Social Media x Gaming: Final Thoughts
“21st century experience is simultaneously slackened and overstimulated, 24/7 and always on. The value of social media, casual games, and networked connection lie with the way that they enable a subject to divest from the burden of selfhood” (Hodge 18).
I relied heavily on the definition of phatic communication given in James Hodge’s “Sociable Media: Phatic Connection in Digital Art” in trying to create a game that embodied a feeling of modern connection. Take for instance my game’s “final boss fight,” that is only accessible through staying
on one of the game’s home screens for longer than five seconds. This creates a situation in which the player is able to completely miss the opportunity to finish the game if they are unable to stay on a screen for longer than five seconds. This is representative of Hodge’s “simultaneously slackened and overstimulated,” felt in modern times in that it mimics the feeling that even in a break (stopping on a screen for a few seconds without clicking) the option to check one’s phone becomes an option; or, there really is no break to be found in our current networked times. To counteract a feeling of exhaustion caused by being, the checking of one’s phone, the quick flip through Facebook, the glancing at beautiful people with beautiful lives on Instagram, and the chirp of refreshing twitter all become a habitual resource of disengagement. After sitting on a screen for five seconds, I allow the player to disengage by “checking their phone,” even though the main ‘engagements’ of the game are also social media.
“Critics discussing social media and networks too often assume that the draw or allure of connection lies with interpersonal or intersubjective relationality. Connection here denotes living in explicit relation to a potential somebody or somebodies, but ignores the more fundamental baseline and ordinary impersonal pleasures of simply being connected” (Hodge 2).
Again, I found myself relying on this thought to help explain my game, and even in forming my own thesis about my game: The mundanity of social media is counteracted with gamification, but this doesn’t quite work because the pleasure we seek from social media is not to be exhilarated, but rather to be lightly pleased in our search for connection. I am (lightly) pleased with this thesis, but I have not talked about gamification nearly enough to connect it with my game.
In order to further explain the connection between social media and gamification, let us look at Cliff Lampe’s “Gamification and Social Media” from the book The Gameful World: Approaches, Issues, Applications by Sebastian Deterding and Steffen P. Walz. According to Lampe, “The term gamification has been used to describe a particular set of technical features common in games to shape social processes (Deterding et al. 2011). Both social media sites and the games that inspire gamification share common elements” (463). Lampe then argues that “interaction between players is often a major motivation and a driver of game play. It is this unmoderated communication that has driven the development of gamification-like features in social media, as developers have created tools that both ameliorate some of the effects of text-only environments and extend how people can interact” (465). In claiming that the gamification of social media is to ameliorate its text-only environments, what then does this say about the current design of social media and our reliance on it for personal relief from selfhood? If we use Hodge’s view of “impersonal pleasures of simply being connected,” to look at social media, gamification and the blurry line between social media and casual networked game actually makes sense. Both are methods of relieving users of the burden of selfhood, so why wouldn’t a merger happen between them? If social media continues to expand its use of gamification practices, what will happen to the “living in explicit relation to a potential somebody or somebodies” that is the apparent purpose of social media? What happens when sending stickers on Facebook messenger, which is both phatic and visual not unlike network games, replaces the instant text-messaging that requires more relation, more personhood, more burden, more exhaustion?
If social media truly is ‘gamified’ what does that mean for my Twine game? What does it mean to subject players to a game that mediates an already gamified media? What does this do to the idea that social media and casual games are habitual resources of relinquishing selfhood? Does my game then “enable a subject to divest from the burden of selfhood,” or does the fact that my game is single-player/not actually connected to the network disqualify it from this status?
Though I have ended up with far more questions than answers in this last blog post, I am satisfied with the way that this blog (both my personal and the group) has turned out. If I was to make another twine game, I would definitely want to create a more immersive experience. This game was a bit of a gluttonous experience, and I adventured into several themes that really didn’t flesh out into anything great. I ended my game with the following quote that is more feel-y than network-y:
“No one’s sure what C.T.’s choice of this wallpaper is supposed to communicate, especially to parents who come with prospective kids in tow to scout out E.T.A., but Hal loathes sky-and-cloud wallpaper because it makes him feel high-altitude and disoriented and sometimes plummeting. -David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest
This quote is a kind-of in-joke with my fellow bloggers, but it also resonated with me after finishing most of this game. The fake social media in my game is called ‘Clouds,” and so this theme of being somehow omniscient ‘in the clouds’ and viewing what should be un-viewable (another person’s personal information) becomes the same kind of disorienting /plummeting that the character feels when looking at cloudy wallpaper.
My game can be found here: http://www.philome.la/J_Miller317/a-walk-in-the-clouds (Please play it).
