New Media & The Future

The human race has a constant need to evolve, progress, invent and explore. This has led not only to exploring outer space, and the depths of our own oceans, but also in the ongoing creation of new forms of media and new ways to access/enjoy that media. We've gone from building sized computers, to phones that possess more computing power and fit in the palm of our hand, and this will only continue. With possible new media forms such as holographic technology or AR (Augmented Reality), just to name a few, on the horizon, we can see how our boundaries will continue to be pushed and explored.

To study new media, as we have in this class, we must immerse ourselves in the field and the media that it contains, and to attempt to throw away our preconceptions and start anew, as with many of these new forms of media, we cannot justly compare them to previous 'established' forms, for they may not comparable in the least. It's an area I think is very important to study, hence being in this class, and I hope more classes in this field are offered to students in the future.

What are New Forms of Media? How Can We Study Them?

New Media can be defined as every single electronical device that has been recreated. This means that the upgrade of device equals remediation, so it is seen as a new form of media again even if there is only slight changes to its outward appearance. Its abilities, however, are better after every single remediation.
The process of remediation seems endless. There are always new updates, new softwares and new ideas influencing media. It is a delicate metter to study new media, because there are continuously changes made, so that there cannot be made any generalizations or finite statements about new media that are studied.

The New Medium

Studying new forms of media, we always have to keep in mind that what we consider New Media won’t be new in a couple of years, especially since the field of media is growing so rapidly and at the same time constantly changing and morphing into other forms of new media – the remediated versions of new new media which, in turn, will also be recent or old media eventually. The seminar gave a nice overview of the current forms of new media and how people attempt to study them but, as Jessica already mentioned in her entry, there is much more to it and we cannot go beyond the very basics of studying New Media within the short period of time we had during this semester.

Gender and Video Games

As much as I love video games – I really hate the same old discussions about gender, be it in video games, movies or real life. The symposium group was dealing with a text about a study on the video game “Second Life” where women tend to create better looking avatars than they actually look in real life which eventually led to the idea that women in video games were always depicted as very attractive and sexy. Now, feminists tend to argue that this was an insult to all ‘real’ women, since they are rather seen as an object (princesses being taken away or wives and daughters getting killed) than a person and they would demand equality. The term ‘equality’ tends to be misunderstood though, since many feminists want women to become superior to men rather than equal.

I – being a woman – do not have any problems with women being depicted as the physically weaker sex, simply because we actually are. Although I have to say that I tend to get annoyed by the excessive use of women as kind of a sexual highlight for a game simply to reach more people (since most gamers are male), I really don’t like these overly strong women who can easily take out any man in a fight, no matter how strong and well trained he is. That is not my perception of equality between genders. As to the unrealistic attractive women being shown in video games: that’s the very same with male characters who tend to be way too muscular and/or attractive in comparison to a real person.  

I could go on and on about this topic, but I’ll just end it with one question: would you really want to play a female plumber saving a prince who got kidnapped?

What are new forms of media? How can we study them?

New forms of media are all media which have either been computerised by a computer chip or by remediation. As the seminar has shown shown so far new media can be studied in very different ways and on different levels. Especially in this course we focused on literary theories and the comparison to new media like TV series, movies or video games. One can analyse if their do represent reality or not. The question of simulation and simulacra is also comparable to all these media. However, ‘simple’ literary theories and topics like identifying the narrative situation or talking about gender are also aspects of new media which can be studied. All in all, new media are very complex and cover a high number of different academic topics. Through the last 13 weeks, we only covered some of these topics. However, there is still more. Because of the constant process of remediation new media will be created future generations of students will analyse and study at university because we will never run out of interesting topics.  

Video Games and Gender

Although I am a woman I do hardly disagree on today’s session and the opinions concerning gender the other students mentioned. First of all, the representation of women within video games and the ostensibly lack of women as protagonists is, in my opinion, neither a discrimination of women nor a gender related social problem which has to be changed. Of course, it is true that the majority of video games consist of male main character who have to rescue a woman. Nevertheless, I do not see this as discrimination but a completely normal and logical relation. As we talked about the example of Kim Possible, who is the female protagonist, and her male friend Ron Stoppable, who always gets in trouble and has to be rescued by Kim, isn’ t it strange that the man is the weaker sex? I could not take such a man seriously. In my opinion, it is just a game and I do not feel personally   discriminated if a man has to save a woman.

Talking about the topic discussed in today’s reading material, the avatar of women, I have to say that I cannot agree on the author’s opinion. Of course, there might be a few women who create a beautiful and non-realistic avatar because they wish to look like this. In my opinion, however, this is the minority. If I have to create an avatar, she would definitely not look like me. But that does not mean that I think I am not pretty. It is just a nice chance to create a new character. If my avatar looks like a rock star, that does not mean I am unhappy with my career and want to be a rock star.  

Discussions like these, talking about gender, make me always very angry. I am an independent, educated and self-confidential woman and do not share the opinion that women have to take care of the household and children.  Nevertheless, in video games there are specific roles which do not have anything to do with discrimination. It is just a fictive world consisting of heroes and men saving women is more attractive than women saving men.

Second Life

The article "Identity and Gender in Second Life" that was published in the book Living Virtually deals with women that are actively participating in the online game Second Life. The text deals with women who were interviewed and asked questions while participating in the online game. The main issue that the text is about are the avatars especially women create for themselves. They are usually very attractive with bodies as athletic as those of models. These women live in a virtual world where they look good and try to be popular and integrated. In real live, these women admitted, that they do not look as their avatars, but they wished they would. I think these women are not self-confident at all. If they were, they would get out of their houses more often and meet real people.
The most grotesque example, to my mind, were Cici and her husband ( Living Virtually 159). Cici seems to be upset with the doings of her husbands avatar. She is complaining about him dating other avatars, but even if she sits next to him in the real world she does not say anything to him. Cici seems to be unable to seperate the real world from the virtual one. In cases like this I question myself whether this kind of addiction to a video game like Second Life can have a serious influence on real relationships. These people have no possibility to find someone or meet someone in real life when they are spending their entire time in virtual worlds like this.

Loke, Jaime. "Identity and Gender in Second Life." Living Virtually Researching New Worlds. Ed. Heider, Don.  Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., New York: 2009. Print. 145-161.

Is Bioshock a Narrative?

After last sessions presentation on the Ego-shooter Bioshock the question arose whether it is a narrative or not. The answer to the question was that it is a narrative that is presenting a linear story that the player can create. Furthermore, we established that there are two possible endings to the game namely a positive  and a negative one whereas the negative ending can be further split in a negative ending with a positive tone or with a negative connotation. Knowing these facts about the ending of the game I question myself whether one can play the game multiple times. Are there so many possibilities to create the narrative that it turns out differently each time even if there are only two possibilities for an ending? Or is it a game that starts to be boring after a while because of the narrative that is fixed and cannot be altered completely?

Gender and Video Games

It's quite poignant that we're tackling this topic this week, as I had just seen an interesting video dealing with girls and toys, aimed at adjusting the kinds of toys made for girls in an effort to promote the design and sale of toys that encourage young girls to be engineers, scientists and builders.

I found the article to lack scientific rigour, as some of my classmates have mentioned in their blog postings, with Loke's methods seeming somewhat haphazard, with what to me was far too small a sample size, a lack of standard questions, and not all the same information provided by the interviewees (some provided pictures, some didn't etc.). 

In terms of gender roles in the virtual space, I thought it focused much more on the blurring of real and virtual life than it did on an in depth study of gender in games and virtual spaces. Games such as Tomb Raider and Resident Evil could have been utilized to discuss the representation and depiction of women in games, as could The Sims and World of Warcraft which both skew a little closer to Second Life, and which were in wide release when this article was written. Dealing more with issues of addiction, self-esteem, the tendency to blur real and virtual lives, the article could have been more provoking if it had addressed how female characters have been, and are, portrayed, in virtual spaces such as games, if that has changed over the years and if there are movements or efforts to change these portrayals.

Female characters in video games are not new, Samus Aran, the protagonist of Metroid has been around since 1986, before most of the people in the class were even born, but as graphics and technology has developed that allowed us to create more realistic and visual games, did the (seemingly) male dominated arena of video gaming create unrealistic and unrepresentative female characters? (if you take a look at the video below, you can see how Samus now looks similar to many other female characters, with the small waist, big breast, and very fit)

What have we (or I) learned from the seminar so far?

From discussing Marshall McLuhan, Post-Structuralist theory, remediation, video games and everything in between, this semester has been quite an enjoyable one thus far and precisely what I was hoping for when choosing the specialization for my Masters program, which is how I ended up in this course. Tackling new media in its various shapes and forms has been intriguing and further stimulated my interest in the area, which had been stoked many years ago in my BA days through classes in Semiotics and the history and theory of media.

I've enjoyed speaking about these various topics with my classmates and the instructor, and therefore found the discussion aspects of the course to be the most fulfilling. That could also be from the fact that I also find that those people who do not participate normally may participate more during these aspects of the class, although that is not always the case. Having read some of the other blogs, some of my fellow classmates have commented on the presentations or symposiums, and I would tend to agree that some of them did not provide a great deal of insight and were more of a rehashing of the article that had been assigned, or were rehashing the film or television series being covered, and providing no clear link to the theories or article. It has improved as the semester has progressed, and the additional time for Stefan to engage the class was a positive step.

In a way, I wish that this class required certain prerequisites or a particular semester/level of student, so that Stefan could delve even deeper into certain topics, and presume certain skills/knowledge in terms of writing, presentation skills etc. I feel that would allow much more interactivity and thought provoking, deep, intellectual discussions amongst the class, allowing all students to get even more out of each session, but understand that classes here don't seem to be offered with those restrictions. I've learned a great deal, and look forward to tying it all together in the upcoming weeks.

What have we learned from the seminar so far?

The seminar, so far, was an interesting journey, starting with Marshall McLuhan’s definition of what he considered New Media in his time up until the question of what we currently see as contemporary forms of media, be it remediated versions of older media, such as digital paintings in contrary to classical paintings with pen and paper, or completely new forms of media (and here I can’t even think of anything which is not, at least in some way, only remediation, but something completely new; maybe someone can help me out here. Do we even have something really new? Have we reached our limits already? I hope not…). When we continued talking about the New New Medium on the basis of images, movies and videos, we were questioning our perception of reality: in this highly manipulative world of media things can no longer be guaranteed as visual truth. What is reality? Who defines the truth? Taking a closer look at the example of video games, we see that this form of new media combines various kinds of media and creates something new. We came to the conclusion that video games have emerged into a whole new culture, which is not limited to being one form of new media, but remediates various kinds of media, be it music, movies or traditional arts.

The symposiums were dealing with really interesting questions and conveyed some intriguing approaches to trying to explain the different forms of New Media and how we perceive them; I am looking forward to the remaining sessions.

Video Games as Narratives

I think we all can agree that video games are a form of narratives in one way or another. Still, there are clear distinctions between how a book or a movie is narrated in comparison to a video game. Every kind of game (we don’t even have to restrict this to video games only) is telling a story – a story every player has to identify and understand for himself, because he is part of the process of creating this story and thus bring life to the underlying text. The amount of clear narration varies greatly in the field of (video) games: while some, such as Alan Wake or some of the Prince of Persia series, even offer a real narration by characters within the game in addition to the player’s own experiences, other games, like Minecraft or Tetris, hardly show any kind of story in the first place which makes the player the only – yet also necessary – narrator.

What have we learned from the seminar so far?

During the last weeks a number of different topics referring to new media have been covered and discussed. First of all, it is necessary to differentiate between old and new media. According to McLuhan this means that new media is anything consisting or using computer chips. However, old media are for instance also the telephone or the printing press. These media were “updated” and became cellphones and fully digitalized copy machines. This process is called remediation.  Old media are influenced by new technology, borrow or adopt these technologies or only parts of a particular technology and create a new medium. 

Analyzing specific new media, like movies or video games, one has to focus on different aspects and theories. In the analysis of movies, TV series, etc. one of the most discussed questions is the one of reality. Is the story or the presented world real and can the audience rely on what they see? This leads automatically to simulation and the concept of simulacra. Explaining simulacra on the example of the iPhone it means: there was one original iPhone once, but because of the huge number of iPhones all around the world we do not know which one is the original and consequently we do not know if our iPhone is the real iPhone. 

Focusing on video games the analysis of this medium is quite different. Whereas movies play with the question of reality, video games seem to have a great influence on other media. There, remediation works in both ways: video games can remediate media like movies, novels and smartphones whereas animated special effects, narrative structures or the development of technical equipment can also remediate video games. 

All these aspects discussed in our course so far show that new media is a very complex topic. It is more than just computerized technology or digitalization. It is more than just the Internet and the problem of information overload. It is a constantly changing process of media and we can analyze them in different ways and by focusing on different and interesting aspects.

Video Games and Narrative

 

There are two essential questions which are very hard to answer talking about video games and narrative. Talking about movies and books narrative is definitely text because the content is written down and (in the case of a movie) visualized. In a video game the player gets the possibility to “write” his/her own story. Of course, the possibilities a gamer can chose are created by those who created the game, but it is not a traditional narrative. Maybe, one could think the other way around: if a gamer writes down the story of his character and his adventures experienced in a game, than one gets a written story which is text (I hope this makes sense because I do not know how to describe my thought in a better way).

The question of the narrator does also seem to be quite difficult unlike books. The protagonist of a video game does not necessarily tell the story but “writes” the story by making decisions and actions. If he stops acting the story will not be continued and the game stops. With his decisions the protagonist influences the story as well as its ending. Nonetheless, sometimes there is an omnipresent narrator giving additional information in short cuts for instance. So, do video games possibly have more than one narrator? And are video games even texts? These two questions will hopefully be answered in the next session because today we could not find an answer.  

The Magic Circle

The Magic Circle is an interesting topic, as I believe it provides and allows for an interesting discussion on the evolution of gaming as a whole, and in particular how pervasive video games are in contemporary society. Much has changed since 1938, when Huizinga made his observations and remarks, and I believe they have lost much of their weight and relevance when applied to video games and modern gaming culture. With Cosplay, LARP-ing, real-time communication within video games, and most notably augmented reality games, the divide between an enclosed world of gaming and the real world has vanished. Augmented reality games are a prime example of this, as they are games or applications which utilize the information about the surrounding real world and makes this information interactive and/or digitally manipulable. This can be a result of the location/GPS functions of our modern smart phones, or it could utilize the cameras, but either way it makes it so that your surroundings are now part of the game/app and blurs the divide between game and 'real life' even further. This was an intriguing topic that I think could spark a good discussion in class, and perhaps something we could revisit if time permits.

Difficulties of defining video games as narratives

In Egenfeld-Nielsen’s chapter “Narrative” taken from his book Understanding Video Games: The Essential Introduction, the author focuses on video games and narrative as well as discusses their differences. Maybe, the most obvious difference between traditional narrative and video games is that video games are far more interactive than books or movies. In a book or a movie, the reader/audience has to watch whereas in a video game the player has to act – otherwise nothing will happen (170). The player, or the protagonist, takes an active part of the “story”. Nevertheless, he/she is still following a settled structure or plot. The people who had written this game created a story with a particular plot. For being successful in this game the player has no other chance than to experience this story. In my opinion, this makes a video game similar to a book or a movie.

As mentioned in the chapter a number of video games “try to make as many objects ‘alive’ as possible” (175) in order to make a game more interactive and diverse . Further, producers came up with another model of narration where the gamer goes from chapter to chapter, making individual decisions leading to individual endings (182). Doubtlessly, all these “specialties” makes video games extremely interactive and give the gamer the feeling of “writing” his/her own story. Nevertheless, a video game is still a narrative because it is based on a particular story, different chapters, a protagonist and end (even if there are several possible endings available). If a gamer does not act, nothing will happen. But if I do not continue reading a book, the story will also stop. In my opinion, books, films and video games are all based on narrative and follow its structure because without narration there is no story and that is what books, films and games are based on.

Egenfeldt-Nielsen, Simon. “Narrative”. Understanding Video Games: The Essential Introduction. New York: Routledge. 2008, 169-195. Print.