Simulation - War games being a version of events.
Interactive - Relationship between player and text puts "us" in the text, becoming highly IMMERSIVE.
Erosion of History - Taking events and modifying them.
Call Of Duty as postmodern text
Objective :
*Answer the following questions in relation to Call of Duty.
1. How do games like CoD change the relationship between audience and text?
They allow the players to interact in movie like depiction's of wars based on events that happened. The games story lines draw heavily from past war movies such as saving private Ryan. They further increase this interactivity by allowing the players to engage in mini fictional online wars with each other. The games are interactive simulation parodies of war movies which are simulations in themselves.
It should be noted that by having the game in a first person point of view allows for the player to become more immersed in the experience there by blurring the boundary of reality and forcing the player to become more connected to the experience. Highly detailed focus on the mise en scene. There is an increased focus on the diegetic sounds. You have to be playing the text to experience it properly.
2. How can we apply Baudrillards theory of "hyperreality" to CoD?
"Argued that distinctions between reality and media representations of reality have become blurred."
The first person point of view crossed with highly realistic appearing graphics and a real world basis for the events happening in the game (War in the East, mimicking of Groilla type warfare).
We become someone else, are re-spawned when we die and have control of events.
Hyperrealism is a liberating experience for the player.
Time spent playing sees us ignore reality.
It is also a simulation of war and indeed a simulation of a simulation (the images we have seen of war on the news or from films such as Black Hawk Down).
"Media representations are not based on reality but instead are based on existing representations thus __creating - hyperreality. People then start to believe this hyperreality.+ Reality > Simulation (heightened and exaggerated) > Simulacra ( a copy of a copy, big brother house for instance) > Hyperreality."
The games copying largely from films, the newspaper media etc whilst researching largely in the factual elements of gameplay such as the sounds and the sights (gun fire noises and weaponry specifically modeled in replicata to the original). The effect of crossing a fiction with a studied element created what the above quote explains, by having a setting that is highly tangible but a basis that is completely (or near completely) made up.
3. How does CoD change a players identity (thus creating a postmodern identity)
The player takes on the role of a military solider who can use guns and kill there friends online. This is the complete opposite of the norm of reality, the player can become a violent sociopath but as it is a simulation it is acceptable... However, as you take on the role of the character your playing in the game, that makes the character in the game your playing actual you, meaning the actions you do in the game is you.
The player can become detached from who they really are whilst playing, for instance the anonymous nature of online play allows for people to converse with each other in a far harsher way and yet it not become a problem as the player only has to leave the game to get away, where as in real life they would have to possibly move house.
We are not ourselves but soldiers.
You can choose which and sometimes within the game become different people.
Female players become men.
Online play creates different (gamer) identity and you can join a group.
You can swap, invent and multiply identities.
4. How does the "gamer" become author of the text?Or how does CoD relate to lyotards theory of micro-narratives?
""Micro narratives" - criticism of society, unpredictable, mixing of genres."
The player creates his own story each time he plays the game. (To take CoD 5 may be the easiest example).
The game has a mode in which you can fight off hordes of Nazi Zombies with fellow solider survivors. The setting not only gives a version of events but incorporates elements of eroded history (i.e nazis becoming zombies). It gives a representation version of the Nazi party from second world war Germany/Japan as being like zombie hordes, the satirical idea that they are just going with the crowds, parodying the phrase "I was only doing my Job".
When the player goes online with
Different routes or ways of doing things symbolise micro-narratives.
Freedom to explore.
Several missions not one overarching goal.
Online and multiplayer - different options, choose any weapon etc.
5. Why is CoD a postmodern text?
Micro-narratives
Hyperreality and simulation
Audience/ text relationship
Audience as Author
Changing Identities.
Erosion of history
Intertextual references to other media etc.
6. Why is studying a videogame in itself postmodern?
Blurring of cultural boundaries high/low
Video games have low/pop cultural status even within postmodernism.
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