and industrial technologies present in our lives, what we are seeing is a conflict between ways of conceptualizing technology in gendered terms: masculine metaphors oppose feminine metaphors.” While Springer focuses on aggressive, misogynist cyborgs in cinema for

her analysis, I focus on a different strain of masculinity—boyhood. Once again, boy-

hood iis a state that can be accessed by males(and, in a sense, anyone engaged in digital technologies) of allages a to escape the rule-bound nature of work, the community, and other cultural formations. By escaping ‘work,’ the boy can then ‘play,’ roaming the digital jungle gyms of virtual reality, videogames, the Internet, and cyberspace. The complications of this position in relation to nonmale genders are acknowledged. At the same time, I argue that this position has been constructed to be, quite ironically, a position that must be f//ed in the sense that the surrounding technologies have always seen the agent/player/performer as something to be articulated in a specific sense (in this case, as fulfilling male fantasies that operate at multiple levels).

Die Tryin’: VipeoGcaMEs, MASCULINITY, CULTURE

4

analytic strategy, This work also seeks to address questions of methodology and me studies. Much of the particularly those important to the emergent field of videoga on videogames as what short history of videogame research and analysis has focused on the precepts Bolter and Grusin call “remediated’—a medium that is based largely

re, it is asof another (chiefly, for videogames, cinema and filmmaking). Therefo by-products of other media. sumed that videogames can be studied as if they are

to continue to deWhile this is useful to a certain extent, I feel it is also important are not films, velop methodologies specific to this field, not only because videogames , Thomas or interactive films, but also because they are primarily games. For instance logy as someMalaby addresses the false dichotomy between ludology and narrato tial, quality of thing that ignores the processual, and therefore material and experien is operplay and games. In addition, the field of games studies is so fractured that it more estabating as a sort of “Wild West” of experimental approaches and older,

his lished methodologies. As Jesper Juul writes in “Where the Action is,” “The introductory editorial to volume 5, issue 1 (October, 2005) of Games Studies,

young field of computer game studies is in a state of productive chaos. It is an amalgam of researchers from different disciplines bringing wildly contradictory assumptions to the table, yet also an area with its own set of conferences, associations, and journals.” So, as they say, the future is what you make of it, and so this can be a productive position for the field while it sets out to find its intrinsic methodologies and approaches.

Espen J. Aarseth has chosen the term “ergodic” (requiring “non-trivial effort”) to describe the interactive nature of a great deal of digital experience, although his project is largely a textual analysis of the games. This is a good start. However, because, as I have mentioned, the games are not simply interactive films, or interactive literature, or hypertext—because they are interactive, pertormative visual games—a topic-

specific methodology is necessary to unpack how the games function as game, as visual medium, and as cultural phenomenon. In short, the games require a methodology that attends to their specific qualities as a medium within postmodern culture. This methodology must include a dimension of performativity in its application and exegesis. This is developed throughout this book in two main ways. First, segments of nar-

rative prose (like the section opening this introduction) serve to recount specific moments of the game that, unlike fiction, are based on experiences of game play. Thus, these segments serve to recount specific encounters, tactics, and strategies, and therefore a specific subjectivity and its performance in digital space. Second, as this work relies heavily on theory for its analysis, particularly the amorphous group of approaches and methodologies referred to as critical theory, I want to introduce a medium-specific style of theory, what I call Aaptic theory. This approach relies on a

INTRODUCTION

5

metaphorical relationship of player to game, so that the theoretical text presents certain puzzles and obstacles that refer to those found in the games. Thus, like most theory, unpacking the text will require a certain amount of “non-trival effort” from the reader. Yet, at the same time, a purpose lies behind this theory game. In firstworld countries, especially North America, digital technologies, particularly technologies of representation and information, have significantly altered foundational cultural, social, and economic structures. As the 21" century opens itself up to us, with its attendant puzzles and obstacles, the emphasis on play, games, and ‘fun’ as a

means of understanding and traversing the spaces of labor and capital, of the personal and the political, of the real and the digital, leads us to rethink the relationship between work and play. This is particularly important as the shift to an information economy becomes more and more total and digitized information replaces its formerly tangible physical manifestations. That said, the theoretical structures in this

book emphasize that embedded within this game (and within the games themselves) are the signs ofanew form oflabor, particularly when considering online gaming and the rise of online economies. In addition, because I am trying to construct a theory

that is structurally appropriate to the object of this study, a certain tactile and haptic effort from the reader—material effort in the face of an overwhelmingly immaterial form—will be called for from the reader. This theory seeks to emphasize a material-

ist politics as a methodology that works cognitively and physically. To a certain extent, this is performative, i.e., self-aware of its own status as performance because

players watch themselves play (often in the form of the avatar), confounding notions of spectator/audience and screen/performer. Some may find this to be contradictory. How to reconcile a materialist, political, haptic theory with the playfulness, the theat-

ricality of performativity? Here is where we turn to our first critical category and object of study—gender, specifically masculinity.

In chapter I of this work I describe the state of boyhood as the subjectivity thatis produced by and produces the digital imaginary. The central mode of production is play—in games and sports, on the Net, within digital code, and in the technological cultural imaginary. The chapter begins with an overview of current scholarship in the study of masculinities, particularly works that focus on the establishment and main-

tenance of male codes of power. To this end, I want to illustrate both the mode of a specific masculine action and the medium of that masculine action based on and around technology. In a sense, masculinity is a form of technology, a set of tools that

allows the user extension of his physical powers, regardless of whether this is an actual physical addition or the ideological prosthetics manipulated by the patriarchy. In this conception of masculinity, technology and masculinity can never be imagined as separate. Similarly, technology can be said to often have a gender in itself, although

6

RE Die Tryin’: VipEOGAMES, MASCULINITY, CULTU

its production. Considering this usually has more to do with who owns and controls ine gender is problematic. Springer’s arguments, to simply assign technology a mascul sense that much of the A general survey of field of masculinities gives one the and concepts. Thus, an field owes a great deal to the work of feminist theoreticians the assumptions and convenimportant tactic in this survey is to uncover some of

of a sociological methodtions in the field. One of these conventions is the adoption of view. Hoping to ology to validate the work of the already-heard-from male point the cloak of scientific authenticate their “data,” many early theorists depended on ing this notion is objectivity to lend credibility to their work. Essential to dispell the complicit relaDonna Haraway’s radical, materialist, feminist point of view on

theories of tionship between science and the patriarchy. In addition, Judith Butler's relationship bethe performativity of gender and sexuality serve to illuminate the tween body, sex, ideology, and gender. ns on Following the work of Haraway and Butler, I attempt to focus my attentio ance in the male body and its attendant technologies, particularly pain and perform

, sport, to show that, while pain may be inescapable in the realy thevirtualized violence danof videogames offers a shadow sphere free of bodily pain, yet full of action and ity, masculin white and sm get. Here, I turn to the work of David Savran on masochi by the particularly his conceptions of the feminization of the male body subjugated gical technolo l historica resent ravages of pain. Linking this to Springer’s absent/p schema points to the role technology now takes (in the form of dually subjugating and enhancing the body) in determining how a body is read, both physically and socially. Rehearsing feats of strength and skill based on pain and violence is the primary mode of production of male codes of power. These codes are learned in boyhood, to the extent that they can (and must) be revisited to assure the virility and longevity of the male subject, particularly in relation to the encroachment of absent, feminizing

technologies. The popularity of sports and violent games shows that the games serve as a sphere for bodily action as well as one in which the subject can fight off the looming threat of absent technologies. Moving to an analysis of sports and masculinity, I turn to the work of Toby

Miller and Joseph Maguire, among others, to establish a clear link between sport, violence, and the male body as the stage for this theater of pain. Considering that sport is a major point of most young men’s lives (and continues to be of extreme importance as a masculine code when men no longer play and simply watch), it serves as a useful thematic bridge to a short look at psychoanalytic theory, which in turn allows me to analyze more fully the learned nature of violence and its technological origins in the performance of masculinity.

INTRODUCTION

7

Switching gears to the theory of games, I hope to create a strong contrast between the older, more modernist theoretical works of Huizinga and Caillois, as well as the works of more contemporary theorists of masculinity, to illustrate the heavily

regulated conceptions of work and play in the “world of man.” While both Huizinga and Caillois seem to be writing chiefly about play, they are equally concerned with

masculinity and how it relates to and regulates play. Both these theorists make clear

gender and age distinctions in their considerations of games and play, particularly in their theoretical parameters and methodologies. To a certain extent, the work of Huizinga and Caillois points to an outdated style of scholarship and masculinity, as well as an outdated notion of play. Yet these two authors carried out the earliest major studies of the field, and thus their studies are necessary and useful. What is essen-

tial to note is that gender differences occur in the realm of play, especially when it comes to rules. This is particularly clear in videogames and the rules and structures that control the flow of play.

Videogames, particularly Resident Evil and the Tomb Raider series, form the central object of study of chapter II. By considering the games a type of performative

medium, I theorize the relationship between the player, the avatar, and the game. Also, by analyzing several games closely with the aid of the work of performance theorists such as Peggy Phelan, a conception of the visual and thematic nature of games can be formulated, particularly in relation to live performance and the theorizing of performance. The chapter is largely a close look at thematics and narrative structure in the Resdent Evil games and an analysis of gender and the gaze in Tomb Rarder. In addition, in this chapter, I introduce the metaphors of virus and ghost.

Virus relates to the ‘spread’ of these new virtual media, to the thematics of Resident Evil, to the invasive nature of interaction with the spaces and figures in the games, as well as to Artaud’s famous metaphor for his metaphysical theater. In the term “ghost,” I find a useful metaphor for the dual subjectivity that exists within the space of the game and the body of the player, in the form of the avatar, and in the form of the gazing player who experiences what Matthew Causey calls the “uncanny experience of the double.” In chapter I, I analyze the real-world spaces in which videogames are played

and enjoyed—arcades... Traditionally inhabited by a particular adolescent breed, the semidelinquent technophile, mega-arcades such as the Dave and Buster's chain rework the space and its activities as a family-centered funfest. As an example of this new construction, I analyze the arcade-like spaces of Sony's future-mall, Metreon™

where the digital boy finds another facet of his existence, as consumer and Haneur. At the Metreon, commodities masquerade as interactive tools for empowerment, and the digital subject is hailed as player, spectator, and buyer simultaneously.

8

Dre Tryin: VipeocAmEs, MAscuLINITY, CULTURE

many senses, play Chapter IV argues that the structure of videogames (and, in nity and that masculi of itself) is intimately tied to cultural constructions and notions ion of several asthe games themselves follow a type of masculinist logic: My inspect

are both literal and figupects of game structure, particularly the rules and how these overtly macho lead rative, aids in my analysis of three action games that feature Vice City. This Auto: avatars, Syphon Filter, Metal Gear Solid, and Grand Theft and games; serving chapter works as a type of analytical bridge between masculinities digital culture. ve to mark each material and discursive practice as mutually formati in

confluChapter V focuses on what I have termed the “digital imaginary,” or the reand produce to ence of forces and practices—both real and virtual—that serve is the stage produce conceptions of “high-tech” culture. In short, the digital imaginary played out are gy where the various ideological and cultural battles regarding technolo toand performed. It is both real and imagined, with both spaces pushing the other overward an assumed “progress,” or techno-utopia. This techno-utopia is, of course,

the rise shadowed from within the imaginary by dreams and prophecies that describe face of the in nd of intelligent machines and the quickening ‘obsolescence’ of humanki increasingly complex and ubiquitous technologies. In a sense, the digital imaginary is also a playground for the digital boy, where emphasis is placed on play, and culture and politics are often posed as a type of game. This is partially due to the influence video and virtual games have had on Generation

X (and now

Generation

W, for

‘Wired’) and the increasing role technology plays in the formation of subjects and subjectivity. Play is also the corporate mantra and lifestyle of the new urban cybercitizen, the bohemian bourgeois, or “bo-bo.” Following these cultural trends requires the use of a good deal of contemporary critical theory in this chapter, particularly the theoretical studies of contemporary postmodern culture and media. Thus, I use authors such as Baudrillard, Virilio, and Deleuze and Guattari to inform my critique of the digital imaginary and its greater relationship to capital and capitalism's shift to its present transformative status, as well as the increasing commodification of cyberspace and the digital imaginary. Beginning with cinematic representations of the digital imaginary, I analyze films that focus on the hacker/gamer, the cyberjockey who operates in a perpetual state of boyhood (the topic of so many cyberfilms), acting as hero and outsider simultaneously. In Tron, The Lawnmower Man, and The Marrix films, we see clear examples of this subjectivity. Each of these films attempts to spatialize cyberspace in different

modes, furthering the ability of machines to represent and simulate the real (and the unreal). Ending with the futuristic portrayal of virtuality in eXistenZ, each film has marked changes in the nature and influence of the videogame industry and the popularity of play over the past two decades. Increasingly, the films present a game world

INTRODUCTION

9

that requires the players to perform as themselves, as well as the avatar or character, within the game. Identity, gender, sexuality, nationality—all of these things become

aspects ofplay, paving the way for the visual and interactive complexity of games such as Black and White (2001), in which the player plays God in a virtual world, creating

cultures and setting entire scenarios in motion that are pursued in the game by artificially intelligent agents. Finally, in the film eXystenZ we witness a model of pure

simulation, where the referent reality becomes altogether unrecognizable, tying back in to the levels of media spillage found in, for example, the James Bond films, games

and product tie-ins. Using eXistenZ as a platform, I leap into a discussion of the omnipresence ofthe cyborg, in technological and social reality as much as in contemporary critical theory. A mixture of machine and human, the cyborg raises questions of gender, sexuality, and embodiment, relating again back to key issues in this work:

absent vs. present technologies, embodiment and telepresence, technology and masculinity, and the performance of the self in technologically mediated sites. However

often it has been theorized, the cyborg remains a largely metaphorical and discursive site of productivity in terms of virtuality. In this sense, I work to ground the beast in the service of a master yet unseen—the ghost ship of virtuality paradoxically adrift on the turbulent seas of apost-9/11 postmodernity.

Moving away from cinema, I turn to a discussion of “bo-bo” culture (which serves as a kind of hyperlink back to the section in chapter HI on Sony's Metreon), particularly the dotcom world that sprang out of late 1990's Northern California, and its relationship to digital culture, play, and work. In digital culture, e-commerce, online trading, and Second Life become the new adult videogames for the accumulation of capital, fusing the world of work and play (a hyperlink back to the section at

the end of chapter I on play and games). These topics lead to an analysis of another practice, another genus of play I refer to as ‘lysing.’ Lysing is a term that seeks to combine alternative and subversive online practices such as hacking, cracking, and

phreaking. Using the theoretical work of Andrew Ross and the hacking credo of Eric Raymond, I trace the historical changes and political intentions of lysing as a type of game in itself, a marker of a set ofonline practices that sometimes seem to be subversive but, in the end, are perpetuated by those who are the most technically savvy of us

all—_programmers, coders, ‘geeks’ —those who live their boyhood (and adulthood) in the digiral imaginary, firmly in control of the new technology. This kind of subversion mimics the postmodern imperative to ‘operate from the inside.’ Cybersubjectivity, in the end, is still unable to operate outside or above ideology or the hegemony. I close the chapter with a discussion of two films that represent several issues that are central to this work. In War Games, the young hacker operates as if he lives in an ethical vacuum, yet in the end he learns his lessons from the game, in the form

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, the cybergang band together of an artificially intelligent (boy) program. In Hackers

illustrate sites of strugto fight the specter of corporate technocracy. Both these films the same time showing gle and resistance from within the digital imaginary, while at same rules of power that the virtual (and the digital imaginary) operates under the of a type of technothat dictate the Real. The chapter concludes with a description which offer logically centered communal event—LANs (Local Area Networks)— may not be as soliinteresting proof that the cybersubject known as the “digital boy” n technology as tary a creature as imagined, showing again that the dialectic betwee as ever. This type utopian impulse and dystopic force is as dynamic and multivalent games popuof communal behavior is, of course, mirrored in the massive multiplayer promise. and digital __play online of rise the during larized fall of Startup.com, a documentary that details the meteoric rise and DMV govWorks.com (a dotcom that offered online access to tax information, the ntgovernme other and , [Department of Motor Vehicles], parking ticket payments ons related services), serves to crystallize the issues, problems, theories, and explorati through company the of in this book. The film documents the progress and decline portraits of its two founders, Kaleil and Tom. Playing the corporate game for these

twenty-somethings (including millions in venture capital) results in great personal and financial loss for both. In a sense, the two begin as boys at play and finish as older, wiser, more jaded men. As Nick Dyer-Witheford writes in C)yber-Marx: Highly paid, frenetically creative, technologically compulsive, often enjoying substantial entrepreneurial opportunities, this elite work force has been the subject of innumerable adulatory media reports, making their exploits an important part of the information revolution’s 4

romantic mythology.

6

But, as witnessed in the dotcom bust of the late 1990s, the mythology has its limits. In Cyber-Marx videogames have clearly become the new mythos, for producer and player, city and state, information and capital. The documentary is a telling look into masculinity at work in the corporate world, at how online technologies served to fuel the ghost economy of Internet startups, and how the two together led to the dotcom “crash” of 2000, and of govWorks.com. The hubris of the entrepreneur, the aggressive attitude of the capitalist, the machinations of venture capital, the seductions of cyberspace, and the masculinist approach to business (the founders are shown lifting weights at the gym and leading their “team” in spirit-building chants and cheers) all coalesce in Startup.com, illustrating how masculinity, play, and capital served as the thematics for the grandest of videogames—the race for gold and glory in cyberspace. This work details similar cultural patterns and markers.

INTRODUCTION

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Recently, at a club in Los Angeles, I attended a Guitar Hero ‘open mic’ session.

Guitar Hero is a great deal like standard karaoke in that the players ‘sing’ (with their hands) popular guitar-riffF- heavy songs to a crowd of aficionados and spectators using the commercially available software and the requisite wired plastic guitar, The rockers, pluckers, strummers, and fretboard tappers worked their magic and might, simulating a rock show with an iPod mix culture sensibility. One person writhed on the floor like Morrison faking Hendrix. One woman did her best Riot Grrrl Joan Jett. Top prize for the night was $100, Amazingly, the once revolutionary prosthesis of

the guitar, now made of flimsy plastic, still lugged its masculinist equipment with it, still working as a cultural totem. Yet, the most impressive moment of the night was that fame and fortune were negotiated through the dynamics of a cultural practice so often associated with a performative masculine pose—rock music—and that practice

and pose were now channeled through a videogame full of moments of slippage, deception, and fun.

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nee Newman, Videogames, M. Fuller and H. Jenkins, “Nintendo and New World Travel Writing: A Dialogue,” in S. G. Jones, ed., Cybersoctety: Computer-mediated Communication and Community (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1995); T. Friedman, “Civilization and Its Disconwww.gameat available Space,” and Subjectivity Simulation, tents: research.com/art_civilization.asp, 2002. Last accessed, June 5, 2003.

* Newman 115.

‘T borrow this term from Anne Friedberg and her essay, “Cinema and the Postmodern Condition,” Viewing Positions: Ways of Seeing Film, ed. Linda Williams (Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers U. Press,

1995) 59-83. * For nearly the rest of the game series, as well as in the films, a female avatar becomes the central character, hinting at the success of other, similar game series such as Tomb Raider and Perfect Dark. * Tanya Krzywinska, “Hands on Horror,” in G. King and T. Krzywinska, eds., ScreenPlay 207. ” Geoff King and Tanya Krzywinska, “Introduction: Cinema/Videogames/Interfaces,” in G. King and

T. Krzywinska, eds., ScreenPlay (London: Wallflower, 2002) 4. * Lisa Blackman, “Culture, Technology, and Subjectivity; An Ethical Analysis,” The Virtual Embodied,

ed. John Wood (London: Routledge, 1998) 132. ” Margaret Morse, in her essay, “An Ontology of Everyday Distraction: The Mall, the Freeway, and

T.V.,” in Logics of Television, ed. Patricia Mellencamp (Bloomington, IN: U. of Indiana Press, 1990) 193-221, discusses a similar ontological state—one of perpetual distraction, supported and focused by surrounding cultural and spatial structures. Also, Sue-Ellen Case, in The Domain Ma-

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trix: Performing Lesbian and the End of Print Culture (Bloomington, IN: U. of Indiana Press,

1996), describes a similar screened existence, compounded by the screenic histories of L.A. and the surrounding, spatial layout of the city as a grid, or matrix. Finally, Mark Poster, in The Second

Media Age (Cambridge, MA: Polity Press, 1995) finds the subject constructed by TV advertisements and surveillance cameras, while databases of information create a portrait of the subject as

consumer. " Kevin Robins and Les Levidow, “Socializing the Cyborg Self; The Gulf War and Beyond,” The Cy-

borg Handbook, ed. Chris Hables Gray (New York: Routledge, 1995) 122. “ Donna Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (London: Free Association Books, 1991). > Haraway, Modest_ Witness@ Second_ Millennium, 270.

* Herbert Blau, Take Up the Bodies; Theatre at the Vanishing Point (Illinois: U. of Illinois Press,

1982) 199. “Blau 199. ® After the retrovirus inserts itself into the host cell, the host cell can either serve to produce more retro-

virus, or it can begin the process of oncogenesis—cancerous growth. Either way, the host cell is never the same again.

* Peggy Phelan,

Unmarked (New York: Routledge, 1993) 1.

” Phelan 146. Phelan 13. ” Phelan 163. * Phelan 21. * Phelan 21.

* A notable exception is the collection From Barbie to Mortal Kombat, ed. Justine Cassell and Henry Jenkins (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998), in which several authors and interviews focus on the “girls’ games movement” and how this can result in not only different software products/experiences, but also how an emphasis on gender (particularly women) calls for alternate approaches to studying players and the games. ® Sue Mortis, “First Person Shooters—A Game Apparatus,” in ScreenPlay, ed. Geoff King and Tanya

Krzywinska, 81-121. 4 Interestingly, Smith likens her to the Spice Girls, instead of to another historically localized women’s

youth movement, Riot Grrrl, emphasizing Lara's looks instead of her ability to “kick ass.” In general, Lara is representative of what has become known as “Grrrl” culture (stemming from the earlier punk-feminism of the Riot Grrrls), where sexy young girls double as kick-ass characters in a variety of mediums. Examples would be Buffy the Vampire Slayer in television and Tank Girl in comics and film. ® Chris Taylor, “The Man behind Lara Croft,” Time Dec. 6, 1999: 78. Press, 2005) * Astrid Deuber-Mankowsky, Lara Croft: Cyber Heroine (Minneapolis: U. of Minnesota 47.

* Joe Funk, Editorial, Electronic

Gaming Monthly 10.9 Sept. 1997: 6.

- Crispin Boyer, "Straight to the Core. . .,” Electronic Gaming Monthly, Sept. 1997: 96 cortex so that one * Laser Retinal Display is an example where the image is projected onto the visual “sees” nothing but the virtual world.

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Game Violence,” Journal of ” Randy Schroeder, “Playspace Invaders; Huizinga, Baudrillard, and Video Popular Culture 30.3 (1996): 144-152. Effect of Video Games | See C, E. Emes’ article, “Is Mr Pac Man Eating Our Children? A Review of the years. Canadian on Children,” for an excellent summary of many of the effects studies done in past

Journal of Psychology, 42 (1982): 409-414. on,” Zheatre ” This phrase is borrowed from Mikail Kobialka’s essay, “A Topography of Representati Research International 19. 2 (1994): 118.

Chapter III Seeing Film, ' Anne Friedberg, “Cinema and the Postmodern Condition,” Viewing Positions: Ways of ed. Linda Williams (Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers U. Press, 1995) 59-83. * Susan Buck-Morss, The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989).

’ Friedberg 59-83. to be * This is, of course, due to the fact that the smaller, cheaper properties in malls and strip malls tend of this configuration. Video arcades have traditionally been found in modern shopping malls. Interestingly, the word “mall” stems from a 17th-century game, pall-mall, which found players driving a wooden ball with mallets (similar to croquet) down a long, rectangular hallway. The rectangular structure also recalls the shape of many French theaters of the time that borrowed their spaces from another game—tennis. * There are, of course, exceptions to this model. For instance, the arcade/restaurant/bar chain Dave and Buster's features bright lighting and a family-oriented gaming space. However, the chain is clearly focused not on only the children who would populate the more traditional arcades, but also on adults who want to consume alcohol and food and mix in a socialized space that creates a nostalgia for the original arcades they frequented as adolescents. A forerunner of this is featured in the film Tron, in which the protagonist Flynn owns and runs a multilevel building that caters to all ages, and features many different entertainments other than just videogames. ° Michael Benedikt, “Cyberspace: Some Proposals,” Cyberspace, First Steps, ed. Michael Benedikt

(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991) 163. ’ Phelan, Unmarked 16. *T use this word in two senses—medium as the singular of media and as clairvoyant, or spirit guide.

* Benedikt 182. " Benedikt 183. " Bor instance, San Francisco has one of the worst homeless problems in the country though a survey

taken at the height of the dotcom revolution found that 62 percent of the Bay Area population had e-mail addresses and nearly 80 percent used computers regularly. Compare this to the rest of the

nation where, at the time, only one third of the population had e-mail facility. See Carrie Kirby, “Bay Area Leads the Way in Use of Computers, Internet,” San Francisco Chronicle

Dec. 17,

1999: B1+.

"From Metreon Map and Guide (n.p.: S.D.I. Development, 2004) n.p.

" Frederic Jameson, Postmodernism or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham, NC: Duke U. Press, 1991) 40. " Metreon Map and Guide, inside cover. The use of the term “homepage” points to the level of familiarity with computers the average visitor is assumed to possess. It also serves to spatialize Metreon in

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a strange sense. In effect, it poses a simulation model (the Internet) as the basis for a real-world space. So, to navigate the real space of Metreon, the user must already have navigated and familiarized himselfor herself with the simulated space of the Net. ” Metreon Map and Guide 2. On the map of the Metreon in the Metreon Map and Guide, a series of icons dot the maps of the four

floors. These icons represent things such as concessions, restrooms, water fountains, escalators, and so on. It is interesting to note that on the map, a small coffee-cup icon represents not a coffee shop, but Starbuck's Coffee*. This suggests that having a Starbuck's coffee is as necessary and common a part of the visitor's daily rituals as eating and using the restroom, and that having Star-

buck’s Coffee is the sublimation of that activity. ” Metreon Map and Guide, inside cover. '* Metreon Map and Guide, inside cover. ” Buck-Morss 271. ” Buck-Morss 268.

* Sue-Ellen Case 200.

* Morse 193-221. * Case 200. * Case 200. * Tt is ironic that the iMac, as a machine and an idea, was initially a failure. After the computer was

made available to the public, the same public began to request, en masse, that external disc drives be made available. The iMac was not equipped with an external disc drive; the emphasis of the machine was on Internet file movement and not on an actual disk. This is ironic because the success of the iMac, and hence the marketing campaign, became based on the external design and color of the machines, and not on the intrinsic utility of the computer.

* Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Steven Rendall (Berkeley: U of California Press, 1984) xiv—xv.

Chapter IV ‘King and Krzywinska, ScreenPlay (London: Wallflower, 2002) 1-32. * Steven Poole, Trigger Happy: Videogames and the Entertainment Revolution (New York: Arcade,

2000). * Varda Burstyn, The Rites of Men: Manhood, Politics, and The Culture of Sport (Toronto: U, of Toronto Press, 1999) 150. Two notable exceptions to this progression are the adventure films, which have come to be known as pep/um, a series of films produced between 1958 and 1965 that starred bodybuilders posing as heroes from antiquity, and the Tarzan films. For a discussion of masculinity, the male body, and these films, see Richard Dyer, “The White Man’s Muscles,” in Race and the Subyect of Masculinities, ed. Harry Stecopoulos and Michael Uebel (Durham, NC:

Duke U. Press, 1997) 286-314. * Espen J. Aarseth, Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins U. Press, 1997) 1. While this is a useful term, I would like to emphasize that Aarseth’s focus is on construction of a theory of hypertext, not a theory of games. Therefore, Aarseth tends to favor analysis of narrative and textuality instead of the visual nature of the games. Still, the term is useful in that it intimates a kind of activity, not typically provided to either the reader or the spectator.

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and Social Theory, ed's. Jeff * Wil Coleman, “Doing Masculinity/Doing Theory,” Men, Masculinities Hearn and David Morgan (London: Unwin-Hyman, 1990) 186. whereas the Star Wars fran° Lara Croft serves as a prime example of leakage from games to cinema, discourse. A few re- chise exemplifies the reverse. Lara has also become a favorite topic of scholarly Grieb, “Run Lara Run,” cent scholarly articles on Lara Croft and the Tomb Raider series: Margit a and Kate and Diane Carr, “Playing with Lara,” both in ScreenPlay, ed. King and Krzywinsk ed. Sally R. Munt (London: O'Riordan, “Playing with Lara in Virtual Space,” in Technospaces,

Continuum, 2001). an unnatural distur’ This effect is usually caused by a singularity in the camera trajectory that yields in an unconbance in the (usually) smoothly interpolated camera motion. The camera then moves plane literally trolled fashion and comes close enough to the character so that the near-clipping clipping plane passes through the character's body, thus making the body appear permeable. The to avoid obstructing helps rendering in two ways; first, it removes anything too close to the camera

limits a the view, and second, and more important, in combination with the far-clipping plane, ic This volume of renderable space and throws out anything else to speed up the render pipeline. simplification is problematized when the camera moves too close to an object (or character). The player can often force this to happen by moving closely (with the camera in first person) to a corner or wall in the environment.

* Huizinga; Caillois.

> H. Scott Bierman and Luis Fernandez, Game Theory with Economic Applications, Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1993, 69. The authors define a von Neumann-Morgenstern utility ranking as “that player's payoff from that outcome” (69). iy Huizinga.

" Elsewhere in A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, trans. Brian Massumi, (London: Althone, 1988]), Deleuze and Guattari speak of games, comparing chess with the board game Go. While they acknowledge that the two games function differently because of their rules (with Go more in line with their deterritorializing project, the project of the nomad), it is implied that rules operate as limiting structures and like national borders and/or borders of the subject, they are fixed by the structures of capital, set in binaries of interior/anterior, private/public. ” Judith Butler, “Imitation and Gender Insubordination,"in inside/out: Lesbian Theories, Gay Theo-

ries, ed. Diana Fuss (New York: Routledge, 1991) 24. ” Jennifer Terry and Melodie Calvert, Processed Lives: Gender and Technology in Everyday Lives ; (London: Routledge, 1997) 5-6.

"Miller 102. " See, Derek A. Burrill, “Oh, Grow Up, 007’: The Performance of Bond and Boyhood in Film and

Video Games,” in ScreenPlay, ed. King and Krzywinska (London: Wallflower, 2002) 181-193. Roger Horrocks, Masculinity in Popular Culture (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994) 51. "'T feel that this is what is behind the cries ofthe critics. True, the level of violence is unprecedented, but it is its random quality that makes the game seem so dangerous.

Chapter V ' Thomas Bangalter as quoted by Andrew Bozza in “Daft Punk,” Rolling Stone Apr. 12, 2001: 110.

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* Vivian Sobchack, “The Scene of the Screen: Towards a Phenomenology of Cinematic and Electronic Presence,” Post-Script: Essays on Film and the Humanities, 1990: 56. “Newman 49-50.

“Fernbach 246. * Scott Bukatman,

Terminal Idencity (Durham, NC: Duke U. Press, 1993) 227.

* Bukatman 225. * Bukatman 22. *Bukatman 210. * Bukatman 211. Bukatman 215.

" Tron, the videogame, did actually exist, but was released after the movie and both received similar reviews—both were panned. The second coming of the game, 7ron 2.0, was released in 2001 as part of the retro/nostalgia wave in the early 2000s.

* See Newman's excellent chapter, “Manufacturing Fun: Platforms, Development, Publishing and Creativity,” for an overview of past and current trends in the business of gaming in his book Video-

games. ® Paul Virilio, “The Third Interval: A Critical Transition,” Rethinking Technology, ed. Verena An-

dermatt Conley (Minneapolis: U. of Minnesota Press, 1993) 8-9. “ Of course, the information on the Internet actually comes to the user, instead of the reverse. See Virilio again for his thoughts on arrival without traveling. ” The level of computer animation in Lawnmower Man reads in a similar manner, as if the producers of the film could imagine cyberspace only as far as the designers and equipment would allow them. “Jameson, Postmodernism. Jameson points out that the postmodernist era is, in fact, contrary to orthodox Marxist theory, one of several phases in the growth and maturity of capitalism, and is at root

indicative of the inherent instability and dynamism of postmodernism. Jean Baudrillard, more pessimistically, finds the phase to be collapsing in on itself, closing off any means for change or transformation.

Baudrillard, For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign, trans. Charles Levin (St. Louis, MO:

Telos Press, 1981). “a Dyer-Witheford 169. *Jameson 17. * Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. Geoff Benning-

ton and Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: U. of Minnesota Press, 1984) 45. “I borrow “mecanosphere” from Felix Guattari because it points to the more visceral nature of bodymachine relations, and “technosphere” from Paul Virilio, which intimates the vast series of associations between culture and technology that operate on visual, cognitive, political, and other levels. ” The DVD versions of the Matrix films resemble videogames in their structure and setup, and though the Matrix game series is closely based on the films, they feature segments that do not come from the films but serve as internarrative links between the three films. This further collapses the films and games (as well as the multiple worlds within each) by intimating that the player must become

one of the band of rebels, and can do this only by unlocking further (un)realities in the act of play (and therefore decoding). * Or, the fact that the book is hollowed out could be merely a criticism of Baudrillard’s theories, and critical theory in general, particularly in the face of a more widespread, but supposedly decrepit,

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it is perhaps the most popular culture. To hollow out a book and store digital information within by proxy, the auand, text significant of actions in signaling the death of the traditional, physical Baudrillard, see of thor. For an interesting and provocative response to the hyperbolic histrionics

“Two Essays,” Sctence-Fiction Studies 18.3 (1991): 309-320. “RL. Rutsky, High- Techné (Minneapolis: U. of Minnesota Press, 1999) 130. ” Rutsky 131. * Bernbach 246. reality of the rebel ” One of the rebels, enticed back into the Matrix because he despises the lackluster the other rebels ship (and presumably the lack of romantic/sexual attention from Trinity) betrays man. In this and makes a deal with the agents to have himself reinserted into the Matrix as a rich that machines case, the desire for money, or more generally, the power of capital, is brokered by the Matrix the into the last free humans seek to destroy. The power of the agents to insert people back Gramscian at will represents the overwhelming illusory quality of ideology, particularly in the sense. At the same time, the agents and the greater intelligent system that controls them represent a space outside of ideology, a vantage point from which a subject might escape the system that produces those illusory beliefs and false doctrines (a truly fictive space). It is interesting that this space is, of course, a site of pure technology. As Morpheus asks in the film, “How deep does the rabbit hole go?” While this is a reference to Lewis Carroll and the metaphysics of existence in the world of the film, the same question can be asked of ideology, in the reverse direction. When does the code stop encoding? * This is not to say that there are not those who cannot afford them and desire them. I am referring mostly to the class of citizens that can afford them because it is this same class that promotes and is subject to this kind of technological ideology. However, this has fast changed since the phone wars of the late 1990s that brought cell phones, the new great democratizer, to all. ” William Gibson, “Burning Chrome,” (1985) Burning Chrome (New York: Ace Books, 1987) 186. “ Deleuze and Guattari 454. ” Deleuze and Guattari 352.

* Claudia Springer, “Muscular Circuitry: The Invincible Armored Cyborg in Cinema,” Genders 18

(1993): 87. ss Springer 87. ‘ Springer 87.

2 Springer 88.

“ Springer 96.

” See Goldberg's “Recalling Totalities,” CynthiaJ.Fuchs’ “Death is Irrelevant’: Cyborgs, Reproduction, and the Future of Male Hysteria,” Genders 13 (1993): 113-135, as well as Fernbach 234-255. : Springer 89.

” This, of course, has everything to do with the explosion of the Internet as social sphere and as com-

mercial realm, particularly in relation to the strong U.S. economy of the late 1990s and its (somewhat exaggerated) links to the software, technology, and e-commerce industries. ” Haraway, “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth

Century,” Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York: Routledge,

1991) 34. " Donna Haraway, “Cyborgs and Simbionts: Living Together in the New World Order,” The Cyborg

Handbook, ed. Chris Hables Gray (New York: Routledge, 1995) xix.

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” Chris Hables Gray, Steven Mentor, and Heidi J. Figeroa-Sarriera, “Cyborgology: Constructing the

Knowledge of Cybernetic Organisms,” The Cyborg Handbook (New York: Routledge, 1995) 5, “ Luse v. 1, 2, and 2.1 to indicate the numerous “games” operating simultaneously in the film. Where the film actually starts in v. 2 and leaps to a second level within v. 2 (v. 2.1), it ends in something that is

supposed to be a referent reality, v. 1. Versions are a popular method ofidentification for the software industry, but really they point to the presence of bugs found in a package and to the symbiotic

neurosis formed between the avaricious software corporation and the mystified consumer who “must” upgrade as quickly as possible. “ Gray, Mentor, Figeroa-Sarriera 12. The authors mention that subjectivity and agency are two key concepts that appear in many of the articles in The Cyborg Handbook, and find that at the root of

both of these “fascinations” is the key term “embodiment.” It seems that the handbook does indeed privilege physicality in its analysis of these terms, signaling that an essentialism is at work in our general thinking about technology in relation to the body. This is confounded, of course, in the third category of cyborg, because embodiment is not, to a certain extent, the key concern of online subjectivity or agency, but representation.

* Te is interesting to note that a player has to be penetrated before she or he may engage in “foreplay” with the pod.

* Fuchs 113-135. ” Buchs 114. “ Fuchs 114. ® Interestingly, Fuchs does not bring up the point that through this penetration, Picard is made truly powerful and indestructible, devoid of humanity but full of the knowledge and cooperative strength of the Borg. Although Fuchs identifies the Borg-Picard as a “penetrated, ungendered, and

unfamiliar Picard,” which “collapses conventional binary terms of difference” (113), she fails to see that the cyborg Picard represents actually a member of her first category, the macho-cyborg. Picard’s masculinity within the series has always been one based on restraint, wisdom, and kindness; as a cyborg, Picard appears as a brute, standing for the opposite kind of masculinity he is usually associated with. Thus, I would argue that this cyborg actually constitutes the more familiar body fantasy of transcendence and power, at the expense of the less important features of intelli-

gence, wisdom, and so on, so that this representation actually substantiates “conventional binary terms of difference” —although it may be more akin to Jonathan Goldberg's (repressed) homosexual male body traced out in “Recalling Totalities: The Mirrored Stages of Arnold Schwarzeneg-

ger,” The Cyborg Handbook, ed. Chris Hables Gray (New York: Routledge, 1995). * Buchs 114.

* Yans Moravec, “The Senses Have No Future,” Zhe Virtual Dimension: Architecture, Representa-

tion, and Crash Culture, ed. John Beckman (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1998) 88. * Moravec 93.

© Taken from the title of N. Katherine Hayles’ article in Rethinking Technologies, ed. Verena Andermatt Conley (Minneapolis: U. of Minnesota Press, 1993) 173-189. * Brom “Architecture and the Age of Its Virtual Disappearance,” an interview with Paul Virilio by An-

dreas Ruby in The Virtual Dimension 180. : Allucquere Rosanne Stone, “Will the Real Body Please Stand Up?: Boundary Stories about Virtual Cultures,” Cyberspace: First Steps, ed. Michael Benedikt (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992) 81-

118.

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MA: MIT * Bernadette Wegenstein, Getting under the Skin: Body and Media Theory (Cambridge, Press, 2006) 161. z Wegenstein 158.

Harper* A term used from Neal Stephenson's epic hacker fantasia, Cryptonomicon (New York: Collins, 2000). New ® Paul A. Taylor, “From Hackers to Hacktivists: Speed Bumps on the Global Superhighway?” Media and Society 7 (5) (2005): 625-646. * P. A. Taylor 626.

* Andrew Ross, Strange Weather: Culture, Science, and Technology in the Age of Limits (London:

Verso, 1991) 87.

® Similarly, the term “phreak” came to be associated during the 1980s with crimes committed with the aid of a telephone. “Phone phreaking” has since come to be looked down upon by the hacking community as a type of petty theft. Using stolen credit card numbers for theft on the Internet or identity theft is essentially a new form of phreaking. ® Bric S. Raymond, The New Hacker's Dictionary (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994) 218.

* Raymond 218-219. © Ross 76. ** Ross 80. *” Ross 81.

® Katie Hafner and John Markoff, Cyberpunk: Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991).

* Ross 91,

” Jim Thomas, “The Moral Ambiguity of Social Control in Cyberspace: A Retro-assessment of the ‘Golden Age’ of Hacking,” New Media and Society7 (5) (2005): 607. ” Taken from an interview with John Marcotte, “The Accidental Revolutionary,” in California Computer News, Jan. 18 2001: 40-43. ” Bric S. Raymond, The Cathedral and the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an_Acciden-

tal Revolutionary (Sebastapol, CA: O'Reilly, 1999) 234. ” See Kevin Poulsen, “exileccom” Wired 7.1 (1999): 108-159, regarding Poulsen’s heavily surveilled and restricted life after a five-year prison term for phone hacking. “ Raymond, Accidental Revolutionary, 40. ” See http: //www.opensource.org/halloween.html for a digital copy of the famous Microsoft internal

(leaked) memo that spells out their “sinister” corporate strategies. Last accessed, June 2001. ” Florian Réetzer, “Outer Space or Virtual Space?: Utopias of the Digital Age,” in The Virtual Dimen-

sion, Architecture, Representation, and Crash Culture, ed. John Beckmann (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1998) 123. ” See Edward Soja, Third Space: Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Imagined Spaces (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), for a critical rewriting of Henri Levebre’s work on urban space and ideology; Mike

Davis’ City of Quartz (New York: Vintage Books, 1992), a look into the city of the future using L.A. an as example of utopia and dystopia, and the collection, Jmagining Cities: Scripts, Signs,

Memory, ed. Sallie Westwood and John Williams (London: Routledge, 1997). “A. R. Stone 98,

” Dyer-Witheford 122,

Novres

155

© Simon Penny, “The Virtualization of Art Practice; Body Knowledge and the Engineering World-

view,” Art Journal 56.3 (1997): 36, ™ Mark Dery, Escape Velocity (New York: Grove Press, 1996) 22.

© Vivian Sobchack, in her article “New Age Mutant Ninja Hackers: Reading Mondo 2000," South Aclantic Quarterly 94.4 (1993): 569-586, identifies a similar strain of nostalgia for the radical 1960s, although she finds that the use ofsuch cultural references for the creators of Mondo 2000s

more an attempt to reconcile (and privilege) the location of the individual in the cybernetic, particularly the computer-savy, outsider geek. © T.L. Taylor, Play between Worlds: Exploring Online Game Culture (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,

2006). ™ See the special issue of Games and Culture: A Journal of Interactive Media 1(4): October 2006. © Thomas Malaby, “Parlaying Value: Capital in and Beyond Virtual Worlds,” Games and Culture 1(2)

April 2006: 141-162. “A. R. Stone 104.

*” A. R. Stone 107. * A. R. Stone 108.

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Westwood, Sallie and John Williams, Eds. Imagining Cities: Scripts, Signs, Memory. London: Routledge, 1997. Wiegman, Robyn. “Feminism and Its Mal(e)contents.” Masculinities 2.1 (1994): 1-7.

Wolff, Janet. “Dance Criticism: Feminism, Theory and Choreography.” Resident Alien: Feminist Cultural Criticism. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995: 81.

Index Aarseth, Espen) ands A

digital imaginary, 2-3, 5, 8-10, 15, 22-23, 39,

43-44, 74, 86-92, 94-100, 115, 116, 118,

agon, 42

alea, 42

120, 124, 126-128, 130, 131-132,

arcades, 7, 47, 61-67, 69-71, 89, 93-94, 102, 117, 127, 130-131, 134

134, 137, 139-140

Dyer-Witheford, Nick, 10, 98, 126

audience, 5, 21, 45-47, 50, 53, 55, 59, 110-111,

120, 141 avatar, 2,5, 7-9, 22, 40-41, 45-47, 49-53, 5560, 62-64, 74-77, 79-82, 90, 93, 107, 109,

Electronic Software Ratings Board, 22

ergodic, 4, 74 eXistenZ, 8, 9, 88, 97, 105, 107-111, 113-115

142

feminism, 2, 33 Baudrillard, Jean, 8, 43, 63, 92, 97-99, 101, 104

Fernbach, Amanda, 29-30, 88, 102

Benedikt, Michael, 62-64

film, 1-2, 4, 8-10, 19, 22, 25-26, 29, 34, 36, 43,

Benjamin, WalterJ.,47, 69-70

50, 53, 55-58, 64, 68-69, 73-75, 78, 82-

Bersani, Leo, 26-28

83, 85-89, 91-98, 101-102, 105-11, 113,

Blau, Herbert J., 53

boyhood, 2-6, 8-9, 15-19, 23, 26, 29-31, 39,

117, 127-131, 138, 141 first person shooter, 56

43-44, 70, 74, 79, 03, 100, 115, 119-120,

flaneur, 7, 61, 72

135

football, 16, 31, 32, 66, 78

Bukatman, Scott, 2, 22, 91-93, 117

Freud, Sigmund, 21, 26, 33-35, 101, 134

Burstyn, Varda, 73

Friedberg, Anne, 65

Butler, Judith, 6, 14, 22, 78, 112, paze, 7, V9) S274 led2,24-9) Ol-O4107ar/ Caillois, Roger, 7, 38-39, 42-44, 76, 101, Case, Sue—Ellen, 71, 87, 117

cheating, 19, 41, 43 Coleman, Wil, 74 computer, 3, 4, 16, 18, 45, 49, 60, 68, 70-71, 82, 86-90, 93-95, 97, 100, 102-103, 106108, 116-123, 127-132 Connell, R.W., 17, 20-21

Cronenberg, David, 97, 105, 108, 110-113 cyberspace, 3, 8, 10, 30, 62, 87-96, 102, 108, 15) 1205123) 253275135 cyborg, 3, 9, 29-30, 53, 59, 63, 75, 97, 100, 102,

Oy

15, 19,183) 1067120

gender, 2-3, 5-7, 9, 14-17, 20, 22, 24-25, 28-29, 31-35, 38-44, 48-52, 55-58, 64, 70, 7374, 78, 79, 83, 100, 106-109, 1111135115) 117118021,

127, 129-130!

134, 138, 141

Gibson, William, 29, 39, 63, 102, 104, 106, 108, 117, 126, 140 ghost, 7, 9-10, 53-54, 62-63, 68, 102 Grand Thett Auto, 8, 13, 22,75, 77-78, 82

Guattari, Felix, 8, 24, 78, 97, 104 Guitar Hero, 11

105-110, 112, 114, 118, 134-135

Daft Punk, 85-86 de Certeau, Michel, 72, 92

hacker, 8-10, 13, 16, 18, 87-88, 90, 95, 98, 100102, 116, 119-132, 135, 139 Hackers, 10, 102, 127, 129-130, 132

Deleuze, Gilles, 8, 24, 26, 33, 78, 97, 104

haptic, 4-5, 17, 32, 45, 75, 79, 134

Dir Tryin’: VIDEOGAMES, MASCULINITY, CULTURE

168

Harraway, Donna, 6, 18-19, 53, 75, 97, 100,

performance, 2, 4-7, 9, 13, 15-16, 19, 21-23, 28-29, 32, 36-37, 45, 47, 50, 53-55, 59,

102, 107, 117

heteronormativity, 20, 37, 34-35, 50, 79, 114

63, 69-72, 74, 85-86, 94, 96-97, 108-109, WS) 015) 4175137, 141.

Horrocks, Roger, 23-24, 81 horror, 50-51, 110

performer, 3, 5, 33, 45-46, 52, 54-55, 58-59,

Huizinga, Johann, 7, 37-40, 44, 76, 101 hypermasculinity, 16, 30, 32, 73, 78, 80-81

Phelan, Peggy, 7, 54-56, 63

62-64, 87, 110, 137

platform, 9, 75, 110-111, 139 ideology, 6, 9, 28, 31, 33, 37, 67, 69, 86, 91,

Playstation, 65-67, 133, 139, 141 politics, 5, 8, 13, 83, 91, 97, 100, 114, 117, 120-

110, 123, 129, 139-140

121, 124, 131, 138;

ilinx, 42-43 interactivity, 3, 13, 67, 69, 74

posthuman, 29, 75

internet, 3, 10, 16, 64-65, 71-72, 86-87, 95,

postmodernism, 30, 104, 108, 124

107, 109, 116-118, 122-125, 127-129,

psychoanalytic theory, 6, 33-34, 36

137- 138, 140 Raymond, Eric, 9, 121-122, 124-125

isovist, 62-64

reproduction, 20, 26, 35, 54, 61, 98-99, 112,

140

Jameson, Fredrick, 65, 98-99

Resident Evil, 7, 47-53, 59 Kaufman, Michael, 34, 35

rhizome, 97, 104

Kimmel, Michael, 17

Rutsky, R.L., 97, 101-102

Krzywinska, Tanya, 51-52, 73

Ross, Andrew, 9, 87, 117, 121-125

rules, 7-8, 10, 18, 28-32, 37-44, 50, 76-80, 82Lawnmower

Man, The, 8, 94-95, 108

83, 87, 93, 97, 132

ludology, 2, 4

Savran, David, 6, 25-26, 28-29, 32, 36, 79

lysing, 9, 119-120, 123, 131

sexuality, 3, 6, 9, 14, 17, 24-25, 27, 33235) 59; Sl opt yl

Maguire, Joseph, 6, 32 masculinity, 1-8, 10, 13-34, 36-39, 41, 43-44,

i at Eas i OSS

Silverman, Kaja, 26-29, 32, 36

49, 58, 74, 78-81, 83, 88, 90. 93, 95, 97,

Sobchack, Vivian, 87, 117, 134

NOMZNOZ OS 26S

sports, 5-6, 13, 16, 28-39, 31, 33, 36, 39-40, 68,

4a2) 120;

Matrix, The, 14, 30, 106, 117, 121-130, 134-

135, 138-140

Metreon, 7, 9, 45, 64-70, 117

Metal Gear Solid, 8, 13, 75, 79-82 Miller, Toby, 6, 32, 79 mimicry, 29, 42-43, 99

mobilized virtual gaze, 47, 61, 63

96-97, 108-109, 118, 138

Springer, Claudia, 3, 6, 105-107, 114, 117, 138 Stone, Alluqcuere Rosanne, 87, 117-118, 126, 133-134, 140 subjectivity, BAe 728, 7,

20-27) 0) 45,

46, 52, 54, 59, 91, 98, 100, 107-110, 112, 115, 119, 134-135, 137, 142

Mulvey, Laura, 56, 83

Syphon Filter, 8, 48, 79-82

narratology, 4

Taylor, T.L., 120, 132

Neuromancer, 29, 63, 102, 106, 126

technology, 2-3, 5-6, 8-10, 13-16, 18-19, 21-

Newman, James, 46

23, 26, 29, 36, 44, 45, 52, 59, 67, 69, 71,

Nintendo, 67, 75, 140

78, 85-88, 90-91, 95, 100-104, 106-109,

INDEX 111, 114-121, 126-128, 131, 134-135,

137-140 telepresence, 9, 51, 95-97, 116

Tomb Raider, 7, 40, 47, 51, 54, 56-57, 59, 64, 0D; Mp Led Tron, 87-88, 90-93, 118, 122, 130 TV, 2, 16, 58, 60, 64, 71-72, 99 violence, 6, 14, 21-26, 29-37, 43-44, 45, 49-50, 55-56, 59, 73, 78, 82, 105, 109, 114, 140 Virlio, Paul, 3, 8, 24, 95-96, 117

virtual reality, 3, 88, 95, 97, 107, 116, 126, 137

virus, 7, 47-50, 52-54, 70, 80, 88, 118-119, 122, 125, 129-131

War Games, 9, 127-130

Wii, 67, 75, 140 ExT >, 6

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Toby Miller General Editor

Popular Culture and Everyday Life is the new place for critical books in cultural studies. The series stresses multiple theoretical, political, and methodological approaches to commodity culture and lived experience by borrowing from sociological, anthropological, and textual disciplines. Each volume develops a critical understanding of a key topic in the area through a combination of thorough literature review, original research, and a student-reader orientation. The series consists of three types of books: single-authored monographs, readers of existing classic essays, and new companion volumes of papers on central topics. Fields to be covered include: fashion, sport, shopping, therapy, religion, food and drink, youth, music, cultural policy, popular literature, performance, education, queer theory, race, gender, and class. For additional information about this series or for the submission of manuscripts, please contact: Toby Miller Department of Cinema Studies New York University 721 Broadway, Room 600 New York, New York 10003 To order other books in this series, please contact our Customer Service Department:

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Die Tryin’ traces the cultural connections between videogames,

masculinity, and digital culture. It fuses feminist, psychoanalytic, Marxist, and poststructuralist theory to analyze the social imaginary that is produced by—and produces—a particular form of masculinity: boyhood. The author asserts that digital culture is a culturally and historically situated series of practices, products, and performances, all coalescing to produce a real and imagined masculinity that exists in perpetual adolescence, and is reflective of larger masculine edifices at work in politics and culture. Thus, videogames form the central object of study as consumer technologies of control and anxiety as well as possibility and subversion. Moving away from current games research, the book favors a game-specific approach that unites visual culture, cultural studies, and performance studies, instead of a

sociological/structural inspection of the form.

DEREK A. BURRILL received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Davis and is currently Assistant Professor of Media Studies

in the Department of Dance at the University of California, Riverside. His work has appeared in Modern Drama, Social Semiotics, Text Technology, and in several anthologies.

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