What Video Games May Come
If you recognize that image, or if it rings even a small bell with the title, you may be remembering the film starring Robin Williams What Dreams May Come. Within the film (spoiler alert), Robin William’s character dies, goes to heaven, sees all of his lost children, and then saves his wife from an eternity in hell because she committed suicide from her grief. Each event, meeting his children, experiencing his heaven, saving his wife, were essentially dreams. Hell was an obvious nightmare, but an eternity with his wife could be seen as a dream come true. I use this because instant and nigh perfect dream fulfillment is supposedly just around the corner with the promise of technology, or more specifically, virtual space technology. The “Coding the Future” panel at the Technocultural Futurisms convention spoke entirely about virtual spaces both literal and figuratively. How these spaces can be a form of simulation, covert prejudice, and/or immersive. The technology is useful as it can generate user spaces through VR or immersion that accomplishes the same task that a real space can provide or present a compelling alternate perspective. Simply put, virtual space technology allows it users to experience seemingly real world events and problems without leaving their seat.
Not all is well in the virtual world however. As Lisa Nakamura, the first panelist to speak, pointed out that such technology has immediately noticble biases. One instance are current VR headsets being designed for male users. Nakamura points out that most VR headsets developed are designed primarily by men and women report higher rates of ill side effects like headaches, nausea, and motion sickness. “It seems that women’s bodies are less believing than men’s to fantasies presented to them,” joked Nakamura (but not untruthfully). Dave Gaertner, another panelist, takes a different perspective saying that the virtual world maybe the last remaining space for those who have been denied a voice. He presented a website of a small Native American village meant to make the visitor feel like an outsider as they see the homes of the local people, and then as guest as you can read the stories and interview done by the same locals. In this way Gaertner wanted to show that virtual space may be a last resort for those who don’t have any land of their own but also as a powerful tool to show how other people can live. The last panelist argued about the simulationary aspects of games and virtual worlds. Patrick Jagoda explored the world of virtual worlds describing how time and time again, games have been used to simulate real world events, problems, and models either for entertainment or for preparation. Through gamification, the seemingly never ending need to turn everything in the world to a game for practice or profit has been startling to many but Jagoda points out that gamification has strong roots in neoliberalism as the point of making games is to make the rules of games. From what I gathered, Jagoda argued that games, or simulations, are self defining, self perpetuating, and self designing.
Perhaps the closest reading I can get from this panel (besides Pressed For Time) is my favorite article thus far “Do Artifacts have Politics?” by Langdon Winner. Nakamura pointed our the covert, or sometimes even overt, sexism in VR tech like the first VR headset being called the Virtual Boy by Nintendo or how reminiscent VR tech is of the hyper masculine internet of the 90’s. Here, I doubt the developers had any intention of cutting women out of the picture. The users are probably more to blame as the gaming community is almost always incredibly toxic to one another. However, just like Winner points out the bridges of New York as overtly racist in design, the gaming industry was intentionally marketed to boys after the video game crash of the 80’s by Nintendo and thus overtly sexist in origins. In this way, VR tech has been grandfathered into the world of male dominated gaming where the developers themselves may not be sexist, but the practices of the industry, originating from sexist practices, are sexist in nature and thus the politics of video games are sadly sexist. As a gamer, that has always disappointed me and I still see it everywhere, gamers treating gamer girls like trash or prostitutes/strippers in virtual spaces. Given how much of a push VR tech is getting, I wouldn’t be surprised of another wave of feminism but this time in the politics of the virtual worlds.
