Sunday, October 5, 2008

Comments on "Digital Democracy"

Okay, I'm going to relax and realize that Persuasive Games is not, in fact, an academic book (as the first chapter initially suggested) but is rather a report on videogames in American politics, advertising, and education. As such, I will (1) cease looking for more theory development to bolster Bogost's claim for a new domain of "procedural rhetoric," (2) let me previously-posted reservations stand, and (3) confine my comments to the author's reportage.

My reading of Chapter 4, "Digital Democracy," left me with these questions and observations:

Is this book outdated? Having been published in 2007, presumably Persuasive Games was written in 2005 or just after the previous presidential election. So when Bogost was writing, the "first videogame endorsed by a U.S. presidential candidate" may have been legitimate news and portentous of things to come.

But now, as I check the websites of the two major presidential candidates for 2008, on neither site is any videogame featured (or at least, the front pages provide no visible way of navigation). Can "persuasive games" and "procedural rhetoric" be a force in "digital democracy" when, in this important election, neither candidate believes it important to employ such games?

A look at the index of Persuasive Games finds no references to MMOGs or MMORPGS. So has the well-known "light speed" of digital media passed the book by in the four years since Howard Dean for Iowa and Take Bake Illinois were introduced in 2004?

Thus far Persuasive Games has only featured rather ham-handed examples that seem crude by the standards of today's MMOGs. Thus my question is: Has the "center of gravity" in gaming shifted to MMOGs and left the likes of Madrid and September 12 far behind? In other words, do the "persuasive games" on which Bogost builds his case for "procedural rhetoric" matter anymore?

Of course, we still have seven more chapters to go and my mind remains open to the author's thesis. But Chapters 2-4 leave me with the abovementioned question.

What do "docu-games" have to do with politics? Their inclusion seems curious in a chapter on "Digital Democracy." Would these docu-games fit better in Bogost's section on the educational uses of "persuasive games"?

All because we can digitally recreate an experience, should we? Though I seldom agree with Ted Kennedy, I must concur with his assessment of JFK Reloaded as "tasteless." One of the sad memories of my boyhood growing up in Washington DC is the day my father took me to Arlington Cemetery, put me on his shoulders, and together we watched the funeral procession slowly make its way to the gravesite.

What's next? Should a Beltway Sniper game be created that allows players to be embodied as John Muhammad, to access road maps of the Washington DC area and see how many innocents they can be coldbloodedly killed? Or a Columbine or Virginia Tech Massacre game?

The same justification used by the makers of JFK Reloaded could be made for Holocaust Reloaded. Yes, it is possible to digitally recreate a simulacrum of Auschwitz, of the selections on the train platform, the gassings, the plunder, the crematoria, the medical experiments, the slave labor, the barracks. Game designers could make it possible for players to experience embodiment as SS killers.

But should it be done? I am reminded of Jaques Ellul's 1964 warning about the lure, which he believed inherent in technology, of perfecting a technology for no other justification than it is possible to do so.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I'm afraid I have to disagree with your comments on JFK Reloaded and the notion that an interactive version of an event is made 'because it can be'. The assassination of JFK is, and has been since it's occurrence, the subject of much speculation and debate centred around the potential conspiracy involved. It is this fact that prompted development of the game, in order to provide another 'angle' on the existing debate. To my knowledge, only the imbecilic would present the Holocaust as conspiracy and as such, there is no need to recreate the event for interactive exploration.