i have been emailing with gaming and protocol theorist Alexander Galloway on some topics relating to his most recent book Gaming: Essays on Algorhithmic Culture [bad ass picture, by the way]. we got into this discussion on whether gaming is sadistic or masochistic. here is Galloway’s take as it will appear in a forthcoming essay.

“Is not sadism the essential perversion of cybernetic systems, in that they have as their end the emergent expression of action events (what in other contexts might be called desire) via a complex of machinery whose prime directive is the control and manipulation of objects? The sadism of a game like Manhunt is, in this sense, merely a hypertrophy of software itself which solicits us to pursue, target, isolate, reconfigure, process, execute, and generally inflict pain on objects in the world as if they were endless masses of data. What makes the computer different from something like the cinema–which essentially establishes object relationships through a variety of forms of masochism–is the active, expressive, exploitative, ergodic, vigorous, driven materialization of measurable presence and measurable activity. It is this hubbub of activity that is the cybernetic system.”

although i agree that the *gamer’s* position is often masochistic at the same time–repetitive stress disorder, blurry eyes, skipping bio breaks, etc.

Here is my response:

i am interested in your application of sadism to gaming, however, i still think i disagree. in fact, i think Manhunt is the perfect example for precisely the opposite expression. i have only played the first 2 parts of Manhunt, so i could be wrong about how it plays out, but isn’t that game a staging of “The Most Dangerous Game,” or “The Pest,” or “Surviving the Game?” As such, the players algorhythmic adversary situates the playable character as prey in his televised *sadistic* spectacle of manhunting, while the player’s enjoyment of the game is thus a *masochistic* fantasy of being the hunted and harmed.

I suppose my point of disagreement is based mostly in the player’s role in the game’s narrative, how the game situates and defines the activities. It is one thing to be Tommy Vercetti and working you way up the food chain a la Scarface and quite another to be Carl Johnson in San Andreas trying to get your brother out of jail and crooked cops off your block. But, then one has to ask what the correspondence is between narrative and game play, which is a microcosm for the larger question, what is the connection between gaming and life.

Galloway is invested in the material nature of gaming; what does it mean to be pressing the buttons; hence, his statement that gaming is masochistic in that it can lead to afflictions. I do not think, however, that the experience can be separated from the narrative, what players think of themselves as doing. As D+G write, the masochist wants to feel fear at the sound of his mistresses boots. that is a manifestation of masochism that happens completely on the level of symbolism: boots means beatings.

i wonder if that is enough to be considered masochism, identity masochism. isn’t that, after all, what D+G are proposing in BwO? A mental concept of body?

del.icio.us